Jean and Johnny Page 3

  If the change that five minutes with a boy brought about in Jean was strange, the change that the same five minutes brought about in Elaine was even stranger. While Jean was content to daydream about the real live boy, Elaine prepared to organize. Jean discovered this the Saturday evening after the girls had carried the wreaths into the clubhouse.

  Because Mr. Mundy was part owner of a plumbing business and for the sake of his business belonged to a number of clubs and service organizations, the Mundys led an active social life. They often went out on Saturday evening and, rather than leave Elaine at home alone, they usually invited Jean to keep her company. These evenings had fallen into a pattern that both girls enjoyed. Jean arrived late in the afternoon, sometimes with her pajamas and toothbrush, if the Mundys expected to be out late. Mrs. Mundy gave them some money to buy the ingredients of their own dinner. The two girls walked to the nearby shopping center to plan their menu and to market, studying prices and trying to buy as many of their favorite foods as possible. There were three rules in their private game: except for seasonings they must not use anything in the Mundys’ cupboards or refrigerator for their meal, they could not add any money of their own to the sum Mrs. Mundy had given them, and they must spend every penny of this sum. To accomplish this required careful figuring on little slips of paper. On this Saturday they returned to Elaine’s house with two pork chops; one large avocado, which was a great bargain because it was bruised; two artichokes; a papaya, which they selected because neither of them had ever tasted this fruit; and, to use up the last pennies, three Greek olives from the delicatessen. The third olive they would meticulously cut in two.

  “You lucky girls!” exclaimed plump Mrs. Mundy when she saw the groceries. “The calories you can consume and not gain an ounce.” She tugged at her skirt as if she felt it might be too tight, kissed both girls lightly on the cheek, and said, “Have a good time and don’t forget to go to bed. We should be home by midnight.”

  “We don’t want to see the bedroom light go off as we drive up the driveway,” said Mr. Mundy. “And don’t forget to wash the dishes.”

  “We always wash them, Dad,” said Elaine, “unless we burn something and have to soak the pan.”

  “Jean, do you mind if I tell you something?” Elaine asked when her parents had left and the girls had set about preparing their meal. She continued, regardless of whether Jean minded or not. “You should wear your bangs shorter.”

  “My bangs?” repeated Jean, putting her hand to her forehead.

  “Yes,” said Elaine. “Sometimes you let them get too long and then you go around sort of peering out from under them.”

  “I do?” Dismayed by this picture of herself, Jean brushed her bangs away from her forehead.

  “Yes. You are the gamin type and you should wear them short,” said Elaine, unwrapping the pork chops.

  Jean laughed, amused at hearing Elaine speak in fashion-magazine language. “I thought a gamin was a ragged little boy.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Elaine impatiently. “Sort of little and…well, you know. And another thing—do you have to wear your glasses all the time?”

  “I’m pretty nearsighted,” said Jean. “Anyway, I don’t mind them too much anymore. They have become a part of me.”

  “But the point is, you could get along without them in the halls at school without actually walking into the wall,” Elaine said. “And you want to look your best the next time you see the boy. You’re lucky you don’t squint, the way some people do when they take off their glasses.”

  Jean giggled. “Without my glasses I’m not sure I could tell him from the principal.”

  “Don’t be silly. Of course you could.” Elaine was very positive. “For one thing the principal is about six inches shorter.”

  Jean cut the stems from the two artichokes. “Oh, Elaine, what difference does it make? He won’t even remember me.”

  “Of course he will remember you,” said Elaine. “He danced with you, didn’t he?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it dancing,” said Jean, “but he did have a good view of the top of my head. And you know something? I still can’t remember what he looked like. I mean—it all happened so fast and I was so surprised, I felt confused.”

  “I remember,” said Elaine.

  Jean laid down the paring knife and the artichoke she was trimming. “Elaine, what difference does it make? The whole thing was a horrible mistake. He will never look at me again, even if he does remember me—and I almost hope he doesn’t. He probably just asked me to dance because he felt sorry for me or something.”

  “He didn’t feel sorry for me,” Elaine pointed out. “Anyway, I don’t think boys ask girls to dance because they feel sorry for them.”

  Jean was silent, She was turning over in her mind, as she had so many times since the incident, the possible reasons why the perfectly strange boy had asked her to dance. And why he had chosen her instead of Elaine. It might have been better if he had asked Elaine, who at least knew how to dance because she had joined the junior high school dancing class when she was in the seventh grade. Jean had not been able to, because at the time the Jarretts could not spare the nine dollars that the class cost. But perhaps Elaine was right about the glasses. Maybe she could get along without them between classes. If one boy had noticed her, perhaps another boy might come along….

  Elaine gave Jean little time for daydreaming. “Now the first thing you have to do,” she said, as she stood with a fork poised over the sizzling pork chops, “is to learn to dance. After dinner we can play some records and I’ll show you what I have learned. We can practice all during Christmas vacation. After all, if the boy asked you once, he might ask you again and”—Elaine paused significantly—“he might have a friend.”

  So that was why Elaine was taking such an interest in Jean’s future. Jean carefully slipped the skin from the avocado, leaving the fruit as smooth as green velvet. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to practice,” she said, “not that anything will ever come of it.”

  And so Jean practiced dancing under Elaine’s direction during the rest of Christmas vacation. Step, step, slide, slide, step, step. “This is the basic step,” Elaine explained, “but it is more fun with a boy.” Step, step, slide, slide, step, step. When Mr. Mundy saw what the girls were doing, he took an interest and insisted on dancing them around the living room a few times. The girls were polite about this, but they did not feel he was much help. His dancing was so old-fashioned.

  Jean began to half wish that when school started the boy would recognize her, seek her out, and say something to let her know he had not minded those few minutes spent with her. She wouldn’t even expect him to ask her for a date. She would just like to know that a good-looking boy felt friendly toward her and would pay her a little attention beyond saying, “Hi,” in the halls. That was the trouble with her and Elaine and a lot of other girls—nobody paid any attention to them. Jean and Elaine had both had a left-out feeling since they had transferred from junior to senior high school. Northgate High School, the only high school in the city, seemed so big, so full of strange faces, that they felt lost in the crowds that swarmed the corridors.

  One evening when the practice session ended, Elaine sat down with her long legs over the arm of a chair, helped herself to a handful of peanuts, and began to eat them one at a time. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we got to be popular?” she asked. “Dates, committees, getting elected to offices, more dates…”

  “It’s funny,” said Jean thoughtfully, “but I don’t think I even want to be popular.”

  “Every girl wants to be popular.” Elaine was positive about this.

  “I don’t.” This time Jean was positive too. “I’m too—too quiet. I wouldn’t want to call a meeting to order or even read the minutes. And I would be miserable if I had to be a rally girl. Not that there is any danger of that.”

  “Not me,” said Elaine. “I would simply adore swishing a couple of pompoms around in front of the whol
e student body.” She added, with a note of regret, “Except that I am taller than all the yell leaders.”

  “I would rather be part of the crowd cheering for the team,” said Jean, nibbling a peanut.

  “And when the school puts on the variety show I would like to be right out in the middle of the stage, with everybody applauding madly,” said Elaine, “although I don’t know exactly what they would applaud me for. I can’t do anything special.”

  Jean giggled. “You could do that Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines tap dance we learned in gym. The one where we had to paw the ground with our feet.”

  Elaine leaned back against the arm of her chair and laughed. “I want people to applaud, not die laughing,” she said. Then she sighed gustily. “I guess I don’t have a thing to worry about. Nobody is going to ask me to swish a pompom in front of the rooting section or ask me to dance Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines in the variety show.”

  “I would like to be more…a part of things at school. And to have a boy like me,” said Jean, reaching for another peanut.

  “The trouble with us is that we are the salt-of-the-earth type,” said Elaine gloomily. “The type that gets married someday and makes some man a good wife.”

  Jean laughed at her friend’s gloom. “I don’t think that is such a terrible fate.”

  “Well, you know,” said Elaine vaguely. “Dishpans, mops…”

  “Diapers, budgets,” added Jean, thinking that all these things were part of the life she wanted for herself. That was one reason why she was struggling to learn to sew. Still, she understood what Elaine meant. They were girls whom no one would ever expect to dance a ballet, fly an airplane, run for Congress.

  “The only thing wrong with us,” said Elaine, summing up the situation, “is that we are a couple of late bloomers.”

  And so, on the day school started after Christmas vacation, Jean, with her bangs cut short and without her glasses, got off the bus with Elaine, walked up the blurry steps, and entered a fuzzy school building.

  “Come on, let’s go upstairs,” whispered Elaine. “If he’s a senior, his locker is up there, and if we walk along sort of casually we might see him.”

  Jean hung back. “Oh, Elaine,” she protested, without much conviction. “If I did see him I think I would die.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” said Elaine, taking Jean by the arm. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”

  Jean allowed herself to be led up the steps to the crowded corridor on the second floor. “Now act as if we were really going someplace,” directed Elaine, “and pretend you aren’t looking for anyone.”

  Jean laughed nervously. “I don’t have to pretend. I can’t see very far.”

  Timidly the two girls patrolled the length of the corridor.

  “Come on, let’s go back,” said Elaine when they had reached the end. “He must be up here someplace.”

  Jean knew it was useless to protest in the face of Elaine’s determination. And she did not really want to protest, because she wanted to see that boy again. Halfway down the length of the hall, not far from the trophy case, Elaine suddenly clutched her arm. “There he is!” she whispered.

  Jean’s nearsighted eyes swept the faces around her. “Where?” she asked.

  “Pretend you aren’t looking,” advised Elaine.

  “I’m not,” said Jean. “I can’t.”

  “Over there against the lockers,” whispered Elaine. “In the green plaid shirt.”

  The plaid shirt emerged from the blur and above it a face, a good-looking face that Jean had seen before and that she now felt too timid to look at for more than an instant. Blushing, she quickly looked away.

  Elaine, still clutching Jean’s arm, giggled nervously, and the two girls hurried to the stairs, where they ran down the steps to the first floor.

  Jean put on her glasses and found it a relief to be once more in a world with clear-cut edges. “Do you think he saw me?” she asked anxiously.

  “I don’t know, I think so,” said Elaine, with her nervous giggle. Then she sighed. “He’s so good-looking in that plaid shirt.”

  “I don’t care,” said Jean. “I’m going to pretend I never saw him before in my life. If he did see me and remember me, he didn’t bother to speak. I am just going to forget the whole thing.”

  Jean did not forget, however, and she found that with careful timing she could make her path cross that of the boy several times a day. Each time she snatched off her glasses just before they met, looked straight ahead, and wished she could control the blush that rushed to her cheeks. She wished…she wished a lot of things. She wished that she was the kind of girl people noticed; that she had lots of pretty clothes; that she was three inches taller, two years older, and did not wear glasses.

  Elaine did not forget either, and the two girls became tireless collectors of information about the boy. Every afternoon, as they rode home from school on the bus or, if it was not raining, walked so Jean could save her carfare, they compared notes and added to what they had jokingly begun to call his dossier, as if they were characters in a spy movie.

  Working together to compile the boy’s dossier gave Jean and Elaine the cozy feeling of sharing a delightful secret. Jean had not felt as close as this to Elaine since they were in the fourth grade and had formed the exclusive TEAJ Club. The letters stood for “The Elaine and Jean Club,” and it was so exclusive that they were the only members. They had printed the initials on badges, which they had worn to school. They enjoyed the attention the badges had attracted from the rest of the fourth grade, but when the attention diminished because their classmates began to suspect that the club had no other members, the club was abandoned.

  Jean filed away in her mind every scrap of information that she and Elaine gathered. She learned that the boy had five different plaid woolen shirts—the kind that had to be dry-cleaned. He usually bought the Dagwood Special instead of the regular cafeteria lunch, except on the days when he went across the street with a crowd of boys and ate a hamburger at the Shack.

  Elaine, who was bolder than Jean, usually had more information to add to the dossier. He took chemistry—she had seen him coming out of the lab. His name was Johnny Chessler—he had left his notebook on a table in the library, and she had peeked inside. (“Elaine, what if he had seen you?”) He knew lots of girls—wouldn’t you just know—and he spent a lot of time talking to them in the halls. He lived at 11 Madrone Lane, high enough in the hills so that his house had a view. His telephone number was Toyon 1-4343—she had looked it up in the telephone book. He had a close friend named Homer Darvey, who was much too short for Elaine (wasn’t that just her luck?) and was sort of funny looking, with glasses and crinkly hair, which he wore cut short. She had seen Johnny coming out of a sporting-goods shop with a pair of skis over his shoulder (probably he had rented them for the weekend), and he had driven off in a light blue Chrysler with a white top and license number ENK729. She was sure of the number because she had written it down.

  Strangely, once the girls knew Johnny’s name, they rarely mentioned it. Johnny was simply “he.” This was due partly to caution (they did not want any of the girls at school to know about their interest in Johnny) and partly to their childish pleasure in sharing a secret. Even at home Jean referred to Johnny, when she felt she had to talk about him, as “that boy who danced with me that time.”

  The girls discovered that by riding the bus to the end of the line and climbing four blocks up the hill, they could walk back past Johnny’s house, and this they did. Trying to act as if they were not even looking at the house, they observed it carefully. It was a modern house with a flat roof, and a carport instead of a garage. Because it was built on a steep lot, there was no front lawn but, in its place, a bank covered with low-growing shrubs. Although there was nothing the least bit funny about the house (it was, in fact, a house that both girls admired), Jean and Elaine always burst into a fit of giggles when they were safely past it. One Saturday they even made the walking of Dan
dy, a most surprised dog, an excuse for going past Johnny’s house in hopes of catching a glimpse of Johnny. Jean hoped that if Johnny happened to see them he would realize that Dandy had once been a show dog, even though half his tail was missing now.

  And with each shred of information that Jean stored away she found it more and more difficult to forget the boy. Johnny Chessler. Johnny. Jean squeezed her memory hard and brought back the remembered scent of soap and clean wool and, with it, the memory of his toe treading on hers. It was not what a girl could call a beautiful memory, but it was a memory that Jean clung to. It was the only memory concerning a boy that she had to cling to.

  From the school paper the girls learned that Johnny took part in the Saturday-morning broadcast, called Hi-times, that Northgate High presented over the local radio station. After that Jean, whose share of the Saturday housework was dusting and vacuuming the living room, always turned on the radio and listened, dust cloth in hand, for Johnny’s voice. When she heard him speak, introducing a record or interviewing a basketball player, she compared his voice with her memory of the voice that had said, “May I have this dance?” She hung on every word.

  Then, early in February, there came a few days of sudden spring weather. The sky was blue, with fluffy white clouds sailing above hills green from winter rains. During lunch period students sunned themselves on the high-school steps or strolled about, enjoying the warmth. It was the kind of day that made a girl wish she could throw away all her winter sweaters and skirts and go out and buy a whole new wardrobe of gay cotton dresses.