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Commentary

banana split – “сплит” (сладкое блюдо из разрезанных пополам фруктов с орехами и мороженым сверху)

dual quads – частьавтомобиля

clutch – сцепление (автомобиля)

one-hoss shay – фаэтон (hoss – ам. прост. horse)

coed freshmen – первокурсники (coeds – однокурсники)

jalopy – драндулет, ветхий автомобиль

Joseph’s coat of many colors – разноцветная одежда Иосифа (библ., предмет зависти – из-за которой братья Иосифа продали его в рабство)

buggy – зд. рыдван

Venetian blinds – жалюзи, маркизы,шторы, ставни

manifold – трубопровод, коллектор, магистраль

combustion chamber – камера сгорания

valves – клапаны

pistons -поршни

Exercise 1. Practise the pronunciation of the following words:

1. boisterous ['bOIstRrRs] 9. tousle ['tauzl]

2. arid ['WrId] 10. fastidiousness [fWs'tIdIRsnIs]

3. banshee [bWn'SI:] 11. inadvertently [LInRd'vR:tRntlI]

4. derisively [dI'raIsIvlI] 12. bovine ['bouvaIn]

5. ensuing [In'sju:IN] 13. spontaneity [LspOntR'nI:ItI]

6. furtively ['fR:tIvlI] 14. chamois ['SWmwQ:]

7. ritual ['rItjuRl] 15. tirade [taI'reId]

8. perseverance [LpR:sI'vIRrRns] 16. irretrievable [LIrI'trI:vRbl]

Exercise 2. Read the following extract:

That was just a dodge, Jane decided, as they all piled into Eric’s ancient Ford and drove to the Snack Shop. Ken’s got better sense than to bring Belinda along into our crowd.

Nevertheless, she felt rather uneasy as they gathered around a big table and Sue insisted on piling all their coats on two extra chairs. She ordered a chocolate milk shake in spite of Gordon’s protest: “Oh, come on, Jane, I’m going to have a banana split.”

“Just the thing for a receding waistline,” Sue kidded. “Know what I’m going to give you for Christmas, Gordon? Reducing pills. You take two before meals and then you aren’t hungry at all.”

“Who says so?” asked Jack Preston.

“My mother, and she should know.”

“But I like to be hungry,” Gordon said seriously. “I enjoy eating.”

As a group, they all leaned forward in mock astonishment and cried, “No!”

Sue reached out and patted Gordon’s arm. “You’re a good sport, Gordy,” she told him with a smile.

Now I should have been the one to do that, Jane realized. Why didn’t I? It was such a friendly gesture, so natural and unaffected. It brought Gordon into the group again, and took the curse off the teasing they could never resist.

The waitress came with the orders, and there was the usual confusion in their distribution. Stitch, presented with Gordon’s banana split, regarded it with mock horror. “What’s this?” he croaked.

As the necessary exchanges were made, with a good deal of laughter, and chitchat, Trudy leaned toward Jane and whispered, “Don’t look now, but how dopey can anyone get?”

Without turning her head, Jane knew that Ken and Belinda had arrived. She felt them, rather than saw them, as they approached. Her spine seemed to grow rigid, her chest tight with anger. This was inexcusable. This was going a good deal too far. If Ken didn’t have the common sense to realize what he was doing, Linda should have steered him off.

But even as rage swept over her, Jane knew what had happened. By the end of the evening Ken was beginning to miss his own crowd, and with his usual directness he had hustled Belinda along to join them, never –dreaming that Jane might be jealous or that Linda might feel out of place.

“Hyah,” Ken greeted the gang. “Thanks for saving the seats, Sue.” He picked up a stack of coats and, pretending to stagger under their weight, transferred them to the nearest radiator. Belinda slipped into the empty chair without saying a word, but her smile swept the group and indicated a shy, becoming pleasure at being here with all these upperclassmen. It neither lingered on Jane nor avoided her. She looked very guileless and sweet.

Each one of the boys sat a little straighter. Here was a newcomer – a dilly of a newcomer! – on whom to try their charms. Without seeming to notice Linda at all, they became boisterous and overwhelmingly masculine. Grabbing the conversation, they tossed it around like a football, leaving the girls out.

“And Butch said to me, he said, ‘Look, Jack, next year you’re going to kiss this little town good-by. So whad-dya wanta worry about, you’re passing, aren’t you? They’re not going to kick you off the team.’ ”

On the other side of the table, Eric snorted to Stitch, “A hot rod? I’d call it a heap. You haven’t seen a hot rod until you’ve seen Denny Bishop’s Merc. He’s got solid lifters and dual quads and he’s even considering an aluminum clutch.”

Ken leaned forward. Cars were something he could discuss. “I’ve got my Caddy almost ready to roll,” he said. “With those twin carburetors – man!”

But instead of gathering him into the fold, the boys were inclined to bypass Ken tonight. Suddenly they let the subject drop and switched to tape recorders, which he knew nothing about.

Jane, along with the rest of the girls, sat back and listened. There wasn’t one of them who didn’t know exactly what was going on. Stitch, Eric, Jack – even Gordon – were all showing off for Belinda. They had worked up quite a production in a very few minutes. They sounded, at least to their own ears, like very big stuff.

Linda was sipping a coke through a straw, looking from one to another with her round blue eyes, apparently unaware that the other girls were beginning to resent her presence almost as much as Jane did. This child might look winsome and far from dangerous, but they knew better. The lads weren’t turning handsprings for nothing. Not Eric! Not Stitch or Jack!

Trudy leaned forward and started talking across the table to Sue in a voice calculated to drown out Stitch’s discourse on tape recorders. “It’s time we got serious about the yearbook elections. You’re a natural for joke editor, I think.”

“Who, me?” laughed Sue. “I’m not exactly flattered.”

“It’s a good job,” said Trudy, determinedly serious.

“Jane ought to be literary editor,” decided Polly, as though she were thinking out loud.

“That’s what I say!” Trudy agreed heartily. “Only she’s so modest, she won’t believe she stands a chance.”

“Nonsense. We’ll see to it,” said Polly firmly. “And I suppose you’ve got your eye on art director, true?”

“Well...”

“We could all nominate each other,” Sue chuckled. “That would make it easy, now that we know what we want.”

It was a conversation intended to exclude Belinda, just as the boys had excluded them. In its way, it was also big stuff. But if Linda felt uncomfortable she didn’t show it. She sat very quiet and listened to the boys, even though it was difficult to catch everything they said, considering the cross fire the girls kept up.

The contest became louder by the minute, with neither side appearing to win. Finally Ken covered his ears with his hands. “Pipe down!” he said. “You’re screaming like a pack of banshees. What’s the point?”

The point was quite obvious to everyone but himself. Nevertheless, the shouting subsided. He had caught their attention at last. And now, flustered and foolhardy, he kept it. “As I was saying – about my Caddy – I think I’m going to get her on the street next week!”

The announcement fell into a vacuum. “Well, so be it.” Said Stitch finally.

Taut as a violin string, Jane vibrated to the change in atmosphere. “Now he’s calling that one-hoss shay ‘her’!” she put in derisively.

“Baz-o-o-m,” murmured Eric, like a bass viol.

Ken looked surprised and offended. What was the matter with everybody tonight? Soft-hearted Gordon came to his rescue. “Pay no attention,” he told him. “they’re just jealous, that’s what.”

It struck, quite unintentionally, too close to the mark to suit Jane. Pretending indifference, she kept her head turned away toward the soda fountain, but she could feel herself flush.

“I think,” said Belinda, in the ensuing silence, “that it’s a lovely car.”

Ken looked pleased and grateful, but Stitch threw back his head and laughed. “You’re pretty lovely yourself, honey,” he said to Belinda.

“Second the motion,” chimed in Eric.

And Gordon, unable to resist the impulse, pushed back his empty plate and murmured “Yea, man!”

* * *

Furtively, Jane bought a box of mascara and an eyebrow pencil. She set her hair every night in the new way Trudy had hit upon, and began getting up half an hour earlier every morning and locking herself in the bathroom, to Belinda’s indignation.

“How come you’re all of a sudden acting like Lana Turner?” she wanted to know. “Who do you plan to impress?”

It wasn’t like Linda to be waspish, as even Jane would have admitted. But because of this new bathroom ritual Linda had been late for school on three consecutive days. Finally Mrs. Howard put an end to it. “I think we’ll have to institute a rationing system,” she decided. “Fifteen minutes should be ample for either of you. There’s such a thing as being just too beautiful.”

Looking at her face in the mirror, Jane realized that this was an eventuality she would never have to face. In spite of the delicately applied make-up, she remained fundamentally plain. No matter how many times she wrote in the back of her history notebook, “Nothing succeeds like success,” there remained the cold, inescapable fact that she didn’t have Belinda’s equipment. She wasn’t, as Stitch put it crudely, “stacked.”

It was difficult, therefore, to remember to flutter her eyelashes at the boys and assume a coyness she didn’t feel. And all sorts of distractions kept interfering. Hockey was now in foil swing. Football was beginning. Class elections, as well as the yearbook staff nominations, were about to come up. Jane felt one interest crowding out another. Frequently she wished she could just forget the existence of the entire male sex. But of course this was impossible. The ringing of the telephone — always for Belinda these days — reminded her that creeping around feeling sorry for herself had availed her nothing. Perseverance seemed her only hope.

Instead of being bowled over by the impact of Jane’s new personality, the boys in the crowd were baffled. Here was a girl they had always treated like a pal. What was she trying to do, anyway? They shied away from her, feeling uncomfortable and a little afraid.

So instead of improving her position, Jane had definitely worsened it. Although she still had the support of the girls who were her most intimate friends, the rest of them regarded her dubiously. Like the boys, they were wondering what she was trying to do.

Then, from a most unlikely source, came a stroke of luck. As Jane walked home from school Friday afternoon, carrying a heavy pile of books, a car pulled up to the curb and Bob Wright leaned out. “Want a lift?”

“Do I!” Jane’s response was perfectly natural. “I can’t think of anything I’d like more.” She hurried over and climbed in gratefully, repeating her thanks.

The October wind had brought color to her cheeks and her hair was tousled becomingly. The mascara, applied with great fastidiousness, did not show, but it made her eyes look larger than usual and gave them depth. Bob regarded her closely, but couldn’t put his finger on the change. Somehow, she seemed more sophisticated. Maybe it was the bright, autumn-leaf-colored coat.

Because she didn’t regard him as a potential swain, Jane forgot to exhibit her new personality. Chattering easily, as she would have done with any acquaintance, she asked Bob if he had decided on any special fraternity. Inadvertently, she made her question sound as though she assumed that he would have his pick of any house on the campus. He basked in the sun of this unearned admiration and replied, rather grandly, that he was being rushed by a couple, but hadn’t yet made up his mind.

In front of the Howards’ house he parked and turned off the ignition, although Jane already had her hand on the car door. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What’s your hurry?”

“None,” Jane admitted. She settled back wonderingly. Bob had never before been especially anxious to prolong a conversation with her.

“Tell me what you’re doing these days. I don’t suppose you’re seeing much of Ken.”

Just as Jane was thinking him extremely tactless, he went on to say with a chuckle, “Ken and his Cadillac seem to be inseparable.”

So perhaps he hadn’t heard about Linda. After all, Bob was moving in a different sphere now. She smiled. “It was a case of love at first sight,” she said lightly.

Bob laughed, unexpectedly reminding her of Gordon. They were both nice boys, with kind, rather bovine eyes, and they both lacked the sparkle which Jane unconsciously craved. He turned toward her and said, “If you’ve got some time on your hands, how about giving me a little of it next week?”

“Next week?” she repeated, to hide her surprise.

“There are always house parties during rushing season,” Bob explained. “I thought you might like to see a game and then take one in.”

Jane gasped. “Do girls my age go?”

Such naïveté was precisely what Bob had expected — even anticipated. It gave him a feeling of superiority. As a college man he could show the little girl from across the street a time. With very faint condescension he explained that at the dances there would be lots of girls who were juniors or seniors in high school. The coed freshmen, he told her, usually went out with older guys.

“I... I’ll have to ask my mother,” Jane said hesitantly.

“Sure, sure. Give me a ring tonight, why don’t you?”

Jane nodded. “Are the parties formal?”

He shook his head. “Not after a football game.”

Her new green dress, then, would be just right. She gave a small sigh of relief. Even though she suspected that as yet Bob probably didn’t know any girls in his classes well enough to ask them and that she was being used as a stopgap, the invitation was exciting. And it had come just when she needed something to give her prestige. “I think you’re awfully nice to invite me,” she murmured. “I do hope I can go.”

With unaccustomed gallantry, Bob slipped out of his seat behind the wheel and came around to open the car door for Jane. “I hope you can too,” he told her. “And I hope we get a break on the weather. It’s no fun sitting through a game in the rain.”

As Jane went up the walk, Ken came past on his way home. Since the day when he returned the money he owed her, she hadn’t seen him alone, and it gave her a certain satisfaction to have just stepped out of Bob Wright’s car.

“Hyah!” he called. “How ya doin’?”

“Fine,” she replied, but she didn’t add the usual “And you?” She went on up the steps without pausing and didn’t catch the rather baffled expression with which he followed her progress into the house.

Belinda was sitting curled up on the floor in front of the fireplace, cracking walnuts and tossing the shells into the blaze. Mrs. Howard was darning socks, a task she loathed. Looking up, she waggled a finger at Jane through a hole. “How do you do it?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Get holes this big?”

Jane shrugged. “I don’t cut them out with scissors, honestly.” She flung her books and her coat on the couch and went over to the fire, picking up two walnuts from the bowl and cracking them together with the palms of her hands, boy fashion. “Mother,” she said, “Bob Wright wants me to go to a fraternity house dance. I said I’d like to go if it’s all right with you.”

Belinda’s eyes lifted. “Why, you lucky bum!” she breathed.

Her unconcealed envy gave Jane tremendous satisfaction. Although she was careful to hide it, she felt like a miner who had struck gold. Mrs. Howard put down her darning and asked cautiously, “It isn’t a weekend party, is it, dear?”

“Oh, no. Just a football dance.” Jane’s newly acquired knowledge of college life came to her aid. “It’s the rushing season, you know.”

If Mrs. Howard had known, she had forgotten. When Belinda gave a prolonged and heartfelt sigh, her mother glanced at her and said, “Don’t be covetous, sweetie. Your turn will come.”

“Then I can go?” Jane persisted.

“You even may,” Mrs. Howard replied.

“Oh, goody!” Jane cried. Then, with more spontaneity than she had shown for the past month, she added, “I can wear my velvet dress.”

Belinda put the nutcracker back in the bowl and clasped her hands around her legs, leaning her chin on her knees. “What will it be like, do you think? A fraternity house, I mean.”

Mrs. Howard started to answer the question, then thought better of it. In the eyes of anyone Belinda’s age, she couldn’t possibly know anything about fraternity houses. And anyway, this was Jane’s deal.

But Jane’s triumph was short-lived. The very next day Ken decided to test the motor overhaul he had done on his Caddy. He couldn’t have chosen a more conspicuous time for a trial run. At one o’clock on Saturday afternoon practically everyone on Franklin Street was at home. The early golfers had returned, the hunting crowd was back from the hills with their dogs, and the car-washing males – the conservatives – were getting out their buckets and chamois and exchanging views on the state of the nation over the fences and hedges. Everybody else had just finished lunch.

Therefore, inevitably, Ken collected quite an audience. The news of his Cadillac had traveled from house to house. The neighbors had followed with amusement the tussle between Mr. Sanderson and his son concerning the question of the twin carburetors, and the more adventurous among the men were delighted when Ken eventually won out. The small boys on the block had hung around the Sanderson driveway, watching Ken work on his antique automobile and dreaming of the day when they could own one themselves. George had helped his big brother clean engine parts in distillate and had splattered the dirty liquid all over the breakfast nook. In short, almost everyone except Jane had had a finger in the pie.

Aside from lending temporary financial support, which nobody knew about except Ken himself, she had openly poked fun at the jalopy. As rust was scraped from the fenders and replaced with base-coat paint, she said publicly that the Caddy was beginning to look like Joseph’s coat of many colors and that anybody would be ashamed to ride in such a buggy.

Now Ken stood in the driveway, throwing a shower of pebbles at the Howards’ dining-room window. “Hey, Belinda!” he called. “Come on out! I’ll take you for a ride.”

Linda, needing no second invitation, snatched up a jacket to fling over her shoulders and raced out of the house.

Somehow, although Jane had believed that she was beyond caring since the night in the Snack Shop, this was the final insult – that Ken should give Belinda the first ride in his car. Deeply hurt but pretending indifferent, she ran upstairs to peep through the Venetian blinds of the bathroom window.

Belinda was just climbing into the car, Ken was obviously too excited to be gallant and hold the door for her. Already seated behind the wheel, he was listening attentively to the idling engine. Jane knew the precise way in which his eyebrows were drawn together, although she couldn’t see them. This was a high spot in his life and he was savoring it. As Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson watched from the front porch, as Mr. Wright stopped hosing his new Ford station wagon to wave his good wishes, as a dozen shouting little boys and girls jumped up and down on the sidewalk, the Cadillac backfired with a note of triumph and rolled away.

This, then, was the end, Jane thought bitterly. All the long years of their friendship stood for nothing. They were finished, dead and buried, forgotten as though they had never existed. As she stood looking down on the empty, sunlit street she told herself she was saying good-by to her childhood and all its loveliness, as well as to Ken.

It didn’t occur to her that she was dramatizing the situation. She had been deeply hurt, and in the past weeks she had come to live with jealousy as with an affliction – unwanted, ugly, but impossible to shake off. After what seemed a long time, Jane washed her face in very cold water and came on downstairs, just ill time to see the Cadillac roll back.

Mr. Sanderson, smoking a pipe, had settled down on the porch steps for a chat with Mr. Wright, who had abandoned his car-washing job and was engaged in the more stimulating business of exchanging political views with a traveling man. The small children had started to build a fort of fallen leaves and were jumping in it. Scott Pritchard, who lived on the other side of the Howards, was combing burrs out of his setter’s coat in front of his garage doors, and the various other Franklin Street people who had been present at the getaway were also interested in witnessing the return.

Jane cocked her head and listened. Something was obviously very wrong. The engine didn’t purr as it should have done. It was missing badly. Anyone – even a girl as inexperienced as herself – could tell that.

“Carburetors aren’t set right,” Ken called to his father the explanation, but he looked worried as he climbed out of the car and slammed the door. Mr. Sanderson got up from the steps and went down the walk with Mr. Wright. “Sounds as if you barely made it home,” he growled, as his son came around and raised the hood.

Jane had come out to the porch on the pretext of looking in the mailbox. Her back turned, she stood and waited while the men bent over the reconditioned carburetors.

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” said Mr. Wright after a moment, “if your welding’s at fault. Looks to me as though you’ve left some bits of brass inside the manifold.”

This observation meant nothing to Jane, but she knew, glancing over her shoulder at Ken’s worried expression, that Mr. Wright had apparently hit the nail on the head. A further inspection proved the point. Brass particles, sucked into the combustion chamber with the gas, had seriously damaged the valves and pistons.

At this moment, the case proved, Mr. Sanderson lost his temper. He didn’t care if everybody on the street heard him. He was good and sore. “A slipshod job – that’s the trouble! How many times do I have to tell you that haste makes waste? All you want to do is tear a perfectly good car to pieces.” To Mr. Wright, he said, “I was a fool to let him have the thing in the first place. That’s what I was — a fool!”

“But, Pop –”

“Keep quiet, young man!” he stormed. “Twin carburetors indeed!” He turned and tramped halfway up the front walk, puffing furiously on his pipe, then whirled around and laid down the law. “This is no fifteen-dollar picnic, I hope you understand. Damaged valves and pistons mean a major garage job. You’re going to have this fixed and pay for it yourself. And after that you’re going to sell that junk heap for whatever it’ll bring.”

As Mrs. Sanderson appeared at the front door, alerted by the commotion, he stamped up the steps and shook his pipe at her threateningly. Red in the face with rage, he shouted “I’ve had enough!”

Very gently, Jane shut the top of the mailbox so that it would not make a noise. Adult anger always shocked her, and because Ken was the victim, this tirade left her spent. The old ties persisted in such a crisis, even though she had believed them broken irretrievably.

“It wasn’t that I was in too much of a hurry,” Ken was trying to explain to Mr. Wright. “I guess I just didn’t have enough experience. But next time, honest, I’ll learn to do it right.”

Forgotten in the heat of battle, Belinda opened the car door and slid out of the front seat.

Exercise 3. Find the following words and word combinations in the text you have read. Write out and learn the pronunciation. Give the Russian equivalents:

1. to show off for smb.

2. to drown out

3. to stand a chance (to stand no chance)

4. to come to one’s rescue

5. to be in full swing

6. to be bowled over by smth.

7. love at first sight

8. to crave smth

9. to loathe smth

10. to be short-lived

11. to peep through

12. to stand for nothing

13. on the pretext of doing smth.

14. to be at fault

15. to lay down the law

16. to be red in the face with rage

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