How could she be grateful on the one hand and resentful on the other? It didn’t make sense. She thought and thought and tried to reckon it, but it just didn’t make sense. Maybe she would be able to figure it out after she completed the Critical Thinking class she was signed up for next semester. Now she wanted to scratch out all that part about being grateful and write, “You son of a bitch! Who do you think you are? Now I’m obligated to you. Now I owe you money. Aren’t you so fucking noble? So magnanimous? That’s right. Thanks to you, I know a word like ‘magnanimous’. Well, aren’t you special? Helping the poor ignorant country girl? Now you can claim her as your little prize, now that you’ve completely changed her and made her into your perfect little marble statue. But before I can become a work of art, a statue, a perfect fucking sculpture, first you gotta take the heart of me. Statues don’t have hearts!” She muttered it to herself, but of course she wouldn’t write it. If it’s one thing she learned from the high society, it’s to keep things civilized. Real honest feelings were not to be dealt with openly. What would Emily Post say? It might offend. Of course, it was acceptable to be snide or sardonic, disdainful or condescending, but always with a smile on your face. One must never ever be just out and out pissed off.
I’m sorry I embarrassed you in front of your friends. I guess I shouldn’t have drank so much the night of that party.
She stopped and thought a moment. Was the correct conjugation drank or drunk? Who cares anyway, she thought. If it’s wrong it only goes to show that once an ignoramus always an ignoramus. Her mind went back to that night. Or at least what she remembered of that night. Just a week ago, it was the incident that finally sealed their fate.
* * * * *
The Christmas party was given by one of the most prestigious and popular young men in Lamasco. He was the son of a third generation family owned and operated Lamasco business. The dashing young host was all the more celebrated for the fact that he had survived the demise of his family’s manufacturing firm which, like so many manufacturers, had come upon hard times, leaving his father and uncles with few options but to sell the company to a national firm. The old Lamasco plant was promptly shut down and a new one opened in Mexico where cheaper labor could be found.
The shut down of the plant was a great shock and heartache to the family.
There were many sons and daughters in the same position who left for the bigger cities after family businesses were lost, but he stayed in Lamasco and started up a wholesale medical supply company, which for now, was doing well.
Frank was explaining the history of the host on their way to the party that night. He met him playing golf. They talked about how sad it was to drive through certain sections of town where old manufacturing companies had been and thrived for years, only to see them deserted. They talked about the economic effect it had had on Lamasco.
Vicky thought about how sad it was particularly for the laboring man and woman who had few options. They couldn’t just uproot, go to a big city, and find another job. They didn’t have an education or anything to fall back on. They’d lost everything, even their reason to hope. She’d seen it with her own father. All they had to fall back on was day to day survival and the periodic escape from it which they found in TV, bars, drinking, gambling, and drugs. The drug business was thriving in the wake of the plant closures.
Frank drove cautiously through an intersection, slick with a thin layer of freshly fallen snow. It had been flurrying off and on all afternoon and just since they got in the car the flakes had become larger and were now beginning to accumulate on the ground. They were approaching the downtown area and passing through a poor rundown section of town. Yet just blocks away was their destination, where the beautiful newly renovated historic homes sat like sentinels overlooking the river. Here in the oldest section of town was the diverse contrast of the classes virtually bumping up against each together.
Everyone who was anyone in Lamasco was at the party. The expensive cars were lined up and down the old brick covered street. They had to park more than a block away and walk across the bumpy surface of bricks, all the more treacherous from the slippery layer of snow. Frank had a hold of her elbow, the way he always did when assisting her, and Vicky protested the way she always did when he helped her, complaining all the while that she was not an invalid.
“I got cold feet,” Vicky said as they approached the old Victorian red brick house, beautifully decorated with greenery, wreaths, red velvet bows and white lights.
“What do you expect? You’re walking across snow,” said Frank.
“Not that kind of cold feet.”
“Are you ever going to stop being nervous at these social gatherings? You know you have nothing to worry about.”
“I know. I just wish I could mix drinks or pass out hors d’oeuvres or something. Maybe they’ll let me help in the kitchen. I’ll offer.”
“Vicky!” Frank said as if he was scolding a child. “They’ll be plenty of people here you know. Tim and Sally are going to be here. You don’t have to hang out with the kitchen staff.”
They were greeted at the door by the hostess, the young host’s new bride, a stylishly attractive though not beautiful Junior Leaguer and import from the suburbs of Chicago that he brought back from college. They did indeed have hired help at the party, and the first one to greet them was an acquaintance of Vicky’s, a young black woman who worked at the River Inn.
“Hey LaVonna,” Vicky greeted her as she approached them to get their drink order. “I see you’re doing a little moonlighting.”
“Vicky girl! What are you doing here?”
Vicky motioned to Frank. “LaVonna, this is Francis.”
“This is the one I heard so much about?” La Vonna said, giving Vicky a knowing smile and a wink.
“This is the one,” Vicky said, then turning to Frank. “Francis, I’d like you to meet LaVonna. We work together at the River Inn.”
“Nice to meet you, LaVonna,” Frank said in his stiff and formal way.
“Nice to meet you, Francis,” she said holding her tray of drinks a little higher and giving Vicky a nod of approval. “What can I get you to drink?”
“I’ll have a vodka martini,” said Frank.
“I’ll have a double Jack Daniels on the rocks. Make it light on the rocks, La Vonna.”
“You’re drinking tonight?” Frank said to Vicky with a look of surprise.
“No, I’m just going to swish the ice around in the glass like how you do,” Vicky said with a smile, thinking she had earned a drink at long last. She had remained sober for months, worked fulltime, took twelve credit hours, made it through finals, and got all A’s, a fact of which she was so very proud.
“If you think it will help those cold feet,” he whispered sweetly, intertwining his fingers with hers and giving the back of her hand a quick kiss. “Come here I want you to meet some people,” he said dragging her off.
The first part of the evening went so well. The bourbon certainly helped her confidence. Conversing freely with the party guests, she was charming and funny. She sensed Frank’s pride in her. To this group of people she was something new, different from all the other girls, fresh, filling each room she entered with that charge of energy, peculiar to Vicky alone. They liked her.
Naturally, she didn’t remain at Frank’s side the entire evening. It was expected that any girl who was anybody would not cling to her date’s side at such an event but would mingle. It was the difference between moxie and mousy. She went looking for Sally and found her. She met her circle of friends and kept them all entertained as she and Sally began recounting Camelot stories.
She met up with Tim. He and his circle of friends invited her into the den which was a small room with a door on the other side of the stairs. She remembered Tim telling her it used to be the kitchen back in the 1800’s. They closed the door, passed around a joint, and snorted some lines of coke. She thanked them all profusely for letting her party with them. She had some more drinks,
drink after drink. She had to take the edge off since the marijuana and cocaine had left her somewhat anxious and paranoid.
The next thing she remembered she was back in the kitchen talking to LaVonna and the rest of the kitchen staff. Frank came looking for her. He seemed angry. That was all she could remember, just a vague memory of his anger. It seemed he was angry that she wasn’t out mingling with the guests instead she was hiding back in the kitchen talking to the kitchen staff. That was it; he used the word “hiding”. She told him she wasn’t hiding and that she could talk to whomever she wanted to talk to.
She remembered nothing else except the vague uneasy feeling she had the next morning when she woke up in her apartment alone. She was all too familiar with that feeling. Like Pinocchio’s Jiminy Cricket, that little inner voice always told her she had done something wrong. She consulted Sally before anyone else. She begged her to tell her the truth. Sally told her she had gotten into a fight with Brooks about labor unions. The host had gotten into it to, saying that it was the labor unions that drove his family business under with their ever increasing demands. It was because of the labor unions, the host contended, that American businesses were moving to Mexico. She insulted the host, saying that for a fine private school, college educated man he certainly wasn’t very smart in the ways of the world.
Sally downplayed the incident which worried Vicky all the more. Sally never downplayed anything; on the contrary, she hyped most things. Where there was no juice in a story she added it, yet she kept telling Vicky that it was no big deal; that everyone drinks too much at those parties. Still Vicky wondered why rich girls could get drunk and giggle and somehow manage to not make a scene.
You know I never meant to hurt anybody. I wish we could’ve talked about it, but maybe you were right when you said it wouldn’t do any good. You’ve been different toward me ever since then. You say nothing is wrong but we both know that just isn’t true. You’re too much of a gentleman to step down. You feel obligated. I’ll make it easy for you and end it now.
Vicky reflected a little wistfully on that morning back in September after they first made love. It was just a little over three months ago, yet it seemed an eternity since they awoke naked in one another’s arms, making love again with enough of the early morning light creeping through the blinds to reveal any flaws. Flaws weren’t noticed that morning; all imperfections were fearlessly revealed and found worthy of acceptance, leaving them completely vulnerable, entirely spent, blissfully themselves as they lay in one another’s embrace, catching their breath in the afterglow. She remembered their conversation that morning.
“You said last night you would walk away when it was over,” Frank said.
“I meant it,” said Vicky.
“It doesn’t have to be over.”
“Well, not now anyway.”
“Not ever.”
“What are you saying, Francis?”
“I’m saying I think we can make it.”
“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it, honey.”
“I mean it,” he laughed as if some shocking revelation had just taken him off guard. “I really mean it! I think we can make it work.”
She remembered how they spent the remainder of that morning, laughing and talking as if they had some private joke, all their conversation an offhanded way of planning their future together.
“Would you be willing to get allergy shots for our animals? I understand you can get those now. I can’t have a big house out in the country without critters.”
“What about kids? How many?”
“How many do you want?”
“How many do you want?”
“As many as I can have. Wonder what they’ll be like.”
“Some strange breed of human, never before or since seen.”
Then they laughed and kissed and made love again. They did a lot of laughing in those days. Vicky smiled so much her cheeks hurt by the end of the day. It seemed so long ago. How could things change so much in just three months?
What were we thinking, Francis? Some things in this world just don’t change. You plus me will never equal any kind of equation that makes sense. But one thing in this world will never change. I will always love you.
There were tears in her eyes as she wrote this. She grabbed the handkerchief sitting there on the table with Frank’s monogram stitched meticulously in navy blue thread. She wiped her tears and blew her nose and resumed writing.
I know I’ll never find anyone like you.
She nearly wrote ‘thank you for loving me’ then realized how stupid that would sound. Still she meant it. He glimpsed passed her exterior into the deepest part of her soul for a brief period and found it worthy of love. Gratitude was as near as she could come to finding a word to pin on how she felt. There was that word again. Grateful. She looked it up in the dictionary. It came from the Latin, gratus, meaning pleasing. But it was such an inadequate word. Gratitude conjured up images of charity cases and feelings of obligation. That’s how she felt now but not in the beginning. Now she was grateful to him, indebted to him. It was big of him to take a chance on her, to delude himself into believing for a short period, but of course he had finally come to his senses. Sadness mixed with anger, loss, love, resentment, and self-pity mingled together in her tears.
She put her head down on the table and sobbed. After a while, after she had composed herself she picked up her pen again and wrote through blurred eyes.
I know you’ll find someone who’s right for you. I wish you happiness.
“No, you don’t,” she said aloud to herself. “You hope he’ll suffer without you.”
She looked at what she wrote and thought she certainly had learned how to be civilized, how to hide her true feelings and say just the right thing. Her education was complete.
Love Always, Vicky
That part she meant. Despite everything, she meant it. She read over the letter one more time. She folded the paper and put it in an envelope. Sadly and somewhat ceremoniously she removed the silver chain from around her neck, undid the clasp and took Frank’s college ring off. Now there was only the key to her grandma’s hope chest on the chain.
“Well, grandma,” she said looking at the key. “I hoped.” She looked at the hope chest. “I was thinking maybe I could finally open it and look inside once I was properly betrothed, that it would be proper and acceptable to do it then.” She thought about opening it just out of sheer curiosity but then thought it would only make her sad to see those things her grandma had intended for a bride.
“I can still hope,” she said then wondered what she had to hope in now. She couldn’t go back to her old life. She’d tried getting together with her old friends and found herself struggling for something to talk about. She had changed. They knew it and resented her for it. She was stuck between two worlds and she didn’t fit into either. She would have to make her own world and some new friends. She thought of the adults she’d met in college, the ones who’d gone back. They were sort of in the same place she was. They would be her new friends. That was it! She would continue her education. She would throw herself into that. She would be disciplined and steadfast. She was training her brain to slow down and take in new information. It was getting easier for her. After all, didn’t she enjoy the challenge? She looked at the key to grandma’s chest and smiled. “I can still hope.”
Vicky put Frank’s ring in the envelope with the letter. She re-clasped the silver chain which bore the hope chest key and put it back over head. She would walk out of Camelot tomorrow and when she did she would do it with hope.
Allison
Chapter 28
December 1984
Allison made some hot chocolate, slipped out of her work clothes, into her grey sweats and pink fuzzy slippers, put on The Carpenters’ Christmas album, and set about wrapping Christmas presents for the evening. Her thoughts were on her future, her new life, which she planned would begin after the holidays. She had copies of her new resume professiona
lly printed and ready to go. After the New Year she would blanket the metropolitan Midwestern cities with that new resume–Indianapolis, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and of course Chicago, which was top of her list, but it really didn’t matter as long as she could leave Lamasco far behind her. After over six months of convalescing from the break-up with Kent she was well enough to finally get up from her metaphorical sickbed and move around. If she didn’t do it soon she would develop psychological bedsores.
She sat on the floor spreading out the wrapping paper, folding it around a box until the design of green holly with red berries covered it, then satisfied with the measurement, she began cutting the paper. As she folded and taped she realized she was content for the first time in ages. Perhaps she would bake some cookies tonight, or better yet, perhaps she could invite the Camelot 3300 girls to come over and bake with her. Sally would be able to join her and Barb if she wasn’t working, but she hadn’t seen much of Vicky lately. She and Frank were getting serious. In fact, she’d heard a rumor from Sally, who’d heard from Tim, who’d heard directly from Frank that he bought her an engagement ring. He was going to propose to her over Christmas. But then a strange thing happened. Frank left town, presumably to visit his family out east for the holidays, but Vicky stayed behind. Maybe things weren’t going so well between them after all. She must be sure to ask Sally what was going on.
Allison’s mind flitted easily from one thought to the next while her fingers struggled to make a neat fold out of a particularly obstinate and uneven corner of wrapping paper. A loud knock on the door interrupted the rhythm of her activities with a sudden and startling jolt. It only took a second to register that it must be Vicky. She knew each neighbor’s distinctive knock by now. Vicky’s was three loud very succinct knuckle wrapping bangs. Looks like I get to find out from Vicky in person about Frank. I hope it’s not bad news, Allison thought as she hopped over a roll of wrapping paper on her way to the door.
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