Richard Yates

by Easter Parade (v5. 0) (epub)

  ‘And the worst problem is the heating,’ he went on. ‘My father built it as a summer place, you see, and there’s never been a proper heating system. One of the tenants did put in an oil burner that looks vaguely adequate, but I imagine we’ll have to shut off most of the rooms this winter. Well. Cheers.’

  ‘I think it’s a charming house,’ Pookie said, settling down to enjoy the cocktail hour. ‘I won’t hear a word against it. Look, Emmy, see the lovely old portraits? They’re some of Geoffrey’s ancestors. There are stories connected with every single thing in this room.’

  ‘Mostly ve’y dull stories, I’m afraid,’ Geoffrey Wilson said.

  ‘Fascinating stories,’ she insisted. ‘Oh, Geoffrey, I can’t tell you how I’ve come to love it out here – all the lovely meadows and the woodland, and Sarah’s cottage, and this wonderful old house. It has such – I don’t know; such flair. Does it have a name?’

  ‘A name?’

  ‘You know, the way estates have names. Like “Jalna,” or “Green Gables.”’

  Geoffrey Wilson pretended to think it over. ‘The way it looks now,’ he said, ‘I suppose we might call it “Overgrown Hedges.”’

  And Pookie didn’t realize he was kidding. ‘Oh, I like that,’ she said. ‘Not “Overgrown,” though, that’s not quite right. What about’ – she worked her lips – ‘what about “Great Hedges”?’

  ‘Mm,’ he said kindly. ‘Yes; rather nice.’

  ‘That’s what I’m going to call it, anyway,’ she announced. “Great Hedges,” St. Charles, Long Island, New York.’

  ‘Well.’ He turned to Emily. ‘How are you finding your – college?’

  ‘Oh, it’s very – interesting.’ Emily took a sip and sat back to watch her mother get drunk. She knew it wouldn’t take long. With the second drink Pookie began to monopolize the talk, telling long pointless anecdotes about houses she’d lived in, hunching forward in her deep chair with her elbows on her slightly parted knees. Emily, sitting across from her, could watch her face loosen as she talked and drank, watch her knees move farther apart until they revealed the gartered tops of her stockings, the shadowed, sagging insides of her naked thighs and finally the crotch of her underpants.

  ‘… No, but the nicest house I ever had was in Larchmont. Remember Larchmont, dear? We had real casement windows and a real slate roof; of course we couldn’t afford it, but the minute I saw it I said That’s where I want to live, and I went right in and signed the lease, and the girls loved it. I’ll never forget how— Oh, thank you, Geoffrey; just one more and then we’ve really got to be…’

  Why couldn’t she get drunk quietly, with her legs curled up in the cushions, like Edna Wilson?

  ‘A little more sherry, Emily?’

  ‘No thanks. I’m fine.’

  ‘… And of course the schools were wonderful in Larchmont; that’s one reason I wish we could have stayed; still, I’ve always thought it did the girls a world of good to move around to different places, and then of course…’

  By the time she was ready to leave at last Geoffrey Wilson had to help her to the door. It was getting dark. Emily took her arm – it felt soft and weak – and they made their way past trees and overgrown shrubbery toward the long road to the railroad station. She knew Pookie would sleep on the train – she hoped she would, anyway; it would be better than if she stayed awake and talked – and their dinner, if they had any, would be a hot dog and coffee in Penn Station. But she didn’t mind: the weekend was almost over, and in a matter of hours she’d be back in school.

  School was the center of her life. She had never heard the word ‘intellectual’ used as a noun before she went to Barnard, and she took it to heart. It was a brave noun, a proud noun, a noun suggesting lifelong dedication to lofty things and a cool disdain for the commonplace. An intellectual might lose her virginity to a soldier in the park, but she could learn to look back on it with wry, amused detachment. An intellectual might have a mother who showed her underpants when drunk, but she wouldn’t let it bother her. And Emily Grimes might not be an intellectual yet, but if she took copious notes in even the dullest of her classes, and if she read every night until her eyes ached, it was only a question of time. There were girls in her class, and even a few Columbia boys, who thought of her as an intellectual already, just from the way she talked.

  ‘It’s not just a bore,’ she said once of a tiresome eighteenth-century novel, ‘it’s a pernicious bore.’ And she couldn’t help noticing that several other girls made liberal use of the word ‘pernicious’ around the dormitory during the next few days.

  But there was more to being an intellectual than a manner of speaking, more even than making the dean’s list every semester, or spending all your free time at museums and concerts and the kind of movies called ‘films.’ There was learning not to be stricken dumb when you walked into a party full of older, certified intellectuals – and not to make the opposite mistake of talking your head off, saying one inane or outrageous thing after another in a hopeless effort to atone for whatever inane or outrageous thing you’d said two minutes before. And if you did make a fool of yourself at parties like that, you had to learn not to writhe in bed afterwards in an agony of chagrin.

  You had to be serious, but – this was the maddening paradox – you had to seem never to take anything very seriously.

  ‘I thought you did very well,’ said a rumpled man at a party during her sophomore year.

  ‘I what? What do you mean?’

  ‘Just now, when you were talking to Lazlow. I was listening.’

  ‘Talking to who?’

  ‘You didn’t even know who he is? Clifford Lazlow, political science. He a tiger.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Anyway, you did very well. You weren’t intimidated and you weren’t aggressive either.’

  ‘But he’s just a funny little man in bifocals.’

  ‘That’s funny.’ And he shook his plump shoulders to simulate a spasm of laughter. ‘That’s really funny. A funny little man in bifocals. Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘No, actually, I – well, all right.’

  His name was Andrew Crawford and he was a graduate assistant in philosophy. His damp hair hung in his eyes as he talked, and she wanted to comb it back with her fingers. He wasn’t really as pudgy as he’d seemed at first glance; he was attractive in his own way, especially when he was tense with talking, but he looked as though he ought to spend more time outdoors. When he got his doctorate, he said, he would continue to teach – ‘if the Army doesn’t get me, and there’s not much chance of that; I’m a physical wreck’ – and he would also travel. He wanted to see whatever would be left of Europe, and he wanted to go to Russia too, and China. The world would be made over again in unforeseeable ways, and he didn’t want to miss any of it. Essentially, though, he wanted to teach. ‘I like the classroom,’ he said. ‘I know it sounds stuffy, but I like the academic life. What’s your field?’

  ‘Well, I’m only a sophomore; I’m an English major, but I don’t really—’

  ‘Really? You look older than that. I mean you don’t look older, but you seem older. The way you move around; the way you handled old Lazlow. I could’ve sworn you were a grad student. You have a very – I don’t know. You seem very sure of yourself. In a good way, I mean. These parties get a little thick after a while, don’t you think? Everybody shouting each other down, everybody trying to score points. It’s all ego, ego, ego. You ready for a refill?’

  ‘No; I’d better be going.’

  ‘Where do you live? I’ll take you home.’

  ‘No, actually, I’m with someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You wouldn’t know him; Dave Ferguson. He’s over there by the door; the tall one.’

  ‘Him? But he’s only about fifteen years old.’

  ‘That’s silly. He’s twenty-one.’

  ‘Why isn’t he in the Army? Strapping youth like that.’

  ‘He has a bad knee.’

  ‘A �
�trick knee,” right?’ Andrew Crawford said. ‘A “football knee.” Oh, yes, dear God, I know the type.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what you’re implying, but I—’

  ‘Not implying anything at all. I never imply. Always say exactly what I mean.’

  ‘Anyway, I have to go.’

  ‘Wait.’ And he started after her through the crowd. ‘Could I call you sometime? Can I have your number?’

  As she wrote down the number she wondered why she was doing it. Wouldn’t it have been perfectly easy to say no to Andrew Crawford? But that was the trouble: it wouldn’t have been easy. There was something about him – his eyes, his mouth, his soft-looking shoulders – that suggested he’d be hurt beyond all reason if you said no.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, putting her number in his pocket, and he looked as pleased as a child singled out for praise. ‘Oh, thank you.’

  ‘Who was the little fat guy?’ Dave Ferguson inquired when they were out on the street.

  ‘I don’t know. A graduate student in philosophy. I wouldn’t exactly call him fat.’ After a while she said ‘Arrogant, though.’ And then she was troubled again: you couldn’t exactly call him arrogant, either.

  ‘He sure had the hots for you.’

  ‘You say that about everybody.’

  It was a clear night, and she enjoyed walking with Dave Ferguson. He held her close but not in the clutching, almost desperate way some boys did; his legs matched her stride perfectly, and their heels made a sharp, invigorating cadence on the street.

  ‘Can I come up?’ he asked at her doorstep. She had her own apartment in ‘approved student housing’ now; she had let him ‘come up’ three or four times, and twice he had stayed all night.

  ‘I don’t think so tonight, Dave,’ she said, not quite meeting his eyes. ‘I’m really very—’

  ‘What’s the matter? You sick?’

  ‘No, it’s just that I’m so tired I want to go right to sleep. And I’ve got that awful Chaucer exam tomorrow.’

  After turning back to watch him retreat up the sidewalk, hunched in his raincoat, she wondered why she had sent him away. Life was confusing.

  One distressing thing Emily learned in college was to feel more intelligent than her sister. She had felt more intelligent than her mother for years, but that was different; when it happened with Sarah she felt she had betrayed a trust.

  She began to notice it when she and Pookie went out to St. Charles soon after Sarah’s second boy was born. Tony Junior was standing now, drooling and clinging to his mother’s leg as they peered into the crib at the small new face.

  ‘Oh, I think Peter’s a lovely name,’ Pookie said. ‘And you’re right, Sarah, he is different. He and little Tony have whole different personalities. Don’t they, Emmy?’

  ‘Mm.’

  With the inspection over and the babies asleep, they sat around the living room and Sarah poured three glasses of sherry. She had evidently picked up sherry from Edna Wilson.

  ‘Oh, it feels so good to sit down,’ she said, and she did look tired; but she began to look refreshed as she talked. There were times, especially with a little alcohol in her veins, when Sarah could be almost as much of a talker as Pookie.

  ‘… I couldn’t help thinking of Daddy back in August or whenever it was, when Italy surrendered. Did you see the papers that day? The headlines? Well, the News – that’s the only paper we get; Tony likes it – the News headline was “ITALY QUITS”; but I happened to be down in the village that day so I saw all the other papers. The Times and the Tribune said “ITALY SURRENDERS,” or something like that, and so did most of the others. But do you know what the Sun said? Daddy’s paper? The dear old Sun’s headline was “ITALY CAPITULATES.” Can you imagine? Can you imagine Daddy writing a headline like that, or ever allowing it to be written? He would have died. I mean,’ she added quickly, ‘he never would’ve let it happen.’ And she took a deep drink.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Emily said.

  ‘Oh, Emmy,’ Sarah said. ‘How many people know what “capitulate” means?’

  ‘Do you know what it means?’

  Sarah blinked. ‘Well, but I mean how many other people do? And for a daily newspaper that’s supposed to reach millions of people – I don’t know; I thought it was funny, that’s all.’

  ‘Marvelous,’ Pookie said.

  Sarah sat back in the sofa, tucking her ankles up beneath her – had she copied that gesture from Edna Wilson too? and launched into her next monologue with the zest of a performer who knows her audience will be enthralled. ‘Oh, I must tell you this,’ she began. ‘First of all, I got a letter from Donald Clellon last year, and he—’

  ‘Donald Clellon?’ Emily said. ‘Did you really?’

  ‘Oh, just sort of a sad little letter; that’s not important. He said he was in the army now and he often thought of me – you know – and he said he was out here at Camp Upton. So anyway—’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘I don’t know; a year or so ago. Anyway, last month we had an air-raid scare out here – did you hear about that?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Pookie said, looking concerned.

  ‘Well, it was nothing, of course, that’s the whole point. It only lasted a few hours. I wasn’t frightened, but some of the little townspeople were – they talked about it for days afterwards. Anyway, they announced on the radio that one of the soldiers at Camp Upton had turned in the alarm by mistake, and I said – I told this to Tony and he couldn’t stop laughing – I said “I bet it was Donald Clellon.”’

  Pookie threw back her head for peal after peal of hearty laughter, showing her bad teeth, and Sarah was helpless with laughter too.

  ‘Well, but wait,’ Emily said while her mother and sister were recovering. ‘Camp Upton is only an induction center; they only stay there a few days before they go to other camps for basic training, and then they’re shipped out to divisions. If it was a year ago that Donald wrote you, he’s probably overseas by now.’ And she would have added He might even be dead, but didn’t want to overdo it.

  ‘Oh?’ Sarah said. ‘Well, I didn’t know that, but even so.’

  ‘Oh, Emmy,’ Pookie said. ‘Don’t spoil the story. Where’s your sense of humor?’ And she repeated the punch line, to savor it. ‘“I bet it was Donald Clellon.”’

  Emily didn’t know where her sense of humor was, but she knew it wasn’t here – nor would it be in the main house, later this afternoon, when she and Pookie went over there for their ritual visit with the elder Wilsons. She guessed she had left it, along with everything else that mattered, back at school.

  For a little while she expected Andrew Crawford to call her any day; then she stopped thinking about it, and more than a whole year went by before he did – the year she became a junior.

  She had broken off with Dave Ferguson and spent six romantic, melancholy weeks with a boy named Paul Resnick who was waiting to be drafted; he later wrote her a long letter from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, explaining that he loved her but didn’t want to be tied down. She worked that summer in an upper-Broadway bookstore – ‘English majors make good booksellers,’ the manager told her; ‘I’ll take an English major every time’ – and then the following winter, out of the blue, Andrew Crawford called her.

  ‘I wasn’t at all certain you’d remember me,’ he said as they settled into a booth in a Greek restaurant near the Columbia campus.

  ‘Why did you wait so long to call?’

  ‘I was shy,’ he said, opening his napkin. ‘I was shy and also I was miserably involved with a young lady whose name shall not be mentioned here.’

  ‘Oh. What do people call you, anyway? Andy?’

  ‘Oh, Lord, no. “Andy” suggests some devilish, hell-for-leather sort of fellow; not my type at all, I’m afraid. I’ve always been called Andrew. A little hard to get your mouth around, I’ll admit – sort of like Ernest or Clarence – but I’m used to it.’

  From the way he ate she could tell he liked his food – h
e was a little chubby – and he didn’t say much until he was full, by which time there was a faint shine of grease around his mouth. Then he began to talk as if talking were another sensual pleasure, using words like ‘tangential’ and ‘reductive.’ He talked of the war not as a cataclysm that might soon swallow him up – he said for the second time that he was a physical wreck – but as a complex and fascinating international game; he went on to talk of books she’d never read and authors she’d never heard of, and then he was talking about classical music, of which she knew almost nothing. ‘… And as you may know, the piano part in that sonata is one of the most difficult pieces in the world. Technically, I mean.’

  ‘Are you a musician, too?’

  ‘Used to be, sort of. I studied piano and clarinet for many years – you know, I was one of these tiresome little creatures called “gifted children” – then when it turned out I didn’t have the talent to perform I tried composing. Studied composition at Eastman until it was clear I didn’t have much talent for that either; then I gave up music altogether.’

  ‘It must be very – painful to give up something like that.’

  ‘Oh, it broke my heart. But then, back in those days my heart was getting broken on an average of about once a month, so it was only a matter of degree. What would you like for dessert?’

  ‘How often does your heart get broken now?’

  ‘Mm? Oh, somewhat less frequently. Perhaps two or three times a year. What about dessert? They have marvelous baklava here.’

  She decided she liked him. She didn’t much like the grease around his mouth, but he wiped that away before digging into his baklava, and she liked everything else. No other boy she’d known had such a wide general knowledge and so many well-reasoned opinions – he was an intellectual – nor had any other boy had the maturity to be self-deprecating. But that was the point: he wasn’t a boy. He was thirty. He had come to terms with the world.

  She allowed herself to nestle close to his arm as they walked, and when they came to her doorway she said ‘Would you like to come up for some coffee?’

  He backed two steps away on the sidewalk, looking surprised. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, really; thanks very much; some other time.’ And he didn’t even kiss her; all he did was smile and make an awkward little wave of the hand as he turned away. Upstairs, she walked the floor for a long time with one knuckle in her mouth, trying to figure out what she’d done wrong.