Clair De Lune

by Jetta Carleton

“Isn’t that what they call chaperoning? No harm in that.”

  “I didn’t see any.”

  “Hm. Well, I don’t see how they could fire you for something like that and maybe a little gossip. If there’s nothing to it.”

  She was tempted to spill it out, how she ran around in the night, all over town, and stole forks and drank beer and went crazy over a schoolkid. “They might,” she said faintly.

  He sat for a moment, thoughtful, looking out at the street. “See here,” he said, turning to face her, “if they’ve got a reason to fire you, or if they can make one up, if you’re really afraid, I say beat ’em to it. Go in tomorrow and hand in your resignation.”

  “But—”

  “Take off for New York if that’s what you want. Or the Amazon! Maybe now’s the time, even if it is a bad time. Maybe you ought to just cut and run.”

  She cried out forlornly, “Mother won’t let me!”

  “For the love of little green apples!” He slapped the steering wheel. “Are you going to let her run your whole life? She’s done it up to now. But you’re a grown woman. Take charge, be your own boss!”

  “I don’t know how!” she wailed in misery.

  “Oh, now, now,” he said, “calm down. We’ll work it out.”

  “You got a handkerchief?”

  “Here.”

  She blew her nose on the red bandanna. “I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t mean to come down on you so hard. I just thought—well, I still think—listen, how much money do you have saved up?”

  “Forty-five dollars,” she said, wailing again, “and eighty-five cents.”

  “Whoa!”

  “And I’m still in debt.”

  “Maybe not as much as you think. Come on, kid, don’t cry. Your nose is all red. You’re going to be okay, really you are. But you got to stick to your guns. Don’t give in because of Mother. She wanted me to be a lawyer, y’know. But it wasn’t what I wanted. She can be got around. Just keep that in mind.” A slow grin spread across his face. “Do you remember the time when—no, you wouldn’t, you weren’t born yet. And of course you can’t remember much about Dad. You were so young when he went.”

  “Not much. Except what you’ve told me.”

  “Dad and I were good friends. And when he left home that time… Did she ever tell you about that?”

  “Last summer.”

  “Tell you why he left?”

  “Said they’d had a few problems. Didn’t say what.”

  “Of course she didn’t. Because most of those little problems were … her.”

  “I thought so.”

  “You know how Mother is. Bossy. Her way is always right, and come hell or high water, she’s going to have it. I caught onto that by the time I was seven. So he stood it as long as he could and took off. He had himself one last great big beautiful fling.”

  “What did he do?”

  Dalton was smiling to himself, remembering. “What he did best.”

  “What was that?”

  “Gambling.” He turned to her, grinning. “Our father was one hell of a poker player.”

  She opened her mouth, shut it, and opened it again. “Dad was a gambler?”

  “That’s how he got the farm.”

  Her mouth fell open again.

  “In a poker game in St. Louis. Won it from a banker who had foreclosed. Fair and square.”

  But a gambler was the same as a drunkard. A lowlife, a disgrace. Insofar as they thought of it at all, that’s what they had been taught to think. But her own father! She stared for a moment and began to grin. Then she laughed. “Did Mother know?”

  “He never told her. She knew he had gambled some before they were married, but she thought she had him cured. Maybe she had, more or less.”

  “How did you know all this?”

  “I didn’t, for, a long time. All I knew was he could play poker. He taught me how.”

  “He did? Did Mother know?”

  “She never found out,” he said gleefully. “Dad kept a pack of cards in the barn. We’d sneak out there sometimes and play in the hayloft. Played for straws. I got right good at it too. I was lucky though. I never caught the fever. But Dad had it in his blood. Feel kinda sorry for him, looking back. He must have loved her a lot to carry around all that frustration.”

  But he had never told Dalton about winning the farm. “I found that out from Uncle Woodrow. When I was about seventeen he sent for me to come down. And I was to come by myself. He didn’t want Mother along or you. He made that plain. Mother never got along with his brothers, you know.”

  So Dalton had gone down to Ste. Genevieve alone, and he came back rich. “When Dad left home that time, he and Woodrow went up to St. Louis and got in a big poker game. Dad won six hundred dollars.” It had stayed in a bank in Ste. Genevieve till long after Dad died and Uncle Woodrow himself was dying. “That’s when he gave me the letter, when he was about to die. Dad had left a letter with him for me. He wanted me to have charge of the money, he said. But when the time came, you were to have your half. And that’s what you thought you were borrowing from me. It wasn’t a loan. The three hundred dollars is rightfully yours.”

  She looked at him in astonishment. Three hundred dollars was a fortune.

  “I’ve dipped into my half when I needed it bad. But I’ve always paid it back, sooner or later. And I’ve never touched your half. Just left it there to draw interest—till you were going back to get your master’s. I thought you needed it then.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me?”

  He laughed. “Because if you’d known it was yours, you might have spent it all by this time. I know how hard it is to save money, ’specially when you never had it to save. This way, when you thought you were paying it back, you were paying yourself. So it’s there now, the hundred bucks plus interest you’ve paid me back so far, and another hundred and fifty where that came from. You’ve got a stake now, kid. And if you want to take it and run, I say do it. Remember, you’re a gambler’s daughter.”

  “Dalton,” she said at last, “you always did look after me.”

  There was one more question. “Does Mother know where this money came from?”

  “His letter said I was to tell her. And I did. She’ll never tell you where it came from. But she knows.”

  Twenty

  And so Father had had the last word!

  For all those years of good behavior he had paid her back. And there wasn’t a thing Mother could do about it. It was tainted money, but good usage could take off the tarnish. She might even have admired the way he did it. With a wink and a grin, as befitted the winner, and probably a pat on the fanny. Better than a kick in the butt.

  Mother in the backyard that night last summer: I loved him and I wanted him back. And he came. And maybe it wasn’t his love that brought him back, but hers. How seductive being loved could be.

  And how seductive it was now to take her share of the money and do what she wanted to do. Or wanted once. Go in and resign, Dalton said. Well, maybe she should. Get out before they fired her, no matter what Mother would say. After all, she hadn’t meant to stay here forever, not with all there was to see and do out there. She resolved to go in and write the letter tonight. She rose from the landing, where she had sat for the last half hour, and opened the kitchen door.

  But what if she resigned?

  She stopped in the doorway and thought about it. What if she did it—and they had made up their minds to keep her? Don’t count on it. Go in and resign. Her mind tossed it back and forth, around and around until in the end, she decided to trust Mr. Frawley. There was still the chance that he could save her.

  It was the last week of school, and still she’d had no word from the dean. She took it as ill omen. By this time, surely, he would have talked to Mrs. Medgar; if he had convinced and pacified her, he would surely have said so. On the other hand, perhaps it had slipped his mind. He was old and forgetful, and this time of year there were many responsibilities. Ma
ybe it was only that; he had more important things to worry about than her transgressions. But it wasn’t likely. She might yet be called to account before the board, and she went to school each morning cold with dread.

  Maxine’s wedding provided some distraction. In the lounge the Ladies were much preoccupied with what they should wear and when to present the gift. They had gone together to buy it. Although they had asked her to come in on it, Allen obligingly declined. They didn’t really want her to and, anyway, she preferred to choose on her own. She wasn’t sure what the Ladies had bought. From the chatter, it was some sort of cut glass something, rather large. “Something that will show,” Mae Dell said. Verna thought it should have been a pressure cooker.

  Allen’s gift came from an antique shop, a slender crystal vase that had caught her fancy. A small thing, it would hold one rose, maybe two daffodils, and it cost too much. But she liked it and hoped Maxine wouldn’t consider it secondhand.

  She had bought a new dress to wear to the wedding, pale green like new poplar leaves, and a new ribbon to put on last year’s hat, a little straw thing that sat on the back of her head, with the ribbon down the back. The slippers were two summers old. They would have to do.

  Reluctantly she began to pack her belongings. On the Sunday after the wedding Dalton would come for her. A week later he would deliver her to summer school. She thought, with a sinking heart, of John Dewey and Theory of Education. Meanwhile, there were reports to make out. She did all this faithfully, and faithfully each night listened to the news reports and studied the evening paper. The British were dying and losing in Crete, their cruisers destroyed, Nazi troops dropping out of the sky in parachutes. The Germans were sinking merchant ships faster than England and the United States could build them. In a Fireside Chat the president said we would step up our efforts, the Axis powers were trying to strangle us. “We will not hesitate,” he said, “to use our armed forces…” She felt in some odd way that her ignorance had helped to bring it all about, that the war would not end unless she acknowledged and understood it.

  She recalled tales of the World War, heard in her childhood: frozen trenches, mud and rats, starvation and poison gas. And shell shock that sent men home with their minds half gone and their bodies a mass of twitching nerves. Like the man in Grigsby, just a boy, they said, who sat in the porch swing all one summer, his mother beside him, or one of his sisters. She remembered him. “The crazy man,” she called him. “No, dear, he isn’t crazy. He was hurt in the war. You don’t have to be afraid of him.” She imagined Toby and George wounded on the field, dragging their shattered bodies through the bloodstained snow. But it was too painful to dwell on for long.

  Leaving her books, she stepped out onto the landing, where the damp air cooled her face. The branches stirred lazily. Far across town the long muted warning of a train whistle. Silence again. The night spread wide around her, filled with its wonders.

  But no more of that, no more at all. The time had passed. Sighing, she went in to study war again and redeem herself.

  It was in further atonement that she surprised the wits out of Dr. Ansel and agreed to go out with him. On Wednesday afternoon he had come in to ask if he might escort her to baccalaureate services that Friday night. “Your steady won’t object to a little thing like that, would he?”

  “My who? Oh, him,” she said, recalling the excuse she had made months ago. “Well, maybe he wouldn’t.”

  “We’ll be well chaperoned. Could I call for you then, Friday?”

  Dr. Ansel could be more tiresome than not; he was pompous and stuffy, and there was the blotch. But he had asked. No matter how much he knew about her fall, he was willing to be seen with her. He stood by the desk, his anxious pale blue eyes looking down at her. And spurred by a curious jumble of feelings, she smiled and said, “Thank you. That would be very nice.”

  The Holder of the Third Degree stared in astonishment. “Gee, swell,” he said, “swell!” so taken aback that he could only repeat himself. “That’s swell. I’ll see you then Friday night.”

  “What time?”

  “It starts at eight. About seven-thirty, shall I come for you then? Or seven-fifteen, so we’ll have plenty of time? It’s up at the high school, you know, way uptown. And we have to get into our gowns and all that.”

  “Seven-fifteen will be fine,” she said. “Or make it seven. I like to be early.” The sooner they got there, the fewer people would see them come in together.

  “Good! Seven o’clock sharp. See you then!” And turning back from the door, “Mother’ll be with us, you know.”

  She hadn’t known, but she might have.

  “I hope you won’t mind. She doesn’t get out much unless I take her and I’d hate to leave her home on baccalaureate night.”

  “Of course not.”

  “She gets a big kick out of seeing me in my gown and hood. She’s really proud of that. We’ll take her right home afterward.”

  Me too, she thought.

  “I hope you won’t mind.”

  “Not at all.”

  “That’s swell. Thanks ever so much. You’re a swell sport.” She wasn’t a swell sport. Neither Toby nor George had come by all week, and now classes were over, and she was left to spend the last week grading finals, entering grades and cleaning out her room. She still hadn’t heard anything from Dean Frawley, and it weighed on her heavily. So why not go with Ansel, and pretend everything was all right, and she was a member of the faculty in good standing?

  So Dr. Ansel, in the polished blue Essex, called for her promptly at seven o’clock on Friday night, and they drove to the high-school building, his mother in the backseat with his cap and gown on her lap. They arrived a few minutes after seven.

  The graduates had beaten her there. Ganged up at the side door, they were clowning about in their ceremonial garb and parted like the Red Sea for Dr. Ansel’s triumphant entry, his mother on one arm, Allen firmly held on the other.

  Nor were they in advance of the Ladies. Backstage, Verna and Gladys and Mae Dell were already getting into their robes. “Well, hel-lo!” said Gladys, her smile spreading.

  Verna looked around, assuming the practical. “Get a ride?”

  But Dr. Ansel wasn’t letting it go at that. Making clear that she had been brought, he hovered around with a proprietary air that gave her the collywobbles. There was no way she could shake him. Wherever she turned, there he was, adjusting her hood, helping with hooks and tassels and this and that that she didn’t need help with. He was in wonderful spirit, strutting in the vestments of Higher Education, which he and he alone of this company was privileged to wear. When they filed into the auditorium, he was immediately behind her.

  The faculty sat on the platform, behind the speaker’s lectern; sat and rose and sat again, through the invocation, the choral selection (which, to her relief, had nothing to do with Shakespeare’s bee), and the introduction of the speaker, the local Congregational minister.

  In the rows down front Toby sat with his mortarboard cocked back on his head. George, his cap pulled to the bridge of his nose, kept biting the tassel. The girl next to him was going to die of laughter any minute.

  Allen fixed her eyes on the speaker’s back. Beside her, Dr. Ansel sat erect in his dignity, turning his head now and then as if to assure himself that she was there. She pretended not to notice. Old Ansel, with his mother, his blotch, and Harold Bell Wright. But Ansel was Doctor-of-Philosophy Ansel, and she had allowed him to bring her here. She sat beside him and she sat bravely, shored up by the visible proof of his ripeness: that gown and that hood that separated the man from the boys.

  Twenty-one

  Afterward, Dr. Ansel drove his mother straight home. Allen had been rather glad to have her along; that made it less like a “date.” And she had every intention of going straight home, herself. But Ansel, having seen his mother into the house, came bounding back with other intentions.

  “Want to go for a little ride,” he said, releasing the brake, “get
a breath of air?”

  “I’ve got an awful lot to do,” she said, but she hesitated. After all, Dr. Ansel wasn’t afraid to be seen with her. Unlike the others, he had not turned the cold shoulder and crossed to the other side of the road. “Well, maybe, just for a little while.” She had to make some small show of gratitude.

  But she did not have to stop for a Coke at the Breeze Inn, otherwise known as the Grease Pit. “I really don’t want a thing,” she said.

  “Chocolate malt? A banana split? They make swell splits out here.”

  “Oh, please, no. I don’t think I could get around one of those,” she said, who could polish off two at a sitting.

  “Root beer?”

  “Not a thing, really.” A mean trick to play on Ansel’s sweet tooth. But she had been seen with him once tonight. That was enough.

  “Okay, we’ll drive around awhile. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

  He drove slowly through the dark streets, most of them as familiar to her as her own two rooms. Presently, turning west, he said, “Guess you haven’t had a chance to see much of this town, not having a car and all.”

  She leaned against the door, looking out, and said nothing.

  “Lots of interesting spots around here. Interesting region. Ever been out to Chisdale Park?”

  “It’s rather late,” she said.

  “It’s not far—just at the edge of town. Nice out there. It’s a big park, sixty acres or so, I’d say. More, if you count the country club. That’s more or less part of it. One runs right into the other. Beautiful spot. Old Chisdale was a millionaire, you know. Mining and land. He built one of those big houses not far from you, by the way. The land for the park was deeded to the city in 1890 and the adjoining acreage sometime later, after the war. That’s the country club now. They’ve got a swell clubhouse, a real mansion from the looks of it. Guess we’ll get to see it on Saturday at Miss Boatwright’s reception. You’re staying for the wedding, aren’t you?”

  “I plan to.”

  “I sure hope so. We’ll have a good time at the reception.”