Fifteen (6 page)

Tuesday Julie telephoned. “Any luck?” she asked guardedly.

“Not yet.” Jane sighed. “Pop stayed in the city for dinner.”

On Wednesday Julie called just before dinner. Jane knew from the sound of her voice that she did not have good news. “Tell me, Julie. What happened?” she asked.

“Wouldn't you just know?” said Julie gloomily. “They're thinking it over.”

“Oh, Julie, how awful,” said Jane. There was nothing worse than having parents think things over.

“Jane, you've simply got to get your folks to say you can go,” Julie begged. “Then I can use that for an argument.”

“I can't put it off any longer,” Jane admitted. “Stan doesn't even know they haven't given me permission. He just assumed they would let me go. I guess I'll have to beard them in their dens at dinner tonight.”

“Good luck,” said Julie, not sounding at all hopeful.

And so that evening at the dinner table, when her father was enjoying a second helping of strawberry shortcake, Jane said casually, “Stan is taking me to the city for dinner Saturday. I think I'll wear my gray suit.” Then she braced herself for the inevitable.

Mrs. Purdy set her coffee cup back on its saucer. Mr. Purdy laid down his fork. They both looked at Jane.

“Greg and Marcy are going too,” said Jane chattily, as if nothing were wrong. “And Buzz Bratton will probably take Julie.”

“Jane,” said Mrs. Purdy, “it seems to me that you are seeing a lot of this Stan Crandall.”

Here we go. This Stan Crandall again. “But Mom, you said yourself he was a nice boy.” There. She had known she could get that in someplace.

“But you are only fifteen,” protested Mrs. Purdy. “I don't think a bunch of fifteen-year-olds should go to the city alone at night.”

Only fifteen! That old argument. Well, she wasn't going to be fifteen all her life. “I've only been to the movies with him twice and had a couple of Cokes with him. I don't think that's seeing such a lot of him. Anyway, except for Julie, I'm the only one who is fifteen. The others are older. Stan must be practically seventeen.”

“Now Jane, I certainly don't want you running around with an older crowd,” said Mrs. Purdy.

How unreasonable could parents get, anyway? First Stan and his friends were too young. Now they were too old. “I don't think sixteen is so awfully much older than fifteen,” Jane pointed out.

“Where do you plan to have dinner?” asked Mr. Purdy curiously. “It seems a pretty expensive thing for kids that age to be doing.”

“In Chinatown,” answered Jane. “Stan has eaten there lots of times with his family when he lived in the city.”

“Oh, Chinatown. You get a lot for your money there,” said Mr. Purdy. “The boys ought to be able to fill you up for a dollar or so apiece.”

Jane refrained from asking her father please not to be so crude.

“I just don't like the whole idea,” said Mrs.
Purdy. “How do you plan to go? On the bus?”

This was the hardest part. Her mother always got so excited at the thought of her riding in a car with a boy. “No,” said Jane carefully. “Mr. Crandall is letting Stan have the car.”

“Now Jane,” said Mrs. Purdy sharply. “I am not going to have you running around all over the country in a car with a lot of teenagers.”

“But Mom,” protested Jane. “It's less than ten miles to the city. That isn't all over the country. And Greg and Marcy and Buzz and Stan and Julie and I aren't a lot of teenagers. Except for Stan—and you said yourself he was a nice boy—you've known all of us all our lives.”

“Did Julie's mother say she could go?” Mrs. Purdy asked.

“I don't know,” said Jane truthfully, for Julie's mother had not actually refused permission.

“I don't like the whole idea,” said Mrs. Purdy. “You know the sort of things we read about teenagers in the papers these days.”

“Oh, Mom,” said Jane impatiently, “you're acting as if we were a bunch of juvenile delinquents. As if we were all out on probation or something.”

“But children your age get into such terrible scrapes,” said Mrs. Purdy.

“But not teenagers like Stan and me,” Jane told her mother, ignoring Mrs. Purdy's reference to children. Surely her mother was not going to hold her personally responsible for every wild teenage newspaper story she read. “People like Stan and me don't get into the papers. I told you before I went out with him he wasn't the type to drive around in a hot rod, throwing beer cans around. He's the kind of boy who has a purpose in life, like George. He's going to be a veterinarian when he finishes college.” A purpose in life—that ought to please her mother.

“I think Jane has a point there,” said Mr. Purdy. “It isn't fair to judge all teenagers by the few we read about in the headlines.”

“I suppose not,” admitted Mrs. Purdy, “but it worries me just the same. I would feel a lot better if they went on the bus.”

Ha! She was gaining ground. This was the first time her mother had admitted the possibility of her going at all. Jane thought quickly. “But Mom, you know how terrible the bus service is in the evening,” she said. “After we got to the city we'd have to transfer twice to get to Chinatown. We'd be standing around on street corners all night waiting for buses, and Stan might not be able to
get me home by ten thirty.” This was, she admitted to herself, a dangerous argument. It might lead her mother into protests against staying out till all hours. And if she weren't careful, her mother would be dragging in lots of girls. Lots of girls would be satisfied with going to the movies in Woodmont, and that sort of thing.

“I don't see why they wouldn't be safe enough in the Crandalls' car,” said Mr. Purdy. “Stan has lived in the city and is used to city traffic. And he drives a truck, too, so he had to pass the test for a commercial license. He looks like a pretty steady sort of kid, and if Jane doesn't have any sense now she never will have.”

“I suppose it's all right to let her go just this once,” agreed Mrs. Purdy reluctantly. She turned to Jane. “But you must go straight to Chinatown and come straight home. And be home by ten thirty.”

“We will,” promised Jane, and thanked her father with one grateful glance across the bowl of begonias in the center of the table. Darling Pop. He understood. Suddenly hungry because the battle had ended so much sooner than she had dared hope, Jane served herself another piece of strawberry shortcake. She really was going to the city in
a car with Stan to have dinner—her first grown-up date. And it was going to be the most wonderful evening she had ever spent in her whole life!

Jane finished her shortcake and hurried to the telephone to dial Julie's number. “Julie, I can go!” she said ecstatically.

“I was just going to phone you,” answered Julie, equally ecstatic. Her mother and father had finally
finally
consented to let her go after a lot of talk about teenagers and speeding and goodness knows what all—you know how parents are.

It did not take more than an hour on the telephone for the girls to decide they would not wear hats, because if they both went bareheaded it wouldn't matter what Marcy did about a hat; that Julie would wear her navy blue suit, because it made her look thinner, and Jane would wear her gray suit and the white blouse that had tiny tucks down the front and really was very pretty even though it did have one of those awful round collars Mrs. Purdy always insisted on. (“But Jane, they're so becoming.” “But Mom, they're so childish.”) Jane would wear her black shoes that looked like pumps except they had low heels, and Julie would try to talk her mother into a new pair of shoes. Both girls would wear, or anyway carry,
white gloves, because after all they were going to the city, weren't they? The city was not the same as Woodmont. They had to be well dressed to go to the city.

“Good heavens, Jane,” Mr. Purdy remarked at the end of this conversation. “You and Julie are only going about eight miles to eat some food you probably won't like, with a couple of high school kids who are, I would like to remind you, mere mortals.”

Jane smiled vaguely at her father and did not bother to answer. For a fleeting moment she felt sorry for him—poor old Pop, with his cat and his begonias to keep him happy.

Jane spent the rest of the week in joyful anticipation. She was an extra-special girl to Stan, and if her mother and father let her go to the city with him, she should have no trouble getting permission for beach picnics and swimming parties. What a wonderful summer this had turned out to be, and fall should be even better. For the first time since she entered Woodmont High she would feel that she really belonged.

Thursday Jane met Julie and although they both had Cokes in their refrigerators at home, they walked to Nibley's and ordered Cokes. Plain Cokes,
not those chocolate Coke floats they used to order. This was a splurge for Julie, who had been dieting for four days and should have ordered tomato juice.

An earnest-looking boy in the front booth was holding the attention of the crowd. “And so I went up to my counselor,” he was saying, “and I said, ‘Why can't I know what my IQ is? After all, it's my IQ,' and he told me if I found out I had a real low IQ of about twenty-seven or something I might get discouraged and quit studying.”

The boy paused, and the two girls exchanged a quick glance. “I've simply got to find time to wash my hair before we go to the city for dinner with Stan and Buzz,” remarked Julie in a voice that was not exactly loud but nicely calculated to carry to the crowd around them.

“And my counselor said if I found out I was a genius I would think I was so good I would quit studying anyhow,” the boy continued, but his audience was losing interest.

“I wish I had a yellow blouse,” said Jane, as if she were completely unaware of the interest others were taking in their conversation. “Stan always likes me in yellow.”

“So then my counselor said, ‘I'll tell you one
thing. Your IQ is over a hundred,'” the boy went on, but now no one was listening.

The faces reflected in the mirror behind the milk shake machines revealed that the girls around them were wishing they had dates for dinner in the city too, and that they were sure to spread the news to every girl in Woodmont. Jane and Julie left Nibley's feeling that they had enjoyed an unusually pleasant afternoon.

On Friday Stan came by to drive Jane to a babysitting job—an easy job this time, sitting with a baby who slept most of the time and whose mother only went out between feedings and who always left a snack for the sitter. It was really an ideal job and Jane was glad, because she did not want anything to intrude into her lovely glow of anticipation.

“I'm sure glad you can go tomorrow,” said Stan when it was time for Jane to get out of the truck.

“I'm glad too,” said Jane shyly, hopping to the ground. “I know we're going to have a wonderful time.”

And the next day was Saturday.

By quarter to six on Saturday Jane, who had been too excited to eat lunch, was ready. She sat on the edge of the sofa in her carefully pressed suit, pulled on her white gloves, and after a few minutes pulled them off. Then she put them on again, decided they made her feel as if her hands belonged to Minnie Mouse, and peeled them off a second time. Perhaps someday she would learn to wear gloves gracefully.

Promptly at six o'clock the doorbell rang. “Be still, my heart!” Mr. Purdy laid his hand over his heart and spoke in an exaggerated whisper.

“Pop!” implored Jane, as she opened the front door.

Never had Jane seen Stan look so attractive. He had a fresh, scrubbed appearance and was wearing a gray flannel suit, a white shirt that set off his tan, and a green tie, just the right color for his greenish eyes. Jane stood smiling at him with admiration and sensed at once that something was wrong. Stan was painfully embarrassed.

“Uh…Jane.” Stan hesitated and then went on. “At the last minute Dad had to use the car on a business trip, and Greg and Buzz couldn't get their cars either and…well, my cousin said I could…uh…take the Doggie Diner truck. I…I hope you don't mind going in the truck.”

Jane was engulfed in disappointment. Driving to the city on a special date in a truck, especially the Doggie Diner truck—how perfectly awful! But the expression on Stan's face quickly made her stifle her own feelings. His eyes were pleading with her not to mind, to be a good sport about riding in the truck.

Jane was filled with sudden sympathy for Stan. She could not let him down. “Of course I don't mind,” she managed to say gaily. “What difference does it make? It has four wheels and a motor, doesn't it? That's all that really counts.” Her reward was Stan's smile of relief. Darling Stan.
What difference did it make what they rode in, as long as they were together?

When she climbed into the front seat, Jane saw that Greg and Buzz were already sitting on cushions in the back of the truck. Buzz whistled when he saw her. “Hey, don't you look nice!”

“You're looking sharp yourself,” Jane flashed back at him. It always helped a girl to have a boy whistle at her.

The first stop was Marcy's house, a new house in the hill section of Woodmont. When Marcy walked out to the truck with Greg, she stopped and laughed. “No!” she exclaimed. “We aren't really going in the Doggie Diner truck! How perfectly marvelous!”

Out of the corner of her eye Jane could see Stan's face turn red. Shut up, Marcy, she thought fiercely; can't you see Stan is embarrassed enough as it is?

“Isn't this a scream?” Marcy went on, as she climbed into the truck beside Jane. “Isn't this the funniest thing you ever heard of?”

If it were somebody else who was going to the city in the truck, Jane admitted to herself, she would think it was funny. But since it was Stan who had got them into this situation, she could not laugh. She smiled reassuringly at Stan, but his
eyes were on the road. Sitting beside him made Jane feel pleasantly possessive and a little important, because her date was the driver. It made up for sharing the seat with Marcy, who was wearing an expensively casual tweed suit with a plain silk blouse and pumps with real high heels. Jane began to feel that her own dainty blouse with tucks and a round collar looked like a baby dress and that her suit was too obviously her best suit. Beside Marcy she felt as prim as…well, as prim as Miss Muffet.

The last stop was Julie's house, because Julie lived near the entrance to the freeway. When she came out to the truck with Buzz, Jane saw that she was wearing high heels, which made her taller than Buzz, and that her hands did not look natural in her white gloves. She has the Minnie Mouse look too, thought Jane, and she's wearing a girdle because of her straight skirt. Poor Julie. Unaccustomed to her high heels, Julie turned her ankle, and Buzz caught her by the elbow.

Please, please, Julie, thought Jane, don't make fun of the truck. Don't embarrass Stan. Julie shot Jane a questioning glance. “Hi, everybody,” was all she said, as she climbed into the back of the truck with Greg and Buzz. Jane relaxed. From now on,
in spite of the truck, everything would be as wonderful as they had planned. Suddenly she was hungry, and she remembered that she had skipped lunch.

Jane felt excitement rising within her as the truck left Woodmont and climbed the approach to the bridge that crossed the bay. Through the sunset haze the city at the opposite end of the span looked unreal to Jane. It seemed like an imaginary city, a magic city, a city that appeared from the mists and might disappear if she closed her eyes for a moment.

“What shall we have to eat?” Buzz asked from the back of the truck. “Shark's fins?”

“How about carp?” suggested Greg.

Leave it to Buzz to mention food right away, thought Jane, remembering the times he had robbed her of her cooking samples in the seventh grade. Then it occurred to her that goldfish were a kind of carp, but she could not believe they would really have goldfish for dinner. She pictured a platter of fried goldfish garnished with lemon and parsley. It was not an appetizing thought.

“Or fried octopuses,” said Buzz.

“You mean octopi,” corrected Marcy over her shoulder, and everyone laughed. Everyone but
Jane. She was beginning to remember reading that the Chinese ate some strange things.

“Anyway, don't you mean squid?” asked Marcy.

“Don't forget bird's nest soup,” added Stan.

“Ugh!” This was Julie's first contribution to the conversation.

“It's all right.” Greg was comforting. “They don't use any old bird's nest. They use special birds' nests.”

“How about thousand-year-old eggs?” put in Buzz.

Jane, her appetite diminishing rapidly, suppressed a shudder.

“What's the matter, Jane?” Buzz asked. “Don't you like eggs that are really ripe?”

“Make mine three-minute eggs,” answered Jane, who had made up her mind not to let Buzz tease her.

“Buzz, you mean hundred-year-old eggs,” corrected Julie. “And anyway, they aren't really a hundred years old. I had to read a book about China for a book report, and it said the eggs were really only about a hundred days old. They just
call
them hundred-year-old eggs. And they aren't rotten. They are salted or pickled or something. Anyway, the book said they are very good.”

Isn't that just dandy, thought Jane. Only a hundred days old.

“I know what,” said Buzz. “Let's have flied lice.”

This was too much for Jane. “They don't really eat lice, do they?” she cried in alarm.

Everyone shouted with laughter. “‘They don't really eat lice, do they?'” mimicked Buzz, and they all laughed again.

“Don't pay any attention to him,” whispered Stan. “He thinks he's saying
fried rice
with a Chinese accent, but I have lots of Chinese friends in the city and I never heard anyone talk that way.”

“Oh.” Jane felt the blood rush to her face. How could she be so stupid? Determined not to be laughed at again, she took a firm grip on her sophistication.

“Which restaurant shall we go to?” Greg asked.

“How about that one on the corner up over the shop with the Chinese furniture?” suggested Marcy.

“That's a tourist trap,” objected Buzz. “Let's go to a real Chinese restaurant.”

“Yes, one where the Chinese eat,” agreed Stan. “I know a good one at the far end of Chinatown. Hing Sun Yee's.”

“Hey, I know that one.” Buzz sounded enthusi
astic. “I've eaten there several times. It isn't very fancy, but the food is swell.”

“Let's try it,” said Greg.

“Yes, let's.” Jane added a small murmur to the enthusiastic agreement of the others. After all she had heard about bird's nest soup and hundred-year-old eggs, she secretly thought a restaurant popular with tourists might have been a safer choice. Some of the talk was joking, she knew; but how much, she could not be sure.

When they reached Chinatown, Stan was unable to find a parking space in the narrow crowded streets. Around and around he drove, uphill and downhill, creeping and stopping, creeping and stopping in the heavy traffic, past a housing project, barber shops, a mortuary, laundries, chair-caning shops, around and around, up and down, creeping and stopping.

When at last Stan spotted a space in front of a hardware store, he said, “It will be a tight squeeze, but I think I can make it.”

I hope so, thought Jane fervently. Backward and forward Stan maneuvered the truck, an inch at a time, it seemed to Jane, or even a half inch at a time, until he finally had it parked.

“Let's go. I'm starved,” said Buzz. “Lead me to that bird's nest soup.”

Stan led the way down a dingy street unfamiliar to Jane. They passed an herb shop, its walls lined with drawers and its windows filled with glass jars displaying weird-looking specimens. What are those withered things, Jane wondered. Toads, newts, salamanders, pieces of unicorn horn? Don't be silly, she told herself. They are probably just dried seaweed or something.

They paused to look at a Chinese grocery with its bundles of thin beans, baskets of flat green peas, a tank of turtles, another of gaping catfish, dishpans full of clams and snails. I won't look, Jane told herself. I just won't look.

A neon sign above the door marked Hing Sun Yee's restaurant. In the window was a row of ducks that had been roasted whole and were now displayed hanging by their heads. As Stan guided Jane into the restaurant, the man at the cash register seized one of the ducks, tossed it onto a chopping block, and hacked it to pieces with a cleaver. Jane hastily looked away. The room, which had a cement floor and a low ceiling, was filled with marble-topped tables. Seated at several of the tables were
elderly Chinese men who were wearing hats and eating with chopsticks.

“Hi, Tom,” Stan said to the young waiter who came forward to meet them. “How about a booth?”

“Sure,” said Tom. “Golly, Stan, I haven't seen you for a long time.”

“I live in Woodmont now,” Stan explained. “We don't get over here very often.”

“We'll sure miss you at school,” Tom said, as he showed them into a booth.

Jane entered first, then Stan, followed by Marcy, who slid into a chair beside him. Jane would have preferred to have Julie sit on the other side of Stan. When they were all seated at the round table, Tom handed them menus and left, pulling a red curtain across the entrance to the booth.

Buzz picked up a cruet filled with brown liquid from the center of the table. “Good old beetle juice,” he remarked.

It isn't really beetle juice, Jane told herself. She spread the menu on the marble tabletop and looked at it in bewilderment. It was filled with Chinese characters and words that were unfamiliar to her. Chow yuke, fried wonton, polo pai gwat
sounded terrible to her. From the chopping block she heard the crunch of little bones. Stop being ridiculous, she said to herself. American dishes such as hush puppies or her mother's casserole, “It Smells to Heaven,” would probably sound distasteful to the Chinese. It was only a question of what you were used to.

“Let's each order a dish and then pass them around,” suggested Stan. “What would you like?” he asked, turning to Jane. He looked so enthusiastic that Jane longed desperately to feel the same way.

“How about some flied lice?” Buzz asked wickedly, his eye on Jane.

Determined not to let the others know how she felt, Jane made a face at Buzz and said, “I'd like chow mein.”

“Oh, no,” protested Marcy, swinging her blond hair away from her face. “Only tourists eat chow mein.”

I guess I said the wrong thing, thought Jane uncomfortably.

“You should get something special here.” Buzz agreed with Marcy. “You can get chow mein anyplace.”

“That's all right,” said Stan. “If Jane likes chow mein, she shall have it.”

Jane smiled gratefully at him. For Stan's sake she must hide her misgivings. She could not let their first big date turn into a disappointment for him.

Tom appeared with six handleless cups and a battered enamel pot filled with tea, which Stan poured while Tom wrote down the orders in Chinese characters. “Forks or chopsticks?” he asked with a grin.

“Chopsticks,” the boys all said at once. Jane and Julie exchanged an anxious look before Jane bent her head to sip her tea. Good old familiar tea.

Stan held up his cup. “Here's to next semester.”

“To next semester.” They all raised their cups and drank the toast.

Tom set plates before them and carried in dish after dish of food—bowls of strange sauces, platters heaped with crinkled brown objects, mysterious mixtures of unknown foods. Jane, unable to identify even her own order, glanced across the table at Julie, but Julie did not appear to be worried. Everyone was looking at the bowls and platters with anticipation. Everyone but me, thought Jane miserably. The memory of the herb shop and the produce market floated through her mind. Whacking, crunching sounds came from the
chopping block. Jane struggled to subdue her imagination.

“Shrimp roll!” exclaimed Julie. “I adore it. It's practically my favorite food.”

“Here's your flied lice, Jane.” Buzz handed her a dish.

“Thanks. I can hardly wait.” Jane managed to put a note of gaiety in her voice and helped herself to one spoonful. At least she knew it was rice. That was something. As the dishes were passed around, she served herself the smallest possible portions and hoped the others would not notice. One dish, especially strange looking, made her pause, however. It was a thick red sauce in which floated pieces of onion, green pepper, and what appeared to be tiny brown hands. “What's this?” she asked lightly, as if she were merely curious.

“Sauce for the wonton,” Greg explained.

“Oh,” said Jane. That did not tell her much. Jane ladled a small spoonful onto her plate. Now if she only knew which was the wonton, and should she pour the sauce over it or dunk the wonton in the sauce? And what on earth could those floating things be that looked like little brown hands?