by Gail Rock
“Oh, no!” she said. “It would happen now.” She craned her neck around to see what was wrong with her stocking, and Carla Mae and I broke up laughing.
Just then Billy walked up to us.
“Hi, Addie,” he said. “Wanna dance?”
Tanya turned back toward us so fast I thought her neck would snap.
I was about to say no to Billy when I saw the look on Tanya’s face. She couldn’t believe it.
“Sure,” I said to Billy, and we moved out to the dance floor.
We stalked around stiffly for a few moments, with Carolyn and Dick dancing just as self-consciously across the floor from us. The spotlight in our eyes made it difficult to see where we were going, and I was thankful there was only one other couple to worry about bumping into on the floor. Billy’s robe kept getting in the way, and his crown would slip over his forehead each time we changed directions.
“I think you were supposed to ask Tanya to dance,” I said.
“Are you kidding?” Billy said. “She’s been dancing with everybody else in the place. All she does is show off what a hot dancer she is. It’s like trying to drag a tornado around the floor.”
“Serves him right,” I thought, but I didn’t say it.
I twisted around a bit to see if I could spot Mr. Davenport. I wished the music would stop so I could go and choose him as my next partner.
“You look neat,” Billy was saying.
I didn’t reply.
“I was really going to ask you to the dance,” he said. “But you made me so mad that day after class—well, I just asked Tanya to get even.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I didn’t even want to come to the dumb dance anyway.”
“Well, I wish I hadn’t either,” he said. “I really feel stupid in this get-up.”
“Yes,” I said, looking at him. “It’s pretty childish.”
Before he could reply the music stopped, and I quickly dropped his hand.
“Thanks,” he said, starting to walk me off the floor.
“Sure,” I said as I left him standing there and started toward Mr. Davenport.
Now I was going to find out what it was he wanted to tell me. That, after all, was my only reason for coming to the dance.
He smiled as I walked up to him.
“Hello, Addie,” he said. “You look wonderful.”
“So do you,” I blurted out. He was wearing a handsome blue suit and a wonderful tie with navy and red stripes. I was staring at it and wondering if I could remember just the color of blue to try in a painting of him when I realized he was introducing me to someone standing next to him. I looked up.
“… Kathleen Tate,” he was saying. “My fiancée.”
I heard the word, but it didn’t register at first. I could see it in front of me. I knew it was a French word with two e’s at the end, an accent over the next to last one. I always won the spelling bee in our class.
I was reaching out my hand to shake hands with her and saying, “Hello, nice to meet you,” but it seemed to be coming from somewhere else.
“Kathleen and I are going to be married this June when school’s out,” he said. “But don’t tell anyone yet; it’s still our secret. She’s teaching in Omaha. I wanted you two to meet. I knew you’d like each other.”
Kathleen gave me a dazzling smile. She was beautiful.
“I’m delighted to meet you, Addie,” she said. “Douglas has told me so much about you and your interest in art. I think you’re his favorite student!”
“Thank you,” I mumbled.
“I hope you were coming over to ask me to dance, Addie,” said Mr. Davenport, smiling.
“Oh, yeah,” I said.
He took my hand and we moved to the dance floor. I looked back at Kathleen. I knew I must be invisible next to someone as beautiful as she was, and I felt like a fool for trying so hard to look glamorous.
“I’ve taken a job teaching in Kansas City for next year,” he was saying. “We finally found a place where we can both teach in the same school.”
“Oh, great,” I said numbly.
When the music stopped, Mr. Davenport thanked me and started to walk me to the side of the dance floor, but I left him standing there and headed back for the corner by the record player where Carla Mae and some of the other girls were standing.
Someone put on another record, and everyone moved to the floor to dance.
“You were dancing with Alan Ladd!” Carla Mae giggled.
I was silent.
“Did you see his girlfriend?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Is she gorgeous? Oh, I’d give my arm to look like that.”
“Well if you gave your arm, you wouldn’t look like that, would you?” I asked irritably.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked.
“Nothing!” I said angrily.
Jimmy asked Carla Mae to dance, and they went out on the floor. I stood there by myself watching them. Billy and Tanya were dancing together again and so were Carolyn and Dick and my father and Irene. Mr. Davenport was dancing very close with Kathleen.
I realized I was the only person there who wasn’t with someone. I was the only one alone. I suddenly felt everyone was watching me. I felt paralyzed. If I only had gloves or a handkerchief to fiddle with, something to look busy with. I bent over to fix the seam of one of my stockings and I heard someone whistle. Three of the boys in our class were sitting on the edge of the bleacher seats, watching me. They whistled again, rudely.
“Oh, shut up!” I said to them.
“Hey, glamor girl,” one of them called to me. “You got a great pair of legs!”
None of the boys in our class had ever said anything like that to me before, and I was furious. They were mocking me somehow, trying to embarrass me for having tried to look good. I hated them for it.
“Just shut up!” I repeated.
“Whatcha gonna do, kick me with your high heels?” one of them said sarcastically,
“You’re disgusting!” I said. At that, they all roared with laughter.
“Disgusting!” one of them shrieked, mocking me.
I was so angry that without thinking I grabbed a basketball that was sitting on the bleachers and heaved it at one of them. He just laughed and caught it, and tossed it to one of the others.
Suddenly one of them started bouncing it on the gym floor toward the basket and took a shot. He missed.
“Bad shot!” I said, pleased that he had failed at showing off.
“Let’s see you do better,” he said and threw the ball at me angrily.
I caught it easily. I was a whiz at basketball, and I wasn’t about to let them humiliate me for another second. I kicked off my shoes, put my corsage on the bleachers, then dribbled a couple of steps, and made a perfect one-handed jump shot.
One of the other boys grabbed the ball under the basket and in a second I was in the middle of an impromptu basketball game with them, all thoughts of high heels and taunting remarks left behind.
A couple of the other boys standing along the sidelines joined in, and without realizing it we had broken up the whole dance. I was lurching around wildly under the basket, sliding in my nylon stockings, my dress flying. We weren’t even aware that Mr. Davenport was striding across the floor toward us.
“All right,” he shouted. “That’s enough!”
We kept right on playing.
“That’s enough!” he said angrily. “Stop this now!”
We stopped, and the boys withdrew to the sides of the gym. I was left standing under the basket, holding the ball.
“This is a dance, not a basketball game!” Mr. Davenport said, looking at me.
Everybody was staring at me, and my face was burning.
I turned away and went to put my shoes back on.
“Addie, I’m surprised at you,” he said, following me. “What a childish thing to do.”
Nothing he could have said would have hurt me more than that.
&nb
sp; “Well, I’d rather play basketball than dance any day!” I said, close to tears. I knew I had made a fool of myself in front of him, and I ran for the door.
“Addie …” Mr. Davenport called after me, but I rushed past him and out the door.
Chapter Eight
I took the shortcut through the playground, heading for our house, which was only two blocks away. I heard someone call my name, and I looked around. Dad was coming toward me from the schoolhouse door, carrying my coat.
I sat down in one of the swings and waited for him, tears running down my face.
“Is that any way to behave at a dance?” he asked as he approached me.
“I don’t care. I’m going home.”
“Why’d you run out like that?”
“That stupid Mr. Davenport. He embarrassed me in front of everybody! Calling me childish!”
“Well, what in the world are you doing playing basketball at a dance?”
“They started it!” I said, still crying.
He put the coat over my shoulders and sat down in the swing next to me.
“Being called down is nothing to get so upset over,” he said, handing me his handkerchief.
“I hate this dance!” I said, blowing my nose noisily. “I hate looking like this! It’s not me!”
“I think you look real nice,” he said.
“It’s disgusting!” I said angrily. “Those boys are so stupid and mean! They whistled at me like a bunch of idiots. It made me feel awful.”
“They don’t mean any harm,” he said. “Sometimes boys act foolish. They don’t know what to say to girls. It’s just as hard for them.”
“Well, they’re all creeps!”
“I thought you were having a good time. I saw you dancing with Billy Wild and Mr. Davenport …”
“I can’t stand Mr. Davenport!”
“I thought you liked him a lot.”
“No!”
“Irene said his girlfriend was there. Did you meet her?”
“It’s not his girlfriend,” I said. “It’s his fiancée.”
“Oh, he’s getting married,” said Dad.
“Yeah, this June. And moving away to Kansas City.”
“I guess you’ll miss him. All the kids seem to like him.”
“I don’t care what he does,” I said and got up from the swing and started to walk toward home.
Dad walked along beside me.
“It’s unfair,” I said after a few moments. “The pretty girls get everything without even trying. If you’re not beautiful or rich, then you’re nobody. It’s just not fair—they get everything! Everybody falls in love with them!”
“Well, love isn’t something you ‘get,’” said Dad. “It’s not like winning a game or something. It doesn’t happen at first sight. You have to know somebody a long time and work at it.”
“Yeah, but if boys don’t like the way you look, you never get the chance to know them. That’s all they care about. And you’re the same with that Irene Davis!”
“Irene’s a nice person,” he said. “I wanted to tell you I was going out with her, but I just didn’t know what to say …”
“How could you like somebody like that?” I asked. “She’s so—I don’t know—she’s not refined like my mother was.”
“No,” said Dad. “She’s not much like your mother, but that doesn’t mean we can’t like each other.”
I wondered how he could say that. I imagined that his love for my mother had been like the feeling I had for Mr. Davenport. We walked along for a moment, not saying anything.
“I don’t suppose I’ll ever feel that way about anybody again,” he said. “The way I felt about your mother …”
I was surprised that he continued the conversation. He almost never mentioned my mother to me. What little I knew of her I had learned from Grandma.
“But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy other people’s company,” he went on. “And care about them in a different way.”
“But it’s not the same,” I said.
“No,” he said. “It’s not, but you don’t always get just what you want in life.”
“I don’t see why not,” I said impatiently. That had always been an argument between us. I thought you could make things happen the way you wanted in life, and he was a firm believer in fate, not to mention bad luck.
“You just can’t settle for any old thing that comes along,” I said. “Then you’ll never get what you really want. You have to try for it.”
It struck me that I was repeating what Mr. Davenport had said to me about trying to be an artist. It was true that my dad was disappointed about some things in his life, and it was a constant struggle for me to overcome his pessimism and maintain my optimism. As badly as I felt about Mr. Davenport, I somehow knew that I didn’t share Dad’s pessimism about love.
He didn’t say anything for a moment, as though he were thinking over what I had said.
“I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “Sometimes I thought if I couldn’t find somebody like your mother again I’d rather be alone. But I’m pretty sure there’s nobody else like her for me, and I don’t think I want to be alone the rest of my life—that doesn’t seem right either.”
I had never thought of it that way, and it made me very sad to think of anyone, especially my dad, settling for something he didn’t really want just to keep from being alone.
“I don’t have all the answers,” he said. “I guess you just have to try and see what happens. You can’t just give up the first time something goes wrong.”
He looked over at me, and I knew he was referring to Mr. Davenport.
“There’re plenty of boys around for you to like, that’s for sure,” he said.
“I don’t know who,” I said dejectedly. “I don’t know how you’re ever supposed to find anybody.”
“Well, you don’t exactly go out and look for somebody,” he said. “You just have to keep your eyes open to what’s happening around you. The right person might be there all along and you wouldn’t see him—somebody like Billy.”
“Oh, him. He didn’t even ask me to the dance,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you,” said Dad.
“I guess not,” I said, and wondered how Billy really did feel. I had hardly talked to him at the dance, and he had been very nice to me after all. I wondered if I had hurt his feelings, and I realized it was the first time that night I had even thought about his feelings, I had been so preoccupied with my own.
“I asked Irene to come over to the house for coffee,” Dad said.
I looked up, surprised.
“I think you ought to try to get to know her,” he said. “I think you’ll like her. She’s a lot of fun …” His voice trailed off for a moment.
“It isn’t always perfect, you know,” he said. “It doesn’t happen the way it says in the movies.”
I looked closely at my father as we walked along together. I wondered if it was fair of me to wish he wouldn’t settle for just anyone. I knew I could never do that. If I had been Grandma, I would have married Tom. I would do what I thought was right for me.
Chapter Nine
Grandma was surprised to see us back from the dance so soon, but I didn’t feel like explaining it all. I went into the bedroom to hang up my coat, and I heard Dad talking to her in the kitchen.
I put my coat in the closet Grandma and I shared, and stood there looking at myself in the mirror. I wondered if I would grow up to look anything like Kathleen, but I figured I had no chance. Grandma came in and stood next to me and put her arm around me.
“You didn’t like the dance?”
“It wasn’t any fun,” I said.
“Your dad told me about the basketball game,” she said.
“Oh.”
“That must have been a sight,” she said, smiling a bit.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I acted really dumb.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said.
“I wi
sh I hadn’t even gone,” I said.
“Dad says Mr. Davenport’s getting married,” Grandma said.
“Yeah.”
“Well, I guess your whole class will miss him.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said listlessly. “We’d have a different teacher next year anyway, so we’d probably never see him even if he was here.”
I kicked off my high heels.
“Don’t forget to put tissue in those to hold the shape,” Grandma said. “You can wear them to the next big dance.”
“Ugh,” I said. “I’d rather wear army boots—these are so uncomfortable.”
“Well, put them back on a minute and come out and have some cake and ice cream. Irene is here.”
“Oh, no,” I groaned. I had forgotten Irene was coming over. The last thing I wanted to do was sit around the kitchen table and be sociable with company—especially Irene Davis.
“Now, Addie,” said Grandma. “You behave yourself. Come on.”
We went into the kitchen, where Dad and Irene were sitting at the table having coffee and some of Grandma’s chocolate cake. I poured myself a big glass of milk, and Grandma and I sat down, too. I was curious to see how Dad behaved around Irene, and I tried to watch them but didn’t want to be rude or stare or anything. We were all a little uncomfortable, but Irene just kept chatting and laughing as if nothing was wrong.
“Just love your shoes and dress, Addie,” she said.
“I hope I never have to wear them again,” I said grumpily.
“Oh, you look great in them,” she said. “Even playing basketball.” She laughed.
For a second I was angry, then Dad and Grandma smiled, too, and I realized how funny I must have looked skidding around the gym in my dress and stocking feet, and I started to laugh too.
“You sure livened up the joint!” Irene said. “It was a pretty dull dance till you arrived!”
“Yeah,” I said, and we all laughed again.
Somebody knocked on the kitchen door, and Grandma got up to answer it. I thought I heard Billy Wild’s voice coming from the dark porch, and I went to the door too. He was standing there with a red satin, heart-shaped candy box tucked awkwardly under his arm.
“Hi,” he said to me.
“Hi,” I said. “How come you left the dance?”
