Whipple's Castle

by Thomas Williams

  He imagined that Foster and Jean had no such problem. Foster was very tall, the center on the basketball team, and Jean was very short, so short it was awkward for them to dance together. When they walked together Foster would reach down and put his hand on the side of her neck. In fact Jean was so short she had a kind of midget look about her, or maybe even a dwarf look. She seemed almost to belong in another scale, especially when she stood next to Foster. She was always very sweet and even-tempered, and it did not seem strange to see her crying so silently and sadly. She had a freckled, Irish, kid-sister sort of face, and light brown hair that always looked as though it hadn’t been out of curlers for the proper number of hours. Now she and Foster, by their whispering and sighs, still signaled to be left alone.

  Beady, who hadn’t spoken to Wood since his outburst at Milledge & Cunningham, had glanced over at him once or twice and looked away without admitting recognition. Wood knew he could have made up with Beady anytime, but had hesitated because he knew Beady felt guilty about it, and would feel better if he broke the silence himself. But now the silence had progressed too far, and Wood decided to do something about it Monday morning.

  Beady swung around and went to the jukebox, put a coin in it, and as the arms and cams inside the glass chose his record he cocked his head like a dog, trying to see it all through his strange eyes. The song he had chosen was “That Old Black Magic.” Once it began, he turned and went back to his stool, seeming to pay no more attention to it.

  Jean had wiped her eyes with a paper napkin, and now looked up, abstractedly, and tapped her fingers on the table to the rhythm of the song. Foster hummed along.

  That old black magic’s got me in its spell,

  That old black magic that you weave so well…

  They were coming out of it, coming into public again. But aware, Wood thought, even in their sadness, of the dramatic value of their predicament. For just a moment he felt jealous of their intensity. It seemed to him that all of his strongest feelings were a kind of resigned disgust at the way people acted—or sometimes anger, or pity.

  “Where were you?” Lois said to him. She tapped him, quickly, on the hand with her sharp fingernail.

  “Thinking, I guess.”

  “About?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sorry I asked.”

  “No, I can hardly remember what it was,” he said.

  “The Army?”

  “No.”

  “I just think about you not being around,” she said. “And me at college. College? Unh!”

  “Don’t you want to go?” he asked.

  “I guess I have to. All Potters go to college, just like all Whipples—that don’t get drafted, that is.” Her eyes seemed to dim for a moment. “I wish we…” She shook her head, forbidding herself to go on.

  “What do you wish, Lois?”

  “Never mind.”

  Foster turned toward them. “You heard from the draft yet, Wood?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Greetings!” Foster said, and made a surprised face. Jean laughed, and they all looked at her at once, which made her shy.

  “I’m just waiting around,” Wood said.

  “I hope they wait till after Christmas, anyway,” Lois said. She reached across and put both hands on his arm, holding it down on the table.

  Jean poked Foster in the chest and said, “This jerk’s been trying to enlist.”

  “You’re not going to finish high school?” Wood asked him.

  “They’d give me a diploma anyway,” Foster said. “Anyway, all I want to be is a Navy pilot, and now I find out I’m too tall. You can’t be over six-four. All they want is a bunch of shrimps.”

  “You can’t fit in an airplane,” Jean said. She turned to Lois, pleased. “So he’s not going to. He’s going to graduate with his class in June. Aren’t you, Foster?”

  “I don’t know. There’s a war on out there.”

  “But you’re only seventeen,” Jean said. Foster frowned at her, and she ducked her head slightly.

  “Old enough to join the Navy or the Marines,” Foster said. This fact kept him from being more irritated by Jean’s remark.

  “That’s true,” Lois said, shaking her head. “My goodness, we’ve all…grown up!” She looked at Wood, still shaking her head. “We’re men and women, aren’t we.”

  Wood thought of Susie Davis, the big little girl, still soft with baby fat. Again, her having been known by all that raw sex, those brawling, howling red boys, seemed a part of the war.

  “Where are you?” Lois asked him. “Where are you, Wood?”

  He shook his head. “Just thinking.”

  “About?” Her hand came toward his, like a darting bird, and her cool finger tapped his hand, seeming to leave a little frozen spot just behind his knuckle. “Let’s go to my house,” she said, including Foster and Jean. “We can play the phonograph or something.”

  Foster and Jean, who had no place to go that wasn’t dangerous, were happy with this idea. As they paid Prudence and left, Beady stared away, into the syrup pumps. Wood wondered what he saw, what fragments of light from the silvery spouts came into his brain. Monday he would have to make up with Beady.

  They walked through the clear night on the shoveled sidewalks, between high banks of snow, the compressed snow beneath their feet hard and white as marble. Foster and Jean walked silently behind.

  Wood thought how once, a year or two ago, this would have been exciting, because they would turn the lights down, and dance, and eventually each couple would retire into the darkness to mumble privately and neck—a funny word; it made him think of swans and ostriches. He did enjoy (what a word!) feeling Lois’ pretty body next to him. When they kissed she seemed almost to lose consciousness, and he wondered how far she would really go. They had discussed this once, and had decided not to go all the way; that later, when they were older, or engaged (if they were to marry, and he knew that he was responsible for that “if” in their agreement), they would. So he always went home from these sessions with a dull but almost intolerable ache in his testicles, and he would dream, not usually that night but the next, not of Lois but of some cheap faceless girl who shamelessly raised her skirt and invited him to take her standing up. He came as she laughed raucously, and he woke up, still seeing fragments of red lipstick and wide white teeth. There was no shame to this dream, only a kind of sadness because it was a dream of no one, with no love.

  Yet he did believe that love existed. Foster and Jean were in love. They burned and froze in each other’s sight. And Lois was in love with him—but he was in love with no one.

  At the Potters’ house Lois’ mother and father greeted them pleasantly. A tall, wrinkled, friendly couple, worrying through their smiles, they soon retired to some other room in order to leave the young people alone. Wood rolled up the oriental rug in front of the embering living-room fireplace, and they danced to records. Lois had taught him to do all the popular steps, and he dutifully jitterbugged and fox-trotted. “String of Pearls,” “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” “If I Loved You”—it was something she liked very much to do. She hummed in his ear, and her dark hair, always clean and sweet smelling, touched his face. He seemed to feel her white bones twist in her sweet flesh. When they kissed she seemed so open and generous, he was sad that he didn’t love her as much as he should.

  Sometimes when he was alone in his room he would try to daydream of Lois, naked in his bed with him, but she always turned into that Lois Potter who had an address, parents, relatives, a class at school, possessions—a kind of social entity instead of a needful girl. She reminded him of responsibilities, and without the warmth and softness of her real presence she couldn’t excite him the way the anonymous girl could.

  After they had danced for a while Foster and Jean retired to a couch in a dark corner, and soon after that Lois turned off the phonograph and switched on the radio, low, to the long-distance station that came on in the night. First Wood sat beside her on the davenport, and t
hen they lay down together. Lois moaned as they kissed.

  “I love you,” she whispered. “I love you so much.” She kissed his eyes and pulled his head against her. She was close to crying, and her lips grew soft as fleece, and silky. “I don’t want you to go away. I want to…get married and sleep with you every night and have babies. You just don’t have any idea how much I love you, do you?” Anger began, a hard, almost querulous edge. “I know you don’t!” she whispered. “You don’t know!”

  “Yes, I love you, Lois,” he said. “You’ve always been my girl.”

  “Yes, I’m your girl. But I’m more yours than you are mine. That’s what makes me cry.”

  “That’s not true,” he whispered, knowing she recognized the lie; they always had to ignore it, or she would grow sad and tears would start. She pushed him up and got her arms under his sweater, hugging him as hard as she could. She spoke softly into his ear. “Sometimes I think when all this started it was like a devil or something got into me. I remember when we used to play together like a couple of boys. Remember? Five or six years ago? Remember my costume, with the big handlebar mustache, when I was the Duke of Venice and all that? I mean I always wanted to marry Wood Whipple someday, but I never cried over it. Sometimes I’d decide I didn’t even like you, and I wasn’t going to marry you after all. But damn you, you never really did anything nasty, or ugly, or mean enough so I could stop loving you. You always had the advantage. You’re so much better than I ever was. I’m nasty sometimes, and I lie, and I used to steal things—”

  “Shh. Everybody does things like that.”

  “But not you. Not Wood Whipple. God, sometimes I hate you. You’re not even real sometimes. And then I think of you, no matter where I am. In school. Even during an exam, and I melt. Quickly she took his hand and put it on her breast. “Oh, God, I melt,” she whispered. “I’m melting all over.”

  She moved against him, not rhythmically but as though she meant merely to shift position. He did this too, and in his eyes gold flashed. He saw whole mosaics of color. He could just stop himself from moving, moving against her.

  Then they heard Jean cry out loud. “Oh no! Foster! You didn’t!”

  “Shh!” Foster said. “I’m sorry!”

  “Oh no! No!” Jean sobbed.

  Wood and Lois sat up. It was obviously not a private matter with Jean, whatever it was. She was disconsolate. “No, I don’t believe it! I do believe it!”

  “What’s the matter?” Lois said. “Jeannie?”

  “He did!” Jean cried.

  “Did what?”

  “You know what! Foster Greenwood!” She turned on the bridge lamp next to their couch and sat under it, her lipstick spread lightly all over the lower part of her face. Foster loomed over her, the same amount of lipstick on his pale jaws.

  “Now what will I do?” Jean cried.

  “What did you do?” Lois said to Foster, who looked away, shrugging his shoulders.

  “I guess I couldn’t help it.”

  “He went all the way,” Jean said. “He said he wouldn’t. Now I’ll have a baby…” She cried into her hands.

  “Wait a minute, Jeannie,” Wood said. “You don’t always get one, you know.”

  “I couldn’t stop myself,” Foster said. “I guess I just lost my mind.”

  “Are you sure you…?” Wood said.

  “He did!” Jean said. “I asked him to stop. I said be careful, but he was just like a mad raving beast! I never saw you like that, Foster!”

  “I lost my head, that’s all.”

  “Are you sure you…? Did you…come?” Wood said.

  “I’m afraid so,” Foster said.

  Jean sat beside him, trembling, frozen. “Now I’m not a virgin,” she said. “I can’t confess that. I will not ever say that to Father Brangelli. I just couldn’t!”

  Suddenly Foster laughed. “What a mess!” he said. “What a mess! If you get pregnant! What a mess!”

  “Lois!” Jean said. “Wood! You won’t tell, will you?”

  “Of course not,” Wood said. “But anyway, Jeannie, it isn’t that terrible, is it?”

  “If she gets pregnant?” Foster said, raising his eyebrows incredulously.

  “Oh, oh!” Jean cried, and threw herself across his lap. “It’s all my fault! I couldn’t expect him to have all the self-control. It’s really all my fault.”

  “No, Jeannie,” Foster said. “It was my responsibility.” He looked at Wood. “Is there anything we can do about it now? To keep her from having a baby, I mean?” He looked at Lois, asking her too.

  “It’s kind of late to think about that,” Wood said.

  “What about…?” Lois said. “Jeannie? Like in feminine hygiene, didn’t it say…?” She went over to Jean, who got up, and they moved away from the boys, whispering.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jean said. “Miss Dube was pretty vague about that part.”

  “Can you do anything?” Foster called across the room to them. Lois gave him a blank look, which made him wince, and then she and Jean left the room. Wood and Foster looked at each other and shrugged.

  “I know about nothing on that subject, to tell the truth,” Foster said. “Even if I had a rubber I wouldn’t have put it on, because I never intended to do it. You could have cut my left leg off and I wouldn’t have given it a thought.”

  They stared morosely at the furniture.

  “It’s sort of embarrassing,” Foster said. “I just couldn’t stop. I tore the hell out of her panties. It was like…” He thought for a while. “I love her, you know,” he said finally.

  “You’re kind of young to get married,” Wood said.

  Thanks,” Foster said. “Ow! And her family—a bunch of crazy harps. They think the Virgin Mary invented God. The time Jeannie took me to her house they looked at me like somebody’d laid a turd on the rug. If he knew I got her cherry he’d eat me up. Ow! Her old man. Look at that!” He held out his hands, and watched them tremble. “He’s just a little banty rooster, but he’d eat me alive.” He stared sadly at the radio, which uttered faint little chirps. “It was worth it, though,” he said. “I’m going to do it again too, only next time I’ll be prepared.”

  “Nothing’s foolproof, though,” Wood said. “I read that.”

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Foster said, and then added in a smooth, thick voice, “I’ll tell you somebody else who loved it too. While it was going on, Wood. I mean it. She grabbed me so hard you couldn’t have pried her loose with a crowbar. Oh, Christ, I’m getting all horny again.” He untangled his legs, got up and turned away. “I guess I better join the Navy and get the hell out of this town.”

  When Lois brought Jean back to them, Jean was very shy again, and quiet. She went up to Foster and took his big hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “The second show’s going to be out soon,” Foster said. “I’d better get you home before an Irish posse gets after me.”

  When they’d left, Lois tuned the radio in better. Johnny Mercer was singing “Sentimental Journey.” She came and sat next to him. “It’s amazing,” she said.

  “What’s amazing?”

  “They really did do it. Right over there.” Lois was trembling. “I’m afraid to touch you,” she said, and then added in a quick little mumbling voice, “I’d let you, you know that?”

  “You shouldn’t, Lois.”

  “Have you ever done it, Wood?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Neither have I,” she said, and giggled nervously. “Of course you know that.”

  “You’re only seventeen,” he said.

  “Old enough to join the Navy or the Marines,” she said, imitating Foster.

  “But there are other things to think about. You know that,” he said. He felt the old resentment, just its signal from a long way off, that he should always have to be the one to serve caution.

  “Oh, I know,” she said, and leaned back, sighing. She had washed her face, and now in the soft light she looked
very young. A wave of love, like weakness, came over him, and he didn’t move.

  “Maybe after the war,” he said. “Think about after all this is over, and we’re older.”

  “It’s never going to be over,” she said bitterly. “Whatever it is. ‘Victory.’ That’s all I ever hear. When’s that going to be? Maybe you’ll get killed. You!”

  “I don’t think I will,” he said.

  She grabbed his arm hard and held it against her side. “You’d be just the one to do something too brave. I know. Listen, I know all about you. I know everything you do. I’ve got my spies that tell me everything.”

  He laughed. “Who are your spies?”

  “Never mind,” she said. She wasn’t smiling. “You know what I wish I had the power to do? I’d make you lose your mind. Jeannie—how can she have so much power?”

  Suddenly he felt close to tears. It was pity for her, and disgust with whatever defect in him that had caused such a confession. He waited, hoping that this feeling would go away. Maybe, he thought, it was because that girl who came to him in his dream was really himself, only a creature of his imagination, that he could forget about responsibility and just go to it. She had no name, no past, no future to be jeopardized. But then a foreign little voice said, “Maybe you’re afraid, Wood Whipple.” What was that voice? Maybe he could not love Lois for her strangeness, her separateness, and if he became involved too closely he would no longer be free, and thus all his compulsive responsibility might be fraudulent.

  “Lois?” he said. “Lois? We could lose our minds now…”

  “I lost mine a long time ago,” she said.

  “But if we don’t,” he said, “you’ll be grateful later on that we didn’t. Who knows what’s going to happen? You’ll be so glad we didn’t.”

  She pushed his arm away and turned toward him, her face in the soft shadow of her hair. Her eyes gleamed out of this shadow. “It’s just the other way around,” she said slowly and precisely. “It is just opposite to that.”