The Cheer Leader (12 page)

“No,” I said, though I wasn't quite sure, though I had this horrible urge to ask Red if there had ever been anything between him and Beatrice's stringy haired friend. No, but that was ridiculous.

“I know,” he said, “I'll make it all up to you. Tonight. We'll have a special night, just the two of us.” He was talking faster and faster. “You know, talk about us, really talk. You love me, too, don't you?” I nodded again and he kept talking, about when he'd pick me up, about what a good time we were going to have, about how much he loved me and then I was alone, watching him get his shirt out of the backseat. None of the people in the car seemed to even see me standing there; they just kept talking to Red, asking him to come back once he walked me down the shore, asking him if he was going to a party that night.

He lifted his hand to Tricia, Lisa and Cindy when we got back to the pier but he made no move to go any closer. I was relieved because I didn't want them to see his eyes, to judge him on this one time. He kissed me and then turned to go. “See you around seven,” he yelled and then left.

“What's this?” Tricia asked when I sat back down on my towel.

“I'm sorry,” I said, “but it's very important that I see Red tonight.” I kept trying to pull this one thread out of
my beach towel so that I wouldn't have to look at them. “Red just told me that he loves me,” I said, thinking that that would somehow merit the pact about breaking dates.

“Do you love him?” Cindy asked and I nodded. “That's great, Jo.” I knew that she was trying to break the tension, just like she and I had always done when Tricia and Lisa were fighting. It wasn't working.

“Hey, maybe we can go to the movies tomorrow night,” I said and looked at Tricia. She just shrugged and got out her car keys.

“I'm ready to go,” she said, “there's no sun, anyway. I don't even know why we came today.” She looked directly at me and shook her head. “Besides, why would you want to see a movie that you've already seen? I mean why would you ever do that?”

That special night with Red was the night that I broke one of my rules, for instead of going out in Blue Springs to the movies which is what he had told my mother, we rode down to the lake and spent the time just sitting in his cabin, talking and kissing, lying side by side on his couch. I was worried that first time that my mother was going to find out, that I was going to get into trouble, that Tricia, Lisa and Cindy would never forgive me, but then it got easier, because I was with Red and because everything seemed so perfect. By the time that school started, I felt relatively little guilt about saying that I was going somewhere else and then going down to the lake with Red. It was that important to me, especially since I couldn't see him on school nights and my Friday nights
were taken up by cheerleading. Every now and then, Red would come to the games but usually not, and I didn't blame him; he was too old to go to high school games; he would be glad when I was through with all of that and he had me all to himself. Tricia, Lisa and Cindy had just about stopped asking me to do anything with them because they knew that I would either be with Red or waiting for him to call; and yet, the four of us were really the only ones aware of the change. Around school, we were always lumped together; we sat together; we ate together; we were chosen for just about everything, dance committees, school representatives, and somewhere in all of that, my name had suddenly emerged at the top of the list and it was Jo, Tricia, Cindy and Lisa, maybe it was because I was chief cheerleader and then Tricia and Cindy were still cheering that it turned out that way, or maybe it was because I had never dated any of the guys in our class and had merely maintained friendships, unlike Tricia and Lisa who had made several enemies. Maybe it was just my turn, or more probably, maybe it was that I was not trying for any of it, that suddenly all of the things that I had wanted and looked forward to were not important in comparison with Red. It seemed that so many things were changing. Red even said that our relationship was changing, growing, and that we had to do something about it, that he had been so patient with me and so on, the ultimate crux of the conversation being that he wanted to make love.

There were so many times that autumn that I wanted to go to Tricia and ask what she thought, to Lisa or
Cindy, and even though I knew that they would be there for me, I also knew that they would say that Red was putting pressure on me, that if Red really loved me that he would understand, or worse, I was afraid that Lisa would look up with that certain know-it-all look of hers and say, “What's the big deal?” And it was a big deal, especially when I gave in. But then, ultimately, it was no big deal at all except that I couldn't take it all back: a dreary Sunday afternoon (I kept thinking “of all days”), an old couch with busted springs, the uncomfortable position, the discomfort of my body being perused, the patronizing “It's okay” that Red breathed into me the whole time.

“Is that it?” I asked when he had rolled off of me because I really didn't know. How was I supposed to know? He kicked the couch and took me home, a long silent drive, at the end of which he promised, “It'll get better for you; it takes experience.” I wanted to ask how he knew that, who he had been with that was experienced enough to enjoy it all, but I just got out of the car.

I kept thinking about how Lisa had lied to me when she used to tell us how wonderful it was and I even started wondering if she had done anything; I even started wondering if there was something wrong with me. I kept thinking about all of those movies where the girl does it and then goes and stands in front of the mirror to see her new self, all transformed. The only change that had occurred was that then, that was all that Red wanted to do, help me to get the experience that I needed and I went along with him because I loved him, because I suddenly
felt the same sense of commitment that I used to have for my friends, that I once had for Blue Springs High, that I felt when I rescued our dog, Jaspar, from his mother who wouldn't feed him years ago. I could see the payoffs from those things; the closeness that I had had with my friends, the honors that all seemed to be falling my way in school, even Jaspar, because he was a good dog who did what I told him to do most of the time. I could only wonder when that was going to pay off; I imagined it would be when Red asked me to marry him.

Yes, that was really the change, for instead of being up on all the new movies which I had been since I dated Pat Reeves for the first time, my free time went to gaining experience. I remember one time in particular or maybe it was many times rolled into one memory. It was just before Christmas. I was in Red's room, his hands were going up and down on my back and the stereo was playing in the next room where Mark and Beatrice and two people that I didn't know were smoking pot.

We are in his room; the door is closed. I am in here because Red realizes that I am very uncomfortable around those people. Beatrice makes fun of my friends who I am no longer even certain are my friends. Red says that they are not my friends. Red says that my family is so odd, that I need to break away, that Bobby isn't the perfect person that I think he is. But he loves me; I'm his. It doesn't bother him that I'm a cheerleader because he used to do silly things like that when he was in high school. Red says, “It's all right. You can't help it. I still
love you. You've got me. I may be all that you've got but you have me.” I can't think of anything, not one good thought; I can only listen to the soft voice of Art Garfunkel singing “Disney Girls” and think how very much like that girl I am, or used to be, while I watch Red unbutton my shirt, while he tells me that he is all I've got, that it's all right.

“How many girls have you ever been with?” I feel like I have to know even though at this point, it really doesn't matter.

“I don't want to tell you.”

“Why?”

“I don't want to upset you. Besides, they didn't mean anything. I didn't love any of them.”

I feel cold like I have never seen him before, like I don't know him, don't know anyone, shouldn't have ever broken a rule. My clothes are on the floor and he is on top of me, always on top of things, breathing heavily. My mother's face is etched clearly on my mind. She is wearing a strapless dress with a tulle ballerina length skirt and she is dancing a slow dance around and around to “Stardust,” to “Disney Girls.” She is in my place and were the roles reversed, she would not be in this place, not now. I close my eyes and concentrate on the music, wait for what I know is going to happen. The bed rocks rhythmically, like this blue captured wave that Red has on his shelf that goes back and forth, back and forth. There is a tightness in my stomach, my legs, my head.

“Jo, Jo.” He is gasping my name in short little breaths
and I watch his eyes, somehow foreign and frightening like the eyes of a dead man, scrinching up, feel the sweat of his chest making me sticky. “I love you, Jo.”

I stare back and I realize that I am crying and I don't know why. He could have been saying “Abraham, Abraham” and I could look just like Richard Nixon and it wouldn't matter. His heart and his brain and all the really important organs are concentrated between his legs and when it is all over and he has left a thick white puddle on my stomach, I realize that he has nothing more to say or think. It is all there, thick and bland, a future promise, and I wipe it away with an old paper towel that is on his windowsill. Out the window is the lake, the pier that cuts through it, the very place where we sat the night of our first date, in the summer. Summer seemed to be years ago.

I liked being in school those last weeks before Christmas break, not the time before or after or in between classes but that time during the class, those fifty minutes when no one was talking except the teacher, fifty minutes of outlining history chapters, or working long trigonometry problems. I wasn't very good in trig, not like Cindy, but I enjoyed doing neat work, taking it all one step at a time. I liked the hours spent reading Shakespeare. It was easy to be in class; it was easy because my grades were as good as they had ever been and sometimes I could even afford to not pay attention at all, to think of nothing, or to think of how it was going to be when Red did all of the things that he said he was going to do, go back to school, get a good job, marry me. I had
already been elected Most Popular Senior Girl. Everything was easy in school and all I had to do was be very quiet and agree with whatever anyone said to me. All I had to do when Tricia, Lisa and Cindy found me crying in the school bathroom one day was to say, “Yes, I'm fine. I don't feel very well. Everything's okay.”

“You haven't felt well for a long time,” Tricia said. “We're still your friends you know.”

“Is it Red?” Lisa asked. “I overheard Beatrice tell someone that he had gone to Raleigh one weekend to see Buffy. Did you know that?”

“Yes,” I said. “But it's not true. That's not it.” But that was true, that was it. Why, all of a sudden were they there to ask all those questions anyway?

“I'm just going to go home,” I said. “I hate to miss class but I think I've got the flu.”

“You had the flu two weeks ago,” Cindy said and then was sorry that she had said that. I could tell from the way that the three of them kept looking back and forth that they had been talking about me. “Well, what I mean is that you must have a bad case. I think you should go home.”

“Don't tell anyone,” I said while washing my face, “but there have been some problems at home. I can't go into it because my parents would kill me. Please, just don't say anything.” They just stood and stared first at me and then at each other and I left. That was a lie, too, but so what? It seemed to me that everything was a lie and the only comfort on that day had been the drizzling rain that glowed on every grease slicked puddle in the
high school parking lot, and all the way home all I could think about was James Agee's little Rufus in
A Death in the Family
when he is so proud of the hideous cap that he wears and his aunt feels sorry for him because she knows that he looks ridiculous and that people are going to make fun of him. Still, she doesn't have the heart to tell him. I began thinking that maybe Red was my hideous cap and that Tricia, Lisa and Cindy just didn't have the heart to tell me. I thought, too, that there might be another part of me in that book, a part that wished that out of the blue I would hear that Red had been in a serious accident and I could cry and do the proper amount of grieving and then begin all over as though I had never known him, never fallen in love with him, never been exposed. Or maybe it was none of that, maybe it was just a thought, the book and the drizzly day, to take my mind off of the lie that I had told my friends, the lies that Red had told me, the lie that I would tell my mother again when she suggested that I spend more time with my friends, that they were excluding me, that Red was my only friend, all that I had. I would tell her all of that and I would cry just as I had done before and she would hug me and say that things would work out and I would wish in that moment that she would say that I must stay there forever, that I must not see Red or anyone else ever again, that I could go back and start all over.

I was looking forward to the Blue Springs High Christmas dance. It was going to be special because all
of the senior superlatives would be called onstage during the night. My mother had even let me get a new dress for the occasion. It was emerald green with a lowcut neckline and a little slit up the side. I should have known when I stood at the checkout and watched my mother write that check that I never should have gotten it, that Red wouldn't even see it, though somehow, I had thought that I could convince him to attend a high school function so that everyone could see us together and stop wondering, “What's going on with Jo?”

“Jo, you know how I feel about these things.” He is in my living room talking loudly as usual and I don't want my parents to hear him. “You go on and have a good time.”