’t married by the time she was thirty, she was going to pick out some man and say, Look here, I want to have a child, and go to France or some place and have the child. She knew she never would do that, but one part of her threatened another part of her with it. Then, in the spring of 1926, she fell in love with Julian English, and she knew she never had loved anyone else. It was funny. Why, it was the funniest thing in the world. Here he was, taking her out, kissing her good night, ignoring her, seeing a lot of her and then not seeing her at all, going together to dancing school, kindergarten, Miss Holton s School she d known him all her life, had hidden his bicycle up a tree, wet her pants at one of his birthday parties, been bathed in the same tub with him by two older girls who now had children of their own. He had taken her to her first Assembly, he had put clay on her leg when a yellow-jacket stung her, he had given her a bloody nose and so on. For her there never had been anyone else. No one else counted. She was a little afraid that he still loved the Polish girl a little, but she was sure he loved Caroline the most. They dodged being in love at first, and because they always had been friends, his seeing her increasingly more frequently did not become perceptible until he asked her to go with him to the July 3 Assembly. You asked a girl at least a month in advance for the Assemblies, and you asked the girl you liked best. It was the only one he ever freely had asked her to; she knew his mother told him to ask her to the very first one. The Assembly was not just another dance, and in the time between her accepting and the night of the dance they both were conscious of it. A girl gave preference in dates to the man who was taking her to the Assembly. You’re my girl now, he would say. Or at least till after the Assembly. Or she would call him up and say: Do you want to drive to Philadelphia with Mother and me? You’re my beau now, so I thought I d ask you first, but don t say yes unless you really want to. When he would kiss her she could tell he was trying to find out how much she knew. The long kisses in the beginning were like that; no overwhelming passion, but lazy and full of curiosity. They would halt in a long kiss and she would draw back her head and smile at him and be at her, and then without speaking be would put his mouth to hers again. He left it at kissing until one night when he brought her home from the movies and she went upstairs for a minute and saw that her mother was sound asleep. He was in the lavatory on the first floor and he heard her come down the back steps and try the kitchen door. They went to the library. Do you want a glass of milk? she said. No. Is that why you went to the kitchen?
I wanted to see if the maids were in.
Are they?
Yes. The back door s locked. She put up her arms and he came in to them. He lay with his head on her shoulder for a few minutes and then she reached up and pulled the cord of the floor lamp, and moved in on the davenport so that he could lie beside her. He rolled up her sweater, up to her armpits, and unhooked her brassiere, and she unbuttoned his vest and he dropped it and his coat on the floor. Don t don t go the limit, will you, sweetheart? she said. Don t you want to? he said. More than anything in the world, my darling love. But I can t. I never have. I will for you, but not here. Not you know. I want to in bed, when everything is right for it.
You never have?
Not all the way. Don t let s talk about it. I love you and I want you all the way, but I m afraid to here.
All right.
Do that. Ah, Ju. Why are you so nice to me? No one else could be so darling to me. Why are you?
Because I love you. I always loved you.
Oh, love! Sweetheart?
What, darling?
I can t help it. Have you got a thing? You know?
Yes.
Do you think it d be all right? I m so afraid, but it s just as wrong to stop, isn’t it? Isn’t it just as wrong to stop?
Yes, darling.
I m so crazy about &
CHAPTER 6
THERE were Lute and Irma Fliegler, Willard and Bertha Doane, Walter and Helen Schaeffer, Harvey and Emily Ziegenfuss, Dutch (Ralph) and Frannie Snyder, Vic and Monica Smith, and Dewey and Lois Hartenstein. From where he sat, at the side and to the rear of the orchestra, practically in the drummer s lap, Al Grecco could see them all. He knew all the men by sight, and Lute Fliegler and Dutch Snyder he knew by their first names, and the others he knew to say hello to without his using any name on them and without their calling him Al or Grecco or anything but Hyuh. He knew Irma Fliegler to speak to; he called her Mrs. Fliegler. He knew Frannie Snyder to speak to; he could have called her Frannie or Baby or practically anything that came into his mind, but he never said more than hello, with a distant nod, to her. What the hell; she was married, even if that was no bargain she was married to that Dutch, and for all Al knew she had been straight as a dye (Al sometimes wondered how straight straight as a dye was; a dye wasn