Judith Krantz

by Till We Meet Again

  She’d been only a year older than Freddy when she’d disappeared and gone off to live in Paris. To live in sin, as they must all have whispered in shocked voices … in blackest, deepest sin, although it had not seemed like sin to a carefree girl who called herself Madeleine and made the Grands Boulevards her territory; to Madeleine, who’d taken the dare and auditioned for Jacques Charles and made him sit up and take notice; to Maddy, again renamed, starring in a tour de chant at the Olympia, so sure of herself and of her right to do whatever she pleased that she had practically thrown her Aunt Marie-France out of her dressing room when she’d come to beg her to return home. Had she been seventeen still, or eighteen? Eve could still hear her own defiant words.

  “I’m not a little girl you can order around anymore … How could I be content with a life like my mother’s?… I have nothing to be ashamed of.” Maddy, who was so utterly determined to become a star, come what may, and would never have left the stage had it not been for the war and Paul. When had she finally forgotten Maddy? When, at what moment in all these years, had she become Madame la Consule de France, who sang only for her friends at private parties or at black-tie benefits for the many charities of Los Angeles? When had she lost Maddy?

  Back and forth in the bedroom, with only a little moonlight to show her the way, Eve walked in a daze of awakened memory. For many long minutes she was lost in the past. She came back to the present. Paul was still asleep, but somehow she knew that Freddy was not.

  Eve left the bedroom and walked down the corridor to her daughter’s room. There was a light under the door. She knocked and Freddy answered with a faint “Come in.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Eve said, looking at her daughter, curled up on her bed in her flannel pajamas, forlorn and diminished, clinging to a small book with a blue and red cover.

  “Neither could I.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “It’s a student pilot’s handbook.”

  “Any good?”

  Freddy tried to laugh. “There’s no plot and no dialogue, but lots of detailed description.”

  “Freddy, tell me, this person—this flying instructor of yours—is he a … young man?”

  “Mac? I’ve never even thought about it. He flew in the war, with the Lafayette Escadrille, so he must be, oh, I don’t know. I could ask him.”

  “No, never mind. I was only asking because I wondered … how much experience he had.”

  “More than anybody. He started flying when he was just a kid. He’s taught hundreds of people. You know, Mother, it really isn’t unusual to solo at sixteen. Lots of boys do it. Ask anyone.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. It was just such a … surprise.”

  “You don’t sound angry anymore,” Freddy said cautiously.

  “I’m not. I’ve been thinking about it. Flying means a great deal to you, doesn’t it?”

  “More than I can explain. I wouldn’t have told so many lies if there had been any other way. I knew you wouldn’t give me permission to learn if I asked,” Freddy said earnestly.

  “Hmm.” Eve considered the question.

  “Well, you wouldn’t have, would you?”

  “No, you’re right. We would have made you wait.”

  “I couldn’t have waited.”

  “I know.”

  “How … how do you know?”

  “I just do. I was young once too, remember?”

  “You’re still young,” Freddy blurted.

  “Not that young. Never that young again … and perhaps it’s just as well. Yes, certainly it’s just as well … and in any case, it’s inevitable. Oh, what are we going to do with you now, my darling?”

  “I have to get my pilot’s license. I can’t lie about that. For one thing, I promise not to lie anymore … and for another, I need your written permission to take the exam for the license. It’s ten more hours of lessons, minimum.”

  “What had your plan been? To work until you could pay for that much instruction?”

  “Yes. I was going to figure out some other … things … no … lies to tell you to account for the time I wasn’t at home or at school.”

  “The tennis team? The Easter pageant? The Queen of the May?”

  “They’re all good ideas—except for the Queen of the May. If I hadn’t been so proud of my solo and told you about it, I bet I could have done it.”

  “Even the written permission?”

  “Forgery,” Freddy said somberly. “I would have.”

  “I have no doubt,” Eve murmured. “Still, now we know. All things considered, I think that it’s better this way.”

  “Does that mean that you’ll let me work at Woolworth’s?” Freddy demanded eagerly.

  “I’ll have to speak to your father. But I believe I can manage to make him understand. However, there is to be absolutely no hitchhiking, Freddy. None. Whatsoever. Do you promise me faithfully?”

  “Yes, of course, but how can I get out to the airport?”

  “If you’re good enough to fly a plane in the air, I must assume that you’re quite capable of driving on the streets. Most of the boys get their licenses at sixteen, don’t they? I remember when Delphine talked of nothing else.”

  “Oh, Mother!”

  “When you learn to drive, Freddy, you can borrow my car.”

  “Oh, Mother—you’re so good to me!” Freddy lunged at Eve and crushed her with a hug. Although she was bigger than her mother, she snuggled as close to her as she could, needing the comfort and reassurance that the contact brought. She hadn’t been bad enough to be cast out of the family as she had feared during the last hours alone in her room. They both had tears in their eyes.

  “Let’s just say that I’m grateful for certain favors … big and small. Now you must go to sleep, darling. Ill see you in the morning.”

  “Good night, Mother,” Freddy said, looking as if she were planning to stay up all night, dancing over her good fortune.

  “Good night, darling. The solo was wonderful, wasn’t it? I can imagine … no … I can … remember … yes, in my own way, remember … how you must have felt. Congratulations, my darling. I’m very proud of you.”

  “Come on, Freddy, it’s time,” Delphine said. Freddy looked out the window at the winter rain that had followed her birthday and had lasted for a week. Delphine had arrived that Sunday from her sorority house and announced that it was time to do the “make-over” she had promised Freddy for her birthday present. Freddy didn’t see how she could reject the experiment politely, with the excuse that she had too much homework. Clearly she didn’t, and clearly she had to accept this gift of Delphine’s or be accused of being ungrateful, unsisterly and uncooperative.

  “I’m going to drape a bath towel around you,” Delphine said, once she had Freddy settled down in front of the dressing-table mirror in her room. “Did you bring your hairbrush?” Freddy handed it to her with a silent sigh of impatience, yet how many of Delphine’s friends would give anything for this concentrated attention?

  Delphine, absorbed and serious, turned Freddy around so that she was facing away from the mirror. She brushed all of her sister’s waterfall of hair away from her face and held it back with big plastic barrettes. She took a bottle of cleanser, moistened a piece of cotton with it, and wiped Freddy’s face with its high outdoor color. The cotton was as clean when she finished as when she had started, for Freddy used nothing on her skin.

  “There,” said Delphine. “Now I can start.” She took one of the boxes of Max Factor pancake base she kept in a drawer and covered Freddy’s strong features with a layer of thin, expertly applied base, turning them all one pale tint, several shades lighter than Freddy’s natural coloring. She powdered Freddy all over in the same soft beige color and studied the result silently, circling round and round her sister.

  Freddy looked as pure as a statue, she thought. A vigilant statue, with bone structure as resolute and inevitable as the vaulted ceiling of some great cathedral. But she was Freddy’s siste
r, not a boy, and boys, normal boys or exceptional boys, simply didn’t date statues with marvelous bones. That wasn’t what they were looking for in a girl.

  Although Delphine had never said anything to Freddy, she was concerned with the fact that her sister, at sixteen, was not being asked out enough. Enough? Practically not at all. If a girl hadn’t become popular by sixteen, what possible kind of future could she hope for? Freddy stayed home on many a Saturday night, trying to seem perfectly happy to be left alone with her impossible books about flying, but Delphine knew that she must be deeply worried and too proud to admit it. Freddy danced masterfully, for they’d often danced together, practicing the latest steps, but who would ever know how light and rhythmic she was, if she never went out?

  Delphine took out a puff and a round flat compact of rouge. Using the lightest of strokes, she applied the rouge delicately, blending it so that it looked absolutely natural. Then she took out a sharp eyebrow pencil and, with feathery gestures, drew tiny light brown lines between the coppery hairs of Freddy’s eyebrows, darkening them just enough to make them a dramatic frame for the deep sockets of her wildly blue, unwavering eyes. Freddy stirred restlessly. “I didn’t know you had all that stuff. Do you use it?” she asked.

  “Of course. Everyone does.”

  “I never realized.”

  “That’s the point. If it’s too obvious, you’ve done it wrong. But it makes all the difference. Freddy, it’s so easy to learn. I’ll teach you exactly how to do it when I’m finished. I’ll take it all off and then I’ll do half of your face and you can do the other half yourself, and we can practice until you’ve got it just right … I don’t care how long you take. You have to relax and have the courage to make a mistake. You can always wipe it off.”

  “That’s … that’s really sweet and generous of you, Delphine.”

  “You’re only sixteen once. This is a big birthday and I had to give you something important,” Delphine said with pleasure. She worked in silence for a while and then added casually, “High school boys are really drips.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  “You’re lucky you skipped a year. You’ll be at UCLA next fall, and that’s another story. College men. Thousands of them. And a majority who aren’t drips.”

  “Good news.” Freddy gave her as innocent a smile as she could manage. Delphine could be so adorable when she was trying to be subtle.

  “College guys know how to appreciate a good conversationalist. They’ll go for you.”

  “That’s better news.”

  “Only up to a point,” Delphine said, using the words as expertly as a picador, as she took out a small box in which she kept cake mascara, her most precious possession.

  “Oh?”

  “Well, you know how men are.… They like to do most of the talking, even with a good conversationalist.”

  “That’s silly. Isn’t it a waste of the other person?”

  “Not really. Good conversation is really making somebody else feel brilliant—you know—bringing him out, encouraging him to express himself, listening creatively.” Delphine dipped a brush into a glass of water and rubbed it expertly on the cake of black mascara.

  “If you’re trying to say that I talk too much, I know I do,” Freddy said.

  “Oh, Freddy, it’s not that at all. It’s just that boys—even college men—can’t talk intelligently about aviation. They don’t know anything about it, and they certainly don’t want to learn from a girl.”

  “Well, what else can I talk about?”

  “Cars,” Delphine said solemnly.

  “I’ve tried. I really, truly have, but a car’s such a ridiculous thing. I mean, where can the dumb thing go, for heaven’s sake, except back and forth on some silly road? It’s so one-dimensional! What’s the big deal about cars?” Freddy asked in disgust.

  “If … just if … you could not breathe a single word about planes and pretend to be interested in cars, just for a little while, cars could lead to other things Most girls can’t even be semi-intelligent about cars or engines, so you’re in great shape there. Then … well, then the conversation will get around to other things.”

  “Like what?” Freddy was frankly puzzled but willing to learn.

  “His fraternity, his classes, his professors, the football team and what he thinks about its chances, what bands he likes, what new movies he’s seen, who his favorite movie stars are, what he’s planning to do when he graduates, what he thinks about absolutely anything—even what he reads in the comics—oh, Freddy, there are a million things to get a man to talk about if you start with cars and keep asking questions.”

  Lash by lash, Delphine had applied the black mascara, managing, in her skill, not to make it too thick or too beady. Now she inspected Freddy’s eyelashes, found them to her liking, and, slowly and dramatically, imparted her most important piece of insight to her sister. “If a man stops talking, and you don’t know what to say next, just repeat the last few words he’s said in a questioning tone of voice, as if you hadn’t understood him, and he’ll go right on talking, and tell you more and more. It never fails. I’ve never told another girl about it before, not even Margie.”

  Impressed, but not convinced, Freddy asked, “Just echo his last few words? That’s all there is to it?”

  “That’s all. It’s simple, but men just can’t resist you if you do it right. You’ll get a reputation as a terrific conversationalist, and with your looks, and your sensational legs—I’d give anything to have legs like yours—you’ll be the most popular girl in the freshman class.”

  “My looks?”

  “Don’t look in the mirror yet. Wait till I’ve finished. I haven’t done your hair.” Delphine loosened Freddy’s hair and brushed it until it lay as neatly as it ever would. She parted the bright tumble on the side and then, with the curling iron that she had been heating on the dressing table, she pinched a few cunningly placed waves into the long heap of hair until it rippled down on either side of Freddy’s face and turned under at the ends. Finally she applied a coat of pink lipstick to Freddy’s lips and, dissatisfied because the shade wasn’t any deeper than Freddy’s own, used a tube of light red lipstick to cover the pink. Delphine took out a big, black chiffon scarf from her dresser drawer, unpinned the sheet that she’d put around her sister, and draped the scarf artfully so that Freddy’s triumphant shoulders and the deep cleft above her breasts were revealed in their nakedness.

  Delphine caught her breath in delight. “Turn!” she commanded, like a fairy godmother, and she whirled Freddy around on the seat so that she faced the mirror.

  Freddy looked at herself in astonished silence.

  “Well?” Delphine breathed.

  “I … I don’t know what to say …”

  “You’re devastating! Freddy, you’re simply breathtaking. I can’t believe it’s you!”

  “Don’t I look too … old?”

  “You look like a movie star,” Delphine said with reverence, bestowing the ultimate compliment. “I knew you could, if you just used a little makeup.” Delphine bent over her creation and kissed Freddy on the top of her head. Her taste was faultless, and Freddy had turned out to be even more beautiful than she’d dared to hope. She felt a tiny twinge of envy, but a quick look in the mirror reassured her. They were such different types that they set each other off.

  “Let’s go show somebody,” Delphine begged, tugging her sister’s arm.

  “No, I can’t. I’m … well, it’s a little frightening. Give me time to get used to it. Anyway, who can you show? Mother doesn’t know you use all this stuff, does she? Dad would kill you. And me. Me first, I’ll bet.”

  “You’re right … I just got so excited that I forgot. Freddy, when you’re at college I’ll do your face for you any time you need it—that’s the second part of my present.” Delphine bustled about in satisfaction, putting away her battery of cosmetics, many of which she had first seen advertised in movie magazines and ordered by mail.

  “Wai
t, let me look at those pictures,” Freddy said suddenly, in abrupt curiosity, reaching for a pile of glossy photographs that she spied in the bottom of one of Delphine’s cosmetic drawers.

  “Never mind!” Delphine ordered hastily, but Freddy was already turning them over, photo after photo of Delphine and a variety of unknown escorts. They had been framed in pasteboard mats that bore the names of all the well-known nightclubs of Hollywood. There were unmistakable cocktails on the table in front of Delphine, and a cigarette in her hand, as she sat at the Coconut Grove, the Trocadero, the Palomar ballroom, the Circus Cafe, and Omar’s Dome.

  “But these men … they’re not college boys, are they?” Freddy asked.

  “Some are, some aren’t,” Delphine answered, flustered.

  “Say, wait a minute … this character has to be thirty if he’s a day. But not bad looking. Delphine, do you drink and smoke?”

  “Not much. Only enough so that they won’t think I’m a kid.”

  “How old do they think you are?” Freddy wondered, captivated by her sister in the photographs. She was a glamorous, older, poised, flirtatious stranger, smiling into the eyes of men no one in the family had ever met.

  “Twenty-one”

  “How do you get away with it?” Freddy asked in admiration.

  “I have fake ID, of course. Everyone does,” Delphine answered evasively, and, grabbing the photographs away from Freddy, shut them up into a drawer and slammed it shut.

  “Just answer one more question,” Freddy said to her older sister.

  “One?”

  “Those men? Do they take you out dancing in nightclubs and buy you orchids to pin on your shoulder and look at you the way they do in those pictures because you’re such a terrific conversationalist? Do you spend the whole evening asking them what they think about the football team and the comic strips and what kind of car they own?”

  “Not entirely,” Delphine said carefully, “but it’s a beginning.”

  It was a Sunday afternoon in June of 1936, the day after Freddy’s graduation from high school, and she was off alone on a cross-country flight, the longest she had ever made, from Dry Springs to San Luis Obispo and back. The most direct route lay north and a little to the west, over Big Pine Mountain of the San Rafael Range, across the valley to the east of Santa Maria, past the Twitchell Reservoir, and over the Arroyo Grande, directly into the airport at San Luis. A far easier route would have been to simply follow the coast north and turn east at Pismo Beach, but it wouldn’t have given her any practice in navigation, and during the months she’d been working with Mac toward her private pilot’s license, which she obtained just over a month ago, Freddy had been studying navigation as hard as she could.