“NO DEPENDENT CLAUSES,” said the principal back home, in August. “No Middle Ages.” She was muttering, but in a kindly fashion. She was trying to decide whether to enroll us in the fifth grade or simply to declare it skipped. “Tell me what you did learn.”
Willy sat looking out of the office window at the playground. I sat looking at Willy. “What did you learn?” the principal gently repeated.
We kept mum. So we had to repeat fifth grade, or endure it for the first time, who cared, same difference. Willy did master long division. I never figured out how to forget.
HANGING FIRE
NANCY AT CYNTHIA’S WEDDING had made a kind of hit. That is, one of Cynthia’s uncles had fallen in love with her.
“My dear Miss … Hanks?”
“Hasken.”
“That’s what I said. Sweet girl graduate. Lovely green stalk. How old are you, Hanks — twenty?”
“Twenty-one,” Nancy admitted. A pair of dancers hung above their table. Nancy shook her beaded bag over her plate. As her eyeglasses landed she grabbed for them. The dancers, revealed as Cynthia and her new husband, floated away.
“Glasses, and that filmy green dress — you remind me of a studious naiad,” the uncle said. When his hand crept between goblets toward the girl’s elbow, his wife at last claimed him. “I am not an old fool,” he protested as he was led away.
Thus the wedding. The next afternoon, Nancy, in dungarees and T-shirt, slumped against the window of a Greyhound. The bus was rumbling northward along a New Hampshire highway. Her duffel bag lay in the overhead rack. Nancy drew a compact from her back pocket and opened it. That uncle might be no fool, but he had a poor eye for similarities. She was not a nymph. What she did resemble, though, was a tutor — a tutor of German literature, say: the sort of fellow who used to hire out to young gentlemen hiking in the Dolomites. He’d quote Goethe while his charges frolicked with barmaids. Nancy had seen pictures of such scholars in biographies — limp hair just covering the ears, and long chins, and gold-rimmed glasses. The likeness was remarkable. She ran a comb through her bangs, and wondered where the Dolomites were.
The trees along the highway were taller now, and greener: Maine. Nancy shifted in her seat and took out her worry beads. When in doubt, tell your assets. A bachelor’s degree, cum laude; a boyfriend, Carl; a skill at certain languages; a good forehand. Yes, and she was an expert skier. She was discreet, too; for more than a year she had borne a hopeless passion for an itinerant tennis coach, and not a soul suspected. She’d do. Ahead waited her family, such as it remained — three kinswomen, couchant. She’d be fine.
At six the bus pulled into the Jacobstown depot. Nancy de-barked, compact, comb, and beads in the back pocket, duffel bag over the shoulder. She walked quickly away from town. Sidewalks narrowed, then withered altogether. The road climbed a hill. At the top, a board on a pole marked the entrance to the Jacobstown Country Club. The girl sat down beneath the sign.
A few days earlier at around this time her relatives, driving back from her commencement, would have reached this spot — weary ladies with champagne headaches. Nancy could imagine their approach. Aunt Laurette would have been at the wheel of the Jeep, her heavy lips folded like arms. Nancy’s mother would have been beside her, as thin as asparagus. Old Cousin Phoebe nodded in back. They chugged uphill, raising dust, awakening a vagabond on the grass … and, sitting up, Nancy saw that what had stopped today was a Renault, not the family Jeep. Two golden eyes glowed at her. “Miss Hasken?”
“… yes.”
“It’s Leopold Pappas,” he said, telling her what she could herself see, presenting her with a situation which she had herself invented, and many times: that on this hill, at this hour, he would appear, sweaty from the game just won, and invite her to ride with him, to leap, to soar … “Hey. Can I give you a lift?”
“I’ll level with you. I walk on purpose.”
“Oh. Good for the digestion.”
“… I suppose.”
“See you at the club this season?”
She nodded.
He rolled away.
Blank-mindedness, for five or ten minutes. Then Nancy lumbered to her feet, hoisted the duffel bag, and tramped on. Soon she had reached her mother’s property. The pines and firs were dense. She left the road, walked along a path, and reached a clearing. Still under cover of trees, she gazed at her home.
It was a low white house, silvery now in the summer evening. An ample porch encircled the first floor. Upstairs, dormers and turrets. The house was comfortable. Plays could be written here, or revolutions planned. At present, on the porch, three St. Petersburg countesses were enjoying high tea. Their posture seemed a shade too arrogant — one had to squint to be certain — yes, arrogant. Nancy sighed. She drew something from her pocket, raised it, took aim …
“Is that you, Nancy?”
“Yes, Mom.” She walked across the lawn and swung a leg over the porch rail. Cousin Phoebe leaned forward and tapped her knee.
“What were you doing out there? Something silver flashed.”
“Steel,” the girl corrected. “A steel comb.”
“Oh. I imagined it a pistol.”
Nancy handed her the comb and swung the other leg over.
“Welcome,” said the nasal voice of Aunt Laurette.
“Welcome,” Mrs. Hasken said, gently.
“Welcome,” Phoebe said.
They were drinking gin out of teacups. Mrs. Hasken was placid. Aunt Laurette grinned under her globe of orange hair. Phoebe was currying her skirt with Nancy’s comb. They were not aristocracy after all — only stand-ins.
“Tut,” Phoebe said. “Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, my girl; it’s not so bad to have come home.”
Nor was it. Often during the semester just past, Nancy had furiously contemplated her future, coming up always with a single agreeable vocation: governess. But these days, who required a governess? Genteel spinsters took up other trades now, Nancy figured. Veiled, they turned up in Washington as prostitutes or lobbyists. As for her friends, some were settling into New York apartments. Some were hitching west. One had gone to live on a houseboat. But such enterprises were out for Nan. She had her family to consider …
They were at this moment considering her, regarding her coolly over their gin like the aunts they all more or less were, for Phoebe seemed closer than a cousin, Mrs. Hasken more remote than a parent. But whether aunts or ancestors, lineal or collateral, these dotty ladies were Nan’s by blood. In consanguinity lay their claim — consanguinity, and affection.
She slipped from the rail and settled on the glider. Phoebe handed her a gin and mint. Her mother smiled. Laurette began to whistle.
“Hello, Nancy,” said a housemaid at the window.
“Hello, Inez.” Inez vanished.
“Did you dance a lot at that wedding?” Mrs. Hasken asked.
“Some, with Cynthia’s uncles.”
“Men are creeperoos,” Laurette said. Each winter she flew to the Caribbean for two disappointing weeks. “Do I really resemble Simone Signoret?”
“Like sisters,” Cousin Phoebe said.
“How’s Carl?” Mrs. Hasken inquired.
“Since yesterday,” Phoebe added.
“… fine.”
“You don’t love him.” Mrs. Hasken’s pale eyes were spoked and rimmed with black. She had been a widow for ten years.
“No, I don’t,” Nancy said.
“He loves you,” Phoebe remarked.
“The way of the world,” Laurette said briskly. “Usually the shoe’s on the other foot. Anyway, what’s love? Duping, derangement. I like Carl.”
“I say, take him,” said Phoebe. “Or else, don’t.”