Clair De Lune (23 page)

“It starts at eight. About seven-thirty, shall I come for you then? Or seven-fifteen, so we'll have plenty of time? It's up at the high school, you know, way uptown. And we have to get into our gowns and all that.”

“Seven-fifteen will be fine,” she said. “Or make it seven. I like to be early.” The sooner they got there, the fewer people would see them come in together.

“Good! Seven o'clock sharp. See you then!” And turning back from the door, “Mother'll be with us, you know.”

She hadn't known, but she might have.

“I hope you won't mind. She doesn't get out much unless I take her and I'd hate to leave her home on baccalaureate night.”

“Of course not.”

“She gets a big kick out of seeing me in my gown and hood. She's really proud of that. We'll take her right home afterward.”

Me too, she thought.

“I hope you won't mind.”

“Not at all.”

“That's swell. Thanks ever so much. You're a swell sport.” She wasn't a swell sport. Neither Toby nor George had come by all week, and now classes were over, and she was left to spend the last week grading finals, entering grades and cleaning out her room. She still hadn't heard anything from Dean Frawley, and it weighed on her heavily. So why not go with Ansel, and pretend everything was all right, and she was a member of the faculty in good standing?

So Dr. Ansel, in the polished blue Essex, called for her promptly at seven o'clock on Friday night, and they drove to the high-school building, his mother in the backseat with his cap and gown on her lap. They arrived a few minutes after seven.

The graduates had beaten her there. Ganged up at the side door, they were clowning about in their ceremonial garb and parted like the Red Sea for Dr. Ansel's triumphant entry, his mother on one arm, Allen firmly held on the other.

Nor were they in advance of the Ladies. Backstage, Verna and Gladys and Mae Dell were already getting into their robes. “Well, hel-lo!” said Gladys, her smile spreading.

Verna looked around, assuming the practical. “Get a ride?”

But Dr. Ansel wasn't letting it go at that. Making clear that she had been brought, he hovered around with a proprietary air that gave her the collywobbles. There was no way she could shake him. Wherever she turned, there he was, adjusting her hood, helping with hooks and tassels and this and that that she didn't need help with. He was in wonderful spirit, strutting in the vestments of Higher Education, which he and he alone of this company was privileged to wear. When they filed into the auditorium, he was immediately behind her.

The faculty sat on the platform, behind the speaker's lectern; sat and rose and sat again, through the invocation, the choral selection (which, to her relief, had nothing to do with Shakespeare's bee), and the introduction of the speaker, the local Congregational minister.

In the rows down front Toby sat with his mortarboard cocked back on his head. George, his cap pulled to the bridge of his nose, kept biting the tassel. The girl next to him was going to die of laughter any minute.

Allen fixed her eyes on the speaker's back. Beside her, Dr. Ansel sat erect in his dignity, turning his head now and then as if to assure himself that she was there. She pretended not to notice. Old Ansel, with his mother, his blotch, and Harold Bell Wright. But Ansel was Doctor-of-Philosophy Ansel, and she had allowed him to bring her here. She sat beside him and she sat bravely, shored up by the visible proof of his ripeness: that gown and that hood that separated the man from the boys.

Twenty-one

A
fterward, Dr. Ansel drove his mother straight home. Allen had been rather glad to have her along; that made it less like a “date.” And she had every intention of going straight home, herself. But Ansel, having seen his mother into the house, came bounding back with other intentions.

“Want to go for a little ride,” he said, releasing the brake, “get a breath of air?”

“I've got an awful lot to do,” she said, but she hesitated. After all, Dr. Ansel wasn't afraid to be seen with her. Unlike the others, he had not turned the cold shoulder and crossed to the other side of the road. “Well, maybe, just for a little while.” She had to make some small show of gratitude.

But she did not have to stop for a Coke at the Breeze Inn, otherwise known as the Grease Pit. “I really don't want a thing,” she said.

“Chocolate malt? A banana split? They make swell splits out here.”

“Oh, please, no. I don't think I could get around one of those,” she said, who could polish off two at a sitting.

“Root beer?”

“Not a thing, really.” A mean trick to play on Ansel's sweet tooth. But she had been seen with him once tonight. That was enough.

“Okay, we'll drive around awhile. Maybe you'll change your mind.”

He drove slowly through the dark streets, most of them as familiar to her as her own two rooms. Presently, turning west, he said, “Guess you haven't had a chance to see much of this town, not having a car and all.”

She leaned against the door, looking out, and said nothing.

“Lots of interesting spots around here. Interesting region. Ever been out to Chisdale Park?”

“It's rather late,” she said.

“It's not far—just at the edge of town. Nice out there. It's a big park, sixty acres or so, I'd say. More, if you count the country club. That's more or less part of it. One runs right into the other. Beautiful spot. Old Chisdale was a millionaire, you know. Mining and land. He built one of those big houses not far from you, by the way. The land for the park was deeded to the city in 1890 and the adjoining acreage sometime later, after the war. That's the country club now. They've got a swell clubhouse, a real mansion from the looks of it. Guess we'll get to see it on Saturday at Miss Boatwright's reception. You're staying for the wedding, aren't you?”

“I plan to.”

“I sure hope so. We'll have a good time at the reception.”

They had come to the high bridge across the ravine. “This is the main entrance,” he said. “The drive winds around clear across the park, but a lot of little roads leading off. Country club's over there to the right. You can't see the clubhouse from here, but that's the golf course all around it. Ever play golf?”

“I've—been on a golf course.”

“Always thought it would be an interesting sport. You'll have to teach me how to play.”

“I don't know much about it.”

“I'll bet you do, I'll bet you're good at it. Dang! I wish it weren't so near the end of school. I bet you play tennis too. There are some nice tennis courts out here, right up that way.”

And beyond the courts, the long hill sloping down to the creek where the fog sometimes rose over your head.

“I never learned to play tennis,” he said. “Always meant to in college, but never could find the time. Now over on this side there's a lake, spring-fed. In summer they rope a part of it off where people can swim. Right over there, see? Lean over this way—see that long building? That's the bathhouse. You like to swim?”

“Wherever there's water.”

“Same way with me. Learned in the creek down at the farm. My mother tried to keep me out, afraid I'd drown. But I sneaked in every chance I got. Don't have much time to swim nowadays. Now up here a little ways—up this drive, I think—there's a large playground. Swings and teeter-totters, slides, everything for the kids. I don't see it though. Must've been up that other direction.”

She could have led him to it, blindfolded.

“Well, anyway, it's out here somewhere. And a bandstand and picnic area. This is a nice stand of trees along here.”

Tiresome old Ansel, rattling off facts and figures, pointing out places she knew better than he did and wanted to forget. She sat in her corner of the seat and looked out the window.

“The majority of trees out here are oak, lot of scrub oak and hickory. Ash and sycamore down by the creek, and some willows.”

He prattled on as they meandered through the maze of byways, through groves and hollows she knew by heart.

But soon, when they had left the park, driving along a road unfamiliar to her, she found that she was listening to his tales of feuds and hauntings, barn-raising and hell-raising in that hilly countryside, and high drama enacted here long ago in rude accents still touched with Elizabethan. He really did know a great deal.

“But I'm talking too much,” he said. “You probably find it pretty dull.”

“No,” she said, meaning it, “not dull at all.”

“I get wound up on local lore and forget when to stop.”

“I like it.”

“I didn't mean to monopolize the conversation. You haven't hardly got a word in edgewise. Let's talk about you for a while.”

“Oh, that's not very interesting.”

“I bet it is.”

“What time is it? I should be getting home.”

“But there are still so many places to see around here. Let's run out to Bunkin's Mill—I bet you've never been out there.”

“That's a long way, isn't it?”

“Nah, mile or two.”

It was more like five or six. If it had been any closer, within walking distance, she and Toby and George would have been there. But he entertained her with a story of old Bunkin's daughter, how she stood off her brothers with a forty-four when they tried to take over the mill. “That was after the old man died, around 1897. He got in some trouble with the half-breed his daughter married, some Osage wandered over from Oklahoma or left over from the days when they inhabited this neck of the woods. Rumor was that the gal used that forty-four on the husband not long after. He wasn't around when she took over the mill and ran the brothers off. It's a recreation place now, swimming pool and a dance pavilion. Right up this road here.”

They turned off on a dark lane winding among the trees and across a narrow bridge. Beyond it the mill stood, tall and featureless in the darkness.

“You ought to see it when there's a full moon,” Ansel said. “It's really picturesque. Mother and I came out here one night last summer. We spend most of the summer here in town, you know. Sometimes spend a few weeks with some kinfolks down close to the farm, but we're here most of the time. It was one of those real hot nights in July. We were just driving around, trying to get a breath of air. This place was all lit up around the pavilion. We could see people dancing and swimming. It's real swanky out here, so I've heard. There's the old mill part over there. Listen, you can hear the water.”

He stopped the car and she sat back in her corner, expecting him to reach for her. But he left the motor running and after a moment drove on. The road was dark; it crossed a creek by a spillway, took sharp turns this way and that. She had no idea where she was until they were coming up Center Street, with the Grease Pit dead ahead, all its bare bulbs blazing.

“How about it,” said Ansel, “you ready for something to drink now?”

There were cars (ceded for the evening by cautious fathers, in honor of graduation) nosed up to the Pit all around. The place would be swarming with kids. Toby and George might be there. “Thank you, no!” she said. “I couldn't. Really, I ought to get home.”

“Well, if you think you have to.”

He drove past the Grease Pit slowly, on past the bakery, remarking on the aroma, and so at last to her corner.

“That was fun,” she said, hopping out of the car before he could come around to help her. “It was fascinating, all that about the landmarks around here and the old settlers. You really know your local history. You should write about it.”

“I've thought about it,” he said, following her up the steps. “I'd like to write a novel about the region, something on the order of Harold Bell Wright.”

“Something like that.” She paused at the door and turned. “Thank you very much, Dr. Ansel. See you Monday.”

“I sure hope we can do this again.”

“Not another baccalaureate address!”

“I mean ride around like this. And talk. Gosh, it's too bad you're not going to be here this summer. Mother and I are going to be here most of the time.”

“I've got summer school on my shoulders,” she said. “Have to finish my education credits.”

“Guess you'll be seeing a lot of your fiancé up there.”

“Who? Oh.”

“Your steady, your whatever you call him. What's his name anyway?”

“Max,” she blurted. It was the first grown-up name that popped into her head.

“Max! Don't you gals marry anything but Maxes?”

“I didn't say I was going to marry him.”

“I thought you were engaged.”

“We—broke it off.”

“Oh. Well. Golly, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to… Say, maybe if you're not going to be busy with him all summer—”