Barbara Greer Read online

  ‘Why doesn’t she get a job?’

  ‘She has a job.’

  ‘What kind of job is that—going through nurse’s training?’

  ‘She wants to be a nurse.’

  ‘Well, she wanted to be a teacher once, too, remember? She went back to school and got an M.A. Then she decided that she wanted to be a lawyer. She went to law school for a year. All she’s ever done is go to school.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I think nursing is it. I think that’s what she really wants to do.’

  He yawned again. ‘Well, there’ve been a lot of things that Nancy has really wanted to do. She really wanted to be an interior decorator once, and another time she really wanted to run a ski lodge in Vermont, and—’

  ‘Please!’ Barbara said sharply. ‘Please don’t criticise her. After all, Nancy is my dearest friend. I’m sorry you don’t like her, but—’

  ‘I do like her,’ he said ‘But, my God, she’s nearly thirty. What she ought to do is get married.’

  ‘Marriage,’ she said sarcastically, ‘is the solution to everything, isn’t it?’

  ‘Look,’ he said ‘I’m not trying to pick a fight! I merely said—’

  ‘You resent her, don’t you? And your reasons are pretty transparent!’

  ‘What are they? What are these transparent reasons?’

  ‘You resent her simply because she’s someone from the outside world. And she reminds me how much I hate this place!’

  ‘I resent her because she’s always barging in on us without an invitation, that’s all,’ he said. ‘I resented it when she joined us on our wedding anniversary. And when I came home from four months in South America, I resented having Nancy on the welcoming committee with you. And tonight—Jesus Christ, Barbara—’

  ‘No, no,’ she said. There were tears in her eyes and she brushed at them quickly with her wrist. ‘You resent her because she’s my best friend!’

  ‘Have you ever noticed that the minute she shows up you and I start fighting?’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘It is. She’s an unhappy, mixed-up girl—not even a girl, a grown woman. And being around her makes you unhappy, too.’

  ‘Listen,’ Barbara said, ‘If you’d heard what she told me this afternoon—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No. I can’t tell you. I promised her.’

  ‘Something awful, I’m sure, that involved a man.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You see? That’s all I said. She ought to get married.’

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ she said.

  ‘She talks about all the men who are fighting over her—’

  ‘Those men!’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I thought so. She invented them.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. What are you doing, calling her a liar?’

  ‘She’s the only girl in the world who’s always available for a last-minute blind date on New Year’s Eve,’ he said.

  She turned to him sharply. ‘How can you be so horrible!’ she cried. ‘How can you?’

  ‘Please, keep your eyes on the road …’

  ‘Oh!’ she sobbed. She pressed her foot on the brake pedal, slowing the car. ‘You’d better drive,’ she said. But she didn’t stop the car. She continued, slowly, in the crowded lane of traffic.

  ‘All right,’ he said ‘I’ll drive if you want.’

  She ignored him. ‘I thought it was going to be such a wonderful evening,’ she said. ‘I thought we’d have a little farewell party—for you. I thought we’d have such fun. Now you’ve ruined it.’

  ‘Why is it me who’s ruined it? It seems to me that—’

  ‘That I’ve ruined it, is that what you mean? Don’t you know what ruins everything? Locustville ruins everything! And we’re in Locustville because of you!’

  He sat back in his seat. ‘All right, Barbara,’ he said quietly. ‘The rules. Remember the rules.’

  ‘The rules involve your being a little considerate of me, too.’

  ‘Very well. I’m sorry. I apologise. I’m sorry that I said anything to hurt your feelings. Nancy is a sweet, wonderful girl and I’m just dying to see her again.’

  ‘And the rules include not being sarcastic!’

  ‘I’m sorry. And the rules include apologies from both of us.’

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘I’m sorry, Carson.’

  ‘There. Now it’s all over.’

  ‘Yes. All over.’

  They drove on in silence.

  A few minutes later, she said, ‘Darling, anyway, be nice to her tonight. Will you please? Because I do feel sorry for her. And try to act as though you’re pleased that she came tonight—your last night before your trip and so forth. Will you?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Sure I will.’

  ‘Because she loves us so, she really does! In a way, she depends on us. I really think so. Because she has no mother or father—only a few crazy aunts and uncles that she can’t stand—no brothers, no sisters! Don’t forget, darling, that she and I were roommates at college. She used to come to the farm for vacations and weekends. Mother and Daddy sort of adopted her, really! And we spent that year in Hawaii together, and she was one of my bridesmaids. I feel—oh, I feel sort of responsible for her! I really do! So be nice to her tonight, will you, Carson?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ he said.

  ‘Even if she gets—you know, Nancy-ish. And talks the way she does sometimes. Be nice to her.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  ‘And don’t be sarcastic, Carson!’

  Barbara took her left hand from the wheel and let it trail out the car window, getting ready to signal for her turn.

  Their house was in a section of Locustville called Sunrise Heights. It was a name that had been given to it by the developer, since the subdivision was arranged across the side of an east-facing hill. Sunrise Heights itself was divided into three smaller sections—like Gaul, Barbara often said. In one of these, the streets were named for flowers—Arbutus Lane, Bluebell Lane, Columbine Lane, Daffodil Lane. In the second, where Barbara and Carson lived, the motif was trees—Appletree Lane, Bayberry Lane, Cherry Lane, Dogwood, Evergreen (the street names in, each area followed an alphabetical pattern.) And in the third, it was precious and semiprecious stones—Amethyst, Beryl, Coral, Diamond and so on, through Ruby. The three parts of Sunrise Heights were also separated architecturally. In the floral-streeted section, the houses were all Colonial; in Barbara and Carson’s, they were Ranch; in the precious stones section, they were Modern.

  All the houses in Sunrise Heights were ‘pre-built with custom details,’ which meant that Barbara and Carson, when they were buying their house on Bayberry Lane, had been given a choice of six Ranch-style floor plans and had been able to select their interior colour scheme. Optional, at extra cost, were such features—which the Greers’ house had—as a two-car semi-attached garage, a flagstone terrace, and such decorative touches as window boxes and the golden rooster weather-vane. Sunrise Heights, though it was a development, fortunately had only a slight ‘development look.’ On the whole, the area had been well used. The streets, which were winding and followed the contours of the hill, were planted with trees, the houses were well spaced and well landscaped. If there was any similarity, or feeling of monotony, it came from the fact that the houses were all about the same size—three or four bedrooms—and had been built to cost about the same, between twenty-five and thirty-five thousand dollars, and all—even the Greers’ Ranch-style three bedroom house—showed strong signs of south-eastern Pennsylvania’s regional preference for brick, as opposed to wood, construction. Carson and Barbara were not particularly fond of Sunrise Heights, or even of their house. It was not, as they often said, the sort of house they eventually wanted. They considered Locustville only temporary. Still, they had lived in Locustville, and in their house, for more than five years. Barbara Greer
turned now into Bayberry Lane and drove up the gentle, winding hill. Bayberry Lane houses, by choice, were not numbered. Signs, with the owner’s names pricked out in reflector lights, were used instead. Sage … Bryson … Bishop … Hodgson … Greer … the little signs read as she drove up the street and turned into the driveway.

  Nancy Rafferty came around from the terrace. She had put on the heart-shaped earrings again, had brushed her reddish-brown hair and put on fresh lipstick. She was not a tall girl, several inches shorter than Barbara, and in her light linen dress, standing at the top of the brick steps, she looked very slim and pretty. Though she was thirty, she looked, as she raised her arm and waved gaily, smiling, much the way she had looked at nineteen.

  The two little boys—Dobie, who was four, and Michael, who was two and a half—appeared behind her and came running down the steps, still wearing their bibs from supper. Dobie cried, ‘Daddy-Daddy-Daddy-Daddy!’ holding out his arms to be picked up.

  ‘Hi-de-ho!’ Nancy called.

  ‘Hi, kids. Hi, Nancy,’ Carson said cheerfully, and Barbara thought, yes, it’s going to be a nice evening; I know it is.

  2

  By the time the children had been put to bed, it was nearly eight o’clock. Carson mixed cocktails in a silver pitcher—his ushers’ gift—and Barbara arranged a plate of cheese and crackers which she placed on the glass-topped table on the terrace. The three of them sat in a semi-circle around the table in the lingering twilight, talking in low voices because, on other backyard terraces all around them, voices of neighbours they could not see talked over other twilight cocktails.

  Carson said, ‘See? Even in Locustville we’ve got gracious living.’

  Barbara gave him a grateful smile. ‘Cool,’ she said, pushing her dark hair back with her hands. ‘Isn’t it wonderful to have it cool!’

  ‘It’s worse in Philadelphia,’ Nancy said. ‘You can’t believe how hot it gets in Philadelphia.’

  Carson filled their glasses a second time with the pale, crystal liquid from the pitcher and Nancy sat holding her cocktail glass in front of her, with both hands, like a little chalice. Her eyes shone. ‘Remember Hawaii, Barb?’ she asked, pronouncing it with four syllables—‘Ha-wa—i-i.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’

  ‘Those two Navy lieutenants that used to take us out. Remember? What were their names? Lieutenant Boles and Lieutenant Harvey, wasn’t it? Both named Charlie! Charlie and Charlie, the gold-dust twins we called them.’ She laughed.

  ‘Yes,’ Barbara said.

  ‘My Charlie always liked you best, though,’ Nancy said. ‘Of course your Charlie liked you, too. But you were always true to Carson.’ She flashed a smile at Carson. ‘She was, too, Carson,’ she said. ‘She used to write to you every day. I’ll never forget. Every single, solitary day she sat down and wrote to you. I was horribly jealous. I used to think: here’s Barbara, who has two Charlies absolutely mad about her—and Carson, too! And I had nobody. Remember all the coffee we used to drink in the morning, Barb? Cup after cup after cup! We measured out our life in coffee spoons!’

  Barbara smiled, remembering their year in Hawaii. It had been her idea, going there, to have some sort of a career before settling down to marriage with Carson. And it had seemed a good way to spend the time while Carson did his two-year stint in the Army, after college. She had applied for a job in the Pan American Airlines office in Honolulu and persuaded Nancy to apply for a job, too. ‘It was a wonderful year, wasn’t it?’ Barbara said.

  ‘Oh yes. Remember, Barb, I didn’t want to go? I wanted to work in New York, live in Greenwich Village. Thank God you talked me into going to Hawaii instead. Remember Schuyler Osata?’

  ‘Yes, yes …’

  ‘What a wonderful boy. What a wonderful name—Schuyler Osata! he was—’ she turned to Carson again. ‘He was part Japanese, part English, part Hawaiian and part something else. Beautiful, beautiful Polynesian eyes and he could swim like a fish. He used to swim out into the sea and ride on the backs of those big sea turtles. He did! He’d grab one of those enormous turtles by the flippers and let it carry him around. Oh, incredible! Schuyler was in love with Barbara, too—not me.’

  ‘Now, that isn’t true,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Oh yes, yes it was,’ Nancy said. She sighed, put her head back, looking up at the darkening sky. ‘I don’t know why it was. They all liked you, Barb, better than they liked me. Yes, I do know why it was,’ she said and leaned forward again, taking a sip of her cocktail.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘It’s true,’ Nancy said, her eyes widening, looking first at Carson, then at Barbara. ‘You see, my real trouble is—was—that I was an only child. I never had any sisters or brothers. Brothers, particularly. That was why, in college, I used to be known as a tease.’

  ‘Oh, you weren’t!’ Barbara said.

  ‘Oh yes I was, I was,’ Nancy insisted. ‘I was a tease. That was what they called me, wasn’t it, Carson?’ She gave Carson a searching, affectionate look as if to say: Tell me, Carson, how dreadful my reputation was in college; tell me, I’ll understand. But Carson shook his head soberly back and forth. ‘Honestly, I never heard anybody say that, Nancy,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I was. I got that reputation. It was because I didn’t know. And my father, you know, died when I was five years old so I never knew anything about boys. It was because I wanted to find out—you know, what boys were like. That was why I used to neck so much and play feely-feely …’

  Carson made a muffled, throat-clearing sound.

  ‘No, but seriously,’ Nancy said quickly. ‘I did play a lot of feely-feely and neck a lot. I didn’t know how hard it was for a boy, how difficult. I didn’t know then what I know now—that sometimes it’s almost impossible for a boy.’

  ‘What’s impossible for a boy?’ Carson asked.

  ‘Oh, you know, Carson! Heavens, you ought to know. How sometimes when a boy gets, you know, excited, it becomes almost impossible for him—not to. I mean it’s really unfair of a girl to get a boy excited, to let him get himself so excited and then—then not let him. To draw the line and not let him go the limit. I mean, it’s very painful—physically painful for a boy. Isn’t it?’

  Carson smiled. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is a rumour that the male sex has done a good job of circulating—for obvious reasons.’

  ‘You mean it isn’t true?’

  ‘How about another one of these?’ Barbara said, offering Nancy the plate of cheese and crackers.

  ‘No thank you,’ Nancy said quickly. And then, ‘No, but don’t you see what I mean? I mean if I’d known then what I know now—about boys—I might not have made so many, well, mistakes. My God, I sometimes think that now I know too much about men! Working at the hospital and everything, I mean.’

  Neither Carson nor Barbara said anything. Carson lifted his cocktail glass and stared, smiling slightly, into the shallow bowl. Barbara reached for a cigarette and lighted it. It was growing quite dark. ‘I think there’s going to be a moon,’ Barbara said.

  After a moment Carson turned to Nancy. ‘Any prospects in Philadelphia?’ he asked.

  ‘You mean marital prospects? Oh, goodness, I don’t know. I have lots of dates, if that’s what you mean. Doctors at the hospital; But doctors are—you know—kind of funny, don’t you think?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Carson asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean doctors as a breed. I don’t mean practising doctors. But young doctors, interns, that kind of doctor. They’re always—well, none of them have any money, for one thing. They’ve all got a long time to go before they’re practising and making any money. That makes them all rather cautious—about getting involved with a girl. They don’t want to think about getting married—they’re not ready. So they want—you know—what they can get from a girl, without marrying her.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that bad. There’s this one, this Jewish doctor …’

  ‘Who is he?’

&
nbsp; ‘His name is Klein, Sidney Klein. He’s Jewish. He’s asked me to marry him. But I don’t know. He’s very nice, but do you think I should marry someone who is Jewish?’

  Carson smiled. ‘If you have to ask that, you shouldn’t,’ he said.

  ‘No, no, that’s not what Nancy means,’ Barbara said quickly. ‘She means—’

  ‘No, Carson’s right,’ Nancy said. ‘He’s right. It’s not the religious thing that bothers me. God knows I’m not religious! It’s just that, well, I don’t know if I want to be Mrs. Sidney Klein—married to a Jew. And he’s not even a rich Jew!’ She laughed. ‘He comes from the Bronx.’

  There was another, longer silence.

  ‘How about another cocktail?’ Carson asked

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ Nancy said. ‘These are delicious, Carson. Wonderful Martinis. What proportions do you use?’

  ‘I think I’ll put the peas on,’ Barbara said. She stood up and went into the kitchen.

  In the kitchen she put water in a pan, turned up one of the burners on the stove and unwrapped a package of frozen peas. The room was quite dark, lighted only by the flame from the stove; she turned on no lights. The screened door was open and from the terrace she could hear Nancy’s voice, raised somewhat now in the exuberance of three Martinis. ‘You’re right, Carson,’ Nancy was saying. ‘I shouldn’t marry Sidney feeling the way I do. You’re absolutely right. But the trouble is when I get up here—like tonight, with you and Barbara—and when I see how happy you two are, then I think goodness me, I’m thirty years old. What’s going to happen to me? I think I must marry somebody. Only I mustn’t rush into it. I mean, after all, you and Barbara didn’t rush into it. You’d known each other for years. You came from the same background. That’s why you’re happy, because you didn’t rush into it. What I should do is marry somebody I grew up with, not somebody like Sidney Klein! But the trouble is, everybody I grew up with is already married! Oh, well …’

  Barbara came out again and sat down. ‘Oh, there is a moon,’ she said.

  ‘I love this house,’ Nancy said. ‘It’s just beautiful. This terrace is just beautiful. This is the life. You’re so lucky, Barb.’