“What?”
“That I’m not what you think.”
“You have a nasty mind, and you’re developing a very nasty habit.”
“I just didn’t want you to be upset by my phone—”
Click.
“—call.”
I hardly slept all night. She might know my voice when she heard it again. She might already have recognized me. If she did, she’d tell her parents this morning. Her dad could be over here any minute, yelling at my mom.
Maybe he’d call the police first. After all, it wasn’t like I’d accidentally thrown a baseball through his window, barely a misdemeanor. I’d probably committed a felony.
I opened my door to hear part of a conversation going on below.
“—solution is a simple one, Dominic.”
“If all I wanted was a housekeeper, I’d never have gone looking for a wife.”
“Are you suggesting that—”
“No. Donna, don’t make anything more out of what I say than what I meant. I can screw things up enough on my own.”
“Dom,” Mom said, her tone softening immediately upon some sign of vulnerability in Mr. B.
“I love you, Donna. For more important reasons than your housekeeping.”
“God knows you’d have to love me for more than that,” Mom said with a laugh. She’s a sucker for hearing someone loves her.
I shut my door again, very quietly.
Mom’s enthusiasm for playing with her new house had lasted through the holidays. As soon as Mr. B and I put away the Christmas decorations, Mom apparently forgot where to find the vacuum cleaner. The thing is, I knew Mom was doing her best. She can map things out, but she needs more than cooperation, she needs a support system. She has that at work, she had that in Dad. I loved her, but it might turn out that with Mr. B, Mom had to sink or swim.
When I went downstairs ten minutes later, everything had cooled down. Mr. B had gone, Mom was just leaving. I made a bowl of cereal for myself. I squinted at the wall clock, the way we all did—the field of Italian sunflowers on the face nearly obscured the numbers—and began to breathe easy. No irate fathers had pounded on the door, there were no cops surrounding the house.
My breakfast went uninterrupted.
EIGHTEEN
There was a midmorning fire drill.
My second-period class filed out right alongside Patsy’s.
“Hey, Patsy,” the girl in front of me called out in a pretty voice with a strong Southern accent. She reached out for Patsy as she called her name, grasping Patsy’s hand to give it a little squeeze.
What followed happened so quickly, I would’ve missed it if I blinked once. Patsy’s immediate reaction was to return the hand thing, starting to smile, but she cut her own response short, the happy pink flush of her cheeks deepening to one of mild embarrassment.
“Sissy, I always mean to call—” Patsy said.
“I’m always busy anyway,” the girl ahead of me said, sort of too cheerfully. “You know that.”
“I know that,” Patsy echoed in a dismal tone. “Do you like your teachers this semester?” she said, mustering up a conversation.
“Oh, yeah. They’re all real good about late homework and all.”
“How are your brothers and sisters?”
“Oh, fine. Bobby Wayne’ll be coming here next year.”
Brown Bunny moved in from Patsy’s other side just then. I had a feeling she’d been listening in from a few steps away. I didn’t think Patsy saw her until then, either.
“Say hi to everybody for me,” Patsy said quickly, stepping out of the loose formation of the line as she spoke.
A casual onlooker might think they’d spoken only in passing, the way Patsy handled herself. Sissy was in a couple of my classes, one of those serious kids teachers always seat squarely between two of the class loudmouths to tone things down. I’d never even heard her voice before.
I followed Patsy and Brown Bunny, something that was less conspicuous than it sounds. Students were shifting around, so all I had to do was look like part of any conversation if the girls noticed me.
“I didn’t know you were so friendly with her,” Brown Bunny said, letting her long teeth sink in.
Patsy said, “I was standing next to her, that’s all.”
“You had something to talk about,” Brown Bunny said, cutting off that line of defense.
“I used to hang out with her now and then.”
“Who?” Melanie said as she joined them.
“Sissy Donovan,” Patsy said, her facial expression plainly communicating severe pain. “Melanie and I both did, didn’t we?”
“Hung out?” Melanie looked wary.
“Oh,” Patsy said, with a dismissive lift of her hand.
“It was more a matter of carpooling,” Melanie said, clearly irritated that her cover had been blown. “Our mothers arranged that, if you know what I mean. Before her mother died.”
“That must be why she is so completely without style,” Brown Bunny said, and it was hard to say whether she accepted the explanation or secretly reveled in her superiority. “Her hair looks like she cuts it herself.”
“She’s in charge of her brothers and sisters till her dad gets home from work,” Patsy said. “She makes dinner for six people. And she gets decent grades, so she probably doesn’t have much time for style.”
“Oh, who really cares,” Melanie said, and stalked away. I had the feeling she did care. And Patsy certainly did.
The bell rang, signaling the end of the fire drill.
I’d learned something about Patsy, the meaningful stuff of picking friends, and what we give up when we try to move up a level in popularity. If I was dating Patsy, this would be valuable. Of course, I wasn’t dating Patsy and it wasn’t likely I ever would be.
However, I was talking to her. Sort of.
12:00 a.m. and ringing.
“You again.”
“Just hear what I’ve got to say,” I began.
“I never heard of a creep who had this need to apologize.”
“Exactly! I’m just a regular person.”
“You sound weird. Like you have cotton balls in your mouth or something.”
“I’m talking through a handkerchief.” I didn’t think that sounded as creepy as a T-shirt.
She said, “If you need me to forgive you, it’s probably a sign that you’re neurotic.”
!!!
“What are you, a psychologist?”
“My dad’s a psychiatrist.”
“And you never tell him you’re sorry.”
“We were discussing your apologies, not mine.”
“That’s what you were discussing.”
I’d hoped to get a laugh, but she said, “I probably know you. Why else would you care what I think of you?”
I tried to sound like someone who sat next to her at school. Somebody she knew. “I’m not a creep, okay? I do want you to know I’m sorry. If I wasn’t, I’d be a whole lot worse than neurotic.”
“You’re going to get caught if you keep this up.”
Maybe that was it—I had a compulsive desire to be discovered. The idea gave me the willies. But I said, “I’m not crazy, either.”
She said, “That is what they all say,” and hung up.
The terrible thing, I was disappointed when she did.
Also, I was a little offended. Her tone of voice had been … ripe. Ripe with being sure of who I was. Well, not who I was, but the kind of guy she thought I’d have to be.
Actually, it was just possible she was getting a kick out of these phone calls. Oh, not that she was loving them exactly. But I noticed she didn’t hang up right away. She exchanged a few words with me, and when she had me where she wanted me, she hung up.
She must have been enjoying a certain sense of triumph when she hung up. Sadistic, that’s what it was. It made me queasy to think about it.
NINETEEN
The next day, at the start of fourth-period lunch, I followe
d Patsy in, veering around the room before getting in the cafeteria line just behind her. This was not an easy maneuver, I couldn’t look like I was following her.
At fruit salad, somebody she knew stepped into the line.
“Hey, Patsy!”
“Daniel. Hi.”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said as if they were in the middle of a conversation, “I loved your essay on ballet camp.” I knew the type immediately, just hearing his voice. Too thin, mostly nervous, always terribly precise when he’s nervous.
“Thanks.” Said with little enthusiasm as she chose a cottage cheese salad.
“Are you going again this summer?” he asked as the line shifted. He was riveted on her. Plus, he had a galloping case of dermatologist-treated acne, sunburned and peeling.
She said, “I don’t know. I’ve sort of started thinking more seriously. I mean, ballet was never about a career for me.”
“No? No, I—”
“Patsy,” Melanie said, low and urgently, fitting herself into the space between Patsy and myself.
“Move aside, Twinkle-toes,” Brown Bunny said as she horned in on Patsy’s other side. Melanie looked hard at the food choices, and I couldn’t quite read her expression—sad? mad?
Daniel moved up the line to pay for his lunch. Which is to say, he backed off without the obligatory adolescent male’s repartee.
“He asked you for a date?” Brown Bunny asked Patsy.
I guessed “he” was not Daniel.
“Not the way you’d think,” Patsy said, sounding reluctant. “Sunday dinner at his uncle’s house.”
“He didn’t ask anybody out since he moved here, and now he’s wild for you.” Brown Bunny didn’t sound happy about it.
“Please,” Patsy said, as if this was a crazy exaggeration. But she was eating it up. She turned away to pay for her cottage cheese.
“I wonder why he didn’t ask you to go to a movie.”
Melanie said, “This is better, like—” This pause came with a thoughtful frown. “Like, she’s getting introduced to his family.”
Brown Bunny looked skeptical. “This weekend, meet the uncle, next weekend, plan the wedding? I’m not getting the right vibes here.”
“It’s just a family meal,” Patsy said, very cool. The truth, I think she wasn’t too happy to hear that Brown Bunny wasn’t going to drape a luckiest-girl-in-the-world banner over her shoulder.
“I just wonder who needs the uncle’s permission, you or him.” Brown Bunny had surprisingly good instincts. I liked that.
“You’re making too much of this,” Patsy said as Melanie paid for milk and a sandwich.
“I’ll see you in class later,” Brown Bunny said, which was as close as I’d ever heard her come to sounding like a friend.
I wandered through the maze of tables until Patsy and Melanie sat down. Then I chose a place right behind them. I heard Melanie say, “She’s just mad he didn’t ask her,” and I let my chair scrape across the floor.
I was sharing the table with Daniel, who didn’t even try to sit with them, although he knew Patsy well enough. He laid two textbooks on the table and set his lunch out on top of them like they were a place mat.
I could see he’d resigned himself to a certain position in life. As in, satellite spinning around the popular and beautiful, but never getting swept into the inner circle. I was pretty much a satellite myself. Just not resigned to it.
I had a book report to make up, so I started to reread The Catcher in the Rye. We never said a word to each other the whole period.
Mr. B came back to the house for a sandwich at four. Actually, I think he expected a cold dinner to be waiting for him, since this was one of Mom’s at-home days. But she had gone out and hadn’t gotten home yet.
He went right back out to run practice sessions for the powder-puff game. Mom came in about ten minutes later, carrying some Macy’s shopping bags. Mr. B had cleaned up after himself, so she didn’t know she’d missed an important pass.
She and I ate rotisserie chicken and potato salad from the deli. She studied her Wall Street Journal. I made notes for my book report. To my mind, Holden Caulfield wanted to get it together, wanted to be heroic in some way, but it was harder than it looked.
I wondered, was he Patsy’s kind of guy?
I saw her going out as I was taking out the garbage. She was dressed in jeans, a fisherman’s sweater, and a peacoat that she hadn’t buttoned up. Maybe she wanted to look rugged, heading for the powder-puff practice session. She was getting into a beat-up Dodge with the Wall.
There you have it, I said to myself. Patsy’s kind of guy.
TWENTY
I didn’t think I would call her again.
Seriously, I didn’t. I like a girl with a sense of humor, and she hadn’t shown me much of that. It looked like I wasn’t her type either.
But I couldn’t help myself. It was the song of the siren.
I dialed.
She picked up, asking, “If you feel so bad, why do you keep calling back?”
Talking to her was like talking to a debate team. I answered, “I don’t regret these calls. I’m sorry about what I said. The first time.”
“Still?”
“Still what?”
“Still sorry? I mean, most people don’t feel sorry for what they do for too long. They rationalize it, you know? Justify it. So the guilt fades.”
She’d brought up a good point, and truthfully, I’d stopped feeling guilty. Now I wanted to feel, well, like someone who should never have felt guilty at all.
“Who gave you my number, anyway?”
“Someone dropped it,” I said, relieved to have the conversation move in another direction. I fell back on my pillow.
“Come on.”
“Swear. It was on a piece of paper, lying on the ground.”
“Just a phone number?”
“And your name,” I said. “Patsy.”
“What’s your name?”
I hesitated, then said, “Do you really think it’s in my best interest to tell you?”
“I have to have something to call you. Besides creep.”
I took a scolding tone. “Patsy, Patsy, Patsy.”
“Got a crush on me? Do you write my name all over your notebook?”
I sat bolt upright in my bed. Her tone had changed, become so condescending.
“Lines and lines of it down the pages?”
Guys don’t do that kind of thing. Okay, I was being teased, but not in a nice way.
“Mr. and Mrs. Patsy—”
My blood beat indignantly in my veins. What could I say? I didn’t do childish things. I made obscene phone calls.
“So you’re not somebody who wants to date me. That’s not it, right?”
“What would make you more appealing than the average Patsy?”
She made an annoyed sound with her tongue. “There’s no such thing as an average Patsy,” she said.
I grinned. “Sure there is. They have friends named Muffy and they date football players named Biff—”
“Nobody’s named Biff.”
“—and they wear pink with kelly green and they hide their ankles under little socks—”
“Why would they do that?”
“The socks?”
Silence.
“Because they have sturdy ankles that will thicken with middle age. If Biff sees—”
“Is this what you called for? To make fun of me?”
“I think we’ve already agreed on why I call.”
“You’re a pervert.” It had a terrible sound, coming from her. Final.
“I’m sorry I made the crack about the socks.”
“I didn’t know perverts came in kids.”
I laughed. The way I should have when she made that remark about writing her name over and over, like it had nothing to do with me. I felt suddenly that I was getting the hang of this, talking to her, joking with her.
“What’s funny?”
“You make
it sound like a size. Kids, medium, and dirty old man.”
“Ha. Ha.”
“Listen, I’m not a pervert.”
“Did you or did you not make an obscene phone call?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Who makes obscene phone calls?” she asked.
“Two kinds of people, apparently.”
“Yeah?”
“Perverts,” I said quietly. “And people who want something they can’t have.”
“And what do you want?”
“Think about it,” I suggested. “And while you do, think about what you want. There are two of us having these lit—”
“You’re obnoxious, you know that?”
“I thought I was neurotic.”
It was only a second before she barked into my ear. “You know what else?”
“What?”
“I’ll bet you’re short!”
Click.
I guess I deserved that.
But as I hung up, I was annoyed with myself for apologizing. Not the first time. Just about the stupid socks. Couldn’t she take a joke?
TWENTY-ONE
“Don’t forget, tonight’s the powder-puff game,” Mr. B said to Mom over breakfast. He had a bowl of instant oatmeal to fortify him for the day.
“I’ll be there,” Mom said cheerfully. This would be the first game she’d attended, largely because it wasn’t a serious game. Actually, the season was over.
We’d missed most of the games through absenteeism, not moving into the house until late in November. Mom had used commuting as her excuse through December, I used makeup homework. I had a feeling we wouldn’t get off so easily next year.
I saw Patsy throughout the day, in the halls on the way to classes and in the cafeteria. My luck that we didn’t have any classes together, probably due to last year’s bad grades.
I saw her come through the auditorium with another girl during study period, putting up posters for the Valentine’s Day dance. I tried not to go around acting like she was invisible to me, but I couldn’t let her catch me staring at her either. Especially now.
I was nearly the last one to get on the bus to go home. All the seats near Patsy were taken, if you counted the seat next to her, where she’d set her books down to save a place for someone.
Not Exactly a Love Story Page 5