Carefully, Bethie replaced the book in its spot underneath the mattress. She lay down on her sister’s bed, settling her head on her sister’s pillow, gazing up at the ceiling. She felt sorry for Jo, but also sorry for herself; a little lonesome as she lay there, listening to the sounds of the dorm, feet on the stairs and in the halls, laughter and bits of music whenever another door opened. She and her sister were growing up. Jo had always been Bethie’s anchor and protector, and now they were moving in different directions, away from each other. It was as if Jo had bought a ticket for a trip Bethie couldn’t take; like she was already on her way to a country where Bethie would never become a citizen, where she would always speak the language with an accent. Bethie would possibly be able to visit, but she’d always have to leave, to go back to her own place, to stand at the border and wave and mouth I love you across the divide.
* * *
Bethie was waiting in the dormitory’s lobby, surrounded by students sitting at tables studying, or talking, or playing cards, when she heard a familiar deep voice calling her name.
“Bethie? Is that Bethie Kaufman?”
She turned. “Why, Harold!” Harold Jefferson had changed since high school. His hair, previously a neatly cropped cap of tight curls, had grown into a thick mane that stood up and out a few inches from his head. Instead of a football jersey or a varsity jacket or an Arrow button-down, he wore a cream-colored shirt that fell past his hips and had gold embroidery around the notched collar, and a pair of bell-bottom jeans (both the shirt and the jeans, Bethie noticed, were meticulously clean and perfectly pressed). His long, narrow feet were bare. Bethie could see their high arches and his long toes, and how they were paler underneath than on top.
“You up here for an interview?” Harold asked.
“I’m visiting Jo,” Bethie said. From behind him, Bethie heard the girls at the table laughing, and one voice rising over the giggles, calling, “Harold, we’re lonely! Come back!” Peeking over his shoulder, she saw glimpses of the girls at the table: a glint of long red hair, a lit cigarette in a dark-skinned hand with oval nails painted red. Someone had set up speakers, from which Bob Dylan’s plangent, droning voice declaimed, I’m out here a thousand miles from my home / Walkin’ a road other men have gone down.
Bethie shook her head, thinking about how, back in Detroit, the kids were still mostly listening to Frank Sinatra, or Elvis singing “Crying in the Chapel.” She wanted to join those girls, to sit cross-legged on the floor, and smoke cigarettes, or whatever else they’d inhaled that made everything so funny. “Har-old,” called one of the girls in a teasing singsong.
“Hey,” he said, ignoring the girls’ protests, keeping his eyes on Bethie. “You want to go for a walk?”
* * *
“So, do you play football?” Bethie asked ten minutes later as she strolled through the Diag with Harold beside her, trying not to stare at everything she saw.
Harold smiled, shaking his head. “I might’ve been a big shot in high school, but here? I’m barely good enough to be the water boy.”
“So then . . .” Bethie gave him an innocent look from underneath her lashes. “Drama club?”
“No, no, no,” Harold said, shaking his head. “Once was enough for me.”
“But you were so good,” Bethie said. It was true. Harold had brought down the house in South Pacific. Even his football buddies, and the sisters he’d said had only come to laugh, had been on their feet by the end.
They walked along the sidewalk, through the throngs of other kids, all of them cheerful, nobody looking lonely or out of place. It made Bethie feel optimistic. Here was a place to start over, a place where nobody—or at least only the kids from high school—would remember how Bethie had packed on fifteen pounds one summer, or would instantly know her as a girl whose father had died. Here, she could begin again.
“You never even asked me why I was in trouble with Coach,” Harold said as they turned onto Division Street. “Never once.” His voice was teasing, and every once in a while he’d come so close that Bethie could almost feel his hip bump against hers, or she would catch a whiff of his cologne. She was so happy she barely noticed feeling hungry, and these days her hunger was a constant presence, like a pet that followed her everywhere. Bethie weighed herself every morning, and if the scale crept up by more than a pound, she’d have nothing but lemon water for breakfast and lunch that day.
“That’s not true. I asked you all the time!”
“Is that right?” Harold looked like he was trying hard to remember. Bethie balled up her fist and punched his bicep. Harold rolled his eyes.
“Maybe you just forgot because you were so preoccupied with Vernita,” Bethie said.
“Ah, Vernita,” Harold said, his expression turning comically dreamy.
“Why were you in trouble?” Bethie asked.
“You know how seniors are in charge of putting messages up on the marquee?”
Bethie nodded. There was a large rectangular marquee on the lawn in front of the high school, usually displaying banalities like CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATES or BACK-TO-SCHOOL HEALTH FORMS DUE SEPTEMBER 9 or ENJOY SPRING BREAK.
“Well,” Harold said. “The situation was, on Monday the school would put up whatever message the administration wanted, but on Friday, the seniors got to pick. Doug Fitzgibbons—you remember Doug?—he was in charge of putting up the messages. But Doug was what you’d call undermotivated.”
“Lazy,” Bethie supplied.
“Indeed. So he left your faithful friend Harold Jefferson in charge. Gave me the keys to the supply closet, told me what the marquee should say. You know, ‘Go Spartans,’ or ‘Congratulations, Homecoming Court.’ That kind of stuff. So I’d do it. Except I started stealing the Es.”
“You did what?”
Harold looked both slightly ashamed and pleased with himself. “The letter Es. I just started taking them. The first one was an accident. I’d taken out too many Es, and I just put the leftover one in my pocket and didn’t even realize it until I got home. The next week, I took one on purpose.”
“Because your accidental E was lonely?”
Harold nodded, and said, “There’s nothing sadder than a lonely vowel. So then I had the two, and I guess it started to feel like a challenge. And I wanted to see what would happen, of course.”
“Was your plan to eventually just use them? Have the sign just say ‘EEEEEEE’? Like it was screaming?” Bethie asked. “Or were you going to branch out to the As and the Is?”
Smiling, Harold shook his head. “I never got that far. I just kept stealing Es. So eventually, Coach Krantz had to put up something about a Future Farmers meeting, and you need Es in ‘Future’ and ‘Farmers.’ Week after that, there was a Debate Club meet, and you can’t spell ‘Debate’ without Es. So he just wrote ‘Farmrs’ and ‘Dbat,’ ” Harold said, spelling them out. “And I guess someone in the administration noticed, and told Coach that it was a bad look for a school to have a big misspelled sign right up front.”
“I see their point,” Bethie murmured.
“Coach called Dougie and the rest of the class officers down to the gym, and he just lost his mind and started screaming, ‘WHO IS TAKING THE GODDAMN ES?’ And I guess I was overheard in the caf that afternoon, repeating the phrase and, ah, displaying my loot to some of my brothers in arms. Next thing you know, ol’ Harold’s dressed up as a Seabee, prancing around onstage.” He shook his head in mock sorrow.
“You were good,” said Bethie, her voice soft and sincere. She felt herself blushing and wished that Harold would reach for her hand. Too soon, they were back in front of Jo’s dorm.
“You got any plans tonight?”
Bethie shook her head. “Jo wants to take me to hear some music, but nothing’s official.”
“Want to come to a party?” he said, and Bethie, grinning, said, “I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
Dinner in the dorm cafeteria was some kind of sliced meat under a blanket of thi
ck gravy, mashed potatoes, steamed green beans, and surprisingly tasty carrot cake, served in the noisy, echoing, high-ceilinged dining hall. After they’d eaten, Jo took Bethie to a church a few blocks off campus. HOOTENANNY TONIGHT, read a hand-drawn sign, with an arrow pointing toward the basement door. Jo put some money in a coffee can with a hole cut into the lid and found them two metal folding chairs a few rows back from the stage. A single spotlight on spindly metal legs cast a circle of illumination on the microphone. Behind it, two boys sat on metal chairs, tuning their guitars.
Bethie stifled a sigh and tried to get comfortable. She had worn her best blue-and-white dress and had dabbed a little perfume behind her ears, thinking about meeting Harold later that night, half paying attention to the music, hearing the crowd laugh and clap when the boys sang the line about not working for Maggie’s pa no more, because “he puts his cigar / out in your face just for kicks / His bedroom window / It is made out of bricks / The National Guard stands around his door.” When they were done, a girl with creamy skin and long, wavy blond hair in a turquoise minidress, high-heeled white boots, and a strand of beads around her neck took the stage. Eschewing the guitars, she clasped her hands at her waist, closed her eyes, and sang, a capella, “Masters of War.”
The evening ended after that performance. Students, Jo included, clustered around the stage. Bethie waited for a gap in the conversation before saying, “I ran into Harold Jefferson this afternoon. Remember him?”
“Sure. I know Harold. He’s in SDS with me.”
Bethie knew she was supposed to care what SDS might be. She decided that she didn’t. “He said there’s a party tonight.” Jo’s eyes were on the girl in the turquoise-blue dress, who was heading toward the door. Bethie saw her chance and grabbed it. “If it’s okay, you can go with your friends, and I can go check out the party with Harold. I won’t stay long, and I’ve got your key, so I can let myself in.”
Jo was frowning. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll be in college myself next year,” Bethie pointed out. “I’m going to go to all kinds of places on my own. And Harold’s a good guy.”
“Don’t stay out too late,” said Jo. “Don’t drink too much.”
“Got it, Mom.” Bethie rolled her eyes, but Jo had already turned around, swept up in the crowd of beards and beads and bell-bottoms, all of them talking about Sunday’s “action.” Bethie followed them onto the street, where Jo’s crowd turned east, toward College Avenue, and Bethie headed west, toward the address Harold had given her.
* * *
Since she’d started high school, Bethie had been to sock hops and school dances, record parties at the VFW Hall or the Masonic Lodge, and house parties in pine-paneled basement rec rooms in Bellwood’s nicer neighborhoods, where kids dumped pints of pilfered booze into the punch bowl on the sly and parents stepped away from The Huntley-Brinkley Report long enough to stick their heads down the stairs and holler at the kids to keep it down. She knew, as soon as she found the address Harold had given her, that this would be a different kind of affair.
The house, a two-story brick structure, was fronted by a sagging wooden porch. Three steps and a splintery railing led to the front door, which stood wide open. Inside, most of the lights were off, and all of the furniture had been shoved against the walls. The room was packed with people and full of smoke and a thick, skunky-sweet smell that Bethie figured had to be marijuana. Boys and girls were dancing, except instead of doing the Shag or the Twist or the Hully Gully or any of the dances Bethie knew, they were just pressed up against one another, swaying in the darkness.
In her blue-and-white flower-print party dress, with her hairband and a pair of white pumps, Bethie felt ridiculous. All of the girls wore jeans, or long dresses, or colorful, embroidered skirts, and all of them seemed completely at ease in these costumey clothes. Quickly, Bethie pulled off her hairband and ran her fingers through the curls she’d taken such pains to style, thinking that she couldn’t do a thing about her clothes, but she could at least make her hairdo less conspicuous.
“Hello, Alice.”
Bethie spun around to see a boy smiling at her, and she felt her heart leap into her throat. The boy—not a boy, a man, she thought—had dark eyes, a mustache, and a sharply trimmed beard that came to a point on his chin. His long, dark hair fell to his shoulders, and his white skin had golden undertones, as if he’d spent months in the sun. Her first thought was that he looked like Jesus, but there was nothing remotely holy about the gleam in his eye. He looks like a pirate, she decided, imagining him with a hoop through one ear, a scar or two on one high cheekbone, and a parrot perched on his shoulder.
“My name’s not Alice.”
He gave a lazy shrug. “And here I was, all ready to welcome you to Wonderland.”
Bethie made a show of looking around. “Is that what you call this place?”
He smiled. His teeth, she saw, were very straight. “Rose-colored glasses, child. Let me fit you with a pair of rose-colored glasses. I can make the world beautiful.”
“With glasses,” Bethie repeated.
“Of the chemical variety,” he explained.
“Do you live here?”
“That I do,” he said, and tipped her a wink.
“Do you go to school?” He seemed too old to be an undergrad, and far too disreputable to be studying medicine or law.
“I am a student,” the man said, as if that answered her question.
“Dev, leave her alone.” Finally, Harold Jefferson appeared, wearing the same shirt he’d had on in the dorm. His crown of hair bounced and waved with each step. “Ixnay on the ailbait-jay.”
“I am not jailbait,” Bethie said, her voice high and childishly indignant, belying her words.
“Okay,” the man said indulgently, smiling, as if Bethie had told him a joke instead of her age. He reached down and set his hand on Bethie’s girdled hip, drawing her close, as if he had a right to her body, as if he’d known her forever.
“Is this a friend of yours?” Bethie asked Harold, who nodded.
“This is Devon Brady. Devon, Bethie Kaufman, a friend from back home.”
“Alice,” said Devon, with a grin that was almost a smirk. “I’ve named her Alice.”
“I already have a name,” Bethie said. Part of her was indignant, and part of her recognized her indignation as a pose, like she was playing the part of the good girl, pretending to be Alice, before Alice slipped down the rabbit hole. Except Alice had taken her tumble unwillingly. Bethie, on the other hand, was excited to go. She wanted to be different, now that she was almost a college girl. She wanted to see what the world looked like upside-down.
“So have another.” Dev’s expression was paternal. Bethie didn’t want that. She didn’t want him feeling fatherly; she wanted him feeling desire. “Names are important. We ought to be able to choose our own. Once we’ve decided who we are.” Bethie watched, feeling almost hypnotized, as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a spotless white envelope, folded in half. With great ceremony, he unfolded it and shook something out into his hand. Bethie saw what looked like a square of pale-brown cellophane, a quarter of the size of a normal stamp.
“Dev.” Harold’s voice held a note of warning. Ignoring him, Dev leaned in close, with the cellophane square pinched between his fingers. He had a woodsy scent, unfamiliar but pleasant, a little like a cookout in the forest, with undertones of fire and moss.
“Our friend Harold here is a P.K. Know what that is? A preacher’s kid.” Bethie nodded. At rehearsals, back at Bellwood High, Harold would do imitations of his father, Reverend Luther. “In or out?” Harold would holler, pretending to be his father, yelling at the kids. “Am I paying to air condition the whole doggone street?” Harold would demand, with his shoulders back and his chest out, assuming what Bethie imagined was the reverend’s posture. “You shut that door before I slap you into next week, have you looking both ways for Sunday.”
“As such,” Devon continued, “Harold is naturall
y more cautious about certain mind-expanding substances.”
“They use wine in church, right?” Bethie felt like she was being hypnotized. At her side, Harold made a disgusted noise.
“Holy Communion.” Dev reached one finger toward her face. Bethie thought that maybe he was going to tap the end of her nose, like she was a little kid, but instead he touched his finger to her lips.
“Open up,” the pirate said. “I’m going to show you all the wonders of the world.”
I shouldn’t do this, Bethie thought. But that was the voice of her mother, the voice of Vice Principal Douglass, the voice of scared little-girl conformity. Bethie might have to be young and female, but she didn’t have to be scared, and she didn’t have to conform. She could be like her sister, on her way to some exotic destination. This small brown square could be her ticket.
Bethie opened her mouth. “Bless you, my child,” Dev said, and laid the square of whatever-it-was on her tongue. “Hold it there. Let it dissolve.” He smiled, before reaching out with his long-fingered hands, cupping her head in a gesture that felt almost like a blessing. “Welcome to Wonderland,” he said.
Bethie let Dev lead her to the plaid couch pockmarked with cigarette burns that had been shoved against the wall. On one side of the couch was a boy and a girl, their pale arms and legs entwined. On her other side was a curly-haired, golden-skinned boy who lay on the couch, looking like a prince who had fallen in battle, with his head thrown back and his mouth wide open. Bethie sat between them and held the square on her tongue, listening to a song about purple people eaters. The smoke got thicker, and the music got faster, and the dancing became more urgent to the Beach Boys, the Chiffons, Lesley Gore and Brenda Lee. Bethie watched male hands cup and caress the curves of female bottoms, female hands gripping men’s waists and shoulders. In the dim light, through the haze of smoke, all of the girls were beautiful, all of the boys were handsome, and Bethie felt her skin dissolving, her body floating away, somewhere up near the ceiling, a high perch from which she could look down at herself and the party. She peered through the smoke, looking for Harold, but couldn’t see him. At one point, the sleeping prince shook himself awake and stumbled off, and one of the dancers flung herself down in the space the boy had left empty. The girl had a wild, loose tangle of light-brown hair and pale white skin that glistened with sweat. She was barefoot, not thin, her hips wide above fleshy thighs, but she hadn’t seemed to be worried about her problem areas, as she spun in ecstatic circles, arms spread wide. Bethie had watched her in admiration, wondering how it felt to take up room like that, to force other people out of your way, to claim so much space for your own. Bethie’s father was dead, her mother’s life was small and predictable, her sister was moving on, heading toward a world Bethie couldn’t inhabit, and sometimes—a lot of the time—it felt like her skin no longer fit her, and her body was only a collection of flaws to be fixed or at least disguised, an endless source of despair. But now, it was as if her spirit was rising, leaving her body, and her pain, and her silly party dress behind. She felt like she was pure joy, excitement and anticipation and desire. She wanted to move on, too. She wanted to be born again, in this new place. She wanted to dance.
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