Authors: Marie Bostwick
River's Edge (14 page)
Mama followed his exit with a disappointed look before turning to me and smiling again. “Don't pay any attention to that, Elise,” she said and gave me another quick squeeze. “You are going to be the belle of the ball tonight. Just enjoy yourself.”
“Yes, Mama. I will,” I replied dutifully, but somehow the shine had gone out of the evening.
Junior drove. Cookie was graciously going to let me ride in the front seat, but I declined, saying that she needed more room because her legs were longerâwhich was not true; I was a good two inches taller than Cookie. She hopped into the front seat next to Junior, being careful to arrange her skirts around her so they wouldn't look wrinkled when we arrived at the dance.
Cookie chattered away like a magpie about the evening ahead, wondering what the decorations would look like, asking questions without waiting for answers, now and then urging Junior to drive a bit faster, but not too fast. She didn't want to be late to meet up with Mark in front of the main door of the gymnasium, but she didn't want to be too early, either, and risk standing around looking awkward while waiting for her date to arrive.
“Do you think he'll bring me a corsage? It would be awful if I were the only girl there without ...” She stopped in midsentence, remembering that I didn't have a corsage and that there would be no one waiting at the door with a flower for me. She paused awkwardly and then spoke again, more slowly this time.
“You'll have lots of dances, Elise. You'll be the prettiest girl there. And you'll certainly be the best dressed.”
I murmured my thanks, knowing in my heart that she was right, at least the part about being the best dressed. I knew that when I walked into the room, all the girls would be talking about my dress and wondering where it had come from. Would they all reach the same conclusion that Junior had? Was he right?
I stroked the miraculously silky fabric with the tip of my forefinger and thought about its origins. The ice blue hue of the skirt read as flat gray in the diminishing light of the summer evening. It didn't shine as it had in the warm light of the Muller kitchen.
I looked out the window and began counting telephone poles, trying to calculate how many poles and miles of wire it would take to stretch from Brightfield to Paris.
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I walked into the gymnasium and knew it had been a mistake to come.
In my mind this occasion, the graduation prom, had become something much more elegant and glamorous than a high school dance. My imagination had conjured up a scene that was a cross between a Viennese ball, with swirling couples waltzing through gilded banquet halls, and a ritzy New York supper club, where the men all wore tuxedos and the women dressed in evening gowns every night and I was Norma Shearer, the most stunning woman in the room, wearing a dress of gold cloth and smoking cigarettes in a slender ebony cigarette holder.
The real setting was much more humble, despite a wonderful job by the decorations committee. The dance floor was ringed with tables covered by white cloths. Each table had a floral arrangement with three small white candles, which looked a lot like the candles we used to decorate the church at Christmas, and white roses interspersed with willow branches dipped in silver paint. Longer tables with bigger versions of the same floral bouquets, flanked by tall silver candelabras, which I was also sure had been borrowed from the church storeroom, stood on either side of the gym. Each one had a silver punch bowl in the center and trays of cookies and tea sandwiches and bowls of nuts.
It really was quite pretty and yet ... the scent of rose petals couldn't quite mask the odor of floor wax and damp towels that seems to permeate the pores of every high school gymnasium. Instead of the dance orchestra I'd invented in my imagination, there was a simple combo consisting of a pianist, bassist, saxophone player, drummer, and combination lead singer/clarinetist who tried his best to mimic a Benny Goodman grin. And while my classmates did look nice in their party dresses and suits and ties, they were still my classmates, as giggly, gangly, and acne-scarred as they had been when I'd left them on Friday afternoon. No amount of perfume and Brylcreem could transform them into sophisticated socialites.
It is not vanity on my part to say that my dress was the prettiest in the room; it was simply a fact. When I came in, all the girls ooohed and ahhhed over it and asked me where in the world I got it. I brushed off their questions and their compliments. I was in the Bulldogs gym, not the Rainbow Room; I felt embarrassed. I was clearly overdressed, and I knew that no matter how fawning their admiration to my face, when the girls gathered in the powder room they would criticize me behind my back.
I decided that I would not allow myself to think about that. The evening might not live up to the mental fantasy I'd embroidered, but it was a lovely party. For the first few minutes everyone seemed a little tentative, as though not quite sure how to behave in such fancy, unfamiliar surroundings. It was as if they were all dressed up in their parent's clothes and playing at being grown up. The band started to play, but for the first three or four tunes, couples just milled around nervously, not wanting to make themselves conspicuous by being the first pair to take the floor. Cookie and Mark finally worked up the courage to dance, and it wasn't long before other couplesâthose who, like Cookie and Mark, were “going steady”âfollowed suit and took the floor. Soon dancers were packed together like sardines, swaying in time to the musical stylings of George Kaplan and the Hep Cats.
There was a row of folding chairs arranged along one wall. This was where a line of dateless girls sat, perched primly on the edge of their seats with their gloved hands folded neatly in their laps, trying to appear interested in the music but completely disinterested in the clumps of boys who had come stag and might, or might not, rescue them from the indignity of wallflowerdom.
The girls seemed determined to ignore the presence of the other young women seated next to them; possibly they felt it would be easier for a boy to ask a lone girl to dance than it would be for him to interrupt a conversation between chatting females. The boys, however, hung about the corners of the room in groups, eyeing girls, guffawing, and, when the chaperones' backs were turned, sneaking a pull from a flask stored in a pocket. Every now and again, the boys would start elbowing one another and laughing more vigorously, obviously daring one of their gang to ask one of the girls for a dance until finally the gauntlet was thrown and their buddy took the dare. The brave youth would then cross the room and ask the girl of his choice if she wanted to dance while the lucky female would try to look as if the suggestion took her completely by surprise. This elaborate ritual was repeated every few minutes. Each time it was, and their numbers were reduced, the unclaimed girls would sit up a bit straighter and try harder than ever to look as though they were just happy to listen to the music.
In all the weeks that Cookie and I had talked about the prom and discussed what we would wear and practiced our dance steps, taking turns leading, I hadn't considered the possibility that I wouldn't have a dance partner. It wasn't that I was pining to dance with one particular boyâI just had a vision of myself swirling around the floor, guided by a pair of sure feet and strong arms, my hand resting lightly on one of his broad shoulders. There was no special masculine face involved in my fantasy. No, that wasn't quite true.
The previous night I had awoken from a dream. I was waltzing to the music of a full orchestra, the dance floor was ringed by sparkling lights, and the air smelled of gardenias. My partner and I moved like one person, gliding easily together in long, flowing arcs, and I realized that the dance floor had turned into a shining sheet of ice and our shoes were really silver skates. It was exhilarating! I laughed aloud, pushed myself lightly off my partner's shoulder into a spin. I saw Junior's face smiling back at me, momentarily coming into my field of vision, then disappearing again as I spun around and around until I finally awoke with a start and found myself sitting upright in bed, the music and lights all gone. The room was silent except for the sound of my heart beating steadily in my ear and Cookie's heavy, slow breathing. My cheeks were hot, as though still flushed from the dance, but the heat faded from my face even as the dream faded from my memory. I pushed the picture of Junior as my dance partner from my mind, dismissing it as nothing more than one of the absurdities of the world of dreams, as inconsequential and improbable as a dance floor made of ice.
Now, seeing myself through the eyes of my classmates, in my too-fine finery, and feeling the weight of my German accent heavy on my tongue, I knew that I would not dance that night. I would not take a chair among the chain of unclaimed hopefuls. There was no point. If I did, that was where I would spend the rest of the night, sitting taller and taller, my eyes more and more determinedly glued to the dance floor as the numbers of unmatched girls around me dwindled and only I was left without a partner.
I would not subject myself to the humiliation. At the same time, I couldn't spend the rest of the evening loitering by the punch bowl, feigning an unquenchable thirst. I considered hiding out in the ladies' room, but I knew that it would be filled with giggling girls who had briefly and coyly abandoned their dates on the pretense of needing to powder their noses while their real aim was to retire to a female sanctuary to compare notes and boast about the attributes and devotion of their escorts. The idea of joining them was too depressing for serious consideration.
I glanced around the room as I considered my options and saw Junior standing alone in the opposite corner of the room, staring at me. My face colored, not from any embarrassment but from irritation at the thought that he could somehow read my mind and was enjoying my predicament. His lips curled in a smug smile as he saw me looking at him.
Furious, I turned away and held out my empty punch glass to Mr. Simmons, the ancient bachelor science teacher and assistant principal who manned the refreshment table.
“My! You must be awfully thirsty tonight, Miss Braun. That's your third glass of punch.”
I fumbled in my mind for some explanation but was rescued by the arrival of Cookie and Mark, who, having danced to five or six tunes in a row, truly were thirsty. Mr. Simmons handed them each a glass of punch and asked if they'd mind keeping an eye on the table while he went to refill the sandwich trays.
“I'll be right back, Mr. Woodward. Make sure no one touches that punch. If I come back and there is the slightest trace of alcohol in that bowl, I will know exactly who is to blame. Understood?”
“Understood,” replied Mark. We all smiled as Mr. Simmons walked in the direction of the cafeteria with the empty tray in his hand, but under his breath I could hear Mark mumble something that sounded like “sanctimonious old goat.”
“Hey, Cookie,” I said. “Do you have a cigarette? I think I'll go outside for a smoke.”
Cookie's carefully penciled eyebrows raised in surprise. “Of course I don't have a cigarette! I don't smoke. Neither do you. What are you talking about?”
Mark reached into the pocket of his jacket and, after checking about him to see that no adults were watching, retrieved a crumpled pack of cigarettes. “Here,” he said surreptitiously pulling a smoke from the pack. “Take one of mine.”
“I never knew you smoked,” Cookie said doubtfully.
“Why shouldn't I?” he asked, without a trace of defensiveness in his voice. “My old man grows the stuff. Three quarters of the kids in this room live on tobacco farms. I think it's stupid that the school won't allow me to smoke when it's tobacco money that pays the taxes to run the place.”
“Still, I don't think it can be very good for you.”
I ignored Cookie's objections and took the cigarette, concealing it in my palm so none of the chaperones would see. “Thanks.”
The air outside was clear and cool. I was grateful to be out of the stuffy gymnasium and away from the crowds. Retreating to a quiet corner on the back wall of the gym, I leaned back against the bricks and tilted my head up to see the stars. Suddenly a star shot across the sky, expending itself in a last burst of brilliance before dying, determined to leave some kind of impression so that after it flamed out and disappeared, someone might look up and notice an empty place where a small light had once lived. I squinted up at the heavens, trying hard to pinpoint the spot where the star had been only a moment before.
Loneliness threatened to overwhelm me. I moved away from the dark part of the wall and into a tight, distinct circle of light under a spotlight where it was harder to see the night sky and easier to ignore sad thoughts. Inside, the band was playing “I'll Never Smile Again.” I closed my eyes and hummed along.
The air felt colder than it had at first. I wished I'd thought to bring my wrap with me but didn't want to go back inside to get it. Having successfully made my escape without being noticed by chaperones or nosy classmates, what was I going to do out here? The cigarette was just an excuse to get outside, but now that I was standing around with nothing to do, I supposed I might as well go ahead and give smoking a try. I fished the cigarette out of my evening clutch and put it to my lips but then remembered I had no matches.
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