A Penny a Kiss

by Judy McConnell

  “We’ve never had girls follow us home before,” said the tall, handsome one named Bill, who walked with a svelte, nonchalant stride á la James Stewart . “We like being chased.”

  “You don’t look very chaste to me,” said Bobby.

  “Ha, ha. You girls are tricky. We’ll have to watch out.” Once seated, we learned that Bill lived with his father, the building superintendent, in the bowels of the stone building they were in. Owned by the Minister’s Life & Casualty Union, it was at one time a private mansion and carriage house. His best pal, Jim, seated himself on a low couch and spread his arms comfortably. With his stocky build, thick blond hair, and warm grin, Jim came across as everyone’s favorite brother. The third boy, Riley, who spoke with a likeable intensity, was already attending the university. The boys told us they were long-time friends from the local DeMolay chapter.

  “You know about DeMolay?” Jim asked.

  Not about to admit I’d never heard of it, I extended my legs and leaned back. “Sure. It’s a syrup used on barley pancakes in the Southern outback.”

  “It’s a Masonic fraternal organization created to mentor boys from the ages of twelve to twenty-one,” the one named Riley explained, throwing an earnest look at me.

  “I knew that. My answer’s more interesting.” What’s a white lie between strangers? I thought, enjoying the turn of events.

  Soon we were sitting with our feet up telling them all about ourselves. Maybe it was the other-world remoteness of the cavernous apartment hidden away in the depths of the building that put us at ease. Here in the reality of their home there was no choice but to speak the truth. We explained that we were fringe Northrop-ites who sang our own tune and operated outside the school structure. Bill, the tall, attractive one with a slow smile and blue eyes, didn’t say much but threw droll comments into Jim’s anecdotes, setting us all laughing. Riley talked about the competitive downhill ski program he belonged to.

  Bobby sat cross-legged on a desk, head tilted, her quick laugh ringing as she and Bill eyed each other across the room. Bobby drew boys like melted honey. Everywhere she went boys materialized, and she finagled endless ways to meet them. Now she zeroed in on Bill.

  From that night on we saw the boys constantly, attending movies, football games, and backyard picnics, sometimes in the company of their West High friends. Bobby and Bill soon became an item, while Margo had fallen for Riley. At one of my basement parties, Jim met and was pursuing one of our Northrop classmates.

  As for me, I met Dick.

  * * *

  The parking area behind the stone gates in our driveway was packed with cars, and in our amusement room the party was in full swing. People squeezed into the kitchenette where the fridge was stocked with Miller Highlight, Coke, and Seven-Up. Bobby and Bill scrunched side by side on the couch, while a Northrop classmate, Caroline Hessen, reclined in a rocker with Jim leaning over her shoulder, talking into her ear. The pop and jangle of the slot machine mingled with the hum of voices and footsteps tapping down the stairs.

  Margo at the bar, beer in hand, leaned towards Riley seated on the stool next to her. A university student, Riley was valued as one of the “older” boys. He followed Margo’s words with an intent expression. Thin and sporty, cute, in a dark raffish sort of way, he was full of energy, with a passion for racing down ski slopes. Margo was not put off by his conservative, rather serious manner. She was entering into the whirling drama of first love and savoring every minute.

  Margo began telling stories. How I complained that I’d been sideswiped by a streetcar a week after obtaining my drivers’ license, which for some reason everyone found hilarious. How during school field trips to the symphony at Northrop Auditorium we snuck to the lavatory to smoke, strictly forbidden. How she had lugged her butterfly net up the wooded hill behind the Northrop grounds to collect butterflies for a school project in order to sneak a smoke. It was an assignment she detested, but she managed to collect, between cigarettes, a record number of butterflies. Subsequently, her butterfly display won a best-in-class award. This the group also found hilarious.

  After practice for the school operetta, some of us snuck out to the same back hill for smoking orgies. But we didn’t fool Miss Ingalls, the music teacher. When we returned from a break during The Bartered Bride, she remarked, “That’s not Chanel No. 5 I smell.” We started carrying vials of perfume in our uniform pockets.

  It was time for a game of sardines. The lights were extinguished, except for a yellow streak that filtered through the window from the front entrance lamps. We hurried off to snoop out a hiding place. The girl who was It began to count.

  I headed for the furnace room behind the bar, but heard whispers of “we’re filled up,” so I veered off past the half-bath, past the laundry tubs to the tool room on the other side of the back stair landing. Using my hands I felt my way towards the crawl hole hidden in the far corner, barely distinguishable in the shadows, nothing but useless space—until now. Only I knew its location; I would never be found here. The voice from the far room was chanting—ninety-eight, ninety-nine, a hundred. Better hurry.

  Kneeling down I squeezed into the low space and crawled along the crumbly concrete toward the corner in total darkness.

  My hand hit on something soft, alive. A foot? I inched forward until I was startled by a voice that was inches away. “Hello.” A few seconds later the voice sounded again. “They’ll never find us way back here.”

  I touched something warm with my knee. I considered the clues. Some strand in the whisper told me this was male. But which individual one I couldn’t fathom.

  Another whisper: “There’s room here.” Quickly I shifted towards the unknown body. Each person who was found joined the hunt, forming a more and more powerful body of offense. The two of us needed to stick together.

  “Ouch!” A sharp piece of concrete jammed my thigh. I felt a searching hand against my arm.

  “What happened?” came a thin whisper.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered back. As I sank back against the wall, I felt the press of a shoulder and was aware of soft breathing a few inches from my face. “Sorry,” I murmured lamely and then giggled. Some strange person was tilted against my side, and I felt a faint beating in his arm. This was cozy. But who was it? The only hints were the faint odor of musk and the feel of a corduroy jacket.

  The voices grew louder as the searchers closed in. We could hear laughing as they groped in the dark, snatches of words, getting near, moving away. With each person discovered there were squeals and whispering. Then ominous quiet. I turned towards where my companion’s face must have been, keeping my whisper low. “I’m afraid to move.” Frozen, I listened to the voices moving closer. I felt the presence next to me like a warm mist.

  He spoke softly against my cheek. “Do you know who I am?”

  “I don’t suppose you’re somebody’s boyfriend or you wouldn’t be this close to me,” I breathed, lowering my head. “I’ll give you a clue about me . . . I’m not anyone’s girlfriend.” My arm received a squeeze and I heard a murmur as if he were about to speak. Suddenly the door squeaked open and a flicker of light shot through the opening, falling several inches into the hole. We froze.

  “They must be in here,” a familiar voice insisted. “There’s nowhere else.” I could sense someone crawling in, feeling their way along the wall. My companion and I squeezed closer, shrinking into the corner. “You’re the only two left. Come out, come out.” We felt the breeze of a hand sweep by—and disappear. The figure backed out and declared the space empty. The door then shut and the voices disappeared.

  Slowly we crawled out. We had won!

  It wasn’t until we stepped into the laundry room under the glaring light that I saw my companion looking at me, sweeping grit from his sleeve and grinning. I recalled vaguely that he had arrived with Bill. We stood and blinked at each other..
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  “Ah . . .” I said.

  He took up the slack. “I’m Dick Winston, a friend of Bill’s. I saw you at the picnic Friday.” Dick had a wide smile, square shoulders, and full, neatly combed blonde hair. His gray-blue eyes looked at me reassuringly. I didn’t see how I could have missed him.

  “I live four houses away from you, just up the hill,” he said.

  What? How could I not know who he was? “I live here,” I replied idiotically.

  He laughed. “I know that,” he said. “That’s one reason I came.”

  “There they are!” At that moment several partiers burst from the next room. “Where have you been?” they cried, “And what have you been up to? I can tell by your faces it was something!” The group pulled us into the other room, with admonitions that they were going to keep an eye on us. As for Dick, I was already keeping an eye on him myself.

  Dick Winston began asking me out. On one date we attended a meeting of DeMolay, where his father was one of the officers. Dick stood at the podium and gave the presentation while I sat in the front row thinking he looked fetching in his dark slacks, white shirt, and tie. This was the first time I had actually dated someone, and I thrived on the distinction of being a part of a couple. I guess you might say Dick was my boyfriend, as I saw him every weekend. Slightly taller than I was, with an air of sturdy reliability, Dick was on the quiet side, as I was, but it didn’t matter for we were continually with other couples.

  We enjoyed the soft summer evenings just beyond the blare of the campfire, sitting on a blanket eating hot dogs singing camp songs, and watching the smoke spiraling up into the darkening pearl sky. Finally, at the hour when conversation ceased, we ended up in each other’s arms and that was enough.

  I adored necking. As we sat watching a bonfire in the park or swaying to mood music in a party room, I grew excited at the thought that I would shortly be in the arms of the boy I was sitting next to, and every look into his face brought the moment nearer. Clinging together in the back seat of a car without having to worry about talking, enclosed in an intimacy where nothing else mattered, I enjoyed surrendering fully to the moment.

  When I wasn’t dating Dick I was a lake junkie. Margo would call me after breakfast. What was I doing? Why didn’t I come on out? I’d throw some clothes into a bag and drive the thirty miles in Mother’s Studebaker and out Highway 12 past Wayzata to Navarre. The white clapboard cottage, set on a slope overlooking Lake Minnetonka, had been expanded over the years with several additions, including three screened porches and a kitchen with its own side porch. It had arched ceilings, dark oak furnishings with wooden knobs, and boasted six bedrooms. Behind the main house a separate garage had been converted to a small guest cottage. A small two-room shack at the edge of the woods housed Elmer, the gardener. The cottage was reached by a long driveway lined with tall willow trees that wound past the remains of a clay tennis court.

  Mrs. Holt and the children spent summers at the cottage. Dr. Holt joined them on weekends. Now I was added to the list. I was practically a live-in. I’d stay a day or two, return home in proper order, and was back almost immediately. I raced up the stairs to the bedrooms gleefully, with the lake air swishing after me and the enticing warbles of a motor boat droning in the distance.

  The warm, fuzzy days of lake breezes and gratuitous pastimes blended into weeks and months. Mornings, Margo and I lolled in twin beds under the eaves and read until Mrs. Holt called us to a lunch of sandwiches, Oreo cookies, and milk. At dinner time, I crowded around the dining room table with the rest of the family. Potatoes, green beans, and braised pork were passed while we discussed the new art center opening down the road, what the youngsters had been up to, the novel Sara was reading, and the local restrictions on motor boating at night.

  Afterward, Margo cleared while I washed. She spent so much time in the dining room collecting plates that I had finished drying and putting the dishes away by the time she brought in the last bowl.

  “What on earth were you doing out there?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. Her mother praised my manners and competence. At my own house I would be playing Margo’s role, I thought. Mrs. Holt’s approving presence by my side, scraping leftovers into refrigerator containers as we chatted, kept me at the sink every night until the last lick of butter had been wiped from the white porcelain sink. I liked doing dishes in this house.

  One night, Margo and I had crawled into twin beds upstairs and were sunk deep into our mystery stories. The musty scent from the lake and the muffled noises stirring in the house below lulled me into a soft reverie. I could hear Mrs. Holt puttering below in the kitchen, no doubt fetching fruit from the refrigerator to fill the bronze wicker fruit bowl on the kitchen table and stuffing freshly laundered tea towels into the drawer. Her voice, talking to someone in the next room, sent muted vibrations through the house. Once she called up to see if we wanted ice cream. A feeling of devotion swept through me. Even with all her children, Mrs. Holt had room for me in her affections. I would have done anything for her.

  Sara lay in her room across the hall reading Mary Roberts Rinehart.

  I heard fluttering near the ceiling over my bed.

  “What is that?”

  “Just bats. They’re my buddies.” And Margo went back to her book. I didn’t say another word. I watched the bat, with its flighty webbed wings and mouse body, dart across the ceiling and disappear in a crack in the eave above me.

  “I hope I don’t get pooped on,” I finally ventured, distracted from my book.

  “It’s never happened.” Margo was lost in her reading. Evidently she had given up trying to drive off the bats. I decided to follow her lead. I sank into my pillow and turned the page in front of me. You don’t bother me, I don’t bother you. That would work.

  Now that my parents were members of the Lafayette Club, Margo and I became regulars. We could spot the club across the lake. All we had to do was hop in the Chris-Craft, and after skimming for five minutes across the bay, we’d clamor onto the sandy beach and stretch out with novels and bronzing oil.

  The lifeguard arrived regularly to take up his post, a routine we caught on to at once. His name was Craig. We pummeled him with questions, shared our fresh peaches, and set about to discover his life story and, ever so discreetly, if he was taken (he wasn’t). When Craig’s buddy, Hayes, showed up, our visits to the beach increased. We took up swimming and practiced the side-stroke and crawl assiduously.

  One afternoon, after lunching at the lower-level snack bar on club sandwiches, potato chips, and Cokes, which we charged to our mothers’ accounts, we wandered out to the beach and approached Craig, the club swimming instructor. Our strokes, we informed him, needed work, they were sloppy. He taught us the proper way to do the back stroke, the side stroke, the breast stroke, and the crawl, all of which we already knew.

  When Craig informed Margo he had no more to teach her, she took up diving. I watched them standing at the end of the floating dock as she flew off and landed in the water flat on her face. Somehow, in the few seconds between the diving board and the water surface, Margo’s perfectly formed dive, sculpted by Craig, fell apart. She improved, and before the summer was over Margo could perform a neat jack knife and we had invited the boys to go water skiing.

  * * *

  Dad busied himself with our lake activities. It was important to him that we enjoy ourselves. He loved providing activities for us that had been missing from his youth. He bought a twenty-two foot, second-hand Chris-Craft and docked it at the marina at Brown’s Bay. It had a walnut hull, a paneled dashboard, and two front cockpit seats. Leather bench seats ran along both sides, and a white striped canopy cover was stored in a hull pocket. The boat looked like a poor relation lined up in its slip among the tall, gleaming two-deck yachts, but we liked the freedom of its old shoe look. It was the perfect party boat, and we immediately set about putting it into service.
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  Dad took her out on several trial runs. I think he could have spent hours tooling from bay to bay, for the boat proved to be surprisingly agile. With Margo and me in the back, Dad grasped the wheel and drove full speed over the water, his face blown clean by the wind. He looked relaxed as he turned a curve, swirling up a spray as the boat lurched ahead. I believe he would have liked to turn into a teenager and partake in our aimless forays over the lake, if he could have stepped out of the heavy restrictions of being an adult, at least temporarily.

  * * *

  To crown afternoons of swimming, water skiing and exploring the azure bays of Lake Minnetonka, Margo and I hosted evening parties at the Holt boat house. Blocked by a line of willow trees from the main house, the boat house was an ideal teenage hideaway where Margo and I could sink into long rambles about our lives or hold beer parties. Isolated at the end of a promontory that jutted arrow-like into the lake, the small, one-room boat house was surrounded on three sides by water. An outside stairway led to a flat roof deck with a white wooden railing.

  One hot summer evening, Dick, Riley, Margo, and I drove to the nearby Navarre drive-in, where we gorged on burgers, French fries, and malts from a tray fastened to the car window. After a drive to Excelsior to pick up a few six-packs, we strolled the marina docks as the sailboats were dropping their riggings, then headed to the cottage for a moonlight swim.

  We found Bobby and Bill waiting on the porch steps. Their flushed faces held a muted excitement. Those two were always up to something. They joined us as we headed for the boat house to change into our suits, stepping over shadowy patterns formed on the grass by tall willow branches. The water looked tame and sleepy, still warm from the afternoon sun, and the air held the scent of freshly mowed grass. Before long the stillness of the evening was invaded by our cries of anticipation and the wild sounds of splashing in shallow water as we roused the lake from its nighttime slumber.