Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen

by Susan Gregg Gilmore

  By Valentine's Day, it was official; we were going steady, something the other girls at Ringgold Senior High had a hard time accepting. The most popular boy in school had fallen for the sassy-mouthed girl who'd never had a boyfriend before in her life. Yep, that would be me.

  I could tell by the way Ruthie Morgan and her friends whispered in one another's ears whenever Hank and I walked down the hall together that they were convinced that young Mr. Blankenship was wasting his time with the preacher's daughter. And I didn't know for sure, but sometimes I wondered if they were right. I wondered if Hank loved me because I was the one thing in his life that wasn't perfect.

  But whatever his reasons, Hank wanted to be with me, all the time. And it wasn't long before we had developed a predictable yet wonderful routine of our own. We studied together every Monday night at Hank's house, where his mother would fix us spaghetti and a green salad tossed with Thousand Island dressing. On Wednesdays we went to the Young Life meetings at church, and before taking me home, Hank would drive me over to the Dairy Queen for some fries or a chocolate-dipped cone, knowing good and well I ate Dilly Bars only on Saturdays with Martha Ann. Then every Friday night he came to dinner at our house, something my daddy seemed to enjoy almost more than I did. They'd talk about sports and President Carter and just about everything in between. Daddy never acted like he regretted not having a son, but he sure did enjoy borrowing the Blankenships' once a week.

  Sometimes when we were alone, I could barely keep myself from giving all I had to Hank Blankenship. Gloria Jean called it the gift. Daddy called it the sin, at least until your wedding night when it magically became the gift. The touch of Hank's hand on my breasts made me feel more like a woman than I figured any number of classes at Miss Lilly Martin's School of Etiquette and Social Graces ever could. There were times when we parked in his red truck down by Chickamauga Creek, when he'd unbutton my blouse and I'd toss his shirt on the floor, and I could feel his warm, smooth chest rubbing against my breasts. My entire body would flutter with excitement and I was pretty darn willing to give and sin all over Hank's beautiful, perfect body.

  But not Hank. No, he said it wouldn't be right. Nothing beyond second base until there was a ring on my finger, especially with me being the preacher's daughter and all. Once again, being the preacher's daughter didn't seem to be working in my favor.

  It shouldn't have been any big surprise that by the time graduation rolled around, people—not just our friends but Hank's mother, Gloria Jean, my own daddy, even me—started speculating about a possible Blankenship-Cline engagement. I mean, we had been dating for almost a year and a half and apparently that was almost as much of an official proposal as that ring on my finger Hank kept alluding to.

  “Catherine, have you and Hank talked about your future, after graduation and all? I know you've been planning on leaving town, but I thought you might be rethinking that, you know since Hank's in your life now,” Daddy said as we were standing in the kitchen one night cleaning the dinner dishes.

  “Daddy, no boy is going to stand between me and my dreams. You ought to know that, believe it or not, not even Hank Blankenship. When this little birdie flies the coop, she's going to build her very own nest in a tree that's really big with lots of cool-looking branches,” I said emphatically.

  But inside, I was having doubts, big doubts about whether I'd be able to step out of the only nest I'd ever known. I loved Hank. I knew that. I couldn't imagine being without him. But I couldn't imagine living the rest of my life in Ringgold, even with Hank. I kept encouraging him to go to college, go to Georgia Tech, heck, I could learn to cope with a Yellow Jacket. He could be a veterinarian or a lawyer, anything but a dairy farmer. The biggest dream he had was going to the community college down in Dalton, studying a little agriculture, and coming back to Ringgold and working his daddy's farm.

  I couldn't understand why he didn't want more. He wanted me. He told me that. But every time I asked myself if I wanted to grow his tomatoes, I felt sick to my stomach. Sometimes I wondered if my own mama ever felt sick to her stomach. Did she ever have thoughts of being something more? Was she afraid that Daddy was going to be the only true love of her life, and out of fear or stupidity, gave up her dreams and got married?

  My head was spinning, something it had been doing an awful lot these past few months, but thankfully the only question Hank had on his mind was whether or not I was going to be his date for the Senior Prom.

  Daddy asked Gloria Jean to drive me to Chattanooga and help me find a dress. I think even he was willing to admit that shopping for a formal gown was one of her God-given talents. So early one Saturday morning, Martha Ann and me piled into the front seat of the LeSabre and headed the twenty-something miles north to Chattanooga.

  We got there an hour or so before the stores opened and decided to have breakfast at a cozy diner next to Love-man's department store. We sat in the last empty booth in the back of the diner and did what all the other women were doing, sipped coffee and hot chocolate and chatted about the day's possibilities. I kept thinking this would have been something Mama would have done with me, which made me feel excited and sad all at the same time, a kind of awkward, empty feeling that had become all too familiar.

  As soon as the store opened, Gloria Jean took Martha Ann and me by the hands and walked us through the front doors and up a long flight of stairs. A white-haired woman wearing a navy blue dress and navy pumps appeared be fore us and offered to help, like a star guiding the way. Once she heard Gloria Jean say the word prom, she indicated she had heard enough and led us into a room that was filled with long, sequined dresses. She placed me in a fitting room and carried in seven gowns to try, each one a different color and fabric.

  Another woman, dressed more like a waitress than a sales clerk, followed her into the fitting room, and without uttering a word insisted on helping me dress. I hadn't had anyone help me dress since I was a tiny girl. I didn't feel particularly comfortable with this stranger seeing me in my bra and panties, but she never gave me a chance to protest. As soon as I was zipped and buttoned into a gown, she would start drawing pins from a small red cushion strapped to her arm and placing them along the seams of the dress. When she was done, she positioned me directly in front of the mirror and stepped back so everyone, especially the woman in the navy suit, could see.

  Martha Ann gasped, seeing each new gown on my body. “Oh, that one's it! Pick that one!”

  But my favorite was made of pink moiré, with wide straps that stretched across my shoulders and crossed over my back. It was gathered at the waist and had a soft full skirt. Teeny pink beads were sewn all over the bodice. It was the most feminine thing I had ever seen. I had never loved a piece of fabric as much as I loved this dress. Gloria Jean agreed. This was the one. She talked to the saleswoman, and then explained to me that a few alterations would be made and that the department store would mail the dress to my house in a week or two.

  With the color of the gown decided, we walked downstairs to the shoe department. I hadn't thought about shoes, but Gloria Jean told the sales clerk that I needed a pair of two-and-half-inch heels, closed toe, peau de soie, and that they must be dyed to match the dress that was upstairs in alterations. I didn't care what Daddy thought about Gloria Jean being married five times. When it came to formal wear, the woman knew what she was doing. While the sales clerk slipped different shoes on and off my feet, I just sat there and smiled. I had never owned a pair of heels, let alone pink ones, and I had never had a man put a pair of shoes on my feet before. I couldn't help but feel like Cinderella, squeezing my foot into the glass slipper until I looked down and noticed for the first time that my toes seemed exceptionally skinny and long.

  Gloria Jean told me to stand up and try walking on the carpet. She took one look at me wobbling across the floor and said, “Honey, you are going to have to do some practicing in those shoes before the prom, or I think you'll come home in a cast.” Martha Ann was laughing so hard, Gloria Jean had to tap her on
the shoulder to remind her she was in a public place.

  We left the shoes to be dyed and made arrangements for the department store to mail the shoes along with the dress when both were ready. It felt kind of funny to do all this shopping and then leave empty-handed. Gloria Jean must have thought so, too, because we were headed toward the front door when she suddenly stopped at the jewelry counter. She turned toward me, lifted my hair off my shoulders, and asked what kind of earrings I was thinking of wearing, knowing good and well I didn't have a clue what kind of earrings I was thinking of wearing.

  “Sweetie, every girl needs to sparkle on her prom night. It's kind of like a dress rehearsal for your wedding day. I think this rhinestone pair is the perfect finishing touch, the pièce de résistance, as the French would say.”

  “I don't know, I've never worn anything so, so sparkly before,” I said with some hesitation, not really knowing how Daddy would feel about his baby girl sparkling with a boy and all. But Martha Ann just kept staring at the light dancing off the earrings as if she were under some sort of magic spell. I could tell she loved them.

  “My treat; this is a special, special night,” Gloria Jean said, and I left Loveman's department store holding a shiny, black shopping bag.

  The three of us walked out of the store and onto the sidewalk, where we stood for a moment breathing in the fresh air and soaking in the sunshine. I looked at my watch and couldn't believe it. We had been shopping for most of the day. I had never shopped for anything that long, and I was feeling tired and hungry from the effort.

  “You see, girls, shopping is hard work, and there ain't a man on this earth that understands that,” Gloria Jean announced. Sensing that Martha Ann and I were needing a rest, she asked if we wanted to go back to the diner for a grilled cheese sandwich and a Coca-Cola before heading back home.

  Not many things in my life ever seemed to happen just like I wanted them to, but this . . . this was pretty near perfect.

  When the morning of the prom finally dawned, Gloria Jean took control of my day like some kind of military drill sergeant. She drove me to the beauty parlor to have my hair done and told the stylist to pull it up in a twist because she wanted everyone to see the back of my dress and my rhinestone earrings. She wanted four curly tendrils hanging down my neck for dramatic effect. Only four, she was very clear about that. Then she told another woman to scrub my fingernails and paint them a soft shade of Baby Doll Pink, two coats of color and two coats of clear.

  There were no grilled cheese sandwiches and Coca-Colas that day. Gloria Jean said only salad, carrot sticks, and lots of water. She read in one of her lady magazines that if you drink eight glasses of water in a day, you'll lose five pounds and your skin will glow. She wouldn't let me out of her sight for fear that Martha Ann would sneak me a Coke and some peanut butter crackers.

  “Honey, you want to feel as light and airy as possible when you slip into that dress. I didn't eat for two days before I married Dwayne Dilbert. Heck, I fainted right before I walked down the aisle,” she said, as though we should be impressed with her sudden lapse into unconsciousness. “All of that starving and for what? A good-for-nothing slouch. But Hank, honey, oh Hank's worth starving for.”

  She was right, because when I slipped into my dress, I felt more feminine than I'd ever felt in my life, if not a little light-headed. Gloria Jean zipped and buttoned me into place and Martha Ann shook the hem so the skirt would hang as full as possible. I stood in front of my mirror and stared at myself for five whole minutes. I wondered if I'd ever feel like this again, so I tried to memorize every detail of the moment. Then, yelling from behind my bedroom door, I told my daddy to close his eyes.

  “No peeking, Daddy,” I said as I cracked the door, “I mean it, no peeking.” I crept out of my room and positioned myself directly in front of him. Gloria Jean and Martha Ann were trailing close behind, tending to my dress with every step. “Okay, now.”

  Daddy slowly and deliberately opened his eyes. He just stood there, staring, not saying a word, and trust me, preachers are never speechless. His expression grew big and then slowly softened. I think he even had tears in his eyes.

  “C'mon, Daddy, what do you think?” I asked.

  “Catherine Grace Cline, you are absolutely beautiful,” he said, adding emphasis to every word. Daddy was always telling me and Martha Ann how pretty we were, but I had never heard him say it like that, so carefully. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I couldn't cry, not now. Gloria Jean would kill me if all the makeup she spent the last two hours putting on my face started running off in a stream of teardrops. As I dabbed the corner of my eye with my fingertip, the doorbell rang, sparing me from any further embarrassment. It was Hank, and even though I was used to seeing him almost every day, tonight he looked particularly handsome, like some kind of movie star. He was wearing a brown tuxedo and a soft pink shirt he had picked out to match my dress. And in his hand, he was holding a corsage made of tiny pink sweetheart roses.

  “Good evening, Mr. Cline, Martha Ann, Mrs. Graves,” he said. Then he looked at me and, like Daddy, he just stared. “Catherine, you look amazing,” he said, then he gave me a kiss on the cheek and slipped the corsage onto my wrist.

  Daddy took at least a hundred pictures while Martha Ann stood there giggling and making funny faces. Then Gloria Jean, who had stayed to make sure that every hair on my head was cemented in place, took another hundred pictures with her own camera.

  “Catherine Grace,” she said as she put her Kodak Instamatic back in her pocket, “you look prettier than any bride ever could, and I've got the pictures to prove it.” She gave me such a tight hug that I thought she was going to wrinkle the dress she had so meticulously pressed right before slipping it onto my body.

  By the time Hank and I got to the school, the band was already playing, and it looked like the entire senior class was crowded onto the dance floor. The gym was decorated with balloons and crepe paper and tiny white lights. It didn't even look like the same place where I had spent so many hours doing sit-ups and pull-ups in the ridiculous hope of passing the Presidential Fitness Test. I had to hand it to Ruthie Morgan: all that time spent perfecting her homemaking skills had really paid off as chairman of the decorating committee. This was the best that the Ringgold High gymnasium had ever looked.

  Hank and I said a quick hello to Mrs. Gulbenk, who was guarding the punch her tenth-grade home economics class had made as a gift to the graduating seniors. “Are there any tomatoes in that punch bowl, Mrs. Gulbenk?” Hank said with such an adorable smile that she could only blush.

  We joined our classmates out on the dance floor. The only time we took a break was so I could reapply my lipstick. Gloria Jean had given me very strict orders about when and how to reapply my lipstick, and I was not about to let her down. “Line, apply, pat. Line, apply, pat.” I kept saying to myself for fear that if I did something out of order, I would come out of the bathroom looking more like a clown than a girl pretending she was Cinderella.

  We were having so much fun that we almost forgot to have our official photo taken. Daddy and Gloria Jean had snapped plenty at home, but I wanted a photograph taken under the rainbow Ruthie Morgan had made with balloons and tissue-paper flowers. I grabbed Hank's hand and dragged him off the dance floor. We were making our way through the crowd toward the photographer when Trisha Munger, senior class president, stepped onto the stage and tapped on the microphone.

  “Welcome, Senior Class of 1972. It's that time we've all been waiting for, the announcement of this year's King and Queen of the Senior Prom. Are you ready, Ringgold Tigers?” she shouted, more as a cheer than a question.

  I knew Hank would be crowned King of the Prom Court. Everyone knew that. And I never expected to be Queen; in fact, no one expected that. The queen was, as I predicted, Shelley Hatfield. Everyone let out a loud tiger roar, including me. It was hard for me not to like Shelley. If it hadn't been for her, Hank and I would never have gotten together in the first place. And even t
hough she was captain of the cheerleading squad, she never acted better than anybody else. But when I saw the two of them standing on the stage, I realized how truly perfect they looked together. I had played with my Barbie dolls long enough to know that now I was looking at the real thing. Hank was Ken and Shelley was his Barbie. And in that moment, it hit me. Shelley was the kind of girl Hank needed.

  He deserved a wife who would admire him, dote on him, and grow his tomatoes. The future wasn't just about my dreams; it was as much about his, too. His dreams were just as important as mine, even if I couldn't understand them. All of a sudden, my heart began to hurt.

  The band started to play “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?” and even though I knew the Bee Gees hadn't written that song with me in mind, it sure felt like they had. I held Hank closer than ever, somehow knowing this would be the last time we would ever dance together. I pulled my mouth close to his ear and whispered, “You looked great up there, Hank . . . you and Shelley. You two look like you were made for each other.”

  “Catherine Grace, you are my girl, my only girl,” he said softly.

  His only girl, the one, the one and only. If that was true, I thought to myself, trying to absorb Hank's words while the music was pounding in my head, then I would have no choice but to marry him. Mrs. Hank Blankenship would be my destiny, my obligation. Truth be told, I had been worrying for a long time that Hank believed I was his one and only girl, but now I panicked.