Come and Join the Dance (3 page)

Peter was grinning. “Susan … stop looking grim. We're all getting older. But I'm going to be a promising young man as long as possible. If you haven't got all the time in the world, what else is there?”

For a moment she wanted to challenge him: “How much time does anyone really have?” But she knew that he had probably long ago rejected his own excuses, that he must be bitterly aware that the people who came to the university were a little younger every fall.

“You see through all this?” he said wryly.

She shook her head. “I see it.”

“You'll be thirty someday.”

“Today I had my last examination,” she said. “I keep telling myself school's over, now something else begins. But nothing's any different. I haven't
changed
. Maybe I never will. When I was eight, I used to look forward to being twenty. Now I'm twenty and I'm still the same person. I really am. I may even be the same at thirty.”

“You have no patience,” he said.

“Well, what if there's nothing to look forward to!”

“Maybe there isn't.” His voice was quiet. “No point in getting upset.”

“I think you have to get upset!” She realized, astonished, that she had almost been shouting.

He got up from the table and stood beside her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “You're a nice girl,” he said. “You're worth saving.”

“But who's going to save me?”

“Not me,” he said cheerfully. “Thank God!”

“Peter, what will I be when I'm thirty?”

“Anything,” he said. “Anything you want.”

CHAPTER THREE

S
he spent the rest of the
afternoon with Peter. He borrowed four dollars from her and they left the College Inn and went all around the neighborhood paying off his debts; he retrieved his shirts from the laundry, his shoes from the shoemaker, and redeemed his library card. Susan followed him happily, never bothering to ask, “Where are we going now, Peter?” For this afternoon, at least, her life had been absorbed by his, and yet at the same time, everything was peculiarly important, peculiarly distinct—the pyramids of oranges in a grocery window, the names on the marquee of the Nemo movie theater, and Peter calling, “Here cats! Here cats!” in a cracked, plaintive voice, until the thin gray cat that had been eying them crept under a car and they both laughed helplessly. She thought she would remember that forever, and the faces of the people in e streets would also be remembered and exactly how warm the sun was on her shoulders, and the fact that on 114th Street Peter grabbed her hand for an instant, saying “Wait! Look at that!” and there on the sidewalk had been a wonderfully elaborate chalk drawing of a neckless man on a lopsided horse.

The afternoon ended in a secondhand bookstore. “Let's stop in here for a minute,” he had said; for the next hour he had restlessly searched the shelves for something he wanted. “There must be a book. I have to buy a book,” he cried. “You help me now.” She had ransacked stacks of books for him until her eyes smarted from the dust. “Let me know when you've had it,” he called to her once, and she had replied gaily, “But you don't really give a damn.”

Then all at once it was over. “It's five o'clock,” he announced soberly.

“Oh, what will we do now?” she asked.

“I have to go back,” he said. “I have to go back to the apartment.”

She felt perilously close to having the words “Don't go” wrenched from her, but knew you could never say things like that and said only, “I see,” because that was meaningless.

“I'm sorry… . You see—I have an application for a fellowship due at five tomorrow. I've been avoiding it all semester, but I ought to try to get it done… . Funny—I actually feel a little like working now.” They stood before each other in silence, awkwardly. “So … ” he sighed at last.

“You didn't buy a book,” she reminded him crisply.

“Couldn't have anyway. I've spent all your money.” They laughed. Their eyes caught for a moment as they walked out of the store into the street. “So long.” He grinned at her painfully and she found that his hand had somehow captured hers. Then he let it go and began to stride down the block, disappearing at last around the corner.

Standing by herself outside the bookstore, she suddenly discovered that she could stand still in the street if she wanted to, that aimlessness could have its own legality. If she wanted to, she would walk five times around the block or take a subway downtown to no place in particular. There was no shame then in accepting temporary shelters. She walked back up Broadway to the college.

As soon as she had pushed open the green gate, she saw Jerry. He was sitting on the concrete steps outside Brooks Hall, a copy of the
New Yorker
open on his lap. She wondered how long he had been staring at the same page.

She was not at all surprised to see him, but thought, Of course. Of course he's here. He had expected her to come; she had expected to find him. If there had been no one waiting for her on the steps, she would very likely have rushed into the lobby and asked the girl at the desk hadn't there been any calls, hadn't anyone come and then gone away. And yet she was as angry with him as if he had cheated her of something.

“Hello, Jerry.”

“Susan!” He scrambled to his feet, trying to jam the
New Yorker
into the pocket of his jacket. She wondered why and almost asked him. He was frantically grinning at her.

“I took a walk,” she said finally, feeling that there was nothing they could say to each other that would be appropriate; anything would be hopelessly out of context.

“I figured.”

“Have you been waiting long?”

“No. Not long. Not long at all,” he said. But he couldn't quite look at her.

“You didn't have to wait. You could have called.”

He was silent. For a moment his eyes searched hers anxiously. “I wanted to see you!” he cried.

She felt a sudden relief that he hadn't lied to her, that he hadn't said, “Well, I just thought I'd sit here and read.” She wondered why she always underestimated Jerry. “I didn't think you'd want to,” she said lamely.

“I thought we'd talk.”

“I don't want to talk, Jerry! I really don't.”

“Okay,” he said sadly. “We won't talk. Shall I go away?”

“I don't know.”

He took off his glasses and rubbed them against the sleeve of his jacket and tried to smile at her. Why hadn't someone warned him not to wait?

“Listen,” he said, “let me take you to dinner. You don't want to eat dinner with a lot of girls.”

“Jerry … you're terribly nice.” She felt herself trapped by his niceness.

He caught her by the shoulders. “Let's go downtown. We'll really go out. We'll go to some great place, some French place, anything you like.”

Should she get dressed up, go downtown with him? She could wear her black Shantung dress, which was the one dress she owned that made her feel worldly, and the long silver earrings her mother had given her. Jerry would inevitably tell her that she looked like the 1920s and they would drink cocktails and be very gay. Maybe she could be gay if she made the effort. “Will you buy me champagne?” she asked.

“We'll get drunk,” he announced extravagantly. “That's what we'll do.”

“All right. Let's get drunk.”

He laughed uncertainly. “You know, we could. There's no school tomorrow.”

“There's no more school at all!” She flung the words at him. “And I meant it about getting drunk.”

“Okay,” he said, bewildered.

The listlessness of the afternoon settled heavily upon her again, and she knew she could be neither gay, nor kind, nor cruel—only blank, a spectator of herself, immensely bored. She told Jerry she had to go upstairs for a little while; at least there would be no one to talk to there, she thought.

“Why?” he demanded anxiously.

“To get dressed.” As good an excuse as any.

“But you look okay… . ”

“I have to get dressed up if you're taking me out.” Already her hand was pressed against the heavy glass door. “I'll be just a minute!” she called over her shoulder.

“Susan!” he cried out.

Susan turned. “Well?” she asked impatiently.

“Don't forget to come down.” He looked so small and frightened. Perhaps if he had not been waiting for her, she would have telephoned him when she had come back to her room—not to apologize, but to talk. Somehow she would have managed to be great, just great. She wondered sadly why she was always being deprived of her greatness. “Of course I'll come down,” she said.

It was seven o'clock when they got off the Fifth Avenue bus at 57th Street—a soft evening. The city seemed deserted, except for a few couples strolling languidly down the avenue. Susan wondered where all the afternoon people had vanished—to cocktail parties perhaps, or the icy darkness of bars; surely they were all doing something infinitely graceful, not just lingering at a bus stop because they had no idea where to go next. Across the street, the mannequins in their summer dresses stood in the muted light of the Bonwit Teller windows, their wooden limbs twisted into an impossible, infuriating sophistication. “Just look at them!” Susan cried. “They are all waiting for taxis.”

Jerry very tentatively touched her arm with the tips of his fingers. “Okay,” he said. “When we know where we're going, we'll go there in a taxi.”

Quite unaccountably, tears had come into her eyes. “Oh, Jerry,” she said, “that's ridiculous.”

“No,” he insisted. “I can afford it tonight. I feel like spending money. Sometimes I want to ride in taxis too.”

“I thought you were so practical,” she teased him.

“I'm not practical at all,” he said gloomily. “I've just been broke all my life.”

It was true. She remembered his home suddenly, the worn, ugly furniture arranged in the cramped rooms just as it had undoubtedly been arranged twenty years before. “You have no idea how much cheaper good things used to be,” Jerry's mother had said to her. Everything his family owned was a bargain—their apartment, their car, the food they ate. “The butcher down the block is eight cents less a pound. Cashmere sweaters for five dollars if you look hard on the East Side. Movies are twenty cents less in the afternoon.” His father had told her that if she and Jerry got married, he would give them the still-good-as-new bedroom set. “Isn't Dad just great!” Jerry had cried. She had only been able to smile politely, and Jerry had accused her later of a lack of warmth. Perhaps he had been right. There was nothing wrong with people who didn't have much money making ends meet and being proud of it. There was nothing wrong with people who couldn't afford taxis.

She burrowed her head into Jerry's shoulder and felt him put his arm firmly around her waist. “Hey—what's with you?”

“I'm such a snob, Jerry,” she whispered. “I'm such an awful snob, I can't stand it.”

“It's one of your crazy moods,” he said.

“It's not a mood, it's the way I am. I'm a snob.”

He laughed uncertainly.

“You shouldn't have brought me down here,” she said. “This part of the city always kills me. It's all made of money. I don't mean money in the bank, but money like Henry James people had it, money so you could be really cool and never have to worry about carfare.”

“I've got twenty dollars in my pocket right now,” he said. “And I don't care if I get rid of all of it. How's that for coolness?”

“I wish you wouldn't spend it on me, Jerry.”

“Look,” he said, “I'm taking you out. I want us to have an evening. It's the end of exams and we're celebrating. Is there anything wrong with that?”

“No. I guess not.”

He was holding her hand very tightly. “Hey,” he murmured. “Hey there.” It was his evening too. He was entitled to it. She tried to smile at him reassuringly.

The sky was growing paler, and the sun made great red shadows on the empty buildings. It was all so quiet. The elevators had stopped, and the typewriters and the telephones, yet she felt a thousand faces watching her from the darkness behind the windows. In two more weeks every street would be a street she didn't know. She was suddenly glad Jerry was with her; she moved closer to him. But when he began to kiss her, she could not shut her eyes.

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HE WOMEN WERE
all so sleek. They are the adults, Susan thought, looking with wonder at their impeccably sheathed bodies, their bare, slender arms faintly tan a month before summer. She listened to their soft laughter and saw how easily the men leaned toward them across the little tables. “A great place,” Jerry had said an hour ago, as the waiter led them across the thick carpeting to a table from which they could see everything. Thinking guiltily that what she saw was beautiful, she had found herself perversely saying, “I wonder why they've turned out all the lights,” which was such a childish remark—not cool, not sleek—but she was determined not to be impressed. Restaurants were not beautiful. And she knew that the people were not really great—they put their coiffures up in curlers, worried about their charge accounts, had their feelings hurt, and were probably having dull conversations—still she wished she were completely taken in. Life was simpler for people like Jerry; they said what they meant, and they walked into strange places as themselves and said it, not wanting to be anyone else. They would always be tourists, carrying their cameras to cathedrals, staring at the natives with delight and open curiosity, half blind perhaps, but doggedly proud of their own identities. They were probably quite comfortable that way—they did not see the world as a magnificent party to which they had not been invited. And there was a certain dignity in being a tourist, if you never tried to be anything else, if you did not even dress yourself up in appropriate costumes. The black dress did not make her sleek; she was betrayed by the wisps of hair that clung to her forehead, the slight wrinkle in her left stocking, the smudge of soot across her wrist, the tightness of her lips, and by her consciousness of it all. She was a pretender.

“You still haven't told me about the exam,” Jerry said. He was beginning to sound angry. He had patiently set up one conversation after another and she had evaded each with an “I don't know” or “It isn't very important, is it?”

“Oh, it was very boring,” she said, knowing how annoyed he'd be. Exams, marks, were life and death to him. “In fact”—she felt pleasantly wicked—“I walked out on the American Lit question.”

“You mean you couldn't answer it!” He looked so worried.

“I just got tired of sitting there,” she said. “I had enough points.”

“Suppose you didn't! I mean, why are you always taking risks like that? Don't you care what happens to you?”

“But I've never gotten into any trouble.”

“That's amazing,” Jerry said grimly. “All the classes you've cut! Did you go to gym once last term?”

“Once or twice.” He would really be shocked, she thought, if he knew she hadn't picked up her mail, but she couldn't quite bring herself to tell him about that. “If you were the Dean, I bet you'd expel me.”

“How were the other questions?” he asked stiffly.

“Do you want a complete breakdown on each one?”

“I don't give a damn,” he said. “Sorry to have bothered you.”

She began to laugh. “You didn't bother me. Oh Jerry … don't be bitter.” She placed her hand delicately on his arm.

“I guess you find me boring too.”

She picked up a lump of sugar and carefully examined the words on its paper wrapping—
La Lune d'Argent, La Lune d'Argent
. She did not look at Jerry. At last she said, “Let's get out of here and do something.”

“We haven't had coffee yet,” he said.

“Let's have it somewhere else.”

“We might just as well have it here. It's paid for.”

“You remind me,” she said wearily, “of a little boy kicking a can down the street.”

He was staring at her with a peculiar earnestness. “Well … maybe that's what I am.”

“For heaven's sake, don't agree with me!” she cried. “Tell me to go to hell or something!”

“I don't understand you at all.”

“Tell me to go to hell. Go on—do it.”

He shook his head sadly. “I can't.”

“I think we should fight, have a big scene—right here. Let's see what happens. You throw the salt shaker at me, I'll throw the sugar bowl at you.
Something
!”

“Look,” he said, “I don't want to fight with you. I love you.”

“But Jerry, that has nothing to do with it.”

“I love you,” he said, “I really love you.” His hand clenched around her fingers. It was unfair, she thought. He was waiting for an answer. She nearly wept from helplessness.

“I don't know,” she said painfully. “I think you're trying to make me into some sort of monster.”

“But what are you talking about!” he shouted. “What do you want me to do? Okay, I wish I hated you. I wanted to hate you this afternoon when you stood me up.”

“I didn't stand you up,” she said, “because I didn't mean it that way. I felt strange.”

“All right. I don't care what it was. But look, when you didn't come down—I tried to think, Well, if that's the way she feels about it … I tried to be angry with you for an hour. But I ended up phoning you like an idiot after all. They kept saying ‘She's out.' So I kept phoning. Then at five—I was sitting in the library studying for Wednesday, and I thought, She'll be coming back to the dorms for dinner. And I ran—right out of the library, all the way back to the dorms. I didn't even wait for the elevator.”

“But would you have waited for the elevator if you hadn't been in love?” she asked lightly.

“Oh God!” he groaned. “I know you're not interested.”

“But I am interested.”

“Susan … why don't we just go to the movies?”

They walked down Third Avenue. She had put her arm through his, a young lady on a promenade. They did not attempt to talk, but there were all the antique-shop windows to look at; they stopped methodically in front of each and stared at the accumulations of rickety furniture and ornate china and once useful objects with names that were no longer remembered. Susan hated antiques. It depressed her to think that tea kettles and candlesticks could survive human beings. Her own furniture, she decided, would be as modern and impermanent-looking as possible, and it would fall apart soon after she died. Once, for a moment, she and Jerry were reflected in a massive gold-framed mirror that perhaps had reflected a Louis Fourteenth lady, and Susan saw that they looked like two people who might be walking on together forever, arm in arm, long past the point where Third Avenue ended and there were no more antique shops and the world's unknown space began—they might have looked that way too to the quick glance of a stranger. She let her arm slip from Jerry's, wanting to stand alone. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Of course.” She let him take her hand.

“Maybe we'll find a French movie,” he said, “all about the dangers of Paris. People hiding out in sewers.”

“I'd love to hide in a sewer.”

“You just think you would.”

“Maybe I'll do anything I want to.”

“Well,” he said, “I think you'll be glad to come back here in the end.”

She laughed exultantly. “In the end, perhaps. But not in the beginning, not now.”

“Oh,” he said quietly, “I see.”

They had begun to walk very quickly. He was whistling; he whistled “Oh, Susannah” and “Tea for Two.” “Hey,” she protested, stopping for a moment, “I'm wearing heels.” He grabbed her wrist roughly and jerked her along behind him like a disobedient child. She pulled herself free. “I refuse to walk like this, Jerry.” But strangely enough, she was not angry with him; she stood before him laughing, feeling an immunity in laughter.

“There's a movie theater four blocks away,” he said. “That's where we're going.”

“Do you know what's playing?”

“No, I don't. I just want to get there.”

“Jerry … I don't think we ought to go to the movies.” The sound of her voice seemed peculiarly distinct.

“Why not?” he said defiantly.

“I think we should go somewhere and talk.”

“Oh,” he said slowly, “I know what's coming.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, I think I know. You're going to say it's all over—right? That's that.” He raised his hand uncertainly, then snapped his fingers in the air. “Is that what you mean?”

He was so permanent, tangible, standing there in the street. It seemed impossible that words could make him vanish. “Yes,” she whispered. “I guess … ”

“Just like that!” he cried.

“Jerry,” she said timidly, “it's been coming on.”

“Sure. I know.” He looked up at the street lamp and then at the cars passing and the people. It seemed to Susan as though everything were moving except them. “This is a hell of a place to have a conversation,” he said.

“Better than the subway.” She tried to laugh, hoping he would too. She couldn't look at his face.

“Do you feel anything at all?” he asked suddenly. “Do you?”

“What do you mean?”

He moved toward her and put his arms around her, pressing her head against his chest. “I love you, Susan.”

His body sheltered her, blotted out the street. She shut her eyes tightly. “I'm sorry,” she said. It was all so easy, so swift and antiseptic—dead. She wished she were able to cry. She owed him that much.

“You did love me at the beginning,” he said desperately.

But she was somehow unable to remember. When she was a child it had seemed possible to measure love; if you really loved somebody you knew you would weep when they died. She did not know if she would weep for Jerry's death. But that was silly, a child's standard, and yet there were no others. Perhaps she had never loved anyone. She felt his body trembling against hers. Was he crying? “It's not your fault, you know,” she whispered. “It's really not.”

“Then whose fault is it?” he demanded.

“No one's—I don't know,” she said. “It's just the way things are.”

“That's easy to say. That's damn polite and philosophical. But it's me! I wasn't enough for you.”

“I won't talk about it like this,” she said. “I just won't.”

“Well, tell the truth,” he cried. “Say it was me!”

“Jerry, this doesn't do any good.” She hated the words as she said them, but she couldn't think. She wanted to run away, disappear. There was no time to be beautiful. She saw an empty taxi speeding down Third Avenue and just as it was about to pass, found herself waving at it frantically. It stopped. She walked to the door and closed her fingers tightly around the cold metal handle, taking possession. “I'm going back to the dorms,” she announced.

“Okay.”

“I don't see the point of talking—really.”

Jerry said nothing. He strode over to the taxi, yanked the door open and held it for her, “Well,” he said, “get in.”

“Jerry—look, call me.”

“Get in.” She climbed obediently into the taxi and slid back on the leather seat. Jerry slammed the door shut. “One hundred sixteenth and Broadway,” he said to the driver.

The driver put his hands on the wheel. “Wait!” she cried, turning the handle that opened the window. “Jerry! I want to say good-bye.”

He had already begun to walk away. He turned now and stared at her with immense sadness. “You've used me,” he said. “I've just realized it.”

The taxi sped up Fifth Avenue. She had rolled the windows all the way down, and the wind was whipping her cheeks, blowing her hair into tangles. The stone city was luminous around her, promising, and she was in her taxi in the center of it all—for the time being it was hers.

Later, when she was in her room taking off the black dress, she remembered an afternoon spent with Jerry a year ago, when they had cut classes to go down to the Drive. It had been a Grimm's fairy tale afternoon; there were children looking for berries in the dusty bushes, white pigeons in the sky, and the river was as glassy and still in the sun as if it had been frozen. They had thrown their books down upon the lawn and begun a mock fight, flinging grass at each other, ducking behind trees. “You'll never get away! You'll never get away!” Jerry had mocked her ecstatically. She had let him catch her at last, let him pelt her with leaves and kiss her. Then they had lain beside each other in the grass, smoking cigarettes and talking drowsily as long as there was sun. She remembered now, with a sudden pang, that she had almost wanted to die that way, that afternoon.