“So? Who?”
“She wouldn’t say what her name was. But it sounded like Old Wiremouth to me.”
“Don’t make fun of people with braces,” said her father sharply. “Someday you’ll probably have them too.”
“And eat your peas,” Milly added.
“They’re burnt.”
“They’re not burnt. Eat them.”
“They’ll make me throw up.”
“I don’t care. Eat them.”
“What did she want, the girl who called?”
Cecelia stared balefully at a teaspoon-size mound of peas sticky with white sauce. “She wanted to know where you were. I said you were out, but I didn’t know where. Now I wish I’d told her.”
Daniel reached over with his spoon and scooped up all but three of the peas. Before Milly could say a word he’d eaten them.
Cecelia gave him a grateful smile.
Down in his own room he had to decide whether his futzing around with the instruments at Worry counted as practice and whether, therefore, he was at liberty to omit his hour of Hanon’s Virtuoso Pianist. He decided it didn’t count and he wasn’t at liberty.
With the first fifteen exercises behind him, which was as much as he could get through in an hour, the next decision was easier. He wouldn’t do his homework for chemistry, and he wouldn’t read the Willa Cather novel for Eng. Lit. He would read the paperback that Boa had given him. It was really more of a pamphlet then a paperback, printed on pulp so recycled it was a wonder that it had got through the presses intact.
The white letters of the title shone through a ground of ink, so:
No author’s name appeared on the cover or the title page. The publisher was The Develop-Mental Corporation of Portland, Oregon.
Boa had got the book from her brother Serjeant, who had got it in turn from a college roommate. The book had convinced Serjeant to drop out of college and take (briefly) boxing lessons. It had convinced Boa to have her hair cut short (it had since grown out again) and to get up every morning at six to study Italian (which to her own and everyone’s amazement she was still doing). Daniel thought that he was already doing approximately his utmost by way of advancing slowly and steadily toward his major life goals, but he wasn’t so sure that his personality couldn’t bear improvement. In any case Boa had been insistent that he should read it.
Daniel was a naturally fast reader. He’d finished the book by ten o’clock. Generally he didn’t think that much of it. It was self-help at a pretty simple-minded level, with lots of mottoes you were supposed to whisper to yourself in order to get motivated. But he understood why Boa had wanted him to read it. It was for the sake of the Second Law of Develop-Mental Mechanics, which appeared first on page 12 (where it was heavily underscored by a ballpoint pen), and was then repeated many times throughout.
The Second Law of Develop-Mental Mechanics is as follows: “If you want something you’ve got to take it. If you want it badly enough you will.”
8
The Second Law of Develop-Mental Mechanics notwithstanding, it was some time before this tacit promise was to be fulfilled. Boa herself was not at once persuaded that her virginity should be numbered among the somethings that get taken by those who want them badly enough. Then, by the time she’d been brought round, early in April, Daniel found himself unaccustomedly beset by technical difficulties. But a way was found, and they became, just as Boa had imagined they would, and just as Daniel had imagined too, lovers.
In June Daniel was faced with an awkward choice; which is to say, a real one. All through the school year he had been confidently expecting to fail Mrs. Norberg’s Social Studies class, but when the grades were posted he came off with an almost mirraculous B (the same grade Boa got). All at once it became possible to take up Bob Lundgren’s standing offer to work again that summer at his farm. Eighteen weeks at $230 a week meant more than four thousand dollars. Even taking into account the expense of weekend carousals in Elmore and a further outlay for some sort of motorbike in order to keep on visiting Worry, the job would still have meant a bigger chunk of money that he could hope to put aside by any other means. The fact remained, however, that he didn’t really need so much money. In his overweening pride he had only applied to one college, Boston Conservatory. He hadn’t expected to get in (except in the idiot way he half-expected all his wishes to come true), and he hadn’t. His tapes were returned with a letter saying very bluntly that his playing in no way measured up to the Conservatory’s minimum requirements.
Boa, meanwhile, had been accepted at all but one of the eight schools she’d applied to. Accordingly, their plan for next year was for Daniel to find a room and a job of some sort near the college of Boa’s choice. Harvard seemed the likeliest, since maybe Daniel would get into the Conservatory on his next try, and meanwhile he’d be able to start taking voice lessons, Boston being so musical.
As to the summer just ahead, Daniel had been expecting to stay in Amesville to repair his inevitable F in Social Studies, the bright side of which was that he’d have been able to see Boa just about any day he liked. Also, Boa’s favorite aunt from London was going to pay a long visit to Worry, and this aunt, Miss Harriet Marspan, was a musical amateur in the old sense of doing and caring for nothing else — and for its own sake, never thinking where it might lead nor what profit it might yield. Boa thought she performed with unusual capacity and immense good taste. The three of them would form the Marspan Iowa Consort, to which end Boa had already sewn together a sort of banner of welcome and hung it across the whole width of the music room.
However if Daniel went off to work for Bob Lundgren, the Marspan Iowa Consort would amount to no more than an old pink sheet with assorted scraps of cotton stitched to it. Yet if he stayed, what would he be accomplishing? For all her excellences Miss Harriet Marspan didn’t sound like a natural ally. Even her devotion to music made him uneasy when he thought about it, for how was Daniel to measure up to standards of accomplishment formed in one of the music capitals of the world? She would flay him, like another Marsyas.
But then again, some time or other he’d have to take the plunge; he’d have to leave the audience and join the chorus on the stage. However: and yet: but then again — the questions and qualifications multiplied endlessly. And yet it ought to have been a simple choice. But then again.
On the night before he had to give a final yes or no to Bob Lundgren, Milly came down to his room with a pot of coffee and two cups. With a minimum of beating around the bush (without even pouring the coffee) she asked what he was going to do.
“I wish I knew,” he said.
“You’ll have to make up your mind soon.”
“I know. And that’s about all I know.”
“I’d be the last person in the world to tell you to pass up a chance to earn the kind of money you earned last summer. It’s twice what you’re worth.”
“And then some,” he agreed.
“Besides which, there’s the experience.”
“For sure, it’s a good experience.”
“I meant it could lead to more of the same, numbskull. If you want to do that kind of work for a living, and God knows, in this day and age it’s about the only kind of work that has a guaranteed future.”
“Mm. But it isn’t what I want. Not for ever.”