Saturday Night (6 page)

Matt smelled of wet wool. Like sweaters and mittens. What could he be wearing that had such a distinctive scent?

Lightning leaped ahead of them, thunder following it so quickly and so loudly that it drowned out Matt’s next sentence. Emily closed her eyes and shivered in spite of all efforts to stop herself.

“You don’t like lightning?” said Matt.

“I hate it.”

“I love it when the thunder makes everything tremble. Primitive,” said Matt. “Strong. Wild.”

“It’s going to kill me someday,” Emily told him. “I feel it in my bones.”

“Not in my car,” said Matt, patting her knee, and then leaving his hand there, warming her through the velvet, and making her tremble with something other than fear of lightning. “The only thing you have to worry about is the distance between the car and the high school front door,” he said. He began teasing her about her destiny. “Maybe you have a rendezvous with lightning on the school steps,” he kidded.

“Don’t even joke about it. It’s not funny to me. It makes me sick inside to think about lightning. I’m not sure how afraid of lightning I am, on a scale of afraid-ness, but I think I fall into the category of phobic on lightning.”

“I kid about everything,” Matt told her. “Don’t worry, Emily. I can’t have you roasted before the dance. Who’ll I dance with then?”

They both laughed.

“You look beautiful,” Con said softly.

Anne looked at him in the dark of the car. Streetlights swept shadows over and across his face, and as he turned to smile at her, his features were unknown and mysterious. She could just barely keep from crying. “Thank you.” She thought, Did Mother prime him? Or is he learning at last?

Maybe it really is
at last
, she thought.

Con took her hand. “You’re freezing,” he said. He turned up the heat and redirected all the vents so that warm air poured over her. “Have to take care of my girl,” he said, grinning sideways. He drove with one hand, something she hated because it was dangerous … and yet loved, also because it was dangerous.

Maybe that’s why I like sex, she thought. Danger.

They arrived at the high school.

In one great, eerie flash lightning illuminated the building. Three stories high, brick, with white columns set into the brick over the wide granite steps. A storybook high school, with its modern expansion safely hidden out back. I love the building, Anne Stephens thought. It’s my life. And this is autumn of my junior year. What about senior year, what about. …

“We’re here,” said Con unnecessarily. He leaned over and kissed her and in his eyes she could see his love: It was there, clear and true. “I knew you’d look great in that dress,” he said, “but I didn’t know you’d look this great.”

His words came awkwardly. She knew they were his own, not her mother’s tutoring.

Now
, Anne thought. Now when I can see that he loves me. She cleared her throat. “Con?” she said.

“Yes. Here’s the doorman. You go inside under his umbrella; I’ll park the car and be in in five minutes.” Con undid her seatbelt, the doorman opened the door and took her arm. She was out of the car, on the doorman’s arm, and Con had driven off.

With a grand motion that matched the sweep of his mustache, the doorman graciously helped Anne over the puddles and up the wide shallow steps into the foyer. No, no, no! she thought. Drive me home! I want to go home. I want to be my mother’s little girl and have nothing to do but line up my Barbie dolls in their Barbie playhouse. I want to be Anne the perfect daughter, Anne, the perfect granddaughter. I don’t want—

But they were in the school.

It smelled like school. No matter what Kip did, the smell of school would never leave these halls. People and books, sweaty gym socks and leaking pens, clean paper and illicit smoking.

The doorman left her for the next car.

She had never felt so out of control. She felt papery, as if she could be crumpled and tossed away without effort.

The doorman brought Molly in.

“Ooooh, Anne,” squealed Molly. “You look absolutely
lovely
. I adore your dress.”

With tremendous effort Anne said, “Thank you, Molly. You look lovely, too.” It sounded fake, it was fake, and Molly knew it. She maintained courtesy, but Anne knew with a sinking heart that Molly would be difficult all night. Molly had a real ability to damage people. Boys never seemed to notice, but then, as she knew to her cost, boys were thicker than cement all the time, anyway. Molly’s eyes narrowed, and her laugh turned spiteful. Anne turned away and studied the wall, and in that moment made her fatal mistake.

Turn away from me? Molly thought with concealed rage. Pretend I’m not standing here, when we’re the only two people in this entire foyer? Who do you think you are, Anne Stephens?

The doors were flung open, both at the same time, and two boys entered, without the doorman.

Con. Perfect. Grinning at her. Rain running off his hair. She could not move toward him.

Molly went instantly to her date and snuggled against him in spite of the rain. Con’s eyes rested on Molly for several seconds. Before he walked to Anne he said, “Hello, Molly. Evening, Christopher.”

Christopher Vann, that’s who her date was! Anne remembered him now. Two years ago he’d been everything. Football captain, soccer co-captain, basketball guard, the whole jock career. Christopher was at Harvard now. For Molly he had flown home to go to a high school dance? Wow.

Christopher put out a hand to shake with Con and Anne knew instantly that Christopher was drunk. Don’t get involved with them, Con, she thought, horrified. Vividly she remembered that Christopher could get rough. He was always the first to foul out in a game, the first to start a fight, the first to swear … and the last to stop.

She walked up to Christopher, Molly, and Con, and took Con’s arm to turn him toward her.

Molly’s long lashes followed this gesture and Molly laughed, and Con and Anne could read the laugh as if it were the page of a book—
What’s the matter, Anne? Afraid Con’s too interested in me?

“Let’s go on in and see Kip’s decorations,” said Anne in a brittle, bright voice.

Con went with her. “What’s the matter with you?” he said, faintly irritable. “You weren’t exactly friendly to them.”

“I don’t exactly like them.”

“Oh, that’s a great attitude to start the evening with, Anne,” said Con. “Now listen, if you can’t be cheerful, forget it. You’ve been moody for days. It’s getting on my nerves.”

Anne trembled. Ahead of them Molly wrapped herself around Christopher and they swayed from side to side, dancing to inaudible music, or perhaps holding each other up. Behind them somebody else walked. Anne could hear the sound of the dress rustling, but lacked the curiosity to turn to see who it was.

With the worst possible timing, at the worst possible moment Anne whispered, “I’m not moody, Con. I’m pregnant.”

T
HERE SHOULD BE A
rule, Kip thought. Never drive a car that has manual transmission while wearing a floor-length gown.

Her gleaming satin slippers were pressed where usually only dirty sneakers lay. She had had to yank up the ruffles of peach and rose around her knees to keep it off the floor. The unused bottoms of her slippers slithered over the brakes ineffectually.

I can’t believe I’m driving, Kip thought. And of course Roddy lives in a subdivision still under construction. Of course I have to drive over sewer pipe bumps and around lanterns I can barely see in the rain, and of course he said, “Oh, my house is easy to find, it’s the gray one,” and of course it’s dark and every single house in the whole stupid neighborhood looks gray.

She saw Roddy by the side of the road. He was wearing a raincoat and holding a newspaper over his head. The newspaper was drenched and flattened into pulp that drooped onto his hair.

Great, Kip thought. I’m going to the dance with a wet nerd. Just what I’ve always yearned to do. “Well, for heaven’s sake, get in!” she shrieked over the thunder. “Who do you think it is in this car?” she muttered more quietly. “Santa Claus?”

Roddy got in, soaking her upholstery, like a kid from the beach who forgot his towel. He wasn’t quite so dull-looking as she remembered. In fact he was okay-looking. Just very wet. “Hi, Roddy,” she said tonelessly. She was desperately regretting her decision to go with him, but fatalism had set in. She was in motion now, there was no stopping the events to come, and if she were meant to suffer total humiliation in front of every person she knew or cared about, so be it.

Roddy said, “Hi, Kip. Thanks a lot for coming. Do you mind turning the heat up a little? I’m kind of chilled. I thought you’d be here quicker.”

I hate boys who get cold and chilled, she thought. I like boys who show up in January wearing sleeveless sweat shirts, complaining they’re suffering of heat prostration.

She turned up the heat. Roddy put his hands in front of the vents, shivered noticeably, and said, “Gee, we’re going to have fun, aren’t we?”

Kip lived by certain rules. One that she never broke was that if she intended to do something anyway, she would do it courteously and to the best of her ability.

Now it struck her as a very stupid rule. Why should she have this stupid date with a smile? Why should she work hard to make the evening pleasant? She
always
worked hard, and where did it get her? Nowhere. Roddy was the jerk who’d called and she was the jerk who’d said yes. Let it all go down the tubes. She didn’t care.

She said nothing to him.

Roddy looked at her nervously. She hated nervous people. She liked solid secure people who got things done.

Silently they crossed Westerly, paying no attention to the storm or their surroundings, saying nothing, Kip caught in her bitterness, Roddy caught in his embarrassment.

Con said flatly, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

He kept right on walking. Molly and Christopher were the same distance ahead, and whoever was behind them was the same distance behind. It had never crossed Anne’s mind that Con would simply dismiss the idea of her being pregnant. “But Con …” she said. Doubt and hope entered Anne in spite of herself. Maybe it was ridiculous. Maybe the tests had been wrong. Maybe she should go to another doctor.

“We always used stuff,” said Con impatiently. He detested the real names of any contraceptives.
Stuff
was his word. “Let’s not ruin a perfectly nice evening. You
aren’t
. Okay?”

Anne came to a halt. “Except sometimes we didn’t bother,” she said.

Con’s eyes found a spot on the wall above and to the left of her.

“Don’t look at me,” he said, not looking at her.

She was filled with rage and terror, but even more with a dreadful need to placate him. He mustn’t get mad at her. She needed him. “Okay,” she said, “this is the wrong time. But Con, there
is
no time. We—we have to—talk—about—about—”

She couldn’t say the real words, either. Words like baby, illegitimate, childbirth, abortion, adoption, marriage—all those caught, snagged by fear, and didn’t come out of her mouth. “Stuff,” she said lamely.

Con put his arm around her waist and began walking again. She could not believe it. In a moment they would have caught up to Molly and Christopher. “Con,” she whispered.

His fingers tightened painfully around her. His lips came right to her ear, as if he were nuzzling her lovingly. “I could kill you for bringing this up now. Don’t you dare do it again,” he hissed.

She was so cold now her back ached.

Molly’s rich laugh rang out. “No, no, you guys. The way it works is, you walk
inside
, and kiss under Kip’s little rose arbor, and get immortalized on film.”

“Expensive film,” added Christopher.

“Oh, is that how it works,” said Con, laughing.

Anne struggled to laugh with him. Nothing came to her face but fear and anger, and that she could not show. She kept it blank instead, and again she saw Molly’s expression—
Oh, Anne won’t laugh with me, huh?
said Molly’s vivid features.

Anne looked at Con. This is my fault, she thought. Any girl with half a brain would have planned this conversation better. I—

And then she thought, Now wait a minute. He’s the father. He should have planned a little better. Who is he to complain? Is
he
pregnant?

“Poor Kip,” said Molly. “She did such a nice job on decorations and nobody asked her to her own dance. Isn’t that sad?”

You stinker, Anne thought. You haven’t even seen the decorations yet. You just want to announce somebody’s bad luck and jeer at somebody who’s not here to defend herself.

“Kip doesn’t have a date?” repeated Con, visibly amazed.

Now the coldness shivered up Anne’s spine, settling in her skull, throbbing like a glacial headache. He likes Kip. If he leaves me, will he turn around the next night and call another girl? Kip, say? Could Con do that—after three years with me?

Con was not looking at Anne. He walked her into the gym, and they were, and she knew it, the picture of romance. A kneeling photographer caught them, bulb flashing. Con was laughing, pressing his cheek against hers, looking right into the flash.

He won’t look at me again, she realized. That might make it real. He’ll get through this entire evening without letting it get real.

She stared at the cafeteria and knew in a moment that Con could pull it off. Because Kip had succeeded beyond anybody’s wildest dreams. The cafeteria was no longer real: It was a fantasy of fallen leaves and shining stars.

Hundreds of brilliantly colored autumn leaves hung from invisible wires strung across the ceiling. An actual fountain splashed gently on rocks. Behind it greenery formed a wreath for two benches. Already coins twinkled in the water where couples had made wishes. If a penny would make my wish come true, Anne thought ruefully, I’d sit all night by that fountain.

Baskets of flowers, stacked pumpkins, and split rail fences flanked a scarlet runner that led to a barnboard refreshment stand. Behind bales of hay, junior high girls dressed in white lace and black cotton maid costumes were serving cider and wedges of apple pie. A wheelbarrow piled high with real autumn leaves stood next to an old wooden porch swing.