Evergreen (30 page)

“I wish they would put on a waltz,” Iris had said to Fred.

“They won’t,” he had answered, and laughed and put his cheek on hers. She had felt very excited, being that close to him. It had started to be a good time, Iris thought now.

She went to the bathroom and ran the water for a bath, although she had taken one before getting dressed this evening and was certainly quite clean. But she wanted to lie in the warm water and think. There was great comfort in warm water.

If that girl hadn’t arrived it might have been lovely, after all. The minute she walked in everything had changed. She was one of those lively girls who make everyone look at them. They don’t even have to be pretty.

“This is Alice,” Enid had said. “She’s just moved here from Altoona. We went to camp together.”

“Alice from Altoona,” Alice had said and everybody laughed, although it wasn’t funny. Right away everybody was interested in her. They all wanted to know: When did you move? Where are you going to school? This your first time in New York?

She had taken all the attention as though she expected it. No doubt she had always had it. Iris had watched her, thinking again: It is like a play, only now the leading lady has come in; the others were just bit players up to now. Iris had observed what she did, what was different about her. She saw that Alice didn’t talk too much. When she did say something, it counted; usually it was something to make people laugh. Or else it was a compliment, not too thick, just a comment almost casual, something to make the other person feel important. It looked so easy, the way she did it, never overdoing it, but Iris knew it really wasn’t.

She had told Enid’s mother that the apartment was just beautiful and she’d love to have her own mother see it. (Her mother would be invited.) She had let everyone know that her brother was a sophomore at Columbia. (The girls
would ask her to all their parties.) She had told every boy there that he was a simply marvelous dancer. “I couldn’t help noticing,” she said. (Immediately, they all wanted to dance with her.)

“You’re so
tall!”
she had said to Fred, as though, Iris thought disgustedly, he were some sort of giant that she had never seen before.

But Fred had been pleased and asked her to dance. They did the Peabody; Alice knew some variations. “We know a thing or two in Altoona,” she said and did a whirl. Her skirt swirled high till it showed the lace on her panties. Fred picked her up the way they do at the ballet and everybody stepped back into a circle to watch the performance of Fred and Alice. Fred was delighted and exhilarated.

Iris had tried to look as if it were really fun to stand there and admire. When Enid had changed the record, Fred had gone right on dancing with Alice. Soon everyone was back on the floor except Iris. Then a boy came and invited her; she was so relieved until she found out that he was Enid’s little brother. He was almost thirteen. His hand was sweaty on the back of her dress and he didn’t really dance, just walked around the floor. He kept on and on as the record changed; perhaps he would have liked to get rid of her and didn’t know how? She would have liked to get rid of him and didn’t know how. After a while she told him she wanted to sit down.

Fred had seen her sitting and had come over. No doubt he remembered his duty as her escort. Besides, someone had cut in and taken Alice away from him.

“You know,” Iris reminded him then, “it’s Sunday and don’t you think we ought to get going home soon?”

She had been surprised when he agreed. He said he still had homework to do. She had thought that now probably he would want to stay to the very last. But he had agreed.

Now she ran more hot water. Her mother always warned her not to fall asleep in the tub, but it was such a soothing place to think. Perhaps Maury would know what I do wrong? Everything Fred always said he didn’t like is
what that girl did. Perhaps Maury would know. So often she wished she could ask him about what she always thought of as his golden charm, but he would be so embarrassed. Once, when she was perhaps eleven, she had peeked through the crack of his door and seen him sitting at the window for minutes and minutes. And finally she had gone in and asked him, “Are you unhappy about something?” And he had been so cross. “Damn pesky little kid!” he had yelled at her. But then later that night, she remembered, he had come to her room and said he was sorry, and asked her whether she had wanted anything. He could be so tender, Maury could, but he didn’t like to show that side to people.

I feel so sorry he has left us this way. I suppose he couldn’t help falling in love with Agatha. Anyway, religion never meant very much to him. I used to see on his face that he wasn’t feeling anything when we went to services. Not the way Pa or I do. (I never could tell about my mother; I know she loves the music.) But I truly love it, I love the old, old words and the ancient people. I think of a long caravan of people, trailing back in time, I think of all the people in all the rows as if they are a part of me and I them. Afterward, when they get up and go out, they will be strangers again, not caring an instant’s worth about Iris Friedman, but while we are there and the mournful, plaintive music sweeps over us it draws us all together and we are one. When I was very little, I used to think that God was like Pa, or Pa was like God and could do anything, could make anything happen. Now I know he can’t.… He couldn’t do anything about Maury. He is so sad about Maury; I know he is, because he doesn’t talk about him anymore. When Pa isn’t home my mother talks about Maury. She talks so much about when he was a baby. She never says: When you were a baby, Iris.

The water began to grow cool. She climbed out of the tub and put her nightgown on. The telephone rang in the hall. Her mother answered and called her.

“For you,” she said.

Iris looked at the clock. It was almost eleven. She picked up the phone and Fred said, “Iris? I’m awfully sorry to call this late, but I just found out something and I wanted to tell you—”

“Yes?” she waited.

“It’s about the wedding,” he said. “I’m so embarrassed. But it seems that I or somebody made a mistake and I’m not supposed to bring a girl, after all. I feel lousy about it, but—well, I know you’ll understand.”

“Sure.” She spoke brightly. “Sure, I understand.”

He talked a minute or two longer, something about the paper, but she wasn’t really listening. She was thinking: Why don’t I tell him not to brother to lie? I know perfectly well he intends to take Alice. He probably went back to the party after he left me. Why don’t I?

When she hung up her mother came out of her bedroom. “My goodness,” she said, smiling, “couldn’t he even wait until he sees you tomorrow in school?”

“It was about the wedding. He made a mistake. He’s not supposed to bring a girl, after all.”

“Oh,” her mother said slowly, “I see.” She looked troubled for a minute, and searched Iris’ face, which was guarded and proud. Then she said, “Oh well, there’ll be other weddings. You’ll make the best of it.”

Mama didn’t mean to be indifferent, not at all. That was the way she treated herself. “Short of a catastrophe, you will never admit when anything has gone wrong,” Pa always complained, and yet he was really grateful for his wife’s placid optimism, which Iris often found so exasperating. Didn’t anything ever upset her? When Iris asked her that one time she didn’t answer at once, and then she said, “If it does, I keep it to myself. Your father has enough to worry him already.”

She went back to her room, brushed her teeth and got into bed. It was funny, but she didn’t feel as bad about this as she would have expected. Perhaps, in a way, it was a relief not to have to go. Not to have to think about what impression you were making, or to worry about girls like
Alice. Anyway, Fred was only a boy. Someday there would be a man, a real man, who would have eyes only for her.

I’m sure my mother thinks now that I’m crushed because of this—for she knows as well as I do that Fred lied. She used to think I was unhappy when we were at the beach years ago and there was a crowd of kids out on the lawn, while I was in the hammock reading. I remember the summer I read
Ivanhoe
and
The Last Days of Pompeii
, all those fat, wonderful books, the stories and tragedies that are so sad but never real enough to break your heart, just enough to make the sweet tears rise. I used to lay the book down and let them rise and I was very happy.

When I get to college I want to major in English literature. I’ve been in love with the sound and cadence, the charm and fragrance of words, as long as I can remember, probably ever since Mama first read stories aloud when I was three years old. Maybe younger than that. You can feel words, the way fingers feel velvet. Once I made a list of words that are especially beautiful. Sapphire. Tintinnabulation. Grass. Angelica. I wish my name was Angelica. I must make it a duty to learn five new words every day.

She wanted so much to write. The problem was that she had nothing to write about. Once she had written a piece about a lonely girl away at camp, and the teacher had said it was lyrical, but that was the only time. She guessed she didn’t have any special talent, although perhaps after she had really lived she might find something to say.

At school there was a girl, only Iris’ own age, who left to study at a conservatory; she had already played with an orchestra. How marvelous it must be to have such a way of expressing what is in you! It seemed to Iris that something was alive inside of her that wanted to get out and couldn’t. There was a rising in her chest, so beautiful and dazzling that people would stop and look with surprised faces if they could know about it.

It’s true, Iris thought, the person who lives inside me and the person that other people see are not at all the same.

In the autumn of 1935 there seemed to be no place for a well-spoken, fine-appearing graduate of Yale who had majored in philosophy and was willing to do anything at all. Nor was there a place for an attractive Wellesley girl of excellent family who had studied fine arts in Europe and spoke French better than many of the natives of France. She couldn’t even fill a job as a lunch-room waitress because there were fifty applicants for every such job and they had all had experience. He couldn’t get a job as a porter because in the first place he didn’t look like a porter and in the second place everyone was laying off, not hiring. There was no sense in it.

Every night at midnight Maury went out for the early-morning editions of the papers, read the help-wanted pages, then took the subway at five o’clock, walked from store to loft to factory, rode from the Bronx to Brooklyn and back and came home with nothing.

By October they had to believe that there were no jobs. They had seventy dollars left. And one day Maury didn’t brother to buy the newspaper; it would be wasting a nickel. That was the day when, for the first time, they knew panic.

Agatha asked timidly, “Don’t you know anybody? I mean, you’ve always lived in New York—”

How to explain? He had lost touch with all his childhood friends. He couldn’t call up now and beg a favor. Besides, most of their fathers were doctors or lawyers who couldn’t
do anything for him, or else they were in business and had their own troubles.

The only possibility was Eddy Holtz. To be sure, they had drifted coolly apart. Yet there was something about Eddy that would make it possible for Maury to swallow his pride, and he recognized what a tribute that was to some quality in Eddy. Eddy was at Columbia Physicians and Surgeons. His painful grind had paid off and Maury thought wistfully that he would always hang on and get where he wanted to go. His father owned three or four shoe stores, a small chain, in Brooklyn. Perhaps he just might—

“I’ll ask my father,” Eddy said. “I’ll see what I can do. You’re happy, Maury?”

“Yes, yes, except for the job situation. You’d heard I was married?”

“Chris Guthrie’s cousin, isn’t she?”

“Yes, and our families don’t—we don’t have anything to do with them. That’s why I thought of you. I may not always have agreed with you, Eddy, but I knew you wouldn’t forget the time when we were friends.”

“I haven’t helped you yet. But I will try.”

The store was two blocks from the subway station, which was good. He didn’t have far to walk. It was a long, narrow store wedged between a Woolworth’s and a Kiddy Klothes shop. One entire window was a display of children’s shoes. There were two other salesmen, Resnick and Santorello, men who had been there fifteen years. They earned forty dollars a week. Maury was to get twenty, taking the place of an older man who had dropped dead the week before.

“Boss saves money with Binder gone,” the other men told him. “He was here longer than we were; he got forty-five dollars.”

What worried Maury was that there really wasn’t enough work for three men. Sometimes no more than half a dozen people came in during the hours before three o’clock: mothers with toddlers, a man buying work shoes, young girls buying cheap patent-leather pumps for dancing,
an old woman with shoes cracked and split, who counted out her money for the new pair in dollar bills, the last dollar in coins from her change purse. After three, when school was out, there was a flurry and scurry of children crying and fighting over the hobbyhorse. He learned to handle them with dispatch and patience so that, coming with the rest of the family on another day, the mothers often asked for and waited for him. It saddened him that these shabby people could clothe and shoe their children only by neglecting themselves.