Test Pattern

by Marjorie Klein

  “What was that all about?” Mom asks.

  “He wants me to go on his show,” I say. “He likes the way I curtsy.”

  Mom and Delia look at each other. “See what I mean?” my mother says. “She tells the most fantastic stories with such a straight face.”

  “Sometimes,” I say, carefully folding the napkin and tucking it into the pocket of my terry robe, “they’re true.”

  MOM’S MORE EXCITED about Snooky’s autograph than I am. She won’t let me just paste it into my scrapbook, like I want to do. Oh, no. She has to get a frame for it at Woolworth’s and hang it in the kitchen.

  I think she’s sorry she wasn’t the one who went up to Snooky to ask for his autograph. She probably thinks he would have discovered her, like he would have asked her to tap-dance or something. She saw me watching her when she was practicing her routine and instead of getting embarrassed like a normal motherwould, she tried to show me how to do it, saying with each step, “Brush, brush, shuffle-ball change, lunge and pullback.” The loose skin on her arms jiggles all around when she does that.

  One night when we were watching TV, Mom got this brilliant idea that she and I could try out to be the dancing Old Gold cigarette packs in the commercial. She would be the big pack and I would be the little pack. Then she got up and tried to follow the steps the Old Gold packs were doing until Dad got mad and told her to sit down, she was blocking his view. She said It’s just a commercial, and then they started fighting and I went up to my room to read Nancy Drew.

  But she won’t let go of the dancing Old Gold packs idea, so now she’s making me take dancing lessons. I hate it. I like to dance, but not when I have to. I dread Thursdays, getting on the bus with my tap shoes in a shopping bag, climbing the stairs to the dusty studio that smells like feet, tapping while Miss Fritzi plays that tinny old piano and counts “… and a one-and-a- two …” until she loses her temper and squawks “… together, ladies, you’re not a herd of cows.” This is not fun.

  Mom thinks I have her talent. It’s all my fault for showing her the dance steps I learned from test-pattern TV. The dancing there is different from anything on regular TV. I like the way the painted ladies in bathing suits dance, not just with their feet but with their arms and heads and butts. And there’s a show where a bunch of teenagers do dances with funny names like the twist or the swim or the monkey.

  Once I saw this neat guy with tall greasy hair dance the hootchy-cootchy while he sang about somebody being a hound dog. When I told Mom I saw him on Milton Berle’s show, she said she never saw anything like that on Milton Berle, I must have made it up, like I made up the story about the four English guys with long hair on The Ed Sullivan Show who sang about wanting to hold my hand. People in the audience screamed and screamed while they were singing, just like they did for the hound-dog guy.

  It would be fun to sing and dance and have people scream for you, but it’s not something I’d really want. After I saw something on test-pattern TV about this princess who got killed in an accident because she was so famous that these guys chased her to take her picture, I don’t know why anybody would want to be famous.

  I AM WEARING the most beautiful dress imaginable. It is silver, made by Mom from Christmas-tree tinsel she found in the back of the hall closet. It moves when I move, brushes my legs like crystal feathers when I walk. Each strand catches the blue rays of the footlights and shimmers like neon. I walk across the auditorium stage and take my place.

  I am the star of the fifth-grade play. I am the month of May. I get to wear the dress of lights, the dress that looks like rain.

  All the mothers are looking at me. My classmates are in the wings, watching. I hear somebody hiss at me, “You only got the part because your birthday’s in May.” The lights are warm and bright and all the mothers’ faces blend into a pink blur, except one: my own mom, sitting in the front row.

  I want to make her proud of me, like she was when I was little. Then it didn’t matter what I did or said because I was so cute. That’s what Mom says—"Wasn’t she cute?"—when she shows people the picture of us taken a few years ago, where we’re dressed alike in our mother-daughter sundresses. You can see Dad’s long shadow on the grass as he held the camera. “Wasn’t she cute?” Mom always asks. I don’t remember being cute. I just remember that day, Mom cuddling me close on her lap, her smell of roses and powder, the soft squishy feel of her cheek on mine. “Wasn’t she cute?” I guess that means she doesn’t think I’m so cute anymore.

  I listen nervously for my cue from Dewey Puckett, who is dressed in a big pointy hat and his mother’s bathrobe. He is Father Time. “Mother’s Day!” he spits at me through the space in his teeth. “Memorial Day! What boring holidays. If I had known May would be such a dull month, I would have left it out of the calendar altogether.”

  I am supposed to get mad, stomp my foot, and say, “Dull? Never! May is the month of flowers.” Then Tony Fanelli in a green crepe-paper beard will leap from the wings and throw pink paper streamers at me while I say, “And don’t forget May Day.”

  “… out of the calendar altogether.” My cue. The air is thick in the auditorium, as heavy as the black velvet curtain I can touch behind me. I smell the ham and collards cooking for lunch in the cafeteria. I look at Dewey, hands on his hips, sneering like the little snot he is, waiting for my line. I stamp my foot and tinsel rainbows flash around my knees.

  “Dull?” I say. “Never!” Mom gives me a big grin. I glance toward the wings at Tony Fanelli, who is standing there like a blob. “May is the month of my birthday!” I say all wrong because I’m thinking about Tony and how I just know he’s not going to leap when he’s supposed to. What’s my next line? Something about flowers. “And don’t forget to bring me flowers,” I say, but Miss Winkle, crouching offstage like a toad, croaks in her Froggy the Gremlin whisper, “No, no! It’s ‘Don’t forget May Day.’” I hear a giggle, then another, and then the whole audience is tee-heeing.

  I glare at the sea of pink faces opening like clam shells to laugh at me. “Don’t forget my birthday,” I say, wrong again, but it startles Tony Fanelli enough to leap and throw pink streamers at me. One streamer doesn’t unroll. It bonks me on the nose and makes me so mad I do a Whitey Ford windup and pitch it back hard into Tony’s butt. Now the audience laughs even more.

  Mom’s frozen grin is the last thing I see before I stomp offstage. I want to vanish, me and my beautiful dress of rain, just disappear into a tinsel puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West. I swear I’ll never do that again. I swear this is the last time I’llever get up on a stage in front of people and make a fool of myself.

  Mom doesn’t say too much on the ride home. She doesn’t even get mad when I braid strips of the tinsel on my costume while we drive. And tonight when we’re watching TV, for the first time all week Mom doesn’t bring up the Old Gold dance thing.

  10

  LORENA

  TODAY LORENA FEELS—well, perky. She washes her hair, sets the frizz in pincurls, and it does indeed look like a poodle. Spends an hour with her new makeup, lines her eyes in a fairly successful upswoop beneath brows that hover black as crows’ wings, rouges her cheeks into perfect circles.

  She has a hard time choosing the right dress. The shirtwaist with the cinch belt, or the princess dress with the low-cut neckline? She decides on the shirtwaist with her patent-leather high-heel shoes, polished up with a little Vaseline so she can see her blurry reflection in their toes.

  Lorena is vacuuming. It’s a little awkward in heels, but if the housewife in the Hoover commercial can do it, so can she. Not a one of those models in ads is doing housework in a robe or raggy clothes. You sure don’t see Betty Furness wearing torn pedal pushers when she flings open the door of the Westinghouse, no sirree. She looks like she’s Cinderella on her way to the ball—blond hairin an updo, gold hoop earrings—instead of demonstrating how crispy the cabbage stayed in the Humidrawer.

  Lorena is vacuuming, shoving the Hoover back and forth over t
he same spot on the rug. It’s three-thirty. About this time yesterday, Binky delivered the mail. She assumes he’ll deliver it the same time today. Oh! she’ll exclaim when he rings the doorbell. You caught me vacuuming. What a surprise.

  Three forty-five. She’s worn a path in the rug, sucked it limp with the Hoover. Where is Binky? Cassie is outside playing and could walk in any second. All Lorena wants is a few minutes alone with Binky, let him see she doesn’t always look dowdy in torn pedal pushers, that she usually looks, well, perky.

  Four o’clock. Where is he? She gives up vacuuming, starts dusting, whaps the feather duster over the shelf of knickknacks, over the ceramic Hummel boy tooting his horn, the snow-globe souvenir from their honeymoon at Virginia Beach, the sepia-toned photograph of Pete’s mother in its dimestore frame, the wooden Dutch shoe planted with a plastic tulip. Whap, whap. The knickknacks haven’t been so free of dust in months.

  Now what? Her heels hurt. She slumps down on the sofa and stares glumly at the vacant screen of the TV. Nothing on to watch right now, just the test pattern, and then she starts thinking of Cassie, wonders why she has fixated on the test pattern, decides she’s just devised those stories to torment Lorena. And then the doorbell rings. She leaps to her feet, minces precariously to the door.

  It’s Cassie. And Molly.

  “Can we have something to drink, we’re dying.” Cassie brushes by Lorena and heads for the kitchen, followed by Molly, who adds, “And something crunchy to eat, I need crunch.” They are both damp and dirty from the kickball game going on in the court, and exude a faint aroma of banana Popsicle.

  “Didn’t you get something from the ice-cream man?” Lorena asks, annoyed that the doorbell signaled this invasion rather thana visit from Binky. “I gave you a nickel for a Popsicle. Isn’t that enough?”

  Cassie emerges from the kitchen with a package of strawberry Kool-Aid. “Can I make this?”

  “Make it,” Lorena sighs.

  “How come you’re so dressed up?” Cassie asks, suddenly noticing. “You going somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” Lorena says. “Upstairs.”

  She strips off the dress, throws the shoes in the closet, goes into the bathroom. As she sits contemplating the tile, she hears the doorbell ring. She leans forward, opens the door a crack to catch what’s being said, finishes up quickly, and throws open the door.

  “Who is it, Cassie?” she calls in her most melodious voice. She hears the slam of the front door.

  “Nobody,” Cassie yells upstairs. “Just the mailman.”

  Lorena scrambles back into her dress and heels, skitters down the stairs. Cassie stares at her, a Kool-Aid stain giving her frowning mouth a clown’s grin. “Where you going now?” she asks.

  “Damn,” Lorena mutters.

  “You said I couldn’t say that. How come you can?”

  Lorena doesn’t answer. She throws open the front door, spies Binky way down the row of houses. “Forgot to mail something,” she mumbles as she scurries past Cassie and teeters down the sidewalk calling “Yoo-hoo.” When he turns around, she slows her trot to a sashay and waves.

  “My, my,” he says as she approaches. “Don’t we look nice today.” His eyes roll like marbles up and down her shirtwaisted shape.

  “Oh, this old thing. I wasn’t expecting you or I would have answered the door myself.”

  “That your kid?” he asks.

  She nods. “Cassie.”

  “Cute. Looks like you, huh?”

  Lorena shrugs. “Some say.” She bats mascara’d eyes, tossespoodle-cut hair, says in what she hopes is a Mitzi Gaynor voice, “I’d ask you in for a Coke, but with Cassie there …”

  “Sure, sure.” He ponders that. “When didja say she has her dancing lesson?”

  “Thursdays. Gets home at four,” she says, attempting nonchalance.

  “Oookay. Thursdays.” He pokes at his temple with a forefinger. “Gotta remember that.” He flashes a crooked grin and contemplates her with rain-gray eyes half-hidden by lowered lashes. “I’ll see you then, then.”

  He slings his mail pouch over one shoulder, gives her a little salute before resuming his rounds. She imagines his legs, pictures them firm and furry beneath those clinging gray pants, as they carry him away up the sidewalk. She saunters slowly back toward her house, hopes he’s turned to notice the sway of her skirt, the tap of her high heels.

  Cassie looks up from the Monopoly board she and Molly are setting up on the floor as Lorena comes back into the house, kicks off her heels, and plods up the stairs. “What’s going on?” Cassie asks. “Is there a party or something?”

  Lorena doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing, just shuts the door to her room. Stares into the mirror. Turns her face this way and that. Looks pretty good, she decides, good enough for Binky’s approval. All that work wasn’t wasted after all. She reaches for the Pond’s to erase the upswept eyes, the crow’s-wing brows, the gleaming cheeks and lips, but as she dips her fingers into the pearlescent cold-cream pudding, she hesitates. She looks too good. She decides to wear her face a little longer. Maybe see if Pete appreciates her efforts.

  PETE DROPS HIS lunch bucket on the kitchen counter with a clang, reaches into the Frigidaire, extracts a Ballantine. “What a day,” he complains, flipping off the cap with a bucktoothed bite

  from the remover screwed to the wall. “I dunno about the new foreman. Like to snap my head off today. Seems like he’s got it in for me or something.” He tips his head back to suck on the Ballantine, Adam’s apple bobbing beneath plucked-chicken skin.

  Lorena plants herself in his line of sight, pouts painted lips, bats licorice eyelashes. She emits a mew of sympathy for Pete’s plight. He finishes his beer, bangs the bottle on the counter next to his lunch bucket, belches. “What’s for dinner?” he asks.

  “Meat loaf.” She won’t give up. “Notice anything?” She moves until she’s standing right in front of him.

  He allows her a quick glance, then a grimace. “Not your hair again.”

  She gives a puff of exasperation. “I haven’t been back to Maybelle since last week.”

  “You’re wearing lipstick,” he tries again, impatient now.

  “So? I wear lipstick. It’s not like I never wear lipstick.”

  He squints. Tips his head. Then, “What’s that stuff on your eyes?”

  “Like it?” she asks.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s eye makeup. Mascara. Eye shadow. Eyeliner.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “You didn’t even notice it.”

  “You look like Delia. All that paint and stuff. I think you been hanging out with Delia too much.”

  “Well, I think Delia looks good,” she says, remembering Delia’s gyrating prance before the sailors, a neon-plumaged parakeet outshining Lorena’s brown wren self. “There’s nothing wrong with accentuating your assets,” she adds, echoing Delia’s advice.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Listen. I got problems at work you don’t understand. I come home, all’s I ask is dinner on the table, a little peace and quiet, and what do I get? Bozo the Clown.”

  Clarabelle, Harpo, now Bozo. She just wanted to look prettyagain. Didn’t he remember? How she looked when he saw her that first time, asked her out, wanted her to marry him? Didn’t he remember?

  “I used to be pretty,” she says, pouting. “I was Miss Buckroe Beach 1938.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Miss Buckroe. How many times you gonna remind me of that? You’d think it was the highlight of your life.”

  Well, she thinks, it was.

  LORENA WAS SEVENTEEN that summer, a summer of long, lackadaisical days spent baking in the sun at nearby Buckroe Beach. Facedown on an old frayed blanket redolent of suntan oil, sweat, and mustard from hot dogs bought at the stand, she lay immobile for hours, lulled by the throbbing pulsation of waves and the bubbling music of the merry-go-round calliope.

  From the vortex of d
arkness behind her closed eyes a recurring fantasy would emerge: being tapped for stardom by a Hollywood talent scout. “You are magnificently gorgeous,” exclaimed the phantasmagorical scout of her imagination, “but can you dance?” And she dazzled him on the spot with her Ginger Rogers footwork.

  Prone on her blanket, lost in her dream, Lorena was so certain that fame would come to her that her baby-oil-and-iodine-basted body shivered with anticipation.

  It was Delia who suggested that Lorena enter the Miss Buckroe contest. Delia would have entered herself, but she had broken her elbow doing a swan dive off the high board trying to impress some guy at the Community Center pool and had to wear a cast for most of the summer. She wouldn’t be able to perform her baton twirling for the talent part of the competition. But, she pointed out, Lorena could tap-dance.

  “Miss Buckroe?” Lorena’s round nose wrinkled in dismissal at the suggestion. “They don’t care about talent. Besides,” she sighed in a fit of candor, “I’m too flat-chested for any beauty contest.”

  “Socks,” said Delia.

  “Socks?”

  “Everybody does it. We’ll stuff socks in your bathing suit.”

  So, sock-stuffed chest held high on the Fourth of July, Lorena lined up with nine other sweating girls on the flag-draped plywood platform in front of the balloon-dart concession. Although she could tell from the wide grins on the faces of the judges that her tap-dance routine had gone flawlessly, she knew that her appearance in a bathing suit was what really counted.

  Clutching her cardboard with the number “3” painted on it, she posed like the others: front toe of her high-heel shoe angled forward, hips tilted one way, head tipped the other. Mayor Gupkie, Councilman Bunting, and the editor of the Daily Press made notes, chewed gum, and studied with narrowed eyes the rigid bodies of the contestants.