Immediately, Lillian pursued the subject. “What do you mean? He respects you, I hope.”
“Respect” in the aunts’ vocabulary meant “no sex.”
“Yes, he respects me.” And she recalled a crude attempt—she thought of such attempts as “wrestling matches”—that he had once made, and having been thwarted, had never made since.
“I am simply not going to let you,” she had told him.
She had never “let” anyone yet. They might go so far and no farther. It had been quite a feat in 1971 for a nineteen-year-old woman to be still a virgin.
Bud had yielded. “All right. I’ll wait. You’re going to marry me, Laura. You don’t know it now, but you are going to. So I’ll wait.”
In the middle of August, Francis Alcott came home.
“It’ll be good to see him again. It’s been almost four years,” said Cecile. “Can you believe it, Laura?”
Yes, she believed it and remembered it well. Fifteen, and so childish that night! He must have seen that she was preening before him even while she was hoping to display her calm new maturity. But how absurdly she had posed in the big chair, thrusting under his very nose her manicured nails, her lace-flowered cuffs, and her “sophisticated” low neck, while all the time her heart was jumping so that it might just as well have been visible under the velvet dress.
“Dr. and Mrs. Alcott want us to come over this evening. They’re having a little welcome home for Francis, just relatives and old friends,” Cecile announced at lunchtime.
Laura looked down at her plate. “You go without me,” she said.
Both aunts were astonished. “Without you? But why?”
“I won’t know their relatives, and I hardly know Francis anymore, so what’s the point?” This retort, given in a high-pitched voice so unlike her natural voice, contained a note of petulance that did not belong to her.
“Is it that you have a date, dear?” asked Cecile. “Something you’d rather do?”
“I’d just rather stay home.”
“All wrong,” objected Lillian, “when Dr. Alcott never even forgets flowers on your birthday. Really, Laura. Really.”
Cecile rose from the table and drew back the curtains. “Look! They’re hanging Japanese lanterns over there. What a lovely night for a party! Do get dressed up, Laura. You’ll have a good time. You haven’t worn that new white dress yet, and summer’s almost over.”
She was in great confusion, caught between a strange dread of seeing Francis and the challenge of letting him behold what she had become. For a moment or two, she was unable to answer them. And then, deciding that the dread was after all unreasonable, she told them that she would go.
Upstairs in her room she put on the white dress, red slippers, and the pearls that the aunts had given her for her last birthday. Her grandmother’s pier glass told her that this was one of the “good” days that every woman has, in contrast to the days when nothing about herself is pleasing. Her eyes were large, her hair hung in long curves, and the white silk skirt swayed with grace when she moved.
Across the lawn and through the gap in the hedge that had never been filled in, the three women walked toward the lights and voices. There was laughter; it seemed to Laura that she recognized the gaiety of Francis’s laugh among the rest. And the blood rushed up into her face.
He had been standing in the center of a circle. When he saw her, he broke the circle, came toward her with outstretched hands, and gave a little cry. “Laura! Laura!”
Everyone turned to look at her, and she was exposed. All her planned poise evaporated and, foolishly, she gave him her hand to shake.
“Oh no, a handshake? For me?” And he pulled her to him, pulled her into a warm, strong embrace. He whirled her about as if to display her with pride. “This girl, excuse me, this young woman, has been my friend since she was four years old. These are my cousins from Monmouth, you’ve never met, this is Mary, Don, my uncle Dave, Laura Paige, Miss Lillian and Miss Cecile, you people remember each other—”
Most within the circle were old, or, if younger, were married and had brought their children; the little ones ran around like rabbits, and the older ones were bored except at the buffet table, where they clustered.
“Come take your plate over here and talk to me,” said Francis. “We need to get acquainted. The last Laura I knew was a young girl playing grown-up in a velvet dress.”
“You remember that!”
“Of course I do. You were charming. You are charming. When I read your letters, I would think, ‘Now she’s seventeen, and she must be thinner; now that she’s eighteen, she’s stopped growing,’ and I figured that you’d stop at five feet seven.”
“Spoken like a doctor.”
“Well, am I right?”
“You are.”
“So then, tell me things. You’ll graduate next year. And after that?”
“I’ll be teaching piano, and I’d like to get a master’s in music, too.”
“Unless you get married first and start a family.”
Laura’s blood had sunk back into her heart, and her face had cooled, but now the flooding blood surged into it again.
“I have no plans for that,” she said, and then because the sentence was so flat and final, questioned pleasantly, “And you? Are you finished with California, Boston, India, and wherever?”
“Yes, finally. I’m going to be in New York in private practice with a partner, and also I’ll be teaching at a hospital.”
“No more traveling,” she said with a conventional smile.
She was waiting. Waiting for what? It was absurd.
“Yes, it’s time that I stayed in one place with a permanent plan, don’t you think so?”
“I guess it is.”
A small night breeze struck the paper lantern so that it swayed, cutting a shadow across Francis’s face, revealing now the gentle cleft of his chin and the corners of his lips, which having been shaped with a cheerful upturn, always contradicted his dark, heavy-lidded eyes with their thoughtful gaze. And the lantern tipped again, now lighting the upper half of his face and the thoughtful gaze directed upon Laura.
“You make me feel old,” he said.
“Why? At thirty-five?”
He shook his head. “I suppose it’s because I’ve watched you grow almost from your beginning. The years are not so many, it’s true, but the changes are. I look at you and I don’t seem able to grasp that you’re the child whom I taught to read, the girl who learned tennis with me in her backyard, and now—”
“You’re monopolizing Laura,” said Dr. Alcott, “and I want to ask a favor of her. Will you go inside and play something for us? A party needs music to liven it up.”
The interruption was provoking, but she responded with enthusiasm. “I’d love to. Just tell me what you want.”
“Some show tunes. Or jazz?” the old man asked hopefully. “Can you play it?”
“Well, I did take a class this year, and I can manage. I’m not really good, though, I warn you. No one’s invited me to New Orleans to play.”
“Let me warn you that the piano’s not all that good, either. It needs tuning.”
The music floated out onto the lawn, so only a few people, chiefly teenagers, went into the house to hear it. After a while as they lost interest, they drifted outside again, leaving Francis standing alone in the curve of the piano.
He was watching her face, not her hands on the keys as one usually does; with his head held in the listening posture that she suddenly remembered, he studied her face. There was no way of telling what his thoughts might be.
“Are you tired?” he asked when she paused.
“Just tired of jazz. It’s not what I like to play. And it doesn’t fit this night, anyway.”
Outdoors, voices had faded under an incessant wave of sound, the monotonous throb and chirp and tick of a thousand hidden insects, a wave as languorous as the lapping of low tide.
“Wasn’t it Henry James who said that ‘summer aft
ernoon’ are the two most beautiful words in the English language? But I think ‘summer night’ will do as well.”
“Then shall I play Eine Kleine Nachtmusik?”
“Yes, do.”
And while her fingers moved across the keys, and while he stood there, still with the slight watchful frown that drew two vertical creases between his eyes, a question, in rhythm with the music, kept repeating itself in her head: Can this mean anything?
“That was perfect,” Francis said when she came to the end.
“No, no, far from it. If I had a record here, I’d have you listen to a real pianist, and you’d hear the difference.”
“Maybe so, but I’m not a musician. You touched my heart, and that’s enough.”
“You and Francis had a long talk this evening,” Cecile remarked as they picked their way across the dark lawn going home.
“Yes, we stayed in the house. It was quiet, away from all the kids.”
“His father’s disappointed that he’s not going to practice here in town.”
Lillian said, “Well, he’s aiming high, and he’s got every right to, but still it’s too bad. I hope you’ll never get it into your head to fly off to New York or someplace, Laura.”
“I’m not thinking about it.”
This was the answer they wanted. But suppose—just suppose Francis were to ask her? The way he had looked at her tonight … And they had stayed indoors talking for two hours … Was it possible?
The little chime clock across the hall in the upstairs sitting room struck half-past one. When the clock chimed three, her thoughts were still running forward and backward: I want him to love me, I know he doesn’t, I don’t know it, his eyes, I want him to love me … And the clock chimed four.
“My, you slept late,” Aunt Lillian remarked in the morning.
“I was awake half the night, that’s why.”
Cecile shook her head, reproving, “You had coffee at eleven o’clock, and it wasn’t decaffeinated. I asked. You should always ask.”
The sun poured over the grass, turning its tips brown. The morning was loud with the drone and drill of locusts, and although it was not yet noon, the heat was already enough to take one’s breath away.
“So nice of the doctor’s cousin Claire to invite us to their lake house,” Lillian said. “After all, we don’t know her that well.”
Cecile said, “Don’t forget a plastic bag for your wet suit, Laura.”
She had been reading the newspaper, not paying attention. Now she looked up. “Oh, am I included?”
“Well, naturally you are,” said Lillian. “Didn’t you hear them last night? The cousins stayed over at the Alcotts’ and they’re going to drive Cecile and me and the Alcotts. That’s already six, so it leaves you and Francis to go in a separate car.”
“How far is it?”
“About an hour’s drive, they said. Maybe a bit more.”
A whole hour in a car with nobody to interrupt. A whole hour.
Laura yawned, took a long stretch like a cat, and spoke lightly. “I could use a cold dip in a lake on a day like this.”
Often afterward, even now more than twenty years later, she wondered about the power of a minor, ordinary mishap to alter an entire life.
“You’ll undoubtedly be there before we will,” said Francis’s cousin Claire. “I’ve driven with you, Francis, and you make my hair stand on end. So take the keys to the cottage and put the lunch in the refrigerator when you get there.”
The car, a two-seater with the top down, climbed into the cooler hills and sped along a narrow road under dark shade. The radio played, and between the music and the rush of wind, you had to shout to be heard. After a while, they stopped talking. It seemed to Laura that a mood had settled upon Francis, a quietness, as if something had gone wrong. It troubled her, so she laid her head back on the seat, let her hair fly in the wind, and kept the silence as though she were simply listening to the music.
The cottage stood at the far end of a small oval lake. There was a dock and a stretch of sandy, man-made beach on which a canoe had been drawn up. A hammock and rocking chairs filled the front porch. When they had stowed the lunch away, they took some Cokes and sat down on the porch to wait for the others. Where the lake lay in this hollow of the hills the air was still. A single sailboat heading toward the shore barely moved.
“Can’t make any headway,” remarked Francis almost as if to himself.
“No,” she said.
What could have changed him since last night? He had turned away from her to concentrate, or make believe to concentrate, on the boat. The one cheek that she could see was furrowed, and his lips seemed to be pursed, as if he were annoyed. He wasn’t the same man that he had been. Maybe last night had been enough, and now he was angry at having been inveigled into this outing. A day with relatives, neighbors, and the neighbors’ “nice young niece”! He must have had a dozen better things to do, and now he was bored. It’s not my fault, she thought miserably, and he needn’t be so sulky about it.… She sought for something to say that might break the mood, but her muddled head offered nothing, nor was there inspiration anywhere, not in the halfhearted garden, the neglected chrysanthemums and aster beds that dwindled down along the path to the dock, nor in the hot, vacant sky. The rocking chair creaked at her least move, offending the silence. Her hands lay heavily in her lap like useless things; not knowing what to do with them, she examined them, the bruise on one finger, the tiny ruby on another, and the whole hand splayed on the cotton skirt, the pretty skirt the color of ripe raspberries …
When the telephone jangled, Francis went in to answer it. “Oh, that’s awful,” she heard him say. And when he said next, “What hospital?” she followed him to the telephone.
“Not your aunts,” he told her. “It’s my cousin Claire. They stopped for gas, Claire got out of the car, took a fall down a step and gashed her leg open on a mess of gravel.”
When he had hung up the telephone, he presented Laura with a choice. “The accident happened before they were ten minutes out of town, so they’re taking Claire back to my house as soon as she’s through at the hospital—Dad wanted a plastic surgeon to do the job. So we can either go back home or stay here for a swim. You decide.”
“No, you do.”
“No, it’s up to you.”
“Then I’ll say let’s start back.”
“Why? Do you really want to?”
This posture of his was ridiculous. And a sudden recklessness, like that of a gambler risking his last, made her answer, “I don’t, but you do and I don’t want to stay here with somebody who doesn’t like being here, so let’s go.”
He stared at her with a look of instant shock. “Who said I don’t like being here?”
“You didn’t say it. You didn’t have to.”
Shock turned to remorse. “Oh Laura, I didn’t mean—” And he fumbled, he whose speech was so clear and fluent, saying, red-faced now, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean, didn’t intend, you must know I couldn’t have, I was only—things on my mind. Please understand.” He seized her hand. “Please let’s stay. There’s a good lunch, and we’ll have a swim. Okay?”
She nodded, and he repeated, “Forgiven?”
“Forgiven.”
The accident gave them a way to begin a conversation. From tetanus shots and antibiotics the talk moved naturally to medicine or the lack of it in India and other places, exotic to Laura, where Francis had spent the last years. But she was hearing and responding only with the surface of her mind. Its sharp cutting edge was seeing him, the sudden lights in his dark hair, his eyelashes as thick and curved as if they had been curled, his cotton sport shirt open at the throat showing a tawny arc against white. A trail of disconnected pictures—Francis carrying a tennis racket, Francis reading with his cheek resting on his hand—unwound and took her to the day when, stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, she had resolved to think of him no more.
So they were to have this whole private afternoon, and
she was perversely unsure how she felt; excitement and a certain queer anxiety tumbled together in her chest.
“You’re far away,” Francis said abruptly.
“No, I’ve heard every word.”
“Let’s get out of the sun. Your face is burning. Put our suits on and sit under a tree until you’ve digested this lunch.”
When they had rested and had a swim in cold water, they went back to the warm little sliver of beach. In her yellow bikini she half expected him to speak some compliment—men always did—but he did not and now remarked only upon the pendant that lay glittering above her cleavage.
“Does it open?” he asked.
She felt an awkwardness in the question, as if, having for some reason become ill at ease as they lay there, he was merely making conversation. Surely he could not care whether a gold trifle opened or not.
“Yes, there’s a picture inside. Do you want to see it?”
And she leaned forward so that the pendant dangled near enough for him to reach it. When he had seen the picture, he drew back and dropped his hand as if it had been stung.
“Me,” he said.
Well, tell him. Why not? Maybe it’s the sun that’s made me a little drunk, but anyway …
“When I was just a child, oh ten or twelve, I was in love with you. Didn’t you know?”
He sat up then with his arms around his knees and looked straight ahead across the lake. Then she sat up, too, for a sudden change in atmosphere had taken place, and she was afraid she had made a fool of herself.
“I hope you’re not angry,” she said, affecting a light tone as if really, this was all too amusing.
“No, of course not.”
But he did look angry with his face so tight, just staring across the lake, while seconds passed in silence.
Now there was nothing to do but continue the joke and laugh her way out. “It was about then, yes, I must have been eleven, when you told me that you’d marry me if I were older.”
At that Francis turned toward her with astonishing vehemence. His dilated pupils had turned his eyes black. “Did I? I don’t remember. But I shouldn’t have. It was wicked.”