Chapter Thirty-Two
The rocket-launching sites at Remsen Park were fifteen miles to the south and this presented a morale problem for there were hundreds or thousands of technicians like Coverly who knew nothing about the beginnings or the ends of their works. The administration met this problem by having public rocket launchings on Saturday afternoons. Transportation was furnished so that whole families could pack their sandwiches and beer and sit in bleachers to hear the noise of doom crack and see a fire that seemed to lick at the vitals of the earth. These firings were not so different from any other kind of picnic, although there were no softball games or band concerts; but there was beer to drink and children strayed and were lost and the jokes the crowd made while they waited for an explosion that was calculated to pierce the earth’s atmosphere were very human. Betsey loved all of this, but it hardly modified her feeling that Remsen Park was unfriendly. Friends were important to her and she said so. “I just come from a small town in Georgia,” she said, “and it was a very friendly place and I just believe in stepping up and making friends. After all, we only pass this way once.” As often as she made the remark about passage, it had not lost its strength. She was born; she would die.
Her overtures to Mrs. Frascati continued to be met with sullen smiles and she invited the woman in the next house—Mrs. Galen—in for a cup of coffee, but Mrs. Galen had several college degrees and an air of elegance and privilege that made Betsey uneasy. She felt that she was being scrutinized and scrutinized uncharitably and saw there was no room for friendship here. She was persistent and finally she hit on it. “I met the liveliest, nicest, friendliest woman today, honey,” she told Coverly when she kissed him at the door. “Her name’s Josephine Tellerman and she lives on M Circle. Her husband’s in the drafting room and she says she’s lived on nearly every rocket-launching reservation in the United States and she’s just full of fun and her husband’s nice too and she comes from a nice family and she asked us why didn’t we come over some night and have a drink.”
Betsey loved her neighbor. This simple act of friendship brought her all the delights and hazards of love. Coverly knew how dim and senseless Circle K had seemed to her until the moment when she met Josephine Tellerman. Now he was prepared to hear about Mrs. Tellerman for weeks and months. He was glad. Betsey and Mrs. Tellerman would do their shopping together. Betsey and Mrs. Tellerman would be on the telephone every morning. “My friend Josephine Tellerman tells me that you have some very nice lamb chops,” she would tell them at the butcher. “My friend Josephine Tellerman recommended you to me,” she would tell them at the laundry. Even the vacuum-cleaner salesman, ringing her doorbell at the end of a hard day, would find her changed. She would be friendly enough, but she would not open the door. “Oh, hello,” she would say. “I’d like to talk with you but I’m very sorry I don’t have the time this afternoon. I’m expecting a telephone call from my friend Josephine Tellerman.”
The Wapshots went over to the Tellermans’ for a drink one night and Coverly found them friendly enough. The Tellermans’ house was furnished exactly like the Wapshots’, including the Picasso over the mantelpiece. In the living room the women talked about curtains, and Coverly and Max Tellerman talked about cars in the kitchen while Max made the drinks. “I’ve been looking at cars,” Max said, “but I decided I wouldn’t buy one this year. I have to cut down. And I don’t really need a car. You see I’m sending my kid brother through college. My folks have split up and I feel pretty responsible for this kid. I’m all he’s got. I worked my way through college—Jesus, I did everything—and I don’t want him to go through that rat race. I want him to take it easy for four years. I want him to have everything he needs. I want him to feel that he’s as good as the next fellow for a few years. …” They went back into the living room, where the women were still talking about curtains. Max showed Coverly some photographs of his brother and went on talking about him and at half-past ten they said good night and walked home.
Betsey was no gardener but she bought some canvas chairs for the back yard and some wooden lattice to conceal the garbage pail. They could sit there on summer nights. She was pleased with what she had done and one summer night the Tellermans came over to christen—as Betsey said—the back yard with rum. It was a warm night and most of their neighbors were in their yards. Josie and Betsey were talking about bedbugs, cockroaches and mice. Coverly was speaking affectionately of West Farm and the fishing there. He wasn’t drinking himself and he disliked the smell of rum that came from the others, who were drinking a lot. “Drink, drink,” Josie said. “It’s that kind of a night.”
It was that kind of a night. The air was hot and fragrant and from the kitchen, where he mixed the drinks, Coverly looked out of the window into the Frascatis’ back yard. There he saw the young Frascati girl in a white bathing suit that accentuated every line of her body but the crease in her buttocks. Her brother was spraying her gently with a garden hose. There was no horseplay, there were no outcries, there was no sound at all while the young man dutifully sprayed his beautiful sister. When Coverly had mixed the drinks he carried them out. Josie had begun to talk about her mother. “Oh, I wish you people could have met my mother,” she said. “I wish you kids could have met my mother.” When Betsey asked Coverly to fill the glasses once more he said they were out of rum. “Run down to the shopping center and get a bottle, honey,” Josie said. “It’s that kind of a night. We only live once.”
“We only pass this way once,” Betsey said.
“I’ll get some,” Coverly said.
“Let me, let me,” Max said. “Betsey and I’ll go.” He pulled Betsey out of her chair and they walked together toward the shopping center. Betsey felt wonderful. It’s that kind of a night, was all she could think to say, but the fragrant gloom and the crowded houses where the lights were beginning to go out and the noise of sprinklers and the snatches of music all made her feel that the pain of traveling and moving and strangeness and wandering was ended and that it had taught her the value of permanence and friendship and love.
Everything delighted her then—the moon in the sky and the neon lights of the shopping center—and when Max came out of the liquor store she thought what a distinguished, what an athletic and handsome man he was. Walking home he gave Betsey a long, sad look, put his arms around her and kissed her. It was a stolen kiss, Betsey thought, and it was that kind of a night, it was the kind of a night where you could steal a kiss. When they got back to Circle K, Coverly and Josie were in the living room. Josie was still talking about her mother. “Never an unkind word, never a harsh look,” she was saying. “She used to be quite a pianist. Oh, there was always a big gang at our house. On Sunday nights we all used to gather around the piano and sing hymns you know and have a wonderful time.” Betsey and Max went to the kitchen to make drinks. “She was unhappy in her marriage,” Josie was saying. “He was a real sonofabitch, there’s no two ways about it, but she was philosophical, that was the secret of her success; she was philosophical about him and just from hearing her talk you’d think she was the happiest married woman in the world but he was …” “Coverly,” Betsey screamed. “Coverly, help.”