The Luckiest Girl

by Beverly Cleary

  It was over Katie’s last dancing class that a crisis arose in the Michie household. Two days before the party Katie discovered that she had outgrown her best dress. Naturally she had to have a new dress. Katie requested what she called a store-boughten dress. Mavis said she could make a dress for half the price of a ready-made garment, and wouldn’t Katie like yellow organdy? Katie said she would die, absolutely die, before she would go to the party in any old organdy dress. Organdy was for kindergarten. Mrs. Stickney suggested white dotted swiss. Dotted swiss was always so sweet, she thought. Katie did not actually disagree with her grandmother. She merely stared at the corner of the living-room ceiling with a stubborn, sulky look on her face.

  A last dancing class was so important, and Shelley wanted so much for Katie to have a good time. “Maybe white piqué would be nice,” she suggested cautiously.

  “Yes!” agreed Katie enthusiastically, to everyone’s relief. There was some argument over the pattern, but they finally settled on a princess style because there was no sash across the back. Katie would absolutely die before she would wear a dress with a sash to the party. She did not want any old ruffle around the neck, either.

  Saturday morning passed in a flurry of pattern and material on the dining-room table and basting threads on the living-room rug, while both Mavis and Mrs. Stickney worked on the dress. When they were both busy sewing, Katie called Shelley into the laundry. “Shelley,” she whispered, “can’t you persuade Mommy to let me get a permanent? There is still time before the party and maybe she would listen to you.”

  Shelley was in a difficult position. She felt that straight hair was more becoming to Katie, whose face was round, and she knew Mavis would agree. At the same time she wanted Katie to feel she looked her best that evening.

  “Please, Shelley,” pleaded Katie.

  “Katie, you know it wouldn’t do any good,” said Shelley, and then she had an inspiration. “Why don’t you ask your mother if you could have your hair cut in a beauty shop?”

  Katie was elated with this suggestion. Her mother and grandmother agreed that a professional haircut was a good idea, and for once something was accomplished without argument. Shelley made an appointment for Katie and drove her downtown in the station wagon because Mavis and Mrs. Stickney were too busy sewing. Katie emerged from the beauty shop with her hair thinned and trimmed into a sleek little cap.

  “Katie, you look darling!” exclaimed Shelley. She could tell that Katie was pleased by the way she held her head higher as if she were proud of it.

  Somehow Katie’s dress was ready to try on and Mavis was marking the hem with a yardstick and a row of pins (“Katie, stand still. How do you expect me to get this hem straight when you stand first on one foot and then the other?”) when from the garage came a loud popping noise and then the unmistakable sound of a motorcycle running.

  “Luke’s motorcycle!” cried Katie. “He’s finally got it to run!” She jumped down from the stool she was standing on and ran to the window.

  “There he goes down the driveway!” Shelley was excited over Luke’s success after all these months.

  “Oh!” The exclamation escaped Mavis as if this were the last straw.

  The motorcycle turned at the corner of the house, crossed the front lawn, proceeded under the pergola, and around to the backyard and the garage once more. The whole family was on the back porch when Luke arrived, grimy and triumphant, his face and hands smudged with grease. He stopped, with the motor idling. “She runs!” he shouted.

  “Oh, I never thought—” began Mavis.

  “Well done, son,” said Tom. “I never thought you’d do it but I’m proud of you.”

  “But he can’t ride it,” insisted Mavis. “He isn’t old enough to have a license.”

  “I can ride it on our own property if I don’t take it out on the road,” Luke informed his mother with the air of a boy who had inquired into the subject. “And next month I will be sixteen and can get a license.”

  “But Luke,” protested Mavis, “I can’t bear to think of you riding that dangerous contraption on the highway.”

  Luke looked stubborn.

  “If the state of California lets him have a license to operate the motorcycle and Luke can earn enough money to support it, we will have to let him ride it,” said Tom. “What is there for a boy his age to do? I would rather have him tinkering on a motorcycle than hanging around the drugstore like some boys.”

  “That’s right, Mavis,” agreed Mrs. Stickney. “You have to let your children grow up, you know.”

  “Sure, Mommy,” said Katie. “He’ll be all right.”

  “Sure I will,” said Luke.

  “But he’s—” Mavis began. She stopped, defeated.

  “We can only hope that we have brought him up to have enough sense to use his head,” said Tom.

  “I hope we have.” Mavis managed a shaky smile.

  “Mommy, my hem!” cried Katie. “We’ve got to finish my hem.”

  “This seems to be one of those days. If it isn’t one thing it is another,” said Mavis with a sigh. “Come on. I’ll have to start pinning it all over after the way you have been jumping around.”

  Somehow, while Luke rode his motorcycle around and around the house, Katie’s dress was finished and a meal prepared. After supper Katie showered, admired her hair frequently in the mirror, slipped her dress on over her best petticoat, and was ready for the party. She twirled around in front of her family. “Mommy, I just love my dress,” she exclaimed. “And you know what? Pamela’s mother can’t sew a thing. She’s awfully dumb about a lot of things.”

  “I am glad you are pleased, Katie,” said Mavis. “But I don’t think you should talk about Pamela’s mother that way.” Mavis sat down, rested her head on the back of the chair, and closed her eyes. “Shelley, is Hartley coming over this evening?” she asked.

  “Not till later,” answered Shelley. “Probably not till nine o’clock. They are having a family dinner for his grandmother’s birthday and he has to stay around.”

  “Would you mind driving Katie to the party?” Mavis asked. “I’m too tired.”

  “I would love to,” answered Shelley, who enjoyed driving.

  When she had deposited Katie at the junior high school auditorium, Shelley said, “Have fun!”

  “I will,” said Katie, smiling. Then she turned and ran toward the auditorium before she remembered how grown-up she was and slowed down to a walk.

  Shelley drove slowly back to the Michies’, looking at all that had grown familiar in the last months—the cannon in the park, the big old houses along the main street, the high school’s mission tower that had never contained a bell, the pomegranate trees, the groves that had shed their petals. She must remember every bit of it always. At the Michies’ Tom and Luke were washing the dishes while Mavis and her mother recovered from their frantic day of sewing. Mrs. Stickney’s bright green yarn lay in her lap and everyone seemed too tired to argue about anything.

  Shelley decided to go to her room to answer her mother’s letter. She picked it up and glanced through it once more. “We are looking forward so much to our trip to California. We can hardly wait to see our daughter again. It seems as if you have been gone more than nine months. Mavis writes that Hartley is one of the nicest boys she has ever known and that is such a relief. I do worry so about you way off down there. What has happened to Philip?”

  Shelley’s feelings were a mixture of tenderness and irritation. Honestly, the way her mother acted as if she were still a child! Shelley picked up her pen and stared thoughtfully at a blank piece of notebook paper. “Dear Mother and Daddy,” she began. “Of course Hartley is a nice boy. I don’t know why you think I would be interested in any other kind. You really did not need to write for references—”

  Shelley sat with her pen poised above the paper. She did not want to bicker with her mother, any more than her mother wanted to bicker with her. She could not understand why they behaved the way they did. She wished the
situation would be different when she returned but she was afraid it would not. Her mother would still tell her she should wear the blue dress instead of the green or the green instead of the pink, she would still insist on helping Shelley select her clothes, she would still say she thought Shelley should not go over to Rosemary’s house so often. And Shelley would still object to everything her mother said. She laid down her pen. Darn it all, anyway. Why did things have to be the way they were?

  A little before eight thirty Shelley went downstairs and asked, “Would you like me to go get Katie?”

  “Why don’t we all three go?” suggested Mavis. “Mother, wouldn’t you enjoy a little ride?”

  “I think it is a fine idea after such a hard day,” agreed Mrs. Stickney.

  “Oh, I forgot,” said Mavis when they arrived at the junior high school and saw no sign that the party was ending. “Since this is the last class of the season, it lasts until nine o’clock.” They sat in silence in the station wagon awhile until Mavis said, “Let’s go in and watch. The girls always look so pretty in their spring dresses.”

  Shelley realized she was going to lose some of her precious moments with Hartley, because now it would be after nine o’clock when they returned. There was nothing she could do about it.

  They walked up to the auditorium, slipped quietly through the door, and silently joined the parents who were standing along one wall watching. It seemed to Shelley an exceptionally pretty party. The girls were all dressed in pastel cotton dresses and each was wearing a lei of pink carnations. The boys wore carnations in the buttonholes of their best suits. They were all very dignified as they danced around the auditorium to the music of a band of four high school boys. Shelley located Katie dancing with a boy who was shorter than she was—so many of the boys were shorter than the girls. Shelley thought Katie was having as good a time as it was possible to have with a short boy, but she could not be sure. Like all the girls Katie looked rather solemn. Not as solemn as the girls who were wearing their first high heels, but solemn for Katie. Shelley was glad to see that Katie’s next partner, who had bushy hair, was taller. Katie’s expression was one of elation suppressed by anxiety about not stepping on her partner’s feet. Shelley was sure that this boy must be Rudy. Katie did not appear to recognize either Shelley or her relatives.

  Eager not to miss any time with Hartley, Shelley glanced surreptitiously at her watch every thirty seconds and was glad when the party ended and Katie joined them.

  “Did you have a good time?” Mavis asked.

  “Oh, I guess so.” Katie spoke coldly as they left the auditorium.

  Shelley and Mrs. Stickney exchanged a glance. What had gone wrong? Shelley shivered in the cool night air. She should have worn a sweater.

  Katie walked to the car in silence. She slid into the seat beside Shelley, filling the station wagon with the spicy fragrance of her carnation lei.

  “What happened, dear?” Mavis asked.

  “I was having a perfectly marvelous time and then you had to come along and spoil everything,” Katie burst out.

  “Now what have I done?” Mavis’s voice was weary.

  “You brought Shelley and Nana in and watched as if we were all a bunch of animals in a zoo or something,” Katie accused her mother. “You spoiled everything.”

  “But there was nothing wrong with that,” protested Mavis. “Other parents were watching, and I thought it was a very nice party. You girls looked lovely in your light dresses with your leis.”

  “I was the only one there with three people watching,” said Katie. “And nobody who is anybody lets his parents come and watch anyway.”

  Of course, thought Shelley. She had felt exactly the same way at Katie’s age about her mother’s visiting school. How well she remembered those arguments. “But Shelley,” her mother would say, “the board of education wants parents to visit school and at P.T.A. we are urged to visit.” “I don’t care, Mother,” Shelley would answer. “Nobody’s mother visits school in the eighth grade.” Now she wished she had remembered and somehow kept Mavis and her mother from watching the party. She could have made some excuse about her date with Hartley and asked them to drive her home. Now they were wasting precious minutes.

  “Katie, that’s ridiculous,” said Mavis, inserting the key into the ignition. “The parents pay for the series of lessons and there is no reason why they shouldn’t see what their children are doing.”

  “Mommy, you don’t understand,” complained Katie.

  “Katie, I wish you would stop saying that,” snapped Mavis, her patience at an end.

  “I understand,” said Mrs. Stickney. “What Katie is really saying when she complains about our watching is, ‘I am trying to grow up—I want to be free of my mother and grandmother and so I don’t want them watching me.’ And what Mavis is saying is, ‘Katie is still my little girl and so I have a right to watch.’”

  “I guess you are right, Mother.” Mavis sounded tired. “Children do have to grow up.”

  Everyone was silent as the station wagon traveled up the main street. Why, of course, thought Shelley. It was all as simple as that. That was all she and her mother ever really argued about. She was trying to grow up and her mother did not want to lose her little girl. The argument might be disguised as a disagreement about a slicker, or visiting school, or how late she could stay out, but it always meant the same thing. Shelley wanted to grow up and her mother felt she was still her little girl. And that was the reason she had stuffed the roses in the Disposall. She had been trying to say, Now I am going to grow up.

  “I am at a very difficult stage,” said Katie in a voice that suggested everyone should sympathize with her problems.

  “Not really?” said Mrs. Stickney, and laughed.

  Shelley could see that Katie felt her grandmother was being most unsympathetic.

  “Tell us about your difficult stage,” suggested Mrs. Stickney.

  “Well, I read an article—” Katie began defensively.

  “She’s read an article,” chortled Mrs. Stickney. “And I suppose the article said a thirteen-year-old girl is going through a lot of difficult changes.”

  Mavis shared her mother’s amusement. “It must have been that article that said a thirteen-year-old girl is half child, half woman.”

  “You don’t have to make fun of me,” Katie said crossly. “What I mean is I am not like Shelley, who doesn’t have any problems.”

  “Why, I do, too,” said Shelley, surprised at this view of herself. “Lots of them. I had a terrible time with biology.”

  “Oh, school.” Katie was scornful. “School doesn’t count. I mean you have dates and things.”

  “But school does count,” protested Shelley. “It’s terribly important. And just because I have dates doesn’t mean they are always with the right boys.”

  “Don’t you like Hartley?” asked Katie.

  “Of course I like Hartley,” said Shelley. “I mean…boys at home. And I have other problems, too.”

  “What?” asked Katie.

  “Katie, do you think because you are thirteen you have all the problems?” Mavis asked.

  “Well, the article said—” began Katie.

  “I don’t care what it said,” snapped Mrs. Stickney. “Look at me. My hair is gray. I wear bifocals. I have bridgework. All because I have changed.”

  “But you’re…grown-up,” Katie pointed out, hesitating just enough so that Shelley knew she had been about to say, “But you are old.”

  “Katie, just because a girl grows up doesn’t mean she stops feeling,” Mavis pointed out.

  “And take your mother,” said Mrs. Stickney. “Her life is difficult too. Her children are growing up whether she wants them to or not. She will have to let Luke ride his motorcycle whether she wants to or not. And probably the hardest part of all is having a daughter too old to read Winnie-the-Pooh but young enough to misinterpret articles in women’s magazines. That is a terrible stage for a mother to go through. I don’t know wh
y someone doesn’t write an article about it.” Mrs. Stickney and her daughter both thought this was extremely funny.

  “I never read Winnie-the-Pooh. Mommy read it to me,” said Katie grumpily. “Why does this family have to argue all the time?”

  “Yes, for goodness’ sake, let’s stop arguing,” said Mavis. “Let’s get Shelley home for her date with Hartley, and then the rest of us can go downtown for an ice-cream soda.”

  “I’m starved,” said Katie as they turned into the driveway behind Hartley’s parked car.

  “Mavis, I’ve been meaning to tell you—I think you’re putting on a little weight,” said Mrs. Stickney. “Don’t you think you should cut out desserts?”

  “Mother, you say that every time you come to visit us,” answered Mavis. “I think I am old enough to know what I should eat.”

  Shelley stifled a desire to laugh as she climbed out of the station wagon. She found Hartley in the garage examining the motorcycle and talking to Tom and Luke. “Hi,” she said, feeling the pang she had felt so often lately. This was her next-to-the-last date with Hartley. “The others have gone downtown for a soda.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Hartley. “Why don’t we go for a ride and then stop in for a soda?”

  “I’d love to,” agreed Shelley. “Wait till I get my sweater.”

  She ran upstairs, and as she turned on the light in her room, her glance fell on the unfinished letter on her desk. She picked it up and read it over before she crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket. How silly she had been to be so indignant over nothing. All her mother really meant by her letter was that she loved Shelley. And all Shelley’s answer meant was that she wanted to grow up. And she would grow up, was growing up every day. There was nothing her mother could do but accept it and there was nothing Shelley could do but try to understand her mother’s feelings. Maybe neither of them would do a very good job, but it would all turn out all right, she was sure.