One or Two Things I Learned About Love

by Dyan Sheldon

  No messages. Morale losing altitude. Nomi said maybe Connor lost my number. I reminded her that he wrote it on his hand so it’s not like he was going to throw it out by accident or anything. She said that maybe he accidentally washed it off. They have all those signs in the bathroom: EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS. She says she’s sure people accidentally wash off numbers they wanted to keep all the time. More often than you’d think. Which means that I’ll have to go back to Café Olé! as soon as I can. But what if Nomi’s wrong and that isn’t what happened? What if he just changed his mind? Like Sara said. Then I can never go back to Café Olé! Not even if every other coffee bar in the county shuts down. This stuff could really make you crazy. My dad was actually working on the deck when I got home so I gave him a hand just to take my mind off my phone for a while. I hammered his finger.

  I decided to start acting like a sane person again. (And not hurt anyone else.) If he called, he called. And if he didn’t at least I know that some really cute guy was once interested in me, even if it was only for five minutes. I left my phone home today so I wouldn’t feel it in my pocket whispering, No call … no call … still no call … are you sure you gave him the right number…? like some evil genie. I told my mom it needed a charge and to call me on Ely’s cell if she wanted me for anything. We were really busy on the stand, and Ely was in super-hilarious mode, and Broccoli Man came and wanted exactly 19 ounces of onions, so that took a while, and Green Pick-up Guy also showed up and wanted to know what happened to my fan and I told him about Zelda and the dinosaurs and the flood and he was very sympathetic (he has two brothers), so the day went a lot faster than yesterday did. But as soon as I got home, I checked to see if anybody had called. Of course, no messages. Doom loomed. I called myself from the landline. Phone working just dandy.

  I was in the shower. Where else? I mean, if you’ve been waiting more than 48 hours for someone to call you, when else would he call? I didn’t even bother turning off the water. I just jumped out, dripping. There was soap in my eyes and water everywhere and I knocked the bowl of shells my mother keeps on the toilet tank on the floor reaching blindly for my phone. (Why do we have fish on our shower curtain and a bowl of shells on top of the tank? It’s not an aquarium, it’s a bathroom.) Heedless of the risk of electrocution by wet electronic device, I pounced on my phone like a cat on a mouse. I said, “Hi”. He said, “Hildy?” I didn’t say well who were you expecting to answer? Like I would’ve if it was Louie or someone like that. I said, “Yes”. He asked me what I was doing. I didn’t say I was standing wet and naked in the bathroom with soap in my eyes. I said, “Nothing much.” He said he just got back from work. He said it was frantically busy all day. I said, I told you, it’s the heat. It’s driving everyone into anything that’s air-conditioned. Have you seen the buses? People are just riding back and forth for hours. And I bet the supermarkets are packed tighter than battery farms. While he laughed I rubbed my eyes with a towel. Blind but now I see! He’s a senior at Priestly-Hamilton (or will be when school starts), that’s why I’ve never seen him before. Besides the fact that he’s only just started working at the mall. (And because I don’t go to games. He plays a lot of games with balls.) He had some pretty funny stories of stuff that had happened at Café Olé! since he’s worked there. He said he used to think most people were mainly normal, but now he’s not so sure. I said that’s what working with the public does. You realize that most people are a little nuts. And some are a lot nuts. We were laughing so much that he didn’t hear his mom yelling till she started banging on his bedroom door. He said he better go. I said I had to go too. (Which was true. The heat had dried me off but I didn’t have any clothes on and the water was still running.) I had one leg in my shorts when my phone rang again. It was Connor. He said he’d been so involved in talking to me that he’d forgotten to ask me out. (How cute is that?) I’m seeing him on Thursday. It’s his day off. (I don’t want to start out by making problems so I didn’t say anything, but it isn’t my day off, of course. I figure I can probably swap with Mike for one of her days.) He says he has a great idea for what we can do. He doesn’t want to go somewhere noisy or crowded. He wants to go somewhere where we can talk and get to know each other. I said, “What? Group therapy?” He said it’s a surprise. Oh goody.

  I don’t want to get carried away or anything (Nomi says it’s not pride that goes before a fall, it’s HOPE), but I am getting kind of excited about the BD (Big Date). I want to believe that (at long last) the Hildy D’Angelo Dating Curse has been lifted. And that I’m finally going to go out with someone like other girls do. You know, instead of another immense disaster/public humiliation/waste of time/all of the above.

  1 Mick Littlejohn in ninth grade. We went to a movie. Mr Littlejohn drove us there and back. Mr Littlejohn and Mick talked about football the whole time we were in the car. The last thing Mick said when we got to the movies was something about being tied with minutes left to play. When we came out two hours later, Mick got into the car and started talking about how in the very last minute some guy made a 50-yard pass and his team won 33–30. I’m not really into football (I’d rather watch a snail race at night in a fog), but that’s the kind of thing you remember. At least you do if it’s the only time you heard your date’s voice all afternoon.

  2 David Schlessel in tenth grade. (This is the half date that doesn’t count.) Nomi, Sara, Cristina, Maggie and I went to the Halloween dance together. Safety in numbers. (And so you don’t have to stand there all by yourself like the last doll on the toy-store shelf on Christmas Eve.) We went as a 60s’ girl band (no instruments and we all dressed the same). David Schlessel asked me to dance. We had a couple of dances and then I said I had to sit down because it’s really hard to dance when you’re dressed like a 60s’ back-up singer. My feet were redefining the meaning of pain. We hadn’t talked while we were dancing but when I was about to limp away he all of a sudden asked me if I wanted to go out with him. I don’t know if I did or I didn’t, but I said yes. Turned out, he didn’t want to go out with me. He thought he was asking out Sara. He didn’t realize I wasn’t Sara until I showed up at the movie. He wanted to know where Sara was. I said I guessed she was probably at home. He asked if she was standing him up. I said, “Standing you up where?” He said, you know, breaking our date. I said I didn’t know he had a date with Sara, I was under the impression that he had a date with me. He said he really had to have his glasses checked. There was no point in wasting money on a movie, so we both went home after that. (That’s why it’s only half a date and it doesn’t count.)

  3 Daryl Jonas last spring. Daryl sat next to me in math. He’s about as good at math as a skunk. He’s also immensely accident-prone. It’s practically a talent. Every week it was something else. A fractured wrist (pulling himself out of the pool). A sprained ankle (stepping off the sidewalk). A black eye (he really did slam right into a door). Daryl can’t walk into a room without knocking into something or someone. (He said his mother fines him every time he breaks something now, and Mrs Spurgeon in the cafeteria made him bring his lunch from home because he dropped his tray so many times that she refused to serve him any more.) But Daryl’s nice and funny, so I ignored all the times he knocked stuff off my desk or got himself caught in my bag, and when he asked me if I wanted to go bowling, I said yes. He broke my toe. I was lucky he didn’t ask me to go white-water rafting.

  Which makes this the first time I’m going out with someone I really and truly want to go out with. And who really wants to go out with me. Someone who’s hugely attractive, super-charming and a good conversationalist. And who could walk through a china shop without putting it out of business. Sara says I shouldn’t get too excited. She says not to forget the Frog Factor. I said what do frogs have to do with the rainfall in Oklahoma? She said you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince. (She read that in a magazine while she was waiting for her mother to have her root canal.) But Cristina says there’s no point starting out expecting the worst because if y
ou do that’s exactly what you’ll get. However, Maggie says there’s a difference between negativity and realism. She says you should hope for the best but be prepared for the worst. And Nomi says that even though Connor’s cute and there’s no evidence that he starts food fights or that his feet smell like cheese, he could still be a disappointment. That’s just the way life is. I said that’s true. Life is like that. On the other hand, he might not be a disappointment. He might be the exception that proves the rule (as Gran would say). Life is like that, too. Nomi said if she was me she probably wouldn’t hold her breath.

  Mike’s agreed to swap my Thursday for her Saturday. She said no sweat. My mother wasn’t as gracious, because most of the time she needs me to help with Zelda on Saturdays since there’s no day camp. She kept saying, “You’re not going to make a habit of this, are you, Hildy?” I said, “What am I – an indentured servant?” Naturally, she ignored that. She said, “What about your pottery? You’re missing that too.” I said it’s only one day. What difference is one day going to make?

  I had a really hard time focusing at work today. I kept giving people potatoes when they asked for tomatoes, and tomatoes when they asked for potatoes. I put zucchini in with the cucumbers. I went to put a basket of onions on the table and I missed. Onions went rolling all over the parking area. Blue Eyeshadow Lady pulled in at exactly that moment. (Murphy’s Law strikes again.) She flattened about six before she finally came to a stop. Then she burst into tears. She thought she’d run over a prairie dog. Ely tried to tell her that we don’t have prairie dogs in this state but would she listen? No she would not. (Turns out she mowed one down in Colorado once and it scarred her for life.) I was holding up a squashed onion and saying, “Look! It’s not a prairie dog, it’s an edible bulb!” But she was crying too much to see it. By the time she calmed down her face was all blue. I was so stressed out after that, that I overcharged Green Pick-up Guy. “Scarlett, dear.” He held out his hand. “I thought I bought squash, not gold.” I apologized. Profusely. Later, Ely wanted to know if I was having some trouble at home or something, because I was so distracted. He said he knows how crazy families can get. (Ely’s father isn’t allowed within 40 miles of Redbank without being arrested. That’s how crazy he got.) I said it was nothing like that. I said I was finding it hard to concentrate because of the heat. No wonder none of the major inventions of the industrial age came out of tropical countries. Everybody was collapsed under palm trees, fanning themselves with giant leaves. (Unless their little sisters washed them after they dropped them in the toilet.) Ely said, “Whatever, Hildy. But I’m here if you ever need somebody to talk to.” I said I’d keep that in mind.

  The main reason I was all vague and preoccupied is that I can’t decide what to wear tomorrow. Which is why I couldn’t very well tell Ely. He was thinking heartbreak and fear, and I was thinking the jungle print or the skinny jeans. If I had some clue what we’re doing I’d know how to dress. I don’t want to look like I just threw on any old thing if his idea of getting to know each other is a candlelit dinner at a nice restaurant, but I don’t want to be wearing a dress and good shoes if we’re going clamming.

  Gus won’t let me borrow her super-best peach silk shirt for the BD, even though it’d be perfect since silk is casual and elegant at the same time. I said that I don’t know how she can live with herself, being so selfish. She said she just about manages. And anyway, you should never go for broke the first time you go out with a guy. You want to get better and better each time he sees you. I don’t know how she ever came up with this since, except for Abe who wrecked the mailbox and Barry Lincoln (who lasted almost a whole summer), she rarely has more than two dates with the same person. I argued that if I don’t look really great there won’t be a next time. Gus said, “You weren’t wearing my peach shirt when he asked you out, were you?” Of course not. I was wearing those cotton pants I got for yoga with the geckos all over them and a D’Angelo’s Garage T-shirt. “Right,” said Gus. “So how high can his expectations be? You looked like a beach bum. You see, Hildy, it so doesn’t matter what you wear. It’s you he’s interested in, not your clothes.” This from the girl who once spent so long getting ready in the bathroom that the rest of us had to go over to the Masiados’ to use their facilities.

  Have had everything out of my closet and my dresser TWICE tonight. The depressing truth is that all my summer stuff makes me look like a beach bum. A beach bum who never goes anywhere. (Well, the beach, but you’d expect that.) Except my overalls. They don’t make me look like a beach bum. They make me look like a farmer (which is OK, really, because they’re supposed to. I got them at the second-hand store to wear to work). I don’t have anything that says hot or babe. It’s all lukewarm and buddy. Nomi said she’d lend me her peach silk shirt, only she doesn’t have one. And even if she did, it would only fit me in a dream. The last time Nomi and I were even close to being the same size we were twelve. And then I kept growing and she kind of stopped. So Nomi’s what everybody calls petite or doll-like, and I look like I’d be a good basketball player (but I’m not, I always duck).

  After a restless night dreaming that I met Connor wearing the bunny suit I had when I was eight, I called Nomi as soon as I got up and she came over to help me pick out an outfit and get ready. Nomi was great. (Of course. She isn’t my best friend because nobody else applied for the job.) She dug out those white jeans I never wear because I’m afraid of bleeding in them, a plain, pale-coloured top and that woven scarf in about eight different shades of blue that Gran gave me for Christmas, which I never knew what to do with. It took hours to do my hair and everything. But when we were done I looked pretty good. Nomi said I was definitely all-purpose – you know, like I could go to anything from a ball game to lunch with the governor. Unfortunately, Connor’s family doesn’t live near a stadium or near the gubernatorial mansion. Where they live is on the lake over by Crow’s Cross. Connor’s surprise was that he thought it’d be a great idea if we went canoeing. (So it wasn’t either, or; it was either oar.) “You can’t get more peaceful, private and quiet than canoeing,” said Connor. (Only in death was what I would’ve said if he’d been Louie or Ely.) But even though I hadn’t exactly been planning on rowing across a fairly large body of water, I did think it was sweet and thoughtful of him to want to get to know me like that. Most guys would just take you to a movie, so the only thing they’d find out would be whether or not you liked popcorn. So I said what a great idea!

  My jeans got dirty just getting into the canoe, never mind sitting down. And I needn’t have wasted so much time worrying about what top I was going to wear since we had to put on what Connor calls personal flotation devices (and I call life jackets). I looked like a bright blue marshmallow. (I could’ve been on a date with Dolittle!) And then I got really, really nervous. The way I would if I had to talk in front of the whole school. Not because of the canoe (I’ve had enough near-death experiences because of Zelda not to let that kind of thing bother me). Because of him. Just being near him made me feel fizzy. And it wasn’t because he’s even better looking than I remembered, or even because of that smile (which if you ask me should be registered as a lethal weapon). I never really tried to impress a boy before. I’ve never had to. They’re either my friends or they don’t really know I’m there. But I wanted to impress Connor. I wanted him to remember all the intelligent, funny and interesting things I said. It made me a wreck. You know how when you’re anxious you can hear your heart beating? I could hear my heart beating, and my breathing and the blood moving in my arteries and veins. I swear I could even feel dead skin flaking off. (Wait till I tell Sunia. I’ve spent two years in yoga class trying to become aware of every part of my body, when all I had to do was get in a small boat with Connor Bowden. I could’ve saved a fortune!) So instead of being intelligent, funny and interesting, I pretty much just sat there like a sack of potatoes. I couldn’t even think of something not clever to say. So he did most of the talking, and I did most of the smiling and nodding. E
very time he made a joke, I laughed. I sounded like I was in a who-can-laugh-the-most contest. It was agony. I could see that my whole life was going to be like this. For ever. There really was a curse on me. I’d have one disastrous date every year or two. Until even I got tired of trying. And then I’d end up living with a whole bunch of cats and a Weimaraner like Gran’s friend, Aviva. I guess my hands were really sweaty or I wasn’t concentrating enough or something, but all of a sudden I dropped my paddle. We both made a grab for it. We banged heads. We slammed shoulders. We capsized the canoe. But besides all his other terrific qualities, Connor is really calm. (Unlike anyone I’m related to.) There was no panic. No screaming. He told me what to do like he was telling me the time. We weren’t too far out, so we grabbed the rim and swam the canoe back to shore. When we got on dry land, Connor said, “Boy, some people will do anything to keep cool.” We both thought that was hilarous. And I said it must be something that runs in my family because my sister capsized a rowboat last summer. We cracked up again. And that was it! After that I wasn’t nervous at all. By the time we got to his house we were practically dry so we sat out on the porch and talked and talked and talked. We talked about all kinds of things, not just the normal stuff like what your favourite music is and what things you think are cool. We talked about what we really like and really don’t like. About embarrassing stuff that’s happened to us. Things we worry about. Things that really make us mad. I didn’t expect it to be like that. I expected it to be about liking dogs and salt and vinegar potato chips, and hating violent movies (which he does!). It was pretty intense. But in a good way. We laughed a lot, too. (Besides being smart he’s also very funny.) Later we went down to the Snack Shack for crabcakes and fries. Connor said it was the best date he’d ever had. I said me too. (But I didn’t say it was more or less the only one.) And then he kissed me. Since nobody’s ever tried to kiss me before, I didn’t actually have a first-date policy in place. I kind of froze. Connor asked what was wrong. So I said I’ve never really done much kissing before. He said that was OK, practice makes perfect! And he kissed me again.