Saturday Night (3 page)

Emily was staggered. Her biggest fear had been thinking of something to say to him. And listen to this outpouring of interest! “I just called to talk,” she said nervously. “I
would
drive up to see you if I had a driver’s license though. And a car, and money to buy gas.”

Matt laughed. “I’ll settle for the phone call. It sounds like it could be a few years before you drive my way. Your timing is perfect. I’m doing trig. I hate math. Don’t know why I’m planning to be an engineer when I hate math. You think maybe I should consider another career goal, Emily? What do you think about my becoming a disc jockey? I sure can talk.”

Oh, yes, he could talk! For two hours they talked, and her mother didn’t interrupt her once. They went over the conference, as if it really had been fun. But it was Matt who’d been fun. For once Emily had had good luck—sitting next to a strange boy in the auditorium who instantly introduced himself and informed her they would go to the lectures together, because a person could only survive this junk if he had an ally.

That was late September. All through October Emily thought about Matt.

Kip Elliott had created the Autumn Leaves Dance herself; chaired every committee, in her exuberance and determination to make it wonderful. Kip had a knack for publicity. Everybody in school—and Westerly had nearly 2,000 students—knew as each step was accomplished. And each time Emily heard about the next thing Kip had done for this dance, she thought, I wonder if Matt would. …

And over the phone he said, yes, he would, he’d love to.

And she believed him, because he was such a solid person; he seemed so trustworthy and good and funny. Like Con Winter, who dated Anne Stephens. Matt seemed perfect to Emily, so of course she believed him. She said it was formal and Matt said he had a tuxedo. She said her street was hard to find and Matt said he had the directions written down and would not lose them.

But he had not called her in the two weeks since then.

No flowers had been delivered.

He had done no double checking to be sure he had the right night, the right hour.

Emily turned out the light in her room, and stared into the pelting rain outside her window, and shivered when lightning ripped through the night. I’m a fool, she thought. He was just handing me a line. He didn’t mean it. He won’t come. A forty-five minute drive to Westerly in this weather? Next year’s yearbook they’ll have a new category. Biggest Jerk. Emily Edmundson. Most Gullible. Emily Edmundson.

The dance starts in fifteen minutes.

And he’s not here.

Her mother walked into the room and flicked on the lights. “Don’t sit in the dark, Emily. Honestly, Emily, this boy
will
come. Although I must admit if he doesn’t show I’m going to be irritated.”

Emily sat immovable in the garnet velvet dress, the pearls dangling delicately against her cheeks. Irritated? she thought. My mother will be irritated? I will be sick with shame and sadness and embarrassment and loneliness … and my mother will be irritated.

Emily sat alone.

Lightning flashed, thunder shuddered.

And Matt did not appear.

Molly Nelmes adored boys, and they adored her.

Sometimes she stared into her mirror, wondering what the boys saw. Certainly girls didn’t see it. Molly didn’t have a female friend in the world. Molly didn’t have a great figure, either, or terrific looks, or wonderful hair. Yet she was the only girl who was truly in demand. She actually turned boys down fairly often, because she already had a date. Those same boys came back again, until she squeezed them into her schedule—or didn’t squeeze them in, if they were duds.

But things had slacked off. All fall there had been nobody but Roddy. Over the summer, girls and boys had paired off. Molly hadn’t run into this before; most of the boys at Westerly were pretty casual. Now they were imitating Anne and Con, who had been and remained the most tightly bound of couples.

Molly’s favorite sweat shirt said
SO MANY BOYS … SO LITTLE TIME
. She had no intention of tying herself down to anybody.

Roddy was all right. A little on the thin and gawky side for her taste, but he’d fill out this year. He was seventeen, and even the shrimpy ones started growing when they hit seventeen. Not too bright, but brains weren’t number one for Molly. Roddy had plenty of money, and she liked that. He could borrow his father’s Jaguar, which she loved, and he had his own four-year-old Ford—not exciting, but there.

But Roddy had had the cars taken away. His grades fell, he got a speeding warning, he’d failed to write a thank you letter to his grandmother, or some dumb thing, and the cars had been taken away for six weeks.

As far as Molly was concerned, Roddy no longer had anything to offer. She herself had no car, and what good was a boy if he couldn’t drive you to the movies or the Pou-Belle, or someplace? She especially liked the Pou-Belle. A coffeehouse/juice bar, with pool tables, darts, video games, wide screen television, and a dance floor. Pou-Belle meant “garbage can” in French, which appealed to Molly’s sense of humor. She loved to hang out there.

They had ridden with another couple to Pou-Belle the week before and Roddy got all bent out of shape when Molly danced with other people. “I like to dance,” she said to him. “And you’re not good at fast dances. You just sort of stand there and twitch.”

She was trying to be funny; she was laughing when she said it. But Roddy blushed an uncomfortable splotchy red, and mumbled, and fumbled. Molly couldn’t stand being with a boy who was awkward. She walked away instantly, and who should be leaning against the bar, waiting for some action, but Christopher Vann.

She was amazed to see him. Christopher had graduated from Westerly High two years before. A sophomore at some Ivy League college back East, he was old enough now to drink legally. What on earth was he doing in a kids’ juice bar? She went right up and asked him, in her direct way.

“Waiting for someone like you,” said Christopher instantly, and Molly laughed, and forgot about Roddy. A few hours later when their ride was leaving, Roddy came up to her and Christopher. Looking down at his shoes (stupid shoes; shoes with Velcro pads instead of laces) he mumbled, “You ready to leave, Molly?”

“No,” said Molly. “I’m going with Christopher.”

Christopher grinned down at Roddy. Big, broad, and muscular, Christopher had been the football captain and president of his class as a senior. Almost got into West Point, but ended up at Harvard instead. Harvard. Molly adored the sound of it.
I go with a Harvard guy, of course
, she pictured herself saying.

“So what are you doing this weekend?” she said to Christopher.

Roddy shuffled a little bit. Molly thought, At least when you asked me to the Autumn Leaves Dance, you were a jerk with a Jaguar. Now you’re just a jerk.

It would be fantastic to appear with Christopher. There were plenty of decent boys in Westerly now—like Con, or Gary—but Christopher was a Harvard man, and this year’s crop was nothing like that. What a splash she would make, strolling in with Christopher! Molly was wildly excited.

“You got something in mind?” Christopher asked lazily.

“I’m taking you to a dance.” She grinned at him mischievously, a grin she had long ago learned wrapped boys around her little finger.

Christopher fell right in line. “What kind of dance?” he said.

Roddy made a funny little sound.

Molly said, “Formal. At school. You’ve got to dust off your tuxedo and everything and I’ll be wearing a dress cut so low you’ll have trouble driving.”

Christopher laughed. “Can’t pass up an offer like that,” he said. They talked about the dance and about Harvard, and what she would wear. Actually her dress wasn’t that low cut because her mother wouldn’t buy her anything like that, but Molly was no stickler for facts.

On Saturday night she was still laughing happily, without any memory of the way Roddy had slunk off and the way she and Christopher moved on to another nightclub—no juice bar this, but one where she had to lie about her age to get in.

What a catch Christopher was. Molly even thought of him that way—as something she had snagged, rather than a man she was with.

Boys, Molly thought contentedly. Her mirror told her the hairdresser had done her hair perfectly and her complexion was clear. I love boys, she thought. Girls, now. A dime a dozen. I hardly even notice girls. Except when they get in my way. But boys are worth counting one by one. I’ve never had a Harvard man before.

And what it would do for her status in school! Not plain old Roddy, but Christopher Vann, who’d been Most Likely to Succeed and Best Dressed.

He’ll invite me to a Cambridge weekend, she thought. Football. The Harvard-Yale game.

When the doorbell rang, and she heard Christopher’s voice and her mother’s, exchanging conventional greetings, Molly was almost delirious with pleasure.

It did not occur to her to wonder why a Harvard sophomore would be home for a week in November, with nothing better to do than go to a high school dance.

“M
OTHER,” SAID BETH ROSE
, her voice tight with panic, “can you button me up?”

Unfortunately her mother’s negative advice would come right along with the buttoning. But there was nobody else in the family to do it. She was an only child, and her father was a television addict who was even now glued to some Saturday night program, although at this hour there was nothing interesting on. Mr. Chapman never cared. He just watched, regardless.

Her mother walked into the bedroom and said, “Oh, honey, your hair looks awful. What are we going to do about it?”

Beth turned away quickly before the tears showed. Her mirror was not full length. It was a cheap rectangle from the discount store, sitting on top of her bureau, and the bottom was blocked anyway by all her rows of makeup and perfume. Bottles to make her beautiful. Bottles that had not lived up to their promise. And yet Beth Rose loved them all. She loved scents and colors. She made herself look at the mirror and knew that her mother was right. Her hair, which she had tried to fix the way Aunt Madge had, merely looked ridiculous. The braids were fat spikes that stuck out and the shining dark red cap of hair on top was frizzled and askew.

Her mother finished buttoning. “Let’s leave,” she said. “Now do you want me to wait outside the high school for you for fifteen minutes? I think that’s the best thing, Bethie. If you get in there and you simply can’t handle it, and nobody talks to you, you can just slip right out again and get in the car and we’ll drive away and say no more about it. How does that sound?”

It sounded like a nightmare.

But it also sounded possible.

I’ll walk in, thought Beth, and the gym will be perfect, because Kip was in charge. There will be beautiful corners and aisles of plants and clusters of seating arrangements and sparkling things hanging from the ceiling. I’ll move like a stick figure from spot to spot, until I see and touch everything Kip designed and then I’ll be back where I started from. And a few people will look at me pityingly, thinking, Does Beth Rose really think she can pull this off?

Oh, Aunt Madge, how could you do this to me! I really believed you were my fairy godmother, and you could wave your wand and make me beautiful and popular, but of course you aren’t and you can’t.

She didn’t weep, but only because she was used to things going wrong and her mother being negative.

Her father’s voice came bellowing up the stairs. He disliked anything that interrupted his television. “Beth!”

“Yes, Daddy?”

“Your Aunt Madge is here. Come on down.”

Aunt Madge? But she lived a hundred miles away!

Beth ran to the stairs, and the funny thing was, she instinctively knew to lift her skirt from the sides, ever so little, so that she didn’t trip on the hem, and she held it gracefully, because the dress was so lovely it demanded grace. Aunt Madge was standing at the bottom with a heavy-set, middle-aged woman and they were both beaming. “Beth Rose!” cried Aunt Madge, clapping her hands. “I just had to come see how you looked. Didn’t I tell you, Jeannette? Didn’t I tell you she would be beautiful in my old prom dress?”

“You certainly did,” said Jeannette, whoever she was. “And you were right. We got here just in time to fix her hair.”

There were introductions. Jeannette was Aunt Madge’s next door neighbor. This was a lark, they explained—an adventure in their quiet lives. They wanted to see the dress go out the door. “And how often do I get involved in a dance anymore?” added Aunt Madge.

She had Beth’s messy braids out in an instant, and brush and comb flew through the hair so quickly it really felt like a magic wand.

Beth Rose kept laughing.

It was too wonderful. “I wish I’d known you were coming, Aunt Madge,” she said happily.

“I didn’t know myself. A hundred miles is a long way to come. But I’ve been thinking about your dance all day long and I couldn’t bear it. It’s my dress, you know. I went to my prom with Virgil Hopkinson. I worshipped Virgil Hopkinson. So did every girl in town. They were all jealous of me, Beth. I tell you, there’s nothing so wonderful as a dance where every other girl in the ballroom is looking at you.”

“But you didn’t marry Virgil Hopkinson,” said Beth.

“Oh, my, no. He wasn’t worth marrying, darling. He just made a perfect escort. Tall, dark, handsome, and rich.”

“I wonder what your life would be now if you had married him,” said Beth Rose. Her hair was finished. She looked in the hall mirror, and the magical girl was back. The lovely fragile creature with the gleaming hair in her soft, old-fashioned dress, as if her edges had faded like an old photograph album, and she was drifting in from another world.

“Boring,” said Aunt Madge. “Virgil was boring. People who travel on their looks often are. My dear, you are beautiful.”

“And boring?” teased Beth.

“Never! Nobody could be bored with you around. Oooooh, I can’t wait. I know you’re going to have the best time of all,” Madge said.

Her mother said nothing, but her eyebrows said it all. Mrs. Chapman was saying, “The best time? No. She’ll arrive, she’ll sit, and then she’ll leave. That’s the kind of time Bethie will have. That’s the kind of time Bethie always has.”