A Penny a Kiss

by Judy McConnell

  I did this by proving I needed no one. Independence was my watch­word, my banner, my ballast. I asked for nothing, except maybe a shooting star to spirit me away.

  I rejected her world of light fun and momentary pleasure, her mellow southern speech, soft-edged demeanor, and sweet disposition, her musical and literary leanings. The truth is, I didn’t see beyond her role, who she was.

  * * *

  Mother and Margo also clashed. Margo backed Mother into corners. One Friday night during dinner, when we were seated around the breakfast room table, Mother started passing the meat loaf platter around. Dad helped himself, then handed it to Harold next to him. When it came to Margo, she lifted a large slice of meat loaf to her plate. She was lively as usual.

  “This looks yummy, Mrs. Bradford.”

  “Have y’all been studying for your test Monday?” inquired Mother approvingly.

  “Oh, yes,” Margo replied, “Well, we got started anyway.” Actually we had gotten no further than opening our books before getting into a discussion about Dr. Holt’s attitude towards Negroes, which we were trying to evaluate. Monday was miles away.

  Margo went on. “American history is not that hard. A lot of it is memorization. We have to learn the first ten presidents of the United States, their dates of office, and major accomplishments. I already know that.”

  My brother looked up, skeptical. “Who was the third president of the United States?” he asked as he helped himself to the scalloped potatoes. “Mother, you know that. You’re an American history buff.”

  Mother folded her napkin gently. “Well, yes, let me see.” She looked out the window. “Well, first was Washington, then Adams, and then . . . let me think.”

  “Thomas Jefferson,” supplied Margo. “It was Thomas Jefferson. Remember the feud between him and Adams?” Margo broke her roll in half. “And after him his son, John Quincy Adams, but there was someone in between—yes, it was James Madison.”

  With her sharp memory, Margo could pinpoint discrepancies and back up any fact with details. Mother said nothing more but I could see the muscle twitch in her jaw as she delicately punctured a slice of cucumber in her salad. Such intellectual contests were decidedly not to her taste, since she always seemed to be on the losing end.

  Then there was the day Mother brought home a pair of inlaid bronze candelabras she discovered at a local antique store. Antique hunting was one of her hobbies, and she loved finding unusual pieces, especially English silver and relics from the American Civil War period. Nineteenth-century statues of Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson sat on either side of the living room mantle, and brass fluted lanterns mounted on either side of our front door had once graced an English country house.

  “I’ve never seen any bronze pieces like this. Aren’t they lovely?” Mother commented.

  “They’re nice, Mom.”

  “Is this pure bronze, Mrs. Bradford?” Margo wanted to know, lifting a candelabrum to the light.

  “Why, yes, it is.”

  “I can never tell if it’s bronze or brass. How do those two differ?” Margo was always asking questions that Mother didn’t know the answer to, at which Margo would dig out a reference book and look them up. Such digging was common practice at her house, but Mother was not impressed. Margo, however, was a stickler. Once when Mother didn’t know the author of Gone with the Wind, Margo was incredulous. “You don’t know who Margaret Mitchell is?”

  Mother acquired a distinct dislike for Margo. She considered her a know-it-all. Little by little she found other things to disapprove of. “That girl doesn’t know when to go home. She stays and stays. She doesn’t take hints.” Or if Margo phoned once too often, “That girl is so persistent. She never gives up. I told her you were not available until after dinner, but she calls back anyway. She’s much too pushy.”

  Once, she and Margo clashed over bridge. In school we played the game at every turn: after lunch, during free periods, and while waiting for the bus. Margo was a natural. It so happened that bridge was one of Mother’s passions. She took lessons, spent bridge weekends at friends’ cabins, and played twice a week at the Lafayette Club, sometimes with Mrs. Holt among the players. On this occasion, Margo and I were watching a foursome seated at a card table in our living room. Mother won the bid and played out the hand, pulling in the tricks confidently. She went down one. The silence was broken as the women rehashed the play of the hands.

  After the guests left, Mother walked into the den where Margo and I were playing gin rummy on the coffee table.

  Margo looked up. “On that four spade bid, Mrs. Bradford. You could have opened clubs,” she informed Mom innocently, “since you had all those points and no five-card suit.” Mother stopped short.

  “You don’t bid a short club after another bid,” she shot back. “I would have if Frances hadn’t opened with a heart.”

  “But you could have bid two clubs to show a short suit,” Margo went on.

  “Not at the two level, that would show a club suit.”

  Mother had enough and disappeared into the kitchen to start dinner. Her coolness followed her through the swinging door, although Margo, slamming her cards down on the table with an exultant “Gin!” appeared oblivious.

  * * *

  All was not conflict. There were rare moments when Mother and I found ourselves pitted against the world. Mother, fresh from her afternoon nap, would settle on the couch and we’d munch popcorn from bright-colored bowls while watching Your Hit Parade. Mother loved perky Dorothy Collins bubbling up one of the seven top songs of the week, like “Harbor Lights or Shrimp Boat,” and the fetching midget calling for Phil-lip Mor-ray! She wiggled her toes when “Put Another Nickel In” came on, giggling, “Makes you want to kick up your heels.” Behind Mother’s observations, like a sentry guarding the Hall of No Errors, lurked a normalcy detector that was ever on the alert. We often found the personalities on the television screen wanting and pounced on every imperfection. Fat people were a particular target. Mother liked Jackie Gleason until he got fat.

  “How can he let himself get that way?” she frowned. “Doesn’t he have any self- respect?” When Arthur Godfrey sang, “I don’t want her, you can have her, she’s too fat for me,” we laughed, along with everyone else. On one program the moderator with a pointed goatee and hairbrush eyebrows spoke with a cracked beer-barrel voice into the camera. “Honestly, this guy is terrible,” she shook her head. “Who put him on the air?” She laughed over at me and I laughed back in agreement, feeling a warmth curl around my shoulders.

  It wasn’t just on television that we performed critical surgery. As we walked down a downtown sidewalk she spotted a man with a lumbering walk, wearing a beard shaped like a juniper bush and red suspenders.

  “Look at that,” she whispered, poking me with her elbow.

  The worst offense was butchering the English language. Woe to the person who said, “It’s me,” instead of, “It’s I.” Once a waitress sauntered over and addressed us, “We don’t have them rhubarb pies no more.” Heavens above, a double negative! And the wrong pronoun! Worse, the waitress went on, “They’re not so popular around here, doncha know. Anyways, the key lime is good.”

  As the girl walked off, Mother leaned over and whispered. “She was chewing gum, and did you see her dirty fingernails? What is the world coming to? I’ve lost my appetite.” Although she went on to devour the pecan pie when it was set before her. “We’re never coming back here.”

  At these times a coziness surrounded us. We were united in a mutual bond of superiority. I admired her sharpshooter skills and enjoyed our partnership and the hint of us against the world. It was a rare allegiance and I ate it up.

  I developed critical skills of my own. I was able to pierce the normalcy of any scene and expose the fundamental faults veiled behind the surface. Flaws burst into light under my scrutiny, tiny as they may
have been. I saw every uneven skirt, every crack in the cement. In this way I deflected much that came my way.

  Decades later, after rounds of therapy, I made up my mind that these negative dissections were debilitating and had to go. One spring afternoon I visited the Aveda salon for my annual massage. Stretched out on the table, lulled by the scent of Jasmine and the purr of rippling piano notes, I was sinking into a libidinous submission when my mind began its familiar journey. The room is a tad cold. I wish the masseuse would vary her strokes. The new age music is becoming monotonous. Why don’t they soundproof the rooms?

  It struck me: here was my mother, speaking through me, and here was I, imbued with the very traits that had irritated me for so many years. By the end of the session I was as relaxed as an icicle, my mind having sabotaged the hour of anticipated bliss. And I couldn’t even chastise myself on the way home, due to the vow I had just taken to mend my ways and forbear judging, even myself.

  Chapter 9: Sailing for Boys

  At the beginning of eleventh grade, a new girl named Bobby breezed in out of the blue from Chicago, a willowy brunette with windblown hair and an athletic, provocative stride, wearing deep-red lipstick. Bobby moved into a house on the other side of Hennepin Avenue, a few blocks from me. Her mother had a painting studio in a sunroom at the top of the house and often answered the door in an oil-streaked smock. Brought up in the stifling hinterlands of Tennessee, Bobby’s mother had escaped to New York City at the age of twenty-two and enrolled in art classes at a private studio in Brooklyn. There she met Bobby’s father, a Brooklyn native who dabbled in art, philosophy, and economics before matriculating into the New School for Social Research degree program. Now a professor of Social Science at the graduate level, he and his artistic wife ran an intellectually liberal household. Bobby was something of a free spirit. Being new to the Northrop tradition didn’t faze her in the least and she set about having the time of her life.

  It wasn’t long before Margo, Bobby, and I were spending weekends together, sharing family secrets and figuring out how to meet guys. Margo and I had already decided that to meet boys we would have to improvise. The lack of opportunities at an all-girl’s school, for those who didn’t attend the Blake dances and private parties, would have to be addressed. My older brother was no use, although I attracted a slew of girlfriends who were taken with this good-looking boy who retained a touch of Southern grace, with his red hair, slow manner, and gentle blue eyes, and who addressed our parents’ friends as ma’am and sir. When he returned from an Alpha Tau Omega party or flew in with Don Levenius and several other boys in tow, my girlfriends, spying him pass, perked up. Who was that? My popularity was enhanced for a while, but Harold kept me and my companions at a distance, and the girlfriends went home empty handed.

  Where to find boys? We had to use our ingenuity. One Saturday night Margo, Bobby, and I took off cruising in my mother’s yellow Studebaker. We drove toward Lake Street through a throng of pedestrians completing their last-minute gift shopping. Christmas lights from the store windows reflected in the frosty car windows parked along the curbs, and the streetlamps glittered with garlands of green, yellow, and crimson. The marquee of the Uptown Theater flashed gold letters advertising The Moon Is Blue above the sidewalk.

  “Oh, look,” exclaimed Bobby, “there’s the film starring Maggie McNamara everyone’s talking about. It’s caused a real scandal.”

  The reference to sex by the young heroine had nearly caused the film to be pulled from circulation. We decided we had to see it and impulsively pulled into the lot. In those days it wasn’t necessary to see a movie from the beginning; we just walked in at our convenience and caught the beginning on the next round, which followed an interlude of newsreels and a short cartoon.

  The film centered on the virtuous Maggie, who meets playboy architect William Holden on the top of the Empire State Building and accepts his invitation to join him for drinks and dinner in his apartment. There he pressures her to abandon her virginity, which Maggie successfully resists. The film violated the Motion Picture Associ­ation of America production code because it contained the words pregnant, virgin, and seduce. The idea of Maggie being soiled by using the word “virgin” and that the film was considered unsuitable because it dealt with a young girl’s successful struggle for her purity seemed silly, but this mentality was common at the time and we didn’t question it.

  During the fifties, sex was not a big problem for girls. That is, we didn’t have to worry when was the best time to give in and go all the way, whether we’d pay an emotional price, or how to pace the slow evolution to the inevitable. Sex was black and white, requiring no soul searching or advice. Intercourse was out of the question. Period.

  Our formal sex education was skimpy. In ninth grade Mother left a few pamphlets on my bed. They contained diagrams charting the path of the egg down the fallopian tube and pictures of sperm: miniature particles capable of bursting out like atoms in search of a receptacle. When these two items met they sparked a fetus, from which babies grew. This happened when you were married. I’d seen the same diagrams at the Church of Youth at Hennepin Avenue Church, an automated film version that the boys and girls viewed in separate rooms. There was no discussion. Physical allusions were almost as taboo as the act itself. At Meadowbrook, Jean and I’d had to speculate how sex occurred by piecing together scrambled bits of information from older siblings of classmates. We got the general idea.

  The limits were clear. Girls did not “go all the way.” An absolute no-no, don’t even think about it. Girls who transgressed were in the same category as single pregnant girls and the females in western brothels we saw in movies. A girl who did IT would see the news spread like wildfire. She would never be spoken of again in the same way. Other girls would be horrified and indignant, boys would titter and stare, and the bad girl would be bombarded with requests for dates and expected to “put out.” She was then regarded as a lost woman.

  Margo and I discussed this. Why was it the girl’s job to maintain virginity and why did the boys feel it was okay to continually press them to renounce this responsibility? The only recourse was for the fallen girl to get married. Of course the boy was honor bound to marry her despite lack of any compatibility, and most did, begrudgingly, make the sacrifice. To save her. That’s the way it was.

  After the movie we plotted our next move. I turned the Studebaker towards Lake Calhoun. High drifts of snow ran down to the shore and far off down the lake we saw the ice-colored dots skating around under a circle of strobe lights, like marbles swirling on a plate of glass. A mammoth spruce by the water’s edge glittered with colored Christmas lights.

  “Look!” Bobby pressed her nose to the car window. “Look over there!” We watched three figures emerge from behind a clump of oak trees, silhouetted in the shadow of drooping branches. As the figures crossed the sidewalk and entered the yellow circle of the street light, three boys came into focus. One boy was taller than the others. They were all wearing parkas with dangling hoods and had skates laced together hung over their shoulders. Walking easily in step they laughed and elbowed each other. The tall one with the athletic stride slid into the driver’s seat of a black Chevrolet, the others piling in after him.

  Here was a challenge that couldn’t be passed up. As they drove off, I inched the Studebaker up behind them and managed to squeeze illegally through several lights to hold their tail. There was no sign that they had spotted us. Suddenly, before I knew it, their black car jerked into a filling station, curved past the gas pumps, careened out the other entrance and pulled up behind us. The sneaks! I coasted the Studebaker slowly down Hennepin, stopping at the next red light. The boys behind us were laughing and looking at us, sizing us up. We did the same.

  Time for some crafty action.

  Encouraged by Margo and Bobby, I continued slowly, made a quick turn onto Groveland Avenue and immediately pressed the accelerator, swerving into the He
nnepin Church parking lot. Hidden behind a row of bushes we saw the black car slip by, and I hurriedly maneuvered behind them, leaving a car in between us. After a few blocks the black Chevy swept into a flagstone drive, passed under a beige porte cochère, and came to a stop next to a mammoth stone building.

  “Turn, turn!” my pals cried. I twisted the wheel, and as the boys were opening their car doors we pulled up behind them.

  We were parked between two three-story stone buildings set next to each other on a corner lot. The main building, large with heavy stone walls of pastel brown, was a mansion in the Italian Renaissance style. The boys had seen us and were standing on the steps grinning, unmindful of the light blotches of snow beginning to coil down on their heads like flakes from a pinwheel. Finally, they walked over to our car and stood tentatively, steam puffing from their mouths. Who were they and what were they doing in this stone bastion?

  Bobby rolled down the front window. “Why are you stopping here?” she asked.

  They boys stepped closer. “We live here.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Where are you girls from?”

  Bobby tilted her head to look up at them. “We live nearby, in Kenwood.” She wasn’t prepared to explain further. “We’ve been to the movies and had nothing to do.”

  “You might as well get out of the car,” one of the boys said finally, “Unless you want us to stand out here in the snow. Come on, we’ll show you around.”

  We followed them through a narrow side entrance and down several cavernous corridors lit by dim yellow wall lights. After climbing single file up a twisting staircase we found ourselves in a low-ceilinged apartment spread with Southwestern rugs and plump sink-in furniture.