Seventeenth Summer

by Maureen Daly

  We had doubled with Fitz and Margie so often that I had learned not to seem surprised at anything they did. When they came back to the table both had another bottle of beer and we talked together for a short while before Fitz glanced nervously at his wrist watch, saying, “I hate to break this up but we’d better leave you kids and shove off. Margie’s mother don’t want her going out so much lately so we got to be cautious.”

  Margie opened her purse and patted her hair in the mirror, remarking coyly, “I know you two aren’t going to mind being left alone ….”

  Fitz looked at his watch again and stammered apologetically,

  “It’s just a little after nine o’clock now but she has to be in early and if you kids don’t care … well … you know how it is. We want a little time.”

  “That’s all right, fella,” Jack answered. “Go ahead.”

  After they left we moved to a table near the big grand piano that was set in the middle of the floor. “They’ve got a wonderful colored pianist for the floor show,” Jack told me. “He doesn’t come on till ten o’clock but I want to sit where we can see him as well as hear him. I don’t know much about music myself but they say that fellow’s got magic fingers.

  “He’s from Chicago,” he explained. “Used to play at the Three Deuces there.”

  I drew my eyebrows together, trying to look interested, but I couldn’t remember ever having heard of the Three Deuces before. And I had only been in Chicago twice.

  “You know, that ‘home of swing’ place that everyone used to talk about,” he went on, explaining with his hands as if he were blowing on a trumpet. “That place where they had big jive sessions and stuff—regular Bix Beiderbecke. It burned down a couple of New Year’s Eves ago.”

  He sat thinking, making wet rings on the brown table top with his beer glass. “Used to play there before it burned down,” he commented absently.

  Just then Martin and Lorraine came in. She was squinting a little to get used to the duskiness of the place and didn’t see me at first. I was as surprised to see her as she was to see me, though I had often wondered where she and Martin went at night. Jack stood up as they came over to our table. “Hello there, Angie,” Martin said heartily and, “Hi there, fellow, long time no see!” to Jack, pumping his hand and slapping him on the back. Jack looked surprised.

  “Won’t you two pull up a couple of chairs and have a glass of beer with us?” he asked politely.

  But Lorraine put in hastily. “Thanks anyway, Jack. I don’t think we’ll bother. We were on our way somewhere else and just stopped in for—”

  “Sure. ’Course we will,” Martin interrupted, and pulled over two chairs from the next table. “We got a little time to spare—especially when I haven’t seen this cute young sister of yours for such a long time,” and he gave me an exaggerated wink. I had never seen him act the way he did that night.

  When the waiter came to our table he said benevolently, “We’ll have the same as before for these two and a couple of Scotch and seltzers here,” pointing to Lorraine and himself.

  “No, thank you,” Lorraine interrupted again. “I’ll have a Coke if you don’t mind.”

  Martin looked at her. “A Coke …” he began incredulously and then looked at me. “Oh. Oh, all right. Sure. Waiter, make that one Scotch here and one Coke.”

  We were sitting near the jukebox and had to talk above the music. “You know, I’m beginning to like this little town of yours.” He looked at Jack and me as if expecting an answer. “Yes, sir, it’s a pretty good little town when you get to know the people. It’s not like the big city, of course, and you can’t have the fun you can in some towns, but it’s like I always say—if you want fun, you’ve got to make it yourself.”

  “You’re right there,” Jack assented. “I know I’ve always had a good time here.”

  “I met an old fraternity brother of mine the other day in Waupun and I said to him, ‘You know, if I had a wife and six kids and nowhere else to go there is nowhere I would rather live than Fond du Lac,’” and Martin guffawed loudly. But Jack didn’t laugh with him and neither did I. Talking about your home town is like talking about your own mother.

  Lorraine was restless and excused herself, going into the powder room. Martin turned to me, “That sister of yours is the greatest one for fixing up. Everytime you look at her it’s prink, prink. I tell her sometimes she’s going to wear her face right off with that powder puff. Another beer, Jack?” He was trying hard to be pleasant now. I almost liked him.

  When Lorraine came back she was freshly lipsticked, with her hair fluffed out, and her heels clicked sharply on the floor. “Come on, Martin, let’s go now.”

  He turned in his chair and looked her squarely in the face, saying very deliberately and a little too loudly, “Let’s go! We just got here, didn’t we? We’ve got about twenty minutes to wait until the floor show starts and you want to go already!”

  “I know, Martie,” she answered coyly, her lips pouted, “I know we just got here, but I want to go. Come on!” and she smiled at him. Sometimes Lorraine talks as if she were sucking sugar lumps.

  He drank down the rest of his beer and looked at us, sighing in mock exasperation. “It’s like that all the time. Just when we get where there is people and fun it’s ‘Let’s go! Let’s go!’” and he squeaked out an imitation of Lorraine. “To hear her talk you’d think she had somewhere to go!”

  Jack and I sat in an uncomfortable silence after they had gone. I noticed that Martin had nodded to the two girls in the thin satin blouses as he went out the door. We both knew that he hadn’t been trying to be funny, and it made me curl up inside because it had been my own sister he had been talking to. Jack lit a cigarette, trying to think of something to say.

  “Say, why don’t you try a bottle of beer with me, Angie?” he suggested.

  “Oh, no! No, thank you, really. I never drink beer.”

  “Come on,” he urged. “Just for fun. One bottle won’t hurt you.”

  “It would look so awful, though—me sitting here with a beer bottle in front of me. I’d look like a witch or something.”

  “All right,” he assented. “I wouldn’t want you to have to have one if you didn’t want to but I just thought you might like it—this once.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” I suggested. “You order me a bottle and if I don’t like it you can finish it. Will that be all right?”

  “Well, if you want to, Angie … but don’t do it just on account of me.”

  “No, no, I really want it. It will be sort of fun, I think.”

  “Waiter,” he called. “Make that two bottles of beer this time. And bring us some potato chips to go with it.”

  He put his hand very close to mine on the table and looked at me with a warm gratitude in his eyes. It made my cheeks tingling hot and for a moment I forgot what I had been saying. When the waiter brought the beer Jack poured both our glasses. I took a cautious sip and screwed up my face at the flat bitterness. Jack winked at me and I laughed back at him—so much fuss over one bottle of beer. But when he wasn’t looking I pushed the bottle over a little toward his side of the table. A girl can’t feel like a lady with a bottle of beer before her.

  When it was time for the floor show even the dim wall lights were switched off and the spotlight tossed a bright lariat of light around the baby grand piano in the middle of the floor. There was a moment’s pause and the pianist came out of the darkness while a spatter of applause from the tables greeted him as he slid onto the bench. I had never seen a colored pianist before.

  He sat for a moment, very still, with his head back and his eyes closed, poised and waiting, and then began running his hands up and down the keyboard. His fingers were chocolate-brown against the white keys and his foot kept up a dull beat-beat on the floor; his head bobbed. Jack looked at me and winked approval. This wasn’t small-town music at all. With his eyes still closed, the colored man leaned back on the bench, way back, one hand limp at his aide and the other like a
dark spider on the high notes at the end of the keyboard, quick and supple, tingling the keys in a rippling, tantalizing way until it made my scalp prickle to hear him. Suddenly he swung back into position, both hands playing the whole keyboard, and let out a queer, wild cry that sounded like “Oh, rock the baby!” A laugh went round the room, from table to table, and everyone relaxed. He played on and on, rocking back and forth on the piano bench, rolling his eyes and shaking his head till his white teeth shone like dice against the black of his face. He played “St. Louis Blues” and then “Honeysuckle Rose,” singing as his fingers ran over the keys, with his eyes turning up wildly in his head, drawing out the first words of the song long, sweet, and high, with a sensuously slow half-smile on his lips, holding it till I felt myself looking at Jack and laughing uneasily and almost breathing with relief when he swung off the high note into the rest of the piece. He played on and on, sitting in the bright circle of light, his fingers flashing, and after each number he paused, wiping his forehead, while people at the surrounding tables tossed in their requests like pennies.

  “Like it, Angie?” Jack asked.

  I nodded, sipping my beer slowly, almost enjoying the bitter, unpleasant taste. Jack ordered another bottle for himself. All around us the room was dark and cool with the underground coolness of wet stone, but the piano, its dark wood shining in the spotlight glare, set the air warm and throbbing with its music. The glass of beer made me cozy inside.

  Jack leaned over and said quietly, “Gee, this is fun, Angie. Each night seems to be more fun because it’s getting near the end. We’ve only got a few more weeks before you go back to school….”

  I didn’t notice Jack order again and I didn’t notice the waiter come to our table, but soon there was another full bottle of beer before me. The pianist had launched out with a fast piece, singing as he played, his foot on the pedal of the piano and his shoulders keeping rapid time to the beat of the music. Jack put his hand on mine and together we drummed time. At other tables people were knocking their glasses together in a clinking rhythm. I don’t know how long we sat there sipping beer. I can’t remember that, either. The table top felt like a cushion under my hand. Before long the music of the piano and the sound of the clapping of the audience seemed to come to me as from another room, floating in soft, gentle waves, and the effect struck me as so funny that I giggled!

  Jack leaned over to touch my cheek with the back of his hand and I think he was laughing at me. “You’re a honey, Angie. I like you so much tonight!”

  I said something to him then—I must have said something. But talking was a queer feeling. I felt as if the thoughts came out of my mouth in bright bubbles and floated over to Jack before they burst into words and the sound of them came back to me. Everything seemed to be at a distance. I looked at the beer in my glass, clear as amber, and even to look at it made me feel mellow.

  The colored man was playing again with his head thrown back; quick, sharp notes that seemed to trip over each other. His fingers kept up a rapid sparkle over the keys.

  “Look, Jack,” I remember saying, and the thought first puzzled and then amazed me. “He has red nail polish on! Isn’t that funny—for a man?”

  “Yeh,” he answered laconically, playing with his beer glass. “It’s pretty funny.” It struck me as so amazing that I wanted to talk about it but Jack looked the other way. And that was all he said.

  The whole room was cool with the smell of beer and blue with cigarette smoke. The piano tinkled through my brain in a steady stream and my thoughts seemed to run out with the note sounds. There was a tingle in my head like the sparkle of ginger ale. I could hear myself talking and talking to Jack, the words all mixed up with laughing, and he smiled back at me and I hummed to the music and we laughed and laughed again and I don’t remember all the funny things he said. My brain was in a sing-song. It was such a hot night outside that he had worn no necktie; just a white sport shirt, open at the throat, and I had a blurred thought about how much he looked like the picture of Lord Byron that had hung on the wall of my English room at school.

  In the corner the face of the jukebox still shone with light and the twisting of the colors made me giddy. My cheeks were too hot now and I thought how nice it would be to feel for a moment the coolness of the night wind off the lake. “You must drive me down to look at the water before you take me home, Jack,” I murmured to him. At least I think I did.

  He finished his beer and the pianist played one last piece, hunched over the piano, his forehead shining, while he fretted the lower keys in a grumbling boogie-woogie that rumbled out to the very corners of the room, and then slid his long, dark fingers up the keyboard in a flourishing finish. He slid off the piano bench, gave the audience a quick black-and-white grin, and disappeared into a back room.

  The bright spotlight was snapped off and the dim wall lights glowed on. The room was filled with an almost pleasant gloom, very quiet and cool, with its damp-stone smell. “We’d better go,” I said. “We’d really better go home because I’m so sleepy now.”

  After that I never drank beer again. It had really been a wonderful evening—but no evening can be that wonderful by itself. That’s how I know. I didn’t realize it then and I hate to admit it now, but I must have been a little tight that night!

  After that evening at the Rathskeller, Lorraine talked and talked about Martin even more than before. She told me about the smooth girls whom he used to date when he was at the university—long-haired, pretty girls who belonged to the best sororities; she told my mother how particular he was about everything he ate—never touched salads and didn’t like butter on anything but toast; she even asked my father if he knew some man who lived out near Campbellsport who owned a big garage and to whom Martin had sold insurance at the beginning of the summer. Anything just to say his name. I was surprised at her. In fact, she talked about him so much that my mother began to give my father alarmed, raised-eyebrow looks at the dinner table.

  She even asked Jack what kind of rolls Martin bought for his breakfast each morning, and how many, and whether he came every morning or bought a two days’ supply at once. Jack told me later that he had charged the rolls for two weeks now and owed a little over a dollar and a half at the bakery. Martin phoned for three nights in a row, just before supper, and one night he and Lorraine went out for a Coke together, coming home much later, when we had all gone to bed. She borrowed three university annuals from a fellow who lives down our street—she wasn’t just sure what year he had graduated—and looked up his picture. We lay on the livingroom rug one evening, she and I, to look at the books together. We found his graduation picture on a back page and under it a list of the activities in which he had participated and Lorraine pointed out with pride that he had as many as any other boy on the page. He looked much younger then than he did now, with a high, white collar and a shiny look—like a man in a brilliantine ad. We found another picture of him standing before his fraternity house with the rest of the committee for arrangements for the Junior Prom, but only half his face showed for there was another boy standing almost directly in front of him. Quite by accident Lorraine found the picture of the girl he used to date and on whom he had hung his fraternity pin when he was a sophomore.

  “Where is his pin now?” I asked her.

  “I really don’t know. Maybe that little blonde still has it,” she said. “Some girls are like that, you know, Angie. Never want to give a fellow up even when he doesn’t like her anymore.”

  Margaret and Art drove up from Milwaukee late that Saturday afternoon—Margaret had to be back at work the following Monday morning—and Lorraine showed Martin’s picture to them. At suppertime she announced that maybe he was even going to come to Chicago to work in November; he was writing to the main offices to see about a transfer. “You know, he is the kind of man who would be good in any territory,” she commented. “And then if he is down that way he can come to the dances at school next year and he probably will be able to get blind dates for A
ngie too. That would be good,” she added significantly, “because it takes some girls a long time to get started.” I wondered what had made her change so suddenly; what had made her so sure of herself.

  She even said that Martin might drive her back to Chicago when college classes begin in the fall. Art looked at Margaret, winked and said, “Hey, hey, what goes on here? We’ve been away too long, Maggie.”

  Jack went out with Swede and Fitz and some of the other fellows that night and Lorraine asked me to walk up to McKnight’s for a Coke with her. “It’s all right for me to be seen without a date,” she explained lightly, “when everyone knows I’m practically going steady anyway….” Martin had called just after supper to say that he wouldn’t see her that weekend—he was driving up to Eagle River and wouldn’t be back until late on Tuesday. He asked her then to go out with him the following Sunday.

  “That’s his birthday,” she told us happily when he had hung up. “I don’t know just how old he will be, but it certainly is something to have him ask me out for that night when he knows other cuter girls in town and everything, isn’t it? We’ll probably do something very special and have dinner somewhere first. I don’t know what I should wear. Either I will have to get something new or borrow something of Margaret’s …” She was giddy with excitement.