It was a glorious fight — the whole bit. We yelled and screamed at each other, and she slammed doors and threw books at me. I insulted her intelligence and her maturity, and she screamed like a fishwife.
Then she tried to hit me, and I held her arms so she couldn’t, so she kicked my shins for a while — barefoot of course.
I’m sure we both knew we were behaving like a couple of twelve-year-olds, but we were having such a good time with the whole thing that we just went ahead and let it all hang out.
Finally she ran crying into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. I went right on in after her. She was lying across the bed, sobbing as if her heart were about to break.
“Come on, Blossom,” I said soothingly, sitting down beside her.
“You — you said such aw — awful things,” she sobbed.
“Come on, now. You know damn well I didn’t mean any of it.”
“No, I don’t,” she wailed. “First that awful phone call and now you come down here yelling, and calling me names, and ordering me around, and grabbing me, and — oh, Danny, why?”
“Because I’m in love with you, you little knothead,” I said. I hadn’t really meant to say it, but it was pretty damned obvious by then.
She rolled over very quickly and looked up at me, her face shocked. “What?” she demanded.
“You heard me.”
“Say it again.”
I did, and then she was all over me like a fur coat. She tasted pretty salty from all the crying, but I didn’t mind. I kissed her soundly about the head and shoulders for ten minutes or so — as I said before, it was a glorious kind of fight.
“You’re going to transfer up to the U next quarter,” I said firmly.
“All right, Danny,” she said meekly. “I know it’s stupid, but I can’t fight you and me both.”
“You knew damn well you were going to do it anyway,” I said kissing her again. “Why did we have to go through all of this?”
“I just wanted you to say it, that’s all,” she said, nestling down in my arms.
“You knew that was what it was all about, for God’s sake. You’re not dense.”
“A girl likes to be told,” she said stubbornly.
Women!
38
And so, after the holidays, Clydine Stewart, the terror of Pacific Avenue, transferred to the University of Washington. I’m not exactly sure what she’d threatened her parents with to get them to go along with a switch like that in the middle of her junior year, when the loss of credits probably set her back almost two full semesters, but somehow she managed to pull it off.
She rented a sleeping room down the block from my shack — primarily for the sake of appearances and to have a place to store her spare clothes and her empty luggage. She slept there on an average of about once a month.
I suppose that if a man lives with a woman long enough, he gets used to the damp hand-laundry hanging in the bathroom and the bristly hair-curler that he steps on barefoot in the middle • of the night, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
“You don’t put your hair up,” I said one morning, as calmly as I could, “so why in the name of God do I keep stepping on these damned things?” I held out a well-mashed curler.
“A girl never knows when she might want to,” she said, as if explaining to a child.
We were horribly crowded, and our books and records got hopelessly jumbled, and we were always stumbling over each other. We argued continually about who was going to use the desk and who got firsties on the bathroom in the morning. All in all, it was a pretty normal sort of arrangement. We even wound up sharing the same toothbrush after she lost hers and always kept forgetting to buy a new one.
She even read my mail, which bugged me a little at first, but I couldn’t see much point in making an issue out of it since we read all our letters to each other anyway.
“Hey,” she said one afternoon as I came in, “you got a letter from Cap Miller.”
“Where are you?”
“In the bathtub.”
I went on in. She’d gotten over that little hang-up.
“Where is it?”
“On the desk.”
I bent over and kissed her and then dabbled foam on the end of her nose.
“Rat,” she said.
“Are we going to have to go to the store this afternoon?” I asked her, going on back out to the living room-bedroom-study-reception hall-gymnasium.
“We’d better, if you want any supper tonight. Why?”
“Just wondering, that’s all.”
“Did you get any word on that fellowship yet?”
I picked up Cap’s letter.
“Yeah,” I said. “I got it.” I tried to sound casual about it.
She squealed and came charging, suds and all, out of the bathroom. I got very wetly kissed, and then she saw that the shades were up and scampered back to the tub. What a nut!
I unfolded the letter. It was in pencil.
DEAR DAN,
I have been meaning to write a letter to you ever since we got your fine letter just before X-mas. I was real glad to hear about the big man. I have been awful worried about him ever since the trip last fall.
I was awful sorry to hear that your brother and his Mrs. broke up. That’s always a real shame.
The snow here is pretty deep this time of year, but you don’t need to worry about being able to get through come spring. Clint says he’ll carry you piggyback from Twisp if need be. Ha-ha.
We are all wintering pretty well considering our ages. Clint has a little trouble with his legs that he broke so many times when the weather turns cold. And I have a little trouble getting started out of a morning myself, but otherwise we don’t have no complaints to speak of.
Well, Dan, it’s about time I went down and fed the stock. Old Ned is resting up so he’ll be all full of p — — & vinegar when you come up. I knew you’d like to know that. Ha-ha. I have been going on here about long enough. Next thing you know I’ll be turning into one of them book writers your learning about at college. So long till next time.
Your friend, CAP
Oh. Clint says to say hello for him, too.
I could see him laboring over the letter with that stub-pencil of his, the sweat trickling down the outer edges of his white mustache.
“He isn’t very well educated, is he?” she called from the bathroom.
“He’s one of the smartest men I know,” I said.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“I know.”
“You can see how hard he worked on that letter,” she said. “I kept trying to see through all that stiffness to the real man.”
“You have to meet him to see that,” I said.
“I hope I get the chance,” she said.
“You will,” I promised her.
Somebody knocked at the door, and I put Cap’s letter down, swung the bathroom door shut and answered it.
It was my mother.
“Danny, baby,” she said, her mouth kind of loose and her tongue a little thick.
I couldn’t say anything. Just seeing her was like having somebody grab me by the stomach with an ice-cold hand. I know that sounds literary, but that’s the only way to describe it. I held the door open and let her in. My hands started to shake.
The years on booze had not been very kind to my mother. Her hair was ratty and gray, and not very clean, and her hat was kind of squashed down on top of it. She’d tried to put on some makeup and had done a rotten job of it. Her coat was shabby, and she had a large hole in one of her stockings.
She stood uncertainly in the middle of the room, waiting for me to say something.
“Sit down, Mother,” I said, pointing at the couch.
“Thank you, Danny,” she said and perched uneasily on the edge of the couch.
“How have you been, Mother?” I asked her.
“Oh,” she said tremulously, “not too bad, Danny. I’ve got a pretty good job down in Portland. I’m in maintenance.” She pronounced it “maintain-ance.” “It is with the company that owns this big office building. I work nights.”
I nodded. It was about what I’d expected.
“I got a week off,” she said. “I heard about poor Jackie’s marriage going on the rocks. You heard about that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Well, quick as a shot I went to my boss and I told him I was going to have to have a few days off so I could come up to Tacoma and see if I couldn’t help him maybe patch things up. Poor Jackie. He’s had such bad luck with his marriages.”