Jean and Johnny Read online

  “I’ll have a pot of hot coffee waiting for him when he gets home this afternoon,” volunteered Jean.

  “That’s my good girl.” Mrs. Jarrett smiled at her younger daughter. “Have you thought what you are going to serve in the way of refreshments this evening?”

  Jean was happy to have the conversation turned to the evening that lay before her. “I had thought of that dessert made of chocolate cookies with whipped cream between, because it is supposed to stand awhile before it is served, and I could make it after lunch,” she said, as Sue began to wash the breakfast dishes. “Or is that too expensive?”

  “I think we can manage.” Mrs. Jarrett opened a cupboard, took down a canister, and pulled out some of the housekeeping money, which she handed to Jean. “This should be enough. You might even buy a small jar of maraschino cherries, too.”

  “Thank you, Mother,” said Jean. “I’ll make enough so we can have some for supper, too.” It did not seem right to use so much of the housekeeping money for herself and Johnny.

  “And, Jean,” Mrs. Jarrett continued, “be sure to plan some way to entertain him. You might get that old Chinese checker set out of the garage and set it up on the coffee table.”

  “Oh, Mother,” protested Jean. “Nobody plays Chinese checkers anymore. That went out with bustles.”

  “Not quite,” said Mrs. Jarrett. “Johnny doesn’t have to play if he doesn’t want to, but it might make things easier if you had something on hand in case you need it.” Mrs. Jarrett set her empty coffee cup on the drainboard for Sue to wash. “I hope Johnny has a good time this evening. I am so glad boys are beginning to come to the house.”

  Jean felt that her mother’s use of the plural was a little optimistic.

  “What are you going to do today, Sue?” asked Mrs. Jarrett.

  “Straighten our room and then go downtown to the main library to gather material for my term paper,” answered Sue. “‘Should Capital Punishment Be Abolished?’”

  “I didn’t know high-school students were still abolishing capital punishment,” remarked Mrs. Jarrett, as she opened the back door. “Well, good-bye, girls. I’ll try to catch the five thirty-three bus so we can have an early supper.”

  “Good-bye, Mother,” answered Jean. “I hope you sell lots of remnants.”

  Jean set to work cleaning the living room and dining room, and soon discovered it was much more fun to clean house for a boy than for her family. She forgot about the weather and set about trying to make the living room attractive. She ran the vacuum cleaner and used an attachment to remove Dandy’s hair from the chair he slept in when no one was looking. At ten o’clock she turned on the radio to hear the Hi-times broadcast and sat, toying with the vacuum-cleaner attachment, lulled into a daydream by the smooth flow of Johnny’s voice. It was too bad the program wasted time playing records—she would much rather listen to a full fifteen minutes of Johnny.

  The day grew so dark that Jean had to turn on the light to dust when Hi-times was over. She had not realized the shabbiness of the furniture until now, when she tried to see her house through Johnny’s eyes. She turned the cushions of the couch to find the least worn sides. She scrubbed the soiled spot on the back of her father’s favorite chair with ammonia and water and then shoved the chair over a thin spot in the carpet. Her father should not object just this once, since he was going to spend most of the evening in the breakfast nook anyway. She dusted with unusual thoroughness, remembering to wipe off the windowsills and the rungs of the dining-room chairs. Dustcloth in hand, she paused to look critically around the room. It was comfortable, even if it was shabby, but it needed something to brighten it, something to divert the eye—Johnny’s eye—from the walls in need of a fresh coat of paint. She wished she could think of a way to hide the crack in the plaster over the door into the hall.

  Jean went to the bathroom at the rear of the house and looked out into the yard in hope of seeing a few flowers that she could cut. The day was even more forbidding than she had realized. The small lawn was sodden, and the few geraniums along the fence were beaten down as if they would never have the courage to rise again. Juncos had stripped the berries from the cotoneaster in the corner of the yard, so there was no hope of creating an interesting arrangement from a few of its branches. Then Jean remembered her mother’s African violet on the kitchen windowsill. Its fuzzy green leaves and purple blossoms would make a spot of life and color.

  Jean carried the African violet into the living room, where she tried it in front of the mirror over the mantelpiece, on the coffee table, on a lamp table, and finally back on the mantelpiece, where it stayed because, reflected in the mirror, it was almost as good as having two plants.

  “Oh, Johnny, oh, Johnny, dum de de dum,” Jean hummed, as she turned the plant so the most blossoms would show. Probably her mother was right about the Chinese checker set, even though Johnny might think it terribly old-fashioned of them to keep the game around. If she found conversation difficult—not that she would with a boy like Johnny, but if she did—she could casually make the first move, smile at Johnny, and say, “Your turn. Isn’t it a quaint old game. My father simply adores it and insists we keep a set in the living room all the time.” Or something like that. The more Jean thought about it, the more certain she became that this was exactly what she would have to do, except that she would have to omit the line about her father’s adoring Chinese checkers. Conversation with her whole family within earshot might be difficult. She would like to spend the evening talking to Johnny, getting to know him better. She particularly wanted to find out why he had asked her to dance that evening in December, but this sort of conversation would be impossible, unless her father happened to watch a good noisy Western on television and they could talk under cover of gunfire from the breakfast nook.

  Jean shoved Dandy, who appeared restless, out the back door into the storm and let him in again a few minutes later. Then as she dragged the dusty checker box out of a pile of cartons in the garage, she found another worry nagging at her. Because her father had to get up at five o’clock in the morning on workdays in order to eat breakfast and be at the post office by six, he was inclined to yawn, sometimes rather noisily, by nine thirty in the evening. Wouldn’t it be dreadful if he started yawning from the breakfast nook while she and Johnny were talking? She was positive that Johnny’s father, whom she pictured as a tweedy commuter with a briefcase, never yawned.

  When Sue had not come back from the library by lunchtime, Jean prepared herself a peanut-butter sandwich, poured herself a glass of milk from a carton, and ate her chilly lunch standing beside the floor furnace with her skirt ballooned out by the hot air.

  After lunch she put on her sneakers and raincoat to go to the market to buy the chocolate cookies, whipping cream, and maraschino cherries. The rain slanted against the street in sheets and she had to leap the gutters, which boiled with muddy water rushing down from the hills. She thought sympathetically of her father, his mail pouch protected by the cape on his black raincoat, who had been walking in this weather all morning. For herself she did not care. She felt exhilarated by the bad weather and even found a childish pleasure in getting her sneakers wet. What difference did it make? By evening it would all be over, and when Johnny arrived the stars would be out and sparkling through the atmosphere that was now being so thoroughly washed. It almost seemed as if the whole world was being washed clean for Johnny. In the market she smiled radiantly, for no reason at all, at the boy who packed her groceries in a bag, and was surprised when he smiled back. Smiling at a boy was not so difficult after all.

  Jean enjoyed puttering around the kitchen preparing dessert for Johnny. She stacked the cookies carefully with layers of whipped cream between, frosted them with graceful swirls of more whipped cream, and topped each small tower with a red cherry. She made five servings, three for her mother and father and Sue to eat for supper, and two for herself and Johnny later in the evening. She would be too excited to eat dessert with her family anyway.
>
  When the kitchen clock told her it was almost time for her father to come home, Jean got out the percolator, measured coffee and water into it, and set it over one of the burners on the gas stove. While she waited for the coffee to perk, she leaned on the windowsill of the breakfast nook and scanned the sky for even one light spot in the dark clouds. It was a soggy, soggy day and for the first time Jean began to wonder if it really would clear up before eight o’clock. The coffee began a few tentative eruptions into the glass percolator knob before it settled into a rapid perk. Come on, weather, thought Jean intently. Clear up, clear up, clear up for Johnny.

  The kitchen was filled with the fragrance of hot coffee, and Jean, who timed coffee by her sense of smell rather than by the clock, turned down the heat under the percolator. Her father should be home by now. Clear up, clear up for Johnny, she went on thinking. Through the window she saw Sue, her umbrella held low against the wind, hurrying up the driveway, and hastened to open the back door for her.

  “M-m-m, hot coffee!” exclaimed Sue, handing her wet umbrella to Jean, who thrust it into the sink to drip. “I’m starved. I skipped lunch because everything cost so much downtown. Where’s Daddy?”

  “He hasn’t come home yet,” answered Jean, thinking that the cold air had made Sue’s face glow until she was actually pretty. “How would you like me to make you a delicious peanut-butter sandwich, specialty of the house?”

  “Would you?” asked Sue gratefully, as she glanced at the kitchen clock. “He shouldn’t be this late even if the weather is awful.”

  “At least all the dogs that don’t like mailmen will be inside on a day like this,” observed Jean, spreading peanut butter with a lavish hand. “Want some coffee with your sandwich?”

  “Love it.” Sue removed her wet coat and hung it on a corner of the kitchen door so it would dry over the linoleum. Then she clasped both hands around the hot cup Jean handed her. “This feels good. My hands are practically numb, they are so cold.”

  “Get the information for your paper?” Jean cut the sandwich diagonally and laid it on a plate.

  “Enough to make a good start, even though the book I need most is out,” answered Sue, carrying the sandwich and coffee into the breakfast nook. “And, Jean, you will never guess who I ran into in the reference room!”

  “The reference librarian?” guessed Jean, joining her sister at the breakfast table with a cup of milk flavored with coffee.

  “Silly,” said Sue. “No. Kenneth Cory. I hadn’t seen him for ages. Not since he moved out of the neighborhood.”

  “You mean Old Repulsive?” The words escaped Jean’s lips almost involuntarily. The expression that crossed Sue’s face made her instantly regret that she had recalled the nickname the neighborhood children, with the cruelty natural to childhood, had once given this boy.

  “Yes, Old Repulsive. Only he isn’t anymore,” said Sue. “I almost didn’t know him at first. You know how he used to have buck teeth with bands on them? Well, his teeth are straight now. And his skin isn’t all blotchy the way it was when he was in high school, either. And he wears a crew cut, so his hair doesn’t stick out like porcupine quills the way it used to.”

  “Where does he live now?” asked Jean, more from politeness than from interest.

  “His family moved up into the hills,” answered Sue. “He’s going to the university now. He’s going to be an entomologist.”

  “Is that the study of bugs or words?” asked Jean. “I never can remember.”

  “Insects,” answered Sue.

  This confirmed Jean’s feelings about Old Repulsive. He was exactly the kind of boy she would expect to study insects.

  “He talked to me quite a while,” said Sue, and added almost shyly, “I think he likes me.”

  “Do you want him to?” Jean hid her dismay upon realizing that her sister was so eager to have a boy like her that she would snatch at this one.

  “Yes,” said Sue thoughtfully, “I do.”

  “I hope he does like you.” Jean kept the stiffness she felt out of her voice. How fortunate she was to have a good-looking boy like Johnny like her. There was something pathetic about Sue’s eagerness to make Kenneth sound attractive, as if perhaps she wanted to catch up with her younger sister.

  The girls heard a car turn into the driveway. Jean, glad to have the disturbing conversation about Old Repulsive interrupted, got up to set the coffeepot back on the burner to reheat.

  “What happened to you?” both girls asked their father as soon as he opened the back door.

  Mr. Jarrett removed the black raincoat and handed it to Sue, who carried it into the bathroom to drip into the tub. “It was that little lady near the end of my route,” he said, stooping to pull off his rubbers and to pat Dandy, who had come running, his half a tail wagging, at the sound of his voice.

  “The one with the son in New York who never writes?” Jean took a cup and saucer out of the cupboard.

  “Yes,” answered Mr. Jarrett. “She came out on the porch in this rain to ask if I was positive I didn’t have a letter from New York for her. She was so sure she would get one today. She said she had a hunch.”

  “She says that every day,” said Sue, coming out of the bathroom.

  “I know.” There was regret in Mr. Jarrett’s voice, and his daughters knew he would have liked to bring the lady a letter from her son every day. “She was so disappointed that when I got back to the post office I looked around and sure enough, there was a letter for her from New York. Airmail. I got to thinking about this poor woman living all alone and spending the whole weekend wishing she had that letter. So when I left the office I drove out to her house and gave it to her. I wish you could have seen her face when she saw that return address.”

  Jean and Sue smiled affectionately at their father. “We might have known,” said Sue. “Last week it was the lady who was watching for the colored slides of her trip to Europe, because she was having company that evening and wanted to show them.”

  “And the week before it was the girl watching for the letter from the sailor in Okinawa,” added Jean, pouring a steaming cup of coffee for her father.

  “It was a small thing to do, and it made her happy. I only wish it had been a thicker letter.” Mr. Jarrett accepted the coffee with a grateful smile for Jean. “Are you ready for that young man of yours?”

  “Yes,” answered Jean. “Now if the weather will just clear up before tonight.”

  But by the time Mrs. Jarrett came home from work it was obvious that the storm would not only continue but would probably grow worse. Squalls of wind dashed rain against the living-room and dining-room windows. Rain gurgled out of the gutters on the roof, and drops fell down the chimney and plopped into the cold ashes in the fireplace. The branches of the trees that lined the street bowed and lashed and tossed.

  “I hope the roof doesn’t leak.” Mrs. Jarrett sounded worried. Their roof, as they all knew, was old, and although Mr. Jarrett had patched it last summer, it needed reshingling.

  Jean began to be uneasy. Perhaps Johnny would not be able to come after all. She listened for cars on the street, and it seemed a very long time before one passed. A branch torn from a tree blew against the house. At the back of her mind was the worry that she was not attractive enough or interesting enough for a boy to come through a storm to see. Don’t be silly, she told herself sternly. “Neither rain, nor snow, nor heat, nor gloom of night…” Now she was being even sillier. Johnny was not a mailman.

  Jean tried to shut out the fear that the telephone might ring and it would be Johnny breaking the date. She wondered if Elaine and Maxine had had fun marketing for their supper and how many Greek olives they had had money for when everything else had been purchased. She wondered if Elaine missed her and if Maxine liked avocados as much as she did.

  When supper was over and the dishes washed, Jean took one last reassuring peek into the refrigerator at the two desserts she had saved for herself and Johnny. So far he had not telephoned to break the dat
e, so maybe everything was going to be all right after all. She went to her room to change her dress.

  Sue was already sitting at the table with a pile of books and notes in front of her. “Term paper,” she said.

  “May I extend my sympathy?” asked Jean, who admired her sister for starting her term paper in the middle of the semester. She changed into her best blouse and a bright cotton skirt. She brushed her hair and carefully arranged her bangs. The rain was still beating against the windows. “Isn’t this a terrible night?” she said, wanting and yet not wanting to discuss with Sue the possibility that Johnny might be kept home by the weather.

  “Mm-hm,” murmured Sue, her head bent over her notebook. A blast of wind seemed to shake the house.

  Jean tiptoed out of the room. In the living room she found her father kneeling on the hearth, starting a fire in the fireplace.

  “I thought this might be a good time to get rid of some of the cartons and a couple of orange crates that were cluttering up the garage,” Mr. Jarrett said. “They won’t last long, but I thought a little fire might brighten things up.”

  “Good idea, Daddy.” Jean could not help being touched. This was her father’s way of showing that he, too, was pleased that a boy was coming to see one of his daughters. The papers and cartons caught fire, making the room seem more pleasant and the storm less threatening. While Mr. Jarrett broke up the orange crates, Jean sat down on a chair near the front door, got up, and moved to the couch. She did not want Johnny to look through the glass door and see her sitting there as if she couldn’t wait to open the door. She looked around the room at the fire, the African violet blooming cheerily on the mantel, the Chinese checker set waiting on the coffee table, and was satisfied. Their house might be small, but it was homelike—tonight one could even call it cozy—and no one would notice the crack in the plaster or the worn places in the carpet. Her father, who was outdoors so much, was better-looking than most men his age and no one would ever guess, looking at her mother, that she had stood on her feet all day selling remnants.