Clair De Lune (29 page)

“… abide in thy peace, and continue in thy favor, unto their life's end … through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

But Lord, she had been chosen! And she had consented, forsaking all others, for academe.

“Let us pray. ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day—”

Oh, more than our daily bread, Lord! She was praying too, in her own words and with all her might, praying on past the power and the glory (did it have to be forever!) and on through the last incantations. She didn't want this job. She would be desperate without it, but she most desperately did not want it. She had told her mother more truth than she thought. Against all reason, with no compass and no place to go, with most of the world in turmoil, she wanted out.

And if the truth were known, she had no right to be
in
. By all that was just, they should have sent her packing. But they hadn't. And here she was now, caught by her own duplicity and trapped in the middle of the row, with the knot tied and the ring in her nose and Mr. Frawley between her and the window. Life everlasting. Amen.

The triumphant boom of Mendelssohn set the final seal.

Solemnity at the breaking point, the congregation rose noisily as the wedding party, in joyous disorderly retreat, charged up the aisle. Allen sat in a sodden heap, tears dripping into her lap. Her sins had turned on her in the mockingest way. Life would always turn on you, maybe. As it had on her mother. And on Gladys and Mrs. Medgar. She wept for them all. She wept for Dr. Ansel.

“Get up, Allen, people are trying to get out! I'm so hot I could die.”

They squeezed her into the aisle, Gladys on one side, Mae Dell on the other, close behind Dr. Ansel. Her face was on a level with his shoulder blades, where perspiration had left a dark stain. She could smell the damp mustiness of his coat. The line moved slowly, held up by kisses and congratulations outside on the steps. He smelled of mothballs. Down in among the warm bodies she wept again in despair. And was still at it when they all moved out onto the lawn.

“Why, look at you!” somebody said. “Your face is all wet.”

“Can't you dry up?” said Verna. “What is the matter with you?”

“Oh, she's just crying because she isn't the bride.”

But she was the bride. That was the trouble. Inasmuch as she had consented, advisedly, soberly, in the fear of Mother and Mrs. Medgar, she was joined in this union. And it wasn't for another year, maybe three, maybe five, it was till death did them part. That's how it went, one year leading to another, until it became a habit too comfortable to break. Security was pernicious. Once you had it, you might never let go, not for the world and all the gardens in Spain. That's how it went and how it would go with her unless she escaped it now. But she
couldn't
escape. And it wasn't her mother who stopped her now, it was Dean Frawley, that gentle, well-meaning old man.

“Here, honey, here's a clean hanky.” Mae Dell put a moist arm around her. “I always carry two to weddings. Now stop teasing, you-all. Weddings just do this to us, don't they, Allie? I cried myself. It was a beautiful wedding. Wasn't it?” she said, looking up at Dr. Ansel, who had joined them. “Just beautiful, wasn't it? I bet you cried too. Come on now, one weensie tear?”

“It was very impressive,” he said. “You ladies need a ride to the country club?”

“Oh, can we go with you?”

“You got room for all of us?” said Verna.

“Plenty of room. Miss Liles can sit in the front with me and Mother. She doesn't take up much room. Where is she? Oh, there you are,” he said, plucking her from behind Gladys.

Mr. Frawley came up at that moment, mopping his head. “If any of you ladies would like to ride with—”

“They're going with me,” Ansel said firmly.

“I'll go and see if anyone else…” He wandered off in Mr. Hudgin's direction.

Releasing herself from Ansel's grip, Allen moved over to Verna for protection and blew her nose.

“Where'd you get that hat?” Verna said, laughing. “You look about ten years old.”

“It's cute,” Mae Dell said. “Oh, isn't it exciting—we're going to the country club!” And lowering her voice, “I bet they serve champagne. Do you think we ought to drink it? Oh, look!” she went on, voice rising again. “They're taking pictures!”

The Ladies stood on tiptoe to see, their faces flushed with the heat and the glow of somebody else's happiness. They were part of it, they had been allowed to share, and they were going to the country club! She watched them for a moment with an unaccustomed ache. They had grown dear to her.

She turned away, and turning saw through a momentary gap in the crowd two figures at the far end of the street. They had stopped at the corner to watch, straddling their bikes. They saw her and waved.

A man stepping back from the crowd paused in front of her and took off his jacket. He was a large man with a good-natured red perspiring face.

“Too dang hot,” he said, grinning. He moved away, and the street was empty.

At the top of the steps the bride, all baby's breath and meringue, stood with her rose bouquet, the attendants arranged on the steps below. Flashbulbs popped.

All the way up the street, there was only the sunlight filtering through arched branches, and the line of cars parked at the curb.

Laughter broke out on the steps. She looked up as one of the ushers bounded down them and up again. Maxine's brother, up to some prank. She watched him for a moment—the lithe young body, the fresh intelligent face. And she looked away, with a guilty glance at Mr. Frawley's back. She looked all the way up the street again to where the two of them had stood. And she turned back to the churchyard with a sinking heart, knowing what she must do.

Oh, she had learned her lesson. She would be circumspect. Charged by the dean, she would bear faithfully the standard entrusted to her. She would be diligent, study history and the Greeks. She would partake of the small pleasures, little suppers, endure conformity and prudence…

Until one night there should come a footstep at her door and a young face appear there, eager, bright with laughter, with the spring moon behind him and the long, gray deadly waste of years stretching ahead of her, and she would run, reckless with joy, into the dappled beckoning night.

Across the yard the dean stood a little apart from the crowd, a deposed old king, his dignity and courtesy unshaken. It would be a good marriage, this that he left her to. He offered her tenure in the life of the mind, the wealth of books, ideas, and learning, the rewards of passing that wealth along to the young. She wanted that. And she wanted—freedom, to touch and taste and explore whatever the world had to offer, wide open to magic and wonder and the come-what-may of night and moonlight, the lovely lunacy. She wanted that too. And she could not have them both. It would be a good marriage. But she would be an unfaithful wife. She was, after all, her father's daughter. And better that the dean know it now than later, when she had betrayed them both.

“I expect there'll be dancing at the country club.” The odor of mustiness and perspiration. “Could I have the first dance? I'm not very good, but—”

She looked up into his anxious face, and for a moment she wavered. (Dr. Ansel weeping in her kitchen for the stifling mother.) But he carried the scent of the failed spirit and eternal regret.

“Look, look, she's going to throw her bouquet!” Mae Dell's voice was a shriek.

“I don't want that thing,” Verna said, taking a step back. “What would I do with it!”

Dr. Ansel had turned his head. She moved quickly, sidling around behind the Ladies. Then, little by little, she began to make her way toward the street. Halfway there she stopped and looked back. On the far side of the yard they had drawn together, the familiar group. Dr. Ansel and Lordy and Pick, her Ladies in their brave flowered hats. And the old dean, who had not seen the top of the world. Friends and fellows, whose ways she knew: cantankerous, tedious, well-meaning; flawed and human and hard beset; with debts and dreams, the same as she, and more common sense. She had only to go back and take her place among them. And again, in an aggravation of humility and love, she hesitated. She stood for another moment at the edge of the yard, weighing escape against years to come, secure and salaried, and an old man's faith. But she was the gambler's daughter. She had chosen. And all unwitting, they had given her leave to go. Out of their disappointed lives they had given her what she needed. It was hers now to take with her, her currency that would buy her way in the world.

She turned, suddenly rich.
Forgive me, Mr. Frawley!
Guilty, exulting, scared half to death, she slipped away unnoticed amid the rice and the cheering and walked up the street, faster and faster, till she came to the corner, where she turned and ran for her life.

Twenty-six

T
hey came home late through the warm murmurous night, between the hedges, past the great houses like ghosts hidden by the darkness. The moon had gone down. They said very little now, though earlier there had been no end of talk. Since early dusk, when the boys clattered up her stairs to find her, till long after moonset, they had made up for time lost and things left unsaid. (The three weeks were not spoken of. There was no need.)

The town was alive this night. Car lights fanned through the shadows, music from radios and phonographs floated through open windows. On lighted porches people were dancing.

“What is it?” she said. “Is it the wedding—contagious excitement? What's got into them?”

“Nerves!” said Toby.

At one spot, where the music was loud and the rhythm good, they stopped to dance on the sidewalk, and she was handed back and forth from one to the other until a voice broke in with a late news report. “… while the British count their losses in Crete, fires from the latest German attack burn uncontrolled in London. The sinking of another British destroyer—” The voice was cut off as someone twisted the dial, and Benny Goodman tootled them on up the street.

They had drunk some beer at Sutt's Corner, eaten hot dogs at the Grease Pit. On the corner by the Osage Theater they bought popcorn and carried it to the Scottish Rite Temple, where they sat on the steps and talked and talked. But the hour grew late, and now as they came down the alley they spoke hardly at all.

They walked through the willow branches in silence, the long twigs whispering around them—once through and back and through again. George said, “What'll I do without you and Toby?”

“What'll I do?”

The other said, “Who am I going to talk to?”

They walked on, hand in hand, and slowly up the steps to the landing. Down the street the chimes had begun to ring. Sixteen notes dropped sleepily through the gentle air, and the clock struck one.

“It's Sunday,” Toby said.

They leaned against the railing, looking out over the trees. “Will you come and see me,” George said, “at the music school?”

“If I can,” she said.

“Do you think I can make it, Teach?”

“I know you'll make it.”

Toby said bitterly, “Do you think I'll make it in chemical engineering?”

“No, but you will in other ways.”

“Maybe.”

“You will,” she said, “and George will. And maybe I will too. Somehow.”

“Now you can write your books!” they said.

“I have to find a job.”

“You can go to New York!”

“Someday. Maybe. Right now… I don't know where I'm going.”

“Neither do I,” said Toby.

They went on staring into the darkness, until the chimes dropped four more notes. George drew a long breath. “I better be gettin' home.”

“Me too,” said Toby.

They turned to each other, awkward and hesitating. “Well,” she said, “have fun this summer.”

She could go no further, but only stand and look at them. And as she looked, committing to dear memory those faces, they began to change. Two men stood before her, grave and handsome, and they did not know her. Nor she them.

She touched them, and they came back, two wistful boys, batting tears. And the three of them stood for a moment longer, poised at the edge of that kingdom they had held as children, beyond whose borders they would not again recognize each other.

“Write to us,” George said in a husky voice.

“I will. You write to me.”

“We will.”

For a moment then, it seemed they were holding their breath. “Oh, I'll miss you!” she cried out. And they were all in a clump, hugging one another and laughing and crying at once.

She kissed them and let them go. George went down first. Toby lingered, or perhaps he didn't. But he turned once and looked back, and he went down last.

They vanished quickly in the blackness of the alley, only a glimmer here and there and the fading sound of their footsteps between the hedges, past the great houses blind and asleep, and where beyond that, and how far, and through what perils, none of them knew. She watched them as far as she could see and sent a small prayer after them, that they would find their way in the dark.