Greensleeves

by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

  “Isn’t college teaching rewarding?” I asked.

  He hesitated, rather bleakly. “At times. At least, there are some rewarding pupils—young Sherrill, for instance. A few more like him—students possessed of true intellectual curiosity—and I could feel it was all worth while. But there are discouragingly few.” His voice thinned out a bit as he gazed through me. “One wonders sometimes if one has managed to teach a single person anything of any value.”

  “Why, Dr. Edmonds!” I said, then recovered Georgetta and added, “You kind of sound like you’ve got the blues.”

  He recovered himself, too, and gave me one of his usual brisk smiles, tinged with an unusual irony. “Oh, the blues are an occupational hazard in my profession—maybe because most teachers should have gone into a different profession in the first place. Now, I might have made an excellent plumber—my father was the best in town.”

  I said firmly, “Sherry told me you’re the best teacher in this college—the best he ever had.”

  Dr. Edmonds dropped his irony and really smiled at me. “Thank you, Miss Greensleeves. But Sherry learns because he wants to, not because I want him to. I believe he learns because he must. He ought to go on and on, find out where it leads him. It will be a pity if he doesn’t get—” I know he was going to say “that scholarship,” but he caught himself and finished rather lamely, “—get to go farther. Into graduate school—where there aren’t so many sheep to slow the others up.”

  “Sheep?” I repeated.

  Dr. Edmonds smiled and shrugged. “It’s a bit harsh, perhaps, but Ezra Pound once said, ‘Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing; the rest is mere sheepherding.’ I think he was right. I seem to have spent my life with the sheep.”

  Again, that odd, bitter note in his voice; then he turned hastily—almost hungrily—back to his book, while I stood mulling all this over and watching his face relax and his expression turn worshipful again as he studied the pictures of the ancient sculptures.

  “Dr. Edmonds,” I ventured, “couldn’t you go to Greece sometime?”

  “I’d like it above all things,” he said. He glanced up at me, then suddenly closed the book and returned to his everyday manner. He said a lot of hearty things about having to revise his physics textbook extensively this summer, teachers having no time to travel if they expected to publish, and besides there were always summer classes, and incidentally he was almost late for one—and the conversation was over.

  Obviously, he doesn’t want to talk or even think about a trip to Greece. Because he hates to admit he hasn’t the money? I can’t quite believe in that time-devouring textbook. Anybody could take three weeks off to do a thing he wants that badly to do.

  My letter was from Franz. A good letter. It’s made me homesick for him—for anybody I could be myself with for just five minutes. Good old Franz.

  11th July (I think. Anyway, Thursday) . . . Day off. And I’m not going to do a solitary thing more energetic than wash some nylons and maybe file my nails. Nothing to report except that Dave seems to be keeping his word and my secret, and Mrs. Jackson is beginning, almost imperceptibly, to thaw. Maybe Dr. Edmonds did his promised bit of smoothing-over.

  13th July . . . That Helen. My word, she’s hard to believe in sometimes! When I got to work this morning, she was scooping ice cream—a job she loathes, so I wasn’t surprised to be greeted with, “Dear, could you finish here? You manage this old scoop so much better than I can.” She gave me the scoop and studied her undeniably slender hand with an expression intended to be rueful, though it turned out fond. “My hands are just too small to be very useful.”

  I wanted to tell her she should have lived in Old China, where they bound their feet to prove they weren’t up to walking any farther than from this couch to the next one, but I didn’t. I just closed my gross coal-heaver’s paw over the scoop and started digging, while Helen happily relaxed and told me about her sufferings with geology, in which she had a quiz yesterday. “All those boring little minerals and things. Why do I have to know feldspar from quartz? I’ll never need to.”

  I asked why she was taking it, and she said, well, you had to take something, and anyway it was required, and she’d be so glad when all those requirements were out of her way. I hooked the milk shake in and asked what she meant to take when they were. She said, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe education. I hear a lot of education courses are snaps. I was majoring in French, but it’s too hard. Useless, too. I wish I’d taken Spanish. My roommate says Spanish is easy.”

  “Pig Latin is even easier,” I said brightly, but of course too far under my breath to be heard over the milk shake mixer. Then I raised my voice and said what if she ever went to France?

  “Oh, you don’t need French to go to France, dear,” Helen told me with a kindly smile. “Everybody in Europe speaks English now. They’re glad to.”

  Oh, are they really, I thought. Funnily enough, I can’t recall one single enfant de la patrie who’ll speak anything but French unless he has to. I seem to remember that Austrians prefer German, too, and Italians Italian, etc., etc. However, I feel certain that even if Helen went to Outer Mongolia, she’d hunt up the Hilton—I assume there’s an Outer Mongolian Hilton—where she’d be sure of air conditioning and Cokes, and everybody at a Hilton would speak English, so the whole thing would be as easy as taking a nap. Helen’s always going to find the easy way—I feel one can rely on that absolutely. Well, it’s her nap. Presumably, she doesn’t even want to wake up. As Uncle Frosty would say, it’s the shape her inner girl has been taking for eighteen years or so. Only thing is, I don’t think she knows it.

  I’ve been sitting here thinking, and I believe I’d rather be a mass of protoplasm like me, and know it, than be a sleepwalker like Helen and not be aware of reality at all. I wonder how she sees her inner girl—or her outer girl, for that matter. As a sort of youthful lady of the manor, maybe—maddeningly attractive, with tiny, fragile hands and an irresistible wit, but unspoiled despite countless suitors, and tremendously kind to noncollegiate peasants like me.

  Well, I see a moderately pretty girl with an extraordinary lot of phoney affectations. And I’ve a notion most people see what I see.

  It makes your skin crawl, rather. I mean, it’s one thing to write fiction, or even put on a disguise and act it out. At least I jolly well know the difference between Georgetta and Shan Lightley. But Helen’s mixing fiction up with life, and that strikes me as the road to utter confusion.

  14th July . . . Bastille Day, and I’m ready with several nominees for the tumbrills. Everybody’s having quizzes—summer session’s at the halfway point—so everybody’s rushed and preoccupied and either waspish or glum, and it isn’t even interesting to overhear conversations, which are chiefly about Part A under Question Six, or what’s that element that sounds like manganese but isn’t? Sherry didn’t even come in, except to grab a fast hamburger during the noon rush when I couldn’t stop to talk, and later Milton wittily sugared my cheese sandwich.

  18th July . . . College, college, college. I promised Uncle Frosty not even to think about it, and here I am dunked right into the middle of it every day, like Nockerl in the soup. I can’t help thinking about it. Even that letter from Franz was half about starting at the University of Vienna, long absorbed paragraphs describing Herr Doktor-Professors he’ll study under, and lectures with names as long as my forearm that he’s signed up for. Well, Franz has a real reason for going to college. When you’re planning to be a surgeon, you can’t find out what you need to know any other way.

  I hope Dr. Edmonds doesn’t have Helen in any of his classes. I can scarcely imagine a student less rewarding. I keep wondering why she bothers with college—she seems to loathe every course offered and doesn’t mean to use any of them. Probably husband- or status-hunting. And I could point to half a dozen hamburger eaters in the Rainbow at any given moment who are in college merely
because their parents decided they should be—the way Dad tried to decide for me. Charlie says frankly, “It beats working.” I don’t think much of any of those reasons. Seems to me Sherry has the only reason with any bite to it, anything to wake you up. Dr. Edmonds calls it intellectual curiosity; Sherry calls it “wanting information”—about what things like integral calculus are all about. A bit dotty, but a real reason, like Franz’s, not just something he made up.

  To tell the truth, Sherry’s theory of higher education sort of sneakily appeals to me—maybe because it’s the first argument for college I’ve ever heard that wasn’t studded with “musts” and “shoulds” to get my back up.

  Or maybe it’s just that Sherry appeals to me.

  I do like him; he’s nothing like any other boy I’ve ever known. Not that I’ve known many very well—except Franz. Well, there was that brother of my roommate at Madame F.’s, but he scared me to death—madly good-looking and some kind of a count, besides, and always bowing from the hips. Fine to daydream about in study hall but no good to be with—he always made me feel my feet were too big. Then there were those two Principal Boy types Mother tried to pair me off with in London, but one was too old to be interesting and the other too fond of himself to be anything but nauseating, particularly when enacting the great lover, which was every time he could corner me alone. Of course, Mary-High was full of boys—two kinds: loud, boneheaded, and boring; and quiet, intelligent, and terrified of girls.

  Anyway, Sherry’s different from anybody. Special. Hard to say why—hard to put him into words, in fact. It would take a film with soundtrack to capture him, because one thing that makes him so himself is that inconspicuous, drifting way he moves, so that first he’s here and then over there, and you never quite see him do it—and the other thing is his voice. It’s light, never loud, a little gravelly, a little lazy, always with that faintly inquiring note. Everything about him is interrogative—eyebrows, smile, set of his head, the way he looks at people out of his narrow greenish-gray eyes, his entire personality. If you feel a kind of question-mark atmosphere coming into the room, you can look around, and there’s Sherry.

  Oh, well, I can’t describe him. Maybe you can never explain what it is about one certain person that makes you feel there are a lot of little strings attached between you and him, all pulling. My problem is wondering whether the pull is all one way. I mean, a blind man could see that Sherry takes quite an interest in me—but a zoologist takes quite an interest in a brand-new bug, too. In my (admittedly limited) experience, when a boy feels those little strings pulling, he usually lets you know somehow, even if he only says your frock is pretty. And if the pull is very noticeable, drat it, he says you’re pretty, whether you are or not. He doesn’t talk about your sterling character, either—he makes personal comments. Enthusiastic ones.

  Well, so far Sherry’s personal comments have all managed to deflate me somehow. Look at his remark about my dimple—a subject I’d rather not have brought up at all. And the other day he said with an air of discovery that I had real bone structure—good bone structure, he added as an afterthought. I suppose that might have delighted some people—Wynola would probably have been flattered to death—but since I happen to be all too aware that I have bone structure, and that it’s all too apparent in, for instance, a scoop-necked dress, I simply don’t care to be reminded of it even if it is good. Sherry failed to improve matters by explaining that he was only speaking of the bones in my head—and then adding, in a fascinated voice, that he bet I was going to be a mighty good-looking old lady when I was about eighty-five. I told him, Gee, I could hardly wait, and all he did was insist he really meant it. As a pretty compliment, that leaves a lot to be desired.

  I keep wishing he’d mention just one thing about me that’s actually attractive. Not that I have a suggestion—except possibly my hair, and at the moment that’s ruined by Georgetta’s coiffure. He did once say he liked red hair, but he didn’t add, “Especially on you”—he didn’t add anything. So I said, “You’d be crazy about my dad; his is lots redder than mine,” and that’s where he left the subject flat and began to ask me about my dad, so I had to quick remember who Georgetta’s dad is and think up a lot of convincing lies about him.

  In a lot of ways, Sherry is impossible. I don’t know why I keep on liking him so much.

  8

  Then one day about quitting time—it was July 25, I happen to remember—a taxi driver came into the Rainbow, a big taxi driver, whose hair was even redder than my dad’s. I thought, Brick Mulvaney, as I live and breathe, and all but flung myself the length of the counter to wait on him. He was approachable enough, a friendly chap with a big homely blob of a nose and a round red face and blue eyes that looked innocent as a three-year-old’s but a bit weary, too. Small wonder, considering old Stanley and Mama’s hysterics. But he wanted coffee, not a chat—or else, logically enough, saw no special reason to chat with me.

  I did my best, without eliciting any response beyond amiable monosyllables until I tried remarking that I’d sure rather be out fishing on a day like this instead of working. At that he perked up a bit. “Say, you and me both. What kind of fishing do you do, mostly?”

  “Well—oh, all kinds,” I said brightly, feeling myself falling head over coiffure into deep, deep waters. What I know about fishing is the following: it requires a hook and bait.

  “Ever troll for swordfish?” he asked with interest.

  “Swordfish. Well—” I pulled my cheek curl, trying to imagine what trolling was. “No, I never tried that. I’d like to. Is it fun?”

  “I’ve never tried it either. A little too rich for my pocket-book.” Mr. Mulvaney slapped his hip where I presume his wallet was and gave a wistful laugh. “I’ve trolled for pike, though, back in Minnesota when I was a youngster. And muskies. Those muskies are fighting fools, I tell you. Man, that’s sport. But then you take these here Chinooks or steel-heads, they’re not bad either. You’ve tried the Willamette down here, I s’pose?”

  “Oh, sure, and the Clackamas and Santiam and Zigzag.” At least I knew the names of some rivers in Oregon, if not the fish.

  But Mr. Mulvaney was looking puzzled. “You trolled in the Zigzag?” he said slowly. “Now I’d have said that was a mite too fast to troll in. Whereabouts on the Zigzag?”

  “Oh, I didn’t troll there,” I said hastily, wondering what to say I had done. “Just—you know, fished.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’ve cast in it, too, many’s the time. This is really great fishing country. Well, thanks, young lady. I better be up and at we always just put ’em, I guess. So long.”

  He slid a dime under his saucer—which made me feel bad, because I suspected he needed it worse than I did—and gave me a sweet kind of smile and went to the cash register to pay. A minute later he was gone.

  Well, better luck next time, I told myself glumly. It depressed me; I couldn’t help it. Here I’d finally talked for five whole minutes to this elusive party, and what was the result? I knew all about muskies and not a thing about Mulvaney.

  That evening, after an hour with Mrs. Dunningham’s Stonehenge book and another with my journal, I was still brooding and decided to write the evening off and go to bed. Some detective I am, I thought as I climbed into my tub. Not one mingy bit of information have I dug out of anybody since way back early this month—in fact, since the Monday after the Fourth of July.

  I got thinking about this, and it struck me as very odd. That whole Fourth of July weekend, fourth to eighth, I’d been inundated with information—it had come at me from all sides. Why then? And nothing since? It was ridiculous. Those were the very four days I’d been so up, down, and sidewise from one strong emotion after the other that I couldn’t even hang onto my characterization, much less my wits.

  I’d finished my tub and was belting my dressing gown before it dawned on me that I’d answered my own question. The characterization was in the way. The moments p
eople had talked to me most freely were those when Georgetta had gone AWOL. As soon as I dragged her back, front-and-center, for instance when I went to Miss Heater’s room, the confidences dried up.

  Well, it was a truly nauseating little discovery. Just what had I accomplished with all my playacting and keeping tabs on Georgetta’s relatives and squashing her vowels and struggling with her hairdo? Nothing. Which meant that Uncle Frosty’s mistrust of the whole proceeding had been quite right. Provoking thought. No way to save face, either—Georgetta I was and had to stay.

  But maybe if I just played Georgetta down a trifle? Backed her out of the spotlight? Kept her quiet about her relatives so somebody else could talk for a change? Would that work?

  Maybe so, I told myself.

  I couldn’t wait to try. I leaped out of my dressing gown and into some clothes and in five minutes was dashing upstairs to Miss Heater’s room. I’d already knocked before it occurred to me that it might be some ungodly late hour, and I jerked my wrist up so fast to look at my watch that I dealt it a nasty bang against the door jamb and scraped it raw. Only nine o’clock. I’d barely had time to feel relieved about this, and not enough time to stop dancing silently up and down grimacing over my banged wrist, when Miss Heater opened the door a cautious three inches and peered out. When she saw me, she gaped, not unnaturally. I hurriedly rearranged my face into a smile and said I hoped I hadn’t got her out of bed.

  “Oh, no,” she said, and waited for me to say why I was there, which was a bit daunting.

  “I—know it’s late to come calling,” I said, keeping the smile in place.

  “Oh, that’s all right—I mean it’s not late, is it? I really don’t—I was just reading.” She still looked bewildered, but suddenly she remembered she was talking to me through a crack and opened the door, saying in a flustered voice, “Well, come in! My goodness.”