One Day You'll Leave Me, page 14
Once she stopped giggling she asked, “I know that’s not a true story, but why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you keep turning him down? I mean, I went to school with him. I didn’t know him, we weren’t friends, but I knew who he was and I can tell you at least half the girls in the school would have killed to go on a date with him. My friend Sue, a week before she got married told me if he asked her out she’d call the wedding off.”
“What a lucky man your friend hooked, that’s going to be a lovely marriage.”
She smiled but was still waiting for my answer. I wasn’t getting out of it. So I shrugged.
“I’m just not attracted to him.”
“Not attracted to him? Gosh, you must have really high standards. Who are you waiting for? Warren Beatty?” It’s a good thing she’d turned her eyes back up towards the ceiling and didn’t catch my expression. I thought of the Warren Beatty of 2010.
“No, it’s not that at all, I think Ralph is very good looking and I also think he’s a great guy. Maybe a touch pompous, from all the attention he gets, but nice. He’s not the problem.”
Judith rolled over, propped her elbow on the bed and then her head on her hand. “Okay,” she said, and then waited for me to tell her what the problem was exactly.
So I took a deep breath and did.
“It’s not just Ralph I’m not attracted to. It’s boys, or men, in general, that I’m not interested in.”
She became so still, so quickly, she probably stopped breathing mid-breath.
“I don’t think I under...” The look of bemusement dropped from her face as she sat up. “You don’t mean...”
“Yes, I do. I’m...” I trailed off trying to think. Is the term “gay” part of the sixties vernacular? Didn’t sound right. But neither did lesbian. Queer? Ew. “I’m attracted to women, Judith.”
Even though we were at least a foot apart on the bed, she still leaned away from me. That kinda hurt.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you or...”
“No, no, you didn’t, but, um...” She stood and pointed towards the alarm clock. “It’s already nine and I’ve been gone all day so I really should get going.”
“Because of what I just said.”
“No. Not at all, it’s just that I still have some things to do, for tomorrow, so...” She was halfway down the hallway before I even made it to my feet.
“Judith, I’m really sorry. I was only trying to be honest.”
I followed her to the door but cautiously, like I was trying to approach a skittish deer without spooking it into bolting.
Whether she didn’t hear me or just chose to ignore it, I don’t know.
“Thank you, Evelyn, for going to the diner with me today and for the walk and everything else. It was fun. I’ll see...uh...bye.”
“You forgot the dress!” I shouted at her from the porch just as she was opening her car door.
“That’s okay! I’ll just wear one of mine!” She didn’t peel out of the driveway but she’d made her point.
Boy, that did not go the way I thought it would.
I figured she’d be relieved to know she wasn’t the only person in the whole world who felt the way she did (it’s what I felt as a teenager, and that was in the eighties). I thought she’d be happy to have someone she could talk to about it, to finally have even just one friend she didn’t have to lie to constantly. I never expected her to run out of here like I had the plague. Or the mumps.
But hey, I wanted to know her story and now I’d just gotten a small piece of it. She hadn’t figured things out this early. She didn’t actually come out, officially at least, until the eighties. Could be another sixteen years.
I was happy to learn something new, but not so happy that I probably blew my chances at finding out if it was just a joke or if there really was an actual song called The Shoop Shoop.
15
I woke up the next morning thankful that I was still here and with all the lyrics of The Shoop Shoop Song playing in my head. Betty Everett, of course. I’d heard it plenty of times.
I didn’t even have to think about it.
There were a lot of things I didn’t have to think about. Like going to work. I had no problem finding the place, I had no problem recalling all of my co-worker’s names, I even knew several of the regular customers. I worked both on the floor selling ladies dresses and slips, and also in the back offices, when needed, to answer phones, type up correspondence...and make the coffee. My 21st century brain seethed at that, but I had Fran to seethe along with me, so it wasn’t all that bad.
I also met, for all intents and purposes, my father.
I saw him before he saw me, I already knew what he looked like. Taller than average, lanky, his dark hair already thinning, soft brown eyes behind the half black-rimmed glasses that matched his brown suit and shoes. Not the most handsomest of men, a big nerd in school who was still growing out of it, but he looked like a good man. No, I knew he was a good man. A man who loved his daughter and didn’t deserve to be deceived.
I managed to keep it together, when the memories and emotions hit at the sight of him. It’s a good thing, that to him, today was no different than any other day. He’d seen me just three days ago, at the end of work on Friday, so there was nothing dramatic about it, our meeting. All I got was a “Good morning, honey” and a quick squeeze of the shoulder before he had to attend to a busy workday.
What could I do? I certainly didn’t want to hurt anyone, but I had no control over the situation. I didn’t choose to be someone else. And even if I wanted to go back, and let her return, I was starting to think I just flat out no longer had a choice in the matter.
When ten o’clock rolled around, I thought about calling Judith, to ask about the party. I could slip away from work for an hour, hell, my father owned the place, but decided against it. Clearly I’d made her uncomfortable, she wouldn’t want me there. But she’d also probably be too polite to say so, so I made the decision for her.
To keep my mind off of it, I made smalltalk with the ladies who came into the store to buy expensive gloves and girdles. I teased Fran about having to wear a dress to work. I studied the paper when I had a few spare minutes throughout the day, and made plans. Fran and I walked to the Woolworth’s three blocks down the busy streets at lunchtime for a couple of bacon and tomato sandwiches with apple pie and malted milks. My treat. Not just because the entire bill was less than two dollars but also because I got paid almost twice as much as she did even though we both had essentially the same job. She was not aware of that fact and I thought it best to keep it that way. I rather liked having functioning eardrums.
It was bad enough when I asked her if she’d managed to find Dwight the day before. She hadn’t and she let me know just how teed off she was about it. Me and half of the Woolworth’s lunch counter.
All in all, by the end of the day, I think I did pretty well. I only slipped up once early in the day. When I guessed a woman’s size at a four and I got a funny confused look. There was no such thing as size four in the women’s department. She was a size twelve. No one was trying to appear thinner by slapping a smaller number on a label. What women did in these days to appear thinner, was, well, be thin.
By the time I pulled into my driveway at the end of the workday I was thinking about one of those hypothetical questions we’ve all asked or been asked before.
If you traveled back in time and had to do without modern conveniences, which one would you miss the most? Which one would you not be able to live without?
I don’t think I would have hesitated in giving my answer before I actually did travel back in time. The internet. Of course.
But now that I was here, I thought, as I walked through my front door after driving straight home after work and roasting in my metal tank of a car under the Texas sun, I knew better.
The answer is central air.
Screw the internet.
And above that, even above refreshing cool air, at least for this particular moment, the answer would have been an answering machine. Even a ten pound 1985 clunker of an answering machine would have been wonderful. Just to know if she’d called. What’s a little heat stroke after all?
If I did have the internet, I’d be able to look it up and learn that there are in fact answering machines around in 1964. Large impractical monstrosities that cost an arm and a leg, but they do exist. But who cares, that information wouldn’t have done me any good anyway.
What was going to do me good was another shower. My second of the day. Thank God I hadn’t been accidentally shipped off to 1804 or I’d have had to make do with a bucket.
After my shower I had the last of Mrs. Luskin’s ham. I watched a little TV. I read. I washed Mrs. Luskin’s Tupperware bowl and dried it. I thought about walking over and returning it but without a cell phone, I wasn’t going to risk missing a call.
By eleven o’clock, after pouring over the business section of the newspaper once again while the phone remained stubbornly silent, I gave it up as a lost cause, took one last quick shower, and called it a night.
The next day I met Dwight.
I was surprised to see he was every bit as handsome, if not more so, than I had pictured. And even more surprised to see Fran transform into a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl in front of him when he and Ralph showed up at the store right before lunchtime.
It was embarrassing really, all the giggling and batting of eyelashes. I’m pretty sure she was going for sultry but that fell apart when one of her fake eyelashes fell off mid-blink.
“Hello Mr. Englewood, Mr. Ellison, here to buy every tie I have in stock?” my father asked. He placed a hand on each of the boy’s shoulders and winked at me playfully.
“No sir, Mr. Bryant, we’re here to take Evelyn and Fran out to lunch.”
“Sorry Ralph, but I’m afraid Evelyn has a date with me this afternoon. Evelyn? You wanted to speak to me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“See you later Evelyn,” Dwight said, and then clapped a deflated Ralph on the back, “come on, cheer up buddy, we can still go have some lunch.”
I smiled and waved at all of them before following my father back to his office.
“Hey! Just because Evie isn’t going doesn’t mean I’m not still hungry!” Frannie shouted across the store behind us. Ralph and Dwight were already halfway outside the door.
“So what’s this about honey? Everything okay?”
“Yes, sir, everything’s fine,” I said, as he opened his office door for me. “I’ve just been thinking about something, and I need your help.”
“Okay, I’m all ears.”
I entered his office, pulled the newspaper out of my purse, and hoped he wouldn’t laugh too hard at what I had to say.
That evening was a repeat of the day before. I drove straight home after work, even though I was going to have to risk going to the grocery store soon. There were a couple of TV dinners in the freezer but believe it or not, they looked just as bad as anything you’d find in 2010. And there was no microwave. That meant having the oven on for thirty or forty minutes. In this heat? With no air conditioning? Puh!
No calls, except from my mother, who told me not to worry, I’d get what I asked for, she’d see to it. And another from Frannie who’d reverted back to her old self now that Dwight wasn’t around.
“What a damned disaster today was!”
“What are you talking about?” It couldn’t be about her lunch date, she’d already vented to me about that at work. Seems Dwight didn’t pay her enough attention and instead spent too much time talking to Ralph about cars or baseball or some other ridiculous topic.
“My father’s car broke down, so after waiting outside the store for half an hour before getting the call, I had to take the bus home, and very nearly took my eye out when I was trying to put my eyelashes back on and we hit a damned pothole.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I’d have come back to drive you home.”
“How could I? You wouldn’t have been home.”
“True, go on.”
“So there I am walking the three blocks to my house from the bus stop sweating my tail off and here comes old Mr. Goldstein’s dumb dog yapping his fool head off and almost takes a chunk out of my calf. Well the last thing I need is rabies so I tried to swat at him with my purse and that’s when my heel gets caught in a crack in the sidewalk and it snaps clean off! Now I’ve got a broken shoe and a twisted ankle.”
“Hello? Evie? I can hear you laughing!” She was laughing herself, so it didn’t come out as angry as she wanted it to.
“I’m sorry Fran, that’s horrible, it really is.”
“Yeah, you sound real torn up about it.”
“How about I buy you a new pair of shoes?”
“No, what I need is for you to tell me who the hell I call to fix potholes and to keep that hellhound off the street.”
“He’s a poodle.”
“He’s a nuisance.”
Now that I wasn’t cracking a rib I was anxious to get her off the line, if someone were trying to call they’d only get a busy signal, so I told her to call city council. I have no idea if that’s correct but she seemed satisfied with that answer and finally let me hang up the phone.
Not that it made a difference.
By the end of the workday on Wednesday my resolve to give her space and time, to let her contact me, if she ever wanted to again, that is, was crumbling. I drove home on autopilot, my brain busy working out how I could casually bump into her. Grocery store? That’s good, yes, but I don’t know where she lives. There are several grocery stores to choose from. And even if I happened to pick the right one, I could spend all day hanging out in the produce department squeezing oranges and thumping watermelons when she’s already been and gone while I was at work.
I could try going to the Saturn and Sun again on Saturday, that was a possibility. But she never did say whether or not she goes every weekend.
This is bad. This is cutting it close. I only have a few weeks before she’s off and running hobnobbing with Mike Douglas or Ed Sullivan and I’ll be back here with Fran, Mrs. Luskin, and a rabid thug of a poodle.
What can I do? What can I do? I was thinking, as I rounded the corner on my block. What other option did I have? None. I’ll just have to call her. I could try the “Oh, sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number...but...how are you?” ploy. That could actually work, after all, it’s probably new, no one’s had time to catch on to it yet. For that matter I might be the first person to ever even use it.
This is what was going through my head when I pulled into my driveway, so I didn’t notice her car parked on the curb, nor did I see her sitting on the front steps until I was only a few feet away, twirling my key ring on one finger.
“Hi,” she said, looking up at me.
She was sitting on the bottommost step with her knees tucked close to her chest and her arms wrapped around her skirt and legs for modesty’s sake.
“Judith, hi. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, I just...I needed to apolog-”
She’d abandoned her modest pose and was now leaning both legs off to one side at a sharp angle, she had one hand planted on the step beside her and the other stretched out straight in front of her. Without the help of a railing she was having a hard time getting any leverage.
I watched her struggle for a few seconds and tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the smile off my face, before I said anything. “You’re trying to get up aren’t you?”
“This...jeez...this-”
She managed to lift herself about an inch off the step before her shoe slipped and she plopped right back down.
She let her head fall back and laughed. “I can’t get up, this skirt is so tight!”
“How did you even manage to sit all the way-”
“Are you going to help me up or are you just going to stand there giggling?”
She held her hands out to me and I pulled her to her feet.
Once she was standing we were only a few inches apart. It felt awkward, given what had happened on Sunday, but she didn’t step back so neither did I.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And I’m sorry, Evelyn, about-”
“No, there’s no need, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
She nodded. Underneath the bright sun, and this close up, her eyes were...stunning. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help but to stare at them.
Probably a mistake. She shifted her eyes to her right, towards my car, then cleared her throat before looking back at me.
“It’s hot out here.” She squinted up towards the sky and back. “And I’ve been waiting on you for over an hour. So can I come in? Have a Coke?”
“No, you can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” The small smile she’d given me after asking her question vanished. “Uh...okay...I understand, I’ll just-”
“My refrigerator is empty. Come on, hop in the car, we’re going shopping.”
“Not funny,” she said, but the smile that reappeared on her face as she followed me to my car said otherwise.
“You know, the nearest grocery store is always too crowded this time of day. Why don’t we go to the one you normally shop at?”
This time I wasn’t taking any chances.
16
We went shopping that day.
And the next.
Instead of a fan I bought a window air conditioning unit that brought the temperature inside my house (or at least half of the living room) down from a scorching ninety degrees to about a soupy seventy-nine, but still, Judith and I sat on my couch that evening drinking iced tea out of frosted mugs and luxuriated in it. Now that’s living. It’s the little things.
On Friday, the three of us, Fran, Judith, and I, finally went to see the movie I was supposed to have seen the previous Saturday night. Viva Las Vegas. It was horrible. But watching it was hilarious.
Every time a scantily clad woman popped up on the huge drive-in screen (which was approximately every five minutes) I could see Judith watching me from the corner of her eye. She was sitting right next to me, with Fran on her right, in the front seat of my car. At first I tried to keep my face neutral. Which should have been easy, because believe me, nothing on that screen intrigued me in the slightest, no offense to Ann-Margret. But with Fran there, something was bound to happen.
