Fifteen

by Beverly Cleary

  Last night. The humiliation Jane had felt for the past week came rushing back. She could not look at Stan. “I hope you had a good time,” she said stiffly, picking up a dry bay leaf that had drifted onto the seat between them and twirling it around in her fingers.

  “I guess I should have explained it all to you ahead of time,” said Stan miserably.

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me.” This time Jane was cool and aloof. She looked away from Stan and crumpled the bay leaf to release its fragrance. “If you wanted to take another girl, there was no reason why you shouldn’t.”

  “But I didn’t want to,” said Stan.

  Oh, Stan, thought Jane, please don’t try to make me believe your father made you take Bitsy because she is an old family friend.

  “I mean, I didn’t want to take her after I met you,” Stan went on. “I used to take Bitsy out once in a while when I lived in the city. Her folks are friends of my folks and I sort of liked her. Anyway, just before we moved over here I told her I would have her over for the first school dance. I know it was a dumb thing to do, but after I had done it I couldn’t very well break the date, especially since Mom and Dad knew about it. You know how families are.”

  Joy surged through Jane. So that was the reason Stan had not asked her to go to the dance! She should have known he would have a perfectly good explanation. He wanted to take her, but he had to keep a date he had made before he knew her. It was as simple as that, and she was still Stan’s girl. But even so, Jane found she could not forget her unhappiness of the past week.

  “I would rather have taken you,” Stan told her. “Honest. I’m sorry I couldn’t. I sure felt awful that day in the hall at school. I felt so awful I couldn’t even call you up or anything.”

  “It’s quite all right,” Jane said stiffly. “I hope you had a good time,” she repeated.

  “Oh, it was all right,” Stan showed no enthusiasm. “But Bitsy is too short and she got lipstick on my coat and she wore a dumb dress with a narrow skirt and I had to take short steps all evening.”

  Well! thought Jane. It just goes to show that boys don’t look at things the way girls do. Here I was feeling awkward and unsophisticated beside this Bitsy, the smooth girl from the city.

  “She’s not like you,” said Stan. “She laughed at my job. She kept laughing and saying, ‘Imagine delivering horsemeat to dogs!’ all evening. Maybe it does seem funny to some people, but I like dogs and I like my job.”

  Poor Stan, thought Jane tenderly; he sounds so hurt. How thoughtless of Bitsy to make fun of his job.

  A car drove past the spot where Jane and Stan were sitting. Jane began to feel uneasy. She did not want it to get around town, and back to her mother and father, that she and Stan had been seen parked in a car. Not even in broad daylight. Her mother would have enough to say about Stan’s having a car of his own, even though it could not possibly be called a hot rod, without bringing up the question of parking.

  Jane turned to Stan and smiled. “I know what,” she said. “Let’s go show Julie your car.”

  “You’re not mad?” he asked, looking down at her.

  Jane knew that her answer was important to Stan. “No, Stan,” she said honestly. “I’m not mad at you.” But she could not tell him that even though she was not angry, the hurt of the last week was still with her. She was ashamed to admit it.

  “Sure?” Stan asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay,” said Stan, eager to show off his car to someone else. “Let’s go!”

  They drove out of the park and down the hill toward Julie’s house. The car made loud, popping noises as it went downhill. “It’s just the carburetor,” explained Stan. “Most cars make that noise going down a steep hill.”

  Jane brushed her hair out of her eyes with her new Marcy gesture. “Oh,” she said, resolving to look up carburetor in the dictionary when she got home. Every car had a carburetor, she knew, and she had a vague idea that a carburetor in a car was something like an appendix in a human being, but this was the first time she had met the word in conversation. If Stan wanted to talk about a carburetor, she wanted to find out exactly what it was.

  When Stan stopped his car by the curb in front of Julie’s house, Jane reached over the center of the steering wheel and sounded the horn twice, long and loud. Julie and then Buzz appeared at the window. They smiled and waved and in a moment came running down the front steps.

  “Say, that’s all right!” Buzz stood back to admire the Ford. “She sure looks a lot better than when you got her. Neat but not gaudy.”

  “You mean me or the car?” Jane glanced sidelong at Buzz, the way Marcy so often looked at boys.

  “The car, of course,” bantered Buzz. “Anybody can find a girl.”

  “Stan, do you mean this car is yours, your very own?” Julie asked.

  “That’s right,” said Stan proudly. “I bought it last month, but I had to do a lot of work on it before I could use it.”

  Julie stepped up on the running board and leaned over to examine the dashboard. “And it runs and everything?” she demanded incredulously.

  “It sure does,” said Stan. “A model-A is a little noisier than the cars they make now, but it runs like a top.”

  “What’s this?” Julie asked, pointing to a cap on the hood in front of the windshield.

  “That’s the top of the gas tank,” Stan explained.

  “In front?” asked Julie.

  “On this model,” said Stan.

  Buzz opened one side of the hood and bent over to examine the engine. Stan got out of the car and leaned over beside him.

  With the two boys half hidden under the hood, Jane and Julie looked at each other and, without uttering a word, carried on a conversation. Jane’s look told Julie that everything was all right. She now understood about Stan and the dance, she was happy to see him again, and she was thrilled about his car. Julie’s look told Jane that she was so glad Jane and Stan had things straightened out and that she was both surprised and excited that Buzz had come over to see her so soon after the dance. Both girls silently expressed to each other a feeling of great satisfaction at the way everything had turned out.

  “Stan painted his car himself,” said Jane aloud.

  “Did he really?” Julie stepped back to admire the paint job.

  The two boys came out from under the hood of the car. “I painted it with a powder puff,” said Stan.

  “A powder puff!” Jane laughed. “Stan, not really!”

  “Sure,” said Stan. “There’s a kind of plastic paint for cars that you put on with a powder puff. You just wipe it on. Of course, I did get a few streaks, and a little dust got in it. And when I tried to paint it in the garage under an electric light, a few moths got into the paint on the hood. See, that’s what made these spots.”

  “It looks marvelous,” said Julie. “The spots hardly show, and nobody would ever dream you did it with a powder puff.”

  “Look, Julie, it has an old-fashioned rumble seat,” Buzz pointed out. “That’s for you and me to ride in.”

  “A real rumble seat!” exclaimed Julie. “I’ve always wanted to ride in one. Mother used to ride in one when she was a girl and she’s often said what fun it was.”

  Stan got into the car and put his foot on the starter. “We’d better be on our way if I’m going to get Jane to her babysitting job on time.”

  Buzz stepped up on the running board beside Jane to look at the inside of the car, and as he stood there he looked down at Jane. Then he said, “Jane, for someone who used to be a scrawny kid who was a terrible cook, you’ve turned out to be a mighty Purdy girl.”

  Jane felt pleased and a little embarrassed by this remark. Buzz was teasing, she knew, but at the same time she was sure he really thought she was pretty. Not knowing how to answer him, she flashed him her new Marcy look.

  “A pun is the lowest form of humor,” observed Julie.

  Buzz continued to look down at Jane. Then he reached into his pocke
t and pulled out a fifty-cent piece, which he tossed into the air and deftly caught. “Stan, I’ll give you fifty cents to let me kiss your girl,” he said.

  Jane looked at Buzz in astonishment and afterward she was shocked by her own sudden behavior. Still feeling like Marcy, she met his challenge. She smiled at him, closed her eyes, and lifted her lips. Buzz leaned over and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

  Oh, thought Jane, as his lips touched hers, what have I done? She felt her face flush scarlet as she opened her eyes and saw Buzz, grinning cockily, flip the fifty-cent piece across her lap to Stan, who caught it automatically.

  Confused and ashamed, Jane looked down at her hands. She could not think what to do or say. She did not want to look at Buzz and she could not look at Stan. No one spoke.

  Unsmiling, Stan kicked the starter button, and the motor roared. As the car began to move, Jane glimpsed Buzz still grinning wickedly at her and, beside him, Julie looking dejectedly after the car, the gaiety she had shown a few minutes before gone out of her. Now I’ve gone and hurt Julie’s feelings, on top of everything else, thought Jane, and I didn’t mean to.

  “Where to?” asked Stan.

  Jane gave him an address in Bayaire Estates. “I’m sorry, Stan,” she said timidly. “Really I am.”

  “That’s okay,” said Stan briefly, his eyes on the road.

  “I guess I just had a silly impulse. I didn’t mean to—to do what I did.”

  “Forget it,” said Stan.

  He really was angry, Jane realized, and trying to explain wasn’t going to help. She could not tell him that she had let Buzz kiss her because she was trying to act like Marcy. It wasn’t the sort of thing a boy would understand.

  Stan drove on in silence until they came to a bridge that crossed a narrow arm of the bay. In the middle of the bridge Stan stopped his car. Jane put her hand over her eyes to shade them from the brilliant sunlight. “Why are we stopping?” she asked.

  Stan did not answer. With one quick motion he shied Buzz’s half dollar across the railing of the bridge and out over the bay. It flashed in the sunlight above the water for an instant before it hit the surface with a plop and sank from sight. “That takes care of that,” Stan said.

  “Why, Stan…” Jane was startled by his gesture. He’s hurt, she thought suddenly. I should have known. Stan was angry, because he was hurt. And with a flash of insight she realized that was the real reason she had let Buzz kiss her. She wanted Stan to feel some of the hurt that she had felt. Now she was sorry and ashamed.

  When Stan stopped his car in front of the house where Jane was to babysit, he glanced at his watch. “I got you here two minutes late,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  We seem to be spending the whole morning apologizing to each other, Jane thought, as she got out of the car. He’s sorry about the dance. I’m sorry I let Buzz kiss me. He’s sorry, because he got me here late. “That’s all right, Stan,” she said, and looked directly at him. “Are you still mad at me?”

  “No,” he said with a weak smile.

  “I’m glad, because I really am sorry,” said Jane, and smiled at him. “Good-bye for now.”

  “So long, Jane,” he said, without looking at her.

  He looks pale under his tan, Jane observed. Actually pale. He must really be upset. She wanted to reassure him, to tell him not to be hurt—that she liked him better than any boy she had ever known—but there was no time to talk. Stan was already driving away.

  “Stan!” she called urgently above the noise of the model-A engine. “Stan, phone me this afternoon!”

  She could not hear his answer, but it did not matter. A boy who turned pale beneath his tan when another boy kissed her really cared, and a boy who really cared would call. Darling Stan. She was sorry for what she had done, and she could hardly wait for the telephone to ring.

  Chapter 9

  Although babysitting with Patsy Scruggs was hard work, Jane was always glad when Mrs. Scruggs, the youngest of her customers, called her. Jane felt that the pleasant home the Scruggses had created with ingenuity and not much money was the sort of home she would like to have someday in the shadowy future when she was married. But first she would go to college and have a career. Just what career, she did not know—an airline stewardess, or a writer of advertising copy for a big department store, or perhaps a job at the American embassy in Paris—something like the girls in the pages of Mademoiselle, who always managed to be clever about clothes and to be seen in interesting places with men who had crew cuts.

  While little Patsy was engrossed in moving three dolls, a set of blocks, a floppy bear, two old aluminum pans, and a frozen orange juice can out of her doll buggy and into first one home-upholstered chair and then another, Jane, her thoughts full of Stan, sat smiling dreamily at a framed photograph of Mrs. Scruggs, looking young and radiant in her wedding gown. Darling Stan, who was sure to call soon—probably before he started his Doggie Diner route. Stan, who had really wanted to take her to the dance, Stan, who wanted her to be the first girl to ride in his car, Stan, who really cared…

  Jane let her gaze drift around the room at the odds and ends of furniture, the unbleached muslin curtains at the windows, the bright unframed prints on the wall, the bookcase made of boards set on stacks of bricks, the worn copy of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care. Mrs. Stanley Crandall…Jane Purdy Crandall…Stan Crandall, Jr….

  Patsy, chubby in her corduroy overalls stuffed with diapers and a pair of plastic pants, toddled across the room and plumped her floppy bear and the orange juice can into Jane’s lap.

  “Thank you, Patsy,” murmured Jane, and wondered what was showing at the Woodmont Theater that evening. Or maybe Stan wouldn’t ask her to go to the movies this time. Maybe they would just ride around in his car and then go to Nibley’s for a milk shake. Patsy, delighted with her game, laughed and made trip after trip to Jane’s lap with pans, blocks, and dolls. “Thank you, Patsy,” said Jane politely each time.

  Then the telephone rang. Stan! Jane dumped Patsy’s toys to the floor and flew to the kitchen, where she had to throw her shoulder against the door to open it. Doors so often stuck in Bayaire Estates. How thoughtful of Stan to call so soon! He must have remembered he had not mentioned a date for that evening and telephoned the minute he reached home. Jane picked up the receiver. “Hello,” she said eagerly.

  “Hello, Jane.” It was Mrs. Scruggs. Jane not only felt let down, she also felt foolish, because of the way she must have sounded when she answered the telephone.

  “I’m calling from the dentist’s office,” said Mrs. Scruggs. “I forgot to tell you that when you get Patsy’s lunch she likes her milk heated.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Scruggs,” answered Jane. Oh, why couldn’t it have been Stan who had called?

  “She doesn’t like it cold,” continued Mrs. Scruggs, “and she doesn’t like it hot, either.”

  Hurry, Mrs. Scruggs, thought Jane. Stan may be trying to get the line.

  “Just heat it enough to take the chill off,” said Patsy’s mother. “I don’t like to chill her little stomach with milk right out of the refrigerator.”

  “Of course not, Mrs. Scruggs.” Hurry and hang up, please!

  “But be careful not to get it too hot,” said Mrs. Scruggs. “I wouldn’t want her to burn her tongue. And when you heat it, be sure you turn the handle of the pan so she can’t pull it off the stove.”

  “I’ll be careful,” promised Jane.

  “And she likes her applesauce in the dish with the bunnies on the bottom,” Mrs. Scruggs went on.

  “I’ll find it,” said Jane.

  “I guess that’s all,” said Mrs. Scruggs, and finally left the line free for Stan.

  Because it was time to fix Patsy’s lunch, Jane decided to move the little girl into the kitchen with her. She did not like to leave Patsy in the living room alone, because she was never sure what mischief her small mind might devise. “Come on, Patsy,” she coaxed. “Let’s go into the kitchen and fix some
nice lunch.”

  Agreeably Patsy pushed her doll buggy into the kitchen and removed from it a box, which she dumped onto the floor. Spools of all sizes rolled across the linoleum.

  “Patsy, you’re not much help,” remarked Jane as she looked around the kitchen. Mrs. Scruggs had done everything possible to make the room childproof. The handles of the gas stove had been removed and set out of reach of little hands. Yardsticks had been run through the rows of drawer pulls so that no drawer could be opened without first pulling out a yardstick. The lower cupboards and the refrigerator door were tied shut with lengths of clothesline rope.

  Patsy threw a spool across the kitchen, and Jane sighed. It was here that she had to prepare lunch. “Patsy, how would you like to sit in your high chair while I fix you some nice lunch?” At least she would be near the telephone while she worked.

  “No!” said Patsy stubbornly, and hurled another spool across the kitchen.

  Jane realized she had made a mistake. She should have told Patsy, not asked her. Oh, well, what difference did it make whether Patsy was underfoot or in her high chair? She could watch the little girl while she waited for Stan’s call. Jane untied the refrigerator door and removed, according to Mrs. Scruggs’ instructions, the milk, some cooked green beans, a bowl containing chopped liver and bacon, some applesauce, and some cheese for her own sandwich. Then she tied the door shut again.

  Next Jane untied a cupboard to look for pans, but the cupboard was full of platters and casseroles. She tied it shut again and untied another cupboard from which she removed two small pans for heating the meat and the vegetables. She tied it shut, remembered she must heat the milk, untied it, removed another pan, and tied it shut again.

  Patsy rolled some spools across the floor. Stepping carefully, Jane carried the pans to the stove. Then she examined the knobs that had been removed and fitted them into place on the front of the stove. She stepped back across the kitchen and pulled a yardstick out of a row of deep drawers. The first metal-lined drawer was filled with flour, the second contained sugar, and in the third she found a loaf of bread, which she took out and placed on the draining board. Then she remembered that the butter was still in the refrigerator, so she untied the door again.