Barbara Greer
Stephen Birmingham
1
They were sitting side by side in canvas chairs on the little terrace behind the house. Between them, a glass-topped table held an ash tray crowded with lipsticked cigarette butts, their empty iced-tea glasses resting on moist paper napkins, a crumpled match folder, two heart-shaped gold earrings that Nancy Rafferty had removed because they pinched her ears, Barbara Greer’s folded sunglasses—the relics of a summer afternoon. Barbara turned in her chair and began aimlessly arranging the objects on the table in a sort of pattern. Nancy had come to the end of her story a few minutes before and now there seemed to be nothing to say. Barbara sat silently wishing that Nancy had never begun it, or, better still, that there had never been any story to tell. Then Flora came out of the kitchen door, untying her apron as she came. ‘It’s ten to five, Mrs. Greer,’ Flora said. ‘I’d better go now if I’m going to catch my bus.’
‘All right, Flora,’ Barbara said.
‘Is there anything else, Mrs Greer?’
‘No thanks.’
‘The boys are in the kitchen having their supper. Well, good night, Mrs Greer. See you tomorrow. Nice to see you, Miss Rafferty.’
Barbara looked quickly at Nancy. ‘I hope Miss Rafferty will spend the night,’ she said. ‘Will you, Nancy? Not drive all the way back—’
‘Well—’ Nancy said hesitantly.
Flora looked doubtful. ‘I haven’t fixed the guest bedroom, Mrs. Greer,’ she said.
‘I can do it,’ Barbara said.
‘Oh, it’s too much trouble,’ Nancy said.
‘No, no, it’s no trouble at all.’
‘Well—if you’re sure you don’t mind—’
‘Don’t be silly!’ Barbara said.
‘Well, then I’ll see you both tomorrow,’ Flora said. ‘Good night.’
‘Good night, Flora.’
They were alone again and Barbara lighted a cigarette. She put her head back and looked at the sky, blowing out a slow stream of cigarette smoke.
‘I suppose you’re terribly shocked, aren’t you, Barb?’ Nancy asked after a moment.
‘No, not shocked,’ Barbara said. ‘I’m just so sorry, Nancy.’
‘I had to tell you,’ Nancy said quietly. ‘I just had to tell somebody. Needless to say, there isn’t another person in the world I’ve told.’
‘You poor dear!’
‘Look,’ Nancy said. She leaned forward, opening her pale blue eyes wide, and pointed with one finger to a thin line just above her cheekbone. ‘Can you see that?’
‘What is it?’
Nancy’s eyes seemed to grow wider and bluer. ‘My scar,’ she said. ‘She told me, “If you scream, I’ll hit you,” I screamed and she hit me. I had a black eye. I wore dark glasses for two weeks.’
Barbara looked away with a little shudder. ‘Oh, Nancy!’ she said.
Nancy sat back again and uttered a short little laugh. ‘I have other scars in other places of course,’ she said. ‘But that’s the only one that shows! I guess I’m lucky. It was horrible, but I suppose it could have been worse.’
‘You poor dear,’ Barbara said again. She sat there then, holding her cigarette, saying nothing. It had been a hot day and the afternoon lay oppressively upon her. She felt above her eyes the beginning of a headache, and she gazed across the terrace toward the house, at the climbing blue clematis that reached, now, almost to the low eaves across the wide pebbled roof to where, at the apex, the gilded rooster stood rigidly on the artificial weather-vane, pointing arbitrarily east. The air was full of sounds that were both distant and close. From the kitchen she could hear the boys, Dobie and Michael, talking as they ate their supper; Dobie seemed to be having a conversation with himself as Michael banged his spoon on the tray of the high chair. From the window-box in front of the kitchen window flies were buzzing in the red blooms of the geraniums. From next door she could hear Muriel Hodgson’s voice talking on the telephone, saying, ‘Okay … okay … Sure, sweetie.’ Farther off, from the highway at the foot of the hill, she could hear traffic sounds. All these sounds were deeply familiar. But, hearing them, she felt suddenly mournful, and the shadowy, slanting afternoon sunlight seemed to transform the house and the terrace, to change them from solid areas of home to oddly disconnected places of singular loneliness. The terrace seemed unfamiliar, foreign, and she and Nancy Rafferty, her old friend from college, seemed like two strangers cast aimlessly adrift upon it. The chairs they sat in seemed to be floating apart. Something, perhaps the heat, made her feel dizzy; she wondered if a salt pill would help. She still could think of nothing to say. She wished that, by some magic, it were still four o’clock before Nancy had begun the story. She wished that when—a few minutes ago—she had asked Nancy to spend the night, Nancy had said flatly no. She started to raise her cigarette to her lips and then, not wanting it, she tossed it. It landed neatly in a flower bed. She stood up, straightened the waistband of her shorts and tucked in the bottom of her striped cotton shirt.
Barbara Greer was a tall girl, slim and dark. Her long legs, below her abbreviated shorts, were darkly and evenly tanned from being held, stretched out straight in front of her, for at least half an hour each day in the summer sun. She pushed her hands into the pockets of her shorts and stood slightly forward, almost on tiptoe, in the pose of a girl on a beach who might be looking for a sail on the horizon. Then she turned to Nancy. ‘I think I’ll run down and pick up Carson at the office,’ she said.
Nancy looked up at her. ‘Do you always do that?’
‘After a day like today he’ll be tired,’ Barbara said. ‘If I hurry, I’ll catch him before he gets into that sweaty carpool. And besides—’ She left the sentence unfinished.
‘Are you sure you meant what you said, Barb? That you wanted me to spend the night?’
‘Of course,’ Barbara said. ‘You’re like one of the family, Nance. Carson would hate to miss you.’
‘I could honestly go—’
‘Oh, stay. You don’t want to drive all the way back to Philadelphia tonight. Stay, and after the kids go to bed we’ll have a cocktail and maybe eat out here on the terrace. You can start back in the morning refreshed.’
‘Well, you know I’d love to.’
‘Then do it!’ Barbara said cheerfully. ‘I’ll run down and pick up Carson. Be back in fifteen minutes.’ She pointed toward the house. ‘If the kids ask for something—you know, just give it to them. Anything within reason, that is.’ She started across the terrace.
‘Barbara?’ Nancy called.
She stopped and turned to her.
‘You won’t—you know—you won’t mention any of this to him, will you? You won’t tell him, will you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I don’t want him to—to know about it. I mean, I think Carson still has a few shreds of respect for me!’ She laughed a little wildly.
‘Respect! He’s got all sorts of respect for you, Nancy! Don’t be silly. Now, when he gets home, let’s be cheerful. Let’s not be gloomy. After all, this will be the poor guy’s last night home for six weeks.’
‘Oh, I’m afraid I’m intruding!’ Nancy said.
‘Let’s just not be gloomy!’ Barbara said.
She walked quickly across the terrace and down the short flight of brick steps to the driveway where the car was parked.
In the car, she glanced briefly at her reflection in the rearview mirror, pushed her dark hair tighter behind the red scarf that she had tied, bandeau-fashion, around her head, and ran a tentative finger along the thin ridge of her nose where she had burned slightly and was peeling. She looked, she decided, presentable. She was always pleased with her appearance when she had a tan. She started the car and backed out of the dri
veway.
It was five and three-tenths miles from their house on Bayberry Lane to the main office of the Locustville Chemical Company, and Barbara Greer could make it in almost as many minutes. She liked to drive fast, and at the foot of the hill where the lane met Locustville Pike, several clear, uncluttered miles of road stretched out straight in front of her. There was traffic, but, at this hour, most of it was coming the other way, away from the town. The road dipped and rose as it crossed the low, rolling Pennsylvania hills but it was straight; she could see, in the distance directly ahead of her, the skyline—such as it was—of Locustville: water-storage towers, the new television tower of WLOC-TV, and Locustville’s single skyscraper, the ten-storey Conestoga Hotel. On her right she passed the sign that said:
TOWN OF
LOCUSTVILLE, PA.
SETTLED 1730
WE LOVE OUR CHILDREN
DRIVE SLOW
And Barbara Greer, who loved her children but hated Locustville, drove faster in defiance of the sign—knowing that there was not a stop light nor a stop sign for miles, that the road was straight and unpatrolled, that all the traffic would continue to be coming the other way.
Locustville, as Locustville residents were quick to point out, was not a little town, but a city of somewhat more than sixty thousand souls. It was one of the few American cities of its size to deserve an article a column and a half long in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It had been the birthplace of one U.S. President and the residence of two others; it was the centre of one of the most highly cultivated agricultural districts in the country, producing tobacco, corn, wheat and dairy products; the Locustville stockyards were one of the largest east of Chicago, and the Locustville airport was served by four major airlines, with direct flights daily to New York, Boston, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. It was an important industrial centre, too; principal manufactures were candy, toys, television tubes, industrial paints and finishes, and gunpowder. It was also a city that offered a rich cultural life. Such institutions as the Locustville Symphony Orchestra, the Locustville Community Theatre, the Locustville Art League, the Locustville Lecture Series (which had recently heard Sir Edmund Hillary), and the Locustville Community Concert Series all received enthusiastic public support. In addition, plays and musical shows occasionally had pre-Broadway try-outs in Locustville because, as the Locustville Evening Herald pointed out, ‘Producers know that cosmopolitan Locustvillians are typical of big-city theatre-goers. If it’s a hit in Locustville it will be a hit on the Great White Way, and vice versa.’ In summer, especially, the city received a generous influx of tourists. It was a quaint city, and thanks to the efforts of the Locustville Historical Society, much of its quaintness was being efficiently preserved. Downtown Locustville contained a number of quaint cobblestone streets and quaint red brick sidewalks; old brick houses in this section were carefully maintained, their brass door knockers polished, their ironwork painted, their window boxes filled with bright flowers. Along these streets, the old shade trees that rose from the sidewalks were regularly clipped and fed and sprayed. The population of Locustville also contained a quaint element—a number of Amish and Mennonites—who wore quaint, unadorned clothes, drove horse wagons rather than motor cars, and spoke a quaint language all their own. Gift Shoppes specialising in Pennsylvania Dutch crafts did a thriving business. Driving toward the town, Barbara passed one, then another, of these quaint shops now.
Driving along the Locustville Pike at sixty miles an hour in the early summer evening, with the top down and the wind blowing her hair forward about her face, with all the traffic rushing toward her instead of with her, she found herself losing, or leaving behind, the sad, dizzy feeling that had swept over her sitting on the terrace; she began, in the sheer enjoyment of breaking Locustville’s speed limit, to forget about the story Nancy Rafferty had told her, and to look forward to the evening ahead. She slowed the car at the last rise and signalled, though no one was behind her, that she was about to turn into the circular drive that led to the new brick and glass office building of the Locustville Chemical Company, manufacturers of industrial paints and finishes.
She stopped the car at the foot of the wide granite steps and waited with the motor running, her arms stretched forward on the steering wheel. People were beginning to file out of the building now. She looked for Carson. Then she saw him, sounded the horn and waved. ‘Carson!’ she called. He saw her, smiled, and started down the steps toward her. His jacket was off, slung over his shoulder, held hooked in a finger of his right hand. His shirt collar was unbuttoned, tie loosened. He looked young and tired and cheerful, and as he walked out of the building’s shadow the sun caught his dark hair, momentarily bleaching it, and she had a sudden vision of how he would look as an older man, how he would look at fifty. And she thought at once: How distinguished he’ll look with grey hair! The thought made her smile and she was still smiling when he came to the side of the car, bent and kissed her. ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked her.
‘When you were right there,’ she pointed, ‘the sun made your hair look white! Now I know what you’ll look like twenty years from now—just like Spencer Tracy!’
‘It feels white already,’ he said. ‘Want me to drive?’
‘I’ll drive.’
He tossed his jacket across the back seat, went around the front of the car and climbed in beside her. He slumped in the seat. ‘Christ, it’s hot,’ he said.
‘Terrible!’ she said.
She started the car forward, and as another car turned in front of her, she gave it two short, scolding blasts with the horn.
‘Hey,’ Carson said, ‘That’s Clyde Adams.’
‘Beep-beep, Clyde Adams!’
‘You’re in a good mood tonight.’
‘I’m in a silly mood,’ she said. ‘How was your day? Busy?’
‘Yes. Hot as hell, mostly.’
‘Poor darling!’
At the end of the drive she turned right, toward the centre of town. ‘Where are you going?’ Carson asked.
‘I’ve got to buy some French bread,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a surprise. At least I hope you’ll think it’s a surprise. I mean I hope you’ll be pleased.’
‘What sort of surprise?’
She smiled. ‘You’ll see.’
‘French bread means somebody for dinner. Who is it?’
‘You’ll see.’
He sat back, stretching his long legs forward. He clasped his hands behind his head, fingers interlaced, yawned widely and closed his eyes. ‘Let’s see,’ he murmured, ‘who could it be? The mayor of Locustville? The chief of police? Spencer Tracy, maybe? No—I’ll bet it’s good Old Nancy Rafferty.’
‘How did you guess?’ she asked.
‘Who else drops in for surprise visits?’
‘Are you angry?’
‘Why should I be angry?’
‘Are you pleased then?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t care.’
‘Sometimes I think you don’t like Nancy,’ she said.
‘Oh, I like her. But—’
‘But what?’
‘Well, she’s always dropping in at times like this. Doesn’t she know I’m going away tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘You see? My God, this is my last night at home for six weeks. Why do I have to spend it with Nancy Rafferty?’
‘You are angry.’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It’s just that—well, she always picks the damnedest times to drop in. I suppose she’s spending the night.’
‘I asked her to, yes.’
‘Ah. I thought so.’
‘You wouldn’t want her to drive all the way back to Philadelphia at night, would you? Besides, it’s going to work out perfectly. Your plane’s at eight tomorrow morning. Flora doesn’t get to the house till nine. Nancy can stay with the kids while I drive you to the airport.’
‘I thought we were going to take the kids to the airport?’
‘Oh, but this is so much simpler,’ Barbara said.
He said nothing.
Barbara slowed the car now and pulled up against the kerb in front of the delicatessen. ‘Will you run in and get a loaf of French bread, darling?’ she asked him. ‘And, oh yes, a jar of olives.’
He got out of the car and went into the store. She sat behind the wheel, shoulders back, tapping a little rhythm on the steering wheel with her fingertips. She turned her face to the sun which, though it was past five o’clock, was still warm and bright, and closed her eyes, letting the sunlight form swirling, reddish specks against her eyelids. Her skin felt pleasantly tight and warm, the way her whole body used to feel—at the farm—after a day of tennis or a day of lying, doing absolutely nothing, by the pool. She thought: Here it is June twenty-something, twenty-fifth, the summer seems half over, and I haven’t played tennis at all; there is no pool in Locustville and no time any more to do absolutely nothing. She felt, rather than saw, Carson come back to the car. He opened the door, slid across the seat beside her, and she continued to look at the fiery image of the sun through her closed eyes.
‘Are you asleep?’ he asked her.
‘No, just thinking.’
‘What about?’
She opened her eyes and started the car. ‘About Nancy,’ she said. She swung the car in a wide U-turn and headed back along the Pike toward home. ‘I feel so sorry for her, Carson,’ she said.
‘Sorry for Nancy? Why?’
‘She’s all alone, she has nobody to tell things to. No mother or father. Only us.’
He said nothing, merely stared ahead at the road. They were moving slowly now, with the out-of-city traffic.
‘All alone, in Philadelphia,’ she said.
‘She always talks as though she had plenty of fun in Philadelphia.’
‘Yes, but—well, talk is one thing and the way she really lives is something else again.’
‘She’s got boy friends all over the place. My God, to hear her talk every man in Philadelphia is trying to go to bed with her.’
Barbara frowned. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but she isn’t happy.’
‘Why doesn’t she marry one of those guys?’
‘Perhaps—perhaps they don’t ask her. I don’t know.’
Barbara Greer Page 1
