Chapter 2
At twenty minutes of noon, Sophia was wakened from a troubled sleep by Margo's phone call.
"I don't have more than a second to gab, Sophia. Can you be down here at three o'clock on the nose?"
"Three? At the studio? Why, I guess so, but-"
"Listen, no time to explain. Gotta dash back. The choreographer's running a dance audition here at three for the new season. Three or four girls're going to be replaced. You dance. So why not you? The pay smells but it'll be a break."
"So? Yes or no? They're yapping for me to get out of here. Larry was very impressed with you. Will you come or not?"
"Yes! Yes, of course!"
"Good. Get the address from Blossom. I'll leave word at the desk. Just ask for me."
"But clothes! Marg, all my stuff is great for Willetsville, but I don't have a thing I'd wear there."
"Urn. Yeah. Yeah, tassels and ribbons would be extra square, wouldn't they? Look, I'll telephone Mme. Borget. That's near the apartment. Blossom'll give you that address, too. I have a charge account there. Go over and get yourself decked out. You won't need a dancer's outfit for this audition, nothing like that. But it's on the way and you're going to need a wardrobe, anyway. Get yourself some stuff. Pick a sexy full-skirted affair for this afternoon, have Borget send the rest to the apartment."
"Marg, I can't let you-"
"Everything clear? Got to fly now, baby. Bye!"
Click.
Replacing the receiver, and sitting up in the wide bed, Sophia was astonished by the rapid turn of events. She had hoped for some identity in this city, but she certainly hadn't expected it to happen this fast, and she sincerely hadn't given any serious consideration to having Margo go out of her way to be of assistance. She'd never felt particularly close to her sister and had always considered Margo a selfish, self-centered girl.
Now Margo was taking the time from a busy schedule to phone her about an excellent lead, and she was ordering her to shoot the works at a fancy dress salon.
Within the rash of the past months' atrocious luck, all this now came as a windfall of wonderful fortune. And because there was nothing so important at this time as positive identity, Sophia would accept it.
A bracing shower, on the heels of this morning's lingering bath, served to make her buoyant. Still in the mood of manic expectancy, she helped herself liberally to Margo's rich perfumes and powders. She dressed with a feverish intensity, trying to hold back unhappy thoughts of the past. This was a new life....She must forget what had gone before.
Childhood had been an unpleasant experience. Her mother had died when Sophia was seven and Margo was thirteen. But Daddy had eased the adjustment. He'd had long, long talks with her at bedtime and had seen to it that she accepted Mother's departure without extended despondency. There was no one in all the world like Daddy. He could play the piano and the saxophone, and when he came home from work at night he never failed to bring her something-a sack of jelly beans or a picture book. Or, if he'd been in a hurry and couldn't get to the store, he'd provide her with a newly madeup story or poem. She never went to bed without knowing that he had something for her.
Daddy's devotion to Sophia was an incentive to be good. She wanted Daddy to be proud of her.
Margo was different, though; Margo had gone her own way ever since Sophia could remember. Not spitefully but just sure of herself, independent. Maybe that's why Daddy used to say over and over again, "Sophia is my girl. My own little girl, my very own prize...."
There wasn't any need to be interested in anyone else; certainly not any boy. She made a point of getting to school on time and getting home on time so that Daddy would be pleased, of doing her homework and keeping her room cleaned and her neck washed so that Daddy would be proud of her. She was in heaven when Daddy rewarded her with a poem dedicated to "my very own little girl."
Something changed, though, when she was thirteen, something gradual but real. For some reason Daddy didn't have his business anymore (she remembered hearing a "Good cash offer on the barrel head" and "You're wiped out, Holland, whadda ya wanna hang around for and watch your store go down the drain?"), and she no longer got presents or even poems. She saw his hair turn white and his always-happy face grow gray and sad.
Then there was the night, when she lay in her bed upstairs, that she heard Uncle Norvel's angry voice down in the living room.
"Let me hear it from you, Foster. Do you want a job with me or not?"
"Norvel, I never worked for anybody in my life but myself. I can't go in with you. I can't explain it. I just can't do it."
"Don't be a sap, Foster. You're a man without a job. You have two daughters to provide for. What're you going to do, take your pride to the poorhouse?"
"I'm not arguing with you."
"Then tell me what the story is. My hardware business isn't the biggest in the state by any manner of means, but it's the biggest in this town and it's getting bigger every day. I sure as shootin' don't need any extra help, but after all you're my brother and it don't look good for business if anybody'd ever say I didn't look out for my own. If you're willing to swallow yur gosh-awful pride a little, I'll hire you as a clerk, pay you a hundred-fifty a week. Keep in mind that's a good deal more than I start my regular help off with. I'm a busy man, Foster. Say yes or no."
Suddenly Sophia heard Margo's voice.
"Daddy, I couldn't help overhearing. Why don't you tell this guy to zip himself up and go to hell?"
"Margo, that will be enough out of you!"
"No, it won't. What are you, a fourth-rate black sheep, begging for handouts? Daddy, go work in a ditch first. Go sell newspapers. Tell him to go to hell.".
Then Norvel's voice: "Is this the kind of children you bring up, Foster? Teaching them to have such filthy mouths and such disrespect? If she was my child I'd know what I'd do, sure as shootin'."
"Margo," Daddy said quietly. "Go to your room."
"Okay," said Margo. "But I'm right. You work for him, you'll never be the same man again."
There were miles of talk back and forth.
But Daddy finally went to work for Uncle Norvel.
As Margo had prophesied (where did sassy Margo get all those brains?), Daddy never was the same man again. His shoulders began to sag a little, and he became careless about the way he dressed. He would sit at dinner and push a fork idly through his food without more than ten or twelve words to say all the way through the meal. Sophia would try to bring him out of his gloom, try to make him feel good by saying bright things, by repeating funny jokes she'd heard at school that day, try to make him feel proud by showing him her straight-A report cards.
He would agree to take the report cards in his hand, but he would merely run his watery eyes over them, mutter, "That's fine," and hand them back to her.
His switch from the adoring father to the distant father stunned her, made her curiously convinced that she was somehow responsible for his change.
By her late teens, the tall Sophia had a. woman's body. She was shocked when young Manny Stokes grabbed her one afternoon in the cloak room and roved his hands over her.
"Manny! Now you stop that!"
"You don't like it, huh?"
"That isn't the point!" she retorted.
The shock continued with her agreement to meet Manny Stokes up near Billingsleys' barn, where she let him kiss her and fondle her until she slapped him finally and ran home. But there followed a long line of one boy after another-Herbie Dilroy and Wilfred Clarke and Jim Curtis and Walt Grady, boys from the junior basketball team and school newspaper, boys on whom she had crushes, plus the pimply-faced boys in whom her only interest was their interest in her.
At no time did she go "all the way," as the old parlance was phrased, but she found herself consistently pleased when she was wanted by one of the boys, and increasingly aroused when they evidenced they cared for her enough to spend late afternoons with her playing around. At no time did anyone advise her that she was developing into quite a beautiful girl, and that it was definitely not philanthropy on the part of the boys whom she indiscriminately allowed to make their inexperienced and fumbling love to her.
Each time she returned home (to find Margo diligently at work at university studies, and Daddy slouching in his chair, half-listening to the radio, half-gazing with vacant eyes at his newspaper) she was torn with guilt and remorse. She would promise herself never to repeat her unholy behavior. .
But a few days later, someone else would give her the friendly, lopsided grin, and once more she would sink into availability.
When Margo left the university and Willetsville for New York, over Daddy's loud but indecisive objections, Sophia was sure that home would take on a different tone, that when they were alone in the big house Daddy would snap out of his unhappy moods, and everything would be right again.
But, if anything, Margo's departure made things worse. It became a special day when Daddy said anything more than, "Good evening Sophia."
Sophia was interested in dramatics in high school. "Miss Sophia Holland's expert performance as Portia in last night's Willetsville High School production of The Merchant of Venice," wrote Mrs. Quimby in The Willetsville Dispatch, "gives proof to our long-held prediction that she will one day be the leading light in a mammoth success on Broadway. Her striking blonde beauty is exceeded only by her warm, professional skill as an actress."
After graduation, the prospect of going on to Poindexter College was a joyous one. Margo was beginning to work in television. Daddy, regrettably, had taken to drinking; he still held his low-paying, nothing job at Uncle Norvel's hardware store, but alcohol was becoming a consuming passion with him. There was nothing to hold Sophia here at home.
The high school scholarship helped. There was something hopeful in all this, she thought. Through her years at high school, she had kissed and been ineffectively inti mate with more than half of the male students at Willetsville High. Even Mr. Watkins, the handsome biology instructor, had kept her after class one afternoon and had kissed her (informing her all the while he touched her that his third-hour classes were conducted sputteringly only because she sat up front and her very presence made his oratory suffer). But she'd managed to study well, get exemplary grades and graduate at the head of her class. Her nearly constant fears of being discovered and being called a tease, or worse, were cast away. No one of importance in town knew what she was; the recommendations for college scholarship proved it.
She would be different at college. She would change. She convinced herself that she'd given in to her desires only because things were so dreadfully oppressive at home and in this closed-in, boxed-up, narrow town of Willetsville. In a free atmosphere, away from all this, she would find herself, free herself of her compulsive need to be loved and petted.
At Poindexter, she learned it wasn't that easy.
Boys were taller, more muscular, more enticing, more insistent.
At first she made valiant efforts to adjust to her new environment. She roomed off campus with three girls who, like herself, would have loved to have belonged to a sorority, but who couldn't afford it. After a while it didn't really matter, though. There was something healthy in the curfews imposed on her by the house mother of the rooming house. She was approved of immediately by the landlady and vowed to keep that approval; she would immerse herself in her studies of the drama and automatically stay out of mischief.
Her good conduct lasted precisely five weeks.
"I just can't figure you out, Holland," complained Beth Armstrong, the least inhibited of her roommates. Beth had honey-colored hair and an I've-been-around manner. "Every dreamboat at school's been buzzing around you, trying to date you. And you make with the forty-below-zero act. You don't make like a snob here with us, in the room ... "
"I'm not a snob."
"Then what goes? Tommy Elliot, for instance, he's really been giving you the good old evil eye. Man, if he ever looked at me, I'd grab him and never let him get away." Tommy Elliot was the college's big man. He was the big man in basketball, the big man in dramatics, the big man in the diaries of many of the coeds. Sophia certainly had been conscious of him. He had been informing her, with a word here and a poignant glance there, that they could make mighty sweet music together. Sophia had brushed him off, just as she'd brushed off all the other willing males at Poindexter-not because she was disinterested, but because she was too interested.
"There are Tommy Elliots all over," Sophia answered blandly. "I'm here to study."
Beth shrugged. "Okay, Miss Independent. But if you change your mind and want to sneak your nose out of a book for a few hours, we're all going to be at the Soiree tomorrow night in Lancaster Hall. Tommy'll be there."
"I doubt that I can make it. English exams Monday."
"Can you use a word from the wise, Holland? You ought to go there. If you don't, you're going to be known as the season's biggest drip. If I didn't like you, I wouldn't be warning you."
By the next evening, Sophia had changed her mind. The hall would be packed with students. She would be as safe as it was possible for a wary girl to be safe. And the growing possibility that Beth's epithet could be applied to her was appalling.
It began innocently enough. She waited till Beth and the other two girls, Joan and Sally, had left the room for the dance. Then she hastened to bathe and dress. She chose her clinging pink taffeta, the provocative dress she hadn't yet worn. Standing before the mirror, she examined herself as she combed her hair. No, they wouldn't get the chance to call her a drip. She would make the grandest entrance in the world. The taffeta caressed her tawny body invitingly. Her liberal use of Beth's earth-shaking cologne helped.
Tall and tawny and stacked. She'd knock their eyes out with this debut. She'd behave herself but she'd command attention and hold it. The dress exposed her arms and the suggestive outline of her womanly curves.
Her yellow hair was striking against her dark, golden skin.
On her way, alone, across the campus, the sound of the Lancaster Hall jukebox wafted through the air, beckoning to her. Near her, from the bushes, she heard a furtive rustling; before she could either retreat or hurry on, a couple emerged from the bushes, their faces flushed, the young man's tie askew. On ahead, other couples were walking, hand in hand, some of them laughing softly, some of them significantly quiet. The campus seemed to be crying out that it was a night for romance.
But not for drips. Never for drips.
At the dance, she created more of a stir than she'd anticipated. Most of the men were acutely conscious of her, but Tommy Elliot got to her first and refused to let her go.
"Hi, turtle," he greeted, taking her in his arms and gracefully gliding her into the current dance number. Casanova and Don Juan. You rated when Tommy Elliot accepted you into his special orbit.
"'Turtle'? Is my back as hard-shelled as all that?"
He moved his hand over her back, thrilling her. "Doesn't seem to be. But then I never make snap decisions. I'll have to investigate the question more thoroughly at a later, more convenient date." The music was one of the Barry Manilow greats. The hall was getting more and more crowded and the colored lights were beguiling. "No, I call you turtle because you've been hiding all that gorgeous upholstery for so long. Hiding yourself, as a matter-of-fact. And Dr. Elliot doesn't approve."
"Now isn't that too sorrowful?" she chided.
He wasn't really giving out with the Big Man conceit; or, if he was, it wasn't offensive. She would have to banter with him. She wasn't certain if she was successfully hiding her enthrallment at being in his arms. If she were to drop her guard and be serious for one instant, he would see through her without difficulty.
"Yeah, very sorrowful. You're a luscious lady, Sophia."
Through the evening she danced with a few of the other fellows, but she knew she was rarely out of Tommy's sight. Harmless punch was served. At least, she was told it was harmless and it certainly tasted like nothing that would upset the WCTU. But, close to midnight, one of the cups Tommy brought to her elicited a very special jolt.
Tommy winked. Sophia, still fearful of gaining the "drip" title, drank it, without flinching.
She drank the second one he brought her, too. A delightful, heady buzz went through her brain and for the first time tonight (soon she realized it was for the first time since she'd come to Poindexter), she loosened and felt free.
It was obvious, within the next hour or so, that Tommy wanted to pry her from this constricting hall, and get her alone. When he suggested that they leave, she smiled gaily but refused. There was a pause, after which Tommy frowned, shrugged, said something she felt but did not hear and moved off.
Sophia stood near the door, alone, defeated. She'd wanted his kindness; she'd wanted to prove she could sustain herself.
She'd failed.
Then, suddenly, a hand was on her arm and Beth was saying, "We're all going to drive over to Beanpole's for a nightcap. C'mon along, Holland."
"Where's-Tommy?"
"He's coming, too. Hey, what happened? You two were a couple of bugs in a rug all evening long. Now you're playing it alone. What'd he do, whisper the wrong sweet nothings in your ear?"
"Beth ... what's at Beanpole's?"
"Just a nice guy's apartment where there's no curfew and where the liquor cabinet isn't padlocked. Sally and Joan are coming."
"Sally and Joan?"
"Sure. Wise up. We're all going to have some kicks. What do you want to do, go back to the room and play solitaire? C'mon, Holland. Let's live a little."
"I-think I'm a little high...."
"Great! Then you're one up on us. Let's go to Beanpole's and watch you get higher."
Sophia went along.
Tommy Elliot was there, with a glass in his hand, by the time she arrived. He had not reached out for her after she'd refused him. Now it appeared she was reaching out for him.