"No. This boy's coming for me," Elaine explained.
The man shook his head. "He's not coming," he said. "I got a hot tip." Elaine was suspicious. "How do you know?" She wanted to know.
The man stared at her. "What's your name, kid?" he asked.
"Elaine. Elaine Coooo-ney."
But just at that moment Teddy Schmidt's party pulled up behind the masher's car. Elaine recognized Teddy in the back of the car, and smiled. The masher drove off.
It was twenty minutes to eleven. Teddy got out of the back of the car. "Sorry I'm late!" he said, without a jot of regret in his voice. "Frank couldn't find the keys!" It was a great joke. He ushered the young girl into the back of the car, and got in beside her. The two people in the front were turned around and staring.
"Elaine, meet Monny Monahan. Monny, meet Elaine. Elaine, meet Frank," introduced Teddy.
Frank Vitrelli acknowledged his introduction by issuing a long, low whistle.
"Hello, kid," Monny said to Elaine, staring.
"Hello," said Elaine.
"Drive on, McGinsberg," ordered Teddy. Frank Vitrelli shifted gears, and the car moved off. "How ya been, Elaine?" Teddy inquired, affecting a casualness for the information of Frank and Monny.
"O.K.," said Elaine, sitting straight in her seat.
"Not bad lookin', eh, Monny?" Teddy asked Monny, who was still staring.
"What do you do, kid?" Monny asked Elaine. "You go to school?"
"I graduated."
"From high school?"
"No, from 8-B. I'm going to high school next week. George Washington High."
"That's co-ed, isn't it?" Monny said.
"No. Boys and girls," Elaine informed her.
When the gorgeous sun was descending that day, Frank Vitrelli suddenly sprang to his feet, brushing off sand from his hairy legs. "Well," he announced, "I don't care what others want to do, but as for me, give me liberty or give me paddle tennis." He reached down, and with only the slightest exertion of his powerful arm, yanked Monny Monahan to her feet.
"Let's play doubles," Monny suggested. "You play paddle tennis, Elaine?"
"What?" said Elaine.
"You play paddle tennis?" Elaine shook her head.
"Well, c'mon along, anyway," Monny said to her, glancing at Teddy Schmidt. "It's fun to watch."
"Naa, we'll stay here," said Teddy casually.
Frank Vitrelli abruptly made a little fullback-like movement, lunging his huge shoulders at the lower quarters of Monny Monahan, and in an instant Monny was sitting on his shoulders. She made a painful little grimace, replaced it with a smile, and said, "Oh, you!" to Frank Vitrelli. The latter turned around for the benefit of the others, with his hands so placed and gripped on Monny's thighs to show off best his deltoid muscles. Then, sharply, he twisted about, as though to ward off a sudden and formidable opponent, and galloped off, with his burden bouncing high and painfully on his shoulders.
"He's a panic," commented Teddy.
"He's strong," Elaine observed, basically.
Teddy shook his head. ''Muscle-bound," he said briefly. "See him in the water?"
"No."
"Muscle-bound. I mean he's all muscle-bound." Teddy changed the subject. "Listen. This sand is killing my feet. I mean it's shady under the boardwalk. Let's take a walk."
"Okay," said Elaine, and they both stood up.
For the first time Elaine noticed that the beach was fast becoming deserted. There were a few city die-hards like the Schmidt-Vitrelli party, but it seemed as though all the "regulars" had suddenly folded a single, great, green-and-orange umbrella, and plodded across the scorched sand toward the parking lots. Standing up, Elaine was almost instantly involved in a private, terrible panic. She had never been to a beach before, but she had seen hordes of Coney Islanders in newsreel shots taken annually on the Fourth of July or Labor Day, and the occasion of being on a crowded beach all day had not estranged her violently from the dimensions of her own world. But now - the sudden vast, lonely expanse of a deserted public beach at dusk came as a terrible visitation upon her. The beach itself, which before had been only a fair-sized manifestation of tiny handfuls of hot sand which could slip with petty ecstasy through the fingers, was now a great monster sprawled across infinity, prejudiced personally against Elaine, ready to swallow her up - or cast her, with an ogreish laugh, into the sea. And with the sudden exodus of the beach people, Teddy Schmidt took on a new meaning for her. He was no longer Teddy Schmidt, pretty, wavy-haired, male; he was Teddy Schmidt, not her mother, not her grandmother, not a movie star, not a voice on the radio, not -
"What's the matter?" Teddy demanded, but softly. Elaine had snatched her hand away from his as they walked, as though it had been charged with high voltage. She did not answer him. As they walked along, everything he said was unintelligible to her. There was only her heart clomping. There was only a frightened prayer that the beach and ocean change into a Bronx street, with tooting horns and clanking trolleys and jostling clothed people. She listened only for the beach to move, to spring, to swallow up. The sand and air under the boardwalk was cool and clammy, and there were smells of sea things and picnic. But it was dark and, abruptly, retreatful for Elaine, and the farther she walked under the boardwalk with Teddy, the more intelligible his conversation became, the less her heart clomped.
"Too cold here?" Teddy asked, in a peculiar voice.
"No!" Elaine almost shouted.
Like a child with its head under blankets, afraid to look at the panic-making silhouettes of objects in the room, she wanted to stay under the boardwalk until the transition to her own familiar world could be made instantaneously.
"Let's sit down," Teddy said, at the right moment. His mediocre heart had begun to pound excitedly, because with the eternal rake's despicable but seldom faulty intuition, he knew it was going to be easy...so easy....
At that moment, on the paddle tennis courts Monny Monahan walked up to net and said to Frank Vitrelli, "Let's go back, huh? My feet hurt."
"One more set."
"I don't like that guy there with that kid."
"What guy?" Vitrelli said, turning to look at the players in the next court.
"No. I mean Schmidt."
"Teddy? Oh, he's a good guy. C'mon. You serve," said Vitrelli, and jogged back to his own base line.
Monny served, hating Vitrelli, but aware that he made sixty-five dollars a week, aware of the great potential security of him.
When she came in from that first night under the boardwalk with Teddy Schmidt, Elaine was required to relate very few details of the day. Her mother was washing her hair, her soapy head bent over the hand bowl in the bathroom. Her grandmother was asleep.
"That you, Elaine?"
"Yes, Mama." Elaine walked into the bathroom, and watched her mother wash her hair.
"Have a good time?"
"Yes."
"The suit shrink?" Her mother wanted know.
"I don't know," Elaine said.
"You eat anything?"
"We had hot dogs. With relish."
"That's nice," said her mother.
Elaine stood there. She was almost ready to say something.
"Anybody get wise with you?" her mother asked suddenly.
"No," Elaine said.
"That's good. Hand me the towel, dolly."
Elaine handed her a towel.
"Go look and see in the papers what's at the Capitol. Maybe we'll go in the morning."
"I can't," Elaine said. "Teddy doesn't work in the mornings. He's going to learn me how to play bridge.''
"Oh, that's nice! You can play with me and your Uncle Mort and your grandmother when you know how. See once what's playing for me, though, like a dolly."
A month later-two weeks before her seventeenth birthday Elaine was married to Teddy Schmidt. The marriage was performed at the Schmidts' home, and was attended by Teddy's large family and several of his friends. Mrs. Cooney, Mrs. Hoover, and Mr. Freedlander represented Elaine. It was a cold, rainy October da
y, with threat of intenser chills and more rain in the late afternoon. Elaine wore a cheap, thin "traveling" suit and a dreary gladioli corsage which Teddy's sister, Bertha Louise, had selected for her. But no Grade-B Hollywood film had ever seemed to make Elaine as happy as she looked on her wedding day. No last-reel film kiss would have stirred her heart so tenderly, if objectively she could have witnessed herself raising her own lips to meet the thin, effeminate mouth of her new husband.
Teddy was nervous throughout the ceremony, and at the wedding table following the ceremony he was irritable with his bride. Elaine was too happy to cut the wedding cake effectually, and he had to take the knife away from her. He was thoroughly disgusted with her incompetence.
Teddy's mother and Mrs. Cooney began to argue with guarded politeness concerning the virility of a certain popular male movie star, Mrs. Schmidt questioning it, Mrs. Cooney swearing by it. It took them very little time to drop their guards, to raise their voices; and when Mr. Freedlander had responded to Mrs. Cooney's request to "stay out of it," Mrs. Cooney thoughtfully, effectively, struck her daughter's mother-in-law full in the mouth with her open hand. Teddy's mother screamed and rushed forward, but met with the interference of Frank Vitrelli. Freedlander grabbed Mrs. Cooney. The groom stayed in the background, frightened, avoiding active participation by pretending to comfort his bride. Elaine wept like a small child, all the happiness wrenched away from her, like a broken film in a projector. Monny Monahan came up to Teddy. "Get her out of here," she told Teddy. Teddy nodded nervously, and looked around, as though selection of a proper exit was questionable. But he stood there, panicky.
"Get her out, you dope"' Monny Monahan grated at him.
Teddy grabbed his wife's arm roughly.
"C'mon," he said.
"No!" said Elaine. ''Mama!" She broke away from Teddy, and rushed over to her mother, who was being pacified somewhat inadequately by Mr. Freedlander and Mrs. Hoover.
"Mama," Elaine begged. "Me and Teddy are goin'."
"I'll kill her," threatened Mrs. Cooney, ferociously.
"Mama. Mama. Me and Teddy are goin'," Elaine said.
"Go ahead, kid," Freedlander advised.
"Your mother don't feel so good. Have a good time. Don't do nothing I wouldn't do."
"Mama," begged Elaine.
Mrs. Cooney suddenly looked up at her daughter. And something strange happened. A great tenderness crossed Mrs. Cooney's face, and she took her daughter's beautiful face between her two hands and drew it down to her own. "Good-by, dolly," she said, and fervently kissed Elaine on the mouth several times.
"Good-by, Grandma," Elaine said to Mrs. Hoover.
Mrs. Hoover gathered her granddaughter in her arms, and sobbed over her. Teddy prodded his wife to make the embrace short. The newlyweds started to leave the house. But there was a change of plans.
"Elaine!" Mrs. Cooney suddenly called, shrilly.
Elaine turned, her big eyes wide. Her husband swung around, too, with his mouth open.
"You ain't goin' nowhere," said Mrs. Cooney. And the entire gathering of wedding guests snapped their attention her way; even the sobbing of the groom's mother was abruptly suspended.
"What, Mama?" said the bride.
"You come back, you beautiful," ordered Mrs. Cooney, crying. "You ain't goin' nowhere with that sissy boy."
"Listen," Teddy started to bluster, "we're leaving right - "
"Keep quiet, you," commanded Mrs. Cooney, and turned to Mrs. Hoover. "C'mon, Ma."
Mrs. Hoover stood up painfully, but readily, on her swollen legs. She followed her daughter across the room toward her granddaughter.
Teddy's lower jaw trembled violently. "Listen," he told his mother-in-law, nervously, as the latter put her arm around the bride's waist, "she's my wife, see. I mean she's my wife. If she don't come with me, I can get it annulled, the marriage."
"Good. C'mon, dolly," said Mrs. Cooney, and led the way out.
"G'by, Teddy," Elaine said in a friendly way, over her shoulder.
"Listen," began Teddy again, trying to imply imminent danger to the Cooney party.
"Let ‘em go!" shrieked his mother. "Let the riffraff go!"
When they were outside in the street, Mrs. Cooney dismissed Freedlander with a minimum of tact. "You go ahead, Mort," she said. And Freedlander, looking hurt, went ahead.
Bride, mother, and grandmother moved up the street. They turned the corner in silence, moved half way up the next block, then Mrs. Cooney made a little announcement which seemed to please all three.
"We'll go to a movie. A nice movie," she said.
They walked on.
"Henry Fonda's playing at the Troc,” commented Mrs. Hoover, who didn't like to walk too far.
"Let Elaine say where she wants to go," snapped Mrs. Cooney.
Elaine was looking down at her gladioli corsage. "Gee," she said. “They're all dying. They were so beautiful." She looked up. "Who's at the Troc, Grandma?"
"Henry Fonda."
"Ooh, I like him," said Elaine, skipping ecstatically.
14. This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise
I AM inside the truck, too, sitting on the protection strap, trying to keep out of the crazy Georgia rain, waiting for the lieutenant from Special Services, waiting to get tough. I'm scheduled to get tough any minute now. There are thirty-four men in this here veehickle, and only thirty are supposed to go to the dance. Four must go. I plan to knife the first four men on my right, simultaneously singing Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder at the top of my voice, to drown out their silly cries. Then I'll assign a detail of two men (preferably college graduates) to push them off this here veehickle into the good wet Georgia red clay. It might be worth forgetting that I'm one of the Ten Toughest Men who ever sat on this protection strap. I could lick my weight in Bobbsey Twins. Four must go. From the truck of the same name....Choose yo' pahtnuhs for the Virginia Reel!...
And the rain on the canvas top comes down harder than ever. This rain is no friend of mine. It's no friend of mine and these other gents (four of whom must go). Maybe it's a friend of Katharine Hepburn's, or Sarah Palfrey Fabyan's, or Tom Heeney's, or of all the good solid Greer Garson fans waiting in line at Radio City Music Hall. But it's no buddy of mine, this rain. It's no buddy of the other thirty-three men (four of whom must go).
The character in the front of the truck yells at me again.
"What?" I say. I can't hear him. The rain on the top is killing me. I don't even want to hear him.
He says, for the third time, "Let's get this show on the road! Bring on the women!"
"Gotta wait for the lieutenant," I tell him. I feel my elbow getting wet and bring it in out of the downpour. Who swiped my raincoat? With all my letters in the left-hand pocket. My letters from Red, from Phoebe, from Holden. From Holden. Aw, listen, I don't care about the raincoat being swiped, but how about leaving my letters alone? He's only nineteen years old, my brother is, and the dope can't reduce a thing to a humor, kill it off with a sarcasm, can't do anything but listen hectically to the maladjusted little apparatus he wears for a heart. My missing-in-action brother. Why don't they leave people's raincoats alone?
I've got to stop thinking about it. Think of something pleasant. Vincent old troll. Think about this truck. Make believe this is not the darkest, wettest, most miserable Army truck you have ever ridden in. This truck, you've got to tell yourself, is full of roses and blondes and vitamins. This here is a real pretty truck. This is a swell truck. You were lucky to get this job tonight. When you get back from the dance...Choose yo' pahtnuhs, folks!...you can write an immortal poem about this truck. This truck is a potential poem. You can call it, Trucks I Have Rode In, or War and Peace, or This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise. Keep it simple.
Aw, listen... Listen, rain. This is the ninth day you've been raining. How can you do this to me and these thirty-three men (four of whom must go). Let us alone. Stop making us sticky and lonely.
Somebody is talking to me. The man is within knifing distance (fou
r must go).
"What?" I say to him.
"Where ya from, Sarge?" the boy asks me.
"Your arms gettin' wet."
I take it in again. "New York," I tell him.
"So'm I! Whereabouts?"
"Manhattan. Just a couple of blocks from the Museum of Art."
"I live on Valentine Avenue," the boy says. "Know where that is?"
"In The Bronx, isn't it?"
"Naa! Near The Bronx. Near The Bronx, but it ain't in it. It's still Manhattan."
Near The Bronx, but it isn't in it. Let's remember that. Let's not go around telling people they live in The Bronx when in the first place they don't live there, they live in Manhattan. Let's use our heads, buddy. Let's get on the ball, buddy.
"How long have you been in the Army?" I ask the boy. He is a private. He is the soakingest wettest private in the Army.
"Four months! I come in through Dix and then they ship me down to Mee-ami. Ever been in Mee-ami?"
"No," I lie. "Pretty good?"
"Pretty good?" He nudges the guy on his right. "Tell 'im, Fergie."
"What?" says Fergie, looking wet, frozen and fouled.
"Tell the Sarge about Mee-ami. He wantsa know if it's any good or not. Tell 'im."
Fergie looks at me. "Ain'tya never been there, Sarge?" - You poor miserable sap of a sergeant.
"No. Pretty good down there?" I manage to ask.
"What a town," says Fergie softly.
"You could get anything you want down there. You could really amuse yourself. I mean you could really amuse yourself. Not like this here hole. You couldn't amuse yourself in the here hole if you tried."
"We lived in a hotel," the boy from Valentine Avenue says. "Before the War you probly paid five, six dollars a day for a room in the hotel we was at. One room."
"Showers," says Fergie, in a bittersweet tone which Abelard, during his last years, might have used to mention Heloise's handle. "You were all the time as clean as a kid. Down there you had four guys to a room and you had these showers in between. The soap was free in the hotel. Any kinda soap you wanted. Not G.I."
"You're alive, ain'tcha?" the character in the front of the truck yells at Fergie. I can't see his face.
22 Out-of-print J. D. Salinger Stories Page 12
