Nancy and Nick (13 page)

I could understand panic. There were a couple of boys in the senior class whose smiles made me panic, whose greetings for some reason made it impossible for me to greet them back, although that was what I wanted to do most. But panic over
me?
“Mother, I love the adjectives you’re using, but you are, as my mother, rather prejudiced. I think Nick just didn’t want my company and he felt like being rotten, because it made him feel better about his rotten day to make my day rotten.”

“Whew!” said Mother, laughing. “People hardly ever feel like being rotten on purpose, honey. Everybody wants to have a good time. Nobody wants friends to shrug and walk away and have to leave early and not have anything to say or share. Nick probably feels as terrible as you do. Worse, because he started it. He didn’t sleep much last night. Tossed around for hours. I don’t know if it was the lumps on our terrible couch or his thoughts that kept him awake, but he was pretty bleary-eyed this morning. Poor boy. And facing two more interviews, too.”

I got up and went into the kitchen to have some shredded wheat. “Mother, why do you think he suddenly starts talking in that awful annoying smooth voice?”

“It may be that he thinks it’s attractive. Or he may feel safe behind it. Like somebody else. Or he may not be aware of it. It may be a nervous tic. I’m sure it’s just an adolescent habit. He’ll outgrow it, Nancy.”

Much good that would do me. I’d never see him again. How would I know if he ever outgrew the habit?

I sat over my shredded wheat. Things have to be pretty bad to sit over shredded wheat for any length of time. I told myself it didn’t matter one bit to me if Nick quit talking like that. He was stupid and I didn’t care.

But he wasn’t stupid and I did care.

At eleven o’clock I picked up the telephone and called Rod Holmes. My second time calling a boy. It might be as much of an error as the first time, but I could not face a weekend of just sitting there running my mind over my ought to haves and should have dones.

“Rod?” I said. “Nancy. You want to bicycle out to the waterfall and have a picnic?”

Mother gaped at me. I guess she thought I was calling Holly or Ginger. But nothing would be worse than them, today. They’d want to dissect Nick, and I couldn’t face that. Not until I knew what I felt about Nick first.

“Great idea,” said Rod instantly. “I’ll meet you in forty-five minutes. I’ll bring potato chips and soft drinks if you’ll bring sandwiches.”

It was so easy! As if we had done this several times before, and had known before the phones rang what we’d be doing this time. Why hadn’t it been that easy with Nick?

“My goodness,” said my mother, shaking her head. “Two weeks ago, nothing would have made you do that.”

“I’m sick of just thinking about boys, Mother. Rod likes me. I need somebody who likes me, after last night.”

“Nick likes you,” she said. “A lot.”

“Right,” I said sarcastically. “So much he can’t dance or speak with me. Now, do we have any ham or do I have to make peanut butter and jelly?”

Peanut butter and jelly conjured up the memory of that really nice night with Nick. Last night was pretty painful compared to that night. I made ham sandwiches, found some pickles and a few Oreo cookies, and dropped them in my little backpack. Tying a red bandanna over my hair, I ran down the stairs to get my bike from the storeroom.

I didn’t feel happy yet, but at least I was doing something, and Rod would be good company. I didn’t think Rod would object to being chosen as a friend in time of need, rather than a date.

“I
DON’T THINK WE
should sit there, Nance,” said Rod, when I set my backpack down on a large, flat, sunbaked rock with a perfect view of the waterfall. “Snakes are out in this heat,” he said. “I don’t see any, but I’d rather not chance it.”

I jumped about a foot.

Rod grinned. “I’m not trying to be difficult. I just hate snakes. Let’s go over to the picnic grove and eat there.”

We locked the bicycles together and chained one to a little sapling and then walked through the woods to the picnic area. The park was new. Fifty-five acres along the river’s edge had been donated to the town by the hosiery mill, when they finally realized they were never going to build there. The Cub, Boy, and Girl Scouts had spent three years carving trails through the woods and over the meadows, building tables and shelters, and painting trash receptacles in woodsy colors, like wartime camouflage. I had never been a Scout. When I saw how much they’d accomplished I found myself wishing I had been part of it all, instead of out toting Mother hither and yon in search of the perfect antique.

“How was the dance last night?” Rod asked.

“Horrible. My cousin was a complete jerk. We left early and he got lost driving home and we ended up spending the evening in front of the television.”

Rod laughed. “Poor guy. Getting lost in this little burg. Bet he feels like a jerk today, too. What was horrible about the dance?”

“The dance was probably fine. It was my cousin.” Funny—I didn’t feel at all cousinly toward Nick. I really wanted to say “my date,” but Nick had made it pretty clear he wasn’t my date, so that didn’t seem the right word either.

“What did you watch? That Barbra Streisand thing? I like that movie. You really want them to live happily ever after, but all along you can see they never will. They are too different. It makes you worry about the sort of person you’ll fall in love with, you know?”

I choked on the pickle I was nibbling. “Yes, I know.”

“Are you choking?”

“Yes,” I gasped, “but only a little.”

Rod whacked me on the back, almost dislocating my vertebrae. “That’s not what you do for choking anymore,” I said. “You make a fist in the person’s stomach, and jerk the fist hard into his abdomen to kind of whomp the choke out of him from the bottom up.”

“Oh, really? Show me.” Rod’s eyes glinted and he was half grinning.

I put my hands around his waist and pressed my fist into his stomach.

“You’re not pushing hard enough Nance. That doesn’t even flatten my belly button.”

I was suddenly too embarrassed to do it any more and I broke away, blushing, but it was a different kind of blush from the painful ones of last night. We ate facing each other, chewing ham sandwiches and crunching potato chips and then just sort of giggling. I felt silly and stupid but I was enjoying myself tremendously. I couldn’t think of anything at all to say, but it didn’t seem to matter. Giggling and eating were plenty for Rod. After lunch we retrieved our bikes and rode all up and down the Scout trails. We chased each other, vaulted our bikes over one fallen log (it was a stick; we just called it a log to sound more adventurous), and pretended to find snakes in the tree limbs so we could rescue each other from certain death. I felt about nine years old. I couldn’t believe we were really playing in the woods like this, and yet it was so much fun.

“I have to go,” said Rod suddenly. “I’ve already started my summer job and I’m due there at three.”

It was like the end of Mary Poppins’ laughing gas. “Oh,” I said.

We rode solemnly out of the park. “What’s your summer job?” I asked.

“Information desk at the hospital. Three to eleven shift. I log visitors in and out. I tell them what room their friends are in. How many can go in at a time. Where X-ray is. Where the gift shop is. When the city bus leaves. The work is boring and yet I really love it. All those people moving past me, Nancy, wrapped up in lives I don’t know anything about. Everybody is worried and tense and concerned, unless they’re there to see newborn babies. It’s amazing to think of all these people leading their lives and you aren’t part of them at all. They don’t even know you exist. Even when you tell them how to find the elevator to Memorial West Wing third floor they don’t really see you. It makes you feel half visible.”

“You like that feeling?”

“I don’t like it or dislike it. It’s a watcher’s feeling. I want to be a journalist, you know, and I think that’s the kind of sensation journalists must have a lot. Standing there watching and thinking and taking notes while other people’s lives whisk by.”

I had never been anywhere really except school. I began to think of how much I was missing, not getting out in the world, not seeing the lives of all those other people whisking by. I said, “But if you want to be a journalist, how come you didn’t get a summer job at the newspaper?”

“Oh, wow!” Rod shook his head, grinning at the dusty ground. “Forget that! Everybody wants a summer job at the paper and there aren’t any. Besides, my father says I have to have wide experience so I can make intelligent analyses of the stories I write.”

“Wide experience,” I repeated. “Is hospital work wide?”

“Well, it’s a wedge. What I want is to have a resume like you read on the jackets of spy novels. Where the writer has paddled a canoe in northern Canada, studied archaeology in Crete, taught mathematics in Paraguay, tended bar in San Diego, been a hang-glider instructor off the Outer Banks, repaired pre-1910 electric automobiles, and taken advanced degrees in Manchurian dialects.”

“I like to see a person with a few goals,” I said, laughing. How interesting people were, once you talked to them! Who would have thought Rod Holmes wanted all that? That wild, different excitement-packed life! It made me embarrassed about my own daydreams, which consisted of little goals, such as holding hands, going steady, getting kissed …

I sighed. Everybody but me had his act together. “You have a summer job?” asked Rod.

“Couldn’t find one.”

“There aren’t any more paying jobs left at the hospital, but I’ll tell you, Nancy, they’re desperate for volunteers,” said Rod seriously. “Nobody volunteers anymore. All the women who used to be able to give an afternoon a week have gone back to work and they’re too tired to come in evenings. It’s rough down there, without the volunteers filling in.”

“What do volunteers do?”

“Oh, they take patients down to X-ray and walk them after their surgery and exchange their library books and water their flowers. It sounds rinky-dink, but nobody likes to wait four hours for X-ray and then go in alone. Especially if the patient has to go to the bathroom, or something.”

Waiting four hours outside X-ray with a patient who needed to go to the bathroom didn’t sound too good. But I did need something to do all summer, and after hearing all the things Rod wanted to do I felt sort of ashamed for not wanting to do more myself. “How do I sign up?” I said.

“Come down with me right now. I’ll introduce you to the lady in charge of volunteers.”

“Nancy,” said Mrs. Perkins, “we’d love to have you. How many hours can you work? Can you start Monday—day after tomorrow? We need workers everywhere. You can choose flowers, library, transportation, gift shop, linens—you name it.”

“I think I’d like to be with people,” I said, “moving around. Not … not stuck in some room somewhere.” I felt nervous saying that so bluntly but Mrs. Perkins nodded. “Just the way I feel. I hate this office. Walls between me and all the action. How about flowers? There’s plenty of action there. You rush around with a little metal cart taking the flowers from the delivery drop up to each room. You get to chat with the patients and their families. Receiving flowers always cheers people up and that will make you feel good about what you’re doing.”

“Okay. Flowers sound fine. Are there really enough deliveries to keep me busy?”

“Oh, yes. You’ll be scurrying around every minute. And if by some chance you run out of things to do, they always need help in the gift shop.”

We settled on four afternoons, from noon till six. Mrs. Perkins gave me a funny little smile. “Most people just work one afternoon a week,” she said. “You may find your enthusiasm dwindles after a bit. Feel free to come back if you want a change, Nancy. Now. Wear a dress and stockings and comfortable shoes. Not sneakers. We used to have uniforms, but we dropped that. You’ll just wear a bright pink apron. See you Monday!”

I rode my bicycle home and the world I passed looked a lot better. It was very hot, but there was a breeze, and I made another breeze of my own, zooming along on my bike. The hospital happened to be a nice distance from home and on roads where biking was fairly safe. Even if we did get a car, I’d ride my bike. Keep me trim all summer.

I would not call Rod a second time. It was his turn now.

I hoped he would call me, and yet I wasn’t counting on it. Nice as Rod was—and he was
very
nice—I didn’t feel about him the way I had about Nick.

I wished I did. Nick was difficult and mysterious and sulky and far away. What good was a crush on Nick? Why couldn’t I be crazy about Rod, who was interesting and funny and easy and close by?

I rode halfway up the big hill before I could no longer push the pedals down. I dismounted and walked the rest of the way up. I could not write Nick off, much as I wanted to. He was right there, filling up my thoughts.

Oh, Nelle Catherine, I said to myself, puffing at the top of the hill. Some guy you met three times, you’re going to go into a decline over? Come on, lady. He’s not worth it.

I coasted down the other side of the hill and into the little cramped parking lot of our apartment. Mother and I were going to spend the afternoon car shopping. We had pretty well decided that a new car was not for us. We could save thousands of dollars by buying a good used model. Of course, we wouldn’t get very good gas mileage, but the car would run. We’d have our freedom back. Life without a car in a town as spread out as ours is not much fun.

The car in our space was not a new one Mother was trying out.

It was Nick’s jeep.

“H
ELLO, NANCY.”

“Oh, hi, Nick.”

His presence seemed to swirl about me. Rod had been a friend, relaxing and fun. Nick was more than I could think about at one time.

“Did you forget something?” I said. Now it was
my
voice that sounded tape-recorded! I tried to control it and get it back to normal.

“Yes.” Nick looked so unbelievably handsome. He was wearing the blue jeans he’d told me he hadn’t brought and a striped shirt with an open collar. He looked terrific. I swallowed.