Chapter 5
THE TRIP TO EUROPE was okay. I mean, it was interesting, seeing all those old castles and the museums-Debbie and my mother got full of culture. Father was busy most of the time, meeting with European representatives of his corporation. We saw as little of him as usual.
We returned to the States at the end of summer, in time for me to begin my fall school term. I was a sophomore that year. We had been back only a short while when I got the awful news about Nell's being married.
I came home from school one day and Debbie was reading a letter.
She said, "Guess what, Mark. Nell Phillips is married."
I said nothing. I felt as if somebody had dumped the ceiling on my head. I thought at first that Nell had made up with Paul Edwards.
Debbie said, "I'll bet you'd never guess whom she married."
I was feeling real lousy. I wanted to go off somewhere by myself and bawl. I shrugged. "I don't care."
I was wishing Debbie looked less smug.
"She married Fred Turner-can you imagine? He's the man that owns the shrimp fleet that Uncle Enoch works for. I'll bet he must be almost forty years old. I wouldn't have believed Nell would marry anybody like that."
She stared at the letter again, as if to make sure she had not misread it.
Mother came in.
She said, "Well, I'm not really surprised. Nell is like her father-nighty and irresponsible. Fred Turner is pretty well fixed. He can buy her pretty dresses and give her a big car to drive around in. That's all a girl like Nell really cares about."
I wanted to hear no more. I went up to my room and closed the door. I got my shell collection out of the closet and sat on the floor, looking at it dully, remembering the summer I had spent collecting it. I felt lonely and terrible. Why would Nell do a thing like getting married to old Fred Turner? I remembered what he had looked like and I got sick at my stomach thinking about Nell's being his wife.
My brain was a dull lump in my head. But certain inevitabilities were gradually seeping into it. I was going to spend no more summers on the beach with Nell. She and I would have no more bicycle races, no more secret moments behind the dunes where exciting events took place that were elsewhere forbidden.
The fun, the adventures, the hot, sweet yearnings were over.
I was angry at Nell and at fat, piggish Fred Turner. While I was at it, I threw my brother Gordon, my father and Debbie, too, into my personal perdition. I thought bitterly that Uncle Enoch probably would have backed out on his promise to take me out on his shrimp boat again. Suddenly I trusted no one. To hell with them all.
I gathered up my shell collection and dumped it into the trash. I took a key from a secret place in my desk drawer and went to my closet. I dug under a bunch of boxes until I found one I had put a big lock on. I unlocked it and lifted the lid. I looked at Nell's island treasure-the stuff she had given me the summer before last. I took all those things and dumped them, too, into the trash. The gesture made little sense. I still felt lousy.
Not much worth telling about what happened while I was in high school. My father saw to it that my activities followed a "respectable" pattern. I conformed because I could think of nothing else to do. My grades were okay. I went out for sports. That I was too light to make it big as a football player failed to bother me.
I found no other Nell. I dated the girls in my crowd. They came from nice, respectable families. Families like mine. Most were conscious about the money their parents had.
Some made a big deal out of being virgins while others would go pretty far if you caught them in the right mood. I made it in the back seat of my car with a girl whose name did not matter then or later-on the night of my last prom. She was scared stiff the whole time and kept blubbering about how she had never before done anything like what we were doing-which was a fat lie. I knew a guy who had made out with her in her freshman year.
I remembered how Nell had been and wondered if any other girl would ever make sense to me.
Finally I was on my way to college. Leaving home was like being let out of a concentration camp.
My father and I had a big row about what I was going to major in. I wanted to teach school, maybe on a junior college level. My father hit the ceiling.
"You want to starve to death? Teachers make no money."
Then he informed me that I was going to major in business administration like my brother, Gordon, so I could equip myself to "get into the business." Which meant being "a member of the team." Or, to put it more simply, a "company man" in his corporation. I felt like puking.
But leaving home made up for the old man's telling me what I had to study, at least to a degree. I won the fight to choose my own college and selected one in another state. Freedom tasted like a rare wine.
The very first week I was in college something important happened. I met Alice Rawson. Alice was a beautiful, long-legged girl whose father owned a ranch large enough to lose the state of Rhode Island in.
I had just taken my seat in my first class when she came in. Her gray eyes swept the room, collided with mine. I felt a special kind of excitement crawl up my spine.
The class was over. I stood outside on the top steps of the building. Other students hurried past me on their way to other classes. I had taken few notes during the class. I had been more interested in the dark-haired girl with the high-voltage eyes whose name I did not yet know.
She had chosen a seat near the front of the class. I had spent the hour gazing at the back of her head and her shoulders, speculating about her. You can tell a lot about a girl from her back. This one wore her hair smartly, yet casually. I could imagine it tumbling freely on a pillow. She carried her shoulders squarely and walked well. She seemed to have an assurance about her fenfininity. She did not remind me of Nell one way or another. She was a girl in her own right.
She was obviously a daughter of money-but enough of her self was visible at a glance to make her worth investigating.
She passed me. She trotted down the steps on clicking heels. I read style to the swing of her body.
She had long legs. I needed a couple of healthy strides to fall in step with her. "Hi," I said.
Her head jerked around. She looked startled. Her eyes hit me again-pleasantly. She smiled.
"Oh-I saw you in class."
"I'm Mark Harris."
She cocked her head.
"Hello, Mark. I'm Alice Rawson."
The name Rawson registered. My father had mentioned it. I associated it with money older than my father's. There were, of course, many Rawsons. But if Alice belonged to the clan I had heard of-her family could probably buy and sell my old man a couple of times.
The possibility pleased me.
I said, "Let's take a coffee break."
She gave me a long look, shook her head.
"Thanks, but I have another class."
I watched her turn and stride away. She walked with a sexy swing. Her dress tugged at the smooth lines of her thighs. I wondered what they would look like freed from that skirt.
I checked with the student register, found out she was living at one of the sorority houses. It figured.
I telephoned her that night for a date.
She said she had to study.
I tried her again the following night.
She agreed to a date during the weekend.
On Saturday night I took her to a pizza parlor where they had a sing-along banjo group. We stuffed on pizza, washed it down with keg beer, sang loudly and laughed. I decided Alice was okay. I was glad to find out she was no phony.
How would she be in making out? She had given me no clues during the evening. She had exuded healthy spontaneity but had given away no secrets about herself. If she had arrived at some conclusions about sex, she kept them to herself during our first date.
I managed to kiss her good night in front of her sorority house. That was as far as I wanted to go, first time out. I was sizing her up as a challenge.
"How about a swim tomorrow afternoon?"
"Gosh, I don't know, Mark. I have to work on my chemistry notebook and I haven't yet finished unpacking."
"You don't want to stay cooped up all day, do you?" She smiled.
"I guess you're right. All right, then. About three o'clock?"
"Sure."
The next afternoon we took a drive up into the hills to a lake where some of the college crowd went to ski and swim. The weather was still warm. Alice came out of the bathhouse in a red bikini and my eyes went out on stems. Clothes can sometimes fool you about a girl but a bikini tells the truth. And the truth about Alice's figure was poetry in flesh. It had to do with more than proportion and symmetry-it dealt with how she used them.
We swam and horsed about in the water. Every time I touched her an overwhelming truth about myself became more evident-it had been a long time since I had made out with a girl. I was suddenly as horny as a guy could get.
Alice sensed what was happening. A girl had to be able to figure out things like that about a guy. She played the scene cool. I did the same.
Something started to build up between us.
The weeks passed well into the fall term and I began to wonder when one of us was going to knock the thing down. We had drawn the line at fervid good-night kisses but I was willing to bet she was not frigid. A virgin maybe. But she came on real strong when we kissed, breathing hard and fingering the back of my neck and sometimes letting out a sound that could never be translated into words.
I had no idea of what both of us were waiting for. And I don't know what I would have done if some good buddies hadn't told me about a cathouse located out in the country about twenty miles from town.
I patronized a little hustler named Ginny. She was about five feet tall and weighed all of ninety pounds soaking wet-but she put her heart into her work. And she never .seemed to get tired. Also, she looked the opposite of a whore. She had a little turned-up nose with freckles sprinkled across it. Her eyes were wide and blue. Her figure was cute, no more, no less. She could have passed for the girl next door and she told me she had been hustling since she was thirteen.
I believed her. She knew her business. Part of it was to look like the girl next door and to be able to kill a guy in bed-but leave him breathing.
Ginny was a fine little swinger as prostitutes go. But I always felt vaguely dissatisfied and disgusted when I left her. I could find no real satisfaction in commercial sex-so that not even Ginny explained why I held back from really putting everything on the line with Alice.
One morning I awoke feeling particularly bugged and disgusted. I lay in bed, looked around my pad. I had decided not to five at the frat house. The idea of living where a bunch of guys were constantly walking over each other iced me. I liked my privacy. And my father was footing the bills. So I rented this little garage apartment.
It consisted of a room with a lumpy day bed-a miniature kitchen the size of a closet was set in an alcove. The ceiling was right up against the flat-top roof, with no crawl space or insulation between. This morning I heard sparrows walking around on the roof. Or so I told myself. Life was not beautiful.
I had pasted over the pathetic wallpaper with its faded flower design with travel posters and full-length, four-color nudes from fold-out sections of girlie magazines. Normally these made a pleasant enough scene to awake to. I could he in bed and take a world cruise by looking at the travel posters. And when I felt like making port, I could shift over to the girls.
This morning neither prospect pleased.
I had a glass of orange juice laced with gin for breakfast. The juice was for my health. The gin was for me.
I got on a small glow, sipping spiked orange juice and gazing at travel posters of Tahiti. I was on my third orange juice and had gone from Tahiti to a field of tulip blossoms in Holland when I heard a knock on my door.
I said, "Go away."
Alice Rawson's muffled voice came insistently through the door panel.
"Mark, you let me in."
I crawled from under the tangled covers, pulled on a robe and opened the door. "Hi."
I blinked uncomfortably at the bright sunshine she was letting in.
My pad was reached by means of a rickety outside staircase. Alice stood on the landing, looking like an ad from a coed dress shop. I looked like a guy in a bathrobe, hair uncombed and yesterday's beard still showing.
"Now that you're here, Alice," I said, "come on in."
"All right, be sarcastic. Mark, you're supposed to be in math class right now."
"Well, what do you know? Listen, I've got some crazy orange juice. Like some?"
She came in, dumped her books on a chair and closed the door.
"Mark, you're drunk."
"Maybe it's the vitamin in the orange juice. You have to watch that stuff."
I mixed up a fresh pair of screwdrivers and handed her one.
She put it on an end table without tasting it.
"Mark," she said. "You've already had four cuts this month in that math class. If you take more they'll kick you out of the class."
"Swell," I said. "I never did like math."
I went to my record stack and selected a program of unobtrusive modern jazz. I had a fine set of stereo components. Debbie had given it to me. The sound they delivered was too much. I kept the volume soft. The faintly discordant notes of the cool jazz remained at a discreet level.
Alice was still being severe with me. I liked it. She looked and sounded fine and good to me-what I needed.
"I wish I could understand you, Mark. Do you want to flunk?"
I flopped on the bed.
"I don't imagine it makes much difference one way or the other."
She shook her head in bewilderment.
"You're something else, do you know that? What do you want, Mark?"
I gazed at her. She had sat down in my sagging, overstuffed chair. The tight gray skirt of her suit had pulled well above her knees. I decided to start kicking down whatever it was we had built between us.
"Well, to start with," I said frankly, "I want you."
She blushed. "Now don't start that-"
"Why not?"
She shifted uncomfortably. "You know why not. You and I-"
"No, I don't know why not. Aren't you interested?" She took a sip of her screwdriver finally, stared into the glass.
"You know I am," she said.
"Well, then why do we keep holding out on each other? Sex is supposed to be life's sublime experience." She gave me an angry look.
"You're so-so darned cynical about everything. I'll bet you figured out this pitch in advance-"
"How could I have figured you'd come here this morning?"
"You make my being here sound cheap-"
"You make it sound phony," I countered. "Why should you care about my grades? It bugs me when people are phony. I'm trying to be honest."
She flushed angrily. "You're all mixed up-"
"I'm not mixed up. I'm drunk."
"That's another thing. Do you realize how much you've been drinking lately? You're going to wind up getting yourself thrown out of school-"
She broke off and we glared at each other. I picked up my drink. I felt lousy. I hated the morning again, screwdrivers and all.
A painful silence ensued. The only sounds in the room were soft, cool jazz and my imaginary sparrows walking around on the roof.
Alice suddenly put down her drink, got out of her chair, came over to sit on the side of the bed. She put her hand on my arm.
"Mark, honey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start a quarrel."
"That's okay," I said. "I don't even want to be the easiest guy in the world to get along with."
"All right. I shouldn't try to change you or make you over. And maybe you're right about my reasons for coming here. I hate to see you banging your head against a stone wall all the time. I-I guess I care a great deal for you, Mark."
We kissed and made up and then we necked for a while on the bed. I put my hand on one of her breasts. She pushed the hand away.
She sat up, looking flustered and slightly disheveled.
"Mark, we have to stop."
"Why?" I wanted to know.
"It's not right. It's dangerous-when we're alone this way."
"I don't dig. So we're alone and in the mood. What's to be afraid of? We don't have to worry about anybody here."
"Except us, Mark." She plucked at the sheet. "What you're suggesting is a big step for a girl."
"Do you want to spend the rest of your life being a virgin?"
Her flush deepened.
"Of course not," she said, in a voice so low it was almost inaudible. "But when I-go all the way with a boy ... I want it to mean something. I want it to happem with a boy who feels it's as important to him as it is to me-"
"It means a lot to me, Alice." I wondered if I was lying. "You know I've flipped about you."
She looked at me searchingly.
"I wish I could be sure how you really felt about me, Mark. I don't think you're sure yourself."
"You talk too much," I said impatiently. "You want to analyze everything."
I pulled her back into my arms. She resisted. But when my lips found hers she relaxed against me with a shuddering sigh. We kissed long and deeply. The kiss shook up both of us. I felt her eager young body straining against mine. Hunger for her tore through me. She was right-I was not entirely sure of what she meant to me. How could I be sure of how I felt about her until I knew her all the way?
My thoughts were vague and confused.
Our kisses became more heated. Alice's head was turning' slowly from side to side as our mouths fused, parted, strained together until I could feel her teeth touching mine and her quivering tongue searching deeply. My arms were tight around her and I could feel the heat of her through her clothing. She was stretched out on the bed with me now, shivering and breathing raggedly.
Suddenly she tore her lips from mine and sat up. Her hair was a lovely disarray. Her mouth looked swollen and her clothes were rumpled. The pupils of her eyes were wide with lust and fright. She seemed on the verge of tears.
"Mark, you're driving me crazy-"
"What do you think you're doing to me?" I said. "You get a guy all steamed up-then chicken out."
She buried her face in her hands and began to cry softly.
"I'm sorry, Mark. I shouldn't have come. I don't mean to be a tease. You know I'm not like that. It's just that-" She raised her tear-streaked face, looked at me steadily, "If I once start-I won't be able to go back. I have to be sure-"
"Sure of what? That I'll marry you? We can't get married in the middle of the school term. My old man would squeal like a stuck pig."
She gave me a reproachful look.
"Why do you have to say things to hurt me? Do you think I'm acting as I am because I'm holding out for a wedding ring?"
"I asked you a question. What do you have to be sure of?"
She was looking at me steadily.
"For one thing-I have to know there isn't anyone else you're involved with."
"Oh, for cripe's sake-I haven't got a lousy harem, if that's what you mean."
"How about the girl you told me about? Your cousin Nell."
One night when I had been drunk on beer I had told Alice about that summer with Nell. Perhaps telling her had been a mistake. It's never wise to tell a girl about your past.
"That happened when I was a kid," I told her. "Nell doesn't mean anything to me any more. Anyway, she's married."
I was tired of all this fencing around. I pulled Alice back into my arms. This time she put up no resistance. Again our kisses grew heated. We were clamped together on the bed, both of us breathing hard, perspiring and straining as if to weld ourselves together. My hand moved down to her thigh. It touched flesh, as smooth and soft as velvet. Her tight skirt had risen far up her legs. I caressed the softness of her inner thighs. She did not stop me this time. She only breathed harder and strained more tightly against me. She made a throaty sound.
My blood surged in hot waves. My hand moved. Her body leaped.
She choked out my name. Her hips began a rhythmic, instinctive movement.
My bathrobe had fallen open. I felt her quivering against me.
She gasped, "Mark, don't make me-"
But I forced the issue now. Excitement thundered through me.
She whispered breathlessly, "What's the use of lying? I want it as much as you do. I think about it all the time-"
She writhed in frightened eagerness.
I took her as decisively-and perhaps with much the same passion-as a matador moves in for the kill. The game was over between us and she no longer had a chance. I heard Alice's cry of pain. I ravaged her virginity ruthlessly.
Then I felt her body leaping and surging. Something in her died in that moment, I remember thinking.
Was something new born?
Exquisite waves of ecstasy mounted to a thunderous crescendo and exploded in a white-hot burst of sensation. I left her and we sprawled in tangled bedclothes, panting.
After a while she crept into my arms.
She whispered, "You hurt me, Mark." Her fingers touched my cheek. "But it's all right, honey. I love you and that makes everything right. Doesn't it?"
"Yes," I said.
But I was anything but sure. Did I feel guilt? What had made matters right between Nell and myself? The fact that she had taken the initiative, the lead, and so removed me from all possible guilt?
Whatever I felt now, it was something new. As I had sensed when I first saw her, Alice was a girl in her own right.
What was our relationship now? I wished I could be more certain of how I felt about her. Something inside kept me from being sure about anything.
After a while I kissed her again and we started fooling around. Suddenly she sat up and took off her jacket and blouse. Her face turned pink and she looked away.
"I guess, if we're going to do it again-we might as well do it right," she said.
I watched silently as she slipped out of the blouse. Satin bra straps indented the soft flesh of her shoulders and back. She reached behind her to unhook the bra. She let it slide down her arms and threw it over a chair. She drew a deep breath, stood up beside the bed, divested herself of her skirt and hose and came to me.
This time our love was more abandoned, more complete. I knew no impulse to conquer or to seek out moments of truth. Instead of taking, I gave and accepted.
Yet something was lacking in the midst of the glory and the fulfillment-and presently I discovered I was again using her roughly, almost angrily, trying to find the totality that should have been in our new relationship.
Later we lay side by side on the bed and sipped screwdrivers.
Alice asked, "Mark, what is that crazy sound I've been hearing all morning?"
She was getting a little drunk.
"It's sparrows walking on the roof."
She propped herself on one elbow, staring incredulously at me.
"What?"
I nodded.
"Honest. That's what it is. Sparrows walking on the roof."
I never did find out what that sound was-maybe it was simply caused by the roof components expanding in the day's growing heat.
I stared up at the ceiling. Suddenly my thoughts were a long way off. I knew what had been lacking while I had been making love with Alice. It was something Nell had been unable to teach me. I wondered if any girl could.