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  “Davie’s in architecture,” Charles William went on. “He’s my assistant this semester. We’re building a cathedral all of wood, aren’t we, Davie?” He still had his arm around him. He was holding him as he would a girl. Their bodies melted into each other. Surreal. “So you and Malcolm hit it off.” He giggled. “I tried to talk to him this morning, but all he would say is that you’re pretty.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I said, Don’t you think she’s gorgeous? and he said yes.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “Not much. He doesn’t talk much, haven’t you noticed that by now?”

  “I think I’m in love with him. I mean it.” I took Charles William’s hand. I forgot Davie was there. “Do you think he likes me? Did he say he did?”

  “I told you, he said you were gorgeous. And you are, isn’t she, Davie?”

  “She sure is. I’ve been dying to meet you, Dee. He talks about you all the time.”

  “Well, I’m going to go and find Malcolm.” I stood in the circle of the two young men. The three of us were perfectly safe at that moment, safe in each other’s good graces with the sunlight pouring down through the windows and the morning of the world all around us. “I think I’ll get a Bloody Mary,” I added. “Is that a pitcher of them over there?”

  “I’ll pour you one.” Davie took the glass he had been polishing and filled it with ice and poured in vodka and Bloody Mary mix. He handed it to me.

  “Thank you. I’m going to find Malcolm. Are you sure I look all right?”

  “Wait a minute,” Charles William said. “Get me a comb.” I took a comb out of my pocketbook and then, as if it were the most important thing in the world, Charles William combed my bangs down across my forehead and stood back to admire his work. “Perfect,” he said. “You look absolutely beautiful.”

  “She does,” Davie added. “You’re gorgeous, Dee.” I took my Bloody Mary, and, believing I was beautiful, I went back into the living room and found Malcolm and made him believe it too. We walked out onto the sidewalk and started down the hill toward the engineering school. The sidewalks were lined with young men and women in bright fall clothes. The sky was a brilliant blue. The sycamore trees golden in the clear fall air. An incorruptible mirror that cannot be contaminated by experience, Anna once wrote, meaning life. So I suppose whatever price Malcolm and I were going to have to pay for that day’s ecstasy would be the proper price. “I love you,” I said and took his arm.

  “I love you too. You want to go back to Putty’s apartment after a while?”

  “I have the key.” His leg brushed against mine. A marching band began to play. The first Wreck hove into view, a vehicle with a bed mounted on top. On the bed were two young men dressed as women. They were wearing pantaloons and huge balloon breasts and they were locked in an embrace. Now even the trees seemed sexual, locked in the ground by their roots. The sycamore leaves made golden beds upon the grass. Light coming down between the buildings seemed a sexual thrust. I looked up into Malcolm’s face. There were specks of gold in his green eyes. Gold on the freckles of his arms.

  “Let’s go now,” he said. “We don’t need to see this damn parade.”

  There was a party at the house that night and Malcolm drank gin martinis and danced a crazy dance he learned from his mother’s gardener. “I call it the hootchy-cootchy,” he would yell, and laugh uproariously and do it again. His legs and feet moved like liquid. I could barely keep up with him. “Yes, it’s me and I’m in love again,” he kept singing. “Yes, it’s me and I’m in love again.”

  At intermission I went out into the backyard. One of Charles William’s projects had been turning the backyard of the KA house into a garden. There were rows of holly bushes and flower beds and a goldfish pond. Charles William and Davie were standing by the pond. As I watched, Charles William took Davie in his arms and kissed him on the mouth. He knows I’m watching, I thought. He knows I see him doing that. I was in a strange conflicted sensual mood anyway. The things that Malcolm and I had been doing all afternoon were all over me. I didn’t feel guilty about doing them, just surprised and interested and amazed. I turned away from the pond. I thought of the weight of Malcolm’s body on mine, the smell and taste of him, how I had thought I could kiss through his shoulder to the bone and taste the birth of blood. I had melted into his body and he into mine and that was what was meant by love. And that was what Charles William was doing now to Davie.

  “Rhoda, where are you?” It was Malcolm, coming across the patio looking for me. “Come dance with me,” I said. “I want to dance some more.”

  “What’s going on?” He looked toward the pond. “Oh, that. Well, he won the Wreck Parade for us, didn’t he?”

  “Why is he kissing Davie?” I took his arm. “Why is he kissing him?”

  “Don’t you know, Rhoda? You really don’t know?”

  “No. And I don’t want to stay here anymore. I want to leave. I’m sick of this party. Sick of people getting drunk. Let’s go back to Putty’s. I want to leave right now.”

  “I can’t leave right now. Come on inside. Don’t worry about other people.” He led me back into the crowded living room. The KA’s and their dates were becoming sweaty and wrinkled and incoherent. I saw Irise in a corner dancing with her cousin from Dunleith. A harsh yellow light filled the hallway near the front door, fell down the stairs into the darkened room where everyone was dancing. “I have to get out of here,” I said. “I’m very sensitive, Malcolm. Sometimes I can’t stand to be in crowds.”

  We found my coat and my sequined scarf and my white gloves with rhinestones sewn around the cuffs and got into the car and drove back to Putty’s. “I have to leave in the morning,” I said. “How can I go home after this? How can I leave you?”

  “You can come back up. You can write to me. We can write each other letters. Come sit by me. Come over here. Put your hand back on my leg.”

  “I can’t leave you. I won’t be able to leave after this.” I began to cry. Terrible tears rolled down my cheeks. I held on to his sleeve. “Why did we start doing that? We shouldn’t have done it. What did we do it for? Now I have to leave you. How can I go away?”

  “It’s all right. We’ll see each other again. You can come up any time you want to.” He patted my leg. He drove the car. We were going back to Putty’s. We would do it again and then I would go away and never see him. It was the same thing always with my life. If something was valuable to me it would disappear. No one would ever be there to hold me in their arms when I needed them. I would always be wandering through strange houses, through unknown rooms. Malcolm pulled the car over to the side of the street and turned off the motor and pulled me into his arms. He held me while I cried. “It’s all right, Rhoda,” he said. “We’ll see each other again very soon. It isn’t only you, you know. I’m in this too.” He held me away from him. He began to laugh, a wonderful boyish happy laugh. “Yes, it’s me and I’m in love again,” he sang in a crazy voice. “I’m in love in Georgia. Hootchy-cootchy’s in the air.”

  It was a full moon. We did it again that night and when he left I slept and dreamed of horses racing down hills toward the water. In the middle of the night Irise came in and got in bed with me and put her small sweet hands on my back and patted me awhile. In the morning I started menstruating. Rich red blood poured out of my body so I didn’t even have to fear that I was pregnant.

  At eleven Malcolm and Charles William came and got us and took us out to breakfast and then took us to the airport and put us on the plane.

  “You fell in love with him, didn’t you?” Irise asked, when we were high above the city, rocking our way south and west to Tuscaloosa.

  “Why are people always leaving each other? It seems like a dumb thing to do.”

  “It’s just when you’re young. When you get older I think you stay.”

  Part Four

  ATLANTA

  Chapter

  11

  Dear Malcolm,


  I’m so glad you liked the teddy bear. I made it out of my black cashmere sweater. The one I was wearing the night we were in Putty’s apartment. It is named Errington. Oh, Malcolm, I miss you so much but I’m happy and I’m busy with schoolwork. I told my parents I was going to Emory to summer school next summer. Are you sure you’re going to be at Tech? If you are, I’m going to make the applications.

  I wish I could apply you to my shoulder and my arms and around my waist and so forth and so on, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Ad infinitum.

  I love you. More later. I have to go to class and I want to mail this from the student union.

  Love and more love,

  Rhoda Katherine, her mark

  Dear Rhoda,

  My roommate said he was going to take Errington for a swim and almost got him out but now I have him tied to the bed. Phinias, not Errington. Are you sure you want to write that paper for me? It would really help. It has to be a thousand words. You can write on any modern American poet. I have to tie his feet.

  Love always,

  Malcolm

  Dearest Malcolm,

  Here is the paper. It’s on Dorothy Parker, my absolute completely favorite poet now. She was speaking at Randolph Macon when I was at Southern Seminary but I was campused for smoking and they wouldn’t let me go. Can you believe that? Anyway, I hope you get an A. Anyway, I love and miss you so much. Are you really coming with Charles William in ten days? It seems like nothing and it seems like a million. I will kiss you a thousand times and then a thousand more.

  Love,

  Rhoda

  P.S. Please bring Errington with you. I am lonely for him. He wants to see his old sleeves which I have made into pillows for my bed.

  Te amo,

  Rhoda

  Dear Malcolm,

  Now it is seven days. One week. The way we divide up time but time seems different in different times. Now it seems like water that never moves or waiting for rain.

  We had the most amazing English class yesterday. The new teacher the dean got me is the best teacher I’ve ever had anywhere. His brain spins out in six or seven directions and he asks the most amazing questions. He’s been around the world twice. He quit everything he was doing when he was twenty-one and bummed his way around the world. He said he couldn’t presume to teach until he knew where he was in space and time. Now I think the only reason I moved to Dunleith and came to Tuscaloosa was to be in the presence of this man. Yesterday he spent the whole class on one poem. First he passed it out to us and let us read it. Then he read it out loud twice. It is called “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” I think you could keep on thinking about it the rest of your life and never completely understand it. Mr. Whitehead said he reads it every year and each year it seems to be about something entirely different but the images stay exactly the same. Here is a line from it, “Once a fear pierced him, in that he mistook the shadow of his equipage for blackbirds.”

  There is another part that goes, “A man and a woman are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird are one.” “Among twenty snowy mountains the only moving thing was the eye of the blackbird.” I am going to write my term paper on Stevens. God, he might be the only poet I read all winter. “One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine-trees crusted with snow; and have been cold a long time. …” God.

  Thirty minutes have gone by. I just want to hold you in my arms forever. Maybe this is too much for you. I don’t know any other way to be in love.

  Hurry, love,

  Rhoda

  Dear May Garth,

  Thanks for the note and the picture of Randolph Macon. I’m sorry you got shipped off there and I’m sorry you almost got raped by a football player from V.M.I. I really miss you and think of you when I walk by the Tri Delt house.

  I am so much in love I am almost crazy. His name is Malcolm Martin. Charles William fixed me up with him for Homecoming at Tech. They are coming here in twenty hours. I haven’t been asleep in days. Durrell says there are eight people involved in any love affair but he doesn’t tell who they are. Maybe they are all the other boys you liked and the girls they liked. I don’t know who Malcolm liked except this girl I went to camp with named Pepper Allen who is a perfect little angel goody-goody whose grandfather owns Atlanta.

  We will all be in Dunleith for Christmas for Irise and Charles William’s wedding and we can tell our stories then. In the meantime stay away from those gray uniforms and write when you have time.

  Yours in the western world,

  Rhoda

  P.S. Later

  I’m going crazy waiting for him to get here. I think he won’t like me after all or will think I’m fat or think I’m silly or think my hair is too short or maybe I’ll really get lucky and my face will break out for the first time in my life. I made him this teddy bear out of a cashmere sweater. In short, I am in love. More later. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

  Dearest darling Rhoda,

  You want the whole story? He pulled off my underpants and took them home. When he called up to apologize he said he had them in his hand while he was talking on the phone. He said he would be satisfied with the underpants but I said, no, come back over Saturday night and we’ll try it again.

  I mean it. I went out with him again. He’s from a really poor family in some town in West Virginia. If he wasn’t playing football he couldn’t even go to school. He’s three inches taller than I am. His hands are very crude and he’s tough looking. He looks like someone your mother would have over to paint the house. His name is Iler. It’s his mother’s maiden name. I’m glad you’re in love. I am too. I can’t write you any more details. They read our mail. They feed us saltpeter in the potatoes but I never eat in the dining room anyway. My parents are still getting a divorce. It will keep my father from ever being on the federal appeals court. My mother did it on purpose because she hates him. She hates me too so I’ll probably go live with him when I get out of school here. Fuck this place. Iler says fuck all the time. I do too. I love to say it. Read between the lines if you want to.

  Love,

  May Garth

  Dear Rhoda,

  Charles William and I will leave Atlanta at four o’clock on Friday afternoon. He wants to leave sooner but I have to see my adviser at three. Thanks for all the letters last week. My roommate is in love with you. If we let him off the bed for more than five minutes he gets your letters and reads them. He is a birdwatcher and used to keep bees but I played football with him at Darlington so I have to keep him around. See you Friday night.

  Love,

  Malcolm

  P.S. He wants to write a note.

  Rhoda, oh, Rhoda, why are you wasting yourself on Monk Martin when I am here. I am five feet eight inches tall and will read Yeats to you while you languish in pools of aquamarine water. I will bring you oranges and tangerines and take you away from all this. He won’t introduce me, but he is letting me write this note because he ran out of things to say. People call me Kayo but my name is Phinias Kernodle. Errington likes me more than he likes Monk. I don’t hang him from the light fixture during the night.

  Dear Malcolm,

  It will never be Friday. It will never never never never never be Friday. Let’s say it finally gets to be Friday. And you leave Atlanta and start driving here. Then you will have a car crash and die a fiery death or I will fall into a hole and end up in China. You’ll be in Tuscaloosa and I’ll be in China. But there is no way we could be together in the same place. That would be too good to be true. I love you. Me.

  Rhoda

  Chapter

  12

  After an eternity of hours it was Friday afternoon and I could really begin to wait for him to come. It seemed a dream that I had taken off my clothes and made love to him. In another way it seemed like the only real thing that had ever happened to me except for sometimes when I was reading poetry or sometimes when I wrote it. Maybe, at last, after all these years, since I was fourteen years old, maybe I w
as really going to be in love again. In love with a flesh-and-blood person who loved me back and wasn’t going to die. “Do not project unmet developmental needs onto the current love object via the vehicle of romanticism.” There was an idea I could have used but it would be many years before I would hear that and many years before I knew what it meant. For now, I was a nineteen-year-old cauldron of unmet needs and ecstasies and hopes and fears and desires.

  At five o’clock I went over to the KD house to wait for him to come.

  “They’re going to be so late,” Irise said. “We won’t get to see them for more than two hours. If they don’t hurry up we won’t get to see them at all.”

  “I’m going to see Malcolm all night. I signed out to spend the night over here with you. I’m sneaking out as soon as we sign in.”

  “You have to tell our housemother.”

  “I already did. I told her when I came in.”

  “How will you get out?”

  “I don’t know. How do people do it?”

  “I don’t think they do.”

  “There has to be a window somewhere on the ground floor. All I have to do is climb out and climb back in. I used to do it all the time at Southern Seminary.”

  “What would you do when you got out?”

  “Sleep on the ground or in the stables. Nobody’s keeping me locked in. Dudley and I’ve been sneaking out of our house at night since we were twelve years old. There’s nothing to it, Irise. You just do it.”

  “There’s the car. It’s Charles William’s car. It’s them. Oh, Rhoda, here they are.”

  Charles William’s car drove up and Malcolm got out and came up on the sidewalk and put his arms around me. I had forgotten how big he was, how powerful he was. I had forgotten how much I loved him. I only thought I had remembered. Irise and I signed out and we went to a drive-in and ordered things and talked. “I’m applying to Taliesin West to study with the Wright foundation,” Charles William said. “They have summer apprenticeships. If I get one Irise and I will go next summer. It would be the greatest thing that ever happened to me. He built houses that fit the earth. He’s revolutionized architecture.”