Souvenir of Cold Springs

by Kitty Burns Florey

  “Of course, I’ve barely begun it,” Aunt Alice said. “But it’s just a matter of proportion, once I get the masses down, then I—” She made a smoothing motion with her hand and stood looking at it, and Peggy would make a trip to the bathroom, drink some tea, walk barefoot around the room looking out of each window in turn, and then return to the sofa, let the robe drop, and listen to the dabble of brush in water, the desultory conversation of the women.

  Don’t tell anyone, she wrote Ray.

  Not that you would—I can just see you telling everyone you had a letter from me! But here’s my secret. I’ve become an artist’s model. Aunt A. is sculpting me in clay, and the others are painting me, two in oils, one in watercolor. Yes—in the nude! It’s all very respectable, I assure you, but I find it rather thrilling, I don’t know why. Or maybe I do. I seem to be one of those girls for whom this condition is particularly becoming. And it’s very nice to be admired. Maybe I can get one of the paintings and bring it back and show you what you’re missing!

  While they worked, the women talked in little spurts. They talked about the problems of German artists, the Munich conference, the situation in the Sudentenland, and then moved gradually, inexorably closer to home, to their husbands, their students, their children—all of them except Aunt Alice had at least one child, mostly grown up. As the days went by they drew Peggy into their conversation and it turned, gently, to her predicament. Sitting in their midst with her clothes off, she was another person—beautiful, brave, adult—and one afternoon, all in a burst, she told them something about it. How the man involved was unavailable at the moment. How marriage was out of the question just now. How he stood by her, wrote every week, missed her dreadfully. How good he was, such fun, and handsome—not unlike Cary Grant. How infernally complicated things were.

  There was a silence when she was done. She couldn’t turn her head to look at them, but she heard that their hands had stilled, their brushes stopped. Then one of them—Frances—said, in a shocked, hushed voice, “But the man is a heel!”

  She did turn then, in confusion, and stood up without asking for a break. She picked up the robe and put it on and faced them. “That’s not true,” she said. “He’s wonderful.”

  “Oh, yes—wonderful!” Frances twiddled her brush in the turpentine and wiped her hands on her smock. “My dear girl, I don’t know who this man is, but he’s victimized you. Taken advantage of you and abandoned you. What is he? Married?”

  She flushed and said nothing. Let them think it. Frances came over to her and put her arm around her shoulders. “He’s told you lies, you poor darling. Oh, it’s so unfair what men get away with.”

  Peggy said, “No—”

  Aunt Alice said, “Frances, dear—please. Don’t start making assumptions. We don’t know the whole story, and I’m quite sure Peggy doesn’t want to tell it to us.”

  Peggy looked at her gratefully, then wondered how much her aunt guessed. Certainly she knew about Caroline’s engagement to Ray Ridley, and knew he traveled for Pepsi-Cola, and she must have seen the mail for Peggy in envelopes from hotels.

  “It’s really none of our business,” her aunt said.

  “But it is infuriating,” said Cora. “Not that it’s necessarily true in your case, Peggy—that you’ve been seduced and abandoned, all those clichés. I don’t mean to imply—but it does happen. Remember Helena Porter, Alice? Lord, she wanted to keep that baby. But she gave it away—what choice did she have? That’s the real scandal, that society makes it impossible to keep the child. I’m sure you feel that, Peggy.”

  “Yes,” Peggy said. “It’s—” She made a vague gesture and excused herself to go to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet, her face burning. The baby: no: nothing could make her think about the baby. There was nothing to think. As far as she was concerned, the baby didn’t exist. The bulges under her hand, the fluttering kicks that she knew were tiny, perfect fingers and toes, were not to be considered, were not to be seen as little Thomas or little Judith. Ray, she thought in a panic. She put her head in her hands. It was like the night on the balcony, all the lights going out, a mist over the moon. Ray. But what could he do? There was Caroline, and his promise to her. What had happened was never meant to happen, they were swept away, it was Fate, it was no one’s fault, she had wanted it as much as he—more, more …

  Tears rolled down her cheeks. It was partly that she was constipated and her back hurt and everything was so strange and she couldn’t sleep enough. Oh, if only it could be over, so that she could go back home and fight for Ray on equal terms with Caroline. Or almost equal. Caroline was so beautiful. It was hopeless to compete with her there, she would never be pretty like Caroline, not if she worked on it for a hundred years. But Peggy knew she had something else: sex. She loved doing it, and would do it anywhere: in the backseat of Ray’s old Dodge, in the woods, in Ray’s ice-fishing shack on the lake, on the floor of his mother’s garage—once, standing up, in one of the men’s changing rooms at Sylvan Beach, while Caro and John and Nell sat on a blanket not fifty feet away.

  She knew Caroline didn’t like it because Ray had told her so. She’s cold, he had said. Not like you. All she cares about is how she looks.

  And all I care about is this, Peggy had said, and they had laughed, kissed, pressed their bodies together. This this this—

  She wiped the tears from her eyes with toilet paper. She stood up and, breathing deeply, looked in the mirror over the sink, watching the frown between her eyes disappear. She made herself smile at her reflection: pretty, so pretty, everyone said it. Things would work out. It would all take time, but time was what they had: months, years—forever. Ray wasn’t making enough money yet to marry anyone, and Caroline was only nineteen, still in college. Their engagement was vague, indeterminate. It would get more so as time went by. He and Caro would drift apart naturally. There was no need for a blowup, Ray said. No need to send everyone into a tizzy. Caro would become impatient with a fiancé who was always out of town, she would think twice about marriage to a traveling man. They were young. Time, time would take care of everything.

  She came out of the bathroom red-eyed but smiling. The women were standing around the stove, looking her way with anxious faces, and she knew they had been discussing her. Frances came up to her and said, “Forgive me, Peggy. I have no right to meddle. I’m turning into a terrible old busybody.”

  “That’s all right,” Peggy said. “Really. I imagine it would seem hard for most people to understand.” She lit a cigarette, shook out the match, and threw her head back to exhale. “Not for me, though. I mean, I know it’s complicated.”

  “Well, it was especially rude of me, when you’ve been so kind about posing for us.”

  Peggy smiled. There was Frances’s canvas, on which she was a vague rounded figure. The chair and the window, by contrast, were painted in photographic detail. Everywoman, Frances had said in explanation. The specifics don’t matter, just the condition.

  “I like posing.”

  “That’s what makes you so good at it,” Frances said. “You’re so completely relaxed. That’s very rare.”

  Cora put her hand on her arm. “It’s true,” she said. “You’ve been a gem. A wonderful opportunity for us. And frankly, I think you’re very gallant, my dear. I have no doubt that you’ll keep your young man in line. My personal opinion is that he’d be mad to let a sweet girl like you get away.”

  Peggy’s eyes filled again with tears. She expected Cora to embrace her, but instead she gave her hand a hard, masculine shake, which made Peggy giggle, and then each of them shook her hand in turn, laughing with her, as if it were a ritual in Caroline’s silly sorority.

  Back in position, the robe at her feet, she felt happy again, and comfortable. They hadn’t condemned her, hadn’t called her stubborn and stupid and loose as her mother had. They had condemned Ray, and though they were wrong and didn’t understand the situation, a kind of elation came to her because of it. She was appreciated, sympathized wi
th, admired for her courage. And, yes, she would talk to Ray. Things must change. The situation had gone on long enough. He had to face it—behave like a man! She smiled, imagining this conversation. Poor darling Ray. She would be firm—yes—but she would say nothing until she was lying in his arms, sure of her power. And not in some freezing ice-fishing shack or backseat, either; he could damn well take her to a hotel. You could ask me for anything right now, he had said once, his trembling breath on her neck, their bodies linked. I couldn’t deny you.

  It occurred to her that she had never asked him for a thing. You’ve changed, he would say. California has changed you. Maybe they should just pack up and move, he should take this job he’d heard about in Ohio, take off and leave them all gaping. First Hawaii, then the job in Columbus, and a tiny apartment with a big bed …

  Outside the window, there was sunshine, the day had turned warm. Claire complained about it—how harsh the light was. Peggy listened to them talk, talked a little herself, and felt that she could say whatever she liked, that what would have shocked people at home in Syracuse was here met with laughter and agreement. She told them a lot about Caroline, mimicking her affectations and absurdities, and made them all laugh, even her aunt, who said she recalled Caro as an unpleasant creature even at—what? Five? When had she last been east? 1923? Four? She could still remember little Caroline and her blond curls, how she showed off dancing, reciting poetry—how she played up to people to get what she wanted.

  The talk turned to sisters, to daughters, finally to people Peggy didn’t know, then back to the situation in Europe, and she stopped listening. The troubles in Europe were like a hurricane far off. She sat quietly, head turned toward the window, but what she saw was home. Suddenly she missed everything—all the things she’d barely thought about all this time: her blue-flowered bedroom, her good black winter coat with the frog closings, the silver urn in the dining room, the jars of penny candy at Minetti’s Grocery, Nell’s kitten Dinah. The oil-and-dust smell of her father’s hardware store. Her mother’s corned beef. Dancing at Club Dewitt in her tight-fitting black dress with the slit skirt—how she’d love to get into that again! And snow: Nell had written to say they already had snow. The first thing she would do would be to make a snowman—no, make a snowball and throw it at Jamie! And then go sledding down the hill. There would be the sound of chains on the tires of cars laboring up Hillside Street. And Mother would have cocoa waiting for them when they came in. And John would tease her about how red her nose got in the cold. And she would show them her California things—the half-moon pendant her aunt gave her, the embroidered black shawl from Frances, the funny old doll she found in Chinatown, the blue Mexican beads, the scarab bracelet. And she would put on the blue ring and meet Ray and they would have their talk.

  She longed for home, with an actual pain that made her want to put her head in her hands and weep. But she sat quietly, eyes on the blue sky, blue bay, her belly hard under her hand. She wondered how soon, after it was all over, she could get on a train headed east. The Forty-Niner, then change in Chicago for the Broadway Limited. All those dull states, so dusty and shabby on her way out, would be covered with snow on the trip back, made beautiful and serene. She would enjoy the train ride this time. She wouldn’t just sit sulking in her roomette, she’d be friendly and talk to people, wave from the window when they went through towns, dress for dinner every night, smoke cigarettes in an ivory holder and drink whiskey sours in the dining car with its round tables and handsome black waiters in white coats.

  The women were finishing up their paintings; Aunt Alice pronounced The Future nearly done. A day or two more, they said. And there she would be, her likeness, ready for the San Francisco Art League Show in the spring—hanging on someone’s wall or, in clay, up on a pedestal where people could touch her as they passed, think perhaps who was this girl …?

  But by then she would be home. She saw herself moving back across the country, freed of her cargo, sailing swiftly and gaily and brightly flagged, like one of Uncle Ralph’s ships coming into port.

  EPILOGUE

  NELL

  1988

  On her way to the video store to return Sid and Nancy, Nell detoured by the old house on Hillside Street to see what horrors the new people had perpetrated since the last time she passed. With the first signs of spring, they had enclosed the porch. Then they put on beige aluminum siding and replaced the first-floor windows with big staring casements unbroken by panes. Now they were landscaping—sodding over her rose garden, ripping out the overgrown rhododendrons and the lilac bush, widening the driveway, and, from what Nell could see, turning the backyard into a massive concrete patio.

  “Not that I care,” she wrote to Jamie and Sandra from her new address—a neat little condo on Grant Boulevard. “I’m just glad to be rid of the place. I should have unloaded it years ago, when Thea died. Four and a half rooms instead of ten! This is what those women in the diet ads must feel like after they’ve lost 150 pounds.”

  She hadn’t even taken much with her. Photographs. Books. The afghan Thea had knitted. Jamie’s painting, Blue Number Eleven, that she had lived with for over twenty years. One small truckload of boxes, and her new kitten, Dinah Number Six. The rest was auctioned off. Now her furniture was all new, and so was the VCR that was the joy of her life.

  Nell always got her movies at the Video Bazaar, even though another place had opened up closer to home. I have a good relationship with my video man, she wrote to Jamie, then realized how odd it sounded and crossed it out. Sandra would consider it strange indeed to rent a movie every day: She’d use that to make some point about the degeneracy of American culture.

  “So what did you think of it?” Randolph asked when she handed over the film.

  “I loved it. It reminded me of Keats. And it made me cry, which I always like.”

  Margaret had recommended the film in one of her letters from California—letters that were so impeccably spelled and punctuated that Nell had sent her a fat check when the house deal closed. One of her great pleasures was sending money to Margaret, who had a job in a bookstore in San Francisco and was working furiously on her novel; she was planning to dedicate it to her great-aunt Nell, whom she considered a patroness of the arts. As another sign of her gratitude, she gave Nell pointers on keeping up with the times. When people retired, she said, they sometimes lost touch with reality. She hoped Sid and Nancy would help.

  Randolph put the film back in its box, matched it up with the proper square white card, and stowed it away while Nell watched approvingly. She liked the finickiness of his system, and she liked Randolph, who was short and trim and usually dressed in running clothes. Something about him, she didn’t know what, always made her wonder if he was gay.

  “So recommend something, Randolph,” she said. “What’s good?”

  He stood with his hands on his hips surveying the shelves. “Let’s put it this way. What haven’t you seen?”

  They discussed the problem at length, with digressions. There were seldom any other customers at that hour of the morning, so she and Randolph always had plenty of time to talk. Nell ended up with High Noon, which she had seen once already (not counting seeing it at the old Paramount in 1952 with Caro and the children) but wanted to see again. She loved watching movies twice. “But only if they’re absolutely first-rate,” she said to Randolph.

  “This is definitely one of the greats,” he said. “Not what you’d call an innovative film, except maybe for that literal-minded clock motif, but perfect in its own small way. And it has a lot in common with Sid and Nancy, come to think of it. Love and death—that’s the name of the game.” Randolph had been working on an M.A. in English when he decided to quit and open the video store; the rumor in the neighborhood was that the store had made him a wealthy man, but he still talked like a graduate student. He said, “Hey—is that a good topic for VB?”

  “Too broad.”

  “Think so? Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  VB
was Video Blast, a publication edited, subsidized, and mostly written by Randolph, who handed it out to his customers. He gave her the new issue along with a receipt for the film. They had a private arrangement: two freebies a week, a better deal than he gave his other customers.

  “By the way, if you liked Sid and Nancy you’ll love Stranger Than Paradise. It should be back tomorrow.”

  “Save it for me. I think that’s another one Margaret mentioned.”

  “Is she as big a videohead as her auntie?”

  Nell flushed. “I hope you don’t think I’ve given up reading entirely, Randolph, just because I watch so many movies.” Though, if pressed, she would have to admit that she read less than she used to. All she really liked now was poetry; she kept Yeats and Eliot by her bed, and the bad romantic poems Joyce wrote in his youth. She said, “I couldn’t stop reading anymore than I could stop eating.”

  “That’s the trouble with a lot of people,” Randolph said, winking at her. “They read instead of watching movies. If you didn’t read so much, you’d have time for two movies a day.”

  She gave him her tart schoolmarm smile and left, the film tucked in her canvas shopping bag. She was aware that Randolph was watching her go, that he found her quaint and amusing—a colorful little old lady—and she didn’t mind that in the least.