April Love Story (13 page)

What I still didn’t know was if, given a selection, Marnie MacDonald was the girl he’d have chosen to date.

M
Y LOFT HAD NEVER
been cozier. I snuggled into my quilt. Before she went to bed Mother had opened the windows and cool, spring, night air drifted in. I fell asleep thinking of Lucas and love and how perhaps our parents were right—this
was
the good life! Except for them, the good part would be farming, and for me the good part would be Lucas.

We’d paint his room together. Laughing. Enjoying it. Making it attractive. We’d build his shelves and drawers together. One of these days he’d ask me for a real date. He’d think of some way to find a few dollars (or at least a few hours) and arrange for the two of us to be alone, somewhere, somehow.

When I woke up, my mother was calling my name over and over. “It’s late, Marnie. You’ll miss the bus. Hurry and dress. I’ve got a sweet roll for you to eat while you rush down the lane.”

So much for a leisurely breakfast with a single rose at my place and an atmosphere redolent of romance. The only thing our house was redolent of was scurrying sounds of six people getting ready to leave it.

I dressed as quickly as I could, backing down my ladder without getting a run in my stockings. I stood over the kitchen table, gulping my apple juice (one of the things I yearn for most is frozen orange juice; I grew up believing Vitamin C came only in frozen orange juice and it’s very hard to believe my own squashed apples will also keep my body functioning), and my father said, “The last possible frost date has gone by, Marnie. Forecast for the rest of the week is in the seventies. This breeze is drying out the soil and everything is just perfect for planting our summer crops. Beans, corn, squash, tomatoes, and so on.”

“That’s nice,” I said. I stacked my books, looking for Lucas. I had heard him earlier, but he didn’t seem to be in the house now.

“So the minute you get home from school, get into your jeans, and meet us in the garden to get working. We want to get everything done now. Forecast for the weekend is heavy rain, which will be good for the new seeds, assuming it isn’t too heavy, of course, in which case …” He tapered off into a monologue about the vagaries of weather and the precarious position of the farmer.

That wasn’t nice. It meant instead of a date with Lucas, I had a date with a garden. Oh, well. Lucas and I could stoop over the same carrot row. It wasn’t a rose on a lace-covered tray, but at least it was proximity.

I hurried outdoors. It was warm, and the breeze was soft, full of flowery scents. Sometimes I wish I had a strong nose, like an animal, so I could identify everything, and know where it came from, and when, instead of just getting a faint, mishmashy perfume.

Lucas was just coming out of the barn. He must have had to check on the cow or the goats. He brushed himself off, picked up his bookbag from the porch step, and we headed for the bus stop.

“I’ve got an exam,” said Lucas. “I should have studied yesterday instead of running all over the place.”

He would rather have been studying than driving me around Boone? Would rather have been studying than giving me kisses, talking to me about Life, Truth, and Outhouses, the improvement thereof?

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t meant to hurt your feelings. That’s usually your scene, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“A few verbal stabs just when I don’t need them.”

“Lucas, I told you yesterday how sorry I am for all that.”

“Yeah, you did.”

The bus came. Our conversation—if you could call it that—ended, because Lucas didn’t try to sit with me, even though there were plenty of empty seats. He fell into a seat beside one of the boys and immediately opened a book to begin studying. I ended up with Eloise, Connie, apparently sick again, showing Eloise how to do remainders on long division.

It wasn’t what I had had in mind for today at all.

It was impossible to keep my mind on class. I kept running through those few little sentences, as if I were in a play and had to have them by memory. What had Lucas meant by that? Was he telling me he couldn’t forgive me for all the mean things I’d said? Was he telling me to buzz off, because studying had a much higher priority than I did? Or was he just nervous about an exam he hadn’t prepared for, and the stress made him unaware of what he was saying to me?

When my teachers called on me, I didn’t know what page we were on or what the topic was, and once, I wasn’t even sure which class I was in. I don’t know who was annoyed more, the teachers or me.

Coming home I got on the bus early. Lucas will be in a good mood, I told myself. The test will have been easy, because tests are always easy for Lucas, and the sun is shining, and life is good, and we’ll be friends.

Lucas emerged from the building at the last possible second and ran to catch the bus, leaping onto the moving steps just as it pulled out. He didn’t so much as glance at any of us, but squatted beside the folding exit doors to talk to the bus driver.

“Don’t worry about it, Marnie,” said Eloise, patting my hand.

“Don’t worry about what?”

“Lucas.”

“What makes you think I am worried about Lucas?”

“All you ever do is make cow eyes at him. Do you know that you did one of my division problems wrong, and the teacher made me do it on the board, and I didn’t know how? All because you are dotty about Lucas.”

“I am not dotty about anyone and I have never made cow eyes in my life.”

“Connie says you have a crush on him.”

I had never said that to Connie. Suddenly I wondered just how much everybody did know. Was it painfully obvious that I loved Lucas and he had no use for me? Did every single person on this bus know that I had been hoping Lucas would sit with me and been in pain when he didn’t?

I was quite glad when our bus stop came. I was afraid Eloise would tell me that she had never seen Lucas make cow eyes at me so he must not have a crush the way I did. I was afraid Eloise would tell me that when I wasn’t looking, Lucas was making cow eyes at someone else.

Cow eyes, I thought, gathering my books. What a revolting phrase.

Although cows do have beautiful eyes. Large, amazed, dumb, brown eyes. Was that what I looked like when I faced Lucas?

Lucas was off the bus first, of course, since he was perched on the steps, and by the time I got off he was already a hundred feet down the lane, swinging along, whistling to himself.

It was the whistling that hurt most. Such a carefree sound. Happiness with pursed lips. A boy alone on a country lane, enjoying himself.

My insides ached.

I pretended to drop my books, so as the bus pulled away anyone watching would have thought it perfectly normal for me to stand by the roadside stooping and gathering them up. It surprised me somewhat that I cared what they thought. I’d have said that if Lucas didn’t care, then nobody mattered at all. But apparently I didn’t really feel that way. Maybe somehow I needed a reason even for myself for the distance between Lucas and me.

The sun was no longer a friendly, warm yellow. It was a hot hammer, whacking the insides of my head until it throbbed.

Okay, Lucas, I thought, if that’s the way you want it, so be it. You couldn’t be making it more plain that you didn’t intend our trip to turn out the way it did. Any kisses exchanged were meaningless, and no conclusions should be drawn from the conversations.

I accept that, I told myself. Look at me shrug.

I even shrugged. It was a shoulder movement, though. It didn’t have a whole lot to do with me.
I
wasn’t shrugging at all.

It’s probably just as well, I said to myself. Living together the way we do, it could be awkward for us to be in love. My bedroom in the loft, his a few feet away behind the kitchen. A mild friendship, that’s probably much more healthy.

Who cares? I don’t care.

Beside me was the thick hedgerow that ran along Mr. Shields’ property. He had dozens and dozens of forsythia bushes, which four weeks earlier had been a gaudy ribbon of gold. This week all the gold was gone and the bushes were a bright new green. In the middle of all this was a slender weedy renegade, just now coming out with blossoms peeking through all that green. I felt a tremendous affection for that bush. Setting my books down in the rutted lane, I began slowly picking forsythia branches.

I’m not going to cry, I told myself. Lucas is not worth one single salty tear.

I had to do deep-breathing exercises to keep from crying, because the other half of me was saying, Lucas is worth a million salty tears! Cry, flood the lousy lane, get your eyes red, scream even.

I picked forsythia instead.

“Marnie?” said Lucas. His softest voice. Nothing at all resembling a newborn foghorn. A deep, gentle baritone.

“I’ll carry your books for you,” he said.

I had not even heard him walk up to me. I kept my eyes on my armload of flowers, making myself think which vase I’d put them in. The narrow-topped, dark-brown pottery, or the thick crystal vase that Mother hadn’t, after all, given to the yard sale? “Thought you were already hard at work in the garden,” I said.

“I should be.”

We both should be, I thought drearily. The word garden is so pretty. Why isn’t the work involved pretty, too?

“Marnie, wait, please.”

“I’m walking beside you, Lucas, what is there to wait for?” There. I had snapped at him again. What a habit it was for me, really. No wonder he liked to walk alone.

“I’m sorry,” he said unexpectedly. “You told me you didn’t like it when I walked on ahead and I did it anyhow. On purpose.”

At least he admitted it. But I wasn’t too thrilled he came back out of guilt for his bad manners. The last thing I wanted was Lucas around because he had been brought up to be courteous. I wanted him around because he couldn’t bear to be anywhere else. “Doesn’t matter,” I said.

“You remember yesterday?”

I almost said, “Certainly I remember yesterday, you think I’m senile?” But I caught it in time and merely answered, “Yes.”

He took my arm to stop me from walking farther. “Are you glad about it or sorry?”

“I’m glad it happened yesterday, Lucas. I’m sorry it’s not happening today.”

There, I’d done it. Said what I really felt, at the right time, with the right person. No flip nastiness about it. It made it possible for me to look at Lucas without the fear that I’d burst into tears, which neither of us needed.

Lucas looked awkward and upset. I could identify with that. He flushed when our eyes met and whatever it was he’d meant to say didn’t come out. He muttered something about my flowers. Then he heaved a big sigh, turning me by the shoulders so he could look at me without having to squint into the sun behind my back. “I rehearsed for this,” he said. “Now I can’t remember my lines.”

“Sounds familiar,” I said wryly. “Give me a hint and I’ll give you a cue.”

“Sometimes I hate speech, Marnie. I read somewhere that deaf and dumb married people never get divorced. Experts think it’s because they never exchange words. I always sort of hope I’ll get things across with ESP, or something, but I never do, and I’m stuck with words.”

“I know what you mean. Lots of times I want to say something, but I don’t know how, and then I think, how crazy, I’ve been speaking for seventeen years, of
course
I know how.”

Lucas grinned. “It’s so odd, Marnie. Every time you say something I think, that’s just it, that’s just how I feel. And then I think, Marnie and I feel the same way about something? Impossible.”

“I guess … I guess we’ve both changed a lot in the last year, Lucas.”

“You certainly have. You’re incredibly different. I … I know I wasn’t nice on the bus. I did that on purpose. I just don’t know what to think about… about liking you so much. It feels so strange. Yesterday … it was … well, it was terrific, and in the morning, I thought, with Marnie, who thinks the only thing I can do is walk on the bottoms of my feet, I had this terrific time?”

“Lucas, I’ve been wanting to do something with you for so long! You were always feeding the goats or something. Yesterday was terrific for me, too. And I retract a million times over the bit about the bottoms of your feet. Okay?”

We looked at each other. There were an awful lot of flowers and books between us. After a while we set them all down and stood in the middle of the lane and kissed.

“Say,” said Mr. Shields, “I like that. Decorates the old lane a lot better than the scarecrow my wife usually puts up.”

We jumped apart and Mr. Shields laughed. “Going to be any repeat performances?” he wanted to know.

“I apologize,” I said, “we didn’t mean to annoy you or anything. We just—”

“Marnie, m’dear, the only thing annoying me is that I’ve smoked so many cigarettes for so long I couldn’t possibly sustain a kiss as long as you two did. I felt like applauding.”

Very slowly, Lucas and I walked the rest of the way home. Lucas felt it was only neighborly to give Mr. Shields a few repeat performances.

“M
ARNIE! LUCAS! STOP WASTING
time. We need you.”

We were separated: me to the kitchen garden to set out strawberry plants, Lucas to the far field to finish the cultivating.

We waved at each other a few times, but we didn’t have a moment together until dinner, which came very late, since we worked outdoors until dusk.

For the first time I noticed that at dinner we seemed to have assigned seats. Aunt Ellen, Uncle Bob, and Lucas always sat on the window side of the trestle table. We MacDonalds invariably sat on the opposite side, starting with me across from Aunt Ellen, Mother across from Uncle Bob, and Dad across from Lucas. We need a new arrangement here, I thought, but by the time I knew I wanted to sit next to Lucas for a change, or at least across from him, everybody else had sagged to a seat and the only empty chair left was my usual one.

There was no chance to talk during dinner. Our parents monopolized the conversation, comparing notes over what had been accomplished.

As for after dinner, Lucas had a book report to write, and I had an English exam, and both of us would have been tempted to skip them in favor of a good night’s sleep, so we found our mothers monitoring us.