Page 27 of Endless Summer: Stories
Her mother exhibits a rare failure of composure; her gasp is audible, but probably only to Eleanor. Then a whispered “Good God.”
“Now, now,” Win Roxie murmurs.
It’s approximately twelve steps from the front door of the club to the receiving line, and in the time it takes Rhonda Fiorello and her date to cover those twelve steps, Eleanor has the following thoughts:
1. Rhonda has come to the Christmas party wearing a floor-length lavender (out-of-season) dress that is (basically) see-through and a pair of leather thong sandals. Over the top of the dress is a threadbare white “wrap”—honestly, for all Eleanor knows, it might be a towel stolen from the Holiday Inn, but she is grateful for its presence because Eleanor fears her cousin isn’t wearing a bra. Rhonda has not seen fit to wash her hair; it hangs in dark strings around her sallow, pinched face.
2. Rhonda has never been a pretty girl, but this evening she looks particularly ghastly.
3. Eleanor is not supposed to have uncharitable thoughts about her cousin. Rhonda’s mother, Cressida Roxie Fiorello, Win’s younger sister, got pregnant at nineteen, endured a shotgun marriage at Eleanor’s grandfather’s insistence, gave birth to Rhonda, then promptly left the city of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the East Coast altogether. She became an activist for a Sioux Indian tribe in South Dakota, leaving Rhonda to be raised by her father, Sal Fiorello, a car salesman on Route 1 in Revere.
Win Roxie tried to intervene. He offered to pay to send Rhonda to Winsor with Eleanor; he offered to let Rhonda move into the house on Pinckney Street. She could stay in the fourth bedroom, he said, the one with the best view of their hidden garden out back.She’ll be like another sister!Win had said to Eleanor as if this were something she might have wanted. Rhonda was only two years younger than Eleanor, far too close in age to remain uncompetitive. Eleanor enjoys being her father’s favorite and resents the soft spot he seems to have for Rhonda. Eleanor realizes it is merely hand-me-down affection—his younger sister, Cressida, was his favorite of his four siblings for reasons Eleanor doesn’t understand—and now that Cressida is effectivelygone,he has transferred his tender feelings to Rhonda.
Thankfully, Sal insisted on keeping Rhonda in Revere to attend Immaculate Conception; however, Rhonda got expelled by the nuns for smoking marijuana. That was in her junior year, and although it had been possible for her to finish up at the public school, she chose to drop out. She took a job as a chambermaid at the Sheraton Commander and started dating a boy who worked as a bellhop. The boy’s name was Frank Paley. Rhonda had brought Frank Paley to the previous year’s Christmas party and he had presented himself well, which is to say better than anyone thought a special friend of ne’er-do-well Rhonda’s might. He had held his liquor and ended the evening sitting in the men’s bar with Win, teaching him magic tricks—he took a dollar bill from Win, then produced the same dollar bill from inside a lemon, a trick that had confounded Win.
The boy’s going to be famous!Win said.
But shortly after the new year, Frank Paley enlisted and was deployed to Vietnam. He was killed in July during Operation Buffalo—and that was when Rhonda went from being a black sheep to a full-blown off-the-rails lunatic. She became a war protester, the tenacious, unruly kind. She was photographed marching outside the Massachusetts State House, and the photo was published on the front page of theBoston Globe—Rhonda with her mouth open, fist in the air, sign thrust in front of her:CHILDREN ARE NOT FOR BURNING. Vivian, who believed that a lady should appear in the newspaper only three times in her life—her birth, her marriage, and her death—was fit to be tied. She was relieved there was no common last name linking the angry young woman in the photograph to the Roxie family of Pinckney Street.
No time for further thoughts; Rhonda and her date are upon them.
“Hello, Rhonda,” Eleanor’s mother says. “Welcome to the Christmas party.”
“Happiest of holidays, Rhonda,” Win says. “Would you care to introduce your guest?”
Rhonda stares at Win and Vivian with glassy eyes, then starts to cackle. She’s on drugs, Eleanor thinks. She wonders if her parents are going to let Rhonda stay or if they will ask Frederick, the club’s social director, to find someone to discreetly escort her out.
The young man speaks up for himself. “I’m William Frost, sir,” he says, offering a hand. “But please, call me Billy.”
Win shakes Billy Frost’s hand, clearly relieved that the young man is upright and coherent and speaks English. “How do you do, Billy Frost. Welcome to the Country Club. Is this your first time?”
“Yes, sir,” Billy Frost says. “However, I have long dreamed of playing the Primrose course.”
“A fellow golf enthusiast!” Win says. “How marvelous!”
Eleanor takes a look at this fellow, Billy Frost. He’s tall and well built with sandy hair, recently barbered. He’s wearing a navy blazer and a standard red-and-blue rep tie, a webbed belt, penny loafers. The outfit, at least, passes muster. Where did Rhonda find this fellow? Surely not at one of her protests or sit-ins. Possibly she stationed herself outside the Hasty Pudding Club and waited for a suitable escort to emerge.
At that moment, Billy Frost turns to Eleanor, and her heart swells enough that she is aware of it there, in her chest, beneath the black velvet. Billy Frost’s eyes are so intensely blue that Eleanor feels as if she has never seen blue eyes before. As she is noticing this, he appears to be noticing her. His eyes flick to her décolletage—Rude?she wonders, even as she knows that the entire point of décolletage is to be noticed—then back to her face, and he gives her a prizewinning smile.
“Oh, hello,” he says, and the rest of the world—her parents, her mousy cousin, the orchestra, the canapés, the evergreen garland spiraling down the banister of the main staircase emitting the scent of Fraser fir, the entire Country Club—evaporates. Eleanor is suspended in a silvery mist. Billy Frost extends his hand. “I’m Billy Frost. And who mightyoube?”
“I’m Eleanor Roxie,” she says. She nearly addsRhonda’s cousin,but she stops. She willnotdefine herself in terms of Rhonda. Rhonda, Eleanor decides at that moment, is irrelevant.
She takes Billy’s hand.
Rhonda, perhaps realizing she is about to be cast aside, snaps to attention, but her focus is not on the thrum of energy between her date and her cousin; her focus is on her uncle.
“Howdareyou!” Rhonda says to Win. She swallows, and her eyes blaze like trash fires. “How dare you throw a party, a party as sparkling and frivolous as this one, when our boys are dying in the rice paddies! How dare you, Uncle Win! Tell me, is President Johnson in attendance tonight? He is awar criminal.A murderer.”
Win laughs uncomfortably and takes a breath to respond, but Vivian whispers, “She’s high as a kite, Win.”
“I can hear you,” Rhonda says, now addressing Vivian. Eleanor has to admit, she’s impressed. Vivian is fearsome to one and all, and especially, Eleanor would assume, to someone as disenfranchised as Rhonda. But Rhonda is giving Vivian her full ferocity. Maybe that’s easier to do when you have nothing to lose. One can’t fall farther than the floor. “I’m standing right here,Vivian.”
“But not for long,” Vivian says. She signals to Frederick, who has sensed trouble and is posted nearby. “Frederick, please ask our driver to deliver Miss Fiorello home immediately.”
Before Eleanor can think better of it, she says, “But Mr. Frost can stay, can’t he, Mother?”
“Of course!” Vivian says, and the miraculous happens: her face lights up with a natural smile. Whether this is because Vivian relishes the act of separating Rhonda from her date or because Vivian senses her daughter’s utter captivation by Billy Frost, Eleanor doesn’t know, nor does she care. She takes Billy Frost by the hand and leads him into the ballroom.
