My First Love and Other Disasters

by Francine Pascal

  “So what?”

  “And then I’ll fix your hair.”

  “I wanna go first.”

  “And so you will.” I smile down at her, frantically brushing my hair. “Right after me, you go first.”

  She’s so confused she doesn’t even make a fuss.

  “Look,” I tell the kids, “the ferry’s docking.”

  The four of us stand there, watching the people coming off the boat. Everyone is loaded down with tons of luggage and backpacks and things. It’s the opening of the season, and people with houses are moving all their things out. My heart is practically pounding out of my chest knowing I’m going to see Jim. I’m getting worse every day.

  There he is. And . . .

  “There they are.” Barry pokes me to look at Jim leaving the ferry with this horrendous growth hanging off his left arm. Barry waves at them!

  “Hey! Jimmy! Gloria! Over here!”

  “I didn’t know Gloria was coming out here too,” I say very casually.

  “She’s just here for the day,” Barry says, and looks at me kind of surprised. “Don’t you like her?”

  “Are you kidding? I think she’s . . . she’s . . . something else.” I’m smart enough not to say what. Actually I despise her type of girl—as I told you—the cutesy cheerleader kind with the slippery blond hair that hangs a mile down their backs and the dimples that simply look like cheek holes to me.

  A lot of the little kids in school are impressed just because Gloria is captain of the cheerleaders. They think she’s a real big deal, and at the ball games you’re always hearing them saying did you see what Gloria did with her hair, or get a load of those boots Gloria’s wearing, or something about her eyes. You’d think she was the only person in the world to have blue eyes. In my opinion, one look in those eyes and you think nobody’s home.

  Anyway, here they come. I don’t think Jim’s going to recognize me from the shoe store because, after all, there are probably lots of customers going in all the time. Why should he just remember me? I wasn’t in there that long, and most of the time he was down in the basement anyway. I hope like crazy he doesn’t remember me. I don’t think I was at my best that day.

  “Gloria?” Barry grabs one of Jim’s bags from her. Obviously he doesn’t think nobody’s home behind those eyes. “Do you know Victoria Martin? Victoria, do you know Gloria Donovan and Jimmy Freeman?”

  And like I never laid eyes on either of them before this minute, I say, “Hi.” Please, God, don’t let him recognize me.

  “Hi,” Jim says, and he does one of those double takes and looks kind of puzzled, but I keep very cool and look at him like I’m a completely new person. I give him a wide, open kind of smile—slightly upturned face, merry eyes, absolutely nothing to hide. It works. I can practically hear him say to himself, “Naaw, that can’t be that nut from the shoe store.”

  As for Gloria the Magnificent, she can’t even squeeze out a “hi.” All she can manage is a sickly dumb smile with those stupid cheek holes. Naturally every tooth is perfect.

  “How’s it going, buddy?” Jim says to Barry, giving him one of those affectionate back slaps.

  “Okay,” Barry says, “still pretty quiet, though.”

  “But picking up a little, right?” Jim kind of motions in my direction. At least I think that’s what he’s doing. Obviously Barry does, too, because he gets real embarrassed-looking and says, “Yeah, I guess so.”

  And Gloria looks annoyed. Great! I guess he did mean me.

  “Been getting in any tennis?” Jim asks, and Barry says he’s been waiting for him, and Jim says, “Well, buddy, here I am.”

  And that’s the feeling you get, that it’s all about to start because here he is. Jim is definitely a mover type, and people like to move with him. Like now, with Barry, Jim’s the one who sets the time and date for their tennis game even though it’s Barry’s court. But that’s the way it is, Jim calls the shots, and people just kind of want to go along with him.

  Everyone’s always talking about how some politicians have charisma. Well, I’m not exactly sure what it is—charisma, I mean—but the way everyone is so attracted to Jim I think he must have tons of it.

  “Victoria . . .” DeeDee is sniffing and tugging at my shorts. “My ice cream is melting all down.”

  “Who is that?” Gloria says, looking at DeeDee like she was some kind of bug. I admit she looks pretty disgusting with chocolate ice cream all over her face and running down her arm and dripping off her elbow. Still, I don’t like Gloria’s tone.

  “That’s DeeDee,” Barry says, “if you can find her under all that ice cream. Victoria’s a mother’s helper.”

  “Who are you working for?” Suddenly Gloria is all interested.

  “Cynthia Landry,” I tell her.

  “I know her!” she squeals.

  “Come on, DeeDee,” I say, paying no attention to Gloria, who obviously can’t wait to unload on Cynthia. “I’ll wash you off in the water fountain.”

  “No,” she says, “I want to do it myself.”

  Gloria can’t hold it in. “Boy,” she chirps, “poor Cynthia. She had a real rat husband who played around with everyone and ran off to California. Was he gorgeous! Looked like Al Pacino.”

  Gross! No wonder Cynthia hates Jed. It’s horrendous to think everyone knows your whole life’s story and how your husband was playing around. He really was disgusting. And so is Gloria for gossiping around like that.

  “That’s what a lot of people are saying.” I sniff. “But of course they don’t know the real story, so they just keep repeating the old gossip.”

  That ought to shut her up.

  “Cool! I’d just love to know the whole story,” she says. She’s so dumb she doesn’t even know when she’s being put down. How can Jim stand her?

  “Hey, the Landry house is in Ocean Beach too,” she says, and then turns toward Jim. “Isn’t that nice,” she purrs, giving him a brilliant smile. “You’ll be real close neighbours.”

  “I don’t know how close we’ll be,” I say as nonchalantly as I can manage.

  “Well, I do,” she says, really snotty. “The Landry’s house is on Evergreen, right around the corner from Jimmy boy’s. Actually Cynthia offered me the job this year, but I said no. I would have considered it if gorgeous Jed was still there, but I make it a policy never to work for divorced women. They stick you with the kids twenty-four hours a day because they’re always running around. Besides,” she says, sending the last bullet directly into my brain, “she was paying peanuts.”

  “That’s really good news!” Barry cuts in. What’s good news? That she’s paying me peanuts? “All three of us are going to be together this summer,” he continues, and he’s really excited. Jim doesn’t dare say a word with Gloria staring at him.

  “It sounds so cozy, maybe I should plan to spend a little more time out here too.” Gloria says that last line right in my face. God, I loathe her!

  “Jimmmmmy.” There goes Gloria the whiner again. “I’m positively exhausted. I simply must get to the house. Are you coming?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jim says, grabbing up his gear. Then he says to me, “You know, I know you from somewhere.”

  “It must be from school,” I say weakly. I’m in absolute, stark terror.

  “No, not school,” Jim says thoughtfully. “Maybe with Barry. Or—no . . .”

  He’ll never let go.

  “Jim-my!” Gloria whines.

  “Okay . . .,” he says. “I was just trying to figure out how I know Barry’s girlfriend.”

  Barry’s girlfriend! That’s disaster if he thinks I’m Barry’s girlfriend. I have to set him straight right now.

  “I think there’s some misunderstanding. . . .” I want to do it gently because after all he is Barry’s friend, and besides, I don’t want to hurt Barry. “Barry and I . . .”

  “Jimmy, c’mon . . .”

  “Okay . . .,” he says, but he’s still looking at me.

  “ . . . I’m
hungry.”

  “Hungry!” he says like he just discovered the wheel, and points to me.

  “No, thank you. I just ate. Well, I’ll see you all around sometime,” and I grab DeeDee and call David, who’s been lost in a comic book all this time, and take about two giant steps when a hand grabs my shoulder.

  “You’re the Hungarian who went home with tight shoes!” Jim is on the other end of that hand.

  “The Hungarian?” Barry and Gloria say it together like a vaudeville act.

  “Oh, man you should have seen her and her friend . . .” And he practically doubles over in hysterics. He starts laughing so hard he can barely tell the story. Frankly I didn’t think it was funny at all.

  Finally he gets the whole story out, and the three of them are cracking up. I ask, kind of cold, “What’s so funny about being Hungarian?”

  “Hey, nothing . . . we weren’t laughing because you’re Hungarian . . .” And he practically falls on the ground, he’s laughing so hard.

  Anyway, one thing and another and they finally pull themselves together and Jim grabs his stuff, which of course had fallen all over during his little story.

  “Hey, see you around,” Jim says to me. Then to Barry, “You really picked yourself a winner, chum,” and he chuckles good-naturedly.

  I can do without the whole thing. I am not Barry’s girlfriend. “I am not Barry’s girlfriend,” I say to all three. “I practically only met Barry for the first time today. So I couldn’t possibly be Barry’s girlfriend, and furthermore I’m not even Hungarian. My friend is.”

  And as if it didn’t matter at all, Jim and Gloria say, “Sure, that’s terrific,” or something like that. “See you later,” they say, and while my brain is seething, the love of my life takes off with the love of his life, and I’m left alone with David, DeeDee, who just dropped her cone on my left shoe, and lover boy Barry.

  “You shouldn’t tell people I’m your girlfriend. That’s ridiculous, we only practically just met.” I’m not trying to sound angry, but I’m really ticked off.

  “I didn’t exactly say you were my girlfriend, more like . . . that . . .” I hate to make him struggle like that, but, damn, it’s not fair.

  “More like what?”

  “That . . . you know . . . more like I liked you.”

  Well, I can’t exactly hang him for liking me. At least someone does.

  “Actually . . .” Now he’s really stammering. “It’s more than that. More than like . . .”

  Now I’m the one staring at him.

  “ . . . I love you.”

  No way!

  “You can’t love me!”

  “But I do.”

  “But you can’t!” I know this is a ridiculous argument, but he can’t. “You hardly even know me.”

  “I know you better than you think. I’ve been watching you all year.”

  See, I told you he was always following me around and staring at me.

  “And I know I’m deeply in love with you.”

  Oh, God, he’s deeply in love with me. Is he crazy or something?

  “I think you’re the most beautiful girl in the entire school.”

  He’s really making me nervous now.

  “I can’t think of anyone but you. You’ve become the most important person in my life.”

  And when I get nervous . . .

  “We have to be together.”

  . . . I laugh.

  And of course I crack up. I know it seems like the meanest thing in the world, but I swear I’m not laughing at him, I’m just laughing because I’m nervous and I can’t handle the situation. It’s horrible but he naturally thinks I’m laughing at him. Now he grabs me by the shoulders, and his face is two inches from mine, and he looks crushed, and I feel terrible, and I want to cry but I can’t stop laughing. I try to tell him that I’m not laughing at him, but every time I open my mouth to get the words out I become so hysterical I can’t talk. All I can manage is half of “I’m sorry,” which he probably can’t even make out.

  Now he turns away from me, and I’m afraid he’s going to cry. Just like that, the laughing jag disappears and I’m back in control. First thing I tell him is that I’m sorry and that I wasn’t laughing at him, I just wasn’t expecting anything like that and he threw me, and more “I’m sorry”s and “please forgive me”s and “I feel horrible,” but it’s like he didn’t hear anything, because when he turns back to me he’s really angry.

  “Forget it. It’s my problem.” And he starts to walk away.

  “No, wait,” I grab his arm. “I really am sorry. Please . . .”

  “I told you, forget it. It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have told you. What a jerk I was.” And I can see he’s really hurt. If I can love Jim without even knowing him, why can’t Barry love me? Then I think, suppose I told Jim and he laughed in my face . . . I think I’d just die. Oh, God, I feel horrible. He shakes my hand off his arm. I keep apologizing, but it’s too late.

  “Don’t tell me how you’re so sorry, just don’t tell me anything. I suppose you think it’s funny . . . well, it isn’t. It hurts. . . . It hurts a lot.” And while he’s still talking, he starts to walk away.

  “Please, wait . . .”

  “Good-bye.”

  And he’s gone.

  I feel like a monster. I absolutely hate myself, and now I’m the one who feels like crying. I’m so ashamed.

  “I’m sorry . . .” DeeDee puts her arms around my leg and kisses my kneecaps, “I didn’t mean it. I’ll never do it again.”

  I bend down to ask her what she did, but all she does is shake her head and look as if she’s going to cry. Boy, we’re a great group today.

  I ask her again and this time she says she doesn’t know.

  “Then why are you sorry?” I ask.

  “Because,” she says, “I don’t want you to cry.”

  Oh, God, she thinks I’m upset because of her. Naturally I hug her and tell her she had nothing to do with it and besides everything is fine now and I feel great. Funny, isn’t it? When you’re little like that you think everything that happens has to do with you. I can remember when I was really young, if I heard my parents arguing in their room I was always certain it was about me.

  We pick up the things from Cynthia’s list at the grocery and the drugstore and start back to the house.

  All the way home I can’t help but feel miserable about what happened with Barry. I swear I’m going to make it up to him somehow. I can’t love him, you know. If you don’t love someone you just can’t make yourself. But at least I’ll show him that I appreciate the way he feels about me and that I understand and that it makes him really special to me . . . always. I’m absolutely going to spend the whole summer making it up to him. Not that I expect it to take the whole summer.

  Still, you have to realize that it’s only partly my fault that it worked out so bad. After all, that was a heavy thing to lay on someone, especially when they didn’t expect it at all. It’s not my fault he fell in love with me. I certainly didn’t make him do it. I didn’t even know he was doing it. Sure, I shouldn’t have laughed, but you take your chances when you spring something like that on someone you hardly know. And then the part about letting Jim think I was his girlfriend—that really bugs me. That was really gross of him—not that I’m saying what I did was right—still, he wasn’t so right himself.

  Even so, he’s really a pretty nice guy, and it would be nice to be his friend. Not only because of Jim, but because he’s definitely a nice person with a good sense of humor and cute and . . . I don’t know, he’s just a good type to have for a friend.

  On the way home David sees one of his friends and wants to go back to his house, but I have to say no because I don’t know if I have the authority to let the kids go off on their own like that. David gets a little aggravated and starts crying, and then DeeDee says something, and he kind of kicks her, not a bad one, only on her shoe, but she gets hysterical. It’s sort of embarrassing because I think everyone thinks I
probably hit them, and of course I would never touch them, ever.

  I try to explain to David that it’s my first day and I don’t really know the rules but he’s going to be there for the whole summer and there’ll be other times and so on, and I almost feel like a mother. I know I sound like one. What’s really funny is that I think someone said something just like that to me a couple of years ago at camp. I don’t remember what the situation was, but I know it didn’t help then and it doesn’t help now. All the way home David won’t even talk to me.

  Turns out he could have gone with his friend, which makes him even angrier, but I was afraid to take the chance. But everything gets better anyway because I play a couple of games of War with David, and Sorry with DeeDee, and then the three of us play Monopoly, and then DeeDee gets upset about losing and throws the board in the air and all the pieces go flying. David runs off to tell his mother, who says it’s time for DeeDee’s bath any-way, and to me, “Victoria, see that they put that game away properly, please.” Suddenly David gets a bad stomach ache and has to go to the bathroom, and DeeDee goes up to get ready for her bath. It doesn’t take me that long to pick up the pieces, and by the time DeeDee is ready for me to shampoo her hair I’ve finished. The game will never be the same. When the kids are in their pj’s, Cynthia says they can watch TV until eight and then to bed.

  I figure that later on, after they’re in bed, if Cynthia isn’t going out I’ll take a walk down to the dock and see what’s doing. It probably takes a while longer for my room to cool off because it gets the afternoon sun, so it’s still a little warmish up there, but that’s okay because by the time I’m ready for bed it will probably be perfect. I throw myself together a little bit and go downstairs. Cynthia is on the phone so I just sit down and grab a magazine and wait.

  “That’s out of the question,” she’s saying. “No!” She sounds furious. I hope it isn’t about me. Whoops, I sound just like DeeDee. “Absolutely not, Henry. I won’t permit you to see them and I don’t want you to call anymore . . . . I certainly can, they’re my children. . . . . He’s your son, you see what you can do with him.”

  Of course it has to be about her ex-husband, Jed. Maybe she doesn’t want the kids to see him.