When She Was Good (16 page)

Well, too bad for her. There really was very little Lucy could do that met with Mrs. Sowerby’s approval. She was a dowdy, snobbish woman who even seemed to hold against Lucy the fact that it was she who had finally had the strongest influence in deciding what Roy should become. Which was certainly none of Mrs. Sowerby’s business—even though that did appear to be the case: why Roy had decided to go to photography school in Fort Kean, where Britannia was located, seemed to have less to do with the quality of the training he would receive there—or with whatever natural talent he had for taking pictures, to be frank—than with the fact that Lucy happened to be going down to school in Fort Kean too.

That Roy had been guided in his decision by such a consideration was hardly a fact that displeased Lucy. On the other hand, it was one more refutation of that idea she had formed of him before they had met: that he was a serious young man who had choices before him of real magnitude and gravity. No, he wasn’t exactly turning out to be entirely as she had imagined him back then—not that that was all to his discredit, however. For one thing, he really wasn’t as rude and ill-mannered as he had first appeared. And he wasn’t indifferent to others’ feelings; least of all to hers. Once the showing off had stopped, once he was no longer as frightened of her (she realized) as she had been of him, he was altogether sweet and considerate. In his amiability he even reminded her a little of Mr. Valerio, which was certainly a compliment.

Nor was he superior in his attitudes, which was something she had just assumed would be the case, given his age and experience. He never tried to boss her around—except for sex;
and even there she knew that when she decided enough was enough (probably that very night), there was nothing he would be able to do to force her to resume. There was nothing he could have done to force her to start, either, only why hadn’t she realized that at the time? The worst that could have happened was that he would never have seen her again. And would that have been a tragedy? Truthfully, there were a lot of important ways in which she was discovering that she didn’t like Roy that much. At times it even seemed as though it were she who was two and a half years older than Roy, not the other way around. She simply couldn’t bear him when he sang those songs into her ear, first of all. He was so childish sometimes, even if he was now twenty-one and old enough to vote, as he kept saying to everyone. Sometimes the things he said were nothing less than stupid. In the car, for instance, he kept telling her that he loved her … But was that stupid? What if it was true? Or what if he was only saying it for fear that if he didn’t she wouldn’t let him go all the way any more? Oh, she knew, she knew, she knew—they should never have started up in the car. It wasn’t right if you weren’t married, and it was even worse with someone you never could marry, either.
We must stop!
But somehow it made no more sense to stop now that they had begun than it had made to start in the first place. What she should really stop was the whole stupid thing!

Yes, she was very, very confused—even on that wonderful, cheery night at the Sowerbys’, which began with Uncle Julian (as Roy had encouraged her to call him) kissing her as though she were another member of the family, and ended with his bringing out of the refrigerator a real bottle of French champagne, exploding cork and all … Oh, how could she possibly believe the suspicion, growing larger in her every day, that he probably wasn’t going to have one of any consequence at all, when they all stood around him with glasses raised, and said in unison, “To Roy’s future!”

After graduation she began her summer schedule at the Dairy Bar: from ten to six, every day but Wednesday and
Sunday. Midway through July she and Roy drove down to Fort Kean one Wednesday to look for a place for him to live in September. After inspecting each rooming house he came back to where Lucy sat in the parked car, and said he didn’t think the place was right, at least for him; either the room smelled funny, or the landlady looked suspicious, or the bed was too short, something he had had enough of for sixteen months in the Aleutians. In the one place that was ideal—one huge room with a bed in it that used to be the landlady’s husband’s (who’d been six foot
five
), where the toilet was spotless, and the roomer guaranteed a shelf of his own in the refrigerator—there was no private entrance.

Well, said Lucy, there had to be.

At four that afternoon they had the worst argument they had ever had with each other, and far and away the worst Roy had ever had with anyone, his father included. To what was still the best all-around deal, all she could do was vehemently shake her head and say no, there had to be a private entrance if he expected ever to see her again. Suddenly, crying out, “Well, I don’t care—it’s me who has to live here!” he wheeled the Hudson around and drove back to the house with the long bed.

When he got back to the car he took a road map from the glove compartment and on its face carefully drew a rectangle. “This is my room,” he said, managing not to look at her. It was on the first floor, a corner room with two tall windows on either side; all four let out onto a wide porch surrounded by shrubs. They were as good as four private entrances. At night a person could just step in and out of the windows exactly as though they were doors … Well, what did she want to say? Was she really planning on never speaking to him again, or did she have an opinion to express?

“I expressed my opinion,” she said. “It didn’t mean anything to you.”

“It did.”

“But you went ahead and rented the room anyway.”

“Because I wanted to, yes!”

“I have nothing further to say, Roy.”

“Lucy, it’s a room! It’s only a room! Why are you doing this?”

“You did it, Roy. Not me.”

“
Did what?
”

“Acted like a child, again.”

Before starting back to Liberty Center, Roy drove around to the Fort Kean College for Women. He pulled the car to the curb so Lucy could take another look at her new home. The college was across Pendleton Park from the main business section of Fort Kean. It had been built as a boys’ preparatory school in the 1890’s; in the thirties the school went under, and the property had been unused until the war, when it was occupied by the Army Signal Corps. After V-J Day the site had been purchased by the state, barracks and all, for its expanding educational program. It was certainly not the ivy-covered college campus one saw in the movies, or read about in books; the barracks that the Army had thrown up, long faded yellow buildings, were used as classrooms, and the administration building and dormitory was an old square fortress-like structure of gray stone that stood almost directly onto the street and resembled the County Courthouse in Winnisaw. At the sight of it, however, Lucy thought, “Only fifty-nine days more.”

“Which is your room?” asked Roy, looking out the car window.

She did not answer.

The school was across from a row of stores, one of which was called “The Old Campus Coffee Shop.” Roy said, “Hey, want a Coke in The Old Campus Coffee Shop?”

No answer.

“Oh, Angel, I do care what you think. You know that. What you think is important to me. But I have to live somewhere, don’t I? Well, Lucy, just be reasonable—don’t I? That’s not being a kid, or a child, or whatever you said.”

“Yes, Roy,” she finally said, “you have to live somewhere.”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Lucy, really. Sometimes you’re just too
sarcastic, when I’m only asking for a simple answer. I’ve got to get my eight hours’ sleep if I expect to get the most out of classes. Well,
don’t
I? So I
need
the long bed. Well, is that a stupid statement too?”

She thought,
Everything you say is a stupid statement!
“No,” she said, for he had taken her hand, and really seemed to be in pain.

“So then how can you be angry? Lucy, come on, what’s the sense of fighting? Let’s have a Coke, okay? Then we’ll start home. Come on, say the fight is over. Why ruin the day? Look, am I forgiven for my terrible sin, or are you going to keep this silly thing up forever?”

He actually appeared to be near tears. She saw that there was no point in arguing with him any further. For in that instant she made up her mind—if only she had made it up earlier in the day, she could have saved them both the misery of a fight: she would never set foot in that room of his so long as she lived, no matter how many windows it had, or even doors. It was really as simple as that.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s have a Coke.”

“That’s my girl,” said Roy, kissing her on the nose, “that’s my old angel girl.”

From that afternoon on she knew for sure that Roy wasn’t for her. That very night she would not drive up with him to Passion Paradise. When instantly he grew sulky and morose, and seemed about ready to break into tears again, she told him it was because she was not well. It happened to be the truth, but then at home with a thick black crayon she circled on her calendar the day she would make it altogether clear their romance was over (at the same time x-ing out another day of her life in Liberty Center: fifty-eight to go).

It looked as though the bad news could not be broken to Roy until Sunday: the following night there were already plans to drive up to the Selkirk Fair with Ellie and Joe, with whom they doubled at least once a week now that Lucy was working only during the day; and on Friday evening Roy expected her to go over to Winnisaw with him to see
A Date
with Judy
; then on Saturday there was the barbecue at the Sowerbys’. It was a barbecue for the Sowerbys’ adult friends, and when Roy’s uncle had invited “the long drink of water” to come and to bring “Blondie” with him, it had delighted Lucy (secretly) no less than Roy. She was coming to like Mr. Sowerby more all the time, and to admire certain of his qualities. As Roy said, he really didn’t give a hoot about people’s opinions; he did and said whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. She still thought he was a little coarse with his language, but she didn’t object, corny though it was, when he called her “Blondie,” which seemed to have become his nickname for her, or even when he put his arm around her waist one evening and said (in a joshing way, of course, and winking at Roy), “You just tell me, Blondie, when you get tired of looking up at this big lug and want to look down at a little one.”

She would have circled Friday then instead of Sunday, had it not been for the Sowerbys’ Saturday night barbecue, at which her presence had specifically been requested by the host himself. That was awfully hard to turn down. She supposed she could wait until Sunday without losing anything—gaining three nights more away from home, in fact. Surely any diversion, even if it involved Roy, was better than sitting up in her hot room, listening to her family rocking downstairs on the porch; or lying awake in the dark bedroom, unable to sleep until she heard her father’s footsteps coming up the stairs and she had determined (solely for the record) whether he was actually going off to bed sober.

What had always made summer particularly awful was that with all the doors and windows open, her sense of the presence of those whom she could hardly abide was painfully, horribly acute. Just to hear someone she hated
yawn
could drive her to distraction if she happened to be in an angry mood. Now, however, she was out every night until twelve-thirty, by which time they were usually asleep (not that it was any pleasure hearing someone you hated snore, if it made you start thinking about them). On the hottest nights, rather than being
locked up with her family, she and Roy would sit on one of the benches down by the river, catching what breeze there was and staring off into the black stillness of water under the Winnisaw Bridge. She would think about college and Fort Kean—
away, away
—and often Roy would begin to sing to her, in a voice that really wasn’t that bad, or so she was willing to admit in the pleasure of contemplating the future that would soon be hers. He sang like Vaughan Monroe, and like Dick Haymes; he could do Nat “King” Cole singing “Nature Boy,” and Mel Blanc doing “Woody Woodpecker,” and Ray Bolger (whom he thought he resembled in build) doing “Once in Love with Amy.” After they saw
The Jolson Story
he did for her his imitation of the incomparable Al Jolson. That was how Roy introduced himself as hand in hand they sat down by the river on those close nights during what was to be the last summer of Lucy’s arduous and unhappy youth. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you will, the incomparable, the one and only, Al Jolson.

Fifty-eight days. Fifty-seven. Fifty-six.

At the Sowerby barbecue on Saturday night she got into a long, serious discussion with Roy’s father—their first real talk—in which she heard herself assuring Mr. Bassart that he really shouldn’t have anxiety or doubt any longer about Roy’s future. Mr. Bassart said that he still could not figure where the interest in photography had suddenly come from. His experience with young people had long ago convinced him not to bank too heavily on sudden enthusiasms, since they had a habit of disappearing under strain. He was, he admitted, relieved that the months wasted wading around in what he called “a swamp of half-baked ideas” had come to an end, but now what concerned him was whether Roy had really chosen something he was going to be able to stick with when the going got
rough. What did Lucy think? Oh, said Lucy, his heart was really in photography, she was sure of it.

“What makes you so sure?” asked Mr. Bassart in his flat voice.

She thought quickly and said that photography wasn’t such an astonishing interest for Roy to have, when you thought that really it was a wonderful way of combining his present interest in drawing with his old interest in printing.

Mr. Bassart reflected upon what she had said.

So did she, reddening. “I think that’s true, in a manner of speaking, Mr. Bassart.”

“It’s clever,” he said without smiling, “but whether it’s true is something I’ll have to think about. What about your own plans? What are your own personal educational goals?”