When She Was Good (12 page)

She carried the paper bag with her to work that night, intending to drop it into a garbage can along the way, or toss it into a lot. But a rosary? a veil? a crucifix? Suppose the bag was found and brought to Father Damrosch? What would he think then? Perhaps the only reason he had refrained from calling her so far was because he felt it improper to interfere in a family already so strongly opposed to conversion; or perhaps he believed it improper to meddle in a private matter before his assistance had been asked for; or perhaps he had sensed all along that Lucy only half believed the things he told her and so would be immune to anything further he might have to say; or perhaps he had never really been that interested in her to begin with, thought of her as just another kid, and if she came to him, would only resume stuffing her full of catechism so as finally to stuff her into the confessional, where, like stupid Kitty Egan, she could ask forgiveness for sins that were not really her own and say prayers for people that did them absolutely no good. He would try to teach her to learn to love to suffer. But she hated suffering as much as she hated those who made her suffer, and she always would.

After work she hurried out Broadway toward the river. At
St. Mary’s she entered without genuflecting, placed the bag on the last bench, and ran. Outside, there was only one light on in the rectory … Was Father Damrosch standing behind one of the dark windows, looking down at her? She gave him a moment to call for her to come inside. And tell her what? This life is a prelude to the next? She didn’t believe it. There is no next life. This is what there is, Father Damrosch. This! Now! And they are not going to ruin it for me! I will not let them! I am their superior in every single way! People can call me all the names they want—I don’t care! I have nothing to confess, because I am right and they are wrong and I will not be destroyed!

One night two weeks later Father Damrosch came into Dale’s Dairy Bar for a black and white ice cream soda. Dale popped immediately out from the back to say hello, and to serve the priest personally, saying all the while what a great honor it was. He refused to take Father Damrosch’s money, but the father insisted, and when he left, one of the waitresses said to Lucy, “He’s absolutely
gorgeous
.” But Lucy only continued carefully refilling the sugar bowls.

The very next term Lucy took the music appreciation course, where she was prevailed upon by the teacher, Mr. Valerio, to become interested in the snare drum; so for the next year and a half the problem of what to do after school was solved by band. Either they were practicing in the auditorium, or on the field, or on Saturdays were off and away to a football game. There were always kids dashing in and out of bandroom, or shoving from behind onto the bus, or jamming together, epaulet to epaulet, in the band section, to stay warm while the game itself—which Lucy hated—wore interminably on. As a result, she was hardly ever alone around school to be pointed out as the kid who had done this or that terrible thing. Sometimes as she was rushing up out of the school basement with her drum, she would see Arthur Mufflin slinking around the basketball courts, or perched on his motorcycle, smoking. He had been thrown out of Winnisaw High
years ago, and was some kind of hero to the boys who used to call her “Gang Busters” and “J. Edgar Hoover.” But if he himself had any smart remarks to make she didn’t wait to hear them. She would just start in practicing the marching cadence and continue all the way to the field, beating it out so loud that whether he called to her or not, she didn’t even know.

But then, altogether unexpectedly, at the very start of her senior year, band was over. She had cut practice twice in two weeks to go up with Ellie Sowerby to The Grove; to Mr. Valerio she explained (her first lie in years) that her grandmother was ill and needed her—and he had swallowed it. So there was no tension between them at all; she was still his “dream girl.” Nor had the thrill gone out of marching up the field at the start of the afternoon, guiding her line, “Left … left … left, right, left,” and drumming out the muffled cadence till they reached the midfield stripe and launched into the National Anthem. It was the moment of the week she had come to live for, but not because of anything so ridiculous as school spirit—or even love of country, which she supposed she had, though no more than an ordinary person. It wasn’t the flag, snapping in the breeze, that gave her the gooseflesh so much as the sight of everybody in the stands rising as it moved down the field. She saw from the corner of her eye the arms sweep up, the hats swept off, and felt the drum thump-thumping softly against the guard on her leg, and the warmth of the sun fell on her hair where it poked out from under her black and silver hat with the yellow plume and oh, it was truly glorious—until that third Saturday in September, when they turned at the midfield stripe to face the stands (where everyone was silently standing facing them) and she tightened her hold on the smooth sticks, and Mr. Valerio climbed onto the folding chair that had been brought out to the field for him, and he looked down at them—“Band,” he whispered, smiling, “good afternoon”—and then in the moment before he raised his baton, she realized (for no good reason at all) that in the entire Liberty Center Consolidated High School Marching Band, there were only four girls: Eva Petersen, who
played the clarinet and had a wall-eye; the harp-bell player, Marilynne Elliott, whose brother was a big hero, but who herself stammered; and the new French-horn player of whom Mr. Valerio was so proud, poor Leola Krapp, who had that name and was only fourteen and already weighed two hundred pounds—“stripped,” the boys said. And Lucy.

On Monday she told Mr. Valerio that working in Dale’s Dairy Bar at night and having band practice in the afternoons wasn’t giving her time enough to study. “But we finish by four-thirty.” “Still,” she said, looking away. “But you managed last year, Lucy. And on the honor roll.” “I know. I’m really sorry, Mr. Valerio.” “Well, Lucy,” he said, “you and Bobby Witty are my mainstays. I don’t really know what to say. The big games are just coming up.” “I know, Mr. Valerio, but I think I have to. I think I better. College is coming up too, you know. And so I really have to knuckle down and make an all-out effort—for my scholarship. And I have to make the money at the Dairy Bar. If I could quit that, of course, then I could have this … but I just can’t.” “Well,” he said, lowering the lids of his big black eyes, “I don’t know what’s going to happen to the rhythm in that drum section. I hate even to think about it.” “I think Bobby can carry them, Mr. Valerio,” she said, feebly. “Well,” he sighed, “I’m not Fritz Reiner. I suppose this is what they mean by a high school band.” “I’m really sorry, Mr. Valerio.” “It’s just I don’t often get a person, boy or girl, who is serious about the snare drum the way you are. Most of them, if you’ll pardon my language, just beat the damn thing to death. You
listen
. You’ve been my dream girl, Lucy.” “Thank you, Mr. Valerio. I really appreciate that. That means a lot to me. I sincerely mean that.” Then she laid on his desk the box in which she had folded up her uniform. The silver hat with the black peak and the gold plume she carried in her hand. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Valerio.” He took the hat and put it on his desk. “My drums,” she said, weakening by the moment, “are in bandroom.”

Mr. Valerio sat there flicking the plume on her hat with one finger. Oh, he was such a nice man. He was a bachelor with a
slight limp who had come to them all the way from a music school in Indianapolis, Indiana, and his whole life was band. He was so patient, and so dedicated; he was either smiling or sad, but never angry, never mean, and now she was letting him down, and for a selfish, stupid, unimportant reason. “Well, so long, Mr. Valerio. Oh, I’ll stop by and say hello, and see how things are going—don’t worry about that.”

Suddenly he took a very deep breath and stood up. He seemed to have collected himself. He took one of her hands in his two and shook it, trying to look happy. “Well, it was good having you aboard, Dream Girl.”

The tears rolled down her cheeks; she wanted to kiss him. Why was she doing this? Band was her second home. Her first home.

“But,” Mr. Valerio was saying, “I suppose we are all going to survive.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “You take care now, Lucy.”

“Oh, you take care, Mr. Valerio!”

A little girl with braids was sitting in the swing on the porch when Lucy came running up the front stairs. “Hi!” the child said. Whoever was already at the piano stopped in the middle of a bar as she slammed the door and took the stairs, two at a time.

As she turned the key in the bedroom door she heard the piano start up again downstairs. Instantly she pulled out her desk chair, stood up on it, and looked at her legs in the mirror over the dresser. They had hardly any shape; she was just too short and too skinny. But what could she do about that? She had been five one and a half now for two years, and as for weight, she didn’t like to eat, at least not at home. Besides, if she got any heavier her legs would just get round, like sausages—that’s what happened to short girls.

She climbed down off the chair. She looked at herself straight on in the mirror. Her face was so square—and boring. The word “pug” had been invented to describe her nose. Eva Petersen had tried to give her that as a nickname in the band, but Lucy had told her to cut it out, which she did instantly,
what with her own wall-eye. A pug nose wasn’t that bad, actually, except that where hers turned up at the end it was too thick. And so was her jaw, for a girl at any rate. Her hair was a kind of yellowish-white, and she knew that bangs didn’t help all that squareness any, but when she lifted them up (as she did now), her forehead was so bony. Well, at least her eyes were nice—or would have been had they belonged to someone else, though that was the trouble: they
did
belong to someone else. Sometimes she used to look at the mirror in the bandroom, and with her hat on she would be terrified by the resemblance she bore to her father—particularly those two round blue stains beneath the steep pale brow.

She had freckles too, but no pimples—her only physical blessing.

She stepped backward so as to see all of herself again. All she ever wore was that plaid skirt with the big safety pin in front, and her gray sweater with the sleeves pushed up, and her ratty loafers. She had three other skirts, but they were even older. And she didn’t care about clothes. Why should she? Oh, why had she quit band?

She clutched at the back of her blouse so that it pulled tight across her front. Her breasts had started growing when she was eleven; then to her relief, a year later, they had just stopped. But weren’t they going to start again? She did know an exercise that supposedly could enlarge them. The health teacher, Miss Fichter, had demonstrated it to them in class. It was out of
American Posture Monthly, a
magazine with a picture on the cover of little twin boys in white briefs, standing on their heads and smiling. There was nothing there to cause giggling, as far as Miss Fichter could see, and that went for the exercise as well, whose purpose was all-around health and attractiveness. If only they got into the habit of exercising their muscles when they were young, they would always be proud of themselves physically. Too many teen-age girls in this school
slouch
, said Miss Fichter, and she said it as though she really meant
lie
or
steal
.

You did the exercise with your hands out in front of your
chest: first you pushed the right fist into the open left palm, and then the left fist into the open right palm. You did this twenty-five times, each time chanting in rhythm, as Miss Fichter did, “I must, I must, I must respect my bust.”

In front of her mirror, behind the locked door, and without the words, Lucy gave it a try. How long before it began to work? “Da
dum
,” she said, “da
dum …
dz
-dum
, dz
-dum
, da-
dum
.”

Oh, how she would miss band! How she would miss Mr. Valerio! But she simply couldn’t march any more with those girls—they were freaks. And she wasn’t! And nobody was going to say she was either! From now on it would just be her and Eleanor Sowerby together. In Ellie’s room was a bed with a white organdy canopy and a dressing table with a mirror top, where they would do their homework on the afternoons when it rained; on nice afternoons they would sit out in the back, reading together in the sun, or just walk around The Grove, doing nothing except looking at lawns and gabbing. If by the time they got back it was dark, most likely the Sowerbys would invite her to join them for supper. On Sundays they would ask her to come with them to church, and stay on afterward for dinner. Mrs. Sowerby was so soft-spoken and attentive, she had called her “dear” the very afternoon they were introduced—to which Lucy had nearly, idiotically, responded with a curtsy. And Mr. Sowerby had come noisily into the house at five—“Pappy Yokum’s home!” he’d called, and then had given his wife a loud wet kiss right on the mouth, even though she was a plump woman with gray hair who, Ellie said, had to wear rubber stockings to keep her veins in. It was Ellie’s current joke to call him Pappy Yokum, and his to call her Daisy Mae, and silly as this struck her, Lucy had nonetheless found herself very much in awe of what appeared at last to be a happy family.

So she quit band. And Ellie dumped her. “Oh, hi there,” Ellie would say as they passed in the corridors, and then just keep walking. For a week Lucy was able to tell herself that Ellie was only waiting for her to return the invitation. But how
could she invite her home if she didn’t even get a chance to talk to her? And even if she was able to, did she want to? One day, after two solid weeks of being ignored, she saw Ellie sitting in the cafeteria at the same table with some of the shallowest and silliest girls in the entire school, and so she thought to herself, well, if
those
are the kind of girls she really prefers, et cetera, et cetera.

Then in late February she found the note slipped down through the air vents into her locker.