The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (16 page)

 

 

The lack of contact with her brother didn't seem to bother Barbara.
For the past few years conversation with Yale had been in the vein of,
"Hi, kid, what's up?" and a variation of sarcastic responses from Yale
such as "Not what your boy friend has up." To which Barbara would answer
sweetly, "Well, someday you'll be big enough and yours will go up."

 

 

Liz heard one of their conversational flurries and had expressed her shock
to Barbara. Yale imagined that she probably discussed the quality of
being a lady with Barbara, but it hadn't diminished Barbara's fresh,
breezy manner.

 

 

Walking in the back door, through the kitchen, Yale found Amy, the
Marratts' cook and maid, sitting at the kitchen table reading one of
her
True Story
magazines. She hadn't heard him come in.

 

 

"And that's how I got pregnant by my husband's brother and ruined all
our lives," Yale said, leaning over her shoulder.

 

 

Amy jumped. "Boy, you shouldn't tiptoe around like that." She looked at
him suspiciously. "It was her stepfather not her husband's brother. You
all been reading my magazines?"

 

 

Yale grinned. "You bet, Amy. I read anything. It's a vice. Where is
everybody?"

 

 

"You sure are in trouble, Yale Marratt. Your ma says your father is
ready to skin you alive. She's gone out to the club. She had to bring
his tuxedo to him. When he called I listened on the kitchen phone. Your
father can outswear any man ah ever heard including my poor old George --
God rest his soul. Where you been? . . . Stealin' your father's car."
Amy shook her head. "You kids today sure get away with murder."

 

 

Yale looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was seven-thirty.
The wisest approach would be to face Pat at the club. Earlier, Pat had
expected him to come. If he arrived and sat casually at Pat's table there
would be little that Pat could say in front of his friends. Later, maybe,
Pat would have cooled down and would be more tractable.

 

 

"Your sister is upstairs getting ready," Amy said. "Your ma says you could
drive Barbara to the club when you came in. She ain't got a date tonight."

 

 

Walking upstairs, Yale smiled. Amy knows everything that goes on in
this family, he thought. She monitored all the telephone calls, and
she wasn't averse to peeping through keyholes. It occurred to him that
someday with the proper encouragement he could find out from Amy if there
were anything between Liz and Frank Middleton. At the rate things were
developing he might need an ally in Liz. It would be handy to know what
really was the score with his mother and Middleton.

 

 

In his room, he took off his clothes, and looked at himself in the mirror
for a second. He brushed off a couple of pebbles that clung to his buttocks,
and chuckled as he thought of sitting naked in Harry Cohen's back yard. He
opened the bathroom door and walked in. Barbara was sitting in the tub.

 

 

"Get out of here," she yelled, and covered her breasts.

 

 

"Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle," Yale said, laughing. He sat down on
the toilet bowl, facing the tub. "This is my day! I haven't seen my
beautiful sister in her birthday suit since she was thirteen years
old! You're slipping, sis, old kid. How come you forget to lock my
door? Liz wouldn't like it. Tsk, tsk, very careless."

 

 

Barbara, her brown eyes wide and angry, her blonde hair tied in a knot on
top of her head, looked at him furiously. "If you weren't an adolescent
voyeur, you'd have the decency to get out of here."

 

 

"Not on your life," Yale grinned. He walked around the bathroom. "Take a
look at a man, sis." He sucked in his belly and expanded his chest. "Yahoo
-- not one of your Harvard dilly boys." He grabbed the face cloth out
of her hands. "Here, I'll wash your back -- no charge. Front, too,
if you want."

 

 

She screamed as he reached for her breasts. She stood up in the tub.

 

 

"Well, you're not so bad for a sister," Yale said admiringly. He picked up
the towel. "Come on, I'll dry you -- just to be friendly."

 

 

Suddenly, Barbara laughed. "My God, men are funny looking!" She stepped
out of the tub. "Go ahead, slave. Dry me!"

 

 

Yale snapped the towel at her fanny. "The hell you say. You're too eager."
He flung the towel at her, and watched; enjoying the sight of her rubbing
her back, while her breasts shook. She bent over to dry her toes. It was
strange. She was his sister. In many ways she looked like him with the
addition of a wide fanny, and tits. She had even occupied the same womb
a few years before him. Was that all? Did the things in common stop there?
He guessed they did. It beat all hell how two people, born of the same
parents, raised in the same house, could be so apparently different. Was
there any common ground between them, any similarity of outlook?

 

 

"Have you seen enough?" she asked, standing and looking at him coolly.
"Because if you are through looking I'm going to get dressed. You are
going to be my date at the club tonight. So wash yourself, and use a
deodorant because I don't like to dance with smelly little boys."

 

 

Yale turned on the shower. "I've seen enough to know you're a big girl,
now but are you still a virgin?" he asked casually.

 

 

"Wouldn't you like to know," she said, slamming the door as she walked
into her room.

 

 

 

 

Half an hour later they were driving to the club. Yale felt a little
uneasy. Pat might very well make a scene. Time and place were not
considered when Pat was angry. He worked on the premise that if he
had something on his mind, good or bad, he would say it. It was this
come-hell-or-high-water attitude of Pat's that frightened Yale. In this
past year Yale recognized that, somehow, he, too, was acquiring the same
headlong approach. The real source of trouble between them was that he
attacked any problem the same way Pat did. Their difference lay not in
approach but in fundamental differences in values, and what constituted
the "good" or the "bad" in life.

 

 

"What are you thinking about, Yale?" Barbara asked. He took his eyes
off the road a second and looked at her. She was wearing a green satin
evening gown, deep throated and sleek around her breasts.

 

 

"You're a good looking dish," he said. "If you weren't my sister I'd go
necking with you."

 

 

"As your sister, I can tell you, chum, you're in a heap of trouble! Why
did you run off on Pat like that? When he telephoned from the club you
could hear his voice all over the house. Liz wouldn't tell me. She just
said you had gone too far this time. Was it over your Jewish girl friend?"

 

 

"I suppose you have the same attitude toward Cynthia as they do," Yale said
bitterly.

 

 

"I've never met your little filly, remember?" Barbara squeezed his
arm. "I'm on your side, Yale. I don't know anything about Jews. I went
out with a Jewish fellow once. No complaints. A perfect gentleman.
I wouldn't have married him, though. I met his mother and father.
The mother was very glittery. You know, rings on her fingers, rings on her
toes, very blonde, very efficient. The father quiet, agreeing with his wife.
No, it wasn't them. I suppose they were no better or worse than Pat or Liz.
It was their friends. I was in another world. They had their own jokes.
If you understood Jewish slang, I guess they were funny. They seemed to
live in a world surrounded by enemies, -- goyim -- do you know the word?
It doesn't mean enemies, maybe it means someone different -- someone not
Jewish -- and I was a goy. Nothing Joe, that was his name, could do,
could overcome it for me Barbara's voice trailed off. "And he tried,
too . . Joe really was very nice."

 

 

Barbara snapped on the car radio. The poignant, seekbig tones of a violin
filled the car. Barbara hummed along with it.

 

 

"I'm going to meet Cynthia's family in September," Yale said. "I'm going
to drive her back to school. I'm not worried. You see, I look upon it
simply as an interesting problem. I couldn't become a Jew. Cynthia
couldn't become a Christian. We love each other enough, I believe,
to simply absorb what we need of each other's religion. I'm coming to
believe that most religions are not ultimates. We make progress in other
areas. Why not religion? What's that they are playing?"

 

 

"It's Beethoven's violin concerto. Nice. Yale, I agree with you, but so
what? Why don't you accept the world as it is? You'll never change it.
In your lifetime there will be Protestants, Jews and Catholics, and
never the three shall meet."

 

 

"The world would never change if everyone took your attitude," Yale said
bitterly.

 

 

"Yale -- why do you always snap at me? I'm not a complete dope, even if
you think so."

 

 

"You'd never think it to watch you."

 

 

Barbara looked at him, hurt.

 

 

"Oh, darn it, Bobby, I didn't mean that. I suppose it's because we're
so much alike really. Yet you always act superior and older. It gets
my goat. You're only twenty. Sure you can have babies, but you're still
only a kid."

 

 

Barbara leaned against the door of the car. She watched Yale's profile.
The lids on her brown eyes were half closed. "I like that music. It makes
me feel sad . . . kind of longing for something. Do you remember when we
were driving up from Miami?"

 

 

Yale nodded.

 

 

"That was years ago," Barbara said. A feeling of warmth and nostalgia
for times remembered overflowed in her eyes. "Pat was driving the car.
We were coming along that narrow concrete highway just before you come
into Jacksonville. The night was dark. The headlights of the car caught
at those luminescent signs. Flash and then darkness. Like that music. I
knew that up ahead was Jacksonville. You could see the pink glow of the
city in the sky. A hundred sounds filled my mind. Pat taking a puff on
his cigarette, the brush of other automobiles passing us, the throb of
the engine, the loneliness of the four of us, sitting there, travelling
to a strange city. Then we came into the city, and I was thrilled,
Yale. It was a strange feeling. I was in love with the loneliness of
those empty streets, the strangeness of the place. We passed a department
store and the lights were still on in the window, but nobody was on the
sidewalk. And then a cigar store, and a man was standing outside smoking
a cigar. He looked at us driving by, and it was if he were intended to be
there, just gazing into the night. I wondered who he was . . . and where
he was going. Then we parked the car in front of the hotel. Pat went up
to the clerk, and the lobby was filled with men talking and smoking.
I was dreaming that I was just married . . . that my husband was taking
me up to our room. Pat came back and said that he could only get two
rooms . . . Liz gave him hell for not making advance reservations. The
Braves or the Red Sox or some baseball team was in town and everything
was taken. Liz said she would sleep with me, but somehow when we got
upstairs it was decided that we could sleep in the same room. Liz was
upset, I think. She didn't like the idea. We were too old to sleep in
the same room. You were thirteen, I think, but Pat said it would be all
right. I guess he wanted to have a time with Liz." Barbara's laughter
was warm with her memories.

 

 

Yale chuckled. "I remember. They were like a couple of kids about it. Pat
with a pout on his face because he thought he was going to have to sleep
with me."

 

 

The music crowded over their conversation. The violin was leading the
orchestra now, and seemed to be skipping in and out of the woodwinds
and brasses. Barbara's face was dreamy. "It was funny being alone in a
hotel room with you. It wasn't as if you were my brother somehow."

 

 

"You undressed in the bathroom," Yale said, remembering how Barbara had
walked timidly out of the bathroom in her red pajamas. "Pat had the clerk
put a cot in the room for me to sleep on."

 

 

Barbara nodded. "And you sat on the edge of the bed. Then Liz and Pat
left us, and I knew you didn't want to sleep on the cot, and I didn't
want you to." She blushed. "You asked me to take off my pajamas so you
could look at me."

 

 

Yale grinned. "You thought I was terrible, and yet you did it. It's funny.
We are brother and sister, but up to that time and since then I have
never seen you without clothes. You'd think there was something sinful
in being naked. I had never seen any girl naked. It was just a crazy
idea." Yale's voice drifted away in a whisper thinking of Barbara in
the tub. "You look like me somehow . . . only with breasts and a bigger
fanny. Bobby, you're a good kid. I hereby make a resoluiion. I won't
make dirty cracks at you any more."

 

 

Barbara furrowed her long nails into the seat of the car. "You don't
mean it, but you're nice to say it. Yale, does Cynthia like music?"

 

 

"You know it's strange," Yale said, turning into the drive to the club.
"If Pat could see Cynthia as a girl -- a woman, instead of a Jew, they
might have at least one thing in common. Cynthia can play the piano with
a feeling and emotion that brings tears to your eyes. The one time they
met, Cynthia was playing. Pat was quite impressed."

 

 

"We're here, kid," Barbara said getting out of the car. "Hold your breath
and fasten your seat belt. You're on your own. I'm joining the gang.
Don't forget, if you see me unattended, it's your duty to take up the
slack and dance with me."