Nick clattered down the three flights of stairs without waiting for me. His knees kind of poked out to the sides when he moved, while mine went straight out frontwards. I loved watching him. He was moving like blue jeans, but he was wearing a suit.
It was funny. For years and years, all through elementary school, I had no use for boys. They were wild noisy animals with claws for fingernails and burps for conversation.
I can distinctly remember sitting in seventh-grade science, pretending to care about stamens and pistils when an eighth-grade boy came in to give Mr. Hines a note and I thought, Gee, I wish I knew him! It was the first time I ever wanted to be in a boy’s presence.
And now there were two boys I was interested in.
How absolutely incredible and marvelous to have two boyfriends!
I said to myself, hold it, Nelle Catherine. One cousin and one Mello Yello does not two boyfriends make … But it sure did make nice daydreaming.
The daydream lasted precisely as long as the drive to Burger King. Five minutes. Five minutes of silence on Nick’s part, while I assumed he was paying attention to the traffic, and five minutes of solid joyous daydreaming on my part, whirling among a long series of boyfriends.
Nick held the glass door for me to go in first and I was aware of the way he stood way back to hold it, as if he were making absolutely sure that I couldn’t brush against him. It was the first clue. I began to feel little pricks of nervousness all over.
Then we got up to the order counter and Nick stopped to look in his wallet. The way he did it, and the time he spent, turned the pricks into nails. “Let me pay for myself,” I said. “After all, it’s not really a date.”
“Right,” he said, looking relieved. “Okay.” And he placed an order for himself only.
I could hardly manage to speak out loud to the girl waiting for my order. I wanted to request no onions and no pickle, but I couldn’t find the words and I said nothing. I could take them out when we sat down. Okay, Nelle Catherine, I said to myself, you said it, he didn’t. It isn’t a date. Now just enjoy yourself anyway. If he can be polite, so can you.
And who should be sitting at a table for four and waving madly at us to join them but Holly and Chuck Summers. Chuck called hello and there was absolutely nothing we could do but sit with them.
Suddenly I was terribly ashamed of all the gossiping Holly and I had done about Nick. She knew so much of what I felt about him. I also knew what she really thought about Chuck. It didn’t seem funny. It seemed rotten and wrong, to have whispered so much to each other when the boys didn’t even know.
I introduced the boys. Chuck stood up, as if he were a businessman, although Nick was the one who looked like one; in his suit. It was such an adult gesture. It made me feel even more as if I were going to sit with a stranger. Or a pair of them.
And Nick actually looked at Chuck’s extended right hand and ignored it and sat down on the opposite side of the booth without shaking it, “Nick Nearing,” he said, “Nancy’s cousin.”
I wanted to scream that we weren’t cousins, that we had nothing in common but a peculiar name that was probably only coincidence. We were on a date, didn’t he understand? A date I’d dreamed about—but after all, the dream was just on my side. Nick had come for college interviews and a free room for the night. Still, he could have shaken Chuck’s hand. It bothered me that he hadn’t.
Chuck sat down and began on his french fries as if he hadn’t noticed a thing.
“So,” said Holly brightly, after an odd look at me, “we’ve heard so much about you, Nick.”
Nick gave her a tight smile and bit into his cheeseburger.
I could not possibly have taken a bite.
Chuck said, “That’s real interesting about you two being long-lost cousins. Everybody’s talking about it. Imagine finding a girlfriend through a cookbook. Better than those computer dating services, huh?”
Nick finished chewing. “Cousin,” he said very firmly, dispelling any image Chuck might have had of girl- and boyfriend.
My stomach was tied so tightly I could not possibly fit any food there. I pressed the rim of my drink cup to my lips to have something to do.
“So, Nick,” said Holly again. “Tell us about yourself. You, ah, let me see, came up here for college interviews?”
Nick nodded and went on eating.
Chuck said to me, “I hear you’re on the yearbook committee.”
“Yes. It’s going to be hard work.”
Holly said, “I’m glad I’m not on it.”
And that was the end of that topic. After a while Chuck said, “You play any sports, Nick? What are you going to be doing this summer?”
“Working,” said Nick. He got up to shove his papers in the trash receptacle.
Holly gave me an incredulous look. I could read it perfectly. “This is the famous Nicholas Charles Nearing?” she was asking me.
“He’s tired,” I whispered. “Long trip.”
Holly didn’t buy that for a moment, but she pretended to.
I was not at all surprised when Chuck said, “Well, we have to be going. I’ve got to change before the dance. You going back to change, too, Nick? It’s pretty informal. I mean, nobody else’ll be wearing a suit.”
“It isn’t one of my goals,” said Nick, in his perfectly awful tape-recorded tone, “to be like everybody else.”
“Uh huh,” said Chuck, which I thought under the circumstances was very verbal of him. “Well. Nice meeting you. See you later, okay?”
But if Nick thought it was nice meeting Chuck and Holly, he didn’t say so. So much for the young man with the lovely manners. My cheeks burned. I watched Holly and Chuck leave the restaurant. I knew that whatever other problems they might have together, they weren’t going to lack for conversation once they got out of earshot.
“Do you feel okay?” I said to Nick. If he was coming down with mononucleosis, that would be a good excuse for his behavior.
“Yes.”
“Listen, let’s forget about going to the dance. I know you’re tired from all that driving.”
“What’s the matter? Just because I found your friends boring, Nancy, you don’t want to go to this dance?”
I realized just how little I knew Nick, really. What were a few silly hours spent together joking about antiques and relatives? This guy was just plain rude.
He was also the guy I wanted terribly to get to know better.
I didn’t know what to do or say.
“Well, let’s go home and you can change, at least,” I said.
“I didn’t bring jeans after all.”
I could not, absolutely could not, go to an informal dance with somebody rude and tape-recorded who was wearing a vested suit.
“Let’s go,” he said, with all the eagerness with which one might address one’s Army recruitment officer.
I had pictured us laughing and talking and dancing—the perfect couple—matching from their names to their personalities, like a splash in a glimmering pool.
It was beginning to look instead as if we were the stone going to the bottom.
Eleven
EVERYBODY WHO KNEW ME came over to be introduced. Nick, wearing such unexpected adult clothing, would sort of bow, and say “Good evening” in that awful canned tour guide voice. My friends would start to laugh, thinking he was imitating somebody, or joking. Then they’d see he wasn’t trying to be funny, he was really like that; they’d look at me incredulously and then shrug and back off.
Nick wouldn’t dance, either. Twice we actually got out on the dance floor. He sort of twitched a few times and then said he didn’t feel like it after all and walked away. It was either walk after him or go on dancing alone. I almost deserted him. I have never been so embarrassed. I just wanted to crawl away and never be seen in public again.
Nick and I sat on the sidelines like a pair of wallflowers and had nothing to say to each other. My metal folding chair was more companionable than Nick. I felt stiff all evening. Not
just my conversation, but even my face and my fingers and my legs were stiff. The few people who stayed and tried to make conversation with us gave up fairly soon, because Nick just wouldn’t participate.
He gave no clues as to what was making him behave this way. All I knew was that it was, without doubt, the worst evening of my life. Everybody else seemed to be having an extraordinarily good time. Maybe it was just the comparison with Nick and me, but I ached with envy seeing everybody I knew laughing, dancing, and hugging.
Finally, at nine-thirty (the dance lasted until midnight) I said, “Nick, you must be exhausted. You want to go home?”
“All right.”
It felt as if the entire student body was turning around to watch us leave. I knew they knew we weren’t going to park somewhere. We were failures and they knew it and they were going to gossip about it. So much for Nancy’s super cousin. If that was her idea of a good date—whew! Sure, he was good looking, but so are department store mannequins.
I blushed, thinking about their exchanges after we were gone.
Nick walked too fast for me and I had to trot to keep up with him. That was the final insult, that I had to run to keep up with somebody I wished I’d never come with! The only good thing I could think of in the entire evening (my mother always combats depression by coming up with silver linings; I guess I’ve picked up the habit) was that school lasted a mere five more days so there was a limit to the amount of teasing I’d have to endure. By next year maybe everybody but me would have forgotten about Nick.
Nick opened the jeep door for me, which somehow surprised me, as I had figured every remnant of his manners was long gone, and I clambered into the car.
He got in without looking at me or speaking to me, started the engine, and headed for the apartment.
Fastening my seat belt was a more complex endeavor than usual. My stiff fingers wouldn’t cooperate and I was having to fight a real urge to cry. I studied the lock mechanism. Was there any way I could salvage the evening? Bring back the pleasant, funny Nicholas I’d fallen for?
Or did that Nick perhaps not exist? “Nancy?” he said finally.
“Mmmm?” I was too upset to say much. My throat hurt. It was ridiculous. I hadn’t had a sore throat from germs since I was a little kid, and here I was with my whole throat aching and rasping just because Nick hadn’t made the impression I’d anticipated.
It’s not important, I told myself. But it was important! I was crazy about Nick. I wanted other people to see the Nick I knew, not some difficult, fake, infuriating store mannequin of a jerk.
“I’m lost,” said Nick, his voice not taped this time, but very tight and strained. “Where’s your place from here?”
I looked up. We were on some narrow street without street lamps or signs. “I don’t recognize this,” I said. “Keep driving until the next intersection and then I’ll tell you.”
It seemed to take forever to reach the next intersection. When we finally stopped at a stop sign and I squinted to read the road names, I’d never heard of them. “Oh, honestly, Nick,” I said irritably.
“Why didn’t you tell me where to go?” he said twice as irritably.
“Believe me, I wanted to, after the way you behaved!” I snapped.
“You should have given me instructions on manners to be used in front of nosy old school friends, I guess, huh?”
“I never thought you’d need a lesson in manners. You’re seventeen years old. You ought to know how to shake hands by now.”
We glared at each other. I know if there had been anything handy to throw, I’d have heaved it at Nick. He broke the tension by shifting into first and leaving the intersection. “Where are you going?” I demanded.
“I have no idea.”
We barreled along for a mile or two and I recognized nothing. It began to strike me as very funny, in an enraging sort of way. “Stop at a gas station or something, Nick,” I said. “I’ll have to ask for directions. Wherever we are, I’ve never driven here before.”
Nick turned so fast into the parking lot of a Quik-Stop Store that I’d have fallen off the seat if it weren’t for the seat belt. He jerked to a stop and turned off the engine as if he wanted to snap the key. I looked at him for a minute but he didn’t look at me, and finally I got out of the jeep and went inside for directions. It turned out that we were only six blocks from an entrance to the interstate, so getting home would be easy after all.
Right next to the cash register was an ice cream freezer with a glass lid, so you could look inside at all the goodies and forget your budget and make a spur-of-the-moment buy. I have always found food to be a nice way to solve problems (one reason why I’m an inch larger at the waist than I ought to be) so I decided to buy each of us an ice cream sandwich. If nothing more, it would soothe my aching throat and keep my hands busy.
I climbed back into the jeep with Nick and told him how to get us home. “But there’s no rush. Here, have an ice cream sandwich. It’s so hot tonight they’re already melting.” I gave him a paper napkin the friendly clerk had handed me and began unwrapping mine. Nick took his reluctantly, as if it were a test paper, and let it melt into his napkin.
“Nick?” I said. “What is the matter with you? I thought we were going to have such a good time and I was looking forward to it. You were such fun the other times we got together.” I had more to say but Nick turned his head and looked out his window so I stopped and bit into the ice cream. The chocolate sides tasted like cardboard.
“Listen,” said Nick, irritating me all over again. What did he think I was going to do? Turn deaf? “I … I …” He let out his breath hard, not a sigh so much as a slug of air. “I guess it was cutting my hair. I’ve felt like somebody else since eleven o’clock this morning. I cut it for the wrong reasons at the wrong time. To make an impression on people. To be different from what I really am. To please some dumb college interviewer who probably only does the interviews because he’s not good enough to teach. To please friends of yours I’ve never met, don’t care about, won’t meet again. I felt … I don’t know … I felt sort of open at the back. My Achilles heel, or something.”
My anger felt like flour, sifting. One minute it was a big white lump and the next moment it was gone, drifting away. I tried to think of what to say to tell him I understood, but somehow I wanted to touch him more than speak to him. Only I couldn’t touch him—he was way over on the other side of the jeep, frozen in on himself, and I wasn’t sure how he would feel, being touched. I struggled to find words and none came.
Nick said, “You don’t know what I’ve been through over that hair, Nancy. Since I was thirteen years old, I’ve gotten hassled for not cutting my hair and I know it sounds silly, but that hair mattered.”
I could see how it mattered, but I couldn’t see how it made him rude to dozens of people and unable to dance and unable to be pleasant. I was torn between wanting to hug him and tell him even if he was a dumb turkey with a missing ponytail I was crazy about him, and wanting to lecture him about how rotten he was.
It’s odd how not having the right words can actually hurt. I felt as if I were having appendicitis. In a way I wished I could have an attack of it. Then I’d have a really good excuse for leaving the dance and for Nick being surly!
Although it could hardly be an excuse for Nick unless he were the one to have the appendicitis.
By the time I had written off that idea and told myself to lean over and kiss him for confiding in me, Nick had started the jeep and was heading for the interstate.
You couldn’t just go ahead and hug him, could you? I thought, as furious with myself now as I had been with Nick. You had to think about it, and weigh the pros and cons, and deliberate as if it were a presidential debate. When he opened up and said personal things you just sat there like a lump, and he had no way to know what you thought or whether you cared. Now you’ve blown it.
“I understand about your hair,” I said.
The sentence sounded remarkably stupid, five
minutes after Nick had referred to his hair. He did not even look at me. I could imagine how much he regretted giving me any explanation at all.
“I mean, it’s okay,” I said. “It’s only hair. Turn left. No, not here, at the red light. The next red light, I’m sorry. Yes, here.”
“It’s not only hair,” said Nick.
“Turn again here. Right. Yes, right here, turn right. I know it isn’t only hair, Nick. I understood what you were saying—left here, around that traffic circle when you get to that arrow.”
In his tape-recorded voice, as if he’d flicked a switch to get to it, Nick said, “I’d rather not discuss it any further.”
“Oh, talk like a normal human being, will you?” I snapped.
He left that intersection so fast the tires screamed as if we were braking instead of accelerating. In a moment we were at the apartment and my date, my wonderful date, was over.
Final Fling, I thought. It certainly was.
I got out of the jeep. Nick went up the three flights of stairs as if he were going to prison. I was surprised he didn’t just get in the jeep and drive away. Probably didn’t have the money for a motel and didn’t want to ruin his precious three-piece suit by sleeping in it.
Any other date would have gone home, and I could have unwound by screaming in the closet, or weeping in my pillow, or dancing by myself to records. But this one had to be spending the night with us.
Mother could not have been more astonished to see us home at ten o’clock. She gave us a long look, as if we were a checkbook that she had to balance. “There’s a good movie on,” she said. “Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand. I’ll make some popcorn. We can watch that till bedtime.”
So we sat, silently, watching a very complex movie all of us had seen before. It was the sort of film that makes you sad and full of understanding for two people who will just never match except at the edges, and the edges will always be raw.