Was 8—or anything but 18, for that matter—too young to be exposed to this kind of thing? As horrifying as it was, I don’t think so. The early exposure to injustice from someone on Jaret’s side absolutely is a powerful tonic to defend against the crappy justice system the reader is going to grow into. The sheriff Jaret has to deal with after the rape is cut from the same cloth as Are You in the House Alone’s awful lawman, and as awful to watch as the parents who stand up for their girls are a relief:
“What’s the name of her boyfriend?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Kay asked.
“Pardon?” said Foster.
“Why do you want to know about a boyfriend? She was horribly beaten. It has nothing to do with a boyfriend.”
“Pardon, Mrs.,” Foster said, “but you’re out of your element here, so to speak. The girl was raped and we have to find the perpetrator. Now, please, let me do my job.”
“This is a crime of violence,” Kay went on, “not a sexual one.”
Foster cackled, took a swipe at his nose with thumb and forefinger. “Well, if rape ain’t sexual then I don’t know what it is.”
“Well, I have news for you,” Kay persisted, her voice rising. “It ain’t sexual. It’s aggressive and it’s violent and it’s based on hatred of women, not desire for them.”
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH DON’T YOU WANT TO KILL HIM! (Just wait until he gets to the part later about how it didn’t matter that Jaret was raped because a) she’s not a virgin and b) she’s a lesbian.) So, say what you will about early exposure, but it definitely gave you your feminist talking points—of which I have personally amassed a very large collection ever since.
But—despite these handy fillips—what’s wonderful about Happy Endings Are All Alike is how it chooses to not devolve into a paroxysm of blame. Not only is Jaret’s lesbianism not Kay’s fault—it’s not a fault—but neither it nor the rape turns Jaret bitter against men, which is another prejudice Scoppettone uses the book to debunk. After Jaret’s brother, Chris, beats up Mid, he realizes it was unnecessary:
“Chris, you know, we never talked about what you did that day. Going after Mid like that.”
“What’s to talk about?”
“Why’d you do it?”
“What d’you mean? He hurt you, I wanted to hurt him. Simple.” He looked past her shoulder.
“Is that the only reason?”
“Sure, what else?”
“I don’t know.” She touched his hand. “Are you angry with me? Do you hate me?”
He was shocked, sat up. “Me? Hate you? No. I thought…I mean, wow…. I thought you hated me.”
“Why?” she asked, dumbfounded.
“Well, I’m a…a guy.”
“I don’t hate men, Chris.”
“You don’t? Then how come…I mean, how come you’re a…”
“A lesbian? It’s not such a terrible word. I’m not sure why but it definitely isn’t because I hate men.”
“Not even after what happened?”
“No. I’m angry with him, Mid, but not all men. Not you.”
“I thought for sure”—he cleared his throat—“lesbians hated men.”
“Well, we don’t. But what’s that got to do with you going after Mid? And don’t tell me it was just because he hurt me because I won’t buy it.”
Chris stood up, shuffled back and forth at the end of the bed. Then he said, “I thought if you saw a guy do something good, you know, kind of brave
…well, I thought maybe you wouldn’t think all guys were so bad.”
“Oh, Chris.” Jaret loved him more then than she ever had.
I started this review talking about how this book was brain-searing simply for its depiction of an adult romantic relationship, and I think that’s true, for an 8-year-old read. But what I find so interesting as an adult is not the depiction of the romantic relationship, which, happily, seems very normal to me now, or the depiction of the rape, which, unhappily, also does, but what passes between all the family members once Jaret and Peggy come clean, and then when Jaret is assaulted. Both are huge bombs dropped on the people who love them, but instead of making the family and friends betray the girls, Scoppettone deals with the ways they feel they are—and especially why they feel they are. No family members, including Peggy and Jaret, are at fault for anything. That’s a good lesson to know. But, in a novel where all of the relationships are as complex as Peggy and Jaret’s love, it’s nice to know that, in one author’s view, family is not a fault.
BOOK REPORT
Fifteen
By Beverly Cleary 1956
Prelude to a Kiss
Today I’m going to meet a boy, Jane Purdy told herself, as she walked up Blossom Street toward her babysitting job. Today I’m going to meet a boy.
Mothers and fathers all across the world should, before releasing their preteen girls on the dating market, have them read the innocent, inspired Fifteen, a story whose drama rests solely on the sweetly fraught first steps of a relationship between a wholesome girl-next-door type, Jane Purdy, and her handsome, kind, smart first boyfriend, Stan, whom she meets while he delivers doggie horsemeat to the house of a child she’s babysitting for.
Fifteen, which contains no great tragedies beyond the anxiety of when and if Stan will call on various occasions, should not be mandatory in order for girls to laugh uproariously at the contrast with that hoary, rotary-phone-based wooing and whatever text-based romance they are about to click forth on, and neither is it necessary because Stan, considerate, firm, and smitten, is a good baseline for a model boyfriend. (Although he is.)
No, the book should be read simply because, without being saccharine, over-the-top, or fluffy, it takes the natural anxieties of a first relationship seriously, on their own alternately dreamy, moody, terrific, and terrified terms. In fact, they are the sole elements of the plot—a combination I’ve never seen elsewhere absent a death, pregnancy, or otherwise inconvenient act of God.
As we watch Jane and Dennis move from “first phone call” to the snapping on of Stan’s identification bracelet, indicating they are now “going steady,” it is as if we have been privileged to look on a Discovery-channel-type mating documentary, one in which each act, like, say, the gathering of straw for a nest, is an intrinsic and necessary part of a process that is as ageless as they are young.
When we meet Jane, she’s walking home alone, moodily (there’s the moody part) noting how, though she’s far from the kind of girl who’s off the radar entirely, she’s also not the kind who triumphs socially—like Marcy, the queen bee who’s waving happily at her from a convertible:
…Marcy brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes and smiled at Jane with the kind of smile a girl riding in a convertible with a popular boy on a summer day gives a girl who is walking alone. And that smile made Jane feel that everything about herself was all wrong.
The trouble with me, Jane thought…is that I am not the cashmere-sweater type like Marcy. Marcy wore her cashmere sweaters as if they were of no importance at all. Jane had one cashmere sweater, which she took off the minute she got home from school. Marcy had many dates with the most popular boys in school and spent a lot of time with the crowd at Nibley’s. Jane had an occasional date with an old family friend named George who was an inch shorter than she was and carried his money in a change purse instead of loose in his pocket and took her straight home from the movies. Marcy had her name mentioned in the gossip column of the Woodmontonian nearly every week. Jane had her name in the school paper when she served on the clean-up committee after the freshman tea. Marcy belonged. Jane did not.
That is, until she meets Stan, a new boy in town—and one who, she notes optimistically, does have a car, even though it’s a truck that delivers horsemeat. Stan endears himself to Jane by helping her out with her young charge, who is about to dump ink on the carpet, by speaking pig latin to Jane, thereby reestablishing her role as a figure of authority—one Jane doubts herself, frequently:
Well, thought Jane. Well! I did meet a boy today! A new boy who is old enough to have a driver’s license!
This endearing ability to look on the bright side, though Jane doesn’t know it, actually distinguishes herself from girls like Marcy in a good way, as does her simple, unalloyed joy at being called by a boy who is nice, new, and, miraculously, interested in her:
“Uh…is this Jane Purdy?” asked a voice—a boy’s voice.
An electric feeling flashed through Jane clear to her fingertips. The boy! It was his voice! She was sitting there thinking and wishing, and suddenly there he was, on the other end of the line. He was calling her! Jane swallowed. (Careful, Jane, don’t be too eager.) “Yes, it is.” Somehow she managed to keep her voice calm. To think that she and this boy she wanted so much to know were connected with each other by telephone wires strung on poles along the streets and over the trees of Woodmont! It was a miracle, a real miracle.
That last sentence may stand, simply, as the best description of the heady rush of young love in all its glory—because it’s not that Jane is a narcissist, pleased to be loved, or that she’s a temptress like Marcy, pleased to be in power, but that she’s thrilled by a simple, unironic connection—her first one that has nothing to do with the house’s old haughty cat, her slightly distracted mother and cheerily ironic father, or Gordon, who’s been picked for her without her desire or volition.
But the move from first date to first kiss can’t come as easily as all that. Though Stan is steady in his calm attempts to continue to know her better, she continues to doubt herself as too young, too unsophisticated, and too nervous for such a goodlooking, popular boy—one who would certainly be better off with the type of girl he was meant to be with—someone like Marcy, perhaps. Because, when Jane orders a silly dish of vanilla ice cream at Nibley’s, Marcy, in a sleek black skirt, orders black coffee. When they all go out to Chinatown, Marcy knows what to order, while Jane, frightened of all the new food, sticks to chow mein. And then, most horribly, when the school dance comes around, Stan doesn’t ask Jane but goes instead with an adorable, sophisticated girl he knew from San Francisco (“And I suppose she has a terrible time finding anything to wear in her own size, because she is so little,” Jane comments to her friend when she hears her description, finding “a certain relish in being catty herself.”)
But it takes her quite a while to learn that Stan isn’t interested in a girl like Marcy. First off, he thinks black coffee is bitter, and he remembers not knowing how to order Chinese food, too. On their first date, he was nervous, too, Jane remembers—having hidden his bike in the shrubbery lest she see it. He’s grateful that Jane isn’t ashamed of his Doggie Diner truck, and his old friend from San Francisco, whom he had promised to take to the first dance ages ago, is too short to be a good dancer. In fact, “Bitsy” is downright cruel: “‘She’s not like you,’ said Stan. ‘She laughed at my job. She kept laughing and saying, “Imagine delivering horsemeat to dogs!” all evening. Maybe it does seem funny to some people, but I like dogs and I like my job.’”
But it’s not until they have a spat over a small misunderstanding and Jane despairs of Stan ever forgiving her that she grows to have quite the same appreciation of herself:
Jane wondered what she would do about Stan if she were some other girl. If she were the kind of girl who went to school with her hair in pin curls, she would probably telephone the disc jokey on Station KWOO and ask him to play “Love Me on Monday” to Stan from Jane. If she were intellectual like Liz, she would probably say that dancing and riding around in a model-A Ford were boring or middlebrow or something, and spend the evening writing hokkus for Manuscript. Or if she were the earnest type, she would write a letter to Teen Corner in the newspaper. The letter would begin, “Dear Ann Benedict, I wonder if you could help me solve a problem. Recently I met a boy…” If she were the cashmere sweater type, like Marcy, she would date several other boys and forget Stan.
But Jane was not any of these girls. She was Jane Purdy, an ordinary girl who was no type at all. She was neither earnest nor intellectual, and she certainly wasn’t the kind of girl the boys flocked around. She was just the kind of girl who liked to have a good time, who made reasonably good grades at school, and who liked a boy who had once liked her. There was nothing wrong with that….
…Maybe if she continued to be herself, Stan would like her again. And if he didn’t there was nothing she could do about it. Jane was filled with a wonderful feeling of relief….
And once she makes that decision, Jane finds in fact that Stan does find it in his heart to forgive her for her small crime (lightly kissing his best friend in a Marcy-like act of brio), and in fact likes her all the more. Because not only does Stan appreciate Jane in all her vanilla ice-cream, chow mein, one-cashmere-sweater glory, she’s the only girl who can appreciate the same ordinary things about him. Witness their first ride together in Stan’s new car—not as glorious, perhaps, as the one Marcy had been chauffered around in, but one that’s more her speed:
“Like it?” asked Stan.
“It’s perfect,” said Jane, and meant it. The car was neither a jalopy nor a hot rod. It looked plain and serviceable, exactly right for riding around Woodmont.
“I knew you’d like it,” said Stan. “Some girls might think it was old and funny, but I knew you wouldn’t.”
“I think it’s neat-looking,” commented Jane.
…. “I—I wanted you to be the first girl to ride in it,” Stan said.
“Did you really? Oh, Stan!” They drove past a girl who had been in Jane’s math class and who was now walking toward the library with an armload of books.
“Hello there,” called Jane. Poor girl, going to the library on such a beautiful morning!
As the book ends, Jane is riding in Stan’s convertible, waving at another girl on the street—but she hasn’t gotten there because she’s become a Marcy. She’s gotten there simply learning to like Jane. Young girls dizzy with love and dreaming of cashmere and convertibles everywhere could do worse.
BOOK REPORT
My Darling, My Hamburger
By Paul Zindel 1969
Double Whopper
“It was Marie Kazinski who asked how to stop a boy if he wants to go all the way,” Maggie whispered. Liz dragged her trig book along the wall files so that it clicked at every crack.
…“Well”—Maggie lowered her voice—“Mrs. Fanuzzi’s advice was that you’re supposed to suggest going to get a hamburger.”
You know Maggie, and you know Liz. If you read this book, you are, obviously, Maggie. Maggie is a little dumpy and wears pleated homemade dresses and plucks her eyebrows cockeyed. She dots her i’s with hearts and writes cheery, forced notes that go unanswered. Liz only reads astrology books. Liz tells Maggie her hair looks like “thin fungus,” and Maggie loves her anyway, because, as Liz asserts, “it’s true,” and anyway, Liz has the kind of remote, galactic beauty that causes lesser planetary objects to be pulled into her orbit effortlessly, periodically setting them aflame as they burn through upon entry.
In My Darling, My Hamburger, the story of two young girls—one easily overwhelmed by love, the other too afraid of it to speak—and the two boys, Sean and Dennis, who cannot quite negotiate either successfully, high-school love is depicted as something that one endures, a trial by fire into adulthood, one that, if one is not careful, may leave permanent injuries.
Like most Zindel characters, Liz and Maggie are the children of parents whose indifference is matched only by either their brutishness or inability to understand their children at all. Liz is coolly built, so much so that she has no idea of the yearning that she produces in Maggie—only that, while she’s fond of her friend, she’s only truly bonded to Sean (who describes their union as, “Two foreign spirits trapped under skin [who] were
finally able to breathe.”) Sean would like to sleep with Liz, because, as he also puts it, “We love each other, don’t we?” Liz is not so sure—mainly because her stepfather already thinks she has loose morals and her mother leaves statues of the Madonna in her bedroom, and this is not going to lead anyone into a positive embrace of the sexual position.
Sean has a friend named Dennis, whom they fix up with Maggie, even though they know they’ve been Blisted and are exactly as happy as you’d be to be paired with a loser. (Aaaaa! Why does Liz get to be so pretty and have a hot boyfriend and a LIFE and a PERSONALITY and an IDENTITY in the school, while I get fixed up with DENNIS, Sean’s friend, who is always wearing A BAGGY GREEN SWEATER. I mean, why does that happen to Maggie?)
As someone who still doesn’t get it that when the parking attendant says I can just pay cash and I don’t need the ticket and it’s all fine, he’s using my $5 for beer money, I have always found the following passage a brilliant description of their power imbalance:
“Liz, we can’t go in there. We’re not old enough.”
“They never ask for proof.” Liz kept heading for the entrance.
“They’ll ask me!”
Liz stopped and took an objective look at Maggie.
She decided they probably would ask her. Quickly she opened her purse and pressed a frayed piece of paper in her hand.
“What’s this?”
“Somebody’s birth certificate. Remember, your name is Catherine Usherer tonight,” Liz assured.
“I can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
Maggie could hardly find her voice. “They’ll know I’m lying.”
“No, they won’t,” Liz insisted. “Unless, of course, they’ve already checked the real Catherine Usherer’s ID.”
“How did you get Catherine Usherer’s birth certificate?”
Liz looked at Maggie as though she had lost all patience with her. “You know Helen Bordanowitz?”
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