Clair De Lune

by Jetta Carleton

  What they did in addition was harmless enough. For the most part. Sutt’s Corner—well, that was a mistake, even if she wasn’t the one who led them there. The boys knew where it was long before they knew her. And they had had a beer or two before she knew them. Anyway, who could have seen them there? Nobody, except railroad men and stockyard workers and a few sociable ladies of the evening. No one who knew or gave a damn. And though it was always only the three of them, who knew that for sure? As for those informal “seminars,” Maggie had been there for the first two and there could have been other girls as well. How did Mrs. Medgar know whether there were or weren’t? The only thing Mrs. Medgar knew was that Miss Liles had been seen at the movies and students sometimes came to her house in the evening.

  And all that had been explained. Well enough too. Mr. Frawley believed it, he could explain to Mrs. Medgar, and things would be all right. She might have to go on the carpet first and let Mrs. Medgar pick her liver. But she could do it if she had to. With Mr. Frawley behind her, the whole affair would blow over. And she would still have a job. She pulled her chair up to the desk and opened the book to Act IV.

  But what if it didn’t?

  She looked up, staring across the empty chairs. What if it did not blow over? Suppose Mrs. Medgar would not give in? Mrs. Medgar was a bitter woman. And what if—she put her hand to her mouth in horror—what if, in spite of Mr. Frawley, she had to appear before the board? Tell us, Miss Liles, is there any truth to the rumors … we have it on good authority … a saloon down near the stockyards at odd hours.... Do you realize, Miss Liles … the moral character of students … ethical code … the privacy of your rooms … young men … would you give us their names, please … their names, Miss Liles—

  What would she do? Grovel for mercy or stand there barefaced and lie?

  She would lie through her teeth. She had to. She had obligations, loans to repay, a living to make. She had Toby and George to protect. The truth at this point was a luxury she could not afford.

  She realized tardily that the class bell had rung, and rose and opened the door. Maybe she wouldn’t have to lie. Maybe Mr. Frawley would take care of it and Mrs. Medgar would be outmaneuvered. She sat down at the desk, erect and teacherly, and began hastily to review her notes.

  The students came in promptly, settled themselves with a light scraping of chairs. She bent over the notes, making a few additions. In the stillness of her kitchen one recent evening she had thought of some rather perceptive things to say about Caliban, a question or two that would set off a good discussion. She waited until the room was quiet and looked up.

  “Well now,” she said, “after these several weeks with The Tempest, I think it’s clear to all of us that this is one of the world’s great fairy tales. It has all the standard ingredients—love and virtue, which triumph, of course; and wickedness, which is punished; and we can assume that everybody who deserves to lives happily ever after. So far, this follows the formula. It’s the same formula that applies to old melodramas, where the villain is thoroughly evil and the hero is thoroughly good and neither one is true to real life.

  “But how much truth do we want it in a fairy tale or a melodrama? Not much, I’d say. It’s that suspension of reality, of truth to real life, that allows us to live for a while in an ideal world where storms are safely ordered, and in the end everything comes right. So it is in The Tempest. But Shakespeare doesn’t stick strictly to the formula. Throughout the play he gives us overtones of reality, of humanity and growth of character, which make the play more complicated than your run-of-the-mill fairy tale, and more satisfying. Now, along this line of fantasy and reality and good and evil, I’d like us to take another look at a couple of the symbols—Ariel and Caliban. Let’s begin with Caliban and to refresh ourselves, let’s turn back to Act Three.”

  There was a rustle of pages. Lindsey, in the front row—he was always in the front row—smiled tenderly.

  She looked down and quickly up again. “Now about halfway through the scene, you remember—” She glanced at the book, but the train of thought had come uncoupled. Flustered, she picked up her notes, laid them down, and turned a page of the text. “Let’s start at the beginning of Scene … Three. Would you read to yourselves, please, the whole scene, before we start the discussion.” She added lamely, for no reason, “Pay particular attention to the choice of words.”

  The heads went down.

  It was not at all what she intended. Caliban wasn’t even in that scene. Somehow she would have to wrench it around to make a point about him. Where the hell was he? She scanned the page for a clue. Old Gonzales, Alonso, Prospero… What if Mrs. Medgar did not give in?

  She pulled the book closer and tried again. Again the mind went its own way. Her thoughts darted from Medgar to Mr. Frawley to Toby and George and back. Visions of the board, mitred and robed, rose between her and the page—Tell us, Miss Liles … can you explain—and mobs of outraged parents behind them. She stared hard at the page. It was no use. The horrors of inquisition beat kettles in her head.

  But what could they know? she asked herself again. How could they pass sentence of guilt with so little to go on? Rumors. A movie or two, the boys on her stairs. It was not what you think it was, not that at all. If I could explain… No, it would not happen again.... I am sorry, I never intended—

  They would boil her in oil.

  For she was guilty as charged. And who had she thought she was that she could get away with all that? All over town under cover of darkness, careless as blown trash, dancing in the moonlight and drinking beer, prowling through churches, up and down the streets with a hoot and a holler and then the night of the fog and she and Toby and any way you sliced it, it was Immoral Conduct. Had she thought nobody would know?

  “Miss Liles?” A small voice from the front row.

  They were waiting for her, patient and courteous.

  “I finished that whole scene.”

  Eighteen smooth attentive faces turned upon her, waiting.

  “Are we supposed to keep on reading?”

  “No…” she said, and looked down before she turned to stone.

  The fact was, she realized, all of them knew. Knew some part of the story. And the other fact was that she had been glad they knew. For Toby and George were good to look at, and bright and coveted, and hers. She had been proud of that. Her illegal, undersize catch. And there was in those faces—all except one—something she recognized. She had seen it before, elsewhere and close up and not too long ago: a haughtiness, sweetly unconscious, and a cool, young pity. The look that children turn on their elders, that says, You are not one of us.

  Head down over the open book, she searched in frenzy for a clue to Caliban. Her face was hot with shame. She was Lindsey Homeier in reverse, and everybody knew—most of all, Toby and George.

  Eighteen

  Over and over in the next days, the whole spring flashed before her, not the spring she had thought it was, but as the others would see it—Mrs. Medgar and the school board and Mr. Frawley, and as the children saw it. She looked at herself through all those eyes, and the sight appalled her.

  And how would her mother see it?

  She knew very well how Mother would see it, and she would be right. Little Allen was guilty of misconduct and there was no getting around it. It would be a few days yet before error would be analyzed and absolution handed out right and left. As it was, she could see no way to forgive herself, and no way either, for anyone else to forgive her.

  It was an ordeal for her, appearing at school each morning. As she stood before her classes, sober and correct, every face seemed to accuse her. As for the teachers, they might as well have known to the letter what had gone on in the dean’s office. It was deduction from hints and symptoms studiously observed. A particular talent of the academic breed. And inevitably, she must have given herself away. Chastened as she was, it was difficult not to show it and impossible for the others, especially the Ladies, to ignore it. In the lounge, when
she was present, the chatter was conspicuously idle. Busier was what went on behind her back. It was not malicious; they were kindly women. But they were curious. Whatever was happening with Allen, and something was happening, had them mightily intrigued. And it gave Gladys something to comment on in her own brand of wit. Allen was always appearing in the lounge in the wake of the punch line, catching Mae Dell in spasms and Gladys still sizzling between her teeth. Both of which expressions of merriment stopped abruptly as she walked in.

  “Oh, there you are!” Mae Dell was likely to say, and Verna as likely as not to grab her purse and herd the pair of them out. “Come on, Allen’s not ready yet and we’ve got to stop by the bank.” Or some such excuse to get them away before she asked to join them.

  She wouldn’t have asked, not for the world (even pariahs have their pride), for the Ladies were not merely curious, they were afraid. Guilt by association was something they could not risk. They were taking no chances, and she couldn’t blame them. One can’t be too careful around one who hasn’t been careful at all. No wonder they avoided her; she was repellent. Corruption gives off an odor.

  Lordy passed her in the hall now with no more than Good morning. Even Dr. Ansel seemed distant. He hadn’t asked her out once last week. No wonder. If the rest of them had wind of her disgrace, think what Ansel must know! Nevertheless, he had come in a time or two to air his views on proposed munitions plants and what Roosevelt was up to. But that was a pretext, she suspected. Curiosity getting the better of him, he probably came in the interests of research.

  In a way it was a comfort that more and more was being said about the war. It was in the air, you heard it in the halls—rumors and predictions. Although such talk alarmed her, she took some solace from the thought that in their concern with the larger issue, they might forget about her.

  She went about her business all week as inconspicuously as was possible for a girl who might have been wearing a scarlet letter. Mornings, she crept to school; during off hours, as often as not, she hid in the library. No more free and easy banter with the students in the hall, no slipping out for a Coke between classes. Now she came early and, like the other teachers, stayed late. And crept home nights to stay there.

  Her shame was an occupation. The only other, the only distraction, was work. She made out questions for final exams next week and plans for next year’s classes, persuading herself that Mr. Frawley must surely prevail and she would be back at work.

  Joblessness haunted her. Visions of breadlines flitted through her head. She had never stood in a breadline, nor sold pencils on a street, nor lived in a Hooverville. She came of farm country, where they lived well enough. Even so, it was not always easy. The great drought dried up the fields and burned the gardens and orchards; the cattle, those not sold at a loss, shriveled and some of them died. On Sundays the preacher stood up in his shirtsleeves (his trousers darned where they had worn through at the buttocks) and prayed for endurance of faith through this plague which the Lord had put upon us as upon Egypt, and for the repentance of sins for which it was punishment. He had given up praying for rain. Through the open windows dust had blown in and settled in the pews. Women brushed it off with their handkerchiefs before sitting down.

  Those were the years when the banks failed, more than five thousand of them (Ansel reminded her), and fifteen million people were unemployed. In cities a grown man would shovel the snow off your driveway and the sidewalk for a dime. A woman would clean your house for a quarter, if anyone had the quarter. Farmers went broke and left the land. Men left their families and went looking for jobs in St. Louis and Kansas City. And half the boys in town shipped out on freight trains, looking for work, any kind, anywhere. Girls sewed up the runs in their rayon stockings until the toes and heels wore through. A stray bobby pin was considered a find, and luxury most extravagant was a candy bar for a nickel.

  Those times were not long ago and she had not forgotten, even though she had been better off than most: Her mother taught school—she had a salary! Because of that, her daughter could go to college, and because of that, she had a job.

  What would she do if she lost it?

  Soberly she considered the alternatives. She could type; with luck she could get a job in an office. Or she could clerk at Woolworth’s. She could go back to the farm, maiden aunt to her brother’s children, and help with the butchering and the canning. Or go home to her mother in the country town, turn inward and hide from the world.

  In view of those grim prospects, any notion she had had about quitting her job quickly faded. She could not watch the dream go without a pang of regret—that long dream of cities and excitement, theaters and galleries and dance studios, and people rushing through the streets on marvelous, mysterious business. Hadn’t she thought about it through those long fall nights, thought seriously, and planned how she would get there?

  Others had done it—gone to New York, gone to Paris. She knew a girl who had bicycled through Europe. Why couldn’t she do the same, just pick up and go, on a shoestring and a bike? But Europe was at war now. England, Italy, Spain, all in turmoil. Paris fallen to the Nazis. No more seeking your fortune there, or anywhere else in these times. She hadn’t a shoestring anyway, and she fell off bikes.

  She looked over her shoulder wistfully as the vision receded. But recede it did. The best she could do now was behave herself and hang on to the bird in hand. If indeed it hadn’t already flown.

  With that possibility in mind, she had written to her mother, a cheerful dissembling letter suggesting that because of other ambitions, wayward though they might appear, she just possibly might resign. She would get a job with a magazine or a newspaper, start at the bottom, work her way up, and so on. Never so much as a hint that resignation might not be voluntary.

  She went so far as to draft a letter to Mr. Frawley, giving him all the reasons she gave her mother: she felt the need to broaden her horizons; she had thought about it for a long time and felt she should leave before she got in a rut. It made a good story.

  And she might as well say she was swimming to China, for all the faith he would have in it. For Mr. Frawley knew better. And to resign at this point would be a clear admission of guilt. She tore up the letter.

  But to her mother she kept up the pretense.

  Mother’s first response was amused disbelief, a “There, there” letter: Mother understood; restlessness, just like her father’s, a touch of spring fever; it would pass. This was followed the next day by another letter, expressing bafflement, then by dire warning, and at last resignation: “great investment in you … faith and hope.”

  Oh, Mother knew how to play it. Gave you what you wanted, and if you took it, made you feel guilty as hell. But in the next letter, two days later, the plain facts: “Why in the name of reason are you being so foolish? Aren’t you mature enough by this time to know… For heaven’s sake, daughter, use your common sense!”

  That one stung. Truth usually did. She had been foolish. To leave now would only make it worse. If she had any common sense, she wouldn’t. And furthermore, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She had been happy here in more ways than one.

  She studied the university catalog, weighed and considered and chose courses she must take in order to go on teaching. Somehow she must squeeze history into the schedule and find time to study Greek drama.

  Each morning she would read the news from last night’s paper, left on her desk these mornings by Dr. Ansel. There was word now of munitions plants proposed for southern Missouri. The president said the international situation was on an hour-to-hour basis. She was horrified by the bombing of London, bewildered by Harry Hopkins. Dutifully she memorized the names of fallen countries and the number of bombers built or about to be built in American factories.

  Alone in her rooms, at the kitchen table, she struggled to atone for her sins and achieve salvation. She studied, read, graded, wrote, and listened for a step on the landing.

  She tried not to listen. But it was a habit not eas
ily broken, even though no one would come. Not Toby. And not George. For George knew. No one had had to tell him. He knew, though he made no accusation. Only his distance reproached her. He had gone back to his own kind, and Toby with him, resuming the old easy camaraderie of best friends. But not with her. It was in their eyes too, that she had seen that look, the gentle reproach of the young. She had erred, and all of them were sorry.

  And yet, she protested, Toby was guilty too. She hadn’t forced him to come up her stairs that night. Why should he be absolved and back in grace and she alone be the outcast? It was one of the questions that harried her through the long, still nights.

  Sleep was skittish. No ritual seemed to help, no rhymed words nor the counting of sheep nor the black mass of the Lord’s Prayer said backward. No matter how she coaxed it, it came when it pleased or not at all, and halfheartedly at that. She turned and turned in the darkness, enduring the snaps and nibbles of remorse. Until one night, as the clock struck two, she had had enough and she put on her clothes and ran.

  It was a reflex, involuntary. She couldn’t have said why she did it, only that she had to escape. And she ran down the alley like one running to freedom. Between the high hedges, the fencerows of mulberry and bridal wreath and the lilac bushes, past the bins by the carriage-house doors, and on to the house with the empty fountain, where she stopped to breathe. The cool air washed her skin. It smelled of green growing things and moist earth. She walked on slowly, taking deep breaths. Here the scent of viburnum lay across the path, made heavier by the dampness. It followed her for a long way and she turned and went back, counting the number of steps of its reach, the point where you first could detect the fragrance and where you no longer could. She played at this for several minutes, absorbed in the counting, the precise demarcations, then went on to where the willow drooped over the fence. She waded into it, into the long, thin hanging branches that made a soft clicking as she moved. Out and in and stopping a moment, letting them close around her, a familiar whispering element.