“What kind of fruit trees?” the nursery woman asked as we all clustered around the receiver, listening.
“I don’t care,” Itchy said in a deadpan voice. “I just want some nice fruits.” The rest of us shrieked, and ran into the kitchen.
We started hanging out at my place every day after school. We’d sit in the same seats, I’d get Cokes and we’d light up cigs and swig whiskey, planning what to pull. The way we did the same thing every day reminded me of the rituals in church. Prayers. Songs. Standing up, sitting down. Like if you didn’t have the rituals, everything else would somehow fall apart.
The stuff we pulled wasn’t very churchlike, though. We snuck into movies and palmed candy from the Five and Dime. One afternoon in March we went out to Stern’s Dairy on the edge of town and dressed a cow in some of my mom’s old clothes. We tied a ruffled dickey around its neck, threw a fringed shawl over its back, put two pink garters on one of its legs and fastened a beige straw hat with plastic cherries to its head. We led it into town through some back alleys and tied it to a telephone pole in front of City Hall.
Another time on a dare I roller-skated through the lobby of the Colonial Hotel wearing a Lone Ranger mask, the wheels of my skates clacking like a racing train on the old marble floor. When I rolled out the front door again, the four of us fell against one another, roaring like wild animals just as Sylvia Staples came around the corner.
Sylvia smiled at me but I could see the hurt in her eyes. I’d told Sylvia my mother said I had to stay home alone after school and study. I said, “Oh, hi, Sylvia,” and busied myself taking my skates off, but a couple of minutes later I told Joanie I had to go home. At the apartment I pulled dust balls out of my bookbag and watched them float to the floor. If my mother ever noticed the extra dirt, she never said peep, as if she didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of knowing I got her goat. She was back to being her phony cheerful self and avoiding me as much as she could.
She’d started working overtime, too. Sometimes I wondered what my mother’s life was like at work, what she thought about and said. As pathetic as she was, her work was a part of her she had all to herself.
I opened the kitchen window that looked out on the empty lot out back and propped a stick in it. I stared at the budding limbs of a tree jiggling in the warm breeze like a girl who’s itching to dance, a girl swaying with the music, dying to be asked. A train whistled somewhere. I stared at some dandelions wilting in the too early March heat, and their bent little stems seemed like the saddest thing I’d ever seen. The air was so still I was afraid everything might stop just the way it was. For a minute I wondered what would happen if I went up the fire escape to the roof and jumped.
One warm day in April, Bobby Felker was standing outside my homeroom after school. “Hi,” he said, with a small smile. He wore a blue shirt and dark pants pegged at the ankles. His face was lean and he looked so debonair, my knees went rubbery.
“Hi.” My voice sounded like it came from under water. “Listen,” Bobby said, “you know, they’ve started up the twilight dances on Friday nights at Marysville Park. I thought if you weren’t doing anything Friday, maybe we could go together.”
I looked at Bobby in disbelief. How could he just mutter something so momentous in a hallway full of kids with the smell of chalk and stale sweat? “Maybe we could go together.” The words pounded in my brain. They should be written in the sky, draped in crepe paper letters over the front of the school.
“Well, yeah, sure.” I studied his face like a map, wondering what the catch was.
“Good.” He smiled. “I figured we cut a mean rug that time at your aunt’s. So, hey…” He put his hand on my arm. “… Why not do it again?”
“Yeah. Great.” I smiled idiotically, my arm burning underneath my pink blouse where he’d touched it. “That will be…” I put my hands out, palms up, and laughed, as though there were no words for what it would be.
Bobby laughed too. “So are you on your way home? I’ll walk with you.” He turned toward the front of the school and a shaft of sun winked in his hazel eyes.
I spotted Joanie and Itchy shifting from foot to foot at the schoolhouse door and knew I was trapped. “Oh, gee, some friends are coming to my place to do homework,” I stuttered and smoothed the pleats in my navy blue skirt. “If I could get out of it, I would.”
“Hey, I understand.” Bobby turned back to me. His sandy hair was cut short and his eyes had slight dark rings around them, making him look sophisticated. “So the dance starts at seven. Shall I pick you up at your place?”
All the dread I’d felt the day Eddie moved in when I’d run into Bobby on the playground came flooding back. I had no idea how much Bobby knew about my mother or about Eddie.
“How about I just meet you at the park?” I studied my saddle shoes, then looked sort of at Bobby’s ear. “I—uh—the weather is so nice these days, and I just love the outdoors. Nature. You know, what do they say? ‘Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.’” I felt my face go red. “What I mean is, it’d be fun to meet at the park.”
Bobby frowned for a second but shook it away. “Sure. Let’s make it over by the barbecue pit. At seven, okay?”
I nodded and watched him walk away as though I’d never seen a human being move before.
All week I practiced looking glamorous. I swiped some Ravishing Red lipstick from Doc’s and ran upstairs to the bathroom mirror and tried it on. It seemed to really do the trick. I kept eyeing myself from a three quarters view to be sure I still looked a little bit like Jennifer Jones. I brushed my hair one hundred strokes every night; the scent of the oil from my hair on the brush seemed grown-up and full of promises. I tried on all my clothes and tried them on again. I studied my list of fancy quotes, repeating them alphabetically as I went to sleep. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for.” “By their deeds ye shall know them.” “Come live with me and be my love.”
On Friday at seven o’clock, I sat on a bench by the barbecue pit underneath a pale purple sky that was huge and cloudless, as though it knew the day was special. I had on a swirly black ballerina skirt and a lilac sweater Aunt Cora had said highlighted my complexion. I picked up a stretched-out wire coat hanger that had a piece of burnt marshmallow sticking to it and started carving vowels in the earth, trying to make each letter perfect. I wrote out nature words … “honeysuckle” … “pink tulips” … “pines” when suddenly Bobby peeked over my shoulder.
“Now that’s what I call a dedicated poet. Writing in the dirt.” He smiled and sat down by me.
I blushed that he remembered I wrote poems, and scratched over my words with the hanger. “Just warming up for it,” I said. I looked at Bobby and smiled. He smelled like after-shave lotion. My nerves felt like shooting stars.
“I see. I do the same thing myself, drum my fingers on anything handy when I hear music in my head.” He nodded his head and jiggled his shoulders in rhythm. “Which is most of the time.” Across the way in the park, two older couples who were chaperons for the night walked onto the glassed-in pavilion dance floor and put money into the jukebox. The women wore their hair in swoopy waves in front, then pulled up behind their ears with barrettes. They had on flowered dresses with V-necks.
A record came on. Violins. “Ah, music…” I grinned at Bobby. “Charms to soothe the savage beast, huh?”
Bobby grinned back. “Well, yeah, I suppose so, but with savage beasts, myself, I’d try a revolver first.”
I giggled.
Rudy Vallee started singing “Cheek to Cheek” and Bobby stood up. “Shall we?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Heaven, Rudy sang, I’m in heaven …
Rudy, you don’t know, I thought to myself as we walked across to the dance floor. I noticed some kids from school inside the pavilion, and suddenly I worried I’d do something crazy. I’d throw an episode like my Uncle Walt. I’d fall and shake and not be able to stop or I’d jump and yell and drool.
But when Bobby put his arm around me and took my hand, I knew I didn’t have to worry. And I seem to find the happiness I seek, Rudy sang, when we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek. I leaned against Bobby, and we moved together like we’d been glued.
We danced to “You’ll Never Know,” “Till the End of Time” and “Oh, What It Seemed to Be.” When Bobby dipped a knee, I dipped a knee. When he rotated a shoulder, I rotated. It was as though I had a force in me I’d never known was there, as though I had just been waiting for Bobby to bring it out.
We jitterbugged to “Jingle Jangle Jingle” and “In The Mood,” swirling past other kids from school and older couples who were all elbows and pumping arms, whizzing by posters of Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, and The Andrews Sisters. Sometimes Bobby moved his mouth to the music but he wasn’t singing words, just sounds.
Later, we stopped to get Cokes at the snack bar in the corner of the pavilion and stood watching the other dancers. I should say Bobby watched the other dancers. I watched Bobby, afraid he’d disappear if I didn’t. I studied the pores of his skin, the patch of sand-colored stubble near his ear that he’d missed when he shaved, the little swoop at the end of his nose. I stood with one foot pointing slightly out like Aunt Cora’d taught me models did to look more poised.
Kids from school passed by and said “Hi,” surprised to see us together. Once Bobby leaned toward me to say something above the music and put his hand on my shoulder. I thought I might explode from joy.
After the dance, we went to sit on a bench back near the barbecue pit.
“Our spot,” Bobby said, grinning.
“Yeah. Our spot.” I surprised myself, sounding so bold, but somehow it seemed natural, as though Bobby and I belonged together in a special spot.
“So how’s your Aunt Cora?”
“Oh, she’s good. She got a job modeling for Finkel’s Catalog.”
“No kidding? Good for her. She seemed like a woman who was going to go places.”
I decided not to mention that she modeled girdles. I thought of saying my uncle came back from the war with shell shock but decided no, my family was weird enough already. Anyway, Aunt Cora said he was doing better except he’d still only wear his khakis.
Bobby looked toward the dance pavilion A woman was locking up the snack bar. A couple danced without music. “I guess you heard the reverend is doing all his counseling at the church these days,” he said in a soft voice. He turned and looked me in the face. “And Mrs. Mackey is helping him.”
I felt my fingers turn to fists. My eyelids fluttered. “Yeah, I heard.” Aunt Cora had told me. If my mother was visiting Reverend Mackey at the rectory, she hadn’t said anything to me.
“She told my mom she’d always wanted to do more for the needy people in his flock but never knew what. Then one night it came to her when she was canning pickles.” Bobby looked at the ground for a second and a smile flitted across his face. “She told my mom the Lord said the reverend needed her to help him counsel the women in his flock. He needed the woman’s point of view.”
I nodded, staring at my fists.
“What I’m trying to say…” Bobby raised his hand toward my chin but he didn’t quite touch it “… is that your speaking up made a difference.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Suddenly I felt tired and teary.
“I admire you for it. A lot. I know it wasn’t easy.”
I raised a foot and looked at my ballet slipper. “Thank you,” I whispered in a small voice, but I felt a surge of satisfaction, too. Maybe I had made a difference. Maybe I was going to be a woman who would go places, too.
We didn’t talk for a minute, then Bobby said, “Tell you what. If you recite one of your poems for me, I’ll sing scat to you.”
“Scat?” I figured it must be a new song.
He grinned a mischievous grin. “You’ll like it. Just wait. But you first. Poem first.”
“Oh, I don’t know. My poems are mostly silly,” I lied, then looked at the ground and frowned, thinking of all the bitter verses I’d been writing lately.
“Try me.”
I tilted my head and figured what the hell. The night was like a dream anyway.
“Okay, I’ll recite a poem about poetry.” It was an old one, harmless. It didn’t give anything away about me,
“Perfect.” Bobby stretched his legs and leaned back on the bench.
“Okay. ‘A poem is a secret, a memory that lingers at the edge of your thoughts.’” My voice was whispery. “‘Images gather like birds. Baby fists. A quick blonde smile. A cage.’” Bobby’s eyes were closed and he nodded. “‘Pinpricks of neon flicker between the leaves outside your bedroom window.’” Suddenly I realized the poem was giving away more of me than I realized, and my mind went blank.
“Uh, I’m sorry.” I put a palm up to my mouth and laughed a fuzzy laugh. “I forget the rest.” I felt foolish. Bobby opened his eyes and turned to me with his eyebrows arched.
“Okay.” He smiled. “I’ll give you a provisional A.” He patted me on the back. “You can recite the rest next time.” My heart leapt. Next time. He said next time.
“Now you,” I whispered. “Now scat.”
“Okay.” He leaned close to my ear and sang, “Beeyoop de doop dooey beeyoop de doop.” He drummed his fingers gently on my knuckles until my fists fell open.
“I figured a poet would enjoy scat,” he said. “Scat is a kind of poetry for a jazz nut like me.”
I smiled and wanted him to drum on my hands again. “I like it,” I said. “It’s cute.”
“Good. Here’s some more.” He put his mouth even closer. “Doo wee beeyop doo ee yop,” he sang. His lips touched my ear and sent a shiver through me. I turned toward him and he kissed me on the mouth, soft at first, then harder until I felt it in my fingertips and toes. The trees could have crashed down around us and I wouldn’t have known.
14
NANCY, 1945
I didn’t see Bobby again until next Wednesday except in my brain. The morning sun would splash a patch of light on the foot of my bed and I’d see Bobby’s face in the blaze, bright as a movie. At night in my dreams we danced on streets of gold, a white rose in my hair, while kids from school craned their necks to gape as we whirled past.
When I found Bobby waiting for me outside homeroom on Wednesday after school, I wasn’t surprised, and then I had to laugh to myself. A couple of weeks earlier if someone had said Bobby Felker would take me to a twilight dance, I’d have joked, “Oh, sure, and we’ll take a trip to the moon on gossamer wings.”
But suddenly looking into Bobby’s hazel eyes in the dusty hall as he leaned against the wall with one sneaker on top of the other, I moved to him as though we were two pieces of a puzzle.
We went to another twilight dance, and then another. On May Day we watched the parade on Main Street together. We bought little American flags on toothpicks and I stuck one in Bobby’s shirt pocket while he fastened one in a buttonhole on my sweater. We walked to our spot in Marysville Park holding hands for all the world to see. I took it as a sign that Bobby and I were meant to celebrate May Day together forever.
I still wouldn’t let Bobby come around to the apartment, though. He was a part of my life I wanted to keep away from my mother, as though she might tarnish him. I just kept gushing to him about how much I loved the out of doors as an excuse to meet wherever we were going.
I rattled on about the smell of sweet corn and cut grass and the silky velvet feel of rosebud petals. I memorized the constellations. I looked up nature quotes. “I love not man the less but Nature more,” I’d say with a smile. “Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee,” I’d quote with a grin. I knew I was overdoing it but I couldn’t stop, and I could tell Bobby wasn’t ever sure if I was kidding or not, but in case I was serious, he was too polite to laugh, so he’d just smile back.
One Sunday we took a walk on Kessler Junction Road that led out of Marysville to even tinier towns nearby: Bethel, Pumphrey, Pool Creek.
Sitting underneath a poplar tree in a grassy meadow near Kessler’s Creek, Bobby told me his mother had been married before to a traveling machinery repairman who moved around the country a lot and that his father had walked out on his mother one spring night in 1932. “Just left her there with three boys.” Bobby shook his head and looked as if he tasted something sour. “We never saw him again.”
“Oh, that’s so sad,” I said, wanting to grab Bobby’s hand, wanting to say I understood, I hadn’t ever seen my own father at all, but I decided I shouldn’t, it would sound as if I was saying I had an even sadder story than his. Not to mention I’d be too ashamed to admit to Bobby out loud I was a bastard, although I supposed he knew. I’d always supposed everybody in town knew.
He told me he wanted to be a jazz musician but that he’d probably go to college just in case.
“My stepdad wanted my older brothers to go, but they never did. Too much wanderlust. They’re living all over in different places now.” Bobby waved his hands in the air. “I guess I’m his last hope.” He smiled a crooked smile.
I told him I might go to commercial school, I was already a whiz in typing class. He said that was great, he’d worked on yearbook write-ups and a lot of girls didn’t seem to know what they wanted to do with themselves. I told him I was double-jointed and he said let’s see so I jumped up and demonstrated a couple of my backbends and twists. The ground smelled fresh and minty as I performed and the tiny points of grass pricked at my legs and wrists, making me tingly all over.
Bobby howled when I finished. “That’s great,” he said. “No wonder you’re a natural dancer. Same principle: a bend here, a twist there.” He got up and started jitterbugging underneath the poplar tree. “Here a bend, there a bend, everywhere a bend, bend.”
I laughed and began jitterbugging, too, chanting, “Here a twist, there a twist, everywhere a twist twist.” We danced for a while facing one another, floppy armed, grinning, something strong and sweet pulling between us as though one was the moon and the other the tides as butterflies twirled around us and birds cooed their springtime songs. I started to understand how Aunt Cora must feel about Uncle Walt. I wondered if my mother had felt the same way about my dad.
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