Picture Perfect

by D. Anne Love

  “Just a skirt and jacket for the Howdy Dance.” I described the outfit and the accessories I’d gotten to go with it.

  “Sounds perfect,” Caroline said. “My freshman year Mrs. Cantrell sent three girls home from the dance because their skirts were too short. When they bent over, you could see everything!”

  “The judge would never let me out of the house looking like that.” I crunched a handful of chips. “He’s pretty strict.”

  Caroline nibbled her sandwich. “Is there somebody special you’re seeing at the dance?”

  I hadn’t told Mama or Shyla or Zane about Nick, but for some reason I told Caroline everything—how we’d met on the first day of school and how he’d told me I looked good in my distressed jeans and how he’d sat with me at lunch after Ash and Courtney bailed on me. “He acts like he likes me, but he hasn’t said anything directly, you know what I mean?”

  “Boy, do I ever.” Caroline added more sugar to her tea and stirred. “My boyfriend, Grady? It took him an entire year to ask me out, even though I was practically following him around with my tongue hanging out, dropping hints all over the place.”

  “Are guys really that clueless?”

  Caroline laughed. “Who knows? But it sounds like Nick really likes you.”

  “How can I tell for sure?”

  “If he keeps paying you compliments, sitting with you at lunch, that’s a pretty good sign. It just takes time to get past that horrible, awkward getting-to-know-you stage.” Caroline got a bunch of grapes from the fridge, washed them off at the sink, and set them on a plate. “If you see him at the dance, go over and say hello. Ask him what he thinks of the decorations, how he likes the music they’re playing, whatever. But don’t crowd him. If he thinks you’re pushing him, he’ll disappear faster than ice in August.” She sipped more tea. “Always have your next move in mind.”

  “Next move?” I hadn’t realized that simply showing up at a dance involved developing a strategy as complicated as the D-day invasion.

  Caroline nodded. “After your conversation about the music or the lake pumpkins or whatever, maybe he’ll ask you to dance. If so, great. But if he doesn’t, just say, ‘See you later,’ and move on, like there’s someplace important you have to be. It’s better if you can have a friend stationed nearby, but if not, head for the rest room. Don’t run like you have to go or anything; just don’t let Nick see you wandering around like a lost puppy.”

  “Yo, Caro!” Will hollered from the den. “Your favorite movie is coming on.”

  “Casablanca?” Caroline grabbed her plate and said to me, “You like Bogart?”

  “He’s okay.”

  “You have to see this movie. It’s the best love story ever.”

  We took our food into the den and settled down to watch the movie, and like Caroline said, it was pretty romantic. Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund fell in love in Paris and planned to run away together before the Nazis got there. But the day they were supposed to leave, Ilsa stood Rick up. He was so upset he moved to Casablanca and opened up a nightclub. One night Ilsa walked in with her long-lost husband, whom she thought was dead, throwing everybody’s emotions into total chaos. It was a huge mess. Near the end Daddy came in, his shirt torn and bloodied, an angry welt on his cheek.

  “Daddy, what happened?” I cried.

  “Dad?” Zane said, coming to his feet. “Did you get into a fight?”

  “I got caught between a couple of protesters and the TV guys, and a camera hit me in the face. Bloodied my nose.”

  Mr. Harte said, “Do you need a bandage, Judge? Some ice?”

  “No, I’m fine. I’ve come to take my kids home. I appreciate your letting them stay here. Some folks in town wouldn’t have been so welcoming, given the circumstances.”

  “Some folks are just plain ignorant,” Mr. Harte said.

  We left Rick and Ilsa standing on the tarmac at the airport in Casablanca, breaking up for good. Zane jumped into his car and took off. I got into Daddy’s car. Caroline bent down and stuck her head though the open window and whispered, “Good luck with Nick, Phoebe.”

  When we got home, Daddy changed his shirt and got some ice for his bruised face. Later, over cups of cocoa and apple pie from the bakery downtown, he told Zane and me that most people understood he’d had to follow the law, but that didn’t make his decision any easier to take.

  “Some people may make disparaging remarks about me for a while,” he warned. “And I’m sorry for that. But I’m not sorry for upholding the law.”

  Okay, I knew he was sworn to defend the Constitution and blah, blah, blah, but still, I was upset that he had made other people mad and that Zane and I probably hadn’t heard the last of the gossip at school.

  Lying in bed later that night, I put the whole trial episode out of my mind and thought about Caroline’s strategy for dealing with Nick. He was hard to figure out, the way he acted so sweet one minute and wary the next, like he didn’t want me to get too close. It drove me crazy. Still, when I was around Nick, it was easier to forget my problems and pretend that my family was whole and totally normal. I hoped he would ask me to dance. And I hoped that now Ashley and Courtney would lift their moratorium on contact with me and serve as my backup if he didn’t.

  The next morning, after Daddy made pancakes, he called Shyla and they discussed the trial in excruciating detail, even though she’d already heard about it on TV. Then Mama called home. After Daddy told her about the trial and Zane updated her on his life, I told her I was going to the Howdy Dance.

  “I’m so disappointed I won’t be there for that,” Mama said.

  “It’s no big deal. All the freshmen are invited.”

  “I remember the year Shyla went,” Mama said, her laughter bubbling up. “The way she agonized over which boys she wanted to dance with nearly drove me crazy. She reminded me of Scarlett O’Hara choosing a beau for the barbecue at Twelve Oaks. Finally I told her to stop obsessing or I’d make her stay home.”

  “I bet that got her attention,” I said, thinking of how much my sister loved having a good time. Her motto was “Work hard, play hard.”

  “Tell me,” Mama said. “What are you wearing to the dance?”

  I described the skirt and jacket, but I didn’t tell her how I’d gotten them. I’d already tried making Mama jealous by playing the Beverly card, and it hadn’t worked. I didn’t beg her to come back, either. It was obvious that she’d come home when she got good and ready, and there was nothing I could say that would hurry her along.

  Mama said, “You be sure and have Daddy take your picture, honey.”

  Preserving my fourteen-year-old self on film had never been such a big deal to me, but because it was important to Mama, I promised.

  Then she said, “If everything works out as planned, I’ll be there next February to take pictures myself.”

  For a minute I couldn’t believe my ears. I was afraid to hope. “You’re coming home?” I asked.

  The sound of her laugh settled over me like a warm blanket. “I told you I never planned to stay away forever. By February, I’ll have reached all my goals, and my replacement will be ready to step into my role. By then I’ll be ready to let someone else worry about the sales figures.”

  I let out a yelp that brought Zane and Daddy running. “Does Daddy know?”

  “Do I know what?” Daddy asked.

  “Mama’s coming home!”

  Zane said, “You’re kidding me, right?”

  I handed him the phone. “Ask her yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  While Zane talked to Mama, Daddy told me that he and Mama had discussed the possibility of her coming home in the winter, but he hadn’t wanted to tell us until she was sure. I wasn’t the least bit surprised. Keeping secrets was the Trask way, but in this case I didn’t care. The main thing was that our family was about to be put back together again.

  When Mama hung up, we called Shyla back to tell her the good news. Dad put her on the speakerphone so we all could list
en and talk.

  “That’s great, Dad,” Shyla said, her voice thick with sleep. “Now life can go back to normal.”

  “You sound exhausted,” Daddy said. “Are you getting enough rest?”

  “You remember college,” Shyla said. “There’s never enough time for sleep.” She yawned loudly. “Hey, Phoebe, don’t forget to call me after the dance and give me all the details, okay?”

  After we hung up, I went to my room and flopped onto my bed, feeling better than I had in months. The trial was over. I had survived the first weeks of freshman year. The dance was coming up, and Nick Harper liked me, sort of. Best of all, my mother was coming home, and when she did: Ciao, Beverly.

  On Monday, Zane and I returned to school as minor celebrities due to the TV coverage about the trial and a long newspaper article that had been published the day before. Of course, Zane was already well known on campus, but until that day I was pretty much a freshman nobody. Now even sophomores and juniors were stopping to talk to me in the hall. I’d gone to school that morning expecting more gossip and name-calling, so to have so much positive attention was a pleasant surprise.

  It also helped that there had been a huge controversy at the Second Baptist Church the night before. According to Bobby Hager, a sophomore football player who claimed to have witnessed the whole episode, a couple of the deacons went to the preacher after the Sunday-night service complaining that the choir director had been flirting with the new soprano, who lived with her husband, five kids, and a foul-tempered bulldog in a trailer house out on Buckner Road. The deacons said the church just couldn’t abide such unseemly behavior in public, and something had to be done. Preacher Landrum backed up the choir director, who just happened to be his very own brother-in-law, and overnight the church had split into two camps—those who backed the preacher and his kin, and those who didn’t. Second Baptist was the biggest church in Eden except for First Baptist, and it looked like there would soon be a Third Baptist. Now that the town had something new to gossip about, Judge Trask and his flag-burning communists were yesterday’s news.

  Even better, the moratorium against me had been lifted; Ash and Courtney saved me a seat at lunch. It was raining, so we were inside at long tables in the cafeteria.

  As soon as I sat down, Ashley said, “You are not going to believe this. I am so bummed. My aunt Rita, up in Fort Worth, had her baby a whole month early, and now my mom says we have to go visit them this weekend.”

  “But you’ll miss the dance!” Courtney said.

  “Duh!” Ashley opened up her hamburger and scraped off all the chopped onions. “It’s so unfair. I don’t see why we have to go this weekend. The way I see it, that baby is going to be a baby for a good long while. What does it matter when we see him? Newborns all look the same anyway.”

  “Well, if you’re not going to the dance, I’m not going either,” Courtney said. Then she glanced at me. “No offense, Phoebe. But you know how it is.”

  Even though I was irked, since I’d counted on them as my backup strategy, I knew what Courtney meant. Lauren and I had shared that same kind of loyalty. I picked at my Caesar salad. “Not a big deal.”

  “So, what are you wearing?” Ashley asked.

  I described my new clothes and the earrings Beverly had picked out. Then Courtney asked about the assignment Madame Rochard had handed out last week, and we talked about homework and our upcoming tests until the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch.

  Ashley grabbed her backpack. “See y’all in PE!”

  Courtney went to the rest room. I ran up the stairs to my locker to dump a bunch of books and slid into my seat in world history five seconds before the tardy bell. Mr. Clifton roused himself from his post prandial stupor and fumbled with his lecture notes. “In the year 986,” he began in a voice so boring I actually started looking forward to PE, “the Norse-men were the first to see North A-mer-i-ca, while seek-ing the set-tle-ment of Er-ic the Red.”

  I tried to concentrate, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that my mother was coming home. I was relieved that soon all would be well in the Land of Trask, that Beverly would no longer be trying to step in and take Mama’s place, but now that my initial relief had worn off, I didn’t feel the overwhelming elation I’d expected whenever I imagined her homecoming. Maybe I didn’t miss my mother as much as I thought. Maybe what I missed was the idea of a mother who was always there to listen whenever I wanted to talk.

  Mercifully, the bell finally rang, and I headed for science class, which turned out to be a bust because Nick was absent. Mrs. Grady assigned me to sit with a couple of other people as temporary lab partners. We took turns looking at a bunch of plant seeds through the microscope and drawing examples in our workbooks. I scribbled the names into my book, but I missed Nick. I hoped he hadn’t gotten sick, or hurt in some freak accident that would prevent his coming to the dance.

  In PE we were supposed to climb a rope as part of a physical-fitness test, but Ash and Courtney and I cracked up when Courtney kept sliding back down. The more the teacher told us to stop laughing, the funnier it got. Pretty soon everybody was laughing so hard nobody could climb the rope, and the teacher got mad and gave us all zeros for the day. As if we cared.

  By the time I met Zane in the parking lot, my stomach felt sore from laughing so much. On the way home I told him everything that had happened that day, including my bad grade in PE. “So,” I finished, “how was your day?”

  He swung the Ford through the drive-in window at Gus’s and ordered a couple of extra-large colas. “There’s news in the Ginger department.”

  “Her dad is letting you date her for real?”

  “Yeah.” My brother tried to look like it was no big deal, but I could tell he was about to explode with happiness.

  “That’s great! So she’ll be your date for the Halloween party after all.”

  “She has an early curfew, though. Mr. Threadgill says nothing good happens after ten p.m.”

  He paid for the sodas, and we drank them on the way home. I tackled my homework, and when it was done, I made some tea and took some hamburger patties out of the fridge for dinner, keeping one eye on the street. Even though things seemed to be settling down now that the trial was over, I still worried about Daddy until I saw his car coming up the drive at the end of the day.

  He got home around six. We grilled the burgers and watched the Rangers game on TV. Zane left after the third inning and went over to the Threadgills’. Daddy fell asleep in his chair during the seventh-inning stretch. I took Lucky outside, then we went to my room, and I read for a while before finally falling asleep dreaming of Nick.

  The rest of the week went by at a snail’s pace, the way it always does when you’re waiting for something important to happen. But at last Saturday came. Shyla called just as I was getting out of the shower. I wrapped my hair in a towel and sat on the edge of my bed while she peppered me with dos and don’ts, until I thought my head would bust open. I told her finally about Nick and about Caroline’s backup theory, which Shyla said was a sound strategy. “She’s right. You can’t look like you’re desperate for his attention. Let him make the first move.”

  “The problem is I have no backup!” I said. “The only two girls I really know are not going to the dance at all.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet you know a lot more kids than you think,” Shyla said. “You just can’t be so shy about talking to them.”

  “But what will I say? I’m not good at small talk like you are.”

  “I don’t know. Ask them who their favorite teacher is. What they thought of last night’s football game.”

  “We lost,” I said. “Mirabeau High beat us twenty-seven to zip.”

  “Oh. Might not want to bring that up, then,” my sister said. “Listen, kiddo, I’ve got to run. I just wanted to wish you good luck tonight. Call me tomorrow, okay? Bye!”

  I hung up and took my time getting dressed. When I was ready, Daddy took the pictures we’d promised Mama, and he drove me
to the dance.

  “I’ll pick you up at ten thirty,” he said as I opened the car door. “Have a great time, Feebs.”

  “It’s Phoebe, Daddy.” I got out of the car and hurried inside.

  The cheerleaders had transformed the gym into a fake ranch, complete with bales of hay, cowboy boots, and a full-size papier-mâché longhorn steer. At one end of the gym they had set up tables holding cans of soda, boxes of pizza, and plates of cookies. In the middle of the table sat a huge cake with white icing and the word “HOWDY” spelled out in University of Texas orange. At the other end of the gym a spiky-haired deejay was spinning records.

  “Here you go,” one of the cheerleaders said, handing me a name tag printed with my name and, below that, in big letters, “HOWDY!”

  I put the name tag on and looked around. So far the dance was shaping up pretty much the way Zane had described it, with the boys on one side of the room and the girls on the other. The doors leading to the girls’ rest room were in constant motion. I looked for Nick, but he hadn’t shown up yet. Katie and Gillian, Lauren’s former friends, came in together. They waved to me, so I took a deep breath and went over to them.

  “Hi,” Katie said, eyeing my suede skirt and jacket. “Cute outfit.”

  “Thanks.”

  I just stood there, my brain suddenly stuck on stupid. Gillian, who was wearing a pink dress, strappy sandals, and way too much glittery eye shadow, said, “The music sounds pretty good, don’t you think?”

  “Great,” Katie and I said together.

  Then Katie said, “Excuse me!” She grabbed Gillian’s arm, nearly pulling her off her feet, and they headed for the rest room.

  The deejay put on another song and said into the mic, “Okay, freshmen, let’s get this party going. Everybody dance!”

  A few couples moved onto the floor. The deejay turned the volume up, sending the sound bouncing off the walls.

  “Phoebe?” said a voice in my ear. Nick.

  I turned around, certain that he could actually see my heart beating through the fabric of my jacket. My mouth went dry as dirt. “Hi.”