First Love and Other Sorrows: Stories

by Brodkey, Harold

  “I want to!” she cried. “I’m just a little embarrassed. I’ll be all right in a minute—

  “We went out Sunday night…” she began after a few seconds. They had gone to Medart’s, in Clayton, for a hamburger. Joel had talked her into drinking a bottle of beer, and it had made her so drowsy that she had put her head on the back of the seat and closed her eyes. “What kind of car does Joel have?” I asked.

  “A Buick,” Eleanor said, surprised at my question.

  “I see,” I said. I pictured the dashboard of a Buick, and Joel’s handsome face, and then, daringly, I added Eleanor’s hand, with its bitten fingernails, holding Joel’s hand. I was only half listening, because I felt the preliminary stirrings of an envy so deep it would make me miserable for weeks. I looked up at the sky over my shoulder; clouds had blotted out the moon, and everything had got darker. From the next block, in the sudden stillness, I heard the children shouting, uttering their Babylonian cries as they played kick-the-can. Their voices were growing tired and fretful.

  “And then I felt his hand on my—” Eleanor, half-drowned in shadow was showing me, on her breast, where Joel had touched her.

  “Is that all?” I said, suddenly smiling. Now I would not have to die of envy. “That’s nothing!”

  “I—I slapped his face!” She exclaimed. Her lip trembled. “Oh, I didn’t mean—I sort of wanted—Oh, it’s all so terrible!” she burst out. She ran down the front steps and onto the lawn, and leaned against the trunk of an oak tree. I followed her. The pre-storm stillness filled the sky, the air between the trees, the dark spaces among the shrubbery. “Oh, God!” Eleanor cried. “How I hate everything!”

  My heart was pounding, and I didn’t know why. I hadn’t known I could feel like this—that I could pause on the edge of such feeling, which lay stretched like an enormous meadow all in shadow inside me. It seemed to me a miracle that human beings could be so elaborate. “Listen, Eleanor,” I said, “you’re all right! I’ve always liked you.” I swallowed and moved closer to her; there were two moist streaks running down her face. I raised my arm and, with the sleeve of my shirt, I wiped away her tears. “I think you’re wonderful! I think you’re really something!”

  “You look down on me,” she said. “I know you do. I can tell.”

  “How can I, Eleanor. How can I?” I cried. “I’m nobody. I’ve been damaged by my heredity.”

  “You, too!” she exclaimed happily. “Oh, that’s what’s wrong with me!”

  A sudden hiss swept through the air and then the first raindrops struck the street. “Quick!” Eleanor cried, and we ran up on her porch. Two bursts of lightning lit up the dark sky, and the rain streamed down. I held Eleanor’s hand, and we stood watching the rain. “It’s a real thunder-shower,” she said.

  “Do you feel bad because we only started being friends tonight? I mean, do you feel you’re on the rebound and settling on the second-best?” I asked. There was a long silence and all around it was the sound of the rain.

  “I don’t think so,” Eleanor said at last. “How about you?”

  I raised my eyebrows and said, “Oh, no, it doesn’t bother me at all.”

  “That’s good,” she said.

  We were standing very close to one another. We talked industriously. “I don’t like geometry,” Eleanor said. “I don’t see what use it is. It’s supposed to train your mind, but I don’t believe it….”

  I took my glasses off. “Eleanor—” I said. I kissed her, passionately, and then I turned away, pounding my fists on top of each other. “Excuse me,” I whispered hoarsely. That kiss had lasted a long time, and I thought I would die.

  Eleanor was watching the long, slanting lines of rain falling just outside the porch, gray in the darkness; she was breathing very rapidly. “You know what?” she said. “I could make you scrambled eggs. I’m a good cook.” I leaned my head against the brick wall of the house and said I’d like some.

  In the kitchen, she put on an apron and bustled about, rattling pans and silverware, and talking in spurts. “I think a girl should know how to cook, don’t you?” She let me break the eggs into a bowl—three eggs, which I cracked with a flourish. “Oh, you’re good at it,” she said, and began to beat them with a fork while I sat on the kitchen table and watched her. “Did you know most eggs aren’t baby chickens?” she asked me. She passed so close to me on her way to the stove that, because her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, I couldn’t help leaning forward and kissing her. She turned pink and hurried to the stove. I sat on the kitchen table, swinging my legs and smiling to myself. Suddenly we heard a noise just outside the back door. I leaped off the table and took up a polite position by the sink. Eleanor froze. But no one opened the door; no one appeared.

  “Maybe it was a branch falling,” I said.

  Eleanor nodded. Then she made a face and looked down at her hands. “I don’t know why we got so nervous. We aren’t doing anything wrong.”

  “It’s the way they look at you,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s it,” she said. “You know, I think my parents are ashamed of me. But someday I’ll show them. I’ll do something wonderful, and they’ll be amazed.” She went back to the stove.

  “When are your parents coming home?” I asked.

  “They went to a double feature. They can’t possibly be out before eleven.”

  “They might walk out on it,” I said.

  “Oh no!” Eleanor said. “Not if they pay for it…”

  We ate our scrambled eggs and washed the dishes, and watched the rain from the dining-room windows without turning the light on. We kissed for a while, and then we both grew restless and uncomfortable. Her lips were swollen, and she went into the kitchen, and I heard her running the water; when she returned, her hair was combed and she had put on fresh lipstick. “I don’t like being in the house,” she said, and led me out on the porch. We stood with our arms around each other. The rain was slackening. “Good-bye, rain,” Eleanor said sadly. It was as if we were watching a curtain slowly being lifted from around the house. The trees gleamed wetly near the street lamps.

  When I started home, the rain had stopped. Water dripped on the leaves of the trees. Little plumes of mist hung over the wet macadam of the street. I walked very gently in order not to disturb anything.

  I didn’t want to run into anybody, and so I went home the back way, through the alley. At the entrance to the alley there was a tall cast-iron pseudo-Victorian lamppost, with an urn-shaped head and panes of frosted glass; the milky light it shed trickled part way down the alley, illuminating a few curiously still garage fronts and, here and there, the wet leaves of the bushes and vines that bordered the back yards and spilled in such profusion over the fences, hiding the ashpits and making the alley so pretty a place in spring. When I was younger, I had climbed on those ashpits, those brick squares nearly smothered under the intricacies of growing things, and I had searched in the debris for old, broken mirrors, discarded scarves with fringes, bits of torn decorated wrapping paper, and such treasures. But now I drifted down the alley, walking absently on the wet asphalt. I was having a sort of daydream where I was lying with my head on Eleanor’s shoulder—which was bare—and I could hear the slow, even sound of her breathing as I began to fall asleep. I was now in the darkest part of the alley, the very center where no light reached, and in my daydream I turned over and kissed Eleanor’s hands, her throat—and then I broke into a sprint down the alley, slipping and sliding on the puddles and wet places. I came out the other end of the alley and stood underneath the lamppost. I was breathing with difficulty.

  Across the street from me, two women stood, one on the sidewalk, the other on the front steps of a house, hugging her arms. “It’s not a bad pain,” the woman on the sidewalk said, “but it persists.”

  “My dear, my dear,” said the other. “Don’t take any chances—not at our age…”

  And a couple, a boy and a girl, were walking up the street, coming home from the Tivoli Theatre. The gir
l was slouching in order not to seem taller than the boy, who was very short and who sprang up and down on the balls of his feet as he walked.

  I picked a spray of lilac and smelled it, but then I didn’t know what to do with it—I didn’t want to throw it away—and finally I put it in my pants pocket.

  I vaulted our back fence and landed in our back yard, frightening a cat, who leaped out of the hedge and ran in zigzags across the dark lawn. It startled me so much I felt weak. I tucked my shirt in carefully and smoothed my hair. Suddenly, I looked down at my fingertips; they were blurred in the darkness and moist from the lilac, and I swept them to my mouth and kissed them.

  The kitchen was dark. There was no sound in the house, no sound at all, and a tremor passed through me. I turned the kitchen light on and hurriedly examined myself for marks of what had happened to me. I peered at my shirt, my pants. I rubbed my face with both hands. Then I turned the light off and slipped into the dining room, which was dark, too, and so was the hallway. The porch light was on. I ran up the front stairs and stopped short at the top; there was a light on in my mother’s room. She was sitting up in bed, with pillows at her back, a magazine across her lap, and a pad of paper on the magazine.

  “Hello,” I said.

  I expected her to bawl me out for being late, but she just looked at me solemnly for a moment, and then she said, “Sonny proposed to your sister.”

  Because I hadn’t had a chance to wash my face, I raised one hand and held it over my cheek and chin, to hide whatever traces of lipstick there might be.

  She said, “They’re going to be married in June. They went over to the Brusters’ to get the ring. He proposed practically the first thing when he came. They were both so—they were both so happy!” she said. “They make such a lovely couple…. Oh, if you could have seen them.”

  She was in a very emotional state.

  I started to back out the door.

  “Where are you going?” my mother asked.

  “To bed,” I said, surprised. “I’m in training—”

  “Oh, you ought to wait up for your sister.”

  “I’ll leave her a note,” I said.

  I went to my room and took the white lilac out of my pocket and put it on my desk. I wrote, “I heard the news and think it’s swell. Congratulations. Wake me up when you come in.” I stuck the note in the mirror of her dressing table. Then I went back to my room and got undressed. Usually I slept raw, but I decided I’d better wear pajamas if my sister was going to come in and wake me up. I don’t know how much later it was that I heard a noise and sat bolt upright in bed. I had been asleep. My sister was standing in the door of my room. She was wearing a blue dress that had little white buttons all the way down the front and she had white gloves on. “Are you awake?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I said. “Where’s Mother?”

  “Downstairs,” my sister said, coming into the room. “Sending telegrams. Do you want to see my ring?” She took her gloves off.

  I turned the bedside-table lamp on, and she held her hand out. The ring was gold, and there was an emerald and four diamonds around it.

  “It was his grandmother’s,” my sister said. I nodded. “It’s not what I—” she said, and sat down on the edge of the bed, and forgot to finish her sentence. “Tell me,” she said, “do you think he’s really rich?” Then she turned a sad gaze on me, through her lashes. “Do you want to know something awful? I don’t like my ring….”

  “Are you unhappy?” I asked.

  “No, just upset. It’s scary getting married. You have no idea. I kept getting chills all evening. I may get pneumonia. Do you have a cigarette?”

  I said I’d get her one downstairs.

  “No, there’s some in my room,” she said. “I’ll get them. You know, Sonny and I talked about you. We’re going to send you to college and everything. We planned it all out tonight.” She played with her gloves for a while, and then she said, looking at the toes of her shoes, “I’m scared. What if Sonny’s not good at business?” She turned to me. “You know what I mean? He’s so young….”

  “You don’t have to marry him,” I said. “After all, you’re—”

  “You don’t understand,” my sister said hurriedly, warding off advice she didn’t want. “You’re too young yet.” She laughed. “You know what he said to me?”

  Just then, my mother called out from the bottom of the stairs, “Listen, how does this sound to you? ‘Dear Greta—’ It’s a night letter, and we get a lot of words, and I thought Greta would like it better if I started that way. Greta’s so touchy, you know. Can you hear me?”

  “I have to go,” my sister whispered. She looked at me, and then suddenly she leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. “Go to sleep,” she said. “Have nice dreams.” She got up and went out into the hall.

  “‘—Dodie got engaged tonight,’” my mother read. “Is ‘got engaged’ the right way to say it?”

  “Became engaged,” my sister said, in a distant voice.

  I put on my bathrobe and slippers and went out into the hall. My sister was leaning over the banister, talking to my mother at the bottom of the stairs about the night letter. I slipped past her and down the back stairs and into the kitchen. I found a cold chicken in the icebox, put the platter on the kitchen table, and tore off a leg and began to eat.

  The door to the back stairs swung open, and my sister appeared. “I’m hungry, too,” she said. “I don’t know why.” She drifted over to the table, and bent over the chicken. “I guess emotion makes people hungry.”

  My mother pushed open the swinging door, from the dining-room side. “There you are,” she said. She looked flustered. “I’ll have to think some more, and then I’ll write the whole thing over,” she said to my sister. To me she said, “Are you eating at this time of night?”

  My sister said that she was hungry, too.

  “There’s some soup,” my mother said. “Why don’t I heat it up.” And suddenly her eyes filled with tears, and all at once we fell to kissing one another—to embracing and smiling and making cheerful predictions about one another—there in the white, brightly lighted kitchen. We had known each other for so long, and there were so many things that we all three remembered…. Our smiles, our approving glances, wandered from face to face. There was a feeling of politeness in the air. We were behaving the way we would in railway stations, at my sister’s wedding, at the birth of her first child, at my graduation from college. This was the first of our reunions.

  THE QUARREL

  I CAME TO HARVARD from St. Louis in the fall of 1948. I had a scholarship and a widowed mother and a reputation for being a good, hardworking boy. What my scholarship didn’t cover, I earned working Wednesday nights and Saturdays, and I strenuously avoided using any of my mother’s small but adequate income. During the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, my grandmother died and willed me five thousand dollars. I quit my part-time job and bought a gray flannel suit and a pair of white buck shoes, and I got on the editorial board of the college literary magazine. I met Duncan Leggert at the first editorial meeting I attended. He had been an editor for a full year, and this particular night he was infuriated by a story, which everyone wanted to print, about an unhappy, sensitive child. “Why shouldn’t that child be unhappy?” Duncan shouted. “He’s a bore.” The story was accepted, and Duncan stalked out of the meeting.

  Two nights later, as I was walking along Massachusetts Avenue in the early dusk, I saw Duncan peering into the window of a record store at a display of opera albums. He was whistling “Piangi, piangi,” from “La Traviata,” and he looked, as usual, wan, handsome, and unapproachable. I stood beside him until he looked up, and then I told him I thought he’d been right about the story.

  “Of course I was right,” he said, looking down at me from his patient, expectant eyes. “Those people confuse being sordid with being talented.”

  We went to a tavern and sat in a booth that was illuminated by one of those glowing ju
ke-box things in which you deposit a nickel and push a button, and the Wurlitzer, a mile away, plays the tune. At first, I was nearly asphyxiated with shyness, but I asked Duncan what he was planning to be when he graduated (substituting “graduated” for “grown up” at the last minute), and he said “Nothing.” I looked blank, and he took his cigarette and stared at the glowing coal for a moment and then said quietly, with a good deal of sadness in his voice, “I’m rich.” Then he raised his head, looked me in the eye—he was half smiling—and added, “Filthy rich.” I was utterly charmed. I asked him how rich. He said, airily, “Oh, a couple million if the market holds.” The idea of talking to someone that rich pleased me so much I burst into idiotic laughter. He asked me why I was laughing, but I didn’t tell him.

  We talked warily at first, as men—or, rather, as boys imitating men—will; but then, impelled by the momentum of some deep and inexplicable sympathy, we went on talking until one o’clock. Duncan said the college literary magazine was a mere journal of self-pity, and those parts of it that weren’t amateurish were grubby. He firmly believed, he said, that most unhappiness was a pose. “It’s a way of getting out of being interesting.”

  Even at his most arrogant, Duncan always had a note of despair in his voice. “People get what they deserve,” he said. “Why should I believe in tragedy? I’ve never seen any. Stories ought to have happy endings; people ought to be more interesting; everyone ought to have better taste.

  “The important thing,” he said as he slouched in his corner of the booth and sketched faces in the sugar he had poured on the table, “is to have quality. No one cares if your mother loved you or not if you’re dull. And most people are dull,” he added sadly.

  “This is a democracy,” he said later. “I’m supposed to consider everyone my equal. Well, I don’t. Dull people give me a pain. I think Whitman is a lousy poet and Willa Cather is feeble-minded, and old Huckleberry Twain gives me the creeps. What’s more, if there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s a lot of pointless good nature.” I quenched my smile.