When She Was Good Read online

  “Look, Roy,” she said, dropping into her southern accent, “why don’t you-all get Monkey Littlefield? Probably she’ll even do cheesecake fo’ ya’. A la Jane Russell—yo’ favorite actress.”

  “Look,” he said, making his sour face, “I don’t even know that Littlefield kid. And I’ve never even seen a Jane Russell movie in my life, actually.”

  “Oh, I’m shoo-wa of that. You only had her little ol’ pinup all over your walls in the Army, but you never seen her in a movie.”

  “Look, Ellie, who are you supposed to be, Gone With the Wind? I want to do this study. So say either yes or no. I haven’t got all day.”

  Ellie said she’d think about it, and then went up and changed into her new white linen dress, all the while telling Lucy about the kind of letters her Aunt Alice had gotten while Roy was in the Army. S-e-x, to his own family.

  They drove off to the river. Lucy came along for the ride. That was how Roy had extended the invitation, when she said that she’d better go home. “You can come for the ride, if you want. I don’t charge anything”—all the while using a little pressure gauge he had bought to check the air in a front tire that he said looked to him to be low.

  He posed his subject (because that’s all she was, and he hoped she could understand what that meant) by the big oak near the old pier. Ellie kept wanting to look off in profile toward Winnisaw, but Roy wanted her looking straight up into the tree. Every few shots or so he came over and yanked on one of the branches so as to get the shadows to fall in the right places.

  Ellie said she would like to know what he meant by “the right places.”

  “I’m talking technically, Eleanor. Will you shut up?”

  “Well, it’s hard to know these days, Roy, when you say ‘the right places.’ Considering where your mind is.”

  “Oh, look at the branches, please? The whole idea, Ellie, is The Marvel of Spring. So look up, and not at me.”

  “I hear you at night, Roy.”

  “Hear me what?”

  “Laughing. And I know what you’re laughing about too.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Guess.”

  At the end of the afternoon Ellie said, “Why don’t you take some of my friend?”

  He sighed deeply. “Oh—okay. One.” He turned all around. “Well, where’d she disappear to? I haven’t got all day.”

  Ellie pointed to the bank of the river where the black pilings jutted out into the water.

  “Hey,” Roy called, “want your picture taken? I’ve got to leave, so if you want it, let’s go.”

  Lucy looked up. “No,” she said.

  “Lucy, come on,” Eleanor called. “He needs one of a blonde.”

  Roy had to slap his own forehead. “Who said that?” he wanted to know.

  “She likes you,” Ellie whispered.

  “Now who told you that, Eleanor? Who told you something like that?”

  Lucy stood at attention under the tree, looking straight at the hole in the camera, and he took a picture. One. She noticed that he did not refer to the light meter first.

  When the picture was developed, he showed it to her. She was heading down the Sowerby drive for home when he came out of the house behind her. “Hey.”

  Despite herself, she turned. He trotted down the drive in a kind of loping, pigeon-toed run.

  “Here,” he said. “You want it?”

  She had hardly taken the picture from his hand when he added, “Otherwise I’m going to throw it away. It’s not too hot.”

  Glaring at him she said, “Just who do you think you’re talking to, you!” and thrust the photograph at his chest and walked angrily home.

  That evening he appeared at Dale’s Dairy Bar, where she worked on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays from seven to ten, and on Fridays and Saturdays from seven to eleven-thirty. He sat where she had to take his order: a grilled cheese with bacon and tomato.

  When she put down the sandwich in front of him, he said, “Hey, about this afternoon”—he took a bite out of the sandwich—“I’m sorry.” She went on about her business.

  When finally she came back to ask if he would care for anything more, he said it again, as sincerely as he could, and this time without a mouthful of food.

  “Pay the cashier,” she answered, giving him his check.

  “I know that.”

  She had been watching him, however, for months; he was always so busy thinking about himself that he usually left the money on the counter. “You never do it,” she answered sharply, and started away, realizing that she had said the wrong thing.

  Sure enough, he followed her down the counter. What a smile. From ear to ear. “Don’t I?”

  “Pay the cashier, please.”

  “What time do you get off work?”

  “Never.”

  “Look, I really am sorry. I meant the picture was no good. Technically.”

  “Pay the cashier, please.”

  “Look, I’m really genuinely sorry. Look … I don’t lie,” he said when she did not respond. “I don’t have to,” he said, hitching up his trousers.

  He was parked outside at closing time. She refused to accept a lift home. She did not even acknowledge the offer.

  “Hey,” he said, driving slowly along beside her, “I’m only trying to be nice.” She turned off Broadway, up Franklin, and the car turned with her.

  After proceeding in this way for another block, he said, “Well, no kidding, what’s wrong with trying to be nice?”

  “Look, you,” she said, and her heart was beating as though some terrible catastrophe had just occurred, “look, you,” she said again, “leave me alone!” And from then on, he was unable to.

  He took hundreds of pictures of her. Once they spent a whole afternoon driving around the countryside in search of the right barn for her to stand in front of. He wanted one with a falling roof and a gloomy air, and all they could find were big red ones freshly painted. Once he made her stand in front of a white cement wall by the high school, in the full noon light, so that her bangs looked like white straw, and her blue eyes like the eyes in a statue, and the bones of her square serious face appeared to be stone beneath her skin. He entitled the photograph “Angel.”

  He began a whole series of black and white studies of Lucy’s head, which he called “Aspects of an Angel.” At first he had to tell her to stop frowning, or glaring, or fidgeting, and to stop saying “This is ridiculous” every two minutes; but after a while, as her embarrassment diminished, he did not have to tell her to stop doing anything. He told her practically every day that she had fantastic planes in her face, and that she was a far better subject than someone like Ellie, who was all glamour and no substance. He said girls like Ellie were a dime a dozen—just look at the magazines. Her face had character in it. Every afternoon he picked her up at school at three-thirty, and they went off on one of their photographic expeditions. And at night he was parked outside the Dairy Bar, waiting to drive her home.

  At least that was where he drove her the first week. When he asked one night about coming inside awhile, she said absolutely no. To her relief, he did not ask again, once she had consented to drive with him out beyond The Grove to the wooded bluff that overlooked the river, which was called Picnic Paradise by the Winnisaw County Park Commission and Passion Paradise by the high school kids. There Roy would turn off the lights, flip on the radio, and try with all his might to get her to go all the way.

  “Roy, I want to leave now. Really.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to go home, please.”

  “I sort of love you, you know that.”

  “Don’t say that. You don’t.”

  “Angel,” he said, touching her face.

  “Stop. You almost put your finger in my eye.”

  “ ‘You sigh, the song begins,’ ” he sang along with the radio, “ ‘you speak and I hear violins, it’s maaaa-gic.’ ”

  “Roy, I’m not going to do anything. So let’s go now.”
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br />   “I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m only asking you to trust me. Just trust me,” he said, trying once again to put his fingers between the buttons of her uniform.

  “Roy, you’re going to tear something.”

  “I’m not. Not if you don’t fight. Just trust me.”

  “I don’t know what that means. You say that, and when I do, then you only start going further. I don’t want that, Roy.”

  But he was singing into her ear.

  “Without a golden wand,

  Or mystic charms,

  Fantastic things begin,

  When I am in your … arms!

  “Oh, Lucy,” he said.

  “Not there,” she cried, for on arms he had sunk an elbow into her lap, as though by accident.

  “Oh, don’t fight me, don’t fight me, Lucy,” he whispered, digging round and round, “trust me!”

  “Oh, stop! No!”

  “But I’m outside your clothes—it’s only an elbow!”

  “Take me home!”

  Three weeks passed. She said that if that was all he was interested in each and every night, she did not think they should see each other ever again. He said that it wasn’t all he was interested in, but he was a grown man and he hadn’t thought she was going to turn out to be just another kid who didn’t know what life was all about. He hadn’t thought she was going to turn out to be like Ellie, a professional virgin—a c.t., if she knew what that was. She didn’t, and he said he had too much respect for her to tell her. The whole point was that he wouldn’t even have started up in the first place with a girl he couldn’t respect; nor would he have invited her out in the car if he didn’t think she was mature enough to handle some ordinary premarital petting. She said petting was one thing and what he wanted was something else. He said he would even settle for petting if she would just relax; she said that as soon as she started to relax, he stopped settling. She said she wasn’t Monkey Littlefield; he said well then, maybe that was just too bad for her; and she said well then, go back to her if that’s what you’re really after; and he said maybe I will. And so the next afternoon when she came out of school the car wasn’t there. Ellie wasn’t waiting for her either; she had stopped weeks ago, once Roy got involved with Lucy on his “Aspects of an Angel” series. Lucy didn’t know what to do with herself. Again, nowhere to go.

  That night she was walking home from the Dairy Bar when a car pulled up alongside her. “Hey, girlie, want a lift?”

  She did not look around.

  “Hey, Lucy.” He blew the horn and pulled over to the curb. “Hey, it’s me. Hop in,” he said, throwing open the door. “Hi, Angel.”

  She glared at him. “Where were you this afternoon, Roy?”

  “Around.”

  “I’m asking a question, Roy. I waited for you.”

  “Oh, come on, forget it—get in.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Roy,” she said. “I’m not Monkey Littlefield.”

  “Gee, I thought you were.”

  “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, nothing. It’s a joke!”

  “Is that where you were this afternoon? With her?”

  “I was pining for you. Well, come on, I’ll drive you home.”

  “Not until you apologize for this afternoon.”

  “But what did I do?”

  “You broke an engagement, that’s all.”

  “But we had a fight,” he said. “Remember?”

  “Well, if we had a fight, why are you here now? Roy, I won’t be treated—”

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”

  “Are you? Or are you just saying it?”

  “Yes! No! Oh, get in the car, will you?”

  “But you do apologize then,” she said.

  “Yes!”

  She got into the car … “Where do you think you’re driving, Roy?”

  “I’m just driving. It’s early.”

  “I want to go directly home.”

  “You’ll get home. Did you ever not get home?”

  “Turn around, Roy. Please, let’s not start this again.”

  “Maybe I want to talk to you. Maybe I have some more apologizing to do.”

  “Roy, you’re not funny. I want to go home. Now stop this.”

  Just past The Grove he pulled onto the dirt road, instantly turning down his headlights (the unwritten code of Passion Paradise) until he came to a clearing where no other car was parked.

  He flipped the parking lights off now, and the radio on, and tuned in “Rendezvous Highlights.” Doris Day was singing “It’s Magic.”

  “Boy, either it’s coincidence or it’s just our song,” he said, trying to pull her head toward him. “ ‘Without a golden wand, or mystic charms’—” he sang. She resisted his gentle tug on the back of the neck, so he bent his face toward her closed mouth and wide-open eyes. “Angel,” he said.

  “You sound like a movie when you say that. Don’t.”

  “Oh, brother,” he said, “you can really destroy a mood.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. I expected to be driven home.”

  “I’ll take you home! You can at least move over for the time being,” he said. “Well, will you move over, please? So I don’t get a steering wheel in my chest, do you mind?”

  She began to shift to her right, but before she knew it he had her pinned up against the door and was kissing her face. “Angel,” he whispered. “Oh, Angel. You smell like the Dairy Bar.”

  “Well, I happen to work there. I’m sorry.”

  “But I like it,” and then before she could speak again, he pressed his mouth on hers. He did not fall away until the record was over, then with a sigh. He waited to hear what the next song would be.

  “Don’t fight me, Lucy,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “Don’t; it’s not worth it,” and along with Margaret Whiting he began to sing “ ‘There’s a tree in the meadow, with a stream drifting by’—” and to move his hand up under her slip. “Don’t,” he said, when she began to struggle. “Trust me. I just want to touch your knee.”

  “I don’t believe that, Roy. That’s ridiculous.”

  “I swear. I won’t go any higher. Come on, Lucy. What’s a knee?”

  I will always remember

  The love in your eye—

  The day you carved upon that tree,

  I love you till I die.

  They continued kissing. “See?” he said, after several minutes had passed. “Did I move it? Well, did I?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t I say you could trust me?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but don’t put your tongue on my teeth, please.”

  “Why not? What’s it hurting?”

  “Roy, you’re just licking my teeth, what’s the sense to it?”

  “There’s a lot of sense to it! It’s passion!”

  “Well, I don’t want any.”

  “Okay,” he said, “okay. Calm down. I’m sorry. I thought you liked it.”

  “There’s nothing even to like, Roy—”

  “Okay!”

  There was a boy,

  A very strange, enchanted boy.

  They say he wandered very far,

  Very far, over land and sea.

  “I love this,” Roy said. “It’s just out. The guy who wrote it is supposed to live just like that.”

  “What is it?”

  “ ‘Nature Boy.’ Just what the guy who wrote it actually is. It’s really got a great message. Listen to the words.”

  This he said to me:

  “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn,

  Is just to love, and be loved in return.”

  “Lucy,” Roy whispered, “let’s sit in the back.”

  “No. Positively no.”

  “Oh, hell, you don’t have any respect for a mood—do you know that?”

  “But we don’t sit in the back, Roy. We tried to, but you really want to lie down in the back.”

  “Because the back doesn’t have a
steering wheel, Lucy, and it’s more comfortable—and it’s plenty clean too, because I cleaned it out myself this afternoon.”

  “Well, I’m not going back there—”

  “Well, I am! And if you want to sit up here alone, go right ahead!”

  “Oh, Roy—”

  But he was out of the car and into the back seat, where he promptly stretched out, his head against one door and his feet through the open window opposite. “That’s right, I’m lying down. Why shouldn’t I? It’s my car.”

  “I want to go home. You said you’d take me home. This is ridiculous.”

  “To you, sure. Boy, no wonder you and Ellie are friends. You’re a real team.” He mumbled something she couldn’t understand.

  “I’d like to know what you said just then, Roy.”

  “I said two c.t.’s, that’s what.”

  “And what are they?”

  “Oh,” he moaned, “forget it.”

  “Roy,” she said, turning on her knees, now in real anger, “we went through this last week.”

  “Right! Right! We sat in the back. And did anything terrible happen?”

  “Because I wouldn’t let it,” she said.

  “So then don’t let it this time,” he said. “Look, Lucy,” and he sat up and tried to take hold of her head, which she pulled away. “I respect what you want, you know that. But all you want to do,” he said, slumping backward, “is to get your picture taken, and get driven home at night, and what the other person feels … well, I happen to feel something! Oh, forget the whole mess, really.”

  “Oh, Roy,” and she opened the front door and got out of the car, as she had on that awful night the week before. Roy threw open the back door so violently that it careened on its hinges.

  “Get in,” he whispered.

  In the back he told her how much he could love her. He was pulling at her uniform buttons.

  “Everybody says things like that when they want what you want, Roy. Stop. Please stop. I don’t want to do this. Honestly. Please.”

  “But it’s the truth,” he said, and his hand, which had touched down familiarly on her knee, went like a shot up her leg.