Tender Deception: A Novel of Romance (7 page)

Lilly did not know how to exchange the glib small talk that Jimmy’s teen-age crowd batted back and forth so easily. She felt tongue-tied and painfully self-conscious in his presence. But now she had found a way of communicating with him that was as easy and natural to her as breathing.

In later years, she would reminisce about that impromptu jam session in the high school auditorium that afternoon when she was fourteen and Jimmy was eighteen, and realize how far they were from sounding truly polished. She would smile, remembering the rough spots, the gaps in technique, the times they reached for heights and missed. But at the time, the music they played was the sound of angels. It would echo in her heart forever.

They finished in a rousing climax. Jimmy reached for a high C, missed, and put his horn down with a laugh. Lilly laughed with him. Then Jimmy caught her up in a rib-crackling hug. “Hey, you’re okay, kid! When I first saw you, with your pigtails, freckles and flat shoes, I thought, ‘Boy, what a little square.’ But you’re a bunch of fun. I like you, kid.”

Lilly gazed at him, wide-eyed and breathless, and she wanted to tell him how desperately she loved him. But that was not a thing a girl could dare tell a boy, and she could only blink back the tears and try not to say something terribly dumb.

That last year, when Jimmy was eighteen and still in school before he went off to New Orleans, was a gem that sparkled in Lilly’s otherwise drab childhood in the dismal little town. Her music and being in love with Jimmy LaCross were the magic that transformed her life.

After that first encounter in the high school auditorium, Jimmy became her friend. He treated her with a kind of amused kindness, like a big brother, and always called her “kid.” They went to the state meet and Jimmy won first place in the solo trumpet division, and they celebrated with hamburgers and milkshakes afterward.

There were other times when they played together, sometimes after school or Saturday mornings when they could use the school piano. Jimmy had decided that Lilly was the only person he knew in their small home town who could play the piano with the same understanding and feeling for jazz that he had. According to Jimmy, all the other pianists in town were “little old ladies who played for Sunday School.”

Lilly told herself that Jimmy LaCross had no personal interest in her, that his only reason for spending any time with her was their mutual interest in music. But she was grateful for even those crumbs. She hated the senior girls with their long legs and flirty eyes who went out with Jimmy. She felt sick with jealousy when she saw one of them walking across the campus holding possessively onto Jimmy’s arm.

But the times she and Jimmy had their private little jam sessions, he belonged to her. When he took off on one of his inspired jazz solos, a driving, smoking explosion of creative expression, Lilly’s heart would pound with excitement. Other times, he would be in a sentimental mood and play the rich, gutsy style of Bunny Berrigan’s
I Can’t Gat Started with You,
and bring a rush of tears to Lilly’s eyes.

Sometimes, when he wasn’t occupied with tinkering over his car or dating the pep squad leaders, he’d pick up Lilly and they’d listen to records together, discussing and analyzing the jazz styles of the artists. The “discussion” mainly consisted of Jimmy doing the talking while Lilly hung on every word.

Once, driving her home after they’d played for a while in the auditorium, Jimmy turned out of town on a narrow farm road. It was a balmy day in early spring. The top of his convertible was down. The wind blew Lilly’s hair and the sun was warm on her face. She didn’t ask where they were going, or care. She was just grateful for the time to be with him.

He came to a spot where a grove of trees bordered the road, and parked there. “C’mon, kid,” he said, “let’s take a walk down to the creek.”

They followed a path through a field down to a stream where the clear water rushed over stones with a soft murmur. They lay on a grassy bank with wildflowers all around them. Lilly stretched out on her stomach and plucked a blade of grass and chewed on it as she gazed at Jimmy. He was on his back, arms folded behind his head, looking up at the clouds.

It was one of those special moments in growing up that stays with an individual the rest of his life. Lilly knew it would always live in her heart. All of her senses were sharpened. The purple, red and green colors of the wildflowers were almost painfully vivid. Sounds were intensified. She could hear the rustle of squirrels playing in the giant oak trees that fringed the creek, and the song of a bird far downstream. She could almost hear the grass growing. The perfume of the wildflowers was intoxicating. Mingled with it were the special smells that clung to Jimmy, the faint scent of his hair dressing, the mingling of school chalk, grease from his car, and shaving lotion. The blade of grass she was chewing tasted sweet.

She felt like pinching herself to believe she was actually in this secluded, romantic spot, alone with Jimmy. If it were a dream, she hoped it would never, never end.

“I used to ride down here on my bike, when I was a kid,” Jimmy said, “and catch crawdads in the creek there. Once, a buddy and I dammed it up and made a little lake and sailed toy boats on it.”

He rolled over on his stomach, propping himself on his elbows. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing the swell of biceps in his tanned arms. He grinned. “Want to go wading?”

“Sure.”

She kicked off her loafers. They ran down the bank, laughing. Jimmy took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his trouser legs. Lilly raised the hem of her dress and ventured into the water. It curled around her toes and ankles, tickling her.

Jimmy splashed into the water behind her. She waded into the middle of the small stream. She turned and then became aware with a warm flush that Jimmy was looking at her legs. She was holding her dress above her knees, revealing her thighs.

Jimmy was grinning, but his voice sounded a trifle thick as he said, “You’re developing a nice set of legs, kid. You’re going to have a great figure in a couple more years.”

Her heart began beating swiftly. A strange, sweet yearning filled her. Emotions she had never felt before stirred deep within her. The way he was looking at her awoke a feeling of forbidden excitement. She was partly embarrassed, partly glad that he was looking at her bare legs that way. For once he wasn’t treating her like a child.

She felt a bit frightened. Instinctively, she sensed that glimpsing her bare legs had aroused his male desire. What would she do if he reached out to touch her here in this secluded place? Her knowledge of the details of sex were still somewhat vague. Yet, she was more afraid of her own ignorance and of the unknown than she was of Jimmy.

But the moment suddenly passed. As if reminding himself how young she was, Jimmy picked up a flat stone from the creek bed, skimmed it across the water, then said gruffly, “C’mon, kid, let’s go back up on the bank.”

When they had settled back on the carpet of grass and wildflowers again, Jimmy said, “Well, I’ll be graduating next month and I guess after that I won’t be seeing you anymore.”

The joy of the day was suddenly dispelled in the cold wind. “What—what do you mean?” she asked in a small voice.

Jimmy shrugged. “I’m blowing this burg. You know, I never have gotten along very well with my folks. My old man and I have been at each other’s throats since I can remember. He’s a mean old coot, and dumb as they make ‘em. He’s always hated my music. Thinks it’s a waste of time. Just because he never got past being a grease monkey at Joe Simm’s garage, he thinks I think I’m better than he is because I want to do something else. My brother, Kirk, hated the old man even more than I did. I guess because he was Kirk’s stepfather.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Half brother. My mother was married once before and had Kirk. Her first husband, Kirk’s father, died, and then she married Dad. Kirk was ten years old when I was born. He hung around until I was about six years old, then he split. Went to work in the oil fields. Did all right for himself, too.”

Jimmy laughed, chewing on a blade of grass and gazing up at the clouds. “I worshipped Kirk when I was a little squirt. ‘Listen, kid,’ Kirk used to tell me, ‘as soon as you’re big enough to buy a bus ticket, get out of this lousy town. You’ll never amount to anything here.’ I still get a letter from him now and then, offering me a job in his company. But I’ve got other ideas. I’ve been saving my money. The day after I graduate, I’m getting in my car and heading for New Orleans. I’m going to get a card in the musician’s union, and get a job playing in a jazz band. I’ve got big plans. One day I’m going to have my own band, and we’re going to play Bourbon Street. I’m going to make records and I’ll be famous, like Al Hirt or Pete Fountain.”

Lilly fought back her tears. “I—I guess I’m going to miss you,” she choked.

“Yeah,” he said casually. “We had some fun, didn’t we? You’re a real little swinger. You’ve got a lot of talent, Lilly. Don’t get stuck in this miserable town. Do something with your talent when you finish high school.”

“I don’t know what I’d do—”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? You wouldn’t want to wind up a lonely old maid, playing for local weddings and the church choir would you?”

She shuddered. “No, I guess not.”

“Well, that’s what will happen to you if you stick around here,” he warned. “This town will suck the life out of you. It will leave you like a dried up prune with all the spark gone. Heck, with your talent, there’s no telling how far you could go.”

Then, remembering something, he reached in his pocket and took out a small package. “Hey, I wanted to give you a little something to show I appreciate the times you’ve helped me practice.”

Lilly turned the package over in her trembling fingers, looking at it through a mist of tears. “You—you didn’t have to give me anything. I liked it very much, when we played together....”

She fumbled at the wrapping. There was a small box, and inside, nested on a bed of cotton, was a small gold locket.

Lilly’s face was pale. She was struggling valiantly to hold back a flood of tears. Finally, she managed to whisper, “Thank you so much, Jimmy. I’ll always treasure it.” She bit her lip, then gathered the courage to say, “I—I wonder if you have an extra one of your school pictures. The small ones. I’d like to put it in the locket.”

“Sure,” he shrugged. “I think I’ve got some extra ones in my locker. Remind me at school sometime, okay?”

And that was how his picture came to be in the locket that she would wear around her neck from that day on. Later, she’d put her own picture in the other side of the locket.

True to his word, Jimmy LaCross left Millerdale shortly after school ended that term. He didn’t tell Lilly good-bye. The day after his graduation, Lilly saw him driving downtown with one of the senior pep squad leaders snuggled close beside him. Then she didn’t see him anymore. She heard from the small town grapevine that he had gone.

Lilly wore the inexpensive locket Jimmy had given her all through high school. She knew she would never forget Jimmy LaCross. He was her first, her only, love, she thought, and he had left a void in her heart that no one else could fill.

She was a quiet, studious girl during her high school days in Millerdale. She had few friends and hardly any dates. Her friend was the piano and its music. She didn’t know how to make light, meaningless chatter so important in school social interaction, and had no desire to flirt with boys. She made top grades. The choir director continued to take a special interest in her. On graduation night, Lilly was the valedictorian of her class.

With the help of Miss Andrews and the school principal, she had earned a scholarship to a college with a fine music department. A college education was more than William Parker had ever, in his wildest dreams, imagined within the realm of possibility for his daughter.

Lilly would never forget the sight of her father and mother, standing in the bus station the day she went off to college. Her father was a gray, faded little man with stooped shoulders. He was indelibly stamped with a look of a life that had amounted to nothing. But that day, there was a look of pride in his otherwise defeated eyes that Lilly would remember and treasure. Her mother, plump, a little bewildered, dabbed at her eyes with a balled handkerchief, and waved good-bye to a daughter she had never understood.

Her parents would both be dead by the time she’d earned her college degree. Her father was the first to go, the victim of an accident at the paper mill where he was working on the last of a string of dreary, meaningless jobs. Less than a year later, her mother succumbed to complications of a diabetic condition that had plagued her most of her life.

Lilly went back to Millerdale for the funerals. After her mother’s death, she stood beside the grave in the small town cemetery, and knew there would be no reason for her to return to the town after college. Except for a few personal items, her parents had left her nothing. Even the dilapidated frame house where she’d lived all her life, had been rented.

Lilly had another plan for her life. It had formed in her heart that spring day so long ago, when she and Jimmy LaCross had laid in the wildflowers on the creek bank, and Jimmy had talked about his dreams.

Seven years had passed since then. Lilly was grown up now, twenty-one years of age. Life on the big city college campus had polished some of the rough edges of her small town awkwardness. She felt more sure of herself and more confident than ever of her musical ability. The college training had added a great deal of technical knowledge about music theory to her great natural talent.