“Be right back,” he called and then pulled me towards the parking lot. “As soon as we take her the cushion, we can go. I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet, but you know, I knew we had to come over here and I just wanted everything else out of the way.” I felt his arm circle around my waist, his hand finding its way up the side of my sweater. “I can’t wait,” he whispered as we walked in and out of rows of cars. I was about to ask him where we were going when he grabbed me and kissed me like he never had before, my back thrown up against that filthy old Dumpster. I was out of breath and my heart was pounding when he stopped and opened the trunk. He was telling me how as long as he could remember his dad always got sick at things like this and left his mom to fend for herself. He said his mother had sat on a cushion ever since she had an accident and hurt her back. I heard myself asking what kind of accident, but I wasn’t really thinking about his answer. I was thinking about that piece of twine dangling from the trunk, its ends flecked with yellow. I knew before looking down at the bumper the exact placement of the booster club sticker. I thought of her then, thin white body beneath Mr. Sinclair, her hands on his broad muscular back, her heart beating like mad. I imagined her planning and scheming, hiding underwear in strange places just like I’d done. Maybe when she kissed her husband it was like kissing Mike Tyler. Maybe she was waiting for the right time to come along when she’d do something. I watched the Ferris wheel circling and circling while Donnie ran the cushion over to his mother, and I felt like I might throw up myself. She looked over as Donnie was walking back to me and she lifted her hand, then she looked over at the shop booth where there was an engine recently reassembled by three guys in my class. Mr. Sinclair was there with his big foot propped up on the table. He was talking to some men but the whole time he was looking at her.
“Let’s go,” Donnie said suddenly, and I told him that we had to ride at least one ride so that I could tell my parents all about it without lying. He looked reluctant, his mind counting off every second it would take to drive out to the Royal Villa Inn, which was twenty miles away. Finally he gave in and bought two tickets for the Ferris wheel. When we stopped at the very top, our cart rocking back and forth, I could see Mr. Sinclair had made his way over and now was sitting right beside Donnie’s mother.
“What was it you wanted to tell me?” Donnie asked. “You said you knew something funny.”
“Well, not that I know something,” I said and tried to force my brain to think a little faster while I watched Mrs. Wilkins begin to pack up her baked goods like she might be closing shop. It was at that moment I thought of Bill and how he was going to be out there in the parking lot, waiting. All I could think was that if the story got out it would all be my fault. Donnie would never forgive me, not to mention stop loving me. Then we would never have that perfect moment to take our clothes off.
“It’s just an idea is all,” I said. And then I told him that I had a fantasy of being with him in the car, that I’d fought it by saying again and again how cheap and meaningless I thought it was, but that really it was what I wanted more than anything. I said my biggest fantasy was being parked in that lot right behind my very own house. I knew as soon as the words left my mouth that I had ruined our night, that there was no way I’d be showing off my underwear; he moved his arm from around my shoulder and just sat there staring at me. We were stuck at the top again, and now his mother was standing with her purse over her shoulder. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t watching her, noticing something.
“It’s pretty strange,” he said. “But okay. I’ve heard girls have a lot of ideas about how the first time—” His sentence was cut short when the machine bolted and lurched forward, dropping us down and then lifting us back up. Scooter Clark was just a blur below as he bent to pick up something beneath the Bullet. When our cart was stopped on the ramp, our safety bar lifted, Donnie kissed me full on the mouth, then grabbed my hand and pulled me off towards Shoney’s. He moved faster and faster until I had to run to keep up with him. I would have been excited out of my mind if all this other hadn’t been going on. We passed Jennifer, who smiled and gave me the thumbs-up sign and then turned to whisper something to Rowland and Mike Tyler, who was standing close by. The story was starting; like a match head struck against a rough surface, it had leapt to life and now would begin spreading in and among our classmates. I could almost see it happening, a trail of words cutting through all the people, reaching all the ears except those of my brother, who would already be out in the parking lot, waiting.
Donnie was out of breath when we got to the car, and just kept grinning at me in that way that made my heart almost stop. He pulled me over beside him, his arm around my shoulder while he drove with his left hand. When we passed by my house, I could see Granddaddy sitting in the living room, as motionless as the lamp beside him. Donnie pulled into the far end of the lot, parked, and leaned over to kiss me.
“Nervous?” he asked when he opened his eyes to find me staring right back. “You’re acting kind of weird.”
“I am?” I asked, and he nodded, laughed.
“But that’s okay,” he whispered into my neck, his breath warm on my skin as he fumbled with the buttons on my sweater. I saw the bushes move, and I knew it was Bill and his friends. They were smoking cigarettes; I could see the flare of matches and the tiny red glows marking where they huddled in the shrubbery. Donnie’s mouth covered mine, and I quickly pushed him away and moved to my side of the seat. “Can’t we talk a little first?” I asked.
“Sure.” He tapped his finger on the steering wheel, breathed in and out in puffs. It seemed the longer we were quiet, the more rapid those puffs became. Once I saw Bill peek in the window and then squat quickly; I was going to break his neck. I asked Donnie about his plans to go to Yale. How far was it to Connecticut anyway? Would he be taking a lot of courses? Did he think we’d date other people or keep on going together? How much snow would he see over the winter? Did he think he’d come home often or just on the major holidays? What did he think about the new Madonna video? Did he think his mama liked me or not? He answered everything politely but his answers were getting shorter and shorter, the last one a simple yes.
“Why didn’t you just say you didn’t want to go through with our plan?” he finally asked. I turned to face him and the moment I did, headlights circled and crossed his face. It was the Honda, lights cut as it moved slowly to the side of the lot opposite ours. It was her. I imagined how it all worked: Mr. Wilkins goes home and suddenly the evening is convenient after all. She makes a phone call. They are short-handed at the booths. Who can possibly come now that poor Mr. Wilkins is sick? Poor Mrs. Sinclair can’t come. She can’t get a babysitter on such short notice. Mr. Sinclair will just have to do it. And he says, “Aw, honey, I don’t want to go. I have to deal with those crappy people all week long.” But it’s his duty and in no time there he is meeting his lover in the parking lot behind my house. Does he really like her or is he telling stories about how he’ll die if they don’t meet? Does he catch her in the school hallways and whisper tonight is the night?
Bill and his friends had put out their cigarettes and I watched the shrubs move slightly as if by the wind, as the troop made its way around the lot.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Donnie.
“So now what happens?” He was watching the car. I was watching Bill getting closer and closer.
“I don’t know.” I was too scared to cry. My mind was working so fast in so many directions that it was like it stopped functioning, and when I saw Mr. Sinclair’s headlights turning into the lot, I jumped out and began running toward the shrubs where Bill was hidden. I still don’t know why I felt the need to keep everybody from knowing what they were up to, but I did. It seems like I was thinking about the way my parents looked at each other when they didn’t know I was looking, a look that let me know they wanted to be together.
“What are you doing hiding in those bushes?” I kept yelling. “Can’t a couple get a little privacy?” I ran r
ight up beside Donnie’s mama’s window so that I blocked the sight of her, and immediately she cranked her car and screeched backwards. I turned and there was a slow second when I knew we were looking at each other, and then she was gone, almost sideswiping Mr. Sinclair along the way.
“Why’d you do that?” Bill stepped from the bushes, somehow looking older now that he had a group following him. “You messed it all up. They’ll never come back now.”
I heard a car door slam and then Donnie was walking across the parking lot. I looked to see if my parents were in the window but I couldn’t tell. Bill turned and looked at me then. “What are you doing out here?”
“Same as you,” I said, the words coming to me quickly. “We’re out here spying.”
“Yeah, right. That’s why you scared them off.” Bill was staring first at Donnie and then at my unbuttoned sweater that was hanging off one shoulder. My black lacy bra was showing. His friends were laughing, ready to spread the word. “What are you really doing?” Bill asked, his face red, from embarrassment or anger I wasn’t sure.
“What do you think?” I asked, the words coming to me quickly. I turned and rubbed my hand up and down Donnie’s chest, kissed him on the mouth. My legs were shaking like crazy. “So why don’t you leave?” I looked at Bill the way I always looked at him, like he was scum and not worth my breath. “Go on.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a jerk,” I said, “and you’re in our way.” There was a brief flicker of feeling on his face, a hurt look that maybe I wouldn’t have even noticed if we hadn’t felt so close the night before. Now he had no choice but to get me back, to go along with his friends and spread some rumors, or at least to act like he had. “Donnie and I want to be alone …” I let my voice trail off with a lilt that implied a lot. Might as well let Donnie’s reputation get some mileage out of it. It would be good for him. Boys would elbow him and nod knowingly. His mother would stare at him every morning and be left to wonder how much he knew and what we really did. It would keep her squirming for a long while.
My reputation was dirt by Monday morning, and even though Donnie still walked me to my classes we both knew things would never be the same. After all that teasing in front of Bill and his friends, I had gone back to the car and cried. I don’t mean polite little sniffles either. I mean out-and-out sobs, the kind that leave you with red splotches all over and a stuffed-up head. Donnie said he didn’t understand me at all. That he didn’t think he could take much more of my leading him on. He said that if I was trying to hook him permanently, then we weren’t thinking the same way. “I was,” I told him. “I was trying to get it so you’d marry me.” I thought later that was a dumb thing to have said; I mean, if he’d repeated that I wouldn’t have had a date for the next century. But he didn’t. As a matter of fact, he didn’t say anything at all. Nothing. He made no effort to correct the rumors that we had done it five times in the back of his daddy’s Chrysler, once under an old live oak at Hermit’s Crossing, and yet another time in the Led Zeppelin Laser Light Show. Be real.
By the time graduation came around and I had spent two months as a bona puella with no dates at all, things died down a little. I spent most of my time with Bill, the two of us playing cards or talking while Granddaddy stared at us. There were so many nights when I almost told Bill the whole story, but I couldn’t risk it. By then (despite her husband’s differing opinion) Mrs. Wilkins had gone out of her way to show me all kinds of financial aid forms just in case you might be interested, a smart young woman such as yourself. We never said anything about what I knew but, as they say, a picture paints a thousand words and we were doing it all with our eyes. Mr. Wilkins watched her every move like he was waiting for a mistake. But the worst part of it all was the way my parents couldn’t look me full in the face for a while.
Sometimes when I think about it all, I wish that I had never crept out that night while Bill was sleeping. Then I would’ve just gone on about my business, to the carnival and then out to the Royal Villa Inn, where I would’ve taken my clothes off. Donnie would’ve gone off to school and I would’ve stayed at home—not a virgin—and worked somewhere like Pick-a-Chick, ending my day with bunions and a polyester uniform that smelled of grease. I would have eventually gotten around to going to Tech; I would have had to take the long route. Would it have been worth it, that one thrilling moment? Sometimes I think maybe it would’ve because I loved Donnie Wilkins like I’d never loved anybody. Sometimes I still think about kissing him and imagine myself in black lingerie writhing on a bed like Madonna.
Instead, I was called into The Counselors’ office one day late in the spring to be told that I had a full scholarship to the state university. “It was very lucky that there was an open spot this late in the year; I’m sure you’ll do very, very well,” Mrs. Wilkins said and handed me a letter that spelled it all out.
I wanted to say “mmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm,” as I looked over the letter but instead I said “thank you.” Mr. Wilkins was standing there in all his Tinkertoy glory, acting like he was the one who had gotten it for me.
“Thank you,” she said, and it was clear that she meant it. It was the first time she ever looked me square in the eye and smiled.
On graduation night, my scholarship and attendance to State were announced along with all the others (including Donnie’s acceptance to Yale), and when I walked across the stage to get my diploma from Mr. Sinclair it seemed he held my hand a little longer and a little tighter than he had everyone else’s. It was like a silent pact, this scholarship of mine. It was as binding as the one Donnie and I had made to each other even though we’d never seen it through. I looked up at the rows of seats in the auditorium until I found my parents and Bill, all three of them waving at me. I walked under those bright lights while Mr. Sinclair told the whole auditorium that I planned to go to State and become an architect. I figure I’ve got the rest of my life to fall in love and take my clothes off for a man, but I don’t have so long to be my parents’ future. I mean, someday they’re going to be sitting there like Monterey Jack, staring at me with a blank empty look, and I want to know that I made at least one decision that was right.
Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 1992 by Jill McCorkle.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.
The author wishes to extend a long overdue thanks to Ann Crowther, Mimi Fountain, Bettye Dew, Liz Darhansoff, Susan Cobb, and Linda Dunn for their invaluable assistance and friendship. And, as always, thanks to Louis Rubin, Rhoda and David Shapiro, Melba and John McCorkle, Dan and Claudia.
Some of the stories originally appeared, sometimes in slightly different versions, in the following periodicals, to whose editors grateful acknowledgment is made: “The First Union Blues” in Southern Magazine, “Crash Diet” in Cosmopolitan, “Waiting for Hard Times to End” and “Comparison Shopping” in The Southern Review, “Departures” in Atlantic Monthly, “Gold Mine” in The Greensboro Review, “Words Gone Bad” in New Virginia Review, “Man Watcher” in The Crescent Review, and “Carnival Lights” in Seventeen. Two stories also appeared in New Stories from the South.
ISBN 978-1-61620-199-9
Also by Jill McCorkle
NOVELS
The Cheer Leader
July 7th
Tending to Virginia
Ferris Beach
Carolina Moon
STORIES
Final Vinyl Days
Creatures of Habit
Going Away Shoes
Crash Diet: Stories Page 19