She rushes past him and locks herself in the bathroom, where she runs the water so that no one can hear her cry. She is not worth his devotion. She wishes he would evaporate into thin air. Maybe then she wouldn’t have this feeling deep inside, a feeling she can deny all she wants, but that won’t stop it from being desire. Still, in spite of her constant refusals, she can’t help but peek out the bathroom window, just to get a look at Ben. There he is, in the fading light, certain of what he wants, certain of her. If Gillian were speaking to her sister, or, more correctly, if Sally were speaking to her, Gillian would draw her over to the window to get a look. Isn’t he beautiful? That’s what she would have said if she and Sally had been talking. I wish I deserved him, she would have whispered into her sister’s ear.
It chills Antonia through and through to see Mr. Frye on the front porch, so obviously in love it seems he’s placed his pride and his self-respect on the concrete for anyone to trample. Antonia finds this display of devotion extremely disgusting, she really does. When she walks past him, on her way to work, she doesn’t even bother to say hello. Her veins are filled with ice water instead of blood. Lately Antonia doesn’t bother with carefully choosing her clothes. She doesn’t brush her hair a thousand times at night, or pluck her eyebrows, or bathe with sesame oil so her skin will stay smooth. In a world without love, what is the point of any of that? She broke her mirror and put away her high-heeled sandals. From now on she will concentrate on working as many hours as she can at the ice cream parlor. At least things are tangible there: You put in your time and pick up your paycheck. No expectations and no let-downs, and right now that’s what Antonia wants.
“Are you having a nervous breakdown?” Scott Morrison asks when he sees her at the ice cream parlor later that night.
Scott is home from Harvard for summer vacation and is delivering chocolate syrup and marshmallow topping, as well as sprinkles and maraschino cherries and wet walnuts. He’d been the smartest boy ever to graduate from their high school, and the only one to ever be accepted at Harvard. But so what? All the time he was growing up in this neighborhood, he was so smart that no one talked to him, least of all Antonia, who considered him to be a pitiful drip.
Antonia has been methodically cleaning the ice cream scoopers, which she’s lined up all in a row. She hasn’t even bothered to glance at Scott while he delivered buckets of syrup. She certainly seems different from the way she used to be—she was beautiful and snooty, but tonight she looks like something that’s been left out in a storm. When he asks her the completely innocent question about the nervous breakdown, Antonia bursts into tears. She dissolves into them. She is nothing but water. She lets herself slip to the floor, her back against the freezer. Scott leaves his metal dolly and comes to kneel beside her.
“A simple yes or no would have been just fine,” he says.
Antonia blows her nose on her white apron. “Yes.”
“I can see that,” Scott tells her. “You’re definitely psychiatric material.”
“I thought I was in love with someone,” Antonia explains. Tears continue to leak from her eyes.
“Love,” Scott says with contempt. He shakes his head, disgusted. “Love is worth the sum of itself, and nothing more.”
Antonia stops crying and looks at him. “Exactly,” she agrees.
At Harvard, Scott had been shocked to find out that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people as smart as he was. He’d been getting away with murder for years, using a tenth of his brain power, and now he actually had to work. He’d been so busy competing all year he hadn’t had time for daily life—he’d repudiated things like breakfast and haircuts, the consequences of which are that he’s lost twenty pounds and has shoulder-length hair, which his boss makes him tie back with a piece of leather so he doesn’t offend the customers.
Antonia stares at him, hard, and discovers that Scott looks completely different and exactly the same. Out in the parking lot, Scott’s summer partner, who’s been driving this delivery route for twenty years and has never before had an assistant who received a 790 on his verbal SATs, leans on the horn.
“Work,” Scott says ruefully. “Hell with a paycheck.”
That does it. Antonia follows him when he goes to collect his metal dolly. Her face feels hot, even though the air conditioner is switched on.
“See you next week,” Scott says. “You’re low on hot fudge.”
“You could come in before that,” Antonia tells him. There are some things she hasn’t forgotten, in spite of her depression and this mess with her aunt Gillian and Mr. Frye.