Is That You, Miss Blue?

by M. E. Kerr

“I wasn’t thinking that you should carry a handkerchief,” said Miss Blue. “You need one for the front of your dress. It’s cut much too low.”

  “There’s nothing there for anyone to see anyway,” I said.

  “It is not decent, Flanders. We’ll fix it.”

  She loaned me a small square of black lace handkerchief and helped me pin it in place.

  By the time I got down to the reception room, I had missed the march of W.M.A. boys as they came up the hill. It was supposed to be one of the highlights of the dance. I hated Miss Blue for meddling, first in Agnes’ affairs, and then with the front of my gown. I stood beside Miss Balfour in Reception, waiting for my name to be called, and I complained about Miss Blue.

  “All you girls think about is yourselves,” she said. I thought that was a strange remark coming from someone who was most of the time mesmerized by a mirror. She was all in red for the dance, red shoes even. She looked like a little hand puppet, she was so small and her face was made up like a doll’s, with circles of rouge and spit curls across her forehead. Her bright red lipstick made a distinct Cupid’s bow.

  She said, “You girls make everything sound worse than it is, telling rumors about things that are supposed to be in the food, for example.”

  “I don’t tell rumors about the food at all,” I said.

  “You will if you hang around Carolyn Cardmaker much longer,” she said. “If you walk with ducks, you start waddling before long.”

  Then I heard my name.

  Into the room stepped a young man in dark blue jodhpurs with shiny black boots and a light blue military-style jacket. There were gold epaulets on the shoulder.

  “He’s got boots and jodhpurs on. He’s cavalry,” said Miss Balfour. “Step forward.”

  I did, hoping I hadn’t already begun to waddle.

  “Cadet Sumner Thomas,” a man’s voice proclaimed.

  We walked toward each other. As he came two steps from me, he stopped abruptly, and like the mechanical man performing, his arm shot out in a crook, ready for me to put my arm through it.

  I did, vaguely aware that Cute Dibblee’s name was being called next.

  “For a blind date, you’re okay,” said Sumner Thomas in a surprised tone. He had a good face, gray eyes, a pug nose, and tight curly blond hair. He could have been taller, and thinner, but I thought he was okay, too.

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet about you,” I said. “I hear you’re in the cavalry.”

  “Didn’t you see my entrance?”

  “No.”

  “That’s why you haven’t made up your mind about me. You’ve never seen me on horseback.”

  “How come you made up your mind without seeing me on horseback?” I said.

  “I like redheads, that’s why. Do you want to hear my prospectus?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you want to hear all about me?” he said as we were walking along Bleak House toward the gym.

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  “Okay. Number one, my father has no money. He had to practically liquidate all his holdings to send me off to W.M.A. I wait on table for extra money, groom the academy horses, and M.C. some of the academy affairs. My mother’s dead.”

  “Mine is, too,” I said. “Sort of.”

  “Mine was this gorgeous bitch who killed herself.”

  “Mine isn’t actually really dead. But she ran off with someone young enough to be her own son.”

  “Mine left a note you won’t believe. You want to hear what she wrote?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “She wrote: ‘Everyone is to blame for this. Everyone who reads this note or hears about it. Sincerely, Beddi Thomas.’”

  “How awful!”

  “So now you’re to blame for her suicide, too, because you heard about it,” he said. “Someday if I ever make a lot of money, I’m going to throw a huge party for everyone to blame for my mother’s death. A lot of people have heard about her note, and most of them have told others. I could probably fill a hotel with all those responsible.”

  “Why did she feel that way?”

  He shrugged. “She was a dramatic type. She’d wanted to be an actress really badly, and she sort of was one for a while. But my father finally made her give up her career.”

  “Did it happen a long time ago?”

  “Last Christmas Eve,” he said. “Her timing was dramatic, too.”

  “You’re lucky you can talk about it so calmly,” I said.

  “I can talk about it; why shouldn’t I talk about it?” he said.

  “That’s what I said,” I said. “You’re lucky you can talk about it.”

  “When did yours run off?” he said.

  “At the end of summer.”

  “Mine was in the bottom of the bottle half the time.”

  “She was where?”

  “She drank,” he said.

  “Mine didn’t have that for an excuse.”

  “She loved the theater. Every fall she went up to New York and saw all the openings. She was in summer stock once, in Connecticut, doing Shakespeare.”

  “Mine never wanted to be anything but what she was until a certain Italian came on the scene.”

  “I never saw her stagger or get thick-tongued or sloppy,” he said. “I never saw her in bad shape, no matter how much she drank.”

  “Mine got drunk once. She had to, to tell my father she was leaving.”

  “Mine was beautiful.”

  “Mine wasn’t beautiful,” I said.

  “Jesus, it’s morbid to talk about the dead at a dance.”

  “My father is a truly handsome man though.”

  “How’d we get started on all this parental crap? We ought to change the subject if you ask me.”

  We were approaching the entrance to the gym. Ahead of us I could see Billy, and the glimmer of light from his gold Phi Beta Kappa key. He was wearing a white carnation in the lapel of his dinner jacket.

  “Did you see the clown behind me in line at Reception?” Sumner asked.

  “No.”

  “He’s not W.M.A. He’s not in uniform at all, and he’s not in a tux or a dinner jacket. He’s this big farmer in white ducks and a blue jacket.”

  “Whose date is he?”

  “I was going to ask you. We were all standing out front by the rose bushes, waiting for Reception to be started. There’s fertilizer that’s just been put down. This dumb oaf suddenly speaks up in this real hillbilly twang, and says ‘Smells lak somebody farted.’”

  I remembered then that the name after mine had been Cute Dibblee. Sumner was probably describing her cousin. I also remembered the card with the roses.

  “What did your card mean?” I said.

  “My mother taught me about it,” he said. “It’s an opening-night thing, and this is sort of our opening night. On opening night in theater it’s bad luck to wish something good, so you send bad wishes, like ‘Break a leg’ or ‘Fall down a flight of stairs.’”

  “What does ‘Don’t ever change’ have to do with bad wishes?”

  “Think about it,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think I get it now.”

  “Are we going to have the same agreement Cardmaker and Peabody have?”

  “I don’t know. Are we?”

  “It’s very practical. There are no strings.”

  “What if someone likes strings?” I said.

  “Someone had better get it out of her head,” he said.

  “Well, it’s the last thing I want. Strings,” I said.

  “It’s out of the question,” he said.

  “I don’t even want to discuss it,” I said.

  “It’s for real mid-West, WASP, Republican straights,” he said. “It’s not for me.”

  “If I thought it was for you,” I said, feeling more and more disappointed, “I’d split.”

  Then I decided to change the subject. “Butler said you’re a poet.”

  “I am.”

  “Give me an o
riginal line or two.”

  “Here goes,” he said.

  “That’s right I want everything about you

  including the body you are hiding in.

  I’ll take that first and then I’ll rape your eyes.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I see.” I didn’t. Not at all.

  We were face to face with Billy. Behind him, inside the gym, I could see APE in a long, light blue dress with a lace front and a long rope of pearls swinging off her bosom.

  I said, “Mr. Ettinger, I would like to present Cadet Thomas.”

  “Dr. Ettinger, please, Miss Brown.”

  “Cadet Thomas,” I said, “this is Dr. Ettinger.”

  We were nicely performing all these little rituals when out of the corner of my eye I suddenly caught the glint of a diamond’s sparkle, then another glitter. I looked and saw APE moving her diamond up and down, rubbing it. Cardmaker had warned me she only did that in rage.

  Then she said my name and I knew she was angry.

  “Come here! By yourself, Flanders!”

  I placed my palm over the black lace handkerchief and inched forward.

  “I want to know the meaning of all this, Flanders!”

  “My father didn’t think it was an indecent dress, Mrs. Ettinger.”

  “You may tell your father that it is clearly verging on indecency,” she said, “but I’m interested more in the doings on Little Dorrit!”

  “The practicing?”

  “The pinning up of pictures and sayings in the bathroom. I’m just sick in bed about it!”

  “I had nothing to do with it, Mrs. Ettinger.”

  “Then it was clearly your responsibility to report to me the destruction of school property.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I was astounded to go up on Little Dorrit a short while ago and discover that certain students have taken it upon themselves to blaspheme Jesus Christ by hanging his picture beside a bathroom mirror. I gather the D.H. Lawrence quotation is a comment upon the picture by a second student!”

  “Miss Blue put Jesus up there,” I said.

  APE stopped what seemed to be a sputtering start of another harangue, this one on D.H. Lawrence. She stared down at me. “Miss Blue?”

  “I don’t think she intended blasphemy.”

  “Students, my dear Flanders, do not make a habit of thinking about what it is that may motivate a member of the faculty. You may return to your partner.”

  It was in the middle of the second Paul Jones of the evening that I felt the beginnings of the attack.

  I needed air badly.

  Miss Horton tried to help me by leading me out into the hall and unlocking the doors which opened onto the playing fields.

  “You’re not supposed to set foot out here during a dance unless you’re an E.L.A. senior,” she said, “and then only to allow your date a smoke…. But I think we can make an exception under the circumstances.”

  I was bent double coughing and wheezing.

  I had left Sumner with Cardmaker and Cadet Peabody. Cardmaker’s neck had turned blue; her perspiration had activated the dye she’d used on her formal. They were trying to figure out a solution.

  Sumner had said, “Try to get a hold of yourself so you can come back, will you? Asthma is all psychological, anyway.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’re marvelously sensitive, tactful, and sympathetic.”

  The only other thing I’d really noticed at the dance, besides Cardmaker’s blue neck, was the very tall, loose-boned boy in the white ducks and the blue coat—Cute Dibblee’s cousin. He had rust-colored hair as silky looking as a prince’s and real dimples with this big wide white smile. I thought as I looked at him that a girl could forgive someone with a face like that for saying just about anything, but probably my overworked bronchi were taxing my brain.

  “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?” Miss Horton said as I struggled for breath.

  I turned away from her to try to expire the deep breath of air I’d inhaled. Suddenly I saw them. They were way over near the bleachers, spotlighted by a circle of moonlight. She was the most everything in a white net formal as well as in any old thing at the breakfast table in Dombey and Son. He was a W.M.A. most everything, judging from all the paraphernalia attached to the front of his jacket, ribbons and circles of gold and badges.

  They were just about to kiss. She reached up and removed his dark glasses.

  “Do you feel any better, Flanders?” Miss Horton asked me.

  Even though I was gasping for breath, and trying frantically to convey to Miss Horton the knowledge that I did not feel better, the old mind was clicking.

  Dark glasses … dark glasses at night.

  France Shipp had used her E.L.A. privilege to slip away from her Junior Chaperone duties to be with Peter Rider. Peter Rider was not interested in a smoke, either, from what I’d observed.

  That was my last clear thought before I found myself on Great Expectations, in the nurse’s examining room of the infirmary.

  After the injection of epinephrine the nurse told me I was to stay in the infirmary sleeping room all night.

  “Why not my own room on Little Dorrit?”

  “On the evening of a dance, one must either attend the dance or stay in the infirmary.”

  She said she would send for Miss Blue and have my pajamas brought to me. I went into the sleeping room to wait for them.

  “Owl!” I heard. “Owl!”

  It was dark. I could just make out her silhouette near the window. I walked across to her and stood in the moonlight so she could see my lips.

  “I had an asthma attack.”

  She ignored this information and pointed out the window. She had a view of the playing fields, the bleachers, and France Shipp with Peter Rider.

  “He’s handsome,” I said. “He could have been your date.”

  She didn’t respond to my remark. Instead she moaned, “Dexxxxxxxxxx,” howled and giggled, hunching her shoulders and making this bizarre face with all her teeth showing in a grimace.

  “Dex!” she cackled. “Dex!”

  She turned her back to me and stared out the window, the huge gold dragon on the back of her robe facing me menacingly.

  I tapped her on the shoulder. “Just the preliminaries, Agnes,” I said. “Not the real thing.”

  She gave me one of her famous mean and hard punches. Her face was cross. She looked around until she saw the pencil she had left on one of the infirmary cots, the pad beside it.

  She scribbled: I know about sex!

  “Good,” I said. “Now try to learn how to get someone’s attention without boxing them.”

  “Gite!” she said. She turned her back on me again and went to the window to look out.

  The epinephrine worked so well I was able to sleep through Agnes’ snoring.

  Before I closed my eyes I thought I had the answer to the suddenness of my asthma attack. Sumner Thomas had come to Charles School on horseback. He had also announced that he groomed the academy horses. Animal dander was enough to trigger one off. I fell asleep believing that had to be the reason.

  When I woke up it was early morning. The sun was streaming in through the open window, and there was a strong breeze. Agnes was asleep under the covers, but her writing material was scattered about the room. I recovered most of it, including the second page of a letter, left unfinished.

  2.

  said she met you and Don one summer at a race. It was her idea to fix me up with this blind guy. She said if she didn’t have a guy herself, she’d fall for him. I was all set to go but then I just couldn’t. It wasn’t that he was blind. It was my same old fear of boys. Who would want me? I can never act like everyone else because I’m not like everyone else, and this is not going to work. Tell Dad that I want to come home because I just can’t—

  Nine

  THEY SPRUNG AGNES AND me from the infirmary in time for church. Reverend Cunkle preached a sermon against vanity, and Agnes and I made sour faces at each ot
her over Hymn 497.

  Come labour on.

  Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain,

  While all around him waves the golden grain?

  And to each servant does the Master say,

  “Go work today.”

  It went on and on that way, advising that the enemy was watching night and day, and that no arm was so weak it couldn’t do service.

  Agnes scratched a note to me on her program. This is WORSE than bloody faces! Blisters, backaches and callouses—icky! Let’s become Buddhists!

  After church I joined Cute Dibblee and her father. They were talking with APE on the church steps.

  “This is the other girl having dinner with us, Pappy. This is Flanders Brown.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said. Then, turning to APE, he said, “I’m real sorry the Cardmaker girl can’t join us.” He said it as though it was a question instead of a statement of fact.

  Lorimer Will Dibblee was a medium-height man with a red, wrinkled face, brown curly hair, and brown eyes with thick eyebrows that met at the bridge of his nose. He wore a light gray suit with a bright yellow shirt and a matching yellow tie, and pigskin boots with gold buckles, and he carried a large white ten-gallon hat in his hand.

  APE said, “Carolyn Cardmaker is being disciplined.”

  Will Dibblee sank one of his huge square hands into his pants pocket, rocked back on his heels, and drawled, “Well, who among us don’t have sin, as the Bible says? Some of the greatest saints were sinners, ma’am. Moses murdered an Egyptian and hid him in the sand; David was an adulterer who took away the wives of three men; Jacob was a liar and a thief, deceived his blind and aging papa so he could get something didn’t belong to him…and old Mary Magdalene was a hooker.”

  Cute’s face went pale. I had to look away and concentrate on national disasters to keep from laughing. But the expression on APE’s face didn’t show signs of having heard anything of the kind.

  “The girls must be back by three thirty for Quiet Hours,” she said.

  She went lumbering away in Billy’s direction, and we three started down the hill to town.

  “What’s Cardmaker being disciplined for?” I said.

  “You know the downstairs W.C., next to the gym?”

  I nodded.

  “Dance nights that’s the boys’ W.C. We’re supposed to use the W.C. up on Bleak House. Last night Cardmaker and Butler Peabody were caught in the boys’ W.C. Butler was trying to get this blue dye off Cardmaker’s neck and back while your date, Cadet Thomas, kept guard. Miss Balfour caught them in there and thought Butler was taking down her straps.”