When they went outside, Hal was awed by the new ferocity of the wind. The Cadillac was closer than the Plymouth. He saw it had a radio aerial. And he remembered leaving the keys in ft. He caught the door handle as the wind tried to push him away. He got in and shut the door. The water was coming up the road from both directions. It was no longer possible to tell where the bridges had been. He watched Malden and Hollis. They moved slowly with the wind, heading due east toward where the highway should be. They were soon out of sight in the brush. Hal turned on the radio and waited for it to warm up.
Betty Hollis stared at the closed door after Bunny had left with the other two men. She hurried to the window, but she could not see them. The direction was wrong.
She felt that somehow the magic was being taken away from her. If only there had been more time, just the two of them together. Then perhaps she could have learned all the ways to bind him to her so he would never leave.
She knew that she could never have or keep the things she most wanted. Even from the very beginning, when all of childhood and young girlhood seemed to be compressed into one unending scene — where she walked alone down a street while all the others watched from steps and porches, scornfully amused by the soft awkward body, the rhythmless stride. There goes the Oldbern girl.
She had known from as early as she could remember that she was not the sort of girl Daddy wanted. Not the kind of girl he had hoped for. The brown, sunny, laughing ones. The girls who could do things and talk to anyone in the bright, pert way she had never been able to manage. When she had tried to imitate those girls, people had looked at her so peculiarly that she had wanted to run and hide from all the world.
That was why Daddy had sent her away, of course. To all those far-away schools. It was something you had to accept. You weren’t what was wanted, what had been expected, and so you had to go away. And she had sent back the very best marks she could — and the medals she earned with those marks. It was a small gift, but the only one she could give.
Eating was a part of it, too. Only lately had she begun to understand how that was so much a part of it. Eating had been the only fun. Pastries and chocolate and fudge and starches, with the soft pounds adding higher and higher, and then you knew you didn’t have to worry about men or marriage because, in the intense pleasure of eating, you had made yourself so gross. And the slim girl you were in your heart was hidden and safe, underneath the wabbling pounds.
But you had never expected to fall in love. Certainly not in love with anyone as magical and unattainable as Bunny. And you could never understand how you acquired the courage to start taking the tennis lessons from him.
It had happened all of a sudden.
It was a still, hot day, and she was at the club under an umbrella eating a sundae and watching Bunny teach two brown boys of thirteen. She noticed absently that day that he seemed like a nice man. So patient and anxious to have the kids learn. She was aware of him, but not specifically aware. Then he sent both boys to the far court and volleyed with them. And she saw how he moved like a big blond cat, saw the line of his back and the shape of his shoulders and the way his head was set on the round strong column of his neck.
She looked at him and felt the rising of a strange warmth within her, a slow stirring that she had never felt before. She had had crushes, but they were not like this. And then she saw the absurdity of her position. Fat girl in the umbrella shade going all sticky over the tennis instructor at the club. He was so old. He must be nearly thirty.
Making the appointment for lessons later on was by far the bravest and boldest thing she had ever done. He had played a few games with her to find out how well she could play. And then he had called her, panting, up to the net. His smile took the sting out of his words. “I think I can help your game, but I have to be rude to you, Miss Oldbern. The first exercise I am going to give you is pushing yourself away from the table before dessert. That will help your game more than anything.”
He could have said anything to her without offending her. She was in the first stage of worship.
She took many lessons. She worked on her weight. Sometimes they talked. It was a long time before she overcame her painful shyness of him. Then she could talk almost naturally, telling him about herself and her nineteen years. He seemed gentle and thoughtful. He told her how he had lived for his thirty-three years. Fourteen years’ difference in age didn’t seem so much if you said it quickly. When she was fifty he would be only sixty-four; they would both be old, then.
When it turned cold, the lessons were given on the indoor courts. Her days were filled by him. There was nothing else worth flunking about. She adored him. She could not tell him of her love. It was too ridiculous. He would laugh. This was another of the things in life she would never have. But it was good to dream about for a little time.
On one gray November day after a lesson, he turned out the court lights, and they walked toward the door. The building was empty. She clumsily dropped her racket. They both bent to pick it up. They straightened up, close together. She was without breath or will when he put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her close and kissed her. From far away she heard the racket fall to the floor again.
Within the next month they began to talk cautiously of marriage. She was not a fool. There had been all the usual family warnings about fortune hunters. She knew the need of caution. She would not have the right of decision until she was twenty-one. She knew the world was full of men who would pretend love in order to win that much money. And she knew Bunny was one of those. But she did not care. If that was the price, it was a price she would gladly pay.
She appraised herself dispassionately. Lumpy figure, still too heavy after all the reducing. Nondescript face. A quick, clear intelligence that was somehow always defeated when it came to putting thoughts into words. Nothing there for Bunny. Except the money. And all the money could not buy a return of the love she felt for him. And even all the money did not add up to a fair exchange. She felt grateful to him for providing this oblique chance at life. And, of course, it was the only way the money would ever be of any use to her.
They waited until she had passed twenty-one. The family blunted all weapons against her passive determination. On her wedding day she was down to one hundred and thirty-seven pounds. The softness was gone, but the remaining excess was firm, durable, discouraging.
She had made her bargain and accepted a marriage where the love was only on one side. But she had not known about the magic. She had not known that the magic could transform her until she could almost believe herself worthy of love. And he seemed to be in love with her. She flowered in that warm light and could almost come to believe herself beautiful. She pushed the cool skepticism back into a remote corner of her mind. That skepticism which said Bunny was earning a great deal of money and was at least honorable enough to play the part of husband with as much sincerity as he could muster. As she came to believe that he could love her as a person, as the Betty he had married, there came a new confidence. She knew the confidence had an effect on her walk, her talk, the way she carried herself. And for the first time the quick mind grasped the awkward handles of speech, and she could be wry and funny and make him laugh.
She was becoming Betty Hollis, and Betty Oldbern was someone unpleasant who had existed in a faraway, unpleasant world, someone dead and not worthy of grief. A fat, stupid, awkward one, wolfing pastries, talking dully, winning tiny gold medals for excellence in French composition.
And she had forgotten what she had originally known: Bunny would stay with her for just so long and then there would be some sort of “arrangement” — some amicable separation and an allowance for him which, out of gratitude, she would make generous. And then she could settle back into the lethargy of the soft thickening flesh.