A Stitch in Time Pt. 03

"And Jill was a freshman," I nodded.

Jeanne shrugged.

I smoothly pulled into the parking lot, and we made our way into the school. First period was my first Government test of the year, and as soon as I got the questions, I knew I'd pegged this class correctly. The major question — "describe how a bill becomes law" — was straight out of the textbook. I could even see the page in my mind; there were twenty-eight steps. I could only remember twenty-seven, so I made one up: "No. 21, the President pro tempore impresses the bill for the register." Did it make sense? No. Did it have a number? Damn straight.

In History, Mr. Anson began his analysis of Jacksonian democracy. I was very pleased to learn the extent to which it coincided with my analysis. There were some teachers, like Mrs. Palmer and Mrs. Jenkins, with whom I was happy to disagree. They would grade my work based on its reasoning, not whether they agreed with its conclusion. Mr. Anson, though, was more likely to believe that anyone who held a contrary opinion was just wrong. Since my UVA admission depended on my being right almost one hundred percent of the time, I couldn't afford too many contrary opinions in his class.

Third period, Mrs. Palmer dropped the bomb. Literally. She walked around the room, a sadistic little smile on her face, dropping copies of "Moby Dick" on everybody's desk. We'd be finished with Bartleby this week, she told us. Chapters one through five to be read by next Monday, five through ten by the following Friday. The same schedule for the rest of the year. Five more chapters every Monday, and another five every Friday. There were lots of chapters, people, but they were small. A paper entitled "Why not call him Bob or Sam?" was due on the 20th of February. No, Mrs. Palmer would not explain the title; we should read chapters one through five first. She would answer the question next week, although her look implied that she hoped she wouldn't have to. Yes, Mrs. Palmer was aware that the weekend before the paper was due was a three-day weekend; students were free to turn in the paper on the preceding Friday if they wanted, but they'd get no additional credit.

In Astronomy, we learned that Aaron Fleischmann had contracted pneumonia as a follow-up to his mononucleosis, and that he was going to be home-schooled the rest of the semester. Mr. Carruthers asked if Cammie and I minded having each other as lab partners. I said no instantly; Cammie reminded me about the consequences of screwing with her admission to R.P.I. which, I'd since learned, was actually a very good engineering school in upstate New York. But she ultimately agreed to accept me as her new permanent partner.

And fifth period was Tanya. Oh, and Religion. But mostly Tanya. Who told me she'd had a nice weekend but she'd have probably rather spent it here with me.

"Probably?" I whispered.

She gave me a brief but beautiful smile.

"How do I know?" she asked me. "Yet?"

At lunch, I suddenly found myself with a full set of friends. Jeanne motioned us over to her table, where I sat next to her and Tanya sat next to Sammy. A week ago, I would have wanted nothing more than to eat lunch with a group of people. Today, what I really wanted was a chance to ask Tanya what "yet" meant.

I never got that chance the entire week. Not only had we been accepted into a new circle of friends, but there seemed to be one of them around us every minute of the day. With the exception of Cammie, who was probably going to be cool toward me for the rest of our lives, everyone else treated Tanya and I like we'd been part of the group forever. For that matter, Cammie and Tanya also seemed to get along great.

The only excitement during the school week came on Wednesday night, when Jeanne showed me what I was going to be wearing to the dance on Saturday.

"I am not," I protested.

"Oh yes you are," she said.

"It looks like somebody threw up on it," I pointed out.

"What were you going to wear?" she countered.

"I dunno," I said. "Jeans? A button-down shirt?"

She gave me a smug little smile.

"You'd have never gotten past the door," she said. "Dress code is seventies. Margie's got Mo sitting by the door for the first hour keeping out the undesirables."

Maurice "Mo" Perra was probably the biggest guy in the school. He'd been in the baseball team picture last year. I assumed he was the first baseman. Even on the pickup softball games we played in gym class back in the ninth grade, Mo had been "the" first baseman.

"They wore jeans in the seventies," I said hesitantly.

"Yeah, you try that out on Mo," Jeanne crossed her arms.

"So what the hell is this?"

"Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd," she said. "Saturday Night Live. Two wild and crazy guys. You want to see a clip?"

"I guess," I said. She'd downloaded one onto her computer and I had to admit that it was a good routine.

"Wait a minute," I said. "You got two shirts. Who's the other one for?"

"Sammy," she said proudly.

"I'm wearing the same outfit as Sammy Houghtaling?" I asked.

She nodded.

"No way," I said. "Tanya'll never —"

"Call her," Jeanne interrupted me.

I stomped off to my room to get my cell phone. Tanya wasn't picking up, but I did get a return text message: URAQT. I was a cutie.

"She already knows, doesn't she?" I asked when I returned to Jeanne's room.

Jeanne just smiled at me, and I stomped off back to my room again.

Then I returned for the shirt.

"What's Tanya going as?" I asked.

"It's a surprise," my sister smirked.

Then she gave me the pants that went with the shirt. The plaid pants. And the hat.

Women.

I was destined not to find out what Tanya was going as until Saturday night, when I rang the doorbell at the address Tanya had given me looking like a fruitcake. An actual fruitcake.

The woman who answered the door was older than I would have thought Tanya's mom should have been, perhaps in her mid-to-late-fifties. She gave me a long look up and down before she stepped back to admit me.

"Mrs. Szerchenko?" I asked hesitantly. "I'm Patrick Sterling."

"I know," she said coolly. "Please come in. Tanya will be right down."

Right down was apparently a more relative term than I was used to; I cooled my heels for ten minutes in the Szerchenkos' foyer until Tanya finally emerged at the top of the staircase.

"Oh my God," I blurted out.

She was dressed in a white short-sleeve shirt with short white shorts, accessorized with a white belt and a pair of white tennis shoes. The hairdo was unmistakably that of Farrah Fawcett-Majors, the look unmistakably that of one of Charlie's Angels.

"Oh my God," she snorted.

"You're gorgeous," I stammered.

"You're a riot," she giggled.

"Shall we go?" I said.

"Did you meet Mom and Dad?"

"Your mom," I shrugged.

"Then she just left you here?" Tanya sighed. "Figures. Come on."

She grabbed a long coat, and I escorted her out to my car. Mo Perra was sitting at the door of the gym, his white teeth flashing in his dark face. He gave me a good laugh and told me my twin was already inside. Then he gestured Tanya to open her coat. She took a step back and flashed him, and he gave her an appreciative whistle.

"Hey, buddy," I said. "Eyes forward."

"Gotta check everyone out, man," he said. "Chief's orders."

The one thing I had learned during the previous week was that Margie Williams was "The Chief." Margie was the president of the senior class, the organizer of all social events. In a nutshell, she was the eye of the John Marshall High School hurricane. If something needed arranging, like this dance, Margie would do it. And without delegating anything, either. Margie had created the idea for the dance, booked the D.J. with orders to play nothing that didn't come from the seventies, and led the crew that decorated the gym. They'd done a great job, too. With a few pieces of cloth, they'd made it look just like the inside of a tent. That and a disco ball were all that Margie needed. This was the indeed the Winter of our Disco-tent.

As I entered and looked around, I realized that everyone else in the gym had pretty much dressed in generic seventies clothes, and I did see a number of jeans. I frowned at Jeanne as we approached her table, and she just laughed at me. I was at the Jeanne Sterling table, and we had all done things the Jeanne Sterling way. Jeanne had outdone Tanya, and was attracting stares from across the room as the title character from the television show I Dream of Jeannie. I immediately revised my previous opinion of my sister's figure. She was a hottie. And smart, too, of course. Jeanne always did her homework. When one wise-ass pointed out that I Dream of Jeannie was a 1960s show, she smugly pointed out that the last show had aired on May 26, 1970. Then she giggled and stuck out her tongue.

Jeanne had saved us seats at her table with my wild and crazy friend Sammy and a bunch of other television characters. Cammie was a very convincing, if somewhat drab, Hot Lips Houlihan. Rabbit, in a white shirt and a maroon vest, on top of a maroon pair of pants, was a hysterical Keith Partridge.

Tommy Narburg was the best, as a slightly larger version of Gopher from the "Love Boat." He kept asking us if everything was okay, and did we need him to get us anything from the bar, which in our case was a table with punch. Tommy was great fun, but as the evening wore on, he kind of wore down. Part of it, I'm sure, was not having a date. Tanya, Cammie, and Jeanne did their best to drag him onto the dance floor, but there were times when we three couples were out there dancing and Tommy was sitting there by himself. Another part of it, though, was Andy Lebo and his gang, who kept walking by the table and yelling out "Hey, Woodchunk" and "Hey, buddy, time to go-fer another piece of pie, huh?" By the end, I'm sure he wished he'd picked another outfit.

For my part, I wished that Jill hadn't been a participant in the ribbing. She was hanging on Andy's arm for most of the evening. As far as I knew, she never actually said anything to Tommy, but she certainly joined in the laughter with Andy and his friends. At one point, I met her in the hallway leading to the boys' and girls' rooms, and asked her if she would please knock it off. She just rolled her eyes at me, as if she couldn't believe what a wuss I'd turned into.

The music was fun; I didn't know anything about disco, and with good reason. But there was some good disco — mostly the Village People — and the other tunes included some great rockers like Springsteen and Bob Seeger. Tanya was pretty much my constant dance partner. When she got up to dance with Sammy or Rabbit or Tommy, I just sat at the table and looked around. I wasn't about to dance with my sister, hottie or not, and I wasn't about to ask Cammie. The only other girl I danced with, in fact, was Margie, who came by to thank all of us for dressing up so "festively."

Margie wasn't my only other dance partner, though; it's just that I found hard to think of the third one as a "girl." As the party began nearing its scheduled conclusion, Margie stopped by the table one last time to ask if any of us knew Rachel Carter. We all looked blankly at each other, and then shrugged our shoulders and told her we didn't.

"Wait a minute," Rabbit said as Margie was about to leave to try the next table. "You mean Ms. Carter who works in the office?"

"Yes," Margie said eagerly. She followed Rabbit's gaze to me, where everyone else at the table was now looking, and raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah, um, I do," I said sheepishly. "I know her. I mean, sort of. I'm sorry. I just think of her as Ms. Carter. Why?"

"She's one of the faculty chaperones," Margie said.

"Seriously?" I looked around. I hadn't seen her all night.

"She's back there in the corner," Margie pointed to an area behind the D.J. "She's been just sort of sitting there all night and I wondered if somebody could just go talk to her."

"Sure," I said. "I guess. Is she upset?"

"Honestly?" Margie leaned in to confide in us. "I think this is the first time she's been out since her fiancée died."

"Died?" I asked.

"In Iraq," Margie said. "Almost a year ago. He was a grad student or something, but his Reserve unit got called up. That ass Peterson ordered her to show up here tonight. Could you please, Trick? You're a doll."

I was a little reluctant to leave Tanya, but she gave my hand a squeeze, and I made my way over to Ms. Carter. She was, in fact, sitting in the corner, wearing a fringed leather halter-type top and a pair of hip-hugger bell bottoms. And still that same bun.

I approached her cautiously, and she sensed me coming when I was still about ten feet away. My shirt did look a little radioactive, come to think of it. She got at least the beginnings of a grin on her face.

"Well, you look about like I feel," she said as I sat down next to her.

"I don't know how you feel," I said. "But I know how you look."

"Ridiculous?" she asked.

"Really, really hot?" I suggested instead.

She gave me a long, searching look.

"You are the Trickster, aren't you?" she smiled. "Where's your blonde friend — Tanya, right?"

"Over at the table," I said, pointing in the general direction. "I came over because I never thanked you properly for meeting me like that at the mall."

"Oh, it wasn't anything," she smiled.

"No, it was," I shook my head. "If it hadn't been for you, I would have fallen for that three-day thing, and I'd have been out of luck."

"Well, it was my pleasure," she said, offering me her hand for a shake.

"Mine, too," I stood up and pulled her to her feet.

"Trick," she tried to pull back.

"Nuh-uh," I pulled even harder.

I pulled a good bit harder, and I soon had her on the edge of the dance floor. The disc jockey began playing Bob Seeger's "Old Time Rock and Roll," and she slowly began swaying back and forth in rhythm to the music. We were joined by a hundred of our closest friends, and soon found ourselves bouncing up and down in an area the size of a telephone booth. She was a very attractive woman, although she'd certainly never dressed to emphasize it at school as far as I could tell. This time, her outfit did some justice to her body, revealing curves that the student body of John Marshall High School had probably never suspected.

By the end of the dance, she was smiling at me, and when she tripped over someone and fell into my arms at the last chord, I held her there until the next dance began. It was a slow dance, and we danced as closely as a 20-something-year-old woman and a 17-year-old high school senior dared dance at a school function.

"This was nice," she said. "Thank you, Patrick."

"It really was my pleasure," I grinned.

And then another song began, another slow one. I was actually ready to pull away; this time it was Rachel holding onto me. Apparently, she knew the song. After its slow start, it turned into yet another disco tune, called "Last Dance." And dance is what we did. Actually, to say that Rachel and I danced is an overstatement; I was to Rachel pretty much what a maypole is to a maypole dancer. She was amazing, twirling under my arms, sinuously moving around me, even dipping herself twice, fortunately without my dropping her. At one point, holding onto the fingers of my left hand with the fingers of her right as she extended herself backward, she reached behind her head and pulled something, causing her beautiful auburn hair to explode around her shining face like an aura. By the time the dance ended, and the D.J. was screaming out, "That's the last dance, boys and girls, thank you for coming," everyone else was just standing there watching us. And when we finished, with her in my arms again, everyone applauded.

Almost everyone. My table was looking on in amazement. Or shock. Or horror. I walked over and Jeanne stood up to stop me as I watched Tanya head out with Sammy to get her coat. Tanya took one last look back at me over her shoulder, and I could tell that she was furious. And I thought I knew why. I'd danced the last dance with Rachel Carter rather than saving it for her.

"Jeanne, I was just helping..." I looked at Tanya and pointed back in Rachel's direction.

"I know," Jeanne said. "Probably one dance too many, though. Sammy will take her home. Come on. You can take me."

On the way home, Jeanne countered each of my arguments about how I had just been being a good guy with the sympathetic observation that Tanya was upset, and that she'd probably get over it. "Probably" — that was a big help.

At church the next day, Jeanne sat in the back with me, leaving Cammie by herself in the front. When she caught me looking particularly forlorn during the confession of sins, she leaned over and whispered that I should just go to Tanya's house.

"Jeanne," I began to protest.

"Just go. Now. Do you really think the stupid communion is more important than she is? Just tell her you're sorry."

So while everyone else was exchanging the peace, I slipped out the back.

I arrived at the Szerchenkos' about 11:20, and the same cold-looking woman answered the door.

"Hi, Mrs. Szerchenko," I said. "I'm here to apologize to your daughter for — "

"Apologize to her?" she hissed, shutting the door behind her as she joined me on the porch. "If you even so much as hint you're sorry, you'll be forbidden this house for the rest of your life."

"I'm sor —" I started. "What?"

"She told me everything this morning," she said. "The mitzvah you did for her in school, the mitzvah you did last night, and how she left you at the dance. I told her I couldn't believe I'd given birth to such a selfish little bitch and sent her to her room."

"Her room?"

"Until noon," she nodded. She suddenly broke into a dazzling smile. "Come in. Have a bagel."

Despite my conviction that I had slipped into the twilight zone, I followed Mrs. Szerchenko into the kitchen, where she explained to her husband, a somewhat unassuming guy, that I was the mensch that his no-good daughter had mistreated last night. He offered me a bagel as I sat down at their dining room table and Mrs. Szerchenko poured me a cup of coffee. I put a small scoop of cream cheese on the bagel, and Mrs. Szerchenko snatched it from my hand and told me I needed to learn to schmear — she told me I ate like a Gentile.

"I am a Gentile, you know," I said.

"I know," she suddenly looked sad. "I don't suppose you want to convert, do you?"

"I don't think I could do that to my, uh, to my mother's memory," I said.

"Your mother died?" she patted me on the cheek. "And she must have been so young."

She gave me a long, sad look, and then turned to her husband.

"We should be going," she patted him on the knee and abruptly changed the subject.

"Where are we going?" Mr. Szerchenko offered the first sign of a challenge to his wife's authority.

"Lunch," Mrs. Szerchenko announced.

"Lunch?" he was astonished. "We just finished —"

She didn't even need to speak. The look alone was enough to shut him up.

"Lunch," she said again, firmly.

"Lunch," he sighed.

I stood up to leave with them.

"No, no," she said. "You stay here. Tanya will be down at noon."

"You're just leaving?" I asked. "Leaving me... here... with, uh...?"

Was she serious?

"And remember," Mrs. Szerchenko smiled as she got in my face and shook a finger at me, "no apologizing. I'll leave Tanya a note in the kitchen. Sit."

I sat. I was too nervous to finish the bagel, so I just sat. Ten minutes later, at noon exactly, I heard a tentative voice from the top of the stairs.

"Mama?" she called. "Mama, can I come down?"

I stood up and walked to the bottom of the stairs. She was still on the top landing, waiting for an answer.

"Hey," I said, as we finally saw each other. "I came over to — "