The World of Henry Orient

THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT

NORA JOHNSON

Copyright The World of Henry Orient Copyright © 1958 by Nora Johnson Cover art and eForeword to the electronic edition copyright © 2000 by RosettaBooks, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address [email protected] First electronic edition published 2000 by RosettaBooks LLV, New York. ISBN 0-7953-0352-1

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Contents eForeword Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13

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eForeword Growing up is hard to do, especially for the two bright but stressed-out adolescent girls who leave childhood behind in Nora Johnson’s affectionate novel The World of Henry Orient. Set in the 1950s, when little girls longed to be grown-up and sophisticated, the novel tells of two new best friends who have yet to discover boys but are beginning to explore a world beyond school and their families. They share a crush on a concert pianist named Henry Orient, a man with an inexhaustible appetite for women, and the girls learn a thing or two about life as they begin to follow him around Manhattan. Novelist, biographer and essayist Nora Johnson (b. 1933) made her publishing debut with The World of Henry Orient in 1958. She is the daughter of the late Nunnelly Johnson, an esteemed writer, director and producer during the golden age of Hollywood. When The World of Henry Orient was made into a film in 1964, Nunnelly Johnson collaborated with his daughter on the screenplay. In addition to several novels, she is the author of Flashback: Nora Johnson on Nunnelly Johnson. RosettaBooks is the leading publisher dedicated exclusively to electronic editions of great works of fiction and non-fiction that reflect our world. RosettaBooks is a committed e-publisher, maximizing the resources of the Web in opening a fresh dimension in the reading experience. In this electronic reading environment, each RosettaBook will enhance the experience through The RosettaBooks Connection. This gateway instantly delivers to the reader the opportunity to learn more about the title, the author, the content and the context of each work, using the full resources of the Web. To experience The RosettaBooks Connection for The World of Henry Orient, go to:

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To My Father

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Chapter 1 It was very cold that morning in October. The sun had risen, but was only a faint orange blur through the gray fog, and the water of the East River was full of chilly silver glints. I had come early, to avoid the school bus. I indulged myself in this way once a week, to give myself a few moments longer in the comforting society of strangers, and to be able to stand and stare at the insane asylums on Welfare Island before going into the dreaded school building. It wasn’t that there was anything really wrong with the Norton School. It was more that I didn’t like myself when I was in it, and I suffered through each day like a prisoner filling out a jail sentence. When school was out, I would take the school bus halfway home, get out and go to a certain drugstore for a butterscotch sundae, then go home on the gay and wicked public bus. The sundae marked my independence for the day, and I usually sat over it and dreamed of myself in wild and heroic situations. I didn’t read much, as I had outgrown comic books and was not interested in my school subjects, and it hadn’t occurred to me that there might be something in between. The rest of the girls at Norton bewildered and frightened me. They were shrill-voiced, athletic and sophisticated, and they talked as though they were forty-year-old demimondaines whose every week end was spent in pursuit of a new and exhausting love affair. I believed all they said, was duly terrified, and went my own way: eating sundaes, staring at the insane asylums, and imagining myself having escapades that would scandalize all the other girls in the eighth grade. I had a particular place where I sat, behind a corner of the building, where the railing curved out slightly and allowed me a private corner, all to myself. Just above was the cement pier, and I could hear the shrieks of the girls who came early to play prison ball. This was a

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malicious game whose only apparent object was to abuse the opponents by hitting them as hard as possible in the stomach with a heavy rubber ball. It sounded vaguely unreal, like something on another planet; and to distract myself I pulled a history book out of my schoolbag and began to read about the Assyrians. I read furiously for two pages, then, finding Sargon as dull as ever, closed the book. As I did so, I heard a slight scuffle just outside my hiding place. I looked up, and saw a strange girl standing in the entrance. She was rather tall, with scruffy dark red hair and an elfin face, like some sort of wood nymph in the wrong wood. She was dressed exactly as I was (and as all Norton girls) in a dark green gym tunic and a white starched Wright and Ditson blouse, ironed into unrelenting squareness. Over this she wore a fitted, fur-trimmed coat, much too old for her and flying wildly open at the front. In her arms she held a large and hectic pile of notebooks, mittens, stray pieces of paper, a pair of dirty sneakers, a tennis ball, and balanced precariously on top, a thick folder with MUSIC inked in large and ornate letters across the front. As she stood there, the pile began to wobble dangerously. She grabbed at the top, but everything slipped, and before either of us could do anything the whole collection was flying through the air. The music folder opened and one piece of music hit the railing and balanced on top for a moment. She snatched at it, but it went over into the river. “It was the exercise book,” she said. “Mr. Drago will say I did it on purpose.” She giggled wildly, then sat down on the ground and began to stuff everything, even the sneakers, back into the notebooks. The more she stuffed, the more disorder she seemed to make, and the more stray objects seemed to appear. Finally she sat back on her heels and glanced at me as though seeing me for the first time, which of course wasn’t so, and said: “Sorry.” I had been staring at her as though she were a strange animal in a zoo. “What for?” I asked, in an astonished voice. “For interrupting you — in whatever you’re doing,” she said. “I’m not doing anything,” I said. “Oh,” she answered. She stuffed the last of the papers away, then fished around in her bulging pocket for something. At last she produced a package of gum and offered it to me. We both took a piece and sat chewing in silence.

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“How do you like Mrs. Cooney?” she asked after a while. She referred to the home-room teacher, a pouchy old owl who laughed hysterically and called us all Kiddo. “Are you an Eight?” I asked in surprise. I had never seen her before. “Supposedly,” she said, with another giggle. I said nothing, but continued to stare at her in fascination. “I’ve seen you,” she went on. “You sit two rows in front of me. You always look as though you’re in a fog.” Feeling embarrassed, I said nothing, but pretended to concentrate on my gum. We sat in silence for a moment. Then, to change the subject, I asked her about Mr. Drago and the exercise book. “He’s my piano teacher,” she said. “He knows I hate finger exercises. But they’re good for me,” she added in a bored voice. “Like the Assyrians,” I said gloomily. She glanced up and smiled. “Oh, they are awful! Phoenicians are much more fun. I’ve been reading about them.” “Have we had an assignment on the Phoenicians?” I asked in alarm. “No,” she said. “I was just reading anyway.” “You mean when you didn’t have to?” I asked. She looked at me curiously for a moment. “Is that peculiar?” “I guess not,” I said. There was another silence. Finally she said: “What’s your name?” “Marian Gilbert. What’s yours?” “Valerie Boyd.” “Boyd . . . say, aren’t you the one who goes home early every day?” She didn’t answer, and for the first time I saw the look of fear come into her face. I had no idea why she left early, nor did I particularly care, and had meant it only for the purpose of identification. But her eyes became guarded, and she began picking up her possessions. “Have to go,” she said quickly. “Have to see somebody.” And she was gone, almost before I knew it. I sat there for a few moments longer, hearing the noise louder on the pier, and the rattle of voices in the street, knowing it was almost nine o’clock. And I felt an annoying curiosity to know who she was, and

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where she went every day at three-fifteen, because of the look I had seen on her face. If she had laughed, or made up something, it wouldn’t have mattered. But even though she was so young, she had already begun to protect herself, as though she knew her survival would depend on it. She understood far more than she should have for one her age. I understood far less, and it might have been that which drew us together. When I got off the bus that day and went into the drugstore, I felt elated at having something to think about besides myself. The world continued to exist outside me, and some novelty existed in it. As long as this was so, life would be tolerable, I thought, sitting at the counter and staring at a spot of spilled milk shake on the black surface. Besides, I dared to hope that I would have a friend at Norton; if this were so, I could bear the rest. The spot was whisked away with a cloth and my sundae appeared, in its white paper cone, set in a nicked metal container. I ate it very slowly, staring thoughtfully at the spigots with their flavorsome labels. I did not dread going home particularly, but I liked my hour of suspension between two worlds, responsible to no one but myself. In this hour I could be — at least in my own mind — important. Today, however, the pleasure of the hour faded quickly. The incident of the morning, a relatively inconsequential bit of life, had supplanted my usual imaginative wanderings and made them worthless. It was real and they weren’t; it had infinitely more power, but there wasn’t enough of it to occupy me; it was a mere beginning. And I realized, with despair, that I had nothing else that was real to think about. While I pondered over meeting Val by the East River, she had other things to occupy her. She could think about playing the piano, about the Phoenicians, and about her mysterious doings, whatever they were, at three-fifteen in the afternoon. She had another world and could afford to ignore Norton. And she had unwittingly made me dependent upon her. Full of these depressing thoughts, I put my quarter down on the counter and left, lugging my schoolbag across Lexington Avenue. It was a damp, cold evening and the bus was warm and cheerful. I stood wedged between packages borne by three hawknosed women who complained about prices in loud voices over my head. Sitting in a nearby seat were two boys, probably from Trinity School, who were trying to out-burp each other. One had a low, rumbling and impressively long burp; the other’s was short, windy and loud. After each burp they laughed loudly and cuffed each other. I thought how revolting prep school boys were, and got out of the bus.

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Home was a brownstone in the Sixties between Third and Second. It was a curious neighborhood, and I was too young to appreciate its virtues. Most of the girls at Norton lived on Fifth or Park, a few trailing over to Lexington. Third was, in this junior snob set, something of a slum. Actually, it was nothing of the sort. Here was a neighborliness, here was a feeling of the past of New York such as the enormous monuments on Park or Fifth never had. This, however, meant nothing to me. I was embarrassed at being unable to discuss the Elevator Boy, the People Upstairs and Downstairs, the Doorman, and other such essential features that the rest of the girls took for granted. As a result, I had never brought anyone home from school or invited them to lunch on Saturdays (even if I’d had a friend I probably would have avoided it) for fear they would see the squalor I lived in and condemn me forever. I considered this as I walked up the street, thinking of the possibility of sometime inviting Val. I had a feeling that there was some impropriety in her background too, and that she might not take too badly to Third Avenue or our way of life, which was not precisely the Norton pattern, either. My parents being divorced, I lived with my mother, whose name was Avis Gilbert, and Mrs. Erica Booth, known as Boothy. Boothy was a vastly energetic divorcee with a mysterious income and several passionate hobbies, who had known my mother since high school. She was living with us in New York for the sake of convenience and friendship, and because she and my mother had both had unfortunate marriages and they felt the mutual dependence of two women who must fight the world on their own. I was fond of Boothy and considered her as permanent as the bathroom fixtures, but I realized that the other Norton girls had fathers who came home in the evening, and might consider Boothy as peculiar as Third Avenue. I walked into the house, dumping my schoolbag and coat on the hall chair. My mother was in the living room reading the paper, and sounds and smells from the kitchen downstairs indicated that it was Boothy’s night to cook dinner. On the floor, stretched out sensuously in the lamplight, was Sweeney, the cocker spaniel. The room was a beautiful one. The walls were sea blue, the furniture all in satin and velvet, the tables of cloudy glass. On the marble mantelpiece stood two graceful Japanese dolls, in red satin, their faces flat and chalk white, their hands like birds in flight. The whole scene was pleasant and peaceful. If you assumed Boothy was the maid, and Father was due home any time, it really did quite well.

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“Hello, dear,” said my mother, putting down the World Telegram, and giving me her calm smile. She had a peaceful, beautiful moon face, which led one to believe she was cool as Italian marble. “How was school?” She asked this every evening, in the eternal hope of getting an enthusiastic answer. So far, she had never gotten one. “Oh, about the same as usual,” I said, sitting on the floor and scratching Sweeney’s stomach. “Classes and prison ball, more classes and more prison ball.” I thought of telling her about Val, then wondered what there was to tell. My mother looked at me for a moment, then leaned forward with an earnest little frown on her face. “What’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to you all day?” she asked. “I got a fail for the day in history, because I didn’t know anything about the Assyrians,” I said. “I had macaroni and cheese for lunch, I skinned my knee in gym, and Val dropped her exercise book in the East River.” I went on, rather irrelevantly, “She goes home every day at three-fifteen, and nobody knows why.” “Who’s Val?” my mother asked. “Oh, just somebody I met.” There was a silence, and my mother picked up her newspaper again. I felt vaguely annoyed that she didn’t ask any more questions, and I pulled Sweeney’s ears in revenge. My mother never forced me to do or say anything. She believed in letting me make my own mistakes, partly because she believed I learned more that way, and also because she believed she had her own life to live. Undoubtedly I did learn more, though I felt alone and helpless a good deal of the time. Usually I didn’t mind, however, because it meant I could do pretty well anything I wanted. But recently I had begun to resent it. The other girls at Norton (who preoccupied me, though I would die rather than admit it) had mothers who scolded them, made them go to dances and parties, and were forever introducing them to Groton boys. My mother did none of these things, and deprived me of both the pain and the pleasure. She only made suggestions, and left the rest up to me. There was a clump in the hall, and Boothy appeared. “I’m making the most amazing curry,” she said. “Hi, Marian. How was school?” “Oh, fine,” I said, pulling back the corners of Sweeney’s eyes to make her look Oriental. Boothy strode across the room and sat

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down. She was tall, angular and nearsighted, and she had a pair of glasses to match almost every dress. Her hair, at present auburn, also underwent constant change, and it was always interesting to see Boothy’s latest color scheme. Today it was a green dress and green-rimmed glasses, relatively subdued. “Are the little pre-debutantes still whamming each other in the stomach with a medicine ball?” Boothy asked. “Of course,” I said. “By the way,” said my mother, “I got an invitation today for you to go to Mrs. Leopold’s tea dance. Are you interested?” I sat staring at the floor. “I don’t know,” I said. “Who’s Mrs. Leopold?” Boothy asked. “An old bag who has a dancing class,” I said. “A lot of the Eights go.” “She’s not an old bag,” my mother said. “She’s an extremely nice woman who has patience enough to give these little brats an opportunity to meet boys. She’s called me two or three times to ask if Marian wants to join.” “Oh, Mom,” I whined, “I’ve told you I’m not interested in the damn thing.” “Marian, I’ve told you not to use that word.” “I think she’s too young, Avis,” Boothy said. “I never met any boys till I was about fifteen, and I never had a date till two years after that.” “Things are different now.” My mother resignedly folded the invitation and put it back in the envelope. “Now they go out on dates at thirteen.” “My God,” said Boothy. “They do? What do they do on the dates? Play prison ball?” “They neck,” I said. “My God,” said Boothy again. “They say they neck,” said my mother. “I doubt if they really do.” “Have you ever necked?” Boothy asked me. “Of course not,” I said scornfully. “Well, Boothy,” my mother said, as though she’d had enough of that subject, “what’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to you all day?”

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“Oh, Mom,” I groaned. “Well, I almost got picked up by the cops,” Boothy said. “I was trying to get some shots of the Mall, and I had to climb a tree to get one of them. Patrolman O’Leary didn’t quite understand.” Boothy was entering an amateur photography contest with Scenes of Central Park. Besides this, she wrote articles on interior decoration for a magazine, had three pet canaries in her room, and occasionally shook a can for TB or cerebral palsy. My mother, meanwhile, made bandages at a hospital, did some freelance editing, juggled real estate, and was taking a course in electronics with her eye on getting a “useful” job. She was making a radio for the course, which was set up on a card table in a corner of the living room. She spent an hour or so every day sticking tubes into it and attaching red wires to blue ones. She would go to it in the evenings as some women pick up a bit of knitting. Besides all this they both did reducing exercises every morning at seven-thirty with an enthusiastic little Finn, alternated nights in cooking dinner, and ran the house in a pleasant, if slapdash, way. A maid named Florida came in twice a week to clean and iron. I sat on the floor, half listening to them, the little conversation in which I could participate having been dropped. I felt as useless as Sweeney when my mother and Boothy began discussing their daily activities. They did everything; I could do nothing. As I sat worrying about it, the same self-pity came to me that I’d felt while eating my sundae. I had nothing of my own to talk or think about. I supposed it was my own fault, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I belonged neither at home nor at school, nowhere, in fact, but the drugstore. For one unguarded moment I thought of the tea dance, but dismissed the idea with loathing, thinking of the burping boys on the Lexington bus. There must be something for me, I thought sadly. There must be . . . “Oh, God, the curry,” Boothy exclaimed, grinding out her cigarette and dashing out of the room. The clock ticked on the mantel, Sweeney’s tail thumped gently on the floor, and there was a faint grate as my mother inserted a tube into the radio. “Why don’t you go and set the table for Boothy?” she said. She was bending over the machine with a frown, staring at the mass of wires. Then she looked up. “And there’s some hamburger in the icebox for Sweeney.” I sat staring at my skinned knee.

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“Mom,” I said slowly, “would it be all right if I invited someone to lunch Saturday? Maybe not this week. Maybe next.” “Why, I’d love it,” she said, smiling. “Who? The girl who throws everything into the river?” “Just her exercise book,” I said, suddenly feeling much better. “She’ll probably get another.” I stood up, pulled my tunic down and my bloomers up, and started down the stairs to help Boothy.

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Chapter 2 I got off the crosstown bus the next morning quite early, and walked along the river toward school. Val would probably be around somewhere, and I could ask her if she’d like to have a sundae after school. I’d wait a week or so before asking her to lunch. It was bitterly cold, and the tugboats wailed from the river. The sky, the street, the buildings and the water were all the same color, indistinguishable in the musty morning light. The streets were practically empty, and the golden windows from above in the apartment houses made me feel lonely. I turned down the street toward school. There were two or three girls standing in the doorway of the school, talking and stamping their feet to keep warm, but I didn’t know them. I went past them and turned into my niche. It looked utterly bleak. I leaned on the railing and stared into the moving water, where some scraps of paper and two orange peels floated by. Nothing very interesting seemed to happen, so I left the niche and wandered past the girls and into the school lobby. It was huge, with a marble floor, and the two elevators had bright green doors. The building had ten floors and was very modern. The cafeteria was downstairs in the basement, the top three floors were devoted to gyms, and in between were the classrooms. You couldn’t talk in the elevators or run in the halls, and you had to march to assembly every morning in pairs. Also, you had to wear a skirt in the street, because the gym tunics were so short. At the time I accepted the rules without question, not seeing anything particularly wrong with them. It wasn’t till I got to know Val that I began to consider them a horrible imposition. A few more girls came into the lobby, but no Val. I took the elevator up to the fifth floor and went into the library. There was only one other person there, a large girl with greasy blond hair, who kept licking her lips and copying reams of notes from a big purple book, turning the

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pages frantically. I sat down in front of the big dictionary and read the definitions for parataxis, parathyroid and paratroop; then, justifiably bored, I got up and left. The blond girl never looked up from her book. Back down in the lobby, I saw that it was eight-thirty. Prison ball was well under way, and I heard screams and thumps from the pier. I had no desire to play, but thought I’d take a look. I went across the lobby and opened the far door. The pier was full of Eights, shouting, running back and forth, making a thunderous roar like a herd of cattle. They wore coats and mittens and blew steam into the air. The ball was hurled back and forth with malicious intent, and everyone in between made fantastic dodges, leaping into the air in huge splitses, throwing themselves on the ground, onwrithing off to the side like corkscrews. It seemed the thing to do was to dodge even if the ball came nowhere near you, so everyone was dodging at once, and the effect was like a ward of epileptics. Whenever someone got hit, she would howl loudly and retire to the prison in shame. I stood there for a moment, blinking; then a voice from the other side shouted: “Here’s Gilbert!” This made no noticeable impression on anyone, and I looked over to see who had said it. It was Val, flapping about in her furtrimmed coat, the pockets bulging as usual. I started to say something, but someone yanked me into the game, saying: “Don’t just stand there, you’ll get hit!” I had never really learned to play and didn’t know the rules very well, but I was swept off in a tide of moving Eights. They ran first one way, then the other, and I followed them, more from fear of being trampled to death than of being hit by the ball. Soon, inevitably, the ball was bounding at my feet; and someone screamed: “Throw it, stupid!” I picked it up and hurled it, and it bounced ineffectually into the hands of the other team. “Dope,” muttered my tormentor, and we began aimlessly running back and forth again. “What was I supposed to do?” I asked, during what I thought was a lull. I looked around, and no one was there. The rest of my team was far off at the back line, and to my horror I found myself three feet away from the opposing team. I looked around frantically, and there in front

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of me was Val, clutching the ball. Her hair was standing up all over her head and she was grinning. “Now I’ve got you!” she shouted. Not knowing what else to do, I threw myself on the ground; but she took the ball in both hands, raised it high above her head, and heaved it at me with all her strength. It hit me in the stomach. A horrible pain went through me, and I could do nothing but lie there, moaning. It was as though I’d been hit by a cannon ball. There was a pause, and in a moment everyone had clustered around. They stood there, looking at me. “She must be hurt,” someone said. “She keeps clutching her stomach.” “Take her in to the doctor, there might be something wrong with her.” I was hauled off by two large girls, who half carried me across the lobby and deposited me on the sofa in the doctor’s office. The screams and thumps resumed from the pier, and I lay there, forgotten. The doctor came in. “Does any one spot hurt?” he asked. “They all hurt,” I said. “She’s all right,” the doctor said. “Just has the wind knocked out of her.” The two girls departed gratefully, anxious to get back to the game. “Just stay there and rest,” he added. “When you feel better, you can go to your classes.” He went out and closed the door, and I could hear him washing his hands in the next room as though he had just performed a bloody operation. The nine o’clock bell rang, and I could hear the tramp-tramp of feet going to assembly. I was glad to be here instead of there, and decided not to recover until eleven o’clock art class. A clock with a luminous face ticked beside me, and I stared at it until it grew blurry, then fell asleep. It wasn’t until later that I really began to understand why she had done it. The rest of the day passed quickly and pleasantly, with no history and an excuse from gym. When the last bell rang at twenty of five and I realized that she had left an hour and a half before, I knew that was the reason. I noticed about three-fifteen and she didn’t want me to, I thought, squeezing into the back seat of the school bus. She was paying me

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back. But don’t other people notice it? The bus was filled with girls and I sat crouched among them, trying to be invisible. One of the morning’s stretcher-bearers stopped by my seat and said: “How’s your stomach?” “Fine,” I said, then couldn’t think of anything else to say. She scrutinized me for a minute. “Well, that’s good,” she said, then went and joined her large friend, who was saving her a seat. I sighed and closed my eyes, trying to shut out the noisy and nerve-wracking world. The motors began to whine, and the bus lurched off. Whatever Val did every afternoon must be pretty shocking. I tried to think what it might be, but I had a limited knowledge of shocking things, and little came to mind. Perhaps she had some horrible disease, and had to go and have treatments every day. But she looked healthy . . . maybe something internal, that didn’t show. Cancer or tuberculosis. I felt a wave of pity. Maybe she had been given only a few years to live. (I had heard of this in a recent movie.) People with only a few years to live must act peculiarly . . . and I fell to musing about how I would act if told I was to die when I was fifteen. The bus dragged to a stop, and I saw that we had reached the drugstore. I grabbed my schoolbag and got out. It was always a beautiful moment of freedom. The bus was gone, taking Norton with it, and I was alone. Lexington Avenue was magically dark, and the drugstore looked gay and tempting. I crossed the street and went in, sitting on my customary stool. “Butterscotch sundae,” I said. “With nuts.” The soda jerk methodically began scooping up ice cream. It was surprising that he hadn’t come to recognize me after all this time, but he never did. Of course, I thought, this is New York. I was glad it was, because in New York he’d never laugh at me or tell my mother I was spoiling my appetite. It must be awful to live anywhere else, I thought. You couldn’t do anything. The sundae came. I put down my quarter, and, square with the world, began eating contentedly. There were about a dozen people in the drugstore. Four women in suits sat at one of the tables drinking tea. A mother was feeding ice cream to her young son. There was a mirrored column in the center of the floor plastered with colored ads, and a glass counter in back contained a whole army of gold lipsticks. The air was warm and moist and smelled of coffee. I sat there with my eyes half closed, enjoying it, when the door swung open and Lilian Kafritz walked in.

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Lilian Kafritz was the most odious girl in the eighth grade. She was short and lumpy, with black frizzy hair which she tied back with a ribbon, in a desperate effort to keep it straight. She had glasses and large yellow tecth and a mottled complexion. There was nothing about Lilian that wasn’t ugly; but yet everybody was nice to her, because she always managed to find out everybody’s secrets and tell them to everybody else, unless you could make a deal with her. She traded in gossip the way grownups play the stock market. On one hand I loathed Lilian, but on the other hand she was the only Eight who ever bothered to talk to me. I knew this was no distnction, because Lilian talked to everybody to see what she could find out; but since she’d never done me any injustice, I was willing to put up with her for the sake of having some company. She stood in the door for a moment, then saw me and came over and sat down. “What’s the matter, can’t you make it home?” she asked, as though I were a husband stopping for a short nip before going home to his wife. She waved at the soda jerk. “Hot fudge with strawberry ice cream and marshmallow,” she said. I shuddered. Lilian even had revolting taste in sundaes. “Do you come here every day?” she asked. “Sometimes,” I said evasively. “Do you?” “Heavens, no, I’d rather go home,” said Lilian in a superior voice, indicating that some people in the world had a decent home to go to. “Today it so happens I’m meeting Mother to go shopping.” I took another bite of sundae. Lilian was always doing something so irreproachable. I glanced at her, and saw that all her yellow teeth were showing in a horrible grin. “How’s your stomach?” she asked. “Val Boyd really whacked you, didn’t she? You don’t seem to play prison very well.” I began to get angry. “I don’t think you’re any one to talk,” I snapped. “Every time you play prison, you get hit out the very first ball.” “It so happens,” said Lilian, in a martyred voice, “that I have a permanently sprained knee, and I can’t move very fast. I just play to be a good sport, that’s all.” I was impressed into silence, and Lilian spilled some sugar on the counter and began drawing pictures in it with her grubby finger. She seemed hurt, so I said, “Sorry, I didn’t know.” “Oh, that’s all right. I wouldn’t expect you to know.” She emphasized the “you” slightly, as though to imply I didn’t know much of anything,

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and for her purposes, was a bore. But she was grinning her yellow grin again, and I realized she was after something. Before I could guess what, she said, “What do you think of Val Boyd?” I started, then was on my guard. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know her very well.” Lilian scrutinized me, then apparently decided I was telling the truth. “I was just wondering,” she said, in her insidious voice. “It so happens I heard something interesting today.” I tried to look unconcerned. The soda jerk put down her sundae, which looked repulsive, and stood there waiting expectantly. Lilian fished in her pockets, then turned to me with a meaningful grin. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I forgot, Mother has all my money. Could you possibly ...” Why, the foul little beast, I thought. She’ll stoop to anything. Anything. I’d never loathed anybody the way I loathed Lilian right then, but she had me trapped. I reached into my pocket for another quarter and slammed it down on the counter. “As I was saying,” continued Lilian, shoving a huge bite of glutinous marshmallow in her mouth, “I just happened to be passing by Miss Rollyman’s office today” (Miss Rollyman was the head of the Middle School) “and the door just happened to be the open, and Mrs. Cooney was in there. Mrs. Cooney is such a dear.” I squirmed, watching the contortions of Lilian’s mottled jaw. “My locker just happens to be right there, and as I was getting out my skirt and coat, I couldn’t help hearing what they said.” She swallowed the remains and turned to look at me, her casual manner gone. Her voice dropped to a rasping whisper. “I heard them talking about Val Boyd,” she hissed, “and I heard them say she goes to a psychiatrist! Every day at four. She has special excuses to go, and the school knows all about it, but nobody else is supposed to know, and Boyd doesn’t tell anybody. Can you imagine that?” I started at her. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Is that what they said?” “Of course I’m sure,” said Lilian sharply. “Mrs. Cooney said Boyd had come to her and asked to have it kept a secret, and Mrs. Cooney said of course I understand. Miss Rollyman said she’s right, the other Eights might think she’s queer or something. Then she said, in view of Boyd’s marvelous I.Q. she’s a prize to the school anyway, even if she is a little difficult. What do you think of that!”

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“What’s an I.Q.?” I asked. It sounded ominous. “Intelligence quota,” said Lilian positively, if not correctly. “If you’re smart, you have a high one. If you’re not so smart, it’s low. Boyd must be some kind of a genius.” “Gosh,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say. “Does she get terrific marks?” Lilian shrugged. “She’s in my music class, and she only got Fair on her last report. She never says anything in class. It so happens I got Good.” “Naturally,” I said, feeling irritated again. “You probably never shut up.” Lilian wiped the rest of the sundae from her face with attempted dignity. “I’m very interested in musical theory, and I believe in class participation. Not being a genius, I believe in telling others my ideas.” She stepped down from the stool. “I have to go,” she said. “There’s Mother.” I looked toward the door. A slightly larger image of Lilian was peering through the glass. Lilian waved, and her mother waved back. She turned toward me with an ingratiating smile. “Thanks for the sundae,” she said. There was no mention of paying me back my quarter, for we both knew the transaction was finished. “See you at prison.” “Good-by,” I said. She turned and walked out of the door, kissing her mother on the cheek. They walked toward the downtown bus stop. I sat there for a moment, staring into the empty ice cream cup. I wasn’t quite sure what a psychiatrist was, and it worried me. I knew Boothy had once gone to one, but Boothy was about forty, and when you were forty you probably had to. But why Val? Was she crazy? The thought made me shiver, and I remembered her face just before she threw the ball at me. Maybe she wanted to murder me! Fooey, I thought, there aren’t any murderers at Norton. If she were that crazy she’d be on Welfare Island. Considering it all, I decided that the fact that Val was a mad genius made her much more interesting than if she weren’t. And the fact that she kept it all a secret fascinated me. The drugstore was suddenly boring. I’ll go home and Mom and Boothy about psychiatrists and intelligence quotas, I thought. I picked up my schoolbag and hurried across the street to the bus stop.

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I managed to get an excuse to leave early the next day, due to my sore stomach. It was completely recovered, but I so rarely had anything wrong with me that I took the opportunity to drag out my ailment as long as anyone would believe me. So at three o’clock I went to collect my books before leaving. The home room was completely empty. Cold winter light shone through the tall windows on the rows of desks, and the blackboard was covered with the strange language of algebra. Mrs. Cooney’s desk at the front of the room, with its eternal three daisies stuck into a lab test tube, looked remote and important. I walked back to my own desk, with its pencil groove and dried-up inkwell. I opened it and began to fish inside for the history book I told myself I would study when I got home. There was a step in the doorway, and I peered over the desk top. Val stood there. She didn’t look surprised to see me, but seemed to expect me to be there. “Hellow,” I said. “Hi,” she replied. “How’s your stomach?” “Oh, it’s fine,” I said. “It’s a good excuse to go home today.” She came over and sat down at the desk in front of mine. “I didn’t mean to hit you so hard,” she said. I was a little surprised at that. Of course she had; but I only said, “Oh, that’s all right,” and reached into the desk for another book. There was a silence, and she sat picking at her nails. She had bangs, and they were falling in her face. She was completely different now. She looked lost and a little frightened. Neither of us said anything, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the clock and the faint cry of voices from the pier, five floors below. “I was wondering,” she said suddenly, “If you’d like to come to my house for lunch Saturday.” My mouth fell open slightly. “Sure,” I said. We both sat and stared at each other for a moment. It was the last thing I’d expected. “Where do you live?” I asked, unable to think of anything else to say. “Downtown,” Val said. She got up, with obvious relief that it was over with. “I’ll see you before then. Maybe I’ll even come and pick you up,

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and take you there in the subway. It’s sort of hard to find. It isn’t my house, you know. I board with some people.” “Oh, you do?” This didn’t surprise me, for some reason. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had said she lived on the moon. “Yes, you’ll see. My parents are . . . away. Oh, you’ll see. I’ll explain it all — it’s all — it’s all very complicated.” She giggled a little hysterically, and started toward the door. “Well, good-by,” she said hurriedly, and ran out of the room. I dropped the desk lid, which for some reason I had been holding up all through the conversation, and stared at the empty doorway. And then I felt a huge sense of elation. I have a friend! I thought triumphantly. It was such an overwhelming and delightful thought that I laughed out loud. Even then I realized that knowing Val was going to prove a most unusual thing, but if any premonition crossed my mind, I ignored it. I sat there for a moment, smiling into the air, then suddenly gathered up my books and went into the hall. I took my skirt and coat from the locker and put them on hastily, then went out the door to the stairway. The art room was on the sixth floor, and I ran up the stairs two at a time. There was no class going on, but two or three girls stood at easels painting with poster paints. In the middle of the room was a table which held a Chianti bottle, two apples and a book, arranged with careful casualness Lilian sat ona stool at the other end of the room, tilting her easel into the sunlight and staring at it through slitted eyes, like Botticelli just finishing his Venus. She wore a green smock, spattered with a paint both in front and back. Only Lilian could manage to back into a wet painting, I thought. “Why, hello,” said Lilian, glancing at me, then back at the picture. The wine bottle wiggled, the apples looked like hedge-hogs, and the book might have been anything. “Do you think the perspective is all right?” she asked. “Yeah, it’s fine, Lilian,” I said. “Listen ...” She looked at me and grinned. “Why, you’re going home,” she said. “At three-fifteen, yet. Do you have a psychiatrist too?” “Listen, Lilian,” I snapped, “that’s just what I want to talk to you about.” Lilian put the picture back on the easel and wiped her orange and purple hands on her filthy smock.

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“It so happens,” she said, in an uneasy voice, “that I have work to do.” “It so happens,” I said, “that I don’t want you to tell anybody what you told me yesterday. It’s none of your business that you know about it all, and I want you to shut up.” “Oh?” Lilian’s fuzzy eyebrows rose. “And suppose I don’t feel like shutting up?” “Then,” I said in the nastiest voice I could muster, “I will let Mrs. Cooney know that you were snooping around while she was talking to Miss Rollyman. And if there’s anything Mrs. Cooney hates, it’s snoops.” Lilian’s face went distinctly pale. “And suppose Mrs. Cooney doesn’t believe you?” she asked, but she didn’t sound very convinced. “I just happen to know that Mrs. Cooney is waiting for a chance to catch some people in the class nosing into things that aren’t any of their business,” I said. I didn’t know any such thing, but it convinced Lilian. She glared at me, and snatched up her paintbrush. “As I said before,” she said cuttingly, “I have work to do.” “Oh, of course!” I said. “I wouldn’t dream of holding you up.” I patted her on the head, and I thought she was going to take a poke at me. “Good-by, Lilian. See you at prison.”I skipped out of the room, humming a song.

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Chapter 3 The Hamblers lived on West Tenth Street. I had gotten my ideas of the Village mainly from overheard conversations, and I wondered if the Hamblers were Bohemians, standing around Washington Square in the summer doing likeness in chalk; then I told myself that even Val, a student at the Norton School, could not possibly be living with semi-responsible people. Anyway, Val had told me that the Hamblers had been chosen by Norton; that several of the Eights whose parents lived elsewhere boarded in the same way she did, that in fact there was quite a little group of them. She told me this in an effort to justify herself, and convinced me that there was nothing irregular about the situation. Val met me by the subway stop at Fifty-ninth and Lexington. She was standing in the doorway of a flower shop, looking at some yellow roses, and she pretended not to see me until I was practically on top of her. We looked at each other cautiously. It was the first time we’d ever appeared in anything other than our gym tunics, but as a matter of fact, the change was hardly startling. We both wore our Wright and Ditson shirts and wool skirts, sneakers, and school coats. We felt immediate relief that neither of us had committed a social error, and went down the steps into the gloomy New York underworld. “How’s Mr. Drago?” I asked, trying to make conversation. Val seemed slightly nervous. “Oh, fine,” she answered, sounding relieved at having something to talk about. “He’s full of soul. He has long blond hair in tufts, and he waves his arms like a windmill” (she demonstrated this) “and he’s always telling me I’m going to suffer and be a great musician, because geniuses always suffer.” She giggled. “Would you like to be a great musician?” I asked.

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“I don’t know. Would you like to be a great anything?” “Sure,” I said. “But I’m not good enough.” “That’s just the way it is with me,” said Val. “Anyway, who wants to suffer? Here’s our train.” We sat down in one of the wicker seats, and the train rattled away. I looked around with interest. I had hardly ever ridden on a subway before, since I had nowhere to go in one. My knowledge of New York was pretty well limited to the upper East Side, with an occasional trip to Central Park West to visit an aunt, and the Village sounded gay and adventurous. The city rushed by with unnerving speed, passing mysteriously above our heads. After Thirty-fourth Street, I kept expecting to get off, but Val made no move to do so. “Where are we going?” I asked finally, unable to stand the suspense. “Right here.” The train lurched to a stop, and she smiled mischievously. “Astor Place. Haven’t you ever been here?” “I’ve never heard of it,” I said. “Oh. Well, now you have.” We went up the stairs and out into a rather empty square, then walked west to Fifth. Val pointed to a park at the end, with a big archway leading into it. “Washington Square,” she said. “Have you ever seen that before?” “No,” I said truthfully. “Heard of it?” She was grinning. “Of course.” I looked at her and laughed. “Okay, so I haven’t seen anything in New York. So what?’ “So nothing.” We went down Tenth Street almost to Sixth, and Val stopped in front of a brownstone. She capered down into the small area way and thumped on the door. “I wonder what lunch is,” she said. I smelled nothing but cabbage, and I hated cabbage. I tried to look through the glass part of the door, but there were curtains over it. Val thumped again. The door flew open, and Emma Hambler stood there.

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“Ah, here she is, with the hair not combed as usual. And this is Marian? I am truly glad to meet you.” She was small and neat, with brown hair tied back in a bun, and a perfectly smooth, ageless face. She looked more like a good imitation of a Swiss Hausfrau than an authentic one, as though something, some time in her life, had jostled her out of her natural role and made her decide, with pleased relief, that she never need go back to it again. None of this occurred to me at the time, of course; I just thought that she was a nice woman who said pleasant things. Apparently she adored Val, and she swept us inside to a room on the right and told us to take off our coats. Everything smelled faintly of glue. She said that this was Val’s room, and she would call us when lunch was ready. I looked around with interest. It was completely unlike any bedroom I’d ever seen; it contained simply a studio couch, a battered oak chest, and a piano. It was saved from complete barrenness by a figured rug upon the floor stacks of papers in the corner, and a curious mass of wire and paper on a stand near the window. The room further interested me by the fact that it didn’t have four walls, but five. The fifth was very narrow and bore the window, which looked out on a tiny garden. I decided that it gave the room a pleasant informal look and that all rooms should be five-sided. I sat down on the couch. Val was wandering around the room, humming, and shifting things from one place to another — not that there was very much to shift, but Val seemed to create things out of nowhere, and soon the room had the look of havoc that she herself usually had when she wandered around with her armload of notebooks. Finally she sat down on the floor. “How do you like the abstract?” she asked. I looked at it. It looked faintly human, with a piece of newspaper for the face and wire wiggles below. It looked tortured, most unhappy, and rather indecent. “It’s me,” Val said. “Not really me, but the essence . . . my soul and all that.” “It doesn’t look much like you,” I said hesitantly. “It isn’t supposed to,” Val said, giving me a pitying look. “It’s an abstract. All of Charles’s things look like that. He’s groping for something.” “Who’s Charles?” I asked. “Emma’s husband,” she said. “You’ll meet him in a few minutes.” I hadn’t thought of Emma as having a husband, for some reason, but as I sat digesting this fact, Emma called:

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“Lunch!” Val hopped to her feet. “Come on,” she said. We went out into the hall: The rest of the apartment was quite as amazing as the bedroom. The hall was endlessly long, and lined with more abstracts on stands. Some were people, some were animals, but they all had newspaper faces and the air of writhing under unearthly burdens. I didn’t have time to comment on this as we were hurrying past them, past two or three rooms on the right, and finally into the living room (or so I supposed) at the end. The living room was quite large, and was really more of a studio. The men and beasts were all around, and there was a large table in the corner covered with pieces of wire, bits of string, and other odds and ends. The smell of glue was overwhelming. There were two studio couches, and near one of the windows was a pull-out table set for four, with a bright red tablecloth. “This is Charles,” Val said. I looked around, and a man rose from the far studio couch, where he had apparently been lying, though I hadn’t noticed him. Val seemed to consider this an adequate introduction, for she disappeared into the corner to examine one of the creations. “Ah, so you are Miss Marian,” said Charles, grinning and extending his hand. He looked a little wild, and I didn’t like him calling me “Miss” as though he were the valet. “Val has told us so much about you.” This surprised me, but if Val heard, she didn’t show it. I was trying to think of something to say next when Emma appeared from the kitchen, carrying a tray. “Okay,” she said, distributing the food on the table and getting everyone seated. Charles pulled out my chair with a huge gesture of servility, which made me nervous, and we all sat down. The food was delightful, and not at all the sort of thing we ever had at home. Plates of cold meat, basket of rye bread, bowls of mayonnaise and butter,lettuce and sliced tomatoes, and a kind of pie made out of cheese and bacon. The Hamblers drank beer and we had cold milk from a crockery pitcher. We all took some of everything, and as the others piled most of the food on the bread to make sandwiches, I did the same. It was delicious, the sun poured in through the window, and I began to feel as though I had stumbled on a small heaven. Most of the conversation was Emma’s. She talked a good deal about Val and how naughty she was, how smart she was,

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how messy her room, and what a sweet child she was, basically. She seemed to fancy that Val and I were better friends than we really were, as Val had apparently talked a good deal about me; after being initially surprised by this I grew pleased, and felt sure of myself and slightly superior. Val was a little embarrassed, giggling nervously every once in a while, but she seemed really more interested in the food than anything else, as I was Charles had lapsed into some sort of torpor, and sat hunched over his plate, pushing a piece of ham around with the heel of bread. When we had all finished, Emma took the things away and reappeared with a chocolate cake. At this point Charles seemed to revive somewhat and talked for a long time about theories of art, none of which I understood. He seemed in a curious way to be appealing to Val in all this and asking for her opinions. If Val had any, she didn’t indicate it. He concluded by saying that great art came only through strife and unhappiness, and Val said he sounded like Mr. Drago. Charles gave up and lapsed back into his lethargy. “Come on,” Val said suddenly. “Let’s go back to my room.” Lunch seemed to be over, so we got up. “You two should go outside this afternoon,” Emma said. “It is a lovely day.” “Yes, let’s” I began, but Val was halfway down the abstract halfway. I followed her, and we resumed our places in the bedroom. Val sat on the floor, staring moodily out the window. Suddenly she said: “Are your parents divorced?” “Yes,” I said, surprised. “How did you know?” She shrugged. “I just guessed. Was it a mess?” “What, the divorce?” She nodded. “I don’t even remember,” I said. “I was only a baby. My father lives in Florida. Sometimes he comes to New York and I see him, but I never see both parents at the same time.” “You don’t seem to be very bothered by it,” she said. I hesitated. “Well, I never think about it very much. I’m just used to living with Mom and Boothy.” All this was a little painful, probably because I’d never talked about it before. “Who’s Boothy?” “Oh, an old friend who lives with us. She’s swell.”

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She looked at me for a moment, slightly disappoint, then resumed her staring out of the window. There was a silence, and finally I could bear it no longer. “Are your parents divorced?” I asked. “No,” Val said, and lapsed into silence again. I was wildly curious, but even then guessed that I could accomplish nothing by prying. If she wanted to tell, she would. If not, nothing on earth could induce her to. Finally she said: “Mom and Pop travel all over the place. Pop’s business is international trade, or something,” she said, with impressive vagueness. “They’d like to live in New York, but they can’t, for a while, anyway. Pop’s business takes him all over.” “Where are they now?” “Rio, I think,” she said. “Or Mexico. One or the other.” This all seemed beyond reprrof, so I tried something else. “How did you happen to come to Norton?” “It was recommended by the last school I went to. Pine Valley, in Connecticut.” She grinned. “I was kicked out.” I started. “What for?” “I was `unmanageable.’ “ She giggled. “Everyone wrote long letters about me. I suppose they’d never had anything as interesting as me before. They decided I might thrive better in a city.” She was staring thoughtfully at the ceiling, and I felt slightly bewildered. “Before that I went to a boarding school in Maine. Not a very good one. It was too easy. I got A’s without doing anything, so people thought it was a waste of time.” “You mean your parents?” I asked. “Oh, yes, and . . . people,” she said evasively. “Before that, we lived in Oregon. I vaguely remember a ranch and a lot of horses, and riding in the mountains with Pop. There’s the story of my life.” I felt it was full of holes, but nevertheless it was far more interesting than mine. “What do you think of Norton?” I asked curiously. She sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s peculiar. It’s just about the best school in the country, you know.” “Is it?” I had never thought of Norton that way.

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“Sure. If you graduate from there, any college will take you. A lot of people say so.” Val seemed to have a group of omniscient people around her to whom she constantly refferred. She began drumming on the floor. We said nothing for a few moments, then suddenly she got up and went to the piano. She sat there for a minute, staring at the keyboard. Then, with no further ado, she began to play. When I think over all the time I knew Val, it seems that this moment was the most astonishing and rewarding thing she ever gave me. It was so unexpected; my own feelings were so completely unprecedented that I wondered where they had been all my life. It was not only the music. She played wonderfully, but wonderfully for a thirteen-year-old only. I can’t say even now whether she was a child prodigy, for at the time I had no way of judging. All I knew was that hearing the music was like seeing the ocean for the first time, or suddenly realizing there was a sky, or catching the first glimpse of New York from the top of a skyscraper. It was the first wash of beauty, and with it came a strange and unexpected insight into myself and all other human beings, unformed thoughts that shocked me with their importance. I believe it was the first time I ever felt any real connection with the human race. For a moment, I was no longer different; Val had done that for me. She finished the first piece, which had been wild and wonderful, and then, as though to show me the other side of the picture, she played one that sounded both complicated and childish at the same time. I didn’t like it half as well, and felt disappointed. “It’s Mozart’s `Turkish March,”’ she said, when she’d finished. “Cough medicine music, Drago says. It’s good for you. Stupid, isn’t it?” And she tinkled on with something else. She was thoroughly enjoying herself, now. She didn’t bother to finish anything, but just played a bit here and a bit there, her favorite parts, all tantalizing and incomplete. I stood beside her, watching her fingers on the keys; white child’s fingers, with dirty nails, but very strong-looking. Finally she stopped and looked up at me, as though for approval. “I think it’s beautiful,” I said. I meant more than that; she had completely captivated me. I was her friend forever, if only she would play for me again. And looking at her, I suddenly realized that she needed me. Emma appeared in the doorway. “Good, Val,” she said. “But I like to hear you play the things through. Just playing your favorite parts is like only eating the dessert. It is a

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discipline you must learn.” She turned to me. “She charms us with music, this child. When Charles is working and I am in my room reading or sewing, and when this little one plays, we stop everything and listen. She has more power than she knows.” Val was picking at the piano with one finger. “As soon as I learn discipline,” Val said, waving her arms in imitation of Mr. Drago. “I must suffer and be disciplined all at once!” she said, mimicking a tortured music teacher, and we laughed. “Come on,” Val said. “Have you ever wandered around the Village? No, of course you haven’t. Let’s go out.” The spell was broken, and we hurried about for our coats. I told the Hamblers good-by since I had said I would be home by five. Charles shook my hand and bowed, saying it had been an honor to have me, and Emma said I was a nice girl and a good influence and to come back soon. Val ran about collecting her tennis balls and notebooks, which she stuffed about her person. Just before we left, Val said she had to get her mittens from Emma’s closet. I followed her in there, and as she burrowed through the clothes and shoes, I began to read the titles of the books in a small wooden bookcase. They all seemed to be by three authors, Freud, Jung and Adler. Val emerged from the closet with the mittens and saw me looking at them. “The big three,” she said. “Emma’s a bug on the stuff.” I heard Emma laugh from the hallway. “Val is always teasing me,” she said. “It is my hobby. Jung is a fellow-countryman, and I keep my loyalty.” That was all, and we were out the door. I looked at Val’s face in the shadow of the areaway, and if there was a look of fear there, it quickly disappeared. We went out into the glorious cold afternoon, and with a sudden burst of freedom started running at top speed up the street toward Washington Square.

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Chapter 4 After that we were fast friends. With Val around, everything seemed to take on life. She had a magical art of being able to instill a third dimension into things and make them more interesting than they had been before. To me her life was a continuous drama, full of heroic emotion, with piano chords crashing in the background, colorful people running in and out, and an incredibly complicated plot. Things were always happening to her. If they didn’t have the proper elements of epic drama, she would add them in the retelling; but usually she didn’t have to, because Val made drama wherever she went. She didn’t merely walk down the stairs at Norton; she would leap down, three steps at a time, with me at her heels, and the whole venture took on traumatic proportions. A piano lesson might have been a commonplace event to someone else, but to Val it was a psychological purge, a trip into nirvana in which her genius would take over and she would have a soul-meeting with Mr. Drago. Mr. Drago was probably unaware of all the furor he caused, but that didn’t matter. Even Mrs. Cooney, whom I had barely noticed, became a gay old bird who was prone to early morning conferences on the subject of psychiatry, and who (Val said) was considering going to one herself. Val gave the impression that she lived in a sort of wheellike society with herself at the hub. The members of this chosen group were a rather odd collection. I was the only one who was a contemporary of hers, and the others consisted of Mr. Drago, Dr. Braintree (the psychiatrist), Emma Hambler, a janitor at Carnegie Hall, a salesman at Liberty Music Shop, Mrs. Cooney, and a ballet-dancing Hungarian who sometimes visited the Hamblers. All of us theoretically rotated around Val, giving our opinions of her, which were always good. If anyone missed a cue, and seemed to be more interested in his own life than Val’s, she would be deeply hurt; if he dropped her altogether, she would shrug it off, implying that his

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life would be considerably emptier and duller without her. This was certainly true, though I don’t think Val really believed it at the time. Each of us satisfied some need in her, and added up, I suppose, to a composite person, her opposite number. She took whatever we had to give her; inspiration from Mr. Drago, love from Emma Hambler, free concerts in the wings by courtesy of the janitor, knowledge of her own mind from Dr. Braintree, companionship and admiration from me. In return, we had the privilege of knowing her; and this was enough. For anyone who got to know her well had a naging desire to help her. She seemed so lost, so wistful in her big coat, so bright and malleable, so alone, that everyone wanted to take the tiger lily from the field and plant it in a proper garden. Her parents did little to remedy this, as they were hardly ever around. Gradually I learned more about them. According to Val, they were fabulously rich, glamorous creatures, who leaped on and off planes between Paris, Cuba, New York, Bombay and Hollywood, all to a tinkle of diamonds and champagne glasses. Occasionally a large check or a package of expensive clothes would arrive from them, or more rarely, a letter. Usually Val was rather vague about them — they seemed to live everywhere, to do everything, and to know everybody. They appeared occasionally in the gossip columns, where they were found by Boothy, having been seen at Romanoff’s or the Nationale in Havana. But it was a life Val did not share with them, and she remembered her family best as riding with her father in the mountains of Oregon. She clung to that; it was one of the few things she had that any other child might have had. But behind every phase of her life was the shadow of Dr. Braintree. “What’s she like?” I asked Val one Saturday afternoon, as we walked home along Central Park South after seeing a movie. “Oh, she’s a good egg, underneath it all,” Val said. “She looks stone-faced when she has her professional manner on. But afterwards, when we have tea, she relaxes and tells jokes.” “You have tea there?” I asked, surprised. I had envisioned Val spending her hour on a hard stool, with a naked lightbulb overhead, and Dr. Braintree in a uniform. “Could I meet her sometime?” “Well, I asked her if I could bring you, and she said no. She doesn’t want to meet any of my friends. She’s afraid of being biased about me.” “Hasn’t she ever met Emma? Or your parents?”

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Val shook her head. “She was just recommended by people, and off I went. The school I got kicked out of recommended her. She likes to do things that way.” “How funny,” I said. “What on earth do you talk to her about?” “Oh, anything She’s a Freudian. I tell her my dreams, or what I think of my teachers, or what I think of anybody. Or my childhood. Sometimes we don’t talk about me at all, just about movies or music or horses.” “Do you tell her everything you think or do?” I asked. “Hell, no,” Val replied. “Some things aren’t any of her business, that’s all. Let’s go into that drugstore and have hot chocolate.” We had nothing to do with the rest of the Norton girls, nor they with us. Their week-end adventures paled beside ours. All they had done was to go to a dance with burping Trinity boys, while we had made friends with a tramp in Morningside Park who turned out to be a frustrated oboe player, had tea with two pansy friends of Val’s who ran a lampshade shop, seen a Chinese movie on the Bowery, taught a group of children in a playground to play prison ball, or spent at afternoon in one of the booths at Liberty’s playing records, aided by the obliging salesman. The city turned out to have unheard-of depths, and we plumbed all that our age and circumstances permitted. If one of our escapades seemed shady, such as our encounter with the tramp (friendly though he was), Val would make up a gentle lie for my mother and Emma as to our whereabouts for the afternoon. She was adept at this, which I found a little shocking at first, but I soon got used to it. To enhance our adventures, we took to new and unique ways of doing everyday things. It was too boring to just walk along a street or talk in plain English. Val made up a little dance to go with a Mozart gavotte, and we gavotted down the street, singing to the music. This led to other things, and we developed weaving and splitsing. To weave, you chose a very crowded block, like Broadway and Forty-fourth, and thundered along it at top speed, weaving in and out of the people; the only rule was that you had to choose the longest way around any one person, rather than the shortest. Val liked to weave through moving traffic, but I could never bring myself to that. Splitsing was derived from prison ball, and it meant you rose in the air, legs apart, and let the missile (whatever it was) go underneath. We started out by splitsing the tennis balls, notebooks and extra shoes that Val carried around with her, but branched out to bigger things. One day Val came triumphantly into the classroom saying

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she’d just splitsed a little boy on a tricycle. She’d been cantering down the street in her usual manner, and when she saw the little boy she couldn’t stop in time, so she splitsed him. His mother had been astonished, but they got to talking, and it turned out she was a harpist, and invited Val to tea. With all this constant practice, we did attract a certain amount of admiration at prison ball, but aside from that, the other Norton girls thought us mad. We both got good marks, but we were constantly being called in to Miss Rollyman’s office because of our lack of discipline. Miss Rollyman would sigh, shift her bony jaw, and flip two file cards on her spotless desk. “Boyd and Gilbert again,” she would say, calling us always by our last names, with that peculiar assumption of masculinity headmistresses often get. “I hear you two started a ruckus in the cafeteria yesterday. Throwing apples at each other, or something. Very funny. You each get a warning.” Three warnings meant you went before Student Council, but Val always managed to talk her way out of it just when such a fate seemed inevitable, and somehow drag me out too. Norton being somewhat progressive, we had Remarks on our report cards, and they usually said we were bright enough but we had Undesirable Friends. Conferences with my mother and Emma ensued, during which Val said we were misunderstood and we were actually marvelous influences on each other. She pointed out to my mother that whereas I had previosly been sort of a drip (she said it more tactfully), since I had become friends with her I had come of myself and begun to participate in the world around me. My mother smiled at this, but it was true enough. Besides, she liked Val, and was willing to put up with the screaming and splitsing just to have her around and to hear her play the piano. Emma knew that Val needed a friend more than anything else; she also knew, paradoxically, that I was one of the few people who did not constantly scrutinize Val, as though she were an object under a microscope. “She has too much of that,” she said to me one day. “All her life it has been intelligence tests, aptitude tests, personality tests. She was becoming too interested in Val, and you snap her out of that. The two of you drive me wild sometimes, but I like to see her happy.” But she kept reading her books on psychiatry, as though she couldn’t stop herself, just as at certain moments I found myself lapsing into a nagging curiosity about Val and the many things that still weren’t explained about her. I hated myself for doing it, and tried to make myself think of her as just anybody. But with Val, it seemed impossible.

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She was utterly unpredictable. There was always the vague possibility that she might, for no reason that I could divine, suddenly disappear. Occasionlly she did. One day, when we were looking through the postcards and prints in the Museum of Modern Art, Val mumbled behind me, “I have to do something.” I didn’t pay any attention for a few minutes, and when I finally turned around, she was gone. I went outside and walked up to Fifth, but didn’t see her. I wandered around, and then asked a policeman about her. After a while I gave up and went home. I felt hurt, and it meant the waste of a precious Saturday. “Maybe she was playing splits with one of the Rouaults, and they took her away to juvenile court,” Boothy suggested when I told about it in the kitchen. She and my mother were making canapés for a cocktail party, and they weren’t paying much attention. “Or maybe the spirit moved her to go and commune with her alter ego. Who knows?” Boothy was covering small pieces of toast with anchovy paste. “Remember when she spent two hours here the other day sitting under the piano? We can’t repress her, because we’d cause some terrible psychosis to form.” “Oh, Boothy, you make her sound like a freak,” I said, irritatedly bouncing a tennis ball. “Not a freak, just. . . uninhibited.” “Dear, would you mind putting some cigarettes in these boxes? That’s an angel.” The electric blender was whirring, the cake-mixer was whizzing, something was boiling on the stove, and my mother was knocking ice out of ice trays; I could hardly hear myself think. “But suppose something happened to her?” I shouted, as my mother turned on the faucet, full blast, to loosen the ice. “What?” “Oh, nothing,” I said, and gave up. When I asked her where she’d gone, she said she’d gone into Liberty’s to hear a concerto; she’d looked for me, but thought I’d guess where she was. So I learned that if she felt like disappearing, there was nothing anybody could do about it; if pressed, she would lie. The old feeling of annoyance came back that Val had more resources than I did, and when she wasn’t around, I was bored; whereas she could get along very well by herself. To fortify myself, I took to reading novels, which Val never did, determined to have something I knew

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about which she didn’t, something to excel in. I would start long and affected dissertations on Jane Eyre or David Copperfield, only to find them cold and dull beside Val, and I would give up and we would go off on another escapade. But most of the time, there was harmony. I remember one day that we spent in the Village, going in and our of art galleries and playing checkers with a nice old man in Washington Square park. When Val beat him, he bowed gravely and thanked us, and walked away with his cane through the gentle twilight. We both sat there, sprawled on a bench; it was November, but curiously springlike. The grass shimmered and the Arch looked ancient and opulent, like something of another age. Through the dusk the lobbies of the hotels threw gold spots on the street. “You know,” Val said suddenly — she was given to confidences in the dark, when her face was invisible — “I’ve never told anybody half the things I’ve told you. You’re my best friend. It’s funny. . . but you don’t know yet what you believe about anything, so you aren’t shocked by Dr. Braintree. You know how the rest of the Eights would act, if they knew. But you just sort of accept everything. It’s because you live in your imagination, so nothing that happens in real life surprises you.” “Oh, doesn’t it?” I asked, fumbling for something to say. I was thoroughly unaccustomed to character analysis. I was immensely flattered, but suspected that what she was saying was not entirely complimentary. Did she think I was a dope? A faithful old retainer? But I’d wondered it before, and resigned myself to the answer; what I got out of this friendship was what she happened to drop by the wayside, reflected light from her own life, nothing more. And again I knew, as I had known before, that that was enough. All I could say now — that since I had known her, I had emerged into the real world — would be a devastating compliment for her, probably just what she was waiting for, and just what I refused to give. So I said nothing, and just looked at her. She looked, as she so often did, like a wet puppy, and I suddenly blamed myself for thinking evil of her. She’s lost and lonely, and she’s saying I’m her best friend. How mean I am, reading anything else into it. But what was there about Val that made it so impossible to take anything she said at face value? “Emma is impressed by you,” Val went on musingly. “She says you’re remarkably naïve. She was so surprised when I told her about your parents being divorced, and all. She said that usually snaps children up in some way.” Her words were hypnotic; how often had anyone

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ever thought about me, and what I was, before? At home I was a helpless creature caught between two frantically energetic women; at school I was another little girl in a gym tunic, and even the remarks on my report cards were duller than anyone else’s. To Val I was something, anyway, if only a cottonhead. “But I’m getting less naïve,” I said, hardly realizing I was talking out loud. “Sometimes I do things that. . . really aren’t so naïve at all.” I suddenly remembered about Lilian, and the way I had handled her. I had never told Val about it, and didn’t think it would be a good idea. But that action had been brought on by Val too. Was I responsible to her for everything? “Oh, of course you do,” Val said, like a mother talking to a child. “I didn’t mean to sound insulting, or anything. Not at all! I like you better than anybody, I said. I can really talk to you, about almost anything. Of course, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me.” “Are there?” I asked, curious again. I longed for the faculty of disinterestedness, but I didn’t have it. “What things?” “You don’t know anything about my family, you know,” she said. She giggled, suddenly embarrassed by all this confidence. “You’ll find out, soon enough.” She got up, as though she couldn’t sit still another moment, and ran across the grass. “Splits!” she shouted, brandishing a tennis ball. She threw it and I splitsed it, then we raced over to the street to get the Fifth Avenue bus. One night after dinner I phoned Val, as I did frequently. We spent a good deal of time on the phone, and had some of our most interesting conversations there. I sprawled on my mother’s satin bedspread and kicked off my sneakers. “Hello?” said a voice. There was wild music going on in the background. “Hi, it’s me. What are you doing?” “It’s Bartok. He does things to me. His dissonances are positively pathological.” “Did you make that up?” She giggled. “Yeah. Intellectual, isn’t it?” “Fascinating. Listen, Mom wants to know if we want to go to a concert Friday night. Somebody named Henry Orient is playing at Carnegie.” I was looking at the Times. “ `Henry Orient, a newcomer to the concert stage, has technical versatility and enthusiasm, but lacks the finesse

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and discrimination of a true artist. Subtlety and nuance are lessons he has yet to learn.’ “ “Oh, I see. Schmaltz. I’ve heard of him. He’s been trying to get a concert in New York for years. Sure, let’s go.” “Okay, I’ll tell Mom. We’ll go with her and Boothy, probably. She says we should wear dresses.” “Dresses! I don’t even have a dress.” “Fooey, sure you do. I have one I can tolerate.” “We don’t have to wear stockings, do we?” “Of course not. She just wants us to look neat, that’s all.” “I’ll . . .” Val began, but Bartok reached a crescendo, and I couldn’t understand. We shouted back and forth for a while, then Boothy wanted to use the phone, so we hung up. Val came to dinner Friday, she in her dress and I in mine. We sat sedately at the table, over beef Stroganoff, with milk for us and “a neurotic little wine,” as Boothy called it, for the grown-ups. “I met Henry Orient, years ago, in Hollywood,” Boothy said. “He’s one of those people who won’t take a bath. His agent kept trying to scrub him up, but it didn’t work.” “You girls should like him,” my mother said. “I can see a kinship already.” “Mom, I think that’s mean,” I said. “Kindly notice the pains we’ve taken to look nice this evening. Val even shaved her legs.” “Gilbert, you are the worst blabbermouth,” Val said, glaring at me. “Emma would have a fit if she knew. She says I’m too young.” “Now that you’ve started, you have to keep doing it,” Boothy said. “Otherwise, bristles.” “You really shouldn’t have, Val,” my mother said. “It’s not as though you’re terribly hairy.” “Like Lilian Kafritz,” I said. “Who’s that?” Boothy asked. “A creep,” I said. “Mrs. Gilbert, please don’t tell Emma.” “I won’t, dear. She’ll probably notice anyway, thought.”

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Val was looking thoughtfully at my mother. “I can’t stand to call you Mrs. Gilbert any more,” she said. “I’d like to call you Wimpole.” “Good God,” Boothy said. “Why Wimpole?” “She just looks like Wimpole, and acts like Wimpole. I can’t explain it.” “Do I?” my mother asked. “Funny, it’s never occurred to me.” “Your maiden name was Wimpleton, so you’re Wimpole. I know you too well to say Mrs. Gilbert, and I can’t call you Avis. So something in the middle is needed.” “I’ve always felt that,” Boothy said. “I think it’s a good idea, Mom. You aren’t a Mom or an Avis, really.” “Don’t repress her, Wimpole,” Boothy said. “You might cause a backfire.” “Boothy, that’s not funny,” I said, but Val was laughing. “Yes, it is,” she said. “I’m sick of being sensitive. Boothy’s in the proper spirit. Can I have a glass of wine, Wimpole?” “I don’t think so,” Wimple said. “Marian can’t, so neither can you.” “I have a feeling things are going to change around here,” Boothy said. “We’ll all have so many names, we won’t know who’s who.” “Just Wimpole,” Val said. “We’d better go,” Wimpole said. “It’s twenty after.” “Cheers,” Boothy said, gulping down the rest of her wine. “Why don’t you girls run out and flag a cab?” The lobby at Carnegic was steamy and crowded, with the smell of wet fur and radiators. There was a line at the ticket window, and more people were coming in from the street, stamping their feet, as it had begun to snow. Val looked around interestedly. “I don’t see Harmon,” she said. “Who’s Harmon?” Boothy asked. “Is his name really Joe Smith?” Val laughed. “No, it’s really Harmon, and he’s the janitor here. He’s a friend of mine. I suppose he’s backstage tonight.” “The floor’s dirty,” Boothy said. “He’s a slacker.” “Oh, he doesn’t really like being a janitor. He’s above it. He’s only here for the music. If he likes the performer, he stays back, so he can hear better. Funny, I shouldn’t think he’d like Orient.”

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There was a poster of Henry Orient on the wall. He was fat and bushy-haired, with a pouting lower lip. “Here he is, Val.” “He wouldn’t win any beauty contest,” Val said, looking at him with interest. Wimpole fished through her purse for the tickets, and we stood in line to go in. “Just think, Val,” Wimpole said, lapsing into one of her frequent philosophical digressions, “this is the world you will belong to some day. Here are the makers of music . . . that man over there is undoubtedly a critic, covering the concert for tomorrow’s paper. And that one with the moustache is probably a composer. Perhaps Mr. Orient is playing one of his compositions. He will sit there, weighting every note, judging it, with an ear sharp and sensitive as a needle, wincing when a phrase is not played exactly as he intended it. And that man over there with the white hair is probably an old retired . . .” “Harmon,” Val said. “I guess he changed his mind. Hi, Harmon,” she called, waving at him. “Schmaltz, huh?” Harmon nodded and winked. “And inside,” Wimpole continued, “the harpist is plucking her strings, the cellists are bracing their instruments between their knees at exactly the right angle, and even the cymbalist is making sure he knows where to come in, for although his part is small, it’s crucial . . .” “Wimpole gets carried away,” I said to Val. “How about the man at the chair-backs? This is modern music,” Val said, grinning wickedly. “And there’s a place where a man strikes a match on the sole of his shoe. Small, but crucial.” Boothy burst out laughing. “Val, you mesmerize me,” she said. “You’re all cynics,” Wimpole said. “I’m just trying to open your eyes to the things around you, and you laugh.” “I’m sorry,” Val said penitently. “Honestly. It’s just that I don’t think I’ll ever make this world.” “If you try, Val, you can do anything. You have the gift, the rest is up to you.” “It’ isn’t, Wimpole. It never was, and it never will be.” “Tickets are requested,” Boothy said. “No tickee, no Henry.”

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We went inside and found our seats, which were in the fourth row. “I’ve never sat this close before,” Val said. “Just think,” Boothy said. “We’ll be able to see every pulsating muscle. Maybe we’ll even be able to smell him.” The orchestra was a confusion of muted noises, hands moving over instruments. The conductor came, mounted the podium and bowed. “What’s the first?” I asked. “Concerto by Khatchaturian,” Wimpole replied. There was a stir, and we all watched the stage. The huge concert grand stood in front, polished, we assumed, by Harmon. The last sound was gone from the audience; the maestro bowed to the wings, and Henry Orient walked out. He strode over to the piano, like a small fat soldier, flipped out his coattails, and sat down. “Look at the color of his hair,” I whispered to Val. “It’s like a tangerine.” But Val was watching him closely and didn’t hear me. Henry Orient clamped the edges of the bench with his hands, at the same time undulating on the bench in the most curious way. He stared at the ceiling, and his forehead shone with perspiration. “He looks fairly clean,” I whispered to Boothy. “Shhh!” Val hissed angrily. I glanced at her in surprise, and the music started, the violins building gently, and then Henry began to play. The music was modern and strange, but I liked it. It went on and on, as concertos do. I listened, interested, then wiggled a little, glancing around. Perhaps this would be Val’s world, some day. Perhaps I would be in this same seat, listening to her play. She said she didn’t have enough talent; was it truth or modesty? Neither Boothy nor Wimpole knew enough about music to know if she were just good or really great, and I certainly didn’t. Maybe nobody could tell. Boothy blew her nose and wiped her purple glasses, while Wimpole sat with her hands folded in her lap, serene and intent. But Val was literally on the edge of her seat, her hands on the chair as Henry’s had been on his bench. Her mouth was open slightly, and once her hands flew into fists in front of her, as though she were catching two bugs at once. She seemed to be in an acutely emotional state, and I had no idea what was the matter with her. “What is it?” I whispered. “You look like you’re having a trauma.”

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The look she gave me was cutting, pitying and patronizing, as though I were a tiresome old drunk who was bothering her. Wimpole nudged me and said to be quiet. The concerto ended and Henry Orient bowed, flipped his coattails and strode off the stage. Val dropped back in her seat. “Wow,” she said softly, instead of applauding. “How about an orange drink?” suggested Boothy, who apparently hadn’t noticed any of this. “I’m parched.” We went out into the lobby and bought orangeades. Val was silent, leaning against the wall, her face wistful. “Well, I think he’s very good,” said my mother. “He really throws himself into it, you might say. The last movemetn was really exciting.” Val was watching her from her half-darkned corner, and there was a tiny, secret smile on her face. I frowned at her and spun my finger in a circle around my ear. She ignored me, saying: “I think he needs to spend an hour a day on scales.” “What do you mean, Val? Doesn’t he have good technique?” “Well, yes, but he . . . no, he doesn’t. I mean . . .” She stopped, and we all stared at her. “Easy, girl,” Boothy said. “Have another orangeade.” Val grunted, and lapsed back in her corner. I continued to stare at her, and Wimpole talked about the bygone days of Carnegie. Back in her seat, Val brooded. She often had moods, but this one seemed extreme. “You must think he’s marvelous,” I began experimentally. “You seem all carried away, or something.” “Do I?” said Val innocently. “Oh, I’m sorry. He isn’t great, like Kapell or Casadesus. He’s interesting, you might say . . . he’s a good pop pianist.” Her words were noncommittal, but her face belied her. “Come on, Val,” I said softly, as the sounds were dying down. “Cough it up. What is it? Are you in love with him, or something?” She looked up slowly, her face astonished, then began to grin. One eyebrow went up slightly. “Boeuf sur le Toit — Milhaud,” whispered Boothy. “Beef on the roof.” Val looked back to the stage, where Henry Orient was striding again to the piano, and leaned forward, clutching her program. I sat back in my seat and laughed very softly.

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Chapter 5 High–jumping class, which met shortly after lunch, was a pleasant time, since by some fluke Val and I were in the same section. Usually the school did a pretty good job of keeping us apart, and sometimes there were days when we hardly saw each other, but just passed in the hall. We high-jumped in the small gym on the top floor, while a blizzard howled outside. The room was warm and pleasant, smelling of feet and sneakers. I stood in a corner doing warm-up exercises, flanked by Lilian, who was unfortunately in the section also. It was the Monday after the concert, and I had not seen Val since, having spent the week end at my grandmother’s in New Jersey. “My permanently sprained knee is bothering me today,” Lilian said, swinging one short and hairy leg back and forth. “I’m afraid I won’t do very well. Fortunately, I have an excuse from the doctor.” “I heard Miss Bindrol say she was going to try the bar at four feet today,” I said, looking around for Val. “I bet I can make it. I made three-eleven last time.” Val came in the far door, and I waved. “My,” Lilian said. “You and Boyd are certainly thick these days. Does she take you along to her psychiatrist?” “Lilian Kafritz,” I said, in a low and threatening tone, “please recall a discussion we had one day in the art room, and keep your mouth shut.” “Certainly, lord and master,” said Lilian, looking at me with hatred. “Your word is my command.” Val came over and stood behind me, swinging her leg back and forth. Lilian stared at the leg for a moment, and said, “Why Val Boyd, you’ve shaved. Honestly, if my mother ever caught me doing that, she’d be furious.”

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“Oh, shut up,” said Val, but she said it in a pleasant voice. She was looking smug, as though nothing in the world, even Lilian, could possibly bother her. “It wouldn’t hurt you to do it,” she added cheerfully. “It might even improve the total effect.” “It so happens,” said Lilian with dignity, “that I have a chronic skin condition in my pores, which are extremely delicate. In a year or so, when I’m grown-up enough, I plan to have a wax job done.” “Did you have a jolly week end?” Val asked, ignoring Lilian, who was now trying to touch her toes. “Jolly,” I said. “We played Monopoly almost the entire time.” I was dying for Lilian to go away, so I could pump Val. Lilian showed no signs of going, and was giving both of us an extremely nasty look. If she mentions anything to Val about the psychiatrist, I’ll skin her, I thought. But she wouldn’t dare open her mouth. “All right, class,” boomed Miss Bindrol, striding around in a purple tunic and white tights. “We’ll start at three-four today, and work up to four feet. All warmed up? Hup, hup! Stand in line.” Sylvia Van Dyke sailed over the bar, then Hillary Green, then Lilian, who barely made it. The bar went up inch by inch. By three-nine, there were only four of us left; at three-eleven, I went out, and Val got ready to try for four feet. “Here’s your chance at Field Day, Boyd,” called Miss Bindrol. “Hup, hup! Relax . . . poise . . . run!” Val cantered toward the bar and took off. She gave a wild giggle, the bamboo bar went flying across the room, and she landed in a heap on the mat. She didn’t get up, and everyone ran over to see what was the matter with her. She groaned and unkinked a leg. “Just a cramp. Come here, Sylvia, and help pull.” Miss Bindrol and Sylvia grabbed the leg and yanked. An object fell out of Val’s bloomers, where she often carried tennis balls, pencils, and the like. I looked at it. It was a picture of Henry, cut from the concert program, carefully preserved in Scotch tape. I grabbed it, and Val, miraculously recovered, snatched it from me and poked it back in her pants; but not, however, before Lilian had seen it. “My, my,” said Lilian. “That’s an interesting wrinkle.” “All right, Boyd? You’d better go let the Doc have a look at it. All right, class, you can go now.”

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Val was out of the room like a shot, and I was after her. She thundered down the back stairs, three at a time, and I saw the door swing open at the seventh floor, which was full of lockers. I tore in after her, and heard her banging and clanging among the metal lockers, giggling. “All right, Boyd,” I called, “I’ve got you cornered. Come out and confess.” I was creeping slowly to where I had last heard her, then there was a bang somewhere else in the room. “You can’t escape, Boyd,” I said, changing directions. It was lovely; I felt like Jason. “Val,” I called in wheedling tones, “even if you sneak away now, I saw it. I saw that you have a picture of . . .” “Shhh!” said Val, surprisingly close. “Do you want the whole place to know?” We were silent; there was no sound in the room. “Of course not,” I said, in unctuous tones, creeping toward the locker. “I just want a confession, that’s all. Just an explanation. I just want to know what you see in that fat, unwashed, carrot-headed . . .” “Stop! You’re wounding my soul,” said Val melodramatically. “You don’t understand! You’re besmirching his name! Oh, honorable Henry!” “Oh, boy,” I said. “That I should live to see the day, when Val Boyd gets a crush on . . .” “Crush! What crude terms you use. Obviously you’re too plebeian to even . . .” I leaped around the locker. She made a dash for it, but I grabbed an arm and began twisting. “All right, Valerie Boyd,” I said, between screams of laughter from both of us. “Admit it. Admit that you’re madly, passionately, painfully and eternally in love with Henry Orient! Admit that you’d die for him, throw yourself off cliffs, swim the river, anything anything!” “No, no!” screamed Val. “I won’t admit!” I twisted harder. “Confess! Confess he’s the light of your life, your eternal salvation, confess!” She writhed off to the side and slumped against the locker, laughing and gasping. “All right, I confess. But Marian Gilbert, if you ever tell a single soul . . .” “Of course not! Oh, this is divine.” I was prancing up and down.

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“Honestly, Val? You’re really in love? What does it feel like?” “Oh, it’s hell.” She was leaning on her knees, sighing happily and idiotically. “I’ve been suffering, every moment, ever since he walked out on the stage! Naturally, I couldn’t tell Emma.” “Naturally.” “So I went out and bought one of his records, and spent almost the entire week end in my room, playing it. Oh, Gilbert,” she groaned, “you just don’t know. I feel as though knives are cutting me up inside. I feel as though . . .” There was the clank of a locker door somewhere in the room. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “Don’t tell me anybody heard.” “I doubt it. Go on.” “I don’t dare talk here. Let’s go to the . . . oh, hell, I have to go to Braintree’s.” She looked at her watch. “I’ll call you tonight. Talk from Wimpole’s room, where nobody can hear.” She got up and ran two grubby hands through her hair. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I think we should make a pact. In blood, if possible. Got a pin?” Val fished in her bloomers and found a safety pin. We stuck each other’s fingers gravely. We took Henry’s picture and put a spot of blood on each of his ears. Then we touched our fingers so that our blood would mingle. “We do solemnly swear that from this moment on, we are eternally and forever dedicated to the welfare of Henry Orient,” I said. “Hear,” said Val. “We swear that we will devote our lives to the pursuance of facts, information and data about Henry, with the ultimate design of meeting him someday.” “Meeting him! I’d faint.” “Not yet,” I said impatiently. “Some day, when our souls are properly prepared. When yours is, rather. I’m just along to aid and abet.” “Hear, hear.” “We also swear that the whole thing is a secret, on pain of human sacrifice,” I went on vaguely, quoting from a recently read novel. “No

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living soul will know. Not even . . . are you going to tell Braintree about it?” “No! I wouldn’t dishonor his honorable name. Lord, I’ve got to go, right now. Hail Henry!” she cried, waving her arms. Then she turned and dashed out of the door and down the stairs. I sat there smiling, and licked a drop of blood from my punctured finger. And so it began. If I’d thought Val and I were having fun before, it was nothing compared to what Henry brought to us. He gave a focus to all Val’s violent energy; she had something to live for. For this was no passing diversion — it was a full-time job. Characteristically, Val gave it all she had. She collected his records, bits about him in music periodicals and even newspapers, and even talked Harmon into giving her the old poster from Carnegie Hall. Instead of aiding, and abetting a romance, I felt more as though I had embarked on an immense research project. Our spare time was spent in Liberty’s or the Public Library, going through back copies of papers, searching for any mention of Henry. Since Henry was rather obscure, there was little to be had. He had another concert, and we went to it — sneaked into the wings by Harmon, where Val was free to go through loverlike contortions. On the way out, Henry Orient passed us in the alley and smiled. His smile was curiously attractive, though he was certainly odd-looking. “Sometimes,” I said to Val, “I just don’t understand.” Val smiled. “I don’t either,” she said. “And I’m not very interested.” That was what made it so nice; it could not be analyzed. “Someday I’ll tell Braintree all about it,” Val said, “and I defy her to make anything out of it.” She kept an extensive journal, recording her emotions and observations about the whole thing. Even while she steadfastly denied its psychological significance, I noticed that there was one Val standing back and watching with amusement, while the other one rolled on the floor in agony in front of the Victrola. The journal was like a running dialogue between the two Vals; one suffering, the other appraising. The appraising Val seemed to think that the Era of Henry had extraordinary historical importance, and must be recorded, while the love-struck Val just wanted to pour it all out on paper. The journal was top secret, of course. If Val didn’t carry it around with her, she secured it underneath a floor vent in her closet.

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We decided, since we led such public lives, that a code had to be developed to communicate to each other about Henry, as well as to use in the journal. The code was highly obscure and largely in symbolic terms. Since Henry’s name was Orient, any term about the Far East could be used to refer to him. The journal was called the Bible, as it not only included Val’s immortal prose but also clippings about Henry, making its pages hallowed. Its sections were named accordingly. Scotch tape (which had bound Henry’s picture from the concert program) became symbolic of all the necessary juvenile measures we had to take to keep it all a secret, which were so unworthy of Henry; tomatoes and toenails were the color of Henry’s hair and something about his feet on the pedals, respectively, which showed that Henry’s unfortunate physical appearance proved him human and fallible like the rest of us. This thought was, on occasion, comforting. The code was conventient because it had a great range. We could refer to Henry as Fu Manchu, Cherry Blossom, or Junk, as the occasion warranted, so that no one searching for the meaning could find any possible consistency. As the research progressed, a picture of Henry began to emerge. He didn’t seem to be a very admirable character. He had divorced three wives, and spent most of his time in bars. As he was usually accompanied by ladies-about-town and visiting movie starlets, he periodically appeared in the gossip columns. (“At the Club Besame last night was ivoryman Henry Orient and up-and-coming starlet Mitzi Flitter.”) He seemed to be a creature of moods, and was reputedly hard to work with. He was often late for rehearsals and could usually be found, when missing, at a back table in his favorite bar, alone and brooding. He had twice grown a beard, he dressed badly, and drank Black Velvets. He sometimes disappeared into New Jersy to commune with his soul. Val was vastly interested in all this. “He doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him,” she said delightedly one day. We were sitting in her room at the Hamblers’, playing one of Henry’s records. This was undeniable, though it did not seem like any particular virtue to me. “Don’t you mind that he goes out with other women all the time?” I asked. “Well, he never seems to go out with one for very long,” she said. “Anyway, Gilbert, don’t you understand? I just like to watch him from afar. That’s the way I love him. There wouldn’t be any point in meeting him, or getting to know him. Why should he even know I

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exist?” Since my experience with love hardly qualified me to refute this, I conceded. “If I met him,” she went on, “it might destroy everything. He’s so priceless the way he is now.” She was lying on the floor, staring musingly at the ceiling. Suddenly she contorted and clutched two hunks of hair. “Oh, Henry, what a hash,” she said. “What rhubarb. Why don’t you practice?” She got up and flipped over the record. “He’s got talent,” she said patronizingly, as though she were speaking of a wayward student, “but it isn’t pure. It’s all mixed up with life. No discipline . . .” The new record went on. She rummaged in the closet, then giggled. “I have an entry for Deuteronomy,” she said. “I told Mr. Drago yesterday — casually — that I’d heard Henry play. He said no matter what else I did, never to copy Henry Orient. He said Henry could get away with his own murder, but if anybody tried to imitate him, it would be awful.” She emerged from the closet with the Bible and a bottle of purple ink. “The Bible’s too dull — I’m going to color it up a little. Look what I got yesterday.” She indicated several bottles of colorful ink. “One for every mood.” She made a careful entry: “Follow the shining path of Confucius but do not try to imitate it.” “How can you follow it if you don’t imitate it?” I asked. “There’s a subtle difference,” she said. “I’d like to be Henry, but I never can.” She was decorating Deuteronomy with voluptuous purple grapevines. “And don’t ask me why, Gilbert.” She flipped through the pages. “What a prize collection we have,” she said. “Probably nobody else has ever bothered to collect so much data about Henry. After all, why should they?” She got up and wandered over to the window, looking out into the courtyard. “It’s all so ludicrous, isn’t it? How can this be, when I’ve never even talked to him? He might have a voice like a boat-whistle, for all I know. He might pick his nose.” “Boothy says he does,” I remarked. “Boothy!” She lunged at me. “Gilbert, you haven’t told!” “Of course not,” I said. “We made a pact in blood, didn’t we? She seems to bring him up all the time herself. She used to know him.” “We could put her in Numbers,” Val said. “All the women who have suffered over Henry. Mitzi Flitter, the three wives, Boothy, Val Boyd. It makes me feel I have companionship in my misery.” She sat down cross-legged on the floor. “Boothy never suffered over him,” I said, but she went on:

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“I laugh about it a lot, but no one will ever know what I go through.” Her voice was low. “Not even you. I feel like a fool. If you had any idea of the way I felt when we saw him that night, after the concert. I felt as though I were being consumed by ice and flames. I felt . . . I would have done anything for him, anything. He has all the music, all the freedom, all the courage I’ve ever . . .” She bent over her hands and moaned. “Oh honorable Henry Wong,” she said. “Your low servant kowtows to you. Your low servant is bound with Scotch tape, and imprisoned in a gym tunic.” To my astonishment, I saw that she was crying. I went over and put my arm around her. “Val,” I said, “I didn’t know it was that bad.” “It isn’t. I mean it is. Oh, hell,” she flung herself away and got up. “That’s why it’s so ridiculous.” “It isn’t, Val. If you feel it, it isn’t.” “That’s what you think. It all seemed like such a gambit at first, and now it’s got the better of me.” She looked at me. “You always know whether the things you feel are right or wrong, don’t you? Well, I don’t. I never do. That’s why I go to Dr. Braintree. See?” She stood up, angrily. “Sometimes I wonder where your head is, Gilbert. People don’t just go to psychiatrists to pass the time of day.” Again, here was something about her I’d never suspected. “But . . . but you’ve always said people made you go to Dr. Braintree. That your mother . . .” “Well, that’s how it started. But do you think I’d still be there if I had nothing wrong with me? Braintree would have sent me on my way.” “Maybe she likes the money,” I said, trying to sound knowledgeable. “Some psychiatrists might, but not her.” She turned and stared at me. “You don’t think I’m well-adjusted, do you?” I considered it. “Well, I suppose not,” I said. “But if you aren’t, neither am I.” “Oh, you are, all right,” she said. “Or you will be in time. You’re just in a temporary fog. I can’t wait to see you in five years or so.” She smiled a little wistfully. “You have the right people around you, telling you what to do. Wimpole is a prize. But I don’t have any Wimpole.” “I don’t have a father, really.”

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“Oh, pooh. Sure you do. Enough of one, anyway.” She began pacing back and forth. “You’re not the problem, anyway. I am. Do you think I’m well-adjusted? Tell me. I’m interested.” “Adjusted to what?” I asked. “I don’t really know what it means.” “Oh, adjusted to school, and responsibilities, stuff like that. Adjusted to your life.” “Sure you’re adjusted to your life,” I said. “You get good marks. You play the piano. You like Emma. You’re adjusted to honorable Henry.” Val looked at me in exasperation, then began to laugh, a strangely unchildish laugh. “But don’t you see? Henry’s so peculiar. And Emma isn’t my family.” “Well, you haven’t got anything else, have you? If you weren’t adjusted to Emma and Henry, you’d be worse off than you are now. Since you can’t change your life, I don’t know what’s so maladjusted about you.” Val was staring at me, shaking her head. “You make everything seem so fantastically simple.” “Anyway,” I said, dipping the pen in green ink and beginning to adorn Exodus, “I don’t see what’s so great about being adjusted. If the rest of the Eights are adjusted, I’d rather not be. I think most of them are creeps. I suppose Lilian Kafritz is supposed to be adjusted, because she’s always such a goody-goody.” I drew a border of ferns. “I just read Wuthering Heights,” I went on, determined to throw in a literary reference, “and nobody was very adjusted in that. Heathcliffe was a mess, I suppose, but he was interesting and divine. And Edgar Linton was absolutely awful, though he always did just what he was supposed to.” I leaned back against the oak chest, pleased with my penetrating speech. Val was looking down at the floor. She said nothing. “Henry isn’t particularly adjusted,” I added. “Oh, I know that.” She smiled to herself. “And Henry is a man, and can do what he pleases.” “Listen, Val,” I said, throwing down the pen, “I think you should stop going to Dr. Braintree.” “I can’t,” she said. “I have to go.” “Well, do you want to or not? Do you think you need her?” “I . . . I don’t . . .” Her hands dropped helplessly. “I don’t know, Gilbert. When I’m not with her, I’m happy. When I am with her, everything

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makes sense. If you can figure that out.” She sighed. “Anyway, you’re not supposed to say things like that. I’m supposed to admit I need help and pour out my soul to her.” “I don’t care what I’m not supposed to say. She isn’t my psychiatrist.” “I’m supposed to avoid people who constrict my analysis.” “Who what?” “People who make me question Braintree. I’m supposed to make friends with well-adjusted people.” “You just said I was well-adjusted, and I’m questioning Braintree.” “Well, I mean . . . don’t you understand?” She made a little pleading gesture. “That’s what analysis is. If you don’t believe in it, it’s a waste of time. So you should surround yourself with people who believe in it.” I was about to tell her what a lot of nonsense it was, then I looked at her. I saw utter bewilderment in her face. What were they doing to her? I felt a rush of simple compassion. She was my friend and she was unhappy; besides that, she was the loneliest person I’d ever seen. I said the only thing I could think of: “Val, you’re my absolute best friend. I love you better than anybody. And so does Wimpole. Does that make things any better?” She was huddled in a chair, pulling at her forelock. She smiled very faintly. “Sure it does. I might need both of you in time of trouble.” Her eyes began to twinkle. “Just go on thinking I’m well adjusted, will you?” She looked at her watch. “You’d better go, Gilbert. It’s five-thirty. Wimpole is probably having a fit.” Thoughtfully, I gathered up coat and mittens, and went to say good-by to Emma. When I came back, Val was composedly sorting records. She looked up. “I’m sorry to have bored you with all this stuff,” she said. “You never bore me,” I said. “You never have to worry about that, Val.” “Well, that’s something, anyway.” I went out the door into the areaway, and she said, “Pax, brother! Only the spilling of blood may break the bonds between humble kowtowing servants and exalted Ming Wong!” “Pax, brother,” I echoed, and ran down the street to the bus stop.

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The note of indecision followed me home, through the crackling, knife-sharp evening, and along the piles of frozen slush in the gutter, where it was more fun to walk than on the sidewalk. We didn’t really finish, I thought, but then there was no place to go from there. Or maybe there was, and I didn’t know about it. I must talk to Wimpole. Val said she was a prize. Maybe she is! You never really think of your mother as anything special, just your mother. She always seems so busy, I wonder if she’s really interested in anything I say. But she’s got to explain to me about Val. I know she’s interested in Val. I ran up the stairs and opened the door. I heard the sound of voices and glasses, and my heart sank. Later, I thought. I started upstairs, but was intercepted by Boothy. “Come in, pal,” she said, “and greet the people.” “Oh, Boothy, do I have to?” “Well, now you do, because they’ve seen you. It doesn’t do to have the daughter of the house sneaking around like Typhoid Mary. You’d better wash your face. What is it? It looks like green ink.” The party went on for ages, and I stood around being polite and drinking ginger ale. I told three people what I was learning in school, and finally ended up settled on the sofa next to an elderly Columbia professor, who told me about his sabbatical in Norway. “Land of the Midnight Sin,” said he. “Ha, ha!” “Do you teach psychology?” I asked. He blinked. “No, my dear, I teach industrial finance and taxation. Will that help?” I was then introduced around the room as being interested in psychology, which I hoped would have revealing results, but it only led to a long and aimless dissertation by a tipsy lady about her psychiatrist. “I can’t think of a thing to say to him,” she said, “so we exchange recipes. He likes to cook, and gave me the most marvelous recipe for almond duck. He’s absolutely suave and brilliant, and I’m half in love with him, but don’t tell my husband. Everyone falls in love with their analyst, didn’t you know? Like women with their obstericians.” Boothy appeared from behind me. “You can go now,” she said. “You’re getting in over your head, I can tell.”

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By around nine, the three of us sat in the dining room picking at the remains of a smoked turkey. I half listened while they discussed the party, then said: “Wimpole, do you think Val is maladjusted?” She and Boothy exchanged a glance. “Well, dear, it’s hard to say,” she began. “I’d certainly say she’s individualistic.” “But does she really need a psychiatrist?” “I have no idea, Marian. You have to know someone very well to say that. Anyway, I should think only a doctor could say whether Val is maladjusted.” “What’s this adjusted business?” asked Boothy. “In my day, you were neurotic or you weren’t that’s all.” “Well, is Val neurotic?” “You can’t tell at this age,” Wimpole went on patiently. “She’s obstreperous, but I love her,” she added. “Then she shouldn’t be going to Dr. Braintree, should she?” There was a silence. They knew no more about it than I did. Finally Boothy said: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” “Oh, Boothy, don’t joke.” “I’m not. Which came first, Val’s neuroses or Dr. Braintree?” “I don’t understand,” I said. “Boothy means that either Val really is neurotic, and that’s why she goes to a psychiatrist, or else someone thought she was neurotic, and sent her. Sometimes people who go to psychiatrists when they really don’t need to can be worse off than before.” “But you don’t know which it is.” “No, darling. We don’t.” She got up and began to clear away the glasses. “Maybe we’ll know her well enough sometime to find out.” “Do you think Dr. Braintree knows the truth?” I asked. “Undoubtedly. But she isn’t going to tell you,” said Boothy, sticking a cracker in some leftover oyster dip. “There are all sorts of ethics among psychiatrists, like any profession. So I wouldn’t bother marching into her office and asking if Val is nuts or not.”

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I looked up at her. She was brushing crumbs from the front of her burnt-orange cocktail dress, with burnt-orange glasses to match. “What about you, Boothy?” I asked. “Are you neurotic any more?” “Me! My child, I spent half my life’s savings becoming nonneurotic. Haven’t you noticed how well-adjusted I am?” She grinned, and picked up the glasses from the table and strode into the kitchen. But behind the cockiness, I had seen something I rarely saw in Boothy: loneliness. And with it, a simple truth dawned. If you don’t have people around who love you, your own family, then nothing else makes any difference. I gave a tired sigh and walked slowly up the stairs.

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Chapter 6 A good deal of the time, however, Henry was responsible for good moods, not bad ones. When things looked black, our intrepid research would usually produce some fascinating new item, and keep us going for another few days. The two greatest finds were Henry’s address and an article in a magazine about him, called “A Day with a Concert Pianist.” It had pictures of Henry practicing, shaving, having lunch, and drinking Black Velvets at Benny’s, his favorite bar. Val was in ecstasy. Since this was described as a fairly typical day in Henry’s life, we had the comforting feeling that if we suddenly needed him at any time, we could, by a little deduction, figure out where to find him. “What good does that do?” Val asked, when I mentioned this. “What will we ever need him for?” “You never can tell,” I said, and entered it in Revelation. After lunch at my house on a Saturday shortly before Christmas, we decided to go and inspect Henry’s domicile. It was snowing hard, and we sat in the hall and pulled on galoshes and long wool socks. As we were just going out the door, Boothy came down the stairs, wearing a huge raccoon coat and a pair of black Cossack boots. She was carrying her camera. “Wimpole’s studying her electronics, and I’m going to try and get some snow scenes. I’ll walk to the corner with you.” Our faces must have shown relief that she did not intend to accompany us the whole afternoon, for she added, “If we meet anybody you know, you can tell them I’m your drunken Aunt Erica, and you have to walk me around in the fresh air to sober me up.” We laughed, and started down toward Lexington. We talked about this and that, and at the bus stop Boothy said:

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“Where are you off to today, my chickadees? To try and pluck out locks of Henry’s beautiful red hair to sew into your union suits?” Val’s face must have dropped at least four inches. She said absolutely nothing, just stared at Boothy. “What’s the matter? You do wear union suits, don’t you?” Boothy asked. “How do you know about Henry?” I burst out at last, as Val looked as though she might collapse into a snowdrift. “Oh, is that it! Is it supposed to be a secret?” “We haven’t told anyone,” Val said faintly, “not a soul. I don’t understand.” “Come, now, Val, you’re smarter than that,” Boothy said. “That code is the most transparent thing I’ve ever heard, and you always have pictures of him falling out of your pants. Every time I mention him the two of you look as though you’re going to evaporate. It’s such an enchanting sight, I mention him all the time.” She laughed at our horror-stricken faces. “The only thing Wimpole and I can’t figure out is which of you is the starcrossed lover.” We both sighed, and finally Val said, “It’s me. She’s just along for the ride.” She stood there with her mittened hands plunged into her pockets. “What I want to know is, how did you figure out our code?” “Oh, it was terribly difficult. Henry Wong — Henry Orient. Terribly obscure. Avis Wimpleton Gilbert — Wimpole. Honestly, do you think adults are morons?” “I guess they aren’t,” Val said. “Who else knows?” “Well, nobody that I know of. But if you keep yakking about it at the present rate, everybody on this side of Central Park will know. Not that they’ll care, particularly.” She looked at her watch. “Speaking of the Park, I have to immortalize snowdrifts.” “Please don’t mention it at tea, Boothy,” I said. Emma Hambler was coming for tea that afternoon, as she had come once or twice before. “Mrs. Hambler probably knows already, unless Val develops an increasing degree of subtlety as she goes from here to Tenth Street. Don’t look so gloomy, you two. I was the same way about Valentino.” “Who’s Valentino?” “Who’s Valentino?” asked Val suspiciously.

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This time it was Boothy who looked horror-stricken. “Do you mean to say you don’t know . . .” She rolled her eyes to the top of her glasses. “Oh, my God. I must frisk off after my lost youth. Who’s Valentino! Wait till I tell Wimpole!” She strode off through the snow, her big furry coat flapping behind her, and Val and I stood looking at each other. “Well, the cat’s out of the bag,” Val said. “We could have played innocent, but I was too flabbergasted to think of it.” “Does it really master?” I asked thoughtfully. “If they know?” “Well, I suppose not,” Val said, as though it had never occurred to her. “They don’t seem to think it’s so peculiar, do they?” “Not particularly.” “They just seem to think it’s funny.” “About a year ago, I was mad about Gregory Peck. They didn’t seem to think it was strange. They just sort of laughed understandingly.” Val’s face fell again. “But look at Gregory Peck, and look at Henry.” “But Boothy didn’t think it was peculiar! Anyway, it’s too late now. Do you really care if Emma finds out? Boothy’s probably right, you know. I suppose we are kind of unsubtle.” “I wonder what Emma would think,” Val said thoughtfully. I had the distinct feeling that nobody would take it very seriously, and wondered what we were worrying about. I said this to Val. “I don’t know about that,” she replied. “Emma might look it up in Freud.” “So what? She wouldn’t find it.” The bus stopped, and we got into it, dropping our nickels in the slot. “Stop worrying about it, Val. Other people have been in love.” We rode in silence for a couple of blocks, then Val said in a low voice: “I have a confession to make, Gilbert.” “What?” I asked. “Have you done something terrible?” “I’ve told Braintree.” “You’ve . . . why did you do that?” “I don’t know.” She looked at me. “It’s done, and that’s that.” “But why . . .”

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“Honestly, Gilbert. Every other word you say is `why.”’ She was staring out the window, chewing her lower lip. “Somebody has to explain this to me,” she muttered. I didn’t answer. For some reason, I felt terribly hurt. Henry was none of Braintree’s business; he was Val’s and mine. Finally I said: “What did she say?” “Nothing,” Val replied. She glanced at me. “That’s right, she said nothing. I do the talking, not her.” “Then what are you so worried about? She might have said she thought it was queer, or something.” Val gave a short laugh. “Do you think she tells me I’m queer? That wouldn’t make me any less so.” “I didn’t say that! I didn’t mean . . .” With an odd sound, something like a sob, she reached over my head and pulled the buzzer. Then she got up and started toward the door. For a moment she hesitated, but I sat staring at my lap, and wouldn’t look at her. I’m always chasing after her, I told myself. I’m always telling her how normal and marvelous she is, and trying to pull her out of her moods. This time I won’t. Let her go shake it off by herself. The door slammed closed, and I saw her running down the street through the snow, as though the Fates were after her. I decided to go to Henry’s house anyway. If Val didn’t go there, she would be forced by curiosity to come to me later and ask about it, and — for a moment, anyway — I would have the upper hand. If she did come, we would meet on the hallowed ground and all would be well. For scarcely had she gone than I was looking forward to meeting her again. But then I remembered that she had told Braintree, and the irritation came back. She constantly described Braintree as an ogre, and now she had told her the great secret. What a hypocrite she was! Then it occurred to me that Braintree might have given an explanation after all, and that Val had lied to me. She didn’t want to tell, I thought, and that’s why she got off the bus. But didn’t she tell me everything? I’ll never understand her. Never, if I know her all my life. Henry lived in a brownstone downtown. The street was desolate, and snow blew around in flurries. I reached the house and stood in front of it. There was a light on in one of the windows, and I imagined Henry sitting by his fire, dirty and unshaven, poring over a piece of music. It

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was bitterly cold and raw, and I wished I could join him. “Henry,” I might say, “I’m Marian Gilbert, and I’m aiding and abetting your romance with Val. May I sit by your fire?” He would probably say yes, and offer me a Black Velvet. I stared at the house for a while, trying to memorize what it looked like, and then grew bored, since Val wasn’t along to make it interesting. I felt duty-bound to stay for ten minutes anyway, then I walked back up the bleak cold street. What does it matter? I wondered. It isn’t a secret any longer. Val wasn’t anywhere, so I got on the bus and went home. The house was warm and bright, and Wimpole was looking motherly and arranging petits fours on a plate. “Go up and put something pretty on, for tea,” she said. “Where’s Val?” “I don’t know. She got in a mood and left.” “Oh.” She put the tea kettle on the stove. “Well, she’ll be along. She won’t wander around in the snow when she knows where to find tea and people who love her.” “She’s a jerk,” I said, pulling off my galoshes, “and I’m mad at her.” The doorbell rang. “It must be that nice Mrs. Hambler. Run on and change, and don’t be angry at Val. She’s a little waif.” When I came down, Val still hadn’t come. Emma, Boothy, and Wimpole were sitting decorously around the teapot, just like three ordinary Norton mothers, who might be discussing what Val and I should wear to the Junior Cotillion next week. But they were talking about Charles’s abstracts. Emma asked about Val, and I told what had happened. “Well, she will come back; she always does. Actually, I am glad of it for a moment, because I want to ask you something. What is all this about Mr. Orient?” Boothy looked as though she were trying hard not to laugh, and I felt like crying. Wimpole looked up and said ingenuously: “Why, Val is in love with him, Mrs. Hambler. Didn’t you know?” Boothy began to shake with laughter. “It’s been announced in Cholly Knickerbocker,” she gasped finally. “She’s the hit of the café set. All the debutantes have taken to wearing Norton gym tunics.” “Oh, Boothy,” I stormed, “it isn’t funny. Honestly, can’t you ever do anything but make jokes?”

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“Now, Marian, I think Mrs. Booth has the right spirit,” Emma said. “People always take Val much too seriously. Has she ever met Mr. Orient?” “No,” I said. “Oh, I see. Is she very much in love with him?” Emma was looking a little bewildered. “Yes,” I said. “She thinks about him all the time. And I help her out,” I went on, feeling a sudden eagerness to tell of what had been absorbing us for the last weeks. “We know everything about him, and where he lives, and what he does all day. For instance, if you’d like to know where he is every Monday at eleven-thirty P.M., I can tell you.” “Where is he?” Wimpole asked. “At Benny’s, on Fifty-fifth Street,” I said triumphantly. “Third table from the left, drinking Black Velvets.” “That’s interesting,” Boothy said. “Is that why she plays this Khatch . . . Khatch . . .” “That’s right, Emma. Khatchaturian. Henry plays it.” “All the time,” Emma said. “Always the loud pedal. The Bach was so soothing to hear around the house. But this!” She shook her head. “Now, Marian, I ask you something else. Does she tell Dr. Braintree of this?” There was a silence. “Yes,” I said. “That’s what happened today. She told me she’d told Braintree about it, then got upset and got off the bus and ran away.” “Oh, poor child.” Wimpole shook her head. “Always so frightened.” “It sounds like Dr. Braintree disapproved,” Emma said. “That can plunge her into these terrible moods.” “But I thought she didn’t care about Dr. Braintree!” Emma smiled. “She cares very much. Of course she pretends she doesn’t, to you.” “It was so simple when I was in love with Valentino,” Boothy said musingly. “People just said `it’s a stage’ and let it go at that.” “Well, it’s just a stage with Val, isn’t it?” I demanded. “You all don’t think it’s peculiar, do you?”

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“Of course not, dear,” Wimpole said soothingly. “And I’m sure Dr. Braintree doesn’t either.” Emma put her empty cup down on the table. “Of course Val is a rather exceptional child, and her life has not been normal. This I was led to understand when she came to us last summer, that Charles and I must watch her closely. You see, if Val falls in love with this musician, it is not quite the way it would be with any other child.” “But that’s just it!” I said. “It should be the same way. That’s what makes Val so unhappy. Everybody thinks she’s peculiar.” “Not peculiar, Marian. I should say — highly sensitive.” “It’s true,” Wimpole said. “Val is extremely intelligent and talented. She might turn out to be a genius — her aptitudes seem to indicate it. She’s special. Special people should not be treated as average; it drags them down.” “I’d like to hear what a public school board would say about that,” Boothy said, taking the last cookie. “Well, Val goes to a progressive school. They cater to the exceptional child. Goodness, Marian, don’t scowl like that. It’s good that Val is the way she is, not bad.” I had no answer. Sweeney jumped up on my lap, and I sat trying to tie her cars on top of her head. They talked about it for a while, and Emma told them some of the results of Val’s intelligence tests. Her I.Q. was one point below genius, and since a point or two leeway was allowed for the variables, you could really consider her as smart as Einstein. It was amazing, when you thought of it, that she would bother with the likes of me. Finally I heard Emma say: “One reason I talk so much about this, Mrs. Gilbert, is because I have a cable today from Mr. and Mrs. Boyd. They are to arrive next week, and they always want to have a report on Val.” I shoved Sweeney to the floor and started to say something; then I changed my mind. “They are very busy people, the Boyds. Mr. Boyd has business all over the world. They know a great many people in all fields. Mrs. Boyd takes a great interest in charities and dresses beautifully. They are neglectful of Val, of course, but I am not sure if it is entirely their fault.”

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“They sound very interesting,” Wimpole said. “I hope I can meet them. What sort of charities, Mrs. Hambler?” “Mostly underprivileged children,” Emma said. “She is impressed by what she sees in India.” She gave a slight smile. “It does seem a little ironic, doesn’t it?” From downstairs, the basement doorbell rang. We all looked at each other, then I said I would go. “Now, be kind to her, dear,” Wimpole said. “Forget your little spat.” I went downstairs and opened the door. Val was standing there, her nose red, her eyebrows frozen into small icy ridges. Her shoulders and the top of her head were dusted with snow. We stood and stared at each other for a moment, and finally Val said: “For Pete’s sake, Gilbert, let me in. I’m half frozen.” She stood in front of the radiator and shook herself like a furry dog, then began to peel off layers of clothing, leaving them in a heap on the floor. “What have you been doing?” I asked. “Sitting in a snowdrift?” “Oh, just wandering around. I felt like a walk.” She glanced at me. “I guess I was upset, or something. Nothing is private any more.” She didn’t apologize. She never did, except when apologies were totally unnecessary, so that people would deny them profusely. “I’m starved,” she said. “Is there anything in the icebox?” “There’s tea upstairs, but all the cookies are gone.” She went into the kitchen and opened the icebox, and I trailed after her. We looked inside. There was some leftover boeuf Bourguignon, a carton of yoghurt, two ancient and gangrenouslooking lemons, a bottle of Tavel ’49, and a pot of bacon grease. “Isn’t there anything to eat?” Val asked. “Emma always has apples and cold meat.” “Well, Wimpole has boeuf Bourguignon,” I said. “Take it or leave it.” She sat down on the floor and began picking at it. The gravy had congealed into a rectangular, reddish-brown crust, fitting neatly into its container, and Val picked out the cubes of meat. I sighed, wondering what we were doing there. The other Norton girls were probably . . . but there they were again, and I thought I had rid myself of them. They appeared when I least wanted them, like specters, their mothers

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hovering behind them with purses bulging with the addresses and phone numbers of Trinity boys. “Val,” I said suddenly, “we aren’t peculiar, are we?” Val said, “Oh, forget it!” and ate another piece of beef. Through the thin walls, I could hear someone in the next house painfully picking out “Good King Wenceslas” on the piano. “What do you want for Christmas?” I asked, conversationally. She looked up at me slowly. “Gilbert, is there something you’re trying not to tell me?” I groaned and pulled at a piece of hair. Nothing could be secret any more; all the doors had somehow been opened. Anything we thought, everybody else could guess. “Emma said your parents are coming next week,” I said finally. Val tried to look as though she had known all along, but I wasn’t deceived. She looked at me for a moment, then said: “Whoop-de-doo. Just what the doctor ordered. Just when I’m starting to compensate for my lack of home life, it arrives in town.” “Is that what Dr. Braintree said?” I asked. She got up from the floor and shoved the remaining beef back in the icebox. “I’m going home,” she said. “But you haven’t even come yet. You have to go up to the living room.” “Why?” “Well, because you’re expected. Wimpole wants you to play.” She laughed. “Another time. Look, Gilbert. Will you do me a favor? Tell Emma to come down and we’ll go out the back door. I just want to go home and sleep.” “You tell her,” I said, disgusted. “Since when are you so shy? You were invited for tea, and you’re not supposed to sneak around in the kitchen.” She hedged. “It’s just that I’m tired.” “Oh, you and your damn moods,” I said, and went up the stairs, leaving her standing in the kitchen. In the living room, Emma was gathering up her things.

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“What’s the matter with Val?” Boothy asked. “She’s sulking,” I said. “She won’t come up. She wants to go home.” Emma sighed, and tied a woolen scarf around her head. “That child is the death of me. We are invited to a nice tea, and she disgraces me. You must have told her about her parents, Marian. It is so sudden.” She turned to Wimpole. “I humor her just this once, Mrs. Gilbert, if you don’t mind. I hope you don’t think it foolish, but sometimes in such moods, she must be alone. It has been so nice today. I hope you can come to lunch sometime soon.” “Why, we’d love to, Mrs. Hambler. I’m so interested to see your husband’s abstracts.” “Certainly, you must see them.” She shook hands firmly with all of us and went down the stairs. We heard a murmur of voices, and then the door closed. The house stood empty and silent. “That woman is pure gold,” Boothy said. “I don’t know why she puts up with all this stuff.” “Oh, heavens,” Wimpole said, gathering up the tea things. “Val is just a child. We all seem to forget that.” We went downstairs to prepare dinner, and I set the table, to blot out my dismal feeling of loneliness.

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Chapter 7 THE Melton Arms was a small, expensive residential hotel in the Fifties, convenient to everything. It was populated by dowagers, social out-of-town women who wanted to show New York to their daughters, an occasional successful columnist, and foreign diplomats who knew New York well enough to avoid the Waldorf. It had springy carpets, mirrors, fantastic arrays of gladioli, silently sliding elevators, and a famous cuisine. The waiters smiled wisely as they set down bowls of vichyssoise, and the desk clerk cloud look at a face and reach around for the mail that belonged to it, hardly even glancing at the box number. Into all this went Val, carrying a suitcase, her fur-trimmed coat neatly buttoned. She was to stay there with her parents for the month they would be in New York. “A month or longer,” Val had said, after talking to them on the phone. “It depends on Pop’s business.” I saw her off at the corner, feeling as though she were going on a long ocean voyage. She was nervous, and kept dancing up and down. She fished a cough drop out of her pocket, tossed it in the air, and caught it in her mouth. “I’m barricaded against all evil,” she said. “I have the sacred pictures and the Bible. Actually, it ought to be fun. We’ll probably be going out all the time. Mom likes 21. They give parties all the time . . . I’ll probably get some new clothes.” She babbled on and on, while I stood there feeling desolate. The world of romance was snapping Val up. “Well, I have to go now. We’ll probably go out to dinner somewhere tonight, and Pop always lets me have beer.” She looked impatient, and I said: “Well, good-by. I’ll probably see you around school sometime.”

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She looked at me thoughtfully. “Oh, sure,” she said. Then she laughed. “Don’t look so sad, Gilbert. I’m not going to the moon.” She went into the hotel, and I wandered up Fifth Avenue. It was snowing softly, and the shop windows glittered with Christmas. From inside, I could hear carols being played on chimes. It was late afternoon on a Saturday, and for the first time since I’d met Val I felt the old feeling of longing for all the city had to give, that I was too small or too ignorant to take. Up above in the windows, behind the glass revolving doors that turned and whispered in the flaky snow, beyond the fragile crystal trees in the Park, in all the carpeted steaming lobbies and in all the living rooms where candles glowed on the mantels and the lights twinkled and moved on the trees, there, if you could gather it all up in your hand like a snowball, was fulfillment. And I imagined myself in one of the living rooms, and watched desperately as I walked to the window and looked out, thinking that even this was only a part of it, and even if you were God and had forever to do it in, you could never have all of the city’s promise. Can you ever have everything you want? I wondered, standing on the corner of Fifty-ninth. Or do the people inside and above just rush around, trying to have a bit here and a bit there, hoping it will do? It seemed like an unjustifiable cruelty, for one place to have so much; for one place to be so agonizingly beautiful. It’s only because I’m lonely that I’m noticing it today, I thought. But perhaps people always are, at one time or another. Perhaps it’s good to be lonely sometimes, to be able to stand here and feel everything, all at once. After all, there’s nothing to stop me from doing anything I want, and someday I will gather up New York, like a snowball. Full of joy and cold, I began running up the street, past the secondhand bookshops, past the florist, with his window full of poinsettias, over to Lexington where two Santas tinkled their bells and a scruffy brown man sold roast chestnuts, their fragrance on the cold air. I’m happy! I thought. I’m happy! I have forever to live! In the store window, three plaster children in Flannelwarm bathrobes stood poised by their tree, one hanging a ball, one dangling a candy cane, one with her hands upraised in joy. Softly, from inside, came: “We, three kings of Orient are, Bearing gifts we traverse afar . . .” Orient! We are the kings of Orient!

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On Third, the El rattled by, sending down a cascade of snow. Up the block, at the Supermarket, stood a mass of pine trees, leaning helplessly against a wooden frame. Two familiar figures stood in front of them, reaching out mittened hands to inspect a branch, or leaning back and gazing on them studiously, calculating the height of the living room. I ran over to Wimpole and threw my arms around her furry middle. “Oh, Wimpole,” I cried, “please don’t let’s ever leave New York!” For a week I hardly saw Val. She always seemed to be in a great rush, dashing off to have lunch with her parents and waving hastily as she went by. One day she grabbed me in the hall and said: “Say, I’m sorry about all this, but you know parents. Mom says you’re to come to lunch Saturday.” “Oh,” I said. “Is it an order?” Her face fell. “You don’t have to. She just said to invite you.” “I’ll come,” I said. “I’m sorry.” She grinned meekly and ran off. I watched her run down the hall in her new blue coat, with a flapping label saying, “Bergdorf Goodman.” As I stood there, chewing a fingernail, Lilian came over from her locker, where she had been listening. “What’s with Boyd these days?” she asked. “Her parents are in town,” I said abstractedly. “They take her to lunch every day at 21 and places.” “Oh,” Apparently 21 was old stuff to Lilian. “I was wondering if she was seeing a lot of that musician.” I turned and stared at her. “What musician?” “Orient. She always carries his picture around.” “Lilian Kafritz,” I said, “is there anything you don’t poke your nose into?” Lilian put her hands on her hips and bared her yellow teeth. “Listen, marian Gilbert. Do you think Boyd could keep a secret if she tried? Do you know how many times she’s left that picture lying around, and pages from that silly notebook? Honestly, I think she does it on purpose. Everybody knows about it. They think she’s having some great romance. Honestly, if she wouldn’t make such a fuss, nobody would care. I think she wants attention, that’s why she does it.”

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I stared at her. “Everybody thinks she’s having a romance?” I repeated unbelievingly. “Sure they do, stupid. Wouldn’t you? I don’t know whether she is, of course. It doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. But I thought you might like to know what some people think.” “Well, she isn’t,” I said. “She’s never even met him. She admires him. Haven’t you ever had a crush on anybody?” Lilian pursed her lips. “Of course not,” she said. “I’m not that silly. Anyway, if I did, I wouldn’t make so much noise about it, especially if I’d never met him. Everybody thinks Boyd is just silly. Or they would think she was silly, if it weren’t for . . .” She paused, wondering whether to go on. “Well, what?” I asked. “Well, if it weren’t that everybody knows about her . . . well, you don’t have to look so horrified. She isn’t very quiet about that, either.” I was convulsed with anger, and stood there scowling for a moment, wishing I had the courage to hit her. “So you told everybody about that, too, after we made an agreement. All right, you asked for it. I’m going to Mrs. Cooney.” As I said it, the words sounded hollow. If it were the truth, Mrs. Cooney wasn’t going to care who found out first, whether it was Lilian or not. “Now, listen,” Lilian was saying. “I know you think I told, but I didn’t. This is one time I didn’t. I like Boyd, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. It was just that everybody seemed to think I knew and kept asking where she went at three-fifteen. Nobody could go to a doctor or a dentist that often! So soon everybody was asking and I went to Mrs. Cooney and told her I knew, and so she got a few of the Eights together, Sylvia Van Dyke and Hillary and them, and told them, and said it didn’t mean she was queer or anything, but it was just like going to a regular doctor, and they said they understood, and they’d tell anybody who asked that Boyd had a psychiatrist but it didn’t mean she was queer, and they’d all try to help her adjust, but it was hard because she’s so quee . . . I mean different, and now with this Orient business, and nobody knows what to think. But I didn’t start it,” she finished, breathlessly and triumphantly. “I just thought I’d tell you before somebody else did.” The hall was swinging back and forth in gentle arcs. All this had been happening while Val and I had been consecrating Carnegie

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Hall, peering through the window of Benny’s, writing in the Bible. We ignored Norton, and now we were paid back. There was nothing more to say. “Okay, Lilian,” I said, feeling tired and dazed. “Meet me after school and I’ll buy you a sundae.” She looked down at her little stubby hands. “It’s okay,” she said. “It so happens I have to go home anyway. Forget it.” She picked up her books and walked down the hall, an awkward little figure, all alone. She doesn’t even have a friend, I thought. She’s the worst off of all. And I didn’t think she could ever do a nice thing. The next day I went to see Mrs. Cooney. She frightened me, but everybody seemd to like her, so I cherished some hope that she would be understanding. I didn’t really know what I wanted from her; perhaps I just wanted to talk to someone. I found her in the home room all alone, putting fresh daisies in her test tube. She was large and lumpy, and the top half of her surged forward like a cannon barrel, while her feet, in Red Cross shoes, remained stolidly on the ground. Her face was purple and pouchy and a pince-nez balanced on her nose by magic. She always had three fountain pens stuck in the neckline of her crepe dresses. “Well, Kiddo,” she boomed as I came in, “how’s tricks?” I wondered if she knew who I was, for I merely mumbled at her in the mornings, but she was sharper than I thought. “About time we met,” she said. “After all, we’ve been occupying the same room for three months.” She bit the end off a daisy to make it fit. “You’re Boyd’s little pal, in the blue funk. Your marks are okay, though. That’s half the battle. So I take it you’re here about the other half. Feel unpopular?” She backed me into a chair and grinned at me. “Well, not exactly, Mrs. Cooney,” I said. “Bip-boop,” said Mrs. Cooney, irrelevantly. “All these kids go to dances. You go to dances?” “No, I don’t. I’m not really here to talk about me, Mrs. Cooney. I was wondering about Val . . .” “Oh, the psychiatrist. Sorry it leaked out. Doggone sorry. She came to me at the beginning of the year and asked me to keep it quiet, but impossible, all these snoopy kids. Boyd throws herself around, you know. Makes so much noise about her secrets everybody finds out.

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Poor kid doesn’t know which end is up. Wants attention, gets it in the wrong way.” Wants attention. Lilian had said that too. Did she? Perhaps, underneath it all . . . I tried to look into Val’s mental processes, but a black abyss yawned up at me, hundreds of layers; on top she doesn’t, underneath she does, but something makes her, and below that her childhood . . . “She has to fight it herself,” Mrs. Cooney said. “But no strain. Most of these kids are okay. They won’t make it rough.” I looked at her so skeptically that she grinned. “Don’t think so, eh? How do you know? You hang around with Boyd all the time. I know ’em. Most of ‘em have a skeleton in the closet. Divorced parents, drunk parents, loony parents, parents who don’t bother with ‘em. Get ’em in here, they level out and make like everything’s fine. The school helps ’em. Finds ‘em families to live with if they haven’t any, gets ’em painting or playing music or writing poetry to get it out of their system, lets ’em have self-government. Orders ‘em up, tries to turn ’em back out feeling they’re okay. That’s why it’s a good school.” I stared at her in astonishment. “Listen, Gilbert. This is New York, not some country day-school in New England. We get all kinds here, as long as the I.Q. is so high. Knocking around makes them tough.” “But . . . don’t their mothers send them to dances and introduce them to boys?” “Some do. Those are the ones you hear about. You’re in a fog, aren’t you, Kiddo? I’ll tell you another fact of life. Mothers do anything for their kids. A mother may be living hand to mouth on alimony, but when it comes to her daughter, she’ll scrape up enough money and find a boy somewhere and send the kid off to a dance, with a silk dress and kid gloves and all the rest. Her life’s pretty well over; where she failed, the kid’s going to make up for it. That’s the way mothers are. I’ve seen it and I’ve done it. Your mother would do the same.” “She . . .” “You probably tell her you don’t feel like going to the lousy old dance, so she gets discouraged.” I watched her, listening to the echo of my own words. “But, Mrs. Cooney,” I said slowly, “if it’s the parents, that’s one thing. But with Val . . . well, it’s she who has a psychiatrist.”

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“True.” She looked up at me. “I don’t know everything. I don’t know how this will turn out. I think it’s nutty for a kid her age to go through this brainwashing, anyway. The parents are in town now, aren’t they?” “Yes. Val is staying with them.” “Bip-boop. I’m always around, Kiddo. Come see me whenever you like. Sure you’re all right?” She grinned at me, the cannon nozzle in my face. “You’re all right. You’ll snap out of it. Just open your eyes, and save people like me the bother of explaining. I don’t begrudge it, Kiddo. But it’s more fun to learn things yourself.” I heard her laugh to herself, a soft croak, as I went out the door. I didn’t have to tell Val that the Eights knew her secret. It sifted through to her, whispered from behind doors, and she knew. Children cannot keep a secret unless their own feelings are at stake. The Eights kept their own, whatever they were, but Val’s served as a good excuse to pass a few notes in a dull class, to speak to the omniscient senior, to wonder over at odd moments. But Val being Val, she pretended not to know, and obliviously flitted between her business and her pleasure, as though all was right with the world. Knowing her as I did, I watched the first big defense build up, the defense of her normality. It was a little shaky at the beginning, but I had the feeling that it was going to strengthen and last all her life. Always, I told myself, she will be trying to convince people she’s just like everybody else. She’ll try to be ordinary, and then something horrible will happen to her mind. She isn’t ordinary, and she never will be; that’s what makes her wonderful. But she’s afraid of being wonderful. As I was talking to her briefly one day in the cafeteria about plans for the forthcoming lunch, a couple of Eights walked by with their trays, staring at us inquisitively. When they had passed us, they began to giggle, and one of them spun her finger around her ear expressively. Val saw it; she had been staring at them idly, as I had; but she turned away and looked at the food. Her face crumpled little, but she only said: “The chicken actually looks edible today. Maybe they only cooked it six hours this time.” It was feeble, and I was in agony for her. Why do you care? I wanted to say. Why, when you’re so much better than they are? But one couldn’t burst these things out to Val; one had to work up to them. I saw her so little these days, any confidences were impossible. I ached to tell her what Mrs. Cooney had said, and resolved to.

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“You aren’t meeting your parents for half an hour,” I said hastily. “Sit down with me while I have my sandwich. You can take a taxi. I haven’t seen you in days.” She hesitated, and I added, “Honorable kowtowing servant desires to exchange latest Cherry Blossom dirt.” It worked, and we sat down at a table. She seemed embarrassed; guilty, I suppose, that she had been neglecting me. She made a few comments about Bartók, the looks of my sandwich, and a new dress her mother had bought her. I sat there staring at her, chewing my sandwich. When she looked at her watch, I burst out that I had talked to Mrs. Cooney and told what she had told me. She leaned forward, her chin in her hands, listening. Everything in her eyes showed that she wanted to hear, and everything in the rest of her face denied it. But I said it all wrong, as usual. It sounded as though I was telling her not to worry about being queer because everybody else around was too. It got worse and worse, and her eyes were frightened. “Look, Val,” I said desperately, “you’re so much better than any of the rest of them. You’re smart, and you can play the piano, and you’re . . . well, you’re different. Better different. You mustn’t be afraid.” I told her that Mrs. Cooney had said she let the secret out because she wanted attention. Val put on an extremely bored smile. “Shades of Braintree,” she said. “Mrs. Cooney is another amateur psychiatrist. This time she agrees with Braintree — everything I do is to get attention, and all that.” She looked down at her hands, resting on the table. “I just wanted to be natural, that’s all. I didn’t want to bark it all over the place that I had a psychiatrist, but I was trying to act as though I wasn’t ashamed of it at the same time. So I let it slip to a couple of people, accidentally on purpose.” She glanced up at my shocked face. “I knew you’d be hurt, so that’s why I didn’t tell you. You get so upset sometimes, and horrified, when I pave the road a little. You’re terribly honest.” It all rang false. “Then why did you make up all the things about going to dentists and meeting relatives every afternoon? How can you lie? Why didn’t you just tell people where you were going?” “Because I didn’t want to bark it around, I told you,” she said patiently, as though I were an idiot child. “You’ve never had a psychiatrist to be ashamed of, Gilbert. You don’t know.” “Nuts,” I said. “That’s the first time you’ve used that kind of talk to me.”

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“Well, it’s true.” She was still looking at her hands, which were now playing arpeggios on the table, and she avoided my eyes. “Anyway, Mrs. Cooney has told me the same stuff she told you. She likes to feel she’s helping wayward children. But it’s probably true,” she said. “That’s why I’ve never had this illusion about Norton mothers that you have, and I keep telling you to appreciate Wimpole. There are probably three or four Norton mothers the way you imagine them, and those are the ones you hear about. The ones with other kinds of mothers keep their mouths shut, like me.” She looked up for a moment, realized her slip, and went on. “I should have told you you didn’t have to be so hush-hush about Braintree.” I was furious. “You’re damn right you should have! You always acted as though you’d die if anybody found out. So old me, being a friend, acted the same way.” I stormed out the machinations I had gone through to keep Lilian Kafritz quiet, even before I had known Val. “I sat and watched her chew up that revolting sundae, paid for out of my own money, just so she’d keep her trap shut. Does she? Oh, yes, but she lets on to everybody she knows where Boyd goes every day after school, and when they ask her, she turns chicken and throws it all in Mrs. Cooney’s lap. What a worm. I suppose forty-two sundaes would buy the life history of everybody in the class.” I got so wrought up about Lilian’s foulness, completely forgetting the last piece of free information, that I almost forgot to be angry at Val; then I remembered. “And all the time you would have been delighted if I’d told her to spread the word to everybody so you could be `natural’ about it.” Val’s face wore an odd expression; it was almost tender. She smiled. “You did all that for me before you even knew me?” “Yes,” I grunted, “fool that I was.” “Gilbert,” she said, “sometimes I think you’re mad.” “Me too! Well, I’ll go check in with Lilian.” Val began to laugh. “Honestly, you’re fantastic! You’re even wising up! You’re starting to make wisecracks! But seriously, don’t you ever consider the fact that there’s evil in the world? Do you trust everybody? You heard I had a brain-doctor; didn’t you think I might have fits or whip out razors? You can imagine anything, I know. But you just went ahead and spent your allowance.” “I know about evil,” I said. “The Eights are teeming with it.” But she had melted me, as usual, by telling me how marvelous I was. “Oh,

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Val,” I groaned, “you’re a pig, you really are. Go away and leave me alone.” She grinned, then looked at her watch. “Oh, my God, I’m late.” She gathered up notebooks, mittens, rubbers, and for some reason, the remains of my sandwich. “ ‘By, Gilbert. Melton Arms at one tomorrow. Black tie.” She zoomed out, and I sat there grinning after her, watching the coattails and feet flying down the hall. It was only then that I remembered; I had forgotten to tell her what might have bothered her more, that the Eights also knew about Henry Orient. I was really quite excited about the lunch at the Melton Arms. I hardly ever went out to lunch, save with my father, who always ordered the meal in the hotel room so we could Talk. In truth, he avoided restaurants, which was a disappointment to me, for I regarded eating in a restaurant the height of glamor and luxury, and would have gladly spent my life doing so. I ran between my closet and Wimpole’s room, where she and Boothy were doing their exercises with the Finn. “Should I wear this or this?” I asked, holding up two dresses. “I don’t need to wear stockings, do I? Should I comb my hair this way or this way?” “Flex, release,” chanted the Finn, “flex, release. Mrs. Booth, you are not really trying. I shall have to come over and help.” “Oh, no,” groaned Boothy. “Spare me, just this once!” “This one or this one, Wimpole?” “I think the blue velvet, dear. And part your hair the other way . . . ooh, I really felt that one.” The Finn scrutinized me. “How about you, little Gilbert? It seems to me the buttocks are lazy, are they not?” “They’re fine,” I said irritably. “Let her keep her happy youth a while longer,” Boothy said. “Say, maybe if I took up prison ball I wouldn’t have to do this.” “I’m going to wear the green silk,” I decided. “The blue velvet is so revoltingly young.” I spent half an hour or so trying to dress as though I ate at the Melton Arms all the time, and didn’t really succeed at all. I presented myself to Boothy and Wimpole, drinking black coffee in their shorts, and they said I looked sweet, which wasn’t at all what I wanted to hear. Then I went out and hailed a taxi. I could have walked, but my new shoes

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hurt, and it was icy. I got out in front of the hotel, while the doorman opened the car door for me. The street glittered; the city glittered. I felt, for a moment, pleased with the world. Then I went into the soft, velvety lobby, where strains of Muzak came softly from the dining room. Val was pacing up and down like a sentry. “Mother’ll be down in a minute,” she said. “She’s putting on her face.” We looked at each other solemnly, and I remembered the day we had met when I first went to the Hamblers’, in our Wright and Ditson shirts. She looked approximately as I did; silk dress, neat hair, gloves. Then I looked down at her legs. “Val Boyd,” I said, “you’re wearing stockings! How could you?” I felt as though an old and trusted ally had moved over to the enemy. “Well, Mother likes me to,” she said. “You know, pamper the old girl while she’s in town.” “Have you ever worn them before?” I asked. “Sure. All week.” “All week!” This was fantastic. “How do they stay up? Do you wear a corset, like Boothy?” “Of course not,” Val said, from the height of her superior knowledge. “I’m wearing a garter belt.” “Oh,” I said lamely, looking down at my bare, fuzzy legs with white socks. “It isn’t so bad,” Val said. “You get used to them. Let’s go in and get a table.” We went into the dining room, and I watched with awe as Val greeted the captain with “Hi, Pierre,” and he replied, “Good afternoon, Miss Boyd.” He led us to a table at the back of the room and pulled out our chairs for us. “The usual?” Pierre asked. “Yes, please. Two.” Pierre left, and Val looked around the room. “Pretty crowded today.” “Val,” I said, “did you just order a cocktail?” She turned to me and grinned. “A Horse’s Neck,” she said. “Now, look. You can have one if your mother lets you, but Wimpole would have a fit if . . .”

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“It’s just ginger ale, dope.” I frowned. “Word of honor?” “Absolutely.” She began reading the menu, which was enormous. I looked around the room, and saw a lot of extremely handsome women in black suits and a couple of elderly men. In the center was a round table with an enormous tower of gladioli in the middle, surrounded by beautiful pastries. For dessert I’ll have one of those, I thought. No, I think one of that kind. On the other hand, the cherry tart . . . “Here comes Mother,” Val said, putting down her menu. “Oh, Lord, she’s got Freddie with her.” “Who’s Freddie?” “Some society dame. A friend. She’s been up there at the sherry all morning.” The two women were crossing the room. The one in front was clearly Isabel Boyd. She wore a black suit, like most of the other women in the room, and a small hat made entirely of pink feathers. She was impressively tall, and she carried her height well. She moved with a challenging air; she walked as though she had complete control of the situation, or rather, as though she would have control of it if she could only catch up. She somehow gave the odd impression of being overpowered by her own appearance. Her face, when she turned toward us, was poised and slightly desperate. It had Val’s features, and Val’s expression when she was afraid and trying not to be. It was a lonely face, looking out from under complicated coils of magnificent dark red hair, and in it I saw a curious suggestion of one of Val’s possible futures. She nodded at acquaintances as she passed their tables with a brilliant, forced smile. Freddie, panting behind her, was outrageous. She was short and dumpy, covered with furs and jewels and make-up, and she wore a red velvet fez on her black curls, tilted to the side. The moment she sat down at the table she whipped out a huge gold compact and disappeared behind it, twisting and stretching her jaw to apply powder, and emitting little grunts. Isabel kissed Val and stretched out a suede-gloved hand to me, which I shook. “It’s very nice to meet you, Marian,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you.” “It’s very nice meeting you, too, Mrs. Boyd,” I said. She scrutinized me for a moment, then turned to Val, and Val turned to her. They had the

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most curious effect on each other. Val smiled and fawned, and Isabel softened into melting motherliness. “How do you feel, darling? Is the cold better? That dress is charming on you, and we’ll get another in a different color. We’ll go over to Bonwit’s afterwards.” Then, as though she had done her duty, she fished in her purse and emerged with smoking equipment. “I don’t know if the sleeves are right for me,” Val was saying. “I think they should be longer.” “Oh, no. They’re perfect, darling. Just perfect.” She lit her cigarette, and I sipped my Horse’s Neck, listening to this amazing conversation. Since when had Val given a damn how long her sleeves were? Isabel blew out her smoke, and looked as though she were wondering what to say next. Freddie put down her compact and leaned over the table. “Let’s have a little cocktail, Izzy,” she said. “Well, hey! Who are these cute little girls?” Apparently she hadn’t noticed us before. “Don’t be so silly, Freddie. This is Val, and her friend Marian Gilbert.” “Who’s Val?” Freddie asked. “My daughter,” snapped Isabel. “You know perfectly well who she is.” She turned to us and melted again. “What would you girls like to have? Anything you like. I’m just having a little poached fish, but why don’t you have a steak or something?” “I’ll have a steak,” Val said, “and French fries. How about you, Gilbert?” “I’ll have the same,” I said agreeably. “Let’s us have a little cocktail first,” Freddie said. “A little gin and a little vermouth, a very little vermouth.” “You shouldn’t, Freddie,” Isabel said. “You’ve already had entirely too much.” “I have to get worse before I get better, if you know what I mean,” said Freddie, and she began to laugh. It sounded more like a bark. “For old times’ sake.” “All right, just one.” Isabel ordered a Martini for Freddie and a vermouth for herself. “Val, dear, did Daddy say where he was going when he left before?” “Nope,” said Val.

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“Oh, I was just wondering. He works too hard, Marian, far too hard,” suddenly turning to me. “He’s getting an ulcer, I’m sure.” I looked blank. “Does your Daddy work hard too?” she pursued. “Divorced,” Val said cryptically, before I had time to answer. She said the word as one might say “palsy” to explain my abnormal silence. I was awed by Isabel, who rotated in a different world than any I had ever seen. Isabel started talking to Val about a party that was coming up, and what Val should wear to it. I turned to Freddie, who was tenderly fingering her drink. She was smiling at the onion in it like a wise old owl, as though she was communicating to it in some mysterious language. “This is a nice restaurant,” I croaked out. “I’ve never been here before.” She started and turned to me. “Who are you again?” she asked. “Marian Gilbert. I go to school with Val.” “Oh, I see.” She looked blank. “Do you like school?” “I suppose so,” I said. Freddie turned back to her onion. “What the hell do you talk about to school kids?” she asked it softly. There was certainly nothing else to say to that, so I sat staring into space until Isabel turned toward me. “I’m so sorry, Marian,” she said, “but Val and I see each other so little, that we just talk and talk when we get together. Arthur and I like Val to meet all our friends, and you know how it is.” For some reason, I couldn’t think of a thing to reply to anything Isabel said to me. She talked on her own plane; she didn’t even come halfway down to mine, and I was left floundering. Her attitude to me seemed to say, “You understand, dear, I’m not really very interested in you,” or something of the sort. Clearly I was excess baggage and would, in time, be paid off and told to go home. Not that she said anything rude; she was really quite civil, I suppose, but the lunch was so aimless, and the four of us so disconnected, that it all seemed like an unpleasant dream. The steaks, the little bit of fish, and black coffee for Freddie arrived. Val was humming and playing a sonata on the tablecloth, and Isabel was talking across to somebody at the next table. “Is your steak good?” I asked Val.

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“Oh, I’ve had better,” she said abstractedly, playing some octaves. Then she looked directly at me. “Are you having a good time?” “Oh, fine,” I said, a little flustered. Freddie looked over at us. “Aren’t you kids having anything to drink?” she asked. “Well, we . . . I . . . my mother doesn’t let me,” I said. “I’m too young.” “All my youth is blurred together,” Freddie mused. “I can’t remember at what age you do what. For instance, does a baby walk or talk first?” She smiled at her tiny companion. “Walk or talk, my little one? Walk or talk?” Val leaned over the table. “Maybe afterwards we can . . .” “How about dessert?” Isabel asked suddenly, turning back to us. She seemed to be in a hurry. “Parfait, pastries, what? I’m having a stewed pear.” We ordered pastries, and Isabel sat pulling on her gloves. It took a long time, and each finger had to be eased into its place. First one, then the next, then the next pointed across the table at us. The desserts came. She sat there impatiently while we ate them, saying that we must hurry, since there was so much to be done that afternoon. Every shop on Fifth Avenue was to be cased, Christmas tree decorations were to be bought, presents for everyone. I wondered if I were to go along, and soon it became obvious that I was not. “We’ll drop Marian at the cross-town bus,” she said, and it seemed to me I’d never heard a more damning statement. Val looked at me pleadingly across the table. On the way out of the restaurant, she said: “I’m sorry this was such a framble. I’ll call you later.” “Oh, don’t bother,” I said, with a weak attempt at nastiness. “I’m sure you won’t have time.” She looked hurt for a moment, then Isabel swept us away. I stood fingering the bus-stop sign after they had left me, and wondered what kind of poison was being put into Val now.

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Chapter 8 Emma,” I said, “what is Mrs. Boyd like?” It was only five in the afternoon, but Emma’s room was almost dark. I had called her from school, asking her if I could come, the following Monday when I was supposed to be at the dentist’s. She said yes immediately, almost as though she had been expecting me. When I came she was pouring tea into a white pot and cutting pieces of orange cake. She settled me by the hissing radiator and gave me some tea, then sat back as though waiting for me to begin. “What did you think she is like?” Emma asked. “You had lunch with her, did you not?” “I didn’t like her very much,” I said, looking into the cup. “I suppose nobody else agrees with me.” Emma smiled. “Perhaps, perhaps not.” “I just thought Val was so funny with her. Talking about clothes and shopping and stuff. Val doesn’t care about all that.” “Perhaps she is growing up. It is high time you two stopped being such scamps, you know. Running all over the city the way you do.” She looked over at me. “You feel lonely now, huh?” “Well, yes! And not just because Val talks about clothes to her mother. I talk about them to Wimpole too sometimes. But Mrs. Boyd seemed to want Val all to herself, and she didn’t want me around. And sometimes Val seemed to be lapping it all up, and sometimes she looked as if she wanted to get away.” “But you must remember that it is her mother, Marian. The only one she has. And she sees her so rarely, of course she wants to please her.” “Yes, but there was something wrong. It wasn’t natural.”

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Emma reached into the box beside her and took out one of her rare cigarettes. She lit it and blew the pale smoke up at the ceiling. The room was dark, and I felt as though I was consulting the Oracle of Delphi, waiting for the answer to the riddle. I wondered again where and when Emma had gotten her wisdom; from Charles, or in spite of him? I had the conviction that Emma always knew the truth about something, no matter what it was. “That is what I wanted to know,” Emma said finally. “You have sensed trouble.” I waited. “So?” I asked finally. “Then what is wrong?” She looked at me for a moment, clearly wondering whether to tell me or not. Then she sighed. “It is not as though I am telling you anything you would not guess or find out for yourself,” she said. “It is quite simple; Mrs. Boyd is a neurotic woman. She comes from a poor family. She had to work hard instead of going to school, to support her mother. She grew up bitter and unhappy, and determined to be rich. She met Arthur Boyd somewhere — I do not know — perhaps she was selling magazines or cigarettes or something. He was attracted by her beauty and cynicism and set her up in a beautiful apartment. But his business took him away often, and she trusts no one. So she . . .” She looked over at me kindly. “First I will tell you something about Arthur Boyd. He was a child genius.” “Like Val,” I said. “But more so. His I.Q. is better. He went to business school and was an immediate success. His parents had money, and now he has made more.” She paused. “So,” I said, “what did Mrs. Boyd do when she was in the apartment?” “She was not Mrs. Boyd yet,” Emma said. “She wanted very much to be, but Arthur Boyd did not. So she . . .” Her hand dropped onto the arm of the chair. “So she started a child.” I stared at her. “Do you understand these things, Marian?” Her voice was rueful, as though she hated to talk to me of such things. “People can start children or not, as they desire. Sometimes it does not work, but in Isabel Boyd’s case it did. Then she told Arthur Boyd she was with child and he must marry her. She knew him well enough to take such a chance; he would not leave her in such a situation, and so they were married.”

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Her brown hair glimmered in a faint light from the window, and she watched me closely. I said nothing for a moment, then asked softly: “Was the child Val?” “Yes, it was Val. And of course there was nothing she wanted less than a child. When her time came, she suffered terribly, and was in great pain for a long time. For some women it is a hell, nothing else. At last they said that she must choose between her own life and that of the baby. She chose her own. I do not blame her for that; probably most women would. But the baby struggled and lived. She always resented it for that, I think. Then she said to herself, now that this is over, I am going to do all the things I’ve wanted to do. So the child was put in the hands of nurses and kindergartens right from the beginning, and the Boyds bought beautiful clothes and flew about the world.” She got up and poured some more tea. “But the marriage has been a failure. Arthur Boyd thinks of nothing but his business and his money; I do not think he has strong feelings about anything else. He knows nothing of people. Isabel grew bored and lonely, in spite of the money and the travel — a woman needs more than that — and soon there were other men. She deceived her husband for a long time, but then he began to threaten divorce. Whenever he did that, she would reform for a while, and then she would be bored, and it would start all over.” “Then why didn’t he divorce her?” I asked, fascinated by this first glimpse into the world and its functions. Emma shrugged. “I do not think he wanted to bother,” she said. “Marriage becomes a habit, and after a certain number of years one cannot bear the thought of starting anew. She is an asset to him in his business; she is a charming hostess and dresses well. She has cultivated herself. She gives a good impression with her charity work. In a way, he needs her. You are too young to understand the bonds that can grow between two people who have lived together for many years.” She was smiling softly into the air, and I had an oblique glimpse of understanding into her life with Charles. She said nothing for a few moments, and I pursued: “Then why is Isabel being so nice to Val now, if she doesn’t want her?” “Why? Why indeed does a neurotic do things? I do not know, but I can guess. It is Isabel’s desperate bid for her husband’s approval. I suspect he has threatened divorce again, and she is trying to make a family in a hurry. She is trying to win Val with money, the only way she knows.”

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I sat pulling the nap off the rug. “She’ll never win Val. She’ll never make Val what she wants her.” Emma looked at me. “Are you sure? If you are so sure, then why did you come here today?” Her words brought a cold bleak pain. I said nothing. “Has Val been neglecting you and Henry, to go and buy the expensive dresses with her mother?” she asked gently. “I have not seen her this week.” I sighed. “I’ve hardly seen her either, Emma. But I know Val! I know she wouldn’t have anything to do with falseness, and her mother is a false woman.” As I spoke, I wondered if it were true, then promptly brushed the feeling away, like a fly. “She’s just being nice to her while she’s here, that’s all. She still loves Henry, and she still loves me.” “You don’t think she can love you and Henry and Isabel all at the same time?” I looked up at her thoughtfully. “No, I don’t.” “I don’t think so either.” She got up and snapped on the light, and we both blinked at each other in astonishment, as though we had waked from a dream. “It is almost six, Marian, and though I am happy to have you, your mother must be worrying.” I got up and pulled on my coat, from where I had dropped it on the floor. “Emma,” I said, “everybody at Norton knows that Val goes to a psychiatrist.” The smile left her face. “Oh,” she said softly. “Does she know this?” “Yes. She said she told a few people herself, and a lot of stuff. She acted as though she didn’t care.” “Oh, good heavens.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Listen, my child. If you want to prove yourself an adult, here is your time. You must stick with her, no matter what she does. I know she is infuriating; but she needs you, and you must be her friend, no matter what Isabel does.” “Oh, I will,” I said. “Don’t worry about that.” “Don’t think it will be easy.” “When the Boyds go, everything will be back where it was.” Emma said nothing, and I hated to go, so I asked another question. “Emma, how did you find all this out about Isabel?”

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“She told me herself, last summer, when I first met her to discuss Val’s living here. I did not ask her. She seemed to want to tell me.” “Oh.” I buttoned my coat. “Well, I have to go. Thanks a lot, Emma. Really thanks.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Come again, any time you like.” Just as she was about to close the door, I thought of one more thing. “Emma, is it always a hell?” “Is what, my dear?” “Having babies,” I said. She smiled. “I wish I could tell you. I have never been able to have any, and that is the saddest thing in my life.” I went out the door and walked slowly and thoughtfully down the street. Days at Norton had again taken on the cast they had when I had hidden in the nook each morning. No one met me at prison, no one had lunch with me, except occasionally Lilian, and there was no one to impress with my growing literacy. However, there was a change. I first felt it at the annual Christmas pageant, the last day before vacation. I stood backstage, looking at the previously omniscient Eights in their white dresses lined up to march across the stage, and I began to feel that they weren’t so omniscient after all. I might be the only one in this whole group without a skeleton in the closet, I thought. What’s a divorce? Nothing, when you think of some things that people don’t tell about. Wimpole’s normal, and my father is too, except that he hates restaurants. My father was such a dim figure, I could hardly say whether he was normal or not; but he seemed to be. For the first time I could remember, I had a slight feeling of superiority. The Eights lined up and marched across the stage in twos, down the steps, and up the aisles. The assembly hall was decked with pine and holly, and there was an enormous wreath on the back wall of the stage, and each of us carried a lighted taper. Sang the Eights: “Masters in this hall, hear ye news today Brought from oversea, and ever I you pray. Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel sing we clear! Holpen are all folk on earth, Born is God’s son so dear!”

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The tramp of feet shook the stage, and I found myself with Sylvia Van Dyke, the most impressive girl in the class. She was beautiful, she was Class President, she got high marks, and her mother had thousands of phone numbers. Sylvia’s every week end was filled with tulle, flowers, tuxedos and laughter. But, I reminded myself, her father might be a dope addict. Or Sylvia herself might have screaming fits in the night. Who knows? I was sure of myself, but not of Sylvia; and this unwarranted state of affairs made me want to laugh. “Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel sing we loud! God today hath poor folk raised, And cast a-down the proud.” Isn’t it wonderful what Christmas can do? I thought. I’m alone, but I don’t really mind so much. I looked up; the hall was breath-taking, with candles flickering over the rows of faces, and the smell of pine. Just at this moment, I love Norton, and everybody in it. Maybe in a minute I won’t, but just now I do. Sylvia and I marched across the stage, carefully in step, our white dresses swishing. Here go Sylvia and I, just two girls, dressed the same, walking in step, both of us with the same chance at life. “God today hath poor folk raised, And cast a-down the proud.” We sat in our assigned section, and I spotted Wimpole across the room, with the rest of the parents. She was all furry, with a small green hat on, and she raised a hand in solemn greeting. The assembly was nice; it was the only one of the year that I liked. We sang carols, and Miss Clipper, the dean, read the Nativity. Then we prayed for a long time, our heads bent. During the prayer, Sylvia whispered: “Say, do you have a minute afterwards, Gilbert? I’ve been meaning and meaning to talk to you, but I’ve been so busy, and I’m sure you have, and . . .” She smiled helplessly. “You know how it is. Just for a minute.” “Sure,” I said, full of curiosity. The secret of Sylvia’s popularity was that she always acted as though everyone else was as mad and gay and busy as she was, and it was flattering. When the prayer was over, we marched out of the hall, leaving the flickering lights and the breath of pine.

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“This is Christ the Lord, Masters be ye glad! Christmas is come in, and no folk should be sad!” Outside, mothers were kissing their daughters and saying how beautiful it was, and shaking hands with teachers, while the strains of music still came through the door. Sylvia waved at several people and then drew me into a corner. Hillary Green appeared like magic beside us. Hillary was Sylvia’s ugly friend. She was said to be cute; she had stick-like yellow hair, about two inches long, and buck teeth and freckles, and Sylvia passed on her cast-off dates to her. Unlike Sylvia, she was fawning, conceited and unpleasant, so proud of being chosen by Sylvia she could hardly stand it. “This will just take a minute,” Sylvia said, smiling winningly. “I . . . uh . . . I’m giving a small party on Saturday night, and I was wondering if Val would like to come, and you too, of course. I thought I’d ask you first, because . . . well, you know Val so well, and I wasn’t sure if she liked to go to parties and things.” I was astounded. None of the Eights had ever asked me to a party, or Val, or consulted me as to whether Val . . . and suddenly, I understood. It was a charitable act; Val was now acknowledged to be strange, and no one was quite sure whether she performed human functions, eating or sleeping or going to parties. I stood looking at her in astonishment, wondering what to say. Hillary was pulling at Sylvia’s arm and saying: “Come on, Syl, Mother’s dying for some tea,” and looking at me as though I were some sort of vermin. Clearly she was as surprised by this as I was, but, recollecting herself, she began to smile affectionately at Sylvia, as though she was too amusing for words. “Well,” I finally stuttered out, “it’s awfully nice of you, but I don’t really know about Val. I mean you’d have to ask her yourself. Her parents are in town and . . .” “Oh, I see,” Sylvia said, and I realized with horror that I had said the wrong thing; even I, her best friend, had acknowledged doubt of her social capabilities. I was wondering what I could say to remedy this, but Hillary was pulling Sylvia away, and all she said was, “Well, maybe I’ll ask her myself. How about you?” The air froze around me, and I said, “Thanks so much, Sylvia, but I don’t think I can,” and the moment I said it, I hated myself. Then they were gone, and it was too late. My chance had come, and as usual I had muffed it.

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I felt tears in my eyes. I looked blurrily around and saw Wimpole standing by the door, looking for me. I managed to smile, and she came over and told me how lovely we had all looked in our white dresses, marching across the stage and singing. She waited wonderingly to see if I would introduce her to any friends or teachers. But as always before, I silently got my coat and we went upstairs and out in the snow, huddled together against the cold, waving for a taxi. A couple of days later, Val called and said that Isabel giving a tree-trimming party on Christmas Eve, and would like us all to come. Wimpole said she thought it would be delightful, and we accepted. I was pleased by the prospect. Not because I particularly wanted to see Isabel, but because Christmas Eve was, in our house, the hardest time of year to bear. Wimpole usually asked several strays to Christmas dinner the next day, with much turkey and eggnog, and it was a cheerful time. But few people gave parties Christmas Eve; it was the time for families to be together at home. In previous years, when Wimpole, Boothy and I sat around our tree, I don’t think there was one of us who didn’t feel the pain of loneliness, the lack of a father or husband sitting around in a smoking jacket with a pipe. My picture of fathers came mostly from novels and the movies, but it was the best I had. The first week or so of vacation I spent doing my bit of Christmas shopping, talking to Wimpole’s and Boothy’s friends, and wandering futilely about the city to Henry’s old haunts. I could not believe Val had given Henry up; I felt she was just forced to be away from him for a while, and depended on me to keep up the faith. It was lonely, by myself, as it had been when I stood in front of Henry’s apartment in the snow. But I periodically traced Henry’s route, as well as I could by memory, for Val had the Bible with her at the hotel. I wanted very much to give Val something of Henry’s for Christmas. She had all his records and must have found everything there was to be found about him in magazines. One day, I had an idea. I went to Carnegie Hall and asked Harmon if there was any way I could get Henry’s autograph. Harmon shook his head; Mr. Orient was in New Jersey for Christmas (with his widowed sister and her two children, one of whom resembled Henry, and his father, who was senile, I supplemented). I told Harmon that it was for Val, and couldn’t he do anything? He liked Val and said he hadn’t seen her for a while; scratched his head, and said he would see what he could do. I returned the next day, and Harmon had found buried away a score actually used by Henry, with “Mr. Orient” written on the

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top. It was better than I expected; surely the music had magic powers, and Val would play from it as she had never played before. I burbled out my gratitude to Harmon, and scudded home through the snow with the music buttoned inside my coat. By Christmas Eve, the city, the neighborhood and the house were full of enchantment. Park Avenue had sprouted magically, the streets were silver with snow, the Lexington bakeshop had a four-foot-long chocolate log in the window, which I gazed at in awe. Even on Third there were signs. Every bar, no matter how desolate, had a bit of tinsel or a red cellophane wreath; O’Hara, the grocer, had Imported Mincemeat; Feinbaum, the cleaner, had silver bells in his window; and Schwartz, the hardwareman, went mad with strings of colored lights, balls, tinsel, candles, Angel Hair, and fake snow. Every woman, no matter how dowdy, had a bit of holly or a silver bell on her lapel. The El rattled by, shimmering the air with snowflakes, and the cobblestones, bare in spots from heat underneath, shone dully in the flickering light. Our street took on the air of a private lane, the main street of our own country town. Everyone from Third to Second nodded in passing, wreaths appeared in the windows, and carols chimed softly from the small Italian church up the street. It was all ours. We were interested in and concerned about the Block Carol Singers’ Group, why the senator up the street had not put up a wreath, whether the midnight service would be well attended, and who had drawn O’Hara’s special turkeys this year. Admittedly, Christmas was the only time I was interested in such things, or the only time Boothy was. Boothy, being what the New Yorker was supposed to be, laughed at community spirit; Wimpole, being what the New Yorker really was, was quite provincial about her neighborhood. It seemed a shame to leave all this for the Melton Arms, but the alternative of our empty house loomed, and so we went. After the usual debate about whether or not I should wear stockings, I decided that the time had come to take the great step. After a good deal of searching for the necessary equipment, I stood in the hall with my legs feeling as though they were encased in sausage skins. “How do you stand it?” I wailed. “Do you ever get too old for stockings? Can I at least look forward to that?” Boothy replied, “Well, in about forty or fifty years you can start wearing elastic ones for your varicose veins,” which was such a sobering thought I said no more about it.

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The lobby of the hotel had a single gold wreath hanging in solitary magnificence in the center of the wall, and canned carols came faintly from the dining room; Christmas spirit, like everything else, was expensive and restrained at the Melton Arms. We went up in the elevator to the nineteenth floor, and walked soundlessly along the hall to the Boyds’ door. Val flung open the door the minute we rang, as though she had posted herself there to inspect us for germs before she let us into the living room. She wore another new and impressive dress and was hopping around nervously. “Merry Christmas, all,” she said. “This isn’t formal or anything like that. Just a few friends, you know.” When we got into the living room I saw why she had apologized. Clearly, this was Isabel’s night for taking in the lunatic fringe. Freddie was there, stretched out on a sofa with a high-ball in her hand. She was wearing a blue turban, with a large fake jewel in the middle of it, like an evil eye. She greeted us blankly, having completely forgotten who I was. A bar was set up in one corner and Arthur Boyd stood by it, mixing drinks. He seemed pleasant enough, and had Val’s twinkle in his eye. His shoes came to neat and polished points and the crease in his trousers cracked just above the instep. At the far end of the room, an ethereal, wraith-like youth was engaged in decorating the Christmas tree. He would wander over to it, carefully hang a ball on a branch, and step back in deep and fervent concentration to the sofa, where he would sit and contemplate the ball for several minutes; then he would repeat the process. Val introduced him as Giles Gothic, an interior decorator. Helping him contemplate was an emaciated, tense girl with black hair, who never said a word the whole time we were there. She was Stella, a friend. Besides these, there was a hearty columnist in a red-and-green shirt with a fat friend who laughed at what he said, and Isabel, in green satin pants and a black turtle-neck sweater. She was being hostessy, rushing from one person to another, trying to make her party congeal into a whole. It looked like an impossible job, but her enthusiasm didn’t flag. She greeted us with brisk authority, as though the demands of her guests only allotted us a moment of her time. “So glad to meet you at last, Mrs. Gilbert, and you, Mrs. Booth. You’ve been so sweet to Val, having her over all the time. With us away so much it’s wonderful for her to know a family or two here. You can put your coats in here . . .” She dispensed us to the

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bedroom and whisked off busily. We left our coats and went back into the living room. The setting looked wonderful. The tree reached to the ceiling, which was at least ten feet high. It was pure white, and the balls were only green and gold. The white marble mantelpiece had gold and green candles, and a magnificent gold wreath hung above it. Val was with her father, and we went over to them. “Well, what will you ladies have?” Arthur asked. “I have Scotch, gin, bourbon, anything. I have some eggnog here, but most of the others didn’t seem to want any preliminaries to the serious drinking.” He laughed heavily, and Wimpole said: “I’ll have some eggnog, please.” Boothy, amused, said she would too. There was some scuffling around as Arthur looked for nutmeg. Val and I were given eggnogs too, with about a teaspoon of whiskey in each cup, since it was Christmas. I watched Arthur interestedly. Val resembled him a little, as she resembled Isabel, but most of her looks were completely her own, inherited perhaps from some long-forgotten ancestor. Arthur was given to guffawing and tedious stories. I saw no signs of genius; but perhaps he transformed, as he walked through his office door, into a bristling dynamo of industrial know-how. As it was, he tried to amuse Wimpole by telling her of the comparative advantages of the Martinis of TWA and Pan American on the New York-London run, She nodded politely, having only been to Europe once, on a bicycle tour at the age of eighteen. Boothy, who seemed highly amused at the whole gathering, whispered to me, “I’m going to pick up some local color.” She wandered over to Gothic and began criticizing the position of one of his green balls, which threw him into another coma of concentration. Val and I were left under the gold wreath, and she filled me in on how much the tree had cost, what her parents had given her for Christmas (clothes, money, records and a metronome), how Isabel had shopped for satin pants that matched the decor, and a party at 21 the night before, at which she had been allowed a glass of beer. She said Jack and Charlie knew her and maybe the two of us could have lunch there sometime. “And on Saturday, I was at Van Dyke’s party,” she said. “It was swell. You should have gone.” So she had gone! Any joy or pleasure promised by the evening began to wither, and the familiar ache began to return; but for the first time I

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tried to stop the feeling, and said to myself, Stop being miserable! It doesn’t do any good! You have enough to be proud of! And a peculiarly calm light-heartedness, perhaps brought on by my lightly-spiked eggnog, appeared and took over. Val was watching me, in the flickering candlelight; her big dark eyes were half guilty and half challenging. “Maybe I should have gone,” I said. “Was it fun?” And the words, when they came out, sounded only a little forced. There was a pause. “Oh, it was all right, as those things go,” Val said finally, in a light voice, as though it had been one of a succession of Van Dyke parties. “Lots of boys from Trinity, and some from Groton and St. Mark’s. We danced, and had punch and sandwiches and stuff. No beer. Prickle-top Green was all over the place. What a creep. But Sylvia’s a good egg. She manages to be nice to everybody at the same time. It’s the secret of her success.” I tried not to show it, but I was fascinated by every detail of what went on at the party of a Van Dyke, with Trinity boys in their tuxedos, smiling and being amiable. “Is it a nice house?” I asked casually, picking an invisible speck out of my eggnog. “Apartment,” Val said. “Like this. You know. Mama Van Dyke was around during the first part of the evening, and she seemed like a good egg too.” She paused significantly, and I glanced up, wondering what she meant. Perhaps Mrs. Van Dyke was strange in some way . . . a psychiatrist too? But I was on the wrong track. “During the second part of the evening . . . Gilbert, don’t you dare tell a soul. Promise?” “I swear!” I breathed, no longer trying to hide my curiosity. “During the second part of the evening, somebody turned the lights out, and people necked.” If she had dashed a bucket of cold water over me, I couldn’t have been more astonished. I had heard of such sinful goings-on among the Norton girls, but it seemed incredible that Val or I could be a party to them. I felt as though Val were dropping into a boiling vat of vice, and I wanted to rescue her. I stood staring at her as she leaned against the mantel with a curious expression on her face. “Well?” she said finally. “Why don’t you ask me what you’re dying to know?”

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“What?” I fairly shouted, not having any idea what she was talking about. “Shhh!” Val said. “Stop yelling!” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You’re dying to know if I necked too, Gilbert. Don’t be so innocent.” “If you . . .” No, it was impossible! “I . . . you . . . well, did you?” She grinned at me, then began to laugh. “I can’t help it,” she gasped, “the expression on your face! No, I didn’t really . . . I mean, I did in a way . . . oh, it was fantastic! I’ll have to explain another time. I can’t go into all the gory details here. But I will tell you one thing . . . I saw Green in the john just before we left, when she was putting on her coat, and the whole top of her dress had been pulled off!” By this time, I was speechless. “It was so dark, you know, in the living room, and everybody was kind of sneaking out. You could just hear grunts and see people writhing around on sofas. It was like a zoo, Gilbert. Then at about midnight Mrs. Van Dyke rang the bell three times from her room. That’s her signal for when the party’s supposed to end — clink, clink, clink. And I went into the john to comb my hair, and there was Green, with her dress down around her waist. She almost had a fit when she saw me and made up a lot of stuff about fixing her zipper, and I just grinned and said . . .” “Hark, the herald angels sing!” came a soft, familiar voice from behind me. “Whatever you say, you’d better lower your voice! Glory to the newborn King!” Boothy, on the other side of the sofa, was carefully straightening a piece of tinsel. She turned around and grinned at the two of us, standing there looking horrified. “Don’t worry, our friend Gothic here is in a trance, and La Stella is drunk,” she whispered. “But there are others . . .” “Boothy, you didn’t hear!” I said. “Every golden word. Fascinating! Marian, I question your schooling. Maybe you’d better go into a convent.” “Oh, Boothy, don’t tell,” Val pleaded. “Isabel would . . .” “Don’t worry, my little delinquent. It’s safe with me, on the condition that you’ll tell me about future necking parties, in lavish detail. Honestly, when I think how I began . . . one lousy kiss on the cheek on the front porch by somebody named Jeremiah Rappaport, age sixteen, with my father looking out the window! At the time, I thought it was great, but it pales beside the modern generation.” Isabel interrupted this interesting conversation with a request for Val to get her a handkerchief.

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“Marian, I have so wanted a moment to speak to you,” she said in a hurried tone when Val was gone. She was holding an enormous glass of whiskey, and she was smiling her rigid smile. She led me to the sofa and sat me down, ignoring Boothy. Now what? I wondered. Another blow to my constitution? But I felt I could absorb it. I felt a little sleepy, a little unhappy, filled with an unfamiliar restlessness. Isabel looked at me and said, “Really, you and your mother are so sweet to Val. I know what a problem she is, and you take her in all the time.” “We like her, Mrs. Boyd,” I said. “Val’s my best friend.” She watched me for a moment, still smiling. She crossed her shining green knees and rested the bucket-like glass on one of them. “You’re so sweet to say it, Marian, but I know what a trial she is. Of course you know about her problems and all that.” “Well, you mean Dr. Braintree?” “Yes. What a godsend that woman is! We couldn’t do a thing with her, and neither could any of the schools. Val has always been bull-headed and stubborn, and treated Arthur and me like a couple of monsters. I suppose she’s told you how awful we are.” The smile was still there, and I felt a faint and unexpected pity for her. “Of course,” she said, becoming brisk, “we can’t go into all that now. It’s unfortunate we have to travel so much. I’m trying to get Arthur to stay here for a while, till the spring anyway. We could try and give Val some home life. That’s what she lacks, of course. Braintree says that’s the source of all her troubles. She compensates in the most ungodly ways. And that mad Hambler ménage . . . all those horrible pieces of wire . . .” She sighed, as though she could hardly bear to think of them. “Emma is sweet, but her husband is rather overcreative. I definitely want to keep her with us for a while, if I can possibly arrange it.” She sat up and took a sip. “You’re so sweet,” she said for the third time, “and I know what a trial she’s been. I just want to thank you for having been so nice to her.” I listened to her wonderingly. It sounded as though I had been doing her a great favor and was now being dismissed. What was happening? Was she going to try and separate Val and me? She was perfectly nice to me, but nice as though I was a poor relation she wanted to get rid of. She had been that way in the restaurant; she was being that way now. I was trying to think of something to say, but she was staring across the room.

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“Oh, God,” she said, “Freddie’s passed out. Excuse me, dear. You’ve been so . . .” She was gone. Freddie had indeed passed out, and was lolling on the sofa, her blue turban on the side of her head. Isabel chafed her hands and spoke to her, then finally enlisted Arthur’s help to get Freddie into the bedroom. The columnist was trying to talk to Wimpole, who was yawning. When she caught my eye she made a let’s-go gesture. Val was showing Boothy some records on the other side of the room, and I wandered to the window and looked out. The magic city was below, and I remembered how I had stood on Fifth Avenue (I found Saks by its façade of lights) and looked up, wishing myself inside. Well, here I was. I turned away, and on the sofa facing the tree I saw an astonishing sight. Giles Gothic and Stella were clasped together in an enormous, serpentine embrace; arms and legs jutted and swirled in angles and curves; bits of her chiffon dress fell out of odd corners; his smooth gold hair shone in the flickering light. Their mouths were pressed together in a a silent and awesome kiss. They were transfixed, like statues. They were so still that the sight had no reality for me, and I watched them detachedly for a few moments, as though I were looking at a photograph. Then suddenly my heart began to hammer unpleasantly, and I looked around wildly for Wimpole. The Boyds came back in the room, and the couple silently drew apart, and went back to their tree-trimming. It seemed as though the evening had completely disintegrated; everyone was floating aimlessly about the room, each preoccupied with his own problems. I felt miserably uncomfortable, and was relieved when Wimpole, Boothy and I finally stood in the hallway, having briefly thanked Isabel. “I’ll get the coats,” Boothy said, and she sounded rather irritated. “What a jolly gathering.” She went into the bedroom and came out with the coats. “Freddie looks enchanting against the pink satin of the bedspread.” Val stood there, trying to be cheerful. “I’m sorry it was so aimless,” she said. “Sometimes it . . . well. I mean . . .” There wasn’t anything for her to say, and she stopped. Wimpole put her arms around her and kissed her. “Good night, dear,” she said. “We all love you very much. If you feel like dropping over tomorrow, we’ll be there all day.” We left her standing by the door, silent and forlorn. We rode downstairs in the elevator, and none of us said anything.

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Chapter 9 Christmas Day came with its still magic. The hurrying and anticipation were over, and for a day the world rested and wondered. By mute agreement neither Wimpole, Boothy nor I mentioned the previous evening. It was like an unpleasant dream, and it left in me a vague residue of disturbance. I tried to forget it, but it came back again and again like a shadow. I started at every footstep outside, expecting it to be Val. “What’s the matter?” Boothy asked as I sat quietly under the tree, making a neat pile of the presents and tissue paper. “Are you longing for the excitement and intrigue of a necking party?” I glanced up at her, alarmed, and she grinned. “Oh, please, on bended knee, let me tell Wimpole. You don’t have to be there.” “I don’t care,” I sighed. “Isabel isn’t supposed to know, that’s all.” I looked down at the six pairs of stockings she had given me. “Thank you, Boothy,” I said. “It was very nice of you to give me the stockings.” “Oh, come off it,” Boothy snorted. “You know you wish I’d given you money instead.” “No, really I don’t. And the books look wonderful.” “I wish you’d stop being so polite, it makes me nervous,” and she went off singing “Deck the Halls” in a loud and cheerful voice. I wandered around, and found Wimpole in the kitchen basting the turkey. “I’ll have several chores for you later on,” she said brightly. “I hope you’re feeling co-operative.” “Anything at all,” I said. “What do you want me to do?” She put down the spoon and looked at me anxiously. “Are you all right, dear?” she asked.

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“Just because I’m being nice on Christmas Day, everybody thinks I’m sick,” I almost shouted. “Not at all. It’s just that usually you don’t like to help and sometimes you forget your manners.” She smiled. “I don’t need you yet, so go get dressed and talk to old Professor Bean when he comes.” By four, the bowl of eggnog was out (“Anyone who wants whiskey will have to come and ask for it,” Wimpole said firmly) and half a dozen people sat around the living room, talking quietly while carols played on the radio. Boothy’s canaries flew about the room, and our tree — looking frumpy and overdressed if you compared it to the Boyds’ — shimmered in the fading light. Wimpole, in a blue satin dress, lit the candles, and Boothy’s restless face looked, for once, peaceful. Professor Bean told me more about the beauties of Scandinavia, adding: “Though there are some aspects you’re too young to appreciate, my dear! Ha, ha!” “You mean their morals are looser?” I asked, trying to sound as though I said that sort of thing all the time. “Well, I suppose you could put it that way,” said the professor, glancing at me hastily. “Now, how about a nice glass of eggnog?” I talked for a while to the Renfords, a kindly couple from New Canaan, who told me of the problems of their teen-age daughter and thought that I, being almost the same age, could throw some light on them. It seemed she was a chain-smoker; she wore far too much lipstick; she wore black leotards around the house, and she would have nothing to do with the community square dances given by the Teen-Agers’ Club. I had no idea why she did any of these things, but I could understand about the square-dancing. I suggested that perhaps she found things dull so she was pretending to be somebody else. The Renfords said they didn’t understand how she could find things dull, with such nice classmates and activities in the town, and why should she want to be someone else, anyway? I wandered over to Mrs. Branch, who exchanged recipes with her psychiatrist. She told me that was all over, and she was at last plumbing the depths of her personality. “It’s so cleansing and purging,” she said. “I tell him everything — everything. It all stems from my early impressions of sex . . .” She stopped and put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, I forget you’re so young,” she said. “Everyone is so free and equal in this house, I hardly think of you as a child. Tell me, do you like school?”

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“Not particularly,” I said. “Oh, my dear, but these years are so important. You just don’t know! Some day you will long for them. You don’t realize that you are at a most vulnerable period.” “I do,” I said. “I feel very vulnerable.” “Oh,” said Mrs. Branch. “Well, that’s good.” Our neighbors, the Menloes, dropped in. Mr. Menloe edited a magazine called Bundle of Joy, for new mothers. Every time he saw me he said that whenever I had a baby, he’d give me a free subscription. The senator from up the street dropped in, sitting on the edge of a chair with his glass of eggnog and glancing at his watch. He liked to try and visit everyone on the street at Christmas, which meant he could only stay ten minutes at each house. “When you’re old enough to vote,” he said to me jovially, “I’ll stay fifteen minutes.” Since nothing was to happen till I was older, I wandered to the window. Wimpole stood there in one of her moments of contemplation, smiling over her company. “Did you set a place for Val?” I asked. “Yes, dear, but you mustn’t depend on her coming. Her family might have arranged . . .” “Oh, Wimpole,” I said, mentioning it for the first time, “it was so awful last night!” She hesitated, and looked at me. “It didn’t seem like a very congenial group, did it?” Sometimes Wimpole was so tactful I wanted to scream. “It was ghastly,” I said. “Let’s admit it. Val is miserable. Wimpole, can’t we get her out of there?” “She isn’t ours, dear. We have no power over her.” “But we’re the only ones who care anything about her.” “That doesn’t mean we can have her.” She put her arm around me. “Sometimes things are very unfair. All we can do for Val is love and encourage her, and hope she’ll come out all right.” She smiled. “Dinner is about ready, and you might help me now.”

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The candles flickered lower, and the remains of a once-flaming plum pudding sat on the table, crumbled unrecognizably. The wine glasses had been emptied and filled, and the brandy glasses replaced them. I looked over at Renata Renford, who had drifted in just before dinner. She looked utterly bored, and she sighed periodically, as though the business of living was too much for her. Her parents looked at her occasionally with anxious smiles. Mrs. Branch was growing sentimental over her brandy, and saying what a beautiful thing Wimpole had created, here, in this house, and it was all because her soul was beautiful and clean. Boothy and Professor Bean were discussing what Boothy could deduct from her income tax. I sat next to a little Italian woman, who was one of Wimpole’s classmates in the electronics course. She snapped and bristled, and hurried through everything as though she had to rush back and slap together three radios. I was allowed a half glass of wine, which had a dry, papery taste. It made me feel mellow, however. “Ah,” said Wimpole, raising her arms in a beneficent gesture of good will. “Here we are, an assorted group from all professions and walks of life, united over the Christmas board.” Boothy snickered amiably and raised her glass, and Renata Renford sighed and gazed out of the window with mysterious longing. “Oh, Avis, you are far too good,” said Mrs. Branch. “You make me feel so very simple and uncluttered.” “I’m beginning to feel pretty cluttered with all this booze,” barked Professor Bean, whose face glowed redder and redder. He leaned over to Renata, who certainly was pretty, as well as I could tell for all her make-up. “Hey, young lady, what’s the matter? Got some Yalie on your mind?” To my surprise, Renata blushed, and her parents changed the subject. So all Renata’s interesting problems stemmed from some boy? I sighed, and felt disillusioned. Are boys really that important? There had been such a dearth of males in my life that the question was honest enough, but it had a hollow ring. Of course they are, a voice from nowhere said. It’s just that you’ve been unfortunate enough not to know that they’re important. You’ll find out, Gilbert. You’ll find out. The voice had the curious wisdom of Val when she was in one of her oracular moods. We started to drift upstairs to the living room, amid complimentary groans from the guests.

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“It would be nice, dear, if you’d just stack the dishes,” Wimpole said at the stairs. “You don’t have to wash them, Florida comes tomorrow.” “Oh, let me help,” said Mrs. Branch enthusiastically. “I just feel I must express my gratitude for all this in some small way. Such tasks are good for me, Dr. D’Anvilliers says so.” She seized a dishcloth and whisked around, after putting on one of Wimpole’s frilly aprons. I started to throw away the turkey carcass, then remembered Boothy’s pea soup, and left it in the pot, as a hint. “Oh, my dear, you are being brought up in the right way,” sighed Mrs. Branch, putting things away in the wrong places. “I only wish I had had your opportunities. I was brought up by strict uncompromising parents in a dreadful town in Minnesota. I was frustrated from the moment I was conceived. When I came to New York I went mad, simply mad, and that’s why I am the way I am now.” She sighed. “Here you see the greatness of life from the moment you are pushed out in your stroller. You identify yourself with life forces and great movements. You grow strong . . .” “Mrs. Branch,” I said thoughtfully, still feeling mellow, “what do you think about men? I don’t know any.” She put down the gravy boat with a slight plop. “My dear, I am absolutely the last person to tell you about men. I am terribly confused in my attitude to them.” “Well, why are they so confusing?” She looked at me, a rather wistful smile on her small bird-like face. “I wouldn’t think of telling you,” she said softly, “because the most interesting part of your life will be finding out.” She wouldn’t say any more, but kept watching me with a little half smile, and I decided that Mrs. Branch was really rather nice and I felt sorry for her. It seemed that men were her undoing, and I told myself firmly that they should certainly never be mine. But why, I wondered, do I keep thinking about them? There was a timid knock at the door. Without saying anything, I put down the dishtowel and walked into the hall. Val’s face was peering through the glass, her hair covered with snow. She didn’t smile, but just stared. I opened the door. “Gilbert, I’ve got to talk . . .” she began hurriedly. I poked her and pointed toward the kitchen, and then Mrs. Branch appeared at the door, polishing a wine glass.

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“Why, who is this poor little thing?” exclaimed Mrs. Branch. “She looks like a snowman. Come in, child, into this beautiful, clean house.” “This is Mrs. Branch,” I said hurriedly, wondering how I could get rid of her. “This is Val Boyd.” “How do you do,” Val muttered, and looked at me wretchedly. “Mrs. Branch,” I said, “I don’t think Val feels very well. I wish you wouldn’t mention her being here when you go upstairs. She gets . . . sort of attacks, and she just has to lie down on the floor for a while till they go away.” “On the floor! Oh, Dr. D’Anvilliers says it’s a recognized form of therapy. I take it her attacks are . . . physical, or are they psychosomatic?” “Physical,” Val said firmly. “I have a prison knee.” “Prison!” She put down the wine glass and came over to scrutinize Val. “Oh, my, what a noble forehead you have, child. Why, it’s wonderful. I’d like to sketch it.” “Mrs. Branch,” I said, trying again, “please don’t feel you have to help any more. You’ve done everything that needs to be done. Please go up and have some brandy, and I’ll just stay with Val a minute till she feels better.” “Of course, dear. I wouldn’t think of upsetting the routine of your beautiful home.” I almost laughed, but she meant it. “I’ll just skip along. Do bring this lovely child up, when she feels better.” “Sure,” I said, and Mrs. Branch handed me the apron and trotted up the steps. The hall was quiet, and Val looked at me. “Do you have any food?” she asked. I led her to the turkey carcass, and she pulled up a stool and began to pick at it. I didn’t say anything. She sat there chewing and pulling bits of meat off the turkey. Then all of a sudden she pushed the turkey away, and leaned her face on her arms and began to cry. “Oh, Val, what’s the matter?” I asked miserably, trying to comfort her. “What’s happened to you?” She said nothing; she couldn’t. She sobbed and sobbed, as though she had been wanting to for a long time, but just hadn’t been able to find the time or place. I stood beside her and waited. Finally she began to get control of herself. The sobs started to die away, and she

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said, “I haven’t done that in a long time.” She looked up. “I’m sorry. I’m spoiling your Christmas. Merry Christmas.” Just when I loved her most, she was most exasperating. “Merry Christmas! Oh, same to you.” Her face was a curious mask of unhappy pride. She looked at me for a long time, then sighed. “I’m not even sure what I want to tell you,” she said. “I’m so mixed up. And you always have that you-could-knock-me-down-with-afeather expression.” “If you’re afraid of shocking me,” I said grimly, “I get tougher and tougher every day. Nothing bothers me any more, absolutely nothing.” She grinned. “Who’s upstairs?” she asked. I told her. “What’s with Mrs. Branch?” “She has a psychiatrist,” I said. “She’s kind of carried away, isn’t she?” “She thinks Wimpole’s soul is beautiful and clean.” She pulled the turkey back and started at it again. “Gilbert, all sorts of queer things have been going on.” “So I gathered.” She turned around on her stool, and to my surprise, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “Don’t tell,” she said. “Well, you know I’ve been going out all the time with my parents, to 21 and places.” “Yes.” “I’ve met all sorts of people. Isabel and Arthur know everybody. In fact, I’ve hardly seen them alone since they’ve been here. They start out nobly enough, but before we even get where we’re going, somehow we’ve picked up everybody and his little brother.” “Nice people?” I asked. “Oh, some yes, some no. All rich and all drink. They all seemed to be amused by me and amused that Isabel was dragging her daughter along. They seemed to be expect me to perform, or something, like a trained monkey. One night we were at a party at somebody named Joe Bird’s apartment. Joe Bird’s apartment. Joe Bird is one of the nicer ones, and he has a piano, so I played. Usually I don’t.” She looked up. “You know I hate to play for people unless they appreciate it.”

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“I know,” I said, thinking of how long she had scorned playing at our house, until Wimpole cajoled her into it. “Joe Bird knows a lot about music. So I played, and he sat down on the bench with me and played too, and we had a fine old time. Then . . .” She coughed over her cigarette and threw it into the sink. “Then he asked me to have dinner with him the next night.” “He did!” I exclaimed, impressed. How old is he?” “Oh, old. About thirty, I suppose. I said I didn’t go out with men. Then he said how about lunch? So I laughed and said I’d bore him with my infantile conversation. He said I was refreshing.” She glanced over at me. “So I went out to lunch with him.” “Did Isabel let you?” “Oh, I didn’t tell her. I said I was having lunch with a school friend. We had lunch and then he said he wanted to hear me play again. So we went back to his apartment, and he tried to kiss me.” She was talking faster and faster. “He was very nice about it, and I said I was too youg, and he said he understood, and he was sorry, and then he said he’d wait five years and come back. That was all.” “Oh. Well, what’s so bad about that?” “I’m not finished. Then I went to Sylvia’s party . . .” “And you necked,” I finished for her. There was a silence. Finally Val said, “Honestly, you sound like a prissy old aunt. It isn’t that awful, you know.” “But those horrible Trinity boys. Did you neck with one of them?” “No, I necked with . . .” The bravado began to go out of her voice, and she started picking her fingernails. “When the lights went out, I decided I wouldn’t,” she said slowly. “I went and sat over by the window telling myself I’d just wait, and after a while I’d go. And then . . . before I knew what was happening, I found myself necking with somebody named Peter Davidson. It just happened, like . . . boom.” She waved her arm. “I’ve never felt like that before. It was just as though I’d been picked up by a gust of wind and blown somewhere, and I couldn’t stop myself. It was . . . it was really something, Gilbert.” She looked up at me slowly. “You should try it sometime.” “I will, sometime. But when I do, I’ll just decide. I won’t get blown away.”

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“Yes, you will Just wait. That’s the best part. You go into a sort of trance . . .” She got up and walked over to the icebox. “Then I came to. Here I was, necking with somebody named Peter Davidson from Groton, and that’s all I knew about him. I felt horrible. And then do you know what I thought of?” She smiled ruefully. “I thought of Henry. And the minute I did, I wanted to cry. I felt just awful, so I got up and said good-by to Peter and went into the john.” She smiled oddly. “You don’t look shocked.” “I’m not shocked.” I sat down and leaned against the sink. “It’s just so funny . . . I thought you’d forgotten all about Henry.” “I thought so . . . no I didn’t really. He’d come back at odd moments, like the voice of my conscience. He’s so awful, and yet he seems to mean everything good. The way I feel about Henry is real . . . too real. And I don’t care if I never see Peter Davidson again, which I probably won’t.” She began to pace up and down. “But Gilbert, it’s all wrong! I’m supposed to be necking with Peter Davidson every night, and I’m not supposed to care about red-haired pianists I’ve never even met! It’s not normal . . . that’s why I’m so mixed up.” “I don’t think it’s so great to sit around in a dark room every night necking.” “But everybody else does it.” “Everybody at Norton? That doesn’t make it normal.” “But it’s all I have, or all you have. What do you call normal?” “Oh, for God’s sake, Val, stop worrying about it.” I got up off the floor. “All you think about is how you stack up beside everybody else. What do you care? I don’t.” “You’re braver.” I looked at her. “Was that what you were crying about?” She didn’t say anything for a moment, then she shook her head. “The worst part happened today,” she said slowly. “Just before I came over here. We had Christmas dinner — sort of — sent up from downstairs. Then everybody sort of went off by themselves, the way they did last night. Finally I went into my room, and there were Isabel and Joe Bird — he was there too. I heard their voices, and then they were quiet when I came in.” “Were they necking?” I asked, before I could stop myself. “Necking!” She stood up and came over to me. “She’s my mother!” I said nothing, and she watched me for a moment. “they were

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reading the Bible,” she said quietly. I looked up. “They’d seen it on the table when they came in, where I left it. They sort of looked at me, and Isabel said something would have to be done.” She looked at me wretchedly. “Why do you leave it around like that?” I asked. “Well, because I’m fool enough to think my own mother won’t go nosing into my stuff, I felt awful, Gilbert. If only Joe Bird hadn’t been there too . . . they went out and left me, and then I came over here.” She started walking up and down. “Whenever I don’t know where to turn, I come to you and Wimpole.” She looked at me, waiting for me to say something; but I felt it was beyond my power. Her emotion exhausted me. I could feel love and pity for her, but when the events of her life over-whelmed my ability to sympathize, all I could do was to feel tired, as she did, and wish to crawl away into a corner till it was all over. “Val,” I said wearily, “you get yourself into the damnedest situations.” “Is that all you have to say?” I looked at her helplessly. “It’s all too much for me,” I said. “Nothing like this ever happens to me.” Her face was disappointed, and I hated myself for failing her, when she had finally come back to me. I decided to make Henry leave town.” She smiled wanly. “She might send me off to another school, or something.” “Oh, nonsense. Everybody gets crushes, and their mothers don’t ship them away.” She looked toward the door. “Where’s Wimpole?” she asked. I sighed, and said, “Listen, I’d better go up for a little while. They might think I’ve died, or something. Do you want to come, or wait here?” “I’ll wait. Can I talk to Wimpole?” “I’ll try and send her down.” I went upstairs, feeling curiously relieved to get away from her for a while. I needed to take stock. When I got upstairs, people were just beginning to leave. “We thought you fell in,” said Professor Bean. “You must have done those dishes three times.”

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Mrs. Branch came over and whispered, “I told your mother about that lovely child. Is her attack over?” I smiled. “It’s all over. She’s resting.” “Odd she should come here to have her attack. Hasn’t she a home? But even if she has, it couldn’t be like this one.” The cold air blew through the door, and they went out one by one, thanking Wimpole and Boothy, and saying what a nice girl I was, even though they hadn’t seen much of me today. I said I was sorry, but didn’t try to explain. The moment they were gone, Wimpole said, “I’ll go to her,” and went down the stairs. Boothy and I went into the living room and sat among the fallen pine needles, tangerine peels, and sticky brandy glasses. Boothy looked over at me. “Val,” she said, “will end up either on the concert stage or in the electric chair.” “You don’t think she’ll just be medium-happy?” “No,” Boothy said. “She’ll never be either of those things.” She got up and began straigtening up the room, in a desultory way. “What’s the trouble?” she asked. “Is home life too much for her?” “It’s . . .” I stopped. I could hear her sobbing again, from downstairs. “Oh, Boothy,” I said miserably, “can’t we do anything about her?” “No,” Boothy said. “You can’t help people, Marian. Everyone has to fight for himself.” She was standing next to the window, looking out. “That’s what your mother and I are doing.” “Boothy, why don’t you and Wimpole get married?” She turned around and grinned. “Oh, I don’t think Wimpole is my type.”

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“No, seriously.” “It isn’t so easy, after a while. It seems so easy at your age . . . there’s so much possibility. Then slowly it begins to narrow down.” She looked at me. “Would you mind having a step-father?” “A stepfather . . . I’d adore it,” I said fervently. “If he was nice, that is.” “Wimpole wouldn’t marry anybody who wasn’t.” I heard Val’s noice from below, emphatic, trying to make a point. “Why are we waiting here, Boothy?”

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“To see Curtain, Act Two, I suppose. Do you want to tell me what the trouble is?” I sighed, and told her. When I finished, Boothy said: “Enter the opposite sex, and enter trouble. Val is a very attractive girl. She doesn’t look any thirteen, either.” “What will happen to her?” I asked, frightened. “May be she’ll meet some nice boy.” “But she’s too young.” “In some ways, yes.” She stalked across the room. “I’m not a star-gazer. I don’t know. I wish I did. That kid wrings my heart. There’s so much there . . . she could be bigger than any of us.” There were steps on the stairs, and Wimpole came in. “I’m keeping her here for the night,” she said. “I’ve talked to her mother.” “Oh, good,” I said. Wimpole looked at me. “I think the best thing all of us can do is leave her alone. She wants to . . .” There was an odd catch in Wimpole’s voice. “She wants to play the piano.” “That’s nice,” Boothy said. “She wants the living room to herself. I said we were going to bed anyway. She’ll creep up to the spare bedroom when she’s ready.” “Wimpole, can I give her her Christmas present first?” “That score? Why don’t you just leave it for her on the “But I . . .” “Dear, there are times when people must be alone.” She smiled. “Do you understand? It isn’t that she thinks you don’t love her. Do you see that?” “Yes,” I said, and felt tears welling up. I went upstairs slowly and undressed, and got into bed. From below, I could hear Wimpole walking around her room, and then silence when she got into bed too. There was a moment when we all seemed to be waiting, in all of our rooms, and then from the living room the music came.

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Chapter 10 She stayed for three days. Nobody seemed to care where she was, and she seemed more waiflike than ever. I had never seen her for such a sustained period, and I found her a little nerve-wracking to have around the house. She never announced herself; she would get up, fling her book aside, and disappear into the streets for two hours, and never bother to mention where she had been. She was likely to play the piano in the middle of the night or come to the dinner table in her pajamas. I could tell that Wimpole was trying to decide whether to put her in line or not, and she clearly gave Boothy the jumps. “My God,” Boothy said the second evening, when Val had flung herself out into the snow at about nine o’clock. “It isn’t a child, it’s a jack-in-the-box.” Wimpole smiled over her radio. “She’ll teach us patience.” Val reappeared in about ten minutes with a paper carton. “I thought maybe we’d like some black raspberry ice cream,” she said. “Just what I’ve been sitting here craving,” Boothy said. “How did you know?” “Shall I get four plates?” Val asked. Boothy’s humor sometimes evaded her. “Oh, you kids,” Boothy groaned. “Take it in the corner where I don’t have to look at it.” “We’re full of dinner, dear.” Wimpole extracted a tube and looked at it perplexedly. “Thank you anyway.” I got plates and Val and I sat under the tree and ate it, spooning it up hungrily. “I think I’ll go home tomorrow, Wimpole,” Val said.

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“Well, I love having you, dear, but your mother probably wants you to come home.” “I don’t know if she . . .” She put down her spoon. “Oh, probably she does by now. She was getting tired of having me around the house all the time. She isn’t used to having a daughter around, especially one like me. It’ll be okay when I go back.” Nobody said anything, and Boothy glanced up from her book. “Isabel’s funny,” Val went on, picking needles off the tree. “She seems snappy, and she has her faults, but she’s rather a good egg when you get to know her. And she’s been trying so hard to be a real mother. She’s given up so much time to me since she’s been here . . . shopping and stuff . . .” Her voice died away, and she looked at the three of us. None of us said anything still, and she went on bravely, however. “If only all this stuff hadn’t happened . . . all the stuff I told you about. I’ve just botched things up . . . I want to go back, but I’m almost afraid to. I feel as though she gave me the chance to get along with her, and be good, and I’ve made a mess of it.” Boothy sighed and shook her head, turning a page. “You do seem to walk into mud puddles,” she said. “Well, it isn’t that exactly,” said Val, though she had just said that it was. Wimpole leaned back in her chair, and Boothy closed the book, listening. Val lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling. “Braintree says I subconsciously attract traumatic experiences,” she said gloomily. “Even though I think I want to just toodle along like everybody else, my whole trouble is that my subconscious is just seething with horrible desires to get into trouble.” “So is everybody’s,” Boothy said. “I’ve been analyzed.” “But things just happen to Val,” I said. “They don’t to other people, in the same way.” I looked at her. There was a faint smile on her face, which often came when she was the center of attention and people were talking about her. “Do you want to know what I think?” Wimpole asked. “I think that for one thing, you’re full of music, and if you don’t play and compose, you’ll never be happy. For another thing, you’ll have to grow up before you can find your kind of people, the kind who appreciate you for what you are and who play violins to your piano. You belong in a small and special world, Val: a world of artists and thinkers, composers and highly strung people. That’s what you are. It’s a question of finding your niche, and until then, being patient.”

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“Isn’t she wonderful?” Boothy said to me. “Oh, the clarity of mind that comes from never going near psychiatrists.” “You have a trust,” Wimpole went on. “You have a pack of talent, and the Lord is trusting you to do something with it. The finger has been laid on you. Develop yourself; learn everything you can; play till your fingers are sore. Your life is unfortunate. Make the best of it till you’re old enough to do something about it. Your way is lonely and hard, but if you have the guts I think you do, you’ll make it.” Val looked at her. “Do you really think so?” “Of course.” “How about my neuroses?” Val demanded. “How about my weaknesses?” “Do what Dr. Braintree says, Val. She understands the ins and outs of your mind more than anybody. Take the treatment, and cure the cold.” “You and your mother,” Val said, looking at me, “make things sound so easy.” “I’ve lived a long time,” Wimpole said, “and I know a little more about life than you do.” “You’ve never been analyzed.” “Val, are you afraid to go home?” Wimpole asked, clearly trying to avoid an argument. “Well, sort of. You might laugh, Wimpole, but Isabel is jealous of Henry.” “Of Henry!” I exploded. “I mean it. She thinks Henry is standing between her and me.” “Henry,” said Wimpole, “is at Carnegie Hall. You are at the Melton Arms Hotel. Mothers don’t get jealous when their daughters have crushes, Val.” “But it’s different with me. It’s all tangled up with my subconscious . . . I’m compensating for what Isabel didn’t give me and that makes her mad.” “The trouble with being analyzed is that you always start analyzing everybody else,” Boothy said. “Did Dr. Braintree say that?” Wimpole asked Val. “A hundred times.”

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“Has she discussed it with your mother?” Wimpole kept using the word “mother,” probably because she wanted Val to. “Yes,” Val said. “Over the phone. She’s never met Isabel. She doesn’t want to. She just kind of calls up and rattles off a report on me, and Isabel says yes-yes, and that’s that.” “Are you really so in love with this Henry, Val?” “Oh, Wimpole, he’s like a mosquito that buzzes and buzzes around my head. I try and swat him, but he comes back and buzzes in the other ear.” Boothy tried to suppress a smile. “At first I thought he’d go away, but it gets stronger and stronger. I never believed I had it in me . . . all the emotion, I mean.” “You have emotion coming out of your ears,” Boothy said. “But it’s all frustrated. Henry is the only thing I feel really generous toward. I’m selfish about everything else. So,” she wound up, “I feel as though I have to decide between Henry and Isabel.” Wimpole almost laughed, but hid it. She sat looking at Val for a moment, then said thoughtfully: “If I had powers of magic . . .” She stopped. “I forget how young you are,” she said, smiling. “How very, very young. If you were older, I would give you all sorts of astonishing advice . . . I’d tell you to run after Henry, and all the other Henrys, to leave this city and go to another, to wipe the slate and start again . . . you need room and free air.” Val looked at her as though she would at that moment rush to Grand Central and catch the next train to Chicago. “I would advise you to do all the things I never did, because I never had the courage, or any talent as an excuse,” she said softly. “I would tell you to follow your heart, and never make any compromises to it. Henry means the world you need, that’s all. In my own life, I saw it and let it go by; and in you, I see the chance all over again.” No one said anything. Wimpole hardly ever mentioned her past life, and the reasons for her divorce were unknown to me; but for the first time I understood that she had made a choice because she thought she should, and not because she wanted to. I looked at her face, calm and slightly smiling, watching Val wistfully, and I had a fervent hope that somehow, some day, her chance would come again; slightly aged, perhaps, but still possible. Or was it too late? Boothy was watching her too, her mouth slightly open. Was Val to her, too, a signpost to the other, wilder road? In the expressions on their faces I

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had an alarming view of the narrowing end of the way, with mystery over the horizon. It will end, I thought. It won’t go on forever, like this. And every day is important, and the most important of all are the moments when you choose what to do next. I’ve never had one yet, but I will. I’ll do the best I can, and when the moments come, I’ll do what’s in my heart. I’ll run down the right way without any doubts, without bothering about the people watching me. But when I looked at Val’s face, I knew that it would never be quite that simple. I woke up early the next morning to see Val sitting on the end of my bed, fully dressed. “I’m all packed,” she announced. I wondered what she could have packed, as she had been wearing my clothes and using my toothbrush for the past three days. “Are you going home now?” I asked. “Well, I was wondering. If I waited till this afternoon you could come with me. I could tell Isabel I’d invited you for tea.” “You’re scared, aren’t you?” “Fooey,” Val said, turning the other way. “I just would rather see her first with somebody else around, that’s all.” “Okay,” I said. “We’ll have tea at the Melton Arms.” I got out of bed and stared at my ruffled head in the mirror. “Oh, how ghastly,” I said. “Nobody will ever neck with me.” “In the dark it’ll never make any difference,” said Val, philosophically. We both giggled, she knowledgeably, I enviously. “Last night somebody was giving a dance or something up the street,” she said. “I saw lots of little girls going by in their evening dresses.” “Probably Mrs. McGuire,” I said. “She has a daughter at Talbott.” Talbott was Norton’s arch-rival, a den of creeps, in our opinion. “Ugh,” she said. “Gilbert, are you going to come out, and all that?” “No,” I said firmly. “I can’t decide,” she said. “I thought Isabel was deciding for you.” “Well, she would like it,” Val said mildly. “How do you get to know anybody if you don’t?”

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“Look at the creeps you get to know if you do,” I said disgustedly. “I’m disappointed. I didn’t think you liked that sort of stuff.” “What’s the point? I don’t want to spend my life sitting around chewing my nails.” “There are other ways to meet people. Nice people.” I had a dim vision of organizing a literary salon in a few years, sitting around on a divan with intellectuals at my feet. “Smart people. Debutantes are such ninnies.” “But you have to know the ninnies before you can meet the smart ones,” Val said with an odd burst of insight. I had an uncomfortable feeling that she was right, so I changed the subject. “Let’s do something exciting today,” I said. “Okay. What?” We thought for a while, but nothing seemed particularly interesting. It was the first time this had happened, and my heart sank. Too much has gone on, I though. There must be something left. She can’t have left me behind already . . . me and Henry. “Why don’t we go and see some of our old friends?” I suggested. “We could go to Liberty’s. Or the lampshade shop, and take some lunch up to Mike and Davy. Or Morningside Park.” “Okay,” said Val, not visibly enthusiastic. I wasn’t either, but I made a mighty effort. We spent an hour or so in Liberty’s, playing Henry’s music, but our salesman friend was busy that morning and couldn’t sit in the booth with us, as he often did. We took the bus to Morningside Park, and looked vainly for our oboist, but he was nowhere to be seen. “Maybe he’s gone down to Central Park with the upper crust,” Val suggested. We went to a delicatessen and got salami and potato salad, and went to the lampshade shop. Mike and Davy greeted us with their usual ephemeral enthusiasm, and gobbled up the lunch eagerly, but for the first time I was bored and rather revolted by them. Davy started putting the lampshades on his head and imitating what he called “Park Avenue Matrons,” and Mike, for obscure reasons, began to sulk. A squabble ensued, Mike accusing Davy of being a show-off, and they forgot us completely, so we left. We stood in the middle of the street, looking at each other.

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“It’s only two,” Val said. “Let’s go to a movie.” That proved the greatest success, and when we came out, it was four-thirty. “Well, old girl,” I said, “shall we trot off to tea?” She looked at me gloomily, nodded, and we took a subway back downtown. “I hope she’s out,” Val said nervously, as we took the elevator upstairs. We walked along the hallway and Val opened the door quietly. The apartment was silent and beautiful. We went into the living room and took off our things. Val called room service and ordered tea and sandwiches. “I’m starved,” she said. “I got hardly any lunch.” Tea arrived, and we sat down, after putting some Bartók on the Victrola. We began to relax, and talked about school for a while. Then, just as we were laughing wildly about something Lilian Kafritz had said, a key grated in the lock. “Oh, my God,” whispered Val, sitting bolt upright. “Gilbert, don’t go anywhere.” “I won’t,” I said, but my stomach was twisted into a knot. There were footsteps in the hall, and Isabel walked in. “Well, well,” she said. “So the prodigal daughter is home.” Neither of us said anything, just sat and watched her. She was wearing a black dress and fur coat, and she dumped the coat on a chair, along with a couple of packages she had been carrying. Slowly and meaningfully she pulled off her long gloves, jerking each finger out with great concentration. Then she looked over at Val. “Have you finished camping on Mrs. Gilbert’s doorstep?” she asked shortly. Val tried to laugh, but it came out quavering. “She’s used to me by now,” she said. “She must be,” Isabel said. “You seem to spend your life there.” She sat down opposite us. “Pour me a cup of tea. No sugar.” Val did so, the pot shaking slightly in her hand. She handed the cup to her mother, spilling tea into the saucer. There was a long, terrible silence while Isabel crossed her knees gratingly, moved the sofa cushion,

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took a sip of tea, put down the cup, straightened her hair, and closed her eyes for a moment. “If I’d thought you didn’t want me to stay at Gilbert’s,” Val said finally, in a brave voice, “I would have come home.” “You know damn well what I think,” said Isabel. “You didn’t seem to care.” “You know damn well I care where you are. My God, what I’ve given up for you since we’ve been here. I haven’t seen half of my friends. I had that Christmas Eve party for you, with the people I thought you’d like best.” She opened her eyes. “I’ve never told you this, but we’ve lost a lot of money because of you. We’re supposed to be in Cairo, right now.” “Cairo!” exclaimed Val politely. “Your father gave up a big deal that only he could have swung, so we could stay in New York with you for the holidays. You have no concept of the sacrifices we make for you.” She looked over at me. “Don’t we make sacrifices?” “Oh, yes,” I said hastily. “And then she runs off and I don’t know where she is, for days at a time. Are you staying?” “Me?” I asked. “Yes, you.” Val glanced at me quickly, and I said, “Val asked me for tea.” “Oh, well, we mustn’t interrupt that. You might as well hear what I’m going to say, anyway. She tells you more than she tells us.” She closed her eyes again, and Val and I sat on the edge of the sofa in fright. Val had been right; she knew Isabel far better than I thought. “More tea, Mother?” Val asked, in what I thought was a disgustingly placating voice. Why was she being so nice? “I was horrified and revolted,” said Isabel finally, “by what I read in that book of yours the other night.” “Oh, the Bible,” said Val, laughing nervously. “Silly, isn’t it?” “Not silly at all. Quite shocking, as a matter of fact. It made me realize what you’ve been up to in New York, while your father and I were earning money to put you in good schools. It was a blow to me, as a

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mother, to realize how little you’ve learned about decency and good behavior, not to say morals.” Val was looking at her, puzzled. “Oh now, Mother, it isn’t that bad.” “Isn’t that bad! Isn’t that bad!” She sat up and stared at her angrily. “Then what is bad, if you please?” She lit a cigarette hastily. “I haven’t told your father anything about this,” she said. “It would kill him, simply kill him. I’m a little tougher about these things.” “But, Mother, everybody gets crushes on . . .” “`Oh, I’m sure it’s all the thing at Norton.” She leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “My God, what a school! You’re being transferred immediately. And I’ll tell everybody I know what I think of it.” She sighed. “And I suppose Emma Hambler didn’t care, either, with her psychiatry books and her dedicated little husband. That’s another thing. You’re not going back to that place. I’m making some changes around here.” “Mother!” cried Val. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Emma hasn’t done anything!” “Oh, nothing at all. Just let you run haywire around New York City, and never asking what you’ve been up to. That’s just what you love . . . never to be responsible to anybody. That’s just what’s going to stop.” She crushed the cigarette in an ash tray. “I might as well tell you,” she said. “I’ve talked to your Mr. Orient.” Val looked as though she had been struck. All at once, it burst on both of us, the full horror of what Isabel thought, and what she had done. Val blushed a deep red, and I stared at Isabel, who was watching Val closely. “I phoned him,” she went on, “and we arranged to meet and have a drink and talk about it. He’s an odd creature, but not as bad as I expected. I didn’t want to be the outraged matron with him, so I just told him quietly how old you are, which he, of course, didn’t know. Naturally, he denied knowing anything about it, and said he’d never heard of you. I pleaded with him, Val. I threw away my pride for you, and pleaded with him. I said you were too young to know what you were doing. I said I was sorry if you’d bothered him, and the damn man said he hadn’t minded at all.” To my fascination, she suppressed a smile, which Val apparently didn’t see. “He’s much too old for you, Val. I hope you realize that. However, he isn’t as vile as I thought he would be. Hardly a seducer of little girls.”

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“Mother,” Val shouted, “you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never met him. I’ve never . . .” “Oh, my God, do you have to start lying? It’s a horrible trait, and you must get over it. Of course you’ve met him; he admitted it himself, having the grace, however, to laugh at himself as he said so. Now, I hate to drag out dirty linen, so I won’t ask you how far it went — maybe he never seduced you at all.” “Well, that’s more like it!” Val exclaimed, still red in the face. “But the fact remains you chased him and bothered him, and wrote it all down in that incredible book. You needn’t look so injured-innocent, Val. I know perfectly well what you’re capable of. I know what went on in Joe Bird’s apartment, too.” “Nothing went on in Joe Bird’s apartment!” I exclaimed, before I could stop myself. Isabel eyed me. “Were you there?” she asked. “Well, no. I . . .” “Then keep out of it. I discussed it with Joe as we read your book, Val. He said you went to lunch with him — bad enough, he’s old enough to be your father — and that you let him kiss you. Well?” Val said nothing, and I looked at her in astonishment. So she had, after all! “I’ve never met Henry Orient,” Val said stubbornly. “Believe it or not. If you think I’m lying, I can’t help it.” “Do you deny that you’re in love with him, or some such nonsense?” Val’s eyes dropped. “No, I don’t deny that,” she said, so softly I almost couldn’t hear her. Isabel began to laugh, a horrible laugh. “What do you expect me to believe? You lie about Joe, you lie about Henry Orient. You tell me you’re having lunch with a friend, you tell Emma you’re going to see Gilbert. I can’t trust you, Val. I know you don’t tell the truth, and Braintree knows it. How about you, Marian? Does she lie or doesn’t she?” “She doesn’t . . .” I stopped. Val was full of small deceits; no one knew better than I. But I couldn’t even bring myself to lie in her stead. If there was one thing I believed in passionately, it was honesty; and it seemed dead wrong to add a lie to hundreds of others, when it could

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do nothing but turn Isabel against me too. “She never tells big lies,” I said, weakly. “You see?” said Isabel triumphantly. “Your best friend, a sworn witness. You have black marks on your record, Val, and it’s hard to erase them. If I could have faith in your word, that would be one thing. But I don’t.” She got up and walked across the room. I looked over at Val, crouched in the corner of the sofa. She didn’t look at me, whether from hatred or embarrassment, I didn’t know. She couldn’t hate me for telling the truth; she couldn’t be that desperate. “Val,” I said softly, “tell her the truth. Make her believe it.” “She doesn’t know how,” Isabel said from across the room. She was looking out the window, her back to us. Val looked up at me, her face blotchy and terrified. “How can I say I’ve never met Henry?” she asked in an odd little whisper. “How can I say I don’t know him? I’ve met him every day, since that concert. He follows me down the street. He isn’t out of my mind for a moment . . .” “Oh, Val, this is no time to be a boob!” I snapped. “You’ve never seen him in the flesh. Say it! Go on, say it!” “I’ve never seen him in the flesh, Mother,” Val said. “Just in clothes,” snapped Isabel. “I’m so happy to hear it. You’ve still made a fool of yourself.” Val’s lip began to tremble. “Oh, my God, the schools, the psychiatrists, the money, the time, everything! For what? Now we have to start all over, from scratch, just as though she were brand new. Has none of it done any good?” Her voice was getting hysterical. “Your father . . . everything down the drain in Cairo. Just this once . . . this once I persuaded him we were going to have a home, and make a life for you, just for these holidays! And now this! What will your father think of me? He’ll think I’ve ruined you, do you understand? And then God knows what he’ll do. Dump me out in the street, I suppose, and you too. He doesn’t know about Joe Bird . . . he’d kill me, for letting you out of my sight. We had it all planned. We were going to make a home . . . Braintree suggested it, she said you needed home life, and God knows your father and I do, too. So we tried, and you spoiled it, with all your lying and deceit! You spoiled it!” She stood in the middle of the room, trembling, and Val looked up at her. “Arthur doesn’t care about me,” she said slowly, “and you know it.

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He doesn’t care about anything but money. You’ve been trying to use me as a foil to hold him.” Her voice was grim, and it frightened me. Did she know how Isabel had gotten Arthur . . . that she had been used as a foil even before she was born? Isabel was glaring at her. If I had ever seen hatred between two women, I saw it then. “You’re an unnatural child,” Isabel said, her voice shaking, “to even know such things, or say them. Right now it even horrifies me that I bore you, in pain and anguish, at the risk of my life. Perhaps it would have been better if I had died then. But I have lived to watch what you’ve turned into. I wonder often if they got the babies mixed in that hospital room. You aren’t mine. I don’t know where you came from.” She snatched up her gloves and began to put them on, clearly because she couldn’t think of anything else to do. “You’re full of things I don’t understand . . . full of strange ideas and strange ways. You always have been. There’s nothing complicated about me, nothing at all. Or your father. But you . . .” She wheeled around, and I saw that she was on the verge of crying. I had an odd, oblique pity for her, as I had had Christmas Eve; not a pity for her situation, but pity for her total inability to understand Val. It was almost pity for all the world, and for all the people who would never understand her. “Val . . .” I began. “You’d better go and lie down, Mother,” Val said, in the same curious voice. “You’re upset.” “You’re damn right I’m upset! Everything, everything, out the window!” “It isn’t that bad,” said Val. “He isn’t going to leave you. As long as you don’t . . .” She stopped, and Isabel stared at her. “As long as I don’t what? As long as I don’t what?” Val said nothing, and she screamed, “My own child! My God, oh my God!” and turned and ran out of the room. We heard the bedroom door slam, and then silence. Val got up and walked to the door, looking after her. “Poor Isabel,” she said. “She’s so damn neurotic.”

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Chapter 11 She walked slowly back across the room and sat down on the sofa. Her face, always responsive, showed many things at once: a curious pity for Isabel, tiredness, guilt, anger and utter embarrassment. Neither of us said anything for a few moments, and Val lit herself a cigarette and sat there blowing the smoke out of her mouth, as though nothing bothered her at all. I wondered if she was going to cry, but she looked too exhausted for even that, as though she was beyond tears. What can I say? I wondered frantically. Can I tell her what I think of her mother, tell her to get out of here and never come back, tell her again what Wimpole told her last night? Or have I any influence over her at all, any more? But even as I wondered, I felt that if I was ever going to win Val back to her senses — back to Emma, back to Henry, and back to me — now was the moment to do it; and if I didn’t Val would be whisked away from me to a clattering world of dancing, writhing around in dark rooms, and Isabel. Isabel will make her grow up wrong, I thought. She needs to be a child longer, and if I say the right things right now, I might be able to keep her that way. The silence became and glassy, and I was afraid to break it. Finally she turned and looked at me. I must have been glowering, for she gave a tiny smile. “Well, Gilbert,” she said, “now you know all about my happy family. You started asking questions the day we met, and now you know all about it. Got any statements?” She was annoyingly calm, and I said angrily: “You’re damn right I have a statement. Why did you sit there like a dope, and let her go on believing you’d met Henry? Why didn’t you tell her the truth? You could have made her believe it.”

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“Oh, Gilbert.” Val sighed and got up, then started pacing up and down. “She was hysterical. It didn’t make any difference what I said.” “You got her hysterical. You could have gotten her unhysterical again.” “How?” she asked. “A nice bucket of cold water?” “By telling the truth! That never occurs to you, does it?” She glanced at me. “Thanks for putting in your two cents,” she said, “and telling Isabel what a liar I am.” “I never said that. I just said . . .” “That sometimes I don’t tell the truth. That’s enough for her. She lights on things and carries them to the end, and you can’t change her mind.” “Even Henry said he’d never met you. If you’d said so too, as though you meant it, she would have had to believe it.” “Henry . . .” She smiled faintly. “Henry laughed. Henry laughed that a little thirteen-year-old is in love with him . . . more in love than anybody else will ever be.” She flung herself on the sofa, face down, rested her chin on her hands, and brooded. “You know, this might sound funny, but it’s kind of a relief.” “What? That Henry knows about you at last?” “Sort of. It’s the beginning of the end. It’s like a balloon that the air is just beginning to go out of — fzzz-fzzz.” “I don’t understand.” “I mean that I’m not going to be in love with him very much longer. All the excitement has gone out of it.” “Oh, don’t be a jerk!” I raged. “If you had any sense, you’d be more in love than ever! Obviously, he’s fascinated by the very idea of you.” I splashed some cold tea into my empty cup and gulped it down. It was dreadful, so I lit a cigarette too. “Val,” I said slowly, “just get up and walk into Isabel’s room, and quietly tell her the truth. Tell her about Boothy and Valentino, and me and Gregory Peck.” She looked over at me. “Gilbert, she won’t believe a word I say. Can’t you understand that? I lied about Joe Bird.” Her eyes dropped, and she began picking the tobacco out of her cigarette. “I didn’t dare tell you, either. I knew you’d think I was awful. I didn’t let him kiss me very much. He tried to do more, and I wouldn’t let him. Then he went and told her out of revenge, I suppose. He wasn’t very happy about being

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rebuffed. She thinks that since I did that, I must have gone and thrown myself at Henry, too.” She looked over at me again. “Don’t you see? She’s all mixed up. Now she thinks Pop is going to dump her out in the street, and she feels inferior because of what I did. That’s how her mind works. Her home-making spree hasn’t worked. Now the whole cycle will start all over again.” She rubbed her eyes. “Some new pal. Don’t ask me who. Maybe Joe Bird, though he’s past history.” “You mean . . . you mean she’ll go out and . . .” “That’s right. Maybe she has already. She always does, when she gets in this state.” “How do you know,” I asked, “when you’ve seen her so little?” “I’ve seen her enough.” “But . . . if she wants to keep Arthur, why does she act this way?” “She thinks she isn’t good enough for him. It’s true, she isn’t. She tries some gambit or other, and gets discouraged, and goes out to make up for it.” “But . . .” “Oh, Gilbert, don’t be so thick. It’s hopeless. I know her better than you. All I can do is sit it out. If I try and mess around with her life . . .” She shook her head. “It’s like trying to move the rock of Gibraltar.” “So you’re just going to sit here and let her think . . . all the things she thinks.” “That’s right. It won’t last. In a week or two, after she’s made herself feel better, she’ll come bouncing back and casually say she’s sorry she didn’t believe me.” I put out the cigarette in a huge glass ash tray. It was too easy. Val seemed willing to let it go at that, while I wanted violent action. I hated Isabel; I felt like going in and slitting her throat. She had humiliated Val, and if Val didn’t care, I did. As I watched her lying on the sofa, her hand with the cigarette trailing on the floor, I fancied I saw her slipping away, very slowly, forgiving and forgetting, accepting accusations and hypocrisy, accepting wrongness, giving herself up. There must be some way. There must be . . . “Val,” I said slowly, “you know there’s one thing in all this that I should think would bother you to death.” “What’s that?”

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“What Henry must think about you.” “He thinks I’m a fool. It doesn’t matter. I told you, it isn’t going to last very long.” I shrugged. “Well, if you don’t care about him any more, which you apparently don’t I suppose there’s no point in worrying about it.” “I didn’t say I don’t care about him,” Val said, rising up on one elbow, “I said I won’t, before long.” “Well, then I suppose you don’t care what he thinks of you. If Isabel hadn’t gone to him, that would be one thing. But it seems too bad just to let it end like this, on a sour note.” “What kind of a note should it end on?” Val asked suspiciously. “Oh, I’d say . . . a dramatic note. I mean, after all, we’ve spent weeks being dramatic about Henry, and making pacts, and racing around to his haunts. It seems too bad to let it just fizzle. But,” I sighed elaborately, “if it must fizzle, I suppose there’s no point in trying to do anything about it.” Val bounced off the sofa and stood in front of me. “Gilbert,” she said warily, “what are you driving at?” “Driving at? Absolutely nothing. I’m just making a point, that’ all. I like consistency.” I lit another cigarette. “It’s just that you’re being out of character, Val. After all, you usually don’t do anything in a dull way. Usually you’re so much fun because you make things interesting. You add glamor to things. Oh, dear,” I said, smiling in what I fancied was a coy manner, “I guess I’ve just gotten your habits, that’s all.” Val began hopping up and down. “Gilbert,” she shouted, “come off it. You sound like Kafritz when she’s working up to imparting a prize piece of dirt. Come out and say it, will you?” “I am saying it,” I said, “if you’ll only let me finish.” I felt a little more groundwork was necessary. “I just hate to think of all the time and effort wasted, all the information, all the knowledge we’ve acquired. I hate to think of your character left with a smudge on it. Just think . . . think of the night of that first concert, when Henry came walking out on the stage. Think of his red hair. Think of his coattails. Think of the way you felt! Honestly, Val, you were transported that night. You glowed. You looked gorgeous. You were in love.” She didn’t say anything, but kept watching me. “Ever since then,” I went on in a rhapsodical voice, “you’ve built something, and I’ve helped. We made the world of Henry

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Orient. I’ve never had such a good time, and neither have you. And think of all we accomplished! All the research! Think of it from the standpoint of pure efficiency. Think how we organized our activity around something as ethereal as love, beautiful love! Love and efficiency! Doesn’t that prove anything to you?” She sat down on the coffee table and eyed me. “It proves that you hate to see all this wasted. Right?” I nodded, and she started down at the floor. Then she smiled and shook her head. “Gilbert, it was all great while it lasted, but . . .” “So, it’s still lasting, isn’t it? What’s the one thing you want to do more than anything — even though you’ve always denied it? What would be the only way to finish it off, with the proper flourish?” I leaned forward, breathlessly. “Val, you have just a moment left to take advantage of the best thing that’s ever happened to you. The moment is now. Well?” We both sat there, watching each other; the room was deadly silent. Slowly, very slowly, she began to grin. She said: “You want me to meet Henry.” “Absolutely!” I said triumphantly. “Can you think of anything more divine?” She sat there, looking at me, wondering whether or not to be convinced. Suddenly she groaned and collapsed on the sofa. “Oh, Gilbert, I couldn’t I just couldn’t! I’d die in my tracks. I’d be dazzled by his shinning presence . . .” “I thought you practically weren’t in love with him any longer,” I interrupted sternly, trying to hide my delight at her reaction. “For somebody almost not in love, you’re certainly wiggling around.” “Oh, I don’t mean . . . but I . . . meet him! See him face to face! Oh, so what? What do I care about . . .” “Listen, Val,” I began excitedly, tired of being elusive, “you know we could find him at any hour of the day or night. We have all the facts. We have his concert schedule . . . night would be the best time. We could track him along the street, catch him at a likely spot, and talk to him.” “What would we say?” She was sitting on the edge of the sofa, cracking her knuckles. “Oh, all sorts of things. We could show you to him as you really are, not as he thinks you are from talking to Isabel. We could tell him what we think of his playing . . .”

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“Oh, no!” shricked Val. “He’d be insulted!” “He’d be glad we’re so honest. We could tell him all about how you love him, not in the ordinary way . . .” “Gilbert, you have such gall!” “We could apologize for Isabel, and explain that she gets carried away . . . just think of standing there in front of him, talking to him! Just think!” “I’m thinking,” said Val, “and the thought simply gives me the heebie-jeebies.” She got up and began to prance about. “Oh, I couldn’t! I’m too frightened! I’m a coward! After all this time!” “So, this is the time to prove yourself. You know what I’ll even do? I’ll approach him first, and you can hide in a doorway or something till I’ve got him talking, and you can emerge when the spirit moves you. How’s that? If that isn’t friendship, nothing is.” “Nothing is,” echoed Val. “When shall we go?” “Tonight!” I said, afraid she’d change her mind. “Oh, now, Gilbert. You have to give me a couple of days to work up to it. After all, this is going to be the most momentous moment of my life.” “I know, but in a couple of days you might . . .” “Well, so I might. But I don’t think so. Now that you’ve thought of it, I couldn’t bear not to meet him.” “Are you sure?” I asked, relieved. “Fairly sure. A month ago, I didn’t want to. But now I feel we’ve reached a new stage.” “Right!” I cried. “A new era! We’ll enter it in the Bible. We’ll write it in purple and gold . . . the era when Val met Henry.” She lay on her back, kicking her feet. “Oh, my God,” she moaned. “It’s all too much. I need some beer. I need Henry. O honorable Henry! O Cherry Blossom! In a couple of days . . . let’s make it Saturday night, after his concert. I’m sure he has one then, at Carnegie. I need the time to writhe around in ecstasy. By then, I’ll be in the proper state . . .” “Right! Surging with love and devotion! Palpitating! All worked up!” “Carried away! At the end of my rope! Oh, Gilbert, where do you get these hideous marvelous ideas?”

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“It just came. In my role as aider and abettor, I just felt the psychological moment had come.” She got up and began to whirl around, chanting, “O honorable Cherry Blossom high omnipotent samurai what Confucius sayeth goeth,” and so forth, until I grabbed her and threw her back on the sofa. “Okay,” she said, “we’ll have to make plans and lists, and draw up statements and documents, and make out our will, in case we die on the spot. In fact, we have enough to do to fill a week, but I can’t wait that long.” She grinned. “Okay,” I said, “let’s get to work. Oh, Val, the most fabulous thing is going to happen to us.” We spent most of the next day shut up in my room in front of the fire, making entries into the Bible, renewing the pact in blood, and drawing a map of Henry’s route on the proposed night. In the afternoon we decided to have a sacred ceremony and burn somebody in effigy in the fireplace. I suggested Isabel, but Val said that was a little mean; Lilian Kafritz didn’t seem worth the trouble, and Val was afraid that if we did Dr. Braintree, her brain would fall out on the spot. Finally we decided to burn the corrupt part of Val’s soul, which would be magically purged on Saturday night. We drew her on cardboard, cut her out, and put her in the fire. “I hope the rest of me doesn’t get burned by mistake,” Val said nervously. “Nonsense,” I said. “We’re only casting out your devils.” We did some tribal dancing and chanted saying from Confucius, which I found in a book, then ended up by singing Khatchaturian in loud and penetrating voices. In the middle of this, Boothy poked her head in, a pair of plaid glasses on the end of her nose. “I haven’t been able to do a bit of work,” she said. “My God, are you two joining the Shriners?” We explained, and asked her if she’d like to participate. “Thanks,” she said. “I only stick pins in fetishes, myself.” “Boothy,” I asked casually, “are you going out Saturday night? Is Wimpole?” “We’re going to a party with two bibulous old tax attorneys,” she said, “from which we plan to return early. Why?” “I was just wondering,” I said.

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“O shining moon of Hong Kong, how to the apricot stars,” sang Val. “I’m leaving,” Boothy said. “It’s too weird in here for me. Now, please try and keep it down. I’m earning my bread.” She closed the door behind her, and Val said: “Good. My parents are going out too that night, so nobody will be around to ask us where we’re going.” She sat down on the floor. “I’d better go soon. I’m trying to keep on Isabel’s good side, even though I haven’t seen her since yesterday, and probably won’t for another few days.” “What’s she doing?” “Compensating,” Val said. “But just in case she blows in, I’d like to be around being daughterly.” “I think it’s silly,” I said, “I don’t see why you don’t go back to Emma’s.” “I might, if things get rough. But I’ll stick it for the time being. Boy, we’ve gotten a lot accomplished today. Shall I come over in the morning?” “Sure,” I said. “Then we can relax on Saturday, and see a movie or something, to make the time pass.” “Right.” She got up. “Don’t bother to come down. I’ll just amble home.” By the end of the next day, we had an enormous pile of documents, wills, lists, maps, planned conversations, and relevant material. It was a stroke of luck that all our parents were to be out that night; if they had not, we would have changed the day. We knew perfectly well that we would get into trouble, no matter when we did it. But if they were out we would be able to leave our houses without difficulty, knowing they would not discover our absence until eleven or so, when they would probably start some sort of ignominious search for us. In spite of the amount of freedom we had, we knew instinctively that we were about to go too far and kept scrupulously quiet about the plan. Val had moments of doubt and terror, but on the whole, she held up quite well. I prodded her periodically, painting glorious pictures of Henry and how he would look walking along Fifty-seventh Street, and how Val would feel when she met him, face to face. I got a little tired of coaxing Val’s temperament along, and was glad when it was Saturday afternoon and I had nothing to do but wait it out till the appointed hour. A few minutes before leaving, I sat in the kitchen eating leftover oyster soufflé and turkey hash, mentally checking over the plan. Val had taken some of our documents, including the Bible, down to

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Emma’s, and put them under the floor-vent. The rest we were going to take along. I was dressed as though we were going on a pack trip in the Alps. I wore a heavy coat, which had a removable lining, and inside were maps, papers, wills, a couple of tennis balls, candy bars, two broken cigarettes, a dollar, a copy of Great Expectations, a sealed envelope containing the ashes of Val’s contaminated soul, and a few old keys, rubber bands and fountain pens I had found lying around the house. It took a little extra effort to move, and the bottom of my coat swung heavily back and forth like a stage curtain. I felt a little nervous, quite elated, and somewhat reckless; I felt that no power on earth could stop me from doing what I was going to do, no matter what anybody thought or said the next day. I vaguely felt that this attitude was not a good thing, and if it didn’t get me into trouble that night, it might well in the future; but I reminded myself that it was, after all, for a good cause. It was the only way to keep Val in love with Henry, and save her from the life of vice her mother would lead her into. So, convinced that we were about to do fine and noble thing, I poked the remains of my dinner back in the icebox and went out to meet Val. Fifty-seventh Street looked wide and expensive, lined with show windows of paintings, sofas and cocktail dresses. I stopped at Fifth and looked around with satisfaction. It was cold, clear evening, and my breath made a slight fog in the air in front of me. It was almost eight o’clock, and taxis were moving westward. I hurried across the street and walked on. A few people lingered in front of Carnegie Hall, looking at the posters, shielding a flickering match behind one hand, waiting in the ticket line. I looked up at the picture of Henry, and he stared proudly over my head. Just wait, I told him. We’ll rout you out. We’ll make you know the truth. You can’t go on believing a lie. I walked on, and one or two people turned to stare as my coat rustled and clanked against my legs. I felt a little silly, but walked bravely on. It was darker near Seventh Avenue, and I began to feel the atmosphere of intrigue. According to plan, I walked slowly to the corner drugstore, turned, and walked twenty paces beyond. Then I stopped. The drugstore clock said exactly eight. I said, “Confucius!” in a low voice. Then I waited. Nothing happened, and two women with a great deal of make-up stared at me curiously. “Confucius!” I said again. “Cherry Blossom!” came the reply from a dark doorway, and Val appeared. She was dressed similarly to me, except that her supplies were in her pockets — her coat had four of them — and every

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one bulged. She had an odd-looking knitted hat pulled down to her eyebrows. “O sacred fount of wisdom, enlighten humble Hong Kong servant,” she said. “O apricot stars of China, shine on poor kowtowing slave,” I replied. “Boy, I thought I’d never make it,” Val said. “They aren’t going out till later, so I finally had to sneak out through the kitchen and go down the back stairs to the eighteenth floor. She’s probably having a fit.” “Have you got everything?” “All here. Let’s go in and perform the first ritual.” We went into the drugstore and sat down. This particular drugstore had been reported by Henry Orient to have the best fruit cup in town, so we ordered two fruit cups. We were the only customers, and a yawning soda jerk opened a can of fruit cup and dumped some into two dishes. “What’s so great about this?” I asked, looking at small pallid squares of peach and grapefruit. “Never mind,” said Val, “eat it. Henry likes it, and that’s what counts.” The drugstore was dim, gloomy and dirty. A surly-looking man came in and sat down at the other end of the counter, eyeing us suspiciously. We gulped down our fruit cup and paid. “That was awful,” I said “Let’s go on to Operation Harmon.” “Onward!” said Val, and we left. We sidled along the walll to the corner, then crept into Carnegie Hall. “Through the back,” Val said, who knew the place like the back of her hand. “Follow me.” We went through a side door, down a long hallway, and after a good deal of scuttling about, found ourselves backstage. There were several musicians around, impressive in starched shirts and tails, and we felt somewhat out of place. There was a buzz of voices and music, and someone onstage was plinking at the piano. Val began to glow. She played arpeggios on her lapels and hummed. Nobody seemed very interested in us, which was lucky, for the last thing we wanted was to be escorted out. We found Harmon in the far wing, reading a newspaper. He grinned when saw us. “Thought you two might be along tonight,” he said. “What’s the matter, spend all your allowances?”

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“Can we listen from back here, Harmon?” Val asked smiling winningly. “Last time you were here, somebody saw you and asked who you were,” Harmon said. “I don’t want to lose my job.” “Harmon, this is a very important night,” I said. “You know how Val is in love with Mr. Orient.” “Shut up, blabbermouth,” said Val sharply. “It has has nothing to do with that. I admire his playing, that’s all.” “Aw, rats,” said Harmon. “If you’re the musician I think you are, you wouldn’t waste your time. How’d you like that score your little friend gave you?” Val turned red, then grinned. “Can we stay?” “Oh, sure. I’ll put you over in the corner there, and no monkeying around. Just listen and go when he’s finished.” “Harmon, you’re the greatest,” Val said, and we went over and sat in two camp chairs he set up for us. “Don’t you dare try to talk to him, or anything,” Harmon admonished. “The musicians don’t like little teen-agers hanging around for autographs.” “We’re not teen-agers,” I said. “You’re not, eh? What are you, then?” “We’re just . . . music students,” I said feebly. “Well, study hard. I’ll see you.” He went off onto the stage.We sat there looking out of our dark corner eagerly, watching every tuxedo that passed by. “Of course, he won’t come till the last minute,” Val whispered. “He stays in his dressing room chewing lemons, and then comes out and walks straight onto the stage.” We couldn’t see out into the hall, but we could hear the murmur of voices and rustle of programs. The musicians gradually took their places on the stage and began to tune up. Val sat on the edge of her chair and bounced up and down, occassionally remarking that the cello was flat or that someone was spitting into his horn. She seemed a world away from me, and I sat there watching her. It occurred to me that my interest in Henry had taken on a different color; I was bored with the prospect of sitting through the concert, and wanted to get on to the dramatic moment. Before Isabel, this part of the evening would have been a delightful prelude to what was going to come. But now I couldn’t rest until I saw

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what happened to Val when she met Henry, face to face, and knew for sure whether I had won or lost. And down beneath it all, I felt something give in. Not from anything particularly discouraging in Val’s attitude, but just a simple, logical realization that I was fighting a lost battle. The era of Henry was over, and there was nothing I or anyone else could do about it. The odds were all against me, but I knew I had to keep at it to salvage what I could, and hope against hope that some sort of magic would take us back to where we had been before life got so vastly complicated. The lights lowered in front, and our wing emptied out. I saw Harmon over by the door, the light shining on his white hair. There was a hush, and then the conductor went onstage. Val’s hand reached out and grabbed my arm, and all at once Henry appeared. He hovered for a moment, rubbing his hands. He stood very straight, staring ahead at nothing in particular. His hair, the color of copper, glinted in the dim light. Then he walked toward the stage, passing so close to us that I could hear one trouser leg scrape against the other and smell the odor of his clothes. I noticed his hands as he went by; white, cared-for hands. In a moment he had passed us and gone onto the stage, and a moment after that the music began. Val spent the next hour writhing in her chair, gasping, and going through appropriately lover-like contortions. I tried to force myself to enjoy it, to savor what would probably be the last concert. But my mind went ahead of me, wondering and speculating. During the intermission Henry passed us again on his way to his dressing room, and Val and I impatiently ate a chocolate bar. For the last half he played the Khachaturian concerto, which I knew and liked. When the third movement started, Harmon came over and whispered: “You kids better leave before the end. I don’t want you around here when they come offstage.” We agreed, having expected this. Five minutes before the end he signaled to us, and we crept out the door into the alley, showering him with gratitude. We went a little way back, away from the street, to a nook that Val knew of. We could hear the last strains of the music, and then the burst of applause. “He played better tonight than I’ve ever heard him,” Val said, “but still not good enough. He isn’t great, and he never will be. He’ll never be a Rubinstein, or even an Oscar Levant. That’s why I won’t go into it, Gilbert. I won’t be like Henry.” “How do you know you aren’t great?” I asked.

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“If my music were in another person, maybe it could be great,” she said. “But unfortunately, it’s in me, and I’ll keep getting in the way of it.” “I don’t understand.” “Look at the kind of person Henry is, and you’ll see what I mean. He’s a jerk. He’s a hypocrite and a liar and nobody likes him, except some women, I suppose. I don’t want to be like that. He knows he’ll never make it, and that’s the trouble with him. The least I can do is try and live a decent life, and forget about music, if it comes to that.” She looked at me, and the light from the door shone on her face. A few people were starting to trail out. “I suppose that’s why I’ve been in love with him. He’s just me, in a man’s body.” “You’re much better than he is,” I said defensively. Neither of us had any illusions about Henry. “Right now, yes,” she said. “But I might not be, sometime.” Several musicians came out the door. “Gilbert,” she said, “I feel really fantastic this evening. I feel as though I’ve gotten to the top of the mountain, and now I’ll be able to look out and see everything.” I felt a little clutch of fear. “What do you think you’ll see?” I asked. She grinned. “The big wide world,” she said. “What else?” She looked toward the door. “In a minute, he’ll come out. He’s had time to change. In just a minute . . . it will start.” She hopped around the alleyway. “Humble servant of Shanghai awaits shining moon of Hong Kong! Eternal enlightenment and sublime wisdom!” “Shhh,” I hissed. “Come back, you idiot.” “Oh, my God, he’s coming!” She ran over and clutched my arm. “Gilbert, don’t desert me! I think I’m going to die!” “Pull yourself together,” I whispered, “and shut up. Now when he starts down the alley, we have to keep a way behind him. We won’t even start after him till he’s out in the street . . .” “Gilbert, stop being so damn practical. This is it. This is the moment we’ve . . .” She stopped dead and stared over at the doorway. There, with a half-smoked cigarette hanging out of his mouth, stood Henry Orient.

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Chapter 12 Val and I crouched against the wall, trying to be as invisible as the shadows of the alley. It was difficult; I could hear my heart thudding and the papers rustling in my coat, and something in one of Val’s pockets was clanking against the wall. If Henry saw us, he took no notice. His hands were thrust into his pockets, and he stared straight ahead. The yellow light from inside made his hair glisten alarmingly. He stood with a casual slouch, surprising after one had seen his erect posture at the piano. He stood in the doorway as though testing the night before venturing out into it. Behind him, inside the door, I could see and hear the usual backstage activity, but Henry seemed miles away from it. Unexpectedly, he smiled. We both sank back into our corner, afraid he had seen us, or, by some mysterious instinct, guessed our reason for being there. But the smile was not for us. It was directed far away, up in the sky, apparently. It was quite a wonderful smile, and I could hardly take my eyes off it. There was a sweeping freedom in it, an enviable irresponsibility. It lingered for a moment, then disappeared. Henry turned and started slowly down the alley. We stood frozen and watched him till he got to the end, where he turned left. “Benny’s, I’ll bet,” I said. “Let’s go. We don’t want to lose him in the mob.” We ran noiselessly to the end — we had worn sneakers — and out into the street. For a frantic moment, we couldn’t find him. Then we saw the red hair glistening under the street light at the corner. “O honorable carrot-top,” said Val, “what would we do without you?” She giggled, and I looked at her. She was glowing, and her hair clung to her face in damp nervous waves. “Gilbert, all my adrenalin is leaping around hysterically.” “Well, control it,” I said. “There he goes across the street.”

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He crossed and went down Seventh, and we followed, praying he wouldn’t decide to take a taxi. Sometimes he did, and sometimes he didn’t. But he seemed to be loitering along, enjoying the mild evening. He stopped at a newsstand and bought two morning papers, leaving the change in a little metal dish. He stood for a moment in front of the window, looking at the morass of toys, cosmetics, and odds and ends from Christmas. “He must be going to Benny’s,” Val said. “He’ll meet a bunch of his cronies there, and we’ll have to wait it out.” We followed him two more blocks, running from doorway to doorway. “Gilbert,” she said, “maybe we’d better approach him now. He might be in there for hours.” I considered, and decided it would be better to wait. For one thing, I didn’t think enough suspense had been built up, and besides that, I was not at all sure Henry was going to meet anyone at the bar. If he were, wouldn’t he be with people from Carnegie Hall, or wouldn’t he be hurrying more? He seemed a man alone with his thoughts, wandering at leisure along the street, with no appointment ahead. “I don’t think he’s meeting anybody there,” I said. “Anyway, the chase has hardly begun.” He turned the corner and stopped in front of a small bar with a neon sign over it. “There he goes,” Val sighed. “And it’s impossible to see in there. There’s a curtain over the window.” Henry went inside, and Val and I went into a drugstore across the street, sitting by the window where we could watch. We ordered sandwiches and milk shakes, hoping to distract ourselves, but it was a terrible half-hour. Every time Benny’s door opened, we jumped up and peered out, and it was never Henry. We wondered if we had missed him, or if he had gone out the back door, or if he was going on a binge. None of these things seemed likely, however. So we played word games, read a bit, made a few notes in our documents, and finally, after almost an hour, Henry came back out. We threw our money at the cashier and ran out the door. We stood in front, looking nonchalant, as Henry passed by. I thought his attitude was slightly different. He still looked thoughtful, but now he appeared to be in more of a hurry. “Now he’ll go home,” Val said, as he turned up a side street. “And then we’ll nab him.”

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His pace was so much faster now that we had to trot to keep up with him. He had reverted to his straight, soldierly posture again, as though he were striding out upon the stage. He smiled again into the night. “Two more blocks,” panted Val. I was beginning to feel slightly apprehensive. I decided it was because I knew what our parents would think of this, and because instinct told me of the danger of pushing any situation too far, especially one that was potentially explosive. I thought I had talked myself out of worrying about it, but a voice kept saying, You’re wrong! Stop and turn back! I ignored it, and tried to concentrate on keeping my belongings from clanking, and possibly attracting Henry’s attention. “Have you got Operation Formosa all straight?” Val asked. “Absolutely,” I said. “With liberal interpretation in case of undue circumstances.” “According to plan A, I’ll cringe in the hall next to the mailboxes. If all goes well, you give the password. If he threatens to take us to the police or something, we’ll just blow.” “Roger and Cherry Blossom,” I said. “Are you ready? It’s just up the street.” She made an odd little sound, and I looked at her. She was pale and nervous, and she was biting her fingernails. “Don’t worry,” I said, making a heroic effort to keep my voice confident. “I’ll shape him up so that he’s all ready, and then you can come along. I’ll get him in exactly the right mood.” My hands were cold and wet, and my stomach felt as though it was full of ice cubes. What on earth was I going to say? It was the one thing I hadn’t really thought about. We had both been going along on the assumption that Henry’s mere presence would inspire us to stirring oratory, but now that the task was at hand, I began to doubt it. Mr. Orient, I’d like you to meet Val, who’s in love with you, I rehearsed. You must realize that she’s been grossly misjudged, and she’s really a nice girl. It’s her mother who’s a terror . . . Mr. Orient, only you can purge Val’s soul of all its faults, and steer her back on the right path. Save her from necking parties and the sin of the city . . . that sounded too much as though Henry was a faith healer, so I crossed it off. Mr. Orient, we’re music students and we’d like to tell you what we think of your playing. It’s all right, but you need to practice more. How long do you practice every day? Mr. Orient, you are Val in man’s clothes. Mr. Orient, we know more about you than you’ve ever dreamed . . . you’ve made our lives interesting for the past months. Do something about Val. Keep her for me and yourself too. We can share her . . .

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Henry turned toward his door. He paused for a moment and looked up at his window, where a light was shining. I grabbed Val’s hand, which was as cold and wet as mine, and we crouched in the next doorway, holding our breaths. Then Henry went slowly toward the door and walked in. We stole after him and crept into the little hallway. We saw his feet disappearing around the first bend of the stairs. Val held onto the door and let it close behind her very slowly, with hardly a creak. Then she turned to me. “Okay, Gilbert,” she whispered. “Carry on.” I nodded, swallowing nervously. “Operation Formosa must go on at risk of life or death. Oh, God, this is awful.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “If I don’t see you again,” she said, “it’s been swell.” I gave her a long, tragic look and started up the stairs. My coat rustled and I clutched it up in front. I saw Henry’s heels disappearing again, which meant he had one more floor to go. The stairs were dark and narrow, with shoddy brown carpeting, and I thought I would remember them to my dying day. I planted one sneaker after another on the step in front of me, and the old wood made a faint crunch each time. I paused before the top; I wanted to stay just one bend behind Henry, keeping his feet in sight. I saw them go around the last bend before his floor, and I hurried a little. Then I crouched by the railing and looked up. He stood in front of the door, looking through his pockets for the key. My heart was thudding so wildly I was sure he could hear it, and I wrapped my coat more tightly around me. Now was the time! What should I say? How should I begin? What could I say to make him . . . And just as I was about to approach him, to face him and talk to him no matter what came out of it, the door flew open; and there, like an apparition, stood Isabel. If the bright flames of hell had suddenly appeared to consume Henry to ashes, I couldn’t have been more astonished. Everything began to swing around in gentle circles; I clung to the railing with both hands, probably to keep myself from tumbling down the stairs, and stared up with horrified fascination. The two figures were like magic lanterns, swinging in the darkness, acting out some fantastic pantomime. The Isabel one smiled; the Henry one stood in silence for a moment, and then words drifted out of it: “Well, the beautiful and indiscreet Mrs. Boyd was able to come tonight after all. And last night, and perhaps tomorrow night?” Then the Henry one swung forward, and the Isabel one backward . . . had I imagined it, or did her eyes catch mine? . . . and the door closed after them.

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The darkness screamed with voices. Don’t tell her what you saw! It was none of your business to be here, anyway! But here’s your chance . . . now you can shock her away from Isabel . . . and make her mind sicker than it already is? You’re her friend . . . her life is grim enough, and all it would do would be to make it worse. I felt dizzy and nauseated, and I looked down at my hands which still clung to the railing, like two disembodied objects. I’ll tell her I lost my nerve . . . I’ll even tell her that some dame was there, but I won’t say who it was. Will she see the truth in my face? Which would be worse? Shall I lie, and make her hate me, or shall I tell the truth, and . . . make her hate me in the long run anyway? But why should she? It isn’t my fault . . . it isn’t, except that I thought of this and persuaded her to come, just because I hate to see anything unfinished, and because I wanted to see her reactions, as though she were something under a microscope. I felt the choke of tears, and let them drip down my face unnoticed. So this is what your fine friendship has turned out to be, I thought. You’re just like all the rest, like Braintree and Emma and all the teachers, and all the people who can’t see her as a human being, but who insist on picking and probing and looking into her soul, as though she were something on exhibition . . . and all the time you’ve thought you were the only person who loved her for what she was, a lonely little girl. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. All I asked was to be able to sit down in that dark hall and cry, punishing myself for having ever thought of this evening, raking over my failure to Val and blaming myself for having been a hypocrite. Never did it occur to me that I might not be completely to blame, that Val, being what she was, seemed to have made a wordless demand for such a denouement to her romance; or that she was the one who had always pushed me and prodded me into action, telling me to come out of my fog and do something interesting, or that she was the one who had invented the world of Henry in the first place. I forgot her hypnotic quality when it came to breaking rules, disobeying, running about New York, and making it all seem attractive and interesting; I forgot about her subconscious, seething with desires to get into trouble. I saw her only as the trusting victim of my foul play, my interfering, my uncontrollable curiosity, and I hated myself for being the worst kind of friend she ever could have had. Slowly, I started back down the stairs. I could hear nothing from the apartment or downstairs in the hall, and I hoped that for one reason or another she had left. I had no desire to face her, but the thought did

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not frighten me. I felt drugged and exhausted, and before I even got there, I knew I would lie. I simply hadn’t the courage or energy to tell the truth. It was the first time I’d ever felt that way, and I wondered at myself. But looking at it from the other side, I saw that it was more than that. I wanted to save what I could of Val, and if I could postpone her discovery of the truth by lying, and save her for me for a while longer, I would do it. She was worth more to me than my own honesty. She was crouched by the mailboxes, her brown eyes looking up at me. “You chickened out,” she said, and her voice was flat. “I had a feeling you would.” Her face was disappointed and resigned, as though she had expected this to happen all along. “He had some dame in there, Val,” I said. “I couldn’t just charge in.” “I heard him say something.” “He was talking to her.” She sighed and stood up, then looked at me and gave a rueful little smile. “Well, I guess we wasted a lot of fuel, didn’t we?” She looked around the hall. “While I was waiting for you, I began to wonder just what we were doing here.” She glanced back at me. “I guess the balloon has busted.” The disappointment welled up in me, not as anything new, but as an old friend who had been waiting to put in an appearance. And with it came an unbearable feeling of emptiness, that from here on, there was nothing left. “I guess it had to,” I said dully. I felt exhausted, and my head began to ache. Any more talk seemed pointless; I wanted to forget it all and pick up the pieces in the morning. “Let’s go,” I said. We walked out into the empty street. “We haven’t enough money to take a cab,” Val said. “We spent it all in those damn drugstores.” In silence we walked down the dark street to take the first of the two busses that would get us home. “How about coming back to the Melt for some scrambled eggs?” she said. “We’re in enough hot water now. Another hour won’t make any difference. Pop and Isabel will still be out.” “What time is it?” I asked.

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“Almost midnight.” I hesitated, and the old inclination to drag it out to the bitter end returned. Perhaps I could tell her when we got there. And even if I couldn’t, perhaps we could salvage something from the ruined evening. One of the voices in the hall came back. Won’t you ever learn? it scolded. Won’t you ever learn to stop while you can, to leave things unfinished as they are meant to be, and think later what the endings might have been? I looked at her, and she looked so woebegone and lost that I gave in. If she wants me, I’ll go, I thought. We went on down the street and got on the crosstown bus. “I hope there’s some beer in the icebox,” Val said, as we got out of the elevator. “It’s good to mix with scrambled eggs.” The hall was empty and silent, and I felt silly in my weighted coat and dirty sneakers on the soft rug. Val got out her key and opened the door. “Go on into the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll be along in a . . .” “Do you girls have any idea what time it is?” We both jumped. Wimpole’s voice came through the air like a gong. “How did she get in?” Val whispered. “I didn’t think anybody was . . .” As though to answer her, Isabel appeared in the living room door, and Wimpole behind her. “I don’t understand!” I gasped, before I could stop myself. “It’s not difficult,” Isabel snapped. “We’ve been searching the city for you. We’ve been worried frantic, as any mothers would be, if their daughters disappeared at night for hours, God knows where. We have Mrs. Booth posted at your house waiting and Emma Hambler at her apartment in case you went there . . .” I wondered if I was losing my mind. How could she . . . did I ever see her at Henry’s apartment, or was it all a nightmare? Perhaps I had had some sort of vision in the hall, like a saint. But here she was in the same dress she had been wearing, a dark red dress with a low neckline, and a gold necklace, all as I had seen it before. My mind raced around in circles. Perhaps there was a back door . . . she must have seen me, I thought, my knees weakening. She must have seen me, and even if she had come out the front door she could have beaten us back here if she found a taxi immediately. The streets are empty at night. She must have just gotten here, about five minutes

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ago. Isabel was watching me with a curious, unfathomable expression on her face. “I just discovered all this a few minutes ago,” she said, echoing my thoughts. “I’ve been at the Billings’, and I just got back.” It was rather inconsistent with what she had just said about searching the city, but Val didn’t seem to notice. “I found your mother here. She’d been calling all over. And Arthur has been distraught.” Slowly, we followed her into the living room. Wimpole stood by the door, still in her coat. Arthur was sprawled in a chair with a drink in his hand, looking not at all distraught. The radio was playing rhumba music. I looked at Wimpole, and her face was angry. “I thought you were developing some sense of responsibility,” she said, “but apparently you aren’t. You have no idea what can happen at night in the streets of New York.” I swallowed miserably and looked at her, but I couldn’t say anything. “It looks as though neither of them can be trusted any more,” Isabel said. “They never realize how much trouble they cause. Inconsiderate, selfish . . .” “I’m sorry, Mom,” Val said. She looked over at Arthur. “I’m sorry, Pop.” “It’s all right, Val.” Arthur got up and poured himself another drink, then looked at his wife. “How was the party, Is? Anybody there?” Clearly he wanted to change the subject, not feeling at home in conversations about the behavior of thirteen-year-olds. Isabel looked at him for a moment. “Lots of people,” she said. “Doesn’t it concern you that your daughter has been roaming alone around the city for the past four hours?” He swirled the ice around in his whiskey. “I want to know about your evening, Is,” he said slowly. “Val’s back. She’ll be punished, of course. Now, how about you?” My stomach constricted oddly, and I looked at Val. She was watching Isabel wonderingly. Isabel ignored him, and turned back to Wimpole. “I think you’ll agree, Mrs. Gilbert, that these girls should be separated for a while. They’re only bad influences on each other.” Wimpole looked at her. “I certainly think they should be kept home more, but I don’t see any reason to separate them.” “Well, I really wonder at that. Ever since they’ve known each other, they’ve been constantly in trouble. I’ve been very disappointed in Val,

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very. I think the school is too lax and Emma Hambler is certainly not strict enough. I think that only certain changes can make Val into the kind of person I want her to be. I’m considering another school.” Val didn’t say anything. She was slowly biting on a fingernail. “I don’t think we should talk about this right now,” Arthur said. “Mrs. Gilbert wants to take Marian home.” I looked at him, and he winked. I didn’t like the wink, which was a broad hint to get out, but it seemed like the first sensible statement that had come from the Boyds so far. “Don’t you want to get home, Mrs. Gilbert?” “Well, I do,” Wimpole said, buttoning up her coat. “I think we all need some sleep.” She looked at me, and there was a certain understanding in her face. Arthur began leading us out of the room. “I’m sorry about all this trouble,” he said pointlessly. His breath smelled of whiskey. “Kids will be kids.” I turned to Val, just before I was edged out of the room. “I’ll call you in the morning,” I said desperately, trying to read her face. There was nothing there, just weariness and the old fear. “She might not be here,” Isabel said sharply. “She’ll let you know when she isn’t busy.” Her face was hard, and I felt like slapping her. Oh, how I hate you! I thought. How I wish I had the courage to tell the truth about you right here and now, in front of everybody! How I’d like to make you cry, the way you made Val! For a brief, frightening moment, I actually thought I could blurt it out; but Val’s face, so tired, stopped me. No one would believe me anyway, I thought. I gave up, and a wave of emptiness and loneliness came over me. Wimpole and I walked out and closed the door. She walked on ahead, but some ungodly instinct made me linger behind a moment and listen at the door. I heard Arthur’s voice. “And now, Is,” it said, “I’ll find out where you were this evening, if I have to knock it out of you.” I turned and ran down the hall after Wimpole, and then the tears started to come. I waited four days, then called her. The desk clerk told me that the Boyd family had checked out, and he had no idea when they would be back. I asked him if he was sure, and he said, in a clipped voice, that of course he was. I put the receiver back for a moment, then called Emma.

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“I am so glad to talk to you,” she said. “Val is here with me, though she is out right now. The Boyds have gone to Rome for about three weeks.” So Arthur dragged Isabel away to new pastures, I thought. “Is Val all right, Emma? Does she want to see me, or what?” She hesitated. “She has not mentioned it, Marian. I think she feels ashamed about the other night. She felt she was immature to run about the city. She was most upset when she came here. Apparently there was a most unpleasant scene after you and your mother left the hotel.” “Then she found out all about Isabel and Henry,” I said resignedly. “About Isabel and . . . who?” “Henry!” I exclaimed. “She was at his apartment, when we went there! Doesn’t Val know?” “Good heavens,” Emma said softly. “So that is the dame you told her about.” “I thought Isabel told Arthur!” “She told him she was with Joe Bird, Val said.” “Joe Bird . . . why should she do that?” “Perhaps even Isabel has some understanding.” “But didn’t she think I told Val I saw her there?” “It seems she took a chance that you didn’t, Marian.” “Then why is Val all upset, if she doesn’t know?” “She thinks she made a fool of herself and made Isabel angry at her,” Emma said. “She wants very much to please Isabel.” “Oh, Emma, why?” “It is her mother. I am afraid that when the Boyds come back, they are going to put Val in another school, and take her away from me. Val will do anything Isabel says.” “Can’t we stop her?” I asked desperately. “If only you could understand! Val wants so much to make a place for herself among the other girls of her age.” “Except me,” I said bitterly. “I’m too peculiar for her. I live on Third Avenue and my parents are divorced.”

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“You must not talk like that, Marian. There is nothing different about you. You and Val have been going around thinking you are unique, and you are not so at all. You are quit normal children.” “Then why is Val going to a psychiatrist?” I asked rudely. She paused. “I try so hard to think she is normal,” she said, and her voice sounded defeated. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Emma, don’t tell her that Isabel was at Henry’s.” “I will not. Perhaps she will never find out, and I assume the affair has ended.” She paused. “School starts Monday, does it not?” “Yes. Will Val go?” “I will send her until her mother returns and tells me otherwise.” I thanked her and hung up, then lay back on Wimpole’s bed and stared at the ceiling. I felt much better. If Val didn’t know about the other evening, and Isabel had lied, there was no way for her to find out. As it was, she was having some trauma or other about being immature, and would soon get over that. Probably when I saw her at school, we would resume our friendship and grow up gracefully together, while I kept the secret locked in my heart. It sounded logical, but the fact remained that Isabel was determined to separate us; and besides that, she loathed me. So, I thought grimly, the battle for Val’s soul is still on. I could give up Henry, and Val and I could still be friends without him, but Isabel would not let me. I turned over and put my head in my hands. And what, I wondered, is so awful about me? Am I that bad? Three days after school started, Val disappeared. She had come to Norton for the first two days, ignoring me and scurrying around between classes and piano lessons as though she had time for no one on earth. I waited for her, followed her around, and asked her to have lunch with me, but she always had an excuse. Finally I gave up, and went my own way. On the third day she did not leave her card with Mrs. Cooney in the morning, and was nowhere to be seen. Mrs. Cooney button-holed me as I was on my way to math. “Do you know where Boyd is, Kiddo?” she asked. “No, I don’t. Isn’t she here, Mrs. Cooney?” “Didn’t check in. I’ll call what’s-her-name. Sick, maybe.”

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I wondered a little, but decided she must be in bed with a psychosomatic cold. At lunchtime I asked Mrs. Cooney if she had called. Mrs. Cooney looked up from her ham sandwich. “What’s-her-name thought she’d gone to school,” she said. “You mean she’s lost?” “Looks like,” Mrs. Cooney said. “These kids. No sense of responsibility.” “Isn’t anybody going to do anything about it?” I asked. “What’s-her-name is doing some checking around. Don’t get het up, Gilbert. She’s probably in a drugstore somewhere, eating banana splits. If she doesn’t come back by tonight, probably they’ll get the police out, or something.” She looked up at my worried face. “Kids have done it before. Don’t look so rattled. In my day they called it playing hookey. In your day everybody thinks they’ve gone out and jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge.” I anguished through the rest of the day, and as soon as school was out, I grabbed my coat and books and ran downstairs. There was no real reason to think anything was wrong, but I had an unpleasant premonition that something, at last, had cracked. I had watched pebble after pebble of fear and anguish be added to the pile, and I was afraid that, at last, she was not able to carry it any longer. On my way out the door, a small hand reached out and grabbed my coat. “Lilian,” I said, “I’m in a hurry.” “It so happens,” she said, “that I have something to show you. Has anybody found Boyd? I just happened to hear you talking to Mrs. Cooney at lunch.” “She has a right to play hookey if she wants,” I said. “Are you interested in what I have here, in my pocket?” She reached into her bulging pocket and pulled out chewing gum, candy bars, broken pencils, seventy-five cents, an art gum, a comb, a hard-boiled egg, and at last a clipping. She put it in my hand. I looked at it, and saw that part of it was circled. “On the society scene,” it read, “Mrs. Arthur Boyd, wife of the international trade tycoon, was at a corner table at the Club Marinda with key-tickler Henry Orient — probably pursuing a musical interest.” I crumpled it up in my hand.

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“Lilian,” I said angrily, “where did you get this?” “From the Daily News,” said Lilian. “I read it every night. When I saw this, I got another copy. One for you, and one for Boyd.” “So you showed it to her.” I felt a wave of fury. “Well, I gave it to her yesterday afternoon, just as she was leaving. She just read it and stomped off without even saying thank you. Honestly, you’d think she was mad, or something.” I looked down at her small yellow face. “Listen, Lilian. You don’t know what you’ve done. Right now Val might be jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, because of that clipping.” Lilian paled. “I thought she’d like it! I thought she liked to know everything about Orient! That’s why I saved it. I was trying to do something nice.” “Well, you didn’t! For God’s sake, Lilian, try thinking how you’d feel if you had a crush on somebody, then saw a clipping like that about him and your mother!” “My mother . . .” Lilian looked aghast. “What are you talking about?” I stared at her, and suddenly understood. “You didn’t know? Who did you think Mrs. Arthur Boyd was?” “Oh, Gilbert!” Her face crumpled up, and two tears oozed out of her eyes. I was faintly surprised that she was capable of crying. “I just didn’t think! She lives with the Hamblers, and I didn’t know her father was an international trade tycoon, or even who her parents were. I did think it was a funny coincidence . . .” “Well, now you know. Go and blab it around to everybody you see. Just think of the sundaes you can get out of this one.” I felt like poking her in the nose, as I usually felt at the end of every conversation with her. She began to sniffle, and several people turned and looked at her. “Gilbert, you can believe me or not, and you probably won’t because you hate me, but this time it so happens I was trying to do something nice for you and Boyd. I told you before I like you, and you didn’t believe me. Whenever I try to be nice I do something wrong, and everybody hates me all over again. You don’t know what it’s like . . .” I began to steer her out of the door away from the staring people. “All the Eights think I’m awful, and probably I am, but the only way I know to make anybody pay any attention to me is to tell them

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something they want to hear . . . you don’t know what it is to look like me, and have everybody leave the minute you come, and the only people who ever bothered with me are you two . . . I feel so awful I want to kill myself.” I looked at her, and for the first time I felt sympathy for her. “I understand in a way,” I said. “I haven’t got any friends here either, except Boyd. Listen, Lilian, stop crying. You didn’t know what you were doing.” “The only way I know . . .” she sobbed, “the only way . . . is to tell people things . . . I seem to just make people run the other way . . . only you and Boyd . . .” I tried to console her, feeling pity for her on one hand, and frantic to find Val on the other. Finally she stopped crying, and as I looked at her, I had the odd thought that if Val had gone up in smoke, Lilian was the only friend I had. “Lilian,” I said, “there are ways to make people like you besides telling them things. That’s the reason people think you’re a goon. Nobody trusts you. It isn’t the way you look, or anything. If you’d cut out all this eavesdropping and gossiping, and try to be nice, I bet you’d have some friends.” I paused. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you all about Val, and it might make you understand better why you should keep your mouth shut sometimes.” She looked up at me. “Gilbert,” she said, “thanks a lot. If you’d even hit me, I would have deserved it. Honestly, I’m grateful to you. I don’t know why you’re so nice to me.” “I’m not that nice,” I said, and smiled. She smiled back, and for a moment we were friends. I went straight from there to Emma’s, knowing what a hopeless errand it was, but full of a nagging desire to see it to the end. I went down the two steps into the areaway and found the door open a little, as though Emma had left it that way in the constant expectation of Val creeping back in the middle of the night, if she chose. The hall was silent, and I went into Val’s room and stood there in the middle of the floor. The room was a shambles: empty hangers strewn on the closet floor, a few particular books missing from the window sill, and a heap of odds and ends lying on the oak chest; scribbled pieces of paper, books of matches, paper clips, old stockings, some squashed cigarettes, a couple of tennis balls, and six or seven fountain pens that no longer worked, as though she had dumped out all of her

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drawers. Even in absence, she was infuriating. But she had so obviously left — and left with violent purpose — that any last hope was removed from my mind, and I knew there was nothing more I could do for her. A wave of discouragement came over me, and then I heard Emma’s footsteps coming up the hall, and her voice saying: “Val? Have you come back?”

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Chapter 13 The office building was large and gray, in the Nineties off Park. I looked at the row of brass plates until I found the one I wanted: E. BRAINTREE, M.D. It had taken me two weeks to work up the nerve to come. On the evening of the day Val had disappeared, Braintree had called Emma and told her that she had Val, that Val was safe and sound, and that she would keep her in custody, so to speak, until Val felt she was ready to leave. Emma had demanded to know where she was, and said she had no right to take her away from her home and schoolwork without the permission of her guardian. Braintree had replied that Val’s mental health was at stake and that if she was not allowed to be alone and think, she might have a breakdown. Emma asked where she was, and Braintree refused to tell her. When I talked to Emma the next day, I asked her why she didn’t go to Braintree and demand to have Val back; what right had she to keep Val a prisoner? And Emma had sighed, and said that perhaps Braintree was right. It was an acknowledgment of defeat, both of giving up Val and her own self-confidence as a psychiatrist, and it made me sad. “Breakdowns are a result of an accumulation of things, often repressed, piling upon the nerves,” Emma had said. “I think this might be a wise move, even though I disapprove of Dr. Braintree’s methods. But then I always have.” I thought of telling Wimpole and Boothy the whole story, but decided not to. They would only say that I should just sit around and wait, and if Val wanted to be friends with me again, well and good. They would probably say I had interfered enough by dragging Val after Henry, and causing a new crisis, and that I should learn to sit on my hands, so to speak. I knew this was right, but I had not learned; and as the days dragged by, and Val was

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nowhere to be seen at school or anywhere else, my curiosity grew overwhelming. Then came the conviction that if nobody else was going to bother, I should be the one to get Val out of the clutches of Dr. Braintree. I thought of her as an evil spirit, casting spells on Val; and it was with rather a missionary courage that I at last convinced myself to go and talk to her. The thought was certainly frightening. I still envisioned her in a police-woman’s uniform, giving Val the third degree, and thought she would probably do something hideous to my mind while I was there. I vacillated for several days, then reminded myself that if I didn’t do something fast, the Boyds would return; and then I would be defeated. I summoned up the courage to call Braintree and ask her if I might come. She sounded as though she had been expecting me, and gave me an appointment. I didn’t like the word at all, but had no other choice. So I invented a dentist excuse to leave school early on the designated afternoon — feeling as though I was following in Val’s footsteps — and went to Braintree’s office. I wore a navy blue suit, stockings, black suede shoes, and a dreary-looking hat. I wanted to look grim, formidable, and undistracting, and so I undoubtedly did. I strode into the elevator, a young woman with purpose, and asked for the sixth floor. I rang the bell, and a nurse took me into a waiting room and told me Dr. Braintree would be with me in five minutes. Five minutes, I thought, sitting on a black and prickly sofa. It will take just five minutes to get that last childhood experience out of Mrs. X, and then she’ll just have to muddle through till next time. I picked up a magazine and read about conditions in lunatic asylums, and then the nurse beckoned and I walked into Dr. Braintree’s office. She sat behind the desk, writing something in a notebook, and she pointed wordlessly to a chair. I sat down and looked at her. She was much different from what I had expected. She was much smaller, for one thing. She had slick black hair in bangs, glasses, and she was rather fat. I had pictured her as tall, gaunt and forbidding, and I was somewhat unnerved by the difference. She didn’t look as mean as I had expected, and I couldn’t picture her as having a single evil power. Suppose I like her? I thought, panicked. Suppose she convinces me she’s right? Then I reminded myself of her odd professional methods, and her presumptuousness in hiding Val away. She can’t be right, I told myself. Even if she smiles and acts sweet as pie, she’s done wrong things and I’m going to tell her so.

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She put down the pen, closed the notebook, and put it neatly on the desk. Then she looked at me and smiled slightly. She had a direct stare, and I found myself avoiding her eyes. “Marian Gilbert,” she said, in a quick, cool voice. Was she asking me or telling me? “That’s right,” I said. “I suppose you’ve come to ask me where Val is,” she said. Her black eyes were penetrating, but her voice was not unkind. It was, in fact, rather noncommittal, which I found irritating; I was spoiling for a fight. “That’s right,” I said again. “I take it you’ve talked to Emma Hambler, and she’s explained why I’m keeping Val.” She folded her hands on the desk. “Don’t you think she’s safe in my hands?” I was slightly taken aback. “Well, I didn’t mean that she wasn’t, but we all think it’s funny she’s being hidden away . . . I mean . . .” I looked at her pathetically. “I mean when Val didn’t come to school or anything, I was worried, and then I talked to Emma, and she was worried too, and then you called her and said Val had to be alone and think or she might have a nervous breakdown.” “Well, that’s more or less right,” said Braintree, smiling slightly. “Is she going to have one?” I blurted. “Or has she had one already?” “I think it has been averted,” she said. She waited as though she expected me to say something, and when I didn’t, she went on. “Val is staying with a professional friend of mine who has accommodations for occasional cases of this sort. She has seen practically no one for the past two weeks, except her hostess, and me, of course.” I glanced up, and she tapped the pencil on the desk. Another psychiatrist, I thought. Can’t she ever get away from them? “You probably wonder why she came to me.” “Well, yes. I do.” “It’s quite simple. I’m the only one who hasn’t let her down.” I stared at her. “How can you say that?” I demanded, forgetting to be tactful. “Emma Hambler hasn’t let her down! I haven’t! Neither have my mother and Boothy. We all love her. Val even said herself. . . .” “Just a moment,” she said. “Let’s go slowly, and try to be realistic. Emma Hambler, as you probably know, follows Val around with a

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notebook and then looks up her findings in Freud. This is very dangerous, Miss Gilbert — very. Psychiatrists are trained people, just as doctors are. An Emma Hambler practicing textbook psychiatry on someone — particularly someone like Val, particularly one of my cases — is like a college math major trying to perform a heart operation. I have never liked it and have constantly instructed Val to ignore Emma’s advice. Besides, I gather that Emma is somewhat frustrated herself, compensating for her childless state by taking in children as boarders.” “You don’t know Emma,” I said. “You’ve never met her. She’s kind and generous, and she loves Val, and she just happens to be interested in reading Freud. She can’t help it if she couldn’t have children . . .” “Of course not, Miss Gilbert. I’m not blaming her for her physical incapability, nor am I doubting her good intentions. I am simply saying that I don’t regard her as the best influence for Val to have at this stage of her life.” She smiled, and I felt a wave of annoyance. I wished she’d say something I could really argue with, but she was being maddeningly logical, and I found myself agreeing with most of what she said. “Let me explain something to you, Miss Gilbert. You seem to think I’m a fiend, after listening to Val talk about me, and I’d like to state my side of the case.” I thought of Isabel, in her green satin pants, bitterly saying that her own daughter thought her a monster. “One of the greatest problems of any science is to keep the factors constant. If a chemist wants to produce a reaction between two substances, he must have the temperature and the quantity exactly right for accurate results. If a biologist wants to see what happens to a guinea pig if it doesn’t get Vitamin A, he must control its diet so that it never gets Vitamin A. Doctors constantly have trouble because their patients don’t follow their advice to the letter. The ideal science would be one in which the doctor or experimenter could have absolute and complete control over all the factors, which is not always possible. Mathematics is the nearest example of that, but in my field, it is very difficult to have ideal circumstances. If I could have my way, I would supervise Val’s life for several years, exactly as I am doing now. This is a great opportunity for me, and for her too.” “But Val isn’t a guinea pig,” I protested. “She is a case, Miss Gilbert. She is far from being cured.” “All right,” I said angrily. “You’ve told me why Emma is so horrible. Now how about me?”

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“Now, please, Miss Gilbert,” she said. “Let’s give each other a chance.” “I’m sorry,” I said helplessly. “I’m certainly not going to give a thumbnail sketch of your psyche, except as it affects Val. There’s nothing really wrong with you at all, as far as I can tell, except . . . your parents are divorced?” “Yes, and I live on Third Avenue.” She ignored this. “I think this might have had something to do with your encouraging this Orient nonsense of Val’s. Girls whose father-love is frustrated are likely to have highly explosive ids, particularly during adolescence.” Necking parties, I thought, and then what? I saw myself in long black stockings and a red blouse, ambling along Sixth Avenue. “Henry Orient is a dream-figure of a man, entirely unreal. You thought if you could keep Val’s interest in him, you could put off the inevitable — Val’s becoming interested in boys and taking you along with her. You tried to fall in love with him yourself, probably.” “Well, I did,” I admitted. “But I couldn’t seem to work up to it.” “Of course not. I should guess your id wouldn’t settle for any dream-figure. It wants something real.” I began to feel myself a seething mass of horrible desires. “For Val, however, Henry Orient was an escape figure. She has some of the same id problems as you do. But besides that, it was a desire to create a world of her own. The one she lives in is far from satisfying. She met you, and you became her friend, so the two of you decided to make your own world, ignoring the rest of the Norton girls and their activities.” “But Val isn’t like the Norton girls, and neither am I! And neither of us was interested in going to all the necking parties that they . . .” I stopped, feeling guilty. According to her, I was dying to go to them. “Anyway,” I charged on, “I don’t see what was so terrible about Henry. We had fun, and we learned about music and went to concerts . . .” “Miss Gilbert, you have no idea how very complicated and neurotic Val is. Val is supposed to be adjusting to her home and family, not chasing after musicians she’s never met. Look what’s happened. You had that escapade the other night, which ended in humiliation. She came to me utterly exhausted and embarrassed, with a fully realized desire to start again on the right track.” I felt a little chill of fear. Had Braintree won, after all? “So you think she should live with her parents,” I said slowly. “I suppose she showed you

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the clipping she had from the newspaper. Do you still think she should live with Isabel?” “Oh, that clipping. That was a good thing, in my mind. Whoever gave it to her is to be congratulated.” I looked at her incredulously, thinking of Lilian’s yellow face with the tears running down it. “That ended her fixation for Henry Orient quickly and neatly. It showed her the sharp contrast between the dream world and reality, and proved, in an admittedly abrupt fashion, the contrast between her age and experience and her mother’s. She is competing with her mother for her father’s love, of course. The clipping put her in her place, so to speak. A form of shock treatment.” “But . . .” I began to feel bewildered. “If the clipping made her almost have a nervous breakdown . . .” “But she didn’t. It brought things to a head, and put her in a mood where I could have some influence over her. Val has always been a difficult patient. She is full of duplicity, and she constantly hid things from me.” I sat looking at her wretchedly. “Miss Gilbert, Val needs a normal home life. I think her parents understand that now, and when they come back this time, they will make every effort to make one for her in New York. Mr. Boyd can undoubtedly arrange it.” “But, Dr. Braintree, they don’t love her,” I said. “You’ve never met them. You don’t know what kind of people they are. Mr. Boyd doesn’t care about anything but making money, and Mrs. Boyd keeps doing things like going to Henry Orient’s apartment.” She said nothing. “Doesn’t it make any difference that Emma loves her, and I do, and my family?” I asked, rather agitatedly. “Miss Gilbert, it is her family that she must adjust to. It is not an ideal situation, but it is the only one she has. I’m sure you and your family mean well, but after all, you have no father. Or, rather, you hardly ever see him. Val has both a mother and a father.” She folded her hands again. “You think me cruel, Miss Gilbert. I think this is the only way Val will ever become a normal person. She has been hiding from things and running away from things all her life. She has never faced responsibility. She has never been anywhere for very long. It is high time she settled down. If she can grow to understand her parents and be able to live with them, she’ll be a stronger person. She understands that now.” I saw very clearly that she had had a far greater influence on Val than I ever understood, and I remembered the stockings, the fawning

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attitude, the unreasonable willingness to please Isabel — to the point of allowing Isabel to keep her delusion about herself and Henry — and it was all from Braintree. I felt a surge of useless anger. Was there nothing, then, that I could do? She looked at me, and there was a certain sympathy in her face. “Miss Gilbert, please understand that I am doing what I honestly believe to be right. Don’t you think it is my business to try and make people happy? Often the cure is painful. If I allow myself to feel sympathy, I’m not a very good doctor. Would you have any respect for a dentist who allowed all your teeth to rot away, because he couldn’t bring himself to use the drill? Can you see this?” “I suppose so,” I mumbled. “But isn’t it different when it has to do with someone’s feelings?” “No, it isn’t,” said Braintree kindly. “That was the first thing I learned as a psychiatrist.” She looked at me for a moment. “Would you like to see Val?” she asked. “Of course,” I said, surprised. She took a piece of paper and wrote an address on it. “Val is quite ready to see you. I don’t think you’ll find her in a very friendly mood, however. She is feeling a little rebellious toward you. I hope you won’t be angry with her.” She gave me the slip of paper. “You realize that your friendship with her must change. Val will eventually want to see you again, but not as frequently as before. She is rapidly outgrowing the age of such close attachments to other girls. She must make more friends at Talbott.” “Talbott!” I exclaimed. Val wearing stockings to school every single day of the year! “Is that where she’s going?” “Her mother has it in mind, and I certainly approve. It puts more emphasis on manners than Norton does.” At last I was wounded enough to cry out. Val and I were being forcibly separated! I had thought that as long as we saw each other every day, I would have a chance at her again, and might be able to win her back to me; but now, clearly, I was beaten. All my feelings of kindness to Braintree disappeared, and I started to talk, hardly aware of what I was saying. “You don’t have any sympathy. You’re trying to make Val something she isn’t. She’ll special, and you’re trying to make her like everybody

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else. She’ll just get worse . . . you sit in your office all day, and you never think how people act outside. You never . . .” “My job, Miss Gilbert, deals exclusively with trying to help people live in the world outside.” “But you send her to Isabel, who wants to make a debutante out of her, and who won’t let her be a concert pianist! You’ve forgotten all about her music!” In the heat of the moment, I entirely forgot that Val herself had said she would never be a concert pianist. “She should study and get to know musicians, not all the little snot-nosed Talbott . . .” “Please, Miss Gilbert! I thought I made myself clear to you. Have you thought about what you would do in Val’s position? What else is possible for her? She’s only thirteen years old. She can’t buck everything she has. Don’t you see that?” I did see it, and it made me more furious than ever; not at Braintree any more, but at the world. “Don’t you understand?” I shouted. “Don’t you understand anything? You’re going to ruin her! The world is going to ruin her!” And I turned and ran out the door, leaving her standing there behind her desk; and her face was almost helpless, as though she knew underneath that her way for Val wasn’t the right one either. I took the bus down to Sixty-eighth Street, where Val was staying. Before I went up, I stopped in a drugstore and had a cup of tea. I sat at the counter, full of anger and unhappiness. I knew I was defeated, and seeing Val would only prove it. But as I sat there, grimly raking over the interview, I understood the frightening truth in what she had said. There was no place for Val, save with her parents. Run off to another city, Wimpole said. How? How could she do anything at her age? How could she do anything for years, when it would be too late? For the first time I saw her not only up against her family, but up against a world that apparently could not accommodate her, a world that tried to make her adjust, when the whole keynote of her being was not adjusting to anything. Her mind — as full of color and imagination as a forest of tropical birds — had to be shaken down and shaped to fit the only kind of life that was possible for her; and it would, undoubtedly, become grayed and dull in the process. In a way, I felt appallingly ignorant about her. She still had facets I had never seen, and there were portions of her life I knew nothing about. Braintree’s diagnosis of her would undoubtedly be bewildering. My knowledge of her came from intuition and sympathy, a child’s

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knowledge. But since I felt, rather than really understood, her tragedy, being so young myself and dimly knowing how precious this time was, I had a knowledge of her that went deeper than any theory of Braintree’s, or of any other adult’s. I shared her fate; it was my world as well as hers, we would grow up into it at the same time, and it was shocking to see how it was already treating another of my generation. I paid for my tea and walked slowly across the street, my gloves and hat crumpled in my hand. I felt as though I were going through the motions of a pantomime, when everybody knew what the ending was going to be anyway. But I had a last shred of hope that I could salvage something, however little, from what we had. In the past hour I had lost such ground that I demanded little; just the privilege of occasionally hearing what she was doing, and perhaps seeing her every few years. I wanted to see what she would turn into, and speculate on what she was thinking and feeling. Perhaps something might leak through to me, and make a difference sometime. The door was open slightly, and I walked in. She was sitting at a small upright piano in the far corner of the room, playing a bit from this and a bit from that. When she saw me she gave a little smile. “Hi, Gilbert,” she said nonchalantly. “Braintree just called and said you were on your way over.” She turned back to finish the phrase of Bach she had been playing, and I felt a wave of irritation. Up to the last she must pretend that nothing matters to her, that this scrap of music emanating from her magnificent brain is vastly more important than the likes of me, and that the whole thing must be staged very conspicuously. I took off my jacket and threw it on a chair, along with the dreary hat. No one seemed to be around, and the room was dreadful — orange walls and brown curtains. “Val,” I said, “stop that hammering and sit down. I’ve come here to talk.” “I thought you liked me to play,” she said. “I can’t stand Bach.” She closed a book of music that she had not been using, then came slowly over and sat down on the sofa. “How do you like it here?” I asked, sitting opposite her. “I wouldn’t go for the color scheme,” she said, “but the food isn’t bad.” “Where’s Dr. What’s-her-name?” “Out jouncing somebody’s gray matter.”

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“Does she jounce yours?” “Mildly. About like Emma.” She looked straight at me, then offered me a cigarette. She seemed to have become a nicotine addict. I wondered what to say to her; her manner was defensive. “Since you came here to talk,” she said, “we might as well start. I’ll start, since you look fogged. Why didn’t you tell me about Isabel?” I felt as though I had been immersed in a cold bath. Her face was hard, and it frightened me. I can’t fight back, I thought helplessly. I have no strength left. I’ll just be honest, and grovel, and see what happens. If I’m down she can’t hit me very hard. “I didn’t have the nerve,” I said. “It would have made everything much simpler.” “How did you find out? That she was at the apartment, I mean?” “I guessed. When I saw the clipping and remembered your green face when you came down the stairs, it all made sense.” She mashed out the cigarette. “Why didn’t you tell, when we got back to the Melt? You missed a swell opportunity. Isabel was being bitchy, and it would have been a fine way to slap back at her.” Her voice was a little agitated. “I thought you hated her enough to poison anything good I thought about her. If you didn’t have the nerve to tell her to her face, why didn’t you tell me? It would have had the same effect. As it was, I had to find out in the school lobby — from Lilian Kafritz.” I looked at her wretchedly. “I wanted to save you from knowing, Val. I didn’t want you to know, if I had to be buried with the secret. I want you to be happy more than I hate Isabel. I thought you’d be happier not knowing the truth.” She watched me, not at all disarmed. “Lilian didn’t know it was your mother in the clipping,” I said. “She feels terrible about it.” “So you told her. That’s fine. Now she’ll blab it all over.” “She won’t! Of course I told her! It was the only way to knock some sense into her. She started to cry and got all repentant. What do you care?” I asked nastily. “You’re going to Talbott, aren’t you?” “So what?” Both of us were backing into our corners, preparing to charge. I was getting off the ground, and I meant to stay there. “So I’ll miss you, that’s all,” I said abruptly, and felt tears coming into my eyes. It was worse than I had ever expected, and I didn’t know

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what to do about it. In desperation, I began to babble. “I didn’t come here to try and make you change anything you’re going to do,” I said. “I know I can’t do anything about it. I just didn’t . . . didn’t want you to think I was awful, or anything. You’re the best friend I have . . . the only friend, as a matter of fact. When you live with Isable, she probably won’t let us ever see each other, and . . . well, I just want to see you sometimes. Just occasionally, to see how you like school and stuff. If I was wrong in not telling you about Isabel, I’m sorry, but I just didn’t know what to do. We never should have gone out that evening anyhow. We never should have . . .” “Gilbert, listen.” Her voice had an unexpected gentleness, something I had never really heard in it before. “All sorts of things have happened, and you know about most of them. You’ve got to understand why everything has to change. Before, everything seemed so simple. You and Wimpole! Any problems can be solved by walking through the Park or whipping up some beef Stronganoff. And for you they can, or partly, anyway. I envy you, because I’m not that way. But I thought everything was simple too. I didn’t take stock of myself. You almost had me convinced that Braintree was for the birds, and that I could throw my emotions every which way about Henry, even though she didn’t approve. You were always talking about her as though she was a demon, and Isabel too, and making Henry out to be the ideal of everything.” “Don’t forget,” I said slowly, “that you were the one who fell in love with Henry, and you made up the code and wrote the Bible, and you talked about Braintree and Isabel as though they were spooks. You were always the one who led, and I followed. I was the one sitting in a fog in the third row, and you were the one who pulled me out of it.” “Oh, I know, Gilbert. But you get carried away, once somebody gives you a shove. Once it got started, who’s to say who was pushing and who was being dragged along? We both went into the whole business whole hog. The point is, you had nothing to lose, but I did.” I started to say something, but she went on. “I’m not blaming you, except that you happened to be sitting there by the river that morning. But when you came along, eating your sundaes and looking around with that dazed smile, I thought I could just forget myself. So I decided that I’d consider myself normal. It worked, for a while, then it didn’t any more. I knew I was doing something wrong, and I felt guilty. Then when Isabel came to town, and I knew I should be sticking with her, I was all torn. And I’d see you around Norton looking at me as though I’d

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sprouted two heads. Look, Gilbert . . . I’m neurotic. I almost had a nervous breakdown. Can you understand that?” “Yes,” I said. “I’m undergoing psychoanalysis. I’m learning all sorts of awful things about myself, things that would surprise you.” “I know, your id,” I said wearily. “My id is a mess too.” “Did Braintree tell you that?” “Who else?” She grinned, and I smiled wanly. “That’s only the beginning,” she said. “I’m overattached to Arthur, believe it or not. I hardly ever see him. Then there are all sorts of things about expressing myself and emotional blocks, and believing myself to be a genius” (she didn’t contradict this) “and escapism and stuff. But the old id is at the bottom of it all. Since I have a frustrated father instinct, I’m looking for a father in other ways.” “So am I,” I said, “but I’m hoping to marry off Wimpole.” “There are plans for me,” she said. “Would you like a Coke or anything? This dame doesn’t keep any beer.” “Sure, a Coke.” She went into the kitchen and rattled around, then came back with two bottles. “I have to go to Talbott, Gilbert. Isabel is getting an apartment, and we’re all moving in.” “How jolly. Parties every Christmas Eve.” I was having a hard time being agreeable. “And Freddie will baby-sit while Isabel goes out and paints the town.” To my relief, she giggled; I hadn’t really meant to say it, it just popped out. “You’re really getting funny,” she said appraisingly. Then her face grew serious. “I know Isabel isn’t any ideal mother, or anything. She has her problems. Her id . . .” “Is purple with orange stripes.” “Anyway,” she went on patiently, as though she was explaining a math problem to a six-year-old, “Isabel has been a little jostled by all this too. She wants to make a home. No, this time she really does,” she added, looking at my skeptical face. “This is the first time I’ve believed her when she said that.” Her voice was impressive, as though she was giving unshakable evidence. “Arthur doesn’t know about the Henry

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business, and he isn’t going to find out.” She looked at me intently. “Gilbert, she’s the only mother I have.” She had said it before, but when she said it this time, something struck. I looked at her for a moment, then drew a deep breath. “Okay, Val,” I said, “I give up. Braintree’s won, and Isabel’s won. I won’t try to say anything else.” She looked at me quickly. “Do you understand? Do you understand that if I ever want to be adjusted I have to give myself over to Braintree, and do whatever she . . .” “I understand everything.” I got up. “Call me up sometime when you’re adjusted again. We’ll have lunch.” I felt my lip tremble. Gilbert, you’re a slob, I told myself. Why don’t you stop alternately being nasty and starting to cry? Nothing I’ve said is right. Nothing . . . She looked over at me. “Try hard to understand,” she said. “And stop looking so rattled. You have to grow up too, you know. You’re out of your fog, now. You have to go back to Norton, all alone, and make some friends. Get to know Sylvia. She’s a good egg. Why not join Mrs. Leopold’s dancing classes? I’m going to.” I hesitated. “I might. I’ll think about it.” “Maybe we’ll get to know some boys and go out some time.” “Maybe.” I looked at her wonderingly. There was a calmness about her I had never seen before, a certain gentleness; I had thought that today she would be the excited one, but it wasn’t so. Was it going to be all right, after all? Who could say? The calmness was new, and probably more pleasing to adults, but to me it was a poor substitute for the Val who ran up streets, splitsed little boys on tricycles, and who fell passionately in love at a concert. It was the way the crisis had been resolved, that was all; it was the way she had to face what was coming. It was time to leave, but I looked lingeringly around the room. There in the corner was the piano, brown and tidy. “What about that?” I asked. “I’ll still take lessons, probably.” “But you aren’t going to be a great pianist.” “I’ve always told you I’m not good enough.” She was looking at me searchingly, waiting for some sort of approval.

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“You don’t know unless you try,” I said, a little savagely. “I know. If it’s a choice between being happy and being a great musician, I’d rather be happy.” “Is that the way you see it? I’d say you’ll never be happy without it.” “It’s all or nothing. If I did do it I’d have to be great. If I turned out not to be, I’d probably cut my throat. So why take the chance?” She was still watching me. “Gilbert,” she said quickly, “say you don’t think I’m a complete jerk.” “Val . . . let’s make a pact in blood, right now. I don’t think you’re a jerk, or not completely, anyway. Let’s make a pact that we’ll meet ten years from today and talk things over.” “My God,” Val said. “We’ll be twenty-three.” “We might evern be married or something. Let’s meet at the drugstore on Fifty-seventh at five o’clock.” “Okay. I’ll get a pin.” She pranced out of the room and returned with a pin, a large sheet of paper and pen. Boyd and Gilbert solemnly swear, she wrote, that ten years from this day January 28, in the year of our Henry, they will meet at sacred drugstore for a powwow. They will then be the venerable age of twenty-three and probably will have more sense than they do now, but then again maybe they won’t. “Fine,” I said, and we both signed it. “Okay, give me your finger.” I jabbed it with the pin, then my own, and we put two small spots of blood underneath the signatures. Val looked up and grinned. “You keep it,” she said. “I never know where I’m going to be living.” “I’ll put it in the basement under a stone.” I looked at her, at her mischievous, lonesome face, and I threw my arms around her and hugged her. “Val,” I said, “I’ll never forget you, no matter what awful things you do.” She smiled, her face full of wistfulness — longing for more childhood, which she had been so abruptly denied. I looked at her, trying to memorize everything about her face. If I saw her again — before the ten years were up — it might be across the floor at Mrs. Leopold’s, or at the end of the sofa at a necking party. As she had been, she never would be again; and I turned and walked quickly out of the room, closing the door behind me, and trying to ignore the sting of tears in my eyes.

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