Chocolates for Breakfast (3 page)

Miss Rosen stood up.

“Courtney . . .”

Courtney stopped and turned back suddenly by the door. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Miss Rosen walked over to her and looked down at the girl with a sadness in her eyes. She leaned down and kissed Courtney on the forehead.

“Please don't be angry with me,” she said. “I had no choice.” Courtney was never to understand what Miss Rosen meant.

Courtney did not know yet how much she had lost, she only felt the pain of her loss and a numb sense that somehow her life would be different now. She ran past the chapel and through the courtyards because she had started to cry and she never liked anyone to see her cry. When she got to the main building she stopped and rubbed her face dry on the sleeve of her blazer, and she smiled to a committeeman on the stairs although she did not trust herself to speak.

Janet saw that Courtney did not want to talk, and so she wrote letters and did not intrude upon her roommate's privacy. After lights out she heard Courtney crying into her pillow. For half an hour she lay in the darkness and listened, and then she reached over and turned a light on.

“It's after lights out,” her roommate murmured.

“The hell with that,” Janet answered. “I'd offer you one of my illegal cigarettes but I know you don't smoke. But I have another illegal commodity that is exactly what you need.”

She got out of bed and picked up her silver perfume bottle.

“This has escaped every committee inspection,” she said proudly, and handed Courtney the perfume bottle that was filled with a very excellent Scotch.

“Goddammit, Farrell, you drink every drop, and appreciate it. There's just about a shot in there. I don't care if you don't like Scotch,” she said in the harsh tones reserved for a roommate's tenderness, “I plan to get some sleep tonight, and this will calm you down. You can tell me in the morning what that bitch said to you.” She turned off the light and rolled over.

Chapter 2

T
here was only one light on in Courtney's room, because Janet was studying her history and Courtney was doing nothing, only lying on her bed and looking up at the ceiling where a whimsical predecessor had painted black footprints leading to the door. Janet was playing her records of Stan Kenton, which Courtney did not like very much, but she was too lethargic to protest as the moody dissonance filled the room. It was raining, a cold spring rain that was very depressing after the week of fine weather. Janet was smoking a cigarette which she held in the hollow that her knees made under the comforter. When she took a drag she would lift up the comforter and blow the smoke in with her legs. After lights out she would fumigate her bed before she went to sleep, but it was too dangerous to have smoke in the room when committeemen were prowling about.

It seemed strange to Courtney to have so much time to herself, now that she could not see Miss Rosen any more. Kenton took a riff and Courtney jumped at the sudden and strange volume. Crazy music, so intensely personal and almost neurotic. Bizet was so agreeable and gregarious. He was nicer to listen to but tonight Kenton's music seemed to fit in with the lonely rain and the rolling bursts of sudden thunder. It had been a week since Courtney was condemned to this solitude. She often lay in her room now and looked up at the ceiling. She felt that it was even too much of an effort to go outdoors, and Courtney loved the outdoors.

“Take a drag,” Janet commanded her.

“I don't want to. I don't know how to smoke.”

“You've gotta learn sometime, and you might as well learn
well
.”

Courtney didn't bother to protest.

“Jesus, you don't hold a cigarette like a pencil. Look.”

“That's better. Now when you take a drag, inhale
beyond
the point where it catches in your throat.”

Courtney tried and coughed like any neophyte.

“I said inhale
beyond
the point where it hurts. Otherwise you'll cough like an idiot. Pretend it's air.”

Courtney steeled herself and this time it was all right.

“
That's
it,” Janet said with pleasure. “I'll teach you to look sophisticated yet.”

Courtney handed Janet back the cigarette and Janet waved away the smoke. She put on another Kenton record, “Abstraction,” and then she went back to her history. Within a few pages the medieval history had bored her again and she looked resentfully at Courtney.

“Haven't you got any studying to do?”

“Sure,” Courtney answered unconcernedly. “But I don't feel like doing it. I can bull through French class and I've done my Latin—those are the only two that I worry about.”

“Going to hell fast, sweetie.”

“I feel kind of lazy. . . . It's a lousy night and it's been a lousy week and I don't want to do anything but lie here and pretend I'm out of this hellhole.”

“You're going to get a jolt when finals come around.”

“What the hell.”

“Oh, cut this crap with me,” Janet said angrily. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and damning the world because you got hurt. I won't put up with moods like this. Shape up, sweetie.”

“That's easy for you to say,” Courtney answered gloomily.

“Look, Court, do you think you're the first person who's ever been cut out of something that meant a lot to her? Do you think you're unique or something?”

“No. No, I guess not. I'm sorry, Jan, I really am. I've been a bitch, I know.”

“Now don't start talking to me as though I were a staff member or something. This self-abnegation bit is no good, either. We've gotta shape up Courtney, that's all. I think we'll begin with studying. You're still in this lousy place for another three weeks, you know, whether you want to be or not.”

“You sound like a parent.”

“What's the matter, haven't you got anything to live for but that Miss Rosen?”

Janet had struck on a vulnerable point.

“Sure, I've got a lot to live for. I've got myself, and that's the most worth living for. I don't die when somebody leaves me. I go on.”

“You talk all right but you live like a coward.”

“What the hell are you trying to do to me? Make me mad at you?”

“Yes, I'm trying to make you mad enough to come back to life.”

“Okay, go on. What do you mean, ‘come back to life'?” Courtney said soberly.

“I mean do your schoolwork, for one thing. No one is a bigger goof-off than I am, but there are some things that have to be done. And make some sort of effort to talk to people. You can't talk to Miss Rosen any more, so talk to other people. Alberts and Clarke, for example. They're all right, really they are.
I
enjoy talking to them. You've cut yourself off and that would be all right if you were happy that way, but you're not.”

“Okay, I'll try. I'll go up there tomorrow afternoon. But are you sure that they want to talk to me?”

“Of course, sweetie. They like you, I know that they do because we've talked about you. They would have been good friends of yours if you had given them half a chance, if you hadn't run to Miss Rosen instead.”

“Okay, I'll do that, then. Because I'd really like to.”

“Maybe this will be a good thing for you, this Miss Rosen thing. That was the kind of un-Regsman behavior that kept you out of the clique, you know. Everyone's got to be regular and conform. Maybe if you let these kids know that you'd really like them for friends, you'd have a chance to be editor of the
Lit
next year.”

“I don't have much chance for that. Mlle. de Labry is the faculty advisor and has to pass on the editor, and she hates my guts ever since she was trying to pump me on some gossip column bit about Mummy and Nick's divorce, and I told her to go to hell. In those words,” she mused. “I'm amazed she didn't give me a conduct for disrespect.”

“If the board really wanted you, you could get on. She couldn't veto it if you really got a good vote.”

“Oh, that cruddy publication is only a mechanism of social approval.”

“Sour grapes.”

“I know. I'd love to get on. Do you really think I could?”

“I don't know the criteria for social success in the clique that runs this school,” Janet said. “But becoming friendly with Alberts and Clarke would help. You know, they're great buddies of Fairchild, and since she's this year's editor she has a lot to say about next year's.”

“Actually I'd love to get in with that group because there are a lot of kids in it that I like. But I'm not used to talking to people my own age much.”

“I know, you never even see any boys. That's too bad, because if you did this Miss Rosen wouldn't mean so much to you.”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me,” Janet said, “has a boy ever really kissed you?”

Courtney grinned.

“This New Year's Eve, at that party they gave for Mummy, this crazy actor kissed me. Really kissed me. He was kind of tight.”

Janet laughed. “What do you mean, ‘really kissed you'?”

“You know, with the tongue and all that bit. I really flipped.”

“Sweetie, that's great!” Janet grinned. “Your first French kiss. Oh, that's really funny. I mean, I can see you flip.”

“He was this male-lead type, and he was really drunk out of his head.” Courtney was beginning to enjoy herself as she talked about it.

“Has anybody ever made a pass at you?”

“Oh, you know, all the remarks about the beautiful young body and the Hollywood greeting of an embrace.”

“What do you do?”

“I just kind of stand there.”

“With your arms hanging down?”

“Well, yes.”

“Oh, Court, you've got a lot to learn. You put your arms around a man's neck because then your bodies kind of fit together. Otherwise you're like a stick of wood, and it's not comfortable and natural.”

“I always did feel kind of awkward.”

“Well, sure. But you'll learn.”

“Do you really know a lot about sex, Jan?”

“I'm still a virgin, if that's what you mean—rumor to the contrary.”

“But have you ever really made out?”

“When you say ‘really,' I never know what you mean. I've slept with boys when neither of us had any clothes on, if that's what you mean.”

“Honestly? But doesn't that—”

“Doesn't that bother me? Court, everybody does. I mean, all the girls I know. It doesn't mean much, and it's nice. I kind of enjoy it,” she mused, “going to sleep with a boy's arms around me.”

“But when do you get a chance to do that?”

“Oh, on weekends at prep schools and colleges, and in New York when the parents are out of somebody's apartment for a while. You've missed a lot by being brought up in Scarsdale. You don't even drink, and you're fifteen. Most of the girls I know and certainly the boys start to drink a little bit when they're thirteen.”

“Mummy lets me have Daiquiris. And a couple of times I've had as many as four when she's been a little bombed and hasn't realized it. I've drunk Daiquiris since I was fourteen.”

“Yes, but how long ago was that—November, only.”

“I'm not so out of it. I know pretty much about sex and what goes into it and bodies and all, and I even know about homosexuality so I can recognize it in actors a lot of times, and I know how they make love.”

“Really? How?”

“Well, you see, one of them—oh, hell, sweetie, I don't like to talk about things like this. I wondered and I asked Mummy one time when she and Nick had been talking about some actor and another actor, and Nick said, ‘You tell her,' and Mummy did.”

“Oh, I don't mean to say that you're naive or anything. I just think you ought to make out with boys a little.”

“But prep school boys are so grubby. They have bad skin, and they press your hand and their palms are all wet, and they are so
awkward!
I mean, I like these actors who are so charming and put their arms around you with a Martini in one hand and all that. I like men who are older.”

“Yes, but here you go again. They're not for you; there's no future in
that.
I mean, none of them has ever kissed you or anything.”

“No, of course not, because I'm still a kid. But they will, when I get older. I'll have some older man teach me all these things, just as you said about smoking, because they'll teach me to be smooth the way they are. I don't want to find out by trial and error with some awkward prep school boy what is the lovely way to put my arms around a boy. That's grubby. I want to be charming, to live in a charming way and to love in a lovely way.”

The lights-out bell rang in the pause and they listened to it and it rang twice. They had not heard the warning ten minutes before, and now the committeeman would come around to see that they were in bed and that their polo coats and galoshes were at the foot of their beds, in case of a fire. You got a penalty if you weren't ready. The polo coat was to put over your pajamas and the galoshes were to stamp out ashes or something like that. At any rate it had worked very well when Scaisbrooke had the big fire in 1923. Courtney and Janet were always late for lights out, so they had a system worked out. Courtney tumbled out of bed and threw out Janet's polo coat and galoshes from the closet and Janet arranged them at the foot of Courtney's bed. Then Courtney ran to the other closet and threw out her own, and Janet jumped onto Courtney's bed and arranged them while Courtney ran around the beds and turned out the light. Then they both rolled into their own beds laughing, and pulled the covers over themselves to hide the fact that they had not changed into their pajamas yet. The entire operation had taken less than a minute.

The next day couldn't make up its mind between rain and clear weather, but the two athletic periods had been held outdoors. Sue Alberts and Brookie Clarke were both on the Junior hockey team of which Courtney was a member, so they all had first-period athletics together. As the other two girls put their pinnies in the basket after the practice, Courtney lingered on the pretext that she had to be sure all the pinnies were in, because she had been on the non-pinnie scrub team. As they walked back to the main building Sue announced that she was going to get a piece of cake in the tearoom, but Brooks Clarke, a lovely, tall girl with lank blonde hair and a little Boston in her speech, had reminded the slightly plump Sue that she was on a diet, so they had passed the tearoom by. Courtney hung with them and the other girls were hardly aware of her presence, although Courtney was going through agonies of unsureness and watching them closely to see if they resented her presence. They had all climbed the stairs, hot from their two hours of hockey, and gone into Alberts and Clarke's room.

Their room was antiseptically neat, unlike Courtney and Janet's with its casual disorder. It looked as though they were expecting inspection any minute. But then, Alberts and Clarke wanted the ten-bar honor of having served ten months on the committee, and they wanted to hold the important offices and be esteemed by the faculty. By this, their fourth-form year, they were both on the
Lit Review
and had been on the committee for one term. By their senior years, the personable and popular Brookie was to be head-committeeman and editor of the
Lit
, while her roommate was business manager and a committee member, controlling the school through her influence over Brookie and her in with the faculty. They were to carry their successful combination into Vassar as well, and were always well liked. Janet was right that they would make powerful friends.

“Want an orange, Court?” Brookie asked pleasantly.

“Oh, thanks.”

“Split one with you, Brookie,” said Sue. Courtney noticed that they were splitting an orange while they offered her a whole one, as a guest and an outsider.