But the girl knelt down in a single graceful movement, the sort of movement that girls seemed to be able to make without any effort, even though they were often hopeless at snagging a grounder, say, or firing a puck. This girl knelt down like a ballet dancer and retrieved the dropped, female blue jeans. She even refolded them on her way up.
“The men's jeans are over here,” she said.
She walked along with me and, when I stood before them in a bumbling sort of silence, she asked me what size I was.
Sophisticated men, of course, know their own size intimately, and can recite it to others as easily as putting on a belt. But I had no idea, and so she had me raise my hands towards the ceiling while she took out a cloth tape and measured me. The edges of her fine hair almost brushed my shirt as she put her slender arms around my waist. Then she knelt, measured down to the ground, and soon pulled a particular pair of jeans off the shelf and handed it to me. I could have stood there eight entire Saturdays and wouldn't have been able to put my hands on exactly the right jeans the way she did, with hardly a moment's thought.
The tiny change room had a full-length mirror inside, but it was much better to pull on the blue jeans, then walk out to where the salesgirl stood waiting for me with her knowing eye. “Oh, you look great in those!” she said, and that was good enough for me. I was ready to buy them and leave. But she had pulled down several other pairs for me to try, and it would have been ungentlemanly to waste her effort like that. So I tried them on too. Some of them I thought were fine, but as soon as the salesgirl saw them, she told me they would never do. Then I instantly realized it as well whatever it was that wasn't right.
No, the very first pair was obviously the best, and she kept going back to it with her comments. “The girls will love you in those,” she said.
“Do you think so?”
She nodded, not just like a girl who knows who makes it her business to know but also like I must be a bit of an idiot if I didn't know as well. But I wasn't a bit of an idiot that message, too, was part of her little nod. I did know. I knew exactly.
So I bought two pairs.
At the cash I had an anxious moment, when I wasn't certain I had enough money to pay for both. I knew it was going to be close, but I didn't want the salesgirl to think I might be the kind of fellow who would walk into a jeans store unable to afford what he wanted and needed. In the end, I had to chip in my return bus fare, but it was worth it to see the kind approval in her eyes.
When I walked out into the bright Saturday sunshine, I felt as if I might be able to float lazily up to some low-lying clouds and let the breezes blow me home.
Everything was imprinted on my brain. I knew the route home because I'd memorized it on the bus ride over. It would take more than an hour to walk, but what was an hour on the best day of my life so far?
A pleasure.
On that walk home, I thought about the salesgirl. I regretted deeply not having asked her name. I thought when I saved up a little more cash, I could return some Saturday maybe the next Saturday and ask her if she wanted to have a hot chocolate with me. I felt certain there must be places in downtown Ottawa a capital city, after all that served hot chocolate. Perhaps she already knew of one. I would just have to go up to her and say, “Hello, there. You probably remember me. I'm the boy who bought two pairs of jeans last week.” And I would be wearing one of them and looking quite handsome, so of course she would remember.
I'd say, “You were really nice and I was wondering if you'd like to come with me to drink some hot chocolate.” Every one of those words was simple and, if I wrote them down and studied them for a week, I would certainly have them grasped in time for next Saturday.
But perhaps she wouldn't remember me. Probably hundreds of boys bought jeans from her in the course of a week. So it would be embarrassing, for both of us, when she couldn't remember me. It might be better if I simply bought another pair of jeans. We could reenact the entire scene, but just at the end, instead of leaving, I would turn to her and deliver my hot-chocolate speech.
But I didn't have enough money to buy another pair of jeans.
Besides, an important part of me realized that it was one thing to dream up and memorize a speech, and quite another to actually walk up to a girl and deliver it. I'd thrown too many snowballs at girls by then, I suppose, to expect any kind of favorable response to a memorized speech. And the words might choke me, like ginger ale gone down the wrong tube.
I arrived home the new owner of two pairs of blue jeans, but I wasn't happy. My parents still didn't want me wearing either pair to school and thought I'd made a stupid mistake buying identical trousers when I was still growing like fungus. And my mind was now sick with the thought of the beautiful salesgirl I would never see again because of personal poverty and cowardice.
I determined that I would write her a letter. In it, I would simply state my gratitude. I would say that it was rare, in my experience, for a salesgirl to make a customer feel so at ease, and that this was a good thing with the way the world was at the moment. She would understand what I meant, since she was obviously intelligent and well read. At the end of the letter, I would say, “By the way, perhaps someday you would do me the honor of sharing a hot chocolate.”
I began to write the letter in secret, at my tiny desk in the closet off the dining room, where I did my homework. My younger brother's desk was in the bedroom that we shared, so I got the closet. It was a sanctuary. When I sat at the desk, the door could not be opened without banging into the back of my chair, and so my privacy was near-complete, and I could open my soul and examine it without fear.
My first problem with the letter was over the issue of sharing the hot chocolate. The way I initially expressed it on the page made me wonder whether the salesgirl might think I expected her to share a single mug with me that perhaps I couldn't afford a mug for each of us because I'd spent so much money on the two pairs of jeans. So I rewrote the letter to clarify the matter.
I very nearly sealed it in an envelope and sent it off.
But the name issue bothered me again. “Dear Salesgirl” was a limp way to begin a letter from the depths of one's soul. As I did not know her name, then surely I had no right to send her such a heartfelt message. I tried to put the letter aside.
Yet, as the days passed, I thought more and more about the salesgirl how pretty she was, how friendly, how easy to talk to, and how attractive I seemed to be to her. It occurred to me perhaps it was the next Saturday, when I was acutely aware that I might get back on the bus and go see her that I should simply write a letter to her manager at the store.
“Dear Sir,” I might begin, man to man. “I would just like to take a moment to commend a member of your staff, who was very friendly and polite to me last Saturday when I bought two pairs of jeans from your store.” I knew that hockey players sometimes get letters from fans, and movie stars get bags of mail, and even authors, sometimes, hear from readers who liked their book. So this salesgirl might enjoy hearing from a satisfied customer, and it would be better for her if the letter went to the manager, who might then give her a raise. Naturally, she would spend at least a few moments wondering who this satisfied customer was. My name and return address would be on the envelope, so she could correspond with me if she so chose. Then, if I got a letter from her, I would know that she might be open to an invitation to hot chocolate after all, and I could just go and see her at the store without having to buy another pair of jeans.
And so the world fell into a finely patterned web of possibility.
But I couldn't send a handwritten letter to the manager. It would have to be typed. I would have to borrow my father's ancient Royal typewriter, with an e that stuck and a ribbon so tired you had to slam the keys to make even a faint impression. Worse, though, was the thought that my labors on the Royal would attract my family's attention. “What are you working on?” they would ask. My scheme, of course, was far too sensitive and complicated to explain.
So for th
ese and other various reasons, I did not write the letter to the manager of the jeans store. And Saturday followed Saturday until it was obviously too late to return. The salesgirl would never remember me. The best of intentions and the brightest of hopes choke in dust and lie in pathetic failure at the side of the road.
Still I thought of the girl.
I knew I would never amount to anything in her eyes. By now other boys were plying her with hot chocolate or milkshakes and hamburgers while I failed to even wear the jeans she'd sold me, except for forced labor in the garden on Saturdays when I did not have the courage to visit her. But certain thoughts fine phrases, bits of wording fused in my brain.
Then, one evening, with the rest of my family still eating dessert at the dining-room table just a slender door-width away and the sound of the evening television news leaking through, I began to compose an epic poem about the whole event. It was a tragic work, but the lines seemed to write themselves. I felt like I was simply holding the pen, that the words came from the cosmos and ran through my arm and onto the page in perfectly formed, five-beat lines, some of which rhymed and some did not, in the style of a Dylan or a Shakespeare. It was pure experience, distilled like sweat wrung from a sock after basketball practice.
The poem went on, page after page. I could barely breathe. I don't know how long I wrote. Perhaps two hours, or four, or seven. When I stepped out of my room, the family had long ago abandoned the dining-room table, the lights were off, and the house was shut up for the night.
I'd written poetry before, but this was my first poem. I lay awake in bed, thinking about it.
I suppose if I had truly loved the girl, I would have made the pilgrimage back to the jeans store and asked her out for that hot chocolate. And while she was wiping the whipped cream from her beautifully thin lips smooth as polished glass, yet tender, too, and very alive I would have recited the poem to her. For days and weeks, I wandered around telling it to myself. Now that I think of it, I fell in love with the poem, and the desire to ride the bus downtown and see the girl again got pushed aside by this new obsession.
That summer, while at my cousin's cottage, I was sitting around a campfire late at night with a few others. The lake was still and dark and cold at our backs, and the fire warmed our faces. We didn't want to go to bed, but the conversation was dying. “Who knows a ghost story?” one of the girls said there were girls in the group; they were just like ordinary people. No one knew a ghost story. Someone poked my shoulder. “You're writing all the time. You tell us a story.”
So I recited my epic poem. My voice was a bit shaky at first, but it got stronger when they didn't laugh. My poem felt as natural as the water, or the fire, or the darkness pressing in on us, as the sand beach beneath our bodies. I don't know how long it took to say forever almost. But I knew it in my bones and I let it out line by line.
When I finished, there was silence just the crackling of the logs and the whisper of the lake. But I could it see on their faces as they gazed into the fire: for just that while, I'd given them the best poem in the world. Our world, the world that mattered. We lay on our backs and looked at the stars and let the words echo in the night.
Solitary Night
SUSAN ADACH
There was an apple core on the picnic table on Friday morning.
I scuttled outside, when I'd screwed up the nerve. I picked up the apple core and whipped it as hard as I could over the back fence.
I vowed I would never speak of it. Not ever.
“You're sure Angela can stay with you, Dixie?” my mother asked, not for the first time. She flipped a clean white sheet across the other twin bed in my room and waited for an answer. I counted to three.
“Yes, Mom. Her dad said she could stay over till you get back.”
She went on to tell me, also not for the first time, that it wasn't every day Dad got the chance to take her along to a conference. And Grandma said she'd take Jeffrey for the night, and we all knew how seldom that ever happened. And I could go to Grandma's too, but with my summer job and having to be at that blasted glass factory by the crack of dawn, it didn't make sense. And how Dad said I was sixteen and would be fine for one night with Angela.
“And it is only one night…. You'll be okay for one night.” She smoothed the sheet and finished with the comforter on top. She looked up at me, a small smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.
Jeffrey zoomed into the room and said, “Can I take these?” He held an armful of toys and junk, including an aeroplane as big as a jumbo jet.
“No, Jeffrey, pick two.” Mom put a hand on top of his head, swung him around, and hustled him off down the hall.
I flopped down on the freshly made bed. The stereo was playing in the living room. Paul McCartney's soft voice sang to me about love.
I couldn't wait for Angela. I couldn't wait to tell her about Harry Long today at work. Coming out of the change room, I heard him ask Warren Crocker about me.
“Which way does Dixie go home?” Harry asked. I panicked and leapt back into the change room before I could hear more. I pressed myself against the pink brick wall as the little Italian ladies who worked the line filed past, smiling as if we did this every day. I counted to 1,023, then poked my head out the door. The coast was clear. I swallowed and ran for home, deliberately taking an alternate route.
Harry Long…!? Omygawd!! This would take all night to talk about. My heart skipped the tiniest bit of an extra beat at that. Not at the thought of Harry, but of the empty house, just me and Angela tonight.
The phone jangled out in the kitchen.
“I'll get it.” I walked past Jeffrey's room. Jeffrey was crying, sitting on the floor with Mom. Toys were everywhere.
I grabbed the phone. “Hello?”
“Hi. I can't come over,” blurted Angela.
I moved to the corner of the kitchen and turned to the wall. “You can't? How come?”
“My dad.”
I should have known. Her dad was also Italian, but not sweet and friendly like the ladies at Marquis Glass. He had this thing about his daughter venturing more than two feet from home.
“Does he know I'll be alone?”
“I'm really sorry, but he just changed his mind. No reason,” she said. Her voice was all watery
“It's okay.” The night alone reared up in my head and blanked out every other thought. “I have to go. I'll call you later.” I hung up.
I could hear Mom humming down the hall. A sweet, happy humming that decided me. If I told Mom about Angela, the whole reason for humming would be canceled, and I couldn't do that. So I kept my mouth shut.
Dad loaded up the car, including Jeffrey and the jumbo jet, a box of Lego, and his army men. “C'mon, Dot.”
Mom, standing on the last step of the porch, didn't budge. “You're sure Angela's coming? I thought she'd be here by now.”
“That's why she called, I told you. She'll be here in about a half hour.”
She looked into my eyes without saying anything. She could smell the lie on me like a mother bear sniffing the air for danger. But Dad grabbed her by the hand and gently tugged her toward the car. “Let's go, she'll be fine.”
“There's potato salad and hot dogs for dinner. And don't be late going to bed.” She waited at the car door, giving me one more chance to save myself.
I let it slip away. “No, we won't.”
She climbed into the car.
“And no parties,” Dad said, grinning.
“No parties.” I cracked a smile.
The Cutlass started to roll out of the driveway. Mom blew me a kiss and waved. Dad honked the horn. He turned and said something to Mom. Whatever it was, they both laughed and looked away from me. Then they were gone and that was that.
I went back into the house. It had suddenly become a stage set. Everything in the living room was the same, of course, but it all looked slightly different. As if it had been moved over an inch. I was out of place here alone. My family usually took up some of the space, d
oing stuff, making noise and smells. It wasn't the same as coming home fro school when no one was there. Or when I baby-sat Jeffrey for part of an evening. Those times, you knew that just at the moment when the boogeyman was about to attack, Mom or Dad would arrive back home. This was different.
I thought about phoning Mom at the hotel and telling her about Angela. But then I heard her humming, and saw them laughing in the car. Forget it. Surely I had the guts to tough it out for one whole night.
I went to the kitchen and looked at the clock over the stove. It was almost dinnertime. Might as well eat. That will pass some time.
I got out the pot, filled it with water, and boiled up two hot dogs. I spooned out some of the potato salad. Is there anything worse to eat by yourself than hot dogs? So round, soft, and chewy. Saved for nights when Mom didn't feel like cooking. Bun and meat sat in my mouth. I was surprised by tears pricking at the backs of my eyes. “Oh, snap out of it,” I told myself. “It's one stupid night. What can possibly happen?”
But why had I never noticed the sound of my footsteps when I was not alone in the house?
I couldn't think of what I usually did at this time. I turned on the tv and sat on the couch. I watched Bowling for Dollars. A guy was bowling for the jackpot of $1,000. He lost. Shows rolled across the screen one after the other. I could feel my eyes glazing over.
The phone rang.
Please be Angela … please be Angela….
“Hello, sweetheart. Just want to make sure you girls are doing okay,” Mom said.
I choked back what I wanted to say. “Yeah, we're good. Just watching tv.”
“Oh, that's fine then.” She sounded relieved. “Well, I won't keep you. We're off to dinner now. The number for the hotel is there by the phone, if you need us for anything.”
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