She Loves You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)

by Ann Hood

  “I cannot wait!” I whispered back.

  We were quiet through “Sunshine Superman” and “See You in September.” When “Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra came on we both groaned.

  Nora sang along in an exaggerated lounge singer way that made me laugh. I never knew how funny she was.

  “I guess I’d better go home,” she said when the news came on. “My mother will worry about me if I’m gone too long.”

  “Does she still have that women’s consciousness-raising workshop?”

  She looked embarrassed, and I couldn’t blame her. A bunch of women eating ham salad and burning their bras in your sunken living room was embarrassing.

  Nora shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “My mom went once,” I said.

  Nora just stood there awkwardly.

  “She said your mom makes good ham salad,” I offered.

  “Yeah. She puts pickles in it,” Nora said. “Well, bye.”

  She walked off kind of quick, her head down.

  Of course as soon as she left the DJ shouted, “Beatles Blitz!” and “Paperback Writer” came on.

  “Hey, Nora!” I called after her. “Come back! It’s a Beatles Blitz!” There was nothing like listening to a Beatles Blitz with your friend. But she didn’t come back. I guess she hadn’t heard me.

  “First of five!” the DJ announced as the Beatles sang, Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book . . .

  I sat back down at the picnic table and let the Beatles’ music fill me up.

  * * *

  * * *

  Mom had finished Tai-Pan and now she was reading a book called Up the Down Staircase, which was about an idealistic teacher in a big-city school.

  “So much stands in the way of teachers trying to teach,” Mom said when I brought her breakfast the next morning. “You should read this book, Trudy. It’s an eye-opener.”

  The Today Show was on and Hugh Downs was reading a weather summary in front of a big map of the United States. New England was colored in bright red. For hot, hot, hot. The smell coming from Mom’s cast filled the room, gagging me slightly.

  “I am going to melt,” I told her, trying to breathe through my mouth. Dad said that was the best way to not smell stinky stuff.

  “Try having one of these things on,” Mom said. She stuck a knitting needle down her cast and scratched away. “Have you noticed it’s starting to smell bad?”

  “Uh, yeah. Like days ago,” I said.

  “When does Michelle get back?” Mom asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “I hope you two didn’t have a fight,” Mom said, narrowing her eyes at me. “You girls have been friends for too long to throw it away.”

  “We didn’t fight,” I said, and I could hear the whine creeping into my voice. “She dumped me and the whole fan club for Future Cheerleaders.”

  “Trudy,” Mom said, returning to Up the Down Staircase, “I’m sure that isn’t true.”

  “Yes it is!” I said.

  Mom peeked at me over the book.

  “Why don’t you go to Nora’s house, then? She stopped by here yesterday, so today you could go there,” Mom said.

  “I don’t like Nora,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true. I kind of did like her, and Jessica, too. They just weren’t Michelle. I thought of that postcard from Acapulco, which I had tucked into the corner of my mirror. Didn’t it mean that she’d thought about me, even though she was in Acapulco? But I knew somewhere deep down that she didn’t wish I was there with her, not really. That was just what people wrote on postcards. Hot tears sprung into my eyes and I wiped them away with the back of my sweaty hand.

  “No one’s that bad, Trudy,” Mom said. “Everyone has redeemable qualities.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I think they have air-conditioning,” Mom said.

  Even I had to admit that was a redeemable quality.

  * * *

  * * *

  On the walk over to Nora’s, the air was so hot and sticky, it felt like moving through cotton candy. If I paused, I could actually see the air ripple slightly, like it does in the desert. But the thought of air-conditioning kept me moving.

  The street of new houses where Nora lived didn’t have any trees because they’d all been cut down to build the houses. So it was even hotter walking there, the tar all soft and sticky and the sun so bright it made my eyes hurt. Her house was the next-to-last one, which meant I had to walk all the way down that scorching street, but I did get the pleasure of a sprinkler on her neighbor’s front lawn spraying me with water when I passed by.

  Big wide stone steps curved their way up to Nora’s front door. By the time I rang the doorbell I was hotter and sweatier than I’d been all summer. I quick-smelled under my arms to be sure I didn’t stink, then I stood still as a statue, waiting for someone to answer.

  It took practically forever and I was considering leaving but then Nora opened the door with, yes, a blast of cool air.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She did not look happy to see me.

  “Two more days,” I whispered, hoping to remind her we were in a big conspiracy together.

  “I know,” Nora said. “See you then.”

  And just like that she closed the door.

  I could hardly believe it. Was it possible that Nora didn’t like me? I rang the doorbell again, but this time she didn’t even bother to answer. If I could have ripped up her ticket to the concert, I would have. I would have kicked her out of the fan club, too. But the fan club was dangerously close to getting shut down for low enrollment already, and I needed her to help execute my plan to meet Paul McCartney. So all I could do was turn around and make my slow hot way back home.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  We Can Work It Out

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 16, 1966

  8 P.M.

  OFFICIAL COUNTDOWN TO MEETING

  PAUL MCCARTNEY BEGINS:

  48 HOURS AND COUNTING

  “Why are you so antsy, Trudy?” Mom said. “You barely paid attention to that show you like.”

  That show I liked was The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. in which special agent April Dancer fights THRUSH and other enemy agents. But even April Dancer couldn’t distract me from my upcoming plot and the anticipation of looking in Paul McCartney’s eyes.

  “If you’re going to wiggle around like that, make yourself useful and pop us some popcorn. Houdini’s on Tuesday Night at the Movies tonight, and you know how much I like Tony Curtis,” Mom said.

  I did make some Jiffy Pop, scorching some of it like I always did. Then I tried to concentrate on Tony Curtis doing more and more difficult escapes. But honestly, how could I? At this very moment, the Beatles were in Philadelphia finishing their concert. For all I knew, someone at the John F. Kennedy Stadium handed Paul my letter and he knew that I, Trudy Mixer, president of the Robert E. Quinn Beatles Fan Club, was going to be in Boston in just forty-eight hours.

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17, 1966

  8 A.M.

  OFFICIAL COUNTDOWN TO MEETING

  PAUL MCCARTNEY BEGINS:

  36 HOURS AND COUNTING

  “What in the world is wrong with you, Trudy?” Mom asked me. “Why are you up so early? It’s summer vacation! You’re supposed to sleep in.”

  How could I tell Mom that I had hardly slept at all? And that when I did, I dreamed of crowds and buses and running down Boston streets? Suddenly, our plan seemed full of holes. I hadn’t ever done any of the things I’d told the fan club I’d done—riding the bus to Boston or the subway anywhere at all. In just thirty-six hours, I had to actually do all that stuff. One missed bus, one wrong subway, and not only wouldn’t I meet Paul McCartney, but I also wouldn’t even get to the concert.

  There was only one person who could help me: Penelope.

&n
bsp; Penelope lived in one of the mill houses near the river, which was a pretty long walk. But I needed to go over the details of transportation with her or I might mess up everything tomorrow night.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I mumbled.

  “But you haven’t even had breakfast,” Mom said.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said, and stepped out into the hot muggy morning.

  * * *

  * * *

  My little town used to be a thriving mill town back in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of the mills had closed by now, but they still stood there like big stone castles over the Pawtuxet River. People who used to work in them could live in houses the factory owned, having the rent taken right out of their paychecks. The houses were all duplexes—two side-by-side attached houses—that lined blocks near the mills. That’s where Penelope lived, right up the street from the Royal Mill where Fruit of the Loom underwear used to be made.

  On my way to her house, I passed a Dunkin’ Donuts, so I stopped there and got two glazed doughnuts for us. I mean, if you’re going to show up at someone’s house before nine o’clock in the morning, you should bring something like glazed doughnuts.

  Penelope looked sleepy and confused when she opened the door and found me standing there sweating.

  “Gertrude?” she said, like she was taking a reality check.

  I held up the Dunkin’ Donuts bag.

  “Breakfast,” I said, which made her look even more confused.

  Penelope had on cutoff jeans and a faded University of Rhode Island T-shirt with sweat marks under the arms.

  “Thanks?” she said.

  We looked at each other for a moment and then she said, “Oh,” and let me inside.

  The house was stifling hot, like there was no air inside it, and I could smell the faint scent of gas. Penelope’s mom was sitting at the kitchen table drinking an iced coffee and smoking a cigarette.

  “This is Gertrude,” Penelope said. “She brought breakfast.”

  Of course I immediately felt bad because I’d only brought two doughnuts, but Penelope’s mom didn’t seem to care.

  “Hot out there,” she said as Penelope placed the glazed doughnuts on a plate.

  “Hot in here,” Penelope said.

  There was a fan in the window, but it just pushed around the hot air.

  “John Ghiorse says we’re breaking the record for an August heat wave set in 1949,” Penelope’s mom said. “No end in sight,” she added, shaking her head and stubbing out her cigarette.

  John Ghiorse was the Channel 10 weatherman, the only real meteorologist in New England, so everyone trusted him.

  Penelope was happily eating a doughnut, her lips sparkling with sugar.

  “Dog days of August,” she said.

  “Interesting fact,” I said. “‘Dog days’ actually means the position of Sirius, the dog star, in the heavens. Not that dogs get super hot.”

  That was the kind of thing I knew from my father, one of the arcane facts he recited at the dinner table before disappearing into his newspaper.

  But Penelope’s mom didn’t seem impressed. She seemed suspicious.

  “John Ghiorse say that?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.

  “My father read it somewhere,” I explained.

  Penelope was working her way through the second doughnut. My stomach growled. Her mother got up, turned on the gas on the stove, and lit a cigarette in the flame.

  “Why don’t you take your friend to your room?” she said. “I’ve got to make some calls.”

  “Okay,” Penelope said. “But prepare yourself, Gertrude. It’s even hotter up there.”

  I followed Penelope up a steep staircase to the second floor, which looked like an attic with its sloping ceilings and exposed rafters. Penelope’s room was right at the top of the stairs, and instead of a door she had a curtain of beads that we had to part to enter. In other words, it was the coolest, most exotic room I’d ever seen. Inside, there was an Indian-print bedspread hanging from the ceiling, and the lightbulb in the light by her bed was pink, casting a lovely glow into the room.

  “So,” I said, sitting on the edge of her rumpled bed. Penelope had flopped onto the Pepto-Bismol pink faux leather beanbag chair. I noted that almost everyone in the entire world had a beanbag chair except me. “I wondered if you could walk me through some of the details of tomorrow?”

  Penelope blinked. “Tomorrow?”

  “Getting to the concert.”

  “Oh, it’s so easy,” she said. “Everything’s marked really clearly, like the subway lines and where the buses are. You just have to kind of look at the signs.”

  “Okay,” I said. Could it really be as easy as that? Just follow signs?

  “I’ve done it so many times,” Penelope said.

  I frowned. Those words sounded eerily familiar.

  “It’s so easy,” she said again.

  That was exactly what I’d told the fan club. And I had never ever taken a bus anywhere by myself, never mind all the way to Boston and then got on a subway. Sweat trickled down my ribs and back. I tried to read Penelope’s face, to see if she was making it up, like I had. But she just looked back at me, blank. In that instant, I understood that it was entirely possible there was no high-school boy, no tickets to the Beatles concert, no nothing. Just a girl like me with big hopes and impossible dreams.

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17, 1966

  3 P.M.

  OFFICIAL COUNTDOWN TO MEETING

  PAUL MCCARTNEY BEGINS:

  29 HOURS AND COUNTING

  You know how when you feel nervous and worried and excited all at once every single thing that happens makes you feel even more nervous and more worried and more excited? That was exactly what the day was like after I left Penelope’s. Back at home, Mom’s cast was stinking bad and John Ghiorse was telling people to stay inside because it was so hot and polluted outside. I kept going over our plan with all the buses to catch and subways to find and my crazy idea that somehow—somehow—I would actually meet Paul McCartney, and my even crazier idea that if I did my life at school would get better, and my even more crazy idea that my father would realize that I was special again. He would start paying attention to me. He would remember that I’m more important than semiconductors and Peterson and his big new promotion.

  And then who should show up on his dumb bicycle but Peter? He was wearing baggy madras shorts and orange rubber flip-flops and he just looked like the goofiest person on the planet. Plus, there was something weird sticking out of the wire basket on his bike. It wasn’t until he pulled up right in front of me that I saw what it was: a ukulele.

  Let me be perfectly clear. Playing the guitar, especially an acoustic guitar, is maybe the coolest thing anyone could do. Playing a ukulele? The complete opposite. The most uncool thing ever. If you played a guitar, you might perform in coffeehouses. You might sing folk songs, like my favorite one, “Today,” which the New Christy Minstrels sang. It even makes my mother sigh and look dreamy. However, if you play the ukulele, people laugh at you. You remind them of Tiny Tim, the worst performer on television with his creepy wavy long hair and the stupid basket he carries around and the way he sings songs like “On the Good Ship Lollipop” in a falsetto.

  All of this ran through my mind as Peter hopped off his bike, kicked his kickstand down, and lifted the ukulele out of the basket.

  “I need to show you something,” he said.

  Yup. It was that kind of a day.

  Peter cleared his throat.

  And then he started to strum that ukulele.

  And then he started to sing.

  “If you knew I loved you, would you turn and walk away? Or would your heart urge you to stay?”

  I had never heard this particular song, and I had to admit that the ukulele didn’t sound as awful as when Tiny Tim pla
yed his. Also, Peter’s voice, though kind of thin, wasn’t exactly terrible.

  “These are the thoughts I think, when I see you each day . . . Might your heart . . . might your heart . . . urge you to stay?” Peter sang. Then he strummed a kind of little musical finale, and stared at me.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

  Imagine a boy with a cowlick and orange rubber flip-flops and baggy madras shorts holding a ukulele. What was a person supposed to say?

  Peter looked crestfallen, but I wasn’t sure why.

  “That was better than Tiny Tim,” I finally said.

  Now he looked horrified. He dropped the ukulele into the basket, unkicked the kickstand, got on his bike, and pedaled away.

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 1966

  8 A.M.

  OFFICIAL COUNTDOWN TO MEETING

  PAUL MCCARTNEY BEGINS:

  12 HOURS AND COUNTING

  I woke up and I had one thought: The day has finally arrived.

  Just like that, all my worry and anxiety from the day before vanished. In twelve hours, I was going to see the Beatles.

  Somehow I got through the morning, even though my stomach was so full of butterflies I actually wondered if I opened my mouth would hundreds of them fly out? I had picked out an outfit, but I kept changing my mind and trying on other ones. Finally, I settled on my miniest minidress, which was covered with a pattern of sunflowers. Mom made me stand on a chair and put my arms straight by my sides to be sure the end of my fingertips met the hem of the dress. Anything shorter was not allowed. I’d grown a little since we bought the dress back in June, so I hoped she wouldn’t measure again. I wished I had a white floppy hat like I saw in Seventeen magazine, but it was too late for that now. I set my hair with empty Campbell soup cans like Seventeen magazine said to do to make it as straight as possible and tried not to imagine how Good Night Slicker lipstick would look perfect.

  “Why are you all dressed up?” Mom said when I floated into the living room. Really. I was so excited I felt like I was floating again. I missed this feeling. It wouldn’t surprise me if I glanced down and saw that my feet were actually not touching the floor.