Эд Макбейн: Mothers and Daughters

She learned besides that Gillian’s seeming slovenliness had very little to do with the girl’s honest concern for cleanliness and good grooming. She had never known anyone who bathed as often as Gillian Burke. “Cleopatra bathed in milk, did you know that?” Gillian said. “I wish I could play her. I’d adore playing her.” The tiniest blemish, the smallest unexpected bulge, was studied by Gillian absorbedly before the full-length mirror on the closet door. For Amanda, who took her flesh for granted, the interest seemed abnormal, almost narcissistic. Gillian would suddenly move close to the mirror and sweep her hair onto the top of her head, holding it there with one hand. “Do you think I should wear my hair up? Does it make me look older?” Or she would put her hands on her hips and scowl at her mirror image and say, “I need to gain a few pounds. Actresses shouldn’t be too thin.” And once she stood before the mirror nude and suddenly said, “Look, Amanda, a Javanese dancing girl,” and struck the angular pose of arm and leg, and moved her head in the short quick movements of the dance, and in that moment even her eyes seemed to slant Orientally. And all at once, Amanda realized that Gillian considered her body only another of her tools. Gillian wanted to be an actress, and learning her own body, its potential and its limitations, was part of her training. Still, Amanda wished she would spend less time before the mirror, and less time in the bathtub.

Her body and her clothes were the two standing edifices in the wake of her personal hurricane, and the clothes completely mystified Amanda. She would never understand how Gillian did it. No matter where she dropped her skirt — on the floor, at the foot of her bed, over a chair — when she put it on the next morning, it never seemed rumpled or wrinkled. It looked, in fact, as if it had just come back from the campus cleaners. Gillian took a long time dressing each morning, in complete contradiction to the speed with which she disrobed each night. It was almost like watching the slow and painful construction of a skyscraper that was destined to be blown to smithereens at sunset. The result was impressive. Gillian’s figure carried clothes well. Her waist was narrow; her skirts, hung on wide hips, dropped in a sleek smooth line over good legs. She wore her sweaters modestly loose, as if denying her own rich femininity. She spent a great deal of time applying lipstick to her generous mouth, brushing out her long straight hair, trimming her bangs. And at sunset, boom! The dynamite was exploded, the entire structure collapsed, the meticulously designed skyscraper was utterly demolished.

It was a building, Amanda soon learned, that had no foundation.

“I don’t like pants,” Gillian said, and the oracle had spoken, but Amanda missed the meaning of the Delphic sibyl, thinking her roommate was referring to slacks. She should have known that Gillian chose her words as carefully as she chose her clothes; she would not have said “pants” if she’d intended to say “slacks.” Gillian Burke did not like pants, and she did not wear pants.

“But don’t you get cold? ” Amanda asked.

Gillian winked and flashed her impish grin. “I’m warm-blooded,” she said, implying more than her words actually stated, implying — Amanda knew — more than was true. For despite her cyclonic habits, despite her sailor’s vocabulary, despite her concern with things physical, Amanda knew that Gillian’s actual experience was almost as limited as her own. And this, perhaps, was the one real bond that allowed them to live together in harmony.

The explosion in the little theater was quite unlike anything Amanda had come to expect from her roommate. Or maybe Amanda was simply unprepared for such an outburst. She had been in Minnesota for Thanksgiving and had returned to Talmadge carrying the news that her brother-in-law Frank had been killed in a night action off Guadalcanal. The War Department telegram had been brief and to the point, barely sympathetic in a journalistic way. But by piecing together the news stories of the naval engagement, Penny had come to the dull realization that her husband had been killed before he’d learned of the birth of his daughter. And this magnified the tragedy; this made death an even bigger thief. On the train back to Connecticut, Amanda had wept openly, surprised when she realized she was weeping not for her dead brother-in-law but for her sister, who had to bear the burden of remaining alive. She returned to school with an aching emptiness inside her.

Gillian, on the other hand, was bursting with energy after the holiday. She immediately tried out for a part in the Christmas Pageant and was given a small role, nothing more than a walk-on, actually. “That’s only because I’m a freshman,” she told Amanda. “All the fat parts went to juniors and seniors. I can outact them all.”

But whatever she told Amanda, she worked diligently at the part and seemed moderately content with it until someone heard her singing during a rehearsal one day and decided she’d be just right for one of the songs in the show. She was an excellent mimic, and her command of dialect was impeccable. So whereas her voice was small and rather undistinguished, Dr. Finch, who was directing the show, felt her true ear was perfect for the particular song he had in mind. He told Gillian only that he was fattening her part with a song. He did not tell her which song until the day of the explosion. Amanda was sitting out front in the darkened theater that day. Morton Yardley was slouched in the seat beside her, his hood up over his skull. From the back of the theater Dr. Finch called, “Gillian! Gillian Burke!”

“Yes?” Gillian answered from somewhere backstage.

“Where are you, Miss Burke?” Dr. Finch shouted.

“Here I am,” she said, and she came on stage carrying a container of hot coffee, sipping at it and peering out over the footlights. She was wearing black slacks and a black sweater. The overhead row of Lekos cast a burnished glow on her hair. “What is it?” she called to the darkness.

“I’d like you to try that song, Miss Burke,” Dr. Finch said.

“Oh, okay,” Gillian answered.

“Pete,” Dr. Finch called to the piano player, “would you give Miss Burke the music, please? Can you read music, Miss Burke?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Well then, would you listen to it once, please? Pete?”

The piano player nodded and began playing. Gillian, sipping at her coffee, straddling one of the chairs on stage, cocked her head to one side and listened. The song was a pleasant ballad with a pastoral quality. She found herself humming to it as the music filled the theater. When the piano player stopped, Dr. Finch said, “How do you like it, Miss Burke?”

“I love it,” Gillian answered. “What’s it called?”

“‘On a Certain Morning,’” Dr. Finch replied.

“May I see the lyrics, please?”

“Pete?” Dr. Finch said, and the piano player leaned up over the footlights and handed Gillian the sheet music. Watching from the third row in the orchestra, Amanda whispered, “She’s so professional.”

“What?” Morton said.

“Gillian. She’s so very professional. She looks as if she’s been on a stage all her life.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Morton said, and shrank back into his hood.

Gillian was studying the sheet in her hands. She was silent for a long time. Then she looked up, directing her voice toward the back of the theater, unable to see Dr. Finch, but shouting in his direction.

“I thought this was ‘On a Certain Morning.’”

“It is,” Dr. Finch said. “The ‘certain morning,’ of course, is Christmas.”

“Um-huh,” Gillian said.

“What’s the trouble, Miss Burke?”