LITMIR.BIZ

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they had been in bloom three days. It was lilac time at South’s, she thought to herself, and tried to remember what song it was that that line was trying to bring to mind. She went up to the porch and decided to indulge herself in her favorite pastime: just to think for a while.

      By nature she was reflective. Her father called her “the greatest thinker ever wore skirts.” Jack teased her too, and told her she was in another world. But she had to. And she made very satisfying discoveries too, even if they took her a long time. When she finally had a whole situation analyzed, the actual event would be way in the past. A boy would say something on a date that she wouldn’t quite understand, and she would not pursue it at the moment because it wouldn’t be that important. But still she wouldn’t forget. She would tuck it in the grab-bag in her mind. It might not be until months later that it would suddenly dawn: “That’s what he meant!” Then she’d be happy.

      Today she had two items for her grab-bag: Jim running his finger across the back of her leg in the A&P, and Florence’s panic over Ralph’s visit.

      She rested her sneakers on the rail of the porch, and smiled when she thought about Jim. She remembered the party after graduation from Saint Margaret’s Elementary School when they were fourteen. At the party her brother Jack turned out the lights in the living room, and the whole group played Flashlight, Spin-the-Bottle, and Post-Office. Jack was the star since he was the best-looking of the boys, and easily the most aggressive. Jill had to sit against the wall, and watch the girls throw things at Jack, and squeal and act silly. But when it came Jim Meagher’s turn to pick someone to go to the post office, he had picked her, and she was delighted. When the two of them had shut the door to the group, she stood with her heart almost stopped, and closed her eyes and waited for the kiss. She got a cruel disappointment, for it turned out he had no courage at all. He backed and slid along the wall away from her. He looked ill. There was nothing to do but wait. After a minute, Jack hammered on the door and demanded, “What’s going on in there?”

      He tried to open the door but Jill used all her strength to hold the knob against him. Finally Jim said in a small voice from up the hallway, “We’d better go back in, Jill.” As he passed her to enter the living room, he gave her a quick kiss and then ran. Jill smiled more when she remembered how wild with suspicion Jack was. “You didn’t have to take so long.”

      He even got sore at Jim, having made the natural error of projecting what he would have done behind the door. Jim of course was delighted to be suspected; he walked around the room like a rooster. It was all very funny.

      The other situation in the grab-bag, the dinner Florence was giving for Ralph and his family, was not so funny. It disturbed Jill to see anyone to get as upset as Florence was. She had actually called Jill “Mary” when Jill was leaving the house. Several times during the conversation it was clear she wasn’t paying attention to what was being said at all. But Jill knew what was most disturbing about the situation: it was so calculating. Florence was on a campaign to get Ralph, and the campaign was at a critical stage, the meeting of the families.

      Well, the families had to get together at some stage of the romance, didn’t they? Yes. But they didn’t have to get together before an engagement. For Florence to take this step before a ring was given was to force the issue. It was a critical moment in Florence’s campaign; hence her panic. The problem was that Florence was on a campaign. She was like Jill’s girlfriend, Nancy McGann. Nancy went to nursing school, and picked out a medical student the first week she was there. For two years she refused dates with any of the other medical students so as not to give even the appearance of being entangled with anyone else. In the end, she got him. She told the story to Jill in the afterglow of her victory. Jill was shocked. She said, as cautiously as she could, that she had always had the idea that in Providence her man would come along. Nancy had stiffened and replied, “God helps those who help themselves.”

      Jill suspected her own attitude was somewhat romanticized and silly. How would two people get together unless someone did some planning? But still, she couldn’t shake the idea that her own attitude in the end made more sense. Perhaps, she thought, it was because we know so little about another person that we have to trust in God that we won’t make an absurd choice.

      She was hard on Florence, she knew. Florence would be a good wife. On Saturday mornings, when Florence decided to bake, she baked for everybody, and the Connollys and the Souths and the other neighbors got a cake as well as the Meaghers. She had a good heart.

      Yet Jill liked Jim better, for all that he was as thoughtless and kiddish and harum-scarum at nineteen as he had been at nine. He seemed sometimes to deliberately try to get Florence and Mr. Meagher upset. He seemed to do it almost from malice. Maybe he was striking back because the father—and perhaps Florence too—was sitting too hard on him, was too critical of him. Of course, all the Irish fathers were alike, Jill thought. If the son or daughter brought home a “99” grade on the report card, the father didn’t praise the high mark: he wanted rather to know why it wasn’t a hundred. It was the same in the South household. But there was more there in that relationship between Mr. Meagher and Jim. Mr. Meagher had been a youngest child. Had he been sat on too hard by a father and older children? In that case, the sins of the father weren’t being visited on the son, so much as the sins of the grandfather were. Wasn’t that great? And where did it all begin? Back in the mists of some Celtic dawn? And where would it end? In some American twilight?

      In any event, Florence would be married: Jill had no doubt that she was going to get Ralph. The question was, was he worth getting? He seemed very mild to handle someone as domineering as Florence could be. But that was a question that would be answered only by the years.

      Florence would be married, and Nancy McGann was getting married, and Tootsy Vesh had a baby already, and how many others? A lot. How about herself? The old fear: was she pretty enough to get married? It was the fear that made her arrange the bathroom mirrors so that she could almost get a profile, and she always had the hope that the nose would be a little shorter, and the chin more feminine and rounded. She did have nice legs though. Jim said that. She knew it anyway. She held her legs up. Boys did like her. They seemed to, anyhow. But she hadn’t gone out in two months. So? How many girls had dates all the time?

      Why wasn’t Jim taking her out if he thought she had such great legs? There could be a lot of reasons. Maybe it was just because she was next door. Maybe he was afraid to get involved because the families were so close. But Eva lived only two blocks away. That was pretty close too. What secret did Eva have? She was cute all right. But no personality. Nobody knew anything about her, really, because she never said anything. “Like a tomb,” as Tootsy Vesh said.

      Maybe Eva was letting him take liberties with her, Jill thought. Maybe she wasn’t as sweet and innocent as she looked. Jill sat straight up. That was mean, she said to herself. Catty. Most likely untrue.

      Maybe Jim went out with Eva instead of her because Eva wasn’t a cold fish, worrying all the time.

      That’s me, thought Jill. Worry. Worry. Worry.

      Bob Pinelli, who was the last boy to take her out with any regularity, undoubtedly thought she was a cold fish. They went dancing, and in the slow number when he held her too close (“that Italian blood,” she could hear her aunt saying), she fended him off. In the end she sat him down, worrying that perhaps she was inciting him, which would be a serious sin. At the same time she was thinking: Am I crazy? I finally find a guy I can get excited and I’m fighting with him?

      Oh, face facts, Jill thought. She didn’t really like Bob Pinelli. He always had his comb too handy. And he was forever squatting down before gum machine mirrors in the subway to admire himself. And he scented himself. Like a rose. And as for getting him excited, a female cat could get him excited. Worst of all, he had no sense of humor. If a girl didn’t want to go along with him, he could at least have made a joke out of it. But Pinelli got angry, made comments about her being a cold fish, asked, “Are you a nun?” and went on in that vein.

      Later on that night in her bed, Jill framed the answer that hadn’t come to her at the dance. “It may come as a surprise to you, Mr. Pinelli, but the question of religion is central.”

      Pinelli wouldn’t

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