Anastasia says Mother thinks Joy is pretty and popular and Anastasia is smart and talented. Joy knows this is what Mother thinks. And Anastasia said Mother had made her believe that she was ugly, and Joy that she was stupid. And she said it wasn’t true, that Joy was really smart. Anastasia was mad at Mother for making them think that. But Joy feels that Anastasia was mad at Mother for making her feel ugly, but not for making Joy think she was stupid because Anastasia thinks Joy is stupid too. She just had to say that to be polite.
Joy wishes Mother would tell her she is pretty. It would make her feel better even if she didn’t believe it. It would make her feel…oh…happy. But Mother has never said anything like that to Joy. And Joy can’t ask her directly she’d be too embarrassed what would she say, “Mommy, do you think I’m pretty?” Then Mother might say something that would make Joy feel terrible like that time Joy came home from Linda’s house when they were in the fifth grade and they had been fooling around with their hair and Linda did Joy’s hair in a pompadour just like the big girls’ and Joy thought it was beautiful and couldn’t help crying out to Mother, “Doesn’t my hair look great?” She knew Mother wouldn’t let her keep it like that it was too grown up but Mother just looked at it and turned her mouth down a little and said it looked cheap. Or the time she and Anastasia were playing Chinese checkers and she won and she cried out and told Mommy and Daddy, and Daddy said she was making it up, because she could never beat Anastasia. Or the time Mother acted as if Joy was…something awful…because she loved to play with Cetta, and Cetta’s nose was always running. Undiscriminating. Yes. Or the time she looked at Joy and shook her head and said in that awful voice, “Always running, always out, you’re just like Mrs. Dabrowski!” Joy didn’t remember Mrs. Dabrowski but she understood it was not good to be like her.
Still sometimes Joy just drops a remark like “Kitty is so pretty isn’t she?” and waits to hear something maybe she might say “Yes but so are you” or something like that. But she never does. But she never yells at Joy for failing a test either the way Kitty’s father does he makes Kitty cry. It is so unfair Kitty can’t help it that she isn’t smart can she? If you try to understand and you pay attention in class as well as you can and do your homework then you can’t help it if you don’t get good grades can you? Mother never scolds but she never smiles either. Most of the time it feels as if Mother isn’t there at all as if the house is empty even though someone cooks dinner and washes and irons the clothes the way all mothers do but the person wasn’t real, it didn’t talk. Kitty doesn’t have a mother and their maid Sarah does all the work but when we go to Kitty’s house after school, Sarah sits on her high stool in the kitchen and gives us Cokes and potato chips and talks to us and laughs. But here it feels empty, as though there’s no one home Mother is always up in her room making those hats it feels as if there’s no air as if no window was ever opened and the smells of all the old dinners are hanging on the wallpaper and the curtains….
But sometimes when Anastasia lived here she would talk to her sometimes. But she never talks to me or Daddy we are the outsiders. And sometimes I try to talk to Daddy but he doesn’t talk to me except to scold me for always saying “You know?” after I say something. But I can’t help it. Anastasia used to do it too. Because if you talk and talk to a person and they don’t answer, they don’t even say Yes, or Um-hm, or anything, you just can’t help it, you have to get them to say something, so you say “You know?” to get her to say something. You can never be sure Mother is even listening when you talk, sometimes she is looking far away out the window or out at nothing.
But sometimes she’s in a good mood. Some nights if Joy isn’t baby-sitting Mother says “How about a game of Chinese checkers?” They are good players Daddy won’t play with them. They take turns winning the three of them Mother Anastasia and Joy they play with two sets of marbles each and fly across the board so fast that Penny said when she watched them one time that she couldn’t follow their jumps. Mother likes to do the crossword puzzle in the Sunday Times too and she asked Joy to do it with her the way Anastasia used to but Joy couldn’t do it so Mother doesn’t ask her anymore. She knows she disappoints Mother and she wishes she didn’t but she can’t help it. She loves to play gin rummy she’s really lucky at it she always wins really fast just a couple of draws and she has gin so now Mother won’t play gin unless Joy is sick. She hasn’t been sick in a long time, she’s healthy now.
But once in a while Mother sits down on the porch and lights a cigarette and asks Joy a question and Joy knows she wants to talk and if Joy isn’t going out she pours herself a Coke and sits down across from Mother. Joy knows she wants to hear about her friends and their mothers and fathers and how they live. Mother seemed happy when Joy told her that Linda’s house was as small as theirs but she was impressed that Mrs. Hale can support her three daughters all by herself working as a bookkeeper. She acted like she’d like to be Mrs. Hale even though Mrs. Hale is a widow. Joy sometimes wishes Mother was Mrs. Hale too. Mrs. Hale is fun she laughs and jokes with Linda and Mae even though she’s much older than Mommy, she has grey hair. Linda’s oldest sister Silvia is grown up and married and lives in Ohio.
But Mother especially loves to hear about Penny’s family the Swopes although that isn’t Penny’s real name Mr. Swope adopted Penny and her brother when he married their mother Penny’s brother goes to Princeton he’s much older he never even looks at Joy or Linda or Kitty when he’s there he has his own car a red convertible but he’s really stuck-up. Mother loves to hear about Mrs. Swope’s clothes and how they have cocktails every night before dinner and how the maid serves the meal and what they had to eat. She loves it when Joy says that their dinners are not as good as Mother’s even though they have a maid and a cook. And neither are the dinners at the McArdles’, Kitty’s family, of course Sarah is all they have. Their dinners are all like the Carpenters’ Anastasia always makes fun of the Carpenters’ Sunday dinners—one thin slice of London broil Joy didn’t know what London broil was and a baked potato and one teaspoonful of canned peas and a salad made of lettuce with a peach half and mayonnaise. Anastasia says it’s wasp food, Joy doesn’t understand what she means, wasps don’t eat do they? Joy is always starving when she eats at the McArdles’ at home she gets three lamb chops or pork chops one time she had five they were small and big heaps of vegetables and potatoes and no salad but she doesn’t really mind because you don’t eat dinner out to eat, you do it to be with people you like and besides, she loves canned peaches and canned fruit salad which they have when they don’t have peaches. But she tells Mother how awful their dinners are because she knows it makes her happy and she loves to make Mother happy when she can.
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.
4
&nbs
p; AUGUST 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 room—after 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 night—oh, 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’s—she 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 it….
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 ar
e 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.