When We First Met

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “Well, so there I was, fifteen and dinky Nell Smith, when who rides into town—he really did, on a Harley-Davidson cycle—but this golden-haired boy named Pete Montana. First I saw him, and then I heard his name. That was the clincher: Montana. I said that name a thousand times every night, and it was never enough. Then I said Nell Montana to myself, and I saw how having the name Montana would make me someone.” She laughed. “Anyway, we got married, and you notice I didn’t name my kids Betty and Bob. I thought long and hard over their names. But I hope you love my Robin for more than his pretty name.”

  Despite herself, Jenny laughed. Maybe Rob’s mother was a little talkative, but she was nice, very nice. And for that moment, looking into the blue eyes so much like Rob’s, Jenny forgot everything. Forgot, because it hurt to remember. Forgot, because remembering was the past. And this moment in the kitchen, the three of them in a coziness of family feeling that quickened her heart; this moment was now. This was her time, the living moment of her life.

  Chapter 14

  “Tomorrow is our anniversary,” Rob said. He sat across from her in a booth. “Two months since we saw each other in the auditorium. Do you want to do something special?”

  It was Sunday; Rob had showed up at work just as she got her lunch break. “What I’d love to do is get up really early, maybe five o’clock, even before the sun is up, when everyone is still asleep, and go for a long walk. And while we’re walking, we’ll eat an entire loaf of hot Italian bread from the all-night bakery.”

  “We’ll do it,” he said. “You know what I want to do that’s special? I want to call you at your house and talk to you. I want to come visit you and hear your parents say, ‘Oh, hello, Rob, Jenny’s waiting for you.’”

  Doodling on a place mat, Jenny drew two little stick figures looking at each other. She began to feel tense. He’d brought this up before, but she couldn’t just spring him on her parents.

  “I don’t like this feeling that we’re sneaking around. My mother knows about us now—”

  “That was totally accidental, and we are not sneaking around.” They stared at each other for a moment.

  “All I mean is, if you don’t tell your parents about me, one of these days someone else will. You know who turns out to be in my bio class? A cousin of your brother’s girl friend.”

  “Mimi? How do you know that?”

  “His name is Holtzer, same as her name, isn’t it?” Jenny nodded. “Well, I heard him talking about his cousin Mimi one day. So I just figured—And he knows me, and probably knows your name. And we’re always together in school.”

  “I see what you mean.” She wrote “Rob” under one stick figure, “Jenny” under the other, and linked their hands.

  “Maybe I could meet your folks with a paper bag over my head. Just to get them used to the idea that there’s a guy in your life. I’ll be the mystery guest.”

  “They won’t have to see you or hear you. They’ll love that.”

  He took the ballpoint from her. On the place mat over “Rob’s” head he drew a balloon and inside wrote “Wilt Thou Marry Me?”

  “Yes, I Wilt,” Jenny wrote back in a balloon over the Jenny figure, “Someday.”

  Then Rob drew a fourposter bed with two little stick figures lying next to each other, their feet turned out. They were still holding hands. Along the bottom of the bed, he wrote, “Just Married.”

  “They look chilly.” Jenny drew a quilt over them. “Their room looks a little bare, too.” She added a tipsy-looking chair and a lopsided bureau. Rob put a frame on the wall in which he lettered HOME SWEET HOME. Then he crossed out the second HOME and wrote JENNY.

  “I want to kiss you,” he said. “Do you think your boss would mind?”

  “Don’t know about Awful, but I’d mind.”

  “Because of where we are?” She nodded. “Then I’ll think a kiss,” he said. “You, too. Look at me, and I’ll look at you, and we’ll imagine we’re kissing. How is it?”

  “Wonderful,” Jenny said. “Probably the best kiss you ever gave me.”

  After a moment he said, “My mother asked about you. She liked you.”

  “I hardly said two words.”

  “Those two words impressed her. She’s been talking about you ever since.”

  “Rob, she hasn’t.”

  “Yes, she has. She thinks you’re fabulous-looking, like something out of the Arabian nights. And that you’re smart; wise, she says.”

  “This is embarrassing.” Was Rob trying to build up a lot of good feeling between her and his mother? He didn’t have to work so hard at it. The fact was, she had liked his mother, and under other circumstances …

  “She wants you to come over for supper sometime.”

  Jenny crumpled her napkin. One thing for her to meet his mother, but this! “You can’t force things, Rob. I’m not going to your house for supper.”

  “I’m not trying to force anything, Jenny. I’m trying to make things better for us. Which is why I want to meet your people.”

  “I told you I have to talk to them first.”

  “When are you going to do it?” She frowned. “You don’t want to, do you?” he said.

  “That’s the kind of question where you think you already know the answer, so why ask?”

  He looked grim, stood up. “I’m going to get a drink.”

  “Why don’t you make that vodka or gin?”

  He stared at her, walked off. She spread a wet spot on the table with her finger. Didn’t he know that she wanted everything out in the open, too? But he didn’t seem to recognize the depth of her parents’ feelings about what had happened. Why was he acting so thick? Did he really think he could whistle and smile and charm his way into their hearts as if he were anyone’s son?

  He came back and sat down next to her.

  “Why are we fighting?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Rob. I don’t want to! I’m sorry about what I said …”

  He nodded. “Let’s forget it. Want some?” He offered her his strawberry shake.

  She shook her head, turned the links on her watch strap. “You know, if things were different, I’d really be glad to visit your mother. It’s just—I can’t be at ease with her. And my parents—that’s a whole other problem.”

  “I understand,” he said quickly. Did he? To begin with, there was a difference in the way she felt and the way he felt about what had happened to Gail. The point being, it was her sister. Then, though she knew he thought it was tragic, he also thought it was something people had to learn to live with, all of them: her parents, his mother, her.

  Like her mother, she tended to brood, to chew over things. Rob was good for her precisely because he didn’t. His personality was basically optimistic. He was always convinced there was a way, no matter what stood in front of you. That’s why he kept harping on her parents.

  He was like those Israelites who believed they could bring down the walls of—what was the name of that town?—by blowing on their horns. Sure, guys, we can do it. She could see him saying it and tooting away, while she’d be standing by, shaking her head at the sheer craziness of shattering a wall with a tinny horn.

  Joshua fit the battle of Jericho … that was it. Jericho. They used to sing that in music class in junior high. And then the last line popped into her mind: And the walls came tumbling down.

  Chapter 15

  Rob and Jenny were sitting on the stone wall outside the school. On the lawn a group of people were playing Frisbee, and from the opened windows on the second floor the band could be heard banging out “Pomp and Circumstance.” Rob bit into a hard-boiled egg. “What have you got to eat that’s interesting?”

  “Peanut butter and lettuce.”

  “Weird. I’ll try it.”

  “Give me a bite of your egg.”

  They leaned on each other, exchanging food from their lunch bags.

  “Talk to your parents yet about my coming over?”

  “I want to catch them in the right mood.” She
raised her face to the sun, sighed. “It seems when my father is feeling benign my mother looks tired, and when my mother is feeling chirpy, Dad either isn’t home or he’s rushing around doing things.”

  “Maybe I should just appear. I’ll come over tonight, knock on your door, and politely say, ‘Hi, is Jenny in?’ And then … who answers the door in your house?”

  “Whoever’s closest.”

  “Okay, suppose it’s your mother. ‘Hi, is Jenny in?’ She says, ‘Yes, who should I say?’ I say, ‘Her friend Rob.’ And she says, ‘Come on in, Rob.’ And I follow her in and then—um, you’re there and you say, ‘Mom, this is Rob Montana.’”

  “Ahhh, yes,” Jenny said. “And then I explain how Robin turns out to be a boy, and the other little detail is his last name, did you catch it? Montana, as in Arizona.”

  “Okay, your parents are a little shocked, a little upset, but then they calm down. We say we’re going together—you know, very simple, boyfriend and girl friend, and, uh, we just wanted to get things, uh, out in the open and, you know, we’ll probably talk and your parents will see that I’m not Frankenstein’s monster, and that’s it,” he said.

  She looked at him. Oh, Joshua.

  “So what do you think, Jen?”

  What should she say? What if he was right? It would be wonderful! And how would they ever know if they didn’t give it a try? “Okay,” she said.

  “We’ll do it?” His face lit up.

  She felt scared but glad. “I know you’re right. We’ve got to make the break sometime.” They loved each other—nothing could change that—and so something had to give. It wasn’t going to be her and Rob, so it would have to be her family. Her family! She thought of each one separately. Who could she count on? Ethel? Sweet Ethel, she’d love Rob, but she was a kid. Frankie, then, but he didn’t have much influence with her parents. No, it was her father and her mother Rob had to get past. Her father’s stubbornness, her mother’s grief and anger. Oh, Joshua, she thought, get out your horn and start tooting. This ain’t going to be an easy wall to bring down.

  Her father was home for supper that night, and Mimi came, too, wearing a flowered scarf tied around her forehead. Jenny was quiet, preoccupied with how to bring Rob into the conversation. Wouldn’t it be wise to prepare them a little bit? Mother, Father, have you noticed I’ve been quite busy lately? There’s this special person … no, no, too stuffy. Be more natural. Mom and Dad, there’s someone I’d like you to meet, a friend of mine … too vague, get to the point. Parents. You don’t know this, but I have a boyfriend who, it just so happens, is coming over tonight … not bad, but a little crisper. Get down to the nub of the matter. Folks, I have a boyfriend you are not going to be too happy about. His name is Rob Montana … On the other hand, being blunt might alienate them. Maybe, after all, she should be more subtle, lead up to it gradually?

  But how?

  Mimi came to her rescue. “Mrs. Pennoyer,” she was saying, “last week you promised to tell me about how you and Mr. Pennoyer met.”

  “You mean that time on the Erie Canal path?”

  “What time?” Her father looked up from buttering a piece of bread.

  “You remember, Frank. The very first time we met. I was with Glenda Sherman—”

  “Who?”

  “Frank!”

  “He’s teasing you, Mom,” Jenny said. She liked the look her parents exchanged.

  “It was a beautiful spring day,” her mother said. “Glenda and I were walking on the towpath when these two boys came along. One was tall and slim, I think his name was Ernest—”

  “Ernie Camber,” Jenny’s father supplied.

  “See! You do remember.”

  “Of course I do.” He winked at Mimi.

  “We all stopped and talked. Of course the other boy was your father,” she said to Frankie. “I didn’t think too much about him.”

  Ethel pulled at her father’s sleeve. “This is a story about you and Mommy?”

  “That’s right. A long time ago when Daddy was a young buck.”

  “He was very handsome,” Jenny’s mother said to Mimi. “You should have seen him. He had all his hair then, and this way of walking …” She stood up for a moment and rolled her shoulders. It made them all laugh. “And such eyes,” she said, sitting down. “Am I right, Frank?”

  “Dad’s blushing,” Jenny said. “No, you are, Dad. Did you like Mom right away?”

  “I certainly did.”

  “Well, I didn’t like you,” Amelia said. “Not then.”

  “You didn’t like him?” Frankie sat up, looking interested. “Why not?”

  “Because of the way he was looking at me. Of course, I could tell he was interested—I guess you could call it that.”

  “I guess you could,” Jenny’s father said.

  “But he had a very superior look on his face. Macho is what you kids call it now. We didn’t know that word then. But that’s what it was. As if he was doing me an enormous favor just by talking to me. And I was, well, sort of superior myself. I figured … I didn’t want a fellow to be humble, but I certainly wasn’t in any need.”

  “You had other boyfriends?” Jenny asked.

  “Oh, certainly.” A look of young delight appeared on her face and Jenny imagined her mother as a girl of nineteen—tall, full of pride, jaunty, and pretty. “Anyway, these boys, your father and Ernie, invited themselves to walk with Glenda and me. Well, we’re talking and your father is telling me all about himself. You know, building himself up? He’s telling me all his plans, right, Frank?”

  “It’s your story.” He leaned back, sipping coffee.

  “We came to the end of the path where Glenda had left her car and he, Frank, said to me right out of the blue, “So when are we going out on a date?’”

  “I saw what I wanted.”

  “And he called me ’Melia, as if he already knew me really well. I looked at him and said”—Jenny’s mother cleared her throat—“I said, Excuse me, Mr. Penny, or whatever your name is, but I don’t remember saying I would go out with you.’ And then I hopped in the car and rolled up the window tight.”

  “Oh! Poor Mr. Pennoyer,” Mimi said, patting his arm.

  “No, Mimi, that’s not the way it happened at all,” Frank Pennoyer said. “She asked me to go out with her. I couldn’t believe it! I hardly knew the girl!”

  They were all laughing when the doorbell rang. “I wonder who that could be,” Jenny’s mother said.

  “I’ll get it,” Ethel said, hopping off her seat.

  “I think it’s for me.” Jenny followed Ethel into the hall.

  “Hi,” Rob said as she opened the door. He looked very fresh, as if he’d just showered. His hair was damp and curled tightly. He was wearing an open-necked, deep-blue shirt.

  “Who is this?” Ethel said.

  “I’m Rob, scout. Are you Ethel?”

  “How do you know my name?” She looked at him, frowning, hands on hips.

  “Magic powers,” he said. “And”—he put his finger to his forehead—“you are five years old!”

  Jenny gripped her sister’s shoulders. Rob was so confident and relaxed, joking, while she was all nerves. “Look, guys, can we play games another time?”

  “You’re hurting me,” Ethel said. “Jenny!”

  “Sorry, Eth,” she said distractedly. “Go on in, will you? I want to talk to Rob alone.” She knew how Ethel hated to be shoved, but she pushed her anyway. “Go.”

  The child went slowly, paused at the door, looked back at Rob, and said, “Maybe I don’t like you.”

  “Well, I like you,” Rob said. Ethel didn’t answer.

  “Let’s get it over with,” Jenny said. As they walked into the dining room, her father was praising the cake. Everyone was still at the table, plates pushed aside. Her mother looked up. “Who was it, Jenny?” Then she saw Rob behind Jenny. And everyone looked at them.

  The moment was upon her, and Jenny said the first thing that came to mind. “Mom—everybody, t
his is Rob, my friend. Rob Montana.” Blurted it out like that, without any preparation, and couldn’t stop talking, went on swiftly, “Rob, this is my mother—”

  Then Rob, hand out: “How do you do, Mrs. Pennoyer?”

  And her mother, the remnants of a smile still on her face: “What did you say your name was?”

  “And this is my father,” Jenny said quickly, as if by introducing Rob fast enough she could leap over the reverberations of his name, “my brother Frankie, you met Ethel, and this is Mimi Holtzer.”

  “Hi,” Rob said, carrying on. “Frankie. Mimi. Think I know your cousin, Mimi. How do you do, Mr. Pennoyer?” Again his hand was out. But Jenny’s father didn’t respond, looked at Rob flatly, as if he were an unwelcome salesman. “Rob what?”

  A beat of silence passed. They know, Jenny thought. They know. “Montana,” Rob said.

  Mimi fidgeted with her scarf. “Montana?” She turned to Frankie. “Isn’t that the same name as—”

  “Montana?” Frankie had been slouched in his seat, one arm around the back of Mimi’s chair. Now he pulled himself upright. His eyes darted at Rob, then Jenny.

  Jenny’s stomach pounded. The name, she thought, the name—as if nothing else were important.

  “Are you related to someone named Nell Montana?” Frankie pointed a finger at Rob, and Jenny wanted to slap his hand down. “Well?” Frankie said aggressively, sounding eerily like their father.

  “She’s my mother,” Rob said. “Nell Montana is my mother.”

  It was out, and everyone froze—it was almost comical. A snort of nervous laughter ran through Jenny; her eyes teared with the effort to suppress it. Her father froze in the act of lifting his coffee cup to his mouth, Frankie froze with his finger pointed, Mimi with a piece of cake in her hand, and Jenny’s mother dabbing up crumbs with a napkin.

  “You’re—kidding!” Frankie said finally.

  “No,” Rob said, his voice sinking as if he’d just realized who he was and where he was and what he was up against. “I’m not kidding.” In the sharpened bones of his face, Jenny saw what an effort it was for him to continue smiling. “She’s my mother.”