Love Comes Calling (5 page)

I was debating whether to try to find something to wipe them off with or hope that I could just sneak up the back stairs once I got home when I saw Irene come out of her room balancing a stack of hatboxes with one hand as she tried to close her door with the other.

I almost turned around and went back into my room, but she'd already seen me by then.

“Ellis! Could you—would you mind helping me?”

Well, yes, in fact, I did mind! “Are you planning on insulting me again? Or abandoning me in expectation that I'll just fill in for you?” My goodness! When I was mad I sounded just like my mother.

Her face flushed. “Listen, Ellis. I'm really sorry for the other night at your play. I told Floyd not to come for me until after it was over, but he forgot and then, once he was there . . . well . . . he hates waiting for me, and it put him in a bad mood.” She looked over at me. “Trust me, you don't want to be around him when he's in a bad mood!”

I took two of the boxes off the top of her stack. “Is he the one who gave you the black eye?”

Her eyes darted from mine. “He didn't mean it. He really didn't. I'd made him mad, but he was so apologetic. He promised it would never happen again.” She tried hard to smile, but her lips were wobbling.

“Isn't he . . . I mean . . . I've never actually met him, I've only seen him from a very long way off, but isn't he a little old for you?”

“We can't all date the captain of the Harvard football team, can we?” She grabbed the boxes from me and tried to put them on top of hers, only she lost her grip and the stack of them cascaded to the floor.

“Oh! I'm sorry.” I stooped to retrieve them. “Let me help. I didn't really mean to—”

“You never mean anything, and you're always so nice about it. But not everything can be fixed by being sorry!”

“I never said it could be.”

“I'm not like you and I never will be. No matter how hard I try, it just won't work. And I want to be somebody someday, don't you understand?”

Of course I understood. I wanted to be someone too. Someone different than I already was. “Irene, I—”

“And sometimes you have to take risks and—and overcome your inhibitions in order to make things happen!”

“If you say so.”

She took a deep breath and tried on a smile, but I could tell she wasn't really happy. “Anyway, I have to go now. Floyd's waiting for me.”

Louise and Mary were waiting for me, but I let Irene go on down the stairs by herself before I followed her.

Mary, Louise, and I were halfway to Billings & Stover when I realized what day it was. “It's Friday!”

Mary was looking at me as if I'd gone mad. “Sure. And yesterday was Thursday.”

“No! It's
Friday
.” Good grief! “The Chilton Club. Symphony! I have to go.” Last time I'd completely forgotten about
something really important, I'd asked my father to get me one of those clever little books he always carried around in his coat pocket so that I could transcribe everything I was supposed to remember into it, things like symphony. But I suppose it only worked if I actually remembered to take it out of my desk and look at it once in a while. And now it was probably buried at the bottom of my trunk. I ran down the sidewalk, shoes flapping beneath me. As I rounded the corner to the dormitory, I saw the car already waiting. Oysters and clambakes!

I rapped on the window. The driver got out. Bowed.

“Just—five minutes.”

“Yes, Miss Eton, but—”

“Five.”

I bolted up the stairs and down the hall. Martha was standing outside my door, wringing her hands. “Something's happened.”

Something was always happening to Martha. There was always some strange noise in the hall or some odd shadow in her room. “Where?”

She nodded toward my door as she chewed on her lip. “In there.”

“In . . .
my
room?”

She nodded again.

“Are you sure?”

“There was . . . well, there was a . . . it sounded like . . . a boom.”

“A
boom
! When?”

“About . . .” She consulted the watch that was pinned to the bosom of her blouse, turning it nearly upside down and twisting the material in the process. “Four minutes ago.”

In
my
room? I put the key in the lock and turned it. Opened the door slowly. Stuck my head inside. My room wasn't very big, and most of my things were already packed, so it didn't take long to determine there was no one there inside.

I pushed the door wide and stepped in. “There's nothing—” But . . . there
was
something. There was a smell. A very strong, very yeasty, stench. Like . . . a moldy loaf of bread. Or . . . overripe grape juice.

Irene!

I pulled my closet door open and nearly gagged. Or cried. I couldn't decide which to do. Irene's jug of grape juice had exploded, spewing the wine all over my clothes. Most of my dresses and all of my skirts were dripping with it. And now I had . . . “What time is it?”

She cocked her head and screwed her blouse around again. “One thirteen.”

I only had two minutes to figure it all out.

Her nose was twitching like a rabbit's. “What's that smell? It's revolting!”

“Irene's wine.”

“Wine!” Martha's brows rose alarmingly. “But you can't have wine in your room. It's against the—”

“Yes, I know! But what am I supposed to do about it now?” And what was I supposed to wear to symphony?

I rifled through my dresses and found all of them soaked but for one. And even that had been stained along the hem, but since it was already red, maybe no one would notice. I'd seen the dress back in October and knew I had to have it for the Christmas ball, so I'd used up the allowance money I'd been saving for Hollywood to buy it. But I'd come down with
a head cold, and not even a teakettle's worth of lemon and honey water had been able to cure me in time for the dance.

I had never worn it, but I was going to now. There was no help for it. I couldn't go to symphony in my vest blouse, and the red dress was the only thing left.

Martha stood there blinking as I shed my blouse and skirt and pulled the dress on over my head.

“Isn't that a bit . . . formal? I don't know if you want to—”

“Just . . . don't say anything.” I pulled my squirrel-collared coat from the back of my closet and pulled it on, fastening it tight around the dress.

“You can't wear
that
! It must be eighty degrees outside.”

But I couldn't wear a red satin evening dress with beaded trim to symphony by itself, either. “Do you have a hat I can borrow?”

O
f course Martha's hat was an old-style toque, but beggars couldn't be choosers. At some point the driver came up to my room in the dormitory. I suppose it was all right since most of the other girls had gone home. I threw the rest of my closet into the trunk, and he latched the lid, lifted it to his shoulder, and started off down the hall.

By the time we reached the colonnaded symphony hall, I was truly and officially late. Though the orchestra was not yet playing, everyone had already abandoned the lobby for the concert hall. I slipped into the seat next to Mother's. She was reading the program, but she glanced up as I sat down. “Why on earth are you wearing—?” She studied me with a worried frown and then put out a hand to touch my forehead. “Are you ill?”

I dodged her hand. “I'll be fine.”

The orchestra struck up the beginning strains of an opus from Brahms'
Academic Overture
. I settled into my seat, determined not to fidget, not to start humming, not to do any of the things I normally did.

Mother glanced in my direction, her nose wrinkling. “
What
is that smell?”

I dipped my chin and sniffed at the dress beneath my coat. Oh crumb!

“Ellis? Have you been
drinking
?”

Before I knew it, she'd grabbed hold of me by the ear and was dragging me through the hall, out into the lobby.

“I don't have the words—! I've known you to disobey me and disregard me and to—to—be an utter disaster! But I've never known you to break the law!” She stepped closer as an usher came out from the hall. “You're an Eton. You have a reputation to uphold. You have
our
reputation to uphold! And that doesn't have anything to do with becoming mixed up in . . . in . . . illegal alcohol!”

“I didn't—”

“This is unbelievable.”

“It wasn't—”

“This really is the last straw!”

“It wasn't my fault!”

“Oh? Someone dragged you into one of those . . . those . . . what do they call them?”

“Speakeasies?”

“Speakeasies!” Mother threw up her hands. “And forced you to take a drink? Is that what happened? Really, Ellis, I just don't know what to do with you anymore.”

“It wasn't like that at all! Someone put a jug of grape juice in my closet and—”

“And now you're making
bathtub gin
?”

“In my
closet
, not my bathtub. I don't have a bathtub. At
least not one of my own. Not at the dormitory. And I'm not making anything at all.
It wasn't mine
.”

Her eyes had grown round in horror. “The dormitory? You did this at the dormitory?”

“I didn't do it. It wasn't me.” It was Irene.

She pressed her lips into a firm, straight line. “This really is the end. With your inattention to basic proprieties and your propensity to scandalize the entire city, you've left me with no choice. I'm going to have to send you to Granny.”

I heard myself gasp. Granny lived way out in the woods, miles from nowhere. She was a hundred years old, and the only reason her heart kept beating was because she was too stubborn to let it stop. She was a bent, sour-mouthed widow who didn't have time for foolishness and had never liked me at all. If my mother made me go to Granny's, all hope of Hollywood, all hope of life in general, was gone. “Please don't. I promise . . . anything! I'll promise you anything! Please don't make me go!”

She looked at me, her eyes swimming in pools of sudden tears. “I just don't know how I failed you, but I must have. If I'd done the right things, then you wouldn't be this way . . . would you?”

So now I was all her fault?

“Just . . . go wait over there in that chair.”

When we got home, my mother told me I'd have to speak to my father about the wine after supper and that my sister was there for the weekend with my nephews. At least she'd
warned me. It's not that I minded the boys, but I did resent how quick Julia always was to assume I'd watch them for her.

“I'll expect you to be on your best behavior. It's time you learned how to set a proper example for the younger generation.”

I put a foot to the stairs.

“And we're having that poor Phillips boy over for supper tonight.”

Poor Phillips boy. I couldn't help rolling my eyes. My mother must be the only person in the world to think Griff might be poor in any sense of the word. The Phillipses had plenty of money, and Griff was rich as Midas in the adulation of the entire population of the city. The only thing he lacked was a mother. She'd died in the influenza epidemic during the war. “Do we have to?”

“Ellis! You really ought to start treating him like the man he is. You're not a child any longer and—”

I ran on up to the landing, held on to the newel post, and spun myself around the corner and headed up to my room.

“Honestly, Ellis! . . . Don't be late for supper.”

I hadn't meant to be.

It's just that I found an old copy of
Movie Weekly
as I was unpacking my trunk. It had a full-color spread of Antonio Moreno's new mansion, which was exactly the kind I was going to buy when I became a movie star. It was one of those Mediterranean-style houses with a sun-splashed courtyard, rounded, red-tile roofed towers, and balconies outlined with iron grillwork. It had a bathroom
inside
the master bedroom,
plenty of space, and lots of light. In fact, it was the exact opposite of our old red brick Bulfinch with its boring wood-paneled walls, long dark halls, and wavy glass windowpanes. The magazines said it never got cold in Hollywood and it never rained! I'd be able to leave all my coats and sweaters behind, which would make it that much easier to go. There wasn't anything at all I would miss about Boston.

Except . . . except for Griff.

No matter how much I told myself I wouldn't, I knew that I would. I wished I were different. I wish God had made me better or smarter or
something
that would make me deserving of Griff's attention. Something that would let me feel right about accepting his pin. Sometimes, though it wasn't too terribly often, I almost wondered what it might be like to be married to him, even though I knew I couldn't. Shouldn't. I mean, I could marry him; it would be as easy as accepting his fraternity pin, and then accepting his marriage proposal, and then actually getting married . . . but the point of it all was that I shouldn't because I wouldn't be any good for him. My, but it was hard to do the right thing!

I was halfway through an article on Nita Naldi's latest movie when I realized the house had gone silent. There was no creaking from my sister's old room and there was no thumping up in the attic where Mother still kept the nursery for my nephews. I pushed away from my pillow and tiptoed to the door. As I opened it, I heard a murmur of voices from downstairs amidst the clatter of silverware scraping against plates.

Oysters and clambakes!

What to do? I chewed on a fingernail. I could go downstairs and endure the scowls of my mother, the reprimand of my
father, and the smirks of my brother and sister or . . . I could stay in my room and starve to death.

It wasn't much of a choice, so I determined to make the best of it. At least Griff was down there. They wouldn't yell at me in front of him.

I slipped from my skirt and blouse and into a flounced orange georgette dress and then exchanged my old T-straps for my satin pumps. Taking up a hand mirror for a peek at my hair, I pulled a face at myself.

Although I wore my pumps down the Oriental-carpeted hall, I pulled them off when I reached the front stair. Holding them in one hand, I sat on the banister and slid to the landing. Touching down with one foot, I slipped past the newel post and then slid down the final flight. I froze mid-slide as one of my nephews glanced over.

His brows rose, and his mouth fell open.

Griff reached over and stuffed a piece of roll into it.

After slipping my shoes on, I took a deep breath and walked into the dining room as if I expected everyone to be delighted to see me. In my experience, it never hurt to hope. But Mother followed my progress to the empty chair beside Griff with narrowed eyes.

At least Father waited until I was seated before he spoke. His mustache was twitching and his eyes were glaring at me from behind his old-fashioned wire-rimmed eyeglasses. “So glad you decided to join us, Ellis. Are we to feel honored?”

Across from me, my little brother, Lawrence, snickered. I kicked him—hard—under the table. He choked on his lamb chop.

“Whatever are they teaching at Radcliffe that they've ne
glected manners and common courtesy?” My sister, Julia, could always be counted on to be snide.

“Latin and mathematics. Along with English literature. And the dissection of frogs.”

She tried to smile and failed.

Griffin was hiding a smile of his own beneath his napkin.

“Are they green
inside
too?” My nephew Marshall looked as if he really wanted to know, but he was only five years old, so it was hard to tell.

His younger brother, Henry, tried to talk around a mouthful of food. “I like frogs.”

Mother cut in on him. “Griffin was just telling us about his plans for the summer.”

Well, thank goodness, because I had no idea what the inside of a frog looked like! I'd fainted dead away the moment Louise had slit it open. I glanced over at Griff as I cut into my lamb chop. “What are you doing?”

“I've agreed to intern for the Governor's Finance Commission.”

At least he sounded excited about it; it sounded rather boring to me. I gave him another glance.

Mother was smiling. “The governor requested him.
By name
.”

He waved a hand as if to dismiss my mother's compliment. “It's only because he's my uncle.”

Father was shaking his head. “Doesn't mean he had to. He wouldn't have requested you if he didn't think you'd do a good job of it.”

Mother was rapping Marshall on the elbow with the handle of her knife.

Ow! I knew how that felt, and I couldn't help but sympathize as I saw tears spring to his eyes.

“If I wanted to see your elbows at the table, I would have set a place for them.”

His chin trembled as he cradled his elbow in his hand.

Griff leaned around behind me toward him. “Hey. Maybe after supper we could throw around the football. See if you've got what it takes to play for Harvard.”

Marshall's eyes brightened.

“Can I come too? We could show them what a real play looks like.” Lawrence might have thought he sounded indifferent, and at the age of eighteen he was definitely practicing, but here he had misjudged. He was practically begging.

“
May
I come too.” My mother pounced on the mistake like a cat.

Marshall turned to her with a frown. “I don't think you'd like it, Grandmother. You might get your dress dirty. Can Auntie Ellis come, though?”

“No.” My mother answered before I could. “There are some things your grandfather and I need to discuss with her.”

“You're not going to yell at her, are you?”

“I never raise my voice at anyone.”

Griff gave my neck a squeeze at the back where no one else could see it.

“How are your grades, Ellis? Got your finals back yet?” Lawrence was smirking.

I shouldn't have kicked him. I knew I shouldn't have. “They're fine.” Fine enough, considering I wasn't planning to return to college in the fall.

“And how are the plans for Cosmopolitan Club coming?” Now my sister was ganging up on me too!

I shrugged. Mary had been sick the day I was supposed to put the announcement in the
Radcliffe
News,
and I'd forgotten all about it while I'd walked with her over to the doctor's and then waited with her while she'd been examined. I'd missed an economics exam that day, too, while I'd gone down to the pharmacy for her medicine—which was the reason my grade was so bad. I'd tried to explain my absence, but Professor Whitmore accused me of offering excuses and wouldn't even listen. “How about you, Julia? How are
your
clubs coming?”