So seventeen was a different thing, a new thing, and Kate was a part of this new seventeen, a curious seventeen, which still included a freedom from most adult responsibilities, but which also included an adult attitude of tolerance that permitted participation in many adult activities. You could smoke at seventeen. You could have a drink at seventeen. You could drive a car. You could mix with your parents’ friends at cocktail parties, you could even dance with some of the men, you could discuss everything they discussed, no conversation ever stopped suddenly when you walked into the room, no one ever said, “Shhh, here are the kids.” It was casually assumed that you were almost an adult at seventeen, not quite, but almost. If you could kill at seventeen, if you could be killed in the indiscriminate indifference of a hydrogen bomb explosion, then surely you could be allowed the courtesy of adult treatment.
Kate was allowed this courtesy, as were most of her friends. She accepted it with a supreme ladylike poise that was sometimes astonishing. She could sit in a group of older men and women and discuss anything they happened to touch upon, perhaps too vigorously and with the extreme conviction of the very young, but nonetheless intelligently and knowledgeably. She could smile in maidenly restraint at the too-dirty joke told in her living room — and then later repeat it to Agnes and laugh vulgarly and hilariously when she delivered the punch line. She could listen to a conversation about morality and virginity, knowing she was still pure and relatively untouched, voicing her opinions in a low clear voice, and then pet furiously on the back seat of an automobile with a boy, his hands under her dress, her own hands exploring.
There was in Kate the woman.
They saw this in her, the other women, and the men. They saw in her the woman almost formed, and they were surprised by the glimpse because they could not remember themselves this way at seventeen, and indeed they could not because this was a new seventeen, quite different from what theirs had been. When they told stories of their own youth, they could remember with extreme clarity the single incident that propelled them into the world of the adult, that one memorable instant when their parents at last seemed to accept them as grownups, when they crossed the imaginary dividing line. But for Kate, there had been no crossing, there had been instead a gradual disappearance of the line itself. She had helped serve hors d’oeuvres at one of her parents’ parties when she was only ten. She had danced with one of her father’s friends when she was twelve. She had listened to a conversation about birth control when she was fourteen. There seemed to be no adult aversion to her growing up, no pressure to keep her a child. Instead, the adults surrounding her seemed impatient, even eager, to accept her into their world, to equate seventeen or eighteen with thirty-five or forty. She sometimes felt she was allowing them into her universe rather than being permitted to enter theirs.
The woman was in her — but so was the child.
And they recognized the child, too, especially the women, and saw in Kate something fresh and unspoiled, something that was yet to be determined by, fashioned by, molded by her contact with... and here they hesitated. They hesitated because for each there had been a different experience, sometimes sourly admitted, sometimes joyfully, a different experience, but the same knowledge, and they did not hesitate for long. They saw in Kate something fresh and unspoiled, something that was yet to be molded by... men. They saw the child in her, and they watched the glow. But they waited for the greater change, waited expectantly, like women at a wrestling match, aware that the match was a phony, knowing the outcome was identical each time, and nonetheless screaming for blood.
The child in Kate knew fear.
The child was afraid of too many things, afraid of growing up too soon, afraid of never growing up, afraid of being too passionate, or not passionate enough, or frigid, of being popular for the wrong things, or even unpopular for the wrong things, of touching and being touched, afraid. The child Kate could remember sitting in the middle of a room far away, on a scatter rug covered with her hair, while two women struggled grotesquely. The child Kate could remember coming to a strange house and sleeping in a strange room with night noises in the house, timbers creaking, frightening shadows on the wall whenever an automobile passed outside in the night. The child Kate sometimes dreamed of a woman who was insane wandering down long narrow cramped halls, a scissors clutched in her hand.
The child Kate wondered if something would happen to her one day, something terrible and horrible, something that would drive her finally mad. Like her mother.
Like her mother.
She confided her fears to David once. She had gone to the Regan house one weekend, ostensibly to see Julia, but knowing it was the weekend and David would be there. They sat in the living room while she waited for Julia. Outside, the wind whipped under the eaves of the house.
“That’s a very scary wind,” she said.
“Yes.” He paused. “But you get used to it.”
Kate shivered. “It makes me think of terrible things.”
“Like what?”
“Like losing my mind,” she answered quickly and without hesitation. She looked across the room at him. “Do you ever think of losing your mind, David?” she asked.
“I’ve got nothing to lose,” he said, and smiled.
“No, seriously.”
“No, I don’t think I ever do, Kate.”
“I do. I keep waiting for it.” She paused. “Do you think insanity is hereditary?”
David shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“I mean, do you think something terrible could happen to a person, something, well, frightening and traumatic that could cause... could...” and Julia had come into the room, and she had let the conversation lapse, but she was still afraid.
She was afraid of her relationship with David, too. And here, too, there was a combination of woman and child, one creating phantoms and the other putting them to rout. The child was quite sensibly disturbed by her love for a man twice her age. The woman could speculate upon the ecstasies of such a love, could envision passionate embraces and whispered promises, but the child reared back in something like revulsion at the prospect of ever being held or fondled by David Regan. The woman could plan supposedly chance meetings, could sit opposite him in a living room full of other people and plan the quickest and most direct route to his side, concoct the wildest schemes for coming into chance physical contact with him, the resting of her hand upon his arm to emphasize a point, the casual brushing of a breast against his shoulder as she reached for a magazine — and then the child would pick up her skirts and run. The woman wanted him to know she loved him, wanted him to accept this love, use it, abuse it, do with it what he wanted. But the child was fearful that he would laugh, and more fearful that he would act upon a cue from her, act in a masculine and physical way for which she was not yet ready. And so she thrilled in his presence, she quaked in his presence. She schemed in his presence, she defected in his presence. She wanted him, and she was fearful he would take her.
She was seventeen.
It was March.
It was Sunday. Matthew was still in his robe and slippers, reading the newspaper on the sun porch when the telephone rang. In the living room, Amanda was working at the piano. Beverly, the cocker spaniel, began barking the moment she heard the phone. Matthew scratched the dog’s head, shushed her, put down the paper, and went to the telephone.