Comme tu es douce, he said. Ma j'olie mademoiselle. Je t'aime.
She giggled, not understanding his clumsy French but suddenly sure it was all going to work out just the way she had hoped it would.
It would be fun, she said happily. Just the two of us. I could makean early supper and we could eat it right here, on the deck.
He grinned. Eclipse Burgers a deux?
She laughed, nodding and clapping her hands with delight.
Then he had said something that struck her as a little odd even at the time, because he was not a man who cared much about clothes and fashions. You could wear your pretty new sundress.
Sure, if you want, she said, although she had already made a mental note to ask her mother to try and exchange the sundress. It was pretty enough-if you weren’t offended by red and yellow stripes almost bright enough to shout, that was-but it was also too small and too tight. Her mother had ordered it from Sears, going mostly by guess and by gosh, filling in a single size larger than that which had fit Jessie the year before. As it happened, she had grown a little faster than that, in a number of ways. Still, if Daddy liked it… and if he would come over to her side of this eclipse business and help her push…
He did come over to her side, and pushed like Hercules himself. He began that night, suggesting to his wife after dinner (and two or three mellowing glasses of vin rouge) that Jessie be excused from tomorrow’s “eclipse-watch” outing to the top of Mount Washington. Most of their summer neighbors were going; just after Memorial Day they’d begun having informal meetings on the subject of how and where to watch the upcoming solar phenomenon (to Jessie these meetings had seemed like ordinary run-of- the-mill summer cocktail parties), and had even given themselves a name-The Dark Score Sun Worshippers. The Sun Worshippers had rented one of the school district’s mini-buses for the occasion and were planning to voyage to the top of New Hampshire’s tallest mountain equipped with box lunches, Polaroid sunglasses, specially constructed reflector-boxes, specially filtered cameras… and champagne, of course. Lots and lots of champagne. To Jessie’s mother and older sister, all this had seemed to be the very definition of frothy, sophisticated fun. To Jessie it had seemed the essence of all that was boring… and that was before you added Pooh-Pooh Breath into the equation.
She had gone out on the deck after supper on the evening of the 19th, ostensibly to read twenty or thirty pages of Mr C. S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet before the sun went down. Her actual purpose was a good deal less intellectual: she wanted to listen as her father made his-their-pitch, and to silently root him on. She and Maddy had been aware for years that the combination living roorn/dining room of the summer house had peculiar acoustical qualities, probably caused by its high, steeply angled ceiling; Jessie had an idea that even Will knew about the way sound carried from in there to out here on the deck. Only their parents seemed unaware that the room might as well have been bugged, and that most of the important decisions they had made in that room as they sipped after-dinner cognac or cups of coffee were known (to their daughters, at least) long before the marching orders were handed down from staff headquarters.
Jessie noticed she was holding the Lewis novel upside down and made haste to rectify that situation before Maddy happened by and gave her a big, silent horselaugh. She felt a little guilty about what she was doing-it was a lot closer to eavesdropping than to rooting, when you got right down to it-but not quite guilty enough to stop. And in fact she considered herself still to be on the right side of a thin moral line. After all, it wasn’t as if she were hiding in the closet, or anything; she was sitting right out here in full view, bathed in the bright light of the westering sun. She was sitting out here with her book, and wondering if there were ever eclipses on Mars, and if there were Martians up there to watch them if there were. If her parents thought no one could hear what they were saying just because they were sitting at the table in there, was that her fault? Was she supposed to go in and tell them?
“I don’t theenk so, my deah,” Jessie whispered in her snottiest Elizabeth Taylor Cat on a Hot Tin Roof voice, and then cupped her hands over a big, goofy grin. And she guessed she was also safe from her big sister’s interference, at least for the time being; she could hear Maddy and Will below her in the rumpus room, squabbling good-naturedly over a game of Cootie or Parcheesi or something like that.
I really don’t think it would hurt her to stay here with me tomorrow,do you? her father was asking in his most winning, good-humored voice.
No, of course not, Jessie’s mother replied, but it wouldn’t exactlykill her to go someplace with the rest of us this summer, either. She’sturned into a complete Daddy’s girl,
She went down to the puppet show in Bethel with you and Will lastweek. In fact, didn’t you tell me that she stayed with Will- even boughthim an ice cream out of her own allowance-while you went into thatauction barn?
That was no sacrifice for our Jessie, Sally replied. She sounded almost grim.
What do you mean?
I mean she went to the puppet show because she wanted to, and she tookcare of Will because she wanted to. Grimness had given way to a more familiar tone: exasperation. How can you understand what I mean? that tone asked. How can you possibly, when you’re a man?
This was a tone Jessie had heard more and more frequently in her mother’s voice these last few years. She knew that was partly because she herself heard more and saw more as she grew up, but she was pretty sure it was also because her mother used that tone more frequently than she once had. Jessie couldn’t understand why her father’s brand of logic always made her mother so crazy.
All of a sudden the fact that she did something because she wanted tois a cause for concern? Tom was now asking. Maybe even a markagainst her? What do we do if she develops a social conscience as well asa family one, Sal? Put her in a home for wayward girls?
Don’t patronize me, Tom. You know perfectly well what I mean.
Nope,-this time you’ve lost me in the dust, sweet one. This is supposedto he our summer vacation, remember? And I’ve always sort of had theidea that when people are on vacation, they’re supposed to do what theywant to do, and he with who they want to be with. In fact, I thoughtthat was the whole idea.
Jessie smiled, knowing it was all over but the “shouting. When the eclipse started tomorrow afternoon, she was going to be here with her Daddy instead of on top of Mount Washington with Pooh-Pooh Breath and the rest of The Dark Score Sun Worshippers. Her father was like some world-class chessmaster who had given a talented amateur a run for her money and was now polishing her off.
You could come, too, Tom-Jessie would come if you did.
That was a tricky one. Jessie held her breath.
Can’t, my love-I’m expecting a call from David Adams on theBrookings Pharmaceuticals portfolio. Very important stuff… also veryrisky stuff, At this stage, handling Brookings is like handling blastingcaps. But let me be honest with you: even if I could, I’m not really sureI would. I’m not nuts about the Gilette woman, hut I can get along withher. That asshole Sleefort, on the other hand-
Hush, Tom!
Don’t worry-Maddy and Will are downstairs andiessie’s way outon the front deck…see her?
At that moment, Jessie suddenly became sure that her father knew exactly what the acoustics of the living room/dining room were like; he knew that his daughter was hearing every word of this discussion. Wanted her to hear every word. A warm little shiver traced its way up her back and down her legs.
I should have known it came down to Dick Sleefort! Her mother sounded angrily amused, a combination that made Jessie’s head spin. It seemed to her that only adults could combine emotions in so many daffy ways-if feelings were food, adult feelings would be things like chocolate-covered steak, mashed potatoes with pineapple bits, Special K with chili powder sprinkled on it instead of sugar. Jessie thought that being an adult seemed more like a punishment than a reward.
This is really exasperating, Tom-the man made a pass at me sixyears ago. He was drunk. Back in those days he was always drunk, huthe’s cleaned up his act. Polly Bergeron told me be goes to AA, and-
Bully for him, her father said dryly. Do we send him a get-wellcard or a merit-badge, Sally?
Don’t be flip. You almost broke the man’s nose-
Yes, indeed. When a fellow comes into the kitchen to freshen his drinkand finds the rumdum from up the road with one hand on his wife’sbehind and the other down the front of her-
Never mind, she said primly, but Jessie thought that for some reason her mother sounded almost pleased. Curiouser and curiouser. The point is, it’s time you discovered that Dick Sleefort isn’t a demonfrom the deeps and it’s time Jessie discovered Adrienne Gilette is just alonely old woman who once slapped her hand at a lawn-party as a littlejoke. Now please don’t get all crazy on me, Tom; I’m not claiming it wasa good joke; it wasn’t. I’m just saying that Adrienne didn’t know that.There was no had intent.
Jessie looked down and saw her paperback novel was bent almost double in her right hand. How could her mother, a woman who’d graduated cum laude (whatever that meant) from Vassar, possibly be so stupid? The answer seemed clear enough to Jessie: she couldn’t be. Either she knew better or she refused to see the truth, and you arrived at the same conclusion no matter which answer you decided was the right one: when forced to choose between believing the ugly old woman who lived up the road from them in the summertime and her own daughter, Sally Mahout had chosen Pooh-Pooh Breath. Good deal, huh?
If I’m a Daddy’s girl, that’s why. That and all the other stuff shesays that’s like that. That’s why, but I could never tell her and she’llnever see it on her own, Never in a billion years.
Jessie forced herself to relax her grip on the paperback. Mrs Gilette had meant it, there had been bad intent, but her father’s suspicion that she had ceased being afraid of the old crow had probably been more right than wrong, just the same. Also, she was going to get her way about staying with her father, so none of her mother’s ess-aitch-eye-tee really mattered, did it? She was going to be here with her Daddy, she wouldn’t have to deal with old Pooh-Pooh Breath, and these good things were going to happen because…
“Because he sticks up for me,” she murmured.
Yes; that was the bottom line. Her father stuck up for her, and her mother stuck it to her.
Jessie saw the evening star glowing mildly in the darkening sky and suddenly realized she had been out on the deck, listening to them circle the subject of the eclipse-and the subject of her-for almost three-quarters of an hour. She discovered a minor but interesting fact of life that night: time speeds by fastest when you are
