Seventeenth Summer (7 page)

I turned over, shutting my eyes, trying to sleep, and on my fingers I could still smell the pungent spice of the spruce tree.

It was odd to remember that just this time last night the thoughts in my head had been as pleasant and sweet as warm, thick honey.

Doing the supper dishes next evening, Lorraine and I discussed what kind of a formal I should get, though we knew very well that in the end it would be my mother who would decide. All of us had agreed at supper time that it should be “something young and not too sophisticated.” Margaret had suggested a blue and white sprigged dimity—very quaint and little-girlish, which has just come in at the store—but Lorraine thought something “less ordinary” would be better.

“You know,” Lorraine said to me later, “a girl should always choose something different so she stands out on the dance floor. If you really wanted to do something unusual you should take a very, very long piece of ribbon and tie it in a small bow
on the top of your head and let the streamers hang right down to the hem of your skirt. One of the girls at school did that at our spring dance this year. And another had a black net formal so she got some black veiling and wore it on her head with a red rose like a Spanish mantilla—but that would be a little exotic for Fond du Lac.” My sister always knows a lot of original, clever ideas about clothes and even if she wasn’t going to the dance herself she didn’t mind talking about it.

No one had mentioned it out loud, of course, but we had all been hoping someone would ask her. When the older and younger go it’s hard for the middle one to stay home. Lorraine never dates much in Fond du Lac. When she was at college in Chicago she used to go out a lot—at least as much as the other girls. There wasn’t a chance for meeting many boys when you went to a girls’ college with no college for boys nearby. She used to write home about the smooth blind dates she had for school dances and they almost always asked her out again afterward. Somehow the boys around our town didn’t seem to appreciate her—there weren’t many fellows who knew about books and English literature and the things that Lorraine learned in college. Of course, she never said anything about it but in the summertime it is handy to have a boy.

Kitty was outside playing “One, Two, Three, O’Leary” on the driveway and the ball made a pleasant, rhythmic bounce-bounce on the pavement. The man next door was cutting his lawn and between the noise of the lawn mower we could hear
Margaret and my mother talking in the back garden. “You know,” my mother was saying, “if you’re sure it isn’t too old looking, I think that blue sprigged should be nice for Angie.”

“You’ll like it!” Margaret assured her. “You and Angie come down to the store tomorrow and she can try it on. It’s the prettiest one we have in right now and we certainly don’t want her in one of those aqua or rose taffeta things .” And then the lawn mower drowned them out again.

A few moments later Lorraine was just shaking some soap chips into the dishpan for me when we caught the tail end of a sentence from the back lawn—“well, it’s a little late but Art can probably get hold of
someone
who will go, though, you know, Mom, most fellows wouldn’t want to drive all the way up from Milwaukee just on the chance of a blind date!”

My mother’s voice was very maternal and concerned. “I know. It wouldn’t be so bad if Angie weren’t going, too, but—” and then came the whirring sound of the lawn mower.

This was something we hadn’t been meant to hear and I hoped perhaps Lorraine hadn’t, so I made a clatter with the dishes and tried to pretend nothing had happened. But suddenly she turned to me and said in a tight voice, “Why if that isn’t absolutely silly, Angie. Honestly! If I really
wanted
to go I could always ask one of the fellows up from Chicago, couldn’t I?”

I checked myself just in time with the logical question on my lips—“Why don’t you, Lorraine?”

A moment later she threw her dish towel over the back of
a chair and without looking at me said quickly, “Got to go upstairs a minute. Be right back to finish.” I dried the rest of the dishes, swept the kitchen floor, and hung the dish towel on the rack to dry. The bounce-bounce of Kitty’s ball on the driveway was beginning to get monotonous so I turned on the living-room radio to drown out the sound. The breeze coming in the window was fresh and clean with the smell of newly cut grass.

When Lorraine finally came down I pretended to be very busy with the evening paper and she leafed through an old magazine, neither of us saying anything. Her cheeks were very white with powder but around her eyes was still red. It was funny that I had never realized before that Lorraine
minded
not dating.

On Friday night before the dance I stood in the garden, wondering what it was all about. Just a short time ago Jack called to say he would pick me up at a quarter-past nine. I was all ready except to slip my evening dress on over my head. In the end we had decided on the sprigged dimity and my mother had pressed it so the full skirt hung in soft, billowy folds and the small sleeves stuck up stiff and puffed as it was spread out on my bed. I had come out to the garden to pick bachelor’s buttons for my hair in my long white slip, holding it high to keep the hem above the cool dew on the grass. And as I stood in the garden with the soft air against my cheek and a night breeze fingering through my hair, I couldn’t help wondering a little.

From the house came familiar sounds—the radio in the living room purring out soft dance music, the noise of Lorraine clicking down the stairs as the telephone rang, and Kitty in her own bedroom talking to someone excitedly in a high, small voice. When Jack had called I had thought it would make me excited, after not having heard him for three days, but it didn’t. It was just a boy’s voice. Just a low, friendly boy’s voice that might have belonged to anyone. I hadn’t felt any particular thrill at all—at least I believed I hadn’t; but now out in the garden with the night air so still and soft, the thought of him came back to me and played through my mind till my lips felt warm and my heart beat fast with the wonder of it.

In the past few days something had changed. I had never felt things inside of me before and now I wasn’t even sure if I really felt warm and eager because it was my first Country Club dance and my dress was new, or if it was really because in such a short time, such a very short time, Jack would be there—or was it only that the night was so beautiful that I just wanted to feel something? That evening at Pete’s had left me with a cautious soreness, half in my mind and half in my heart. And yet, out in the garden, I realized that some of the strange feeling of the first night still lingered. But I couldn’t tell, really—it was all still so puzzling and so new. And the night breeze blew till the thin silk of my slip licked against my legs, cool and clean.

Beside the garden path was a rose vine clinging to a rough lattice support, the tender trailers tied with bits of string. The
heavy-headed red roses looked black in the darkness, their perfume floating upward, bewitching the air. Over the whole garden the crickets sang with a steady, rhythmical cheeping, keeping time to the music of the night. The air was soft and warm with the smell of damp earth and the lush darkness of summer. Somewhere, off where lights were bright and the night was moving, I heard a car’s brakes screak. The echo waited a moment and then all was still. One thought in my mind sang a beating refrain with the crickets—“in just a few minutes Jack will be here.” Far up in the darkness was a thin yellow arc of moon, turned over on its back, and the night sky was faintly star-dusted. Something deep within me stirred and a throbbing warmth surged through my whole body until the very tips of my fingers tingled. The whole night was drawn out like soft, silver music. Dew from the plant was cool and clean on my wrist, and as I stooped to pick the little flower heads in the darkness a small night moth with white tissue-paper wings fluttered upward from the leaves. I remember suddenly my lips felt soft, as if I had just smiled, and with a hushed feeling of breathless awe I heard myself whisper a single-word prayer, “God!”

I know you will think it’s terrible, after I had only been out with him two times but in a way I couldn’t help it—even if I did know from the very beginning of the evening, or at least from the first dance, that it would happen. If I had heard of any other girl’s doing it I would probably think the same thing you will think but, well, I did it—and I wish I could make you understand.

I can’t explain much about it—the dance itself, I mean. So much happened that I don’t remember any of it very distinctly; but it doesn’t matter much, because it wasn’t the dance, it was the evening as a whole that was so important. I do remember seeing Lorraine dance by several times with the pale blind date who had come up from Milwaukee with Art. He looked a little odd to me, gaunt and dry—like something you should soak overnight before using, but Lorraine didn’t seem to mind. Having been to college, she knows how to act at dances. She had on purplish lipstick and was dancing with her head back, laughing very hard and having a very gay time, but he was looking at her in a surprised sort of way, holding his head back at a funny angle as if his neck were stiff.

At times I could hardly believe I was actually with Jack. When he was talking to someone else and I was watching him he seemed so tan and clean, so familiar and yet so far away; he was so much fun and everyone liked him so well that it didn’t seem as if he could possibly be my date at all. It didn’t seem that a boy so nice could really be with me. Several times I felt quite sure that when the music began again he would be off dancing with someone else. Once when he introduced me to a friend of his, Dick Fox, who said, “So this is the Angie we’ve been hearing so much about,” I looked at Jack quickly but he was looking at Dick just as if he hadn’t even heard him at all.

One dance I had with Tony Becker, a boy from Oshkosh, whom Jack didn’t seem to like very well. They had played
basketball together on opposing teams during the winter and that night Tony didn’t have a date—he was just out with the fellows, he told me. I liked Tony. I liked the way he held me when we danced and I liked him for telling me he thought my formal was pretty and for commenting on the flowers in my hair. Of course I knew it wasn’t all true but it was fun talking to him—and he said he hoped he would see me again sometime.

But what I really wanted to tell you about is this. After that dance with Tony, I had all the rest with Jack. At first I tried to dance like Jane Rady with my head back so I could look up at him, but that way I had to look right into his eyes and it gave me such a funny, panicky feeling that I would forget what I was saying and get mixed up in my dancing. Once Swede came up, tapping Jack on the shoulder, asking to cut in, but he told him to come back later and Swede just shrugged and went away smiling knowingly, as if he had a secret on his mind.

I don’t know just the minute it began to happen but soon, after each dance, when the music had stopped, I would feel less and less like taking my arm away from Jack’s shoulder and he kept holding my hand as if the music were still playing. And yet he would never look at me and as I watched his face it was perfectly still, as if nothing were happening, while all the time his hand was in mine sending warm shivers all up my arm. Once Swede danced past and said under his breath, “Break it up, break it up!” and Jack grinned suddenly and I couldn’t help laughing.

The band was playing something slow and hushed—I don’t remember what it was—but it filled the room from the floor to the ceiling. No one seemed to be actually dancing but the crowd moved with a slow, rhythmic swaying and Jack and I seemed to be part of the whole, gentle movement. I shut my eyes and the sound of the other dancers, the full, sweet swelling of the saxophone, and the thin magic of the clarinet floated above us in a haunted cloud while we danced in a stillness beneath. I knew then I couldn’t go on feeling this way—I knew something had to happen.

The rest of the evening passed quickly, like a movie film being run off in a rapid blur, rushing to the climax. When the dance was almost over we went out on the terrace, Jack and I. I think there were several other people out there, I’m not sure, though I vaguely remember the scattered glow of cigarettes burning in the half darkness and the warm sound of people laughing. It seemed to me then that I had two hearts, one where it should be and the other pulsing rapidly in the soft hollow at the base of my throat. Leaning against the clubhouse wall I could feel the roughness of the stone and the coolness of the Virginia creeper leaves on my shoulders. Even out here the air throbbed with music. It was better to say something casual than just to wait in the breathless silence saying nothing at all. “Did you have a good time in Green Bay, Jack?” I asked.

“I did, Angie. I really had fun,” he answered. “I meant to send you a postcard but, well, I just didn’t get around to it.”
He paused. Now it was his turn to be without words. “Did you do anything special while I was away? Anything interesting?” It was silly to be standing there with my hands closed tight behind my back telling him about the new book I had read and that Kitty had started to take swimming lessons at the lake to try to earn a Junior Lifesaver’s badge and other unimportant things, when we both knew we were just trying to make conversation, just marking time; and the words lumped in my throat, not even wanting to be said. It was silly just standing there. Both of us knew.

“I used to caddy on this course,” he told me suddenly as if the thought were an inspiration. “It’s a beautiful course. Beautiful, Angie. One of the best in the state. I practically know it by heart. There’s a little elevation over by the second hole, you can’t see it from here, but standing on it you can look out over the whole course. At night it’s wonderful. There’s just enough moon—would you like to look at it with me?” I nodded and he took my hand to guide me over the grass. “Hold your skirt up,” he said softly. “There is dew on everything.”

Standing on that elevation, the whole course seemed to be rolled out broad before us in the moonlight, smoothness and shadow. From this distance a sand trap looked like a big open scar on the smooth face of the green and the moon gave a weird yellow half-light that made the whole night a two-tone picture of highlights and hollows. Behind us tall old elm trees on the edge of the course stretched their black leaf-lace high against the sky.
Jack took a handkerchief out of his coat and the dubonnet dress handkerchief from his breast pocket, spreading them together on the grass for me to sit on. I have never known anything so lovely as that night.