Sister of the Bride

I guess this is just one of those days, thought Barbara MacLane on her way home from school one bright afternoon late in April. She was not alone. She was walking beside a boy, a very tall boy, but their thoughts were like those famous parallel lines that lie in the same plane but never meet.

Barbara was mulling over the events of the day. First there was that argument with her brother, because his cat had clawed one of the stuffed animals she kept on her bed. At breakfast her father had lectured her on doing better work in chemistry. Part of the afternoon had been spent in conference with her counselor who thought she
should have her future planned as neatly as an English composition. He was an English teacher, who thought life should have a topic sentence. And now she was being walked home by Tootie Bodger.

Tootie, who was six feet four and played the trombone, had his problems. “Just because I'm tall everybody expects me to do things I don't want to do,” he was saying as they walked up the hill. “Like dance with all the tall girls when I don't like to dance. And play basketball. All winter the whole school kept asking me why I didn't turn out for basketball, and when the season was over I thought they would forget it. But no such luck. Today the coach stopped me in the hall and said that next season he wanted to see me come out for practice. He said I was basketball material.”

“Why don't you?” asked Barbara automatically. It seemed as if everybody in high school had to be some kind of material. That was what her counselor said she was. College material. He had sat there, tapping his nose with that yellow pencil and telling her she was college material and asking what college she wanted to go to and what she wanted to major in when she got there.

“I don't want to go out for basketball,” answered
Tootie. “I don't care what they do. Flunk me. Expel me. I am not going to play basketball.”

“Why don't you want to?” Barbara was more interested in keeping the conversation alive than in learning the answer. It had been easy enough to tell her counselor where she wanted to go. To the University of California, where her mother and father had gone and where her sister, Rosemary, was now a freshman.

“Aw, I'm not any good. I'd just fall all over my feet,” said Tootie.

“Oh, Tootie, you wouldn't either.” She felt this was expected of her, but she went right on thinking her own thoughts. Her counselor hadn't thought much of her reason for wanting to go to the university, that was plain. And naturally she couldn't tell him that all she wanted to do, all she had ever wanted to do, was catch up with her sister, Rosemary. So she had just said lamely that the one thing she was sure of was that she did not want to major in chemistry, and he had said she had better give some thought to her futureâ¦.

“Yes, I would,” insisted Tootie. “I always fall over my feet. Besides, I never can care that much about getting a ball through a hoop. It seems pretty stupid to me, chasing a ball around just to throw it
through a hoop. I'd rather practice my trombone.”

They walked awhile in silence. It was too bad, Barbara decided, finally giving her attention to the boy beside her, that everyone expected Tootie to play basketball when he was such a good trombone player. The whole school respected him for his ability to play
The Tiger Rag
. You would think that would be enough. She wished she knew of something to say that would make him feel better, not only because she really wanted him to be happy, but because the walk home would be so much easier if he was more cheerful.

“It's getting so I get the feeling nobody likes me.”

“Why, that just isn't true,” protested Barbara, again because it was expected of her. “You know it isn't true. Everybody likes you. I like you.” She saw at once that this was the wrong thing to say.

“Do you, Barbara?” Tootie asked eagerly. “Do you really like me?”

“Of course I do. You know that,” Barbara answered impatiently, feeling that Tootie was insensitive to shades of meaning. There was no way to explain that she liked him to smile at in the hall or to talk to before class and that was all.

“No, you don't,” contradicted Tootie, his morale sagging once more. “Not really.”

“Yes, I do, Tootie.” Barbara spoke without much conviction. This could go on all the rest of the afternoon. The whole trouble was that he liked her so much more than she liked him that she felt uncomfortable when she was with him.

“If you really liked me you'd go to the movies with me Saturday night.” Tootie looked straight ahead, waiting for her answer.

“I'm sorry,” said Barbara. “I would like to, Tootie, really I would, but Mom said something about Rosemary's coming home Saturday, and she said she was going to ask Aunt Josie and Gramma over. You know how it is. Family dinner and all.” They turned up Barbara's street, which was damp and woodsy and smelled of bay leaves.

“Rosemary only goes to the university over across the bay,” Tootie pointed out. “She comes home all the time. It isn't as though she goes to Vassar or someplace a long way off.” His voice was reproachful as he ducked to avoid a bay tree that leaned across the sidewalk.

Tootie was quite right. Rosemary came home twice a month to have the orthodontist look at the retainers that held her newly straightened teeth in place. Tootie knew this, because his mother and her mother had been members of the same club for years.

“I am sorry, Tootie,” Barbara said firmly, carefully hiding her real feelings. She should have offered some more plausible excuse for not going to the movies with him. After all, she liked him enough not to want to hurt his feelings. Someday she would learn. Someday she would be as skillful at this sort of thing as Rosemary. Lucky Rosemaryâeighteen, away at college, free of growing boys.

“Okay, if you don't want to go out with me.” Tootie looked gloomier than ever.

Barbara remained silent to avoid any more you-don't-like-me-yes-I-do conversation. By now they had reached her house, an L-shaped white house with green shutters, set in a clearing at the point where the pavement stopped looking like a city street and began to look like a road. Sidewalk and curb ended in a clump of redwood trees beyond the MacLanes' house, and there the road began to climb and twist up the hill.

Barbara paused in front of her walk. “Well, good-bye, Tootie. Thanks for walking home with me.” There was no question of asking him in. Mrs. MacLane, who described herself as three-fifths of a teacher because she taught English and social studies part-time in the junior high school, would not be home yet. She almost always stayed after
school to help her slowest students. Neither Barbara nor her sister, Rosemary, when she lived at home, was permitted to invite a boy into the house unless one of their parents was home.

“So long,” said Tootie, who understood the situation. He brightened slightly. “See you tomorrow.” He turned and, hunching his shoulders, plodded back down the street.

Poor old Tootie, thought Barbara as she walked around to the back door and let herself in. If only he would stop being so gloomy about everything. Boost his morale in one spot and it sagged someplace else. It was like trying to pick up a handful of cold spaghetti. She stepped into the kitchen, where she found her thirteen-year-old brother, Gordy, eating cold pork and beans out of a can. His cross-eyed Siamese cat, Buster, was sitting at his feet looking elegant and disdainful even while begging.

“Hi,” said Gordy with his mouth full. “I saw old Tootie Bodger walking home with you.”

“M-hm.” Barbara was not going to admit to Gordy that she was not particularly glad to have Tootie walk home with her, that she considered it a waste of a beautiful spring afternoon. She found the sight of her brother eating cold beans
particularly irritating after her exasperating conversation with Tootie. Maybe all boys were exasperating. Maybe this was one of the fundamental truths of life her father was always telling her she had so much to learn about.

Gordy, his red hair uncombed and one side of his sport shirt hanging out, chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “You know, old Tootie even looks like a trombone. Long and narrow.”

Barbara wanted to smile, but she would not give her brother this satisfaction. “That's a mean thing to say. He can't help it if he's tall and thin.”

Gordy picked one bean out of the can with his fingers and fed it to Buster. “Why a fellow with his build doesn't go out for basketball beats me,” he said.

“Tootie doesn't like basketball. He can't see any point to throwing a ball through a hoop,” Barbara told her brother. “Can't you put those beans on a plate?”

“Nope, I can't wait that long,” said Gordy. He added virtuously, “I'm a growing boy.” And he was. He would soon be as tall as his father, whom he resembled. And someday his curly red hair would grow thin and sandy, just as his father's had.

Barbara detected in his manner a certain plea
sure in annoying his sister. She and Gordy disagreed about almost everything lately. Their mother said they went out of their way, even took pains, to disagree, but somehow, once they had started differing on every little thing, they could not stop. Neither was willing to let the other have the satisfaction of giving in first.

“I wouldn't call eating cold beans out of a can gracious living,” she remarked, feeling that she was one up on Gordy because she knew where her mother had hidden a lemon meringue pie.

“Okay, Miss Barbed Wire, nobody asked you to,” said Gordy, picking out another bean for Buster, the cat he had saved his own money to buy.

As much as she disliked being called Barbed Wire, Barbara made up her mind to ignore this brotherly remark. She noticed that the grocery list had been removed from the bulletin board on the cupboard door, and concluded that her mother was going to shop on her way home from school. Probably to buy more cans of pork and beans, thought Barbara as she left the kitchen and carried her books down the hall to the room she shared with her sister, Rosemary, on the weekends Rosemary came home from college. Mrs. MacLane always watched for specials on anything that
would help fill up Gordy when he came home from school. Pork and beans, eight cans for a dollar, were a good buy. So were tamales, four cans for thirty-nine cents.

Barbara opened the door of the bedroom, which was always kept shut to prevent Buster from using her collection of stuffed toys for sparring partners. Now she tossed her books down beside her nineteen animalsâthe teddy bear, Pooh Bear, Tigger, the stuffed penguin, the fat pink pig, and all the restâwhich bore snags and tears from Buster's teeth and claws, like wounds from a one-sided battle.

Barbara unbuttoned the pink blouse that Rosemary had discarded after her first semester of college when she took to wearing grays and beiges. If she changed now, she could wear it to school another day and save ironing a fresh blouse. Of course Rosemary, in spite of their mother's protests, was quite right about neutral colors being so much smarter than pastels. But Barbara still thought it was a pretty blouse and was happy to have inherited it along with several other discards that Rosemary did not consider appropriate for college, even though several of them bore good labels. Rosemary had done a lot of babysitting to earn those labels.

As Barbara changed into a cotton dress she discovered that she had somehow absorbed some of Tootie's gloom. Lucky Rosemary, who was across the bay at the university and who even owned a sophisticated basic black dress. Rosemary always got to do everything first. Lipstick, heels, datesâalways Rosemary was first, and by the time Barbara caught up and was wearing lipstick and high heels on special occasions and being walked home by Tootie Bodger, there was Rosemary way ahead of her in basic black with earrings.

Barbara could never get over the feeling of being a little behind, a little left out. These feelings were intensified on the weekends Rosemary came home from college to share with the family her enthusiasm for her life across the bay. Rosemary seemed so sure of herself. She was even sure she wanted to be a nursery school teacher, and was looking forward to the work she would do at the university's Institute of Child Welfare. Her conversation seemed sophisticated, full as it was of references to work shifts in the cooperative dormitory where she lived, to midterms, and to grade-point averages, words that were strange to Barbara's life as a junior at Bayview High. Oh well, thought Barbara to console herself, as she often had ever since the
two sisters were little girls, at least I am the one with the naturally curly hair.

Gordy and Buster must have finished the can of pork and beans, because in the next room Gordy began to play his guitar and sing, “Michael, row the boat ashore. Hallelujah!” Barbara closed her bedroom door. Gordy had been practicing that song for days, and he never seemed to improve.

Gordy stopped, experimented with a chord, and tried it again. “Michael, row the boat ashore. Hallelujah!” It was not right. He tried once more before he continued. “Jordan's river is deep and wide. Hallelujah!”

Barbara sat down on the bed and put her fingers in her ears. This had been going on for weeks. Gordy and two of his junior high school friends had formed a trio to sing folk songs. Their ambitionâin a year or two when they were really goodâwas to make records or, rather, “cut” records, as they were always careful to say, that would sell millions. Other boys not much older had done it. Why shouldn't they?

“Sister, help to trim the sail. Hallelujah!” Barbara heard Gordy singing in spite of her fingers in her ears. Lucky Rosemary, to be away at college and escape this. Poor Barbara, left behind to endure
her brother's folk singing, uncertain about her future, forbidden to wear earringsâ¦.

But sitting on the bed with her fingers in her ears was a dull way to spend an afternoon. Not that Barbara had anything more interesting to do except, of course, study. She could always study, and she supposed she should study even on a sunny April afternoon, because her father, who taught print shop at the high school, was sure to talk with her chemistry teacher one of these days. But she did not feel like studying chemistry. She felt likeâ¦she did not know what. Running barefoot through fields of daffodils maybe or writing a poem. Certainly not studying chemistry while Gordy plinked at his guitar and sang in the next room. The sound waves from Gordy's record player managed to get past the fingers in Barbara's ears. He was playing a record of
Michael, Row the Boat Ashore
good and loud, so he could catch and try to imitate the chords of the guitar player.

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