Everything and More (8 page)

NolaBee frowned. “He hasn’t tried anything, has he?”

“I’ve only been with him in the daytime,” Marylin whispered.

“They’ll try in the daytime what they can’t do at night,” said NolaBee.

“Mama, you’re hurting my wrist,” Marylin said.

Peering at the beautiful red face, NolaBee let go. “You’re a good girl,” she said finally. “But always remember, you have your career. That’s first and foremost.”

“Mama, I want love, a husband . . . babies.”

“That’ll come later.”

“I wish you didn’t count on me to accomplish so much. I worry I’m going to let you down.”

“Sometimes you’re right silly, Marylin. You’re not going to let me down. When you’re at the top, I reckon you’ll thank me for bein’ a believer.” She gave Marylin a gentle push. “Now, go on down and call Roy. She must be freezing out there.”

  
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The next day, Friday, in the break before last period, when she had Drama, Marylin stood pressed against the wall by the thunderous crush in the hallway. As she worked the combination of her locker,
BJ Fernauld shoved through the crowd. “My leading lady returneth,” she said.

Despite the full mouth caked with orange lipstick, the pudgily round face, the messy pompadour, there was so much of Linc in his sister—the Indian hair, the prominent nose—that Marylin felt huge waves of affection. “Hi,” she said.

“Where have you
been?”
BJ demanded. “Did you have a cold?”

So Linc hadn’t mentioned being with her. Marylin fumbled past the number. Composing herself, she turned two revolutions, starting the combination again. “I’m all better,” she murmured.

“Praise Allah. You have no idea what it’s like, rehearsing around you. Well, what happened at Chapman’s?”

“We talked.” Briefly Marylin rested her cheek on the cool metal. “He took me home.”

“Listen, he’s a very unusual person, very talented in all sorts of ways.” BJ’s voice rose. “I hope you don’t get the idea he’s a creep, taking you out.”

“That,” Marylin said, “is hardly my criterion for creephood.”

“I didn’t mean it as a slap, but, well, you are a junior in high school, and he’ll be twenty-four in February.” BJ sighed. “He’s sure been weird since he got home.”

“What do you mean, weird?”

“I mean
weird.
He really was a sweetie, even for a brother. Before the war, he was never mean. Oh, sometimes he battled Dad, but then again, Dad’s not an easy man to live with—We’re cursed with one of those fathers who tries to run a person’s life entirely.”

“What about Linc now?” Marylin asked, pushing her biology book into the locker.

“He can be perfectly normal, then all at once, for no reason at all, he explodes like a bomb. He barges out of the house. Either that or he’s going around touching everything, as if he’s blind.”

Twisting the dial of her lock, Marylin asked, “BJ, has he had a bad time out there?”

“No, he’s been lolling around on paradisiacal Pacific islands,” BJ snapped. “Of course it’s been rough. He’s a pilot and there’s a war on, or haven’t you heard?”

They began pushing their way through the noisy hall.

“What happened?”

On the crowded stairs, BJ said, “I guess it’s no big military secret. He flies a TBM, a torpedo plane. Torpedoes have to be dropped right on target. Which means he has to zoom right down onto the Jap ships. So not only are Zeroes chasing him, but those Kongo battleships and Hayataka or Shokaku carriers are training their guns on
him.” BJ’s voice rounded magniloquently as she classified the Japanese ships. “He was shot down.”

Marylin closed her eyes. She stumbled on a metal-edged step and bumped into a short, frizzy haired boy. “Shot down?” she whispered.

“In November. He floated around for nearly a day before he was picked up. He got the Distinguished Flying Cross—but he positively blows up if anybody mentions it. I mean, he keeps flying off the handle. Yesterday I heard my parents talking. They’re worried sick.”

Marylin clutched her notebook to her breasts, dizzy with a sickening urgency to hold Linc, to interject herself between his body and Japanese flak.

“You sure you’re better?” BJ asked. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you look punk.”

“It must be terrible, knowing every day you might have to face enemy fire.”

“He has the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross!” BJ barked. “They don’t give those medals to chickens.”

“I didn’t mean that he was a coward, BJ. But I know I couldn’t keep forcing myself to risk my life.”

Before BJ could retort, the warning bell sliced like a buzz saw through the other sounds. They bolted toward Room 217.

In class Marylin’s discipline deserted her, and she could not concentrate on her lines. . . . 
a few minutes of monstrous, degrading terror
 . . . how long had he floated in that warm, shark-infested sea, uncertain whether these waters were his grave? All that kept her from crying aloud was BJ sitting in the next row of desks, BJ, who resembled him and who sat unscathed in this Beverly High drama classroom.

When the final bell of the day rang, she found herself leaving class with BJ. The school’s painted brick walls glowed like rich cream in the afternoon sun while on the street below, carloads of kids honked and waved with frenzied Friday-afternoon excesses. Wasn’t there an irreconcilable paradox between Beverly Hills and the flame-exploding maw of hell that was the war?

She started to walk toward Santa Monica Boulevard with BJ. BJ—proud to be seen with Marylin Wace, who though not one of the school’s true elite, was certainly its most beautiful adornment, and well known, besides, by virtue of her acting—strutted along with her messy black pompadour high, bragging cheerfully about the numerous boys crazy about her, accomplished, adorable paragons who by some fortuitous chance attended other schools. Marylin nodded whenever it seemed obligatory. She did not turn at Charleville. Instead,
she continued on with BJ, crossing the two Santa Monica Boulevards.

Here, separating two identically named thoroughfares, lay the Southern Pacific tracks—also used by the trolley line—which sociologically bisected Beverly Hills. To the south of the tracks lay the unhurried business district and quiet streets of apartments and less expensive homes. To the north, on larger lots, stood houses that regardless of size sold for considerably more, a geographical snobbery accepted by every shop keeper when he charged your bill.

BJ understood the class implications of stepping over cinder and steel, but Marylin moved across the few yards without so much as a thought. Not only was she too poor to catch on to the subtleties of class coloration, but her luminous blue-green eyes had a blind spot where such pretensions disappeared from view.

On the north side of the tracks, further buttressing the division, lay Beverly Gardens, twenty-three blocks long, eighty feet wide, a narrow manicured park of lawns, flowerbeds, pergolas, a cactus garden, a lily pond, rose gardens. As the two girls walked along the promenade, which was soft-dappled by the shade of weeping elms, BJ continued her monologue. A khaki truck bearing khaki-clothed soldiers lumbered along Santa Monica, trailing exhaust and wolf whistles.

Both girls waved.

“Listen,” BJ blurted. “How about coming over to the house?”

Marylin hesitated. Her nerves ached for physical reassurance that Linc was not locked into watery depths; however, since for some reason he had kept their relationship a secret, she worried about his reactions if she showed up on North Hillcrest Road with BJ. “What about the Gramophone Shop?”

“Hey, a great idea! I’m dying to get Frankie’s ‘Night and Day.’”

In the shop, the girls browsed over bins of records whose paper wrappers were cut out in a circle to display the credits.

BJ selected five. Marylin picked up only “These Foolish Things” by Tommy Dorsey, wishing she could afford to buy it, though the purchase would have been idiotic. The Waces had no record player.

All four of the booths were occupied: beyond soundproofed glass, people listened raptly to inaudible music. BJ plopped onto the narrow waiting bench. “You want me to talk about Linc, don’t you?” Her dark eyes were shrewd.

“Oh, BJ.”

“I’m not exactly a moron, Marylin. My brother takes you for an ice cream and all at once we’re buddy-buddy.”

Marylin stared down at her record, considering how sick she was
of a life filled with lying. “That’s true, BJ, but I do think of you as a friend, too.” This was honest. BJ’s braggadocio might irritate, yet she had brains and—more important to Marylin—a bounding warmth, like a big, ungainly St. Bernard puppy. “The truth is, I like you a lot. And admire you—your play’s a wonder.”

BJ wriggled with pleasure. “Hey, I do believe those two in there are leaving.” A gray-haired couple were replacing records in an album imprinted
Excerpts from Carmen.
“Let’s go wait there before some other classical creeps take over for another year.” As they shifted positions, she asked, “You find Linc devastating, don’t you?”

“I’m in love with him.” A common-enough confession exchanged by Beverly High girls, but Marylin’s voice quivered on a note of visceral sincerity.

BJ leaned against the glass wall. “So it’s like that. Listen, I don’t blame you. He’s a terrific guy and groovy-looking. If he weren’t my brother . . . Oh, Hail Mary and preserve me from incestuous thoughts.”

“Does he have a lot of girls?”

“Some. The latest is Rosellen St. Vincent—she’s a Pi Phi at Berkeley. She came down to spend a weekend after he graduated from flight school. I’m positive she goes all the way.”

Marylin sighed, richly jealous of Rosellen St. Vincent and her sexual activities with Linc.

“Would you rather not hear about her?” BJ asked.

“No. Yes. I don’t know. . . .”

“Well, anyway, it’s probably cooled off. He hasn’t talked about seeing her this time.”

“How long has he been in the Navy?”

“Since the day after Pearl Harbor. Dad was furious, I can tell you. It was his idea to get Linc into the quartermaster corps and keep him here in California. The funny part is, Dad’s a gung-ho physical type and it’s hard to imagine Linc in a war. I mean, he’s very caring of life, if you know what I mean. I can’t see him shooting at anyone, even a Jap in a Zero.”

The classical couple emerged and BJ and Marylin went into the booth.

“He seems very complicated,” Marylin murmured in a fishing expedition.

“Is he ever! Listen to this. He had this poem published in
Atlantic Monthly,
and he never told any of us. I mean, what’s the point of getting something printed if you aren’t going to let everybody know?” BJ paused. “Look, that was a clunky remark I made about
you worming into my good graces because of Linc. And I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, BJ.”

“Sure I do. Aren’t we friends?” BJ grabbed her record. “Let’s put that on first.”

  
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