The Rebellion of Yale Marratt Page 4

  Cynthia turned away from him. "That's a rotten thing to say. What I say and what I do are completely unrelated. Because I sing a dirty song doesn't mean anything." She was crying. Yale fought an impulse to brush the tears from her cheeks. Instead, he said, "Let's get away from here before Larry comes back." He led her along the river beyond the picnic grounds. There was no path. Holding her hand, he guided her over fallen trees, and through the underbrush. He felt strangely at ease with her and wondered whether it were Cynthia that made him feel this way or the whiskey.

  Cynthia hung to his arm. "I'm kind of dizzy," she said. "Where are we going? We've got to go back."

  "They'll never miss us. Just a bit farther; there's a cove and a little sandy beach. I'll show you a quicker way back to the campus from there."

  They stumbled out of the woods onto a tiny, sandy stretch of river bank. "This is a tributary of the river that cuts right across my father's land," Yale explained.

  "It's nice," Cynthia said. She flopped on the sand. "Is your home near here?"

  Yale told her that the Marratt estate covered more than one hundred acres. His father's house was at least a half mile farther up the river.

  Cynthia was impressed. Yale told her about his father. It was difficult for him to make the portrayal objective. "He's president of the Marratt Corporation. I'm not his pride and joy. He wanted me to go to Harvard but my marks weren't good enough. I guess he expects that I'll eventually go to work in the company." Yale described the factory to her. He liked the interested way Cynthia listened to him as he talked. He tried to convey to her that he wasn't like his father, that he couldn't get enthusiastic over the famous line of Marratt jams, soups, ketchups and piccalillis. Whenever Pat made a tour of the plant he was greeted with grins and cheery hellos. He would talk to the men about their families, and give them tips on how to run their machines. "Your old man's a great guy, the workmen, almost without exception, told Yale. Yale envied Pat's easy camaraderie. He wanted to emulate him but he couldn't seem to overcome his basic shyness and engage in casual conversations and gossip the way Pat could. His unintended withdrawal had gained him the reputation of being a "Snotty rich man's son. Nothing like his old man."

  "You don't seem so very different to me." Cynthia lay back on the sandy edge of the river and watched the clear blue sky through half closed eyes.

  "Why did you pick Midhaven College?" Yale asked. He tried to focus Cynthia a little more closely. He wondered for a moment whether the whiskey which burned in his stomach was going to make him sick.

  She didn't answer for a moment, and then, she looked at him seriously. "What religion do you think I am?"

  Yale looked puzzled. "How do I know? Most everyone at Midhaven College is a Protestant. Me, I'm nothing."

  "I'm Jewish," she said, softly. "My father's name was Carnetsky. When he came from Poland he changed it to Carnell."

  "I still don't get it."

  "Midhaven was the only college whose Jewish quota was not filled this year," Cynthia explained. In high school, she told him, she had been on the honor roll, but the college of her choice couldn't accept her until next year.

  Yale was surprised to learn that certain New England colleges had a quota system that limited the number of Jewish students.

  "This world is batty," he said. "Everybody in this country professes to be upset about Hitler, yet we do the same thing and don't talk about it." His mind was a little too fuzzy to think any further on the subject. He had a vague recollection of discussions on the subject of Jews by his family. A few years before he remembered that Pat had made reservations for his family at a hotel in Florida. When Pat found that it was predominantly occupied by Jews there had been an angry discussion with the manager and they had gone somewhere else. It had all seemed rather silly to Yale.

  "From what you have told me about your father," Cynthia smiled, "I'll bet he doesn't like Jews." She didn't tell him that it was only in the past year or two that she herself had become aware that her racial background could be considered offensive to some people.

  "Small worry," Yale laughed. "He doesn't like me much either. He says I read too much and have crazy ideas. I read the whole Bible last year." Cynthia looked at him amazed. "Oh, I'm not one of those religious twerps. I happened to read another book that kept making reference to Biblical characters so I just decided to read it. It took me two months." He grinned. "There are a lot of nice Jewish girls in the Bible."

  "If you read so much, you must be smart."

  "Oh, I'm smart. I'm so smart that I am a freshman on trial. I'm smart . . . queer. Anybody who reads and doesn't care for athletics and thinks he would like to be a poet rather than a businessman is not smart in my family."

  "Well, I like you," Cynthia whispered.

  Yale looked at her in wonder, struck by the clear, clean beauty of her features. She had large, brown eyes that seemed to contain within them the wisdom of her race. Her face descended from high cheekbones to a firm chin. Her slightly angular jaw was a favorite of many artists depicting feminine beauty. He suddenly realized that Cynthia's features resembled his own imaginings of Ruth and Naomi in the Old Testament. In the years to come, as he knew Cynthia better, the thought would often recur to him that even beyond her own awareness she seemed to carry with her a racial warmth and understanding. Later, he would ask her many times if she realized that she had this transcendent beauty, and she would look at him and laugh, and tell him that perhaps it wasn't she at all, but something he had conjured in his own eyes and in his own brain.

  Although Yale had kissed only one or two girls in his lifetime, and those halfheartedly as the expected thing to do, he had a tremendous desire to kiss Cynthia. The liquor gave him the courage to try.

  She looked at him, amused. "You kiss like a schoolboy. I'll show you how a farmer's daughter does it." She kissed him with her lips pressed hard against his, her mouth slightly open. The top of her tongue brushed his teeth. Yale blinked. The liquor was beginning to give him a dull, throbbing headache. He saw Cynthia's face through a blur. The clear vision of a moment ago vanished. She became a curious blend of black hair and wide brown eyes.

  "I'm drunk," he mumbled. He closed his eyes. He didn't know how long he slept. Perhaps it was only a few minutes. He awoke to her shaking him and saying, "Hey, freshman, wake up. I feel awfully funny. Have you ever been drunk before?" Yale looked at her leaning over him, her hair falling across her eyes.

  "Nope," he said and wondered if the dizzy feeling he had, and an inability to bring Cynthia into clear focus, was being drunk. "But I think I am now. How much of that stuff did you drink?"

  "Five or six swallows. I've never been drunk before either. I feel like a bird. Woo. . . ." She stood up and then quickly sank to her knees. "I am dizzy." She flung her arms in front of her and fell forward on the sand.

  Yale looked at her, alarmed. "Hey, come on. Wake up! Are you sick?" She didn't answer. He felt suddenly protective toward her. "Cynthia? Cynthia, what's the matter?"

  "Oh, I think I'm sick," she moaned.

  He looked at her helplessly, "I've got an idea. Let's go in for a swim. The river water is cold, it'll straighten us up." He pulled off her saddle shoes and ankle socks. She didn't move. "Come on," he said, patting her on the back. He noticed a zipper on the back of her dress and pulled it down. Her dress came apart to just above her buttocks. Still she didn't move. He started to fumble with her brassiere clasp, and she jumped up.

  "Okay -- you think I'm afraid to go in?" Quickly she stripped off her brassiere and panties, and ran into the water. "Oh! Oh!" she shouted gaily. "It's freezing. Come on in, you coward!"

  Wallowing in the water beside her, Yale knew he was blushing. He watched her with a feeling of warm delight. Her hair was soaking wet, and dripped over her shoulders. Her breasts were thrust high, her nipples firm and pointed from the cold water.

  "Gosh, I feel better," she said, smiling at him, Unconcerned about her lack of clothes. "You know," she confided, "I never had but one
drink before in my life."

  They walked back on the tiny beach. "Why did you drink that stuff, then?" Yale asked.

  "I don't know. I won't again, I can tell you."

  They sat together on the sand. Yale sprawled on his stomach and watched her hugging her knees. She seemed like some lovely creature out of a fairy tale he had read years ago. Yet he was bothered. She was so wild and unexpected. Did she go swimming naked with just anyone? The thought made Yale jealous.

  "I suppose, now, you'll tell all your friends that we went swimming together naked," she said, looking at him speculatively.

  Yale shook his head. How could he tell her that this moment was indescribably precious to him? That this was the first time he had ever seen a woman naked except maybe his sister and that had been years ago when Barbara was thirteen. How could he tell Cynthia that her beauty, the curve of her shoulders, the softness of her breasts, the arch of her stomach and the triangle of her hair leading into her slender thighs, was for him an emotion ineffable. An emotion that brought tears to his eyes and joy to his very being. He wanted to somehow shout, "Look at the wonder of the existence of us. We are alive . . . and it is good!" A woman's body, he thought, could give the beholder the concept of God -- a tangible evidence of mysteries beyond comprehension.

  "Look at you!" she giggled. "You're a man, too!" She stared at him thoughtfully. "You look different from my father and brother though." She suddenly realized that it was because Yale was not circumcised. Cynthia blushed. She wondered what he was thinking. She wanted to tell him that other than her own brothers, he was the only boy she had ever seen naked. Awkwardly, Yale tried to put his arm around her.

  "Don't get any ideas," she said. She slapped him playfully on the stomach. "I'm a virgin. I intend to stay that way for a while." Yale admitted that he was a virgin, too. He told her that it was all right with him. He didn't tell her that just being with her, sharing the warm September sun, the quiet whisper of the trees and the murmur of the river as it rushed by toward the ocean, was a kind of completeness in itself. Holding her hand as he lay beside her, he realized that for the first time in his life he was not alone; that he had a potential friend. Someone who might come with him in a wondrous search for all the mystery and beauty that he knew was in life. Was Cynthia that kind of person? Or was she just another one of the crazy girls that he had known whose only interest seemed to be what clothes they wore, what dances they were going to, what song was on top of the Hit Parade, what dates were the smoothest, or which boy could dance the best.

  He looked at Cynthia and found her watching him. "You seem so far away," she said. "Come back and tell me what you were thinking."

  "Why did you drink with Larry McQuail? Why did you sing that song?" Yale demanded bluntly. "I'm not a prude, but you are too nice to get mixed up with him."

  "And why am I lying here naked with you?" she asked angrily. "I know what you think -- that I'm a tramp."

  Yale denied it. "I think you are beautiful. I don't know. I'm the romantic type, I guess." He was silent trying to think what he meant. How could he tell her that he felt protective toward her. He was embarrassed to try to explain to her the feeling of exaltation he felt in her presence. The same feeling of wonder, only sharper, more poignant, that he felt on a warm summer evening as the day slowly departed and soft shadows of night crept into the sky. The same wonder and emotion that made him shiver with delight when he walked along deserted ocean beaches in the winter and felt his own insignificance in relation to the sky and water stretched in cold and remote infinity before his eyes.

  "I guess I don't like dirty songs," he said slowly. "Why do people want to make sex so ugly? I don't understand it."

  Cynthia had tears in her eyes as she tried to answer him. "I'm not wild, honestly, Yale. I guess it is kind of an act. For a long time in school, no one knew I existed. I was just a smart Jewish kid whose father grew tomatoes. I was shy and I studied hard, and the better marks I got the fewer friends I had. I was the wallflower at all the dances. Then I watched how the other girls acted -- and I found that if I acted sexy and said crazy things like they did that I could have dates too. It worked. I was very popular in my senior year."

  "Sure," Yale said, acidly. "You were hot stuff!"

  Cynthia stood up. The sunlight, drifting through the leaves, made a shimmering pattern of shadows on her body. "I take it back," Yale said. "You are a chaste goddess."

  She kissed him quicldy. "Cynthia is a moon goddess." She grinned. Then she blushed. "We better go back."

  They dressed, shyly, turning away from each other, On the way back to the campus she told him not to worry -- that from now on she would go back to being a wallflower. "And when you find out what a grind I am -- even you won't like me."

  Yale smiled. He had a friend, a beautiful, wonderful friend. A girl -- he thought. A girl. The word was filled with a sense of magic. He squeezed Cynthia's hand. "I like you, Cynthia, very much. . . ."

  3

  Within a month after college started Yale had established that Cynthia was his girl. Because Cynthia was very definite in her desire to complete her major requirements in English, Yale decided he would do the same. It had the added advantage that they were able to take many of the same classes together.

  Sonny Thompson labelled them the "inseparables" He told Yale in a leering voice that the rumor abounded that Cynthia could be "had." One night Sonny carried it too far. When Yale returned to their room around ten-thirty, after a date with Cynthia, Sonny looked up from the book he was studying. "You must be Charles Atlas or something," he said with a smirk.

  Yale, filled with happy thoughts of the lingering kiss Cynthia had just given him, failed to catch the drift of Sonny's remark. "What do you mean?"

  "It takes a strong man to knock off a piece of ass every day -- Saturday and Sunday included." Sonny howled at his own joke. Yale grabbed his Introduction to Freshmen English and hurled it at Sonny, hitting him squarely on the side of his face. Yale threw the book with such force that the binding broke. Sonny slumped off his chair, a glazed look in his eye.

  Yale pulled him to his feet. He was shaking from the violence of his anger. "I'm sorry, Sonny -- but keep your dirty mind off my life." He didn't say that the crude expression that was bandied about in every bull session by pimply faced students irritated him as much as Sonny's inference.

  Sonny rubbed his face. "Listen, you crazy bastard, I'll tell you for your own good. All the guys in this school think you're a fruit. Hanging around with a dame all the time. You don't take part in any of the normal activities. You don't go out for sports -- you never show up at football rallies. Believe me if this dump had any fraternities you'd never make a pledge. I hear through the rumor channels that a few of the sophomores plan to take you for a little ride in the country and straighten you out."

  Yale looked at him incredulously. "You must be nuts. What I do is none of your goddamned business. I don't happen to care whether Midhaven wins a football game or not. As far as sports go I'll beat anyone in the college at tennis or golf -- if I want to -- but it so happens I think golf is stupid, and I play tennis when the mood suits me, and not for the glory of Midhaven. You can tell your beloved sophomores to stay clear of me because I think freshmen hazing is little boy stuff. I wouldn't hesitate to report anyone who tries it on me. Remember," he finished sarcastically, "we don't go in for hazing and infantilism at Midhaven to quote the good Dr. Tangle."

  "You're a spoiled rich man's son," Sonny said sourly.

  "Well, don't expect a 'Good-bye Mr. Chips' ending," Yale said. He began to laugh. The ridiculous prep school atmosphere that Sonny and a good portion of the freshman class thought should prevail at Midhaven College amused him. He had had his fill of that at Buxton Academy. "Believe me, Sonny -- my father has tried for eighteen years to make me a 'man's man.' I don't care for the type. I've known it all my life -- and if the great Pat Marratt couldn't succeed -- you and a few sophomore goons won't accomplish it."

  Yale cont
inued to see Cynthia as much as possible. While the girls' dormitory rules made this somewhat difficult, they discovered a small Italian delicatessen about a half mile from the college called Mama Pepperelli's. Even though the faculty of the college had tried unsuccessfully in the past to close the place, Mama's had acquired a reputation as a college hangout. Since no liquor was sold, there was little that Doctor Tangle could do about it.

  Here amidst the occasional boomings of a juke box, Cynthia and Yale took refuge and studied their common courses together. The wide reading that Yale had done over the past five years came suddenly into focus. He was able to interrelate the subject matter in his various courses in a way that was surprising to his professors. His fervor delighted Cynthia. "Your father must be pleased with you. At the rate you are going you will have the best marks in the freshman class."

  Yale laughed. "If Pat knew that I had the highest marks in a course called 'Biblical History,' he would get Doctor Tangle on the telephone and ask him why in hell his son was taking such a course. What practical value could it have? if I told him that the course was unsuspectingly giving me a tremendous appreciation of the cultural contributions of the Jewish people to the world, I think my father would blow his top."

  While Yale had questioned Cynthia endlessly about Judaism he had carefully avoided telling her about his parents' reactions; particularly Pat Marratt's feelings about Jews. She sensed that his family wouldn't approve of her.

  One evening in March, Yale brought Cynthia to a family dinner. As they drove up the tree-lined, three-quarter mile drive to the Marratt home, Cynthia remarked nervously that this was some difference from the dirt road that led into her home in New Jersey. "In the summer I live in the middle of tomato plants as far as you can see. There are no rolling green lawns and pine trees. In the winter our house is surrounded by acres of muddy level land. New Jersey is a lot flatter than Connecticut, you know."