Seventeenth Summer (10 page)

Until she had mentioned beer I had never thought just what people did do at parties like this—we couldn’t just sit around and listen to Viennese waltzes all night. I hadn’t really gone to parties since the days when we were small enough to care about ice cream and cake with pink frosting, and play drop-the-clothes-pins-in-the-bottle or Going to Jerusalem. Some of the other girls had come in and I thought of saying very casually, “What are we going to do—just sit around and talk?” but I didn’t want them to know that I’d never been at a party like this before. It was important to act as if you had been around. Maybe they would whisper to their dates later in the evening, “You know that girl that Jack Duluth is with? She doesn’t even know the score. She asked me before what we were going to do. I’ll bet she’s never even been at a party before!”

One of the girls said to me casually, “How long have you been going with Jack, Angeline?” I explained that I hadn’t known him quite a week and that I’d just been out with him a few times. “That’s what I thought,” she went on, “because last thing
we
knew he was dating a couple of girls from high school and then Jane Rady off and on and then all of a sudden he turned up with you at the dance … We kind of wondered,” she added slowly. She was sitting on the arm of an old stuffed chair smoking a cigarette with deep puffs and holding the smoke in her mouth for a long time before blowing it out. I could tell by the way she spoke that she was a friend of Jane Rady’s.

When we went back to the living room two of the boys
were rolling back the old grass rug—“just in case someone might want to dance,” and Dollie and the other girls got down on their knees to help roll, laughing and talking loudly. I tried to help too, but gave up because I felt awkward and in the way. Dollie sat down backwards suddenly with her legs sprawled in front of her and cried with a petulantly accusing voice, “Johnnie, you pushed me on purpose!” and everyone laughed.

I went out to the kitchen then where the others were crowded around Swede who had just come in. He was trying to screw a spigot into a barrel of beer. We never had beer at our house and I had always felt that there was something disgraceful about it. For a moment I wished I hadn’t come. Jack was holding the barrel for Swede and when the first beer dribbled out onto the floor he yelled, “There she goes! Wash out some glasses, somebody!”

I was glad to have something to do rather than just stand watching, so I opened the cupboard and took out some glasses to wash and the other girls came to help. There were half a dozen pink glass tumblers and three tall, heavy glasses with thick edges that looked as if they must have once been peanut butter jars. The faucet made a choking sound far down in the pipes as I turned it on and then water spouted out very brown and muddy, for it had been standing in the pipes unused for so long. We waited till it ran clear and then rinsed the glasses, setting them upside down on the newspapered table top to drip dry.

Everyone crowded round the barrel holding out his glass to be filled. Jack came over with one for me and when I shook my head he said suddenly, “That’s right! I forgot you didn’t drink beer! We should have stopped and picked up some root beer for you but I never even thought of it. I can’t give you a glass of water either because the water out here isn’t very good for drinking, and besides these glasses look too dirty to drink out of unless there is beer in them.”

It was all right, I told him. Really it was all right. I didn’t mind the least bit and I wasn’t thirsty anyway. I hoped he wouldn’t say anything to anyone else, for the other girls were all drinking it and having fun. For a minute I was tempted to take a glass myself. But then I thought of having to walk up the stairs when I got home and perhaps my mother would call from her room, “Angeline, come in a minute and tell me if you had a nice time,” and I would weave my way over to her dressing table, fumble for the lamp, knocking over the perfume bottles in a glassy-eyed stupor—I had seen people in the movies who had had too much to drink.

Later they moved the beer keg into the living room and we all sat around on the chairs and on the floor, laughing and singing. I couldn’t make myself sing with the rest, for my voice sounded queer, but no one seemed to notice. Swede was next to me and Jack sat on the arm of the davenport, singing and winking at me at the same time. A lamp with a parchment shade was lit on a corner table and the room was in a half-glow as if
by firelight. Large night moths fluttered low around the shade and made vague shadows on the circle of light on the ceiling. There were musty brown-and-cream print drapes on the windows, full and shadowy, and I noticed that high on one of them was pinned a large yellow butterfly of waxed crepe paper with bent wire feelers and wings edged with a dust of gilt paint—the kind unemployed women used to make to sell from door to door during the depression.The floor and chairs were scattered with cushions stiff with painted roses and bright sunsets, or made of soft leather with doeskin fringes printed with pictures of tall pines and low yellow moons—souvenirs of the north country and the Indian reservations.

The whole room was filled with the damp smell of the lake and it was even a little chilly—the sort of chill that makes you feel more comfortable because you can snuggle against cushions and be grateful for their warmth and comfort. Those sitting on the floor joined hands and sang low songs as they swayed from side to side, and Jack slid off the wicker arm of the davenport and sat beside me. I was so contented and happy I felt as if I would like to sit right there without moving until I fell asleep. It was odd to think that just last week I hadn’t known anything about this—about Jack, about girls who really went out and drank beer, about parties like this—the sort of things I used to hear Jane Rady talk about and never thought I would be a part of. Tonight had been easy. Everyone else had been laughing and talking so much they didn’t seem to notice
or mind that I just watched and enjoyed the whole thing without saying anything. The first misgivings I had felt when I saw them fitting the spigot into the beer barrel were gone, for after all they were just sitting in a circle singing now and there was nothing wrong about that! But back in my mind I had a vague guilty feeling that I probably wouldn’t mention to my mother that there had been no older person there and that they had had beer—even if I hadn’t drunk any myself.

Suddenly Dollie jumped up and said in her round, baby voice, “Come on, fill my glass and let’s play ‘chug-a-lug!’” Everyone passed around his glass to be filled and then, holding them high, began to sing a loud song with words which I couldn’t catch for everyone was laughing so hard as they sang. Someone called out, “Dollie!” and they all went on laughing and singing like deep-throated bullfrogs—“chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug”—while she stood up, tilted her glass of beer and drank to the bottom without stopping. Then the song was started again and someone else’s name was called and he drained his glass while the others kept up the rhythmic chant. They kept it up till they had gone the round of the circle and everyone was laughing so hard they could hardly catch their breath and I found myself laughing, too, with my mouth open.

Finally they laughed themselves quiet and Dollie gathered some of the painted cushions into a heap and leaned against the victrola, sleepy-eyed and contented. Someone shuffled through the pile of old records again and put on an old
scratchy recording of a dramatic baritone singing “In The Valley of Sunshine and Roses.” Fitz looked over at Margie and they both got up, rinsed their glasses at the kitchen sink, and went out to sit on the front porch. Soon we heard the creak-creak of the glider. Fitz and Margie were “going steady,” Jack told me later.

Swede gathered up some cushions and made himself comfortable beside Dollie, and some of the others got car robes from their cars and went out to sit on the front lawn. I didn’t quite understand how, as if at a given signal, the whole party broke up into couples and drifted off by themselves. Jack and I still sat where we were, not saying anything, mostly because I didn’t quite know what to say or what I was supposed to do now. Dollie, snuggled against the cushions, was rubbing over Swede’s short curly hair with the back of her hand, saying over to herself softly, “Just like a kitten. Swede feels just like a kitty.”

One of the boys came over to us saying, “Mind if we sit on the davenport—if you kids aren’t going to use it?”

“Sure, sure,” Jack said. “Go ahead. We can sit on the porch. Do you want to sit on the porch, Angie?” I nodded.

The front porch was built across the full length of the cottage and was screened in with long, black screens that ran from the floor to the ceiling. Out there, the darkness was warm and thick, for the broad front lawn stretching down to the lake was covered with trees and their branches, heavy with the full, lush foliage of early summer almost hid the moon. On one side was
the glider and on the other a lumpy couch covered with the same musty brown-and-cream chintz as the drapes inside. Jack and I sat there. Out on the lawn near the lake’s edge someone was building a bonfire and we watched it grow, flickering at first till the fire dried out the damp wood and then suddenly bright and leaping against the darkness of the water. It was very quiet with just the steady lap-lap of the water, the hush of the wind through the trees, and the occasional creak of the glider on the other side of the porch. Attracted by the light of the dim lamp inside, heavy-bodied June bugs bumped clumsily against the screens and night moths kept up a dainty flutter. Out on the lawn there was a wink of light like a firefly as someone lit a cigarette.

“Angie,” Jack said, “let’s get a robe from the car and sit out on the grass. It smells so damp and musty here that I’ll bet if we turned this couch over centipedes would crawl out from under it like from under a rock.” He spread out the robe on the lawn and lay flat with his chin in his hands, smoking his pipe, and I sat beside him with a funny, choked feeling in my throat because I suddenly felt self-conscious being alone with him. I was running the fringe on the edge of the robe through my fingers, wondering whether or not it would seem funny if I suggested that maybe Swede and Dollie would like to come out to sit with us, when Jack turned to me and said in a puzzled voice, “Angie, you didn’t have fun tonight, did you?”

“But I did. I did,” I told him. “I liked it very much. The girls
were all nice and the boys were funny and I really liked it—what made you think I didn’t?” I watched him puff-puffing at his pipe, making the tobacco glow as he drew in.

“You didn’t talk much,” he explained, “and I thought maybe you were mad because of the beer or because we made too much noise or something. You seemed different Friday night. I don’t know. Just thought maybe you were mad,” and he reached over and I felt his fingers on mine. “If you ever don’t like anything, Angie, just say so.”

For the first time in my life I felt that warm, possessive power that comes from knowing that you are able to worry a boy. It wasn’t fair I know, but I left my hand flat on the robe, pretending that I didn’t even know he was looking at me, pretending that I didn’t even know his hand was on mine.

“Is it about Friday night then?” he urged in the same worried tone. “Tell me what’s the matter.” After a moment’s hesitation he added slowly, “Are you sorry, Angie?”

“Friday night?” My voice sounded high and incredulous as if I had never even heard of such a thing as a Friday night before.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just thought you might be mad about it later on. I was almost afraid to call you this afternoon.”

“Why? I certainly don’t see why you should be,” I heard myself saying in the same high, surprised voice, while my thoughts went slowly, carefully through my head as if they were on a tightrope. I had never thought of being angry about Friday
night, but it just made me feel shy to think of it now that I was with him again. I had kissed him once, but what are girls supposed to say the next time they go out with a boy after a thing like that; what are they supposed to do?

“It’s just that you’re different from other girls I’ve known,” he went on. “Most of them wouldn’t give it a second thought but I didn’t know what you would think about it the next day.” His pipe had burned out and he sat tapping the bowl on the palm of his hand. The thick leaves were whispering above, and behind us the wind made a thin whistle in the screens of the porch. “It wasn’t
wrong,
Angie!”

How queer all this is, I thought. Here am I sitting in the dark with a boy I didn’t even know a week ago and he’s worrying about what is in my head and I’m so mixed up I can’t even tell him. He’s worried about whether I’m angry at him because I haven’t been talking all evening, and I haven’t talked because all the other girls were so much prettier than I was that I couldn’t think of anything to say.

It made me feel older than he to have him talk to me that way. “Of course it isn’t wrong,” I told him. “Things like stealing or telling lies are wrong but kissing someone you … well, it isn’t … you know what I mean, Jack.” I couldn’t quite see his face in the darkness but I could feel his hand on mine, so I added softly, “Kissing someone you
like
isn’t wrong!” and the words felt warm on my lips.

And all within a week I, Angie Morrow, was sitting there
saying things I’d never dreamed of saying, things that belonged in a movie.

We mused over the thought for a while and soon the quiet stretched into long minutes till our thoughts cleared and both of us were conscious of the silence with nothing but the hushed night noises going on in it.

A car pulled into the gravel drive, the door slammed, and someone called out, “Hey, anybody home here?” and Fitz and Margie left the front porch to go inside and we heard Swede talking. “That’s Tony Becker who just came,” Jack said. “I can tell by his voice. He always gets places late because he finds so much to do on the way. I wonder who he’s got for a date tonight?”

I suggested that we go in to find out and say hello to Tony, but Jack held my hand. “Let’s not go in quite yet, Angie—unless you really want to see Tony …” His voice turned the end of the sentence up into a question. “He told me that you and he got along pretty well at the dance.”