Free When She Was Good by Philip Roth Page B

for instance, who had more or less been his private property during senior year, and was now a junior in elementary ed at the University of Minnesota (where Roy thought he might decide to go at the last minute, if everything else fell through). Bev was one of the few girls around who didn’t live her life as though she were in a perpetual popularity contest; she would just as soon leave the showing off to the show-offs, and didn’t go in for giggling and whispering and wasting whole evenings on the phone. She’d had a straight?average, worked after school at the library, and still had time for extracurricular activities (Spanish Club, Citizenship Club,
The Liberty Bell
advertising manager) and a social life. She had her two feet on the ground (even his parents agreed—bravo!) and he had always respected her a lot. Actually, it was because of this respect that he had never tried to make her go all the way.
    Still, it was the hottest and heaviest he had ever gone at it with anyone. In the beginning they used to kiss standing up in her front hallway (for as long as an hour at a stretch, but all the time in their coats). Then one Saturday after a school dance Bev agreed to let him into the living room; she took off her own coat and hung it up, but refused to let Roy remove his, saying he had to go in two minutes because her parents’ bedroom was directly over the sofa, toward which Roy was to stop trying to push her. It was several weeks more before he was finally able to convince her that he ought really to be allowed out of his coat, if only as a health measure; and even then she didn’t consent, so much as give up the fight, after Roy had already sort of slipped it half onto the floor, necking with her all the while so she wouldn’t know. And then one night after a long bitter struggle, she suddenly began sobbing. Roy’s first thought was that he ought to get up and go home before Mr. Collison came down the stairs; but he patted her a lot on the back and said everything was all right, and that he was really sorry, he hadn’t actually meant it; and so Bev asked, sounding relieved, hadn’t he really? and though he didn’t know exactlywhat they were talking about, he said, “Of course not, never, no,” and so from then on, to his immense surprise, she was willing to let him put his hand wherever he wanted above the belt so long as it was outside her clothes. There followed a bad month during which Bev got so angry with him that they very nearly broke up; meanwhile Roy was pushing and pulling and pleading and apologizing, all to no avail—until one night, fighting him off, Bev (inadvertently, she tearfully contended later) sank a fingernail so deep into his wrist that she drew blood. Afterward she felt so rotten about it that she let him put his hand inside her blouse, though not inside her slip. It so excited Roy that Bev had to whisper, “Roy! My family—stop snorting like that!” Then one night in Bev’s dark living room they turned on the radio, very, very low, and of all things, on “Rendezvous Highlights” they were playing the music from the movie
State Fair
, which had recently been revived over in Winnisaw. It was their movie, and “It Might As Well Be Spring” was their song—Roy had gotten Bev to agree. In fact, Roy’s mother said that he looked a little like Dick Haymes, though, as Bev commented, least of all when he tried to sing like him. Nevertheless, in the middle of “It’s A Grand Night For Singing” Bev just fell backward on the sofa with her eyes closed
and her arms behind her neck
. He wondered for a moment if it was really what she wanted, decided it must be, decided it
had
to be, and so, taking the chance of his life, drove his hand down between her slip and her brassiere. Unfortunately, in the newness and excitement of what she was letting him do, he caught the buckle of his watchband on the ribbing of her best sweater. When Bev saw what had happened she was heartsick, and then