We Were Beautiful Once

by Joseph Carvalko

  Ordinarily, Jack avoided the inside of the mansion, preferring to stay by the pool, but tonight he had little choice. He meandered to the edge of the room where he heard small talk: who was marrying, who was divorcing, who was sick with what, who was building a house or running for office, why Truman didn’t nuke Moscow. He smelled stuffed mushrooms. A maid with obsidian eyes held up a silver plate with hors d'oeuvres.

  “No, thanks.”

  From across the room, Jack caught Tracy’s eye. She smiled coquettishly as she walked toward him. He admired her rosy white All-American face, thin model-like body dressed in a high necked green brocade gown tightly fashioned about her tiny breasts, tailored past her boney hips. Under the lights, her hair looked the color of honey and was tucked neatly behind her flat ears, which were adorned by pearls that picked up the emerald in her gown. Jack beamed an easy, natural smile, one that complimented a strong jaw and near perfect teeth. Beneath it all, though, he was edgy, feeling that Tracy’s father would be watching him all night.

  “Hi Jack.” She leaned in for a kiss.

  “Hi.” Eyes darting he puckered his lips and brushed her cheek. “I forgot your corsage.”

  “Oh Jack, you didn't. I wanted that—to save it.”

  Jack knew she could be overly romantic, sometimes comically so. “I'm sorry, I'll give you something else to remember me by.”

  Smiling devilishly, she cocked her head. “Like what, Jackie boy?”

  Jack blinked fast several times. “You'll see.” Jack did not intend to give her anything. Over time he had come to know her and her friends, and he felt that they were spoiled—not in the affections of their parents, but by an overabundance of everything material. All Tracy had to do was wish and it appeared, like the 1948 green MG roadster in the garage. But that was only part of an aroma of resentment, jealously or what his friend Rossini called “social differences.”

  ***

  By the middle of summer ’47, Jack began spending Saturday nights at the Hamilton pool, where his friends would drink beer, listen to music and disagree about sports, religion, politics, you name it. They argued over whether Truman or Dewey would make a better president: Jack for Truman, everyone else for Dewey.

  Tracy said, a wry look on her face, “If I were voting, I’d vote G.O.P. Don’t pay taxes now, but pretty soon I will. And, like Daddy says, we don’t want our money going to deadbeats.”

  Jack calmly replied, “I don’t want my taxes going to welfare, either.”

  Tracy nodded agreeably.

  “On the other hand, I’d gladly pay taxes that go for defense, or things like that,” Jack continued. “Some of us pay higher taxes, sacrifice so that our neighbors live decent, and... ”

  Gallagher interrupted, “Jack, you’re a goddamn socialist. The whole idea’s Marxist. If you give to those pulling at your coattails, they’ll never get off their ass. It’s common sense, man. Dig it?”

  Jack did not think much of Gallagher. He was a gawky clumsy kid in the frame of an adult; his strongest talent was imitating his uncle, who had given him a job.

  “But, Tom, we give and take. To get the balance right we need to do more, I don’t know... ” Jack said, trying to be conciliatory.

  Trent, with a touch of sarcasm, chimed in. “You’re saying if I work hard, make more, then government should take more?”

  Tracy, not wanting to get further into the row, went to the radio and dialed in Dinah Shore howling “Buttons and Bows.”

  Ignoring the blast of music, Jack turned to Trent deferentially. “No, I ain’t saying that. But my grandfather was a socialist from Europe, my father was a New Deal man. A little like religion—once you are what you are, it’s hard to change.”

  Trent crushed his cigarette in an ashtray overflowing with butts. “Ain’t that the truth,” he growled. Then blowing out a plume of smoke deep from his lungs, he added, “Let’s have a beer and screw politics.” With that, Trent walked over and pushed Jack in the pool. The guys laughed, the discussion ended and Jack, blinking rapidly, looked up at Tracy, who stormed into the house. Trent took a long swig of beer. His friends were onto a different topic.

  When Jack went home that night, he had met his mother coming in from work, beaten down from two shifts at the hospital. He thought about how different his friends were, not because they were rich, not because they weren’t Catholics, and not because they were Republicans, but because they worked differently and thought differently. They’d never had to witness mothers trekking miles of greasy factory floors or Lysol scented hallways. They had money, power, call it what you will, but it guaranteed that they’d never fail.

  ***

  Tracy thought that Jack seemed lost. “Jack, Jack, are you in this world?”

  “Sorry, I was looking at the band.”

  “Look at me, please.”

  “Trace, I’m a bit overwhelmed. Guess I didn’t expect this many people.”

  “Relax, you look really handsome. I've never seen you in a tux before.” She touched his cheek. “Monkey Cliff,” she said, teasing him with what her girlfriends called him. He blushed like when he had first heard it.

  “You look swell. I mean beautiful.” He’d never said this to a girl before and was afraid it sounded phony.

  Smiling now, Tracy looked Jack straight in the eye. “Well, Mr. Jack, I think that’s the first compliment you ever gave me.”

  “You know I get tongue tied.” He put his hand on the small of her back and looked past her where he spied her old man next to the bar. A large man with thick silver hair, he could easily be mistaken for an ex-pro football player. Tracy followed Jack’s gaze. “Let’s say hi to Daddy.” She grabbed his hand. “You’re cold, Jack,” she said, “you’re not shaking, are you?”

  “No, just... ” Jack did not press the thought. He knew Tracy played games with her father, bringing him all sorts of things—from wounded birds to weird friends—to get a reaction; maybe Jack was one of those “things.” She either tried getting his approval or shocking him, depending on her end game. At this point, Jack fit somewhere, but he didn’t know exactly where. Maybe she wanted the old man to see him dressed in a tux.

  Jack was aware of heads turning as they walked across the floor. Athletically built, within a quarter-inch of six feet, he looked military trained, head back, eyes straight ahead. Although this was the first time, he wore the tux with the confidence of a man who had worn one countless times—impeccably creased, without fold or wrinkle, from bow tie to black shoes.

  Hamilton was a man accustomed to having other men hang on his every utterance. Surrounding him were two local politicians Jeb Brookfield, Fairview’s alcoholic selectman, and Gerry Mason, listless Town Clerk. Both were shaking their heads.

  “Daddy!” said Tracy, insistently.

  Jack felt from when he had first met Hamilton that the old man did not like him, or at least did not like him dating Tracy, so when Tracy confessed that, “Daddy thinks I’m too young to be dating you,” and a month later, “Daddy thinks I need to find someone closer to home,” Jack wasn’t surprised. When he was with the pool crowd, Hamilton never gave Jack the chance to talk, cutting him off before he’d get to the end of a sentence. Jack had told Tracy, “Your father can’t stand me, Jack Prado O’Conner, dating his only daughter.”

  She had replied, “Jack you’re imagining what’s not there. Daddy just isn’t that warm of a guy.”

  “Daddy,” Tracy persisted, in a voice loud enough to hear over the band.

  Focused on the politicians, Hamilton either did not hear his dear daughter or pretended not to. Sidling up, Tracy asked, “Daddy, may I interrupt?”

  Hamilton stepped aside. “What is it, my girl?”

  The old man ignored Jack.

  “Daddy, Jack wants to say hello.”

  As Hamilton extended his large, soft, banker’s hand, Jack could not tell if the man was looking him directly in the eye or over his head. In a deep voice, he said, “Oh... hello, Jack.” He took Jack’s chilly hand and
drew him into the perimeter guarded by the two sycophants.

  “Hello, sir,” Jack used his deepest tenor. When he spoke he usually impressed listeners by his maturity, although they were soon aware of his hesitating speech, which by some was assumed as a sign of respectful diffidence.

  “Jack, I'd like to introduce Mr. Brookfield and Mr. Mason, our First Selectman and our Town Clerk.”

  Jack shook hands and nodded. “ How’d you do, sir.”

  Brookfield let go his hand like he had touched a hot stove. “Well, son, tomorrow’s a big day. By noon you and Trent will be in Uncle Sam’s Army. It didn't take you boys long to grow up, did it?”

  “Yes, sir, really lookin’ forward to... ”

  Hamilton interrupted, “How tall are you, six feet?”

  “More or less, sir.”

  Jack felt Hamilton studying him, though he could not tell what he was looking for.

  “I remember when I first met your folks, about ’42, yes, maybe eight years back when they came to the bank. You must’ve been about fifteen, high school age I guess. A skinny kid. They needed a mortgage. For a bungalow.” He smiled and then added smugly, “Still there?”

  “No, sir.” Jack stood stiffly at attention, and Tracy touched his arm. Hamilton’s eyes momentarily shifted to Tracy’s hand and back to Jack.

  “And how’re your mom and dad? Will they be at the station tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I guess so.” Jack knew that his mother would be there.

  Hamilton looked away. “Fine, I'm hoping to see them.”

  “Yes, sir, I'll tell them you said hello.”

  “Good. Now you and Tracy have a swell time.” He turned to Brookfield, who smiled, pleased that he had won the greater man’s attention.

  “Nice meeting you both,” Jack said earnestly.

  Always looking for a vote, the First Selectman replied, “Good luck, son.” Mason only needed Hamilton’s vote, so he fixed on Hamilton stuffing a wiener into his beefy face.

  Tracy steered Jack toward the foyer. “Come on, let’s walk through those fox trotters and say hello to Mom.”

  Tracy’s mother was welcoming guests, smiling, mentioning their children or hobbies in a few words. She invited Congressman Bickford and his young wife Nina to help themselves to cocktails before she acknowledged Jack with an arched brow and a turned up smile, “Hi, Jack, enjoying yourself?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hamilton, the party’s terrific, I never expected so many people.”

  “I did hope your mom and dad would be coming.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom isn’t feeling well, and Dad has to get up at five.”

  Jack and Tracy had been making the rounds for an hour before they ran into Trent. “Jack, what do you think?”

  “Well, a little more fucking sane than the last frat party.”

  “Sane ain’t the word for it. Let’s blow this joint. Gallagher and the guys are makin’ a dent in our beer supply out back.”

  “I want to introduce Jack to Congressman Bickford, then we’ll come out,” Tracy said.

  Jack watched Trent walk in the direction of the pool and, having been in the old man’s presence a short time ago, saw in him the mold of his father, aloof, deciding by the numbers, trusting only what he saw and touched, gravitating toward reality, repulsed by the ideal—not a dreamer. Between detached and emotional, Trent chose the former, even to the degree that he didn’t have a steady girl, so there would not be any tear jerking goodbyes in the morning. Trent told Jack the day before the party that Anna, his on-again, off-again girlfriend, wasn’t coming to the party, but that he would see her just before the train came—not for some soppy farewell, but to make sure, “things were settled before he left.”

  Tracy and Jack danced a few numbers, then she drifted off to her college friends and Jack found himself alone among guys he had come to socialize with over the past few years, but in reality had remained distant. The band played until one. The honored guests and their friends sat on the veranda around a circular glass table. Jack remained quiet, drowned in the sounds of beetles throwing their bodies against the ceiling lamps, the buzzing of mosquitoes close to his ears and the crickets chirping in the stuffy summer air.

  Tracy’s mom appeared, thumb in the air, signaling that the party had ended. She pursed her lips.

  “It’s time to call it quits. Trent has an early start, people.”

  Old man Hamilton, having walked the last of his guests out, appeared in the doorway and laid eyes on Jack, before rubbing his chin and bidding everyone good night. Linda followed saying, “Goodnight, all, don’t stay up. You have to be at the train by eight.”

  ***

  After the guests left, Trent lay in bed painting thoughts on his bedroom ceiling— thoughts that could no longer be delayed by graduation exercises, soirees and going-away-parties. Thoughts of tomorrow’s reality, adventurous military operations, foreign cities, alluringly strange women. Out the bedroom window, Bridgeport’s sulfurous lights cast an orange halo over the black hills. With sunrise, the hills would be forest green again and, in a few short months, red, russet and gold. Trent would miss fall’s wild asters, goldenrod and gentians in the fields behind the stables. Like the birds that migrate south after the first frost kills most of the insects, Trent’s time had come. He would fly away and return at the end of the season. Neither he nor anyone in Fairview could know that the next season would not be that of a bucolic New England countryside, but that of a foreign place, where the hills would be painted brown, black, and white, a less than Impressionistic selection of color. He went back to bed, shut his eyes, and dreamed of the good life, until the 5:30 alarm that would send him to Anna’s.

  Dawn had barely broken over the southern hills leading to Bridgeport when Trent drove out of his driveway down the two lane highway and by the old gravel quarry that brought back memories of the years he and his friends raced cars around the field, took girls there to make out, played chicken and, occasionally, crashed perfectly good cars.

  ***

  During the ’49 summer break, Trent went to work for his father’s loan department, where he inspected the condition of collateral before the bank loaned money. Albert Staples and his wife Rebecca, a couple in their mid-sixties, needed $2,000 to buy a tractor, and they applied to Hamilton Bank. Every morning he hitched up two huge brown Percheron work horses, mother and son, to a small two wheeled wagon, and depending on the season worked one of three fields until supper. In the spring, Albert decided to buy a used John Deere after the gelding broke its ankle and had to be put down. The remaining mare could not work alone.

  The Staples’ farm with its dilapidated, unpainted barn sat a quarter-mile at the end of a dirt road twenty miles north of Fairview. The couple was on the porch when Trent Hamilton pulled up in an open convertible.

  “We’ve been expecting you, young man,” said Albert.

  “Well, where should I start?” Trent asked in business-like fashion.

  “In the house. I can take you to the barn, the chicken coop. We can go to the field if your car don’t mind.”

  Mrs. Staples bowed her head slightly when Trent entered the front hallway, where he opened a notebook and jotted things down. When he finished inspecting inside, the men walked to the barn. Inside, it smelled of horse manure and piss, and except for the horse stall, the place hadn’t been used in some time. Behind a pile of hay at the far end, was a 1929 four door, yellow and black Studebaker.

  “Nice car.”

  “Yep, haven’t driven it in years. Belonged to my boy.”

  “Well how come he don’t get it on the road?”

  “Didn’t come back from war. Lost in ’43. Over Germany, bombardier, B-17.”

  “Probably worth a little.”

  Pointing in the direction of the car, Staples complained, “Yep, who wants an old car?”

  “I’d take it off your hands.”

  “Well, don’t know. I didn’t mean... . If you’re serious. We’d have to see how we felt about it.”
/>   After looking at the barn, Trent headed for the bank.

  That night the phone rang at the Staples house.

  “Staples here... oh, Mr. Hamilton.”

  “I’m calling to ask if you’re interested in selling the car,” said Trent.

  “How much?”

  “Well, I can make it worthwhile. Hundred bucks. How ’bout it? Take it off your hands?”

  “Well, son... I’ll ask my wife. Call tomorrow.” Albert hung up and sat down at the kitchen table. “Well, offered hundred bucks for Scooter’s car.”

  “I’m not ready to let it go.”

  “Maybe I can get more. But, you know if we give the kid a break, I’m sure he’d put in a good word with his old man. We need that loan or this time next year we’re out on the street.”

  Rebecca slumped her shoulders forward and picked up a wet dish. “Do what you want, you always do.” Albert went into the bedroom, Rebecca finished drying, patted her hands on her apron and went out on the porch to watch the sunset.

  The next night the phone rang. Albert picked up. “Yes, Mr. Hamilton. No sir, we haven’t come to a decision on the Studey, yet.”

  “What’s he want?” Rebecca whispered.

  Albert waved his hand at his wife to keep her from distracting him. There was a pause while he listened to Trent. “We need to get more than a hundred,” Albert countered forcefully. He listened and reiterated his position, “No... it’s worth more than a hundred.”