Chapter 8
The summer was passing with such dizzying speed that Penny often felt she was on a rocket ship, whirling in space. In many of the places she'd lived, time was relatively unimportant. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow melded together into a kind of easy-going way of life which Philip Gilmore, Penny's father, sometimes described as a no-hope-no-hurry type of existence.
Here in the States, however, time was the one commodity that there was too little of. The weeks, the days, even the hours, were all too short for reasonable accomplishment, much less fooling around.
Penny had come to Washington in May. Now, incredibly, it was the middle of August, with autumn only a few heartbeats away. Where has the time gone? she asked herself over and over again.
Today, she was alone in the office of J. Cyrus Henry, the genial legislator, having arrived early for the express purpose of getting out a large mailing in the interest of health, education, and welfare for his beloved constituents. Because it was a Saturday and the air-conditioner had been turned off for the weekend, the heat was almost overpowering.
While this was technically a day for rest and relaxation, Penny had come to work of her own free will and accord. Mr. Henry, now out of the city attending a meeting on crime prevention, had insisted upon getting extra help for the prosaic business of stuffing envelopes.
"No, thanks," Penny had told him. "I'd rather do it myself."
"Good girl." The kindly old gentleman, inured to surprises, had beamed his approval. "The way to get a thing done right is to do it oneself."
Oh, she had known all along that stuffing mountains of envelopes would be no picnic. Nevertheless, so engrossed was she in the work that it was eleven o'clock before she realized how tedious, how tiresome, it really was. Why, she had worked steadily for three solid hours and had scarcely made a dent in the pile!
She was glad now that she had accepted Nellie-May's offer to come in later and lend a hand, and wished she had not been so quick to decline Cynthia's and Susan's proffered help. Even Mark Graham had risen to the occasion and offered his services.
In fact, it was amazing how Mark, like everyone else-well almost everyone-had changed within the brief space of three scurrying months. Had anyone made the astute observation that the change was within herself, Penny would have denied the allegation and given the presumptuous alleger a piece of her mind. She had not changed. Certainly not!
Presently, feeling the need for a brief rest, Penny got up from her desk, stretched her legs, and went over to the window-wall, where she stood for a while watching the street scene below. A line of people of assorted sizes and ages, all carrying placards, marched along Pennsylvania Avenue, seemingly oblivious of the sizzling midday heat.
Back and forth, back and forth, they paced, while the sun beat mercilessly down upon them. From where she stood, Penny could not read what the placards said, but she knew the marchers were demonstrating for what they thought was right. They'd get it, too-if what they wanted was right for themselves and for their fellow man.
America is like that, she reflected. People get what they ask for, work for-that is, if their ultimate objective is "to establish Justice ... promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty" for all....
Penny smiled as she heard herself repeating from childhood words she'd nearly forgotten but had come to believe. She could almost hear Erlene saying:
"Look who's waving the flag now!"
Even so, it was hard for her to believe that this fabulous America she had so recently discovered had been there all the time!
Her rest-break over, she returned to her desk and resumed work. Since the task was purely mechanical, she permitted herself a backward glance through the past three months, trying to find related incidents that might pinpoint the time, the place, and the possible reason for this dramatic change in people and places.
For one thing, just when-and why-had J. Cyrus Henry emerged from being a pussyfooting politician, angling for votes, into a man of great compassion, high ideals, and genuine love for his fellow man? Just when had he stopped being "a tiresome old coot" to become the kindliest, most considerable employer a girl could ever hope to have? As Mark Graham had said, the old gentleman's smile was indeed real, his heart as great as his beloved Southwest.
All of which made the stuffing of mountains of envelopes, on a hot Saturday in August when no one else was working, if not exactly a pleasure, at least a spiritually rewarding chore.
The change in Mark "Graham was equally astonishing, and certainly for the better. He no longer badgered Penny about changing her image, but appeared to have taken stock of his own. In their recent dates together, he had concentrated on providing lively and interesting entertainment, with almost no name-dropping at all!
They had gone to concerts, museums, and points of historic interest, with occasional nights on the town for dinner and dancing. And Mark had always acted like a gentleman, never a wolf. Once, at his insistence, they had crashed a large reception in Embassy Row-but only once. Even that, in Penny's opinion, was once too often.
"You're so right, my dear," Mark agreed, surprisingly. "It's good to see you've come down to earth, changed you perspective."
"I've changed my perspective ... '..?" Penny began, then decided to let the matter ride. After all, people never saw the beams in their own eyes; they were much too busy performing the peculiarly human rite of removing the motes from the eyes of others.
If Penny loved her job-which she certainly did, now-she was equally enamored of her living quarters. Miraculously, the Georgetown apartment had graduated from being an overly crowded area, harboring four girls, their assorted belongings and an inquisitive dog, into being a place of friendly camaraderie.
Cynthia and Susan, when at home, were marvelous companions, and Nellie-May, in her reincarnation, was not too hard to take. In fact, the four roommates never-well, almost never-got into one another's hair. Even Husha, formerly so snoopy, seemed to have become reconciled to the various smells.
It was fun to take turns with the other girls, to prepare quick meals to be consumed leisurely off trays while watching television. It was exciting to hoard dimes, then to go out as one of an "affluent" foursome and shoot the works at one of Georgetown's smartest restaurants. In a way, it was like feeding upon hot dogs and sauerkraut, while dimes piled up into the necessary dollars for a really big splurge, in the David Stewart manner.
It isn't too bad, Penny reflected, hibernating occasionally in a form-fitting bedroom while Susan entertains her Mr. Right, or Cynthia, whose job as an airplane hostess is a romantic hazard, fends off the importunities of a Mr. Wrong. She, Penny, could always do her nails, read a book, or wash her hair. Nellie-May, who seemed to have crawled into a shell, seldom intruded now.
As she looked back, Penny tried to remember just when Nellie-May had converted from being a Grade A nuisance into an object of pity. Was it on that unforgettable Saturday night when Penny had returned to the apartment, after a supposedly riotous evening, to find the girl all but drowned in a tear-sodden pillow?
Or was it the dreadful morning-after when Cynthia had come home unexpectedly from her West Coast run? Finding her cousin still asleep, Penny's dress on the back of a chair, her own desecrated shoes by the side of the bed, Cynthia had assumed the worst; the worst being that Nellie-May, in defiance of strict orders, had been skylarking in forbidden Rock Creek Park, and that Penny, who surely knew better, had been an accessory to the fact.
Whereupon Cynthia, normally a gentle girl, had read the riot act to Nellie-May; not sparing Penny, who at this point could see herself only as an innocent and grievously wronged bystander.
"I don't know what you mean, Cynthia," Penny had said defensively when NellieMay, sobbing wildly, had departed the scene and locked herself in the bathroom. "I don't know what's wrong with Rock Creek Park, except that it's quite a distance away. I only loaned her my dress, so what's the to-do about? After all, she's eighteen years old, and knows all there is to know, or claims to...."
"Nellie-May is fifteen, and too precocious for her own good. She only thinks she knows it all. Never hear of a romance-prone teenager? Never hear of a girl who thinks Cloud Nine is for real?"
"Yes. I've heard. Only I prefer to think such unrealistic people don't exist."
"You-and a lot of other escapists who don't feel responsible for the airborne prima donnas."
It was with mixed emotions that Penny later had accepted her roommate's apology and listened to a confidential report on the Southern girl. According to Cynthia, NellieMay was a cousin, several times removed, the product of a broken marriage, and therefore without roots. The "lovely family and beautiful plantation home in Georgia" were pure fiction, born of false pride and a foolish desire to impress.
"I brought her here, thinking I could help her," Cynthia had gone on to say. "You know-give her a happy summer and send her to school here in the fall. I didn't know I was letting myself in for baby-sitting and real trouble."
"She's lonely, she needs friends," Penny .had volunteered, a little embarrassed over the revelation. "Maybe if she thought she could have a few friends in here for a party or something...."
"She knows very well she can have her friends come here-that is, when I'm around to give them clearance. But no, she's found herself a 'steady,' as she calls him. Heaven only knows what this Chet Dalton is like. And the minute I turn my back, she's off to the park or somewhere to meet him. I can't seem to get through to her."
Then, as now, Penny had felt that NellieMay was more to be pitied than censured. At the time she had expected to do many things for the lonely girl before the summer was over. Now the summer was practically gone and she'd done nothing.
Perhaps this very afternoon, when NellieMay came to help with the envelope stuffing, she could have a heart-to-heart talk with her, get through to the girl behind the defensive facade. And there were still three weekends left before school started.
Why not, Penny asked herself, on one of these remaining weekends, take Nellie-May out to The Grove where real people lived? Gena's almost fifteen and also becoming slightly romance-prone. But she has her feet on the ground and would be good for NellieMay. And so would Erlene and Dad. Her parents were as genuine as the sturdy little house, which in one fleeting summer had blossomed from a makeshift shelter into a home-sweet-home where love and happiness dwelt in abundance.
More than once Dave Stewart had said nothing ailed Nellie-May that a few years, a little understanding, and a lot of love wouldn't cure. And nowhere in the whole wide world would one find a better diagnostician than Dave Stewart, intern, soon to become David Stewart, M.D.
And so it was by an extraordinarily circuitous route that Penny finally arrived at the subjects closest to her heart: family, home, and David Stewart. Oh, they had changed, too, especially the man she'd tried to put out of her life, but whose stubborn image refused point-blank to get out of her heart.
Through the summer months she and Dave had seen each other quite often, considering how busy she was, what with time carrying on like crazy; and how busy Dave was, what with his residency coming up, and the daily routine of hospital life going on just the same.
However, they had managed to squeeze in such patriotic excursions as a visit to Mount Vernon and a trip to the National Cemetery in Arlington, as well as trips to other historic shrines. By way of diversion, they had taken long drives through the Maryland countryside and enjoyed an occasional basket dinner at a picnic spot Dave had discovered, overlooking the Potomac.
And twice, at Penny's suggestion, they had stopped off at their special roadside diner for hamburgers and sliced raw onions, or frankfurters and Boston baked beans. There, they'd been greeted by friendly truck drivers, newcomers, who, assuming Penny and Dave were married, avowed they remembered them when they were only engaged.
Several times recently, they had driven to the little house in The Grove, to admire Dad's latest carpentry or paint job, to talk about the contact lenses Gena would soon be getting, and to enjoy one of Erlene's luscious Yankee pot roasts. They would leave there, Penny glowing with pride, Dave lapsing into a thoughtful silence characteristic of his new incarnation.
It disturbed Penny to realize that the change in David Steward boded no good for romance. He was as handsome as always, as friendly, as charming. But somewhere along the line, he had lost something, and Penny could not shake off the feeling that she was the actual loser.
She tried to think that his preoccupation was due to the pressure of his work, the new responsibilities he was facing. As a doctor, he would have to be dignified, aloof. But was it necessary for him to practice on her?
He no longer made light of her shortcomings, jokingly suggesting ways and means of improvement. And not once during the whole summer had he mentioned love and marriage. Only last April he had spoken the two words in practically the same breath.
True, she'd discouraged him, but people who were genuinely in love did not give up so easily. Clearly, he'd concluded that she did not have the stamina necessary for a doctor's wife; he had decided to travel faster-and alone.
Because the thought was too painful to contemplate for long, Penny returned her full attention to the task at hand. The pile of finished envelopes was growing, she noted but there was no noticeable decrease in the heaps yet to be done. It was pushing one o'clock, too, and Nellie-May, who had promised to come before noon, had not ye put in an appearance.
The phone rang in the outer office, and Penny ran to answer it. This, she decided would be the tardy Nellie-May, with some elaborate alibi to excuse herself for letting Penny down. Undoubtedly, Nellie-May was right now en route to the off-limits park for a rendezvous with her boyfriend. All she'd wanted was an excuse to get out; Cynthia had been right. When she lifted the receive and said, "Hello," Penny was surprised to hear David Stewart's voice coming over the wire.
"I called the apartment, and Cynthia said you were at the office. How come? Don' you know it's Saturday?"
"Oh, so it's you, Dave. I was expecting someone else," Penny stammered, taken off-guard. "What I mean is, I'm working.'
"Can't you find something better to do on the hottest day of the hottest month in the year?" Dave demanded. "How about a picnic at our place down on the Potomac? I have the afternoon and evening off. There's a swimming pool nearby. We'll eat, have a swim, then go places. Okay?"
Penny hesitated, but only briefly. "I'm sorry, Dave. It sounds wonderful, but-well, I just can't."
"Nonsense," Dave scoffed. "Why can't you?"
"Because I'm working, that's why."
"Nonsense," Dave said again. "What's so pressing it can't wait till Monday? I'll be around to pick you up in twenty minutes or so. I'm sure nothing you're doing on a Saturday is so important it can't wait."
"It is so important," Penny said a little crossly. "What I mean is, I'm up to my ears stuffing envelopes that have to go out on Monday. If it was your work-well, I don't try to lead you astray when you say you have to go back to the hospital."
Instantly David Stewart's manner changed, and he spoke with solicitude, even respect. "Need any help? Had any lunch?"
"No-uh-yes. If you'd only ask one question at a time...."
"All right. Need any help?"
"Well, stuffing envelopes isn't a picnic-and there must be tons of these hideous things. Nellie-May promised to come help, but she hasn't shown up. To tell you the truth," Penny added wearily, "I'm just about dead. I've been here since eight o'clock."
"Well, don't die yet, sweet." Dave laughed. "There's a doctor on the way. Had any lunch?" he repeated.
"No. I forgot to eat, and I'm starved."
"Take it easy, baby," Dave said. "I'll be right there in no time flat, bearing sandwiches and stuff, prepared to stay for the duration."
Upon leaving the telephone, Penny returned to her work with renewed energy and considerable speed. Funny, she mused, how you start getting better even before the doctor arrives. Why, these miserable throw-aways-she waved a hand in a sweeping gesture-are practically in the mail right now!