William F. Buckley Jr. (16 page)

“History?” Danny volunteered.

“Exactly, Danny. Exactly.”

Danny gave his sister a sly wink. Lila permitted herself a trace of a smile. Both took care to effect their exchange so that Harriet would not be privy to it.

Lila left, an hour and a half’s drive ahead of her. She kissed Caroline, her brother Danny, and—she thought, Why not?—also Harriet. After they were gone, Danny asked Harriet if she would like to swim out in the Sound. “The water temperature’s real nice.” She declined, but urged Caroline to join her husband. “I have a long day tomorrow. I’ll turn in.”

Wearing terry-cloth dressing gowns, Caroline and Danny walked hand in hand to the water’s edge. It was just after Labor Day, still summer, but the heat shimmer had gone and the air was fresh and bracing. The property was pretty well sheltered from neighbors at either side by leafy trees and tall bushes. Danny dropped his robe and dived in. Caroline followed him. In the water Danny ducked and a few seconds later, sputtering water from her mouth, Caroline giggled her remonstrance.

“Stop that! Danny. You are a silly boy.” He surfaced and made out Caroline’s eyes, and her little smile, in the new moon light. He sank underwater again, his two hands on her breasts. She threw herself to one side, swam vigorously toward the beach, her
foot reached land and she ran toward her dressing gown, followed closely by Danny, who threw himself over her on the grass. His hand reached between her legs.

“Danny?”

He only just managed to reply, through his ardor. “Mmmm?”

“I’m not safe yet. Not for two more days.”

Activity froze. Then Danny pushed her away brusquely. “God-
damnit
, Caroline. Why don’t you wear some protection? Or is it that you want
another
baby? How many more, ten? Twenty?” He flung his bathrobe across his lap. “Nine fucking days—no, nine
non
-fucking days—because Mother Church won’t allow you to take
civilized
measures to guard against having thirty-five children. I happen to be a
normal
man, Caroline, and it’s not
normal
to go nine days every month without—”

“Danny, Danny.” She stroked his hair. “Just try to understand how I—we—feel. Please, darling. Let’s go up to the house, have a nightcap, maybe. The children will be here first thing in the morning.”

Danny had put on his dressing gown. He was not yet smiling, Caroline could see. But the immediate crisis was over.

They walked toward the house and Danny reminded himself to pay greater attention to the timing of his out-of-town trips. They should more closely correspond with Caroline’s periods. Dumb of him not to have thought of that before. He wondered whether he would also have to worry about Florry’s periods.

F
LORIDA CARMELA HUERTA left home when she was sixteen. Her mother, Jeanne, a native of France married to a Mexican-American soldier, had been widowed when only thirty (Enrique, wending his way more or less home from El Cielito Lindo one night, was run over) at which time ten-year-old Florida had two younger siblings, a boy (Raul), and a girl (Conchita). Their mother grieved the loss of their father and was so lonely, she shared her bed with attractive substitutes and in six years had three more children by three more companions.

Her most recent lover had attempted to seduce Florida. Jeanne, ever obliging, tried to persuade Florry in seductive French to be accommodating, whereupon Florry bashed her mother over the head with a table lamp. At this, the lover
brought out his belt, grabbed her left wrist and beat Florry over head, shoulders, legs—whatever part of her was exposed—for ten full minutes. Raul, age twelve, tried to restrain the assailant, who grabbed him, pulled down his shorts, and beat him raw on the naked buttocks.

Florida was left weeping on the floor of the room she shared with her five brothers and sisters. She writhed in pain through the night, tiptoed early in the morning to her mother’s room, drew the wallet of the lover from his pants, and left the house with a canvas suitcase in which everything she owned fitted comfortably. She had the address of a friend whose parents had moved to Los Angeles.

Dorothy’s mother had met Florida back in San Diego a year or so before. She liked her, knew about the parlous situation at her mother’s little apartment, consulted with her husband in their two-bedroom cottage in Santa Monica, suffering from old age on its fifteenth birthday.

They agreed to cooperate in the fiction that Florida was an only child whose mother and father had both drowned in the terrible ferry accident a month ago in San Diego Harbor. Finding herself alone, Florry had made her way to the address of a girlhood friend in Los Angeles, and now, they hoped, “Sister Alicia, that the convent will take little Florry in, make room for her with the other orphan girls you and the other sisters so generously look after.”

It worked, and in a few months the nuns learned that Florida Huerta was badly underinstructed but extraordinarily gifted. It was only a matter of weeks before she caught up with other girls her own age. Her behavior was exemplary. She studied and read six hours every day and did chores for four hours, everything from cleaning toilets to teaching the little girls how to read.

After eighteen months, Sister Alicia told her that she was going to give her special training to study for the college boards. But how could she afford to pay tuition? Florry asked. Sister Alicia said she should set her sights on earning a full scholarship. Florry bowed her head in bewilderment. Sister Alicia looked at her, her hair braided and pinned behind her oval face, the large
eyes, the full figure. Sister Alicia sighed. If she prevailed and won the scholarship, Florida would be an alluring target. But that was, very simply, the way things were. Sister Alicia closed her eyes and recited a Hail Mary, beseeching strength for little Florida to resist temptation.

Florida did yield completely, though the importunate male was not after sexual favors. What Nicola Agrippo wished to cultivate was the knowledge of Spanish and of Spanish literature. It was toward the end of her sophomore year and Professor Agrippo had become her tutor. He had officiated over the impact on her of the Spanish language. To be sure, her father had known Spanish, but conversations at home were in English, or in her mother’s hectic French. Florry knew nothing of the structure of the Spanish language, which she had never used or heard used at home.

She raced through the first year’s formal course and was ready for the final examination halfway through the first semester. Mr. Agrippo took her out of the intermediate class and entered her in advanced Spanish. Before the end of her freshman year she was reading Spanish classics. Now he encouraged her to compete for the student exchange seat endowed by the University of Salamanca, designed for two California undergraduates who were well on their way to proficiency in Spanish and were inclined to the study of Spanish history, literature, and culture.

The qualifying round was conducted by teachers of Spanish within a competing jurisdiction. Those students who passed the qualifying round went into a final round. The six finalists would be examined by Professor Juan Gustavo Amador, who traveled from Salamanca to examine finalists in six American cities.

The nervous students, two boys, four girls, met for lunch at the home of the Spanish consul. All of them were seniors in college except for Florida. Their genial host suggested that it might be both amusing and appropriate to speak to one another, and to their hosts, only in Spanish during lunch. The contenders did so, at first tentatively, then rather garrulously. They were seated around a table presided over by the consul and his wife. From the living room they could look down on the city of Los Angeles,
and inevitably there was talk of smog. “Sir,” one student asked her host, “how do you say ‘smog’ in Spanish?” The consul was startled by the question, and said he would defer to Professor Amador for the answer. Professor Amador spent fifteen minutes discussing textual descriptions used by Cervantes to describe the air, from pure to extra-polluted, in his epic, then wandered over to note how Dante had handled the phenomenon in the
Comedy.
He did not answer the question, and nobody took the initiative in pointing this out to him.

After about ten minutes, Florida was pleasantly surprised to conclude that her Spanish was distinctly better than that of one of the girls, and infinitely better than that of everyone else. She had not quite got used to her remarkable fluency, never having tested it in a competitive situation. But it was also the case, she reflected, that she was improving every day. Her peculiar capacity to ingest Spanish was churning so intensively, she had learned a great deal even since the competition was initiated, just two months before.

To be sure, it wasn’t merely conversational fluency the visiting professor would want to satisfy himself about. What exactly he’d ask, Florry didn’t know. She did know that there really wasn’t very much she could say in English that she couldn’t find a way of saying in Spanish, possibly excepting the best word for smog. That was a comforting thought.

Florida caught the eye of one of the two male contestants, a trim blond young man from Berkeley who had traveled down to Los Angeles for the examination. His eyes were pale blue. From his slightly parted lips white teeth showed, and his smiles were easily ignited, though mostly he kept within himself whatever it was that amused him; Florry watched him a full five minutes, and never quite knew what it was that brought on the quick, amused, inscrutable reactions. She noticed that although it was only May, he was nicely tanned—either he had spent a week or so in southern California, or he had spent long hours lying in such sun as they got in the San Francisco area in April and May. His glance at Florida was candidly covetous. After lunch, as they walked out to the little
capilla
where the examination would take place, he approached
her and reintroduced himself: “Nobody can remember names when more than two people are introduced—I’m Tracy Gulliver, and you’re—?”

“Florida Huerta.”

“Look,” he said, his smile now full, beguiling, “the shooting match will be over by five o’clock, and, win or lose, I don’t have to go back to Berkeley till
mañana por la mañana.
So what do you say we have
una cenita, entre los dos?
”

Florida was attracted to him and inclined to accept the invitation to a little dinner between the two of them. There was the one problem, that Professor Agrippo had said that if she won the scholarship, he would host a little celebration at his apartment. Florry was reluctant to tell the young man—to tell Tracy—that she doubted she would be able to dine with him because she expected to win the competition. She had to devise a more modest way to plant the problematic …

“That would be nice. There is a complication, and I won’t know whether I can work it out until after—”

“After they award me the scholarship?” Tracy asked, affecting guilelessness.

She wondered—did he actually
expect
to win? Or was it merely braggadocio, the kind of thing to expect of preying young males? She merely smiled at him and waved her hand, a “let’s-see-what-happens” gesture.

It was the practice of Professor Amador to conduct his examination in front of all the candidates. He liked to explain that, by doing so, the applicants were themselves able to evaluate contending talents. As often as not, however grudgingly, his election of the winner was unchallenged by those left behind. The burden was heaviest on him, since he would of course not put the same question to more than one student.

“Well, Tracy, I wish you good luck.”

“Thank you, dear Florida.
Aunque no estoy seguro que necesito buena suerte.
” That riled Florry: Tracy, saying he didn’t think he needed good luck to win.

Yet somehow—the way he said it?—she didn’t mind his self-confidence, though it had to mean that he hadn’t taken the
measure of her skills during the random conversation at lunch. Well, he would soon hear her perform.

The competitors drew straws.

Tracy would be fifth, Florida last.

Her confidence was fortified as she heard the first girl, a deadly serious student from the Santa Barbara campus, exchange conversational patter with Professor Agrippo.

Yes, she was very anxious to get to know Spain.… Yes, the University of Salamanca must be a very exciting place to study, and she knew of course that it was the second-oldest university in Europe.… Indeed she intended to pursue her Spanish studies, having given four years to the study of the language, spending two summers in Mexico.

It was a good performance, but hardly memorable. Obviously Fran (Frances Weymuller was her name) needed to run her thought through her mind in English before translating it into Spanish. The mark of the amateur. But after all, they were all amateurs, including herself, Florry forced herself to admit.

But she was gaining in confidence. The performances of the ensuing three competitors didn’t disturb her. It was now Tracy’s turn.

She listened dumbstruck. She was both flabbergasted and furious. He spoke with near-native fluency, at high speed, about subjects not entirely prosaic. Clearly he had, for histrionic effect, disguised his achievement during the badinage at lunch—it would be more fun to spring his fluency on the competitors than to let them have a preview of it at lunch. The examining professor was also struck by the proficiency, and sifter ten minutes asked where and how had Mr. Gulliver prepared his Spanish? Tracy said that he had studied it beginning junior year in high school, that he had been attracted to the language as the result of an early love for Cervantes communicated to him by his mother; and that he had been coached during summer months by his father’s … gardener, who talked to him by the hour, and together they would go to Spanish and Latin-American movies every week. He was now, he said, attempting to write poetry in
Spanish. Give us a sample, Professor Amador asked him. Tracy recited a sonnet.

After fifteen minutes Professor Amador thanked and dismissed him. He looked over at the other contestants, satisfied that when the decision was handed down no one would question the verdict.