She was frightened, “Get out,” she said, “get out now before I call the police! Get out of here!”
And that was it.
•
Well, Millie wasn’t so hardened that she didn’t cry; she cried hard and long. Anger and revenge and insult was in her mind, and hatred, too, but she cried it all away and it’s too bad she didn’t know it, could never imagine, that Dearest Costello had loved her. She didn’t know about love without carnal desire, she had never experienced it, which lack was not entirely her fault. As she had lain for those few moments on her back, half naked, caressing herself, waiting for male co-operation, she had been, perhaps, neither good nor evil, just an anthropological specimen. If she hadn’t known how to talk, no one could have blamed her.
•
“Mamma,” sobbed Costello.
“It’s all right,” said Allison.
But it wasn’t; Allison didn’t have the least idea, how could she.
Dearest Costello is on his own now. Instinct or chemistry, perhaps, kept him from his father, but whether, like Allison, he can save his dream is doubtful.
Chapter VIII
The Glamorous Tomboy
Victorine stood in the doorway watching Lydia Van Zandt play the piano with her toes. Lydia’s thick crinkly hair that was red and gold in alternate streaks was tied back with a narrow black satin ribbon, but some of it escaped in tight curls over her forehead and behind her neck. Her thin fair skin, the skin of a redhead, usually colourless, was flushed, almost apple-red over the cheek-bones, and there were violet shadows under her eyes and over them, too, very faint and very lovely as if she were sitting under a tree. She had a wide impudent smile and her teeth were even, a little transparent, a milky blue; her ears exposed by the tightly drawn back hair that seemed to strain at her temples, had pointed tops like a fawn or a cat, maybe, and they were pink. Lydia was seventeen and did what she pleased, and she pleased to “chase,” as her father called it, Costello. She came and went as she liked, helped herself out of the icebox when she was hungry, which was all the time, spilled the powder in the powder room over the dressing table, helped herself to lipstick, so misused the mechanism in the “john” that it dripped and trickled after her every visit. “Lydis been here,” said Dennis when he heard it. But she was so pretty, so appealing and so talented that even Costello reluctantly put up with her. The young men in the neighbourhood all knew where to find her and came often and directly to the L’Hommedieus’ to try to persuade her to go to a movie or race along the country roads in a new car. She made fun of them all; she wanted Costello. She petted Victorine a little, with a motive, it looked like, and Victorine felt strongly attracted to her although she thought she was undoubtedly crazy. At present, as she stood watching the amazing performance on top of the piano, Lydia looked like a third bunch of chrysanthemums on the upright instrument, dappled in the light as they were, their petals as curly as her hair, her hair as burnished as they, her body a vase.
“Costello, look, I’m just using the black notes.”
Nimbly her strong bare toes picked out the notes of a strange little tune that she was making up as she went along. She just managed to reach the keyboard by arching her feet like a dancer’s and her calves rippled with the effort. She had pulled her jeans up over her knees and her legs were still brown from the summer on the beach, with short gold hairs that caught the sunlight from the window, too. But Costello had no interest in Lydia at all, he did not look up from his book.
“Bookworm,” she said. “Look at me, I’m pretty, and I play so nice with my toes, diddle-diddle-dum-te-ta-te-ta-te-ta.” Her voice was clear and high and she didn’t take her green eyes off Costello. “Meany,” she said, “I hate you.” She stuck out her lower lip. She slid off the top of the piano and deliberately sat down hard on the keyboard, a discord with volume. She pulled down her jeans, still looking sideways at Costello, and leaning over, standing on one foot at a time, put on her battered old sneakers. She gave a deep made-up sigh and saw Victorine in the doorway. “Let’s tickle him!” she cried. “Vicky, come on, you hold him.”
Costello got lazily to his feet and stood with a slight slouch, his feet apart, and waited. He liked Lydia well enough. She was fun, but she was not woman; she had no niche in his hall of dreams, she was just that tomboy, Lydia Van Zandt. He glanced at his sister. Led on by Lydia, almost compelled, Victorine advanced on Costello from one side as Lydia did from the other. They stuck out their chins and swung their arms like a couple of monkeys. Soon the three of them lay struggling and laughing on the sofa as they had often before, Lydia, mad with excitement, pressed herself against Costello’s legs, her head digging into his ribs. Victorine was straddling Lydia and with one hand grasped a fistful of her brother’s hair. She drove her pointed chin into Costello’s chest. Costello tried to hold on to them both and at the same time retaliate; freeing one hand he grabbed Lydia’s shirt at the neck and tore it down the front. Lydia raised her head and bit his neck, and Victorine, suddenly free of Lydia, wrapped her long legs around one of her brother’s and the two girls, almost dying of laughter and the excitement of promiscuous bodily contact, entangled with each other and the boy, hardly knew or cared whose arms and legs were whose. The wild attacks and counterattacks were like violent caresses and they fought for breath to laugh with, and each to untangle herself, to be preciously entangled again. Costello’s elbow jabbed Lydia’s soft breast and she screamed, but it turned into a laugh and a gasp, and she tore open his shirt and fitted her fist into his armpit. Victorine felt her brother’s round thigh flexing and unflexing between her legs and he, succeeding in freeing himself of Lydia’s octopus-like grasp for a second, forced Victorine’s legs apart and closing his hand on her, he shoved her away from him along her back, but she quickly jumped his neck and ran her tongue into his ear, which felt so pleasant he threw back his head and laughed and tried to do the same thing to her, whereupon Lydia took hold of his other thigh, as Victorine had, and sliding down it she let go with her hands and hit the floor. “Oh!”
“Cut it out!” yelled Costello, dodging up and away from both of them. As they struggled to their feet for more of the same he held each at arm’s length, one palm flat between each pair of half-formed breasts; Lydia’s shirt, nearly torn off, exposed her and his hand was on her bare skin. She longed to hug his legs again and ducked; she fell to her knees; pinioning him, she hung with her loins to his hard leg like a leech to a blood-vessel.
“I’m pooped,” said Victorine and sat down on the sofa.
“Get off,” laughed Costello, shaking his leg, but Lydia hung on, a rapt look on her rosy face, her eyes shining like emeralds, her eyelids quivering. Victorine, who had felt the same pleasure at the intimate contact with her brother’s body, stared at the tell-tale swooning look, but Costello did not seem to notice the sensual let-go in Lydia’s face, or see the woman in her steady smile. But suddenly she did let go and leaping gracefully to her feet quickly turned her back and bent her head, seeming to be fussing with her hair. But Victorine knew, and she was jealous. A painful tightness caught at her throat; she did not place the feeling or know whom she was jealous of. The triple rough-house was over and the children, who were growing up, each at a different rate, and each a little behind his and her body, precocious, only chemically, one might say, rearranged the furniture and separated in silence. Lydia hopped on her bike and was off; but she will be back.
Victorine went up to her room and looked at herself in the mirror wondering who she was and what would become of her. Costello stood looking out of the window, as, a while back, Homer had. His expression was inscrutable. Unconsciously, hands in pockets, he fondled himself. But he did not connect, I think, his body’s responsiveness to the girl’s mad caresses with any need for love or women. He certainly did not want to sleep with the little hoyden, Lydia, and his fraternal, even if sensual, love for his sister did not much trouble him. He had quickly adjusted himself to her loss, and his straining after a dream woman who ha
d unfortunately materialized left him with nothing to do for the present. He did not, like a girl, languish and regret and re-live his disillusionment, neither did he hate or despise Millie. He did not despise himself either. Too young to doubt his virility he did not consider the possibility as Homer, let’s say, might have, that he had been a failure in Millie’s room, and that perhaps she was laughing at him. His sufferings were amorphous, lacking in detail, with bright intervals. The girls’ warm quivering bodies, their strange softness in spots and silky skins, their double attack and quick funny surrender, and delicious foolish laughter, his little sister’s wet tongue in his ear and Lydia’s fist in his armpit came to him at just the right interval after Millie, and he stood, for the moment, again intestate, looking out of the window, without regret and without ambition, alone; Dearest Costello.
It couldn’t have been ten minutes later that brother and sister met on the landing of the stairs. “Vic?” Costello spoke first. Victorine did not answer but looked past him, she loved him so much but she was afraid of the gentle sound of his voice so soon after the bodily intimacy, the old game in a different setting.
“I only played because Lydia wanted me to,” she said finally.
“It was fun, wasn’t it?” he said. He seemed taller, the sadist was gone and the sullen look, the slight sneer erased, his lips parted in a friendly loving smile. He looked admiringly at his long-legged little sister with the heart-shaped face, the pointed chin that had dug into his chest. (Dearest Costello, had God made him a good boy?)
“You like Lydia better than me,” said Victorine suddenly and ridiculously. She regretted it the minute she said it. What had happened to her dignity, her reserve, how did she know in one encounter on the stairs that she didn’t need it any more?
“Oh, Vicky, that tomboy!”
“She loves you!” sobbed Victorine, again unaccountably.
Costello awkwardly placed his arm around her shoulder and shook her a little. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “How silly you are, Vicky. She’s crazy.”
“She’s not!” snapped Vicky, recovering.
Costello threw back his head and laughed. He was really the elder now.
“Listen! She’s back!” Victorine flew down the stairs. “Let’s lock her out! Quick! You get the back door, I’ll get the front!”
Lydia pounded on the bolted door and shook it vigorously. The two children hid in Homer’s study, the shades drawn, fingers on lips, eyes shining. “She’s going around to the back,” whispered Victorine.
Soon the clamour began at the rear. “Oh, I hope Elsie doesn’t come down,” whispered Victorine.
“Costello! Vicky! Let me in, I know you’re there!” Lydia was surrounding the house, she was outside the study, she banged with her fist at the windows.
Costello and Victorine clung together controlling their laughter; it was sweet excitement.
There was quiet. “Don’t move, she’s looking in the living-room windows,” said Victorine. “Ssssh!”
The silence continued a long time. “Where can she be? Has she gone?” said Costello. “Let’s see.”
“No! No! Wait.”
If the children had been outside, they would have seen what the expressman saw, who drew up the old horse he was driving to watch. “That tomboy, Lydia Van Zandt,” he said to himself, “what’s she up to now?”
Lydia had stood away and appraised carefully, checked the house; she saw that a second-story window was open several inches. The ivy grew strong and thick all the way to the roof and had grown there for a hundred years. It was full of swallows’ nests and its shrubbery was hardy and strong. She did not hesitate. She grasped the stuff firmly and hoisted herself up, her arms were strong and she gracefully pulled up her hind-quarters after her, her round buttocks easily following the pull of her shoulders, her sneakered feet sure. Half-way up she got a secondary idea, and throwing back her head, she let out the cry of Tarzan. The expressman slapped his thigh and laughed out loud and the old horse twitched an ear uneasily. “What a card!” said the expressman. “Whoa, girl.” He meant to stay for it all. One of Lydia’s boy friends, driving by, spied the blue jeans, the bare legs and the bronzed head of Lydia in the ivy, circled by a living halo of fork-tailed swallows, and slammed on his brakes behind the expressman and his horse. The expressman pointed and shook with laughter.
“Lydia! Where are you going!”
Lydia swung around from the waist and yelled, “Fishing!”
The expressman nearly collapsed.
Inside the house the children heard the Tarzan cry but dared not leave the study. In a moment they heard an upstairs window slam and simultaneously, almost, Lydia was screaming down the stairs and upon them. She was dying of laughter. “I know when I’m not wanted!” she cried.
“Gidyap,” said the expressman but the swallows scooped angrily and uneasily around the house for a long time and the little ones shivered in their nests that human hands had defiled, their yellow mouths wide open, demanding the security of food and parental cleanliness.
Victorine and Costello, too, could not help but show their admiration, it flashed from their eyes like twin beacons, for the picture of health and vitality and magnetic charm, Lydia triumphant, that faced them; legs apart, head up, you could see the blood beating in her temples and her open shirt trembled at her racing heart beneath it.
She appraised the children, who stood apart now, as she had appraised the front of the ivy-clad house searching for its weaknesses. “Lovebirds,” she said. It was a strange thing to say. She flung herself down in Homer’s big leather chair, Homer’s throne where no one else dare sit, where he sucked at his evil-smelling pipe and staring at untranslatable, to the family, sheaves of foolscap, thought his very private thoughts.
Costello came to himself. “I’ve had enough fooling,” he said. “See you later, Vic.” He took no more notice of Lydia.
“Dearest Costello,” mimicked Lydia.
“Shut up!” said Victorine.
Costello left.
“Let’s go up to your room,” said Lydia, in a quick change of mood, “and talk about him,” she nodded her head at the door Costello had gone out of.
“All right,” said Victorine; with Costello gone she felt Lydia’s charm and was almost proud of her.
“I love him,” said Lydia, upstairs, “he’s my man.” She looked at herself in the mirror and grinned at herself. “I like him the way he is, I like to chase him, and I’ll catch him, too, there’s no hurry. I want a lot of children,” she said. “I want to nurse them, it’ll be easy for me.” She cupped her two little breasts with her hands lovingly. “My married sister says it’s a delicious feeling. She’s got three already. It’s a funny thing,” she said, as if to herself.
Victorine turned shy at such talk but lay on her bed watching Lydia speaking as if to herself in the mirror, her back as straight as a sled, her shirt unbuttoned. Lydia turned and bent over her, she laid her hot cheek against Victorine’s cool one and let herself down beside her. She whispered something Victorine did not catch and, gently opening Victorine’s blouse, caressed her left breast. Suddenly, with Victorine quiescent, still as a mouse, she ducked her head and took the tiny nipple between her soft warm lips. Victorine felt a strong thrill go through her body down into her loins, and she moaned, she couldn’t help it.
“Ahhh,” said Lydia, and she lowered her hand along Victorine’s body, pushing with her fingertips; she came closer and closer, moving her hands up and away and returning until Victorine could bear it no longer.
“No, no,” she pleaded.
“Yes,” whispered Lydia, “I feel it, too, kiss me, Vic.”
But Victorine saved herself from Lydia’s seduction, she leaped to her feet and pulled her blouse together, where the mark of Lydia’s lipstick could be seen like red sealing wax.
“I hate you!” cried Victorine; she was white as a sheet.
“Little fool,” said Lydia, but she didn’t like to lose out at anything, she was taken a
back, but she acted quickly. “It was just for fun,” she said, “it’s nothing to be mad about. Well, I better go, it’s nearly supper.” She didn’t lose her stance.
Victorine had lapsed into total silence.
“Well, don’t be mad,” said Lydia. She looked so pretty and hesitant as if what would she do next, “You aren’t, are you?” She grinned at Victorine, an honest grin.
“I’m not mad,” said Victorine. She was beginning to feel as if she had lost at tennis.
“Well, ’bye.” Lydia turned. “Don’t tell,” she said.
“Of course not.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“Cross your heart?”
“Yes,” Victorine crossed her heart.
“’Bye.”
Victorine heard Joe’s monotonous home-coming whistle as he preceded Nanny back from the pasture. They were passing under the window. Nanny’s big swollen udder with its brown teats looked like something hypnagogic in a Macy pre-Christmas parade.
Victorine turned back to the room uneasily and looked around her, searching, as she often did in her bureau drawers, for something that would catch hold of her wandering attention, something to forestall that boredom that sometimes attacked her after too much excitement. A doll’s leg hung limply out of her old toy chest. She went over and lifted the lid. A dozen reckless, slap-happy dolls lay hit-or-miss, semi-clothed, naked, sprawling uncomfortably, indecently intertwined; except for their red cheeks and pink conformity of looks, their lacy drawers and patent leather slippers, they looked as if an atrocity had buried them alive in an alien ditch, their glassy eyes betraying an idiotic amazement at their predicament. As if in a dream of an earlier self Victorine lifted the prettiest one gently out and hugged it to her breast. Fishing about among the others she found a jacket, a bonnet, a tippet and a muff, with all of which she adorned the senseless doll. She washed its face and combed its hair. After that she carefully undressed it again, speaking all the while in a caressing undertone, and wrapped it in a shawl. On tiptoe she showed it the sunset and then, careful not to let the little rocker squeak on a loose board, she rocked the doll to sleep. Its eyes shut down with a click and she kissed its slippery cheek.
Victorine Page 10
