New Year's Eve

  On the day he truly ran out of money, he stole what he needed from the girlfriend of his roommate. And that was so easy to do, he did it three more times. He got a kick out of thinking that the only thing he had learned to do well at his ivy school was steal. It was funny … right up to the moment his roommate caught him.

  It wasn’t easy, coming home a failure.

  For months he lay around staring at the ceiling. He was moving faster toward being an alcoholic than getting a job. He parents, bitterly humiliated that their only child was kicked out of Harvard, yelled at Christopher, and he screamed back, and things got worse and worse.

  He might have ended up in the gutter, except one day the previous summer, Emily Edmundson needed a ride and he happened to be there. He was a little drunk at the time. Or maybe very drunk. Definitely out of touch. Because he scared Emily enough that she jumped out of his car at an intersection and fled.

  When it was happening, his only worry was that somebody would hit his beautiful car.

  Later, sober, he had a lot more to worry about.

  Emily … physically afraid of him … how could that be? He was the kind of guy that girls had crushes on, and flirted with, and yearned for.

  Every night for weeks he saw Emily again in his mind: trembling fingers reaching for the seatbelt he had purposely hooked to make it hard to undo, her other hand ripping open the door. Her skirt flared up: pale green, with tiny silver dots. It was a graceful exit: she stepped out and started running without losing her balance or anything.

  Christopher was the one who had lost his balance.

  He was horrified to find how hard it was to back off the drinking.

  He got a job.

  Most days he managed to get home and have a Pepsi instead of stopping at a bar.

  Now and then he saw Emily. She always pretended she didn’t see Christopher, and she always walked a little faster.

  It was New Year’s Eve. A year and a half since he had left Harvard in shame.

  Christopher had a strong sense of the calendar turning. A new year, he would think. He wanted to prove he was a new person, too. His failures would not be repeated.

  He would kind of like to prove that to Emily.

  But how?

  If he cornered her, she’d probably yell for the police or something.

  So when Molly Nelmes ran into Christopher downtown, and they went to a movie together, and she told him about the big New Year’s Eve ball, he thought, I want to do that! I want to be a kid again and dance the New Year in!

  “I’m twenty,” he said, almost shyly. “I guess I can’t go.”

  “You can go with me,” said Molly, batting her eyes at him, and he was delighted. He had gone out with her during the past year, in his drunken stage, and as he recalled she had been a lot of fun.

  Tonight Christopher buttoned up his dress shirt and put on his tuxedo. It fit him again. Last year he had gained weight from all that beer; fat and disgusting at nineteen? Yuck. He hated being nervous. But there was a lot at stake.

  He had to launch the New Year the right way.

  No drugs.

  No drinks.

  No fighting.

  No fists.

  Emily would be there. Would the boyfriend let him within twenty paces? What was he going to say, anyway?

  His hands were sweaty, and he couldn’t remember where he’d left his car keys. Out of the refrigerator, he took the corsage for Molly. She said her dress was green, which reminded him of the simple cotton gown Emily had been wearing that night: soft mint, with soft folds. He had bought the most feminine bouquet he could think of: baby’s breath and ferns and stephanotis: creamy white, heavily scented bridal flowers.

  Okay, he thought, nodding, happy about the flowers.

  Okay, it’s going to be good.

  George was not wearing his cummerbund.

  “I checked you before we went out the door!” Kip wailed. “How could that have slipped by me, George?”

  George hunched down in the back seat next to Beth Rose. “It felt funny,” he said apologetically. “It was wide. It stuck up higher than a belt does and it cramped my ribs.”

  “You mean you left your cummerbund behind on purpose?” Kip said. She whirled in the front seat to glare at him. Visibility was low, however. There were ten dinosaurs in the way. Kip divided them, ducked between two tyrannosaurus rexes in gold Mylar, and faced George squarely with her toughest frown. “That beautiful black satin cummerbund, you purposely left at home? Just as you purposely sent Beth dinosaurs when any normal human being would send flowers?”

  “I didn’t think anybody would notice,” George said.

  “How could you think nobody would notice ten Mylar dinosaurs?” said Mike, driving too fast.

  “You’re driving too fast,” Kip said.

  “Listen!” Mike shouted. “I have no rear view mirror because it’s full of shiny pterodactyls! Any speed is too fast!”

  Beth tried to rein in her herd of dinosaurs by tightening on the strings. She already had a lap full, though, and there really was no way to clear the air of dinosaurs except by opening the windows and letting them fly into the night. I can hear it now, she thought. Look, dear, there’s a flock of dinosaurs outside the window.

  “Why did you bring them anyway, Beth?” Mike said. He rolled down the driver’s window, stuck his head out to check traffic on his left, and made a big, big deal over the three flakes of snow that landed on his face. “I mean, you could just have left the stupid balloons at home.”

  “Nobody ever sent me a dinosaur bouquet before,” Beth said.

  “Maybe your luck will hold,” Mike said grimly. “Maybe after tonight nobody will again.”

  George ran his fingers through his hair. George had had a buzz not too long ago, but he was growing it out. Eventually he would have nice curls. Now, however, he had bumps. The haircut was so bad that it didn’t even appear to be his hair with the bumps: he looked as if his skull was misshapen.

  Great, Beth thought. We’re a matched pair. I’m bald with doorknob ears, and his skull is bumpy.

  It wasn’t just the cummerbund that had been bothering George: the shirt wasn’t so comfortable either. He had untucked it When Kip demanded to know what had happened to the cummerbund, George explained that he had let Jamie wear it.

  “Jamie?” Kip screamed. “Jamie will use it to mop up popsicle drippings!”

  “I had to make it up to him about not going to a formal dance like you and me,” George said.

  “That’s if I let you come!” Kip stormed. “George, you cannot go to The Hadley. You don’t even look like a person.”

  Beth couldn’t stand it and intervened. “You look excellent, George. Relaxed. Casual. I like it.”

  George beamed at her. “Good. Can I take off my jacket, too?”

  “No!” his sister shouted. “You have to behave like a person tonight, George!”

  Mike just drove, fingers tight on the wheel.

  When nobody was yelling, the car was full of peculiar noises: the metallic rub of the Mylar balloons, static from a radio station not quite tuned in, the windshield wipers’ ceaseless clicking. Mike’s car was fairly old, and he didn’t care enough about it to care for it properly: it rattled, squeaked, banged, and whined.

  “I don’t care if it is my senior year,” Kip said, “I’m moving out of town. This Saturday night is going to be so humiliating I cannot possibly return to school on January second.”

  You’re humiliated? Beth Rose thought. I’m the one carrying the dinosaurs. “George,” she said, noticing for the first time, “what shoes are you wearing?” Her voice must have given Kip a clue, because Kip undid her seat-belt, crouched on her knees and leaned all the way over her seat to peer down at George’s feet. “George!” she screamed. “You’re wearing moccasins.”

  “Boat shoes,” George corrected. “I always wear ’em, Kip.”

  Beth closed her eyes.

  Kip got a grip on herself. “George,” she whispere
d, “this is a formal ball. You and I polished your dress shoes not an hour ago. They were shining. They were just right. Why did you take those lovely black shoes off?”

  George hunched down to avoid his sister’s wrath. “They were tight,” he said.

  Now Mike was laughing. He was trying to control it, and he had succeeded in controlling about fifty percent of his laughter, so that what came out were little bubbly gasps, as if he had indigestion.

  “If you think I am associating with you at this dance,” Kip said coldly, “you are wrong, George.”

  “Just because I’m wearing boat shoes?”

  Beth thought that was a perfectly good reason not to associate with George. Unfortunately, she was George’s date.

  Beth Rose could just imagine what Gary was going to think when she walked in with an armload of dinosaurs and George: boat shoes flapping, shirttails hanging, skull bumpy. And what other defects would be revealed in the bright lights of The Hadley?

  Gary always looked perfect. He prided himself on it. Whether he was wearing a pullover sweater with cords, or jeans and an old jacket, or a tuxedo for a ball, he would look perfect. He was that kind of person. Not only did he like clothing, but clothing liked him.

  “George shouldn’t be going to a New Year’s Eve ball,” Mike said, laughing for real now. He spoke exclusively to Kip, as if the two in the back seat were deaf. “He should go play miniature golf or something.”

  Mike was right. George would fit in at Hole Four on a miniature golf range: driving his orange ball through the Dutch windmill and heading on past the clown’s mouth.

  Kip said, “Well, of course, ten dinosaurs is enough that you can arrange them around your body for camouflage, Beth Rose. Nobody will know it’s you in there with your pterodactyls.”

  “If she has any sense,” Mike said, in a tone that implied he would drop dead if Beth Rose were to show any sense, “she’ll let go of the damn things when we reach The Hadley. They’re helium. They’ll go up to that great balloon park in the sky and stop bothering us.”

  Kip faced forward again, re-attaching her seatbelt with such force that she would have executed anything between the belt and the hook. “I apologize for this, Beth Rose,” she said formally. “If I had known I would not have suggested this.”

  “She knew what she was getting into,” Mike said. “She didn’t have to say yes. A sensible person would just have stayed home. And if she didn’t know before she got the dinosaurs, she certainly knew after the gorilla arrived what her night was going to be like.”

  As they drove beneath a street light, George’s face was momentarily illuminated. Between the light and the shadow Beth Rose saw George hunched against the glass on his side of the car. She had played that scene: resting a hot cheek against the cold to stop the telltale flush. Poor George. It must have sounded so clever to him—sending a gorilla with a dinosaur bouquet. And it must have seemed so minor to put on his comfy old dock shoes instead of the dress shoes.

  Mike laughed cruelly at George. George managed a laugh of his own. Was there any skill that elementary school taught more viciously? How to laugh back when they’re laughing at you. It counted more than arithmetic.

  Not that long ago, had she not gone all alone to The Autumn Leaves Dance? The only girl who did. Those first humiliating minutes she stood by herself while the chaperones pitied her. And then Gary rescued her.

  This is why, she thought.

  He saw my humiliation and could not bear it

  He never loved me. He’s a rescuer at heart, and there stood a girl to rescue.

  I am not a rescuer at heart. But it’s my turn.

  “Kip, don’t be such a killjoy,” Beth said. “I love these dinosaurs. You watch, everybody’ll want one. George and I will spend the evening selling off tyrannosaurus rexes to jealous dancers. And who cares if he’s wearing boat shoes? I dance barefoot, myself.”

  Mike snorted.

  Kip gagged.

  But George beamed at Beth, revealing two rows of sparkling braces complete with rubber bands. “Actually, I can’t dance,” he confided. “Kip’s been teaching me, but she says my legs are out of proportion to my arms and I’m like a reverse ape.”

  Mike laughed his head off. “A reverse ape?” he said.

  “Apes have little short bowed legs and long, long arms,” Kip said. “My brother, however, has long, long legs and little short bowed arms.”

  “My arms are not little and short,” George protested. He stuck forth his right arm to prove this, and sure enough, his arm was long enough to smack Mike in back of the head. Mike yelped, jerking the wheel in his surprise. They skidded slightly in the snow.

  “Sorry about that,” George muttered.

  “This is a side show,” Mike said to Kip. “They should charge admission.”

  Kip was shaking her head and moaning softly. “The only thing I can console myself with,” she said, “is that Gwynnie will be a bigger side show.”

  “I think we should arrange for a pre-midnight switch,” Mike said. “We’ll give Dumbo here to Gwynnie, and get Gary back for Beth Rose.”

  Chapter 6

  KEVIN PUT ON HIS Sunday jacket. He couldn’t find his white oxford shirt or his pre-knotted tie, so he settled for a green and gold striped pullover sweater he’d worn the day before to clay class. A small cloud of grey dust flaked off each time he moved, but Kevin figured it would all fall off before they reached The Hadley.

  He brushed his hair and his teeth and was very proud of his grooming.

  Pete felt he should have a decent jacket, but he had outgrown his and not yet grown into the next size hand-me-down. Several times he had spoken to his parents about this, but they did not feel it was important. Pete went into George’s closet. George did not have what you might call a large selection of formal wear, but Pete took this golden opportunity to wear George’s safari jacket. He stood in front of his sister’s full-length mirror and admired how the jacket hung, how the pockets—it had as many pockets as a jet has dials—were lined up waiting to be filled with good stuff like maps and compasses and survival food.

  Food. Now that was a good idea.

  Pete raided the kitchen, filling his pockets; you never knew when you might need to eat.

  The Oreo cookies crumbled at the bottom of a deep white pocket when he shoved two apples down on them, but he didn’t notice.

  Jamie, fresh from a tantrum over tuxedos, happily chose his new sweatsuit. Jamie rarely possessed anything new, what with three older brothers to give him their stuff, and he was in love with his sweatsuit. It was the brightest blue in the whole world, and it had the yellowest streak in the universe going down the side seams. With vast pride that he had been honored to keep watch over his big brother’s cummerbund, he fastened the wide satin around his waist. It covered him from his nonexistent hips to his armpits. He tightened it up with a couple of safety pins laboriously fastened. Over that he put Pete’s winter jacket (red and black hunter check) and their father’s best baseball cap.

  “Boy, we’re ready now,” Kevin said happily. “Somebody call a taxi.”

  Christopher started the car.

  It was not his wonderful classic red Corvette, which had been sold. His father had refused to pay the insurance when the roommate explained just why Christopher had been asked to leave college. No, this was an old Subaru: dented on the outside, faded and torn on the inside. It was not a car that rejoiced in cold weather, and it took Christopher several tries before the engine caught. He breathed a sigh of relief when it did. Driving to Molly’s, he hoped she would be ready at the door: if it idled more than a minute it stalled, and he’d have a terrible time starting it up again. He planned to park underground in the garage at The Hadley, where the temperature should be fairly moderate and the car might even begin the New Year by starting!

  When he stopped at Molly’s, Christopher’s mind was full of cars. Molly was pretty relaxed: she liked to laugh and would be amused by a car that had to be nursed.

&n
bsp; Molly’s stepfather opened the front door. “Hello there, Christopher,” he said cheerfully. “Happy New Year.”

  “Happy New Year to you, too,” Christopher said, unable to remember the stepfather’s last name. “Molly ready yet?”

  “Is she ever,” the stepfather said dryly. “I just hope you are.”

  Christopher, worrying about his car, said, “Well, as long as it doesn’t have to idle too long.”

  “There is nothing idle about Molly tonight.”

  This sounded like a joke, so Christopher chuckled, and the two stood in the hall waiting. “Molly!” her stepfather yelled. “Christopher’s here!”

  “Coming!”

  Christopher had forgotten the flowers. Slipping in the snow he ran back to the car, stuck his foot in to give the accelerator a quick jab, grabbed the corsage, and raced back to the house. Inside, he looked at the flowers again to be sure he hadn’t crushed them. They were what flowers should be: pretty and sweetly scented.

  He began to feel romantic.

  “Here she is,” the stepfather said in that same dry voice.

  A nightmare in green. Not even a dress, but a thing. Molly was an afterthought: just a face sticking up out of the nightmare.

  The whole front of her dress—where he had childishly visualized a bit of lace, or a ribbon—was exaggerated faces and lips.

  “Isn’t this dress astonishing?” Molly cried.

  How naive he had been, expecting a little girl in a little girl’s dress, bringing a little girl’s bouquet.

  Molly repeated the word with a flourish. “Astonishing!” She pirouetted. The black silhouettes kept on kissing no matter how she postured.

  “Yes,” Christopher said, because it certainly was.

  Molly took the corsage and swirled over to the hall mirror to look at herself while she put it on. The sweet flowers looked peculiar on the violent green and black shoulder.

  “I myself would not leave the house with a date dressed like that,” the stepfather said to Christopher.