My One Square Inch of Alaska (9781101602850) (11 page)

Will looked at me. “Can I?”

“
May
I,” I corrected, immediately hating how school-teachery I must sound. “And, yes.”

Will grabbed his box of Marvel Puffs and a handful of grapes and ran to the car. He yelled back at us, “Make sure you eat all those Marvel Puffs! It doesn’t count if you don’t!”

“What doesn’t count?” Jimmy asked.

“His deed to his one square inch of Alaska,” I said. “His rule is that every last puff has to be eaten, and he can’t ask for help. Other people have to volunteer. Like you just did.”

Jimmy looked at the plate of puffs and groaned. “We’ll find a way to get rid of them without him knowing,” he said.

I looked at him, not liking that, but I didn’t say anything. We were finally alone—sort of. I glanced at Jimmy’s car. Will was in the front seat, head bent over the atlas as if it were a treasure map leading to the most amazing thing imag-inable.

“I’m worried about how disappointed he’ll be if he doesn’t get all ten box tops in time. He’s been getting about one a week, but he needs three, and there’s less than two weeks—”

“You worry too much,” Jimmy said. I looked back at him. He’d opened the picnic basket and pulled out a bottle and two wineglasses.

Jimmy smiled at me. “Champagne. It’ll help you worry less.” He looked at the bottle. “Moët and Chandon. My dad’s favorite.”

A flutter of nervousness was suddenly making my forehead and upper lip tingle. Dad and Miss Bettina were at an AA meeting, and here I was, about to drink with Jimmy. I wasn’t sure if I should feel guilty or amused.
What
do
you feel, Donna?
It was the kind of question Mr. Cahill would
ask. Answer:
I feel
like drinking the champagne. Seeing what happens next….

“Won’t your dad miss it?” I blurted.

Jimmy laughed as he popped the cork and poured champagne in a glass. “He has plenty more.” He handed the glass to me. I took a sip. I liked how the bubbles felt on my tongue and lip. Jimmy moved closer to me, kissed the back of my neck. I moaned. Then Jimmy nipped my neck a little and I winced.

We both said, “Sorry,” at the same time.

“I’m just a little stiff in that spot,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

From stretching in some impossible pose for Mr. Cahill on his chaise longue
…. But I couldn’t say that. Not if I wanted to keep Jimmy’s interest. And I did. I very much did.

“Doing alterations for Miss Bettina,” I said, feeling a little sick turn in my stomach at the lie. “It’s really a lot of close-up work, especially the hemming.”

Jimmy started rubbing my neck and I gasped, both at the jolt his touch sent through me and at how his hands made my neck start to feel like warm putty.

“I don’t think she likes me,” he said.

“Now who worries too much? Of course she likes you. Everyone likes you.” Although, I thought, she was unusually quiet and stiff around him. Why, I wondered, wouldn’t Miss Bettina like Jimmy?

But then he said, “I brought you here because I wanted to ask you something. Well, three somethings. And I didn’t want to ask with anyone around—”

I laughed, a little bitterly. “I guess my little brother ruined that.”

“No, he’s lost in looking at that atlas. Probably mapping out a route to Alaska!”

I laughed again, but not bitterly this time. I loved how often Jimmy made me laugh. I closed my eyes, nearly moaning again. I loved his touch, too.

“Would you come to dinner at my house next Friday? That means meeting my parents.”

I misunderstood and stiffened. “I’ll try not to be too embarrassing, although there’s not much I can do about the fact my father used to be somebody at Groverton, and now—”

Jimmy stopped rubbing my neck. He twisted around on the cloth so that he was looking at me. He put his hand to my cheek. “Donna. I’m not embarrassed by you. Do all the Lanes have such big chips on their shoulders?”

“Yes,” I said.

He laughed. “I just hope my parents don’t embarrass me.”

I frowned at that. He had the most powerful father in town.

Jimmy shrugged. “They can be…a bit much. But will you come?”

The next Saturday would be Will’s eleventh birthday party. I had planned to spend the week preparing for that. But I told myself I could finish the yellow dress to wear to dinner the next Friday, still prepare for Will’s birthday party the next day, and, of course, keep up with school and modeling for Mr. Cahill. Not being under Grandma’s critical glare made me feel I could do anything. Everything.

So I nodded. He looked relieved. “Good. They want to meet you because they know about this next question. Will you go with me to homecoming?”

I smiled. “Of course.”

I’d need a dress, and I knew immediately which of Mama’s I’d remake, one of the last ones left…. My heart started to flip at the idea.
Maybe it’s wrong, using that particular dress…it’s definitely risky….

Jimmy leaned close, his lips nearly brushing mine as he said, “and here’s my third question.” He looked suddenly nervous as he slipped his hand into his pocket. He pulled out a delicate chain on which he’d hung his class ring. “Will you be my girl?”

Of course I would. It was what I wanted, wasn’t it? What any girl would want?

I blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Why me? When you could have any girl?”

“Because you see me for who I am. You don’t put me on a pedestal.” He smiled. “And I see you for who you are.
You.
And I like what I see.”

After that, of course I said yes. But as he slipped the chain around my neck, his thumb brushing the sore spot where I’d stiffened from posing for Mr. Cahill, something in me fluttered that wasn’t quite giddiness.

I wasn’t sure what it was. It just felt like…something slipping away.

A small flock of starlings suddenly rose from the tops of the trees on the bank of the Tangy, their black bodies temporarily dotting the gray smoke puffing up in the distance from Groverton Pulp & Paper. Even farther away, a freight train whistled.

Be happy,
I told myself, as I watched the birds fly away, while Jimmy pulled me to him for a kiss.
Now you’re Jimmy’s girl. And everything will be fine….

W
ill fell asleep studying the Sterry Oil atlas, waking up long enough for Jimmy to tell him he could keep it, and that we’d finished off the Marvel Puffs, so now Will had eight box tops, which made Will happy. He wouldn’t have stayed happy if he’d known that we’d taken the plate of Marvel Puffs down to the Tangy and dumped them for birds to eat. Even as I was thrilled to spot a colony of great blue herons across the river, I felt guilty about dumping the cereal, but Jimmy seemed annoyed—
What could it really matter?
he asked—and I stopped protesting. After all, I didn’t want to ruin a nearly perfect evening in which I’d eaten exotic food, drunk too much champagne, and become Jimmy’s girl.

At our house, Jimmy gently scooped Will out of the car and carried him up the walk and porch steps to our house. Daddy’s car was parked in the driveway, but the living room was quiet. There was light coming from under his bedroom door, but no sound.

Jimmy followed me up to Will’s room and carefully placed him on the bed. I pulled his covers over him. He moaned a little when I started to pull the Marvel Puffs box
top and atlas from his hands. Jimmy whispered, “Let him keep it,” which made me smile, and forgive him for being dismissive of Will’s rules. On our way back downstairs, we made the third step creak, and I heard Daddy cry out in his bedroom. Another nightmare, I guessed.

So we stepped out on the front porch. Jimmy kissed me and then whispered in my ear, “My girl.” He grinned, then pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket, lighting it as he ran down the porch steps to his car. Then he hopped in and drove off.

I stood there, still dizzy from the kiss and the evening and the champagne, not wanting to go back inside and be alone, but then a faint whiff of smoke from the direction of Miss Bettina’s house drew my attention. I could just make out, in the light that spilled out from the living room window onto the porch, a slim figure sitting on the porch swing. Then there was an orange flare, the tip of a cigarette. Daddy? But no. I’d just heard him inside his bedroom—the reason I hadn’t asked Jimmy to stay in the house with me. For a second, a tingly feeling came over me as I briefly imagined what might have happened if he’d been able to stay…. I shook my head. Did I want those things to happen? Or was it the champagne?

I walked across our lawn—the grass was too overgrown and itched my ankles—and across hers, shivering. September was more than halfway over. By October, the chill of night would creep into the day. I pulled my cardigan around me, went up the steps.

I sat down in a rocker across from Miss Bettina, who held up her cigarette. “I used to smoke all the time. Now, just on meeting nights. Everyone smokes at them.”

How is Daddy? What happened? What did he say? Is he really going to stop drinking, for good?
The questions swirled in my mind, but I bit them back. I didn’t want to care.

“Want some iced tea?” Miss Bettina asked.

“No thanks. I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

My fingers immediately went to Jimmy’s ring on the delicate chain around my neck. I knew Miss Bettina wasn’t really asking about my thirst. “I am fine.” Defensiveness crept into my voice. “Jimmy asked me to go to homecoming. And to meet his parents. And to go steady with him. I said yes, to all three.”

Miss Bettina didn’t say anything.

“Jimmy is good to me, to Will,” I said. For God’s sake, he’d even carried Will up to the house moments before. She’d just seen that!

“Oh,” Miss Bettina said, exhaling the word along with her smoke. She ground her cigarette out on the porch.

“Why don’t you like him?” I asked.

“I do, honey. I think he’s a very nice young man.”

“He thinks you don’t like him.”

She sighed. “I don’t want him to hurt you.”

Girl on chaise longue, stretching out in a suggestive pose—turning, twisting however the artist tells her to….
I pushed the image from my mind. I thought,
I’m more likely to hurt him.

“Just…be careful. I knew another young woman, once, who thought her life would be better because of a young man,” she went on. I thought she must be talking about herself. Or was she? I remembered how little I knew about her life.

And then I thought…
Mama
. Maybe she was talking about Mama.

I fingered the fabric of my skirt, the perfect seam that I’d been so proud of after taking it off the sewing machine in the basement. I didn’t have any childhood memories of the dress I’d made it from, or of any of Mama’s other garments tucked away in old suitcases in the basement. I wondered if she’d been beautiful, laughing, carefree, charming when she wore that dress.

Suddenly, I was desperate to ask Miss Bettina what she remembered about Mama. The words finally blurted out. “Miss Bettina, do you mean Mama? She thought life would be better with Daddy?”

Miss Bettina sighed. “I’m sorry, sweetie—I shouldn’t have said that. Jimmy’s a nice boy, but I just want you to remember who you are.”

Funny. I wanted to forget who I was.

“Please, Miss Bettina, what do you remember about my mama? I mean, from before she got sick?” I stared out into the darkness of Elmwood Street, waiting for an answer.

After a long while, though, all she did was sigh. “Just be careful, sweetie,” she said, and went back inside her house.

The next Monday, halfway through art class during the last period of the day, my eyes pricked with tears of boredom. I couldn’t stand shading yet another sphere while the classroom clock ticked, Mr. Cahill read a book, and half the class snoozed or passed notes.

Suddenly, I ripped the page from my sketchbook, wadded up the paper, tossed it to the floor. The rustle made the other kids stir, turn, stare at me. Lisa Kablinski glared at me the hardest—word had gotten around quickly about me
wearing Jimmy’s ring. Jimmy turned in his seat a few rows up and winked at me. I smiled, thinking,
Take that, Lisa
.

I flipped to another page in my sketchbook and started sketching a jacket and pants ensemble, a variation on the outfit Audrey Hepburn wore in
Roman Holiday
.

“Is there a problem, Miss Lane?”

I looked up. Mr. Cahill was standing by my desk, staring down at me.

“Um, no,” I said.

“Having trouble with the sphere?”

Of course he knew I wasn’t.

An awful flush crept up my face when I realized that he was staring at Jimmy’s ring on the slim chain around my neck. My fingers automatically, protectively went to the ring.
Jimmy’s girl.
Mr. Cahill clearly didn’t approve, just like Miss Bettina didn’t.

He stared at me, waiting for my answer. My neck suddenly stiffened, like it had at our last session, when I’d stretched out in some impossible pose on his chaise longue. I thought about the massage and kisses Jimmy had given me on our picnic, when I’d complained about a stiff neck, not saying how I’d gotten it. My face burned even more deeply.

“She’s just upset that she’s in a class with a red,” Hank said.

The class gasped. I knew I should have been thankful that Hank was diverting Mr. Cahill’s attention, but suddenly I was scared as Mr. Cahill closed his book with a purposeful snap and turned his gaze to Hank.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Coleman?”

Mr. Cahill’s tone would have made most kids mumble a quiet “Nothing, sir,” but not Hank. He said, “My old man
read your editorial. Said you’re one of them reds. That true?”

The class went silent and still, a sudden tension holding everyone breathlessly in place.

Mr. Cahill said, “This is art class, Hank. I will gladly answer questions pertaining to
art
.”

There was something so self-satisfied in Mr. Cahill’s tone, like he knew that no one was going to ask anything about art.

“I have an art question, Mr. Cahill.”

“And what question is that, Miss Lane?”

“Why don’t we ever draw anything except spheres and cones and cubes, Mr. Cahill?”