Fancy Pants (26 page)
Chapter
18
Holly Grace looked up at the anniversary clock on the mantel and swore18
under her breath. Dallie was late as usual. He knew she was leaving for
New York City in two days and that they wouldn't see each other for a
while. Couldn't he be on time just once? She wondered if he had set out
after that British girl. It would be just like him to go off without
saying a word.
She had dressed for the evening in a silky peach-colored turtleneck,
which she'd tucked into a pair of brand-new stretch jeans. The jeans
had tight cigarette legs whose length she had accented with a pair of
three-inch heels. She never wore jewelry because putting earrings and
necklaces near her great mane of blond hair was, she felt, a clear case
of gilding the lily.
"Holly Grace, honey," Winona remarked from her armchair on the other
side of the living room. "Have you seen my crossword puzzle book? I had
it right here, and now I can't seem to find it."
Holly Grace retrieved the book from beneath the evening newspaper and
sat down on the arm of her mother's chair to offer her advice on
twenty-three across. Not that her mother needed advice, any more than
she had really lost her crossword puzzle book, but Holly Grace didn't
begrudge her the attention she wanted. As they worked on the puzzle
together, she put her arm around Winona's shoulders and leaned down to
rest her cheek on top of her mother's faded blond curls, taking in the
faint scent of Breck shampoo and Aqua Net hair spray. In the kitchen,
Ed Graylock, Winona's husband of three years, was puttering with a
broken toaster and singing "You Are So Beautiful" along with the radio.
His voice kept fading out on the high notes, but he came on strong as
soon as Joe Cocker slid back into his range. Holly Grace felt her heart
swell with love for these two—big Ed Graylock, who had finally given
Winona the happiness she deserved, and her pretty, flighty mother.
The anniversary clock chimed seven. Giving in to the vague nostalgia
that had been plaguing her all day, Holly Grace stood up and gave
Winona's cheek a peck. "If Dallie ever gets here, tell him I'll be at
the high school. And don't wait up for me; I'll probably be late." She
grabbed her purse and headed for the front door, calling out to Ed that
she would invite Dallie for breakfast in the morning.
The high school was locked up for the night, but she banged on the door
by the metal shop until the custodian let her in. Her heels clicked on
the concrete ramp that led into the back hallway, and as the old smells
assaulted her, her footsteps seemed to be tapping out the rhythm of
"R-E-S-P-E-C-T" with the Queen of Soul wailing right in her ear. She
started to hum the song softly under her breath, but before she knew it
she was humming "Walk Away Renee" instead and she'd rounded the corner
to the gym, and then the Young Rascals were singing "Good Lovin'" and
it was homecoming 1966 all over again. . . .
Holly Grace had barely said more than three words to Dallie Beaudine
since he'd picked her up for the football game in a burgundy 1964
Cadillac El Dorado that she knew for certain didn't belong to him. It
had deep velour seats, automatic windows and an AM/FM stereo radio
blaring out, "Good love. . . ." She wanted to ask him where he got the
car, but she refused to be the one to talk first.
Leaning back into the velour seat, she crossed her legs and tried to
look like she rode in El Dorados all the time, like maybe the El Dorado
had been invented just for her to ride in. But it was hard to pretend
something like that when she was so nervous and when her stomach was
growling because all she'd had
to eat for dinner was half a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup. Not
that she minded. Winona couldn't really cook anything more complicated
on the illegal hot plate they kept in the small back room they'd rented
from Agnes Clayton the day they'd left Billy T's house.
On the horizon in front of them, the night sky glowed with a patch of
light. Wynette was proud of being the only high school in the county
with a lighted stadium. Everybody from the surrounding towns drove over
to see Wynette play on Friday nights after their own high school game
had ended. Since tonight was homecoming and the Wynette Broncos were
playing last year's regional champions, the crowd was even bigger than
normal. Dallie parked the El Dorado on the street several blocks away
from the stadium.
He didn't say anything as they walked along the sidewalk, but when they
reached the high school, he slipped his hand into the pocket of a navy
blazer that looked brand new and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. "Want
a cigarette?"
"I don't smoke." Her voice came out tight with disapproval, like Miss
Chandler's when she talked about double negatives. She wished she could
speak the words all over again, say something like, "Sure, Dallie, I'd
love a smoke. Why don't you light one up for me?"
Holly Grace spotted some of her friends as they headed into the parking
lot and nodded at one of the boys she'd turned down for a date that
evening. She noticed that the other girls wore new wool skirts or
A-line dresses bought just for the occasion, along with low
square-heeled pumps that had wide grosgrain bows stretched across the
toes. Holly Grace had on the black corduroy skirt that she'd worn to
school once a week since her junior year and a plaid cotton blouse. She
also noticed that all the other boys held hands with their dates, but
Dallie had shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks. Not for long,
she thought bitterly. Before the evening was through, those hands would
be all over her.
They joined the crowd moving across the parking lot toward the stadium.
Why had she said she would
go out with him? Why had she said yes when
she knew what he wanted from her—a boy with Dallie Beaudine's
reputation, who'd seen
what he'd seen.
They drew up next to the table where the Pep Club was selling big
yellow mums with little gold footballs dangling from the maroon and
white ribbons. Dallie turned to her and asked grudgingly, "You want a
flower?"
"No, thank you." Her voice echoed back at her, distant and haughty.
He stopped walking so suddenly the boy behind him bumped into his back.
"Don't you think I can afford it?" he sneered at her under his breath.
"Don't you think I've got enough money to buy you a goddamn
three-dollar flower?" He pulled out an old brown wallet curled in the
shape of his hip and slapped a five-dollar bill down on the table.
"I'll take one of those," he said to Mrs. Good, the Pep Club adviser.
"Keep the change." He shoved the mum at Holly Grace. Two yellow petals
drifted down onto the cuff
of her blouse.
Something snapped inside her. She thrust the flower back at him and
returned his attack in an angry whisper. "Why don't you pin it on!
That's why you bought it, isn't it? So you can grab a feel right now
instead of having to wait till the dance!"
She stopped, horrified by her outburst, and dug the fingernails of heT
free hand into her palm. She found herself silently praying that he
would understand how she felt and give her one of those melty looks
she'd seen him give other girls, that he would say he was sorry and
that sex wasn't what he'd asked her out for. That he would say he liked
her as much as she liked him and that he didn't blame her for what he'd
seen Billy T doing.
"I don't have to take this crap from you!" He knocked the flower out of
her hand, turned his back on the stadium, and strode angrily away from
her toward the street.
She looked down at the flower lying in the gravel, ribbons trailing in
the dust. As she knelt to pick it up, Joanie Bradlow swept past her in
a butterscotch jumper and dark brown Capezio flats. Joanie had
practically thrown herself at Dallie the whole first month of school.
Holly Grace had heard her giggling about him in the rest room: "I know
he runs around with the wrong crowd, but, ohgod, he's so gorgeous. I
dropped my pencil in Spanish and he picked it up and I thought, ohgod,
I'm going to die!"
Misery formed a hard, tight lump inside her as she stood alone, the
bedraggled mum clasped in her hand, while the crowd jostled past her
toward the stadium. Some of her classmates called out a greeting and
she gave them a bright smile and a cheery wave of her hand, as if her
date had just left her for a minute to go to the rest room and she was
waiting for him to come back any second now. Her old corduroy skirt
hung like a lead curtain from her hips, and even knowing that she was
the prettiest girl in the senior class didn't make her feel any better.
What good was it to be pretty when you didn't have nice clothes and
everybody in town knew that your mama had sat on a wooden bench most of
yesterday afternoon at the county welfare office?
She knew she couldn't keep standing there with that stupid smile on her
face, but she couldn't go into the bleachers, either, not by herself on
homecoming night. And she couldn't start walking back to Agnes
Clayton's board-inghouse until everybody was seated. While no one was
looking, she slipped around the side of the building and then dashed
inside through the door by the metal shop.
The gym was deserted. A caged ceiling light cast striped shadows
through the canopy of maroon and white crepe paper streamers that hung
limply from the girders, waiting for the dance to begin. Holly Grace
stepped inside. Despite the decorations, the smell was the same as
always—decades of gym classes and basketball games, reams of absence
excuses and late passes, dust, old sneakers. She loved gym class. She
was one of the best girl athletes in the school, the first to be chosen
for a team. She loved gym. Everybody dressed the same.
A belligerent voice startled her. "You want me to take you home, is
that what you want?"
She spun around to see Dallie standing just inside the gym doors
leaning against the center post. His long arms were hanging stiffly at
his side and he had a scowl on his face. She noticed that his slacks
were too short and that she could see an inch or so of dark socks. The
ill-fitting slacks made her feel a little better.
"Do you want to?" she asked.
He shifted his weight. "Do you want me to?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I guess."
"If you want me to take you home, just say so."
She gazed down at her hands where the dirty white ribbon on the mum was
woven through her fingers. "Why did you ask me to go out with you?"
He didn't say anything, so she lifted her head and looked over at him.
He shrugged.
"Yeah, okay," she replied briskly. "You can take me home."
"Why'd you say you'd go out with me?"
She shrugged.
He looked down at the toes of his loafers. After a moment's pause, he
spoke so quietly she could barely hear him. "I'm sorry about the other
day."
"What do you mean?"
"With Hank and Ritchie."
"Oh."
"I know it's not true about you and all those other guys."
"No, it's not."
"I know that. You made me mad."
A little flicker of hope flared inside her. "It's okay."
"It's not. I shouldn't have said what I did. I shouldn't have touched
your leg like that. It was just that you made me mad."
"I didn't mean to—make you mad. You can be sort of scary."
His head shot up and for the first time all evening, he looked pleased.
"I can?"
She couldn't help smiling. "You don't have to act so proud of yourself.
You're not that scary."
He smiled, too, and it made his face so beautiful her mouth went dry.
They looked at each other like that for a while, and then she
remembered about Billy T and what Dallie had seen and what he must
expect of her. Her brief happiness faded. She walked over to the first
row of bleachers and sat down. "I know what you think, but it's not
true. I—I couldn't help what Billy T was doing to me."
He looked at her as if she'd grown horns. "I know that. Did you think I
really thought you liked what he was doing?"
Her words came out in a rush. "But you made it seem like it was so easy
to get him to stop. You say a few words to Mama and it's all over. But
it wasn't easy for me. I was afraid. He kept hurting me, and I was
afraid he'd hurt Mama like that before he sent her away. He said
nobody'd believe me if I told, that Mama would hate me."
Dallie walked over and sat down next to her. She could see where the
leather was scuffed on the toes of his loafers and he'd tried to polish
over the marks. She wondered if he hated being poor as much as she did,
if poverty gave him the same sense of helplessness.
Dallie cleared his throat. "Why'd you say that about me pinning the
flower on you? About grabbing a feel? Do you think that's the way I am
because of how I was talking the other day in front of Hank and
Ritchie?"
"Not exactly."
"Then why?"
"I figured maybe—that after what you saw with Billy T, maybe you'd
expect me to ... you know, to maybe—have sex with you tonight."
Dallie's head shot up and he looked indignant. "Then why'd you say
you'd go out with me? If you thought that was all I wanted from you,
why the hell did you say you'd go out with me?"
"I guess because someplace inside me, I hoped I was wrong."
He stood up and glared at her. "Yeah? Well, you sure were wrong. You
sure as hell were wrong! I don't know what's wrong with you. You're the
prettiest girl at Wynette High. And you're smart. Don't you know I've
liked you since the first day in English class?"
"How was I supposed to know that when you scowled every time you looked
at me?"
He couldn't quite meet her eyes. "You just should have known, that's
all."
They didn't say anything more. They left the building and walked back
across the parking lot to the stadium. A big cheer went up from the
bleachers and the loudspeaker announced, "First down. Wynette."
Dallie took her hand and tucked it, along with his own, into the pocket
of his navy blazer.
"Are you mad at me for being late?"
Holly Grace spun around toward the door of the gym. For a fraction of a
moment she felt disoriented as she gazed at the twenty-seven-year-old
Dallie leaning against the center post, looking bigger and more solid,
so much more handsome than the sullen seventeen-year-old kid she'd
fallen in love with. She recovered quickly.
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