Jean and Johnny Read online

  The day the costume rental company’s truck backed up to the side door of the auditorium was an exciting one. As the workmen carried racks of costumes into the building, the room backstage became crowded with crinolines, pantalets, Indian headdresses, bat wings, white wigs, parasols, several horse costumes, and parts and pieces of costumes that Jean did not recognize. There was one costume she looked for and did not find—the costume for Johnny. “Where are the evening clothes for the narrator?” she asked Mitsuko, as the two girls were pressing ruffles on some Gay Nineties dresses at the ironing boards in the sewing room. “It was on the list, and I didn’t find it anyplace.”

  “Mr. Kohler crossed it off,” answered Mitsuko. “He decided Johnny didn’t need to appear. That would save the rental of one costume, and it would be more effective if the audience just heard his voice. The disembodied voice of time marching on, I guess.”

  That was a disappointment, but one that Jean did not have time to dwell on. Because she was not a particularly skillful seamstress capable of fitting coats and bodices, Jean was assigned the job of handing out costumes to members of the cast. This was a task that Jean enjoyed. She stood behind the Dutch door, and as members of the cast requested their costumes, she located on the racks whatever it was they were to wear. Touching the various fabrics was a pleasure, and it was interesting to see how inexpensive materials had been used to achieve the greatest effect. Jean had handed out a Civil War uniform (Confederate—tall) across the Dutch door when Johnny looked in to see what was going on. Maybe this was her moment to ask him.

  Peggy Jo appeared behind him, and Johnny stepped aside. “Blue dress with hoop skirt,” said Peggy Jo.

  “Blue dress with hoop skirt coming up,” answered Jean, glad of the opportunity to disappear behind a rack of costumes to try to calm herself. She had to ask him, and he had to say yes. Now—as soon as Peggy Jo leaves. Johnny, will you go to the Girls’ Association Dance with me? She had the words lined up on the tip of her tongue, ready to be spoken.

  While Jean slipped the blue dress from its hanger, a chorus of war whoops came from the Dutch door. Well, thought Jean, that takes care of that. A girl could not ask a boy to go to a dance with her when a bunch of Indians were whooping over his shoulder. When Jean carried Peggy Jo’s costume to the Dutch door, Johnny was gone. Feeling let down, Jean set about gathering up an armload of war bonnets. Surely the next time she saw him…

  Elaine, who was wearing her outing-flannel dress and had a turkey feather stuck in a band around her head, elbowed her way through the group of Indians, clasped her hands, and sang, “‘For I’ll be calling you—oo—oo—oo.’”

  Jean wished Elaine was not so eager to call attention to herself. The boys would only laugh at her.

  “Let’s scalp her,” suggested one of the Indians.

  “There isn’t time,” said Jean, smiling at the Indians as she shoved their costumes across the Dutch door. Smiling at boys, now that she was taking part in a school activity, was getting easier every day. “Go try on your costumes.”

  Elaine lingered by the door while half a dozen girls who were to be bats came to collect their chartreuse leotards and black wings.

  Jean consulted a list. “Your fingernails haven’t come yet,” she told the bats, “but the rest of your costumes are ready to try on.”

  “What fingernails?” asked the bats.

  “The bats all wear glittery fingernails eight inches long,” answered Jean.

  The bats were entranced with the thought of eight-inch fingernails.

  “Did you ask him?” whispered Elaine as soon as the bats had trooped off to the dressing room.

  Jean pretended to find something wrong with a beard that one of the boys was to wear in the Rip Van Winkle skit. She was beginning to be annoyed by Elaine’s intense interest. She was so—so pushy where boys were concerned. You would almost think she was the one who was going to ask Johnny.

  “Well, did you?” insisted Elaine. “I saw you talking to him.”

  “No, Elaine,” said Jean. “I haven’t.”

  Elaine must have sensed the change in Jean’s feeling toward her, because she sounded crestfallen when she spoke. “Oh. I just wondered, is all.”

  “There were so many people around.” Jean did not want to hurt Elaine’s feelings. “Don’t you think the bats will look spooky with their long fingernails? I think the haunted-house number will be one of the best in the show.”

  “Yes,” said Elaine, whose feelings had been hurt. “Yes, I guess it will.”

  Gradually the show took shape. Scenery was painted, the orchestra rehearsed, lines memorized, dances perfected, songs sung. After Jean checked out the costumes for fitting, she checked them in again. While various parts of the show rehearsed in the gymnasium or the band room or wherever they could find space to work in, Jean assisted with several of the simpler alterations. She basted up the hems of some dresses worn by square dancers and sewed an artificial rose on the hip of a dress from the 1920s, to be worn in the Charleston number.

  And then came the afternoon of dress rehearsal, the day that Jean would surely ask Johnny to go to the dance. She had to ask him. She was tired of waiting for exactly the right moment, weary of carrying the question on the tip of her tongue. The worst he could do was to say no, and if that was the way it was to be, she wanted to find out now. She did not want this awful suspense to spoil her fun the night of the actual performance.

  The minute school was out, Jean rushed to the costume room to start handing out the costumes. This time, because the cast was going to run through the entire show, from beginning to end, it was important that everyone be dressed on time. Out in the auditorium the orchestra was tuning up. Backstage there was the sound of hammering and the shout of “Heads!” that always preceded the lowering of a piece of scenery. Johnny, may I take you to the Girls’ Association Dance? Once more Jean lined up the words on her tongue as she handed costumes across the Dutch door. Johnny, will you go to the Girls’ Association Dance with me? Outside in the auditorium Mr. Kohler shouted, “Will the singers please stand under the microphones?”

  Mrs. Rankin, adviser of the Costume Club, pushed open the lower half of the Dutch door and entered the room. “All right, girls, let’s try to issue the costumes a little faster,” she said briskly. “We can’t waste time this afternoon. Jean, I’m putting you in charge of the bats’ fingernails. Take this box to the dressing room and give each bat ten fingernails, and after rehearsal see that you collect ten fingernails from each girl.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Rankin.” Jean certainly wouldn’t have a chance to see Johnny in the girls’ dressing room. That question on the tip of her tongue seemed to grow heavier by the minute.

  On her way to the dressing room she caught a glimpse of Johnny, surrounded by a group of admiring girls. Jean’s acrobatic heart managed to leap because she was looking at Johnny and at the same time to sink because there were so many girls with him. This was not the moment. Scurrying down the hall with her box of fingernails, she found consolation in the thought that there was safety in numbers. All those girls couldn’t be asking Johnny to go to the dance. Not at the same time.

  The dressing room was a whirl of activity. Girls in their slips waited for members of the club to help them with their hoop skirts. Indian maidens ran around in their bare feet. Girls in the long-waisted, short-skirted dresses of the 1920s, knees close together, stood in front of the mirrors, kicked up their heels in the steps of the Charleston, and collapsed on the benches in fits of giggles. The bats, all twenty of them, were wearing their chartreuse leotards with black bands crisscrossed from waist to shoulder, and helping one another fasten on their black wings.

  “Anyone ready for fingernails?” asked Jean, opening her box.

  “Oh, look!” cried the bats, as they clustered around Jean.

  Jean began to hand out the sparkle-encrusted plastic fingernails to the bats, who slipped them over their fingertips and held out their hands for admiration. “Aren’t we gla
morous?” they crowed, twinkling their fingertips for everyone to see. Girls in less exotic costumes crowded around to admire.

  “You look positively Fu Manchu,” said Elaine.

  “Lo, the poor Indian in her brown-flannel nightgown,” answered a bat, as she flitted over to the mirror to admire herself.

  Mrs. Rankin bustled into the dressing room with an armload of white wigs. “All right, minuet girls. Here are your wigs. We have to return them in good condition, so it is not necessary to let the entire student body try them on. We are not going to take time for full makeup today. Three of each group report to the makeup room, so we can get the effect. Jean, if all the bats have their fingernails, see if you can’t help some of the other girls.”

  Jean, who had hoped to escape from the dressing room to someplace backstage where she might see Johnny, looked around for someone to help.

  “I need help, Mrs. Rankin,” said Peggy Jo. “The hem is coming out of my skirt and I am afraid I will trip on it.”

  “There is your chance, Jean,” directed Mrs. Rankin. “Are all the jitterbug girls wearing saddle shoes and white socks? We don’t want any ballerina slippers in this number.”

  With needle and thread Jean went to the assistance of Peggy Jo, who had accidentally caught her foot in the hem of her sweeping skirt of the 1860s. Outside in the auditorium Mr. Kohler called out, “Don’t forget we are timing this show!” Jean knelt and quickly basted up the hem of Peggy Jo’s blue brocaded gown. When she stood up she paused to admire the tall girl in the dress with the drop shoulders. “You look lovely,” Jean said truthfully. Even with her blond hair skinned back in an untidy knot, Peggy Jo was beautiful.

  “Thank you,” said Peggy Jo, her eyes on the mirror.

  Jean studied her a moment. “Maybe I shouldn’t suggest it,” she said shyly, “but I think your hair would look awfully pretty with that dress if you wore it down instead of pinned up.”

  “Oh, yes, Peggy Jo,” said Mitsuko enthusiastically, as she tied a sash for one of the square dancers. “Please take down your hair.”

  “All right.” Peggy Jo quickly pulled the pins out of the knot, so that her fair straight hair tumbled over her shoulders.

  “Look!” cried a Charleston girl. “Peggy Jo has taken her hair down.”

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” asked Jean admiringly.

  “But I can’t wear it this way,” protested Peggy Jo studying herself in the mirror.

  “Give me your comb,” said Jean. “Maybe I can fix it.”

  Peggy Jo dug her comb out of her purse and handed it to Jean.

  “I think she should wear it hanging straight down her back,” said one of the girls.

  “With a flower over one ear,” added another.

  Jean combed back the hair so that it hung straight and heavy. It must be wonderful to have such beautiful hair, so thick and soft to touch.

  Mitsuko produced a pink camellia, which she said she had snitched from a bush outside the auditorium (the gardener shouldn’t mind this once, because it was for art, wasn’t it?) and helped Jean secure it behind Peggy Jo’s ear with bobby pins.

  “Perfect!” exclaimed the girls, and Jean agreed.

  Peggy Jo smiled at herself in the mirror and said nothing.

  “Everyone out front,” cried Mrs. Rankin. “Now as soon as your number is over, come backstage, change your clothes, turn in your costumes, and quietly return to the auditorium by the side door. Minuet girls, be careful of those wigs. Bats, don’t tear your wings, and be sure you turn in your fingernails to Jean Jarrett after your act. We don’t want any nine-fingered bats during tomorrow night’s performance. Now hurry along.”

  The cast and the members of the Costume Club crowded out of the dressing room, through the backstage area, and down the steps at the front of the stage. Jean saw Johnny standing by a microphone in the wings.

  “Hey!” exclaimed Johnny, when he saw the bats. “You can haunt my house anytime.”

  “Hi, Johnny,” said Peggy Jo.

  Johnny whistled.

  “All that and a Chevrolet, too,” remarked a stagehand.

  Jean, carried along by the crowd, felt a twinge of some uncomfortable emotion. It wasn’t envy and it wasn’t jealousy. It was more a feeling of dissatisfaction with herself, a foolish feeling because she neither expected nor wanted to be the kind of girl boys whistled at. And she was bothered by something else. Maybe some people did make fun of feminine intuition, but Jean knew—as certainly as she was wearing white saddle shoes—from the way Peggy Jo looked at Johnny, that Peggy Jo liked Johnny and liked him a lot. And I helped make her even more beautiful than she usually is, thought Jean.

  “Hi, Jean,” Johnny called, as she descended the steps into the auditorium.

  Jean smiled radiantly. “Guess what I am,” she called gaily. “Vice-president in charge of bats’ fingernails!” It was good to know she was not completely overshadowed by Peggy Jo.

  “Hi, Jean.”

  Jean looked around and located Homer, his violin resting on his knee, sitting in the orchestra pit.

  “Oh—hi, Homer,” she answered, thinking that he must have just had his crinkly hair cut. Or perhaps moved was a better word.

  “House lights!” bellowed Mr. Kohler. The auditorium grew dim. The orchestra played a medley of music used in the show, and then the voice of the invisible Johnny filled the auditorium.

  “WELCOME ONE AND ALL!

  COME WITH US YEAR BY YEAR

  FROM THEN TO NOW, FROM THERE TO HERE,

  IN SONG AND DANCE AND SKIT.

  WE HOPE OUR SHOW WILL MAKE A HIT.”

  Jean’s admiration was wholehearted. Johnny was every bit as good as any announcer she had heard on radio or television. The curtains parted on the Indian scene, and after noticing with amusement Elaine standing on an artificial rock in her brown outing-flannel Indian dress, Jean drifted off in a daydream in which Johnny was saying, and she was replying, Why, yes, Jean, I’d like to go to the Girls’ Association Dance with you and don’t worry about transportation. I can get the car. Oh, Johnny, that will be wonderful! That’s all right, Jean. I am looking forward to going to the dance with you.

  If only it would happen that way.

  It seemed to Jean that the show had scarcely begun when the bats were leaping and twirling eerily through the moss-hung trees. She pulled herself out of her daydream long enough to admire the effectiveness of the glittering fingernails, which were her responsibility. And then it was time to slip through the side door and around to the dressing room.

  The bats, breathless from dancing, came crowding into the dressing room and flung themselves down on the benches. “How did we look from out front?” someone asked Jean.

  “Eerie. Just the way you should look,” answered Jean, holding out her box. “Fingernails, please.”

  “I think we should wear black leotards,” said another girl. “Whoever heard of a chartreuse bat?”

  “Maybe you are right,” agreed another girl. “Don’t you think so, Jean?”

  “What?” asked Jean, who had been thinking about Johnny.

  “Don’t you think black leotards would look better?” repeated the girl.

  Jean was flattered to have her opinion asked. “No,” she said, after considering the matter. “All-black costumes in the dim light would not be nearly as effective. Fingernails, please.”

  “I guess you are right,” mused the bat.

  Plainly the bats were in no hurry to part with their fingernails. “Fingernails, please,” said Jean.

  “Can’t we wear them awhile?” pleaded a bat, twinkling her fingers. “I have always wanted to have really long fingernails, but my mother won’t let me. She’s so mid-Victorian about things like that.”

  “No,” said Jean, feeling desperation growing within her.

  Girls from other acts were coming in to change their costumes, and the dressing room was once more a scene of confusion. Each girl wanted to discuss her part with anyone who would listen. Jean looked into
her box. She had collected fingernails from not more than half a dozen bats.

  Jean made a decision. If she was ever going to ask Johnny to go to that dance, she had to do it now. That very minute. She set her box on a bench, stepped up on the bench, clapped her hands, and as the voices subsided and she had attention for an instant, she announced resolutely, “All bats will deposit their fingernails in this box at once. Mrs. Rankin’s orders.”

  I am not acting like me at all, Jean marveled, as she hopped off the bench and pushed her way out of the dressing room. That was the thing to do, she decided—go right on not acting like herself. Be somebody else for a change. She ran down the hall and up the steps to the area backstage. She heard the cowboys singing and caught a glimpse of their campfire, red electric bulbs under crumpled paper this time, instead of a wastebasket, and saw their horses standing in the background. A ripple of laughter went through the audience as the horses stepped out of the shadows and began to dance. But Johnny—where was Johnny?

  “Only members of the stage crew are supposed to be backstage,” someone reminded Jean.

  Jean paid no attention. She had to find Johnny. Now. She tripped over a prop and as she bent to rub her leg, she saw Johnny leaning against the wall in the wings toward the front of the stage, waiting for his cue. While she made her way around the artificial rocks that had been removed from the stage after the Indian number, the cowboys and horses finished their act and after the curtain had been drawn, trooped into the wings.

  Jean got around the last rock, stood in front of Johnny, looked him straight in the eye, and in her determination spoke almost belligerently. “Johnny, will you go to the Girls’ Association Dance with me?” This was not the way she had meant to sound at all, but at least her tongue was free of the weight of those words she had carried about with her all through rehearsals.

  “Narrator!” bellowed Mr. Kohler, from the rear of the auditorium. “We are wasting time! Where is our narrator?”

  Johnny grinned at Jean and tweaked a lock of her hair before he answered, “Sure, Jean. I’ll go with you.” Then he turned on the microphone and filled the auditorium with his voice.