A Penny a Kiss

by Judy McConnell

  * * *

  I hardly knew Anne. The only girl I was close to the first year lived in my neighborhood. Margo and I first met by chance in the school lobby. I’d seen her often but we’d never spoken. Every afternoon at the three o’clock bell I gathered my books, exited by the back door of the school, and strode up the back hill. Often I noticed another girl walking ahead of me, a short girl with blond hair who disappeared by the time I reached the top of the hill. It seemed I wasn’t the only Kenwood student who walked to school.

  One Thursday, I descended to the lobby to keep an appointment to see Miss Spurr. I’d first been exposed to Miss Spurr on the opening day of school when the student body had assembled in the main floor auditorium. Miss Spurr, in her official role as principal, had delivered a lofty talk on opportunity and responsibility. Her formal Eastern style and prim wavy hairdo, chesty posture and large, looming authority underlined the signifi­cance of her words. Her favorite admonition, “A word to the wise is suf­ficient,” was brief and to the point, just as she was. Miss Spurr personified Northrop officialdom: aloof, upstanding. I had never seen anyone like her.

  It was the last period before school ended and I was seated on a bench waiting to be summoned to her office. The lobby was deserted. As I was regarding a photograph of Cyrus Northrop hanging above the fireplace, a blonde girl moved into view. I recognized her immediately. She looked over at me and then away, adjusting the leather belt around her navy uniform. Finally, she came over to the bench and sat down.

  “You waiting to see Miss Spurr, too?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Miss Spurr held introductory meetings each fall to connect with the students and launch the school year.

  “Nothing to worry about,” the blonde girl said, “All she ever wants is to know is how you spent the summer and how you’re liking school.”

  “You don’t have to kneel on a stool?” I asked, and she tossed her head to one side and smiled, looking at me with a friendly air. She was almost pretty, with her soft blonde hair, creamy Irish skin, a small, slightly hooked nose, and a lively, intelligent gaze.

  “Oh, she barks but she doesn’t bite,” she said encouragingly. It turned out that Margo lived four blocks from my house. She offered to walk up the hill with me after school. You bet. Little did I know that she would be my best friend and confidante for the next three years and far beyond.

  When I entered Miss Spurr’s office I was greeted by short woman with a ramrod gaze and the stance of a heavy weight. She motioned me to a tall-backed brocade chair facing her desk. Soon she was expounding on school duties, academia, and Eastern formalities. She focused her smile on me: gracious, direct, and impenetrable. Here was someone you didn’t trifle with. But I soon got used to her. The progress and future of the students were her primary concern, and she would back them in whatever way possible. The podium lectures she gave in the auditorium began to sound uplifting I couldn’t help but like her, from a distance, hoping I would never have to be alone with her for more than two minutes.

  From then on, Margo Holt and I trudged up the hill to my house every day after school, fixed ourselves saltine crackers with jelly, or pulled out a round tin of Old Dutch Potato Chips and a plate of butter to spread on them. Sprawling out on the sun room rug, we listened to Tom Mix and The Lone Ranger until in our junior year the radio was replaced by a grandiose fifteen-inch TV console.

  More often we ended at Margo’s house. She was full of invitations. Did I want to do this or that? Her assertiveness matched my shyness. She not only spoke up readily, she didn’t take no for an answer. Of course no was not the answer I ever wanted to give. We were at her house almost every day. Margo was not one to appreciate being alone and sought company at every turn. She had no close friends at school, despite moving up the grades and through dancing class with the rest of the “established” girls. Mother readily agreed to my long absences, more than happy to have me in a respectable home with a new classmate and fulfilling her expectations that I would better myself and find friends now that we lived in the upscale Kenwood neighborhood.

  Margo lived in an old, inviting three-story Kenwood house with a wooden porch stretched along the entire front. The entrance door was never locked, allowing the five Holt children easy access to the house. Before long I had acquired the same privilege. The minute I first entered the dark hallway I knew this house was different. Mine was airily constructed with tall hallways, light woodwork, sliding doorways to parcel off the dining room and den, and a sweeping curved central staircase, giving it an open, spacious look. Mother had adorned the rooms with documented antiques and Ethan Allen furniture. The Holt house was dark and homey. Solid mahogany furniture, much of it passed through generations, circled around the living room. A voluptuous Viennese tapestry hung over the fireplace. Dark molding circled the ceiling and the heavy brocade drapes were drawn, plunging the room into an old-world darkness. Everything in the house seemed to have taken root, like the oak trees in the yard.

  We found Mrs. Holt in the back family room bent over a roll-top desk, working on some papers. When Margo introduced me her mother turned in her chair, held out her hand and gave me a wide, beaming smile. Her flat shoes and loose gray suit spoke of comfort and function. A bookcase stuffed with hardcovers stretched across one wall of the room. People lived and worked here, too busy with projects to put away every notebook or fold every lap robe. The contrast between this home and mine was glaring: the one meticulous with orderly elegance, fashioned for entertainment, and the other casual with purposeful clutter. I thought I might fit in here.

  “So you’re the Bradford girl? Glad to have you. Make yourself at home.”

  Mrs. Holt inquired about my family and where I lived. With her square white teeth and thin mouth she looked like an older version of Margo; the two faces reflected the same open expressions and the same alert hazel eyes.

  “Margo,” Mrs. Holt said, “Take Judy to the kitchen and fix yourselves a snack. There’s some ice cream in the freezer.” She turned back to the ledger on the desk.

  I soon became comfortable with Mrs. Holt. She had the reassuring habit of always being there, at her desk or in her recliner. She handled the finances, oversaw the bi-weekly cleaning woman and house upkeep, managed the progress of her five children, and organized a myriad of other household tasks. She could also discuss literature, music and every detail of the latest presidential election. Besides being president of the Women’s Investment Club, the Wellesley College Alumnae, and active in the League of Women Voters, she participated in two bridge clubs and the women’s Lafayette Club golf team. Her lack of chic was more than compensated for by her warmth and generosity toward everyone who came into the house. She soon attached herself to me. When I confided to her one day that I felt out of place at home, she told me she was an orphan of the Catholic Church, being left motherless at age four. I think she understood.

  My mother and Mrs. Holt could not have been more different. My mother wore Tiffany jewelry and radiated charm and amiability, while Big Margo, as Margo’s mother was called, was brilliant, intellectually informed, and efficient. Margo and I had similar differences. Margo was forceful and thick-skinned while I was scatter-brained and sensitive, traits that reflected our mothers enough to cause problems. In both our households the mother-daughter relations were charged. Margo went her own way, resisting her mother’s every attempt to keep her in line. I did the same. We understood that our mothers would rather be anywhere than around us and that deep down we did not measure up.

  Before long I was spending all my spare time at the Holt’s.

  Margo had the entire attic floor to herself, including a bathroom. “They put me up here to get rid of me,” she said in her usual forthright way as we sat on the twin beds. “This is my oasis. No one ever comes up here but me.” From the first Margo withheld nothing; she was full of details of her family and their intrigues and problems. I picked up a photo
from the bureau of clean-cut Blake boys grinning into the camera. They stood tall in creased slacks and wool sweaters, gazing at the camera with handsome confidence. These were a different breed from the guys I was used to. They looked intimidating. Educated in a separate school, these snappy boys were out of reach and all I could do was admire them from a distance.

  Sara, Margo’s sister, often sat next to me at family dinners at the Holt house. A thin slip of a figure, frail and thin-boned, she was plagued with ongoing health problems, yet she entered the conversation cheerfully, responding to comments with an optimistic laugh.

  Sara had contracted polio in seventh grade, the year polio hit Minnesota like a thunderbolt. That was 1947. Hundreds were crippled by the vicious disease and were clamped into in braces or crutches, special maneuvering devices, or the dreaded iron lung. For a year Sara underwent special treatment at hospitals in the Twin Cities and New York City.

  A local physician described the crisis.

  The first summer when I was home in Minnesota . . . we admitted 464 proven cases of polio just at the University Hospital. . . . And this was a very severe paralytic form. Maybe two or three hours after a lot of these kids would come in with a stiff neck or a fever, they’d be dead. It was unbelievable. It was just loads of people that came in, sometimes with only a fever but usually a headache and a little stiffness in the neck. And just absolutely terrified. At the height of the epidemic, the people in Minneapolis were so frightened that there was nobody in the restaurants. There was practically no traffic, the stores were empty. It was considered a feat of bravado almost to go out and mingle in public. A lot of people just took up and moved away, went to another city.

  — Richard Aldrich, M.D, quoted in A Paralyzing Fear

  The accident happened when Sara’s parents were vacationing. With the consent of the baby-sitter, she had ridden her bike down Franklin Avenue to the grocery store and was returning with a newly purchased Pepsi-Cola in her basket. While passing a parked car, one of the bicycle’s wheels slipped, tossing her and the Pepsi bottle to the pavement. Sara lay amidst shards of broken glass, one of which had pierced deep into her leg. When she showed up at the house, leg bleeding, the matronly sitter took one look, grabbed a dishtowel from the kitchen, wrapped it around the wet leg and ran off with Sara to the bus stop. At the Medical Arts Building downtown they located a physician and the wound was closed with twenty stitches. Two days later, when her grandparents arrived to drive her to the Holt lake house as planned, Sara appeared to have a slight case of the sniffles. By the next morning her neck and head hurt, and she couldn’t lift her head off the pillow.

  Sara was devastated, as her craving to spend the next two weeks at Lyman Lodge lake camp in Excelsior had been crushed. Camp was out of the question.

  And then the terrifying source of her illness was discovered.

  At this time little was known about polio. The number of cases in the Twin Cities had increased so drastically over the previous two years that people were panicked. Friends were barred from Sara’s presence, with parents fearing their child would be next. The main lake beaches were closed. Dr. Holt defied the skeptical medical community and persuaded Nurse Sister Kenny, fresh from working successfully with stricken children in Australia, to bring her methods to Minnesota. Following her recommendation, hot packs were duly applied to Sara’s upper arms. The ravages of the disease were tamed, if not healed. Encumbered with a severely damaged lung and a fresh spinal fusion, Sara slimmed to eighty-three pounds. She eventually passed the danger point but was advised that she would remain too fragile for the rest of her days to have children. (Defying the odds, she eventually gave birth to three.)

  Chapter 8: Cross Fire

  For my sixteenth birthday, Mother undertook what she knew best—throwing a party. I hadn’t noticed any whispering or suspicious behavior at school, until one afternoon in the lavatory I heard a smattering of words—“up the hill” and “this Saturday”—that ceased abruptly as I exited the stall. A party for me—and the entire sophomore class invited!

  I hated the idea. This would be sacrifice by fire. I would never emerge unburned. My entire being was geared to blending into the background, to not being noticed. Being the target of piercing eyes was terrifying. Now everyone would be at my house. How could I possibly act?

  I never let on. I was resigned to pretending to be surprised, a role that would no doubt prove to be another failure. I didn’t know which would be worse, actually being surprised, with all the emotional adjustment that required, or having to pretend to be surprised, calling for false responses and fake smiles.

  When the big day arrived, I readied for a birthday dinner at Charlie’s, dressed in a full black-and-white-checked skirt and white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, part of the new wardrobe Mother and I had purchased for the upcoming Northrop events, of which so far there had been none. Mother kept me busy in the back yard as the girls arrived, cars idling at the front of the house as they climbed the three flights of steep stairs leading to the front entrance. Finally I was called into the living room. The girls stood clustered in front of the windows, looking chic in their two-piece outfits, nylons, and heels. Luckily, my fake smile was accepted. A February fire crackled in the background, as Mother passed trays of punch and hors d’oeuvres and everyone admired the view of downtown from the picture window.

  We filed down to the amusement room where the bar was spread with chicken salad sandwiches and potato chips. The girls sat sedately on the couch or at the bar, legs crossed. Mother was in her element, dressed in a soft ruffled blouse that peeped from her little blue jacket, chatting easily and winning the girls over with her Southern drawl and graciousness. After lunch Dad ran a Disney movie on his 8-mm projector. It was a silly thing about two boys lost on an island and a spotted cow they found abandoned in a cave. I had no idea how my classmates found this film, as they were all politeness, but I was certain it was too stupid for words. If Mother noticed my sour look, she said nothing. After the guests had left, I fled to my room. She had done another dumb thing. There was no accounting for her.

  Mother couldn’t understand my attitude. “Why are you always so contrary?” she would moan. I contradicted her at every opportunity, which drove her to heated silence. I’d walk into a room and see irritation sweep over her face, hear the frustration in her voice. “Your doctor’s appointment was at 4:30. Where have you been, girl?”

  More often, to avoid direct conflict, our skirmishes appeared in subtle disguise. No direct mention was made of her disapproval. Rather, she discharged double-edged remarks, offered a smiling compliment and then . . . zing . . . she’d finish off with a follow-up remark that cut to the quick. “Your hair looks nice. Your new hair-dresser does a good job,” she would say. Then, after a few seconds, “It would, that is, if you got rid of those strings around your neck and wore a clean collar.” I emerged from these skirmishes feeling deflated, a sharp knot in my stomach.

  If she showed me directions on a map and I asked a question, she snapped a reply in an irritated tone. “No, not U.S. 1. This one over here,” running her finger along a black highway line.

  “But this route looks shorter.”

  “I told you, that road is closed.” The fire in her voice cut the air.

  Just being together left us both feeling negative. I reacted unconsciously to her subtle jibes and tsks tsks of displeasure lobbed in my direction, slipped through the calm smiles and cheerfulness she turned to the world at large. She, in turn, no doubt reacted to my critical bluntness. I detested golf, which I considered namby-pamby, devoid of real exercise. Golf was just a highfalutin excuse to be outside with others of the same ilk and spend three hours pulling a long bag across manicured lawns dressed in yellow shorts and polo shirts. Skiing, tennis, now those were sports. I quit golf after two lessons at the Lafayette Club, vowing never to try again. Mother said I didn’t seem to like anything new, which she thought wa
s ironic, given that I didn’t much care for what existed.

  I was never without Chiclets or a stick of Black Jack. The habit of popping two sticks in my mouth and chomping vigorously rankled Mother continually. I perfected a loud, penetrating snap, of which I was rather proud, and could produce two or three in a row. For days, Mother said nothing, until her nerves were strained to the core and finally I heard a desperate “Pleeease!” At last she forbade me to chew gum except in my room, which I remembered some of the time.

  Most of our interchanges went something like this:

  “Judy, turn on the light. You can’t see the book.”

  “I can see it just fine.”

  “Your hair needs a touch up.”

  “I just combed it.”

  “For heaven’s sake, get into the elevator.”

  “For heaven’s sake, it’s full!”

  I was decidedly not compliant and she was all nerves. We were like oil and water, doomed to co-exist and torture each other. She knew nothing of my private feelings, other than the negative ones I projected in abun­dance. In her house, feelings were kept under wraps, under the cloak of Pleasantness-At-All-Costs. The give-and-take skirmishes between children were anathema to her. And there was I, all contradiction, all skirmish. I, in turn, chaffed at her impenetrable pleasantness. While the outside world saw a charming, polished, Southern belle, I saw a creature who was superficial and shallow. There was no way out. We were incompatible and destined to inhabit the same house in mutual misery.

  Mother was doomed to condemnation no matter what she did. I was convinced her efforts were disguised attempts to undermine whatever I did. She was out to get me. The truth is, I didn’t know my mother at all. She was a caricature, a figure playing a role, shaped like a mother. Her reality was impenetrable. This cardboard cutout had to be handled like a formidable opponent.