Superior Women (2 page)

George asks, “All through?” His voice catches.

Mid-seat they collide, then, their mouths, arms, breasts, and hands and legs all wildly seeking each other out. (The genital sources of all this passion are oddly ignored, not touched, only mashed together violently, through clothes.) “Kissing” is what both Megan and George Wharton think of themselves as doing, or “necking,” that being the totally unspecific term then in use. They are kissing, their mouths devouringly open to each other, his tongue in her mouth, probing and tasting as she tastes his, his sexual tastes
of cigarettes and beer, hers of summer fruits and toothpaste and beer.

Although they reach many climaxes, both of them, in the course of those hours of kissing and straining together, that first night—and God knows how many climaxes in the course of the weeks that they spend in that way, every night—those spasms are in a curious way passed over, made nothing of. George is ashamed: surely he is not supposed to be doing this with a girl, it is probably worse than doing it with your hand, in the shower. And Megan is similarly ignorant; the orgasm is the one part of the sexual act that no one has told her about, in terms of women; she has been vaguely told that “receiving seeds” is pleasurable, but in some unspecified way. Men “ejaculate,” women “receive.” Thus she is allowed to believe that she and George are kissing, are necking—neither of which is necessarily related to “sexual intercourse.”

It is only a six-week chemistry course that George is taking, and then he is going back to Boston; he will spend the rest of the summer with his parents and brothers at their place on Cape Cod, “the Cape.” Sailing, swimming, “clamming.” Resting up for med school. To Megan it all sounds remote and glamorous, a movie about people in white flannel suits and yachting hats. Mostly it sounds most painfully distant from her, from California. She is sure that George will not write to her; in a way she does not even expect him to. But the pit of her stomach twists at the thought, the imminence of his departure.

It does not occur to her, as it might to some other girl (surely it would occur to Lavinia, later one of Megan’s most important friends), that he could invite her to visit, to meet his family. Learn to sail. To “clam.”

“I’m not much on writing letters,” George quite unnecessarily says, on their last night together. Again, they are parked up on Page Mill Road.

Megan has determined not to cry, a resolve of steel, and she is not going to say anything silly, any high school stuff about love.

And she manages; she even jokes, “Maybe postcards?”

George laughs, very pleased with her: had he been afraid that she would cry, or make some dumb demand? He says, “Terrific, I’ll send you a postcard.” And then, out of many impulses, innate good manners among them probably, he says, “Megan, you don’t know what a difference knowing you has made, this summer. You are absolutely the greatest girl—” He breaks off, having gone as far as he can, and maybe farther.

They fall to kissing again. His large hands, now experienced, reach up under her bra, touch her breasts, hard nipples. He does not touch her under her pants.

Clutching each other, they writhe and twist and strain together, thighs and legs entwined, sweat and sexual secretions wetting them everywhere.

They are kissing, they are necking in a car. They are not “going all the way.”

You are absolutely the greatest girl.
Those words, in George’s often-hoarse, flat-voweled, and still (to Megan) exotic voice, form her winter treasure, a record that she plays and replays. It is an accompaniment to her memories of “kissing.”

But, greatest in what way, did he mean? Sexiest, she is fairly sure that he must have meant that; she thinks he has not kissed many other girls. But is that good, is it good to be sexy? Or is there something seriously wrong with her, called nymphomania?

Or, did he possibly also mean nice, or smart, or even pretty? There was, certainly, a note of regret in his words, but regret for what? For the end of their summer time together, or for not being able to say more?

Did
he love her?

Rounding any corner in Palo Alto, Megan imagines seeing George, with his narrow sea-blue eyes, his tall strong body, just slightly stooped. His shy New England grin. There he would be,
and he would say something really silly, like
Surprise.
And then he would say, even sillier, “I had to see you, I couldn’t stand another day or night without you. I love you.”

No postcards, nothing at all until December, and then there is one, mailed in care of the Stanford Bookstore, that is signed, “Your old friend, George Wharton.” No salutation, just beginning: “Remember me? Med school is really keeping my nose in the books. I hope you are well. I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Your old friend, George Wharton.”

The picture on the other side is of a dormitory, where he must live. Longwood Avenue, in Boston.

Not much to go on. Still, there is the fact of his having sent a card at all. Not having forgotten who she is.

Megan thinks about George all the time: while studying and getting straight A’s, while walking and swimming a lot and trying not to eat; while parked and necking up in their place on Page Mill Road with some boy from her high school (in that slightly odd way, she is being true to George).

“Rad-cliffe?” says Florence Greene, mother of Megan; giving the two syllables equal stress, she has made the word bizarre. Thin, bleached-blond Florence does not look old enough to be Megan’s mother.

Megan moves restlessly through the dingy, antimacassared living room of the small house that George Wharton never entered—but where, in the early morning hours, he often let her off: her girl friend was recovering from “an operation,” Megan was staying on with her, “helping out.”

“You noticed that new drive-in, a couple of blocks from here, out on the Bayshore?” now asks Florence.

“Uh, sort of.” She and George once had hamburgers there; Megan recalls how they gobbled, so famished, after so much kissing.

“They’re hiring,” says Florence. “I’m really thinking I could get
me a job there. They’ve got these real cute uniforms.” Megan believes that her mother talks this way on purpose to irritate and embarrass her; after all, back in Iowa Florence taught school, before the Depression took her job and she and Harry came to California and started in with Junque. When Megan was younger, for a long time she refused to believe that Florence was her mother.

“Oh
Mother
,” Megan now says—a frequent response to Florence. She has instantly imagined her mother coming up to their car, as a carhop. Coming up to George’s Model A and—oh Jesus, what could she say? “Jesus, Mother.”

At which Florence flares up. “Don’t swear at me! You know you’re just like your father, when it comes to me. Why shouldn’t I get a job like that? You’re both big snobs, that’s what you are. Look, you want to go to Rad-cliffe, you go there, if you can get yourself a scholarship, to add to that money your granddaddy left for your college. And I want to be a carhop. I’m tired of that dirty store. Tired of being broke all the time. I want to
work.
And I want to wear something
cute.
”

One of the things that Megan spends the second half of the winter doing is trying to answer George’s postcard. Not that it needed an answer, she knew that, but she wanted to remind him of herself, and she wanted to sound light and lovable, not a fat girl who is seriously in love. She scribbles message after message on various scratch pads, and then on a variety of unsent Christmas cards. It always comes out wrong, whatever she says.

At last she writes what is a probably unconscious imitation of the very card that she got from him. Including no salutation. “Guess what: Radcliffe has decided to accept me and I start in June. Will live in Bertram Hall. Hope to see you sometime. Your friend, Megan Greene.”

On the reverse side there is a picture of the Stanford Bookstore.

June 1943. Freshman Orientation Week is dizzying for Megan, in that heady bright New England air. Very much alone, and feeling herself to be a foreigner, a Californian, a hick, she looks and watches and absorbs. She smells new grass and hears old church bells, she observes strange buildings. And everywhere she sees new, alluring faces. Interesting clothes. And she thinks obsessively of George, now only a few miles away.

This is the week when Megan first sees what she takes to be a trio of old, close friends: Lavinia, Cathy, and Peg, in the smoking room on the third floor of Cabot Hall. They all look so Eastern, those three; Megan is powerfully drawn to them. Megan, in her denim skirt and shirt, California clothes, has been talking to a small, dark, rather nearsighted but pretty girl named Janet Cohen; they have exchanged names along with certain other information about each other. Janet is “practically engaged” to a boy who is in the army, somewhere in the South Pacific. His name is Adam Marr; he is a writer, a genius, probably, but Janet’s parents can’t stand him. Her mother cries when Janet goes out with Adam. Janet sighs, as Megan thinks how pretty she is, how enviably small—and how even more enviable is the declared fiancé. Janet seems very smart; Megan likes her already, she thinks.

And then, as they are talking, the tall Eastern trio comes in: Lavinia, in a white quilted satin robe, the lace just slightly bedraggled (a somehow endearing touch, that lace). She is laughing softly, with Peg and Cathy. Big Peg in blue chenille, Cathy in a tailored dark red flannel robe, white lotion dabbed on her face, her brown-black hair in pin curls.

Glancing over at Megan and Janet, Lavinia gives the tiniest, slightest frown, one of her most characteristic gestures. At the time, Megan is not entirely sure who has earned that negative response, she or Janet, and why? Was it simply the fact of their presence?

•     •     •

Later she will ask her close friend Lavinia, “But why don’t you like Janet?”

The famous frown. “Oh, I don’t know. She’s just so—so Jewish.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Megan’s voice is tight.

Lavinia laughs. “Megan, Megan, you’re such a California innocent. If you’d ever lived in a big city where there’re lots of them, you’d
know.
”

Megan experiences the total frustration that comes of knowing you are right, but being for whatever reasons unable to argue. Lavinia’s flawless sophistication, which is incredibly impressive in a girl of seventeen, makes Megan feel simple and silly. Lavinia is from Washington, D.C. She knows everything.

In the smoking room at Cabot, that first night, on the other side of the room Lavinia (no longer frowning; they come and go quickly, those little frowns) and Peg and Cathy go on with whatever they were talking and laughing about.

As Megan says to Janet, “There was this boy, I knew him last summer. He was taking a chem lab course at Stanford. He’s at Harvard Med. I really like him, I guess, and I sent him a postcard, but I said I’d be in Bertram. I didn’t know about Cabot, for this week. And it’s four more days. I just don’t know—”

“Well, if I loved him I’d certainly call him,” says valiant Janet, who loves Adam Marr.

“Really, do you think so?” Megan is breathless at the very idea of calling George.

“Well, sure. But maybe wait until you move to Bertram. That way if you have to leave a message it won’t sound confused.”

Wonderful, practical Janet. Very smart indeed. Who goes on to say, “I know it’s hard to wait, sometimes.”

The sound of laughter from across the room has reached a higher pitch, and Megan imagines that they are talking about sex, sharing confidences, maybe. Gradually it dies down, those mingled laughs, and from the diminishing sounds one voice emerges, such
a light and pretty voice that it must belong to the blond one, Lavinia, who says, “Well, the truth is I’m just terribly frustrated.”

“
George
!” At the sound of his voice, having left her message and then waited four days for his call, all Megan’s plans for cool control collapse; her
George
could be heard all over Bertram Hall.

At his end, presumably the med school dormitory, George chuckles. “God, you sound terrific,” he says to Megan. “Are you liking it here? You like Cambridge?”

“Oh, it’s fantastic. I’m absolutely crazy about it, it’s wonderful—”

Another chuckle. “Well, I’m glad. It’s a town I’ve always liked, especially there around the Square. But say, do they let you out at night? Could you come out for a beer?”

“Oh sure, I’d
love
to.” So much for being coolly casual. Blasé. Sophisticated.

George, in army khakis, is something of a surprise. Unused to each other, in new surroundings, he and Megan sit facing each other in a booth in the Oxford Grill; two beers sit on the table between them, and a large wine bottle covered with candle drippings, years of multicolored wax, just now topped with a large red candle. Megan has not seen this done before, and she imagines it to have been accidental.

George still likes her. Megan can tell by his eyes and his smile, as he looks across at her; when he says, “Gosh, you really look great!” she can almost feel that love has been declared.

He tells her how busy he is in med school, how really hard they have to work just to keep up, not to mention his wanting to do really well. Last summer he had told her that his father and grandfather and his great-grandfather all were doctors, and now the weight of this reaches her, the pressure he must feel as fourth in line, generations of distinguished Boston doctors. No wonder he is paler and thinner now, the bony line of his jaw yet more pronounced.

Because of gas rationing George has taken the subway over from
Boston; leaving the O.G. (as Megan is quick to learn to call it) they walk very slowly, in the gentle June dark. Earlier he asked what time she had to be in, and Megan airily told him, “Oh, any time before midnight.”

“Well, I call that really liberal,” was George’s comment.

Megan did not tell him that she had to ask for a special permission, with a lie about a friend’s brother on his way overseas.

They are not heading toward the Radcliffe dorms, she notices, but are going in an opposite direction. They reach a boulevard which she knows to be Memorial Drive, beside the river, the Charles. They cross the street. Traffic is light, no one speeding. On the river bank George begins to talk in a nervous way about rowing, “crew,” one of his favorite undergraduate pastimes, he tells her. Megan is reminded of their first drive together, from the Stanford bookstore out to Rossi’s, George going on and on about his car.