Philip Wylie - Tomorrow!

He hadn’t written her that he was coming home for his thirty days because, until the last moment at the base in Texas, he hadn’t been sure of the date on which his leave would begin.

He’d reached the house, by cab from the airport, just in time for dinner. He had wanted then to phone Lenore of his arrival. But he had felt it would slight his family, his mother especially, if he immediately sought out someone else. He had hoped all during the meal (which the siren had spoiled as a family reunion anyhow) that Lenore might step across for some reason or another and find him there. Maybe the Bailey phone would be out of order—or they’d need to borrow coffee-or something. He had known the hope was preposterous. He had also reflected during the meal (while he told his mother that life in the Air Force “wasn’t bad at all” and while he had watched with incredulity the amount of food Nora consumed) that in years past he had run over to the Bailey house freely, casually, while now he felt a definite constraint.

He still felt it as he walked along on the mowed grass between his driveway and the privet hedge, examining the Bailey house. There was a Buick parked at the curb—“a Buick,” his father often said, “trying to look like a Cadillac”—and a Ford in the back yard. That meant all three Baileys were probably at home: Beau, Netta and Lenore. But it didn’t mean Lenore had no date that evening or that Chuck, at twenty-four, could simply enter without even knocking as he’d done when he and Lenore had studied algebra together.

He had about decided to go back in the house and phone formally when a door opened and somebody came out. At first he couldn’t tell who the person was. Not Mrs. Bailey: too tall.

But it wasn’t Beau: no sign or his expanded waistline. It was somebody, he could see, in a kind of plastic jumper, yellow, with a hood that covered the head. The person was carrying a box with wires attached to it and a silvery gadget dangling from the wires. This figure turned toward the open door and called in a husky, pleasant voice, “Don’t wait up for me. I’ve got a date—after.”

It was Lenore’s voice. Chuck, completely bewildered, shouted, “Hey!”

The box with its attached gadgetry was set on the lawn. The voice now floated toward him. “Chuck! When did you get back?” Lenore ran toward him.

Had Charles Conner been more experienced in the behavior of women, had he even been of that temperament which is given to shrewd scrutiny of others, he would have noticed the impulsiveness with which the girl started toward him. It was emphasized by the fact that she remembered the outlandishness of her costume only later, when she had skirted a neat bed of tea roses, come up to him, held out both her hands and exclaimed, “What a wonderful surprise! Why didn’t you let me know?”

He was not such a person. He was a gentle and dreaming kind of young man, somewhat introverted, modest, in his opinion far from handsome. His head was long and narrow, his features somewhat ascetic; his hair had retreated a little way: he would soon be half-bald like his father; meantime, the effect was to make his forehead seem extraordinarily high. Lenore’s good looks invariably brought out his diffidence.

In addition, her regalia (astounding for any woman and all but unthinkable for Lenore) put him off. She was dressed as if she were going to crawl under the Buick and fix it-a chore of which she was capable; but it was not for that, he knew. He knew it if for no other reason than that neither her mother, whose social ambitions were limitless, nor her father, who had matching financial desires, would let their daughter play mechanic in the street.

It was only when they touched hands there in the gathering twilight, with a subconscious pulling—when they felt warmth and strength each in the other—that Chuck associated the girl’s costume and recent events. “Ye gods!” he cried, letting go of her, “a Geigerman !”

She nodded serenely, a little impishly. “Isn’t it becoming?” She pirouetted like a model.

“Yellow,” she went on, “is the fall color. The material is simply amazing. Not only weatherproof and mothproof, but fire-resistant too. Absolutely dustproof. No common chemicals can damage it. The hood”—she pulled it farther over her face and drew down a green, transparent visor which sealed her from view—” provides adequate protection from the elements, all the elements, including their radioactive isotopes!” She broke off, pulled down the hood, disclosed blue eyes, tumbling dark hair, raised, crimson lips. “Oh, Chuck! I’m so glad to see you! Kiss me.”

He tried to kiss her cheek and she made that impossible. She held the kiss, besides, for a long moment and when she settled on her heels she whispered, “Welcome home.”

He dissembled his feelings, pointed. “How come?”

“This?” she looked down at the radiation safety garment. “Spite.”

“Spite?”

“I’ll explain. I’ve got to take off in a sec—South High. Want to drive me there?”

“‘Whither…’ and so forth,” he answered.

She stared at him, shook her head as if she couldn’t quite believe him real. “Come on, then. We’ll take my Ford.”

“Just a mo!” Chuck reverted to a bygone period. He ran back toward the open kitchen window and shouted, “Hey, Mom!”

Beth Conner’s voice floated back from above the dishpan. “Yes, Charles? No need to yell so.”

“I’m going to run Lenore down to the school.”

“All right.” Mrs. Conner wiped a copper-bottomed pan and hung it up with her set, one of her many small sources of pride and joy. It was just like Charles, though now a man grown, to let her know where he was going. Teddy had reached an age when he preferred never to say, or else forgot. And Nora had never known a time, never would know one, probably, when she considered her private destinations any affair of her mother.

Chuck carried the Geiger counter to the car, climbed in, and backed down the driveway.

He switched on the headlights and started slowly along Walnut Street. The girl beside him began to turn the knobs on the radiation counter. “Let’s see if you’re radioactive,” she said. She held up the wandlike detector and frowned down at the dials. “Nope. Just overheated.”

“Warm day—for September.”

“Since when wasn’t September warm?”

“How are things?” he asked.

“Just the same.” She shrugged one shoulder somewhere under the coverall. “But absolutely, painfully the same. Possibly a shade worse. Dad seems to be drinking a little too much, a little too often, if you know what I mean. And Mother keeps crowding me a little harder all the time.”

“Why don’t you go away?”

“Away like where?” she asked. “Didn’t we kick that around till it got lost, the last time you were home on leave?”

“I kept thinking about it—at the base.”

“I didn’t need to. The family didn’t let me study what I wanted. Couldn’t afford graduate courses. You know that. They hate the very thought that their darling daughter has a knack for science instead of a knack for rich men. So why should I go away, to New York even, and work at something I’d detest, myself? Being a secretary. Or a model. Phooie!”

“Anyhow,” he said, not happily, “you’ll make a damned good Geigerman.”

She ignored the hurt tone. “Won’t I? And doesn’t it burn mother to the core!”

“Does it?” He could understand her relish. Lenore’s parents frightened him, in a sense: they were able to influence Lenore.

“About six weeks ago the Civil Defense people called at our house,” she began. “They gave Mother and Dad a long spiel about how this state is high up on the national list in preparedness and how everybody in Greek Prairie who could, ought to be in the organization.