Tell Me If the Lovers Are Losers (16 page)

Niki ran up. “What appointment? What happened? Are you OK?” She looked at Ann, then at Hildy. “You didn't see how close you were, did you?” Niki asked quietly.

“I have already given Ann my word that I will go,” Hildy said.

“Why will you do it when Ann tells you and not me?” asked Niki.

“She was so very angry. She swore at me.”

“Hell, if I'd known that would work, I'd have done it long before,” Niki said.

“It is not the same for you,” Hildy answered.

Niki grunted. And grinned. “All's well that ends well?” she suggested. “Except, both of you are wet and shivering.” She jabbed Ann in the shoulder with her finger. “You're it,” she declared, and ran away.

“I don't want—” Ann protested. Then she quickly reached out for Hildy, before the blonde girl could realize the game; but Hildy had swept away and was running back toward their empty lunch boxes.

They played a senseless and exhausting game of tag until they all sat, flushed with heat, beside the creek.

“I don't know about you,” Niki said, “but that makes me feel better. I got a letter from my dad this morning,” she announced without transition. “It seems I may have a stepmother. Replete with three ugly step-siblings. I've never thought of myself as the Cinderella type.”

Ann grinned. Hildy spoke from Niki's opposite side. “Will he marry her?”

Niki shrugged. “It's none of my business. Only she's not as young as we thought. I figured it out and she can't be. The youngest she can be is twenty-six because her oldest kid is ten. Her husband is a barber, Dad says. They want to go to Acapulco during Christmas to get her a divorce. Among other things. He didn't exactly say he was going to marry her, but it's in the cards.”

“You haven't even met her,” Ann said.

“Don't think I want to.” Niki let another handful of pebbles slide back into the icy water.

“Would he marry someone you haven't met?” Ann asked.

“He thinks I won't like her. He hasn't said so, but it's pretty clear. I mean, I'm not invited to Acapulco.”

“What'll you do over Christmas?” Ann asked.

“Who knows? I've got a couple of friends in New York. Let me ask you, both of you, don't you think eighteen is the right time to lose your virginity?”

“What? Why?” Ann said.

“I've got a feeling. If you hang onto it, it gets to be a bigger and bigger problem. Lots of women aren't virgins before eighteen—Kinsey made that clear enough. Eighteen is well away time to learn what it's like, sex. If you don't want sex to take over your life. I mean, I want a lot of it, I expect I will, but not to tie me down. Hildy? What do you think?”

“I think this woman of your father's is married now. While he is taking her out. Is that so?”

“Sure. What does that matter? Before or after, what's the difference?”

“What of her husband?” Hildy asked.

“Dad says he's stupid.”

Niki thought, “That could mean anything,” she went on. “It could mean he's a failure. Or slow-witted. Or that he works hard and is the reliable sort. Or just that he doesn't like Dad.”

“I can understand
that,”
Ann said. “What does your father think you're supposed to do?”

“He doesn't,” Niki said. “I'm on my own.”

“They are adulterous,” Hildy said, in continuation of her own thoughts.

“Root word adult, as in consenting adults,” Niki responded.

“That is wrong,” Hildy said.

“Spare me the fundamentalism.” Niki dismissed her. “My problem is more immediate.”

Ann felt sorry for Niki. “Come home with me,” she said. Then she felt sorry for herself.

Niki shook her head. “Your mother would have fits. It's a bitch of a problem.”

“Hildy could come too.”

“And we could continue our gay camaraderie unabated through the entire year? No thanks, Annie, it's not my idea of a vacation.”

“You should not let him do this,” Hildy said. “He is your father and you are responsible for him.”

Niki's laugh contained no mirth. “You've got it backwards. He's responsible for me.”

“As you say, you are on your own, and he has permitted this. You should stop him.”

“How? I've played my ace. As far he's concerned, I can go live with my mother. He said I'd like her, Letitia—
Letitia,
can you believe it?—when I got to know her That's the kiss of death.”

“He holds his soul in jeopardy,” Hildy said.

Niki looked at her. “Yes, I think maybe. But not in the way you mean.”

“That doesn't matter, does it?” Hildy answered.

“Oh, I hope not,” Niki said. “But—what can I do?”

“Go and stop him.”

“You know, you're right.” Niki stood up and stretched. “I'd have a couple of days with him before they're scheduled to leave. Maybe I'll try it. Although what the hell I'll say I don't know.”

“You'll think of something,” Ann remarked.

“Yeah, I will, won't I? Right as always, Hildy, and you too, Annie. Right as always. I owe it to him to try at least. He's taken some trouble over me, in his day.”

“Maybe she'll be nice,” Ann said. “Maybe you'll like her when you meet her.”

“More likely, maybe she'll be after his money and I can explain how it's not as much as she thinks it is and a lot tied up in a tidy little trust for me.”

Niki walked away, upstream. She kicked at stones as she went.

“I meant that about Christmas, Hildy,” Ann said. “I'd like it if you would come home with me.”

“I know,” Hildy said.

“Think about it, OK? I've got to check it with my mother first, of course, but I'm pretty sure you'll like her.”

“And she'll like me?”

“Of course.”

“She did not like Niki?”

Ann shook her head.

“And you, do you like Niki?”

“I haven't thought about it,” Ann answered. “Not recently at least. We're getting along all right, all of us. Why? Do you?”

“Of course.”

“Sometimes she embarrasses me. Sometimes she's pretty funny. Sometimes she makes me angry. Sometimes she scares me. I don't know. I haven't thought about liking her. I'm kept busy living with her.”

“Niki dares much.”

“I think she plays it safe,” Ann said. “In a backwards way, that's just what she does.”

“No,” Hildy said. They were silent.

Evening was drawing in when they returned to their bicycles. Hildy asked if Ann and Niki would like to come to the observatory with her. “Saturn will be visible,” she offered them.

Niki refused, saying she was going to make a call to New York. Ann thought it sounded beautiful, Saturn surrounded by its blazing rings.

Niki rode off fast, pedaling to gain all possible momentum for the roller coaster return. She waved a rodeo rider's hand as she disappeared around a sharp curve. Ann kept Hildy right behind her and held them to a carefully controlled speed. Hildy did not protest.

Hildy went to an optometrist late the next afternoon. When she returned, her pupils were dilated but her step did not waver. She seemed unexcited by the experience, although perhaps a little amused. “He was first angry,” she said. “But not at me, I think. He says what you say, that I cannot see. I asked him then,
What is it I have been doing all my life?
He stopped being angry and became curious. I am a challenge he says.”

“Why?” Ann asked.

“He says there are so many things wrong about my eyes.”

Niki tried to peer closely at Hildy's eyes, to descry the flaws.

“You cannot see it, he said. He said astigmatic in both eyes. It is so serious for me because of the other flaws, which cause one eye to be nearsighted, the other farsighted. He said that he will have the glasses ready on Friday, because I am in mortal danger until I get them.”

“I'll vouch for that,” Ann remarked. “Can glasses correct the errors?”

“Big glasses,” Hildy said. “Thick glasses.” She was silent.

Ann tried to reassure her. “You'll look fine in them.”

“What does that matter?” Hildy said. “I was remembering. As I left he said that my eyes looked perfect to him. He said he was sorry to say I must have glasses. Isn't that strange?”

“No,” Niki said.

“So I told him if he would write a note to my roommates that I was all right, I would not need them. And he put me in his car and drove me here. So that is done.”

“When do you get the glasses?” Ann asked.

“Friday at four.”

“Then I won't see them until Sunday when I get back. You
won't schedule a game for the weekend, will you? Remember, I have to go home—it's my father's birthday.”

“Our only match this week is Thursday,” Niki said. “No problem.”

“No bike riding until you get the glasses. OK, Hildy?” Ann asked. Hildy nodded meekly, but spoke softly to herself as she lay down on her bed.

“What?” Ann asked.

“Nothing. Nothing. How old is your father to be?”

“Fifty-four.”

Niki joined in. “That's not young.”

“No. So what?”

Niki shrugged. “I just thought. People, when they get older, into their thirties, they don't want the inconvenience of small children. I just thought that.”

“I've got a younger brother too,” Ann said.

“What's he like, your father?” Niki asked.

This time Ann shrugged. “I don't know. He's strict. He's conservative. He's a pretty good lawyer, I think. He doesn't care anything about art or literature. Cultural stuff. He says he lets Mother dabble in all that. We don't have these incredible father-daughter talks. I don't tell him—you know, we're not intimate. I mean, what does he need to know about my first menstrual period, say, or Greek verbs? He's busy. We get along OK. I like him.” She thought. “I don't know him well. Not nearly as well as I should, do I?”

“What's it matter,” Niki asked.

“Do you know your father, Hildy?”

“I have worked beside him. He has taught me patiently. But as a man—no, I do not know him, and that is proper. He is my father.”

“He's just a human being, like every other,” Niki argued.

“His seed made me. His blood flows in my veins. His work feeds me, clothes me, shelters me. How am I to think of him as I do other people?”

“Do you like him?” Ann wondered.

“We work well together, my father and I.”

♦   ♦   ♦

Their second sophomore match went smoothly. Ann played the first game, Eloise the second. Watching, Ann could see a coordination in her team that she was not aware of when she
was playing within it. Most of the crowd at this match rooted for the freshmen, although a few partisan sophomores hooted, jeered, and called out to their own team, praising and pushing them on. The gym walls echoed the spectators' enthusiasms, magnifying them.

Miss Dennis slipped onto the bench beside Ann during the second game. She did not take off her heavy jacket, although Ann offered to help her. “This game will not last long,” she said. “You won the first, didn't you?”

“Fifteen—eight.”

Ann was too constrained by the Munchkin's presence to shriek eagerly, as she would have, say, when Sarah rose to spike a ball. Miss Dennis applauded a good play, a sound undistinguishable in the general noise, a little Munchkin sound of fingers on palms.

“I want to thank you—”

“For the grade?” Miss Dennis cut her off, leaning slightly toward her. “You disappoint me, Miss Gardner. I had thought you capable of accurate self-evaluation.”

“Yes, of course,” Ann said, flushing as she realized what she had almost said.

The woman smiled at her and inclined her head. It was a gesture Ann knew from Philosophy lectures, perfectly ambiguous.

♦   ♦   ♦

Grades were announced at the middle of the week. Carbon copies of the reports that were being sent to parents were mailed to each student. Ann had a B + in Philosophy; what she would have guessed. The rest of her grades, even the A in English, were not surprising either: except for a D in Sciences. Ann looked at the slip of paper and then at Niki. “I must have flunked the unit test.”

“What?” Niki was displeased about something.

“Science. I got a D. I've never flunked anything before.”

“What about the rest?”

“B's and an A.”

“Don't sweat it. D is passing and you won't have to take another science.”

Ann bit her lip.

“Annie—are you really upset?”

Ann nodded.

“Why? You don't want to transfer out of here or anything. No graduate school will look at a freshman science course.”

“I'm not worried about
that.
I've never flunked. Not even a quiz. I didn't think I'd done that badly. I don't understand how I could have. It's the only thing I could count on being good at, school.”

“Don't worry. It doesn't matter, does it? Now, I've got a real problem. Look at this.”

“That looks pretty good. How did you get an A-minus in Math?”

“What kind of question is that?” Niki mocked hurt feelings. “No, you're right. We did some Calculus last year and this first section has been review for me. The A will go down, I promise. But English—”

“C-plus? That's all right.”

“I need at least B's to get into Berkeley. Nothing lower They got a lot of transfer applications.”

Hildy entered, bearing her grade slip, serene.

“And how'd you do, Hildy?” Niki asked.

“I have passed everything,” Hildy spoke lightly. “Not well, but I did not expect to do well. See? So that is all good.”

Ann noticed that, although she had received permission to take two sciences, Hildy had C – in both.