“So my father keeps telling me,” Heath said dryly. “A better one, according to him.” He stopped a moment, and coughed. “Look,” he went on, “I called to ask you if you would like to go to the movies with me on Saturday. I was just thinking of going someplace in town, but since you like that nostalgia stuff too, how about the two of us taking a ride to Middlebury? There’s a theater there that shows nothing but oldies. I’ll find out what’s playing.”
He didn’t have to find out what was playing. I would have gone with him if the feature were a documentary on plant life in North Dakota. But Middlebury was almost an hour away. I had an idea how my father would respond to this suggestion. “I’d love to go,” I said casually, “but I’ll have to check with my parents. It’s a long drive, and I might have to convince them that I’ll be safe and everything, you know how it is.” That was putting it very mildly. The chances of my father okaying this little excursion without a struggle were slim and none.
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed, and then his tone brightened. “We can do something else, if they say no.”
Anything, I thought. Fly to the moon, play Chinese checkers, stare at a wall. If it was with Heath, I was ready for it.
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, I guess I’d better be going,” Heath said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He definitely would. “‘Bye.”
I hung up feeling a warm glow that easily overcame the dull throbbing in my injured ankle.
The night before, Heath had said that he would see me on Monday. He could have waited until then to ask me out, or another time later in the week. But he hadn’t been able to wait. He’d wanted to talk to me today.
I limped upstairs to set my hair, humming.
* * *
On Monday, Heath waited for me after math class. He was wearing one of his new plaid work shirts, and a pair of jeans that we had bought together.
He gestured to himself. “Well, what do you think?”
“You look great.”
He shook his head. “These pants are stiff as boards. I washed them three times, too. Everybody else’s look so lived in and I feel like I’m still wearing a uniform.”
I shrugged. “You can take the boy out of military school, but you can’t take the military school out of the boy.”
He sighed. “I hope that isn’t true. But if I start saluting Mr. Mackley, just slap me.”
I laughed. His sense of humor continually surprised me. I had thought he was dull just because he was quiet, which wasn’t very fair, or even very bright. Not everybody was as loud as Jeff Lafferty. And I had noticed that while Heath was opening up to me, he still maintained his reserve with everyone else. I loved that. It made me feel chosen, special.
We started to walk down the corridor together. Since our schedules rotated every day on blocks of time, he had a class next period while I had lunch. The halls were crowded, full of people rushing to get to the cafeteria early so they wouldn’t have to wait on line. The crush was terrible, and Heath pulled me with him out of the path of oncoming traffic, moving against the wall. The handle of a locker pressed into my back, and he stood in front of me, blocking my view of the passing students. We seemed on an oasis of solitude amongst the sea of shifting, pushing teenagers. Someone bumped him, and he lurched against me. My face brushed his shoulder, and I inhaled his clean, fresh smell. My heart began to beat faster.
He put his hand on my arm, to steady himself, looking down at me. “That’s a pretty sweater,” he said softly, so softly I almost didn’t hear him with the surrounding noise. “The color suits you.”
It was green, as usual. “Most of my wardrobe is green,” I said.
He smiled. “Green’s a good color. God used it everywhere: the trees, the grass, the plants are green. I like a girl who looks good in green.”
“That’s me,” I said lightly. “Nature girl. A walking botanical garden.”
His smile faded. “You don’t have to joke about it,” Heath said. “I meant it as a compliment.”
He wasn’t going to let me hide behind kidding around, the way I always did. “Thank you,” I said. “I didn’t mean to make light of it, Heath. I guess I just don’t know how to handle remarks like that. Guys don’t usually say those things to me.”
“I can’t imagine why not,” Heath responded, and the warning bell rang.
“Two minutes,” I said. “You’d better go.”
He took my hand and hustled me along with him. “There’s a double bill playing in Middlebury,” he said, negotiating a pile of books someone had left on the floor. “China with Alan Ladd and Loretta Young and Adventure with Clark Gable and Greer Garson.”
It was all over. Adventure was one of my all time favorites, possibly the corniest movie ever made. Gable is this devil-may-care soldier of fortune who falls for Garson, who is, are you ready, a librarian. When it was made, right after World War II, they advertised it with the tag line, “Gable’s back and Garson’s got him.” Barbara said that The Blue Dahlia was actually Number One in Cornball City, and I had to admit it had more guys in trench coats and fedoras, but my choice would always be Adventure.
“I’ll do my best to get permission,” I said fervently.
“Tell your father I was an Eagle Scout.”
“Not really.”
“I really was.”
“Maybe that will make an impression on him,” I said. “But I doubt it. My father doesn’t trust teenage drivers. He’s convinced that anyone under the age of twenty-one behind the wheel is a menace to society.”
We were nearing the chemistry lab and Heath’s class. He paused in the doorway, taking my chin in his hand, tilting my face up to look into his eyes.
“Try,” he said. “I really want to take you.”
“I really want to go.”
He dropped his hand and pushed through the door as the final bell rang. “Later,” he said.
I walked on dreamily for a few steps, and then stopped, overcome with the urge to see him again. I went back and paused in the hall, looking in through the glass window on the door. I had the time, and I couldn’t spend it better than in watching Heath.
My heart sank as I spotted Heath at a far table, hooking up a Bunsen burner. His lab partner was Stacey Trumbull, bosom buddy of Daphne Morris, Superstar.
Stacey Trumbull’s claim to fame, in addition to her perfect half gainer dive, was her waist length, blade straight blonde hair. She wore it parted in the middle and draped like curtains over her face. She made the most of it, tossing it over her shoulders, shaking it out of her eyes, peering around it like a woman of mystery. Right now, I felt like strangling her with it.
I went to meet Barbara in the cafeteria, trailing clouds of gloom.
* * *
I gave Barbara the word over tuna sandwiches and “garden salad.” I love the way they describe the stuff on the school menu they print in the newspaper. The descriptions rarely match the reality. The garden salad was two pieces of limp brown lettuce with half a tomato and a carrot curl.
“Stacey Trumbull, huh?” Barbara said, rolling the waxed paper from her sandwich into a ball. It was clear that she did not consider this good news.
“Yeah. And her hair was in full bloom.”
She sipped orange drink through a straw. “Maybe he hates blondes.”
I threw her a dirty look. “I wouldn’t count on it, Barb.”
“Maybe she’ll break a leg in her next dive.”
I kicked her under the table.
“Ow. Maybe she’ll go bald.”
We both broke up at that, cackling madly.
“Come on,” Barbara said, pulling out her chair and standing. “Cheer up. You’re the one he’s asking out, he likes you. Forget Stacey. She’s a paper doll under twenty pounds of hair.”
I nodded. I thought so, too.
But when lunch was over and I was heading to the second floor for my English class, the image of Heath and Stacey in the midst of a chemical reaction returned.
It nagged me for the rest of the day.
* * *
That night, I started working on my mother about going to Middlebury with Heath. Even though I knew she would not be the problem, it was wiser to go through her first. My father said no to everything immediately without even considering it.
I was helping my mother to put away the dishes after dinner when I said, as casually as possible, “Heath asked me to go to the movies Saturday night.”
“Oh?” Mild interest.
“Uh-huh. I thought we’d take the drive to Middlebury, it’s so nice this time of year.” That was an insane remark. It was winter, the trees were bare, and the only scenery was what we might encounter as we skidded on a patch of ice and dropped into a ditch.
But all she’d heard was “Middlebury.” That got her attention, as I had known it would. “I don’t know, Gaby,” she said warningly. “Your father is going to take a dim view of that, it’s fifty miles each way.”
I was of course prepared for that argument. “Come on, Mom. It’s not that far, you’re acting like I’m joining a wagon train heading for the Oklahoma Territory. You go back and forth to Middlebury all the time.”
“I am not a sixteen-year-old girl out on my second date with a boy I hardly know.”
I opened my mouth to protest, and she held up her hand.
“Don’t waste the speech on me, Gaby, save it for your father.” She saw my stricken face, and relented a little. “I don’t mean to say anything against Heath, dear, he seems fine to me, but couldn’t you just go to the Palace downtown? There’d be no problem then.”
“It wouldn’t be the same. The theater in Middlebury has an oldies show.”
She sighed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. You and those old movies. Sometimes I think you spend too much time in the past. Old movies, historical novels, dusty photograph albums in the attic. It’s an escape, Gaby.”
That reminded me of something. “Why didn’t you tell me who Dana Andrews was?” I asked her. “When I told Barbara that you said Heath’s father looked like Dana Andrews, she said that he played the detective in Laura. I know that guy, I just didn’t know his name.”
My mother stared at me. “Forgive me. I didn’t realize there was a magic phrase involved.” She put the last cup on the lower shelf of the cabinet and shut the door. “And don’t change the subject. You’d better talk to your father about this soon, Gaby. Don’t let it go until the last minute and then raise the roof when he says no.”
“Will you put in a good word?”
“I’ll think about it.”
I let it go at that. But I wasn’t happy. When my mother thought about anything, the conclusion she usually came to was that I was wrong and she and my father were right.
My mother pulled open the silver drawer and started firing forks and spoons into their places. She did it so fast it was almost like a machine was doing it on an assembly line.
“By the way,” she said, “who is this woman Lois who was with Heath’s father when you went to the country club?”
I could have kicked myself for bringing up Heath’s father. “I told you that Heath’s mother is dead,” I said. “Lois is someone his father is dating.” This was true enough, but not all of it. If my mother ever got a look at Lois, her opinion of Heath might change. I didn’t care if Heath’s father kept a harem in his basement, but I knew that the obviously mature Mr. Lindsay escorting blonde bombshell Lois would not be a hit with the folks. It wasn’t fair for them to judge Heath by his father’s taste in female companions, but there it was.
Lois would have to stay in the closet for a while. Hopefully they wouldn’t have occasion to see her until Heath and I were married and had at least three kids. By then, she would have to look older.
I got down on my knees to stow the Dutch oven in the cupboard under the stove, wishing that my father might have a change of attitude before Saturday night.
* * *
I waited until everyone had settled down after dinner, and then went upstairs to call Barbara. I related my most recent conversation with my mother.
“I don’t know why you insist on telling them everything,” said Barbara, whose most cherished guiding principle was to tell her parents as little as possible. “You could have just said you were going to the movies, and they wouldn’t have known the difference.”
“Barbara, don’t give me that. You know how my life goes. Remember the time in seventh grade when I forgot to get a permission slip from my mother for the field trip to the planetarium? I forged one instead, and then fell down the steps of the bus and split my lip. I wound up in the nurse’s office filling out an accident report, while the nurse waved the phony note under my mother’s nose, congratulating herself on her efficiency in absolving the school from responsibility. That one made me real popular at home. With my luck, Heath’s car would break down in Middlebury, or something else would happen to give me away, and then my father would ground me until I was collecting social security.”
“This is true. Well, it’s not the end of the world, is it, if they don’t let you go?”
“Oh, Barb, I don’t want Heath to think I’m some baby whose parents won’t let her do anything or go anywhere. Guys tend to lose interest under those circumstances pretty fast.”
She was silent. There was no argument for that. Guys who got a hassle looked elsewhere, and plenty of girls had more permissive parents.
“No bright ideas?” I prodded. If Barbara couldn’t think of anything, I was really in trouble.
“Hypnotize your father?” she suggested.
“Very funny, Barb. Thanks a lot.”
“It sounds reasonable to me. We could plant that suggestion that you should be allowed to do anything you want.”
“I was hoping for something of a more practical nature.”
“Where your father is concerned, I’m fresh out of ideas. I suppose we should be grateful that he lets you date at all.”
By the time I hung up a few minutes later, I was convinced that I would have to level with Heath. If he really liked me, he would understand. It was a chance I would have to take.
* * *
I waited for Heath after Mackley’s class on Wednesday.
He smiled slightly when he saw me lingering in the hall and said, “Looking for somebody?”
“Heath, I don’t think my father’s going to let me go to Middlebury with you.” It came out abruptly, as if I were issuing a challenge. That’s it, Gaby, don’t beat around the bush. Let him have it right between the eyes.
A crease appeared between his fine, sandy brows. “Why not?”
“What I said before,” I answered, too miserable to try to explain the unexplainable to him. “It’s too far to go alone with you and ... I don’t know, it’s just the way he is.”
Heath shifted his books on his hip. “Would you like me to talk to him?”
I stared at him. That had never occurred to me.
“What would you say?” I asked suspiciously. We were entering alien territory here. And yet. . . it might work. Heath handled adults better than anyone else my age I had ever seen. The teachers all seemed to like his mature, straightforward manner. Why should my father be any different?
“Oh, I’d tell him how careful I would be, and what a safe driver I am, that type of stuff.” He shrugged almost regretfully. “Parents always go for me, though I can’t say the same for their kids.”
I go for you, I wanted to say. Instead I asked, “Can you come to my house tonight, after dinner, say around seven?”
“Sure thing.” He touched the tip of my nose. “Stop frowning, Gaby, your face will freeze that way.”
I grinned, and so did he.
I wondered if we’d still be smiling after he met my father.
* * *
When I announced at dinner that Heath would be arriving shortly to talk to my father, he glanced at my mother, startled.
“It’s not to ask for my hand in marriage, Daddy,” I said dryly. “He ju
st wants to get your permission to take me to Middlebury this weekend.”
Storm clouds gathered. “I wouldn’t expect too much in that direction, young lady,” he said crisply.
The rest of the meal was conducted in strained silence. My father wore the expression of a determined man. My mother sent me a look which said, Be patient, I’ll talk to him later. And Craig seized the opportunity to toss his broccoli down the disposal before my mother could remind him to eat it. He sneaked out of the kitchen looking like a chicken thief emerging from the henhouse.
I was mashing raspberry gelatin cubes when the doorbell rang. I ran to the hall to let Heath in, narrowly avoiding colliding with Craig, who was observing the scene with great interest. Life for him would be pretty dull without me around to provide entertainment.
When I saw Heath standing on the steps I wanted to fling my arms around his neck. I was having that reaction a lot lately. I clasped my hands behind my back to avoid touching him, while he unbuttoned his navy pea coat. Underneath he was wearing a pearl gray sweater that made his eyes look gray, too, the color of rainwater on a windowpane. His eyes changed with what he wore, and had specks of gold in them around the pupil, like a dash of fairy dust. I blinked and looked down, taking his coat. I had to stop mooning over him. Why couldn’t I be cool, distant, learn to lighten up a little? I folded his jacket industriously and put it on the back of a chair.
I glanced at the rest of his outfit. He had resurrected a pair of his original tailored pants, and the old oxfords. His hair, which was just long enough now to part, was slicked down with water.
“You look like a recruiting poster,” I whispered.
“That’s the idea,” he said. “The All-American boy has come to pay a call.”
I pointed to the manila folder he was carrying under his arm. “What’s that?”
“Ammunition,” he said mysteriously. He jerked his head in the direction of the den. “You coming with me?”
“I think I’d better help my mother with the dishes,” I said nervously. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this.
“Coward,” Heath said. He put his hand over his heart. “Well, buckeroo, if I don’t make it back to the bunkhouse, tell the guys I died with my boots on.”
Gabrielle's Bully (Young Adult Romance) Page 5