The Crossroads (6 page)

“I don’t want you to …”

“Sometimes you want to talk about a thing like that.”

“All right, Chip,” she said, looking down.

He rested his heavy arms on the table and told her. He tried not to color it, not to appeal for sympathy. He made it as factual as a case history. When he finished there was a silence again, but this time it was more comfortable. She looked up at him, frowning, and said, “But what can you
do?
”

“Nothing. Live with it. I’d better go. Thanks for the coffee, Jeana. Thanks for listening. Thanks for … being the sort of person you are, so I could talk to you.”

“I’m not much of anything.” she said.

She went to the door with him. Night had come. The highway was a river of lights, moving with a rare slowness. He put his topcoat on and turned toward her. They looked into each other’s eyes for perhaps ten long seconds. He saw her mouth soften, saw the slow deep breath that lifted her rather small breasts under the cinnamon cardigan. When he reached for her she came meekly and obediently, blushing, into his arms, but with nothing meek or shy about the textures of her mouth.

He took her to bed that night, in her three-quarter bed in the tiny garden studio apartment, with the wind whining outside and intermittent gusts of sleet rattling against the windows. They went to bed as hungry strangers, victims of a mutual attraction stronger—as they confessed to each other at another time—than anything they had ever felt before. They could not subdue their need. Quenched for a time it would rise again. When he left her they were no longer strangers. It was the last time he ever left his car in front of Number 22. From then on they were careful, devious—cautious, greedy schemers.

When they could talk easily with each other, to the companionable glow of the shared cigarette, he learned that she had never been promiscuous. It eased those jealousies he had felt because of the very ease with which he had acquired her. She could not understand what had happened to her. Nor could he. Together they tapped latent stores of sexuality of which they had both been
previously unaware. They took each other to far, strange, sometimes frightening places. And, as what had begun as naked need changed slowly into love, they found an ever deeper, more gratifying use of each other. They shared a little guilt at their overwhelming sensuousness, but guilt was forgotten in the whine of need, the chortle of pleasure, the great cry of completion. They talked in the gentle darkness of how there had never been truly another woman for him, or a man for her. They talked of this new magic. They wondered what would happen to them.

And they were both aware of the trap. He could not accept—nor did she want him to—the moral and emotional responsibility for destroying the pattern of Clara’s vague existence, and thus destroying what was left of her. Nor could they parade their relationship and consider themselves decent. It had to be secretive. For a time Jeana had been as sure of love as he was. But now in June she had come full circle, had begun to wonder, aloud, if it was only the rationalization of the strength of the physical attraction. Though the savageness of their need seemed to grow ever stronger, he had begun to wonder if he would lose her through her own self-doubt. Their helplessness seemed to increase her doubt and her sense of guilt.
I want you
is a shallow substitute for
I love you
.

He knew there could never be enough of her, of her supple, nimble pleasures. During all the hours he could not be with her she stood smiling in one corner of his mind, stepping out from time to time with a bawdy demureness to stop him in the middle of a sentence, or blur the page in front of his eyes. Their excesses led to renewal rather than exhaustion. He felt more intensely awake and alive than ever before in his life, his mind more quick and sharp, his energies keyed higher. And, as though her body sought to please him, there had been an actual physical change in her slenderness obvious to both of them, a deeper, warmer curving of her hips, a swelling heaviness of breast, even a more resilient texture and pliancy to her skin. Her eyes were shining and she
walked, swaying, on tiptoe for him. For a time she thought that the physical changes, in spite of her precautions, might be due to pregnancy, and she was terrified. When she found her fears were groundless she was pleased that she could change in this way for him, that the body had this magical ability. She sat at her dressing table and smugly admired her new abundancy, telling him that this was by far the most pleasant solution to her ancient dilemma of whether or not to experiment with falsies, having spent, as she said, all her college years looking like a smuggler of small green pears, two at a time.

The shop bell jingled and he had no way of knowing whether the customer had left or another had arrived, until he heard the quick tick of her heels coming toward the storeroom. He got up and stubbed out his cigarette in the ash tray on the shelf under her mirror, and turned toward her, smiling.

“Don’t you dare come near me,” she said.

“Sell anything?”

“A wildly expensive little music box. And I felt sad while I wrapped it. It plays that Sugarplum Fairies thing.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“Oh, yes, darling. Yes. Yes.”

“It is love, you know.”

“Keep telling me. Please.”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Forty times.”

“Make it fifty.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“You can keep saying that, too. A lovely lie, darling.”

He got back to his house a little after eleven. He called Nancy but there was no answer. Clara was sitting in the living room. The blinds were half-closed against the sunlight. She sat on the couch wearing a dressing gown, her graying hair stringy, a glass at her elbow, staring at the television set. It was turned very loud. She liked it loud. He went and stood over her and said, “Where’s Nancy?” You had to speak loudly and distinctly and then wait in patience for her to comprehend the question.

She looked up at him slowly. She was never too bad in the mornings. “Nancy? Uh … Nancy went out.”

“Where?”

… “I don’t know.”

He checked the kitchen. There was no sign of Nancy having fixed her own breakfast. So he rode over to the Motor Hotel Restaurant. She was alone at a corner table in the almost empty room, reading a book as she ate. She was wearing her most recent favorite costume, leotards or leotights or whatever they called them, and an exceptionally baggy sweater. A lock of her black hair fell across her forehead. The young beauty of her pinched his heart. Though she was not as big as her grandmother had been, she looked very much like the girlhood photographs of Martha McCarthy. Chip guessed that was why Papa liked to have her come and see him.

She looked up as he approached the table and smiled and closed her book. He sat down and said, “What kind of a breakfast is that?”

“It’s brunch, sort of. Orange juice and a steak sandwich and a coffee shake.”

The waitress hurried over and said, “Can I get you something, Mr. Drovek?”

“Coffee, please, Sally. What time did you roll out of the sack, Nance?”

“Elevenish. And now you ask me what time I got in. Five minutes of two. And now you give me a blast and shoot me into orbit.”

“Pretty late, punkin.”

“Well, the second movie wasn’t over until quarter after twelve. And then we ate down at the Haven, and then we took Jupe all the way in to Walterburg. Honest, I didn’t know it was getting so late.”

“How does this most recent hero drive?”

“Oh, he’s a real good driver! He’s very careful.”

He studied her for a few moments. “Is that going to be the summer, punkin? Sack in ‘till noon and tear around all night?”

She sucked at the coffee shake, frowning into the distance, and then said, “That’s what I want to talk to you
about, Dad. I know I’m supposed to be sixteen, but couldn’t you fix it so I could have a … regular kind of a job?”

“Do you really want to work?”

“Yes.”

“This isn’t a whim? You won’t work a week and decide it’s a bad idea?”

“I won’t goof, Dad. I’m not Uncle Pete.”

“What makes you think Uncle Pete goofs?’

“Oh, Dad! For heaven’s sake!”

“All right, if you mean it, I can fix it. How about working for your Aunt Joan over in …”

“No, thanks. I want to be a counter girl at the Haven.”

“That’s hard work, honey. And it can get rough down there. You know that. It takes an older girl who …”

“Dad, I know it’s hard work. Gosh, I’ve been in there often enough. But … well, they seem to have fun too. It’s what I want to do.”

He grinned at her. “And they have cute uniforms?”

“Will you let me?”

“There’s one condition. I’ll make sure you don’t get any special treatment.”

“I wouldn’t want that.”

“And the condition is that you stick it the whole summer. Right up to August. That will give you a little break to rest up and get ready to go away to school. You won’t come moaning about being on your feet all day. You’ll stick it out.”

“Shake, boss!”

He shook her firm young hand. “You asked for it, punkin. You’ll go on the eight to four shift. You’ll be setting your alarm for seven. That’ll put a crimp in your night life. You’re sure, now?”

“I’ve thought it over. I’m sure as sure, Dad.”

“You’ll start Monday. I’ll fix it up. Don’t you let me down, punkin. Report at eight. They’ll know you’re coming. Now how about going with Joan tomorrow to see your grandfather? You haven’t been to see him in a long time.”

“There’s a picnic tomorrow. We’re all going swimming, a whole mess of us. Four cars.”

“He asked me about you this morning.”

“I know I should … Say, I could go up there right now. How about grounding yourself and letting me have the red bug?”

“You be careful.”

“I’ll be real careful.”

“No joy rides. Ride up there and ride back and leave it in front of the office.”

A few minutes later he stood out in front of the restaurant, watching her. He saw her get across the highway in a safe and conservative way, and disappear beyond the bowladrome. A few minutes later she reappeared, a busy little red dot, trailing a spume of dust, halfway up the long hill. He walked slowly to the office, a big sandy man with a thoughtful look on his hard-boned face, his eyes on the ground.

THREE

Sylvia Drovek awoke a few minutes after noon, drifting reluctantly, heavily upward out of the protective layers of sleep. Finally she opened her eyes, her very dark eyes with the long black curling lashes. She was aware of a little area of dread in her mind, but she was not anxious to identify it, or to face the day. The room air conditioner hummed. Sun came in around the blinds in narrow shafts. The blanket was fleecy and yellow. Her black hair was sprayed across the pillow.

She listened for any sound of Pete in the house, and then remembered he had phoned at nine last night from Richmond. Party sounds had been audible behind his slightly tipsy voice. “Honeybundle? Say, I’m going to stay over here. A great guy named Kip showed up. An old buddy from Tokyo. If Boss Brother comes around
showing his teeth, you tell him I’m making a special deal on a million gross of plastic toothpicks.”

That crazy Pete. A man with ten thousand close intimate friends. People were always showing up at some crazy time like three in the morning. And Pete would bound up and get dressed, delighted with them. They’d drink and make crazy talk and kind of close her out of things, somehow.

She pushed the covers aside and sat nude on the edge of the oversized bed. The rink. The skating rink. “Let’s you and me go take a couple of turns around the rink, chubby stuff?” That crazy Pete. All I’m good for.

She held her legs out, ankles together, feet arched like a toe dancer, and was pleased for the ten thousandth time that her legs touched all the way up, evenly, smoothly. Like I was some kind of one-woman harem, she thought. Just wait right here for him. Not like what I thought marriage would be.

The realization she had been avoiding, the little area of dread and excitement, became more clearly defined in her mind. This was Mark’s day off. This week he had Friday off. So for once I won’t go to him. What can he do if I don’t? But she knew she would go. She wished she could have stayed asleep. Since this thing had begun she had slept harder and longer than ever before in her life. Deep sleep, without dreams, that somehow did not leave her feeling refreshed or even completely rested.

She got up and padded across the deep blue rug and turned the air conditioner off. She was twenty-four, four years younger than Pete, a short girl, five foot three. She weighed a hundred and twenty-six pounds. She looked bulky in clothing. Her most becoming outfits were sweater and skirt combinations where she could call attention to the slimness of her waist by wearing wide ornate belts. In any derivative of the sack she looked square as a little box. But in her skin, she was succulently, firmly lovely. If she had any figure defect it was being rather long-waisted, slightly short-legged. The opulence of thighs and calves tapered to tiny ankles, small feet. All of her was rounded, smooth and slightly dusky. She
felt most comfortable, most confident and at ease with herself in her skin, knowing she looked her very best, and comfortably proud of herself.

Though her maiden name had been Kesson, and the bloodline was vaguely Scots-English-Irish-Dutch, she had blue-black hair, a Mediterranean cast of features, the sulky, sensuous, sexy expression of a nymph in the Mohammedan Paradise who found herself among unsatisfactory infidels. Pete claimed that it was obvious that one of her great-great-grandmothers had had certain dealings with a Spanish gypsy. For the past ten years she had been relentlessly pursued by males from fifteen to sixty, with varying success. A few of those who came to know her well enough to learn the basic contradiction between her appearance and the girl inside could say, with surprise, “You know, Sylvie’s a pretty good kid!” An uncomplicated kid. She was ashamed of the times she had been Bad. And she wished she could always be Good. The relationship with Mark was Bad.

She had been born and brought up—to the age of sixteen—in Lowell, Massachusetts, the middle child of five children of a little, wiry, sour, savage, sallow tool-and-die-maker and a fat, dim, defeated woman who always looked as if she had just finished weeping or was just about to begin. Her childhood was marked by the hard little unpredictable hands of Rudy Kesson, by squalls of rage and pain and terror.