Jean and Johnny Read online

  “Hasn’t Johnny come yet?” one of the girls in the sewing class asked Jean one afternoon.

  “Johnny?” Jean pretended surprise. “Oh, I wasn’t waiting for Johnny.”

  Once Homer appeared alone. Jean could not avoid walking out of the building with him. “Where’s Johnny?” she asked.

  “Trying out for the variety show,” answered Homer.

  Jean remembered hearing the announcement of the tryouts in the morning bulletins for the past week. The show was to be built around the theme “Through the Years,” and any student or group of students who had an act could try out. Jean, who had no desire for the spotlight, had passed over the announcement without giving it any thought. Now her thoughts fell quickly into logical sequence: Johnny, variety show, costumes, Costume Club, the club’s new member as of the first thing tomorrow morning—Jean Jarrett! It was the most natural thing in the world.

  “What kind of an act is he trying out with?” Jean asked.

  “It isn’t an act exactly,” explained Homer. “They need someone to be the narrator. You know, sort of hold the acts together, and he is trying out for that part.”

  What sort of costume would a narrator wear? A circus ringmaster’s costume? A different costume for each act? Top hat, white tie, and tails? How handsome Johnny would look in evening clothes! “Don’t you want to be in the show?” Jean asked, because she felt she had to make conversation with Homer as they left the building. Boys like Homer never took part in variety shows.

  “I’m already in it,” said Homer. “I play a violin in the orchestra.”

  “That’s nice,” said Jean vaguely, as they reached the foot of the steps. “Well—good-bye.” She did hope Johnny would wear evening clothes.

  The next day Jean found Johnny and Homer waiting by the sewing-room door. Johnny told her that he had been chosen to narrate the variety show and she told him that she had been sure he would get the part and that since she was a member of the Costume Club, she would be seeing him at rehearsals. Everything, she felt, was working out very nicely indeed.

  Then there was one dreadful day when Jean, who had waited too long by the sewing-room door, was about to give up and leave when she saw Johnny and Homer coming toward her with another girl, a girl named Peggy Jo. Johnny, who was smiling at Peggy Jo, was engrossed in telling her something that required broad gestures.

  Jean felt a pang of pure despair. She now had a rival for her brief walk with Johnny, and that rival was Peggy Jo, who was tall, quiet, and beautiful, but a girl who wore her beauty carelessly as if it were of no interest to her. Her long fair hair was twisted into an untidy knot at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a baggy brown skirt and a tan suede jacket that needed cleaning. She looked, Jean thought, like a girl who would not bother to wash her face before going to bed. But for all her carelessness there was something about Peggy Jo that made people aware of her. What that something was Jean did not know, but she did know that she herself lacked this quality. That made it even harder to see Johnny walking with Peggy Jo.

  Jean was about to slip back into the sewing room, to allow Johnny to pass without seeing her, when Johnny looked directly at her. Jean was embarrassed to have him see her waiting for him when he was with another girl. She hesitated, not knowing how to handle the situation, and while she hesitated Johnny winked at her. He looked straight into her eyes and winked. And suddenly everything was all right again. That wink told her that Peggy Jo did not really matter, that he liked Jean, and that he could not really help it, because Peggy Jo came along and walked down the hall with him.

  Jean smiled at Johnny and walked out of the building alone. She wondered where Elaine was, and thought how much fun she and Elaine used to have talking over the events of their day as they walked home from school. It almost seemed as if she and Elaine were growing apart lately. Elaine seemed so busy—she had even managed to get a part in the variety show. A group of girls from her gym class planned to perform an Indian hoop dance and had asked Elaine to join them. It was scarcely a part to bring an applauding student body to its feet, but Elaine, a long-legged and enthusiastic Indian, was ostentatiously busy with rehearsals. Jean hoped that as a new member of the Costume Club she would not only see more of Johnny but also of Elaine.

  Then one Friday when Johnny and Homer had walked out of the building with Jean, Johnny turned to her and instead of saying good-bye, said, “Are you doing anything tomorrow night?”

  “Why…no,” admitted Jean.

  “I thought I might drop around awhile if you are going to be home,” said Johnny.

  “I—I would love to have you,” answered Jean, frantically trying to think what she could do with her family when a boy came to call. “I mean—I really would.”

  “I’ll see you around eight,” said Johnny.

  “That will be nice,” answered Jean, expecting him to ask where she lived.

  Johnny grinned. “So long,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.” Apparently he already knew where she lived.

  “So long,” said Homer.

  Jean wasted a second’s thought, as she did almost every day, in wondering what Johnny saw in an unimaginative boy like Homer. Then, elated, she hurried straight to Elaine’s house. “Guess what!” she burst out when Elaine met her at the door.

  “You have a date with Johnny!” guessed Elaine.

  It was blissful to be able to answer yes.

  “Come in and tell me everything. Absolutely everything!” said Elaine.

  “There isn’t an awful lot to tell,” admitted Jean, and told Elaine what little there was to tell.

  “Golly. He really asked you for a date. Now maybe there is hope for me.” Elaine did not try to conceal her admiration. “I was going to ask you over for supper tomorrow night, but now that you are busy, I think I’ll ask Maxine instead.”

  When Jean reached her own small house, she had no recollection of having walked there. She had been thinking about the house and how tiny it was and how awkward it would be trying to entertain Johnny with the whole family sitting in the living room. She walked into the bedroom, where Sue was sitting at their table studying several leaflets advertising dress patterns, the sort of leaflets given away at pattern counters in department stores.

  Jean could not wait to break the news. “Sue, guess what. Johnny Chessler is coming over to see me tomorrow night!”

  “Johnny Chessler?” exclaimed Sue.

  “Yes.” Jean could not help feeling indignant at the way Sue spoke. “Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “No. No, of course not,” Sue said slowly. “Was he the boy who danced with you that time?”

  “Yes.” Jean’s feelings were still slightly ruffled.

  “Oh. I knew you were interested in the boy who danced with you and I knew you talked to Johnny once in a while, but…Well, it just never occurred to me that they were the same boy,” Sue explained. “Johnny is in my English class and…I just never thought about you and Johnny together, is all.”

  Jean looked speculatively at her sister. Sue was such a quiet girl, it was not often easy to tell what she was thinking. Could it be, Jean wondered, that Sue liked Johnny herself? Poor Sue, it wasn’t going to be easy to have her younger sister dating first, especially since Sue had already said she wanted to meet a nice boy. Well, that was life.

  Sue studied a page of dresses designed in Paris. “I can’t picture anyone I know wearing these,” she remarked, and then said, as if it had been Jean’s date with Johnny that she had been thinking about all the time, “What are you going to do with him when he gets here?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Jean confessed. Then she lowered her voice and asked, “What am I going to do about Mother and Dad? There’s no place for them to go.” Tactfully she refrained from saying, “And you, too.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Sue, as if she had heard the unspoken words. “I can sew or study in our room. But I don’t know about Dad….”

  Once more Jean went over the h
ouse in her mind. A living room not much larger than a nine-by-twelve rug, a dining room that was practically part of the living room, two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen that was just a kitchen and not a family room like those pictures in house and garden magazines, a breakfast nook that showed how old the house was, because houses were not built with breakfast nooks anymore. That was all. It would help if the breakfast nook was a breakfast room, but it was not. It was so awfully…nooky.

  “Dad may be a problem,” agreed Jean, wishing that a rumpus room or a family room or any kind of extra space would suddenly attach itself to the house.

  “Maybe we could move the television set into the breakfast nook and pretend we wanted to see something during supper,” suggested Sue. “If we didn’t move it back, Dad might just happen to sit there and watch it.”

  “That won’t work,” said Jean, pleased that Sue was entering into her plans in spite of any feelings she might have about the date. “You know Dad won’t allow television during meals.”

  “I guess you’re right,” said Sue. “But don’t worry. We’ll think of something.”

  “We’ll have to,” said Jean, “but I don’t know what. I can’t expect Mother and Daddy to go to bed at eight o’clock just because Johnny is coming over to see me.”

  Sue pushed aside the fashion leaflets and smiled at her sister. “We’ll manage Dad somehow,” she said. “He may be strict in some ways, but underneath it all he is just an old softy.”

  “But you never can tell what he is going to be strict about,” Jean reminded her sister. “Look how he feels about babysitting.”

  Jean waited until suppertime to break the news to her mother and father. When everyone had been served she said as matter-of-factly as she could manage, “A boy named Johnny Chessler is coming over to see me tomorrow night.”

  “Why, how nice, dear,” said Mrs. Jarrett. “Chessler? I don’t recall hearing the name. What is he like?”

  “Well…” Jean hesitated, wondering how to describe a boy like Johnny to her mother and father. She did not know how to explain that Johnny was handsome and charming and all the things a girl would like a boy to be. “He—he is nice looking, with curly hair, and he wears the most beautiful woolen shirts, the kind that have to be dry-cleaned, and he is—oh, I don’t know….”

  “You are telling us what he looks like,” said Mr. Jarrett, “but what I want to know is, is he good enough for my daughter.”

  “Oh, Daddy,” said Jean with a nervous laugh. Her father was teasing, she knew, but she understood him well enough to know that beneath his banter was a serious note.

  “And what I want to know,” said Sue, “is how she is going to entertain a boy. We can’t all sit around the living room and stare at him.”

  Jean mentally thanked her sister for bringing up this touchy problem.

  “No young whippersnapper is going to drive me out of my house,” said Mr. Jarrett.

  The sisters exchanged a glance that said they understood their father was not entirely joking. “Now, Dad,” said Sue, “don’t start playing the heavy father.”

  “We’ll manage somehow,” said Mrs. Jarrett reassuringly. “Of course the girls will be entertaining boys and we will have to figure out a way for them to do it.”

  “I’ll stay in my room and study,” volunteered Sue. “I have to do it sometime this weekend and it might as well be then. That will remove me from the scene.”

  “Your father and I will want to meet him,” said Mrs. Jarrett.

  “Of course,” agreed Jean. “He would think it was peculiar if I didn’t have any family around at all.”

  Mrs. Jarrett sighed. “I do wish we could buy a larger house. Or at least build onto this one. Perhaps I should enter that contest I saw announced the other day.”

  “What is the prize this time?” asked Mr. Jarrett. “Not a live kangaroo like you thought you might win for naming that airline.”

  “I thought it was rather ridiculous at the time,” said Mrs. Jarrett. “The winner receives his weight in gold. Or rather the equivalent in money for writing the last line of a limerick about a new kind of home permanent.”

  Mrs. Jarrett’s family shouted with laughter. “You don’t have to enter a contest,” said Mr. Jarrett. “You are worth your weight in gold already.”

  “Have some more potatoes, Mother,” urged Jean. “Just in case you win.”

  “Every little ounce would help,” said Sue. “How about some more dressing on your coleslaw?”

  “Just don’t forget—I won the television set,” Mrs. Jarrett reminded her family.

  “But nobody has said what I am going to do with Johnny,” Jean said, bringing the conversation back to the original problem.

  “Just who is the fellow, anyway?” asked Mr. Jarrett.

  “A boy at school.” Jean resigned herself to answering questions of this sort from her father.

  “If he wants to call on Jean, I am sure he is a very nice boy,” said Mrs. Jarrett soothingly.

  “Do you know him?” Mr. Jarrett asked Sue.

  “Yes,” answered Sue. “He’s in my English class.” This seemed to mollify Mr. Jarrett. At least he did not ask further questions about Johnny.

  “But nobody has said what I am going to do with him.” Jean cast an anxious glance at Sue, who could be counted on to understand and help out.

  “We could all have a lively game of old maid or lotto,” said Mr. Jarrett.

  “Daddy!” Jean could not help sounding stricken. What a dreadful idea, suggesting that Johnny play old maid or lotto with her family. He would never want to come again.

  Mr. Jarrett patted Jean’s hand. “Don’t worry, daughter. I was only joking. Of course you may entertain your young man.” It sounded so quaint and old-fashioned, his saying “your young man.”

  “The breakfast nook,” said Mrs. Jarrett as Jean and Sue rose to clear the table. “It is the only place for us. We’ll move the television set in here before Johnny comes and after we meet him, we can come back here, and your father can watch his television programs while I work on a contest.”

  Jean and Sue exchanged a smile in the kitchen. “Whew!” mouthed Jean silently.

  “What are we having for dessert, Mother?” asked Sue.

  “Vanilla pudding,” answered Mrs. Jarrett. “There is a jar of strawberry preserves open. You might put a dab on top of each serving to give it a little color.”

  “Let’s call it blancmange,” suggested Sue. “It sounds so much more glamorous. When I used to read in Little Women about the March girls’ taking blancmange to Laurie when he was sick, I thought it must be a great delicacy.”

  “Why, so did I!” exclaimed Jean. “I felt terribly disillusioned to find out it was plain old vanilla cornstarch pudding.”

  “I suppose this boy is going to eat us out of house and home,” commented Mr. Jarrett, as the family began to eat the vanilla pudding, or blancmange.

  “That is just in the funny papers. At least I think it is,” said Jean, “but I suppose I should give him something to eat. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Jean thought it over. She had a vague notion that when a boy came to see a girl, the girl usually took him into the kitchen to raid the refrigerator. The Jarrett refrigerator, unfortunately, did not merit raiding. Vanilla pudding and cold meat loaf were hardly the sort of things a girl could offer a boy. And the milk…It was stored in half-gallon cartons that Mrs. Jarrett bought at the market, because she saved two and a half cents a quart, just as she bought butter in one-pound pieces because it cost five cents less than a pound of butter divided into quarters. Jean did wish they could have milk delivered in bottles from a dairy. It seemed to her that quartered butter and milk in bottles always looked so elegant in a refrigerator.

  “I think you should fix something ahead of time,” said Sue, who also must have been taking mental inventory of the Jarrett refrigerator. “Something you can whisk onto the table. That is what I would do if he were coming to see me.”

  “Wha
t table?” asked Jean. “Mother and Dad will be in the breakfast nook. Eating with a boy in the dining room is too formal.”

  “Serve it from a tray on the coffee table,” said Sue.

  “I think that is a very practical suggestion. Now don’t worry, Jean. I am sure it will all work out.” Mrs. Jarrett patted her daughter’s hand.

  Jean looked around the table at her mother, smiling at her so reassuringly; at her ruddy-complexioned father, who was so tenderhearted underneath his sternness; at Sue, who had helped her, even though it must hurt to have her younger sister have the first date. Jean was completely happy. She not only had a date with Johnny, she also had the most wonderful, understanding family in the whole world.

  Chapter 4

  Mrs. Jarrett, in galoshes and her wet-weather coat, stood by the drainboard enjoying a last-minute sip of coffee before she left for her day of selling yardage at Fabrics, Etc. “It is such miserable weather I doubt if we will be very busy today,” she remarked, “even though we are having a good sale on seersucker mill ends. There are some very good buys—pieces that would make up into sturdy pajamas for children.”

  Sue, who was stacking the breakfast dishes, looked out the kitchen window into the gray morning. “Poor Daddy, delivering mail in this awful weather.”

  “‘Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat—’” began Jean, as she carried her plate from the breakfast nook into the kitchen.

  “‘—nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,’” finished Sue and her mother in unison. Mrs. Jarrett plucked a couple of dead blossoms from the brightly blooming African violet on the windowsill.