Honey, Page 4

  "Right. See you then." he said and hung up.

  "What was that all about?" Mommy asked from the kitchen doorway.

  "Chandler Maxwell's father gets tickets to shows and he wanted to know if I'd like to go see Porgy and Bess Saturday night. I said yes. Is that all right?"

  "That's very nice," Mommy said. Daddy came up beside her. "He wants to take me to dinner first." I added.

  "Well, that's a full-blown date. Sounds like something special,'" Daddy kidded.

  "She could use something new to wear," Mommy told him. He nodded,

  "I don't have to buy something new," I said.

  "Your mother wants you to so she can help you pick it out," Daddy said, smiling at her.

  "But..."

  "He's right," Mommy said, stepping forward to take my hand and smile. "There's a point in every mother's life when she starts to relive her own youth through her children, especially a daughter.'

  I smiled. It wasn't something she and I had done very often.

  "Okay," I said. Then I ran up the stairs, my heavy footsteps waking Grandad, who called out to ask what was going on in his house? It sounded like the roof was caving in. Couldn't we walk softer?

  Not tonight. I thought. Not tonight, Grandad. I was so excited. I didn't think I would fall asleep. I got into my nightgown and under the covers, anxious for the night to pass and the morning to bring me to school.

  I reached over and turned off the light on my night-stand, throwing the room into darkness.

  Outside, the moon had just gone over the west side of the house. Like a giant yellow spotlight, it lit up the barn and my step-uncle Simon's window. He was sitting there, looking toward mine.

  And I realized I had left it wide open while I had been studying my naked body. Had he been there that whole time? I was too old now to leave my window open like this. I thought, and went over to draw the shade.

  After all, I told myself. Chandler Maxwell had called me for a date. I would buy something new and beautiful and I would fix my hair and study how beautiful women in magazines did their makeup. Men would start to notice me. It would be as if I had just been discovered standing there or walking or sitting at a table.

  Who is that? they would surely wonder. Every smile, every look of appreciation would be like hands clapping.

  Emerging from childhood, a woman is surely reborn. It's almost as if a light goes on inside us and the glow from it brightens the stage and opens the curtain. When that happens, one way or another, all of us live off the applause.

  5 A New Song Begins

  I used to think that I was exceptionally shy. If a boy stopped to speak to me or showed me any attention. I could feel the heat rise to my face immediately, and just knowing my skin was starting to glow like the inside of a toaster made me even shier. I had to shift my eyes away and always spoke quickly, giving whoever it was the impression I wanted to get away from him as fast as I could. It wasn't my intention, but I could understand why someone would think that.

  When I arrived at school the following day, I looked forward to seeing Chandler. His locker was halfway down the hall from mine, and pretty soon I saw him arrive. He glanced my way, but to my surprise, he returned his attention to his locker, took out what he needed, closed it, and walked on as if he and I had never met. For a moment I was so stunned I had to question my own sanitv. Did we speak on the phone and did he invite me to dinner and a show? Or was that a dream?

  I hurried to homeroom, now even more curious and more eager to speak with him. He sat two rows left of me. When I entered. I looked at him, but he had his face in one of his textbooks as usual, not bothering to look up when the teacher spoke or when the announcements came over the public-address system. Our teacher asked everyone to take his or her seat. Roll was taken and then the bell for our first class rang. I deliberately moved slowly so Chandler and I would be side by side as we were leaving the room.

  I said as soon as he was beside me.

  "Hi," he replied; he gazed about nervously for a moment and then sped up and walked away, swinging the briefcase he carried, which looked like a lawyer's attache case and was the object of many jokes.

  I just stood there, amazed, as other students moved by, some knocking into me because my feet were planted in cement.

  "You all right?" Karen Jacobs asked mt.

  "What? Oh. Yes." I said and started to walk to class. She tagged along.

  Karen was a mousy-looking girl with big though dull brown eyes. whose life was apparently so boring she fed off everyone else's sadness as well as happiness. Almost ninety percent of what she said to anyone daily was in the form of a question.

  Sometimes I thought she resembled a squirrel, hoarding information, tidbits, anecdotes about other people, like acorns: and sometimes. I thought she was more like a parasite, existing solely off the lift of her hosts, which in this case was anyone who cared to share his or her revelations.

  "I saw you say something to Chandler Maxwell. What did you say?"

  "I said hi."

  "Why?"

  "-Why not?" I fired back at her. She looked confused and lagged a step or two behind me.

  During my first-period class, however, I sensed her nearly constant study of my every glance and Zesture. Maybe she had some sort of built-in radar for these sort of things. Whatever she had, she homed in on my interest in Chandler and made us the subject of her study for the day. I knew she was eager for gossip she could use to ingratiate herself with some of the other students, especially the girls in our class who made no effort to hide their dislike of her.

  As it turned out, this was exactly what Chandler was trying to avoid. Between periods one and two, as we were moving through the corridor, he swooped up beside me and said, "Here."

  He had a slip of paper in his hand. For a moment I didn't know what he wanted. He repeated, "Here," and I took the paper. The moment I did, he walked away. When I paused to open the note. Karen moved closer. I felt her approaching and I shoved the paper into my math text.

  "Didn't Chandler Maxwell just hand you something?" she asked me. I turned to her.

  "Yes."

  "What was it, something secret between you?"

  I was annoyed, but for some reason, I decided to lie.

  "I dropped some notes when I left English literature just now, and he picked them up and gave them to me. Why didn't you say something about it?"

  "I didn't see you drop anything," she insisted.

  "How could you miss it?" I countered. "You've been watching me like a hawk,"

  "I have not," she protested, but fell back as if I had just slapped her face.

  I knew she was just waiting for me to take out the note in my next class, so I deliberately pretended no interest. I don't know why it was so important to me to be surreptitious, but it was obviously important to Chandler. so I maintained the same very low profile.

  It wasn't until I had time to go to the girls' room that I took out the note and read it. It was, as he promised, details about Saturday night: what time he would pick me up, where he would take me for dinner, what time the show started and ended, and what time I could expect to be home. He hadn't even signed it or anything. I was disappointed, but I was more angry. How could he be so impersonal and so insensitive? Was I the first girl he had ever taken on a date? Maybe he didn't know how to behave.

  That did give me reason to pause. Maybe I was his first real date. too. Why did I assume that he had taken other girls out? No one ever spoke about it. If anyone would know, it would certainly be Karen Jacobs. and I never heard her pass any gossip along concerning him.

  I was hoping he would be friendlier at lunch. Chandler usually sat with some computer heads in the rear of the cafeteria. I was ahead of him in the line and deliberately found an empty table, anticipating his joining me: but he didn't. He went to his usual place and, moments later, some of the girls in my class, including Karen, sat at my table. I could see from the looks on their faces that Karen had begun to spread a story. I de
cided she was going to be the editor of the

  National Enquirer one day.

  "Is something going on between you and

  Chandler Maxwell?" Susie Weaver asked me almost

  immediately. She was a very attractive red-haired girl

  who was already dating college boys and had an air of

  sophistication about her that made her the target of

  every other girl's envy. All of us, including me, hung

  on her every comment and pronouncement as if it

  were relationship gospel. Her seal of approval on a

  boy someone was seeing was sought after and

  appreciated, and when she condemned someone,

  everyone joined the bandwagon and found faults

  where none really existed.

  "Why?" I replied, which was a mistake. I

  should have either vehemently denied it. if I wanted to

  deny it, or owned up to it and defended it.

  Her lips softened and spread like two strips of

  butter on a frying pan. "How long have you been

  sneaking around with him?" she followed.

  The other girls smiled. and Karen looked so

  self-satisfied. I felt like smearing my piece of pizza

  over her pudgy blah face.

  "I haven't been sneaking around with him or

  anyone else," I said.

  "Really?" Susie looked at the others. She wore a look of achievement, the expression of some investigator who had just exposed the criminal. The others nodded.. "You don't have to be ashamed. Unless you and Chandler are doing something pretty

  kinky," Susie added, and started eating.

  "I'm not ashamed. There's nothing like that

  going on!"

  "Or embarrassed."

  "I'm not!" I practically screamed.

  "Do you go to his place, or do you take him

  into your barn with the cows?"

  "Stop it!"

  "Sensitive, isn't she?" Susie asked the others.

  All eyes were on me. I took a deep breath, calming

  myself.

  "Chandler and I are taking private music

  lessons together, if you have to know," I finally

  confessed. "We have the same teacher, and he's

  having us practice duets, me on the violin and

  Chandler on the piano."

  "So, you admit you're making music together,"

  Susie said, and the whole table roared and giggled

  with laughter. "I hope you're on key and in rhythm." Their laughter was louder.

  "Does he say please first and thank you afterward?" Janice Handley asked. She was Susie's alter ego, her gofer, ready to jump at her beck and

  call.

  There was more laughter.

  My face turned white before it turned scarlet. I

  glanced back at Chandler. He was looking my way

  now, an expression of concern and disgust on his face. "Come on," Susie said in a mock-friendly tone

  of voice. "tell us about it. You can trust us. We're all

  your friends."

  "Some friends," I said. I glared at Karen. "Are

  you satisfied? Think they like you any more than they

  did before school started today?"

  I rose, picked up my fray, and left the table,

  their laughter roaring like a waterfall behind me. I sat

  out the remainder of my lunch hour in a stall in the

  girls' room. Two of the girls who had been at the table

  came in. and I heard them talking and laughing about

  me and Chandler. What interested me was their

  conclusion that he and I were made for each other.

  Somehow, because I was unable to participate in

  after-school activities and did so little with them and

  the others, they interpreted it to mean I was just as

  snobby.

  As I was entering Spanish class. Chandler

  caught up with me.

  "Don't take the school bus home," he said. "I'll

  take you. Just wait at your locker."

  He spoke quickly, like someone giving very

  secret information about an impending rebellion, and

  then took his seat and ignored me the rest of the

  period. Every once in a while. I saw some of my

  classmates looking my way, whispering and then

  laughing to themselves.

  It was as if my eyes were washed with a good

  dose of reality and opened wider. Susie Weaver

  wasn't as sophisticated as I had thought. None of them

  were. Maybe they were out there, doing things I never

  did: drinking, smoking, hanging out late into the

  night, being sexually active, but that didn't make them

  sophisticated. They suddenly all looked like immature

  people dressed in adult clothes. Most of them were

  just as insecure as I was, if not more so. and what they

  did was mock me or someone else in order to cover up

  the truth about themselves.

  I used to feel terrible about not having loads of

  friends, not being invited to parties, not dating

  regularly, not being Miss Popularity, and being

  thought of as a prude, too religious, too moral, but

  now I felt relieved, even lucky. What I felt terrible about missing looked more than simply insignificant. It looked foolish, wasteful. Maybe there was too much

  Grandad in me. but I wasn't feeling sorry about it. I guess I really was an outsider, a loner of sorts.

  I guess Chandler and I did appear made for each

  other. I hurried to my locker after class and waited

  eagerly for him. He deliberately lingered until most of

  the school had left. When that bell ending the day

  rang, it was often like a stampede. Anyone watching

  outside would think we had all just been released from

  doing hard time in a state penitentiary.

  "What happened in the lunch room?" he asked

  me as soon as he approached.

  I told him how Karen Jacobs had seen him pass

  me the note and then had made a big thing of it with

  the others who enjoyed teasing me.

  "What did they say?"

  "Stupid stuff," I replied. "I wouldn't honor it by

  repeating a word." He nodded.

  "That was why I didn't bother you all day. I was

  afraid of something like that. I know I'm the source of

  amusement for many of these yahoos."

  I laughed at his reference to Gulliver's Travels,

  which we had been studying in English-- yahoos

  were human creatures who were dirtier and more

  stupid than talking horses.

  "I just thought what you and I did wasn't any of

  their business." he continued. "I thought-- no.

  correction. I knew they would pick on you if you had

  anything to do with me."

  "You didn't have to worry about me," I said, my

  eyes narrowing with angry determination. "They don't

  bother me. I can take care of myself."

  He nodded.

  "I wasn't worrying about that. I was worrying

  that you would..."

  "What?"

  "Get driven away and change your mind." he

  admitted. He looked back so he could avoid my eyes. "I'm not that easily influenced. Chandler. I'm

  not going to go out with someone or not go out with

  someone because of what they think. I have a mind of

  my own," I insisted. You should have known that." He looked at me and nodded.

  "I do now," he said, and then we both laughed.

  It felt good. It felt as if I had been holding in some

  happiness the whole day and it was
ready to explode. "I'll take you home," he said, and we left the

  building.

  He kept his car so well, it looked new. The leather smelled wonderful and felt soft to the touch. He had a built-in CD player and a telephone, too. I was very impressed, but I didn't want to seem like

  someone who had never been off the farm.

  "It happened to me once before," he said after a

  few minutes of driving.

  "What?"

  "Something like this. I was in the tenth grade.

  You probably don't remember. but I was going with

  Audra Lathrop for a week or so. Her friends really

  made fun of her and turned her against me. I decided

  most of the girls in this school are lollipops." "Lollipops ?"

  "Shiny, sweet, and insubstantial," he recited.

  "You're the first girl I've spent any time with who is

  focused on something other than her hairdo." "That's not true. Chandler. They're not all like

  that." He shrugged.

  "It hasn't been important to me to make friends

  with any of them," he said, but he sounded like

  someone trying to convince himself of something he

  really didn't believe in his own heart. "How come you

  don't have someone steady?"

  "Too occupied with my family and my work. I

  guess. My uncle Peter used to be my escort. He took

  me everywhere."

  "That's the one who was killed recently?" "Yes."

  He nodded.

  "Makes you want to stay home and pull the

  covers over your head." he muttered.

  "Yes, exactly."

  "Music gets you out. It gets me out, too," he

  admitted.

  "That's why I thought you were different from

  the lollipops. I have a confession to make," he

  declared.

  "What?"

  "I noticed you long before Mr. Wengrow

  suggested we practice together. I pretended I didn't.

  but I did."

  He was quiet, and so was I. He had revealed

  more than I expected someone like him would

  already.

  "Maybe we'll find more to get us out," I said.

  He turned and smiled at me.

  When we turned up my driveway. I tried too

  late to warn him about Grandad Forman's bump. Both