Till We Meet Again (32 page)

Oh, it was true enough that Freddy had always wanted to “fly.” She’d said so often enough, and demonstrated it with her daredevil antics, but that had been a childish whim, that a girl should put behind her just as she grew out of her escapades on skates or jumping from a window.

Sighing, Eve thought that she had rarely felt so much a failure. The Freddy she had found out about tonight wasn’t the daughter she knew, and that must mean that she was an unobservant, careless mother. How ironic it had been when Maurice had sat down with them and insisted on celebrating, imagining that all was joyful with the family Lancel. What was it that he had whispered to her? She had paid no attention at the time, so deep was her shock and anger. “Would not a certain Maddy have been delighted …” A
certain Maddy
.

Eve jumped off the window seat, stunned by memory. She stood absolutely still, listening to the heavy beat of her heart.
Maddy!
Maddy who had, without thinking twice, caused
a grievous scandal that had lived on for many years, a scandal that had brought great pain and shame to everyone in her family and, she had to admit it, caused Paul’s career to come to a dead end; Maddy of the red dress and the red shoes and the amorous songs, the wild applause, the hot, incandescent, orange beacon of the footlights; Maddy who had finally craved every glory the music hall could bring her.

She had been only a year older than Freddy was now when she had deceived her parents night after night in Dijon, plotting to slip out of the house and run to the Alcazar to hear Alain Marais sing. Unthinkable—to meet him alone. Eve blushed deeply in the darkness as she remembered the night she had gone to his rooming house. Two glasses of red wine were no excuse for what she’d let him do to her there—and yet, and yet—he’d asked her permission each step of the way. No! She must not think about the events of that night, not deliberately, although she would never forget them.

She’d been only a year older than Freddy when she’d disappeared and gone off to live in Paris. To live in sin, as they must all have whispered in shocked voices … in blackest, deepest sin, although it had not seemed like sin to a carefree girl who called herself Madeleine and made the Grands Boulevards her territory; to Madeleine, who’d taken the dare and auditioned for Jacques Charles and made him sit up and take notice; to Maddy, again renamed, starring in a
tour de chant
at the Olympia, so sure of herself and of her right to do whatever she pleased that she had practically thrown her Aunt Marie-France out of her dressing room when she’d come to beg her to return home. Had she been seventeen still, or eighteen? Eve could still hear her own defiant words.

“I’m not a little girl you can order around anymore … How could I be content with a life like my mother’s?… I have nothing to be ashamed of.” Maddy, who was so utterly determined to become a star, come what may, and would never have left the stage had it not been for the war and Paul. When had she finally forgotten Maddy? When, at what moment in all these years, had she become
Madame la Consule de France
, who sang only for her friends at private parties or at black-tie benefits for the many charities of Los Angeles? When had she lost Maddy?

Back and forth in the bedroom, with only a little moonlight to show her the way, Eve walked in a daze of awakened
memory. For many long minutes she was lost in the past. She came back to the present. Paul was still asleep, but somehow she knew that Freddy was not.

Eve left the bedroom and walked down the corridor to her daughter’s room. There was a light under the door. She knocked and Freddy answered with a faint “Come in.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Eve said, looking at her daughter, curled up on her bed in her flannel pajamas, forlorn and diminished, clinging to a small book with a blue and red cover.

“Neither could I.”

“What are you reading?”

“It’s a student pilot’s handbook.”

“Any good?”

Freddy tried to laugh. “There’s no plot and no dialogue, but lots of detailed description.”

“Freddy, tell me, this person—this flying instructor of yours—is he a … young man?”

“Mac? I’ve never even thought about it. He flew in the war, with the Lafayette Escadrille, so he must be, oh, I don’t know. I could ask him.”

“No, never mind. I was only asking because I wondered … how much experience he had.”

“More than anybody. He started flying when he was just a kid. He’s taught hundreds of people. You know, Mother, it really isn’t unusual to solo at sixteen. Lots of boys do it. Ask anyone.”

“I’m sure you’re right. It was just such a … surprise.”

“You don’t sound angry anymore,” Freddy said cautiously.

“I’m not. I’ve been thinking about it. Flying means a great deal to you, doesn’t it?”

“More than I can explain. I wouldn’t have told so many lies if there had been any other way. I knew you wouldn’t give me permission to learn if I asked,” Freddy said earnestly.

“Hmm.” Eve considered the question.

“Well, you wouldn’t have, would you?”

“No, you’re right. We would have made you wait.”

“
I couldn’t have waited.”

“I know.”

“How … how do you know?”

“I just do. I was young once too, remember?”

“You’re still young,” Freddy blurted.

“Not
that
young. Never that young again … and perhaps
it’s just as well. Yes, certainly it’s just as well … and in any case, it’s inevitable. Oh, what are we going to do with you now, my darling?”

“I have to get my pilot’s license. I can’t lie about that. For one thing, I promise not to lie anymore … and for another, I need your written permission to take the exam for the license. It’s ten more hours of lessons, minimum.”

“What had your plan been? To work until you could pay for that much instruction?”

“Yes. I was going to figure out some other … things … no … lies to tell you to account for the time I wasn’t at home or at school.”

“The tennis team? The Easter pageant? The Queen of the May?”

“They’re all good ideas—except for the Queen of the May. If I hadn’t been so proud of my solo and told you about it, I bet I could have done it.”

“Even the written permission?”

“Forgery,” Freddy said somberly. “I would have.”

“I have no doubt,” Eve murmured. “Still, now we know. All things considered, I think that it’s better this way.”

“Does that mean that you’ll let me work at Woolworth’s?” Freddy demanded eagerly.

“I’ll have to speak to your father. But I believe I can manage to make him understand. However, there is to be absolutely no hitchhiking, Freddy. None. Whatsoever. Do you promise me faithfully?”

“Yes, of course, but how can I get out to the airport?”

“If you’re good enough to fly a plane in the air, I must assume that you’re quite capable of driving on the streets. Most of the boys get their licenses at sixteen, don’t they? I remember when Delphine talked of nothing else.”

“Oh, Mother!”

“When you learn to drive, Freddy, you can borrow my car.”

“Oh, Mother—you’re so good to me!” Freddy lunged at Eve and crushed her with a hug. Although she was bigger than her mother, she snuggled as close to her as she could, needing the comfort and reassurance that the contact brought. She hadn’t been bad enough to be cast out of the family as she had feared during the last hours alone in her room. They both had tears in their eyes.

“Let’s just say that I’m grateful for certain favors … big
and small. Now you must go to sleep, darling. Ill see you in the morning.”

“Good night, Mother,” Freddy said, looking as if she were planning to stay up all night, dancing over her good fortune.

“Good night, darling. The solo
was wonderful
, wasn’t it? I can imagine … no … I can … remember … yes, in my own way,
remember
 … how you must have felt. Congratulations, my darling. I’m very proud of you.”

“Come on, Freddy, it’s time,” Delphine said. Freddy looked out the window at the winter rain that had followed her birthday and had lasted for a week. Delphine had arrived that Sunday from her sorority house and announced that it was time to do the “make-over” she had promised Freddy for her birthday present. Freddy didn’t see how she could reject the experiment politely, with the excuse that she had too much homework. Clearly she didn’t, and clearly she had to accept this gift of Delphine’s or be accused of being ungrateful, unsisterly and uncooperative.

“I’m going to drape a bath towel around you,” Delphine said, once she had Freddy settled down in front of the dressing-table mirror in her room. “Did you bring your hairbrush?” Freddy handed it to her with a silent sigh of impatience, yet how many of Delphine’s friends would give anything for this concentrated attention?

Delphine, absorbed and serious, turned Freddy around so that she was facing away from the mirror. She brushed all of her sister’s waterfall of hair away from her face and held it back with big plastic barrettes. She took a bottle of cleanser, moistened a piece of cotton with it, and wiped Freddy’s face with its high outdoor color. The cotton was as clean when she finished as when she had started, for Freddy used nothing on her skin.

“There,” said Delphine. “Now I can start.” She took one of the boxes of Max Factor pancake base she kept in a drawer and covered Freddy’s strong features with a layer of thin, expertly applied base, turning them all one pale tint, several shades lighter than Freddy’s natural coloring. She powdered Freddy all over in the same soft beige color and studied the result silently, circling round and round her sister.

Freddy looked as pure as a statue, she thought. A vigilant statue, with bone structure as resolute and inevitable as the
vaulted ceiling of some great cathedral. But she was Freddy’s sister, not a boy, and boys, normal boys or exceptional boys, simply didn’t date statues with marvelous bones. That wasn’t what they were looking for in a girl.

Although Delphine had never said anything to Freddy, she was concerned with the fact that her sister, at sixteen, was not being asked out enough. Enough? Practically not at all. If a girl hadn’t become popular by sixteen, what possible kind of future could she hope for? Freddy stayed home on many a Saturday night, trying to seem perfectly happy to be left alone with her impossible books about flying, but Delphine knew that she must be deeply worried and too proud to admit it. Freddy danced masterfully, for they’d often danced together, practicing the latest steps, but who would ever know how light and rhythmic she was, if she never went out?

Delphine took out a puff and a round flat compact of rouge. Using the lightest of strokes, she applied the rouge delicately, blending it so that it looked absolutely natural. Then she took out a sharp eyebrow pencil and, with feathery gestures, drew tiny light brown lines between the coppery hairs of Freddy’s eyebrows, darkening them just enough to make them a dramatic frame for the deep sockets of her wildly blue, unwavering eyes. Freddy stirred restlessly. “I didn’t know you had all that stuff. Do you use it?” she asked.

“Of course. Everyone does.”

“I never realized.”

“That’s the point. If it’s too obvious, you’ve done it wrong. But it makes all the difference. Freddy, it’s so easy to learn. I’ll teach you exactly how to do it when I’m finished. I’ll take it all off and then I’ll do half of your face and you can do the other half yourself, and we can practice until you’ve got it just right … I don’t care how long you take. You have to relax and have the courage to make a mistake. You can always wipe it off.”

“That’s … that’s really sweet and generous of you, Delphine.”

“You’re only sixteen once. This is a big birthday and I had to give you something important,” Delphine said with pleasure. She worked in silence for a while and then added casually, “High school boys are really drips.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“You’re lucky you skipped a year. You’ll be at UCLA next
fall, and that’s another story. College men. Thousands of them. And a majority who aren’t drips.”

“Good news.” Freddy gave her as innocent a smile as she could manage. Delphine could be so adorable when she was trying to be subtle.

“College guys know how to appreciate a good conversationalist. They’ll go for you.”

“That’s better news.”

“Only up to a point,” Delphine said, using the words as expertly as a picador, as she took out a small box in which she kept cake mascara, her most precious possession.

“Oh?”

“Well, you know how men are.… They like to do most of the talking, even with a good conversationalist.”

“That’s silly. Isn’t it a waste of the other person?”

“Not really. Good conversation is really making somebody else feel brilliant—you know—bringing him out, encouraging him to express himself, listening
creatively.”
Delphine dipped a brush into a glass of water and rubbed it expertly on the cake of black mascara.

“If you’re trying to say that I talk too much, I know I do,” Freddy said.

“Oh, Freddy, it’s not that at all. It’s just that boys—even college men—can’t talk intelligently about aviation. They don’t know anything about it, and they certainly don’t want to learn from a girl.”

“Well, what else can I talk about?”

“Cars,” Delphine said solemnly.

“I’ve tried. I really, truly have, but a car’s such a ridiculous thing. I mean, where can the dumb thing go, for heaven’s sake, except back and forth on some silly road? It’s so one-dimensional! What’s the big deal about cars?” Freddy asked in disgust.

“If … just
if …
you could not breathe a single word about planes and pretend to be interested in cars, just for a little while, cars could lead to other things Most girls can’t even be semi-intelligent about cars or engines, so you’re in great shape there. Then … well, then the conversation will get around to other things.”

“Like what?” Freddy was frankly puzzled but willing to learn.

“His fraternity, his classes, his professors, the football team and what he thinks about its chances, what bands he
likes, what new movies he’s seen, who his favorite movie stars are, what he’s planning to do when he graduates, what he thinks about absolutely anything—even what he reads in the comics—oh, Freddy, there are a million things to get a man to talk about if you start with cars and keep asking questions.”