He Loves Me Not: A Cooney Classic Romance

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “That’s what I thought they were. Why do you have stars in your hair? How do they stick?”

  “Decorated hair is in this year. Ribbons, combs, bangles, beads, and even stars. They come in a jar—you just shake them on right after you spray on the hairspray and they stick.”

  We played the theme from Ordinary People. The best scene in that film was where the boy, Con, lies in bed rehearsing the phone call he’ll make to the girl he wants to date. I wondered if it had been hard for Ted to call my father. Somehow, I couldn’t picture Ted having trouble phoning people or walking into rooms filled with strange people.

  “I’m not sure I like them,” said Ted.

  I thought he meant rooms full of strange people.

  “The stars in your hair,” he explained. “They don’t look very strokable.”

  That time I really did miss a beat in the music. It was a perfectly simple phrase that I’d played perhaps a thousand times, and I fumbled it. Ted noticed it; Ralph noticed it; in fact, I think the whole room noticed it. I stared down into the keys and waited for the repeat to come so I could set it right.

  I’d set my hair with my electric curlers and I was wearing it loose, which I don’t usually do, because it falls forward into my face and makes it impossible to see what I’m doing. But there was enough hair spray in my hair to make each strand like wire.

  And tonight Ted Mollison wanted to stroke it.

  I wondered if Lizzie would lend—or even sell—me her hairbrush so I could brush it all out during a break.

  Ted said softly, “You really look fantastic.”

  It was a good thing he said that during a rest. My hands began to dampen. I tried to think of what to suggest to do after the music. Ted obviously had his car. Ralph always took me home, but tonight I’d go home with Ted.

  Ted didn’t talk to me again, but I could feel him there, only inches away, looking at me and thinking about me. I had sat on a hundred stages in front of a lot of audiences but I had never felt the spotlight as much as I did then. I could hardly breathe. A good thing I wasn’t a singer!

  When we broke up Ted went to get my jacket, and Ralph said to me, “You want we should keep on playing so you two can have a little music to make love by?”

  “Ralph!” I said furiously.

  “Well, you’re making it awfully obvious, dear,” said Lizzie.

  “How about Ted?” I asked her. “Is he making it obvious?”

  “He came, didn’t he?” said Lizzie.

  I decided she was right. He had come; that made it obvious. He liked me, too. Ralph left by himself, after informing Ted at length that it sure was a pleasure not to have to tote Alison around anymore, and why didn’t Ted show up every night like this and set Ralph free? Ted just grinned, but he didn’t commit himself to every night.

  We sat by the piano and talked until the dinner organizers asked us very politely did we have rides home? Because it was getting very late and they really did have to lock up.

  I was amazed to see that Ted and I had talked for an entire hour after Ralph and the rest had left. I could not believe it. Ted was so easy and companionable I really had not noticed the time. “Come on,” said Ted, “I’ll drive you home.”

  “You…you want to stop off somewhere?” I said. It was also amazing how much courage it took me to ask him that. “We …we could get ice cream, or something.” Ted hesitated, and I said, “My treat.”

  “Actually,” he said, “I’m in a popcorn mood. Where can we go besides the movies where we can get popcorn?”

  “My house.”

  So we went to my house. Ted, it turned out, was forbidden to have popcorn at home. His mother hated the smell. She thought popcorn smelled like Woolworth’s, and that made her think of unwashed shoplifters getting their popcorn out of a machine using fake butter.

  “I,” I told Ted, “supply nothing but the most high-class popcorn with real butter.”

  We talked all the way home, too, and it was like a television script. I thought everything Ted said was funny and he thought everything I said was hysterical. We kept laughing and enjoying each other and I actually felt giddy, I was enjoying myself so much.

  When we got to our driveway and pulled up behind the fat old fir trees between the house and the garden, Ted turned off the motor and the lights and we sat for a moment in silence and darkness.

  I wanted to kiss Ted so much I could hardly stand it, but I wanted him to kiss me, so I just sat there. We looked at each other and I could feel him holding his breath, too, and I thought, Go ahead, do it. But he got out of the car and came around to open my door, and the moment was gone. Daddy heard us and turned on the porch lights and yelled for us to come on in. The three of us popped popcorn, and the three of us joked and talked together, and the three of us had a wonderful time.

  The only trouble was, I would rather that just two of us had that wonderful time.

  “I wonder if the space shuttle is doing okay,” said Ted. I blinked at him, because nobody had expressed any interest in space shuttles up till then and the remark had nothing to do with anything.

  My father said, “I don’t know. It’ll be on the news, though. You want me to turn it on? There’s a set downstairs and another up.”

  I said, “Your TV upstairs is a better one, Daddy.”

  My father looked at me for a moment, and then at Ted, and then he laughed. “So it is,” he said. “Enjoy your popcorn.”

  He went on upstairs, and Ted and I were alone in the unwaxed kitchen with the rest of the popcorn. “Are you really interested in the space shuttle?” I asked. “Or was that a ploy?”

  “I’m interested in everything,” said Ted, and he proceeded to tell me all the things he was interested in. I felt as if we could talk for a decade and not begin to say all the things we wanted to say to each other. I had forgotten, really, how wonderful it is to share things with a person your own age, who has your own ideas.

  Ted handed me a napkin when the popcorn was finally gone—we’d popped a huge batch—and when our fingers touched I shivered. For one moment it was just like in the car, both of us holding our breath, and then Ted was leaning across the table and we were kissing each other. I loved touching him. We moved the chairs and got closer and kissed again. “Tastes of popcorn and butter and salt,” said Ted, laughing softly.

  “Want a glass of water?” I said, embarrassed.

  “Definitely not. I’ll just kiss away the rest of the popcorn till I get down to the real Alison.”

  We started to go into the living room, to sit on the couch and be more comfortable, but we never got there. We just stood between the stove and the refrigerator and hugged and kissed.

  “I was right,” said Ted after a bit. “You can’t stroke stars.”

  We were both gasping for breath. It wasn’t that kissing was so strenuous. It was just that I was so glad to have it happen I couldn’t seem to fill my lungs. I put my hands on Ted’s shoulders and I wanted to hang on to him all night.

  My father yelled, “I’ve finished my popcorn. Have you?”

  “No,” yelled Ted, “not yet, sir.”

  My father shouted, “Well, I have, and I’m coming down to wash up the popcorn popper.”

  “He’s very considerate,” said Ted. “Now my mother, she would have inched up on us to see what we were up to.”

  We gave each other a short hard hug and moved back to our separate places at the table. It felt so funny to be sitting opposite each other instead of next to each other. I felt as if those kisses should have cemented us together so that we never sat opposite each other again.

  We didn’t kiss good-bye. My father was there.

  Fathers certainly know how to kiss. And my father certainly knew we hadn’t been chomping popcorn the whole time he was upstairs. But I could not bring myself to get close enough to Ted for a good-bye kiss. I did not know Ted well enough to announce how I felt about him by kissing in front of anybody. “Good night, Ted,” said my father formally. “I hope we se
e you again.”

  And Ted said, “Yes, sir. Good night.”

  I lay on my bed for at least another hour before I fell asleep, thinking about boys and kisses and music and happiness.

  Ted had not asked me for another date.

  Did it mean he forgot? Or didn’t want to commit himself? Or took those kisses much much more lightly than I did?

  Or had my father’s presence bothered him as much as it did me, so that he couldn’t say anything except, “Yes, sir.”

  I got up and tossed the rest of the jar of stars into the wastebasket and promised myself that from now on my hair would always be soft and unsprayed and free of annoying stars.

  I lay back down and thought about Ted some more and wondered if he was lying awake thinking about me. Or if he was planning a terrific feature with photographs for his newspaper and that was more interesting to him.

  For the first time in my life, I really painfully wanted a mother. I even went downstairs and got the photograph of Mother in her wedding gown and I said to her, “I love somebody, Mother. It’s scary.”

  My thoughts tumbled over each other, a lot of sorrow and joy mixed up together, and I finally went back up to bed, wondering if I would ever know Ted well enough to talk to him about my dead mother.

  16

  THE ONLY MALE WHO telephoned me during the next week was Ralph. There may be a woman out there daydreaming of a phone call from Ralph, but it isn’t me. When I heard his voice I just groaned.

  He was just checking to be sure I knew that the hour of next Saturday’s club date had been changed. Yes, I told him, I knew.

  We had gigs Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Ted didn’t appear at any of them, he didn’t call my father to ask where I was, and he didn’t call me to arrange for us to be at the same place any night, either.

  I felt flat all week, as if I had once been this plush stuffed toy and somebody ironed me, or punctured me. That evening had meant so much to me! How could it not have meant just as much to Ted?

  I told myself I would just call Ted myself. This was the era of women’s liberation. Just as soon as old Ralph stopped tying up my phone line I would call Ted. Why even bother to have a telephone if you’re not going to call up the people you want to talk to, right?

  Ralph said, “And please have Ted come and get you. I have a date and I don’t want to have to drive you home.”

  There was no way I could telephone Ted and ask him if he could take up chauffeur work where Ralph was leaving off. I said, “Well, if he can’t my father will, how’s that?”

  Ralph’s life was now perfect.

  My life dwindled into staring at the silent telephone, telling myself any fool could make a simple phone call. Hi, Ted, this is Alison. How about a movie?

  Hi, Ted, how are you? I miss you, come spend an evening.

  Hi, Ted, I have this unbelievable crush on you, don’t stay away, come stay with me.

  But Ted didn’t call me and I didn’t call him and it was my father who had to come and get me after the gig Saturday.

  I hung on to my cloud of happiness by my fingernails, hoping Ted would reemerge without my having to dial him myself, but Monday had to intervene.

  At first I thought it was just any old Monday, and I was usefully employing homeroom by doing the last line of my Latin translation. Everybody was buzzing around, and in spite of my dedication to Ovid’s immortal lines, I could not avoid figuring out the topic of their conversation.

  Yearbooks.

  I wanted to die.

  See, yearbooks have to be signed. Nobody wants a blank yearbook. You want a yearbook covered with the handwriting of all your intimate friends and admirers, so that none of the photographs are visible and all the pages testify to your immense popularity.

  It works fine if you’re immensely popular.

  I said to myself, I’m a junior. I don’t know that many seniors. It’s okay if nobody asks me to sign theirs. Next year will be better. I’m going to be a better person and get to know everybody. This year doesn’t count. So there.

  I took my yearbook with almost a shudder.

  You would not think yearbook signing could be traumatic. Trauma is living through tornadoes or divorce. And here I was so traumatized by what people might—or might not—write in my yearbook I couldn’t even open the dumb thing.

  Perhaps there was no picture of me. That would be a good excuse for not passing it around for signing.

  Instantly somebody caroled, “Oh, there’s a terrific shot of Alison right there in the candids on the third page. See her by herself at the piano?”

  One of the boys said, “Where else?”

  Everybody laughed, and I began thinking in terms of skipping my senior year. How did one go about getting early acceptance at college anyway?

  First period was Chemistry. Our Chem teacher, universally disliked, is given to unfair, unannounced quizzes, which he so humorously refers to as “quizzicunies.” I was just telling myself that even a dreaded quizzicunie would be better than yearbook exchanges when he said, “I’m feeling kind. You can spend the entire period on your yearbooks.”

  Kind. The fiend. I could pretend to be busy during two or three minutes of yearbook signing—but forty-four whole minutes?

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a sophomore boy approaching me. I had had precisely one contact with Jonathan outside of chemistry. He’d turned a page for me during an assembly last fall.

  I smiled at him falsely. Dear Jonathan, I wrote, with my usual flair for words. Best wishes, I added, before I could stop myself. Just what I never wanted anybody to write in my yearbook. Meaningless, blah junk anybody could write to anyone. I scribbled, Wish you could turn pages for me more often.

  Oh God, I thought, that’s even worse. That’s so stupid. He won’t even remember that.

  I tried to think of something—anything—to add that would be funny or even sensible. I wrote, Love, Alison.

  I couldn’t believe that either. I didn’t love Jonathan. I didn’t even know Jonathan.

  I would have destroyed the page if I could. But Jonathan had paid a lot of money for that yearbook and probably would press charges for destruction of personal property. There was nothing to do but hand it over. With a shaky smile I took my own back and we sat looking at each other, wanting to read what the other had written but afraid to. That ridiculous situation was resolved when our yearbooks were literally snatched out of our hands by other kids ready to exchange. I turned back to my desk. To my relief, it was stacked with yearbooks. There were definitely people out there, then, who wanted my name on my photograph.

  Sue’s was on the top. Sue, with whom I’d always wanted to sit at lunch but never had the nerve to invite myself. I took a deep breath. For once I put down exactly what I was thinking. Dear Sue, I wish we knew each other better. Maybe next year. You always crack such funny jokes. At jobs I tell everyone your joke about the man with the extra shoe. I reread it. It looked stupid, but there was no going back now. I lifted the next yearbook and wrote just what I thought there, too.

  I told the people I admired why I admired them and I told the ones I didn’t know very well how sorry I was I hadn’t set up my schedule to fit in more friendships. The words upset me, seeing them written down, and I had no idea how anybody would take them. Would people laugh? (“Pitiful old Alison, begging for friends.”) Or not even notice? (“Yeah, she signed mine. I think. I forget.”)

  But I felt better, somehow, expressing myself.

  I’d been uptight too long. Time to relax and say things to people.

  I was feeling very good about myself right up through Latin, when Mike MacBride grinned at me. For many reasons, I could not relax around Mike. I liked him too much. And I felt so conscious of his being rightly disgusted with me.

  Ms. Gardener called on me to translate third, and Mike fourth, and both of us relaxed about the Latin, at least, knowing we were safe for the rest of the class. Mike, who sits diagonally across from me, stretched out a long, plaid-shirt
ed arm and grabbed my yearbook off my desk, handing me his. It would have been a fine, sneaky ploy except he dropped mine.

  It bellyflopped on the floor during a total silence in which poor Frannie was trying to figure out whether the verb was in the subjunctive. Ms. Gardener said, “Michael? Could you and Alison consider paying attention to your Latin instead of to your already swollen egos?”

  The class roared with laughter. I slid down in my seat. Mike just grinned and kept my yearbook. A few minutes later, when Ms. Gardener’s back was turned, it got passed back to me.

  Alison, he had written across his beautiful senior picture, ruining it from the pressure of his ball point pen, very best wishes to you in the career that’s obviously ahead. From an admirer, Mike MacBride.

  It was a nice, friendly, pleasant note.

  I hated it.

  What I wanted to write in his was, Dear Michael, of all the boys in the senior class, you’re the one I most wanted to date. It is not too late to remedy this situation. Love, Alison.

  But of course I didn’t. You had to draw the line somewhere in this honesty stuff.

  I considered writing this, Dear Michael, I’ll never forgive myself for spending so much time on music that I never even saw you play a single game. I’ve lost out on a lot at high school, from friendship to fun. Just hope it’s been worth it.

  Well, that was even worse. Sounded as if I’d been pining away, lost and sorrowful, since sophomore year.

  I tried to think of something just like what Mike had written. Perhaps, Have a super year at college.

  I liked that. I bent over his yearbook to write it, but the space near my photograph was already filled.

  I had written in it. The very words I’d decided I could not possibly put on paper.

  Dear Michael, I’ll never forgive myself for spending so much time on music…

  I could not believe it. I wanted to rip the page out. I even got a grip on the page so as to rip it quickly and violently. Mike said, “Come on, Alison, the class is over. Just put Love, Alison on the end and hand it over, okay? My fans are swarming around demanding their turns.”