“Oh, for God’s sake,” Annette was saying. “You’re not talking to your mother, honey, or Queen Victoria, either. Sex, you’ve heard of? Didn’t you know he was there?”
Nanjo had forgotten he was there. So she screamed, “NO.”
“Careless,” said Annette.
This, being true, was too much. “You shut up!” screamed Nanjo.
Outside, Cal said, “For God’s sakes, Mr. Little, your wife goes crazy! I wasn’t going to hurt her. Dontcha know that?”
“I doubt you would have,” said J quietly and said no more. He was in the middle, and firmly he stayed there. Cal took the check (his wage, plus some severance pay) ungraciously, slung his long pole over his shoulder, and began to walk toward the path around the garage, muttering and spitting.
(As he backed his truck out and was away, a car went after him. Nobody noticed, although Goodrick dogged him all the way to the nearest tavern.)
“Mother!” howled Nanjo. “You scared me! You just about … Look, I’m just shaking.…”
Sophia was getting a reaction herself. “Go and cover yourself up,” she said icily. “Excuse me, too, please?” She bowed rather quaintly to the guest and went off to her own bathroom where she could fight herself until she won—too late.
But Nanjo began to howl at her father as he came in and closed the sliding glass. “Daddy, I’d like to know what I did that was so wrong? If I can’t work on my suntan in my own yard, where can I work on my suntan? I don’t see why Mother had to come out there and yell at me to ‘git’ as if I were some kind of hound dog. You’d think I was some kind of criminal.”
“That was too bad, Nanjo,” said J. “Would you get dressed, please? I’d just as soon not present you in that state.”
“Well, it’s not my fault, the state I’m in. Mother just about scared me to death! And I wasn’t doing one darned thing!”
But J was not going to be pushed off his balance in the middle. So his daughter howled, “You just don’t want me to do anything, either one of you. If I’m supposed to sit around this darned old castle in some kind of flannel shroud, I might as well be dead. I hate you!”
J said nothing to this. He didn’t even wince. Given the incident (which had certainly been too bad), this only followed. But Annette spoke up. “Flannel could be sexier than you think, honey,” she drawled. “That outfit is suitable only for the lower classes.”
Nanjo choked. Too angry even to howl, she tore out of the room.
“Papa better spank, eh?” said Annette, as one adult to another. “How old is the child?”
“Sixteen,” said J. He sat down, thinking, Papa’s going to spank you in just about another minute. He realized that Annette had been trying to puncture Nanjo’s outsize stubbornness, as she had Cary’s the other evening. But it is one thing to understand, another to condone.
Annette had already dismissed the incident. “Mr. Little, things are very tense. Either you will have to go into hiding or someone must be here in the house during the night. I thought.…”
J truly did not know what she was talking about and said so.
Then Sophia was there, saying calmly, “I apologize for the unseemly ructions, Miss Woods.”
“You mustn’t be too hard on the poor kid,” said the wise young woman. “Of course, I knew.…”
“Yes, I must thank you for calling it to my attention,” said Sophia, causing her husband to shudder within.
But then Marietta was there saying, “Oh, we have company? How lovely you look today! Doesn’t she, J? How delightful to have young people around the house.”
There were a few confused moments, during which J said he was wanted at the office and perhaps he had better be off, and Annette chimed in to say that Mrs. Little having been so understandably upset, she wouldn’t dream of being a bother. But Sophia announced in a voice permitting no arguments that luncheon would be served in fifteen minutes.
So Marietta got to entertain the guest, because Sophia went to the kitchen, and J went quietly out of the room and tapped on Nanjo’s door.
She was burrowing under a fat quilt on her bed. “I don’t care,” she wept stubbornly, “I don’t see why I had to be blasted. I don’t see why she had to make such a big deal.…”
“It wasn’t very pleasant for your mother, either,” said J patiently (or for Cal, the gardener, he thought. Or for me).
“Mother just made a big fool out of me!” Nanjo came up on all fours, her hair hanging down around her face. “What did she think I was going to do, anyway? If I wanted to do anything, I wouldn’t have to depend on the lower classes. I know all about sex!”
At this preposterous remark, J couldn’t help feeling a little better momentarily.
Oh, he had heard long since that all they talked about in high school was sex. The girls talked about it to the girls. The boys talked about it to the boys. The girls and boys talked about it to one another. And the teachers talked about it to either or both the boys and the girls. Oh, Nanjo had talked about it a lot—and seen it playacted on the screens, heard it wailed about in songs, and read it written about in book after book all the way from junk to literature.
But surely only a virgin could say what she had just said!
Still J, who did not believe that there was more than one way to know even the first thing about sex, found himself soon saddened to think of all the generations who by whisper-whisper or talk-talk-talk had been and would be brought impure to the experience, already prejudiced one way or the other.
“I wish you were Eve,” he said sadly, “but it’s too late.”
Why should he say more? Why should he talk? More talk? (But how can a human resist the lure of language?) “As it is,” J said in spite of himself, “I guess you’d better go be a sexpot in the movies, Nanjo. That’s only pictures. You’d never have to know who’s watching. Or what side of the tracks he comes from. You’d never have to know there was anybody out there at all.”
Nanjo fell flat with a thump. “You make me sick,” she murmured. The quilt billowed. J could see the flush along her cheekbone. He guessed he’d spanked her.
“You may be excused from luncheon,” he said.
“I’d throw up!” howled Nanjo, rearing up again. “I can’t stand that bleached blond character. How come it’s okay for her to be a sexpot?” She glared; she would be in the right, somehow.
“I wish you knew who you were trying to fool,” said J.
“I’m not! I hate the whole stupid thing! I don’t know what you want. I’m not trying to fool anybody!”
“Yes, you are,” said J, “but it won’t be me.”
He left her, thinking that if he had to choose a side, he just might find himself on the side of Cal, the gardener!
Luncheon was a very polite affair.
Sophia, under her iron mask, was mortified. She had let her cursed temper explode under the temptation of an outlet for it that had nothing to do with its true cause. Well, she didn’t care (anymore) what this Annette thought, and her mother didn’t count, and Nanjo she would deal with somehow. But she hated to have made such a fool of herself in J’s eyes. He could be so maddening, as for instance when he kept his temper. She tried defensively to believe he took this all too casually, but it didn’t work. Sophia knew he was upset and much saddened.
Lunch did not take as long as it seemed to take. J said he’d have to go now. Annette sprang up; she must go, too.
“Must you really?” Sophia said, as lightly as she could. “Let me say again that I am sorry for the unpleasantness.”
“Oh, don’t be on my account,” said Annette generously.
Marietta, having tuned out at the very mention of unpleasantness, now started for her room, which was also Nanjo’s. J went to his room in preparation for departure.
Sophia saw the guest’s eyes change and become fake-shy. “I had meant to get up the nerve,” she breathed, “to ask an enormous favor of you, Mrs. Little. I don’t know whether I’ve got the nerve, after all.”
/> “What favor is this?”
“I was wondering if I could possibly dare ask you to let me come and stay and—be a kind of daughter to you for a few days.”
“Daughter!” Sophia was startled enough to snap.
“I know that would have been an awfully nervy thing to ask. But you see …”
“I’m so glad you didn’t,” gushed Sophia. “I would have had to say certainly not. J,” she turned to him as he reappeared, “she wants to move in here and be our daughter. I’ve said No. But I’m sorry. I should have talked it over with you, of course.” She glittered dangerously.
“Why?” said J. “It’s obvious. We can’t have that.” He gave the girl a steady look. (“Out, out,” it said.) “Well, good-bye, Cousin Annie,” he said aloud. “See you, Sophia.” He did not kiss his wife’s cheek. He knew she wouldn’t have liked it.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Little,” he could hear Annette saying behind him, breathless to get away. “I hope your little girl will be all right.”
“I’m sure she will,” lied Sophia. “Good-bye.”
Annette went out to the car at the curb. J was in the garage getting into his car. Sophia wasn’t going anywhere. She would have to deal with Nanjo.
And I wouldn’t have handled it the way I did at all, she thought, if it hadn’t been for that miserable female twerp. Daughter! Hah!
CHAPTER 20
Wednesday Afternoon
In Nanjo’s room Nanjo was up on all fours again. “No,” she screamed at her grandmother. “Oh, for God’s sake, Grandmother!”
“But Nanjo, dear,” said Marietta, “I don’t wish to see you so unhappy. I know how much you wanted that beautiful gown. And I want you to look beautiful, of course I do. Beauty is our right, and such lovely material in the stores. I still have almost twenty dollars.”
“I don’t want any stupid, old, botched-up, homemade dress,” howled Nanjo. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in some crumby old formal you made. Oh … woe.…” Nanjo rolled over.
The door of the room flew open so fast it banged the wall. Sophia stood there. Nanjo shut up and quivered as if she had been hit.
“Mother,” said Sophia, “just get out of this room and leave this miserable brat to me.”
Marietta began to walk backward. She backed out of the room. In the moment Nanjo rose to a sitting position to stare at her mother.
“You are a perfect mess,” said Sophia coldly, “and I am bitterly ashamed of you. I am bitterly ashamed of me, too.”
The words echoed around the walls.
They could both hear Marietta blathering, “So sweet of you, Mrs. Neeby. Such a good neighbor.”
“Well, I heard some commotion in the garden,” said Susie, “and I was wondering if there is anything I could do, you know?”
Nanjo saw Sophia’s chin come slowly up and her mother’s face settle into smiling lines and a cool mantle of control come down over her mother’s whole person.
“Get up, now,” said Sophia to her daughter quietly. “Put on some decent clothes. Wash your face. Make it up. Look civilized.”
“Why?” said Nanjo so quietly that she surprised herself.
“Because you and I have a date to go somewhere,” said Sophia. “Or so I am about to tell Susie Neeby. All right?”
“All right,” said Nanjo, feeling ten years older in a flash.
When Marietta saw her daughter coming, she turned and tottered to the kitchen. Mrs. Arriola, having dealt with the debris of luncheon, was retying her head scarf. “Oh, Miz Thomas, I got to go now. But oh, Miz Thomas, there’s something bad, bad, going on around here, ain’t there?”
“Lovely home,” said Marietta. “So warm, so generous to include.” Marietta was not being sarcastic. She didn’t know how.
“Oh, Miz Thomas, there’s some black cloud hanging over this house,” said Mrs. Arriola. “You remember what I’m saying.”
“My Own Good Angel is over this house,” said Marietta tearfully.
“Oh, Miz Thomas, I dunno about that,” said Mrs. Arriola. “There’s angels of darkness, too, don’t forget.”
“I guess the whole block heard me blowing up and booting out the gardener,” Sophia was saying to her best friend.
“What brought this on?” Susie wanted to know.
“Oh, there’s probably a straw for every camel’s back,” said Sophia. “He hasn’t been satisfactory for a long time. I just wish I didn’t have to get worked up before I can fire anybody.” She looked out at the half-pruned tree and the heaps of branches on the ground.
“Spoke too fast, didn’t I?” she said. “Should have let him finish the elm. Poor J.” (Sophia felt uneasy for that booting out. But done was done. She might have had to do it in any case.)
“Where did J go by the way?” Susie asked.
“To the office. Why?”
“Say, who’s the platinum babe?”
“What babe?” Sophia pretended she didn’t know.
“The one who stopped her car around the corner in front of my house and honked at J so he stopped, too. They kinda had their heads together for a minute.”
“Oh, that platinum babe,” said Sophia. “She’s some kind of cousin. I can never figure out whether it’s first cousin twice removed or second cousin once. Pore little thing”—Sophia’s eyes assured Susie that this was sarcasm—“is in some kind of a state over a boyfriend. Well, you know, old reliable J, the father figure?”
“I guess he’s pretty good with girls, at that,” said Susie mischievously. “What’s all this about J looking for another position?”
“You got me there, pal,” said Sophia bluntly.
“Oh, listen, there was this man showed up this morning. He said he was checking J out for clearance, for top secret.”
“I’ll be darned,” said Sophia.
“Listen, I can’t help knowing that J hasn’t been to his office. Sophia, I’ll telling you, if they’ve fired J, they must be crazy.”
“If who has fired J?” Sophia drawled. “Oh, darn it, he forgot to endorse that check again. I guess I can charge it. Nanjo?” she called. “Almost ready?” Then she said to Susie, “We’re on our way to I. Magnin’s. Nanjo saw a dress there she wants for only three fifty. And I might find a little something for myself for, say, three ninety-five.”
“What do you mean three fifty? Three ninety-five?”
“Say four hundred, then,” said Sophia. “That’s the dregs of seven fifty, isn’t it? J told me to blow it all in.”
“Do you mean,” said Susie, “seven hundred and fifty dollars?”
“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” said Sophia with a grin.
“Hey, can I come, too?” said Susie. “I love to see money spent. Anybody’s money.”
“Be my guest,” said Sophia carelessly. Thinking, Damn it!
The moment he put his foot inside the office door J saw his work cut out for him. So he simply fell to, putting aside his unhappy thoughts about Nanjo and his irritation with Cousin Annette. That one had had no business honking him to a halt and begging him to follow her to a secret conference because great affairs hung in the balance. J had had it with great affairs. He had affairs enough in his own backyard.
He knew very well that somehow or other Annette had been the spark to a fuse and that there would not have been quite such an explosion in his own backyard had she not been in his house.
So he had looked upon Annette with stern disfavor and had said to her, “Beat it. And don’t come around anymore. I’ve got nothing to confer with you about, and I won’t have you upsetting my family. The day you move in! Hah! That’ll be the day! Move on.”
“But Mr. Little, you’d get to understand. You’re in danger.”
“One danger,” J had barked, “I’m getting out of right now is you and your helpful hints to my daughter. I understand you don’t know any better. But your assumptions are ignorant, and your ignorance is destructive. I can’t do a thing about it, since I didn’t have the raising of you. But I don’t have to pu
t up with it around my house. So beat it, like I said.”
“But for the sake of so many important people, I have to beg you … Would you be willing to go into hiding for a while?”
“I would not.” (Who the hell does she think is important?)
“But you must be careful. This man, Goodrick …”
“Go play hide-and-seek with him, why don’t you?” J had said, putting his car in “drive.” “He’s childish, too. Now I’m a grown-up. I … and don’t ask me why, because you’d never understand … I have got to go to the office.”
He had watched in his rearview mirror, but her car had not moved to follow. Nor had any other car—that he noticed.
The mess at the office was the consequence of indecision; tempers were touchy, feelings had been hurt, progress hung up; something like mutiny was brewing. J wasted no time in making soothing remarks. He simply began to make decisions in an orderly array. After a while, he thought to himself (mixing metaphors as usual) that he had hold of the right threads to thin out the fog and set up the applecart, by golly, and here was something he did know how to do, whoever he was.
He had been at it for about an hour when his phone told him that he had a visitor, “A Mr. Goodrick to see you.”
“Tell him I’m busy.”
The phone rang again. “He says it is very urgent. He says only three minutes.”
“Tell him No.”
“He says he’ll wait, Mr. Little.” J received the sense of the receptionist’s cry for help.
“I’m coming out there,” he said.
In the reception room, sure enough, there stood Goodrick, flashing his teeth as whitely as ever and playing to be the old backslapping buddy wanting to repair to some inner sanctum, but J would have none of that.
He said, “What do you want? I’m busy.”
So Goodrick began to speak in low tones, eyeing the receptionist the while. “I only ask you to do me the favor of coming to my hotel room,” he coaxed, “as soon as convenient, for only an hour or so, and repeating to me every word that Doctor Willing said to you. For the sake of your country? I know you’ll do it.”
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