Girl on the Best Seller List (7 page)

Beside him now in the Fulton backyard, Freddy heard his daughter say, “Well?” “Well, what?”

• • •

“You’ve been dreaming … I asked you if it wouldn’t kill Gloria Wealdon if I used the
whole
can? There’s arsenic in it, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” Freddy said. “There is.”

“I could write a sequel to her book,” said Ginny. “I could call it
Population, 12,359.”

• • •

Freddy chuckled. Then again he wondered if it
could
be possible that the novel had hurt Ginny. Everyone in Cayuta, he supposed, knew who the lisping teen-ager was supposed to be. Ginny herself had once or twice pretended to lisp in fun, after she had read the book. She had teased Freddy about their closeness too, often satirizing an old song by singing:

Once, when Fern was getting ready for her appointment with Jay, Ginny had said, “Will the kindly psychoanalyst be able to resist the devastating Mrs. Frederick Fulton during
this
session? Tune in tomorrow — ”

Fern had cut her off by screaming, “Virginia! Don’t you ever,
ever
speak that way again!”

“What do you want her to do?” Freddy had asked Fern later that evening when they were alone. “Take that book seriously?”

“Doesn’t she even know when someone’s made a fool of her?” said Fern.

“She knows someone’s tried,” Freddy had answered, “and she knows how to laugh off a bad joke.”

“Ginny’s afraid to show
you
her true feelings,” Fern had begun shouting again. “You expect her to behave the way you do. Old, unflinching, unfeeling Freddy — old Ironsides!”

“Don’t raise your voice, Fern!”

“Freddy, dammit all, people
raise
their voices when their houses are on fire. And our house is on fire! If I want to holler
fire,
I will! One of these days Ginny is going to holler fire too!”

At the time, Freddy had dismissed the whole idea of his inhibiting Ginny by his own example of durability as just another of Fern’s notions. But that Saturday morning when Ginny began all the teasing talk about poisoning Gloria Wealdon, Freddy wondered just what kind of a joke it was. He remembered Jay Mannerheim’s cliché,
No one ever jokes,
and he thought that it simply was not like Ginny to indulge in such obvious, trivial humor. One of the things he had always admired about Virginia was her subtlety; another was her poise and dignity. To Freddy, she was a remarkably intact personality. Apart from being his daughter, whom he loved, she was a human being he admired and respected.

He turned to Ginny and said, “Tell me something, honey, would you really like to see Mrs. Wealdon dead?”

“Yes, a little.”

“I wonder why. It doesn’t seem much like you, Ginny.”

“I feel sorry for Mr. Wealdon.” She stood up. She pushed her glasses back up on her nose and squinted at the sunlight. “I keep thinking of the time those bulb mites got at his tulip bulbs. He was furious! I was with him the afternoon he soaked the bulbs in nicotine sulphate. I thought he was going to cry, he was so furious.”

“It wouldn’t do him much good to cry over his wife’s book, Ginny.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that it’s too bad a man like that had to marry someone like her!”

“Someday you’ll discover that people usually deserve each other, Ginny.”

“I know your theories on that subject.”

“Do you agree with me?”

“I have always … but Mr. Wealdon doesn’t deserve her. It was different with you. There was Edwina to make up for things mother lacked.”

“It was never that your mother lacked something, Virginia. It was just that after I met Edwina, I wanted more. Not from your mother. Just from Edwina — her particular kind of gentleness.”

“I know all that. I didn’t mean to bring it up. It’s just that I feel sorry for Mr. Wealdon. He doesn’t deserve a woman like her.”

“Maybe he does. Maybe he wants to protect a woman, watch out for her. You know how solicitous he is with his plants and everything. Well, he’s got a handful in Gloria Wealdon. I don’t know anyone besides your mother who’s ever felt even lukewarm toward that woman.”

“Mother was sorry for her too.”

“Yes, I think so. She’d deny it, but I think so. Your mother’s always had a soft spot for people like that.” “Poor mother.”

“Yes,” said Fulton. “She’s been very upset.”

Virginia Fulton sighed, kicking the small pile of weeds at her feet. After a moment, she smiled. “Dad, would you like some hot coffee?”

“Yes, Ginny.”

“I can sneak in the back way and get some for us. I’ll bring it out here in the old thermos.”

Freddy watched her run up the lawn. She was so quick and bright and good-natured; so intuitive, too. He found himself thinking for a moment of what her grandfather used to say:
“God gave handicaps only to the highest types. Little minds are subdued and ruined by them; great minds are challenged and made by them.”

He looked after her, and then he experienced the wonderful feeling a parent does, when, for no particular reason, at some random interval, on no especial day, he suddenly has a heart full of pride, when he observes his child in a simple, everyday situation.

Smiling, Freddy Fulton knelt down by the Matrimony Vine and began looking around for the can of herbicide.

S
TANLEY SECORA
sat on the green bench at the bus stop on the corner of Genesee Street and Alden Avenue. A new Buick pulled over, and the owner pointed toward downtown with his finger and beckoned questioningly with his eyes at Stanley. Stanley shook his head. “No thanks!” The Buick’s owner, an attorney, waved and went on.

That made the sixth person who had offered Stanley a ride. Stanley didn’t need a ride. In fifteen or twenty minutes he would get up and walk down Alden Avenue to the Wealdons, for his appointment with Mrs. Wealdon. But meanwhile, Stanley liked sitting on the green bench while people stopped and offered him a lift. There was no doubt about his popularity. Every single summer since the war he had more lawns to cut than he needed, and in the winter he had an assistant help him with the walks he was asked to shovel. Evenings when he came home from his regular job, working as a stock clerk for Freddy Fulton, the “Y” switchboard operator invariably had two or three messages for him. He would get painting jobs, planting jobs. He even did plumbing work once out at the Riford summer camp. All kinds of work would come his way in a never-ending stream. Someone once made the remark that in Cayuta,New York, people never used the expression “let George do it”; people said, “call up Stanley.” Stanley liked to remember that.

Stanley liked the way people counted on him. He always had. When he was a kid, growing up in the Kantogee County Orphans’ Home, on the outskirts of Cayuta, he was the best lawn-raker, ashcan-emptier, bed-maker, floor-mopper, and errand-runner of anyone in the Home. In the army, he never minded K.P. He didn’t even hate latrine duty. Work was work; a job had to be done. That was the way Stanley felt about it.

Sometimes when you did a job well (like last week when he helped lay Sandran in the Meens’ kitchen, and Mrs. Meen kept saying afterward, Oh, it’s so nice! It really is nice! Oh, my, Stanley, thank you!) your satisfaction was in the reaction of other people. Delighted astonishment, in Mrs. Meen’s case; a direct and forthright compliment from someone like Dr. Mannerheim; a dollar pressed into his palm by Freddy Fulton; or from Min Stewart the offer of a cold beer which he could have out on the back steps in the summer, or in the warm kitchen in the winter.

During the war, of course, it was best of all. There were medals, but it wasn’t just the medals — it was before the medals. It was jumping out of that foxhole with mud on your face and some kind of crazy wings on your big, dirt-clogged fatigue boots, pulling the thing on the hand grenade and shouting “Yah! Yah! Yah!”, as though you were just routing out some stupid crows from a corn patch, instead of Germans.

“Boy, you sure have got guts!” someone would say.

“Man, are you out of your G.I. mind! The chances you take!” Someone else.

And once an officer who didn’t even know a single thing about Stanley Secora took one long look at him, and said he would be good front-line material. A thing like that could make Stanley’s day.

• • •

Stanley never knew where he got his nerve, but he knew he had it.

Every time he did something to win himself another medal, he knew no fear. He even began to believe nothing could touch him, not a bullet, not a mine, not a bomb — nothing, if he, Stanley Secora, had the bull by the horns. That belief kept him returning to the front; and ultimately returned him to an astounded, but nonetheless wildly pleased Cayuta…. Stanley Secora, the third-most-decorated soldier of World War II. The American Legion Band met his train. Min Stewart’s husband, who was still alive then, offered him a permanent job at the drug store (which he would have accepted if it were not for the fact he would have to work alongside Louie Stewart) and the Knights of Columbus had a Stanley Secora Night, with a huge bigger-than-life photograph of him all blown up and wired around the basketball net in the basement of Saint Alphonsus Church.

Stanley sat on the green bench that morning in May, smiling to recall those days. What was that song playing over and over that summer he was a hero? Got no something, got no hum, dum de dum de? Then he remembered. Got no dia-monds, got no rings, but I’ve got plenty of ev-ry thing: I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night. That was it. It always reminded Stanley of good old 1946.

Beside Stanley on the bench were two boxes, one containing two pieces of coconut ice (candy he had made himself) and the other the first three chapters of his novel. The candy, he realized, was a romantic inspiration, and he felt a trifle sheepish about going behind Mr. Wealdon’s back. He could not justify his intentions toward Gloria Wealdon; he no longer tried. He was sick, silly, down-to-his-toes in love with the author of
Population 12,360,
and that was that. The only thing that
did
make him feel better about his date with her that noon, was the fact that Love was not his sole motivation. There was his novel, which he wanted her to read; he called it
A Vet’s Memories.

Stanley Secora, six months ago, would never have dreamed of getting anyplace with Milo Wealdon’s wife. Women (when he thought about them
that
way) had always been a source of painful embarrassment to Stanley. It was because he felt clumsy and ugly in their presence. The summer of 1946, when he was at his peak,wearing his uniform around Cayuta with his medals pinned to it, some of the Polish girls from the Falcon’s Ladies Lodge had crushes on him. This did nothing to inspire confidence in Stanley. They were all fat and pimply and left-over, and instead of being flattered by their giggling and blushing in his presence, he felt conspicuous, as though he had cast his lot with them. It made him feel as though he were a war hero for nothing, and there was the slight suspicion that if he had not been a war hero, even those homely wallflowers would not have him.

• • •

Population 12,360
changed all that. When he read Gloria Wealdon’s novel, he saw himself in a new light. He was Will, the husky, somewhat awkward character who did odd jobs around the town. He was Will, and the heroine used to watch him mow her lawn from her window, and wonder what would happen if she called him into the house and showed him her sheerest black negligee. Stanley could almost remember one part word for word:

Just thinking about it made Stanley’s pulse race.

• • •

He flipped his wrist up so he could see his watch. It was eleven-thirty. He had fifteen minutes more to wait. Near his wrist there was a bandage; he had burned himself while he was making the candy. It was painful, but he thought about it the way he had thought about his battle wounds during the war. It was part of the reward attached to winning; the only difference was that in this case he bore the scars of the battle before the battle was fought. There probably wouldn’t even be a battle, Stanley Secora decided happily. With Gloria Wealdon as his objective, victory was certain. He felt euphoric, and, like any good soldier, not at all brave yet.

I
N THE DREAM
Gloria was dressed like Cinderella.

“I’m leaving you,” she said, “unless you can prove you’re the real Prince, and my literary agent is not. If you are,” she continued, “you’ll be able to wear this shoe.”

She held a space shoe in her hand. It was as big as a bread box.