Page 28 of Endless Summer: Stories
Later that night, after procuring a glass of champagne for herself and a Jameson, neat, for Billy; after snatching up the last Ritz cracker with salmon mousse from the tray; after sitting next to Billy for a dinner of prime rib, Yorkshire pudding, and peas; after dancing with him to over a dozen songs, including “At Last,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” and “Fly Me to the Moon,” which Billy croons in Eleanor’s ear, immediately making it “their” song, Eleanor and Billy leave the party in Billy’s car, a Plymouth Valiant convertible, the vinyl top of which is not quite flush, so that even when Billy cranks the heat, there is still a blast of chilly air leaking into the passenger side.
Does Eleanor care? No!
“Where do you live?” Billy asks. “Around here?”
“Here? Brookline?” Eleanor says. “No.” She lives with her parents on Pinckney Street on Beacon Hill in one of the houses that face Louisburg Square. They have a key to the garden, although the novelty of that wore off years ago. Eleanor and Flossie have been trained never to reveal their exact address. This started in June of 1962 when Eleanor was sixteen and the Boston Strangler was on the loose. The whole city had been in a panic, but Vivian doubly so because Win was a bank president, and one of Vivian’s most frightening childhood memories had been of the Lindbergh baby’s kidnapping in 1932. “I live in the city, but let’s not go there.”
“Okay, where to, then?” Billy asks. “My place? I have an apartment in Dorchester.”
Eleanor closes her eyes.An apartment in Dorchester—those four words would fell Vivian Roxie like a tree. As much as Eleanor pretends not to care what Vivian thinks, she can’t, under any circumstances, spend the night inan apartment in Dorchester.
But then Eleanor gets an idea.
She directs Billy onto Pine Manor’s campus. The college is deserted but technically open because there are a handful of students who live too far away to leave for Christmas break—Washington State, Mexico City, Jordan—and another handful who are willfully staying on campus to avoid or annoy their families. All of the women on Eleanor’s floor are gone, however. Her roommate, Ann-Lane, is safely in Memphis.
Once in the dorm room, Eleanor wonders what she’s really prepared for. All she wanted was a warm, quiet place to talk.
The first thing Billy notices is her sewing machine.
“Is this yours?” he asks. “You sew?”
She nods, suddenly shy. “I want to be a fashion designer.” She plucks the velvet of her bodice. “I made this dress.”
“You did not.”
“I did.”
“Come here,” Billy says. He takes his overcoat off and lays it across Ann-Lane’s bed, but he leaves his blazer on, like a gentleman. Eleanor walks over to him and raises her face.
He pulls the red ribbon at her neck. “It’s like opening a present,” he says. He kisses the hollow at the base of her throat.
Just like that, Eleanor is in love. She suspects it’s a condition from which she will never recover.
William O’Shaughnessy Frost. O’Shaughnessy is his mother’s maiden name. He’s Irish Catholic, grew up in the Mission Hill section of Boston, attended Boston Latin.
Eleanor silently celebrates. Her mother can’t argue with Boston Latin.
His college was in Amherst, and Eleanor gets ready to marshal a parade until she realizes he means UMass, and in any case, he dropped out after two years when he decided he didn’t want to be an engineer after all. He now attends trade school in Southie. In eighteen months, he will be a licensed electrician.
Trade school,Eleanor thinks. She imagines Vivian pursing her lips.
“Family?” Eleanor asks. They are lying naked under the sheet, wool blanket, and Amish quilt on Eleanor’s bed. She did not, however, sacrifice her virginity. She wanted to, but Billy said she was too fine a girl and they should wait until they knew each other better.
Billy’s father is a doctor, a general practitioner on Mission Hill. His mother is a librarian, a slave to the card catalog. The physician father will meet Vivian’s standards, although a hospital position would have been better. But what will Vivian think of a mother who works? Vivian sits on the ladies’ auxiliary committee for the Boston Public Library, so she might consider being a librarian noble work in the name of literacy for the masses or she might consider a woman who gets paid for finding call numbers and locating microfiche a travesty.
There are no siblings. Apparently, Billy had had a complicated birth.
An only child is preferable to a squawking Irish household of twelve, Eleanor supposes, although she herself has always longed for a bigger family—brothers, more sisters. Not, however, an adopted sister such as Rhonda.
“How do you know my cousin?” Eleanor asks. This is the answer she dreads the most.
“I was a chum of Frank Paley,” Billy says. “We were altar boys together at the basilica. He introduced me to Rhonda, then told me to look out for her while he was overseas. I saw her again at his funeral, and last week out of the blue she called me up and invited me to the party. She was afraid to go by herself, she said. I went partly as a favor to her but more as a favor to my old buddy Frank, may he rest in peace.”
“So you don’t…likeher?” Eleanor says. “The two of you aren’t… you haven’t…”
“No,” Billy says, kissing Eleanor’s left eyelid. “And no,” he says, kissing her right eyelid.
She feels it again, the heart swell. She had worried that Billy held back in bed because he was in love with Rhonda. But he barely knows her! He was a childhood friend of Frank Paley’s! Eleanor wonders if Billy knows any magic tricks. His eyes are a magic trick all their own.
