Superior Women (8 page)

•     •     •

No word from Gordon, not that day or the next, and then vacation is over, and everyone is back. Lavinia tells all her friends that Gordon has been restricted, such a bore.

She admits to herself that she is suffering, and admits it to no one else, of course not. She is in actual pain, and it takes all her tricks of makeup, eye cream, and varieties of powder, not to let it show. When Megan was suffering most over George Wharton, she used to slop around in her Levi’s and a torn old sweater, no makeup, her broken heart all over her silly fat face. (But Lavinia really likes Megan, the little fool. She will never tell Megan about Connie Winsor; Megan will find out for herself, and Lavinia will be as comforting as she can. She has even thought of introducing Megan to one of Gordon’s friends, maybe Potter?—but then Megan is so—so fat, and her clothes are never right.)

And how ridiculous all this
love
is, Lavinia concludes. She is deeply contemptuous of her own pain, as she was of Megan’s; she is aware of being extremely foolish, she knows. “Love,” finally, turns out to have no meaning at all. Harvey was madly in love with her, and she was (she is) madly in love with Gordon, who (quite possibly) still loves Marge. And Megan is in love with George, who is practically engaged to Connie Winsor.

Nevertheless, she will not allow Gordon to drift off from her like that, or whatever it is that he imagines himself to be doing.

She sends him a telegram, at Eliot House. “Please meet me at St. Clair’s for tea at four on Thursday.”

Lavinia, in her softest sweater, looks fragile, delicately bruised, rather than accusatory. And she speaks very softly. “I just wanted to see you again,” she says. “I missed you, and I wondered.”

“Ah, Lavinia, you’re too good and beautiful for me, I always knew it. And there’s things, things with my family, friends of my family. Things you’d never understand.”

Smiling sadly, “understandingly,” Lavinia is at the same time thinking how
Irish
he sounds; God, almost a brogue. She says, “You mean your family won’t approve of me? Of us?”

“Well, that’s a hard way to put it, but you could say that, you could indeed. But Lavinia, when I see you I only know that I love you. Ah, beautiful Lavinia—”

Dear God, is he going to cry? The cheap lower-class mick. “I love you too,” she says.

Gordon leans toward her, and there are indeed tears in his eyes. “Besides,” he says, “no one’s supposed to know this, but we’re shipping out next week.”

“Shipping out?” For a moment sheer panic makes it hard for Lavinia to breathe. A second later, though, she is able to wonder just what it is that she fears: his being away? being killed?

“Yes, just for a practice cruise. On the
Enterprise.
” He looks at his watch. “Look, I have to get back now. I’m on duty. But I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll see each other for sure. I have to see you.”

Gordon does not call, not that day or the next. Lavinia continues to keep herself looking beautiful, and to say that Gordon is restricted, on duty—as she feels her thin blood blacken with rage and pain.

Only to Peg does she confide that Gordon is shipping out, and only that; she does not mention not hearing from him. “Oh Peg, I’m so frightened! I don’t know what to do.”

“Poor little Lavinia—oh, poor thing! But you mustn’t worry, Gordon will come back safe and sound to you. No one gets hurt on a practice cruise. And in the meantime, would you like a nice back rub?”

“Oh Peg, you’re so nice. Whatever would I do without you?”

Big kind Peg, whom Lavinia secretly suspects of being a lesbian.

At last, beneath Peg’s big strong clumsy well-meaning hands, Lavinia allows herself to cry.

•     •     •

A week later, on board the
Enterprise,
on the trial cruise, Gordon Shaughnessey dies of a burst appendix. Only the circumstance of its happening on an aircraft carrier makes it seem a military death.

By early spring of that year, 1944, the four friends have divided themselves into twos; it is now Lavinia and Peg who are always together, and Megan and Cathy. By everyone else the four are still perceived as a group (to which Megan was once so eager, so desperate to belong), and they are still friends; there has been no falling out. But Megan, for example, has spent no time alone with Lavinia, has had no private conversations with her since Christmas vacation; nor have Cathy and Lavinia spent any time together. Cathy and Peg were never more than friends of friends, and so it is less remarkable that they have hardly talked; they never really did. All in all there has been a distinct change, though, in the four-way relationship.

Undoubtedly the death of Gordon Shaughnessey had something to do with this new patterning. Since that happened Lavinia has spent even more time with Peg; they go to movies in Boston, even out to dinner together. It is as though Lavinia were newly widowed, and being cared for by her friend.

Megan and Cathy find it interesting to talk about.

“It’s very strange,” Megan says, one morning in Hood’s, between bites of bran muffin, sips of coffee. “It’s as though in some way she’s happier now; she’d almost rather be going to matinees with Peg than waiting around for Gordon, the way she did all last fall.”

“I know what you mean.” Generally Cathy simply listens and agrees, she is not inclined to put forward theories of her own. But sometimes there is a sharp thrust to her observations. “Lavinia
does everything in such a beautiful, ladylike way,” she now says. “And ‘war widow’ is an especially good thing for her to do.”

They laugh, and Megan agrees, “Oh
yes.
” She enjoys Cathy so much, she finds Cathy so very bright, and funny. She adds, “Lavinia is a terrific widow, one of the prettiest and youngest around the Square.”

They laugh again, until at the same moment the possible unfunniness of being a war widow strikes them both, in a sobering way. But they do not express this perception to each other; they never talk about the war. It isn’t funny.

“And Peg is the perfect comforting friend.” Megan carries it on, in their usual tone. “Peg’s not going to like it when Lavinia gets tired of being a widow and starts going out again.” Some time ago Megan faced the fact that she just does not care much for Peg, jolly noisy old good-hearted Peg.

“Oh, you’re so right,” agrees Cathy. “This is the best time of all for Peg.”

Megan is aware that envy, sheer unacceptable and generally inadmissible envy, is making her more malicious toward Lavinia than she should be. Whatever was going on between Lavinia and Gordon (and Megan sometimes caught a vague sense that Lavinia was not quite as “sure of him” as she sounded), it is probably easier to bear a lover’s death than his living absence in your life, which is the case with Megan, who now hears from George Wharton perhaps once a month. One beer at the Oxford Grill and then some furious necking, somewhere, and then a miserable month or so of silence. Megan has wished that George were dead; if he were dead she would behave much better, she is sure. “I’m surprised Lavinia isn’t wearing black,” she now says, quite viciously, to Cathy.

Cathy looks at her and giggles, as in a somewhat academic way she says, “Actually in some cultures white is the mourning color. And she is wearing mostly white these days, if you’ll notice.”

“God, what she must spend on clothes.” This remark does not make Megan feel guilty: it is okay to envy someone’s large clothes allowance, whereas it is certainly not okay to envy the death of a friend’s lover.

Cathy suddenly giggles again, clearly at some random thought, as she asks, “Did you ever read those really old books about girls’ boarding schools? Grace Harlow or someone? There were a lot of them at a resort we used to go to. Anyway, there were always four girls. One beautiful and rich and wicked, and one big and fat and jolly. That’s Lavinia and Peg, of course.”

“I’m not the big jolly one?” Megan asks, somewhat anxiously.

“You’re not so jolly. And Peg is much bigger than you are.”

“Well, thanks.”

Cathy goes on. “I’m not too clear about the other two. I think one was poor and virtuous and the other one was very smart, or some combination like that.”

Megan laughs. “Well, I’m poor and you’re virtuous, and God knows both of us are smart, so I guess it’ll work out all right?”

“I guess. But is Lavinia wicked, really?”

In a speculative way they regard each other, and then, again, they both begin to laugh. Later Megan wonders: was Cathy thinking of the four girls in those books when she said that it would be better if there were four of them?

One of the things that Megan thinks about a lot, that spring, is her own virginity, her “virtue.” Despite all that violent necking with George, she is still technically a virgin; hands don’t count.

“Technical virgin” is a favorite phrase of Janet Cohen’s, with whom Megan has continued to be friends. “All those technical virgins from Cabot Hall,” Janet will say, indicating an especially good-looking, mostly blond, and handsomely dressed group of girls, who all live in Cabot Hall.

Uncertain as to her exact meaning, Megan cannot quite ask; she is forced to conclude, on her own, that the phrase could apply to herself; she herself is someone who has gone “almost all the way.” But does that mean that Janet and Adam Marr really do it, go all the way? She supposes that it must; they would surely feel that real sex is more honest.

Megan wonders: should she and George have done it? Would he then have loved her, and taken her to the Cape, sailing, meeting
his parents? Would he have said that he loved her? Megan believes that Janet is right; actually doing it would have been more honest, and somehow cleaner.

That winter, curiously, there was also a lot of talk about virginity in Megan’s Criticism of Poetry class. It came up particularly in discussions of Donne, and the sexual symbolism in the religious poetry: “I never shall be chaste, unless you ravish me.” And then, when they got to Auden, there was the difficult “distortions of ingrown virginity.”
Well.

The professor, a dark, very pale-skinned man, almost luminous with intensity, had an odd gesture: with both hands stiffly outstretched before him, in a sudden motion he would dip them down, like opposing wings; he did this often, as he spoke of Donne. He talked about “the breaking through of virginity into wholeness,” a phrase that resounded in Megan’s eagerly receptive mind. Breaking through, virginity into wholeness.

Walking back along Garden Street to the Radcliffe dorms, in the wild blue air of a New England spring, Megan decides that what she and George have been doing is really dirty: perverted, wrong. All that squirming around together, tugging inside constricting clothes, pretending just to kiss. She decides that the next time she sees George they will go all the way. They will “do it.”

However, as she crosses Cambridge Common, past the benches of young wives, some with babies or little children, others pregnant, Megan then begins to think of practicalities: just how will she go about altering their usual procedures, especially if George really does not want to do it? As she thinks of it, he is the one who has remained untouched; she has never touched him there, touched his, uh, thing. He is always fully clothed, his khakis firmly zipped. Whereas lately, desperately, Megan has left off wearing a panty girdle; she bought herself some open-legged silk panties, to be worn with a garter belt, the sort that Lavinia wears, so that he can more easily touch her. There. How possibly could she be more available, should he want to enter her? Does she have to reach for him, unzip and grab? Can men be raped?

She smiles to herself, at that thought, and then she thinks, Well, maybe George just isn’t the one. But I have to stop being a virgin. A technical virgin.

Arrived back at the Radcliffe quad, and approaching Barnard Hall, Megan sees a man in khakis, a soldier, sitting on the front steps, and for an instant her silly heart leaps up at the thought that it could be George.

It is not George, of course, but someone smaller and thinner and far messier than George could ever be. Light brown curly hair, a big nose, thin face, and large, intense blue eyes. A face, in fact, that Megan recognizes, having so often seen its picture, on Janet Cohen’s bureau. Without thinking, Megan says, “Oh! You’re Adam Marr!” A severe infection on his left foot has brought Adam home from the Pacific.

“You want my autograph?” This comes in an exaggerated Brooklyn accent, with an Irish grin.

“Oh. I’m, uh, a friend of Janet’s. Megan Greene.” Abashed, Megan has muttered her name.

But Adam caught it. “Well, Megan Greene.” He looks her over, as Megan stares at his eyes. She is thinking that she has never before, on anyone, seen such a hot, hot blue; he has literally burning eyes.

Still not getting up, still looking at her, hard, Adam Marr then pronounces, “You know, Megan Greene—by the way, I like your name, are you going to be a writer?—if you’d take off a few pounds, you’d be one terrific tomato.”

He has a fairly deep, very attractive voice; the voice and the grin combine to make what he has just said inoffensive, so that Megan is more pleased than not. She is flattered, actually, at the attention being paid her.

She says, “I guess. I mean, I know I should lose some weight.”

“Yeah. Shed the baby fat along with the cherry.” Adam has said this in, again, a burlesque Brooklynese, and then, somewhat jarringly, he continues in what Megan has learned to recognize as
“Harvard.” “But actually,” he says, “it’s nice to see a few young virgins around these days.” The grin appears and remains.

How can he tell, though; does it show, her “ingrown virginity?” Would he say such a thing to Lavinia? (Lavinia too is still a virgin, Megan is sure.) Wondering, and blushing, Megan is at the same time thinking that Adam Marr’s eyes are very sexy; he is an exceptionally sexy-looking boy—young man. Of course he and Janet do it. They go all the way. Make love.

“Well, I guess Janet will be along soon,” Megan manages to say. “I’d better go in and check my mail.”

“Okay. See you later, Megan Greene.”

“Well. Bye.” He is somehow hard to leave, perhaps because he continues to look at her, in his particular way. Megan feels herself transfixed there, but at last she does walk past him, faintly smiling, and she pushes open the front door.