by M. E. Kerr
“I feel like talking fast.”
“You sound nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“Then we’re friends?”
“To the death,” she said.
“What are we going to do about Ella Early?” I asked.
“What should we do about her?”
“Are we just going to stop writing her mash notes now, just click off?”
“We didn’t write her mash notes. I wrote her mash notes.”
“Are you just going to click off?”
“You said yourself life isn’t fair, even or equal.”
As time flew by I began to think I was wrong about life. I began to believe life, like the Lord, giveth and taketh, and suddenly I was on the giveth side. . . . My father was not going to marry Electric Socket; Christine was mine; there was an empty house all to myself in my near future; Brenda Belle was my friend. . . . I had even passed a surprise history quiz with a B-.
My grandfather left for California on the morning of the thirteenth. After school that afternoon, I rushed home to clean the house from top to bottom. I must have made twelve trips from the kitchen to the workshed, carrying out empty gallon bottles of Almadén wine. I moved the furniture around, washed windows, changed sheets, polished woodwork and scrubbed the bathroom.
Then after I made myself dinner, I set to work on my Sir Walter costume. Around eight o’clock, Christine called me. Her folks were at the movies. She was working on her costume, too; she was going as Queen Elizabeth.
We had one of these long conversations where what you said wasn’t important (“What are you thinking?” . . . “Things.” . . . “What things?” . . . “Things about you.” . . . “Like what?” et cetera) but you felt like you were reciting Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love sonnets to each other, and you could hear each other breathing, and your palms were wet.
At one point I said, “I wish you’d come here.”
“I wish I could.”
“Can’t you?”
“I don’t want to spoil anything for tomorrow night.”
“Can’t you sneak over for a while?”
“I’m afraid to risk it.”
“I really wish you were here.”
“Me too.”
“Me too.”
Like that.
After I hung up, I turned on the radio and listened to the words of hit songs, turning the dial when the song on one station didn’t seem to apply to Christine and me, switching around finding the right songs. I stayed there on the couch that way for about an hour, higher than a kite on Coke and Christine and the second character in the Chinese word for “crisis.”
Then the knock came on the door.
My feet didn’t feel as though they were touching the floor as I went to answer it. In those seconds life was fair, even, equal and fantastic, and I was grinning; I was ripping apart inside with this wild feeling, brimming over.
I flung open the door and said, “You came!”
“I had to!” she said.
I just looked at her then for several slow beats.
“I couldn’t let your father go through this alone,” Electric Socket said; “but shouldn’t you be in bed, honey?”
She was carrying a suitcase.
Notes for a Novel by B.B.B.
“Adam,” I said, “this is Brenda Belle.”
“I know who it is,” he said.
Bear in mind that I was seeing him in an entirely new light, and that, in a way, it was like calling up a stranger. I had made up my mind to keep my big mouth shut concerning all that I had learned about him.
“Since neither of us is going to the dance tonight,” I said, “why don’t we get together?”
“What time is it?” he said.
“What do you mean what time is it?”
“What time is it?”
“It is twelve o’clock noon.”
“It is?”
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.
“I’ve been up all night.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been handling something, Brenda Belle.”
“Handling what?”
“Something came up.”
“What’s going on?”
“Call me back.”
“When?”
“I’ll call you,” he said.
From the Journal of A.
“I’ll call you,” I told Brenda Belle.
“I’ve heard that one before,” she said.
I said, “I will,” and I hung up just as Electric Socket came out of the bathroom. She was wearing the red silk gown with the mink collar and cuffs which she’d changed into the night before. For a while after she’d first arrived, I’d just sat across from her in the living room, listening to her. My father had postponed the wedding with the excuse that I was very sick and that he had to be with me. He had told her not to telephone, but that she could write to this address. She’d decided to just hop a jet and join him.
“He’s always been such a big baby, A.J.,” she’d told me. “Do you know what he always said when he hugged me tight?”
“No,” I’d answered, not wanting to hear.
“ ‘Never leave me, never leave me, never leave me no matter what.’ He’d say that over and over and over.”
“I’m sorry,” I’d said, because I’d been unable to think of anything else to say.
“Who was that on the telephone just then, A.J.?” she said.
“A friend,” I said.
“It wasn’t him, was it?”
“No, honestly, Electra. Why don’t you try to sleep now? You haven’t had any sleep.”
“I’ll sleep,” she said. “I’ll sleep,” but she sat down in my grandfather’s leather chair and picked up the silver flask filled with bourbon, which she’d been nursing along through most of the night. Her eyelids were beginning to droop, and her mascara was running. “Read me the Bible,” she said in this thick-tongued voice.
“Look, Electra,” I said, “I’m not good at reading the Bible.”
She pulled the head I’d made of Sir Walter Raleigh into her lap and began stroking the black hair I’d fashioned from darning thread.
“The Bible is the only thing that calms me,” she said.
I was beginning to worry about what I was going to do with her when it came time for me to get ready for the dance.
“I don’t even know if my grandfather has a Bible.”
“Corinthians,” she mumbled.
I said, “If it’ll help you sleep, I’ll try to find a Bible.”
“I want to die,” she said.
“I’ll find a Bible.”
I ran into my grandfather’s bedroom. She’d unpacked on the bed and her stuff was all over the place: a blonde wig, undies, half a dozen fashion magazines. I looked everywhere for a Bible, but I couldn’t find one. From the other room, I could hear her babbling. “‘When I was a child, I spake as a child. . . .’ ”
I stumbled over one of her shoes and cursed everything. Coffee, I thought, strong coffee to sober her up, and as I raced into the kitchen, I saw the flaw in that idea: Coffee would only keep her awake. I stood there trying desperately to think of some plan of action, when my eyes rested on the telephone book in a corner of the old wooden counter. Under the telephone book was a thick volume with red-gold pages and a purple ribbon hanging from it. I had never noticed it before, but it was very definitely a Bible.
While I was lifting it up, a piece of paper fell out of it, faded blue and old, with handwriting across it. I reached down and picked it up, and saw the signature. “Annabell.”
I called in to Electric Socket, “Just a second! I see a Bible!”
“First Corinthians, Chapter Thirteen!” she shouted back.
I held the piece of paper in my hands and read my mother’s writing.
Dearest Daddy,
I know my phone call tonight came as a shock, but please don’t worry about me anymore. You don’t have to worry about me anymore, Daddy.
He’s a really decent man, kind and intelligent—he’s very intelligent, with more books in his library than there are in the Storm library, and he’s actually read them all, too. Daddy, he loves me so very much, and I am really going to learn to love him back. As I told you, he’s a lawyer, but he doesn’t want to practice law all his life. He is ambitious and hard-working. Don’t worry about me, Daddy. More than anything else now, I want to get pregnant and have a baby and grow to love my husband. I’m not too homesick but it’s still a big city. I think becoming a mother will grow me up, too, and my husband is patient and says he has enough love in his heart for the two of us. I think this is the answer. I have the answer now, Daddy, so take care of yourself and don’t worry.
Love,
Annabell.
“Thy kingdom come!” Electric Socket said from the other room.
“I’m coming, Electric,” I said, folding the letter and putting it in my trouser pocket.
I lugged the Bible into the living room where she was sitting, with her head dangling as though it hung by a thread.
“Corinthians?” I said, flipping through the Bible as I sat down on the hassock next to her chair.
“Good-bye, A.J.,” she said.
“Are you going to sleep?” I said. “Don’t you want to go into the bedroom?”
“I’m here,” she said. “Good-bye.”
“Sweet dreams,” I said, as she closed her eyes and sighed.
I picked up the overflowing ashtray and emptied it in the kitchen. I kept thinking about my mother’s letter, and the date at the top, and I did some fast arithmetic. My mother was just about four years older than me when she wrote that to my grandfather. I had such a completely different picture of her after I read that letter. It wasn’t only the punch of shock at the fact she’d never loved my father, and he’d known that when he married her; it was the vulnerability she expressed, the wistful “don’t worry’s” and the “I think this is the answer,” followed by “I have the answer,” as though she was trying so hard to talk herself into something.
I was close to tears . . . maybe because I hadn’t slept all night. I had the feeling I was just going to break down and bawl my guts out. I went into the bathroom to stick my head under a faucet of cold water.
It was then that I found the empty bottle marked Nembutal.
Notes for a Novel by B.B.B.
“You took your sweet time calling back,” I said. “It’s seven thirty. I’m all alone on a Saturday night, with only the boob tube for—”
“Brenda Belle,” he said, “I don’t have time to talk. This is an emergency. I’m at the hospital with a friend of my father’s. She tried to commit suicide.”
“Who tried to commit suicide?”
“I can’t go into it now,” he said. “Brenda Belle, you said a few days ago that you’d do anything you could for me.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“I’m asking you to do something for me now. Something very, very important, Brenda Belle.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Do you promise to do it?”
“I said okay!”
“Promise,” he said.
“I promise, Adam!”
Never, never, never promise before you know what you are promising.
You may find yourself one fine evening dressed as a man, carrying the head of Sir Walter Raleigh, en route to a Valentine dance with Queen (hatred is immortal!) Elizabeth.
“Don’t forget to spread your cloak at my feet so I can walk across it when we get inside,” Christine Cutler said as we approached the gym.
“$%¢&*@#!” I answered.
“Brenda Belle, I can’t hear a thing you’re saying with that sweater over your face, so don’t try to talk.”
Her father had dropped us off in the parking lot.
“I want her home by one o’clock, Marlon,” he’d said to me. “Not one thirty, not one fifteen, not one ten. One o’clock on the dot!”
I’d nodded my head up and down in assent and plowed through the snow a little ahead of Christine. She’d reached out and yanked me back. She was still hanging on to me.
“You’re being a real good sport about this, Brenda Belle,” she said. “I hope Adam’s all right. I hope that friend of his father’s doesn’t die and spoil things so he can’t get here. He said he’d get here, though, so she must be coming out of it. She’s probably having her stomach pumped. I remember when old Mrs. Yarrow gave her basset hound a lot of tranquilizers to quiet him down, and my father had to pump out his stomach—that was a night to beat all nights! . . . Brenda Belle, don’t tread on my train, please.”
“STOP THE CHATTER! THE CHATTER MAKES ME NERVOUS!” I shouted.
“Don’t shout,” she said. “You can be heard.”
“IT’S ABOUT TIME!” I said.
“Shhhh, Brenda Belle, people will know you’re a girl.”
We went inside and Queen Elizabeth hied herself off to the Girls’, while I stood there carrying my head and praying to God my bladder would hold out through the evening. Adam had promised that he’d arrive with a woman’s coat and a blonde wig for me to change into, and that by the time he got there, Marlon Fredenberg would have shown up to be my date. Adam would then take over as Sir Walter Raleigh, and we’d all double.
While I waited for Christine, I tore at one of the air holes in the sweater, making it wider so I could breathe and talk.
“For God’s sake, don’t bite your nails,” Christine said as she approached from behind. “Sir Walter Raleigh didn’t bite his nails.”
“How am I supposed to be introduced?” I said. “It’s one thing for your father to think I’m Marlon Fredenberg, but all the kids know Marlon’s in Stowe with the basketball team.”
“You’re the Mystery Man,” she said. “If you have to speak, speak in a very low voice.”
“I already have a very low voice,” I said, “or haven’t you noticed?”
The band was playing a slow number as we entered the gym. The lights were very low, and everyone was dancing except the boys who came stag and the girls on Wallflower Row whose dates were ignoring them.
Christine kept punching my side with her elbow, signaling for me to spread my cloak at her feet. When I finally did it, she said, “Thank you, Sir Walter,” in this loud voice, and walked across it with this snotty expression on her face.
Then she said, “Well? Pick it up.”
“You pick it up,” I said.
“Queen Elizabeth didn’t pick it up,” she said. “Use your head.”
“I don’t have a head,” I said, beginning to enjoy myself.
“Pick up the cloak!” she commanded.
“Don’t make a scene,” I said.
“I thought you were a good sport.”
“I have my limits,” I said.
She bent down and picked up the cloak with two fingers. “Yiiiik! It’s dirty.”
“That’s why I didn’t pick it up,” I said.
“What’ll I do with it?”
“Give it to me,” I said.
She handed it to me, and I hung it across her shoulders. “So you won’t feel the draft,” I said.
“#%&¢$*#@, Brenda Belle!” She slapped the cloak back at me.
“You can be heard,” I reminded her. “Lower your voice or everyone will know you date girls.”
“You got my gown filthy!” she muttered under her breath.
“Let’s dance,” I said, shaking out the cloak and fastening it across my shoulders.
She began to sneeze from the dust.
I grabbed hold of her and began pushing her around the floor. “Isn’t this fun?” I said. “You’re a good sport, Christine.”
“Get off my toes,” she said.
I said. “You dance divinely.”
“You don’t,” she said.
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Keep that head away from my bare back,” she said.
“We really need some ketchup for that head,” I sa
id. “Heads bleed when they’re cut off.”
“Don’t talk,” she said. “Do you have to talk?”
“What kind of a date would I be if I didn’t talk?”
“Then don’t talk about blood, please.”
“That head should not only have blood dripping off it, there should be icky pieces of flesh and torn purple tendons extending from it.”
“Will you shut up?”
“And pus probably, too; it’d be infected by this time,” I said; “or it’d have maggots starting to collect on it.”
“Why are you doing this?” she said.
“I wouldn’t do it to everyone,” I told her. “Only a select few, like the select few you had over on Christmas Eve.”
“So that’s it! Can’t you forgive and forget?”
“I’ve forgiven,” I said, “but I haven’t forgotten. . . . Excuse me, was that your big toe?”
Ty Hardin was making his way across the dance floor, heading in our direction. He was dressed like a prince, and in case no one got the point, he had a name tag across his chest with ROMEO printed on it in large letters.
Christine said, “Don’t let him cut in. I’m not speaking to him.”
“I thought he was going with Diane Wattley.”
“He is. He brought her here. I saw her in the girls’ room.”
“He’s not with her now,” I said.
“Well, he’s not going to be with me, not for one second.”
Ty tapped me on the shoulder a minute later.
“This is my dance,” he said to me.
“Thanks,” I said making my voice as low as possible. “I was bored stiff!” Then I walked away, leaving Christine with him.
I saw Marilyn Pepper standing over in Wallflower Row, dressed as a flapper from the twenties. Her parents always forced her brother to bring her to dances, and her brother always spent a lot of time out in the parking lot smoking.
I bowed very low as I stood in front of her. She had done a fairly good job of hiding her pimples with pancake makeup.
“Who are you?” she said.
I gave a shrug and bowed low again.
As we danced, she said, “Do I know you?”
Another shrug, but I pulled her closer. “I am your secret friend.”
“Did you send me that card?”