Personal Touch (13 page)

We were lying on the beach.

A row of girls.

It’s a re-run, I thought. Not one thing has changed since the beginning of summer. Except David is gone and we’re all tan. Even me.

Ginnie and Lois talked about how lousy their jobs had been while I complained about how hot the bookstore was, and Margaret wrapped up by informing us that senior year was going to be terrific, just wait and see.

“We said that about junior year,” Ginnie told her, “and it still was a dud.”

“Not to mention sophomore year,” said Lois. “That wasn’t exactly a standout either.”

We watched some sea gulls fighting over a heap of french fries some little kid had accidentally dumped into the sand. “Sunny?” said Margaret, yawning. “Whatever happened to Tim?”

Good question. Too bad I didn’t have an answer. “He went back up to Albany for a while. I don’t know if they’ll be back again this summer or not.”

I wondered about Mrs. Lansberry’s kindergarten job application. My father wanted her to have the job: they were holding it open ’til they heard from her. Maybe she simply wouldn’t come back. I didn’t know how reliable she was. When you got right down to it, all I knew about her was that she packed terrific picnics.

How stupid we were, I thought, to let five years of living next door slip by without ever getting to know each other.

It seemed to me that my sixteenth summer had been like a row of mistakes, materializing one by one for me to look at and learn by. Tim, come home, I thought. Let me talk to you. It’s my turn to talk.

“I thought you two had something going there,” said Margaret, “the way you looked at each other that night at the square dance.”

Ginnie said, “I still need to earn more money this summer, Sunny. Any chance your mother would hire me to fill in for Tim for a few weeks? And maybe on into the school year? She doesn’t close on Labor Day, does she?”

Ginnie and I discussed Chair Fair—certainly a subject I knew better than Tim—and Margaret fell asleep. Beaches and hot sun are soporific. I flopped over on my stomach and rested my chin in my hands so I faced the picnic pavilion instead of the ocean. It was a great view. I watched a mother rearrange an umbrella over her dozing baby. I watched a little boy try to lick an ice cream bar faster than it melted. I watched a kid toss a crumpled napkin at a trash basket and miss.

“What’s so fascinating up there?” said Tim. “I’ve been wiggling my toes in your face for five minutes and you haven’t even noticed. You specifically informed me in June that my toes were imprinted on your brain for all time.”

He was back! I patted his terrific toes, feeling a wonderful thick joy rise all the way up inside me, like carbonated soda bubbling.

“Sit with us, Tim,” said Margaret, waking up for something as interesting as Tim.

“Thanks,” said Tim, and I caught a note of strain in his voice. “I’d love to but I can’t just now.” I looked up at him. He looked stretched, his skin pulled tightly, his smile forced. “Sunny?” he said. “Want to go for a ride?” I got my book and my sunglasses; Tim took my towel and Thermos.

“Sorry to break it up,” I said to the girls.

“But not very,” whispered Ginnie, grinning.

Tim strode over the parking lot to his car. I was barefoot, which is no fun when crossing hot pavement. I scurried beside him, trying out my tiptoes, then my heels, and finally flying in an effort to burn just parts of my feet instead of all of them.

Tim was in a rage.

I had never seen him like that. Don’t drive, I thought. Go pound your head on a wall, or pound nails in a board, or break up some furniture. But don’t drive.

It was too late. By the time I realized how angry he was, we were out on the road. He was having a sort of wheel-borne tantrum. He made jackrabbit starts at red lights, took corners far too fast, and passed cars in no-passing zones. I shrank down in my seat and prayed.

Let him calm down, God, I thought. And please let us both live through this drive so I can find out what happened in Albany!

He held the steering wheel so tightly I thought his hands would be permanently joined to the metal.

I kept thinking of all the color safety films we’d seen in school in driver’s education classes. They figure the more blood they show you, the more apt you are to drive well. I ought to speak up, I thought. I ought to scream at him. For both our sakes I can’t just sit here and let him drive like a maniac. Never mind
our
sakes. He could kill somebody else along with us.

We were at a four-way stop when Tim said his first syllable since leaving the beach. “Sorry,” he muttered. I was enormously relieved to see him shift slowly into first and leave the intersection at a normal, intelligent speed.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re alive.”

He shot me a half-furious, half-ashamed look.

I’m more grown up than he is, I thought suddenly. I wonder if my father would attribute
that
difference to the fact that he’s a boy and I’m a girl.

“Let’s stop somewhere and talk,” I said.

He drove for a little while. I didn’t pressure him. He was driving fine; the tantrum, if that was the right word, was over.

A few miles later he said, “Okay.”

He turned off the main road into a village whose name I could not see on any signs—we must have been thirty or forty miles from Sea’s Edge. We drove down a few quaint little streets and came upon a factory with a huge empty parking lot. Tim pulled under the shade of a huge old maple tree at the far end of the lot. Its first leaves had already turned scarlet. Autumn, I thought, can it really be autumn already?

“So what happened?” I said.

He shrugged and got out of the car. He walked around, opened my door, and helped me out. I needed help for a change. My knees were still jelly from that terrifying drive. We walked over to the tree. I inspected the ground for stinging insects and crawling bugs, decided it was relatively safe, and sat down. Tim just paced.

I bet he won’t tell me, I thought. Oh, he might say what his father plans to do or where his mother is going to live, but he’s not going to tell me how he feels. Although I could make some pretty good guesses.

“They’re definitely splitting up,” said Tim at last.

We talked about Mrs. Lansberry. All the time we had been driving so fast I had known we would talk about Tim’s mother. “But she agreed to a divorce?” I said.

“What’s she going to do?” demanded Tim, his voice rising in anger. It didn’t bother me. It wasn’t me he was so angry at.

Finally Tim sat down beside me, but he kept flexing his muscles as if he were still pacing.

Or kicking somebody, I thought.

Tim took a very deep breath, stopped jerking his legs around, and said, “So tell me what you did while we were gone.”

“I swept dust and sand into the hairdo of a lady from New York. She wanted Mr. Hartley to fire me and he told her she was absolutely right. I was a typical worthless, inconsiderate, stupid teenager, and she went away happy hearing that and Mr. Hartley said for me to forget it. He could think of a whole lot of summer people he’d always wanted to sweep dirt onto.”

Tim laughed much harder than the story deserved, as if he’d been a long time without laughter. Oh, Tim! I thought sadly.

“How’d you sweep it all the way up into her hair?” he asked.

“I was on top of the stairs and she was at the bottom.”

“Oh. Now I can picture it.” He grinned again.

There was a long silence. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and pull him over on top of me and hug everything away, but I couldn’t. His smile was forced, his body was stiff. It wouldn’t work. He wasn’t ready to be touched. How odd, I thought, that I have never really touched a boy, but I can tell this isn’t the time. “I put a tarp over your car during a windstorm,” I said. Other girls give a guy a handknit sweater, I thought, or homemade fudge. My gift is a tarp on a car.

“Thanks, Sun.” He took my hand and rubbed it absently between his fingers.

“It’s late,” I said finally. “We’d better get on home.”

I didn’t say anything about how worried my parents would be. They’d have to get mad at me, not Tim. Tim had had just about enough anger for one year, I thought.

We didn’t talk driving home.

There was one week left before school began. Mother was working madly to unload her summer inventory before her summer buyers moved away; my father was at school every moment getting ready for all the hordes of little urchins who would soon descend upon him. The weather stayed cool, Mr. Lansberry stayed in Albany, and I stayed at Second Time Around, peddling books.

“Can I ride to work with you this morning?” said Tim, poking his head in our door as we were having breakfast.

“May I,” corrected my mother. “Yes, you may. Why? Did you hurt your car?”

“Nope. I’m out of gas and I won’t have any way to fill the tank ’til payday. Hi, Sunny,” he added, getting the important things out of the way.

I saluted. I was dumping a little heap of dry cereal in my bowl and dribbling milk on it. I like my cereal barely dampened. Nothing is more repugnant in the morning than soggy cereal.

Tim watched me pour the milk. It’s quite hard to do even the simplest things when somebody puts his face right up to you and stares. I almost missed the bowl. “Tim,” I said irritably. “Please.”

“Like to go out tonight?” said Tim.

I almost didn’t hear him, I had gotten so involved putting the cap back on the milk bottle. When I did hear him, I was opening the refrigerator door and I thought I must have misunderstood. Somebody is asking
me
on a date? I thought. Somebody named
Tim
?

“Yes,” I said, since there was only one possible answer to the question.

“I like your sweater,” he told me. “I’ve never seen you except in summer clothes.”

“Thank you.” Perhaps he daydreamed about me in woolen kilts and ski jackets. For the first time I really considered school: Tim and I were going to be in the same class at the same school for one entire year. If we rode the bus, we’d get on at the same stop…and if Tim drove, surely he’d take me.

“Better eat your cereal,” said Tim, “it’s getting soft at the bottom.”

“Hurry up, Tim,” said my mother, “we’ll be late.” She didn’t even give Tim time to protest that
he
had been the one waiting.

All day long at Second Time Around I thought about our date. An evening picnic on the beach? I thought. Swimming by moonlight? It was pretty cool for that. Bowling, I thought, putt-putt golf, movies. Jazz concerts in Newport, dancing at the night club across the river.

He likes me! I thought delightedly, selling Gothics with more spirit than usual. It isn’t just that he needs someone to talk to. It isn’t just that I’m the only one in Sea’s Edge who is willing to listen to his stories about his father’s mid-life crisis. He actually likes me!

I kept hugging myself.

Mr. Hartley, who was in back trying to figure his quarterly income taxes in such a manner as to pay none, said, “Are you cold, Sunny? All summer you’ve been complaining about being hot? Here we are the first day of cool weather and you stand there and shiver.”

“I’m not cold,” I said, hugging myself.

I wrote “Sunny C. Lansberry” on a piece of paper to see how it looked and it looked symmetrical and handsome. I kind of liked the initials, too. S.C.L. Sounded like a conglomerate.

Terrific, I thought. I’m drafting wedding invitations and we haven’t had our first date yet.

I sold three paperbacks to a very fat summer visitor who should have spent his time exercising instead of reading.

But it was not Tim who bounded up the steps of Second Time Around that evening—it was his mother. “Guess what, Sunny!” she cried. “I just got a call from the school. They hired me!” Mrs. Lansberry hugged me and I hugged her. “They hired
me,
Sunny,” she said, as if this were a minor miracle. “Well, of course,” I said. “You’ll be terrific in the kindergarten.” Personally I wouldn’t be a kindergarten aide for all the money in Sea’s Edge. Imagine nothing but five-year-olds all day long!

“Let’s celebrate,” she said, biting her lips like a little girl waiting to open a present. It gave me a sad twist in my heart, seeing someone my mother’s age so thrilled that anybody would pay her to do anything. “Let’s go out to dinner, Sunny. You and Tim and me.”

“That would be great,” I said. “How about Saturday night?”

“Sunny, you can’t postpone celebrations. Tonight! Right this minute. Where’s Mr. Hartley? Maybe he wouldn’t mind if you left early so we can relax and enjoy instead of having to rush through the meal.”

Mr. Hartley said anything was better than taxes. Go. Enjoy.

“Wonderful!” said Mrs. Lansberry, hugging him too. Getting deserted by her husband and then finding a job had really loosened her up! It was amazing.

We went over to Chair Fair. Mother and Tim were just closing up and they looked quite startled to see us. Mrs. Lansberry fell on Tim, telling him how wonderful life was after all and how good everything was going to be now. We had to celebrate.

“Tonight?” said Tim. He looked at me dubiously. “Mom? Could we maybe go out tomorrow night? See, I’ve—”

I could not believe it. Tim was actually considering postponing an evening with his mother for our date. He does like me, I thought, he really does like me.

Mrs. Lansberry sort of sank down into herself, her face getting flat and elegant again, instead of happy and bouncing. She mumbled that yes, of course, she understood, it wasn’t important.

“Of course it’s important,” I said. “I know how I felt when I finally got the job at Second Time Around. Come on. We’ll all go out.”

“Don’t I get to come?” said my mother.

“Sure,” said: Tim, giving me a funny smile. I couldn’t tell exactly what it meant, but he took my hand and squeezed it and I decided it was a thank you. “Call your father, Sun,” he said. “We’ll make it a real party.” He kissed his mother. She was restored to delight and began bubbling again, telling my mother all about what kindergarten would be like.

I remembered that I had ridden by bike to work. I’d left it at Second Time Around. “I’ll meet you all back at the house,” I said. “It’ll take me twenty minutes.”