Everything and More (14 page)

“Linc loved you, Mr. Fernauld, he told me that.”

“He did?” Joshua turned. Tears wet his cheeks. “Jesus, how I loved him.”

“He knew that.”

“How? We were exact opposites, he unassuming, honorable, aberrationally modest about his accomplishments . . . If you only knew how I was prodding him to blow his own horn! Trying to get him to be like his old man. As if the goddamn world needed two Joshua Fernaulds!” He rested his big, grayhaired head against the window. “How do you go on living, how do you keep going through all the stupid, shitty motions?” He started to sob, a rusty, clumsy sound that he cut off with a loud blowing of his nose. “Honey, would you happen to have some booze around?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“Not so much as cooking sherry?”

Marylin shook her head: even in her misery the ludicrousness of NolaBee preparing meals with elegant wine sauces brought a faint curve of a smile to the beautifully scrolled lips.

“There is pain, such pain,” Joshua said.

“I know,” she sighed. “Mr. Fernauld, I could fix some tea.”

“Tea? God help me, tea! My mother was forever brewing pots, the
same leaves two or three times, to ease her journey through this vale of tears.”

Taking this as acceptance, Marylin lit a match to the front burner, filled the kettle.

“When Linc came home,” said Joshua, who had followed her to the kitchen, “that first leave after he was downed, he was jumpy as hell. All raw nerves. He certainly captured it in ‘Home Leave.’ Before the war, he’d argued back, but in general he’d been a thoughtful kid. A hard-core reader. Yeah, an unregenerate bookworm. Once I caught him with my copy of
Ulysses.
I told him I wasn’t about to let any son of mine lie about the house turning into a bookworm faggot, then gave him a good, swift kick in the ass—physically.”

“Yes, he told me. He said he was set to run away. Instead, he went out for the basketball team. He enjoyed playing, enjoyed it a lot. He said you were right.”

“He did?” Joshua shook his head. “Anyway, that leave, when I saw how shot his nerves were, I wanted to hug him, to soothe him, but of course I shouted and argued at the drop of a hat. Even chewed him out for becoming a Navy pilot—I had in mind a safe desk job for him. I was worried as hell, and that made me even more scurrilous. Then he seemed to calm down, to unwind. That was your doing, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe. I think so.”

“You made him very happy.”

“I loved him,” she said simply.

“It’s damn obvious why he was nuts about you. You’re a spectacularly fantastic-looking little dish, but it’s more than that. You two belonged together. You’re a gentle sort, and so was he.” Joshua paused. “Why did you bring me the stories?”

Marylin could feel the heat travel up her throat to her face. To cover her confusion, she rinsed out two cups—every dish they owned was dirty and in the sink.

Joshua kept watching her. His eyes might be the same darkness and shape as Linc’s, but the resemblance ended with flesh and pigmentation. Joshua Fernauld’s eyes were alertly probing, twin instruments voracious for her soul’s secrets. In a flash of insight she realized that Linc’s characters were drawn from someplace within himself, just as his father’s films emerged from acute powers of observation.

“Why?” he repeated.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

He leaned forward, continuing to stare at her. The cup in her hand
slipped, and she fumbled, catching it maladroitly against her empty, cramping stomach.

He asked, “A baby?”

After a brief hesitation she nodded.

He looked at the faded robe, her drawn, lovely face. “And now?”

“Now it’s too late,” she said, turning away.

“You had a D and C?” His voice was gruff with misery.

She dropped her face into her hands and gave way to the ragged sobs. He reached his arms around her, drawing her to a thick, hard body and the smells of aftershave and sweat. She made no attempt to stop weeping, but let Linc’s weeping father hold her. Both were sobbing for the same reasons, for a sensitive, fine young man whom the war had first bitterly traumatized, then destroyed, and for his baby, whom between them they had contrived to kill.

They were quietly drinking tea when NolaBee came in with her inevitable bulging grocery sack.

“Mama, this is Linc’s father, Mr. Fernauld.”

NolaBee’s pitted cheeks blotched with redness. Marylin, between gasping sobs, had told her of her trip to the Fernaulds’. Setting the bag on the floor, she folded her arms. “We thought the world of your son,” she said with rapid ungraciousness, then added, “Mr. Fernauld, I reckon you needn’t have come visiting Marylin when she’s ill.”

“I understand her illness, Mrs. Wace.”

NolaBee pulled back her thin shoulders, a peppery, acne-scarred little woman facing down a man she certainly had a use for. “You might reckon Marylin is a tramp, but that’s not so. She made a mistake not because she’s a bad girl but because she loved your son. She’s a lady through and through. A Wace, a Fairburn, a Roy, and where we come from, that means a lot. Her great-great-granddaddy was General Fairburn, on Lee’s staff, and—”

Joshua raised a large paw-thick hand. “Peace, Mrs. Wace, peace. We stand at the bier, weeping together.”

She stared at him in confusion and then said, “Marylin, you look right peaky. You sure this man hasn’t been upsetting you again?”

“Mama, he brought me back Linc’s stories. We’ve been talking about them.”

“Humph.” NolaBee’s snort meant she was unconvinced. She looked around. “Where’s Roy?”

“I asked her to go to the library for me.”

“Mrs. Wace, won’t you join us for some of your own tea?” Deliberate charm was in Joshua’s invitation.

NolaBee plumped down in the chair, getting out a cigarette.

Joshua sat next to her. “I was drunk and behaved despicably when Marylin came to the house. It was the worst day of my life, but I promise you, I’m not a lush or a bastard.” He fished a gold lighter from his shirt pocket.

The flame illuminated NolaBee’s drab skin for a long moment. Then she bent to accept his light. “I reckon you’re a bit of one and a whole lot of the other, Mr. Fernauld,” she said with a coquettish smile.

*   *   *

By the end of the following week, Marylin had recovered enough to return to school.

  
12
  

Though most of Beverly High’s wide-flung breadth slept in obsidian dark, the far north windows—the auditorium’s foyer—streamed yellow brightness. The school’s triangular parking lot had long ago filled, and nearby streets crawled with cars squandering rationed gasoline in the search for a space.

It was May 17, the night of
Vera,
the junior play.

The cast (including Marylin), the stage crew, BJ, and a jittery Miss Nathans had been at the school since four this afternoon.

Night made the familiar steps exotic, strange, and Roy and Althea fell silent as they climbed. Roy wore a peculiar, knee-length crimson cape which had been in some long-ago trousseau, a nose-thumbing gesture at the sea of camel topcoats. Althea, too, defied convention with a chubby of some odd, ultra-soft gray fur.

A few steps below them were NolaBee and Joshua Fernauld. At the last minute, Mrs. Fernauld had suffered a recurrence of some chronic, unnamed ailment that often confined her thin body to bed, so Joshua,
alone and tardy, had picked them up. Althea was already in the apartment, sharing the scrambled-egg-sandwich dinner.

NolaBee was saying, “. . . that you’re in for a big surprise tonight.” All keyed-up, she had been talking ceaselessly.

“Life is full of ’em,” retorted Joshua Fernauld. “But my BJ, Lord bless her, has a mouth on her, and we’ve heard nothing but
Vera, Vera, Vera
for months. She’s served us up every goddamn surprise there could be.”

NolaBee chuckled. “Marylin—”

“I anticipate being bowled over by your lovely.”

“You aren’t going to be even the teeniest bit sorry about . . .” NolaBee lowered her voice confidentially so that Roy could not hear the rest of her remark.

In the month since Mr. Fernauld’s visit, the two families had become quite close. The Fernaulds had invited the Waces to a barbecue supper in the garden of their palace, where Joshua had entranced them—especially NolaBee—with the inside dope about movies he had written and directed, the bickering, the foul-ups, the famous stars. The Fernaulds had taken the Waces to two screenings at the Academy, a shabby private theater on Melrose, where Roy had been struck dumb at the sight of so many known faces in human size, and had even been introduced to a pair of genuine greats in the living flesh, Ronald Reagan and his wife, Jane Wyman.

The two girls pushed ahead into the vestibule, where, from the ceiling, was strung an enormous poster:

Diagonally across the ticket window was slashed a streamer printed
SOLD OUT
, and lines waited at the two auditorium doors for girls with black sashes to take the tickets. Inside studying their programs were many of the student body, Mr. Mitchell, the principal, and other faculty members, as well as the doctors and lawyers, the star sports columnist, the famous composer, the movie people, plumbers, millionaires, shopkeepers and divorcees who made up the big and little fish parents of Beverly Hills High School.

As Roy and Althea moved to the front of the auditorium, several groups of girls smirked or raised eyebrows. Roy flushed. Althea gazed right back with her cool little smile. All cover-up. Though she
had applied her cosmetics and worn her mother’s chinchilla to attract attention, she shrank from the critical eyes. Althea was balanced on a tense plateau between superiority and inferiority, between shyness and hauteur. She would accept nothing less than the right crowd, agonizing to be noticed and accepted by them, yet she was too timid to make any move toward their company. And Roy, intensely loyal, knowing Althea’s indifference was a pose, allowed herself to be locked into one of those symbiotic alliances so commonplace in early adolescence.

The girls jostled into the last available seats in the third row. Several rows behind them, NolaBee’s old violet felt hat bobbed animatedly toward Joshua Fernauld’s thick shock of prematurely gray hair.

The overhead lights dimmed in uncertain waves, and a spot wavered against the folds of crimson velvet. The left curtain pulled back and Miss Nathans stepped onto the proscenium. Her Viking figure was encased in tight purple rayon, and a huge corsage of red roses and silver ribbon bristled on her shoulder.

“I take great, yet sad pleasure,” she intoned in her most resonant theatrical voice, “in announcing that the junior class has voted to dedicate their annual play to the memory of Lieutenant Abraham Lincoln Fernauld, Beverly High, summer of 1937. At intermission the Minute Maids will pass among you. They will be wearing the red-white-and-blue aprons that are familiar to students. We urge our parents and guests to dig down deep and buy war stamps and bonds in honor of Lieutenant Fernauld, who—like many another Beverly Hills High School graduate—has given the full measure of his devotion that we might continue to enjoy the fruits of freedom and democracy.” She paused. “Would you please join me in a moment of tribute to a gallant young man.”

The spotlight shifted jerkily to the flag.

People rustled to their feet; the men—and two women—wearing uniforms snapped up their hands, holding their salutes. A backstage bugle sounded taps, slowly, truly. This was one of those moments that redeem warfare by permitting humans to emerge from their fixed, immutable loneliness. The Beverly High auditorium was welded into one being, the poignant notes universally shivering on the skin and bringing ubiquitous tears. Roy’s eyes dampened solemnly not only for Linc but for all the immortal dead, for all the brave young heroes who rode eternally into the wild blue yonder.

At her side, Althea whispered derisively, “How tacky can you get? Cashing in on BJ’s brother to sell a few dollars’ worth of stamps.”

That’s Althea all over, Roy thought, blinking. She never gives in to mushy group emotions, she has a kind of hard honor. Maybe her family’s royalty.