Jory made her way back downstairs. She went through the kitchen, pointlessly running her hand over the counters and tabletops. She opened cupboards and the pantry door—here were all their boxes of cereal and macaroni and below them cans of tuna and soup still waiting to be eaten. She came back into the living room and sank down on the dead cat couch. She leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. She examined the cracks in the ceiling’s plaster. This house was a hundred years old. At least a hundred. The people who had built this house were all dead. And the people who had lived in it. Just like Mrs. Kleinfelter’s baby was dead. David Daniel. He, too, was dead and buried and no one even gave him much of a thought anymore, even though he had been only three and had had beautiful blue eyes. No one cared about Henry Kleinfelter or the people he loved or his old house and all his old stuff.
Jory stood up. She went over to the victrola and lifted its lid. There was already a record on the player’s turntable. A tiny little .45 with one of those yellow plastic things stuck in the middle to make it fit. Jory lifted it cautiously off the spindle. “Prelude to a Kiss.” Sarah Vaughan. She held the record closer to her face. I’m sorry—XOXOXO was written in blue ink on the record’s center label. Jory stared at the record again and then she sat down on the floor, still holding the record. She inspected it again. She ran her fingers over the X’s and O’s. She gave a cry that she was glad no one was there to hear. She stood up again and shakily placed the record back on the turntable. She cranked the victrola’s handle and put the needle in place. The record crackled and hummed and popped and then a woman’s voice, sweet and yet deep, began singing. Jory stood next to the victrola with her heart swelling tight and tighter. She thought that surely soon her heart might burst open and spill its contents out into her chest. Even now, a piece of her heart seemed to be stabbing her over and over in a horrible, wonderful spot behind her breastbone. Jory listened to the song three more times before she turned the victrola off.
She sat down on the hardwood floor and leaned her head back against the wall. She held the record in her lap. Her heart was still sweetly, wondrously sore, but there was also something else—a niggling, struggling bit of something that was crawling its way to the forefront of her brain. She had a sudden, momentary flash of uncovering the mess of writhing worms beneath Grip’s back step. I’m sorry—XOXOXO, the record said. I’m sorry. What did he mean? In reference to what? Was he sorry about what he’d last said to her? Sorry about leaving? Sorry about not saying good-bye? Sorry about the brown paisley dress that was crumpled beneath his bed?
Jory continued to sit as the evening light outside dimmed and disappeared completely. When she stood up, one of her feet had fallen asleep and it tingled and buzzed as she hobbled into the kitchen and picked up the heavy phone receiver. She dialed her old phone number and listened to it ring. Her heart, which had been so thick and swollen with feeling, was now back to its painful jerky thrumming. She held the phone tightly to her ear. The phone in her old house on Ninth Avenue rang hollowly on and on. For once, there was no one there to hear the news that she had been finally willing to impart.
Chapter Eighteen
Laird was wearing an off-white tuxedo with tan velvet piping and a stiffly ruffled shirt that matched Jory’s dress, and Mrs. Kleinfelter was helping him pin Jory’s corsage onto the shoulder of her gown. Laird kept fumbling with the long pearly-headed pin, and finally Mrs. Kleinfelter tut-tutted and batted him away with her hand. Jory held completely still as Hilda inserted her long, coolly-knobbed fingers inside the front portion of her dress and fastened the fragrant red rosebuds to her shoulder. “There,” Mrs. Kleinfelter said, standing back and assessing her handiwork. “Lovely, if I say so myself. Good choice,” she said to Laird. “Both the flowers and the girl.” Laird smiled and glanced nervously at Jory. Jory patted her hair. It was in a sleek knot on top of her head, fastened there by about a million bobby pins, but she was not entirely sure of its sturdiness or stability. “Well, I guess we better go,” said Laird, looking apologetically at Mrs. Kleinfelter. “Randy and Rhea are waiting in the car.”
“Randy and Rhea,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “Sounds like a comedy team.”
“Or a disease,” said Jory.
They trooped out to the porch, and Jory held the bottom of her dress up as she made her way down the stairs and into the backseat of Randy’s newly washed Camaro. The driver’s door—the only part of the car that was still a primer gray—was open and Laird squeezed carefully in next to her. Jory waved at Mrs. Kleinfelter, who was still standing on the porch.
“Is that your grandmother?” asked Rhea, who was examining herself in the sun visor’s mirror.
“Sort of,” said Jory.
“She’s really old,” said Rhea.
“She’s not that old,” said Jory, feeling at her hair, which was nearly brushing the car’s ceiling.
“Okay, kids,” said Randy, turning around and backing the car out of the drive. “Who wants peppermint schnapps?”
Jory watched as a pair of headlights behind them slowly lit up the interior of their car, and then her father’s green Buick pulled up and into the driveway next to them. She could see her father’s face slowly registering Jory’s presence in the Camaro.
“Hey, who’s that?” said Randy.
“Just go,” said Jory. “Go. Hurry.”
With a roar of the car’s engine, Randy reversed out into the street and Jory sat back and tried not to feel guilty about leaving Mrs. Kleinfelter to deal with this situation. Her head felt both tingly and fuzzy. Or maybe it was that her hair was too tight. Laird handed her Randy’s flask and she took a drink. “Urg,” she said, wiping her mouth. “That is horrible.”
“Only the best for my friends,” said Randy. “We’re all going first class tonight.”
“It’s not so bad after the first few,” said Rhea. “And besides, it freshens your breath.” She turned and grinned at Jory and Laird, the stiffly curled ringlets in front of her ears bobbing with each movement. “Minty fresh, see?” She blew a puff of air at them. “Hey, was that your dad in that car?”
Jory nodded glumly.
“I don’t understand your family.” Rhea turned back around and adjusted the top portion of her hair, which—she had told Jory on the phone—was now padded with a “wiglet.”
“Me either,” said Jory. Her father would be so disappointed in her. He already was disappointed in her. She bent her head down and smelled her corsage. “How’d you know what color to get?” she asked Laird.
“My mom called your grandma.” He put his arm around the back of the seat. It rested there, not touching her shoulder.
Jory noticed that his hair was slicked down. Differently. And he smelled like some kind of green or blue soap. She suddenly felt shy, as if she had never met him before. She folded her hands together in her lap. She was wearing gloves.
“I like your dress.” Laird leaned closer toward her. “I like these little things.” He touched one of the velvet rosebuds at her neckline.
“Thanks,” she said, not looking at him.
“How do your gloves stay up?” He tried to encircle her bicep with his fingers.
“I don’t know,” said Jory, feeling quite strange. “They just do.”
“Hey,” said Rhea, leaning back from the front seat, “what do you bet some of the teachers are drunk tonight?”
“Shit,” said Randy. He took his hand off the wheel and struggled to find something in his jacket pocket—finally, he pulled his hand out and tossed a package of gum into the backseat. “Chew some of that before you go in. They’re gonna try and check your breath.” Randy was wearing a bright red crushed velvet tux with a red velvet bow tie, both of which were supposed to match Rhea’s burgundy dress, but instead clashed horribly. The tux shop had made a mistake, Rhea had told Jory, but they had gotten a fifteen percent discount and free white patent leather platform shoes for Randy, so it was alm
ost worth it.
“What about me?” said Rhea, turning back toward him and pretending to pout. “Don’t you care if my breath reeks of booze?”
Randy grinned. “I’ll test it for you ahead of time.”
Jory picked up the pack of Doublemint and tried to pull a piece of gum out of its paper slot, but her fingers were all thick inside her gloves.
“Here,” said Laird. He took the package and pulled a foiled piece of gum out and unwrapped it. He turned to Jory. “Open up,” he said. Jory opened her mouth slightly and Laird laid the piece of gum carefully on her tongue. He smiled at her. She blushed and then smiled back and began to chew, the gum’s sweet mintiness filling her mouth. Laird’s arm was now resting on the back of her shoulder.
“Okay, boozehounds,” said Rhea. She turned around and narrowed her eyes. “Hand over the schnapps.”
Jory sat dazedly in the car’s backseat, feeling more sophisticated than she had in her entire life. She was wearing a pair of cream-colored suede pumps that Mrs. Kleinfelter had bought at Nafziger’s just this afternoon. She also had on nylons and a garter belt and girdle, plus Mrs. Kleinfelter’s very own clip-on pearl earrings. Jory tugged tentatively on her left earlobe. What if one of them fell off and she didn’t notice?
They drove past the now familiar houses and farms, and finally climbed the little hill to the Day ’N’ Nite grocery. A few minutes later they made a long turn. “Hey, hey,” said Randy. “Get a load of this.” With a sudden bump and a screeching of tires, he pulled the Camaro into the school parking lot and Jory craned her neck looking to see who was here. Girls in long Gunne Sax dresses and ratted and ringleted hairdos and guys in ruffle-shirted, ill-fitting tuxes and shiny rented shoes stood somewhat awkwardly in the parking lot, smoking and rushing in and out of the brightly lit gym, the girls squealing and hugging as if they hadn’t just seen each other at school that very afternoon.
Randy found a parking spot and backed the car carefully into it. He turned off the engine. “Well, now,” he said. He took a long drink from the flask, put it into his breast pocket, and leaned over toward Rhea. Jory watched, embarrassed, as Rhea wrapped her arms around his neck and began kissing Randy as if receiving life-sustaining sustenance. Jory felt a pang of nervousness that was only slightly tempered by the thrill of being here in the first place. She smoothed the folds of her dress and tried to figure out what to do with her gum.
“All right,” said Laird, leaning forward and punching Randy once on the shoulder. “Hey, Asumendi,” he said. “C’mon. Let’s go. You guys can do that later.”
Rhea laughed and unlinked her arms from around Randy’s neck. She unscrewed the lid on the flask and took a long drink. “One for the road.” She dangled the flask over the backseat, offering it to Jory and Laird.
Jory, for reasons that remained obscure to her, took the flask and tipped it up to her own mouth. The schnapps still tasted terrible, absolutely horrible, like a Christmas candy cane mixed with mentholated fire. Jory took one drink and then another. She swallowed and gasped and then swallowed again. An amazing warmth spread slowly down her throat and into her stomach; it seemed to fill every empty hollow of her, the nervous, anxious, saddened, scooped-out part of her. It was like taking a luxuriously hot bath on a cold night. She lifted the flask up and took another drink. It was considerably less horrid this time. She took a final lengthy sip. “Hey-o,” said Laird, looking surprised. He took the flask out of Jory’s grip and handed it back to Rhea. “Can we go now?”
Rhea and Jory and Laird clambered out of the car. Jory lifted her hand to her hair for the umpteenth time. She could feel her hair, but it didn’t seem to make any sense to her anymore. She couldn’t quite remember what it was supposed to be doing. “Do I look okay?” she asked Rhea.
“Simply loverly,” said Rhea, linking her arm through Jory’s. They stumbled through the graveled parking lot in their strange high-heeled shoes, laughing and grabbing at each other for support. As they got closer to the gym, Jory could hear music pouring forth from the golden-lit doorway. “Is it a band?” she asked Laird, who had caught up to them.
“What else would it be?” Laird put his hand on Jory’s arm.
“I don’t know,” she said. “A record?” Her shoes seemed to be getting increasingly wobbly.
Laird shook his head. “Oh, boy,” he said.
“What a lightweight,” said Randy, smiling. He socked Laird on the shoulder. “Way to go, my man.”
At the gym’s doorway, a girl Jory thought she recognized from typing I took their tickets. And then they were inside. The music issuing from the stage was loud. Jory felt as if her whole body, from her feet up, was vibrating like a big pulsing heart. She liked this new heart beating; it was so much more friendly than the thing her heart had been doing lately. She smiled and couldn’t seem to stop.
The gym was now, as Rhea had told her it would be, “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” What this meant was that the ceiling of the gym was now covered with white and silver crepe paper streamers and many, many helium-filled balloons, and on the stage was a backdrop of silver stars and planets and an enormous lopsided crescent-shaped moon that tilted precipitously to one side. Toilet paper and tinfoil had obviously been utilized to full effect.
“Saturn is in the wrong spot,” said Jory, standing on her tiptoes and yelling into Laird’s ear.
“What?” he said, leaning down and hanging on to her arm.
“Nothing,” said Jory, gaping about her. The band! On the stage there was an actual band! Jory had never seen a band before. She had glimpsed one once on American Bandstand right before her mother made her turn off the TV, but she had never seen a musical group in real life before, and not one up close like this. There was a guitar player and a guy playing the drums and some other guy and they all had long hair—much longer than the guys at school—and they looked like maybe they were in college. The guy playing the guitar was wearing striped pants and a silver shirt. They reminded Jory of the people at Hope House; in fact, the guitar player had a long dark braid just like the guitar player who lived in the cabin behind Hope House. Jory squinted up at the stage.
“Nice dress.” Jude Mullinix had walked up with her brother in tow and now stood staring about the gym with a slightly bored look. “Very Laura Ashley. It suits you.” Jory couldn’t detect a single note of sarcasm in Jude’s voice.
Jude was wearing a long sleeveless dress made of some kind of slinky navy blue formfitting satin. Beautiful blue sequins fell randomly down its length like dark glistening raindrops. Jude’s hair was one long sheath of shining blackness, like the back of a radiant, shower-wet crow. “You look beautiful,” Jory said. She hadn’t meant to say this at all, but it was so true that it had come out regardless.
Jude looked momentarily nonplussed. “Thanks,” she said finally.
“What about me?” said Nick, pivoting on one heel. “How gorgeous am I?”
Jory laughed. “Very,” she said, and he was. He looked unlike any other boy here, with his smooth chin-length black hair and navy pants and silk dress shirt. He had on no bow tie or suit jacket, but instead wore black suspenders and expensive, complicated-looking shoes.
Jude smoothed down the sequined portion of her dress. “Where’s your date?”
“Off getting punch, I think,” said Jory.
“Well,” said Nick, “if that’s the manly thing . . .” He gave his sister’s elbow a squeeze and sauntered off in the direction of the punch bowl.
Jory took a deep breath. “So, how do you know Grip?” She felt as if she had been waiting forever to ask this.
Jude’s expression didn’t shift and her dark eyes remained as blank and inscrutable as ever. “How do you know him?”
“Oh,” said Jory. She shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s my friend,” she said finally, lamely.
“What a coincidence,” said Jude.
Jory’s stomach felt a pin
ch of residual tightness. She hadn’t envisioned the conversation going like this at all. In her obsessive nighttime thoughts she had foolishly pictured Jude providing an explanation that would soften or even remove the hateful sting of her earlier implication. Jory glanced around her in desperation. “I just don’t understand,” she said, miserably.
“Really?” said Jude. She gave Jory a long, and perhaps genuinely empathetic, look. “I think you probably do.”
Laird came up beside them now, holding a triangle of punch cups. “Here you go,” he said, handing Jude and Jory small cups of some pinkish liquid. “Salud,” he said, and, grinning, lifted his own cup in the air. He downed his quickly. “Okay,” he said, “let the festivities begin!”
Laird pulled her out into the middle of the gym floor, where Jory put her arms lightly around his neck the way Mrs. Kleinfelter had shown her, although Laird was much taller than Mrs. Kleinfelter and he felt nothing like her either. She could feel herself smiling into the shoulder portion of Laird’s tuxedo. Over his shoulder, on the stage, the guitar-playing guy held the last note of the song that she recognized from her transistor radio, and then he caught sight of Jory and winked and she saw that he was the guitar man from Hope House. She stopped still on the dance floor, but everyone else stopped too. They were clapping while Jory was still looking up at the guitar-playing man, until Laird took her arm and steered her across the gym floor through one of the open side doors.
They stepped out into the dark, freezing air of the parking lot. Here and there students could be seen furtively lighting cigarettes and embracing in the darkness. Laird took Jory’s hand and walked her over to the nearest car. They sat on its hood. Jory carefully rearranged her dress’s folds and Laird pulled the flask out of his jacket pocket. He unscrewed the lid and offered it to Jory and she took a long drink of the horrible stuff. “I know the guitar player,” she said, handing him back the flask.
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