5:45 to Suburbia

by Packer, Vin

  On the evening of that same day, after participating in a romantic maneuver of her own, which ended in her being pinned to Otto Avery, Mitzie Thompson made an entry in her five-year diary:

  Well, I did it. Neither one of us wanted it to happen. Ave kept murmuring, “I have no right to do this, darling. No right … No right!” But it happened anyway … How do I feel? Well, I don’t know exactly, but I wasn’t embarrassed at all about the wart the way I alway thought I’d be…. That’s something!!! … When I got back to the sorority, the girls said, “What’d you and Ave do?” I told them: “Not much” … Not much! (ha! ha!).

  Three months after that entry she wrote this:

  Sometimes I think all men are selfish. Lately it seems that more and more Ave doesn’t care anything about me THAT WAY. I mean he cares, but only for his own pleasure. He says the reason I don’t get anything out of it is I’m frigid, but I know better. DO I! … But men think they are the only one with feelings … I made an A in E-Lit again. Papa will be pleased.

  Mitzie Thompson, in the beginning of her sophomore year, was voted the girl with the most “It,” and she was still pinned to Otto Avery, though less and less did she notice the fact he wasn’t saying “I love you” as much as he used to after their good-night kisses.

  With Avery she was very comfortable, and sometimes on week-end nights they didn’t even bother making love any more.

  With Avery, she enjoyed a certain amount of freedom which she somehow imagined made her a very blasé young lady. During THAT TIME OF THE MONTH, she quite nonchalantly mentioned that she had cramps, and Avery, in turn, quite nonchalantly did little things to comfort her — offered aspirin; kissed her only on the forehead (as though it would be unholy under the circumstances to kiss her on the mouth) and frequently patted her tummy lightly and inquired: “Is my girl hurting?”

  With Avery she was disenchanted at those times when she was sure he loved her more than she loved him; and enchanted when his eye strayed to another. But when he was behaving as he was on the evening of March 6, 1925, a few moments before he reached into his pocket and took out the poem Charlie Gibson had written, Mitzie was simply bored.

  They were having coffee at a campus café across from the Administration building. Otto and Mitzie had been to an evening lecture on Hemingway, the new writer who had been causing such a stir lately, and subsequently inspiring everyone to talk in tough understatements out of the corners of their mouths. They had come into the café alone, and Mitzie had rather fancied they would take a table alone and indulge in a somewhat intense conversation centering on this Hemingway. She had been looking forward to it. For one thing she loved to picture herself holding intense conversations at a table alone with Avery, and to imagine people saying: “They must be awfully interesting, those two.” And for another, she liked to listen to Avery’s voice. It was fabulous; Avery was convinced radio was here to stay and he wanted to get a job in radio after he was graduated, so he was always practicing, imitating the announcers on the radio, and Mitzie liked to listen to him and fantasize herself years ahead, when someone would be exclaiming: “Oh, really! Why I hear him every evening. So you’re Otto Avery’s wife!”

  But the moment after they had entered the café and put their coffees on a tray, Mitzie knew they wouldn’t sit alone. She saw Avery’s eyes become alert once he spotted two of his fraternity brothers at a table in the rear; and then he said in that snidely sly way of his — whenever he thought he might amuse himself by being cruel: “Oh, look there! There’s Fodor and O’Brien. Let’s join them.”

  She knew too, even before they got to the table, that Avery would ride them, that he would begin again his annoying habit of teasing and ridiculing them in that ostensibly tolerant and amicable manner of his. He seemed to take some perverse pleasure in making buffoons of certain boys, and Fodor and O’Brien were among them.

  Whenever Mitzie Thompson was bored, she flattened her short black flapper-cut hair to her pretty head by smoothing it over and over with the palm of her hand, and as she sipped her coffee beside Avery then, facing the two scapegoats he had chosen for the evening, she was doing just that.

  “Whatever are you reading Fitzgerald for?” Avery was saying in his supercilious tone to the intimidated O’Brien, who was blushing down at a library copy of The Beautiful and Damned — ”I wouldn’t waste my time on him. He’s not going to be at all important.”

  “I don’t mind him,” O’Brien managed.

  “No, I suspect you don’t. I suspect you think he’s ripping. O’Brien, your tastes are so inconceivably mediocre. I wonder why you even try. Why do you try, O’Brien? Why?”

  “Don’t let him ride you, O’Brien,” Mitzie had put in. “I like old Scotty myself. He suits me to a T.”

  O’Brien looked pleased, but Avery said, “It’s all right for Mitz to think like that. Mitz is pretty. She can think any way she wants to because she’s pretty. But you, O’Brien. You’re not pretty, are you? Do you wish you were, O’Brien?”

  “Why don’t you stick to literature and stop getting personal,” Fodor dared defend his colleague.

  “Oh ho, so you’re afraid we’ll put things on a personal plane, eh, Fodor?” Avery grinned maliciously at Fodor. “Afraid we’ll hurt little O’Brien’s feelings, eh, Fodor? Well, I admire loyalty. In fact I’ve always admired the way you two stick together so much. Ever notice, Mitz, how these two stick together? They’re inseparable, really. I mean, I’m not criticizing them, or insinuating anything. I mean it in the nicest way. Fodor and O’Brien. Just like Mister Gallagher and Mr. Shean — in a way, eh?”

  “What the devil’s the matter with you, Avery?” Fodor snapped.

  “Oh, nothing with me.” Avery chuckled.

  So it went; and Mitzie sat and listened and smoothed her hair to her head and didn’t listen. She daydreamed, and felt vaguely sorry for the two boys. Neither of them were Avery’s match; otherwise he would never have picked on them; both were horrible bookworms, and rather weak, wilting types, suitable prey for Avery. Mitzie wished he wouldn’t have the inclination to tease such types, but he did, and she would have to tolerate him because they were pinned. It was like being married.

  Whenever her mind wandered from the conversation at the table, it seemed inevitably to drift back to a discussion she and Avery had had a week or so past. They had been talking about what they were going to do for Easter; and Avery was saying that the idea of going home bored him. He believed he’d go quail hunting with a group of the boys. Mitzie said that it would be nice, wouldn’t it, if they could go off somewhere together, off to a hotel or something?

  “What for?” He’d seemed surprised.

  “Well, to be together.”

  “But what for? What would we do?”

  “It’s just that we never have been. Not overnight. We’ve always been in cars or woods or fraternity-house cellars.”

  “And what magic, pray, would be added to our relationship by the fact of a night spent surreptitiously in some hotel room?”

  “We could — well, have breakfast together. We’ve never done that. We’ve never awakened together, Ave. It’d be — fun.”

  “Oh,” Avery said, “I see. Then your idea of fun for Easter is kissing one another’s hung-over mouths every morning, and afterward sipping orange juice atop wrinkled sheets sprinkled with toast crumbs.”

  “You always spoil everything, Ave. I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “And I wish you’d grow up!”

  It had been the closest they’d ever come to an argument — and that had been the only saving fact about it because Mitzie was worried at the fact they never seemed to argue. Ave simply wouldn’t. But it had hurt her quite a lot more than she’d realized at the time, and she would find herself dwelling on it in odd moments — and asking her five-year diary: 1) Could he really love me if he doesn’t want me there in the morning? 2) Why does he mock me whenever I’m a bit romantic? and 3) That thing he said about hung-over mouths … It strikes me he always dri
nks before we love! ! ! Why ? ? ? Or should I just be glad he can get hootch. Ann K.’s boy friend hardly ever can; and when he does, he always gets sick. I couldn’t stand it if Ave were ever to vomit. Better count my lucky stars.

  “Hey — ” O’Brien eventually interrupted the conversation at the table — ”there’s Charlie Gibson coming in. Let’s hail him.”

  “Where?” Avery said, swinging around sharply to see. “By God, that reminds me.” He began to fumble frantically through his slicker pockets. “I have a little something here that’ll be of interest to you, darling.”

  He nudged Mitzie, smiling, and then took out a piece of folded yellow paper.

  “I say, O’Brien,” he said, “go and get Chazz; have him join us. Only don’t tell him I’m here. You see, it’s his birthday and I have a surprise planned for him.”

  O’Brien got up to go after Gibson, and Avery unfolded the paper.

  “Mitzie, listen to this. You too, Fodor. You’re a scholar. See what you think of this bit of poetry.” He began to read the lines slowly, forcing as much emotion into his voice as he could:

  Tell me how you like to see morning

  Come for us. Say it sleepily —

  Mitzie Thompson listened to it with some surprise, and Fodor frowned thoughtfully. But toward the end, as Avery was reading: “I love you when your arms hold me — ” Charlie Gibson arrived at the table with O’Brien, and he stood stick-straight, staring, with his face beet red, and his coffee cup shaking.

  “Ah, there you are, Chazzy,” Avery said. “I was just reading your poem.”

  “Sit down,” O’Brien said. “Aren’t you going to sit down?”

  Fodor said, “You write that, Gibson? Not bad.”

  “I think it’s awfully good too,” Mitzie Thompson said. “What’s the matter?”

  Charlie Gibson just stood there. He couldn’t even look up from his coffee, or hold the cup still.

  “It is good,” Avery said expansively, “it’s very good.” He put his arm around Mitzie. “And do you know who it’s written about?”

  “Don’t embarrass him, Ave. He has a right to a private life.”

  “But it’s written to you, my darling. The title is mitzie before breakfast.”

  At that, Charlie Gibson turned away abruptly, managed to walk four booths ahead and then sink down into the fifth, sitting like a stone with his back to them.

  “Oh, Ave! Oh, gosh, that was terrible!”

  “Of course.” Avery spoke to Fodor and O’Brien now, “The amusing part of it is that Chazz boy has hardly had six words with Mitzie since he was a freshman. But you know he’s in love with her. He’s in love with her and he imagines — ” Avery slapped the paper with the back of his hand — ”this sort of thing.”

  “What an ass!” Fodor said, somewhat relieved that the spotlight had been turned on Gibson now.

  O’Brien said, “Well, read it over. I didn’t hear it all.”

  And it was then and there, precisely at that moment, that Mitzie Thompson felt a sudden surge of emotion sweep through her; a very sad, tender, gentle emotion; an emotion that made her, she thought, one with Dante’s Beatrice, Petrarch’s Laura, and Tristram’s Isolt; and besides, it had been called mitzie before breakfast! It had mentioned awakening together, and for one solid year a man had loved her without her knowing it. She, the girl with the most “It,” had inspired a poet. At Columbia, Missouri, in the month of March in the year 1925, an incident had occurred which might well be recorded in the literary annals of the future — ”… was reported that the young poet was so shy in the presence of his beloved that he fled — ”

  “Where the devil are you going?” Otto Avery shouted as Mitzie got up suddenly from the table.

  “She’s crying,” O’Brien said.

  “What’s she crying about?” Fodor asked.

  Otto Avery said, “She’s being dramatic again.” He shrugged. “What’s the date anyway? Probably her period.”

  “It’s the sixth,” O’Brien said. “The sixth of March. Is it really Charlie’s birthday?”

  And so, on Charlie Gibson’s eighteenth birthday, Mitzie Thompson ran weeping past him in the Ankle Inn Café, and Charlie Gibson ran trembling after her.

  In the street where he caught her by the arm, he looked at his fingers clutching her coat, and then dropped his hand from her as though he had touched a burning coal. He blushed even more and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to — ”

  “That’s all right,” she said.

  She blew her nose.

  Charlie stood there.

  She put the handkerchief back in her pocket. Neither one knew what to say or where to go from there. A group of boys and girls, their arms wound around one another, feigning intoxication, staggered by singing bois-trously, Yes, We Have No Bananas.

  “Everybody’s singing that dumb song,” Charlie said, “but nobody I want to know is.”

  “Me too,” she said. “Nobody I want to know is either.”

  With a common bond acknowledged, they began to walk along together — Mitzie Thompson and Charlie Gibson — she, on the verge of her second affair; he, still a virgin.

  MARCH 6, 1957

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AFTER Charlie Gibson put aside the news clipping, he searched through his mail pile for the letter from his daughter, Jane (or Jayne, as she was now spelling it).

  It was written on Radcliffe College stationery and it began quite simply:

  Dear Dad,

  I am having an affair …

  Charlie felt his stomach do a flip. He gulped (he had been expecting “Happy Birthday” or something like that; never, never this), got a grip on himself and took a deep breath and exhaled as he continued to read:

  with a man named Dudley Q. Davis, Harvard ‘59. At the risk of being labeled an exhibitionist by the fact that I announce this to you, I am going to state my reasons for so doing.

  First of all, we’re serious — dead serious. You and I are close, Dad, but we’ve never been very much alike. I guess I’m not very much like either you or mother. When I feel things, I feel them very, very deeply; and when I say that what I feel for Dud is more than love, far more, I wonder if you’ll be able to understand. I ask you, please try!

  Secondly, we’re planning to go to Europe this summer, and that’s another reason why I must make everything very clear to you. Dud’s folks are comfortable, but they’re not rich. For generations back, they’ve been Harvard; and their one wish is for Dud to be Harvard, too. It’s a tradition I respect Dud for respecting.

  If we were to do anything rash at this time (marriage) Dud would not be able to finish, and this would kill the Davises. I think you and Mom would like to see me finish Radcliffe, too. Marriage is out!

  Even if I were to use the money put aside for my education, to support Dud and I, his father would never forgive us if we were to marry before Dud got his B.A.

  I don’t want you to think Dud is one of these Ivy League types who places more importance on a “name” university than is justifiable. That isn’t it at all; it’s simply that there is tradition there and tradition is vital in human life. Harvard, as far as Dud is concerned, is of very little consequence, outside of the tradition involved. And that brings me to our plans for Europe this summer …

  You see, Dad, Dud is a writer. Notice that I don’t say, “Dud wants to be a writer.” He is one, and he’s a very important one. In your business, Dad, you deal with hacks who sell emotions and ideals and rationale down the river for three cents a word — but Dud is not that kind of a writer. He’s sensitive; and he’s thoughtful; and he wants his work to live in aftertimes, to be read, and reread. He’s at work now on a series of poems, based along the idea of Pound’s cantoes (Ezra Pound wrote poetry, poems called cantoes) — and it’s his hope that in Europe this summer he’ll perfect them. His folks are financing his trip, and I am going to ask you to finance mine.

  Do you remember that you promised to buy me a car when I was graduated from Radclif
fe? Instead of that, and now while I’m young and could make real use of that money, in a more real way, I would rather go to Europe with Dud.

  I know you’ll be shocked by this letter, Dad, and angry too. But please try to appreciate the fact that I’m not like you; I’m not even like the girls you probably dated when you were in college. Prudishness, false modesty, supercilious principles — these things are archaic to me. I only know how I feel. How deeply I feel. And for me, this feeling is the only voice of reason.

  I’ve seen Dud perspire, struggle, suffer anxiety over, and weep because of a line of poetry he was trying to make important. And I think this experience made me grow up and realize life has to be meaningful — to me, to Dud, to people like us, life has to have a message, something more than the business world “step on toes and go for the buck” philosophy; or the suburbia “wear comfortable shoes, read Dr. Spock, play Scrabble after dinner” monotony.

  Dad, I somehow know you won’t fail me. You never have, have you?

  Please answer very soon.

  Best love,

  JAYNE

  Charlie Gibson’s first reaction to the letter was mute shock, shock of the uncanny sort that seeps in on one gradually, like water slowly flooding a leaky rowboat, and he sat there at his desk momentarily in an effort to get used to it. When he could — just barely — he seized at the idea that his daughter did not mean “affair” in the same sense as he had taken it. Not affair, sexual, not that … Jane? … Jayne?

  For some peculiar reason his mind shot back to a summer afternoon (how many years ago) when his wife came out into the backyard, and pulled a lawn chair up beside the hammock where Charlie was napping, and said, “Well, Janie’s finally gotten around to the birds and bees.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlie woke up enough to ask. Funny how he could recall too that he had stared up above his head at the caterpillar nests in the apple tree, and thought he ought to get a kerosene torch and burn them out of there. Funny how you could remember odd little things like that.