Alma Mater Read online

  "Yeah, but once I found her I discovered she was bright and beautiful."

  "Thanks to me. I am responsible for bringing you two together. You owe your happiness to me."

  "Saint." Vic put her arm around Jinx's neck.

  "Face it—if Charly and I hadn't had Physiology together, then

  who knows? You were waiting for me after class, and then he wanted to know me." Jinx sighed.

  "If you hadn't introduced me, I'd still be out there trying to find Vic." Charly smiled.

  What Jinx wouldn't admit was that when Charly came up to her before the next class, her heart had skipped a beat. But when he asked about her friend, she knew she was defeated before she'd even had a chance. She promised to introduce Charly to Vic, and she kept her promise. Jinx loved Vic, she would always love Vic, but there were times when it was hard not to resent her.

  'Vic, do you remember the first time you saw Charly?"

  "Sure, when you introduced us."

  "Well?"

  "Well, what?" Vic shrugged.

  Jinx asked. "Do you remember what you thought?"

  Accustomed to male attention, Vic remembered her first meeting with Charly, but it didn't loom as large in her consciousness as it did in his. She hoped that didn't show. "I thought he was a nice guy."

  "Thank you." Charly smiled.

  "Jinx, if you go around trying to find someone, you never will. I think it kind of sneaks up on you. You'll meet the right person."

  "And he'll like intelligent women." Charly winked at Jinx.

  He liked Jinx. She was cute, energetic. He had to like her. Jinx and Vic were inseparable.

  They passed the Catholic church, St. Bede's, stopping to admire the large statue of Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mother, in the middle of the immaculately kept grounds. Across the street, the monsignor lived in a tidy white house where he kept an eye on St. Bede's and Mary.

  "She always looks so peaceful," Jinx remarked. "Male saints never look as peaceful as the Blessed Mother."

  "Because they're struggling against their own testosterone."

  "If Raphael were alive, he'd paint you as the Madonna." Charly kissed Vic's cheek.

  Jinx grimaced. "I'm going to throw up."

  "Cynic," Charly said.

  "I'll be the godmother to Vic's children. They'll need a cynic in their lives. That's probably why the BVM looks so peaceful. The kids are out of the house."

  "Your mother, if she heard you . . ."

  "She won't unless you tell her." Jinx pinched Vic's arm. "Which reminds me, what's the plan for the weekend?"

  Vic rolled a deep breath. She hadn't yet told Charly that she needed to go home. He hated it when she missed a football game. In his defense, he attended all her lacrosse games. Vic and Jinx held the lacrosse team together each spring.

  "Home."

  Charly's face fell.

  "Dad's lost all our money. Again." She glanced at each of her friends and then back to the serene BVM. "Mother came by yesterday. She didn't make a big deal about it, but you know it is. Last time he did this I was in seventh grade, and it was hell."

  "Can you pay tuition?" Charly dropped his large hand on her shoulder, lightly squeezing.

  "I did already. That sucked up most of the money I made working for Uncle Don this summer." She exhaled again, louder this time. "I've got enough for my books, but I think I need to get a job. No lacrosse."

  "Don't say that," Jinx said quickly, her voice carrying a sense of urgency. "There's plenty of time before practice starts. We'll think of something."

  "Hey, it's not a funeral. If I can't play lacrosse, I can't. I can't let Mom and Mignon down."

  "There's got to be another way," Jinx said.

  "Sell dope?" Vic suggested, raising her eyebrows.

  "Mmm, not a good idea."

  "Charly, you're so straight." Jinx studied the BVM's impassive, beatific expression. "I think she'd look fetching in a striped uniform." "Prisoners wear orange now," Vic corrected her.

  "Orange, well, that's bright and cheery." Jinx thought for a moment. "Maybe someone needs a researcher, some professor who lost his graduate assistant."

  "Yeah, but I'm not in graduate school."

  "They can make exceptions," Jinx said hopefully.

  "We'll figure something out," Charly reassured her.

  They walked back toward the shops. Charly kissed Vic again and then headed for class.

  Vic and Jinx walked back to Vic's apartment, just around the corner from Jinx's. The two friends could never be far apart, but they couldn't room together. They'd figured out early on that they'd never get any work done.

  leez, there's nothing in here." Jinx looked around her friend's apartment.

  "One bed, one kitchen table, four chairs, and a million books. That's all I need."

  "Vic, it's depressing."

  "The living room is cavernous. I don't think of it as depressing. I think of it as spartan elegance."

  "No money."

  "Well, yeah. Now I'm really glad I didn't buy anything. I mean after Mother's visit. I've got a little bit in reserve."

  "But if we go to church sales and the used furniture stores, we'll find stuff. Not here. Cross the James into Surry County, home sweet home. I know we can find stuff over there. And then there's my mother, Princess Rat Pack. I can pry some stuff loose from her."

  "Did I ever tell you you're my best friend?"

  "Not often enough." Jinx sat on the windowsill in the living room, looking out the wide open windows. She sighed. "I don't care about going to the football game. I'll go home with you."

  "Your mother won't be happy."

  "My mother has a deep primal fear that I will not properly socialize. I don't have a date for the game, so I might as well go home and see if I can get stuff out of her once she gets over the shock of seeing me. Her college days," Jinx said, "were an endless round of dates, parties, dances—jeez. I'm not her. She was a beauty."

  "Ah, Jinx, you're great looking."

  "You've been looking at me since we were born."

  "Tell yourself you're great looking. Attitude is everything." "You've got enough for both of us. But really, my mother drives me

  crazy. She still thinks the purpose of going to college is to get married. I can't say that your mother is far off that, except she has the sense not to push. Plus you have Charly."

  "Because Aunt Bunny pushes enough. It was different for them, I guess. You know, they still think you're only as good as the man you're with."

  "We should have gone to the University of Wyoming or Montana. We stayed too close to home."

  "Yeah." Vic sat opposite Jinx on the windowsill. "But it would cost a fortune to go to school out of state, and those places are really far away. I'd love to see them, though."

  "We could run away." Jinx almost meant it.

  "Tempting. Damn, it's senior year, and I have no more idea what I'm going to do than . . ." Vic's voice trailed off.

  "We get our degrees. If our GREs are good, we can push on. Not that I much want to, but it delays making a decision," Jinx said.

  "Aren't you taking the Law Boards, too?"

  "Yeah. If worse comes to worst, I can join your dad's law firm." "That's worst, all right."

  Frank Savedge, a country lawyer, drew up wills and did the paperwork for land transactions.

  Vic stretched out, her feet touching Jinx's thigh. "You know, I sometimes wonder if we won't wind up like our mothers."

  "Yeah, me, too. The feminist movement is something that hap-

  pened in New York and Chicago. It ain't here, and it's already 1980." "Nah, when it's four-thirty in New York, it's 1940 in Williamsburg." They both laughed at the old joke.

  "That's what your mother says." Jinx got up and fetched a Coke for herself and another for Vic. In the sticky heat of late summer, nothing else could quench the eternal thirst.

  "You know, I do think of running away sometimes. Funny that you said it. But I don't know if I could leave Southside. It gets
in your bones."

  "I could leave. In a heartbeat. And so could you. Besides, we could always come back," Jinx sensibly added, holding the frosty glass to her forehead. "We need a thunderstorm."

  "Sistergirl, we need more than that."

  B

  unny McKenna, R. J.'s sister, carried an expensive pair of Leica binoculars wherever she went. When R. J. joked that her sister probably slept with those binoculars, Bunny always replied that

  they were more exciting than her husband, Don.

  An avid bird-watcher, she'd suddenly whip the binoculars to her eyes and mutter, "Green heron." It could be quite unnerving.

  On this languid September afternoon as golden light splashed over the dock at the Savedge place on the bank of the James, Bunny had already identified thirty-two different species of birds, many of them waterfowl. She also named the people in the sailboats gliding by. Each passerby earned a tart comment.

  R. J. was sitting by the dock in a blue rowboat. Armed with her toolbox, she was handily replacing an oarlock.

  Bunny, black binocs to her eyes, again swept her gaze down the river. "Why doesn't Francie put him on a diet?" She spied some friends out in the middle of the glistening water, the husband, Nordie, at the till of a breathtaking sailboat.

  "He'd just go uptown and get a cheeseburger. Ah, I got it." R. J. lifted off the old oarlock.

  "Nordie's beyond a spare tire. I mean, it's a tractor tire now. Can you imagine sex with a man with a potbelly? It would be a triumph of physics."

  "No, dear."

  "No what? It would or would not be a triumph or you can't imagine it in the first place?" She lowered her binoculars.

  "Can't imagine sex with Nordie."

  "Do you think sex is overrated?"

  "Bunny, we've had this discussion before. I believe it started in 1955. The day you turned fourteen."

  "I hate that. You were born in an even year and I was born in an odd one. I just hate that. 1938. Now that sounds lovely. But no, I'm 1941. And all anyone remembers about 1941 is the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It's not fair."

  "You aren't even forty yet, so don't bitch and moan." R. J. sanded the spot where the old oarlock had been and then placed the new oarlock on the spot. Perfect fit.

  "Some days I feel like I'm one hundred," Bunny sighed, swinging her legs over the water.

  "Momma said there'd be days like this."

  Both sisters then sang the tune.

  "You know something, Orgy? I don't know if I want to get old. Momma Catlett has lived too long. And the Wallaces—now, they're demented. I want to go flat out, pedal to the metal." Bunny stared down at the oarlock that R. J. was screwing into place. "You are so organized. Protestants are supposed to be organized."

  "Bunny, I can usually follow your conversational leaps and non sequiturs, but you are positively scatterbrained today."

  "How good of you to notice." Bunny whipped her binoculars to her eyes. "White ibis. Big one."

  R. J. slipped the oar into the oarlock and wiggled it around. "Not bad, if I do say so myself."

  "That's what men are for."

  "If I waited for my husband to do it, it would never get done. I think Frank has mowed the lawn once since we married." R. J. said this without rancor, more in the nature of an accepted fact.

  Bunny wondered if perhaps men weren't wiser about these things. The grass would always be there, but a good golf game—now that was worth one's time.

  "Donald's dependable about the chores. He always hires someone else to do them." Bunny laughed.

  Don made a good living off his combined Dodge/Toyota dealership. At his wife's urging, he had quickly grabbed the Japanese dealership when it became available back in the late sixties, and it had proved a sound move. Dodge was hanging in there so-so, but Toyotas were hot.

  R. J. looke.d up at the broad blue sky. "What is it about late afternoons? I love them so. The day has fallen into place. When I get up in the morning, I know what my chores are, but the day itself hasn't taken shape. By now it has, and the light is pure gold, golden and rich like cadmium paint. The hours seem lucky, somehow."

  "I never thought of it that way."

  "I wonder if every hour has its own spirit."

  R. J.'s poetic musings delighted Bunny even if she couldn't help teasing her sister about them. Bunny's mind worked in a straightforward manner, rather like a locomotive. She might have ideas, cars hitched to the engine of her desire, but everything was on a track. R. J.'s mind took in everything, but she didn't order it immediately. It was as though she saw the world through the compound eyes of a dragonfly, a series of separate but related images. Unlike her younger sister, R. J. could let her mind wander. She felt no great need to prove anything.

  "Who's that?" Bunny peered at a large boat under power, a Chris Craft. She put the glasses to her eyes to read the yacht club flag flying from the back. "Bahia Mar. That's in Fort Lauderdale."

  "Probably on the way back down for the winter."

  "Winter's a long way off."

  "If we're lucky." R. J. sat down, picking up an oar in each hand. "Ready for a spin?"

  "Sure." Bunny gracefully dropped into the boat, turned, and untied it.

  Having grown up on the water, both women were in their element and could manage any boat with an ease that people coming to it later in life envied. Both could read the river, the currents, the temperature, the quick building of a sandbar that might be sluiced away in a mighty storm. They just knew.

  R. J., tall and strong like her elder daughter, pulled them out into

  the deepening water with four powerful strokes. Then she pointed the bow downriver so they could float for a while. Bunny peered at the shoreline through her glasses. "Blue heron. Mallard. A lot of mallards this year, and this one's a male yellow-green bill." Without dropping her binoculars, she asked, "So what are you going to do?"

  "Same as always. Go without."

  "Do you think you'll have to sell off acreage?"

  "I won't let Frank do that. This place has been here since 1642, through Indian wars and white men's wars and just about every mess you can think of, and I'm not letting him sell it."

  Bunny gently placed her binoculars on her chest. "Must have been something once upon a time, four thousand acres."

  "It's something now."

  "Yeah, it is. You've still got close to a thousand acres, but I don't know what you can do to keep them."

  "I can make him sign off the deed. When we married, things were different. I was chattel." She smiled ruefully. "What was mine became his. That's got to change."

  Bunny blinked. "Would he do it? Remove himself?"

  "Perhaps, but it will be a terrific blow to him."

  "And even if he did, could you keep it going? Things are changing, honey pie. You can't make a goddamned dime farming or fishing."

  "No, but I've got over a mile of shoreline and if I have to, I can intelligently develop part of it."

  "R. J.!" Bunny's voice rose.

  "Show me another way."

  "If Vic will marry Charly, that'll bring a nice chunk of change into the family. And I predict she will marry him right after graduation," Bunny said.

  "We don't know what will be settled on him by his family. Some families make the kids go out and work. And I don't think that's a bad idea—no, I don't."

  "They'll get them started at least. It wouldn't do for a Harrison to be poor."

  "Bunny, it doesn't do for anyone to be poor."

  "How true." Bunny stretched out her long, pretty legs.

  And what if Vic and Charly don't want to live here?" R. J. continued. "Surry County may not hold them. For all I know they'll troop up to Richmond. Even Washington! Charly's got to get a job."

  "She'd die of boredom. She's an outdoor kid."

  R. J. laughed. "Vic's happiest running the tractor or putting up fence."

  "Her idea of fashion is a red bandanna around her neck, overalls, and a shirt. Or overalls and no shirt." Bunny thought Vic's attire
most unladylike.

  "She worked hard this summer down at Don's and then on the farm in the early mornings and evenings. She's not afraid to work. Neither is Charly. They'll make something of themselves, those two," R. J. said.

  "She's going to end up the wife of an important man. I can't picture her slapping down shingles on a roof."