The Luckiest Girl (16 page)

Spring, warm and gaudy, came to San Sebastian. One day was no season at all and the next day was spring—a spring unlike any Shelley had ever known. Wildflowers bright as paint spilled by children colored the hills. Geraniums washed clean of dust bloomed brilliantly while vines and low plants that clung to the ground brought forth crimson and magenta flowers that shimmered in the bright spring light. The orange trees, covered with bridal blossoms, filled the town with rich perfume. Shelley had not known that anything in the world could be as fragrant as San Sebastian in the spring.

The perfume of the groves grew stronger at night
and as she lay in bed consciously enjoying every breath, Shelley thought how different this was from spring at home. An Oregon spring meant fresh green leaves unfolding on the birch trees that lined Shelley's street. It meant rain soft as pussy willows and fat robins pulling worms out of the wet lawn. It meant trilliums in the woods and lilies of the valley in the backyard. Shelley was happy, now that she was rid of homesickness, to lie in bed and enjoy two springs, gaudy and delicate, one in reality and the other in memory.

Hartley replaced Philip on Saturday nights and Shelley was not sorry. She felt gloriously free of that plonking little Ping-Pong ball. When she and Hartley discovered they both enjoyed working double-crostics, they spent several evenings prowling through the Michies' reference books trying to find Cotton Mather's wife's maiden name or a colloquial expression of three words meaning to be in good health—the second letter had to be
n
and the last letter
k
. Shelley was delighted. She had always enjoyed puzzles and word games but she had not expected a boy to enjoy them too.

Once when one of the puzzles called for the name of the chief room in a Roman house, Shelley printed the word
atrium
in the proper spaces and
was reminded of her first school dance a long time ago. “Hartley, is this a peculiar way to spend an evening?” she asked suddenly.

“Of course not,” he answered. “We're both having fun. Why do you even ask?”

“I was just thinking about the first time I ever went to a school dance,” she explained. “I went with a boy from my Latin class, the studious type, and we spoke Latin as much as we could.”

Hartley laughed delightedly. “Whatever did you find to say?”

Shelley giggled. “I don't suppose our conversation was exactly witty. I remember saying that the floor of the gymnasium was divided into three parts. You know, like all Gaul in Caesar, but I had to cheat a little, because I didn't know the Latin for
gymnasium
, so I just pronounced it with what I hoped was a Latin accent. And we said things like, ‘
Is
drummer
cum diligentia laborat
.'”

“Don't all drummers work diligently?” Hartley asked, laughing.

Shelley laughed with him. “It was funny, wasn't it?” she remarked, thinking that now the whole incident seemed like something that had happened a long time ago when she was practically a
child, and she wondered why she had been so upset by her mother's amusement. Because she had felt so unsure of herself, probably.

Shelley enjoyed Hartley's companionship. Once he arrived late in the morning with a picnic lunch and drove Shelley to the mountains to see the wild lilac covered with blossoms the color of blue smoke. They picnicked beside a stream. “So you can see that we really do have water in California,” Hartley explained. Shelley, who had always had to pack the lunch when she picnicked with a boy, was charmed. She did not, however, talk about her dates with Hartley to any of the girls at school except Jeannie. She could not help feeling guilty, with Philip working doggedly beside her in the biology laboratory and—she supposed—studying with equal doggedness at home on weekends. When Hartley asked her to go to the school carnival with him, Shelley accepted although she did not feel quite right about it, knowing that Philip could not go.

It was on the Saturday of the carnival that Shelley received a letter from her mother in the same mail in which Mavis received a letter from her mother, Mrs. Stickney.

Shelley's letter concluded with a worrisome
paragraph. “Jack came over this evening,” Mrs. Latham wrote. “I was so glad to see him. He is such a nice boy and I have missed him while you have been away. He wanted to know when you would be home. I told him Daddy and I were going to drive down to get you and that we planned to take in Yosemite and the redwoods on the way home but we expected to be back the end of June. He was pleased to hear this and said he wanted you to go to the mountains with him and his family over the Fourth of July.”

Jack. Shelley read the paragraph again. Her mother did not say she had accepted the invitation for Shelley, but Shelley was sure she had. Naturally her mother would not want to see her sitting at home on a day when other girls would be away on picnics or trips to the beach or mountains. But Jack—oh, well, as Rosemary said, a boy in the hand was worth two in the bush or any old port in a storm. But Shelley was not entirely successful in persuading herself that this was true. She might have believed it at one time but not since knowing Hartley. However, if her mother had accepted for her, there was not much she could do about it but go to the mountains with Jack and his family. She knew what it would be like, though. A crowd of
people would come up from the city and there would be whispered questions about Shelley and Jack. Jack's mother would smile and whisper that Shelley and Jack were going steady. Everyone would smile back and there would be half-heard remarks about that was the way kids did things these days—now when I was in high school…Shelley would hate every minute of it.

“Goodness!” exclaimed Mavis, looking up from her letter. “Mother will arrive this weekend. Honestly, I can't understand why she absolutely refuses to send letters airmail.” There was considerable exasperation in her voice. “Shelley, I wonder if you would mind picking some fresh flowers for the dining room and for the coffee table while I make up the bed in the corner bedroom. Mother is apt to turn up at any hour of the day or night.”

“I'll be glad to,” said Shelley, and went about the pleasant task. She chose some wild California poppies that were blooming among the weeds at the back of the Michies' property and arranged some of them in a brown mug that Mavis had made. The rest she set in a green pitcher of Mexican glass for the dining-room table. She was pleased with the effect of both her arrangements. They were gay and casual, suited to the Michie household.

Not long after Shelley had finished with the flowers, an old car pulled into the driveway with a crunch of tires on gravel.

“Hello, Mother!” called Mavis from an upstairs window. “I'll be right down.”

Shelley joined the family at the side of the house, where a tall gray-haired woman was getting out of the car. It was obvious that she knitted. While Mrs. Stickney kissed her daughter and grandchildren, Shelley stared at her dress. It was knit round and round in random stripes of yarn of every imaginable color.

“That's some dress you are wearing,” remarked Tom, after he had hugged his mother-in-law.

“I call it my coat of many colors,” replied Mrs. Stickney. “I told myself there must be something I could knit out of all those odds and ends of yarn, so I knit this. It's the most practical thing in the world for traveling. Nothing shows on it and I just keep turning the skirt around and it never bags in the seat.”

“That's my girl,” said Tom, and kissed Mrs. Stickney on her cheek. “Luke, get your grandmother's luggage out of the car.”

“And this is Shelley,” said Mrs. Stickney, taking Shelley's hand in hers.

“How do you do?” said Shelley, as she took her eyes off the fascinating dress.

While Luke pulled three suitcases out of the car, and a large knitting bag that Katie eyed with distrust, Mavis said, “Mother, aren't you ever going to get a new car? That one is so old I worry about your driving it on the highway.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Stickney. “I understand that car and that car understands me.”

“It's a car, Mother,” said Mavis. “Not a horse.”

“Anyway,” said Mrs. Stickney, “if I keep it long enough, some old car collector is bound to offer me a lot of money for it.” It was easy to see she was a woman with a mind of her own.

The afternoon seemed unusually lively, even for the Michies, so lively that Shelley had little time to think about her mother's letter. First of all Shelley was dismayed to see that the poppies she had arranged so carefully had folded their petals as if it were night and instead of two gay bouquets, they became stiff bunches of pointed buds. Probably in protest against being picked, Shelley decided.

“That's all right,” said Mavis. “Just put them in a dark cupboard for a while and they will open up when you bring them out into the light.”

Amused at the idea of trying to outwit flowers,
Shelley did as she was told. This crazy mixed-up California vegetation!

After Mrs. Stickney had unpacked, she settled herself with her knitting needles and some bright green yarn that Katie could not help staring at so apprehensively that Shelley, to end her suspense, finally came right out and asked Mrs. Stickney what she was knitting.

“A pullover for Luke,” she answered. “I am making it out of his school colors.”

Shelley and Katie exchanged a look of conspiracy, while Luke's expression became worried. Only lettermen wore sweaters in school colors, but a grandmother could not be expected to know that.

“Luke, what are you up to these days?” asked Mrs. Stickney, pausing to measure her knitting.

“I'm helping Dad in the grove and using the money I earn for parts for my motorcycle,” answered Luke. “I'll get it running one of these days.”

“Now, Luke,” protested Mavis. “We've been through this a dozen times. You're just wasting money on that old wreck and even if you do get it to run, which I doubt, you are too young to get a license.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Stickney. “The boy has to grow up.”

“I'm going to be sixteen,” Luke told his mother.

Mavis looked as if she were about to say something but thought better of it. Instead she told Katie that she had to practice her piano lesson, both the rhapsody and her scales, before she could go over to Pamela's house. Katie observed that she never had any fun and began to play the
Hungarian Rhapsody
. Suddenly, as if she had had an inspiration, she speeded up her playing until the music sounded as if it were being rattled out by an old-fashioned player piano.

“Katie!” shouted Tom in his basketball court voice.

The playing stopped. “Mommy said I had to play it through before I could go over to Pamela's,” answered Katie plaintively.

“Now Katie,” said Tom. “Time is just as much a part of the music as the notes. You know that. Now play it properly.”

The music continued with only one lapse into
Pop Goes the Weasel
. Then Katie went to work on her scales. Shelley was the only one who noticed an open copy of
Betsy Devore, Girl Sleuth
resting on the music rack while Katie's fingers flew up and down the keyboard.

When Mavis went into the kitchen to put the
roast into the oven, Mrs. Stickney went along to visit with her daughter. Soon Shelley heard their voices rising through the transom.

“Mother, I know what I am doing,” said Mavis. “This isn't the first roast I have ever cooked, you know.”

“Mavis, I have been cooking roasts longer than you have,” said Mrs. Stickney, “and I can't bear to see you ruin that meat.”

“I know you have been cooking longer than I,” said Mavis. “And sometimes the roasts were too rare and sometimes they were overdone. That is why I am doing it scientifically. By inserting a meat thermometer into the roast I can tell exactly when the meat is medium-rare.”

“If you plunge that dagger into the bosom of that roast,” said Mrs. Stickney dramatically, “all the juice will run out.”

“Oh, Mother,” said Mavis, and laughed.

Things were equally lively at dinner. The roast was excellent. The confused poppies opened their petals when brought from the cupboard as if they were greeting the morning sun. Everyone argued with everyone else.

Katie said it was Luke's turn to feed the dog and cat, because she fed them the night before. Luke
said it was Katie's turn, because the only reason she fed them the night before was that the night before
that
he fed them when it was really her turn and she had gone off to that creep Pamela's house and he couldn't let the animals starve, could he? Shelley said she would be glad to feed the animals if it would settle the argument. Luke and Katie told her to please keep out of their affairs. Mrs. Stickney said when she was a girl, children did their chores cheerfully and did not argue at the table. Mavis said she and her brother always argued at the table and everyplace else. They still did. Tom told Katie to feed the cat and Luke to feed the dog and now couldn't they introduce a new topic of conversation?

They did. Mrs. Stickney said she was thinking of a trip to France next year—she had always wanted to see the château country. Mavis asked her mother please to promise not to ride a bicycle in France, not at her age. Mrs. Stickney said nonsense, she might be getting on in years but her bones were not that brittle yet.

Tom changed the subject by asking his mother-in-law who she thought would be elected the next president. Mrs. Stickney said she did not believe in discussing politics, especially with relatives, but…
Mavis did not agree. She believed the man was more important than the party, but…Katie said her social science teacher, who was not even supposed to discuss politics in the public schools, said…Luke said Katie was only in junior high and what did she know about it anyway? His history teacher said if a man was to be elected president it was essential that he be born east of the Rocky Mountains. Mrs. Stickney said that was nonsense. The way the West was expanding, it was high time the East realized the United States included the West.