by Jane Rule
“No, nothing at all. What I want is an enclosed order with everyone else, or almost everyone else, on perpetual spring vacation.”
“That would suit me, too,” Monk said with such odd seriousness that I did not respond with any of the obvious remarks.
Monk could not have gotten permission to stay at college without the excuse that she must help supervise rehearsals for the spring play, which was her own. She was the only daughter of a successful farmer among numerous sons. It was unusual for a man in her father’s position to choose to educate a daughter—he was cynical about a son who had wanted to study agriculture—but Mr. Ridley had recognized in Ramona just what he recognized in prize cattle. He had, therefore, determined to raise her carefully and breed her well. The crowns and cups from beauty contests, which he kept in his own den, were evidence that she should be sent to college for the final prize, a rich husband. Any other honors along the way, plays produced, degrees granted, were acceptable, but he did not want any accidental trophies for her beauty. He did not approve of independent holidays either at home or abroad. He apparently did not realize that Ramona was more apt to catch a married professor than a young millionaire at a small women’s college, no matter how richly attended by other young women whose suitable brothers were sent east to college. In any case, a haven for rich young women attracts more fortune-hunters than fortunes. Ramona’s father, strict but unaware, went on sacrificing his steers for his higher hopes, while Ramona debated girdles with the history professor or a modest future with the social worker and prepared her play for production.
You had no difficulty persuading your mother that you needed time to work during spring vacation. She was serious in wanting to do the right thing for you, but, if it involved your being at home, it was always the wrong thing for her.
I was probably the only one a little sorry not to be going home. It was the only place where I could work without interruption. My comfort was quietly arranged by a housekeeper who took impersonal pleasure in her task, and my mother’s vague, affectionate company was always peaceful. But she often traveled now to give me more freedom from her loneliness or a more interesting holiday. I could never have told her that I did sometimes miss the innocent and reasonable life we lived together for the first few years after my father’s death. It was probably true only because I was free to miss it. And I had found a substitute in the orderly life at college, particularly when I could stay there after most of the students had left. I tried not to resent the number of other people who also chose to stay, but I was disappointed.
“I won’t come knocking at your door,” you said. “I’m going to work all day in the studio and read all night. And Monk’s going to be tied up with rehearsals and her private life.”
“Good.”
“Was Sandy here last year?”
“Yes, she was, rehearsing for the Bartok concerts. She wasn’t around much.”
“She’s staying this year, too, working on her proficiency concert…”
“And…?” I said.
“I had a long, strange sort of talk with her the other day—the day you didn’t come in for coffee. She asked a lot of questions about you. When she heard you were staying on campus, she suddenly said, ‘Well, that’s that,’ and got up and walked off.”
“Then let it be,” I said.
“Do you think she’s queer, Kate? That’s what people say And it did sort of seem… I don’t know.”
“That would be all you’d need, E.”
“Then you do think she is.”
“I don’t think anything at all. But then she’s never propositioned me.”
“Well, she didn’t me. Monk’s just terrified of her.”
“Why?”
“She heard a rumor that it was Sandy’s ambition to sleep with every senior on our corridor, and about two weeks ago Monk saw her leaving the room right next to Monk’s about three in the morning. Monk kept saying, ‘I’m next. I’m next.’ When I laughed at her, she said hadn’t I noticed how friendly Sandy had been with her when we were all having coffee. Of course, she has been….”
“Monk has only one thing on her mind, and that’s her problem. Maybe Sandy’s got another. You’ve got a sculpture show to get on and two papers to write. That’s enough.”
“More than enough,” you said, but you weren’t finished. You sat, folding an empty match book into a flower. “Do you think I could be queer, Kate?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know—only it doesn’t seem to me odd for one woman to love another. I love you. It’s not sex or anything like that, but, if it were, I don’t know—I wouldn’t be shocked. When I thought that, thinking about Sandy, I suddenly wondered about me.”
“E., don’t get involved with Sandy.”
“Did you know Pete was queer?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t. Andy had to tell me. I don’t mind about that, either. Maybe sex isn’t very important to me.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “Not by itself, anyway.”
You sat there, your face turned a little away, thinking, your cheek still softly curving like a child’s, your woman’s beauty still half sleeping in your eyes and mouth, but in your throat, in the line of your shoulder, breast, it woke, and you couldn’t ignore it much longer. I watched you, thinking, you are not to spend yourself on a Sandra Mentchen. I haven’t saved you from myself for that. If stopping it meant encouraging Sandy to think that you were already involved with me, that risk might better be taken. It would be strange, perhaps even difficult, after four years of being so careful about small details to be just as consciously careless, to allow an occasional gesture of affection, to adopt the pronoun “we.” I said no more to you about it, but I never missed morning coffee after that. When Sandy stopped at the table, I was friendly with her, so friendly that she could rarely have a conversation with you. I talked of “our” plans for next year. I occasionally let my hand rest lightly on your shoulder. And I watched Sandy withdraw a little until, by the time spring vacation began, I felt I could relax.
Or perhaps nervousness about my work simply distracted me. I had promised to give a sermon. I had to write it. It’s hard to remember now just why I chose the subject I did. It must have come out of a conversation with you, a play I’d read by Dorothy Sayers, one of my mother’s favorite writers, or some of my father’s marginal notes in a commentary, and the hope that, very indirectly, I might deal with some of my own doubts. Anyway, on that first Saturday morning, when the dormitory was as deserted as I had hoped it would be, I sat down at my desk, surrounded by books, making notes on various interpretations of the story of Cain and Abel. When the phone rang and rang down the empty corridor, I finally had no defense against it.
“Kate?”
“Andy! Where are you?”
“In the city. I just got in.”
“How long are you going to be here?”
“That somewhat depends—look, can I see you?”
“Of course.”
“This afternoon?”
“Well… yes, sure.”
“Is Esther around?”
“Yes, shall I see if she’s free?”
“No, better not. I’ll get in touch with her later. Do you look as good as you sound?”
“No, but I’m sure you do.”
“For that, I’ll change my tie.”
“Tie? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a shirt!”
“What a disappointment I’m going to be. I haven’t been out of long underwear all the Canadian winter. Why did you want to go to Spain when you live in a place like this?”
“As you’ll remember, I don’t know myself.”
“Are you free for dinner as well? I know that’s a very bad boy-girl thing, calling Saturday morning for Saturday night—”
“Don’t waffle. Just come along.”
I was surprised that Andrew Belshaw would call me rather than you, for though I’d had several whimsical letters from him during the year and one rathe
r drunken and amiable phone call from Calgary, I assumed that he must have made a closer friend of you in the weeks you traveled together after I left. We had talked very little about those weeks, but now I remembered that, if his name came up in casual conversation, you rarely said much. Perhaps, out of loyalty to Peter, you had gone on mistrusting him.
I remembered, too, just for a moment, that last, long morning which I had used to myself as the final excuse for being driven away from all of you. I didn’t really believe it at the time, and now, caught by my own pleasure at the sound of Andrew’s voice, I let go of unnecessary defenses against him. I quite simply wanted to see him.
I worked peacefully for the rest of the morning, intending to make only casual preparations for his arrival. “Don’t spend all day on a meal you don’t intend to serve,” Doris would say. I’d let vanity rest in the high cheekbones and coloring of an unknown mother and in the handsome burnt-orange cotton dress my known mother had recently sent to me. I would be all one color.
“You’re gorgeous, Kate,” Andrew said, in almost surprised approval, and I thought that he had never seen me in a dress before.
“So are you—the sky-eyed boy, all dressed up in clothes.”
Perhaps the reason I liked Andrew’s handsomeness so was that it made him a little less real to me, a little less accessible; for I had nothing to offer that could belong to the other half of his silverware ad. Meeting him there in the large, empty living room, I was even sorry there was no one else around to admire him, for he looked as at home in his well-tailored suit as he had in his perpetual swimming trunks or old khaki trousers.
“How many times did I sew up that back belt loop on your old trousers? You must have someone very faithful and clever to turn you out like this.”
“Mother, sisters, and Papa’s charge accounts, but I’ve got my trunks in the car—just in case you didn’t recognize me.”
We went to the pool, which we had to ourselves, except for the white-haired custodian who issued locker keys and towels before she disappeared again to the company of her newspaper and never-quite-finished cup of tea.
Lying in the California sun, we talked about the Mediterranean, remembering the beautiful bell we had found in a derelict chapel, a half-wild hunting dog that looked like a deer, an English professor and his mistress who had come to the hotel one night for dinner.
“Where’s Pete now?” I finally asked.
“Back in Paris or in Spain, I suppose. We don’t write.” When I didn’t comment, Andrew propped himself up on his elbow to look down at me. “Did you leave because of Pete and me or just because of me?”
“Neither,” I said.
“I guess Esther’s told you all the humiliating details.”
“None at all, humiliating or otherwise. Oh, I heard about a dinner in Madrid, a show opening in Paris, that kind of thing.”
“That was kind of her, I suppose. After you left—oh, it was comic really, Esther running after Pete, Pete running after me, me running after Esther. It kept us together, anyway, but it was a magic circle before you left, Kate. Why did you go?”
“I had some chasing of my own to do,” I said.
“Did you catch anything?” he asked amiably.
I held up my hands to measure a fish. “How’s the dragon slaying been in Alberta?”
“Bad,” he said. “I want to be at Cambridge next year for my Ph.D. This time the whole family’s against it, but I’ll go finally, after a lot of unpleasantness. Are you going over?”
“I think so, to LSE. Esther wants to go to Slade.”
“What do you plan to do, Kate?”
“Work. Salvation through work.”
“At what, though?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ve got to get out of the theoretical and into the real world. It’s teach and write articles, or be a spy and a humanitarian. I’ll have to see.”
“But never a princess.”
“Certainly not,” I said, smiling. “In real life there’s a difference between a bastard and a king’s daughter. Are you going to take me out to dinner?”
“I am.”
Andrew took me out to dinner not only that night but on Sunday night and Monday night as well.
“Now look,” I said as I got into the car on Monday night, “I want no more of this south sea island curry with Hungarian violins at two hundred dollars a martini. Let’s go to the local steak-house.”
“All right,” Andrew agreed, “but in Calgary there’s not much else. It’s nice not to have to struggle to spend money for a change. I’ll go to the steak-house with you tonight if you’ll drive to the ocean with me on Wednesday.”
“I can’t, Andy. I have to work. Aren’t you going to get in touch with Esther? Why don’t you ask her?”
“Canadian social customs,” he said, a little embarrassed. “I didn’t think it was the thing to date two girls at once, particularly if they were friends. You wouldn’t mind?”
“Of course not. Why should I?”
“I sometimes wonder why you don’t completely destroy my ego,” Andrew said, sighing. “I thought maybe at least I was a status symbol: rich, handsome—”
“Ah, you are, but there never seems to be anyone around to admire you. It’s a pity.”
As if to contradict me, Monk hailed us as we walked into the steak-house. She was on what she called “public mating business” with Robin Clark, her brother’s social worker, “And, of course, my own.”
“Are you Andy… the Andy of Spanish fame?” she asked at once.
“I’m afraid so.”
He and Robin shook hands, Robin at an awkwardly balanced disadvantage behind the table, while Monk and I measured them against each other. I let myself enjoy the advantage for the moment I had it. I was no more competition for Monk than Robin was for Andrew.
“I was going to ask you to join us, but if this is a real lovers’ reunion—”
I protested while Andrew and Robin reached for extra chairs. Without ignoring Monk, in fact making it seem a subtle compliment, Andrew turned at once to Robin with questions which would give Robin authority in the conversation.
“What I know is out of a course in sociology, but you’ve been there, and you know really…”
But he did not let either Monk or me relax into listening.
“I wonder if you’d say, Monk” or “Kate, what about the church and social work? Do ministers know enough to get involved with drug cases?”
We talked about morality and the law, church and state, freedom and the imagination, earnestly at first but no conversation in which Monk is involved is unleavened for long. Andrew did not strain to match her humor, more pleasantly enjoyed it. I had not seen him in so entirely social a role before. That he should be as graceful as he was handsome seemed almost unfair.
“But I like the unfairly endowed,” I said at a point when the remark was not out of keeping with the discussion.
Andrew did not miss the compliment or the implication that I knew very well what he was doing. Even my comrade’s smile of encouragement didn’t rattle him. I did not intend it to really, though it occurred to me that Monk’s life was complicated enough without Andrew.
“I hate to break this up,” Monk said finally, “but I’ve got to get back to a rehearsal. Are you going to be around a while, Andy? Maybe we could do this again.”
“If Kate really won’t elope to Mexico with me, I’ll probably be around until the end of next week.”
“Doesn’t he say the sweetest things, Kate?” Monk asked, turning to me with one of her brilliant burlesques of a smile. “Are you tempted?”
“I haven’t checked on what Whitehead would say about it yet,” I answered. “Do you know where Esther is tonight?”
“She’s gone beer-drinking with Sandy.”
“Seriously?”
“Well, I hope not, but she doesn’t have much sense of humor, does she?”
“Why did you let her go?”
“I’m not her mother,” Monk answer
ed sweetly “I leave that sort of thing to you.”
Robin and Andrew were standing patiently. Monk turned again to Andrew to say good night, and they were gone.
“Who’s Sandy?” Andrew asked, as he sat down and poured the last of the wine into our glasses.
I shrugged.
“Do you mother Esther too much?”
“Probably,” I said. “And then I’m not around or, if I am, I walk off.”
“She’s safer than you know,” he said. “I should know.”
When you dropped in the next day just before lunch, I waited for you to mention your evening with Sandy. But your nervousness, which always took form in objects made of matchbooks, bits of paper, anything at hand, apparently had another source. When the table by your chair had been turned into a zoo of mythical animals and we had exhausted complaints about work and college gossip, you fell silent with whatever it was you were about to say. I waited.
“Would you like me to spend the day with Andy tomorrow?” you asked finally.
“What do you mean, ‘Would I like it?’ ”
“Well, you care about him, and so I suppose I should try to get to know him better… if you’d like me to.”
“I should think you already know him better than I do. If you don’t want to go, don’t.”
“But I’d like to like him, Kate, if you do.”
“Why?”
“Because, if he matters to you, I’ve obviously not been fair about him. We had a bad kind of disagreement this summer, but it was probably a misunderstanding all round. I guess I will go.”
“Don’t do it for me, E. I do like Andy well enough, but that doesn’t mean you have to.”
“No. I want to. Anyway, I can’t work yet. I’d like to go to the ocean.”
It was about the same time on Wednesday that there was another, unfamiliar knock on my door. I was not really surprised when Sandra Mentchen came in.
“I’ve practiced myself into blood blisters,” she said. “Are you in a mood to drive out for lunch?”
“Sure… just one more paragraph, and I’d love a break.”
“Good. Can I just wait for you here?”
“Sit down,” I said, turning back to my typewriter.
