JC2 The Raiders (19 page)

Everything in life was in suspension for "the duration."
She did not resent it. She was a patriotic American. Yet — Yet
she realized she was losing an important part of her life. It was a
little enough sacrifice, but it was real. For instance, her father
had promised her he would buy a new car when she was sixteen and
would give her his old Plymouth station wagon. Now he could not buy a
new car, or buy enough gasoline to drive this one much.

She was introduced to sex about the same time, that is, when she was
a little short of seventeen. Two boys somehow had accumulated enough
gas to take two girls out into the Everglades in a big old dark-blue
Packard. They parked, and the couples took turns walking along the
road and looking at the flowers and wildlife, leaving the back seat
of the car to the other couple. Half an hour, each couple promised
the other. Toni was intoxicated by the feelings the experienced young
man could induce in her, and she went further with him than she had
intended.

Then she decided he had taken unfair advantage of her and would not
see him again. She developed an affection for another boy, and for a
few weeks they were intimate on the couch in her family living room —
assured of their privacy by the despised blackout curtains. Twice
they even did it on the roof while Piper Cubs checking the
completeness of the Florida Atlantic Coast blackout flew overhead not
more than two hundred feet above them. The darkened houses that did
not silhouette ships for German submarines leaked no light to afford
the pilots a clue as to what was happening on that roof.

In May 1944 she graduated from Seaview Academy, first in her class.

Her mother wanted her to go to Rollins College; her father's first
choice was Emory University; and her stepmother urged her to apply to
Radcliffe. She applied to all three, and others, and she was accepted
at every college she applied to. She chose Radcliffe.

The photos she sent with her applications showed that she was an
exceptionally pretty girl. She had by then lost the baby fat around
her face. She wore her hair in a loose, careless style that obviously
took only an occasional whip or two of the brush to control it. She
was pretty but no contrived glamour puss.

The second Mrs. Maxim was active in Democratic politics. She was a
delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1944. She saw to it
that Antonia met as many as possible of the prominent Democrats who
came to south Florida, and so Antonia was introduced to Senator Harry
Truman, the peppery little man running for Vice President with
President Roosevelt. He said he had a daughter her age — in
fact, Margaret Truman was two years older than Antonia Maxim —
and told her he hoped she would be as loyal a Democrat as his
daughter was.

In the fall of 1944 she arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and
within no more than a day she developed a troubling, even frightening
sense that she was hopelessly narrow and provincial, inexperienced,
naive, and ill-educated. After a month or so she amended her initial
pessimistic judgment and decided she was provincial and
inexperienced, not narrow or naive or ill educated. Before the
semester ended she realized she was not provincial either, no more
provincial anyway than the other girls in the college. No one, she
observed, was more provincial than New Yorkers, followed by New
Englanders. She learned that she could compete very handily with
them.

Only when they spoke of their travels was she at a disadvantage. She
had never seen Paris or London, or even Texas or California, but they
had and could talk with brittle gaiety about this hotel and that
restaurant and about how they hoped these places would survive the
war. When they told stories of how they abandoned their virginity,
Toni conveniently forgot the back seat of the Packard and said she
had given up hers on a flat roof during a blackout, with low-flying
planes buzzing overhead. None of them topped that story.

She was an excellent student. She majored in history, with minors in
political science and languages. Her mother wrote her a letter
suggesting she make an appointment with a Boston cosmetician
recommended by a friend and have herself done over. She was so
beautiful, her mother said, that she should make the most of herself
and consider a career in modeling and maybe even acting.

She made few male friends. The boys who hadn't been in service were
... well, boys. Many of the returned GIs were married. Others were
moody, and some were aggressive. She dated two of them and allowed
one to be intimate, but they drifted apart, finding no great
attraction in each other.

Her stepmother arranged to meet her in Washington
during the spring break of her junior year, to take her around and
introduce her to senators and congressmen. She also took her to the
offices of
The Washington Post
, where she introduced her to
the publisher and editors. In their hotel room, Morgana and Toni
talked about what she would do after she graduated. Was there a
marriage in sight? No. Was she interested in government? Yes. Did she
like Washington? Yes. Well then — maybe she could come to
Washington as a congressional aide. Morgana would inquire around.

For the fall semester of her senior year she enrolled in a class at
Harvard in abnormal psychology, just to round out her education, just
because it was something she thought she ought to know something
about. It was an eight-o'clock class, and people came in carrying
paper cups of coffee, smoking their first morning cigarettes. Toni
put her coffee on the writing arm of her chair and snapped her Zippo
to light a cigarette. She was wearing blue jeans rolled up to
mid-calf and a man's white shirt, tail out and collar open, also
brown-and-white saddle shoes with white cotton socks. Of the eight
young women in the class, only two were dressed otherwise than in
this uniform.

By his first words the professor announced that smoking would be
allowed in his classroom only so long as the weather permitted them
to keep the windows open. After that, no smoking would be the rule.

"Why wait till then?" asked a voice from behind Toni.

She turned around and saw a tall, handsome man, looking at her with
intimidating bright-blue eyes. He too wore a white shirt, but his
shirttail was tucked into khaki corduroy pants. She had meant to look
at him defiantly, maybe even to blow smoke in his face; but she
decided not to. They stared at each other with eyes equally steady.
He was smiling faintly, very faintly.

"I like the idea, Mr. —"

"Batista."

"Oh, yes, Mr. Batista. I like your idea, but I guess we'll stick
with my original plan, to postpone the onset of nicotine fits."

Toni had heard of Jonas Cord y Batista, who was nicknamed Bat. He was
known in Cambridge. The story about him was that he was an
illegitimate son of the rapacious tycoon Jonas Cord and was somehow
related to the former and perhaps future president of Cuba, Fulgencio
Batista. He was of course one of the returning GIs, and the rest of
the story about him said that he had been wounded and decorated. He
had been in Cambridge for a whole year, but this was the first time
she had seen him.

She stopped outside the classroom later and said to him, "I hope
my smoke didn't drift up your nose."

"I hope my suggestion didn't spoil your pleasure," he said
dryly.

She grinned. "I'm Antonia Maxim, and I'm usually called Toni."

"I'm usually called Bat," he said. "Because a lot of
people are uneasy with my name — which is Jonas. Do you have a
nine-o'clock?"

"No."

"Neither do I. Let's go across the street and have some
doughnuts."

Two nights later he took her to dinner and a movie.

Two months later word circulated among her friends and his that Toni
Maxim and Bat Batista were in love and planned to be married. Some
noted scornfully that she had stopped smoking and wearing blue jeans
with her shirttail out.

When his mother, Señora Sonja Escalante, came to Boston for
one of the only two visits she would make to the States to see her
son while he was at Harvard, she stayed at the Copley; and Toni Maxim
was her guest for dinner two of the five nights she was in town.

Some other friends could not imagine Toni could fall in love with
Jonas Cord y Batista. Oh yes, he was handsome, and apparently he was
rich, but he was a queer duck. He took courses that had no apparent
aim — lots of history and government, some economics,
chemistry, physics, psychology, philosophy, literature, and art. He
was seen on the Yard during the day, sometimes in the library at
night, but he lived as far away as Lexington, as though he made a
conscious effort not to associate himself with the college any more
than necessary. He didn't seem to care about much of anything —
about anything, that is, that other people cared about. He didn't go
to football games. He didn't go down to the river to watch the
rowing. It was as if he went out of his way to make it clear he was
not in awe of Harvard and didn't think himself privileged to have
been admitted.

Toni shrugged at this talk. So? A lot of the returning GIs were like
that. They had seen too much, experienced too much, to go rah-rah at
football games. So far as being admitted to the college was
concerned, Bat was an outstanding student. So far as she was
concerned, if he was privileged to be at Harvard, Harvard was
privileged to have him.

She had met his mother but not his father. He told
her, finally, that
he'd
never met his father and wasn't sure
he wanted to. Mexico City and Cordoba were too far away for him to go
home often. He had gone last summer, but would not go home for
Christmas. He accepted her family's invitation to spend Christmas
with them in Florida.

Dr. Maxim was not pleased to have his daughter
talking about marrying the illegitimate son of Jonas Cord but was
reconciled to the idea after he watched Bat land a big tarpon. The
young man had fished from a boat out of Vera Cruz and was experienced
and skilled at fighting a big fish. What was more, he passed a test
put to him by Dr. Maxim — he backed
Maxim's
smoothly
into its slip, steering with its twin screws more than its rudder.
The doctor was prepared to accept him after watching him do that.

Morgana liked him better after several evenings of dinner and
after-dinner conversation. When he said he thought President Truman
might be reelected — and backed his judgment with reasons —
she decided she liked him very well indeed.

When Toni and Bat caught the train to return to Boston, the Maxims
did not comment on the obvious fact that they would be sharing a
roomette. They were in fact traveling as Mr. and Mrs. J. Batista, as
their luggage tags indicated — because railroads in 1947 would
not allow an unmarried couple to share a roomette.

"They like you," Toni said as she waved at her parents
through the window.

"I tried," he said.

"Well, they do like you," she said. "They do. They've
bought the idea of our marriage. Not one hundred percent, but ... no
parents ever accept one hundred percent the marriage of a son or
daughter to some stranger they did not choose. Of course" —
she grinned wickedly — "if they knew I go down on you,
they'd kill you."

"We should just go ahead and marry," he said. "Then we
could live together."

"Soon ..." she whispered, glancing one more time at her
parents on the platform as the train pulled away. "We have to
let them give me a wedding."

Toni could not move in with him in his apartment in Lexington, but
she spent hours there almost every day. She spent as little time as
possible in her college living quarters — only from 1 a.m. to
dawn, as the rules demanded. She kept most of her clothes in
Lexington, most of her books, and her two portable typewriters.

She had two portable typewriters because she had
one that typed Greek characters. During her senior year she wrote a
thesis for a class in public ethics, in Greek. She won the award for
the best senior thesis of the year. The title was
Δεμοκρατια
εσχατη τυραννις
,
a quotation from Plato that translates "Democracy passes into
despotism."

Bat was proud of her. Dave made him prouder by
marveling over her Greek typewriter and her Greek thesis. Dave
encouraged Bat to go to law school, and Toni joined in that. It would
be a fine career for him. Besides, he needed focus. He had been
thinking of law school anyway. His mother, too, urged it. He applied
for the fall class in 1948 and was admitted. So far as Bat was
concerned, everything was settled.

"We can buy a house," he said to Toni one afternoon in the
spring. "Or lease an apartment in Boston." He grinned. "We
can't go on living with Dave. I'm going to accelerate law school, go
all summer and so on, and graduate six months earlier. Then —
New York. Or would you rather live in Connecticut?"

"Bat ... What about my thing in Washington? I told you it's
almost certain I'm going to be appointed an aide to Senator Spessard
Holland."

He stiffened. "You mean, even if we are married, you —"

She nodded. "Of course. It's what I've wanted to do. I've
planned for it, studied for it. Washington is where a person may be
able to make a difference."

"What about children?" he asked.

"I don't want to have any children for a
while. I want to see what I can
do
. Then ... There'll be time.
I'm only twenty-two."

"The perfect time for children," he said.

"I didn't say I want to wait ten or fifteen years. But I didn't
come to college to learn to be a housewife. That's what my mother and
my stepmother are. There are more important things in this world than
shopping for groceries and doing laundry and playing golf. An
arrangement can be worked out, Bat. An element of it is that I'm not
going to have children for a few years."