Joyce held her rigid posture in the chair. "Don't you think it would have been fairer," she said, holding on to herself to keep her voice from breaking, clutching at the strange, adult dignity the could sometimes keep in time of stress--"Don't you think it would have been fairer if the teacher that saw me had kept her mouth shut."
"Truthfully, Joyce, I don't know. I can't tell you what I would have done myself. I might have done what that teacher did--it was a man, by the way--or I might have spoken to you personally. I don't know. But this teacher went to Mr. Mercer, and spoke to several other teachers. Naturally, the fact that this is public information leaves me no alternative ..."
2 ~ Reaction
Joyce stepped out of the side door of the school into a long narrow yard where two hundred feet of bicycle racks paralleled a cinder sprint track. She stood for a moment on the stone steps, worn by generations of scuffing feet, letting her mind go on by itself. Joyce, this is a difficult thing to say, but I believe you need psychiatric help... Old Iris. A talent for doubtful limericks does not suffice to earn good grades in English. The witch. The physical is important, young lady, but not the only thing in life. I can't prevent you from experimentation--I understand most of you girls, nowadays, have your own theories about that kind of thing--but I can prevent you from carrying on inside the school. Filthy-minded old maid ...
Then she discovered herself standing still, and set her feet in motion. Ruth Scott was waiting for her at the street gate. Ruth was shaped like the familiar potato sack, and had honey-colored blonde hair and blue eyes constantly wide with shock at ideas too big for her small mind.
"What happened?" Ruth demanded.
"She kicked me out."
"Out of school!"
"That's right."
"Oh, how could she?"
"She did."
"What will you tell your aunt?"
"I won't."
"But, Joy, you'll have to."
"Why?"
"Because what will she think when she finds out you're not going to school?"
"She won't."
"How can you keep her from finding out?"
"I'll just leave the house in the morning and come back at night."
"Aren't you afraid of what will happen if she finds out?"
"She won't. That's all."
"But, what happened? What did Dean Shay say?" demanded Ruth.
"She told me they wouldn't even bring a thing like this before the Senior Court, and I'd have to bring my father in before they would let me come back to school. I told her my family was in Europe, and she said, well, somebody would have to come in to see them. I said I wouldn't bring anybody in, and old Iris said, I'm really very sorry to have to tell you this, but I'm afraid you will have to remain suspended until you bring in either your parents or your guardian." She mocked the dean's accents.
"Are you going to write your folks?"
"No. I'm going to get a job. The same as I had last summer, if I can fix it. I'll be a copy-girl on the Daily Courier." Joyce pointed over Ruth's plump shoulder. "Hey, isn't that Tony's car? Let's get him to take us for a ride!"
Ruth almost ran toward the convertible parked halfway down the block. But Joyce walked slowly with her odd adult grace.
"Want to drive us home?" Ruth asked as she reached the car.
The dark-haired boy in the front seat, slowly disentangled his much involved limbs and straightened himself up in the seat; looking at Ruth with a steady, appraising gaze of his brown eyes. "I might," he said. "Where's Joy?"
"She's coming."
"All right. Get in back." He kicked at the door handle and the door swung open. Ruth scrambled into the rear seat, and when Joyce reached the car she got in and seated herself calmly in front, drawing her skirts tight about her legs.
"Take Ruth home first," she said. "I want to talk to you."
There was a loose-jointed ease about Anthony Thrine that lent his every movement a feline flexibility that also contained something of beauty, and his manner was as easy as his movements. He had the assurance and poise of absolute security--his father was the largest stockholder in the Farmers and Mechanics Trust company of Paugwasset. He was not the president of the senior class, but he could have been. He was not the editor of the student weekly, because he had refused the job as ill-suited to his indolent nature. His grades were high in the subjects that attracted him, and barely passing in the ones that didn't. He had been going, in a tentatively steady way, with Joyce since the beginning of the senior year. He had not been the first of the student body to get a drivers license, but he was the first to own his own car.
His driving was faultless--but in the California manner. He started the car with much tossing of road-shoulder gravel, and took the corners of the narrow tree-lined streets in a squeal of tires. He stopped the car in a long slither before Ruth's house and had the door open before the momentum had ceased.
Ruth got out and closed the door behind her, then hung on it for a moment "Joy," she said hesitantly, "hadn't you ought to talk to your aunt?"
"What for? She'll only nag."
"But don't you want to graduate?"
"I don't give a damn," Joyce said. She tossed her hair. "Come on, Tony. Take me out to Chester's. I need a drink."
Chester's was a roadhouse that led a sheltered existence off the main highway about three miles outside of Paugwasset. Its income traced almost exclusively to the fact that the line of demarcation between the ages at which high school students may drink or not drink is unapparent to the naked eye, so small is the visible difference between seventeen-year-olds and eighteen-year-olds. Once its dance floor had been the rendezvous of the respectable middle-class citizens who directed businesses in New York and lived in Paugwasset--the upper middle class which kept accounts at Tiffany's, cruisers at Manhasset and lady friends in Greenwich Village.
But somehow this adult trade had waned, to be replaced with, first, a collegiate set--the sons of the middle-class, down for the summer from Harvard, Yale and Princeton, down from M.I.T. and in from Chicago. By a subtle contamination these had given place to their younger brothers and sisters, the near-collegians, who attended high schools in Paugwasset and Glen Cove and Mineola, until at length weekly or semi-weekly intoxication at Chester's had become as essential to social prestige in the senior class as the use of Dad's car on a Saturday night.
The place boasted a high raftered ceiling, a long, much-mirrored bar. A juke-box stood near a dais which, on Friday and Saturday evenings, supported a good hot trio. The upper panes of the windows were of stained glass which, with the ceiling rafters, gave a vaguely cathedralesque atmosphere to the gaudy whole. And, in a way, Chester's was a cathedral. It was a religious edifice in which youth might worship, by imitation, the adulthood so soon to come.
Friendly voices greeted Tony and Joyce as they entered. Chester said, "Hiyah, folks. What's your pleasure?" He was too good a businessman to say, "Kids." You saved that for the older generation.
Tom Houlihan raised a languid hand from his rum-and-coke for a gesture of welcome. Harry Reingold said, "How're things?" Sandra Hart winked at Joyce and said, "Chin up, old man." Mickey Kramer, in one of the booths with a boy just a shade too young for her, pointedly disregarded Joyce and nodded brusquely to Tony before turning back to her escort and her Scotch.
Tony pulled out the table so that Joyce could slide into the booth, but himself strode long-legged to the bar. Joyce watched him without really seeing. With her fingernail she gouged shapes into the cork coaster on the table. Old Iris was like her aunt! No attempt to understand the justification that might explain the act. There had been no point, even, in attempting to tell why she had given that silly little exhibition there on the auditorium stage, because old Iris in her prudery would never have been able to understand. Oh, there was a reason--or there had been. A clear, sensible reason. But now, thinking about it, it was also clear that the reason was something old Iris should have understood from talking to Joyce's teachers. Maybe Iri
s did understand, but just couldn't condone. Because the real reason, and Joyce knew it well enough, was a compulsion for defiance. Just as the biology paper she had written had been a defiance. They had asked for a general study of a disease. Joyce picked venereal infection. All right, so she was a "bad" girl. A defiant girl.
But the injustice in her punishment, she felt, was that defiance was no crime. Why, lots of famous heroes had been--well, just defiant. Even her mother and father, it seemed to Joyce, were pretty defiant when someone was stepping on their toes ...
She suddenly fell into reverie.
She tried to remember when Mom and Dad had not been off somewhere, and the recollection was reaching for memories of rare days in long years.
Tony came back to the table, slopping daiquiris at every step. He sat down.
"All right, Joy," he took her hand. "Tell me all about it."
"There's nothing to tell," she said. "I just need a drink."
"Quit kidding. Iris had you on the carpet for the strip act, didn't she."
"Um-hunh. She kicked me out."
"She couldn't. All right, they had to do something to you. After all, that was a pretty raw stunt you pulled. It might have been okay at a party, or something, out in the high school auditorium. I mean, that's pretty raw stuff. But she couldn't kick you out just like that. You've only got another month to graduation."
"That's what she did."
"Can't your folks do anything?"
"What do you mean do anything? They don't even know I'm alive."
"Can't you send them a cable or something? Maybe if you radioed them they'd come back. My old man wouldn't let the school get away with anything like that."
"Listen, all my family ever does for me is leave me lying around with whatever relatives they can find who'll take me. It's been going on like that since I was five--ever since Dad got to be president of Intercontinental."
"You don't mean that kind of stuff."
"The hell I don't. Every darned thing in the world comes ahead of me with those two. The year I was five they went to Mexico, As soon as I was old enough they sent me to a private school, and then left me there summers while they went off to Washington or Texas or China or Brazil or almost anywhere I wasn't. First they could leave me with grandpa and grandma, and then, later on after they died, with my aunt. Anyway, they always found some place to leave me where they wouldn't have to be bothered. And even when they were here they never paid any attention to me--unless I did something really wrong. Once I ran away from a school in Boston. That was two years ago, just before I came back to Paugwasset. You can bet they paid attention then, came tearing in from Chicago by plane." Joyce grinned, as though their frenzied arrival made a pleasant memory. "After that, for about a month, I was a real big deal. There was nothing good enough for me--until they forgot, and dumped me on Aunt Priscilla, who only stays at the house with me because Daddy gives her so much money to do it."
She broke off, shaking her head, so that her hair swung heavily on her shoulders.
"Can I have another, Tony?"
He rose obediently and went to the bar where Chester mixed a second set of daiquiris. She thought, maybe Mom and Daddy would come back if they knew what had happened. But, no. They were in Europe for the summer, and they would, instead, cable Aunt Priscilla to go to the dean and straighten everything out--and Aunt Priscilla would, too, but her nagging would be beyond endurance; she would be reminding Joyce of it every day, needling her, preaching ...
Tony set the fresh glass before her and squeezed into the booth. Somebody had encouraged the juke-box with nickels, and a sex-in-a-highchair voice was whispering, "... Just a little lovin', honey, would do a lot for me ..."
On the floor Sandy Hart and Harry Reingold, his six feet tremendously mismatched with her five, were dancing with determined irrelevance to the music.
The May afternoon sun had slipped behind a tree, casting a deep shadow on the stained glass windows, and darkening the room to a warm, intimate mood. Joyce's cocktail filled her mouth and throat with a raw distaste, but her body was becoming warm, and the tense feeling in her abdomen was subsiding and Tony was so good and sweet and wonderful, listening like this to her.
"I thought I would go down to the Courier and get the job this summer," she said, "and then if I'm working they can't say I'm no good, can they?"
"Who?" Tony wanted to know.
"Anybody. Daddy or Mom. Aunt Priscilla or dirty old Iris."
"Whoever said you were no good?"
"Everybody. They all do. You will, too, after a while."
"Why should I, Joy?"
She was a little drunk, now. She knew it. She could feel it. And it was such a wonderful feeling. "Because I'm bad. Because I do crazy things just to get into trouble. Because I got up there and started taking off my clothes in front of everybody. Tony, am I pretty?"
"Of course, honeybun."
"That's the first time. The very first time."
"The first time you--uh--took things off?"
"No. I don't mean that. I mean it's the first time you ever called me honeybun. Tony, you're very sweet to me." She could feel tears of earnestness coming into her eyes. "That's the first time anybody called me honeybun--except once Daddy did, after they found me when I ran away."
Just a little self-consciously, because he too was feeling the warm, singing flow of the liquor, Tony put his arm around Joyce's shoulder and drew her close to him, "You'll always be a honeybun to me."
He bent closer and kissed her cheek. She let her head fall back on his shoulder, and her face looked up at his. Her lips were a little slack, slightly parted and moist and glistening. Her eyes sparkled. He bent and kissed her wet lips, letting his tongue caress the pink flesh.
Suddenly he pulled free, a little frightened at the ardor with which her lips answered his. "Let's have another drink," he said.
"Not now, darling. Kiss me again."
"First another drink," Very firm and adult, though his heart was pounding and his breathing seemed to swell him to the bursting point.
Joyce watched him crossing the floor, aware of his tension as of her own. Something inside her kept saying, honeybun, honeybun, honeybun, over and over, as though it were especially important, and she had a confused recollection of her father, holding her close in his arms as he had after they had found her when she ran away, and saying to her, "Poor little honeybun. Poor little baby."
Honeybun. There was a song like that. Having too much fun--with honeybun. What's Tony doing with that drink? What's that drink doing with me? Me baby honeybun, Daddy's gone away for fun ... No. My baby bunting, Tony's gone a-hunting. Gone to get a glass of gin to dip his baby bunting in ... What kind of nonsense? Pull yourself together, Joyce--you're a big girl now and Tony loves you and you don't need your Daddy ...
Tony was coming across the floor now, unsteadily attempting to keep the daiquiris intact in their glasses.
Joyce slid out of the booth. Got to help Tony carry the glasses to dip his baby bunting ... What's wrong with the darned feet? Silly feet, dopey little feet.
Funny about feet, funny about bunny, funny about Tony. Everything was suddenly very funny. Tony and his glasses. Iris Shay and her spectacles. Men seldom made passes at Iris Shay. But they would make passes at Joyce, because men loved Joyce. Funny--ha-ha. Tony had reached the table and was carefully sliding the glasses across.
"Tony," Joyce said, standing there trying to control her feet. "Tony," she said urgently.
"What's the trouble, honeybun?"
"That's it. That's what I wanted you to say. You love your honeybun?"
"I think so," Tony said. "But you'll have to wait till I sit down. I'm concentrating on these daiquiris."
"Never mind. That's all I wanted to hear." She pulled herself very erect, and with a supreme effort seized herself by the arm and escorted herself back to the table. "Let's drink a toast."
"What kind of toast?" Tony had a sudden, somewhat owlish dignity.
"A toast to Tony and his honeybun."
"I dig that," Tony said, "Here's to honeybun." They drank quickly, and the flavor of the liquor was suddenly mild, going down almost like water.
"Don't you think we ought to have another?" Tony inquired.
"I kind of think you've had enough," a voice said, and they looked up to find Chester standing over the table. "Maybe it would be better if the next couple drinks were coffee? Hunh, folks?"
"Were we getting noisy?" Tony asked, very innocently.
"Well, just a mite," Chester said. "Let's put it like this. You're not as lit as you think you are, but you're a little more lit than you ought to be."
"Thank you, Chester," Joyce said, graciously, struggling to slip out of the booth again. "We knew we could depend upon you to keep an eye on us."
"Anytime at all, Joyce," Chester said, "You and Tony are two of my favorite people. And Tony has to drive you back to town. I like my favorite people to get back okay."
"Check," Tony said. He took Joyce's arm. "Well, s'long Chester. Be seein' you."
There was a little difficulty getting the car turned around, but, once on the road, Tony found the machine amazingly responsive to his slightest whim.
The late afternoon sun was warm on their flushed faces, and the wind caught at Joyce's dark hair. She moved closer to Tony on the seat of the convertible, ducking her head to slip it under his right arm.
"Tony?"
"Yes, baby?"
"You love your honeybun?"
"Yup. Intensely."
"Then kiss me."
"Not while I'm driving."
"Then stop driving."
A side road turned off at right-angles to the dirt thoroughfare over which the convertible was bumping. Tony swung the car into it. Suddenly they were in deep woods. The waning sun cast a golden light on the pale spring greens of the trees, and a swift brook gurgled over its stony bed beside the road. Tony halted the car.
Marijuana Girl Page 2