Last Night at the Telegraph Club(60)
* * *
—
On the B-Geary back to Chinatown, they discussed their plan. Shirley would submit her application in the next two weeks, after persuading her parents and Mr. Wong next door to sponsor her. Lily would ask her father if the Chinese Hospital could sponsor her in any way, or at least allow her to sell raffle tickets there. Shirley needed to get a cheongsam for the contest, as well as an American-style evening dress, and she needed to practice her speech and determine how best to do her hair. And over Christmas, they would sit down with their friends and strategize over how to sell as many raffle tickets as they could.
Shirley wanted to make a list of what she had to do, so Lily found a stray newspaper on an empty seat, and Shirley borrowed a pencil from a woman seated across from them. As Shirley scribbled notes, Lily saw a small story about a construction project at Cliff House. There was an illustration of a “sky tram,” which looked like a single streetcar hanging by a thick wire, that would travel between Cliff House and Point Lobos, just past the old Sutro Baths. Once it opened next year, visitors could pay twenty-five cents to ride out to Point Lobos and back.
Lily realized the construction she had seen from Sutro Heights must be related to this sky tram. She wondered whether anyone would pay to ride this short, useless loop. The same view could be seen from the shore, for free. Would it be worth the cost to dangle above the rocky cliffs and salt spray, to get twenty feet closer to the Seal Rocks? The passengers would simply be going back and forth, and when they stepped out at the end of the trip, they wouldn’t have gone anywhere at all.
28
It was as if Shirley had flipped a switch, and Lily was suddenly back in the clutch of their group of friends. In the weeks after the trip to Sutro’s, Shirley monopolized almost all of Lily’s free time. She had to accompany Shirley to fill out the Miss Chinatown application; she had to meet with their friends to form their Miss Chinatown committee; and those committee meetings inevitably turned into gatherings at Fong Fong’s where the boys joined them. Even Lily’s walks home after school had been claimed; Shirley almost always looked for her now.
That meant Lily had less time to spend with Kath, and as the days turned into weeks, Lily felt increasingly out of sorts. At first, being back in Shirley’s good graces had been comfortable and familiar, but it didn’t last. Aunt Judy had sent Lily another issue of Collier’s, and the articles in the magazine made Lily wonder if she should major in aeronautical engineering in college, instead of math. She thought about talking to Shirley about it, but she knew that Shirley wouldn’t be interested, and she might even be resentful of Lily’s aspirations. When she was younger, Lily had accepted the differences between her and Shirley, because they had been the same in all the important ways. But now their differences seemed so vast, maybe even insurmountable. She wondered if she would have felt this way if she hadn’t become friends with Kath.
And yet, as the end of the semester crawled ever closer, Lily began to worry that a distance was growing between her and Kath. She was understanding when Lily couldn’t walk home with her, but after several cancellations, she stopped waiting for Lily after school. Of course, they hadn’t been friends for very long; perhaps their friendship was simply shrinking back to the way it was before. Kath had her own friends, including the G.A.A. girls she ate lunch with, although Lily had gotten the impression that her closest friends, like Jean, had graduated last year. Lily wondered if Kath was going to the Telegraph Club with them, and the thought raised a strange jealousy in her while another part of her sank into a fatalistic gloom. The only thing she could conclude was that she didn’t understand how her friendship with Kath worked, but whatever was happening—or not happening—felt wrong.
By the last day of school before Christmas vacation, Lily hadn’t really talked to Kath outside of class since early December, though Kath was still perfectly friendly to her during school. Lily hoped to find Kath before the Christmas assembly, but there had been no time that morning, and then she was almost late to the assembly itself. Miss Weiland was waving at her to hurry as she rushed through the doors into the auditorium.
“Lily, over here!”
Shirley was down near the front of the auditorium, in the third row near the middle. As Lily made her way down the aisle, she finally saw Kath. She knew Kath saw her too, because their eyes slipped past each other almost furtively. Lily wanted to go over to Kath right now, but she couldn’t. She had to edge through Shirley’s row, bumping against knees while apologizing, to the seat that Shirley had saved beside her. Their friends were all here too; there was Flora sitting smugly on Shirley’s left, with Hanson beside her, and Mary looking unusually sour-faced.
As Lily sat down, Shirley said to her, “We’re going to my house after school, not Flora’s. You’re coming, right?”
“Of course,” Lily said, but she was still thinking about Kath. She had to find her after school; otherwise she wouldn’t see her until after Christmas break.
The assembly began with the choir singing Christmas carols before the sophomore class’s Nativity scene. Lily twitched in her seat, worrying about whether she had somehow made Kath angry by reconciling with Shirley. It was clear that Shirley didn’t like Kath, and the feeling was probably mutual. Or maybe Lily had done something wrong the last time they’d gone to the Telegraph Club. She remembered sitting silently at the table and listening to Jean and that woman Rhonda saying all those things she hadn’t understood about dykes and paying the cops. Maybe Kath was embarrassed to be seen with someone as na?ve as Lily. The thought made her shrivel up inside, certain that she had ruined their friendship.