In class Marylin’s discipline deserted her, and she could not concentrate on her lines. . . . a few minutes of monstrous, degrading terror . . . how long had he floated in that warm, shark-infested sea, uncertain whether these waters were his grave? All that kept her from crying aloud was BJ sitting in the next row of desks, BJ, who resembled him and who sat unscathed in this Beverly High drama classroom.
When the final bell of the day rang, she found herself leaving class with BJ. The school’s painted brick walls glowed like rich cream in the afternoon sun while on the street below, carloads of kids honked and waved with frenzied Friday-afternoon excesses. Wasn’t there an irreconcilable paradox between Beverly Hills and the flame-exploding maw of hell that was the war?
She started to walk toward Santa Monica Boulevard with BJ. BJ—proud to be seen with Marylin Wace, who though not one of the school’s true elite, was certainly its most beautiful adornment, and well known, besides, by virtue of her acting—strutted along with her messy black pompadour high, bragging cheerfully about the numerous boys crazy about her, accomplished, adorable paragons who by some fortuitous chance attended other schools. Marylin nodded whenever it seemed obligatory. She did not turn at Charleville. Instead, she continued on with BJ, crossing the two Santa Monica Boulevards.
Here, separating two identically named thoroughfares, lay the Southern Pacific tracks—also used by the trolley line—which sociologically bisected Beverly Hills. To the south of the tracks lay the unhurried business district and quiet streets of apartments and less expensive homes. To the north, on larger lots, stood houses that regardless of size sold for considerably more, a geographical snobbery accepted by every shop keeper when he charged your bill.
BJ understood the class implications of stepping over cinder and steel, but Marylin moved across the few yards without so much as a thought. Not only was she too poor to catch on to the subtleties of class coloration, but her luminous blue-green eyes had a blind spot where such pretensions disappeared from view.
On the north side of the tracks, further buttressing the division, lay Beverly Gardens, twenty-three blocks long, eighty feet wide, a narrow manicured park of lawns, flowerbeds, pergolas, a cactus garden, a lily pond, rose gardens. As the two girls walked along the promenade, which was soft-dappled by the shade of weeping elms, BJ continued her monologue. A khaki truck bearing khaki-clothed soldiers lumbered along Santa Monica, trailing exhaust and wolf whistles.
Both girls waved.
“Listen,” BJ blurted. “How about coming over to the house?”
Marylin hesitated. Her nerves ached for physical reassurance that Linc was not locked into watery depths; however, since for some reason he had kept their relationship a secret, she worried about his reactions if she showed up on North Hillcrest Road with BJ. “What about the Gramophone Shop?”
“Hey, a great idea! I’m dying to get Frankie’s ‘Night and Day.’”
In the shop, the girls browsed over bins of records whose paper wrappers were cut out in a circle to display the credits.
BJ selected five. Marylin picked up only “These Foolish Things” by Tommy Dorsey, wishing she could afford to buy it, though the purchase would have been idiotic. The Waces had no record player.
All four of the booths were occupied: beyond soundproofed glass, people listened raptly to inaudible music. BJ plopped onto the narrow waiting bench. “You want me to talk about Linc, don’t you?” Her dark eyes were shrewd.
“Oh, BJ.”
“I’m not exactly a moron, Marylin. My brother takes you for an ice cream and all at once we’re buddy-buddy.”
Marylin stared down at her record, considering how sick she was of a life filled with lying. “That’s true, BJ, but I do think of you as a friend, too.” This was honest. BJ’s braggadocio might irritate, yet she had brains and—more important to Marylin—a bounding warmth, like a big, ungainly St. Bernard puppy. “The truth is, I like you a lot. And admire you—your play’s a wonder.”
BJ wriggled with pleasure. “Hey, I do believe those two in there are leaving.” A gray-haired couple were replacing records in an album imprinted Excerpts from Carmen. “Let’s go wait there before some other classical creeps take over for another year.” As they shifted positions, she asked, “You find Linc devastating, don’t you?”
“I’m in love with him.” A common-enough confession exchanged by Beverly High girls, but Marylin’s voice quivered on a note of visceral sincerity.
BJ leaned against the glass wall. “So it’s like that. Listen, I don’t blame you. He’s a terrific guy and groovy-looking. If he weren’t my brother . . . Oh, Hail Mary and preserve me from incestuous thoughts.”
“Does he have a lot of girls?”
“Some. The latest is Rosellen St. Vincent—she’s a Pi Phi at Berkeley. She came down to spend a weekend after he graduated from flight school. I’m positive she goes all the way.”
Marylin sighed, richly jealous of Rosellen St. Vincent and her sexual activities with Linc.
“Would you rather not hear about her?” BJ asked.
“No. Yes. I don’t know. . . .”
“Well, anyway, it’s probably cooled off. He hasn’t talked about seeing her this time.”
“How long has he been in the Navy?”
“Since the day after Pearl Harbor. Dad was furious, I can tell you. It was his idea to get Linc into the quartermaster corps and keep him here in California. The funny part is, Dad’s a gung-ho physical type and it’s hard to imagine Linc in a war. I mean, he’s very caring of life, if you know what I mean. I can’t see him shooting at anyone, even a Jap in a Zero.”
The classical couple emerged and BJ and Marylin went into the booth.
“He seems very complicated,” Marylin murmured in a fishing expedition.
“Is he ever! Listen to this. He had this poem published in Atlantic Monthly, and he never told any of us. I mean, what’s the point of getting something printed if you aren’t going to let everybody know?” BJ paused. “Look, that was a clunky remark I made about you worming into my good graces because of Linc. And I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize, BJ.”
“Sure I do. Aren’t we friends?” BJ grabbed her record. “Let’s put that on first.”
Oh, how the ghost of you clings!
These foolish things
Remind me of you.
7
Despite their awesome bulk, aircraft carriers are thin-skinned. When the Enterprise had limped into San Diego in early January it was after thousand-pound bombs had caused costly fires and a torpedo had wreaked hell on the steering mechanism. Work proceeded on the enormous craft night and day: the estimate of the time the repairs would take was, of course, strictly hush-hush.
* * *
“But how long will you be here?” Marylin asked.
They had just left the rambling, ugly barn of the Avalon Ballroom on the Ocean Park Pier. Linc did not answer. Instead, he tilted his head to catch the last of the cool, pulsating notes of Jimmy Dorsey’s alto saxophone. They moved through the swirl of uniforms and bright dresses, the shrieks from the plummeting roller coaster, and the sweet smell of caramel corn. In the parking lot there were only the waves breaking far below the tarred boards with the incessant hollow roar that one hears listening to a shell.
“Linc, you must have some idea how the repairs are going. Isn’t there any scuttlebutt?”
Again he said nothing, but when they reached the Packard he took her hand, gripping it. “Lay off, Marylin, please lay off.” His long fingers crushed hers.
She got into the car, hating herself for rousing his demon—or whatever you wanted to call the war-hideousness that devoured his living entrails.
Yet she had to know, didn’t she, how long those repairs would keep him safe and with her?
Chaotically consumed by love, Marylin had turned into time’s miser, endlessly counting and recounting each hour and minute she would spend with Linc. She could bear that he had never told her th
at he loved her, bear that he had never taken her the couple of miles to North Hillcrest Road to introduce her to that renegade Catholic/Communist father and exotic Jewish mother, from whom (Marylin was positive) he and BJ had inherited their black hair, dark eyes and strong noses, even bear that he never spoke of any degree of permanence or even temporary fidelity. What woke her shaking in the nights, what debased the glory of her time with him, was her total ignorance of how long they had before the Enterprise was returned to seaworthiness.
As they drove, her balloon of silence threatened to burst with a gush of inquiries.
Linc drew up at an enormous clump of syringa that hid a shabby bungalow court.
On the narrow cement walkway Marylin flushed with the sense of wrongdoing that this place always engendered, yet the scent of the small, wiry lemon tree that grew by the door of number 2B stirred the most profound spiritual emotions that she had ever experienced. The question of whether to enter never stirred her mind.
The small room’s Spanish-plastered walls were covered with framed pictures of groups: Hawthorne Grammar school and Beverly High graduations, posings of clubs and athletic teams. The apartment’s leaseholder, Linc’s lifelong friend, was stationed in Lompoc and Linc had a key. He and Marylin had been coming here since that Friday night in early January, their second evening date.
He put his arms around her. Photographed Beverly Hills children watched from the ombré shadows while Linc and Marylin clung together as if reunited after a long, arduous separation.
* * *
Afterward, she drowsed.
She was walking in some enchanted green place, a forest of great ferns growing to incalculable heights over her head, music drifting all around her, hauntingly familiar music that she could not quite place, a blending of classical and popular that might have been Freddy Martin. Though she could not see Linc, she knew he was someplace near, and so she was secure, happy. “Linc,” she called out, “Where are you?” “Here,” he answered, close by. She pressed through a feathery thicket toward his voice, finding herself in an empty dell where small yellow primroses grew in profusion. “Where?” she cried. “This way.” His voice, again near, drifted from the opposite direction. The music changed to a plaintive, mournful minor key, and a sense of doom settled over her. “Linc!” she cried. “Please tell me where you are!” There was no answer, only the sound of sobbing.
She awoke.
Linc sprawled facedown next to her, the thin blankets thrown off him, his long, well-knit body shuddering, the muscles of his shoulders and torso showing with each heaving gasp. By the dim light from the living room she saw that tears streamed from his closed eyes.
“Linc,” she said, kissing his shoulder, which was damp with sweat.
He jerked awake. For a moment he stared blankly at her, his dark, tormented eyes still seeing his nightmare; then he focused on her and buried his face between her breasts.
“Bad dream,” he muttered, rubbing his cheeks dry, leaving red marks on her sensitive skin. He kissed the small dark mole just above her navel.
“Nifty spot for a beauty mark,” he said in a normal voice. “Not that you need one.” He lifted up on his elbow, staring at the small, exquisitely lush body.
“Linc, okay?”
“When I’m with you,” he said, “all’s right with the world.”
He embraced her with tenderness, adoration, yet these delicate qualities did not preclude the blazingly vital electricity between them that had, from that first fateful Friday, canceled out any shame or guilt on her part. She had graduated since then from a carnal ignoramus to an eager acolyte and then to an equal partner. Together they moved with tremulous languor, and his breath against her ear made her think of waves reverberating forever against the shore, receding and lapping, and all at once that involuntary, incomprehensible stillness preceding orgasm was upon her and she held her breath, attending the moment before she was borne away. “Oh, Linc, Linc, Linc, I love you, love you . . .” And they both sped swiftly, artlessly into the great sea of life and love.
When their breathing quieted, he twisted off his ring. Heavy, hand-hammered silver formed his initials. “You wear old ALF for a while.”
She looked into his eyes, trying to gauge his meaning. He had never hinted at going steady or being engaged. So why a ring? All at once, like an evil needle piercing her, she recalled her mother’s words: Men use the war as an excuse to take advantage of girls. Linc was so very honorable. Was his conscience rubbing him, did he need to throw her a sop, payment for her virginity? Yet he surely knew that her body collaborated freely and joyously with his.
He fitted the warm silver on each of her fingers. It even slipped off her thumb. “Guess you’ll have to put it on a chain.” His throaty warmth belied his teasing tone. “In intime moments, what a clangor with my dogtags.”
She kept looking at him.
“Oh, Marylin, those beautiful eyes, those beautiful sea-colored eyes. Listen, I’m giving you something of mine. Is that so odd?”
“What does it mean?”
“That you’re gentle, wonderful, soothing, and so beautiful that it’s not quite believable. That I’m out of my head about you. Marylin, what does a ring usually mean?”
She gripped the silver in her palm. Here, finally, was the admission of love, the symbol that she had longed for, and her soul should have been soaring on hosannas, yet a sadness that had to do with the brevity of time ached in her throat—how much longer until he sails?—and she had to cough before she said, “I love you so much, Linc.”
“It’s binding on my part,” he said. “Not yours.”
“Always.”
“No, I mean it. You’re free to look around for some equally devastating Beverly High graduate.”
“I’ll love you forever,” she said. “I belong to you.”
“For the time being, this is between us.”
Again that odd secrecy. Why? “Yes.”
He smiled at her.
She began to cry. “Darling, I can’t bear not knowing how long we have.”
He pulled away. “The general time frame is until death do us part, right?”
Death. . . . She shivered. “You know what I mean.”
“I always have trouble reconciling how tenacious you are with that gentleness.”
There was a shrill buzzing. It was the red Westclox alarm that they always set for 11:45 in case they fell asleep.
“There’s your answer,” he said, pressing down the stem.
* * *
The following Tuesday, just as she and Roy (who had graduated from Horace Mann and would start at Beverly in January) came in from school, the telephone began to ring.
Marylin ran to it.
“I’d abandoned hope,” Linc said.
“We just came in the door.”
“This is classified, so I count on you not to tell any Japanese or Nazi spies.”
A knot twisted around her heart. “The repairs?”
“Completed.”
Her knees went weak and she sat on Roy’s cot. “You mean . . .”
“Yep.”
“Oh, Linc. . . . Not even this next weekend?”
“Nope.” There was a rustling as if buzzards had come to perch on the long-distance wires. His voice sounded faraway and thin. “You have my APO address.”
“I’ll write all the time. Is it tonight?”
“I think so.”
“Oh. . . .”
Another flap of ghostly wings.
“Marylin.”
“What?”
“I may send some of my stuff from time to time.”
He’s leaving, she thought, leaving. . . . An immense, crowding misery was upon her and she could scarcely move her lips to form words. “Your writing?”
“It’s just for you.”
“I’ll keep it.”
“Wearing old ALF?”
She touched the ring, which hung around her neck on a silverplated chain that had come in one of her Christmas ca
rtons. “Always.”
“Good.”
She could hear a distorted banging at the other end of their bad connection. Then: “Oh, shut up. Give a guy a chance!” Linc’s anger was muffled as if he were holding his hand over the mouthpiece. Then his voice came through the crackling. “The barbarians are at the gates. Listen, don’t take ALF off, okay?”
“Never, never.”
“That’s my good-luck charm you’re wearing.”
She was shaking and tears blinded her, but she used all the points of control she had learned in her acting lessons to say clearly, “Linc, I love you.”
“Marylin—”
The phone went dead.
“Linc?” she cried. “Linc?”
The connection was dead, but she did not hang up. Instead, she hunched over on Roy’s cot, her tears falling onto the instrument.
Roy, who had been at the refrigerator studiously drinking from a milk bottle, came over to clumsily pat her shoulder. “Is Linc shipping out?”
Marylin ran into the bathroom, the only place she could weep in privacy.
8
Every day from 11:20 to 12:10, the Beverly High student body descended on the cafeteria. The kitchen staff of six women and a man turned out a creditable full-course lunch in spite of rationing. There were also lines that dispensed triple-decker tuna or cheese sandwiches and thick malts, as well as exterior windows where a sweet tooth could be satisfied with ice cream and packaged cakes—Twinkies were the most popular. No soft drinks or candies were sold on any grounds belonging to the Beverly Hills school system.
In the environs of the cafeteria one could see the school’s social strata, which bore no relationship to the hierarchies of the outside world. The scholarly, the acned, and the humble beings who lacked any idea of status ate at the long tables inside. Those more in tune with the scheme of things sat on the patio.
Marylin was at a round table away from the visible storm of movement, the blue table umbrella keeping the bright April glare from the clipped-together sheaf of legal paper on which her attention was focused.
Opposite her, Roy and Althea Cunningham were sharing Althea’s package of Hostess cupcakes.
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