by Anita Shreve
It is in that room that Linda reads Keats and Wordsworth, studies advanced algebra, memorizes French verbs, lists the causes of the Great Depression, and, on the sly, looks at Eileen’s high school yearbook in which there is a picture of a boy who was a junior the year before: “Thomas Janes, Nantasket 2, 3; Varsity Hockey 2, 3; Varsity Tennis 2, 3.”
______
On Saturday afternoon, Linda walks to Confession. She wears a navy blue skirt and a red sweater, a peacoat and a mantilla on her head. She tells the priest that she has had impure thoughts. She never mentions the aunt’s boyfriend.
______
That night Linda announces that she is going to visit a new friend she has made at school (a lie she will have to confess the following Saturday). There is a bit of a flurry amongst the cousins, because Linda has not been told any of the rules and doesn’t have a curfew as they do. Though no one ever follows it anyway. She leaves the house in the same blue skirt and red sweater and peacoat she wore to Confession. She has on as well a silk head scarf that Patty has lent her because the wind from the water is blowing the flags straight out.
Linda walks down the hill, passing other apartment houses like her own with asbestos shingles and tiers of balconies with charcoal grills and bicycles on them. She walks along the boulevard and crosses Nantasket Avenue. She keeps her hands in her pockets and wishes it were cold enough to wear gloves. At night, Patty rubs Oil of Olay into all the cracks and creases.
The lights of the amusement park are dazzling. Tens of thousands of bulbs illuminate the park by the beach on this last weekend of the season. Nearly all of the lights are moving — on the Giant Coaster, on the Ferris Wheel, on the Carousel, on the Caterpillar, on the Lindy Loop and on the Flying Scooters. The entrance is surprisingly ugly, though: only a chain-link fence and a sign. Flags whip at the tops of tall poles, and Linda’s scarf snaps at the back of her neck. She pays for her ticket and steps inside.
She knows that Michael would have taken her to the park if she had asked. He, of all of the cousins, even Patty, who has been nothing but sisterly, seems the most distraught by what has happened to Linda and is, consequently, the most eager to please. To make Linda feel welcome, he has given her his John Lennon poster, his denim pillow, and his royal-blue Schwinn. In the mornings, he always asks her if she has a ride to school. Perhaps it is too soon to tell, but Tommy and Erin do not seem as generous, possibly having inherited their mother’s temperament or simply resenting another mouth to feed.
Jack, the youngest, is smitten with his new cousin. Anyone who is willing to pay attention to a four-year-old in that family of seven children is, in his opinion, a goddess.
______
Linda plays Shooting Waters, Hoopla, and Ball Toss and buys penuche at the candy concession at the arcade. When she has finished the fudge, she walks directly to the Giant Coaster and stands in a short line with people who have their collars up. She has never been on a roller coaster before, but logic tells her she will probably survive the experience.
The sense of terror on the steep incline is deeply thrilling. She knows the drop is coming, and there is nothing she can do about it.
She rides the Giant Coaster seven times, using the money she has saved at the home for wayward girls (thirty-five cents an hour for ironing; twenty-five an hour for delivering). The ride lasts only a minute, but she thinks the Giant Coaster has probably provided her with the best seven minutes of her life.
While she is on the Ferris Wheel, from which she can see Boston, the wind blows the cars sideways, and people scream. In fact, people are squealing and screaming all through the park. Which is, after all, she thinks, the point.
To one side of the park is a pier of thick planking that runs out over the water. Above it, a lone streetlamp shines. She is slightly nauseous from the cotton candy and hot chocolate back-to-back, not to mention the penuche and the Lindy Loop, and so she is drawn to the pier for fresh air. She treads over the damp planks and listens to the shouts and squeals of the people on the rides, muffled now by the white noise of the mild surf. She is nearly to the end of the pier before she notices the group of boys, in sweaters and parkas, smoking. They hold their cigarettes down by their thighs, pinched between thumbs and forefingers, and take deep drags like Jimmy Dean. They shove each other’s shoulders with the heels of their hands for emphasis, and occasionally a high giggle rises like a thin tendril of smoke into the air. She has walked too close to them for anonymity, and now she finds herself in the awkward position of having to continue forward or having to turn and retreat, which she isn’t willing to do, not wishing to give the message that she is afraid of the boys, and not liking the image that she has of a dog retreating with a tail between its legs.
She moves sideways to the northern edge of the pier and glances down. The tide is in, lapping high on the posts. The boys have noticed her and are quieter now, though they still continue to whack each other on the shoulders. She watches as one boy throws his cigarette into the surf and sticks his hands into his pockets. His posture is unmistakable. She decides she will remain where she is for a good minute anyway, and then, having held her ground, will stroll casually away, just as she would have done had they not been there.
But the boy with his hands in his jacket pockets detaches himself from the others and walks to where she stands.
“Hello,” he says.
“Hi,” she answers.
“You’re Linda.”
“Yes.”
He nods, as if needing to ponder this important fact. Beyond him is their audience.
“Did you go on the rides?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“The Coaster?”
“I did.”
“How many times?”
“Seven.”
“Really?” He seems genuinely surprised. She imagines a raised eyebrow, though they are standing side by side and she can’t see his face.
“Do you want a cigarette?”
“Sure.”
He has to bend away from the wind to light it. He takes it from his mouth and hands it to her. She sucks a long drag and suppresses a cough. At the home for wayward girls, she smoked often. The breezes from the ocean blew the smoke away almost immediately. It was the one sin the girls could easily commit.
“Did you pick a poet yet?”
“Wordsworth,” she says.
“Do you like him?”
“Some of his stuff.”
“Did you like ‘The Prelude’?”
“I like ‘Tintern Abbey.’”
The boy sniffs. His nose is running in the cold. Beneath his navy parka, he has on a dark sweater with a crew neck. The sweater looks black in the streetlamp, but it might well be green. A sliver of white collar shows itself.
“Who are you doing?” she asks.
“Keats.”
She nods, taking another drag.
“The park is going to close in half an hour,” he says. “Do you want to go on the Coaster one more time?”
It is unclear whether this is an invitation or a reminder.
“No, that’s OK,” she says.
“Do you want to meet them?” Thomas asks, gesturing toward the boys.
She doesn’t know. Or, rather, she supposes that she doesn’t. She shrugs.
But the boys, wanting to meet her, are moving slowly closer, drifting on a tide of curiosity.
“They’re jerks, anyway,” Thomas says, but not without a certain kind of grudging affection.
A raised voice punctuates the air. “It is so, warmer than the air,” one of them is saying.
“Fuck that,” another says.
“No, seriously, the water’s warmer in October than it is in August.”
“Where’d you get that shit?”
“All you have to do is feel it.”
“You go feel it, dickhead.”
The boys start pushing the boy who said the water was warmer. But he, small and wiry, bobs and weaves and deftly outmaneuvers them so that he is standing in
the middle of the pier and they are now on the edge.
“So what do you say, dickhead, you want to go test it out now?” The boys laugh. “I’ll bet you twenty-five you won’t go in.”
Thomas turns to Linda and snorts, as if to say, I told you they were jerks.
Linda glances down at her feet and over toward the boardwalk. Lovers are walking arm in arm, and some are descending to the beach. Overcoats will become blankets. In the wind, the streetlamp, on a wire, swings wildly, making the shadows lurch.
“He’s right,” Linda says quietly to Thomas.
He looks at her, a quizzical expression on his face.
“The water’s warmer in October. It’ll feel like a bath on a night like tonight,” she says.
At the home for wayward girls, Linda sometimes slipped out of her room when the nuns were asleep and walked out onto the rocks. There was one rock from which it was safe to dive. She would take off her robe and pajamas and plunge into the surf. She liked being naked, the sense of being free of the nuns.
Beside them, the argument continues. The boy who is sure the water is warm, whose name is Eddie Garrity, gets down on his belly, rolls his sleeves, and extends his arm to the water to test it. He can’t reach. It is, of course, too much trouble to leave the pier, take off his socks and shoes, roll his cuffs, and test it at the shore, as any sensible person would.
“Hey, Eddie, I’ll lower you down you want to test it,” a boy named Donny T. says and laughs hysterically. He means, I’ll lower you down and then let you fall in.
“Screw you,” says Eddie, scrambling to his feet.
“I told you twenty-five,” says Donny T.
Linda listens to the argument. She leaves Thomas’s side and walks to the far end of the pier. With her back to the boys, she takes off her peacoat and head scarf, her sweater and skirt, her shoes and socks. In her slip, she dives into the water.
______
When Linda comes up for air, she can see Thomas kneeling on the pier. He has an overcoat in his hands. Behind Thomas, within the pod of boys, Eddie has his arms wrapped around his chest. He is silent. The girl has gone in for him.
She hitches herself onto the pier, does a quick turn mid-air and sits with her back to Thomas. She is hunched in the cold. Thomas wraps her in the wool overcoat.
“Donny, give me your shirt,” he demands.
There is no sound of protest from Donny T. Within a minute, Linda feels a cotton shirt grazing her shoulder.
She uses the shirt to dry her face and hair. She puts on her sweater and her skirt as best she can with her back to the boys. She lays a hand on Thomas’s shoulder to balance herself as she steps into her shoes. Thomas holds her peacoat open for her, and she slips her arms into it. The boys are absolutely silent.
“The water’s warmer than the air,” Thomas says to them as he and Linda leave the pier.
______
Linda and Thomas have to walk quickly because she is shivering.
“I have a car,” he says. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“No,” she says. “I just live across the way.”
She has an image, which she doesn’t like, of leaving a wet spot on the seat of Thomas’s car. More important, she doesn’t want the cousins asking questions.
______
He walks her across Nantasket Avenue and up Park. Her sweater is scratchy on her arms, and as she walks sea water drips from her slip onto her calves and runs down into her socks.
“Why did you do it?” Thomas asks.
Her teeth are chattering beyond her control. Thomas puts an arm tightly around her to stop the shaking. Watching them, one might think the girl was sick, had perhaps drunk too much, and that the boy was walking her home.
Why has she done it? It’s a valid question. For the theatrics? To prove a point? To overcome the commonness of her name? To cleanse herself?
“I don’t know,” she says truthfully.
Her hair is plastered to her head, all the fuss with the rollers forgotten. She looks her worst, her nose running from the sea water.
Her hair is, and always has been, her one vanity. Normally, it is thick and long, the color running to warm pine. At the home for wayward girls, she sometimes grew it to her waist, though the nuns always made her wear it in braids.
“Well, it was great,” he says, rubbing her arms to keep the circulation going. And then he laughs and shakes his head. “Jesus,” he says, “they’ll be talking about this for weeks.”
______
Linda leaves Thomas at the bottom of her street.
“I’m all right now,” she says and detaches herself from his arm.
“Can I call you tomorrow?” he asks.
She thinks a moment. No one has yet called her at the apartment.
“It would be better if I met you,” she says.
“Here?” he asks. “At noon?”
“I’ll try.”
She runs up the street, though her limbs are shivering and stiff, and she knows she looks ungainly. As she turns the corner, she cannot resist glancing back. He is standing where she left him. He raises a hand and waves.
______
Her aunt is in the hallway when she enters the apartment. The aunt’s hair is rolled in pin curls and is secured with a hairnet: little coils of gold on silver stems behind a wire fence. Normally, her hair is frizzy, and sometimes Linda can see her scalp. The aunt has a pronounced widow’s peak that she tries to hide with bangs.
The aunt has on a pink seersucker bathrobe and flannel pajamas with teapots on them. The slippers, once pink, are worn beige. The aunt’s eyebrows are unkempt, but she has traces of maroon lipstick on her mouth, as though she were ambivalent about her vanity.
They stand on separate sides of a fault, each wanting something from the other.
“Where have you been?” the aunt asks.
“I fell in,” Linda says, walking past her.
______
Thomas picks Linda up the next day in a white Buick Skylark convertible with leather trim the color of her aunt’s lipstick. Linda is wearing dungarees in defiance of the Sunday, even though she has dutifully gone to church with the cousins. Thomas has on the same jacket he wore the night before, but good trousers, like a boy would wear to school.
“I didn’t bring a scarf,” she says. “I didn’t know it would be a convertible.”
“Do you want to go back and get one?”
“No,” she says.
They sit in the car for a moment before he starts the engine. There seems to be something each wants to say, though for a time neither of them speaks.
“Did you get yelled at?” Thomas asks finally.
“I got looked askance at,” she says, and he smiles.
“Do you want to go for a drive?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Just a drive.”
“Sure,” she says.
In the car, there is an ocean of space between Thomas and Linda. She studies the chrome dashboard, the plugs that say Light and Wiper and Lighter and Accessory. What exactly will the Accessory be? she wonders. Thomas turns on the radio, and an energetic patter issues forth. It is all wrong for them, as though Ricky Nelson had wandered into a chamber orchestra. Thomas switches it off at once.
“Sometimes when I drive,” he says, “I don’t play the radio. I need time to think.”
“So do I,” she says. “Need time to think, I mean.”
She sits with her hands in the pockets of her peacoat. If she hadn’t worn a coat, she would sit on her hands.
She likes the open air of the convertible, even though her hair whips into her eyes, and she knows it will be snarled and stringy when he stops the car. When the aunt’s boyfriend was around and there was actually a car, she and her cousins were routinely packed into a backseat meant for three. On rainy days, the windows were shut tight, and her aunt smoked. Just thinking about it now gives Linda a headache.
Linda notes, as Thomas is driving, that the color of the water and the sky have
intensified since the day before; the sun glints painfully from the sea. It is a fabulous piece of jewelry with a million diamonds.
Diplomatically, Thomas moves away from the neighborhood where Linda lives. Diplomatically, he does not point out his own house on Allerton Hill.
“Did you go away?” he asks as they make a turn onto Samoset.
“Yes.”
“Did you have a baby?”
She is stunned by the boy’s boldness, but exhilarated nonetheless. She might have spent the entire year without a single direct question, learned to live with sniggered looks and aspersions.
“No,” she says.
“I don’t care about that,” he says. He amends himself. “Well, I care, because it happened to you, but it wouldn’t have made me like you any less. I don’t care about reputation.”
“Why do you like me?” she asks.
“I liked the way you walked into the classroom,” he says. “That first day. You were trying for something — trying to be cool — but I could see that you weren’t. That you might be someone others could take advantage of.” He thinks a minute. “Now, I’m not so sure about that.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“You. Last night. When you jumped into the water.”
“Dove.”
“Dove into the water. You did that for yourself, didn’t you?”
She is silent. Even with the ocean between them, she can smell the boy — that warm toast scent, and something else. Of course, a laundered shirt.
“I’m a fallen woman,” Linda says, only partly joking.
“Magdalene,” he says, half turned toward her and steering with one hand.
“That was the name of the home,” she says.
“Really?”
“They’re always called Magdalene.”
“You’re a Catholic.”
“Yes. You’re not?”
“No.”
“How do you know about Magdalene?”
