Эд Макбейн - Last Summer

The dances were elementary, too, a simple response to the pulsing harmonic background, requiring little or no concentration, little or no involvement with one’s partner. They were, in fact, onanistic, David said, which means expressive of nothing but an involvement with oneself. The new experimental electronic music was carrying this sense of uninvolvement a step further because it threw away even the usual chord progressions, substituting instead an erratic series of sounds. It would become impossible to dance to the music of the future, he said. It would also become impossible to listen to it, except in the way one might overhear a random and accidental arrangement of noises.

He explained all this while illustrating his premise with some really good 45s and LPs. It was fascinating, most of it, anyway. Even Rhoda seemed pretty impressed by his instruction, although she was a bit ill at ease that first day with us. There was a tight enclosed feeling to the afternoon, the round wood-paneled living room and the fire David had set in the fireplace, the teeming rain outside, the records spinning while he patiently and expertly explained the evolution. Sandy was stretched on the floor before the fireplace like a long tawny cat, wearing tan chinos and a bulky beige turtle-neck sweater, barefoot, her blond hair streaming, her jaw propped on one hand. Rhoda sat rather primly at first in the blue wingback chair to the left of the fireplace, only later relaxing enough to tuck her feet up under her.

The rain was relentless. It never varied in its rhythm or its intensity, seemed in fact to add natural conviction to everything David was saying about the sameness of pop music. Rhoda, as it turned out, was a quite bright person who asked intelligent questions, and who smiled in delight each time David satisfactorily answered them. Her smile was a radiant thing, despite the unflattering bands on her teeth. It transformed her entire face, imparting a warmth to it that was totally lacking when she wore her serious, older-party look. She was not an attractive girl, but there was an appealing softness to her, in perfect contrast to Sandy’s glittering fine-boned beauty. As the afternoon waned, I found myself liking her more and more, and when David ended his demonstration, I was delighted that Sandy turned the conversation to Rhoda, asking her to tell us all about herself. I thought of that rainy Monday when we had drunk the truth serum, and I wondered now what Rhoda would say. She was under no obligation to tell us anything, of course, except that she was there , and the fire was blazing, and the room was warm and cozy, and there was an atmosphere of relaxed permissiveness, the rain outside creating an island within an island, drilling its narrow gray prison bars against each melting window.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Rhoda said, and blushed. The blush seemed entirely contradictory; I could not imagine it on the face of the girl who had boldly requisitioned Deuce’s microphone and drowned the night in horrid sound.

“There’s always something to tell,” Sandy said. She was eating prunes by the fireplace, lazily dipping her hand into the green Sunsweet box, chewing off the black meat, sucking the pits dry. She had told us the day before that she had been irregular for more than a week now, ever since The Big Rape Scene, when she’d been more terrified than she was willing to admit.

“Well, my mother is dead,” Rhoda said, and stopped.

“How did she die?” David asked.

“She drowned,” Rhoda said.

“Wow.”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“On Martha’s Vineyard, five summers ago.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten.”

“God, that must have been awful,” Sandy said.

“Yes. Yes, it was.”

“Didn’t she know how to swim?”

“Oh yes, she was an expert swimmer.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well...” Rhoda said, and stopped. “I don’t like to talk about it, really.”

“Okay,” Sandy said, and popped another prune into her mouth. There was something chilling about the way she said that single word, as though she were suddenly excluding Rhoda from our closed society, in effect sending her outdoors into the driving rain. I sensed it, and I know that David did, too. I was surprised, however, to see visible recognition of it crossing Rhoda’s face and settling into her serious brown eyes. She hesitated only an instant before speaking again. Sandy had cowed her with a word, and I almost smiled at the ease of her accomplishment. I restrained myself only because Rhoda, after all, was going to tell us about something very serious and important, the drowning of her mother five years ago on Martha’s Vineyard.

“It was a bet,” Rhoda said. “My mother made a bet with this man.”

“What was the bet?”

“That she could swim out to the sandbar and back without stopping to rest.” Rhoda paused. A spark crackled out of the fireplace and onto the living-room rug. Sandy lifted the prune box and then brought it down on the spark, killing it. “There had been a party that night...”

“Oh, was it at nighttime?”

“Yes,” Rhoda said, “and I think everyone had a little too much to drink. I don’t remember very much about it because I was only ten at the time. There was a writer there who had written a bestseller about a man who takes another man’s identity, and there was a lyricist who kept using the word ‘fantastic’ all night long, ‘Oh, that’s a fantastic roast beef,’ or ‘Oh, where did you find this fantastic old lamp?’ I remember him very distinctly. I don’t know how the thing started, I think they were all a little bored. I was in my nightgown already, starting up for bed, going around the room and kissing everyone goodnight. The lyricist was very drunk, when he kissed me goodnight he cupped my behind in both hands and kissed me right on the mouth, smelling terribly of whiskey.” She blushed again. Outside, the rain swept in against the windows, driven by a sudden ferocious gust of wind. The eaves of the house creaked. By the fire, Sandy made tiny sucking sounds around her prune pit.

“They were saying that Mother was a great swimmer, and someone remarked that women had more stamina than men, and someone else said women had an extra layer of fat around their bodies, which was what made it possible for them to stay in the water for long periods of time without getting chilled. The writer, I think it was, explained that this was why so many of the long-distance swimmers had been women, like Gertrude whatever-her-name-was who swam the English Channel...”

“Ederle.”

“Yes, I think that was it. I don’t know if what he said was true or not, but I remember the women taking offense at the idea of having an extra layer of fat, and my mother saying — she was very slim and athletic-looking, you see — saying she had a lot of endurance and certainly did not have an extra layer of fat. All the women in the room said, ‘Bravo, Irene,’ and that was when the lyricist said Mother’s endurance was only a matter for speculation until it was proved. Daddy said that Mother had swum to the sandbar and back without stopping, the sandbar being a half mile offshore, and the lyricist said this was impossible, and Mother said she could do it again anytime, and he said How about right now?

“So that was how it started, I guess. I think they were all sort of restless, there had been a party on Friday night, and another one on Saturday night, and this was Sunday in the middle of August, and it can get kind of dull, I guess, I suppose it had got kind of dull for them. So Mother took me upstairs to tuck me in, and I could hear her changing into her bathing suit in the bedroom next door, and then she came in wearing the suit, a red one, and a short terry-cloth robe over it, and kissed me goodnight. She looked very pretty and very excited. When she kissed me, I smelled the same alcohol on her breath that had been on the lyricist’s, but of course she wasn’t drunk — she never drank to excess, just to feel happy, she always said. She turned out the light and left the room, closing the door behind her. That was the last time I saw her alive.”