When We First Met

by Norma Fox Mazer

  Later, as they turned back toward her house he said, “I want to give you something. Something from Rob to Jenny. To show that we’re—”

  “We’re what?” she said.

  “Us. Just us.”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “I know that. I want to, though.”

  “Don’t get any ideas about rings,” she said. “I don’t like rings. I like hands, plain hands.” She seized his hands and inspected them. No rings, no bracelets. Hers, the same.

  “Okay, I won’t give you a ring, I’ll give you an elephant.”

  “I’ll keep it in the garage with the Dart,” she said.

  The next day, meeting outside the school, he snatched her lunchbag and dropped something into it. “What’s that? Give me back my lunch.”

  “You’ll see.” He held it out of reach and ran through the swinging doors. A couple sitting on the stairs watched as Jenny grabbed Rob and tickled. “No respect for private property,” she cried.

  “I thought you were a pacifist.” He squirmed with laughter.

  “I am; my motto is don’t shoot, tickle.”

  He relinquished the lunchbag, and she took out a small china elephant with trunk upraised and four pink feet. “Is it all right?” he asked. “I told you I’d give you an elephant.”

  She smiled and stroked its gleaming white back. “Maybe I won’t keep it in the garage, after all.”

  Chapter 10

  In the library Rob sat down next to Jenny. “Hi,” he whispered.

  “Hi,” she whispered back.

  He moved his chair closer, touched her foot with his foot. “I got my schedule changed.”

  “Shh!” someone said.

  Rob unclipped a pen from his suspenders and wrote on a piece of paper, “Gym, fourth period. Fifth period, lunch with Jenny.”

  “You have fifth-period lunch now? How’d you manage that?”

  He tapped his forehead significantly. “I did it. Did you notice the weather?” Behind his propped-open notebook, he whispered, “We might never have another great day like this until next April. Want to cut out?”

  “Where would we go?”

  “Anyplace else.”

  Outside she saw the blue sky, and trees, glossy and swaying in a light wind. So it was April—she’d nearly missed the change, even though Ethel had said, “Jenny’s got a rip in her blouse. April Fool!” April. She felt suddenly released, glad that March was gone.

  She shoved her books together. “Let’s go!” He clipped his pen back onto his suspenders and closed his notebook with a clap that made heads turn. They walked fast, through the library, out the turnstile, and into the hall. “We’ll meet outside.” He continued to whisper conspiratorially.

  At her locker she pulled on her corduroy jacket and, after only a moment’s thought, dropped her books and closed the locker.

  Rob waved from across the street near the candy store. Jenny ran to meet him. “How’d you get out so fast?”

  He did a little toe dance. “We’re both wearing sneakers with holes in them today. Another one of your major coincidences.”

  They walked, almost skipped along, holding hands. “Let’s move fast,” Rob said, “so they don’t catch up with us criminal elements. Jenny, I bet you’ve never done this before. Do you think your character is going to be damaged forever by contact with me?”

  “Don’t take so much credit. I’ve skipped plenty of times. What do you think I am, a wimp?”

  “I think a lot of things about you, but wimp definitely is not one of them. You haven’t asked me something important.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Think, Jenny. Here’s a little hint—meow?”

  “Carl! How’s Carl?”

  Rob looked happy. “Carl is fantastic. He sleeps all night on my bed and chews on me in the morning to wake me up.”

  “So it was all right that you brought him home?”

  “Sure, I’ve always had a cat or a dog. I left my dog at my father’s when I came up here because Dammit is more than half Dad’s. Just as well, since I don’t think Carl would want to share my bed with Dammit.”

  “How’d he ever get a name like that?”

  “We were going to name him Spot—something really original—but what happened was, when we were training him, Dad would say, ‘Dammit, do it here!’ ‘Dammit, aren’t you ever going to get trained!’ Before you know it, pup comes every time anyone says Dammit. So Dad said, ‘Well, that must be his name.’”

  “Your father sounds nice.”

  “He is. Hey, I’ve got a great idea.” He pulled her into a phone booth at the gas station on the corner. “Let’s call my father. Operator? Hi! I want to make a collect call—”

  “Isn’t he working?”

  Rob shook his head. “He works second shift.… Dad? It’s Rob.” He moved slightly, bumping into Jenny, leaning against her. “Sure, I’ll tell her … Uh huh … right … she did? Great!… Hey, Dad, I have somebody here who wants to say hello to you.”

  “Rob, no,” Jenny whispered.

  “Her name is Jenny,” he went on, “and she’s terrific. The most terrific girl I ever met.” He pushed the phone into Jenny’s hand.

  “Hello, Jenny,” she heard his father say. “Is that it—Jenny?”

  “Yes, Jenny,” she said, making a face at Rob. “Hello, Mr. Montana.”

  “Well! Rob gave you some build-up.”

  “You, too,” she said.

  “How’s the weather up there, Jenny?”

  “Oh, it’s beautiful.”

  “Well, enjoy it while you can. Before you know it, summer’ll be here, and then it’ll be too hot.”

  “You’re right,” she said. Then there was one of those silences you can almost feel. Rob’s father cleared his throat. “Well, Jenny, let me speak to that boy of mine again.”

  She handed the phone to Rob, pushed open the door, and stepped out. “Why’d you do that?” she said when Rob came out. “I don’t know your father. It was really embarrassing. I must have sounded like a fool. I didn’t know what to say.”

  “You couldn’t sound like a fool.”

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “Stick around.”

  “I plan to,” Rob said. “My actual, secret master plan is to stick to you like Super Glue. You’re never going to get rid of me, Jenny.”

  “Oh, no?” She gave him a shove that caught him by surprise. Before he could recover she was off and running. Rob was right behind her. Maybe she would never stop. She would run, and he would run, and they would go on and on and on … At the corner, at the stream of honking cars, she came to an abrupt halt.

  “I didn’t know you could run like that.” Panting, he put his arm across her shoulder.

  Jenny smiled smugly. “You may be Super Glue, but I am Super Feet. Where shall we go? Blue Lake Park?”

  In a small grocery they bought seeded rolls, a hunk of Gouda cheese, milk, molasses cookies, and apples. On the bus to the park they sat in back and ate the apples.

  The park was deserted, the beach empty, the lake green, not blue, and mushrooms were growing in the sand. It was cooler here, and they decided to have a fire while they ate. “I think this is illegal,” Jenny said, feeding twigs into the small blaze. “We’ll probably spend our twilight years in adjoining cells.” She sat down, took out her jackknife—the one that had been her grandfather’s—and cut the rolls in half and sliced chunks of cheese. They passed the carton of milk back and forth.

  “We’ll take our trash out with us,” Rob said. “I cannot litter. My Boy Scout training. Every summer when I was a kid, for a couple weeks I went to Boy Scout camp, even went after I wasn’t a Boy Scout anymore.”

  “Was it fun?”

  “I loved it. How about you—did you go to camp?”

  “No, none of us did. Oh, maybe my older brother, Vince—”

  “Vince—he’s the handsome devil?”

  “Right.”

  “And he’s how old?”

  “Twenty-
four.”

  “And he’s going to be a father.”

  “Uh-huh.” Valerie had written:

  Dear Family, I’m pregnant! If it’s a boy he’s going to be Vince, Jr. If it’s a girl, it will be Gail.…

  “Okay,” Rob said, “I’m getting these Penn—” He broke off. “Getting all this straight. So maybe Vince went to camp, but Freddie didn’t?”

  “Frankie. I guess after we all started coming, my folks didn’t have the money. We’d play with each other summers, and I’d visit my grandfather—”

  “I thought he lived in your house.”

  “Yes, but he had his own apartment, remember? Down in the basement. It’s Frankie’s now. When I was little I thought of it like visiting someplace else. It was so special. Grandpa’s house. I’d go there every day. And then there was the baby to look after, so there was always plenty to do. Gail and I took turns—”

  She stopped, busied herself with the fire. Gail’s name had just popped out. Wrong. No last names, no mention of mothers, and no mention of one sister. The dead sister. But how difficult it was. How could they be totally open, honest, if there were so many things to avoid? Like being in a swamp and having to avoid quicksand.

  She leaned her chin on her knees, poking at the fire. “I have a cousin Ernie who used to tell me stories about the quicksand that was going to get me if I wasn’t careful. How it was going to suck me down, down, down. I’d scream, he said, but nobody could help me.

  “I believed Ernie. He was older than me. And I was terrified for the longest time if I saw even a bit of sand. Even sand in a sandbox. My mind would flash, Quicksand.”

  He rubbed her head. “Oh, this is as bad as my zipper story.”

  “I never told anyone, not even Grandpa. Then one day I said to myself, I won’t let that quicksand get me. And I made myself go into sandboxes and stuff. I was little when this was happening. It seemed so real to me.”

  “Little kids have all kinds of stuff going on in their heads,” he said. “People think they’re just merry and happy, but it’s not true.”

  “I don’t think Ethel is afraid of anything,” Jenny said. “At least it doesn’t seem that way to me.”

  “Ethel—she’s the youngest, right? Does everyone spoil her?”

  “More or less. We try not to, but you know … and especially since—” Again, she stopped. She had almost stepped into the quicksand.

  “I’ve always been sort of spoiled by everyone, too,” Rob was saying. “Not that I think I’m spoiled, but Jade used to say I got stuff—privileges, love—she didn’t get. She always told me I was so protected, but I don’t think so. I remember plenty of things going on between my parents—fights they didn’t want me to know were happening. But I knew. I would be lying in bed, listening to them talk in the kitchen. I’d be drowsy, sleepy, and then all of a sudden my whole body would become—stiff … just tense; my legs would shake they’d be so tense, because something in their voices, some change would tell me they were fighting. I used to think, Their beanpole voices.”

  “What a funny thing to think.”

  “I know, it seems funny now, but then it just seemed the right thing. I must have been five or six, and somehow saying that—Their beanpole voices—seemed the exact way I felt. Maybe because I’ve always hated green beans, and my mother insisted I eat them. Sometimes I’d sit at the table saying ‘Beanpoles, beanpoles, beanpoles’ as fast as I could. And after a while it would be ‘Meanpoles, meanpoles, meanpoles.’ But they were never mean to me. They were very loving, just not to each other.

  “What I started to tell you was about this one time they were fighting. They had their beanpole voices. I was right there. My mom had her hands on my shoulders, talking to my dad over my head. First I’d hear her say something, and then I’d hear him. And I didn’t know which one to love, which one was right, which one was wrong.

  “That bothered me a lot. I wanted someone to be right, someone to be wrong. You know how kids are. Who’s the good guy? Who’s the bad guy? I still have this tremendous enthusiasm for cowboy movies—”

  “I know, I know,” Jenny said, “you can always tell the white hats from the black hats.”

  “Exactly.” Rob laughed.

  “Do you realize what we’ve been doing?” she said. “We’ve talked about practically nothing but our families.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “We said no last names, just Jenny and Rob, but we’re like a couple of turtles, carrying our families around with us on our backs.”

  They finished the cheese, shared the last roll, and, leaning against each other, ate the whole bag of cookies. How frightened she’d been, Jenny thought, every time one of them mentioned their family; afraid they’d ruin everything. Instead, all afternoon it had gotten better and better.

  They kept the fire going and sang songs. Their hands played together, twining, untwining, twining again. Something had changed between them. It was as if by talking about their families they had separated out the bad parts—Gail’s death, the guilt and anger, her mother sending a red rose of blood to his mother—and packed them into a little box, while the rest—their childhood memories and the stories about their brothers and sisters—were in another box, a big box. They could talk easily about the contents of that big box. Maybe they could even talk about the little box as long as they were careful to put everything back inside, close the lid, and remember who they were—Jenny and Rob. Just us.

  The sun was going down. “I suppose we should go,” Jenny said.

  “I guess so.”

  Neither of them moved. Rob poked at the embers. “I wish we could always be like this.” He looked at her.

  She wanted to kiss him. She wanted him to kiss her. She moved toward him, put out her hands. He was smiling a little. “Hi,” he said, and for the first time they kissed. And kissed. And kissed again.

  In a while, they got up and packed their things, covered the fire, and, hand tightly in hand, walked out of the park to the bus stop.

  Chapter 11

  “Where are you going?” her mother said as Jenny passed through the living room.

  “Out. Downtown.”

  “Meeting Rhoda?”

  “No. Just going to do some shopping.” Uncomfortably, she planted a little blue newsboy’s cap on her head. It was Saturday morning and she and Rob had arranged to meet at one o’clock in Messenger Square. Every day they’d been seeing each other in school, eating lunch in the cafeteria or outside on the stone wall near the parking lot. After school they met again and walked to Jenny’s job or just walked and talked, arms around each other, bumping shoulders, and stopping on quiet streets to kiss.

  “Did you bring your laundry down to the basement?” Her mother was wearing her Saturday cleaning outfit—old jeans and one of Jenny’s father’s shirts.

  “Right. And my room is clean. I vacuumed, did the windows, too. Anything else?” Jenny said, showing a willingness to put off going out that she didn’t really feel. She disliked being evasive with her mother. She could never mention Rob, but so far in accounting for her time she had managed to avoid outright lies. When her mother asked where she’d been, and why, even on days she didn’t work, she came home so late, Jenny could say truthfully enough, “I was in the library,” “I was downtown,” “I met a friend and we got to talking.”

  “Don’t come home too late,” her mother said now.

  “I won’t. Are you and Dad doing anything special tonight?”

  “Her mother laughed. “Like watching TV?”

  “You ought to go out more.”

  “Oh, your father’s always so tired—”

  “Well, he should do it for you.” On impulse she hugged her mother, who remained almost stiff in her arms. No, they weren’t huggers in their family; they didn’t even touch that much. It was from Rob that Jenny was learning how to hug. His hugs were big and warm, bear hugs, generous and unself-conscious. Jenny wondered if her parents had ever hugged for pure joy, the way
she and Rob did. Not being put off by her mother’s stiffness, she hugged her harder. “What’s this, Valentine’s Day?” her mother said, but her face softened and her cheeks got pink. “You’re growing up, aren’t you, Jenny?”

  Downtown, Rob was waiting for her near the fountain, one foot up on the stone rim. Jenny came up quietly behind him, put her arms around him, and squeezed.

  “Hello!” Rob turned, smiling. “You look pretty.”

  “Were you waiting long?”

  “Couple hours.”

  “Rob! We said one o’clock.” Then she saw his smug smirk and raised a fist. “You’re teasing me again.”

  “I can’t resist, you’re such an easy mark. What should we do today? Should we go to a movie?”

  “Maybe.” Jenny smiled privately.

  In the darkness of the movie house they sat close and kissed endlessly.

  After the movie they were both hungry. “Fried chicken,” Jenny said.

  “It’s fattening.”

  “What are you worried about?”

  “I wasn’t always this slender sex object you see before you, Jenny. I used to be fat and funny-looking.” Jenny laughed. “True,” Rob said. “I only lost weight last year when I gave up eating supper.”

  “How about the funny-looking bit?”

  “How about it? Look at this nose.”

  “But, Rob, you’re beautiful. Remember what I told you I thought when I first saw you? The face of an angel—”

  “You’re embarrassing me.”

  “You love it!”

  “I have to admit …” He snickered. “Did you really mean it?”

  “You just want to hear me say it again. Who said girls were vain?”

  They were still laughing when they sat down in the fried chicken place, but oddly, a memory came back to Jenny at that moment like a shadow in her mind. It must have been those words, The face of an angel. Angels were the souls of the dead. And the memory was about Gail.

  “Are you okay?” Rob said.

  “I just remembered something awful.” She picked up a chicken leg, put it down. “It’s making me feel sick just thinking about it.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll think I’m terrible.”