Seventeenth Summer (24 page)

He turned it over and over in his hand, looking into all the special compartments and trying the zipper. Then he looked at my mother and winked, “I’m still a fellow,” he answered, “and I
do
like it so I guess that makes it all right.” My father is always in a good mood when he comes home from work. He must have been trying to sell an order at a new house under construction, for I noticed there was red clay on the soles of his shoes.

Lorraine stayed at home all Saturday afternoon and all Saturday evening in case Martin might call. On Sunday she sat out on the back lawn where she could hear the phone easily if it should ring. No one mentioned him to her. Once she said to me, as if I had arguing with her, “But, Angie, he wouldn’t have asked me if he hadn’t wanted me to go!” I knew what an empty aching feeling she must have inside her. If only she hadn’t talked about Martin so much earlier in the week!

In the later afternoon I brought out a deck of cards and she and Mother and I tried to play bridge on the grass of the back lawn; but the wind kept flipping the cards about and Lorraine wasn’t interested anyway. So we just sat, not talking at all, and let the late sun fall warm across our legs. The breeze was sweet with the hay smell of grass long burned by the sun. A flock of wild canaries had flown in from the fields, flitting quickly in and out of the trees, and bobbing like fat yellow blossoms on the topmost branches.

Each moment dragged by, trailing suspense behind it. I couldn’t make myself believe that he really wasn’t going to call at all! We had our supper on the back lawn as usual and Kitty had to close Kinkee
in the garage because she kept sniffing at the plate of sandwiches on the grass. It had been a long, warm day and the sun went down slowly and shadows were low on the ground, while the clouds above were still light and the trees were silhouetted black against the soft pink of the sky. The seconds were as slow as minutes. There was still no word, and watching Lorraine sitting, waiting, my heart felt as raw as cubed steak.

In the last glow of early evening sphinx moths came out, with their soft, furred bodies like small birds, blundering from flower to flower with their wings whirring and setting the tall honeysuckle rocking in the dusk. Mosquitoes hummed in the garden hedge and a meadowlark called, perched on the handle of a spade stuck in the earth at the far end of the garden path. Art was lying on his back on the cool grass, his head in Margaret’s lap, looking at the first new stars that were just twinking yellow in the pale of the evening sky. Lorraine gave a short sigh and then went into the house and up to her bedroom.

After a long time my mother said to me, “Angeline, you’d better go up and speak to her.”

I waited for a moment in the living room, trying to decide what would be the best words to say. Lorraine was sitting on the rug in her bedroom with the little dresser lamp beside her, its pink shade off, and the bare bulb glaring bright. She was sitting with a long darning needle in her hand, carefully picking at the gilt initials inside Martin’s wallet. Neither of us spoke.

“See, Angie!” she said triumphantly, holding it up. “Look, I’ve
got it all off now but one little part of the M. Probably Dad can use it or something….”

I looked at her closely. She hadn’t even been crying. I took the wallet and turned it over in my hand, holding it to the light. “That’s nice, Lorraine,” I said quietly, “You’d hardly ever know.” That’s what I said but there were needle pricks in the leather and I could still see where the initials had been.

That night, lying in bed, I could not help wishing that there wasn’t so much sadness in growing up. It was all so confused in my mind. There had been the long, long days of being young and not wondering about tomorrow at all and thinking in a strange, forgotten child’s world. There were days when my thoughts were as mild as feathers and even an hour seemed like a long time.Then suddenly it was like turning a sharp corner—you were older and the things that counted when you were young didn’t count anymore at all, and looking back, you couldn’t even see them. Growing up crowds your mind with new thoughts and new feelings so that you forget how you used to think and feel.

When Lorraine was a little girl she didn’t know about people like Martin—none of us did. Nothing she had ever done had prepared her to feel the way she felt that night. We had never known about anything unpleasant. Our whole lives had been little-girl lives, crowded first with thoughts of kindergarten and going for exciting walks with the class in the early gray of spring to gather pussy willows along the creek banks, and eating oranges on the
school playground at recess, oranges with skins so thick that they gave off a fine spray of fragrant oil when they were peeled. Somewhere in the years, Kitty was born and we seemed bigger because she was so little. Quiet memories of her slid into my mind. I could remember putting her into her crib on warm summer nights, her skin cool and baby-soft through the thin cotton of her nightgown; and then before long she was sitting by herself on the living-room rug and the floor was always strewn with painted-eyed dolls and scribbled-up color books. On the piano stool there is still a white mark where she set her wet box of water colors. After Kitty the days went faster, merging into long Wisconsin winters with snowdrifts piled almost up to the living-room windows, and hot, still summers with the sunlight pouring through the trees like yellow honey. Lorraine and Margaret and I were changing. Things that had once been so important didn’t matter anymore. Carnivals still came to town and set up their Ferris wheels in bright wheels of light against the night sky and pitched little striped tents all stained brown with rain, but we no longer felt the same ecstatic thrills. And we didn’t go out barefoot in the wet grass hunting for tiny, green-brown toads that came out after the rain. Our thoughts were on different things.

When Margaret was seventeen she had her first date with a Western Union messenger boy, and then one day I found a tube of lipstick hidden in the pocket of Lorraine’s coat and shortly after that my mother bought her special Castile soap to use because her complexion wasn’t good. Finally Lorraine went away to college,
Margaret met Art, and we all began to live our lives separately. And no one said anything or seemed to think it odd.

I had seen it happen to both of my sisters and here was I, letting it happen to me. Every moment I was awake I was thinking of Jack, letting him into my house and into my days. Everything had changed. Until this summer telephones had never been important to me and now, always, I was waiting for it to ring. Growing up is like taking down the sides of your house and letting strangers walk in.

Lorraine lay beside me in bed sleeping—I think she was sleeping. We had both gone to bed early and quietly, not mentioning Martin. I had lain awake, waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t; she hadn’t even moved or turned her head on the pillow once. The night air made a light whistle through the screens and blew warm over the thin top sheet, and the trees on the front lawn seemed to be crowding their leaves stiflingly close to the windows. Somewhere, far off in the sky, heat lightning winked.

And I lay there wondering sadly how long—how many days and nights—it would take Lorraine to forget about Martin. How long before she could listen to soft music on the radio, see cars shining in the sun, or blue smoke rings floating without some thought of him coming into her mind. It would take a very long time. And for her there would be no more summer.

In the morning the sky was a dazzling blue with clean, white puffs of clouds scattered high over it. There was something brightly expectant about the morning—as if the sun had been up
for hours and hours just waiting for the rest of the world to wake. Even before breakfast the air was hot and sparrows were bobbing in the hedges and the plants in the garden were drooping. There were big, dry cracks in the earth as wide as my wrist. “Looks like another scorcher,” my mother remarked cheerfully. “Fine weather for the last day of July!” The house was buzzing with hurried, Monday morning noises, with my father talking through his coffee and his paper and Kitty keeping up a steady excited chatter that no one bothered to listen to, while Margaret click-clacked about the kitchen in a pair of flat, wooden-soled sandals she had bought in Milwaukee. My mother had got up earlier than the rest of us and the sonorous hum-hum of the washing machine in the basement came up to us as we ate breakfast.

But the brightness of the morning didn’t last long. We had just got the first clothes hung on the line when a light wind came up and a few dark clouds floated into the sky out of the west; and by noon they had gathered together, dark and sullen, heavy and sagging with rain. The hot, dry air changed to an oppressive mugginess but still the rain didn’t fall. The clouds were lined up, gray and sulky, as if they were waiting for something and the day dragged sluggishly by in a tiresome, clammy heat. The clothes took a long time to dry and I spent the afternoon ironing while my mother sat at the kitchen table sewing on buttons and mending little tears in Kitty’s playsuits. It was so quiet that all my thoughts seemed to have a yawn in them.

At five o’clock Jack came. I had seen the black truck pull up
at the curb and had run to open the door even before he knocked. I was wide-awake again the minute I saw him and the house no longer seemed hot. The storm had finally broken and the first rain fell in slow, round drops that spotted the sidewalks dark, drying up almost at once on the warm cement.

“Hello there, Mrs. Morrow,” Jack said to Mother. “They’ve got you pretty busy, I see!”

“I like to get these things put away mended right away,” she explained, snapping off a bit of thread with her teeth. “Angie’s been ironing all afternoon and we’ll be all through in about half an hour.”

“We send our washing out,” he said, but added hastily, “but that’s because my mother helps down at the bakery sometimes and just doesn’t have time to do it herself.” Jack is always very careful not to hurt people’s feelings; very careful not to pretend about anything.

He was restless that afternoon, seemed worried about something. He was sitting on a kitchen chair opposite my mother while I finished the shirt I had been ironing. I noticed he hardly heard what I said when I spoke to him. He took a cigarette and lit it at the kitchen stove—we were out of matches—and I took a saucer from the dish cupboard for the ashes. He just nodded at me and in a moment crushed the cigarette out. I had a never seen him nervous before and it puzzled me to know what he was thinking. He shouldn’t even have been away from the bakery so early in the afternoon.

“Mrs. Morrow,” he said suddenly, “mind if I take Angie for a short ride?”

“No, of course I don’t,” she answered, “but it’s almost suppertime.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” and his tone was crestfallen, “I didn’t realize that. I wasn’t even thinking what time of day it was.”

He looked at me to say something and my mind worked quickly. “Mom,” I asked hopefully, “we could be back almost right away?”

“You may go if you like, Angeline. I don’t mind at all, only I don’t want you to miss your supper. Just be back by six.” She gathered up a pile of clean, ironed clothes in her arm. “I’ll get these things put away before Lorraine and Margaret get home.”

I pulled the iron cord out of the wall socket and fluffed my fingers through my hair. Just as we were going out the front door my mother called after us, “Bring home some lemons, will you, Angie? It won’t take you a minute to stop at the store and I think the children might like iced tea for supper.”

“We will,” I called back.

The rain was coming down harder now and together we ran for the car. The storm seemed to be rolling toward us high above the dark clouds, rumbling like a bowling ball. In the trees the sparrows cheep-cheeped in excitement and fluttered among the leaves.

The moment we were in the car Jack said impatiently, “I’ve got to talk to you, Angie. Where shall we go?”

“Out to the park maybe?”

“No, not there,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to run into Swede right now. I talked to him a little while ago and he said he was going out to put an extra rope on the boat. This looks like a pretty bad squall coming up and that water gets plenty choppy.”

We both thought a moment. “How about down past the creek on Willow Road,” he suggested.

But I didn’t want to go there. “That’s not a—a ‘daytime’ place,” I explained.

He started the car. “Let’s just make it Pete’s then. I could stand a Coke anyway.”

The rain was falling at an angle, blown by the wind and dashing slantwise against the car windows. As we turned onto the highway the storm wind swept low in from the lake, making furrows in the waving grass along the fields. We passed a farmyard where a little boy was driving a team of horses into the barn and the chickens ran across the yard squawking, the wind parachuting their tall feathers and pushing them from behind.

“Have a cigarette?” Jack said, pulling out his package. It was a standing joke between us for he knew I never smoked, but he took one himself and I held the steering wheel for him while he rummaged through his pockets for a match.

“The farmers can really use this rain,” I remarked. “This has been the hottest, driest July I can ever remember.” It was falling so hard that the drops splashed back off the highway and the bushes at the roadside bent beneath its weight.

There were already puddles in the gravel lot as we pulled in behind Pete’s. Jack shut off the motor and was silent for a moment. “Aren’t we going in?” I asked.

“No,” he answered. “Let’s just stay here .” The rain made a noisy pit-pat on the car roof and with the windshield wipers shut off, the water ran down the windows in a steady sheet.

“I thought you said you wanted a Coke?”

“I do. But we’ll get that later. I want to talk to you alone, Angie.”

All the way out to Pete’s I had been wondering what it was he had to tell me; what it was that made his forehead all wrinkled with thought. As often as I had seen Jack and as much as I liked him I still felt almost afraid to be alone with him. I still had the self-conscious feeling that I should have worn a better dress and that I should have brushed my hair again before I had gone out with him. When he looked at me directly I almost felt that I knew what he must be thinking—he had gone out with so many girls who were prettier than I.