P. S. I Love You

by Barbara Conklin

  P.S. I LOVE YOU

  Barbara Conklin

  Sweet Dreams #1

  That night I wrote in my notebook: “When we stand together, my head just comes up to his shoulders. He has nice hands. When he helped me climb his rock, he held his hand out to me and I took it. It felt warm and strong and I had the funny feeling that as long as I held onto his hand, I would never fall.”

  To:

  Robert S. Conklin, my husband

  Dr. Pat Kubis, my teacher

  Barbara and Connie, who were first to really know Mariah

  Foreword

  In one corner of my room there stands a creamy white-topped vanity table, dressed in yellow and white ruffles of organdy. I made the skirt a long time ago, all by hand, long before my mother bought our sewing machine that does everything.

  Attached to the vanity are three mirrors hinged together and when tipped a certain way, I can see three of myself from three different angles. For sixteen years, I’ve watched myself grow up in those mirrors and sometimes when I peer intently into them, I can swear I not only see the outside of me, but the inside as well; the soul of me that no one can see — but me.

  The most important part of this little table is not the creamy whiteness of the smooth top, not the cascades of carefully handmade ruffles, not even the three revealing mirrors. It is the shiny yellow bumper sticker I have pasted to the top of the middle mirror. It reads, P.S. I Love You.

  The city of Palm Springs is proud of that bumper sticker. You can see it on so many cars all over California. I remember how hard I fought against our trip to that city the summer I turned sixteen, and now I know if I hadn’t gone, I would have never met Paul. I would have never experienced the exhilarating joy of knowing him, of loving him, the agonizing frustration of knowing how it would all end.…

  Chapter 1

  Amy Iverson waited impatiently for me on the school steps, her long, dark hair hanging like dirty mop strings around her flushed round face. Her glasses were already steamed up because she was breathing so hard. She was clutching a long, narrow brown envelope in her sweaty fist and waving wildly at me.

  It was one of those rare, terribly hot humid days in Laguna Beach, with hardly a breeze from the ocean. Just looking at my best friend made me wilt. I felt like jumping into the water that very second.

  “We did it!” she shouted at me as I ran down the bleached white cement stairs, taking them two at a time. “We’re juniors — at last!”

  “I thought it would never end,” I told her, pushing my sticky, long brown hair off of my neck. Grabbing as much of it as I could with my one free hand, I pulled it away from my wet neck and flapped it in the air, trying to feel a little breeze.

  “Thank goodness they let us out before lunch,” I said, wiping my forehead with a clean tissue.

  Just the thought of us being juniors at last, though, carried me down the rest of the stairs. Maybe IT would happen now. I’d seen IT happen to other girls — girls whom I didn’t consider very attractive. It seemed to me that when the guys are aware that you are a junior, they become interested. There you are, going to the movies together, sharing the same beach towel, sipping date shakes in the little hut on the Pacific Coast Highway and then, finally, going to the prom in the spring!

  It was a terrific time for me. I’d just turned sixteen last week. Now finally I was a junior and had the whole summer to look forward to. Plenty of time for me to do the one thing I most wanted to do for so long — write my own romantic novel and become famous by the time I was a senior.

  I could see it all now. I would spend the summer writing out on my favorite rock by my ocean. By the time my junior year began, I would have the completed novel safely in the mail to some big publisher. Then, after waiting maybe a few weeks, I’d get this terrific contract and I’d be on my way! By the time I became a full-fledged senior, I’d have to literally fight off the offers of dates from boys, boys waiting in line to date a successful novelist.

  Amy and I stopped on the bottom step and hugged each other, sweat and all. Then we raced down the grassy hill and headed for Talbot’s meadows. It was a shortcut home, and we both were so terribly anxious to get on with it, to get the summer started!

  “Are you really gonna write that book this summer, Mariah? Remember you were going to do it last summer and the summer before.…”

  I pushed my face down into the tall yellow and green grass of the meadow and smiled. Just the delicious thought made happy chills quiver from my toes all the way up to my skinny fingers. I rolled over again and rested on the tip of my spine, propping myself up with my equally skinny elbows.

  “Sure I am. And it’s going to be really good,” I promised Amy. “Just like Rosemary Rogers or Kathleen Woodiwiss or Denise Robins. Or maybe even like Fiona Harrowe. In fact, it’ll be so great, maybe the publishers will think one of them really wrote it and is sending it in under a different name. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll even want to make a movie out of it!”

  Amy shot right up then, her chubby face glowing with anticipation, her dark brown eyes sparkling. “A movie,” she moaned. “Oh, Mariah.…” But then her face wrinkled all up in a frown. “But when they find out that you’re only sixteen — not even through high school yet — they might not even want to read it!”

  I let out a heavy sigh of impatience and disgust for Amy’s ignorance. “Oh, Amy! They won’t know I’m sixteen.” I flicked a lost ladybug off my jeans.

  “But they have to find out sooner or later,” Amy said, standing up and stretching. The orange-red ladybug landed on her arm and she jumped away in fright.

  I laughed. “It’s just a ladybug,” I told her. “By the time they find out, the contract will be signed. Anyhow, when they do eventually find out, they’ll be thrilled about it. I’ll be their protégéas I climb the bestseller list!”

  Amy just sighed as we walked toward home. I really didn’t think she knew what a protégéwas and I expected her to ask me, but she didn’t. By the time we were in front of her house, a huge stone and brick structure with vibrant pink bougainvillea growing all over it, we were hotter than ever and all I could think of was the ocean.

  I waved goodbye to Amy and headed for the highway. I hated crossing the busy thing, but I refused to walk all the way down to the crosswalk.

  “Hey, wait,” Amy called and I turned. She ran up close to me and smiled. She had removed her glasses for our run through the meadow and had now returned them to her rounded nose. She was peering through the thick lenses at me as though she was trying to read the sign across the street.

  “I’ve read some of these romances, you know.” She looked all around the field and started to whisper even though there was absolutely no one around. “Mariah, are you going to write the juicy parts, you know, the ladies with big heaving breasts?”

  I kicked a gray stone off a grassy mound, and it flew to the centerline of the highway. “If the part calls for a big bosom, I’ll have to, well, do some research, see how they handle it, you know.…”

  “And the love parts?” Amy went on seriously.

  “I’ll handle it,” I told her with confidence. She smiled and we waved goodbye again, but as I ran across the highway, dodging the cars rounding the curve, my confidence was weakening. How would I handle it? Certainly not from experience.

  Amy and I were both extremely shy. Maybe that’s what drew her to me in the first place; we both seemed to need each other in a funny way. Her problem had always been her weight. She wasn’t terribly fat, at least I didn’t think so, but when you’re our age, having any amount of excess weight was a big problem. Still, Amy had done her very best to get the boys to notice her and ask her out — even for just a ride on the back of their mopeds, or maybe their cars if they had one.
She had tried setting the dark, thick strands of hair so many times, but by noon, the strands turned into strings and she would usually just give up and shove it all into a rubber band and let it hang at the back of her neck. Nothing she did seemed to work.

  My trouble was a little different. I couldn’t smile. I mean, I just don’t have a face that smiles easily in front of boys. I can be laughing, really hysterical with a bunch of girls, but when a boy walks into the room I can feel my whole body tense up, my face go from a pleasant happy, oval shape into a perfect nerd of a square. I can actually feel my lips form steel wedges and realize that’s just how the boys see me.

  Adults think I’m very serious, too. But they always say how pretty I am, especially my dark eyes. Actually I sort of like looking “deep and mysterious,” but the kids probably think I look sad and gloomy. No doubt the boys do.

  I also have my nose in a book most of the time. I’m sure most of the more interesting guys think I’m not interested in them in the slightest way. I’ve been told I even look bored.

  My grades come easily to me, but I have a terrible urge to read everything and anything I can get my hands on. For two years now I have thought of nothing but to turn out my own romantic novel and become famous. Maybe then some boy will take a closer look.

  Amy has to really study to get good grades, but in one way she’s not stupid. She is just as aware as I am that life is passing us by without one of us being asked out on a date. How will I ever be able to write about a big romance if I’ve never had one?

  Ever since I was fourteen I’d put off writing, waiting for that real romance to happen. But I would wait no longer. This was it, this was the summer I would finally write — romance or no romance!

  “My imagination will just have to do,” I said aloud. I looked down now at the stone in the middle of the highway and kicked it the rest of the way across.

  My feet practically flew down the path, the one I had beaten down with my feet ever since I’d started school. I parted the oleander bushes and squeezed through. The salty, tangy smell of my ocean greeted me, filling my head with a tingling sensation of being home.

  Our house sits on the top of a rocky, steep hill and from just about any room you can look down and see the ocean, swelling in and out in a never-ending dance. Looking further down the strip of sand, you can see the city of Laguna Beach. In the daylight you can spot hundreds of homes dotting the cliffs and hills. Some of them are Spanish, some are Old English, and some are rustic cottages whose windows and patios turn toward the sea. Intermingled with them are motels and hotels and restaurants, and unique little shops that display the work of local artists. At night the coastline becomes a black, soft strip of velvet, with tiny jewels of lights displayed on its softness. I never get tired of staring at this view.

  As soon as I scurried through the front door I headed straight to my room. I practically tore off my sweaty clothes and changed into my favorite yellow bandeau. Then I headed for the beach.

  The sea gulls scurried around when I took over their perch, a large rock, looking over the waves. It was as if they were mumbling and grumbling since they all had to reposition themselves. I’d been scrambling up on that rock all of my life, and why they still didn’t trust me I didn’t know. Maybe they were just different sea gulls.

  “You all look alike to me,” I hollered at them. Did people all look alike to them, I wondered.

  The rock was a good place to think, and I had a lot to think about. I assumed most romance writers lived in really neat places, pretty surroundings where they think their books out. Well, at least I was ahead of the game on that one.

  Amy and I had been friends for a long time, ever since I could remember, but there are things I don’t even tell her. Or anyone. Like how it was when my father walked out, and how many rejection slips I’d received from magazines where I’d submitted my short stories. I’d written poems, too, but no one seemed to like them either.

  Anyhow, I’d already come to the conclusion that poems and short stories are just not my thing. After reading a few romantic novels, it occurred to me that perhaps I’d have better luck in that category. The romances are great and they’re sold everywhere, even in supermarkets, so I began to pick some up about a year ago while doing some innocent shopping for my mother. Now that I have my own driver’s license, I do it quite often.

  The novels are usually very fat paperbacks — you really get your money’s worth in reading — and they have terrific, passionate covers. My closet was so crammed full of the books, there was absolutely no place anymore for my shoes.

  I had my novel all figured out and outlined in one of my shorthand notebooks. On the first page I’d written: “Exotic Place.” The background for the book can’t just be anywhere — it must be in a place that sounds mysterious, enticing, exciting, and somewhere far off where the reader probably has never been so that you can kind of skirt around the details (and bluff a little).

  Then you have to have a girl, a heroine with a gorgeous figure. She must be really innocent and untouched. That is extremely important because when she is finally not innocent anymore and finally touched, the reader has got to be there and go through it with her.

  Then you have to have her living under terrible conditions, like a bad stepfather or something and so she escapes it all, or tries to. But the tragedy comes when she gets into even more trouble and then THE MAN always enters.

  He’s got to be really good-looking, in a gruff sort of fashion. I would choose mine to have very dark curly hair and his muscles would have muscles. I sighed at the delicious thought that I could make him absolutely anything I wanted to.

  Most of the stories take place centuries ago, but I could research that part. After I completed the book (it would be an instant success, of course, and they would ask for more), I would have loads of money — money that would solve all my problems.

  First there is my mother. Her greatest passion is reading the travel folders she picks up at an agency down in Laguna Beach. She leaves them all over the house. She also cuts out the travel section of the Los Angeles Timesevery Sunday.

  If I had the money, I’d buy her plane trips to wherever she wanted to go. Time off from her work would be no problem because she wouldn’t have to work another day in her life. I would buy her new clothes, too. She goes to that day school where she teaches in the same things every day. Not that she doesn’t look nice. I’ve often just stood back and tried to view my mother with a stranger’s eyes so that I could get an impartial opinion, and I always come up with the final conclusion that my mother is strikingly beautiful. With new clothes, I felt she’d be a knockout.

  Her hair is the color of a caramel candy, still in its shiny, see-through wrapper. It bounces like the hair on the girls on the television shampoo commercial so, I bet if you put your nose in it, it would smell like a shop full of beautifully scented candles.

  Her eyes are an honest brown, not like mine. Mine look like they are cheating because they have little green and yellow specks in them — I think people call that hazel. But my mother’s are a true, true brown, and they always smile with her face. She doesn’t have a freckle on her body, so I guess I got mine from my father. She never, never gets pimples on her chin like I sometimes do, unless she overdoses on chocolate. I can’t remember her ever saying the word “diet” because she’s never had to.

  Money could change her whole life. And maybe, just maybe, one of her trips could be to Chicago to bring my father back home.

  Then there is Kim, my sister, who’s just six years old. Sometimes she’s a doll, and sometimes she can be a real brat. But I find I usually love her no matter which role she’s playing. Her hair is a bright orange-red, and she hates it. Her body came with its own set of freckles that you wouldn’t believe, but my mother says that a lot of them will fade with age. That’s terribly important to Kim because she wants to be a dancer when she grows up. She attends beginner’s dancing lessons twice a week after school.

  With the mon
ey from my first book, I figured I could send her to a better school, a private one, and maybe send her to one in Paris or Russia when she is older. My mother could then say, “Yes, I have two daughters, one a famous writer and one a famous dancer with the Paris Ballet.…”

  I wouldn’t have minded having Kim’s red hair so long as it was curly like hers. Mine is a mousy (and a dead mouse at that) brown color and is so straight you can almost hear it cry out when I try to bend it around a roller.

  That’s probably what I like best about writing. No one needs to know what you look like when they read your work.

  Well, I thought, looking around me, watching the sea gulls line up on the beach, I don’t have a bestseller yet. I don’t even have a typewriter, but I do have this summer. I’ll start this afternoon. I flipped the pages of my shorthand book and waited for the inspiration that was bound to come and start it all.

  Chapter 2

  My feet felt hot and itchy, so I pulled off my sandals and used the jagged, black rocks for a foot scratcher. The sea gulls finally settled down again, probably deciding I could be trusted. Our white clapboard house with blue shutters at the windows stared back down at me from its precarious perch on the hill. I could see the yellow and white organdy curtains stirring a little in my bedroom window on the second floor. That was one great thing about my bedroom — there’s always a breeze. The other great thing is that the view from the window right above my desk is fantastic.

  I’d bought that desk in a secondhand store in Santa Ana three years ago. It had been a dark, murky color and I’d stripped it and antiqued it white, working for days until it finally looked like the one in the interior decorator shop window downtown. Would people someday come from all over just to see where Mariah Johnson wrote?

  Maybe out of all the guys who came to our beach, there would be one very special one who would smile at me as he was jogging by. Because he would be someone special, I’d smile right back with no trouble at all. Deep inside of me, I’ve always believed that this trouble about smiling back at boys would completely disappear if the right guy came along.