“Cracker?”
He nodded and took the plate from me before passing it along to my father. My eyes lingered on him. I watched as he carefully spread a thick wedge of butter across one of his crackers. Then he took a bite and I could tell he didn’t have the slightest clue what was in his mouth. If I had a different sort of relationship with Dickie—and my sister for that matter—I would’ve put my hand on his arm and told him to hang in there. But I don’t have that relationship with him. So my hands stayed on either side of my plate and my eyes contemplated the pink circle of ham that was waiting on my plate to be sliced.
I know Helen suspects me of jealousy, but I honestly have no desire to get married. Not yet. I’m only seventeen. Even twenty, the age Helen is now, is too young. I don’t see what the rush is about.
“You’ll find someone soon enough,” my mother keeps telling me, even though I haven’t expressed one doubt or desire. “When you least expect it, love will come knocking.”
I’ve been on a few dates, but none of the boys have left much of an impression on me. Maybe I’m not cut out for love. That’s true for some people.
“My aunt never married,” Fern says. “Of course, she’s a teacher.”
“What has that got to do with it?” I ask.
We’re sitting at the lunch counter in Woolworth’s. Fern works the afternoon shift on Saturdays. Sometimes I come by in time for her break. She looks down and scratches a piece of dried food from her name tag.
“Men don’t want a woman with a job. My aunt didn’t start teaching until her mid-twenties. She must’ve given up on marrying someone by that point. Once that window of opportunity passes you by, well …” She takes a long sip of her Coke. “You have to take control of life before life takes control of you. I’m getting married by twenty.”
Fern is one to talk. She’s completely controlled by her mother. Mrs. Dover’s first child was stillborn, the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck.
“It was a girl,” Fern once whispered to me. “She was blue by the time she came out.”
When Fern arrived a few years later, Mrs. Dover was so terrified of something happening that she clamped on to Fern and never let go. Fern is bound by a lot of rules. She can’t date, she can’t stay out past nine (which is ridiculous, considering we’re practically adults), she has to call her mother whenever she arrives at and before she leaves a destination.
I don’t think things would be as bad for Fern if the Dovers had had another child, but once Fern was born alive and pink, Mrs. Dover had an operation. She wasn’t going to take any more chances. When Fern talks about taking control of her life, it’s all I can do not to arch an eyebrow. I’m not sure that her mother will ever let Fern out of her sight long enough for her to find a husband.
In any case, I don’t want to discuss marriage anymore. Not weddings or dresses or spinster aunts. And I have to leave for work, which makes Fern’s comment about men not wanting women with jobs sting all the more.
When I get to the Dairy Maid, Freddy Pender is on the phone with his mother. I don’t know how they find as much to talk about as they do, although I suppose the same could be said about Freddy and me.
“Well, how much does she want to pay?” he’s saying as I pass by. The small of my back brushes up against his stomach and I immediately feel my face turn crimson. About a month ago, I came to the realization that I have a crush on Freddy, but I’d die if he—or anyone else—ever found out.
You could say that Freddy and I are friends, but I’ve never really been friends with a boy before, so it’s strange thinking that way. Most boys I know are clumsy and either too shy or too bold and usually only after one thing. And once they get it, they’re on to the next girl. (I’ve never given it. Never given anything, for that matter. Sometimes I’m proud of that. Other times, embarrassed.) But Freddy isn’t like most boys. He’s fun and loves to talk and I’ve never once caught him looking at my chest instead of my eyes. He calls me his Cinema Princess (he’s the Theatre Prince) because every Friday night for the past two months, we’ve been going downtown to the Odeon Theatre. Freddy’s crazy for movies. I like movies and looking at people on screen who are better looking and lead more important lives and always say the perfect thing at the perfect time. Sometimes it’s easy to convince myself that that’s how real life could be, if only I lost a few pounds and had more confidence and knew how to dress. But for Freddy, the movies mean much more. Something happens to him. I can see it in his eyes when the screen goes bright. Like he’s under a spell. It seems so personal for him. Private. I asked him once if he would prefer going on his own and he got very serious.
“You’re part of the magic,” he said, and those words rolled and rolled inside by head. I wanted to tell Freddy that he was part of the magic, too. That while I was sitting in the movie theatre next to him, the darkness around us, I felt like the first tear of a wrapped present.
Last week, we went to see
A Place in the Sun
, and when Montgomery Clift told Elizabeth Taylor that he loved her even before he saw her, I was certain that Freddy was going to reach for me.
“Wasn’t Montgomery sensational?” he said as we left the theatre. I nodded, still thinking about the scene where Elizabeth says to Montgomery, “Tell Mama … Tell Mama all,” and then they kiss passionately. What would that be like? To give yourself over to something so completely? I hoped Freddy might take my hand as we walked home, but instead, he was preoccupied with the remains of his popcorn and his talk about Hollywood.
Being around Freddy is frustrating, because I can’t seem to get him to “see” me. I don’t know if that makes sense, because it’s not as though he doesn’t notice me. We go to the movies. We’ve gone for bike rides along the river and lain in the grass at Donlan Park all afternoon and sometimes we share a cigarette behind the Dairy Maid when it’s not busy. In other words, all the things that a boyfriend and girlfriend would do. Only we’re not that. But I want more. And I think Freddy does, too. It’s so complicated it makes my brain hurt sometimes.
I go to the backroom that Mr. Devlin, the owner, refers to as the “Gussy-Up Room.” There’s a sink and a mirror and a shelf stocked with cologne, aftershave, a razor, shaving cream, hair spray, a tube of lipstick (the most unnatural shade of red I’ve ever seen), a tortoiseshell compact that a customer left behind and a tin of black shoe polish. Mr. Devlin insists that all staff arrive at least ten minutes before their shift so that everyone has a chance to primp before stepping behind the counter to serve up banana splits and Tiger Tail ice cream.
I’ve been working at Dairy Maid for just over three months. I took the job when school finished to bide my time until I figured out what I wanted to do. Now it’s Labour Day weekend, and I still haven’t taken any definitive steps. Leaving Balsden is top of the list. I hate this town with its belching smokestacks and zombie citizens and the prevailing attitude that you might as well give in and give up before even trying. That’s what bothers me most about Helen. She’s only marrying Dickie because he asked.
“There are other guys in the world,” I said to her. “It’s not like God created Dickie and then shut down the factory.”
“People get trapped into thinking that anything worth having must involve some big journey,” she said. “Sailing on icebergs and thrashing through jungles with machetes. But what if it’s already here, Joyce? What if what you have now is as good as you’ll ever have?”
She slipped on her veil and examined herself in the mirror, her face blurred through a wall of netting.
“I’m the practical sort,” she said. “Like Mom. She told me that when she and Dad got married, she had her doubts. It’s expected. But over time, you can learn to love anyone. You, on the other hand.” She turned around. “You still think you’re in store for magic. Stars and firecrackers. But that’s because you’re young. You’ll see in another few years.”
“See what?”
“That your life is already mapped out whether you realize it or not. There’s a natural order to things, Joyce. You might as well make the best of it.”
I gather up my hair, fasten it into a ponytail and bobby-pin my paper Dairy Maid hat into place. Then I check the temperature of the hot fudge because Freddy always has it too hot and it slides off the ice cream.
“I suppose, Mother,” Freddy sighs. “But I’m not crazy about the idea of private lessons. She’s got about as much poise as a greased pig. What is it she wants to learn? The rumba? And by the end of summer? Kill me now. All right. You call me back after you’ve spoken to her. But this is the last time, Mother. I mean it.”
He hangs up and adjusts the paper hat on his head. He’s always been very particular about this. The hat has to sit just slightly off to the side. “I never sacrifice personal flair for uniformity,” he said once.
“Oh. Joyce,” he says when he sees me. He always says my name like I’m some kind of surprise.
“Hi, Freddy,” I say, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. I’m having trouble looking at him lately because I can’t stop noticing his blue eyes. There are other things, too—his blond wavy hair, the straw splat of freckles across his nose and cheeks. The cleft in his chin, just like Kirk Douglas’s. “Has it been busy?”
“Moderately,” he says. “We’re out of rum-and-raisin if anyone asks. I told Mr. Devlin last week to get some in, but he didn’t listen. Nothing new there.” He squints at me. “Did you colour your hair?”
“No,” I say, feeling my face stain red again.
“You should. It would soften your complexion. I got my mother to take the plunge, but it wasn’t easy. She said schoolteachers don’t bleach their hair. I told her that was a pile of garbage. Now she can’t stop looking at herself. Someone told her she looks like Lana Turner in
The Postman Always Rings Twice
. I wouldn’t go
that
far, but I think she looks younger. Now if only she’d lose twenty pounds.”
I can’t imagine Mrs. Pender blond. Both Fern and I had her as our teacher in grade six. I never liked her. She was stern and wore too much blush and would whack the desks with her yardstick if anyone got out of line. Fern thought Mrs. Pender was romantically frustrated.
“No man wants a woman with a child,” she said. “Damaged goods.”
A number of years ago, maybe eight or nine, Mrs. Pender’s husband died in an accident. He was on the roof during a storm, got hit by a bolt of lightning and then fell to his death. No one could say for sure whether it was the lightning or the fall that killed him, although my father thought it was likely a combination of three things.
“The lightning, the fall and a spectacular lack of common sense,” he said.
I’ve never heard Freddy mention his father. All he ever seems to talk about is his budding career. He’s convinced he’s going to be a movie star. When he’s not serving ice cream, he’s teaching tap dancing to women in a studio above the mechanic’s shop on Bowden Street. I overheard my mother’s friend talking about him once.
“He certainly isn’t the most masculine thing on the planet. But he does have ambition and they say that’s half the battle.”
“He’s as fruity as they come,” Helen said once. “Baton and all.”
“That’s not true!” I shot back, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what “fruity” meant. But I knew it wasn’t a compliment. “You don’t know the first thing about him.”
Freddy was in my sister’s grade and was, among other things, the baton twirler for the high school marching band.
“I didn’t think there were boy baton twirlers,” Fern said to Helen.
“There aren’t,” Helen answered out of the corner of her mouth.
“Of course there are,” I said. “Lots of them.”
Two years ago, before I even knew Freddy, there was a championship game between our high school football team and the Catholic high school team. I’d never seen so much hoopla in my entire life, which was largely the result of our school not having made it to the finals in years. You’d have thought the new Queen Elizabeth was coming. Still, it was hard not to get caught up in the excitement. For once, it felt as though I was part of something magical and important. Fern and I planned to go even though we couldn’t have cared less about football.
The day of the finals, a parade was planned to run along Parker Street and eventually lead straight onto the football field. Fern and I stood bundled and huddled under the grey November sky, waiting for the parade to wind its way to us. The sidewalks were thick with people wearing hats and ear-muffs, and breath hung in the air like small clouds. Eventually, we heard the distant notes of trumpets and drums. Everyone began to clap and whoop and little kids jumped up and down and tried to break free from their parents’ arms to run into the middle of the road.
“I hope they’re not expecting Santa,” Fern said.
I stood on my tiptoes and leaned over just far enough to catch sight of the band turning onto Parker Street. I caught a flash of something white and it wasn’t until the band got closer that I realized it was Freddy Pender, leading the parade with his baton. For some reason, he’d chosen to dress not in the band uniform, but in a white suit. He was wearing a hat like my father puts on for his Elks Lodge meetings, only it was white to match his suit. An oversized pompom dangled from it, bouncing to the beat as Freddy’s knees slapped the sky. His blue eyes were frozen on some distant point on the horizon, his smile hard and wide, like the grille of a car. He stopped in front of us, threw his baton up in the air, spun twice and caught it in his white-gloved hand on the descent. I’d never seen a boy so … I wasn’t sure what the word was. I’m still not sure.
Feminine
didn’t seem right. It wasn’t like he was wearing a skirt. But he was garish. Outrageous.
Un-Balsden.
Based on the laughter and half-hearted claps Freddy generated as he passed, I could tell the crowd felt the same way. But I didn’t see anything wrong. In fact, I think he had more courage than any of those pea-brained football players. Everyone spends so much time trying to be like everyone else. At least Freddy knew who he was. And maybe, even before our paths had crossed, that moment in the parade was when I
really
fell for Freddy.