Superior Women (11 page)

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By 7:09, when the buzzer on the top floor of Barnard Hall announces that there is a caller for Peg, she is in a state of extreme exhaustion; exhaustion has almost replaced anxiety. Like an automaton, a zombie, she makes her way down the four flights of stairs. Only when she is a couple of steps from the bottom does she think that she could so easily have fallen, broken her neck, or at least an arm, or a leg. She could have avoided this whole impossible situation.

But there he is, standing at the bell desk. It must be he, Cameron Sinclair. Extremely tall, maybe six five or six, with a large red raw-looking face, red hair, so that what Peg actually thinks is, Good, we sort of look alike.

She immediately perceives that he is much more nervous about this occasion than she is even. Which helps to soothe her. A natural comforter, Peg is given something to do by his discomfort; she will concentrate on putting him at ease (this is always a recommended course for girls, and one that Peg takes to instinctively). Never mind how she herself feels, about anything.

Outside the door, Cameron tells her that Cambridge is “absolutely unfamiliar territory” to him, and he feels pretty much at a loss without his car.

For such a large man his voice is rather high, but this could be sheer nerves, Peg instructs herself.

Just how do they go about getting in to Boston? he asks her. And maybe they could stop off somewhere for a quick drink first?

Helpful Peg tells him that the subway at Harvard Square is an easy walk, and then just ten minutes in to Boston. And if he would really like a drink on the way, well, there’s a very nice bar in the basement of the Continental Hotel, which is right on the way to the Square.

In the pleasant, dark leathery bar, Cameron seems visibly to relax. “I suppose they know how to make a really dry martini?” he asks, in a deeper voice than he has used before. “It’s an okay place, I like it.”

Pleased by his approval of her choice, Peg says that they make quite good martinis, she believes (she and Lavinia used to come here, in the early days of mourning Gordon Shaughnessey).

They have two double martinis each, which is more than Peg wants or is used to, but it is her vague feeling that a girl should go along with a man’s drinking habits when out on a date.

They discuss his courses at Yale, his summer plans, and his chances of going to Harvard Law. A few perfunctory remarks about their families are thrown in for good measure.

“Well, how about getting in to Boston, getting some chow?” asks Cameron, during a pause. “I could use some grub about now.”

Peg sees that this is indeed quite true. He should eat something very soon, or else he’ll be drunk; Peg’s father “drinks,” she knows a thing or two about that problem. “Actually we don’t have to go all the way into Boston,” she says. “There’s a very nice place near here, good steaks. Italian things. The Buena Vista. We could walk there in five or ten minutes.” And get some fresh air on the way, she is thinking.

“Well, if you don’t mind taking a rain check on Boston, that sounds like a splendid idea,” says Cameron. “Lead on.”

He is drunk, Peg realizes, as they lurch toward the Square, heading for the B.V. He is drunk and I will be too, if I don’t eat something very soon.

Saturday night: the restaurant is crowded, and so they have another martini, waiting at the bar. Peg gulps down some peanuts, along with the gin.

Over dinner—the huge, probably black market steaks that finally arrive—Cameron confides his political ambitions to Peg. As he sees it, after the war there will be a reaction to all this pals-with-Russia business, as he puts it; people will stop worshiping Roosevelt and all the “sob-sister semipinks in Washington, not to mention all the New Deal Jews.”

Peg, who is considerably more intelligent than any of her friends then realize (except possibly Lavinia, with her accurate personal assessments), is certainly far brighter than Cameron Sinclair in his ego-driven drunkenness has grasped. She is seriously offended by this nonsense; she has deep, personal feelings about Mr. Roosevelt (never mind what Lavinia would think; they do not discuss politics) and she is impressed by what she knows of the New Deal (also,
Cameron’s views are painfully close to those of her father). But she does not say any of this. “That’s really interesting,” is what she says.

Which leads Cameron to think that she might at least be intelligent, after all.

Dinner somehow serves to sober Cameron and to make Peg more drunk. She is not quite sure what is wrong, she feels dizzy and vaguely sick; how she wishes that she were safely back in the dorm. And, even drunk, all her instincts urge her away from this Cameron Sinclair, but she is incapable of saying the simple words needed to get her home: if she says, I don’t feel well, he will think she’s having her period, and men always hate to hear about that, don’t they?

And so, when Cameron hails a cab, just outside the restaurant, and grandly announces that they are going in to Boston, after all, she even smiles up at him, and she says, Oh, terrific.

Bitter bile is jolted up into her mouth, as they tear across some bridge or other, crossing the Charles.

Later, in the pink-frilled Ladies’ of a nightclub, where (God help her, and her feet) they have danced and danced, she does throw up. Lacking a mouthwash, she fastidiously washes her mouth out with soapy water.

During another cab ride, the final one, a couple of nightclubs later, Cameron begins to kiss her—but “kiss” does not quite describe that sudden plunge in her direction, that thrusting of a thick, bad-tasting tongue into her mouth, while his hands, strong and enormous, tear at her blouse. Peg is caught somewhere in that limbo between fighting him off and responding, both of which she knows that she is supposed to do simultaneously; she is supposed both to make him want to see her again and to convince him that she is not “fast,” or, worse, “easy to get.” However she does manage an amazing feat of strength: she manages to remove his hand from its approach to the top of one of her stockings, but this is less from virtuous impulses than from fear that he will also feel the heavy stays in her girdle. But the effort is almost too much for her; she is nearly sick again, and she cannot be, not with his tongue in her mouth. She manages to swallow more bile, and to remove another strong hand from her breast.

And then, mercifully, they have reached Barnard Hall.

Peg realizes that it is extremely late, and she thinks, Good, no one will be around to see me. At that moment being unseen is more important to her than any possible punishment for lateness. With a quicker kiss than she had feared, at the door (possibly he did not want to keep the cab waiting?) Cameron is gone. Sure that she will never see him again, and relieved (although she has not admitted to herself her true view of Cameron Sinclair), Peg lets herself into the dorm, and she puts her key on its hook. If the night watchman has checked, she is in trouble, but she then thinks, So what? Why should she mind being campused (which is the almost automatic punishment for lateness), since no one will ever ask her for a date again?

She goes up the stairs and has almost reached the top floor when she realizes that someone is sitting out there, smoking. Someone in a pale blue quilted robe. Lavinia.

Who looks at her and cries out, “Peg! My God, are you all right? God! Look, no one must see you like this. I’ll go ahead into the bathroom and check. You stay here.” She leaves, with a quick backward look of sheer dismay, and of true sympathy.

Alone, waiting for Lavinia to come back—chilled and still somewhat drunk—Peg’s eyes fill with tears of gratitude: Lavinia is taking care of her, Lavinia cares.

“Oh now, don’t cry, old Peg. It can’t be all that bad. Come on, quick, there’s no one in the bathroom. You can get all cleaned up in a minute.” Lavinia bustles her along the hall, and into the large bright empty bathroom. “Now, take off that blouse. God, what a mess you are! And wash your face. Peggy, for God’s sake, stop crying. He didn’t rape you, did he?”

“No—”

“Well, next time don’t drink so much. It’s
very
bad for your skin.”

Lavinia does not let Potter Cobb touch her in any of the ways that Gordon Shaughnessey did, although they go out a lot that spring, and they neck, after dancing at the Fox and Hounds, cocktail parties at Adams House. Lavinia manages, always, to stay his hands;
she believes, and is probably correct in her idea, that this prim behavior will both indicate to Potter that she and Gordon did not do much either, in a sexual way, and also that it will make him love her even more than he already does.

In a way she too loves Potter, though, she really does. She loves his clothes and the way he combs his hair, his accent and his car, and actually his
ideas.
He is a conservative, and does not mind saying so. He quotes from Edmund Burke and Hamilton. “I distrust the mob,” he says, “besides which I really don’t like many of its representatives. Those should rule who have been educated to do so.” He would like to go into the State Department; he has been in Washington a lot; he likes it there. He thinks he remembers Lavinia’s house. He does not really remind Lavinia of her father, nothing Freudian like that, as awful Janet Cohen might put it; her father is a more forceful (she has to face it), a stronger person—but they sound alike, at times. If she had any sense at all, Lavinia thinks, she would marry Potter, and have with him the sort of life that she is supposed to have. Who needs another Gordon Shaughnessey, she thinks, or that sort of “love.”

During that same spring an odd thing happens to Cathy Barnes, which is that a very rich, not bad-looking (if he is a little short) boy from Cleveland, Shaker Heights, falls wildly in love with her. He drives a red convertible and he wears Sulka ties, does not shop at Brooks or J. Press, and is thus called Flash by the New England clubbies, by those who speak to him at all; most do not. His name is Phil.

Flash Flannigan and Cathy, an unlikely couple from any outside point of view, first meet because in a careless way they both show up for an economics class, in Sever, that has in fact been canceled—Cathy, on that cool spring day, in a just-cleaned white cashmere sweater, and Flash-Phil in camel’s hair (he is 4-F because of a dubious knee, and a little political pull on his father’s part having to do with defense contracts). Phil looks at Cathy, and maybe he does fall in love right there and then, as he is later to claim. What he says is, “Well, a free hour. How about some coffee at St. Clair’s?”

At St. Clair’s, Cathy sees Lavinia across the room, having coffee with Potter; the two girls exchange small waves, each indicating to the other that it is okay not to come over and say hello.

Almost right away, as they talk, Phil and Cathy establish what strikes them both as a remarkable list of things in common: both are majoring in economics; both are Catholic; both plan to make a lot of money after the war. They do not plan to go to graduate school; they are not sure how they feel about Harvard and Cambridge; they would like to know where there’s a really good steak dinner in Boston. They like the big bands, like Miller or Dorsey, Charlie Barnett.

Cathy to Megan, hesitantly: “I met this really strange guy.”

“What’s so strange about him?”

“Well, he wants me to go out with him tomorrow night. Dinner and dancing. I guess in Boston.”

“Well, that sure does sound strange. He must be some kind of a freak.”

They laugh.

Then Cathy adds, “He drives this big red convertible. I just don’t quite see myself in that.”

“Why not? Just don’t wear bright pink, you’d look silly. But go along with it. Have fun. Honestly, Cathy—”

“Well, okay. But he’s so—so Midwestern.”

“Oh, come on. You sound like Lavinia. Or Potter.”

Cathy giggles, blushing a little. “He’s not very tall. I’ll have to wear my flats.”

They begin to go out all the time, hitherto quiet Cathy racing around in that long red car with Phil-Flash, as she has begun to call him. They go everywhere for really good steaks: is Locke-Ober’s really better than Durgin-Park? They go dancing, at the Palace and the Statler, the Fox and Hounds, and out to the Totem Pole. They neck a lot.

•     •     •

“I feel as though I’m drunk all the time.” says Cathy to Megan.

“Well, maybe you are.”

“Do you think I’m in love?”

“I guess. Do you think you are?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask my priest.”

They laugh.

“Honestly, she’s beginning to sound Midwestern herself,” says Lavinia to Peg. “Have you listened to those vowels?”

“Well, I hadn’t exactly thought about it. She sure looks happy. But, uh, Lavy, this funny thing happened. I got a letter from Cameron Sinclair.”

“From who?”

“Cameron Sinclair. The boy I went out with that time.”

“Oh.”

“He wants to come up and see me. Again.”

“Well, honestly, Peg, what’s so funny about that?”

“Nothing, but I just thought—I don’t know.”

“He must have liked you. But you just remember what I told you, and don’t drink so much this time.”

“Oh, I won’t!” cries out Peg, who in fact drinks considerably more the next time she goes out with Cameron, and she passes out in a borrowed room, in the law school dorm—unfortunately not before Cameron has succeeded in ending both his own and Peg’s virginity.

Although she could joke about asking her priest whether or not she was truly in love, still, Cathy is deeply concerned with possible sin; she knows perfectly well that she is committing sins of the flesh, and doing it often, almost every night. She is also going to Confession and not truly confessing. She wonders what Phil-Flash is saying to his priest, and decides that probably he is not fully confessing either. And what does this say about his true character—or for that matter about hers? What does it say about their relationship?

And Cathy inwardly notes that she has not in any way mentioned Phil to her mother, not even very casually. “I’ve been going out a lot” she might have written to her mother, whose affectionate interest is often thwarted by Cathy, Cathy knows. Her mother would have liked to hear such an intimate fact, and surely if Cathy means for them to meet, eventually, she could have made this small preparation?