Things I’ll Never Say (8 page)

Mrs. Kepner's heroines may not have worn black stockings or sequined bras, but like Courtney Love, they broke the mold. In her version of Red Riding Hood, it was Grandma, not the famous little girl in a cape, who took charge: “Yeah,” Granny told Red, “I fed him that jive about ‘Oh, what big teeth you have'. And then I plugged him right between the hairy eyeballs!”

My favorite story, though, was the one Mrs. Kepner never finished. She started it the last time we went shopping. On the way, Ruthie kept trying to pump me for her book report on
Shiloh
, but I was a lot more interested in her mother's potboiler. This one was about a princess who started out so poor that, in order to make the rent, her family forced her to marry a hideous beast who, even though he looked like a giant wolf, had a palace that was high and dry and paid for.

“Some girls, they'll settle for anyone with an open wallet, right? But this princess, she didn't care about men with fancy airs or panty hose. She wanted a guy who knew how to have fun, you know what I mean?” Mrs. Kepner stopped, cradling her Pic-Fresh bag, to light a cigarette; as we continued down the street, I watched the ashes grow longer and longer. “Most men, I don't care if they're Lord High Whatchamacallit, they just don't get it. They think romance is turning down the TV for dinner.”

I couldn't take my eyes off that fragile cocoon at the end of Mrs. Kepner's cigarette. Each time she inhaled, the end lit up and grew longer. The sun glanced off her hair, turning it orange. Her makeup, more liberally applied than Ruthie's and mine at our makeover, made her a cartoon cover girl, a face like the ones Maynard Owens drew on top of balloon boobs and passed to me in science.

“Turns out, then, this princess fooled everyone. 'Stead of being miserable with that saber-tooth boy toy of hers, she was happier than she'd ever been. He brought out the best in her, you know?”

“How does it end?” Ruthie, walking between us, was still focused on
Shiloh.
“Does the dog die?” She claimed she hadn't read the last chapter, but I figured she hadn't even started the book. The report was due the next day. “I'll bet the dog dies. Am I right?”

I told her I didn't want to spoil the surprise for her, but the truth is, if she'd been one of my for-real friends, the ones I needed more than they needed me, I would have given her a plot summary on the spot. Instead, I looked at Mrs. Kepner over Ruthie's shoulder. “So?” I said.

“So the two of them had more fun together than either of them ever had alone. Every day, they slept in the beast's big carved bed, but every night, they partied in the forest. The beast took her for long rides on his hairy back, and they played this game where if she fell off, he'd jump her bones. And her bones were pretty hot, you know?”

“Mom!” Ruthie stopped walking. She put her bag of groceries on the sidewalk. “This is way too heavy. I got all the bottles in here.”

Not very gently, I took Ruthie's bag and put my own into her arms. When I'd made the switch, I turned back to her mother. “So then what happened?”

Mrs. Kepner took another drag, frowned at her daughter, then started down the street again. “Well, you girls have hardly lived long enough to know it, but good times? They're over before you know you've had them. Turns out, that beast wasn't no beast at all.” (Exhale.) “He was a legitimate, card-carrying prince who'd been put under a spell. It took the kiss of True Love to break it.”

Ruthie, who had given up trying to wheedle
Shiloh
crib notes, tore a piece of paper off the edge of her grocery bag and put it in her mouth. She chewed on it thoughtfully as Mrs. Kepner explained what happened next.

“See, the princess was falling in love with this hairy fool.” (Drag.) “She loved the way he looked at her with his wolf eyes. And she loved the way he put his paws on her face but kept his big old claws pulled in.” (Exhale.)

“I'm bored.” Ruthie, who had undoubtedly heard every one of her mother's stories before, was hopping from one sneakered foot to the other. “I'll see you slowpokes back at the house.” She pulled in front of us, her legs straightened into a show-off racewalk, and disappeared around the corner by Scott's Pharmacy and the Java Hut.

Mrs. Kepner dropped her filter tip in a planter outside the pharmacy and put down her grocery bag. She dug into both pockets of her coat, then went through the innards of her purse. Finding nothing, she sighed theatrically, picked up the bag again, and continued her story. “So one night, after they took a boom box into the woods and woke up all the birds with their laughing and dancing, she finally went and did it.”

When she paused, I looked up to see if she was hunting for a cigarette again, but instead she was focused straight ahead. I followed her glance. Just visible now that we'd rounded the corner, Ruthie was keeping a steady pace and had nearly reached our street.

I, on the other hand, slowed down, even let a tangerine roll out of my bag so I'd have to stop and pick it up. I was afraid that once she got home and it was time to put the food away, Mrs. Kepner would forget about the story. Besides, my mother had made me promise never to set foot inside the house. “What?” I asked. “What did she do?”

“Huh?”

“The princess,” I reminded her. “What did she finally do?”

“Well, looking at the beast, you'd figure him for a pretty tough customer.” She had fallen back into the story now, was striding ahead at a steady pace. “But the princess didn't see things that way anymore. She'd got so used to looking at that monster kisser of his every day, all she saw now was how much fun he was and how much he loved her. So she planted one on him.”

“A kiss?”

“Sure. And on account of no one made her do it, on account of it was a kiss of True Love, it broke the spell. The beast turned into a handsome prince right there in front of her. The two of them high-fived and headed back to the palace.”

“And lived happily ever after,” I finished for her. Even though Mrs. Kepner's stories often threw me for a loop, I knew where this one was headed.

But Ruthie's mother shook her head. “At first they did,” she said. “All the new princess's sisters were jealous of her good-looking guy and her castle full of servants. But pretty soon, life lost its punch, you know? And the princess had to admit she was downright bored. ‘Aw, come on, Harold,' she told him. (She got to call the prince Harold after they were married, even though everyone else had to call him Your Lord Higher than High.) ‘Why can't we do some of the kinky things we used to? Remember when we were wild? When I rode on your back and pulled your hair?' But that stuffy prince, he didn't remember those good times at all. He just kept telling her to be still and kiss his ring.

“It wasn't long before the princess figured out a beast that's fun trumps a prince that ain't, any day. So she packed up all her stuff and ran for daylight —”

First it was Ruthie's scream that stopped us, then it was the fall — right on her own front steps. Just as we looked up, Ruthie's shopping bag flew into the air like some big awkward bird. Then her legs went up, too. And came down. Hard.

I was pretty scared by the time we got to her; she lay still as a statue on the sidewalk by the porch. Her eyelashes were fluttering, though, so I knew she wasn't dead. I leaned over her, a mix of curiosity and fright making pictures in my head — Mrs. Kepner and me in the ambulance, Ruthie in a hospital bed, with tubes and wires and blinking lights. The same pictures must have been playing in Mrs. Kepner's head, too, because she dropped to her knees and started sobbing. “Ruthie! Ruthie! Oh, my God! Somebody help my baby! Don't let her die!”

Ruthie, who was apparently injured much less seriously than we supposed, sat up. “Mom!” She grabbed her mother's hands, which were clasped together in what I could only assume was prayer. “Mom, I was just kidding.” She jumped up, pulling her mother with her. “See?” She wiggled her toes and tapped her head. “I'm fine.”

Mrs. Kepner stopped crying and looked at Ruthie. She brushed her daughter's hair from her face and cupped her chin in her hands. “You were kidding?”

“Yeah.” Ruthie wriggled in her mother's hold. “Sorry.”

“You ain't hurt?”

Ruthie shook her head, and her mother helped her to stand up. The two of them stared at each other, and I was sure that Ruthie had gone too far this time. I don't remember which of them started first, but soon, to my complete astonishment, they were both laughing hysterically.

“Oh, my God, Ruthie,” Mrs. Kepner managed, tears and mascara streaming down her cheeks. “You got me good. Oh, my God, I thought for sure you went and busted the spaghetti sauce!”

They stood like that, right at the front door, howling. They laughed so long and so hard that, even now, it gives me a twinge of jealousy to remember it. Maybe that was why I went along with the plan.

It didn't seem so bad at first. I mean, teasing and ostracizing just washed right off Ruthie's happy-go-lucky duck's back, anyway. I don't remember whose idea it was, but I agreed to tell my new neighbor that all my friends and I were going to a slumber party at Mr. Popularity's house the following week. And to persuade Ruthie that, wonder of wonders, Maynard Owens had invited her, too.

Ruthie didn't thank me or sigh or clasp her hands in ecstasy. But you could still tell she was pretty happy about being included. I added the instructions that the in-clique had agreed on: she wasn't to tell anyone this was a boy-girl party, she should wear her cutest pajamas under her coat, and she should bring a giant stuffed animal to sleep with.

“I don't have no stuffed animals,” she told me, considering, her head to one side in that way she had. “But Momma's got this big ol' guitar pillow she done won at the Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville. Will that do?”

“Sure,” I told her. “Just don't forget, this is top secret. Maynard's folks are out of town, so tell your mom it's at my house, practically next door.”

“I guess you and me can walk to Maynard's from your place, huh?”

Ruthie sounded like walking to the party together would be as much fun as the party itself. I felt a tiny thrill of guilt, but I fought through it. “I can't get there for the beginning,” I told her. “My mom has a big dinner she needs my help with, but I'll come as soon as I can. Just be sure you're at Maynard's by seven sharp, okay?”

Ruthie, as it turns out, was right on time. But none of us had counted on Lenore Kepner's new boyfriend. We didn't know she'd been dating a mechanic at the Super Shell, who, of course, had a car. I guess the two of them, Mrs. K. and the short, dark, un-prince-like man who came with her that night, had insisted on dropping Ruthie off at my house before they went out. And I guess that was when Ruthie had to tell them that the party was actually at Maynard's. Because just a few minutes after seven, there they were.

The mechanic's lime-green Ferrari rumbled while the two adults waited for Ruthie to ring the doorbell. The clique and I waited, too, tucked behind the fence that separated the Owenses' house from Sue Racine's. Sue was blonder than blond and mean in a cool, animal way that mesmerized us all. “Here comes the fun,” she whispered as Harriet Owens, Maynard's pretty mother, opened the door.

We couldn't hear what they said, but we could see the surprise on Harriet's face and the sudden, frantic effort Ruthie made to close her coat over the purple ruffles of her PJs. When Maynard was called to the door, he and his mother both looked at their visitor with a mix of confusion and pity. After a brief conversation, Ruthie dropped the overstuffed guitar pillow she'd carried to the door and turned to face the Ferrari. “Momma!” She ran from the curb, her face clenched tight like a fist, fighting tears. “Momma!”

Mrs. Kepner was out of the car, just opening her arms, when the bicyclist came around the corner. The rest of us, behind the fence, saw it all — the way Mrs. Kepner fell to her knees when the bike and Ruthie collided. The way Ruthie landed on the sidewalk like a floppy rag doll. Sue Racine stood frozen, one hand over her mouth. Some of the other girls screamed. And me? I kept hoping that Ruthie would stand up like she had when she'd fallen down with the groceries, that she'd wiggle her toes and arms at us. “See? I'm fine.”

She didn't, of course. In fact, when the mechanic and the cyclist finally helped her to sit up, it was clear from the way her right elbow angled out like a broken wing that Ruthie wouldn't be “fine” for quite some time. It was a whole week before she came back to school. And even then, she couldn't write letters or work math problems on account of the cast on her arm. Sue Racine said we all had to sign it, that we needed to be extra nice to Ruthie so she wouldn't tell what we'd done.

We needn't have worried, though. Ruthie told everyone that she'd made a mistake and gone to the wrong house. She let the adults suppose that, just like always, the joke was on her. But even as she saved us from blame and worse, the victim of our cruelty, the naive butt of our constant, merciless teasing, had clearly decided to punish us in her own way. Ruthie, you see, never spoke to Sue or the others again. She never looked at them hopefully when we chose up teams in gym. She never laughed when Sue's best friend did her imitation of our math teacher, sleazy Slater. And she never asked any of them to add their signatures to those of the social outcasts who covered her plaster arm with hearts and
X
s and
O
s. In fact, there was only one member of our group exempted from this silent treatment, only one person whose favor she still curried. Only one she asked to sign her cast:

“I know you didn't have nothin' to do with that mean trick,” she told me, handing me a fat pink marker. “I know you was helping your mom with her dinner party.” So I was shamed into signing a noncommittal, dashed-off “Get well soon” on the cast. I continued, just as before, to be the reluctant object of all Ruthie's lavish overtures, her confidences, her persistent attempts at intimacy. And because she wouldn't be carrying groceries anytime soon, Ruthie and Mrs. Kepner almost never took a shopping trip without me. Which is why, when her mother and that mechanic finally got married and decided to move back South, it was only me, out of all the kids in school, who Ruthie promised to write to.