The Boyfriend List (12 page)

Here is why I’m now a leper. I went to the Spring Fling with Jackson, even though he broke up with me before it and was already going out with Kim. So sue me. My ex-boyfriend that I was madly in love with wanted to take me to a dance, and it was only the second formal dance I was going to with a boy, and I had already bought a dress, and who knows? Maybe he’d see me in it and realize he made a big mistake. Really, I think almost any girl in my shoes would have done the same.

Here’s the other formal dance I had been to: Homecoming at Garfield High, which is the public school we always drive past on the way to the Chinese restaurant my dad likes the best. I went because my mom’s friend Juana
(the playwright with the thirteen dogs and four ex-husbands) has a son who goes to Garfield: Angelo.
¹
He’s a year older than me. I had only met him three or four times before, at Juana’s dinner parties. I think he spends a lot of time at his father’s house, so he’s hardly ever at Juana’s when my mom and I go over there.

Angelo seemed all right. He had big brown eyes and curly black hair; sort of a flat, round face. Serene. He dressed kind of hip-hop, which no one does at Tate.

At the dinner parties, we generally got up from the table early and watched TV. He never said too much, probably because Juana is always talk-talk-talking, and also because no one can ever hear at her house anyway, what with all the barking going on.

So Garfield was having a homecoming dance, and I guess Angelo needed a date, which is a little odd because the school has like 1500 students and he’s definitely not bad-looking. He didn’t even call me and ask directly. Juana called my mother, and my mother asked me if I’d want to go to this thing with Angelo.

I said yes. Not because of Angelo. Because I wanted to go to a dance.

But why was he asking?

Maybe Angelo was such a loser no one at Garfield would go with him. Or maybe he was gay and didn’t want to take a girl at all, and Juana thought she was helping him out when really she just had no idea. Or maybe my
mother had told Juana I was unpopular with boys, and so she was making him take me out of pity. Or maybe he was madly in love with some girl Juana didn’t like, and I was supposed to distract him?
²

My mom told me he’d pick me up at eight and not to have so much angst—but I worried for the whole two weeks before the dance. I had used my babysitting money to buy a yellow silk dress from the 1950s, with spaghetti straps—but what if I got all dressed up and he never actually showed? What if he really didn’t want to take me, and started being mean, or left me to go off with someone else? What if this was a Stephen King situation?
³

My mother told me to stop being so insecure. My father asked me sixteen times if I wanted to talk about my feelings of insecurity.

The day of the dance, Angelo arrived on time, wearing a blue suit. He brought me a corsage of yellow roses. My dad took pictures. Juana was driving us, and she acted all hokey, like she was a chauffeur. There were two terriers and a big hairy mutt in the backseat, so we all three sat in the front, squashed in. Juana didn’t make us wear the seat belt.

The dance was in the gym, with the lights down low
and decorations everywhere. Angelo and I didn’t say much. He got me a cup of fruit punch. A lot of the girls were wearing narrow black gowns and high heels. I felt virginal and young and goofy in my yellow dress with the wide skirt. We danced, and the music was good, and we even slow-danced, which was strange and awkward and nice—holding hands and swaying back and forth.

But the whole thing went on too long. By 8:45, we had danced, stood around, drunk punch, slow-danced, stood around. We had talked to his friends, but the music was too loud to have a real conversation. What else was there to do? We danced some more. Went outside and got some fresh air. I was basically bored from 8:45 until 10:30, when Juana came to pick us up. I sat on his lap on the ride home, since now there was a border collie, a fat Labrador and a mean-looking Doberman in the back.

That was it. I didn’t see Angelo again until the next dinner party his mom had. We watched TV, as usual.

Strangely, this anxiety-producing and ultimately boring experience did not lessen my interest in going to another formal dance. I would definitely have gone to the Spring Fling later on in my freshman year, only no one asked me, and I was excited that Jackson was taking me this year. Although I ended up lying to him once again because he never issued a formal invitation. To
the formal!
I mean, aren’t you supposed to ask
formally
if you’re taking someone to a
formal?
Pete asked Cricket. Bick asked Meghan. Finn asked Kim. Nora asked Jackson’s friend Matt. Hello? Are my expectations unreasonable? I don’t think so.

But Jackson just assumed we were going. The dance was announced on Friday, three weeks ahead. I figured he’d wait a few days, maybe ask me on Monday, so as not to make a big deal of it. That’s what I would have done if I was asking him.
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So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And a week passed, and he hadn’t asked me. Cricket and Kim and Nora went shopping for dresses, and I went with them. I tried stuff on, then said I was planning to make the rounds of the vintage stores the next day with my mother.

But I didn’t.

Finally, halfway through the second week and five days before we broke up, Jackson and I were talking with Matt and Nora at lunch. “Hey, Roo,” Jackson said. “After the Fling would you want to have people over to party on your dock? Because the miniyacht stops nearby.”

“Oh, um, sure,” I said.

And that’s how I knew we were going. I went out and bought a dress, and ended up borrowing $85 from my mother so I could get this great seventies silver wrap thing I found at Zelda’s Closet, and to pay it off I was going to have to babysit fourteen hours for this kid who barfs on me nearly every time I go over there.

Then Jackson broke up with me, and after I had been crying and crying alone in my room, I saw the corner of
that dress poking out of my closet and it made me cry even harder, because there was nowhere to wear it, and I’d be paying it off for at least a month, and I couldn’t believe he let me get excited about the dance and buy a dress, when he was going to dump me.

My parents could hear me sobbing though our paper-thin walls. Mom kept knocking on the door. “Roo, come out here and have dinner with us. I made tofu with diced cauliflower!”

“Elaine,” my dad said, “let her have her privacy.”

“She’s been in there for two hours, Kevin.”

“Roo?” asked my dad. “Don’t you want to share? Maybe we can help.”

“She’s not going to talk to us. Get with it. She’s a teenager. The best we can hope for is to get some protein into her.”

“Sweetie, do you want to talk to just me? Mom doesn’t have to come in.”

“Kevin!”

“Elaine, you know you make things worse. Maybe you should stay out of this one.”

“Ruby,” squawked my mom. “If it’s a girl thing, you know I’m here for you.”

And so on. And so on. I finally put my headphones on to block out the noise.

Tuesday night,
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my parents took me to a dinner party at Juana’s. She lives in this ramshackle house that is so
covered with dog hair you have to wear old jeans when you go, and definitely no black, because you will be insanely furry when you leave. My mom made me go. I wanted to stay home and stare at the phone hoping Jackson would call, but she said I had to socialize.

It was one of the first warm days of spring, and Angelo was out on Juana’s front lawn throwing sticks for seven dogs at once. He had this system of three sticks in rotation, so he was throwing constantly. The dogs were going berserk. He was taller than the last time I saw him, and he’d let his hair grow out, so you could see the curls. He was wearing an oversize football jersey and baggy jeans. “Ruby’s suffering from a broken heart,” my mother announced. “Her boyfriend dumped her. Angelo, you cheer her up. Roo—help him throw the sticks.”

“Elaine!” snapped my dad. “When will you learn to give the girl some privacy?”

“People shouldn’t have secrets,” my mom said. “Besides, he probably already knows. I told Juana everything on the phone.”

“Elaine!”

“What?” My mother put her hand on her chest as if to proclaim innocence. “She’s my oldest friend!”

“Hey, Roo,” said Angelo. “I’ve got a system going on. Check it out.”

“See?” said my mom. “He wants her to help him. Go on, Roo. We’ll see you inside.”

They went up the steps, my dad muttering at my mother in a low voice.

Angelo and I threw sticks for a while. My hands got
covered with dog slime. We didn’t say much, but he did show me how the little mutt named Skipperdee would never drop a stick unless you picked her up and squeezed her. Whenever she brought one back he’d scoop her up with his left hand and squeeze her under his arm while throwing another stick with his right to get the other dogs out of the way; she’d drop the stick, he’d pick it up with his right, put her down with his left, throw the stick and she’d be off again. Also, he had a system of throwing two sticks at the same time, so that the smaller dogs would have a chance against the Labradors, who went for it hardcore.

After a while we went in for dinner. My dad and I ate until our stomachs were sticking way far out, because Juana is a great cook and we’d been eating the macrobiotic-sludge-and-breakfast-cereal diet for weeks.
⁶
My mother ate a lot, too, bare-faced acting as if fried plantains, spiced shrimp (which I didn’t eat), vegetable jambalaya and ice cream with sugared pecans were all part of her normal regime.

“Roo doesn’t have a date for the big dance Saturday night,” my mother said, as we were all eating dessert on Juana’s porch while the dogs roamed around peeing on the grass. “It’s on a boat. And she has the most beautiful dress. But no date.”

“Mom!” I wanted to die.

“Angelo could take her,” Juana said, picking up my mother’s cue. “He’s not doing anything Saturday.”

“Mom!” (This, from Angelo.)

“What, honey?” said Juana. “You could take Ruby to her dance. She went with you to homecoming last year. I bet it would be fun.”

I looked at Angelo, sure he was thinking what a nightmare it would be to be trapped on a boat with a bunch of prep school kids he didn’t even know. “Sure,” he said, smiling. “Sounds good.”

“Oh. Um. Thanks.”

“I should wear a suit, right?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Okay. What time?”

“Eight-thirty. The boat leaves at nine.”

“No, no, Roo,” interrupted my mother. “You two should go to dinner first. It’s Roo’s treat.”

Angelo laughed and gave me a look, like “Ag! Our moms are such freaks.” But he said “All right”—and would I like to get Italian, because he’d heard of a good place?

“I’ll loan you two the station wagon,” said Juana.

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” said Angelo.

So: I had a date for the Spring Fling, even though I got it in the most embarrassing possible way.

I felt a tiny bit more cheerful all day Wednesday.

Until Kim called Wednesday night with the news about her and Jackson.

From then on, my head felt clogged, like I had a cold, and my chest felt hard and hollow inside. I was in a daze. Literally, everything looked blurry, and my throat was so
closed up I could barely talk. Fortunately, Nora and Cricket were still friends with me then, so at lunch both days I got Nora (who had her license) to drive me off-campus for French fries, so I wouldn’t have to sit with Kim, or see Jackson in the refectory.

Cricket and Nora basically took the attitude that everything would settle down once I got over the shock. Nora made me some cupcakes and put her arm around me a lot. She framed a photo she had taken of her and me at a lacrosse game. Cricket talked loudly about other subjects and cut cartoons out of the
New Yorker
and put them in my mail cubby. They were happy for Kim, and sorry for me, and they figured I’d be too shattered to deal for a week or two—and then we’d all go back to normal.

But I couldn’t even look at Kim, I felt so betrayed. I avoided her even though it meant changing my seat in almost all my classes. More and more every hour, I stopped feeling the sadness I was supposedly going to get over—and started feeling angry. Even though she had been “nice” about the whole thing, and told me herself on the phone, and never kissed him until he had dumped me—I just didn’t think she had been nice at all, really. I thought she was a conniving, lying, man-stealing bitch, and I hoped she would fall in a volcano and die a horrible lava death.
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But I kept my mouth shut and tried to retain what little dignity I had left.

The Friday afternoon before the dance, I came out of lacrosse practice and there was no one to drive me home. Jackson had picked me up every week before, and I was in such a tangle of misery I hadn’t even thought to ask anyone in the locker room for a ride. I was the last one to leave, and I went outside and realized I was the only one still there.