Windchill Summer

by Norris Church Mailer

  Jackie was a little surprised when she asked him if she could start working the banquets, but he said yes. The second night she worked, she met Frank O’Reilly, who flirted with her and, after everyone else had gone home, drank one more scotch and listened to her pour her heart out about her boyfriend, who had just been killed in Nam. He understood how she felt, he said, because he had a wife who had died of a hemorrhage from a tubal pregnancy, and he never got married again.

  He told her what she needed was to get away for a few days and go down to Hot Springs to get her mind off of things, stop dwelling on the past and start a new chapter in her life. He had money, he said, and he would be happy to give her a free trip. It would be good for him, too, to be with a beautiful young girl who needed him to cheer her up. It was selfishness on his part, he said, because it would cheer him up at the same time.

  Her first reaction was to say no, but he promised they would have separate rooms and that he would be a perfect gentleman. He liked her and wanted to get to know her better. She talked it over with her mother, who thought it was a bad idea.

  “What would people say, Carlene, you going off with an older man you don’t hardly know like that? Him spending all that money on you?”

  “Mama, I have a bad reputation in this town anyhow. No matter what I do, I’m branded a tramp forever, so I might as well do what I want to. I’m not going to sleep with him. He’s a nice guy and just wants to do something good for me. I didn’t promise him anything. I’ve got to find a way to pull myself together and move on.”

  Frannie got a little tight around the mouth, but she understood what Carlene was saying. Once people put you in a box, there was precious little you could do to get out of it.

  “Well, I guess you might be right. I don’t have much to say about it anyhow, do I? You’re a grown woman with a baby. You go on. Have a good time. Me and Kevin will be all right.”

  They drove down in Frank’s Cadillac and stayed at the Majestic Hotel, in the Lanai Towers—in two rooms, just like he said. They swam in the heated pool and took the baths on Bathhouse Row, hot soaks and salt scrubs and massages that made their skin tingle and feel like fresh peeled eggs.

  At night, he took her to a restaurant where they wouldn’t let you in without a coat and tie, and ordered lobster for her. She got to pick out her own lobster from a glass tank, and then cried when it came out boiled and red on her plate. They drank champagne, which made her sneeze, toasted the future, and he gave her a sweet kiss at the door to her room and said good night. Then he went into his own room. She slept all night long, for the first time in years, without one nightmare.

  The second day, they passed a jewelry store. A ring of pink coral that reminded her of Baby’s ring caught Carlene’s eye. Frank walked right in and bought it for her—eighty dollars, and he didn’t blink at the price. She had never known anyone like him before, who had the money to spend and who spent it without begrudging it.

  He didn’t push her to sleep with him, but she wanted to, and the second night when he kissed her good night, she opened the door and he came into her room. He was amazing. It seemed like he got his pleasure from giving her pleasure. She was a girl who had never had much, and it all went right to her head; later, she realized that she hadn’t thought of Jerry for twenty-four hours.

  Sunday night the coach turned into a pumpkin, and on Monday she was back in the real world of the trailer, Kevin, and work. It was too soon to think of more with Frank, but she knew something was starting. He traveled a lot, but he called every few days, and whenever he was in town he would take her out or make dinner for her on the houseboat, make love to her, and put a hundred dollars in her purse, which she found when she went home. She never asked him too many questions—where he went, or if he had any other girlfriends. For now, it was enough just to be with him when she could and to look forward to the next time he came to town.

  He brought up the pictures one night as a new game. He loved to dress her in costumes, and each time she came over he gave her a gift, like a set of black lace underwear in a box with a red ribbon, or a gold-sequined G-string. After she told him she wanted to be an actress, they always played like they were characters in a movie, meeting somehow and of course winding up in bed. He bought a Polaroid camera and came up with the game that he was a photographer for Playboydoing a test shoot for the Playmate of the Month. The pictures were sexy and cute. He said she was extremely photogenic, a good actress, and would do well in the movies. Of course she got the pretend job of Playmate. It became his favorite game.

  The pictures really turned him on. She wanted to tear them up, but he promised he would lock them in a drawer and nobody else would ever see them. He didn’t want to share them with anyone; he wanted to keep her all for himself. He would have the pictures to look at when he was away from her.

  The picture-taking got to be almost as important to Frank as the love-making. Sometimes Carlene was almost jealous of her own self as he pored over the pictures while she sat and watched, waiting for him to come to bed. Every time they did it, the camera equipment became more elaborate—more lights and tripods—and the pictures got more and more raw. Then he suggested making a home movie.

  “Frank, I don’t think this is something I want to do. What if somebody was to see it?”

  “Who’s going to see it? It’s just for you and me. It will be a turn-on. Do it for me, sweetheart. If you don’t like it, we’ll burn it up.” But she said no.

  At Christmas, he gave her a diamond ring—not an engagement ring, exactly, but a cluster of small diamonds in a leaf shape. He put it on her left hand.

  “What does this mean, Frank? Are we engaged or something?” She tried to tease him, but it sounded serious when she said it.

  “It’s a little pre-engagement ring, honey. The real one will be as big as a goose egg.”

  —

  They made the movie. When she got home that night, there were three hundred-dollar bills in her purse. Her stack of money in the tin box under the movie-star pictures and Jerry’s letters was growing. She bought a map of Hollywood, and that went into the box as well. At this rate, they might be able to move by the summer. Where Frank would fit in, she didn’t know. She didn’t really want to marry Frank, but then he hadn’t actually asked her, either. She appreciated the money, but sometimes she felt like he enjoyed giving her the money, like he was paying for the sex or something, and it made her feel funny. At first, she tried to give it back to him, but he insisted.

  “A hundred dollars to me is like ten to you, Carlene. Let me help you and your family out. It’s the least I can do.”

  He knew about her son, of course, but she still hadn’t let him meet Kevin or her mother. Frank didn’t strike her as the daddy type. There was something too slick about him that nagged at her sometimes. He never talked about his life or family, and he seemed not to have any friends. She didn’t even know if he had a home besides the houseboat. He mentioned once that he didn’t want children, and for Carlene, that was reason enough not to marry him. But she would cross that bridge when she came to it. For now, California was getting closer, and that was all that mattered.

  53.Cherry

  I woke up at four with Tripp and Faye and Ricky Don on my mind, tossed and turned for an hour, and finally got up at five. I had to see Tripp and find out what was true and what wasn’t.

  Ramblin’ Rose was not in the driveway at Tripp’s house, but I got out and knocked anyhow and waited on the porch while the silence seeped around the door. I hoped to goodness he hadn’t somehow found out about Ricky Don. Maybe he had driven by when we were out in the potato patch and seen our cars or something, but I couldn’t remember any car lights passing while we were out there. Then again, I probably wouldn’t have noticed if there were any.

  I knocked again, but he didn’t answer. I couldn’t imagine where he would have been all night, but he obviously wasn’t at home. It wasn’t like him to get up this early and go off with somebody. I didn’t want to think
he might have another girlfriend. Maybe he had spent the night with Bean or something.

  As often as I had come to Tripp’s house, it felt like a strange place to me now. I tried the door, and it was open. If he came back, I’d just say I had dropped by and was waiting to surprise him. I hesitated for about ten seconds, then went in.

  There was no sign of him. I went into the living room and the bathroom, calling out his name, but he wasn’t there. The house was as neat as it always was. The bed hadn’t been slept in. I had never thought about going through his drawers and things before, but now I needed to see if there was something that would tell me what his secret life was like, if there was a picture of Faye or letters from her, even though it seemed like if she had written him letters, she would have known his address and phone number and not had to call the sheriff’s office. Maybe he had left her and he hadn’t told me about her because they were getting a divorce. Surely to goodness he wouldn’t have started up with me, or even come here at all, if he was happily married. I didn’t look forward to telling Daddy that I was dating a married man, or a divorced one, either. I still couldn’t believe that he had fooled me so completely, although I guess no woman who is fooled ever believes it until it slaps her in the face. It’s not hard to fool somebody who loves you and trusts you. Look at me fooling Mama and Daddy. I got a guilt pang, but it didn’t stop me from searching.

  There was nothing in the closets or drawers but clothes, all clean and tidy. I felt under the stack of undershirts and in between the underwear. Nothing.

  On the top shelf of his closet there were three guns. Not too unusual around here, but one was a pistol, which I had never seen up close in person before. Daddy had never had a gun, and I was a little afraid of them, so I didn’t touch these.

  The desk drawers in the room he used as a studio were empty, with not even a stamp or an envelope. There was an easel set up by the window, and he had started a big oil painting of me. It was a nude, and although I really liked how I looked in it, I had told him he should put a bathing suit on it if he was going to show it to anybody. So far he hadn’t.

  Beside the desk was a small bookcase nearly filled with books. They were mostly schoolbooks, history books, art books—he liked Edward Hopper a lot, and Andrew Wyeth—a few novels, a dictionary, and two or three cookbooks. One had a red-and-white-checked cover, and I picked it up to see if it looked like he had used it much. Cookbooks always have flour or vanilla stains on the pages of the recipes used the most. He had made dinner for me a time or two, and his puttanesca sauce was incredible. I wondered what all else he had made.

  A letter fell out. It was a pink envelope with a woman’s handwriting, the round kind that girls have, with little circles for dots on the i’s. It wasn’t addressed to Tripp but to Jerry Golden, to some army post office number. In the corner the return address was Carlene Moore, Rt. 3, Sweet Valley, Arkansas.

  I got weak in the knees, and sat down to read it. It took me a couple of minutes before I could take it out of the envelope. She had sprayed perfume on it, Revlon’s Intimate. I wore that myself sometimes.

  Dear Jerry,

  I don’t know how to answer your last two letters. It was hard to believe what all you told me at first, although I know you wouldn’t lie about something like that or make it up, but I went and had the film you sent developed at the drugstore. Thankfully it was busy and the girl who worked there had too much to do to riffle through the pictures like she usually does. I worried that the guys at the developing place looked at them, but maybe it is a machine that does it. I hope it is a machine.

  Even with them right in front of me, I couldn’t hardly accept what was in the pictures, but everything you wrote in the letter is there, and pictures don’t lie. I don’t know if you know what all was on the roll, but there are pictures of guys posing beside piles of corpses like you would hunting trophies, just like you said. One of them had what looked like a hank of black hair stuck in his helmet like a plume. There is one of you and some blond, good-looking guy who must be the Tripp Barlow you took the roll of film from. You have your arms around each other, and in the background a soldier is holding a Zippo to the straw roof of a burning hut.

  There is a picture of the ditch full of people you talked about, with fat little baby legs sticking out of the pile of dead bodies. The pictures are in color, and that makes it even worse.

  Oh, Jerry, I wish I could come and snatch you up out of that awful place and bring you home. Please don’t talk about not coming back and getting ready to die and all. Please try to hang in there. You didn’t do anything wrong. It was Tripp Barlow who shot those people, and even if you and him thought in some twisted way it was mercy, it was him and not you who pulled the trigger. They can’t send you to jail for just being there.

  I think we ought to at least try to do something about it when you get home. Maybe send a letter to Senator Fulbright or Congressman Wilbur Mills to let them know what they are handing out medals over there for. I’ll wait to hear from you, though, and we can do it together when you get home. In the meantime, I’ll hide the pictures and not say anything to anybody about all this. I don’t think anybody would believe me, anyhow. You have to hang in, Jerry, and come back home. You just have to. I love you, and we will get through this together.

  All my love forever,

  Carlene

  —

  I read it a few more times. It was hard to know what she was talking about, but obviously there had been some kind of a massacre over there, and Tripp was somehow involved and had killed some people. What was Tripp doing with a letter addressed to Jerry, though? I needed to know what was going on. I went through every book on the shelf, shaking them out and flipping the pages. Several twenty-dollar bills fell out of one, but the rest were all empty, except for a copy of Joseph Heller’s book Catch-22.Stuck between the pages were pictures—color pictures just like the ones Carlene described in her letter. My ears started to ring, and the room began to get black around the edges and dwindle down to a pinpoint. I sat down and put my head between my knees before I passed out. After a few minutes I was all right, but the room with its tidy air felt like it was smothering me. I had to find Baby and tell her we wouldn’t have to go out to Carlene’s and get the letters. I had found one already.

  54.Carlene

  “Telephone, Carlene! It’s some guy with a sexy voice, and he don’t sound like he’s from around here!” Rita yelled out across the dining room.

  “Thanks, Rita. Everyone in the restaurant appreciates that information.” Carlene took the phone, not too gently, from Rita’s hand. Rita grinned and pretended to get busy filling salt shakers so she could listen.

  “Hello?”

  “Carlene, you don’t know me, but I was a good friend of Jerry Golden’s in Vietnam. My name is Tripp Barlow.”

  Her heart nearly froze. She had been afraid this might happen one day. Rita had her big ears pointed toward the phone. Carlene turned her back, so she could at least feel like she had a little privacy.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m here in town. I came to see you, really. Do you think we could get together for a little while tonight? There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t want to get into it over the phone. Will you meet me?”

  “All right. I get off work at ten. Do you want to pick me up here at the restaurant?”

  “Why don’t you meet me at the Ramada? I’m in room twenty-six.”

  “All right. Sure. I can do that. I’ll be there between ten and ten-thirty.” She hung up. Her hands were trembling.

  “New boyfriend?” Rita screwed on a salt-shaker top and dusted salt off her hands.

  “Who knows? Might be.”

  “Can I have the old one? I always did think Frank was cute.”

  “If you think you can get him, Rita, go for it. Do your worst.”

  “Thanks. I always do.”

  —

  The Ramada Inn was ou
t of town, a few miles east on Route 66. Carlene drove with butterflies in her stomach. The only reason Tripp Barlow would come all the way from California to see her had to be the pictures. They would have to talk about those pictures.

  She pulled up beside number 26, got out, and knocked. Tripp opened the door and looked at her with a big smile. He had to be the best-looking man she had ever seen in her life, and that included Jerry. She felt a little pang of disloyalty, but there it was. What was behind that smile, though, remained to be seen. Wolves had big shiny white teeth, too.

  “Come in. Come in. Thank you for coming out here.”

  The room was the generic motel kind: beige walls, fake wood-grain particleboard furniture, plastic carpet that smelled like hundreds of cigarettes and late nights. Tripp’s leather bag sat on the floor of the closet under a couple of hanging shirts, and the contents of a shaving kit were laid out on a clean towel beside the sink under the fluorescent light. There was a six-pack of beer, one of Coke, and a bucket of ice on the dresser.

  “Can I get you a beer or a Coke? Sorry the choices are so limited. I had to drive ten miles to buy beer. I didn’t realize Arkansas had this dry-county thing.”

  “Welcome to Arkansas, Tripp, the land of the deep-fat fry and the teetotaling lawmakers—make that lawmakers with teetotaling voters. I’ll have a Coke, if it’s not too much trouble. I don’t drink much—I work selling liquor and I see what it makes people act like.” She knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  “Good for you. I’m not too much of a drinker myself. A little beer once in a while.” He put some ice in a glass and poured a Coke; handed it to her and poured himself a beer.

  “So, Tripp Barlow. What made you come all the way to Arkansas from California to see me?”

  “You get right to the point, don’t you?”