When She Was Good (15 page)

“I love this,” Roy said. “It’s just out. The guy who wrote it is supposed to live just like that.”

“What is it?”

“ ‘Nature Boy.’ Just what the guy who wrote it actually is. It’s really got a great message. Listen to the words.”

“Lucy,” Roy whispered, “let’s sit in the back.”

“No. Positively no.”

“Oh, hell, you don’t have any respect for a mood—do you know that?”

“But we don’t
sit
in the back, Roy. We tried to, but you really want to lie
down
in the back.”

“Because the back doesn’t have a steering wheel, Lucy, and it’s more comfortable—and it’s plenty clean too, because I cleaned it out myself this afternoon.”

“Well, I’m not going back there—”

“Well, I am! And if you want to sit up here alone, go right ahead!”

“Oh, Roy—”

But he was out of the car and into the back seat, where he
promptly stretched out, his head against one door and his feet through the open window opposite. “That’s right, I’m lying down. Why shouldn’t I? It’s my car.”

“I want to go home. You said you’d take me home. This is ridiculous.”

“To you, sure. Boy, no wonder you and Ellie are friends. You’re a real team.” He mumbled something she couldn’t understand.

“I’d like to know what you said just then, Roy.”

“I said two c.t.’s, that’s what.”

“And what are they?”

“Oh,” he moaned, “forget it.”

“Roy,” she said, turning on her knees, now in real anger, “we went through this last week.”

“Right! Right! We sat in the back. And did anything terrible happen?”

“Because I wouldn’t let it,” she said.

“So then don’t let it this time,” he said. “Look, Lucy,” and he sat up and tried to take hold of her head, which she pulled away. “I respect what you want, you know that. But all you want to do,” he said, slumping backward, “is to get your picture taken, and get driven home at night, and what the other person feels … well, I happen to
feel
something! Oh, forget the whole mess, really.”

“Oh, Roy,” and she opened the front door and got out of the car, as she had on that awful night the week before. Roy threw open the back door so violently that it careened on its hinges.

“Get in,” he whispered.

In the back he told her how much he could love her. He was pulling at her uniform buttons.

“Everybody says things like that when they want what you want, Roy. Stop. Please stop. I don’t want to do this. Honestly. Please.”

“But it’s the
truth
,” he said, and his hand, which had touched down familiarly on her knee, went like a shot up her leg.

“No,
no—
”

“Yes!” he cried triumphantly. “
Please!
”

And then he began to say trust me to her, over and over, and please, please, and she did not see how she could stop him from doing what he was doing to her without reaching up and sinking her teeth into his throat, which was directly over her face. He kept saying please and she kept saying please, and she could hardly breathe or move, he was over her with all his weight, and saying now don’t fight me, I could love you, Angel, Angel, trust me, and suddenly into her mind came the name, Babs Egan.

“Roy—!”

“But I love you. Actually now I do.”

“But what are you doing!”

“I’m not doing anything, oh, my Angel, my Angel—”

“But you will.”

“No, no, my Angel, I won’t.”

“But you’re doing it
now!
Stop! Roy,
stop
that!” she screamed.

“Oh, damn it,” he said, and sat up, and allowed her to pull her legs out from under him.

She looked out the window at her side; the glass had fogged over. She was afraid to look over at him. She didn’t know whether his trousers were just down, or completely off. She could hardly speak. “Are you crazy?”

“What do you mean, crazy? I’m a human being! I’m a man!”

“You can’t do something like that—by force! That’s what I mean! And I don’t want to do it anyway. Roy, get back in front. Dress yourself. Take me home. Now!”

“But you just wanted to. You were all ready to.”

“You had my arms pinned. You had me trapped! I didn’t want anything! And you weren’t even going to—to be careful! Are you absolutely
insane?
I’m not doing that!”

“But I would use something!”

She was astonished. “You would?”

“I tried to get some today.”

“You
did?
You mean you were planning this all day long?”

“No! No! Well, I didn’t get them—did I? Well, did I?”

“But you tried. You were thinking about it and planning it all day—”

“But it didn’t
work!
”

“Please, I don’t understand you—and I don’t want to. Take me home. Put your trousers on,
please
.”

“They’re on. They were always on. Darn it, you don’t even know what I went through today. All you know is your own way, that’s all. Boy, you are another Ellie—another c.t.!”

“Which is
what!
”

“I don’t use that kind of language in front of girls, Lucy! I respect you! Doesn’t that mean anything to you at all? You know where I was this afternoon? I’ll tell you where, and I’m not ashamed either—because it happened to involve respect for you. Whether you know it or not.”

And then, while she pulled her slip down and rearranged her skirt, he told his story. For almost an hour he had waited outside Forester’s for Mrs. Forester to go upstairs and leave her goofy old husband alone at the counter. But once Roy got inside, it turned out that Mrs. Forester had only gone back into the storeroom, and she was up by the register ready to wait on him before he could even turn around and walk out.

“So what could I do? I bought a pack of Blackjack Gum. And a tin of Anacin. Well, what else was I supposed to do? In every store in town my father’s name is a household word. Every place I go it’s ‘Hi, Roy, how’s G.I. Joe?’ And people see me with
you
, Lucy. I mean, they know we’re going together, you know. So who would they think it was for? Don’t you think I think about that? There’s your reputation to consider too, don’t you think? There are a lot of things I happen to think about, Lucy, that maybe don’t cross your mind, sitting in school all day.”

Somehow he had confused her. What really did she want him to do? To have bought one of those things? He certainly wasn’t going to use it on her. She wasn’t going to let him
plan
what he was going to do to her hours in advance, and then act as though the whole thing was the passion of the moment. She
wasn’t going to be used or tricked, or be treated like some street tramp either.

“But you were overseas,” she was saying.

“The Aleutians! The Aleutian Islands, Lucy—across the Bering Sea from the U.S.S.R.! Do you know what the motto is up there? ‘A woman behind every tree’—but
there are no trees
. Get it? What do you think I did up there? I made out order forms all day. I played eighteen thousand ping-pong games. What’s the
matter
with you!” he said, sinking in disgust into the seat. “Overseas,” he said sourly. “
You
think I was up in some harem.”

“… But what about with someone else?”

“I never did it with anyone else! I’ve never done it in my entire life, all the way!”

“Well,” she said softly, “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, it’s the awful truth. I’m twenty years old, almost twenty-one, but that doesn’t mean I go around doing it with every girl I see. I have to
like
the person, first of all. You listen to stupid Ellie, but Ellie doesn’t know what she’s talking about. The reason, Lucy, I don’t take Monkey Littlefield out is because I don’t happen to respect her. If you want the truth. And I don’t like her. And I don’t even know her! Oh, forget it. Let’s just go, let’s just call it quits. If you’re going to listen to every story about me you hear, if you can’t see the kind of person I am, Lucy, then pardon my language, but the hell with it.”

He liked her. He actually did like her. He said people knew that they were going together. She hadn’t realized. She was going with Roy Bassart, who was twenty and had been in the service. And people knew it.

“—over in Winnisaw,” she was saying. Oh, why was she going on and on with this subject?

“Sure, I suppose they have them over in Winnisaw, they probably give them out on the streets in Winnisaw.”

“Well, you could have driven over, that’s all I mean.”

“But why should I? Even going into Forester’s on Broadway is going too far, as far as you’re concerned. So what’s the
sense? Who am I kidding? Myself? I spent a whole afternoon hanging around outside waiting for that old hag to disappear, and it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. You’d only hate me worse. Right? So where does that leave me? Well, what is it you want to say, Lucy? That you’d say yes, if I had something?”

“No!”

“Okay, now we know where we stand! Fine!” He threw open the back door on his side. “Let’s go home! I can’t take any more of this, really. I happen to be a man and I happen to have certain physical needs, as well as emotional needs, you know, and I don’t have to take this from any high school kid. All we do is discuss every move I make, step by step. Is that romantic to you? Is that your idea of a man-woman relationship? Well, it’s not mine. Sex is one of the highest experiences anybody can have, man or woman, physical or mental. But you’re just another one of those typical American girls who thinks it’s obscene. Well, let’s go, Typical American Girl. I’m really a good-natured, easygoing guy, Lucy, so it really takes something to get me in a state like this—but I’m in it, all right, so let’s go!”

She didn’t move. He was really and truly angry, not like somebody who was trying to deceive you or trick you.

“Well, what’s the matter now?” he asked. “Well, what did I do wrong now?”

“I just want you to know, Roy,” she said, “that it isn’t that I don’t like you.”

He made the sour face. “No?”

“No.”

“Well, you sure do hide it.”

“I don’t,” she said.

“You do!”

“… But what if you don’t like me? Really? How can I know you’re telling the truth?”

“I told you, I
don’t lie!
”

When she didn’t respond, he came closer to her.

“You say love,” Lucy said. “But you don’t mean love.”

“I get carried away, Lucy. That’s not a lie. I get carried away, by the mood. I like music, so it affects me. So that’s not a ‘lie.’ ”

What had he just said? She couldn’t even understand …

He climbed back into the car. He put his hand on her hair. “And what’s wrong with getting carried away by the mood anyway?”

“But when the mood leaves you?” she asked. She felt as though she weren’t there, as though this were all happening a long time ago. “Tomorrow, Roy?”

“Oh, Lucy,” he said, and began kissing her again. “Oh, Angel.”

“And what about Monkey Littlefield?”

“I told you, I told you, I don’t even know her—oh, Angel,
please
,” he said, sliding her down against the new slipcovers he himself had installed. “It’s you, it’s you, it’s you and only you—”

“But tomorrow—”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, I promise, and the next day, and the next—”

“Roy, I
can’t—
oh stop—”

“But I’m not.”

“But you are!”

“Angel,” he moaned into her ear.

“Roy, no, please.”

“It’s okay,” he whispered, “it’s all right—”

“Oh, it’s not!”

“But it is, oh, it is, I swear,” he said, and then he assured her that he would use a technique he had heard about up in the Aleutians, called interruption. “Just trust me,” he pleaded, “trust me, trust me,” and, alas, she wanted to so badly, she did.

A week before Lucy’s graduation the news arrived: Roy had been accepted at the Britannia School of Photography and Design, which had been established, according to the catalogue and brochure, in 1910. They were delighted to enroll
him for the September session, they said, and returned with the letter of acceptance the dozen studies of Lucy he had enclosed with his application.

At the little impromptu party he gave that evening in Roy’s honor—Ellie and Joe, Roy and Lucy, Mr. and Mrs. Bassart—Uncle Julian said they all owed a debt of gratitude to Lucy Nelson for being so photogenic. She deserved a prize too, so he gave her a kiss. He was still somebody whom she hadn’t made up her mind she actually approved of, and when she saw his lips coming her way she had a bad moment in which she almost pulled away. It wasn’t just Mr. Sowerby’s behavior with his wife, or his language, that caused her to be slightly repulsed; nor the fact that someone five foot five and smelling of cigars wasn’t particularly her idea of attractive. It was that during the last month there had been several occasions when she thought she had caught him looking too long at her legs. Could Roy be telling his uncle what they were doing? She just couldn’t believe it; he might know they parked up at Passion Paradise, but so did Ellie and Joe Whetstone, and all they did was neck. At least that’s what Ellie
said
—and surely what her parents believed. No, nobody knew anything at all, and Mr. Sowerby was probably only looking at the floor, or at nothing, those times she thought he was looking at her legs. After all she was just eighteen, and he was Eleanor’s father, and her legs had no shape, or so she thought, and it was ridiculous to imagine, as she had when she had found herself alone with him in the house one Saturday afternoon, that he was going to follow her up to Ellie’s room and try to do something to her. She was getting sex on the brain, too. She and Roy really had to stop what they had begun, she just knew it. He liked it so much he was dragging her up there every night, and maybe she liked it too, but liking it wasn’t the issue … What was, then? That’s what Roy asked, whenever she started saying, “No, no, not tonight.” But why not tonight, if last night?

Anyway, when Mr. Sowerby kissed her it was loud and on the cheek, and everyone was laughing, and Mrs. Sowerby was right there watching, trying to laugh too. It was as unlike
Lucy as anything could be—in a way it was one of the strangest things she had ever done—but in the confusion that came of being told in public that she was attractive, in the excitement that came of being so much a part of this celebration, of this family, of this house, she shrugged her shoulders, turned bright red and kissed Uncle Julian back. Roy applauded. “Bravo!” he cried, and Mrs. Sowerby stopped trying to laugh.