Ivy Secrets (15 page)

She thought of how the summer had changed them all. Tess wore makeup now. She had lost weight, and had traded in her long skirts and peasant blouses for tight-fitting jeans and sweaters. She curled her hair each morning and wore an
abundance of silver jewelry. She had actually become attractive, Charlie thought. Probably because her boyfriend would be back at Amherst, although Tess hadn’t mentioned seeing him yet.

Marina, too, was different, though not in such a positive way. She was still elegant, still perfect-looking, but the somberness that had set in last year when Viktor left seemed to have deepened. Charlie didn’t know what Marina had done over the summer: Marina didn’t seem to want to talk about it. Charlie only knew that when she asked Marina if she’d seen Viktor in Novokia, Marina had simply shaken her head and changed the subject.

As for Charlie, she had worked very hard to change, to mature, to focus on those things she wanted beyond Smith. And she was now more determined than ever to have a better life. She would start tonight. She would start with Vance. And the first thing she was going to do was have him pick her up under the arch at the Quad. If she intended to find a guy with money, she might as well let him think that she had money, too.

She said a silent good-bye to the swans, wiped the beads of perspiration from her brow, and headed up the hill toward the house. Cashmere, Ultrasuede, silk or not, Charlie still had to serve Sunday brunch to earn her keep.

    “You look like a Quad Bunny,” Tess said, as Charlie modeled the cashmere dress.

Charlie pretended to be offended.

“It is too early for cashmere,” Marina commented, her accent heavier than last year. “Never wear cashmere before October fifteenth.”

Charlie smiled but did not mention that in Pittsburgh, the only thing you didn’t do before October fifteenth was turn on the oil burner, no matter how cold it got.

“No cashmere before October fifteenth,” Tess echoed, “and no white before Memorial Day.”

“What time is he picking you up?” Tess asked. “I want to get a look at the son of a U.S. congressman.”

After taking off the cashmere dress with a groan, Charlie held up the silk pant outfit and examined it for wrinkles. She didn’t want them to know that Vance was meeting her at
the Quad; she didn’t feel like explaining. “Actually,” she said, pulling on the pants and zipping them up, “I’m meeting him in front of the museum. He doesn’t know the campus.”

“How hard is it to find Morris House? Does he have a brain?”

“Maybe not.” Charlie put on the blouse and buttoned it. “But he’s awfully good-looking.”

“And rich.”

“That outfit is perfect,” Marina interrupted. Charlie could have kissed her for changing the subject. “If I had a date tonight, I would wear that.”

“So why don’t you have a date tonight?” Tess asked.

Marina rose from Charlie’s clothes-cluttered, unmade bed. “I could ask the same about you. Is your boyfriend back at Amherst?”

Tess curled a lock of hair behind one ear. “It’s his senior year. He’s busy getting his schedule together.”

Marina snickered. “Right.”

“Stop it, you two.” As Charlie examined herself in the mirror, she reminded herself to keep jogging, that the exercise kept her trim and toned in all the right places. “I won’t have you arguing in my room.” There was a new tension between Tess and Marina that Charlie didn’t like. She wondered if Marina was still angry at losing Viktor, and misdirecting that anger toward Tess. They’d both be much happier, Charlie suspected, if they both had dates tonight.

Marina laughed. “You would not know a real argument if you fell over one.”

“That’s not true. I have five brothers and sisters, remember?”

“And I have one sister who could out-argue any of them.”

“Why doesn’t she come here to college?” Tess asked.

“Because I do not want her to.”

“Does everyone always do everything you want?”

“I am next in line to the throne,” Marina said. “Of course they do.”

It was the first time Marina had sounded conceited about who she was.

“Well, pardon us peasants for breathing,” Tess scoffed.

“I’m sure Marina didn’t mean it that way,” Charlie said.

“Yes, I did.”

Charlie frowned. “You did?”

“My sister is an idiot.”

Tess laughed. “Well, you know what they say. It takes one to know one.”

Charlie slipped out of her pantsuit and wished she knew how to shut Tess up. She wanted to look forward to her date tonight without anyone dampening her mood. “Even if Alexis is an idiot,” she said, “it must be hard on her always to be second best.”

“She had her ways of letting me know she does not think she is second best. One of the reasons she didn’t want to go to college was so she could get married.”

“She’s getting married?” Charlie asked.

“In June. To Lord Jonathan DuValle. A man with a title and no money. A Slavic nightmare.”

“Twenty is too young to get married,” Tess remarked.

“Not if you are, Alexis. Not if you are trying to get the jump on your sister and produce the first offspring of the next generation.”

“The king’s first grandchild,” Charlie pointed out.

“And the next in line to the throne—after me—if I fail to reproduce.”

“She doesn’t love this Lord whoever he is?”

Marina laughed. “Alexis loves no one but Alexis. Jonathan DuValle is a convenience. A means to an end.” She pulled back her long hair and Charlie was once again struck by how pretty Marina was, how flawless her skin, how deep her eyes. And though her frame was small, her carriage was unmistakable: quality, elegance, royalty. Charlie looked at Marina’s warmup suit—an ordinary warm-up suit on anyone else, but Marina wore it with the grace befitting a black-tie event. As she carefully draped her silk outfit on a padded hanger, Charlie realized that no matter how much money she spent on clothes, she would never have Marina’s savvy. Or her class.

“You may be honored with the privilege of meeting Alexis,” Marina added as she moved toward the doorway. “Before I left, she threatened to come to America to buy her wedding gown.” With that remark, Marina disappeared into her own room.

“Can you imagine?” Tess whispered to Charlie. “
Two
of them?”

If Marina heard Tess’s words in the next room, she didn’t respond.

    “How about a frat party?” Vance suggested as he and Charlie walked down the steep, wide stairs of Springfield Symphony Hall.

“I thought we were going to a restaurant,” she said. She’d been to only one fraternity party last year, and the smell of beer and cigarettes hadn’t come out of her clothes even after she washed them.

They crossed the small park at Court Square, past the old, white church, down the redbrick street.

“I need to stop in for a few minutes. Make an appearance. We can go out after.”

“Sounds fair,” Charlie said, smiling at him as he opened the door of his MGB for her.

In the forty-five minutes it took to get from Springfield to Amherst, Vance talked a lot—about himself, his congressman father, and the office in Northampton that Vance had recently helped set up so that his father could be close to his constituents. “During his last campaign, he told the people he’d be more accessible,” Vance said. “Times have changed. Politics has changed. Ever since Watergate, everyone’s making more demands on politicians.”

He sounded as though he didn’t think that was fair. Charlie pretended to agree, though she couldn’t care less. She was thoroughly enjoying sitting back in the great sports car, wanting to be admired by all those they passed on the road, feeling good in her silk outfit. Feeling right.

“A friend of mine dates a guy from Amherst,” she said during a lull in the conversation.

“What’s his name?”

Charlie thought a moment. “Peter, I think.” She couldn’t remember Tess’s boyfriend’s last name. “He’s a senior.”

Vance took a quick turn off the highway to cross over the Calvin Coolidge bridge—the green bridge, as most everyone called it. “There’s nobody named Peter in my house,” he said. “What kind of car does he drive?”

“Car?”

He shifted the gears and chuckled. “My father says you can tell everything about a man by his car. The sharper the
car, the more money he has.” He winked at Charlie. “I guess the same goes for women these days. What kind of car do you have?”

Charlie quickly averted her eyes and gazed out the window. “Pontiac,” she answered.

“Firebird? That’s cool.”

Well, Charlie thought, it wasn’t exactly a lie. The O’Briens did have a Pontiac, but it was an old four-door Bonneville. She didn’t dare explain that to Vance, or tell him that the car had rust on the bottom and that the upholstery inside was held together with gray electrical tape.

    The house was big and roomy; Victorian in architecture, blatantly male in decor, as if in protest to the fact that two years earlier, Amherst had become coed. Inside, the crowded, noisy living room was decorated with banners and posters of various jocks in various stages of football glory. The tall windows were undraped; a piano that sat in one corner was covered with paper plates of half-eaten pizza, kielbasa, and baked beans; bowls of potato chip crumbs and pretzel remains littered the windowsills and radiators. The stench of beer was pungent and the level of singing, laughing, and shouting was so loud that Charlie couldn’t tell whose music was blasting from the huge stereo speakers that hung from the high ceiling.

“Hey, Vance, my man,” yelled one burly, drunken brother.

“Hey, Jason,” Vance replied with a wave, as a drunken guy wove through the crowd of happy partygoers, past a girl who danced alone, her large breasts bouncing. The girl giggled as he stopped to rub one of her breasts.

When Jason reached them, he slapped Vance on the back, whistling as he looked at Charlie. “Where’d you get the lady?” he shouted above the noise.

“Smithie,” Vance shouted back.

“A Bunny!”

Charlie tried not to shrink from the repulsive breath of Vance’s friend, but she was pleased to be presumed a Quad Bunny.
One goal attained
, she thought.

“Come on, Vance,” Jason slurred. “Bring your Bunny and follow me to the keg!”

With Vance’s hand on the small of her back, she followed
Jason into an enormous kitchen where several guys were clustered around a keg. One of them belched.

“Sorry,” Vance said to Charlie, “I should have warned you.” He offered her a beer, found two reasonably clean plastic cups, and pulled the tap of the keg. Charlie kept her eyes on what he was doing: she didn’t want to make eye contact with any of the others.

Beers in hand, Vance said to her, “Come with me. I know somewhere a little quieter.”

Charlie followed him down a long hall. He unlocked a door, stepped inside, and quickly pulled her in, just as a boy ran past, retching. Vance closed the door behind them and leaned against it.

“I hated to bring you here,” he said quietly, “but they expect it. They expect it of all the brothers.”

“I understand,” Charlie assured him. She turned to see a wide mattress on the floor, a stereo, and several chunky candles. In the corner, what she supposed was a desk was smothered with books. Vance handed her her beer, turned on the stereo, then lit the candles. The room was filled with a moody, seductive glow. No one had to tell Charlie what Vance expected next.

“Have a seat.” Vance gestured to the mattress. “Sorry for the lack of amenities. But a frat house is a frat house.”

She looked at the mattress. She thought about her future and wondered if this was what it would take to land a guy from Amherst. She wondered if this was how Tess had landed Peter whatever-his-name-was.

“I’m really hungry,” she said. “Are we going out to eat soon?”

“Sure.” Vance sat down and pushed back a black-and-white striped bedspread. “I just need to stay here a few minutes … make the guys think I was here.” He patted the mattress beside him. “Take a load off.”

Charlie hesitated. Then she reminded herself that Vance Howard was the son of a U.S. congressman. She carefully squatted beside him on the mattress. “Nice place you have here,” she said.

“It’s home.” He set down his cup and turned up the stereo. Fleetwood Mac blared from the speakers. He turned back to Charlie and scooped her hair in his hand. Then he leaned forward and kissed her. His lips tasted of beer.

He kissed her again. This time, his tongue slid into her mouth. He pulled back and said, “You are incredibly beautiful. You are so unlike the other Smithies.”

Charlie wasn’t sure what that meant.

He took her cup of beer from her hand and set it on the floor. He kissed her again, and gently tried to nudge her backward.

Charlie broke his hold. “No, Vance.”

He sat up beside her and tried again.

She shoved his arm away. “I said no.” Son of a U.S. congressman or not, Charlie wasn’t going to do this. She had no idea how a real Quad Bunny would handle it, but she knew that screwing on a floor on a first date was not her idea of a good time.

“My mistake,” Vance said as he stood up. “I guess you want me to take you home.”

“No,” Charlie said as she rose from the mattress. “I want you to take me out to dinner. Like we planned.”

    Monday morning they awakened to the sound of bells. Loud bells, ringing bells.

“Oh, great,” Charlie heard Marina mumble from the room next door. “It’s Mountain Day.”

Charlie rolled over and pulled the pillow over her head. She hadn’t gotten in until after midnight. “Dinner” had ended up being hero sandwiches—“grinders” they were called here—at the only place they could find open. But it had given her a chance to get to know Vance better, and the opportunity to show him she really wasn’t like the other girls. When he dropped her off outside the Quad, he hadn’t even tried to kiss her good night. He did, however, ask if he could call her again. Charlie sighed now and opened her eyes to the morning light. The fact that he wanted to take her out again was, she guessed, a good sign.

“What I find incredible,” came Marina’s voice through the doorway, “is that classes are canceled, but they wake us up with those infernal bells.”