Rumors of Peace (17 page)

And all at once, noiselessly, she began to cry.

Rudy came waddling in from the garden, but she didn't call him Doris, she didn't call him anything. With her face squeezed into a thousand lines, she looked older than ever, but the horrible thing was that she seemed like a child. Helpless and asking and needing, with her hands hanging open at her sides and the tears pouring down her face. It was that terrible turnabout again, the grown ones suddenly powerless and needing, making your heart pound with the wrongness of it. It made me hate her, and I fought down the pity that banged along
with my heartbeats. How long was she going to stand there anyway, blubbering because she was old?

Helen Maria went over to her. “It's all right, Aunt Dorothy,” she said with that odd catch once again in her voice. And she smiled, the only truly kind and gentle smile I had ever seen on her face. Putting her arm around the older woman's shoulder, she helped her from the room.

A
UNT DOROTHY
was sent to a clinic in San Francisco. Every day in study hall Peggy dashed off a cheery little note ending with a line of Xs and several plump hearts. Sometimes she would ask me to add a few words, but I would only scrawl, “Hello, from Suse.” I wanted to forget Aunt Dorothy.

So, apparently, did Helen Maria. She never spoke of that awful day in her room, never mentioned her aunt's name. Then one day I saw that she had pinned above her desk a small and very delicate sketch of a young boy. I glanced over at her but saw from her severe expression that I was to make no comment, so I didn't.

Whatever became of haggard, roulette-playing Roger in his beautiful blue blazer, no one knew. After Aunt Dorothy was sent away, he borrowed money from the Hattons to pay his hotel bill. Then, leaving town, the bill unpaid, he was heard of no more.

Mama and Dad and I waited for Peter's first overseas letter. When it came, Mama read it aloud to me after school. Then I read it myself. Then, when Dad came home, Mama read it aloud again, even before he changed his clothes. Then he read it himself. Then I read it again. It said October 23, Somewhere in England. A couple of words in the letter had been censored, not scissored out, like the Germans did, but
laid over with a square of black. It was cold and rainy, he said, but the countryside was beautiful, very green with rolling hills and big hedges along the roads. There were about censored men in the camp, it was a good size. He was training as a machine gunner. They hadn't gotten a pass yet, so he hadn't met any English people, it was still like being in Camp Crowder. He was looking forward to getting out and seeing London, it was censored miles away. It was a long letter and said a lot more, including that he missed us and thought of us often.

The heat loosened, blew away, leaving the sky glassy and high. The wind crowded the yellow leaves in bursts along the gutters and twanged eerily in the garrison storm fence. Behind the fence the soldiers were in warm jackets now. For months they'd gone around with their sleeves rolled up; sometimes you even saw them in undershirts, dog tags glistening in their chest hair. Peggy said chest hair was all right if there wasn't too much. But too much was better than too little. It was repulsive if there was none. Still, it shouldn't be a mat. Now she wouldn't have to worry about all this, with everyone covered up.

She could concentrate on other important things. She was jitterbugging at the noon dances now, and she got up the nerve to ask home a girl Towk to help polish up her steps. She seemed to like this Towk, whose name was Bev—a girl as neat and pleasant and dull as Peggy herself was becoming—and often, instead of hurrying home to study after school, she went off together with Bev. But she kept her grades up; she seemed to have energy for everything. In study hall—where she no longer dashed off her daily greeting to Aunt Dorothy, who had gone back to Mexico City—she was a demon of application, reading with knit brows, scribbling down notes, chewing her pencil. I no longer whispered or offered gum. I sat sketching my exploding Zeros, and sometimes it was Bev who was blown in small bits from the cockpit.

The end of November I had my thirteenth birthday party. Peggy showed no interest in grabbing Dumb Donny, she received Eudene's elbow smash with a grim sigh, and when I blew out my candles with a silent wish (every Jap dead and the war over), all my guests clapped exuberantly except Peggy. She ate no cake and left before the festivities were over, pleading tons of homework.

After that it was all downhill. She won an interclass essay contest on the meaning of patriotism, she was invited to Bev's Christmas party, and when school resumed after the holidays, she had been elevated to another class. She was gone, bodily, unbelievably.

Nineteen forty-four. I walked around downtown in the heavy fog. It seemed that the whole war, even with an invasion in the works, even with Berlin bombed daily, was a dead end. It would go on forever, getting nowhere. Already it was as if it had been with us always. Streets had never known lights at night. Barrage balloons had always hung over the bay. The most ancient, permanent-looking structure in town was Sheriff O'Toole's stained and hardened wall of sandbags.

In the hall I would catch a glimpse of Peggy walking along talking and laughing with her new friends. She looked completely relaxed, all her furious work behind her, and in passing she would send a warm but distracted smile in my direction. I didn't smile back. We still had gym together, and there she even came over a few times and tried to be nice, but I rebuffed her. This pleasant, groomed thing had never inspired any interest in me except for the old Peggy who still breathed inside it, and now old Peggy had breathed her last. I saw my beloved friend drowned, lying fat and forgotten on the ocean floor.

With an elective to choose, I had taken up the snare drum. I found myself soothed and comforted in music class, which was hardly a class at all, just a few students scattered through the dim wings of the auditorium stage, practicing in solitude. As I sat at the mottled drumhead and lost myself in a long, steady tattoo, I felt strangely content. Under dim pools of light the floor shone scuffed. Music stands glinted, their ink-spattered scores the color of honey. Against the wall a long row of folded chairs disappeared into the darkness, where a jumble of dusty props could be made out. The drum roll mixed with the strange twilight seclusion, as if time had stopped, leaving me free of all worldly cares.

I resented the music teacher's intrusion. From his tiny office he would emerge, reluctantly, to hear our lessons. When he sat down, pulling up a chair with an old flattened cushion on it, you had the feeling you were about to cause him pain. Inclining his face against two
fingers—it was a heavy-boned face, lined and sallow—he would sigh, “No, straighten your wrists,” and sit back with an impatient nod. His eyes were small, pale blue, distracted. But his nostrils were great, cavernous, tragic. He wore a wine-colored velvet jacket over a soft shirt, and foreign-looking shoes, woven, with open toes, very old and scuffed. He had spent a year in Europe before the war, and it was rumored that he was composing a symphony entitled
Europana.
It was no wonder, with such a background, that his hands went to his ears as he approached a beginner scraping on a violin or that he was not amused when a boy got his thumb hopelessly stuck in the intricacies of a French horn. Yet in a way Mr. Kerr seemed a kind person. He smiled when he saw you in the hall, and he was a surprisingly mild grader, maybe to make up for his deep sighs and curt nods.

After school, a black beret on his head, he paced outside, waiting for his wife and a large sheepdog to fetch him in an old wood-paneled station wagon. Before the car even stopped, he leaped inside and, in a tumult of barks and grinding gears, was borne swiftly away. I never glimpsed the wife—she drove too fast—but it was rumored that she sang
Lieder,
whatever that was, and wore purple eye shadow.

In the dim light Mr. Kerr's scalp shone through thin strands of brown hair, but at the sides the hair was thick and uncut, mixed with gray, curling over his ears. His hands were very big, with freckles and reddish hair on their backs. It was said he could span an octave and a half. He told me I had a feeling for the drums and began spending more time with me. No longer could I indulge myself in my tattoo, protracted to the point of trance. I had to learn notes, beats, measures. Mr. Kerr's foot thumped as he marked my timing; often his voice broke in angrily. I listened and learned, afraid to do otherwise. When my tormentor honored me with a smile, I expressed my resentment by not smiling back. He never seemed to notice. There was much he didn't notice. One day he remarked, “Girls don't usually take up drums,” as if he had only that moment noticed I wore a skirt. Boys, girls, to him they were all the same: short people affixed to musical instruments.

When I went to the Hatton house now, it was to visit Helen Maria. She was deeply disappointed in Peggy, whose burst of academic passion
had fizzled out to an unremarkable B average and who now spent most of her time entertaining friends, trying out dance steps, and fussing over her wardrobe. The genius's efforts to prod me into accomplishment were now resumed. When I told her I was taking the drums, she said there was no future in it.

“I don't care about the future. You ought to see where we practice, it's backstage. It's an interesting place, it's got a dramatic feeling. And our music teacher is living in sin.”

“Free love isn't sinful. You should purge yourself of these narrow attitudes. How do you know?”

“Well. He's supposed to be married, but he doesn't wear a wedding ring.”

“That means nothing. Neither does Jack.”

“Maybe not, but I know Mr. Kerr's living in sin—I mean free love.”

“How do you know?” she asked again.

But I could come up with nothing. In fact, until my remark popped out, I had never thought of Mr. Kerr's love life, and I was surprised that I held an opinion on it. It gave me an uneasy feeling, to be carrying an idea around without even knowing it.

“You shouldn't spread rumors about people. It's immoral.”

“Why? If there's nothing wrong with free love?”

“Any untrue statement is immoral, it doesn't matter what it is. Only the truth is moral. Even a child knows that.”

She was irritated because she was so interested in free love and would have loved to hear about someone who was actually doing it. But I was glad to leave the subject.

H
AVING NOTHING
better to do one rainy noon in February, Eudene and I wandered into the auditorium where the orchestra was rehearsing. Jacket off and shirt sleeves rolled up, Mr. Kerr was working very hard conducting “Song of India.” Hunched over, arms outspread, he waved his baton in one hand while with the other he made deep, scooping motions, as if to drag the musicians bodily from their chairs.

After a while Eudene yawned and scratched her sauerkraut hair. “Who wants to listen to that?”

“It's not bad,” I objected, watching.

She smashed me with her elbow. “Let's go.”

But my eyes were fastened, as if mesmerized, to Mr. Kerr's arms. They were hard-looking, hairy arms, and as they raised higher, the shirt stretched taut across a broad, muscular back.

“I'm going,” said Eudene.

I beat her to it, getting up and walking hastily out the door.

“Have you got a cigarette?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“Could we have a puff somewhere?”

“Sure.”

I felt uneasy, not myself. In movies a smoke always helped.

The next day after my lesson, the sheet music happened to slip off my stand as Mr. Kerr departed. It fluttered down next to the chair he had used, and to reach it more easily, I slid over onto his cushion. As my thighs sank into the unexpected den of body heat, a keen sensation shot up my spine, an exciting, tingling rush of heat that seemed to envelop and melt my heart. I sat immobile, staring straight ahead. It was an intensely pleasurable feeling, but its very intensity was alien, shocking.

It lasted only a moment. I scrambled back into my own chair, feeling frightened and looking nervously around. In the shadowy distance, Mr. Kerr was instructing the boy with the French horn. I looked at him a long time, as he stood there sallow-faced and irritable in the dim light. Then my foot shot out, kicking his chair away from me.

All through the day I worried. It had happened. My body had cried out to someone I didn't even like. Who next? What next? What if I carried inside me a dark, secret weakness for any warm chair a man had sat in?

By the time the last class was dismissed I had decided to try something. Setting my jaw, I slid into the still-warm seat of the boy opposite me. Nothing. I tested the next one. Nothing. I stood up, relieved.

But they were only schoolboys. Mr. Kerr was a grown male, and that must be the difference. What if I was powerless against the body heat of all grown males—half the chairs of the world?

Throwing on my slicker, I hurried out into the rain and walked directly to the Hatton house. I knew that Helen Maria wasn't home today and that I had no excuse to go inside, but I opened the door and stepped into the hall. The hush of the rooms was so great that I went into the Dungeon tiptoeing. There I took off my slicker and sat down on the chesterfield, which still stood at its careless angle from the wall. I gripped my hands in my lap. The rain blew and spattered against the long dim windows.

After a while the front door opened. I stiffened at the sound of Peggy's voice. Helen Maria said Peggy never came home from school early anymore—why of all days did she have to today? A sense of criminal guilt gripped me, a housebreaker, and I fought down the urge to jump up and hide behind the chesterfield.

She came through the archway with Bev and another girl and stopped.
I looked at the three faces, each with a little bud of lipstick at its center.

“Hi,” Peggy said, in a neutral tone, and I knew she thought I had come to break into her charmed circle.

“I'm waiting for Helen Maria,” I said stiffly.

“She won't be home till about nine tonight.”

“I know. I'll wait.”

She looked surprised. It was a ridiculous thing to say, but I couldn't think of anything else.

“Sure, if you want to,” she said, and paused uncertainly, as if she felt she must ask me to come along with the others to her room.

“I'll wait here,” I said more stiffly. “I want to read.” I took a magazine from the side table.

“Okay,” Peggy nodded, and they moved off. The two other girls smiled at me, nicely enough.

Watching them go out, I felt a sudden certainty that for all their grown-up ways they were more innocent than I, that they would be horrified to know the real purpose of my visit, that their lives were smooth, clear, and virtuous, deeply to be envied.

The magazine was a podiatrics journal. I put it back and resumed my wait, listening to Sinatra crooning through Peggy's closed door.

It was at least another hour and a half before the front door opened again. Mr. Hatton came into the Dungeon, the newspaper under his arm.

I cleared my throat. “Hello, Mr. Hatton.”

He glanced over at me. “Hello, Suse,” he murmured, opening the paper as he continued toward his room.

I watched him passing. One more step and it would be too late. I sat forward, squeezing my knees. “Could I talk with you?”

“Hm?” His eyes were on the paper.

I had planned what I would say. I spoke quickly. “I'd like to talk about your profession.”

“Hm?”

“Would you—sit down for a minute?”

I could hardly get the words out; they seemed on top of everything else so rude and demanding. But with only a slight frown he came
over, sitting down at my side. I had never seen him so close. He had many freckles. Even the bags under his eyes were freckled.

“I want to be a marine architect.”

“Good. Fine. You'll like it.”

He seemed already on the verge of rising.

“But I'm not strong in math.”

“Got to be strong in math. Work on it.”

“What about—what about English?”

“Got to know what you're reading, of course.”

I ransacked my brain. “I like to read. I read a lot, because I like to read.”

“Good. Always a good thing.”

His eyes had strayed back to the newspaper in his hands.

“It sounds like a good profession,” I said. “I know I'll like it.”

“Got to like what you do.”

“I think I'll be good at it.”

But he was no longer responding. I feared an immediate departure. My eyes dropped to the headline.
Cassino Battle Rages!

“They should have invaded in the north,” I said.

“Too easy,” he muttered, as if to himself. “This way they'll divert the whole German force for months.” He slapped the headline. “Is it worth it, though? Look at the losses already. This monastery is something awful. A fortress.”

“I know. It's held out for a month already.”

“God-awful.”

“I hope they shoot Mussolini.”

He nodded, reading on. I hoped he would read for a long time. But after a few minutes he began rising.

“They should have gone in at Genoa. Don't you think so?”

He nodded again, but I could keep him no longer. Still reading, he shambled off. It had been long enough, though. I touched the cushion; it was sufficiently warmed. Holding my breath, I slid over and sank into its sultry depths. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing.

I sat quietly for a while, at peace. I didn't have to worry about every male in the world. Just Mr. Kerr, which narrowed it down to something manageable.