Jean and Johnny (16 page)

“Good night, Jean,” said Mrs. Darvey. “I am so glad Homer brought you home. I hope you will come again.”

“Thank you.” Jean smiled shyly at this woman who liked a good rousing springtime. She could tell that Homer's mother and father liked her. Awkwardly she unfastened the camellia from her dress and pinned it to her coat.

When Homer turned the car into the Jarretts' driveway, he turned off the motor and switched off the lights. Jean waited for him to get out of the car, but when he did not, they sat in silence. Jean began to feel uncomfortable. Her mother and father and the people next door must have heard them drive in and might be thinking that Jean, on her first date, was parked in the driveway with a boy.

“The people next door just had their house painted,” said Jean to break the silence, even though she knew Homer would not be interested.

Homer did not answer.

“I mean—you can still smell the paint,” said Jean, because a girl had to say something at a time like this. “I thought you might have noticed it.”

Homer laid his arm across the back of the seat and turned to Jean. “Jean,” he said earnestly, “would you consider kissing me?”

“
Kissing
you!” The words were startled out of Jean. What a funny idea—kissing Homer. Jean's
impulse was to jump out of the car and run up the steps into the house.

“Yes,” said Homer seriously. “I wondered if you would be interested.”

Interested! Homer made kissing sound as impersonal as—as discussing a current event. Jean could not imagine kissing Homer. And if she did, with both of them wearing glasses there would be an unromantic clash of spectacle frames. Or did couples who both wore glasses say, Excuse me while I remove my glasses? And if they did,
then
what did they do? Hold them? Or pull out their cases, fold their glasses, and put them away, saying, Now I am ready to be kissed. Had Homer thought of this, she wondered. The way he was behaving, they would probably have an impersonal discussion of the problem. Jean, he would say, since you have agreed to kiss me, perhaps we should remove our glasses. Yes, Homer, she would answer, that is an excellent suggestion.
Oh
. What was she thinking of anyway? She wasn't going to kiss Homer.

“Well?” said Homer. “You haven't answered.”

“Why I…” Jean did not know what to say. She did not want to hurt his feelings, because she liked him. And anyway, she had probably already hurt his feelings by sounding horrified when he men
tioned kissing. She had not meant to sound that way, but in her surprise she could not help it. “I mean…Well, no thank you. What I mean is, this is just our first date and everything—” Jean stopped. Would he think she expected him to ask her for a second date? Or would he—this was worse—think she was leading him on? What was a girl supposed to do at a moment like this? She wished she knew.

“I didn't think you would,” said Homer seriously, “but I didn't think it would hurt to ask.”

“No, I guess it doesn't hurt to ask,” said Jean, so relieved to get through this awkward moment that she felt for the second time that evening a wild desire to giggle. Elaine would die laughing. Except that this time she was not going to tell Elaine, because even though she thought the situation was funny, there was something so likable about Homer that she would not want anyone to make fun of him. Not ever.

A square of light from a bedroom window fell on the driveway, telling Jean that her father must have turned on the bedroom light to look at the time. The car clock said ten minutes to midnight.

“Homer, I think I had better go in,” said Jean.

Homer got out of the car, went around, and
opened the door for her. This time Jean could not bear to shove her feet into her pumps. She picked up her shoes and her florist's box and stepped out of the car in her stocking feet. They walked up the steps and when Jean had unlatched the door she stood with one hand on the knob. Her parents, she was sure, would hear the click of the lock and know that she was about to come in. “Thank you for going to the dance with me,” she said, feeling that this was proper, because she had extended the invitation. With etiquette out of the way, she laughed and said, “I know the dance was pretty awful, but I really did have a good time at your house. I loved seeing your pigeons and the milk shake was fun, too.”

“I'm sure glad you asked me,” answered Homer. Then he hesitated. “Jean—would you like to go out again sometime? With me, I mean?”

“Yes, Homer, I would,” answered Jean.

“Swell.” Homer sounded both pleased and relieved. “Maybe next Saturday afternoon we could take the pigeons out over the hills and release them.”

“I would love to. And I—I hope your feelings aren't hurt, or anything, because I didn't—” ventured Jean, and stopped.

“That's all right.” Homer understood what she was talking about. “Good night, Jean.”

“Good night, Homer. And thank you again for the flower.” Jean stepped into the living room, closed the door, started to turn off the light, remembered that Sue probably had not come in, and walked in her stocking feet to the kitchen, where she removed the bruised camellia from her coat and laid it next to a carton of eggs in the refrigerator. Then she tiptoed into the bedroom, sat down on the bed, and began to rub one aching foot.

So that was the way it was, Jean thought. A girl went out with a boy she did not much care about, and her evening did not turn out at all the way she had imagined. In many ways it was disappointing, even painful, and yet when it was over, it was all right. She liked the boy and he liked her. And she would be happy to go out with him again, even though no date with him would ever be the kind of date a girl dreamed about. Homer would always do and say unexpected, disconcerting things, but that was the kind of boy he was. And a girl would not have to analyze every remark, every quirk of his eyebrow, when she went out with a boy like Homer. She would not have to wonder if he liked her just a shade less than he had the day before if
he happened to say Hi instead of Hi, Jean.

Jean was still sitting on the bed tenderly massaging her foot when she heard a car stop in front of the house, and in a few minutes the front door opened and Sue tiptoed down the hall.

“Hello,” whispered Jean.

“Hi,” answered Sue, silently closing the door. “Did you have fun?”

“Yes and no,” answered Jean. “Mostly yes. Did you?”

“Oh, yes.” Sue sighed, and dropped down on her own bed. “I had a wonderful time. Just wonderful. We saw
The Great Train Robbery
and some old Chaplin comedies.”

Jean thought she had never seen her sister look so pretty, and she knew that prettiness was not caused by old movies. Jean rose from the bed and walked gingerly to the closet. She wished she were floating on a cloud like Sue—then her feet might not hurt so much. She removed her coat and as she did so, she put her hand in her pocket and took out the paper covering from the straw. She hung her coat in the closet, but instead of throwing the straw covering into the wastebasket, she smoothed it out and read the words printed on it.
Sanistraw. Pat. U.S. Off
.

“You know something?” said Sue dreamily.

“What?” asked Jean, absently winding the flattened paper tube around her finger.

“Ken kissed me good night,” whispered Sue.

Jean looked curiously at her sister, radiant because Ken had kissed her. It must be a lovely feeling. “I guess Ken changed a lot as he grew up,” she reflected.

“Mm-hm.” Sue slipped off her coat and kicked off her shoes. “A whole lot. He makes the boys at school seem childish.”

“Sue, how did you feel that day you ran into Ken at the library?” Jean asked.

“Oh, I don't know. Surprised that he had changed so much, and not sure what to say to him.” Sue pulled her dress off over her head.

“You didn't feel all full of pinwheels at the sight of him?” persisted Jean.

“Pinwheels and Fourth of July sparklers? Of course not, silly. I just thought he had turned out to be an awfully nice boy,” said Sue.

“Do you think you would have liked him as much if you had gone out with him two years ago?” There was so much Jean wanted to know.

“You are certainly full of questions tonight,” answered Sue. “No, I don't think I would have
liked him very much two years ago. He wouldn't have grown up enough. And now if you want first turn at the bathroom you had better stop playing with that piece of paper and get started.”

“You go first,” said Jean, still toying with the wrapper from the straw. Maybe that was what a lot of girls should do—all they could do, really—wait for the boys to grow up. And in the meantime there were other things to do…the things she and Elaine had always enjoyed doing together…and now there was Homer and his flock of pigeons.

Jean decided she really would keep the straw wrapper for a souvenir. She opened her top drawer and took out a Japanese lacquered box, which held the odds and ends she did not quite know what to do with but still did not want to throw away: her junior-high school graduation diploma, a paper napkin from a birthday party, a ballpoint pen that needed a refill. As she removed the box from the drawer, her eyes fell on the snapshot of Johnny that she had thrown into the drawer and half forgotten about. Now she picked it up and studied it critically. How charming he looked smiling into the camera, and how miserable she looked facing Johnny and trying to peek at the camera at the same time! All that was behind her now. The real
Johnny would always do what Johnny wanted and never mind how other people felt. The Johnny she had admired was no more real than Kip Laddish on the television screen.

Jean started to tear the snapshot in two, hesitated, and looked at it a second time. Johnny, the boy she neither liked nor admired, and yet…she would never forget Johnny. It was Johnny who had noticed her, singled her out of the crowd, had made her feel that she was attractive. In a way, it was Johnny who had made her aware of herself. She could not forget that. If only Johnny had been a different kind of boy….

Jean picked up a pair of manicure scissors from the dresser and carefully snipped off her half of the snapshot and dropped it into the wastebasket. She lifted the lid of the lacquered box and dropped into it the wrapper of the straw. Her glance lingered on Johnny's half of the snapshot, which she laid on top of the wrapper. Silently she closed the box and shut it in her drawer. Good-bye, Johnny, she thought. I am not sorry I knew you. Maybe she should be sorry, but she wasn't. In her heart she knew she would remember Johnny. Always.

Cover art by Amy Ryan

Cover design by Jennifer Heuer