Tell Me If the Lovers Are Losers (10 page)

Eloise blinked, nodded.

“If she'll sub, and we all are the team”—Hildy was included in the sweep of Niki's arm and she did not protest—“couldn't we try it Hildy? We might just be good, really good. If we practice a lot and you coach them. Everybody wants to”—nobody would have dared to contradict her—“and we could, we could be good. By any standards, even yours.”

“That's what I thought,” Sarah added. “I thought we had a chance for excellence.”

“Yes.” Hildy nodded. “I think so too. I am willing.”

“And will you sub, Eloise?” Ann asked. “Please? I'll feel more secure.”

Under Niki's eye, Eloise agreed.

None of them wondered why it was they were so pleased with the agreement. They all felt excited by the prospect of this team. Ruth's throaty laugh floated over the afternoon air as she suggested they confirm the decision by having ice cream sundaes together. Only Hildy declined, returning to the room to study. The six others trooped down the street to the village, in the golden afternoon.

♦   ♦   ♦

These times Ann remembered. And the stubborn way Hildy refused to alter that original team, despite Carol's arguments that she was “twice, thrice, ten times the player Ann is,” and
despite a jealous collective anger among those freshmen excluded from this team. These things passed, and Hildy's team played together, most often with Eloise in position and Hildy coaching. Hildy coached all the freshman teams. She coached everyone except Niki, whom she left alone.

They practiced on weekends too. It was not always convenient, but the girls always made their way to the court. Niki was sure they were ready for the first match game. Hildy agreed, but seemed unimpressed by the challenge. Ann was nervous. She hoped aloud she would sprain a wrist and so cause Eloise to take her place. Eloise declared her prayers for Ann's continued good health.

Niki's father wrote to say he had a new girl friend. He enclosed a photograph of her, and another of the two of them. Niki's father looked young, a handsome young man—slender, golden brown, muscular He had a shock of brown hair and even, white teeth. Ann, whose father always looked like a respectable, responsible man, whose father would never have been taken for anything other than the Philadelphia lawyer he was, gaped. “He looks so
young,”
she protested.

“Well he is. He's not thirty-nine yet.” Niki studied the second photograph. “What about her?”

Ann looked at it. “How old is she?”

“He doesn't say. That means he thinks she's pretty young for him. Or he thinks I'll think or somebody'll think. Hildy? What would you say?”

“She looks sixteen, doesn't she?”

“He's not that bad. He doesn't seduce kids.”

“Perhaps older than she looks? Where I live she would be sixteen or seventeen. But in California, where everybody stays younger longer—twenty perhaps.”

“I can't ever tell people's ages,” Ann said.

“Whatever, it's too young,” Niki announced.

“What can you do?” Ann shrugged, thinking that this blasé pose rather became her.

“What I always do, tell him I'll go live with my mother,” Niki said.

“Huh? You mean you'd go live with her? After all these years when you haven't seen her?”

“I haven't seen her and I don't want to. I didn't say I would go, I said I'd tell
him
I would.”

“A threat?” Ann knew better than to try threatening her father. But she didn't have a father who looked, and apparently
acted, more like a brother. You could threaten a brother. But a father . . . .

“A threat, Annie. Sometimes it's the only way to bring him around.” Niki shrugged. “He gets fixated on these things.”

“These women,” Ann corrected.

“Not just girl friends. Matter of fact, he's pretty good about his girl friends. Jobs, attitudes, causes; those. He gets
idées fixes.”

Hildy's golden head turned toward them, a halo of lamplight behind it. “Your mother is not dead?” she asked Niki.

“Not a bit of it. They're divorced.”

“I am sorry,” Hildy said.

“Don't mention it, it's nothing unusual,” Niki said, then asked, “Don't people where you live get divorced?”

Hildy shook her head.

“They do where I live,” Ann said. “Some of them.”

“My parents were divorced when I was about a year old. My dad has custody. He always did.”

“How is that so?” asked Hildy.

“He wanted it,” Niki shrugged.

“And your mother?”

“She didn't want it. Me.”

“How is that possible?”

“Don't ask me. I was just a little kid. My mother lives in Mexico now, somewhere, on the alimony. She never married again, although she's had plenty of lovers. Or at least Dad says so. I don't know for sure. He hasn't married either. I've come in handy for that. If some dame gets serious, he just tells her I can't stand her and he has to put his daughter first. And I usually can't stand them, not as mothers.”

“Do you ever hear from your mother?” Ann asked.

“Not since I was little. She stuck around the area when I was young, until I started school. After that she moved out into the Big Sur and I'd go spend a month in the summer with her. Her and her friends. We'd camp, do wilderness stuff. I don't know—I liked her but she scared me. She had this deep theatrical voice, and everything that happened to her was so serious. You know? Her life was a series of crises. I never knew what was going on. I don't know.” She looked at the two photographs again, jabbing her finger at them meditatively. “I
mean, Dad has his faults, but he's OK. You can figure out what he wants.”

“Doesn't your mother—” Hildy began, but Niki interrupted her “No. Not since she moved to Mexico. I was ten I guess, or nine. And I'm just as glad, let me tell you.”

“That isn't right,” Hildy said.

“It doesn't matter,” Niki shrugged.

“A mother should not leave her child,” Hildy continued.

“There's no law that says so,” Niki said.

“She must be a strange woman,” Hildy said. “Your mother A bad woman.”

“Now wait a minute.” Niki's voice had shades of anger to it. “She had her own life to lead, didn't she? A husband and a child, especially the child, they tie you down. She needed to find herself, to know who she is. Women don't have a fair chance at life, you know that. Ann? You know it's true. Not a fair chance at a life of their own. Not tied down the way they are. Unless they're old maids. I don't blame my mother, not one bit. It's what I would do.”

Hildy stared vacantly at Niki. “Perhaps. Would you like yourself for doing it? Leaving your child?”

“I don't know,” Niki muttered. “How can you know ahead of time, a thing like that? Besides, who are we to judge?”

“Not to judge,” Hildy said. “This has nothing to do with judgment. It is wrong.”

“Nothing is that simple,” Niki said.

“Yes. Some things are. People just—make excuses?—and this complicates things. But these excuses, they are not important. What she did, your mother, was wrong. If you did it, you would be wrong too.”

“Well, I wouldn't want to do it probably. I like kids. I do. Male or female, I've got no prejudices. I'd take the kid with me.”

“That too,” Hildy said sternly.

Niki glared at Hildy. Then she turned her attention to Ann. “Do you know any divorced people?”

“Me? Or my parents?”

“Parents, of course.”

“A few. Four, maybe six.”

“Any relatives?”

“One of my uncles—his wife—I don't know.” It was a
family secret; well, nor exactly a secret but something they preferred to keep private. “He married again.”

Niki nodded. “How about you, Hildy?”

“None. Nor have I known any by hearsay.” Hildy smiled.

“But what happens out there if the couple is unhappy? What if the husband screws around, or the wife? What if he's cruel to her, or to the kids? What if she drinks? Or takes drugs? What if they just hate each other and can't stand to live together and there is constant fighting and bickering with the kids in the middle all the time?”

Ann sided with Niki. “In some cases, people should divorce. It is so much easier, on the kids, everyone. Better than pretending that you're still happily married and the wife taking the kids off to a summer place; that's expensive too. And the kids play the parents off, one against the other. I agree with Niki.”

“It is still wrong, however many agree,” Hildy said. Her voice, for such a pronouncement, was curiously soft.

“My God, Hildy—'scuse the language. But listen. What's supposed to happen when a couple begins to fall apart? That can happen you know.”

Hildy nodded. “I know.”

“People get irrational. Nothing can save the marriage. They can't afford to live in separate places. That happens. What do they do then, in your never-never land? What does a wife do, stuck in the house with a man she hates?”

“She kills him,” Hildy said.

Niki's mouth hung open for a second before she laughed. The tension in the room dissipated within the laughter, like a shriek dissipating into the clear sky. “But it's true,” Hildy said, through her own laughter. “Why cannot people live apart? Even if in the same house. As if the other were dead. Only, one cannot remarry.”

“What's the point in that?” Ann wondered.

“You keep your promises,” Hildy said. “You have promised. To one another. To God.”

Ann could not answer this objection, but Niki could make an impatient gesture with her hand. “Do you think He cares? If He's there.”

“He's there. He cares.”

“So He wants people to suffer,” Niki pursued.

“That is not it,” Hildy said.

“To resist the temptation? He puts the temptation there so we can pass it by? Is that it? A test?”

“No. He does not need to test. He knows.”

“Then what's the point? Who put that tree in the garden of Eden?”

“God.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. How should I know?”

“And the Jews in Germany? Or the blacks into slavery? Or a kid into a wheelchair, dying piecemeal? And his parents—watching, knowing. Or the Mexicans, the migrant worker. There's a life for you, a test of endurance. What about all of that?”

“How should I know?”

“Not to mention the Crucifixion,” Niki continued. Her glance for Hildy was level, straight. “Do you
know
how people were crucified, exactly how they did it? Have you thought about the Crucifixion?”

“Yes. That one; and the many thousands of others so executed.”

They looked into one another's eyes, searching. Profound bitterness reflected off, reflected in, profound sorrow.

“Then, what about it?” Niki asked.

“I do not know.”

“What
do
you know?”

“There is a purpose. They purpose is good.”

Niki shook her head. “That won't do.”

“What do you think?” Ann asked Niki. “How do you understand it?”

“Chance,” Niki said. “Accident. If I had been a boy for instance.”

“Do you really think that?” Ann asked. “Does that mean you blame yourself?”

Niki shrugged.

Ann continued. “Maybe she would have gone anyway. Maybe she just used you as an excuse.”

Niki shrugged.

“It's possible, isn't it?” Ann insisted.

“I guess so. But that isn't what happened. It doesn't matter anyway.”

“Hildy?” Ann asked.

“It does matter,” Hildy said. “And there is a reason. I must go to the observatory.”

“A classic
non-sequitur,”
Niki said.

“You should take a bike,” Ann remarked.

Hildy protested. “It's not far.”

“Want to use mine?” Ann offered. Hildy did not have a bike. “No, I mean it. Not tonight, because I haven't gotten a headlight yet, or reflectors. But would you?”

“I would like that,” Hildy said. “But—”

“I was going to get that stuff anyway,” Ann said. “I promised my mother I would. You know how they worry. She's sure to ask, and this will make sure I do it.”

“What do you go twice a week for anyway?” Niki demanded. “There's only one lab a week up there.”

“I'm learning to use the telescope,” Hildy said.

“What for?” Niki asked.

“To study the stars. I really must go. I am expected.” She buttoned a heavy woolen shirt, tied her shoes, and left.

Niki turned to Ann. “Do you ever wonder what will happen when she sheds her illusions?”

Ann nodded, disturbed by the appropriateness of the question. Whenever she thought she understood Niki, Niki threw her off-balance. “Maybe she knows something you don't,” Ann ventured.

“Balls.” Niki dismissed the possibility.

“I don't think she will,” was the strongest defense Ann could make. “Besides, what do you care?”

Niki chewed on her nail and glared at Ann. “Sometimes, I think you're just another stupid preppy bitch,” she remarked.

“What do you care?” Ann repeated.

“What do you care?” Niki mimicked her, in a nasal, whiny voice. “Nannynanny booboo and so's your old man,” she said. “She doesn't have any money, you know.”

Ann looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Full scholarship.”

“How do you know?”

“Sarah said.”

“How does Sarah know?”

“She knows these things. Don't ask me how. Maybe Hildy told her.”

“But she hasn't told me,” Ann protested.

“You her best friend or something?” Niki asked.

Ann had thought perhaps so. “I didn't know,” she said.