Saturday Night (2 page)

Anne bit down on her lower lip, feeling suddenly as if she might throw up. Instantly her mother and grandmother were next to her, anxious, wanting to be convinced that all was well. “I’m fine,” said Anne. “Just nervous.”

“Nervous? You?” They both laughed.

I have to get away from them, she thought. Just for a minute to pull myself together. But in the Stephens household there was no privacy. Never had been. Anne was community property here, even at seventeen years of age. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she told them, and shut the door on their warnings not to muss her dress.

Nothing to be nervous about, Anne thought, and she wanted to laugh, but she didn’t dare. She had a feeling that if she laughed even a little bit, the laugh would grow into hysteria and she would turn insane on the spot.

Oh, Con, she thought, what are you going to say?

She didn’t really care what he would say, though. Con was not much of a talker. Even after three years of constant dating, Anne sometimes had the sensation that she didn’t know Con. He had a way of allocating his personality: he would permit a specific fraction to show at any given time, and the rest he kept to himself.

It was not what he would say that worried her.

It was what he would do.

Tonight is truth time, Anne thought, staring into the smaller, much more brightly lit bathroom mirror. I think of Con as my rock, my life. But I don’t know that. We’re at the crunch, we’re at the top of the cliff, and I don’t know if I trust him. How strange. How awful. To love him as much as I do, and not trust him.

She tried to kill the thought, as if it could filter out of the bathroom, travel across town, curl around Con’s mind, and whisper to him,
She doesn’t trust you.

Anne was shivering. She couldn’t see the shivers in the mirror. She felt them on the inside, and her flesh crawled and turned cold.

Tonight. She would have to talk with him tonight.

For the first time in three years, Anne was sorry that she and Con had gotten so close. Because she had no intimate girl friend to talk to. She had let them all drift away, sure that Con could be everything and everyone to her. And now when she needed advice, there was not a telephone number in all Westerly she could really dial and find a friend.

I’m the most popular girl in Westerly, she thought, numbed with fear, and I’m the most alone. How did
that
happen? How
could
that happen? If you’re popular, then by definition you can’t be all alone.

I’m all alone.

I don’t even know if Con is here.

Through the door her mother said, “Darling, you’re not changing your makeup, are you? I really think it was perfect.”

Perfect. A person could come to hate that word after a few years, Anne thought. “No, Mother,” she said.

For all that Mrs. Stephens had had a grim, poor childhood, she was really very innocent. For her there had been no happy adolescence: no dances, no dates, no boys in gleaming cars. Only Anne’s father—who was abroad more than half the year, selling blue jeans in Europe—had rescued her from that grinding poverty. And the greatest joy in Mrs. Stephen’s life was Anne; and Anne’s looks, and talent, and brains, and boyfriend.

In school, Anne and Con were taking a gut course called Family Relations. The only reason anybody took this was to get three easy credits, and be able to talk quietly during filmstrips. But surprisingly, Family Relations was quite interesting. In the third week of class Con said to her, “That’s your mother. Right here listed under Classic Examples. It’s the old Smother Mother routine.”

“She doesn’t smother me,” objected Anne.

“She sure tries hard enough,” Con said, whose goal with the Stephens family was to get in and out the door with Anne as quickly as possible, and not have to hear what a perfect couple they made.

“I love her, though,” said Anne mildly.

“Yeah, but you have low standards,” Con told her.

Anne laughed. “Low?” she repeated. “To love a mother like mine? To love my grandmother, too, even though they both interfere around the clock? You should try it some time, Connie. It takes one heck of a lot of effort to keep up those low standards of mine.”

Standards, Anne thought, opening the bathroom door. What kind of standards do I have? I don’t know anymore.

“Oh, Anne,” breathed her mother yet again, “oh, sweetheart, you look so lovely.”

Con would not say it. He never noticed how she looked. It was one of their problems. Anne was accustomed to her own personal cheering section. Even when they infuriated her, her two fans at home could be counted on to list her various beauties and talents. Not Con. He’d just say, “What’ll we do Friday? I’m sick of going to the movies.”

She’d told him and told him that her dress for the Autumn Leaves Dance was electric blue and she wanted white flowers. Heavily scented. But if she knew Con (and she did) he wouldn’t remember flowers at all. But if she knew her mother (and she did) Mrs. Stephens would have phoned in the flowers in Con’s name, and called Con to let him know, and Con would show up with the right flowers and everybody would pretend Con had done it.

Once Con had said, “You’d better not turn out to be like your mother. Tough and domineering.”

Anne thought, I’d be better off if I were tough and domineering. I’ve given in to everyone all my life, and I never even knew it till now. I never even noticed. I was so busy being perfectly beautiful and popular and smart I didn’t notice that I’ve never made a single decision in my life. Not stupid ones, not good ones. Con’s just as domineering as they are. And I never knew that, either.

She checked the mirror again, tilting her head to one side to see the rhinestones, and a flashbulb went off in her face. “Grandma, I
wish
you wouldn’t do that!” Anne cried. Lights continued dancing in her eyes, making the queasy feeling come back.

“I always immortalize you before your dates,” said her grandmother, paying no attention to Anne’s complaints.

Panic began to crawl up Anne, like some kind of little slimy animal, taking control of her, walking on her skin.

She could hardly breathe.

The doorbell rang. Her mother and grandmother pounded down the stairs like two little kids, to let Con in. Grandmother got there first. She was a swim instructor at the Y and more athletic than any of them. Anne could hear Con’s soft voice—very deep, very mellow. Everybody in school said it was the sexiest voice they’d ever heard. Anne would have to agree with that. Bellowing up the stairs to make her hurry, so he wouldn’t have to talk to her mother and grandmother very long, Con shouted, “Anne! I’m here!”

“Coming,” she called.

She thought, Maybe I could forget about it for a little while longer. Pretend. It’s our first formal dance. This is my first formal gown. It’s practically an historic event at the school, since it’s been so long since they’ve allowed dances like this. Not since the vandalism three years ago. Who am I to ruin it for us?

She stared at the dress again.

She would never have chosen the dress herself. But she found her grandmother’s decisions hard to argue with. The dress was rather too hard-edged, too sophisticated. Anne would have chosen something much softer, much more romantic. The dress was so bright it screamed.

Well, that’s only right, she thought. I certainly feel like screaming. Perhaps I will scream. Go to the top of the stairs, look down at these three people who run my life entirely, and start screaming.

She walked to the top of the stairs, went down six steps to the landing, turned, and looked into the uptilted faces of the three people who admired her most in the world. Con was laughing, his wonderful smile spread across his face. He tossed the flowers up to her. Anne caught them and bent her face over the bouquet: gardenias. They smelled like paradise, thick with romance.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, the flashbulb went off, but she was prepared this time, and kept her eyes focused on the lovely flowers. Tears came into her eyes again. “I love you, Con,” she said huskily.

He looked faintly surprised. Was it because he knew that already, and there was no reason to repeat it? Or was it because he didn’t love her, loved only the good times he had with her, loved being the perfect couple with her, and. …

With all the self-control she had ever learned, Anne put a smile on her face. “Some dress!” said Con, which was high praise from him, and Grandmother Stephens looked happy.

“You’ll be home by one
A.M.
?” her mother said to Con, frowning so that Con would know this was a command.

Con smiled. “Yes, we will.” He put his arm around Anne.

“You do know there’s a terrible storm out there,” he said to her. “You got a raincoat or something?”

“A raincoat? Over
that
dress?” her grandmother said.

Anne’s raincoat was shabby. She knew in the morning her mother would buy her a new one, having seen the shabbiness. “Let’s run to the car, Con,” she said, holding the coat over her to keep her hair dry.

She ran, and kept her hair dry. It reminded her of some old battle cry.
Keep your powder dry, boys.
If I tell him tonight, that’s what tonight will be, thought Anne. A war zone. But I have to tell him tonight. I can’t last alone any longer.

Con began driving.

He put the windshield wipers on high, and heavy rain flicked off the glass. Lightning tore through the sky, and thunder rolled. Anne stared at Con’s profile. He didn’t notice.

E
MILY EDMUNDSON HATED THUNDER
and lightning. She had read lots of statistics by now, and every time she had to leave the house during an electrical storm (or stay in the house alone) she reminded herself that few people were killed each year by lightning. Emily knew, however, that she was destined to be one of the few.

What would it be like to be burned to death by a shaft of electricity? Quick, at least.

Outside her bedroom window lightning fired in the sky like a series of warning signals. Don’t go, don’t go.

“Penny for your thoughts,” said Emily’s mother, fixing the hook at the top of the zipper in the back of Emily’s dress.

Emily smiled tightly at her mother. But she didn’t answer. Emily felt that she was boring. Therefore, all her thoughts were boring, too. Emily never knew what to do about being boring. Her life was dull, and apparently it was because she was a dull person. Right now Emily could not help thinking that her mother offered a penny for Emily’s thoughts because that was all Mrs. Edmundson thought they were worth.

“I hope poor Matt recognizes you,” said Emily’s mother, laughing. “Goodness! The poor boy sat next to you in some assembly for an hour, and here he has to go out on a night like this to take you to a formal dance. We were all so surprised he agreed to go!”

Emily forced a smile. “Not as surprised as I was. Good thing I don’t have any sisters for him to confuse me with. At least that way he’ll know who the flowers are for.”

Mrs. Edmundson patted Emily’s arm and left her bedroom. Thunder rocked the foundations of the house. Emily, who kept track of such things, did not think she had seen such a fierce storm in years. And to think she had to leave her house, run through this wicked rain and lightning and thunder to get into Matt’s car, and then do the very same thing again to get into the high school. And all the time pretending she hardly noticed. Because, as her mother would have been quick to reassure her, most people did not give lightning storms a thought.

Emily stared at herself in her mirror.

She could never tell if she was attractive or not. There were times when she felt the reflection in that mirror was quite satisfactory, and other times when she felt that leaving the house would be an act of cruelty to the general public who would have to look at her. But at last tonight she had the perfect dress. Old-fashioned, garnet-colored, the cloth was a heavy velvet. Very romantic, dark crimson, with the narrowest line of pearl beads around the swooping neckline. She felt like the sort of girl who sat with a feathered fan and flirted with the young gentlemen.

Oh, how she wanted a lovely evening to go with her lovely dress!

Her mother had certainly cooperated. Mrs. Edmundson had taken Emily to the hairdresser, and bought her earrings that looked as if they had been custom made for the dress, with the same narrow pearls, and even agreed to the special purchase of matching shoes: shoes in that dark romantic red that would never match anything else in her life—shoes for a single night.

Don’t let it be a single night, prayed Emily, staring at the sky. Let Matt fall in love with me. Let this be the first night of many, many more. Please.

She sighed.

The odds against such a thing were pretty high.

She’d met Matt the second week of the term. There was a regional student government conference. Nobody in Emily’s school was interested in their own school government, let alone a regional conference. Every class officer in sophomore, junior, and senior year pleaded conflict from sports, jobs, family, or lessons. The social studies teacher in charge looked vaguely around his Comparative Economics class and said, “We have to send
somebody
. Won’t anybody volunteer to represent us?”

Emily raised her hand.

The teacher said (burning the words into Emily’s mind as if printing them with a hot branding iron), “Oh, good. At least Westerly will have a warm body there.”

That’s all she was. A warm body. The teacher couldn’t even remember her name. She had to spell Edmundson for him. And the next week when he demanded to know why she’d been absent from his class on Wednesday, she had to remind him about the conference.

But Matt had remembered. Emily called him up. The most daring thing she’d done in her life. She felt as if she were scaling Mount Everest just lifting that telephone. And Matt remembered. His laugh rang out over the phone as if Emily had made his day by calling.

“Emily!” he cried happily. “The only interesting person at that whole conference. It’s great to hear your voice! So what’s happening? Where are you calling me from? Are you up here? Are you coming our way? Want me to meet you at the turnpike exit?”