Chapter 5
Penny, for all her maneuvering, was not consciously an opportunist. She much preferred to think of herself as a modern Andromeda, trapped by circumstances, seeking escape into an environment that was rightfully hers.
There was nothing vicious about her apparent antagonism toward her stepmother. The Grove and the Gilmores' surroundings-they were only convenient pegs upon which to hang her discontent with a self-service world, which she had certainly never made but had been thrust into.
I deserve something better, and so does Gena, she told herself time and again, and with each reiteration believed it more strongly.
Therefore, it was with no sense of culpability that she turned her back on The Grove and moved into the apartment which was to be home until something better came along. Perversely, she was shocked, even pained, to hear Nellie-May, the youngest and surely the least tactful of her three roommates, say in her exaggerated Southern drawl:
"Washington is a good place to visit, sugah-that is, if all you want to do is sightsee. It's a fine town to work in, too-that is, if you know the right people and how to use 'em." The girl paused to readjust one of the oversized rollers that garnished her bright-blond hair, then continued:
"What I mean is, this is purely a cat-clawcat town in many respects. But a girl can go places, if all she wants is a little ol' career, and she isn't too squeamish about steppin' over bodies and stuff."
Penny's face crimsoned, but from annoyance rather than guilt. The Southern girl's words seemed peculiarly obnoxious. If there was a vague resemblance between NellieMay's words and her own plan of survival, Penny chose to ignore it.
After all, she asked herself, what could a birdbrain but recently out of the hinterlands tell her that she did not already know? Why, Nellie-May, who boasted of being "eighteen, going on nineteen," looked as young and untutored as fourteen-year-old Gena.
Less than an hour before, when she had arrived at the apartment with her luggage, Penny had been pleased to find the premises less crowded than she'd expected. Although it was a Saturday and business offices were closed, only the young visitor from Georgia and her pooch were on hand to greet her.
Cynthia, whose life was bounded on all sides by her job as an airline hostess, NellieMay explained, was off on a trip to Chicago and points West. Susan, a truly dedicated librarian, was spending the weekend with bookish friends in Maryland.
"See?" the girl had exclaimed as she ushered Penny into the living room, the poodle all but upsetting the two of them in a frenzied dash to get ahead. "Like I told you, there isn't always a crowd here. Some days, like today, I'm so lonesome I could cry. I really should take Husha and go back to the lovely plantation, where I've got such a sweet little ol' family and oodles of friends-"
Momentarily, Penny's heart had warmed toward this homesick girl who was lonely for crowds. She thought of Gena, trapped in her semi-blindess, and lonely now that her adored sister was away. She'd made a mental note to bring Gena in to Washington for a visit the very first weekend Cynthia and Susan were away.
Now, as she unpacked her bags in the form-fitting bedroom she was to share with Susan, under the watchful eyes of a chatterbox and a meddlesome dog, it occurred to Penny that Nellie-May and Husha constituted a considerable crowd. Moreover, in many respects, they were a whole lot a-like: curious, acquisitive, bent upon running the show.
She wished devoutly that they would go away, leaving her to get settled in peace. But no-Nellie-May, enthroned in the one easy chair, was jabbering away, airing her outlandish views regarding life and the single girl in the National Capital, her avowed purpose being to spare "little ol' Penny the sure-for-certain pitfalls" she would encounter.
As a bonus irritant, Husha was inspecting Penny's belongings, poking his small nose into handbags, sniffing disapprovingly, as though he did not like anything about this dark-haired newcomer, including the perfume she used.
"Like I'm telling you, sugah," Nellie May was saying, "Washington is all right for girls like Cynthia and Susan who are married to their jobs and think love is only for birds and bees. But it's rugged on a single girl who wants to get married, and have a nice home and raise a family. Purely rugged...." She paused, but only to get a fresh breath and speak to the sniffing poodle.
"We wouldn't want to discourage little ol' Penny, would we, Husha, honey?" she crooned. "Cynthia and Susan would never forgive us if she got cold feet and walked out, considerin' what she's putting into the kitty." Then to Penny, who was getting more aggravated by the minute:
"But I couldn't forgive myself if I didn't brief you."
Penny, in the process of crowding her belongings into the half-closet and three dresser drawers that had been assigned to her, forced a smile. Resolutely, she refrained from pointing out that she had been briefed by experts, including one David Stewart, intern. Some of her annoyance must have seeped through, though, for NellieMay, looking a little frightened, demanded:
"You wouldn't leave, would you, sugah? I'd never in the world hear the last of it. It's only for your own good I'm briefing you."
"Don't worry," Penny said crossly. "I have no intention of leaving, now that I'm here and have paid my share of the rent."
"Good. That takes a load off my mind. As I was about to say, love-and-marriage in this town is a dead pigeon. The men are either too old for any use or already taken," Nellie-May resumed, evidently bent upon going all the way with her talk. But Penny was equally determined to put an end to what she considered a senseless monologue.
"Oh, skip it, for heaven's sake," she snapped. "I've been around." She lifted her chin high in the air, then said in a tone calculated to impress, "As a matter-of-fact, I've been living abroad for ten years. Europe, Asia, Africa, and-well, just about everywhere. It's true I've never lived in a large American city before. But I'll get along."
The blond girl's reactions were disappointing, to say the least. "Oh, boy," she groaned, "how perfectly creepy! Ten whole years with nothing to pick from but foreigners, savages, and stuff."
Penny looked at her sharply and waited for the giggle that would identify the inanity as a bad joke. There was no giggle. NellieMay's face was deadly serious and, with her coltish legs draped over an arm of the easy chair, she looked younger than ever.
Much too young, Penny reasoned, to be chattering about love and marriage and throwing out unwanted advice. But then, she reasoned further, notwithstanding reports to the contrary, American girls, even the nice ones, were more precocious, more outspoken on such matters than their European counterparts. Too, Nellie-May had said she was eighteen. There was no logical reason to doubt her.
"I've been hopin'," Nellie-May said, giggling now, "you'd have a sweet-patootie already sewed up and in the bag. It would be sort of nice to see a pair of pants around now and then. You don't look like the old maid type."
Penny could not suppress a smile. "Oh, I have a Prince Charming, if that's what you mean."
Nellie-May grinned, and her baby-blue eyes flashed a message of approval. "What's he like, sugah?"
Penny thought a minute, then decided against telling this scatterbrain about tonight's date. Nellie-May would find out soon enough that Mark Graham, though a successful man of the world, was not as young as he once was. Mark, considerably on the far side of thirty, would be relegated to the status of senior citizen.
The thing to do is to get Nellie-May out of here before Mark Graham arrives, Penny told herself, and groped around in her mind for a kindly way of doing so.
"What's he like?" Nellie-May repeated.
Penny, pinned down, launched forth on a glowing description of David Stewart, the man she was putting out of her life. "Oh, he's very tall, rather dark, wonderful company, and devastatingly handsome. He's an intern at the Medical Center," she added rashly.
Nellie-May's expression of delight did not change. "Sounds marvelous," she caroled. "Of course it will be years before he can give you anything-except first-aid lessons, maybe."
Again Penny's face burned, this time from a gnawing sense of guilt. She herself had harbored the same idea about David Stewart and the rugged road in front of him. Coming from someone else, it sounded shamefully mercenary. She was relieved when Nellie-May changed the subject, transferring her attention to the attractive dresses Penny was crowding into the half-closet.
"Looks like you've got everything you'll need, sugah, and more," the girl commented, and ran over to get a close-up of the dress Penny had planned to save for special business dates. She held the dress up in front of her and smiled at her reflection in the pier glass on the closet door.
"This is keen, sugah, purely keen," she squealed. "And, would you believe it, we wear exactly the same size! Mind if I borrow this sweet little ol' rag sometime?"
"Anytime, dear," Penny said absently. A glance at her wristwatch told her that it was after five o'clock. Mark Graham would be calling for her at seven-thirty, and there were still things to put away before she could shower and start getting dressed.
Nellie-May whirled around to give Penny a bear hug, but she did not loosen her hold on the blue linen dress. "You're a doll, sugah; a livin', walkin' doll!" she intoned. "Right now, can I borrow it?"
Penny, taken aback, had a vague feeling that she had nothing to say about it; that, in Nellie-May's opinion, the dress was already hers. Why, this girl was an opportunist of the first order!
"Well, yes," she said presently in answer to Nellie-May's question. "That is, if you have someplace special to go."
"Oh, I have a place, sugah. A way-out, swingin' place, if you know what I mean."
Penny, whose Stateside outings had been limited to mildly exciting evenings with David Stewart, did not quite know. But before she could say anything, Nellie-May, the blue dress draped carelessly over an arm, flounced out of the room, Husha racing ahead of her.
An hour or so later, showered and ready to get dressed, Penny sat on a divan in the living room, doing her nails and wondering helplessly how she had ever managed to get into this predicament. At least one of her roommates was a practicing nuisance; the other two, if Nellie-May was to be believed, were dedicated drudges. She supposed she should be grateful because there would be no personal competition, but the session with Nellie-May had been too distasteful to leave room for gratitude.
A door opened, and Nellie-May emerged from the small bedroom she'd designated previously as belonging to her Cousin Cynthia, Husha, and herself. For a moment she stood poised on the threshold, a preening pigeon dressed in borrowed plumes.
"How'm I doin', sugah?" she drawled, turning this way and that for inspection.
Penny hesitated. "You're an extraordinarily pretty girl," she said evasively.
And she was pretty. The blue of Penny's dress accentuated the blue of Nellie-May's eyes, and the extremely high-heeled shoes-probably Cynthia's-made her look taller and slimmer. Her weird, offbeat coiffure did nothing to diminish the golden sheen of her hair or the Georgia peach-blossom quality of her complexion. In her present incarnation, she could easily pass for a girl older than her declared eighteen years.
Only the little-girl-lost look in her eyes did not match up with the rest of Nellie-May, Penny observed. There was another look, too-was it defiance, furtiveness? Penny could not be sure. But suddenly it seemed vastly important to get rid of this chattering female before the ultra sophisticated Mark Graham put in his appearance.
Nellie-May bent over to fasten a worse-for-wear leash and rhinestone-studded collar on Husha, then turned to face Penny. "I guess I shouldn't be runnin' out on you on your first night here," she apologized. "But I don't often get a chance to go places. I'm supposed to just housekeep when Cynthia's away. And when she's here...."
Penny, realizing that time was marching on and thinking to shorten the girl's leave taking, made a gesture of dismissal. "Think nothing of it, darling. It just so happens that I have a date."
Nellie-May, sauntering leisurely toward the door, whirled around, her eyes bright with interest. "Oh. Then wild horses can't pull me away," she announced, and slid into the nearest chair. "I've got to see that handsome intern of yours. The way you were ravin', he has to be seen to be believed."
"We're going out," Penny said shortly, "where the action is. In fact, it's to be quite a large evening, starting with dinner, and winding up at Tino's a Go-Go. That's a discotheque."
Reluctantly, Nellie-May got up from the chair. "Sounds fabulous, sugah, purely fabulous."
Penny nodded, appeased. "I probably won't get back till all hours, so don't wait up for me."
"I may be out late, too. I'm going where the fun is," Nellie-May said, but volunteered no further information.
At the foyer door she turned again, evidently still reluctant to go. "You won't tell Cynthia, will you, sugah?"
"That you borrowed my dress? Why, of course not."
"Wel!"-Nellie-May hesitated-"that, too, I guess. You see, Cynthia's sort of old-fashioned. Still thinks I'm a stranger here and don't know my way around. Says it's dangerous for a girl to go places alone."
Carefully averting her face, she bent over and picked up the poodle in her arms. "Only I'd never dream of, traipsin' around alone in this town, especially at night. I'm takin' Husha...."
Penny smiled to herself ... Nellie-May's word had a familiar ring. She had heard the same arguments from Erlene and Dad. And even David Stewart had tried to discourage her by saying there was a crime wave going on. As if anything untoward could possibly happen in the fashionable Georgetown section!
Meanwhile, Nellie-May continued to stand in the doorway as if rooted to the spot-and time was not standing still. Something had to be done, and quickly.
"Don't just stand there, Nellie-May," Penny blurted. "For heaven's sake, get started. I'm sick of the sight of you!"
Even as she spoke, Penny felt her face burn with shame. She had not intended to say so much, had not wanted to hurt this exasperating girl.
Nellie-May, her chin trembling, stared at Penny in disbelief, her expression not unlike that of a wounded animal at bay. Then, without bothering to close the door, she teetered slowly down the corridor, her impossibly high heels beating a rhythmic tattoo against the tiled floor.
"I didn't mean it," Penny wailed into the heavy silence that mocked the privacy she'd asked for. "Why, the way she looked, you'd have thought I was throwing her to the wolves! I'll make it up to her later."