A Hundred Summers

by Beatriz Williams

  “Geology! You see? That’s what I mean. Studying something just because you find it interesting. It’s not as if Graham wants to be a geologist.” She makes a little laugh at the absurdity of it.

  “And what if I do, honey? We could go out in the field, camping out in the canyons. It’d be grand.”

  Budgie laughs again. “Isn’t he funny?”

  Later, the boys escort us back to Budgie’s Ford and raise the top for the journey back to Smith. Budgie offers them a ride back to their dormitory. “I can’t let you walk back with that on your leg,” she says, nodding at Nick’s cast.

  Nick looks at Graham. They shrug.

  “Sure, why not?” says Graham. He climbs into the front passenger seat, and Nick manages to hold open the door while I creep in back. He throws in the crutches and then himself, folding that long body crosswise to fit inside.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, easing his cast against my leg. We sit so close, in the back of Budgie’s little Ford, I can feel his breath on my cheek.

  “No, it’s all right,” I say. “I’m small.”

  He looks at me. In the yellow glow from the lamppost outside the hotel, his face is dusky and distorted, and his eyes are nearly invisible. “Yes, you are,” he says.

  “Behave yourselves back there,” says Budgie, throwing the car into gear.

  We rattle down the darkened roads, with Graham muttering directions to Budgie, sliding himself closer to her. His left shoulder moves next to hers. I can sense the flex of muscle in his neck, his back; I can see the playful tilt of her head. The contrast between the intimacy up front and the stilted silence between me and Nick is impossible to ignore. I glance at Nick, just as he glances at me. A pair of headlights flashes by, illuminating his face beneath his peaked wool cap, and he rolls his eyes and smiles.

  “Right here, you silly female,” says Graham. “Don’t you recognize it?”

  The Ford swerves to the side of the road, next to a large white clapboard house. “Well, it looks different by night,” says Budgie. She puts the car in neutral and drums her fingernails against the steering wheel.

  No one moves.

  “Here we are,” says Nick.

  “Greenwald,” says Graham, “why don’t you take Lily for a little walk? Show her the campus a bit.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Nick mutters.

  “Budgie?” I ask, in a small voice.

  “Go ahead, honey,” she says. “I just need to talk to Graham for a minute.”

  Graham gets out of the front seat, opens Nick’s door, and heaves him into the chilly night. I slide after, absorbing the warmth of Nick’s seat as I pass over.

  “We’ll just be a minute,” Graham says to Nick.

  “I’ll bet.” Nick looks at me. I can’t read his expression, not in this darkness, but I gather something like sympathy. “Come along, Lily. There’s a bench over this way.”

  “Are you all right to walk like this?”

  “Of course.” He brandishes one crutch. “It’s nothing.”

  The air has chilled remarkably since the sun-filled noontime in the stadium. I cross my arms over my woolen cardigan and trudge along next to Nick Greenwald’s crutches as they swing and plant along the lawn. I wish I’d brought a coat. I hadn’t known we would be staying so late. “It really is awful of them, on a cold night like this,” I say. “Couldn’t they have saved it for the telephone tomorrow?”

  “I guess not. Here’s the bench. Sorry, it’s probably frozen.” He swings himself down and props the crutches between us.

  “I suppose Budgie is just too irresistible.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Don’t you think so?” I ask, surprised. Budgie seems to me, on a purely objective basis, to be the exact fleshly representation of male desire. The boys sure agree. I’ve seen it myself, time and again, the way they fall over her, offering Hershey bars and steak dinners, offering their arms to cross the street, offering to carry books, to dance and fetch drinks. Offering whatever she wants.

  “Look,” Nick says, “I don’t mean to say a word against a girl, but I can’t see how a fellow would be looking at Budgie Byrne, with someone like you standing next to her.”

  I sit motionless, staring at the faint shine of the Ford where it idles by the curb a hundred yards away. The dormitory sits like a giant rectangular ghost behind it.

  I can’t quite believe what I’ve just heard. I sift through the words again, piecing them apart and then back together.

  He clears his throat. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m not trying to . . . All I mean is that she’s very pretty, yes, in the same way all girls like her are pretty, skin and hair and smart clothes. They’re all alike. There’s nothing special there, nothing interesting.” He pauses. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”

  “Not really. All the boys like Budgie. There must be something there.”

  He laughs out loud, heartily. “Oh, there’s something, all right. I’m sure they like her plenty, or most of them. But I guess I’m different.” He pauses and says, under his breath, so I almost miss the words: “Nothing new there.”

  “Well, I like different.”

  “I know you do. Oh, look. I’m sorry. You’re frozen.” He starts to take off his jacket.

  “No, it’s all right,” I say, but he settles it over my shoulders anyway, heavy and shimmering with the heat of his enormous body. The silk lining slides like liquid against my neck.

  I know you do, he said. What does that mean?

  “I’m warm enough,” he says. “So tell me, Lily Dane, what you do when you’re not out traipsing around after Budgie Byrne to football games.”

  I laugh. I like that he uses words like traipsing. “Study, mostly. Reading, writing. I want to become a journalist.”

  “Good for you. Lots of women doing that these days.”

  “And you? You’ll be graduating soon.”

  He scuffs the grass with his heel. “I’ll be starting work at my father’s firm.”

  “Your father owns a history company?” I say teasingly.

  Nick laughs. “No. Everyone on Wall Street has a history degree, though you’d never know it, the way they keep making the same mistakes, crash after crash.”

  “Hmm. So is that why you’re studying architecture, too? Find a way to rebuild it all with a sounder foundation?”

  “No.” The amusement drains from his voice. “I just love architecture, that’s all.”

  “Then why don’t you become an architect, instead?”

  “Because my father wants me to join his firm.”

  “And do you always do what your father tells you to do?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Do you always do what your parents tell you?”

  I pull the ends of his jacket close to my chest. A warm scent drifts up from the wool: cedar closets and shaving soap, reassuring, extraordinarily intimate. This is how men smell, I think. “I guess I do. Of course, Mother thinks I’m only getting a job to find a husband.”

  “Are you?”

  “No. I want to . . .” My breath dissolves in the air.

  He nudges me with his shoulder. “You can tell me. I’m just some stranger. I don’t even know your parents.”

  “I don’t know. Travel. Write about what I see.” I hesitate again, embarrassed, because I haven’t really put it all into words before. The dream is just an image in my head, a vision, a yearning for something else, something more, something sublime and brilliant. I am sitting at a desk somewhere, typewriter before me, in a room on a high floor, with some foreign scene—Paris or Venice or Delhi—framed in the sun-flooded window.

  “Then you should go out there and do it,” says Nick Greenwald, with passion. “Now, before some husband ties you down with housework and kids. Go out there and do it, Lily, before it’s too late.”

  We fall silent, watching the Ford. I wonder what’s going on in there. Probably not just talking, I realize with a jolt. Graham kissing Budgie, Budgie kissing him back. Embr
acing each other, his hand wound in her hair. Like the movies, like Clark Gable and Joan Crawford.

  My face grows hot and tight.

  Nick looks at his watch, shakes it, holds it up to catch the sliver of moonlight. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to sound so vehement.”

  Vehement. “No, you were right. You are right. It’s very kind of you to take such an interest.” I am warm underneath Nick’s jacket, and yet I can’t stop shaking. His words keep repeating themselves in my head. He is so solid and massive next to me, so vital. I think of his expression as he stood with Graham in his dark green jersey, the relentlessness of his eyes, the lightning snap of his arm as it sent the ball down the field. I can’t quite comprehend that all that power and determination is packed within the laconic human shape stretching out its wounded plaster leg beside mine. If I were brave enough, if I were brazen and confident of success like Budgie, I could simply lift my fingers a few inches and lay my hand atop his. What would it feel like? Calloused, probably, like his leather football. Strong and calloused and firm. It could probably snap my fingers like chicken bones, if it wanted.

  The back door of the Ford juts open, and Graham raises himself awkwardly, raking his hands through his hair, hitching his trousers. Budgie’s head emerges above the roof, on the other side, and bobs to the front door.

  “Why do they call her Budgie, anyway?” Nick asks. He makes no move to get up.

  I think back. “Well, you know, she was blond as a child. A towhead, if you can believe it. Talking all the time. Her father used to say she was like a bright yellow parakeet. That’s the family story, anyway.”

  “What’s her real name?”

  “Helen. Like her mother.”

  “And is Lily your real name, or some ridiculous pet name?”

  From the wide arc of the Ford’s headlamps, Graham peers through the darkness and waves to us.

  “My real name.”

  Nick heaves himself up from the bench and offers me his hand. “I’m glad.”

  “But you think it’s ridiculous,” I say, taking his hand and rising.

  “Only if it were a pet name. Otherwise, it’s lovely.” He’s still holding my hand. His palm is softer than I imagined, gentle. We stand there, poised, not quite looking at each other. Graham hollers something through the clear air. Nick lets go of my hand and reaches for the crutches.

  “Let me help you.”

  “No, I’ve got it.” He positions himself expertly above the crutches, and it occurs to me that he must have had another pair, at some point, for some other injury. “Nick is short for Nicholson, by the way. My mother’s maiden name.”

  “Nicholson Greenwald. Terribly distinguished.”

  “I urge you forcefully to call me Nick.”

  Oh, God, I like him. I really do.

  Graham is leaning against the passenger door, legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded. He winks at Nick. “About time. Did the two of you get lost?”

  Nick holds up a crutch. “I can’t exactly sprint with these.”

  Budgie toots the horn.

  “We should go,” I say. “We’ll probably miss curfew as it is.”

  “We can’t have that.” Graham opens the door with a flourish.

  I climb inside, and Graham closes the door behind me. The air in the car is close, humid, earthy. I roll down the window. “Good-bye. A pleasure meeting you both.”

  “Good-bye, darlings!” Budgie calls, leaning across my chest to waggle her fingers out the window. Graham snatches her hand and kisses it.

  “I’ll see you soon,” he says. “You’re driving up again, aren’t you? We’re playing here Saturday, same as today.”

  “Then yes. Lily, roll up the window, it’s freezing.” Budgie puts the car in gear and lifts the brake.

  I roll up the window. “Good-bye,” I say again, through the disappearing gap, feeling desperate. It can’t be over, not yet, not when everything is hovering on the brink. “I hope your leg feels better!”

  Oh, God. I hope your leg feels better?

  Nick says something, but Budgie is already popping the clutch, rolling away, and his words lose themselves in the crack of the window.

  “Well, that was nice. Wasn’t that nice? Did you and Nick have a nice chat?” Budgie is warm, electric, seething with energy. She pats her hair, smooths it, and changes gears. Her hat has disappeared.

  “Yes. He’s very nice.”

  She glances sideways. “Souvenir?”

  Nick’s jacket. “Oh, no!” I clutch the collar with one hand and brace the other on the door. “Turn around, quick!”

  Budgie laughs and leans forward to turn on the radio. “You amateur, you. You don’t have the slightest idea, do you?”

  “About what?”

  “Listen, the deal is, you keep the jacket, honey. Then you’ve got an excuse to come with me next week and give it back.”

  “Oh.” I put my hands in my lap and stare ahead, at the pavement rolling past the beam of the headlamps, at the tunnel of trees on either side of the road. The scent of soap and cedar still rises from the jacket. Nick’s scent. A giddy wheel of anticipation starts to spin inside my stomach. From the radio comes the tinny scratch of “Goodnight, Sweetheart,” filling the Ford with sentiment. I add: “I guess you’re right.”

  BUT FOR ONCE, Budgie is wrong. In the morning, just before seven, I am awakened by a determined knock at my door. Behind it, a groggy-faced fresher in a plaid robe and round tortoiseshell eyeglasses tells me there’s a fellow on crutches waiting downstairs for me, who wants his jacket back.

  4.

  SEAVIEW, RHODE ISLAND

  May 1938

  Unlike me, Kiki was never afraid of strangers. Adult or child, tall or small, human or animal, everyone was her friend. While I stood frozen, just out of sight at the bottom of the stairs, my hand clutched around my gin glass, she replied to Nick Greenwald as if she had known him all her life.

  “That’s a fine hat you’re wearing. What’s your name?” she asked pleasantly.

  “My name is Nick Greenwald. And I think I know who you are.”

  “Do you?” She was excited by this information.

  “You must be Miss Catherine Dane of New York City. Am I right?”

  His voice floated out from above me, exactly the same as I remembered, only a little deeper, more mellowed. I pivoted around the base of the veranda and sank into the sand, shaking at the familiarity of the sound.

  Kiki gasped over my head. “How did you know that, Mr. Greenwald?”

  “Well, look at those eyes of yours. I’d recognize them anywhere.” He paused. “Is your family here?”

  “Lily’s right behind me. Lily?”

  I sprang up and forced my feet to the steps. “Right here, darling. I was just picking up my glass and . . . Oh! Mr. Greenwald!”

  Nick was crouching next to Kiki, addressing her eye-to-eye, and the expression on his face was so soft it stopped my breath. He straightened slowly to his full towering height. “Lily Dane,” he said. “How are you?”

  Kiki was right about his hat. It looked new, the straw still stiff and bright, like he’d bought it last week at Brooks Brothers just for the purpose of a summer on the Seaview beach. Beneath the brim, his eyes were the same warm hazel as ever, and his face had lost all traces of boyishness. The bones sat prominently below his skin, austere as a monk’s, regular and uncompromising.

  “I’m well, I’m well. How are you?”

  “Never better. I . . .”

  But before we could enlarge on this promising beginning, another familiar voice carried across the slow-moving air of the veranda.

  “Why, Lily Dane! Look at you!”

  Nick and I both turned, with simultaneous relief.

  By now I was well prepared for the sight of Budgie Greenwald. I had seen her face in the newspapers, so I knew that she now kept her dark hair longer and her curls softer, according to fashion. I knew that her round eyes now had a sultry cast, though I didn’t know whether
this was due to some natural effect of maturity or from some sort of cosmetic pose; I knew that she tinted her lips a deep wine red, which was even more startling in the full color of real life. I knew she would be dressed in the height of fashion, and her floating full-length chiffon gown, with its bare arms and relaxed Grecian neckline, did not disappoint.

  But still I was shocked by her, more even than by Nick. Perhaps this was only natural. After all, I’d known Budgie all my life, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, in all moods and settings: far more intricately than I had known Nick. This new phase of Budgie’s life was the first I hadn’t seen as it developed. Now here she stood before me, fully realized, every promise fulfilled, and I couldn’t stand the strangeness of it.

  “I thought you might be here. I’ve been looking all over. Of course Nick was clever enough to find you for me, weren’t you, darling?” She slithered to his side in a rush of chiffon and looped one languorous arm through his. Her eyebrows raised expectantly.

  I knew I had to speak, but I couldn’t think of a single word.

  Kiki saved me. “You’re Budgie Byrne, aren’t you?” she said. “I’ve heard about you.”

  Budgie looked down. “I beg your pardon, my dear.”

  I couldn’t find my voice for myself, but I could find it for Kiki. “Budgie, how lovely to see you. Such a nice surprise. Kiki, this is Mrs. Greenwald.”

  “Kiki. Of course.” Budgie held out her hand and spoke gravely. “How do you do?”

  Kiki took her hand without hesitation. “I’m very well, thank you. I adore your dress.”

  Budgie laughed. “Why, thank you. Now tell me, what have you heard about me? Something scandalous, I hope?”

  “I’ve heard you grew up with my sister, before I was born.”

  “Your sister.” Budgie’s sly eyes met mine. “I certainly did. I can tell you the most horrific stories about her, things you’d never believe.”

  “Oh, like what?” Kiki asked eagerly.