“It will,” Neva said.
“You look smashing,” Clare said to Neva, who had given him a desperate look, as if he could tell the women to let Neva go bareheaded.
“I know! I’ll hold your headband until we get to the church,” Ida said in her happy-soldier voice, dropping the headband into her giant pocketbook. “And you can put it on right before you go up the aisle.” Ida was dressed in taffeta, too, but hers was a pale green suit that she wore on all special occasions. She wore enormous pearly beads and pearly clip-on earrings and around her ringed hands pearly bracelets dripped. A green feather pointed out of her small green velvet hat, upon which perched a small black-and-green bird.
“We’re going to be late,” Charlotte said, striding into the now crowded room like a giant Easter lily in heels, one hand fluttering to her own headband, which was attached to a veil and threatened a backward slide. Her eyes filled with tears when she saw Clare, and she remembered a nickname from long ago, one he hated as much as she hated Lottie: “Oh, Dipsy. I’m sorry you can’t be there.”
“It’s all right,” Clare said. “Vinnie’s coming with a new game her cousins sent from England. And chocolates. She said that specifically.” The puffiness of crying was not quite gone from her face. “You look kind of ravishing,” he said.
“Thank you, kind of,” Charlotte said.
“Will you save me some of the chocolates?” Neva asked.
“Sure,” Clare said.
He could hear his mother calling out to Hurd, and then coming up the stairs, and then each ornately dressed and perfumed woman was kissing him and adjusting some aspect of his bed. His mother’s face looked tight. He figured this was because of his father not coming back, or maybe her own father arriving, or maybe both. She was wearing the pearls Opa had given her for Christmas and when Clare said they looked nice, she said, “They do, don’t they?” She smiled and lowered her voice. “He asked me to wear them. I think he was afraid I’d pawned them or something.” The whole party was clattering down the stairs when Neva ran back to give him a kiss on each ear, and then an Eskimo kiss, and then a kiss on his chin, which she called an Australian, as if each position on the face had a corresponding continent. “Bye,” she said gravely. “Is Vinnie your girlfriend?”
He gave her an Australian and added a Polar, right on the crown of her wet-combed hair. “Vinnie?” he said. For a while now Lavinia had been visiting every day after school. He was grateful to her, and he thought she was probably the smartest girl he’d ever met, aside from Miss Warren, the Latin teacher. She’d gotten a new haircut, short and angular, so that she looked like a moll in a comic book, which sometimes he liked and sometimes he didn’t. He felt a tug of something toward her, a need, maybe. He didn’t know what it was. “No,” Clare said.
“Marchie says she’s your sweetheart,” Neva said.
“Well, Marchie’s wrong,” Clare said.
It was then that Clare became aware of someone outside the open door to his room. “Neva,” Lavinia said, poking her head in, “your mother told me to tell you they’re all stifling in the car, and that your sister is going to have ten thousand kittens if you don’t hurry.”
Clare was pretty sure Lavinia had interjected the kittens part, but she didn’t look saucy and amused. Her face was flushed and stricken, and he knew that she must have overheard.
“Okay, Neva,” Clare said. “You’d better clear out. Wear the headband for me, okay? And tell me all the good parts when you get back.”
“I have a surprise,” Neva said. “Wait’ll you hear about that!”
Clare gave her his sternest look. “Don’t do any surprises,” he said. “Weddings aren’t a good time for surprises.”
“Bye-da-lie!” she called, which he was supposed to answer with “Bye-da-loo,” but he was worried about the surprise and the strange way that Lavinia was now staring out the window at the baking-hot empty street.
When everyone else was gone, the hotel was suddenly quiet, but Lavinia said nothing. Her straight black hair gleamed where it came to a point beside her chin. She had applied fresh lipstick and he was pretty sure he’d never seen the dress before. It was red with white dots, and the collar came down over her breasts in folds of silky cloth that revealed a snowy triangle between her breasts. Normally, she wore long sleeves and high collars and heavy black skirts. He looked to see if she wore silk stockings and was surprised to see that she did. He wondered how much of this his mother had noticed.
“How do I look without the pulley?” he tried.
“Jake,” she said, glancing without interest at his leg.
“I’m not supposed to stand up yet, though. The doctor wants me to do exercises in bed first.” He intended this to be off-color because sometimes Lavinia was the kind of girl you could joke with, but she remained silent now, which depressed and annoyed him. He needed her to be encouraging. He had expected her to make a big fuss about it, to see the de-casting as a triumphant beginning to his triumphant recovery. She’d been saying all along that he’d walk across the stage on graduation day and give the valediction.
“That the new game?” he asked.
She had set the long rectangular box she was carrying on the chair. It said Sorry! in pink letters on the side. “Uh-huh.”
“Can I see it?”
She handed it to him without comment.
“I see your motives now,” he said, trying for a flirtatious tone. “It’s a ‘fast-paced game of pursuit.’”
She shrugged and he saw that she was holding back tears.
“How about we play it then?” he said softly. “I feel pretty sorry already.”
Lavinia didn’t answer.
“Ah, come on, Vinnie,” he said in a coaxing voice. He felt different. The tugging feeling was much stronger now that she was pulling away from him.
She sat down on the steamer trunk and looked out the window.
“Is that a new dress?”
She didn’t say. She went on looking out the window and then she said, “I think it’s time I stopped visiting.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, I can’t tell you then.”
In the new, revealing clothes, Lavinia looked older and more sophisticated.
“You’re all dressed up,” Clare said truthfully. “You look pretty.”
Lavinia glanced at him with what might have been gratitude, then looked back at the window, through which there was nothing to see, he thought, though in fact Bart Crandall was already limping toward the El Real with a night letter in his hand.
“Stockings, even,” Clare said.