He Loves Me Not (2 page)

Three people—none of whom could possibly be classified as romantic young men—paused in loading their cupid-decorated plates with sardines and olives to tell me how much they were enjoying the music and I was awfully young, wasn’t I?

I nodded mutely.

I am far more articulate with notes than with words. Ralph says if I could improvise with my tongue the way I do at the keyboard, I’d have the world by the tail. Lizzie says it only takes practice and if I would just open my mouth and try, eventually I’d learn the art of conversation.

I dipped the ruffled potato chip into a bowl and discovered the dip was something horrid and fishy. I buried the chip surreptitiously under a puffy crepe-paper valentine. By that time the adults had moved on, and my chance to improve my speaking abilities was gone.

I looked around forlornly for a slice of pizza or a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, but there was nothing edible on the whole buffet. The average age of the partygoers was roughly twenty-two (the bride’s friends) and fifty (her parents’). I hung around the buffet hoping some male twenty-two-year-old would pass by, and some did, but their eyes were on the caviar, not me. I have no use for people who eat fish eggs, anyway.

Ralph came between me and the punch and handed me a can of 7-Up. His second promise to my father is that soda is the strongest liquid I can drink. The first promise is that if Ralph thinks there will be grass or coke at a party, he’s to take one of his other keyboard players and not me. Once Ralph misjudged, and when the party turned out to be wall-to-wall marijuana, he actually phoned my father to come and get me. I didn’t know whether to be glad or furious. The result of that phone call, of course, is that Daddy thinks Ralph is the most admirable man in the city. (Ralph agrees with this analysis and quotes my father at every opportunity.)

“About tomorrow’s gig,” said Ralph, taking my share of punch as well as his own. “I know you need money, infant, but I talked to the host, and it’s going to be a lot more wild than I figured when I signed you up for it. So forget it. I’ll get somebody else.”

Actually, I was delighted. I had a term paper to do for biology and desperately needed an entire day in the library. “Term papers,” said Ralph, making horrible faces. “Just when I’d almost forgotten what an infant you are. Still in school worrying about grades.”

“How old are you, dear?” said an elderly lady dressed in a shimmering golden sheath. I’d like to look that good
now,
let alone when I’m eighty.

“Sixteen,” I said.

“My goodness! And you play so well, dear.”

I never know how to handle compliments. I blush and shift my feet like a horse pawing the ground. “Thank you,” I said. Lizzie says when in doubt just say thank you. She’s right, it never fails.

“May I make a request?” the lady said, smiling shyly.

“Certainly,” Ralph told her, half-bowing.

For what they’re paying, I thought, he should kneel!

My stomach knotted up, waiting to hear the lady’s request. With older people I hardly ever know the song, although, of course, after a year and a half of this I’m a lot better than I was. But playing a good smooth rendition of a song you don’t know is quite a trick. Ralph gives me the key, the beat, and the tempo. Then I lay out an intro, and from there on I have to follow the others at the very same moment I’m actually playing: feeling the chords coming
before
we get there. It’s very, very hard.

And yet, I always hope for tough requests. It’s like fighting a lot of tiny wars; every evening is much more exciting if there’s a skirmish to win. I wish I felt that way about school.

“‘My Blue Heaven,’” she said. “It’s my favorite.”

Sure enough, I’d never heard of it.

“I love it, too,” said Ralph, who always says that even when he hates it and said last week if he ever had to play it again, he’d lose his sanity. I went back to the piano while Ralph talked to the lady, and meanwhile Alec (the trumpeter) hummed the tune for me, and Rob (the drummer) tapped out the rhythmic motif.

We went through it once with Alec taking the melody. Then, figuring I was secure with the chords, Ralph picked the tune up on his sax and really played around with it; it took all my concentration and energy to do my part. When we paused, what I wanted most was a nap, but the other guests had realized this was a request number and they began making requests, too. It was like being hit by a machine gun.

I didn’t make any errors the audience knew about, although Alec gave me a dirty look once over the top of his trumpet and Ralph smiled in such a way that I knew if I didn’t shape up I’d be replaced.

I shaped up. Ralph rewarded me with a fierce frown.

People don’t think of music as being physically hard to do, but to me it is. When the Lindsay party was over I had to totter out to Ralph’s van.

Sometimes I think the hardest part of performing comes when the gig is over. You’re wound up so tight, you’re so pleased with yourself, you’re so exhausted—but you can’t just shrug it off and go home and sleep. What you really need is an hour to celebrate the performance and exchange stories (“…and when they asked for ‘Mighty Like a Rose,’ I nearly died…”). But all of us in Ralph’s combo have to get up in the morning. We quit, we pack up, we mutter good-byes, and we leave.

Ralph drives me home, waits in his van with his headlights shining on my porch until I’m safely inside, and then he goes off. My father, who has been dozing, yells, “Is that you, Alison?” and I yell, “Yes, Daddy.” Then he falls asleep and I stand there.

For the hundredth time that year, I’d come home from a party…alone.

It was the irony of my life.

I had the busiest social schedule of any girl at senior high—and I had never had a date.

I spent weekend after weekend at parties, dinners, socials, dances, and receptions—and I had never received an invitation. Never danced, never sat down at a meal, never had an escort (unless you count Ralph; my father certainly counts Ralph), and never had my hand held (except by the combo; they certainly felt I got my hand held a lot).

I took a long shower, letting the hot water drain the tension of the evening out of me. My mind ran over the things I’d done well as well as the mistakes I’d have to correct and the practice I’d need to do.

And mixed in with all the pride and the pleasure at being a good musician doing a good professional job was loneliness. I didn’t have a single person to share it all with.

I went to sleep wondering what it would be like to go to a party as somebody’s girlfriend, instead of somebody’s keyboard player.

“T
ELL ME ABOUT IT
,” I begged Frannie. “Come on. Please?”

Frannie just shook her head and laughed, as if I were making a really ridiculous request. She fiddled with the pages of her American History assignment. We were studying election regulations and trends. “It was a silly date, Alison,” she said. “It was nothing. We just kind of walked around. You know you aren’t interested in that. Now tell us about the Lindsays’ party. I was thinking about you Saturday night. They have such a super house. That marvelous curving brick drive and that beautiful portico with all the white pillars. Like Cinderella or something. That must have been some dance!”

“I hear they actually have a ballroom right in the house,” said Lisa. “Is that true, Alison? I mean, it is a big house, but it doesn’t look large enough to have a real ballroom.”

“Oh, tell us about it!” cried Jan. “Suzanne Lindsay’s picture was in the newspaper and she looked absolutely beautiful. I bet you had a super time, didn’t you, Alison?”

“It was okay. Just a dance. The decorations were nice, though.” I wanted to hear about Frannie’s date. Her little brother Joey had sold the most candy bars of anybody in his elementary school, raising money for playground equipment. But the day they had to be delivered, Joey was throwing up, so Frannie waded through ice and slush and old blackened snow to make the deliveries for him. And who should volunteer to walk with her but Dick Fraccola! I’d love to go anywhere with Dick, especially laughing our way through the snow with a box of candy bars.

“It was okay,” Jan mimicked me. “Just a dance.” She and Frannie and Lisa rolled their eyes at each other. “Miss Jet Set here can’t even be bothered to describe the party of the season.”

“Aftah all, dahling,” said Frannie, affecting an accent, “they’re such a
bore
when you’re out night after night.”

I often wondered what they thought I did at these parties. Did they really see me as Cinderella, taking the social scene by storm? I’d told them often enough that for me these parties were work, but they never seemed to hear me. They always thought I was just being a pain.

“Did you wear your scarlet satin number?” said Lisa.

“No, that’s too gaudy for an engagement party,” I said. “At an engagement party the bride is the star and the musicians have to be pretty low-key. I wore my white velveteen costume.”

“Gosh, I envy you,” said Lisa, and from her voice I thought she really did. “The most exciting party I’ve ever been to was Halloween, bobbing for apples at Kevin’s house.”

I’d never been to Kevin’s. He gave a lot of casual parties. They had a big basement with an old jukebox, a pinball machine, a few electronic games, and of course a good stereo set; the kids went there a lot. You knew you were
in
if you dropped in at Kevin’s a lot. Kevin had asked me. Once. I’d had to decline. I remember the occasion vividly, because I had felt so completely stupid. “Oh, Kevin,” I said, “I’d love to!” I proceeded to drop all my books trying to pull out my engagement calendar, and my Math book smashed Kevin’s foot. “I’m sorry,” I said desperately. “It’s okay,” said Kevin, “I only walk on the bottoms. Can you come?” I bent over to gather up my books, when a girl tripped over me and I went sprawling. After Kevin had gathered me
and
my books and relocated us in a corner, he said a third time, very patiently, “Can you come?”

I opened my calendar, and Kevin actually gasped at the list of activities I had there. What with term papers, exams, combo practice, music deadlines, and all the gigs Ralph had lined up, the calendar was pretty impressive. Just
looking
at my schedule exhausts me. I never see how I’m going to live through the month, juggling everything; and every time I turn over a new page I’m sort of amazed, and I think, I really did live through the month.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was really, painfully, terribly sorry. “I have a dinner.”

“Oh,” said Kevin. “Well, have fun.” He stacked my books carefully in my arms and pointed me toward my next class and he never asked me again.

The dinner was the induction of officers for the Junior League’s new year. It was the most boring thing I ever endured—some of the gigs Ralph lines up can be pretty dull.

Sometimes, in the cafeteria line or at the school bus stop, Kevin mentions my schedule to someone. “Forget Alison,” he says, although he’s nice about it and smiles—as if he’s proud of me. “She’s probably tickling the ivories for the governor, or something.”

And once Pete Fox asked me to go to the library and study with him. We had a huge, frightening test coming up in Biology: the skeletal, muscular, digestive, and reproductive systems of every little beast we’d studied. “I wish I could, Pete,” I said, checking my calendar, “but I have a rehearsal.”

“You can skip a rehearsal,” said Pete. “You must know all that stuff cold by now.”

“No,” I said helplessly. “There’s always a new hit to learn, or a different kind of music for an unusual gig. Smoothing out the rough spots from the last performance. Working out transitions. Spacing…”

But Pete was bored by that. And hurt, I think. He really thought there was no reason for me not to skip the rehearsal except that I didn’t want to study with him.

The only person who agreed that I couldn’t possibly skip a rehearsal was our football captain, Michael MacBride, who said he personally liked to kill people who missed football practice. I said, “Gee, sort of cuts down on the lineup, doesn’t it?” Mike laughed and touched my shoulder as he passed on, and that was the closest I have ever come to a boy-girl chat.

Furthermore, Pete Fox never quite forgave me for getting an A-minus on that Biology test when he got a C-plus. He was positive I’d skipped the rehearsal anyhow and studied by myself. I tried to describe how Lizzie and Alec quizzed me all through the practice. Ralph would say, “Okay, let’s listen to that record again. Now get that modulation right this time, you jerks,” and Lizzie would say, “Okay, Alison, what two kinds of ribs does a frog have?” After I’d listened very hard to the modulation I’d say, “Fused and carpel,” and Alec would say, “Discuss the digestive system of the earthworm.” Then Ralph would scream, “There’s got to be a keyboard player somewhere who’s out of high school!”

It was fun studying with the combo, but I’d far rather have studied with Pete Fox. After all, Lizzie, Rob, and Ralph are all in their twenties. (Alec is nineteen and rather spaced-out. He took a year off between high school and college to “find himself” and, as Lizzie says, he’s finding less and less each week.)

But when I tried to tell Pete about the combo, he only got the idea that the combo was more fun for me than he was, and he went off bristling and annoyed and hurt.

I dragged myself out of my daydreams and listened to Jan and Lisa and Frannie going on and on about the Lindsay party. “Really,” I said to them helplessly, “It wasn’t that exciting. More than half the guests were Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay’s age, or even older, and we did a lot of slow dances, waltzes, and foxtrots, and we didn’t do much rock at all. We had requests going back to Jerome Kern and—”

“Forget the music,” said Jan impatiently. “Tell us about the party!”

But for me the music had been the party.

“What did everybody wear?” demanded Jan. “What did the bride wear?”

I tried to remember what the bride had worn. I tried to remember something besides the awful buffet and that moment when Ralph smiled evilly at me. “There was this old lady in a golden sheath,” I said finally.

“Sheesh!” said Jan, furious with me. “Don’t be such a snob. Talk with us for a change.”