Nancy and Nick (11 page)

I was completely astonished when Mother leaned forward as if to tell Nick a confidence. “I thought I’d start with new paint,” she said. “I’m sick of these cream-colored walls. Especially where you can see the lighter places where my quilts hung. What would you think of shiny cranberry red for the window wall and a slick royal blue for the rest of the room? Maybe lemon yellow mini-blinds for the windows and emerald green upholstery for the chairs?”

We gaped at her. “That doesn’t sound very early American,” said Nick in the sort of voice his Aunt Catherine would use if she couldn’t understand you.

“I’ve been through my early American stage,” said Mother firmly. “I’m reaching out for something else. I’ve always liked bright colors. I want a whole rainbow in here. Something that will smack you in the face when you open the door.”

“It’ll be cheerful,” said Nick doubtfully.

“What about beige?” I said.

“Beige! I’ve had it with the natural look. All those tans and neutrals and wood and weeds. They sent me photographs from Bloomingdale’s showing their kitchen exhibit and you should see some of that stuff. They’ve built all sorts of levels and cabinetry and barn-siding walls and rippling kitcheny areas, with my old things sort of hanging around for atmosphere against all the walls—but up front! You should see up front! Purple laminated Parsons tables and brushed stainless steel lamps and lucite napkin rings and—”

“Good grief,” said Nick. “Talk about turning over a new leaf. And all I did was cut my hair.”

We all three began laughing helplessly, looking at the disaster that was the living room and imagining Mother’s lemon yellow blinds, scarlet walls, and brushed stainless steel lamps.

“How about supper?” said Nick. “As long as you’ll settle for cheeseburgers and french fries, it’s my treat.”

“I,” said Mother brightly, “have this marvelous idea.”

We looked at her nervously.

“No, no, not decorating the apartment. My idea is, since I want to lose some weight and I do not need french fries nor burger buns, you two go by yourselves and live it up. Have dessert. Go all out. I’ll stay here and have a cup of bouillon and meditate on whether I want lime green or pumpkin orange mugs.”

“You sure?” said Nick. “A cup of bouillon sounds depressing.”

“It is. Anything slimming is depressing.”

“Come with us,” said Nick again, and he really seemed worried. Did he really not want Mother to have bouillon, or did he not want to be alone with me? I had a piercing thought that as long as Mother was along, we were cousins—but alone, we might be a date. And all Nick wanted, as he’d so clearly told me, was to get away from the long endless cluttered line of N. C. Nearings. I shook off the thought. “Well, Nick,” I said, “let’s go then. See you after the dance, Mother.”

Nick clattered down the three flights of stairs without waiting for me. His knees kind of poked out to the sides when he moved, while mine went straight out frontwards. I loved watching him. He was moving like blue jeans, but he was wearing a suit.

It was funny. For years and years, all through elementary school, I had no use for boys. They were wild noisy animals with claws for fingernails and burps for conversation.

I can distinctly remember sitting in seventh-grade science, pretending to care about stamens and pistils when an eighth-grade boy came in to give Mr. Hines a note and I thought, Gee, I wish I knew him! It was the first time I ever wanted to be in a boy’s presence.

And now there were two boys I was interested in.

How absolutely incredible and marvelous to have two boyfriends!

I said to myself, hold it, Nelle Catherine. One cousin and one Mello Yello does not two boyfriends make … But it sure did make nice daydreaming.

The daydream lasted precisely as long as the drive to Burger King. Five minutes. Five minutes of silence on Nick’s part, while I assumed he was paying attention to the traffic, and five minutes of solid joyous daydreaming on my part, whirling among a long series of boyfriends.

Nick held the glass door for me to go in first and I was aware of the way he stood way back to hold it, as if he were making absolutely sure that I couldn’t brush against him. It was the first clue. I began to feel little pricks of nervousness all over.

Then we got up to the order counter and Nick stopped to look in his wallet. The way he did it, and the time he spent, turned the pricks into nails. “Let me pay for myself,” I said. “After all, it’s not really a date.”

“Right,” he said, looking relieved. “Okay.” And he placed an order for himself only.

I could hardly manage to speak out loud to the girl waiting for my order. I wanted to request no onions and no pickle, but I couldn’t find the words and I said nothing. I could take them out when we sat down. Okay, Nelle Catherine, I said to myself, you said it, he didn’t. It isn’t a date. Now just enjoy yourself anyway. If he can be polite, so can you.

And who should be sitting at a table for four and waving madly at us to join them but Holly and Chuck Summers. Chuck called hello and there was absolutely nothing we could do but sit with them.

Suddenly I was terribly ashamed of all the gossiping Holly and I had done about Nick. She knew so much of what I felt about him. I also knew what she really thought about Chuck. It didn’t seem funny. It seemed rotten and wrong, to have whispered so much to each other when the boys didn’t even know.

I introduced the boys. Chuck stood up, as if he were a businessman, although Nick was the one who looked like one; in his suit. It was such an adult gesture. It made me feel even more as if I were going to sit with a stranger. Or a pair of them.

And Nick actually looked at Chuck’s extended right hand and ignored it and sat down on the opposite side of the booth without shaking it, “Nick Nearing,” he said, “Nancy’s cousin.”

I wanted to scream that we weren’t cousins, that we had nothing in common but a peculiar name that was probably only coincidence. We were on a date, didn’t he understand? A date I’d dreamed about—but after all, the dream was just on my side. Nick had come for college interviews and a free room for the night. Still, he could have shaken Chuck’s hand. It bothered me that he hadn’t.

Chuck sat down and began on his french fries as if he hadn’t noticed a thing.

“So,” said Holly brightly, after an odd look at me, “we’ve heard so much about you, Nick.”

Nick gave her a tight smile and bit into his cheeseburger.

I could not possibly have taken a bite.

Chuck said, “That’s real interesting about you two being long-lost cousins. Everybody’s talking about it. Imagine finding a girlfriend through a cookbook. Better than those computer dating services, huh?”

Nick finished chewing. “Cousin,” he said very firmly, dispelling any image Chuck might have had of girl- and boyfriend.

My stomach was tied so tightly I could not possibly fit any food there. I pressed the rim of my drink cup to my lips to have something to do.

“So, Nick,” said Holly again. “Tell us about yourself. You, ah, let me see, came up here for college interviews?”

Nick nodded and went on eating.

Chuck said to me, “I hear you’re on the yearbook committee.”

“Yes. It’s going to be hard work.”

Holly said, “I’m glad I’m not on it.”

And that was the end of that topic. After a while Chuck said, “You play any sports, Nick? What are you going to be doing this summer?”

“Working,” said Nick. He got up to shove his papers in the trash receptacle.

Holly gave me an incredulous look. I could read it perfectly.
“This
is the famous Nicholas Charles Nearing?” she was asking me.

“He’s tired,” I whispered. “Long trip.”

Holly didn’t buy that for a moment, but she pretended to.

I was not at all surprised when Chuck said, “Well, we have to be going. I’ve got to change before the dance. You going back to change, too, Nick? It’s pretty informal. I mean, nobody else’ll be wearing a suit.”

“It isn’t one of my goals,” said Nick, in his perfectly awful tape-recorded tone, “to be like everybody else.”

“Uh huh,” said Chuck, which I thought under the circumstances was very verbal of him. “Well. Nice meeting you. See you later, okay?”

But if Nick thought it was nice meeting Chuck and Holly, he didn’t say so. So much for the young man with the lovely manners. My cheeks burned. I watched Holly and Chuck leave the restaurant. I knew that whatever other problems they might have together, they weren’t going to lack for conversation once they got out of earshot.

“Do you feel okay?” I said to Nick. If he was coming down with mononucleosis, that would be a good excuse for his behavior.

“Yes.”

“Listen, let’s forget about going to the dance. I know you’re tired from all that driving.”

“What’s the matter? Just because I found your friends boring, Nancy, you don’t want to go to this dance?”

I realized just how little I knew Nick, really. What were a few silly hours spent together joking about antiques and relatives? This guy was just plain rude.

He was also the guy I wanted terribly to get to know better.

I didn’t know what to do or say.

“Well, let’s go home and you can change, at least,” I said.

“I didn’t bring jeans after all.”

I could not, absolutely could not, go to an informal dance with somebody rude and tape-recorded who was wearing a vested suit.

“Let’s go,” he said, with all the eagerness with which one might address one’s Army recruitment officer.

I had pictured us laughing and talking and dancing—the perfect couple—matching from their names to their personalities, like a splash in a glimmering pool.

It was beginning to look instead as if we were the stone going to the bottom.

E
VERYBODY WHO KNEW ME
came over to be introduced. Nick, wearing such unexpected adult clothing, would sort of bow, and say “Good evening” in that awful canned tour guide voice. My friends would start to laugh, thinking he was imitating somebody, or joking. Then they’d see he wasn’t trying to be funny, he was really like that; they’d look at me incredulously and then shrug and back off.

Nick wouldn’t dance, either. Twice we actually got out on the dance floor. He sort of twitched a few times and then said he didn’t feel like it after all and walked away. It was either walk after him or go on dancing alone. I almost deserted him. I have never been so embarrassed. I just wanted to crawl away and never be seen in public again.

Nick and I sat on the sidelines like a pair of wallflowers and had nothing to say to each other. My metal folding chair was more companionable than Nick. I felt stiff all evening. Not just my conversation, but even my face and my fingers and my legs were stiff. The few people who stayed and tried to make conversation with us gave up fairly soon, because Nick just wouldn’t participate.

He gave no clues as to what was making him behave this way. All I knew was that it was, without doubt, the worst evening of my life. Everybody else seemed to be having an extraordinarily good time. Maybe it was just the comparison with Nick and me, but I ached with envy seeing everybody I knew laughing, dancing, and hugging.

Finally, at nine-thirty (the dance lasted until midnight) I said, “Nick, you must be exhausted. You want to go home?”

“All right.”

It felt as if the entire student body was turning around to watch us leave. I knew they knew we weren’t going to park somewhere. We were failures and they knew it and they were going to gossip about it. So much for Nancy’s super cousin. If that was her idea of a good date—whew! Sure, he was good looking, but so are department store mannequins.

I blushed, thinking about their exchanges after we were gone.

Nick walked too fast for me and I had to trot to keep up with him. That was the final insult, that I had to run to keep up with somebody I wished I’d never come with! The only good thing I could think of in the entire evening (my mother always combats depression by coming up with silver linings; I guess I’ve picked up the habit) was that school lasted a mere five more days so there was a limit to the amount of teasing I’d have to endure. By next year maybe everybody but me would have forgotten about Nick.

Nick opened the jeep door for me, which somehow surprised me, as I had figured every remnant of his manners was long gone, and I clambered into the car.

He got in without looking at me or speaking to me, started the engine, and headed for the apartment.

Fastening my seat belt was a more complex endeavor than usual. My stiff fingers wouldn’t cooperate and I was having to fight a real urge to cry. I studied the lock mechanism. Was there any way I could salvage the evening? Bring back the pleasant, funny Nicholas I’d fallen for?

Or did that Nick perhaps not exist? “Nancy?” he said finally.

“Mmmm?” I was too upset to say much. My throat hurt. It was ridiculous. I hadn’t had a sore throat from germs since I was a little kid, and here I was with my whole throat aching and rasping just because Nick hadn’t made the impression I’d anticipated.

It’s not important, I told myself. But it
was
important! I was crazy about Nick. I wanted other people to see the Nick I knew, not some difficult, fake, infuriating store mannequin of a jerk.

“I’m lost,” said Nick, his voice not taped this time, but very tight and strained. “Where’s your place from here?”

I looked up. We were on some narrow street without street lamps or signs. “I don’t recognize this,” I said. “Keep driving until the next intersection and then I’ll tell you.”

It seemed to take forever to reach the next intersection. When we finally stopped at a stop sign and I squinted to read the road names, I’d never heard of them. “Oh, honestly, Nick,” I said irritably.

“Why didn’t you tell me where to go?” he said twice as irritably.

“Believe me, I wanted to, after the way you behaved!” I snapped.

“You should have given me instructions on manners to be used in front of nosy old school friends, I guess, huh?”

“I never thought you’d need a lesson in manners. You’re seventeen years old. You ought to know how to shake hands by now.”