Эд Макбейн: Mothers and Daughters

Gillian was thoughtful for a moment. Amanda, watching her, saw a curious expression cross her face. She seemed troubled... or was it calculating? Amanda couldn’t tell which.

“That’s not what this says,” Gillian called to the back of the theater. “This says,” and her pronunciation was flawless, considering she had never studied German in her life, ‘ An einem gewissen Morgen.’ ”

“Yes,” Dr. Finch said patiently. “That means ‘On a Certain Morning’ in German.”

Gillian nodded briefly and emphatically. “Count me out,” she said. She walked to the footlights and handed the music back to the piano player.

“What?” Dr. Finch said. “I beg your pardon, what did you...?”

“I said count me out!” Gillian said, louder this time. She put up one hand to shield her eyes from the lights, squinted toward the back of the theater, and said, “Can you hear me all right? Count me out. ”

“I don’t understand,” Dr. Finch said, puzzled, coming down the aisle on the right-hand side of the theater.

“I won’t sing it,” Gillian said.

“Why not?” Dr. Finch stood just alongside the piano now, looking up at Gillian. A bunch of kids had come from backstage and were watching her nervously, not knowing whether to giggle or panic.

“It’s German,” Gillian said.

“It’s what? ”

“It’s German, it’s German. Isn’t it German?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“I won’t sing it. That’s all. I won’t sing a German Christmas song while the Nazis are cooking Jews in ovens! That’s that!”

“Miss Burke, this song—”

“I don’t want to sing it,” Gillian said, and she walked off the stage.

“Oh my gosh!” Amanda said to Morton. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.” And she left her seat abruptly and ran backstage to find Gillian, but she had already left the theater. She caught up with her outside. Gillian was walking with her head bent, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her pea jacket.

“Gillian!”

She stopped and waited for Amanda to draw alongside. Then she began walking quickly again.

“Why on earth did you do that?” Amanda said.

“I don’t like Nazis.”

“German is not synonymous with Nazi.”

“Oh, isn’t it now?”

“No, it isn’t! That song was written by Margit Glück. She—”

“I don’t care who wrote—”

“She’s a student here, a refugee! She escaped Vienna, and German is her native tongue, and she writes brilliantly, and you had no right to do what you did, Gillian!”

“Oh,” Gillian said in a very small voice.

“Yes, damn you!” Amanda answered. “Oh!”

The college newspaper ran the story the next day. It told exactly what had happened in the little theater, and then printed an interview with Margit Glück, composer of An einem gewissen Morgen , in which Miss Glück said she was “surprised and saddened” by the incident. Dr. Finch, commenting on the cause célèbre to one of the college reporters, said, “Tempers are traditionally short in rehearsal periods. I’m sure this is simply a matter of misunderstanding. Miss Glück and Miss Burke are essentially opposed to the same ideology. Miss Burke simply reacted emotionally, the way an actress would be expected to, I might add.”

Gillian Burke refused to talk to any of the campus reporters. Instead, she went to Margit Glück’s dorm the day after the interviews were printed, found her room, and apologized to her. They were both in tears by the end of the session, and some enterprising student recorded the tearful scene on film and sent the snapshot to the newspaper. A fresh recounting of the story appeared the next week, together with the heart-rending photo. Both Gillian and Miss Glück came out of the whole thing rather well, but it was Gillian who really carried the field. She had shown artistic temperament and true patriotism. She had been called “an actress” by Dr. Finch, a respected campus authority. She had refused the vulgarity of publicity by avoiding any of the campus reporters. She had gone privately and in all humility to Miss Glück and apologized. That someone had taken a picture of the soul-shattering meeting was not Gillian’s doing, but the picture and the new story did get wider circulation than the original story had, and the picture proved beyond a doubt that this was “simply a matter of misunderstanding” that Gillian had been big enough and humble enough to set straight immediately. The Christmas Pageant, which was a big student draw each year anyway, sold out immediately the day after the new story appeared. Gillian Burke became a well-known campus figure in her first month at school.

Amanda never knew whether that moment of silence on stage had been a moment of calculation. And she never asked Gillian.

The girls were plentiful in Honolulu, but David Regan fastidiously stayed away from them. There was something too impersonal about the whores, something mechanical and precise, something that made the act of love completely loveless. Besides, though he would never admit this to himself, he had been frightened by the training films he’d seen in boot camp, images of which flashed across his mind whenever he was tempted by a passing skirt.

The ship had come back to Pearl at the beginning of the month, ostensibly for repairs in dry dock. But everyone in the crew knew that the Hanley was there for reassignment to a picket destroyer squadron. The men of the Hanley weren’t too tickled by the prospect. The average life of a picket ship on station, they had been told — and they repeated the story with the relish of true heroes — was three minutes. Hardly time to say a final prayer. So they made the best of their time in Hawaii. David would go to Waikiki in the afternoons and swim alone. Sometimes there were nurses on the beach, and the wives of officers stationed at Pearl, and he would watch them in their trim swimsuits and think of the girls he knew back home in Talmadge, think especially of Ardis Fletcher and the things they had done together. Once a young Wave came over to him where he lay on his blanket and asked for a match. He had taken out his Zippo lighter and thumbed it into flame. The girl looked at him archly as she drew in on the cigarette. She blew out a stream of smoke and said, “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“You off one of the ships?” She stood with one arm crossed over her waist, the other resting on it as she puffed on her cigarette. She was not really a pretty girl, really too thin in the blue bathing suit, her teeth a little too large.

“Yes,” David said. “The Hanley. ”

“Just get back, or are you heading out?”

“Just got back.”

“From where?”

“Tassafaronga.”

“Guess you saw some action,” the girl said.

“I guess so,” David answered.

The girl was silent, puffing on her cigarette. Behind her, three boys on surfboards rode in toward the beach. The girl’s hair and eyes were brown, he noticed. Her teeth were too large, but she had a good mouth. She didn’t seem nervous at all, and yet something in her eyes told him this was very difficult for her.

“I saw you here the other day,” she said suddenly.

“Mmmm?”

“Why do you come alone?”

“Just like that.”

“Are you a lone wolf?” she asked coyly. She paused. “Is that what you are?”

“I guess so.”

“Well,” she said, and she paused again. The pause lengthened. “How old are you, anyway?” she asked.

“Eighteen,” he said.

She studied him speculatively. “Well,” she said, and again fell silent. “Well, I don’t want to intrude on your privacy.” She looked at him steadily for a moment, flicked the cigarette away, and began walking back toward her own blanket. He almost called out to her, and then decided not to.