Acquainted With The Night Part 5

"Yes, he was," she agrees.

Suddenly we are convulsed with laughter. Just outside the waiting room the old man has flashed for an elegant slender woman in a gray silk suit and bouffant hairdo, and carrying a Gucci bag. It greeted her the instant she stepped off the elevator. The astonishment on her face is exquisite and will sustain our spirits for hours.

It occurs to me that my sister and I have not been so close since my childhood, when I used to hold the book for her as she memorized poems. I was eight when she began college. Her freshman English teacher made the cla.s.s memorize reams of poetry; thanks to him my head is filled with long, luminous pa.s.sages. I sat on her bed holding the book while she pranced around the room reciting with dramatic gestures: And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea.

What are kinsmen, I wanted to know. And what is a sepulchre? I thought it terribly mean of her highborn kinsmen to drag Annabel Lee away, even if she did have a cold.

"'That is no country for old men,'" she intoned solemnly, "'The young/In one another's arms, birds in the trees ...'" When she came to "sick with desire/And fastened to a dying animal," she grew melodramatic, clutching her heart and pretending to swoon. I was an appreciative audience. "'Already with thee! tender is the night.'" She would flutter her wings like a bird, and if I giggled hard enough she would be inspired, at "Now more than ever seems it rich to die," to stretch out flat on the bedroom floor.

Eliot was her favorite. But even here, though reverent, she could not resist camping. "'I an old man,/A dull head among windy s.p.a.ces.'" She let her jaw drop and lolled her head about like an imbecile. She sobered quickly, though, delivering the philosophical section with an awesome dignity reaching its peak at "These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree."

"What does that mean?" I interrupted.

She could not tell me. She herself was only seventeen. But she said it beautifully, standing still in the center of the room, hand resting on her collarbone, head slightly cast down, long smooth hair falling over her shoulders: "'These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.'"

Evenings, after I held the book and corrected her for about an hour, she would get dressed to go out on dates. Indeed, my memories of my sister at that period show her doing only those two things-memorizing poetry and getting dressed for dates. She let me watch her. She kept perfume in a crystal decanter whose top squeaked agonizingly when it was opened or closed. The squeak made me writhe on the bed in spasms of s.h.i.+vers. She squeaked it over and over, to torment me, while I squealed, "Stop, please, stop!" She laughed. "Come here," she said. "I'll give you a dab." I went. But before she gave me a dab she squeaked the top again. When she left home three years later to get married I inherited her large bedroom. She left the perfume decanter for me, and often, feeling lonely, I squeaked it for the thrill of the s.h.i.+vers and for the memories.

Now she is in her forties, the mother of two grown sons. "Do you still remember all the poetry?" I ask.

She smiles. She has an odd smile, withholding, shy, clever, and she says, "'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.'" When she gets to "Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade," she stops, her voice choking. We light up more cigarettes. "Six-two-four Avenue D?" he asks us. "Oh, for Christ's sake," she says, stubs out the cigarette angrily, and stomps off to the ladies' room.

I sit at my father's bed, waiting for the night nurse to come. The man in the next bed and his wife are trying to make conversation with my father about an earthquake in China. My father, who in good health was gregarious and an avid follower of current events, has his lips sealed in wrath.

"Maybe he's not quite with it, huh?" the man's wife says.

I rise staunchly to his defense. "Oh, he's with it, all right."

She pulls the curtains around her husband's bed, as she does every evening for fifteen minutes. I envision them engaged in silent, deft manual s.e.x.

"You don't have to stay here, you know," my father says.

"Why not? Don't you want me to stay?"

"Of course."

"So I'll stay then." This is the closest I have come to telling him I love him. Not very close. I long to tell him I love him and am sorry for his suffering, but am afraid he would consider that in bad taste. My father does not consider love or sorrow in bad taste, only, I imagine, talking about them. That he is dying is an evident obscenity that cannot be spoken. I do not want to say anything at this critical moment that he would consider in bad taste, or that might imperil his final judgment of me. My mouth waters with the sour bad taste of unspoken words. Reality, in fact, is in bad taste.

"Six-two-four Avenue D? Six-two-four Avenue D?" The flasher is at the bedside. I point towards the door and he moves off.

"What the h.e.l.l does he want, anyway?" my father asks.

"Six-two-four Avenue D."

He shrugs and grins. I do the same, like a mirror. We understand each other.

The next day my mother and I stand at his stretcher in the corridor of the hospital bas.e.m.e.nt after X-rays, waiting fifteen furious, endless minutes for an orderly to wheel him upstairs to his bed. He moans in pain on the hard pallet and wants my mother to wheel the stretcher upstairs herself. She says that is against hospital rules. Propping himself up on his elbows to glare at her, he shouts hoa.r.s.ely: "Law and order! Law and order! That is the whole trouble with some people. Rules are made by petty minds, for petty minds to obey. Throughout history, the great achievements were made by those who broke the rules. Look at Galileo! Look at Lenin! Look at Lindbergh! Daring!" This speech has been too much for him. He falls back on the stretcher, his mouth wide open, panting. I grab the back of the stretcher with one hand, the IV pole with the other, and we dash on a madly veering course through the labyrinth of the bas.e.m.e.nt towards the forbidden staff elevator. Our eyes meet in an ecstasy of glee and swift careening motion. I remember how he drove me anywhere I asked at seventy miles an hour, his arm out the window, fingers resting on the roof of the car, an arm sunburned from elbow to wrist. Oh Daddy, for you I am Galileo, I am Lenin, I am Lindbergh! Daring! We reach his bedside unstopped by any guardians of the law. He grips my hand in thanks, my life is fulfilled.

Actually, my mother is not at all a fanatical law-and-order person. Only right now she thinks, hopes, yearns to believe that if she obeys all the rules in life G.o.d will look down on her with favor and let my father live. I know that he cannot live, so I can afford to be lawless.

I carry his urine in a blue plastic jug given to me by an orderly like a sacred trust, to present to the proper nurse. I cannot find the right nurse, they all look alike. I have never looked at them, only stepped on the toe of one, in protest. As I search, a new patient approaches me, a small woman with straight white hair drifting about her cheeks in a girlish bob. "Have you seen my children?" She has a sweet face and a gentle, pleasing voice. "No? You haven't seen them? Two little children, a boy and a girl, curly hair?"

I shake my head again. "I'm awfully sorry, I haven't."

The next day I see them. They visit with her in the, waiting room, large, weary, middle-aged, and kind. They treat her ever so kindly in the waiting room, and she treats them with aloof politeness. An hour after they leave she stops me in the corridor. "Have you seen my children? A boy and a girl, curly hair?"

The day before the operation, cousins whom I cannot bear arrive to pay their respects. I wish the flasher would come in and perform for them but he stubbornly stays away. I even consider going to fetch him, but that would be exploitation. My sister is doing her duty entertaining the guests. Let her. She is the big sister.

"Take me out for a drink," I whisper to my nephew, her older son.

He is a smart boy, though only twenty-three. He understands that his mother and I are losing our father and must be treated like children. He rises promptly like a great blond hairy tree, six foot two, and steers me to the elevator.

"I bet I can drink you under the table," I say.

I order Johnnie Walker Red, he orders Johnnie Walker Black. I wonder what is the difference between the red and the black, but not wis.h.i.+ng to appear so ignorant in front of a younger man, I don't ask. From the way he drinks I realize he is an adult, and feel almost resentful that he grew up secretly, behind my back. I imagine now that women look at him with l.u.s.t. I try, merely for distraction, to look at him with l.u.s.t but cannot manage it.

During the third double Scotch my nephew says, "Have you met the woman who's looking for her children?"

"Yes."

"You know, I thought if we could introduce her to Six-two-four Avenue D maybe we could make a match."

I choke with laughter, sputtering Scotch all over the table. What a brilliant sally, a pinnacle of wit. I wish I had thought of it. Yet inside I am thinking, That is really in bad taste. Such bad taste. Young people.

He drinks four, I drink only three. I feel old, middle-aged. What do the other drinkers think about us? I don't look old enough to be his mother, nor young enough to be his girlfriend. They think he is a young man doing a middle-aged woman a favor, which he is. I wonder if I am boring him with my gloom. The hours I spent holding the book for his mother long before he was born or even dreamed of come back to me.

"Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer.

But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache."

That is unfair. He is a good boy and I love him dearly. I put my hand on his. "Thanks for getting me out of there." What I really want to say is this: 'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale Is not so brisk a brew as ale: But take it: if the smack is sour, The better for the embittered hour; It should be good to heart and head When your soul is in my soul's stead; And I will friend you, if I may, In the dark and cloudy day.

But I don't think he cares for poetry. I doubt if his mother ever told him how I held the book for her; she is not given to discussing the past, says she remembers very little.

The day of the crucial operation we crowd into the room to see my father wheeled out on the stretcher. There are too many of us for comfort, but what can we do? Everyone has a right to be there, everyone wants to say goodbye. Once again, his lips are sealed in wrath. You don't care about anyone but yourself, dying. Selfish. Brain. Heartless. I shout all this at him from behind closed, withering lips. What about us? What about me? Not one word for me? His eyes open. He looks around at us one by one, enumerating the members of his tribe. He is groggy from the shot, but he says mildly, "If you're all here, then who's home taking care of the little girls?"

Those are my little girls he's talking about. He has forgotten nothing and no one, keeps us arrayed in his eye like a family portrait, precious and indestructible. My heart leaps up, to a grief that cuts like a knife.

"Six-two-four Avenue D? Six-two-four Avenue D?" He edges up and appeals to the crowd of us around the stretcher. We ignore him. Go find the old woman with the children.

The odd thing is, I think, when it is over and we bid goodbye to the waiting room, that all along I knew exactly where 624 Avenue D was. It was near my high school. I had a friend who lived in 628, in a row of attached two-family houses on a modest, decent street. Had I met the flasher anywhere else but the terminal waiting room, I would gladly have given him directions to find his way home. There, I was powerless. I wish I could explain that to him.

PLAISIR D'AMOUR

THEIR NAMES CAME TO her in a dream, Brauer and Elemi. They were a couple, close to thirty. In the dream they walked holding hands along the southern edge of Central Park, stopping to admire the restless buggy horses pawing the pavement. Then they had breakfast in the Plaza Hotel: a waiter who bowed discreetly from the waist served them eggs Benedict and ambrosial coffee. Afterwards they walked in the park, where the smell of cut gra.s.s rose keen and fragrant. As if by telepathy, they stopped walking at the same moment and sat down on a bench to talk. Vera's first thought on awakening was that the dream had been so realistic; nothing happened in it that could not happen in real life.

She reached for an old plaid bathrobe-originally John's, but it had lost its aura of ident.i.ty by now and felt anonymous. Vera, who was slim, had to fold over the excess fabric and belt it securely. In the kitchen she found her daughter, Jean, just sixteen, already finis.h.i.+ng breakfast, peering through thick gla.s.ses at Madame Bovary. The pot of coffee was waiting on the stove. Jean made it nearly every morning, using a filter, and it was excellent. When Vera praised it, as usual, Jean slowly closed the book, her eyes fixed on the vanis.h.i.+ng page till the two halves snapped shut. All the years of inculcating good manners have worked, thought Vera.

"Thanks. Did you sleep all right? You didn't take any of those pills, did you?"

She was touched by her daughter's concern. Vera only occasionally took the sleeping pills prescribed when she left the hospital five months ago, but Jean was righteously wary of drugs. She also had strong feelings against cigarettes, abortion, and war. "No, I haven't taken them in over a week. I slept fine. I had a funny dream, though."

"Oh, really? What?"

"This man and woman with very odd names who eat at the Plaza and walk in Central Park."

Jean leaned forward smiling, her face resting in her palms, some strands of loose blond hair falling over her hands. "What were their names?" She was looking at her mother with almost the same eager attention she showed to her friends. Unprecedented and flattering though this was, Vera became aware that she did not wish to reveal the names of Brauer and Elemi.

"Oh, I forget. Except for the names it was a very ordinary dream, only I can't seem to shake it. Do you know that feeling?"

Her interest extinguished, Jean carried her plate and mug to the sink. Watching her, Vera received an abrupt flash of illumination: the name Brauer had something to do with the German word Frau, and "elemi" was a word she had often written in crossword puzzles. It meant a soft resin used in making varnish. Also, it was an auditory inversion of "Emily," the name of a beautiful girl she had known at college and since lost track of. She sensed at once that these connections were true and ingenious, but finally irrelevant.

Jean cast her mother a curious glance from the doorway. "You're going to work today, aren't you?"

"Oh, yes. It doesn't matter if I'm late. Howard is away this week and n.o.body else cares." She had worked in the advertising agency for seven years. When she needed to take six weeks off because of illness after her husband's death, they had been very understanding. She noticed, though, that on her return, Howard, the boss, had watched her closely for signs of instability, of which there were none. Vera was recovered; it would not happen again.

"I won't be back till around seven," Jean called from the hall. "I have the Dramatics Society." Then she dashed back to the kitchen. "Do you think we'll get a letter from Freddy today?"

"I hope so." Vera smiled at her. "Any day now." Jean's older brother, away for his first year in college, had mentioned possibly bringing a friend home over Easter, someone Jeanie might like, Freddy wrote, since he refused to do the vivisection experiment in zoology. Although boys were Jean's preoccupation, few met her ethical standards.

As the door finally clattered shut Vera realized that she had not even recalled Freddy's existence this morning before Jean spoke of him. That had something to do with the dream about Brauer and Elemi, which hovered about her still like a pleasant, warm fog. All other mornings now, when she woke she mentally ticked off the names of her two children, like a miser whose h.o.a.rd has been plundered counting over with melancholy the few coins remaining. She had begun it in the hospital, spurred by a chance remark of one of the nurses: "But you're not all alone, Mrs. Leonard. Think of your children. You have a lot to live for." Vera had smiled wanly as the nurse, round, Oriental, efficient, smoothed unruly wrinkles in the sheets with a firm hand. Trite as her counsel was, it had helped, Vera had to admit.

Naming over her connections was not the only new habit to have taken hold since the painful weeks of her illness. With John gone, so many of her rooted personal customs had altered. (An "untimely" death, the minister had called it, and despite her suffering Vera almost grinned involuntarily: as a writer of copy she understood the lure of the ready-made phrase.) She no longer woke outrageously early on weekdays to start dinner simmering in the slow cooker; she could fix something simple for herself and Jean after work. She no longer tore the crossword puzzle out of the paper, or worried about underwear hanging in the bathroom for days or library books kept past their due date. She shopped in bits on the way home from work instead of ma.s.sively on Sat.u.r.days. Magazines could be tossed out when she finished reading them, instead of acc.u.mulating in unsightly piles for John eventually to glance at. There was no need now to struggle with clothes packed tight in a narrow closet, or to feel hesitant about taking taxis home on rainy days, or talking at length to her older brother, long-distance. All winter Vera had slept in flannel granny nightgowns, heedless of appearance, and let ashtrays overflow while she smoked in bed to her heart's content. In fact, as she often noticed guiltily, daily life was freer and easier without him. Yet she was lonely at night, and though she had tried she could not change the twenty-year habit of sleeping on one side of the bed, the right. If ever again she found herself in bed with a man, she thought in her more lighthearted moments, he had better approach her from the left or not at all.

On the bus going to work Vera let her eyes close and lapsed into a waking daze. She saw Brauer and Elemi again, this time following an Hispanic building superintendent up the stairs to see a vacant apartment. It was s.p.a.cious, with five good-sized rooms and large windows overlooking Central Park. The walls were dingy, but the super promised they would be freshly painted for the new tenants. Brauer and Elemi were holding hands as before, their faces glowing with joy. When they looked at each other they knew immediately, without words, that they would take it. Brauer spoke to the super and gave him some money. Outside they stopped at the corner to buy frankfurters and orange drinks at a stand. Walking across the park, they pa.s.sed the pond where miniature sailboats glided in the brilliant sunlight, then discovered a trio of students-violin, cello, and clarinet-playing ethereal chamber music under a grove of trees. Brauer tossed some coins into the violin case and they walked on, holding hands, to the Frick museum, where they sat down in the indoor sculpture garden. Vera was so enchanted that when she opened her eyes-some part of her mind attuned to the duration of the ride-she had to hurry through the crowd to get off at her stop. Again she was struck by the realism of the dream. She would have been less surprised had the dreams been re-creations of her own experience: there had been a phase, just after John's "untimely" death, when she brooded over episodes from their past. But she and John had not done any of the things that Brauer and Elemi did.

There were meetings with clients all morning, then a festive staff lunch for one of the young copywriters, whose wife had had a baby. Through it all Vera was suffused with a calm, happy glow which made her think of Eastern philosophies of acceptance, feeling beyond desire, the flow of being. These were things her son, Freddy, home from college at Christmas, had talked about. Later, in the company library, Will Pratt, one of the head accountants, approached her, slapping her warmly on the back so that she quivered. "Hey, Vera, you're certainly looking great today. I meant to tell you at lunch. What's up?"

"What do you mean? Nothing is up."

"Oh, come on. You don't get that glow just from martinis at lunch. You must be seeing somebody." He was gazing at her earnestly, with kindness beneath the brash grin, the nervous, swift dark eyes. She had known Will for years-he had been a help during the months of John's dying, letting her cry in his office, bringing her cups of coffee, even fixing her slipshod account sheets without complaint-so she shouldn't be alarmed by his bantering now. Nonetheless it made her eyelids twitch.

"No, really. No one."

"No one? Then you're a naturally beautiful woman. Lucky. Have a drink with me after work." Will had been divorced for some time and prided himself on his bachelorhood. She might have gone out with him now, as a friend-he asked her often-had he not also asked her often when John was alive and well.

"Thanks, Will, but I'm sorry. I've got to get home for Jean."

"Oh, Jean is no baby. What is it, Vera? Aren't we friends? Can't friends have a drink?" He came closer, frowning. She could feel his warm breath on her cheek, not unpleasant. When she kept silent his voice grew sharp and tight. "You've turned me down three times in a month. What the h.e.l.l is suddenly wrong with me anyway, I'd like to know?"

Vera stepped back in fright, holding a large slick magazine before her as a s.h.i.+eld. "Nothing is wrong with you, Will. Of course we're friends. It's just that evenings, you know, I'm tired. And I worry about Jean-she's lonely too. I'm sorry." Not yet, she was screaming inside her head. Not yet. Not ever.

Will was lighting a cigarette, his hands cupped around the match so a small glow was visible between his thick fingers, like a distant bonfire. He didn't answer.

Vera took another step back. A clasp had become unfastened; she felt the slow sliding of her hair down the back of her neck. In a moment it would be hanging loose. "Why don't we have lunch tomorrow, Will? Or Monday?" Lunch seemed less perilous than drinks after work.

"I'm generally tied up with business at lunch." Will moved to the door. "But I'll give you a buzz next week, maybe. Take care."

Vera breathed deeply, as though she had barely escaped annihilation by a ma.s.sive natural phenomenon, an avalanche. Her hair tumbled to her shoulders and the clasp fell to the floor, but Will was gone by then.

On the bus that evening she closed her eyes as if in prayer and whispered, Brauer, Elemi. And they came. They were lying in bed under neatly arranged blankets, side by side, Brauer on the right and Elemi on his left. Vera waited, but they did not stir. They lay flat on their backs, holding hands, smiling and at peace. The peace that pa.s.seth understanding, Vera murmured, and wondered what she meant by that.

They came often in the days and weeks that followed. Brauer and Elemi did not make love, but they were certainly in love. There was no mistaking their constant hand-holding, their long searching glances, the soft sensual haze that floated about them. They furnished their new apartment with colorful wall hangings, lush ferns, and big floor pillows, and lay on the s.h.a.g rug listening to chamber music and jazz. Other evenings they danced the latest dances in discotheques or went to Charlie Chaplin movies, where they shared bags of popcorn, laughed, and sometimes cried. They went ice-skating in Central Park, skimming along arm in arm through cl.u.s.ters of slower, more awkward skaters. Elemi, who was small and slight, wore a crimson velvet skating skirt with beige tights, a white turtleneck sweater, and a crimson beret. Tied to the laces of each skate were two red fur b.a.l.l.s which bounced as she moved. She was a delicate sight. Vera, who did not skate, wondered if it was too late to learn. One day Brauer and Elemi rode into the country on their new mopeds-red for her, blue for him-and picnicked in a field under an elm tree. They tore chunks off a long French bread and drank red wine, then lay back to rest in the sun, with Brauer's head in Elemi's lap. She stroked his hair.

Vera was looking well, radiant, people told her, and she had stopped taking the sleeping pills altogether, which made Jean very happy. One of her women friends, less brash than Will, said Vera looked as though she were having a love affair. Vera shook her head and smiled, but inside she said, Yes, indeed I am.

Freddy brought Thomas, the boy who had refused to do the vivisection experiment, home for the Easter vacation. He was an amiable boy with a soft voice and long straight hair tied in a rubber band. Vera was glad to have him as a guest, and glad also to see Freddy thriving: his only complaints were about the dormitory food and the fact that he had no car. "I'd like at least to get a moped, Mom."

"Mopeds are about four hundred dollars."

"I'll get a part-time job and pay you back, I promise."

"I'll think about it." She hated to refuse him-he was a good boy, hardworking, not greedy, and she still remembered with emotion how he had hated to leave her so soon after his father's death. It had been poignant, his young grief mingled with his eagerness to start college. Naturally Vera had urged him to go. It was only after he left that she became ill. But deserving as he was, she had to be careful with money: there were still some hospital bills, Jeanie wanted contact lenses, and in a year and a half she too would be going off to college. Vera shuddered at the thought of her daughter gone. But she would have to release her, and when the time came would do so bravely and cheerfully.

Freddy was kinder to his sister since he had been away, and Jean, to impress Thomas, was agreeable and unselfish. Vera was thankful for the peace. If only John could see the children now. Enraged at their nasty quarrels, which had persisted for several years of shared adolescence, he often used to shout, "Don't you two have any feeling for each other besides hate?" She had tried to placate him with a.s.surances that it would pa.s.s. Had he lived, she could feel vindicated.

In the evenings the four of them would linger at the table over coffee and have long, animated discussions. Freddy was not so much "into" Eastern philosophy anymore, he informed Vera. He was more into genetics, and he told of brilliant and daring experiments with DNA molecules. Thomas was into anarchy. After a while the young people would move to the living room and continue their talk sitting on the floor listening to records, while Vera finished cleaning up. They offered to help, but she said she didn't mind, it relaxed her. Besides, she didn't feel overburdened. Thomas liked to cook, and several evenings she found an excellent dinner all prepared: eggplant ca.s.serole, soybean ragout, salads with bean sprouts and alfalfa. When she inquired, he told her shyly that he was also into health foods. Vera was interested in those talks that continued in the living room, but she was hesitant about intruding, and so she went to her room. Often, sitting up in bed holding a forgotten book, she would lapse into visions of Brauer and Elemi traveling on foot through the jungles of South America. There were many dangers: disease, snakes, losing their way in the rough, unfamiliar terrain, but they were unafraid.

Once she saw a man in a television commercial who looked remarkably like Brauer, with broad shoulders, sandy, lank hair, generous eyes, and a stubborn mouth that lost its stubbornness as soon as he smiled. Hot from tennis, the man was reaching for a gla.s.s of iced tea. Vera jumped out of bed to flick off the set before he could say a word. She clapped her hands over her ears, for sometimes a few dying words escaped after it was switched off.

Jean was delighted to have Thomas around. Vera could tell by the brightness in her eyes and by her clothing, only the newest jeans and sweaters. But after the first four or five days the boys started to go out at night, leaving her at home. Jean sulked pathetically at the kitchen table, gnawing on a strand of hair.

Vera dried her soapy hands and sat down. "Listen, they're in college-they feel there's a great gap. In a year or two Thomas may think you're the most exciting person around."

"How can you be so idiotic as to think I care about that nerd," Jean replied coldly. "It's not him. It's me."

"What do you mean, it's you?"

"There is not one single boy in the entire junior or senior cla.s.s who interests me at the moment, or who is interested in me. It makes life extremely tedious. But you wouldn't understand."

"I certainly do understand about being lonely," said Vera. "Things will change."

Jean leaped up and shrieked, "You always say that but they never do! No one will ever like me and I'll die a virgin! I'm ugly, who would ever want me!" She burst into tears and ran to her room, slamming the door. Vera followed. She sat near her on the bed and tried to take her hand, but Jean yanked it away.

"A virgin, how absurd. At sixteen! You have your whole life ahead of you. Lots of men-boys-will want you. Anyway, you're always telling me that women can have a full life without men, marriage is a trap, and so forth."

"I don't want to get married," Jean wailed. "I just want somebody to like me. I mean, look at this hair." She pulled at it wretchedly. "It's disgusting. Every girl in school has long blond hair. If they don't have it they bleach it. I'm so ordinary."

"You could cut it," Vera suggested. "Then you'd look different."

"Oh, you, you're impossible. You don't understand a thing. Would you please leave me alone in my room? I know you probably mean well, but I'd prefer to be alone."