Summer Nights (2 page)

Emily fidgeted with her towel, and Beth Rose smiled at her as if to start a conversation. Any conversation with Beth Rose would be about boys. Emily could not talk about boys right now. Certainly not about her
own
boy. Emily blinked hard to keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks.

“Why, Em,” Beth said, “is something wrong?”

“No, no. Allergy. Humid air. Affects me like this.” Emily lay down and put the towel solidly over her eyes to soak up the tears. Her tears hurt, as if they were acid poured in there by some villain.

“Do you think Gary will be there?” Beth Rose whispered to her, so Anne could not hear.

Em felt sorry for Beth, still fond of Gary. They had studied a poem in English Lit. “No man is an island.” Well, John Donne was wrong. Gary
was
an island, complete with rivers on all sides and no bridges. Nobody would ever possess Gary and Gary would never try to possess anyone, either. He was content to be alone or on the fringes.

But then, thought Emily Edmundson, I am sorry for all girls, because all of us love boys.

She felt the ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. In that tiny gold circle were all the plans so carefully, lovingly made since New Year’s Eve when Matt had placed it there.

All gone. All meaningless.

For Matt had had a better offer.

B
ETH ROSE COULD NOT
stand it any longer. It was driving her crazy, this gathering. Anne stayed suspended in a dream; Emily and Kip either slept or pretended to; Molly forced her bright, sharp chatter on people who didn’t like her.

“Oh, my gosh!” Beth jumped up, stumbling over her own towel. “I forgot the ice cream.”

Kip glared at her. Emily slept on.

Anne said, “What ice cream?”

Molly’s eyes narrowed.

Beth said, “My family. We’re—having this big summer thing—uh—tomorrow—and I was supposed to drive over to Benjie’s and get homemade ice cream. I’ve got to run.” There. She’d handled it well. Nobody would suspect Beth Rose was responsible for bringing the ice cream to the good-bye party. Beth slipped into her white jeans and sleeveless T, slithered her toes into sandals and headed for her car parked out front.

Anne cried out, “Bethie! Beth, where are you going? I’m not going to see you later. I’m leaving in the morning.”

“I forgot,” Beth said guiltily. “I mean, I didn’t forget, it’s just that the whole idea of you going abroad for a year—I can’t get a grip on it, Anne. I can’t believe it’s actually tomorrow.”

Anne’s silvery shiver of laughter matched her hair. She’ll never come home, Beth Rose thought. She’s going to be among stars and she’s going to become a star. No wonder Con is throwing this huge party in a last-ditch attempt to keep her home. He knows that once the world has seen Anne, she’ll belong to the world, not to him.

Anne hugged Beth fiercely. “Oh, Bethie, to think that two years ago you and I had never even spoken. We were so lucky we met at that dance. It feels like years ago. I feel like you and I have been friends forever and ever and ever.”

It was a strange, unsuccessful good-bye. Beth knew they would say it all over again in a few hours, but Anne didn’t. And for all that Anne was sorry and would miss Beth, Beth could feel Anne shaking with excitement, her mind already gone, waiting for her body and clothes to catch up.

I will never forget Anne, Beth thought. But she will forget me.

That made Beth cry, and tears from Beth seemed to satisfy Anne, so they were able to break loose. Beth got into her car and drove quickly off, stopping around the corner to search for a Kleenex and mop up her tears before she went on.

Kip Elliott was filled with the joy of going to college soon.

For all those long high school years, she had struggled for good grades, run committees, chaired activities, and played on teams. She had read hundreds of college catalogs and filled out dozens of forms. She had taken SAT exams and visited campuses and lived through interviews.

The long wait for acceptance was over. College began in ten days. She had her dorm assignment, her roommate had written, her trunk had been shipped—and New York, New York awaited the arrival of Kip Elliott!

She remembered how, on the day her acceptance arrived in the mail, she raced into school screaming, “I’m going to college in New York City!”

Nobody was thrilled. “Why do you want to do that?” they all said, frowning. “Don’t you want to be on a real campus? Aren’t you afraid of crime? Don’t you worry about getting homesick?”

“No!” Kip shouted. “No, no, no, a thousand times no!” She’d spent her entire last month of high school trying to find a single graduating senior who thought she was lucky. But they were glad to be going to ordinary colleges close to home, with big maple trees and wide campus lawns, low brick dormitories, and other freshmen they knew from home.

How unfair it was to have worked so hard for something nobody else even wanted.

Kip was definitely ready to leave Westerly.

Kip leaped into the pool suddenly, splashing Emily. She did a swift stroke to one end and came more swiftly back, working off a little of the tremendous energy she always had.

Anne herself never went into the pool. The chlorine hurt her eyes too much. Kip lived in an apartment with four little brothers. It is symbolic of the unfairness of life, Kip thought, that the girl who hates swimming is the one who owns the pool.

Kip had always envied Anne. Anne was so pretty and popular, with Con always at her side arranging the next time they would be together. Anne had plenty of money and a truly enviable wardrobe. Of course, Con had a few drawbacks, number one being that he was a conceited jerk.

Yet Kip liked Con. She had to remind herself what a jerk he was or she forgot. He was charming and funny and always said the right compliment to make a girl feel good. Even Anne (who had more proof than anybody what a jerk Con was) fell time and time again under Con’s charm.

Those two had started dating in seventh grade. You had only to look at this year’s crop of seventh graders to know that it was a disgusting uncivilized age. Thirteen-year-old boys didn’t seem capable of anything other than rude, crude, and socially unacceptable noises. Yet Con and Anne had begun even then setting an example of romance few had been able to match then or later. (Of course, there was the little lapse of Anne’s pregnancy and then giving the baby up for adoption; few girls
wanted
to match that at age sixteen, and unmarried.)

It’s good, Kip thought, that Anne is leaving. If she went on to State University with Con, Con would stay in charge and Anne would stay obedient. Anne will come back changed. She’ll have spent a year doing things Con can’t even imagine.

Even
I
can’t imagine them, Kip thought, pushing her jealousy away, not letting herself think of foreign lands and fine hotels and fabulous star-studded gala parties.

I wish it were my good-bye party tonight, Kip thought, diving under one more time. I wish somebody had decided to give me a goodbye party.

She started crying underwater, a weird feeling, and when she surfaced her tears blended in with the pool water streaming out of her hair.

She forced her thoughts to college.

There would be, among other things, eighteen hundred boys in her class.

Now how, Kip asked herself, can I possibly live with a collection of one thousand eight hundred boys and not find at least a dozen absolutely perfect ones? Answer: I can’t. So, in a matter of days, life is going to be boy-perfect.

A
NNE WALKED SLOWLY THROUGH
her dark house and back out to Kip, Emily, and Molly. When you have been in the sun for hours, a house is as dim as a cave, musty as an attic.

Not to see Beth for a year!

It did not seem possible to Anne, either. None of them had ever been anywhere but Westerly. To go more than a weekend without seeing all your friends was beyond comprehension.

The first doubt assailed Anne.

What am I doing?
she thought.

She stared at the familiar backyard she would not walk in for another twelve months.

I must stay calm. Less than twenty-four hours now. I’ll keep the girls here as long as I can. Then I’ll take a long time dressing for my last date with Con. I’ll stay with him till midnight. When I come home I’ll tell Mother and Daddy I’m too tired to talk. As soon as I’m up in the morning we have to leave for the airport. So they can’t attack me much more.

And it’s important not to fight at the very end. I won’t want to leave to the sound of anger.

She wondered how much hugging and kissing there would be from Con. It was possible their date would be worse than staying home. Con was coming for her at seven. If this went like their last few dates, they would be back home at seven-ten.

Con actually thought Anne should have asked his permission before interviewing for this job. “I didn’t even know!” Con had cried. “Other people had to tell me you were trying to get the job.” He had stomped around, jamming his hands in and out of his jeans pockets. These days Con wore baggy pants, but when they started seeing each other in seventh grade, jeans were tight. Back then, Con couldn’t have squeezed a lavatory pass into his pockets.

Anne, smiling at that memory, had said, “I’ll never have a chance like this again, Con. You wouldn’t want me to pass it up.”

But he did. He thought the job would change her, turn her into a snob. It seemed the best strategy to joke about it. “You’re right, Con,” she said, laughing. “Probably I’ll forget everybody. Have a whole new set of friends and travel only by Concorde and never land in Westerly.” She tickled him lightly at the back of the neck where his hair grew down in a thick, dark wave.

Con had grabbed her arm roughly. “How can you throw away what’s between us?” he demanded. “We’re supposed to have the best romance in this whole high school. Weren’t we voted Class Couple? We’ve lasted through thick and thin, Anne. You can’t go now.”

She
had lasted through thick and thin. Con had chosen to spend the hard parts with Molly. Anne had forgiven him, but forgetting was harder. She sometimes wondered if she were the only person who remembered the little baby girl they had given away, the little girl who called other people Mommy and Daddy, the little girl who would be old enough, pretty soon, actually to say those words out loud.

Her parents could not bear the subject. Con pretended it had never happened. Her friends never referred to it. Anne thought of it every day.

She was not sure exactly what that had to do with her new job, but somehow it had been part of the final decision to take it.

Last May the local paper had carried an interview with a very elderly actress named Ivory Glynn, the only famous person ever born in the little city of Westerly. Fifty years before, a film called
Ivory Rose
had climaxed her fabulous career, and after
Ivory Rose,
Miss Glynn retired from Hollywood, while generation after generation of film goers remained her fans. Now, film festivals from Cannes to Buenos Aires to Los Angeles were going to feature the fiftieth anniversary of
Ivory Rose
and Miss Glynn, now age seventy-four, had emerged from seclusion and come to Westerly to find a companion to go with her around the world.

Con just laughed when he read the article. “Can you imagine traveling with that old biddy?” he scoffed. “Probably have to spend your time hunting down wheelchairs and flannel sheets and hot-water bottles.”

That night Anne and Con were at Dory’s, a large family-style restaurant on the river. It was one of the few places in Westerly where teenagers could hang out. You could buy one soda and dance half the night, or sit outside on benches, or just mill around, looking for people you knew.

“Now, listen to me, Anne,” Con said that night. “I didn’t like our dorm assignments at State, so I drove up there yesterday and had them changed. Took some talking, but I wrapped that woman in the student residence office around my finger and I got what I wanted.”

Anne was not listening. London. Rome. Planes taking off, silver streaks in a blue sky. What a wonderful woman Ivory Glynn must be. Having stayed out of public sight all these years, brave enough to walk back onstage.

“Now, what did you go and sign up for Music Literature for, Anne?” Con demanded. “You know what that is? Crap like Beethoven and Mozart and you have to sit in the music building all week listening to tapes. Drop that course, Anne, you won’t like it. It’ll take up too much of your time.”

They leaned over the splintery railing and looked down into the Westerly River. Anne fed her potato chips to a flotilla of ducks. Those ducks have more purpose in life than I do, Anne thought. I’m not even paddling. I’m letting Con paddle for me.

Con informed her what tomorrow’s plans would be.

Anne Stephens fed the ducks. She thought she would rather make her own plans for tomorrow. Perhaps she would rather make her own plans for all her tomorrows.

In the morning she arranged an interview with Ivory Glynn.

Miss Glynn was fragile, her skin very white, with deep wrinkles like crushed aluminum foil gently pulled back apart. Her hair was equally white and did not curl, but stuck up like escaped pillow stuffing. She was beautifully dressed, but she sat awkwardly against many pillows. A watch with a jeweled wristband dangled on a thin, blue-veined wrist.

“My dear,” Ivory Glynn said to Anne, “you are quite amazingly lovely. You remind me of myself. But as you have never traveled, I cannot begin to know how you might handle an emergency, and a girl of eighteen lacks the judgment I will need in a companion.”

Anne flushed with embarrassment. How small-town it would be to mention her four years of high school French and three years of Spanish. Impossible to announce that after a lifetime of parental or boyfriend control, she was ready now to make decisions. Nor could she list those romantic cities like a travel brochure and say she hoped for a free ride from Miss Glynn.

The actress cleared her throat. Anne got up and poured her water from the carafe on the table. Miss Glynn offered Anne a Coke. “And perhaps you would tell me, as you sip it, why you would even
want
to go with me?” said Miss Glynn. “You are about to leave for college and the company of several thousand other teenagers away from home for the first time. Think of dorm life, campus life, freedom, and new friends!”