Good-Bye, Little Sister

by CRARY MOORE

THE biggest and best coming-out parties in New York are in Christmas Vacation. There’s just nothing like it, I think: down Park Avenue in a taxi at seven o’clock, with the lights flashing green, red, green, and the white path of Christmas trees down the middle, dazzling in the dark. Your stockings make a sleek little hiss as you cross your knees under all that tulle; you can smell your own perfume; and the Sophomore beside you seems wonderfully dark and dangerous. At home, the closets bloom with pink and white crinolines (Don’t touch it, Betsy! It’s got to be fresh for the Junior Assembly!); flowers arrive; and the phone rings all the time. Sometimes a photographer’s velvet voice inquires if you’d like a nice cabinel-size portrait, real Hollywood type; or a distraught hostess wants to speak to your mother about an extra boy or the table will be ruined: “Can’t you ask Betsy? She knows so many boys!”

I was coming out, and adoring it, when my little sister Emily went to her first big dance. The subdeb parties are terribly important if you want to have a good time in your big year. We had put off the dreadful day until she was fifteen. Emily was skinny and romantic, and in the summer she didn’t sail much or play tennis; she goated, so we were awfully worried about her social career. She had a huge brown billy goal she called Master of Ballantrae, and Daddv called Auld Reekie. When he was stubborn, which was always, she towed him around by his grubby beard, so she was usually pretty gamy herself. She saved up to buy him a wife (the family couldn’t say no); but he abominated the creature, whose name was Flora Macdonald, and Emily couldn’t seem to comfort her.

It’s only reasonable to be afraid of your first dance. Even the naturals, the little pussycat blondes, are scared to death, and I told Emily so. But, like poor old Flora, she bleated and skittered around; she said her dress showed all her bones. It didn’t; Mother chose it to hide them. Then she got fractious, and said only idiots wore pink.

On the day before the party she threw up twice and got a rash where it showed. Two weeks earlier, she had told me, as a dark secret, that she was terrified of meeting Amory Standish, who was the idol of the Tenth Class. H’d almost been fired from Exeter for smoking, and Emily was sure he was a rip in every respect. I thought it was immensely sweet of her to tell Mother that there was no one sh’d rather go to the party with. Yo’re supposed to ask the boys to go with you, rather than the other way round: they look after you, and see that their friends cut in n you; so presentable, wellbehaved ones are in tremendous demand. Unless yo’re lucky enough to have a real beau, your unfortunate mother has to go to one of those Witches Sabbaths they call Patronesses’ Meetings, and see if any of her old schoolmates has an appropriate son. Usually, the son doesn’t prove too fascinating: if no spots, then no chin.

Ma had come back swollen with pride about having collared Amory, who was well and favorably known to the mother-cabal. Emily thanked her with real grace, ran back to our room, gave me a tragic glare, and wept bitterly. I told her that most fatal charmers absolutely lived on flattery, and that all she need do would be to lard Amory with compliments. But Emily, who ‘ never said an artificial thing in her life, looked at me with glazed ed eyes as though ’d recommended spooking Swahili, and I almost gave her up, then and there.

The Awful Evening finally came for her, and with it Amory. I found him delightful: no spots, plenty of chin, tall without that celery look, and a merry black eye. Even dimples. Emily was having a frenzied time with her stockings, so Daddy asked Amory, in a man-to-man voice, if he would ‘ haxe a little sherry in the library. My father has responded splendidly to training; but I saw that Ma was about to get wayward and panicky, perhaps to ask Amory if he played on any teams, so I dragged her upstairs to Emily, “book, Em. I said, “he’s brought you a terrific corsage. No forget-me-nots.”

Emily stared listlessly at her two camellias. Is he cute?" she said in a graveyard voice.

“Awfully.”

“Oh (Jod.”

“Not like that, Em. In a sweet way. He’s awfully nice too.”

“Then h’ll be sorry for me,”and she nearly wept. I saw the time had come for shock treatment. so I said Amory had better things to be sorry for, and not to make her eyes repulsive. I bustled her into her pink dress, stuffed her silvermesh bag into one hand, her white gloves into the other, and dabbed her with my perfume. I told her it was sure-fire.

Mother gaxe her an apprehensive kiss and said, “If you don’t like it by eleven ’clock, darling, ’ll be up in the Patronesse’ Gallery.”

Emily said in a quavering voice that she knew she’d have a good time in such a nice dress. I wanted to kiss her too, for I hat, but thought it might set her off.

“Now, Em,” I said, “one last thing. Ma and ’ll go out; and you stand by the mirror and take a darn good look and think how pretty you are. because you arc, and all you haxe to do is to believe it.”

We started downstairs, both frozen with nerxes. Mother stopped me on the landing and said she was positixely queasy. “It was different with you. Bets, you were just automatic. . . . Damn those spoiled little boys,”she said, “I feel as though I were throwing her to the lions.”

“If sh’d only real ize how cunning she looked.”I heard Daddy and Amory laughing in the library, which sounded auspicious. “You were wonderful to get Amory, Ma,”I said. “ He’s so cheerful, he’ll end up by making her think it’s fun.”

“Do you suppose he has a hip flask?”

I reminded her, gently, that Prohibition was over before Amory was born; and we went on downstairs. Emily finally appeared; I hoped she’d taken a good long look. You can hypnotize yourself into feeling a belle; then you often are one. She seemed stiff and blushful, but she really did look very pretty. I thought her dark oval face had infinitely more distinction than the little pink-china doll’, hose necks I would gladly have wrung.

They said how-do-you-do, and Amory put on her white rabbit cape with a practiced air. She was paralyzed with shyness; exen her voice was hoarse. Amory did a charming thing: looked straight at Mother, sparing Emily, and said, “W’re going to a terrific parly, Mrs. Crane. All the men from my dorm’ll be there. I just hope I get to dance with Emily exen once.”From the way he shook hands with Daddy, I gathered that h’d just been given the usual five dollars, for after the party. There was manly understanding in that handshake, and a good deal of reassurance. It bought of Two Strong Men meeting Face to Face. Emily gaxe us a last, nervous glance, and preceded him out the door.

Mrs. Slandish had sent along her elegant toxvn ear, so they didn’t haxe to hunt taxis in the snow, I hoped nrrixing in such stxle xxould reinforce Em’s confidence at least a little, and that Amory’s good manners xxould help.

2;

I JVNLJX’ everx thing was all right, as soon as I woke up, early next morning. The shades were draxvn, bul enough chilly snow-light came in so that I could see the pink dress, thrown doxvn inside-out, and a fine abandoned tangle of silxer slippers, underxvear, and stockings on the floor. If she’d been a wallflower, she would haxe hung everything up with a sad tidiness and made dogged, don’t-care noises going to bed. I had slept right through her return. Then I saw her camellias, brown and messy, placed tenderly In her pillow, and that really surprised me. All I could see of Em was her tangle of long brown hair. She made such a small ridge under the blue quilt.

1 dozed off again — it had been my first full night’s sleep that week — and when I woke up, there xxas a sunny square on the carpel. I could hear a faint slithering and chinking from the distant traflic on Park, and Emily seemed to he stirring. I mumbled, as though still asleep, and turned over to watch her through my eyelashes.

I nearly died of shock. Her skinny, childish arms embraced the pillow, and her cheek was laid on it delicately, instead of being rammed in. The upper half of her face was like a musing angel’s: eyebrows exquisitely raised, black lashes sweeping her cheeks. But her mouth was curved into a tiny, knowing smile. And, as I watched, she fluttered her eyelids and whispered, “Oh, thank you, no; I rarely smoke.” Then she let go the pillow, turned luxuriously onto her back, raised her hands with a swanlike gesture, and contemplated her pale pink nails.

Enchanted and amazed, f watched, and didn’t say a word. After about five minutes with her fingernails, she rose gracefully from her bed and stood, in flannel pajamas, looking down at the faded camellias. She picked them up, gave them a farewell glance, and dropped them nonchalantly in the wastebasket by the dressing table. Then she took the stopper from my “sure-fire” perfume. It was a sacred bottle, given me by my then best beau, who couldn’t bear to wait until Christmas. She waved it dreamily in the air, and walked a step or two forward. For a moment, I was mystified by that maneuver, until I realized that some precocious Grottie might have said something suave about a cloud of fragrance. Showy boys, I thought, a little annoyed because she didn’t put the stopper back in tight.

Emily walked, barefoot and on tiptoe, into the square of sun, stretched this way and that, and closed the window. She raised the shades, flooding the room with sunlight, and gazed benignly down into our yard. It took her several minutes to account for one bare ailanthus tree (shimmering prettily with ice), an awning frame, and a couple of overturned flower pots. Then she spun slowly toward the long mirror (in the brilliant reflected light, I could see through the blue flannel to her shadowy little bones) and posed, hip-shot, like a model. She ran a tender, wondering finger along her jawline (which was sharp as a terrier’s in those days), and I thought, One night that shook the world. The whole thing came to a fine climax as she turned away from the mirror. Glancing lightly back over her shoulder, she said, in crystal accents, “Oh, Amo. You utter child.”

I decided, almost embarrassed, that it was about time to wake up. My groans and yawns must have been convincing, because, quite without self-consciousness, the Terrestrial Venus disappeared. She even became pigeon-toed again. I said the expected things: “Hi, Em. Was it okay? Did you make out all right?”

Emily asked, in a social voice, very deliberately, if she’d wakened me last night when she came in. I said no, also in a social voice.

It was then, and only then, that she told me about her lovely time. The music, the compliments, the balloons on the ceiling. Good-bye, goats, I thought, a trifle sadly; good-bye, little sister. After sh’d gone through her impressive list of partners, gloating just a bit; after she’d said exactly what there was for supper (Rome wasn’t built overnight), I said, “I bet Amory calls up today.”

Emily dropped her eyelashes. “I bet so too,” she said, and we both burst out laughing.