Boys & Girls Together (52 page)

“What would you like?”

“Tell them, the Markses, tell them what a fine man he is and what a fine addition he would make. Tell them I don’t care, I don’t even have to set foot in the place, that would suit me, but your father—they’re coming to dinner, Rudy, and you know it’s going to be jokes from him and from me nothing but nerves and they won’t see what a fine addition he would be. You must tell them. They like you. You they listen to. You they understand. Do this for your father, Rudy. End the fighting. Make him happy. Help him. It’s up to you. You know it is. Help him.” She sighed again, kissed her son on the cheek. Then she got up. “You go to sleep now.”

“I’m halfway there already.”

“This has been an important talk, Rudy, don’t you think?”

The boy nodded. “I’m really glad you brought it all to my attention.”

Late the next afternoon, as he was closing up the tennis shack, he saw her waving to him from the parking lot. He walked over. “I have to correct an impression,” Dolly said.

“Pardon?”

“Get in.”

The boy walked around the Jaguar.

“We all have these images of ourself, you know?” She roared up the hill toward the club exit.

“Yes.”

“I didn’t like the impression I made last night.”

“I thought you were very nice.”

“I should not have discussed my faults.”

“Faults?”

“Playing.”

“Ah.” The boy squinted up at the billowing clouds and what was left of blue sky. Then, as the car turned, he said, “We’re going to your house?”

“I thought we might.”

The boy nodded.

“I spoke to your father. He said it would be fine.”

The boy smiled.

“This used to be my favorite time, when I was young. Just before the rain. Everybody’s in a hurry then, you ever notice that? Everybody’s scurrying around just as fast as they can; they haven’t got a second to notice you or anything else. They’re all in this tremendous hurry. You can do crazy things and no one ever knows it, just before the rain.” The car picked up speed. “One time, back in Ohio, there was this dress I hated. It made me look all fat and dumpy and you’ll
never know
how much I hated that dress. Pink. For God’s sake. Pink and frilly and this tremendous rain appeared way off on the horizon. All of a sudden. You could see it coming closer and closer and it got dark out and a terrible wind started and, like I said, everyone’s in a hurry then, nobody notices you, so I ran upstairs and I put on this dumpy pink dress—that’s all; I was barefoot and everything—and I went outside just as the wind was reaching a peak and across the street and down the block you could see everybody all hunched over, scurrying around, and I—very slowly—I took off that dumpy dress and I held it just as gracefully as I could, just like a lady, the tip of one sleeve between two fingers, and the trees were bending, and I was standing there naked, holding this dress, waiting for just the right gust of wind, and when it came I opened my hand and it flew away like Dorothy to Oz, and I stood there waving and shouting ‘Bye-bye, bye-bye’ and nobody noticed me or anything. People ran past, this way, that way, but I knew they wouldn’t see me, and they didn’t, not with the first big drops of rain coming down.” Dolly laughed then. “I am known far and wide for my abilities as a storyteller. For an encore I’ll shut up a while.” She drove silently until they reached her house. Then she got out of the car, said “Come on” and followed the path around to the great back lawn.

Nothing had changed.

The colored tents still stood, the stakes, the torches. But the torches were dead, the people gone. Other than that, nothing had changed.

“This is the real party,” Dolly said then.

The boy said nothing.

“There’s no music. We can dance now.”

He took her in his arms and they began to glide across the green lawn, turning and bending, silent beneath the blackening sky.

“I thought you’d like it but you don’t,” Dolly said.

“Why do you think that?”

“I can tell.”

“You’re wrong.” They continued to dance. “It’s very lovely, but a bad thing happened to me today. This morning. Something upsetting. I haven’t gotten over it yet.”

“What was it?”

“Well, this friend of my mother, she gave me a lift to the courts this morning. She picked me up and took me there. A very lovely lady. Truly. Except on the way there she stopped the car. At her house—”

“And she made a pass at you,” Dolly said.

They were in the center of the lawn now, two turning spots of color, white for the boy, yellow for Dolly, white and yellow over green, beneath black. “I suppose so.”

“And you don’t find her attractive.”

“She’s very beautiful.”

“But not very young.” Dolly dropped her arms. “She must be a goddam fool. Doesn’t she know? The worst thing in the world is to be rebuffed. You don’t mind it so much when you’re young, but when you’re not young anymore ... What a goddam fool.”

“At any rate,” Rudy said, “this is very nice here, but I’m still sort of upset.”

“There are only two possibilities of why a woman does that. Either they think they’re going to succeed ...”

“Or?”

“Desperation.”

Rudy turned away, faced the tents, the cold torches. “When will this come down?”

“Tomorrow. I could have had it done today but I like leaving it up as long as possible. I like ruins. Did you see my dollhouse?”

“Yes. Last night, remember?”

“But you didn’t see in it. That’s the treat. Come.” She started walking toward the path. “Do you have a cigarette? No, that’s right, you don’t smoke.”

“And you don’t inhale.”

Dolly hurried along the path, then stopped, pointing to the swing and the teeter-totter. “Not so erotic in the daylight, I guess.” She pushed open the door of the dollhouse, stooped, went inside. He followed. “Sit,” Dolly said. They sat on the floor. “Pretty snazzy, huh?”

The boy glanced around the tiny room. There was a sink and a stove and an icebox and a bed and dozens of stuffed animals and hundreds of dolls. He nodded.

“The dolls are mine. From since when I was a kid. Dorothy—Dolly. Get it? The rest I had fixed up when the baby came, but then she died. Stoppage of the heart. She was very small, so it didn’t bother me all that much; I never got to know her all that well. I’m going to have all this pitched some—oh, I told you all that.”

“That’s all right.”

“No; I talk too much sometimes. I should never have told you about my playing.”

“That’s all right too.”

“When I started—playing, that is—I made a rule: I had to care. It wasn’t so bad until I began breaking it. This was a long time ago.”

“And your husband?”

“My husband inherited a shoe business. He buys things with the profits. Trinkets. You are looking at a trinket. He is a physical coward and a mental gull and I am in all ways his equal. If you’re asking does he know, the answer is yes.” She smiled. “Can you hear?”

Rudy tilted his head to one side.

Dolly pointed up. “Rain on the roof.”

Rudy nodded.

“That’s supposed to be romantic, rain on the roof is. I’ve got this thing about getting old—no, I told you that too.” She pushed the door of the dollhouse wide open and stared out at the rain. “I must have a cigarette. Why don’t you smoke?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ve got this terrible fear you’re going to turn me down.”

“Shut up.”

She started coming toward him, moving into his arms. He held her close and they lay flat on the dollhouse floor. “Don’t laugh at me,” she said. “See? My hands are shaking. Don’t laugh.”

“It’s not funny; I ought to.”

“Help me,” Dolly whispered. “Help me.”

And then the boy was shouting, “I ... am ... so ... sick ... of ... people ... asking ... me ... to ... help ... them! I am sick unto death of people asking me to help them! All my life everybody always asks me to help them but you don’t want my help!” He scrambled across the doll-house floor, bolted out into the rain, sped along the path onto the great lawn. The rain was thick and steady and he stopped, staring at the ruins of the party. “Everybody says help me but nobody means it; they only mean do what I want.”

Dolly touched him. “Listen ...”

“No!” He ripped his earpiece from his ear. “I hear nothing!” He shut his eyes. “I see nothing!”

Her arms went around him.

His hands ripped at her body; he kissed her mouth. “That’s what you want but that’s not helping you. That is only what you get from everybody. Helping you is saying no! But you don’t want that. You want my help? I’ll help you—I’ll say no!”

She held him tighter.

“Act your age!” Rudy cried.

She started to slap him, changed her mind, changed it back, slapped him twice, drew blood.

That evening there was a knock on the door. “Who can it be?” Esther said.

“I know this terrific way of finding out,” Sid said, and he went to the door. Lou Marks stood outside in the rain. “Lou!” Sid said. “Lou! Come in.”

Lou Marks stayed where he was. He wore a monogrammed white shirt and a pair of pale-blue trousers, soaked.

“What is it, Lou? My God, what happened to your hand?”

Lou Marks raised his right hand, swathed in bandages. “I just slammed the car door on it. I bandaged it myself. It hurts like crazy.”

“What’s going on?” Esther asked, coming up.

“Your son tried attacking my wife,” Lou Marks said.

Sid said nothing.

Esther gasped.

“Earlier this evening. She managed to beat him away.”

“Jesus God,” Sid said.

Esther began rubbing her temples.

“Dolly’s pretty upset,” Lou said.

“Oh, no, oh, no” from Esther.

“The boy came home not long ago, Lou. He went to his room. He seemed upset but—”

“He tried to rape her. My wife. On the lawn.”

“Lou,” Sid said. “Lou, believe me when I say—”

“The boy should be punished,” Lou Marks said.

“No,” Esther said.

“Of course, of course.” Sid nodded. “Yes. Definitely. Lou, it takes a while to adjust to—”

“He should be punished!”

“He will be.”

“Sid—” Esther cried, and her fingers pushed at her eyes. “My medicine.”

“I would do it,” Lou Marks said. “But ...” and he indicated his damaged hand.

“I’ll do it,” Sid said. “Rest easy. I’ll do it.”

“How do I know that?”

“You have my word,” Sid said.

“Sid, my medicine—”

“The word of the father of a boy who tried to rape my wife?”

“Like son don’t mean like father, Lou. Believe me. All my life I’ve had nothing but my word to go on. That’s all that’s meant anything—”

“I would love to punish him, but my hand ...” He held up the bandages again. “Dolly told me and I slammed the goddam car door on it, I was so upset. I can’t punish him with just my left hand.”

“Are you sure ...” Sid said. “There could be no mistake?”

“You’re calling my wife a liar—you know that.”

“No-no,” Sid said. “I would rather die.
Rudy! Rudy!
Lou, this will all work out, you’ll see, you’ll see, I swear to you.”

The boy stood above them on the landing.

“Go back, Rudy,” Esther cried. “Run!”

“Did you—tonight—did you—how could you do it how—did you attack Mrs. Marks?”

“In desperation,” Dolly Marks said, moving in front of her husband.

“Did you?” Sid said. “Did you?”

The boy looked down at them. “If I said no, who would believe me?”

“He didn’t deny it,” Lou Marks said.

“Run, Rudy,” Esther cried.

“
God!
” Sid smacked his forehead. “Rudy, how could you—attack the wife of a man like Lou Marks, a woman like that. How—my God—this is not a thing you can excuse. They were nice to you—he took you into his house—this is how you repay a man like that, a man on the board of clubs, a director of companies—you get dirty with his wife. Rudy, Rudy, what must be done to you?”

“Punish him,” Lou said. “I could go to the police but I won’t go to the police with a thing like this. My wife’s name does not get mentioned in connection with a ... a ...” He stared up at the boy. “I would love to punish you. I would. But ...” He raised his bandaged hand.

“I’ll punish him, Lou. You’ll see. Come down here, Rudy. This is your father talking. Come down. Now.”

“No, Sid,” and Esther grabbed for her husband.

Sid pushed her away. “
Come down
,
you!
I got a belt here. I got a strong belt and you’ll see, Lou. Sid Miller is a man of his word.”

The boy looked at them, glancing quickly from face to face: Lou the observer, crippled and safe; Dolly smiling, about to be avenged; keening Esther, on her knees now, beginning to writhe; Sid the inflicter, innocent blue eyes bright. Isn’t it wonderful, the boy thought, shuddering, descending the stairs toward them, his own eyes filling with tears; I’ve made everyone happy at last.

T
HE OPEN CONVERTIBLE BULLETED
down the dark highway. Branch sat hunched behind the wheel, driving with his left hand, using his right to lock the sleeping girl against his body. Annie Withers had a pretty face (unusual for an Oberlin coed) but a bad figure (S.O.P.). Her hips were large and her arms were too short and, worst of all, her legs were knotted and thick, dancer’s legs. Branch flicked a fingertip across her small breast and she stirred, blinking up at him. He smiled, so she closed her eyes.

The speedometer read eighty, but Branch fixed that fast, jamming his foot floorward. Eighty-three, eighty-five, now ninety. The wind screamed. Branch increased his pressure on the gas pedal and at ninety-five the customary panic built inside him, wetting his palms. God, how he longed to brake, to slow, to crawl. It was out of the question, naturally; Branch Scudder drove fast. Everybody knew that. At one hundred miles per hour, the Thunderbird began resenting; the motor roared, matching the scream of the wind.

Up ahead lay Oberlin and Branch felt, as he always did upon approach, smug. Students were forbidden cars and they glanced longingly at his black carrier, just as he had glanced at other cars when he had been a student there, four years before. When he reached the edge of town, Branch slowed. Annie Withers woke, opened her eyes, blinked slowly, then self-consciously ran her fingers through her short brown hair. “We here?”