To See You Again (7 page)

This seemed a dangerous plan to Dylan, possibly because it relied on Zach, who Dylan was sure would end up in jail, or worse. She stubbornly stuck with her job, and on her two days off (Mondays and Tuesdays, of all useless days) she stayed in bed a lot, and read, and allowed her mother to “spoil” her, with breakfast trays (“Well, after all, who deserves her own tray more than you do, baby?”) and her favorite salads for lunch, with every available fresh vegetable and sometimes shrimp.

When she wasn’t talking to her mother or helping out with household chores, Dylan was reading a book that Mr.
Iverson had lent her—
The Eustace Diamonds
, by Trollope. This had come about because one afternoon, meeting him in the library, Dylan had explained the old
Vogues
, the
House Beautifuls
scattered near her lap, saying that she was too tired just then to read, and that she missed television. The winter before, she had loved
The Pallisers
, she said, and, before that,
Upstairs, Downstairs
. Mr. Iverson had recommended
The Eustace Diamonds
. “It’s really my favorite of the Palliser novels,” he said, and he went to get it for her—running all the way up to his room and back, apparently; he was out of breath as he handed her the book.

But why was he so eager to please her? She knew that she was pretty, but she wasn’t all that pretty, in her own estimation; she was highly conscious of the two crooked front teeth, although she had perfected a radiant, slightly false smile that almost hid them.

“I wonder if he could be one of
the
Iversons,” Flower mused, informed by Dylan one Monday of the source of her book.

“The Iversons?” In Flower’s voice it had sounded like the Pallisers.

“One of the really terrific, old San Francisco families. You know, Huntingtons, Floods, Crockers, Iversons. What does he look like, your Mr. Iverson?”

Dylan found this hard to answer, although usually with Flower she spoke very easily, they were so used to each other. “Well.” She hesitated. “He’s sort of blond, with nice blue eyes and a small nose. He has this birthmark on his neck, but it’s not really noticeable.”

Flower laughed. “In that case, he’s not a real Iverson. They’ve all got dark hair and the most aristocratic beaky
noses. And none of them could possibly have a birthmark—they’d drown it at birth.”

Dylan laughed, too, although she felt an obscure disloyalty to Mr. Iverson.

And, looking at Flower, Dylan thought, as she had before, that Flower
could
change her life, take charge of herself. She was basically strong. But in the next moment Dylan decided, as she also had before, more frequently, that probably Flower wouldn’t change; in her brief experience people didn’t, or not much. Zach would go to jail and Flower would find somebody worse, and get grayer and fatter. And she, Dylan, had better forget about anything as childish as being adopted by rich old people; she must concentrate on marrying someone who really had
money
. Resolution made her feel suddenly adult.

“Honey,” asked Flower, “are you sure you won’t have a glass of wine?”

“My mother wonders if you’re a real Iverson.” Dylan had not quite meant to say this; the sentence spoke itself, leaving her slightly embarrassed, as she sat with Whitney Iverson on a small sofa in the library. It was her afternoon break; she was tired, and she told herself that she didn’t know what she was saying.

Mr. Iverson, whose intense blue eyes had been staring into hers, now turned away, so that Dylan was more aware of the mark on his neck than she had been before. Or could it have deepened to a darker mulberry stain?

He said, “Well, I am and I’m not, actually. I think of them as my parents and I grew up with them, in the Atherton house, but actually I’m adopted.”

“Really?” Two girls Dylan knew at Mission High had
got pregnant and had given up their babies to be adopted. His real mother, then, could have been an ordinary high-school girl? The idea made her uncomfortable, as though he had suddenly moved closer to her.

“I believe they were very aware of it, my not being really theirs,” Whitney Iverson said, again looking away from her. “Especially when I messed up in some way, like choosing Reed, instead of Stanford. Then graduate school …”

As he talked on, seeming to search for new words for the feelings engendered in him by his adoptive parents, Dylan felt herself involuntarily retreat. No one had ever talked to her in quite that way, and she was uneasy. She looked through the long leaded windows to the wavering sunlight beyond; she stared at the dust-moted shafts of light in the dingy room where they were.

In fact, for Dylan, Whitney’s very niceness was somehow against him; his kindness, his willingness to talk, ran against the rather austere grain of her fantasies.

Apparently sensing what she felt, or some of it, Whitney stopped short, and he laughed in a self-conscious way. “Well, there you have the poor-adopted-kid self-pity trip of the month,” he said. “ ‘Poor,’ Christ, they’ve drowned me in money.”

Feeling that this last was not really addressed to her (and thinking of Flower’s phrase about the birthmark, “drowned at birth”), Dylan said nothing. She stared at his hands, which were strong and brown, long-fingered, and she suddenly, sharply, wished that he would touch her. Touch, instead of all this awkward talk.

Later, considering that conversation, Dylan found herself moved, in spite of herself. How terrible to feel not only that you did not really belong with your parents but that
they were disappointed in you. Whitney Iverson hadn’t said anything about it, of course, but they must have minded about the birthmark, along with college and graduate school.

She and Flower were so clearly mother and daughter—obviously, irrevocably so; her green eyes were Flower’s, even her crooked front teeth. Also, Flower had always thought she was wonderful. “My daughter Dylan,” she would say, in her strongest, proudest voice.

But what had he possibly meant about “drowned in money”? Was he really rich, or had that been a joke? His car was an old VW convertible, and his button-down shirts were frayed, his baggy jackets shabby. Would a rich person drive a car like that, or wear those clothes? Probably not, thought Dylan; on the other hand, he did not seem a man to say that he was rich if he was not.

In any case, Dylan decided that she was giving him too much thought, since she had no real reason to think that he cared about her. Maybe he was an Iverson, and a snob, and did not want anything to do with a waitress. If he had wanted to see her, he could have suggested dinner, a movie or driving down to Santa Cruz on one of her days off. Probably she would have said yes, and on the way home, maybe on a bluff overlooking the sea, he could have parked the car, have turned to her.

So far, Dylan had had little experience of ambiguity; its emerging presence made her both impatient and confused. She did not know what to do or how to think about the contradictions in Whitney Iverson.

Although over the summer Dylan and Whitney had met almost every day in the library, this was never a stated arrangement, and if either of them missed a day, as they each sometimes did, nothing was said. This calculated diffidence
seemed to suit them; they were like children who could not quite admit to seeking each other out.

One day, when Dylan had already decided that he would not come, and not caring really—she was too tired to care, what with extra guests and heavier trays—after she had been in the library for almost half an hour, she heard running steps, his, and then Whitney Iverson burst in, quite out of breath. “Oh … I’m glad you’re still here,” he got out, and he sat down heavily beside her. “I had some terrific news.” But then on the verge of telling her, he stopped, and laughed, and said, “But I’m afraid it won’t sound all that terrific to you.”

Unhelpfully she looked at him.

“The
Yale Review
,” he said. “They’ve taken an article I sent them. I’m really pleased.”

He had been right, in that the
Yale Review
was meaningless to Dylan, but his sense of triumph was real and visible to her. She
felt
his success, and she thought just then that he looked wonderful.

September, once Labor Day was past, was much clearer and warmer, the sea a more brilliant blue, than during the summer. Under a light, fleece-clouded sky the water shimmered, all diamonds and gold, and the rocky cliffs in full sunlight were as pale as ivory. Even Dylan admitted to herself that it was beautiful; sometimes she felt herself penetrated by that scenery, her consciousness filled with it.

Whitney Iverson was leaving on the fifteenth; he had told Dylan so, naming the day as they sat together in the library. And then he said, “Would it be okay if I called you at home, sometime?”

The truth was, they didn’t have a phone. Flower had been in so much trouble with the phone company that she
didn’t want to get into all that again. And so now Dylan blushed, and lied. “Well, maybe not. My mother’s really strict.”

He blushed, too, the birthmark darkening. “Well, I’ll have to come back to see you,” he said. “But will you still be here?”

How could she know, especially since he didn’t even name a time when he would come? With a careless lack of tact she answered, “I hope not,” and then she laughed.

Very seriously he asked, “Well, could we at least go for a walk or something before I go? I could show you the beach.” He gave a small laugh, indicating that the beach was really nothing much to see, and then he said, “Dylan, I’ve wanted so much to see you, I
care
so much for you—but here, there would have been … implications … you know …”

She didn’t know; she refused to understand what he meant, unless he was confirming her old suspicion of snobbery: his not wanting to be seen with a waitress. She frowned slightly, and said, “Of course,” and thought that she would not, after all, see him again. So much for Whitney Iverson.

But the next afternoon, during her break, in the brilliant September weather the library looked to her unbearably dingy, and all those magazines were so old. She stepped outside through the door at the end of the porch, and there was Mr. Iverson, just coming out through another door.

He smiled widely, said, “Perfect! We can just make it before the tide.”

Wanting to say that she hadn’t meant to go for a walk with him—she was just getting some air, and her shoes were wrong, canvas sandals—Dylan said neither of those things, but followed along, across the yellowing grass, toward the bluff.

He led her to a place that she hadn’t known was there, a
dip in the headland, from which the beach was only a few yards down, by a not steep, narrow path. Whitney went ahead, first turning back to reach for her hand, which she gave him. Making her way just behind, Dylan was more aware of his touch, of their firmly joined warm hands, than of anything else in the day: the sunlight, the sea, her poorly shod feet.

But as they reached the narrow strip of land, instead of turning to embrace her, although he still held her hand, Whitney cried out, “See? Isn’t it fantastic?”

A small wave hit Dylan’s left foot, soaking the fabric of her sandal. Unkissed, she stared at the back of his shirt collar, which was more frayed even than his usual shirts, below his slightly too long red-blond hair.

Then he turned to her; he picked up her other hand from her side, gazing intently down into her face. But it was somehow too late. Something within her had turned against him, whether from her wet foot or his worn-out collar, or sheer faulty timing, so that when he said, “You’re so lovely, you make me shy,” instead of being moved, as she might have been, Dylan thought he sounded silly (a grown man, shy?) and she stepped back a little, away from him.

He could still have kissed her, easily (she later thought), but he did not. Instead, he reached into one of the pockets of his jeans, fishing about, as he said, “… for something I wanted you to have.”

Had he brought her a present, some small valuable keepsake? Prepared to relent, Dylan then saw that he had not; what he was handing her was a cardboard square, a card, on which were printed his name and telephone number. He said, “I just got these. My mother sent them. She’s big on engraving.” He grimaced as Dylan thought, Oh, your mother really is an Iverson. “The number’s my new bachelor pad,” he told her. “It’s unlisted. Look, I really wish you’d call
me. Any time. Collect. I’ll be there.” He looked away from her, for a moment out to sea, then down to the sand, where for the first time he seemed to notice her wet foot. “Oh Lord!” he exclaimed. “Will you have to change? I could run you home.…”

Not liking the fuss, and not at all liking the attention paid to those particular shoes (cheap, flimsy), somewhat coldly Dylan said no; the guests had thinned out and she was going home anyway as soon as the tables had been set up.

“Then I won’t see you?”

She gave him her widest, most falsely shining smile, and turned and started up the path ahead of him. At the top she smiled again, and was about to turn away when Whitney grasped her wrist and said, with a startling, unfamiliar scowl, “
Call
me, you hear? I don’t want to lose you.”

What Dylan had said about being able to leave after setting up the tables was true; she had been told that she could then go home, which she did. The only problem, of course, was that she would earn less money; it could be a very lean, cold winter. Thinking about money, and, less clearly, about Whitney Iverson, Dylan was not quite ready for the wild-eyed Flower, who greeted her at the door: “We’re celebrating. Congratulate me! I’ve dumped Zach.”

But Dylan had heard this before, and she knew the shape of the evening that her mother’s announcement presaged: strong triumphant statements along with a festive dinner, more and more wine, then tears. Sinkingly she listened as her mother described that afternoon’s visit from Zach, how terrible he was and how firm she, Flower, had been, how final. “And we’re celebrating with a really great fish soup,” finished Flower, leading Dylan into the kitchen.

The evening did go more or less as Dylan had feared
and imagined that it would. Ladling out the rich fish soup, Flower told Dylan how just plain fed up she was with men, and she repeated a line that she had recently heard and liked: “A woman without a man is like a mushroom without a bicycle.”