“No.”
“Then, I suppose you wouldn’t know anything about homosexual relationships between little boys,” she said, and looked Max square in the eye. To Max’s credit, he did not turn away.
“No,” he said, “I would know nothing about it.”
“There are homosexuals in Austria, of course.”
“There are,” Max said unflinchingly, “homosexuals everywhere.”
“My God, how’d we get into this?” Tish asked.
“I suppose it’s accepted more easily in Europe, though,” Mary Margaret said.
“I wish I knew where you’d picked up that idea,” Trate said. “I mean, about private schools in America.”
“From association with any number of pansies in New York City,” Mary Margaret said flatly, “all of whom had been exposed to homosexuality at very early ages in posh little private schools.”
“Well, in the East maybe,” Trate said.
“The intellectual East,” Mary Margaret said.
“I can only speak for my part of the country...”
“Where homosexuality is unheard of, right?”
“Listen, you’re rather rude, do you know that?” Tish said earnestly.
“I don’t mean to be,” Mary Margaret said, and smiled pleasantly, and opened her gorgeous hands in a fluid gesture that begged understanding. “I’m really interested in the topic. I’m sure Max is, too.”
“I am interested only in skiing,” Max said, and smiled, and shrugged.
“Well, you can’t ski at night,” Mary Margaret said.
Trate glanced sidelong and uneasily at Max, suddenly understanding Mary Margaret’s implication. Then, ashamed of his reaction, he quickly said, “Anyway, we’re not talking about sex between consenting adults in the privacy of their own...”
“I don’t know how we got on sex,” Tish said, and shook her head.
“We’re talking about, well, corrupting kids. Isn’t that what we’re talking about?”
“Who knows?” Mary Margaret said, smiling. “What are we talking about, Max?”
“I was talking to David,” Max said.
“What about?”
“As I said, skiing.”
“Max and I are old friends,” Mary Margaret said. “We skied a lot together last year.”
“Mary Margaret is a superb skier,” Max said generously.
“Are you an instructor, too?” Trate asked her.
“No, no,” Mary Margaret said.
“Mary Margaret is a model,” Max said. “Show them your beautiful hands, Mary Margaret.”
“A model? Really?” Tish said, suddenly interested, and immediately forgetting how rude she had thought Mary Margaret was.
“Her hands,” Max said.
“Why, of course!” Tish said. “They’re exquisite!”
“What do you do, Tish?” Mary Margaret asked, modestly turning attention from her own brilliant career and graciously bowing Tish into stage center.
“Me? I’m just a housewife,” Tish answered. “Do you do television commercials and everything?”
“Yes, everything,” Mary Margaret said in dismissal. “What do you mean, just a housewife? Lots of women’s libbers would take offense at that statement, you know.”
“Well, it’s what I am,” Tish said, and giggled.
“She’s a lot more than just a housewife,” Trate said, smiling approval.
“And now,” Bittner said at the microphone, “with your kind indulgence, I will read off the names of those contestants who placed in the top ten positions in the slalom, and end finally with the bronze, silver, and gold medal winners in the third, second, and first places. In the tenth position, Mr. Harry Fielder of New York City...”
Harry Fielder of New York City, beaming modestly, rose in place at his table and acknowledged the applause of the crowd and the extended paradiddles Helmut played on his snare drum.
“In ninth position, Mr. Hollis Blake from San Manuel, Arizona.”
“That’s Hollis,” Mary Margaret said.
“Hooray for Hollis,” David said.
“Nothing wrong with being a housewife,” Trate said, as Bittner tediously read the names of runners-up, and Helmut inventively unraveled a series of snare-drum rolls and the instructors grinned and shifted their feet. “Actually, Tish is quite active in...”
“Bed,” Mary Margaret said immediately, and Max burst out laughing.
“Well, there, too,” Trate said awkwardly. “But I meant to say she’s quite active in the social life of the school...”
“Has all the boys in for tea and sympathy, I’ll bet,” Mary Margaret said.
“Well, tea, anyway,” Trate said.
“No sympathy?”
“She’s very understanding of their problems.”
“And will they speak kindly of her in later years?” Mary Margaret asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know what I mean, don’t you, Tish?”
“No, I don’t,” Tish said, totally bewildered.
“Comfort,” Mary Margaret said. “Solace.”
“Oh, yes, certainly,” Trate said.
“Moral guidance.”
“Certainly,” Trate said.
“Right, Sandy?”
“What?” Sandy said, surprised she’d been addressed.
“Comfort and solace. For the boys. Isn’t that what a good friend should offer them? Moral guidance?” And here she spread her expressive hands wide in a gesture that unmistakably identified David and me as the boys she was talking about.
“And now,” Bittner said at the microphone, “we come to those skiers who from all over Semanee Valley and also from all over Snowclad where they came down from there to compete, those skiers who finished third, second, and first in that order and who it gives me great pleasure now to introduce their names and to award to them the bronze, the silver, and the gold medals. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, I give you now the three big winners.”
In other words, ladies and gentlemen, it was time to quit badgering the likes of Max and the Trates, time to quit wasting time with the also-rans. Instead, Mary Margaret had introduced the three big winners (namely yours truly and associates) and was now ready to award the bronze, the silver, and the gold artillery shells. A single glance from Trate informed me that Mary Margaret’s opening barrage had been on target. Belatedly, Trate understood the tea and sympathy reference, and realized Mary Margaret had been suggesting that his good wife Matilda the Tish was spending those long wintry campus afternoons doling out more than motherly comfort and solace while he was correcting term papers in the library, was in fact reassuring buggered little boys of their masculinity, guiding them morally by allowing them entrance to the sacred hidden storeroom and permitting them to gaze upon and fondle the Trate treasures, all in a good cause.
His sidelong glance was directed not accusingly at his beloved faithful wife, but wonderingly at me, a glance of the same species and genus he had earlier squandered on Max. He knew his precious blushing bride was above suspicion, and could therefore dismiss Mary Margaret’s campus fantasy as pure and simple nonsense. But he knew nothing at all about David or me, having first made our acquaintance this evening, and Mary Margatet had just referred to us as “the boys,” time-honored euphemism (even in Portland, Oregon) for pansy, fruit, or queer, and had broadly intimated that Sandy gave to us the comfort, solace, and moral guidance provided at certain exclusive private schools in the East, where white-sneakered, light-footed, limp-wristed students were in constant need of open-bloused bolstering of their male egos, schools where goddamn little fairies, in short, fooled around with the goddamn English teacher’s wife while he was out coaching the goddamn track team! Suspicion ran riot. First Max, now David and me! Trate must have felt suddenly surrounded by three flitting faggots. David bridled at once. If he had been carrying his flute, I was certain he would have rammed it down Mary Margaret’s throat, thereby exacting at least some measure of ironic justice, the punishment fitting the accusation, so to speak. But Sandy surprised me by bursting into explosive laughter, that clever, lovely, marvelous, darling girl.