He looked up, chewing a bite of the hamburger held in one hand, and shook his head. She set her tray down and took a seat next to him.
“I’m Joyce.”
“Hi, Joyce.”
It sounded like the beginning of a particularly lifeless A. A. meeting. This guy definitely needed cheering up….
“I’m hoping to lose another ten pounds,” she said, gesturing toward her spartan lunch. “I don’t want to go through liposuction. I hear it can be really painful.”
He swallowed, grunted. “At least you don’t have to have hair plugs stuck in your skull. You want to talk about painful. I know a guy who had it done.”
She winced. “Well, I’m not nuts about having my whole face stretched up and tied in a knot on the top of my head.”
One of the women at the table not far away said to them, “Do you mind? I’m trying to eat.” She was in the process of removing the skin from a chicken breast.
Joyce lowered her voice and looked back at Rick. “I’m too scared to have my ears pierced, let alone my face carved up.”
He put his half-eaten hamburger down on his tray. “I’m not sure I’m gonna go through with that slice-and-dice crap,” he told her.
“Well you have to,” she said, stabbing a piece of wilted lettuce with her plastic fork. “It’s required.”
“For that matter,” he said, “I might not go through with any of it.”
“What do you mean? Break the contract?”
He shrugged facially.
She chewed the lettuce and thought about that. No, a little discomfort was a small price to pay for the rewards she’d been promised.
He moved his head closer to hers. “Doesn’t this whole deal strike you as just a tad bit … creepy?”
“Not really.” She was starting to lose her compassion for Rick. Scared was one thing; ungrateful another.
He shook his head, smirking disgustedly. “I mean, it’s like Damn Yankees.”
“You mean the play? I saw the touring company in Chicago.”
“Yeah, well, you ask me, we’re all selling our souls to Jerry Lewis.”
“Well, just so it helps his ‘Kids.’ ”
He didn’t laugh; she thought that had been pretty witty.
Joyce put her folk down. “Come on, Rick—I don’t feel that way at all. I think X-Gen is a godsend … hell! Getting another shot at a job. At a life!” She looked squarely at him. “Do you know where I was when they called me? In the process of committing suicide.”
His troubled eyes softened. “You, too?”
“More coffee, miss?” It was the heavyset woman in the hairnet, smiling down at her pleasantly, steaming pot of coffee in one hand.
“No, thank you,” Joyce said, and the woman moved on toward those at the other table.
She put a hand gently on Rick’s forearm. “Look, if it’s the surgery you’re scared of … just ask for extra painkillers. I mean, if our generation knows how to do anything, it’s take drugs!”
“I was never into that.”
“Yeah, well I’ve never been into pain. I’m gonna have them put me so far under, they’ll have to come looking for me in Australia.”
He did laugh at that, just a little. Then he said, “It’s not the pain, Joyce—I know I can deal with that. It’s just … what if, in this ‘new life,’ I … meet somebody?”
“What if you do?”
“Suppose I might want to get married again, someday?”
“So what? Get married again.” What did that have to do with the surgery?
He gave her a strange look. “Well, it’s contractually forbidden.”
She laughed. “What do you mean, contractually forbidden? That’s absurd.”
He furrowed his brow. “Didn’t you read the contract you signed?”
“Yeah, sure, of course I did.” Sort of. Skimmed it, anyway; but she didn’t remember seeing any clause that required her to remain single. Not that that was even an issue for her, and certainly wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker even if she had seen it.
On the other hand, maybe she’d better reread the contract. Only she still hadn’t received her copy….
“Well, Rick—surely the contract doesn’t preclude us from living with somebody?”
“You can do that. But … that’s not me. I was always a straight arrow. I do things the old-fashioned way. You know what the wildest thing I ever did was?”
“What?”
“This.”
Chairs screeched as some of the people got up and began to clear their trays away. Joyce looked at her watch; time for class to start again.
She stood up and slowly took her half-eaten salad to the wastebasket, then headed back over to the Social and Behavioral Building, along the winding path, moving out in front of the others, leaving Rick behind, but wondering nonetheless what else might be in that contract that she didn’t know about.
“To Sir With Love”
(Lulu, #1 Billboard, 1967)
The following weeks in Indianola passed quickly, and on the last day of class Joyce was surprised to discover that the thought of leaving saddened her. The experience reminded her of going to church camp as a kid: initially excited, then wanting to get the hell out of there, and finally a growing fondness for her campmates/ classmates, who by the third week had bonded together in their collective quest for a brighter future.
Even Rick, who remained somewhat sullen and skeptical, could not help being pulled into the fold. Who could blame him for being apprehensive? Who among them wasn’t? Only for Joyce, her sense of adventure outweighed any concerns.
Mr. Hanson never showed her any preferential treatment, even though he’d quietly revealed to her that she’d consistently scored the highest grade on all the tests. And she respected him for that, and made no effort to act upon her lustful daydreams about him.
So she was a little surprised, when—on the last day of class— she turned to the final page of her test paper (subject: Swing Revival; she missed only one—Big Bad Voodoo Daddies recorded “The Boogie Bumper,” not The Squirrel Nut Zippers) and found next to the A minus a notation in cursive: 400 Kelly Street, 7 p.m.
At first, Joyce wasn’t sure how to take the scrawled address. Puzzled, she looked up at Hanson, and their eyes met, and the note’s meaning became obvious. Slowly she folded the test paper and tucked it away in her school notebook.
At exactly six-thirty, Joyce slipped out of her dorm room. It had taken her a long time to decide what to wear. At first she put on one of her old power suits with high heels; but, after weeks of coed-ish attire, she was afraid the maturity of the outfit might jolt Mr. Hanson (or should she be thinking of him as Don, now?) right out of the mood of the moment.
And she wouldn’t want that, would she?
So she climbed into her tan chinos and put on the plaid madras blouse—tied in a knot at the waist—and slipped on the brown Weejuns. Then she grabbed a brown leather bomber jacket (she’d bought it at a secondhand store in Des Moines) of its dorm-room closet hook, and headed out the door.
The corridor was hushed as she walked quickly along. Most of the other women had already packed up and left, for wherever their next stop was. Only Sally and Joyce were left.
Earlier, when Joyce had just stepped out of the shower, Sally had peeked in.
“You up for pizza?” Sally had asked. “Celebrate bustin’ out of this joint?”
Wrapped in a towel, Joyce said, “Oh, that sounds like fun, but I still need to pack, and then I think I’ll just walk around the campus and town, a while. Kinda say good-bye to the place.”
Which truly was her intent. Only at seven o’clock she’d end her walk at 400 Kelly Street.
Sally tried again. “Want some company?”
“No, thanks.”
The woman got a funny little hurt expression, waved and went out. What was that about?
Outside, a heavy snow was drifting down from a darkened sky, flakes clumping together to make huge ones, sparkling in their descen
t in the bright light of the street lamps, covering everything with their soft, white blanket.
It was just so incredibly, storybook beautiful, and Joyce smiled as she strolled the curving paths of the campus, perhaps for the last time, past the Social and Behavioral Building, past the Old Chapel—its Addams Family bell tower looming gothically against the inky sky—past the Administration Building, on her way to the town square.
Digging her hands deep in the pockets of the old leather jacket, she walked slowly down Main Street, pausing now and then to peer at the window displays in shops closed up tight for the night. Only a laundromat, diagonally across the square, and a fifties-style diner, at the end of the street, were open for business.
As she walked by the restaurant, her smile, which had not left her lips since leaving the dorm, broadened as she watched the patrons eating in the diner. Next to the window, a teenaged couple in one of the red plastic-padded booths looked dreamily into each other’s eyes; they were seated on the same side of the booth, as if the separation of the small Formica table was more than they could bear.
At the counter, their backs to the street, was a husband and wife and two little girls. The children were happily twisting back and forth on the swiveling seats as they munched on french fries; Joyce could imagine an earlier altercation where the parents wished to sit in a comfortable booth but the girls wanted the stools at the counter, and the doting parents gave in.
And at the cash register an elderly couple was paying for their meal; the man, tall and slender, with gray hair and a thin mustache, was handing the cashier some money. He then turned to help his stout wife into her coat, she flashing him an appreciative smile.
It was all there in the diner, Joyce thought. The road of Life. And she was envious of them and their simple, small-town existence.
She hadn’t realized it, but she had stopped in her tracks and was staring in the diner window, like Tiny Tim checking out toys. The cashier, a middle-aged woman who looked like she’d logged a lot of miles taking orders, glanced up from the drawer and gave Joyce a friendly little nod.
Embarrassed by her voyeurism, Joyce waved awkwardly back and moved on.
She crossed the street, the snow still coming down, the accumulation on the ground such that with each step the cold white stuff got in her shoes and stung her feet. But she didn’t care; it was a nice reminder that she was alive.
At the end of the square began the one-hundred block of Kelly Street. She picked up her pace; it was almost seven and she had four more blocks to go.
As she hurried along the sidewalk lined with trees, their limbs coated with snow, reaching skyward for more, she couldn’t help looking in the front windows of the grand old homes. This wasn’t like Chicago, where mini-blinds and heavy drapes kept the prying eyes of the world out. Here each home seemed like a miniature doll house as she passed by; she could see all the way to the back, from the front room where light from a television flickered, to the dining room where families laughed and ate, to the kitchen where dishes were being cleaned and put away.
She was approaching the four-hundred block when there came a sound she hadn’t heard since her childhood. She turned and saw an old pickup truck coming slowly up the empty street.
It wasn’t the truck’s engine, which was sputtering and wheezing as the vehicle chugged along, that made her heart race, but rather the sound of the iron chains on its wheels, slapping at the snow and clanking on through to the cement.
There wasn’t another sound in the world like it—it had died with the advent of snow tires—but every kid in the Northern states in the 1950s knew that sound, and loved it. Because that particular clanking meant heavy snow and no school, sleeping in, snug under warm blankets, and spending the rest of the day sledding on golf-course hills or ice-skating on park ponds.
Joyce watched as the truck lumbered on by, her smile fading into melancholy. Actually, the melancholy had come on in small degrees ever since she left the dorm, but until now she’d thought it was euphoria.
Standing in front of the brown brick house at 400 Kelly Street, she considered fleeing. After all, what kind of depressed company would she make, now? All the romance and excitement had left her—only an aching sense of loss remained.
Loss and cold, that is. Her toes felt numb, and Hanson’s house looked so warm and inviting.
She trudged up the three cement steps to the wide porch where a wooden swing hung high near the porch’s roof, waiting patiently for spring.
She rapped on the screen door.
And waited.
She sighed, her breath smoking, and knocked again.
And waited some more.
It’s just as well, she shrugged, and turned to leave when the front door flew open.
“I’m sorry,” Hanson said … Don said … pushing the screen door wide. “I was in the kitchen. I hope you weren’t standing out here freezing, long!” He was wearing a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and khaki slacks.
“I’ll thaw,” she said, entering the house. Her Weejuns made squishing sounds as she walked, and she halted in the small entryway. “I’m afraid my shoes are all wet.”
“Here,” he said, pointing to a pair of his boots on the floor, on a floor register, “you can put them there.”
She bent to take them off and when she straightened up, caught her reflection in an oval mirror on the opposite wall of the vestibule. Her hair, which had been perfectly coifed when she’d left the dorm, perched on her head like a drowned yellow cat. Why hadn’t she had the sense to wear a hat?
“And maybe a towel?” she asked, feeling stupid, the last remnants of any hope for a romantic evening dashed.
He smiled and helped her out of her jacket, which he hung on a coatrack behind the front door.
“Why don’t you go sit in the living room and I’ll get you that towel.” And he disappeared toward the back of the house.
The living room yawned off to the right, and Joyce went in, tiptoeing on the beige carpet in wet socks, and sat down on a brown leather couch in front of the fireplace, where flames danced a red-hot number, occasionally reaching out as if to greet her.
She stretched out her cold feet, instantly feeling better, and took in the room.
It was decidedly masculine, with dark-wood freestanding bookcases crammed with novels, an elaborate entertainment center taking up one whole wall, end tables stacked with magazines, Entertainment Weekly and Widescreen Review on top; but here and there a feminine touch betrayed itself: A collection of corn-husk dolls huddled silently on a shelf in one corner, dead eyes staring at her, and a family of ceramic ducks sat on the coffee table, as if its glass top was a pond.
Joyce frowned. What if Don was married? Unbelievably, that hadn’t occurred to her. He didn’t wear a ring. But, then, there wasn’t a law that said a married man had to.
Any moment now, a beautiful, shapely young woman—a former student who’d hooked him—might come bounding out of the kitchen, wearing a tight, short dress with a plunging neckline, waving a spatula, announcing perkily, “Dinner’s ready!” Was she prepared for that?
Joyce stared at the crackling fire. Well, then, she’d just have to eat the lousy dinner and go.
Another thought perked her up: Maybe his wife was out of town; that she was prepared for.…
Don sat down on the couch and handed her a green towel. She took it, and, bending toward the warmth of the flames, rubbed her head with the towel, then ran her fingers through her tousled hair like a comb.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much,” she smiled.
“Come into the kitchen, while I finish dinner.”
She followed him to the back of the house, padding along a wood floor hallway in her damp socks.
The kitchen was large but cozy, with gray-painted cabinets wearing round silver knobs like big bright eyes, obviously installed in the 1950s. The linoleum, however, with its deco-ish white-and-gray checked pattern, looked new. And here and there were red punctuation
s in the form of a toaster and coffeemaker. On either side of the window over the sink, shelves displayed dozens of old salt and pepper shakers: ears of corn, cowboy boots, bowling pins.
Joyce pulled out a chair at the round oak table in the center of the room, set for two, and watched Don, standing at the stove, stirring a large, steaming sauce pan, with a wooden spoon….
He didn’t exactly look like a salt-and-pepper-collectible kind of guy. But then, she used to collect old thimbles.
“Smells yummy,” she said from the table.
“It is yummy—yummy is my specialty.” He turned and grinned at her. “Carrot soup.”
“Carrot soup? As in, what’s up doc?”
“Yeah—good stuff,” he said. “I make a lot different kinds of soups in the winter.” He set the wooden spoon down on the stove, picking up the saucepan by its handle. “This recipe came from my wife’s side of the family.”
She nodded. His wife. Which explained the feminine touches around the house. Probably away on a trip. All right. Okay….
He poured the hot, thick yellow-orange soup into the bowl in front of her. “I can guarantee you’ll like it,” he smiled down at her. “Sherry’s favorite.”
She smiled up weakly at him; now the wife had a name.
“I’m sure I’ll love it,” she said.
He poured himself a bowl, then sat down across the table from her, but jumped back up. “Oh, I forgot something…. You like Caesar?”
“I’m way too young to remember Sid Caesar, teach. You taught me to forget, remember?”
“I meant salad, you pretty goofball.”
He went to the refrigerator and brought out a wooden bowl brimming with lettuce and croutons and other goodies, and placed it in the middle of the table like an edible centerpiece.
She was taking a sip of the hot soup, which was quite good, tasting a little like squash; she paused to wipe her mouth with her napkin.
He looked at her with the bright eager eyes of a kid. “Verdict?”
“I love Caesar salad,” she assured him. “And I love soup.”
“The question is, do you like my soup and salad?”
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