Hearts in Atlantis(115)

'You look like Brigitte Bardot with your sweater open like that,' I told her.

She looked up, surprised and - I thought - pleased. 'Do you really think so? Or is it just the blond hair?'

'The hair? Shit, no. Mostly it's . . . ' I gestured toward her front. She looked down at herself and laughed. She didn't do the buttons, though, or try to pull the sides any more closely together. I'm not sure she could have, anyway - as I remember, that sweater was a wonderfully tight fit.

'There was a theater up the street from us when I was a kid, the Asher Empire. It's torn down now, but when we were kids - Bobby and Sully-John and me - it seemed they were always showing her pictures. I think that one of them, And God Created Woman, must have played there for about a thousand years.'

I burst out laughing and took my own cigarettes off the dashboard. 'That was always the third feature at the Gates Falls Drive-in on Friday and Saturday nights.'

'Did you ever see it?'

'Are you kidding? I wasn't even allowed to go to the drive-in unless it was a Disney double feature. I think I must have seen Tonka with Sal Mineo at least seven times. But I remember the previews. Brigitte in her towel.'

'I'm not coming back to school,' she said, and lit her cigarette. She spoke so calmly that at first I thought we were still talking about old movies, or midnight in Calcutta, or whatever it took to persuade our bodies that it was time to go back to sleep, the action was over. Then it clicked in my head.

'You . . . did you say . . . ?'

'I said I'm not coming back after break. And it's not going to be much of a Thanksgiving at home, as far as that goes, but what the hell.'

'Your father?'

She shook her head, drawing on her cigarette. In the light of its coal her face was all orange highlights and crescents of gray shadow. She looked older. Still beautiful, but older. On the radio Paul Anka was singing 'Diana.' I snapped it off.

'My father's got nothing to do with it. I'm going back to Harwich. Do you remember me mentioning my mother's friend Rionda?'

I sort of did, so I nodded.

'Rionda took the picture I showed you, the one of me with Bobby and S-J. She says . . . ' Carol looked down at her skirt, which was still hiked most of the way to her waist, and began plucking at it. You can never tell what's going to embarrass people; sometimes it's toilet functions, sometimes it's the sexual hijinks of relatives, sometimes it's show-off behavior. And sometimes, of course, it's drink.

'Let's put it this way, my dad's not the only one in the Gerber family with a booze problem. He taught my mother how to tip her elbow, and she was a good student. For a long time she laid off - she went to AA meetings, I think - but Rionda says she's started again. So I'm going home. I don't know if I can take care of her or not, but I'm going to try. For my brother as much as my mother. Rionda says Ian doesn't know if he's coming or going. Of course he never did.' She smiled.

'Carol, that's maybe not such a good idea. To shoot your education that way - '

She looked up angrily. 'You want to talk about shooting my education? You know what I'm hearing about that f**king Hearts game on Chamberlain Three these days? That everyone on the floor is going to flunk out by Christmas, including you. Penny Lang says that by the start of spring semester there won't be anyone left up there but that shithead proctor of yours.'

'Nah,' I said, 'that's an exaggeration. Nate'll be left. Stokely Jones, too, if he doesn't break his neck going downstairs some night.'

'You act as though it's funny,' she said.

'It's not funny,' I said. No, it wasn't funny.

'Then why don't you quit it?'

CHAPTER 21

Now / was the one starting to feel angry. She had pushed me away and clapped her knees shut, had told me she was going away just when I was starting to not only want her around but need her around, she had left me with what was soon going to be a world-class case of blue balls . . . and now it was all about me. Now it was all about cards.

'I don't know why I don't quit it,' I said. 'Why don't you find someone else to take care of your mother? Why doesn't this friend of hers, Rawanda - '

'Ri-ow-da.'

' - take care of her? I mean, is it your fault your mother's a lush?'

'My mother is not a lush! Don't you call her that!'

'Well, she's sure something, if you're going to drop out of college on her account. If it's that serious, Carol, it's sure something.'

'Rionda has a job and a mother of her own to worry about,' Carol said. The anger had gone out of her. She sounded deflated, dispirited. I could remember the laughing girl who had stood beside me, watching the shreds of Goldwater bumper sticker blow away across the macadam, but this didn't seem like the same one. 'My mother is my mother. There's only Ian and me to take care of her, and Ian's barely making it in high school. Besides, there's always UConn.'

'You want some information?' I asked her. My voice was trembling, thickening. 'I'll give you some whether you want it or not. Okay? You're breaking my heart here. That's the information. You're breaking my goddam heart.'

'I'm not, though,' she said. 'Hearts are tough, Pete. Most times they don't break. Most times they only bend.'