"What is this philosophy?" she asked.
Yale shook his head. "I don't know enough about it to tell you yet," he admitted. "Or, myself for that matter. I just know that Pat won't own me. But you will, Cindar, always. Come on, let's walk around Times Square."
In the glow of lights, and the throb and hum of the Square, Cynthia's happiness returned. There was no answer, she thought. You couldn't live for a tomorrow that might be years away. When the time came they would get married or they wouldn't get married. But for now it couldn't he wrong to love and be loved, or to trust and be trusted; for perhaps trust and love were in many ways one.
Yale tugged her into a bookstore they were passing. "Look," he said, "all these books selling for forty-nine cents each. Isn't it wonderful . . . so much knowledge waiting quietly in those millions of pages -- just waiting to be read."
Like two happy archaeologists digging in ruins, they explored the piles of books in the shop exclaiming with joy at their discoveries. By the time they were back on the street Cynthia had a bundle of five books. Yale had three. "I bought you a copy of Of Time and the River ," he said. "Look at the size of it. Isn't it fabulous? Come on. Let's go back to the hotel. While you read it to me, I'll kiss your breasts and blow on your belly.
"But you can't do that," she said when they were back lying together in their bed. "When you put your tongue on my breasts, I can't concentrate! Look, I haven't read three pages."
Yale took the book from her hands, and dropped it gently on the floor. She leaned back in his arms and he snuggled against her breast. "Cindar," he whispered, "isn't it nice that you love me? Isn't it nice that I love you?"
And Cynthia thought it was nice, and accepted Yale into her body. . . .
11
"Well, kiddo, this is it! We've made it. Proud, august, seniors about to graduate." Sonny shook Yale's bed, threatening to tip it sideways and tumble the bedding, mattress and Yale on the floor. "Get up! It's ten o'clock, a beautiful, beautiful May day. Brother, have I got things to do."
"You do them," Yale yawned. "I haven't a darn thing to do until twelve. This is a day I've been looking forward to since last September. Imagine, no more classes, no studying. I'm going on a picnic and just loaf."
"With Cynthia?"
"Sure, who else? You can run your graduation dances and worry about reception lines and orchestras and refreshments and all that slush. Not for me, boy, I am going on a picnic with my girl and if you're nice, tomorrow I'll promise you something. If you're real nice, after graduation Cynthia and I will go to your dance and I'll help you spike the punch."
Sonny hit him with his pillow. "Some do the work and some take all the enjoyment. I don't know what in hell this little old college is going to do without me to organize things."
Yale rolled over and looked at Sonny. "Right now, chum, somewhere there's a little snotty-nosed high school senior who is planning to come here in September and take over -- right where you leave off."
"You may be right. One thing is sure. It will be a millennium before another Romeo and Juliet like you and Cynthia appear on the Midhaven scene."
"Go to hell!"
"I'm there, lover boy. When are you and Cynthia getting married? Jeez, I'll never figure how you managed all these years to keep her from getting knocked up."
Yale sighed. "It's going to be one great relief to be rid of your nosey prying ways. Go on, get about your business. I have some more sleeping to do."
With one eye half open, he watched Sonny get dressed. For a long time Sonny examined his face in the mirror, changing his expression back and forth from a happy grimace to a stern expression of wise maturity.
"See you, kid," he said finally as he was ready to leave. "You're not quite rid of me yet. I'm going home for a couple of weeks, and then I'm coming back. I was hired yesterday for eighteen bucks a week to assist the fearless editor of the Midhaven Herald make something out of his lousy rag. At the same time, unbeknownst to him, I plan to find out what gives in a political way in Midhaven."
Yale groaned. Sonny was an incubus. Or was it a succubus? He snuggled into his sheets, feeling the warm May breeze stirring at the window. It was going to be a beautiful day. Really a hot one. Ideal for a picnic. In about an hour he'd walk down to Mama Pepperelli's and get some "guinea grinders" and then next door in the package store get some beer. Then he would walk up to Cynthia's dormitory and they would hike out to Strawberry Hill.
It had been inconvenient not having a car, but if he never drove again he wasn't going to beg Pat. He could keep his damned automobile, and his money, too. Yale remembered the night that he came back from New York. Last October. The months had passed so quickly it seemed scarcely weeks ago. He had driven Cynthia to her dormitory. It was a Sunday. When he left her to unpack, he decided that he would go home and face the music. Pat met him at the door.
"Did you have a nice trip?" he asked coldly. "Have you been accepted as a convert?"
"What do you mean?" Yale asked.
"I mean that I presume Mr. Carnell is looking forward to having a wealthy son-in-law. If he is, he can start now and change his mind. Give me the registration of your Ford."
Yale fumbled in his wallet and handed it to him. He watched, unbelievingly, as Pat tore it in pieces, and flung them on the ground. "The insurance has been cancelled. If you want a car . . . buy your own! I warned you not to go to New Jersey. You and your little Jewish friend can enjoy each other's presence on foot. I hope she has a good allowance. You can draw your allowance in the future from the bursar's office. Your tuition and room is completely paid. The bursar will pay you four dollars each Friday afternoon." Pat strode back into the house. "If you can't get along on four dollars a week -- earn your own money. It's more than I had at your age."
Yale followed him in slowly. Liz rushed up as he started for his room. Yale twisted out of her grasp. The anger in him was beyond words. In his room he lay on the bed staring at the ceiling for a long time. The next morning he took a bus to the college. He hadn't been home since nor had he seen Pat. Every week he called Liz and talked with her, generally about school. When she begged him to make it up with Pat, Yale told her, "I'm not angry, I just have nothing to say to him."
Explaining to Cynthia had not been easy. The lack of an automobile was difficult enough. It had been practically impossible to find a way to be with her alone. Worse was trying to tell her the reason for losing the car and still allay her fears.
She grasped what had happened. "It's because of me, isn't it, Yale? Because you visited my family and drove me back. Do you suppose they found out about our staying in New York?"
The entire year had been clouded by the loss of his car. Not having a car they were limited to Mama Pepperelli's which was always crowded with students, or the reception room of Cynthia's dormitory which afforded no privacy at all since it was under the constant surveillance of Mrs. Wicker, the house mother. The only way they could be alone was to go for a long walk, or huddle together at night in the doorway of some college building.
Cold and shivering, Cynthia would worry about the future. Yale wanted to get married in September. He planned to take a summer course at Columbia, and pass his teaching requirements. Then he felt sure he could get a teaching job. It wouldn't be much money but they could live. When Cynthia, more practically, wanted to know whether Pat would give him the money for Columbia, or how they could possibly earn enough, even with both of them working, to pay rent and buy food, Yale would kiss her and tell her that she was a worry bug and had no confidence in him.
While their plans didn't seem as hopeless to Yale as they did to Cynthia, he was a little uneasy. Doctor Tangle had called him to his office just before mid-years and told him that his father expected him to apply for Harvard Business School. Doctor Tangle put the application forms completely filled out even to photographs before him. Yale looked at them in dismay. "Just sign them, Yale, and I'll send them along for you. Believe me, we don't do this for all our students." When Yale told
him flatly that he was not going to Harvard Business School, Doctor Tangle said quietly, "If you want my recommendation for any other place then I advise you to apply. You don't have to go to Harvard if something else comes up." Reluctantly Yale signed the application but he didn't tell Cynthia.
By February their desire to be together culminated in a plan to go to Boston and stay in a hotel. By living frugally Yale had accumulated eighty-five dollars. Fifty dollars of it was the remains of his summer earnings at the Marratt Corporation. In February, just before mid-years there was a college vacation period. Some students remained to study for mid-year examinations. Others went home. Cynthia wrote her father that she was going to stay at the college. She and Yale packed their books. On a Saturday afternoon they took a train to Boston.
Lying in bed, half-awake, Yale could recall every minute of that wonderful week. "It's like being really married," Cynthia had said leaning out of the window of the hotel and looking across Boston Common. The bellhop had left the room and Yale stood behind her, kissing her neck and caressing her breasts. She turned and put her arms around his neck, holding him almost in anguish. "I'm not Jewish, Yale," she said. Her eyes were liquid with tears. "I'm just Cynthia and I'll always love you."
Yale tumbled on the bed with her. "Honey dearest, you are Jewish. You're Ruth. You're Naomi -- you bring me all the wonderful love of a Jewish woman. The pride and love that you have is your heritage from centuries of Jewish women before you. Maybe you are a re-incarnation of some lovely Jewish wife who helped her husband escape from the bondage of Egypt. I love you because you are Cynthia. I love you too because of your fierce Jewish love for me."
As she undressed, between kisses and giggles, she said, "If I am Jewish, my darling, then I am not a good follower of my religion, because I am here with you and we are not married and that is not being a good Jew or a good Christian -- but I'm glad I'm here."
It was a week filled with the easy simplicity of new love. Nothing could go wrong. Nothing did. They sat on the bed, mornings, naked, peeling oranges, and throwing the peelings at each other, high score going to the one who could hit the other in the most vulnerable places. Amidst hilarious laughter, she told him it wasn't fair that he had only one "place" and she had three. They made love in the morning and then studied their courses until noon. After showering together they ate twenty-five cent lunches in Childs. In the afternoon they went visiting historical places. Yale showed her Goodspeed's fascinating bookstore under the Old South Church. They bought a copy of Thomas Wolfe's new book The Web and the Rock . In the evening while Yale studied a course in Physics, which he had belatedly taken to complete his Science requirements, and which threatened to keep him from making Phi Beta Kappa, Cynthia read avidly.
"Yale, Yale," she said excitedly. "Look, listen! Let me read this to you. Thomas Wolfe was in love with a Jewish woman." She read him about Mrs. Jack in the novel. "Wolfe never wrote anything that wasn't partly autobiographical. This happened to him, I know it did!" But as she read she grew sad because the love affair in the book didn't come out happily. She continued to read to Yale, drawn by the story of George Webber and Mrs. Jack.
"But, she was married to someone else," Yale pointed out. "They didn't break up because she was Jewish."
"I know it," Cynthia said despondently, "but I like her. I wanted them to be married."
There were two days that it snowed all day. Yale went out to a delicatessen and bought cheese and peanut butter and milk. They stayed in bed for most of the two days and talked about every conceivable subject from how many children they would have to erudite problems in philosophy. Cynthia had developed a knack of leading Yale's thinking. When he got himself in muddy waters she seemed to know how to say the right words to guide him back. More completely than in the nearly three years they had known each other, they discovered the depth of their love. There was no flaw. They were a perfect meshing of personalities both intellectually and emotionally. Emotionally, they couldn't seem to enjoy the wonder of each other's bodies enough. Yale would wake up to find Cynthia snuggled into his arms, kissing his cheeks softly. In a moment they were joined in a warm alliance that lasted for hours, finally erupting into a passion that left them spent, and sometimes helpless with laughter.
She would look at him tenderly yet with a playful grin on her face. "You're a demon lover, my darling." Yale, his lips on her breast, would murmur, "You know something? In the novels I have read, having intercourse is such a frightfully serious thing. Why hasn't someone written that people can make love, how should I say it 'L'Allegro' instead of 'Il Penseroso'? I guess it's because most religions only tolerate the love of man and woman. They look upon it as competition for love of God. They say it is a 'fall' from grace, and make it evil. I'm sure God would prefer happy laughter or he wouldn't have made spring the time of fertility and birth so delightful, and autumn, the season of death, so sad."
Yale looked at his watch, and jumped out of bed. It was eleven thirty. He was to meet Cynthia at her dormitory at twelve thirty. Shit, shower, shave, shampoo. He grinned as he recalled Sonny's expression. It epitomized the organizer that Sonny was . . . everything fast, thorough and efficiently done. Everything that counted to Sonny, that was. Certainly not studies or learning for Sonny. But "doing" -- ah, yes. And that was where the rub came. It was going to take some "doing" in the next few months. "Doing" instead of thinking to end up married to Cindar.
Yale was beginning to realize that in order to accomplish it he would have to compromise his integrity. And what is my integrity, he thought, as he shaved? Is it so important that I make the break with Pat? Wouldn't it be easier to play Pat's own game? A compromise -- in exchange for his marriage with Cindar in September, an agreement to go to Harvard Business School and take his place with Marratt Corporation. Could he find happiness that way? Could the problems of marketing jams and soups intrigue him enough or would he just become a "yes" man to Pat. No, it was impossible, he couldn't take "business" seriously. Not in the way that Pat did with "business" dominating his very living from one day to the next. Nor would Pat ever accept the condition. It was amazing how deeply hatred could be rooted. He doubted that Pat had ever had a bad experience with a Jew. Sharp in their dealings, certainly, but they'd have to get up early in the morning to be shrewder than Pat. No, Pat's hatred was the irrational, middle-class hatred, created from a lifetime in an environment of little, scared men who built their very egos on the false nourishment that Jews were tricky, sharp, clannish . . . and hated you, too. Many men in the world had the Aryan complex whether they knew it or not.
As Yale dressed, he remembered that tomorrow was his sister Barbara's wedding. When Liz had made the plans with Barbara she hadn't known it would be Yale's graduation day, too. The wedding was at seven o'clock with a reception at the Marratt home. Yale could imagine the preparations. At this point and for the next twenty-four hours the Marratt house would be the scene of the wildest kind of confusion.
Yale hadn't known Barbara was going to be married until Liz had told him in one of his weekly telephone calls. Yale wondered what the guy was like. Rich, Liz had said. From Texas. His father owned a tremendous cattle ranch as well as oil property. Thomas Lawson Eames, II. A graduate of Harvard, of course. Barbara had met Tom in February when she had spent a week in Miami at a girl friend's house. Come to think of it, Yale thought, amused, it must have been about the same week that he and Cindar went to Boston.
Tomorrow was going to be a mess. He would have to go to the wedding and Pat would have to come to his graduation. After almost a year there was going to be a strained, awkward moment and then some kind of reconciliation. It would come after the graduation ceremonies. Pat would have to congratulate him. He wondered if Pat knew that he had been accepted to Harvard Business School. Probably. Doctor Tangle could have found out easily enough. Yale made up his mind, there would be no discussion. No matter what Pat said he would refuse to get in an argument.
Walking up the steps to Cynthia's dormitory, carrying
a bag with beer and guinea grinders, he remembered he hadn't sent a wedding present to Barbara. Well, how the hell could he, he wondered? He had about seventy-five cents left of his four dollars. Liz had offered to give him money several times in the year but he had refused it. He would have to ask her for at least twenty dollars tomorrow to pay for the dance tickets. Should he ask to borrow her car? No, that would simply precipitate an argument with Liz that he owed it to Barbara to be at the reception and party after the wedding ceremony. If he went to the reception, he couldn't bring Cynthia. She wouldn't want to go anyway. What a cock-eyed world, he thought, bitterly.
In the dormitory, he passed Mrs. Wicker.
"Cynthia isn't here, Yale. I saw her go out about ten o'clock."
He sat down in the heavily furnished reception room, smelling the dust embedded in the over-stuffed furniture. He looked at his watch. It was quarter of one. Where did she go, he wondered? He wiped his face with a handkerchief. It was really a hot day. . . .
12
Cynthia awoke to her name being yelled in the hall of the dormitory. "Hey, Cynthia Carnell . . . Cynthia you've got a phone call!" As she walked sleepily in pajamas down to the wall phone, a happy feeling surged through her. It was Friday -- no more classes! Tomorrow was graduation day -- and today, oh, today -- a wonderful, wonderful day. She hurried toward the phone. It must be Yale. Anxious to get started on the picnic; anxious, too, to be with her, to make love. Oh, my hungry darling. I want to love you, too! It had been February since they had really loved. February since they had really been alone. In a way it was good that the year was over. Once you started to love -- to have intercourse -- and you cared for each other the way she and Yale did -- there was no going back. It was like eating peanuts. She smiled at the thought. She wanted more. She wanted the warm, good feeling of Yale in her arms -- Yale inside her -- always. She prayed that somehow they would be married in September.
The Rebellion of Yale Marratt Page 16