Marcie ignored her. “Oh for an experienced man. Minimum age twenty-five. Others need not apply.”
She was lying on the floor looking at the ceiling lamp. Its glow made the porch seem an amber cube, floating alone in the night. Sallyann’s mother wished that the cube would detach itself from the house; from the town of Godolphin; from the entire state of Massachusetts; from the globe. She wished that the porch and its five passengers, herself included, would sail off to Noplace, or at least Elsewhere…
“I’d like a pianist,” June was saying, her fingers trilling on her bare thighs. She herself played the cello. “The Beethoven piano and cello sonatas,” she explained, “the Dvořák…”
From the creaking old glider Helen spoke. “I want to be…taken care of,” she said. Her voice was hesitant — dependency was already going out of fashion.
“My ideal mate,” Sallyann said — she paused for effect, taking off her glasses, putting them back on—“will speak French, raise horses, solve mathematical paradoxes in his spare time, and write poems, paying strict attention to meter.”
They were inebriates, thought Sallyann’s mother. They were invaders. There were a hundred of them, a thousand…
But in fact there were only four, one her own daughter; and they were drinking unadulterated iced tea. She herself had made the tea. They were eating cookies she’d made too, though Marcie was only nibbling, having declared that shortbread was an invention of the devil and could permanently ruin her waistline. Marcie’s waistline measured eighteen inches.
Helen, narrow-shouldered and wide-hipped, ate each cookie slowly, without complaint.
June munched and munched.
Sallyann just sipped.
Her mother sighed. Of course these nubile creatures weren’t drunk — not on spirits, anyway. They’d bounced in from a summer movie that ended in a wedding, and they were intoxicated by their renewed belief in Love: ennobling love; love that hurtles toward blissful marriage; love that lasts beyond the grave. A perfect man waited somewhere for every girl, and her agreeable task was to find him.
For every girl, yes. They called themselves girls — this was the 1950s, and they were nineteen. In another few years they’d drop that sobriquet, all except Marcie. Marcie would be a sweetness. Poor Helen no doubt took refuge in nasty imaginings.
June had the face of a pixie — alert hazel eyes, a firm little chin. Her slender five-foot-nine-inch frame was mostly legs, or so her shorts would have you believe. She had performed a solo at the high school graduation two years ago, her long limbs making chaste love to the cello.
Sallyann had messy red hair, a long mouth, and a small nose. Sallyann was…promising, her mother hoped.
And Marcie of the endangered waistline? Golden skin, blue-green eyes, a banner of black hair, and a grin that suggested that you not take these features too seriously — she would age like everybody else, wouldn’t she; she would grow lined and fatigued, wouldn’t she. Yes, she would, the smile assured you — in a century or two. Marcie was the town beauty. But some boys were too awed to ask her for a date.
So she was planning to turn those jeweled eyes toward men of the world.
And Helen was hoping for a strong pair of shoulders.
And June required ten talented fingers.
And Sallyann, God help her — she wanted a Renaissance man. She was still chattering. “I wouldn’t object to a noble profile.”
“Oh!” cried Sallyann’s mother. They all gasped, no doubt fearing a heart attack. “Oh,” she repeated softly, to reassure them. “My darling fools. You dream about musical fellows, brainy guys, masterful ones, sophisticates…Let me tell you something: all cats are gray at night.”
Respectful silence. Then: “What does that mean?” June asked.
Sallyann’s mother struck her left palm with her right. “It means that, by and large, excluding criminals and the feeble-minded and the psychopathic…men are interchangeable.”
“That can’t be true,” Helen said in a tone of dismay; and “Really,” June said in a tone of curiosity; and “Mother,” Sallyann said in no particular tone; and “Lord!” Marcie shouted from the floor. She sat up. “I do beg to differ. There are amusing men, there are learned men, there are tall ones and short ones and ones who can’t stop biting the sides of their nails; and there are—”
“Listen to me,” Sallyann’s mother said.
In those days girls paid polite attention to women. Marcie wrapped her arms around her calves. Helen stopped the glider with a discreet motion of her heel. June on her chair leaned forward and rested elbows on bare knees. Sallyann took off her glasses.
“There are four of you—”
“Four darling fools,” murmured Sallyann.
“—and there are twenty nice young men buzzing around Godolphin. Some are buzzing close to some of you, I’ve noticed. Any of you can make do with any of them. Yes, you can, Marcie.” Four stubborn silences. “Here’s an idea,” she barreled on. “Choose, together, oh, twelve decent fellows. I’ll write their names on little pieces of paper and fold the papers and throw them into a hat. Each of you will pick one paper. You’ll read the name on it…”
“Out loud?” inquired the explicit June.
“No, silently. And then set your cap for whoever you draw. You’ve got charm, you’ve got determination. You’ll catch your guy.”
“And then?” Marcie demanded.
“You’ll marry him.”
“And then?”
“You’ll be very happy. Well, happy. Happy enough.”
“Happy enough?”
“Happy enough,” Sallyann’s mother repeated to the princess. “It’s more than most people are granted. Look,” she said, with urgent sympathy, “these will be like arranged marriages.” Four blank looks now. Oh, maybe she ought to yawn, and rub her eyes, and creep upstairs to her untenanted bed. “No backing-and-forthing,” she continued, “no dubious enthusiasms.” Let’s talk some other time—perhaps she ought to say that. “No broken hearts!” she said. “And the marriages will be arranged by the best matchmaker in the universe…”
“Who?” Helen asked quietly.
“…Chance.”
Silence for a while, finally broken by June. “What hat?”
Sallyann’s silly beret? Her own pillbox? “…My late husband’s fedora.”
“How many names do we get?” said Marcie, extending her graceful hand.
“One. Bigamy is illegal.”
Sallyann’s three friends assented.
“And Dad,” Sallyann drawled. “This is how you chose him?”
They had met on the fast train from Boston to New York, and for many years, on the anniversary of that encounter, they had raised a glass to the New Haven Railroad. “More or less,” said mother to daughter.
Helen picked up a pad of paper from the table next to the glider. She fished a pencil from the pocket of her skirt. She handed both to Sallyann’s mother in the gracious manner that so pleased her family. She practiced petty thievery, Sallyann’s mother suddenly knew, and told little black lies; anything to lighten the weight of being overvalued.
Sallyann resumed her glasses and drifted out of the porch and walked through the living room and into the front hall. There she opened the coat closet. Two raincoats hung like culprits — hers and her mother’s. Her father’s coats had been bundled up with the rest of his clothing and given away; but, without discussion, widow and orphan had withheld the fedora. On the high shelf — there it rode. Whenever she saw the hat — with her glasses, without them — she reconstructed his head beneath it, the big brow and big nose, the smile; and his broad male body in topcoat and muffler, the trousers sturdily below the coat; and below the trousers the shoes, oh those big shoes. As a child she’d stood on the shoes, stood on his very feet, and together they danced.