by Maureen Daly
Out in the dark sky just a few blocks from us the annual fireworks display was being set off over the lake. Explosions, like dull thuds, preceded a thin whistle as the rockets shot into the air, bursting into a million bright-pointed stars, showering down into the night. Kitty let out little breathless exclamations of awe, and the dog, frightened by the light, whimpered and lay down close to Art with her head meekly on her paws. For a long time no one said anything. Fireworks should be watched in silence. Above us some of the rockets exploded in circles, echoing outward in diminishing rings of color while others burst into showers, hanging in mid-air for a moment like bright flower sprays, and one shot high, high above the others, like a brilliant comet and then plummeted to the earth, dragging a long scarlet tail down the sky. Jack whistled between his teeth and Kitty gave a little gasp of wonder. Above us the whole darkness seemed shot through with light and shattered with bursts of color that sent out a melting rain of stars. It seemed as if one could almost hear the brightness. The whole night tingled with it.
“I hope Lorraine and Martin don’t miss this—wherever they are,” my mother said quietly.
Jack was sitting, propped on his hands, with his head back looking at the sky and he moved his hand just a little so it barely touched mine. A tingling ran up my arm and I felt my face flush in the darkness. As a finale a series of rockets was set off in rapid succession till everything was a dazzle of quick-tailed shooting stars, fiery comets, and huge chrysanthemums of colored light. Long after the display had ceased the spectacle was bright before our eyes and the night sky was suddenly gentle and demure with the coy twinkle of pale stars. All of us felt the strange, silent natural beauty of it. The hushed night seemed so real, so lovely that I felt almost ashamed of the gaudy efforts of the faded rockets.
I wondered for a moment what my mother would think if she knew that I was sitting there in the darkness with Jack’s hand on mine. And all those strange thoughts. I wondered if it were just me or if they all felt this night so mysterious, so pulsing with something unspoken. My whole body felt uneasy with it. Suddenly I had an almost uncontrollable impulse to reach out and touch Jack’s bare throat gently, lightly with one finger, at the V of his shirt. And it was just then that he said politely to my mother, “Well, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Morrow, I think I’d better be going now. I’ve got to be out on the route early tomorrow.” He stood for a moment not knowing what else to say.
My mother rose from her chair too, saying, “I’m glad you came, Jack, and come again any time. It’s nice having you.” Her words sang in my ears as I walked to the front sidewalk with him. Kitty walked with us.
It was late and we all went into the house then and the others went straight upstairs while my mother turned back to call to me, “Angeline, be sure to see that the front door is unlocked for Lorraine.”
“I will,” I called back.
In the living room the window shades were still drawn as they had been against the heat of the afternoon and a few tired flies buzzed behind them against the windowpane. The air was hot and still and had the oppressive weight of not being lived in all day. There was something heavily, depressingly quiet about the whole room, and outside, somewhere in the city, the sound of an occasional late firecracker echoed. On the corner table was a vase of yellow flowers, limp and wilted, and in the heat of the afternoon the broad, smooth petals had dropped to the floor like tired butterflies. The night seemed suddenly husked of its beauty.
Quietly I turned the key in the lock and tried the knob of the front door. It was open. Lorraine would have no trouble getting in.
Of the days that followed I remember almost nothing definitely. Nothing seemed to stand out by itself but all flowed together into a stream of pleasantness like warm, thick honey. Every moment was full of it. Every night there was the lonely, ecstatic wonder of thinking about Jack while I lay in bed alone; outside, the stars just pin-pricked the sky and the wind was gentle in the trees, and in the morning there was the slow luxury of waking with the first sun on the wall and knowing that a whole long day of thinking lay ahead. It was the sort of happiness that almost makes you sad it is so wonderful. Everything seemed different to me—everything.
Sometimes after I had been with Jack, I would go upstairs into my own room and my thoughts seemed as clear and steady as crystal, and I would look at my wrists all traced with thin, blue veins and somehow I almost expected to see them pulsing, all throbbing with the strange new urge that was beating through me. Sometimes I went for walks by myself far out into the big field and my legs felt strong and thin and clean. Touching things sent a new pleasure through my hands that filled my whole body with satisfaction. The rough bark of trees was good, hard, and I thrilled to the soft, silken curve of the dog’s head as I stroked it. Words came out of my mouth like bubbles. Standing in our garden, watching fat bumblebees blunder against the broad faces of the sunflowers, I almost laughed aloud, and there was a new fascination about yellow-furred caterpillars, tufted like toothbrushes, inching along the hollyhock stems in the bright morning sun.
Sometimes I felt that my feet just wouldn’t stay on the ground. I wanted to pick the leaves from the raspberry bushes with their smooth surfaces and the greenish-white fuzz underneath, and touch the softness to my lips. The lake breeze blew in warm and soft, and black and yellow spiders rocked in webs that glinted in the sun and the whole air shimmered with July heat. Everything, everything was wonderful. Sometimes the world seemed so full of the luxurious lushness and warmth of summer that one could almost reach out and eat it with a spoon.
In the evenings we went for walks, Jack and I—long, silent walks—not talking at all, not having to talk. Or we would go out to Pete’s with Fitz and Margie or to the movies by ourselves. Sometimes when we sat in the movies Jack would hold my hand. It wasn’t silly. We did it because it was good to sit so close together in the darkness and, somehow, by holding hands you can carry on a conversation without talking.
When my mother and I were home alone in the morning, doing the housework, I found myself telling her little, noncommittal things about him, anything just so I could say his name aloud. “Mom. Jack says that his father says that more people are buying regular bakery bread and that the fad for sliced bread is going out …” Often when Kitty and I were together I talked to her about him—Kitty will listen to anything. I told her how he had been the star of the basketball team at high school, how well he drove a car, and I once asked her if she had noticed how clean his shirts always looked. I talked and talked about things that made no difference to Kitty at all but just gave me the chance to think of him and say his name.
One afternoon Margie and I walked down to McKnight’s to meet him. It was wonderful sitting there. Fitz stopped in and other fellows and girls came in, together and alone, and called “Hi!” or came over to talk with Jack and Fitz while Margie talked steadily and smiled broad smiles at everyone. She smiled so broadly that I noticed she had got lipstick on her teeth and I thought to tell her about it—but Fitz wasn’t looking at her anyway. Occasionally a woman who had been shopping would come in with a little boy or girl and they both would have a quick ice-cream cone or a pineapple soda, and the child would eat slowly, staring at the older fellows and girls making so much noise, while the ice cream dribbled down his chin. Older people and very young didn’t seem to belong here. No one belonged here but the “crowd,” those who were “in.” Until I met Jack I hadn’t belonged here, either. I remembered once, in early spring having come in with Kitty and having had a small Coke with her, sitting at the fountain, while from the back booths came the sound of laughing and talking. But no one had talked to me. I wasn’t one of the crowd then. I remember I had told Kitty to hurry up and made her leave before the Coke was half finished. I couldn’t stand being so out of things. But it was different now.
Fitz was working in a fruit store for the summer and said that he had to get right back, for he had just sneaked out for a few minutes and he didn’t want them to miss him. After a
while Jack said that he really should get back to the bakery too, for his father didn’t know he had gone, either. But I knew he wouldn’t leave. After Fitz had gone out the door Jack still sat with Margie and me, fingering his bent straws and waiting, as if he wanted to say something.
“How’s this hot weather affecting business, Jack?” Margie asked in a professionally conversational tone. She always talks with an up-and-down movement, as if she were chewing gum. And she likes to be a special friend to all the boys, even if she is going steady.
“It isn’t so bad,” he answered. “People have to eat no matter what the weather does.” He looked at her and then at me and the three of us just sat saying nothing. “Doughnuts and things will always sell,” he added lamely.
Margie craned her neck to look over the booth to see if anyone she knew might be coming in the front door. There was no one.
“Angie,” Jack said, “unless you’ve got to get home right away, would you like to go for a little ride with me? I’ve got the truck and I don’t have to be back to the bakery for about twenty minutes or so….”
“Go right ahead,” Margie said to me indulgently. “I’ll just sit here and talk to the kids and wait till you get back. Some one of the fellows is bound to come in,” and she gave me one of her “I know how it is” smiles. I almost resented her thinking she knew all about Jack and me—even if she did.
He had the bakery truck parked just around the corner; the afternoon sun glinted on the windshield and the black leather seats were hot to touch. Jack got in beside me, started the motor, and swung the truck around in the opposite direction, away from the bakery, just in case he might run into his father. He drove out from the heat of the town to the coolness of the lake and pulled the truck up at the water’s edge. The breeze was moist and cool and the water was blue and rollicking, teased with sunlight. A sand dredge was laboring in the harbor, its engines making a steady grunt-grunt and the whistle on its bridge giving out short, periodic snorts, as if it were blowing through its nose. We laughed, both of us, hearing it.
Jack reached into the shelves in the back of the truck and picked out four sugar cookies with raisins for us to eat. We sat munching them and laughing at the noises of the sand dredge and feeling the sun coming through the windshield, falling warm on our arms and legs. After a long time we went back to town.
Margie was still waiting in McKnight’s when I came back. She had ordered another Coke and was being dainty about lighting her cigarette when I came in. “Where did you leave Jack?” she asked.
“He let me off in front and went on back to work,” I explained, trying hard not to look straight at her. “His father won’t like it that he’s been gone so long as it is.”
She took a long, leisurely draw on her cigarette and we both watched the slow smoke curling. Then, leaning across the table, Margie said to me in a low, confidential voice, “You know, Angie, that shows when a boy really likes a girl—when he wants to kiss her in the daytime!”
The very next Sunday Jack’s aunt from Oklahoma passed through Chicago and his mother and father drove down to see her. But he stayed home. I wish now he had gone. He stayed to attend to the bakery and to see that the restaurants in town got their orders of hot rolls at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning. I would never have dared to mention it myself—in fact, I never even thought of it—but it was my mother who suggested that Jack come over for Sunday dinner.
“If his mother is going to be away I’m sure he won’t want to prepare anything for himself,” she said.
So I called him on Saturday evening while he was still at the bakery. My heart was pounding as I talked to him. Even if I did know him well, it seemed such a forward step to ask a boy to have dinner with your family! I could hear the sound of people moving about and the ring of the cash register behind his voice as we talked.
“Jack, my mother would like to know if you would like to come over for dinner tomorrow, seeing your mother and dad won’t be home….”
“You’ll have to talk louder, Angie,” he said. “We’ve pretty busy here and I can’t hear you.”
“I said,” I repeated, articulating carefully, “would you like to come over for dinner tomorrow?”
“Gee, Angie, that’s swell. That’s really swell!” and his voice dropped low. “What time?”
“What are you whispering for?” I could tell he was talking with his mouth close to the phone.
“I just don’t want my dad to hear,” he said.
“Why?” I made my voice sound very surprised and a little insulted, though I knew very well what he meant. I had thought of it myself before I called.
“It’s all right, of course,” he assured me, hastily. “It’s just that I don’t know if my dad would like it so well … me, having dinner with girls, I mean. You know how it is….”
“Of course,” I said abruptly. “We’ll expect you about noon, Jack,” and I hung up. It wasn’t nice of me. It wasn’t nice of me at all, for I knew just what my father would think if I had been asked to have dinner at Jack’s house. But I knew that Jack would worry all night. He would want to call back and ask me if I was angry with him, but the bakery would be rushed with last-minute Saturday night customers and he wouldn’t have time. After the bakery had closed it would be too late and he would be afraid my mother would be annoyed with him for calling at such an hour. So he wouldn’t know until tomorrow if I were angry with him or not and would spend all the rest of the evening thinking about it, while he waited on customers, and making up ways of explaining to me why he couldn’t tell his father. Of course, I knew why and I wasn’t angry at all. Only sometimes, even if you like a boy so much, it is almost fun to know he is worrying about you.
Sunday morning in the summer is almost too good, almost sensuously pleasant. All the windows were wide open and the sun lay in bright patches on the living-room rug and the hollyhocks grew straight and high around the back door and everywhere there was a feeling of warmth and oneness—as if there was no difference between inside the house and outside. Everywhere it was summer. My father spent the morning in the garden, straightening out vegetable rows with a hoe and piling up a heap of pulled weeds in an empty bushel basket, stopping now and then to wipe the sweat from his forehead. In the kitchen my mother tied on a frilled Sunday apron and began cutting the string beans for dinner. She kept looking out the window at my father, humming as she worked.
Even if the day was hot we were having roast pork and mashed potatoes for dinner because, as my mother said, “If your father has to eat out all week he deserves a good dinner at the weekend.”
Upstairs Margaret and Lorraine were making the bed together and Kitty was reading the funny papers on the back lawn. Everyone knew that Jack was coming. They had known ever since my mother had suggested asking him, but somehow I shied away from talking about it. It didn’t seem quite safe to talk about him anymore. I knew they didn’t quite understand about Jack and me and I had a vague, uneasy feeling that if they did they wouldn’t like it at all. My mind was always on the alert for the first word of disapproval. After all, what would my mother say if she knew that I, who had just been out of high school six weeks, was feeling the way I was? Families just don’t understand about such things.
Kitty came into the kitchen to help peel the apples for the applesauce and then gathered up the long curls of peelings and went out to eat them on the lawn, sitting in the sun. Kinkee came over, wagging her tail and wiggling her nose in anticipation. Kitty held out a curl of apple skin and the dog sniffed it gently and then let it drop to the ground untouched.
My heart felt lumped inside me, warm with satisfaction. Everything seemed too wonderful. I had set the table in the dining room on one of the best white tablecloths and the bright sunshine streamed in the windows and glinted through the tall glasses onto the silverware, sending off sprays of light. In the center Lorraine had put a low bowl of pink cosmos from the garden with their feathery, fernlike leaves. A small green bug dropped onto the tablecloth and began
inching its way toward a plate. I lifted it carefully on the corner of the Sunday funny paper and shook it out the front door. Outside the whole world seemed yellow-green and sunny. Even the way the trees shook their leaves seemed different.
Later I went upstairs and put two little pink guest towels in the bathroom. It seemed impossible to think that Jack would even be seeing what our upstairs looked like! From the kitchen rose the pleasant Sunday smell of roast pork and fresh garden peas, and outside I could hear the sound of neighbors laughing together as they sat on their front porches, and just across the street a man stood in his shirt sleeves with a pail of water and a chamois, shining his car. Everything seemed suddenly too wonderful. The clean sunshine, the good dinner in the oven, and just a few minutes to wait until Jack would be here! It couldn’t be that good! It seemed as if I were drinking in the almost tangible pleasure of the morning like a rich, heavy malted milk that comes slow and thick through the straws.
My whole head sang with warm, summer-Sunday thoughts, till my hands tingled with the sheer joy of it. “O God,” I thought, “O God, O God—stop making me be so glad! I can’t stand being so happy!”
I was still sitting at my bedroom window when he came up the front sidewalk, and I waited there until I heard my mother open the front door for him and then the mumble of voices as my father came in from the garden to get cleaned for dinner. In the living room someone turned on the radio. I knew that Jack would be sitting in the chair near the front door where he always sat and I waited till I knew my face was calm enough to face him without looking too happy. Then I went downstairs.
I don’t know just what went wrong at dinner. It wasn’t Jack’s fault. It wasn’t his table manners that were poor—it wasn’t that at all. He sat very straight just as he should; kept his left hand in his lap while he ate and broke his roll into four little pieces just like it says in etiquette books. So it wasn’t that.
