Chapter 10
Nadine returned to an empty house early Sunday afternoon, her return uneventful except for the slow, wordless wave from Leila Stroud, who was watering her precious roses as Nadine turned into the drive.
It was after seven-thirty when the phone awakened her. Nadine answered it in the den.
"Hello?"
"Mother? Where were you? I tried to call you all morning."
"I must have been awfully sound asleep. How are you, dear? Have a good time?"
"I called Leila, I was so worried. She said the car was gone."
"It's back now. I left it at Mike's to have the oil changed last night."
"Oh. What did you do-walk home?"
"It's only six blocks to the garage."
"How come you didn't go to the movie? Did you go to the auction?"
"No, honey ... I decided not to. The traffic's ..
"Reason I called ... did Mrs. Ryner come around? With it?"
"It? Oh, you mean George. No, honey. No one's been here. It's been very quiet. I asked if you had a nice time?"
"It was okay. We're still over here at Frannie's. Would you have a hemorrhage if we went to the show? I mean, it doesn't look like whozit's coming over."
"It's all right with me if you want to, Sher. Try not to be too late. Dad's coming home and we ought to be here."
Sherry giggled. "To clean the fish? Hey, they're yelling for me. I'll see you, 'kay?"
Nadine had barely gotten out of the den when the phone summoned her return. She expected a postscript from Sherry. It was Mabel Ryner.
"Nadine? Say, don't you pay your phone bill, kid?"
"Pay my ... oh, did you try to call me earlier? I'm sorry ... I ran over to Leila's for awhile."
"I called you yesterday, too. I thought we could ... do something."
"Yesterday? Oh ... I went to an auction."
"The boys are going to be late. See, Paul tried to call you around 'leven this morning, but you weren't home. So when Wardy called here, he said for me to call and give you the message."
"That they'll be late?"
"Uhuh. They had a time with Vince last night. He got plastered and he wandered off somewhere ... I think they were up half the night looking for him."
"I hope he didn't fall into the lake."
"Nah, Wardy found him in some tavern. I said to Wardy, 'llnder the table, I bet,' and he said, 'No, in a damn phone booth.' How about that? Anyway, they didn't get out on the lake until late and they didn't catch anything today. So they decided to try again after lunch and leave about four o'clock."
"Oh ... I'm glad you told me, Mabel. I'd have worried. If Paul had thought to call me at Leila's...."
"Wardy said he did. Oh, well, just so you know. I told Gwen, too ... say, if you're just twiddling your thumbs, come over in about an hour. Gwen's coming ... we could play some cards."
"I'll see, Mabel." (There had to be an excuse!) "I promised I'd take Sherry and her girl friend to a drive-in, but if they change their minds...."
Mabel accepted the alibi graciously; her kids always come first, too, she said. People's kids should!
Nadine decided to digest the conversations while under a shower. The contradictions about the auction and being at Leila's would probably never come to light. It was vain to suppose people devoted their conversations to comparing notes on what you had said to them. No sweat, as Sherry might say.
She took her time in the bathroom; restless, not anxious to spend the evening buttering up the family bread-and-butter-Mabel. Yet too stimulated to be alone. Couldn't even expect a call from Vince to break the monotony ... everybody gone. She began to resent Paul's lateness; she had counted on his company tonight! Since there was no one around to appreciate the results, there was no special reason for Nadine to rearrange her hair and make a prolonged production of applying make-up to her face. But the processes killed some time.
Afterward, rather enjoying the freedom of nudity, she puttered around the bedroom aimlessly. Until the door chimes sounded.
Nadine wrapped herself in a diaphanous red affair that had been a Christmas present from Paul. Somewhat racy for a negligee, but consisting of so lavish a use of transparent nylon that the total effect was opaque. Providing the lights weren't behind you.
A second summons from the chimes and Nadine wriggled her feet into a gamy pair of spike-heeled mules. It was probably Leila, curious about the all-night absence. Nadine smiled inwardly. (If she's going to accuse me of behaving like one, I may as well look like one.) The smile had lighted up her face before she opened the door.
"Hello," he said.
Nadine gaped at him.
He gaped at Nadine and said "Hello" again, this time making it sound like a question. "My cousin said ... I dropped by to see if...." He caught his breath. "I'm George Weidberger."
Nadine's smile warmed as she took in the intelligent young face. Blue eyes reminiscent of Mabel's, sandy crew-cut hair. Somehow the pipe and the terribly Ivy-Leaguish clothing disguised his tender years, but he was a kid for all his height and in spite of the rolling bass voice. And, God knew, she wasn't even remotely interested in collecting juveniles. So that when he asked, politely, if Sherry was home, it was a total surprise to Nadine to hear herself saying, "No, but she'll be here any minute. Why don't you come in and wait?"
George Weidberger brightened the doorway with a wide, college-boy grin. "Why not? You're ... I guess you're...."
"I'm Sherry's mother," Nadine assured him, adjusting the low decolletage of the negligee to a more maternal primness. "I just talked with Mabel. I didn't know you'd gotten into town yet."
George followed her into the living room, seating himself as Nadine gestured at the long sectional sofa. "I think she's disappointed in me. Mabel had an idea she was going to take me to see a Tarzan movie and three cartoons at the Riverdale on Saturday ... and bake gingerbread men, the way she used to do when I came home on vacations from military school. Twelve years ago, that is."
"Won't she accept the fact that you're grown up?"
"No. Luckily, I happen to know a few people in town." George twisted his mouth into a wry, man-about-the-city smile of irony and lighted his pipe. "I get around."
He had some of Warren's Teutonic massiveness, but in another ten years, Nadine suspected, he would make Warren look like a country boy.
Still, it would take ten years. She had no interest in him beyond the fact that there was no one else around to talk with, no one else to admire the ravishing effect of red gossamer stuff against the freshly showered, scented body ... and he was so eager, poor darling, to feel mature and vital and sophisticated. It was the same feeling she had experienced the first time she had come upon a chagrined Sherry wearing lipstick ... years ago, meeting her accidentally in the street, seeing Sherry's embarrassment and then smiling and saying, "Honey, how nice you look. That's exactly the right shade for you, too!" And how Sherry had adored her for that ... yet it had taken no effort at all! Just as it was no effort now to ask George, "Would you like a martini?" He would refuse, of course, but he would enjoy being asked.
"No, thanks," George said. Indifferently, he added. "I'm on the wagon."
"Aha. Too much wild living at the fraternity house."
He seemed pleased. "I'm afraid it wasn't exactly conservative, Mrs. Whitten."
Nadine settled in a chair opposite him. "Careful! You don't want to reveal your wild past to a girl's parents."
George laughed. "You caught me off guard. Somehow you don't...." George paused, looked at Nadine directly for a tenuously personal man-woman instant, during which he was Mr. Weidberger, then averted his gaze, concentrating it on his pipe and probably wondering if being Mabel's little cousin Georgie wouldn't be more comfortable. "You don't strike me as the ... parental type," he finally blurted out.
Nadine enjoyed talking with him. Drawing him out, letting him discuss his future plans, his contempt for the beer business, his intention to become an industrial psychologist. He puffed impressively on the pipe while he delineated the functions of a corporation Freud.
Nadine listened attentively, never condescendingly, constantly aware of the picture she presented. And of George Weidberger's probable fascination with a glamorous older woman who had offered him a martini instead of ginger cookies. He was filling her evening, providing her with the ever-necessary audience. And, reciprocally, she was making him happy. Speaking to him with a frankness generally accorded to only the most polished, worldly-wise adults....
"I think I'm beginning to understand you, George. You're going to be one of those psychologists who prepare tests for future executives. You'll ask questions like ... o-oh-h ... 'If you had to choose between sleeping with your wife and working overtime, what would you do?' And if the applicant says, 'Sleep with my wife,' you cross him off the list as a poor prospect. A properly conditioned corporation man is supposed to place Company before Sex. Right?"
"Well, we haven't gotten into that aspect of it yet," George said, coloring pleasurably. "I mean ... professors don't ... most of them aren't as ... sharp as you are."
"Don't tell me they treat you as Mabel does?"
"Not quite, but ... they don't seem to recognize that maturity isn't strictly a matter of age. For instance, you and I ... well, talking this way, it's obvious that a few years' difference isn't really important when ... say, when people think along the same lines...."
The hours flew by so uncounted that it was startling to hear the front door pushed open and to note that it was after eleven and that Sherry was making a noisy, almost obtrusive entrance, like that of a child barging in on an elegant candlelit dinner for distinguished adults.
Without seeing George (though his car must have been parked outside, an unmistakable warning clue), Sherry breezed into the house, gave Nadine's negligee a cursory examination, saying, "Eeyow! Where'd you dig that up?" and announced that the drive-in double feature had consisted of two stinkers; one about hot-rod, blue-jean, chicken-playing, flying-saucer-piloting teen-agers from another planet, and one about three girls who meet in a nursing home for unwed mothers. Frannie and Peg had seen it before, anyway, but decided to see it again for laughs. "Peeyoo!" Sherry said, kicking off her thonged sandals. "And I do mean peeyoo...."
In the next breath she caught sight of George Weidberger, who had risen politely from the sofa. And in the same instant, Sherry, whose face was already colorless from a lack of cosmetics, blanched to an unnatural whiteness. "Oh...! Oh, I didn't know ... someone was...." Her voice trailed off hopelessly.
"This is Mrs. Ryner's cousin, dear," Nadine said. "George Weidberger. George, this is my daughter, Sherry."
Nadine felt torn between annoyance and sympathy for her daughter. Sherry showed the ravages of a sleepless pajama party, of gabbing all night with the girls and of going to a drive-in movie where she wouldn't be seen by others in the audience ... carelessly dressed in jeans and an unflatteringly loose cotton jersey pullover. And her hair ... I
"Hello, Sherry," George said. His voice and fond expression seemed warmly paternal.
Sherry mumbled something unintelligible. And added that she hadn't known there was a visitor ... to which George added that he had parked half-a-block up the street, mistaking the address and walking the block until he found the right house....
Banal, awkward, hesitant talk; a contrasting let-down from the preceding conversation. Long pauses, and Sherry's lack of ease transferring itself to George and, ultimately, to Nadine.
Considerately, Nadine suggested that the young people might like to get acquainted and that she was nearing her bedtime.
The idea sent Sherry into a panic, and George suddenly remembered that he hadn't told the Ryners he was going out and they were probably beating the bushes for him like worried parents. He left shortly afterward, telling Nadine that they must have another chat soon, and telling Sherry that he was happy to have met her and sorry she and her girl friends hadn't enjoyed the movies, but as you started growing up, you became more discriminating. She would learn that there were fewer amusements for adults than for children. That was the price you paid.
"Well, what did you think of him?" Nadine asked after the door had closed behind George. "Still think he reeks of malt and hops?"
There was no reply from Sherry.
"He's nothing like Mrs. Ryner, is he, dear? I'm sure you're going...."
"I hate you!" Sherry whispered. The words were almost indistinguishable, and it was not until they were repeated that Nadine absorbed them as realities. "I hate you!"
She turned to see Sherry clutching at the rim of an occasional table, a vitriolic expression twisting her face into something less gamin-like and more closely resembling some small underground creature trapped in a corner or shed ... no exit, sensing a foolish, little death, turning its hatred on the captors but hating its own helpless stupidity more.
"Sherry, I'm sorry you weren't all fresh and prettied-up for this meeting, but there wasn't any way I could phone to let you know he was here. And I assumed you'd see his car outside...."
"A lot I care!" Sherry's words dripped a slow venom. "Anybody that doesn't like me the way I am ... the hell with them! Sure, if I'd known he was here, I'd have...."
"Honey, I know you think it's the end of the world. But listen to this...."
Sherry moved away from the extended hand, recoiling as if approached by something loathsome. "I don't give a damn how I look!" Her voice was shrill and unnatural. "I'm looking at you! The way you look! The way he was looking at you!"
"But, Sherry, I didn't expect him...."
"You're supposed to be my mother!"
"Yours, baby. Not Whistler's." Nadine forced a tinny laugh. "A boy always projects himself into the future. If a girl's mother is a crone, he suspects the girl's going to be one, too, someday and...."
"You could have changed. You knew he...." Sherry was staring at the red negligee and Nadine became uncomfortably aware of the lamplight at her back. "He can project himself into the future all he wants to ... but when I'm thirty-six I'm not going to pose around half-naked like a ... like a cheap ... like a...."
Sherry never brought herself to scream "whore." But there was no need for her to. The word was in the ungainly, clomping, hurried exit and in the disturbing, choking sounds that were a hybrid of sobs and audible anger.
"Sherry, you don't understand...." It was a feeble attempt and it succumbed in weakness.
"Understand, understand! You think I'm as dumb as Daddy? The guttural sounds receded down the bedroom hall. "I wish I didn't! I wish ... I was dead!" Then an animal sound more terrible than those preceding it, an undistinguishable sentence ending with a sobbed...."hate you!" after which a door slammed.
Sherry in her room, crying. It wasn't right, but there would be no approaching her until tomorrow. Make Sherry happy. Terribly happy ... that was the sole objective at the moment.