The Love Letters of J. Timothy Owen

by Constance C. Greene

  Once, twice, he tried to find the right words to turn her down. He even resorted to a choking fit, fighting desperately for time.

  Gasping, eyes tearing up, he finally said, “How come you don’t ask one of the boys in your class?” blinking at her as if a bright light had been turned on suddenly, blinding him.

  Melissa put her hands on her hips. “Because,” she said, “they’re all smaller than me. Than I. I’m the biggest girl in the class.” Suddenly, without warning, Melissa’s face turned downward completely, like a sad clown’s. Mouth, eyes, eyebrows, even her nose seemed to dip down as she spoke. A terrible silence fell, broken only by the sound of him swallowing. All the saliva seemed to have left his mouth.

  “It’s only a tea dance!” Melissa wailed, tossing her head, sending the pink curlers on a wild wobble.

  “A tea dance?” He had never heard of such a thing. This was even worse than he’d thought. “A tea dance,” he repeated, trying to stay calm.

  “Yeah. From four to six. On Sunday. Please, Tim.” Melissa’s huge eyes glistened at him. “Will you please, Tim? If you won’t go with me, I won’t go either. You’re my only hope.”

  “Can’t you find someone else to take you?” he asked, almost pleading with her. “I think I’m busy Sunday. I don’t think I can go, Melissa.”

  For Pete’s sake, kid, I just spent hours composing a steamy love letter to this girl. A tea dance. Kid stuff. A pig-out tea dance, for God’s sake. Go play with your pals, Melissa, and leave me alone.

  Melissa stood close to him, smelling of shampoo and onions.

  “You wouldn’t even have to dance with me, Tim,” she said. “All they do anyway is stand around, the girls, I mean, and the boys do the same thing. They tell jokes and burp and, you know, laugh. We wouldn’t have to stay the whole time. We could just stay a little while. Just so they’d see you were my date.” By now, she was so close her breath tickled his ear.

  “And I’d pay, Tim. It wouldn’t cost you a nickel. I promise. My mother’s buying the tickets, anyway. Please, Tim?”

  He couldn’t look at her.

  “Why don’t you get Patrick to take you?” he whispered, ashamed.

  Melissa jumped as if stung by a wasp, a whole nest of wasps. “I’d die first!” she shouted. The color left her face and he was afraid she might be having an attack of something, might even faint. “I’d absolutely die rather than go with my own brother!”

  At the word “brother” Melissa let out a low gurgling sound, like an unplugged drain.

  “Hey Tim!” Patrick popped into view. “I didn’t know you were here. What’re you doing, chewing the fat with Fatty? Let’s go down and shoot some pool.”

  Melissa turned and ran. He stumbled after Patrick, falling upon the pool table as if it was an oasis and he a traveler tuckered out after crossing the Sahara. Patrick tossed him a cue and a piece of chalk, to take the slipperiness off the tip of the cue, Patrick said, as if he’d been playing pool since he was a pup.

  Patrick beat him one game; then, by a fluke, he beat Patrick. The cool joy of winning was heady and unfamiliar to him. He was not a winner at sports, or at much of anything. There was nothing like coming in first, he decided, hoping to make a habit of it. Patrick’s father showed up and beat both of them. Fortunately, for one and all, Patrick’s mother and Melissa were otherwise occupied.

  Buoyed by winning a game, Patrick’s father was all set to make an afternoon of it. But, “I have to get going,” Tim said, still thinking about the tea dance and wondering if he could dredge up somebody to escort her. He liked Melissa, felt sorry for her. It was tough to be thirteen, a girl, and ugly. He felt sorry for her, but not sorry enough to say he’d go to the dance with her.

  On his way out, through the kitchen, he ran into Patrick’s mother, who was stirring a huge vat of chili. He liked her and she liked him, too. Patrick had told him that. “She says you have a kind heart,” Patrick had said, and he had been terribly pleased. Melissa stood at the sink, back to him, as he stopped to talk briefly to Patrick’s mother. Melissa’s mother, too, if you wanted to be persnickety. Because he felt guilty about turning Melissa down, he was extra talkative and polite to her mother. Guilt does funny things to people. When Melissa turned to say something to her mother, he saw her face. She was puffed up like a blowfish, probably from crying. He felt like a rat.

  If only St. Raymond’s would throw a beer bash for the eighth-grade graduation, he might reconsider. But he was darned if he’d be caught in a tea-dance trap. The telephone rang and Melissa’s mother answered. “It’s for you, Missy.”

  Melissa spoke in a low voice, but he heard her say, “No, he won’t. No, I won’t. I don’t care. I’m not going by myself and that’s that.”

  He opened the kitchen door and a gust of wind entered, uninvited. A little voice in his head said “Get going or you’ll be sorry.” He knew that voice. Ninety-nine percent of the time it was right.

  “About that dance,” he heard himself say. Melissa turned and gave him a terrible look, full of hope. He was aware of her mother standing by the sink, spoon held high, frozen, as if someone was taking her picture.

  “I guess I can handle it,” he said. It was as if another person was talking, saying things he himself would never have said. “It’s OK, Melissa. I’ll go.”

  He knew he would never, ever, forget her expression.

  “Oh, Tim.” She clasped her hands and a blinding light lit her face. Followed by a smile of such unmitigated happiness he was embarrassed.

  He thought he heard Patrick coming. He had to get out of there before Patrick showed his face.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” he said. For now, the important thing was to keep going, to make space between himself and Melissa, his tea-dance date.

  “You’ll be sorry,” his little voice repeated. “Boy, will you ever be sorry!”

  Chapter 11

  One minute he’d been leading a practically monastic life, one totally devoid of women; the next, he had two bugging him. One he might want to get closer to, the other not.

  Mournfully, he contemplated his situation, shaking his head the while, trying to stop the ringing inside it. Get your head on straight, buddy. His beau geste, for that was the way he saw his fine gesture made by telling Melissa he’d go to the dance, had put him in the pits. Bloody pig-out tea dance. He didn’t even like tea. What an ass. Almost as bad as Kev, in a different way.

  “You’re my only hope,” Melissa had said, and his sense of romance, of chivalry had been touched. Chivalry was dead but he’d dragged it, kicking and screaming, out of the grave. It didn’t matter what had made him say he’d go. He’d said it. He was in a trap of his own making, the worst kind. He’d painted himself into a corner.

  If it had been winter, he could’ve arranged a broken leg while skiing. A small price to pay, he figured. But it was almost summer, with dandelions rioting in the grass, and peonies about to pop.

  Patrick, when he found out, would give him a hard time. Patrick would say he must’ve been playing without a full deck to say he’d go to a dance with Melissa. Patrick would shake his head and give him a lugubrious look. Patrick’s lugubrious look was well honed and quite splendid.

  If it’d been his sister, would Patrick have come to her rescue? Maybe. If someone had greased his palm with folding money. Patrick could be had for folding money. But he didn’t have a sister.

  A scene played itself against his eyelids every time he closed his eyes—him steering Melissa around St. Raymond’s gym, keeping clear of the foul line. Clasping Melissa’s substantial waist, sweating like a wrestler, trying to get a dialogue going with her. Avoiding collisions with the other dancers, eighth graders all, big-footed and pimply. He’d been an eighth grader once. He knew what eighth graders were like. Turkeys. Looking over Melissa’s shoulder, trying to get a line on refreshments. How soon could he skin out? Half an hour? Fifteen minutes?

  He groaned, imagining the tea dance. There was no out. He’d said he’d go and he ha
d been taught to stick to his word.

  Sophie should get the letter Monday. Or, if the mails fouled up, which they’d been known to do, Tuesday at the latest. On Wednesday, he would lie in wait. When he got her within his sights, he would study her face, check her for signs of mirth, sensuous desire, confusion. Rage? Anything was possible. Perhaps she’d fall into instant love with the writer of such purple prose. Or, perhaps, she would hate him. Would the strength of the written word bowl her over?

  He lurked in corridors, skulked outside her homeroom, planning to accidentally bump into her as she exited the science lab. At last, he caught up with her, eating a bologna sandwich in the cafeteria. A dab of mustard marred her incomparable chin, and dozens of plastic bracelets marched jauntily up and down her arms as she chewed. He said, “Hi!” and registered amazement at finding her eating a bologna sandwich at lunch hour in the cafeteria. How strange that she should be here! Of all places! The palms of his hands were damp. Her friends giggled and poked her and one another. Sophie herself remained unmoved. Expressionless. As he turned and walked away, he felt he’d lost that round. She thinks I’m a weirdo, he thought. And she’s right.

  That night, he began a second letter.

  “Have your affections cooled?” he started out. “Since you have driven me from you, I am the least of mortals. I have lost all reason, all courage. You have taken everything from me! Sophie, my sweet Sophie, you will come again, will you not? Please accept this bouquet. When my hand presses my heart, you will know it is entirely occupied with you. To reply, you press your bouquet. Love me, my charming Sophie, and let not your hand ever leave your bouquet.”

  What if a bee got stuck in her bouquet and let Sophie have it? Was she even then supposed to hang on, sending love signals?

  Like Patrick said, when you start getting crushes on a girl, next thing you know, you’re sending corsages. And more. Much more.

  He signed it “Yours, with sensuous desire, Anon.,” trying to vary the ending of the first letter. On the other hand, that “sensuous desire” might, very probably would, give her the wrong idea. He crossed out “sensuous desire” and wound up with “Yours, Anon.,” the same as before.

  He placed the letter under his pillow. He would not send it right away. Tantalize her with his delay. Besides, it needed a bit of editing here and there. Change a word here, a phrase there. He was striving for perfection. When it came to love letters, he was a perfectionist.

  When he went downstairs, his mother was stretched out on the living-room couch. Not doing anything, just lying there, staring into space. That was unusual. She was seldom idle, preferring to knit or read, or, if her hands were empty and her face set into an intense expression, he knew she was adding figures in her head. It impressed him, the way she was able to do that. Once he’d offered her his calculator and she’d turned it down, saying she liked the mental exercise. A calculator, she said, was a crutch.

  “Where’s the trunk?” he asked at last, having searched high and low for it.

  She turned her face to him and he saw it was blank.

  “What?”

  “The old trunk, Ma. Where is it? I want to make sure I didn’t leave any letters in it.”

  “Oh. Kev took it,” she said. “He knows a man he thinks might be interested in buying it.”

  “When’s he bringing it back?” He tried not to sound surly and knew, from his mother’s face, that he hadn’t succeeded.

  “Tim, why do you always use that tone of voice when you mention Kev?” she asked. “What’s he ever done to you?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing. Sorry. I didn’t know I had a special tone of voice for Kev.”

  “I want you two to like each other. I’m thinking of marrying Kev, Tim.”

  Before he could control himself, a loud, emphatic No! burst from him and lay there between them, separating them, sending out negative beeps. His mother sat up and smoothed her hair. She placed both feet primly together and stared down at them as if they had an answer to whatever the question was.

  “Sorry,” he said again. He felt his bones go loose, then tighten. He sat down in what used to be his father’s chair.

  “Sorry for what? Sorry I’m thinking of marrying Kev?”

  “Sorry I said no,” he answered. “If you want to marry Kev, that’s your business.”

  “I know you don’t like him. I wish you did. I know you think he’s too young. Or that I’m too old, I’m not sure which.” His mother smiled faintly.

  “It’s not only that.”

  “No? Then what is it, Tim?”

  “Well, I guess you could say it’s partly because I always hoped you and Dad might get back together.” That was not a lie. That thought had crossed his mind several times with absolutely nothing to reinforce it. He had a friend whose divorced father had gotten married again. The kid said he hated his stepmother at first, refused to call her anything but “Hey, you.” The kid admitted he’d behaved badly and now, after two years, the kid said he really liked his stepmother. And was sorry he’d behaved so wretchedly toward her. But Tim had a feeling deep inside that, no matter what, he’d never like Kev, that they would never be friends. Kev was a phony, and if his mother didn’t see that, it wasn’t up to him to tell her. They said that love blinds people to the loved one’s faults, and he was willing to buy that. If he told his mother what he thought of Kev and then she and Kev did get married, he knew she’d never forget and maybe never forgive him for what he’d said. So he kept his mouth shut.

  “I would like for you to be happy, Ma,” he told her. “I would like for me to be happy, too. I always remember Dad telling me that, when I was born, it seemed life had treated him royally and that he’d never been so happy. So I was dumb and naive, and thought I was partly responsible for him being happy. I even thought that as long as it was the three of us together, we had it made. I know I was a jerk to think that. But I was only a little kid. What did I know?”

  His mother’s face was frazzled and unhappy. She rose from the couch and her movements were slow and, it seemed to him, elderly. She had lost her former girlishness, probably because of him.

  “I’m tired, Tim,” she said unnecessarily. “I’m going to bed. If you want to go through the rest of the letters from the trunk, I put them in the lefthand desk drawer when you gave them back to me, along with the stamps. I knew you wanted them, so I didn’t send them along with the trunk. Good night, Tim,” she said, and he listened dolefully to the sound of her feet climbing the stairs.

  Chapter 12

  “Joy said to tell you she’s sorry she can’t make it for dinner tonight,” his father said. “Her nephew’s in town. She’s taking him to see the sights.”

  “What sights? Which—Hojo’s or McDonald’s? There are no sights in this town.” His mother slammed some pots and pans around noisily. She was in a bad mood, had been ever since the No! had popped out of him when she’d said she was thinking of marrying Kev. He and his mother, usually friends, were on the outs. He knew lots of kids who were perpetually on the outs with their mothers and, up to now, he’d had no sympathy for them.

  “I didn’t know Joy was supposed to be coming for dinner,” his mother snapped, opening a can of tomatoes so violently tomato juice spewed over everything. “I’m a little tired of her coming here for dinner, especially when I didn’t ask her, if you want to know the truth. She never brings even so much as a flower. Or a piece of candy.”

  His father mopped up the spilled juice and looked surprised. “I thought you hated to have people bring you candy because you eat it and get fat,” he said.

  His mother turned, slowly, majestically. “I am never fat,” she said, pronouncing each word as if his father had just entered the country from Latvia and didn’t understand a word of English.

  “I thought you liked Joy,” his father said in a wounded tone. “She likes you.”

  “Baloney. We hate each other and you know it. This is a very artificial situation, and I for one am calling it quits. If you want to
come for dinner now and then, fine. But leave Joy home. Let her make her own dinner.”

  Time for him to get lost, he decided. Let them fight it out. It would be just like old times.

  He retreated to his room to think. Sophie had given him no sign so far that she’d gotten the letter. But how could she when she didn’t know he’d sent it? If anything, she paid less attention to him now than she had before, if such a thing was possible. He thought it entirely possible he could fall at Sophie’s feet, foaming at the mouth and turning blue, and she’d step over him as if he were invisible. He suspected her friend Barbara of bad-mouthing him, probably spreading nasty rumors about how he ate peas off his knife, about how he kicked little dogs, and about how he ate with his elbows on the table. Not to mention stealing little old ladies’ Social Security checks the first of every month.

  But he’d decided. Even if Sophie showed no sign that she’d received the first letter, tonight he was going to put the finishing touches on the second, which would be more passionate, more romantic than the first. His plan was to continue his barrage through the mails, each letter more fervent that the last, until Sophie was his.

  It would be simpler, of course, to just pick up the telephone, dial Sophie’s number, and when she answered, say, “How about it? Want to go steady?” Or, if that proved too abrupt, he could say, “How about a flick tonight?” Neither of these approaches grabbed him. The love letters were it.

  Tonight, however, the words, his own or the real pros’, seemed to have lost their charm. So he took down the old cigar box his father had given him. He had put the old letters from the trunk inside that box. When his father had presented it to him with a certain formality, saying, “I kept my stamp collection in this when I was your age, Tim. I want you to have it,” he had known his father, in his quiet way, was telling him how much he cared about his son.