Endless Summer, page 5
Now Dabney let herself be swept away. She reached over and grabbed a Budweiser from the cooler. “Yale Bowl or bust!” she cried out.
“Whoa there, sister,” Mallory said. “Easy now.” She settled the radio on “The Boys of Summer,” which was a pretty good choice for Mallory.
Jason said, “I like seeing your wild side, Dab.” He grinned at her in the rearview mirror.
Mallory swatted Jason’s arm. Dabney cracked open her beer and sucked off the foam. She hadn’t eaten any breakfast; the only thing in her stomach was the Valium. Jason pulled onto the Mass Pike.
“Better Be Good to Me,” Tina Turner.
“Material Girl,” Madonna.
“Change this, please,” Dabney said. “This song makes me ill.”
“Summer of ’69,” Bryan Adams.
“California Girls,” David Lee Roth.
“He ruined a perfectly good song,” Dabney said.
“Agreed,” Jason said. “You know, I was thinking of writing my thesis on the phenomenon of the cover song—which artists enhanced the originals, which artists desecrated them, which artists equaled them. Do you think that’s meaty enough?”
Like many athletes at Harvard, Jason was an American studies major, which was another way of saying “anything goes.” But a thesis about cover songs?
No, Dabney thought. However, her brain had been hijacked by the Valium and the beer, so the answer that came out of her mouth was “Yes! That’s so creative. It will definitely get approval.”
Mallory said, “I hate it when you guys talk over me.”
Dabney said, “Oops, sorry, you’re right.” She sank low in the back seat, resting her legs over the cooler.
“Careless Whisper,” by Wham!
Something was up with Clen, but Dabney couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t as though she had expected a parade—but yes, she had expected a parade. She had expected dinner at Mory’s, she had expected Clen to hold her arm proprietarily and introduce her to everyone he knew. My girlfriend, Dabney Kimball.
She had not expected to be left to her own devices for seven to ten hours.
“What are you guys doing after the game?” Dabney asked.
“I figure, get drunk before the game, take a flask into the game, nap in the car, then go find the parties,” Jason said. “But we’re leaving tomorrow morning at ten o’clock sharp. I have a paper to write on Mark Twain.”
“Ten o’clock sharp,” Dabney confirmed.
“You must be excited to see Clen,” Mallory said. “You guys go, like, months. I’m impressed by the level of trust.”
“Trust?” Dabney said.
“Me too,” Jason said. “I mean, you’re both in college. Does he ever worry that you’re going to cheat on him?”
“Cheat?” Dabney said.
“Do you, like, have an understanding?” Mallory asked.
Dabney wasn’t sure how to answer this. Words like trust and cheat didn’t really apply to Dabney and Clen. They were melded together; they were, essentially, the same person in two different bodies. It would never occur to Dabney to cheat, and she knew Clen felt the same way. They did have an understanding, which was that they were an unsplittable unit. After college, they would get married.
“Don’t You (Forget About Me),” Simple Minds.
Dabney finished her beer, crumpled the can, and closed her eyes.
She awoke as they pulled onto Yale’s campus. As far as the eye could see, there was an ocean of blue and crimson.
“Wow,” she said. “Wow.”
People were everywhere. There were the current students, who came in one of the two color palettes, and then there were alumni—couples in their early thirties with kids in strollers and retrievers on leashes, middle-aged couples with sullen-looking teenagers, and older couples, the men wearing blazers and school ties, the women in wrap dresses and sensible shoes. There was no reason for Dabney’s anxiety; what she was witnessing was continuity and tradition. The Harvard-Yale game had been played since 1875. Watching the alumni was like watching different versions of herself and Clen—ten years from now, twenty years, forty years. They had already decided that, no matter what was happening in their lives, they would always attend the Harvard-Yale game. The years the game was held in Cambridge, they would root for Harvard, and the years it was held in New Haven, they would root for Yale. Presumably Yale would, in time, feel comfortable and familiar to Dabney. Safe. Not like now.
“East entrance,” Dabney said. “That’s where I’m meeting him. Where is it? Do we know where it is?” She felt her angst mounting, straining against the muting effects of the Valium like a bulging tummy against a girdle. She did not like new, unfamiliar places. They terrified her. The only person who halfway understood was her friend Albert Maku, who came from Plettenberg Bay, South Africa.
Were you afraid to come to Harvard? Dabney had asked him.
Yes, afraid, very afraid, Albert said. It’s like setting foot on another planet, where no one is familiar and I do not know the rules.
Planet New Haven was overwhelming, even for sane people like Jason and Mallory.
“Jesus,” Jason said. “I’m just going to park here.”
“Is this near the east entrance?” Dabney said.
“I don’t know,” Jason said. “But it’s a parking lot and there are other Harvard cars here. This is where we’re parking.”
Dabney squeezed her eyes shut and wished that she had gotten a ride from the guys at Owl. Clark, who wore horn-rimmed glasses in a perfect imitation of Clark Kent, had promised to hand-deliver Dabney to Clendenin. Now Dabney would have to find him on her own while lugging her picnic-in-a-laundry-basket.
She climbed out of the car and smoothed the legs of her jeans, straightened her pearls, and took a deep breath. Clen was here. He was at the east entrance. All Dabney had to do was find it and she would be safe.
She looked down at her penny loafers. They were resting solidly on the earth.
Jason and Mallory offered to walk with Dabney, which really meant that Jason offered. Mallory seemed put off by Jason’s show of gallantry; in fact, she seemed downright jealous, huffing under her breath that she didn’t see why they had to do this; Dabney had gotten into Harvard, she could find the east entrance herself. Jason forged ahead, undeterred. He was carrying the laundry basket, which got him a lot of attention.
“Hey, man, you looking for the Wash ’n’ Dry?”
“No, man, it’s a picnic,” Jason said. “Chicken salad, the best you ever tasted.”
“I don’t know why you would say that,” Mallory snapped.
“It was really good,” Jason said. “I gave you a bite.” He offered Dabney a look of apology. “I ate one while you were asleep. I didn’t want to stop at Burger King.”
“No problem, Preppie,” Dabney said.
They stopped and asked a young man in parachute pants for directions. He pointed them the right way.
“Clen better be on time,” Mallory said. “Because I’m not waiting around.”
Dabney scanned the surroundings. So many people.
“Cupe!”
There he was, standing alone, wearing his brown corduroy jacket with the fake shearling collar. He’d owned that jacket forever.
Dabney ran to him.
She was safe. Clen was real and strong and warm; he had a body and eyes and a voice. He had shaved. He smelled like himself. He picked Dabney up off the ground, and the days and weeks and months that she had pined for him evaporated. He was her oxygen. She could breathe.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said in her ear. “I. Can’t. Believe. It.” He set her down. “You are in New Haven, Connecticut.” He looked genuinely shocked and delighted, like she was Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny. Dabney was embarrassed. The other ten thousand people present had managed to get here without fanfare. Why was her arrival such a big deal?
But she knew why. She felt like she had flown without wings. It was that astonishing.
“You remember Mallory,” Dabney said. “And this is her boyfriend, Jason.”
Clen stepped forward and shook hands with Mallory and accepted the laundry basket from Jason.
“You’re a lucky man,” Jason said. “That’s some picnic.”
Dabney pulled out sandwiches for Jason and Mallory. “I’ll see you tomorrow at ten sharp,” she said. “I’ll meet you right here.”
“See ya,” Mallory said. She handed Jason her sandwich and turned to go.
Jason, however, being a properly raised Ipswich preppy, offered a farewell. “Have fun, Dab. Thanks for the sandwiches. And hey, nice to meet you, Clen. Great girl you’ve got there.”
Clen said, “I know. Thanks for the safe delivery.”
Elation! They were arm in arm; he was happy to see her. The confusion and hesitancy she had heard in his voice over the phone the day before had been a figment of her imagination or caused by Kendall’s stalking. The first thing Clen did once Mallory and Jason walked away was set the laundry basket down, hold Dabney’s face, and kiss her deeply. God, the rush, the chemistry—it was the same now as it had been during their first kiss at the top of the hill at Dead Horse Valley during an early snowstorm. December 1, 1980, when they were freshmen in high school.
“I want to take you back to my room right this instant,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Take me, take me.”
“But I can’t,” he said. “Because the Daily News has a tailgate all set up and we’re expected.”
Dabney felt cranky about the tailgate, even though Clen had warned her this was the first thing on the docket. She wanted him to herself; a ludicrous wish, she realized, as nearly the whole point of her coming to New Haven was to witness his life here, and the Yale Daily News was a large part of that life. The paper. It was as important as his coursework, possibly more so.
She said, “Maybe we can cut out on the game and go to your room?”
He said, “Cut out on the game?”
Ridiculous, right; she still wasn’t thinking clearly—the Valium, the beer. She sounded like a sex-starved fiend; she should explain, perhaps, that it wasn’t the sex she wanted as much as the time behind closed doors, alone—Clen had a single—his attention shining solely on her.
“We’re over here,” Clen said. He picked up his pace, the laundry basket held out in front of him. Dabney should have scoured the storage closets for a proper cooler. She hurried along, trying to keep up. There was the same woody Clen had driven to Harvard the year before, and next to it was a cluster of card tables that looked like a raft cobbled together by desperate castaways.
“There you are, Hughes!” A guy/boy/man stepped forward. “And you brought your wash!”
“Shut up, Wallace,” Clen said.
It was Henry Wallace, Dabney realized, the editor in chief of the Yale Daily News. Clen never stopped talking about him. Wallace had been the one to recognize Clen’s talents and make him a features editor as a freshman.
Clen set the laundry basket down on the tailgate of the wagon and ushered Dabney forward. “My girlfriend, Dabney Kimball.”
Henry Wallace was tall with curly brown hair and square black glasses. Like so many people Dabney had met in the past year, he had the unmistakable air of the well-bred prep-school eternally privileged set. He took Dabney’s hand and kissed it.
“A real live Cliffie in our midst,” he said. “I’m Henry David Thoreau Wallace, fellow citizen of your fine commonwealth. Lovely to meet you.”
“Lovely to meet you,” Dabney said. “I’ve heard all about what a genius you are.”
“Cupe,” Clen said. He sounded embarrassed, and Dabney grinned at Henry.
“He talks about you all the time,” she said. “I’ve grown quite jealous of you, you know. Although I’m mad as the dickens that you have my beau on deadline this weekend.”
“Deadline?” Henry said. “The only person on deadline this weekend is the sports editor.” He searched over Dabney’s head. “Reese better be in the stadium getting his pregame interviews, not out getting wasted on bloodies.”
No deadline? When Dabney turned to Clen with the question in her eyes, he shook his head and handed her a plastic cup. “Vodka tonic,” he said. “For my Cliffie.”
Dabney said, “Are you still on deadline?”
But before Clen could answer, they were interrupted. “You brought a picnic to a picnic?” A girl with long, dark, straight, shiny hair was peering into the laundry basket. Her hair was so beautiful it was impossible not to stare. If Dabney had hair like that, she would have felt immodest leaving it loose.
“Maybe you think a Harvard picnic is naturally superior to a Yale picnic,” the girl said. “But I don’t think anything from Harvard is superior.”
Dabney immediately felt defensive. This girl wore jeans, a camel-colored cashmere wrap, and large gold hoop earrings. She was pretty—gorgeous, actually. Her eyes were dark blue. Some of her luscious hair fell over her face as she gazed up at Clen.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me, Hughes?” she said.
Dabney glanced at Clen. He looked supremely uncomfortable, and Dabney felt an unfamiliar rumbling in her gut. Jealousy, she realized.
“Jocelyn Harris, this is Dabney Kimball. Dabney, this is Jocelyn. Our arts editor.”
“Hi,” Dabney said. She offered a hand and Jocelyn shook it quickly, as though a Harvard hand might give her a communicable disease. Then she reached into her buttery leather shoulder bag and brought out a pack of Newports and a matchbook that Dabney couldn’t help noticing was from Mory’s Temple Bar. Jocelyn lit two cigarettes and held one out to Clen, but he waved it away.
“No, thanks.”
“What, all of a sudden you don’t smoke?” Jocelyn said. She offered Dabney a poisonous smile. “You don’t smoke, do you, Dabney?”
Mute, Dabney shook her head. She wanted to say, Clen doesn’t smoke either. Except clearly he did smoke. He smoked with this girl, Jocelyn. Dabney located a second Valium in her jeans pocket, right next to the lucky silver dollar. She didn’t want to be here. She would rather have been at Harvard in Solange’s room, sitting on the persimmon silk pillow. Dabney washed the Valium down with some of her vodka tonic. She had consumed nothing that day except pills and booze; she was turning into the Joan Collins character in Dynasty, minus the glamour.
Jocelyn shook the cigarette insistently at Clen. “Just take it, Hughes.”
“I don’t want it, thanks.”
Jocelyn scoffed. “I don’t get it. You’re afraid to smoke in front of your friend here?”
His girlfriend, Dabney thought. I’m his girlfriend. It suddenly seemed imperative that Jocelyn know this. She realized that Clen had not introduced her as such. He had just said, This is Dabney Kimball.
Clen sighed. “Be nice, Jocelyn.”
At that second, Henry Wallace swooped in and took the cigarette from Jocelyn. He grinned at Dabney. “Our arts editor has a flair for the dramatic,” he said. “Which is why I hired her. I, for one, can’t wait to taste a Harvard picnic.”
Dabney set out her picnic on the rickety card tables with a sense of purpose, relieved to have something to do with her hands while her thoughts fell to pieces. Clen didn’t have a deadline, at least not one the editor in chief knew about. Or maybe Dabney had misunderstood. The Valium was making her fuzzy. She felt like she was forty years old, matronly and persnickety; at that point, she would be in charge of children’s birthday parties and soccer-team potlucks while this Jocelyn roamed the streets of Florence antiquing or hopped from gallery to gallery in SoHo. Jocelyn had glamour—that hair, that sneer, those eyes like pure, hard sapphires. And the way she’d pushed a cigarette on Clen, something she had held briefly in her mouth that would then go into his mouth. Dabney got it, or at least she thought she got it. Trust. Cheat. Jocelyn and Clen had been together.
She set out the sandwiches, the chips, the onion dip, the cheese and crackers, the salted almonds, the grapes, the plump, glistening olives. This was a better picnic than the Yale picnic, she thought. The Yale picnic consisted of tortilla chips and jarred salsa, a box of Triscuits, and a bowl of microwaved popcorn.
Glory was hers when the flocks descended on her sandwiches, devoured her dip. “God, what is in this? Heroin? It’s out of this world!”
Clen wolfed down two sandwiches without even breathing, saying, “Really good, Cupe. Really damned good.” He went over to the bar that was set up on a card table to make them some more drinks, and Dabney followed him. Somewhere, a marching band played.
She said, “So tell me about Jocelyn.”
Clen filled their cups with ice and poured generously from the Popov bottle. He shrugged. “Tell you what? She works on the paper. Arts editor, flair for the dramatic.” Clen was overly enthusiastic with the tonic and the first cup bubbled over. “She can be a real bitch.”
Dabney accepted her drink and reached for a wedge of lime. “Well, yeah. I noticed.”
“Your picnic is beautiful, Cupe,” Clen said. “I mean, look, it’s almost gone.” He gazed off in the direction of the stadium. “Jocelyn’s just jealous.”
“Jealous of what?” Dabney said. She wanted clarification. Was she jealous that Dabney went to Harvard? Was she jealous that Dabney could cook? Or was there some other reason, something that had to do with Clen?
Clen didn’t have time to answer, because at that moment, voices filled the air. The Whiffenpoofs were forming a semicircle in front of the Daily News tailgate. The Whiffenpoofs! Dabney felt a flutter of celebrity awe. She loved traditions like this; the most famous a cappella group in the country was right here! Dabney forgot about Jocelyn—she had disappeared into the crowd anyway—and grabbed Clen’s arm.
