The Towers of Love (13 page)

Sometimes, when he was so tired that he could not keep his eyes open any longer, and would let the brush or the needles drop, she would make him turn, and would begin the rubbing in a new place. Sometimes, when he was fast asleep, she would wake him for the rubbing, the massage, the exercise. The nurses and the doctors had had nothing but admiration for her, this drably dressed, dedicated, and seemingly tireless woman. They had called her magnificent too. She had met President Roosevelt there, and had brought the president in to see him. He and the president had talked for over half an hour, and his mother had been so impressed with the president that she had become a Democrat, a thing no Pryor had ever done before.

And then, after that, when there had been the slow series of operations on his leg and arm, she had been there, always beside him. And he remembered the times, after the anæsthetic, that he could not urinate, and he remembered her standing beside him at the toilet, running cold water in the basin, rubbing his arms and wrists and hands with wet cloths and saying, “Now. Do it now.”

And he had said, “I can't, I can't,” weeping from the pain, and she had only said, “Yes, you can. Of course you can. Let your breath out. Do it. Do it now.” Until he had done it.

And then, after that, he remembered them together on the beach at St. Simons Island. She had made him plunge into the water, made him swim to the sand bar, made him lie and float in the rocking waves that gathered just beyond the breakers. Then, out of the water, she had made him run on the beach. “I'll race you to that palm tree,” she would say, and when he would fall on the sand, she would pick him up and make him continue the race. And when the race was over and he sat panting by the tree, she would make him get up and race again. “Run, run, run,” she would say to him.

“Please—no more running!” he would beg her.

“Come on. Run. I'll race you back into the water.”

And so it had gone. You could never forget scenes like those—scenes which had been lived at such a pitch, with such intensity. As long as he lived he would not forget them. They were etched indelibly on his memory.

Lying here now, in his room, trying to nudge himself over the lip of sleep, these scenes were vividly all around him. He was remembering them, and then afterwards, when he had been able to go back to school. For some reason he was remembering one day at Millbrook, when the headmaster had declared a holiday, and when he and Joe Wallace, who had been his room-mate there as later on at Yale, had got permission to take a train to Bash Bish Falls, with a picnic lunch. It had been one of those extraordinary May days in the Berkshire hills when spring had suddenly surrendered itself to summer, and when they had got to Bash Bish, hiking in on the dirt road from the railroad station, it had been very hot, with swarms of aphids in the air. They had stripped off their clothes and gone for a swim in the small pool of cold and faintly sulphurous water at the bottom of the falls. Then, after the swim, he and Joe lay naked on a flat rock in the sun, their bodies smelling of Skol and citronella, thinking that it would be a fine idea to get an over-all tan between now and the end of summer. And their talk, as it so often seemed to do in those days, turned to girls, and what they thought of certain ones, and what their opinions were of the sex as a whole.

“There's this girl at home,” Hugh had said, “Edrita Everett. She's going to Dobbs now. I like her quite a lot.”

“Did you ever make out with her?” Joe asked. (“Making out”—that was the tentative, evasive expression they all used then; “Did you make out with her?” Yes. No. It meant both everything and nothing.)

“Aw, come
on
, Joe!” Hugh had said.

“Did you? Did you?” Joe asked eagerly. “Hey, I'll bet you did. What was it like?”

“Aw, now come on,” Hugh had said.

“Come on? Come on? What does that mean? I'll just bet you did.” And then Joe, not to be outdone or thought inexperienced in such matters, had begun a long, rambling account of a girl
he
knew from his home town in Monmouth County, New Jersey, a telephone operator named Louise. Louise was game for anything, it seemed, and, from Joe's description of it anyway, he had made out with Louise dozens of times. “You know,” Joe said, “there's a little special nerve, or something, in a woman's back. Right below and a little to the left of her right shoulder blade. If you can get your arm around her, and find that little nerve, and press it, then—
whammo
! She'll do anything.”

“No kidding?” Hugh said.

“That's a medical fact about women. You've just got to find that little special nerve.”

They lay in silence, chins resting on their hands. “There was this nurse in the hospital at Warm Springs,” Hugh said. “This real cute little nurse, about twenty-one or twenty-two.”

“Oh, boy,” Joe said. “Those nurses. They're the easiest ones in the world to make out with. Did you make out with her?”

“Hell,” Hugh said, “I was only about twelve or thirteen.”

“Oh,” Joe said, disappointed. “Well—”

“One day she was giving me a sponge bath,” Hugh said.

“Yeah?” Joe said, interested again. “What happened?”

“Well, she was giving me this sponge bath—you know, the kind they give you in hospitals—this pretty little nurse, this Miss Forbes. And I mean she was really pretty.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, “but they always hand you the sponge, don't they, and make you wash certain things yourself?”

“Well, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't,” Hugh said. “They don't when—well, anyway,
she
didn't, not that time. And she was giving me this sponge bath, you see, and—”

“And what? What did she do? What happened?”

“Well, as I say, she was real pretty and she was giving me this sponge bath, and—well, I guess I got a little excited.”

“Yeah?” Joe said, turning and resting on his elbow. “Yeah? And
then
what?”

“Well,” Hugh said, wondering now why he had begun this pointless story, which had nowhere near the colour of Joe's about Louise, “well, I guess she noticed something, and anyway she slapped me.”

“She
slapped
you?”

“Yes. Well, not a hard slap. Just a little slap. But enough.'

“She slapped you in the face?”

“No, not in the face. She sort of slapped me—you know—
there
.”

Joe stretched himself flat on the rock and emitted a long sigh of disgust. “Ahhh,” he said. “Boy, if some damn' nurse ever did that to me, I'd punch her in the jaw. Why didn't you punch her right in the jaw? Boy, but that's
typical
though, isn't it? That's typical of the way a woman is. They make you think—they lead you on—and then they pull some deal like that. Boy, but that's what disgusts me about women sometimes. But that's the way they are, isn't it? That's the way a woman is different from a man. A woman can either take it or leave it alone, and there's not a damn' thing you can do.”

“Well, not all of them are like that,” Hugh said.

“Most of them, though. But you're right, not all. Now take that girl Ted Stranahan had up for the Senior Dance. What was her name? Anne Cromwell?”

“Yes, the blonde.”

“Yeah. I hear she's a pretty hot little neck. I hear Stranahan took her out behind the gym and necked hell out of her. I wouldn't be surprised if Stranahan made out with her, too, some time during that week-end.”

“Aw, how could he have made out with her?” Hugh said. “Where is there around this school that you could take a girl to make out with her?”

“Oh, there's plenty of places,” Joe said.

“Where? Name one.”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” Joe said, “I've heard of one
easy
place. You know that house where some of the cooks and the maids live?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess this school doesn't pay those cooks and maids much. So I've heard that if you slip one of those cooks or maids five or ten bucks, they'll let you use their room for an hour or so.”

“No kidding? And not tell the school about it?”

“Why should they tell the school about it? That's what you slip them the five or ten bucks for.”

“No kidding?”

“Well, that's what I've heard,” Joe said.

“And you think that's what Stranahan did?”

“I don't know for sure. But I wouldn't be surprised. That Anne Cromwell is supposed to be a real hot little neck.”

“Well, necking is one thing …” Hugh said.

“Say,” Joe said, “you ought to take her out yourself. Why don't you? I bet you could make out with her. And she likes you, I could tell. I saw you dancing with her.”

“Aw, I don't know,” Hugh said. “Why don't you take her out?”

“Me? Oh, she wouldn't look at me. She wouldn't give me the time of day.”

“Why not?”

Joe was a slender, well-built boy and, at fifteen or sixteen, which was the age they both were then, he had had a habit of tugging at the sandy-coloured forelock of his hair and pulling it down across his forehead, towards the ridge of his nose, when he was nervous or thoughtful, or worried about something. He seized his hair with his fingers and began this tugging motion now. “Oh, I don't know,” he said slowly. “She just wouldn't, that's all.”

“I bet she would.”

“No,” he said, “Stranahan's told me all about her. She's a regular little snob. She won't go out with a guy unless he's in the
Social Register
.”

“No kidding?”

“Yeah, that's what Stranahan said. Her mother told her to look up every guy who asks her out in the
Social Register
, before she says yes. Do you know what he says she does? She carries around a copy of the
Social Register
in her suitcase whenever she goes anywhere for a week-end, so she can check up on every guy she meets. And do you know what else she carries around in her suitcase?”

“What?”

“A
baby
pillow. A god-damned baby pillow. Some baby pillow she had when she was a kid. Stranahan told me she takes that god-damned baby pillow wherever she goes. He says she can't get to sleep at night unless she's got that baby pillow beside her in her bed.”

“No kidding?”

“That's what he said. And now, I mean that's
disgusting
, isn't it? What kind of a girl would do that? I mean, really, Stranahan said that even
he
was kind of disgusted when he found out about that. You should
see
that old baby pillow, Stranahan said. He said it was kind of all dirty, and old, and torn. It just looked like some old piece of rag, he said.”

Suddenly Hugh had laughed loudly. “Boy!” he said. “I can just see it! Can't you see it, Joe? Can't you see them all? Stranahan and Anne Cromwell, off in some funny old cook's room, making out—with her baby pillow. Can you see it?” He had rolled several times across the flat rock, clutching his sides, whooping with laughter. “Can you?” he said. “Can you see it, Joe?”

Joe had laughed too. “Well, I guess it is pretty funny. But she's still a damn' nice-looking girl, though.”

“Well,” Hugh said, still laughing, “I guess I wouldn't stand much chance with her either, if you've got to be in the
Social Register
to take her out.”

“Hell,” Joe said, “you're in it.”

“Am I?” He looked across at Joe, surprised.

“Sure. You're in it. There's a copy in the library and I looked you up. You're in it.”

“I didn't know that,” Hugh said.

“Well, you are.”

“Are you?”

“Hell, no.”

They lay in silence on the rock for a while, baking in the sun. Joe's mood had changed, and he seemed to be brooding about something, fiddling with the short forelock of his hair, pulling it straight down across his forehead.

After a while, Joe said, “Hugh, are you religious? Do you believe in God?”

Hugh thought about this for a minute. “Well,” he said finally, “I don't know how religious I am. But yes, I guess I believe in God.”

Joe said nothing.

“No,” Joe said. “No, I don't.”

“What do you believe in, then?”

“I believe in nature,” Joe said, looking at the falls that cascaded across the rocks into the pool. “I believe in the eternal laws of nature. And in the powers of the human will.”

“Well, I guess I believe in that, too,” Hugh said.

“Yes,” Joe said. “That's what I believe in. But I believe that man, not God, is all-powerful.”

“Oh,” Hugh said.

“I mean, like take you. What do you want to do? When you get out of college, I mean.”

“You mean seriously what do I want to do?”

“Yes, seriously.”

“Well,” Hugh said, “I do have one idea.”

“What is it?”

“Well,” Hugh said, “it's like this. I like sports. But—well, I can't play any sports very well, you see. It's not that I wouldn't like to, but I just can't play any of them really well, and I never will be able to. But I do like them, and maybe I'm even a little bit more interested in sports than guys like yourself, who can really play them. And so, for the last couple of years I've been thinking that what I'd really like to be someday is a sports reporter for a newspaper.”

“H'mm!” Joe said thoughtfully. “A sports reporter. Not much money in that, is there?”

“Oh, I don't know. Maybe not right at the start. But I guess you can work your way up in something like that, just like in anything else.”

“Well, maybe,” Joe said.

“What about you, Joe? What do you want to do?”

“Well,” Joe said, “I really think that this is the time of life to start planning—right now—and stop wasting time. I figure this is the time to start setting your sights towards what you want to get and to pay attention only to those things that you figure are going to help you get there, and skip all the things that aren't. I mean, it's the same way with girls. I figure—oh, I've fooled around with girls a lot, in the past. But now I'm going to be different because I figure that if you fool around—you know—too
much
with girls, it can make you dissatisfied with the wife you finally get. So I'm going to be a little more choosy from now on.”