Bad Haircut (11 page)

The Jane Pasco Fan Club

 

I
was watching
Wake Up, America!
one gray morning in 1978 when the show's host, Nancy Vernon, almost made me choke on my Pop-Tart.

“You know,” she said, in that soft, oddly intimate voice that made her such an agreeable morning companion, “we hear a lot about the habits and opinions of so-called Average Americans. But lately we've got to wondering: who are these elusive creatures? Where do they live? What are their hopes and fears?

“Well,
Wake up, America!
decided to find out. After weeks of snooping and statistical analysis, our staff located a town that can only be described as uniquely ordinary. Darwin, New Jersey, isn't too big and it isn't too small. The 5,342 people who live there aren't rich and they aren't poor. They're … well, they're just about average.”

I was thinking I must have heard wrong— Darwin, New Jersey!— when the video screen behind
her head blossomed with a face that didn't belong on TV. It was lumpy and mismatched, like a bad composite portrait, with beady eyes, a false-looking nose, and a high forehead decorated with thin strands of strategically combed hair. I felt a strange thrill. It was the first time I'd ever seen someone I knew on television.

“Mario Moretti is the mayor of Darwin. Good morning, Mr. Mayor.”

The mayor straightened his tie and showed his teeth.

“Good morning to you, Nancy.” Nancy Vernon thoughtfully stroked her chin, as though she were about to address an important world leader.

“Tell us a little about your town, Mr. Mayor.” “Well, Nancy, there isn't that much to tell. It's your basic small town, a nice friendly place. Everyone knows everybody else.”

He was at least right on that last count. Mayor Moretti, for example, had grown up with my father and coached me in the Little League. His wife had served with my mother in the PTA. His son Mike had gone out with my girlfriend for two years before breaking her heart. Now he wanted her back in a big way.

“What kind of problems does the town face?” “We Darwinians are basically concerned with inflation, high taxes, drugs, crime, and the skyrocketing cost of gasoline.”

“Crime?” Nancy Vernon sounded a note of surprise. “Is there a lot of crime in Darwin?”

The mayor backpedaled. “Heck no, hardly any. Maybe a little shoplifting.” His smile brightened. “If you want to get murdered in broad daylight, you can always catch the bus to Manhattan.”

Nancy Vernon didn't crack a smile. “Mr. Mayor, we'd like to give our viewers a closer look at an Average American Town. Would you mind if we paid Darwin a visit?”

“We'd love to have you, Nancy.”

“One more thing. While we're in town, we'd like to drop in on an Average American Family. Could you arrange that for us?”

“I'd be delighted.”

The next day every family in town received a letter from the mayor's office inviting them to apply in writing to be featured on
Wake Up, America!
It said that although everyone was technically eligible for the honor, the show's producers had expressed a preference for a family of four, consisting of a blue-collar husband, a working wife, two kids (girl and boy), and a dog. Right after I read the letter I called my new girlfriend, Jane Pasco.

“Hey,” I said. “It's too bad you don't have a dog. You could be on TV.”

I meant it as a joke, but she didn't laugh.

“Jane?” I said. “Are you there?”

* * *

 

Mr. Pasco convinced Jane to go with him to the Humane Society. She dragged me along for moral support.

We passed through an anteroom filled with cats stacked one on top of the other in stainless steel cages. Most of them were fast asleep, despite the alarming volume of dog noise coming from the adjacent kennel. From a distance the barking had sounded relatively innocuous, but up close it took on an angry and desperate edge, as if each dog were crying out in its own private language:

“Take me!”

“Save me!”

“Hey you in the green shirt!”

“Help!”

The dogs were confined in two rows of remarkably clean cells separated by a cement walkway. The cells were narrow, about the size of bathroom stalls, with cinder block dividers and chain-link fencing across the front. Jane clutched my shirtsleeve. Her father adopted the cool, noncommittal air of a man browsing through a used car lot.

A Samoyed flipped her food bowl, sending dry kernels skittering across our path. A shepherd banged his head repeatedly against the fence. A handsome black Lab stood on his hind legs, barking spit into the air. A beagle frantically chased her tail.

“This is the one,” Mr. Pasco declared.

He was pointing at a quiet, intelligent-looking mixed breed, identified by his information tag as “Sparky.” He was a yellow dog with a dark face, flat ears, and sympathetic eyes. The tag said he was four years old and had been surrendered due to “owner allergy.” He stared back at us and thumped his tail twice, as though he knew he'd been chosen. In spite of herself, Jane smiled.

Sparky was a good dog. When we took him for a walk that night, he moved at our pace without straining at his leash. At the park, he politely sniffed the other dogs, but showed no interest in fighting or humping.

“Well,” I told Jane, as we followed Sparky down the dirt path, “even if you don't get on TV, at least you saved a life.”

“I don't know,” she said. “Dad's got his heart set on winning. He thinks it'll be good for Matt.”

Jane's brother, Matt, had dropped out of college in the middle of his first semester. During a late-night acid trip, he had hallucinated that his dorm was on fire. He'd pulled the alarm, then braved the imaginary inferno to knock on doors up and down the hall, waking his neighbors and herding them to safety in their pajamas and robes. The administration had asked him to leave.

He came home and spent a couple of months in his room with the door shut, rereading
The Lord of the Rings
and cultivating a scraggly beard. Then,
one bright morning in January, he hopped out of bed, showered, shaved, and put on his only suit. For the next day and a half, until the police made him stop, he went door-to-door, asking people to sign a petition in favor of making his birthday a national holiday: Matt Pasco Day.

On his rounds, he collected thirty-seven signatures, a bad reputation, and a girlfriend who was an even sadder case than he was. Pam Devlin had been a classmate of Jane's until junior year, when she suffered some kind of breakdown. First she stopped washing her hair; then her spine began to curve like an old lady's. She went for days at a time without speaking to anyone. Her parents blamed her friends for warping her mind. Her friends accused her parents of beating her for minor offenses, even of locking her in a closet once for trying to sneak out of the house in a halter top. She spent a year in some kind of institution, but looked no better on her return.

She and Matt became inseparable companions. Her parents, who had once been sticklers on such matters, no longer seemed to care if she spent the night—or several consecutive nights—away from home. By the time I started going out with Jane, Pam was pretty much a live-in guest at the Pascos’. Jane's parents weren't thrilled with the situation, but they accepted it. Pam was Matt's only friend. It was almost sweet to watch him guide her around the house, patiently explaining the operation
of the toaster or the windowshades, as though she were an exchange student from another planet.

“It's funny to think of Matt on national TV,” I said.

“I know.” Jane shook her head at the thought. “Maybe he'll get in a plug for his holiday.”

When we got back to the house, Mr. and Mrs. Pasco were standing on the front stoop, like a young couple posing for a picture. It was a heartwarming image until you got close enough to notice their expressions.

“Oh Janey,” Mrs. Pasco began in a trembling voice. “We just got a phone call.”

“It's Mike,” her father explained. “He took an overdose.”

Jane made a soft, strange noise; Sparky's ears stood up.

“Sleeping pills,” Mr. Pasco continued. “He apparently meant business.”

“But he's okay,” Mrs. Pasco said quickly. “They had to pump his stomach.”

We were at the bottom of the steps, they were at the top. I turned to comfort Jane, but she dropped Sparky's leash and rushed up the stairs, into her mother's arms.

For two years Jane and Mike Moretti had been one of Harding High's most conspicuous couples. He was a varsity soccer and baseball player, an all-around
nice guy. She was a cheerleader and an excellent student, one of the cutest girls in school. They were always together. People claimed that they were secretly engaged.

It all changed one weekend of their senior (my junior) year. On Friday, Mike was holding hands with Jane. On Monday he had his arm around a hot sophomore named Sally Untermeyer, while Jane drifted alone through the halls, looking like she'd just donated several pints of blood. She told me later that, the hardest thing about the breakup was cheerleading, having to smile like an idiot and pretend she was happy. Away games were especially painful since she had to ride on the same bus with Sally, who, as a member of the drill team, got to wear go-go boots and carry a disturbingly realistic wooden rifle.

Second semester, Jane and I were in the same American lit class. Late in February, Miss Maxwell assigned us to do a collaborative oral report on
The Great Gatsby.
Sitting close together in the library, talking in whispers, we debated the virtues of telling a story through the eyes of a minor character. At one point, Jane stopped talking and looked at me, and I had the feeling that she was seeing me for the first time.

“Have you ever had a broken heart?” she asked.

“Me?” I said.

She nodded.

“Yeah,” I told her. Laura Daly's face flashed in my mind. Only a few weeks had passed since the night we'd made love. “I have one right now.”

“I thought so.” Jane sat back and smiled. “We should go to the movies sometime.”

My ears started ringing when she said that. I was thrilled by the idea, but also frightened. I didn't see how I could possibly live up to her standards. Mike was tall, athletic, and already eighteen years old. He drove a red Firebird. I was only sixteen, five-foot-five, and recovering from a bad haircut. I didn't have a driver's license, let alone a hot car.

But none of that seemed to matter to Jane. She picked me up in a station wagon on Friday night and laughed at everything I said. After the movie she took a detour through Echo Lake Park, pulling into this deserted parking area. She had her arms around me before I could even undo my seatbelt.

“God,” she said, as I gasped for breath in the wonderful interlude between our first and second kiss, “it's nice to be with someone normal for a change.”

“Normal?” I mumbled, disappointed by the word.

“Mmm,” she said, sliding her hand underneath my shirt and up my stomach. Her fingertips
traced lazy spirals on my chest. “I'm tired of crazy people.”

I closed my eyes and surrendered to her definition. “You're in luck,” I told her. “I'm as normal as they come.”

As soon as Jane and I went public as a couple, Mike had a change of heart. He broke up with Sally and started pestering Jane, calling her every night, leaving presents by her locker, and generally making a spectacle of his misery. It turned her into a nervous wreck.

“Look,” I said, “do you still have a thing for him?”

She shook her head.

“Then why don't you tell him to buzz off?”

“You don't understand, Buddy. He's not as strong as he looks. He gets really depressed.”

“That's not our problem,” I said.

But it was. Mike followed us around. I caught glimpses of him in the mall and at the bowling alley. I turned around one night in the Cranwood Theater and saw him sitting three rows back with this queasy expression on his face. A few days later, he was standing by my locker when I got to school.

“What do you want?” I asked.

Tentatively, as though he thought I might be electrified, he reached out and laid his hand on my shoulder.

“Isn't she terrific?” he said. “Don't you love the way she smells?”

“Come on, Mike. Don't be a creep.”

He winced and withdrew his hand. “We should be friends, Buddy.”

“Why?”

Smiling mysteriously, he pulled a white business card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. My name was typed in capital letters across the front of the card.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You're an official member of the Jane Pasco Fan Club.”

He still had this comical grin on his face, like the whole thing was a big joke. I shook his outstretched hand.

Jane drove me home from a party the following weekend. We kissed for a long time before I got out of the car. Then I shuffled backwards up the front walk, waving to her taillights. When I turned to go up the steps, I almost tripped over Mike.

“What'd you do tonight?” he asked cheerfully.

“Go home,” I said.

“What was she wearing?”

“Please go home.”

He didn't answer right away. When he did, I could barely hear him.

“Can I come in with you?” he asked. “I'm not feeling too well.”

I hesitated. I wanted to help him, but didn't know how to do it without complicating things even further. Above all, I didn't want to encourage him.

“Sorry,” I said.

I squeezed past him and went inside. I don't know how much time he spent on the porch that night, or what kinds of thoughts went through his head as he watched the streetlights shine on the empty pavement. I do know that five days later he made a serious attempt at suicide.

Jane visited Mike in the hospital on Sunday afternoon. I called her in the evening for an update.

“He's okay,” she said. “We watched a golf tournament on TV.”

“Why'd he do it?”

“He didn't say.”

I let the silence thicken and dissolve before changing the subject.

“Can I come over tonight? Maybe we can take Sparky for a walk or something.”

“Buddy,” she said, “we have to talk.”