The Paper Dragon (21 page)

The poster to the left of her desk, cluttered with travel folders and carbon copies of letters to hotels and auto-rental establishments, advertised Positano, the white and pastel houses climbing the hillside, the beach below, the rowboats hovering on the water. She glanced at it idly and then reread a letter from the Dorchester in London, confirming a room for Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Tannings, beginning January 10th. She wondered why anyone would want to go to England in January, and then immediately thought of Italy and Greece, and then of course remembered Sidney's proposal.

As she saw it, life was merely a matter of making the right decision at the right time; she should have known that long ago, when she was seventeen, but she hadn't. Well, she knew it now. Sidney had asked her to marry him, this is so unexpected, she had said, I'll have to think it over, meanwhile thinking that two million dollars was a lot of money, if he won his case he would get two million dollars. 
If
he won, but how could he
possibly
win, a jerk like Sidney? Still, the possibility had to be considered. She could manage to live with
anyone
for two million dollars, and besides, Sidney wasn't all that bad, even though she didn't love him. There was a lot to be said for Sidney, but at the moment she couldn't think of a thing.

The decision, anyway, had nothing to do with Sidney. It had only to do with two million dollars, which he might or might not get, that was the trouble, too uncertain. Decisions were never easy for a girl to make even if she knew all the facts, but sometimes the damn facts came in too late or not at all, that was it. How could she possibly second-guess this idiotic trial? No jury, isn't that what he'd said? Two million dollars riding on an Irishman's heartburn. Or lack of it. How could you decide? Better to take the bird in the hand. Still, two million dollars.

(
Take it, no, take it, no, no,
and then his hand under her skirt, and she slapped him without wanting to, without thinking, forgetting for the moment, completely forgetting he was from the college. "Go out with the college boys, Duck," her mother advised. "Get yourself a rich boy from New York who'll be a doctor or a lawyer one day.")

Well, here it was, a rich (if he won the case) New York boy (forty-eight years old) who was a lawyer (but not a very good one) and he had made an honest old-fashioned proposal: I am forty-eight years old, harumph, harumph, and I know that you are only twenty-seven, but I think you know I love you, I think you truly know that. Yes, I
know
you love me, baby, I can wrap you around my finger, I can make you jump through hoops, I can get you to run naked in the snow on Madison Avenue, you little
shmuck
, of course I know you love me. Come sing for me, baby, sing your little heart out and then come on down on Northeast Airlines, brother
do
I know you love me!

But what to do?

Use your instinct, sweetie, use that famous woman's intuition they're always talking about, where was it in the winter of 1957? Or maybe it was operating full blast, maybe I knew
exactly
what would happen if I slapped him, who knows? And maybe the flushed, no, the, the almost I don't know, that tight hot embarrassed feeling (I always see myself as a frightened young girl standing alone on a station platform, a suitcase in my hand) that feeling of, heavy eyes, and almost smarting, tears about to come if something doesn't happen, frightened for two weeks after that night in his car when I slapped him, was it really fear? Or was I waiting for what was about to come, not knowing what, the way I feel embarrassed and hot and try not to giggle when a man stops at the front window to look at my legs, and want to touch myself, who the hell knows?

So he asks last night, naturally. Knows me six months but asks last night when I'm on my way to Ruth's apartment to meet Jerry Courtlandt and his brother there, to go over the European trip with them. I should have said no immediately (
Take it, no, I don't want to!
) I should have said Look Sidney, this is a lot of fun and all, you know, I mean I kind of enjoy having you around, you dear man, to play with, you know, you're a very nice playmate to kick around the block, but marry you? Now, really, Sidney, let's not get ridiculous. I'm twenty-seven years old, I am a
beautiful
young girl! Please don't make me laugh, Sidney.

Touching, though.

Really touching that he should ask.

Really.

And two million dollars,
if
he gets it, well, with two million dollars, who knows, Sidney? Maybe I could learn to love you, who knows, baby? Italy and Greece. Hot sand under me. Stretch, mmmm, relax.

Come on, Chickie, just relax, will you? No, I want to go home.

Home was a two-family clapboard house in a town called Ramsey, four miles from the university. The houses were semidetached, each with a small backyard and a peaked attic, identical except for the paint jobs. Their own house was further distinguished by the aspidistra her mother kept in the window, even the college boys had to ask what aspidistra meant. Her grandmother had kept one in the window of their tenement flat in London, when Agnes Brown nee Mercer was a child. And so now Agnes kept one in the window of the small house in Ramsey, Pennsylvania; it was important to maintain one's heritage, keep the bloody aspidistra flying, the man had written. Pennsylvania was Fourth Street in Ramsey, and an occasional trip into Philadelphia, and it was also the high school on Buchanan Street, and later on — even before it happened — trips to the college, the road straight as an arrow along the railroad tracks and past the power plant and then out into the beautiful rolling Pennsylvania countryside.

Her father owned the drugstore in Ramsey, an aging pharmacist who had also come from London in his youth (the sign outside his shop read "Chemist"). His name was Edwin Brown, but Mother called him Luv or Duck and Chickie called him Dads, and all of his customers called him Mr. Brown. She doubted if he even
knew
his first name, for all the use it got. For that matter, she herself had been called Chickie ever since a cousin from Philadelphia spent the summer with them (coming out of the slums on the city's south side to breathe a little country air) and had trouble pronouncing the name Charlotte, being only three years old and barely able to pronounce her own name, which was Mary. She liked the name Chickie because her mother made it sound like a synonym for Duck, which was her favorite term of affection, and also because when she got to be thirteen and developed a good bosom, the name seemed to apply somehow, seemed to impart a mysterious sort of womanly glamor to her, or so she thought. Chickie Brown, Chickie Brown, Chickie Brown, she would practice writing it in a broad developing hand, using a thick pen point, heavily capitalizing the C and the B.

She was kissed for the first time at her sixteenth birthday party by a boy named Frank Simms, whose father worked out at the gun factory. She blushed furiously, and then quickly raised her eyes to where her father stood in the doorway gently smiling, and hastily lowered them again. The university boys discovered her when she was seventeen, as inevitably they had to, but her mother approved of her dating, and in fact encouraged it. She knew that Chickie was a good clean girl who would probably marry young and raise a houseful of kids, so why not someone with a college education? Chickie, in her seventeenth year, was proud of her appearance, not a little annoyed whenever she asked her father how old she looked, and he smilingly replied, "Why, seventeen, luv," when she knew damn well she looked much older. She was taller than most of the girls at school, with very good breasts she had had from thirteen, and wide hips that everyone said were excellent for the bearing of children, and a narrow waist, and shapely legs — you were supposed to have good legs if the ankles were slender, which hers were. Agnes had taught her to carry herself as tall as she was, and not to slouch the way some big girls do, so she wore high heels with authority even when dating shorter boys. Her walk was rapid and direct; she never pranced or paraded the way a lot of the other kids did, as if they practiced wiggling their behinds when they were home in their own rooms. Chickie thought of herself almost as her mother did; she was good and clean and wholesome, and she was sure her innocence accounted for her fresh good looks, the shining green eyes and fine complexion, the full mouth touched with just a bit of lipstick, the red-gold hair trailing halfway down her back because it had never been cut, or sometimes swinging across her mounded sweater front in twin braids, tiny green bows picking up the color of her eyes. She thought of herself as an English girl or something. A healthy English country girl. She did not know she was just a townie.

They taught her that in the first six months of 1957, after she had dated the president of one of the most powerful fraternities on campus, or so she had been told. In fact, one of the reasons she began dating Buddy was because she
knew
he was the president of a big fraternity, and
knew
it was powerful. She could not imagine what
kind
of power a fraternity could wield, but the notion was intriguing nonetheless, and a little frightening. Perhaps nothing would have happened were she not both frightened and intrigued, perhaps that was all a part of it. Even now, when she thought back upon it, she could feel a tremor of fear, and she quickly pulled her skirt down over her knees, very flustered all at once — the image of a frightened girl on a station platform, that girl on the empty platform.

They had parked after the movie, and Buddy was kissing her — she let most of the boys kiss her, but never on the first date — when he gently tugged her hand toward him, and she realized he had opened his zipper, and he said, "Take it, go ahead." She said no, she didn't want to, but he kept insisting and pulling her hand toward him while she kept saying No, No, and suddenly he let her go and thrust his own hand up under her skirt, and she slapped him. The automobile was very still for perhaps a minute, it seemed like a year, and then Buddy said, very softly, "You shouldn't have done that, miss," and started the car and took her home.

She did not know why she was so frightened in the two weeks that followed, unless it was remembering the tone of his voice and the word "miss," which seemed to be promising something terrible. She had no idea that they were carefully mapping out their campaign in those two weeks, or that she would assume the importance of a military target in the patient months that followed. She did not know that men could be that way, or would want to be that way. She only knew that she was frightened. And yet, oddly, she kept waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for Buddy to call.

The campaign started on a Saturday afternoon two weeks after she had slapped Buddy. It started in her father's drugstore, and it started with an apology from Buddy, who was all smiles and embarrassment and who told her he had behaved very badly and wished she would forgive him. He was with another boy, a good-looking blond boy named Paul, whom Buddy introduced as a brother and one of his closest friends. Paul nodded shyly, and they all chatted for a few more minutes, and then left Chickie. She felt very happy about the chance encounter with Buddy, and not a little relieved that she had misread the tone of his voice that night two weeks ago. The next morning her telephone rang, and she was surprised when her caller identified himself as Paul, "You know, we met yesterday in the drugstore."

"Oh, sure, Paul," she said. "Hi."

"Hi. Listen, I hope this isn't out of line."

"What do you mean?" she said.

"Well, Buddy is a fraternity brother, you know, and

"Yes, I know that."

"I didn't want to ask
him
whether you were, you know, whether you had any kind of an understanding or not. But if you
have
…"

"No, we haven't," Chickie said.

"Well, in that case," Paul said, and he sighed in relief, "I was wondering if you'd like to go see a movie tonight. I know this is sort of short notice, and tomorrow's school and all, but I promise I'll get you home early, that is if you'd like to."

"Well, it
is
short notice," Chickie said.

"Yeah, I know that."

"And I'd have to ask my mother."

"Well, would you
want
to?"

"Well, if she says it's all right, I guess I would."

"Well, fine." He paused. "Would you ask her?"

"Sure, can you hang on?"

She asked her mother, who said it was all right, as long as they didn't get home too late. Paul picked her up at seven that night, and they went to a movie in town and then stopped for hamburgers, where they met a few other fellows from the frat, all of whom were formally introduced by Paul, who seemed very proud of her, and who watched with a sort of quiet glow while they offered their hands and very gentlemenly said, "Pleased to meet you, Chickie." He took her home early, as he had promised, and did not even try to kiss her good night. She learned later, only much later when they told her all about it, that the meeting in the drugstore had been no accident, that Paul had made his first call from the frat house, with the other fellows standing around him, and that the subsequent introduction to the boys in the hamburger joint had all been carefully planned and synchronized because they were out to get her. But she did not know it at the time, and she felt only flattered and not at all suspicious when Paul called again on Monday to ask if she'd like to have a soda or something Wednesday night, and she said Yes, she'd love to. He took her home at ten-thirty, and again did not try to kiss her good night. She wondered about that a little, somewhat puzzled, but figured he was just a shy boy. On Thursday, a boy named John called to say he had met her Sunday in the hamburger joint, "Remember me, I'm one of Paul's brothers, I've got straight brown hair?"

"Oh sure," she said.

"I know this might seem a little forward," he said, "calling when we hardly know each other, but there's going to be a party at the house tomorrow night and look, I'll be honest with you. A girl who was supposed to be coming down from Bryn Mawr for the weekend got a bad cold and she can't make it, and I'm really up the creek. I thought maybe, well… I know I'm not putting this right, and I wouldn't blame you for saying no. But it's just that I really
am
hung up, and I honestly would like to take you to the party. If you think you'd like to come with me. Though I know this is all very sudden."