by Sally Mandel
With their arrival, Manning’s face became the pleasant television mask she had seen in the cab. Quinn realized that he must have dropped it at some point or she wouldn’t have noticed its return. She scrambled along behind him through the terminal. Until today she had never truly understood Van’s complaints about trying to keep up with Quinn’s mad dash.
Manning ushered her into a cab, gave the driver instructions and a twenty-dollar bill. He leaned his arms on the window. “Smedley’ll give you some forms to fill out. You won’t make any money, so find a cheap apartment. See you in June.” Then he rapped on the roof and the taxi pulled away.
“That was whatsisname, Manning, right?” the driver asked, craning his neck to look at Quinn. “Who’re you?”
“Oh, nobody,” Quinn answered. “I just work for him.” She felt herself expanding with elation. She would inflate into an enormous balloon-version of herself, so that they’d have to pop her with a pin to get her out of the taxi back in Manhattan. She could hardly wait to tell someone.
Will! Jesus Christ, she’d forgotten about Will. She glanced at her watch. There was no way she could make the museum by twelve thirty, and Mrs. Smedley was waiting too. She instructed the driver and in forty minutes emerged at the museum entrance on West Fifty-third Street. She found Will in the sculpture garden. Suddenly her excitement disappeared, just as if someone had indeed punctured her balloon.
Damn Will Ingraham. This was the triumphant moment of her life. A job with Ted Manning! An interview in a helicopter! Damn Will for robbing her of her victory.
He turned around. His face brightened, and her anger disintegrated. She grabbed him around the waist.
“Well?” he asked.
“I’m not finished yet.”
“Jesus, what’re they doing, a genetic study of the family tree?”
“It’s been a wild morning. Let’s stay out here for a second and then I have to get back.”
They strolled while she told him about the interview, the helicopter, her impressions of Ted Manning, and finally that she seemed to have been hired as of June.
“That’s wonderful,” Will said. He kissed her on the cheek.
“How come I suddenly don’t feel so terrific?”
He looked down at her silently. Her eyes reflected the dark shapes of the sculptures.
“Will, did you have a good time this morning?”
“It was diverting.”
She released his arm. “I guess I’d better go.”
“Okay.”
I don’t have to go, Quinn thought. I can just say screw Smedley, and Manning will think I’m some weird little number he made up out of an overactive imagination.
“I’ll meet you back at the hotel around four. Go ahead.” He put his hands on her shoulders, spun her around, and sent her marching away from him. When she turned to wave, he was studying a brass figure at the far end of the garden.
Ouch, Will thought. His head seemed to be filled with cartoons. While Quinn was describing her introduction to Manning, the crash in the corridor, Will had imagined their bodies colliding, and the word OOF! in a balloon above their heads. Maybe it made the experience easier to bear, encapsulating it, trivializing it. En-Capp-sulating it, he thought, and winced.
He sat down beside a small pool. A scrawny little bush provided a meager hiding place. He wondered how people found privacy in the city, other than withdrawing to lock themselves into the boxes they inhabited. He had been in New York one day, and already his central nervous system was screaming for space.
Listening to Quinn’s tale, he had found himself drifting off into the mountains back home. She talked of helicopters and he thought of the great Salmon River that the Indians called the river-of-no-return. He had half heard her. Obviously, Manning had been enchanted. Obviously, for the rest of his life Will would never watch the man’s program again.
Will had decided that the only way to survive her departure just now was to become an active participant in it. For a moment, when he’d taken her shoulders in his hands and sent her on her way, he hadn’t felt quite so helpless. He tossed a twig into the pond and watched the reflection of his face ripple and twist. There was a soda bottle resting on the bottom under the exhausted lily pads.
Quinn and Will walked up Madison Avenue in search of a restaurant that was cheap and reasonably clean. As Quinn wove her way along the crowded sidewalks, Will lurched, stopping and staring awkwardly and often standing aside to let someone rush past. Because of his unpredictable pace he was elbowed, poked, bumped into, and cursed at.
They finally had dinner at a coffee shop at Madison and Forty-third Street. It was a quiet meal. As soon as Quinn’s voice began to vibrate with excitement about her future, she would check herself and drop her eyes. Soon there didn’t seem to be much to talk about. Will stretched his hands across the table and held her fingers. It was as if her success was a cross to be borne by them both. He did not accuse her; she felt no guilt. They were miserable and frightened.
Over coffee she said, “Will, I wish I didn’t want it.”
“I wish you didn’t too.”
“It’s like I’m not responsible for it, as if God or Jesus Christ himself said ‘Quinn Cathleen Mallory, you were born to do this thing in the communications media.’”
Will laughed.
“It’s not funny.”
“No.”
“I feel this”—she put her hands against her heart—“this welling up, like I’m going to burst if I don’t do something important. I think it’d kill me if I didn’t try. I’d just shrivel up like a dead plant.” She was quiet for a moment. “You feel that way about teaching.”
“Yes.”
Her blueberry pie lay half finished on her plate. “What’re we going to do?” she asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“We’re going to make it somehow.”
He said nothing.
“I know you don’t.”
“I don’t what?” he asked.
“You don’t think we’re going to make it.”
Again he said nothing.
“You hate it here, don’t you?”
“I guess that’s a pretty fair description.”
“But Will, you were nice to try.”
“I’m a nice guy.”
“You’re a fucking wonderful guy.”
“Watch your mouth.”
“I’m watching yours and I wish I could kiss it.”
“Nobody’s stopping you.”
She got up and walked around the table to squeeze onto his lap. She gave him a long kiss. A woman glanced at them from the counter, and with a bored expression returned her gaze to the Daily News.
They strolled back to the hotel by way of Rockefeller Plaza. Skaters circled the rink, pirouetting and colliding to the strains of piped Lennon and McCartney. Will wished he’d worn his gloves. There was no wind, but the air was damp and promised snow. Quinn stood in front of him, and he wrapped his arms around her chest. His grandfather had told him that body heat is released through the top of one’s head, so he rested his chin where Quinn’s warmth would be escaping like steam from a tea kettle. The music switched. They swayed together, watching the skaters glide past below. Quinn turned in his arms and gave him a fierce hug. Suddenly neither of them could wait to get back to the hotel. They half ran all the way down Sixth Avenue to Thirty-fourth Street, and for the rest of the night they made love—wildly at first, then with silly good humor, and finally, at 4:00 A.M., with great tenderness.
Both of them slept most of the way back to school on the bus.
Chapter 25
Will and Quinn had not spent ten minutes alone together since their return from New York almost a week before. There were class notes to copy, assignments to catch up on. Quinn had spent her last nickel in the city and was putting in extra hours at the garage. When Stanley suggested a double date for Saturday night, they accepted eagerly. Neither of them wa
nted to discuss the trip. Stanley and Van would distract, their attention for the evening.
The four of them sat in the smoky red light of Lou’s listening to Nat King Cole on the jukebox.
“So how’re things in the asphalt jungle?” Stanley asked Will.
“Primitive.”
Van glanced at Quinn uncomfortably.
“Not impressed, huh?” Stanley went on. This time Van squeezed his thigh in a warning, but Stanley misinterpreted the pressure. He drew her close to him and kissed her cheek.
“I liked Rockefeller Center,” Will said.
“That place was always off limits for me in the winter,” Stanley said. “Too goyishe with all those angels and the giant tree. I think my parents figured if I looked at it long enough, I’d turn into a Methodist.”
“So naturally you spent every waking hour hanging around the skating rink,” Van teased him.
“Naturally.”
“See why I’m irresistible?” Van complained. “It has nothing to do with me. I’m just another Christmas decoration.”
Stanley went on: “I saw myself as this choirboy type, all robed and ethereal, singing Silent Night with the Italians down the block. They had fantastic stuff in their windows—Santa Claus and Rudolph with this big fat flashing neon nose. Shit. Finally my parents had no choice but to play Chanukah for all it was worth. I got a present every night for eight nights, and my mother made potato pancakes till they were bursting out of my—”
“Not to worry,” Van broke in. “Next year we’ll have eight days of dreydls and holly.” She and Stanley exchanged a look full of secrets.
“You tell them,” Stanley said. His brown eyes were glistening.
“We’re getting married in August,” Van announced.
“What?” Quinn whooped. She leapt up and threw her arms around them both, practically lying across the table to accomplish the embrace. “Wonderful! I can’t believe it! Of course I can believe it!”
Will was beaming. He shook hands with Stanley and leaned over to kiss Van. “Come on, let’s celebrate.” He held up his hand and called imperiously. “Waiter!”
Quinn giggled. “Look at this.”
The waiter appeared, and Will said, “Champagne. Your best New York State, but no twist-off top, if you please. We shall have a cork.”
Will opened the bottle, which obliged by making a resounding pop. Then he and Quinn slid out of the booth and stood with glasses held high.
“To the bride and groom,” Will said solemnly. “Happiness together always.”
They drank, then Stanley half rose from his seat and pronounced, “To Quinn Mallory, the toast of New York, to her success. To chutzpah.”
“Thank you,” Quinn said with a forced smile.
The silence that followed grew heavy. Quinn quickly began to pepper Van and Stanley with questions about the impending marriage. Every time Quinn glanced at Will, his face looked absent. She imagined that his eyes were filled with reflections of pine trees and white-capped mountains.
It was 1:00 A.M. when they started back toward campus. Stanley and Will walked ahead while the girls strolled along behind, arm in arm.
“I like to think of you ten years from now,” Quinn said. “God, you’ll probably have a couple of little kids crawling around. Mrs. Vanessa Markowitz and her brood.”
Van laughed. “Vanessa Huntington Markowitz.”
“I think you ought to hyphenate it.”
“What about you and Will?”
“Oh, well—”
“You’re going to New York after graduation and he hasn’t said anything about changing his plans, and I sort of wondered …”
“You might just be a bridesmaid yourself one of these days,” Quinn blurted.
Van stopped short and stared at Quinn. Then she hugged her. “That’s terrific! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, it’s not exactly formal,” Quinn said.
Van started running, dragging Quinn by the arm. Before Quinn could stop her, Van had caught up to the others and thrown her arms around Will.
“You sneaks. All that time we were babbling on and on about our own plans, and here you two are holding out on us.”
Stanley and Will looked equally stunned. Quinn’s face was burning.
“They’re getting married too,” Van explained to Stanley patiently.
“Hey, that’s fantastic!” Stanley gathered Quinn into a lung-crushing bear hug. Her eyes, over his shoulder, implored Will.
“This makes everything perfect,” Van said.
Quinn took Will’s hand and clung to it. His fingers were as stiff as his smile.
Stanley watched them carefully.
“Uh, we’ll go on ahead,” Van said finally. “See you at the dorm.” She pulled Stanley’s arm, and they were soon just shadows under the street lights far ahead.
Will’s face appeared to have frozen over. Quinn was afraid that if he opened his mouth or blinked, he would crack right down the middle, forehead to chin, like a glacier cleft by a jagged fissure.
“I don’t know how it happened, Will,” she said. “It just slipped out before I knew I even thought it. Then she just, well, it was too late and she got to you before I could stop her.” Tears had begun to fall down her cheeks.
“Is this your way of making things all right?” The face didn’t crack, but she felt a blast of polar air.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Well, you sure as hell complicated things. Jesus.”
She let go of the rigid fingers. “They were so happy and I guess I just wanted us—”
“How do you think I felt?” he interrupted angrily. “It was as if you were sticking pins in me. We’re not going to get married, Quinn. It’s cruel what you did.”
“It’s cruel to me, too.” Her voice broke. “Don’t you think it hurts me, too? Ever since we got back from New York, it’s been awful. We can’t even talk to each other.” She was crying in earnest now, choking out her words between sobs. Will’s face began to thaw. Out of remorse he touched her arm lightly. They started walking toward the campus gate now visible up ahead. Stanley and Van were just entering. Their shadows made a grotesque shape with four legs.
“Well, then, I guess it’s time we talk,” he said. “We sure as hell can’t keep this up.”
Fear had taken Quinn’s voice away.
“Tonight was just the beginning,” he continued. “We’re only going to keep on hurting each other. Let’s not drag it out.”
“Oh, Will.”
“Do you see any way?”
“I’ll come with you to Idaho. Maybe—”
He interrupted her. “You going to turn down the Manning job? It’s a phenomenal break. You’d hate me in three minutes.”
“Can’t we stay together until summer?”
“No.”
“You sure don’t seem very willing to fight for it.”
“Not when there’s no point.”
“How can you just give up like this?” The tears stopped. A tiny splinter of anger floated to the top of her sea of misery. It felt good. She clung to it, using it as a life raft to keep her from drowning in her own helplessness.
“It depends on how you want it to end,” he said.
There was challenge in his voice, she thought. Maybe he needed anger too. Well, God damn him, he was going to have it. “Got any suggestions?” Her voice was as cold as his.
“No.”
“Just like that.” She looked up at the lights of the women’s dormitory just ahead and wondered how they could have gotten to the end so fast.
“I’ll walk you to the door,” he said.
“Don’t bother.”
“I said I’ll walk you.”
Both of them felt finality swallow them up in a great roaring wave, all splinters pitifully useless now. They stopped at the door and averted their faces from the other couples who were kissing good night.
�
�Oh, God,” Quinn said.
Will turned without a word and walked quickly away.
Van went straight to Quinn’s room. The door was closed. When she tapped on it, there was no answer.
“Quinn, it’s me,” she called softly. “Hey.”
Still no answer.
“Come on, let me in.” She tapped louder. “I’m going to stay here all night unless you let me see you’re okay.”
There was a muffled noise.
“I guess that means come in,” Van said, and stepped inside.
Quinn was huddled on her bed in the dark. “Close the door,” she said.
“I can’t see you.”
“Exactly.” The voice was barely recognizable.
Van shut the door and groped her way to the bed. She put her hand on Quinn’s back. It felt steamy. “What happened?” she asked, her voice hushed in the presence of tangible misery.
“It’s finished.”
Van restrained an exclamation of shock.
“I’m such a jerk,” Quinn sniffed. “All that stuff about getting married. I don’t know. I just got carried away. I want it so much and I can’t figure out how, so I just said it, I guess. He was so angry. You wouldn’t believe the way he looked at me. Will. You know our Will. He wouldn’t swat a spider if it sat on his nose, and for a minute I thought he might even hit me.” She started crying again. “Oh, shit. I can’t believe this.”
“You’ll work it out,” Van said. “Really you will.”
Quinn shook her head. “It’s a curse, this job thing. I’d go live with him in Siberia if that’s where he wants to go, but he says no. He says I’d hate him.”
Van was silent.
“He’s right. I would.”
“Don’t you think he’d get used to the city?”
“Oh, it was pathetic, Van, like watching a wild animal in a cage. He tried. Every time a siren went past, he was in torture.” She reached for a tissue, blew her nose, and poked at her pillow in disgust. “It’s going to take three weeks for this thing to dry out. Christ Almighty, how did I let myself get mixed up with that guy?”
“He’s something special, that’s how.”