Francie (3 page)

“Oh yes, she's unusually pretty. Popular, too.”

“Well.…” His voice trailed off.

“Too much of a responsibility, is that it?” asked Aunt Norah with a flash of shrewdness. “She's an American girl, Fred. American girls know how to take care of themselves anywhere.”

“But
do
they? That's just it. Do they?”

“Frances will be all right, Fred. She's a normal, high-spirited American girl, and she's pretty as a picture, and you're going to be proud of her. You have to make allowances for occasional moods, considering the way you're uprooting her from her established rounds.”

Still Mr. Nelson looked dubious. “Well, if you're not worried,” he said, inconclusively. “Do you think you can get her ready in two weeks? Don't stint yourself on her clothes; I understand there's not much to buy nowadays, over there.”

Francie had looked forward to being wretchedly unhappy all the time, or at least for a while every day, before they sailed, but somehow she never found the time. There was the prospect of farewell parties, with lots of the boys protesting they would miss her too much to enjoy themselves, at least for weeks; there was shopping; there was the prospect of several days in New York, with more shopping. She had to help Aunt Norah pack her glass and china for storage. Aunt Norah was intending to sublet the house and spend some months in Florida, now that she need not make a home for her niece.

“One good thing about all this,” Francie confided to her aunt as she wrapped silver fish-knives in flannel, “is that I'm finding out at last who are really my friends and who aren't. Some of the girls are being awfully catty—their names would surprise you.”

“You'll forget all these little pinpricks by the time you're across the Atlantic,” said Aunt Norah cheerfully. “I must say it makes me marvel, the way young people change from generation to generation. To look at you, anybody would think you'd been condemned to a prison cell, instead of getting a real treat. What wouldn't I have given for your chance at your age!”

“Yes, Aunt Norah, but times aren't at all the same any more. I know people used to want more than anything to go to Europe. We had to read Henry James and all those for English. But don't forget, it's different nowadays. It's the War that did it. You just talk to some of the G.I.'s and you'll find out. I'd never have a better time anywhere else than here, honestly. I know that.”

“You know everything, of course,” sighed Francie's aunt. “It's not a bit of use my arguing. Well, I must say it's nice to think you like your own home so much.”

“Not that I want to be narrow-minded,” added Francie judiciously. “It's just that the time is inconvenient, but I'm perfectly willing to give England a
chance
.”

It was decided in Francie's crowd that her going-away should be marked, if not exactly celebrated, by a series of social gatherings. Movies, they felt, were not enough; everyone went to the movies whenever there was a new picture anyway. A dance in the high-school gym had already been scheduled for the week before and the crowd couldn't very well hold another one so soon again, just before the going-away day. Instead, a party at someone's house was indicated. But whose? Glenn, Ruth and Gretta, meeting at the Chocolate Shoppe by chance, argued about it.

“Let
me
have it,” begged Gretta. “It's my turn really, and I'd love to give Francie a going-away party.” Gretta was the doll-pretty type and everybody knew that if it wasn't for Francie she might go all out for Glenn.

“I know you would,” said Ruth with heavy meaning in her tone, “but after all I'm her closest friend and I do think—”

“We could throw a good one at our place,” said Glenn, “if we give Mother enough notice.”

They had not settled the question by the time Francie appeared for her morning snack, and they turned to her for decision.

“Oh, it's got to be at our own house,” she said immediately. “Aunt Norah would be terribly hurt, you know she would, if I went anywhere else on my last night. It's nice of you all and I
do
appreciate it, but.…” Her voice grew tremulous; she broke off. The tactful Ruth changed the subject. They all gave in to the overpowering argument of Aunt Norah's feelings, and Francie won the day.

“They couldn't have argued,” said Francie, reporting on the arrangement when she went home for lunch. “I just told them that would be the way you wanted it, Aunt Norah.”

“That was right, Francie,” Fred Nelson approved. He looked gratified at Aunt Norah's pleasure, and later when Francie had left the room he said to her, “She's not so self-centered as I was afraid she might be. That showed real sensibility.”

“Oh, Francie's got the right instincts,” said Aunt Norah indulgently. “Francie and I understand each other.”

“It will be fun to see a kid's party again,” said Pop, musing aloud. “I haven't seen one since I was a kid myself. I begin more and more to realize I've missed a good deal, one way and another, working so hard while Francie was growing up.”

Aunt Norah looked at him, opened her mouth, but then thought better of whatever she had been going to say.

The important last evening arrived finally. Pop sat in the living room, looking around with a tolerant smile at the preparations. Aunt Norah was in the kitchen in her good silk print with an apron over it, putting out glasses and depositing Coca-cola and ginger-ale bottles in the icebox, which had been cleared for the purpose. The doors between the dining room and living room were open; the dining-room table had been shoved back into a corner and the carpet was rolled up. The first guest's step was heard on the porch and a young girl walked into the hall without ringing.

“Hi!” she called up the stairs. “Francie? I'm here!”

When she saw Pop she hesitated a moment, then came forward to shake hands, rather shyly. Francie ran down the steps. A boy with a crew cut arrived; the party was under way. The young people perched on chair arms, curled up on sofas, or slumped almost on the backs of their necks in chairs. No one, Pop observed, seemed to use furniture in the more conventional manner to which he was accustomed.

They soon were talking animatedly about their own mysterious affairs, in a language Pop could not understand. Feeling very much out of it, he sought Aunt Norah in the kitchen.

“Are the children getting on all right?” she asked, taking off her apron and hanging it up on the door.

“Very well indeed. Very well. Fine-looking lot of youngsters,” said Pop. “Not that I can tell one from another, except Francie and little what's-her-name—Ruth. And Glenn, naturally. I'd know Glenn by this time, even if he didn't have all those freckles, he's been around so much.”

Aunt Norah said, “Well, if they're started off, I don't know that we've got any more duties to perform out here. Let's go.”

“Go? Why, where are we going?”

“Out,” said Aunt Norah.

“Why? Where?”

“As for why,” said Aunt Norah hesitantly, “that's rather hard to answer. Francie likes to have the old folks out when she has a party, so I always leave them to themselves.”

Fred Nelson began, angrily, “Well, if that isn't the most outrageous—” but Aunt Norah's gentle voice continued.

“As for where, it's for you to decide if you'd rather just drive around somewhere—or we could see the new picture at the Odeon, or go and call on the Tuckers. I know they're at home because I asked when I met Mrs. Tucker at the Stop and Shop.”

Pop stood squarely in front of his sister-in-law, so that she was forced to look at him. “Listen to me, Norah,” he said. “You know it's all wrong, as well as I do, to leave those children in charge of the house. It's—it's unheard-of! It's unmannerly of them to expect it! Our mothers would turn in their graves if they knew. What's come over this country? What's the matter with all the parents to permit this sort of thing? Have they gone crazy, or what?”

“Why shouldn't the youngsters be left, Fred? Don't you trust them?”

He made an impatient gesture. “That's not the point—that's not at all the point. It's the
manners
aspect that makes me sore. It's your house. Why should you be dispossessed of your house simply because a lot of selfish kids want to get together and have a party?”

“Oh Fred!” She laughed helplessly. “What a queer way to look at it! It's easy to see you haven't kept up. Children have it their own way nowadays. As for me, I don't see why not.”

“Why not? Why not? Do you mean to say you don't resent being kicked out to wander around all the evening because these young cubs haven't the manners—”

“If I'm not wanted here,” said Aunt Norah, “I don't want to
be
here. Now you just calm down a minute, Fred, and be reasonable. Of course we could perfectly well insist on staying here, and attend the party, and spoil their fun. If you insist on it, that's what we'll do. But it's Francie's last night and—”

“But why should it spoil their fun if we did? What's the matter with you all? Why can't we all get along together, even if we
are
different ages?”

“Now that's a question,” said Aunt Norah, “that's too big for any one woman to answer. You can't fight Nature, and young people like to stick to their own kind. Do you want to embarrass poor Francie on her last night, and spoil her party, perhaps drive all her friends out somewhere else where they can feel they aren't being watched? They weren't brought up as we were, remember, with chaperones watching us every minute, and all that.”

“Why, no, I—”

“Do you really think you ought to go in and sit down there, and try to talk to a lot of kids who have nothing to say to you?”

“Of course not! It's just that the system's all wrong,” said Pop, “but I'm just as glad I'm getting Francie out of this for a little while. Maybe in another sort of civilization she'll realize that parents have some rights too!”

Aunt Norah shook her head and sighed.

“Well, come on. If we've got to go, we've got to go,” said Pop, “unless we feel we ought to go upstairs instead and skulk in our own rooms. I guess the other way
is
less awkward. I suppose that's why you long-suffering older generation evolved it.”

He looked in at the party as he and Aunt Norah paused, coated and hatted, on their way to the front door. With difficulty he refrained from glowering. A few couples—Francie was among them—were dancing to the radio which was turned up to deafening volume. Others were in groups, animatedly discussing things which Pop either did not understand or thought they did not understand, and doing it at the top of their lungs to be heard above the music. He noticed several couples holding hands not at all self-consciously.

“We're off, children,” called Aunt Norah.

Francie waved, hesitated, and then on a sudden warm impulse ran over to kiss them both. She looked flushed, happy, and very pretty. Out on the front porch, Pop blew his nose. “She's not so bad,” he said. “Spoiled—all of them are spoiled—but she's a nice kid.”

“I'm glad you're beginning to realize that!” said Aunt Norah.

“Well, come on then,” Pop said, as he led the way to the car. “If we're to go into exile for the whole evening, let's get going!”

Time flew by faster than Francie had ever known it to go. Before she could catch her breath, before she had really accepted this uprooting deep down inside her, the parting time had come and she and Pop were on the train rushing east.

However dizzy and breathless she felt, she found New York absolutely heavenly. She was in a hurry to write Ruth about it, and yet in a hurry to do more running around outside the hotel: two theaters in one day, the stores, “21” and the Stork Club for lunch with Pop, the stores again, the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, which nearly knocked the stores out of her mind and made her dig her sketchbook out of the bottom of her suitcase; then a hairdresser's and again the stores.

Two whole hours one afternoon she spent wandering the plazas and corridors of Radio City, trying to satisfy her urge to capture these crowded impressions in sketches on paper. Her rough drawings did not please her, but Pop seemed astonished and impressed.

“That's a big chunk of talent you have, Francie. You're better than your mother already, and she was pretty good.”

She found herself thinking often of her mother in New York. She knew her mother had loved the city, and Francie, feeling closer to her than she had for a long while, loved it too.

“I'm nearly dead,” she wrote at last, in a quiet space forced on her by the time of day, when nothing was open for shopping. “Oh Ruth, I've had the most divine time with the paintings. There are lots to be seen in small galleries, I just found out, and I'm so excited I can hardly wait to get back to work. I've done some sketching here, of course, but I mean seriously back to work. I wonder sometimes if it wouldn't be a complete waste of time, going to State. Art is after all my only
true
interest.” She added another line under “true” and paused, nibbling at her pen, to look into the hotel mirror. It was a pity she hadn't waited to buy all her sweaters and things here, she mused. They had a better look, somehow. If Ruth could only see the yellow twin set she had on right now.…

“… my only
true
interest.…” She smiled at the words. Her head was such a tumble of interests at the moment.

“Pop has given me my head in the way of last-minute clothes and I've gone mad, so it's just as well you and I decided against that blue tweed coat. I did much better here at Saks'. Pop's being absolutely sweet about everything, and sometimes I think I've never done him justice. He isn't just a businessman at all, though he seems to be pretty good at that by the way—it might sound like boasting if I told you how they treat him at his office. But he isn't as difficult as I've always thought. For one thing, he didn't mind my getting a hair-do at Antoine's. Also, anybody less understanding would probably make me trail along to Central Park Zoo. Of course, I wasn't above doing some of the touristy things, like Radio City and going to the top of the Empire State Building, and I loved that—but I kept thinking of Doris the time her father showed her around New York and treated her like a baby. Pop at least lets me pick out my own clothes, and he orders my meals as if I were grown up. (I wouldn't know what to pick, anyway.) I'm waiting in the hotel room now because he had to go to the office to wind up a lot of things, but I'll phone down soon for a coke and start dressing. Tonight we're going to the theater again, and tomorrow we actually
sail
. I'm feeling much better about England and everything. If Pop's going to be as decent as this all the time I haven't got a thing to worry about.”