Seventeenth Summer (9 page)

Lorraine and I made the beds together, and the house smelled of roast and cauliflower from the kitchen, and everything was so pleasant and Sundayish that I forgot to ask what she had done last night and whether or not she had had fun with Martin Keefe.

Margaret and Art had gone for a ride and didn’t get back until just before dinner was served. Art went out to the kitchen with his hands behind his back, walking in his funny way like a Teddy bear. In one hand he had a jar of green olives and a can of black olives in the other. Each Sunday he stops at some grocery store that is open late and brings home a contribution.

My mother was just lifting the roast out with two forks, dripping with sputtering hot fat, and Art set the olives down on the table to hold the meat platter for her. She saw them and looked at him with a softness in her eyes. “What’s that for—a bribe?” she laughed and patted his cheek.

Until she met Art, Margaret had always gone with a different kind of boy—tall fellows who moved fast and laughed deep down in their throats and showed square white teeth when they talked. But after she met Art she never went out with another boy. He was just a little taller than she with thick, dark hair and warm brown eyes that were as soft and mellow as his voice. We got used to his queer humor and odd gentleness till we liked him so well that to say “Margaret and Art” was as easy
and natural as “bread and butter” or “dark and handsome.”

Later, when dinner was over and we were sitting around the table in a contented, Sunday-afternoon apathy, Kitty pushed back her chair, excused herself, and went out to play on the front lawn. She walked about listlessly, flipping off clover heads with a short stick, humming to herself in dejection. Every now and then she stopped to stare down the street.

My mother looked out at her and shook her head. “Really, we’re going to have to do something about that child,” she said. “When you three girls were younger you had each other—but there is no one on this street for her to play with. Angie, you don’t seem to have any more interest in her than the man in the moon. If she wants to play dolls, you’re dusting; if she wants to go swimming, you’re just washing your hair. It will be a good many years before she can go dancing!”

It’s funny how, having nice thoughts in your head, it is so pleasant to pull them all out and think them all over again. And I wanted to think about Jack just then, so I said, “Mom, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take Kitty for a walk in the field. We can pick violets or something …” and my conscience didn’t even prick at the deception.

Our house is the second from the last on our street from the edge of town. Beyond the end house runs a gravel road and then a broad stretch of undeveloped real estate, run wild with weeds and low, scraggly bushes. We have always called it the Field.

That afternoon Kitty and I just wandered aimlessly through the long grass that was still lush and fresh with the last rains of spring, not going anywhere. It was early summer and the water was still puddled in the ditches along the grassy road and underfoot the ground had a soft, spongy feeling. The sky was dotted with cotton cloud-puffs and Kitty walked along, zigzagging with her head back and watching it till she was tired, and then plumped down to rest. I sat beside her. The breeze was like a gentle breathing and the sun hot on our faces till both of us were mellowed with contentment, basking in the almost liquid warmth of the sunshine.

Kitty rolled over on her back. “Angie,” she said, her voice slow with thought, “did you ever wonder where the butterflies go when it rains?” I had to admit that until that moment I hadn’t even thought of it.

“Well, I was thinking about it the other day, Angie,” she told me, “and I figured that seeing they don’t have holes or nests or anything, they must hide under leaves. That’s the only place they could be. Probably under big leaves like on the rhubarb plants. Next time it rains remind me, and I’ll go to poke the leaves with a stick. I won’t hurt anything. I just want to see if the butterflies come out….” and she lay mulling the thought over carefully.

After a while we got up from the soft grass and walked out farther across the Field until we came to the creek. It is a muddy, fast-moving tributary of Lake Winnebago and at this
time of the year it is swollen with the early summer rains. We leaned over the wood bridge to watch it, Kitty and I, and it rushed past beneath, eddying around the cement piles of the bridge and stirring up the red-brown clay. There was a small dead tree fallen part way across the stream, and the water churned around the trunk and ribboned its way through the bare branches. She picked some flat leaves from the roadside and dropped them over the rail, watching them float a moment and then rush on down the stream. Later in the summer the water would be green and sluggish and there would be fat bullfrogs squatting in the mud along the bank, loudly clearing their throats as they sat hidden among the river rushes.

Tired of just standing, we edged our way cautiously down the bank, feet heavy with damp clay, and stood on the cement ledge under the bridge near the water’s edge. The stream is only a few feet deep here but it was whirling along in such full, angry haste that it gave me a queer fear at its strength, and I took Kitty’s arm with one hand, gripping the rough cement wall with the other. A car came along the gravel road and thundered over the bridge above our heads, sending a few bits of gravel hurtling over the side into the water.

Besides enjoying the loveliness of the afternoon I was stalling for time and I knew it. The minute I got home I would be hoping and waiting for Jack to call, but here, not knowing if he had called or if he would call, even the suspense was pleasant.

We walked away from the creek slowly, pushing aside the
grass with our feet as we went, looking for the meadowlarks’ nests hidden in the grass. Often in the summertime we had run across four of the small eggs with the red-brown speckles, secure in a nest, while the mother bird would fly above us in wide swoops to distract our attention, singing desperately, her high breast feathers throbbing with song.

When we got home my bare legs were nipped with small grass cuts and from even that short time in the sun Kitty had new freckles on her nose. The family were sitting in the shade of the side lawn and Lorraine was lounged on a canvas lawn chair, patting polish on her nails right down to the tips and holding her hands straight out in front of her till it dried. She is always very careful to wear her nail polish and lipstick to match.

“Angie, that boy called,” my mother said as I came up the walk.

“What boy?” I asked, careful to make my voice sound surprised. I felt an instinctive need for caution. Individually my mother likes them well enough, but as dates she regards all boys with a vague, general disapproval—just in case.

“That boy, Jack,” she answered, never looking up from her knitting. “Margaret spoke with him.”

“He said he would call later, Angie,” Margaret explained. “That he thought maybe you would like to go to some party at somebody’s cottage tonight with him and some other fellows and girls. I told him you probably could and he said he would call back sometime before supper. You can wear my yellow sweater if you want, Ang—but be careful of it. I’d like to see
him when he comes to pick you up—he sounded cute over the phone. He talks as if he has brown eyes—has he?”

There was a hot tingling round my face and I waited to be sure my voice wouldn’t sound too eager, for my mother was knitting with fast, jerky movements as if she were annoyed and her needles clicked. “Do you mind if I go, Mom?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Ask your father.”

I turned to him. “May I, Dad?”

“Whatever your mother says,” he answered lightly, dismissing all responsibility. If he takes time to reprimand us, my father is always very stern but otherwise he doesn’t bother at all. He was sitting then in a loose golf shirt that he always wears on weekends, and his neck showed soft and white at the throat where it is usually covered with his weekday shirt and tie. I stood waiting as he leafed through the paper.

My mother cleared her throat crossly. “I would certainly like to know with
whom
you are going,
where
you are going, and at what
time
you will be home. I don’t like the idea of you girls just going out any time with anybody!”

It isn’t that my mother doesn’t like boys, as I explained, but because we are girls and because we are the kind of family who always use top sheets on the beds and always eat our supper in the dining room and things like that—well, she just didn’t want us to go out with
anybody
.

“That will be the third time this week that you’ve seen that boy!”

This was just what I had been shying away from. For all the warm glow in my thoughts, thinking about Friday night, I didn’t want anyone else to know or to ask questions.

“But, Mom, I’ll find out about it first,” I assured her hastily. “When he calls I’ll ask where the party is and everything and I promise we’ll be home early. It will be all right.”

Later that evening when I was sitting in my bedroom waiting for Jack to come, I heard the phone ring downstairs and went down to answer. But Margaret had got there before me and she was standing holding it, with her hand over the mouthpiece, saying, “Honestly, Lorraine, if he wants a date and you go I’ll just be furious at you—anyone calling for a date at this time of night!”

Lorraine was absently shining her fingernails on the sleeve of her blouse. “I don’t know,” she said slowly, not looking up, “I can’t quite see why I
shouldn’t
go, after all. I’m the only girl Martin really knows in town—maybe he’s been busy all afternoon and didn’t have time to call before.” She looked over at Art but he just shrugged his shoulders.

“If he thinks he can get a date with you any time he calls! Last night may have been all right at the last minute because you haven’t been home from school so long yourself; but two nights in a row …” Margaret stood jiggling the phone impatiently. Even when she was only in high school she didn’t have to worry about not having boys like her.

“Hurry up,” she urged Lorraine, “and decide what you’re
going to say to him. But I certainly know what I’d tell him!”

“Just say that you’re busy and then you and your mother and father can go to a late show so you won’t just have to be sitting here,” Art suggested in his quiet voice. “From what you told me about last night, he sounds like one of those ‘big men on campus’ who never quite got over going to college. Do what you like, Lorraine, but I know what I’d think if I could get a girl at the last minute.”

Margaret held out the phone. “Here,” she said, “tell him you’re busy.”

It was just beginning to get dark outside and the room was thickening with dusk. We could hear the drone of my mother’s and father’s voices as they sat on the side lawn, but the rest of the house was quiet.

“If you want to go out so badly,” Margaret added, “you can come along with Art and me.”

“I know. I know that,” Lorraine said slowly. “But, Margaret, I can go out with you and Art
any
Sunday night—I want to go out with
him!
”

Just as Jack and I pulled out of our driveway, Martin Keefe swung up to the curb in a low green coupe, screeching the tires against the curbstone, and as we turned the corner I looked back to see him crossing the lawn with his long, insolent stride to shake hands with my father.

Another couple drove out with us, friends of Jack’s from
high school, a girl named Margie and a tall, thin boy called Fitz. He had a very bad complexion and a shiftiness about him, as if by not looking directly at me he could avoid my looking at him and seeing his ugly skin. Margie was a tall, slim girl with quick, bright eyes and she talked continually, laughing between the words. Her hair hung long in the back but was swooped up into curls on the sides and crisscrossed with hairpins. Nervously, she kept adjusting the pins as she talked to me.

Leaning over the front seat she commented affably, “You’re the girl who knows Jane Rady, aren’t you? Us girls have a bridge club that meets every couple of weeks and she happened to mention you. Jane said she might stop out tonight with that new boy from Oshkosh she has a date with.”

“Say, this is going to be some party,” Fitz said with significant enthusiasm. “Is Tony Becker going to be out?”

“Don’t know,” Jack answered, keeping his eyes on the road. “I was talking to him at Pete’s this afternoon and he said he’d be over if he could get the car.” He looked back at Fitz. “But if he gets the car I don’t think he’ll waste his time at the party—huh, Fitz?”

“No, sir, that boy don’t waste no time,” Fitz agreed and whistled shrilly through his teeth. Margie laughed and there was some giggled whispering in the back seat, but I couldn’t understand what they were talking about.

The cottage was only a few miles out of town along the lake shore, set far in off the highway. I had a feeling of
apprehension as Jack swung into the rutted mud road. The car lurched sideways and Margie squealed with delight in the back seat. There were three other cars pulled up in the cottage drive and inside someone was playing Viennese waltzes on an old victrola. Already an early moon was showing through the lace of the trees.

It was a shabby cottage. Jack explained to me later that it belonged to Fitz’s family but they used it only during the last month of summer, and the rest of the year it lay vacant except when some of the bunch came out to go swimming or to have a party. The front of the house was flush with the lake so we went in the back way into a kitchen smelling damp and musty, like old wood, with layers of yellowed newspaper on the shelves and a big wooden table.

No one had lived in the cottage since the summer before and the front room had the same damp, close smell as the kitchen. One of the girls took me off into a side room to powder my nose. There was a mirror on the wall and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. She seemed younger than the rest and more talkative, and as she edged around her mouth carefully with bright lipstick she remarked with emphasis, “Honestly, I’m so glad we’re not having anything but beer, ’cause after
last night
I couldn’t stand to look another mixed drink in the face.” Her name was Dollie, and Jack told me later that she was only fifteen and had been dating the fellows in his crowd for only about three weeks. She was what the boys called “a find.”