The Sweetheart Season

by Karen Joy Fowler

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Fanny said. And then she said that she would handle the column for next week, the one in which Maggie announced she had a sense of humor, and they all returned to their sinks. The schedule for the day was omelets and they fell to it with forced enthusiasm. Irini could see quite clearly that they were angry at her. Something new had entered the Kitchen, something like suspicion and maybe even almost fear—anger, at least—and somehow this was Irini’s fault. Because it wouldn’t be there if Irini had only confessed. That would leave just the final column unaccounted for and surely someone would admit to that column, too, if Irini only stepped forward. The Maggie Collins episodes would turn out to be something they’d done together, something they’d done as a team. Instead of this way, with someone hidden and possibly vengeful.

  Irini looked around the Kitchen and she saw Arlys stabbing potatoes, Claire beating eggs, Tracy whipping cream, Fanny pulverizing toasted bread. Helen was chopping onions. Margo was mincing mushrooms. Ruby was shredding cheese. It was the excessive normality of it all that disturbed Irini. Every single one of them deep in their own private mayhem, just like always. What did she really know about what any of them might be capable of? Sissy had turned out to be capable of heroism and also of sex, and who would have predicted either of those?

  When the girls looked at Irini she imagined it was with resentment. Irini didn’t feel like practicing with them today so she began at noon to complain that her headache had returned and by punch-out time was being ordered home to lie on her bed with the curtains drawn. It was a good decision in any case; it was much too hot to play baseball. Irini walked home, and the acorns swelled like beads of sweat along the branches of the trees.

  She went home and lay down, just as she’d told everyone in the Kitchen she would. Her arm and shoulders, still stiff from the accident, hurt all over again. Her father had heard about her headache and came in to check. He sat on the side of her bed and rubbed her temples gently and told her that the achievement of independence in India was a large step for all mankind. Mankind just had to be made to recognize it as one.

  “I don’t think people are nice enough for nonviolence,” said Irini. “In their hearts, it’s not what they want. They want drama and excitement. They want evil, if it comes to that.”

  “You don’t understand yet. Satyagraha is more sophisticated than that. Gandhi knows what people are like.” He stopped, as if surprised to find himself arguing with her. “I haven’t believed in anything for so long,” he said. “I think it scares me a little.”

  Sometime in the last week he had begun a directed reading course. “It’s more active than you realize at first,” he said now. “I thought it would just be the same old turn-the-other-cheek stuff, but it’s quite confrontational, quite revolutionary.” The question that interested him now was whether or not the movement was specifically Indian. Could it be transplanted?

  “For what purpose?” said Irini.

  He really didn’t see how she could ask that, with the bomb hanging like the sword of Damocles over their heads. As far as he could see, it was nonviolence or it was nothing. Darned right he would celebrate it.

  “I meant,” said Irini, “who do you want to confront?” but he didn’t seem to hear her. He went on for some time about the threat of nuclear annihilation, about the desolated cities. “Dust to dust,” he said and it wasn’t Irini’s favorite topic, even when it was just dust and dusting, so she only listened occasionally. Her head had decided to make an honest woman of her. It really was hurting by now.

  “You know there won’t be liquor served,” Irini told him finally.

  “There never is at Collins House,” he said. “My goodness, do you think I can’t get through a single evening without drinking? Do you think I can’t have a good time unless I’m lit up like a Tannenbaum?”

  Fortunately the question appeared to be rhetorical.

  36

  The sun came up a murderous red on August 15 and had bleached out by noon. The day was steamy and sticky. Magrit arrived at Collins House dressed to the nines, or at least the eights, which was all Magrit could manage. The dresses were homemade or catalogue. Buying off the rack was a luxury Magrit seldom enjoyed.

  Mrs. Tarken was honoring the Indians with a seriously scooped neckline. If she twisted just right you could just see the line that marked the top of her nipple. Magrit tried not to look, but naturally this was hard, especially if you had to wait for her to twist just right in order to not look.

  Mr. Baldish was wearing one of those wide, short ties you see in the forties movies. It was a bright indigo, and it was 1947, so no one thought it was wide or short, although everyone thought it rather blue.

  Ada herself wore a deep purple sari with a silver band. It was surprising how well it suited her. She drifted down the stairs as graceful as if she’d been born in it, as graceful as if it didn’t, every once in a while, bare a sizable strip of her stomach. The silver set off her silver hair. Ada had solved her menu problems by deciding to fast. They would all fast. It was new, it was different. It was so Indian.

  It was a surprise. Irini had not eaten all morning in anticipation of party food and there must have been many others who had done the same. Without anything to eat, it was hard to find anything to do. You think of eating at a party as something that happens while everything else is going on, you think of it as background noise to the real party. This did not prove to be the case. By early afternoon Irini’s stomach had begun to gnaw loudly on itself. She thought it best to keep moving.

  It was hot inside, hotter still, out. Henry was seated in the smoking room, slumped but splendid in a bow tie. Claire was on one side of him, Norma the other. Claire was animated and lovely. Perhaps it was because she had cleared her conscience. Or perhaps she had not enjoyed providing the food for every party in Magrit as much as people thought she had. Perhaps she was really relishing the chance to be a guest. She had her hand on Henry’s arm and she was telling him a joke. It had fish and cannibals and psychologists in it and really, none of this was like Claire.

  Irini interrupted long enough to pay her respects to Mr. Henry and left the smoking room. She went into the parlor. There she saw Holcrow and Tracy talking with their heads bent together slightly. Tracy was facing her. She also looked very pretty. She gave Irini a don’t-even-think-of-it look and Irini backed out again. She went to the kitchen where she considered getting herself a glass of juice. She glanced around to see that no one was watching. She put a hand on the refrigerator handle.

  Someone knocked. “Hello?” someone said. “Hello?” Irini dropped her hand and turned.

  Two blurred figures stood on the outside of the screen door. “Hello?” said the closest. He swung the door open and the vague, screened shape of him came into sharp focus. It was Mike Barr and right behind him a strange young man. Irini thought they were together, but Mike came in and went past with a quick greeting and no introduction. The other man stopped.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Excuse me for intruding. I have no invitation. I’m looking for Ruby Redd.” His eyes were large, and one of the irises was slightly clouded over. This made it hard to see in. Irini wondered what it was like, looking out.

  His hair was curly and dark. He was so tall he had to bend slightly to speak to Irini. “I got off the train in Magrit, but it was like a ghost town,” he added. “It gave me the oddest feeling. The conductor told me to try up here. Do you know Ruby?”

  “Yes. She’s on my team,” Irini said.

  “I’m her brother.” He held out his hand. It was a working man’s hand, hard and rough. His hand was older than his face. Irini guessed his age at eighteen, which made no sense. Ruby had said her brothers were all older than she.

  Irini took him inside. Suddenly no one could find Ruby. She had been there a moment ago, wearing one of Helen’s hand-me-down dresses in a pale tangerine, with some lace at the collar Mrs. Leggett had added to make it seem new. They looked for her in the kitchen and the smo
king room and the parlor. They checked the ham radio room upstairs. They called and called.

  “We’ve been looking for her for weeks,” her brother said. His name was Horace. “Mama is desperate for her.”

  “She told us she had her parents’ permission,” Walter said.

  "What kind of parents would give a fourteen-year-old girl permission to gallivant about the country with people they’d never met?" Horace sounded angry. "We may be poor, but we love each other."

  “She said she was twenty.”

  “And you believed that? She’ll be fifteen in November.” This made her a Scorpio, and secretive by nature, although it’s all complicated by rising signs, as you don’t need me to remind you, and moon signs, too, but in 1947 in Magrit, who cared? And anyway, if her parents loved her so much, why did they stick her with a name like Ruby Redd?

  “How old are you?” Cindy asked him. He didn’t have a handsome face, but it was a friendly one, even when angry. Now the anger vanished instantly, like someone switching off a light. He turned to Cindy, smiling, looked her over. He held out his hand. She nodded down to her sling; it was an excuse and also an explanation, but he ignored it, reached over and took the other hand.

  “Old enough.” He didn’t let go.

  With the sudden, unexpected appearance of a new man, the party picked up. It was better than food; it was better than liquor. It was the perfect way to celebrate Indian Independence Day. The muscles in Horace’s bare arms were as distinct and defined as Irini’s. Cindy, Tracy, and Sissy clustered like grapes about him. Holcrow, Walter, and Mike Barr formed the second tier.

  “She’s an excellent player,” Tracy said. “We’re very fond of her. And we’ve taken good care of her.” Except for that time we nearly killed her in a bus accident, Irini thought, but there would be time for that later. Next lifetime later.

  “No doubt. Her mother wants her back.”

  “You must be proud of her,” Walter suggested.

  “Proud of her? Because she runs away from home to play baseball?”

  “She’s really good,” said Walter.

  “So what? She’s a girl. If you people cared about her, I don’t think you’d encourage her. And we’re tired of doing her chores.”

  “Is it true there are six more of you?” Cindy asked.

  “The six Redd boys. Yes.”

  “Are they all as good-looking as you are?” This was Fanny, of course, shouldering her way through to stand next to him. No one else would be so bold. No one else could make it work the way Fanny did. No one else could make it sound as if she’d just now made it up.

  No one else wouldn’t care that her actual boyfriend was there to watch. Fanny had abandonment issues with men. She was afraid that, once encouraged, men would never go away.

  Horace was taller but thinner than she, so she looked the bigger as they stood together—Cary Grant and Mae West. Mike Barr took hold of Fanny’s elbow. It was a clear statement of possession, but if it was aimed at Fanny she didn’t seem to get it and because she didn’t, neither did Horace, if it was aimed at him.

  “I don’t know how to answer that question,” Horace said. “I guess you’ll have to come and see for yourself.” A look smoldered between them and because she was so much older than he, it was not an appropriate look. Fanny wet her gorgeous lips. It made Mike Barr swell like a toad, but neither Fanny nor Horace broke eye contact long enough to notice.

  “I always wished I had brothers,” Cindy said coldly. Sometime back Horace had dropped her hand.

  “Isn’t it lovely to have men around?” Fanny agreed.

  “I’m to stay right here until I find her,” Horace said. “I can’t go home without her.”

  Irini felt Walter’s hand on her arm. It was not a gesture of possession. It was a request. She turned. He was wearing a shirt and his usual pants. He’d not really dressed for the party. His feelings concerning Ada had always been a bit complicated. So he looked the way he always did, blondish and pinkish and regular. Come with me, he was asking, through pressure and gesture. She followed him to the dining room.

  “Don’t worry,” Irini said. “She won’t leave without saying good-bye to you. Your under-age sweetheart.”

  “Capital S? Or little s?” asked Walter.

  “What?”

  “My Sweetheart? Or my sweetheart?”

  “Both,” said Irini, who had no idea what he was saying. “You were in love with her.”

  “You wish. Golly gee,” said Walter. “I knew she was younger than twenty. I never dreamed she was fourteen. But, hey, Irini. Ruby’ll turn up. This isn’t about that. You know how worried I’ve been about Gramps?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been thinking and thinking what I could do. I had a long talk with him after our trip. I told him about the ape. Nothing. No reaction. An ape who bowls right there for the picking.”

  “Yes?”

  “And then I knew. He’s never going to be better until he swims Upper Magrit.” Walter stood with his arms folded, waiting for her response.

  Irini thought it a surprising idea. “He doesn’t believe he can make it anymore,” she pointed out. “And I’m not sure he’s wrong. You’ll never talk him into it.”

  “He would do it for Ada. To win her back from Mr. Gandhi.” Irini thought it an unlikely idea. “She doesn’t want it.”

  “That’s why it has to be a surprise. She can’t know until it’s over. ‘Guess what I did for Indian Independence Day, darling,’ he can say over dinner. ‘Guess what I did for you.’ ”

  Irini thought it a very bad idea. “He might not make it.”

  “He made it every other year. Just last year he made it.”

  Irini looked at Walter, with his straight earnest hair and his pink scrubbed face and his eye, still richly hued but fainter, like a watercolor, and thought how he always just drove her nuts. In fact, she was a bit insulted. “You’ve already talked him into it, haven’t you? I hate it when people ask me for advice and they’ve already made up their minds and it doesn’t really matter what I think. Why ask? Go away and do whatever it is you’re going to do. I’m looking for Ruby.”

  She left with as much passionate dignity as she could put into the mere act of walking out a door.

  Which was a lot. I saw it many times in later years and I can promise you it was good. It’s one of those things I miss. Isn’t that a surprise?

  I’m not so bad at it myself. It’s worth practicing till you get it. It confers a Darwinian advantage.

  Irini expanded the search to the yard. The sun was keeping the mosquitoes down. She tried the porch and out by the fish pond. The clouds were stationary overhead but rippled below, reflected in the smoky water. Ada had stocked the pond for the party. Brilliant orange fish, the little ones that came in Chinese-food containers, flickered beneath the lily pads. The pond had to be restocked from time to time, since the dogs apparently drank up the originals. Everyone did them the courtesy of assuming this was unintentional.

  No one else in Magrit had a fishpond like that. It was shaped like a cereal bowl, Mr. Henry had always said, and if that’s what it was meant to be, why was there a stone cupid peeing into it?

  No one else had a yard with statuary and sundials. No one else had a yard this size unless they farmed it. Ruby could be anywhere. Ruby could easily be among the trees. Irini stepped through the gate and called to her.

  She thought she saw something bright up ahead, a piece of skirt in a tangerine color like the one Ruby had been wearing. She called again, ran in that direction. The wind was beginning to rise, a hot wind moving sluggishly through the heavy air. Overhead, the clouds began to race, promising shade, but somewhere else. Irini stopped, searched among the tree trunks for just that bit of color. She left the path and made straight for the road.

  She heard a car, but by the time she had come out of the trees it was already past her. She could still see it, though. It was Walter’s car and there were three men inside. Walter, Mr. Henry, and Ho
lcrow, she thought. On their way to the mill parking lot, then under the limestone rainbow, and up to Upper Magrit. The end of the road shimmered in the distance. It was set in fairyland. Irini was at the wrong end, in the heat and the grit of Magrit.

  She stood and watched the dust from their tires settle again, and because of the wind it didn’t ever quite. Dust devils continued to spin down the sides of the road. Dust to dust to dust to dust… She walked after the car. She walked faster; she began to run.

  Long before she reached the mill parking lot she was convinced Henry was going to die. And it wasn’t just him. The guilt of it would take Walter with him. And maybe her, too, because she could have stopped it. If she had thought more about the danger to Mr. Henry and less about her own feelings, there were so many things she could have done. She could have said no forcefully. She could have told Mrs. Ada on them all. She could have cried. She could have taken Walter upstairs to the ham radio room, and kissed him so hard he would have forgotten he ever had a grandfather.

  She could have gone back and taken a car. By the time she thought of this it was too late. She was going to be too late. She had a cramp in her side and couldn’t get a decent breath. She was covered with sweat; it pooled and poured off her.

  She had a vision as she ran, but it was filled with large, black, empty spaces brought on by the heat. The vision was of Mr. Henry stripping out of his party clothes, unknotting his bow tie, and standing in his bathing suit, with his sad little frog body—sticks of legs, round white Buddha belly. She could imagine it quite clearly, except for those dark spaces. He would do a few knee bends. He would talk to Walter and Holcrow in a serious way about the conditions, as if these things could be quantified, and once quantified, understood, and once understood, controlled. He would defer to Walter’s expertise. Walter was the wave forecaster.

  He would wade out. Walter would give him last-minute instructions, which he wouldn’t hear over the noise of the Falls and the constant ringing in his ears, but they wouldn’t be important anyway. He would take a deep breath, so that his cheeks puffed.