“Whose party?”
“Never mind,” I said, hating my own big mouth for really fixing things for me that time.
He walked beside me silently for a while, and then he said, “I’m doing something Christmas Eve, anyway.”
Fine, I thought to myself; at least I spared myself the humiliation of being turned down.
“I don’t like parties, anyway,” he said. “I’ve been to so many parties where people mouth other people’s opinions that it all bores me. All you hear at parties is a lot of manifest knowledge.”
“A lot of what?” I asked him.
“Manifest knowledge,” he answered.
“I know it,” I said. I had no idea what he was talking about. “Oh, that’s the truth, all right,” I said.
“I’ve got this friend coming in from New York City to spend Christmas with me,” he said.
“Did he go to school with you?”
“It’s a she,” he said.
“Great!” I said, nearly bent double by a sudden stab of disappointment. “I hope you have a fabulous time.”
“It’s nothing like that,” he said. “She’s old enough to be my grandmother.”
I would have to go to Christine Cutler’s alone. It wasn’t a place you took just anyone.
“I don’t particularly like old people,” I managed to carry on the conversation. “They meddle with your life.”
“Not Billie Kay,” he said. “She isn’t a meddler.”
“Oh, la-di-da,” I said. “I gather you mean Billie Kay Case of Hollywood fame and fortune.”
“How did you know?” he said.
“The movie star I’m spending Christmas Eve with told me,” I said.
“But Billie Kay Case is who I mean,” Adam said.
“We must all get together and drop names,” I said.
“Honestly, Brenda Belle, she really is coming to see me.”
“I’ll roll out the carpet down Central Avenue,” I said. “Do bring her into Corps for a Manhattan with an olive in it.”
“You don’t put olives in Manhattans,” he said. “Olives go in Martinis.”
“Keep your mouth shut about my upper lip,” I said as we came to the end of the hall. “Don’t spread it around.”
“You can trust me,” he said. “Have you told anyone I was expelled?”
“No.”
“Brenda Belle, I don’t know why I confide in you, but I do. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it quiet about Billie Kay coming to Storm. She doesn’t like a lot of bother now that she’s getting older.”
“Knock it off,” I said.
“I mean it.”
“A joke’s a joke,” I said, “but an all-day running joke is a bore. I can’t be ‘on’ all the time. You’d better know that about me right now. Very few female comediennes have happy lives.”
“Brenda Belle, listen to me,” he said. “Billie Kay is really coming here. Please believe that.”
“You may wear expensive clothes,” I said, looking at his clothes and not seeing any difference from other people’s clothes, “but you have big problems. You not only cheat, you lie.”
I saw the look of disappointment on his face. “All of those things,” he said, and then he walked away from me.
That was fine as far as I was concerned. I had enough not going for me, without having a sickie tailing me around. It was funny, because I’d really liked him up until that conversation. But after that conversation, I thought, No wonder he’s interested in me—he’s slightly crazy. Whacked out. He’d probably been expelled from that school because of trouble with his head, I decided.
What I was looking for at that point in my life was normal companionship, not a misfit. I wanted someone who fit, so I’d feel I fit, too.
After struggling all through Algebra with problems in polynomial multiplication, I bumped into Christine Cutler in the hall.
“Did you ask him?” she said.
“Yes,” I said, “but he said he didn’t want to come, because it’d just be a lot of people mouthing other people’s opinions, which bores him. I’ll be there, though . . . around eight-on-the-dot.”
That night before supper, Christine Cutler called to say that she simply had to cut her party list down, that she was only having very close friends.
“You understand, don’t you, Brenda Belle?”
“Absolutely,” I said, “I understand.”
I had the dream again, that night, about Omaha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
From the Journal of A.
I’ll never forget the Christmas my father’s photograph was on the cover of Time magazine. It was during the early years of his marriage to Billie Kay. It had been a terrific year for my father. It had been the first year he’d ever been asked to the White House for dinner, and the year his photograph began appearing in newspapers and his name mentioned in gossip columns. We were trimming the tree, and my father was gulping down eggnog laced with brandy. When all the fancy decorations were tied to the tree’s branches, my father said, “Now for the finishing touch.” He took the photograph of himself on the cover of Time and pinned it to the very top of the tree. “There’s our star!” he said. Then he fell over backward and knocked the tree down, and everything broke.
I was remembering that on Christmas Eve afternoon, while I helped my grandfather paint empty beer cans gold and silver.
My grandfather had an awful hangover. The night before he’d phoned Late Night Larry to tell him he’d found a publisher for his book. (“When you become famous, Chuck From Vermont, don’t forget your friends in Radioland!”).
“You look down in the dumps, A.J.,” my grandfather said.
“I’m not, though,” I answered him. I was down, I guess. I often was at Christmas. One of the reasons I was down that Christmas was because I’d found out who was giving the Christmas party Brenda Belle had mentioned—the one she’d been invited to, on condition she didn’t bring me. It was Christine Cutler.
I was genuinely surprised. Maybe it had been my imagination, but I’d thought Christine Cutler took to me in some strange way. It was nothing I could put my finger on; it was a feeling I got sometimes when I’d see her in the hall or across a classroom. I’d thought there was just the slightest spark, no bells ringing or rockets going off, but the tiniest kind of undercurrent. I’d get her eye and she’d hold my eyes with hers, and I’d definitely feel this slight charge passing between us.
After Brenda Belle told me what she did, I crossed it off to wishful thinking on my part. Still, to tell someone she couldn’t come if she brought me didn’t do a lot for my ego. I wondered if it had something to do with the rift between my grandfather and Dr. Cutler. I wanted to blame it on that, but a part of me said to just face facts: The only time someone like Christine Cutler noticed yours truly was when she knew whose son I was. . . . In addition, Brenda Belle’s attitude toward me had changed. I knew she took me for this stupid phony; I knew she thought I made up things like Billie Kay’s coming so I could get attention.
I was beginning to feel like an outcast in Storm; I was beginning to wish they all knew who I really was.
“Doesn’t anyone in this town remember my mother’s marriage to my father?”