Seventeenth Summer (12 page)

Margie lit a cigarette and between short puffs said, “You know, Angie, I can’t figure you out. Going with Jack Duluth is really something—because of his being such a good basketball
player and being so cute and everything, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference to you at all.”

“Of course it does,” I hastened to assure her. I knew anything I said would be relayed from Margie to Fitz and from Fitz on to Jack. “But what am I supposed to do, Margie? I am certainly nice enough to him and I’m glad to hear him every time he calls—”

“You’re nice enough to him,” she explained, “but you don’t seem to
worry
about him at all. All the girls worry about their fellows.” She said it in the same matter-of-fact tone that she might have said ‘girls brush their teeth every day.’ “When I first started dating Fitz,” she went on, “I used to come here every day after school to find out what the girls knew. You know, the boys they were dating would tell them what Fitz thought of me and whether he liked me or not and then they would tell me. Of course, now that we’re in love it’s different.”

While we were talking Martin Keefe came in and asked for a package of cigarettes. He stood up at the soda fountain near the front of the store and didn’t see me. He looked at his wrist watch irritably and was holding it up to his ear when a little blond girl from the perfume counter at one of the department stores came in, said something to him, and they left together, laughing. I remembered Lorraine at supper saying that she had a date with him that evening and wondered.

Later when I got home she was sitting in the bedroom brushing her hair and I asked her about it. “Yes,” she explained
carefully, “I was supposed to go out with him but just after you left he called and said that he had a collection to make in Waupun and wouldn’t be able to keep the date tonight. Of course,” she said pointedly, “I could have driven over
with
him if I had wanted to.

“He has a very good job, you know, Angie. In college he majored in business law and this is just a filler-in until he gets into something bigger. This pays very well though—I can tell by his big car and the smooth clothes he wears.”

I undressed for bed, opened both windows and turned back the spread. As I reached to put out the light Lorraine added—just as if there had been no lapse in the conversation at all—“But I’ll probably see him tomorrow night instead.”

It was then that I decided I wouldn’t say a word about having seen him and the other girl.

The next day passed like a bubble. In the afternoon there was a quick summer shower, the kind that blows up from nowhere in a blue sky and spatters the sidewalks with big drops and then spends itself in a brief torrent. My mother had just got up from her afternoon nap and I had put the water on for tea and was standing at the kitchen window watching the rain flatten the corn leaves to the ground. The last of the June roses on the bush drooped their heads and the rain pelted their petals to the wet ground.

Almost as soon as it started the storm stopped and there was a
rift in the dark clouds, the blue sky showing through. My mother laid two clean napkins on the kitchen table and drew it close to the window so we could smell the damp, clean smell of the wet earth. The sun came out, glistening on the leaves and making the whole garden look brighter, like a sudden smile after a hard cry.

Along the block, children came out into the street, chattering like little birds after the rain and we watched them paddling about on the wet grass in their bare feet, pulling small sailboats along the water in the gutter. Why is it, I thought, that rain has never seemed so wonderful to me before? Each day since the beginning of summer something had seemed new and surprising, things I had never noticed before.

That was the first day I had ever seen Jack in the afternoon and I was surprised at how natural even that seemed. He knocked at the front door and explained that he had finished his route early and just thought he would stop in.

“We’re glad to have you,” my mother said. (I always liked the way she talked to boys.) “Won’t you have a cup of tea with Angie and me?” I sliced lemon out in the kitchen and put the sugar and cream on the table, while Jack went out to the bakery truck and came in, all smiling, with six sugared doughnuts on a paper pie plate and a small chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, sprinkled with very dubious chopped nuts.

This was the first time, too, I had ever eaten with Jack and every mouthful I took seemed too big and the tea made a noise in my throat as I swallowed it. Jack seemed perfectly at ease,
holding his doughnut carefully with no fingers and not getting sugar on his sweater while he eat, and he and my mother talked about bakers and pies and whether or not many people make thier own bread anymore.

I passed him the lemon and he dropped a slice in his cup and then unconciously poured cream in after it, stirring the two. I looked at my mother and she looked at me, raising her eyebrows in a signal not to laugh, and went on talking.

As I sat there I found myself being grateful for so many little things around the kitchen that I hardly valued before. I liked the little red-and-white-checked hand towels hanging on the rail, and the way the afternoon sun glinted on the faucets and the clean, well-swept look of the linoleum. I was glad my mother’s hair was in a neat bun instead of a fuzzy permanent, and that her eyes looked as blue as her dress, and that the dog Kinkee sat in the corner very politely, not drooling at some dogs do when they see people eating. I was glad that Jack could know what a nice kitchen we had and that we used quaint flowered napkins instead of oil cloth on the kitchen table.

When he left I walked out to the truck at the curb with him. He looked so strong and brown with his football sweater on and a wihte shirt open at the throat that I could hardly keep from touching him. When he looked at me I had a queer feeling that maybe I had a chocolate frosting on my face or that maybe the freckles on my nose showed too much in the sunlight. A small wind shook raindrops from the trees onto the sidewalk, and on
the lawn young robins with soft, speckled breasts hopped about, scolding for worms.

My whole head was singing with such a warm happiness that when the truck pulled away I felt that if the grass had not still been wet there was nothing in the world I would rather have done than lie flat on my back with my hands behind my head, watching the sky, clear and bright-blue in the sunshine, and just think.

It wasn’t until the next Sunday that I noticed anything strange about Lorraine. The day went much the same as always. After the dinner dishes had been done my father got his briefcase out of the car and spread his papers all over the kitchen table, working away at his prospects and order blanks for the rest of the afternoon. Kitty and Art played catch with a baseball out in the empty lot next to our house, while my mother sat in a garden chair knitting a pair of yellow wool ankle socks to match the sweater she had finished earlier in the week.

Upstairs, Lorraine had been listlessly sorting out the things in her dresser drawers, arranging neat piles of hankies, cosmetics, and odd jewelry on the bed, and then putting them back in as great a disorder as before. She looked very pale because she had put no lipstick on and nothing I tried to talk about seemed to interest her. I knew she hadn’t even heard from Martin since he broke the date with her, and each night when she got home from work she would say brightly, “Anyone call?”

About five o’clock I happened to be alone in the living room, leafing through the morning funnies, when she came downstairs and said, “Angie, I’ve just got to call Martin and see if he has my gold compact. I’ve hunted
everywhere
and the last place I remember having it was in his car. Honestly, I’d just
hate
to lose that.” As she looked through the phone book she added, “He should be home about now. I really can’t think how I didn’t miss it sooner.”

Carefully I folded the funny papers and put them in a neat pile on the davenport. That gold compact was in her purse. I had seen her use it when we went to church in the morning. But there was nothing I could say. She must have wanted to call him very much, for I knew the compact was there and I knew she knew.

“Hello?” Her voice was casually eager. “I’d like to speak to Martin Keefe—if he isn’t busy.” There was a short pause while someone on the other end of the line was talking. “Oh, I see,” she said. “And when do you expect him in?” Her voice was high, cheerful. “Oh, I see. I see.” The receiver clicked down and in a minute she came into the living room humming softly under her breath.

“When do they expect him in?” I asked, making my voice as casual, as noncommittal as hers. There are unspoken ethics between sisters.

She was standing by the table at the foot of the stairs, absent-mindedly plucking the dead blossoms from the bowl of
iris. With the same careful unconcern she answered, “They don’t expect him. He’s out for the evening.” She looked up at me and then turned quickly to go upstairs. “Angie,” she called back. “Angie, don’t tell Margaret and Art I called him. They don’t—they don’t quite see it the way I do!” and then I heard her go into her room, shutting the door after her.

How sad, I thought. How sad to have to cry about a boy on such a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

You know how it is sometimes when things go along so smoothly that you feel certain something unforeseen must happen. To me it happened that Sunday at suppertime.

With no preamble, with no warning at all, my father said suddenly, his lips set in determination, “Angeline, I don’t know as I like your going out so much!”

We were sitting at the dining-room table eating cold pork made from the noon roast and fresh sliced tomatoes. I hadn’t talked about Jack all day so I was puzzled to know what had made my father think of him. We had planned to walk to a movie that evening and except for feeling sorry for Lorraine, my mind had been humming to itself all day with a contented, muted sort of happiness. And now to have my father say that! It was like a blow at the back of the knees. Always he had been occasionally strict with us but his approvals and disapprovals usually came through my mother. And because he was only home on weekends he wasn’t really cross very often.

“In the first place, you are too young to be seeing so much
of one boy, and besides, it seems to me,” he went on severely as he stirred his coffee, “that your sister and you have enough to keep you busy helping your mother and getting some worthwhile reading done for college without all this running about.” My mother didn’t say a word and I could tell by her silence that he had discussed this with her before.

Then he cleared his throat and I could almost tell what was coming next, he had said it so often before, “You’ll have plenty of time for dating later on, Angeline. Your schooling is what is important now. Remember that. Education is one thing no one can ever take away from you!”

Lorraine went into the kitchen for hot coffee just then and the others ate in silence, not looking up or trying to put in a good word for me. Kitty was carefully taking her sandwich apart, cutting the white fat from the pork with frowning concentration and carefully putting the whole thing back together again.

Then that night seemed to me the most important night of the whole year. Here was I with a date with a boy that dozens of girls would like to go out with and I would have to call him up and say in a simpery voice, “I can’t go out because my father doesn’t want me to!” You wouldn’t have to say a thing like that to a boy like Jack twice! Next time he wanted a date he’d know where to call. He’d get some girl like Jane Rady whose mother and father
understood
about her going out. I had such a lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow and had to keep staring at my
plate so they wouldn’t see the tears nipping at my eyes.

And Lorraine was eating quietly, talking to one or the other from time to time, not letting anyone know how
she
felt.

Later, when the dishes were done, the milk bottles set out on the back doorstep, and the floor carefully swept, I ventured into the living room. My father was reading an old paper and Kitty was lying on the rug with her feet in the air doing bicycling exercises. I stood for a moment trying not to look too eager, trying to work up the courage to ask.

“Dad.” My voice didn’t sound like my own. “Dad, may I go?”

“Eh?” he said, looking up from the paper, his eyebrows quizzical. “Go where? With that boy?”

My mind almost smiled inside of me. The mood had completely gone over. He had been having one of his temporary, fatherly spells and now he had forgotten all about it.

“You can go this time,” he said, but added sternly, “I don’t want you running about too often though, understand. Your mother has been speaking to me about it. It isn’t good for a girl your age to go out with one boy so much,” and he turned back to his paper.

The lump in my throat seemed to melt away as he spoke. “You’d better comb your hair, Angie. It’s almost a quarter after seven!” Kitty piped up from the floor.

It was the sort of night near the end of June when everything is warm and hushed, steeped in summer. Jack and I
walked along the side streets on our way to the movie and at each corner the air was filled with an indistinct murmur from the haze of insects circling round the bright street lights. We passed a garden hedged in with flowered shrubs and the fragrance from the white night blossoms hung heavy on the breeze. People were sitting on their front porches enjoying the cool of the evening and we could hear the creak of rocking chairs and the pleasant hum-hum of voices as we passed. It was then that I realized how much older I felt when I was away from my family. It wasn’t that I felt taller or fatter but just more important. At home they cared about what I thought, of course, but in a different way. They cared whether I would rather have pork chops or steak for dinner or whether I would rather have a white collar on my dress or no collar at all, but they didn’t seem to think much or care what was actually in my head.

When I was away from them it was different. In McKnight’s, Margie had been interested in what I thought of Fitz; Jack had been interested to know if I liked Tony Becker—at home you are just part of a family, but away from them you really are somebody!