Rowing in Eden (17 page)

On the top of the bank. Silver siren raised to her lips.
WHIRWoooo! WHIRWOOOOoooo!

“How come she didn't use that thing when she knew I was calling you?” Bob Prohaski had asked.

“Were you calling me?” Franny said in a small voice just as Peg shouted from the bank, “NO BOYS ON BOARD!”

“I can hear her, Franny. How come you couldn't hear
me
?”

Franny flushed. “What'd she say?”

He gave a dark laugh. “Are you deaf? ‘No boys on board!' Jesus, your family lives in the dark ages, don't it?”

She nodded. “Move to the back, and I'll row us in.”

When he stood, the boat began to rock and, quick, he crouched, seized hold of the seat. “I can row us,” he said uncertainly.

“No.” Franny had given her head a shake. “I better be the one, Bob.” To placate her mother, she knew, it was best to behave as if there had been no boy in the boat at all.

The house sat empty when Joan Harvett's mother dropped off Franny after that afternoon shopping trip with Joan and Christy. On impulse—feeling a little nervous—Franny hurried down to Lakeside Drive and made her way to the cottage of Susan Thomas. What she would do, she thought, was present her visit as a literary call. She would ask if Susan Thomas had read
1984
, and see where things went from there.

“Come in, Franny,” Mrs. Thomas said when she arrived at the door. “No need to knock.”

Didn't the cottage smell odd, though? Like permanent-curl solution?

Mrs. Thomas waved at the TV set now on in the cottage's main room. “I was getting some news about Johnson's latest escapades.”

Politely, Franny looked at the program: Some government official behind a microphone spoke of the president's decision to double the numbers of draftees from seventeen thousand a month to thirty-five thousand a month.

Mrs. Thomas plunked herself down in a wheezing rattan chair to stare at the TV. She wore one of her funny hats, something that looked as if it might have come from an army surplus store. A pith helmet? Was that what it was called? It seemed Mrs. Thomas had forgotten Franny, and the girl wondered if she were meant to search
out Susan on her own; but then Mrs. Thomas stood up with a groan. “I don't want to say he's as bad as Goldwater would have been, but who knows what he'll do next?”

Franny had assumed that, like her own parents, the Thomases had voted for Goldwater, and she did not know what to say. In silence, she followed Mrs. Thomas in the direction of Susan's room.

“If you think it stinks out here, wait till you get to Sue's room. She is—
depilating.”
Mrs. Thomas gestured toward the bedroom off the kitchen, where, on the floor—eyes closed, legs covered with hair remover, kitchen timer ticking beside her head—lay Susan Thomas.

“Mom!” the girl protested when she opened her eyes and saw Franny in the doorway. “How embarrassing!”

“I thought it was important you two talked,” Mrs. Thomas said, “and I'm sure Franny's seen things just as silly.”

“I wanted to come before,” Franny said after Mrs. Thomas left the room. “I'm sorry about being unreliable and all.”

“Oh, well.” The girl sat up. She scraped a set of fingernail initials through the cream on her leg. S.T. read the suntanned skin beneath. “I got a kid down the beach crewing—he's fine.”

It was good to be with Susan Thomas. She had not read
1984
, but she, too, had been reading more Dickinson, and the two discussed favorite poems; and then Franny explained how she used the Dickinson poems to record her own thoughts. “And, lately,” she added after a moment's hesitation, “sometimes I put my own poems in the journal, too, since my mom never reads poetry.”

Susan Thomas seemed confused by this last, and as Franny did not want to tell Susan about her mother's reading the old journal or about its demise in the ash can, she hurriedly recited one of her poems.

“I wish you went to Bell,” Susan said when Franny finished. “Half of the girls are boarders, you know? They live in dorms. When I start ninth, I'll be in Mrs. Rogers' English, and we'll get to do a whole anthology of student work. Your poem would definitely get in.”

Earlier in the summer, Susan had shown Franny last year's Bell
Academy “annual,” a book full of photographs of the ivy-covered buildings, and of girls in dark blazers and plaid skirts doing things like debate; and girls in white choir robes holding candles and singing madrigals for a special ceremony at Christmas. There was something wonderful and yet strange about the place—maybe because there were no boys?

Franny could not imagine herself there, and she certainly knew her parents could not afford to send her, and so she just smiled whenever Susan Thomas mentioned the school, and said, “It sounds great.”

T
HE FIRST WEEKEND IN
A
UGUST A COLD SNAP ARRIVED THAT
made the summer days strangely thrilling. To shiver and pull on heavy clothes and dense stockings—Franny's scalp constricted with the pleasure of it. Snoopy cradled against her cheek, she stared out the back hall window, and across the road to the gray fog that hung above the meadow and the swamp, which seemed a new world. Even the voices of the guests moving about behind her vibrated and echoed in some novel way.

Because of the turn in the weather, and the exhausting of possible places to take Turner Haskin, Rosamund had agreed it might be good to throw a party that weekend, and, now, in the downstairs bathroom, girls who initially had refused Peg's offers of old jackets and sweaters got into the spirit of things and donned ill-fitting items and laughed over their appearances. In the den, as if fall had arrived, a couple of boys made a lot of noise talking about football. One boy sat at the kitchen table, reading an Ian Fleming novel of Brick's, while others—sometimes including Peg—played cards on the porch, or in the dining room. One group had spread out a game of Monopoly on the living room floor. A girl seated beside Brick on the piano bench tried to sing along with his “Time After Time,” but Brick kept breaking into improvisations that shut her out, and finally she went to play cards.

That was Friday. Saturday night, the night of the party, girl guests rushed in and out of the upstairs bathrooms to consult the hall mirrors.

“Little Sister!” one of them called as Franny started down the stairs from her bedroom. “What're you reading?”

“Emily Dickinson.” Franny held up the book.

The girl smiled. “Hey,” she said, “‘I'm nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody, too?'” and Franny smiled back before she reached the landing and made her four-step jump into the kitchen.

At the sound of her landing, Brick looked up from mixing drinks for Mike Zanios and Turner. He frowned at Franny, then turned to Peg to say, “Somebody's got to talk to her about that.”

“Yup,” Zanios muttered as he used the tip of his index finger to wiggle back and forth the tiny rudder of a complicated model ship that belonged on the mantel in the den but now—inexplicably—perched on top of the kitchen stove.

Franny pretended not to have heard what her father and Mike Zanios had said. She made her gaze vacant—she was hardly there, no need to say hello to her—and as if she had come to the kitchen for just this reason, she picked up the telephone and dialed Susan Thomas.

While she listened to the ringing, she watched Mike Zanios out of the corner of her eye. He seemed to be in a foul mood. He ignored the conversation between Brick and Peg and Turner—something about the model boat and the man who had given it to Brick. Maybe Mike Zanios felt awkward because he could see that Peg and Brick were dressed to go out, and that the big girls meant to have their own party at the house? And, no doubt, he missed his evenings with Roz, too.

Ten rings. Eleven. Her mother now said something teasing to Turner Haskin, then smiled at Mike Zanios. She looked pretty and cheerful, though a few weeks before, she had worried that she and Brick would not be invited to the Henleys' annual party; then, when they had received the invitation, for a time, she had worried they might have been on a second list, one made up of people who would be asked only after regrets came from those on the first list—

“Hey, Frances,” Mike Zanios called, “how long you going to let that ring?”

She shrugged and hung up.

“That's a girl,” he said. “Now go on and tell your sister I'm here to take your parents to the Henleys' and she ought to come say hello before we leave.”

Franny nodded, okay, and turned to fetch Rosamund, but before she could, the introduction to the song that Zanios's girlfriend always sang to Turner Haskin—“You Better Love Me While You May”—began to play on the living room stereo, and Rosamund appeared on the landing, grinning, casting her arms open wide as if she were about to sing.

“Oh.” The moment she saw Mike Zanios, Rosamund's cheeks went red. “Mike, I—”

As brightly as possible, trying to help, Peg said, “Roz, Mike stopped by to take us to Henleys'!”

“Just”—Rosamund lifted her chin—“excuse me.”

Before anyone else in the kitchen had a chance to speak, Mike Zanios—his own face now a little gray—turned to Turner Haskin and, peering over the rim of his drink, said something about making a pousse-café next time Turner and Roz came into the club. Did Turner know how to make a pousse-café?

Out in the living room, Rosamund's recording of “You Better Love Me While You May” came to a scratchy stop. Then, from the back hall—a welcome interruption—Martie called an halloo and toted in a case of beer that she set on the kitchen floor so she could wrap an arm around Zanios's neck, and give him a kiss on the cheek.

Though Zanios continued to look grim, Brick and Peg and Turner Haskin and Franny all said hello to Martie, and their hellos stuffed a little distance between this moment and the embarrassing moment with Rosamund's record. Martie, of course, was overjoyed at the welcome she received, and Franny was pleased on her behalf; earlier in the day, Franny knew, Martie had been upset and crying over not receiving a response from a boy named Terry regarding tonight's party. Now, however, Martie clapped her hands together, and threw open the refrigerator door.

“Anybody need a brewsky?” she said, and popped the lid from a bottle and held it up for takers.

“Hey, Martie”—Mike Zanios smiled but something in his narrowed eyes gave Franny a chill—“maybe you should lay off the beer. You're getting a little broad in the beam, aren't you?”

Could he really have said that? The words hung in Franny's chest like something dead, birds with broken necks, but her parents' faces maintained fixed smiles. Martie herself smiled. Turner Haskin blew a puff of air at the sail of the sailboat on the stove, and the sail swung out an inch or two. Well. Franny shook her head. “That”—her voice tottered—“that was rude.”

“Oh, settle down,” Brick murmured darkly. And Martie mouthed a beseeching
shhh.

Franny locked eyes with Zanios, a move she found uncomfortable but not impossible. “And it's not true,” she said.

“Franny. Enough.” Peg set her hands on the girl's shoulders and turned her toward the stairs.

She was glad to leave, and hurried up to the landing and then down into the living room where Rosamund now slid a Ray Charles album out of its case.

“How mortifying!” Rosamund whispered when Franny drew near.

“Don't worry about hurting
his
feelings. The jerk.” She explained what Zanios had said to Martie, then added, “It wouldn't be nice in any case, but it's not even true!”

“Franny.” From the landing, now clipping on a pair of earrings, Peg called, “We're taking off, so you need to—” She pointed toward the second floor.

Franny rubbed the bridge of her nose with two fingers. A scholarly gesture, she thought; one that suggested that
had
she been invited to the big girls' party, why, she could scarcely have torn herself away from her book of Emily Dickinson.

“Remember, Frances”—Martie stepped up from the kitchen to join Peg on the landing—“if anybody at the party tries to go upstairs, you tell them ‘down.'”

Rosamund rapped the edge of the album cover on the top of Franny's head. “Franny Wahl,” she said—still sounding a little gloomy, though she smiled—“we dub thee Keeper of the Stairs.”

Keeper of the Stairs. After Peg and Brick and Mike Zanios left for the evening, and the girl guests had all descended to the first floor for the party, Franny set her book on the top step, and went to the mirror closest to the top of the stairs. Folded her arms across her chest. Sneered, “Get thee back to the first floor.”

Did she look tough? She twisted her lips. Put a little poison in her gaze.

A couple appeared on the landing, and they paused there, looking up, heads tipped together in conference. If they started to climb the stairs, then she would have to say, “You can't come up here, guys,” but the couple moved away without a word.

So her power was
not
imaginary—though, of course, it was really the power of Brick and Peg, a sovereignty sufficiently substantial that it could be vested in her thirteen-year-old self.

She was reading, again, when a scowling Martie began to climb the stairs. Was she already a little drunk? Franny wondered as Martie called a loud, “Frances Jean, did you let someone up there?”

“No.”

Martie grabbed the newel post at the top of the stairs and pulled herself up the last step with both hands, apparently unaware of the oddness of this movement.

“You okay?” Franny asked.

“No, I'm not!” In the mirror at the top of the stairs—one eye squeezed shut—Martie watched herself take a swallow from the can of beer in her hand. “I wanted Terry to come tonight!” She sniffled noisily, then examined the book in Franny's hand. “Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson was, like, a spinster. What would she know about love or anything else for that matter?”

When Franny did not bother arguing with her, Martie handed back the book and headed downstairs once more.

It was almost nine-thirty—the party in full swing—when
Franny decided it would be stupid for her to go all night without a snack because of some stupid rule. As she made her own way down the stairs, she did her best to ignore that atmosphere of gelid confidence that immediately rose to her knees, a flash flood that swirled about her waist, climbed to her neck—

“We making too much noise for you, Fran?” called one of Martie's college friends, Nancy-something-or-other, a nice girl.

“I was just thirsty.”

The girl and her boyfriend smiled encouragement. “Big book!” said the boyfriend, nodding at the volume now closed on Franny's finger. A lucky boy, Franny thought. Just saying “big book” seemed to make him happy. A boy whose old battle with acne had left him with skin that was a sheet of pie dough rolled out over gravel—still, he was happy. Nancy-whatever-her-name-was was happy. And there was Rosamund, dancing with Turner Haskin—a cool and restrained sort of dancing, Franny thought, but they looked happy, too, and Franny, feeling diminished, did not jump the four steps into the crowded kitchen but descended slowly, with eyes lowered.

Sweater cuffs and the hands that extended from them comprised her view. The hems of pants. Belts. Loafers. “Excuse me,” she said. As bland as a server as a wedding reception. “Excuse me, please.”

“Hey, Franny.” A very sunburned and drunk Al Castor pulled her toward the back hall. “We gotta talk.”

“Uh-oh!” said a voice across the room. “Jailbait, Al!”

“Shut up, asshole,” Al Castor growled.

It was painful to look at Al Castor that evening. Even his lips were sunburned, crisp and brown as a piece of fried chicken. His eyebrows were now bleached as white as his hair. But Franny smiled at Al. She suspected she knew what poor Al wanted to say to her, and she was right:

Had Rosamund ever talked to Franny about him? About what happened before they all went back to school last fall? He knew he'd come on too strong, and he thought if they could just talk—

Franny nodded. She patted the boy on the shoulder. “I'm sure Roz still thinks you're a great guy.”

“Ha.” Al Castor listed this way and that. Thrummed his fingers across the wires of the hamster cage as if the cage were a harp—just once, but poor Snoopy dashed to the far corner and cowered there.

“Anyway, I'm not supposed to be down here, Al,” Franny said, “I just came to get some pop,” and she backed out of the hall, passing Tim Gleason, who sat in a ladder-back chair beneath a planter of half-dead ivy. Tim Gleason looked a little drunk, and very forlorn, the soles of his tennis shoes turned in toward one another. No doubt, he waited for Rosamund to remember his existence. The tendril of ivy that lay on his shoulder made him appear especially baleful.

“You've got some ivy on you, there,” Franny could have said, “Or, here, Tim, let me move that thing.” But she suspected Tim Gleason would prefer to remain ignorant of a minor debasement rather than have it pointed out by a thirteen-year-old.

Orange soda. The first bottle of pop to hand. Awful stuff that tasted like dust, mildew.

“Hey, you.”

Somehow she knew that voice that rose above the buzz of the party crowd called to her. “Hey. Wait.”

She did not allow herself to look up, but quickly hurried back across the kitchen. Sandals, loafers, tennis shoes. The first step of the staircase appeared and she was moving up. One, two, three and she was on the landing.

She cried out, then, in fright as something clutched her ankle. Just in time, she turned to see a young man fall up the stairs after her.

“Wait!” he said. A silver-haired young man with eyes not merely blue but somehow light in the dark, like one of those creatures that lived miles and miles down in the sea—

The truth: She put her hand to her heart. For one perfect moment, she believed in everything. She was the fairy-tale princess who looks at her reflection in the well and finds the reflection of the prince who stands behind her.

When this prince smiled, however, the reflection in the well
stirred. This prince lived
inside
the well and was about to pull her in.

Franny took a frightened, stumbling step up the stairs. “Nobody can come up here!” she cried when he began to follow her once more.

“But you'll let me come up, won't you?” he said, and walked his chest into the hand she held out to stop him. “Why are you up here?” He looked about in the dark at the top of the stairs. “What's your name?”