My First Love and Other Disasters (3 page)

“I found them, Mr. Howell! I got them. The size sixes.” And Jim comes charging out of the cellar.

Rats! Now he finds them! But it's too late because now Mr. Howell is going to say they're the wrong size and make him go back down and look for the sevens and naturally he's going to think I'm insane and hate me forever.

But it doesn't happen that way. All Mr. Howell says is, “You see what happens when you look with your eyes open?” And he grabs the shoes from the box and pronounces them “perfect, beautiful shoes—are you a lucky girl!”

“I'll put them on,” I say, reaching for the shoes.

“No, no, dear, let the boy.” And Mr. Howell nods to Jim, who sits down on one of those little seats with the slanted fronts for trying on shoes.

Remember that part in Cinderella where the mean stepsisters try to squeeze their feet into the glass slipper? That's nothing compared to what goes on with these loathsome espadrilles. Naturally Steffi is absolutely killing herself. She's so hysterical she keeps sliding off the chair and making all kinds of dumb snorting, giggling sounds.

I don't let him give up. I make some excuse about my socks being all bunched up and twist
them around, adjust them, pull them up tight, and point my toes with all my might. The espadrilles slide beautifully past the toes and hit a brick wall somewhere around the middle of my foot about a mile from the heel. By now my dearest friend, Steffi, is totally convulsed on the floor. The rest of us pretend she's not even in the store.

“I think they're too narrow maybe, huh?” Jim is trying to sound ordinary, like you do with regular normal human beings when they try on shoes that don't fit them.

At this point all I have to say is “Yeah, you're right, too narrow, thanks,” or something like that, and pick up my imbecile best friend and walk out. And that's just what I'm about to do but I'm not fast enough.

“Don't worry, dear,” Mr. Howell says with a sickly-sweet smile, “we'll get you the next size.”

We're this little knot of people in one corner of an almost empty store and there's no way to get away. I see Jim roll his eyes and hear him make a soft groan when Mr. Howell says how he should go back down to the basement and find me the right size.

I absolutely cannot let him go back down to that cellar again for shoes I'm never going to put on once I take them out of the store. Besides, he'll despise me forever if I do. So with one horrendous
shove, I jam my foot into the shoe which goes flying six inches into Jim's stomach, pushing him backward right off his seat.

“Perfect,” I say through clenched teeth. “I love them snug.”

You've got to picture Steffi still doubled over on the floor, Jim sprawled down next to her, and me on Jim's seat somehow with my leg sticking straight out in the air. It's too funny. Now Mr. Howell grabs the foot with the new shoe, gives it a this-way that-way squeeze, and pronounces it a perfect fit.

“I'll take them!” I say and start to pull it off. You guessed. It doesn't budge.

“Write up the bill, Jimmy,” says Mr. Howell, who's not taking any chances, “while I help the little girl off with her new shoes.” And he starts to pull at the shoe.

Jim goes to the cash register to write up the sale. Naturally he's really confused because he doesn't know why someone would buy shoes that obviously are miles too small, and any fool can see they are the ugliest, grossest things ever made. How would he possibly know that I'm doing all this out of love for him? All he thinks is that I'm probably on a weekend pass from the nuthouse. Certainly Steffi looks like she is.

“Perhaps you would prefer waiting outside,” I
say to Steffi in a surprisingly controlled voice while I pinch her arm and nudge her toward the door. She can't exactly answer me, but she obeys and lurches into the street, in screaming hysterics. Very immature.

I, on the other hand, play it absolutely cool. In a flash I see that I can't get the shoe off without a lot of unattractive tugging and puffing, so I say, like it's practically an afterthought, “I think I'll wear it home.”

“Here's the other one,” Jim says, taking the second shoe out of the box.

“Thanks,” I tell him, snapping the shoe out of his hand. “I can manage.” He doesn't argue.

With what I hope looks like the greatest of ease, I begin to slip the second shoe on. I'm still toiling at it when Jim begins to wrap up my old shoes. He gives me some long, hard looks. Not those magical electric current things I dreamed about, the kind that pull you together and make everything zing. More like . . . yuck!

Well, nothing is perfect. I'm still working on the shoe when he finished the wrapping. Now I figure I'll never get the back on, so I just stop trying and crunch down on it. At least I don't have to worry about it sliding off the front—not without a four-man pull team anyway. The worst may be over, so I'm feeling pretty cool. As Jim fills out the sales
check, I busy myself studying the net weight on a can of tan Kiwi show polish.

“Uh . . . can you give me your name?” Jim says.

Dread moment, but I knew it was coming.

“Regina Goldin Vockwarger.” You didn't think I was going to give my real name in a disaster like this, did you?

“Regina what?”

“Goldin Vartbarker.”

“Vartwarker?”

“No, Vartrocker.” It's the first actual conversation we've ever had, and I want it to last forever.

“Could you spell that, please?”

“Sure, W-A-R . . .”

“W?”

“Yes, V is pronounced W in Hungarian.”

“You're Hungarian?” I can tell he's beginning to see me as a person now. Of course, it's the wrong person, but still . . . it's a start. He's probably saying to himself right now, “Gee, she's not so bad.” From out of nowhere Mr. Howell jumps into our private conversation. “Who's Hungarian?” he wants to know.

“She is.” Jim motions to me.

“What was that name, darling?” he asks, but I get very busy counting out the money, and as soon as he takes it I scoop up my shoe box and head for the door.

“Vartsugar,” I mumble, trying to give a kind of Hungarian warble to my voice. And I open the door fast and zoom out.

The last thing I hear Jim say is, “She's nuts.”

I don't know exactly where I screwed up, but I know in my heart it wasn't a total success. Probably more like a horrendous failure that I may never recover from. If only I could go back to where he doesn't know I'm alive.

Steffi comes back to my house and she tries to cheer me up, but I really feel heartbroken because when I looked at him today I knew this was something more than just a kid crush. I think I'm really in love with this beautiful guy, and it probably was dumb and silly and childish to go about it this way. I mean, this is too important for games.

I hope he doesn't remember who I was. But of course he will.
He's
not blind.

Steffi's all for trying it again, this time with a different approach, and she comes up with a couple of other ideas. In one I'm supposed to be taking a survey—you know, one of those house-to-house things, to measure the attitudes of teenage boys toward orphans or something, and the other is a whole big romantic thing where I pretend to faint in his elevator. They're pretty good ideas, especially the fainting one, but I don't know, I'm beginning to think that sort of stuff may be kind of babyish. I
don't say that to Steffi because I don't want to insult her, but I don't think I want to spoil what I feel for Jim with some contrived kind of set up. I tell her that if this thing can't start naturally and beautifully I'd rather just keep it inside myself. Of course she understands perfectly. Any best friend would.

Can it be that I'll have to suffer through one of those unrequited loves? That can happen—ugh. Sometimes you just love somebody and nothing can possibly happen. Like with old maids. I guess they probably loved somebody sometime in the past but they weren't loved back, or maybe the guy never even knew they existed and so they just spent the whole rest of their lives loving someone from far away.

That's not for me—I mean silently worshipping some idol and just kind of drying up and shrivelling away to nothing without him ever knowing.

No way! Okay, so I don't make up some silly little scene. Still, I've made up my mind. I'm not the long-suffering type. I'm not going to tell anyone, not even Steffi. Then it doesn't look so much like a set up, but I intend to make Mr. Jim Freeman very much aware of me very shortly. Watch out, Gloria!

Friday night I work on
my parents some more about the mother's helper job on Fire Island this summer. I'd be working for Cynthia Landry, this woman who lives in our building. I've been sitting for her kids for almost three years now. Last year she got a divorce. It was really horrendous. David and DeeDee—those are the kids—they were very upset. It's not like you could tell by just looking at them, but it seemed that they were always crying about something. Both of them. They would just burst into tears for nothing. All you had to say was, “David, it's too late to watch TV,” or just disagree with him about any little thing, and boom, he would start bawling. It was truly horrific since neither of them are babies. David's almost eight
now and DeeDee is five. It could really upset you, except I knew that it was a reaction to what was happening so I tried to be extra nice. I felt bad for them.

Divorce is such a scary thing. I don't know how you feel, but anytime my parents have an argument I practically hold my breath. I guess divorce is the worst thing next to something horrible happening, like one of them dying. (I'm very superstitious. I have to knock wood when I even think something awful like that.) Just the thought of my father moving away and my mother not loving him, maybe even hating him, makes my stomach sink.

Cynthia hates Jed—that's her ex-husband. He moved to California and he hardly sees the kids anymore. When they broke up, people were saying he was playing around with Cynthia's best friend, Amy. I don't know all the juice. All I know is that Amy didn't leave her husband to run off with Jed, but Charlie the doorman (he knows everything) says Cynthia doesn't talk to Amy anymore, and he says they were practically like sisters. Like Steffi and me, I guess.

It's a funny thing, but I used to think they had a fabulous marriage and I used to baby-sit a lot for them, so I knew what they were like together. It really looked fantastic, I mean they hardly ever
argued, and mostly they helped each other and did things together even, like cooking. He liked to mess around in the kitchen and make bread and things like that. I don't know. I even used to hope that my husband (if I ever get married, which I'll probably do when I'm about twenty-seven or so, but I want a career and I want to live with a few people first so I can make the right choice) would be a lot like Jed.

Ugh! He turned out to be such a creep. I don't blame Cynthia for hating him. But that's what makes me so nervous. Not that my parents fight a lot, because they don't. But neither did Cynthia and Jed, and look what happened to them. You can't ever tell what's really going on with your parents. One day they could just come in and announce that it's over, for some dumb reason, like they're incompatible or unfulfilled, and that's that. I mean, there's nothing in the world you can do about it. It's not like a Disney movie where the kids come up with some outrageous plan and then in the end they get the parents back together again. Baloney. It never happens.

Like with Steffi's parents. Everything was great, and then they got a divorce and it looked like there wasn't even a reason. Steffi said there absolutely wasn't anyone else involved, and she and her brother did all sorts of things to try to get them
back together, but it didn't make any difference. They had made up their minds. Kids never really have anything to say about family things like that. Whatever your parents decide, no matter how gross or how much it hurts you, forget it, they get to make the decision and that's that. I don't think it's fair at all. But a lot that counts! I mean what a kid thinks.

Anyway, David and DeeDee seem to be pretty okay now. I guess they'll get it together, but still I feel bad for them. I would just love to be their mother's helper for the summer, and I know Cynthia really wants me to be. I get the shivers just thinking about how sensational it would be living on Fire Island this summer. Not only would I be near Jim, but I'd be practically living on my own. Sure I'd have to take care of the kids, but I don't mind that, and then on my time off I'd be on my own—me and Jim. Oh, I don't think I ever wanted anything so much in all my life!

I have to make my parents understand how much it means to me. My mother is still saying, “We'll see,” about the job, but I have to get a definite answer one way or the other soon because if I don't Cynthia is going to get someone else. It just so happens that Steffi's mother said she could go, so if I can't I guess then maybe Cynthia would ask Steffi. I would hate that. I know that's sour grapes and
Steffi is really my best friend, but between you and me, I would hate Steffi if she took the job, which of course she would because, after all, why shouldn't she? Naturally I would tell her that I didn't mind, and then she would probably say, “Are you sure?” and I would say, “Absolutely,” but I would absolutely hate her and my parents and Nina, too, because she'd probably think it was hysterical that Steffi was getting my job.

No matter how much I want it to be the best, I guess this summer could just possibly be the worst summer of my entire life, which is a pretty awful gift for somebody's fifteenth birthday.

Did I forget to mention that? I turn fifteen on Sunday, and that's when I make my major, final, desperate, dying-gasp plea for the Fire Island job—at my birthday dinner.