‘Even Columbia?’
He grimaced. ‘That is a long way away.’ Then he smiled. ‘You’re a lucky girl. You got all your mama’s brains. And your daddy’s going to be proud of you, wherever you choose to go.’
I stared at the papers. ‘May I have money for the application fees?’
He nodded. ‘You let me know what you come up with and I’ll write you a cheque.’
I applied to the University of Kansas in Kansas City. I told them I wanted to study languages. Who knew? Maybe I would. It ended the visits to Miss Harrich’s office anyway. On the 27th of February they sent me a letter of acceptance. I showed it to my father, and after work the next evening he came home with a box of chocolate éclairs from the bakery at the supermarket and we had a family party.
No one ever did speak of moving, so eventually I concluded we weren’t going to. Mama continued to cast around the house restlessly during the month of February. Her agoraphobia worsened abruptly, and for a while she refused even to go next door to see Mrs Reilly. But she never said anything about moving. On my way home from school one afternoon, I stopped by the florist’s and bought her a bowl of forced hyacinths. It was only a tiny point of brightness in the winter-ridden days but it was the best I could do. The ground outside remained brown and unbroken.
Megan took up crocheting. She wasn’t very coordinated at doing things with her hands, so it took my mother almost three weeks of undiluted patience to teach her. Once Megan caught on, she crocheted and crocheted, turning out a thing that was five inches wide and about three feet long, because she didn’t understand how to cast off. It looked like a woolly blanket for a snake. I thought my mother was going to break a blood vessel trying not to laugh when Megan showed it to her. But she didn’t laugh. Instead, she said how nicely all the stitches were made and how she’d always wanted a crocheted belt. I don’t believe that’s what Megan had thought she was making, but she was so tickled by Mama’s comments that she immediately set about making another one.
I spent as much time as I could get away with at Paul’s house. All on his own he had converted the attic into a room for himself, so that he would have space for all his projects. Paul lived for the quiet, free moments he could spend up there and I lived for the moments I could spend with Paul. Sometimes I would sit on his bed and watch while he tinkered with one project or another. Other times we would lie, arms around one another, stretched out across the bed, and talk. We talked about ourselves, about school and our classes, about the future, about life, about dreams.
Our relationship moved with languid gentleness. Indeed, I suspect that if Paul’s family had realized how very little went on behind Paul’s closed door when I was with him, they would have laughed at us. As it was, I always had the distinct feeling from his mother that she was relieved to have me around. I think she’d begun to despair that Paul, happily shut up in his attic with his gerbils and his telescope and his dozens of notebooks full of observed astronomical minutiae, would ever get around to taking girls out. So sometimes I said things to Paul in their presence that intimated we were doing more than we were. I didn’t want them to know that we had such an innocent relationship because I think Paul would have gotten a real razzing. His mother kidded him a lot anyway in a cheerful, good-natured fashion, because he blushed really easily and it made everybody laugh. Paul hated her doing it, but I must admit, she was funny, and her teasing was a whole lot less caustic than my mother’s was, when she got on to someone.
I did, however, find myself anxious for the relationship to move more quickly, but intimacy was difficult around Paul’s house because, even up in the attic with the door closed, there wasn’t an abundance of privacy. His brother Aaron was worse than Megan had ever dreamed of being. If we were in the attic, Aaron would continually go back and forth outside the door, making smoochy noises, even when Paul and I were doing nothing more than homework and kissing was distant from our minds. Once Aaron changed thermoses with Paul when we were going skating, and when Paul opened his to pour hot chocolate, out dropped a pile of condoms instead.
The only place we could go for peace was the spot on the creek where Paul had taken me on our first date. Aaron didn’t have a driver’s licence, so we were safe there. And God knows, no one else was dumb enough to be out picnicking in a spot like that in February. We went out often, perhaps once or twice a week, but still we did nothing serious. We just petted and necked. I was a little worried. I enjoyed the slow, easy-going friendship we had and was fearful of losing that if I pressed him. But at the same time, I was ready for more. I didn’t know what to do. I talked about it with Brianna, to see if she thought I should say something or do something. I asked her if she thought anything might be the matter with Paul, because Brianna had four brothers and I reckoned she’d understand how boys worked better than I did. I even toyed with the idea of talking to Mama. But I didn’t. Not because Mama wouldn’t understand. To the contrary. A lot of things Mama seemed to understand completely and, in an obscure way, I resented that. Paul was my boyfriend and these were my feelings. So, in the end, I just kept quiet. Most of the time Paul and I did no more than lie in the brown prairie grass, arms around each other, and watch birds wheel over the enormous expanse of sky above us.
I had rapidly grown to adore Paul’s family. They were noisy, energetic and extroverted – the antithesis of mine. One of Paul’s two brothers was already married and living in Garden City. The other, Aaron, was fifteen. With a face full of acne and peach fuzz, Aaron knew he was God’s gift to girls. Every time I saw him, he was either washing his hair or blowing it dry. He deafened the household with his stereo. To me, Aaron was a kid right out of a television comedy: bold, brash and full of one-liners.
My favourite member of the family, aside from Paul, of course, was his mother. The very first time I came to the house at the end of January, she’d put her arm around me and told me to call her Bo. None of this Mrs Krueger stuff. After all, if I was a friend of Paul’s, I was a friend of hers.
She was a tall woman. Her features were rather plain; she didn’t have the classic bone structure that made my mother’s face so dramatic, but nonetheless, Bo was an attractive woman. Even in February she had a tan. Her body was long and lean from diets and dance classes and daily swims at the Y. Twice a month she had her hair highlighted and trimmed to keep the short, stylish cut. Bo dressed in jeans with designer names and turtlenecks under Oxford-cloth shirts, not like my mama in her old cords and Daddy’s shirts and sweaters.
Sometimes when I was over on Saturdays and Bo wasn’t busy, she would take me into the bathroom off the master bedroom and show me how to put on make-up. She’d pull my hair into a ponytail and draw with soap on the mirror to show me the shape of my face. Look at those cheekbones. Why couldn’t I have cheekbones like that? she’d always say. Or else she’d take out balls of cotton and orange sticks and little jars of cuticle remover and help me do my nails before putting on pale, dreamy coloured polish. On other occasions she would let me come into her bedroom and she’d show me her clothes. This blouse is a Bill Blass. Ralph Lauren designed this pullover. See what good use of colours he makes? Feel this. It’s genuine silk.
Bo knew all the really exotic places to shop. She had been to New York City and shopped in Saks Fifth Avenue. She’d been on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Once she had even been in the same shop as Shirley MacLaine. I would stand in the bedroom beside her and listen and feel drab and colourless, my bones, like Mama’s, peasant huge, my hair, like Daddy’s, uncontrollable. The eye make-up would smudge when I put it on. The blusher made me look like I had a fever. And once when I came home after Bo had made me up, Mama just stood there, arms folded over her breasts, and shook her head. When I asked what was wrong, she burst out laughing. But with every passing visit to the Kruegers, I grew to love Bo more. She never seemed to doubt that I could enter her world, if I tried. She never seemed