Camilla Read online

  My mother turned to go, saying as she left, “Do hurry now, darling, and don’t keep your father— Rafferty hates to be kept waiting.”

  I washed my face again to make sure I got all the toothpaste off and went back to my room and dressed. I put on the sheer smoky stockings my mother had given me for my birthday and which I had never worn before and a dress she had bought me that is neither silver nor green, and that changes color as you move in it. It is a very beautiful dress and the one dress-up thing that I have that I really like and don’t feel strange and uncomfortable in. Luisa gets annoyed at me because I care about clothes, but I love pretty things when they seem right for me.

  When I went into my mother’s room she was lying on her chaise longue with a soft blanket over her knees, but she got up as I came in and stood looking at me. And her face was suddenly very sad.

  “Yes,” my mother said, “you look very—oh, yes, Camilla darling, you look lovely!” And she pushed the sadness out of her face and wrinkled up her eyes in a smile at me, the way she used to when I was very small.

  “Now,” she said, “let’s—here, put this on, darling,” and she handed me a little plastic makeup cape to tie around my shoulders. Then she took her brush off the glass top of her dressing table and started to brush my hair and as she brushed she talked. “Your hair is as black as Rafferty’s, Camilla. You look like a little elf, with that solemn peaked face and the black hair and thick bangs. It’s too bad your forehead’s so high, but then the bangs cover— And those green eyes are very interesting. Did you like the doll Jacques brought you? He came this afternoon just to bring you the doll. Of course you’re old for dolls, but then it’s such a special— And then he wanted to talk to me because he’s terribly unhappy. That wife of his, the things she—oh, I could never tell you, not till you’re older, but the life Jacques lived with— And what an unattractive woman, too, so angular and brusque— And now with the divorce and everything—so of course I had to comfort him. Those shoes don’t really go with that dress, Camilla. You haven’t any that do, though, have you? I must— How would you like to wear my silver shoes tonight? The odd thing is that Jacques thinks I’m so strong. Now that is odd, isn’t— He doesn’t know me the way you and Raff do. But he keeps telling me: Rose, you’re the strong one, so I have to pretend to be strong, as though he were a little boy, you know.”

  I thought of the young men and women on the roof in the summer and on the mild winter nights and I thought of the way my mother had held her arms around Jacques that afternoon. I didn’t say anything.

  My mother stopped brushing my hair and selected a paintbrush from a bouquet of paintbrushes in a little vase; she twirled it in a small jar of red and painted on my mouth, drawing first the outlines of my lips and then filling them in with quick careful strokes. And she took a little round sheepskin powder puff and brushed it over my lips and then she took the paintbrush and made the shape of my mouth again.

  “If Rafferty asks you—” she started, and then she went to her big closet and brought me her silver shoes, “of course I don’t know why he would,” she said, and took her rabbit’s foot, touched it to her rouge, then rubbed it over my cheeks and the very tip of my ears and the tip of my chin. “But if he does,” she said, “I know you’ll—” She took a string of pearls and hung them around my neck, lifting up my hair in back to fasten the clasp. “But of course I know I can always trust you, my own darling Camilla, because you’re a big girl now. You’re really grown-up. But if—” and then the telephone rang. She ran to answer it quickly before Carter could get to the extension in the hall. “Hello!” she cried into the mouthpiece. “Oh, hello!” And then her face dropped again into the look of a sad small flower and she said, “It’s for you, Camilla. It’s Luisa. But don’t talk too long because Rafferty—you mustn’t keep him waiting.”

  I went to the telephone and said, “Hello.”

  “Hello,” Luisa said. There was a buzzing on the line and it sounded as though she were calling long-distance instead of from downtown on Ninth Street. Well, Greenwich Village is almost a different world from Park Avenue, more exciting, and a little frightening. Luisa’s voice came distantly through the buzz. “I guess you’re not alone where I can talk to you.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh, blast. Well, can you come down? Have you had dinner? What about your parents? Mine are both out and Frank and I had a fight and he ate up all my share of the food. Come on down and we can go somewhere and have a hamburger and a milkshake.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I have to— I’m going out to have dinner with my father.”

  “Oh, blast,” Luisa said again. “Well, are you all right? You sound funny.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Well, listen, are you going to get to school early tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll have to. I don’t think I’ll be able to get anywhere near all my homework done tonight.”

  “Okay,” Luisa said. “I’ll get there early too.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Good night.”

  I hung up and turned around and my father was standing waiting by my mother’s dressing table and my mother was sitting on the dressing-table stool and looking at him.

  “Don’t keep Camilla out too long, Raff,” she said. “She’s still just a baby.”

  “A very elegant baby, then.” My father smiled at me. He looked down at my mother again. “Headache any better?”

  She nodded, but carefully, as though it would hurt her head to move it with a jerk. “A tiny bit. But come home to me soon, Rafferty, don’t—” She took a bottle of perfume and touched her fingertip to its crystal lip and dabbed a drop behind each of my ears and at my wrists. “Come home to me soon, Raff,” she repeated, pleading like a child.

  My father kissed her on top of her head, brushing his lips briefly against the softness of her hair. Then he said, “Get on your coat and hat, Camilla. I’ll meet you in the hall.”

  I put on my Sunday coat, which is dark, dark green with a little silver squirrel collar and has a little squirrel muff; and I put on my hat, which is the same green as the coat and has two little squirrel pompons on it, and pulled my white gloves out of the pocket where I had stuffed them the last time I wore the coat. Fortunately they were clean, so I put them on and hurried out to the hall to meet my father. He took my hand and drew it through his arm; his arm felt strong and protecting, as though it ought to have the power to keep things from going wrong. When we got into the elevator, because I was with my father the elevator boy didn’t leer at me but just said, “Good evening, Miss Camilla. Good evening, Mr. Dickinson.”

  Out on the street it was still raining. The rain fell down between the buildings and made a haze about the streetlights and splattered on the sidewalks, and in the streets it lay in rainbow puddles of oil. The sky sagged down between the buildings and I stood there wondering why it is that when it rains at night in New York the sky is a much lighter color than it is on a clear night, and there is always a sickish pink tinge to it.

  The doorman had on a slicker and carried an umbrella; when my father and I came out he put his whistle to his lips and blew for a taxi. Taxis came by but they were full; the people in them kept glancing at us standing there on the wet pavement just in the shelter of the building and seemed to be congratulating themselves that they were warmly seated in a taxi while we were standing there in the dark and cold. The canopy that was usually out in front of our apartment building was down to be mended or painted or whatever it is they do to those canopies when they take them down, and the rain poured through the wet, gleaming frame. The doorman kept blowing his whistle and taxis kept rushing by.

  “You aren’t dressed for walking in the rain, are you, Camilla?” my father asked me.

  “Oh, I don’t mind. I love to walk in the rain. Luisa and I walk miles in the rain,” I said.

  My father looked at my little fur muff and collar and the fur pompons on my hat and said, “But not in those clothes. Rose—y
our mother would be very angry if I let you ruin your brand-new winter outfit.”

  So again we waited and again the doorman blew his whistle and again taxis rushed by and I was just about to say, “Oh, please let’s walk, Father,” when a taxi drew up and a man in top hat and tails bent forward and paid the driver and then went flying into the apartment house and my father pushed me into the taxi and climbed in after me.

  Inside the taxi the floor was wet and the leather seats were slick and damp. I tucked one foot in my mother’s silver shoe under me to try to get it warm. The street sounds rose up through the rain, the hissing of wheels on the wet streets and horns sounding impatient. Through the drenched windows I could see the people walking by, some with umbrellas radiating dangerous spikes—Luisa knows a girl who almost lost an eye when someone poked an umbrella spike into it— and women with newspapers over their heads and men holding umbrellas over their girls and getting soaked themselves.

  We turned east and went down a dark side street where three little boys in leather jackets were trying to keep a bonfire going. A sheet of newspaper caught just as we went by and the flames rose up, bright and cheerful; I would have liked to get out of the taxi and go stand by the little boys instead of going on to dinner with my father. But then we crossed Third Avenue just as the el roared by overhead, and the taxi skidded a little on the old and unused trolley tracks so that for a moment I was afraid we were going to crash into one of the iron el posts. But my father held my arm tightly and then the taxi was across Third Avenue and the taxi driver turned around and grinned at us and said, “Almost scared myself that time.”

  I looked at his name under the picture and it was Hiram Schultz. Whenever I am in a taxi I always look to see if the man in the cab is the same one as the man in the picture. Hiram Schultz was the same and he did not seem to have any neck. His head went right down into his shoulders so that the collar of his red jacket came up to the tips of his ears.

  The taxi stopped in front of a small basement restaurant. My mother and father eat a great deal in restaurants, but they don’t often take me and I had never been in this one before. We walked by a small bar shaped like a half moon, and on into the back of the restaurant, which was long and narrow. Small tables lined the walls and there was just a narrow passageway between for the waiters.

  “Well, Camilla,” my father said, “this is the first time you’ve ever gone out to dinner alone with your old father, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “And since you’re a big girl now—fifteen, isn’t it?— would you like to celebrate your maturity with one very small drink?”

  “Yes, please, Father,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t, because I remembered Luisa warning me never to let anyone get me drunk. “In vino veritas, Camilla, in vino veritas,” Luisa had told me, and since such sentiments were not taught in our Latin classes both of us were proud of being able to understand this. But since I had said I wanted a drink, I knew I would have to go through with it. My father is very formidable about people changing their minds, though my mother says it is a woman’s privilege.

  “What shall it be, Camilla?” my father asked. “I’m having a martini, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t be a very good first choice for you.”

  I thought a minute and remembered a French movie Luisa and I had seen at the Fifth Avenue Playhouse where the heroine, who was quite young, went into a café to wait for someone. And she didn’t know what to order, so the waiter suggested a vermouth cassis as being something fitting for a young girl. Luisa and I sat through the picture twice in order to memorize “vermouth cassis.”

  So I looked up at the waiter and said, “I’d like a vermouth cassis, please.”

  My father laughed. “Well, Camilla, am I wrong? This isn’t your first drink?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “Except for the tastes of champagne.”

  The waiter put the martini in front of my father—pale liquid with a tiny twist of lemon peel, the color of my mother’s hair—and the vermouth cassis in front of me. It was in a regular water glass with a little ice in it, and looked rather like a Coca-Cola without the fizz. I took a swallow, a very small one, because I remembered the movies where the heroine takes a big swallow of a drink, when it’s her first one, and then gasps and coughs and tries to act as though she’d been drinking fire. The swallow did not burn me; it was both bitter and sweet at the same time and it tasted very warm all the way down. Most food stops tasting and feeling as soon as you swallow it, but I could feel the sip of vermouth cassis going down very warm, and somehow as comforting as sitting before an open fire on a cold night, all the way down to my stomach. I took another sip and it gave me the same lovely feeling, but I remembered Luisa saying “In vino veritas” and I remembered my mother’s face all puckered up with fear and put my glass down and took a breadstick out of the little wicker basket in the center of the table.

  The waiter did not bring us menus but stood hovering by my father’s side and made suggestions in low intimate French that somehow reminded me of Jacques, although I have never heard Jacques speak anything but English. My father answered the waiter in French, but his French, instead of sounding all curves and music like Chopin or the ballet, was as square and angular as a problem in algebra. The waiter kept acting very pleased though, and when he went back out into the kitchen—where I had a glimpse of hot heavy air and copper saucepans hanging under a big copper hood, and a chef in a big white hat—my father laughed and said, “Camilla, my dear, you really must be growing up. I believe the waiter thinks I’m your sugar daddy.”

  I did not like it when my father said this. It made me think of a book of Peter Arno cartoons one of the girls at school, Alma Potter, keeps hidden in her desk. My father does not look in the least like one of Peter Arno’s cartoons. But I could see that he thought he had made a very funny joke, so I laughed, too, because I wanted so terribly to keep the dark look out of his eyes. When my father gets the dark look in his eyes it is like the sky in summer when suddenly the daylight grows greeny black and you know it will be better when the thunder comes. Only with my father thunder does not come.

  “Now I should offer you a mink coat and a diamond necklace,” my father said, “but I am afraid those are a little beyond my means, even for my own darling girl. Would a couple of new books for those swelling bookcases of yours do as well?”

  “Yes, thank you, Father,” I said, “but you don’t need to give me anything.”

  The waiter wheeled a little wagon up to us filled with trays of hors d’oeuvres. I was very hungry because I usually eat shortly after I come home from school, so I let him heap a little of everything on my plate.

  “When a sugar daddy gives his baby a mink coat and a diamond necklace, he usually expects certain favors in return,” my father said as the waiter wheeled the little table away. “What are you going to give me for those two promised books, Camilla?”

  I looked at him rather blankly. “You know I haven’t anything I could give you, Father,” I said, and took a small nervous sip of my vermouth cassis. After all, even the Christmas and birthday presents I get for him are bought with the allowance money he gives me. I have never actually earned a penny of my own in my life.

  “Well, you can give me your love, for one thing,” he said, and began picking up lentils, one after the other, on one tine of his fork. “And your complete honesty is another thing I value. You’ve always been honest with your father, haven’t you, Camilla?”

  “Yes, Father,” I said, and broke a breadstick in half so that small crumbs of it fell onto the rough white tablecloth.

  “I would have liked more children,” my father said then. “A son, maybe. But I am sure that no other child could ever give me the satisfaction and joy that you have.”

  My father had never spoken to me like this before. The only way I really knew that he loved me was that sometimes when I kissed him good night he would give me a rough hug that almost broke my ribs and sometimes he would bring me home a bo
ok that he had just happened to hear me mention I wanted, or a new map of the stars. “I love you very much, Camilla, do you know that?” he said now, and I wondered if this was in vino veritas and if it was because of his dry martini, which he had drunk very quickly and then followed with more.

  I looked down at my plate and I had only eaten half the hors d’oeuvres and suddenly I couldn’t eat any more and I took a big swallow of my vermouth cassis.

  “Mademoiselle is finished?” the waiter asked, and took away my plate.

  We had onion soup next. My father handed me a dish of Parmesan cheese and said, “Did you like the doll Jacques Nissen gave you?”

  I sprinkled cheese over my soup. “No. I don’t much care for dolls.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” my father asked.

  “I’d like to give it to Luisa if that would be all right. She still likes dolls.”

  “Why not?” my father said. “It’s yours to do as you please with.”

  The restaurant was filling up. People were crowded about the bar and sitting on the small uncomfortable chairs just inside the door. Occasionally the door would open, letting in a gust of dark rain-smelling air, and I would look at the door because somehow I could not look at my father.

  The waiter took away my soup bowl and brought me a plate with stuffed mushrooms and tiny string beans and potatoes chopped up in cheese sauce. I tasted everything and then my father said, “Nissen comes to see you fairly often, Camilla. Do you like him?”

  Luisa and I play a game called Indications, in which you have to guess a person by the things he reminds you of— colors and materials and animals and painters and things like that. And I did Jacques once for Luisa. I remember some of the things he reminded me of. For an animal it was a little stripy snake coiled around a rosebush; and the flower was the berry of the deadly nightshade and the painter was Daumier or Lautrec and the music was Debussy’s “Golliwog’s Cakewalk.” And the weapon was a dagger or a poison ring and the method of transportation was a submarine and the drink was absinthe with lots of wormwood. I don’t mean that Jacques is like these things, but when Luisa would ask me for instance what weapon does he remind you of, that was the kind of thing I had to answer. So what was I to say to my father?