Whisper Their Love (4 page)

Dean Bannister had a suite on the first floor of the dorm, at the head of the entrance stairs. Probably they had been planned by an earlier generation of deans to provide easy snooping, but Edith Bannister wasn't one to prowl around with flashlights after lights-out. In fact, she had abolished lights-out, only backing up the House Council ruling that everyone should be quiet after eleven. She kept her doors shut and let the student authorities take care of infringements. In her brief chapel talk, the first full day of school, she had said that she liked to treat people as adults. "I expect you to behave as young women of breeding and character," she had told them, standing erect, not leaning on the podium or fidgeting. One hundred shut young faces looked back at her, making no response at all.

The study door was shut now, blank except for the typed name-card. Joyce wasn't sure whether to knock or not. She tapped lightly, swallowing hard, and a clear voice called, "Come in!" Her knees were jello. Her throat closed with dryness. She licked her lips and walked in.

Edith Bannister's study was done in Swedish Modern, like the dormitory bedrooms. A graduate of Henderson Hicks had gone to Hollywood in 1938 and made good, partly in Grade B films and partly in the canopied Spanish bedroom of a Grade B producer. The furniture was her gesture of gratitude for having been educated. To the desk, chairs and thin sectional sofa in Miss Bannister's study, had been added some homemade book shelves and some monk's-cloth curtains. But the desk was clear of papers and decorated with un-teachery objects: a book of French verse with shaggy spaniel edges, open face down, a cut-crystal perfume bottle, a cigarette lighter striped in dull and bright silver, an African figurine of dark polished wood, with sagging breasts and bulging belly. Everything was neat, even the three cigarette butts, all the same length, in a glass ashtray.

Miss Bannister herself sat beside the window, smoking, with her feet on the sill. Beautiful feet, slim and high-arched, in the kind of slippers that never get to the end-of-season sales. Mimi's shoes are too fancy, Joyce thought. Miss Bannister turned her head as Joyce came in, and again there was something too brief and illusive to be resemblance, but something—

"You needn't have been in any hurry." She held out the telegram and Joyce took it, her first one, disappointed that it looked so trivial. She opened it, trying to be casual. In Aunt Gen's world a telegram meant catastrophe or death in the family. Miss Bannister, watching, crushed out her cigarette alongside the other three, swiveling in her chair to reach the ashtray. The tips were lightly tinged with pink. Lipstick, then, but so lightly applied it looked natural. "Nothing wrong, I hope."

Joyce looked up. "My mother wants me to come to Chicago for her wedding. Tomorrow, I guess."

The lighter snicked. "Will you fly?"

"Train, I guess." She was embarrassed. Mimi should have thought about flying, it was hick to go any other way. Images from movies and magazine ads flashed across her mind, chic young women stepping off the plane with smart luggage, lunch in the air served by a smiling stewardess. She felt called upon to say something, change the subject. "I don't know the man she's marrying."

"Perhaps you'll like your stepfather very much," Edith Bannister said. "Can you remember your father?"

"He died when I was a baby," Joyce said. She had never in her life been able to face anyone when she said this, and now she fixed her gaze on her brown loafers, sunk in the pile of the textured rug. The old story, brought out to wrap around the truth because naked truth is indecent for public viewing, and when had she first known it was a story and how had she learned it? Nobody had ever told her. She felt ashamed inside, way she had when Aunt Gen had caught her walking from the bathroom to her own room with nothing on. Cover yourself, Aunt Gen said, you're too big to run around like that. She must have been about ten or eleven. For a long time after that she was afraid to look at her bare body in the mirror, feeling that some parts of her must be dirty or evil. The silence lasted. She looked at Edith Bannister. "You look like my mother," she blurted. That was all wrong. "Except you're better-looking." Apple-polisher, she accused herself, burning with shame. That it was true made it worse; disloyalty to Mimi.

"That's sweet of you," Miss Bannister murmured. You couldn't tell if she was amused, angry or uncaring, but anyway her words broke the silence and Joyce was able to move toward the door.

"Well, thanks."

"Let me know what time your train goes. I'll take you to the station." Miss Bannister put her hand on Joyce's shoulder. A small electric shock zinged down her arm. She stood outside the door, not sure how she got there or what to do next. Then she ran upstairs and into her own room, shutting the door on everything but her own jumbled thoughts and feelings.

Alone, it seemed reasonable enough to be going to Chicago for her own mother's wedding. Second wedding, she corrected herself. Although Ferndell was only about sixty miles from the city, her only trips there had been one each year with her high-school class. They had visited the Natural History Museum, the Planetarium, the Museum of Science and Industry—where everyone wanted to see the mummies and go down into the coal mine—and the International Amphitheater where the big livestock shows were held. She felt that the glamour of the big city didn't have anything to do with museums or prize steers, and although she was not sure just what to expect, it would be more exciting than tagging around with a bunch of kids.

The idea of really seeing Mimi was exciting, too. It was beginning to seem chic, having a mother young and attractive enough to get married. She sat on the edge of the bed and wove a daydream of herself marvelously well-dressed and about four inches taller, being escorted into a smart restaurant by an Ezio Pinza type of older man.

Mary Jean came in, slamming the door. She was a born slammer, except when the situation called for quietness, like dropping through the laundry window in the small hours; then she could be still as a mousing cat. "You sick?" Joyce explained. Mary Jean dropped down on the other bed, kicking off her shoes so she could think better. Her face took on the brooding look of a mother with young daughters to dress.

"Your gray suit would be all right if you had a couple of good blouses to perk it up," she said. "We'll borrow some." She padded over to her closet and took down her new formal, never worn yet, aqua net over satin. "You could wear this if we shortened the hem a couple inches. I reckon it would do if someone took you dancing."

"I haven't any shoes to go with it."

"Buy some," Mary Jean said. "We'll get you organized tonight."

* * *

Getting organized took a lot of time. It involved going from room to room, borrowing whatever anybody had that looked as if it might be useful, and drinking coffee. Everybody wanted to hear about the wedding and she kept adding details to make it more interesting and to make it sound as if Mimi talked things over with her, like the mothers in magazine stories.

Bonnie said, "Look, you can take my nylon shorty pajamas. They haven't even been worn yet," and she was proud and pleased because she hadn't even known Bonnie liked her. They are really my friends, she thought, and a warm glow spread through her chest.

Mary Jean went out at ten. "Just down to the Honey Bee for a coke," she said, "be back in a couple minutes." She came back an hour and ten minutes later, breathing hard and with stars in her eyes. That meant she had met Bill someplace and they'd been parked in a side street or even at the edge of the campus, although that yellow car stuck out like a sore thumb. Tomorrow night they would drive out and park on some country road, and the excitement would build up again. So did she envy Mary Jean, or disapprove of her? She looked at her, wondering how a girl felt the first time. Would she be sorry and ashamed, until she got used to it? It's best to wait till you get married, she decided. Only, well, gosh—

Being married sounded terribly stuffy compared with being in love. After the honeymoon was over and you settled down, would it be dull? She lay awake for a long time after she had finally packed her suitcase and gone to bed, .sticky with hand lotion and cold cream to make her beautiful for the trip. She couldn't decide what she believed. There was room even in Aunt Gen's moral code for smooching ("spooning" Aunt Gen called it)' but going farther than that was more even than a question of morals, it involved sin. I don't believe in what Mary Jean does, she decided, though a lot of people do it.

She turned over, sticking her feet out from under the sheet. Uncle Will had always teased her about changing her mind so often, good-naturedly when she couldn't decide which piece of chicken she liked best, a little crossly when he had to wait in town while she picked out dress goods or a pair of shoes. He didn't know what she'd be up to next, he declared, out playing baseball in the back pasture with the boys one day and mooning around trying to write poetry the next. I wish I could be all one way, she thought pother people don't worry so about things, other people aren't so mixed up.

Whispering in a boy's arms, in the back of a parked car; pressing your body against his until you caught fire from each other, shivering when his hand slid under your skirt. Still, on the other hand, when you stood up in front of the minister to be married—she sighed, drifting off to sleep.

In the morning, though, the magic was back. She felt like someone else, just who was hard to decide, but not Joyce Cameron of Ferndell, Illinois. Certainly not a freshman at Louisa Henderson Hicks Junior College. She floated down to breakfast on clouds of glamour and ate grits without even noticing them.

Time zipped by. She was ready to go, and then at the last minute the dorm felt like home and the girls were her family. She felt hot-eyed and teary, getting into Susy's best dacron blouse and straightening her seams. She wasn't sure she wanted to leave.

Edith Bannister came down the stairs, swinging a key ring against her blue skirt. Joyce kissed Mary Jean, who blinked with surprise, and followed the dean out to the school station wagon, which had peeling paint and one dented fender, but looked like Quality anyway. They drove through the streets of taverns and cheap stores, past the poor-looking people. "Terrible neighborhood," Miss Bannister said. "This was a fine residential district in its day; then the old families lost their money in the depression and those old houses went for almost nothing." She looked aloofly at Babe and Ernie's, from whose open door came a blare of rock and roll. Joyce nodded, noticing the granite cornices above the drugstore, the date 1867 cut over a doorway. But her attention was divided because Edith Bannister sat beside her. There was certainly something—

The ride was too short.

"Let me know when you'll be back," Miss Bannister said, and then she was gone, weaving expertly in and out of the morning traffic. Joyce stood looking after the station wagon until a Cadillac plastered with travel stickers cut in behind it.

The station was old, with rolls of dust under the benches and spittoons in the corners. The rest room doors were marked White and Colored, a thing she had read about but which she had never quite believed existed. She went out to wait beside the tracks.

The train came in puffing and snorting, and she climbed in and propped her suitcase on the overhead rack. The green upholstery pricked through her nylon slip and panty girdle, but there was a clean white doily across the back of the seat and she leaned her head back and was happy with a special kind of happiness that comes only on trains. Maybe a plane would have been better, she thought dreamily. Maybe next time I'll go on one. There's plenty of time. She crossed her knees and admired her pumps. I'm going to be as good-looking as Mimi, she thought. Everyone will think we're sisters. She ignored the red clay fields sliding past and the cotton growing as it did in pictures in geography books, and the little unpainted farmhouses with wash-pots in the back yards and clothes flapping on the lines. Joyce was in a nightclub watching Mimi dancing with a Man of Distinction (something like Clifton Webb, only without the mustache) and herself talking to somebody like Mary Jean's Bill, only handsomer and with higher ideals.

At one—it's corny to eat early—she went into the diner. It was the first time she had ever seen the inside of a dining car, but it was all right, it looked like the ones in the movies. There was a fat steward with a huge roll of bills, and the waiters walked softly down the aisles balancing their trays. She unfolded the big linen napkin halfway and ordered chicken salad and coffee. The salad was mostly chopped celery and for a moment she hungered for a good piece of White Rock or Wyandotte meat the way Aunt Gen fried it, crisp and brown on the outside and melting white inside. She picked up her fork, smiling.

A cute kid, the salesman at the next table thought. Bet she's never gone anywhere alone before. He thought about his daughter, who was an honor student and would probably be valedictorian of her high-school class next June. He thought about the week ahead, hopping from one middle-sized town to another, registering in a series of all-alike hotel rooms, trying to sell carbon paper and stenographic notebooks to a series of bored purchasing agents. A hell of a life for a family man.

Joyce gave him a grateful look. Everybody knows salesmen are very sophisticated about women; their life is one round of beautiful pickups and wild parties. His attentive look made her feel beautiful, too. She broke her cardboard toast carefully and drank her cooling coffee.

Chapter 4

Union Station was a television spectacular or a wide-screen color film, stupendous, colossal, magnificent, all the superlatives that screamed across the pages of newspapers. Joyce came up from the echoing underground passage, pushed from behind by a young man with a sharp, angry profile, hindered from the front by an arthritic old woman who clung to the handrail with gnarled fingers. The whole thing hit her in the face: light, color, the intricate crisscross of people coming and going.

This is a crazy place, she thought. How would she find Mimi in this mob? Oh God, if she doesn't come! All she had was a ten, a one and some small change, and anyway, where would you find a place to stay in a town this big? She realized suddenly that she didn't even know Mimi's address since she'd taken the apartment; it hadn't bothered her before, because Mimi had never really had an address before, she left her out-of-season clothes with friends while she moved from town to town, cheap hotel to cheap hotel. Now she realized that a human being could be swallowed up in a city and never heard from again.