The Yearbook (12 page)

The girls filed onto a raised platform and sang a program of folk songs, starting with “Foggy, Foggy Dew” and rolling right on through to “Mr. Rabbit”—Lola always a beat or two behind, trying to mouth the words. Afterward they stayed for tea with the audience. Ruby and Lola sat down with an old, old lady who described how she had buried her silver candlesticks to hide them from the Confederates and then couldn't find them again after the war.

The tea party broke up, and Lola went to get the coats from a cloakroom by the entrance. She was partway down the hall when she heard the ring of a hammer and glanced into the open door of a custodian's workshop. A man in overalls leaned over some sort of a machine, the parts spread around him on the floor.

Even from the back, she knew it was Peter. She took a step into the room. “Hello,” she said softly.

Peter turned. At the sight of her he stepped backward, involuntarily, it seemed, and an expression like fear flashed across his face so fast that she wondered if she'd imagined it. “You're back,” he said finally. “I'd heard.”

She nodded. “I haven't seen you around.”

Peter looked at her steadily but did not answer. His green eyes seemed to bore like an x-ray all the way through to her bones. He had not looked at her that way the night of the dance.

“I joined the glee club,” she said. “We had a concert. And a t-t-tea party.” Her teeth had chattered.

Peter pulled a rag from his pocket and rubbed slowly at the grease on his hands. He set the rag aside and reached into his shirt collar, drawing out Lola's necklace. “Here it is. Right next to my heart.” There was an edge to his voice. Of anger? Of wariness? Lola couldn't tell.

She realized with a twinge of guilt that she'd almost forgotten about her pretend heirloom, the fading fantasy of a twelve-year-old. “It's my—” She couldn't think of the word. She watched the gold chain graze the skin of Peter's neck and slide through his wavy brown hair as he pulled it over his head. He did not hand it to her but laid it on a work table in the middle of the room. He returned to his work, then, but she could feel him watching her as she went to the table.

The necklace was fixed and polished. She put it on. The metal felt hot as it settled against her chest. “I hope it wasn't any trouble,” she said.

“It's what I like. Taking things apart, learning their secrets.” Then he turned his back to her, as if their business was at an end.

What was wrong with him? His strangeness, his coldness, seemed to confirm that he had indeed been avoiding her. But why?

She glanced behind her at the open door. She wanted to turn and go through it but couldn't. She felt angry with herself. The old Lola wouldn't have stayed two seconds where she wasn't wanted. It was like she'd swallowed a magnet the night of the dance that kept pulling her toward Peter, making her seek him out in the pages of the yearbook and, now, in the flesh. She had been so sure that Peter liked her, that some strong feeling had passed between them.

“Do you work here?” she asked.

He didn't look up. “Odd jobs. Now and then.”

She gestured at the metal parts. “What's all this?”

“An electric vacuum sweeper. Or it used to be. And I hope it will be again. Taking things apart is a lot easier than putting them back together.”

“There's always duct tape,” Lola said.

“Tape?”

“You know, it's that waterproof tape that—” she said, then caught herself; maybe duct tape hadn't been invented yet. Miss Bryant would have known, but she was somewhere in the future with the duct tape. She watched Peter continue to work. She could see that her presence unsettled him. His body was tense. Some powerful emotion was overtaking him, too. Maybe he felt the magnet, just as she did. Or was it something else? She thought again of that other girl Whoopsie had mentioned, that Paulette person who wanted to be Mrs. Hemmings.

The vacuum belt snapped into place.

Peter stood up.

He looked at her again, then moved toward her with sudden determination. He seemed taller than before. Instinct told her to back up, but she held her ground. He took her hand; he seemed to be feeling the bones, the joints, the texture of her skin, all the time looking straight into her eyes.

Lola noticed, more than ever, his beautiful face, the hard muscles of his arm. These were the same eyes she'd looked into at the dance, the same arms that had spun her in and out, but they now seemed to belong to someone else, someone older, frightening.

“I just wanted to see if—” he said, moving closer.

She felt paralyzed. “See if what?”

He ran a hand over her hair.

She could feel his breath on her face.

Neither heard the approach of Whoopsie, who swept into the room in a cloud of lilac perfume and stopped short, taking in the scene. Peter dropped Lola's hand and turned away from her.

“My oh my, what's this here? It's all sidelong glances and quickened palpitations.” She opened her bag and took a swig from a little flask. “You must forgive me for bringing bootleg whiskey onto these esteemed premises, but the whole thing is just too, too gruesome.” She collapsed onto a footstool, her legs stretched out in front of her. “No sooner do I pass through the front doors of this joint than I start thinking about how one day I'll be a crotchety, withered-up crone myself. I'll have to wear false teeth and flat shoes and lug around an ear trumpet, and, oh dear, my hair, my beautiful curly hair. I can't bear it.”

“You're only sixteen, Whoopsie,” Peter said. He had returned to his task and was rummaging in his toolbox as if nothing had happened.

“That shows how much you know. I'm seventeen. I was seventeen last week. The Grim Reaper's stalking me.” She offered up the flask. “Want some?”

They both declined.

Whoopsie screwed the cap back on and snapped the illicit liquor into her pocketbook. “Well, au revoir, Mr. Hemmings,” she said, rising unsteadily from the stool. “Parting is such sweet sorrow, but Mike must take her leave.” She took Lola's arm and reeled toward the door.

“Looks like I'm the designated driver,” Lola told Whoopsie.

“Designated what?”

“I mean, you could get a DUI.”

“A what?”

Lola changed her approach. “Can I drive your car?”

“You know how?”

“Sure. I drove all the time in New York.”

She saw Peter's face darken as she pronounced the name of her fake hometown. He didn't believe it. What was he thinking? She looked down at the floor to make her confusion less conspicuous.

“Let's dash, then,” Whoopsie said. “Ruby's waiting. Good luck with that contraption, Thomas Edison.”

The three girls ran down the hill to the car. Whoopsie flung herself with tipsy abandon into the back seat, and Ruby settled into the front passenger seat, humming one last chorus of “Foggy, Foggy Dew.”

Lola slipped into the driver's seat and found herself confronted with a set of controls as foreign as an alien vessel's. There were two metal arms flush under the steering wheel like the arms on a compass, a couple of mystery knobs down by her knees, a red-needled pressure gauge jutting up out of the dash in a threatening manner, and a weird little button under the steering wheel marked
START.
But where to start?

“Hmm,” Lola said, rubbing her temples. “Golly ding. I think I've got a migraine coming on.”

“Of course,” Whoopsie said. “It's the old Hillside migraine. I get one every time I come over here. Thus, the hooch.”

Ruby drove. Soon the Ford was skimming over the lonely roads back to town.

Lola stared out at the black trees in the dusk and watched drizzle snake down the glass. Her encounter with Peter had shaken her. She felt she'd waited a hundred years to meet him again, only to find him so different that it was as if a strange spirit had invaded his body. She had left him waiting at the fountain, yes, but could that account for such a change in attitude toward her? She felt it was something more, something to do with the way he'd felt her hand, and how he'd got close and touched her hair. Had he meant to kiss her? She didn't think so. It was more like he'd wanted to examine her up close, the way he'd been examining the machine on the floor. She couldn't forget his face, the tips of his fingers in her hair.

“Lola? Aren't you listening?” She realized then that Ruby Gadd was talking, and had been talking for some time, like background music you suddenly become aware of.

“Yes, I'm listening,” Lola said.

Ruby was pointing out the window. “See right there? See? That's it.”

In the dusk, Lola could just make out a construction site on the side of the road. “That's what?”

“I told you. It's my daddy's brick factory, or at least, that's where he's building it. They're just getting started on it—my daddy and my uncles.”

Fairview
, Lola thought. They were in that old dump Fairview, or rather, where that new old dump Fairview would one day stand, because now farmland and the occasional silhouette of a barn showed out the window.

The Gadd brick factory wasn't built yet, and she, Lola Lundy, knew how its crumbling carcass would look. People were forever trying to predict the future, calling hotlines and deciphering Mayan calendars, but being certain of it left her with an uneasy feeling, as if she'd just cheated on a test. She felt glad she stank at history; just imagine how much more of the future she might know if she'd bothered to study.

“You cannot imagine how fatigued I am of hearing about that blankety-blank brick factory,” Whoopsie was groaning. “You might as well know, Mike, that's what passes for excitement around Ashfield. Well, let me tell you something: I'm gonna shake the dust of this one-cow hick town off my heels and see the world.”

“Listen to the Queen of Sheba,” Ruby said. “Shake the dust, my foot.”

“Shows how much you know,” Whoopsie said. “You just watch me and see what I do. I've got a plan. You just watch.”

“And Thumbtack? Is he gonna shake the dust off his heels, too?”

“He'll come around.”

Ruby turned to Lola. “Thumbtack Matthews is the biggest homebody anybody ever met. He wants to take over his daddy's mercantile as soon as he graduates, and this crazy flapper thinks she's gonna turn him into a city slicker. She's always showing him photographs out of those magazines of hers, but do you think he cares one hoot about New York? He doesn't. Not one hoot or honk.”

Whoopsie crossed her arms and sulked. It seemed she couldn't argue the point. There was no denying that Thumbtack was an oak tree with roots anchored in the Ashfield soil. At last the car pulled up at the curb in front of the Wrigley house. The windows glowed yellow in the dark.

“Well, here you are, safe and sound—no thanks to me,” Whoopsie said.

Lola threw open the massive car door. “I'll see you guys, then.”

Whoopsie and Ruby shrieked like they'd been pinched. “Guys?” Ruby said.

“We say that,” Lola explained. “In New York, I mean.”

The girls nodded solemnly at the mention of that fabled city.

“All right, then,” Whoopsie said. “See you, guy.”

Lola was about to explain that two or more girls could be called guys, and that a guy in the singular was always a boy, but the whole thing seemed way too complicated. She stepped out onto the curb.

“Until tomorrow night, then, Mike,” Whoopsie called after her.

Lola turned. “What's tomorrow night?”

“The picnic. You don't mean to say you don't know about it?”

Whoopsie had the same shocked look Lola had seen on Miss Roach's face the other day in history class when Lola couldn't name the sitting US president. Lola had, out of politeness, hazarded a few guesses: Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Paul Revere, General Custard, but the more she guessed, the more Miss Roach had twitched and clawed at her starched lace collar. Evidently it was some guy named Calvin Cartridge. Was it fair to expect a person to know a thing like that?

“Bring a big bowl of mashed potatoes,” Whoopsie was shouting over the idling motor. “A big one.”

“Wait a minute. What picnic?” called Lola.

“Up at Eagle Rock. The gang's having a bonfire.”

“You don't mean Eagle Rock Park?” Lola said. “It's not very safe up there.”

“You mean the bears?” Ruby called out, craning her neck around Whoopsie.

“Bears?” Lola said. “Are there bears?”

“They keep to themselves at this time of year,” Ruby said.

“Real bears?”

“Well, we don't mean Teddy bears,” Whoopsie called as the car slid away from the curb. “You poor, dumb New Yorker, you.”

Bears at Eagle Rock sounded unlikely but plausible, like those stories on the news of crocodiles squeezing up pipes into people's toilets. But if nobody else was afraid, why should she be? And maybe she'd see Peter there. She had to see him again. She waved goodbye at the car and ran toward home.

Thumbtack Matthews pulled up in his Nash Rambler late the next afternoon, with Whoopsie close beside him in the front seat. He was quick to jump out and open the door for Lola, and hold her covered dish as she got situated in the back beside Ruby and Hershel.

As instructed, Lola had brought a big ceramic bowl of mashed potatoes. Henrietta had stared at her for suggesting a Tupperware container, a thing unknown until 1946, and again, five minutes later, for suggesting that, instead of a dishtowel, the bowl be covered with Saran Wrap, a convenience unavailable until 1953.

The car smelled like fried chicken and potatoes and apple pie and old tobacco and Whoopsie's perfume. Thumbtack seemed to feel ridiculous for attacking Lola at the fall dance, and kept trying to atone for it with extra gallantry. The sun was setting as the Nash puttered up, up, up the hillside toward Eagle Rock Park. Lola knew the place well but was unable to recognize the curving country road they took to get there. It was a road long gone by her generation.