Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

They planned their stops miles in advance, looking for filling stations where they wouldn’t have to wait for an attendant. To cut down on stops, they drank as little as possible. They ate nothing but the sandwiches, fruits, and little strufoli cookies from the picnic basket that Nonna had sent, even though Francesca warned Billy he’d be sorry he was eating even that much. They were each supposed to sleep as much as possible while the other drove, and Francesca did try, but between the replaying of those four hours in the Sand Dollar Inn and the bracing speed at which Billy drove that T-Bird, trying to make up for those four hours, blowing past tractor-trailers and decent families motoring unhurriedly along in their dull Chryslers-not to mention Billy’s habit of turning up the radio all the way whenever he found a rhythm-and-blues song or a song off that amazing new Johnny Fontane long-player-the best she could do was close her eyes.

A state trooper pulled them over. Billy showed the man his license, registration, and another piece of paper, mumbling something about “courtesy.” Moments later, they were back on the road, uncited, going just as fast. His father’s massive donations to the Fraternal Order of Police, paying off once more. “My Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card,” Billy said. He blushed.

What an upside-down world, Francesca thought, the Carolina pines rushing by her window in a liquid blur. Billy, this older boy she’d once hated herself for being stupid enough to believe she might have, this big man on campus, this rich boy, reduced before her eyes to a boyfriend, her excellent boyfriend, eager to please, calling in favors on her behalf, crazy about her. It all started the day her sister left. That was the same day Francesca met Billy, but Billy’s falling in love with her, as much as he meant to her now, was a lucky by-product.

Growing up, Kathy had always been the smart twin. Francesca was the pretty one, or at least the one more interested in being pretty; the girly one. Kathy was the bohemian who loved wild jazz music and sneaked cigarettes. Francesca was the good Catholic girl. Francesca was a cheerleader and an attendant on the Homecoming Court. Francesca did her homework, or pretended to, in a malt shop. Francesca owned not one but two poodle skirts. But without Kathy around, Francesca-unconsciously-filled up the empty part of her where her sister had been by somehow becoming Kathy. At the time, she told herself that all the clothes shopping she’d done the first few weeks of the term was for her roommate, Suzy’s, benefit, something they could do together and a means of getting Suzy to stop wearing the terrible little-girl jumpers and dresses she’d shown up with. Only after she’d done it did Francesca notice she’d remade her wardrobe into Kathy’s, blacks and reds, turtlenecks and slacks. Likewise, Francesca couldn’t remember making a decision to start smoking, her sister’s brand, no less, but open her purse and that’s what was there. The smoking was probably a consequence of the studying. She never made a conscious decision to study more, but for no reason she understood, suddenly in class she was one of the smart kids, her judiciously raised hand sought by her beleaguered professors when they wanted to move things along. Which came first, the chicken of how good it felt in class to be one of those kids or the egg of long nights bent over her desk, smoke curling in the languorous haze of her study lamp?

Several times, she’d seen Billy Van Arsdale in the library studying next to a girl or coming out of a movie theater with a different girl, out of one of the bars on Tennessee Street with a different girl yet. Sometimes, Francesca, too, would be on a date (freshmen, no one special) or in a study group. Always Billy would nod hello, often he would make eye contact, occasionally he’d even pause and exchange pleasantries. She despised him for mocking her like this. She was cool toward him but polite, afraid that if she tried to ignore him or, worse, told him off, he’d embarrass her even worse. She had not for a moment believed she was deploying Kathy’s favorite tactic-indeed, her only tactic-in getting boys to like her. Francesca might never have known that was exactly what she was doing-however inadvertently-if it hadn’t been for Suzy, who was in Glee Club with Billy’s heavyset little brother George. One day, studying for midterms, Suzy told Francesca that if she wasn’t careful her playing-hard-to-get act was going to make it so that Billy Van Arsdale never worked up the courage to ask her out.

Playing hard to get? Ridiculous. Francesca was too nice, too eager to please, lacking the nerve it took to try to get what she wanted by rebuffing it. Francesca told Suzy she was out of her mind, but Suzy cited George, who cited a conversation he’d had with his brother about whether he had any classes with this girl Francesca Corleone. Why do you ask? George had asked. No reason, Billy had said. What, do you like her? George asked. Shut up, dickhead, Billy said, are you in her class or not? I thought you told me to shut up, George said. You’re an asshole, Billy said, and punched him in the arm and said forget it. And George said he wasn’t in any classes with Francesca but he was friends with her roommate. How do you know they said all that? Francesca had asked her, and Suzy said she didn’t know, though why would George lie? Francesca had thought about the way her brothers talked to each other and decided that Suzy, an only child, couldn’t have made something like that up. The next time Francesca ran into Billy she did nothing more than just hold his eye contact a few beats too long, but of course that did it. Seconds later, he was asking her out. He knew this great juke joint out in the country. H-Bomb Ferguson was playing; his hit was called “She’s Been Gone,” had she heard it? Can’t say as I’ve had the pleasure, Francesca said, trying, and failing, to restrain her smile, to stop blushing. The next day, the dorm mother knocked on her door and handed Francesca a single red rose and an envelope containing an H-Bomb Ferguson 45. Two days later, they had their first date. Two months later, here they were. Racing north.

Watching him now, and pretending not to, she could see-now that she’d seen all of him there was to see, now that they’d gone to bed together and even though he’d probably been with a hundred girls, he’d turned out to be the straitlaced one and she the curious one, pointing, asking, trying things out (yes, it hurt, some; yes, four times in four hours had left her tender enough that it now seemed slightly greedy), now that she was convinced they were in every adult way in love- that Billy Van Arsdale was not what she’d thought he was, that first day of school. He was a little short, with hound-dog eyes and a crooked smile that she thought was cute but certainly wouldn’t make it in the movies. His blond hair was always disheveled. He had the wardrobe of a small-town southern lawyer-brogans, seersucker and linen suits, pocket watch on a fob (it had belonged to his great-uncle, who’d been chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court), tailored Egyptian cotton shirts rendered unpretentious by their frayed cuffs-and somehow only moments after he got dressed, no matter what he was wearing, his clothes were shot through with wrinkles. He was a frankly awful dancer and seemed unaware of it. He sang along loudly to songs he barely knew. He laughed through his teeth, like a cartoon character. His parents hated each other and had neglected him and his brother. The beloved Negro woman who raised him had killed herself after her grown son was murdered in Mississippi by the Ku Klux Klan, and Billy had been the one who found her, crumpled on the bathroom floor with a cabinet full of pills in her stomach. He went to a psychiatrist once a week and spoke of it as if it were nothing to be ashamed of. All of which is to say that it was not his undeniable good looks, his multitude of talents, or his perfect storybook life that had gotten him all those other girls and the student body presidency as well. He was a born politician: one part the Van Arsdale name and what that meant in Florida, one part his own exquisite manners and social nature, and a third part that was hard to define. More than charisma, Francesca thought. Just shy of magnetism.