The Sweetheart Season

by Karen Joy Fowler

  So she was surprised a week later to see Walter walking toward her down Church Street. It was just after noon. Out past the end of the street the purple edge of distant trees faded upward into the white sky. He was whistling and he was not a good whistler. His whistle was thin and off-key, but pleasantly buoyant.

  She was happy to see him, but this was because she was happy. The water over Upper Magrit was finally beginning to melt in the middle. Behind Irini’s house was a gully and at the bottom of the gully was a thicket of thin trees. Around those trees, in the depressions created by the trunks, there was still snow, but everywhere else the snow was gone. The cardinals were giving up their sulky winter silence. The wind rattled through the pine needles and you still needed a jacket, but you could already forgo the gloves and scarves.

  Spring was so close you could smell it. Everyone’s spirits were high. “You picked the right time to come home,” Irini told him. His hair was sun-blond and his skin was browner than anyone’s in Magrit with just a white strip across his forehead where his hair shaded it. It made him look slightly surprised, as if his eyebrows were up when they weren’t. “Or is it still home? Are you just visiting? If you’ve come back, then you’re the only one who has.”

  “I’m here for baseball season,” Walter said. “And to spend some time with Gramps. Does he look old to you, Irini? He looks so old to me.”

  “Mr. Henry never changes. You’re going to coach?”

  “You’re going to play? I remember that you were a good ballplayer.”

  “I remember that you never picked me first,” said Irini. She looked away. She could feel Walter watching at her, but she wouldn’t look back to be sure.

  “I always picked you first of the girls.”

  “Well, exactly,” said Irini. “You boys all picked each other first. You’d take Wayne Floyd and Scott Moodey before you’d take me, and you know I was better than they were. The field in the Fossum backyard was the place where I first learned that no matter how hard I tried or how well I played, I was only a girl.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see him comb through his hair with his hand. She was making him nervous.

  “You were a girl,” said Walter. “No only about it.”

  She decided to push it. “And now you want me to play for you. Ironic, isn’t it? Now you need a girl who plays ball.”

  “If you and Arlys won’t play, we don’t have a team.”

  “Arlys was better than you were. How come she never got to pick? And Scott Moodey was so bad, he had trouble getting into his glove. He was always the last of the boys to go. He married an Italian woman, by the way. He’s going to college in Madison.”

  “I heard,” said Walter.

  “She probably didn’t know what a bad catch he was. Why don’t you ask Scott Moodey to play for you?”

  “I haven’t laid eyes on you in two years, Miss Irini Doyle, and you’re already mad at me.” She risked a direct look. He was smiling at her, that gum-revealing smile. She liked it, in spite of the pink edge. He had ordinary ears and the nicest teeth. They were the nicest teeth that money could buy. Irini remembered the recess he’d lost his front two originals ski-jumping off a snow scaffold the boys had built in the school yard. Henry came right to the school and took him immediately to Chicago to buy a new pair. He told Walter he could pick them out, but when Walter chose something in a nice silver, Henry intervened.

  “I’m just teasing,” said Irini.

  “No, you’re not,” said Walter. “But you don’t have to start a fight with me. I want you to feel quite comfortable that I’ve come home to help out Gramps and not to see you. When I lived here before, I knew so few girls. I had no one to compare you to.”

  “There must be a more graceful way to put this,” said Irini.

  “I’m just trying to tell you that I’m ready to be friends. I’ll always have friendly feelings for you. I’ll always love you in a friendly fashion. But you needn’t worry that there’s anything more and, given a little time, the rest of Magrit will see it. No one will be bothering you about me.”

  “Well, good.” It occurred to Irini that she had quite misinterpreted the omen on the bricks.

  A few steps later Walter was waylaid by Mr. Baldish. She left the two men talking about the war. How the men loved to do this! “We’re just so doggone proud of you boys,” Mr. Baldish said and Walter was accepting the thanks, just as if he hadn’t spent the war in La Jolla, California, lying around the beach getting tan.

  Irini had gone about half a block when she noticed the buds of leaves on the dogwood tree at the corner of Church and Mill. In a few days they would open into the brilliant, translucent green of new growth. It happened so fast, like time-lapse photography, or like that moment in the movie when Dorothy stepped into the Technicolor Land of Oz. One ill-timed day of excessive introspection and you could miss the whole thing. Irini turned back. “Walter,” she called. “Walter!” He looked up, with that mirage of surprise on his face, and waved. “Of course, I’ll play on the team.”

  Irini’s feelings about baseball were pretty simple. Once upon a time when she’d been very little, baseball had been a fairy-tale place where pirates fought with giants. It was too exciting for girls; only boys were allowed. Like most closed clubs, once you gained admittance, it was nothing so exciting as it had sounded. Baseball turned out to be just a game that anyone could learn to play. The Senators played the Indians, the Tigers shredded the Sox, but it wasn’t as epic as the names would suggest. Irini found it sort of sad, how sedentary men tried to make do with stats and standings; their admiration for anyone who could tell you over beers who’d won the 1932 Series, how many games it had gone, and who made the final out, even when they didn’t play themselves. Irini didn’t listen to the games much. She didn’t think it was much fun to watch, even when you got to go in person, but it meant a trip to the city so she never said no. And she had always loved to play.

  Now, suddenly, when she was nineteen and hadn’t played for years and never expected to again, suddenly she had a team. She had never noticed how much she wanted one. It was her childhood coming back after the war, just the way she’d hoped it would.

  Thomas Holcrow came out of Mr. Tarken’s barbershop. After that night at Collins House he had disappeared, gone home to Los Angeles, Tracy said grimly, and Irini had assumed this would be for good. But here he was again, tipping his hat to her, revealing the unmistakable lines of a Tarken haircut. Now he was stuck in Magrit until his hair grew out.

  Irini felt that this was the first chance she’d had to take a good look at him. And even with the chopped hair, darned if Tracy wasn’t right. This was a really dreamy guy. “It’s swell to see you again, Miss Doyle,” he said.

  Keep in mind that this is 1947. Who did the teenagers go for? What constituted a dreamy guy? I asked my mother once, and she said she was very much afraid those were the Frank Sinatra years. She didn’t elaborate, but I suppose we can assume that just the thought of him made her as squishy and sweaty as summer fruit. We won’t dwell on this, and it’s not because she’s my mother.

  It’s because it’s Frank Sinatra. It’s not as if he had a British accent. It’s not as if there were four of him. I just can’t see it.

  I feel differently about Cary Grant. Cary Grant was still the very essence of male heartthrobbishness, but we can’t really pretend that anyone else is like Cary Grant. So let’s imagine instead that Thomas Holcrow looked just the littlest bit like Tyrone Power, if Tyrone Power had ever worn galoshes and had a bad haircut.

  Walter was more the Donald O’Connor type, fair-haired, compact, energetic, and pinkish. It occurred to Irini that she could introduce them and make some point by doing so. But was the point to introduce Walter to Holcrow or to introduce Holcrow to Walter? She couldn’t quite work it out and by now Walter was halfway down the block and anyway, she could see Tracy May coming. Tracy would get there before she could and the point would belong to her.

  There was a noi
se overhead, a gabbling, a squabbling, a flutter of wings. Irini looked up, shading her eyes. There were nine Canada geese in the sky, the first squadron of spring headed toward Upper Magrit, rowing through the brightness in their V-shaped constellation. Irini’s eyes were filled with tears that she had to blink away and it was just because the geese had come back the way they always did.

  12

  Henry insisted Fanny was too old for pranks, but this conclusion was based on statistics and averages, and not on careful observation. It was not a mistake a scientist should have made.

  Fanny’s age, like everyone else’s, was variable. Like everyone else, she had been all grown up during the war and like everyone else, she was sick of it afterward.

  Tracy told Irini that the May girls were going a-Maying on the first Sunday in May. This turned out to have been Fanny’s idea, a way of forcing spring like a bulb, through the simple expedient of declaring it to be springtime. In Fanny’s hands this was a jolly, rousing, piratical approach to the world. She had used it to end love affairs, to start quarrels. She even cooked with it, although the results were seldom fortunate.

  She couldn’t have imagined that twenty-some years later this same technique would be used to pretend wars had ended; that thirty-some years later it would be applied to the national economy.

  Of course, I don’t mean to suggest she should be blamed for these later mutations. She’s probably not the person who invented the strategy.

  But in the almost spring of 1947, Fanny was unmistakably restless. “We’re getting up at dawn and going into the woods to look for flowers,” Tracy told Irini as they walked home after work that Friday. “Top secret. No parents informed.”

  This was because the plan had heathen overtones. Mrs. May would not approve. Irini’s father wouldn’t care, but after a few drinks, he would look deeply into the daisy mirror at Bumps. He would see his own eyes, bronzed and petaled and repeated many times and it would remind him of the flowers of spring and he would mention it. He wouldn’t really tell anyone. It would be a glancing reference, in the middle of a lot of poetry ringingly misquoted, a lot of “rose-lipped maids” and “light-foot lads.” His conscience would be clear. But then the Baldishes would figure it out and they’d tell the Tarkens and Mrs. Tarken would be delightfully scandalized. No May wanted to see a Tarken delighted on their account.

  “We’ll weave crocuses into our hair and dance in our nightgowns. Fanny says it’ll be fun. And we’ll be back in time for church.”

  “Who all is coming?” asked Irini.

  “Just us girls,” Tracy said as if that told Irini something she didn’t already know.

  It’s easy enough to promise to get up at dawn sometime in the middle of a bright afternoon. It may even seem a good idea. It’s quite a different matter in the ur-light when the tapping on the frosted window of your bedroom comes from the horrible knuckles of Tracy May. Irini turned her back to the sound, hoping it was all a dream.

  She considered the entire plan with a mind cleared of the distractions of consciousness. The trees were ready to leaf and bloom. A troupe of girls dancing in their nightgowns probably couldn’t hurt. In any case, it was a gesture. Maggie Collins was a great one for appreciating the gesture. But it might come off as a criticism. A complaint about spring being late. Then it would be rude.

  “Irini,” Tracy whispered. “I-ri-ni!” as if she could wake Irini by making the name longer instead of louder.

  “Irini.” Cindy’s voice had joined Tracy’s and now went on alone. “You made me break a nail. We’re going without you.”

  “No,” said Irini guiltily. “I’m up.”

  A broken nail is the universal shorthand for something so trivial you needn’t give it a thought. But not for Cindy May, who’d been born with no fingers at all on her left hand. The hand was round and smooth as a stone under water, with just one small bump where the thumb would have been. It couldn’t hold an emery board. It couldn’t work a clipper or nail scissors. Cindy would have to gnaw the edge off or else ask one of her sisters to help. Of course they would, but no one likes to ask.

  Cindy was usually closer to Fanny, in spite of the twelve-year gap in their ages, than she was to Tracy, although you never could tell. The alliances in the May family were pretty fluid.

  She was the quietest and probably the smartest of the May girls. She’d spent the war writing letters to soldiers she’d never met, pretending to be sixteen when she was fourteen and eighteen when she was fifteen. She used a pen with scented ink. Her letters smelled of stale roses.

  One day Tracy followed the scent to an unfinished letter locked in a desk drawer. Not only was Cindy lying about her age, she was sending the boys Arlys Fossum’s picture instead of her own. Tracy told everyone in the Kitchen on drop-cookie day. It embarrassed Arlys, but Tracy minded more. Why hadn’t Cindy used Tracy’s picture?

  No one doubted that it was patriotically motivated. There was a war on. They were all patriots. The soldiers had to be given every reason to beat the Nazis. And then just in the last year, Cindy had gotten quite pretty herself, in a freckled, rosy, coffee-haired Mayish way, but no one in Magrit had noticed yet.

  It was cold out. Irini had selected her nightgown with some care the night before, something suitable for dancing. Now she had to go back and cover it in padded jackets, supplement it with jeans, scarves, boots, and gloves. There was nothing Botticelli-like in the picture she presented and the whole ensemble itched. She was technically in her nightgown, though; no one could say she wasn’t.

  This had all taken more time. The sun was up, but not really open for business. Irini was the same. "I’m cold," she said, joining Fanny on the Mays’ front porch. It wasn’t a complaint, just a fact there was no reason to conceal.

  Fanny reached into her jacket pocket. “I’ve got just the thing.” She pulled out a flat bottle of rum, uncapped it and took a drink. She passed it over to Irini. “Let’s get the sap rising.”

  Fanny was plenty old enough to drink, but Irini had never seen her do it. Certainly she had never offered Irini a drink before. Irini was surprised, but Tracy was so shocked her voice came out all in a whistle. “Fanny!” she said. “It’s Sunday!” Cindy’s eyes were round as tea plates.

  Irini had been about to refuse the drink. She’d never even liked Maggie Collins’s rum cream pies and Maggie was famous for those. But she was still irritated at Tracy for making her get up. Irini took the bottle.

  Tracy had not finished arguing. “That’s an after-dinner drink,” she said.

  “Don’t whine,” Fanny told her. “If this were a proper Maying there would be men. We’re just barely making do here. As usual.”

  Once Fanny had told Irini she didn’t like to drink. “I’m always hoping I’ll find myself in a situation where I have to think fast,” she’d said. “Someday something exciting will happen to me and I want to be awake for it.”

  The war had rather suited Fanny. There were men to be had, easy pickings, if you could get to any city. Affairs were forced to be everything she liked—passionate, stormy, and short. The period after the war with no men at all was not so good. Irini understood her drinking now to be a sort of giving up. Fanny could go to the woods at dawn in her nightgown and know that nothing exciting would come of it. It was sad.

  People talked a lot to Irini about drinking, as if she were some sort of expert. She tipped and swallowed. It was 1947 so who knew alcoholism was genetic? A hot gush slid down her throat and landed near her heart. Her eyes watered. She passed the bottle to Cindy.

  “No thank you,” said Tracy coldly, just in case they didn’t pass it to her and she didn’t get to make a point of refusing. Cindy swallowed enough to make her cough. By the time it came around to Irini again, she remembered the taste as good. When she actually drank, she remembered that it wasn’t. But every time, it got better in the remembering.

  While they tippled, they walked. Fanny led them off Brief Street and there they were, two steps into the woods already. Irini
took a long, hard swallow. In the growing daylight, it was clear that the dancing was to be redundant. Spring had come. It was there ahead of them, with an exhilarating mix of odors—dirt and water and honey.

  As the light increased, the perfumes diminished. A white dogwood was almost in bloom. There were dandelions, blue violets, and wood anemone. Leaves in the thousands, each one shaded a different green, and all colored so delicately. The colors of cake frostings, corsages, and prom dresses.

  And there were birds.

  Fanny began to hum. Every once in a while, she would sing a word or two. “It might as well be spring.” Irini picked up the alto. They extended the final note of the chorus so that Irini could play around with harmonies. It was a subtle sort of tease. Tracy loved to sing. She ignored them both. Fanny handed Irini the bottle.

  They went through a boggy patch, where Irini’s boots stuck, making sucking sounds as she lifted and planted her feet. Fanny chose a glade of aspens full of deep, wet smells and fiddlehead ferns still encased in silver. She picked two large ferns and put them into the back of her hair. They stuck up like antlers.

  On the ground beside her, Irini saw deer track. On another day she might have followed to see if it ate any mushrooms.

  Maggie Collins recommends this, because—ask any naturalist—you almost never find a deer with its tongue blackened and its eyes cloudy and its little hooves sticking straight up into the air, and all from eating the wrong mushroom. Deer always know the difference. We don’t, which is something to ponder. Anyway, Irini didn’t like mushrooms.

  Dancing in the woods sounds romantic until you’re actually doing it. Actually doing it seems dumb. No one wanted to be the one to start. Irini took another drink, and another. Tracy delayed by making herself a complicated coronet of violets and new leaves. She had begun to hum, the same alto line that Irini had followed, but much fancier, with quavers and trills. She opened her mouth. You could tell she liked the sound of her own singing. She stuck the stems of the leaves into the webby parts of other leaves.