The lack of contact with her brother didn't seem to bother Barbara. For the past few years conversation with Yale had been in the vein of, "Hi, kid, what's up?" and a variation of sarcastic responses from Yale such as "Not what your boy friend has up." To which Barbara would answer sweetly, "Well, someday you'll be big enough and yours will go up."
Liz heard one of their conversational flurries and had expressed her shock to Barbara. Yale imagined that she probably discussed the quality of being a lady with Barbara, but it hadn't diminished Barbara's fresh, breezy manner.
Walking in the back door, through the kitchen, Yale found Amy, the Marratts' cook and maid, sitting at the kitchen table reading one of her True Story magazines. She hadn't heard him come in.
"And that's how I got pregnant by my husband's brother and ruined all our lives," Yale said, leaning over her shoulder.
Amy jumped. "Boy, you shouldn't tiptoe around like that." She looked at him suspiciously. "It was her stepfather not her husband's brother. You all been reading my magazines?"
Yale grinned. "You bet, Amy. I read anything. It's a vice. Where is everybody?"
"You sure are in trouble, Yale Marratt. Your ma says your father is ready to skin you alive. She's gone out to the club. She had to bring his tuxedo to him. When he called I listened on the kitchen phone. Your father can outswear any man ah ever heard including my poor old George -- God rest his soul. Where you been? . . . Stealin' your father's car." Amy shook her head. "You kids today sure get away with murder."
Yale looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was seven-thirty. The wisest approach would be to face Pat at the club. Earlier, Pat had expected him to come. If he arrived and sat casually at Pat's table there would be little that Pat could say in front of his friends. Later, maybe, Pat would have cooled down and would be more tractable.
"Your sister is upstairs getting ready," Amy said. "Your ma says you could drive Barbara to the club when you came in. She ain't got a date tonight."
Walking upstairs, Yale smiled. Amy knows everything that goes on in this family, he thought. She monitored all the telephone calls, and she wasn't averse to peeping through keyholes. It occurred to him that someday with the proper encouragement he could find out from Amy if there were anything between Liz and Frank Middleton. At the rate things were developing he might need an ally in Liz. It would be handy to know what really was the score with his mother and Middleton.
In his room, he took off his clothes, and looked at himself in the mirror for a second. He brushed off a couple of pebbles that clung to his buttocks, and chuckled as he thought of sitting naked in Harry Cohen's back yard. He opened the bathroom door and walked in. Barbara was sitting in the tub.
"Get out of here," she yelled, and covered her breasts.
"Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle," Yale said, laughing. He sat down on the toilet bowl, facing the tub. "This is my day! I haven't seen my beautiful sister in her birthday suit since she was thirteen years old! You're slipping, sis, old kid. How come you forget to lock my door? Liz wouldn't like it. Tsk, tsk, very careless."
Barbara, her brown eyes wide and angry, her blonde hair tied in a knot on top of her head, looked at him furiously. "If you weren't an adolescent voyeur, you'd have the decency to get out of here."
"Not on your life," Yale grinned. He walked around the bathroom. "Take a look at a man, sis." He sucked in his belly and expanded his chest. "Yahoo -- not one of your Harvard dilly boys." He grabbed the face cloth out of her hands. "Here, I'll wash your back -- no charge. Front, too, if you want."
She screamed as he reached for her breasts. She stood up in the tub.
"Well, you're not so bad for a sister," Yale said admiringly. He picked up the towel. "Come on, I'll dry you -- just to be friendly."
Suddenly, Barbara laughed. "My God, men are funny looking!" She stepped out of the tub. "Go ahead, slave. Dry me!"
Yale snapped the towel at her fanny. "The hell you say. You're too eager." He flung the towel at her, and watched; enjoying the sight of her rubbing her back, while her breasts shook. She bent over to dry her toes. It was strange. She was his sister. In many ways she looked like him with the addition of a wide fanny, and tits. She had even occupied the same womb a few years before him. Was that all? Did the things in common stop there? He guessed they did. It beat all hell how two people, born of the same parents, raised in the same house, could be so apparently different. Was there any common ground between them, any similarity of outlook?
"Have you seen enough?" she asked, standing and looking at him coolly. "Because if you are through looking I'm going to get dressed. You are going to be my date at the club tonight. So wash yourself, and use a deodorant because I don't like to dance with smelly little boys."
Yale turned on the shower. "I've seen enough to know you're a big girl, now but are you still a virgin?" he asked casually.
"Wouldn't you like to know," she said, slamming the door as she walked into her room.
Half an hour later they were driving to the club. Yale felt a little uneasy. Pat might very well make a scene. Time and place were not considered when Pat was angry. He worked on the premise that if he had something on his mind, good or bad, he would say it. It was this come-hell-or-high-water attitude of Pat's that frightened Yale. In this past year Yale recognized that, somehow, he, too, was acquiring the same headlong approach. The real source of trouble between them was that he attacked any problem the same way Pat did. Their difference lay not in approach but in fundamental differences in values, and what constituted the "good" or the "bad" in life.
"What are you thinking about, Yale?" Barbara asked. He took his eyes off the road a second and looked at her. She was wearing a green satin evening gown, deep throated and sleek around her breasts.
"You're a good looking dish," he said. "If you weren't my sister I'd go necking with you."
"As your sister, I can tell you, chum, you're in a heap of trouble! Why did you run off on Pat like that? When he telephoned from the club you could hear his voice all over the house. Liz wouldn't tell me. She just said you had gone too far this time. Was it over your Jewish girl friend?"
"I suppose you have the same attitude toward Cynthia as they do," Yale said bitterly.
"I've never met your little filly, remember?" Barbara squeezed his arm. "I'm on your side, Yale. I don't know anything about Jews. I went out with a Jewish fellow once. No complaints. A perfect gentleman. I wouldn't have married him, though. I met his mother and father. The mother was very glittery. You know, rings on her fingers, rings on her toes, very blonde, very efficient. The father quiet, agreeing with his wife. No, it wasn't them. I suppose they were no better or worse than Pat or Liz. It was their friends. I was in another world. They had their own jokes. If you understood Jewish slang, I guess they were funny. They seemed to live in a world surrounded by enemies, -- goyim -- do you know the word? It doesn't mean enemies, maybe it means someone different -- someone not Jewish -- and I was a goy. Nothing Joe, that was his name, could do, could overcome it for me Barbara's voice trailed off. "And he tried, too . . Joe really was very nice."
Barbara snapped on the car radio. The poignant, seekbig tones of a violin filled the car. Barbara hummed along with it.
"I'm going to meet Cynthia's family in September," Yale said. "I'm going to drive her back to school. I'm not worried. You see, I look upon it simply as an interesting problem. I couldn't become a Jew. Cynthia couldn't become a Christian. We love each other enough, I believe, to simply absorb what we need of each other's religion. I'm coming to believe that most religions are not ultimates. We make progress in other areas. Why not religion? What's that they are playing?"
"It's Beethoven's violin concerto. Nice. Yale, I agree with you, but so what? Why don't you accept the world as it is? You'll never change it. In your lifetime there will be Protestants, Jews and Catholics, and never the three shall meet."
"The world would never change if everyone took your attitude," Yale said bitterly.
"Yale -- why do you always snap at me? I'm not a complete dope, even if you think so."
"You'd never think it to watch you."
Barbara looked at him, hurt.
"Oh, darn it, Bobby, I didn't mean that. I suppose it's because we're so much alike really. Yet you always act superior and older. It gets my goat. You're only twenty. Sure you can have babies, but you're still only a kid."
Barbara leaned against the door of the car. She watched Yale's profile. The lids on her brown eyes were half closed. "I like that music. It makes me feel sad . . . kind of longing for something. Do you remember when we were driving up from Miami?"
Yale nodded.
"That was years ago," Barbara said. A feeling of warmth and nostalgia for times remembered overflowed in her eyes. "Pat was driving the car. We were coming along that narrow concrete highway just before you come into Jacksonville. The night was dark. The headlights of the car caught at those luminescent signs. Flash and then darkness. Like that music. I knew that up ahead was Jacksonville. You could see the pink glow of the city in the sky. A hundred sounds filled my mind. Pat taking a puff on his cigarette, the brush of other automobiles passing us, the throb of the engine, the loneliness of the four of us, sitting there, travelling to a strange city. Then we came into the city, and I was thrilled, Yale. It was a strange feeling. I was in love with the loneliness of those empty streets, the strangeness of the place. We passed a department store and the lights were still on in the window, but nobody was on the sidewalk. And then a cigar store, and a man was standing outside smoking a cigar. He looked at us driving by, and it was if he were intended to be there, just gazing into the night. I wondered who he was . . . and where he was going. Then we parked the car in front of the hotel. Pat went up to the clerk, and the lobby was filled with men talking and smoking. I was dreaming that I was just married . . . that my husband was taking me up to our room. Pat came back and said that he could only get two rooms . . . Liz gave him hell for not making advance reservations. The Braves or the Red Sox or some baseball team was in town and everything was taken. Liz said she would sleep with me, but somehow when we got upstairs it was decided that we could sleep in the same room. Liz was upset, I think. She didn't like the idea. We were too old to sleep in the same room. You were thirteen, I think, but Pat said it would be all right. I guess he wanted to have a time with Liz." Barbara's laughter was warm with her memories.
Yale chuckled. "I remember. They were like a couple of kids about it. Pat with a pout on his face because he thought he was going to have to sleep with me."
The music crowded over their conversation. The violin was leading the orchestra now, and seemed to be skipping in and out of the woodwinds and brasses. Barbara's face was dreamy. "It was funny being alone in a hotel room with you. It wasn't as if you were my brother somehow."
"You undressed in the bathroom," Yale said, remembering how Barbara had walked timidly out of the bathroom in her red pajamas. "Pat had the clerk put a cot in the room for me to sleep on."
Barbara nodded. "And you sat on the edge of the bed. Then Liz and Pat left us, and I knew you didn't want to sleep on the cot, and I didn't want you to." She blushed. "You asked me to take off my pajamas so you could look at me."
Yale grinned. "You thought I was terrible, and yet you did it. It's funny. We are brother and sister, but up to that time and since then I have never seen you without clothes. You'd think there was something sinful in being naked. I had never seen any girl naked. It was just a crazy idea." Yale's voice drifted away in a whisper thinking of Barbara in the tub. "You look like me somehow . . . only with breasts and a bigger fanny. Bobby, you're a good kid. I hereby make a resoluiion. I won't make dirty cracks at you any more."
Barbara furrowed her long nails into the seat of the car. "You don't mean it, but you're nice to say it. Yale, does Cynthia like music?"
"You know it's strange," Yale said, turning into the drive to the club. "If Pat could see Cynthia as a girl -- a woman, instead of a Jew, they might have at least one thing in common. Cynthia can play the piano with a feeling and emotion that brings tears to your eyes. The one time they met, Cynthia was playing. Pat was quite impressed."
"We're here, kid," Barbara said getting out of the car. "Hold your breath and fasten your seat belt. You're on your own. I'm joining the gang. Don't forget, if you see me unattended, it's your duty to take up the slack and dance with me."
Inside the club, Barbara disappeared into the ladies' lounge. Yale knew that she would join the younger group, the just-married, or about to be married twenty-year-olds who came to the club to bask in a new found feeling of maturity. There were about thirty of them who were "regulars." They travelled together, driving around the countryside in new convertibles, spending money freely at roadhouses; emulating and exceeding their parents in sophistication. Most of them had attended the better eastern colleges. They exuded a feeling of confidence and superiority that both troubled and irritated Yale. He knew them all, but it was a distant friendship. In their company he was embarrassed and ill-at-ease. They seemed to have a superficial but positive knowledge of everything from sex to politics. While he was certain that he knew more and at least thought more deeply than most of them, these fellows like Jim Latham could make him feel like a country bumpkin. They had acquired polish, perfect enunciation with Boston accents, and a patronizing manner that gave authority to all their speech. They could say "Well, fella, or well, old man . . . it's not really so vital, you know" . . . dousing Yale's enthusiasm and then carry on discussions of fraternity or sorority problems in a way that showed that here was really something vital and important.
Yale noticed a group of them congregated on the porch that flanked one complete side of the club. They were sitting at tables, the girls drinking Tom Collinses, the fellows mostly drinking Scotch or bourbon. He wondered why he had come. It was a choice of evils --to join them, or seek out Pat and Liz. Pat and Liz would be sitting at their table edging the dance floor. Dinner was over, and the tables would be cleared for drinking. Between dances, as the liquor took effect, some of the club members would move permanently into the bar. It was closer to the source of supply. It solved the problem of having to dance. It also provided a fleeting rendezvous with other men's wives. Any analysis of the female members of the club would have revealed that the less attractive ladies and the women past sixty usually spent the evening sitting at tables by themselves, happily discussing the vagaries of the younger matrons who were testing their sexual attractions on the men at the bar. Many of the men, even those past sixty, bought the younger ladies drinks and cautiously tested their "availability."
The evening had not yet arrived at this point. Pat and Liz were still at their table. Yale recognized the Middletons sitting with them as well as Doctor and Mrs. Henry Castle. He walked up to the table, and said, "Hi." He tried to be casual and imitate the easy manner of Jim Latham. "Sorry about your car. Here's your keys." He dropped them on the table in front of Pat.
Pat, who had just taken a swallow of bourbon, put down his glass and looked at Yale frigidly. "I'm glad you came, Yale. Liz has been begging me not to fight you, so I'm not going to. But don't think I'm pleased . . . I'm not." He turned away, continuing his conversation with Doctor Castle.
The orchestra started playing. "Dance with me, Yale," Liz said, trying to break the tension. "Yale's a good dancer," she said proudly to Marie Middleton, as they glided away.
"Yale, I just don't understand you," Liz said, enjoying the easy way Yale moved her around the floor.
"You don't, why not?" Yale looked into his mother's large blue eyes.
"You just seem to go around looking for trouble. It was a terrible thing to shame Pat like that in front of Doctor Tangle and Bert Walsh. It just wasn't necessary, and then to take his car. I've spent most of the evening trying to calm him down. He was ready to sell your car. Let you walk or ask permission when you needed a car to use his or mine."
Yale grinned. "Code of Hammurabi," he said.
&nb
sp; "What do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing, it's an old fashioned idea of justice. Eye for an eye . . . tooth for a tooth."
Liz squeezed Yale closer to her. "I don't know why you are so remote, dear. Pat loves you. I love you. He wants you to respect him. He has worked hard to come this far in the world. You don't know what it is to be poor, Yale. Your father and I lived for years on nothing."
"What's being poor got to do with it? If Pat were a garbage man, I suppose he would be killing himself because I wasn't going to some university majoring in Garbage Collecting."
"Yale, your tongue is too quick. You have a chip on your shoulder all the time, lately. Why?"
"Why doesn't Pat let me alone?" Yale asked angrily.
"I suppose he feels that you should benefit from his experience," Liz said. "You'll find out someday that the only thing respected in this world is money. If you don't have it you can be the best educated person in the world, and be nothing. Look at Tom Stephanelli." Liz was referring to a wealthy Italian contractor who lived in Midhaven. "He went through the sixth grade. He can scarcely speak English, yet he's made several million in the past few years. Right in the middle of this depression. Pat and Alfred Latham are inviting him to become a member of this club. Shows you what money can do."
"Oh, shit," Yale said. Liz looked at him horrified.
"I don't care," Yale continued unabashed. "That's the way I feel about this club, and your friends. I could be happy if Pat would stop driving me. If the two of you could stay out of my love-life. That alone would be a help. It's funny. Pat lets you go without interference."
"What do you mean?" Liz demanded.
"Frank Middleton," Yale said. He was pleased to see Liz blush. He had hit home.
"Take me back to the table, Yale," Liz said coldly. "For your information Frank Middleton is a gentlemen. He wouldn't take girls to an overnight cabin and play strip poker. How cheap and common can you be?"
Yale thanked Liz for the dance. He exchanged greetings with Doctor Castle and his wife and went in search of Barbara. She was talking with a boy Yale didn't recognize. He heard his name being called. Beatrice Middleton was waving at him. She was at a table with Jim Latham and two other couples. Yale was introduced and sat down next to Beatrice.
The Rebellion of Yale Marratt Page 12
