We Were Beautiful Once (15 page)

“No, Trent. I can't.  You've been drinking too much.”

“Hey, what's wrong?  C'mon, girl, I can show you a really good time.”

“Look, I don't know you, and I'm not interested right now.”

“Is it that loser, what's his name?  He doesn't have anything I don't got.  Hah.”

“Roger's no loser, he's a... ” Julie broke off.  What she saw in Roger was her treasure, hers alone, and she wasn't about to share it or justify it to Trent.  “I'm saying, I have a boyfriend.”

“God help you, girl, look around.”

 

Four weeks later, Julie received an unexpected call.

“Trent?  You looking for Jack?  I thought he was there with you, up at school!”

“No...  looking for you.”

“What'd you mean?”

“Julie, about that other night.”

“Trent, let's just forget—”                                                                                 

“Julie, hear me out, I can't take no for an answer. All I do is think about you.”

“Please, Trent, that's flattering, bu—”

“Next time I come home, I'd like to call.”

“I can't stop you, but I'll always be straight with Roger.”

***

Trent invited Jack and Julie, together with Roger, to a Memorial Day pool party.  Julie agreed, wanting to appease Jack and maybe even to demonstrate that she and Roger were a couple.  Except for a slight twitch to his smile and an extra, unnecessary pressure in the handshake he offered Roger, Trent's face revealed nothing.  He was the perfect Hamilton host.  The guys talked sports and cars, while the girls, sitting on the other side of the pool, talked about school and boys.  As the evening progressed, Trent and his friend Gallagher started in on a '34 Chevy that they had souped up and then crashed and ditched at the sand banks one night.

“Hey, Roger, you know anyone with a clunker they want to get rid of?” Gallagher asked.

Taken by surprise, Roger answered, “The guy I work for has a '37 Packard he never uses.  It's just sitting in the lot behind his shop.”  Before the words were out of his mouth, he regretted having said anything at all.

The following week Trent and Gallagher asked Roger if they could see the car, and wishing again he had kept his mouth shut, Roger invited them over.  If they were really interested, he would ask Sol if he wanted to sell it.  On Saturday night, Trent, Gallagher and Steve Boddie drove up in Boddie's new Plymouth coupe.  Roger brought them around the back of the shop where the car sat in an otherwise vacant lot.

“Hey, Roger, mind if we start it up?”

“I don't think we should do that, not sure Sol would like it.”

“Come on.  Got the key?”

“Inside the shop.”

“Go get it, let's just turn her over, that's all.”

Roger went to the shop and retrieved the key from a hook behind Sol's desk.

“The battery's sure to be dead,” Roger said.

“Get that coupe over here, we'll jump it,” Trent said, pointing to the Plymouth.

Roger stepped out of the way, while Boddie moved his car in position.  Gallagher popped the hood on both cars.  A minute later, the old Packard turned over.  Trent, behind the wheel, shifted in reverse, floored the gas.  The car jerked back.

“Hey, hold on there,” Roger protested.

“I'll just take it for a spin, Roger-boy.  Be right back, don't worry.  Boddie, follow me in case I get stuck.”

“Trent, get that goddamn car back here.  I'm going to get fired if my boss gets wind of this.”

But Trent was already halfway out the back lot, Boddie and Gallagher in tow.  An hour passed, and the Fairview boys hadn't returned.  Roger went into the shop and went to the loft to lie down to a restless night.

The next day, Sunday, he stayed in New Haven rather than make the weekly trip to Bridgeport.  He tried to contact Trent.  Later that night, Jack called to tell him that while his friends were joy riding, the car went off the road and crashed somewhere north of New Haven.  The boys had abandoned the vehicle where it had come to rest.

When Trent, Gallagher and Boddie were arrested a few days later, old man Hamilton's lawyers launched a full scale attack claiming that Trent had had Roger's “permission” to take the car for a test drive.  As Trent later told Boddie: “This guy ratted me out. He's gotten in my way once too often, first Julie, now this.  This won't be forgotten.  Next time, I'm going to beat that bastard to a pulp.”

On the day Trent and his old man went to court, people with legal problems were standing in the aisles, jamming the courtroom doorway, bobbing, turning, listening for a familiar name, or even their own.  A rap on the oak door behind the bench signaled Judge Miniter's entrance.  Everyone stood as a diminutive, black-robed man emerged from behind a door, commanding, “Sheriff, open court!”
 
 

The prosecutor, a skeletal young man in his mid-twenties, stood next to a shellacked wooden table with two stacks of manila files.  He reached for a folder, and in the timbre of a teenager said, “Your Honor, the State calls...  ”  

Forty minutes later the prosecutor had cleared the docket and, having no more defendants in the stack, approached the judge. “Sir, it's the Hamilton case up ne—” and whispered something.

“Sheriff, clear the room,” Miniter commanded, cutting him off.

The proceedings took two minutes, but Trent—his particular sense of loyalty offended, wasn't about to let things go as easily as the judge had been persuaded to.  He seethed, vowing that the time would come to get even with old Roger.

 

 

ONE CHILLY MID-DECEMBER AFTERNOON in '49, while waiting on the steps of the museum, Julie saw Roger a block away and started running, oblivious of the Santas ringing bells in front of red and green buckets of money and bumping past shoppers, until she threw her arms around his neck.  Taking her soft cheeks in his hands, he kissed her. They took a stroll to East Rock Park on the north end of Yale's campus.  She leaned against a large boulder, and Roger embraced her tightly, blanketing her body with his.

“You're the first guy I ever had a crush on, you know,” she said. “Never dated anybody, except when I went to a freshman dance once.”  Roger listened, kissing her gently on the neck.  Eyes open, looking straight ahead into a thicket of yew, she continued, “I just never drew any attention.”  Roger did not answer, his fingers—rough from shop solvents—moved under her sweater feeling her smooth breasts.  “Always thought I was too plain.  Do you think that's weird?”  Roger rubbed his palms on her back then her stomach.  She felt him press against her.  “And in school it seemed when anybody found out I played the violin, they ran away, like I had the plague or something.”  Roger's body began to move slowly, arcing against hers. She pushed him away looking beyond the yews.  “Roger, be careful, someone might be watching.”  He turned down the corners of his mouth and furrowed his eyebrows.  She burst out laughing. “How come you're so attracted to me?  Well, why?”  Roger was at a loss, trying to regain some measure of self-possession.

“Why'd you think?”

“Maybe because I let you feel me up?”  She grinned.

“Yeah, that's it,” he said, unable to hide his smirk.

“I love it when you try to hide your smile.”

“I ain't tryin' to hide nothing.”

“Roger, do you think we'll last?”

Roger's look went from playful to serious.  She tried looking him in the eye, but he turned away.

“Roger?  You're scaring me.  Will it last?”

Roger was mute.

“Well?  Will it?”

“Julie, I've got bad news.”

She felt a chill pass through her.  Tears welled in her eyes.  “Bad news?” she whispered.

Beyond the yews a crow picked at the carcass of a small rodent.  The trees were barren, and the sun was no longer visible behind high cirrus clouds.

“I got drafted.”

Her brows rose as her eyes bloomed into fullness: he wasn't breaking up!  Everything else could be solved.  Then her brows furrowed.  She drew a deep breath and prepared for Roger's explanation.

 “What do you mean?”

“Means...  I'm soon to be in the Army.”

Her eyes swelled with tears again.  Her lips tightened, her mouth went dry.  “You're leaving?” she said softly.

“Ain't leavin' you.  I'm going to the Army.”

The old tightness in her throat returned. She moved from the boulder toward a leafless tree.  Roger kicked the frozen ground, jamming his hands into his jacket.

“Right after New Year's, I'll be shoving off to Fort Dix. From there, who knows?”

“I...  I suppose, you can do something?  I mean get out of it, right?  My brother's in ROTC, maybe you can talk to him.  He might have an idea.  He'll be home from college next week.”

“It's no use. I already quit my job.”

“Wh...  Wh...  ” she whirled around to face him.  “Roger!  Why?”

“I don't have a choice.”

“So you're just gonna leave?”

“Well, yes and no,” Roger spoke tentatively, “Julie...  Julie, I know a, a small hotel, let's go there.”

Julie would remember this room—a steel framed bed with the thin, feather-stuffed pad, coffee-stained oak dresser, a maple credenza with a yellowed mirror that had lost most of its silver.  A Gideon Bible was closed on a discolored doily. The window was stuck partly open at the top and a radiator creaked beneath it.  The wallpaper had different patterns on adjacent walls, oddly reminding her how badly she wanted Roger, but how scared she was.  It was her first time.  But the credenza and dresser—leftovers from the First World War—made her think about the furniture in her bedroom, and these things made her unafraid.

Julie stood in the middle of the room, her belly pressed against Roger.  She closed her eyes, felt his stiffness.  Roger touched the back of her blue flowered dress and undid its row of small buttons.  His calloused carpenter hands lightly lifted the dress off her shoulder; it fell to the floor, exposing the whiteness of her chest and the silver locket hanging from her neck.  His thumbs slid beneath the thin satin straps of her slip.  She felt like a calla lily on a naked stem—every organ inside her waking, blossoming into experience.  She wanted Roger kissing every part of her that burned with desire.  She saw him take stock of her smallness, unadorned and imagined he might be looking at her like one looks at a half-naked mannequin at Macy's.  Never taking her eyes off his face, she sat on the bed, waiting for him to undress.  She felt nervous.  Fearing her teeth might start chattering she laid back and slipped beneath the covers, where the sheet felt cool on her back. Covered now, she disrobed completely.

The lavender pink sky gleamed through the translucent prism of the gritty window.  She kept her eyes on Roger as he stripped off and slipped in next to her.  His body was on fire.  Nervous, aroused, excited, scared, quiet tears flowed down her cheeks over her lips, she embraced him, saying, “I love you so much, Roger.  So afraid, so afraid...  that what we have will die, if I don't see you.  What if something happened to us?”

They made love, and as the lavender pink sky turned silver gray, Julie lost all sensible measure of time. Each lay in the other's limerence, her head on his shoulder, his arm behind his head. A tawny, orange-winged monarch flew from the window sill to the foot of the bed. She raised herself on one elbow.

“Roger, a butterfly!”  She followed the insect's minute movements and reached down to coax it onto her hand.

The bug flapped its wings and flew toward the window.  She drew her finger down Roger's forehead, over his nose, lips, chin.  “You know, Roger, a butterfly holds a person's soul.”

He squinted, smiled and turned his head toward her.  “Where'd you hear that?”

“I don't know exactly, but I like to think it's true.”

“Whose soul?”

“I don't know, they say it could be someone who's alive, or dying or already dead.”  She pulled her hand from the sheet, raised it in the direction of the creature that flew from the window to the ceiling in the far corner, where the lengthwise wallpaper stripes ran counter to the paper on the adjacent wall, the black margins and veins on its wings making the incongruent wallpaper congruous.  “Maybe ours!” she said, turning over to smile at Roger.

He let out a breath of resignation. “If I were a reckless god, I'd unbuckle Nature's hair and let it fall on her shoulders, letting all the days we've had together come undone again.”  He put his arms around her, burying his face in her breasts so she could not see the ocean filling his eyes.

“You're a poet, you know.  The way you think.  Feel.”

Nothing stirred.  Julie wanted it that way—to freeze time if she could.  She whispered, “
I guess what I'm afraid of more than anything in the world, is that what we have right now may someday fade.”
 

Daylight fell further into the horizon, the striped wallpaper disappeared, and the butterfly flapped its wings, stalled them upright, and finally vanished through a small opening into the cold void of winter.  In their nakedness, they met each other no longer as strangers, in longing, in lust, no longer searching for warmth and tenderness.  Roger filled the voids, erasing all Julie's perceived imperfections: her awkwardness, her loneliness, her frailty.

As they left the hotel, a light snow fell.  At the corner, Julie looked back and noticed how quickly their tracks were covered.

“Roger, tell me you will always love me.  Tell me, tell me and keep telling me while you're away, so I can hear it over and over.  So I know you're there.”