In Those Dazzling Days of Elvis

by Josephine Rascoe Keenan

  I cringed. Darcy would think I was a loose woman, if she knew.

  Darcy continued her lecture. “Maybe, if you mind your manners and act more ladylike, Justin’ll call you again.”

  “He already calls me!” Maylene snapped.

  “He didn’t act like it.”

  Darcy ducked her head, as if to evade a blow.

  I knew they’d both protest their sparring was all in fun but, in reality, the car was fraught with tension. All the girls knew how gone I was over Farrel, especially Maylene, and they all disapproved of her going to the dance with him. Supposedly, I was her best friend.

  “Imagine,” Lynn had said privately to me, “her finagling him into taking her. She absolutely could not bear for people to say that Maylene the Great didn’t have a date. Hey, made a rhyme. See my fellow before bedtime. If she’d only cooled her heels, she could have gone with Justin. He got back in time to take her.”

  “Maybe it was Farrel who did the finagling,” I’d said.

  Lynn’s eyes had grown wide. “I hope you’re not taking up for her!”

  “It’s water over the dam,” I’d said, but it wasn’t. It would never be. I could never forgive either one of them.

  “I like this car,” Lynn said, shifting the focus off Maylene and Darcy.

  Dear Lynn. She always tried to defuse a situation, but I felt she was just being polite about Mama’s inexpensive car.

  “It’s no great shakes,” I said.

  She pointed toward the rear. “It has fins, even if they are little ones.”

  “Nowhere near as big and cool as the fins on Darcy’s Dreamsicle,” I said.

  Laura leaned over from the backseat. “We all love the Dreamsicle. It’s so spacious and comfy.”

  Maylene jumped in. “Almost too big. My daddy says it’s definitely too flashy.”

  Darcy struck right back at her. “But your folks’ car—that little Plymouth—has curved rear fenders with no fins at all. We could barely fit into it before, and now, even without Frances, it’s still a tight squeeze.”

  Maylene’s snide voice came from the backseat. “That’s not a nice thing to say, Darcy. Maybe it’s a tight squeeze because you’re so big. If you’re all that uncomfortable riding in it, you can just drop out of the carpool.”

  “I may be big boned and tall, but I don’t have a roll of fat around my waist like you do.”

  Maylene bristled. “There’s not an ounce of fat on me!”

  “All right, you two, knock it off,” Lynn said.

  Laura joined in. “This car fits us fine, and so does Maylene’s, and they always have, even when Frances was still . . . Oh dear, I’m going to cry.”

  “We can get eight in here,” I said, trying to steer us away from the usual gloom that our conversations eventually settled into these days.

  “Remember last Easter,” Maylene said, smirking, “when we all picked up Larson, Justin, Don, and Farrel at the Dairyette and went parking in the woods?”

  My heart twisted. That was the first time Farrel and I ever kissed.

  “We didn’t all go,” Laura and Lynn said in unison, clearly still ticked off about it.

  “Oh, right. Sorry,” Maylene said. “But just think, if we’d all gone, you wouldn’t have had the fun of hearing about it.”

  An uncomfortable silence enveloped us.

  Was that the night when Frances had gotten pregnant? She and Don had left the car and disappeared, and it’d taken quite a while to roust them out of the woods when it was time to leave.

  As I turned the corner onto Main Street, Darcy said, “Who have you asked for a date to the Sadie Hawkins dance, Julie?”

  “To the what?”

  “Gee whillikers, Julie, get on the stick. Next week is TWIRP week. Saturday night caps it off with the Sadie Hawkins dance.”

  “I forgot all about it,” I said.

  “Can you believe this girl?” exclaimed Darcy.

  “I can,” Maylene said.

  Maylene had threatened me last year that, if I didn’t get a boyfriend, the in-crowd would have to drop me. That was partly why I ended up doing IT with Farrel. I’d tried so, so hard to get him to love me, or even like me enough to be a regular date and get Maylene off my back.

  “Julie, pay attention,” Darcy said. “You know Al Capp’s hillbilly comic strip, Li’l Abner, don’t you? Sadie Hawkins Day and TWIRP week are the only chances a girl gets to ask a boy of her dreams for a date.”

  “And pay for him,” Laura added. “TWIRP stands for The Woman Is Required to Pay. I’m planning to ask fourteen boys out for next week. I’ve been saving for months to buy cokes for them at the Dairyette.”

  “There are only seven nights in a week,” Maylene said in her know-it-all voice.

  Laura groaned. “I know that, Maylene, but there are also seven afternoons. I want to ask Bubba John Younger for one of my fourteen. He’s so cute.” Laura’s voice turned wistful. “I wish he’d ask me out.”

  “If it hasn’t happened yet, more than likely it’s not going to.” Maylene sounded like she was issuing a decree.

  Laura sighed. “I know. In the end, I probably won’t ask anybody. I never do. I’m scared they’ll either say ‘no,’ or their parents will make them go, and they’ll wish they didn’t have to, and they’ll make sure I know it, and we’ll both be miserable.”

  Darcy poked my arm. “I bet that’s why Justin’s going to call you, to give you a chance to ask him. Everyone know you’re shy.”

  Not anymore, I thought, remembering the day I called Farrel at school and told him I was “ready” to do IT. Madness had taken possession of me.

  Darcy looked over into the backseat. “Who are you going to ask, Maylene?”

  I held my breath, hoping against hope she wouldn’t say Farrel.

  The sensible voice in my head said, “What do you care if she asks Farrel? It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  I wished it didn’t. If she says “Farrel,” I might wreck the car.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Maylene said. “Look, there goes Eugene Hoffmeyer in that crate he’s been driving since the year one. I wonder if Rhonda still has his ring.”

  “He gave me a valentine after chemistry class this morning,” I said.

  “You should ask him.”

  I could see Maylene’s face in the rearview mirror, looking satisfied, like she’d thought of the perfect solution to my dateless state.

  I flipped my hair. “Ask him yourself, if you think he’s so cute.”

  “It looks like he’s headed for the Dairyette,” Darcy said. “Are we going, Julie? Let’s do. We haven’t been to the Dairyette since Frances. Life goes on, you know.”

  “I don’t feel right about it yet,” Laura said. “The carpool should still be in mourning. It’s barely been two months. If you’re going, take me home first.”

  “I know!” Darcy bounced on the seat. “Let’s go to the cemetery. We can visit her grave. We haven’t done that yet. We can say a prayer and then go to the Dairyette.”

  Lynn gasped. “Are you out of your tree? I’m never going back to that cemetery.”

  Maylene chortled. “You are someday.”

  “Come on, you all, don’t be like that,” Darcy said. “You know what? I’ve been thinking.”

  “That’s a new twist,” Maylene said.

  “Shut up, Maylene. This is important.”

  “Okay, tell us.”

  “Frances died of the flu, right?” Darcy said, her voice taking on a mysterious tone. “But I haven’t heard about another case of it since. Last time we had a flu epidemic, it was in the newspapers every day how many people were sick. Don’t you all think it’s strange nobody else seems to have caught it?”

  “Hmmm . . .” Maylene said, and another thoughtful silence fell over the car.

  My thoughts went into a silent frenzy. I couldn’t let them get on that track. As far as I knew only Farrel, Don, Mama, Carmen and her mother, Frances’s folks, and I knew the truth about what had kille
d Frances. But as Mama always said, “Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.”

  “We’ll go another day soon, okay?” I said. “Darcy’s right, life does have to go on.”

  Driving home after dropping them off, I thought maybe I should get out of the carpool.

  I’m being hypocritical by staying in it when I loathe Maylene. I loathe her but miss her at the same time. She was my confidant, my best friend. Now I have no one I can talk to.

  When I turned onto our street, the fear that had gnawed at me all day welled up into my mouth, and I thought for a minute I was going to throw up all over myself and the car. I had to get home fast and check something that had been eating at me all day. I had to do it, and yet every inch forward the car went filled me with more dread.

  I’ll check the mail first, I thought, heading straight for the mailbox on the front porch. Bills, bills, and again bills. In the middle of the pile was an envelope addressed to me. Tossing the rest on the commode, as Mama insisted on calling the hutch in the entrance hall, I tore it open and yanked out the red-and-white card, hoping against hope Farrel had sent me a valentine. But the name signed beneath the verse was “Elvis.” Not a bad substitute! A note was handwritten on the opposite side.

  Dear Juliet,

  Hope this reaches you in time for Valentine’s Day. You’ll never believe it, but remember when you said you were all shook up over a guy and I wrote back that “All Shook Up” would be a good title for a song? Well, after that, I went to bed one night, had quite a dream, and woke up all shook up myself. I called my friend, Otis Blackwell, and before you could shake a bull by the tail he’d composed a song using those words. This is the best part—I get credit as co-writer because I said “All Shook Up” would make a good refrain! How about them apples? I recorded it on January 12 out in Hollywood. I’ll send you a cut as soon as it’s released.

  I hope you are doing great and having a ball. Drop me a line, if you have a minute. Your letters bring my toes back down to the ground and remind me of real places and real folks. And, by the way, I sent you this card with the hope that, no matter who has your heart, you, my good luck charm, will always save a part of yourself to be my valentine. After all, as the first girl who ever screamed at one of my concerts, you get the credit for this incredible ride I’m on. I have to confess, sometimes I want to stop and get off, but I’m afraid it’s too late for that.

  My best,

  Elvis

  To him, I was still that innocent young girl he gave a ride home one night. I couldn’t imagine why he was still writing me, now that he had the world at his feet. We were never more than friends, and barely that. We’d had so little time together—and yet it seemed it was enough to make us friends forever. I didn’t understand it, but then, I didn’t need to. It just was.

  I couldn’t put off any longer the deed I had to do. In my room, my personal planner was open to February. I knew what I was looking for wouldn’t be there. I nearly ripped out the page, flipping back to January. Nothing there either. Then I realized I was looking at my 1957 planner. Last year’s was the one that would tell the tale.

  I had hidden it so well from Mama I couldn’t remember myself where it was. I rushed to the box on the top shelf of my closet where I stored my stuff. Not there. I yanked open the drawer in my bedside table. Not there. Not in any of the dresser drawers. Not under the bed. One last place—my hatbox.

  It was there, and what it told made my insides twist, even though I had known it all along—known, but repressed it—tried so hard to pretend it couldn’t possibly be true. A small “p” was penciled in next to December 7.

  I hadn’t had a period since Farrel and I did IT.

  Chapter 3

  FOR A CAP AND BELLS

  Two weeks later, I rehearsed my speech to Mama all the way home from Magnolia, but I could only get as far as two of the three words. Over and over I tried to recite all three. On the road. In our driveway. And on the walk leading to the house. Never getting any further than, “I am . . . I am . . .”

  With her feet propped up on the old footstool, Mama was deeply immersed in the latest Mary Stewart novel when I opened the back door and went into the den. For some odd reason, I could only focus on the straw sticking out through the split in the stool’s leather upholstery and how it highlighted the shabby state we lived in so Mama could spend almost everything she earned on me.

  She looked up at me over the top of her glasses and smiled.

  “Hi, honey. What’s up?”

  “Nothing, much.”

  That’s not what I meant to say.

  I put my school books on the table in the breakfast nook and got a drink of water from the cooler the iceman filled every day. I sipped slowly to postpone the awful moment. Swallowing the last drop, I forced myself to go and stand over her.

  “Just let me finish this page,” she said, lost in the world of Merlin. At last she dragged her gaze up to me. “Okay. Now you have my full attention.”

  “Mama . . .” I paused, unable to get my breath.

  “That’s me.” She grinned.

  “I am.”

  The perpendicular frown line that lived perpetually between her eyebrows deepened.

  “Am what?”

  “Pregnant.”

  Too late I remembered that in her mind the word “pregnant” was not a socially acceptable term for my condition.

  She blanched. Using both hands, she reached for the stale glass of tea on the table by her chair. She took a sloshy sip, wiped her chin with the back of her hand, and smiled.

  “Now, now, let’s not jump to conclusions. It’s nothing to miss a period or two at your age.”

  “I had the rabbit test.”

  “Oh my God.” Stark fear filled her eyes. “You went to a doctor?”

  I nodded. “Twice. At my first visit, he did the test, and today at the follow up appointment, he told me my rabbit had died.”

  “Whom did you see?”

  Even under stress of the worst kind, Mama never flubbed her grammar.

  “A doctor in Magnolia. Gave him a false name.” I held out my left hand. “I even wore this cheap wedding band I won at the county fair playing Go Fish. It didn’t fool him for one minute. Oh, Mama, it was awful. First, I had to give them some tinkle. The doctor said they would shoot my pee into a rabbit, and if he died, then I was.”

  “Use the proper word, please, Julie, and the rabbit wouldn’t be a ‘he.’ Only females are used, and they all die from the test because the lab people cut them open and check to see if their ovaries are affected by the hormone present in the urine of a woman who’s expecting.”

  I stared at her, flabbergasted. “How on earth do you know that?”

  “I was in the family way once.”

  “Right. With me.” My attempt at laughter floundered. “The worst part was the nurse made me take off all my clothes! I thought he would only be concerned with the bottom end.”

  “You must not have minded removing your clothes when you performed the act that landed you in this predicament,” Mama said, clipping her words.

  “I didn’t take off anything but—”

  “Please, spare me the gruesome details,” Mama said.

  I couldn’t look at her.

  “Two trips to Magnolia, and I never knew. I did notice, however, that we were using an awful lot of gas recently. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I warned you at Christmas it could be.”

  Her face crinkled. “What are we going to do?”

  “Mama, don’t start. We aren’t going to do anything. We knew this was a possibility. You said you could handle it, that I could stay home and have my baby.”

  “I wasn’t myself that night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She leaped up from her chair, shrieking, “I mean, you can’t stay here in El Dorado, pregnant!” She jerked open her pocketbook and dug around in it. “Why in God’s name did I give up smoking?”

  “I don’t care what those
people think. They can’t hurt me.”

  “Those people can most certainly hurt you!”

  “How?”

  “For starters, no young man from a good family will want to marry you.”

  “I never cared about those rich, society boys anyway.”

  Mama looked at me like I was an alien from outer space.

  “No young man from any family will want to marry you.”

  “I don’t care. All boys think about is some stupid football game.”

  “The games are our primary form of entertainment in the South. And I’m sure the young men think about making money. Unless you can snag a man who’ll make you a good living, and fat chance you’ll have of that with a child, you’ll have to work.” Mama blew her nose. “Those people can keep you from getting a job. Who’s going to want someone with loose morals teaching their children?”

  “I don’t have loose morals! And what makes you think I would teach school?”

  “Then what do you plan to do? There’s not much other than typing, teaching, or nursing that a woman can do.”

  I broke our locked stare. She had won.

  “Go ahead. Tell me. What?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know. Be a musician, maybe. I hadn’t thought much about it.”

  “Well, you’d better start thinking. I can’t support you forever.” She slung her purse to the floor. “Maybe there’s an old pack left over in another pocketbook.” She hurried toward the breakfast room. “God, please, I’ll be good forever, if you’ll just let there be one left.”

  “I only ever did it one time, Mama, and it was with the boy I loved,” I shouted after her.

  She stopped short. “Once is enough to make people call you a slut. That’s why I didn’t want you going out with Mr. Budrow. He’s too old for you. I was afraid it would come to this. Have you told him yet?”

  “I don’t plan to tell him.”

  Mama smiled her cynical smile. “How did you think you could keep the baby and not tell him? I’m sure he’ll find out, whether or not you ever deign to mention it. So marrying him is not an option?”