Cold Spring Harbor

by Richard Yates

  “You’re very shy, aren’t you,” he said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  But at least she looked at him when she said that; she seemed to be examining his face as though she couldn’t yet believe the perfection of it. Then it occurred to him that “Yes, I am” was a better and braver answer than if she’d said “No, I’m not,” or “Depends what you mean by shy,” so he kissed her quickly and lightly on the mouth.

  “Okay,” he said, getting to his feet, and he reached down to help her up. “Let’s go.”

  It wasn’t only Evan Shepard’s face that Rachel found hard to believe; it was everything else about him. The broad-shouldered, meaty, graceful way he moved and turned was an unconscious performance that she thought she would never tire of watching. Some twenty-three-year-olds retained a boyish quality in their stance and bearing, and she guessed that could be attractive too, in its own style, but Evan always looked like a man.

  And he knew so much! His unfailing poise, his easy flow of talk and his flawless handling of the car had only been overtures, and so had the neat surprise of his stolen kiss. She kept thinking about that kiss as he guided her down a suburban sidewalk and into what turned out to be an extremely nice, quiet restaurant: no other boy or man she’d met could have brought off a charming little kiss like that. If he’d held it a moment longer they might both have been too embarrassed for words, but he’d known just how to dart in, get it, and pull back again with the right kind of smile. And the best part was that now there would be no shyness at all when the time came, later tonight, for the real kissing to begin.

  Seated across from him in this well-appointed place and waiting for further enchanting things about him to unfold, Rachel ordered a dry martini for the third time in her life. Evan’s voice took on just the right blend of courtesy and command in addressing the waiter—that in itself was a fairly enchanting thing—then sometime later, over a dinner that proved remarkable for conversational ease on both sides of the table, he told her he’d been married and divorced and had a daughter of six.

  She knew it would take a little while to sort out all the implications of that startling news. The very words “divorced” and “daughter” were too resonant of maturity to be absorbed right away.

  “Where is she now?” she asked.

  “My daughter?”

  “Well, of course, her too; but I meant your wife. Your former wife.”

  “Oh, she’ll be graduating from college this year, if I’m not mistaken,” he said. “Or no, wait; I guess that was last year—but I don’t really know what she plans to do next; her parents don’t tell me much. It’s her parents who look after the little girl, you see—they bring her over to the house sometimes, or I go over there—but they don’t tell me much about Mary, and I don’t ask questions.”

  So that was her name. A very young Long Island girl named Mary had fallen in love with Evan Shepard years ago, when he was very young too; there had been raptures of the flesh and of the spirit; she had given birth to his child, and now he didn’t really know what she planned to do next.

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Who, Mary?” he said, and looked down at his plate. “Yeah; oh, yeah, she’s very pretty.”

  On the way back to New York that night, riding silent in the car beside him, Rachel began to suspect that Evan Shepard could do anything he wanted with her. Her main constraint arose in a vision of her mother’s anxious face, and in knowing her mother would be appalled if she were to “go too far,” even with a man like this, let alone if she were ever to “go all the way” with him.

  Rachel’s mother had never been a reliable source of information about sex; her unspoken view seemed to be that nice people didn’t find it necessary to discuss things like that. She could evade almost any question with her little shuddering laugh, or by saying there’d be plenty of time for Rachel to learn whatever she might need to know—and the troubling thing about this attitude was that it seemed always to come from carelessness, or laziness, rather than from any kind of principle. When Rachel was thirteen her mother had neglected even to tell her about menstruation until it was too late—until Rachel, at home alone on the day it began, had run bleeding and terrified to a stranger’s apartment, where a kindly woman explained everything (“This just means you’re a woman now, dear …”) while a kindly man went around the corner to buy her a box of Kotex and a little pink elastic belt.

  Even now, at nineteen, she felt heavily handicapped by ignorance. She could count nine boys or men who had taken her out alone on “dates,” over spans of time that ranged from one or two evenings to half a year or more, and she knew there must be girls who wouldn’t consider nine too meager a total (there were even retrospective moments when nine could be made to seem a pleasing abundance); still, some of the boys on her list had revealed by the way they used their hands, if not by the very way they breathed, that they were as heavily handicapped as she was; and a few of the men had made cold, smiling, frightening remarks that spoiled everything.

  Not long ago a national weekly magazine had given surprisingly prominent space to an article on sexual relations before marriage. Rachel had started to read it with quickening interest, not even minding the author’s overuse of words like “realistic” and “sensible,” but then her mother came into the room and said “Oh, I wouldn’t bother with that if I were you, dear. They only publish those things to be—you know—to be sensational.” And when Rachel looked around for the magazine the next day, wanting to finish the article in privacy, she found that her mother had thrown it away.

  Was there really any reason, then, to be cautioned by thoughts of her mother at a time like this? How could her mother be hurt by what she wouldn’t know and couldn’t find out?

  Well, but even so—and there was no denying it—even so, Rachel was afraid. The palms of her hands were moist in her lap as Evan’s car brought her back into the dark and intricate swarm of Manhattan, and she was very much aware of the pump of her heart. Maybe all virgins were afraid, or maybe fear afflicted only those virgins who’d been tyrannized by their mothers; in any case, the worst part of it now was that she couldn’t imagine a respectable way of saying no to Evan Shepard. He would laugh at her; he would think her a child and a fool; he would dismiss her as if with a snap of the fingers, and she’d never see him again.

  But the remarkable thing, as they sat talking softly with the car parked snug and silent at the curb near her house, was that Evan didn’t try to overwhelm her. He didn’t even make a pass at her breasts or her thighs—two moves she had learned to fend off in fairly agreeable ways but would probably have let him accomplish. All he wanted tonight, it seemed, were kisses—long, embracing, Hollywood kisses with open mouths and a sweet mingling of tongues. It was almost as if he were saying Listen, I can wait for all the rest of it, can’t you? Oh, listen, I know an awful lot more about this than you do, dear, and I know it’s going to be better if we take our time.

  When he said goodnight to her in the vestibule at last, after waiting just long enough to make sure she’d found the door keys in her purse, she was faint and dizzy with hating to let him go.

  “Will you call me?” she asked helplessly. “Will you call me again, Evan?”

  “Well, of course I will,” he said, looking back to smile at her in a way that would soon become habitual: a mixture of pity, fond teasing, and readiness for love.

  On the road home to Cold Spring Harbor that night, knowing he’d made a good impression, Evan allowed himself to fool around with the idea of getting married again—but this time of having it come about in a better way, and for better reasons.

  It wasn’t until he was getting ready for bed, with a very few hours left before he’d have to be up for work, that a disconcerting question came into his mind: if he got married again, what about the mechanical engineering? Just before he fell asleep, though, it occurred to him that marriage and college wouldn’t necessarily have to rule each other out. Ways could be found; arrangements could be m
ade. When you were twenty-three and in command of your life, you could do anything.

  Throughout the summer and into the fall of that year it became increasingly clear to Evan and Rachel, and to both their families, that they might as well consider themselves engaged.

  Gloria Drake supposed it was all very nice, though it would certainly have been nicer if Evan had ever brought his father to the apartment again, but she felt unprepared and ill-equipped for this kind of thing. Most of the time she couldn’t even believe her daughter was old enough to be in love; she still thought of Rachel as a little girl meticulously lining up half a dozen dolls for display on her bedroom floor, or breaking down in tears over matters as small as the denial of an ice-cream cone.

  On nights when Gloria stayed up late enough to see Rachel come dreamily home she was always unsettled by the girl’s appearance: clothes crushed and hair awry, eyes dazed and mouth swollen, with the lipstick eaten away. Love was often said to be torment, but Rachel could make it seem like punishment as well.

  Another thing: Gloria had come to suspect that Evan wasn’t entirely to be trusted—wasn’t, perhaps, to be trusted at all. There was a little too much of the devil in that handsome face. Sometimes, as when he narrowed his sparkling eyes to give you a sidelong glance, he looked like the kind of boy who might seduce and abandon a girl without a moment’s remorse.

  “Rachel, I think we ought to have a talk,” Gloria said one afternoon in the living room, where Rachel had set up the ironing board to press the pleats of a sexy-looking white skirt she planned to wear that night. “I don’t think Evan’s being very considerate of you in this long, aimless courtship. If you’re engaged there ought to be a wedding date, and it ought to be soon.”

  “Oh, mother.” And Rachel looked up impatiently in the steam of the electric iron. “Can’t you see how unfair that would be to Evan? He has a career to think about. He’s going to be an engineer, as I’ve told you and told you, and he’s going to need—”

  “All right, but how long does engineering school take?”

  “Well, it’s four years, but the point is—”

  “You want to be engaged for four years?”

  “No! Will you please let me finish, mother? The point is, a great many college students are married. We may be able to get married after Evan’s first or second year, because by then I’ll probably’ve been working long enough to build up our savings. I’ll have a steady job, you see.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this,” Gloria said decisively. “When Evan comes over tonight I think the three of us had better sit down, right here, and discuss it.”

  So that was what they did. The young couple sat listening together on the old sofa, holding hands, while Gloria spoke plainly. She pointed out that long engagements had always been considered unwise, for obvious reasons, and she urged them to be married not later than November. Otherwise, she said, it would be only sensible for them to “release one another from any promises.”

  When she’d delivered that speech she felt acquitted of her responsibility. She had taken the right line and chosen the right words. Meeting unexpected challenges as they arose, absorbing the jolt of each surprise and then making quick, firm decisions—this was the kind of activity she had come to think of, over the years, as living by her wits.

  The young people sat conferring together in murmurs; then Rachel turned back to her mother and said they’d think it over, while Evan appeared to be preoccupied with a loose thread on his coatsleeve.

  “Mrs. Drake?” said a deep masculine voice on the phone, a very few days later. “This is Charles Shepard.” He happened to be in town this afternoon, he said, and he wondered if she might be able to meet him somewhere for a drink.

  At the mirror she tried on three different dresses, none of them quite clean, and two ways of fixing her hair before deciding she was ready. She felt as thrilled as a girl, because it had been years since she’d gone out into the city alone to meet a man, and so she had to caution herself not to be ridiculous. She knew perfectly well Charles Shepard had called her only because he’d heard about her ultimatum; now he would want to present an opposing view. Well, she would hear him out, and then she would try to win him over. This would be still another occasion for needing to have her wits about her.

  The place he’d specified was the high, wide, quietly throbbing lounge of the Pennsylvania Hotel, and it was in keeping with the style of this uncommonly congenial man to have chosen such a tasteful setting. He didn’t seem to see her until she was within a few feet of his table; then he blinked, looked apologetic, rose to his full height like a military man and made a charming little bow. When they were settled she asked the waiter for a bourbon with a very small amount of water, and the roof of her mouth began to pucker pleasurably at the thought of it. This was going to be nice.

  “… So I thought we ought to discuss it thoroughly,” he was saying, “because there may be aspects of it that do require a little—” But before he could finish that sentence one of his forearms tipped over a glass of ice water that flooded the table.

  “Oh!” she cried.

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Here, let me try and—are you all right?”

  “No, I’m fine. It startled me, is all.”

  The waiter was back, expertly blotting and wiping, murmuring assurances that no harm had been done, and when he was gone again Charles said, “It’s my eyes, you see. I have very poor vision. Sometimes I go blundering into things like a blind man.”

  It was possible, then, that he couldn’t see the crepey sections of her face and neck, couldn’t see the grease stain left by a fallen slice of sausage on the bodice of this best of three dresses, couldn’t guess her age, wouldn’t have to wonder what to do about the open loneliness and longing in the way she would always look at him.

  He was talking now in a voice as proud and steady as it must have been in the days when he’d commanded soldiers, explaining how important it was that Evan be “entirely free” to enroll as a full-time college student; and he said he was certain Rachel understood that too. Rachel had even told him as much, during one of the times Evan had brought her out to the house, and he hadn’t been at all surprised to hear it: Rachel was far too intelligent a girl not to understand such a thing.

  “Well, of course,” Gloria said, meaning to agree only with the part about Rachel’s intelligence, and now she could feel the whiskey beginning to do its subtle, wonderful work in her blood and brains. “And I can understand it, too, Mr. Shepard, but I’m afraid I—”

  “Oh, no, please,” he interrupted. “Call me Charles.”

  “Well, that’s nice, Charles, and I’m Gloria. Still, I’m afraid I really can’t see Rachel going to work as a typist or a waitress or something for what might turn out to be years, with no security beyond a vague plan of marriage at some future time. The point is there mustn’t be any chance of her being hurt.”

  “How would there be any chance of that?”

  She had to think it over for a minute, watching her empty glass being taken away and replaced with the gleaming fullness of another drink. Young Evan might occasionally strike her as a boy who could treat a girl lightly, or badly, but he was, after all, the son of this good and thoughtful man who wanted nothing but the best for both children. Even if his going to college did entail some element of risk for Rachel, well, life itself was a risk. Maybe you had to have a man’s mind to think as straight and as clearly as that.

  “Oh, well, I don’t know, Charles,” she said at last. “I suppose it’s just that I still think of Rachel as a child.”

  “Well, that’s—curious,” he said, “because I think I’d describe her as a mature and responsible young woman.”

  And she could tell from his face and the texture of his voice that he knew he’d won the argument.

  For another hour and more, using each other’s first names a little more often than necessary, they talked and drank as if their interest in each other were spontaneous—as if they were friend
s—until suddenly it was past seven o’clock. Charles had meant to be home by this time, but now it seemed only courteous to ask Gloria Drake if she would join him here for dinner. First, though, he said he would have to make a phone call.

  Waiting at a phone booth with a dollar bill in his hand while an obliging bellhop placed the call for him (“There you go, sir; oh, thank you, sir”) Charles knew it was foolish to be spending so much time and money in this place; still, it couldn’t be helped.

  “… Well, I’ve told you how the woman talks, dear,” he explained to Grace. “There isn’t any way to stop her. But I did accomplish the main thing: I got her to agree with us. There won’t be any more pressure on Evan now, and that’s a mercy, don’t you think?… Right … Well, of course, dear, and I’m sorry … Well, certainly. There’s a can of tuna fish on the bottom shelf of the right-hand cabinet over the sink; then if you’d like to warm up some of the cream of mushroom soup we had last night you’ll find that in the refrigerator, in the small pan, and you’ll find some crackers in the left-hand cabinet, up over the stove …”

  As Gloria watched him coming slowly back toward the table she thought she had never seen a man more—well, more presentable. Cold Spring Harbor was well known as a region of “old money”—large or modest family fortunes husbanded through the generations—and the people there couldn’t have asked for a more appropriate representative than Charles Shepard. You could tell his vision was poor from the careful way he walked, but that seemed only to enhance his dignity. He certainly didn’t look as though he might go blundering into things like a blind man; he looked like the kind of man who might still, somehow, turn out to be the hero in the story of her life.