The Collected Stories, page 8
“Got you off your feet that time,” he says, laughing. “Oh yes, I did.” And before I can even make myself half comfortable on that polka-dotted linoleum, he got onto me right where we were, and the truth is, we were so happy, we forgot the precautions.
An Irrevocable Diameter
One day in August, in a quiet little suburb hot with cars and zoned for parks, I, Charles C. Charley, met a girl named Cindy. There were lots of Cindys strolling in the woods that afternoon, but mine was a real citizen with yellow hair that never curled (it hung). When I came across her, she had left the woods to lie around her father’s attic. She rested on an army cot, her head on no pillow, smoking a cigarette that stood straight up, a dreamy funnel. Ashes fell gently to her chest, which was relatively new, covered by Dacron and Egyptian cotton, and waiting to be popular.
I had just installed an air conditioner, 20 percent off and late in the season. That’s how I make a living. I bring ease to noxious kitchens and fuming bedrooms. People who have tried to live by cross ventilation alone have thanked me.
On the first floor the system was in working order, absolutely perfect and guaranteed. Upstairs, under a low unfinished ceiling, that Cindy lay in the deadest center of an August day. Her forehead was damp, mouth slightly open between drags, a furious and sweaty face, hardly made up except around the eyes, but certainly cared for, cheeks scrubbed and eyebrows brushed, a lifetime’s deposit of vitamins, the shiny daughter of cash in the bank.
“Aren’t you hot?” I inquired.
“Boiling,” she said.
“Why stay up here?” I asked like a good joe.
“That’s my business,” she said.
“Ah, come on, little one,” I said, “don’t be grouchy.”
“What’s it to you?” she asked.
I took her cigarette and killed it between forefinger and thumb. Then she looked at me and saw me for what I was, not an ordinary union brother but a perfectly comfortable way to spend five minutes.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Charles,” I said.
“Is this your business? Are you the boss?”
“I am,” I said.
“Listen, Charles, when you were in high school, did you know exactly what your interests were?”
“Yes,” I said. “Girls.”
She turned over on her side so we could really talk this out head-on. I stooped to meet her. She smiled. “Charles, I’m almost finished with school and I can’t even decide what to take in college. I don’t really want to be anything. I don’t know what to do,” she said. “What do you think I should do?”
I gave her a serious answer, a handful of wisdom. “In the first place, don’t let them shove. Who do they think they’re kidding? Most people wouldn’t know if they had a million years what they wanted to be. They just sort of become.”
She raised a golden brow. “Do you think so, Charles? Are you sure? Listen, how old are you?”
“Thirty-two,” I said as quick as nighttime in the tropics. “Thirty-two,” I repeated to reassure myself, since I was subtracting three years wasted in the army as well as the first two years of my life, which I can’t remember a damn thing about anyway.
“You seem older.”
“Isn’t thirty-two old enough? Is it too old?”
“Oh no, Charles, I don’t like kids. I mean they’re mostly boring. They don’t have a remark to make on anything worth listening to. They think they’re the greatest. They don’t even dance very well.”
She fell back, her arms swinging on either side of the cot. She stared at the ceiling. “If you want to know something,” she said, “they don’t even know how to kiss.”
Then lightly on the very tip of her nose, I, Charles C. Charley, kissed her once and, if it may be sworn, in jest.
To this she replied, “Are you married, by any chance?”
“No,” I said, “are you?”
“Oh, Charles,” she said, “how could I be married? I haven’t even graduated yet.”
“You must be a junior,” I said, licking my lips.
“Oh, Charles,” she said, “that’s what I mean. If you were a kid like Mike or Sully or someone, you’d go crazy. Whenever they kiss me, you’d think their whole life was going to change. Honestly, Charles, they lose their breath, they sneeze—just when you’re getting in the mood. They stop in the middle to tell you a dirty joke.”
“Imagine that!” I said. “How about trying someone over sixteen?”
“Don’t fish,” she said in a peaceful, happy way. “Anyway, talk very low. In fact, whisper. If my father comes home and hears me even mention kissing, he’ll kill us both.”
I laughed. My little factories of admiration had started to hum and I missed her meaning.
What I observed was the way everything about this Cindy was new and unused. Her parts, visible or wrapped, were tooled for display. All the exaggerated bones of childhood and old age were bedded down in a cozy consistency of girl.
I offered her another cigarette. I stood up and, ducking the rafters, walked back and forth alongside the cot. She held her fresh cigarette aloft and crossed her eyes at it. Ashes fell, little fine feathers. I leaned forward until I was close enough for comfort. I blew them all away.
I thought of praying for divine guidance in line with the great spiritual renaissance of our time. But I am all thumbs in that kind of deciduous conversation. I asked myself, did I, as God’s creature under the stars, have the right to evade an event, a factual occurrence, to parry an experience or even a small per-adventure?
I relit her cigarette. Then I said, with no pacing at all, like a person who lacks aptitude, “What do you think, Cindy, listen, will you have trouble with your family about dating me? I’d like to spend a nice long evening with you. I haven’t talked to someone your age in a long time. Or we could go swimming, dancing, I don’t know. I don’t want you to have any trouble, though. Would it help if I asked your mother? Do you think she’d let you?”
“That’ll be the day,” she said. “No one tells me who to go out with. No one. I’ve got a new bathing suit, Charles. I’d love to go.”
“I bet you look like a potato sack in it.”
“Oh, Charley, quit kidding.”
“O.K.,” I said. “But don’t call me Charley. Charley is my last name. Charles is my first. There’s a ‘C’ in the middle. Charles C. Charley is who I am.”
“O.K.,” she said. “My name is Cindy.”
“I know that,” I said.
Then I said goodbye and left her nearly drowned in perspiration, still prone, smoking another cigarette, and staring dreamily at a beam from which hung an old doll’s house with four upstairs bedrooms.
Outside I made lighthearted obeisance to the entire household, from rumpus room to expanding attic. I hopped onto my three-wheeled scooter and went forward on spectacular errands of mercy across the sycamore-studded seat of this fat county.
At 4 a.m. of the following Saturday morning I delivered Cindy to her eight-room house with two and a half bathrooms. Mrs. Graham was waiting. She didn’t look at me at all. She began to cry. She sniffed and stopped crying. “Cindy, it’s so late. Daddy went to the police. We were frightened about you. He went to see the lieutenant.” Then she waited, forlorn. Before her very eyes the friend she had been raising for years, the rejuvenating confidante, had deserted her. I was sorry. I thought Cindy ought to get her a cold drink. I wanted to say, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Graham. I didn’t knock the kid up.”
But Cindy burned. “I am just sick of this crap!” she yelled. “I am heartily and utterly sick of being pushed around. Every time I come home a little late, you call the police. This is the third time, the third time. I am sick of you and Daddy. I hate this place. I hate living here. I told you last year. I hate it here. I’m sick of this place and the phony trains and no buses and I can’t drive. I hate the kids around here. They’re all dopes. You follow me around. I hate the two of you. I wish I was in China.” She stamped her feet three times, then ran up to her room.
In this way she avoided her father, who came growling past me where I still stood in the doorway. I was comforting Mrs. Graham. “You know adolescence is a very difficult period …” But he interrupted. He looked over his shoulder, saw it was really me, and turned like a man to say it to my face. “You sonofabitch, where the hell were you?”
“Nothing to worry about, Mr. Graham. We just took a boat ride.”
“You’d better call the police and tell them Cindy’s home, Alvin,” said Mrs. Graham.
“Where to?” he said. “Greenwich Village?”
“No, no,” I said reasonably. “I took Cindy out to Pottsburg—it’s one of those amusement parks there on the other side of the harbor. It’s a two-hour ride. There’s dancing on the boat. We missed a boat and had to wait two more hours, and then we missed the train.”
“This boat goes straight to Pottsburg?”
“Oh yes,” I said.
“Alvin,” said Mrs. Graham, “please call the police. They’ll be all over town.”
“O.K., O.K.,” he said. “Where’s Cynthy Anne?”
“Asleep probably,” Mrs. Graham said. “Please, Alvin.”
“O.K., O.K.,” he said. “You go up too, Ellie. Go on, don’t argue. Go on up and go to sleep. I want to talk to Mr. What’s-His-Name for a couple of minutes. Go on now, Ellie, before I get sore.
“Now, you!” he said, turning to me. “Let’s go into my den.” He pointed to it with a meaty shoulder. I went before him.
I could not really see him through the 4 a.m. haze, but I got the outlines. He was a big guy with a few years on me, a little more money, status, and enough community standing to freeze him where he stood. All he could do was bellow like a bull in his own parlor, crinolines cracking all around him.
“You know, sonny,” he said, leaning forward in a friendly way, “if you don’t keep away from my kid—in fact, if I ever see you with her again—I’m gonna bring this knee right up”—pointing to it—”and let you have it.”
“What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything and you’re not going to. Stay away … Listen,” he said intimately, man to man. “What good is she? She’s only a kid. She isn’t even sure which end is up.”
I looked to see if he really believed that. From the relaxed condition of his face and the sincere look in his eyes, I had to say to myself, yes, that’s what he believes.
“Mr. Graham,” I said, “I called for Cindy at her own door. Your wife met me. I did not come sneaking around.”
“Don’t give me any crap,” he said.
“Well, all right, Mr. Graham,” I said. “I’m the last guy to create a situation. What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t want you near this place.”
I pretended to give it some thought. But my course was clear. I had to sleep two hours before morning at least. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Graham. I’m the last guy to create a situation. I just won’t see Cindy anymore. But there’s something we ought to do—from her point of view. The hell with me …”
“The hell with you is right,” he said. “What?”
“I think a little note’s in order, a little letter explaining about all this. I don’t want her to think I hate her. You got to watch out with kids that age. They’re sensitive. I’d like to write to her.”
“O.K.,” he said. “That’s a good idea, Charley. You do that little thing, and as far as I’m concerned we can call it square. I know how it is in the outfield, boy. Cold. I don’t blame you for trying. But this kid’s got a family to watch out for her. And I’ll tell you another thing. I’m the kind of father. I’m not ashamed to beat the shit out of her if I have to, and the Ladies’ Home Journal can cry in their soda pop, for all I care. O.K.?” he asked, standing up to conclude. “Everything O.K.?
“I’m dying on my dogs,” he said in a kindlier tone. Then in a last snarl at the passing stranger he said, “But you better not try this neighborhood again.”
“Well, so long,” I said, hopefully passing out of his life. “Don’t take any woolen condoms.” But when he cantered out to look for me, I was gone.
Two days later I was sitting peacefully in my little office, which is shaded by a dying sycamore. I had three signed-for, cash-on-delivery jobs ahead of me, and if I weren’t a relaxed guy I would have been out cramming my just rewards. I was reading a little book called Medieval People, which I enjoyed because I am interested in man as a person. It’s a hobby. (I should have been a psychologist. I have an ear.) I was eating a hero sandwich. Above my head was a sign in gold which declared AERI AIR CONDITIONERS. Up the Aeri Mountain, Down the Rushing Glen, Aeri Goes Wherever, Man Builds Homes for Men.
The telephone gave its half-turned-off buzz. It was Cindy, to whom I offered a joyous hello, but she was crying. She said three times, “Oh, I’m sorry. Oh, I’m sorry. Oh, I’m sorry.”
“I am too, honey.” I thought of how to console her. “But you know there’s some justice to it. Your daddy’s really planning a lovely future for you.”
“No, Charles, that’s not it. You don’t know what happened. Charles, it’s terrible. It’s all my fault; he’s going to put you in jail. But he got me so mad … It’s my fault, Charles. He’s crazy, he really means it.”
On the pale reflection in the colorless window glass, I blanched. “O.K.,” I said. “Don’t cry any more. Tell me the truth.”
“Oh, Charles …” she said. Then she described the events of the previous evening. Here they are. I have taken them right out of Cindy’s mouth.
“Cindy,” Mr. Graham said. “I don’t want you to go around with a man like that—old enough to be your father almost.”
“Oh, for godsakes, Daddy, he’s very nice. He’s a wonderful dancer.”
“I don’t like it, Cindy. Not at all. I don’t even like your dancing with him. There are a lot of things you don’t know about people and things, Cindy. I don’t like you dancing with him. I don’t approve of a man of that age even putting his arm around a teenager like you. You know I want the best for you, Cindy Anne. I want you to have a full and successful life. Keeping up your friendship with him, even if it’s as innocent and pleasant as you claim, would be a real hindrance. I want you to go away to school and have a wonderful time with fellows your own age, dancing with them, and, you know, you might fall in love or something … I’m not so stupid and blind. You know, I was young once too.”
“Oh, Daddy, there’s still plenty of life in you, for goodness’ sakes.”
“I hope so, Cindy. But what I want to tell you, honey, is that I’ve asked this man Charles to please stay away from you and write you a nice letter and he agreed, because, after all, you are a very pretty girl and people can often be tempted to do things they don’t want to do, no matter how nice they are.”
“You asked him to stay away?”
“Yes.”
“And he agreed?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Did he say he might be tempted?”
“Well …”
“Did he say he might be tempted?”
“Well, actually, he said he …”
“He just agreed? He didn’t even get angry? He didn’t even want to see me again?”
“He’ll write you, honey.”
“He’ll write me? Did he say he’ll write me? That’s all? Who does he think I am? An idiot? A dope? A little nitwit from West Main Street? Where does he get off? That fat slob … What does he think I am? Didn’t he even want to see me again? He’s gonna write me?”
“Cindy!”
“That’s all? That’s what he wanted me for? He’s gonna write me a letter? Daddy … Daddy …”
“Cindy! What happened last night?”
“Why do you go stick your nose in my business? Doesn’t anything ever happen to you? I was just getting along fine for five minutes. Why do you always sit around the house with your nose in my business?”
“Cindy, were you fooling around with that man?”
“Why can’t you leave me alone for five minutes? Doesn’t anyone else want you around anymore someplace? What do you want from me?”
“Cindy.” He gripped her wrist. “Cindy! Answer me this minute. Were you?”
“Stop yelling. I’m not deaf.”
“Cindy, were you fooling around with that man? Answer!”
“Leave me alone,” she cried. “Just leave me alone.”
“You answer me this minute,” he shouted.
“I’ll answer you, all right,” she said. “I was not fooling around. I was not fooling. You asked me. I was not fooling. I went upstairs where the lifeboat is and I lay down right underneath it and I did it with Charles.”
“What did you do?” gasped her father.
“And I ruined my blue dress,” she screamed. “And you’re so dumb you didn’t even know it.”
“Your blue dress?” he asked, scarcely breathing to hear the answer. “Cindy Anne, why?”
“Because I wanted to. I wanted to.”
“What?” he asked dimly.
“I wanted to, Daddy,” she said.
“Oh my God!” he said. “My God, my God, what did I do?”
Half an hour later Mrs. Graham returned loaded with goodies from the KrissKross Shopping Center. Cindy was crying in the kitchen, and in the TV room Mr. Graham sat in his red leatherette, eyes closed; his pale lips whispered, “It’s statutory rape … It’s transporting a minor …”
Cindy, my little pal, came lolling down the courtroom aisle with a big red smile, friend to the entire court. She wiggled a little in order to convey the notion that she was really a juvenile whore and I was not accountable. Nobody believed her. She was obviously only the singed daughter of a Campfire Girl.
Besides—philosophically and with a heavy hand—I had decided my fate was written. O.K., O.K., O.K., I said to the world and, staring inward, I overcame my incarceration anxiety. If a period of self-revelation under spartan circumstances was indicated, I was willing to accept the fact that this mysterious move of His might be meant to perform wonders. (Nehru, I understand, composed most of his books in jail.) Do not assume any particular religiosity in me. I have no indoctrinated notion about what He is like: size, shape, or high I.Q.
