"I used to work. I don’t do anything now. I didn’t go to college."
I haven’t seen your mother anywheres around tonight," said the Yale man.
"The lady traveling with me?" said Barbara. "She isn’t my mother."
"She isn’t?"
"No. My mother’s dead. She’s my mother-in-law-to-be."
"Oh."
Barbara reached forward for the centerpiece matchbox. She struck a match, blew it out, struck another, blew it out and drew back her hands to her lap. "I was sick for a while," she said, "and my fiance wanted me to go away for a rest. Mrs. Odenhearn said she’d take me on a cruise or something. So we went."
"Well!" said Ray, who was watching Miss Latex Bathing Suit of 1941 perform on the dance floor.
"It’s like being with a girl my own age, almost," Barbara said. "She’s very nice. She was a great athlete when she was young."
"She seems very nice. Drink your drink, why don’t you?" Barbara picked up her drink and sipped a sixteenth of an inch of it. "I can dance to what they’re playing now," she said.
"Fine." They stood up and worked their way to the dance floor. Barbara danced rigidly and without any perceptible feeling for rhythm. In her nervousness she got Ray’s arm into a peculiar position, locked it just enough to give him trouble leading her.
"I’m an awful dancer."
"You certainly are not," said Ray.
"My brother tried to teach me when I was little."
"Oh?"
"He’s about your size. He used to play football in high school. Only he hurt his knee and had to stop. He could’ve had a scholarship to almost any college if he hadn’t hurt himself."
The floor was so crowded that it mattered relatively little how poorly they danced together.
Ray suddenly noticed how blond, how corn yellow, Barbara’s hair was. "What’s your fiance like?" he asked.
"Carl? Oh, he’s very nice. He sounds lovely over the telephone. He’s very - very considerate about stuff."
"What stuff?"
"Oh...stuff. I don’t know. I don’t understand boys. I never know what they're talking about."
Ray suddenly lowered his head and kissed Barbara on the forehead. It tasted sweet and left him feeling unsteady.
"Why did you do that?" Barbara said, not looking up at him.
"I don’t know. Are you sore?"
"It’s so warm in here," Barbara said. "Golly."
"How old are you, Barbara?"
"Eighteen. How old are you?"
"Well, actually I’m twenty-two."
They went on dancing.
"My father had a cerebral hemorrhage and died last summer," Barbara said. "Oh! That’s tough."
"I live with my aunt. She’s a teacher at Coopersburg High. Did you ever read Green Light by Lloyd C. Douglas?"
"I don’t get much time for books. Why? Is it good?"
"I didn’t read it. My aunt wants me to read it. I’m stepping all over your feet."
"No, you’re not."
"My aunt’s very nice," Barbara said.
"You know," said Ray, "it’s very hard to follow your conversation sometimes."
She didn’t answer, and for a moment he was afraid he had offended her. He felt a slight panic rise in his head at the thought: he still tasted her forehead on his lips. But, below his chin, Barbara’s voice spoke up again. "My brother had a car accident just before I left." It was a great relief to hear.
The Woodruffs were already seated at the table. Their shot glasses of bourbon were empty and their chasers barely sipped.
"I waved to you," Mrs. Woodruff lightly accused Barbara. "You didn’t even wave back."
"Why, I certainly did wave back to you," Barbara said.
"Did you watch us rumba?" asked Mrs. Woodruff. "Weren’t we marvelous? Fielding’s a Latin at heart. We’re both Latins. I’m going to the powder room ...Barbara?"
"Not just now. I’m watching a drunken man," Barbara said.
As Mrs. Woodruff left the table, almost simultaneously her husband leaned forward and addressed the two young people.
"I’m trying to keep something from her. Our son’s going to join the Army while we’re gone, I think. He wants to be a flier. It would kill Mrs. Woodruff if she knew." Mr. Woodruff then sat back, sighed heavily and catching the waiter’s eye, he signaled for another round of drinks. Then he stood up, used his handkerchief forcibly and wandered away from the table. Barbara watched him until he disappeared: then she turned and spoke to Ray:
"Do you like clams and oysters and stuff?" Ray started slightly.
"Well, yes. Sort of."
"I don’t like any kinds of shell food," Barbara said nervously. "Do you know what I heard today? I heard the ship may not make any more cruises till after the war."
"It’s just a rumor," said Ray casually. "Don’t look so sad about it. You and what’s-his-name - Carl - can take this same cruise after the war," Ray said, watching her.
"He’s going in the Navy."
"After the war, I said."
"I know," said Barbara, nodding, "but - everything’s so funny. I feel so funny." She stopped short, unable or unwilling to express herself. Ray moved a little closer to her.
"You have nice hands, Barbara," he said. She removed them from the table.
"They’re terrible now. I couldn’t get the right polish."
"They’re not terrible." Ray picked up one of her hands - and immediately let go of it. He stood up and drew Mrs. Woodruff’s chair for her. Mrs. Woodruff smiled, lit a cigarette and looked alertly at them both.
"I want you both to leave very shortly," she said smiling. "This place isn’t at all right for you."
"Why?" asked Barbara, with wide eyes.
"Really. This is the sort of place to go when the very best things are over and there’s mostly money left. We don’t even belong here - Fielding and I. Please. Take a lovely walk somewhere." Mrs. Woodruff appealed to Ray. "Mr. Walters," she said, "aren’t there any not-too- well-organized clambakes or hayrides tonight?"
"Kinsella," corrected Ray, rather curtly. "Afraid not."
"I’ve never been to a clambake or a hayride," Barbara said.
"Oh! Oh, what bad news! They’re so nice. Oh, how I hate 1941."
Mr. Woodruff sat down.
"What’s that, dear?" he asked.
"I said I hate 1941," said his wife peculiarly. And without moving she broke into tears, smiling at all of them. "I do," she said. "I detest it. It’s full of armies waiting to fill up with boys, and girls and mothers waiting to live in mailboxes and smirking old headwaiters who don’t have to go anywhere. I detest it. It’s a rotten year."
"We’re not even in the war yet, dear," said Mr. Woodruff. Then he said: "Boys have always had to go to war. I went. Your brothers went."
"It’s not the same. It’s not rotten in the same way. Time isn’t any good anymore. You and Paul and Freddy left relatively nice things behind you. Dear God. Bobby won’t even go on a date if he hasn’t any money. It’s entirely different. It’s entirely rotten."
"Well," said Ray awkwardly. He looked at his wristwatch: then at Barbara. "Like to take in a few sights?" he asked her.
"I don’t know," said Barbara, still staring at Mrs. Woodruff.
Mr. Woodruff leaned forward toward his wife. "Like to play a little roulette, honey?"
"Yes. Yes, of course, darling." Mrs. Woodruff looked up. "Oh, are you leaving, children?" she asked.
It was a little after four in the morning. At one o’clock the portside deck steward had set up some of his deck chairs to accommodate the nondissipating crowd who would, a few hours later, use the post-breakfast sunshine There are many things you can do in a deck chair: eat hot hors d'oeuvres when a man passes with them on a tray, read a magazine or a book, show snapshots of your grandchildren, knit, worry about money, worry about a man, worry about a woman, get seasick, watch the girls on their way to the swimming pool, watch for flying fish...But two people in the deck chairs, drawn however closely
together, can’t kiss each other very comfortably. Either the arms of a deck chair are too high or the persons involved are seated too deeply.
Ray was seated on Barbara’s left. His right arm, resting on the hard wood of her chair, was sore from pressure.
Both of their voices had struck four.
"How’re you feeling now?" Ray asked.
"Me? I feel fine."
"No, I mean do you still feel a little tight? Maybe we shouldn’t have gone to that last place."
"Me? I wasn’t tight." Barbara thought a minute, then asked: "Were you?"
"Heck no, I never get tight." This inaccurate piece of intelligence seemed automatically to renew Ray’s visa to advance over the unguarded frontier of Barbara’s deck chair.
After two hours of kissing, Barbara’s lips were a little chapped, but still tender and earnest and interested. Ray could not have remembered, even if he had tried, when he had been comparably affected by another girl’s kiss. As he kissed her again now, he was reupset by the sweetness, the generously qualified and requalified innocence of her kiss.
When the kiss ended - he could never unconditionally concede to the ending of one of Barbara’s kisses - he drew back a very little and began to speak with a hoarseness unnatural even to the hours and the highballs and cigarettes consumed. "Barbara. No kidding. We’ll do it, huh? We’ll get married, huh?"
Barbara, beside him in the dark, was still.
"No, really," Ray begged, as though he had been contradicted. "We’ll be damn happy. Even if we get in the war I’ll probably never be sent overseas or anything. I’m lucky that way. We’d - we’d have a swell time." He searched her still face in the moonlight. "Wouldn’t we?"
"I don’t know," said Barbara.
"Sure you know! Sure you know! I mean, hell. We’re right for each other."
"I keep even forgetting your name," Barbara said practically. "Golly. We hardly know each other."
"Listen. We know each other a lot better than most people that know each other for months!" Ray informed recklessly.
"I don’t know. I wouldn’t know what to tell Mrs. Odenhearn."
"His mother? Just tell her the truth, is all!" was Ray’s advice.
Barbara made no reply. She bit nervously at the cuticle of her thumb. Finally she spoke. "Do you think I’m dumb?"
"Do I what? Do I think you’re dumb? I certainly don’t!"
"I’m considered dumb," said Barbara slowly. "I am a little dumb. I guess."
"Now stop that talk. I mean, stop it. You’re not dumb. You’re - smart. Who said you’re dumb? That guy Carl?"
Barbara was vague about it. "Oh, not exactly. Girls, more. Girls I went to school with and go around with."
"They’re crazy."
"How am I smart?" Barbara wanted to know. "You said I was smart."
"Well, you - you just are, that’s all!" said Ray. "Please." And equipped only for the most primary kind of eloquence, he leaned over and kissed her at great length - persuasively, he hoped.
At last Barbara gently interrupted him by removing her lips from his. Her face in the moonlight was troubled, but slackly, with her mouth slightly open, without consciousness of being watched.
"I wish I weren’t dumb," she said to the night.
Ray was impatient - but careful.
"Barbara. I told you. You’re not dumb...Please. You’re not at all dumb. You’re very - intelligent." He looked at her very possessively, jealously. "What are you thinking about?" he demanded. "That Carl guy?"
She shook her head.
"Barbara. Listen. We’ll be happy as anything. No kidding. I know we haven’t known each other very long. That’s probably what you’re thinking about. But this is a lousy time. I mean with the Army and all, and everybody upside down. In other words, if two people love each other they oughtta stick together." He searched her face, less desperately, bolstered by what he considered to be his sudden insight and eloquence. "Don’t you think so?" he asked moderately.
"I don’t know," said Barbara and began to cry.
She cried painfully, with double-edged gulps from the diaphragm. Alarmed by the violence of her sorrow and by being a witness to it, but impatient with the sorrow itself, Ray was a poor pacifier. Barbara finally emerged from the private accident entirely on her own.
"I’m all right," she said. "I think I better go to bed." She stood up unsteadily.
Ray jumped up and took her arm.
"I’ll see you in the morning, won’t I?" he asked. "You’re playing off the finals in the doubles tournament, aren’t you? The deck tennis tournament?"
"Yes," said Barbara. "Well, good night."
"Don’t say it like that," said Ray, reprovingly.
"I don’t know how I said it," said Barbara.
"Well. I mean, heck. You said it as though you didn’t even know me or anything. Gosh, I’ve asked you to marry me about twenty times."
"I told you I was dumb," Barbara explained simply.
"I wish you’d stop saying that."
"Good night," said Barbara. "Thank you for a lovely time. Really." She extended her hand.
The Woodruffs were the only passengers on the last tender from shore to ship. Mrs. Woodruff was in her stockinged feet, having given her shoes to the taxi driver for his lovely driving. They were now ascending the narrow, steep ladder which stretched flimsily between the tender platform and the B deck port door. Mrs. Woodruff preceded her husband, several times swinging precariously around to see if her husband was obeying the rules she had imposed on them both.
"You’re holding the thing. The rope," she accused, looking down now at her husband.
"Not," denied Mr. Woodruff indignantly. His bow tie was undone. The collar of his dinner jacket was half turned up in the back.
"I distinctly said no one was to hold on to the rope," pronounced Mrs. Woodruff. Wavering she took another step. Mr. Woodruff stared back at her, his face teetering between confusion and abysmal melancholy. Abruptly, he turned his back on his wife and sat down where he was. He was almost precisely at the middle of the ladder. The drop to the water was at least thirty feet.
"Fielding! Fielding, you come up here instantly!"
For answer, Mr. Woodruff placed his chin on his hands. Mrs. Woodruff weaved dangerously, then she lifted her skirts and successful, if inexplicably, made the descent to the rung just above her husband’s seat. She embraced him with a half Nelson, which nearly capsized them both.
"Oh, my baby," she said. "Are you angry with me?"
"You said I was using the rope," said Mr. Woodruff, his voice breaking slightly.
"But, baby mouse, you were!"
"Was not," said Mr. Woodruff.
Mrs. Woodruff kissed the top of her husband’s head, where the hair was thinnest. "Of course you weren’t," she said She locked her hands ecstatically around Mr. Woodruff’s throat. "Do you love me mouse?" she asked, practically cutting off his respiration.
His reply was unintelligible.
"Too tight?" asked Mrs. Woodruff. She relaxed her hold, looked out over the shimmering water and answered her own question. "Of course you love me. It would be unforgivable of you not to love me. Sweet boy, please don’t fall; put both feet on the rung. How did you get so tight dear? I wonder why our marriage has been such a joy. We’re so stinking rich. We should have, by all the rules, drifted continents apart. You do love me so much it’s almost unbearable, don’t you? Sweet, put both feet on the rung, like a good boy. Isn’t it nice here? We’re defying Magellan’s law. Darling, put your arms around me - no, don’t move! You can’t where you’re sitting. I’ll make believe your arms are around me. What did you think of that little boy and that little girl? Barbara and Eddie. They were - unequipped. Didn’t you think? She was lovely. He was full of baloney. I do hope she behaves sensibly. Oh, this crazy year. It’s a devil. I pray the child uses her head. Dear God, make all the children use their heads now - You’re making the years so horrible now, dear God." Mrs. Woodruff poked her husband in the back. "
Fielding, you pray, too."
"Pray what?"
"Pray that the children use their heads now."
"What children?"
"All of them darling. Bobby. Our little gorgeous Bobby. The Freemont girls with their candy ears. Betty and Donald Mercer. The Croft children. All of them. Especially that little girl who was with us tonight. Barbara. I can’t get her out of my mind. Pray, darling boy."
"All right."
"Oh, you’re so sweet." Mrs. Woodruff stroked the back of her husband’s neck. Suddenly, but slowly, she said: "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, By the roes, and by the hinds of the field, That ye stir not up, nor awaken love, Until it please."
Mr. Woodruff had heard her. "What’s ‘at from?" he asked.
"The Song of Songs. The Bible. Darling, don’t turn around. I’m so afraid you’ll fall."
"You know everything," said Mr. Woodruff solemnly. "You know everything."
"Oh, you sweet! Pray a little for the children, my sweet boy. Oh, what a detestable year!"
"Barbara? Is that you dear?"
"Yes, it is, Mrs. Odenhearn."
"You can turn on the light, dear. I’m awake."
"I can undress in the dark. Really." Of course you can’t. Turn them on dear." Mrs. Odenhearn had been a deadly serious tennis player in her day, had even once opposed Helen Wills in an exhibition match. She still had two rackets restrung annually, in New York, by a "perfect little man" who happened to be six feet tall. Even now, in bed at 4:45 A.M., a "Yours, partner!" quality rang in her voice. "I’m wide awake," she announced. "Been awake for hours. They’ve been so many drunken people passing the cabin. Absolutely no consideration for others. Turn on the light, dear."
Barbara turned on the lights. Mrs. Odenhearn, to shield herself from the glare, put thumb and forefinger to her eyes, then dropped her hand away and smiled strongly. Her hair was in curlers, and Barbara didn’t look at her very directly.
"There’s a different class of people, these days," Mrs. Odenhearn observed. "This ship really used to be quite nice. Did you have a nice time, dear?"
"Yes, I did, thank you. It’s too bad you didn’t go. Is your foot any better?" Mrs. Odenhearn, with mock seriousness, raised an index finger and wagged it at Barbara. "Now listen to me, young lady. If we lose our match today it’s not going to be on my account. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. So there!"
22 Out-of-print J. D. Salinger Stories Page 17
