“Hello, dear,” her mother said, pulling the drugstore bag from her hand. “Please wash up and set the table for dinner right now. Your brother will be home from work any minute.”
*
Beatrice absently arranged forks and knives beside the daisy-print stoneware, lost in another daydream about Miss Gill.
“Honestly, Bea,” her mother said with a scowl. “I wish you’d wear something besides those pedal pushers and oxfords once in a while.”
Beatrice glanced down at her outfit. “But they’re comfy.”
“How do you expect to land a decent fellow looking so dowdy all the time?”
“I’m going off to college in a few weeks, Mother, not a wedding chapel.” She continued circling their steel-trimmed Formica table.
“You have several lovely dresses that I scrimped and saved to buy you hanging there in your closet. Aren’t you ever going to wear them?”
Another shrug as she folded three paper napkins into triangles.
“Don’t you want to look like a girl?” Her mother banged a metal soup spoon against the pot.
“I do look like a girl, just not one of those girls who look like they jumped out of a vat of cotton candy, all pink cheeks and fluffy hair.” She shuddered. “Aren’t I supposed to be taking care of dinner?”
“You’re not paying attention, and I don’t want this meat overcooked. I paid enough for it.”
“I’m not paying attention because you’re grilling me about boys.”
“Don’t take that tone with me, Beatrice,” her mother said, undeterred. “Boys like femininity. That might explain why you’ve never had a date.”
“I’ve had dates.” She rolled her eyes behind her mother. Who cared about dates, anyway? She’d much rather spend time with Miss Gill.
“I blame your father for this, may he rest in peace.” Her mother propped her hands on her hips, her fingers sinking into her doughy flesh. “He never treated you like a little girl.”
Beatrice smiled to herself, remembering with delight the summertime ball tosses with her father before dinner.
“Throw me a pop-up, Daddy,” ten-year-old Beatrice shouted.
Always happy to comply, her father hurled the ball into the sky, and after adjusting Quentin’s over-sized cap and glove, she leapt through the air and aced the catch.
“Good girl, Bea.” Her father cheered for her. “You could give Mickey Mantle a run for his money.”
“You mean I could play for the Yankees someday, Daddy?” A smile spread across her dirt-streaked face.
“Sure, why not? You’d be the prettiest center fielder in baseball.”
And then the call that always ended the game. “Beatrice, come in here and set the table.”
“Go ahead, Sugar,” her father said. “The Yanks won’t mind waiting.”
Relishing the memory of her father, Beatrice stood grinning, blocking her mother’s path to the icebox.
“What’s so amusing, young lady?” she asked, folding her arms across her apron.
Beatrice retracted her smile. “Nothing.”
“Beatrice, dear, you must understand what’s at stake.” Her mother softened her approach. “If you don’t meet a husband at college, you might end up marrying some shelf-stocker with an eighth-grade education. Then you’ll really be stuck.”
Beatrice looked at her mother’s grave face and suddenly felt sad. I love the shelf-stocker you married, she wanted to say, but thought better of it.
“You’re right, Mother. Maybe we can go shopping for a new dress that’s more today’s style.” Her mother would never go for buying a new dress before the last stitch fell out of the old ones.
Mrs. Darby smiled with satisfaction, a move that used to infuriate Beatrice. But after years of hard-fought, seldom-won battles over why she should be more like other girls, Beatrice had recently discovered the neutralizing power of the words, “You’re right, Mother.”
“Hiya, Mom. Hey, booger,” Quentin said as he bounded into the kitchen and plopped down at the table. “How’s tricks in the exciting world of library books?” he drawled as he tore into a slice of Italian bread.
“What do you care?” She was weary of her brother’s usual sardonic remarks.
Her mother whirled around wielding the pot of potatoes and cabbage. “What a thing to say. You’re lucky to have a big brother who cares enough to ask. It’s admirable how he’s always looking out for you.”
Where the hell had she been? Quentin’s favorite pastime had always been trying to get a rise out of her in some form or another, and she was making him out to be Brother of the Year.
As their mother piled potatoes onto Quentin’s plate, he studied Beatrice.
Her shoulders stiffened. “What are you staring at?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You know Bob Criscuolo at the bike shop?”
“No,” she replied, swirling mushy cabbage leaves around her plate.
“Sure you do. I introduced you to him at the Savin Rock Festival last month.”
Beatrice rolled her eyes. “What about him?”
“For some reason, he thinks you’re pretty. Wanna double this Saturday night?”
“I’m busy,” she snapped, filling her mouth with cabbage, hoping to end the conversation there.
“Busy doing what? Reading Wuthering Heights for the eighth time?”
“Bea, I think that’s a terrific idea,” her mother said, smiling as she chewed.
“I don’t. He has hairy knuckles.”
Quentin and her mother exchanged puzzled looks.
“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” her mother said.
“No, it’s not, Mother. I have to think of my future children. I don’t want to give birth to little Neanderthals. Kids can be quite cruel when they discover you have an obvious difference.”
“Oh, honey, someday you’ll be grateful for your height. You’re statuesque.”
Quentin snorted into his glass of milk. “Come on, Bea. We’ll get some burgers and catch a movie. I’ll even tell Bob to shave his monkey hands for the occasion.”
Beatrice squirmed in her seat. She hadn’t stopped thinking about Miss Gill all day. She simply had no interest in spending an evening with Bob Something-or-other, but she was running out of excuses.
“Tell Bob she’d be delighted to join him Saturday night,” her mother said to Quentin as she tapped Beatrice’s hand and smiled.
Outnumbered, Beatrice pushed her plate away. Maybe Bob would be the boy who made her feel the same way as Miss Gill. She emptied her plate in the garbage and placed it in the sink.
“Sure, Quent. We’ll have a swell time.” She walked out of the kitchen.
*
“Bea, you hardly touched your cheeseburger. Is it okay? I can order ya something else if it’s lousy.” Bob Criscuolo had the longest eyelashes on a guy that Beatrice had ever seen. They waved at her nervously from the driver’s seat of his car.
“No thanks, Bob. It’s fine. I guess I’m a little full from lunch still.”
She gazed out the window at the girls skating around the parking lot balancing trays full of burgers, fries, soda pop, and frothy milkshakes. She couldn’t wait to get to the drive-in to relieve the pressure of having to make polite conversation and seem interested in Bob’s job in shipping and receiving at the bike shop. It was so strange. She could listen to Miss Gill talk for hours about things as meaningless as why ketchup is better than mustard on hotdogs, yet the longer the conversation with Bob lingered, the heavier her eyelids became.
“Don’t worry about her, Bob,” Quentin said from the backseat. “Just get her a box of Jujubes at the drive-in, and she’ll be fine.”
“Gee, I feel kinda bad. Maybe she don’t feel good. You want me to take you home, Bea?” He self-consciously scratched his knuckles when he noticed Beatrice staring at them.
“Of course she doesn’t,” Quentin said. “Bea, tell the poor guy you’re fine.”
Why did this fellow have to be so nice?
If he were a jerk, she could take the opportunity he was offering without remorse. But as it was…
“It’s okay, Bob. I’ll pep up once I get a box of Jujubes,” she said, plastering a silly smile on her face.
Later, when Bob pulled the car in front of the apartment building, Beatrice’s arm muscles ached from keeping them folded so tight across her chest all night. The sound of Quentin’s lips smacking Dottie the Doormat Rubino’s in the backseat unsettled her, as did Bob, drumming his furry fingers on the steering wheel. Holding Bob’s hand during An Affair to Remember was okay, a little sweaty but nothing she couldn’t handle, but she began to shake as she anticipated him getting the same idea as Quentin.
The situation called for swift action. “Well, thanks a lot, Bob.” She swung open the passenger door and offered a handshake. “It was a hoot,” she added before sprinting to the front stoop. She gently twisted the doorknob so as not to wake her mother from her Friday-night coma in front of the Philco.
Once in her room, she flopped down on her bed like a flounder on a fishing boat. Hugging her pillow beneath her, she cried into it. Was Miss Gill on a date somewhere with some creepy man pawing her in his backseat? If only they could double date. Then maybe she’d feel better about the whole thing. She continued sobbing, no longer aware of what had initially upset her. When she was finally cried out, she flipped the pillow over to the dry side and fell asleep in her clothes.
Chapter Three
The next day at work Miss Gill slipped out on lunch break for a smoke, and, naturally, Beatrice tagged along. They leaned against the brick wall behind the library—Miss Gill puffing a long brown cigarette, Beatrice biting large chunks out of a crisp McIntosh apple. She watched Miss Gill’s mouth make an O as it pushed out little ringlets of smoke that collapsed and evaporated in the August air.
“I tell ya, Bea, that Draper made up that cockamamie no smoking rule on purpose, just to honk me off,” Miss Gill said as she snapped her chewing gum. “Early stages of emphysema, my eye. She has it in for me, that’s all.”
“She’s just a nasty old woman in uncomfortable shoes. She’s not that nice to me either.”
“That’s because you’re always hanging around me. She’s been scrutinizing my every move since she saw us laughing near the card catalogue last month.”
Suddenly self-conscious that others were aware she was “always around” Miss Gill, she feigned nonchalance. “Why should that make her sore?”
Miss Gill looked at her a moment, and then dragged on her cigarette. “Kid, if there’s a God in heaven, you won’t have to find out.”
“I’m not a kid,” Beatrice said, slightly insulted.
Miss Gill smiled. “I’m sorry. I guess you’re not. Eighteen soon, right?”
Beatrice smiled proudly and nodded. “Did you have a fight with Draper or something?”
“Yeah, you might say we had a fight. Suffice it to say, we both knew enough to stay out of each other’s way—that is until you and I became pals.”
“We’re pals?” Beatrice asked, tossing her apple core toward a foraging squirrel.
“Sure we are.” Miss Gill absently crushed out the filter with the toe of her ankle-high lace-up boots. “I gotta get out of here. This rinky-dink town’s too small for me.”
“But New Haven isn’t a small town.”
“It is for people like me.”
“You mean because you’re so sophisticated?”
Miss Gill smirked as she lit another cigarette. “Sophisticated? I never heard it put that way before, but sure. Why not?”
Beatrice smiled, unsure of the meaning in Miss Gill’s tone but unwilling to reveal her naïveté.
Miss Gill eyed her intently for a moment. “So, Bea, how come you don’t have a steady?”
Beatrice stopped peeling the waxed paper from her bologna sandwich and looked up. “I don’t know,” she replied, the suddenness of the question unnerving her.
“I don’t either. You’re such a pretty girl,” Miss Gill said, and exhaled a stream of smoke.
She chewed a bite of the sandwich slowly, twitching as sweat broke out on her. “I don’t think I’m that pretty.”
“Oh, don’t be absurd. Of course you are. You’re very pretty. You have the nicest almond-shaped eyes. So blue.”
“Thanks. I’m just very studious, I guess. I don’t have time for that mushy gushy stuff other girls go in for. I never understood it. Seems like a waste of time.”
“Bea, all girls your age go in for that sort of thing with boys. I mean most girls do, but not all of them.”
Beatrice tossed the crust of her sandwich on the lawn. “What about the ones who don’t? Something’s wrong with them.”
“What do you mean by wrong?”
“Well, maybe not wrong, but you know, unusual. They become spinsters. I don’t want to be a spinster. They’re strange and lonely women.”
Miss Gill giggled. “What makes you think you’re destined to be a spinster?”
Beatrice glanced from side to side to make sure they were still alone. “I don’t know. I feel strange sometimes.” She glanced at Miss Gill, bracing for a reaction.
“What do you mean by strange, hon?”
She peeked over both of her shoulders again and then whispered, “Because I’ve never really liked a boy.”
Miss Gill smiled warmly. “Oh, that’s nothing to feel strange about. You’re probably just a late bloomer. You’ll find a boy when you go off to college.”
Beatrice whispered, “I don’t think so.”
“Well, sure you will,” Miss Gill said with a chuckle.
Beatrice leaned against the wall and folded her arms across her chest, observing an ant lumbering along beneath a dead bug three times its size.
“Is something wrong, Bea? Something you want to talk about?”
“No,” Beatrice said softly.
“Are you sure? ’Cause I’m a pretty good listener.”
After a long pause, she finally said, “I have peculiar thoughts sometimes.”
Miss Gill glanced around and lowered her voice. “What exactly do you mean by peculiar?”
Beatrice bit her lip, the answer lodged in her throat.
Miss Gill gave her a moment, then asked out the side of her mouth, “Do you think about girls, Bea? You can tell me if you do.”
Although the grave look on her face frightened Beatrice, she nodded anyway.
Miss Gill’s lips parted and closed several times before any words made it out. “This may sound, crazy, but having thoughts about girls really isn’t so strange—at least not to some people.”
“But that’s queer.”
Miss Gill groaned. “Yeah, to most people. Look, I know it feels like it sometimes, well, probably most times, but you’re not alone.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. Trust me.”
“But it’s abnormal for girls to think about other girls—right?”
Miss Gill shrugged. “Depends on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
Miss Gill took a long drag off her cigarette and gazed into the distance before responding.
“I say, if it’s what you feel in your heart, then how could it be abnormal?” She gave Beatrice a comforting pat on the arm.
Something stirred in Beatrice, the familiar ache she’d felt only when reading that drugstore novel or imagining herself intimately with Miss Gill. But this time the object of her fascination wasn’t tucked safely away in her mind—she was standing right in front of her, and before Beatrice realized what she was doing, her lips were touching Miss Gill’s.
“Bea, honey, take it easy,” Miss Gill said, gently pushing her away.
“I’m sorry,” Beatrice stammered. “I’m so sorry, Miss Gill. I don’t know why I did that. I’m so—”
“It’s okay, Bea, it’s okay.” Miss Gill was flushed, her eyes darting around the parking lot behind them. “But you can’t do things like that in public. You’ll find yourself in big troubl
e if you do. And don’t forget—I’m thirteen years older than you. I’ll lose my job or even worse.”
Beatrice’s shoulders stooped.
“Listen, hon, don’t take it so hard. When you get a little older you’ll find there are places for gals like us. You’ll see. And you won’t have to feel like you need to look over your shoulder constantly either.”
“What kind of places? Where?”
“There’s a joint over on York Street that opens for us every Monday night.”
“Right here in New Haven?”
“Beneath D’Addorio’s restaurant.”
Beatrice gasped. “Can I go with you this Monday?”
“I’m sorry, honey, but it’s not a place for kids. Uh, I mean it’s for people over eighteen.”
Beatrice wasn’t thinking about when she turned eighteen. All she could think about was the sweet sensation of Miss Gill’s lips on hers and her hunger to feel it again.
“We better get back to work,” Miss Gill said. “And keep your lips to yourself before you get us both canned.” She gave her a playful wink.
They rounded the corner to the time clock in the break room. Noticing that Miss Gill stopped smiling as they passed Mrs. Draper, Beatrice took her cue and lowered her head in a posture suitable for church services, funerals, and tax audits. They both gave Mrs. Draper a reverent nod and then rushed to the clock where they stumbled over each other, giggling conspiratorially.
Mrs. Draper appeared around the corner, her square heels clicking on the tile floor. “You’re four minutes late punching in, Miss Gill,” she said, sounding like a crow. “And now Beatrice is, too, thanks to you.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Draper,” Miss Gill said solemnly. “Beatrice had a girl problem she wanted some advice about. It won’t happen again.”
Beatrice was surprised at the way Miss Gill shrank into herself, almost bowing in obedience to Mrs. Draper.
“I hope not. I don’t think there’s room in your personnel file for any more demerits.” Mrs. Draper spun around on one heel and marched out.
“I’m sorry I got you in trouble with her,” Beatrice said.
The Revelation of Beatrice Darby Page 3
