Nothing That Meets the Eye (7 page)

When he turned the corner and saw the hotel, he began running toward it. He expected at every second to see her. He glanced around the lobby, then went to the desk.

“Listen,” he said to the clerk, “can you tell me the name of a woman who's staying here whose initials are H.C.? Miss H.C., I think. Matter of fact, I'm not sure of the C.” He began to feel embarrassed. “She's from San Francisco.”

The clerk came back from the registry. “Would that be Miss Helvetia Cormack?”

“Yes, it might. What room is she in, please?”

“Miss Cormack checked out this afternoon, sir.”

“Then it isn't she. Look again.” He gestured impatiently to the registry, but suddenly he knew it was she and that she was gone.

“No other from San Francisco by those initials, sir,” the clerk said, scanning the book. “Checked out at one
P.M.
”

“A blond woman? Tall and slender?” Hildebrandt persisted.

“Yes, sir. I remember her. Have you got something of hers? She may write us and ask for it.”

“No. She left no forwarding address, either?” he asked desperately, on a wild last chance.

“No, sir.”

Hildebrandt sank back on his heels and slapped his glove into his palm. “All right. Thank you.”

Outside, under the marquee of the hotel, he stood a moment as he did each night beneath the marquee of the Hotel Hyperion, while he decided what direction to take, what to do. And suddenly, realizing it was not the Hotel Hyperion, that the circumstances were quite different, he felt loneliness spring up like a dark forest all around him. The odd thing was, he felt no impulse to hurry after her, to find her somehow. What would he have to offer her except the history of weakness, loneliness, and inadequacy, the decline and fall of himself? He himself was the core of the loneliness around him, and its core was inadequacy. He was inadequate even in love.

His eyelids trembled, but he raised his head indifferently, pushed his gloved hands into his overcoat pockets, and walked toward the avenue.

MISS JUSTE AND THE GREEN ROMPERS

M
iss Juste's police whistle rent the air with two awful blasts. The two hundred little girls in green rompers stopped dead in their tracks. Two blasts meant line up. Line up like at the beginning of the period.

Obediently the green rompers milled about and found their appointed places in regular lines the length and breadth of the gymnasium. With grim pleasure Miss Juste watched the girls respond to her command. She had called them back, after once dismissing them, as a master might jerk her dog back on a leash. On musclebound legs she mounted the platform in the front of the gym. The platform was just like those on swimming pools, only without the diving board.

Standing at attention, her shapeless white sneakers side by side, her knees like two cauliflowers below the voluminous serge bloomers, Miss Juste waited till every movement in the lines should cease. As usual, it was Edith Polizetti who could not find her place. Edith Polizetti who, under the terrible eye of Miss Juste, tried to squeeze her way anywhere into a line and was mercilessly shoved out by the other little girls. At last, desperate, she ran to the rear and took shelter at the end of a row.

Miss Juste blew once more for attention and let the whistle fall, with military unconcern, the length of its black ribbon.

“Next Friday,” Miss Juste's voice rasped against the bare walls of the gymnasium, “that's day after tomorrow . . . you are all to take home your rompers to be washed. . . . Washed! Do you understand? . . . You'll have the whole weekend to do it in, and no excuses will be accepted!”

Her blue, fishlike eyes swept the lines as she paused for the words to sink in. She paused so long the line nearest the door showed signs of wavering. It was lunchtime. They were hungry. Miss Juste gave an ear-splitting blast on her whistle and glared at the offenders. The line froze into position.

“And also,” she continued, “your sneakers cleaned! . . . Not with chalk so you leave dust all over the place. . . . But cleaned . . . with cleaning fluid! . . . If you can't afford to buy cleaning fluid use soap and water! . . . We're to have visitors Monday!”

Miss Juste took time for the announcement to register. One little girl on the front row was scratching her knee.

“Sophie Stephanopolos!”

Sophie Stephanopolos, the tenth girl in the third line, stiffened and held her breath.

“I want to see that elastic fixed by Friday! . . . I've warned you about it . . . you've neglected it . . . and it's disgraceful!”

Sophie Stephanopolos's fingers worked at her side, drawing up the romper leg that hung below her knee.

“Grace O'Rourk . . . I want to see a belt to those rompers on Friday. . . . If you've lost it, get a new one. . . . I don't care how!” A moment of tense silence passed. “And I want that dance perfect on Friday! . . . After six weeks of work, there's no reason why it shouldn't be perfect. . . . If you don't know one of the steps, practice it with a friend before Friday!”

The lunch bells were ringing all over the school now. The little girls shuffled miserably in their places.

“And furthermore,” Miss Juste said, “if any girl has not her rompers washed and her sneakers cleaned on Monday, she needn't come at all! . . . Just don't bother coming!” she snarled, as though this were the most awful banishment in the world.

Then she gave the signal to Miss Pendergast at the piano, who launched into a stirring march with emphatic cadence. Miss Juste marked time energetically to start them off. The two lines nearest the wall closed and filed off and were followed by the next. Around the gymnasium they marched, lengthening their steps near the locker door, past the section of wall worn smooth and black with the rubbing of hands, breaking into blissful disorder as they left the gym and Miss Juste's eye. The march out was used only on solemn occasions, like when they had visitors, or like now, when they were to remember Miss Juste's adjurations.

Miss Pendergast's march beat on, over and over until the last couple had gone out and Miss Juste's whistle told her to halt. The hollow, jangling chords stopped in the middle of a phrase. Miss Pendergast's flat figure rose from the piano stool. A hole had been bored in the keyboard cover and the wood below so that a chain might pass through. Holding the chain was a large rusted padlock, which Miss Pendergast now fastened. Then she stacked her music and tiptoed a polite ten feet behind Miss Juste across the wooden floor, out of the gymnasium.

Friday Sophie Stephanopolos's elastic had been repaired, but Grace O'Rourk had been unable to procure a romper belt. She said so, from her place on the floor, when Miss Juste's hawkeye found her.

“Never mind! Never mind! I don't want to hear about it!” Miss Juste interrupted her, at the same time pointing ominously to the door.

Grace O'Rourk, after one humiliating instant, broke and ran tearfully to the exit.

And on this, the last day of rehearsals before the visitors came, Miss Juste's wrath at the state of the dance knew no bounds.

At Miss Pendergast's first sprightly chords they could group themselves into five circles, they could skip around twice, reverse and skip once the other way. They could break into two squares, pirouette, change places diagonally, and form their circles again. But they could not skip to the center of the circle and make a turn and skip backward again to finish in a circle. Invariably there were collisions in the center, violent collisions, or else they did not come in far enough. And when they skipped backward, the result was anything but a circle.

Miss Juste stamped a sneaker on the platform. “No!” she screamed. “No! No! No!”

They had been stuck on the circle now for the entire six weeks. She had seen it from the beginning. The rest of the dance went well enough, but the circle!

“Take hands! Take hands when you skip backwards, so you'll at least end together! . . . Again, Miss Pendergast!”

Again Miss Pendergast bent to her work, reading tensely through her horn-rimmed glasses, her eyes only a few inches from the music and her thin arms akimbo as her fingers pounded.

There was a fancy run at the point where the dancers were to skip, in simulated coyness, to the center of the circle. Here poor Miss Pendergast went off, and a few little girls, like Helen Murphy and Teresa Galgano, doubled up with suppressed laughter.

The terrible whistle shrieked again, and Miss Juste glowered on various sections of the class until the faces were recomposed.

“Again!” she commanded.

Miss Pendergast, always with her eye over her shoulder lest she miss a cue from Miss Juste, ventured to ask, nodding her head and smiling, “From the beginning?”

“No, from the skip in, please!”

Miss Pendergast resumed from the phrase marked “skip in” on her music.

Taking hands helped the shape of the circle, but Miss Juste was still not satisfied. “If you could stand up here where I am . . .” (Miss Pendergast's music wilted out at the first sound of Miss Juste's voice.) “It's abominable! . . . Simply abominable! . . . I'm going to give every girl in this class a D unless that circle's perfect right now!”

A shudder passed over the class. The faces grew serious. There was a story that once, long ago, Miss Juste had given a senior a D, which delayed her graduation one year, during which time she had had to take gym all day with Miss Juste. Some little girls believed this story and some did not.

“All right, Miss Pendergast!”

“From the beginning?” Miss Pendergast said timidly.

“Yes!”

Again the sprightly chords. The little girls, in position for the skip in, turned in confusion as they tried to start from the beginning. Some even skipped in.

“Stop!” screamed Miss Juste. “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

Everything stopped. There was not the twitch of a muscle in the whole gymnasium.

Miss Juste sighed. “From the beginning, please.”

The circles skipped around and around, reversed and went around again, broke into squares. Each green romper skipped diagonally to her partner's corner.

Miss Juste pounded the beat grimly into her palm. “Lift . . . your feet! . . . Show . . . some . . . life!”

Miss Pendergast halted obediently at the voice, realized suddenly that she was not to have halted, and pounced onto the music again.

There was chaos among the dancers.

Miss Juste was furious. If the class had not been there, she might have vented herself upon Miss Pendergast.

Miss Pendergast's colorless lips formed an apologetic “Oh.”

Again from the beginning. “Lift . . . your . . . feet! . . . All . . . of . . . you . . . look dead!” Miss Juste drummed with the beat.

The two hundred pairs of feet, heavy with fatigue and boredom, lifted themselves an inch higher.

“Lighter! Lighter! You sound like a troop of horses!”

The enormous bell over the door broke into the music and the tread of feet with brazen clangs. Gratefully, the green rompers stopped and drew breath. The bell went on for thirty deafening seconds.

The hour was over. Miss Juste expressed complete disgust with the class's performance, and made dire threats lest there be no improvement on Monday when the visitors came. There was not a word of encouragement.

“And I repeat . . . Any girl who does not have her rompers washed and ironed and her sneakers cleaned on Monday just needn't come at all. . . . And she'll get a D for the term!” Miss Juste concluded with her last ounce of vituperation.

The class was dismissed.

“And Miss Pendergast, you will practice some over the weekend, won't you?”

“Oh, yes! . . . Yes, indeed!” Miss Pendergast nodded as she closed the padlock.

When Monday came, the attendance was unusually good. Furthermore, the sneakers and rompers were universally spotless. The class filed in two by two to Miss Pendergast's finest march. A pungent odor of oil and resin came from the shining floor. The familiar stack of dirty canvas mats had been removed from the corner.

The visitors sat at the rear of the gymnasium, against the wall beneath the high windows. They were two large ladies in furs and one large gentleman in a black overcoat with his hat off. The three sat, very attentively, with Mr. Fay, the principal, on small straight chairs. The ­visitors and the principal himself were so large the chairs could not be seen at all, and they seemed to be suspended in the air.

The visitors were objects of great interest to the little girls, and several couples failed to halt when the march stopped. There was a bumping in the lines like a row of dominoes.

It was a very cold day, but the long windows behind the wire protectors had been flung wide open to show the visitors the fine health habits of the school. The little girls shivered and stood rigidly in their places. Miss Juste pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her big black coat sweater. And the visitors themselves pulled their furs and coat collars closer about them.

To add to the uniqueness of the occasion, Miss Juste was smiling! Actually smiling, in spite of the cold. And she was wearing a bright red tie with her middy blouse, and black-and-red golf hose pulled up to her dappled knees.

When the entire class was in couples all around the gym, Miss Juste, still smiling, blew her whistle, at which signal the couples broke up and took their places in the lines for the attendance.

There were two gaps in the ranks where Grace O'Rourk, who was still without a romper belt, and Concetta Rosasco were to have stood. Concetta's partner for the dance, Lucia DeStephano, darted suddenly out of line and escaped through the door. Miss Juste saw her. Half the class saw her and knew Miss Juste saw her. But Miss Juste continued to smile as she scanned the attendance cards. The class watched her with fascination. Her face looked different. She was like a stranger standing there on the platform.

Then she blew her whistle, Miss Pendergast pounced with enthusiasm onto the Washington Post March, and the lines were miraculously transformed into ranks of four that marched forward, turned the corner smartly, and began a circuit of the gym. The maneuver was not difficult. They had been doing it ever since their first year of gymnasium work. There was no possible chance of mistake, even for people like Edith Polizetti.

Mr. Fay leaned over in his chair and whispered something to one of the large ladies, who nodded and smiled.

After the second lap around the gym, the lines came down the ­center and stood marking time before Miss Juste. The slender vase of bachelor buttons on Miss Pendergast's piano rocked with her crashing chords. When the music stopped, there was a patter of applause from the three visitors. Several of the little girls snickered self-consciously.

The exercises were over. Miss Juste raised her whistle to signal the positions for the dance.

But just at this moment the three visitors rose simultaneously. Mr. Fay rose, too. Miss Juste did not blow the whistle. The visitors came forward slowly between the first line and the wall. Miss Juste waited, beaming upon them.