Fifteen Read online

  Promptly at six o’clock the doorbell rang. “Be still, my heart!” Mr. Purdy laid his hand over his heart and spoke in an exaggerated whisper.

  “Pop!” implored Jane, as she opened the front door.

  Never had Jane seen Stan look so attractive. He had a fresh, scrubbed appearance and was wearing a gray flannel suit, a white shirt that set off his tan, and a green tie, just the right color for his greenish eyes. Jane stood smiling at him with admiration and sensed at once that something was wrong. Stan was painfully embarrassed.

  “Uh…Jane.” Stan hesitated and then went on. “At the last minute Dad had to use the car on a business trip, and Greg and Buzz couldn’t get their cars either and…well, my cousin said I could…uh…take the Doggie Diner truck. I…I hope you don’t mind going in the truck.”

  Jane was engulfed in disappointment. Driving to the city on a special date in a truck, especially the Doggie Diner truck—how perfectly awful! But the expression on Stan’s face quickly made her stifle her own feelings. His eyes were pleading with her not to mind, to be a good sport about riding in the truck.

  Jane was filled with sudden sympathy for Stan. She could not let him down. “Of course I don’t mind,” she managed to say gaily. “What difference does it make? It has four wheels and a motor, doesn’t it? That’s all that really counts.” Her reward was Stan’s smile of relief. Darling Stan. What difference did it make what they rode in, as long as they were together?

  When she climbed into the front seat, Jane saw that Greg and Buzz were already sitting on cushions in the back of the truck. Buzz whistled when he saw her. “Hey, don’t you look nice!”

  “You’re looking sharp yourself,” Jane flashed back at him. It always helped a girl to have a boy whistle at her.

  The first stop was Marcy’s house, a new house in the hill section of Woodmont. When Marcy walked out to the truck with Greg, she stopped and laughed. “No!” she exclaimed. “We aren’t really going in the Doggie Diner truck! How perfectly marvelous!”

  Out of the corner of her eye Jane could see Stan’s face turn red. Shut up, Marcy, she thought fiercely; can’t you see Stan is embarrassed enough as it is?

  “Isn’t this a scream?” Marcy went on, as she climbed into the truck beside Jane. “Isn’t this the funniest thing you ever heard of?”

  If it were somebody else who was going to the city in the truck, Jane admitted to herself, she would think it was funny. But since it was Stan who had got them into this situation, she could not laugh. She smiled reassuringly at Stan, but his eyes were on the road. Sitting beside him made Jane feel pleasantly possessive and a little important, because her date was the driver. It made up for sharing the seat with Marcy, who was wearing an expensively casual tweed suit with a plain silk blouse and pumps with real high heels. Jane began to feel that her own dainty blouse with tucks and a round collar looked like a baby dress and that her suit was too obviously her best suit. Beside Marcy she felt as prim as…well, as prim as Miss Muffet.

  The last stop was Julie’s house, because Julie lived near the entrance to the freeway. When she came out to the truck with Buzz, Jane saw that she was wearing high heels, which made her taller than Buzz, and that her hands did not look natural in her white gloves. She has the Minnie Mouse look too, thought Jane, and she’s wearing a girdle because of her straight skirt. Poor Julie. Unaccustomed to her high heels, Julie turned her ankle, and Buzz caught her by the elbow.

  Please, please, Julie, thought Jane, don’t make fun of the truck. Don’t embarrass Stan. Julie shot Jane a questioning glance. “Hi, everybody,” was all she said, as she climbed into the back of the truck with Greg and Buzz. Jane relaxed. From now on, in spite of the truck, everything would be as wonderful as they had planned. Suddenly she was hungry, and she remembered that she had skipped lunch.

  Jane felt excitement rising within her as the truck left Woodmont and climbed the approach to the bridge that crossed the bay. Through the sunset haze the city at the opposite end of the span looked unreal to Jane. It seemed like an imaginary city, a magic city, a city that appeared from the mists and might disappear if she closed her eyes for a moment.

  “What shall we have to eat?” Buzz asked from the back of the truck. “Shark’s fins?”

  “How about carp?” suggested Greg.

  Leave it to Buzz to mention food right away, thought Jane, remembering the times he had robbed her of her cooking samples in the seventh grade. Then it occurred to her that goldfish were a kind of carp, but she could not believe they would really have goldfish for dinner. She pictured a platter of fried goldfish garnished with lemon and parsley. It was not an appetizing thought.

  “Or fried octopuses,” said Buzz.

  “You mean octopi,” corrected Marcy over her shoulder, and everyone laughed. Everyone but Jane. She was beginning to remember reading that the Chinese ate some strange things.

  “Anyway, don’t you mean squid?” asked Marcy.

  “Don’t forget bird’s nest soup,” added Stan.

  “Ugh!” This was Julie’s first contribution to the conversation.

  “It’s all right.” Greg was comforting. “They don’t use any old bird’s nest. They use special birds’ nests.”

  “How about thousand-year-old eggs?” put in Buzz.

  Jane, her appetite diminishing rapidly, suppressed a shudder.

  “What’s the matter, Jane?” Buzz asked. “Don’t you like eggs that are really ripe?”

  “Make mine three-minute eggs,” answered Jane, who had made up her mind not to let Buzz tease her.

  “Buzz, you mean hundred-year-old eggs,” corrected Julie. “And anyway, they aren’t really a hundred years old. I had to read a book about China for a book report, and it said the eggs were really only about a hundred days old. They just call them hundred-year-old eggs. And they aren’t rotten. They are salted or pickled or something. Anyway, the book said they are very good.”

  Isn’t that just dandy, thought Jane. Only a hundred days old.

  “I know what,” said Buzz. “Let’s have flied lice.”

  This was too much for Jane. “They don’t really eat lice, do they?” she cried in alarm.

  Everyone shouted with laughter. “‘They don’t really eat lice, do they?’” mimicked Buzz, and they all laughed again.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” whispered Stan. “He thinks he’s saying fried rice with a Chinese accent, but I have lots of Chinese friends in the city and I never heard anyone talk that way.”

  “Oh.” Jane felt the blood rush to her face. How could she be so stupid? Determined not to be laughed at again, she took a firm grip on her sophistication.

  “Which restaurant shall we go to?” Greg asked.

  “How about that one on the corner up over the shop with the Chinese furniture?” suggested Marcy.

  “That’s a tourist trap,” objected Buzz. “Let’s go to a real Chinese restaurant.”

  “Yes, one where the Chinese eat,” agreed Stan. “I know a good one at the far end of Chinatown. Hing Sun Yee’s.”

  “Hey, I know that one.” Buzz sounded enthusiastic. “I’ve eaten there several times. It isn’t very fancy, but the food is swell.”

  “Let’s try it,” said Greg.

  “Yes, let’s.” Jane added a small murmur to the enthusiastic agreement of the others. After all she had heard about bird’s nest soup and hundred-year-old eggs, she secretly thought a restaurant popular with tourists might have been a safer choice. Some of the talk was joking, she knew; but how much, she could not be sure.

  When they reached Chinatown, Stan was unable to find a parking space in the narrow crowded streets. Around and around he drove, uphill and downhill, creeping and stopping, creeping and stopping in the heavy traffic, past a housing project, barber shops, a mortuary, laundries, chair-caning shops, around and around, up and down, creeping and stopping.

  When at last Stan spotted a space in front of a hardware store, he said, “It will be a tight squeeze, but I think I can
make it.”

  I hope so, thought Jane fervently. Backward and forward Stan maneuvered the truck, an inch at a time, it seemed to Jane, or even a half inch at a time, until he finally had it parked.

  “Let’s go. I’m starved,” said Buzz. “Lead me to that bird’s nest soup.”

  Stan led the way down a dingy street unfamiliar to Jane. They passed an herb shop, its walls lined with drawers and its windows filled with glass jars displaying weird-looking specimens. What are those withered things, Jane wondered. Toads, newts, salamanders, pieces of unicorn horn? Don’t be silly, she told herself. They are probably just dried seaweed or something.

  They paused to look at a Chinese grocery with its bundles of thin beans, baskets of flat green peas, a tank of turtles, another of gaping catfish, dishpans full of clams and snails. I won’t look, Jane told herself. I just won’t look.

  A neon sign above the door marked Hing Sun Yee’s restaurant. In the window was a row of ducks that had been roasted whole and were now displayed hanging by their heads. As Stan guided Jane into the restaurant, the man at the cash register seized one of the ducks, tossed it onto a chopping block, and hacked it to pieces with a cleaver. Jane hastily looked away. The room, which had a cement floor and a low ceiling, was filled with marble-topped tables. Seated at several of the tables were elderly Chinese men who were wearing hats and eating with chopsticks.

  “Hi, Tom,” Stan said to the young waiter who came forward to meet them. “How about a booth?”

  “Sure,” said Tom. “Golly, Stan, I haven’t seen you for a long time.”

  “I live in Woodmont now,” Stan explained. “We don’t get over here very often.”

  “We’ll sure miss you at school,” Tom said, as he showed them into a booth.

  Jane entered first, then Stan, followed by Marcy, who slid into a chair beside him. Jane would have preferred to have Julie sit on the other side of Stan. When they were all seated at the round table, Tom handed them menus and left, pulling a red curtain across the entrance to the booth.

  Buzz picked up a cruet filled with brown liquid from the center of the table. “Good old beetle juice,” he remarked.

  It isn’t really beetle juice, Jane told herself. She spread the menu on the marble tabletop and looked at it in bewilderment. It was filled with Chinese characters and words that were unfamiliar to her. Chow yuke, fried wonton, polo pai gwat sounded terrible to her. From the chopping block she heard the crunch of little bones. Stop being ridiculous, she said to herself. American dishes such as hush puppies or her mother’s casserole, “It Smells to Heaven,” would probably sound distasteful to the Chinese. It was only a question of what you were used to.

  “Let’s each order a dish and then pass them around,” suggested Stan. “What would you like?” he asked, turning to Jane. He looked so enthusiastic that Jane longed desperately to feel the same way.

  “How about some flied lice?” Buzz asked wickedly, his eye on Jane.

  Determined not to let the others know how she felt, Jane made a face at Buzz and said, “I’d like chow mein.”

  “Oh, no,” protested Marcy, swinging her blond hair away from her face. “Only tourists eat chow mein.”

  I guess I said the wrong thing, thought Jane uncomfortably.

  “You should get something special here.” Buzz agreed with Marcy. “You can get chow mein anyplace.”

  “That’s all right,” said Stan. “If Jane likes chow mein, she shall have it.”

  Jane smiled gratefully at him. For Stan’s sake she must hide her misgivings. She could not let their first big date turn into a disappointment for him.

  Tom appeared with six handleless cups and a battered enamel pot filled with tea, which Stan poured while Tom wrote down the orders in Chinese characters. “Forks or chopsticks?” he asked with a grin.

  “Chopsticks,” the boys all said at once. Jane and Julie exchanged an anxious look before Jane bent her head to sip her tea. Good old familiar tea.

  Stan held up his cup. “Here’s to next semester.”

  “To next semester.” They all raised their cups and drank the toast.

  Tom set plates before them and carried in dish after dish of food—bowls of strange sauces, platters heaped with crinkled brown objects, mysterious mixtures of unknown foods. Jane, unable to identify even her own order, glanced across the table at Julie, but Julie did not appear to be worried. Everyone was looking at the bowls and platters with anticipation. Everyone but me, thought Jane miserably. The memory of the herb shop and the produce market floated through her mind. Whacking, crunching sounds came from the chopping block. Jane struggled to subdue her imagination.

  “Shrimp roll!” exclaimed Julie. “I adore it. It’s practically my favorite food.”

  “Here’s your flied lice, Jane.” Buzz handed her a dish.

  “Thanks. I can hardly wait.” Jane managed to put a note of gaiety in her voice and helped herself to one spoonful. At least she knew it was rice. That was something. As the dishes were passed around, she served herself the smallest possible portions and hoped the others would not notice. One dish, especially strange looking, made her pause, however. It was a thick red sauce in which floated pieces of onion, green pepper, and what appeared to be tiny brown hands. “What’s this?” she asked lightly, as if she were merely curious.

  “Sauce for the wonton,” Greg explained.

  “Oh,” said Jane. That did not tell her much. Jane ladled a small spoonful onto her plate. Now if she only knew which was the wonton, and should she pour the sauce over it or dunk the wonton in the sauce? And what on earth could those floating things be that looked like little brown hands?

  When everyone was served, Buzz picked up the cruet again and poured some of the soy sauce over his rice. “Have some beetle juice,” he remarked, as he handed the cruet to Jane.

  Telling herself it couldn’t really be beetle juice, Jane cautiously poured two drops on her rice. Well, she thought, now I’ve got to start eating. She watched the others pick up their chopsticks and tried to hold hers the same way. She picked up a few grains of rice, but she could not control the bamboo sticks and the rice dribbled back to her plate. She took a firmer grip and tried to pick up a piece of green pepper from the wonton sauce. It slipped from between the sticks. Telling herself this could not be so difficult—millions of Chinese ate with chopsticks every day, didn’t they—she tried again, got a tenuous hold on the pepper, and raised it from her plate toward her mouth. The chopsticks separated and the pepper went sliding down the front of her blouse into her lap.

  How awful, Jane thought, as she picked up the pepper with her fingers and slipped it back onto her plate. With her paper napkin she scrubbed at the stain and succeeded only in smearing it through the sheer fabric onto her slip. Miserable, she glanced around to see if the others had noticed. Julie, who had laid down her chopsticks and was surreptitiously tugging at the top of her girdle, cast Jane a glance of sympathy, which Jane returned. Poor Julie, her girdle was cutting into her waist. Buzz and Greg were eating hungrily, and Marcy, her sun-bleached hair falling against one cheek, was talking to Stan as if she were alone with him.

  Jane studied her plate carefully for something familiar that was not dripping with red sauce and that did not look slippery. She settled on what she decided must be the shrimp roll that Julie liked so much. It was made of shredded lettuce, shrimp, and several unknown ingredients covered with a golden crust and cut in bite-sized slices. Concentrating on the shrimp and lettuce and trying not to think what else might be in it, she slipped one chopstick through the crust, bent over her plate, and popped the bit into her mouth. Instantly she was sorry. “Oh!” she gasped as tears filled her eyes, and she clapped her napkin over her mouth. The shrimp roll was unbearably hot.

  “What’s the matter?” Stan turned away from Marcy.

  Jane gulped and sipped her tepid tea. “I didn’t know it would be so hot,” she said. Because she didn’t want to let Stan down, she added bravely, “It was delicious, though.
”

  Buzz dipped into the red sauce and held up one of the little brown hands. “What do you suppose this is?” he asked.

  “Sh-h.” Marcy giggled. “You’ll frighten Jane.”

  Leave it to Marcy, thought Jane bitterly. If she wasn’t fooling Marcy she didn’t suppose she was making the others think she was having fun either. How awful could this evening get, anyway? Maybe someday she would look back and laugh and say, “I’ll never forget that awful night a bunch of us had dinner at Hing Sun Yee’s in Chinatown.” But this was not someday. It was now and she was miserable. Her head was beginning to ache, she could not enjoy the food, and, worst of all, she felt lonely and left out. Stan talked more to Marcy than to her. Not that she blamed him. Nobody could expect a boy to enjoy the company of a girl who hadn’t learned to like Chinese food, who couldn’t even pretend enthusiasm, and who spilled things all over her clothes like a two-year-old. Her first grown-up date was ruined and probably her friendship with Stan, too.

  Buzz grinned at Jane. “What’s the matter, aren’t you hungry?” he asked.

  Suddenly Jane was piqued with Buzz for teasing her about flied lice and beetle juice. Maybe Stan was losing interest in her, but she was not going to let Buzz get her down any longer. She looked him in the eye and said coolly, “It’s just that your appetite is so big it makes mine look small.”

  Buzz seemed taken aback at his failure to get a rise out of Jane, and the others laughed.

  Encouraged by Buzz’s reaction, Jane went on. “After all, Buzz, if you could eat my seventh-grade cooking samples, I’m sure you could eat anything, even million-year-old eggs.”

  This time everyone laughed at Buzz. “Okay, Jane, you win this time,” he said in a way that made Jane wonder how he would try to tease her next.