pressed against his stomach. His face was drained of blood.
Florence quietly cleared the dishes from the table.
“I’ll go for the groceries,” said Jim.
“Good,” said Florence. “Curley is minding them at the counter.”
Chapter 2
Jim found a beautiful afternoon outside. The sun had sunk only low enough to mellow the greens of the trees and the lawn. He looked over to the wooden-shingled house next door. There was a girl sitting on the porch, her feet propped against the railing, reading a book. It was Geraldine South, or Jill, as she was called. Her twin brother, Jack, was Jim’s classmate at Fordham.
“Hey, Jill, you want to go for a ride?”
“Sure.”
He waited with a pleasant feeling of proprietorship as she came across the lawn.
She climbed into the Meaghers’ car.
“Well, hi,” she said. It seemed to Jim that the whole front seat was suddenly filled with bare leg. She had shorts on, and her bare legs had fine, subtle lines, not muscular at all. It took a moment for the shock and pleasure of it all to wear off. But then the accustomed ways of thinking took hold: after all, it was only Jill. She was wearing a sweater; it emphasized that, at nineteen, she was still as flat-chested as most of the girls were at fourteen. And no one had ever called her a beauty. She was so much Jack’s twin it hurt her appearance. They had the same Roman nose, which fitted into Jack’s face but was too large for hers.
“What are you reading,” he asked, as they drove down Brush Avenue.
“Pickwick Papers.” She held up the book.
“You’re on a Dickens kick?”
“He’s terrific,” she said.
“He’s corny.”
She turned sideways in the seat to face him, and doubled her legs under her. “How can you say that?”
“He is.”
“His novels have more, more. . .sweep than anything that’s being written now,” said Jill.
“You go for that ‘You bounder, I’ll tweak your nose’ stuff, and all the rest of it?”
“I just finished reading that,” she said, excitedly.
She opened the book and read aloud:
“And allow me to say, sir, said the irascible Doctor Payne, that if I had been Tappleton or if I had been Slammer, I would have pulled your nose, sir, and the nose of every man in this company.”
She gave out with a loud, rippling laugh. “Didn’t think that was funny when you read it?”
“It’s been years since I read it,” said Jim. “We read that in high school, didn’t we?”
“I read it every year,” said Jill. “He was a great man. I would love to have known him.”
“I guess so,” said Jim. The he remembered an item from a class lecture. “He didn’t get along with his wife, did he?”
“He was a genius,” said Jill. “But his wife didn’t develop at all.”
“It’s funny though,” said Jim. “You’d think with all that he knew about human nature, he’d know how to pick a wife.”
“Sex is irrational,” she replied airily.
“Look at Thackeray, too,” said Jim.
“I don’t know anything about him,” said Jill.
“His wife was in an asylum.”
“Is that right?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Well I bet you could find a lot of examples of writers who get happily married too.”
“Sure. Uncle Arthur,” said Jim. They both laughed, though Jill tried to stop. She felt mean, laughing at Arthur.
At the store, Curley had the two boxes waiting. He packed groceries at the checkout counter, a beefy youth with a sleepy smile. Jim suspected that he had a crush on Florence, and figured she made quite practical use of his affections by assigning him to guard her groceries.
Jim went into the store proper to get some more items; then he had to wait at the checkout line. Idly he studied the different types of razor blades offered for sale on the back of the register. Then his eye caught Jill. She was looking at the pocket-book rack stretched across the front of the store. She leaned backwards to see the top titles, and occasionally would pull one off the shelf and thumb through it. She looked clean-limbed and pretty from the back. Her natural blonde hair was another characteristic she shared with Jack.
As he watched her, the thought struck Jim that, if his sister Florence had come to the store with a guy, she would have made a big production of walking up and down the aisles with him, oohing and aahing over everything. But not Jill. If she’d rather stay up front and look over the pocket books, that’s what she’d do. She was always on the level. Even in conversation. He reflected on what she said of Thackeray: “I don’t know anything about him.” If that were Florence, she would have made some comment about Vanity Fair, which she hadn’t read, and the man would have gone rushing into a discussion of Thackeray, only to discover five minutes later that she didn’t know anything more than the one fact about Vanity Fair.
When he got checked through the line, he went over to Jill and ran his fingernail across the back of her knee. She jumped, and turned, and asked, “What are you up to?”
“I was just admiring your legs.”
She half-smiled.
“They’re all right,” he said, “But you know me, Jill: I don’t go much for that cheap physical stuff.”
“Not much,” she said, her mouth tightening quickly.
He loaded the groceries into the car and they went to the Peppermint Stick for a soda. The ice cream parlor had red and white striped walls, and round marble tables with wire chairs, and the sodas served had two scoops of rich ice cream and were heaped with whipped cream. Each part of the soda had its own delight: the first pull on the straw brought the sweet liquid; then the whipped cream could be eaten away on one side of the hill, until the chocolate syrup and the ice cream were exposed; then the two scoops of ice cream could be patiently carved until the bottom of the glass was reached, where there was a full inch of residue of chocolate syrup.
“How’s school?” asked Jim.
“All right.” She went to Fordham also, but to the School of Education downtown, which was co-ed. No women were admitted as students on the main Bronx campus.
She probably knows about the suspension, Jim thought. Jack did, and he would have told her.
“I’ve been suspended you know.”
