Yearbook (8 page)

That did it, all right.

“He’ll take it!!” Nathan snapped his fingers.

Spirits decidedly lifted as he walked into the hallway, Guy took the phone. All dinner table action ceased. Breathing in unison, nobody ate. Everyone stared.

Unable to control his nervousness, Guy delivered a high-pitched “Hello?” The old squeakbox revealed all.

“Hiya, kid. Busy?” came Corky’s voice over the telephone.

“Not really,” Guy replied in falsetto, staring into the living room at the piano.

Nathan made a gesture with his hands, signaling Guy to lower his voice, talk slower, calm down.

How?
thought Guy.

“I stopped in at the
Eagler
this afternoon,” said Corky. “Leonard showed me your pictures of the game.”

“And?” Guy responded cautiously.

“They’re super, Guy! Just super!”

“Pssst! Pssst!” Butch interjected from the dining room.

“Uhm, Corky. Can you hold on a minute?” His hand over the receiver, Guy snapped, “What the hell is it?”

“Ask him over!” said Butch, excitedly. “Ask him to come watch television with us.”

“Good idea!” added Rose.

“Tell him I’ve just finished a cheesecake, “ Birdie added on.

Rolling his eyes skyward, Guy signaled them to calm down. “Sorry, Corky,” he said, back on the line. “What were you saying?”

“Ro-Anne and I are down here at the Sugar Bowl. Would you like to join us for a soda or something?”

Would he?!
“Sounds terrific.” Guy tried remaining in control. “Hold on a second.”

Again cupping the receiver, Guy repeated Corky’s invitation.

“Tell him YES!” Nathan was emphatic. “I’ll drop you off on the way to my poker game.”

“Fine, Corky. My Dad’s going to a friend’s, so he can drop me off.”

“Swell,” Corky answered. “We’ll drive you home later.”

“Thanks. Thanks about a million. Be there in a little while.”

Guy hung up and turned to see his family staring at him with new eyes, and wondering what was going on.

“Well,” he shrugged, “guess I’ll get my coat. “

As Guy walked into the Sugar Bowl, the jing-a-ling bells announced his entrance. Corky, down at the last booth with Ro-Anne, waved him over.

Ro-Anne was vacuuming up the remains of a tall and noisy buttermilk. Corky nursed a glass of milk.

“Have a seat,” said Corky, taking a small sip.

Guy plopped down across from them.

Corky’s arm hung around Ro-Anne’s shoulders and her hand rested securely on his near thigh. “You know Ro-Anne, don’t you?”

Guy waved. “I’ve seen you perform. I meancheerleading. “

“Hi.” Ro-Anne winked at him, never removing her clenched teeth from the straw.

A waitress came to the table.

“What’ll you have, Guy?” asked Corky.

“Oh, I don’t know. Coke I guess.”

“Coke
?” Corky made a sour face. “Bringme another glass of milk.”

“You?” the waitress asked Ro-Anne.

Ro-Anne, holding the grip on her straw, shook her head,
no.
Her freshly shampooed blonde pony tail swayed with her response.

“Tell you why we asked you here,” said Corky, squeezing Ro-Anne and her straw closer. “We found out the big news tonight. It’s still hush-hush. Ro-Anne’s been elected this year’s Queen of the Hawaiian Moon Ball!”

“Congratulations! That’s great!” said Guy, having little idea what that meant.

Lock-jawed, Ro-Anne mumbled, “Thanks.”

“So she gets to preside over the dance after the big game against Sewanhaka on Saturday.”

The waitress returned and dropped off the drinks.

Corky continued. “That means she’ll need really good pictures for the
Venture.”

“What’s that?” asked Guy.

“Yearbook,” muttered Ro-Anne, matter-of-fact.

“Oh. “ Guy pinched himself for not knowing such rudimentary information.

Corky c lapped his hands together. “You say yes and I’ll see to it you become the official
Venture
photographer. Think about it.”

Guy thought about it. “Yes!” he said, too loud.

“But first you gotta agree to something.”

“Anything.”

“You gotta take more pictures of me and Ro-Anne than anyone else.”

“I will. I will.”

“I want to be all over that yearbook, kid. Cover to cover! I want my kids to look through it someday and see what a hot shot their old man was.”

Ro-Anne coughed into her buttermilk.

“And what a beauty Ro-Anne was,” Corky was quick to add.

“You got it!”

“Terrific,” said Corky. “I know you won’t let us down.”

“Oh, no… .”Guy promised. “I won’t let you down.”

“Swell!” said Corky.

“Neat-o!” said Ro-Anne.

“I’ll drink to that!” said Guy.

And the three of them lifted glasses, toasting their pact. Ro-Anne finally parted with her straw.

A jing-a-ling above the door. Corky and Ro-Anne both strained past Guy to see who’d entered the hangout. Nudging Corky, Ro-Anne giggled. Guy turned to see who was there.

Amy.

“That’s
her!”
Ro-Anne whispered to Guy.

“Who is she?” Guy whispered back.

“Oh, just the weirdest zombie you can imagine. Amy Silverstein. She has the hall locker next to mine. Always stuffing the strangest books into it.”

“Yeah?” Guy asked. “Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Things you never heard of.
Atlas Shrugged
, is one. You can hardly ever get a word from her. Jewish
and
ugly. Can you think of a worse combo?”

“Ro-Anne!” Corky said.

Ro-Anne brought an innocent hand to her mouth. “Did I say that?”

Amy stood at the magazine rack, aware she was being made fun of. God how she hated the Sugar Bowl; hated the shallow, anti-intellectual crowd that gathered there. All those cattle, she thought. Dressing, looking, sounding alike. Fraternity-sorority bullshit. Love-me-let-me-in-love-me!
No Thank You!

She’d never have come into the place, but it was the only store in town that carried
Atlantic Monthly.

Lifting the magazine from the rack, she carefully avoided eye contact with the patrons.

Guy now watched the tall girl with the long nose, the odd hair, the bad skin and poor posture purchase a magazine.

Shoulders hunched forward, eyes cast down to the floor, she walked from the shop.

As the jing-a-ling signaled her exit, Guy couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

“Seems to me,” reasoned Ro-Anne with a dimpled smile, “every town’s got to have its share of creeps, no?”

At first no one answered, Guy and Corky having their private thoughts. Then Corky laughed and said, “Long as we’re not one of them, right?”

Guy laughed too, his pang of empathy short-circuited. He’d fought too long and alone and was finally too near the inner circle.

Amy stood on the corner of Poste Avenue, thumbing her way through
The Atlantic Monthly
. An article on the Lost Generation. Enticing. A piece on Sputnik, the Russian satellite. Fine. Poetry by Allen Ginsberg. Her evening was set. She could now hurry home and get lost in the magazine. Now she could erase the awful moments just spent in The Sugar Bowl. Most likely, she wouldn’t be able to. She never had. Even way back when…

Amy had loathed Rose Cliff. She had little in common with the other girls, many of them delicate WASP snobs, future cotillion Debs hailing from Grosse Point, Oyster Bay and Wellesley Hills; most of them labeled with cutesy-poo nicknames—Mimsy, Pipsi, Muffy, Woozy.

It was 1951 and ten-year-old Amy already stood an ungainly five-feet-six. The tallest in her class, she towered over everyone. Ten years old!

Other girls at Rose Cliff had the smallest of noses, the silkiest heads of hair, the loveliest of petite bodies, little or no trouble heading into the awkward years. All the good genes old money could buy.

Morning hours at Rose Cliff were devoted to academic studies. For Amy, a breeze. Afternoons covered the domestic arts. Sewing. Cooking. Charm. How to stand, sit and walk; how to dance the fox trot, the rhumba; how to speak softly, ladylike, with just the right finishing school accent; how to tell the fish knife from the butter knife. Torture.

Amy’s mother had given up her annual Miami Beach vacation and Dr. Silverstein drilled overtime so they could send their daughter to so fine a training ground as Rose Cliff. They sacrificed so Amy would be best prepared for the one accomplishment expected from her in their lifetime:
The Right Man!…

One night Amy finished reading
Little Women
, and wept.

She didn’t cry because Meg had married a nice young chap—they deserved each other. It didn’t upset her that Jo was off to New York, writing her way to fame and fortune—best of luck! She wasn’t even especially thrown by Beth’s death at such a tender age—she’d been expecting that.

What brought her to tears was that it was Amy—Amy, her own namesake—the true beauty of all the sisters, who got to marry Laurie, the adorable boy next door, the best catch in the book.

Amy wept because it was all so typically unfair. Ever since she’d escaped into the world of literature, it kept happening, one book after the next, from author to author.

The beautiful girl always caught Prince Charming at the end, always got to live happily ever after. Always the beautiful girl.

What about
us?
thought Amy. What happens to us?

With a deep sigh, she wiped her eyes and sat up straight. Dorm lights had to be out in half an hour, at precisely nine-thirty, and Amy had put on her pajamas hours earlier so she could read until then.

Amy’s roommate, Bobo Weeks, a pipsqueak of a child, strawberry blonde, brazen, befreckled and just about the right peanut size for a ten-year-old, hurried into the room.

“Hi, Amesy! Reading again?’’ Bobo bounced onto her bed.

“My name is Amy.”

“ Scuse
me for living!” said Bobo, jumping up again. Hopping to the bureau, she picked up one of the dolls from her international collection. “What’d you read tonight?” Bobo pretended to be interested as she got lost in the mantilla of her stuffed Spanish senora.

“My love letters from Tony Curtis,” answered Amy, slamming shut her book of poetry.

Bobo undressed her Dutch doll. “I was down in Missy’s room earlier. Her oldest sister married a cousin of one of the DuPonts and her parents threw a giant tent wedding. There’s a picture of it in this month’s
Town and Country.”

“So what?” said Amy. “I’m planning to marry a DuPont some day, myself.”

“Mmmm,” hummed Bobo dreamily to her Scottish lassie. “Wouldn’t that be nifty?”

Amy put on her bathrobe and went to the door. “I’m going to brush my teeth. “

“Aren’t you going to take a book with you?” Bobo called after her, sharing a hearty laugh with her French can-can dancer.

The bathroom window was open and the chill autumn night gave Amy a shiver. After shutting out the cold air, she went to the sink. She turned on the faucets, reached for the soap with one hand, untied her bathrobe with the other and that’s when she first saw it.

Blood. All over her pajama bottoms, right there in front.

She ran from the room. Water still poured from the faucets.

Flying down the stairs, Amy hurried to the pay phone in the lobby. To call Evelyn. She’d know what to do. That’s what mothers were for.

Her near-hysteria began to subside even as Amy neared the phone. Then she ran into Miss Houghton.

“Amy?” asked the puzzled gray-haired English teacher in her monotone-nasal New England accent. “Down here in the lobby like this?”

“I have to use the phone!” said Amy, trying to conceal her anxiety.

“It’s five minutes to Lights Out. Telephone privileges ended at seven-thirty.”

“I know, Miss Houghton. But it’s real important!”

“An emergency?” asked Miss Houghton, not changing her critical tone.

“I think so.” Amy pulled the sides of her robe together, praying nothing obvious was showing.

“Tell me what it is,” insisted Miss Houghton, peering through wire-rimmed glasses.

“I can t!” Amy declared. “It’s personal!”

“Well it certainly can’t be too personal if it’s a genuine emergency, can it now, Amy? You tell me what it is and I’ll decide if it’s any kind of emergency.”

Tell Miss Houghton what it was? Was she crazy? How could Amy tell
anyone
about something so embarrassing, so private? Well, you see, Miss Houghton, it’s like this. There’s this blood oozing out of my honeypot and I’m a little concerned, is all. It would never do.
Primary social grace: a young lady never mentions anything connected with human plumbing.

“Well, Amy …” Miss Houghton folded her arms in her favored
Goodbye Mr. Chips
manner. “I’m waiting for an answer!”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Miss Houghton. Please let me use the phone. Please!”

“Why don’t we discuss this in the morning, Amy? I’m going to ring the Lights Out bell now, so I suggest you take your problem to bed with you. If you wish to call home, you may do so tomorrow evening at six-thirty. You know the rules.”

“Miss Houghton,
please!”

“And next time you come to the lobby, I suggest you appear in appropriate attire. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re doing our best to turn all of you into proper young ladies. We cannot do our work without your cooperation, now can we? Good night!”

Tears in her eyes, Amy climbed back upstairs.

The Lights Out bell had donged by the time Amy finished washing away her predicament. It was dark in her room when she got there—small blessing, as she could avoid banal banter with Bobo.

Carefully crawling into bed, Amy did her best not to disturb anything crucial. Lying there in the dark, all alone, she was sure something had gone haywire inside; God in heaven, she knew not what—but holy shit, was she scared!

Rose Cliff taught its girls, future wives and mothers, all the social graces. But no one, not even Louisa May Alcott, had ever once suggested what to expect when you got your period.