The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  The party was held in a dreary ground-floor room. Bare wood floors, wooden benches around the walls, flaking paint on the walls. On the benches sat a dozen inmates, scrubbed, combed, and dressed in fresh overalls and housedresses. They grinned toothlessly and murmured shy words of welcome.

  The boys hung crepe paper, while the girls arranged flowers and put out piles of gifts and organized cake and punch on a table they covered with a paper cloth. The old people watched, even though most had already endured several identical Junior Service Welcome-to-Spring parties.

  Roger, a slight young man who played organ at the First Baptist Church, sat at an out-of-tune piano and played “I’m Looking over a Four-Leafed Clover.” Marge, a Madrigal, said with a big smile, as though addressing two-year-olds, “Everybody let’s sing now!” Mostly Marge sang, with some help from the Junior Servicettes. The inmates droned an uninspired basso continuo. A man in freshly pressed overalls with a watch chain across the bib pounded time with his cane and grinned toothlessly. Several others clapped faintly, out of rhythm. A gusty April wind rattled the windows in their frames like chattering false teeth.

  The Junior Servicettes passed out gifts—lacy handkerchiefs for the women and billfolds for the men. They grinned and exclaimed, and Emily began to feel irritated that so little could excite them to such gratitude.

  As the old people ate cake and sipped punch, the Junior Servicettes chatted with them. Or rather, listened, as each old person told his or her life story, delighted to find a fresh audience. Emily sat with the old man who had pounded his cane. He told her about his childhood, hired out to a farmer by his stepfather from sunrise to sunset for twenty-five cents a day. His youth, in lumber camps and saw mills. His forty years in the card room at Benson Mill. His old age here at the County Home due to a complicated story of broken promises and abandonment, illness and death. He talked with a toothless smile. Occasionally he paused to wheeze and cough. “Hit’s my lungs,” he explained. “Done gone plumb punky. The Doc, he says hit’s the empheeseemee done got me. Too much smoking. Funny thang is, I ain’t never smoked.” He heaved with soundless laughter.

  Above the smiling mouth, in his eyes, Emily read misery, loneliness, lovelessness, bitterness, resignation, fear, humiliation—and contempt for young people who understood nothing. She got up and moved away, muttering an excuse.

  In closing, Emily on her flute accompanied Marge, who sang, “Shine glorious sun. / Banish all our cares and sorrow. / Set thy radiance in heaven / To greet the morrow.”The old man pounded his cane loudly and off the beat, smiling, until an attendant led him away.

  “Well!” said their adviser as they drove away. “That went very well. You all did a real nice job.”

  “I don’t think we should go again,” Emily murmured.

  “How come?” everyone asked with surprise.

  “I don’t know.”

  Mrs. Prince noted Emily’s sour look in her direction and was swept with guilt. What had she done now? Emily was at an age at which she seemed to need to expend energy making her parents feel bad for having brought her into this imperfect world.

  Next, right on schedule, arrived sympathy. (The two alternated, like flashing neon signs.) Sally was everything Emily wanted to be, and there was no way to tell Emily that the cheerleading set, force-bloomed, shriveled early and spent the rest of their lives consumed by a disembodied sense of injustice that they were no longer the focus for the entire community. Mrs. Prince had watched this happen to her own high school class. The athletes, the “fast” set had had their years. But now the classmates she’d envied so much were tired middle-aged householders like herself. Rose Tatro, for instance. She’d been a sponsor for the band, had marched in front at football games carrying an armload of carnations dyed orange and purple, the Newland High colors. Several boys had fought almost to the death over her. Melanie had seen her downtown the other day. Her hair was frizzy, she was too heavy, was wearing too much makeup in an attempt to conceal wrinkles.

  But Emily took after Robert and was almost impossible to console. She specialized in varieties of frowns and grimaces, and had ever since birth really. That was the astonishing thing—to realize that Emily had been Emily right from the womb. And Sally, Sally. As a baby, Sally gurgled and giggled and climbed all over anyone who was around, touching their eyelashes with fascination as they blinked. Emily had spent most of her early years sitting absolutely still in a playpen, looking as though she were carrying on a dialogue with unseen beings. Several times Melanie had looked out the kitchen window into the back yard and seen chipmunks down from the trees sitting quietly beside her in the playpen. Sometimes it felt as though the two girls were living out two aspects of Melanie’s own personality. Sally was the clubwoman, though she was successful at it. And Emily brooded about time and space and the meaning of life, while feeling bad about not being able to do what seemed to satisfy everyone around her.

  Melanie looked at the altar with an expert eye. She’d set up this communion. She liked draping the embroidered cloths over the chalice, straightening the corners. Changing the hangings for the different seasons and holy days. Changing the numbers in the overhead racks. Keeping the vestments clean and pressed for the choir and the acolytes and the deacon.

  Mr. Shell was about to retire, and they were having to pick someone new. Various young men were giving guest sermons. Recently an earnest young man from Baltimore chastised them for their non-involvement in the Negro struggle. He’d not gotten the job. But the points he’d raised had remained with her. Was church the place to raise such issues? She’d always thought of it as a place of refuge from the problems of this wretched world, like her garden.

  “… May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and give you peace, this day and evermore. Amen.”

  Chapter Five

  The Plantation Ball

  The spotlight was on Jed and Sally as they strolled down the ramp, her arm through his. “Miss Sally Prince, escorted by Mr. Jed Tatro.”

  Sally was wearing a strapless white gown with a full ballerina-length skirt. Atop her dark blonde hair was a rhinestone tiara. The carnations she had shamed Jed into sending were tied on her wrist. She was overcome with pride and had to blink back tears. This was the moment each Ingenue had been working for all year. This was the whole glorious reason for the bake sales, the car washes, the raffles. She glanced with a proprietary smile at Jed in his rented white dinner jacket. He wore a ruffled shirt, and a plaid cumberbund and bow tie. Across his chest was the purple sash that identified him as an Ingenue Escort. He was grinning at their friends, who were applauding as she and he descended the steps to “Moon River,” played by the dance band on the stage. She and Jed took their position in the formation on the dance floor, just to the right of the free-throw line, and watched and applauded as the other club members were presented.

  Sally glanced around the gym, which had been transformed by coral gauze draperies into a voluptuous harem. The rest of the student body stood in the shadows and sat at tables around the circumference of the dance floor. She loved being able to provide everyone with such a lovely dance. Things would get so humdrum without special occasions to work for and look forward to.

  Behind the band was a mural the club used each year-—of a plantation house with white pillars. Jed studied it. This was the kind of house he’d always imagined he’d live in when he returned to Newland after his pro ball career to live off his endorsements and raise his family. Never mind that there wasn’t no such house in town. He’d build him one. Pulling up in front of the mansion was a horse-drawn coach, driven by a nigger in a satin uniform. On the verandah stood women in long dresses and men in white suits. A fat black mammy chuckled in the doorway and shielded pink-cheeked children in her long homespun skirts. Fancy writing said, “Our Southern Way of Life.”

  Jed glanced around the room. It looked good. The girls had done a nice job. The coral walls of the tent swelled and billowed. It reminded him of Be
tty Boob’s cunt when she was coming. This notion of being a midget trapped inside a giant cunt made him feel suffocated. He stretched his neck to loosen his collar.

  All twenty-eight Ingenues and their dates had assembled. The band began “The Champagne Waltz,” and the couples waltzed around each other in intricate patterns while the audience applauded. Bill Rogers, president of the boys’ social club, the Rebels, climbed up on the ramp with the president of Ingenue. He held up a cut-glass cup of fruit punch and gave the ritual toast: “To the young women of the South, exceeded by none in beauty and virtue. We pledge ourselves to your service and protection.”

  Sally blinked back tears as all the young men in the room raised their cups, then tossed down their punch. She glanced down to be sure her bodice wasn’t slipping.

  Emily, standing in a corner, glanced at Raymond, uncomfortable in his rented dinner jacket. He grinned and tossed off his punch. Then he put his arm around her and said in a deep voice, “Don’t worry, little one. You’ve got me to take care of you.” She removed herself from his grasp and gave him a disapproving look. “Virtue, my ass,” Raymond whispered. “Do you think there’s a virgin in this room?”

  “Besides me?” As she gazed at the assembled Ingenues, she felt gangly, unattractive, and envious. What could she do to become one of them?

  Raymond studied the mural of “Our Southern Way of Life” and thought of his kinfolks in Tatro Cove. Who were they trying to kid? He didn’t know anybody who lived like that. Of course, his great-grandfather had died defending “Our Southern Way of Life.” And Raymond himself on the junior high playground had participated in elaborate campaigns against the horrified sons of Newland’s Yankee industrialists. Occasionally he fought on the Yankee side because he played chess with them. But usually he’d devoted himself to restoring the lost honor of the South.

  “Let’s dance,” he suggested, steering Emily onto the floor as the band swung into “Sweet Little Sixteen.”

  As she and Raymond did their best to simulate chickens scratching after grain, Emily saw a Negro boy in a white waiter’s jacket by the refreshment table gathering up used cups. He looked up, as though feeling her stare, and glanced around.

  “Look, Raymond. It’s Donny.”

  They stopped dancing and stared. Donny, long and lanky, was grinning and serving someone punch. “Christ,” Raymond muttered.

  “Maybe we should go say hello?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Raymond said, dragging her toward the door.

  “But why? We just got here.” Raymond was a drag, always wanting to leave parties early and refusing to join in while he was there. No wonder Ingenue hadn’t given her a bid. Maybe she needed to break up with him and find another boyfriend who wasn’t so determined to be a creep.

  “Why is he grinning like that?”

  “Maybe he’s having a good time. Some people do at dances, you know.”

  “It’s bad enough that he’s doing it at all. But it’s terrible if he’s enjoying it.”

  “But why?”

  “They’re trying to fit him into his slot, same as they’re trying to do to me. I know a slot when I see one.” That week at school classmates had begun squealing through the halls waving college acceptances. Raymond was starting to feel frantic over the topic of what to do with himself for the rest of his life.

  Donny sloshed punch into cups, grinning grimly. His grandmaw had taken to telling him lately, “Good manners is the best life insurance a colored person can have.” Besides, a grin set you free. As long as you grinned, you could think whatever you wanted. And at this particular moment, he was wondering if these white boys was knocking off their girlfriends or what. So many of them looked so awkward out there, jerking around like they was half paralyzed or something. Even if they got it in, they’d never be able to keep it in, lurching around like that. No wonder Blanton was out after his mama. He felt the rage begin to rise in his throat. He squelched it, listened to a few bars of “Long Tall Sally,” did a couple of loose-limbed dance steps, and flashed his teeth at the white boy whose cup he was filling.

  “What you so happy about?” the boy asked, smiling back. “You having a good time?”

  “Yes sir, I sure is!”

  As far as his mama knew, he wasn’t here tonight. His grandmaw had come home with Sally’s message offering him this job. His mama yelled, “Why, that little slut! Who she think she’s talking to?”

  “Ten bucks, Mama, for one evening.”

  “I don’t care if it’s ten thousand bucks. You write back and tell her to go douche with her fruit punch!”

  “Kathryn! You watch that mouth of yours in front of your little boy!” Ruby snarled.

  Donny was laughing. “I ain’t so little, Grandmaw.”

  “That’s twice what I make in a day,” Ruby pointed out. “You put on a white jacket, and you dump punch in cups, and they pay you ten dollars. Law, I don’t see a thing wrong with that.”

  “I don’t neither,” Donny said.

  “If you don’t see, I can’t tell you. But I’m still your mama, Donny, and I forbid you to take that job.”

  Their eyes locked, Donny’s amazed. “Mama, I’m sixteen years old. You ain’t been around here for four years. I decide what I gon do.”

  “If you take that job, I don’t want to know about it.”

  If this was what New York City did to people, made them too picky to earn a living, then he thought he’d better stay put. As far as he could see, his mama had turned plumb hysterical up there.

  It was early morning, too early for other boats to be out, but not too early for the sun to be scorching. The inlet was surrounded by wooden cliffs. Buzzards wheeled around nests high overhead. Jed cut the motor and drifted alongside the ski jump. He tied the boat to a leg of the jump and hopped out, then helped Sally onto the sloping canvas surface.

  They lay side by side, half-dozing, the hot sun burning into their tired bodies. In keeping with tradition they’d been out all night at post-ball parties that eventually became breakfasts. They were well fed on scrambled eggs and sweet rolls.

  Jed took Sally’s hand. She squeezed his. “Wasn’t it wonderful?” she sighed. “Everything went so beautifully. I can’t believe it’s all over.”

  Jed rolled over, nibbled at her neck and ears, and pushed the damp blonde hair back from her forehead. “You’re so beautiful.”

  “Of course, it isn’t really over, is it? We have to go clean up this afternoon. How will we stay awake?”

  Jed lowered his mouth onto hers. They kissed for a long time, their tongues playing hide-and-seek. “I want you so much, Sally.”

  “The band was OK, but I liked the Dukes last year better.”

  Jed worked a knee between her legs. He slid his hand down her bathing suit top and stroked a nipple.

  “You won’t forget to borrow that truck for the clean-up this afternoon, will you, Jeddie?”

  “No,” he murmured, rubbing his erection against her thigh.

  The sun beat down. Through half-closed eyelashes Sally could see the surrounding cliffs, sun-struck and shimmering in the heat. The ski jump rocked gently in the swells. The deep green water was penetrated by shafts of sunlight

  She dozed, and awoke to discover that her own and Jed’s bathing suits had been removed. Jed was kneeling between her legs, lowering himself.

  “No, Jed,” she murmured faintly.

  “Please, Sally,” he whispered.

  “Please don’t, Jed.”

  “Please.”

  “Please. No,” she whispered, as he pushed himself slowly into her.

  “Please,” he gasped as he moved ever less tentatively in and out.

  Sally lay absolutely still. If she didn’t participate, if she didn’t enjoy this in any way whatsoever, it would be OK. It would be as though it hadn’t even happened. Jed jerked and shuddered and gasped and sighed and lay silent.

  And in fact, it was exactly as though it hadn’t happened. She felt nothing. Except terror. But
this wasn’t how she’d always imagined. it That song last night: “When you hold me so tight, / I just know this is right…” This conviction was lacking. What had gone wrong?

  “Will you always love me, Jed?” she whispered in a fearful voice.

  He was lying on her, absently stroking her hair and trying to fathom the enormity of what he’d just done. Mr. Prince’s daughter. It hadn’t been as good as with Betty Boobs. It hadn’t even been as good as jerking off. She just lay there, like a corpse. The Chuck Berry song last night that all the boys had hooted at, and all the girls had blushed at: “She said, ‘O yeah, daddy, that sure feels fine!’”

  “Yeah, Sally, I will. You know I will.” God, he had no choice now. He’d taken her virginity. She was his for life. They looked at each other uneasily.

  Raymond and Emily drove in the golden light of early evening down a valley of well-tended farms toward Donley to a meeting Raymond was covering for the newspaper. A lazy river wound through the valley. Forested hills rose up on either side. Tiny figures in the distance threw hay bales onto wagons.

  They drove into the sleepy little town, a shopping community for coal miners and farmers. It consisted of a shopping street, an old brick courthouse, a street of dignified frame houses, and lots of drooping elms. Abruptly they found themselves in a traffic jam, unheard of for Donley.

  Hearing the roar of a crowd on the courthouse green, they found it packed with several hundred white people—men in khakis and short-sleeved white sports shirts with the sleeves rolled up, white socks, black pointy shoes, long sideburns, and slicked-down hair. Women in housedresses and white socks and flats. Babies in diapers. Signs waved: “We won’t go to school with no niggers!” “Get rid of the Supreme Court.” Men were yelling, “Yeah, he’s right!”