“Why didn’t you tell us you played the guitar?” somebody asked him, and Ted grinned sheepishly and said, “I didn’t know that anybody would be interested.”
It grew, the realization, through the long lovely spring days and easy talk and laughter and a feeling of companionship I had never known before with any boy or, for that matter, with any girl, even Nancy. One Sunday evening (we had been to church together that morning and to the beach all afternoon and to an early movie after dinner), Ted said, “We fit so well together, you and I,” and I said, “Yes,” and Ted said, “It’s as if it were meant to be that way.”
“You mean,” I said, and the words came haltingly to my tongue because I had never said them aloud to him before and I was afraid they would sound silly, “You mean, as though it were written in the stars?”
Ted was silent a moment and then he said, “Yes, I guess that’s what I mean.”
It was the night of the Senior Prom that Ted saw the locket. As I said before, I didn’t wear it often, it was too precious, but somehow the night of the Senior Prom seemed right. I wore my rose evening dress and my rose slippers and no jewelry except the locket on its slender gold chain.
Ted noticed it right away.
“Nice,” he commented. “Makes you look sort of sweet and old-fashioned. Is it a family heirloom?”
“You could say that,” I said. “Daddy gave it to Mother, and Mother gave it to me.” I touched it fondly.
Ted was interested. “Does it open?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Let’s see.” He reached over and took the locket in his hands, the gentle, capable hands I had grown to know so well, and fiddled with it for a moment, and it fell open on his palm, disclosing a tiny lock of hair.
“So!” he said, smiling. “I didn’t know your father had red hair.”
“I guess he must have when he was young. He got gray very early.” I smiled too. “Put it back, Ted. It belongs there.”
He did so, closing the locket gently as though anything that had meaning for me had meaning for him also.
I’d tell you about the summer, but it is too hard to describe. I think you must already know what it’s like to be in love. You get up in the morning and shower and dress and eat breakfast just as you always have, but ever motion, every ordinary thing, is flavored with excitement. “I’m going to see him today—in two hours—one hour—ten minutes—and now he is here!”—there’s a radiance, a silent singing inside you that seems to expand to fill your life. That was the summer—and then, so terribly soon, it was autumn again.
Ted got his scholarship. His face, when he told me, was shining with excitement.
“How do you like the sound of it—Doctor Bennington!”
“Wonderful,” I said. “Marvelous! But I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too.” He sobered. “I’ll be home on vacations.”
“Sure,” I said. The summer lay golden and glorious behind us; there would be other summers.
“I wish—” His voice trembled slightly. “I wish you were going to Tulane too.”
“I’ll be here for you to come back to,” I said. “I’ll be a secretary in a year, you know. Maybe I can come there and get a job that has some connection with the college.”
“That would be great.” Still he did not smile. “I’m afraid,” he said suddenly.
“Afraid of what?”
“Of going. Of leaving you here. I’m afraid something will happen, that you’ll meet somebody else or something. What we’ve got—it’s so right—so perfect! We can’t lose it!”
“We won’t,” I said with confidence. You don’t lose something that is written in the stars.
And so my prince rode away on his snow-white horse, and that was the beginning of the end. We did not marry. If we had, I wouldn’t bother telling this story. Ted went to college and I to secretarial school, and we wrote letters at first constantly, and then not quite so often. Ted couldn’t afford to come home at Thanksgiving, and when he did come at Christmas I had the measles, (horrible thing to have when you’re practically grown), and we did not really get to see each other until spring vacation. By then we had been so long apart that we spent the whole vacation getting re-acquainted, and then it was time for Ted to go back again. He was as sweet and wonderful as ever, you understand; we just felt as though we didn’t know each other quite so well.
“Don’t forget me,” he said a little desperately as he left.
And I said, “Of course not,” but this time I did not sound so certain.
As it turned out, it was Ted who met somebody else; he who had been so worried, when I had been so sure! But in the end it was Ted who wrote the letter. The girl, he said, was a premed student just as he was. Her name—well, I’ve forgotten her name—but she was small, he said, and had hazel eyes and was smart and fun and easy to talk to. I would like her, he said. We were alike in many ways. He said he was sorry.
It was raining the day the letter came. I read it in the living room and then gave it to Mother to read and went upstairs to my room.
I lay on the bed and listened to the sound of the rain and thought how strange it was, how unbelievable. I didn’t hate Ted; you don’t hate somebody as sweet as Ted. I didn’t even hate the girl. I was too numb to feel anything; I didn’t even cry. I just lay there listening to the rain and thinking, he was The One—we were right—we fitted—we were perfect. Now he is gone and he was The One, and he will never come again.
I was still lying there when Mother came in. She did not knock, she just opened the door and came in and stood by the bed looking down at me. Before she said it, I knew what she was going to say.
“There will be other boys,” she said. “You may not believe it now, but there will be.”
“Yes,” I replied. “I suppose so.” There was no use arguing about something like that. “Ted was The One,” I said. “There will be other boys, sure, but he was The One.”
Mother was silent a moment. Then she said, “Do you still have the locket?”
“The locket?” I was surprised at the question. “Yes, of course. It’s in my top drawer.”
Mother went over to the bureau and opened the drawer. She took out the locket and brought it over to the bed.
“Put it on,” she said.
“Now?” I was more surprised. “But, why? Why now?”
“Because,” Mother said quietly, “this is why I gave it to you.” She put the locket in my hands and sat down on the edge of the bed, watching me as I raised it and put the chain around my neck and fumbled the tiny clasp into place. “You see,” she said when I had finished, “that locket was given to me by The One on the evening of our engagement. We were very young, and he couldn’t afford a ring yet. The locket had been in his family for a very long time.”
“Oh.” I reached up and touched the locket, feeling a new reverence for it. I thought of Daddy drawing it from his pocket, nervous, excited, watching Mother’s face as he did so, hoping desperately that she would like it. Mother and Daddy—young and newly in love, two people I had never known and would never know.
“He was everything,” Mother continued, “that I ever wanted in a husband. He was good and strong and honest, he was tender, he was fun to be with, and he loved me with all his heart.