He Loves Me Not (7 page)

“He didn’t say.”

I revved up my courage and dialed eight-six-nine, six-one-seven-eight again.

“Yes, Alison,” said Ted’s mother, “he tried to call you back, too. I’m afraid he isn’t here right now. The newspaper called and he’s covering a United Fund Drive meeting.”

That sounded just about as interesting as our gig for the Annual Club Women’s Combined Award Dinner, or whatever it had been. At least I hadn’t had to
write
about that. I wondered how Ted could stand all that stuff. He’d actually have to pay attention to what was being said.

Once I got into the swing of dialing that number, it got easier and easier. I almost forgot why I was calling Ted; it was just a habit I got into. I finally reached him before breakfast, an hour his mother suggested when she grew tired of exchanging remarks with me twice a day.

“Oh, hi,” said Ted, yawning hugely into his end of the phone. I visualized him half-awake. Half-dressed.

“Hi,” I said. “I got your message to call you.”

And then I felt stupid. Stupid right down to the smallest capillary and the least significant cell. I had made no fewer than eleven phone calls to try to reach this kid. Talk about excessive eagerness. His whole family was probably joking about it right now. “Hey, Ted,” they’d say, laughing hysterically between bites of toast, “it’s that crazy girl again.”

“Lemme wake up,” said Ted groggily. “Sorry, but I’m not at my best at six-thirty.” There was a slurping noise and Ted said, “There. Okay.”

“What was that?”

“My mother just gave me a cup of coffee. Now that my tongue is burned we can talk.”

And talk Ted did. About his paper.
The Register.
The wonderful, interesting, meaningful
Register.
About how on Sundays they had a section of the paper devoted to people in the community who were of special interest to the readership. About how the editor of that section had agreed that a successful teenage girl band musician would be a very interesting article.

“Crush” is a funny word. My crush on Ted vanished within moments. It was replaced by humiliation and depression and disappointment, and I want to tell you that that was just as crushing. Worse, maybe. Even my tongue felt weighted down. I hoisted it up and said politely that I would think about it.

“How about today?” said Ted. He sounded very eager and anxious. I tried to feel flattered but that hurt even more. What he was anxious about wasn’t me—it was the article he planned to write and the photographs he planned to take.

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I have a rehearsal after school with a wedding soloist and—”

“That would be perfect!” Ted cried. “I could photograph you in action. Let me come to the rehearsal, please?”

That didn’t exactly thrill me. Here I had been up nights planning all these lovely dates of dancing, movies, skating, walking, kissing, hugging—and I was going to end up on a piano bench again with a flash bulb going off in my face. “It’s okay, I guess,” I said. “But the soloist might object.”

“I won’t photograph her. It won’t bother her at all. What time is the rehearsal and where?”

As I told him, I pictured his engagement calendar. It would be just like mine. Fat and scribbled on. He’d have a pencil in his hand. He’d be the sort whose pencils were always sharp and whose pens were never out of ink.

I said good-bye.

All day in school I caught myself fantasizing that at
this
meeting Ted would get to know the real Alison and be so taken with her that he would ask her on a real date. I tried to stop myself. I was never going to have a real date, because the only date anybody ever wanted Alison Holland for was a paying club date.

I
WALKED INTO THE
church, Ted carrying my music and my organ shoes, as if he really were my boyfriend and was coming along for the pleasure of my company. It felt sort of comfortable to have him walking along next to me. I had the sensation that he and I had done this many times and would do it many more. It was a warm feeling, but when I looked over at him to see if he shared it, Ted was staring at the stained glass windows and wondered how old they were. “Centuries,” I said grumpily and stalked up to the organ.

Whoever had told the soloist she could sing should be imprisoned. The rehearsal was awful. It made my stomach twist to think of her actually singing out loud at a wedding. The only good thing was that she demanded to know who Ted was and he told her! “I’m Ted Mollison, ma’am,” he said. He had a deep, nice voice. I decided to overlook his interest in the stained glass windows and enjoy our interview. Or at least enjoy his voice during it, even if he behaved like a turkey by being completely professional and not at all interested in me personally.

Mollison, I thought throughout the rehearsal. He’s Molly’s son. I wondered if that stern-sounding woman on the phone could really have a name as warm and friendly as Molly. No. She probably had a name like Prudence or Hildegarde.

Ted Mollison. It had a nice sound.

Nicer by far than the sounds the soloist was making.

“Whew!” said Ted, when the soloist had finally given up and left us. “They pay her to sing?”

I laughed, glad to know that Ted could at least distinguish between a horrible voice and a decent one. “I doubt it. She’s probably somebody’s favorite aunt.”

“She won’t be such a favorite after the wedding, I bet,” said Ted. He turned off the church lights before I was ready and I fumbled in the dark, trying to gather my music together. “I’ll help,” said Ted, but he didn’t help by turning on the lights—he helped by bending over to pick up my music with me.

We crashed skulls.

Other girls, I am confident, would manage to touch fingertips. I, Alison had to crash into him with my rock-hard cranium.

The church was filled with gentle groans as Ted and I simultaneously dropped whatever music we had picked up and clutched our heads. I staggered past him and found the light switches again. We eyed each other rather bleakly. He’s going to figure I’m so dangerous he can’t be around me, I thought. If I’m not plotting how to break his ribs, I’m trying to give him a concussion. I’m worse than being on the football team.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Ted held up a hand to stop me from bending down again to get the music. “One of us at a time,” he said firmly. When he was very sure his upturned palm had stopped me from getting closer to him, he bent over and retrieved all my music. Stacking it very neatly and carefully, he said politely, “We ready to go now?”

But we weren’t. I had to change my shoes. I had never felt so stupid. I had to sit on the chancel steps, untie the laces of my organ shoes, put those shoes back in their box, and jam my feet into my old sneakers. I was so upset with myself I could hardly tie the dumb things. Ted watched me with a sort of awed appreciation for anyone so uncoordinated that she couldn’t even tie a bow on her sneakers.

I waited for him to make some sort of snide remark like did I require assistance in getting dressed each morning, but he didn’t. He just gave me a rather determined smile. I could just hear his mother Hildegarde telling him if you’re going to have to do something anyway, best to do it with a cheerful smile. Mother’s well-trained boy Ted gave me a glued-on, cheerful smile.

We climbed into Ted’s car. After I accidentally distributed his neatly stacked pile of my music all over the floor of the front seat, and after we had fished my Bach out from under his gas pedal, and after he had helped me figure out all over again how to fix his crazy seat belt, I was definitely ready for an early death.

Here I had spent my whole silly life learning how to impress people with all my super skills, and the one boy I wanted to impress…you’d have thought my body consisted of old Jell-O.

“Well, I think I’ve got enough photographs,” said Ted brightly. “All we need now is a place to talk. You want to go to the Burger Chef or Howard Johnson’s on the turnpike and sit in a booth?”

I had no money on me. This wasn’t exactly a date, and I had no idea if Ted planned to pay. I’d been so hard on him already—literally—that I didn’t feel up to asking what the financial arrangements were on this. I rubbed my skull where it still ached from whacking his.

Ted, no doubt, was regretting he had ever gotten started on this interview. He was probably thinking it was truly miraculous that a girl could be a musician and still be a completely uncoordinated jerk. He had probably fastened my seat belt so that he wouldn’t have to worry about me writhing all over the seat every time he made a left turn.

The more I looked at Ted, the cuter I thought he was. Sort of solid-looking. Friendly. The sort of guy you could snuggle up to and tell your troubles to and move on from those to…

“Don’t worry,” said Ted, “the newspaper pays for it. We can go anywhere and it won’t cost either of us a cent.” He beamed at me. Clearly the only decent thing about our whole afternoon together was that he didn’t have to pay for it. “Okay,” I said wearily, “then let’s go to Howard Johnson’s.”

I was starving. Daddy and I eat at Burger Chef all the time. I might as well calm my growling stomach and my aching head with a new menu.

“I’d take you to my house,” said Ted, “except that there’s never any food there. We all work and nobody ever gets around to doing a big grocery shopping, so we never have more than enough food for the very next meal. If a war ever comes, we’ll be the ones who starve first because all we’ll have in the house is a bar of soap and a jar of pickles.”

I burst out laughing. A boy with a mixed-up household just like mine. Well…no, really, not at all like mine. Starving is probably my father’s greatest fear. Our house is stuffed beyond belief with canned ravioli and frozen waffles. “I’ll pass on your house then,” I told him.

And spent the rest of the drive scolding myself for saying that. Ted might think I meant I’d skip
him,
not his jar of pickles.

When we got to HoJo’s, I shoveled my stuff out of my lap and tried to plan how to remove myself from the seat belt without falling on the pavement. Ted walked around the car to open the door for me. “Leave all your garbage there,” he said, properly identifying my belongings. “I’ll lock the car.”

Just in case I was flattered that he was worried about my possessions, he added, “After all, my camera is in there.”

Ted helped me out of the car. Now I don’t normally require help anywhere and even if I did, nobody has ever offered it. Can you imagine Ralph asking me if he could open the door for me? Unless the door smashed my fingers, thus making it impossible for me to play our next gig, Ralph couldn’t care less how I got through doors.

But Ted took my arm, extricated me from his seat belt, positioned my shoulder bag again on my shoulder, and turned me very gently away from the car. I was all set to feel warm and good about his attention—when I figured out the only reason he did all that was that he was afraid I might slam the door on the seat belt, and he wanted to feed it back into its slot. He did that. Lovingly. I wanted to make a smart remark about men who stroked seat belts for fun, but I had wrecked enough already. I kept silent.

After he’d locked up the car, Ted took my arm again, and we walked into the restaurant together. We took a booth in the corner and I sat opposite him. I watched his face. First he surveyed the restaurant, found that it looked exactly like every single other HoJo’s on earth, decided that the other patrons didn’t look all that interesting, and finally his eyes came to rest on me.

And he grinned.

Gosh, if I had been like old Jell-O before…

I thought that Ted Mollison had possibly the world’s nicest smile.

This is an interview, I said to myself.
The Register
is paying for this and it is not a date. I will not see Ted again. I must be calm and professional as befits an interviewee. I must be fascinating and intriguing, however, so that Ted calls me up for a date anyway.

I tried to think of one single solitary fascinating thing to tell Ted about me.

The waitress, chewing more gum than any three people normally could, wanted to know what I was having. “Uh,” I said, fascinating nobody. Ted, the infuriating creature, was fascinated by the amount of gum in the waitress’s mouth.

I gave up. Fascination was not my strong point. I didn’t have any strong points except playing hit tunes. If I did have any, why, I’d already have a boyfriend.

“Could we see a menu, please?” said Ted.

The waitress mumbled something and ambled off. I figured she wouldn’t be back for ten minutes. How was I going to be fascinating for ten whole minutes?

It turned out that I was not going to have time to worry about that. I was not even going to have time to read the menu. Ted shot questions at me like machine-gun bullets. He’d start with one topic and jerk into another and back to the first and off on a third. I could hardly keep track of anything and pretty soon I was just spouting answers without thinking—probably what Ted wanted. I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted, though. I like to think long and hard before I speak.

He wrote it all down, too, in a shorthand notebook.

“Tell me the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you.”

I told the waitress I would have the seafood platter and told Ted about the Polish wedding where they had to explain to me what a polka was.

“Tell me about Ralph,” demanded Ted.

I told him about Ralph. How come he didn’t want to hear about Alison? Who cared about music and Ralph and gigs? I wanted to talk about me, and then I wanted to talk about Ted and me.

The delivery of our food was a welcome diversion for me, but Ted was just annoyed by it. He couldn’t talk as well with his mouth full, and he was very impatient because I had to finish each mouthful before I could answer him. It is very hard to chew normally when the person across the table from you is tapping his pencil waiting for that chewing nonsense to finish up.

Finally Ted began talking about himself in order to fill the moments when I was chewing. I relaxed a bit and enjoyed my supper after all.

“Once,” said Ted, “I interviewed this fascinating guy who runs the only one of this business in the entire world. He manufactures autographed baseballs.”