Free A Southern Exposure by Alice Adams Page A

them,” says Cynthia to her daughter.
    “Oh, yeah. Those dopey kids. Some dumb girl named Melanctha, and four dumb boys.”
    “What’s dopey about them?”
    “Oh, I don’t know, nothing special. All the kids in the school are dopey, it looks like to me.”
    “Oh, Abby, now really.”
    “The Byrd kids come to school on a truck, but they’re not really truck children. It has something to do with where they live.”
    Abigail’s own major obsession, this golden Southern fall, has been Benny, Benny and the mixed-up substances in the chem. lab, and the teacher, Mr. Martindale. What happened? Any explosion? Anyone dead?
    Every morning, at first with dread, her stomach tightening, breath short, she has scanned the local paper, half expecting the headline EXPLOSION IN CONNECTICUT SCHOOL . On Sundays she reads
The New York Times
, which is carried by the local drugstore; Harry by now has one reserved. Abigail even reads the “Week in Review” section. It might be there.
    But no, it never is. Just all this other stuff about countries arming, troops marching.
    After a few weeks of such anxiety she decides that it is over; nothing worth putting in the paper happened, no cops or anyone will come down there after her, and Benny is not in any reform school. Probably.
    She is not especially relieved by this realization. What she rather feels is a vast and terrible disappointment. She wanted to know what happened—and she badly wanted something to happen.
    One afternoon, when both parents are out somewhere, the perfect solution comes to her: call Benny. Long distance. How simple, how perfect. How could she not have thought of it before?
    “God, Abby, it was just the greatest thing that ever happened. Oh, if you’d been there! If I’d been there—I got all this poop from Muffy Montgomery, you remember her?—when I was over helping my dad last week. Anyway, she told me that old Martindale made his little speech, you know the one, the magic of chemistry. Our chemistry is going to defeat Hitler’s chemistry because it’s better. All that bull, you remember, only this year he got a lot fancier, according to Muffy. With the gestures, the cute smiles. And then, nothing worked. It was so great. Nothing happened like he said it was going to. No smells, no explosions. Iguess we’re sort of lucky that way, right? But it would have been fun if something had really gone bang, or if there’d been some great big stink he didn’t plan.”
    “What did he say?” Abby asked him. Talking to Benny is so familiar an activity to Abby that she can hardly believe she is doing it.
    “Oh, you know how he is. He thinks it’s okay if you smile all the time, then no one will know that you’re starting an ulcer. He smiled and smiled, Muffy said, and he said he reckoned the summer heat wasn’t beneficial, that’s what he said, not beneficial for chemical compounds. What a pill he is. What a fake.”
    “God, I wish I’d been there.” I wish I were there with you. I would wish you were here, except it’s an awful place and I wouldn’t wish it on a friend, especially if the friend is a Negro. Abby says none of this to Benny; she has begun to think of her father finding this call on his phone bill. “I guess I’d better go,” she tells Benny. “This is long distance, and you know my dad.”
    “Thank you for calling me. I’ll call you sometime when I get some dough. Say, I forgot to tell you, I’m applying for a scholarship to this school in New Hampshire. Exeter? The coach says they’re really interested in good ballplayers.”
    “Do they take girls?”
    “I doubt it. I don’t know.”
    “Okay. Well, good luck if you want to go there. Any school would be better than the one I’m going to.”
    “That’s too bad.”
    “It sure is. Well, bye.”
    Abby hangs up feeling mildly depressed. What was all that about Muffy, anyway? Whom of course Abigail remembers, this really icky black-haired girl, with all these curls.And dumb. Benny