Flesh and Blood, Page 8

  Again, the crowd cheered, but not as loudly. Todd leaned closer to the microphone. His face in profile was grave and competent. He had a low forehead and a short nose, a jaw so heavy Susan sometimes thought, without meaning to, of the shape of his skull.

  “Let me begin by saying that all three of these lovely ladies deserve to be queen. All three, each in her own way, represent the Trojan ideal. But tradition dictates that only one can be chosen. So, without further ado . . .”

  He held up the envelope, sparkling white. He tore it open, pulled out a sheet of white paper. Nothing changed on his broad, mild face.

  He said, “Permit me to present the first princess of the 1968 homecoming game. Marcia Kosselini.”

  Cheers and whoops, scattered boos, rose from the crowd. Marcia smiled and lifted her chin higher, as if defying Peggy Chandler to place the single red princess's rose in her hand. Rosemary and Susan turned to each other at the same instant. Each knew not to permit any sign of relief or triumph to show on her face. Rosemary mouthed the words, “It's you,” and Susan shook her head slightly, mouthing back, “No, it's you.” For a moment Susan wanted Rosemary to win so that no disappointment would ever stain her. For a moment she wanted Rosemary's perfection to expand and expand until she embodied everything, every feminine virtue, and she, Susan, could become her acolyte. Her kind and deserving daughter.

  “This is it,” Todd said into the microphone. A silence cut through the air, marked only by the loudspeaker's soft crackle and the remote shrill of a baby crying.

  “May I present princess Susan Stassos, and the queen of the 1968 homecoming, Rosemary Potter.”

  Rosemary and Susan fell into each other's arms. Susan felt relief and a flood of devotion. Yes, of course. Rosemary was always going to win; it was what she was born for. Susan felt the touch of Rosemary's hair, and thought, 'I'm the first to hold the queen.' The crowd cheered. When Rosemary and Susan drew back, Rosemary was weeping and Susan realized that she herself was not. “Congratulations,” she said. She had not expected the tone of formality she heard in her own voice. Rosemary nodded, helpless with tears, and Susan saw, with a shock, how much she, too, had wanted to win. How much she had wanted to finish school in complete, untarnished victory. Susan felt herself stiffen inside Rosemary's embrace. Rosemary had said, 'It's you,' knowing—she'd surely known—that Susan could not win. Susan had a Greek name. She wasn't blond.

  They parted. They smiled out into the cheering crowd. Peggy Chandler hugged Rosemary, and carefully placed the rhinestone circlet on her head. She gave Susan her single rose, put a dry kiss on her cheek, and then placed a dozen roses, wrapped in tissue, in Rosemary's arms. Susan glanced at Todd. He was looking straight at her, smiling, and she smiled back, thinking, 'I can survive this, I'm being changed by it but I'll survive.'

  The band played “Stardust,” and all three girls took their places in the back seat of the convertible. Rosemary held Susan's hand. They didn't speak. They waved to the crowd. As the car was driven slowly around the track, before the noise and waves of the spectators, Susan fingered the stem of her single rose and wondered what she had expected. Maybe she was surprised because her expectations had been so entirely met. Maybe she'd believed that Rosemary's obvious destiny, the ease with which she'd always won, somehow disqualified her. As the car rounded the far end of the track Susan saw that the world's capacity for surprise was limited. Facts prevailed over romantic unlikelihoods. A poor girl—a dark, foreign girl—could be a princess. The horizon extended no farther than that.

  When the car finished its circuit, the girls were told to remain in the back seat, still waving up into the bleachers, while the band finished its number. Then Todd opened the rear door. Marcia got out first, followed by Rosemary, whose emergence inspired scattered applause. Susan got out and Todd took her in his arms with such force she gasped. “I'm so proud of you,” he whispered. When he released her she scanned his face for signs of sympathy or disappointment. She saw none, but he was impossible to trust. He claimed he'd never met a man he didn't like.

  Several girls, those who'd expected to be nominated but had been passed over, congratulated Susan and she began to know, for the first time, the particular kindness the world extends to those who do not win. Rosemary stood several feet away, beside her boyfriend, Randy, her face still shining with tears. Tonight it was safely behind her—a girlhood of unqualified success. Flashbulbs snapped, igniting Rosemary's crown, and when Susan blinked she saw the crown's phosphorescent red image.

  “The yearbook people told me I've got to keep you three together for pictures,” Todd said softly. It was uncharacteristic phrasing. Ordinarily Todd would have said, 'You have to stay together for your pictures.' Ordinarily he acknowledged no gap between what was expected and what was necessary. He squeezed the back of Susan's neck, and she grazed his cuff with her fingernails.

  Two more girls offered congratulations, and then Susan's family emerged from the crowd. Her mother reached her first, clasped her quickly to her breasts, and said, “You looked so beautiful out there.” Her father chucked her under the chin with his thumb, laughed, and said, “Robbery. There should be a recount. Don't you think so, Todd?”

  Todd said, “Sir, there's no doubt in my mind who the winner is.”

  Her father nodded, and shrugged. “Blondes,” he said. “The whole world goes crazy over blond hair. I've never understood it, myself.”

  Susan shifted her weight toward Todd. Her father blamed her, though he wouldn't admit it. She'd never missed the honor roll, never lost a club election. She'd danced the lead in her ballet recital. Now she stood uncrowned, with one rose, while cameras clicked and flashed around a girl who had somehow worked harder, exerted subtler charms, been more. Susan Stassos was a handmaiden. Of three sisters, she was one of the two the prince disdained to marry.

  Now she belonged to her father.

  Zoe hung back, embarrassed, but Billy punched Susan's arm and said, “You should get the goddamn purple heart for this. I mean, the whole rest of your life is going to seem safe and tame compared to this.”

  She didn't want to be this rancorous girl, standing with a single rose under crepe-paper bunting in the cafeteria as the band played “Cherish.” If she couldn't win she wanted at least to be blase like Marcia, who stood at the edge of the dance floor proud as a captive Amazon, surrounded by her friends—tough girls in makeup and short skirts—and by Eddie Gagliostra, an ill-tempered, handsome boy who was, in Marcia's own words, only good for one thing. One of her girlfriends said loudly, “Let's duck into the ladies' for a smoke, Princess,” and Marcia laughed. Maybe she'd prove mean enough to escape her fate, the two-story brick apartment building, the wild husband who couldn't keep a job. Before she left for her cigarette Eddie whispered something to her and she smiled knowingly. Eddie had thick lips and a broken nose, a curl of oily hair that trembled on his forehead. Susan pretended to be listening to Dottie Wiggins but in fact she imagined what it would be like to be Marcia, later that evening, drunk and naked in a car or a borrowed bedroom. She imagined Eddie—those fat, obscene lips. Dottie Wiggins was saying something about college and Susan thought of Eddie, of the sneering self-satisfied pleasure he would take in making a girl lose control. He broke into houses, bullied the younger boys. He had twice menaced Billy in the locker room. Susan imagined the sinews of his arms and thighs, his insolent tongue, the spare hard muscles of his chest and stomach. She returned, flushed, to Dottie Wiggins, who was saying, “—Tufts is a better school but the University of Colorado would be a lot more fun and I think there's a lot to be said for having fun, don't you?”

  “I don't think anybody around here has any fun, really,” Susan said. “I think we've all just learned to make a lot of noise together and call it fun.”

  Dottie looked at her suspiciously. “Well,” she said, “if you want to get all tragic and everything.”

  Susan twirled the rose in her hands. “No, honey,” she said. She had never called another girl 'honey' before.
'Honey' was what Marcia called people she considered drips. “No, I don't want to get tragic. I want to have fun, real fun. I honestly do.”

  She knew what she was doing. She was starting the story: Susan Stassos got nasty about failing to win. Dottie would tell everyone. She was a good mimic and she would do Susan, standing tense at the edge of the dance floor, twirling her rose and saying, in a voice Dottie would borrow from Marlene Dietrich, 'Honey, no vun hass any fon, not reeely.'

  “Well,” Dottie said. “There's no real trick to it. Fun's the easiest thing in the world, especially for someone like you.”

  “Someone like me,” she said.

  She thought about going home that night. Would her father be awake? Would he have been drinking? Now that she was less than she'd been, how could she ever say no? How could she ever say yes?

  Todd returned from whatever duty he'd been attending to. “Hey, Sooz,” he said. “Hi, Dottie.”

  “Hi, Todd,” Dottie said brightly, mockingly. She was racked by envy, electrified by it, and her efforts to be brisk and fun and carefree had eaten her flesh nearly to the bone.

  “Sooz, you want to go outside for a minute?” Todd asked. “It's a nice night, I wouldn't mind a little breath of air.”

  “All right,” Susan said. “See you later, Dottie.”

  “See you,” Dottie said, and as Susan left with Todd she knew Dottie was already looking for someone to tell the story to. No vun hass any fon, not reeely.

  Susan went with Todd to the asphalt square immediately outside the cafeteria, where students were officially permitted to go if they left the dance. Beyond the square, which was mercilessly lit, stood the mullioned bulk of the gym and, beyond that, the empty football field. Several other couples whispered in the blaring circle of light. They registered Todd's and Susan's presence, shifted slightly. One, an ambitious boy from the junior class, abandoned his date to shake Todd's hand and discuss his own upcoming campaign for next year's presidency. “Congratulations, Susan,” the boy added. Susan thanked him. Rays of deep red from her cheerleading sweater skimmed through the blinding air as Todd disengaged himself from the boy and led her to the far edge of the light. Out in the soft black, cigarettes flared. Scraps of cloud sped past the moon.

  “What a night,” Todd said.

  “Mm-hm. To tell you the truth, I'm glad it's almost over.”

  He paused. He had something to say. Susan thought, 'If he's been practicing a consolation speech for me, I'll break up with him.' She hoped he would. She was ready to scream.

  “Sooz?” he said. “Susan?”

  “Yes?”

  She twirled the rose, insolently. He was going to advise her to think of this as a learning experience, to thank God for giving her a chance to strengthen her character. She thought of Marcia, called 'princess' as a joke. Marcia moving out into the world, powerful and free.

  “Well, you see,” Todd said, “I've been thinking.”

  “Mm.”

  “About next year. You know. We didn't apply to any of the same schools. And now it's too late.”

  “I know.”

  “And we haven't really talked about that.”

  “That's right. We haven't.”

  “So I've been thinking. Suzy. Wherever I go, I want you to come with me. If it's Yale, you know. Or Princeton.”

  His face reddened, and his eyes took on a rheumy, unhealthy cast. She had never seen him flustered like this, except when they had sex. Suddenly she wanted to help him reestablish himself, to find his way back.

  “What are you saying?” she asked softly.

  “I guess. It seems like I'm saying I want us to get married. You and me. I want to marry you.”

  The blood rushed to her head. All she could think of was, This is happening now, right now.' Someone wanted to marry her. He was asking her now, outside the cafeteria, on the night of her defeat. She thought, 'I'm not ready for this. This shouldn't be happening here.'

  “Oh, Todd,” she said. “I don't know.”

  “You don't know if you want to get married? Or you don't know if you want to marry me?”

  “Well, both. No, forget I said that. This is just—well, could we?”

  She didn't know what she meant by that. She wanted to be told whether getting married was something a person like her could do. She wanted to know if Todd was the kind of boy you married.

  “Well, yeah,” he said, and he managed a smile. “We could, if you wanted to.”

  “My father,” she said.

  “I know he's old-fashioned,” Todd said. “I'd talk to him. I'd be very—”

  Then Susan knew the answer. She knew what to do.

  She was going somewhere. If she and Todd went home that night and announced their engagement, she'd have a new language to say no in. She'd be protected.

  “We could,” she said. “Yes. This is really something we could do, isn't it?”

  “Sure,” Todd said, and laughed affectionately. “We can absolutely, positively do it.”

  His poise was back. His forthright, practiced Toddness.

  “We could do it,” Susan said. “Oh, sure. Let's get married.”

  “Really? You really want to?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. Right away.”

  “Right away?”

  “Well, as soon as we graduate. I can wear the veil under my mortarboard, we can go straight to the church after we get our diplomas.”

  “You're funny,” he said. “You know that? You're a funny girl.”

  1969/ Mary wrote on the envelope the phone bill came in: I will not steal. She put the pledge in writing. But she 'went on stealing. She didn't know why she did it. She remembered the first day, in Englehart's. She'd gone to look at stationery for Susan's wedding invitations, just to see if Englehart's stocked anything decent or if she and Susan would have to drive to New York. The salesgirl, young, tentatively pretty under too much base, had shown her the samples. Ordinary cream, a yellowish ivory, a blue milky and shallow as a bus ticket. Borders trimmed with lilies, with doves and spectral white bells. Englehart's wouldn't do. She'd have to take Susan to the city after all. Mary thanked the salesgirl, told her she'd think about it. As she rose from her seat at the counter she knew herself to be an attractive woman in her late thirties, carrying a good navy clutch and graciously rejecting the wares of a store that hired salesgirls like this one, a girl whose common prettiness was wearing away with her youth. In her own youth Mary had seen women like herself, prosperous wives who kindly and firmly rejected the merchandise in neighborhood stores. As she stood, as the sheer satin of her slip fell with liquid ease over her nylons, she saw herself with such clarity she might have been standing outside her own body. She might have been the salesgirl, watching as a woman of stature and property, a woman who wrapped all her gifts perfectly, withdrew from the local stationery store, where the quality was not of the best. Mary's heart rose and she knew a calm, shimmering satisfaction that hovered inside her and then turned to uncertainty, quick as a shattered plate. Her older daughter, an acknowledged beauty, was about to marry a handsome boy on his way to Yale. It was a triumph to have a daughter like that and yet, even as it delighted Mary, Susan's good fortune seemed also to diminish her in some way. She worried that when they appeared in public together she looked fraudulent beside her daughter. She suspected Susan found her sad and slightly humorous. She reminded herself, with a pang of guilt and pleasure, that Susan had not been elected queen. As Mary walked toward the door she heard the salesgirl close the sample book; she heard the heavy muffled thump of the cover. On her way out she stopped to look at address books, because it had occurred to her that Billy was getting to an age when he might need one. The address books Englehart's stocked were second-rate. Their covers were simulated leather, their bindings indifferently glued. Mary stood frowning over one of the books, bound in oxblood plastic, emblazoned with the golden word Addresses, the final s of which had already begun to chip. It was such a flimsy thing, so beneath her, that she felt foolish even looking
at it. She glanced around, saw that no one was watching, and almost before she knew she would do it she slipped the address book into her bag. Her forehead burned. Calmly, walking as herself, in heels and pearl earrings, she left the store with the tacky little address book hidden in her bag, its price tag still attached. The tag, when she looked at it, said that the book had cost ninety-nine cents.

  She didn't know why she'd done it. She didn't want the awful address book. It had not been covetousness she'd felt; the impulse had had more to do with cleaning up. Afterward she'd felt a nervous sensation of relief, as if some promise of bad luck—some debt—had been forestalled but not fully answered. Now she had the address book, this insubstantial thing, and she wasn't sure what to do with it. She couldn't give it to Billy, but she found that she couldn't quite bring herself to throw it away, either. She'd risked so much for it. She removed the price tag and tucked the little book into her top drawer, thinking maybe she'd give it to someone someday. Eventually, she'd be able to put it to some kind of use.

  Since then, she'd stolen any number of little things, and always felt the same queasy satisfaction, as if she'd risked herself to create a little more cleanliness and order. The stealing was a minor aspect of her life. It occupied roughly the same interior space a dull hobby would, or the occasional perusal of National Geographic, with its simultaneous suggestions that the regions of the earth were unutterably strange and yet, in the final analysis, all more or less alike. Mary lost herself in the plans for Susan's wedding, which demanded endless decisions right down to the rosebuds on the cake. The wedding was so much, it weighed so heavily on her lungs, that she finally asked her doctor if something might be wrong with her and was given a prescription for pale yellow pills. She took a pill on the day of the wedding itself, and was surprised that for an instant, as Susan stood at the altar with Todd, she felt a stab of anger sharp enough to penetrate the pill's sweet flotation. The anger was sourceless—just nerves, she'd tell herself later—and seemed to have to do with Susan's white dress, with the placid handsomeness of Todd's square face as he bent to kiss her. Nerves, Mary thought, and the inevitable fears on a mother's part about her daughter's happiness, given all she herself had learned about what can go wrong.