Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories (32 page)

“Right in the pocket,” he said with satisfaction.

“How'd you do tonight?” I asked.

“Not bad. Had a two-oh-seven game. Damn near cracked six hundred.”

He opened the refrigerator and fished around for a beer, then sat down heavily, took a deep drag from the bottle, burped loudly and said:

“Well, tomorrow's the big day, ain't it?”

“Yep,” I answered. “Sure is.”

“You takin' Daphne Bigelow?” he asked.

“Nah. Wanda Hickey.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, you can't win 'em all. Wanda's old man is some kind of a foreman at the mill or something, ain't he?”

“I guess so.”

“He drives a Studebaker Champion, don't he? The green two-door with the whitewalls.”

The old man had a fine eye for cars. He judged all men by what they drove. Apparently a guy who drove a two-door Studebaker was not absolutely beyond the pale.

“Not a bad car. Except they burn oil after a while,” he mused, omitting no aspects of the Studebaker.

“They used to have a weak front end. Bad kingpins.” He shook his head critically, opening another beer and reaching for the rye bread

I said nothing, lost in my own thoughts. My mother and kid brother had been in bed for an hour or so. We were, for all practical purposes, alone in the house. Next door, Mrs. Kissel threw out a pail of dishwater into the back yard with a swoosh. Her screen door slammed.

“How ya fixed for tomorrow night?” the old man asked suddenly, swirling his beer bottle around to raise the head.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how are ya
fixed?”

My father never talked money to me. I got my allowance every Monday and that was that.

“Well, I've got about ten bucks.”

“Hm.” That was all he said.

After sitting in silence for a minute or so, he said,

“You know, I always wished I coulda gone to a prom.”

How can you answer something like that? He had
barely gotten out of eighth grade when he had to go to work, and he never stopped for the rest of his life.

“Oh, well, what the hell” He finally answered himself.

He cut himself a slice of boiled ham and made a sandwich.

“I was really hot tonight. Got a string of six straight strikes in the second game. The old hook was movin', getting a lot of wood.”

He reached into his hip pocket, took out his wallet and said:

“Look, don't tell Ma.” He handed me a $20 bill.

“I had a couple of bets going on the second game, and I'm a money bowler.”

He was that. No doubt of it. In his early teens, he had scrounged out a living as a pool shark, and he had never lost the touch. I took the $20, glommed onto it the way the proverbial drowning man grabs at a straw. I was so astounded at this unprecedented gesture that it never occurred to me to say thanks. He would have been embarrassed if I had. A miracle had come to pass. There was no doubt about it—the prom was going to be an unqualified gas.

The next day dawned bright and sunny, as perfect as a June day can be—in a steel-mill town. Even the blast-furnace dust that drifted aimlessly through the soft air glowed with promise. I was out early, dusting off the car. It was going to be a top-down night. If there is anything more romantic than a convertible with the top down in June going to a prom, I'd like to hear about it
Cleopatra's barge couldn't have been much more seductive.

My kid brother, his diminutive Flash Gordon T-shirt showing a great expanse of knobby backbone and skinny belly, yapped around me as I toiled over the Ford.

“Look what you done to my T-shirt!” he whined, his runny nose atrickle. He was in the midst of his annual spring cold, which would be superseded by his summer cold, which lasted nicely to the whopper he got in the fall, which, of course, was only a prelude to his winter-long
monster
cold.

“Stay away from the fender. You're dripping on it!”

I shouted angrily, shoving him away.

“Flash Gordon's only about an inch high now!”

I couldn't help laughing. It was true. Flash had shrunk, along with the shirt, which Randy had earned by doggedly eating three boxes of Wheaties, saving the boxtops and mailing them in with 25 cents that he had, by dint of ferocious self-denial, saved from his 30-cent weekly allowance.

“Look, I'll get you another Flash Gordon T-shirt.”

“You can't. They're not givin' 'em away no more. They're givin' away Donald Duck beanies with a propeller on top now.”

“Well, then, stretch the one you got now, stupid.”

“It won't stretch. It keeps getting littler.”

He bounced up and down on a clothes pole, joggling the clothesline and my mother's wash. Within three seconds, she was out on the back porch.

“CUT IT OUT WITH THE CLOTHES POLE.”

Sullenly, he slid off onto the ground. I went back to work, until the Ford gleamed like some rare jewel. Then I went into the house to begin the even more laborious process of getting
myself
in shape for the evening ahead. Locking the bathroom door, I took two showers, wearing a brand-new bar of Lifebuoy down to a nub. I knew what happened to people who didn't use it; every week, little comic strips underneath
Moon Mullins
told endless tales of disastrous proms due to dreaded B.O. It would not happen to me.

I then shaved for the second time that week, using a new Gillette Blue Blade. As usual when an important shave was executed, I nicked myself nastily in several places.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered, plastering the wounds with little pieces of toilet paper.

Carefully, I went over every inch of my face, battling that age-old enemy, the blackhead, and polished off the job with a copious application of stinging Aqua Velva. Next I attacked my hair, combing and recombing, getting just the right insouciant pitch to my pride and joy, my d.a. cut. Tonight, I would be a truly magnificent specimen of lusty manhood.

Twilight was fast approaching when I emerged from the bathroom, redolent of rare aromas, pink and svelte. But the real battle had not yet begun. Laid out on my bed was my beautiful summer formal. Al was right: The elegant white coat truly gleamed in virginal splendor. Not a trace of the red stain nor the sinister hole could be detected. The coat was ready for another night of
celebration, its lapels spotless, its sleeves smooth and uncreased.

Carefully, I undid the pins that festooned my pleated Monte Carlo shirt. It was the damnedest thing I had ever seen, once I got it straightened out: long, trailing gauzelike shirttails, a crinkly front that thrummed like sheet metal and a collar that seemed to be carved of white rock. I slipped it on. Panic! It had no buttons—just holes.

Rummaging around frantically in the box the suit came in, I found a cellophane envelope containing little round black things. Ripping the envelope open, I poured them out; there were five of them, two of which immediately darted under the bed. From the looks of the remaining three, they certainly weren't buttons; but they'd have to do. Although I didn't know it at the time, I had observed a classic maneuver executed by at least one stud out of every set rented with a tux. Down on my hands and knees, already beginning to lose my Lifebuoy sheen, sweat popping out here and there, I scrambled around for the missing culprits.

The ordeal was well under way. Seven o'clock was approaching with such rapidity as to be almost unbelievable. Schwartz, Clara Mae and Wanda would
already
be waiting for me, and here I was in my drawers, crawling around on my hands and knees. Finally, amid the dust and dead spiders under my bed, I found the two studs cowering together behind a hardball I'd lost three months earlier.

Back before the mirror again, I struggled to get them in place between the concrete slits. Sweat was beginning
to show under my arms. I got two in over my breastbone and now I tried to get the one at the collar over my Adam's apple. It was impossible! I could feel from deep within me several sobs beginning to form. The more I struggled, the more hamfisted I became. Oh, no! Two blackish thumb smudges appeared on my snowwhite collar.

“MA!” I screamed, “LOOK AT MY SHIRT!”

She rushed in from the kitchen, carrying a paring knife and a pan of apples. “What's the matter?”

“Look!” I pointed at the telltale prints.

My kid brother cackled in delight when he saw the trouble I was in.

“Don't touch it,” she barked, taking control immediately. Dirty collars were her métier. She had fought them all her life. She darted out of the room and returned instantly with an artgum eraser.

“Now, hold still.”

I obeyed as she carefully worked the stud in place and then artistically erased the two monstrous thumbprints. Never in my life had I experienced a collar remotely like the one that now clamped its iron grasp around my windpipe. Hard and unyielding, it dug mercilessly into my throat—a mere sample of what was to come.

“Where's your tie?” she asked. I had forgotten about that detail.

“It … ack … must be … in the box,” I managed to gasp out. The collar had almost paralyzed my voice box.

She rummaged around and came up with the bow tie.
It was black and it had two metal clips. She snapped it onto the wing collar and stood back.

“Now, look at yourself in the mirror.” I didn't recognize myself.

She picked up the midnight-blue trousers and held them open, so that I could slip into them without bending over.

True to his word, Al had, indeed, taken in the seat The pants clamped me in a viselike grip that was to damn near emasculate me before the evening was out. I sucked in my stomach, buttoned the waistband tight, zippered up the fly and stood straight as a ramrod before the mirror. I had no other choice.

“Gimme your foot.”

My mother was down on all fours, pulling the silky black socks onto my feet. Then, out of a box on the bed, she removed the gleaming pair of patent-leather dancing pumps, grabbed my right foot and shoved it into one of them, using her finger as a shoehorn. I tromped down. She squealed in pain.

“I can't get my finger out!”

I hobbled around, taking her finger with me.

“STAND STILL!” she screamed.

I stood like a crane, one foot in the air, with her finger jammed deep into the heel.

“RANDY! COME HERE!” she yelled.

My kid brother, who was sulking under the day bed, ran into the room.

“PULL HIS SHOE OFF, RANDY!” She was frantic.

“What for?” he asked sullenly.

“DON'T ASK STUPID QUESTIONS. JUST DO WHAT I SAY!”

I was getting an enormous cramp in my right buttock.

“STAND STILL!” she yelled. “YOU'RE BREAKING MY FINGER!” Randy looked on impassively, observing a scene that he was later to weave into a family legend, embroidering it more and more as the years went by-making himself the hero, of course.

“RANDY!
Take off his shoe!”
Her voice quavered with pain and exasperation.

“He squirted my T-shirt.”

“If you don't take off his shoe this instant, you're gonna regret it.” This time, her voice was low and menacing. We both knew the tone. It was the end of the line.

Randy bent over and tugged off the shoe. My mother toppled backward in relief, rubbing her index finger, which was already blue.

“Go back under the day bed,” she snapped. He scurried out of the room. I straightened out my leg—the cramp subsiding like a volcano in the marrow of my bones—and the gleaming pumps were put in place without further incident. I stood encased as in armor.

“What's this thing?” she asked from behind me. I executed a careful 180-degree turn,

“Oh, that's my cummerbund.”

Her face lit up like an Italian sunrise. “A cummerbund!” She had seen Fred Astaire in many a cummerbund while he spun down marble staircases with Ginger Rogers in his arms, but it was the first actual specimen
she had ever been close to. She picked it up reverently, its paisley brilliance lighting up the room like an iridescent jewel.

“How does it work?” she asked, examining it closely.

Before I could answer, she said, “Oh, I see. It has clips on the back. Hold still.”

Around my waist it went. She drew it tight. The snaps clicked into place. It rode snugly halfway up my chest

She picked up the snowy coat and held it out. I lowered my arms into it and straightened up. She darted around to the front, closed the single button and there I stood—Adonis!

Posing before the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, I noted the rich accent of my velvet stripes, the gleam of my pumps, the magnificent dash and sparkle of my high-fashion cummerbund. What a sight! What a feeling! This is the way life should be. This is what it's all about.

I heard my mother call out from the next room: “Hey, what's this thing?” She came out holding a cellophane bag containing a maroon object.

“Oh, that's my boutonniere.”

“Your what?”

“It's a thing for the lapel. Like a fake flower.”

It was the work of an instant to install my elegant wool carnation. It was the crowning touch. I was so overwhelmed that I didn't care about the fact that it didn't match my black tie, as Al had promised. With the cummerbund I was wearing, no one would notice, anyway.

Taking my leave as Cary Grant would have done, I sauntered out the front door, turned to give my mother a jaunty wave—just in time for her to call me back to pick up Wanda's corsage, which I'd left on the front-hall table.

Slipping carefully into the front seat with the cellophane-topped box safely beside me, I leaned forward slightly, to avoid wrinkling the back of my coat, started the motor up and shoved off into the warm summer night A soft June moon hung overhead. The Ford purred like a kitten. When I pulled up before Wanda's house, it was lit up from top to bottom. Even before my brakes had stopped squealing, she was out on the porch, her mother fluttering about her, her father lurking in the background, beaming.