“Stay away from the fender. You’re dripping on it!”
I shouted angrily, shoving him away.
“Flash Gordon’s only about an inch high now!”
I couldn’t help laughing. It was true. Flash had shrunk, along with the shirt, which Randy had earned by doggedly eating three boxes of Wheaties, saving the boxtops and mailing them in with 25 cents that he had, by dint of ferocious self-denial, saved from his 30-cent weekly allowance.
“Look, I’ll get you another Flash Gordon T-shirt.”
“You can’t. They’re not givin’ ’em away no more. They’re givin’ away Donald Duck beanies with a propeller on top now.”
“Well, then, stretch the one you got now, stupid.”
“It won’t stretch. It keeps getting littler.”
He bounced up and down on a clothes pole, joggling the clothesline and my mother’s wash. Within three seconds, she was out on the back porch.
“CUT IT OUT WITH THE CLOTHES POLE.”
Sullenly, he slid off onto the ground. I went back to work, until the Ford gleamed like some rare jewel. Then I went into the house to begin the even more laborious process of getting myself in shape for the evening ahead. Locking the bathroom door, I took two showers, wearing a brand-new bar of Lifebuoy down to a nub. I knew what happened to people who didn’t use it; every week, little comic strips underneath Moon Mullins told endless tales of disastrous proms due to dreaded B.O. It would not happen to me.
I then shaved for the second time that week, using a new Gillette Blue Blade. As usual when an important shave was executed, I nicked myself nastily in several places.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered, plastering the wounds with little pieces of toilet paper.
Carefully, I went over every inch of my face, battling that age-old enemy, the blackhead, and polished off the job with a copious application of stinging Aqua Velva. Next I attacked my hair, combing and recombing, getting just the right insouciant pitch to my pride and joy, my d.a. cut. Tonight, I would be a truly magnificent specimen of lusty manhood.
Twilight was fast approaching when I emerged from the bathroom, redolent of rare aromas, pink and svelte. But the real battle had not yet begun. Laid out on my bed was my beautiful summer formal. Al was right: The elegant white coat truly gleamed in virginal splendor. Not a trace of the red stain nor the sinister hole could be detected. The coat was ready for another night of celebration, its lapels spotless, its sleeves smooth and uncreased.
Carefully, I undid the pins that festooned my pleated Monte Carlo shirt. It was the damnedest thing I had ever seen, once I got it straightened out: long, trailing gauzelike shirttails, a crinkly front that thrummed like sheet metal and a collar that seemed to be carved of white rock. I slipped it on. Panic! It had no buttons—just holes.
Rummaging around frantically in the box the suit came in, I found a cellophane envelope containing little round black things. Ripping the envelope open, I poured them out; there were five of them, two of which immediately darted under the bed. From the looks of the remaining three, they certainly weren’t buttons; but they’d have to do. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I had observed a classic maneuver executed by at least one stud out of every set rented with a tux. Down on my hands and knees, already beginning to lose my Lifebuoy sheen, sweat popping out here and there, I scrambled around for the missing culprits.
The ordeal was well under way. Seven o’clock was approaching with such rapidity as to be almost unbelievable. Schwartz, Clara Mae and Wanda would already be waiting for me, and here I was in my drawers, crawling around on my hands and knees. Finally, amid the dust and dead spiders under my bed, I found the two studs cowering together behind a hardball I’d lost three months earlier.
Back before the mirror again, I struggled to get them in place between the concrete slits. Sweat was beginning to show under my arms. I got two in over my breastbone and now I tried to get the one at the collar over my Adam’s apple. It was impossible! I could feel from deep within me several sobs beginning to form. The more I struggled, the more hamfisted I became. Oh, no! Two blackish thumb smudges appeared on my snowwhite collar.
“MA!” I screamed, “LOOK AT MY SHIRT!”
She rushed in from the kitchen, carrying a paring knife and a pan of apples. “What’s the matter?”
“Look!” I pointed at the telltale prints.
My kid brother cackled in delight when he saw the trouble I was in.
“Don’t touch it,” she barked, taking control immediately. Dirty collars were her métier. She had fought them all her life. She darted out of the room and returned instantly with an artgum eraser.
“Now, hold still.”
I obeyed as she carefully worked the stud in place and then artistically erased the two monstrous thumbprints. Never in my life had I experienced a collar remotely like the one that now clamped its iron grasp around my windpipe. Hard and unyielding, it dug mercilessly into my throat—a mere sample of what was to come.
“Where’s your tie?” she asked. I had forgotten about that detail.
“It … ack … must be … in the box,” I managed to gasp out. The collar had almost paralyzed my voice box.
She rummaged around and came up with the bow tie. It was black and it had two metal clips. She snapped it onto the wing collar and stood back.
“Now, look at yourself in the mirror.” I didn’t recognize myself.
She picked up the midnight-blue trousers and held them open, so that I could slip into them without bending over.
True to his word, Al had, indeed, taken in the seat The pants clamped me in a viselike grip that was to damn near emasculate me before the evening was out. I sucked in my stomach, buttoned the waistband tight, zippered up the fly and stood straight as a ramrod before the mirror. I had no other choice.
“Gimme your foot.”
My mother was down on all fours, pulling the silky black socks onto my feet. Then, out of a box on the bed, she removed the gleaming pair of patent-leather dancing pumps, grabbed my right foot and shoved it into one of them, using her finger as a shoehorn. I tromped down. She squealed in pain.
“I can’t get my finger out!”
I hobbled around, taking her finger with me.
“STAND STILL!” she screamed.
I stood like a crane, one foot in the air, with her finger jammed deep into the heel.
“RANDY! COME HERE!” she yelled.
My kid brother, who was sulking under the day bed, ran into the room.
“PULL HIS SHOE OFF, RANDY!” She was frantic.
“What for?” he asked sullenly.
“DON’T ASK STUPID QUESTIONS. JUST DO WHAT I SAY!”
I was getting an enormous cramp in my right buttock.
“STAND STILL!” she yelled. “YOU’RE BREAKING MY FINGER!” Randy looked on impassively, observing a scene that he was later to weave into a family legend, embroidering it more and more as the years went by-making himself the hero, of course.
“RANDY! Take off his shoe!” Her voice quavered with pain and exasperation.
“He squirted my T-shirt.”
“If you don’t take off his shoe this instant, you’re gonna regret it.” This time, her voice was low and menacing. We both knew the tone. It was the end of the line.
Randy bent over and tugged off the shoe. My mother toppled backward in relief, rubbing her index finger, which was already blue.
“Go back under the day bed,” she snapped. He scurried out of the room. I straightened out my leg—the cramp subsiding like a volcano in the marrow of my bones—and the gleaming pumps were put in place without further incident. I stood encased as in armor.
“What’s this thing?” she asked from behind me. I executed a careful 180-degree turn,
“Oh, that’s my cummerbund.”
Her face lit up like an Italian sunrise. “A cummerbund!” She had seen Fred Astaire in many a cummerbund while he spun down marble staircases with Ginger Rogers in his arms, but it was the first ac
tual specimen she had ever been close to. She picked it up reverently, its paisley brilliance lighting up the room like an iridescent jewel.
“How does it work?” she asked, examining it closely.
Before I could answer, she said, “Oh, I see. It has clips on the back. Hold still.”
Around my waist it went. She drew it tight. The snaps clicked into place. It rode snugly halfway up my chest
She picked up the snowy coat and held it out. I lowered my arms into it and straightened up. She darted around to the front, closed the single button and there I stood—Adonis!
Posing before the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, I noted the rich accent of my velvet stripes, the gleam of my pumps, the magnificent dash and sparkle of my high-fashion cummerbund. What a sight! What a feeling! This is the way life should be. This is what it’s all about.
I heard my mother call out from the next room: “Hey, what’s this thing?” She came out holding a cellophane bag containing a maroon object.
“Oh, that’s my boutonniere.”
“Your what?”
“It’s a thing for the lapel. Like a fake flower.”
It was the work of an instant to install my elegant wool carnation. It was the crowning touch. I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t care about the fact that it didn’t match my black tie, as Al had promised. With the cummerbund I was wearing, no one would notice, anyway.
Taking my leave as Cary Grant would have done, I sauntered out the front door, turned to give my mother a jaunty wave—just in time for her to call me back to pick up Wanda’s corsage, which I’d left on the front-hall table.
Slipping carefully into the front seat with the cellophane-topped box safely beside me, I leaned forward slightly, to avoid wrinkling the back of my coat, started the motor up and shoved off into the warm summer night A soft June moon hung overhead. The Ford purred like a kitten. When I pulled up before Wanda’s house, it was lit up from top to bottom. Even before my brakes had stopped squealing, she was out on the porch, her mother fluttering about her, her father lurking in the background, beaming.
With stately tread, I moved up the walk; my pants were so tight that if I’d taken one false step, God knows what would have happened. In my sweaty, Aqua Velvascented palm, I clutched the ritual largess in its shiny box.
Wanda wore a long turquoise taffeta gown, her milky skin and golden hair radiating in the glow of the porch light This was not the old Wanda. For one thing, she didn’t have her glasses on, and her eyes were unnaturally large and liquid, the way the true myopia victim’s always are.
“Gee, thanks for the orchid,” she whispered. Her voice sounded strained. In accordance with the tribal custom, she, too, was being mercilessly clamped by straps and girdles.
Her mother, an almost exact copy of Wanda, only slightly puffy here and there, said, “You’ll take care of her now, won’t you?”
“Now, Emily, don’t start yapping,” her old man muttered in the darkness. “They’re not kids anymore.”
They stood in the door as we drove off through the soft night toward Schwartz’ house, our conversation stilted, our excitement almost at the boiling point Schwartz rushed out of his house, his white coat like a ghost in the blackness, his hair agleam with Brylcreem, and surrounded by a palpable aura of Lifebuoy.
Five minutes later, Clara Mae piled into the back seat beside him, carefully holding up her daffodil-yellow skirts, her long slender neck arched. She, too, wasn’t wearing her glasses. I had never realized that a good speller could be so pretty. Schwartz, a good half head shorter, laughed nervously as we tooled on toward the Cherry-wood Country Club. From all over town, other cars, polished and waxed, carried the rest of the junior class to their great trial by fire.
The club nestled amid the rolling hills, where the Sinclair oil aroma was only barely detectable. Parking the car in the lot, we threaded our way through the starched and crinolined crowd—the girls’ girdles creaking in unison—to the grand ballroom. Japanese lanterns danced in the breeze through the open doors to the garden, bathing the dance floor in a fairytale glow.
I found myself saying things like, “Why, hello there, Albert, how are you?” And, “Yes, I believe the weather is perfect.” Only Flick, the unregenerate Philistine, failed to rise to the occasion. Already rumpled in his summer formal, he made a few tasteless wisecracks as Mickey Eisley and his Magic Music Makers struck up the sultry sounds that had made them famous in every steel-mill town that ringed Lake Michigan. Dark and sensuous, the dance floor engulfed us all. I felt tall, slim and beautiful, not realizing at the time that everybody feels that way wearing a white coat and rented pants. I could see myself standing on a mysterious balcony, a lonely, elegant figure, looking out over the lights of some exotic city, a scene of sophisticated gaiety behind me.
There was a hushed moment when Mickey Eisley stood in the baby spot, his wavy hair shining, before a microphone shaped like a chromium bullet.
“All right, boys and girls.” The metallic ring of feedback framed his words in an echoing nimbus. “And now something really romantic. A request: When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano. We’re going to turn the lights down for this one.”
Oh, wow! The lights faded even lower. Only the Japanese lanterns glowed dimly—red, green, yellow and blue—in the enchanted darkness. It was unquestionably the high point of my existence.
Wanda and I began to maneuver around the floor. My sole experience in dancing had been gained from reading Arthur Murray ads and practicing with a pillow for a partner behind the locked door of the bathroom. As we shuffled across the floor, I could see the black footprints before my eyes, marching on a white page: 1-2-3; then the white one that said, “Pause.”
Back and forth, up and down, we moved metronomically. My box step was so square that I went in little right angles for weeks afterward. The wool carnation rode high up on my lapel and was beginning to scratch my cheek, and an insistent itch began to nag at my right shoulder. There was some kind of wire or horsehair or something in the shoulder pad that was beginning to bore its way into my flesh.
By now, my dashing concrete collar, far from having wilted, had set into the consistency of carborundum, and its incessant abrasive action had removed a wide strip of skin encircling my neck. As for my voice—due to the manic strangulation of the collar, it was now little more than a hoarse croak.
“When the swallows … retuuurrrrrn to Capistraaaaaaaano …” mooed the drummer, who doubled as the band’s romantic vocalist.
I began to notice Wanda’s orchid leering up at me from her shoulder. It was the most repulsive flower I had ever seen. At least 14 inches across, it looked like some kind of overgrown Venus’s-flytrap waiting for the right moment to strike. Deep purple, with an obscene yellow tongue that stuck straight out of it, and greenish knobs on the end, it clashed almost audibly with her turquoise dress. It looked like it was breathing, and it clung to her shoulder as if with claws.
As I glided back and forth in my graceful box step, my left shoulder began to develop an itch that helped take my mind off of the insane itch in my right shoulder, which was beginning to feel like an army of hungry soldier ants on the march. The contortions I made to relieve the agony were camouflaged nicely by a short sneezing fit brought on by the orchid, which was exhaling directly into my face. So was Wanda, with a heady essence of Smith Brothers cough drops and sauerkraut.
“When the deeeep purpullllll falllllllls … Over sleeeeepy gaaardennnn wallllls …” warbled the vocalist into his microphone, with which he seemed to be dancing the tango. The loudspeakers rattled in three-quarter time as Wanda started to sweat through her taffeta. I felt it running down her back. My own back was already so wet you could read the label on my undershirt right through the dinner jacket.
Back and forth we trudged doggedly across the crowded floor. Another Arthur Murray ad man, Schwartz was doing exactly the same step with Clara Mae directly behind me. We were all in a four-part lock step. As I hit the lower left-hand footp
rint in my square—the one marked “Pause”—he was hitting the upper right-hand corner of his square. Each time we did that, our elbows dug smartly into each other’s ribs.
The jungle fragrance of the orchid was getting riper by the minute and the sweat, which had now saturated my jockey shorts, was pouring down my legs in rivulets. My soaked cummerbund turned two shades darker. So that she shouldn’t notice, I pulled Wanda closer to me. Sighing, she hugged me back. Wanda was the vaguely chubby type of girl that was so popular at the time. Like Judy Garland, by whom she was heavily influenced, she strongly resembled a pink beach ball—but acute beach ball, soft and rubbery. I felt bumpy things under her taffeta gown, with little hooks and knobs. Schwartz caught me a nasty shot in the rib cage just as I bent over to kiss her lightly on the bridge of her nose. It tasted salty. She looked up at me, her great liquid myopic eyes catching the reflection of the red and green lanterns overhead.
During a brief intermission, Schwartz and I carried paper cups dripping syrupy punch back to the girls, who had just spent some time in the ladies’ room struggling unsuccessfully to repair the damage of the first half. As we were sipping, a face from my dim past floated by from out of nowhere—haughty, alabaster, green-eyed, dangerous.
“Hi, Daph,” I muttered, spilling a little punch on my gleaming pumps, which had turned during the past hour into a pair of iron maidens.
“Oh, Howard.” She spoke in the breathy, sexy way that such girls always have at proms. Td like you to meet Budge. Budge Cameron. He’s at Princeton.” A languid figure, probably born in a summer formal, loomed overhead.
“Budge, this is Howard.”
“Hiya, fella.” It was the first time I had heard the tight, nasal, swinging-jaw accent of the true Princetonian. It was not to be the last.
They were gone. Funny, I couldn’t even remember actually dating her, I reflected, as the lights dimmed once again. We swung back into action. They opened with Sleepy Lagoon. 1-2-3-pause … 1-2-3-pause.
It was certain now. I had broken out in a raging rash. I felt it spreading like lava across my shoulder blades under the sweat. The horsehair, meanwhile, had penetrated my chest cavity and was working its way toward a vital organ. Trying manfully to ignore it, I stared fixedly at the tiny turquoise ribbon that held Wanda’s golden ponytail in place. With troubles of her own, she looked with an equally level gaze at my maroonwool carnation, which by this time had wilted into a clump of lint.
Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories Page 24