Well, who wants it to go back? I asked myself.
But there seemed so much unfinished business back there—way back before this morning. And my very hypothetical wedding “or something” had been scheduled for some very vague future, not in two short years. Two very short years. Long to Sherry, maybe, but they cut off my breath whenever I thought of them. Now why? I asked myself. Why do I keep shying off, not wanting to think about it? Don’t I love Sherry after all? Of course I do—that’s what all those little tugging strings are in aid of. But then why am I not more—well, overwhelmed or something?
I pondered this point uneasily. Surely being in love was supposed to overwhelm a girl, carry her far past doubts of any kind? I’d always thought so—I wanted it so. I like my emotions big and powerful, same as I like my bears. And it was jolly confusing to feel so excited and happy, then so alarmed whenever I thought of those two years. It isn’t a short time, I told myself impatiently. Twenty-four months—that’s long. In Mary’s Creek it would be interminable.
When I finally gave up and went to bed, I was still feeling happy, excited, and confused, in about equal proportions, and still conducting jumpy dialogues with myself when I fell asleep.
6
The next few days were downright strange. So much had happened to me on the first of August that I thought the entire world must be different and could scarcely believe that everybody else hadn’t noticed it, too. Actually, nobody even noticed that I was different. I tried to behave naturally, but I was astonished that I could bring it off. Even Sherry’s first appearance in the Rainbow the next morning went without a hitch, thanks chiefly to his placid lack of nerves. He accepted Georgetta as if he’d never dreamed I was anybody else, and aside from one private, special smile when nobody was looking, acted as if I meant little more to him than Rose. I wondered how he could do it, then realized he’d been doing it right along. If he’d always disbelieved my act and known he was in love since that day he saw me with Dave, he’d had good practice concealing his emotions. It helped me conceal my own and slip back into character. By day.
Evenings were something else. Every night now Sherry and I walked to the park or along the dusky streets, and with him I never bothered to be Georgetta. The peculiar thing was that I was never Shannon, either. I couldn’t tell who I was, if anybody. Sherry seemed not to notice, but it bothered me, and the more I tried to ignore it, the worse it got. I felt just a nameless, faceless Something floating around with no identity to live in. It was a situation I’d insisted on myself, but now I didn’t like it. Sherry didn’t know me at all; he only knew Georgetta—that small fact I mentioned earlier.
Well, the large headaches had begun—chiefly the impossibility of visualizing Sherry or anybody married to a Miss Smith whose entire background was a blank. Oh, maybe if Miss Smith had amnesia—but I didn’t. I had eighteen years’ worth of memories and mental pictures and relatives and oddly assorted friends . . . So did I intend never to see Uncle Frosty again? Or Aunt Doris, or Dad and Jeanne? Ridiculous. I meant to see them again frequently and all my life. I meant to see Mother and Nevin—sometimes anyway—and Franz and Harlan Manning and even Ann and Kingsley Benton-Jones if I ever went mad and wanted to. I couldn’t cut myself off from everything—the notion was insane. Imagine never going back to Vienna or London—or going as a tourist, scared to admit I’d ever been there before. Imagine never again walking down that little street with all the button shops, in Athens, to eat souvlaki for lunch. I wondered if Sherry would like souvlaki. I wondered if he’d like Dad and Jeanne—what he’d make of Mother, and of the staggering racket of polite screaming that hits you over the head when you step into her dressing room after a performance. He’d be entranced, if I knew Sherry. He’d be entranced by Dad and Jeanne, too, and, for all I knew, by the Mary-High drama club and learning to say “scram” in fourteen languages, and—well, by everything. He’d want to know every one of those worlds I’d lived in and never really belonged to.
And if he never knew anything about them, he’d never know anything about me.
It was odd, but thinking about them from a distance and from Sherry’s point of view, I began to find those worlds fairly interesting myself and forgot for the moment how extremely uncomfortable some of them had been to live through. Just before I slept that night, I even indulged in a bout of homesickness—as well as I could for tripping over what I meant by “home”—and caught myself reflecting that those years weren’t altogether bad—now that they were over—and might have been wonderful if I hadn’t been flung into the middle of them so young and green. Even so, I’d picked up a job lot of odd experience and found I wouldn’t want to give any of it up. Still, I daren’t tell Sherry about it, because that might mean giving him up . . .
Nobody seemed to realize that I was so preoccupied, I was virtually sleepwalking. The everyday world kept prodding me inconsiderately awake to fry hamburgers or make change or take my uniforms to the laundromat or react to Wynola’s announcement that she’d lost three pounds or to chat with Miss Heater at the mail table.
Dave Kulka kept interrupting my meditations, too. He simply hadn’t received the news that I was putting him straight out of my mind, and went on being as disturbing as ever, without doing anything but exist. I can’t explain this, and it was no part of my plans, but there it was. I kept finding my eyes following him—and I had to mind what I was about or my feet would start drifting his way, too. Often enough, they did. I’d see him from my window, working in the garden, and decide instantaneously that I needed fresh air—so instantaneously that it always seemed I’d had the idea before I saw him. Then I’d decide there was no reason to change my plans just because he happened to be around, and I’d defiantly go out and walk about, or sit in the sun on the back steps, careful to snub him if he noticed me. He always noticed me, all right. Occasionally, he’d even stop work, lean on his spade, and give me his undivided attention, which always made me decide that what I really wanted was a cup of tea in the privacy of my room.
He must have noticed me in the Rainbow, too; I felt outlined in neon, head to toe, whenever his eyes were on me—which they more frequently and lingeringly were, the more often he caught mine on him. Once or twice, exasperated with the way I was feeling, I started a casual conversation with him, just to prove I was casual. It didn’t work. One day I thought he was doing the same thing. I’d been making a circuit of the booths, filling water glasses; he’d watched me all the way. When I got to him, he said, “Were you ever a dancer?”
I said blankly, “No. I studied ballet for a while.” He didn’t comment. Wishing I hadn’t answered him, I picked up his plate and said, “You want something else?”
With complete and unmistakable candor, he said, “Yes.”
That put an end to the small talk. Ordinarily, we seldom exchanged a word, beyond those needed to order and produce a cup of coffee—and when we did, we clashed as we always had done. One day, just before quitting time, he wandered in for coffee and caught me studying a sketch of Georgetta that Sherry had drawn at lunch to amuse himself. It was one of those utterly Sherry-like wavery-line cartoons, and it managed to imbue even Georgetta’s ridiculous hairdo with a touch of pathos. I was wondering how he could make those few little queer lines say so much when Dave’s hand suddenly reached into my line of vision and plucked the paper from the counter. For once I hadn’t noticed him come in, and it threw me so off balance that I just stood stupidly while he examined my private property.
“Not bad,” he said.
“Not bad? It’s good!”
“What do you know about it? Who did this, anyway?”
Without answering I snatched at the paper, which he handed to me in the most deflating way, saying, “All right, don’t tell me. Coffee. Black.” He turned away indifferently, then gave me a sardonic glance as I sloshed a cup down in front of him and stalked away. A few minutes later, as I was hooking in a milk shake, I checked on him in
the long mirror behind the counter—the way your tongue goes to a sore tooth. He was lighting a cigarette, and as I watched absently, he shook out the match, glanced into the mirror himself—and there we were, staring directly into each other’s eyes. Not glaring for once, just—I don’t know—plain staring. It was odd. After I’d taken the milk shake to whoever wanted it, I went to the kitchen to shed my pinafore and go home. When I came out, I knew very well Dave was still there, but as usual I made sure—and as usual he saw me do it. Immediately, he tossed a dime on the counter and slid off his stool; by the time I’d passed the front window, he’d overtaken me.
“Look, Greensleeves,” he said without preliminary. “In case you’re having second thoughts about our unfinished business, I’m available. Any time.”
“I couldn’t be less interested,” I told him—after I’d got my breath.
“Seems to me you couldn’t be more so.”
“I don’t care how it seems to you, and I don’t want to discuss it.”
“Discussion’s not what I had in mind.”
I regarded him glacially a second—without effect—and said I wished we could drop the subject for good and all.
“We tried that, didn’t we? It didn’t stay dropped. You don’t ‘wish’ it, anyway. You ought to level with yourself for once. You’d find out a lot of things.”
I whirled and started along the sidewalk—conscious, a second later, of his footsteps behind me. Conscious? If I’d had one of those big Kodiak bears on my heels, I could hardly have been more conscious of it. I whirled back. “Will you quit following me!”
He said scornfully, “I’m not following you—I’m merely going home. I live here, too, remember?”
He walked straight past me and up the steps, leaving me no choice but to follow him, which I did, asking myself furiously why I’d spoken to him at all, why I ever did.
However, the situation didn’t change much. He continued to go his careless, arrogant way, and I went my seething one, while I waited for the whole distracting thing to pass, as I could only hope it would. We reminded me of two hostile cats unable to control a slight bristling and arching of the back at merest sight of each other—and there were moments when if anybody had stroked our fur, it would have crackled.
I found it bitterly hard to understand how this could be when I was so busy thinking of Sherry every minute.
7
My interlude of somnambulance received a rude jar late in the afternoon of August 12, a Monday, and came to an end that night.
Half an hour or so before I got off work, I saw Mr. Bruce come in from the kitchen, where he’d been called to the phone a few minutes before. I can’t say he looked any different, but something about him made me quit thinking about myself for a minute to watch him. He paused by the service cupboard, not even noticing he was in Helen’s way, spotted Sherry in one of the back booths, and walked directly to him and said something. Sherry looked mildly surprised, but pushed back his plate at once, thrust some money at Rose as she passed, and told her to skip the pie—I could read his lips across the room. Then he followed Mr. Bruce out the street door, flashing me a quick smile just as he left. A second later I saw them pass the front window.
Rose came back to the cash register, her eyes still following them, too. “Well! Wonder what their hurry was.”
I wondered, too.
Seven o’clock and quitting time rolled around, and Sherry hadn’t come back, so I said good night to Mr. Ansley, who’d taken to nodding cautiously to me lately, and walked home alone.
As I was climbing the last steps to the boardinghouse porch, I saw Mr. Bruce through one of the beveled-glass panels flanking the front door, standing in the hall talking to Dr. Edmonds. As soon as I walked into the house, I saw practically everybody else I knew. Miss Heater was climbing the stairs toward her room; Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Hockins were retreating down the little passage that led to the back door. Dave Kulka lounged near the mail table muttering to Wynola—who looked a bit tight-faced and strange—and Brick Mulvaney and Sherry were just emerging from the living room. They all looked a bit strange, preoccupied, and overly calm.
Naturally, I’d stopped in surprise at sight of all this traffic. By then everybody’d seen me, too, and abandoned their private conversations. Mr. Bruce and Dr. Edmonds greeted me and separated, one heading upstairs and one for the door. Wynola drifted down the passage. Mr. Mulvaney went out quickly after Mr. Bruce, smiling at me vaguely as he passed. Sherry came directly to me, of course, gave me a loving pat on the cheek, and said, “See you in about half an hour, OK?”—and Dave, who had started for the stairs, saw the by-play and stopped dead. I said, “OK,” to Sherry, so conscious of Dave in the background that I couldn’t help glancing at him the instant Sherry turned away. As I expected, I encountered a pair of alert and intensely irked black eyes. Dave had leaped to all the correct conclusions and was reacting like a bull to the first flutter of the cape. He glanced measuringly at Sherry’s retreating back, then sauntered toward me.
“I want to see you, Greensleeves,” he informed me.
Sherry’s footsteps hesitated. I could feel him standing there with his hand on the doorknob. Everybody else had gone. I snapped, “Some other time,” and started quickly toward the passage. I heard the front door slam—behind Sherry, I hoped. An instant later Dave had stepped directly into my path.
“If you don’t mind,” I said furiously.
“Oh, don’t be so jumpy,” he told me in such casual, scornful tones that I felt an absolute fool and was conscious of heat creeping up my neck and into my cheeks. Dave just stood there unhelpfully and watched me blush. “I merely want to ask you something. You still want to know if Mrs. Dunningham had any children?”
“What’s that to do with anything?”
“I don’t know what it’s got to do with you. But I can answer you now. She did.”
“Oh,” I said. Next instant my wits came back, interpreted the unusual traffic in the hall, and I began adding various twos into fours with dazzling rapidity.
Dave was observing my face closely. “I had a notion you’d be interested. Well, so long.”
“Wait a minute!” I gasped.
“What for?”
“You didn’t even—explain what you—”
“I don’t need to. You knew all about that will, didn’t you? From Sherry, I suppose. Too bad about his scholarship now. It’s blown sky-high.”
He started past me. “Dave, wait!” I said frantically, and caught his arm.
Instantly, he clapped it against his side, trapping my hand and pulling me off balance. “All right. What for?”
“Quit saying ‘what for’!” I wriggled my hand free, with some difficulty. “Tell me how you know this.”
“Didn’t you see that powwow breaking up? Some lawyer telephoned Bruce this afternoon. There’s a daughter, and she wants the dough.”
I swallowed, wishing I could make my mind work. It just kept rushing madly in all directions. I hadn’t stepped back away from Dave when I freed my hand—maybe because I was too distracted. Maybe. Standing so close to him was part of what was distracting me. So was his tautness—a kind of slow smoldering underneath the surface.
“So that’s the end of the bequests,” he finished. “She gets the works.”
“But she can’t! She mustn’t!”
“It’s all settled. She can have it, for all of me. I don’t want it. I don’t think any of us did.”
“Oh, don’t be idiotic!” I choked.
“Who’s idiotic?” Dave’s hackles had inexplicably risen. “I’ll get where I’m going without help from anybody, now or ever. I don’t want handouts from my friends.”
“Oh, you. You don’t even want friends—just plenty of enemies,” I snapped, wondering if anybody had ever talked to Dave ten seconds without being goaded beyond endurance.
“Right
. With enemies you know where you stand.” Again he turned to go—and before I could stop it, my hand was reaching for his sleeve. I snatched it back, but not quickly enough. In a flash he’d swung around to block the passage again, remarking, “Whatever you say, Greensleeves. I’ve got all evening.”
“Oh, really. I was only—I’ve got to go change. Get out of my way.”
“I’m not in your way. You can get past.”
I stared coldly at his shoulder—feeling my usual treacherous desire to touch it, plus a flick of panic. Its hard curve, molding the old brown shirt, looked implacable, in spite of his casual air. There was room to pass him—just. To brush against him. Well, I wasn’t going to. I wondered what I was going to do. I felt a strong suspicion that I wasn’t handling this at all well. I burst out, “What do you want with me, anyway?” Then, realizing he might just tell me, in words of one syllable, I added, “Quit acting childish!”
“You know, it’s the last time I’m going to,” Dave said. Abruptly, he stepped aside and past me. “You’re going to be late for that date,” he added. He walked without haste along the hall and out of the door.
I stood immobilized, torn between wishing him at the devil and agonizing about the will. I was frantic with questions, permeated by sinking guilt. I’d spared scarcely a thought for my cherished legatees since the day I collided with Sherry on the street—having been richly absorbed of late in contemplating my navel. Now suddenly everything had blown sky-high—so Dave said—but it couldn’t be “all settled”! Infuriating man. Why on earth had I clutched his arm that way? Why did I always challenge him to duels when he always won? I should have walked straight past him and got my information from somebody else. Wynola . . . there wasn’t time to find Wynola; Sherry would be back soon. But what if I should be doing something to stop this happening?