He Loves Me Not

by Caroline B. Cooney

Memories of football game marching bands at halftime came to me. I could feel a scrap of Sousa melody—that part where the piccolo shrills over the tubas. “Sure,” I said to the customer, taking my reputation into my fingers. I launched full volume into a piece I didn’t know, throwing on extra brass and percussion until the swell of the instrument filled the entire mall. The customer began marching in place beside me.

  I absolutely hate it when adults act like little kids. I get so embarrassed for them. But I was getting paid and I had to be part of it. I had no choice but to nod, grin, and make marching movements with my elbows so the man would feel good about his marching.

  People turned, smiling, because everybody loves a march.

  When I finished, I got a super round of applause. I was flushed with pleasure. Without Ralph and the rest to carry me through, I’d winged it—when one mistake would have boomed out in two hundred stores.

  I turned to see Mike’s expression, but he was no longer there.

  I searched the camellia crowd for him. After a minute I spotted the four of them sauntering down one of the star-shaped wings to the Cookie Monster Shoppe. Frannie was pointing at the fat sugar cookies decorated like Muppets, and obviously Dick planned to buy her one.

  They had left while I was still playing. They hadn’t been impressed at all. More likely they had been bored.

  My chest hurt and my eyes blurred over. “I have to take a break,” I said to the organ man.

  “Sure, honey. Listen, you’re super. You’re fantastic. How about you and me working out something permanent? Okay?”

  The way I felt then, the only thing I wanted permanently was out of music.

  The organ salesman was hopping with excitement. He was selling more organs in half an hour than he usually sold in a week. “Okay?” he said. “Want to? Okay?”

  It’s not okay, I thought. I don’t want some old organ salesman to call me honey. I want…

  But I didn’t know what I wanted.

  If I had been able to sort that out, I probably wouldn’t be faced with this sort of thing. I wanted everything. Settling for pieces of my dreams hurt. I kept a smile glued to my face and threaded through the camellias. Where, in a brilliantly lit shopping mall, was I going to find a corner of darkness? I had to sit down somewhere and pull myself together.

  “…personally prefer Blood of China,” said a blue-haired old lady.

  “…has a nice bouquet, though,” said her antique companion.

  “…horrible racket is over. I detest loud music.”

  “…head aches from listening to that girl slam around on that dreadful instrument.”

  Somehow I got off the egg, but my smile was not going to last much longer. If only Lizzie or Ralph were along! They knew how to shrug off anything. You have to be tough in this business, Ralph had said over and over.

  Who wanted to be tough?

  I managed to find a fat pillar to lean on, and the spotlights did create a pool of dark behind it, but my clothing was so gaudy I had no hope of really being hidden. Oh, for a bedroom with a door that closed so I could sob for a few minutes before going back on the stage!

  I didn’t have enough self-control to keep the tears back.

  I reminded myself fiercely that I’d ruin my makeup, I’d look terrible, I’d make a display of myself…but it didn’t help.

  Just as my face crumpled into tears, a flash camera went off in front of me.

  11

  “ALISON!” SAID TED. “WHAT’S the matter? That’s not the photograph I expected to get. You were wonderful up there. What on earth is wrong?”

  I had been right about him. He was a comforting person. His crinkly features crinkled some more as he put an arm around me, and then I had my dark corner—between the pillar and Ted’s chest.

  Nobody there but me and Ted’s camera.

  I laughed through my tears.

  “What’s wrong?” he said again, gently.

  “I’m not sure, Ted. I guess I’m just tired. Letting small things get to me.” I shrugged. I couldn’t explain it. Maybe if we’d had hours ahead of us I could have worked into it. But I had only ten minutes and then I’d have to play some more.

  “I was taking photos of the winning camellias,” he said, “and you looked so smashing I wanted to get you, too. What happened? That funny old dude who wanted the march upset you?”

  “No. It was the people who were annoyed by the music. Who wanted me to shut up.”

  Ted was incensed. “Somebody told you to shut up?” he demanded. He looked around, as if surveying the crowd for the sort of worthless clod who would tell a musician to shut up.

  “No, no. I was just reading between the lines. Some people I knew walked away during the piece. I think my playing bored them. It…well, it hurt my feelings.” I tried to laugh it off. “Silly, huh? You’d think I’d have the hide of a rhinoceros by now.”

  “No,” said Ted, running a finger across my cheek. “I wouldn’t think that at all.”

  We stood there, together, and a whole new set of feelings and wishes rumbled through me, like clothes in a dryer, rushing and flapping and falling and tumbling. His finger brushed my skin only for a moment, and I wanted him to do it all afternoon.

  At the same instant we sort of stepped back, half-embarrassed, pretending nothing had happened.

  “It’s just that sometimes you think you’re doing fine,” I told him, “and you find out you’ve ruined it all.”

  Ted leaned back against the pillar and smiled at me. I thought, who needs Mike MacBride’s eyebrows? I’ll take a smile like this.

  “Once I had a chance to cover a big fire,” he said. “You might remember it. The one at the furniture warehouse down on Fifth Street that was started by arson about a year ago?”

  I remembered it. They had been afraid the whole block would go. I wished Ted would hold me instead of talk to me.

  “That was before I had my driver’s license and nobody in my family was home to drive me. I raced over to our neighbor’s and pleaded and begged and made all sorts of foolish promises about raking his yard and fixing his roof, so he drove me to the fire and we got there while it was still blazing.”

  I wondered what a fire had to do with anything. Did Ted just like the sound of his own voice or was he just trying to fill up an awkward space or was he going to tell me something?

  “If,” said Ted, “I had remembered to put film in my camera, I’d have had some good photographs, too.”

  We hung on to each other, laughing.

  For me it was a moment of complete relief. Ted did understand. He was the same kind of person I was. He tried hard and sometimes he lost. He knew pain and embarrassment. He cared about whatever was bothering me. He was willing to tell me a crazy story about himself so we’d have, something to share.

  Ted handed me an enormous Kleenex and I mopped up my cheeks. “You look lovely,” he said. “Listen, how long can you break?”

  “Five more minutes, I guess.”

  Five crumby minutes. What we needed right now was five hours. I pictured myself going to the organ man and telling him I couldn’t finish up my obligations to him this afternoon because this neat boy and I wanted to do some sharing. Somehow I did not think that would do a lot for my musical reputation.

  “How about a frozen yogurt?” said Ted.

  It sounded repulsive to me. But I did not think it would be good tactics to reject Ted’s first offer. “I’ve never had one,” I said cautiously.

  He put an arm around me and began leading me toward the stairs. His arm was wonderfully warm and solid, and somehow it protected me completely from the bored and the headachy camellia patrons.

  “You have missed out, lady,” said Ted. “I love frozen yogurt. You know what I spend my income on? Cameras, film, developing, gas for my car—and frozen yogurt.”

  “I guess I know your priorities now,” I said, laughing. It was easy to laugh with Ted. In fact, we seemed to make a good couple to laugh at, as well. I in my flashy scarlet n
umber and Ted in an old army jacket and faded jeans over work boots. The princess and the farmhand, as it were.

  “What are yours?” said Ted.

  “Mostly I save my money for college.”

  “I am impressed!” said Ted. He actually stopped me mid-stride, took both my arms, and stared down at me to verify that I actually did that sort of thing with my money. “My parents opened a savings account for me,” he said, nodding over and over again. “They put twenty-five dollars in it when I was ten years old.”

  “Oh, really? How much is in it now?”

  “Twenty-five dollars. I withdrew the interest.”

  We cracked up laughing.

  “You’re very thrifty,” I complimented him.

  “Look at it this way. If I saved everything, I couldn’t afford to take your picture and buy you a yogurt.”

  We took the stairs up to the yogurt shop because Ted said the escalator was too slow and we didn’t have enough time to glide around. However, we walked up the stairs so slowly and stopped so often to giggle that the escalator would probably have been ten times as fast. Once when Ted touched me he said, “You must be freezing. Look at those goosebumps. Don’t you ever wear anything practical?” He ran his hand down my bare arm and my thoughts were anything but practical. “Not a dress to eat frozen yogurt in,” said Ted firmly. He peeled off his scruffy jacket and draped it over my shoulders. The lining was warm from Ted’s body. I shivered inside it though, and when I began eating the frozen yogurt—which was unexpectedly yummy—I shivered even more.

  “Maybe you have malaria,” suggested Ted.

  We laughed even more. We walked to the rail of the second floor concourse and looked down on the egg stage. The camellias were dots of dark red and deep pink, and the organ was just a wooden box with wires.

  “Do you write your articles using your own name?” I asked him.

  “Yep. Townsend H. Mollison.”

  “I thought that might be you. I saw the by-line on the article about the citizen’s protest on environmental budget cuts.” Townsend H. Mollison, I thought. It was a name that cried out for an important door and brass letters on it.

  “It’s kind of a heavy name for high school,” said Ted, “but it’ll look great someday when I win a Pulitzer Prize.”

  We didn’t laugh at that one. Should I tell him about the dream I had? I thought. About going to Nashville and cutting a record?

  But down below me the organ salesman was signaling furiously. There was no time in my schedule to share anything. There was only time to thank Ted and run down the stairs. I felt like Cinderella leaving the ball. The prince stayed and she had to go back to her cruel stepmother’s and work and slave.

  At least I knew I would have an appreciative audience for this part of my concert. I slid onto the bench and put on violins and flutes instead of marching band trumpets. I began filling the mall with my engagement party repertoire.

  I played for so many engagement parties and weddings that I have them on the brain. I guess any girl daydreams about them, but I have more to go on. Sometimes, when I’m in a bad mood, I daydream that my boyfriend and I skip all that junk and just get married. Sometimes, though, I plan this extravaganza with all the lace and flowers and hearts imaginable.

  It was difficult to imagine Ted in a lace and flowers setting.

  He was definitely the type to go to a judge some afternoon and wrap the whole thing up in five minutes.

  Quit daydreaming about a wedding, you dodo, I told myself. The boy so far has bought you one frozen yogurt.

  I wondered what Ted was daydreaming about. He must still be up on the balcony, eating his yogurt in peace. Perhaps he was having a second one, since he liked them so much. I decided next time Daddy and I went shopping I would stock up on frozen yogurts. Just in case.

  After all, if nobody at Ted’s house ever bought any food, he might come to mine to eat.

  I played “Some Enchanted Evening” and hoped that Ted was duly enchanted. I could not twist around to look up and see.

  “…arrange monthly payments if you like,” said the organ salesman to a plump elderly lady who was loving every note I played. I wished I could read the expression on Ted’s face as easily.

  “…makes it look easy,” said the old lady doubtfully, “but I’m not so sure it really is.”

  I thought that the next time Ted and I got together I would point out to him that we wore the exact same kind of watch: a big fat Timex with a sweep hand and numbers you could read from a yard away. All the girls I know have these itty-bitty watches that don’t tell time; they just decorate the wrist. Then I started thinking about wrists, and how mine looked so slender and fair against Ted’s, which was almost twice as large.

  Within half an hour the camellia crowd had vanished. There was just a girl in gaudy red, an organ, and a thousand camellias on a stage. The organ man decided it was time to call it a day.

  I ended my last love song with a flourish and looked up for Ted.

  “Thanks a bunch,” said the organ man. “You were terrific, honey. Give me your phone number. I’ll want to have you regular, okay?”

  All over the mall stores were closing down after the short Sunday hours. Huge metal gates clanked and great glass doors slid closed. The mall emptied.

  There was no Townsend H. Mollison anywhere.

  Beside me on the bench, yogurt was melting in a paper cup.

  The only man who’d stayed around was, as usual, somebody who wanted me for my music.

  12

  THE NEXT MONTH WAS like a seesaw. I didn’t go anywhere, but I had motion sickness.

  I could not believe how many times my mind ran over my few conversations with Ted Mollison. Kept pretending I had not knocked him over or crashed heads with him or had trouble chewing in front of him. Kept working and reworking the talk we had had over the frozen yogurt, saying all these brilliant meaningful things that let him realize I was the girl for him.

  But the phone didn’t ring. Unless it was Ralph.

  Ralph developed the habit of kissing me after a gig. “Love ya,” he’d say, and then he’d drive me home. I wanted to screech at him: You do not love me, you love my music!

  We did a gig where this really darling couple wanted their song played. None of us, not even Ralph, knew the song. “You know it, Alison,” said the couple. “It’s the one that goes dum dum, daah, diddle diddle dum dum.”

  I was doomed to spend the rest of my life listening to people sing dum dum daaah diddle diddle dum dum at me. Doomed to be kissed only by a fellow musician who figured it was cheaper than paying me more money for a good performance.

  On top of everything else we lost our drummer, Alec. He was taking uppers to stay awake and downers to go to sleep; his performance had gotten so bad and his attendance was so unreliable that Ralph had to can him. It depressed me terribly.

  And I felt so old, helping to break in another drummer.

  I wandered around the halls at school, feeling so completely out of it. Sometimes I wondered if I had a cane and arthritis and looked eighty-three, and that was why none of these sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds hung out with me.

  “What’s the matter, Alison?” said Mike MacBride one day. He was with a sophomore named Kimmy. “You look kind of down these days,” said Mike with concern.

  I liked Mike. I liked his concern for me. But I felt detached.

  “Lost your dazzle, huh, Alison?” said Kimmy, who did not like Mike’s worrying about me.

  “I guess I don’t have enough energy to dazzle all the time,” I told them.

  “So long as you can sparkle at night,” said Kimmy, “when it counts.” She smiled and led Mike away as if he were the tiny one and she the football player. It looked like a very nice skill to have. Wouldn’t pay as well as music, of course, but clearly it was a lot more fun.

  The beginning of spring had mating significance in my high school. Everybody I knew now came in pairs. Boys who had never before even wanted to walk down the same
hall as a bunch of dumb old girls were now dating regularly and happily. Girls who had been nice and pretty and unnoticed were now nice and pretty and going steady.

  Mike was not exactly going steady with Kimmy. I’d made it a point to keep up with things better since not even knowing about Kathleen’s move. Mike was playing the field: a different girl every weekend. He always smiled at me and waved. And I always smiled back and waved from my end of the hall, too.

  And then I’d wonder why Ted never called me.

  Got a girlfriend, I thought. After all, it isn’t treason to your girlfriend to go comfort some dumb girl who’s weeping all over a shopping mall. He probably told his girlfriend about buying me a yogurt and giving me a Kleenex, and they probably had a good laugh about the bruise on his forehead where we batted skulls.

  Dick Fraccola and Frannie were practically glued together now. She never asked me anymore about what my parties were like. I didn’t know if she had enough parties of her own now, or if I had bored her too often and she didn’t care what I did.

  Sometimes I’d go for a whole day without thinking about Ted. Then I’d see the afternoon paper and begin wondering if he had an article in it, and I’d scour every page looking. And when I found one I’d read it at least twice. Ted was obviously sent to cover the dreary stuff nobody else wanted. I began finding out all about school board meetings and dog vaccination clinics.

  Ridiculous, ridiculous, I’d scold myself. Ted isn’t the only man in the world. Look around. Fall for somebody you’re at least going to see more than twice a year.

  There were even times when I felt this deep anger at Ted, as if he had done something to me by not calling me back. No matter that I reminded myself Ted hadn’t even hinted that he wanted to date me. I still got angry with him for not calling.

  It occurred to me that I could call him.

  After all, I still had his number. Had it memorized, in fact.

  And I had plenty of reasons to call. There was the article, for example. It hadn’t come out yet. I could call to ask about it. I could tell him I owed him a Kleenex and a yogurt. I rehearsed it. “Hey, Ted, since neither of us has any free time, how about scheduling some official time together? Say, Saturday night at the movies?”