He Loves Me Not (3 page)

The bell rang for classes and I had to go in the opposite direction from them.

Sometimes I felt that music, far from being the international language that binds everybody together, had become a wedge between me and my friends. Even the people I knew who were musical—played in the marching band or took piano lessons—didn’t understand.

But then, I didn’t know how to explain myself, anyway.

People asked me about it often enough. You’d think I would have found an easy, logical answer to describe me and music.

I watched Jan and Lisa and Frannie go off together and wondered what they were saying about me. I won’t care about it, I told myself. I’ve bungled a lot of friendships and that’s that. In two years, I’ll be at college, I’ll be a music major, I’ll be with people who understand. Until then I’ll just have to endure high school.

That sounded fine. It carried me about five steps down the hall toward Latin, when I saw, way ahead of me, a boy and a girl sneaking a quick kiss before breaking apart to go their separate ways for the next class.

Two years? I thought miserably. Hang in here alone for two whole years?

I had this overwhelming desire to have somebody love me for myself, not my fingers on the keyboard. To have somebody want to kiss me, not hear me play an old hit tune. I thought how much more warm and wonderful it would be to stroke a boy’s hand instead of ivory, and then I felt absolutely stupid for thinking like that.

My footsteps were getting slower and slower.

The hallways cleared and in another moment I would be late.

Boys, I thought. I don’t even have time to daydream like a normal person, let alone make friends and start dating.

It isn’t worth it, I thought. I’ll tell Ralph I’m quitting. I’m so lonely it hurts and music just isn’t that important.

I scurried alone down the stairs to Latin.

L
ATIN USED TO BE
a forgotten subject. Nobody took it. But when I was in ninth grade, there were seventeen of us in first-year Latin and we all loved it. Not one of us dropped out. The class has the same sort of comradeship that the combo does: a tight, yet easy friendship that comes from sharing something difficult and special.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t had time to do my translation, and with only seventeen people in the class you almost always get called upon daily.

“I see panic in your eyes,” murmured Mike MacBride.

“I didn’t have time to do the translation.”

“Superwoman has fallen short. I don’t believe it.”

I flushed, but Mike was smiling at me. “I’m no superwoman,” I said, embarrassed. And proved it. Miss Gardener called on me first and I couldn’t even fake my way through the first noun.

“Zero,” said Miss Gardener gladly. “Too many activities, Alison. Too little attention to what counts, I’m afraid.”

When other people had trouble, Miss Gardener helped them, rather gently. She’d ask for excuses and she’d accept them, no matter how thin they were. We were her favorite class. But when I failed she was glad. I spent the rest of Latin fighting tears.

After class, Mike tugged my hair. It was a funny thing to do. It sounds mean, but it wasn’t. It was sort of affectionate. I looked up at him and thought that any time he wanted to show
more
affection, I’d be happy to cooperate! I tried to think of something clever to say but nothing came to me. I looked back down at my desk while I gathered up my books, wondering if he had seen my tears.

“It’s just a dumb Cicero translation,” said Mike, “not the end of the world.”

He smiled at me and the world tumbled back into perspective. What a super thing a nice smile is! I felt warmed up like sunshine, and I hugged my books to my chest and smiled back. Mike tugged my hair again and walked on.

He was gone before I realized I had not said one word to him. A boy I really liked, who was nice to me, and I hadn’t even tried to let him know I was glad he’d taken the time to speak to me.

I thought, I know about as much about boys right now as I did about gigs two years ago. Zero.

I began a long involved fantasy about how I would be deluged with offers of dates, so Ralph would have to get substitutes for me five nights a week, and my phone would be ringing off the hook with the deep, romantic voices of strange boys. My father would be meeting a new one at the door every night and I’d leave my spangled sheath at the dry cleaner’s and stock up on all these frilly romantic little numbers. I’d dance instead of provide dance music and all the boys standing on the sidelines would turn and stare at me, the way they do in TV ads for women who have on a new brand of pantyhose.

I figure if you’re going to have a fantasy, you should really lean into it and get it top-drawer.

I thought of the girl being kissed in front of her classroom and told myself that before long I’d have boys arguing over who got the thrill of kissing
me
in front of—

“Alison!”

Fantasies down the tube. It was a girl calling me.

“Alison!”

I turned to see who it was. Lucy, who moved to town about a week before I began playing for Ralph. Needless to say, I don’t know her very well. We sit next to each other in Chem, though, and once in a while we meet in the cafeteria. She’s one of these people you know you’d like tremendously if there were just time to be around her…but there’s never time. Whenever Lucy talks to me or waves at me I feel a twinge. I want to ask her to spend the night or come over after school or something, but I never do because I never can. “Hi, Lucy,” I said, beaming at her.

“Listen, I know how busy you are, and I’m almost afraid to ask, but I’m having a party for Kathleen Devaney Saturday night and I’d love to have you come.”

“Oh, I’d love to.” I said. It was my refrain. I knew perfectly well I couldn’t come Saturday night. Ralph had booked me to play for a dinner party. People who were paying a lot of money, made arrangements weeks, if not months, in advance. And although I might quit playing for Ralph, I certainly couldn’t quit when he had no replacement for me, not with three nights’ notice.

Lucy had a calendar out—the tiny, pretty kind that Hallmark gives out free, where you have a quarter-inch of space per day to write in appointments. Fine, if you have to go to the dentist once and a party once. I felt pushy and ridiculous getting out my fat leather book and turning to Saturday to prove to Lucy I was really busy. Very busy.

“I’m really going to miss Kathleen, aren’t you?” said Lucy mournfully. “When I moved here, Kathleen was all that stood between me and total loneliness. I want to give her a really special going-away party.”

“Kathleen?” I said, stunned. “Kathleen’s moving?” In first, second, and third grades Kathleen Devaney had been my very best friend. We used to alternate meals at each other’s houses, and I couldn’t begin to guess how many times she spent the night. The Devaneys moved across town in our fourth-grade year, so we’d been in different elementary and junior high schools, but we’d kept our friendship up. In senior high we were so glad to be together again that we used to hug each other in the halls.

Lucy burst out laughing. “Alison, you’re so out of touch,” she said. “Kathleen announced at least three months ago they were moving.”

“Three months?” I said. And she hadn’t called me. Hadn’t said a word to me.

But then, when was the last time I’d called Kathleen? My heart began hurting.

“Billy is really cut up about it,” Lucy told me, shaking her head.

“Billy?”

“Billy Schuyler,” said Lucy, laughing at me, but getting irritated. I knew the symptoms well by now. “Kathleen’s only been dating Billy for a year, Alison, seven nights a week. You can’t pretend you haven’t noticed
that,
Alison.”

I could only stand there and gape at Lucy. My best friend from childhood had a boyfriend as steady as that, and I didn’t even know who he was.

Lucy shrugged her eyebrows at me and kept smiling, the way you would at a spoiled brat you like in spite of his rotten behavior. “I…I’m busy,” I said defensively. “My music is practically a full-time job, Lucy, what with having to memorize all those pieces and do all that practice. You just don’t understand how much work is involved. I’ll bet I’ve had to learn six or seven hundred pieces in the last year—and that’s not exaggerating. Everything from Diana Ross and Eddie Rabbit and Bette Midler back to the Beatles back to the Kingston Trio back to
West Side Story
back to—”

“I get the point,” said Lucy. “You don’t have to brag all the time, Alison.”

I choked back another defense. “When is the party?” I said.

“Saturday night,” Lucy repeated.

I looked at my engagement calendar. I was playing the piano for a dinner party.

“Anybody would think you were the presidential aide for foreign affairs,” said Lucy irritably. “Don’t you ever move without that fat, foolish book?”

“I’m sorry,” I said desperately. “I would if I could.” She didn’t want me to explain anything to her. She didn’t care that I had made a commitment and had to stick to it. She just smiled at me tightly and moved on.

I felt as isolated from high school life as if Lucy had shut a door and bolted it.

How could I possibly go play some dumb piano pieces for some middle-aged clods when my best friend Kathleen’s good-bye party was that night? How could I not have known Kathleen had a boyfriend? Or that she was moving?

I tried to picture Lucy’s party. All my old friends sitting around in pajamas, giggling, telling scary stories and…

What is the matter with me? I thought. That’s what we did in the sixth grade. Nobody is having slumber parties any more. This party will be…

…the kind of party where I usually sit on a piano bench. Where people drift up to the piano and ask for “our song.”

Our song. I wondered if Kathleen and her Billy had an “our song.” If they danced closer and looked at each other more lovingly when somebody like me played it.

One thing for sure.
I
didn’t have a song, unless it was “Work, Work, Work.”

I had one more class. I didn’t spend it thinking about music but I didn’t pay any attention to the teacher either. I sat there looking at the backs of people’s heads. At boys’ shoulders and girls’ fluffy hair. At oxford collars and pullover sweaters. I settled on one particular back view: a senior boy who played football and whose shoulders consequently took up a lot more room than anybody else’s.

Good grief, I thought. I’m behind in every class, I have a rough gig coming up, I’ve completely lost touch with every friend—and I’m sitting here rhapsodizing about
shoulders.

The shoulders were very restless. They kept twitching and shifting, and twice fingers crept around awkwardly to scratch between them. I thought, if I were just one seat closer, I could scratch his back for him.

Just then he turned around. You know that awful moment when somebody you’ve been staring at catches you staring at him? You feel
guilty,
as if you’ve been cheating on a test or something, and you blush.

I thought, You really know you’re at the bottom when you’ve been caught daydreaming about scratching somebody’s shoulder blades. I comforted myself that at least I couldn’t be any worse off. Things could only get better. I even toyed for a moment with the idea of skipping my gig to go to Lucy’s party…but no, then things would get worse. Ralph would probably knife me or something.

Ralph. Now there was a male who spent plenty of time around me.

I considered the possibility of having a crush on Ralph. There were several drawbacks. First crushes should just spring themselves on you, not be carefully planned during English Literature. Second, Ralph was old. Third, I had just established that I was overdosing on music. If I hung around Ralph any more than I already did, I would drown in it.

So much for the only available man in my life.

I went back to studying shoulders.

T
HE PROBLEM IN PLAYING
for people your parents’ age is that you make them feel old, which depresses them. Then they wish you weren’t there playing the piano after all, which rather dampens your performance. So for that Saturday’s dinner party, without the combo there to look old for me, I had to look old on my own.

I wore concert black: a shimmering, black knit shirt, a six-chain necklace of rhinestones, and long rhinestone earrings. A matching tight black skirt studded with sparkles and streaked with black satin ribbon. I braided my hair into a complex arrangement with several tiny black satin bows.

And I was terrific. (One thing we musicians are is confident. At least,
I
call it confidence. My father says it’s plain old conceit and I shouldn’t be so proud of myself.) Still, I
was
terrific and the whole evening went wonderfully. I even got kissed by two guests—older than my father—who told me I’d been a joy.

Good jobs stay with you. I always feel kind of like a helium balloon after a good gig: floating and warm and up at the ceiling. Bit by bit you sag and get tired and come down.

I got home, said good night to Daddy, who always groggily waits up for me, and was hanging up my dazzling skirt when something punctured my balloon so fast I hurt inside.

The following Saturday night was another gig, but there was a message on my bed, in Daddy’s handwriting, that it was cancelled; Ralph had phoned to say the club hadn’t sold enough tickets. That meant I was free next Saturday night. Free to do what other girls might be doing on a Saturday night.

And that particular Saturday night was the Winter Dance. They would crown the Snow Queen (although we have yet to have snow on the ground the night of the Winter Dance). When I’d walked past the gym between classes yesterday, the decorations had arrived. Somebody’s department-store-owner father had donated all the Christmas stars from his store: box after box of glittering, glistening, silvery-white stars to hang from the ceiling.

Everybody was going to the dance. Frannie, Lisa, Jan, Lucy, certainly Kathleen.

But not me.

Not Superwoman Brilliant Musician Conceited Booked-Up Alison.

On Saturday night I was going to be alone with nothing to do but maybe a few Algebra problems or a book report.