Love Comes Calling (2 page)

I
know something you don't know.” Louise was smiling like a cat who'd swallowed a canary.

I eyed her as she stepped into the dormitory hall with me. As editor of the
Radcliffe News
and a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Radcliffe Guild, there was probably quite a bit she knew that I didn't know. Or at least quite a few things I'd once known, but hadn't been able to remember. Like the answers to the economics test.

“Ask me what it is.” Her brown eyes were sparkling beneath her green straw cloche hat. “Go ahead, ask me!”

I walked right past her toward the stairs. “I think I'd rather wait.”

“For what?” Mary was coming down the stairs I had planned to go up. “What are you waiting for? Prince to put his fraternity pin on you?”

“
I
was going to tell her that!” Louise stepped past me to take a swipe at Mary with her pocketbook.

I caught Louise by the forearm. “What?”

“Prince Phillips. He's going to pin you.”

Oh no, he wasn't! Not if I could help it.

“He was talking to Roy about it yesterday. And Roy told Helen.”

Roy told Helen everything.

“And Helen told Myrtle. And Myrtle told me—”

“And me!” Mary was smiling so widely her teeth were gleaming.

Louise shrugged. “ . . . and there you are.”

“Griffin Phillips and I are just friends.” And oh, how I wished he wouldn't try to change things.

Louise frowned as if I'd insulted her. “How can you say—”

“The Phillips family has lived next door to us for ages.”

“Honestly, Ellis! I don't know why you always say that. If we truly thought you might not have him, any one of us would be on him in a minute. What's not to like about him?”

“I don't
not
like him.” I did like him. Very much. Too much to let the captain of the Harvard football team, president of the mandolin club, vice president of his fraternity, and heir to all that Phillips money put his pin on a dumb Dora like me. People said Griff was going to be a congressman someday like his father. Or maybe even governor. He didn't need me going around failing economics tests and losing perfectly good hats.

Mary smiled. “That's better.” She reached down and threaded an arm through mine, pulling me up the stairs. “Let's decide what you're going to wear when he pins you.”

“I can't—I'm not—”

Louise swatted at me from behind with her pocketbook. “Hush, Ellis. This is important.”

They hauled me up the stairs to my room and began pulling dresses from my closet.

“Listen: Griff is not going to put his pin on me, because I won't let him.”

“Of course you will. Why wouldn't you?” Mary held a pink and blue sailor-collar dress up under my chin as she squinted at me. “I don't know . . . what do you think, Louise?”

“I won't let him because . . .” Because I couldn't bear to tell him no even though I couldn't possibly say yes. It's not that I didn't like him. On the contrary, ever since he'd gone and gotten so tall and started talking to me in that deep, low voice as if I were the only one he wanted to hear him, it was hard not to think of him practically all the time I wasn't thinking about anything else. And ever since that fraternity dance back in autumn when he'd laughed at something I'd said and then looked right down into my eyes and said, “That's why I like you so much, Ellis” . . . at least . . . I think that's what he said, although it was hard to tell because the band was playing so loudly. But that's what it had sounded like, and after that I couldn't stop ignoring the funny feeling I got way down deep inside whenever I saw him. And that was the problem. I liked him far too much to let him ruin himself by getting involved with me. And why would he want to be pinned to the Eton girl that could never quite manage to do anything right?

If I avoided being pinned, then I'd be able to spare Griff's pride when I ended up leaving town. I'd been humiliated enough in my life to know how it felt, and Griff didn't deserve that. The sooner I could get to Hollywood, the better! I'd been thinking about it since the summer of my freshman year, when I realized college wasn't for me. Being pinned—and then leaving Griff behind—was one thing I didn't want
to have to regret when I left. I just had to figure out how to get enough money to buy my train ticket.

“This one or this one?” Mary was holding up my drop-waisted orchid satin dress and my maize Chelsea-collared chiffon.

“Neither.” I stepped beyond her and pulled my white tennis jumper from its hanger.

She grabbed it from me. “You can't wear
that
!”

“Good grief! I've got the play tonight. Besides, I've already told you he's not going to pin me. And even if he did, I've known Griff for . . . a long time. It's not as if he hasn't seen me in a plain old skirt and sweater. Or nothing at all, for that matter.”

Mary's eyes grew wide, and Louise looked at me as if I'd suddenly sprouted horns.

I might have laughed, but I couldn't resist the temptation to give them the person they so obviously imagined me to be. I smiled a long, slow, smoldering smile as if I were the actress Theda Bara. And then I gave a languorous shrug of my shoulder as I prowled toward my bed, throwing in a shimmy for good measure.

Mary gasped. “You didn't.” She turned to Louise. “She didn't! She couldn't have; she wouldn't, would she? You don't think they've—”

I broke into laughter. Peals of it. I couldn't help it. “No, I never—! I was talking about when we were
babies
. Our families have gone to the shore together every summer for practically forever.”

Louise blushed so bright she looked like a strawberry with that green hat on her head. “I wasn't thinking
that
.
My goodness! How could you even . . . but . . . you almost . . . you seemed so
vampy
there for a second. I never quite know what to think about you, Ellis. You might want to pretend to be Mary Pickford once in a while or people might start to wonder . . .”

Our own Mary was looking at my tennis jumper, nose wrinkled. “Honestly! You'd think you weren't even an Eton, with clothes like that.”

Which is what I said whenever I went home on the weekends. But Mother only sighed and talked about whether my old things were still serviceable.
“Just think how many orphans can
be fed and clothed with the money you're thinking
of spending.”
I undid the buttons on my skirt and let it drop to the floor, and then I pulled my blouse off over my head. “Do either of you actually know when this pinning is supposed to happen?”

“Now.”

“Now!”

“Sure. Just as soon as the boys get done with class.”

“But he can't! Tonight's the play.” And I had to head over to the theater soon . . . where Griff would eventually be meeting me. I'd just have to make sure he didn't catch me between here and there alone. I pulled the tennis jumper on over my head and tugged the skirt down smooth.

There was a knock at the door.

The girls shouted “Come in” while I shouted “Go away!” Two voices beat one, for Irene Bennett opened the door and thrust a tall glass jug in our direction. “Just look what I bought!”

If she weren't still standing in the door, I would have slipped around her. “Looks like a very nice jug, Irene.”

“It's not just a jug. It's a jug filled with
grape juice
.”

I pulled her into the room so I could get around her. “Why don't you go drink it somewhere, then?”

“Because, look: right there. Read what it says.”

I obliged her. “‘Warning. If left in a dark place, will ferment.'”

“See?”

“So don't leave it sitting around. Drink it now.” Somewhere else. So I could leave!

“I'm going to turn it into
wine
!”

Mary gasped. “You can't!”

“Of course I can. If I leave it in the dark, it'll ferment. So . . . ?” She looped her arm around mine as she looked at me, brow cocked.

She wanted to be my friend now, after practically ignoring me at mah-jongg that night before the economics test? “So . . . what?”

She offered the jug up to me. “Will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Put it in your closet for me? I was really hoping it would be done by now. I've had it in mine for a while, but your room is so much stuffier, I was hoping it would work better here. If I can figure out how to make my own wine, then I won't have to depend on the boys downtown to buy it for me.”

She had people buying wine for her? Since when?! “If you want to make wine so much, even though it's positively
illegal
, then put it in your own closet.”

She rolled her eyes. “It's not illegal. Legally, me and you and everyone here is allowed to produce wine in the privacy of their own house—”

“But this is a dormitory.”

She threw an arm around my neck. “Why do you always have to be so literal, Ellis?”

“I'm not.” Irene had changed, and not for the better. I felt my nose wrinkle. Had she already been drinking? “Why can't you just obey the rules like everyone else?”

“Because they're only made for the benefit of the poor fools who can't figure out how to break them.”

“By which, I suppose, you meant me?” Was she trying to be mean on purpose?

Mary and Louise were watching us with wide eyes.

“Of course I don't mean you. Everyone knows rules weren't made for the first families of Boston! You're above the law.”

“No one's above the law.”

She held up the jug. “Come on, Ellis. Will you keep it for me? Please? No one would dare expel you, but if they catch me . . .”

If they caught Irene, then the dean of the college would throw her out on her head. After having been caught smoking in her room and out in the Yard with a boy after curfew, it was a miracle she'd made it through the term at all.

“Please?” She batted her long, dark, incredibly thick eyelashes at me. They were the only thing I envied about her. That and her closet full of silk dresses. And her beaded handbags. And matching shoes. Come to think of it, she'd improved herself quite a bit lately. For a poor girl, she had a lot more nice things than I did!

“Don't do it, Ellis!” Louise was glaring at Irene. “Don't you know what will happen if they catch you?”

Of course I knew what would happen. The dean would
call me to her office for a talk. She'd be ever so disappointed and encourage me to apply myself and buckle down and then everything would be forgiven. Just like it always was. I wouldn't be coming back next autumn anyway. “Oh . . . go ahead. Put it in my closet.” I waved her toward it, then slipped out the door.

“But, Ellis! You can't just—” I stomped down the hall so I wouldn't be able to hear Mary and Louise calling out behind me. I was so tired of people telling me what I couldn't do! And what I wouldn't do! And what I was supposed to do!

As I went down the front stairs, I heard the sound of chanting. It was coming from outside.

I tiptoed to the door and took a peek out the window. A big bunch of fraternity boys was coming across the Yard, waving their flag and singing one of their dippy songs.

For crying out loud!

Now I'd have to think of some other way to get to the theater unseen. At least no one else had heard them.

As if on cue, one of the freshmen popped out of the dining room.

“Don't you dare answer that door!”

She plastered herself against the wall. “I won't. Promise.”

Spearing her with a Pola Negri glare, I ran back up the stairs and down the hall to Martha's room. I might have been an Eton, but she was the one who'd received the honor of the corner room.

She didn't answer my knock.

Please, please, please!

“I'm coming!” She opened the door, her hair already set in water-wave combs and tied up in string.

“Can I borrow one of your windows, Martha?”

“One of my . . . windows? Why?”

Pushing past her, I strode to one. Unlatching it, I pushed up the sash, then hitched up my skirt and sat astride the frame.

“Ellis! What on earth—?”

“Hush, Martha. I need to concentrate.”

She sprang through the door and out into the hall. “Help! Help! Ellis Eton is committing suicide.”

Oh, for heaven's sake. “I am not!” I raised my voice so it could be heard over hers. “But I might just have to murder you, Martha Davis!”

She came back into the room and shut up her mouth as she clutched her collar tight about the throat.

“Wish me luck.” I hoped this would go more like a Douglas Fairbanks movie than a Charlie Chaplin one. Leaning forward, I swung my other leg over the window ledge. Then I pushed off the sill as I grabbed at the edge of the gutter. As I hung there, I wrapped my legs around the downspout. I'd seen Buster Keaton do it once in a movie; it had looked so easy as I was sitting there in the theater, but now I couldn't quite figure out how it worked.

I loosened my hold on the pipe and started to slide, then tightened my grip and stopped. Nothing to it! And much easier than climbing down a tree.

Only . . . those voices sounded louder. Were they getting nearer?

I loosened my grip again and started to slide, when my thighs got hung up on something sharp and pointy.

Ow!

It probably would have worked just fine if the pipe hadn't
separated from the building just then and swung me out away from the dormitory like a ride at Salem Willows Park. I tried to hold on as long as I could—I really did—but with the pipe peeling off and then curving down toward the ground, suddenly I was sliding along the gutter in the wrong direction, upside down. And before I knew it, I'd reached the end of the pipe and sailed off through the air.