Before Sharon Winters came onstage in her leotard (a costume that nearly upstaged Kristi’s) to do a gymnastic routine, I played “Ain’t She Sweet.” Before the identical twin brothers who juggled came out, I played “All Shook Up.” To introduce Leonard Doerr, I played “He’s So Fine.” It could have been a pricky thing to do—Leonard Doerr, after all, was probably the antithesis of the kind of guy the Chiffons were singing about—but he laughed when he heard it, and then surprised everyone by his act, which was a series of impressions. He did Johnny Carson and Rod Serling and then Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent doing Rod Serling.
“The Twilight Zone,” he said, holding up an imaginary envelope to his head. After a moment, he pretended to open the envelope and read what was inside.
“What do students call Mr. Lehman’s advanced geometry class?”
The joke was a C© but the impression was an A®, and he followed that with a Mick Jagger impression and then Richard Nixon doing Mick Jagger.
“Pat—I just can’t get no satisfaction,” he said in Nixon’s gravelly, jowl-shaking voice, and the audience howled.
He got wild applause, and after he took a bow, Kristi came out from the wings and kissed him on the cheek.
“Pat,” he said, flashing the peace sign to the crowd, “let’s spend the night together.”
The show should have ended there, but there was enough talent at Ole Bull High for another half hour of entertainment before Kristi wrapped the show up by sitting behind a drum kit and blasting out a version of “Wipe Out.” My impulse was to jump in by playing the guitar part on piano. It was just backup stuff, because this was entirely Kristi’s show. Man, could that girl drum. The drumsticks in her hands were a blur as they battered the snare drum and the toms, and when she crashed the cymbals at the end, the whole audience erupted in a wild ovation. From the smile she threw at me, you knew she would have accepted nothing less.
After the show, the cast members received their fans out in the hallway.
“Whoa,” said Coach Teschler, slapping me on the back. “Quite the piano man, Andreson!”
“Sharon—nice moves!” said Charlie Olsen, his voice like a wolf whistle.
“Du bist sehr gut!” said one of Leonard Doerr’s fellow German club members, who swarmed around him.
My mom and aunt found me in the crowd.
“For the maestro!” said my aunt Beth, handing me a cellophane-covered cone of roses.
“What’s this? You never give me flowers after a hockey game.”
“You’d never forgive me.”
“You’re right,” I said.
My mother had sidled up to me, sneaking in a sideways hug.
“You were so good,” she said, and the happiness on her face made me think of something Jay Mitvedt said upon hearing that our sixth-grade class had won the school paper drive. As captain, Jay had been urging us for weeks to “collect as many newspapers as you can” and the day of the drive, he nervously watched each classroom add to their piles of paper, paying particular attention to room 307, who had one kid whose mother emptied out an entire station wagon of twine-tied newspaper bundles. When the announcement of our victory came over the PA system, Jay had shouted, “This is a cherry-on-top-of-a-whole-hot-fudge-sundae kind of day!” and at the time I remember thinking, Geez, it’s only a paper drive, but right now, looking from my mother’s face to Kristi’s, I could understand the sentiment.
“Joe, what pretty flowers,” she said, and reflexively I stuck out my hand, presenting them to her.
“Well, thanks!” said Kristi. She held them in the crook of her arm, like a beauty queen, and said hello to my mom and Beth.
“He plays piano like Elton John and gives me flowers!”
“He is thoughtful,” said my aunt Beth, smiling. “And you—my gosh, what a great drummer!”
“And a wonderful emcee,” added my mother. “And just look at you—what a beautiful dress.”
“I dug it out of the costume bin. Mrs. Holbrook said the last time someone wore it was when they put on Dinner at Eight back in the sixties.”
“Well, you certainly do look lovely,” agreed my aunt.
“I second that emotion,” said Blake Erlandsson, and it suddenly seemed we were besieged by people—Mays and Lamereau from the hockey team, Greg Hoppe and some other kids from the paper, and Shannon.
“Joe, I felt like I was watching Liberace or something!” she said, and I thought, Gee, thanks, and then she kissed me and what I thought was: No thanks.
Seven
Hey Joe—
I’m in my government class, which means I’m bored out of my gourd (if Mr. Hasselback’s lectures were pills, they’d be a narcotic strong enough to knock out an elephant), but being bored out of your gourd can be helpful in that it forces you find something to do. So I thought I’d finally write you the note I’ve been thinking about writing for a long time, my I-miss-you note. I know I was mad at you for too long about that peace assembly. I’m not usually a grudge holder—but sometimes I just feel so apart from high school life and when someone like you comes along, someone I feel such a kinship with, well, I guess I take any betrayals (real or imagined) pretty hard.
But I’m tired of carrying this heavy old grudge, so wait a second…(Long pause as I throw it out the window.) Whew! That feels so liberating!
So are we friends again, Giuseppe? I know we’ve been civil, but I think it’s time to move past civility and back into friendship.
If you’re in agreement, give me a sign at lunch—arrange your Tater Tots in a peace sign or something and I’ll rejoin you at the table.
Darva
“Miss Casey, what are you doing?”
It took a lot for Kristi to lose her cool, but being caught in a home ec classroom just as she was about to go down on me qualified as a lot.
Kristi slid her hands off my kneecaps and patted the floor in front of her.
“I, uh, I lost my contact. Joe here was helping me find it.”
Miss Rudd practically spat out the words. “You lost your contact.” Her head bobbed as fast as her foot tapped the wooden floor. “Well, I believe you’re about to lose much more.”
My mind was a record stuck in a groove: Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit.
I could tell by Kristi’s startled, wide-eyed expression that her inner record was playing the same tune, but as she stood up, her features smoothed out into a look of bland contempt. Flaring her nostrils, she asked Miss Rudd, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Two spots of color rose on the home ec teacher’s cheeks, as if she’d been slapped on both sides of her face. Her fingers fluttered up to her throat, as if she was checking for a pulse.
“That means that your days as cheerleading captain could possibly be coming to an end. I’m sure Mr. Brietmayer will think that using a classroom—how’d you get in here, by the way?—for salacious purposes is reason enough for a suspension, let alone a demotion in cheerleading rank.”
I had gotten off the polished chrome worktable I’d been sitting on (the size of the relief I felt that I still had my pants on, that they were still zipped when Miss Rudd had crashed our little party, was incalculable) and I crossed my arms in front of my chest, trying to look like I wasn’t quaking in my boots, trying to look as cool, in fact, as Kristi.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen, Miss Rudd,” said Kristi, hoisting her big leather purse onto her shoulder. “Because whatever warped, untrue story you plan to tell Mr. Brietmayer can’t compare with the warped, true story I could tell him about you and Mr. ‘I’m Married’ Carmody.”
All the blood vessels under the teacher’s face constricted, erasing the red spots on her cheeks. She opened her mouth, but Kristi wasn’t done talking. And not only was she not done talking, she was mimicking Miss Rudd’s high and breathy voice.
“I’m sure that Mr. Brietmayer will think that using the teachers’ lounge for salacious purposes is reason enough for a suspension, if not a demotion in teaching ra
nk.”
The home ec teacher stared at Kristi, her pale face frozen in shock. It looked as if she wanted to speak, but words could not slip past the tight O that was her lips.
“You’re just better hope you don’t get pregnant,” said Kristi, sauntering past the inert teacher. “Because how would you explain that?”
Following Kristi out of the room, I stopped myself from reaching out to pat Miss Rudd’s shoulder, to offer some comfort to the poor woman. Instead, I stared at the floor, my eyes looking at nothing higher than the toes of my shoes.
“What was that all about?” I said, catching up to Kristi in the empty hallway.
“Everyone knows Miss Rudd has a crush on Mr. Carmody,” said Kristi. “I’m just assuming they’ve acted on her crush.”
Holding the railing, I frog-jumped down the staircase after her. “You mean you said that thing about using the teachers’ lounge for salacious purposes without knowing if they really did?”
“Well, they probably did. And it shut her up, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, but for how long?”
She didn’t answer, and when we reached the first floor, Kristi looked at her watch.
“Well, I suppose I should get to that stupid Frost Fling meeting. I am decorating co-chair, after all.”
“Kristi, what about Miss Rudd? What makes you think she won’t go to Mr. Brietmayer’s office right now?”
“First, of all, Brietmayer never stays after school.” Half of her face was full of white teeth and dimples, a cheerleader’s grin offering twinkly encouragement and good old team spirit, but her eyes were as cold as her smile was warm. “Second, Miss Rudd knows what she’s up against.”
After imitating Miss Rudd’s fluttery fingers running up her throat, Kristi turned and headed toward a half hour of arguing over crepe paper colors, and I turned toward the nearest exit, almost—but not quite—running.
For the next few days, anytime the phone buzzed in the classroom, any time a student aide brought a note to the teacher, I was sure both were delivering the same message: Please send Joe Andreson to Mr. Brietmayer’s office. But then Mr. Pedley would hang up the old-fashioned receiver and say, “Jill Foth, you’re wanted in the library,” or Miss Westrum would unfold the note and ask Bill Brendal to please report to the attendance office.
Only after I expelled a gush of air would I realize I’d been holding my breath.
When it became clear that there would be no consequences paid for getting caught nearly in flagrante delicto, I wondered, How does she do it? She told me Gray Billings, the president of the audiovisual club (also president of the Lost in Space fan club, a fact advertised on a T-shirt he wore nearly every day), had given her a spare key to the projection room office, scene of several of our trysts, but Kristi seemed to have access to every room in the school.
“Did you ever hear of juice?”
“Juice?”
“Not the kind you drink. Juice juice. Connections. The power of persuasion. You know—muscle.”
“What are you, a mafioso?”
“I wish,” said Kristi. “but the simple truth is if I want something, I figure out a way to get it.”
Our last game of the season was the best game I ever played, but we still lost 4–3, slamming our hopes of getting to the state championship right into the boards. I’ve never been in a prison visiting room, but I have been in a locker room after a big loss, and imagine the grimness factor is about the same.
There were no jokes, no cut-downs from Olsen—the guy had his face buried in a towel that wasn’t entirely successful in muffling his sobs. Wilkerson was crying too, but soundlessly, his face an integrated sprinkler system of snot and tears. Lamereau was swearing like he had a bad case of Tourette’s syndrome, and Mays was sitting on the bench, stunned, rubbing the hand he had unwisely used to hit his locker door.
Coach Teschler had stood in the corner like a prison guard, glaring at the lowlifes he had the misfortune to supervise. Finally he turned his attention to the ceiling and, pulling in the middle of his upper lip with his bottom teeth, he stared at a flickering fluorescent light, as if its inability to keep a steady light going disgusted him too.
“Hey, you can’t say we didn’t try,” said Blake Erlandsson. “Wilkie, that pass to Olsen in the first period—beautiful.” He smiled at Wilkerson before directing his proud-parent smile toward me. “And Andreson—man, a hat trick! That deke you put on the goalie for the first one—could it have been prettier?”
The pleasure I felt over the compliment was neutered by embarrassment and awkwardness. Now was not the time for pep talks, but apparently Blake was blind to the glares the rest of the team leveled at him.
“We don’t have anything to be ashamed of,” he said, taking off his elbow pads. “In fact, it was an honor to be your captain and to play for the Bulls!”
It was so pathetic, I had to clap; if ever there was an obvious plea for a demonstration of support, this was it. Two or three other guys joined me, but even the clog dancers who had entertained us at our last school assembly had gotten a better response than this.
The usual clot of cheerleaders and girlfriends and a few parents were waiting out in the hallway. Kristi gave me a world-weary shrug as she stood behind Mr. Erlandsson, waiting for her turn to comfort Blake.
I watched her for a moment; she was fiddling with her cheerleader necklace, draping the chain over her bottom lip and then pulling the little gold megaphone back and forth across her mouth, as if she was zipping it shut. You could tell she wasn’t used to standing in line and didn’t like it a bit.
“Oh, Joe!”
I staggered under Shannon’s hug, thinking briefly that it was too bad football wasn’t a girls’ sport because she would have made a hell of a line-backer.
“Oh Joe!” she said again, pressing her cheek against mine. “Joe, I am so sorry!”
“It’s okay,” I offered lamely as she dissolved into tears.
She clung to me, and because I had my hockey bag slung over my shoulder, I stumbled, off balance, and silently yelled at her to let go.
“Shannon,” I said, trying to shift my bag behind me, “let’s get out of here.”
She pulled away from me, a look of hopefulness breaking through her cloudy face.
“Okay, Joe,” she said, a little hiccup punctuating her words. “My car’s outside.”
I broke up with her that night. I figured my timing could be considered either cruel (she was already so bummed out from our hockey loss that I further added to her misery) or kind (why spread out the pain?).
It turns out Shannon wasn’t as crushed as I’d thought she’d be.
“What do you mean, you think we should see other people?” she asked, pushing me—hard—against the back door. “You feel me up for more than an hour and then you suddenly decide we should see other people?”
It’s true, we had been steaming up the car windows of her Delta; just because I didn’t want her to be my girlfriend didn’t mean I still didn’t want to squeeze her tits one last time.
“Well, I—”
“Oh, just shut up,” she said, reaching behind her to fasten the dangling ends of her bra. “Just shut up and get out of my car.”
I smiled with what I thought was compassion and apology, but maybe it was too dark for Shannon to see.
“And wipe that smirk off your face!” She jabbed a button through a buttonhole of her shirt. “Wipe that stupid smirk off your face and get out of my car!”
“But, Shannon, it’s cold outside.”
“I don’t care!” And just to show how much, she leaned over me and opened the back door, pushing me to ensure my exit.
“Hey!” I said, tumbling out into the snow. “Hey, give me my jacket!”
She wadded up my down-filled jacket and threw it at me, as if it was trash on top of garbage, and then slammed the door before climbing over to the front seat. I grabbed my jacket and scrambled away from the car, not convinced as she revved the engine that she might not
further decide to make a point by running over me.
The car lurched forward, and she drove a few yards before the brake lights blinked on and the trunk popped open.
“Get your stupid hockey stuff!” she yelled, sticking her head out of the open window.
I ran toward the car, sliding on the ice-hard street, and after I grabbed my bag and stick, I slammed the trunk as hard as I could.
“Loser!” shouted Shannon, and as I watched the lights of her car get smaller, my teeth chattering like wooden chimes in a windstorm, I found I really couldn’t disagree with her.
It was a wet and rainy spring. A sense of boredom crept into classes that only the teachers with bigger imaginations were able to fend off. Clusters of kids gathered in homeroom, wondering who had heard from their college of choice, a certain desperation coloring their voices as they compared SAT scores and grade point averages. Tryouts were held for the baseball team, and I joined dozens of guys playing catch in the gym because it was too rainy to go out in the field.
In art class, Mr. Eggert was battling the general ennui by cranking up the Led Zeppelin and Procol Harum. Our assignment all week had been to work on self-portraits of ourselves at the age of fifty.
Darva had a stack of magazines in front of her, but instead of cutting out pictures that captured what she might be like in thirty-plus years, she was mumbling as she scraped a hardened pellet of rice off her embroidered shirt.
“What’s the matter?” I said. “Food fights a little too immature for you?”
“You didn’t have a chow mein bomb explode on you,” she said, licking her finger to rub at the palm-sized stain just under her collar bone.
Earlier, someone (I’m pretty sure it was Olsen) cut the power to the basement cafeteria so we were all submerged in darkness long enough to hurl at invisible targets whatever it was we had on our lunch trays.
Darva regarded my unstained shirt.