He Loves Me Not (13 page)

My father shouted, “Well, I have, and I’m coming down to wash up the popcorn popper.”

“He’s very considerate,” said Ted. “Now my mother, she would have inched up on us to see what we were up to.”

We gave each other a short hard hug and moved back to our separate places at the table. It felt so funny to be sitting opposite each other instead of next to each other. I felt as if those kisses should have cemented us together so that we never sat opposite each other again.

We didn’t kiss good-bye. My father was there.

Fathers certainly know how to kiss. And my father certainly knew we hadn’t been chomping popcorn the whole time he was upstairs. But I could not bring myself to get close enough to Ted for a good-bye kiss. I did not know Ted well enough to announce how I felt about him by kissing in front of anybody. “Good night, Ted,” said my father formally. “I hope we see you again.”

And Ted said, “Yes, sir. Good night.”

I lay on my bed for at least another hour before I fell asleep, thinking about boys and kisses and music and happiness.

Ted had not asked me for another date.

Did it mean he forgot? Or didn’t want to commit himself? Or took those kisses much much more lightly than I did?

Or had my father’s presence bothered him as much as it did me, so that he couldn’t say anything except, “Yes, sir.”

I got up and tossed the rest of the jar of stars into the wastebasket and promised myself that from now on my hair would always be soft and unsprayed and free of annoying stars.

I lay back down and thought about Ted some more and wondered if he was lying awake thinking about me. Or if he was planning a terrific feature with photographs for his newspaper and that was more interesting to him.

For the first time in my life, I really painfully wanted a mother. I even went downstairs and got the photograph of Mother in her wedding gown and I said to her, “I love somebody, Mother. It’s scary.”

My thoughts tumbled over each other, a lot of sorrow and joy mixed up together, and I finally went back up to bed, wondering if I would ever know Ted well enough to talk to him about my dead mother.

T
HE ONLY MALE WHO
telephoned me during the next week was Ralph. There may be a woman out there daydreaming of a phone call from Ralph, but it isn’t me. When I heard his voice I just groaned.

He was just checking to be sure I knew that the hour of next Saturday’s club date had been changed. Yes, I told him, I knew.

We had gigs Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Ted didn’t appear at any of them, he didn’t call my father to ask where I was, and he didn’t call me to arrange for us to be at the same place any night, either.

I felt flat all week, as if I had once been this plush stuffed toy and somebody ironed me, or punctured me. That evening had meant so much to me! How could it not have meant just as much to Ted?

I told myself I would just call Ted myself. This was the era of women’s liberation. Just as soon as old Ralph stopped tying up my phone line I would call Ted. Why even bother to have a telephone if you’re not going to call up the people you want to talk to, right?

Ralph said, “And please have Ted come and get you. I have a date and I don’t want to have to drive you home.”

There was no way I could telephone Ted and ask him if he could take up chauffeur work where Ralph was leaving off. I said, “Well, if he can’t my father will, how’s that?”

Ralph’s life was now perfect.

My life dwindled into staring at the silent telephone, telling myself any fool could make a simple phone call. Hi, Ted, this is Alison. How about a movie?

Hi, Ted, how are you? I miss you, come spend an evening.

Hi, Ted, I have this unbelievable crush on you, don’t stay away, come stay with me.

But Ted didn’t call me and I didn’t call him and it was my father who had to come and get me after the gig Saturday.

I hung on to my cloud of happiness by my fingernails, hoping Ted would reemerge without my having to dial him myself, but Monday had to intervene.

At first I thought it was just any old Monday, and I was usefully employing homeroom by doing the last line of my Latin translation. Everybody was buzzing around, and in spite of my dedication to Ovid’s immortal lines, I could not avoid figuring out the topic of their conversation.

Yearbooks.

I wanted to die.

See, yearbooks have to be signed. Nobody wants a blank yearbook. You want a yearbook covered with the handwriting of all your intimate friends and admirers, so that none of the photographs are visible and all the pages testify to your immense popularity.

It works fine if you’re immensely popular.

I said to myself, I’m a junior. I don’t know that many seniors. It’s okay if nobody asks me to sign theirs. Next year will be better. I’m going to be a better person and get to know everybody. This year doesn’t count. So there.

I took my yearbook with almost a shudder.

You would not think yearbook signing could be traumatic. Trauma is living through tornadoes or divorce. And here I was so traumatized by what people might—or might
not
—write in my yearbook I couldn’t even open the dumb thing.

Perhaps there was no picture of me. That would be a good excuse for not passing it around for signing.

Instantly somebody caroled, “Oh, there’s a terrific shot of Alison right there in the candids on the third page. See her by herself at the piano?”

One of the boys said, “Where else?”

Everybody laughed, and I began thinking in terms of skipping my senior year. How did one go about getting early acceptance at college anyway?

First period was Chemistry. Our Chem teacher, universally disliked, is given to unfair, unannounced quizzes, which he so humorously refers to as “quizzicunies.” I was just telling myself that even a dreaded quizzicunie would be better than yearbook exchanges when he said, “I’m feeling kind. You can spend the entire period on your yearbooks.”

Kind. The fiend. I could pretend to be busy during two or three minutes of yearbook signing—but forty-four whole minutes?

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a sophomore boy approaching me. I had had precisely one contact with Jonathan outside of chemistry. He’d turned a page for me during an assembly last fall.

I smiled at him falsely.
Dear Jonathan,
I wrote, with my usual flair for words.
Best wishes,
I added, before I could stop myself. Just what I never wanted anybody to write in my yearbook. Meaningless, blah junk anybody could write to anyone. I scribbled,
Wish you could turn pages for me more often.

Oh God, I thought, that’s even worse. That’s so stupid. He won’t even remember that.

I tried to think of something—anything—to add that would be funny or even sensible. I wrote,
Love, Alison.

I couldn’t believe that either. I didn’t love Jonathan. I didn’t even know Jonathan.

I would have destroyed the page if I could. But Jonathan had paid a lot of money for that yearbook and probably would press charges for destruction of personal property. There was nothing to do but hand it over. With a shaky smile I took my own back and we sat looking at each other, wanting to read what the other had written but afraid to. That ridiculous situation was resolved when our yearbooks were literally snatched out of our hands by other kids ready to exchange. I turned back to my desk. To my relief, it was stacked with yearbooks. There were definitely people out there, then, who wanted my name on my photograph.

Sue’s was on the top. Sue, with whom I’d always wanted to sit at lunch but never had the nerve to invite myself. I took a deep breath. For once I put down exactly what I was thinking.
Dear Sue, I wish we knew each other better. Maybe next year. You always crack such funny jokes. At jobs I tell everyone your joke about the man with the extra shoe.
I reread it. It looked stupid, but there was no going back now. I lifted the next yearbook and wrote just what I thought there, too.

I told the people I admired why I admired them and I told the ones I didn’t know very well how sorry I was I hadn’t set up my schedule to fit in more friendships. The words upset me, seeing them written down, and I had no idea how anybody would take them. Would people laugh? (“Pitiful old Alison, begging for friends.”) Or not even notice? (“Yeah, she signed mine. I think. I forget.”)

But I felt better, somehow, expressing myself.

I’d been uptight too long. Time to relax and say things to people.

I was feeling very good about myself right up through Latin, when Mike MacBride grinned at me. For many reasons, I could not relax around Mike. I liked him too much. And I felt so conscious of his being rightly disgusted with me.

Ms. Gardener called on me to translate third, and Mike fourth, and both of us relaxed about the Latin, at least, knowing we were safe for the rest of the class. Mike, who sits diagonally across from me, stretched out a long, plaid-shirted arm and grabbed my yearbook off my desk, handing me his. It would have been a fine, sneaky ploy except he dropped mine.

It bellyflopped on the floor during a total silence in which poor Frannie was trying to figure out whether the verb was in the subjunctive. Ms. Gardener said, “Michael? Could you and Alison consider paying attention to your Latin instead of to your already swollen egos?”

The class roared with laughter. I slid down in my seat. Mike just grinned and kept my yearbook. A few minutes later, when Ms. Gardener’s back was turned, it got passed back to me.

Alison,
he had written across his beautiful senior picture, ruining it from the pressure of his ball point pen,
very best wishes to you in the career that’s obviously ahead. From an admirer, Mike MacBride.

It was a nice, friendly, pleasant note.

I hated it.

What I wanted to write in his was,
Dear Michael, of all the boys in the senior class, you’re the one I most wanted to date. It is not too late to remedy this situation. Love, Alison.

But of course I didn’t. You had to draw the line somewhere in this honesty stuff.

I considered writing this,
Dear Michael, I’ll never forgive myself for spending so much time on music that I never even saw you play a single game. I’ve lost out on a lot at high school, from friendship to fun. Just hope it’s been worth it.

Well, that was even worse. Sounded as if I’d been pining away, lost and sorrowful, since sophomore year.

I tried to think of something just like what Mike had written. Perhaps,
Have a super year at college.

I liked that. I bent over his yearbook to write it, but the space near my photograph was already filled.

I had written in it. The very words I’d decided I could not possibly put on paper.

Dear Michael, I’ll never forgive myself for spending so much time on music…

I could not believe it. I wanted to rip the page out. I even got a grip on the page so as to rip it quickly and violently. Mike said, “Come on, Alison, the class is over. Just put
Love, Alison
on the end and hand it over, okay? My fans are swarming around demanding their turns.”

I didn’t have much choice. I wrote
Love, Alison
and handed it over.

I thought seriously of lying down on the linoleum and dying but I was too healthy.

Besides Mike wasn’t even glancing at what I’d written. He was handing the book to Kimmy out in the hall.

The only thing worse than writing something absolutely humiliating is when the person you wrote it to doesn’t notice it.

T
UESDAY, THANK HEAVEN, MADE
up for Monday and yearbooks.

When I got home from our combo rehearsal—we were learning a graduation march—there was a message scribbled on the pad by the telephone:
Call Ted, he wants to study at library with you Sat morn.

Study at the library.

Now, over the years I have evolved a very definite study pattern. First of all, I only study in the afternoons. Nights are for gigs, and mornings, if I’m not off to school, are for staggering around trying to wake up.

Secondly, I believe a person can only study when she is sprawled out on her stomach on top of the bed with a bag of potato chips to eat and a radio blaring. The radio has to be close enough so that every time an ad comes on, she can jab a button and change the station.

It is impossible to study at a desk, sitting bolt upright, starving, thirsty, silent, and under observation by a steely-eyed librarian.

The sacrifices I am making for you, Ted, I thought, as I called him back. I had really gotten to like his number. The jingle I’d composed to sing the digits to was really terrific. Eight-six-nine…

“Can you really study in a library?” I asked suspiciously. I figured that what I would be studying was Ted.

“I have to. If I stay home, my mother gives me housework assignments. All week she’s been making noises about how every spring the porch should be scrubbed and this spring it should also be painted. Believe me, Alison, I can study in a library. In fact, I may study there till it’s time to leave for college!”

So we met at the library.

Ted picked our desk: neatly sandwiched between biographies and maps was a table for two, with a nice little divider so that the reference librarian could see us only if she walked all the way around the encyclopedias. “Considering the lady’s weight problem,” whispered Ted, “I doubt very much she walks around the encyclopedias more than once a year.”

We talked about weight problems (his mother had one; I didn’t) and about weight lifting (he liked it) and about going to college (he was wishing he’d decided to go somewhere else). “Listen,” said Ted suddenly, as if I hadn’t been, “I really do have to study.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

Ted began staring into the pages of his history text. I could practically feel him absorbing knowledge, his eyes focused on the page like laser beams.

I tried a little studying myself, but it wasn’t the same without a radio and some potato chips, so I just sat and looked at the way Ted’s hair fell on his forehead and thought about how he was going off to college a year ahead of me. That left us the summer.