Bad Haircut (12 page)

“About what?”

“I need some time off. I can't be anyone's girlfriend for a while.”

“How long's a while?”

“I don't know. Just till things get back to normal.” Her voice had been calm and flat throughout the conversation, but now it cracked. “God,
Buddy, he tried to kill himself.”

Jane didn't deserve any more trouble. She'd already been through a rotten year. In September, the factory where her father worked had shut down without warning. He spent a few months looking for work, then got depressed and settled in for the long haul on the living room couch. He scratched off a minimum of five Instant Lottery tickets a day and sometimes threw tantrums when he lost, claiming that everybody won big money but him.

After twenty years as a housewife, Mrs. Pasco had to get a job to help pay the bills. All she could find was slave-wage secretarial labor for a tyrannical insurance agent who used Grecian Formula, drove a red Corvette, and liked to remind her that she could stand to lose a few pounds. She had trouble getting up to speed and routinely stayed in the office until seven at night to finish her typing.

When I started going out with Jane, she was rushing home from cheerleading practice to cook dinner for her father, Matt, and Pam, and then spending another hour cleaning up, so her mother wouldn't burst into tears when she walked through the door into a messy house.

Then, late in March, the family hit a run of good luck. Mrs. Pasco switched to a better-paying job at a bigger company, where she had a humane supervisor and a realistic workload. Mr. Pasco did some under-the-table interior painting for a friend
and found himself unexpectedly swamped with offers from the friend's neighbors. He began dreaming of a father-and-son business, and convinced Matt to help him out for a few hours a day. Even Pam Devlin seemed to be improving. She took better care of herself and started pitching in with the housework. Sometimes she even laughed at Mr. Pasco's corny jokes.

April was a wonderful month. Jane invited me to her senior prom and decided to teach me how to dance. Whenever we had time we went down to her basement rec room, put on a stack of old 45s, and worked on my rusty moves.

The night before Mike took his overdose, we had an impromptu dance party with Matt and Pam. Matt danced like an acidhead, planting his feet and waving his arms, octopuslike, overhead. Pam marched triumphantly around the room, pumping her knees and elbows like a majorette. Mr. and Mrs. Pasco came downstairs to tell us to lower the volume, but somehow ended up teaching us all how to jitterbug.

On Monday, I restricted myself to smiling at Jane in the halls and transmitting telepathic love messages across the room in English class. It was fun in a childish sort of way, like a staredown or a breath-holding contest, but it got old fast.

I stationed myself in front of her locker on Tuesday morning. She wasn't happy to see me.

“What now?” she groaned, as though I'd done nothing but bother her since she woke up.

“I just wanted to see how you were.”

“Terrible. If you really want to know.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“The only thing I want is to graduate from this fucking school, leave town, and never come back.”

I was surprised by the bitterness in her voice. Seniors talked like that all the time, but Jane sounded like she meant it.

“Never come back?” I said. “But then you wouldn't get to see me.”

She gave me a cold, level stare.

“I'd get over it.”

“I guess you would.”

Her expression softened a little.

“Don't hate me,” she said.

“I couldn't. Even if I wanted to.”

“Don't be too sure.”

On my way out of school that day, I saw her climb into a pistachio-colored Cadillac with a forest-green roof. It was the mayor's car, and the mayor sat stiffly in the driver's seat, wearing state trooper sunglasses and a red polo shirt. For a moment, even though I knew they were going to the hospital, I felt an involuntary pang of jealousy. And then I just felt miserable.

For two seasons, Mike and I had been teammates on Moretti Motors, a Little League team
sponsored and managed by his father. I played shortstop; Mike played first. He followed me in the batting order and led the team in home runs. Whenever we won, he would shake up his soda can for a long time before popping the top. Only a few years had passed since our days in the Little League. But that afternoon, as I watched the Cadillac vanish around a corner, it already felt like a lifetime.

Jane's absence on Wednesday came as a relief. In the preceding days, it had begun to seem like she, Mike, and I were cut off from the rest of the world, floating like astronauts in a private capsule of sadness. But now the spell was broken and I found myself miraculously returned to earth, to a high school full of friendly people with simple lives. My natural optimism revived itself. I realized that Jane would eventually return too—though it might take her a lot more time—and that when she did, I would be waiting for her. Our dancing lessons would resume.

After school I went to work in the deli. Even the meat case seemed comforting in its familiarity, the cold cuts arranged in perfect order on their white metal trays. Around four o'clock Mrs. Trunchka came in, right on time. She was one of our regulars. Every day she bought a pound of spiced ham.

“I just got a call from my sister-in-law,” she
said, as I moved the cool slab of meat back and forth across the whirring blade. “She looked out the window about an hour ago and who do you think she saw across the street?”

“Who?” I caught the limp slices as they fell and slapped them on the scale.

“Nancy Vernon. From
Wake Up, America?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I forgot about that.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Trunchka, “she gets out of a limousine and walks right up to Marge Pasco's front door, like they're old friends or something. My sister-in-law almost had a coronary.”

Carefully, I dropped the last slice on the pile and switched off the machine.

“The Pascos?” I said, trying to keep my voice within normal range. “They're the Average American Family?”

Mrs. Trunchka nodded. “That's right,” she said. “With that crazy son of theirs and everything. But you know how it is.” She held up two crossed fingers. “They're like this with the mayor.”

“Is she still there?”

“Probably. She was ten minutes ago.”

After Mrs. Trunchka left, the store was quiet. I held onto the cool marble counter and tried to think. I decided not to wake Mr. Freund from his afternoon nap and explain the situation. Even though it could have cost me my job, I just hung the “Closed” sign in the front door and took off full tilt down Center Street, still wearing my tattered
white apron, which was stained with mustard, beef blood, soup, and coffee.

The cops had closed Maple Street to traffic. A red, white, and blue
Wake Up, America!
van and a white limousine were parked in front of Jane's next-door neighbor's house. Across the street a crowd of about thirty people had gathered behind a line of yellow police barricades: neighborhood kids straddling bikes, young mothers with bored, thumb-sucking toddlers, nosy retired men, and a couple of celebrity creeps, including one guy in an army jacket clutching a back issue of
TV Guide
with Nancy Vernon's picture on the cover.

I pushed my way to the front of the barricade, wedging myself between Pam Devlin and the guy in the army jacket. Pam looked so good I almost didn't recognize her. Her hair was freshly washed, and she was wearing lipstick and a pretty blue sailor dress that belonged to Jane. She gave me a quick dazed smile when I touched her shoulder, but immediately turned her attention back to the Pascos’ front door. Mayor Moretti stood next to her in an expensive gray suit, nervously tugging on his earlobe. The breeze had messed up his hair, blowing the long strands off his bald spot back to their point of origin. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was about Mike, but realized that this wasn't the time or place for sympathy.

Maple Street was a nondescript block of nearly identical split levels, each with a driveway, a patch
of lawn, and a bay window. Grass and trees didn't thrive there, so the street usually looked bleak compared with the rest of Darwin. But that day, just in time for the cameras, spring had arrived. Technicolor azaleas and forsythia had exploded into bloom. The scrawny curbside tree trunks disappeared into clouds of pale green blossoms. Even the corner Stop sign seemed unusually red. Jane's beige house looked different, too. An unfamiliar flower box full of tulips jutted out from beneath the bay window; a brand new backboard and rim had sprouted over the garage door. A supernaturally orange basketball lay motionless in a driveway black with a fresh coat of sealer.

The crowd began to clap as two crew members—one with a camera, the other with a clipboard—scurried down the front steps and positioned themselves on the lawn, facing the door. Nancy Vernon emerged first, looking statuesque in a crisp navy suit that contrasted well with her stiff yellow hairdo. The stoop gradually filled up with the entire cast of family members: Mrs. Pasco in an apron, Matt and Mr. Pasco in paint-splattered work clothes, Sparky in a red-bandana collar, Jane in her cheerleading outfit, Mike Moretti in a suit and tie.

The world, which seconds before had seemed clear and bright, turned suddenly murky, as though I were watching it on a set with bad reception. But what I saw was real: Mike was standing
behind Jane, with both hands resting on her shoulders. He was so tall that their heads appeared to be stacked one on top of the other, like a partially completed totem pole. They were both smiling.

The mayor's face was transformed by the sight of his son. He stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. “Mikey!” he yelled in a booming voice I remembered from Little League. “Way to go, Mikey kid!”

At the same time, the guy in the army jacket started jumping up and down, waving his
TV Guide.
“Nancy!” he shouted. “I love you, babe.”

I felt like screaming too. I had this crazy idea that if I yelled her name just right—the way Dustin Hoffman yelled “Elaine!” at the end of
The Graduate—Jane
would come bounding down the steps into my arms. Millions of Americans would witness our defiant embrace. But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a loud moan, an animal whimper of defeat.

Pam turned and looked at me. She was sucking on her index finger, her eyes big and glassy. The next thing I knew she was in my arms, sobbing fiercely against my shoulder, while Nancy Vernon and the Average American Family stood together on the porch, waving to the nation.

Several years later, Mike Moretti and I played on different teams in the Darwin summer softball
league. After a game one night, still in our grass-stained uniforms, we ended up sitting together at the bar in Jimmy B's Lounge, buying each other drinks. Things were going well for both of us. I would soon begin my senior year in college. He had just graduated from Rutgers and was about to enter law school at the University of Texas. He looked healthy and said he'd developed an interest in politics.

There was a strange intensity to the meeting, as if we'd once been best friends. The drunker I got, the closer I felt to him. Late in the night, he flipped open his wallet to a photograph of a pretty, round-faced girl with dark hair.

“This is Maggie,” he said proudly. “I think she's the one.”

“Great,” I said, patting him on the back. “She's really cute.”

“What about you?” he asked. “You with anyone?”

I didn't have a picture of my current girlfriend, but something compelled me to open my wallet and fish out the wrinkled white card he'd given me in high school certifying my membership in the Jane Pasco Fan Club.

“I don't know why,” I told him, “I still carry it around.”

Mike stared at the card for a few seconds, then shook his head. The juke box cast an eerie red glow across his face.

“That was a strange time,” he said. “Do you see her anymore?”

“Not for years.”

I did see Matt and Mr. Pasco on occasion. They had a thriving home improvement business—John Pasco & Son—and did a lot of work around Darwin. I also saw Pam Devlin from time to time. Sometimes she recognized me, usually not. She'd gone off the deep end since Matt broke up with her, and now spent her days wandering around town in dirty clothes, talking to an imaginary companion.

The Pascos’ segment on
Wake Up, America!
had lasted only a couple of minutes. It analyzed their grocery bill in minute detail and portrayed them as “American Dreamers in an era of belt tightening.” It could have been about anyone. But Jane never recovered from the experience. She remained moody and distant in the months that followed, and wouldn't answer my calls. As soon as she got the chance, she left town for college and, as far as I knew, never came back.

Just the Way We Were

 

D
ave Horvath and I went to Towne & Country Tuxedo to get ourselves outfitted for the senior prom. On his girlfriend's instructions, Dave chose a powder blue tuxedo to match his eyes. I selected a tan tux with lighter beige piping on the cuffs and lapels. The cummerbund, bow tie, and pointy shoes came in a color called eggshell.

Dave was an unlikely candidate for the passion that had claimed him. He was scrawny and good at math, with a pale hangdog face and an expression generally frozen somewhere between shock and sadness. Until one fateful night in the winter of our senior year, he'd never even had a girlfriend. Then he walked into McDonald's, saw Anita draining the golden oil from a basket of fries, and fell in love on the spot. “I looked at her,” he told me, “and I just knew.” She must have known too, because she agreed to ride with him to Echo Lake when her shift was done. He claimed she
unzipped her ugly brown uniform that first night. He said she tasted like burgers.

On our way home from Towne & Country, Dave told me to check the glove compartment if I wanted to see something cool. What I found, hidden beneath the road maps and travel packets of Kleenex, was a pair of yellow cotton panties, limp and slightly frayed at the edges. There was a tiny smear of dried blood in the crotch.

“They're Anita's,” he said.

“She let you keep them?”

“She's got a really open mind about stuff like that.”

I put the panties back in the glove compartment.

“What about Sharon?” he asked. “What's she like?”

He was looking for a swap, a secret for a secret, and I would have been more than happy to comply. But I'd never come close to seeing Sharon's underwear, let alone keeping some as a souvenir.

“She's different,” I said.

Dave's laugh was short and explosive.

“I bet she is.”

Sharon had moved to Springdale in November of our senior year. She just appeared out of nowhere in four of my classes, this skinny, birdlike girl with watchful eyes and frizzy brown hair that seemed to have been scribbled on her head by a cartoonist.

She wasn't that pretty, but I couldn't stop staring at her. I had this weird feeling she was going to be important.

We had the same lunch period. She ate by herself, then wrote in a spiral notebook until the bell rang. I pulled a chair up one day and introduced myself. She nodded politely, but her pen kept moving across the page.

“Hey,” I said, “you writing a book?” She ignored me, encircling the notebook with her left arm, as if to prevent me from copying. The tip of her tongue protruded slightly, giving her an air of deep concentration.

“This might sound strange,” I said, “but the moment I saw you I knew we were going to be friends.”

She gave up and closed the notebook. “Who are you? The Amazing Kreskin?” “Come on,” I said. “It's just a feeling. Haven't you ever had a feeling about someone before?” “Yeah,” she said. “But not about you.” I was persistent. She was lonely. Within three weeks we were eating together every day. I found out that she came from Richards Grove, a wealthy town about a half hour away, and that her parents were divorced. She talked a lot about San Diego, where her father lived with his new wife (as part of the custody arrangement, she and her sister spent summers there). Sharon wasn't crazy about her father, but she loved California: the people had
open minds, and the ocean turned purple at sunset.

My friends assumed from the start that I was putting the moves on her, but they were wrong. We didn't even see each other out of school until January, when she invited me to her sister's tenth birthday party.

“My mom's worried,” she said. “She's afraid I don't have any friends.”

“Oh, so now I'm the token friend.”

She patted me on my hand. “I hope it's not too much trouble.”

They lived in an apartment complex near the highway. Sharon's mother answered the door. She tugged on her hair and pretended to scream when I mistakenly called her Mrs. Phelps.

“Please,” she said. “Call me Delia. I'm not Mrs. Phelps anymore, thank the Lord.”

Delia's face was an older version of Sharon's— sadder, slightly bloated. The skin below her eyes was loose, darkened like a bruise. Her clothes, though, reminded me of a high school girl: tight designer jeans, red high heels, fuzzy cowl neck sweater.

“Don't mind me,” she said. “Tonight's my dancing lesson. My boyfriend and I do Arthur Murray. It's a blast.”

“Sounds great.”

“Careful,” Sharon called from the kitchen. “She'll try to teach you the Hustle.”

Everything in the apartment radiated a uniform,
vaguely depressing newness—the furniture, the carpet, the appliances, the paint on the walls. Gail, the birthday girl, sat hugging her knees in front of the TV, studying a rerun of
The Brady Bunch.
With her pudgy face and sandy hair, she could have been a Brady girl herself.

“Are you Sharon's boyfriend?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “We're just friends.”

On TV, Mr. Brady lectured his boys on tolerance of the opposite sex. Girls are different from us, he said. We have to learn to respect and love them for who they are, as difficult as that might be. In another room, Mrs. Brady told the girls the same thing about boys. Sharon lit the candles on the cake.

Gail sulked through our spirited, nearly melodic rendition of “Happy Birthday,” but she blew out the candles with a vengeance. Delia asked her if she made a wish.

She nodded. “I wish we could go move back to the old house.”

Delia winced. “Now, honey …”

“The move's been tough,” Sharon told me.

We started in on the cake. No one seemed to know what to say.

“So why did you move?” I asked. It was something Sharon had never really explained. “I hear Richards Grove is a pretty nice place.”

They stopped chewing and looked at me. Sharon said it wasn't that nice. Delia said they
needed a change. Gail glowered at her plate.

“Great cake,” I said.

After Delia left, I hung around for a couple of hours with Sharon and Gail, playing a card game called Uno. In the months that followed, I became a kind of permanent guest at the apartment, spending three, sometimes four evenings a week there, doing my homework, watching TV, helping Sharon babysit Gail. I was never quite sure if I'd adopted them or if they'd adopted me.

My parents assumed Sharon was my girlfriend and kept agitating for a meeting. When I tried to set them straight, they just smiled and told me to invite her over anyway. I finally gave in, just to get them off my back.

I warned Sharon not to expect too much. My parents were nothing like Delia. They weren't particularly talkative, didn't go to Arthur Murray or hold surprising opinions. They spent most nights in front of the TV, complaining that nothing was on.

Despite my concerns, it turned out to be a pleasant evening. We played Scrabble, then sat around the table for a couple of hours, eating Oreos and listening to my parents trade sob stories about their deprived childhoods. Around eleven-thirty, way past his bedtime, my father bounded upstairs and returned with his air force photo album.

“I spent two years in the Far East,” he informed Sharon. “It was the adventure of my life.”

“That's right,” my mother added. “The Philippines still haven't recovered.”

I'd seen the album several times, but that night it seemed unfamiliar, full of new information. Sharon pointed to a picture of my father standing near the wing of a propeller-driven airplane.

“You were handsome,” she told him. “You look just like Buddy.”

My father and I blushed simultaneously. It was the first time she'd complimented my looks.

My mother laughed. “That was a good thirty pounds ago.”

“I was twenty then,” said my father. “Not much older than Buddy is now.”

A sleepy-looking guy with dark wavy hair appeared frequently in the album, making faces or holding devil's horns over my father's head.

“That's Billy Penny,” he said. “My best friend. We met in Basic and stuck together the whole way.”

“Where's he now?” I asked.

“Dead.” My father cleaned cookie crumbs off the table, lifting them with a moistened fingertip. “Car accident. We'd only been stateside for a week. We were planning to drive to California, look for work out there.”

It was funny to hear my father talk about a best friend. He certainly didn't have one now.

“That's terrible,” said Sharon.

My father scratched his head. “Life's a funny thing. If Billy hadn't died, I might never have met Ann. Buddy might not have been born.”

All three of them stared at me, as if to verify my existence. I didn't like the idea that someone else's death was indirectly responsible for my life.

“Hey,” I said. “Don't look at me.”

Gail and Delia were asleep when we got back to the apartment. I followed Sharon into the dark kitchen. She asked if I wanted a soda. I asked if I could kiss her.

She leaned against the refrigerator and hung her head. “Oh boy,” I heard her whisper. She didn't resist when I pressed my lips against hers, but she didn't exactly respond either.

“Did you enjoy that?” she asked. The question wasn't angry or flirtatious.

I said I would have liked it better if I thought
she
liked it. She sighed and ran both hands through her wonderful hair.

“Okay,” she said. “Let's try again.”

The second time didn't work either.

“I'm sorry, Buddy. I don't think this is a good idea.”

“Why not? Don't you like me?”

“I got involved with a friend once before. It was a complete disaster.”

“We're different,” I said.

She chose that moment to open the refrigerator door and take out a bottle of Pepsi.

“Please,” she said. The bottle made a kissing noise as she twisted the cap. “Let's just forget this happened.”

Sharon just wanted things to stay the way they were. She said she thought of me more as a brother than a boyfriend. I did my best to act like a brother for a couple of weeks, but it got tiring. I had to change tactics.

I tried to hurt her into loving me back. I started showing up late at the apartment, leaving early. I talked a lot about other girls I found attractive.

“I'm not standing in your way,” she told me. “If you want to go out with someone, be my guest.”

It was already April, a good time for a senior fling. With time running out, people made themselves available. It was possible to experiment, to compromise, to make up for lost opportunities. I left a party one night with Janice Maloney, a sweet, chubby girl I'd known since kindergarten. She wasn't that drunk, but she let me touch her anywhere I wanted. Then she held me tightly and wept.

“I'm going to miss you,” she said. “I'm going to miss everybody. I just wish this year would last forever.”

* * *

 

Every time I said the word
prom
around Sharon, she laughed and stuck her finger in her mouth. I understood her reaction, but I also happened to be suffering from a severe case of premature nostalgia. Now that I was about to leave Harding, I was haunted by all the experiences I'd missed. I felt like I'd spent too much time on the sidelines, at the edges of high school. But the prom, that was dead center. I decided to go without her.

I made a mental list of candidates but couldn't work up the nerve to ask any of them. One by one, my possibles found other dates. With only three days to go before the deadline, I finally managed to ask Patty Green, this cute junior, my partner in phys ed archery. She blushed and told me I was a week late: she'd already agreed to be a mercy date for her brother's best friend Bruce Davis, a nice guy with a heartbreaking case of acne.

Comforted by the knowledge that I'd at least made an effort, I resigned myself to staying home. I made plans with a group of guys who were holding a “Fuck the Prom” party. Then, miraculously, the day before the deadline, Sharon popped the question. It came out of the blue, at the tail end of another sad night.

“You're kidding,” I said.

She shook her head.

“You
want to go to the prom?”

“It's my mom,” she whispered. “She's afraid
I'll regret it for the rest of my life if I miss the stupid thing.”

In a funny way, her answer came as a relief. I thought at first that she was just feeling sorry for me and was offering herself as an act of mercy. At least this way she could believe that I was doing her a favor. And I, in turn, could wear my rented tuxedo with a shred of dignity.

The dress she wore belonged to her mother. It was a strapless pink chiffon with a flaring knee-length skirt, a party dress from the fifties. Her shoes were black, her anklets lacy white. With her hair pulled back in barrettes and pink lipstick that echoed the dress, she looked like a beautiful dream of herself.

Elegantly, as though she did it every day, Sharon held out her bare arm so I could slip the wristlet of flowers over her hand. It was a slow and somber operation. When it was done, she pinned a flawless white carnation to my lapel, and her mother began to weep.

“Mom,” said Sharon. “Please.”

“I can't help it,” she said. “You just look so perfect together.”

“Welcome Prom Couples!” said the marquee outside the Blue Spruce Manor.

The Manor had a plain exterior—white stucco washed with blue and red lights—but inside it was Glitz City. A shimmering teardrop
chandelier dripped from the ceiling; the wallpaper felt like velvet. In the corner, camouflaged by tall fake plants, a medieval suit of armor stood guard over a miniature waterfall that gushed mysteriously from an opening in the wall. Sharon's eyes widened.

“Wow,” she said. “Is this tacky or what?”

I gave her an affectionate poke in the ribs. “Loosen up. It's your senior prom.”

“Oh yeah.” She reached up and straightened my bow tie. “I almost forgot.”

Flashbulbs popped as we entered the banquet hall. I was struck by an unexpected wave of emotion at the sight of so many familiar, radiant faces: these were the people I'd grown up with, the ones I'd soon be leaving. The band was playing “We May Never Pass This Way Again,” and my vision went a little blurry. Sharon on my arm, I nodded and smiled like a movie star on Oscar night as we threaded our way to Table Eight. Our tablemates had already arrived. Except for Dave Horvath, I wasn't really friends with any of them.