Never before has Joy sat by a window and smoked. Mother does but she does it downstairs in the porch in the daytime, but Joy vaguely remembers Mother smoking downstairs when it was dark and all the lights were out. Joy likes to be doing things, she likes to be out with her friends. They go to games, well of course they have to they're the cheerleaders and they go to movies and sometimes they go to bars at night with the boys in their cars and Joy has a rum and Coke and her ears start to ring. But when she isn't going places or sitting around laughing and having fun with her friends she sleeps. Usually, she falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow she can never even remember lying down. But for the last two days, ever since, she can't sleep. So tonight she thought she would try what they do, Mother and Anastasia. If she could find a way to think about it maybe it would go away. But nothing has happened. Now she feels funny, nervous sort of and the cigarette is smoked down. She gets up and goes into the bathroom and runs cold water over it and throws it in the waste-basket. She wonders, as she returns to the dark bedroom, what Mother and Anastasia would feel if they were she. She can't imagine it. They are not like her. She is not like them. This could not happen to them they wouldn't let it happen to them. Whatever the chemistry of tragedy was, she would never feel it.
A
UGUST 1953
It felt strange to be back here in this tiny room, so shabby with its one tiny throw rug and the old white pull-back curtains and the faded Indian bedspread. First thing she'd do when she saved some money was fix up this roomâafter she bought some clothes, she had to have really great clothes for this job, after all she was meeting the public. And Joy knew CBS had hired her at least partly for her looks, that's what a receptionist is, someone who looks pleasant and attractive. She feels surer of herself than she used to, she knows she presents a pleasant appearance but she will definitely sign up for that course in modeling, they teach you how to do your hair and makeup and all that, things she feels nervous about but everyone always tells her she's pretty, maybe if she gained confidence she could even be a model someday.
It was so exciting to sit there and watch people go by and wonder if they were someone famous, the other day she was sure she saw Kathryn Grayson, and Alison, who sat in the secretary's pool said she was always seeing stars, she saw Jayne Meadows just last week. So she wanted to be well-dressed, she had planned it all out, two good wool dresses, one basic black just in case she met anyone and was invited to the theater or something like that, and two suits with different blouses. Her school clothes were not really appropriate in this job although she has to wear them for a while longer.
It felt great to get that pay envelope every Friday too, of course thirty-five dollars and sixty cents which was all that was left after taxes and all the things they deducted wasn't as much as she thought it would be well of course she thought she was getting forty-five dollars a week she didn't realize about the deductions. And the commutation alone was over five dollars a week, and there were lunches too and Mother insisted she give her ten dollars a week for food, that hurt her feelings as if now that she was grown up she didn't belong to the family anymore. Still she had determined to set aside ten dollars a week for clothes and to fix her room, and when she and Alison went shopping last Friday nightâoh, that was fun, they had dinner in Schrafft's and walked through all the big stores, Macy's Altman's they even went into Lord & Taylor'sâshe saw a suit she really loved, a creamy wool in a soft blue color that matched her eyes, it was beautiful, maybe it would be reduced thirty-five dollars was sort of a lot but maybe she'd try to save up for itâ¦.
If she wanted to buy clothes, it would be a long time before she could afford to fix up her room. Maybe for her birthday in October Mother would make her new curtains and bedspread and a vanity skirt, that one was really faded and limp, she could ask her, she'd made a bedspread and curtains for Anastasia's sweet sixteen.
It was sort of hard to stay in this room now. Especially after visiting Pam's house in Palm Beach, only their summer house too, and they had another one someplace in Switzerland, some funny word starting with a
G
and an
S,
she couldn't pronounce it. And their main house was in Connecticut, she'd seen pictures of it it was even bigger than the one in Florida. Pam's room had its own verandah, with chaises and little tables and even a radio and she had a TV set in her bedroom, white wall-to-wall carpet, and all those windows, oh it was gorgeous! She felt lucky to be liked by someone like Pamela, so far above her, it was so nice of her to invite Joy, she knew Joy had no money but she liked her anyway. And Mrs. Johnson was always very nice to her too, and Mr. Johnson always made a great fuss over her, of course he was practically never there.
But still she was more comfortable with Kitty and Linda, and her own house, even this room, well, she wasn't in it much, only at nights and she always fell asleep the minute her head hit the pillow, she never even remembered lying down. The rest of the house looked better now since Mother had bought some end tables and a new dining room set and rugs, it was starting to look like other people's houses, that was nice. Funny she wasn't tired tonight though. If she just hadn't gone into Schoelerman's, they could have had a soda anywhere, it was just like last time only that was at Eckhoff's. It just didn't go away even though it had been four years, almost four years, she and Whit started to date in her sophomore year in October, yes, just before her birthday, 1949, and this was 1953, a long time. But it was still there like a burr sometimes people put a burr under a horse's saddle to drive them crazy cruel but that's exactly how it felt only it was in her heart. She knew she must have changed color, it was humiliating, but she couldn't help it, her heart started to pound and the ache, oh the ache was terrible, like a burn, a poker stuck right in her heart. He seemed to blush too so at least she wasn't the only one, he was embarrassed, but he said hello as if he hardly knew her, as if they'd just been in the same homeroom or something five years ago.
Joy rose from the bed and switched on a small lamp standing on her vanity. She fished in her purse, found a cigarette, and lighted it. She picked up the china ashtray with little pink roses on it and carried it back to bed. Sheets are rumpled, maybe that's the trouble. She leaned back against the hard wooden headboard of the bed and smoked, gazing toward the window. Moonlight paved the floor and the foot of the bed with pale light, but from this angle she could see only the roof of the Gwyns' garage. She could hear the crickets though, and sense the soft dampness of the night.
Duke, he said, that was an expensive college, maybe it wasn't too hard, Whit never got good grades, he was like her. He looked older, his face had a strain in it that wasn't there when they no not even two years ago when she ran into him at Eckhoff's. All the kids still hung out at the same places, Eckhoff's and Schoelerman's for Cokes or milk shakes and the Arbor Inn and the Shamrock for drinking. Buddy Raft and T.J. had a terrible accident after leaving the Shamrock, last Christmas they said, Buddy was killed. Funny to think of him dead. Fat, round, always boozing but he was really sweet, he was frightened I think, that's why he acted like such a bully sometimes. But he was always sweet to me, I think he liked me. He never asked me out though but that was just as well it would have been embarrassing I would have had to say no, I couldn't have brought myself to go out with him imagine kissing him ugh! But now he's dead it's so sad. And Penny's brother too, his convertible turned over on the New Jersey Turnpike, Penny's mother was in a sanitarium someplace, they stuck Penny in some fancy boarding school in Switzerland, but she ran away. The postcard she sent me was from Paris, I wonder if she's there all alone god I'd be terrified.
And I had a letter from Jane Selby too, I have good friends, I love my friends, she hates being back in Iowa, she wants to come to New York and get an apartment with me I'd be scared and Mother wouldn't like it but maybe who knows. Her parents won't let her go but she says after she's twenty-one in September that's just next month she can and will do as she likes. That's exactly what she wrote: “As soon as I'm twenty-one, I can and will do as I like.” She's got nerve, she's terrific. Her brother should be finishing West Point soon, time I went up there with her, gala weekend, blind date for her brother, a dance no a ball Saturday night and riding the next day, that was fun, I had a ball, it was such a beautiful place, and the ball, all those uniforms, it was like a movie. She was so sure he'd like me, I thought he did but then I never heard from him. Jane said he was failing physics she said if I wrote him not to mention that he'd be embarrassed that she told me. She said he had to cram so that was why. But I couldn't write to him if he didn't write to me, I just wouldn't do that. Anyway, he's had plenty of time to write and he hasn't, the gala weekend was last April, a long time ago, six months nearly. And it's summer and they don't have to take physics in summer do they? I wonder if they get a vacation, I should have asked him, I was so nervous with him, he's so much older than me, he's been in the army and everything, that's why he's still in college even though he's twenty-four, he enlisted and then the war ended, he was really disappointed Jane said but then they sent him to Korea there was another war there too but then he got into West Point so he was really happy. He has a wonderful name, Justin. Unusual.
Yes he was nice, all of them are nice but it's not the same, I just don't feel the same way about them. Maybe I never will, my whole life long, maybe that's my fate, could that be? Kitty and Ted, going together since sophomore year and they're going to get married as soon as Ted finishes school Georgia Tech, and both their families are happy about it, they like the other one, of course Kitty's father is rich too. Not rich rich, like Whit's family, but pretty rich, they have a maid and that nice house. And Linda too, pinned to John Burton that she met at college, he was a senior, but he's only four years older that's not too much, it's just right. They're going to get married at Christmas. Kitty has to wait two years but they've been going together so long I suppose it doesn't matter. They'll both be married then. Who knows, Whit might be too.
She wiped her wet face with the end of the sheet, then shook her head, got up and went into the bathroom, pulled a long string of toilet paper from the roll and blew her nose over and over. She dropped the sodden wad into the toilet and flushed it. But her mouth was wobbly and she felt she might be sick, so she bent over the sink and took handfuls of cold water and sipped it, then she cooled her face with it.
She went back to her room, stopped to light another cigarette, and climbed into the damp rumpled bed. The last time it was June, finals week, she couldn't study, couldn't concentrate. That's why her marksâ¦His school must have let out earlier than the public schools. He looked the same but not the same. His face was the same except a light had gone out in him. He said “Hi Joy” but his eyes stayed pale, the light didn't go on in them the way they used to when they saw her. And his body didn't look as if it wanted to move toward her and she had to hold her own body back so it wouldn't embarrass her. She knew she'd known for a long time. Still, to know something is one thing, and to see it is another. To see it right in front of you, to feel itâ¦.
That time she didn't know what to do, she felt so terrible. Her friends all talked about their boyfriends even when they hurt them but she never talked to anyone about Whit not even when they were together in their sophomore year he and she always together, people talked about them because they were always together. Sometimes they held hands but they didn't make a show of things the way some of the kids did Betty Brower and Bill Binns always with their arms around each other he six feet she five feet tall so that everyone laughed at them but it was kind laughter it made them feel important they thought they were cute and they were even if they were always kissing for an audience. Whit was tall too and she was short but not as short as Betty Brower but they didn't hang on each other that way. They walked quietly side by side.
They were quiet and private. They hardly even talked very much. They talked a little they laughed at things but mostly they just looked at each other their beings tremulous like tiny hairs trembling in a faint wind Whit's eyes so blue just the same color as hers identical eyes everyone said. They saw their own eyes in each other. “They can do anything they want,” Whit had said, “but they can't separate us they can't make me forget you.” And he had written her every week for the first few months he was at Concord. It was after Christmas that he changed, what happened? Because he came over at Christmas, they went out for long walks together, they were the same, even more so, they said they would love each other forever, that nothing could come between them. He had to sneak out of the house, he had to lie, he hated it, he was near tears sometimes, he said they made him feel like a kid or a prisoner the way they kept after him. And Mother always said hello to him so politely as if it wasn't a surprise to see him, as if nothing had happened, maybe she didn't know anything had, she didn't notice, she wasn't interested. She wouldn't understand, that could never happen to her, Daddy bends over backward to please herâ¦.
Then they took him away skiing, yes, someplace in Iowa or Idaho, and she didn't see him again that vacation and after that he didn't write so often and his letters didn't have the same feeling. And when he wrote in May he said they were going to Maine for the summer and he wouldn't be in Rockville Centre at all but she knew that wasn't true, he had to come home to get his summer clothes and to leave his books and things from school. And that was his last letter.