I'm Not Your Other Half: A Cooney Classic Romance Page 4

  It was at this moment that the police car came up the driveway.

  I have never felt so stupid in my life. We paused in our train movements like little children playing freeze tag. Two policemen got out of the car. “The neighbors called,” said the taller one grimly. “They told us a bunch of hooligans were destroying property up here.”

  Our hands dropped from each other’s waists. Michael folded his arms across his chest, removing himself from me and our horseplay. Price stood stiff and furious, his whole posture one of seething anger, as if the police were trespassing on him instead of us on the Harte property. But Annie, still exhilarated from her cheering, gave the police her impish smile. “Nonsense,” she said, giggling. “We represent Toybrary and we’re picking up a log cabin.”

  Never had the word “Toybrary” sounded more unlikely. I should have called it Library Toy Lending Service, I thought.

  Annie—still dancing, grinning like a devil at Price—looked high on drugs even to me. “We really do run a volunteer group called Toybrary,” I said desperately. “Mr. Harte said we could have this cabin.”

  The policemen stared at me expressionlessly. My eyes are too green, I thought. It’s probably a sign of drug abuse.

  “Identification, please,” said one, taking out his notebook. It was a cheap spiral bound notebook, the kind you write class assignments in. It horrified me. The thought of my name, my address, my driver’s license number written down permanently in that notebook was nauseating. Beside me, Michael sucked in his breath, and Price muttered curses to himself. The officers were not hard of hearing. They turned to Price, as the most obviously hostile of the group, and asked for his identification first.

  Price looked at them with loathing. “No,” he said flatly.

  I stared at Price with disbelief. Why, oh why, had Annie taken up with a kid whose acquaintance with cops went beyond an elementary-school safety assembly?

  Annie said, “Now, Price, relax. Any minute now Mr. Harte will drive up the lane and this will all be settled. Show the man your driver’s license.”

  And Price relaxed. Because Annie told him to. I marveled.

  Sure enough, Mr. Harte arrived moments later, full of apologies, grateful to the police for being such magnificent guardians of the peace, and sparing me the horror of having my own name written down. And as we were driving off, Mr. Harte even handed me a check for fifty dollars. “For Toybrary,” he said, smiling. “It’s such a fine idea and I want you to stock up on interesting things for children to borrow.”

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling falsely, because my own desire with Mr. Harte and Cinnamon Ridge was never to see either again. We peeled Annie away (she had discovered that one cop had five children and she was bent on getting them all to Toybrary next Thursday) and got into the van. Price, of course, took out his hostilities by going around corners too fast—this while a police car was yards behind us. I was tossed across the backseat into Michael because I was slow getting my seatbelt latched. Michael caught me and held me next to him. The warmth of his body seeped through his clothing and mine and left me hot and gasping.

  “So how’s that check made out, Fraser?” said Price.

  I looked. “To me.”

  Price howled with delight. “We sure earned it, getting hassled like that. I hate cops. Let’s go cash the check.”

  I could not believe he had said that.

  “Oh, Price,” said Annie, laughing more than frowning. Annie, who teaches Sunday school and is as morally upright as anyone I know. “Stop your nonsense. It’s for Toybrary.”

  “Okay,” said Price meekly.

  Price.

  Meek.

  It was only slightly less amazing than that Annie had addressed him as if she were his mother. Tough wild Price, meek as an automatic shift for Annie. Musical sweet Annie, a stern parent to Price.

  “Well, let’s pool the money we’re allowed to use,” said Price, giving Annie a mock glare, “and go for pizza.”

  That means we won’t get home for another two hours, I thought. And I have so much homework. Chemistry, botany, an English essay, those history chapters to read—

  Ordinarily I do my homework Friday afternoon to get it over with. But Friday afternoon Michael and I had gone with Price and Annie to a basketball game; Friday evening the movies; Saturday all four of us up to the lake to see if the ice was hard enough for skating. (It wasn’t.)

  And Sunday mornings I work. My only revenue is seven hours delivering for a florist—churches, homes and hospitals. I like the job partly because of the money and partly because everybody is glad to get flowers. I had rushed home from my last delivery, choked down a peanut-butter sandwich (I don’t even like peanut butter; its only advantage is that it’s quick) and rushed over to Annie’s so we could go get Mr. Harte’s log cabin.

  I was very tired. And very nervous about the amount of studying still ahead. “Maybe we’d better skip pizza today,” I said. “I have an awful lot of homework.”

  I waited for Annie to back me up. We always support each other, and anyway, she would know I had said that partly for her. Annie has reserved Sunday afternoons for extra violin practice ever since I first met her. But Annie said, irritably, “Oh, Fraser. Come on. You get straight A’s. It won’t kill you to skip a night of studying.”

  I don’t get straight A’s. There have been semesters when I didn’t even get straight B’s. But I give off an aura of academic success that even Annie believes in.

  It was so strange to be sitting in that van, the darkness of winter afternoons closing in on us, and know that my best friend was in the front seat—and she was not my ally. Annie’s voice had tightened in annoyance at me. Here was Price wanting to rip off Toybrary and she had just laughed! And what about her violin? Her days were certainly as busy as mine; she hadn’t fit in any practice Friday or Saturday. Her lesson was still coming up Monday.

  “I want mozzarella and pepperoni,” said Annie. “But if you want it all the way, Price, I can just pick the onions and peppers and stuff off mine and give them to you.”

  They argued about pizza toppings.

  Michael said softly, “Fraser?”

  “What?”

  “What have you got in your boots? Fire?”

  I glanced down. My cords had worked out of my boots. Peeking above the leather were my gaudy flame-patterned knee socks.

  “Oh,” said Michael. “Socks.” He pulled the hem of my trousers up higher. His fingers whispered along the nubble of the knitting and I nearly climbed up him. We looked at each other instead of at my socks, and I forgot log cabins and homework and even Annie.

  Chapter 5

  BY CHRISTMAS, MICHAEL AND I and Annie and Price were linked in everything we did. If I got a party invitation, the hostess added, “And of course you’ll be bringing Michael.” If Michael learned about anything interesting to do, we both went. If Price was in the mood for something different, he consulted Annie first, and then Michael and me, and we all went. Or we all didn’t go.

  I memorized Michael’s phone number. I knew his favorite expressions, the topping he preferred on his ice-cream sundaes, and the trick he had of closing his eyes just before he answered an important question. I knew the taste of his lips, the texture of his hair and the feel of my hand in his.

  We found our spot in school. Next to Annie’s double-wide locker by the music room, where she keeps her violin. The boys found ways to meet us there—before school, between classes, after school.

  My parents met Michael and pronounced him wonderful. “Oh, Fraser,” said my mother after Michael had dinner with us one night. “How lucky you are to have a boy who can be such a good friend. Your father and I are like that.”

  She gave me a long hug and then pushed me away from her, still holding me, and she looked at me approvingly for several seconds. “I’m so happy for you. You’ll be one of these women who has it all. I can tell. Fine career. Fine husband. Fine—”

  “Slow down,” said my father. “She’
s only seventeen. I haven’t even taken her on weekend college campus hunts yet. Let’s not marry her off please.”

  Ben and Lynn met Michael a few days later. Afterward Lynn said I was unbelievably lucky. She had had to wait until she was twenty to meet a gem like that. Ben pretended to glare at her. “You didn’t meet me till you were twenty-one,” he said.

  “Ah, but I was daydreaming about you when I was twenty,” said Lynn, and they laughed and kissed.

  Study time dwindled almost to nothing. Somehow I crammed my math assignments in between toy loans and prepared for quizzes while I set my hair.

  And so my life filled with Michael, as a soda glass fills with froth, and everything that was not Michael floated away.

  “Fraser,” said Annie. We were talking on the phone, of course. It was the only way we ever communicated now—by wire. It subtracted a dimension from our friendship. We did not talk face to face. It’s as if she’s already gone to college, I thought. We’re too lazy to write letters, so we call each other up.

  “What?” I said. I was doodling. For weeks I had doodled variations of Michael’s name. Now I was drawing little birds—fat cozy birds with their wings tucked in tight. I circled the rectangular phone pad with a flock of identical birds.

  “I’m switching my English class. I convinced the guidance counselor I need my music sessions back to back, and that meant I could only squeeze English in fifth period, and the only class small enough to accept another student is Price’s. Isn’t that clever?”

  “No,” I said. “You have enough trouble paying attention to English under the best of circumstances. Now you won’t be paying attention to anything but Price.”

  “You’re wrong, Fraser. I work better with Price around. Either I’m showing off for him, or he has a soothing effect.”

  It had to be the first, because Price was the least soothing person I knew.

  “You could change your American History class,” Annie suggested. “Then you could be with Michael more. Don’t you miss him a lot during the day?”

  But I did not miss him during the day. Sometimes I felt as if the only thing I did was spend time with Michael. What had happened to the rest of my life? I dashed through things like botany lab, I postponed things like my ophthalmologist appointment. I never saw Connie or Susannah or Smedes or Julie except in gym. I never went for solitary walks. I never read a book. I was learning how to ski. I was learning how to program a microcomputer. I was eating fewer hamburgers and more pizza, because Price and Michael both loved pizza so much. I was spending every cent I earned from delivering flowers on my share of the dates.

  And yet, every time I saw Michael I was so overwhelmingly glad to see him that I couldn’t seem to care about my scheduling problems or the things I wasn’t doing. They receded, like a tide, and became too distant to care much about.

  But Annie didn’t wait for my answer. She had another topic. “Price and I are going to a professional ice-hockey game this weekend. He can get two more tickets. You and Michael want to come?”

  My pen made a big splotchy scratch across the last little bird. “Ice hockey?” I repeated. “But Annie! You hate violence.” Annie wouldn’t watch a television show unless somebody assured her that it contained zero violence. She couldn’t even sit in the cafeteria if there were loud arguments going on. And after one junior-high soccer game, when the teams began beating up on each other and the referees and parents were pulling them away, bleeding and missing teeth, she refused ever to see another soccer game.

  “Annie, if you won’t go see soccer games,” I said, “which are very innocent gentle games in comparison to ice hockey—”

  “I know, I know. But Price likes ice hockey. And I like to do the things he does.”

  “Oh, Annie!” I cried, and I stood up holding the telephone as if it were an instrument of violence itself—as if my own thoughts were going to electrocute me. “Do you ever think we shouldn’t be doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t really know. Do you ever feel threatened by all this? Do you ever think it’s wrong?”

  Annie’s side of the phone was silent. Annie is never silent. Finally she said, “Don’t you feel well, Fraser?”

  I thought about that. I even looked down at myself and I knew I was fine. No ear infections. No fever. “No, I don’t,” I said to her. I stumbled for words. “It’s—it’s—Annie, we’re going too far.”

  “Oh, Fray!” There was shock and fascination in her voice. “Oh, no! What have you and Michael been doing? And I thought Price and I were going pretty far. Oh, God, Fray. Maybe you should call that number in the classifieds for birth-control information.”

  “Annie, I’m not talking about sex,” I cried. “Sex has nothing to do with it.”

  “It doesn’t?” said Annie. “Then what are you talking about. You said you went too far.”

  “I didn’t mean sex, Annie. I meant—” But she had annoyed me and I had lost the thought. I no longer knew what I had meant, or even what the subject had been. I felt silly standing up at attention next to the telephone.

  “I thought you were going to tell me what it’s like to lose your virginity,” said Annie. “Now, that would have been interesting. But anything else would be boring after all those expectations. Now, are you coming to the ice-hockey game or not?”

  Michael leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I can’t believe how bored I am. I’ve memorized the patron list.”

  Price, on my right, murmured even more softly, “Not as bored as I am, Michael. I’ve penciled in all the o’s on the program.”

  “What piece are we on now?” Michael breathed in my ear.

  I tapped the program.

  “Which movement?” he said.

  “Third. Two after this.”

  Michael and Price were slumped down on the velveteen auditorium seats, their long legs stretched out under the seats in front of them, threatening the ankles of the viewers there. Michael’s hands were jammed in his pockets, a very awkward maneuver, given the angle of his legs.

  Michael, frantic for something to do, began leafing through the photographs in my wallet. Between movements of the string concerto, he whispered to Price, “I am now intimately acquainted with Fraser’s nephew Jake at age four weeks, eight weeks and twelve weeks.”

  “Let me see those next,” said Price.

  We had brought them to Annie’s chamber concert. After all, Annie had gone to their ice hockey, and I was learning their cross-country skiing. Usually I like snow. It’s pretty and white and makes me feel all sorts of Christmasy emotions, like hope and love and charity. Now I was extremely grateful that all snows so far this winter had been paltry and had quickly melted.

  We should have started them on something easy to listen to, I thought. A pops concert, say. But not Bartok. Not Webern.

  “Music sounds mutilated,” muttered Price.

  “Let’s stick to ice hockey,” said Michael.

  “Be quiet,” I said, before the lady in front of me did. I thought, if they tell Annie how bored they are, when she’s been practicing so many months for this concert, I’ll kill them.

  But I had underestimated them. They were so glad when the concert finally ended they jumped to their feet and participated loudly in the standing ovation. “I didn’t think you liked it that much” I said to Michael. “I hated it,” he said cheerfully. “I never want to do this again. I cannot believe you’ve suffered through this kind of thing before and actually willingly agreed to repeat it.”

  “Then why are you clapping so much?” I said.

  “Because it’s over,” said Price, and the boys laughed. “Don’t worry,” said Price. “We won’t tell Annie anything except how terrific she looked. How many more concerts does she have?”

  The rest of her life, I thought. “Several each year.”

  “None that I’m attending,” said Michael.

  Annie emerged, carrying her violin in its case. She was wearing a silvery-white blouse with
a black velvet ribbon, and a black satiny concert skirt. Her cheeks were flushed with pride and she was absolutely beautiful. “What a concert!” she said. “Wasn’t it wonderful, Price?”

  “Yes,” said Price immediately, bending over and kissing her. “Absolutely wonderful. You are fantastic. Let’s go celebrate. How about Le Fine Bouche for dessert?”

  “Phone call for you, Fraser,” said Miss Herschel, peering around the corner, her hair in her eyes. I longed to take scissors and remove the offending hair.

  I took the call at her children’s book desk. It was Annie. “I wondered where you were,” I said. “Are you coming to Toybrary late?”

  “Oh, Fray, forgive me. Promise you’ll forgive me?”

  I knew that voice. That was the voice she used with all her old friends who wrote to her and she never wrote back to. They’d telephone after six months to find out if she was dead. “For what?” I said.

  “I can’t come. I have to practice the violin. We have that big dress rehearsal coming up with the visiting string quartet and now Price wants me to go with him this afternoon to look at racing bicycles. He’s decided it’s never going to snow this year and we should take up another sport. Oh, Fraser, it’s so hard to practice now. Price can’t stand the music I’m doing.”

  “Racing bicycles?” I repeated. It was beyond imagination, putting Annie on a racing bike.

  “The things we do for them,” Annie agreed morosely. “Oh, well. Anyway, I can’t make Toybrary. Can you carry it alone today?”

  “I guess so. It’s pretty slow.”

  Annie hung up so fast I still had the phone to my ear. There is no sound on earth more empty, more alien, than the buzz of a disconnected telephone. If snow makes me feel hopeful and loving, an empty phone makes me feel alien and abandoned. I set my phone down quickly.

  “Hullo, Fraser!” cried Kit Lipton, bouncing into Toybrary and hugging me enthusiastically. “Guess what I want this time!”

  I grinned at her. “Let’s see. This pretty new doll-house furniture we just got in? See the tiny blue wing chair? It’s even got two tiny-teeny pillows and an eensy lace decoration for the back of the chair.”