Mademoiselle Read online

  When it was impossible for me to loiter at my locker any longer, I turned to walk toward the staircase and almost ran headfirst into Wax.

  “So, are you dragging your feet?” he asked, smiling down at me.

  “I’m getting my books,” I answered, knowing it sounded ridiculous.

  Putting his hand out, he pointed to my book bag. “I’ll carry that,” he said, authoritative.

  “That’s okay,” I said nervously. “I can manage.”

  Taking the strap, he gently pulled it off my shoulder. I gave in and shrugged it off. Slinging it over his shoulder, he placed his free hand on my upper back, but this time unlike the handshake, his unexpected touch made me cringe. We walked toward the exit door with the edge of his pointer finger along the collar of my blouse. It didn’t feel right, and I wanted to shake him off, but it seemed disrespectful.

  Our first moments together were mixed; feeling invaded and yet not wanting to insult him because I was grateful for his interest. Fortunately, he didn’t leave his hand there long, taking it off when my shoulders were squeezed almost up to my ears.

  Trying to rationalize why he did it, I thought maybe it was a gesture of intent; like let’s move in this direction. Or of possession. His buddies stood on the other side of the door throwing the book of one of the less fortunate up in the air, laughing and acting childish.

  “Jeesh!” he said. “What a bunch of idiots.”

  They were my words too; I just didn’t say them out loud. Except for the grace of God, I’d be the unfortunate victim of the book toss.

  “Aren’t they your friends?” I asked.

  It was a stupid question, because it was clear they were, and I felt he may have taken it as an admonishment that he could have such silly friends. But he wasn’t defensive at all.

  “Yes, unfortunately,” he said, chuckling. “It’s pretty hard to break away from people you went to kindergarten with.”

  I didn’t think it was hard at all, but kept quiet. We walked side by side, not touching. The place where his hand had touched me still burned. Reaching up, I rubbed my neck, pulling the collar over it. Air on my skin mimicked where his hand had been, distracting, and I recognize now, provocative.

  It was only September. The city pools were still open on the weekends, yet it felt like fall already. I looked up at the blue, blue sky and a few, white clouds zoomed across space. Soon the sky would turn gray, autumn rain an ominous prelude to winter. If I didn’t watch it, depression would blanket me, my regular companion for this time of year.

  “How’d you know my name?” I asked, slowing down my pace which had the tendency to be frantic.

  The question wasn’t planned, I thought it and the words popped out of my mouth, sounding a lot more confident than I felt.

  “Everyone knows Philipa,” he said, stopping.

  Frowning, my inadequacy prevented me from hearing the admiration, almost reverence in his voice.

  “How?” I asked, dreading the answer. “Oh, wait. The kids from my old school, right?”

  I was suddenly embarrassed. The bullies from junior high were the only human beings in the high school, besides my sisters and their friends, who knew my name. I could just imagine what they had said about me, and a heatwave of shame flowed over me. I thought I could benefit from more of the cooling touch our earlier handshake provided, but he wasn’t reading my mind.

  “No, not the younger kids; I mean Ida and Lynne’s friends. We’ve been waiting for you,” he said, his voice soft and kind. “Beautiful Philipa, with her lovely red hair.”

  Stunned, I looked up at his sincere face, his eyes beautiful, large liquid-brown spheres. My reflection in his right iris mesmerized me, desiring to close my own eyes, to remember what that looked like, burning it into my memory forever.

  “I wanted to be the first to get to you, before the wolves started to circle,” he said.

  Not familiar with that reference, it sounded ominous and negative.

  We walked down Outer Drive toward my house, me silent, listening to him talk. The majestic old oak trees shaded our path as we walked, Wax chatting, the drone of his voice comforting. The sense that he only took his eyes off me long enough to keep from tripping drowned out the awareness of everything else. I don’t remember much of what was actually said on that first walk, but I was captivated. I looked up; we were almost to my house.

  Soon, the leaves would turn color and fall to the sidewalk. I imagined walking on the leaves, crunching them under my feet. The weather would grow colder and colder, and snow would fall. The thought of having to wear boots and mittens and a heavy overcoat on a warm day like this seemed impossible. I wondered if we would still be walking together in the snow.

  “Let’s stop here,” I said when we got to the corner, hoping my mother wasn’t waiting with her eagle eye.

  He’d said he lived around the block from me. Again, the idea that I’d lived within shouting distance of him all my life was inconceivable. All I had to do was cross the alley, walk through my backyard and I was home. Reality ended the hypnotic walk. I didn’t see my mother waiting, so Ida and Lynne had been successful.

  “Thank you for walking me home.”

  I cringed, the words sounded so corny and anticlimactic from what I was really feeling, but he seemed to like it.

  “You are very welcome, Philipa. Thank you for allowing me to walk with you. Will you meet me here tomorrow morning at eight sharp?”

  Asking to walk me back to school must mean I didn’t do anything to repel him. I’d replay every single word spoken for the next eight hours, paranoia destroying the bit of self-confidence his attention had given me. In contrast, my heart did a little flip. I wondered how long the night would be now, having that to look forward to; having to wait to see him again.

  “Okay, I guess I could do that.”

  Wincing, I didn’t mean to sound nonchalant, but he didn’t seem to take it that way, replied how glad he was.

  “That’s great, I’m so glad,” he said.

  Handing over my book bag, he put his hand out again. As I placed mine upon his, the same, wonderful feeling traveled over me, that cool electrical charge that elevated the hairs on my arms and cheeks. So happy, the feeling cured the burning of my neck where he’d touched me earlier. Wondering if the sensation traveled between us from me back to him, I smiled but couldn’t make eye contact. I was speechless. We stood facing each other for the longest time, holding hands.

  “Good bye, Philipa,” he finally whispered.

  Taking all the strength I had, I looked up to see if he was really speaking, afraid of what I might read in his eyes.

  Shockingly, he looked happy.

  “Bye, Wax,” I answered, looking down at the ground again.

  Letting go of my hand as he backed off, he gripped my fingers, releasing them little by little, searching my eyes while he smiled, pleased. I didn’t move, my hand still hanging in the air.

  Watching him walk away, his long legs and broad shoulders stirred something in me that made me uncomfortable, and I quickly turned away, letting myself through the gate which led to our backyard and safety. Closing the gate, relief passed over me, but residual anxiety would make it impossible for me to fully relax, thinking about Wax.

  More self-conscious then I’d thought I’d be, it really was just a walk home, I was making so much out of it. Worrying that my mother would be peering out the window, ready with a thousand questions, I forced myself to forget about Wax and what his physicality was doing to me, and concentrated on our family garden instead.

  The vegetable garden my mother planted behind the kitchen every spring was almost finished. Everything about the garden spoke of love and family to me. It was a group effort; no one was immune from tending it. Meals often revolved around bounty from my mother’s garden.

  Nurturing a few late tomato plants, her winter squashes, cabbages and beets were still growing, ready to be harvested at any time. A prehistoric vine, a hybrid volunteer from last year, bi
rthed gigantic pumpkin-like squashes; only instead of orange they were pine green, their huge leaves beginning that telltale whither that announces the beginning of autumn.

  Among the flowers still blooming were zinnias in a profusion of color, some of the foliage starting to whither like that vine, and giant sunflowers, planted for the birds. Marigolds and geraniums blossomed, hardy to the first frost. Off to the side my mother had placed new containers of mums, seemingly taunting those summer flowers which struggled to stay on.

  In a few weeks, she’d ask us to pull up the spent annuals so she could set the mums in their place. It made me sad, yanking up the flowers. There were always a few last buds. I’d cut them off and force them to bloom in a glass of water in my bedroom.

  Fall was just depressing. This year, Wax Spencer had come to rescue me. The thought stunned me, stopping me in my tracks. I’d never looked for anyone to do anything for me. This was a dangerous first, prepping me for disappointment if I wasn’t careful.

  At the door, my mother appeared, standing on the other side of the screen wearing an old jungle fatigue shirt of my dad’s over pressed pants and a blouse.

  “The garden is almost done,” she sighed, reading my mind. “I hate this time of year.”

  “I know, I do, too. It’s so sad. I’m going to save seeds from your flowers, for next year,” I said, hoping to make her happy.

  “How’d you know to do that?” she asked, frowning.

  “School,” I answered. Everything came from school. “Where are the girls?”

  We referred to each other as the girls. The two oldest, Martha and Angela were away at school. We’d all go to the same, state supported school that was our mother’s alma mater, where our father studied, as well. Everyone knew they’d met there when my dad was attending, paid for by the US Air Force and the GI Bill, and the rest was history. Ida was going next fall with the others. Then it would just be me and Lynne at the high school.

  My sisters were what I thought of as dynamic in the extreme. I once told Ida she was the most dynamic woman I knew. She snickered.

  “I grew up with the name Ida Wiener. You don’t become a shrinking violet with that following you around.”

  Having a strange name didn’t affect me in a positive way. I avoided having to say it out loud whenever possible. I foolishly blamed my name for most of my struggles.

  Now, with Wax in the picture, it didn’t seem like such a liability. I remembered the way he said it, with a question mark at the end. You’re Philipa?

  My mother held the door open while we talked about the garden. I could smell beef cooking.

  “What’s for dinner?” I asked stupidly as I walked into the kitchen.

  “Pot roast, potatoes and carrots, the carrots from the garden. Good fall meal. You gotta lotta homework?”

  My mother may have lived in the Midwest since going to college, but she still talked like she just sprung from Brooklyn.

  “I have a ton of homework. I’m starving.”

  She held out her hand for my book bag.

  “Get a snack. We gotta a while before the roast is done.”

  Putting the book bag down on a kitchen chair, she pointed to the fruit bowl. I could hear laughter coming down the staircase in the living room as my sisters came in with their homework. Both had changed out of their school clothes. Ida had on pajama bottoms and Lynne wore jeans.

  “Mom, can we do our homework down here?” Ida asked pointing to the kitchen table.

  We usually studied up in our rooms or if it didn’t require much concentration, in front of the TV.

  “Yes, I guess so,” she answered. “What’s going on? You girls ready to gang up on me?”

  Turning to the sink, she resumed peeling potatoes while we pulled chairs out around the table.

  “Mom, we wouldn’t gang up, promise,” Lynne answered. “We just want to be together.”

  “You never answered me, Philipa,” my mother asked, ignoring Lynne. “How’d today go for you? First day in high school!”

  “How was it?” my sisters chorused, winking at me.

  “It was very nice! I’m surprised. I expected it to be much harder.”

  “Well, that may come in time. Don’t get lazy,” my mother said.

  “I won’t. Can we do our homework here?” I repeated Ida’s question.

  A nice, new habit for all three of us to sit around the big oak table in the breakfast room while mother fixed dinner, doing our homework together. I might actually get it done quickly this way.

  “I guess so,” she repeated, distracted.

  Taking an apple out of a big bowl of fruit she kept for us on the counter, I started pulling books out of my bag, while my sisters settled down for an afternoon of group homework.

  Chapter 2

  The United States, in spite of having over a half-million young men on the ground in Vietnam, had its first draft lottery drawing on the day I was born, December 1, 1969. American troop deaths in the years from ’67-’69, numbered almost forty thousand. The government replenished soldiers by increasing the enlistment numbers through the draft.

  My dad was an enlisted man stationed at an Air Force base in the Midwest. Lucky to stay in one spot while their friends moved away, my parents often forgot that new orders could change their lives in a moment’s notice. The escalating war took away their peace, and they held their breath, waiting. Nothing could prepare them when he finally received his first orders to go to Vietnam; they were devastated.

  At the middle of a tour to Vietnam, the men were given a choice to either come home for a week or meet their loved ones in Hawaii. With four children under seven, Lynne only a year and a half at the time of his first tour, the Hawaii option wasn’t practical for my folks, so he came home for a week in March. I was born nine months later.

  Leaving for his second year long tour of duty to Vietnam when I was two, I vaguely remember him being home and then returning to war for the last time a year later.

  My sisters and I watched our parent’s relationship curiously. As young as I was, observing their affection made me feel safe. My father loved my mother, and he made sure we knew it. He’d grab her to hug and kiss in front of us all the time. I remember them kissing each other, and then drawing whatever child was nearby into their embrace.

  While my dad was home between deployments, we would pile onto the couch while he sat in his recliner to watch TV. My mother didn’t worry about our clothes, often allowing us to stay in pajamas all day if we wanted. When I hear a certain tune on the radio, it will carry me back to those times. I’m not even sure they were real, or if I’ve imagined them, longing for memories of a father I didn’t know.

  At night, with all of us finally tucked in bed, the sounds of my parents’ voices droned through the house, with occasional laughter, or murmuring and finally, silence.

  The last weekend before his final deployment, we were all together, and though I was so little, I remember the tension in the air. While my mother ironed my dad’s fatigues, Angela sat on their bed cradling me and Lynne, while the others did chores for my dad, polishing his shoes or addressing envelopes with our address. Watching him sorting through items, organizing his toiletries, handkerchiefs, and socks, and writing paper and pens, and stuffing them into a duffle bag lying on a towel spread over the comforter to protect it, I’d someday pack the same way. I must have realized what was happening even though I was so young.

  Getting into my mom’s station wagon, we drove to the big metropolitan airport to drop him off for his flight. All of us girls went wherever they went with no family nearby to babysit. My mother was suspicious of babysitters. The airport ride meant his gear and duffle bag took up room, so Martha, the oldest, came as a helper for Lynne, and I, the babies. Ida and Angela stayed with a neighbor just this once.

  After his departure, our living room wall became the place of honor to display a map of Vietnam my New York grandparents had sent, taken from their National Geographic. With it we followed the location o
f fighting. Our father was stationed at the air base with the odd name, Phu Cat, northeast of Saigon. My mother and the older girls watched the evening news before dinner every evening, and would mark where the latest fighting was with stick pins, clustering south of the DMZ.

  My father was a helicopter pilot, and as a toddler, I’d run to the television when my sisters cried, “Is that dad?” every time a helicopter flew into the scene.

  Once a month, my dad made a phone call to us transmitted through amateur radio. Girlish giggling followed every response; whoever’s turn it was to speak had to say “over” when they were finished so the radio operator knew to switch the radio over to the operator in Vietnam on my dad’s side.

  “Dad, I love you! Over!”

  Angela was the worst at remembering to say it. Pausing after she’d speak, everyone would yell, “Say over, Angie!”

  I associated the ringing of the yellow wall phone and the screams of joy which followed with my father’s calls. After the others had a turn telling Dad they loved him, followed by over, they’d thrust the phone at me.

  “Let Pipi say hello to dad!” they’d cry.

  But I’d retreat, too shy to speak into the phone, hiding behind my mother, who would wait to cry until after everyone had their chance to speak, and he’d hung up with one last, “I love you, over.”

  Besides the calls, my parents wrote letters to each other faithfully. The letters became a hallmark in our lives. Sitting at the kitchen table, or curled up at the end of the couch, my mother with pen and paper in hand, laughed or sometimes cried as she wrote love letters, often with a small child on her lap.

  Every day mother, wearing that jungle fatigue shirt of dad’s over her pristine shirtwaist dress, waited for the mailman to deliver, and seeing her run to the door to greet him was a familiar sight. Looking forward to handing his bounty off to her, her grateful response made his job worthwhile. Seeing how happy receiving the letters made her was a source of happiness and security for us, too.