She turned from the deserted corridor into the 'up' stairwell that would take her back to the classroom. She suddenly yelled in a shock of fright as hard hands grabbed her back and waist and jammed her against the wall, and another hand clamped over her mouth. She struggled and kicked to be free, her eyes bulging with terror at the sight of Bosco, wearing his Sputniks' jacket, his grin a grim split in his face. Gilly was behind him.
"Nobody," Bosco said, poking a finger onto her breast, "nobody but nobody gets away with trying to get the Sputniks into a jam."
Her eyes hurt with straining to reach his eyes and make him believe she was innocent, to please leave her alone.
An arm squeezed across her breasts and Gilly said, "Boy is she a juicy one."
She pushed and shook and tried to kick, but Gilly swung his leg across her shins, holding her still.
Bosco put his mouth close to her face. "This is our sworn duty, see. We can't let no chick damage the good rep of our club. So, you gotta get taught a lesson..."
1
JILL felt now the way she felt three years ago when she first menstruated. Cramped and bewildered, terrified that she would bleed her life away. But the pain-then-had gradually drained and her pain, too, had quieted. And now, sitting beside her older brother in a third-rate hotel room, waiting for a strange doctor to abort her, the same sense of terror and ugliness was in her.
Even gripping her brother's hand and knowing that Marty didn't hate her was no assurance. The rottenness, the despair was too personal. He could only try to share it as she knew he was sharing it-nibbling his wide lips, blinking his eyes, mussing his black hair, his soldier's uniform wrinkled, the flat cloth hat set in the shoulder strap hanging awry like a flap of limp skin.
"Why don't you go back to your army post and forget about me?" she wanted to shout at him. Plead with him to hate his sister who let herself be wheedled into a party jammed with frantic adults where she had touched an unfamiliar, giddy shadow in her character, and when the laughter and the room and the air and sensations slowly flattened, she was sprawled on a bed, her skirt pulled over her belly, her panties dangling from her right ankle, her skin sticky from the dried smears of virgin blood-and in place of that tiny tissue a pulsating clot of someone, or many some-ones.
But she sat silent, her thighs squeezed together, praying to God to help her, to keep her from dying, to not let the abortion cripple her or render her sterile, to be merely cleaned out and be able to leave the hotel as though all that had happened was the painless removal of a lemon pit.
Marty shifted on the squeaky straight-backed chair and said, "I wish he would hurry with his setting up." They glanced to the dark brown door behind which the chubby doctor was making his surgical preparations. Jill held her breath to swallow down a sudden, wild desire to scream. Just to scream. like someone in a nightmare. So when she stopped screaming, the nightmare would end and she would awaken and this hotel room and the blob of birth in her would be a lie.
Marty rubbed the back of her hand, whispering, "Everything will come out all right," then looked down, afraid she would think he was joking. He took a cigarette from his pocket and busied himself lighting the tip. He felt edgy and worried because he had to be back at Fort Claymont in three hours or be posted as AWOL and that son of a bitch Sergeant Levadink would give him a month-long detail of scrubbing the latrines with a toothbrush. God, how I hate this stupid world situation, he told himself. There was no war, and so many almost-wars, it was confusing. If he had had the guts he would have cut it off his left arm when he got the draft notice-anything-just to be back teaching school instead of wearing a uniform that made him feel he was dressed in the thrown-away skin of some outer-space creature.
"Marty," Jill muttered, tugging at his sleeve. "Maybe if I told you what happened, maybe you'll be able to tell me why it happened to me."
He stroked her hand, whispering, "Don't talk about it now, Jilly. After we leave here, then maybe we'll talk about why it happened."
She signed and he looked at the smoking tip of his cigarette, knowing why it had happened, but unable to articulate the reasons without causing her more torment.
Being beautiful with a strange, unphotographic kind of beauty, having a beauty too evasive for herself to see, was part of the reason. Gray-blue eyes a fraction too far apart, a small, straight nose a shade too bony, her mouth a bit too full, and auburn hair plentiful and long, in an era where masculine cuts were the fashion-all the slight imperfections that concealed her from magazine-page beauty, composed to make her womanly beautiful.
But she could not feel her beauty. With inner eyes, she saw herself as swirls of moods and impulses: sincere, morose, glibly cunning, childishly stingy, unreasonably generous, thoughtful, worried, blithe, cruel, anxious, and always lonely. And her specific ambition, she felt, was only vaguely possible to achieve. Jill believed people saw only the inside of her. She did not see others' eyes looking at her as if beholding beauty. Jill was only sixteen and in high school. Although her breasts were still small and high, and her walk a teenager's stride and amble, and she often held her arms in gawky akimbo when carrying her books, her tall, slender figure could pass for womanly. And the time, this time, the roaring Russians and the terrible presence of total destruction, the gangs that swung from hysteria to violence to listlessness to exhilaration, this too had helped this happen to her.
The constant, clamoring frenzy of fear and courage spilled from newspapers, exuded from behind the bland faces of television commentators, sounded from radios, was prayed about in temples, brandished like ferocious weapons by people who dared THEM to attack, wailed through the frightened faces of people with the wounded and the dead of the last war on their conscience, argued about in saloons by anyone who read a government pamphlet on atomic preparedness and survival, rumored about by those who had glanced at the mutated horror of Hiroshima casualties printed in picture magazines. Give! Give! Give! She was caught up in the fury of national sacrifice and GIVE. Every mood and thought and action was to give-from bucks to brood to body-every screeching whistle, every boisterous jam of traffic could be an atomic attack, and she saw herself being exploded into a glare of fragments smaller than pores or being raped by hordes of salivating brutes like smelly apes, then gored on bayonets and flung into a sump of screaming, disintegrating radioactive flesh-though sometimes she was heroic and believed she would escape explosion and imagined herself shouldering a rifle and sniping down the enemy, and sometimes, deep in a terrifying dark of her she wanted to be assaulted and laid by legions of barbarians until her womb became the universe and all pain and horror was hers, because that is how women are. It was a verbal war, a war of threats more deadly in potential than common wars, where only armies are destroyed, and sanity is the scapegoat. And she could dare to imagine today what yesterday she was unable to conceive. The rind of morality becomes thin and soggy and easily peeled bare by fear, and when naked, the man-world is animal.
Oh to be a nuclear physicist's girl and service the genius scientist but still be virginal and able to marry decent. Oh, if my folks would only let me give. "Ahw, baby, I'm an engineering student and tomorrow I may be on a rocket to Mars, so give me something to remember you by."
"If you let me, I swear I'll take care of you when the bomb drops."
"I'm giving my all for the rocket age, so how's about you giving me a little?"
She was sixteen years old and friendlied up with other sixteen-year-olds who had "steadies" who were too poor for college tuitions and had lied to enlist for Army and Air Force educations; but she never let herself have a steady because there was a being in her that didn't want to be connected, to be stunted by a willy-nilly fidelity-but she had no servicemen-scientists to write letters to, to get letters from, so she read the letters of her girl friends and set herself in tiny, vicarious romances and kept her fancies secret while she listened to the others jabber memories about Frankie. "He used to do the cutest things. He had teeth like Burt Lancaster," and "Phil wrote there's no atheists in fox holes. Of course he's only studying in New Jersey, but I thought it was clever," and "I'm glad I let Arty feel me, you know where-but not for too long-because Air Force places are the first to be bombed." She would accompany the girls on their visits to future scientists' homes, and listen to them talk to the parents, and hold her silence, and cry when they cried, and then walk home and pass newsstands and scan the headlines and shudder to read, "Russia Reaches Moon!" and "Russia Wants Germany!" and "Russia Blasts USAF Jet!" and then hurry home to listen to caterwauling Elvis Presley to forget that tomorrow is just a guess-and always the endless talk of sex and intimacies and what they should have done with "him" before he left, and "Oh I'm sorry I went that far because he'll think of me in a cheap light," and "Come on, Jill, swear to God and really be honest, did you ever, all the way?" And even if she had, she wouldn't say, as her friends wouldn't say, though she knew some had. And why the hell was she holding back, because it was common-sensible to feel very thrill you could before the Russians destroyed the universe.
And her boasting ways, that too had helped this happen. The way she pomped and swore she would keep herself a virgin until she married, but when she let loose-zowweee! And if she ever won one of the many coupon or box-top contests she entered, she would use the prize money for a medical education, become a doctor where a woman had her equal rights and could pick the man she wanted to be loved by-until her coupon contests and box-top entries became the neighborhood joke. No one understood this was just her baby-way of dreaming for a future, as she didn't understand she was too womanly for sixteen and contests were childish foundations upon which to build hopes for the future. Sixteen was too womanly for the flourishing of virginity-until she became the neighborhood cartoon and "sex challenge," and like a well coordinated team, every neighborhood boy dated her and tried to make her and walked away more bothered and boiling than when he was in his room thinking of what to do to her. Some said they did and some said they almost did and some said it didn't pay to try and still more tried, and then she began to deliberately tease them. Hallways and rooftops and car back-seats and living-room sofas became her arena, letting them flick their hands on her breasts, but always over the cloth, never in the bare, letting herself get rubbed against, and many nights came home with her mouth bruised from soul-kissing, her skirt soiled by boys who tried to force her to touch them; but she never did-she was a good girl.
And she never knew that as she teased she was teased by her imagination, wondering about the enduring feel of it, the wound of it, the great and sweet explosion of it-until the teasing ritual hardened in her and the gentle being in her numbed her sensations and blacked her imaginings and she no longer felt the joy of teasing and was outraged for being made a prize to be won, and if ever won, would be unloved, and her teasing became automatic and cruelly methodical-letting them have coveys of closed-mouthed kisses and rationing their soul-kisses. He can touch me there for so long and not more than four breaths long while touching me there, then wiggle away and stop him. And when their bodies became gasps and sobs and boyish whimpers, slap away his groping and nag him to apologize for thinking her indecent, a raunchy slut-until she became so arrogant that her intact tissue became her Self, her identity, and her single conviction that all males wanted was to tear it from her and wave it as a banner to their defeated friends. So goddamn their lechy souls, and all she'd give them is a big hammering pain in the crotch-that's what! And at night she went home to coupon and box-top contests, composing tag-tails of sentences why she adored, loved, worshipped the product that might give her a prize, and dreamed of winning and not giving, only winning, winning so she could pick the profession that would give to her the lover she would love and from whom she would be getting.
But because neighborhood boys were simple and puling lovers who wouldn't again try to make her, and because she had no engineer or nuclear physicist to be lonely for, she became moiled in thought, and restless, and indignant to expiate her sense of shame for not "giving." Then desperate to torture oldsters for being older when in her deeps she was far more womanly than her age, but cuffed in freedom by her age, she would spread her teasing among oldsters like a perfumed plague-but she was only sixteen, with only school-girl references to observe the world; and age and, yes, the time, the today, betrayed her. A yesterday of universal lassitude had formed most of her character but had left her naked to the sudden, shocking time of today.
Marty knew all this and had he thought to wonder when this would happen, he might have been able to tell her exactly when it would happen, and even with his warning and her loathing the event, she still would have been inextricably bound to this small horror. But he couldn't say he knew without needing to be told, because she was his baby sister and he loved her, and now she needed silent sympathy and trust, not lectures that would push her deeper into her muddlement and regret.
"Marty," she whispered again, "do you think Mom and Pa will ever find out about this?"
He smiled gently and patted her hand. "Why cross that bridge even before you get to the toll booth?"
Jill sighed and nodded, "I suppose so," and stared at the brown door eight feet from her, deliberately thinking of her mother and father to keep from thinking of what the doctor might be doing in that bedroom.
She would come home, probably walking and looking like a newly exhumed zombie, and her parents wouldn't see the difference. They would do what they always did-be the way they always were. Her mother sitting in the stuffed living-room chair silently crocheting a table cloth she would never let anyone use. Her fingers working the needles as if the chubby digits were individual lives, the metal hooks clicking like the sound of a midget tap dancer. Her father would be hunched over the kitchen table, fitting miniature boat parts into a narrow-necked wine bottle, building another sloop or brigand that, when finished, would be laid beside the clutter of other bottles containing other miniature ships.
They would not talk to each other, as they hadn't talked to each other for the last fifteen years, since the day her father found her mother in bed with the man who lived in apartment 19-C.
"I won't murder you," he had told her, his voice a grit of sound. "I won't bust up with you because of the children. But may God strike me dead, you filthy bitch, if I ever talk to you!"
When Jill would enter the front door, her mother would look up and say, "Did you have a nice time at the party with your brother?" And all she had to do was nod and her mother would smile and return to her crocheting.
Her father would twist his head toward her and ask, "How's my contest queen feeling?" and she would answer, "Shipshape, Pa," and he would turn away and begin fitting a sliver of wood through the bottle neck. Jill shook her head, sadly, and squeezed her brother's hand.
"I wish I could go to them and tell them what happened. But what's the point of it?"
"They mean well, baby, but they have their own troubles."
"I suppose so. Damn it, Marty, damn it, how I wish this hadn't happened. How I wish-oh hell, how I wish, wish, wish!"
"You can still back out. You can still walk away from it."
"And what will I do with a baby? What will I call it? Mystery Fulmer? Unknown Fulmer? What will I-oh come on, Marty, be your sensible self. You know I can't have a baby, like this, at my age."
"They have institutions for babies born under those conditions. There's a war on. The city usually provides for cases of this type.
"Only a man could talk like that. Do you think I could have a baby and just give it away-give it away like a bad tooth? I would walk around all my life wanting it back and loving it and cursing myself to the worst hell for ever giving my flesh and blood away. I would sleep in alleys and peddle myself for nickels, just to provide for him and not have to give him away-that is if I had a child. So don't be a dope. But right now there's no baby in me. Not really a baby. And I just don't want it to become a baby. Not now."
He raised her hand to his cheek, whispering, "I know, Jill, I know," and she leaned against him and softly let herself cry. And she was strangely happy to be crying and the tears eased the cramps in her stomach and she didn't feel alone-only held apart from everybody and in a dense shadow. She knew that this was her punishment, though she wasn't sure why and for what she was being punished-and she didn't even hate the shrewd soldier who left her lying cheap and dirty. The tears felt warm behind her closed lids and the murmuring way Marty shushed her made her drowsy. Then she wanted to laugh giddily and unreasonably because she had been raped and probably re-raped and hadn't been awake to know the pain or the thrill. She wanted to move away from her brother and look at his good square face, stare into his gentle gray eyes and ask him, "Marty, tell me what it's like to be laid."
He dropped the cigarette to the floor and mashed it under his shoe, sensing that now she would want to talk.
"Marty," she said, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, her voice seeming to come from a warm depth in her throat. "Let me tell you about that day. God, was that a day." He drew another cigarette from his pocket and rolled it between his fingers, trying to recall how much indifference and fault he had contributed to that day she would speak about. She laughed softly, "I'll never enter another box-top contest in my life," and shook her head as though bewildered. "Even the way I woke up was crazy. Maybe that was sort of a sign, the way I woke up." He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply and stroked her hair as he listened.
2
She didn't wake up that Friday morning, she was exploded into consciousness by her mother's scream and immediately thought the city was being bombed, but saw her mother rushing into the room, waving a folded letter, shouting, "You won, Jill, you won, you won, I swear!" and she had to cover her ears to shut out the noise of hysteria. Her mother flopped onto the bed, hugging her, patting her, laughing like a hurdy-gurdy organ with a cracked ratchet. "Not a car," she yelled, "not a tour to Yellowstone Park, no, no, money, you won money!" And though the sleep had been startled from her, she felt numb with amazement because she didn't know which contest she had won, and her mother's body was pressed on her like warm lead, and she wanted some cold orange juice so she could think.
She squirmed from her mother's grip and sat up, whispering, "How much?" Her mother's mouth trembled and she nibbled her lips, muttering, "Ten thousand dollars-cash, cold cash!" She widened her eyes and thought her mother had become crazy, that the silence between her parents had suddenly snapped her mentality. The woman closed her eyes and nodded, "Ten glorious thousand wonderful dollars, in money." It's true, she told herself. She had finally won a box-top contest. She covered her mouth and giggled softly, believing that she had won, but also believing that she would probably have to file an application and have to enter an elimination contest and write more applications and something would go wrong and all she would end up winning was some neat and useless correspondence. Her mother opened the letter and began reading, "Dear Miss Jill Fulmer, we are happy to inform you-" She rubbed her eyes, then reached for the letter. Her mother pulled it back, her large face cleft by a dazed grin.
"I can see you don't believe it. I can see you don't. Well, believe it."
"Can I please have the letter, Momma? I'll see for myself."
"Do you know what this means? Have you any idea."
"First let me see it, then I'll know what it means."
"We can move from this hole and buy new furniture and-"
She stopped talking and turned when she heard her husband's footsteps.
Jill snatched the letter from her chubby hand and shifted back, forcing her eyes to focus on the small print, then read that her twenty-five-word sentence praising the qualities and heavenly flavors of Noon-Fresh, the new afternoon cereal created to provide midday vitality-rise had been chosen as the best entry, winning her $10,000 (ten thousand dollars) and as the prominent winner she would be expected to appear on the All-Family Foods television program, to be interviewed and to read her award-winning sentence over a national hook-up and then claim her prize. She lowered the letter, and though her parents were staring at her, she closed her eyes and prayed to God to believe that some day she would return Him the favor, the blessing He had just granted her. She wanted to cry because great happiness was a time for crying. But deep in her sense of joy she felt tiny trembles of fear, wondering what this money would do to her. She felt her shoulder being shaken and had to strain to open her eyes and look up at her father.
"It's really true, daughter-honestly true?"
"It's true, Poppa, I won. Really won ten thousand dollars."
"But it's wild, it's crazy. How can someone believe it?"
"You can tell your father it's true. I read the letter ten times before I came in."
"And you tell your mother she has no damn right to open your mail. It's a Federal offense."
"Tell him for me you're still under-age, and as your legal guardian I have certain rights."
"Poppa, is right, Momma. I've told you a thousand times not to read my mail."
"Jill, will you please stop talking like a moron to meand tell your father the same-you have ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars!"
Jill folded her arms over her eyes and started to cry, softly, sobbingly, "It's crazy, Momma, I mean it's just so crazy, Pa!" and her tears felt like pimples growing under her lids. In a little while I'll be changed, she thought. Money changes people. But how could she be changed from what she was when she wasn't yet grown into what she was meant to be and she still hadn't yet learned what she was meant to be. "Poppa," she cried, and sniffled up some tears. "I didn't believe I could even win a cow-girl badge. I kept entering just to show people I didn't care how much they laughed at me."
He elbowed his wife aside and sat on the bed, stroking her hair and shushing her, telling her this was the greatest event since Lord Nelson sunk the French fleet, and she should be happy because now all the family dreams could come true-but she shook her head, mumbling, "I won, I really absolutely won," and he edged his arm back and stood up, saying, "I'll leave you alone and give you a minute of peace. Tell your mother to do the same."
Her mother wrinkled her mouth annoyedly, but stood up, forcing herself to smile. "All right, Jill, sweet, we'll leave you alone so you can collect yourself. But you'll think of us while you're thinking, won't you?"
She nodded, "I will, I swear," and they left the room, closing the door, and she suddenly felt special to them, as though they had forgotten they had a son in the Army and she was an only child, catered to like a pink princess. She left the bed to stand by the window and again read the letter. She whispered, "True, perfectly true!" and pressed the letter against her breasts and whirled around gleefully, hugging the letter as she used to hug her raggedy-Ann doll. "God, God," she chanted, and kept spinning around until she was dizzy and had to steady herself against the bed frame.
"Trixie!" she said aloud, snapping her fingers. She would go to Trixie's house and tell her best friend about the miracle. Trixie would want to get drunk, she was sure. Maybe I should get drunk. She nodded. Get so pie-eyed, whoopsie-doopsie snazzled and stoned she could say anything and do anything and be anything she wanted to be, and no one could criticize her because she was drunk and not responsible for her actions. She grinned and put the letter onto the bed and drew off her flannel pajama top. I'm only a fraction as happy as I will be soon, she thought, walking to the plywood vanity to brush her hair, wondering if she was peculiar because she liked to watch her breasts jiggle when she combed her hair. She rubbed her thumb on the brush bristles and frowned, certain that this good fortune would bring her some grief. It had always been that way in her life.
The time her grade-school class had been taken for a picnic in Bronx Park and saw a yellow butterfly that was like a chip of sunshine fluttering in the air, and she remembered that Marty collected butterflies in a glass box, so she chased it and began crying because it flew too fast and she would lose the nickel Marty had promised to give her. But a bony man in a brown suit holding an umbrella skipped behind her, laughing, "I'll catch it for you, little girlie," and she watched him run to the butterfly, his arms flailing like broken twigs until he snatched it from the air and brought it to her, puffing and grinning as he held it out like her father held out a lollipop, teasingly. "If you come with me to those bushes there I'll give you the cute butterfly, if you let me give you a gidggy for exchange," and though she didn't know what a gidggy was, or want it, she nodded because the butterfly's wings were fluttering wildly, and suddenly she didn't care about Marty's nickel and wanted it to be flying away so she could chase it again. When they were behind the waist-high shrubbery the man told her to cup her hands, then carefully placed the insect into the bowl of her curved palms and she giggled at the tickling of the gossamer wings. And when his hand began to draw down her panties she wanted to run, but was fascinated by the two silky hairs poked up from its dot-sized head, the raspberry spots on the wings. Then she yipped when his fingers grabbed into her flesh and his mouth began nipping her neck, startling her to opening her hands, then making her scream when his fingers scratched and dug by her wee-wee, and screamed louder because the butterfly was winging away and she didn't say I love you flutterby.
"Shut up, you dopey girl," he cursed and whacked her face, knocking her onto the grass, and she bit her lips to stop from screaming again, because his pants were open like her father's pants were sometimes open, and she knew he was going to wee-wee on her. She jumped up, then flopped down again when her panties twisted around her ankles and she was frightened by the juggling bulge of bone in his skinny neck, then shrieked when he leaned over her, his long fingers like hanger hooks. Then someone beyond the foliage yelled, "What's goin' on in there?" and the man jumped back and pushed the big wee-wee into his pants and snatched his umbrella from a tree branch and ran away, and all she could do was push her face into the grass and cry because she hadn't kissed the flutterby good-by.
And that morning when she found a half-dollar stuck in a gutter crevice and spit on it to wipe it clean she raced to Mr. Fitzmein's candy store and bought fifteen penny-Tootsie-Rolls for Marty, a pack of sweet-smelling pipe tobacco for her father, and a shiny brass key ring for her mother because in four days she would be eight years old, and if she gave them presents now, they would give her better presents for her birthday. But when she gave the half-dollar to Mr. Fitzmein, he squinted at the coin, then tapped it on the marble soda counter, then scrunched up his pink face like his eyes burned and yelled, "You snot-nose cheat!" and grabbed her hair and she yowled as he dragged her to the door and tumbled her onto the sidewalk, shouting, "Give dopes counterfeit, not Max Fitzmein!" then rushed to her and yanked the bag of presents from her hands.
And the night when she heard brittle noises in her parents' bedroom and was sure it was a burglar come to steal the new white pipe her father had brought home, telling her and Marty, "This is genuine Meerschaum, kiddies. Imported from Ireland. The most expensive pipe money can buy." She had listened to the noises and carefully left the bed to keep from awakening her brother who was skinny and never got into fights and would be afraid to catch the burglar-tiptoeing into the kitchen where her father stored his tool chest, her mind filled with pictures of how she would sneak up on the dirty robber and clunk his head with a hammer and knock him out, and when she took off his mask they would see he was a famous crook, and the police would give her medals and money and put her picture in the newspapers. Noiselessly, she drew the hammer from the tool chest and held it with both hands as she skimmed across the floor to her parents bedroom where the burglar was still making noises. She inched the door open and touched the light switch and closed her eyes, praying that she didn't kill the robber because it wasn't nice to kill people, then suddenly snapped on the lights and screamed, "Stick 'im up! I got'cha!" And her eyes bulged to see her father jumping on her mother, then jump off and grab the bed sheet which her mother tried to grab back to cover herself, and she dropped the hammer while they fought for the sheet, and her father roared, "Get outta here, you get outta here!" and she ran from the room and scampered onto Marty's bed and hid under the warm covers, squeezing herself against her brother, praying her father didn't jump on her like he had been jumping on her mother. Her frantic movements didn't awaken her brother.
Jill brushed her hair with harder strokes, grinning at her reflection, shaking her head, as if in disbelief. "My brother sure slept a dead man's sleep," and laughed, thinking it must be weird making love and not talking to each other. She remembered what Trixie had once told her about talking during love-making. "Me talk? You're out of your ever-lovin' mind, doll. When I let that sex deal happen to me, I'll be too busy for talking!" She set the brush beside a cold cream jar and nodded. Trixie had gone all the way, she was sure. Any girl who masturbated as much as Trixie did-and' then stopped-had stopped for a damn terrific reason. Because that pinch of sensation was no longer enough. She had gotten more and now couldn't go back to less.
Jill closed her eyes. She hated that tiny, hurting thrill and all the indecent pictures that squirmed and thrashed in her mind until the thrill was finally squeezed from her nerves. And even in the dark, forgetting-pleasure she still realized her position was humiliating and her action obscene. If she could find another way to relax herself, release the chills and warmth that currented through her body, she would never touch herself again. She shrugged, wishing she was like Trixie. Arrogant and snappy, flashy and happily dumb. It was easy to be that kind of a woman. Your insides were set. You just looked ahead to happiness and never wondered or worried that what was coming might be great sorrow. Trixie was never going to become, she was-and that was enough and just grand. Jill opened her eyes and stared at her breasts and thought the dark red nipples in the mounds of pale flesh were like the eyes of a blind woman. She cupped her hands under her breasts and caressed them, imagining they were the almost square hands of Mike Steffne, his fingers tightening, his thumbs rubbing her nipples to try to excite her, his mouth nibbling down her neck. She pulled her arms back, snickering, "Athletes!" and wiped her palms on her pajama bottoms. She wanted a man with an athlete's physique, but she sure as hell most certainly did not want a man who was only an athlete. She left the vanity and began washing and dressing for school.
She would tell only Trixie about the money. Make Trixie swear to keep her mouth shut. She would attend her first class, American History, and while she sat with students she had known all her life, she would not betray that she was no longer exactly Jill Fulmer, the poor daughter of Jerome Fulmer who would never earn enough money washing office-building windows to pay for his daughter's medical education. She was Jill Fulmer, freak heiress. She would listen to Mr. Crantz talk about the South's break from the Union and take notes on important ideas and facts so she could pass her Regents examinations with the same scholastic brilliance she had sustained all through high school. She would not let herself feel superior to slung-jaw Mr. Crantz-merely richer. When the class was over, she would walk through the school corridors as she always did, letting herself be flattered and congratulated for having achieved Valedictorian of her graduating group, and questioned about what she would say in her speech-pretend to listen to the silly suggestions and advice of her acquaintances and keep secret about Marty helping her write the oration when he came home on leave. She would meet Trixie on the third floor, and some of the athletes trying to date Trixie would turn to her, their muscular chests bulging against their lettered wool sweater-coats, and ask her for a date. Trixie and she would then go through their routine of curtsying like modest and proper Chinese maidens, tittering, "So solly-no Cadillac-ee, no date-eebye, bye," and move in pit-a-pat steps to their next class. This morning there would be a True-or-False grammar test and she would let Trixie cheat from her paper. And only Trixie, wonderful, whacky Trixie, would know she was no longer the exact Jill Fulmer she was yesterday. Jill said aloud, "But I am the same, really, deep in me," and leaned toward the vanity mirror to put on her lipstick. She snapped her fingers, annoyedly. She had forgotten to brush her teeth. She waved her hand, grandiosely. If her teeth fell out she could now buy herself twenty-one new, pure ivory pairs. One for every meal in the week.
She opened the door and almost winced at how her parents were waiting for her, both hovering over the kitchen table, their mouths tight with smiles, their eyes prodding her eyes, silently appealing to her. She wanted to step back and slam the door and leave by the window because they seemed unfamiliar, as though they had been talking to each other-like enemies who had forgotten their personal war for a greater prize. She made herself grin as she walked to the table and drank her orange juice standing up. She felt like a transparent test tube holding swirls of colored gasses as they watched her. Annoyed, she clunked the glass onto the table and glared at them.
"Look, will you please stop treating me like a specimen. Money or no money, I'm still the same, so stop looking at me!"
The smile faltered on her mother's face as she looked to her husband who licked his narrow lips and began cracking his knuckles. Sweat glistened through the tufts of hair on his bare shoulders. Jill sat at the table and sipped some hot black coffee. They kept staring at her. She would ignore them and think about her future. She would attend a city college where the tuition was minor and let the ten thousand dollars earn bank interest. When she graduated from college it might be enough to pay for her becoming a doctor. She drank more coffee and felt her concentration being nibbled away by their staring, their silence. She would make an excellent pediatrician, she was sure. She was silent and loving with children. She was quick to learn, had an unusual memory and high retentivity, was perceptive and-angrily, she turned to her parents, demanding, "Will you please, please stop staring at me!" and gripped the coffee cup to keep from trembling.
"Jilly, sweetheart," her mother cooed. "Having so much money is making you nervous. We understand." She leaned over the chair and patted her daughter's shoulder.
Jill shrugged her hand away. "I haven't got the money yet. And I'm not nervous."
Her mother sighed and fingered the collar of her lavender housedress. She spoke as if to herself. "We'll use some to move and to fix up, and the rest you can bank for the interest, that's my advice." Her father hiked his corduroy work pants over his sagging stomach and shook his head.
"You tell your mother where we live now is fine, and the interest on a bank account is a fraction to what money earns as blue chip stocks."
"And you tell your father he has a son in the Army, in case he forgot. Martin will need clothes and money to get started again. Martin will pay it back, you know that. That's common sense and strategy."
"Please, Momma, you too, Poppa-no arguments now. I have to get to school and I have no time to referee."
"Then just tell your father to mind his own damn business and to remember what he did with the money I got for making the mistake of marrying him. Those damn blue chips turned yellow with pus."
"Ask your mother how come if she's so smart, she's not richer. That's why rubbers come on pencils. So bank presidents can erase off mistakes."
"Tell your father I should of had a pencil eraser when I married the-likes of him so I could of rubbed off the mistake I made and gotten myself a man who-"
Jill turned away from them, not wanting to see their faces, hear their voices, smell the contempt connecting them. I'll be happy in a little while, she told herself. I'll walk to Trixie's house and daydream of all the things I'll keep myself from buying with the money. Then maybe I'll date Mike Steffne and let him feel me until he drives me mad and I can forget, and then stop him when his hands move for under my dress. She stiffened when she felt her father's callused fingers press into her arm, and she turned to him and frowned at the strange way he was smiling.
"Do you love me, daughter?" he asked, his voice an intimate hush. She didn't know what to answer. He stroked her arm, winking, "If you ignore your mother's slandering of me you'll know I'm not a fool. Inside me I'm not just a window-washer, daughter. Inside me is something else. A man you never saw." She stared at him, silently, not knowing if he really was a fool, or a cartoon of a man, or as Marty once said, "He's just a man with the hope knocked out of him. He is, and that's about all." His hand tightened on her arm and she wanted to pull away, suddenly afraid of the hard seriousness in his eyes.
"This could be our chance, daughter. If I know anything, I know there's a fortune in the junk business, and the secondhand parts business, on exchange. America produces the worst junk in the world, cars and home machines in particular. Why? Because there's so many people. If they make a car to last for four years, klunk, down goes the car business. That's why they change styles every year. And a million people a year get into car smashes. What happens to the wrecks? Towed to the junk yard and sold for scrap. But here's something better. A half-baked junkie buys a two-thousand-dollar wreck for sixty simoleons and you thank him. Crackers and soup, daughter. If I had the money before World War II, I would have gone into the junk and secondhand parts business and sold to Japan and made a fortune. And today is just as swell for such an opportunity. Here's an example. A junkie buys a two-thousand-dollar wreck for sixty dollars. But the undamaged parts are worth about seven hundred dollars, if he sells them to a used car dealer or to private people buying over the counter. See? Don't you know that you could buy a new car for twenty-five hundred dollars and strip it down of all parts, and by selling the parts, one by one, you could bring in thirty-five hundred dollars, at least. This country is owned by three businesses, I tell you. Insurance companies, the banks, and the junkies."
His grip on her arm was hurting, but she couldn't move, held by the sudden change in him, the frantic conviction that bulged his green eyes, the tense expectancy flaring his nostrils, held and frightened because he was strange now, not the fuddy-duddering old mumbler who puttered with toy boats like a moron idling away time. The pain of his hard fingers was beginning to numb her arm and she wanted to plead with him, "You never did a successful thing in your life, Poppa," to make him realize he was daydreaming, fantasying. "When Marty comes out of the army and starts advancing in educational administration, can he say his father is a junk man?" But she was unable to speak, only able to cringe back at the sight of his stark desperation. She forced herself to look at her mother who was standing with her eyes closed, her raw-skinned hand flattened on her forehead. "Momma," she whispered, "Momma." Her mother opened her eyes and clasped her hands between her breasts and nodded.
"You can tell your father that for once he makes sense. Making money from junk and parts doesn't make us beggars. It makes us what Marty calls, enterprising. Your father gets a lot of good schemes, except that they don't work out. like the time he made contacts with antique dealers, then went to work for the Salvation Army, trying to sell the good give-aways on the side. It didn't work out, because your father forgot to get a chauffeur's license to drive a truck. But the junk business sounds glorious to me. Junkies hardly pay taxes and it's a public service, too. If the junk isn't collected, the streets would look terrible, right? And even I know there's a fortune in selling parts to dealers, or whoever."
Jill shifted around and stared at the coffee in her cup, feeling dull, and as though cuddled in a vapor of sleep. If Marty was here he would tell her what to answer them, make her understand what to do. She touched the cup handle and the film of bright oil on the surface shimmered.
Her mother patted her shoulders, simpering affectionately, "We know best, darling. We're wise in the ways of the world."
Jill was suddenly angry with God for arranging that she win a magnificent prize when she was too young to be legal guardian over her own wealth.
Her father stroked her hair and his voice was a petulant whine. "Are we doing this for ourselves or to insure your future? Marty's, too."
She thought about the full pack of cigarettes in her pocketbook and wished that they would let her smoke without feeling sinful. She inhaled only a little.
"We're only asking you because we've never taken away your rights," her mother said, the sternness a subtle tone in her voice. "The money is yours, yes. But the legal right to do with it stays with us."
They really love me, she thought. They're just shocked by the amount of money. If I was dying and an eleven-thousand-dollar operation would save me, they would use my money and borrow the rest for me. They love me, yes they do, and in their deepest hearts they're kind.
"Daughter," her father said, leaning to her, his meaty hands holding the back of her chair. "A daughter shouldn't deprive her parents of their last chance." And she thought that he was right. They were old and spent. Every day to them was a hard job to live through-and I have a million years ahead of me. Money has no meaning now, not really. It's just a big number on a page that makes you feel important and it's the wrongest kind of importance. Her father set his hands on her shoulders and gently massaged her, and she felt sleepy and trance-like.
"Remember the time I came home shaking because I was nearly killed when my strap broke? What was my first thought when I was hanging in the air, thirty-three stories up? Dear Lord, don't kill me. My workman's compensation will be so long coming, and it won't be enough to provide for my children. Especially my baby Jill, because a girl needs more. I swear by the heavens that was my first thought."
"And you can tell your father I had the same thoughts when I had my hysterectomy and thought my life was over."
Jill nodded, yes. She had to give them the money. They were as had been explained in her political science class: "Unfunctioning relics from a medieval era still affecting American culture." She must not let them live the way they were. She would help them, become proud of them, adore them the way a child must adore her parents. Never have to flinch when they shambled to talk with her teachers during high school Parents' Day. like humbled immigrants. She would teach her mother the ways of matronly dignity and her father the manner of executive nonchalance. Buy them personalized stationery, and insist they lose weight, and teach them the social value of always being well groomed. Yes, oh God, yes. It's so glorious to have money. It makes all things possible.
"When I needed a corset and you needed shoes, did I buy a corset? When you had such a St. Vitus's to go see Frank Sinatra in person on the television program and I had to get my bridges fixed, did I go to the dentist? No, you bet you, no. When you were ten years old and Mrs. Finnetter caught you playing doctor with her boy Sidney-and you know what he used for a thermometer-did I stand for her calling you a dirty girl, a whore, or did I smash her and try to have her boy arrested to protect your good name?
Are your father and me such monsters that we can't expect a drop of gratitude from you?"
"I don't mean to throw it up to you, daughter, but where would you be if not for our sacrifices-you have to remember."
Oh you liars! she suddenly wanted to scream at them. You terrible, disgusting liars! Your womb made you a mother and your spermatozoa made you a father, but not your hearts, not your souls-and all the years were just playing at parenthood. When I fell and cried you pulled my hair for falling; when I lied you smashed me and never cared why I lied; when Marty broke his arm in school you cared more about suing than about his pain. And the silence between you. Not just the not talking and talking, only through me-the silence between you. The deep silence between you. You did me favors when I wanted natural love. Only Marty loved me. Oh, Momma, why did you cheat on Poppa? Is sex such a force in us? Why did your one stupid lust put me in a cell? Poppa, talk to her, just this once, and you can have the money. Say you love her, say the one stupid lay she gave a neighbor is forgotten-that you forgive. Say it, Poppa, please. Let me love you-both of you.
"Daughter, I want to go into this business for you and Martin. If you want to be a doctor I'll have the money for you when you're ready. If Martin wants to stop teaching when he's a civilian and be a book writer like he always wanted, then anchors aweigh and full speed ahead for him. All we want to do is help our baby girl and boy make their way in the cruel world. Now doesn't that touch you as common sense, and reasonable? Even your mother will say so."
"You tell your father for once I agree. We gave our lives to you and not much came of it-but now we have a chance to really prove what dear parents we are and how only you and your brother's welfare in our minds. We're only asking because we love you. Other parents or legal guardians would just take and never ask."
She understood their frustration-the hanging, dangling way they felt because their dreams were just a fingertip away and their child, their stupid, stubborn child was holding back their hands. But their voices felt like hammers coming at her mind, and their reasons for wanting the money, the painful blows. The presence of them, their hunched, crouched closeness to her made her feel threatened by ominous hulks pressing closer and closer to crush her. The tense smell of them was suffocating and she wanted to bolt from the chair and run into the April coolness blowing through the streets.
"When the check comes, daughter, we'll take care of it for you."
"We'll manage your money, real smart, don't worry."
"With ten thousand in the bank I can get the bank to float me a loan of ten more. Maybe even more."
"Not one penny will be used for personal use, I swear. I won't even get myself a permanent-except maybe get my hair dyed. Business people don't like gray-haired women to serve them."
"I'll start getting up a record of what I need. I could get me a big lot in Astoria or Flushing. There are only certain areas where junkies are allowed in a city. I'll need an overhead crane, a boom truck, a flat-bed truck, furnace pots for smelting-there, you see, daughter, I already talk like a business man."
"Aren't you glad your parents are so smart, Jill? Tell the truth."
She turned to them and they frowned to see she was crying. She looked at them, steadily, as though seeing curious mutations of people-studying her father, the muss of black hair that was like burnt weeds on his head, his broad nose, the shadowy ruts under his small eyes, his slumped shoulders, the ape-like hang of his arms, the low belly that was like a gelatinous lump perched over his belt. She studied her mother, her gray hair set on her head like lacquered smoke, the smear of rouge on her chubby cheeks, the dark green veins in her fleshy neck, her breasts hanging like heavy hams hooked onto her upper chest, the creased house-dress covering her dumpy figure, the duck-like set of her feet. She looked back at her father who squeezed his forehead into a wondering frown-then again at her mother, who nervously blinked her eyes and glanced to her husband. "You are rotten," Jill said, softly, as though her voice had leaked from a dead throat.
"If I was young enough for adoption I would give myself in, just to get away from the-likes of you both. You don't care that a miracle happened and now I can be a doctor. All you care about is your ridiculous schemes that never work out because neither of you have the business sense to make profit on silver pickles. The hell with Marty, and the hell with me, that's your philosophy. Did you stop to ask yourselves if I would want back the money you made from my lucky break. If you ever made it back. Does my brother have to be shamed by a father who's a dirty junk man? Do I have to be shamed more than you've shamed me already with how you are to each other? Don't you care that I want to be a doctor and the impossible has come true? Momma, you are a fat, stupid old witch and Poppa, you're a useless lousy failure who-"
He lashed his arm out and whacked her face, knocking her against the table, yelling, "Don't you talk to your mother that way, you little piss-pot!" and she stared at him, more shocked by having been hit than by the shock of pain in her face. He jumped to her, his arm raised, his mouth working like convulsive muscles. "You keep your tongue civil to your mother or I'll tar the skin off'n you!" She held her face, rubbing the bruised skin, waiting for the pain to dull so she could think, so she could cry. He jabbed his thumb near her eyes, making her flinch back. "Who paid for all those stupid cereals you bought to enter the contests? God? like hell He did. I did. Me! Squeezing out my guts to work up enough nerve to stand high outside and wash a window. So don't get so holy and mighty with me."
She edged to the side of the table, not afraid, only anxious to be alone and then with Trixie and then in school.
Her mother pointed to the three remaining slices of toast. "Don't go to school on an empty stomach. Finish your toast."
She stroked her cheek, unable to speak, afraid the hurt in her face would make her cry and she didn't want to cry. There was no way to cry as deep as she felt she should cry for them.
Her father opened and closed his hands, then hooked his thumbs on his pants belt and snickered, "You get a few lousy pesetas in your kick and right away you're candy on a stick." He leaned to her, his paunchy face close to her eyes, shouting, "We're your parents, daughter, your only people, without us you're gook down the sink, a nothing!" His face bulged and flushed with anger, frightening her, making her shift back.
Her mother shrugged and sucked her tongue, saying, "You can tell your father he's said and done enough. You got his message and you don't need to hear it again."
He suddenly swung to her mother, his hands fisted on his hips, glaring at her as he bawled, "You tell your mother to bide her own goddam business. I'm head of this house. I run things here."
Her mother wrinkled her face and stared back at him, her voice sniggery with contempt. "You tell your nobody father he's boss of the toilet and won't touch a nickel of your money unless I know where it's going. Not a nickel!"
He rocked back and forth and scowled at her, even as he laughed, "You tell your cheating, carnal mother I'm the only one who's going-"
Jill forced herself to move toward her room while they argued, each using the phrase "You tell your-" before insulting each other. She held her face as she took the letter from the bed and folded it into her waist-long jacket pocket. She knew that she must begin thinking, become clever and cunning to stop them from wasting the money. She moved about the room, collecting the textbooks she would need for the day's classes, her mind feeling like an atrophied muscle.
In the kitchen they were still shouting at each other, her father demanding, "You tell your mother she'll work as a clerk, only, and get a broken arm if she so much as goes near the books!"
And her mother haw-hawed as if at a retarded child, "You tell your father I trust him as far as I can lift the Statue of Liberty!"
Jill busied herself binding a strap around the books, telling herself that when she was out of the house and away from them, her mind would clear and she would be able to forget what they were trying to do to her and take from her, forget what they were, and because they were her parents, love them without thinking about them in the specific. She looked down at the fronts of her saddle shoes and was glad her mother hadn't forgotten to polish them. She hated to be sloppy.
3
She hurried downstairs and buttoned her jacket as she stepped into the cool morning air. Across the street she saw two small boys in bright replica space-pilot uniforms skipping over sidewalk cracks, reciting, "Step on'a line, pay a fine. Step on'a crack, break your back," their voices glassy with kid-laughter, their blonde hair fluffed by the breeze. Farther down the street she saw a straggling group of students her own age ambling toward the high school. She cuddled the strapped books closer to her breast and walked slowly, telling herself the money was her future and she had to hold onto her future like a saint holds onto a belief. A huge red beer truck drove up the street and she watched it turn the corner, thinking it looked like a rhinoceros just escaped from a vat of paint-then suddenly she grinned as her mind filled with sights of how her parents would behave if they started a junk business.
Their office would be a rinky-dink shack on some dump lot in Astoria. Her father would be stationed at a battered desk crowded with telephones, waiting for people to call in and have him name the car-parts he had in stock. If the telephone rang he would pick it up and her mother would lunge across the room and clunk her head against his and listen to the conversation, to cackle a comment if her father quoted too slow or low. Or if a man came in to buy a fender for his damaged car, she saw her father squatting in the mud with a hammer and chisel trying to hack off the fender while her mother, in floppy coveralls and smoking a cigar, ordered, "You tell your father a paralyzed ape has more mechanical ability," and her father yelling back, "You tell your rotten mother to shut her trap before I dump some spark plugs in it," and then in anger, smashing the hammer onto the fender and ruining it. She imagined her father seated at the many-levered panel of a crane, hoisting a smashed car from the ground to the top of a great pile of wrecks while her mother directed him from the ground, yelling to him, "You tell your father to lift it higher and to the left, the moron!" and he shouting down, "You tell your mother my left is her right and her left is my right, the damn dope!" and then jerking a lever and suddenly releasing the car which plunged down onto her mother's lap. Jill pressed the school books harder against her and shook her head. They had no right to the money and she had to find a way to stop them from throwing away her future.
On the corner a gray-haired man with an apron tied under his wool coat-sweater was bent over a roped stack of newspapers. Silently, she asked the candy-store owner, "What would you do with ten thousand dollars, Mr. Fitzmein?" and silently answered her own question. "Retire to
Florida and let the sun bake out my rheumatism." That's all he ever talked about. Money for his retirement. He straightened up, slowly, and she winced, almost hearing his bones grind into position. He wound the rope into a ball and pushed it into his back pants pocket.
She lengthened her steps, calling out, "Oh, Mr. Fitzmein, you want to see something?"
He squinted at her through his bifocal eyeglasses, then recognized her and grinned, "Ah-hah, the box-top queenie coming, I'm sure, to buy some stamps."
She drew the letter from her pocket and handed it to him. "Read this."
While he unfolded the letter and fixed his glasses closer to his eyes, she let herself remember the hundreds of times he had taunted her. "If I was your father I would have you locked up with lunatics for throwing his good money away on such a stupidity." How he always pointed her out to people, cackling, "Would you believe such a pretty girl is a moron? Well, she is. She's box-top contest sappy."
He shifted the letter closer to his face, then looked up at her, his green eyes seeming to bulge against the lenses like swelling grapes. He jerked his head down and held the letter still closer to his eyes and reread the words. She had to hold her breath to keep from laughing and told herself, now I'm happy, yes, really happy, truly happy. His hands trembled, crinkling the stiff paper and she thought that she must kick him. He's such a conniving, disgusting man. The stingy scoops of ice cream he gives. I just must kick him.
He looked up at her, his mouth loose as he mumbled, "It's unbelievable!" and kept his eyes bulged at her, his lips shivering against his glistening dentures.
With exaggerated indifference she drew the letter from his hand and ho-hummed a bored yawn. "I think I'll buy your sloppy store so you can have some money to go to the old grouches' home."
He shook his head and gaped at her, "Ten thousand dollars!"
She suddenly wagged the letter at his face, snickering, "Stupid, that's what you called me. Stupid. Moron. Imbecile. Crazy. All these years you made a dope of me. So who's stupid now, stupid!"
She suddenly kicked him in the ankle, making him yowl and skip up and down, sucking in his breath, but still gaping at her, gasping, "Ten thousand dollars!" between sucks of pain.
She wanted to kick him again, but settled for snapping her fingers at his face, saying, "Peasant!" then strode across the street, giggling softly, feeling like a warrior leaving a battlefield.
The breeze felt tickling against her face. Now she felt happy, yes-but she wasn't sure if it was true happiness or just the exhilarated giddyness that follows a wonderful, shocking surprise or a terrible, humiliating disappointment. She did want to laugh-just to laugh. To feel her voice ripple through her throat like currents of delicious cream. But she kept her face serious because she was in the street and people would turn to her and think she suddenly had become idiot. I keep myself inside of me, that's my trouble, she told herself. I should be like Trixie. All outside, all noise. But now I'm happy. I know I am. There are just all kinds of happiness, she assured herself.
Being very healthy made her happy, when she thought of how important it was to be very healthy. Having an unblemished skin and naturally wavy hair and a sexy figure and an ambition to be more than just married, made her happy. Knowing how to maneuver boys so that each one believed she went for him alone, while none of them knew she cared for no one, and when one boy learned that his best friend had dated her, fighting over her or breaking their friendship, made her feel like a puppeteer laughing at her dolls-it was so satisfactory, she was happy to be a bitch. Sometimes. Knowing that no boy had forgotten her yet and that all the boys who had tried once would try again and still not get her, made her happy. Having Mike Steffne panting after her was another happiness. Mike would be a famous athlete, everyone knew that. When he graduated he would take his two undraftable, punctured ear drums to an important mid-Western university on an athletic scholarship. She knew of five girls who were imitating her mannerisms, her hair style, the clothes she wore, all hoping Mike Steffne would get a pash for them. They would not only do it with Mike, but boast about it. She always wanted to tell those girls, "Mike is just a big, conceited dope. Sports is all he cares about. If Cleopatra was naked in his bed, he would ignore her for a chance to talk basketball with Nat Holman. After we finish necking I help him with his homework." Being able to control her sex was a steady sense of happiness-though sometimes she wondered why she didn't let Mike get her. He would keep it secret if he wanted to keep it steady. But why did she have to stay a virgin until she was married, when maybe she just wanted to have sex with someone, like Mike, but never think of getting married to him. The world is sometimes crazy, she thought. Being sixteen when she felt like twenty and having womanly desires is crazy, she thought.
She turned the corner and hurried toward Trixie's house, telling herself she was happy. Yes, I'm very happy, I'm sure-though she didn't want to think of how happy she was. If you're happy, you're happy and there is no thinking. But she was happy, she was certain, most definitely. There was no law that said thinking about how much you were happy meant you really weren't happy. Besides a feeling kind of happy, there was also a thinking kind of happy-she was sure.
4
JILL knocked on the apartment door and opened it without being asked to come in. Trixie's mother, a chunky woman with varicose-veined legs was kneeling on the floor, washing the brown kitchen linoleum.
" 'Morning, Mrs. Galivinisch," she said. The woman swiped the soapy rag near the sink, her hair a messy black spray across her forehead. She pointed to the flattened layer of newspapers at her left.
"I just washed there. Walk on the papers."
Jill nodded, then glanced at the litter of soiled plates on the table and smiled, wondering how Trixie could eat so much breakfast and not get tubby. She stepped onto the papers and forced herself to not grin as she stepped into Trixie's room.
Trixie was sprawled on the floor, swinging her arms under the unmade bed, then suddenly yipped, "Got'cha!" and sat up, holding a complicated gold-plated earring. "I knew the monster was under here."
Jill grinned. "Guess what, Trix?"
Trixie jumped up and began fixing the earring to her left lobe, asking, "Guess what, what?"
Jill put her hands behind her back. "If you can guess what, you're a genius."
Trixie frowned at her. "If you don't tell me what's on your feeble mind, I won't even bother to hate you."
Jill grinned wider, enjoying how quickly Trixie could be teased.
Trixie pointed a threatening finger at her. "If you don't tell me what, I won't give you the privilege of letting me cheat from your grammar test." Jill shook her head. Trixie raised her face and pinched up her nose, stating haughtily, "You will now suffer two minutes of my utter ignoring," and went to the dresser mirror to put on some purple lipstick. Jill felt happy with a flush of affection for her friend.
Trixie was an inch taller than Jill and moved with quick, jerky motions. Though she was now silently unpinning her blonde hair, Jill felt she could hear Trixie gabbing. Her bright hair, jammed with curlers, was obviously bleached, but Jill knew she looked even more made up with her natural flat-brown hair. Her face was angular and her chin a small mound of flesh with a faint dimple. Her eye sockets were large, but the brown pupils were small and seemed like drops of lacquer on porcelain. She had full, high breasts which everyone thought were fabricated. Jill knew they were genuine, though floppy when unsupported. She wore only tight black sheath skirts two inches shorter than the accepted length, and when she sat down, all the boys stared, waiting for her legs to relax apart. Her fingernails, long and pointed and polished avacado green, were causing her to fail Typewriting Two, but she would not shorten them. She had six boy friends in the Army, but could remember their names only when they wrote her letters. Jill never really understood why Trixie believed she could become a fashion-magazine model and then an actress. It was only her flash, her brassy ways, her glib use of obscenity that caused the boys to date her.
Though Trixie was more than a year older than she, Jill had tried to advise her friend, telling her that boys chased her only because they thought she was a cheapy and easy to get. Rage, like a water-scald, had reddened on Trixie's face, and she screamed, "Don't tell me what I am, you bitch-I know what I am. So you shut up, you bitch, or we're quits, and I mean it!"
She watched Trixie carefully comb out her hair, the tip of her tongue poked through her purple lips. She wondered who was doing it to Trixie, and she was worried that she hadn't found out, because there was usually no secret, no privacy that Trixie held from her. It must be someone from a different neighborhood, she speculated. "What is it really like, Trix?" she suddenly wanted to ask. Does it really hurt? Is it a terrible, terrible hurt? Trixie tucked the end of her sweater into her skirt waist and her breasts bulged against the Angora material like two kittens curled in sleep.
Trixie turned to Jill and winked, "Now, in the name Rumpelstiltskin, will you tell me what?"
Jill smiled and nodded. "I have ten thousand dollars. I won it."
Trixie grinned, "Bully for you," then turned to the doorway, yelling, "Mah, you didn't leave me lunch money."
Her mother yelled back, "Blindy, look in your pocket-book."
Trixie shrugged and padded to a wooden folding chair beside the bed and sat down.
Jill drew the letter from her pocket as Trixie began forcing on black high-heeled shoes. "Here, Trix," she said. "Peruse this. Try not to drop dead, please."
Trixie yawned, then took the letter and narrowed her eyes while she read, her face slowly tensing, her mouth clenching inward.
Jill leaned forward, "It's the God's dearest truth," honestly," and Trixie looked up and Jill saw tears pool in her friend's eyes and thought it was so wonderful to have someone cry in joy over your blessing, and she wanted to cry. Trixie looked at the letter again, tracing her finger under the words. Jill said, "You're the only one who never laughed at me. Not seriously."
Trixie folded the letter, whispering, "I'm so happy for us. Wow, what a great break." Jill sat on the bed and hugged herself so all of her didn't pour out.
"Inside me I'm paralyzed, Trix. I stop myself from thinking about the money. But it isn't the money. Ten thousand dollars isn't rich-rich. It's just not being poor-poor. All it means is opportunity come true. My folks want it for themselves, but that doesn't worry me. Marty's coming in on leave this afternoon and he'll keep them from touching it. You know how smart Marty is. It's just that I want to be the same, but now I can't be the same, and I'm afraid to be changed by something I didn't make happen to myself. The change might make me into someone I hate. You understand, don't you, Trix? You dig me, don't you?"
Trixie picked a facial tissue from an opened box and dabbed at her eyes to keep from messing her eye shadow. She lay the letter onto the bed as though setting an ancient parchment into a museum case. Jill put her hand on the letter and the paper felt warm, like dry skin. She smiled at Trixie and Trixie glanced away.
From the kitchen Trixie's mother called out, "Today's a school day in case you glamour girls forgot."
Trixie toyed with an earring and grinned, then stiffened her face, then quickly grinned again. "That money is sensational, Jill. It couldn't happen to a nicer person, and I mean it from my heart. Only, out of our long-standing friendship, can I ask you a great favor?"
"Since when do you have to ask?"
"I hoped you'd say that. Jill, you know my ambition, don't you? How I'd do anything-just anything except murder, and maybe that too-just to fill my ambition."
Jill nodded and kept herself from frowning-she was always disturbed when Trixie suddenly became serious. Trixie never paused long enough to push aside her streak of silliness and think seriously before talking. Jill watched the small muscles in Trixie's jaws twitch, the speedy blinks of her eyelashes and wondered why her friend was so nervous. She wished Trixie would be Trixie and not serious. She put the letter into her pocket. Trixie pointed to her own face.
"My face is my fortune, how many times did I say that to you? Millions, maybe more. The only thing against me for modeling is my breasts and they can be flattened. I'm the perfect type, otherwise. So all I need is six months cultivating at a fashion school-which costs about two thousand dollars-and I'm on my way to wonderful-land. And in five shakes and three wiggles you have your money back, and with interest besides. That's my favor."
Jill leaned over to keep from seeing Trixie's eyes, from feeling the same impact of desperation she had felt in her father-to keep Trixie from seeing her sudden bewilderment, the hurt of disbelief she felt. Trixie stepped to her, both hands held out in a gesture of pleading.
"You think I'm rotten for asking you for money, Jill? I'm not, I swear. I'll graduate and get a job typing for some baldy with hot hands, and after I'm fed up with being felt up, I'll marry some sap to get away from it all. A sap who's a salesman, maybe, and I'll have five kids I'll get to hate. The sap'll cheat on me and I won't give a hooey, and if the plumber is halfway cute, I'll maybe let him slip me the business off and on. In ten years I'll be a rag and what became of Trixie Galivinisch, and who gives a hooey? Will you let that happen to me, Jill? Say no you won't. Two thousand dollars can save my life."
Jill dulled her eyes and stared at the floor, hating herself for believing that Trixie had seen her own future, suddenly pitying Trixie for holding onto the daydream of being beautiful for so long, she believed it was true. Trixie stood still, breathing hard, her lips trembling like a painful wound. Jill kept her vision dull, unable to look up, not knowing what to say. Trixie suddenly snapped her fingers, her eyes wide with a thrilling idea.
"I'll write you out an I.O.U., Jill. We can even go to a notary republic and get it court-proof. I'll write down the rate of interest too."
Jill closed her eyes and silently cursed the money because Trixie was now the way Trixie had been when Mike Steffne dated her for an end-term school party and she didn't have a party dress and cursed her mother and father for claiming the house rent was more important than a Mike Steffne date-then frantically tried borrowing nickels and quarters from friends who insisted on knowing why she needed the money. And when she told them, they laughed at her, calling her a dope, telling her that Mike Steffne was dating her because other boys had said she was easy to get. But some friends pitied her and lent her money, and she got the remainder by buying groceries and meat and fruit on her parents' credit and selling the food at half price. Then she went to Alexander's on the Concourse and bought a pimento-red dress with ruffles and sequins and a d'colletage so low she had to stuff in a frilly handkerchief to hide the rims of her nipples. She looked like a burlesque bumper just come from a bawdy costume skit, and when Mike saw her, even his blunted sense of taste and propriety was shocked, and he hurried away, leaving her standing in the hallway, her face sagging with disbelief, with anguish.
Trixie reached out and shook her shoulder, and Jill looked to the side and spoke as if talking to the movie-magazine photograph of Tyrone Power tacked onto the wall beside the bed-frame.
"Trix, please don't turn me into a monster; please, Trix, don't make me look like a selfish monster. I have a future too, Trix. I can't spend a penny of this except for medical school. You're not being fair, Trix, I mean-well-you're not being fair."
"Why, but why? Won't it take you a long time to graduate from college? By that time I'll be working and making money like crazy, and you'll have the money back. Long before. Hell, even if I didn't pay it back, Jill, for examples sake, only. With your brains and nice ways, you can be anything. I'm short on most, except for modeling. Only I'll pay it back, don't you worry. I won't eat lunch and stop cigarettes, just to give you it back."
"Trix, look, why don't we just make believe I never won the money. I never won it, all right? I'm the same poory I was before today. All right? Let's think about a sharp double date for tonight. I'll see Mike and-"
"Jill, ask me for anything and you have it, only don't say you won't lend me the money. Did you know Betty Fieldstern's no virgin, no more? I got the scoop late last night. There's a rumor that Mr. Etner is laying the new Economics teacher, only I didn't tell you because I know how much you respect Mr. Etner. Here's a top-secret scoop I just-"
"Trix, please, you don't have to tell me things to get."
"This is really top secret, I tell you. You know why Greg Stoller's big brother is out of the Army? Because he's a section eight-that's army talk for unfitness. You know the reason?"
"Please, please, Trix, don't hurt yourself with."
"He's section eight for being a fairy. Can you imagine? A big hunk like him a fairy. Look at all the things I'm telling you, Jill, just to show you I'd never hold back on you or cheat on you. I'll bet you didn't know Barbara Miller has a tipped uterus and Augusta Jaffe has crazy Fallopian tubes and-"
Jill wanted to cover her ears to keep from hearing the anxious rush of Trixie's voice; close her eyes to stop seeing the frantic, spasmodic way her body worked as she talked; her mouth opened wide, her tongue like a thick bulb pumping the words. Jill, though wanting to leave and not see her friend humbled and humiliated, sat and worried about her belief that Trixie was a single-dimensioned person, incapable of enjoying personal privacy or guarding a secret. She realized that Trixie was shrewder and more secretive than she suspected as Trixie's voice pushed into her mind, telling her startling information about their friends.
She felt her shoulder again being shaken and Trixie's voice tensed to a cautious whisper, "All right, Jill, I'll confess to you. Someone got me-there, you always wanted to know, didn't you? So there. Someone got me and if you want to know what it's like, just ask me."
Jill shook her head and closed her eyes, feeling breath hurt in her throat, her body slowly chill and tremble. Trixie hurried to the door and closed it, then grinned stiffly. "It's swell, Jill, real swell. You know I wouldn't lie." She clenched her hands on her stomach and rubbed herself. "It's like nothing I ever had before. Getting pregnant is the only scary part, but I take care of that because I put on his safe. I don't take his word he has it on. Then it's like getting your-"
Jill bowed her head and held one hand on her ear as Trixie described how it was more fun and lasted longer in the back of his car than standing in the dark of her hallway. Jill felt a warm numbness dull her mind, and except for thoughts that the money had changed her life and that she must never lie to herself-never, not ever-she wanted to return home and sleep away this day. Then she wondered if she could give Trixie two thousand dollars to become a model, because Trixie was her friend, and Trixie would pay it back because Trixie loved her.
"But I swear my deepest swear," Trixie said, setting one hand on her heart and kissing her left pinkie, "that I'll stop letting him, or anybody, lay me the second I go to fashion school, because being a model is more to me than even that thrill is, and I mean it!"
And Jill felt tears sting in her eyes and she didn't know why she was crying. There was no reason to cry because this was a lie, all a baby-lie Trixie never grew out of, and Trixie was trying to feed the lie into a truth with more and more lies. And my one dream that isn't a lie will be murdered, she told herself and shook her head, "No!" and kept saying, "No!" until her voice was an anguished wail and she stood up, and Trixie stopped talking to stare at her.
Jill shouted, "No, Trix, no, dear God, no!" She grabbed Trixie's arm, demanding, "Be honest and if you still want the damn money, you can have it!" Trixie gaped at her as she was pulled to the dresser mirror and shoved forward to stare at her reflection. Jill pushed her closer and held her leaned over, pointing to the reflection, shouting, "Is that a beautiful girl, is it? Is that the face of a fashion model, an actress? Should I lose my future just to hide your lie?" She pressed harder against Trixie's back, moving her still closer, her voice shrill with anger. "Look at your face, your figure, Trix, go on, look and look more, and tell the truth, in the name of dear God, tell me the truth!" She held Trixie from pulling back. Trixie's skin paled as her eyes widened and bulged at her reflection, seeing the porous skin, the small, skimpy mouth lengthened and rounded by lipstick, the flat, insloping cheeks and blunt nose bone, her protruding ears ineptly covered by her coarse hair, the pecks of acne ruts in her narrow forehead, the knobs of muscle on each side of her jaw, her thin, short neck.
Her body began to shake as though a grotesque ghost was staring back at her, and Jill stepped away as Trixie huddled over the dresser and sobbed sounds like veins being torn in her throat, and she cursed, "You bitch, oh you bitch, you!" She hit her hands on the dresser top, moaning, "You rotten, lucky bitch, you. I want to kill you, dear God, how I want to kill you!" Jill edged back, suddenly afraid, suddenly shocked by her own cruelty, suddenly wishing she could take back her horrible action, destroy it from both their memories so they could be to each other as they once were. Trixie swung around, her face bunched and creased like a shriveled mask, yelling, "You stinking, rich bitch; you don't care who you hurt!"
Jill shook her head, wanting to explain she didn't mean to shame, only to be truthful; but Trixie's face altered and her head tilted back and she suddenly laughed, her voice a shrill cackle as she kept laughing and pointing at Jill while gasping and struggling to stop laughing, until she was able to speak.
"You like truth, you bitch, do you-and to hurt with it, do you? Well here's some truth. Do you know who got me, you stupid, lousy bitch? Mike Steffne, that's who. You thought you could keep him with your sappy soul kisses and stingy feels, didn't you? But I got him from you-me, dumb Trixie who never studies, got him from Miss 97% average. He tells me about you, did you know that? He tells me how you tease him and then do his homework afterwards. You know what he wants from you? One fast lay, that's all. Otherwise he says you're a drip. A boring drip. One lay he wants, so he can brag he had you. But now he hardly tries for you, if you'll notice. Why? You rotten, selfish bitch, because I give it to him. Every night almost, except before practice, and anywhere, I give it to him; and don't think that big dumb bastard will get off cheap for getting me, neither. But I took Mike Steffne away from you, didn't I? From Miss High Tits, 97% average. I took something away, me, dumb Trixie who-"
Jill walked to the door, her legs feeling leaden, her shoulders slumped. Trixie kept laughing at her, calling her a rotten, heartless bitch who would steal pennies from blind men, and she took back every ounce of friendship which anyway she didn't ever feel, not in her heart, not ever. Jill picked the stack of books from a chair, telling herself, when I get outside I'll tear the letter up and make believe today is yesterday when I was the same and not changed. She turned the knob and Trixie screamed, "You stay away from my Mike Steffne or I'll fix you, you bitch!" She opened the door and Trixie's mother looked up at her, frowning.
"You two glamour girls have a fight over a boy?"
Jill smiled, saying dully, "Just a little spat, Mrs. Galivinisch." The woman brushed strays of hair from over her eyes and shrugged. "The colleges take all the good boys and leave the bums behind." She dropped the bunched floor rag into the bucket. "All my Trixie thinks of is boys," she said, reflectively. "If things get worse I'm sure she'll go to college just to be with boys." Jill carefully stepped onto the protective papers as she walked to the door. The woman asked, "Ain't you waiting for-my Trixie?" Jill sighed, "I'll see her in class," and left the apartment, gently closing the door. She stood in the dimly lighted hallway, feeling sagged and dull, as though all the tendons in her body had loosened. She wondered what she would do without her only best friend. She was too old and set in her ways to start making best friends with another girl. She moved to the staircase, beginning to feel lonely.
5
JILL walked toward the high school, deliberately thinking about how to read her twenty-five-word sentence on the All-Family Foods television program and how to say thank you for the prize money. If she kept thinking about her television appearance, she wouldn't have to think about her mother and father and Trixie and the slamming shock of learning that Mike Steffne was Trixie's lover-about the sense of betrayal that made her blood feel like some bitter fluid, souring her memories and affections, making her wonder if everyone was somebody else, living hidden under what they appeared to be outside.
I won't think about it, she told herself. I won't think about it. She cleared her throat as if preparing to speak before a large camera and enunciated aloud, "It is my profoundest desire to express wishes of thanks to you, All-Family Foods, company, one and all, for-" She wrinkled her face. The grammar sounded awkward and the words false. She shrugged. She would ask Marty to write her acceptance speech.
Ahead of her she could see the weather-darkened red brick high school, the flight of fourteen concrete steps leading to the four wide entrance doors. Clutters of students were hurrying up the steps. Most of the girls wore pastel pull-overs and cardigan sweaters, dirndl and full, plaid skirts and saddle shoes or loafers. Some wore high-heeled shoes and strutted up the steps in gawky elegance. They all carried books; some dangled purses from the crooks of their elbows, others balanced the purses or stuffed folding wallets on top of the books.
The boys wore lumber-jackets, some with the name of their street club sewn in bold scrawl across the back. Five boys, with the black and orange zipper-jackets of the Sputniks club, clumped up the steps, shoulder-to-shoulder, arms tightly linked, chanting their vulgar theme song. "First comes cooze, then comes booze!" Girls scrambled out of their way while other boys stood and laughed or scowled, but all were afraid to stop the toughs.
When they reached the top step, they executed a military about-face and the right-end boy, Jimmy Bosco, shouted, "Tenn-shun! Count down!"
They picked the cigarettes from the corners of their mouths.
Imitating a rough drill sergeant, Bosco barked, 'Rheddy, and aihame!" They extended their arms. Bosco bawled, Tiy-yuh!" They snapped their cigarettes to the gutter and laughed and whacked each other, as students jumped and dodged the lighted butts. In unison, they suddenly roared, "SPUTNIKS," and charged into the school building.
Jill shook her head, disgustedly, remembering the night she had been careless enough to walk past the Sputniks' hang-out on East Tremont Avenue. Jimmy Bosco had grabbed her, yelling, "Here's the crazy contest cooze," and shoved her to a friend who then shoved her to another friend, and she was shoved again and again, her breasts pinched and squeezed, fingers poked into her behind and front with each shove. If the tubby beat cop, O'Rourke, hadn't heard her shrill pleadings to stop, she was sure she would have been raped. Jill shrugged. It was her own stupid fault. She walked toward the steps.
She heard someone call, "Jill, oh Jill," and saw Augusta Jaffe hurrying to her, her stout body on short legs making her waddle like a water-soaked goose.
Jill waited, wondering exactly what Trixie had meant by saying, "Augusta Jaffe has crazy Fallopian tubes."
Augusta, her chubby face flushed from movement, panted, "Holy-mololy, I thought I would miss you." Jill put her foot on the first step.
"You know that Write-A-Lonely-Soldier-A-Letter Club I joined? Yesterday I got a letter. Three pages, all written on. His name is Alfred Twillers, in the Ordinance something, in England. I saved the stamp. Do you know what pro-vock-ah-tiv means?"
"Of course. Tending to arouse or stimulate, as in provoke."
"I should have known better than to ask you. But, therefore and nevertheless, those are the type words he writes and he thinks I'm pro-vock-ah-tiv, and I want you give me some big words to write him back so he won't change to me. Also, a way to work around sending him my picture that he asked for. Will you, Jill? It's life or death."
"All right. Meet me during our study period. I'll write the letter and you can copy it in your own handwriting."
"Can you give me a sample now-you know-an example sample?"
Jul pinched her lips pretending to think of a sample, though she wondered what Augusta would do if she was suddenly given ten thousand dollars. Go to one of those diet farms, probably. She always talked about that. Live on bananas and milk for a month, until she was a size eight. Then spend the rest on Vassar, and if she could hold to her diet, try to fish a Harvard man husband.
Augusta tugged at her arm, pleading, "Just one small sample, Jill, please."
Jill shrugged, quickly remembering a snide sentence she had once used on her father when he started boasting about how wise he was in the ways of life. Jill nodded. "Here, Gussy, see if you like this. When promulgating on esoteric cogitation, beware of platitudinous ponderosities. Will that do?"
Augusta closed her eyes and hummed as though munching a double-sized strawberry frappe. She opened her eyes and squirmed deliciously and looked upward, cooing, "He'll die, my Alfred Twillers will just absotively die." Jill laughed because Augusta was only in the seventy per cent average bracket and was a clown who liked being laughed at. Augusta again tugged her arm, anxiously.
"Say it again-just one pinchy-winchy time more."
"When promulgating on esoteric cogitation, beware of platitudinous ponderosities. Don't you want to know what it means?"
"You mean it really means something? No, never mind, just write that dilly down with no misspellings and let Private Twillers break his brains on it. When he reads it, he'll go AWOL and swim the Atlantic just to meet pro-vock-ah-tiv me."
Jill grinned and suddenly wanted to tell Augusta about the prize money, but the girl raised her arm and waved to a bony girl, yoo-hooing, "Doris, oh Doris," and the girl stopped near the entrance and waved back. Augusta turned, pleading, "During the study period, Jill. If you forget, I'll die, posalutely die."
Jill said, "I won't forget," and watched Augusta lumber to Doris like a pile of laundry bundles being pulled up steps.
Jill turned around and looked down the street; suddenly hoping Trixie was hurrying toward her, anxious to chatter some gossip. Two boys from the Sputniks club ambled close to her, paused to slowly look her up and down, picked the cigarettes from their mouths and whistled lasciviously. She ignored them. They fitted the cigarettes back into their lips. The flat-faced boy snickered, "Jail-bait cooze, of no uzze." They strode up the steps.
Jill muttered, "Creeps," and stretched to see if Trixie was on the street. She shrugged, telling herself she must remember they were no longer best friends. Someone poked her shoulder and she swiftly turned, hoping Trixie had managed to sneak behind her. She stepped back, surprised to see Mike Steffne smiling at her.
He was tall, broad-shouldered and angular, as though not all his muscle had grown onto him. His curly brown hair glistened with brilliantine, and his wide mouth worked casually as he chewed a bulge of gum. A canvas bag dangled from his left hand while he flexed the thick fingers of his right as if exercising paralytic tendons. His face was wide and a scatter of blackheads were on the sides of his blunt nose. He wadded the gum against his cheek and winked at her.
"We got a date tonight?"
"No thank you, Mr. Steffne."
"Can't 'cha study some other time?"
"I can study any time, as I can date any one."
"What's with you? You sore about something?"
"Sore? Who, me? If I considered that you existed, I might be sore. But since you are not existing, why should I be sore?"
"Cut that English Eight talk and get to what I asked, Jill. Tonight-okay, or nokay?"
"No, Mr. Steffne, emphatically no! Not tonight, tomorrow not ever. You're a cheap, imbecilic, hard-up nothing, and as far as I'm concerned, I find it impossible to remember your dumb face!"
She swung around and rushed up the steps. He raced after her, grabbing her arm and pulling her away from the door. She struggled to be free of his grip but he held her, his face loomed close to her face, demanding, "What the hell's with you? You jerky or something?" She knew that students had stopped and were looking at them, and she wished she had stayed home because even the treacheries of her parents were less humiliating than this. She yanked her arm from his hand and moved to run down the steps. He blocked her way and again grabbed her arm. "What's with this hard-up stuff, huh?" His lips were tight across his teeth and she tried to stop breathing to keep from liking the sense of maleness about him. He shook her arm.
"What'd I ever do to you, you never let me do to you? You got a hair up your-I mean, what's with you today, your red flag waving or something?"
"You're making a stupid fool of yourself, Mr. Who-ever-you-are. Please don't include me in your stupid behavior. You're a dirty, treacherous louse, and I mean it."
He stared at her, his eyes squinted, his face taut with anger and indecision, and she suddenly wanted to beg him to hold her, hold her so violently tight she wanted to scream, and then kiss her, and fondle her and do all he did to Trixie, and more, because she was lonely and ugly inside, and alone.
Someone shouted, "Hey, Mike, some chick givin' you trouble?"
He spun around, pointing his finger at a tall student with eyeglasses. "You screw off, hump-head. I won't warn you again!" The boy backed away, his mouth faltering into a worried smile. Mike turned back to Jill, his face loosening, his voice softer. "What's the scoop, Jill? How come all of a sudden I got leprosy?"
She stared at him, remembering the squeezy press of his hands on her breasts, how his thumbs flicked her nipples, the way he jammed his tongue against her teeth to make her soul-kiss, how he rubbed his front against her and forced her to sway with him, and she wanted to tell him he could have got her, many times, if only he had ignored her saying no, if he didn't give a damn about her decency, her will power, and just took. She edged back, trying to keep his bulk from intimidating her. He shifted closer.
"What's with you that all of a sudden I got leprosy, I asked."
"Ask Trixie."
"Ask Trixie what?"
"If you don't know what, then you're stupider than I give you credit for."
"Ask Trixie what, I asked."
"You know damn well what I'm talking about, Mr. Hot-pants."
"So that's it, huh? Are we married? Answer me that Are we married."
"God forbid!"
"So tell me what law says I have'ta be true to someone I'm single from? You tell me the law and if there's one, the first time you see me look at another chick, you can stab me."
She nibbled her lips, wanting to tell him about the moral laws even in unmarried relationships, the understood trusting and honesty rules, but she knew he would laugh at her, call her tricky and devious for how she always played one boy against another-and she didn't care, not really. She didn't really like him, not in her heart. Only in her body. He turned his head and spit the chewing gum onto the steps and turned back to her.-
"Just because I'm slipping it to Trixie don't mean things have to be different for us. With Trixie it's for laughs. It don't even count. But you I like, Jill. You're decent, but even more so, except I can't say it how I feel. I like you, on my honor, you I like and respect-real high."
"Will you be good enough to stand aside, Mr. Who-ever-you-are? Your bullying ways are humiliating me before the student body. And in the future, if perchance we meet again-"
She suddenly shouted, "STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!" and used all her strength to push him aside. She rushed into the school building, bumping into students, startling them, not caring that she appeared wild and hysterical, unlike the calm and unperturbable Jill Fulmer everyone knew-because she wasn't that Jill Fulmer, not exactly, not any more. She ran to a stairwell door, forcing back her tears while she silently begged God to please, please tell her what she was becoming-who she was.
6
The moment she walked into the American history classroom she knew Trixie had deliberately blabbed the information about her prize money. She held herself dignified as she moved to the rear of the room, and when she fitted herself into a seat with a spatula writing flat, she wished she was syrup-boned and could silently ooze down and hide in a floor crack to avoid the disbelieving, reverent, envious, incredulous way the other students looked at her. Mr. Crantz too, strained to keep from staring at her while he started the class with a discussion of the political factors that hastened the South's secession from the Union. She tried to listen, but could only think of how much she wanted to hate Trixie for spitefully gossiping about the prize money. She felt too squirmy and edgy to think of hating Trixie. She wanted to stand up and speak to the students, explain that she was not a freak or even a miraculously lucky person. All I did was win some money, and it wasn't just luck. Don't you remember how you all laughed at me, made jokes about me, while I kept entering and entering contests, writing ditties and stupid rhymes and essays and sentences and spending my allowance on stamps, until I finally won a prize. I'm not a crackpot or a chosen one.
But Jill knew explanations and logic would not stop them from looking at her, from making her feel that every pore of her skin and contour of her face was being inspected, and all her imperfections were being seen. Her spine hurt from pressing against the seat back, and the room began to feel like a small box with air that had solidified into pellet-eyes, like colored agates all aimed at her face. She knew she must find a way to insulate herself against wanting to look into each set of eyes-Joan's hazel eyes, Denny's brown eyes, Jeffs flaky gray eyes, Alfred's myopic green eyes, Louise's amber eyes-or she would believe that the eyes upon her could also see into her depths and would begin to know her, and then the eyes would, all of them, harden and glint and film over with loathing for her. She didn't know why she always believed that if her inner thoughts and feelings were revealed, people would loathe her. What awful, rotten crime did I ever commit? she asked herself, and sat, her eyes closed, unable to think of a crime she had committed. Oh Trixie, she cried to herself, sad for Trixie, holding so much hatred for her for so long-oh Trixie, why couldn't you keep your flappy mouth shut!
Mr. Crantz tapped a fountain-pen cap onto his desk, ordering, "All right now, faces to the front, please." Many of the students turned to him as he kept tapping the cap, insisting, "Must I take disciplinary action just to gain your attention?" The remaining students reluctantly turned away from her, and Mr. Crantz twisted the cap back onto the black fountain pen and smiled. "Would anyone feel intimidated if I asked someone to volunteer the reason for Abraham Lincoln's presidential victory being an issue of grave doubt?"
The room was silent and slowly the eyes again moved to look at her, and she couldn't know if they were looking at her because she was a Believe-It-Or-Not oddity or because they expected her to offer the answer. Jill remained silent, doodling dollar designs on a loose-leaf paper, telling herself she must not speak, not once, during this class.
A short student with stumpy arms turned back to Mr. Crantz and raised his hand, saying, "I know why, Mr. Crantz."
The teacher smiled. "All right, Walter."
The boy scratched his head and wrinkled his small face. "Because Mr. Lincoln was a dark horse-a nobody-a candidate without a rep to back him."
The teacher nodded. "That would be part of the reason, Walter. Let us now go into the other factors." Walter stopped scratching his head and grinned and shifted in his seat to stare at Jill while Mr. Crantz discussed Abraham Lincoln's precarious political position.
Soon, she accepted that she would be stared at, have faces immediately turn to her when another student in her area was called upon to answer a question, be thought about and appraised and looked at as different, because she was positively changed to them, though only vaguely changed to herself.
Gradually, she felt immersed in a strange, anesthetizing haze. An odorless, stingless mist which covered her like a current of gossamer gauze, allowing her to see and be seen, but preventing her from feeling a connection to the other students. Sights were not distorted, sounds were not muted or amplified, spatial dimensions not diminished or stretched, tastes and smells not intensified or unfamiliar-but all substances beyond the haze no longer belonged to her, and she seemed to own only permission to behold them. When Lorna Bender was asked to explain Abraham Lincoln's stand when threatened by the South's secession, Jill knew athletic, tomboyish Lorna would answer in sport-fan language, and that Mr. Crantz had called on Lorna only to have some comedy produced to break up the classroom tension.
"He was in the pivot with no one to pass to," Lorna said, hiking up her skirt and standing straddle-legged, her hands fisted on her broad hips. "The odds against the South nosing back in was prohibitive, so he stalled the inning until the first team pooped out." While the other students laughed at how animatedly Lorna shifted and swayed while talking, she was unable to laugh because she did not feel existent in the room and was afraid her laughter would sound eerie and offensive.
Only when it seemed that she would be asked to answer a question did the haze quickly thicken and cling heavily around her, making her feel suffocated and drained, and the room beyond the haze would drop away and she would be alone in herself, thinking of the changes happening in her, analyzing the changes, and planning on how to order them into a balanced personality-except she could not recognize specific ways that she had been altered. Only an unfamiliar willingness to feel what she had for so long pushed deep into herself, because so often her feelings did not tell her how to express them in action. And these feelings were coming back to her now, in rapid and startling sensations. A sudden surge of arrogance-yes-arrogance, she told herself. She wanted to square her shoulders and push her chin out and turn her eyes into two cutting sneers, revealing to the others her belief that she was totally superior.
She wanted to stride to the front of the class and push her face against the face of baby-blue-eyed, dimple-cheeked Carol Vogel who was reputed to be the hottest soul-kisser in the East Bronx, and boast to Carol that if she wanted to, she could kiss a johnny-pump in such a way that it would pop its cap and do a passionate hulu dance. That's how hot I can soul-kiss when I want to. And then stand before Mr. Crantz's desk and arrogantly call him a kindly fool for treating students like real human beings when she knew that-except for herself-they were spiteful, vicious, thick-minded animals who only thought of games and clothes and candy and sex, and hated school because it ate up their street time. He should be teaching in a private school, earning a high salary, so he didn't have to wear shirts with turned-over collars and suits that shone with wear, and he could afford to groom away the ready-for-the-glue-factory shabbiness and drag that showed in his leaned posture, the hang of his long face, his yellowing teeth. "You poor, pitiful slob," she spoke to him in her mind. "I'll lend you a few hundred. Go out and brighten yourself up. Look alive!" And in the arrogance that vibrated through her, making her soul feel like a great bell pounded by an immense clapper that sent her resonate and swelling into a thrilling musical scream, she saw herself as an omniscient deity swinging through all the classrooms, dominating the minds and desires of all the students who wanted to be, but never could be the Jill Fulmer.
Then the prolonged sense of arrogance was suddenly snapped away, and again the eyes surrounded her protective haze, patiently trying to penetrate. She sat dull and fatigued, feeling hated in one instant and admired in the next, assaulted with envy the next instant, then adored and loved, until she felt herself riding the tops of instants, always changed, always seen differently, until her mind was like a lead slab forcing her head to nod as though about to sleep, only to be startled awake again by a sensation that made her ache with bitterness and anger and despair. She was the twin of Trixie, a self-deluder, a stupid, frantic, self-liar because ten thousand dollars was not enough to make her a doctor, it was only enough to pay for her becoming a doctor. But where would she get the other monies needed to furnish an office, to pay for equipment, to subsist until she could build up a paying practice?
The word "collateral" crept through her mind to become a satanic, taunting snicker. Collateral. Collateral. Collateral. Banks never lend money unless you have enough assets not to need money. And her mind filled with grim images of herself, sexy-grown and twenty-three, dating men with money and letting them use her for a donation to her medical career. "I'd rather kill myself first!" she screamed in herself, because how could she believe in herself, how could she feel honor when swearing to the Hippocratic oath and feel pride when looking at the caduceus on her medical degree? Oh God, why did you curse me with this money? Why couldn't you leave me just a poory, like Trixie, happy with my baby-dreams-so much more happier than now.
The low mood held her until the change-of-class bell rang and she left her seat and the strange, protective haze followed her into the corridor. Though she wanted to hurry to the toilets where she could sit and sneak a smoke and think, the low mood was whipped from her by the sudden clamor and push of students surrounding her, poking and back-slapping and tugging and talking and yelling at her, and in her haze, even as she blinked her eyes and edged back from the jostling shock of attention, she thought this was how a movie star must feel, this is the bounty of fame. Her sensations swung through her in racy exhilarations as she was nagged by questions about the money and the radio program, and because she now was like a movie actress, she posed her face to appear thoughtful and reflective, answering Deedee Landau, "No, I haven't gotten the check yet, Dee," and staring at Paul Humber's cheek warts, replying, "I'm going to deposit the check, not cash it, so you can't count the money for me." She felt brilliantly beautiful and slick-witted and winked to Jean Silver, "It isn't the money that counts, it's the principle."
Some of them laughed and others began remembering when; and yes, she did remember when she went to the high school dance and forgot to wear panties. And when her Cha-Cha partner whirled her around, she had shrieked and run from the floor and now repeated her feeling, "Oh Lord, I thought I would die of shame." She also remembered the night Arty Heller stood in the backyard of her house and serenaded her with a comb and tissue-paper instrument and she dumped a pail of water on his head.
Jill began to feel wise and aged and thought of the students crowded around her as playful puppies yapping and waggling for jiggles and kind caresses. When Alice Belmort shoved against her and clutched her hand, urging, "Aren't you glad we were always close friends?" Jill generously kept silent about the time Alice called her a "filthy sneak" for taking away Charlie Motts. Jill stood haughty and tinged her voice with disdain because others were claiming best-friendships with her, and she could not have friends now, because familiarity bred contempt, and her saintly sense of humanity would not permit her to hurt the students by revealing that their idol might have a minor flaw or two.
Then Yetta Goldman called to her, asking her to buy a full raffle book for the children's charity she represented, and Jill held herself aloof as waves of requests for donations and money favors were called to her. All about her she could only see pale skins and animated blends of hair tone and flashes of bright and dark clothes. The voices no longer shaped clear words and became yammering sounds. She held her exhilaration and her belief that she was radiantly beautiful until a hand that slapped her back made her wince, and the fingers tugging at her arm pinched, and a shoe kicked her ankle, and a fist pummeled her breast, and her hair was yanked to make her turn.
The sense of exhilaration wavered, and she said, "Please, I have to go to my next class." But more students milled about her, and they called over other students who shouted advice on how to spend the money, and some pushed steno pads near her face, pleading for an autograph. Other students requested that she say their names over the radio, and others read off officious sentences and asked if they were good enough to win a prize. Jill began to shake her head, feeling hounded and harassed and brayed at, and the voices became party clackers and droners and shrillers that jelled in her mind.
She could feel the root of a scream begin in her because her back was jammed against the cold wall, and the edges of her books were dug into her stomach, and the faces before her lost their individuality and became a blurry pink band expanding and shrinking, about to snap and lash against her eyes, and the scream in her slowly swelled, and only the mist still shrouding her kept her from kicking out and swinging and gouging at the band of faces who wanted her money, wanted to rip bits of her future until all her tomorrows were the same grim length of Time they were yesterday.
"Please, please," she pleaded. "Please just leave me alone." Someone yelled, "Now that you have money you don't need us, huh?" and someone else cackled, "Your money doesn't make you better than me!" and a boy with horn-rimmed glasses shouted, "We're the dirty proletariat and you're the immaculate capitalist, is that where you stand?" More loud accusations became a rasping chant in her mind, and faces pushed closer to her face, and she felt terror and nausea at the smell of voices, the bulge of mouths and flail of tongues. Jill closed her eyes and cringed back, waiting to be punched and kicked and dragged by the hair to a window, and flung out to hurl and scream in the air finally to thud onto the gate, impaled on the lance-like poles.
Through the noise of voices she heard a shattering shrillness, and she thought her hysteria was screaming from her; but when the weight of bodies and faces and smells and voices were suddenly pulled back, she realized a teacher was blowing a whistle, and she heard him shout, "What in blazes is going on here?"
Slowly Jill could breathe again and the hollow dizziness began to fill while she watched students scramble away, and she was able to stand steady and open her eyes. Although she still wanted to scream, she also wanted to laugh at how clownish the students were, bolting into classrooms, racing through stairwell entrances, rushing along the long corridor as Mr. Etner strode toward her, his sharp-featured face tense with anger as he bawled at the students still in sight. "Get to your classes before I start making out blue cards to Mr. Elmacky's office!" Jill knew that she must not speak, not even to Mr. Etner whom she always wished had been her father because there was a friendliness in him, and laughter and jokes. He stood before her and asked, "Are you all right, Jill?"
She looked up at him and silently nodded. He smiled gently, and she thought that the man she married must have his eyes, the tenderness in them, the patience and wisdom, and also his straight, strong nose and his solid, wide chin. She didn't believe that he was doing it to that new Economics teacher, that was just a vicious lie Trixie had told her.
He widened his smile and winked at her. "Why don't you retire to the Ladies' Room and compose yourself like a true lady?"
Jill made herself smile to show him the terror she had felt was draining from her, though the scream was still a coarse node in her throat. She nodded again and edged along the wall and breathed deeply as she slowly walked to the door marked GIRLS, then turned to him and made herself smile as she opened the door, then stepped into the long white room that immediately hurt her eyes.
Mary Mannerheim was at one of the sinks, one hand cupped under the liquid soap dispenser, jabbing the pumper button. Jill was glad Mary was hard of hearing and too conceited to wear a hearing aid. She quickly shifted to the first booth and entered the cubicle. She snapped the lock and sat down, still feeling the strange haze cloy around her, even as her body trembled and a dull ache pulsed behind her eyes. Because the room was silent and the sense of being assaulted by a charge of students was gone, the scream in her throat quickly dissolved. She felt suddenly alert and knowing, as though a hand in her mind had flicked the covers from her intelligence, permitting her to observe knowledge too painful, too bewildering to admit before this moment of clarity. She realized that she could think about herself without fear or shame, only with astonishment at the belief that she was neither child nor woman, merely a creature dangling between two conditions, pulled at by each, alternately and together, wise without true wisdom, infantile without chance to be babyish, searching for sanction for her womanly desires, wanting to be loved just for being, always praying for Time to hurry and end her limbo so she could begin finding meaning in her life.
And then she thought of sex, and in her mind repeated the word and kept repeating the word until the impression of sex lost sensibility, and she could consider why she thought so continually about sex. Slowly she understood it was not sex or sexuality she always thought about, but in her creature-like state, there were no other expression spouts through which her inarticulate feelings could pour. So a mood that might urge her to seek friendship or an impulse to dance, was glibly translated into sex; while when dancing she had no desire to kiss or touch, but kissed and touched because she had no other way to be. Yet, there were stark times when she just wanted sex, physical sex, raw and brutal, gentle and everlasting, to have her sensations become a crescendo of singing and swinging and shrilling and shrieking pitches that soared her so high above the earthliness of being that she was not while she was all.
She knew, too, why she did not want sex without first culling the guards of love-because in those passionate moments she knew she would not be the way she was when just a daily being. He would look at her and see her in anatomical akimbo, without poetry or symmetry or presence, sprawled like an alley animal, panting and writhing without inner order, touched and mouthed and touching and mouthing the dark places always hidden, even when she studied her body to find its allure. And when it was over and there was no love to hold their apartness connected, she would be left a sweaty, odoring, altered being, enclosed in a cell of self-shame. If only her body was just a body, not intensely clutched to her Self, she could be like Trixie.
Oh God, if I could only be as casual and outside as Trixie. And as she nodded, wishing she could be as blithe and open as Trixie, the hand in her mind slowly drew back the covers and the keenness was dulled, and she felt the strange haze diffuse. She leaned against the metal booth wall and yawned, gradually feeling contact with her surroundings: the press of cold metal against her shoulder, the hardness of the seat against her buttocks, the squeaky noises Mary made trying to pump more soap from the dispenser, the sensation of wanting to urinate only because she was seated in a urinating position, the crisp sound of a book page being turned in another booth.
Jill moved her legs apart and set her books between her shoes, then opened her purse and drew a cigarette from the pack. She lit the tip and dropped the paper match into the bowl. She inhaled deeply, liking the acrid feel of smoke deep in her lungs. Jill exhaled downward and fanned the smoke as it left her mouth. She held the cigarette low and at the side of the bowl so the smoke was spread and thinned before it reached the booth top.
I feel better, she told herself, then yawned, unexpectedly, and frowned at the tiredness she felt. After what I just went through an ox would be pooped. She sighed and idly glanced at the crude scrawlings on the booth sides and door. She saw a heart with initials scratched in the center. Near the metal lock she read, "J.M. tried to lay, relay, parlay me-but he got screwed, blewed & tattooed." Toward the bottom of the door were two circles with thick dots in the center, depicting breasts. She smiled. Above the breasts was an erotic drawing of genitals with initials carved into each testicle. Jill studied the drawing and nodded. They were just like Marty's-and she remembered the morning her brother had forgotten to lock the bathroom door and she walked in and saw him toweling himself. She had stared at that place, wide-eyed with surprise and curiosity, wanting to reach out and touch it.
Jill put the cigarette to her lips and again inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in her until she counted to twenty, then slowly exhaled. The hall door suddenly opened and heels thudded onto the floor. She dropped the cigarette into the bowl and hurriedly fanned the faint films of smoke.
"Let's go, ladies, off the poddys," a harsh voice ordered. Jill recognized the voice as Gert Lowe's, the third floor monitor. She heard Mary say, "Hi, Gert, what's the dirt?"
Gert laughed. "I just saw the principal give two Sputniks a week's detention. Mr. Elmacky just hates that club."
Mary answered, "I didn't hear you."
Gert loudened her voice, "You'll be late for class."
"Oh, I thought you said something else.
The other booth door opened and Gert spoke as though grinning, "They ought to put a couch and radio in here for you, Hanna, you're in there so much." Hanna tittered, "Every-time I mention your name, I get a good seat." They laughed and Jill heard the door close. She leaned back and yawned, then quickly closed her mouth when fingers rapped on the booth door.
"Come on, Miss Constipation, up and out and at'm," Gert ordered. Jill stood up, annoyed at girls who affected toughness to hide their sadness for being gawky and unattractive. She flushed the toilet and picked up her books. She stepped out and Gert raised her eyebrows, then quickly smirked, "Miss Millions. You're the last one I expected to see in an ordinary John."
Jill shrugged. "You're just too funny for words." She moved to the door.
Harshly, Gert demanded, "Hold it, Jill," and began sniffing the air. Jill turned to her, noticing the blotty smears of lipstick at the corners of Gert's mouth. "You were smoking, weren't you?"
Jill wrinkled her mouth, annoyedly. "What's with everyone today? I win some money and instead of people being glad for me, they hold it against me. Why?"
Gert drew a stubby pencil from a pattern of bobby pins in her brown hair. "Trixie told us how you turned her down flat on a loan. Your best friend, yet."
Jill edged closer. "Did she tell you why?"
Gert shrugged her wide shoulders. "Who cares why. You did, that's plenty."
Jill tensed her lips across her teeth. "Would you give Trixie two thousand dollars of your money to spend on a fashion school? Is Trixie the fabulous beauty she thinks she is, that giving her two thousand dollars will help her?"
Gert blinked her eyes, groping for an answer, then looked down, uncertainly.
Jill smirked. "All of a sudden I'm the world's awfulest bitch-and no one stops to know the truth."
Gert, as if suddenly determined not to be talked out of her indignation, folded her lanky arms across her small breasts, declaring, "It's an infraction of the rules to smoke and you know it."
Jill waved her hand disgustedly, "For pity's sake, Gert, stop playing top sergeant," and moved to the door.
Gert snapped, "You just hold it, Jill." She picked a small pad from her shirt pocket.
"I'm putting you on report. I won't let you break rules on my patrol."
"Are you serious? How many times a day do you drop in to smoke?"
"Jill Fulmer, that's your full name, isn't it?"
"What the hell is wrong with you, Gert? What did I ever do to you?"
"You're in the senior group? Correct me if I'm wrong."
"You know what will happen to my deportment record if you send that in. You'll fritz me up, but good."
"Time, the merry month of April, the day, the."
"What's with you, Gert? You've been a monitor all term and you haven't put anyone on report yet. So why start on me? Just because of what Trixie said, is that why."
"Offense-smoking during class changes in-" Jill suddenly shouted, "Gert, damn you, why are you like this?"
Gert looked up and smiled innocently. "You were smoking, weren't you?"
Jill stared at Gert's hazel eyes, trying to understand her deliberate meanness, certain it was more than just believing the lie Trixie had told.
Gert glanced away and shrugged indifferently. "As a monitor I am obliged to report all students who break the rules of Melrick High School. I'm just doing my job."
Jill suddenly understood that Gert felt inferior in appearance and grades, and now in wealth. She wanted to' be begged to tear up the report so she could boast to everyone that the new rich-bitch Jill Fulmer "begged me to forget I caught her smoking. Begged me, a poory like me, and her loaded with loot. So I tore it up out of pity for her. She was just so pathetic, the way she begged."
Gert wrote on the pad, saying, "The exact time of the offense was-"
Jill snickered, "Here's something else to report me for," and she suddenly lashed out her hand, smacking Gert's face, staggering her against a sink.
Gert clutched her face and gasped, "You dirty bitch!" and pushed herself from the sink, raising her arm. Jill quickly smacked her again, making her reel back, feeling thrilled with the sensation of violence and rage in her. Gert gaped at her, holding her face, her eyes wide with shock.
Jill strode to her, hissing, "Put me on report for this, you mean cooze!" and with all her strength, she slammed her opened hand against Gert's cheek, knocking her to the side where Gert slipped on a streak of soapy water and flopped onto her buttocks, her legs sprawled crookedly. Jill leaned over her, cursing, "You bitch! I won't beg. Not for you-not for anyone will I ever beg!" She raised her arm and Gert scooted back, huddling under a sink, rubbing her bruised cheek with one hand and massaging her buttocks with the other. Jill walked to the door, laughing to herself. It felt so good to smack someone. Oooooh, it felt so damn, damn good.
7
SHE was one minute late getting to her English Eight class, and as she had anticipated, all the students stared at her as she walked to her assigned seat. Silently, she tried to re-create the strange haze that had protected her, but only was able to dull her vision to keep from clearly seeing the faces around her. Trixie, seated beside her, turned to the side in an exaggerated show of enmity. Jill faced the front of the room and kept her vision blurred. Miss Carvel, a stout teacher whose fingernails were always ink-stained, tapped a small bell on her desk. The students quickly turned to her.
"We all know about Jill's good fortune," she said, and smiled at Jill. "But I will not permit any fuss or bother, and most certainly will take strong measures to prevent a repetition of the disgraceful mob scene during class changes." She tapped the bell again and in the quiet room the sound was like a glass pellet dropping onto a tuning prong. Her eyes were stern behind the rimless glasses.
"Our principal, Mr. Elmacky, has notified all teachers that if another such disturbance takes place, the only student who will not be placed on a deportment report or given detention is Jill. She is not to be intimidated-not in any way-and disobedience to Mr. Elmacky's order will not be tolerated."
Miss Carvel's wide lips pressed together and her eyes narrowed as she scanned the faces looking at her. Some students shrugged and glanced down at opened books, a few girls fussed with their hair and sneakily glanced at Jill who concentrated on studying the sayings of famous writers printed on long streamers below the ceiling.
She repeated in her mind, "The quality of mercy is not strained." She wanted to snicker.
A slender boy with rolled-up shirt sleeves and a blue rose tattooed on his left forearm raised his hand. Miss Carvel frowned at him, as if warning him to be careful, then nodded. "George, is it a question concerning our subject?" He shook his head and grinned.
"I would just like your permission to go over and touch Jill. All that loot-"
The students laughed, their voices giggly and loud as they turned to Jill. She kept reading the quotations. "To be, or not to be: that is the question," and thought a more fitting line in Hamlet's speech was "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all." Miss Carvel tapped the bell four times and the laughter slowly dwindled to an expectant silence. She raised a thick wooden ruler and pointed it at George.
"That will be the first, and the last idiotic remark from you, or anyone. Either you behave yourselves, or I'll send the lot of you to Mr. Elmacky's office and let him deal with you. You are in a classroom, not a ballroom. However, since your care to display your intelligance and wit, let's see how bright you are on today's examination. Grace, would you be good enough to distribute the test papers?"
A chubby girl with long blonde eyelashes stood up and took the stack of narrow, yellow, ruled papers held out to her. She wet her thumb and began counting the number of students in each row, then handed the test papers to the lead student. The teacher went to the erasure-streaked blackboard and picked up a stick of chalk. When each student had a paper she nodded. "We will test the extent of your vocabularies through antonyms. Twenty antonyms, each one carrying five points." She turned her back to them and began writing a column of words, starting with OBSEQUIOUS.
Jill glanced at Trixie who still sat to the side. She wished Trixie would whisper hello to her, say that all was forgiven and forgotten. I need a friend, Trix, please be my friend again. Trixie drew a fountain pen from her purse and uncapped the end with grandiose aloofness. Jill shifted back, hating her urge to want Trixie as her friend. She had to hold herself away from people. She had to be hard.
She felt someone touch her arm and turned to the boy in the next row. He winked, whispering, "How about a date, Jill? I'm not a fortune hunter-if you remember, I asked you plenty before you got the money."
She stared at the golden film of hair on his lean cheeks, the darker, more often shaved tint of hair above his lip. She wanted to laugh at him, then say, "Sure, Meyer, and during the cowboy movie we go to we'll neck like crazy, and when we get into my hallway we'll neck some more like crazy, and you'll try to get me-only you won't, and you know it."
He edged closer, again winking. "If you think it's Dutch treat, it's not. I'll pay for the movies. It's a double-feature, both with Randolph Scott.
She shrugged and whispered back, "I'm busy tonight. I'm shopping for a platinum Cadillac," and turned to read the list of words on the blackboard.
The words were difficult and she realized Miss Carvel was punishing them for being rowdy. She knew the opposite of each word, but thought that she would have to strain her vocabulary to get two antonyms for each, so Trixie could cheat from her paper, using the second word to keep from being accused of copying another student's answers. She looked down, again remembering that she and Trixie were no longer friends. She glanced at Trixie who was hunched forward, squinting at the blackboard. Jill wanted to grin with a sudden surge of affection, because Trixie was so wonderfully dumb and would never had gotten this far in English, or any of the other classes if, for so many terms, she hadn't cheated. Miss Carvel returned to her desk and sat down. She raised a silver-cased pocket watch and pointed to the dial face.
"Each word carries five points. However, if you select the correct antonym, but misspell it, you lose two of the five points. You have two minutes for each word. Forty minutes. Time enough even for retarded juniors. You may begin."
The students, as though moved by a lever, all bent over and wrote their names and class groups in the right top corner of the paper, then looked up and studied the columns of words. Jill wrote insolent as the antonym for obsequious, for frustrate she wrote support, carefully forming the letters, admiring the grace of her handwriting, thinking that her penmanship showed artistic tendencies. For recreant she wrote constant. She heard the irritating sound of fingernails clicking together and slowly tilted her head, and saw Trixie rubbing her fingers, signaling that she wanted to copy. Jill, crouched over her paper, blocking it from Trixie's sight, wanting Trixie to feel hurt and loss, as she had been hurt and saddened, too, for letting money smash their friendship. For symmetry she wrote inequality. Trixie clicked her fingernails faster. Two students turned and glared at her for breaking their concentration. Jill wrote hatred for benevolence, viciously thinking that she could ruin Trixie by giving her all wrong answers. The fingernail clicking began to sound like a desperate katydid trapped under a stone. What really galled her was the rotten reason why Trixie let Mike Steffne get her. Not for passion, not even love. Only to snatch him from her best friend. The last word was machination; Jill wrote candor and lay down her pencil. She sat back, listening to Trixie's fingernails, imagining how, tonight, Trixie would meet Mike and they would do it, and she would go home and maybe douche herself and lie on her bed, in the dark. Lonely. Without a friend. Feeling like a towel someone wiped himself on. Dank in every pore of her heart, miserable because she wasn't smart or attractive, only flashy and loud. Believing there was no future for her-only a flat ladder of days leading her to boredom. And if her misery became deep-deep and out of control, she might get up and drink a bottle of iodine. Trixie was that way. Her blues turned purple and her reds intensified to scarlet, her heartaches became strokes and she became nutsy and never stopped to think that killing herself was wrong and could hurt.
Slowly, Jill leaned over and picked up her pencil. It's so easy to become a dog and pee on a pathetic cat. She poked up her thumb, signaling Trixie that she would use the far-sighted cheating method, thinking what did it matter if she was hated, or thought of as goony. Today wasn't the end of her life and Trixie wasn't the only girl in the world. Carefully, and in large letters so Trixie's far-sighted eyes could read it, she printed ARROGANT as the antonym for obsequious, and waited. Trixie couldn't help herself with Mike Steffne. All she had was sex to give him, and he would take it until he latched onto a girl who was freer and nicer than Trixie. She heard three fingernail clicks, Trixie's signal that she had copied the word. Jill erased the letters and blew the erasure scatters from the paper. She printed TRUE for recreant and peeked at Miss Carvel who was glancing around the large room. Trixie clicked her fingernails again and Jill erased the word, printed another antonym in its place, and continued printing and erasing, thinking that maybe her break-up with Trixie was necessary. Their friendship had been girlie-girlie and was always there to be broken or deepened when a serious, womanly test came along. She finished printing the last antonym and agreed with herself. A girlie-girlie friendship held for always when both grew womanly at the same time, even for different reasons. And Trixie wanted to stay girlie-girlie. She heard the three fingernail clicks and erased the final word, then carefully turned to Trixie and smiled. Trixie shifted around, ignoring her. Jill wanted to laugh at Trixie's girlie-girlie ways.
The classroom door suddenly opened and a lanky girl hurried in, her blonde pigtails flailing blue ribbon bows. The students looked up and watched her place a white paper on Miss Carvel's desk, then hurry out. The teacher read the notice and looked to Jill, saying, "Jill, you're wanted in Mr. Elmacky's office. How far have you gotten on the test?" The students turned to her.
Jill raised the yellow paper. "I'm finished." She wondered if she was in trouble for smacking Gert.
Miss Carvel smiled. "Bring your paper to me and report to the principal's office. Jill walked to the desk, quickly, not wanting anyone to sense that she was worried. She lay the paper on the teacher's desk and left the classroom. She turned left and pushed open the DOWN stairwell door. She wanted to stop and think, lean against the wall and rest, and consider what to tell Mr. Elmacky about having smacked Gert. But the image of the principal's face in her mind annoyed her and she shook her head, deciding to keep herself relaxed, her mind open and alert. It was the only way to be with a tricky, secretive man like Mr. Elmacky.
She walked down the metal-rimmed steps, then stopped when she heard sudden scuffling movements. She looked through the thick wire mesh guard set on the banister and saw two faces staring up at her. She took a backward step up, not wanting to be taunted or bullied by two of the Sputniks who were cutting classes. She listened to the muted haw of their laughter. The hell with them, she told herself. Jill squared her shoulders, feeling bold as she walked down the steps. They stood at the bottom of the landing, hands clenched on their hips, grinning up at her. The stark black and orange of their club jackets made her think of coarse-skinned animals. She knew Gilly, the tall boy with scar nicks on his left cheek. The other boy, short, with a chunky face, was probably a new member.
He opened his mouth and panted comically, saying, "Hubba-hubba, is that a cooze I see, Gilly, or is that a cooze?" and rolled his eyes lasciviously.
Gilly shook his head, answering, "Hubba-hubba, that's Jill, get the rubba, Sidney-she's the choozy-cooze."
Jill moved down two steps, feeling a little afraid and wishing she was more afraid.
"I have to report to the principal's office. You're in my way."
"Sidney, do you think she bangs? Or just dry-bangs, or only whang-bangs?"
"I'll ask her. Hey, do you bang?"
"Why don't you two slobs shove your filthy mouths in a toilet and leave me alone!"
"She vaahnts tuh bee hah-lone, Sidney."
"Und hie vaahnt tuh bee hah-lone mit her."
"You want to rape her now, or later?"
"Later, Gilly. The last three we just raped pooped me out."
"You think she's a virgin who needs urgin'-or stuff who can't get enough?"
"I'll ask her. Hey, you still got your cherry, or only the crate it come in?"
Sidney laughed and whacked Gilly's back.
Gilly yipped, "Man, you rock me, man," and they whacked each other and kept laughing.
Jill thought, this happens every day, this and worse; only today it seems much worse. Why? And she thought that Life had suddenly conspired against her to test her nerve, her endurance. A strange force was trying to drive her from school this day, and break her perfect attendance record.
Gilly put his foot onto the second step and leaned against his knee and grinned. "Lemme give you a little bang, huh?" He indicated the size by keeping his forefinger slightly separated from his thumb. "I just wanna get this much in, O. K.? A quarter of an inch, O. K.? "
Sidney nodded happily. "Yeah, the quarter of an inch that comes last." Gilly jerked his head back and yowled some laughter while Sidney whopped his thighs and tittered asthmatically.
Jill walked down to the second step, her body hard and chilled with rage, threatening them. "Say one more filthy thing, go on, I dare you!"
They stopped laughing and crouched near her. Gilly sneered his mouth, saying. "You want us to pull off your drawers and flag'm in the auditorium?"
Sidney shoved his face nearer, whispering, meanly, "You wanna get banged right-"
She screamed suddenly, shrill and loud, startling them to scramble back against the wall, her voice echoing through the stairwell like the whip of a glassy whistle.
They waved at her, urging, "Sssssh, you screwy cooze, you shaddup or-"
Jill screamed again, her mouth gaped open, thrilled with the sensation of hysteria flinging from her throat. They lunged forward and raced down the steps as though chased by a fire-belching ghost.
Above her someone yelled, "What's going on down there?" Calm now, and suddenly limp, Jill looked up at the third-floor monitor who was worriedly frowning.
"A mouse ran past me," she said.
The girl sighed, "Oh, I thought you were getting raped, or something.
Jill shrugged. "Just a mouse." She walked down the steps, grinning-then suddenly nibbled her mouth and pursed her lips, hoping the Sputniks didn't start plotting to get their revenge-then hoping she wasn't in trouble for smacking Gert.
8
JILL sat on the left side of the principal's desk. He was a short man with rimless bifocal glasses magnifying his gray eyes, making them appear like watery blobs. He wore a coin-silver tie knotted into a tight pinch at the apex of his starched collar.
Jill thought of his nickname, "Rumbles" Elmacky, for his peculiar stomach disorder which, when he was upset by the pending visit of some educational administrator or because of a free-for-all corridor fracas, rumbled like approaching thunder from beneath his vest. Before seeing him rush into a classroom to stop a disturbance, he could be heard outside the door. He had been principal throughout her school years and it was speculated that he could never achieve a higher position in education because he was unable to control the laughable stomach eruptions during school board conferences.
She had never liked the man and always tried to avoid looking at his face which had the pallor of drying cheese.
But Jill was glad and relieved that he hadn't called her in about smacking Gert. If he had, he would have scowled and yelled and pounded his desk to terrify her before punishing her. It was about winning the contest, she was sure. She watched him toy with a heavy, ornately etched, gold watch dangling from a chain stretched across his vest. He licked his lips and smiled prissily.
"Well, now, Jill, how can I begin?" His voice was reedy, his esses sibilant. He ahemed, importantly. "I must confess to never believing in box-top contests. However, I was obviously mistaken. Have you formulated any plans for the money? Ten thousand dollars is a tidy amount."
"I have, Mr. Elmacky. I'm going to open a savings account and save it for my medical education. I want to be a doctor. Pediatrics, to be exact."
"Most commendable, Jill. You have a head on your shoulders. However-and mind you I say this only in an advisory capacity-is it wise to put all your eggs into one basket, so to speak?"
"I don't mean to sound fresh, Mr. Elmacky. But my money will be earning interest and a bank is not exactly a basket."
"Of course, of course. You are wise beyond your years. We'll not bring up the subject of money again. There is another matter, however. A delicate one I might add. It carries many moral and ethical values; but I'm certain you are up to understanding them. You aren't the brightest student in your senior group for nothing, are you now?"
She shook her head and wondered if he was lying and leading up to ask for a loan. Oh, just a few piddling thousand. She heard a rumbling noise and tensed her face to keep from grinning as he clasped his hands on the small swell of his stomach and shifted into another position.
"Jill, as I have come to understand it, you will be appearing on the All-Family Foods television program. On a nationwide broadcast. Am I correct?"
"In seven weeks from tomorrow. Saturday morning at nine o'clock, to be exact."
"Splendid, child, splendid. You are, of course, aware of the debt you owe to Melrick High School. We, the dedicated teachers at Melrick, have taken the crude, untrained mind of a girl, and with patience, unselfish effort and unflinching devotion, fashioned you into a rather brilliant student. We are teachers; we do this without seeking added remuneration or commendation. However, you do appreciate the enormity of our task, don't you now, Jill?"
She nodded, remembering what Marty had once said about the principal. "He's been kept hidden by that crazy belly of his, honey-but don't think he isn't in there hustling, always pitching. He's a greedy opportunist, don't think differently." Marty was never wrong when it came to judging people, she thought, and wondered what the man wanted. But she was glad he was talkative and long-winded. Jill wanted to stay in his office until the class-change bell rang so she wasn't alone when she returned to classes. She was afraid of the Sputniks. Mr. Elmacky raised his glasses to his forehead and rubbed the pink indentions on the bridge of his nose. He lowered the glasses and sighed resignedly.
"Melrick High School has been my second home, you know. I have been its principal for twelve years now, and every day has been glorious and most informative. The principal of a high school soon learns that he is not better than the students, my dear. He is humble in sight of their youth, their vigor, the knowledge that they are about to go forth and shape this brave new world. This is my second home, yes, but I am needed elsewhere-in an Administrative role where I can serve many, rather than a select few. You can help me to help others, Jill. You understand, don't you now?"
"I'm not absolutely sure, Mr. Elmacky. Could you just say it out-why you called me here? If it's all right with you, I mean."
He nodded several times and sounds like voices shouting into paper bags noised from his stomach. He squeezed his hands over his vest and clenched his mouth, and she knew he hated his stomach. Jill was sorry for him, quickly imagining herself with that disgusting condition just as she was about to have love confessed to her and made to her, the awful sounds bouncing in the dark, frightening her almost-love and lover. Mr. Elmacky pressed his vest harder and the noises changed to the pitta-pat tone of bare feet running on a rubber floor. She glanced down and wished that he wouldn't talk to her as if she were a child. It was annoying. He strained his face into a smile and leaned forward.
"I summoned you to this office so that I might offer a suggestion as to what to say when you appear on television.
You will no doubt be asked questions about yourself. Your life, your-likes, dislikes, and hullabaloo of that sort. I believe it would be a gesture of respect and admirable humility if you were to mention Melrick High School, and, of course, its dedicated principal, as the one who believed in your abilities and instructed you during your difficult times, therefore, enabling you to win a contest of such-"
"But Mr. Elmacky, everybody laughed at me. Even you called me down to insist that I stop making a spectacle of myself by-"
"Young lady, you are interrupting. You were taught in your Social Forms class the grave impoliteness of interrupting. Particularly elders and those in higher stations."
"I'm sorry, Excuse me. But if I understand, what you want me to-"
"Your apology is accepted. 'To err is human, to forgive divine.' "
"Alexander Pope. 'Essay on Criticism.' Part Two. Line 325."
"Most commendable. However, you do have your obligations, as do we all; and your debt to Melrick High School, a great educational organism under my direction, should be discharged as immediately as is possible."
"You're asking me to do something I believe is wrong, Mr. Elmacky. To tell a lie-"
He suddenly smashed his hand on the desk, shouting, "I will not tolerate such temerity!" She shifted back, afraid of the rage that stretched his lips over his small teeth, the quivering of his jowls, the sounds battering against the walls of his stomach. He pulled off his glasses and his eyes were instantly reduced to little, mean glints jabbing at her. He heaved in some breath and shook the glasses at her.
"Money and a spurious rise to fame does not alter your position in my school, Miss Fulmer. You may graduate with a perfect average and all I need do is state on your transcript that while your scholastic achievement is brilliant, your personal character is aberrated. Your professional potential is then null and void. Do I make myself clear? Null and void!"
Jill looked down at her shoes, feeling a dizzying sensation of bewilderment. She tried to think of what to say, how to calm him-but could only listen to the boisterous sound in his stomach, sound that were like thick snakes thrashing around in a deadly battle.
Mr. Elmacky extended his arm and poked his small finger onto the desk, threatening, "You'll learn the double-entendre in life and ethics right now, or suffer for your naivete!"
She wanted to nod and then look up at him and suddenly curse him as an unfair, treacherous dog, and a blackmailer, too, and then smack his face and kick his stomach until it exploded and the gaseous garbage strewed onto the floor. But Jill sat with her head bowed, studying the scuff rubs on her shoe tips and was annoyed because her mother was such a negligent polisher. The noises in his stomach sounded softer, like the lowing of a tired animal, and then like wooden blocks with rubber corners tumbling into a pit. That means he's calming down, she thought, and quickly imagined what he might write on her school transcript to Hunter College.
PERSONALITY: Belligerent. Offensive. Disrespectful. CHARACTER: Untrustworthy. Disloyal. Immoral. SUMMATION: Will have a demoralizing effect in college.
How did all this happen to me? she asked herself. Not just because I won some money. It must be something else. It has to be. What? She heard him pat his hand on the desk and knew he wanted her attention. She kept staring down, hoping he believed her silence meant agreement. He fit the eyeglasses on and raucously cleared his throat.
"Three days before your television appearance I will again summon you to my office and have you memorize a statement to be read on the program. To prove my help, I will coach you on the proper reading of it. I have a devoted interest in the theater, you know. You will be letter perfect, I guarantee it."
Jill remained silent. He flattened his hands on the desk and leaned to her, the stomach rumbles softening to the sound of pleased and languid purrs.
"You should realize another important factor. When you apply for a scholarship, as you will no doubt do, and are without a doubt, worthy of receiving, a deciding factor will come from my office. This should not be misinterpreted as an intent to intimidate-merely a reminder of how tirelessly we work in your behalf. We, the teaching staff of Melrick High School believe in-"
She stood up, suddenly, asking curtly, "Will that be all, Sir?" her head still bowed, her hands clasped before her. He looked up at her, his glasses sliding closer to his eyes, making them seem like globules about to pop.
"Are you always so ill-mannered, or is this some spiteful childishness?"
She stared at him, moving her mouth into a smirk as if curiously inspecting a pale roach. "Will that be all, Sir?"
He flattened his hands hard on his stomach as if trying to mute a gallop of rumbles. He suddenly swung around and spoke with his back to her.
"That will be all, Miss Fulmer."
She stared at the shiny bald spot circled by silky gray hair and suddenly prayed that Marty's leave was not unexpectedly canceled because she had to talk with him, had to let him hold her hand while he explained how and why all this happened to her. Marty knew. Marty knew everything. Jill heard a noise that was like a basketball dribbling on a pad.
The principal said loudly, "You have been dismissed, Miss Fulmer!"
She deliberately tittered, "Yes, Mr. Rumbles-oh, I mean, Mr. Elmacky," and hurried to the door as he swung around. She slammed the door, wishing she was strong enough to smash the frosted window. Jill stood outside the office, trembling, feeling that she now had cause to cry, and was annoyed because she was unable to cry. I'll speak what he writes, she thought. I have to, or he'll ruin me. And the money would no longer be a future. It would be just money to be spent and forgotten. It's just a silly white lie, she told herself. Just a white lie-not a black lie.
Jill walked down the corridor toward the UP stairwell, nodding to herself, thinking that Karl Marx was very intelligent for believing that the end justified the means. Then all lies became white. She pushed open the door, no longer worried that she would be heard as a white liar over the radio. Then she suddenly yelled in a shock of fright as hard hands grabbed her neck and waist and jammed her against the wall, and another hand clamped over her mouth. She struggled and kicked to be free, still unable to understand, her eyes bulging with terror at the sight of Bosco, wearing his Sputnik's jacket, his grin a grim split in his face. She shook her head and tried to bite the fingers gripped on her mouth, but couldn't open her jaw, and the small, pleading screams in her mouth became barbs of air.
"Nobody," Bosco said, poking a finger onto her breast, "nobody, but nobody gets away with trying to get the Sputnik's into a jam.
Her eyes hurt with straining to reach his eyes and make him believe she was innocent, to please leave her alone.
An arm squeezed across her breasts and Gilly hummed, "Hubba-hubba, has she got juicy knockers."
Jill pushed and shook and tried to kick, but Gilly swung his leg across her shins, holding her still. Someone will come and help me, she thought. Someone will. She stopped writhing to loosen the shoots of aches from struggling and prayed that she would faint so she didn't see and feel what they would do to her, though she knew they wouldn't rape her, not here.
Bosco scratched his nose and yawned with pretended boredom. "This is our sworn duty, see. We can't let no chick damage the good rep of out club. So, you gotta get taught a lesson." He bent over, and again she tried to kick him as he raised her skirt. The hand rammed on her mouth made her teeth feel like spikes stuck into her gums as she tried to beg that she didn't mean to come to school today, that to err is human.
He laughed, and his voice was a rusted wire piercing her ears. She closed her eyes and tried to faint and tried to yell, because the smell of Gilly was like soured onions. His forearm was rubbing her breasts and his front was wiggling on her buttocks, and she could feel him begin to bulge. She tried to push away, but his grip was iron and numbing, and only her mind darted frantically. She knew she was being punished for cheapening Trixie and hating her parents, and swore to God she would give them the money, all of it, only don't let them shame me more.
Bosco chuckled inanely and slid his palms along her bare thighs, and spurts of fright kept her fighting to lunge free. But breath couldn't pour into her nostrils quickly enough, and her chest felt slashing, her breasts hard knobs wanting to burst. She felt her panties being pulled down, and rage slammed her into a frantic squirming and bucking, trying to fling Gilly away so she could smash Bosco for the dirt he was, crush him like the roach he was.
But Gilly held on, cursing her with grunts and Bosco mocked titteringly, "Ooooh, what I seen," then grated his voice, "O.K., Gilly, it's comin' off. Watch her legs."
And the clamp around her shins loosened and she knew now she could kick Bosco, mangle his face, but held still, shocked with the instant recall that she always felt this way when her father drew out his false teeth and wiped the food blots from the pink trenches. She shook her head and tensed her legs, ready to kick, but the leg clamp again vised on her shins, and tears suddenly spilled from her eyes as Bosco stood up and dangled the panties near her face, and she could only think she was happy they were clean.
He poked his hand through one of the leg holes and wriggled his fingers, cooing, "Snowy white, a delight, gee. I figured a cee-tee like you for black'n lacy drawers." He rubbed the material along his cheek, then frowned and squinted with theatrical curiosity. "Someone told me you was born with green hair, only you dyed it. Is that so? Huh? O.K. I'll go peek."
Oh, God she cried in a dark pain, help me God, and hunched her shoulders and drove all her strength into her back, and again fought to be free. Bu Gilly laughed and began pumping against her, and his breath was coarse on her neck. She felt as though clamped to a slab and dirty solids were trying to shove into her body, and she squeezed her buttocks and thighs together, trying to draw in her rear and front so all they could see and feel was bathing-suit flesh. Then a flat hardness rubbed her and she recoiled and strained to loosen her arms to hit out, and tried to shriek that he must not hurt it, not damage it, not scar it. Dear God, don't let him cripple me! And fingers tried to poke into her, and she squeezed and tensed while looking to all parts of the stairwell for someone to come and help her, and jerked her head back and shook, banging Gilly's face, making him yelp and curse son of a bitch. The hand on her mouth clamped harder, and she couldn't gasp in pain, and her breath was like scalding steam bursting through her nostrils. But she didn't relax her thighs and Bosco couldn't force her open, though deep in her in another surge of beggings she begged Bosco, yes, to mutilate it, yes, go and tear it from me, it's my curse, my heartache, it never lets me be who I am, so smash it, freeze the heat of it, nail shut the want in it, so I'll be free of what it wants to make rue. Then pain, like a splatter of needles, stabbed through her as he pulled and pinched to make her loosen, but she suddenly wanted the pain and closed her eyes to hold in the pain, wished the pain now whipping her nerves and clawing at her sanity, would never leave.
Then she was suddenly shocked from the thrill of pain by the starring shriek of a bell, and Bosco leaped back, sneering, "You're lucky, bitch, real lucky," his face puffed and flushed, and the terrible clamps were pulled from her body, Although she wanted to scream, she could only feel gusts of arid breath splash into her mouth, drying the sound in her throat, and she stood in paralytic stiffness while Bosco and Gilly charged up the steps, Bosco stuffing her panties into his pocket. He stopped on the landing above her and shook his fist, threatening, "You report on us and well fix you like we fixed Wilma. You report on us and you'll get gang-banged, see!" and he raced from sight. Jill stood still, dully thinking that now she was in terrible trouble because no one, not even the police, knew who had gang-banged Wilma Wasserman into a hospital, and now she knew and the Sputniks might try to hurt her-hurt her bad-to keep her from telling.
She remained still, listening to the loudening currents of noise beginning to happen around her, the hurrying of steps and garble of voices filling the stairwell and corridor as students changed to other classes. Jill wished that she could move her body, walk, even shuffle from where she was to another place, a tranquil place with sweet aromas to lethargize her mind so all of her was in narcotic peace. Then she wished that she could get to the fourth floor where, in about a minute, Mike Steffne and some of his athletic pals and Trixie would be cluttered together, joking and jabbering and just having fun. Then Mike would wink to her and ask her for a date, and she would say, "Yes, Mike, absolutely yes!" because she wanted to be with Mike, to say I forgive you for doing it to Trixie and I love you, yes, I love you, Mike-not deep love, not dream love-just love-love. Because there's no other way to say I want to be with you.
Jill nodded and tried to move, to walk to the fourth floor, but could only stand and nod and wish she was being held by Mike. She needed to cry. To just stand and cry, and let the students see her and know she was not lucky, not rare, not even special. Just cursed with a blessing. She made herself turn around and winced with the ache in her bruised thighs. She leaned against the wall thinking of how, right now, Bosco was telling the Sputniks what he had done, dangling her panties as proof, then describing what he saw and grabbed, adding lies to the truth. And like drunken animals on a roller coaster, all the Sputniks were yowling and roaring laughter. She held her hands over her face, feeling naked and chilled under her skirt, and sobbed and softly cried.
The corridor door opened, and as though a gate-lock had been shattered from a dam, students spilled onto the landing and along the stairwell. The noise was like hundreds of flat and sharp discords careening around her, battering her senses. Some students jerked to a stop to stare at her huddled form, then shrugged and rushed up the stairs; others frowned and stopped, blocking the students behind them, causing a jam as animated bodies pushed forward. There was a jumble of questions and irate voices nagging, "Come on already, move!" and "Hey, what's with her?" and "Move-you wanna make me late?" and "Wha' hoppen, huh, wha' hoppen?" and "Her mother die or something?" and "Christamity, move already!" and "Get your dirty elbows off'a me!"
But Jill stood there, feeling limp, her eyes stinging with tears, knowing she must keep crying and not let her misery stay inside her or something terrible and crazy would happen in her.
Someone touched her elbow, asking, "What'sa matta, Jill?" She shook her head at Harry Glick. He shrugged and moved away, and a student with a brown-speckled bow tie cackled, "She didn't win nothing, the prize was a gag." The noise and motion slowly stopped as students looked to each other, then back to her, then to the boy who nodded knowingly and tweaked his bow tie with nonchalant arrogance.
"That's my personal, objective opinion, see."
They started calling to her, "Is what Oscar says true?"
"Did you win, or not?"
"Awh, Oscar's just eatin' his heart out. She won."
"What a dirty trick to pull."
"Sure she won, didn't you win? Sure."
"And a hand whacked the back of Oscar's head, knocking him against a tall boy who shoved him back, making him crouch and whine, "Can't I have opinions, can't I?"
She wished that someone would touch her, touch her gently and whisper, I know how you feel so let me cry with you, and when we're finished crying we'll be happy. God, it would be so wonderful to be happy. The stairwell became noisier as more students pushed into the area, and others picked up the question of her winning the contest or lying about it. She stood against the wall feeling her tears like warm milk soothing her, and the flurry of fright gradually became lessened, and she tried forcing more tears.
Someone yelled, "Awh, she's just cryin' for attention, that's what," and a girl giggled, "I heard Mike Steffne dumped her." They laughed while she kept straining for more tears to hold the soothing sensation, because soon she would want to hurt somebody, she knew-revenge herself on somebody for being caused all this stupid misery.
Someone on the lower landing yelled, "She won. Trixie seen the letter and she wouldn't give Trixie money, so she won," and the stairwell filled with a sputter and ramble of chorusing yesses and maybes. They began moving up like prodded cattle, discussing the money and what they would use it for if they had won-only a few students looking at her as they passed.
Jill no longer felt pitied or cared about or disliked, and she thought, I'll go home, now. The hell with a perfect attendance record. The spill of tears lessened, and she knew her crying was over and waited for the stairwell and corridor to empty and thought that she must stay in school. She must not be driven home.
Jill pressed her face against the wall, letting the coolness work into the flush on her skin. She could not report the two Sputniks to Mr. Elmacky. Being near the principal, right now, would make her vomit. And putting herself in a position that might demand the police was frightening. If she reported them later on, the other Sputniks would search the neighborhood for her and rape her as they had raped Wilma, or heat her up. Jill shrugged. She would forget the dirty incident had ever happened. All Bosco took was a quick feel and a fast look. They would not print her name on her panties and hoist the garment on the Assembly Hall flagpole as they did with other girls who started up with the Sputniks. Another time, they might. But not now. Now, she was no longer an ordinary student.
Jill moved her cheek from the wall and drew a handkerchief from her purse. She heard the sound of a throat being cleared and she swung around, ready to curse who was staring at her. Gert nodded to her. Jill shifted back, afraid Gert thought her condition was weak and was now going to hit her. Gert squinted her eyes, asking, "Are you all right?" Jill waited, poised to fight. Gert put her hands behind her back and looked to the floor. Her voice was hesitant.
"I heard you were here, crying-or something. So I came over."
"Would you like trying to put me on report for crying, for disturbing the peace? Is that why you came over?"
"No. I wanted to tell you I didn't send in the report on you."
"You didn't?"
"I didn't. I was being goony, not you. I don't know what got into me. But when you whammed me, I deserved it."
"You mean you're going to forget it? As though it never happened?"
"Uh-huh. Just forget it. That's what I came to tell you."
"Why? Why not send it in? There must be a bigger reason. More than just finding out you were in the wrong."
"Look, Jill, I don't want to make a Federal case of it I said I was forgetting it. Being wrong is big enough a reason for me."
Jill snickered nastily, "I suppose you want to be my best friend." Gert frowned at her and Jill leaned forward, taunting, "Buddy-buddy and pals forever, is that what you want?" Her voice became a scowl flung at Gert. "Then maybe you would like me to lend you some money. A thousand dollars. Maybe two?"
Gert shifted back and shook her head. "I don't want your money."
Jill moved closer to her, grinning tightly, "Not a thousand? Really? Seven hundred then? Come on, best friend, ask me for seven hundred."
Gert moved until her back touched the door. She shook her head and smiled falteringly, "I just came to apologize, not to borrow."
Jill winked as though they shared a secret, whispering with pretended affection, "Don't be shy, dear friend, what are best friends for? Four hundred dollars perhaps?" Gert pushed the door open and Jill suddenly shouted, "Money, money, that's all you greedy bitches want is money!" The loudness of her voice startled Gert and she jammed against the door. "Is that all I am, money? Not a person-just a dirty dollar sign?" Jill's fists were clenched and her throat harsh.
Realizing she wasn't going to be attacked, Gert shook her head, sadly, "All I came for was to apologize. I don't want your money, or your goony friendship. You're too nutsy for me." Jill looked down, suddenly understanding she had been wrong and slightly hysterical. Gert stepped into the corridor and held the door open. "You'd better save your money, Jill. Maybe you can use it to pay your way out of a crazy house." She slammed the door and Jill stood staring at the floor, wanting to cry again, wanting to call Gert back and beg to be forgiven. "What's happening to me?" she asked herself, and wanted to rush after Gert and plead to understand that Life was suddenly smacking her from all sides, and changing her, filling her with abscesses of suspicion.
She closed her eyes and waited for the sense of being alone and chilly to pass. It doesn't matter, she thought. Today will go away and then tomorrow, and then the day when she would white-lie on television. She would be graduated and ready for college and have her money, and quietly, without the clamor of boasting or the radiance of pride, without the smugness of money-safety or the showoffy enthusiasms of false dedication, she would silently and surely become a doctor. Yes, yes, she nodded. Oh yes. She kept her eyes closed, whispering prayerfully, "If only this one goddam day would go away fast!"
9
After five minutes of staring at Jill, passing notes advising her how to spend and invest the money, coaxing her to quit school and live it up, whispering, the Study Room students became bored by her silence, her indifference, and began idling the period away. Some opened textbooks and studied. The Study Room teacher busied herself correcting English composition papers. Seated beside Augusta, Jill slowly relaxed. She was pleased that the oddity of her situation was wearing off-even pleased with the annoyed feeling she had about Augusta's finger drumming. It was a luxury to be annoyed over trifles. Augusta kept glancing at her, impatient to have her letter written. But she ignored Augusta, thinking that when this period was over, she would go home for lunch, nod to Marty while rushing into her room to put on a pair of panties, then hurry back into the kitchen to get Marty stare at her. As he always did, he would exclaim, "Gazooks, but you've become a woman!" Then he'd hug and kiss her, and they would go into her bedroom and talk. I want to talk with him, so much.
She sighed, then irritatedly wrinkled her mouth when Augusta furtively tugged at her hand, whispering, "You promised, Jill. Before I knew you had the money-so please."
Jill sighed again, then riffled through her looseleaf binder until she found a blank page. She glanced about the large room while trying to think of the longest, most ridiculously impressive words she knew.
There were no blackboards as in the other classrooms. Only yard-square posters tacked onto the brown wood paneling, exhibiting ideal examples of penmanship and English compositions executed by students from all grades. Mrs. Fogelson, the teacher, a lanky woman who wore her gray hair in a tight bun against the neck, was leaned over her desk, tapping a fountain pen cap on her chin while she graded compositions. Near the door was a squat green box with the word SUGGESTIONS painted in yellow block letters. Jill grinned, recalling the afternoon the entire fourth floor was startled by a terrible scream. When the corridor was cleared to let Mrs. Fogelson be helped to a rest room, she babbled, "The box, the box, the box," and another teacher looked into the Suggestion Box and screamed at the sight of a life-like imitation of an amputated hand splattered with ketchupy blood. Jill grinned, though she thought that type of humor was disgusting.
Augusta placed a quickly written note on the flat of her desk chair, and Jill, frowned until she could read the hurried scrawl.
"The letter Alfred wrote me is private. He wrote me about books and thinking and that dreamy stuff. You make up the answer. I will correct you when you go off."
Jill shrugged and crumbled the note, thinking that while writing the silly letter, she could forget her own troubles. She leaned over the blank page and wrote:
My entrancing Albert:
Your letter was truly splendid. Your phantasmagoric interpretation of our panoramic culture was most enlightening. Your symbology provoked me to regard your conceptual lucidity and articulation when concretizing the abstract, as ovemhelmingly erudite. I stand in profound indebtedness for having been a participant in your incomparable evaluations of the philo-genetic and ontogenetic appraisals of our civilization.
However, I did receive a minuscule palpitation of per-turbance by your somewhat passe and chauvinistic interpolations of the quixotic machinations existent in the female species, and would, heretofore, suggest that when promulgating on esoteric cogitation, beware of platitudinous ponderosities.
She slid the paper to Augusta who licked her lips and began reading, her eyes slowly widening with awe and delight at the multisyllabic words. Jill smiled, thinking that Augusta was a happy dope-then quickly squeezed her legs together when a student two seats before her tipped a small pad onto the floor.
"Sneak," she whispered, knowing Luther had deliberately pushed the pad so he could lower himself and peep under the skirts of the girls careless enough to sit with their legs relaxed apart. He bent over to search for the pad and she shifted in her seat. She watched Augusta squirm and roll her eyes in silent ecstasy, and Jill wondered if she should tell this Alfred Twillers about Augusta's crazy Fallopian tubes. Then she wondered what this Alfred Twillers was really like and what he really wanted from Augusta. Jill shrugged. He wants what they all want. Sex.
Augusta handed her back the paper, whispering, "Don't stop, please don't stop. I'll die if you do!" Jill smiled without feeling the smile. She rubbed her fingers and began writing.
"During a pending war, where silent armies intend to clash by night, a cacophonous and catastrophic clime predominates. Man's inhumanity to man becomes appaling"though Jill wanted to write, are you lonely, are you sad, Alfred? She wanted to ask if howling winds were in his soul and if his heart was a naked, frightened sparrow. Have you ever been in love?
"When hordes of marauding barbarians threaten to spread their havoc and destruction, there is a universal catharsis of misery." When he was small, she wondered, did his father ever sit on the floor with him and make up a funny game with pots and pans, giving the different utensils dopey names, calling a soup pot gooble-doop and a frying pan fizzle-sizzle and a spatula happy-Happy? Did he lie in bed at night and listen to his mother and father talk lovely words with moody and caressing sounds?
"One must question the traditional mores imbued in us at birth in such a disastrous time." Jill knew she would love someone, some day. One day. Love would happen to her like a flash of platinum light. Or she might have a pal-friend, an easy-going boy friend who watched his hands and kissed her buddy kisses after roller skating or the movies, and four years, five years later, she would sense in him a depth she had never sensed before. And he would see in her a specialness he had never seen before. And he, or she, would, say, "You know, all kidding aside-I love you." And she would love and be loved.
"I'm sorry we have no memories to share," she wrote, wishing there was an older boy with whom she had a length of happiness to remember. "Then we would recall those memories and our letters would not remind us but bring us closer together.
She felt strange now, and hurting with words she wanted to write, but which were piled in her like unhewn blocks, unable to know the words she felt. What is it really like to be a girl past sixteen years old and not yet seventeen? she wondered. Is she only a girl, or a young woman, or a what? To be between sixteen and seventeen years old is a baffling phenomenon, she thought. Yes. A baffling phenomenon. Impossible to be understood-impossible to understand yourself. Yes. And her situation was worse. Yes. The suddenness of money-though it might have been the suddenness of anything unusual-causes all feelings and events that might happen at an average, casual pace, to happen with a wild velocity that shocks and startles and stuns. Yes. She laid the pencil beside the paper and sat back, closing her eyes and letting herself feel remote and without marrow, as though all of her could just ooze to the floor in a syrupy puddle.
Augusta reached across the narrow aisle and slid the paper from the arm flat and began reading. Slowly, her wide mouth stretched across her small teeth in a clownish smile. "Swell, just swell," she muttered, tracing her finger under each word.
Jill rubbed her eyes, thinking, why am I always so damn serious? She wondered why she couldn't use five hundred dollars of the prize money to buy a new wardrobe and spend the rest going to swank eating places and the theater where it was positively possible to meet a someone. Jill lowered her hand and shrugged. In a year she would have outgrown the dresses and even if she met Prince Charming in a diamond-studded Cadillac, she was only almost seventeen, a juvenile, and if a mature and wonderful man seriously loved an almost seventeen-year-old girl, he wasn't so wonderful, and hardly mature.
She felt Augusta poke her arm and turned to see the girl frowning and pointing to the last sentence. She shook her head and whispered, "That comes out, Jill. I can write small stuff like that myself."
Jill smiled sadly, whispering back, "That bit of sentiment was a slip."
Augusta nodded, emphatically. "You have to watch that stuff," and looked at the teacher while she sneaked Jill the paper. Jill sighed and began writing. "How quaint and enchanting the English mores must appear to a personage of your superlative sophistication." She stopped writing, annoyed now, certain this Alfred Twillers was as idiotic as Augusta, but with animal cunning. He was probably corresponding with forty-eight girls, so when he was given leave, no matter what state he arrived in, he would have some Hitter-headed female all a-twitter to meet him, then sleep with him. She nodded. That's all they were. Really. Toads and snails and dirty worms' tails.
She heard a book clap against the floor and instinctively squeezed her thighs together and shifted to the side. She saw Luther bend over again, his kinky black hair brilliantined to a glisten. She tensed her back, suddenly wanting to turn and fling her legs open and expose herself and shout, "There, that's exactly what we're all like. There! Does that one filthy look change you? Are you relieved?" She heard Augusta giggle, and looked to see her flapping the hem of her checkered skirt while Luther, his face flushed from leaning so far over, bugged his eyes and stared.
Jill hissed, "Gussy!"
Augusta kept flapping her skirt, whispering, "I have on a panty-girdle, panties, and I'm unwell, so what can he see?"
They heard a sharp tapping sound and Mrs. Fogelson, her bony kneecaps gripped together, barked, "Luther, that will be enough of that!"
He bolted upright and quickly flipped the pages of a textbook while other students chuckled and laughed. Jill stared at the spade-shaped hairline on the back of his neck and suddenly pitied Luther. It was a special sickness, she was sure. She glanced down at the paper, thinking it was sad to be sick about that. Your heart could be a mess of boils and warts and still you could be human. But when you were sick about that-oh God!
She picked up the pencil to keep from thinking and wrote, "To one of your inimitable perspicacity, the degradations, debasements and deprivations of war would be a horrendous imposition." Jill yawned and rubbed her eyes. She would write four more mad sentences and finish the letter, and then stop to think about herself. She hadn't thought about herself all day. Not really. Only about her misery. Then, when the Study Hour was over she would see Marty. She yawned again and wrote, "The youth of America must remain stalwart against the maniacal multitudes of Russians and hold steadfast to their incomparable ideals."
Augusta tapped her arm, whispering anxiously, "Lemme see, lemme see." Jill handed Augusta the paper and idly glanced down at her hands. Are you doctor's hands? Jill asked the long, slender fingers. Or washerwoman's hands? File clerk's hands? Or the hands of anyone at all? She curled her fingers and squeezed them against her palms, the nails digging into her skin. God, I hope I'm not ordinary. I'd rather be a whack than be ordinary. She heard Augusta simper and coo as though having just finished drinking a vat of Oriental nectar. I'd rather be like Augusta than be ordinary.
10
JILL guided herself toward the Assembly Hall like a tightrope walker balanced on a wavery strand of wire-guarding against stumbling or being shoved into a fall by any of the students rocketing past her. Her skirt might suddenly flare up and expose her nakedness.
A girl straining on a clump of chewing gum garbled, arm, asking, "Aren't you just dilly with excitement, Jill? What'll you do with all that loot?" Then she hurried along the corridor without waiting for an answer. Jill shrugged and thought about how she would maneuver to the rear of the auditorium where Trixie would be seated with Mike Steffne. She would signal Trixie that she wanted a private conversation, and when they could speak without being overheard she would tell Trixie, "I forgive you for calling me dirty names-and you can have Mike Steffne!" And they would be friends again. Yes. She still wanted Trixie for her friend. And Trixie would agree. Yes. For all her noise and blabber, her phony independence and sexual looseness, Trixie must also be very lonely.
A student bunked against her and Jill grabbed her skirt. The boy said, " 'Scuse me," then winked wisely. "For a ten per cent commish, I'll give you the winner in tomorrow's daily double. O.K.? "
Jill shook her head, "No thank you, Arty." She thought that without panties she felt a freedom of motion she never felt before, and a sense of danger-like a girl who said she despised sex but went without panties, hoping to be raped.
Other students, as though just recognizing her, pelted her with quick questions. "Were you born with a golden horse shoe up your nose."
"How come a dame like you, with everything, gets still some more?" And a boy with a puckery mouth said, "If you marry me, I'll live on the interest, not the principle. How's about it?" Jill concentrated on feeling the soft warm flesh of her inner thighs touching as she walked with military erectness. She felt indecent, but excited.
A girl straining on a clump of chewing gum garbled, "Will you leave me something in your will, will you?"
Jill remember the spring morning when she was eight years old and her brother called her a scaredy stay-at-home who was going to grow up plain and cross-eyed from reading books. She deliberately left the house and walked to the corner absolutely naked, and the cool air was a pleasing caress. The startled, shocked looks of the neighborhood people made her laugh, and she wiggled and shimmied and cavorted like a tightly wound dancing doll, screeching, "Wheeee, whoooo!" and patting herself until someone told her mother, who grabbed her and covered her with a smelly tablecloth. And even the smacks and pinches and curses couldn't change the sense of glory she felt.
A girl with silver letters painted on the lacquer-black surfaces of her fingernails touched Jill's shoulder and snickered aloofly, "So all right, so you're rich." Then the girl snapped her fingers contemptuously. "But when the term is over, Clarance and me are eloping, so there!" Jill stared at Lucy's short hooked nose and shrugged. Lucy snickered again, "Clarance says money is only purchasing power, but it can't buy love. Clarance is a Socialist, so he knows." She popped shouted, "You, you there, you lower that or I'll have you expelled!"
Mike pushed against Jill, forcing her back. "Come on, Jill, I'll take you outside for a soda."
Two teachers left their posts and rushed toward the stage. Sensing what was happening, she wanted to run from the auditorium, but stepped to the right of Mike and began shivering with shame to see her panties dangling from the flagpole jutting out from the stage wall. Attached to the flimsy garment was a long cardboard streamer with JILL FULMER printed in bold black letters. She turned around and covered her eyes, listening to the laughter, hating God for His cruelty, her body trembling with fury, feeling as though a toilet door had been ripped open and the world was watching her squat.
Mike put his arm across her shoulders, whispering, "Come on, kid, let's get outta here."
Trixie suddenly yelled, "You're with me, not her!"
Mike crooked his mouth at her, "I'm with who I goddam want to be with," and hugged Jill against him as Trixie tried pulling his arm away, demanding, "I mean something to you, she don't. I give you-you know what. She don't." Specks of food sprayed from Trixie's lips.
He hit her hand away. "Get lost, will you? You're startin' to drag me." Her anger drained to baffled surprise and she stared dumbly, her face slack.
Someone shouted, "Who put Jill's drawers in Mrs. Murphy's chowder?" And the laughter was like a sudden clatter of tin in her mind. Bosco crossed his arms on his chest and ambled over to Mike and Jill, his eyebrows slanted in disdainful superiority.
"Next time you'll know better on who to start up with, cooze."
She kept her hands on her eyes, muttering, "Mike, oh Mike," and her body hurt as though gripped in an arthritic vise.
Mike glared at Bosco, "How's about you getting lost, creep."
Bosco lowered his arms and clenched his hand. "You wanna get blasted off all-star? You ain't on no basketball court now."
Mike leaned to her, asking, "Did he do it to you?" She wanted to shake her head and say no, because Mike didn't care about her shame; he had found a time and a way to be heroic, and she didn't want him to fight for her. That would connect her deep to him and commit her to him, and later on, the Sputniks might hurt him. She didn't want his ruined life hanging in her heart, but the memory of Bosco's face while he held her panties was luminescent in her mind-the shine of spittle on his mouth and the mottled flush of blood in his face as he stared at her down there. She again could feel the bruise of his hand rubbing her, his blunt fingers poking and prodding, and her hatred was a stinging wound. She nodded, "Yes, Mike, he did it."
She felt his arm leave her shoulders and heard the splatter and crunch of bone against flesh. She gagged on breath and there was sudden silence. She looked to see Bosco sprawled across three seats, blood gushing from his mouth, his legs splayed and jerking as he tried to get up, flopping back, his head hanging over a seat arm.
Four Sputniks rushed forward and Mike set himself as teachers blew their whistles. She and Trixie were shoved aside by husky boys in athlete's sweaters who crowded around Mike, soda bottles and books gripped in their hands. The Sputniks slowed their charge, then stopped, sneers stiff on their faces, their bodies shifting into menacing poses.
Trixie reached for Mike's arm and Jill slapped her hand away. "Don't hold him now, you moron!" her voice and body tense with nervous excitement.
Mike bent over and grabbed Bosco's shirt, yanking him upright, joggling his head. He whacked him flat-handedly across the face and Bosco's eyes slowly focused and he sucked in some blood.
"Tell Jill you're sorry. Apologize!"
Bosco shook his head and shouted, "Mickey, Pete, come on!" Mike's friends shifted forward. The Sputniks remained still, looking down ashamedly. Students tittered and laughed and flipped wads of paper at the Sputniks. The teachers turned their backs and opened books.
Mike pulled back his arm. Bosco cowered, nodding quickly, "O.K., O.K!, I apologize. O.K.! "
Mike shoved him, hard, again sprawling him across the seats. Jill was suddenly afraid and held Mike's waist as if to protect him. She wished she loved him. Part of her life would be settled. Bosco stood up and wiped his sleeve across his bloody mouth. He back-stepped to a safe distance and pointed his pinkie at Mike.
"Don't count on graduating in one piece."
Mike glanced to his friends, then grinned at Jill and heaved out his chest, proudly. "Any time you like, Bosco," and he kept grinning while Bosco worked his way to his friends who edged back, their mouths nibbling in silent explanations. Bosco swung out and smacked the first boy's face, knocking him against Mickey, then kicked Pete's thigh, making him yowl with pain and limp-scramble away while Bosco cursed, "Yellow sonsovbitches! Chicken yellow bastards!"
A teacher blew his whistle and Bosco swung around, shaking his fist and shouting, "Shove that whistle!" The teacher paled and licked his lips, then shrugged and counted his fingers. The students laughed as Bosco strode through the auditorium exit, cursing, "Come 'ere you yellow sonsovbitches!"
Mike put his arm across Jill's shoulders, winking, "Let's go for a walk."
Trixie clutched his arm, pleading, "You're with me, Mike, you know you are."
Jill wanted to cringe with pity at the meowy whine in her voice. Mike pulled his arm from her hand.
"Why don't you go to the Bronx Zoo and get fed some peanuts?" Jill walked down the aisle, watching a teacher lower the panties along the flagpole rope. She hurried through the exit door, knowing Mike was following her. In the corridor he grabbed her shoulder, holding her still.
"What's with you, Jill? After what I just did for you? You can't hold Trixie against me now, not now."
"My brother Marty is coming home on leave. I don't want to miss him. But if you still want that date for tonight, you can have it."
"Now you're talking. You want drive to the Concourse for some bowling? I can get my brother's car."
"I'll leave the date up to you."
He moved closer to her, skimming a finger along her arm, tickle-chilling her, whispering, "Why don't we just drive? I found a spot to park that's real private. Exclusive, you might say."
Jill stared at his muscular neck, noticing the pink shaving rash that Marty used to get when he first started to shave, and she wondered how, after so much sex activity with Trixie, he could keep so strong and coordinated. After two hours with him, letting him touch her a little while fighting him off, she was as limp as a wet hose. He caressed her arm and she shrugged.
"Whatever you decide, Mike," she said, thinking that tonight she would probably let him do it to her, all the way.
He grinned. "Eight o'clock, O.K.? "
Jill nodded again and turned away without looking at him, not wanting to see the prideful set of his face, the conceit in his eyes-feeling tinges of fear because she knew that only a little coaxing and feeling would push aside her will and he would get her.
She walked toward the street door and he called after her, "Eight o'clock, Jill-and be on time!" She hated the lilts of exhilaration in his voice, the giddy tones of someone who knew that in a little while he would win a valuable prize.
"Dogs," she muttered. "They're all dogs," and thought of Mike as a snarling animal pushing his snout under her skirt, his breath like gasps of pot steam against her flesh. She wished she could hate Bosco more because it was Bosco's rottenness that had connected her so deep to Mike. "Dogs," she repeated viciously. "Just dogs!"
11
JILL left the school building and the bright daylight made her blink. Four students loitering on the steps looked at her, then nudged each other and chiggered nastily. She kept her face bland, her body stiff as she walked down the steps, though she suddenly wanted to turn and snicker, "Tonight, someone is going to do it to me, all the way. What will you be doing?" Then she wanted to snicker harder, as if her contempt had changed them into roaches. "You'll be soul-kissing yourselves into convulsions because you're afraid to go all the way." She reached the bottom steps and a quick gust of wind felt scratchy against her skin.
A girl with hairy legs yipped, "Oooh, Jill, what I see!" startling her to clap her hand on her buttocks to hold down her skirt. They yelled their laughter. Jill grit her teeth, cursing her own stupidity.
A tall boy with a cigarette jutting from the center of his mouth, recited:
"I wish I was a little fly, Buzzing under a grate.
So when Jill walked over me, Wouldn't that be great?" While they laughed, Jill wished she knew an arsonist she could pay five hundred dollars to burn down the school. But only if he guaranteed that all the students would be locked inside.
She hurried toward the corner, telling herself she would not return to school for the afternoon session. By next Monday, when the long weekend was over, the filthy incident about her panties would be forgotten. "Next Monday," she muttered. The event of next Monday seemed as far away from her life as was the top of an endlessly high mountain set on the end of a road seven eternities long.
Behind her someone yelled, "Hey, Jill, you wanna borrow my mother's bloomers?" She crossed the gutter and made herself think about Mike Steffne.
Jill would let him do it to her tonight. Yes. But she would be a dishrag. The second she caught herself enjoying it, she would stop him. She would do it to erase a debt. Not for thrills. Not for love. She nodded.
"Hey, Jill," a hoarse-voiced boy shouted, "you'll get arrested for exposure." She wanted to stop and curse the student as a pest who deserved a fatal disease, but turned the corner and walked toward her house, blurring her vision to keep from seeing any of the people who might be staring at her.
The squawk of a truck horn made her shudder. Gusts of wind blew at her hair. A few yards from the grocery store three small girls were playing skip-rope. The child who was jumping had her tongue clenched between her lips while the rope turners chanted:
"You jump up, You jump down, Dopey Alice Is a clown."
The top worked her tongue to the corner of her mouth and kept jumping, staring at the flicking rope as if afraid it might burn her. In her mind, Jill recited: "You can't skip rope Dilly-dilly, dope-dope, Break your legs Just like eggs, And fall down." Then she grinned, remembering the days when she was five and six years old and skipped rope, and her only fury was to be better than Trixie who was a champion rope skipper.
The screech of the children's voices followed her into the building. She hurried up the stairs, suddenly excited and anxious to see her brother. All her expressionless feelings would find words when she talked with Marty, and he would advise her how to pay Mike back for beating up Bosco. Marty would tell her another way. Not with sex. There was a drop of God in Marty. Yes. He would change the misery of this long day and give sense to her winning the prize money. She wrinkled her nose at the cooking odors that lay in the hallway air like the gluey fumes of hair tonic.
She opened the door, grinning to greet Marty, and her mother screamed, "Jilly, you dumb moron!" She flinched at the anger gnarled on her mother's face. The woman shook her fist. "Why did you assault Mr. Fitzmein?" she shrieked. "Were you crazy? Lunatic crazy?" Puzzled, and wanting to laugh at her mother's wild antics, Jill steadied herself by wondering why Marty wasn't home.
"Where's Marty?" she asked.
Her mother grabbed her arm, shaking her. "You're in trouble, you crazy you. Wake up!"
Her father stepped from the bedroom scratching his stomach and waggling the bit of his meerschaum pipe. "Fitzmein is taking legal action against you." Jill frowned at them, thinking that her refusal to give them her money had unbalanced their minds. She made herself smile.
"Isn't Marty coming home on leave?"
"Where's Marty? Where's Marty? Is that all you can say? Don't you care how much Mr. Fitzmein is suing you for? Twenty thousand dollars, so we can settle out of court for ten thousand, so there goes your money. Our money."
"Don't you worry none, daughter, we'll fight him-all the way to kingdom come, if we have to. I just sure as heaven hope we don't have to."
"Will you both please, in God's name, tell me what you're jabbering about?"
Her mother whacked herself on the forehead and moaned as though fighting off a heart attack. "I gave birth to a moron-a true-blue moron!" Jill looked to her father who began cracking his knuckles.
"Mr. Fitzmein is suing you for twenty thousand dollars, for assault and battery, mental aggravation, and slandering his good reputation. He telephoned fifteen minutes after you left."
"But all I did was give him a little kick. I hurt my toe more than I hurt him."
"Be that as it may, daughter, he smells money, and money's to him like blood to a shark."
Jill shook her head. The sense in the world was beyond her. Being very, very intelligent meant you were just clever enough to be confused.
Her mother flapped her hands together, pleading, "What possessed you to do it? Do you think you're in Africa where you can go around kicking people?" Jill wanted to laugh, thinking that all she needed now was to stand by an opened window and have someone push her out. It was the only new thing that could happen to her. She felt a sudden pain in her ear and pulled her head back, realizing her mother had pinched her. "What will happen to us now?" the woman demanded. "After all the plans your lousy father and I made-what will happen to us?" Jill rubbed her ear and grinned.
"For a minute I thought you were worried about me, not the money."
"That's some funny joke. Go ask your lousy father who Fitzmein's brother-in-law is. Then see if you laugh."
"He's the crookedest lawyer in the Bronx. If he drew an honest breath he'd get asphyxiated. And he never loses his cases."
"Tell me, Poppa, why aren't you out of your mind with worry the way Momma is? If Fitzmein's brother-in-law wins against me, won't your career as a Wall Street tycoon be over?"
"You just watch your sarcasm, daughter. I'll come up with something, rest assured. Fitzmein's a minnow, a mere minnow."
Her mother laughed and patted her own cheeks while her voice cackled like the noise from a clown laugh-box. "Just listen to the legal-beagle. If you put a green pea in his head he would have more vegetable than brains. Listen to him." Her father poked the amber pipe stem into his mouth and began nibbling the bit. Jill knew he was working himself into a rage. Her mother puffed out her cheeks and blew breath at him. "You tell your father that next to him a Mongoloid monkey is a genius." He clamped his teeth onto the hard pipe bit and smiled like a man pretending he didn't mind losing an arm. He relaxed his jaw to talk.
"You tell your hysterical mother I can handle a minnow like Fitzmein. I just need some time. It's his brother-in-law who devils me. A man of my high morality is adrift in troubled waters when up against a crook."
"If he can handle Fitzmein so terrific, ask your lying father why he didn't puch Fitzmein for accusing me of shoplifting a bag of Cashew nuts fifteen years ago."
"Because-you can tell your mother-she did shoplift the peanuts."
They stood glaring at each other, their faces tense, their hands fisted on their hips. Did you ever really love each other? Jill wanted to ask them-then wondered if Mike Steffne would become like her father and she like her mother if she ever married Mike.
Her mother suddenly slapped her hand onto the table and shrieked at him, "You tell your goddam father I did not steal those peanuts. They fell into my pocket unbeknowingst to me."
He drew the pipe from his mouth and chuckled, "The peanut bag raised itself up, opened the counter door and floated into her pocket. Now that makes sense."
Jill shook her head and sighed, "Excuse me," and walked into her room. She closed the door and quickly put on a pair of panties. She wiggled her hips and stroked her buttocks and immediately felt calmer. She pulled open the bottom of the back-yard window and lit a cigarette. She stared down at the grimy gray fences, listening to the garble of her parents' voices as she smoked.
She told herself she would be like Scarlett O'Hara and think about Fitzmein and her other troubles tomorrow. She inhaled deeply and the smoke burned in her throat. "Maybe it's for the best," she whispered. If Fitzmein got the prize money from her she would be changed back to the old Jill Fulmer. She exhaled smoke through her nostrils and shrugged. Winning the money had changed her and losing the money to Fitzmein would not change her back. She would not gain Trixie's friendship-though in her heart she no longer wanted Trixie's friendship. Jill still would have to pay her debt to Mike Steffne. She still would have to appear on the television program and tell a rotten lie or lose her chances for a scholarship, and without the money she would have to depend on a scholarship to college. She crushed the cigarette tip on the stone window sill and dropped it into the yard. She fanned away the remaining smoke and went to her bed. She lay down and closed her eyes, wanting to cry. Just to cry. The door suddenly slapped open, startling her.
Her mother shouted, "Don't you want to eat lunch, you moron?" Jill shook her head. "I'm too tired to eat."
"You can go back to school on your empty head but not on an empty stomach."
"I'm not going back this afternoon. I'm tired, I'm miserable, I'm blue, and I don't want to go back."
"You want to stay in here and count the money you aren't getting, huh?"
"Momma, will you please, just please, leave me alone. Please."
"After what you did I should leave you alone? You should be beaten with a bat."
"Yes, Momma."
"Only an imbecile spoils a miracle, and that's what you did."
"Yes, Momma."
"We had a good chance to make a good life for ourselves and look at what you did to it."
"Yes, Momma."
"I have a good mind to-"
"Yes, Momma. Yes, Momma. Yes, Momma, will you also please go the hell to hell, Momma!"
The woman screamed, "You ungrateful bitch!" and slammed the door. Jill turned onto her side and prayed that sleep, like a leaden blanket, would drop over her and when she awoke it would be four years ago when the biggest terror was the shock of menstruation.
12
She didn't want to wake up, but the hand shaking her shoulder was stronger than the catch of sleep in her mind. She snuggled harder against the mattress, wanting to hold onto the dream in which she was crouched under a glass sidewalk watching neighborhood people walking over her while she frantically jabbed a steel fountain-pen point at the thick glass, trying to shatter it so she could get out. But the hand kept shaking her, the hard fingers digging into her shoulder, and she reluctantly let the dream leave her like a spill of warm milk. She opened her eyes and blinked to see Marty leaning over her, grinning. She bolted up and hugged him, whispering, "Marty, oh Marty."
He laughed softly, "Hello, hon. Boy, have things been happening to you." She could not hold back the tears suddenly filling her eyes and she hugged him harder while he kissed her forehead and mussed her hair. He chuckled, "I hear all the fortune hunters in the neighborhood are after you." She squeezed her arms on his sides and her happiness was a rush of dips and rolls and sways that made her giggle. She put her hand on her mouth to keep her lipstick from staining his uniform and wiped her eyes on his sleeve. He relaxed his grip on her shoulders and moved her back, and they looked at each other.
"You know, hon, you're getting quite beautiful."
"I'll never be as beautiful as you are to me, right now. God, Marty, am I happy to see you. I've been so miserable, I mean it."
"You must be happy about the prize money, aren't you?"
"But did Momma and Poppa tell you about Fitzmein and what he's trying to do to me?"
"If Fitzmein is your only worry, then stop worrying. I told the folks I would handle him. They were so happy they left the house. Going their separate ways, of course."
"Did they tell you about themselves? How they want to take the money away from me?"
"I'll make sure they don't touch the money. Boy, hon, have you grown into a worrier."
She glanced down and stared at the floor. She hated remembering the specifics of her troubles. It pushed fact between her and Marty. It stopped her expressionless feeling from forming words. He put his hand on her hand, whispering, "Think about the hydrogen bomb and your problems will shrink." She drew her hand away.
"Am I being selfish, Marty? Be truthful. They are my parents, and I do love them, and they should get something from me, and it's only money. Except I can't see Poppa throwing it away on a harebrained, disgusting scheme, and when it's all gone where am-"
He cupped his palm on her cheek, shushing her. "You're all wound up, Jill. Slow down a bit." His palm felt callused on her face and she realized it was no longer a school teacher's hand, soft and smooth and always clean. She looked up at him, noticing a leanness in his wide face. His lips had become thinner, and from the faint, grim lines around his mouth she sensed a toughness in him, a solidity of manhood she had not sensed in him when he was a school teacher. Gently, she eased back to stare at him.
"You've changed, Marty. You're the same, but more."
"I suppose so. I'm three weeks away from graduating from Officers' Candidate School, if all goes well. So, in three weeks I'll not only be an officer, but a gentleman. That, darling sister, is a change."
"I don't mean status, Marty. I mean in other ways. A woman can sense such things."
"So you're a woman now, are you? All right, woman, who shall we take on first-our adorable parents or Fitzmein?"
"Can you really do something about him?"
"Absolutely. In military circles there is an animal known as tactical maneuvers. As a near-graduate of O.C.S. I know every maneuver in the manual. Evaluate the enemy's strength, and estimate his weakness as well. Being rather well informed on the historical background of Fitzmein, and remarkably erudite on the complexities and motivations of human nature, I have come up with a maneuver guaranteed to cause Fitzmein irrevocable disaster."
"Can you really, Marty? I mean, really?"
"Yes. However, much of my military strategy depends upon my troop. That's you, hon. You're my troop. You'll have to act a part, and act it convincingly. No matter how whacky or melodramatic it seems, or how ridiculous it makes you look, you can't laugh or back out. Promise?"
"Of course I promise, silly. But what am I letting myself in for?"
"Never you mind, troop. like it or not, approve or disapprove, doubtful or afraid, you're obliged to follow my orders-obey my command. Right?"
"Right, sir. Indubitably!"
"Capital. Now, you go into the John and do your womanly things and freshen up, and I'll issue you your orders on the way to Fitzmein's-our objective."
She laughed suddenly and hugged him. "Marty, it's so wonderful to have you home." He rubbed his cheek on her hair and softly shushed her, and she again felt a giddy happiness.
He squeezed her arm, whispering, "Let's get this done while the folks are still out." She sighed and they shifted apart. He stood up and creased his face into an expression of horror. "I'll be in the kitchen finishing what our mother mistakenly calls coffee." She nodded and watched him walk to the door, thinking he stands taller and straighter. His soldier's uniform looked amber in the daylighted room and fit him smoothly. He turned to her and winked. "Tonight, you and I are going out to dinner." Marty sneered his mouth in mock toughness. "In a high-class joint, see." She grinned and stood up. He closed the door, and she stretched lazilythen tensed, suddenly remembering her date with Mike Steffne. Remembering her debt to him.
Jill shrugged. She could pay the debt tomorrow night. Marty would be home for only three days. Mike would always be around waiting to get her. She stared at the door as if still seeing Marty.
Why do I believe in him, she wondered-then wondered why she doubted that she should believe so completely in her brother. But he hadn't always been her friend, she thought. Not always. And he had not always been wise or her personal guardian. So many times in their life he had been weak and afraid. Timid. Unable to decide. Willingly making unpleasant concessions to avoid an argument with her parents. She could recall times when she needed him and he had walked away as though she did not exist. Why do I believe in him? she asked herself. She opened the door to the living room and walked along the narrow vestibule to the bathroom, trying to recall the times her brother had disappointed her. She shrugged. It doesn't matter now. Marty was home. Marty would set everything right.
13
A. FEW yards from Fitzmein's candy store, Marty touched her hand. "All we have to do is make his strategy seem ridiculous, and we've got him." She smiled falteringly. She wondered if what Marty intended was ethical. This could ruin Fitzmein.
A man with a large stomach pushed against his tan coat sweater left the candy store. He belched loudly and began unwrapping a cigar as he waddled up the street.
A car horn suddenly blasted, and they turned to see a driver lean out the window and bawl, "Cross on the green, not in-between, ya putz!"
A stocky pedestrian with rimless eyeglasses yelled back, "Where'd you get your license-at the Salvation Army?"
Marty grinned. "Now I know I'm home."
Jill thought, I wish I was clever enough to do this another way. They stopped by the candy store, and Marty turned to her.
"Remember now, it doesn't matter how foolish you think you look. Fitzmein and witnesses will prove you're innocent or guilty. So don't start laughing."
"This method seems so-so lousy."
"Look, Jill, there are other ways, I agree, but I haven't that much time to use them. Just try to realize that Fitzmein is a bastard, from way back. We're not picking on a sweet old man bucking for sainthood. He's caused you and the folks and other people a lot of anxiety, and if his brother-in-law is all that Pop says he is, he might really take a chunk of money from you. When it comes to a choice between your future and Fitzmein's greed, there is no choice."
She shrugged, "Let's get it over with."
They stepped into the candy store and stared at Mr. Fitzmein who was humming "The Yellow Rose Of Texas" while polishing the chromium soda dispensers. A stout woman with bright, dyed-blonde hair sipped a strawberry malted through a straw.
Marty whispered, "A witness like Mrs. Grubber is worth a dozen partial juries." Jill nodded, hoping she could act out the plan. Mr. Fitzmein looked up and stopped humming. A knowing smirk tilted up his jowly cheeks.
The woman sipped up a stream of malted and smiled at them. "How's the Army, Martin? Will Russia attack us? You can tell me."
Marty ignored her, stepped forward, and solemnly pointed at Fitzmein. "Little sister, is that the man?" Jill munched her bottom lip and wrinkled her face as though her skin hurt. She nodded. Mrs. Grubber stopped sipping her malted. Marty suddenly cursed, "You degenerate son of a bitch!"
The man bulged his eyes, "Huh? You battle-fatigued or something?"
Jill started sobbing like a kitten hacking up a squirming mouse. Marty shouted, "You old filthy pervert," and made a fist of his fingers. "You could be her great grandfather!" Mrs. Grubber sat back and frowned.
Jill whimpered, "He tried to drag me in the back room."
The woman gasped, "Harry Fitzmein?"
He shook his head as though trying to toss it from his neck. "It's a lie," he wailed. "I'm suing them for defamation, so they're lying. I have four grandchildren." Marty strode to the woman and set his face close to hers, making her shift farther back and grab the counter to keep from falling off the stool.
"Mrs. Grubber, I want you to call the police while I watch that he doesn't escape. Tell the cops I've captured a rape-artist."
"A rape-artist! Harry Fitzmein? Are you sure?"
"Did you ever know my sister to lie? Did you ever hear little Jill tell a lie?"
"Never. She's contest-whacky, sure, but she never lies."
"All right. Now, is this the first time you heard about Harry Fitzmein? How many girls ran home crying that he pinched them. How many, including your daughter? And where did he pinch them? Where, Mrs. Grubber, did he pinch them?"
She frowned at him, then flicked her drop-sized eyes to Fitzmein who was still shaking his head. She glanced at Jill who stood with her head bowed, her hands in a burlesque gesture over her heart. The woman's eyes slowly opened and she whispered, "On the ass. Fitzmein pinches them on the ass."
Marty swung his arm to Jill and shouted in dramatic triumph, "In the front is where he grabbed my sweet sister. In the front!"
The woman pushed the glass away as though the malted had changed to swill. "I never liked him. Twenty-five years ago I said Harry Fitzmein was a louse." She stood up and walked to the telephone booth, asking, "What's the cops' number?"
Fitzmein shouted, "Wait!" his voice a shrill blast. The woman stopped and scowled at him and he shook his head.
"It's a story they're saying. A frame-up, with blackmail besides. I never did it. I never did it."
"Why should Martin lie? A soldier has no cause for lying."
"She attacked me. Right outside my store. That's why I'm suing them. She attacked me!"
"Jilly attacked you? Are you Clark Gable or someone? Besides a pervert, you're ridiculous."
"Ask her, ask her, just ask the girl."
Marty suddenly whacked his hand on the counter. "You molested my sister. A juvenile. That's a crime worse than kidnapping." Jill stood with her toes pointed inward, her hands clasped over her stomach, her head nodded with humiliation. They stared at her and she remained posed, wishing she could laugh at the mottled flush on Fitzmein's skin, the way he sucked in his mouth as if keeping his teeth from popping out. He wants my money, she told herself. He wants my future.
A tall man with flowing gray hair and a rolled newspaper poked in his jacket pocket came into the store. He smiled at them, and the thin, dapper mustache on his lip stretched like an undernourished worm about to nibble his cheek. He looked at Fitzmein. "An egg cream, Harry. Very, very, very sweet."
Fitzmein clapped his hands together and laughed girlishly. "Now we'll see. Marcus is a college man. He'll settle this defamation."
Marcus frowned. "Is this a debating society or a candy store?" Marty strode to the man who had once attended law school but was forced to resign after failing too many examinations.
"Mr. Marcus," Marty said, loudly, grabbing the man's arm, "I want you to make a citizen's arrest. Harry Fitzmein assaulted my sister." Marcus nodded as though molestations occurred every six minutes in the candy store.
"Should I arrest him before, or after, my egg cream?"
"This is no laughing matter, Mr. Marcus. Fitzmein tried to-you know what-to my under-legal-age sister. As a soldier I haven't the authority to make the arrest. But you have. Mrs. Grubber will serve as our character witness."
"I'll shout what a cheapskate Fitzmein is from here to Congress. Also that he's the worst ass pincher since Jack-the-Ripper."
"Did anyone see this atrocious event, Martin?"
"In this case the accused must establish his innocence-not the offended provide just causes. As a man well versed in the law, you know that, Mr. Marcus."
"True, true, Martin. Harry, I'm afraid I'll have to do as instructed. No matter how it grieves me, the law must be supported. To the hilt."
"Are you all loco? Have you got vigilante complexes or something? I'm a respectable man with four grandchildren. Have you all gone loco?"
Marty raised his hand and scratched his left ear and Jill suddenly began to bawl, her mouth opened wide, her voice wailing from her throat like an off-tune siren.
Mrs. Grubber rushed to her, patting her back, cooing, "There, there, Jilly, the dog will pay, you'll see."
Fitzmein began stamping his feet on the floor, yelling, "It's a lie, a lie, a juvenile-delinquent lie!"
Marty leaned over the counter and demanded, "Confess, you degenerate, confess."
Mrs. Grubber hugged her arm across Jill's shoulders and whispered, "I don't know what your scheme is, Jilly, but if you make Fitzmein cancel the three months' bill I owe him, I'll back your scheme to the limit." Jill had to bawl louder to keep from suddenly laughing. Mr. Marcus sighed with judicious resignation.
"Harry, you're in a calamity. Even if the girl is lying-and why should she lie-you're in a pickle of the worst order."
"Marcus, listen to me. For twenty-two years I didn't miss our Thursday night pinochle game. You know me better than my wife. Would I molest a neighborhood girl? If I had such a crazy notion, wouldn't I have the sense to go to a different neighborhood?"
"There, Mr. Marcus, there it is. The confession to degenerate tendencies. You know the law. Doesn't bearing the proclivities toward lead to the commission of? Doesn't it?"
"True, true, Martin. The thought is mother to the deed. So true."
"Fitzmein is a public menace. We must overrule our affections for the man and honor the law. The law is above personal feelings."
"True, true, Martin. Harry, the boy has a case. My friendship aside, I have to be objective. Your brother-in-law is a shyster-I mean lawyer. Call him before you say anything that may be used against you."
"But she attacked me, Marcus. Marcus, don't you see their blackmail? She attacked me!"
"Harry, don't be so obstreperous with illogic. Are you Leslie Howard that she should molest you? Do you have de-; lusions as well? Take out the foot you just put in your mouth. Such testimony could commit you to an asylum."
Fitzmein turned his back to them and clapped his hands on his head. Jill stopped bawling and stood with her body slumped while she sobbed pathetic sounds.
Mrs. Grubber whispered, "You got him Jilly. But for good." Marcus walked to a stool and had to cross his lanky legs before sitting down.
Marty suddenly shouted, "Mr. Marcus, arrest that man, that rape-artist!"
Fitzmein swung around and cursed, "You soldier bastard! You're without pity. Her money meant my retirement to Arizona." Marcus and Mrs. Grubber frowned at him. Fitzmein bowed his head and stared dumbly at the floor, and Jill was sorry for the old man. Marty's scheme had worked only because the man was a terrified fool. Marty looked to her.
"Jill, you go on home. You've been humiliated enough. I'll settle this with the degenerate."
Mrs. Grubber stepped to the counter, saying, "I'll be your star witness. We'll do worse to him than Perry Mason does to the D.A."
Jill slowly turned around and shuffled to the door. She heard Marcus say, "Even someone like St. Augustine couldn't fight an accusation of rape by a minor."
Jill stepped into the street, not knowing what to feel-only able to think that one of her problems was over, and the army had changed her brother. He was cunning now, and a little heartless. She hurried up the street recalling what John Locke once wrote to his friend: "If I have anything to boast of, it is that I sincerely love and seek truth with indifferency whom it pleases or displeases." Jill shrugged. A lie works two ways. She was glad her lie was stronger than Fitzmein's.
14
JILL had walked to the Bronx Zoo and idled two hours browsing about the animal cages, then strolled in the park enjoying the cool breeze on her skin, feeling a languid loneliness, her vision dulled to the sights and motions near her as she tried to understand herself, her future, her life. The world was a steady shuffle of pains happening to you when you most expected happiness, she thought, finally, and shrugged. She thought of her coming television appearance and small currents of pimples skimmed over her skin as she pictured herself standing before a television camera, reciting, "All I am and all I ever will become, I owe to the brilliant tutoring and guidance of Mr. Elmacky of Melrick High School." She shook her head, thinking, Mr. Elmacky is a corrupt louse. She tensed her body as if flexing herself against an attack of despair. She was not afraid to lie-or ashamed to lie. But this lie might be more than a lie.
She remembered a morning in her English class, the morning she told herself, "I want to fall in love with a man like Mr. Etner." She had been listening to Mr. Etner, pretending he was Socrates and the students his disciples. "There are two general beliefs in relative philosophy, or psychology, for that matter." His voice was resonant as an actor's, his tall figure crouched over the desk as though guarding the widsom he was about to reveal, his brown eyes flicking to each face staring at him, to be sure each mind behind the face was attending him.
"One belief states that when a person lives a consistent pattern for a given number of years, no imponderable, no unexpected act of circumstance can disorder the environment of his soul, his psyche, and disrupt that pattern. The regularity of his actions provides him with an unconscious protection. The opposite theory is that no matter how consistent the pattern a person holds to, an uncalculated quirk of circumstance-an imponderable-can alter the pattern of his life and propel him to'great fortune or great disaster."
Jill yawned when she reached the park exit, and felt tired, but would not ride the bus home. She wanted to exhaust herself. To become so fatigued she could not think about anything but sleep.
She walked three blocks out of her way to avoid the street wheYe the Sputniks usually loitered, waiting to scheme up some trouble. She wondered if Mike's beating up Bosco was an imponderable act of chance that would alter Mike's life, alter Bosco's life. She passed Fitzmein's candy store and tried to see inside, but the weakening sunlight was reflected on the windows, turning them into blotchy mirrors. She wondered if what she and Marty had done to Fitzmein was an imponderable that would change the old man's life. Would Mike's startling violence, Bosco's defeat, Fitzmein's frustration be the imponderable that would propel her to disaster? She hurried into her apartment building wondering if her winning the contest money was another imponderable, if her telling a lie on television, an additional imponderable, all the imponderables smacking into her life to cause her irrevocable change. She was not afraid to lie. She was only afraid of what the lie would cause to happen against her.
She opened the door and saw her father stooped over the squat television console, irritatedly turning the dials. She said, "Why don't you just have it repaired, Poppa?"
He whacked the side of the plastic cabinet, cursing, "Rotten crook!" and turned to her.
"If your mother didn't have to watch those stupid tear-jerkers, I would never have signed for it. One second after the warranty expired-blooey! It's as dead as Kelsey's eyeballs, and I'm still paying on it."
"You watch it, too, so don't blame Momma. If you couldn't see 'Meet McGraw' or 'Gunsmoke,' you would think you weren't getting cultured."
"Don't get lippy with me. I'm your father."
He snapped the dial and the gritty noises stopped, the mucous gray film of light faded from the tube. She wondered what imponderable in her father's life had changed him from a man who once wanted to be an admiral in the Navy to an overweight dullard whose greatest aspiration was to become a junkman.
He said, "You had a phone call from Trixie. She was all excited about something." Jill went to the pink stuffed chair her mother used and sat down, kicking off her flat-heeled shoes as she tugged her skirt over her knees.
"The next time Trixie calls tell her I'm not interested-no matter what!" He drew a pipe from his back pocket, and tapped the bowl on his palm and grinned at her.
"So Marty and you got Fitzmein to drop his vicious suit, heh? It's all over the neighborhood how Marty accused him of molesting you."
"Mrs. Grubber is more informative than the New York Times. It was Marty's idea. He was using military maneuvers."
"I tip my hat to your brother. No doubt I would have come up with a like scheme, except that I'm busy making plans about the junk business. I hear there's something like a brotherhood, a guild-"
"Poppa, if you think I'll let you have the money for a junk business, you're still being foolish. That money is for my education."
"Now, now, daughter, let's not have a difficulty about it. You'll come around to your senses soon enough. And if you think signing on Marty to help you will help you, you still have a bucket of thinks coming. Parents carry more legal weight than older brothers."
The hall door opened and her mother hurried in carrying a brown bag of groceries. She smiled at them and set the bag onto the kitchen table, then laughed, "So you and Marty fixed Fitzmein!" and hustled into the living room. Jill stood up and grinned. Her mother tittered girlishly and grabbed Jill, hugging her hard. "It's a blessing, believe me. How did you think-no, never mind. If I know you, then it was Martin's brains that worked it out."
Jill wiggled from her mother's flabby grip and huffed some breath onto her fingernails, polished them on her blouse and gloated, "You realize of course, that Marty's strategy would have been foiled if I wasn't a great actress. Compared to me, Bette Davis is an amateur." Her mother suddenly frowned and scratched her ear.
"The thought just came to me. Can Fitzmein change his mind?"
"You tell your mother Fitzmein can't. The whole neighborhood knows the story. Some believe it, some don't. If Fitzmein moved to sue Jilly again, everyone'll believe he's a rape-artist trying to cover his tracks. In a week he'll be out of business."
"You tell your father this is the first time in twenty years I agree with him, half-heartedly. Then ask him if he's such a smart father, why didn't he think of how to help youthat shirker."
Her father turned back to the television set and Jill yawned, both knowing the woman was about to lecture them on how to become rich and successful.
She tapped her thumb onto her palm, saying, "All it takes to get some place and to be somebody is a pinch of luck and-" He whacked the television cabinet and began working the dials. "-a shrewd idea no one else has. That's all you need, if you ask me." The television set squawked some static and she wrinkled her mouth and glared at Jill.
"You tell your ignoramus father to stop interrupting me when I'm talking. He's a boor." Jill yawned again and stepped into her shoes. The telephone rang. Her mother shouted at him, "You tell your cheapskate father to shut that off while I'm on the telephone." Jill sighed and watched her stalk to the telephone beside the tall breakfront. She wondered if having been caught in bed with another man was the imponderable that had changed her mother from a woman with a placid, negative disposition, into a cutting-tongued shrew.
Her mother said, "One second, Trixie," and looked at Jill who shook her head.
"I don't want to talk to her." Her mother shrugged, then spoke into the mouthpiece.
"She's not available for conversation, Trixie."
Her father shut off the television set, asking, "Did you raving beauties have a falling out?" and Jill could hear Trixie's shrill voice spill from the earpiece. Her refusing Trixie the money had been Trixie's imponderable, she was sure.
Her mother put her hand on the mouthpiece and frowned. "She says it's about Mike Steffne."
Jill wanted to shout, "Tell Trixie to go straight to hell!" but suddenly thought that now was the time to gloat, to use Mike as a knife. She said, "I'll talk to her," and took the receiver, raising her eyebrows with haughty indifference. "Yes, Trixie, what can I do for you?"
Trixie answered, "It's all your fault, you envious bitch!" and the tense hatred in her voice made Jill wince.
"What, exactly, is all my fault?"
"You had to work your ways to take Mike away from me, didn't you? It wasn't enough for you to know you could've had him any time?"
"Trixie, just what are you talking about?"
"So I let Mike do it to me, so all right, what harm was there in that? You think I didn't know it wasn't a big romance? Well, I knew. But I was satisfied, and now look. Just look what came from your stinking butting in on us."
She answered, "Trixie, if you don't stop carrying on like a lunatic and tell me what you called to tell me, I'll hang up!" Jill was worried by the hatred and hysteria in Trixie's voice, knowing that only something terrible could make Trixie sob. "What is it, Trixie?" she said, softly, and she heard Trixie gasp in a deep breath to control herself.
"Bosco and his bastards got even on Mike for what you made him do." Jill closed her eyes and quickly prayed that
Mike hadn't been hurt. Trixie snickered, "Say something now, you rotten whore!" Jill began nibbling her lips, waiting. "Mike is in the hospital, that's where he is, right where you put him. Lucky to be alive, he is." Jill shook her head, not wanting to think. "He not only won't play sports again, but if he can walk regular, he's lucky. They broke his ankles with chains and what they did to his face I wish they did to yours." Jill gripped the phone until her fingers hurt and suddenly thought that she was a jinx to people, males in particular. She would never love or marry, always be alone and without children.
The shrillness whined through Trixie's sobs. "No visitors allowed, they told me. Not even his mother was allowed. They got Bosco, that much, at least, is good. I told the police everything, everything-including about you and how you started it, you caused it. I hope the cops electrocute you, you bitch!"
Jill wanted to tell her, "Even if I take the blame, I'm not to blame for it. I know I'm not." But she was unable to talk, knowing that if she spoke, tears would splash from her.
She felt her mother's hand on her shoulder and the woman asked, "Is something the matter, Jilly?" Jill shook her head, her tongue pressed against her teeth. Her mother shrugged.
Trixie said, "You did it, you bitch!" and Jill closed her eyes again, while Trixie babbled, "He was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I don't care what I had to give him to get him. You don't know what it's like having someone like Mike, being admired and envied-how he got a thrill from me every time we did it. And I was just getting to get a thrill too, I was close to it, believe me. Just doing that wasn't all between us, believe me. Mike liked me for myself, believe me. I know by how he used to-"
Jill shook her head, wishing she could tell Trixie to shut up and hold her grief in silence and let someone else grieve; but she listened to Trixie tell about the secret places they went before they did it, and the secret places they went to do it, and the secret places they went after they did it. She heard how Mike was getting to love her, really love her; and Jill knew that most of what Trixie was saying was a make-believe lie to give grandeur to actions that were only animal.
Trixie suddenly stopped babbling and her voice became a thin, ugly tone. "I hate you, Jill. I only always disliked you, but now I hate you. I hate you right in my heart, that's where I hate you." Jill slowly nodded and set the receiver onto the prongs, still hearing Trixie's voice babble in her mind.
Her mother came in from the kitchen, asking, "What did that dope Trixie want?" Jill stared at her mother, noticing the large pores in her nose, the speckles of dried food stains on her chin, the tufts of gray hair curled in her ears. Her mother pulled at her arm, whispering, "Is Fitzmein suing you again, is that what Trixie said and why you're so pale?"
Jill licked her lips and shrugged, then shuffled to her room, muttering, "I'm very tired, Momma."
Her father turned on the television set, saying, "I could use this stupid set as my first piece of junk for the junk business."
Jill closed the door and went to the bed. The loud static from the living room was like glass slivers dropping into her mind. She lay down and stared at the flat white ceiling, telling herself, I'll think about Mike tomorrow. I'll try to see him and say I'm sorry. She closed her eyes and wished that she had Mike's pain, right now. Pain was better to feel than sorrow. Sorrow changed you. Pain only hurt you. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to cry.
15
THE doorbell rang and Jill thought that Marty had left his house keys at the Army base. She turned onto her side, sorry that her brother was home on leave. She wanted to be happy for him, make his first leave a celebration-not a snake pit of problems.
She heard her mother open the door and ask, "What can I do for you?"
A deep, gritty voice said, "Does Jill Fulmer live here?"
Jill sat up, wondering if a man from the television studio had come to interview her, size her up.
She heard her mother cry, "Police!" her voice a soft shriek.
"Glimmer, Detective Glimmer," the man said.
Her father called out, "Jilly, oh Jilly, come 'ere a minute."
She suddenly felt afraid and furtive and glanced about the room for a hiding place. They were going to ask her about Mike, and then blame her for what happened, she was sure.
"Jilly!" her father yelled. She left the bed and stood by the side of the door, trying to think of what to tell the police. This will get into the newspapers. Mike was no gang crumb. He was a star athlete. The pride of the neighborhood. She closed her eyes, afraid to really think of what a scandal would do. The Noon-Fresh cereal company would cancel her as the winner.
Her mother hurried into the bedroom, her hands gripped together as if holding a lump of terror. "What did you do? What happened?" Her voice was like a hiss of steam.
Jill nibbled her lips and tried to smile. "Some boys picked on me in school and Mike Steffne protected me and the Sputniks put him in the hospital." Her mother frowned and squinted nastily.
"You sure you didn't steal or do-do something dirty?" Jill shook her head. The woman relaxed her hands, saying, "I was afraid Fitzmein was having you arrested for blackmail." Her mother sighed as though deflating herself of all breath. She reached for Jill's hand and pulled her from the wall. "We have rights, so don't be afraid. We ain't got much, but we're citizens. You just shut up and I'll talk." Jill wiped her sweating palms on her skirt and they walked into the kitchen.
I don't want to lose the money, I don't want to lose the money, she told herself. The detective removed his hat. Jill held herself stiff to keep from trembling.
He was a large man with narrow shoulders and a chunky physique. His face seemed almost square and she was suddenly annoyed at his large, gray eyes that made her feel he was friendly and sympathetic instead of cruel. She wanted him to be vicious, so if she refused to answer his questions she had cause for her silence. His hair was thinning and watery brown, and she wanted to laugh thinking that some revengeful crook had splashed furniture stain onto his head. He smiled at her.
"Are you Jill Fulmer?" She nodded. He stepped further into the room. Her father shifted behind him and closed the door. The detective reached into his breast pocket and Jill moved back. He grinned, "You don't have to be afraid, Jill. I haven't shot a minor in two weeks." He drew out a notebook and a silver ball-point pen. Her mother stepped before Jill and wrinkled her mouth.
"What can I do for you, Officer? What do you want?"
"Just to ask your daughter a few questions."
"Ask questions like what? I'm her mother, I'll answer for her."
"Look, lady, all I want to ask is a few questions. I'm not trying to railroad her into the electric chair. Jill, do you know a Michael Steffne?"
Standing behind the detective her father shook his head at her. Jill frowned, not knowing why she should keep silent about knowing Mike. The detective glanced behind him.
Her father meekly cleared his throat and shrunk back, muttering, "I'm her father," then pulled a pipe from his back pocket and began inspecting the charred bowl. Her mother tapped her thumb onto her palm.
"My daughter's under age. I'll answer all her questions." The detective shifted his weight and sighed.
"All right, Mrs. Fulmer. Does your daughter know a Michael Steffne?"
"I don't know who she knows or don't know. Why?"
"Now look, Mrs. Fulmer, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. I have the authority to take your daughter in for questioning, if I have to. So let's cut out this run-around and get to the answers."
"She knows Mike. Why?"
"Your daughter knows why. I want her to answer me."
"She knows what I want her to know and I'll do her answering!"
He closed the notebook and put his hat on, saying, "All right, Jill, let's go to the station and get it done down there." Her mother lurched back against Jill, protecting her.
Her father suddenly yelled, "Will you tell your goddam mother to answer what the officer wants!" The detective looked to him and smiled.
"How about you answering some questions, Mr. Fulmer?" He shrugged.
"My daughter knows Mike Steffne. Ask her what you like. She'll answer for herself."
The detective said, "Thank you," and turned to Jill.
"Were you at Melrick High School for the morning session?"
"Yes. Someone just telephoned me and told me what happened to Mike."
"You were in the auditorium when Mike fought with Bernard Feldman."
"Bernard Feldman."
"You know him as Bosco."
"Oh, Bosco. Yes, I was in the auditorium studying my American History. I heard some noise, but that's all. Someone told me about the fight. I didn't witness it."
He frowned at her and she glanced at the floor. Her mother grinned and humphed triumphantly and Jill hated what wanting the ten thousand dollars was making her do. Hated herself for never before realizing that deep inside her heart she was a greedy, frightened bitch. The detective wrote in the notebook, then looked at her, his eyes steady.
"You say you saw nothing? Nothing at all?"
"Nothing at all. I was glued to my books all the time. I have the highest scholastic average in the senior group and I study hard to keep my lead."
"Wouldn't you like to reconsider your statement, Jill? There are nine witnesses who say you were not only in the middle of it, but the cause of the altercation between Mike and Bosco."
"I'm not responsible for anybody's opinion or imagination, but my own. I know what I saw and what I didn't see. And I didn't see the fight. I was studying."
"Look, Jill, you have no reason for hiding the truth. We've been keeping a check on the Sputniks ever since that girl Wilma Wasserman was gang-fucked and now we've got their leader and two members, cold. Bosco is a wrongo through and through and undernormal in brains, so he's a danger. Any additional testimony, particularly of a sexual nature, will put this Bosco away for a healthy stretch. You can tell me about that incident that started the affair and not be afraid of getting hurt. Without Bosco the Sputniks will break up. So why not be like Teresa Galivinisch and tell all you saw and know?"
"I don't know or care what Trixie told you. I was studying."
"Jill, I have nine statements that place you in the middle of it so won't you-"
"Officer, you stop bullying my daughter or I'll report you. She said she didn't see it, so she didn't see it, and all your coaxing won't change her mind. So don't bully her. She gave you what she saw and that's that."
The detective scowled at her mother, saying, "I haven't bullied your daughter." Then he looked at her father, who wormed his pinkie into the pipe bowl. Jill waited to be questioned again, knowing she would not change her story. The violence was done and Bosco was arrested. Giving a truthful account of what happened wouldn't help Mike Steffne or convict Bosco any harder. But it would hurt her.
Her mother jutted out her chin, saying, "If that's all you have to ask, Officer, I'll be pleased if you leave. I have to make supper." The detective stared at the woman, his mouth a taut, thin line, as if holding back curses. Jill suddenly wanted to blurt, "I have to lie, Officer, please believe me. Ten thousand dollars is hanging over my head and all I have to do is reach up and take it. Why should I let a scandal ruin my changes for a lifetime of good?" The detective riffled some pages in the notebook and looked at her. His mouth softened and he smiled gently.
"Jill, I'll ask you again, did you see the fight between Michael Steffne and Bernard Feldman? And consider your answer, please. This boy Michael is more important than you realize. He's a prominent athlete who has never been in trouble with the police. The gang beating took place only three hours ago, and we're already swamped with protests from the public. We have an iron-clad case against this ass, Bosco, and two other Sputniks; but you can never tell in a case of this nature. There's always some angle floating around that can be used against the law. We were given to understand that it all started when Bosco and his creeps grabbed your-forcibly removed your undergarment and displayed it on the Assembly Hall flagpole. We want this Bosco and we want him bad. Your community and other neighborhoods need a solid example of how a gang of wrongos are handled once we get them. If you're willing to charge Bosco with attempted molestation, we can put him away for a long time. And scare the hell out of half the gangs in this zone of the city. I don't want to lecture you, Jill; but a truthful testimony is your civic responsibility. Now, did you see Michael Steffne attack Bosco-Bernard Feldman-in defense of your person and reputation, thereby giving Bernard Feldman a move for his premeditated assault on Michael Steffne?"
Jill stared at the detective's eyes and told herself, he's lying. This is a job to him; Mike and Bosco are just lumps in his day's work and he has to smooth them out so he can go to another job. He stared back at her and she noticed frail creases, like broken spokes, at the corners of his eyes. Her father moved to the left. She looked to him, and he shook his head, telling her to keep lying. She glanced to the floor and imagined newspaper headlines, "Brilliant H.S. Girl In Middle Of Gang Rumble!" and the picture she had taken for the graduation album dashed across the front page with a stark black caption beneath it, "Jill Fulmer, All-Family Foods contest winner implicated in a juvenile gang rumble over sex!" She closed her eyes, imagining the newspaper on the desk of the All-Family Foods president who was screaming for his lawyers to find a way of dropping her as the winner. She grit her teeth. It was wrong for her to be punched by so many imponderables in one day. She wanted the ten thousand dollars. Oh God, how I must have that money! People steal and murder for so much less.
The detective shifted his weight to his right leg and softly cleared his throat. She wondered what Marty would advise her to do. She wished her mother and father were wise and worldly so she could trust them, believe that their wanting her to stand on the lie was the best way. The moral way. I hate that money, she told herself. Hate it, hate it. For how it wants to change me. Make me into what I'm not, but as I will have to stay all my life. The detective cleared his throat again. Jill put her hands behind her back and crossed her fingers for good luck, then nodded.
"Officer, here's my statement. I absolutely did not see the fight. I did not see the fight. I wasn't molested either."
"I see. You voluntarily gave your panties to be hung from-"
"They were not my panties."
"Your name was on them."
"Anyone could put my name on any pair of panties."
The detective smirked disgustedly and closed the notebook. She heard her mother sigh happily. Her father rubbed his face as if pulling off a dead skin of fear. The detective fit the notebook into his breast pocket and picked his hat from a chair. He walked to the door and turned to her. "You're a damn fool, Jill. Nothing is worth the way you're lying for it." He opened the door and shook his head at her.
"I have two kids of my own, Jill. Younger than you by two and five years. The boy is a little wild and back-talks to me, but the girl is fine. I'm no paragon of fatherhood, what with the hours I keep, but if they were in the spot you're in, and they lied the way you're lying, no matter for what reason, I'd put them in the hospital myself. This isn't the end of it, Jill. Bosco will be put on trial and I'll, personally, see to it that you're made to testify under oath, truthfully, or be sent away for perjury. No, Jill, this is not the last of it. Not by a long shot."
He stepped out and slammed the door. They stared at the beige painted door like people waiting for a movie to flash across the panels. They could hear each other breathe, hear the detective's footsteps moving to the hall elevator. The telephone rang, startling them to twitch around and stare at the black instrument. The shrill ringing was like a great fire bell clamoring in the room.
Her mother rushed to the telephone and grabbed up the receiver, shouting, "Yes!" then embarrassedly lowered her voice. "Oh, Martin, I thought it was someone else."
Jill put her hand over her eyes and thought about Mike, about her plan to let him do it to her for helping her with Bosco. She shook her head and felt chilled, muttering, "Poor Mike, poor Mike." God would punish her, she was sure. Right now God was crying for her, and when He stopned crying, He would work out her punishment. She kept her eyes closed to hold back her want to cry.
Her mother said, "All right, Martin, I'll tell her," then hung up. She drew a handkerchief from her housedress pocket and loudly blew her nose. "Jill, darling," she said, whiningly soft. "Martin wants you to meet him at The Tryst, for supper. It's a place where his Army friends and officers go when they get leave, he said. He wants to show you off, that's plain enough." Jill nodded.
Her father set his face into an authoritative frown, asking, "What's this business about your panties?" Jill suddenly laughed, her voice scaling into a tremulous giggle, thinking that God's punishment might be letting her father get the money she was lying to keep, selling her soul to keep, changing herself to keep. And if her father got the money, it would be lost in fifteen minutes, but the new, the rotten, miserable way she had become, would remain. Her parents frowned at her, then at each other, wondering why she was laughing. She kept laughing.
16
JILL had tasted whisky before, and wine and cheap liquor on the sneak at parlor parties, but never a Bloody Mary that tasted like bitter tomato juice and etched a long scald from her throat to her stomach. Although Marty had cautioned her not to get drunk, she wished she could get drunk; but the heat in her body could not affect the cold in her mind. She was too conscious of herself, too thoughtful. She sat as close to Marty as she could without jamming him against the wall of the narrow dining booth and tried to concentrate on finishing her fruit cocktail which she hoped would cool the deeper scald of the second Bloody Mary. She felt uncomfortable and conspicuous and glamourous in her simple black party dress, the traditional severity broken only by an oval cameo, the only genuine jewelry her mother owned, pinned above her right breast.
She smiled while Marty chatted about the rigid, harassing routine of trying to qualify for Officers' Candidate School, as if he had not just finished calling her "cheap" and "obsessive" about the ten thousand dollars she was trying to keep. Maybe he had forgotten, she thought, but she remembered what he had called her. And she was hating him, now, although she knew in a little while she would love him again and forget his saying she fit the quotation, "The almighty dollar-that great object of universal devotion throughout our land!" Then he had told her, "Lying to the police was all right, Jill. Since television, it's the national pastime. By the time Bosco's trial comes up you'll have the money and you can volunteer your testimony. But you're becoming obsessive about the money. Sitting next to you is like sitting beside someone girdled in charged wires. You hate your parents for wanting the money, you feel ashamed of protecting yourself against Fitzmein, you feel guilty for what happened to Mike Steffne, and so on and so on. The money can bring you a lot of good, yes-but long before the good comes it can do you irreparable damage if you keep craving it. Sometimes the richer you get, the cheaper you become. Be anything you like, Jill, but never become cheap."
I'll forget that remark, she thought, and told herself she would have a splendid time, a glorious time, and looked at the nattily uniformed captain who was staring at her. He was tall, broad-shouldered and good-looking in a narrow-faced, sleek way, and though ordinarily she disliked narrow-faced good-looks, tonight she didn't care. She felt heady and only her respect for Marty made her choke back a mischevious impulse to flirt with the sleek-looking captain. Dazzle him, tease him, make sweat-let wrinkles spoil his sleek, ivory look. She felt strange, too, as though she did not belong in this soldiers' restaurant, and she was annoyed because she visualized herself as awkward and obvious. She condemned herself as an inept gangling kid, because she couldn't feel casual, with a sophisticated grace, like that older woman talking to the chubby First Lieutenant. Her red hair was cut short and treated to pose on her head like a ruby halo, the long jade earrings dangled fom her small lobes and jiggled like moldy flicks of light, her large, high breasts seemed to top her river-green dress like two waves with fleshy crests. Jill was not sophisticated, she knew. That woman was older, much older. Twenty-four at least. But Jill did feel ultra-feminine, and sexy, too-more womanly and passionate than the other fashionably-dressed females. Although she hated Marty, temporarily, she was pleased with his admiration of her, his repeating, "Jill, you're the most seductive sixteen-year-old in the place." She enjoyed his pride in her, yes, even the way soldiers and a few officers from his army base drifted to their table to be introduced. She almost laughed every time Marty said, "This is Jill, my sister."
Their smiles faltered, their eyes glanced down and their bodies seemed to sigh resignedly as they said, "Pleased to meet you, Jill," and wandered away to talk to someone else, as though she was sacred, untouchable.
Jill carefully set some diced pears and peaches into her mouth and chewed as delicately as she knew how, then deliberately winked at the captain, who grinned at her and winked back. She kept herself from tittering and knew the officer would soon come to their table. She hoped he didn't think her ill-dressed, hoped she hadn't worn the wrong shoes, that her table manners were proper and she could finish the dessert without upsetting the table. She wished she had worn a girdle because she felt loose and slinky and hoped she could keep herself so busy hoping and wishing that she didn't think of Mike Steffne or the hateful names Marty had called her. She winked at the captain again, just to spite her brother. The captain again winked back and again grinned. She slowly shifted her sight, hoping the officer didn't think she was a cheap piece and realized she just wanted to joke at flirting.
The restaurant was a long hall with lacquered pineboard booths lined along each wall with a column of four-seater tables in the center. Middle-aged waitresses in dark maroon uniforms and. green aprons kept moving along the aisles, carrying food orders on wide oval trays. Near the entrance was a nine-foot-long elbow-shaped bar crowded with servicemen and their women seated on leather-topped stools. Hung along the walls were mahogany plaques with insignias of the different Army branches. Below each plaque was a two-foot-long, one-foot-wide photograph of that individual outfit in battle. Jill recognized the famous flag raising in the Iwo Jima picture and thought that World War II must have been terrible. She was happy that Marty had been too young to be drafted for that war. She looked at the captain who was talking to a chunky-bodied lieutenant, and she thought it was good that such a place as The Tryst was still in business. "It's the only spot where officers and about-to-be officers can meet on an equal social level," Marty had explained. "Coming to The Tryst is an unofficial test most candidates go through. The officers in charge of their area observe the candidates to see if they are gentlemen, socially, as well as militarily. There's a rumor that the Army is the main backer of The Tryst."
The captain shifted around and stared at Jill as he talked to the lieutenant. She set her spoon onto the saucer and wondered if Marty would let her have another Bloody Mary. She felt timid pulsations of excitement and hoped she wasn't drunk. She wanted the timid pulsations to become great, dizzy throbs. She wanted to be happy. So tremendously, uproariously happy that she could blacken her mind to the sudden images she had of Mike Steffne lying splinted-stiff on a hospital bed, his face and body swathed in bandages, his insides and sensations sluggish from narcotics to numb the agonizing pains. It's not my fault, Mike, dear God believe me, she prayed in her mind. It was a rotten, crazy imponderable that made it happen. She blinked her eyes to clear the mummy-like form of Mike from her mind.
Marty lit a cigarette and she touched his hand, asking, "Do you know that captain, the one at the bar?" Without looking toward the bar, he nodded.
"That's Captain Alfred Fellows Barrow. He's the head of my section and the worst bastard alive. Power mad, pure power mad, that's bastard Barrow, as he is rightfully called."
Jill shrugged. "I'll bet a quarter he comes to our table."
Marty leaned closer to her, whispering, "Barrow's not some high school kid you can tease until his tongue hangs out, Jill. He's hard, ruthless and experienced. He's a career officer, and civil law has no place in his book, so stop flirting with him. It's cheap."
She kept herself from shouting, "Stop calling me cheap!" and hissed angrily, "That's a disgusting thing to call your own sister, Marty. Did you bring me here for a good time or to call me disgusting names?"
He put his hand on her arm, shaking her gently. "Go easy, baby, I didn't mean it that way." She leaned to him, knowing she was unreasonably angry, that the stinging flush she felt was more liquor than feeling, but she was unable to stop herself.
"You better stop calling me cheap, Marty, I mean it. And when it comes to men, officers or basketball players, I can take care of myself."
He tightened his hold on her arm, whispering, "You're acting like a kid, Jill, so cut it out. If you're putting on a show for Barrow, you don't have to. He goes for anything, a snake with ears included, so take it easy." But she held herself tense, able to see the captain from the filmy area of her vision. He was grinning and nodding, as if urging her to lash into her brother, and she glared at Marty, believing that behind his eyes she saw meekness and embarrassment. She remembered that he had not always been wise, not always all-knowing and strong. Had he really changed overnight, truly changed? Or was he putting it on to make himself big to balance the smallness she often had seen him in?
She pulled her arm from under his hand, protesting, "I'm not cheap and I never will be!" her voice a snap of sound. "I've been humiliated enough for today, so stop humiliating me more!" He smiled patiently.
"All right, Jill, I'll never call you names again. All right?" She nodded, curtly, and pulled a cigarette from the pack on the table and poked it between her lips. He winked indulgently, "Is little Miss Miffit all over her tiffit?" and lit the cigarette for her. She saw the Captain leave the bar area and move toward them. She exhaled as sophisticatedly as she couid. Marty looked up at the officer, his jaw clenched.
The captain stood at the table and smiled at Jill, "Hi-ya." Then he nodded to Marty.
"How's it going, Private Fulmer? Having a ball before checking into the base?"
"Jill, this is Captain Alfred Fellows Barrow. Captain Barrow, this is Jill Fulmer, my younger sister."
He grinned widely. "Sister, you say? Well, well, that is a surprise. There's no resemblance at all." Jill noticed that his teeth were in a perfect line, as though they had been filed, his ears pressed against his head and slightly pointed, like fox ears. Still looking at her, he spoke to Marty, "Mind if I join you, Private Fulmer?"
Marty leaned forward and smiled falsely, "I don't mean to seem rude, Captain Barrow, but my sister and I were involved in a serious conversation and we would like to finish it." The captain set his hands on the table and stared at Marty, his eyes steady, his lips taut bands across his teeth. Jill thought, I don't like him, but she quickly imagined herself walking with her arm on the captain's arm as they passed Trixie's house. She turned to Marty and nudged his elbow.
"Don't be such a party-pooper, Private Fulmer. Of course the captain can join us." Marty stared back at the officer and she could sense an exchange of hatred. She thought that she should stop playing this game; it would hurt Marty. But she felt ripples of laughter and excitement and she didn't care what happened, because the world was a silly dream. Isn't it all a silly dream, God? And when you die is when you wake up-and so much has already happened-so much misery. Marty shrugged. The captain reached to the next booth, pulled back a chair and sat down facing them. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke onto the table.
"When you, and your charming sister feel like leaving, Private Fulmer, why not join me at a party held by some fellow officers. Rank won't matter. That is, if you don't mind mingling with officers."
"Thanks, but some other time, Captain Barrow. Jill has to be home by eleven o'clock. She's only sixteen years old and our parents are very strict."
"Sixteen years old you say? Really unbelievable. Twenty-two is the age I would have guessed. Or an ancient twenty-one, at least."
"There, Marty, you see. Officers are gallant. Thank you, Captain Barrow."
"You're quite welcome, Jill. You're a very sensational sixteen years old, believe me."
"Look, Captain, I'm sorry Jill's appearance is so misleading. But not even the upper echelon of military can alter facts. Jill is only sixteen years old and still under the restrictions of her parents. She appreciates your flattery, and sincerity, I'm sure. But we wouldn't want an officer, and a gentleman, tampering with ethics and morality, civilian or otherwise, would we now?"
Jill looked away, again feeling rushes of anger, not understanding why Marty was humiliating her. Did he envy her winning the money, despise her luck and believe it belonged to himself? The captain shifted his legs under the table and his shoe touched Jill's shoe. He smiled at her and she thought she was being a dope. Marty wasn't humiliating her. He was warning her. Protecting her. The captain wanted from her what Mike Steffne and the other boys wanted. She pressed her mouth together to keep from laughing. The captain was a fool and Marty didn't know it. A hurricane of men could charge at her and she would still keep her legs closed, and open them only when she wanted to. She put her hand on Marty's arm and pouted girlishly.
"Captain Barrow, have you been giving my brother a hard time?" He shook his head and put his opened hand on his chest in mock amazement.
"Who, me? Lovable, fluffy-hearted ole' Barrow? Why, young lady, I mother them, I do. I actually do, the poor dears. Away from home and all that. If I had a dollar for every time my CO. has taken me to task for leniency, why I could buy half of Texas. I do declare."
They laughed and Jill could hear a hating snicker in Marty's laughter. She tapped some ashes into a glass tray and wondered if she could handle herself at an adult party. If she could pass for all grown up. I could, I damn well could, she told herself. She would have one drink for sociable-sake and then sit and discuss and observe. To observe, yes, that was learning. Being in life was the way to learn about life. Adult life. She turned to Marty and breathed deeply to keep the eagerness from her voice.
"I would like to go to a party, Marty. I haven't been to a party since-well, since I don't know when."
"I do. Since the school term started. No, Jill, you've got no business at such parties. Forget it."
"Marty, will you stop treating me like a child. You'd think I just left a convent, the way you talk. I've been chased, but I'm still chaste, so stop it."
"Your sister has a point, Private Fulmer, and a mind of her own. You're as old as you look, as they say."
"Look, Captain Barrow, let's cut this noodling around. You want to take my sister to a party and lose me somewhere along the way, and I say no. She's just a kid, whether she thinks so or not. You've got your answer, so fold your tent like a good Arab and look for tail some other place."
"Easy does it, Private Fulmer. We may be in informal surroundings, but there are certain amenities of rank that are never relaxed. Easy does it, now."
They stared at each other, and she could see a small nerve tic in Marty's neck. She was suddenly sorry she had flirted, sorry she had thought Marty was pretending character changes. She didn't know this Marty. He had a temper she had never sensed before, a strength of anger.
Marty said, "I'm talking about my sister, Captain Barrow. Not some round-heeled slut who wants her kicks dillying with an Army captain. You're the intruder, not me." The captain just stared at Marty, and she thought, there is cruelty in this man. A hard, club-like cruelty. He sat relaxed, his hands on the edge of the table, without a line of tension in the thick fingers. He smiled loosely and his voice seemed to drawl.
"I don't see why a simple invitation has gotten out of hand, Private Fulmer. I don't want this to become a question of testing loyalties, but why don't we leave the last word up to Jill. After all, if she's old enough to drink and smoke, she must be old enough to decide for herself."
Marty turned to her and his face was like a flexed muscle. She didn't know why he was so enraged. His eyes seemed to bulge, and she knew he was in trouble now, that she had caused him trouble. She looked down at the table, again thinking herself a jinx to men, even to her brother, and cursed herself, wished she could get up and leave. Marty put his elbow on the table and flicked his thumb to point at the captain.
"Jill, this officer is the worst son of a bitch alive, do you hear? There was a kid in our barracks with a partially paralyzed face because Barrow wouldn't let him report to sick bay. His father is Senator Barrow and even our commanding officer can't take the disciplinary action he would like to take because of Barrow's connections. Right now, I'm out of O.C.S. for talking this way. How do you like that, Jill? I tell my dumb, but wonderful sister about an officer whose only interest in her is profane, and I'm out of O.C.S. Innocence is not it's own protection, Jill. Bastard Barrow is on the make, the take, and all your girlish guards will be picked away from you. Now, I want you to get up and go to the check room and I'll meet you outside. I don't want you to hear what goes on while Bastard Barrow gets his kicks telling me exactly what he's going to do to me."
She remained seated, tense, to keep from shuddering, realizing she had to go with the captain. The officer looked at her, and she stared at his narrow blue eyes, thinking that she would let him have some hard soul kisses, some lingering caresses, and an intimate, promising feel. Then she would demand to be taken home. She would be cold to him, and spiteful, and suddenly she wanted to laugh, because he didn't know she would jinx him, cause some terrible imponderable to happen to him.
The captain tilted his mouth into a patronizing smile and shrugged, "You can believe what you like, Jill, but I'd be damned proud to take you to a party, with or without your brother." She tapped out the cigarette and spoke with calculated nonchalance.
"Oh, I wouldn't mind going to your party, Captain Barrow. But I wouldn't like Marty to be dropped from O.C.S. It's important to him."
"Jill, you silly kid, will you get up and leave this table! What the hell do I care about O.C.S.! I'm not a careerist. This isn't a high school game where you're making a deluded sacrifice to uphold my position. You can't cope with an animal like Barrow."
"Captain Barrow, will you promise to forget the things Marty said about you?"
"I never heard them. On my word of honor. As an officer and a gentleman."
Marty snickered his contempt, and Jill glared at him, wishing he would stop believing she was a dumb-bell ignorant in the skills of avoiding a sex pass. She made herself smile at the captain, idly asking, "Where is the party, Captain?"
He said, "Eight-twenty-five West Eighty-sixth Street. You can pretend my uniform is a chauffeur's uniform. I'll drive you there." She reached out and touched her brother's hand.
"There, Marty, you see. Captain Barrow will be my chauffeur-a prince in disguise-and I'll be Cinderella who must be home by twelve or be changed into a washerwoman." Marty looked at her and there was affection in his smile.
"Jill, you don't belong with animals like Barrow, but I won't stop you. I won't stop you because you're older than your years, and wiser than your years, and nothing bad can really happen to you, not really. The worst this animal will try to do is lay you, and if that happens, it would happen anyway-by Barrow or Mike Steffne, or anyone. You're full of guilt now, and shame and despair, and you want some excitement, I know. But I'm not worried about you, not really. Your own innate sense of right tells you Barrow is vermin, of course it does. But I've maligned rank and you want to keep me in O.C.S. All right. Barrow will keep his word about not having me gigged out of O.C.S., he has to. He has as much honor as Judas, the morality of a degenerate, the justice of a jackal; but he has to keep the illusion of honor by being honorable-fighting down the man to portray the uniform is what it's called. So, don't worry about him hurting me. Just watch yourself, Jill, just watch out for yourself."
The captain chuckled, and it was like a snide rumble squeezed from between his teeth. She wanted to say, "I've changed my mind," but sat silent, strangely afraid and thrilled by her fear, wishing she was menstruating so nature could protect her. Marty leaned back and lit a cigarette and stared up at the ceiling. The captain grinned.
"Shall we leave now, Jill?" She looked at Marty, but he kept staring up at the ceiling.
She touched his hand, whispering, "I'll be home early, I promise." He nodded and smoked the cigarette. The captain stood up and she was surprised by his height. She moved to the side and kissed Marty's cheek, whispering, secretively, "The most he'll get from me is the least I've given to anyone." She left the booth and walked to the small check room for her topcoat, holding herself as tall and straight as she could. Some servicemen at the bar looked at her admiringly, then saw the captain behind her and glanced away. Come on, jinx, come on jinx, she pleaded to the metaphysical curse she was beginning to believe shrouded her life. Jinx this captain, hard and good. For Marty. For me.
17
She sat on the end of a long divan, her legs squeezed together, feeling alone and grim and a little drunk, though she wasn't sure she was a little drunk because she had never been drunk before. Jill kept staring to adjust her vision to the purple dimness, thinking of herself as a slender blade of grass being pushed down by large, oppressive weeds. The most pushy weed was Captain Barrow who, after introducing her to the others as, "My juvenile delinquent companion for the evening, Jill something-or-other," began drinking as though afraid tomorrow's wind would shatter all the glasses in the world and tomorrow's sun dry up all the liquor. Right now, he was at the makeshift bar set up on a long dining table, and when he returned, she knew he would begin making his pass for sex. She bit her tongue to get some feeling into her mouth and swore the most he would get out of her were some indifferent pecks and puckers unlike any kisses he'd had before.
Watching couples stand together and rub bodies while pretending to dance to music that had already stopped, she wished she could he back and sleep, for just a little while. Then she could awaken with a surge of strength and rush from this party that wasn't really a party, but a quick gathering of female strangers with military strangers who, in a few hours, would leave each other and never remember each other's names. She wrinkled her nostrils at the smell of acrid fumes she was certain was marijuana smoke, then cursed herself for leaving Marty. She hiccoughed. She tensed herself when she saw the captain weave toward her carrying a full glass of whisky. He flopped down, spilling some liquor.
"Great party, huh, honey chile?" he drawled. She sipped some liquor from her glass and shrugged.
In the darkened rear of the large room she could see officers and women sprawled on the other couches and stuffed chairs, grabbed together like policemen frantically holding onto wriggling criminals, hands slipping and pressing over each other as if searching for hidden weapons, their faces clutched in kisses like vampires trying to suck the life from each other. The only lights in the room were from a sixty-watt bulb in an indirect lamp focused onto the ceiling and a twenty-one-inch television screen turned to a between-channel slot. Jill thought of it as a great square eye staring at her, a fluoroscope patiently trying to penetrate her mind and witness her thoughts.
Three officers stood near the narrow door leading to the terrace and talked in low voices. She stared at the major, a short, tubby-bodied man with kinky blonde hair that was like a bleached potholder flattened on his head.
"This is Major Sandor's apartment," the captain had told her. "He's a writer. Books on military history. Very intellectual-but a drag of the first order. Tried to start a library on the post and got laughed at. An egghead." Never having seen a real writer, she kept staring at the major, wishing she could talk to the man, talk to someone with a wonderful mentality. She heard someone chuckle and stiffened when she realized it was Captain Barrow.
He held his glass near her mouth, saying, "Imbibe a little've mine, child. It's guaianteed to curl your morals."
Jill edged away, muttering, "I have my own, thank you."
He worked his hand behind her and held her waist, his fingers trembling on the soft flesh of her side. She leaned forward to free herself, and he grinned loosely, forcing her back, coaxing, "Relax, child, that's the order of the day. Relaxation."
She closed her eyes and quickly drank the warm liquor, then turned to him, snapping, "Can't we just sit still-just for a minute. You've been at me since we came in."
He sniggered sarcastically, "Maneuvers must begin sometime. Captain's orders." She pushed his arm down and his face swayed before her. She didn't know if he was drunk or if the liquor, now stinging in her throat, was making his face sway. She tried to think of how many kisses to let him have before standing up and demanding that he take her home, but the numbers she silently counted sounded indistinct in her mind.
The captain suddenly laughed, "Sixteen years old and never been kissed!" Jill wanted to smack the loose grin from his face and tell him, I've been kissed, Captain Bastard Barrow, by someone nicer than youll ever be. But she glared at him, silently, unable to remember whom she meant.
The captain gripped her arm and teased, "Afraid to kiss a big, grown-up man, girlie?" She pulled her arm away and moved to stand up, but he held her back and laughed, "I like'm coy." Then he leered lasciviously, "But A.B., After Barrow, they're blast furnaces!"
He suddenly grabbed the back of her head and jammed his mouth onto her mouth, and his lips were like hard rubber pads on her lips, his breath a harsh warmth bursting from his nostrils. She dropped the glass and struggled to push him away, to jerk her mouth from his tongue, a thick wet muscle against her lips. She felt his hand clutch her breast and she closed her eyes and hunched her body back, shaking her head, her hands pushed against his chest to force him back, hating his fingers dig-caressing her breast, hurting her, his tongue a sloppy hunk of flesh.
A voice above them suddenly said, "There's no need for that, Captain Barrow." Barrow lurched back, and she felt suspended between a shudder of disgust and a scream.
The captain looked up and sneered, "This is not your affair, Major." Jill saw the chubby-faced major frowning at him.
"Keep your voice down, Captain Barrow. In my apartment you'll behave yourself." The captain guffawed loudly and whacked his thigh.
"You intendin' to write me a book on conduct unbecomin' an officer, Major Sandor? How'd you get to be a major, anyhoo?" Jill squinted to see the Major's face better. His annoyed frown changed to benign amusement.
"The same childish way you became a captain, Captain. When I was called up by the Reserves, I used my connections." He grinned contemptuously. "Obviously my connections were superior to yours. Now settle down and enjoy the party, and your young lady." The captain shoved himself up from the couch, swayed to his full height and looked down at the shorter officer.
"Don't pull rank on me, Sandor. If I'm not welcome, we can find another joint." The major shrugged.
"Go where you like. But while you're in my apartment you'll conduct yourself with at least a modicum of propriety-or get out!" They stared at each other, and Jill grinned, thinking that the captain was getting what he had given Marty. She repeated the word "modicum" to herself, defining the word in her mind, "a small portion." She thought she must talk to this man, this real, published writer-ask him questions only a splendid mind could answer, sit with him, her mind flung open, her soul exposed, until her great and even little dilemmas were calmed by his wisdom.
The captain reached out and held her arm. "Come on, let's take off. I know a better spot." She forced her arm from his hand and pressed back against the divan.
"No, thank you, Captain Barrow. I'm staying."
He leaned over, demanding loudly, "I said move out!" She shook her head, wishing she could wiggle herself into a shadow and hide from the people who had separated to watch them, their eyes like glistening, wet slivers. The major shook his head, slowly.
"Don't force me to take action, Captain Barrow. Very little in this world is worth a court-martial."
The captain clenched his hands. Jill suddenly thought that her jinx was working overtime today. If the captain hit the major, he would be in the serious trouble only someone's jinx could bring him.
The major again shook his head, "Don't do it, Captain Barrow. If you hit me, even your father couldn't extradite you from a jail sentence. Think of the sacrifice, and think of the prize, and determine if it's worth it." The large room was strangely silent. Jill could sense savage impulses lashing through the captain who stood like a poised animal, even as he slowly turned and stared at her. She wanted to tell him, I'm not worth it; I'm cheap and cunning; I'm a rotten tease and a betrayer. I'm not worth it. The Captain kept staring at her, and she inched harder against the couch back, feeling like a sour gray spot that belonged at the bottom of a pail. His eyes were like hard green pellets aimed at her face. In her mind she counted, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand-until she counted ten thousand dollars. Then she began counting again. Gradually, like granite slowly pulverizing into sand, the captain's tension eased. He straightened up and nodded.
"You're quite right, Major. The prize is not worth the sacrifice." He winked threateningly. 'That's for you to remember, too, Major." He walked to the door and seemed to fade into the dark, his uniform a tan shadow. Slowly, Jill sighed and blinked her eyes. The major stepped backward, then moved toward the wall. Jill stood up and went to him, wanting to thank him for helping her. He drew a tin box from his pocket and picked out a long thin cigarette and lit the tip. His chubby face was sucked almost narrow as he inhaled, and she was startled at the smell of marijuana.
She shook her head, sadly, and whispered, "You shouldn't smoke that, Major." He grinned.
"Really? Am I being blasphemous or degenerate?"
He set the cigarette between his lips and sucked in a long inhale, his cheeks hollowing, his mouth a full inward pucker. He took the cigarette from his Up and glanced up, holding his breath as if havingingested a fuming insecticide he was keeping in his lungs to purify the tissue of malignant bacteria. Jill giggled, thinking he looked like a clown straining to swallow his own face. Finally, he exhaled, slowly, lingeringly, the smoke leaving his face in thin, gauzy streams that billowed at the ends. He opened his mouth and shaped it into a circle as if pronouncing a vowel, then sighed, half-lidding his eyes, then hummed luxuriously.
"Mmmmmm, Jill, that is sweet. Sweet as faith. Sweet as religion." He held the cigarette out to her and smiled.
"There, Jill, I didn't explode, did I? I didn't go through some fantastic chemical transformation. I'm not ready for the funny farm, am I? Mary is not at all contrary."
"A writer," she said, with pedagogical seriousness, "should not need an unnatural stimulus." Jill nodded, pleased with her logic, although being logical through the furry dizziness she felt was a strain. She had the sensation that Captain Barrow was crouched behind her, ready to rape her. She kept herself from turning by saying, "A man who writes books should receive stimulus from his creativity." The major winked at her.
"Perhaps. But Mary is my darling. She gives me a boot, you see. She doesn't make me forget, she makes what I remember sweeter. She doesn't give me the false courage liquor gives others; she makes me realize everyone is afraid, just as I am; so I become less afraid. Mary takes the knives out of thinking, for me. She isn't habit forming, Jill. She just makes living much sweeter, more tolerable. Consider the question of problems. Mary doesn't solve my problems. No, Jill, not at all. But she does slow me down and keep me from rushing into solutions that are hysterical. Try one, Jill. Go on. Mary won't hurt you. She'll make you like yourself. Self-like is an attitude we could all profit by."
Jill shook her head because marijuana was stupid, a crutch of smoke, a million dollars in eleven-dollar bills, a hot-rod wheel chair. But to slow down her problems, oh God, for just a little while. To see the fear in everyone and see her-elf as less afraid. To take the knives from her thinking ?d feel sweet and cool and lolling. Oh God, to feel lolling ad sweet for a little while.
The major shrugged. He fixed the cigarette between his lips and inhaled. Behind her, a woman suddenly laughed shril-y, then a man guffawed and another woman giggled as hough being tickled. Jill pressed her hands on her thighs, vishing she was older and looser, in every way. She was lisgusted with being young and prim, with thinking her con-cience was her total being, with hating herself for believing she was a jinx to men and had caused the ruin of Mike Steffne. She hated feeling that the moment she opened her eyes she was surrounded by threats and enemies.
You don't want to lay me, do you? she wanted to shout to the Major who stood before her, his eyes closed, his lungs filled with the smoke that sweetened his sensations, sweetened his thoughts. Someone must like me for myself, she thought. Not only for my sex appeal. She laughed, suddenly, curtly, and the major opened his eyes and looked at her. She crossed her arms over her breasts, challenging him, "You want to get me high on Mary and lay me. Isn't that the reason?" The major exhaled slowly, languidly, then grinned at her. He moved his arm in a wide arc and snickered.
"If I wanted a session with sex, I could have it with any female in this apartment. I am Major James Colling Sandor, author as well as officer. Why would I want just you when every female here is infinitely more equipped for the effort?"
"Because I'm a virgin."
"Then you're younger than I thought and probably not even worth a lout like Captain Barrow. A virgin is a terrible bed partner, Jill. She's all complaints and bickerings. No, not that, she says; and please be kind, she wails; and tell me that you love me, she begs; and I'll remember you all my life because you were the first, she promises-forgetting, of course, that long before this moment of truth she's been so digitally manipulated that she's done the foul deed a thousand times over. And yet, Jill, she's still so inexperienced that after it's over, all that has happened was some clumsy calisthenics, not love. A virgin is a prize only to a man who worries about his masculinity, who needs constant affirmation. That man's ego is more important than his pleasures. When a man makes love to a virgin he supresses his most glorious emotions to do some insipid stranger a favor."
"You're saying that just to dare me. That's why you're saying that."
"No, I'm not, Jill. I'm not Captain Barrow who exalts in cruelty. I'm a gentle man, a thoughtful man. I prefer to sustain sensation, not lop off my nerve endings in love-seat quickies. Captain Barrow revels in conquests; I take delight in mutuality. I would rather sit in my library, just fifteen feet from where we're standing, than dally in the awkward sweatings of eliminating virginity. No, Jill. When I make love to a woman, I don't want the act to obliterate my identity in her mind. I want the act to create me in her existence. Each act of love is not a time-filler until the next one, not to me. Each act of love, to me, must be memorable. And the only pleasure a virgin could offer me is to make me know I am still kind enough to pity a stranger."
She wanted to smack him. Smack his chubby face and keep smacking him until his face was swollen with welts and he couldn't speak, because she hated his sensibility, his intelligence. Even the slight drunkenness she felt could not push away the feeling that he meant it, that he didn't want to lay her, that first, sex was disgust, and only the young could make it more, not the experienced who wanted more than just flesh.
She held her hand out, saying, "I'll smoke one," and glared at him, challengingly, not afraid of one marijuana cigarette, feeling impervious to the effects because she was Jill Fulmer, and her nervous system was dominated by her mind, and no damn writer, no chubby, fat-faced writer could laugh at her. He picked a cigarette from the tin and held it to her. She stared at the cigarette and it seemed longer than king-size. She remembered a conversation she had once heard in the high school bathroom.
"I tried my first stick of Mary last night. It did nothing for me-utterly nothing."
And the other girl answered, "I never did. I'm afraid it might make me do what I want to do."
Her friend asked, "What's that?"
The girl answered, "You don't have to use your imagination. You know."
Jill shrugged, took the cigarette and put it to her lips. He smiled.
"Would you like to smoke it in the library, away from the maddening crowd?" She nodded. He stepped sideways to a door and opened it. He snapped on a small lamplight and she walked in, the cigarette dangling from her lips. He lit a match and she drew on the burning tip.
He said, "inhale slowly." She inhaled a little, and the smoke stung in her mouth as she looked at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the gaudy surrealistic oil paintings, the eight-foot-long antique mahogany desk. She thought, what a wonderful place to be seduced. She wished Mike was with her so she could show him the pity she felt for what had happened by letting him seduce her.
The major sat on a long, dark-brown leather couch.
Jill asked, "Have you read many of these books?" He smiled.
"Most of them. A writer must read, you know." She sat on the other end of the couch and inhaled again, wondering when the sweetness would happen to her. She leaned her head back and stared at the leaks of dark shadow on the ceiling, suddenly tired, thinking her face was a dangling mask and all the major had to do was peek at her, right now, and he would see her as the spiteful, selfish, greedy bitch only she knew she was. She closed her eyes because she didn't want to see the books, because she loved books, and there was no love in her now. She began to cry, silently, inhaling the cigarette smoke she wanted to sweeten her life, feeling that her life was a spiraling barber pole of colors, purple and angry like a deep scar that would never heal above the tiny scars she had collected in month-after-month living. like the time she had the measles and her mother let her go out of the house, not caring if the other school kids caught the disease. And thirteen children got sick before a teacher found out she was the carrier, and the neighborhood mothers, like a flock of bellowing cows, carried her home and threw her into the apartment and cursed her and her parents. They stood guard at her door to keep her from coming out. Oh the shame was purple and ugly.
She heard a voice say, "There you are, Jill, relaxed and sweet. You see?" The voice was soothing and gentle. "Now just lie back and think of wonderful moments in your life, think of poetry and song."
The spiral of colors in her was suddenly flush with frightening reds that were like slaps of raw flesh in her mind, and she thought of Sidney Finnetter, how he had said, "Ain'tcha gotta be a nurse 'afore you're a doctor?" So she followed him into the playroom of his parents' house and he showed her the thermometer, and she touched it, even if she knew it wasn't a real thermometer. And while she giggled and he giggled, they slipped to the floor and tried to work the thermometer in, to show the way nurses and doctors took temperatures; but his mother came screaming in and Jill jumped up and dodged the swing of the woman's heavy hand and ran home.
She felt herself being lifted from the leather couch and tried to see who was taking her to a bed to sleep, but her eyes wobbled and she was coughing and couldn't speak. The sensation was drifty and languid, and she was happy that soon she would sleep. The violent colors now spiraling lazily in her mind would be tempered to softer hues when she awoke. Oh yes. She clenched her mouth and stopped coughing and felt throbbing with heaves of gluey oranges. She tried to stop from remembering, to keep from cursing Edna Effler for parading her arm like a imagine salami because she had a sterling silver wrist watch and kept telling everyone the time. I'll have one too, you stinker, you'll see. Only mine'll be bigger, with more silver, and diamonds will be the numbers, and the hands won't be tiny and skinny. Haw-haw, my father'll buy me eight watches. He'll give me them, for holidays. Jill felt herself sinking into a deep cushion.
The voice beside her whispered, "I'll just draw these down for you. Oh the delights you'll feel, Jill, the fantastic, glorious delights I'll put into you, darling." And she wiggled with tickles of sensation, and the colors in her mind lurched together and swilled into dark greens. She sneered her mouth to stop from spitting at Trixie's face poised in her mind, a face that spoke silent words, making her thin mouth snap like fox jaws.
Although she couldn't hear Trixie, she knew her friend was furious for having been told, "Your tits are bigger'n Jill's, but nowhere's as nice!" Then she wanted to beg Trixie not to hate her because she had no control over how breasts grew, and she would save up her cheap allowance and lend Trixie three dollars for a special brassiere they sell in rupture stores-if only Trixie wouldn't hate her for having better breasts.
And the voice crooned, "Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant. Also our couch is leafy. Stay ye me with dainties, for I am lovesick. Let my left hand be under your head and my right hand embrace thee." And the voice was touching her body and kissing her body, and she wanted to tell the voice not to do her naughty because her mother examined her clothes and always asked her questions. And sometimes she did naughty just to spite her mother, but mostly she did naughty because naughty was nice. Oh do me a naughty, Mike-only not too much naughty, a touching naughty, a kissing naughty. You know what. Slow Mike, slow, easy, ooohh, easy naughty, naughty you. It hurts so easy.
"Thy navel is like a round goblet wherein no mingled wine is wanting," the voice hushed to her, and Jill squirmed luxuriously with gentle, probing caresses and wanted to raise herself to say she had to do a duty because under her belly felt strange.
"Thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two fawns-" She moved her head to edge aside the flares of color in her mind, because they were leaking over her body and felt heavy on her, heavier than wool coats. The hurnrning voice was becoming hoarse and gruff.
"Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away!" Pain whipped into her and lashed under her flesh, and the colors dashed from her mind as she screamed. A hand clapped on her mouth, and she struggled to scream and bucked her body. She saw a face above her and wanted to shout, don't fall on me! But the face moved away, then back, then away, and the screams in her throat drained and the pain slowly softened and the colors spilled back into her. But they were deeper now and spreading, and when the lush blues throbbed, she swayed and shook and throbbed with them, and the color opened and felt expanded into a smoldering yellow that looped in her and bulged out. She felt as though she were running and rushing and there was no weight in her. The voice croaked, "Oh baby oh baby oh babyohbabyoh ohbabyohbabyohbaby," and the colors began to fade. She didn't know why, but there was a burning scream beginning in her. The colors dimmed into bleak shadows, and she tensed and winced with the building scream burning harder in her.
"Ohbabyohbabyohbabyohbabyohbabyohbabyohbaby," she chanted with the voice chanting, "Ohbabyohbabyohbabyoh babyohbabyoh," above her. And she didn't want to scream, didn't want to burn, but the burn was like a splash of heat and the scream like a storm of force connected in her. Her mind and body suddenly became white, stark white, porcelain white, and glazed and stiff. She sobbed long and deep, until she moaned as the white instantly snapped and shattered. She poured down, further down into billowy darkness, sinking down, drifting down infinitesimal motes, until her mind and body were dark, soft and sleepy and lifeless dark, yawning toward another white, a dreamy white, an alive white.
18
JILL stood before the hotel window, studying the streaky grains in the yellow shade. Her throat felt dry from talking, her mind felt shriveled from remembering, her eyes burned from having stared at her fingers, the floor, her shoes, the walls, the veiny ceiling, the litter of crushed cigarettes in the ash tray, the black hands on her wrist watch, while she had talked, staring at objects to avoid looking at Marty who had listened without once interrupting. From the other room they could hear clicking and thumping sounds, and she wondered if all abortionists took so long to prepare for their operations. She wondered what would happen to her if, while doing his illegal work, the hotel door was suddenly crashed open and the police charged into the room. I would give birth to half a baby and lose the ten thousand dollars anyway. She clasped her hands together and closed her eyes and turned to her brother, her eyebrows arched in feigned amazement.
"Was that a day, Marty, or a nightmare?"
He sighed heavily. "It was a day to end all days, Jill." He shrugged. "But it was just a day. There will be better days to come-and worse days." She smiled wanly.
"Another day like that would kill me." She glanced to the door, muttering, "Maybe it will kill me, anyway." He shook his head.
"That was a bad day, yes. But after this is over, in a little while you'll forget about it. You really will, Jill."
"Did I tell you the clincher to the party, Marty? I didn't?
Well the clincher is most unforgettable. Before I left the apartment, I looked at the cigarettes in the ash tray in the library. There was only one marijuana cigarette in the place. It had lipstick on it. Whose was it? Why miss smarty pants' of course. I was fooled into it, Marty, like a dope. He was conning me and I got conned. Besides other things. Is that an unforgettable clincher?"
"It's a lulu, I'll admit. And Major Sandor's the worst bastard alive. Everyone knows that at camp. Barrow should have told me it was Sandor's apartment, and I really would have stopped you. But-it's over, so it's over. And you will forget it. All of it."
"Will I, Marty? Will I ever forget those things? And this one too?"
"Sure you will, hon. If people weren't able to forget pain, they would go insane before they reached the age of four. That's why our best memories are about pleasure-even though the bulk of what we experience is painful. Pain touches us much, much deeper than happiness does-but we remember our happiness best because the survival factor in us won't let us remember the pain too clearly. Hell, hon, a week from now you'll be laughing and thinking of a thousand ways to spend the money when you get it-and two thousand reasons why you should save the money."
"Will people know about this, this abortion, when they see me on television? Will it do something to me that can be seen, I mean?"
"Don't be idiotic, Jill. When you appear on that television screen you'll appear just as you really are. A beautiful going-on-seventeen-year-old girl who has just won ten thousand dollars and is so happy she can't think straight. The girls your own age who are watching will hate you with envy, the parents who watch you will wish you were their daughter, the young stallions who watch will have lewd fantasies. Hell, Jill, if some Hollywood or television producer is watching you, you might get a screen test. After tonight you'll have run your course of misery for a while, and all the days ahead, a long stretch of days ahead, will be thrill after thrill. Take my word for it."
She turned to the window shade again and prayed that God had listened to her brother's prophecy, and that He agreed and was now making preparations for her future happiness. "I don't want to be gloriously happy, God," she prayed in her mind. She just wanted to be free from misery, from decision, for a little while. Just until she filled up with strength enough to carry her beyond the hope of finally getting her money. She wanted her hopes to mean more than just money. "Let there be hope for Mike Steffne too," she prayed. Mike meant more to her now. Much more.
Jill closed her eyes again, deliberately recalling what had happened when she went to the hospital to visit Mike. She shuddered, now, with the lingering sensation of horror she had felt seeing him stretched on the hospital bed, both legs held thirty inches from the mattress by traction ropes and pulleys, his head and half his face bandaged, looking as though he had fallen into a snow bank. He had been reading and didn't see her come in. When her feeling of horror dimmed, Jill wanted to smile because he was reading a book on basketball regulations. Both his feet were in plaster casts and his bare toes were popped up like fleshy marshmallows. On the small nighttable was a pad and pencil and a crystal glass vase with a scatter of bright flowers. She cleared her throat. He shifted the book to look at her, then his uncovered eye widened, and he stared at her.
She whispered, "Mike."
He closed his eye and pointed to his mouth and shook his head, slowly, motioning that he was unable to speak. She moved closer, wishing she knew what to say. He laid the book down and the exposed skin on his forehead wrinkled into a frown. Silently, she began to cry, seeing his half-face through the blur of tears, confused because she hadn't been told he was unable to talk. She had expected him to scream at her, curse her, try and leave the bed to choke her. She was to blame, she had made the imponderable happen to him. She squeezed her lips together, feeling full of mumbles and stutters and wishing her tears were printed words, so she could cry a book of her sadness for him to read.
"Mike," she whispered again, stepping to the bedside, her tongue tip pressed against her teeth, thinking that she must talk to him, not just cry and cry. She sat on the white metal chair beside the bed and put her hand on the mattress. His eye was like a glass agate aimed at her face.
"Mike, believe me, Mike, I'm sorry. I didn't mean this to happen. You know I didn't, don't you? You know I didn't mean this to happen!"
He nodded. She looked at his lips and her mouth felt dry, as if her lips were filmed with the same thirst-paleness on his lips. He reached to the nighttable and took the pad and pencil. He pointed to his mouth, then wrote two words and turned the pad to her. She read, "Twelve stitches." His eye stared at her, then flicked to the pad as he began to write. She suddenly wanted to tell him she was no longer a virgin, that she had been had, and if he could do it, right now, she would undress and crawl into the hospital bed and let him do it to her. He stopped writing and turned the pad to her. She read the dark, labored words.
"Not your fault. Mine. I had to be a hero. I got clobbered. Only my fault."
She touched the pad and closed her eyes, asking God why Mike had so much sense and honesty, why someone she thought was slugheaded was only dumb about facts, not about feelings. Mike curled his fingers around her hand and his skin felt warm on her skin. She wanted to cry herself out to him, to explain that she was brilliant about facts, but slugheaded about life. What had happened to her at that party was her own fault, just as his terrible beating had been his own fault, because she thought she was a heroine, and she had gotten clobbered. His hand gripped her hand harder. She looked to him, and he winked, then released her hand and began writing. The wad of bandage on his right cheek was rimmed mucus-yellow.
Did you cry when they beat you? she wanted to ask him. Did you pray to God to strike Jill Fulmer dead for causing this to happen to you? Tell the truth, Mike; don't be kind. He turned the pad to her and she leaned forward.
"When I get out how about a date?"
She laughed suddenly, and her voice was a shrill spurt of sound. He winced and she clapped her hand on her mouth. Jill thought he didn't blame her, he really didn't blame her, and he still wanted to lay her. She thought that when he left the hospital she would walk to Bronx Park and sit on a bench and pray her thanks to God because in times of great relief there was only God to listen to you. She prayed that He make Mike recover immediately, so she could give him a date-a glorious date.
Jill leaned over the bed and lay her face beside his face and whispered, "Mike," and he edged his head closer to her. "Mike, I think you're wonderful and I mean it. Not because you don't blame me, but because, well, because you're just wonderful, and no buts about it. To be thinking of sex at a time like this makes you even more wonderful. Yes, you can have a date. A hundred dates, Mike. A thousand dates. And I won't stop anything you try to do to me. No matter what. And not out of pity, no, Mike, not out of pity. I mean it, Mike, no matter what you want to do, I want to do it, too. I mean it. And not out of pity."
His breathing was slow and heavy and the lid of his eye glistened and she whispered, "Don't cry, Mike, please don't cry. I'll make you happy when you get out. I swear I will." He nodded slowly, and she moved closer and kissed his cheek, then his dry lips, then his closed eye. He raised his arm and stroked her hair, and his large hand was gentle. She thought that pain makes us so tender, so loving, and she softly kissed his mouth again, and whispered while her lips were against his lips, "Mike, I love you-you know what I mean," saying you know what I mean because they were touched together by an imponderable. Saying I love you was the only deep feeling they could reach, though later their deep feelings would demand they say more, or less, than I love you. He raised the pad and pencil, and she moved away while he wrote.
She read, "I know what you mean."
Jill kissed him again, whispering, "Can I just sit with you now, Mike? Just sit. Not even talk. Just hold your hand and sit with you?" He motioned with his finger that he wanted to write, then wrote and turned the pad to her.
"I don't blame you. My fault."
She took the pad and kissed the words, whispering, "Thank you, Mike." They touched hands and intertwined their fingers and remained silent.
Jill heard the door to the hotel room open and she stiffened. Marty stood up.
"All right, miss," the doctor said. Jill and Marty waited for him to step out and lead her into the room.
Marty moved to her and put his arm across her shoulders, saying softly, "I'll be here every second, waiting for you.
The doctor said again, "All right, miss. I'm ready for you." She licked her lips and looked to Marty who smiled at her.
"It's just a simple thing, hon. There's just a pinch of pain and it's over." She licked her lips again and wanted to talk, to say something memorable, some message that was startling, so in case she died she would be remembered, maybe written about in some book of great last messages. Jill flattened her palms on her thighs and moved sluggishly toward the brilliantly lighted doorway that gaped like the phosphorescent mouth of a strange monster.
She reached for Marty's hand and squeezed his fingers, pleading, "Don't tell Momma or Poppa, please." He rubbed his cheek on her hair.
"Torture couldn't make me tell."
Jill stopped at the rim of the doorway and closed her eyes, saying, "You'll stay here all the time, won't you? You won't go out for anything?"
He shook his head. "I'll be here every second waiting for you. Every second." Slowly, she let his hand slip from her fingers and wished she could be someplace else, wished she could have the baby, wished that God was protecting her and not about to punish her, wished she could be brave, wished she could black-sleep the instant he began aborting her. She stepped into the room, her eyes still closed, thinking that now, not only was her soul changed by wanting the ten thousand dollars, but her body too would be altered. She kept her eyes closed, wishing that wishes were ladder rungs and she could climb up to heaven-even beyond.
Part II
19
J ILL sat in Mr. Elmacky's office, waiting for the principal to finish initialing the morning reports on his desk. He had not looked up when she entered his office.
He pointed to the chair near his desk, saying, "Sit there, Miss Fulmer," his voice curt, his stomach rumbling.
The hardwood seat of the chair hurt her buttocks and the fatigue she felt since the abortion was still with her. She wanted to wave her hand indifferently at the principal, and tell him, "Do whatever the damn you want about my scholarship recommendation. I couldn't care less," then slowly slump in the chair and silently sleep until the fatigue, the heavy sense of fear, left her. She didn't care about the ten thousand dollars, about being subpoenaed for Bosco's trial, about the television rehearsal she had to attend tonight, not even about her hatred for Captain Barrow who had gotten Marty kicked out of O.C.S., about the wild plans her father was making for his junk business. All she wanted was a solution to her physical condition-how to find out if she could still have children. She rubbed her hand on her stomach. To be sterile was to be dead. She stared at the glary American flag colors, thinking that if she was sterile, then she was just a living clod, a useless, unproductive lump. She moved her hand to her thigh. She must stop thinking about sterility. I'm not sterile, she told herself. I'm not at all sterile.
The principal set his pen on the desk blotter and looked up at her. She heard stomach sounds and thought of kids scratching hard matchheads across stone. He leaned back and opened the center desk drawer.
He said, "I have an item that will interest you, Mils Fulmer." He picked out a narrow red ticket. She stared at it. It lay on his palm like an amputated tongue. She shrugged.
"What is it?" He closed his fingers over the ticket and grinned.
"I'll be in the audience when you appear on the Noon-Fresh program. I thought my presence would encourage you. Help you to overcome any possible stage fright." He widened his grin, and she could see the silver hooks of his bridgework fastened to his lower teeth. She shrugged again.
"Enjoy yourself." His grin slipped into a pout and she wanted to laugh at him. Tell him he was a pimple hardly worth squeezing. His stomach began noising. He clenched his hand.
"I will not tolerate insolence." She stared at him.
"Will there be anything else, Mr. Elmacky?" The sounds in his stomach were like the croaks of a dying frog. He shook his head and glared at her.
"That will not be all, Miss Fulmer." She intertwined her fingers and waited. He dropped the ticket into the drawer and tapped the desk. "During your three-day absence from school an interesting something happened. I was visited by a former friend of yours. Teresa Galivinisch. Are you interested in what she told me?"
"I'm interested in anything you want to tell me, Mr. Elmacky."
"You seem changed, Miss Fulmer. Cool and detached, for some reason. I have the unpleasant feeling that you've matured since the last time I spoke with you. You seem somewhat older."
I've had life cut out of me, she wanted to tell him. I lay sprawled on a makeshift table, my legs bent and in the air, while a doctor nibbled at my insides for three hundred dollars. Scrape, scrape, like cleaning a little potato. I'm not older; I'm just disgusted. He took a little life out of me and left a little horror. The principal squinted at her, as if trying to see her thoughts. She tensed her fingers and nodded.
"What did Trixie have to say about me?" The principal licked his lips.
"She said that your winning the contest was fraudulent. That you did not write the winning sentence."
"That is interesting. Did Trixie tell you who wrote the sentence?"
"Yes. As a matter-of-fact, she did. She said that she wrote the sentence. She claimed that her natural modesty prevented her from putting her name down, so she permitted you to copy her sentence, in your handwriting, and submit it." Jill smiled. The principal shrugged.
"A fiction, of course. Teresa's scholastic achievements are below average, really. And she doesn't strike me as a youngster who would involve herself in competitive projects." He picked up the fountain pen and screwed on the cap. She relaxed her fingers and thought of what would happen if Trixie found out about the abortion. The principal rolled the fountain pen between his fingers.
"I have imparted that item of information to demonstrate my concern for you, Miss Fulmer. In a situation such as yours, one is prey to the whims of those who envy you. However, you must not take such accusations lightly, Miss Fulmer. Presented to an audience less sympathetic than myself, you might find yourself in a disastrous predicament. However, I was most definite about advising Miss Galivinisch not to repeat such an absurd story. Now-as to the matter at hand, I have your acceptance speech ready. If I do say so myself, it is quite literary. I have inserted the quotation, 'Fame is a fickle food, upon a shifting plate,' for the-"
"It comes from The Single Hound,' by Emily Dickinson."
"Yes, yes, Miss Fulmer. You have a remarkable memory. Now-"
"Do you know the one 'A man must keep his mouth open a long while before a roast pigeon flies into it'? It comes from-"
"Shall we dispense with this quoting of quotations and get to the business at hand, shall we? Now, will you be good enough to glance at what I have written before I rehearse you?"
He drew a paper from the desk and held it toward her. Jill wished she had a lighted match. She would burn the stupid speech. She took the paper and folded it without glancing at the precisely typed words. He frowned and his stomach gurgled.
"I've instructed you to read it, Miss Fulmer."
"I don't have to, Mr. Elmacky. I'm sure it is better than the Gettysburg Address."
"Miss Fulmer, your impertinence is infuriating. I've set aside twenty minutes of my very busy morning to rehearse you in the reading of it. You are trying my patience."
"A rehearsal isn't necessary, Mr. Elmacky. My ability to read a speech is quite adequate. If I decide to read what you have written."
His stomach chugged noises that sounded like boiling water, but Jill felt no laughter over the ridiculous sounds. She wanted to spit at him. He flattened his hands on his stomach and she could see his thumbs press hard into his brown vest, as if trying to strangle an untrained animal. He shifted to the side, and she studied his profile, thinking that his face was like a doughy cartoon. He leaned back and thoughtfully tapped his chin.
"Ten thousand dollars seems to be a lot of money, Miss Fulmer. A veritable fortune. And of course money provides power, and with power comes arrogance. You may feel you don't need a scholarship to help you in a medical career. Dear child, you are in for a terrible disenchantment. Have you any idea what an ordinary college education costs today? I would suggest you investigate. And a medical education is four times as costly. Ten thousand dollars. Is your health so invulnerable that you needn't consider accidents? Are you so completely covered by hospital policies that you'll be free of bills in case you take sick? Have you thought of death, Miss Fulmer? What if one of your parents should die? Have you any idea what it costs to bury someone today? I would suggest you investigate. Shall I name the odd and sundry impediments that occur to drain the inexhaustible resources of even the truly wealthy? Ten thousand dollars, indeed. I'll betray a confidence to you, Miss Fulmer. It may clarify some doubts. When I married, my wife had fourteen thousand dollars. In those days the dollar was worth four times, if not more, the value it has today. Exactly two months after our marriage she learned she had a malignant tumor in her right breast. Her fourteen thousand dollars, by the time treatment was done, dwindled to eight thousand dollars. A month later it was learned that she was diabetic and I developed kidney trouble. I won't go into the various impediments that befell the Elmackys, but in two years I was three thousand dollars in debt. We never bought that five-room home in Brooklyn Heights, never bought a car for Sunday outings, never could afford children. You have ten thousand dollars, Miss Fulmer. Really? Ten thousand dollars-indeed!"
Jill sat with her head nodded, knowing she should feel pity. Underneath his factual manner of speaking she sensed a sadness, a control against sobbing. And she was sorry for him. Sorry that misery and tragedy had squeezed him into a beggar. She wanted to say, I'll read your speech, Mr. Elmacky! And be done with sitting in his office, feeling sadness for a man she disliked. She rubbed the back of her hand, smiling wryly, knowing she would have to read his speech because he was right. Ten thousand dollars was not enough. She needed a scholarship to college. And what was a small lie like the one he wanted her to tell compared to the shame she felt, now? Not much, not really. The principal shifted around to face her. He poked the fountain pen into his jacket pocket and smiled.
"I have asked several important people to watch the Noon-Fresh program. I'm sure you'll agree that this is an important moment in both our lives. For me it will mean a step higher in education, where my administrative abilities will be put to more creative uses. For you, well, Miss Fulmer, I need not elucidate on the many advantages. Now, there is just one more favor I will ask of you. When you speak my name as your intellectual benefactor, I want you to request that the television cameras be turned to me so that the important people watching will receive the full effect and impact of my personality."
She shook her head because she didn't want to do it. She wanted to stop her lies. A small lie is as great as the greatest lie ever told. And she had won that contest. By herself. Alone. Being laughed at since she was ten years old. Scrimping to buy the idiotic and tasteless products for the box-top, the coupon, for stamps and envelopes. And then to win. To finally win above the millions of others who enter such contests. She looked at the floor, imagining herself standing on a stage, speaking alien words, then gesturing her arm, like flaunting a banner, and announcing, "I owe all my achievement to my intellectual benefactor, Mr. Cyrus Elmacky, Principal of Melrick High School!" The cameras would swing to his pipsqueak, putty face, and if they asked him to speak, the microphone would suddenly crackle and gargle and gurgle with the rumblings in his crazy stomach. She shook her head again. Her body, her face, her voice would betray her. And it was a he. A damned, stupid, senseless lie. She closed her eyes, wishing she could tell the principal that he would spoil her glorious moment, turn it into a humiliation. She needed the scholarship, she wanted to be a doctor-but more than her career seemed to be at stake. Her character was being tested by this imponderable, and without character she would be as sterile in her soul as she might now be in her body.
The principal suddenly smacked the desk top, shouting, "Miss Fulmer!" Jill looked at him, startled. He leaned over and pointed at her threateningly.
"From the moment Teresa Galivinisch left my office, I have been going through a terrible struggle with my conscience. How has an apparent fool, an obvious dunderhead, been able to remain in the advanced classes? How, I asked myself? Can I have been mislead by appearances? Beneath her coarse, idiotic manner is there an intelligence that has escaped my trained eyes? No-I think not. Then how has she managed to survive the various examinations? By cheating-that was my conclusion. It is only logical. Well then, has she cheated willy-nilly, copying from anyone's papers? No, I think not. Were I to investigate further, would I not learn that throughout her high-school career she was seated beside or close to a Miss Fulmer? Yes, I believe so. Now, if this be true, then am I not compelled to conclude that this Miss Fulmer permitted Miss Galivinisch to cheat, and am I not, as the higher authority, forced to expel or demote Teresa Galivinisch for wanton cheating, and Miss Fulmer for aiding and abetting her in this contemptible and possibly criminal behavior? Ten thousand dollars. Scholarship, indeed! No amount of money in the world can eradicate the name of cheat from the record of a high-school student. What am I to do, Miss Fulmer? It is a most grievous perplexity. My, my, what am I to do?"
She stared at him, and the meaning of what he intended to do, if she did not recite the lie, slowly worked into her mind like an ugly, hurting growth. She could be held back two years or expelled from school, and her record would follow her to any school she tried to enter. Her hopes for her education and career would be flattened, become stale. Jill shook her head as she stared at him, seeing the steadiness of his small eyes, the tense smirk of his mouth. The sensation that he was desperate and frantic behind his bland face made her want to shudder; she wanted to scream that it was rotten to want to own someone's whole life, to jiggle and flip someone's life any time he pleased. His eyes behind the bifocal lenses seemed shriveled into metal nubs. She thought of how she had jiggled with Mike's life, and Marty's army life, Trixie's life, the lives of her parents, her own life. And she knew that in casual human impulses that do not seem unusual and intense, one person stands guard or in control of another's life, and those instances become little dramatic shocks upon which the person's total life is built. A little destruction here, a little destruction yesterday, some destruction there, and another destruction, and another, piled onto one's life, becomes, at a crystallizing time, a shock that shoves your whole life in a direction-toward your growth or your ruin.
His eyes, staring at her so stiffly, hurt her eyes, and she had to look down, telling herself, "He'll do it to me; he will." She knew there was no way out, and no one she could ask to help her. He was the principal. The higher authority, as he said. And if he questioned Trixie about who had helped her to cheat for so many years, Trixie would scream triumphantly, "Jill Fulmer!" Because Trixie didn't care about scholarships or college and seemed to be living now only for revenge. There's no way out, she told herself. No way out. The principal slowly relaxed his face and noises clapped in his stomach, then changed to mushy thuds, as though mice were doing somersaults. He smiled with fake sincerity.
"I'm not a malicious man, Miss Fulmer. In one lifetime we are entitled to many misjudgments about friends and circumstances. I would never dream of destroying a brilliant career for the sake of upholding a rigid rule. A principal must administrate authority with understanding and justice, not just blind rulings. I would advise you to allow no minor impediments or sentimental moralities to hinder you in the pursuit of splendid achievements. On second thought, Miss Fulmer, you are quite right. Rehearsing what I have written would make it appear rehearsed, rather than spontaneous. Therefore, you may memorize it in your own inimitable fashion and recite it as you will. Naturally. Now it would be best if you returned to your classes and continued with your studies."
She bent over, suddenly, and began to cry, her body shuddering. She covered her eyes that felt loose and swimming, crying because there was no way out. She had brought this imponderable upon herself, because she always hated letting Trixie cheat from her papers, but if she had refused Trixie would have hated her and she wanted a friend. She was crying because she hadn't cried since the abortion, and sorrow was like a swollen sac that had to burst out. Deep in her she hoped crying would soothe his desperation, make him pity her and say she need not tell the lie.
She shook her head, sobbing, "How did this happen, how did this happen?" Her throat felt like squeezed rags filling her mouth with fetid drippings. "How did this happen to me, how?" she asked aloud. The principal left the desk and walked to the door. He pulled down the dark green shade covering the office-door window.
He turned to her, saying, "I cannot stress how important it is that you have the television cameras focused on me when you say my name. Your future depends on it." He opened the door and smirked at her. "When you are done with this silly demonstration, you may return to your classes." He stepped into the corridor and closed the door. The sudden silence felt like blunt plugs pressed into her ears. She sat, huddled over and crying as she wondered how this insoluble imponderable had happened to her.
20
SITTING beside the assistant producer of the All-Family Foods television program, Jill felt nervous only because it was a rehearsal and not the actual show which she wished was already over. The assistant producer, a short man with large eyeglass frames and a relaxed, almost sleepy manner, chuckled softly at the male singer who kept flattening the notes at the end of "Swanee River." She liked him for chuckling at Rip Martin because the male singer was a vain illiterate with a fluke voice. The assistant producer is an intelligent man, she thought. And she liked his name, Franklin Frederick, because it had a euphonic sound. The program director waved his arms and the orchestra stopped playing.
He yelled, "Come on, Rip, boy, you can reach them."
The singer yelled back, "I can't reach those goddam top notes and you goddam well know it!" His young, round face creased with show-off indignation as the other performers stopped rehearsing to listen. Jill grinned, remembering how Augusta Jaffe and Rochelle Weiner faked heavy swoons when they heard Rip Martin's name or saw him perform on television.
The assistant producer turned to her and smiled, "Simple people like ourselves should never meet their heroes, Jill.
It's disappointing to find a myth wearing a toupee. Is Rip Martin an idol of yours?" She shook her head.
"If he was Count Hermann Keyserling or Bertrand Russell, he would be. But not a singer."
Mr. Frederick patted her hand. "Good girl."
The singer nodded to the program director, "I'll take it once more." He stepped nearer to the orchestra section, his eyebrows raised, his face an expression of exasperated sacrifice. The musicians tiredly raised their instruments and the conductor raised his arms to lead.
The music was brassy and loud, and to stop the noise from clamoring in her mind and making her wince, she deliberately selected a problem from her many problems that worried her and thought about it. She would tell her father that if he touched one penny of her prize money she would leave home and never return. Jill shrugged. That was no solution. She leaned back, closing her eyes and remembering how he had hurried into her room while she was dressing to attend this rehearsal, his face animated, his eyes glittering with happiness, a sheaf of letters in his hands.
"You'd better hurry up and get that money, daughter. You're liable to put me out of business before I get into it. I've lined up three steel mills who say they'll buy all the junk metal I can supply them with. And I picked up some contracting contacts who'll tip me off on buildings that are coming down because of-"
"Poppa, why don't you listen to me. You can't have my money. You can't, you can't, you can't. Nothing you say or do can change my mind. Not even if you hate me for the rest of my life."
"Now, now, daughter. I could never hate my own daughter, so don't get your wind up. The second you get that check, that's when I'm in business; so let's not have a poop about it. I'm your father and let me say again, your legal guardian. So that takes care of the money end of the deal."
"But I might not get it, Poppa, don't you understand. After this rehearsal tonight I have to be at the hearing for Bosco. If the newspapers get hold of the story, they'll print it, and the morning the newspapers come out is the same day I have to appear on television for the money. But the All-Family Foods Company will cancel me once they hear about the scandal. So you can be building up a lot of dreams and plans on make-believe money. Not real money."
"It won't get into the newpapers, so don't worry, daughter. They keep these kid things on the q.t. so no one gets a stigma on their name. I'm your father, child, and I'm older, and I know these things. Leave it to your father."
She had wanted to tell him, you were almost a grandfather, did you know that? The generations of Fulmers was almost extended to another. But now it might never happen from me. I might be sterile. And then she wanted to sneer at him, why couldn't I come to you and explain what happened? You're supposed to guide me, comfort me, love me through misery and pain. But I couldn't come to you because you would have beat me, spit on me, called me filth and damned me in the image of my mother. You're not a father, Poppa, not really. You're a lump. A failure waiting to spoil someone else's beautiful opportunity-if it ever happens to me. She walked to the dresser mirror and began brushing her hair, wishing she could hate her father, feel something positive about him. He leaned against the wall and grinned at her.
"Pretty yourself up good now, daughter. Make me proud of my little girl."
"I wish I could feel proud about my father."
"You stop that talk, daughter, I'm warning you. I may be just a window-washer now, but in six months I'll be a tycoon. And don't you think different."
"Oh, Poppa, you're ridiculous. Why can't you be just what you are and stop making an idiot of yourself and ruining my chances for a career-if there is one for me."
He strode to her and grabbed her shoulder, his fingers digging pain into her, making her cringe back to be free from his grip. He held her, his face flushed with controlled anger, his large stomach pressed against her side.
"You keep a respectful tongue in your face, and I mean it. I mean it." She jerked her shoulder from his hard fingers and rubbed the bruise.
"You won't get my money if I get it, you won't!" she shouted, wanting to smack his jowly face, wanting to kick him. He shrugged, then grinned at her.
"After all is said and done, daughter, you still won't stop me from becoming a successful junkman. No one will. I wasn't cut out to be a window-washer. I was made for better things-only until now the fleet passed my port. But now the boat's come in for me, and for you, and for your cheating mother, and Martin. So kick up a fuss all you like, daughter, you can't stop me, not you, not anyone."
The orchestra music blared in her mind and the picture of her father standing with his hands on his hips, his belly pumped out in full arrogance, was shattered. She shook her head and sighed. Mr. Frederick turned to her, then pointed to a wide white sequined and starred drape.
"Your position will be behind the curtains. When the orchestra plays the All-Family's theme music, that's your cue to step forward for your interview. It won't be a depth-probe into your past or character. Just general, casual questions of the human-interest variety. They will cover only the information you provided on the personal questionnaire. Answer them any way you like. Our master of ceremonies, Jolly Harry, is pleasant and you'll feel right at home with him. When you see a red light on one of the cameras pointing at you that means that that camera is focused on you. That's all there is to it."
"Can I ask you a personal question, Mr. Frederick?"
"Go right ahead. That's what I'm here for. To help the winning contestant who, in this particular case, is quite charming."
"Thank you, Mr. Frederick. But if you were under legal age and someone close to you, your father for instance, was trying to use your ten thousand dollars on a foolish scheme, would you be able to stop him? Legally, that is."
"Your father threatening to spend your money, is that the trouble?"
She shook her head, "Oh, no, nothing like that," and looked down. She didn't want to slander her parents. She listened to the music that sounded like the accompaniment to stampeding soldiers, thinking that she would not admit the truth. But he would know she was asking about herself. He was sharp, and intelligent. He was sensitive to her, never pushing at her, never yelling his directions as though at a moron. She said, "No, Mr. Frederick," then shrugged. "I'm asking about a friend of mine who also happens to be getting ten thousand dollars." He grinned, slyly, and pinched his eyebrows together in mock pondering.
"Well, since it is a friend, why not just assume it's a fictional character and build a real plot around her. Say, a young girl from dignified obscurity suddenly wins ten thousand dollars in a box-top contest. Her parents, her legal guardians, demand that she turn the money over to them for dubious uses. Beset and bewildered by this ugly turn of events, she takes her pending calamity to the All-Foods executive staff, the president, or the vice president, who happens to be in the studio during rehearsals-and either one of these notables cool her fevered brow and states, 'Never fear, lassie, we'll foil the rapscallions.' And the young lady's fortune is saved."
She leaned forward, anxiously asking, "How, Mr. Frederick, how is it done?" He cupped a hand around his ear to mute the loud orchestra playing and winked at her.
"Quite simply, Jill. A contract of sorts is drawn up, arrangements are made to put the money in trust for her. A trust fund set-up. Although your friend's parents are her legal guardians, they are guardians only over their progeny, not the guardians of the All-Family funds. The company can arrange to become the guardian of the trust fund, or allot the position to a bank who determines, through prearranged instructions, when to disperse the funds. In fact, it's the smartest way to handle the money in terms of income taxes. I'm not quite sure why, but that seems to be the advice accountants give our winners."
"Is Mr. Seymore the vice president? I'm asking only for a friend, mind you. But I was interviewed by Mr. Seymore and he seemed very nice. I just wondered if Mr. Seymore could give me advice on how to make such arrangements-for my friend, of course."
He grinned at her, saying, "Relax, Jill, I understand. Mr. Seymore is just the man who can solve your problems-I mean your friend's problems." They laughed softly and Jill squeezed his hand in an impulse of affection. She leaned back and sighed, and slowly, as her anxiety dwindled, the loud music sounded merry and jumpy. She began tapping her toe on the floor. She would go to Mr. Seymore's office and ask the vice president to set up a trust fund to keep her father from taking her money. It's so simple, she told herself. So idiotically simple.
Mr. Frederick touched her hand, saying, "Excuse me a moment," and left the chair to speak with the director. Jill wondered if she should tell her father, right out, Forget your silly plans. My money is in trust and you can't take it. Should she let him build himself up to the sky with his false dreams and whack, topple him over, just like that, for wanting to hurt her, for not caring about her future? She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to think seriously, though she wanted to giggle like a ticklish child. Mr. Frederick walked over to her and smiled.
"By a strange coincidence, Jill, you're wanted in Mr. Seymore's office." She stood up and smiled back at him, certain he had told the director about the trust fund and he had notified Mr. Seymore. Mr. Frederick pointed to a wide gray door.
"He's in that office. I'm not sure what he wants, but after his business with you is completed, why not tell him about your business."
"I will, Mr. Frederick, and thank you, very much."
"Just doing my job, Jill. Routine, that's all it is."
He winked at her and she said, "Thank you again, Mr. Frederick." She walked to the office door, thinking that there still were some warm and good people in the world. Jul opened the door and saw Trixie sitting beside Mr. Seymore's desk. Immediately she felt like shuddering and turning around to leave the office, certain it was all over, that Mr. Seymore feared a terrible scandal and was rejecting her as the winner. Mr. Seymore nodded to her and she stepped to the desk, wondering what lie she could tell to contradict Trixie's story about Mike Steffne and how she was responsible for a near street-gang killing. Mr. Seymore said, "Miss Fulmer," then glanced to Trixie.
"A matter of grave importance has been brought to my attention by this young lady."
Trixie nodded and frowned with heavy seriousness. Her blonde hair was fluffed and interwaved into a graceless braid-crown that seemed settled on her head like a sagged layer of meringue. She wore long glass earrings that glittered even in the subdued fluorescent lighting. Her lipstick was a bright smear on her narrow mouth. She sat with one leg crossed over the other, her tight blue skirt hiked about eight inches along her thigh. She kept tapping the tips of her fingers together and shifting in the chair. Jill sensed she was excited and controlling herself, like the time she had found a wallet stuffed with one-dollar bills and she kept it hidden for a week before counting the money. Then she talked and babbled about how she would spend the forty-three dollars.
Jill wanted to ask, "What does my former friend, my nemesis, want now?" But she remained silent, waiting for the imbecile disaster to happen. Mr. Seymore set his hands on the edge of the desk and stared at her.
"The All-Family Foods Company is a highly reputed segment of the American food industry. In the seventy-three years of our existence it has not once been blemished by a scandal. We deal with the American family. If one unholy stigma, one, mind you, were to be associated with our good name, the public would lose faith in our character, our integrity. We will not allow that to happen; we will not allow to happen to us what happened to the quiz shows. A winning contestant must be a citizen of unimpeachable character. If he or she isn't, then proper steps, effective steps are taken to alter our decision. Miss Fulmer, this young lady claims that she wrote your prize-winning sentence as a favor to you, on the condition that if it won, you were to share the prize. Miss Galivinisch demands that we pay her five thousand dollars and permit her to participate in the television program."
Trixie nodded and turned to Jill who kept staring at Mr. Seymore, thinking that she must not give up, not yet She must try, at least once more, to get her money. But I'm tired, Mr. Seymore, she wanted to tell the man-then explain that she had gone through so much for the moneyfrom ridicule to fear to abortion. There's hardly any fight left in me. If I could sell the money for some peace of mind, I would. She sighed heavily, and glanced at Trixie who was smiling. She looked at Mr. Seymore.
"The reason Trixie, Miss Galivinisch, is claiming that is because I refused to give her two thousand dollars for a modeling school. She's done this before, you know. She went to the principal of our high school, Mr. Elmacky, and told him the same story, and he laughed at her. But all right. If Trixie wants to spoil my accomplishment and my good fortune, then I'm entitled to defend my rights. Mr. Seymore, will you ask Trixie to repeat the exact sentence that won the prize?"
Trixie frowned and shook her head. "I wrote it for you a long time ago, so don't get clever. No one can remember that far back." She squinted meanly, hissing, "If I ever asked you for money, it wasn't to give me, only to lend me." She leaned closer to Mr. Seymore, demanding, "I want what's mine, and wanting it don't make me a cheapie." He looked at Jill.
"Miss Galivinisch's explanation is plausible. The winning sentence was submitted over four months ago. It would be difficult to remember."
"All right, Mr. Seymore, I'll agree with that. But this is really silly, in case you didn't know. I was just about to come and see you to ask if you could arrange to have the money put in a trust fund for me so when I started medical school it would be waiting for me. Ironic, isn't that the best word for this situation? But anyway, would you say I was asking a fair question if I asked Trixie how to spell exhilarating?"
"You don't have to ask. I can tell you right now, I can't spell it, and you know it. When I wrote the sentence I used the dictionary for the spelling."
"That too, Miss Fulmer, is a plausible explanation."
"All right, then can I ask her to define the meaning of exhilarating?"
Trixie jumped up, shouting, "You stop trying to make a moron out of me!" Mr. Seymore edged his chair back and stared at them. Jill sensed that he wanted them to argue, believing that the truth would blurt angrily from their argument. She studied Trixie whose lips were twitching and her eyes blinking rapidly. She knew that Trixie wanted to argue, wanted to flaunt herself, her imaginary, exciting, tempestuous, charming personality before this television executiveto be admired, adored, worshipped. She winked at Trixie and spoke with confidential softness.
"Did you know that Mr. Elmacky called you an effervescent provocateur and a kaleidoscopic melange of profundities worthy of universal emulation? Did you know that?" Trixie crossed her arms over her large breasts and smirked.
"That slob can call me all the names he-likes, it still can't change my claim. And if you're trying to get me mad by repeating those names he called me in front of this gentleman, you can stop trying. I'm above such things."
"If I agree to give you half the prize money, will you agree not to go to modeling school and use the money for a smarter purpose?"
"You do with your money what you want, and I'll do with my money what I want. I'm going to modeling school, period. Maybe you don't think I've got that certain something, but who the hell are you to say? If you had what I have, you'd go too."
"Oh, be sensible, Trixie. You saw your face in the mirror. You know the truth. Why don't you invest your money in a college education like I'll be doing. You couldn't model banana peels."
"You shut your damn smart mouth and tell the gentleman I wrote the sentence. You think I care what you think? In two years I'll be so far above you, I'll cry out of pity for you. Maybe I'll throw you a boy friend out of pity. Some creepy millionaire I'm tired of, or maybe I'll let you be my dressing lady. You know, like in the movies, and you can wear my second-hand clothes. It's just too bad for you that-"
"You'll need more than modeling school, Trixie. You said so yourself. You want to be an actress too, don't you?"
Trixie grinned, though her eyes narrowed with squinting dislike, and Jill knew she had forgotten Mr. Seymore was watching them, listening. She's alone, in her own make-believe. Trixie slid her hands over her breasts and along her hips and laughed mockingly. "That's just my intentions, Miss High Tits. Can't you see it all, me on some stage speaking words you never heard of?" Her tongue flicked between her lips and she stepped around the desk, undulating her body in crude motions of seductiveness. Jill wanted to turn away, ashamed for having to humiliate someone she had once loved. But Trixie never loved me, she told herself. She never loved me. Trixie stood with one arm held out in dramatic magnanimity, her voice pitched to a comic falsetto.
"Everything can happen if you hope in it hard enoughyou said so yourself. I can get my name in the newspaper columns. Only it won't be Teresa Galivinisch. I'll change it to Sherry Torn, so it's easy to remember. By the time I'm twenty years old, five thousand dollars will be lollipop money, only first I need to get me started. You can-"
Jill nodded and stared at Trixie as Trixie talked and strutted about the office, her body jerking into different poses as she explained how she would achieve success in different realms of public exhibitionism until she was exploded into fame.
Jill, suddenly feeling vicious and angry because Trixie was dumb and wild and would cut up the world to find a green pea of pleasure, leaned closer snickering, "Really, Trix, really now, do you think that's really true?" Trixie's voice harshened as she talked, and Jill leaned back, silently urging her to keep talking, keep explaining. Keep spouting your desperate dreams, pour out the glorious stories you've held in the secret recesses of your imagination. Jill glanced at Mr. Seymore as Trixie told why she would prefer to be a television star instead of a movie star-because more people watched television more often than they watched the movies. Mr. Seymore sat staring at his wrist watch, tracing a finger along the gold links of the wrist band, his wide mouth pressed in a morbid line, his narrow face bland, expressionless. Trixie's voice became shrill and the words rushed from her as though they were pains she was spitting out.
"-and if you think Elizabeth Taylor or Sandra Dee have sex-plus you don't know what sex-plus is until you see how I can put it on. All I need is polishing up, that's all, and money's the best polisher there is. Maybe I'll go to Europe afterwards. Remember how we used to talk about going to Europe, remember? Hell, Jill, making a foreign movie don't get you much money, but it sure pays off in prestige. Look at what it did for that Texas cooze-what's her name? And what's Brigitte Bardot got that I can't match, and more besides? Only I won't let them dub in my voice, I'll study up on the language. You can help me, like you always did, Jill. I'll pay you, so don't worry. You know I'm better on show than I am studying; but we can meet counts in Europe, and barons. Hell, look at Grace Kelly. And don't you forget, before she was an actress she was a flat-chested model, like I'll be-except I won't need falsies. Can't you see it, Jill? Her Higliness Trixie Galivinisch. I'll have to use my real name, and the whole world will wait until I'm knocked up, and hold its breath to see if it's a little Prince or a Princess and can you see my-"
"Miss Galivinisch!" Mr. Seymore suddenly shouted, his face taut with rage. Trixie stopped talking, her mouth open as she looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise. He held out a slip of paper that trembled in his fingers. "I want you to state the exact sentence you claim to have written for Miss Fulmer." Trixie snapped her mouth closed and stared at him as though paralyzed while watching a lethal snake crawl to her. Softly, Jill wanted to say, Go home, Trixie, scheme another scheme. Something might come up. Jill felt pity for Trixie because she was clownish, with her loud make-up, her burlesque body that Mike used the way a sex maniac used his hand, the childish babble of her impossible dreams. Trixie moved her mouth to smile, shook her head, then tried to smile again.
"I said I forgot it. It was so long ago."
"Miss Fulmer, can you state the exact sentence?"
"Yes, Mr. Seymore. 'I like All-Family's Noon-Fresh cereal because it is the afternoon friend who chases hunger with exhilarating satisfaction, and like a friend, it never lets me down and always cheers me up.' I give you my word of honor, Mr. Seymore, I did not have help. And this isn't the first time I've entered an All-Family Foods contest. I must have entered it at least thirty times."
"I believe you, Miss Fulmer. I'm sorry about this unpleasant affair, and I hope you understand I was merely taking the necessary precautions."
"I do understand. I certainly do."
He pressed a button on a white inter-office communication radio, saying, "Eloise, would you come in for a moment." They turned to Trixie who stood rigid, her body tensed with anger, her face pale, without expression.
"You rotten bitch!" she hissed. "Oh, you smart, rotten bitch!" Jill edged back, afraid Trixie would jump at her, claw her face. "You always do it, you bitch; you always screw me up. How I hate you, Jill, dear God, how I hate you." She pressed her knuckles on her temples, cursing, "Bitch, bitch, oh what a rotten bitch you are." She shook her head with bewildered rage, her eyes flicking back and forth as though searching for a weapon.
The office door opened and a woman with mannishly cut gray hair asked, "Yes, Mr. Seymore?" He pointed to Trixie.
"Have this young lady sign a release claim and have her escorted from the studio."
Trixie suddenly shouted, "Why don't you tell them about Mike Steffne and what you made happen, why don't you?" Jill held her face relaxed, though she felt lurches of fear making her want to twist and squirm. Trixie giggled tensely, "Tell them about the gang war, the scandal, how the newspapers will get your name." Mr. Seymore looked at Jill, and she looked back at him, her eyes unwavering, knowing her career, her future, was hanging on a reaction. A flicker of worry would make the man believe Trixie, make him investigate.
He asked, "What is she saying, Miss Fulmer?"
Jill shrugged, "She was once my best friend; please don't punish her." He sighed, quietly, and turned to the woman "Have her sign the release claim and see that we're not disturbed."
Trixie screamed, "I won't sign nothing! Nothing!"
The woman gripped Trixie's arm, coaxing, "Let's have no trouble now, young lady." Trixie tried to pull free, but the woman held her. Her voice harshened, "You come along with me, and quietly."
Trixie suddenly jerked from the woman's grip and rushed to Jill and spit in Jill's face, screaming, "You rotten bitch!" The woman grabbed Trixie's arms and yanked her to the door. Trixie suddenly relaxed, almost falling as she shrugged, "Awh, what's the use." She kept shrugging as she shuffled from the office, her body slumped, her voice dragging as she muttered, "What's the son-of-a-bitchin' damn use!" The woman closed the door. Jill drew a handkerchief from her purse and wiped the spittle from her cheek.
Mr. Seymore shook his head and sighed, "There is a psycho if I ever saw one. Actress, royalty, gang wars, my God, what an imagination. Without doubt, a classic Freudian case of manic frustration." Jill bunched the handkerchief into her purse and sat down, thinking of the boy who had cried wolf so many times that when a wolf was really attacking him, no one listened. If Trixie first had accused her of causing a scandal in the All-Family Foods Company, they both would have been asked to sign release claims. Mr. Seymore smiled at her.
"You'll have no more trouble from her, I assure you. She'll sign a statement giving up all possible claims to your prize money. If you're in doubt as to her signing the statement, rest assured that after Eloise gets through with her, she'll be willing to confess she is a Russian spy."
"You won't have her arrested or anything like that, will you, Mr. Seymore?"
"Oh no, Nothing as drastic as that. Claims such as hers are not at all unusual. We have a specialized language for frightening such quacks. But never mind that, Jill. Let's chat a bit about this trust fund you mentioned a while ago. The All-Family Foods Company is always interested in helping the youth of America in its valiant march toward professionalism and knowledge. Let me assure you, Jill, that in our history of providing the American family with nourishing, vitiman-crammed cereals we have also-"
Jill slowly let herself relax while he talked of the glorious, inspiring work of the All-Family Foods Company, and she thought that soon the money would be hers. It was just a reach away. Mr. Seymore made a bridge of his fingers and leaned back and stared at the ceiling as he spoke of the charitable programs sponsored by the All-Foods Company. Jill nodded, though his words were blurry sounds in her mind as she thought about her money and career, just a short reach away-but oh the mountains of imponderables that might block her from breaching that small crossing.
21
Waiting for the assistant district attorney to re-appear, followed by Mike Steffne, who would be wheeled into the large office, they sat like people silently, slowly turning into wood. Jill felt uncomfortable sitting between her parents who, like herself, were worried about the four newspaper reporters in the ante-office. She felt ashamed of her father who looked like a bloated store window dummy in a secondhand assortment of party clothes, ashamed of her mother who looked lumpy in her brown street dress, making fidgety noises with her teeth, the ends of her gray hair already frayed from nervous finger pulling and curling.
Jill wondered why Trixie and the others hadn't been subpoenaed to appear at this informal hearing, then realized they had already offered and signed their testimonies and their appearance wasn't necessary. The gray-uniformed guard behind Bosco held his hands behind his back and idly glanced about the office. Bosco, wearing a bright green, checkered sports shirt stared at Jill, steadily. His brown eyes seemed like scabbed pimples about to burst at her, and she felt afraid. She remembered what had happened to Wilma Was-serman and recalled what Detective Glimmer had said about Bosco.
"Bosco is a wrongo through and through, and under-normal in brains; so he's a danger."
Jill was afraid to cause Bosco's going to jail. He might not be sent away long enough to forget who was responsible for his conviction. She heard a rustle of papers and looked at
Mr. Leggit, the lawyer assigned to defend Bosco. He sat to the left of the assistant district attorney's desk, studying a sheaf of long papers. He was a short man with narrow shoulders and a thin mustache, which he kept smoothing down with a thumb while he read.
Jill disliked him for having said, "I'm glad a pretty little thing like you isn't afraid of getting her name splashed in the newspapers and hasn't a qualm in the world about sending some unfortunate youth to prison." She was sure he was trying to shame her and frighten her, and she had almost laughed at him.
She was already shriveled with shame and bewildered with fear. She couldn't remember the nightmare that had caused her to scream herself awake last night, but the bedsheet was splotched with menstrual blood that made her think she was hemorrhaging to death.
She could only sit and rock as though in a trance, chanting, "The abortion, the abortion, the abortion," until her mother came hurrying into the room, pleading, "What's wrong, Jilly, you were screaming?"
Jill had pointed to the blood and her mother smiled, knowingly, "It's just nervousness, nothing more." And Jill had wanted to tell her mother about the abortion, about her dread of sterility; but her mother kept repeating, "It's just nervousness."
Then Jill remembered that if her period was due near school examinations, her flow was always a bit early and heavy, the accompanying cramps more hurting. She had gone into the bathroom to attend to herself, and when she left the bathroom her father was in the bedroom, his face heavy with sleep, his eyes blinking to stay awake. Because she couldn't tell them she had been aborted, that every day was an awakening into worry and misery, she felt suddenly mean and vicious toward her parents.
"Poppa," she said.
He blinked at her, asking, "What's with your screaming, daughter? You want the neighbors to think we're murdering you?" She pulled her bathrobe tighter around her body and sat on the bed, forcing her voice to sound casual.
"Poppa, you too, Momma, I have some bad news for you." They looked at each other and frowned, then looked at her, waiting. Jill thought of a line she had once read, "We must shout to each other across the seas of misunderstanding," and then another line, "A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run." She crossed one leg over the other and glanced at the floor. "Poppa, I'm not getting my prize money right away. I had the vice president of All-Family Foods put it in trust for me. That way I'll have-"
Her father shouted, "You what? You did what?" The loudness of his voice startled her, the rage bunched and knotty on his face, frightened her. He rushed to her, again demanding, "You're lying, it's all a lie?" She edged back and shook her head.
"No, Poppa, it's no lie. You can call a Mr. Seymore at the All-Family Foods Company and he'll verify it."
"Jilly, darling, did your brother put you up to this? Is Martin behind such a scheme?"
"No, Momma, I thought it out for myself. Maybe I'm just a sixteen-year-old, but having money is a responsibility. Being young doesn't mean I can't have mature sense about my responsibilities."
"Is that right, daughter, is that so damn right? Well, when morning comes you'll call this Mr. Seymore and say you've canceled your stupid idea and you want your money in cash, post haste."
"No, Poppa, I won't, and you can't make me," she insisted, feeling like an old-fashioned heroine melodramatically resisting the threats of a glint-eyed villain. "It's done, Poppa, and you have to accept it. You too, Momma." Jill stood up and her breasts brushed against his stomach as she rose, and she thought, what can he do to me but just hate me, and that he does already. She tilted her face upward and looked at him, smiling resignedly. "I thought Fitzmein was greedy for wanting my money, but you're worse. At least Fitzmein knew when to stop trying."
He raised his hand to smack her, but her mother shouted, "You tell your father to stop that, right now. It's bad luck to hit a child with her period." He stiffened his arm and frowned, and Jill wanted to laugh at her mother's superstitious reasoning. He breathed deep, harsh breaths, then lowered his arm and shook his fist at her.
"You are a stinker of the worst degree. Benedict Arnold had more character than you. To think my own child would become a back-stabber. A genuine back-stabber."
"You tell that thing you call a father that what you did wasn't back-stabbing. It was sensible, for yourself. Not for us, all right, but for yourself, yes, very sensible."
"Thank you, Momma. At least someone in this family sees the logic to some things I do."
He swung around to her mother, demanding, "You tell that tub you call a mother she's stupid for saying you did right. What about my plans for a junk yard? What about the bundle of profits she liked before?" Her mother shrugged and sat on the bed beside Jill, her chubby face softened with an expression Jill remembered as serious and affectionate. She put her arm across Jill's waist and her voice was low and pensive.
"You tell your father to think back on all the times he tried to be more than a window-washer and ask him to say what happened? Nothing! Never one good change happened. And me-no matter how he always treated me, I always joined him in his trying. A woman, even like me, also has dreams. But a time comes, a very dirty, terrible time, when the dreams are stupidity, when they risk somebody else's life. So the dreams must stop; they just must. This is such a time. Yes. I think maybe it would be more wonderful for our daughter to be a doctor than for us to be millionaires, that we would never be anyway. Yes. This is the way it should be. Yes."
She hugged her arm around Jill's waist, muttering, "Enough with nothing dreams. Enough." Jill looked at her father who was staring at the floor, his wrinkled green bathrobe hanging on his stomach like a shabby drape, his fisted hands bulging in his pockets. Her mother leaned closer to him, her voice a low tremble.
"You ask your father how much difference it would mean to us if we had money? Would it change how we are? How we are to each other? So we're not the best parents in the world. Does that mean we have to be the worst? Ever since his idea for the junk business came out-and it's a good idea, I believe-I've had no sleep, because why should his idea be payed for by our daughter's future? If ever my heart hurt, it hurt with thinking like this. To steal a child's money for a chance-that's wrong. And even more wrong, since so many chances already taken were flops. I wanted to say this ever since the junk business idea came to him. He got wilder as he got more ideas, like branching out to second-hand cars, and then getting a billion-dollar dealership from the Cadillac people, then maybe going into used airplanes. But I didn't say this, because who's so big they can give up hopes? Yes, Jilly, you did right. You tell your father what he had planned to do with your money was right, while he had the ideas and if you would let us. But you did something sensible for yourself, and our plans are now impossible. So now we have to be sensible, and say good luck, and count your blessings. It's only sensible."
His hands bunched larger in his pockets and he swayed as though the floor was tilting, and Jill sensed his sudden confusion. He wanted to yell and bully and even hit them for ganging against him with denials, for proving he was a failure, no more than an obscure window-washer. She sensed in him the drain of energy that follows expectations that become disappointments. Jill moved her arm along her mother's back, sad about her father and sad about, but admiring, her mother who had struggled to become a person, and a mother. Her father's hands slowly relaxed in his pockets and his head lowered as if it were fastened crookedly on his neck. He looked at them, his mouth trembling, his eyes still and dumb. He whispered, "It was my one chance. My last chance." He nibbled his lips and shook his head in sorrowful disbelief. "I wanted to start a chain of junk yards. I even had a name. The Happy Junkman Company."
Her mother smiled at him, saying, "You tell your father maybe another chance will come. If one miracle can happen, why not two?"
He kept shaking his head, then shrugged. "Let's all go to sleep. We have that informal hearing tomorrow." Her mother stood up and they shuffled ta the door. Jill watched them, thinking that she was wrong, that she should have given them the money for a last chance. She would have other chances. This was their last.
Her father suddenly turned around and shook his fist at her, threatening, "You better keep your mouth shut at that informal hearing tomorrow. Informal hearings are worse than real ones because that's where you get trapped. You don't know from nothing. Absolutely nothing. I don't want my daughter's good name dirtied in the newspapers!" They left the bedroom and Jill sat wondering if there was ever an end to despair. She yawned, then stood up to change the bloody sheet.
The office door suddenly opened and they turned to see the assistant district attorney hurry in, his long arms swinging as he strode to the desk. He sat down and nodded toward the open doorway. A white-uniformed hospital attendant wheeled in Mike Steffne. His hair was shaggy, his face thinner. The bandage wadded on his left cheek was like a clot of packed snow. They stared at him, Bosco's mouth edging into a proud smirk. Mike's head was held stiff by a padded steel brace circling his neck and serving as a ledge for his chin. Both his ankles were in casts that were like plaster columns partially covered by his brown bathrobe. He'll never be the same again, she thought. Mike looked at Bosco and his body tensed.
Bosco edged forward, smirking, "Hi-ya, athlete. Wanna play some handball?" Mike's hands gripped the wheelchair arms and he trembled. Bosco's lawyer glared at him. Jill had to glance down, uncertain of what she thought or felt. The guard grabbed Bosco's shoulder and forced him to sit back.
The lawyer snapped at the guard, "I won't tolerate my client being roughed up." The assistant district attorney drew a cigarette from a desk container and tapped it on his thumbnail.
"I appreciate your concern, Mr. Leggit, but let's not overdo it. You aren't representing a lily of the valley, you know."
"My client, Mr. Horner, is entitled to just treatment, regardless of his background or his indigent status. I have been appointed to-"
"Yes, yes, Mr. Leggit, but let's not delay this any longer than is necessary. Our case is solid, conclusive, and Seneca himself couldn't divert the natural course of this hoodlum's fate."
"I object to your use of hoodlum, Mr. Horner. My client is still a minor, and the charges against him are unnecessarily extensive, particularly the condition of premeditation. If anything, Bernard Feldman was driven by an irresistible compulsion to-"
"I see, Mr. Leggit. You intend bringing a temporary insanity element into this case, is that it?"
"There are several choices open to-"
"Then I suggest you select another path, and a less skimpy one at that. Bernard Feldman's companions, associates, or whatever one calls them, have provided statements and will testify that Bernard Feldman, known as Bosco, stood in that alleyway for two hours, waiting for Michael Steffne to appear. I have others, not members of the Sputniks, who will also testify that several hours before the assault, your client outlined exactly what he would do to Michael Steffne. Your client's capacity for sustaining a period of temporary insanity is quite remarkable. Now, if his own friends, his gang members will-"
"He's full 'a crap, Leggit. Tony and Frankie'll never testify against me!"
Bosco's attorney swung around and shouted, "You shut your damn fool mouth and keep it shut!"
Bosco jerked forward, yelling back, "Who you talkin' to, you fag bastard! I'll have you-" The guard whacked Bosco's shoulder and yanked him back. The lawyer looked up to the ceiling in disgusted exasperation and Mr. Horner grinned. He lit the cigarette tip and winked at Mike.
He asked, casually, "If Bosco is the person who assaulted you, just blink, Mike."
Mike blinked, slowly, then pointed at Bosco who yelled, "You're a son-of-a-bitch'n liar!" Bosco moved to jump forward, but was again restrained by the guard. Bosco glared up at the guard, threatening, "You roust me once more an' you'll get what he got!" The guard shrugged and looked up to the ceiling.
Mr. Horner leaned toward Mr. Leggit, saying factually, "I intend to throw the book at that punk. Would you like to know why?"
Mr. Leggit drummed his fingers on his thigh, then sighed, "Please, if you will." Still staring at the lawyer, Mr. Horner pointed at Bosco.
"What usually happens in an affair of this nature is that some poor, unlucky slob of a kid is picked up for assault and the office of the prosecution, regardless of this kid's potential and possible reform, uses him as an example of how thorough the ways of the law can be. He gets sent away for a good stretch. Not an innocent boy, Mr. Leggit. Just some unlucky kid, half-good, half-corrupt, who was at the wrong place at the right time, going a little further in what might ordinarily be deemed as mischief, but no more. Making an example of him is futile because public opinion is on his side and we, the representatives of the law, become the culprits, the felons against humanity.
"But now, Mr. Leggit, we've gotten our hands on a real one. A dyed-in-the-wool hoodlum, a punk. This isn't the first time Bosco's been brought in on charges. It's the seventh time. All unproven, because of insufficient testimony. Just like in books and television plays, Mr. Leggit. People, friends of the victim, and what have you, will not testify. No need to stress this unfortunate condition; it's common enough and understandable. But in Bernard Feldman's case, we have more than enough testimony, more than enough proof. The prosecution's case-my case-is still not complete. Assault with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest, disturbing the peace, and the five other charges against Bosco are not enough for me. I want a clincher, a felony that will demand Bosco be sent away for a great length of time. For the first time in a long time I want the public to know what is going on. I want the public on our side."
They looked at Jill. She sat with her eyes closed, afraid to see their faces, hurting with the shock of what the assistant district attorney meant to do. That's why there are four newspaper reporters outside. They were waiting to rush in and take her picture and print her name and the disgusting story. She felt her hand being squeezed and knew it was her father, silently warning her to shut up, to know from nothing. She kept her eyes closed, trying to remember a saying, a quotation that upheld the struggle for justice, so the sense of some great man's wisdom would encourage her not to care if she lost her ten thousand dollars, to care more about sending a criminal like Bosco to jail-really sent away.
Jill felt her other hand being squeezed and she wanted to tell her mother, I don't want to face this. I want to go home. She kept her eyes shut, hating the silence in the room, hating the seepage of blood from her body that was making her feel weak and unhealthy, hating the drag of constant worry in her mind. Bosco had ruined somebody's life and she must hate him for it. Bosco had attacked her, felt her up, disgraced her, and she must hate him. She sat silent, trying to remember the flush of hatred she had felt for Bosco. She wanted to hate him. It was right that she hate him.
Mr. Horner tapped cigarette ashes into an amber desk tray and sat back. "Now, Mr. Leggit," he said, his voice calm, unaffected by smugness. "I have consulted my chief and he has accepted my premise that this county and city need a prime example, a frightening example. I am not trying to railroad this punk. I'm merely attempting to give him all he deserves and all the law demands. If it is unfair to punish to the maximum, then I am unfair. What then, is the purpose of this informal, shall we say gathering rather than hearing? To ask you to enter a plea of guilty and throw your client to the mercy of the court? Not at all, Mr. Leggit. I want a battle. The more noise and hullabaloo the better. I want you in on this to indicate the extent to which I intend pushing the case we have against Bernard Feldman, and to show a certain party-a young person in this roomthat she must, regardless of the courage needed, or the distress she might experience, she absolutely must testify against this hoodlum and fulfill her obligations as a person who regards the law as a serious and vital aspect of our society. Did you know that a little over a year ago a Wilma Wasser-man was raped by eleven boys? The enormity of such a trauma has placed her in a mental institution. We know that Bosco and his punks are the ones who did it. Proving it is another matter. But did you know that on the same day Bosco assaulted Michael Steffne he also molested the young lady I just mentioned-a young lady of unimpeachable character? He manhandled her, causing her incalculable shock, and had the psychotic temerity to hang a personal garment, her panties to be exact, on the Assembly Hall flagpole?"
Jill's father swung to her, demanding, "Is that true?" His voice was a slap of sound. She stared at the wall behind Bosco, cursing her father's stupidity for asking her to admit an accusation against Bosco and verifying the importance of her testimony. She remained silent.
Her mother squeezed her hand and shushed her gently, then whispered, "Don't become upset."
Mr. Horner asked, "Why don't you answer your father, Jill?" She stared at the wall, hating the steady, intense way they all looked at her. Mr. Horner smiled at Mr. Leggit.
"You now have the picture, Mr. Leggit. Why shouldn't punks like Bosco go about maiming and molesting people? The most they ever do is a year or two in some reform school geared to pamper them with psychology rather than treat their corruption. I'm against undue brutality, but I do not condone this psychological pampering that has infiltrated into our reform systems. I'm fed up with hearing the parents of these punks being blamed for rejecting their children through ignorance, indifference, and economic demands. While the children are not totally in the wrong, they are not blameless. No matter how these underprivileged children grieve against society, they are not out of the social sphere wherein the masses of civilization are set up to guide and rule all of usfortunate and unfortunate alike. They are not ignorant or unaware of the law, Mr. Leggit; they are indifferent to the law. And it is a conscious indifference. There is a difference between the juvenile delinquents of the thirties and forties, and the juvenile delinquents of the late fifties and early sixties. Today's juvenile delinquents kill! Bosco will one day kill, Mr. Leggit. As sure as God made tasty strawberries, Bosco will one day kill."
"You're assuming the mantle of judgment, Mr. Horner. You have no right to brand him killer, or even criminal, on what you believe. An attorney, regardless of his station, is a practitioner of the law. But it is the law that passes judgment."
"True enough, Mr. Leggit. But the law is not only concerned with justice. While the purpose of the law is to punish those who abuse its precepts, it is also a system of prevention. Otherwise it is senseless. I am predicting, from historical information, that Bosco will one day kill if he is not put away. I intend putting him away as a preventative. And the law is on my side."
"The law takes no sides, Mr. Horner. The law is."
"No, Mr. Leggit-the law is on the side of the side with the best case."
They stared at each other; then suddenly Bosco laughed, loudly, startling them and they turned toward him.
Bosco stopped laughing to sneer, "You stupid bastards! The law's on the side of who's got the connections." He leaned his head back and kept laughing. The guard shook his shoulders, roughly. Bosco stopped laughing to yell, "Get your cocky hands offa me, ya bastard. I got rights."
The guard, a thick-set man with a receding chin, snickered, "Rights, sure, but no connections." Bosco shrugged. The attorneys looked at each other, then slowly they shifted their eyes to Jill, who stared at Mike. He seemed almost asleep, his eyes half-lidded, his mouth loose and partially open. Jill wanted to whisper to him, You'll be the same again, Mike, don't be worried. And you'll play sports, too. Better than ever. Whisper this to him to make him understand that Bosco would be punished, even if she didn't admit he had molested her. Tonight I appear on television, don't you see, Mike? she wanted to plead. Tonight someone will give me a check for ten thousand dollars, and it will be put in the bank for me.
Mr. Horner tapped his desk and softly cleared his throat, saying, "Jill?" She turned to him. "Jill, I want to ask you one simple question. A great deal, as you know, depends upon your truthful answer. Will you co-operate with the law?"
She tensed her lips, wanting to shout, I have nothing to say! Slowly, she relaxed her lips and shrugged.
"I'm sorry for everything that has happened, Mr. Horner. I certainly am. There is no better person that Mike Steffne, and no bigger louse than Bosco. But nobody seems to give a care about me."
"That isn't so, Jill. We all care about you. And for the hordes of young girls like yourself who are afraid to walk the streets. Oh yes, Jill, we do care about you; never think we don't."
"Then why do you have to bring in the newspapers and make a circus of this? I don't want my name in the newspapers, or my picture. A scandal follows you all your life."
"But there will be no scandal or disgrace connected to your name, Jill, not in the particular. Try looking at it this way, Jill. If a doctor found a preventative-not a cure mind you-for cancer, wouldn't it be best if the preventative was advertised rather than kept a secret, merely because the person he experimented on was timid about publicity?"
"I don't want to debate, Mr. Horner. I just want to be left alone. Everything that is done, is done. The little bit you think I can help with can't help much and can hurt me plenty. I have to think about my future."
Angrily, Mr. Horner pointed to Mike. "And what about his future? When he protected you, did he think about his future or about your welfare, your reputation?" Then he swung his arm to Bosco, demanding, "What about this punk's future? Are you afraid of him, is that why?"
Mr. Leggit slapped the desk, protesting, "You're intimidating the young lady; you're bullying her."
Mr. Horner shook his head. "I'm not, not at all!" He pointed to Jill.
"For your added information, Mr. Leggit, the entire Melrick High School has been intimidated by these Sputniks. Teachers as well as students. The only way we could secure the testimony we have now is by assuring each student involved that the Sputniks would be disbanded and their personal safety guaranteed. I intend to fulfill that promise. Jill Fulmer is an integral part of that promise. If I address her without the usual blandishments, it is because she is not a typical minor. She not only happens to be a brilliant student, but an intelligent person as well. She has nothing to fear from me, no matter my attitude in this affair. She has only to contend with the recriminations of her own conscience if she fails to uphold what she knows to be decent and true. Her testimony is necessary because Bosco did molest her. The hoodlum who assisted Bosco in the disgusting act has volunteered that information, and will uphold her testimony. I am not trying to fabricate offenses, Mr. Leggit. I am only trying to get all of them substantiated. I am not, as I have said before, concerned with the minimum-but the extent."
Bosco laughed, "Wait'll talkin' time comes, man-Gilly'll chicken out and I'll get out." Then he snapped his smile to a scowl and stared at Jill. "I never forget a face, or a cooze!" Mr. Leggit rubbed his thumbs on his temples and shook his head at Bosco.
"Will you please shut that moronic mouth of yours!"
Jill thought, I'm afraid of what he'll do to me if he gets off. Then she thought, I'm more afraid of losing the money.
Bosco leaned forward and snickered, "Stop chewing me out, Leggit. That cooze'll stay shut up 'cause she knows the score." Jill looked at Bosco, now hating him, knowing he was taunting her, making her afraid. He licked his lips and relaxed back in the chair while they studied him. Bosco raised his hand to the guard's chin and snapped his fingers, importantly, ordering, "Cigarette me, my good man." The guard slapped Bosco's hand down. Bosco yowled and cuddled his hand, bawling, "Third degree, third degree!"
Then he suddenly pointed to Mike and sneered, "Just 'cause that fag bastard fingers me for rousting him don't mean I did it. It's his word against mine, and don't you forget it. Testimony, my ass. Who you got to say what he said he'll say? Yeah? Anything he says he'll unsay when it comes to put-up time. No one'll say I did it-no one. Mike fell downstairs, that's what he did. That prize athelete's a cow, and clumsy besides. He tripped over himself, so now he's blaming me. How'd he get busted ankles? From me? What'd I do, take his ankles and snap'm like celery? He just let me, I suppose. A big lumpa beef like him let me just snap his ankles 'n break his jaw and cut up his face, huh? Who'll believe it? And the ones you third-degreed to say they seen me do it, you think they'll say it for the record and put themselves in the can for a few years for help-in'? 'Cause anyone in his right mind knows I couldn't do it myself, if I did it. I hadda have help, right? Right? So if you think they'll say they helped, you're out of your ever-lovin' toilet, Horner. Go sit in'a corner and pull your puddin'n pie. He fell downstairs and ain't got the guts to admit he's a clumsy tub've crap. So he picks on an innocent victim like me. And no cooze, not one with brains who knows I'll look for evens for her lyin', will say against me, ona'conna that athlete, that clunker just ain't worth it."
Mr. Leggit turned to the assistant district attorney and shrugged. "His manner is ugly, but what he says is rather reasonable, I would say." Mr. Horner shook his head.
"Not if a motive exists. Not if a young person in this room has the courage to admit a crime against her, he doesn't make sense. A gang is a mob of discontent sheep willing to forego their identities for the safety of following a leader. But when Samson begins to bald, they no longer take their strength from him." He pointed to Jill. "The assault on Michael Steffne is only a part of it. The offense against Miss Fulmer is the prime felony." He nodded, then spoke with strange gentleness. "With a bit more experience, counselor, you'll realize that a conviction is often gained not only through the conclusiveness of your case, but from the order of presenting your charges." He turned to Jill and smiled.
"Jill, now do you realize why you are so necessary to our case? It isn't the attention you'll get from the newspapers that should influence your judgment, but the weight your testimony and charges carry for the cause of justice."
Jill remained silent, feeling weighed down with a heaviness of thought, her body feeling limp, although her mind felt like a camera socket straining to slowly shift into focus. She wanted to shudder at the terrible realization that the people around her were suddenly people, not just names and picture faces who wanted to hurt her, to steal her money, to change her life.
They were human beings, sharp and real and each with personal misery, each with a cliffedge they carried with them as they approached failure or success. The assistant district attorney believed in something; he was a fist rammed against a granite goal, and the success of his conviction was up to her. Mike was a broken-up body who would heal in time, but a bit of him would stay destroyed, and when he saw little boys and girls running and jumping, a dark part of him would cry. Her mother was an old woman who had become a blob, a commodity-outside her kitchen she was a tubby fawn crying in bewilderment. Her father was an old man who had just lost a great dream, hanging in mental Umbo, waiting for the glimmer of another dream to save him, while he waited he played at the habit of being a father concerned with his child. Bosco's lawyer was just a faceless lawyer assigned by the court to defend a public nausea who had struck out and for a while was a little more than a sickness. But the lawyer didn't care, not really. He had his own dreams of battling a famous murder trial in a movie-like courtroom. And Bosco was a dumb boy who flung himself according to any impulse and excitement to satisfy himself. He had become savage and cruel and only slightly less than insane. Deep inside he wanted to be imprisoned, to be taken from the lonely streets and dumped into the jungle of a jail where he could belong, among other animals.
All their lives, including her own, depended on what she said and did. They're real, Jill told herself. Again she shuddered, as though a force of concentrated humanity was smacked against her, roaring the demand that she be more than her minor self, just for now, become the mother of them all, sacrifice, Christ-like, and give herself to the God of humanity because she was the daughter of Life. In this moment, all their lives are at stake, she thought. Tomorrow will be different, for all of them; but this is the moment when all their lives mean more than money. She wanted to shake her head and shout, Bosco never touched me! And then she wanted to pray for bigness, for sensibility. Stomach cramps began to hurt in her and she tightened her body to stop them. She knew her menstrual flow was heavy and she had to make a change or spoil her clothes. I have to make a change, she told herself, and repeated it in her mind as though changing her pad was the greatest importance of her life.
She licked her lips and muttered aloud, "I have to go to the bathroom." Her mother nudged her, embarrassed.
Mr. Horner frowned at her, then smiled briefly, asking, "You aren't thinking of running away, are you now?" Jill shook her head.
"I just want to go to the bathroom." He widened his smile.
"In the corridor, to your left." She stood up, deliberately blurring her vision, to keep from seeing their faces, and walked to the door.
Bosco chuckled, "Mention my name an' you'll get a good seat." His lawyer glared at him.
Her father called to her, "Don't talk to anyone you don't have to."
She answered automatically. "Yes, Poppa," and left the office.
The reporters in the ante-office stood up and moved toward her; but she hurried into the corridor before they could shout questions. She listened to the thunk of her high heels on the tiled corridor floor and thought that the menstrual blood flowing from her now must be the symbolism her English teacher was talking about when he said, "Symbolism is difficult to define. You can make of anything a symbol. It all depends on how badly you need a symbol-a point of reference." She opened the heavy door marked Ladies and drew a pad from her purse as she entered the partitioned booth. She quickly changed pads and wrapped the used one in wads of tissue paper and set it on the side of the bowl. She sat, still feeling heavy, and remembered something Franklin Frederick had told her.
"Don't be awed by the imposing titles presented to television personnel, Jill. Take my title as an example. Assistant Producer. One of my most important assignments is to get the early-morning editions to see if our morning give-away show received favorable comment-or any comment at all. I bring the newspapers to Mr. Seymore's office and have to remain while he reads the television section. It's a petty ritual, to be sure, but quite necessary in establishing position relationships. The title of Assistant Producer carries import only to the uninformed public." Jill smiled, sadly, and knew that it was all over for her.
"I won't get the money," she said aloud, her voice without inflection.
She would testify that Bosco had molested her, and the assistant district attorney would release the story. Her picture and name would be in the Daily News and Daily Mirror, which were sold about half an hour before the All-Family Foods program. Franklin Frederick would see it and bring it to Mr. Seymore, and the vice president would cancel her as the winner and have the second-prize winner take her place. Jill nodded. That's what would happen.
She would testify against Bosco because it was right. Because he had done criminal things and was still dangerous. She nodded, remembering the night she and Mike Steffne had been standing before her building, talking about the lives they wanted to lead, what they wanted to become. She had explained that she wanted to be a doctor because to save people, to give them ease against pain, was a worthy way of living. She had a fine intelligence and an instinctive curiosity for knowledge and new methods. Not to use a natural gift, an almost miraculous guarantee against ordinariness, was to commit a grave stupidity.
Mike had interrupted her to say, "Hey, looka Wilma Was-serman. She's crocked!" They watched Wilma walking in a sluggish stagger, her stockings fallen to her ankles, her skirt ripped up the side, the front of her blouse torn and revealing dirt smudges on her breasts. Her brown hair was like a scatter of dried fudge on her forehead and face. Her eyes looked like glass pellets pressed into discolored and welted flesh. A streak of blood wormed from her mouth.
Behind her, younger kids were skipping and yowling, "Wilma, she got drunk; Wilma, she got drunk!" Their voices chanted in shrill delight.
Then a narrow-faced woman with a wrinkled neck screamed, "Wilma, Wilma!" And Wilma's mother raced to her and held her. She shrieked, "Police! Police! Police!" People rushed from doorways to help her.
Jill closed her eyes and sobbed softly. "Bosco, lovely, playful Bosco." She let herself cry because she had to testify against Bosco. She had to.
Jill stood up and smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt, thinking that she never had the money, so it wasn't as bad as having the ten thousand dollars and suddenly losing it. It's not real money, she told herself. Not really real. She had never seen it, never touched it. She had been like a salivating fanatic, plunging ahead to touch a dream. She would still be a doctor. Somehow. The money would have made it easier, yes. But she would still become a doctor. The hard way. The normal way. And the achievement would taste better, stay sweeter in her heart, she was sure.
She left the booth and grinned, whispering, "Poor Mr. Elmacky," thinking that in this affair everyone was losing their last chance for importance. Her parents, Mike, Bosco, Trixie, herself and Mr. Elmacky. She giggled softly, imagining how he would be sitting in tomorrow night's audience, waiting, his nerves geared to hyper-excitement as he anticipated his face about to be flashed across millions of television screens-his moment of glory and unexpected opportunity about to come true. "Let him wait," she whispered. "That corrupt son of a bitch!"
She leaned against the door, her eyes closed, wanting to cry. God, I suffered so hard to get that money. So hard. The metal door panel felt cool against her cheek. She wished she could believe she was giving up the money for a noble cause, so that she could feel like some dedicated innocent about to be launched into martyrdom for her sacrifice. "It was just never mine," she whispered. "Not really. Not, deep down really." She shook her head as she opened the door to return to where the reporters were waiting. "The money was never really mine," she whispered again. "It wasn't meant to be. Not deep down really."
22
JILL sat in a narrow three-walled booth behind the studio drapes, her body poised as if waiting for the vice president to appear so she could jump up and shout, "You can't cancel me as the winner-I resign!" Behind her, the All-Family Foods show was being enacted, rapidly and noisily. The jugglers were performing, and each time the orchestra's percussion instruments struck, she shuddered.
Though she was wearing the same plain black party dress she had worn the night she was raped, she felt overdressed, like a gangly kid draped in her mother's finery, about to strut across a school stage in shoes with high heels suddenly turned rubber, making her waggle and totter. I should be home tearing out my hair and cursing my bad luck, she thought. Soon, the last imponderable of the month would happen to her. Franklin Frederick would buy the early newspapers and see her picture and read the story. He would yowl "Holy good God!" and rocket into the vice president's office and alert him about the pending scandal. Mr. Seymore would lunge from his office, race to the producer who was in the control booth, and the producer would scream instructions to his crew of assistants. In nine seconds she would be told, "As of now, Jill Fulmer, you're out. You can go home!" Jill nodded, resignedly, as if she had already been told to leave.
She heard waves of laughter and thought that the jugglers must be doing the trick of hitting each other with clubs. The studio audience, at first shocked, was now laughing because the clubs were not solid wood, but foam rubber. She thought, everything fools everybody, at first. She shrugged and leaned against the chair back and stared up at the maze of pipes and wires and reflectors and spotlights under the vast expanse of studio ceiling. She began moving one thumb over the other thumb, wanting to leave, right now, but determined to wait for Franklin Frederick to return with the newspapers. She had to see it through. All of it. Every miserable second of disappointment and despair. Because if she was being punished for some grave sin or sins she had knowingly or unknowingly committed, she wanted all her punishment, all of it. And then be done with it. She would face it, as she had faced it in the assistant district attorney's office, frightened, but not afraid of a violent outburst.
Returning to the office and standing before Mr. Horner's desk, childishly pompous, she had stated with grim certainty, "I am willing to testify that Bosco assaulted me and was assisted by a friend, Gilly. They apprehended me on the Melrick High School staircase and molested me."
They had stared at her as though dumbed by the admission some wanted, some feared.
Then Bosco suddenly cursed, "You rotten son-of-a-bitchin' cooze!" He tried to lunge at her but the guard held him back-clamping an arm across his shoulders. She stood still. She being honest, fulfilling a truth. The goodness of her act would protect her.
Bosco yelled again, "You son-of-a-bitchin' cooze!" Then he stopped, suddenly gaping at her when she turned, and with grave melodrama pointed her finger at him.
"He molested me, yes. I was just leaving Mr. Elmacky's office to return to my class and he, Bosco-Bernard Feldman, and an ally, Gilly, Gilbert Kentnislit-grabbed me. Gilly held me while Bosco pulled up my skirt and forced off my panties."
Mr. Horner had nodded, saying officiously, "Thank you, Jill, you have my appreciation and whole-hearted admiration." He stood up and set himself between her and Bosco. His face was a tensed contour of flesh. "Did Bernard Feldman touch you in any area of your person no longer covered by the garment he had removed?"
She had almost laughed then, suddenly believing it was all a moronic game played by adults who had never participated in a hobby. Bosco had touched her a little, pinched her a little, rubbed her a Utile. What the heck was so terrible, so criminal? I'm not a virgin, she wanted to tell them. All of them. I'm not a child. I've been laid and had an abortion. If an abortion doesn't age a female, then six centuries of Time won't make her a woman, either. But this was more than a game, she knew. She nodded and spoke slowly.
"Yes, Mr. Horner. Bosco touched me down there. He was ready to do more, but someone came into the stairwell. I couldn't scream because Gilly had his hand over my mouth."
"Thank you, Jill. Will you repeat that to my secretary, in fuller detail, and sign it?"
"Yes, Mr. Horner. Also, I'm the one who's reponsible for what happened to Mike. After Bosco had my panties hung on the flagpole, he came over to me and ridiculed me. Mike stepped in to stop him and they fought. Afterward, Bosco threatened Mike with bodily harm. I could tell you other things about Bosco if-"
"That won't be necessary, Jill. What you have just stated will be enough. Thank you."
They were startled by the sudden outburst of her father who yelled, "You rotten scum!" He punched Bosco, and she almost laughed as the attorneys grabbed her father and struggled to subdue him. Bosco rubbed some blood from his lips and chuckled viciously. She was sure her father would have just glared his hatred at Bosco if Bosco had been able to defend himself. Her mother had huddled over and cried. Mike wheeled himself closer and stared at Jill, his eyes wet, his expression loving and respectful.
A loud gust of music pushed into her mind and she sighed, loudly, then quickly covered her mouth, remembering her instructions to be absolutely quiet because the studio microphones might pick up the disturbing noises.
She grinned, recalling how she had walked from Mr. Horner's office, flanked by her mother and father, and just as reporters do in the movies, the reporters began taking her picture and yelling wild questions at her.
"Were you raped?"
"How many were there in the fuck?"
"Will there be a rumble?"
"Is Steffne your lover?"
"Is Bosco your lover?"
After the first eye-shocking flash of bulbs, she had covered her face. She wondered which of the pictures was in the newspapers.
Behind her, the orchestra stopped playing; the silence was strange. She remembered a quotation, "Childhood is the sleep of reason." She wondered why she had remembered that particular quotation. The orchestra began playing the noisy music to introduce Rip Martin. The singer strolled past the booth, his mouth set in a stage smile. The stage cosmetics on his face made him look waxen. She was happy she had refused to wear television make-up.
"What for?" she had whispered. She heard the rumbling, chuckling voice of Jolly Harry.
"Here he is, folks; here he is. The singer of the year. Mr. Personality himself. The lad you've come to love, the lad we all love, Rip Martin!"
She put her hands over her ears to mute the boisterous applause. The orchestra played the introduction to "Swanee River." She looked to the left, past a large boom camera that hung from a stubby crane arm like an overgrown Brownie. She stared at the door leading to the studio lobby, wondering when Franklin Frederick would return. She didn't hate the assistant producer. He would merely be doing his job. She had liked him from the first, and still liked him. Her eyes began to tear from staring so hard. She stretched, then suddenly grinned, imagining how Mr. Elmacky must be waiting for her appearance. Sitting in the center of a two-seat-wide empty space because his nervous stomach was crackling and gargling and booming, annoying the people around him, forcing them to change seats. And when Jolly Harry announced that the contest winner had been changed, she was sure Mr. Elmacky would faint. She shrugged. His disappointment would be the only happy moment in this unfair imponderable.
She listened to Rip Martin's voice boom through the music and grinned wider, thinking that Trixie might be sitting in the audience, waiting to fling rotten oranges at her. She heard a shuffling movement to her right and turned to see her mother waving at her to leave the booth so they could talk. She stared at her mother who was dressed in a dark green dress with a bright drape of false pearls curved between her large, shapeless breasts. Jill thought it was cruel of-the All-Family Foods executives to demand that her mother tell her she was eliminated as the winner. Her mother kept urging her to hurry forward.
She stood up and strolled to her mother, whispering, "It's all right, Momma, I knew it was coming."
The woman frowned and shook her head confusedly, whispering back, "You knew Bosco would escape?"
Jill stepped back, gaping at her mother who snickered, "So you didn't know?"
"Momma, are you crazy? Bosco escaped?"
"Two hours ago. Mr. Horner himself came to the studio, just now, and told me. He says Bosco was a wild man. While they were taking him to some office for a, for a something, who can remember what, he attacked the guard watching over him and pushed him down a flight of stairs and escaped before anybody knew what was happening. The poor guard is in the hospital with a cracked-open head. Mr. Horner came with that detective, you know, Detective Glimmer who first spoke to you. Detective Glimmer will guard you until they catch Bosco."
"Momma, this is crazy. Utterly crazy."
"Now you say it? Now? Didn't we tell you to shut up, to know from nothing. What if Bosco gets you, what good is the money?"
"That's the least of it, Momma-the money, I mean. And Bosco won't get me. He won't even come after me. Do you think that's all he has to think about? He's busy hiding."
"Aren't you afraid-I mean, doesn't it scare you, how it worked out? Your father is standing by the back door, guarding it in case Bosco comes. See how he sacrifices for you, letting himself miss you on television."
"He won't miss anything. In a few minutes I'll be off the show. Without the money."
"Now you're talking crazy. Are you crazy or something?"
"I mean what I said, Momma. I won't be getting the money."
The woman squinted her eyes and stared at her, as if trying to find out if her daughter had suddenly gotten sick, turned peculiar. Jill reached out and embraced her mother's shoulders, sad for her mother. She had forced her husband to give up the dream of becoming a junk business tycoon, so her daughter could become a doctor, and now there was no certainty that the lesser dream would come true.
Her mother closed her eyes and whispered, "Is it because of the scandal? The program will be ashamed of you?" Jill nodded. The woman clenched her mouth and cursed, "The dogs! The blue-nosed dogs!" Then she put her arm around Jill's waist, muttering, "You knew this would happen, didn't you?" Jill hugged her mother.
"I knew, Momma."
The woman shook her head and sighed, "Children, children, they're so foolish. They throw their futures away, and for what? To tell a truth nobody cares for." She kept shaking her head, and Jill hoped she wouldn't cry. If her mother cried, then the sense of crying in herself would explode from her throat in ugly wails, because she wanted to cry, oh God, how much she wanted to cry.
Her mother stiffened, suddenly, and Jill looked at the lobby door which was opening. They edged back, afraid it was Bosco, ready to charge at them. Franklin Frederick stepped into the studio and closed the door. He held a bundle of newspapers under his arm. He glanced around, then tensed when he saw them. Jill smiled, not knowing what else to do. He touched the newspapers and looked toward the vice president's office. Jill held her mouth rigid. He strolled toward them, furtively glancing around like someone who did not want to be seen. He dodged around bulky objects and stepped over thick electrical cables. Jill nodded to him.
"Mr. Frederick, I would like you to meet my mother."
He said, "I'm happy to meet you, Mrs. Fulmer. You have a wonderful daughter." Then he frowned at Jill.
"Do you know the disaster that's in the newspapers, Jill?"
"I know, Mr. Frederick."
"A disaster, a true disaster."
"I agree. A true disaster, Mr. Frederick."
"I mean it, Jill. This is a disaster. I don't know what to say."
"I don't know what to say either, Mr. Frederick."
"It really is your picture, isn't it? I mean, you are the one involved, not some other girl with your name and general features?"
"It's me, Mr. Frederick. No one else."
"Mr. Frederick, maybe I can explain to you what-"
"No, Momma, there's nothing to explain. The newspaper explains it well enough."
"You know what this means, don't you, Jill? This disaster."
"I know what it means. I tried all I could to avoid it. But my testimony was needed. Really needed. More than my getting the money was at stake."
"When Seymore sees this, his head will explode. He'll throw a whingding, the-likes of which will be memorable."
"I suppose he will. I'm sorry to cause him trouble."
"I mean, he'll explode eighty ways from Sunday. Worse than when the fit hit the shan, if you know the joke. A disaster, and I mean a disaster."
He looked at her, shaking his head. She stared back at him, noticing for the first time his large eyes. A line of sweat wormed down his cheek.
Jill's mother hugged her harder, then shrugged, "You never had the money anyway, so what did you lose? A miracle that teased you, that's all." Jill pressed her cheek against her mother's cheek, loving the woman, realizing that good mothers swung into immediate harmony with the sorrows of their children, and poor mothers became only curious. Yes, she loved her mother. Very much. And she felt happy. She had not loved her mother for a long time.
Franklin Frederick edged closer to them, saying, "The All-Family Foods contest has a peculiar history, did you know that?" She shook her head, wondering why his manner was so gentle, his voice almost affectionate. He reached out and touched her arm.
"All-Foods has held forty-nine contests in a period of twenty-five years. Not one of the winners needed the money. Would you believe that two millionaires won? Fantastic, isn't it? We've given money to bank presidents, four ministers with congregations numbering into the thousands, a golfer who won a fortune in a national opening of some sort. A novelist who's novel was a best seller for eighty weeks. All-Foods has proven that adage about money going to money. The rich get richer and the poor get pushed deeper into poverty. Would you like to know a secret about me, Jill?"
"I'll listen to anything you want to tell me, Mr. Frederick."
"Thank you, Jill. When I was twelve years old my mother died. She lay on a hospital bed gasping away her life while some malignancy nibbled at her lungs. After she died and the hullabaloo of grief passed, we were told that she could have been saved if my father, he worked in a butcher shop, had a few thousand dollars in his kick. Money, equal sign, life, is the equation of existence. Deplorable, isn't it? Would you like to know another secret, one you must never tell? Promise."
"Yes. I promise."
"I hate every rich son of a bitch that's ever lived or died or is going to be born. It's a tumor in me, this hate I have for the rich. I defecate on their souls. I hate them with a hatred so consuming I'm being consumed. No one knows this, except you and your mother, now. Did you know that Mr. Seymore, our illustrious vice president, is rich. Oh yes, Jill, quite rich. His father is a major stockholder in All-Foods. For three years now I've waited for an opportunity to embarrass him, to make him look the fool. Jill, may I ask a favor of you?"
She turned away from him to hide the tears seeping from her eyes. Oh, dear God, what tortures you have worked into our hearts, what terrible, terrible agonies you give us, and still we love You. Why? She heard the orchestra play to the climax of Rip Martin's song and she felt herself torn by confusion and sorrow, by pity and dizzying happiness.
"Imponderables," she muttered, "God, the imponderables." She wiped her eyes and turned back to him and nodded. "Yes, Mr. Frederick, you can ask a favor of me." He drew off his eyeglasses, folded the wide leaves and slipped them into his breast pocket.
"If anyone asks you, later on, if you saw me before your entrance cue, particularly if you saw me with the newspapers, would you lie for me? Would you say you did not see me?"
"Yes, Mr. Frederick, I'll lie for you."
"Thank you. Now will you promise me one more thing, Jill?"
"I know what you're going to ask and, yes, I promise you that I will never become rich. Never, not ever."
He squeezed her hand and his skin was sweaty. He chuckled, "When Seymore sees the papers the heart murmur he complains about will become a roar." He kept chuckling as he turned around and ambled toward the lobby door. She stared at his small, unathletic figure and felt mysterious, as though she was watching a sad leprechaun drifting from her life after delivering his magic gift. Then Jill thought of him as a young-old man, slumped and humbled by a crusade, a hatred too heavy to carry, but unable to get free of.
Her mother nudged her arm, asking, "What's going on, Jilly? I don't understand."
Jill whispered wistfully, "He's trying to balance a record he's keeping." Her mother frowned and rubbed her forehead. "I don't understand, I swear I don't. I'm sorry you have to lose the money, but I'm more worried about Bosco." Jill grinned.
"Bosco-schmosko, who cares? There's still a chance, Momma, still a chance that I'll-" She clamped her mouth shut at the blaring sound of her entrance music. Hurriedly, she whispered, "Cross your fingers, Momma-just keep your fingers crossed." She kissed her mother's cheek and rushed back into the booth, afraid to hope, to pray, to think, nervously patting her dress as she listened to Jolly Harry announce her.
"And she is more than a lovely young miss, folks; she is beauty with brains and charm combined. She is only sixteen years old and-" Jill stepped through the narrow opening and stood by the drape waiting for Jolly Harry to say, "-present young Miss Jill Fulmer!"
Jill's eyes closed, her hands gripped into fists, grimly trying to think of how to force the All-Foods Company to honor the check they would give her. Set the company into a position, a public position, where not honoring the check would cause them a good-will disaster.
"And while each All-Foods' contest draws millions of contestants, there is only one first-prize winner, one-in-millions person who-"
She suddenly held her throat to keep from yipping, oh God, Mr. Elmacky! She hadn't decided, not truly, on what to do about Mr. Elmacky.
"And now Folks, I am proud and thrilled to present the winner of the All-Foods Noon-Fresh contest, the cereal packed with vitamins, crammed with energy and with a delicious, delightful, spanking-swell taste-the winner, young Miss Jill Fulmer!"
She moved aside the drape and stepped onto the stage and blinked at the glaring lights, wanting to rush back and away from the clattering waves of applause. She stood still, forgetting what to do, unable to see.
She felt her hand raised and felt herself being pulled forward and heard Jolly Harry whisper, "Come on, kid, shake the lead out." Jill let herself be coaxed forward, forcing her eyes to focus on Jolly Harry's face, inspecting his long, bony face that was like a grinning skull's head, the cluster of boyish curls deliberately flopped on his forehead, the slight jiggle of his white bow tie on his scrawny neck. He raised his arms and the roars of applause became dull ripples, then suddenly stopped, as though he had flicked a switch. Dumbly, she lowered herself onto an aluminum tubed chair and tried to keep from blinking.
"Well, Jill, here we are," he said, his voice a low chuckle, and she made herself grin. "Cat got your tongue?" he said, and winked. She heard laughter. She breathed deeply until her body was tense, then grinned.
"I'm very happy to be here, Mr. Harry." Her voice felt like puffy sounds plopping from her mouth. He turned to the audience and nodded in mock seriousness.
"Now here is a young miss who regards her elders. Just look at her, just you look at her. Isn't she a lovely thing?" The audience applauded and Jill suddenly recalled that she hated audiences who applauded anything an innocuous master of ceremonies said. The applause stopped when Jolly Harry flicked up his hand and turned back to her and grinned.
"How does it feel to be the winner of the All-Foods contest-the one-in-a-few-million type of girl."
"It feels wonderful, it really does."
"If I told you a joke-just a quickie-would it make you feel comfortable?"
"I'm all right now, I really am."
"Did you know that farmers are now teaching their cows to Cha-Cha-Cha so they'll produce whipped cream?"
She grinned and the audience laughed and some people howled. She looked at his eyes and they were two flat, unhappy glitters in narrow sockets. He turned to the audience and spoke with exaggerated sincerity.
"Jill Fulmer is from the Bronx, New York. You can't beat those Bronx girls-there's a law against it." The audience laughed again and continued applauding. She held her grin, though she thought he was as funny as decaying teeth. He slowly raised his arms and the laughter and applause again stopped. "Now, now, folks, enough tomfoolery. Let's get to know this lucky, lovely girl a bit better." He looked at Jill.
"I've been told that you want to be a doctor. Is that true, Jill?"
"Yes. Ever since I could remember I wanted to be a doctor."
"Isn't that an unusual ambition for an attractive girl? I would have guessed you aspired to be an actress, or at least a model."
"I never wanted to be any of those. I just wanted to be a doctor. Always."
"Have you always been so serious, Jill? Or is it just a little stage fright?"
"I guess I am pretty serious. I don't mean to be. I like to laugh and have fun. But I also like to be serious."
"You don't have to answer my next question, Jill-but do you have a fella?"
"Yes. His name is Michael Steffne. He's a very wonderful guy. He's a senior in our high school and the best athlete they ever had."
"Is your fella, Mike, in the audience?"
"No. Something important came up and he couldn't attend. But I know he's watching."
"Would you like to say hello to the lucky guy?"
"Yes, I would. I really would."
"Why then, go right ahead."
She glanced to the three cameras aimed at her face and smiled at the one with a red light on top. She raised her arm, not caring if she seemed foolish. She said, "Hello, Mike. I'm thinking about you. Get well fast." The audience applauded. She thought about Franklin Frederick, how his hatred had become an imponderable, an unforeseen blessing to her. She was tired of weighing people's truths against falsehoods, of judging right and wrong motives, trying to sense and intuit the frailties of wisdom buried in complexities. All she should do is guide her own life, because maybe there were truths and evils that she did not know about. What seemed corrupt to her might only be corrupt because she was too young or too afraid to perceive beyond the safety of her righteousness. If a man's motives were corrupt, then he would pick ruined fruit from what he planted, as she would be nourished or starved by her own crop of motives. The applause stopped and she turned to Jolly Harry and deliberately pouted.
"There is someone else in the audience I would like to say hello to, and to thank. He's Mr. Cyrus Elmacky, the principal of Melrick High School."
"You go right ahead, Jill. The first-prize winner can do no wrong. But you're the first student I know who liked her principal."
"Oh yes. Mr. Elmacky has been an inspiration to meas he has been to all the students of Melrick High School. Whenever we have serious problems Mr. Elmacky is the first one we go to. He encouraged me to enter the All-Foods contest. I remember something he quoted to me the first time I was in his office. 'Schools are the workshops of humanity.' Mr. Elmacky is really an inspiration."
Without waiting for Jolly Harry to answer, she turned and pointed to a random place in the dark stretch of audience beyond the stage, saying, "There's Mr. Elmacky. Mr. Elmacky, would you please stand up. I want everyone to see you."
Jolly Harry blinked confusedly, then quickly grinned, waving his arm, announcing, "Yes, let's all say hello to Mr. Elmacky. Let's get a spotlight and camera on this wonderful educator."
Jill saw a flurry of movement above her and heard cranking noises and a beam of light, like a stiffened pole of butter, probed the shadows and stopped on Mr. Elmacky who was standing and grinning, his Vaselined hair glistening under the light. A camera to her left was pushed forward by a man with his shirt sleeves rolled up, and the operator sitting on a straddle seat focused on Mr. Elmacky. The audience applauded loudly, and Jill almost coughed on the laughter she held back, because the principal was standing in a small area of empty seats.
"There, Mr. Elmacky," she told herself while the audience applauded, "there's your moment of fame, with my blessings." Jolly Harry stood up and raised his arms. The spotlight was snapped off and the audience quieted. Jolly Harry flicked up a finger and the orchestra created a salvo of sound. Jill felt herself cramp, because they were going to ask her to read the sentence and then bring her the money. Jolly Harry bent down his hand and the tah-rah-rah-tah of music was abruptly stopped.
"Folks, the moment is here. To the millions of people who entered our contest, the All-Foods Company, makers of Noon-Fresh, the cereal that turns a snack into a feast, wants to express its gratitude for your entries, and deeply regrets that you were not all winners. However, we urge you to try again. And now, before presenting young Miss Jill Fulmer with a check for ten thousand dollars, she will read her prize-winning sentence."
The audience was silent. Jolly Harry drew a card from his breast pocket and held it out to Jill. She stood up and shook her head. Above her, a microphone was lowered to pick up her voice better. The center camera was dollied closer and the lens of the large machine felt like a heat ray. She stood with her hands at her sides and blurred her vision. She felt strangely tranquil, as though she was a nebulous substance wafting dreamily on a current of air. She licked her lips.
"I like All-Foods Noon-Fresh cereal because it is the afternoon friend who chases hunger with exhilarating satisfaction, and like a friend, it never lets me down and always cheers me up."
The orchestra suddenly tah-rah-rah-tah-oomphed, and the audience applauded. The sound was shaking and deafening, but she didn't care because Jolly Harry was reaching into his jacket pocket and drawing out an envelope. Jill felt her nerves would shred from his slow movements as the audience kept applauding. She made herself smile as though her teeth were rare diamonds to display. Jolly Harry grinned as he opened the envelope flap and slid out a long beige check and held it toward her. She had to strain from snatching it from his fingers to stuff into her dress. He raised his hand and the audience stopped applauding.
"Jill Fulmer. With great pride and whole-hearted admiration I extend to you the well wishes of All-Foods for your success and happiness. May this check for ten thousand dollars, yes, ten thousand dollars, be the first step to a brilliant career as a doctor. As a symbol of our country's youth, you make us know that America is strong and lovely and still the greatest country in the world. God bless you."
Slowly she slid the check from his fingers and stared at the darkly inked blue numbers. People began to applaud, but Jolly Harry shook his arms and they stopped. The numbers blurred in her sight and her legs trembled. She thought, how can I keep you? How can I make sure an imponderable won't come and snatch you away? She realized the studio was silent, but there was no silence in her mind, only the slam of thoughts, the flurry of plans quickly discarded, filled by other schemes, released as instantly as they had come. How, how, damn you, how?
She looked up and Jolly Harry smiled and she whispered, "Thank you, Mr. Harry." And he cupped a hand around his ear in imitation of an old deaf man, comically cackling, "Eh, little missy, what was that?" She swallowed some breath and tried to stop from thinking, from wanting to be cunning. She frowned, forcing her voice to sound louder.
"Is this money really mine?" Jolly Harry clapped his hands together and chuckled with patronizing geniality.
"Why of course it is, Jill Fulmer. Every penny. And it will make a great hill of pennies, wouldn't you say?"
"I mean is it mine, officially? Absolutely officially? Irrevocably officially-no matter what?"
"Yes, Jill Fulmer. You have in your hands a certified check for ten thousand dollars, backed by the largest banking firm in the world. It is definitely, absolutely, irre-really and without a shadow of a doubt, your ten thousand dollars."
"You mean no one can stop payment on it-or take it away from me? Not even if you found out I was a Russian spy, or a kidnaper, for instance?"
He frowned at her and glanced at the audience, then back to her, his rouged lips trembling into a smile. She heard raspy sounds from the audience and knew he was worried and not quite sure of what to say. He had never dealt with a prize winner who questioned the validity of an All-Foods check, but she didn't care. She stared at his face thinking, I'm his imponderable right now. His perplexity. He turned to the audience and winked.
"A sassy little child isn't she? But lovable." No one laughed or applauded. The bow tie juggled up and down his Adam's apple, and he held it as if afraid it would pop off his collar. She could sense the audience silence was a menacing silence-they were waiting, with deadly patience, to know if anyone would take the money from her. They were all little people, all of them. They were all her, right now, demanding to know if they were truly recognized, truly a winner, and God pity the company who reneged them. Jolly Harry worked his mouth into a grin and chuckled, and his false merriment sounded like the rapid snapping of his teeth. His tongue flicked between his lips and he nodded slowly, magnanimously.
"If you are a Russian spy, I must say they are employing a delightful variety of agents."
"Then the money is mine, absolutely mine? No matter what happened or will happen, the money is mine?"
"Jill Fulmer, when the All-Foods company issues a check to a prize winner, the All-Foods company not only meets its obligations in the true tradition of All-Foods integrity, but it is delighted to issue the check. Only an act of Congress could deprive you of it, and dear child, I believe Congress is occupied with other matters."
"Then I thank the All-Foods company. Very much."
Although she was supposed to wait for the orchestra to play exit music, she turned abruptly and strode toward the drapes. Jolly Harry stared at her back, his eyes squinting hatred, then swung around to the audience, which had begun applauding, beating their hands together and stamping their feet and yelling her name-the tumult of their actions stunning Jolly Harry into silence. Jill stood behind the drape and dumbly stroked the check, as if fondling a precious kitten. She listened to the uproar behind her and giggled and thought that deep in their hearts all people hated big money companies and wanted to see pee-wee citizens take them, cheat them, ruin them.
She studied the check and listened to the ovation of noise behind her and knew that if she had to, if another imponderable flicked into her life and demanded that she tear up the ten-thousand-dollar check, she could do it. She tapped her finger onto the check, whispering, "You're just money. Just some stupid money. You'll never cost more than me. Never."
She folded the check and looked up when she heard her mother call to her. A man was standing beside her and she thought that Detective Glimmer seemed taller than he appeared when he had come to her house asking her to testify against Bosco. She walked to them. Her mother grabbed her in a hug, squeezing her hard and sobbing, "You were so beautiful, Jilly, I didn't know you were so beautiful until I saw you on television-on a monitor something. My daughter is so beautiful." Jill hugged her mother back, then worked from her embrace and held the check out.
"Here, Momma, keep this for me until the bank opens tomorrow."
Her mother stared at the check, whispering in hushed awe, "Ten thousand dollars." She kept staring at the check. The detective moved forward and grinned.
"You should have told me about the money, Jill. I didn't know you had won a contest."
"I'm sorry I made you subpoena me, Detective Glimmer. I just didn't want to lose the money. But I sure almost did."
"But you risked it anyway, Jill. Why?"
"The money was eating me up, and I didn't even have it. All of a sudden my whole life was worth only ten thousand dollars."
"That's not much when it comes to a whole life, is it?"
"Next to my life, it's only petty cash. But, thank God, it turned out all right."
"You handled yourself real sharp out there. You nailed the All-Foods Company, but good. When they see the papers they'll know why you insisted about payment on that check. They couldn't stop payment now. Not if you turned out to be Hitler in drag-in disguise."
"I'm glad Mr. Horner sent you to be my bodyguard."
"Don't worry about Bosco. Chances are he'll be picked up by the time I get you home. If not then, then soon after. No one is covering for him. Not his gang of punks, not even his family. I'm not guarding you, Jill. I'm accompanying you."
She stared at him and wondered why she wasn't shivering with fright. Bosco would try to hurt her-that was only logical. Maybe I'm worry-immune, she thought. Made immune by having been afraid for so long, growing tired of fear. It was a drag to her, this constant fear. like a great tumor, long ago anesthetized, and now just a weight. She just wanted to stand and realize that she had the ten thousand dollars, taste the sensation that for a brief moment millions of people had seen her face, listened to her speak, had been witness to a time in her life that altered her and changed the lives of the people her life had touched.
The detective cleared his throat as if anxious to escort her home, but she stood staring at the floor, knowing why she was not stupefyingly afraid, or stupefyingly happy. Winning the money had only been a thrill lasting less than an hour, and all that followed was a shocking struggle to finally get the money. Getting the money was just the finishing of a single dream, a small, single dream. Her lifetime would be long and filled with dreams, some of which she would achieve, some of which she would lose. She wasn't stupefyingly afraid of Bosco because she didn't believe he existed any more. He was part of the dream, and she was not dreaming any more. She Was in her hardest dream, now. Growing up-that was the hardest dream to achieve, she thought. It was a dream that maybe no one ever achieved.
The detective touched her hand, softly asking, "Would you like to ride home in a police car with the sirens going full blast?" She clapped her hands together, feeling suddenly childish as she laughed.
"That should cause a sensation." He winked at her.
"We can't let you take home all that money without an armed escort, can we?"
She said, "Thank you, very much." He grinned and walked to the lobby door. Her mother put the check in her purse and sighed.
"Now that you have the money, it's a let-down. I feel like old pancakes."
"I never thought I would get the money either. Maybe that's why I kept driving so hard to get it."
"Now we have to worry about Bosco. There's always a roach in the cream."
"Don't be such an alarmist, Momma. Bosco is stupid, but he has enough sense to know I'll be guarded."
"Bosco's brains don't bother me. It's his feelings. When someone like him is out for revenge the only thing in his heart is fire, not common sense."
"Momma, you're a worry-wart of the first order. If Bosco gets by the police, there's Poppa to consider. You know how brave he is."
Her mother smiled weakly. "If a pussy cat meows too loud, your father hides under the bed." Jill shrugged with affected nonchalance.
"Then I myself shall best the bloody beast, forthwith!" Her mother smiled, then suddenly wagged her finger at Jill's face. "Just do me a favor and stop entering contests. My heart can't stand it."
Jill put her left hand on her breast and raised her right arm, swearing solemnly, "Never again, Momma. Once is once too much. I'm cured. I promise to kick the habit." Her mother nodded and began to cry. Jill grinned, then slowly let herself cry because she was beginning to feel happy, and happiness was the best time for tears.
23
DETECTIVE Glimmer stopped the police car before Jill's house, and she cringed against her father, trying to hide from the clutter of people standing by the stoop, waiting to rush toward her.
Her father chuckled, "Look at all the well-wishers." Her mother snickered, "If Jilly didn't get the money, they'd be a pack of I-told-you-so'ers." The detective turned to them.
"You stay here for a minute." He hurried out of the car and strode to the people, authoritatively waving his hands and barking, "Break it up, come on; move it. This ain't a circus."
They shied back, glancing at each other uncertainly. Mrs. Bellnott, a large woman with arthritically lumpy legs, leaned forward, cackling, "It's still a free country, Cossack!" The detective poked a thumb at her face.
"You want to be pulled in for being a public pest, for preventing an officer from discharging his duties, for inciting a riot?" The woman goggled her eyes at him and shook her head and shuffled back. The detective turned to an elderly man with wispy gray hair rimmed around his baldness. "You want to be booked for loitering, impeding traffic, intimidating a minor, and forty-seven other charges?" The man wrinkled his mouth contemptibly.
"For gangs you got nothing, for taxpayers you got laws. Drop dead!" The detective put his hand into his jacket pocket and drew out a black notebook. The man hurried back. The others drifted to another stoop to watch from a distance. Detective Glimmer walked to the police car and opened the rear door.
Jill's mother worked herself from the car, grunting as she struggled to stand. Her father flattened his hand on her mother's back and helped push her out. She stood on the sidewalk, waving and grinning at the people. Jill left the car, careful that her skirt didn't hike above her knees.
Someone yelled, "I always knew you'd win a contest!"
A current of voices called to her, "Yeah, Jilly, me too."
"I knew you'd do it."
"Didn't I always encourage you?"
She had to tense herself to stop from suddenly cursing them as dumb lumps and hypocrites. She wanted to jeer at them and recite all the slander they had dumped onto her since she was a kid.
A woman with loosely fitting dentures shouted, " 'Member how I loaned you for a postage stamp?" Jill clenched her mouth and walked to the stoop.
Her father called to her, "I gotta go see some people, Jilly." He walked toward the stoop of people.
Her mother giggled, "I want to rub the check in a certain candy store owner's cockroach face. I'll be upstairs in a minute." The detective strode over to Jill. He smiled.
"Don't let the vultures get you, Jill. The good book says their souls are worth saving." She shrugged.
"Sometimes I think the good book needs rewriting." He patted her shoulder and winked.
"You go on upstairs. I'll nose around down here for a while."
"You can guard me upstairs, if you like. My mother always has some cake, and I'll make you some coffee."
"A little later, Jill. I've got to check with the man detailed in the back yard."
"There's nothing to worry about, is there, Detective Glimmer? I mean, you know."
"Not a blessed thing to worry about, Jill. Chances are we've got Bosco by now. I'm just hanging around, wasting taxpayer's money." He touched her cheek and winked again. "You go on up and relax."
She sighed, then walked up the stoop steps, hearing voices call to her, but not distinguishing the words. My whole world is really settled, she thought. Mr. Elmacky had his sip of fame, and now he would help her with a scholarship to college. Mike Steffne would heal, and when he left the hospital she would pay her debt to him, not with sex, but with friendship. The only sadness she couldn't gloss over with a promise was the sadness she felt about Marty getting ousted from Officers' Candidate School. All she could hope for was that her brother didn't hate her.
She opened the inner-hall door and walked up the steps, feeling like a lazy gray mist drifting some place toward rest. My world is really settled, she thought again. She would have her troubles, yes, but her world would settle into a calm balance. The only excitement she would have would be the exhilarations that followed the solutions to day-after-day average miseries. She unlocked the apartment door and stood in the shadowy kitchen, feeling suddenly tired and sleepy, as though all the tight coils in her had sprung loose and she was without co-ordination. She yawned and rubbed her eyes, moving through the living room into her bedroom, thinking that she would not let herself sleep, not yet. There was too much to remember-too much to think about. Right now.
She switched on the night table lamp and lay on the bed, forcing her eyes to remain open, staring at the ceiling while she thought about Mike Steffne. When he left the hospital, she would go to his home and sit with him, try to make him understand that she wasn't a true-blue bitch-not in her heart. Only in her ways. And she would never be cured of being a some-time bitch, not when she was a doctor, not when she was a wife, or a mother. How could a female become a full-grown, true woman, if she suppressed her bitchiness? She nodded. Mike would understand. There were depths to Mike. All he had to do was push away some of his muscles to get to his hidden depths.
She heard a door open and deliberately closed her eyes, wishing her mother had remained downstairs, crowing to the neighbors about her wonderful daughter. She heard the pad of her mother's slippered feet and wanted to suddenly shout, Momma, just leave me alone for a while! Then she frowned, wondering if her mother had been dieting, because the floor boards weren't squeaking under her weight. She opened her eyes and felt waves of scare-pimples sweep over her skin. She edged her face to the side and saw Bosco standing by the opened closet door. His mouth was stretched in a grin, and the shadows made his face seem ghoulish.
He put his fingers to his lips and shushed her, "Don't yap, cooze-not even once!" He closed the closet door. Her fright was like a coarse wire mesh clamped over her body and face. He held out his palm and she saw the opened knife. He jiggled the tip at her, whispering, "You figured I forgot about you, huh?" She didn't answer, not wanting her voice to quiver, knowing the more he sensed her fear, the more he would want to hurt her. He chuckled.
"I came to pay you off for what you did to me, cooze. First I'll jazz you, then I'll cut you. Letter B on one tit, letter F on the other-and right across your ass-Sputniks!"
She shook her head, unable to speak. He would do it, she knew. Just looking at him, made her know. His black hair was matted onto his head like a messy rug. Smears of sweat glistened on his face. His bulky chest heaved quickly as he breathed, tiny bubbles of spit churning on his lips. She could sense his excitement. Violence was coiled in him and he wanted to hurt her; he wanted her to trigger him. She shook her head again and licked her lips.
He nicked his thumbnail on the knife edge and smirked, "You yammer once and I fix you for good."
She stared at the knife tip, telling herself this moment was unreal, the delayed hangover of a lovely daydream. If she reached out, she could snap off this moment like she snapped off an untuned radio. The knife trembled in Bosco's hand and all Jill could see was the long blade pointed at her like a silver icicle.
He leaned toward her, snickering, "Talkin's your best subject, cooze, so how come you ain't talkin'? " She wanted to think of how to trick him into leaving, how to use her intelligence against his stupidity, but she could only think that she must pray to God. But she didn't know what to pray for. She forced herself to stop looking at the knife and wondered why he hadn't lunged at her, why he was talking and promising to mutilate her. She looked at his rumpled clothes, his shirttail hanging out of his pants like a torn apron, and she thought that he was waiting for her to make him lunge at her. He would stand and wait until she said or did the one action that would fling him at her.
Jill sat numbly, no longer afraid, just dull inside, as though her fright had been a dentist's needle shooting Novocain into her. She was now unfeeling and only aware that she had fooled herself into believing her life was now about settled. She could hear the muffled gusts of his breath as he watched her. The small room smelled acrid from his sweat. She didn't want him to lay her or mutilate her. But there were so many shames that had to be cleansed with punishment-shames she thought she had already suffered for-that it seemed a logical imponderable for someone like Bosco to be her final punishment. He edged closer to her, and she looked at him and shrugged.
"Bosco, do you believe in God?"
"What kind of kook question is that?"
"Do you-yes or no?"
"Sure. God's O. K."
"But do you believe in Him."
"Didn't I just say so?"
"I'm glad you do, Bosco. Because right now you're an agent of God sent to punish me for some rottenness only God himself knows about."
"You're out, kookie, way out."
Suddenly she yelled, "Then do what you came to do and drop dead!" He hunched forward, weaving the knife in jerky arcs, his face clenched with anticipation.
"Pop loose like that, once more, and you had it, cooze!"
She shook her head, not caring that his eyes were flicking nervously, that he was beginning to feel concerned and pressured waiting for her to say or do the action that would drive him to violence. The lines of sweat on his square face were like long polished scars, and she wondered if a scream would startle him to run, or enrage him to violence. She cursed Detective Glimmer for moping some place downstairs, when he should be here, protecting her.
Bosco poked his tongue tip between his lips and winked at her. "If you're hoping your mother comes up, you better stop hopin', 'cause I'll cut her like I'm gonna cut you." Jill quickly imagined how he would leap at her mother, stabbing the knife into her large breasts, one hand clamped on her mouth as he stabbed and stabbed. And her foolish and loving mother would slump to the floor like scarlet jelly. Jill cursed herself, thinking she was stupid, almost lunatic-stupid, for believing Bosco was an errand boy of God sent to punish her.
When I do something that's humanly natural, but which I can't always understand, I call it shameful, sinful, and like a moron I wait for God to punish me. As if the only hobby God had was spying on me and counting my sins. She crossed her arms on her breasts and the motion startled him. Jill knew she must trick Bosco, shift his excitement to another part of his beast-self. She must weaken his want for violence and charge him up in another part of his animal being, where once she charged him up, she could control him. She leaned forward, and his fingers tensed on the knife handle. She winked slyly.
"You're glad all this happened, aren't you, Bosco? You're glad you have a chance to hurt me and my mother. Glad you're on the run, glad the police are searching the city for you. Aren't you?"
"It's somethin' big, you gotta admit that. Yeah, O. K., I admit it-it's kinda fine."
"I knew you liked it. I knew it gave you kicks."
Her eyes flicked to the door as he listened for sounds, and she realized she understood a fraction of him. He wasn't flat-black, just animal, and no more. He wants people to look at him, know his face, remember the texture and tone and raucous melody of his life. In his brute way, he was lonely. Jill folded her arms, and he swung toward her.
She snickered, "You're a first-class jerk, Bosco, and sick besides. You're looking for a short cut to the electric chair, and my mother and me are it. You're afraid to go to jail for even a minute because you'll be forgotten about. So you'll kill my mother and me, just to get to the death house and have people remember you. Boy, Bosco, what a stupid jerk you are."
"That so, huh? Well, O. K., I changed my mind on your mother. She's an old douche bag what never bothered me. But you, cooze, you I'm gonna cut. Not kill. Only cut."
"Thanks loads, for your mercy. Tell me, Bosco, after you got out of medical school where did you complete your internship?"
"What kind'a crap you talkin' now?"
"When you start to cut me, how will you know when to stop? If you were a doctor or a surgeon, I wouldn't mind. But what about the aorta vein under my left breast? What if you cut your initials too deep and I bleed to death? Or if you puncture the Rheinstatistickle muscle in my right breast and I go into shock convulsions and die. You want to slice up my ass too, you said, so how about the Breindeh-schleger membranes in the left cheek and the Lembaduf-kintz tendon near my spine? Cut those and you're a murderer. After all, Bosco, you don't expect me to stand still while you play your sadistic tic-tac-toe on me, do you?"
"I'm not that stupid, cooze. Before I cut, I'll put you out."
"Your consideration is overwhelming. But if you hit me too hard, you might break my neck or I might fall on a protruding object and die of a concussion. If you bang me on the head, you might break my skull and I'll die. If you choke me, just a little, you might choke me a little too much. How, exactly, Dr. Bosco, will you administer the anesthetic before operating?"
"Will you just shut your goddam mouth!"
Jill wanted to tell him, I must keep talking. I'm talking for my life, for my tomorrows. I'll lie, cheat, trick, fake, pretend-I'll do anything and be anything because my life is at stake-I am, and I want to remain.
"You know the rules, Bosco. Every dying person is given a last-minute speech. You'll get the same before they strap you into the electric chair for killing me. What will your last words be, Bosco Feldman? Some sub-normal message delivered in Neanderthal grunts? Will you say you were some underprivileged, underbrained boy who couldn't contend with the intelligence of the other boys? Your dumbness made you positive, while their smartness made them complex and negative, so you were able to rule them? Will you scream that your mother was a miser who wouldn't pay for you-not with money, or love? When it's too late for excuses, Bosco, what excuse will you give?"
He frowned at her, and she nodded. His eyes dulled at her as he thought, and she knew he was confused. She seemed not to be afraid of him and he didn't know why. She was forcing him to be logical, and thinking was draining the excitement from his escape, from the sumptuous sensations of anticipated violence. He understood fear, but logic made him think, and thinking befuddled him. It set him into a real world where he could be seen because unafraid people looked at him, saw him. Deep in him, he felt himself a mucky lump. She stared at him, seeing the slump to his body, the looseness in his face while he thought. Jill did not pity him. She hated him and was happy to feel a genuine and specific hatred. She lowered her arms from across her breasts and pointed to the partially opened window.
"Bosco, the police are all around the house. That detective is coming up soon. Detective Glimmer. If you leave here the same way you came, I won't mention you were here at all."
He suddenly hissed, "Nobody calls Bosco a first-class jerk!" He swung his hand out and whacked her face, knocking her back and forth on the mattress. Her skirt flared over her thighs, her legs akimbo. He grinned lewdly and stepped back from her.
"I just gave you a nibble. Wait'll I give you a big bit of what you're gonna get." She rubbed the pain in her face and swallowed back tears, certain he wanted her to cry and beg. He reached out and slid his hand on the inside of her thigh, stroking her. She kept herself still. His fingers worked up until he touched the rim of her panties. His eyes were rigidly set as he watched her. He licked his lips and his voice was harsh.
"Like velvet. Even after I jazzed Trixie, I said you'd be better'n her."
Deliberately, she yawned, then said, "Take a good feel, Bosco." She smiled as he frowned, drawing back her left leg, as if to give his hand more room.
"I want you to have a happy memory when they sit you in the electric chair." He sneered and drew back his hand, grabbing the soft flesh and squeezing. She gagged on a silent scream, and suddenly, blindly rammed her left foot at him, kicking his face, her shoe heel mashing his mouth and staggering him back to bunk against her bureau.
She sat up, waiting for him to begin beating her, rubbing her thigh as she trembled and swallowed deep breaths of air. She watched him swabbing the blood over his mouth with a handkerchief. Although she wanted to scream, right now-just gape open her mouth and shriek with all her power, because she didn't want to be cut and beaten and scarred, or killed-she waited for her body to stop trembling, telling herself she would let him lay her if that's all he would do. She would rather suffer the obscene assault than be beaten into a cripple.
Bosco spit some blood onto the floor, then lumped the handkerchief against his mouth. His eyes bulged as he stared at her, while listening for sounds in the next room. He edged his left hand to the door and snapped the lock beneath the knob. With casual caution, she moved down her skirt and sat up, sensing that she was now at the core of this imponderable, and only her action would cause the imponderable to turn dangerous or meaningless. She had to be cunning now, and raw; she had to make him want to lay her-but quietly, like lovers meeting to make love. She moved her legs off the bed and stared at the floor, surprised at her calm, at the speedy rush of her thoughts. She listened to the noise of Bosco sucking blood from his mouth. Jill forced her voice to sound factual.
"Trixie told me about your laying her." He moved the handkerchief from his mouth and laughed.
"She's got a big mouth." Bosco shrugged.
"Trixie's been laid a lot of times," Jill said. Bosco turned the handkerchief to an unstained part and dabbed his mouth.
"Maybe lots've guys had her, but I'm the one she remembers." Jill made herself laugh nastily.
"She told me you were the worst. The very worst lay. That's why she remembers you." He jammed the handkerchief into his pocket and rushed to her, shoving her shoulder, forcing her to sprawl on the bed.
"Don't snow me, cooze. I sent Trixie. I sent her, for good."
"You know what else she told me, lover boy? That you talked better about what you were going to do, than what you did."
"You're a kook, Jill. I mean it. You gotta be. Here I am, holding a shiv on you, ready to cut you eighteen ways from Tuesday, only first I'm gonna rape you. And you keep insultin' me and makin' like I'm somebody who should be afraid of you. So you just gotta be a kook."
"You know something else, Bosco? It's a biological statistic that men with a small degree of brains have a small degree of-you know what. Trixie confirmed that statistic. She really did. She said it took her five minutes to find it. She said, and I quote her accurately, that you were 'all thumbs and one pinkie.'"
He drew back his arm to punch her, and Jill tensed herself, to keep from flinching. The tendons in her neck were pulled taut. She stared at him, waiting, telling herself that she was not about to be killed or terribly cut, because she didn't believe in the panic of such melodrama. Bosco would just hurt her-nothing more. Slowly, the strain in her neck softened and his arm lowered. He licked some blood from his lips and leered at her.
"You're gonna find out how Trixie was lying. Right now."
She nodded, "I know."
He muttered, "One second," and began pinching his front teeth to test if they were loose. She thought that it was stupid not to let him try and lay her. If she had a strange cancer in her heart and was about to die and the doctor told her that the only known cure was sexual submission to sixty syphilitic apes, she would let the apes lay her. To stay alive, that's all that mattered.
Bosco stopped testing his teeth and grinned. "You're lucky my teeth'r good." She studied the leaks of blood welled on his stubbly chin, the flop of his ears, the way his eyelids twitched as he stared back at her. Suddenly, she wanted to beg him to go away, to pity her in this most crucial time of her youth-then promise him money and friendship, devotion and adoration. She wanted to scream to God to bring Detective Glimmer charging in to save her.
Bosco stepped up to her, set his hand under her breast and plopped it in his palm. He chuckled, "Trixie never said that about me, did she?"
Jill shrugged, "Trixie said laying you was like being with a sick puppy." He tensed his feel on her breast.
"You just made that up, huh?" She shrugged again. His fingers were like blunt forks digging into her flesh. She wanted to turn from the rank smell of his sweat.
He frowned at her, asking, "Who'd she say was better'n me, Mike Steffne?" She nodded. He pulled back his hand and clenched his fingers. "Strip down, cooze. I'll show you who's better." She licked her lips and forced her voice to sound calmly curious.
"You might make me pregnant."
"So let your mother worry."
"All right, lover boy, where do you want to do it? The bed, the floor, in a chair?"
"You mean I don't have to rape you? You'll let me?"
"Why not? You know what they say. If it can't be helped, lay back and enjoy yourself. But first there are conditions."
"Conditions, huh? These I gotta hear."
"No undressing. I'll just take off my panties, nothing else. Someone might come in, and I have a reputation to uphold."
"So far, O.K. Only don't make a Federal case outta this."
"The next condition is there's to be no fooling or feeling. Just do it."
"You ain't givin' me much, are you? Not even a kiss?"
"I'd rather kiss a moldy bicycle seat than a pig like you. And I want the lights on, all of them. I want to see the stupid faces you make while you're performing the delicate act of love."
"No lights. I don't like lights."
"No lights, no lay, that's how it stands. You haven't got your moron Sputniks to hold me still for you. If a woman doesn't want to get raped, she won't be raped. So make your mind up, lover boy."
"I don't like lights."
"What are you afraid of?"
"I can get more kicks outta a six-buck ginch."
"Then go to one. To me you're just a dirty slob I have to submit to. Maybe some six-buck ginch will consider you her dream man. So go to her."
"All right, cooze, lay down and meet your master."
She nodded to him, then shrugged, asking, "Can I have a cigarette before you try what I know you won't be able to do?" He grinned pityingly at her.
"I feel lousy for what'll happen after I lay you. Everyone else'll be a flat tire, after me."
"If that's true, then I'll come to visit you in Sing Sing for my kicks."
He giggled lasciviously and winked to show his confidence. She opened the small night table drawer and drew out a pack of cigarettes and a folder of matches.
Jill smiled at him, asking, "Aren't you going to light this for me, lover boy?" He snickered. She scraped the pink match head on the black emery strip and blinked at the burst of flame, then lit the cigarette. She held the smoke in her throat and sat with apparent nonchalance, though the fear in her made her breasts feel like heaving pumps, and her stomach a door banging in her body. Now she would risk herself and let her life be determined by luck and Detective Glimmer. Her fear was deepened because she wasn't sure others could be trusted with her life. But she had to try and hurt Bosco.
She exhaled some smoke and smiled at him. "Aren't you going to drop your pants, lover boy?" He scowled at her.
"Don't talk dirty. I don't like it." Then he glanced at the door, muttering, "You get ready first." Jill tittered, to make him turn to her. She stood up, slowly raised her skirt and drew down her panties, feeling herself flush as he stared at her. She picked the panties from her foot and held them out to him.
"Here's your flag of honor, lover boy." He clenched his mouth. She dropped the panties and deliberately stared at him, then pursed her mouth thoughtfully.
"You're not a bad-looking guy, Bosco. There's something about you."
"Yeah, huh? Tell me some more-only flatterin' me won't get you unlaid, cooze."
"I'm not flattering you. I mean it. You have a roughness I like-like Burt Lancaster."
"Oh, I don't mind your laying me. If you can make it, that is. In fact, I hope you can make it, and better than you did with Trixie. You remind me of another actor, that rough-and-tumble one. What's his name."
"Kirk Douglas?"
"That's close, but not exactly. He played in a motorcycle picture."
"Brando? You sayin' Marlon Brando?"
She grinned and nodded several times, saying, "Yes, yes, that's the one, Marlon Brando."
Bosco spit some blood on the floor and smiled smugly. "Everyone says so." Then he pointed at her, cautioning her, "Not that I went out to copy him. I was the way he is long before I got to know how he is. You dig?"
Jill nodded, "I dig." She inhaled some smoke, blew it at the ceiling and winked at him.
"I changed my mind on the kisses. You can have some."
"You're the changingest cooze I ever seen."
"I just need some warming up, Brando."
He hiked up his pants belt and strode to her, his body rocking in a proud motion. She thought, why can't I pity him for even a fraction of time, so I can stop hating him. She inhaled on the cigarette and blew smoke to the side, then outstretched her arms, slitted her eyes and voweled her lips in imitation of a passionate woman. He wiped some blood from his mouth and stooped over her.
"You're a hot-lookin' ginch," he said, his voice breathy and low. He set the knife on the bed and opened his mouth on her mouth and palmed her breasts as she held her arms on his back. His tongue was like a slimy club joggling on her tongue, the taste of blood stinging the bruise he had whacked in her mouth.
He settled against her and she prayed that she didn't gag as his tongue jammed against her cheeks and thumped on her teeth. She deliberately squirmed onto his front, her hands pulling up his shirt, her fingers tickling his bare back, making him tremble and pump against her. His gaspy inhale sucked a vacuum in her mouth, his explosive exhale voomed breath into her throat while she set the folder of matches on his bare skin, telling herself that not all men were this animal or like the officer who had drugged her. Some men were sexual and their sweat was sweet and their bodies a lovely rhythm moving into love while she opened to love. He pumped his body harder and his weight hurt. She could only sip small breaths through her nostrils while his opened mouth grunted and rasped sounds into her mouth as she groped behind him and set the cigarette tip onto the match folder. She heard a whish-noise.
His body suddenly stiffened, then bolted against her, and he shrieked in her mouth. She squeezed the flames onto his skin, and he ripped from her and screamed his agony. He fell to the floor, writhing and shrieking and flailing at his back, until he smacked off the burning matches, his eyes gaped with shock and pain, blood spraying from his mouth as his voice screeched like a gored animal. She jumped from the bed and ran to the door, quickly unsnapping the lock and yanking it open. She ran through the living room and into the kitchen and saw her mother opening the door. Then Detective Glimmer ran into view.
She yelled, "Bosco's in there, in my room." The detective shoved her mother aside and lunged forward, drawing his gun as he rammed against the door, shattering the lock.
He bawled, "Lay still, punk!"
Jill heard Bosco moan and whimper, "My back, my back." The detective drew glittering handcuffs from under his suit jacket. He stuck his foot out and raised his leg and flipped Bosco onto his stomach, wrinkled his mouth at the stench of burnt flesh. Detective Glimmer handcuffed Bosco who lay scragging and clawing at the large patch of charred skin to the right of his spine.
The detective strode to the window and shoved it up, then yelled out, "Frank, get up here, on the double!" He left the window, glanced at Bosco, and walked into the kitchen.
"You nailed him good, Jill. What happened?"
"He was waiting for me, to rape me, then cut his initials in me. I told him he didn't have to rape me. Then I burned him with a cigarette and a match pack while he was kissing and feeling me."
"Very shrewd, Jill. I hope my daughter has your sense and guts. Where's the phone?"
"In the living room."
He nodded and walked to the living room. They heard the pound of running steps in the hallway. A chunky detective with a wide-brimmed slouch hat and padded suit shoulders hurried in. Detective Glimmer pointed to the bedroom.
"In there, Frank. He's hurt, but watch him. I'll get an ambulance." The other detective nodded and hurried into the bedroom. Jill licked her lips and turned to her mother who was staring at Bosco, thrashing on the floor, shrill moans coming from his clenched mouth. She put her arm around her mother's shoulders and coaxed her to turn away.
The woman's voice trembled, "I meant to throw those cigarettes away because you shouldn't smoke. They cause cancer."
Jill patted her mother's shoulder, whispering, "Isn't it better to get cancer when I'm sixty, than raped and cut up when I'm nearly seventeen?"
The woman nodded and a smile flicked on her lips. "It's true what they say about women, Jilly, you know?"
Jill shook her head, asking, "What's true about women, Momma?" Asking just to hear her own voice, to feel she was safe, that she could breathe some quiet air and eat food and think about becoming a doctor and wonder about the man she prayed that she would meet and love and who would love her. "What's true about women, Momma?" she asked again.
Her mother sighed. "That women, deep down, are worse animals than men. Don't you think so?" Jill turned and looked at Bosco who was being helped to a sitting position by the detective.
She looked away and shrugged, "There's all kinds of animals, Momma. Some you pet, and some you cage. But you know something I just learned?" Her mother looked at her and Jill used her thumbs to wipe some tears from the woman's eyes.
"What did you learn, Jilly?"
She kissed her mother's cheek and whispered, "If a woman has to be an animal to stay alive so she can keep being a woman, then being an animal for a little while, isn't so terrible." Her mother nodded, then sighed again.
"Let's go into my bedroom so we can have a good cry."
Jill hugged her mother and grinned. "That's just what we need, Momma. The longest, noisiest cry we ever had." They hugged each other and moved toward the bedroom door. Jill kept herself from looking at Bosco, thinking that after she had her big cry she would think about tomorrow, and the days after tomorrow.
