The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (22 page)

 

 

Yale rolled over and looked at Sonny. "Right now, chum, somewhere there's
a little snotty-nosed high school senior who is planning to come here in
September and take over -- right where you leave off."

 

 

"You may be right. One thing is sure. It will be a millennium before
another Romeo and Juliet like you and Cynthia appear on the Midhaven
scene."

 

 

"Go to hell!"

 

 

"I'm there, lover boy. When are you and Cynthia getting married?
Jeez, I'll never figure how you managed all these years to keep her from
getting knocked up."

 

 

Yale sighed. "It's going to be one great relief to be rid of your nosey
prying ways. Go on, get about your business. I have some more sleeping
to do."

 

 

With one eye half open, he watched Sonny get dressed. For a long time
Sonny examined his face in the mirror, changing his expression back and
forth from a happy grimace to a stern expression of wise maturity.

 

 

"See you, kid," he said finally as he was ready to leave. "You're not
quite rid of me yet. I'm going home for a couple of weeks, and then I'm
coming back. I was hired yesterday for eighteen bucks a week to assist
the fearless editor of the
Midhaven Herald
make something out of his
lousy rag. At the same time, unbeknownst to him, I plan to find out what
gives in a political way in Midhaven."

 

 

Yale groaned. Sonny was an incubus. Or was it a succubus? He snuggled
into his sheets, feeling the warm May breeze stirring at the window.
It was going to be a beautiful day. Really a hot one. Ideal for a picnic.
In about an hour he'd walk down to Mama Pepperelli's and get some
"guinea grinders" and then next door in the package store get some
beer. Then he would walk up to Cynthia's dormitory and they would hike
out to Strawberry Hill.

 

 

It had been inconvenient not having a car, but if he never drove again
he wasn't going to beg Pat. He could keep his damned automobile, and his
money, too. Yale remembered the night that he came back from New York.
Last October. The months had passed so quickly it seemed scarcely weeks
ago. He had driven Cynthia to her dormitory. It was a Sunday. When he left
her to unpack, he decided that he would go home and face the music. Pat
met him at the door.

 

 

"Did you have a nice trip?" he asked coldly. "Have you been accepted as
a convert?"

 

 

"What do you mean?" Yale asked.

 

 

"I mean that I presume Mr. Carnell is looking forward to having a wealthy
son-in-law. If he is, he can start now and change his mind. Give me the
registration of your Ford."

 

 

Yale fumbled in his wallet and handed it to him. He watched, unbelievingly,
as Pat tore it in pieces, and flung them on the ground. "The insurance has
been cancelled. If you want a car . . . buy your own! I warned you not to
go to New Jersey. You and your little Jewish friend can enjoy each other's
presence on foot. I hope she has a good allowance. You can draw your
allowance in the future from the bursar's office. Your tuition and room
is completely paid. The bursar will pay you four dollars each Friday
afternoon." Pat strode back into the house. "If you can't get along
on four dollars a week -- earn your own money. It's more than I had at
your age."

 

 

Yale followed him in slowly. Liz rushed up as he started for his room.
Yale twisted out of her grasp. The anger in him was beyond words.
In his room he lay on the bed staring at the ceiling for a long time.
The next morning he took a bus to the college. He hadn't been home since
nor had he seen Pat. Every week he called Liz and talked with her,
generally about school. When she begged him to make it up with Pat,
Yale told her, "I'm not angry, I just have nothing to say to him."

 

 

Explaining to Cynthia had not been easy. The lack of an automobile was
difficult enough. It had been practically impossible to find a way to
be with her alone. Worse was trying to tell her the reason for losing
the car and still allay her fears.

 

 

She grasped what had happened. "It's because of me, isn't it, Yale?
Because you visited my family and drove me back. Do you suppose they
found out about our staying in New York?"

 

 

The entire year had been clouded by the loss of his car. Not having a car
they were limited to Mama Pepperelli's which was always crowded with
students, or the reception room of Cynthia's dormitory which afforded
no privacy at all since it was under the constant surveillance of
Mrs. Wicker, the house mother. The only way they could be alone was to
go for a long walk, or huddle together at night in the doorway of some
college building.

 

 

Cold and shivering, Cynthia would worry about the future. Yale wanted to
get married in September. He planned to take a summer course at Columbia,
and pass his teaching requirements. Then he felt sure he could get a
teaching job. It wouldn't be much money but they could live. When Cynthia,
more practically, wanted to know whether Pat would give him the money for
Columbia, or how they could possibly earn enough, even with both of them
working, to pay rent and buy food, Yale would kiss her and tell her that
she was a worry bug and had no confidence in him.

 

 

While their plans didn't seem as hopeless to Yale as they did to Cynthia,
he was a little uneasy. Doctor Tangle had called him to his office just
before mid-years and told him that his father expected him to apply
for Harvard Business School. Doctor Tangle put the application forms
completely filled out even to photographs before him. Yale looked at
them in dismay. "Just sign them, Yale, and I'll send them along for
you. Believe me, we don't do this for all our students." When Yale told
him flatly that he was not going to Harvard Business School, Doctor Tangle
said quietly, "If you want my recommendation for any other place then
I advise you to apply. You don't have to go to Harvard if something
else comes up." Reluctantly Yale signed the application but he didn't
tell Cynthia.

 

 

By February their desire to be together culminated in a plan to go to
Boston and stay in a hotel. By living frugally Yale had accumulated
eighty-five dollars. Fifty dollars of it was the remains of his summer
earnings at the Marratt Corporation. In February, just before mid-years
there was a college vacation period. Some students remained to study
for mid-year examinations. Others went home. Cynthia wrote her father
that she was going to stay at the college. She and Yale packed their
books. On a Saturday afternoon they took a train to Boston.

 

 

Lying in bed, half-awake, Yale could recall every minute of that wonderful
week. "It's like being really married," Cynthia had said leaning out of
the window of the hotel and looking across Boston Common. The bellhop had
left the room and Yale stood behind her, kissing her neck and caressing
her breasts. She turned and put her arms around his neck, holding him
almost in anguish. "I'm not Jewish, Yale," she said. Her eyes were liquid
with tears. "I'm just Cynthia and I'll always love you."

 

 

Yale tumbled on the bed with her. "Honey dearest, you are Jewish. You're
Ruth. You're Naomi -- you bring me all the wonderful love of a Jewish
woman. The pride and love that you have is your heritage from centuries
of Jewish women before you. Maybe you are a re-incarnation of some lovely
Jewish wife who helped her husband escape from the bondage of Egypt. I
love you because you are Cynthia. I love you too because of your fierce
Jewish love for me."

 

 

As she undressed, between kisses and giggles, she said, "If I am Jewish,
my darling, then I am not a good follower of my religion, because I am
here with you and we are not married and that is not being a good Jew
or a good Christian -- but I'm glad I'm here."

 

 

It was a week filled with the easy simplicity of new love. Nothing could
go wrong. Nothing did. They sat on the bed, mornings, naked, peeling
oranges, and throwing the peelings at each other, high score going to
the one who could hit the other in the most vulnerable places. Amidst
hilarious laughter, she told him it wasn't fair that he had only one
"place" and she had three. They made love in the morning and then studied
their courses until noon. After showering together they ate twenty-five
cent lunches in Childs. In the afternoon they went visiting historical
places. Yale showed her Goodspeed's fascinating bookstore under the Old
South Church. They bought a copy of Thomas Wolfe's new book
The Web and
the Rock
. In the evening while Yale studied a course in Physics, which
he had belatedly taken to complete his Science requirements, and which
threatened to keep him from making Phi Beta Kappa, Cynthia read avidly.

 

 

"Yale, Yale," she said excitedly. "Look, listen! Let me read this to
you. Thomas Wolfe was in love with a Jewish woman." She read him about
Mrs. Jack in the novel. "Wolfe never wrote anything that wasn't partly
autobiographical. This happened to him, I know it did!" But as she
read she grew sad because the love affair in the book didn't come out
happily. She continued to read to Yale, drawn by the story of George
Webber and Mrs. Jack.

 

 

"But, she was married to someone else," Yale pointed out. "They didn't
break up because she was Jewish."

 

 

"I know it," Cynthia said despondently, "but I like her. I wanted them
to be married."

 

 

There were two days that it snowed all day. Yale went out to a delicatessen
and bought cheese and peanut butter and milk. They stayed in bed for most
of the two days and talked about every conceivable subject from how many
children they would have to erudite problems in philosophy. Cynthia had
developed a knack of leading Yale's thinking. When he got himself in muddy
waters she seemed to know how to say the right words to guide him back.
More completely than in the nearly three years they had known each other,
they discovered the depth of their love. There was no flaw. They were a
perfect meshing of personalities both intellectually and emotionally.
Emotionally, they couldn't seem to enjoy the wonder of each other's bodies
enough. Yale would wake up to find Cynthia snuggled into his arms, kissing
his cheeks softly. In a moment they were joined in a warm alliance that
lasted for hours, finally erupting into a passion that left them spent,
and sometimes helpless with laughter.

 

 

She would look at him tenderly yet with a playful grin on her face.
"You're a demon lover, my darling." Yale, his lips on her breast, would
murmur, "You know something? In the novels I have read, having intercourse
is such a frightfully serious thing. Why hasn't someone written that people
can make love, how should I say it 'L'Allegro' instead of 'Il Penseroso'?
I guess it's because most religions only tolerate the love of man and
woman. They look upon it as competition for love of God. They say it is
a 'fall' from grace, and make it evil. I'm sure God would prefer happy
laughter or he wouldn't have made spring the time of fertility and birth
so delightful, and autumn, the season of death, so sad."

 

 

 

 

Yale looked at his watch, and jumped out of bed. It was eleven thirty.
He was to meet Cynthia at her dormitory at twelve thirty. Shit, shower,
shave, shampoo. He grinned as he recalled Sonny's expression. It epitomized
the organizer that Sonny was . . . everything fast, thorough and efficiently
done. Everything that counted to Sonny, that was. Certainly not studies or
learning for Sonny. But "doing" -- ah, yes. And that was where the rub came.
It was going to take some "doing" in the next few months. "Doing" instead
of thinking to end up married to Cindar.

 

 

Yale was beginning to realize that in order to accomplish it he would
have to compromise his integrity. And what is my integrity, he thought,
as he shaved? Is it so important that I make the break with Pat? Wouldn't
it be easier to play Pat's own game? A compromise -- in exchange for
his marriage with Cindar in September, an agreement to go to Harvard
Business School and take his place with Marratt Corporation. Could he
find happiness that way? Could the problems of marketing jams and soups
intrigue him enough or would he just become a "yes" man to Pat. No, it
was impossible, he couldn't take "business" seriously. Not in the way
that Pat did with "business" dominating his very living from one day to
the next. Nor would Pat ever accept the condition. It was amazing how
deeply hatred could be rooted. He doubted that Pat had ever had a bad
experience with a Jew. Sharp in their dealings, certainly, but they'd
have to get up early in the morning to be shrewder than Pat. No, Pat's
hatred was the irrational, middle-class hatred, created from a lifetime
in an environment of little, scared men who built their very egos on the
false nourishment that Jews were tricky, sharp, clannish . . . and hated
you, too. Many men in the world had the Aryan complex whether they knew
it or not.

 

 

As Yale dressed, he remembered that tomorrow was his sister Barbara's
wedding. When Liz had made the plans with Barbara she hadn't known it
would be Yale's graduation day, too. The wedding was at seven o'clock with
a reception at the Marratt home. Yale could imagine the preparations.
At this point and for the next twenty-four hours the Marratt house would
be the scene of the wildest kind of confusion.

 

 

Yale hadn't known Barbara was going to be married until Liz had told
him in one of his weekly telephone calls. Yale wondered what the guy
was like. Rich, Liz had said. From Texas. His father owned a tremendous
cattle ranch as well as oil property. Thomas Lawson Eames, II. A graduate
of Harvard, of course. Barbara had met Tom in February when she had
spent a week in Miami at a girl friend's house. Come to think of it,
Yale thought, amused, it must have been about the same week that he and
Cindar went to Boston.