Be True to Me

by Adele Griffin

  “Take it easy on your return, Jean. I don’t know who you’ve got it in for, but it’s giving you the yips.” Coach Hutch’s face was more sun lined than you’d expect from someone under thirty. He was Australian, and I imagined him there on the off-season, roaming the outback under the baking sun.

  “What’s the yips?”

  Coach jogged up to the net, signaling for me to meet him at the midline. My body was slick with sweat from charging around the outdoor court. “The yips are when doubt starts to guide your game.”

  “Sorry, Coach.” I flushed because I knew he was right. “Tomorrow, I’ll leave my yips on my porch.”

  “Custis, I don’t want to ride you too hard. But ‘better tomorrow’ is what you’ve said every day all week. What’s breaking your concentration, Missy?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry.” I wiped my sweating face with the shoulder of my shirt.

  Coach had been training me at tennis since I was old enough to call a serve. I braced for his usual ribbing about lady problems or boyfriend problems. Instead he let me go with a tap of his racquet to my visor. “Will I see you tonight?”

  “Yes.” And then I ducked off before my face could betray me any more.

  Tonight was Punch Night. My parents would never let me get out of it.

  I hated even to think about it.

  There were no showers or locker rooms at the Tennis Casino. Just an outside water fountain. I gulped until it made me nauseous, and I biked home with my racquet jammed under my wet armpit and my stomach in a slosh. Would I ever get my game back? Or would my yips overpower me—one morning I’d wake up too depressed to go to practice?

  And was I being a silly, stubborn mule with all this practicing? If Fritz O’ Neill entered the Junior Cup this year, she’d take it from me like it was nothing.

  The same way she’d taken Gil.

  Upstairs in my bathroom, I stood under the water until my toes and fingertips turned hard as raisins. Out of the shower, I dried, changed, and spritzed myself with some Charlie from a bottle I’d found on Daphne’s dresser in her bedroom and joined my parents in the dining room for a late lunch.

  That afternoon, Mrs. Otis had dragged out a pitcher of her unsweetened spearmint iced tea, along with a platter of crab salad, fruit salad, and tomato sandwiches on thin buttered bread.

  On cue, Mom and Dad picked up forks right at the moment I sat down.

  “Sorry.” I picked up my own fork. “Also, I might be quitting tennis.”

  “What a thing to say,” said Dad cheerfully. “How will you win your rematch if you’ve quit?”

  “Exactly. And your dress arrived,” said Mom. “If the alterations are right, you can wear it tonight. Hip-hip-hooray.” She smiled at me.

  I took a breath. “I might have a headache. I might not go to Punch Night.”

  “Now, that’s simply bad form, Punkin,” said Dad. “What will Bertie do? He’s expecting to dance the night away with you.”

  “Daddy’s right. And even if you don’t go,” said Mom, “we still need to know whether the dress fits. If not, I’ll have to send it back to Miss Delaney.”

  I gathered a bite. The mayonnaise-slathered crab looked like a forkful of sneeze. “I’m not very hungry, I don’t think.”

  Dad sighed. “You’re not being very fun, Jeanie.” He looked to my mother for affirmation.

  “I agree. You’re excused for a nap,” said Mom. “But you can’t be surly for tonight. It’s not fair for those of us who want to have a good time.”

  My parents were both committed to fun in all its forms—parties, tea, cocktails, dancing. My gloomy preparty mood broke a big rule for them. I couldn’t help it. I slid off my chair, dismissed. At the foot of the stairs, I swiped the long dress box with its corner-tucked peach business card of Miss Delaney’s Fine Alterations.

  Mom and Dad’s predictable insistence on Punch Night also annoyed me. Why couldn’t they let me stay behind? And why did they think meals and naps solved everything? No amount of sleep or food would make me stop fixating on Gil Burke, how he’d slipped away before I’d learned how to hold onto him.

  I stomped up the stairs and slammed my door. In my room, I dropped onto my bed and stretched out like a starfish. Tucked in on my bookshelf across the room, my Mrs. Beasley doll stared at me with her demonic, bespectacled eyes.

  I reached for my copy of Goodbar and read for a while, then tossed it to the edge of the bed. I couldn’t concentrate. Maybe, for once, my parents were right. A nap might help; my eyes felt so heavy.

  When I woke up in the same position I’d flung myself into, it was a beautiful purpling dusk, and the breeze through my window was silk on my skin. Punch Night. How I’d fantasized about going as Gil’s date. That bubble had been popped, but I couldn’t wriggle out of it—not without a fuss. Last night, Bertie had very deliberately firmed up our plans.

  Besides, my parents didn’t believe in too sick, too tired, or simply not up to it.

  I could already hear them downstairs, clinking through a first round of cocktails.

  Punch Night was an annual occasion. Everyone came, everyone ate, and everyone got silly on the club’s signature spiced rum punch. Mr. Forsythe, Bertie’s dad and the head of the Association, always stood and gave a speech about how well the staff and volunteers had looked after Sunken Haven during the quiet months of winter and spring. Then he reminded people (delicately) to remember to write big checks. Finally, everyone raised glasses to Sunken Haven, the happiest place in the world. Kids danced while the older people smoked and drank and watched contentedly. It was a friendly, easy night—in fact, Daphne was conceived after a Punch Night, my father once exuberantly blurted out at a dinner party, to Mom’s horror.

  But tonight, I wouldn’t be able to hide. Tonight, Gil would be there for sure. With Fritz. Gil and Fritz. Fritz and Gil.

  I took care with myself, first removing the dress from its box and slipping it on. I hadn’t liked it in Bergdorf’s, but Mom had bought it, anyway—and it wasn’t nearly as plain as I’d thought. The sash pinched me a waist where nature hadn’t. The peach softened the violence of my sunburned nose.

  Maybe Gil just needed to be reminded of me?

  Maybe when he saw me he’d want me back?

  I brushed my cowlicky curls as best I could and barretted them down. Blotted my favorite Estee Lauder matte, “Pink Kiss.”

  Then I took my jade-and-jet earrings from my travel bag.

  I’d reclaimed them out of Daphne’s suitcase, tiptoeing into her room while she slept, exactly as I’d warned her I would. That next morning, she hadn’t said a word. I’d waited for the fireworks. None came, though I assumed she’d checked. But as she hugged me good-bye, she had pressed her mouth hot against my ear and whispered, “They’re not yours, Jean. However badly you want them. What you did was wrong.”

  When Daphne had worn my Christmas earrings, they’d seemed perfect. But now, when I dangled one against my jawline, testing it, I was struck by how small and skinny it looked, not right for me at all.

  Guiltily, I dropped them into a dish on my bureau. There was too much else to think about. I slipped on my flats and popped my lipstick into my monogrammed Bermuda bag, then clapped its wooden handles closed. Last year, Tracy Gibbons-Kent had poked fun of how many of my items—shirts, sweaters, bags, belts—were monogrammed, and she’d jokingly asked if it was my way of safeguarding my things against borrowers. Her tease had privately annoyed me. A monogram gave me a sense of precision, was all.

  I looked long and hard at my face in the mirror.

  “You look pretty, Jean,” I spoke softly to my reflection. It sounded like a lie. “Promise,” I whispered. “You’ll be okay, whatever happens tonight.”

  When I met her at the foot of the stairs, Mom’s face brightened. “You seem rested. Quitting tennis! Of all the featherbrained things to say in front of Dad! He’s waiting for us on the porch. Now let’s go enjoy ourselves.”

  I nodded. I knew not to argue with the fun
imperative.

  Outside, my parents strolled comfortably in step, carrying gin and tonics in paper cups. I stayed to the side, walking my bike. I needed it to get to Rosamund’s after party. Stray children yelped like wild dogs in the beachfront playground across from the church. Sundown was a rainbow sherbet across the sea.

  “Truly, we are blessed.” Dad always addressed sunsets as if he thought it was his duty to compliment the artwork God had created exclusively for Sunken Haven.

  As we approached the clubhouse, I could hear “High Hopes” from Billy Boyle and the Lamplighters, who’d set up as usual on the far side of the wraparound deck. Uniformed caterers—a combination of Sunken Haven kids, who often worked the parties, along with Bay Shore kids—slipped among the guests, serving from trays of crudités or mushroom caps.

  Sara and Rosamund had claimed the deck corner with the wicker chairs. As I broke from my parents, skimming ahead and up the steps to join the girls, I saw that Fred Hasty was with them, wearing the club’s catering uniform.

  Rosamund pouted. “Fred promised he’d be my date, but then he took a shift instead. Now I’m single tonight!” Rosamund looked sweet in a checked sundress, with her pageboy neatly winged on either side from its center part. Poor Sara had tried to dress up, too, but her boxy skirt, golf shirt, and rope necklace made her look like a gym teacher. The necklace might as well have been a whistle or a stopwatch.

  Fred shrugged. “I’m saving for a car.”

  “Then go get me a drink,” said Rosamund. “It’s the least you can do.” But Fred sat and tapped out his cigarettes instead.

  “Marcy Pency’s going to fire you, Fred,” I said.

  “Marcy Pency knows she can’t rely on Sunkie kids,” said Fred. “That why she hires all the Bay Shore kids. We Sunkies just don’t have that snap-to-it.”

  I tried to smile, to keep the banter going, to steady my focus on my friends and not look around for Gil and Fritz. My heart was hammering. I didn’t see them.

  Maybe Junior had overplayed the Fritz and Gil romance? Maybe it was nonsense. And maybe, maybe Gil was secretly hoping to see me as much as I was wild to see him.

  “Jean!” Bertie, snazzy in his club blazer, cut through the crowd to drop a kiss on my cheek. “You cut out so early last night. You’ll have to make up for it tonight.” He stepped back and gave a low whistle. “That dress is perfect on you.”

  “Thanks.” Bertie always noticed when I wore something new. I imagined his brain with a labeled accordion file on me, and he never forgot a thing in it. But I was grateful for his compliment tonight, even if it was only because it would boost my confidence when I saw Gil.

  And at least Bertie had never tried to make me feel guilty about not being in love with him. Bertie’s best quality was that he was tactful. If I saw Gil tonight and we recharged our spark—please, please, please!—then Bertie would know to discretely fade off.

  “I checked name cards—we’re table seven,” said Bertie. “I can put your wrap there now, if you like.”

  “Thanks.” As I handed it over, Bertie strode off with the air of someone on a diplomatic mission.

  Was Gil here already? My underarms were hot, and I didn’t want to start sweating through my dress. What if, when Gil saw me, he remembered everything about our night in New York and realized what a fool he’d been? Or what if Gil wanted to spend time with Fritz and me—and other girls, too? What if he didn’t want to be seriously attached to any one of us?

  Or what if all he wanted was Fritz?

  Every door of the club was thrown open so that guests could slip back and forth from the clubroom to the deck. From inside, I caught that dry, distinct harrumph of Carpie’s laugh. My nerves spiked. Did Carpie’s presence mean Gil was here, too? Wouldn’t Gil have arrived with his aunt and uncle?

  “Jeanie?” Bertie was flapping his hand in front of my face. “Come in with me? I thought we could wait for drinks together.”

  “All right.”

  Scooting behind Bertie, I felt the weight of satisfied parental gazes on us. Jeanie and Bertie! The older generation always admired a likely romance. A way to keep Sunkies with Sunkies. We sidled into the crowded clubroom, the smaller of the two large rooms that made up the main floor.

  How many times last week had I imagined arriving with Gil for Punch Night? Necks craning, all the girls green with jealousy but Rosamund and Sara both officially admiring.

  “Sit here?” Bertie huffed at my side. “I’ll shoot to the kitchen’s service bar. Maybe somebody there can fix us up drinks quicker.”

  “Okay.” I slid onto a barstool. Alone, I clicked the handles of my bag in time with the Lamplighters, who had launched into “Somewhere Beyond the Sea.”

  Aside from my tube of lipstick and my Binaca breath spray, my bag was empty. You never needed anything at Sunken Haven. No I.D. because everyone knew who you were. No money because we all signed our account numbers for our bills. No house keys because we never locked up our homes.

  “Jeanie!”

  My head jerked like a kite in the breeze to see Junior Burke, standing a foot away, with his hands coned as if he’d been shouting at me from a great distance. And there, standing next to him, was Gil.

  The week since I’d seen him felt like both a minute and forever. He looked absolutely perfect, in a tailored pale-blue shirt that emphasized his butter-toffee tan. But his smile on me was hesitant.

  “Hey, Junior. Hi, there, Gil.”

  “Why, Jean Custis,” said Gil. “I guess I’ve been looking for you. It’s nice to see you again.”

  Heat flooded the surface of my skin.

  “She was hoping to see you, too!” Junior rewarded Gil’s back with a too hard thump. “You should have seen the hangdog look on Jean’s face last night, when I told her you’d already split.”

  As awful as Junior’s words were, they seemed to ease Gil’s mind, as he stepped into the tight space next to me. “Sounds like we’ve been ships in the night, then,” he said. We were close enough that I could sense the lightest warmth of his body.

  “I guess so. How’s your first week at Sunken Haven?” My heart pounding, pounding.

  “It’s been fine and dandy. But ever since I got here, I kept thinking, I dunno. That I’d run into you.”

  I cleared my throat. “I’ve been around.”

  He nodded. “But I bet you didn’t know that yesterday afternoon, when I was leaving the bay, I did see you? Out on the courts, playing tennis?”

  “My game was so off yesterday.” I could have melted from shame, thinking of Gil watching me klutzing around on the court.

  “I waved from my bike.”

  “But I didn’t . . . you ought to have come over.”

  “You looked mighty intent on your game. Aw, I knew I shoulda stopped.”

  “I’m getting a longneck,” Junior broke in. He strolled away.

  “Don’t rush back,” Gil murmured, short of Junior’s earshot.

  I had to laugh. “The noncharms of Junior Burke haven’t worked on you, either?”

  Gil shrugged. “He’s better when he’s not showing off,” he said, easily. “This party’s pretty high class. ‘Punch Night’ means something else where I’m from.”

  “I’ve missed you,” I blurted. Then I laughed lightly, as if I might not mean it.

  “Me, too.” Gil seemed to know that I didn’t want to chitchat. “My uncle sure has been talking you up since that night in the city.”

  “Oh, gosh. What pressure. I hope he hasn’t been trying to push me at you.” I said it jokingly, but was it true?

  Gil’s smile was tight-lipped. “Well, I kept thinking, I don’t know . . . that we’d run into each other naturally, and then we’d catch up.”

  He hadn’t called, and he wanted to be sure I wasn’t hurt that he hadn’t called? The knot of my anticipation and last-ditch hope for this night was coming undone, a slipping, slippery sense of loss. My eyes prinked. “I suppose I should be happy for you, that you didn’t need to rely only
on me to enjoy your—”

  I stopped. There she was. Fritz O’Neill. She’d crept up slyly, in a faded red-cotton sundress that was too casual for Punch Night. But Fritz had a style all her own. Her effortless wash-and-go looks made me want to trade my Capezio sandals for her Cherokee wedges, my Piguet watch for her copper bangles and elephant-hair bracelet. Fritz was six months younger than I was, but she’d always made me feel as if she were older. Ever since I’d known her, she’d had that same high-wire sense of fun. Kids believed what she said and followed where she led.

  As she moved in on us, I rippled a fingertip hello. I’d never disliked her so violently as in this moment. My Junior Cup defeat was nothing compared to my sinking despair as Gil shifted position, a casual pivot away from me so that he faced Fritz directly.

  And in that shift, the universe.

  “What’s up, Green Bean Jean?” Fritz asked in her raspy voice that made everything sound dirty.

  My baby name, a leftover from a few summers ago, when I’d had that green Speedo. Fritz had a teasing streak in her. It wasn’t exactly mean, but in the moment I felt childish and silly. Worse than that, I could sense it, a connection between Fritz and Gil, a current between them. It made me feel light-headed, almost physically ill.

  “Oh, nothing much.” What to say, what else to say . . . tongue-tied, I was relieved to see Junior returning, beer in hand.

  Bertie trailed behind with our cocktails.

  “Hey-ho, what’s this? The Junior Cup rivals, together again?” Junior brightened at the possibility of a conflict. His eyes lingered on Fritz. When we were younger, he’d been relentless, snapping Fritz’s swimming goggles or stealing her sand pail, always trying and failing to get a rise out of her. Fritz had a breezy, laid-back personality that put up with a lot—even when another girl might have been outraged. It wasn’t her strength, though she played it as one. It was more like Fritz didn’t know how to get mad, especially about someone like Junior, with all his spoiled-brat Burke power.