Rowing in Eden (10 page)

“Franny.”
Rosamund took a step back and fixed a stern gaze on
the girl. “They're the ones who broke in the house when we went to Florida the first time, remember?”

At this bit of information, the golfers pushed back the sleeves of their cardigans; and Franny, astonished at her own daring, blurted, “But we always knew they were the ones who broke in, Roz. You were still friends with them, after that. You told me they just took stuff from the liquor cabinet.”

Rosamund eyes flashed wide:
That's enough.
Then she turned and, reasserting the Peg Wahl posture—“Remember, the top of your skull is connected by string to a star directly overhead”—she began to move toward the door, with the golfers close behind.

“Roz—” Franny hoped Rosamund would turn back; instead, someone else seized Franny's elbow from behind. Martie. Redolent of cigarettes and beer, and asking, “What the hell are you doing, twitching your ass around down here?”

“Back off, Martie,” Rosamund called over a shoulder. “She came to tell me Darren and Artie are here.”

Martie released Franny and broke into a broad smile. “Darren and Artie!” She pushed ahead of the others, and by the time they arrived in the hall, Martie was outside, giving hugs to Darren Rutiger and Artie Stokes and yelping
How the hell are you?

“Hey, Martie,” the boys said, but even Franny—standing at the back of the hall with the golfers—could see that Darren Rutiger and Artie Stokes' eyes remained fixed on the screen door, behind which stood Rosamund.

Darren Rutiger offered Rosamund one of the sleepy smiles that Franny had always found so endearing.
Bedroom eyes.
Rosamund had once told Franny that was what you called heavy-lidded eyes like Darren's.

“Hey, Roz, I'm going in the service,” Darren said. “Thought maybe you'd invite us in for a farewell drink.”

“Not tonight, guys.” Rosamund sounded regretful, but also firm. Skinny Artie Stokes blinked hard before he looked down at the ground, but Darren laughed and asked:

“Not even for one drink?”

Rosamund stared out the door and into the dark beyond the light from the mercury lamp. “You don't need a drink.”

“Rosamund Wahl!” Martie gave a hiccuping laugh. “Would you get real? These are old friends!”

“Yeah, Rosamund.” Darren Rutiger wrapped an arm around Martie's waist. “You're not going to let your big sister be a bad hostess, are you, Martie?”

Martie handed him the can of beer in her hand. He took a long drink, then passed the can on to Artie Stokes. “I don't see why they can't come in for a drink, Roz,” Martie said.

“Roz?” In one move—Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, thought Franny—the golfers stepped up from the back of the hall to the door. “Is there a problem here?”

Martie glared at Rosamund. “I don't believe this! Did you ask them to do this?”

Rosamund lowered her head, but held it aimed at Martie as she said a clipped, “Would you, please,
please
, go inside?”

Martie turned to Artie and Darren, but this time it apparently did not escape her attention that the boys watched only Rosamund. “I give up!” she said, and threw open the front door and stormed inside, past Rosamund and the golfers and Franny.

“Okay,” said the taller of the golfers, “I think you fellows can see that Roz would like you to leave.”

Darren Rutiger exchanged a little boy's grin with Artie Stokes, then rubbed his hand across his mouth as if to contain a laugh. “And who would you be, bud? Dean Martin?”

“That's right.” The first golfer nodded, then pointed to his companion. “And this is Sammy Davis. We got to go do our act now, fellas, so, good night.”

After the golfer had shut not just the screen door, but the inner door, too—an awful moment, to Franny's mind—Rosamund let loose a deep breath. “Promise me you won't do that ever again,” she said to Franny. Then she and the golfers headed across the dark dining room toward the distant gold of the den, where Martie and Al Castor could now be seen dancing with the wild-eyed Mr. Ed.

It seemed to Franny that the front door made a great deal of noise when she went to open it again, but no one came running to check on her and, after a moment's hesitation, she called down the drive, “Artie! Darren! Wait!”

“Franny? Is that you?”

“Just—wait.”

In the crowded kitchen—a nervous beat ticking away in her right eyelid—Franny excused herself to a girl who blocked the cupboard where Brick and Peg stored their liquor.

“Hey, there.” Someone crouched down beside Franny as she knelt to study the bottles: scotch, bourbon, vodka. Richie Craft, she realized. Boyfriend to the beautiful girl who stood in the window of Stacey's Sweets and stirred the big copper kettle of caramel corn with a wooden paddle. Sometimes, when Franny and her friends went to Stacey's, they saw Richie Craft standing outside the shop window, trying to make the girlfriend laugh. He seemed nice. He had a band called The Craft and they had cut a record that received plenty of play on the local station. With his chin as big as a heel, his shiny brown hair soft around his long face, Richie Craft always made Franny think of the photo of Oscar Wilde that appeared in the copy of
The Importance of Being Earnest/Lady Windermere's Fan
that she had found at the library's book sale.

“I've seen you at Stacey's, right?” Richie Craft asked. “So, is the liquor cabinet open for business?”

She shook her head. Behind a bottle of peppermint schnapps were bottles of—brandy, Kahlua. Carefully, she set the schnapps back into place.

“What's she doing?” someone else asked, and Richie Craft stood, and said he didn't know, and then Franny stood with the bottle of bourbon. Pulled two glasses from the cupboard over the sink. Filled the glasses. Set the bottle back in its cupboard.

“Have fun!” Richie Craft murmured as she left the room, and she murmured back, “It's not for me.”

The bourbon sloshed onto her hands as she walked, its chill a surprise. Where were the boys?

Sitting a ways off, on the old church slab. “Is that really you, Franny?” Darren Rutiger called. “When'd you start looking like that?”

Artie Stokes laughed. “Hey, Franny goes steady with Bobby Prohaski now—Larry's little brother, man. I told you that.”

Whap.
Darren Rutiger slapped the side of his head. She had forgotten he did that. “Well, hey, why don't you go with us? Forget that Prohaski kid!”

“Here.” She offered them the glasses of bourbon. “These are for you guys. It's bourbon.”

Darren Rutiger glanced toward the house as he took a glass. “They're drinking
bourbon
in there?”

“No. I took this for you guys. It's my folks' stuff.”

Artie Stokes leaned low to the glass. “There must be eight ounces in each of these! You trying to get us drunk, girl?”

“So what if she is?” Darren Rutiger laughed. “Hey, Fran, did Martie tell you to bring us this?”

She shook her head. “Martie's a jerk.”

“Uh-oh. Trouble in Petticoat Junction!” Darren Rutiger gave Franny a hug. “Well, thank you kindly, ma'am. But, then, we've always been pals, haven't we, Fran?”

She smiled. “Sure.”

“Hey, I bet Brick and Peg try to keep you under lock and key now, huh?”

She knew enough to respond with a wry pucker of the lips that might mean any sort of reply—amusement, girlish or tomboyish disgust, even agreement—before she stared off through the backdrop of the old baseball diamond to the road beyond.

“Hey, Artie”—Darren Rutiger raised his foot to give a nudge in the knee to Artie Stokes, who was now trying to separate the pages of a bloated
National Geographic
that someone had left on the slab—“Artie, remember the night we got wasted and sneaked into Camp Winnebago to visit Franny?”

Artie did not look up from his work on the magazine, but he nodded. “Roz didn't want to see us
that
night either.”

Darren Rutiger ignored this. “Man, we thought maybe we'd spy some cute counselor taking a shower or something, and instead we ended up with that big old mama chasing us around.”

“Yup, we're going, ‘Franny, Franny,' and old Franny's just sawing logs.” Artie Stokes looked up at Franny then, smiling, and she smiled, too. Though she had slept through their visit, she had been proud the next morning when the counselors called her to view the bouquet the boys had left outside her tent and the torn-up flower bed around the Camp Winnebago flagpole.

“Whew!” Darren Rutiger's eyebrows rose as he lifted his lips from his glass. “Good stuff!”

“Like we'd really know,” murmured Artie.

How long would it take for the boys to finish those drinks? Too long, it appeared, and Franny extended a hand toward Artie Stokes' glass—his seemed to hold more than Darren's—and she asked, “Can I taste it?”

“Oooh, Franny!” Darren laughed. “Watch out, babe!”

He was right to warn her. The sips of beer she had taken in the past tasted nothing like that foul swig she now swallowed. “Oh!” she cried. “Oh!” Her shoulders shook and she panted for air, and the boys moaned in delighted sympathy.

“Poor Franny!” Darren Rutiger patted her on the back. “You never tried hard stuff before, huh?”

Eyes tearing, she shook her head; then, quick, took a second swig, this time from Darren Rutiger's glass. While she shook anew, Artie Stokes asked, “But, hey, Fran, who the heck were the clowns in the golf clothes?”

“Just—college boys. Nobody special.”

“Ah. College boys.”

It was not a nice thing to do, she knew, but to assure Artie Stokes and Darren Rutiger that college boys were not so marvelous, she proceeded to act out the way in which the taller of the golfers had tried to air the bathroom that morning: jerking the door back and forth, lighting matches, spraying window cleaner in the air. She was not nearly so funny as the boys' laughter suggested.
She knew that. No doubt, the alcohol in their blood made up a large part of her wit. She herself felt suspiciously good, and had to resist the urge to stretch her mouth into queer, experimental shapes.

“So, Franny.” Darren Rutiger made an amused, luxurious noise, and stretched his arms high over his head. “Rozzie's getting too big for her britches these days, huh?”

Back at work on the stiffened pages of the magazine, Artie said, “Darren”—a brief warning—and Franny said, “Believe me, Darren, Martie's worse. When I went downstairs to tell Roz you guys were at the door, Martie was, like, ‘What're you doing down here?' and—” Franny broke off. Even with the bourbon in her veins, she could not repeat what Martie had said.

Twitching your ass.

“Maybe Martie's starting to worry about the competition, Fran! If you were just a little older—but, hey, I bet you've already got quite an education, being around the big sisters, huh? You must have seen plenty.”

“Oh, pf!” said Franny.
Pf!
Which sounded like one of the old-fashioned expressions people used in Nancy Drew mysteries, and made her snicker.

“Well?” Darren nudged her shoulder. “Am I right?”

“I don't know!” She started to laugh—then the oddest thing, her gums went bone-dry, and caught her upper lip in a horsey snag—so silly it made her laugh even harder, and she bent over at the waist so no one would see.

Darren Rutiger laughed his low, buzzing laugh. “What is it?” he said, and laughed some more. “What, Fran?”

“Well.” She straightened. Stifled a laugh that came out through her nose. “Once, I did see Martie—on the couch.”

“Is that right?” Darren Rutiger raised a silencing finger toward Artie Stokes. “Who with?”

“Oh.” She blinked away the memory of the ROTC boy, fast. Somehow, she knew, it would not do to say the name. And why had she said anything at all? “I don't—it was a while back.”

“But you'd remember something like that, Franny!” Darren
Rutiger chucked a finger under her chin. “Or maybe there've been a bunch of guys, and that's why you can't say?”

She shook her head, hard. “Just the one. Just once.”

“Okay, okay.” He settled an arm around her shoulder, then looked off with her across the road toward the swamp. Which was nice. There were stars. The dark swamp jingled and whirred with baby frogs and crickets. She was consoled, then, and—

“I bet it was Roger Dale, wasn't it? Clothes off or on?”

“On!”
She pulled away from Darren. “And it wasn't Roger, and they were—kissing is all.”

“Yeah, but, like,
grinding
away at each other, right?”

“Hey, Darren.” Artie Stokes stood. “Maybe we should get going, man. You don't want old Franny getting in trouble with her sisters after she was nice enough to bring us these drinks.”

Franny stared at the magazine now spread open on the slab beside Artie Stokes. Even in the night, she recognized that two-page photograph of windmills in Spain, the golden sails like scalded cream.

Darren Rutiger raised his hand to his mouth and made a noise, a kind of “Sssss” which sounded like an air brake on a semi-trailer. Uncanny. He took a seat on the church slab. Sipped from his glass of bourbon as if he hardly knew that Franny existed. Looked over Artie Stokes' shoulder at the photo of the windmills. All of this was intended to make her feel alone, she understood, but when he spoke again, asking, “So were they grinding away, Franny?” she could not seem to stop herself from answering:

“Well, they were
close.”

“How close?”

She hesitated. “Like—cement.”

“You mean, like a cement
mixer?”
Darren asked, a puff of laughter pushing out the last syllable.

She shook her head. She had not given much thought to the description. She meant only to offer an idea of the kind of completeness she had sensed in that moment between the ROTC boy and Martie.