He Loves Me Not (8 page)

I cracked up laughing. Imagine doing something like that all day every day of your entire life—writing names on little white balls. Ted laughed, too. “That’s what I thought, but it turned out to be a fascinating business, especially if you like sports, which I do. Well, I not only sold my story to
The Register,
but I wrote it up differently—they call it
slant
in publishing jargon—and sold it to four major national magazines, including
Sports Illustrated!
Talk about a hit, Alison. There I was, sixteen, and I’d broken into four big, slick, tough, adult markets.”

“Congratulations,” I said, and I didn’t say it lightly. I could well imagine how good the writing must have been to accomplish that. As Ted leaned forward, eager to tell the rest of his story, his notebook slipped and I saw that he had not been writing my words down in longhand, but in shorthand. He must have learned it because he felt he needed it for his career.

It was partly his story and what it had in common with my own, and partly his calling me Alison as if we were friends, not reporter and interviewee. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, I felt a deep kinship with Ted Mollison. I set down my fork and had a tremendous impulse to use that free hand to reach over and grab Ted’s and say, “Ted, I feel a deep kinship with you.”

The mere thought of actually doing that made me choke up with horrified laughter. How disgusted with me he would be then! The girl not only tried to break his bones, she got all soppy and maudlin on him.

“There wasn’t one adult reporter on the whole
Register
who’d sold more than one article to a major magazine and most of them hadn’t done that. Boy, was I cocky. I bragged until the staff was ready to slit my precocious little throat.”

I could identify with that, as one who had done a lot of bragging in her time.

“But I never did it again, you see,” said Ted, and there was a funny tired look in his face. “Since then I’ve never sold a single line to any publisher except
The Register.
I guess I’ve written fifty stories now that I thought were worth publishing, and all I have is a box full of rejection slips.”

Ralph handled all our bookings. I suppose that our combo had had its share of rejections. But I hadn’t had to face the agony of being informed I wasn’t worth anything. Ralph yelled at me from time to time. I flubbed things now and then. But I was never thoroughly and completely rejected.

“I know how it must hurt,” I said helplessly. I wanted to hug Ted. I wanted to say that
I
knew he wrote super stories even if the national magazines didn’t.

Then I thought, I’ve gone crazy. I’ve never read one line by Ted Mollison. For all I know, he’s illiterate and the editor at
The Register
spends every morning correcting Ted’s stories. For all I know Ted’s mother actually wrote the article about the autographed baseballs.

Ted cleared his throat, wrapping up that little moment of confidence. He looked flushed and disgusted with himself for saying anything. I wanted so much to talk with Ted about failure and success and trying again and again, but I couldn’t seem to find the words fast enough. Ted said, “Your combo ever plan to go on the road?”

“No. Ralph went on the road for a few years and he makes it sound awful. Seventeen airports in twenty-two days, rundown motels in dreary industrial cities.”

“Hey, neat,” said Ted, grinning, “when do we leave?”

The grin almost unwrapped me. I restrained myself from saying that I would go anywhere with him, even seventeen airports in twenty-two days. Instead I gave him this dumb smile to fill up the space.

“You like what you’re doing?” said Ted softly. “You have any regrets?”

I want to share my thoughts with Ted the way I never had with anybody. The table was this terrible obstacle, keeping us apart, and I could use words and we would understand each other and it would be such a wonderful thing, to have a friend who understood.

But Ted was not really interested in my regrets and griefs. He was writing an article to go in a newspaper that every family I knew read every afternoon. Did I really want people to know how lonely I was and how much I missed a normal high school social life?

“None,” I said.

Ted shook his head. “I admire you. I think’s it’s hard as hell to juggle high school and a job, especially when people think you’re too young for it and that you’re probably not really serious about it.”

I felt split, shattered almost. The one person I had met my age who would understand…but if I explained anything, his fingers were wrapped around that pencil and he would publish my answers.

“I know what you mean,” I said, and I kept the rest of our conversation meaningless.

“W
E’VE GOT A NEW
form of competition,” said Ralph gloomily at our next practice session.

“What’s that?”

“Music is out,” he said.

According to my schedule, music was still exceedingly fashionable.

“Video games,” explained Ralph sadly. “Electronic games.
Rentable
video and electronic games. That Harrison party—the big reunion I’ve done each year for six years now? This year they’re not having live music. They’re renting enough different video games for everybody to play all night long.”

“Now, Ralph,” said Lizzie. “It’s just one casual party. The whole career isn’t down the tubes just because the Harrisons are hiring electronic games instead of a combo.”

“These things spread,” said Ralph darkly, as if we were discussing an infectious disease.

“Yeah, well, meanwhile, we’ve got four club dates this weekend,” said Lizzie, “so let’s jam.”

I was using the piano bench as a desk to scribble out the rough draft of a book report.
This utterly stupid collection of poorly written stories,
I began.

No doubt it would turn out that my teacher’s sister had written them. I scrunched up the paper and began again.
The beautiful prose of
—“Four club dates?” I yelled. “I have only three written down!”

“Friday is our regular end-of-the-month dance sponsored by the Downtown Businessmen’s Association,” said Ralph.

“Check.”

“Saturday afternoon, Farkis wedding reception.”

“Check.”

“Saturday evening, dance at the convention of dental supply jobbers.”

“Check.”

“Sunday afternoon, your solo appearance at the Camellia Festival at the mall.”

“Aaaaaaaaahhh!!” I had completely forgotten that. My whole Sunday schedule wrecked. Now I would never get the book report done.

Ralph just yelled at me for not keeping better track of things. I thought of Ted. I wondered if he had ever botched up his plans and missed an interview or a deadline. I wondered what he would think if I called him up and said I had blown my weekend. Would we talk about it, would we share? Or would he just be completely mystified about why that Alison Holland creature was bothering him?

Sunset Mall had two hundred stores arranged in a two-story star around a huge, egg-shaped stage. The stage handles everything from antique car exhibits to kids’ Halloween painting contests. I hate that stage. It has no rails or benches at the sides, so you always have the feeling you’ll roll down the curved, eggy parts and splat in front of the stores.

The owner of an electronic organ store was loaning an instrument for the occasion. It had so many gadgets I felt as if I were assembling a color television instead of playing a keyboard.

“Got to make a few sales here,” said the organ man to me severely. “You play what the folks like, right?”

“Right.”

And then, of course, I could not think of one thing to play. Not a single solitary melody came into my tiny mind. I stared at the organ keys as if they belonged to a typewriter.

Here it comes, I thought grimly. My first complete public failure.

“How about ‘Mighty like a Rose’?” said the organ salesman. “Or ‘I Love a Rainy Night’?”

It was sleeting out and this was a camellia exhibit, but he was paying, so I began the thin, mournful chords of “Rose.”

“Hey there! Alison!”

I glanced up, startled, and who should be in front of the organ but Mike MacBride, with a girl I didn’t know, and Dick Fraccola with Frannie. “What are you doing at a flower show?” I said, laughing. Immediately I was okay: I had an audience. I found my stride and failure disappeared.

“We’re just wandering around,” said Frannie. “We didn’t even know about the flowers.” She waved a bored hand at the long rows of tables all around me displaying camellias. “We’re just killing half an hour till the movie opens.”

Perhaps if I had been better company that time when Mike walked me down to gym, I’d be the one waiting with him now, I thought.

“Would you play ‘Evergreen’?” said Mike.

I was so sick of that song I wished it had never been written. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I said, just the way Ralph had taught me. “Sure, I’ll play it next.”

Mike’s eyebrows arched wistfully, waiting for it. Somebody should write a song about those eyebrows, I thought.

I wondered if Ted had good eyebrows. I could picture his face and his fingers and his hair, but not his eyes and eyebrows. Can’t judge a man by his eyebrows, I told myself.

But if I did, Mike certainly came off well.

For about ten minutes the Camellia Festival was like a dream: two marvelous, handsome boys ignoring their dates and staring at me with respect and pleasure as I played for them. (I just hoped they didn’t lean so hard on this portable organ that we all slid off the egg.)

And then some overweight, middle-aged man with a mustache that needed trimming asked for a John Philip Sousa march. The organ salesman nodded at me; obviously he wanted this potential customer pleased. Who cared what a bunch of teenagers wanted? They didn’t buy organs.

Unfortunately, I had never had occasion to play any Sousa marches. Or anybody else’s marches. I added a long tag to the rock number I was doing to give myself time to think. I hated to admit ignorance. On the other hand, if I tried to play a march and failed, the whole mall would know I’d been defeated.

Most of all, Mike and Dick would know.

Memories of football game marching bands at halftime came to me. I could feel a scrap of Sousa melody—that part where the piccolo shrills over the tubas. “Sure,” I said to the customer, taking my reputation into my fingers. I launched full volume into a piece I didn’t know, throwing on extra brass and percussion until the swell of the instrument filled the entire mall. The customer began marching in place beside me.

I absolutely hate it when adults act like little kids. I get so embarrassed for them. But I was getting paid and I had to be part of it. I had no choice but to nod, grin, and make marching movements with my elbows so the man would feel good about his marching.

People turned, smiling, because everybody loves a march.

When I finished, I got a super round of applause. I was flushed with pleasure. Without Ralph and the rest to carry me through, I’d winged it—when one mistake would have boomed out in two hundred stores.

I turned to see Mike’s expression, but he was no longer there.

I searched the camellia crowd for him. After a minute I spotted the four of them sauntering down one of the star-shaped wings to the Cookie Monster Shoppe. Frannie was pointing at the fat sugar cookies decorated like Muppets, and obviously Dick planned to buy her one.

They had left while I was still playing. They hadn’t been impressed at all. More likely they had been bored.

My chest hurt and my eyes blurred over. “I have to take a break,” I said to the organ man.

“Sure, honey. Listen, you’re super. You’re fantastic. How about you and me working out something permanent? Okay?”

The way I felt then, the only thing I wanted permanently was out of music.

The organ salesman was hopping with excitement. He was selling more organs in half an hour than he usually sold in a week. “Okay?” he said. “Want to? Okay?”

It’s not okay, I thought. I don’t want some old organ salesman to call me honey. I want…

But I didn’t know what I wanted.

If I had been able to sort that out, I probably wouldn’t be faced with this sort of thing. I wanted everything. Settling for pieces of my dreams hurt. I kept a smile glued to my face and threaded through the camellias. Where, in a brilliantly lit shopping mall, was I going to find a corner of darkness? I had to sit down somewhere and pull myself together.

“…personally prefer Blood of China,” said a blue-haired old lady.

“…has a nice bouquet, though,” said her antique companion.

“…horrible racket is over. I detest loud music.”

“…head aches from listening to that girl slam around on that dreadful instrument.”

Somehow I got off the egg, but my smile was not going to last much longer. If only Lizzie or Ralph were along! They knew how to shrug off anything. You have to be tough in this business, Ralph had said over and over.

Who wanted to be tough?

I managed to find a fat pillar to lean on, and the spotlights did create a pool of dark behind it, but my clothing was so gaudy I had no hope of really being hidden. Oh, for a bedroom with a door that closed so I could sob for a few minutes before going back on the stage!

I didn’t have enough self-control to keep the tears back.

I reminded myself fiercely that I’d ruin my makeup, I’d look terrible, I’d make a display of myself…but it didn’t help.

Just as my face crumpled into tears, a flash camera went off in front of me.

“A
LISON!” SAID TED. “WHAT’S
the matter? That’s not the photograph I expected to get. You were wonderful up there. What on earth is wrong?”

I had been right about him. He was a comforting person. His crinkly features crinkled some more as he put an arm around me, and then I had my dark corner—between the pillar and Ted’s chest.

Nobody there but me and Ted’s camera.

I laughed through my tears.

“What’s wrong?” he said again, gently.

“I’m not sure, Ted. I guess I’m just tired. Letting small things get to me.” I shrugged. I couldn’t explain it. Maybe if we’d had hours ahead of us I could have worked into it. But I had only ten minutes and then I’d have to play some more.