He Loves Me Not (14 page)

I was not planning to get a summer job. I’d do whatever gigs came up—Ralph expected a slow season—and just laze around the rest of the time. I was sure that Ted was not the lazing-around-for-an-entire-summer type. Even if he were, his mother would change that. She sounded like an ogre!

Ted would probably be working full-time for the paper all summer. I wondered what his free-time schedule would be and whether I would fit into it.

At eleven-thirty, Ted looked at his watch, nodded sharply, took my wrist, put my watch next to his, observed that they both said precisely eleven-thirty, and said, “I am starved. It is time to eat.”

“You sound like a first-grade reading text,” I told him.

He answered me in short bouncy little syllables. “Ted and Alison go to lunch. See Ted go first. See Alison run after him.”

We imitated the Dick-and-Jane style all the way home. Home—to Ted’s house. I held my breath in nervousness; I was not really ready to meet his family—all those brothers and that ogre mother—but nobody else was home. We made ourselves sandwiches and took a jar of pickles and a bag of chips and sat on the back steps to eat.

The Mollison backyard was full of all the things he and his brothers had played on when they were little. Swings were still hanging from the limbs of huge oak trees; a rickety wooden ladder was nailed to the garage, leading to a treehouse precariously arranged between the garage roof and an oak; a basketball hoop was screwed into the garage wall low enough for a very little boy to get baskets with ease.

Ted was tall enough now to look down into the basket. I pictured him, my Ted, using that low basketball hoop.
My Ted.
I thought, But he isn’t mine, really. Two or three conversations and a few kisses do not make a boy mine.

We kissed in the sunlight, scattering bread crumbs over our laps. “Can I pick you up after school Wednesday?” he said. “I’m free for the whole afternoon.”

Could he!

Neither of us could think of anything interesting to do on a weekday afternoon, though.

“We could just do this,” I suggested, and this time I kissed him first, and Ted laughed…and we did that.

“You like him, don’t you?” said my father.

“Yes.” One syllable and a heartfelt smile told it all. I didn’t have to go on and on about it.

“You know, somehow,” said Daddy reflectively, taking a kettle off the stove and pouring boiling water over teabags, “I thought it would be Michael MacBride you’d go around with. I think you’ve like that boy since you were in first grade. I remember when Mike joined Cub Scouts, you came home every Tuesday to tell me how good he looked in his uniform and how many new badges he’d won.” Daddy laughed and jiggled the teabags. You know it’s summer when you start drinking your tea cold instead of hot. I added the lemon.

Yes, I could remember year after year of admiring Mike. Mike was romantic. I remember that in seventh grade particularly
all
the girls had crushes on him. It would have been practically un-American not to adore Mike. Athletic and elegant at the same time. On top of all that, such a nice person.

Even now, my head whirling with thoughts of Ted, the idea of Mike could make my thoughts whirl the other direction.

It threw me off completely. When I tried to practice I kept fumbling and missing notes. I threw the hit tunes aside and did some old Beethoven I hadn’t looked at in a couple of years: great crashing chords that worked out so neatly in the end.

When Ted picked me up at school Wednesday, we drove to Mayberry’s for ice cream. “Ted,” I told him, “I don’t have a weight problem yet, but if all we do every time we meet is eat something fattening, you’ll have to shovel me in and out of your car.”

Ted laughed. “I do that already.” He disentangled the seat belt for about the hundredth time. “I tell you what,” he said. “You just sit there and sip ice water. I’ll have the chocolate sundae.”

The only table empty was an awful, long, thin slab supposedly for two people. It was pressed up against the wall in the far corner, and the only decoration was some old plastic flowers in a red glass cup. We had so much table between us we had to hunch over the place mats and stick our necks forward like swans in order to talk privately. It was very uncomfortable. Ted’s knees kept bumping into mine and the straw in my ice water kept getting caught in my hair.

“Alison?” Ted said.

“Mmmmm?” I was sneaking a bite of his chocolate topping.

“There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

“Sure.” The chocolate was delicious. I lost my resolve to keep slim and began eating off my side of his sundae.

“You know,” said Ted, “in your senior year, there are, you know, well…”

I got the straw out of my hair and rearranged our knees and leaned even farther across the table to hear his mutterings. “Senior year there are what?” I asked.

“Proms. Dances.”

“Oh. I know. I’ve played for bunches. Are you going to be taking photographs of yours?”

“No. The yearbook is long done, sold, delivered, and autographed. No. I wondered if…if you’d go with me to our prom.”

It had actually never crossed my mind that he would invite me to his senior prom. Somehow, our dates had seemed to me the sort that had to be squashed in between other, more important things. So I was important enough to Ted to be asked to his senior prom! I was so delighted I actually clapped my hands. It would have been better if I had not been holding the spoon full of chocolate sauce and ice cream; the plastic flowers looked even worse with spattered chocolate on them. “I’d love to,” I told him. “I can’t wait. When is it?”

Ted’s cheeks got more and more ruddy, and he occupied himself with cleaning up the flowers instead of looking at me. “Saturday,” he said finally. “This Saturday.”

“In four days?”
I stared at him. He stared helplessly back at me, blushing. “I know I should have asked you ages ago,” he said, “And I’m really sorry, I know you can’t arrange anything that fast, or have a dress, or anything, and probably you have a gig anyhow, but I just didn’t get around to asking you, that’s all.”

“Well, we can’t talk about it over this crazy table,” I said. “Let’s go sit in your car. Of course I’m coming. I’d love to.”

I thought about what Ralph was going to say. Nothing good, that was for sure. We had a big date. I almost prayed to Ralph, as if he were God, not to mind if I went with Ted instead of to a gig.

We sat in Ted’s car and laughed at each other and talked about getting tuxedoes and dresses. “Actually,” said Ted, “I can’t dance, which is one reason I felt so edgy about asking you.”

“I don’t dance very much myself. Let’s go over to my house and practice.”

Before we left for my house, we practiced kissing a little bit, too. For a moment I didn’t want
anything
between us, not an ice cream table, not even a sweater. The prom, I thought. I finally have a real date for a dance. With Ted!

“S
ATURDAY NIGHT?” SAID RALPH.
“
This very Saturday night?
But we’re doing a prom ourselves at Catholic High!”

“Please, Ralph?” I pleaded. “Can’t you call that guy who does the gigs when my father won’t let me go?”

There was a long silence on Ralph’s end of the phone.

My heart sank. Ted and I had both agreed that if Ralph could not find a sub for me I’d have to play in the combo and not go to the prom. I felt a dreadful headache starting. Oh, how I wanted to go to the dance with Ted! How awful it would be to have to sit all night at somebody else’s prom, providing them with music to dance by, knowing Ted was home alone.

“I suppose,” said Ralph at last, “that it would be good for you to dance instead of work for a change. All right. I’m probably a soft old idiot, but all right. Go. Have a good time.”

“Oh, thank you!” I said to him over and over. “Thank you!”

I hung up, called Ted, and yelled to Daddy to see if he wanted to go shopping with me to buy a prom dress.

I expected Daddy to tease me and tell me to call a girlfriend and just laugh at the whole idea of his going prom dress shopping. But he didn’t even answer me, and when I tracked him down in the kitchen he was sort of leaning up against the cabinets and there were tears in his eyes. “Daddy,” I said, astonished, “what’s the matter?”

“Oh, kitten. I’m sorry to be sad in the middle of all your fun. I don’t think about your mother much, really. It’s been so many years. But something about our little daughter going to a prom. I just looked at her photograph and I hurt all over, wishing she could be here to do that with you.”

He walked away and I didn’t follow him. I stared at the flowers growing in our neighbor’s garden and thought about how mixed up the universe was, when I could be totally thrilled about one evening out of three hundred sixty-five that year, while my father was weeping for a person neither of us really remembered.

I thought about my mother for a while, and I wondered if she had gone to proms and ached over boys and worried whether or not my father loved her.

Prom dresses.

Who would have thought there could be so many tacky, dull, misshapen, and out-of-style prom dresses hanging on the racks in so many stores? By the time I actually managed to start shopping (would you believe Saturday morning?) every shop I went to was empty of anything decent.

Ted said he didn’t know what I was worried about; why didn’t I just wear that midnight blue satin number with the cutout lace sleeves? I tried to explain that there was no way I’d be caught dead in a performer’s spangled costume when I was going as his date, but he didn’t understand at all. In fact, my father really didn’t understand either.

“Let’s see,” said the saleslady at one store, looking me over carefully. “We’ll want something very demure and simple for you, dear. That’s your style.” She dredged up something that looked like a nightgown and something else that looked like a housecoat. Terrific. It was almost lunch and I had not yet found a dress.

I was supposed to meet Ted for lunch and have the dress with me so he could figure out what kind of corsage would match it. I had a feeling that Ted knew zero about corsages. He’d probably say to the florist, “I don’t know. She’s wearing something bluish. You choose.”

I hobbled over to the restaurant where we were meeting. (All I had to show for a morning of shopping was a beginning blister on my heel.) The restaurant was not at all what I had expected. It was dark and expensive and full of middle-aged adults who should have been dieting. I wondered if Ted had ever eaten there before.

A tall, thin waiter in a white dinner jacket asked what party I was with. “Um,” I said nervously. “Ted Mollison, please.”

And he led me to a table where no Ted Mollison sat. An enormous woman (who
definitely
should have been dieting) was taking up most of the space. She turned out to be Ted’s mother.

“Oh,” I said weakly. The ogre who suspected musicians of scandalous things. Oh, God. “Hi,” I added.

That was the absolute total of things I could think of to say.

“Hello, dear,” said Mrs. Mollison. She beamed at me and took my hand to pull me down into her triple chins for a squishy hug. “Did you find a dress? No? Well, after lunch, you and I will go to the Katydid Shoppe. You’ve never been there? It’s perfect for you. Now. What will you have to eat? You’re dieting? Nonsense, you’re positively frail. Have the seafood platter, it’s delicious. I’ve been known to order two at a time. Ted? Oh, he’s coming, he just had to run some errands for me. I told him we wouldn’t wait and he wasn’t surprised. When it’s food, Alison dear, I hardly ever wait!” Mrs. Mollison burst out laughing and I couldn’t help laughing with her. Ten minutes later we were old buddies. She was as comfortable and easy to be around as Ted—although considerably more of her was around. Ten minutes after that I was actually telling her about my father being upset because my mother couldn’t go prom dress shopping with me and Mrs. Mollison said she understood perfectly, and I thought she probably did, too.

By the time Ted arrived, panting with exhaustion from running all her errands, we were finishing up coffee and dessert and having such a good time telling each other stories that Ted complained about feeling left out.

His mother beamed at him, gave him a suffocating hug, and excused herself to “go freshen up.” (I’ve always thought that was such a funny phrase, as if you’d gotten stale and moldy over dinner.) Ted began talking where his mother had left off and I thought, No, no Mollison would get stale and moldy. They’re too full of themselves and all the things they’re doing and going to do.

Ted peppered his London broil lavishly. I told myself to remember that: Ted uses a lot of pepper. I felt as if I were keeping a mental notebook on Ted, filing away things that helped me get to know him better. I flipped mentally through the pages. A lot of blank ones, I thought, giggling to myself. Plenty of space to write more.

Mrs. Mollison and I left Ted with his steak and salad and went off to the Katydid Shoppe, and she was right: They had perfect dresses. Everything I tried on felt just right. We finally settled for a pale blue cotton dress with row upon row of lavender, blue, and white embroidery. It was a country, peasant type of dress. A more complete change from what I usually wore to dances could not be imagined. I didn’t feel like a musician when I wore it. The skirt was full and frothy, and the little off-the-shoulder sleeves were lacy and girlish.

I’ll wear my hair down, I thought. No braids, no stars, no spangles. Just thick waves and curls.

Tonight I will not be a keyboard man!

“Oh, Alison!” said Ted when I came downstairs, and that was all he had to say. I felt like spun candy: special and light.

Ted felt the same way he always did: solid, comfortable, crinkly, and nice.

The dance was wonderful.

It was so odd to be the dancer. Not worrying about the next request. Not caring about whether the electric guitar lost power or the trumpeter had a toothache. Every now and then I’d glance over to the orchestra and just smile for the sheer pleasure of
not
being in it. “You miss it?” said Ted once. “You wish you were up there?”