After the War (8 page)

Melanctha gulped at her tea, still curiously aware of an improvement in her spirits. “I’m really glad I came out for a walk,” she said. And she forced herself to add, though shyly, “I’m glad I met you.”

“Oh, I’m glad,” Cynthia told her, and in a friendly way she laughed. “You’ll have to come for tea again. I’ll call you. And at Christmas, Abigail—we’ll all get together.”

As they regarded each other with affection and some curiosity, one of the things that Melanctha wondered was: Just
what was going on, back a couple of years ago, between Cynthia and Russ? Impossible of course to ask that question, and so she asked the other pressing question in her mind: “What finally happened to your friend? The one with the big breasts and bad posture?”

“Oh.” Cynthia seemed to hesitate, then to decide to speak. “Well, actually she had some plastic surgery on her breasts. Seemed crazy to all her underendowed friends, but I guess it worked out. She stood up better, and she was always pretty thin, so she looked more in proportion. And she married very well—at least twice that I know about.” Cynthia finished with one of her small laughs, and Melanctha joined in.

And Cynthia added, “Of course it cost a lot, those doctors.”

And Melanctha said, “I’ll bet,” very thoughtfully.

“I consider it for my face sometimes,” Cynthia continued. “I mean, I know I look okay now, but how about when I’m fifty, or
sixty
? What I hope is that by that time I’ll be less vain, more self-accepting. You might work along those lines yourself, Melanctha. Tell yourself every day that you are the way you are, and most women would give anything for a larger chest. And men love it—”

But Melanctha had stopped listening. It was almost as if she had left the room, though she still smiled in a polite, attentive way.

6

I
N early January of 1945, in Pinehill, there was a stretch of sunny weather. Conversations in the A&P reverted to the warmth, the state of various gardens, local gossip. If anything, there was less talk than usual about the war. Not that wartime news had ever been a major topic—but in this lovely, extraordinary sunshine people generally felt less guilty about not discussing the war. Who wanted to hear about battles and deaths and home-front shortages—not this week!

“My rosebushes are just plum crazy,” Dolly Bigelow told Cynthia Baird, in a shopping interlude. “They think it’s spring. Just putting out buds all over the place, and the crape myrtle too, and the quince. I’m just mighty afraid they’re in for a big surprise, the lot of them. Next thing we’ll all be taking a dip in you-all’s pool. Tell me, Cynthia darlin’, how’s old London treating your Harry? You don’t get scared with the bombs and all over there? My goodness, there’s Deirdre Byrd, still seems strange to call her by that name, don’t you think? With her darling little SallyJane—now, talk about names that take some getting used to! She sure has put on a pound or two, hasn’t she—of course I’m referring to Deirdre, not that darling baby. Billy says that her Graham—I guess I should
say their Graham—anyway Graham is the worst little sissy in school. But you know how boys talk, not one grain of sense in a carload. But I surely hope he’s not going to turn out like that—you know what I mean. His daddy Russ would kill him, or more likely kill himself. Speaking of children, you must be purely delighted to have your darling almost grownup Abby visiting you for so long. And so nice that that young New York man of hers would visit too. Jacob? Jonathan? Joseph? Oh, I’m just getting so bad about names, especially those ones that are sort of, you know, unfamiliar. And to speak in a serious way for just one minute, that’s one good thing this war has done, don’t you think? It has surely changed around the way we all think about Jewish people. Why, some of those refugees over to the university are perfectly lovely, as I’m sure the parents of Abby’s Jacob are lovely too.”

“Joseph. And I’ve never met the Marcuses,” said Cynthia when she could. And then she said, “Sorry, I’ve got to rush. I’m taking the afternoon train up to Washington, and I can’t leave Abby and Joseph with nothing to eat.”

“Oh, well—” Dolly’s small bright eyes sparkled. “You’re leaving those two young people in that house all by them
selves
? My, you certainly are—advanced.”

Cynthia, used to Dolly, laughed. “Odessa’s there in the apartment,” she told Dolly. “And Horace. So they’ll be fully chaperoned.”

Dolly laughed too, with no humor at all. “Oh well then,” she said to Cynthia. “That’s all right then.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you think so.” Equally unconvinced—even to her it seemed somewhat careless—Cynthia smiled.

• • •

Odessa was indeed late. Late that same afternoon, after Cynthia’s departure for Washington, Abigail, from her broad bedroom window, watched as tall Odessa with her curious swinging gait crossed the backyard, along the flagstone path to the garage and the apartment above that she shared with Horace. When he was around. “Some chicken and greens on the stove,” Odessa had told Abby. “Be ready anytime you are, you just heat it up. Just a tad.”

Abigail’s room faced west, and now in the final brilliant burst of winter sunlight the white sheets on the tousled unmade bed were golden, as Joseph’s bare back was gold, the smooth muscles sculptural. Abigail’s sense of her own body was golden too; she was irradiated by an inner dazzle—as she wondered why no one had ever said (but who would have; maybe Cynthia?) or she had never read, not really, that actually making love was like—like
this
. Like a prolonged involvement of every nerve, every cell, an extreme of sensation. Like nothing possible in words.

She was smiling as she turned from the window to stroke the nice curve of Joseph’s buttocks, slowly, admiringly.

Looking up, he smiled back before he said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do it again, you’ve worn me down. I’ve heard about you younger women—” He smiled again.

“What I meant was,” Abby told him, “why don’t we sleep for a while?”

“You have the best ideas.”

He turned so that his back pressed against her chest, her stomach; he reached around to her arms and clasped them around himself.

And with absolute pleasure Abby adjusted. And that is how they napped, for an hour or so.

Or rather, Joseph slept. Abby was thinking, in a somewhat confused way. Unsurprisingly, her thoughts had to do with sex.

She knew from studious reading on the subject—Abby had an energetic curiosity, what was actually a lively scientific mind—she knew that “orgasms” were what she had experienced before, while “necking heavily” with boys, in backseats, on sofas in darkened rooms. And boys did too; they “reached a climax” sometimes, making stains on their pants that embarrassed them a lot, poor things. She had always enjoyed, looked forward to that moment of release, that “climax,” although in a way it was less pleasurable than all the intense and sometimes frantic kissing and touching that went on before. The “foreplay,” which was always referred to in texts as being very important, especially to women, “crucial to their pleasure,” but somehow, in some cases, said to be difficult.

However, none of those earlier experiences seemed to have any relevance at all to what happened with her and Joseph—happened for the first time in New York, when Sylvia and Dan, the parents, were away, and back at Swarthmore in his room, where she was not supposed to be—and now down here in Pinehill. Her previous experience, such as it was, and her reading did not get anywhere near it.

When she was older and went to med school, Abby thought, she would study this enormous and misunderstood difference in orgasms. Freud, she thought, had oversimplified. Clitoral versus vaginal, that was not the issue. Unless, and she smiled to herself, unless what she experienced with Joseph was both at once.

• • •

Gently caressing her, just enough to wake her up, Joseph was saying, “But now I can.”

And so they did. Again.

The sex between her parents, Harry and Cynthia, thought Abby, must be really good too, which would explain almost everything: why they stayed together all these years, and why they made so many excuses to go off and take naps. During which there were always non-sleeping sounds. And as for Cynthia’s occasional crushes on other men—a long time ago, Mr. Byrd, father of Abby’s friend Melanctha, Russ; and now this Derek, the broadcaster—they were only that, big crushes. Cynthia was a romantic, her daughter recognized, and recognized too that she herself was not romantic; she was a realist, with a scientific bent.

Years ago, when Abby had first started kissing boys, she liked it so much that she thought she was a nymphomaniac, but with no idea of the meaning of the word. Probably, she now thought, “highly sexed” was more like it.

And most likely, she thought, the realistic plan would be for her to marry Joseph. To get all that over with, so to speak. She could go to Harvard Med (she was not yet worried about getting in) and Joseph to MIT, and they would live in Boston, somewhere in between. And after they both got degrees they might have a few children, or maybe not. They would both work hard and they would always make love, wonderfully.

She wondered what Joseph would think of her plan, but decided to postpone asking him for a while.

• • •

“My parents,” Joseph told Abby as together they ate Odessa’s good chicken fricassee and greens, “my parents are not entirely to be trusted.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, Communists are tricky. They change their minds. They change directions like a boat in some shifting wind. The wind of course being the Soviet Union. Mr. Stalin.”

Abby laughed; her body’s pure euphoria made even serious observations light and funny to her. “My mother’s sort of unreliable too,” she said. “But in a quite different way.”

“Not so totally different, when you think about it,” Joseph mused. “They’re all romantics. Just in different areas. I mean, your mother’s not exactly political.”

Abby laughed again. “No, she thinks Roosevelt is very handsome, and she loves his voice.” She added, “And I think you’re very handsome.”

Now Joseph laughed. “And I think you’re very nuts. No, as a matter of fact you’re not. Not nuts. But speaking of handsome, I’m a little worried about the way my parents are about Ben. They’re too crazy about him. I mean, I can see he’s a swell guy, but they’re both—they’re both sort of in love with him.”

“You mean because he’s so good-looking?”

“No, to them that’s the icing on the cake. Because he’s a Negro. That’s catnip to Commies. Read Richard Wright. How they used him. And Paul Robeson. Whom Ben sort of looks like, don’t you think?”

“You’re afraid they’ll scare him away from Susan?”

“Yes, and try to recruit him too.” He looked across at her. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a very smart girl?”

“Actually, Benny did. A long time ago. ‘Smart for a girl,’ I’m afraid is what he said.”

“And you told him he was pretty smart for a boy?”

“How’d you know?”

“I know you, or I’m getting to. And I’m pretty smart too.”

“For a boy.”

Abby did not think: I am madly in love with Joseph, or even, Joseph and I have fallen in love. She supposed that it could be said that she loved Joseph, but it would not have been she who said it, not even to Joseph himself. For whatever reasons, rare at the time, she refused the non-wisdom of popular songs of the day. She did not think that love had walked right in, nor that it had to be you (Joseph Marcus). Her heart was not on fire, smoke did not get in her eyes. Unlike her mother, she was quite unmoved by all that.

Abby waited for Melanctha at their favorite drugstore table, the small round white table at the back, and as Melanctha walked in, her head up, not slouching so much, what Abby first thought was, Oh good, she looks much better.

When they were both interrupted. Dolly Bigelow, swooping down on them like a greedy sparrow.
“Well
. Such a treat to see the both of you two almost grown-up girls, and the both of you looking
so pretty
. And Abigail, your mama’s off to Washington, I hear? You tell that Odessa she’d better come over to see me, now she’s got some time on her hands. I
need
her, though a lot she cares, the uppity old thing.” And Dolly now laughed, to indicate that she was not serious, and to say too that, really, she was; she really did think Odessa was uppity,
very
.

Before anyone could answer or even greet her, Dolly went
on: “And, Miss Melanctha, you are looking more up and perky every day. It must joy the heart of your old daddy, and that darling Deirdre. How are they doing these days? Haven’t seen hide nor hair for a coon’s age.” And Dolly laughed again; she liked to pride herself on sounding more down home, more true country Southern than anyone. (Only Russ could outdo her at this game, but he did it in a kidding way.)

“Russ’s in Hollywood, and Deirdre’s fine,” Melanctha told her.

And Abigail: “I’ll tell Odessa.”

But both girls smiled politely as they spoke.

Dolly looked from one to the other, with her bright, intelligent, small mean eyes. That day she was wearing a vivid green suit; normally acutely sensitive as to color—though less so than Odessa, on whom she had relied—she had chosen a green that was wrong; it gave her the look of a small unwelcome plant, quite possibly poisonous.

As though to the world at large, she next said, “Why am I just standing here, talking my fool head off when I’ve got a whole slew of errands to do, will you tell me that? Including getting all Archer’s shirts fresh ironed and back to him at the Deke House.” She turned her attention to Melanctha. “You-all must have had some kind of a time at Thanksgiving.”

Melanctha stared up at her. Stricken.
Accused
.

Abby saved her friend. “I’ll tell my mother to call you the minute she gets back, and Odessa too.”

“Well, it was just really lovely to see the two of you—but now I’ve really got to get at it.” And Dolly scurried off, not without a couple of backward smiles and waves.

• • •

“I’m not studying Miz Bigelow,” said Odessa, with a lift of her head. “She get herself in some kind of trouble to do with the wrong clothes she bought, or even just napkins, and she expect me to get her out. I’m like her rescue woman, and then she blame me if’n it don’t work out.”