She Loves You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)

by Ann Hood

“Thanks,” I said.

  “Trudy brought over the new Beatles album,” Theresa said. “We’re going upstairs to listen to it.”

  “I heard it’s terrible,” Mrs. Mazzoni said. “Too psychedelic.”

  “Oh no. It’s really good,” I said, even though as soon as she said the word psychedelic, I knew she was right. Like that song Dad hated so much. And that sitar.

  Theresa’s room was painted bright yellow and she had Peter Max posters on the walls that said LOVE in bubble letters or had a big yellow sun shining on hot pink and red flowers. She also had two vinyl beanbag chairs, one yellow and one orange. I had asked my mom if I could get a beanbag chair, but she said they were bad for your back and could ruin your posture. Still, I loved flopping onto Theresa’s, feeling the little pellets inside shift around to accommodate me.

  That’s what I did right off, flop onto the yellow beanbag while Theresa put Revolver on the record player.

  We didn’t say anything while the record played, just sat across from each other on the beanbags. I watched Theresa as she listened, trying to figure out her reaction to the album. But her face didn’t betray whatever it was she was thinking, even during “Yellow Submarine” and “She Said She Said.”

  When the last song finished, Theresa said, “Well, it is kind of psychedelic.”

  “Kind of,” I said. “But not like Frank Zappa or anything.”

  Theresa agreed. “Or ‘Sunshine Superman,’” she said, naming the Donovan song that her mother took away from her because it sounded too psychedelic.

  Psychedelic was part of the way the world was changing, and it made me feel nervous. It had something to do with drugs, and hippies, and lots of things I didn’t really understand. I liked songs I could sing along with, songs that didn’t have back loops and sitars and gongs. Why couldn’t the Beatles just keep writing music like that?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Please Please Me

  Here are things that have made me happy:

  When I was little, maybe three or four, I thought grass was like a big green blanket that had been laid over the earth. Then one day I was playing in the yard and I stooped to pick a dandelion that had gone to puff. You know how the yellow petals turn into grayish white puff? If you make a wish and blow all of that puff off the stem, your wish will come true. That was what I was after: my wish. But instead of picking the dandelion, excitement seized me. Grass wasn’t a blanket at all! Instead it was made up of slender individual blades. I plucked one blade, then another, and another, until I had a bouquet of grass. “Mommy!” I yelled, running back into the house with the grass clutched in my sweaty, dirty hands. “Grass!”

  Christmas. 1960. I was six; Barbie was one. A year earlier Theresa Mazzoni had come over swinging a skinny doll by its brunette ponytail. The doll was dressed in a zebra print bathing suit with ridiculously small red plastic high heels. All of my dolls looked like babies. Their eyes opened and shut when you picked them up and laid them down. They drank milk from a baby bottle that magically refilled when they finished. One doll, Chatty Cathy, was slightly older than a baby, and when you pulled the chatty ring at the back of her neck she talked: I love you. I hurt myself! May I have a cookie? I had never seen anything like the doll Theresa was wielding that day. “She’s Barbie,” Theresa said in that superior way she has. For months I begged and whined for a Barbie doll. Finally, the next Christmas, there she was under the tree, dressed in a black-and-white-striped full-skirted dress and black high heels. My Barbie was blond and her hair was shaped into a bubble cut. Santa left four more outfits for her, including an extravagant wedding dress. And a lilac plastic wardrobe to hang her clothes in and keep her tiny shoes in drawers. Barbie.

  “Today,” Mrs. Mellon, my second-grade teacher, announced, “I will present the Good Citizen Award. The Good Citizen Award goes to the student who politely raises their hand and waits to be called on, does tasks without being asked, follows rules closely, and is always ready to help others.” Mrs. Mellon held up a beautiful official certificate with an impressive red seal in the lower right-hand corner. “The Good Citizen Award goes to . . .” Here she paused for a million years. My heart was going crazy against my ribs. An award! With a real seal! Mrs. Mellon smiled her coral lipsticked lips and said: “Trudy Mixer.”

  First sleepover with Michelle. We had pizza and orange soda and popcorn and danced the cha-cha on a big mat with footprints on it that tells you where to step. We stayed up past midnight, which was the first time I’d ever done that. When her mother finally made us go to bed, I climbed into the twin bed across from hers. The sheets and the bedspreads and the curtains in her room are the same purple and white check, and there’s a fuzzy purple rug between the two beds and a white night table with a lamp shaped like a ballerina, and we stretched our arms across that space and held hands until our arms fell asleep and we had to let go.

  The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, February 9, 1964. Of course.

  Also: The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, February 16, 1964.

  Also: The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, February 23, 1964, and September 12, 1965.

  The first meeting of the Beatles Fan Club. I, Trudy Mixer, stood in front of two dozen other kids and said, “Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the official Robert E. Quinn Beatles Fan Club. I’m the president, Trudy Mixer.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Love Me Do

  Dad and Peterson left for Japan exactly five days before the concert.

  The night before he left, Dad packed the big tan suitcase that no one ever used because it was so big and we didn’t really ever go anywhere for very long. He also had a garment bag for his suits and shirts so they wouldn’t wrinkle on the long flight, and he put his wing tips in shoe bags so they wouldn’t scuff. I watched him as he filled his dopp kit with his razor and extra blades, Vitalis and a comb, a toothbrush and toothpaste, soap, a nail clipper, and Old Spice. I watched him, feeling about as sad as I’d ever felt.

  Suddenly, Dad stopped throwing stuff in his dopp kit and he looked at me in that way he sometimes did, and he patted the bed for me to come sit close to him and he said, “I’m sorry about the concert, Trudy. Boy, would we have had fun, huh?”

  I managed to nod because I was afraid if I opened my mouth I might start to cry.

  “I’ll bring you back the best souvenir anyone has ever brought back from Japan,” he said, and then he wrapped me in a big hug and I could smell that combination of soap and Old Spice and Vitalis that was my dad.

  When he let go, I looked right in his eyes, which were dark blue. Mom said they looked like a stormy sky.

  “In Japanese, the name ‘Japan’ is Nippon, which means ‘Land of the Rising Sun,’” Dad said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It was believed that Japan was the first country to see the sun rise in the morning,” he said. He shook his head slightly, as if to say How about that? “Thus the name.”

  “So you’ll see the sun rise before we do and maybe you can send us a good morning when you see it and that good morning will arrive when we wake up.”

  Dad smiled and shook his head a little. “That’s sweet, Trudy,” he said. “I will do that. Every morning.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Peterson arrived to get Dad early the next morning and drive the two of them to New York City, where they would board a Pan Am Clipper at 11:30. It was going to take a million hours to get to Tokyo, but they seemed excited about it anyway. Mom hobbled to the front door to see them off, the two of us standing there and waving.

  “Sayonara!” Mom called, which was Japanese for goodbye.

  Once Peterson’s Ford was gone, it felt dumb to still be standing there, but we were.

  “This darn leg,” Mom said. “If I hadn’t broken it, maybe I’d be going to Japan, Trudy.”

  “No, yo
u’d be going to the Beatles concert. With me,” I reminded her.

  “Mount Fuji and cherry blossoms and hot baths,” Mom said dreamily. “I’ve always wanted to see the world, you know.”

  “You did?” It was funny how much I didn’t know about Mom and Dad.

  Mom nodded and smiled. “Paris. Rome. Imagine going up the Eiffel Tower or standing in the Colosseum, right where they used to feed people to the lions!”

  “That’s terrible!” I said.

  Mom sighed. “This darn leg,” she said again.

  “It’ll be better in no time,” I said, to make her feel better. Parents are full of surprises. Who would have thought Mom, a woman whose idea of doing something daring was making Swedish meatballs, actually dreamed of seeing the world.

  “You know, he has to eat raw fish,” I said.

  I said it so she wouldn’t feel so bad, but instead Mom said, “I know! Isn’t that sophisticated?”

  Mom looked at me hard. Ever since she broke her leg, she hadn’t gone to her weekly hairdresser appointment, so her hair was longer than usual, almost past her collarbone, which made her look younger.

  “Someday, Trudy, I’ll go to Japan. Maybe I’ll even see the Taj Mahal. Or the Great Wall.”

  I watched Mom hobble off, that giant cast clunking along the floor as she did her best on her crutches.

  * * *

  * * *

  The next day Jessica called me. Of course when I heard her voice I thought she was going to cancel on me.

  But she said, “Want to come over?”

  “To your house?” I asked her. I did not want to go to Jessica’s house. It was the last thing I wanted to do. It fell into the category of things that reminded me how low I’d sunk these past few months.

  “I baked three different kinds of muffins,” she said. “Blueberry, banana, and morning glory, which has carrots, apples, walnuts, and coconut.”

  “Why are you baking muffins when it’s like a thousand degrees out?”

  “For the Baking merit badge,” she said. “We can listen to records, too.”

  To my utter surprise, I heard myself say, “Okay.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Jessica lived kind of far from me, in an older development that had big houses with screened-in front porches and lots of oak trees so the yards were nice and shady. The whole time I was walking to her house, I was thinking how nice it was to get out and do something other than wait on Mom all day, even if that something was eating Jessica’s muffins.

  The house smelled so good, like cinnamon and vanilla, from all the muffins, which were lined up on the counter in little pale-colored paper cups.

  “Take as many as you want,” Jessica said.

  I took one of each because they really looked good and they were still warm.

  It was so quiet in her house that I could hear the clock ticking.

  “Are you here alone?” I asked, following Jessica out of the kitchen, through the living room with its green plaid sofa, and onto one of those big screened-in porches.

  Jessica had brought glasses of milk and extra muffins with her, and she set those down on a white wicker table. Everything out there was white wicker, which made it seem kind of tropical. Lots of plants hung in macramé plant holders from the ceiling, adding to that tropical feeling.

  “It’s like Hawaii out here,” I said.

  “It’s supposed to look like Nantucket,” Jessica said.

  “My father’s in Japan,” I added, though I wasn’t sure if he had actually landed there yet.

  “Wow,” she said, impressed.

  We chewed our muffins for a while, then Jessica said, “My mother’s resting. She’s depressed.”

  “Oh,” I said. I never knew anybody who was depressed, and this seemed both special and scary.

  “My brother got drafted,” she said. “He went to boot camp for ten weeks in Parris Island and then they sent him straight to Vietnam.”

  “Stephen is in Vietnam?” I repeated.

  I didn’t know anybody fighting in the Vietnam War, either. Who knew Jessica had such an exciting life?

  “But look what I found,” she said. She dug around in her pocket and pulled out a penny, which she held out in her palm for me to see.

  “It’s from the year I was born,” she explained. “That’s good luck.”

  I thought about all of her good-luck charms that she’d talked about for months and months. Now I understood. She was looking for good-luck signs that Stephen was safe.

  “I’ve heard that,” I said.

  “Want to hear the Help! album?” Jessica asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  She went over to another wicker table, this one with a portable record player on it, and put on Help! She skipped a bunch of songs and set the needle on “Ticket to Ride.” By the time the song was half over, we were standing side by side, holding muffins up to our mouths like microphones, and singing, “She’s got a ticket to ride, But she don’t care . . .”

  Boy, did it feel good to be doing friend things again.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Michelle

  Three days before the concert, a surprising thing happened. Mom was going through the mail with one hand and scratching inside her cast with a knitting needle with the other one. That cast was looking pretty ragged, and it had started to smell like rotten peaches. Lately, I preferred to sit across the room from Mom instead of beside her. Which was exactly what I was doing, sitting in the overstuffed armchair with its pattern of butterflies and flowers that Dad usually sat in, and watching my favorite game show, The Hollywood Squares, when Mom said, “For you,” and held out a postcard.

  I was not a person who got mail, except for official Beatles Fan Club stuff, so this was surprising, even thrilling.

  “Toss it over here,” I said, holding out my hands to catch it. It was unbearably hot and the stink of that cast was just too much.

  Maybe Mom realized that because she did throw the card my way Frisbee style.

  On the front was a picture of a beautiful beach with palm trees and big crashing waves. When I turned it over I immediately recognized Michelle’s handwriting.

  Hola! Which is Spanish for hello! Acapulco is really beautiful. Wish you were here.

  Luv, Michelle

  Looking at that postcard made me miserable, but I couldn’t stop myself from examining the picture again and then analyzing the message. Did she really wish I were there? Instead of Kim? Why had she signed luv instead of love? To be cool? Or to let me know our friendship had been downgraded? To me, there was a difference between luv and love. Luv was casual and fun and not as important as love. And I knew Michelle knew that, too. I considered ripping it up. I considered tucking it into the corner of the mirror on my bureau. I considered crying.

  But then the doorbell rang.

  Still holding the postcard I went to answer it, walking through the stifling hot rooms to the front door, where, on the other side of the screen door, stood Nora.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” she said right away.

  Nora did kind of live in my neighborhood, over where some new houses were built. Hers was a low white one that my mother called a bungalow. Apparently, they had a sunken living room that three stone steps led into and a color television and a wet bar. Mom had been there once when Nora’s mother held a women’s consciousness-raising workshop and reported this to me when she got home. I’d asked her what a women’s consciousness-raising workshop was, and she held up a book called The Feminine Mystique, which Nora’s mother had handed out at the end of the night and told everyone it was imperative that every woman read it.

  “She had some interesting ideas,” Mom said, “but at one point she wanted us all to take off our bras and burn them in the fireplace.”

  “What?” I said, noting that Mom appeare
d to still be wearing her bra.

  “A few of the ladies did it,” Mom said.

  The book was scarlet with big white letters, each word with its own black shadow. I opened it and read out loud: “Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—‘Is this all?’”

  I looked at Mom. “Do you feel this way?”

  She sighed. “No,” she said, “but some of the women there tonight do. Well,” she added, in her I’m-done-with-this-conversation voice, “she did make a very good ham salad. I asked for her recipe and she said the secret was sweet gherkins.”

  I didn’t see Nora’s mother around very much, but after that night I did notice that she didn’t wear a bra and she also had stopped shaving under her arms.

  Thinking all this with Nora standing right in front of me, a wave of pity for her swept over me.

  “Come on in,” I said, and opened the door for her.

  * * *

  * * *

  Nora and I went and sat in the backyard at the picnic table. I brought my transistor radio and turned on WPRO, hoping they would do a Beatles Blitz, which was when they played five songs in a row by the Beatles.

  “It’s ninety-eight degrees in Providence,” the DJ said, “so the Lovin’ Spoonful sure have it right.”

  The opening chords of “Summer in the City” came on.

  “I like this one,” Nora said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  Bees buzzed around us, providing the only noise other than the music. Nora and I had absolutely nothing to say to each other.

  “Only three more days,” she said after a while, in a whisper.