Saturday Night (11 page)

“Then I can still go to the dance tonight?” said Emily hopefully.

They all stared at her: doctor, nurse, aide.

“It’s the first formal dance I’ve ever been to,” she explained, feeling stupid. “I can go home and shower and put on another dress. I mean, it won’t be a formal dress, but we can still go. I can catch up with Matt and we can limp in, don’t you think?”

“Catch up with Matt,” repeated a nurse slowly. She and the others exchanged glances. “Emily, we’d better make a few phone calls. You just lie here and we’ll get your parents down.”

Everybody else looked carefully at her damaged foot, and not at Emily.

Matt is dead, Emily thought.

The lightning missed me and got him. Half in, half out of that car the way he was. The wire must have been flung against him, or the lightning struck and he died, and they hadn’t gotten around to telling me yet. They’ll wait until my mother and father are here.

Matt.

Nearly a stranger, but oh so close. So important !

Matt, who had liked her instantly. Thought her perfect from the first minute. Who got a special car, and special flowers to show that she, too, was special. Matt, who was able to make a good impression on her mother and father, who weren’t all that impressed with Emily herself.

She was hardly aware of the stitching and bandaging on her foot.

When the doctor spoke to her she did not answer because she did not hear.

Matt was dead.

If she had not asked him to this dance. …

If she had remembered the first turn. …

Emily began to weep. I was worrying about my
hair!
she thought, wishing she could shave it all off. I ran worrying about my
dress!

And Matt was out there dying.

K
IP CAUGHT A GLIMPSE
of Roddy. He was over by the refreshment tables. Kip had had the food spread out so that nobody would have to stand in line in order to eat. Roddy was standing against the food, as if on display. He was so clearly alone. His posture was one of defeat.

Do I look like that? Kip wondered. Am I standing on my side of the room, folded over as if I’ve a cramp in my side from running too fast?

It diminished her to watch Roddy. If I had come alone, she thought, at least it would have shown courage. People would have respected me for strength at least. But I came with a jerk, and that makes me something of a jerk as well. The minute I walk over and join him, I will be bracketed with him.

But the burden of standing alone was pressing in on her. Three hundred couples danced beneath her decorations, girls’ heads lying on boys’ shoulders. When the music stopped, conversation and laughter sparkled.

But not for Kip.

Swallowing, she followed the scarlet path around her fountain and her wooden swing and her rustic collections of apple barrels and pumpkin stacks. When she reached him, Roddy simply looked at her without speaking, making Kip feel more guilty than if she’d stuck a knife in between his ribs and watched him bleed.

Silently Roddy handed her a cup of punch and a tiny plate of food. The punch—something her mother often served; a ginger ale and lime sherbet mix—was not going over very well. The original sherbet was still floating around, looking like tired foam. The plate Roddy passed to her held one iced cookie (a donation from Veronica’s mother, who evidently thought the dance was your usual flung-together jeans-and-disc-jockey kind of thing), one tiny crust-less sandwich with an unidentifiable filling, one stuffed mushroom, hot on a toothpick, and one cheeseball, formerly hot.

The stuffed mushroom and cheeseball were from Gary’s father’s restaurant. Immediately she thought of Gary with Beth Rose. Amazing. Mechanically Kip said, “Thank you, Roddy.”

No answer.

He didn’t eat anything, either—just took the red toothpick out of his stuffed mushroom and pushed the bits of food around on his little paper plate. “Better not,” advised Kip. “Everything will fall on the floor.”

“Yeah,” said Roddy. “I’m the kind of guy that happens to.”

“You don’t have to be,” said Kip. “You could be a little tougher than that, Roddy. Why did you let Molly and Christopher talk to you like that, anyhow? Why did you just wimp away?”

She could not believe she had said that. She—Kip—who was always kind, always understanding, always sympathetic. I deserve a smack, she thought.

Roddy put down his plastic glass of soda and his sagging paper plate. He folded his arms and stared at her across them. “What did you want me to do?” he demanded. “Toss a hand grenade into their car? Cut Christopher’s phone line so he couldn’t call Molly? Hit Molly, maybe, so she can’t give me a hard time?”

Kip flushed. “Of course not,” she said uneasily. “I just—”

“I know, I know,” Roddy said, nodding and looking at the wall. “You pretend you don’t want violence, but you crave it. You think I should be defending my honor and all that. I don’t understand girls. You pretend you want somebody sensitive and understanding. That’s a lot of junk. What you really want is a stupid, drunk, college kid like Christopher Vann.”

“I don’t, either! I wouldn’t go out with Chris.”

“You don’t want to be out with me, either,” Roddy said.

He flung the words at her like a weapon, and Kip, wanting to be peaceful, wanting to make friends, flung them right back instead. “You called me an hour before the dance. Did you think I would be thrilled or something?”

Roddy froze. After a bit he said, “Stupid, wasn’t it?”

I am lower even than Molly, Kip thought. He knew Molly would be rotten to him. But he had every right to figure I would be nice.

Slowly Roddy moved away from her, giving her time, if she wanted it, to call him back, or to follow him and apologize. All her mother’s training in good manners passed before Kip’s eyes and all of it she chose not to bother with.

The thing is, Roddy, she thought after him, I don’t like you! This is my dance and I want to be here with someone I like!

Roddy’s slumped shoulders vanished in the press of dancers. Kip stood utterly alone, facing the cafeteria that she and she alone had transformed into a place of beauty with its aura of romance.

You win, world! Kip thought. I surrender. I’m sick of fighting. I’m sick of working every single minute to make people like me and failing.

Gary and Beth Rose passed her on their way to get something more to eat. “Just have to tell you again how much I’m enjoying your dance,” Gary said to her, smiling his sweet smile.

She was not jealous of Beth. In her heart Kip knew that the only reasons she liked Gary were first his wonderful good looks and second his completely relaxed poise, as if he owned the cafeteria, and possibly the town. But Kip had tremendous ambition, and Gary had none, except to pitch in occasionally in his father’s restaurant.

What’s the answer? Kip thought. Am I constructed so that there is not a right boy for me? Is my personality the kind that won’t let me fall in love? Or am I so busy being captain of this and chairman of that that boys don’t know I’m a girl?

She had her car.

She could not seem to feel the slightest obligation to Roddy.

I’ll just drive home, she thought. I admit it. This world is tougher than I am. I can’t take another three hours of this.

Beth Rose kept thinking of her Aunt Madge’s remark. “There’s nothing quite so wonderful as a dance where every girl there is looking at you.”

The dress is magic, Beth thought. For Aunt Madge it meant going with Virgil Hopkinson. For me it means Gary. Who is also magic.

“Come on,” said Gary. “We’ve got to have pictures.”

Beth Rose stared at him. Pictures? That cost so much.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on the photographer,” said Gary. “If there’s one thing I hate it’s standing in line.” Gary had his route through the crowd all picked out, and before Beth Rose had time to think about it, they were standing by the rose arbor.

Kip had gotten the garden center to loan her an actual arbor, and she’d twisted green twine around it, and felt leaves, and had pots of silk roses in bright pinks and reds and blushing scarlets. A tiny rustic seat for two slender people sat next to it. The seat wasn’t quite big enough for two, so mostly the girl ended up sitting on the boy’s lap.

Gary sat down first, taking up a lot of space, and grinned up at her. Her heart flopped over. He patted his knee, not the bench.

She was very, very aware of the couples around them. There must be a good twenty people whose conversations drifted to a halt, whose dance steps slowed, as they watched Gary and Beth Rose.

“Sit down, Beth,” Gary said.

Beth sat. The old ivory lace that lined the neckline of her gown brushed against Gary’s face. He looked down, then back at her, and they both flushed slightly, and ignored remarks from two giggling couples near them.

Fall in love with me, Gary! she thought. Please. Please sit here holding me and think there’s nowhere on earth I’d rather be than here, and no girl I’d rather have in my lap than Beth Rose Chapman.

“All right, honey, move your arm a little this way,” ordered the photographer. She moved her arm a little this way and she thought, Why ever move again? Why not just stay here in paradise with Gary?

They took one picture with Gary looking up into her face and another with both of them looking toward the photographer. One of the boys said, “Hey, Gary, you really need one of you scanning that neckline.” And the photographer said, “Okay, let’s have a kiss.”

It was the first kiss of her life.

Nicer if he weren’t obeying instructions, Beth Rose thought, and nicer if we were in private. But still. …

Gary’s hand came up behind her head, and he tilted her head down ever so slightly, and strained up to reach her. The kiss was very light: a mere brush of the lips that would not even disturb her lipstick, but Beth Rose thought she would drift into the air, spun off into space by the pleasure of his touch.

Some of the kids started making remarks, but Beth hardly heard them. She slowly got off Gary’s lap, wondering if she had been too heavy, or just right, and then Gary got up, and the photographer said, “That’ll be a ten dollar deposit and another thirty when the photographs come in.”

Beth froze. She had never expected it to cost that much. She had figured a quarter of that. Her heart fell as quickly as it had risen.

But not a moment of doubt crossed Gary’s face. “Sure,” he said, pulling a wallet out of his back pocket, handing over a ten, and taking the receipt. Beth watched the receipt being folded in half, tucked into the wallet. He can’t forget me now, she thought. I’m in his wallet. I’m an investment. “Thank you,” she said.

He just smiled.

Only reflex made Kip walk into the girls’ room to check on her hair before she left. She was amused at herself in a dark and dreary way. You’re leaving the dance, lady, she told herself. Now you worry about your hair? Nobody noticed you when you walked in, why should they notice you now?

She tried to remind herself of all the compliments she had had on her dance, but in the end only one compliment counted: to have a boy love her.

She felt so much like crying that it did not surprise Kip at all to walk in on sobs. They sounded rather like the sobs she was expecting from herself. In the row of mirrors, she could see nothing at all reflected in her face: not joy, not misery. In fact, she looked very nice. I know what a formal dance is now. Pretty dresses, desperate hearts. Gradually she grew aware that somebody in this bathroom really was crying her heart out. Reluctantly, not really wanting to handle somebody else’s agony when she was so busy with her own, Kip said, “Can I help?”

Pause. Then, whispery, fragile, “No, thank you.”

The sobs were held under control. Kip waited, but nobody came out. “I’m going to leave the dance myself,” Kip said tiredly. “If it’s bad enough that you need a ride home, I’d be glad to take you.”

More silence. Then, “Kip?” in a disbelieving voice.

“Yeah.”

The door opened. And there stood Anne Stephens.

Nothing could have surprised Kip more.

Anne?

Whose life was perfect? Whose personality, talent, brains, figure, teeth, complexion, and style were all to be envied? Anne, standing hidden in the bathroom, sobbing until her mascara ran?

Probably had a fight with Con about something important, thought Kip sarcastically. Like whether to have tonight’s photographs under the rose arbor or by the fountain.

“Oh, Kip,” said Anne, her voice throaty from crying. Actually it sounded very attractive. Con probably told her he liked it. “Oh, Kip, I might have known it would be you. Not Con. Oh, no, Con wouldn’t come after me. But I could count on you, Kip. You’re so reliable.”

Kip felt like smacking her. “So what’s wrong?” she said. She really didn’t care. Of all the adjectives she wanted to hear,
reliable
was the last. If Anne didn’t need an ambulance or a ride home, Kip was bailing out. She wanted to go home and nurse her own hurts, not waste time over some pretend agony from a winner like Anne.

“I’m pregnant,” said Anne.

For a moment the sentence meant nothing to Kip. She could not focus on it at all.

The distorted features of Anne’s face seemed to shatter, and then come foggily back together, and what Kip saw there truly was agony. Not grief, not worry, not depression.
Agony.
“You’re pregnant?” repeated Kip.

Anne nodded.

“Does Con know?”

“Yes. I told him when we got here.”

Good for you, Kip thought. I myself would always time my tragic announcements for the entrance to my first formal dance. I hope you’ve learned from this, Anne old girl. Timing is all. “What did he say?” Kip asked.

“He got mad at me. He said he couldn’t talk about it. It’s my problem, he said. I was probably making it up, anyway, he said.”

So this is what it’s like to be the perfect couple, when the first thing goes wrong, Kip thought. Out loud she said, “We could cut him up in little pieces with a dull putty knife.”

Anne nodded. “That has definitely passed through my mind. The problem is I love him. Anyhow, dead fathers aren’t very useful.”