Great or Nothing, page 17
“It’s awful.” To think they’d danced there only a few weeks ago!
“You know, there was supposed to be a party at the Grove that night to celebrate Boston College going to the Sugar Bowl. Jack and I talked about going. But BC lost to Holy Cross—it was a real upset—and nobody was in a party mood. Jack and I went to a pub to drink away our sorrows with some of our Alpha Sigma Nu brothers. We heard the fire alarms, and saw the smoke when we left, but we had no idea it was the Grove.”
“Well, thank God the Eagles lost,” Meg said.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Andy joked, his eyes darting to Meg, then back to the road. “I heard they’re still identifying the victims. The gals are harder, because lots of ’em got separated from their handbags.”
What a gruesome thought. Meg shivered and squeezed her beaded black clutch. “This is a lovely car. I bet it’s fun with the top down!”
“Yeah, she’s a real beaut.” Silence fell between them, and Meg smoothed her red skirt over her knees. Sallie had dropped the dress off yesterday after school, getting in half a dozen little digs in the process. But it had a black camisole bodice with a long torso that flowed into a full skirt, and Meg felt as glamorous as Ingrid Bergman. She was wearing her best heels, black suede peep-toe pumps. Her caramel curls were arranged in painstaking Victory rolls, and her lips were painted rosy red with Crimson Glory.
“So, you’re the only one left at home, huh?” Andy asked.
Meg nodded. “Do you have any brothers or sisters? Besides Mattie.”
“Two older brothers. They’d already left home when Mattie passed. It was easier on them, I think, being out of the house.”
“I know just what you mean! I’m envious of my sisters sometimes.” It was a relief to say it out loud. “I don’t particularly want to leave Concord. This is my home. Only…it doesn’t feel like home anymore, without Beth. Without Jo and Amy and Father.”
“What about that job Sallie keeps flapping her gums about?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. Sallie invited me to tea next week with Jack’s aunt, the headmistress. But I’m not sure I should leave home. Even if I came back on weekends…I worry about my mother. My sisters are in Canada and Connecticut now.” Meg hesitated. “Everyone’s always saying how marvelous it is that Jo’s doing her part, how modern of her, and it is—I really think it is!—but I suppose sometimes I feel the tiniest bit…trapped. And unappreciated.”
But was it a trap of her own making? Would Marmee prefer an empty nest? Meg still didn’t know, and there was no one to ask, to fret over the change in Marmee with her. Sometimes she resented her sisters for running off and leaving her at home—to face their absence every single day, in addition to Beth’s. To face the sadness in Marmee’s eyes and the dust on the piano and the constant reminders.
“I appreciate you, doll,” Andy flirted, and annoyance crept over Meg. He must have seen it on her face, because he backtracked. “Nah, I hear you. I got a two-A deferment, because of working at the light plant. Civilian occupation in support of national health, safety, or interest. But I could still get called up in a couple months, and I know it’d be rough on Ma. The last thing she needs is all three of us overseas. I’m no coward, but maybe it’s better I stay here in Concord, huh?”
Was he fishing for Meg to say she’d miss him if he went away?
“Well, we can do our part right here in the meantime, can’t we?” she said brightly. She and Andy were not kindred spirits, but she felt better for having confessed her selfish thoughts. Maybe he did, too.
“I’ve bought a lot of war bonds, that’s for sure.” Andy laughed. “Every time I get to feeling guilty for not fighting the Ratzis like my brothers, I go out and buy another one.”
Meg couldn’t help comparing his outlook with John’s. As a teacher, John could have deferred service, too. But he’d reasoned that enlisting in June—and being able to choose his branch of service—was better than potentially getting called up in the middle of the term. Of course he hadn’t wanted to leave Meg, or his mother (he was her only son), but he felt it was the honorable thing to do, and the practical thing. Meg admired that.
“Wow-ee,” Andy said as they pulled up to the Gardiners’ white-columned mansion on the outskirts of Concord. Meg was surprised to find music and laughter and light spilling out from every room in the house. There was no need for a blackout this far inland, although Concord had held its share of drills: air-raid sirens wailing and wardens patrolling the neighborhood as streetlights were extinguished, citizens snapped down the blinds, and motorists pulled over and took cover. But there was still a war on, and they were all meant to conserve where they could.
Andy helped Meg out of the car and tossed his keys to a valet. There was a steady stream of young people coming and going, women in fur stoles and long evening dresses, men in smart black dinner jackets with wide silk lapels and nipped-in waists, starched white shirts, and snowy pocket squares. Meg was grateful that Sallie had loaned her the dress, even if she’d offered in her usual tactless way.
Inside, tuxedoed waiters carried trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres. An orchestra played on a bandstand laden with hothouse flowers while couples twirled to a Glenn Miller tune. Chandeliers threw glittering pools of light across the dancers. In one corner, an enormous fir—why, it had to be ten feet high!—was festooned with silver and gold ornaments and sprinkled with tinsel. Fairy lights wound up the banisters of the grand staircase.
Meg was breathless with the beauty of it, and discomfited by the excess.
“Meg, darling!” Sallie came to greet them and handed her a glass of champagne. “You look marvelous. My dress really suits you. Isn’t she stunning, Andy?”
“She’s a real beaut,” Andy agreed.
Meg frowned. Hadn’t he said the exact same thing about his car? She took a long sip of champagne.
“The two of you make such a lovely couple. I knew it!” Sallie clapped her hands in self-congratulation. A diamond tennis bracelet sparkled on her gloved wrist. “Meg, let me introduce you to my friend Kate. She’s very influential in the Daughters of the American Revolution. Andy, go and get yourself a drink! Jack’s over at the bar.”
As Andy headed across the room, Sallie leaned in close, her sugared breath cool against Meg’s cheek. “He fancies you. I can tell. I’m glad you decided to give him another chance.”
Sallie seemed awfully invested in her matchmaking; Meg hated to tell her Andy had no chance at all. “It’s not like that, Sallie. I—”
“Oh! There’s someone here I think you know.” Sallie looped her arm through Meg’s and hauled her toward a familiar figure. “Helen! Look, it’s Meg. The two of you work together, don’t you?”
Meg stared at Helen Gagnon in mute mortification. It had never occurred to her that she might run into anyone from school. Sallie ran with such a different crowd; her friends were more likely to get their Mrs. degrees than teaching certificates!
“Hello, Meg. What a surprise!” Helen was wearing a slinky black dress that hugged her curves. With her long blond hair in a peekaboo style, she looked straight out of a Hollywood noir.
“Meg’s here with our friend Andy Fitzhugh. And Helen came with Jack’s friend Lloyd Bartlett,” Sallie prattled on.
“Hi, Helen.” Meg was sure her colleague must be wondering what she was doing here with a man who wasn’t John Brooke. She wanted to sink right through the parquet floor.
“I thought you two must know each other; the high school isn’t that big,” Sallie said. “But hopefully, Meg won’t be in that dreadful place much longer, if everything goes according to our little plan.”
Helen raised her thin, arched eyebrows. “Oh? What little plan is that?”
Meg flushed. “It’s nothing, really.”
“Meg’s being modest, as usual. She’s applying to a position at Plumley,” Sallie explained. “Jack’s aunt is the headmistress, and if he puts in a good word, Meg’s a shoo-in!”
Only if Jack put in a good word, huh? That needled Meg. Why couldn’t Sallie keep her big mouth shut? The last thing Meg wanted was word getting around school that she’d applied for another position and she was stepping out on John. “That—that dress is a real stunner, Helen. Excuse me, I’ve got to powder my nose!”
Meg rushed away, draining her champagne and dropping off the glass on a passing waiter’s tray. What should she do? Should she corner Helen and explain? Ask her not to say anything about the Plumley job or seeing her with Andy? Or would that be making a mountain out of a molehill—and insulting Helen at the same time? Oh, what a mess.
Meg was passing the bar when she overheard her name. She snagged another glass of champagne and ducked behind an enormous parlor palm. Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, Marmee was wont to say—mostly to Amy, who had a habit of lurking around corners and beneath open windows. But Meg couldn’t resist.
“She’s easy on the eyes, that’s for sure,” Andy was saying. Meg flushed.
“She’s got nice legs,” Jack allowed. “But do you really want a gal you have to drag onto the dance floor?”
Meg cringed. Had she been that much of a spoilsport at the Grove?
“Aw, give her a break, Jack,” Andy said. “Her sister just died.”
Thank you! Meg thought.
“I bet she’s full of sob stories about it, too,” Jack retorted.
“Sorta.” Andy sounded uncomfortable, but Meg didn’t care. What a crummy thing to say. He was the one who had brought up Mattie, several times, and Meg had hardly gotten a word in edgewise!
“She seems like a real cold fish,” Jack said. Meg gasped. The front seat of John’s Buick would beg to disagree! She wasn’t fast, but with the right man, she was hardly cold.
Meg peeked between the fronds and saw Andy nod, the big jerk! “To tell you the truth, I don’t think Meg’s the gal for me.”
She wasn’t. Especially if he was spineless enough to be swayed by what that donkey Jack Moffatt thought.
“I don’t know why Sal’s so keen on her. Feels sorry for her, I think,” Jack said. “The father’s got no head for business. Lost everything in ’29. If it weren’t for his rich aunt, they’d’ve been in a tent city.”
Sallie and her big blabbermouth! Meg’s face burned, but Jack wasn’t finished.
“You know that dress Meg’s wearing is one of Sal’s. Meg’s a sort of charity case for her. She’s been nagging me nonstop to put in a good word for her with my aunt Viola.”
Meg wanted to throw her glass of champagne right in Jack Moffatt’s stupid, smug face. What a meatball! Then she would use her nice legs—she did have nice, shapely legs; he was right about that—to kick her date in the shins.
No. She’d show them both that she was nobody’s charity case.
Meg gulped her champagne, set it on the corner of the bar, raised her chin, and strolled out to the dance floor. “Hiya, Joe,” she said, to a young man whose name she did not know, hips swinging and eyes inviting. He promptly asked her to dance. When she caught Andy’s gaze, she smiled up at the young man—whose name, it turned out, was Carl—as though he’d set the sun and moon and the stars in the sky. They had so much fun he introduced her to a few of his friends, who all wanted a turn around the floor with the enchanting Meg.
Andy managed to cut in half a dozen dances later. “Excuse me, that’s my date.”
“Too bad,” a young man from Boston University snarled.
“Aw, don’t be sore, Eddie. I’ll dance the next one with you,” Meg promised.
“Aren’t you popular tonight,” Andy said. It didn’t sound like a compliment.
“Who, me?” Meg ducked out of his arms as the song ended and the band struck up the opening notes of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” “Oh, I love this song!” she said. “But I promised Eddie!”
“Hey,” Andy started, but Meg was gone.
* * *
The evening should have felt like a triumph. Meg was an unqualified hit with Sallie’s crowd. She had only stopped dancing long enough to sip another glass of champagne. The fellas called her “baby” and “doll” and “sweetheart” and, when she dodged their good-natured advances, “a real little spitfire.”
While she drank, she chatted with Sallie’s friends Kate and Norma and Hazel. It turned out that several of them were college girls—Hazel was up for the weekend from Wellesley, and Norma had graduated from Mount Holyoke last spring—and Meg picked up pretty quickly that they weren’t actually very fond of Sallie.
“You know how Sallie is,” Norma divulged, voice low. “She’s always making those awful little jabs of hers. Every time we meet for lunch, I end up going home in tears!”
“Oh, yes,” Meg said. “She let me borrow this gown. She said I deserved to have something nice to wear for once, and she was sure that was difficult on a schoolteacher’s salary. Do you know I actually thanked her?” Meg laughed bitterly. “She’s a real saint, our Sal.”
“You’re a hoot, Meg,” Hazel said. “You should come for lunch at the club with us sometime.”
“I’d like that,” Meg said, though she wasn’t sure she would.
Eventually, Andy found her and said he was leaving, if she still wanted a ride home. He was clearly miffed. Meg tucked her arm through his and suggested they say their goodbyes to Sallie.
“Thanks for inviting me. I’ll make sure you get your dress back,” she told Sallie, her smile sharp and toothy. Sallie looked a touch bewildered, as though her favorite kitten had grown claws. She drew Meg aside.
“Why don’t you keep the dress? It’s lovely on you, and I have so many others.”
Meg’s temper—enhanced by one too many glasses of champagne—flared. “I don’t want your dress! I’m not your charity case.”
Sallie raised her eyebrows. “Watch your tone, Meg. You should be grateful. Don’t forget about tea with Aunt Viola next week.”
Meg saw Helen Gagnon out of the corner of her eye and felt suddenly ashamed of herself. What would John think of the way she’d acted tonight? Good God, what would Beth think? Or Jo, even?
She considered the empty parlor at home and Marmee’s silences. The promise of rows of neatly uniformed girls, diligently taking notes, their hands shooting into the air, eager to participate in discussions. She thought of marble halls and bigger paychecks. None of that was worth her self-respect.
“I don’t think I can make it to tea,” she said slowly.
“I haven’t even told you when it is!” Sallie burst out. She looked at Meg, realization dawning. Her mouth set in a thin line. “Andy only asked you out because I told him to, you know. Out of pity. You were such a drag at the Grove.”
Meg shrugged. “I don’t care. I can find my own dates.”
“The math teacher?” Sallie wrinkled her nose.
Meg rolled her eyes. “Have a good night, Sallie.”
Andy was silent on the ride home. When he walked her to the front door, though, he leaned in for a kiss. Meg turned her head and stepped back so that his lips brushed the empty air where her cheek had been.
“I don’t know why you’d want to kiss a girl who’s full of sob stories, or such a cold fish,” she snapped.
“Wh-what?” Andy stammered. “How did you hear…? Don’t blow your stack, Meg, I—”
“Don’t call me!” Meg slammed the door behind her.
Marmee was waiting up in the parlor. She slipped her needle into its little strawberry pincushion. “Is everything all right, Meg?”
“It’s fine.” Meg was shaking with shame and anger. She’d had the silent drive home to think about her behavior, and she wasn’t very proud of it. Maybe it had been satisfying to show Sallie that she was nobody’s charity case, to be catty behind her back, to ignore Andy and flirt with a bunch of men who thought she was pretty. But it had been petty. It had been unkind. It had been disloyal to John. That wasn’t how Marmee had raised her.
Andy was no real loss, and Sallie hadn’t been much of a friend anyway. It was obvious to Meg that Sallie had only been keeping her around to make herself feel better. But now it was time to face the music; if Marmee asked about her evening, she wouldn’t lie. She swiped a hand over her hot eyes and turned to face her mother.
Marmee looked at her splotchy face but didn’t ask questions. Why didn’t she ask? Why didn’t she care anymore? “All right. I’ll go up to bed, then. It’s been a long day.”
Meg waited until Marmee’s footsteps had disappeared upstairs, then flopped into the wingback chair. It was still warm from the heat of her mother’s body; it smelled like rose water and freshly baked bread. Like Marmee. Meg inhaled deeply and wished she were still small enough to ask for a hug, to crawl into her mother’s lap and be rocked and petted till everything felt all right again.
Unburden
You could ask, you know.
You could ask to be held.
I understand why you don’t.
Sometimes I waited for Marmee’s return, longing
to unburden myself of the day’s injustice
but when she arrived, her shoulders already heavy
I couldn’t bear to add another weight.
But do you know what I think?
Marmee didn’t bear children because
anyone could be a mother or
it was her duty or
she had no other options.
Marmee bore children, bore us
because she is a mother
in her core.
A caretaker, nurturer.
