“Would you like the glider, Mother?”
“I don’t think so.” Her face was beautiful despite its extreme thinness. At fifty she had not yet turned gray. She was a woman who had worn hats, hummed tunes, laughed at radio wags. She had endured the illness and decay of the man she loved, and his dying. Alone, she’d attended ballet recitals in drafty barns, clapped at graduations, and waited up for Nancy, lying sideways on a couch whose brocade carved a cruel pattern into her cheek.
“Remember ‘Glow-Worm’?” Nancy asked.
“I don’t think so. That pas de deux?”
“Irma Fellowes pushed me across the stage like a broom.”
“Chubby Irma. She’s married now.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine!” Fingers flew to cheek. “Don’t I look fine?”
No. But Nancy had already spoken with their physician, a belly with a beard.
“High blood pressure,” he’d said. “Under control.”
“Shouldn’t she be on a special diet?” Nancy had asked.
“No. How’s life treating you?” he said.
“So-so.”
“Ha-ha. Lots of chaps blushing you up?”
“Too few.”
“Tsk. Get married, girl,” he advised.
The message was coming through. Marry, said Laurette’s hot eyes — or prepare to wisecrack your way down the years. Marry, warned Phoebe. Or you, too, may play the fool at someone else’s court. “Marry!” Cynthia had wailed, her train a bandage around her arm. “Hey, Nan, get married yourself. Everyone wants to dance with you!” Marry, sighed Mrs. Hasken. Before I withdraw. Marriage, said Carl’s letter, would benefit us both.
Why not? She was not the sort to set men on fire. She was lanky and ungifted. She was lucky that Carl wanted her. She thought hard about that decent young man, so hard that he appeared before her, scholar, don. To a bunch of small rowdies he might someday be the head. He smiled, nearly destroying her — he had a darling smile. She set him on the rail. Next she conjured up the man she wanted, and after checking him for details — the scar on the knee, the paunch — placed him beside his rival.
Nancy was sure the three of them could find contentment. Wearing knickers and caps, they’d hide out in a cave. Late on a January night they’d spy wolves sliding across the ice. When spring came they’d drift downriver in a homemade raft … She twisted on the glider as if in pain. Young women of twenty-one did not play Huck Finn. They got married, sensibly, or made themselves otherwise useful.
What was up, anyway? Truths ducked their heads whenever she drew near. Also she had begun to suffer from sinusitis. The next morning she rose at five and took a walk in the woods, and the day afterward, also. By the third day of tramping out at dawn she was reliably clearheaded in the morning, enraged by afternoon. She abandoned the sport.
That evening, using some grimy yellow paper, Nancy wrote: Dear Carl, I can’t, I’m sorry. Merciful, she stopped there. Fondly, Nan, and mailed the thing.
“You don’t look pleased,” Leo said, the next afternoon. No sun, but the fog was scorching. They sat on their bench, Leo wearing his pony’s hat, Nancy her straw one.
“Dysphoria,” mumbled the girl, uncomfortable under his medical gaze. Her chest was abnormally flat, he’d notice; her shoulders too high; the long chin had been designed as a bookmark …
“Hey!”
She roused herself. “Hot,” she explained.
“Too hot for tennis.”
“Much.”
Leo said idly, “Come down to my cabin for a glass of beer.” Whereupon Nancy, in a panic, stammered, “I’m expected at home.”
“Oh.”
“… half a glass. Would be okay. Do you own a half glass?”
“I’ll halve one,” he promised.
A path dived between the trees. Leo led the way. Nancy studied his nape. Soon they were approaching the cabin. She took the last steep run like a novice, arms outstretched, palms prepared to meet a wall. Leo, still ahead of her, opened the door, and she flew past him into the room. She flopped onto the cot and threw her straw hat onto a table. Leo squatted before a refrigerator. Nancy unhooked her Polaroid cheaters. He handed her a mug. She removed her glasses altogether. A blur seated itself in a chair.
“My uncorrected eyesight is 20/400,” Nan opened. “The army would never admit me, except as chaplain. The foreign legion requires reasonable vision, also.”
“Oh.”
“Many important people have been myopic. It correlates with inventiveness and anxiety.” She plucked at the table, found her glasses. Sighted again, she smiled at Leo as if she had outwitted him. “Do you play squash in addition to tennis?” she inquired.
“No. Ping-Pong’s my other sport.”
“Bridge is mine.”
“I prefer poker.”
“Oh yes.”
“Yes.”
Outside, the fog abruptly lifted. Sunlight flashed into the cabin. A yellow diamond fell upon the central oval in the braided rug. Nancy examined the intersection of quadrilateral and ellipse, and reviewed the method for calculating its area. From this exercise she went on to consider certain authors. Oscar Wilde. Thomas Hardy. Shakespeare; Much Ado; Beatrice and Benedick and their raillery. Profitable to avoid such nonsense. “We’re alone in your cabin,” she told Leo’s scar. “I’d like to take advantage of the opportunity.”
“Oh?”
“I’m in love with you.”
“Oh. Nancy, I’m old enough to be your—”
“Grandfather. I’ll overlook it. Will you marry me?”
“… no.”
“… I didn’t catch that.”
“No.”
“Unacceptable,” she croaked. “You’re the one I want.”
“Only at the moment,” Leo said, soberly.
“I’m not at all impoverished,” persisted Nan.
“Nancy. Do cut this out.”
“All right,” Nancy said, fast, “then let’s just dwell together. I’ll be your slavey sister. Mend, darn, dish up the stew, rinse out the undies of your paramours …”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Nancy soared. She felt detached, exalted. To be defeated, she realized, is also to be disburdened. One travels the lighter. Nevertheless … Leo’s cough drop eyes shone. His enormous sneakers were like ocean liners. She longed to embrace his midsection and plunge her nose into his belly. She recalled the arid nights on Carl’s pallet. There might be commerce between men and women that she was as yet ineligible for.
She remained on the cot, in an aggrieved slouch. Stretching one arm she managed to pick up her hat and place it aslant on her head. Then she rammed her fists into the pockets of her shorts. “Care to reconsider?”
“No, puss.”
The boulevardier shrugged. “Then that’s that.”
Leo leaned forward “Hey. Listen. Listening? Fortune favors the brave, Nan. Life won’t find you here. Go somewhere else for a bit. Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong … Hey, sweetheart, don’t cry.”
“… rarely cry. Not crying now.”
He crouched before her, his hands soothing her shoulders. “See the world, girl.”
“Can’t. Have an obligation.”
“Sure. To yourself. Femme up a little. Try Paris.”
“Le haute couture?” she asked, curious.
“La vie. Look at the swans in Zurich. Study the healthy life in Amsterdam. Learn love from Italians, in Rome.”
“I’d hoped to pick up some pointers from you. In Jacobstown,” Nancy said, crustily. Leo, laughing, kissed her twice: hard, cousinly busses. Since a rejected suitor could expect no more, they had to suffice.
At five Nancy biked up to the porch. The women smiled as she swung one leg over the rail. Having decided against rooming with Carl, the girl thought, and having failed with Leo, content your-self with riotous reunions like this one. You may recollect that you have an obligation. Every so often you can chase crazily after the impossible. Diverting! Still astraddle, she endured a vision of herself in the seasons ahead — a dandy’s jacket, a ruffled shirt; praised, indulged; androgynous beyond repair. She blinked the rascal away.