The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [79]
This was the last straw.
“You mean we haven’t even got a cook or a housekeeper around the place?” I moaned, the joy of freedom promptly evaporating. “I’ll go shopping with you, Bax,” I said grimly. “I’ve got a telegram to send.”
Larry muttered, “Spare us,” under his breath, and they all three exchanged glances.
I saw that I’d gone too far.
“Bax and I are getting the provisions, they’ll be too heavy for you girls today,” said Larry decisively. “You can do the lunch. Get yourselves unpacked while we’re away. Unpacked,” he added, looking at me. “And none of your tricks, Gorce.”
They went out and got the supplies. And we unpacked. And Bax chopped wood and built us a fire. And then we had lunch. And after that we started teaching Missy how to play bridge.
That night, when we were ready to go to bed, we all borrowed warm sweaters from Bax and filled the clay hot-water bottles we’d found in the kitchen and took them to bed with us, where we slept under the rugs of our bedroom floors.
One thing about the four of us: you never know who’s going down next. The morning after we arrived, for instance, I came waltzing in to breakfast determined to be a good sport and make the best of it, rain and all, and who should be deep in the sulks but Missy. So now it was up to us three—the new us three—to pull her out of them.
When we were doing the washing up together that evening I finally asked her point-blank what was eating her.
So then she asked me point-blank if I’d ever been to bed with a man. I blinked and said what did she want to know for and had she?
She said no.
This surprised me. She looked like such a voluptuous sexpot, with her blonde hair falling all over her face, and her slow, melting movements. She kicked off her shoes and sat on a kitchen stool wiggling her toes, sucking on a plum, and staring at the floor in an embarrassed kind of way. You could see she wasn’t lying.
I asked her again why she wanted to know about me and she said she wanted my advice. She said she didn’t know what to do about Larry.
I asked her how she felt about him.
She said she thought he was real nice. She said she thought she was really in love with him, but she wondered if he wouldn’t lose respect for her if she gave in to him. I said, what made her think that? And she said her mother.
I said if I were her I’d jump in first and decide whether he was losing respect for me or not afterwards, but she said she knew her mother would jes’ die if she ever found out. She said Southern mothers were very strict with their children and made them go to church every Sunday at home.
So I asked her what her mother thought she was doing right now, and she said oh, that house parties were different. They were perfectly all right. She’d been on dozens of them in theSouth. Only Southern boys understood Southern girls. They understood you could do everything but.
So then I said, well, if she had all these qualms about it maybe she’d better not, and she said but the trouble was she wanted to.
What a world, I thought. Nothing but sex as far as the eye can see.
My own feelings were getting pretty mixed-up.
I love Larry, I really do. I love him no matter what. But all this was nothing to do with me. You can tell from seeing them together that nothing’s going to stop what’s supposed to happen from happening. Besides, he’s already told me that he’s in love with her, so I’ve more or less got used to it.
However, one of the things I thought was, that if they did start to have a real affair, maybe I’d be able to get over him.
On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons why I hope they don’t. One of them is Bax.
I don’t like the way he’s looking at me.
I’d made it quite clear to Larry when I said I’d come along, that Bax wasn’t to get any ideas about me. And Larry had said, no, absolutely not, he’d straightened him out first thing. But I still don’t like the way Bax is looking at me. And the atmosphere around those two, Larry and Missy, is so heavily charged