The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (24 page)

 

 

She fled into the dormitory ignoring Yale's "Where the heck have you been?"

 

 

Lying in the back room of Mrs. Hearn's dress shop, she had decided what
to do. It was hopeless. She should have known it from the beginning.
She would never marry Yale. As much as they loved each other, there were
problems that love alone would not solve. If she told Yale about this
morning, he would immediately break with Pat. But what would happen
then? She knew that Pat was not the kind of man who threatened idly. In
the end Yale would come under his domination. Even now Yale hadn't told
her that he had been accepted to Harvard Business School. It would mean
that he had decided it was best to give in to Pat. Certainly, Yale's plans
about going to Columbia and trying to get a teaching job in September were
vague. The best thing she could do was to make this, their last afternoon,
a warm, pleasant memory, and then tomorrow after graduation, go home.

 

 

 

 

A hike of about a mile and a half, and a picnic on Strawberry Hill is a
favorite springtime attraction for Midhaven College students. Strawberry
Hill overlooks the Atlantic, dropping in a sharp eroded cliff into the
sea. From the top of Strawberry Hill looking inland you can see the
Midhaven College campus and beyond the campus the taller buildings of
the city outlined against the horizon. To the east are the sky and ocean
merging and endless.

 

 

As they climbed the wooded path leading to the top of the hill Yale
mentioned, as he had before, "This would be a wonderful place for a
home, Cindar. Maybe someday we could find out who owns it and build a
house here."

 

 

Cynthia didn't answer.
We'll never live here or anywhere
, she thought.

 

 

Yale liked the feeling of discovery that came to him when he stood at the
summit. He ran ahead. "Yale Marratt discovers the Atlantic!" he shouted,
grinning and happy. She walked toward him tears in her eyes.

 

 

"Cindar, you are so sad and quiet today. What's the trouble?"

 

 

"Nothing, nothing, I'm just drinking in the sight of you. Boyish. Your
hair messy. You look so impish. I would like to hug you and remember
you like this always."

 

 

In one of his walks Yale had discovered a sheltered ledge on the Atlantic
side of the hill. It was difficult to get to, because parts of the hill,
particularly the windward side, grew lush with a thorny beach rose. In
June the roses bloomed briefly and the hill turned deep red. From the sea,
to a passing boat, the high cliff looked like a huge strawberry. Now,
the leaves on thorny creepers that in some places reached almost shoulder
high had just started to bud. Yale led the way trying to hold the pointed
vines away from Cynthia.

 

 

They reached the secluded ledge. A hot breeze from the sea seared their
faces. Two hundred feet below they could see a rocky beach where the
tide had gone and left the stones burning and dry in the sun.

 

 

Yale spread out a blanket and opened two cans of beer. It was still cool.
They drank silently, watching the ocean below.

 

 

"I love you very much, Cindar. I don't know how I would be without you.
These years have been wonderful, but I am glad they are over. Now, at last,
we can be married."

 

 

"Yale, how do you know our love isn't just physical? How do you know that
it wasn't just a physical something or other that pulled us together in
this little circumscribed college world? Maybe if we had met somewhere
else we would have just made love, enjoyed a moment's passion, and then
have been glad to be rid of each other."

 

 

Yale took her hands in his. "Cindar, of course I love you physically,
but you should know that it is a great deal more than just physical.
You are me . . . only female. I wish I could tell you what you are for me.
Even just physically. When I look at your body it is you and even more
than you. You have a beauty for me that is the essence of everything
beautiful. The abstract beauty that the philosophers like to discuss is
very much a part of the beauty that is you -- Cynthia." Yale smiled. "You
do get the silliest ideas. Is that why you have been so sadly quiet all
day? I think you are getting your period. Well . . . next week anyway."

 

 

She laughed. "Yale, you know too much about women. You have a female
second-sense. I think lots of women would love you."

 

 

"But, I want only your love."

 

 

She sighed. What could she say to him? Thoughts of this morning with
Pat Marratt swarmed back into her mind. If I only could hate him. If I
could meet fire with fire instead of shriveling into myself.

 

 

After they had eaten their sandwiches she and Yale lay side by side,
each thinking their own thoughts. Feeling keenly each other's presence,
they would day-dream or talk sporadically or lapse into silence. Today
Cindar was glad they didn't have to talk. She knew that she was too close
to tears, too close to confessing to Yale everything that had happened.

 

 

Later in the afternoon when the sun was low over the ocean, Yale reached
over and undid the zipper on her skirt. Passively, she permitted him to
take it off. In a moment he had undressed her. He kissed her belly and
breasts tenderly, touching his hand lightly over her legs and mons. She
shivered. It was cool despite the heat. Oh God, she thought. I want
to love you, Yale. But now their love no longer seemed a clean and
good thing.

 

 

He tugged one of the hairs on her mound as he had often done before.
A loving pull. She ordinarily would have responded by pulling his pubic
hair, and they would have giggled joyously.

 

 

"No, Yale, no . . . not today! I don't want to." Her voice was choked
with misery.

 

 

"But Cindar -- honey -- what's the matter? It's been so long. Please.
What have I done?" Yale looked at her unbelievingly.

 

 

She wanted to capitulate, but something drove her on. "Please, don't plead.
You should never beg any woman." Cynthia stood up and started to pull on
her skirt. Yale grabbed it. "No, darling. No! Today we must love!"
He stood up and held her, trying to excite her with searching hands.

 

 

"Give me my skirt!" Cynthia demanded, and the anger and hate that she so
desperately needed swelled up in her. "I don't want you to touch me!" she
heard herself scream. It was as if she were listening to a stranger.
"If you love me how can you treat me like this? Making me stand naked here
for the whole world to see?"

 

 

Please, Cindar, Yale thought, desperately. Oh, my darling, what is wrong?
I only want to be close to you. To be quiet and warm inside you. But he
didn't say it. He tried to be lighthearted.

 

 

"You are a lovely, angry Goddess, and the world would be frightened if
they saw you, but they would adore you and love you as I do. Come on,
Cindar, after we have loved your tension will be all gone."

 

 

She started to cry, sobbing convulsively. "You're just like every man,
Yale Marratt, all you think about is sex! I hate you! I hate you!" She
ran, twisting out of his grasp, in complete horror with herself and the
words she had never before spoken in her life.

 

 

"For God's sake, Cindar, stop! Here's your skirt. I'm sorry." But Cynthia
didn't stop. She ran heedlessly, naked, crashing through the underbrush,
and the rose thorns. As she ran along the edge of the cliff, her foot
caught, in a creeper. She staggered, caught herself, and then sobbing,
inarticulate in her despair, she plunged headlong down the cliff, the
wild thorns catching at her face and body and tearing deep gashes in
her skin. She ran crazily, falling, getting up, falling and running again.

 

 

Bewildered, Yale ran after her. When he caught her she was nearly on
the beach, at the bottom of the cliff. Her body was streaked with angry
welts and her face lashed cruelly. She lay limp in his arms.

 

 

"Cindar, my God! my God! . . . What has gotten into you?" He took
his handkerchief and tried to staunch the blood from the cuts on her
face. "Talk to me. Are you all right?"

 

 

"I hate you," she gasped.

 

 

"You've gone crazy. What's come over you?" He tried to kiss her. She fought
him wildly, scratching him with her nails. "I'll fix you! You're a bitch,
too! I'll fuck you whether you want me to or not."

 

 

"Go ahead," Cindar snarled. "Rape me. Go ahead! I'm just a kike! A hebe!
I'm made backwards. I'm not like other women. My people killed Christ!
Go ahead. Rape me!"

 

 

Yale picked her up in his arms. "I don't know what I have done, Cindar,
but I never could love you against your will." He struggled up the cliff
with her. She sobbed hysterically. He looked at her poor torn face and
scarred body, and whispered, "I'm sorry I used such a word to you. It's
a cheap word, and nothing you could ever do would make our love cheap."

 

 

Somehow, he got her back to the top of the hill. In silence he helped
her dress. As they walked toward the college they could see the city
silhouetted against the early evening sky. On the distant campus, a few
early lights in the college buildings seemed remote and lonely. Strawberry
Hill was enveloped in a strange stillness. The chatter of night insects
made the silence seem more intense.

 

 

Neither of them spoke. Cynthia felt empty and hollow. The trumped-up anger
had gone out of her. Her body stung and ached. The blood had dried and her
skin stuck uncomfortably to her clothes. I am really close to panic and
I am destroying the person I love most in the world.

 

 

When they came on to the road leading to the campus it was nearly dark.

 

 

"I can't go to my room, Yale. Sue would ask a million questions.

 

 

Yale tried to put his arm around her. "I want to ask you a million
questions, too, but I think you should see a doctor. Your face is badly
cut. My God, Cindar, what have I done? What's gone wrong . . . ?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

13

 

 

It was nearly seven o'clock when Mat Chilling climbed the four flights of
stairs to his room. After six years of lonely living in Doctor Tangle's
attic apartment he no longer noticed the furnishings. The first flight was
carefully carpeted with figured green broadloom rug. The second flight
was likewise carpeted with broadloom, but the nap was severely worn,
indicating that the economical Mrs. Tangle had transferred this covering
from the first flight of stairs. Climbing to his room, Mat thought,
was somewhat like shaking off the material vestments of the world, and
assuming the more ascetic character of the seeker after Heaven. Not
only did the broadloom rug change to a linoleum on the third floor,
but on the fourth floor it gave way to bare wooden stairs. On the top
floor there was no vestige of the carefully picked floral wallpaper or
the artistic hunting scene tapestry that decorated the stairwell of the
second and third floors.

 

 

Except for a small cot, a plain wooden table and books scattered in
wild disorder, the room was empty and unadorned. "A good room for a
future minister," Doctor Tangle had said approvingly when Mat had first
taken it. A room conducive to self-contemplation for only four dollars
a week. No electric appliances -- and no female visitors. Dr. Tangle
had stated the conditions with his usual grim, take-it-or-leave-it
manner. Mat had accepted with alacrity.

 

 

When he opened the door, a blast of heat greeted him. Wearily mopping
the sweat off his forehead, he opened the small window that looked out
over the campus. Thank God, he thought. He was nearly finished with
Midhaven College. Tomorrow he would officially become the Reverend
C. M. Chilling. Then, would begin the long struggle through a series of
assistant ministerships until one day he obtained his own church. Taking
off his work clothes he noticed that his underwear was still damp from
the swim he had taken. It had been a crazy day, he thought, completely
outside of the normal ministerial way he should live his life. It worried
him that within a few short hours he could so completely break into a
different pattern of living. He wondered, as he had many times in the
past year, whether he was adapted for the pious, devotional sort of
life that would be expected of him. A life of justifying God's seeming
impersonality toward man.

 

 

Through arrangements with the personnel department of the yard, he
had been assigned the noon to six thirty shift which fortunately had
no conflict with his morning class. In the past two years he picked up
enough knowledge of welding from Joe Pepperelli so that he was reasonably
competent. Without the money that he had earned at Latham's, he would
never have been able to finish and obtain his Divinity degree. It had been
a year of drudgery, and he knew that he would probably have to continue
working at Latham's through the summer until he had accumulated a little
bit of money, or received an assistant's appointment in some church.

 

 

At two o'clock he had been unable to stand the heat in the gasoline
compartment of the partially completed hull of #301. He had climbed to the
open deck of the tanker and the full glare of the sunlight blinded him. He
tried to avoid looking at the Mamaputock River, drifting listlessly to
sea like a stream of hot steel pouring out of an electric furnace. No man
in the Latham Shipyard looked at that mirror of sunlight long without
feeling his eyes contract painfully. It was like the continuous flare
from a welder's torch. Mat swabbed his face with his hand. The taste of
salt made his mouth feel dry. It was incredible that it could be so hot
in May. Everyone was praying for a shift in the wind that would bring
a cool east breeze from the Atlantic. He watched the men going dully
about their jobs. Below him, a welder sat on an "I" beam, his goggles
around his neck, staring at his feet and cursing. "Christ, Chilling,
I can feel the heat of these plates right through these boots. Another day
like this and you will find me at Midhaven Beach, enjoying the cool ocean
breezes. They can take this cruiser and shove it up Alfred Latham's ass."