Seventeenth Summer

by Maureen Daly

  When we got home my bare legs were nipped with small grass cuts and from even that short time in the sun Kitty had new freckles on her nose. The family were sitting in the shade of the side lawn and Lorraine was lounged on a canvas lawn chair, patting polish on her nails right down to the tips and holding her hands straight out in front of her till it dried. She is always very careful to wear her nail polish and lipstick to match.

  “Angie, that boy called,” my mother said as I came up the walk.

  “What boy?” I asked, careful to make my voice sound surprised. I felt an instinctive need for caution. Individually my mother likes them well enough, but as dates she regards all boys with a vague, general disapproval—just in case.

  “That boy, Jack,” she answered, never looking up from her knitting. “Margaret spoke with him.”

  “He said he would call later, Angie,” Margaret explained. “That he thought maybe you would like to go to some party at somebody’s cottage tonight with him and some other fellows and girls. I told him you probably could and he said he would call back sometime before supper. You can wear my yellow sweater if you want, Ang—but be careful of it. I’d like to see him when he comes to pick you up—he sounded cute over the phone. He talks as if he has brown eyes—has he?”

  There was a hot tingling round my face and I waited to be sure my voice wouldn’t sound too eager, for my mother was knitting with fast, jerky movements as if she were annoyed and her needles clicked. “Do you mind if I go, Mom?”

  “I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Ask your father.”

  I turned to him. “May I, Dad?”

  “Whatever your mother says,” he answered lightly, dismissing all responsibility. If he takes time to reprimand us, my father is always very stern but otherwise he doesn’t bother at all. He was sitting then in a loose golf shirt that he always wears on weekends, and his neck showed soft and white at the throat where it is usually covered with his weekday shirt and tie. I stood waiting as he leafed through the paper.

  My mother cleared her throat crossly. “I would certainly like to know with whom you are going, where you are going, and at what time you will be home. I don’t like the idea of you girls just going out any time with anybody!”

  It isn’t that my mother doesn’t like boys, as I explained, but because we are girls and because we are the kind of family who always use top sheets on the beds and always eat our supper in the dining room and things like that—well, she just didn’t want us to go out with anybody.

  “That will be the third time this week that you’ve seen that boy!”

  This was just what I had been shying away from. For all the warm glow in my thoughts, thinking about Friday night, I didn’t want anyone else to know or to ask questions.

  “But, Mom, I’ll find out about it first,” I assured her hastily. “When he calls I’ll ask where the party is and everything and I promise we’ll be home early. It will be all right.”

  Later that evening when I was sitting in my bedroom waiting for Jack to come, I heard the phone ring downstairs and went down to answer. But Margaret had got there before me and she was standing holding it, with her hand over the mouthpiece, saying, “Honestly, Lorraine, if he wants a date and you go I’ll just be furious at you—anyone calling for a date at this time of night!”

  Lorraine was absently shining her fingernails on the sleeve of her blouse. “I don’t know,” she said slowly, not looking up, “I can’t quite see why I shouldn’t go, after all. I’m the only girl Martin really knows in town—maybe he’s been busy all afternoon and didn’t have time to call before.” She looked over at Art but he just shrugged his shoulders.

  “If he thinks he can get a date with you any time he calls! Last night may have been all right at the last minute because you haven’t been home from school so long yourself; but two nights in a row …” Margaret stood jiggling the phone impatiently. Even when she was only in high school she didn’t have to worry about not having boys like her.

  “Hurry up,” she urged Lorraine, “and decide what you’re going to say to him. But I certainly know what I’d tell him!”

  “Just say that you’re busy and then you and your mother and father can go to a late show so you won’t just have to be sitting here,” Art suggested in his quiet voice. “From what you told me about last night, he sounds like one of those ‘big men on campus’ who never quite got over going to college. Do what you like, Lorraine, but I know what I’d think if I could get a girl at the last minute.”

  Margaret held out the phone. “Here,” she said, “tell him you’re busy.”

  It was just beginning to get dark outside and the room was thickening with dusk. We could hear the drone of my mother’s and father’s voices as they sat on the side lawn, but the rest of the house was quiet.

  “If you want to go out so badly,” Margaret added, “you can come along with Art and me.”

  “I know. I know that,” Lorraine said slowly. “But, Margaret, I can go out with you and Art any Sunday night—I want to go out with him!”

  Just as Jack and I pulled out of our driveway, Martin Keefe swung up to the curb in a low green coupe, screeching the tires against the curbstone, and as we turned the corner I looked back to see him crossing the lawn with his long, insolent stride to shake hands with my father.

  Another couple drove out with us, friends of Jack’s from high school, a girl named Margie and a tall, thin boy called Fitz. He had a very bad complexion and a shiftiness about him, as if by not looking directly at me he could avoid my looking at him and seeing his ugly skin. Margie was a tall, slim girl with quick, bright eyes and she talked continually, laughing between the words. Her hair hung long in the back but was swooped up into curls on the sides and crisscrossed with hairpins. Nervously, she kept adjusting the pins as she talked to me.

  Leaning over the front seat she commented affably, “You’re the girl who knows Jane Rady, aren’t you? Us girls have a bridge club that meets every couple of weeks and she happened to mention you. Jane said she might stop out tonight with that new boy from Oshkosh she has a date with.”

  “Say, this is going to be some party,” Fitz said with significant enthusiasm. “Is Tony Becker going to be out?”

  “Don’t know,” Jack answered, keeping his eyes on the road. “I was talking to him at Pete’s this afternoon and he said he’d be over if he could get the car.” He looked back at Fitz. “But if he gets the car I don’t think he’ll waste his time at the party—huh, Fitz?”

  “No, sir, that boy don’t waste no time,” Fitz agreed and whistled shrilly through his teeth. Margie laughed and there was some giggled whispering in the back seat, but I couldn’t understand what they were talking about.

  The cottage was only a few miles out of town along the lake shore, set far in off the highway. I had a feeling of apprehension as Jack swung into the rutted mud road. The car lurched sideways and Margie squealed with delight in the back seat. There were three other cars pulled up in the cottage drive and inside someone was playing Viennese waltzes on an old victrola. Already an early moon was showing through the lace of the trees.

  It was a shabby cottage. Jack explained to me later that it belonged to Fitz’s family but they used it only during the last month of summer, and the rest of the year it lay vacant except when some of the bunch came out to go swimming or to have a party. The front of the house was flush with the lake so we went in the back way into a kitchen smelling damp and musty, like old wood, with layers of yellowed newspaper on the shelves and a big wooden table.

  No one had lived in the cottage since the summer before and the front room had the same damp, close smell as the kitchen. One of the girls took me off into a side room to powder my nose. There was a mirror on the wall and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. She seemed younger than the rest and more talkative, and as she edged around her mouth carefully with bright lipstick she remarked with emphasis, “Honestly, I’m so glad we’re not having anything but beer, ’cause after last night I cou
ldn’t stand to look another mixed drink in the face.” Her name was Dollie, and Jack told me later that she was only fifteen and had been dating the fellows in his crowd for only about three weeks. She was what the boys called “a find.”

  Until she had mentioned beer I had never thought just what people did do at parties like this—we couldn’t just sit around and listen to Viennese waltzes all night. I hadn’t really gone to parties since the days when we were small enough to care about ice cream and cake with pink frosting, and play drop-the-clothes-pins-in-the-bottle or Going to Jerusalem. Some of the other girls had come in and I thought of saying very casually, “What are we going to do—just sit around and talk?” but I didn’t want them to know that I’d never been at a party like this before. It was important to act as if you had been around. Maybe they would whisper to their dates later in the evening, “You know that girl that Jack Duluth is with? She doesn’t even know the score. She asked me before what we were going to do. I’ll bet she’s never even been at a party before!”

  One of the girls said to me casually, “How long have you been going with Jack, Angeline?” I explained that I hadn’t known him quite a week and that I’d just been out with him a few times. “That’s what I thought,” she went on, “because last thing we knew he was dating a couple of girls from high school and then Jane Rady off and on and then all of a sudden he turned up with you at the dance … We kind of wondered,” she added slowly. She was sitting on the arm of an old stuffed chair smoking a cigarette with deep puffs and holding the smoke in her mouth for a long time before blowing it out. I could tell by the way she spoke that she was a friend of Jane Rady’s.

  When we went back to the living room two of the boys were rolling back the old grass rug—“just in case someone might want to dance,” and Dollie and the other girls got down on their knees to help roll, laughing and talking loudly. I tried to help too, but gave up because I felt awkward and in the way. Dollie sat down backwards suddenly with her legs sprawled in front of her and cried with a petulantly accusing voice, “Johnnie, you pushed me on purpose!” and everyone laughed.

  I went out to the kitchen then where the others were crowded around Swede who had just come in. He was trying to screw a spigot into a barrel of beer. We never had beer at our house and I had always felt that there was something disgraceful about it. For a moment I wished I hadn’t come. Jack was holding the barrel for Swede and when the first beer dribbled out onto the floor he yelled, “There she goes! Wash out some glasses, somebody!”

  I was glad to have something to do rather than just stand watching, so I opened the cupboard and took out some glasses to wash and the other girls came to help. There were half a dozen pink glass tumblers and three tall, heavy glasses with thick edges that looked as if they must have once been peanut butter jars. The faucet made a choking sound far down in the pipes as I turned it on and then water spouted out very brown and muddy, for it had been standing in the pipes unused for so long. We waited till it ran clear and then rinsed the glasses, setting them upside down on the newspapered table top to drip dry.

  Everyone crowded round the barrel holding out his glass to be filled. Jack came over with one for me and when I shook my head he said suddenly, “That’s right! I forgot you didn’t drink beer! We should have stopped and picked up some root beer for you but I never even thought of it. I can’t give you a glass of water either because the water out here isn’t very good for drinking, and besides these glasses look too dirty to drink out of unless there is beer in them.”

  It was all right, I told him. Really it was all right. I didn’t mind the least bit and I wasn’t thirsty anyway. I hoped he wouldn’t say anything to anyone else, for the other girls were all drinking it and having fun. For a minute I was tempted to take a glass myself. But then I thought of having to walk up the stairs when I got home and perhaps my mother would call from her room, “Angeline, come in a minute and tell me if you had a nice time,” and I would weave my way over to her dressing table, fumble for the lamp, knocking over the perfume bottles in a glassy-eyed stupor—I had seen people in the movies who had had too much to drink.

  Later they moved the beer keg into the living room and we all sat around on the chairs and on the floor, laughing and singing. I couldn’t make myself sing with the rest, for my voice sounded queer, but no one seemed to notice. Swede was next to me and Jack sat on the arm of the davenport, singing and winking at me at the same time. A lamp with a parchment shade was lit on a corner table and the room was in a half-glow as if by firelight. Large night moths fluttered low around the shade and made vague shadows on the circle of light on the ceiling. There were musty brown-and-cream print drapes on the windows, full and shadowy, and I noticed that high on one of them was pinned a large yellow butterfly of waxed crepe paper with bent wire feelers and wings edged with a dust of gilt paint—the kind unemployed women used to make to sell from door to door during the depression.The floor and chairs were scattered with cushions stiff with painted roses and bright sunsets, or made of soft leather with doeskin fringes printed with pictures of tall pines and low yellow moons—souvenirs of the north country and the Indian reservations.

  The whole room was filled with the damp smell of the lake and it was even a little chilly—the sort of chill that makes you feel more comfortable because you can snuggle against cushions and be grateful for their warmth and comfort. Those sitting on the floor joined hands and sang low songs as they swayed from side to side, and Jack slid off the wicker arm of the davenport and sat beside me. I was so contented and happy I felt as if I would like to sit right there without moving until I fell asleep. It was odd to think that just last week I hadn’t known anything about this—about Jack, about girls who really went out and drank beer, about parties like this—the sort of things I used to hear Jane Rady talk about and never thought I would be a part of. Tonight had been easy. Everyone else had been laughing and talking so much they didn’t seem to notice or mind that I just watched and enjoyed the whole thing without saying anything. The first misgivings I had felt when I saw them fitting the spigot into the beer barrel were gone, for after all they were just sitting in a circle singing now and there was nothing wrong about that! But back in my mind I had a vague guilty feeling that I probably wouldn’t mention to my mother that there had been no older person there and that they had had beer—even if I hadn’t drunk any myself.

  Suddenly Dollie jumped up and said in her round, baby voice, “Come on, fill my glass and let’s play ‘chug-a-lug!’” Everyone passed around his glass to be filled and then, holding them high, began to sing a loud song with words which I couldn’t catch for everyone was laughing so hard as they sang. Someone called out, “Dollie!” and they all went on laughing and singing like deep-throated bullfrogs—“chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug”—while she stood up, tilted her glass of beer and drank to the bottom without stopping. Then the song was started again and someone else’s name was called and he drained his glass while the others kept up the rhythmic chant. They kept it up till they had gone the round of the circle and everyone was laughing so hard they could hardly catch their breath and I found myself laughing, too, with my mouth open.

  Finally they laughed themselves quiet and Dollie gathered some of the painted cushions into a heap and leaned against the victrola, sleepy-eyed and contented. Someone shuffled through the pile of old records again and put on an old scratchy recording of a dramatic baritone singing “In The Valley of Sunshine and Roses.” Fitz looked over at Margie and they both got up, rinsed their glasses at the kitchen sink, and went out to sit on the front porch. Soon we heard the creak-creak of the glider. Fitz and Margie were “going steady,” Jack told me later.

  Swede gathered up some cushions and made himself comfortable beside Dollie, and some of the others got car robes from their cars and went out to sit on the front lawn. I didn’t quite understand how, as if at a given signal, the whole party broke up into couples and drifted off by themselves. Jack and I still sat where we were, not
saying anything, mostly because I didn’t quite know what to say or what I was supposed to do now. Dollie, snuggled against the cushions, was rubbing over Swede’s short curly hair with the back of her hand, saying over to herself softly, “Just like a kitten. Swede feels just like a kitty.”

  One of the boys came over to us saying, “Mind if we sit on the davenport—if you kids aren’t going to use it?”

  “Sure, sure,” Jack said. “Go ahead. We can sit on the porch. Do you want to sit on the porch, Angie?” I nodded.

  The front porch was built across the full length of the cottage and was screened in with long, black screens that ran from the floor to the ceiling. Out there, the darkness was warm and thick, for the broad front lawn stretching down to the lake was covered with trees and their branches, heavy with the full, lush foliage of early summer almost hid the moon. On one side was the glider and on the other a lumpy couch covered with the same musty brown-and-cream chintz as the drapes inside. Jack and I sat there. Out on the lawn near the lake’s edge someone was building a bonfire and we watched it grow, flickering at first till the fire dried out the damp wood and then suddenly bright and leaping against the darkness of the water. It was very quiet with just the steady lap-lap of the water, the hush of the wind through the trees, and the occasional creak of the glider on the other side of the porch. Attracted by the light of the dim lamp inside, heavy-bodied June bugs bumped clumsily against the screens and night moths kept up a dainty flutter. Out on the lawn there was a wink of light like a firefly as someone lit a cigarette.

  “Angie,” Jack said, “let’s get a robe from the car and sit out on the grass. It smells so damp and musty here that I’ll bet if we turned this couch over centipedes would crawl out from under it like from under a rock.” He spread out the robe on the lawn and lay flat with his chin in his hands, smoking his pipe, and I sat beside him with a funny, choked feeling in my throat because I suddenly felt self-conscious being alone with him. I was running the fringe on the edge of the robe through my fingers, wondering whether or not it would seem funny if I suggested that maybe Swede and Dollie would like to come out to sit with us, when Jack turned to me and said in a puzzled voice, “Angie, you didn’t have fun tonight, did you?”