“No, honestly, El. I mean it’s getting so terribly icy. I have hardly any anti-freeze in the car. I mean if I don’t—”
“Let it freeze. Go phone. Say you’re dead,” said Eloise. “Gimme that.”
“Well . . . Where’s the phone?”
“It went,” said Eloise, carrying the empty glasses and walking toward the dining room, “—this-a-way.” She stopped short on the floor board between the living room and the dining room and executed a grind and a bump. Mary Jane giggled.
“I mean you didn’t really know Walt,” said Eloise at a quarter of five, lying on her back on the floor, a drink balanced upright on her small-breasted chest. “He was the only boy I ever knew that could make me laugh. I mean really laugh.” She looked over at Mary Jane. “You remember that night—our last year—when that crazy Louise Hermanson busted in the room wearing that black brassiere she bought in Chicago?”
Mary Jane giggled. She was lying on her stomach on the couch, her chin on the armrest, facing Eloise. Her drink was on the floor, within reach.
“Well, he could make me laugh that way,” Eloise said. “He could do it when he talked to me. He could do it over the phone. He could even do it in a letter. And the best thing about it was that he didn’t even try t
o be funny—he just was funny.” She turned her head slightly toward Mary Jane. “Hey, how ’bout throwing me a cigarette?”
“I can’t reach ’em,” Mary Jane said.
“Nuts to you.” Eloise looked up at the ceiling again. “Once,” she said, “I fell down. I used to wait for him at the bus stop, right outside the PX, and he showed up late once, just as the bus was pulling out. We started to run for it, and I fell and twisted my ankle. He said, ‘Poor Uncle Wiggily.’ He meant my ankle. Poor old Uncle Wiggily, he called it. . . . God, he was nice.”
“Doesn’t Lew have a sense of humor?” Mary Jane said.
“What?”
“Doesn’t Lew have a sense of humor?”
“Oh, God! Who knows? Yes. I guess so. He laughs at cartoons and stuff.” Eloise raised her head, lifted her drink from her chest, and drank from it.
“Well,” Mary Jane said. “That isn’t everything. I mean that isn’t everything.”
“What isn’t?”
“Oh . . . you know. Laughing and stuff.”
“Who says it isn’t?” Eloise said. “Listen, if you’re not gonna be a nun or something, you might as well laugh.”
Mary Jane giggled. “You’re terrible,” she said.
“Ah, God, he was nice,” Eloise said. “He was either funny or sweet. Not that damn little-boy sweet, either. It was a special kind of sweet. You know what he did once?”
“Uh-uh,” Mary Jane said.
“We were on the train going from Trenton to New York—it was just right after he was drafted. It was cold in the car and I had my coat sort of over us. I remember I had Joyce Morrow’s cardigan on underneath—you remember that darling blue cardigan she had?”
Mary Jane nodded, but Eloise didn’t look over to get the nod.
“Well, he sort of had his hand on my stomach. You know. Anyway, all of a sudden he said my stomach was so beautiful he wished some officer would come up and order him to stick his other hand through the window. He said he wanted to do what was fair. Then he took his hand away and told the conductor to throw his shoulders back. He told him if there was one thing he couldn’t stand it was a man who didn’t look proud of his uniform. The conductor just told him to go back to sleep.” Eloise reflected a moment, then said, “It wasn’t always what he said, but how he said it. You know.”
“Have you ever told Lew about him—I mean, at all?”
“Oh,” Eloise said, “I started to, once. But the first thing he asked me was what his rank was.”
“What was his rank?”
“Ha!” said Eloise.
“No, I just meant—”
Eloise laughed suddenly, from her diaphragm. “You know what he said once? He said he felt he was advancing in the Army, but in a different direction from everybody else. He said that when he’d get his first promotion, instead of getting stripes he’d have his sleeves taken away from him. He said when he’d get to be a general, he’d be stark naked. All he’d be wearing would be a little infantry button in his navel.” Eloise looked over at Mary Jane, who wasn’t laughing. “Don’t you think that’s funny?”