Stu turned to look at her, really seeing her for the first time, and Fran felt a stab of pure jealous agony. I waited too long, she thought. Oh my God, I went and did it, I went and waited too long.
She happened to glance at Harold and saw that Harold was smiling in a guarded way, one hand up to his mouth to conceal it. It looked like a smile of relief. She suddenly felt that she would like to stand up, walk casually over to Harold, and hook his eyes out of his head with her fingernails.
Never, Harold! she would scream as she did it. Never!
Never?
From Fran Goldsmith's Diary
July 19, 1990
Oh Lord. The worst has happened. At least in the books when it happens it's over, something at least changes, but in real life it just seems to go on and on, like a soap opera where nothing ever comes to a head. Maybe I should move to clear things up, take a chance, but I'm so afraid something might happen between them and. You can't end a sentence with "and," but I'm afraid to put down what might come after the conjunction.
Let me tell you everything, dear diary, even though it's no great treat to write it down. I even hate to think about it.
Glen and Stu went into town (which happens to be Girard, Ohio, tonight) near dusk to look for some food, hopefully concentrates and freeze-dried stuff. They're easy to carry and some of the concentrates are really tasty, but as far as I am concerned all the freeze-dried food has the same flavor, namely dried turkey turds. And when have you ever had dried turkey turds to serve as your basis for a comparison? Never mind, diary, some things will never be told, ha-ha.
They asked Harold and me if we wanted to come, but I said I'd had enough motorcycling for one day if they could do without me, and Harold said no, he would fetch some water and get it boiled up. Probably already laying his plans. Sorry to make him sound so scheming, but the simple fact is, he is.
note 7
Well, Mark and Perion were off somewhere, supposedly hunting for wild berries to supplement our diet, probably doing something else - they are quite modest about it & bully for them, say I - and so I was first gathering wood for a fire and then getting one going for Harold's kettle of water... and pretty soon he came back with one (he'd pretty obviously stayed at the stream long enough to have a bath and wash his hair). He hung it on the whatdoyoucallit that goes over the fire. Then he comes & sits down beside me.
We were sitting on a log, talking about one thing and another, when he suddenly put his arms around me and tried to kiss me. I say tried but he actually succeeded, at least at first, because I was so surprised. Then I jerked away from him - looking back it seems sorta comic altho I'm still sore - and fell backward right off the log. It rucked up the back of my blouse and scraped about a yard of skin off. I let out a yell. Talk about history repeating, that was too much like the time with Jess out on the breakwater when I bit my tongue... too much like it for comfort.
In a second Harold's on one knee beside me, asking if I'm all right, blushing right down to the roots of his clean hair. Harold tries sometimes to be so icy, so sophisticated - he always seems to me like a jaded young writer constantly searching for that special Sad Café on the West Bank where he can idle the day away talking about Jean-Paul Sartre and drinking cheap plonk - but underneath, well covered, is a teenager with a far less mature set of fantasies. Or so I believe. Saturday matinee fantasies for the most part: Tyrone Power in Captain from Castile, Humphrey Bogart in Dark Passage, Steve McQueen in Bullitt. In times of stress it's always this side of him which seems to come out, maybe because he repressed it so severely as a child, I don't know. Anyway, when he regresses to Bogie, he only succeeds in reminding me of that guy who played Bogie in that Woody Allen movie, Play It Again, Sam.
So when he knelt beside me and said, "Are you all right, baby?," I started to giggle. Talk about history repeating itself! But it was more than the humor of the situation, you know. If that had been all, I could have held it in. No, it was more in the line of hysterics. The bad dreams, the worrying about the baby, what to do about my feelings for Stu, the traveling every day, the stiffness, the soreness, losing my parents, everything changed for good... it came out in giggles at first, then in hysterical laughter I just couldn't stop.
"What's so funny?" Harold asked, getting up. I think it was supposed to come out in this terribly righteous voice, but by then I had stopped thinking about Harold and got this crazy image of Donald Duck in my head. Donald Duck waddling through the rains of Western civilization quacking angrily: What's so funny, hah? What's so funny? What's so f**king funny? I put my hands over my face & just giggled & sobbed & giggled until Harold must have thought I'd gone absolutely crackers.