Daughters of Eve (14 page)

"Good idea. I'll call you later. Is she going to the dance on Saturday?"

"I don't think so," Tammy said. "George Finley asked her, but she said she doesn't feel like it."

"See if you can get her to change her mind. It would be good for her to get out and into things, regardless. Maybe we could all go together. Would that work out?"

"Fine with me," Tammy said. "I'll talk with her and then check with Kevin. I'll talk to you tonight."

"Sure. Fine." Ann stood quiet a moment as Tammy walked away from her. It was scary, she thought, how quickly changes occurred in life. She and Kelly Johnson had been close friends for years, long before either of them knew Tammy. She had slept over so many nights at the Johnson home that the extra twin bed in Kelly's room was as familiar to her as her own. She had gone with the Johnsons on family campouts and sat with them around campfires roasting marshmallows and singing to Mr. Johnson's banjo. It was Mrs. Johnson who had taught her how to pluck her eyebrows one hysterical evening when she and Kelly had been twelve and experimenting with cosmetics, and Mr. Johnson who had sat with them at the kitchen table patiently explaining the mysteries of first-year algebra. To Ann the Johnson home had radiated the same stability as her own—more, perhaps, since the shadow of ill health had come to hang over her father and forced her to the realization that one day her mother would be alone. She had never conceived of Kelly's mother facing such a situation.

With a sigh, Ann continued down the hall to the art room. The door was partially open, and Irene was seated behind her desk, correcting papers. She glanced up quickly when Ann came in as though alert for her arrival, and, noting the pile of books in her arms, gestured toward the table.

"You'd better set those down before your arms snap off. You're pretty heavily laden for a week-night, aren't you?"

"I thought I'd better do some studying while I can. The weekend's a total loss by the time we get through decorating the gym and cleaning it up again on Sunday." Ann dropped her books on the table at which they sat for meetings and gave Irene her full attention. "You wanted to see me about something?"

"Yes, but don't look so worried. It's something pleasant. Do you remember giving me some sketches back in the early fall? There was one of crows on a fence and another of a man on a tractor?"

"Yes, sure, I remember," Ann said. "You said you liked them."

"I did," Irene told her. "They were extremely well done, considering they were the work of someone with almost no formal training. I liked them well enough so that I wanted to share them. I sent them to a former teacher of mine, John Griffith. He's the head of the Institute of Graphic Arts in Boston."

"You did?" Ann said in bewilderment. "Why?"

"Because I wanted him to see the kind of talent young women have in Modesta, Michigan." Irene's eyes were glowing. "I have his letter here. Would you like to hear it?"

"He's written back?" Ann said.

"He certainly has. Let me read it." Irene picked up a sheet of paper from the pile before her. "'Dear Irene—Thank you for your letter. I'd heard by the grapevine about the problems at Jefferson and am pleased to know you are now in better circumstances. I want to thank you also for submitting the sketches by your student, Ann Whitten. I see much talent here and would be very much interested in having her at the Institute.

"'As you know, we have limited money available for scholarships. However, in view of what you tell me about the girl's economic situation, I would be willing to offer her tuition and dorm accommodations for the fall semester, with a full scholarship for the second semester, contingent upon her performance as a student.

"'I would appreciate your putting me into direct contact with Ms. Whitten so that I may approach her about this possibility. I would also like to see more of her work.

"'I am grateful to you for having acquainted me with the work of this young artist, and I hope good things may come of this for all concerned. Sincerely, John.'"

"I don't believe it," Ann said. "He's talking about me?"

"Of course he is. Don't you recognize your own name? He mentions it twice." Irene replaced the paper on her desk and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes were twinkling. "How does it feel to be acknowledged, at seventeen, as a 'talented artist'?"

"How does it feel? My gosh, Irene, I can't believe it." Ann shook her head in amazement. "He likes my work! He really likes it! I can't believe it!"

"Well, start believing it soon, my dear, because it's a fact," Irene said. "You're good, and it's time you realized it. John Griffith has seen artists come and go, and he can recognize talent as few people can. Here's your future, Ann, lying straight out in front of you. How will we celebrate?"

"I just can't get a grip on it. He wants me to come to Boston?"

"On a full scholarship."

"But how can I?" Ann said. "I'm getting married."

"Marriage can be postponed for a little while, can't it? Is next June the only time the church is open?"

"No, but—I'm engaged, Irene. The announcement was published in the Tribune. I've got my ring." She lifted her left hand and looked down at the diamond in its old-fashioned setting. At the angle at which she held it, it caught the slanted afternoon light that flowed through the art-room window and threw a crazy darting pattern on the opposite wall.

"An announcement and a ring don't constitute a royal summons." The smile faded from Irene's face. "When the announcement was made, you thought your whole future was here in Modesta. Now, all of a sudden, things have changed. There's more for you, Ann, than becoming a teen-age bride and spending the rest of your life doing household chores. You want more, don't you?"

"I—always dreamed—of painting professionally," Ann said. "I just never thought it could really happen. But I love Dave. I can't give him up."

"You won't have to. Dave loves you too, doesn't he? You know hell want what's best for you. Hell wait a little while if it's going to make a difference in your happiness."

"I think he would," Ann said, "but he's had a real rough time of it lately. His mother's death really threw him. He was awfully close to her. There's that house now—so empty—"

"David is a grown man," Irene said firmly. "A grown man can manage to live for a while in an empty house."

"It's all so sudden." To her own amazement, Ann found herself blinking back tears. "You think you're set for one thing, and here's something else. You were wonderful to send in those sketches, Irene—to have thought I was good enough for them to mean something. I don't know how to thank you. I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I'm really happy. I'm just so mixed up inside."

"Talk it over with Dave," Irene told her gently. "Tell him how much this means to you. If he loves you as much as you think he does, he'll understand. He won't try to hold you back."

He would not understand, of course.

"How do you think I'd feel," he would ask her, "getting married to a woman who earned more than I did?"

No, wait, Irene told herself in sudden confusion. Those were somebody else's words. It was Bob, her Bob, who said, "I love you, Renie. I want to take care of you."

"Take care of me? By cutting me out of what I've worked toward for so long? You call that loving me?"

"Renie, baby—" He had not even understood what she was talking about. "It's the man's career that matters. You'll stop working anyway when babies start coming."

Robert Morrell or David Brewer, it made no difference. One man was like another. The stolid form that Ann had drawn upon the tractor was Anyman. She had not even attempted to sketch in the features of the empty face.

Poor child, she faced such painful disillusionment. Still, it was better to get such things over and done with. Once she discovered for herself the shallowness of Dave's caring, she would be able to cut herself free and move upward.

As I could have, Irene thought bitterly, if they had let me.

The hatred rose within her, thick and stifling. So many long years, wasted! But, no—they did not have to be. These girls had potential that was hers to develop.

Ann—and Kelly—and Fran—and Jane—

Irene Stark closed her eyes, and their images swam before her—leaping, soaring, carrying her with them into the shining places of her dreams.

CHAPTER 11

On Saturday, November 25, at 9:00 P.M., Kelly Johnson lay on her bed, fully clothed in jeans and T-shirt, listening to a John Denver record and staring at the ceiling. The bedroom door was closed and secured with a hook which she had purchased that afternoon at the hardware store and screwed into the door frame. Then she had gotten a hammer from the tool chest in the garage and pounded the eyelet into the smooth polished wood of the door itself.

"Why are you doing that?" her thirteen-year-old sister Chris had asked in bewilderment.

"To keep you out," Kelly had told her.

"You don't have to do that," Chris had said with hurt in her voice. "I don't want to come into your cruddy old room."

"You're always in there. You were there in the other bed this morning when I woke up. You sneaked in during the night without even knocking, and Mom keeps coming in all the time to check up on me and see what I'm doing. I can't even do my homework in peace anymore without somebody barging in and interrupting."

"It's scary sometimes with Dad not here," Chris had said. "Last night there was a funny noise like somebody was on the roof."

"You'd better get used to it," Kelly had told her crisply. "You're not going to come running in here every time the wind blows."

The cold cruelty of her own voice had pleased her, as had the look on her mother's face when she had seen the disfigured door surface. It pleased her now to lie on the bed and dig the heels of her dirty tennis shoes into the yellow quilted spread. It had pleased her two days ago to turn down George Finley's invitation to Homecoming, the invitation she had been dreaming of for weeks and had thought he might be too shy to issue.

"No, thank you," she had said when he had finally gotten it stammered out in its entirety. No excuse—no apology—no explanation—just "No, thank you," as, though he were the last person on earth she would want to be seen with. And later, when Tammy had called about triple dating, she had said, "No, thank you," again with the distant coolness.

"What was that about?" her mother had asked her as she replaced the receiver on the hook.

"Nothing important."

"It was Tammy, wasn't it?" Mrs. Johnson had prodded. "She was inviting you to do something."

"I said it was nothing important."

"It is important for you to be seeing your friends," her mother had objected. "I know you're upset with your father and me, and I understand that, but you can't just withdraw from the world, dear. You need friends more than ever now. You need people to talk to—"

"I don't need anything," Kelly had said.

And now, in the haven of the locked room, she repeated the words softly to herself—"I don't need anything. Or anybody." Not her parents, not Chris, not poor old George with his hopeful, cocker spaniel eyes, not Tammy, not Ann—not anyone. It was crazy to depend on other people, to let them be important to you. All it did was make you stupid and vulnerable and blind to reality.

"This isn't anything sudden, Kelly," her father had told her. "Your mother and I have been growing apart for a long time."

They had, had they? Well, it had certainly been carefully hidden from her. As far as Kelly had known, her parents had never had a fight in their lives. They were absolutely compatible; they liked the same foods, the same books, the same music. They went to church on Sundays and shared the same hymnal, they attended PTA meetings together and held hands in the movies. They even looked alike. Kelly had read somewhere that people who lived together for a long time grew to resemble each other in appearance, and her parents were living proof, with the first strands of gray appearing in their brown hair in exactly the same spots and the laugh lines crinkling at the corners of their eyes in identical fans.

What a nice, normal, congenial family they were, the Johnsons, snowmobiling together in the winter, camping together in the summer—except for this past summer when they somehow hadn't gotten around to it. Funny, she hadn't thought much about it until now, the fact that this year there had been no camping trips. Kelly herself had been so busy, working through June as camp counselor, going up to the lake for swimming and cookouts, playing tennis and goofing around with her friends. Fiddling while Rome burned. Goofing away the days, while her parents' marriage disintegrated before her unseeing eyes. When was it that her father had met the woman he now thought himself in love with? During the summer? Before that, even? Was he seeing her, perhaps, on those sweet spring evenings when he had supposedly been working late while Kelly knelt in the cool twilight and helped her mother put in the backyard petunia beds? Had her mother suspected nothing? Wouldn't any normal, intelligent woman know when her husband was falling out of love with her? And if she had known, why hadn't she done something? How could she just have sat there, making meat loaves and baking cookies and quilting her daughter a lemon-colored bedspread and pretending nothing terrible was happening?