5:45 to Suburbia (3 page)

“Of course it hurt!”

“It
really
hurt, didn’t it?”

“Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“I don’t know, Chazz boy. It’s always given me a kind of kick when you mind things. Why is that, do you suppose?”

“I don’t know. Just get away!”

“I just wanted to show you I’ll miss you next term, Chazz boy.”

“You have a great way of doing it.”

“It’s
my
way, Chazzy. I get sort of a pleasure in seeing you wince. It’s like — it’s like — pulling your own hair to hurt yourself.”

Then abruptly Avery stopped, removed his arm from Charlie’s shoulder, hoiked and spat at the ground in a quick, defiant gesture. His eyes, when he looked back at Charlie, were dark and shining, the lucid color of them nearly blacked; and he said, “I could rub your face in that if I wanted to, Chazz.”

“You’re — crazy!” Charlie managed, staring at Avery.

“You should be like me,” Avery said, “bold as brass and not giving a damn for anybody.”

“Before I’d be like you I’d drown myself.”

Avery laughed: “
I
almost drowned you, Chazzy, didn’t I? Back there. Do you know I’m sorry for it … in a way … but only in a way, Chazzy.”

He gave Charlie a mock salute and sauntered away from him.

It was the closest Charlie Gibson had ever come to seeing Otto Avery upset. And very vaguely Charlie understood that the reason was his leaving Kedd. Beyond that, he could only puzzle at Avery’s mind; and oddly, for that slow second as he stood looking after Avery, feel sorry for him. And then, afraid. Of what? Charlie didn’t know, but he had that sort of fear one feels when he looks back and realizes for the first time that at some point in his past he had been in great danger and never realized it.

• • •

Charlie never knew Avery was at the University until he saw him during the fraternity rush week. It was not at all unlikely for him to be there; Avery’s parents lived in St. Louis; nonetheless, it shook Charlie up to see him there. Charlie himself was the real interloper, for he was from upstate New York, but against his father’s violent objections, he had come to Missouri to study at the Journalism School. Avery surprised him a second time by announcing he too was studying journalism.

“But I always thought you wanted to be an actor,” Charlie said, after they had shaken hands in the DKE living room and begun what Charlie felt would result in an awkward conversation.

“Pater wouldn’t hear of it.” Avery smiled. “But there’s a fair drama department here, and I manage to work off my thespian impulses. You look good, Chazz. You’ve grown up.”

“Yes, I have. And grown out of that name.”

“Oh, you’ll always be Chazz to me…. Remember how I used to rag you at Kedd?”

“Quite clearly.”

“I was an awful nincompoop, wasn’t I? I hope I’ve grown up too since then…. But say, you’ll want to meet the boys. Come along, Chazz. We have a fine bunch here.”

As he followed Avery, Charlie thought of that incident at Kedd, thought: he
has
changed; I’d rather like him, if he’d only stop addressing me as Chazz. And ultimately, Charlie pledged Delta Kappa Epsilon, with Otto Avery sponsoring him.

Of course, Avery hadn’t changed at all; not really. He had simply expanded; and there were several among Charlie’s pledge class whom Avery chose to “oversee.” He was less obvious than he had been with Charlie at Kedd, but the effect was the same, if scattered. There was always one boy he was riding, in that familiar joking way of his, that pretended amiability, but invariably managed through some sly strategy to show the boy up as a fool; speciously dependent upon Avery for protection. He had a habit of inviting confidences, and then exposing them before a host of people, tossing them in much as one peppers a salad, as though there were nothing unusual about his mentioning that this boy was yet a virgin; (“I think it’s a very noble quality,” Avery would announce, while the boy writhed in shame and surprise at the suddenness of his exposure. “There’re not many of them left among males, except for lilies, of course, and we all know he’s no lily.”) or that that boy had a drastic fear of height (“I think it takes a brave man to admit such a thing,” Avery would say. “After all, most people with silly fears like that are sissies, but we know he’s no sissy. He’s just afraid of heights.”).

During Hell Week, Avery took charge with an enthusiasm unmatched by any of the others. The three or four scapegoats he had selected were the objects of the most ludicrous and cruel tortures, One very shy freshman was stripped of his clothes and left on a downtown street corner, pushed out of a car, and made to run frantically for some sort of shelter. And all the while Avery insisted: “He’s a great guy, but we’ve got to get him over the complex he has. I only want to help him.” Adding, as was his way: “I’m going through more torture than he is, just thinking about the means we have to employ.”

No, Avery had not changed one whit; Charlie really knew this when Avery became interested in Mitzie Thompson.

Mitzie, like Charlie, was a freshman. She was one of the first girls Charlie met when he came to the University and it became Charlie’s habit to wait for her after class, to walk along with her between classes and to linger for hours over coffee with her in the evening after the library closed. One such evening, Avery approached them, and sat with them at their table.

“I’ve been noticing Charlie’s interest in you,” he said to Mitzie. “I’m glad he chose someone like you. Charlie’s one of my favorite people.”

From that evening on, Mitzie and Avery were a pair.

A month later, they were pinned.

Charlie never forgot Mitzie — or the fact that he was in love with her. He wrote about her — pages about her in his diary (“How gentle a thing is my love for her, and fragile, so that just to see her can suffice to start the rush of blood to my pulse and make my mind miss Mitzie, though she is across from me with someone else and all through me inside.”) and he never walked a block in Columbia, Missouri, without being aware of how he would look to her should they meet; of what he would say; and in fantasy Charlie imagined their commune (he chose such a word for it), composed poems as though it had already happened and rehashed every brief conversation they had ever had, making more of it and improving upon it to such an extent that neither one would have recognized the other by the things that Charlie made them say.

• • •

“All right, Chazz.” Avery stretched after he had copied the poem, and tossed the pencil and second sheet on the bed. “That does it now. I’ll run along and see my Sheba…. Or should I say
yours.’’

“Are you going to show it to her, Avery?”

“What do you think, Chazzy?”

As Avery left, he was singing:

W
HILE
participating in a military maneuver over Kelly Field, Texas, on March the sixth, 1925, Charles Lindbergh was forced to abandon his plane and descend to earth by parachute, thus becoming automatically a member of the select “Caterpillar Club” composed of aviators forced to bail out while in flight.

On the evening of that same day, after participating in a romantic maneuver of her own, which ended in her being pinned to Otto Avery, Mitzie Thompson made an entry in her five-year diary:

Three months after that entry she wrote this:

Mitzie Thompson, in the beginning of her sophomore year, was voted the girl with the most “It,” and she was still pinned to Otto Avery, though less and less did she notice the fact he wasn’t saying “I love you” as much as he used to after their good-night kisses.

With Avery she was very comfortable, and sometimes on week-end nights they didn’t even bother making love any more.

With Avery, she enjoyed a certain amount of freedom which she somehow imagined made her a very blasé young lady. During THAT TIME OF THE MONTH, she quite nonchalantly mentioned that she had cramps, and Avery, in turn, quite nonchalantly did little things to comfort her — offered aspirin; kissed her only on the forehead (as though it would be unholy under the circumstances to kiss her on the mouth) and frequently patted her tummy lightly and inquired: “Is my girl hurting?”

With Avery she was disenchanted at those times when she was sure he loved her more than she loved him; and enchanted when his eye strayed to another. But when he was behaving as he was on the evening of March 6, 1925, a few moments before he reached into his pocket and took out the poem Charlie Gibson had written, Mitzie was simply bored.

They were having coffee at a campus café across from the Administration building. Otto and Mitzie had been to an evening lecture on Hemingway, the new writer who had been causing such a stir lately, and subsequently inspiring everyone to talk in tough understatements out of the corners of their mouths. They had come into the café alone, and Mitzie had rather fancied they would take a table alone and indulge in a somewhat intense conversation centering on this Hemingway. She had been looking forward to it. For one thing she loved to picture herself holding intense conversations at a table alone with Avery, and to imagine people saying: “They must be awfully interesting, those two.” And for another, she liked to listen to Avery’s voice. It was fabulous; Avery was convinced radio was here to stay and he wanted to get a job in radio after he was graduated, so he was always practicing, imitating the announcers on the radio, and Mitzie liked to listen to him and fantasize herself
years
ahead, when someone would be exclaiming: “Oh, really! Why I hear him every evening. So you’re Otto Avery’s wife!”

But the moment after they had entered the café and put their coffees on a tray, Mitzie knew they wouldn’t sit alone. She saw Avery’s eyes become alert once he spotted two of his fraternity brothers at a table in the rear; and then he said in that snidely sly way of his — whenever he thought he might amuse himself by being cruel: “Oh, look there! There’s Fodor and O’Brien. Let’s join
them.”

She knew too, even before they got to the table, that Avery would ride them, that he would begin again his annoying habit of teasing and ridiculing them in that ostensibly tolerant and amicable manner of his. He seemed to take some perverse pleasure in making buffoons of certain boys, and Fodor and O’Brien were among them.

Whenever Mitzie Thompson was bored, she flattened her short black flapper-cut hair to her pretty head by smoothing it over and over with the palm of her hand, and as she sipped her coffee beside Avery then, facing the two scapegoats he had chosen for the evening, she was doing just that.

“Whatever are you reading Fitzgerald for?” Avery was saying in his supercilious tone to the intimidated O’Brien, who was blushing down at a library copy of
The Beautiful and Damned — ”I
wouldn’t waste my time on him. He’s not going to be at all important.”

“I don’t mind him,” O’Brien managed.

“No, I suspect you don’t. I suspect
you
think he’s ripping. O’Brien, your tastes are so inconceivably mediocre. I wonder why you even try. Why
do
you try, O’Brien? Why?”

“Don’t let him ride you, O’Brien,” Mitzie had put in. “I like old Scotty myself. He suits me to a T.”

O’Brien looked pleased, but Avery said, “It’s all right for Mitz to think like that. Mitz is pretty. She can think any way she wants to because she’s pretty. But you, O’Brien.
You’re
not pretty, are you? Do you wish you were, O’Brien?”

“Why don’t you stick to literature and stop getting personal,” Fodor dared defend his colleague.

“Oh ho, so you’re afraid we’ll put things on a personal plane, eh, Fodor?” Avery grinned maliciously at Fodor. “Afraid we’ll hurt little O’Brien’s feelings, eh, Fodor? Well, I admire loyalty. In fact I’ve always admired the way you two stick together so much. Ever notice, Mitz, how these two stick together? They’re inseparable, really. I mean, I’m not criticizing them, or insinuating anything. I mean it in the nicest way. Fodor and O’Brien. Just like Mister Gallagher and Mr. Shean —
in a way,
eh?”

“What the devil’s the matter with you, Avery?” Fodor snapped.

“Oh, nothing with
me.”
Avery chuckled.

So it went; and Mitzie sat and listened and smoothed her hair to her head and didn’t listen. She daydreamed, and felt vaguely sorry for the two boys. Neither of them were Avery’s match; otherwise he would never have picked on them; both were horrible bookworms, and rather weak, wilting types, suitable prey for Avery. Mitzie wished he wouldn’t have the inclination to tease such types, but he did, and she would have to tolerate him because they were pinned. It was like being married.

Whenever her mind wandered from the conversation at the table, it seemed inevitably to drift back to a discussion she and Avery had had a week or so past. They had been talking about what they were going to do for Easter; and Avery was saying that the idea of going home bored him. He believed he’d go quail hunting with a group of the boys. Mitzie said that it would be nice, wouldn’t it, if they could go off somewhere together, off to a hotel or something?

“What for?” He’d seemed surprised.

“Well, to be together.”

“But
what for?
What would we do?”

“It’s just that we never have been. Not overnight. We’ve always been in cars or woods or fraternity-house cellars.”

“And what magic, pray, would be added to our relationship by the fact of a night spent surreptitiously in some hotel room?”

“We could — well, have breakfast together. We’ve never done that. We’ve never awakened together, Ave. It’d be — fun.”

“Oh,” Avery said, “I see. Then your idea of fun for Easter is kissing one another’s hung-over mouths every morning, and afterward sipping orange juice atop wrinkled sheets sprinkled with toast crumbs.”

“You always spoil everything, Ave. I wish you wouldn’t.”

“And I wish you’d grow up!”

It had been the closest they’d ever come to an argument — and that had been the only saving fact about it because Mitzie was worried at the fact they never seemed to argue. Ave simply wouldn’t. But it had hurt her quite a lot more than she’d realized at the time, and she would find herself dwelling on it in odd moments — and asking her five-year diary: 1) Could he really love me if he doesn’t want me there in the morning? 2) Why does he mock me whenever I’m a bit romantic? and 3) That thing he said about hung-over mouths … It strikes me he always drinks before we love! ! ! Why ? ? ? Or should I just be glad he can get hootch. Ann K.’s boy friend hardly ever can; and when he does, he always gets sick. I couldn’t stand it if Ave were ever to vomit. Better count my lucky stars.

“Hey — ” O’Brien eventually interrupted the conversation at the table — ”there’s Charlie Gibson coming in. Let’s hail him.”

“Where?” Avery said, swinging around sharply to see. “By God,
that
reminds me.” He began to fumble frantically through his slicker pockets. “I have a little something here that’ll be of interest to you, darling.”

He nudged Mitzie, smiling, and then took out a piece of folded yellow paper.

“I say, O’Brien,” he said, “go and get Chazz; have him join us. Only don’t tell him
I’m
here. You see, it’s his birthday and I have a surprise planned for him.”

O’Brien got up to go after Gibson, and Avery unfolded the paper.

“Mitzie, listen to this. You too, Fodor. You’re a scholar. See what you think of this bit of poetry.” He began to read the lines slowly, forcing as much emotion into his voice as he could:

Mitzie Thompson listened to it with some surprise, and Fodor frowned thoughtfully. But toward the end, as Avery was reading: “I love you when your arms hold me — ” Charlie Gibson arrived at the table with O’Brien, and he stood stick-straight, staring, with his face beet red, and his coffee cup shaking.

“Ah, there you are, Chazzy,” Avery said. “I was just reading your poem.”

“Sit down,” O’Brien said. “Aren’t you going to sit down?”

Fodor said, “You write that, Gibson? Not bad.”

“I think it’s awfully good too,” Mitzie Thompson said. “What’s the matter?”

Charlie Gibson just stood there. He couldn’t even look up from his coffee, or hold the cup still.

“It is good,” Avery said expansively, “it’s
very
good.” He put his arm around Mitzie. “And do you know who it’s written about?”

“Don’t embarrass him, Ave. He has a right to a private life.”

“But it’s written to you, my darling. The title is
mitzie before breakfast.”

At that, Charlie Gibson turned away abruptly, managed to walk four booths ahead and then sink down into the fifth, sitting like a stone with his back to them.

“Oh, Ave! Oh, gosh, that was
terrible!”

“Of course.” Avery spoke to Fodor and O’Brien now, “The amusing part of it is that Chazz boy has hardly had six words with Mitzie since he was a freshman. But you know he’s in love with her. He’s in love with her and he imagines — ” Avery slapped the paper with the back of his hand — ”this sort of thing.”

“What an ass!” Fodor said, somewhat relieved that the spotlight had been turned on Gibson now.

O’Brien said, “Well, read it over. I didn’t hear it all.”

And it was then and there, precisely at that moment, that Mitzie Thompson felt a sudden surge of emotion sweep through her; a very sad, tender, gentle emotion; an emotion that made her, she thought, one with Dante’s Beatrice, Petrarch’s Laura, and Tristram’s Isolt; and besides, it had been called
mitzie before breakfast!
It had mentioned awakening together, and for one solid year a man had loved her without her knowing it. She, the girl with the most “It,” had inspired a poet. At Columbia, Missouri, in the month of March in the year 1925, an incident had occurred which might well be recorded in the literary annals of the future — ”…
was reported that the young poet was so shy in the presence of his beloved that he fled — ”

“Where the devil are
you
going?” Otto Avery shouted as Mitzie got up suddenly from the table.

“She’s crying,” O’Brien said.

“What’s she crying about?” Fodor asked.

Otto Avery said, “She’s being dramatic again.” He shrugged. “What’s the date anyway? Probably her period.”

“It’s the sixth,” O’Brien said. “The sixth of March. Is it really Charlie’s birthday?”

And so, on Charlie Gibson’s eighteenth birthday, Mitzie Thompson ran weeping past him in the Ankle Inn Café, and Charlie Gibson ran trembling after her.

In the street where he caught her by the arm, he looked at his fingers clutching her coat, and then dropped his hand from her as though he had touched a burning coal. He blushed even more and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to — ”

“That’s
all right,” she said.

She blew her nose.

Charlie stood there.

She put the handkerchief back in her pocket. Neither one knew what to say or where to go from there. A group of boys and girls, their arms wound around one another, feigning intoxication, staggered by singing bois-trously,
Yes, We Have No Bananas.

“Everybody’s singing that dumb song,” Charlie said, “but nobody I want to know is.”

“Me too,” she said. “Nobody I want to know is either.”

With a common bond acknowledged, they began to walk along together — Mitzie Thompson and Charlie Gibson — she, on the verge of her second affair; he, still a virgin.