Never Love a Stranger (15 page)

“O.K.,” I snapped, “then quit your beefing! What about you two?” I looked at Janet and Jerry.

“Janet!” Marty cried. “Why, a girl’s never been class president before.” “That doesn’t mean she can’t be,” I said. “How’s about it, Janet?”

“Not for me!” she said. “I won’t stand a chance. But Jerry?” She looked at him.

He sat quiet for a minute, then he smiled. He had a nice smile. “If that is the way you want it, I’m stuck with it on one condition.”

Marty bit for the question but I saw it coming. “What’s that?” Marty asked. “Janet runs with me.” Jerry looked at her, smiling.

“Of course Janet will run with you,” I said, glad to settle the question before she had

time to speak.

For a moment I thought Janet looked a little disappointed at my ready acceptance. But I could have been mistaken. It flashed away.

And that’s the way it stacked up—through to their senior year.

The next day Mrs. Scott stopped me in the hall. “I hear you’re not running again,” she said.

I knew Marty had told her. “News travels fast!” I replied, smiling. “But I thought you had changed your mind after we spoke.”

“I didn’t.”

“What about the things I said you could do? Sam?” she asked. “Sam’ll be O.K.,” I said, “and Jerry can do those things. He likes it.”

“You know. Francis,” she said, “I’ve a feeling I might have been wrong about you.” “You might have been,” I answered casually. “We all can make mistakes.”

“I hope I haven’t,” she said, going into her office. “I liked you.”

After Jerry and Janet had been elected I began to see less of the old class crowd than I had before. My abilities in athletics led to my association with more upper classmen, and I became more or less accepted in their crowd. I felt more at home with them than I did with the group in my class because I felt so much older than the children in my class.

I cut down my visits and going out with Janet to about once a week. I went out with older girls. They were a little more wise and I used to get further.

One day as I left school Jerry fell in step with me. “Hi!” I said.

“Hi!” he answered. “What’s doin’? We haven’t seen much of you.” “I’ve been around,” I said easily.

“I know,” he said. “So I’ve heard. Janet has too. And I don’t think she’s too happy about it.”

“I’m no baby,” I said, “I can take care of myself—and Janet too.” “But Janet …?” He looked uncomfortable.

“Janet and I are not tied together,” I said sarcastically.

He grabbed my arm and I turned to face him. He had a serious look on his face. “You know, Frank, I’ve been waiting for you to say that.”

“So I said it! What are you going to do about it, big brother?”

“Nothing. But you better forget that big-brother angle.” He let go of my arm and walked down the street whistling.

I looked after him, wondering what was on his mind. “Oh, well!” I thought. But just the same I went to see Janet that night.

I got to her house about seven o’clock and rang the bell. She opened the door. When she saw me she smiled. “Come in, Frankie.”

“Hello,” I said, walking in.

We went into the parlour. Jerry and Martin were there. I was surprised to see them but I didn’t show it. I acted as if they were always there when I came.

“Hi ya, fellas!” I said.

“Well, what do you know,” Marty said to Jerry, “the gods descend from Olympus!” And

then to me with an elaborate bow: “Greetings on thy return, O long lost brother!”

“Wise guy!” I answered. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Jerry. The tongue runs in his family.”

“What brings you here?” Marty asked.

“I came to see Janet,” I replied, smiling easily. “How about you?” I had them. Neither would admit coming to see Janet even if they did.

Marty murmured the old excuse about class business.

“Well,” I said, “don’t let me interrupt. I’ll stick around till you’re through.” I sat down in her father’s chair and picked up a magazine. “Where are the folks?” I asked her.

“They walked over to Grandma’s,” Janet replied. “She’s not been feeling too well.” “That’s too bad,” I said sympathetically. “Nothing serious?”

“No, just a cold.”

The boys gave up. “I guess we might as well run along; we’re about through anyway,” Jerry said, getting to his feet.

“Don’t let me break up anything,” I said, with a falsely begging-their-pardonish tone in my voice.

“Yes,” Janet said, picking up my cue, “don’t go. I’ll put on the radio. Maybe we can get something good.”

Marty said something about having promised to be home early, and Jerry said: “Me too,” and they left in spite of our protests.

When the door shut on them, we looked at each other and laughed. “C’mere, baby, and give me a kiss,” I said, holding out my arms to her.

She came. I kissed her slowly. When we came up for air, I said: “Golly!” She smiled. “Long time no see.”

“I was busy,” I said. “But if I’d’ve known what I was missing, I’d’ve been around more often.”

“Don’t lie, Frankie,” she said. “Don’t ever lie to me, Frankie. You don’t have to.” “I know it, baby.”

“I love you, Frankie.”

I kissed her again but I knew I wouldn’t be kissing her long. Something seemed to tell me that she and Jerry…. But her kisses were sweet, and we were so young and so serious

—even if I told myself I was not.

Chapter Ten
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I
WAS
eating lunch one afternoon several weeks later when Marty slipped into the seat next to me. “Hi, Frankie!” he said, “what do ya know?”

“There’s not much to tell. You’ve been making all the news lately.” “Yeah.”

“The whole school’s talking about your not running for class office again,” he said. “They say you think you’re too good for them.”

I laughed at that. “Let them talk,”

“Mrs. Scott doesn’t think too much of it either.”

“Crap!” I said. I speared the cover from the bottle of milk with a fork. “What got into you, anyway?” he asked.

“Nothin’,” I said, drinking the milk, “I’m getting kind of fed up with the baloney she hands out about helping the students. All she’s doing is practising on us. Maybe she’s going to write a book and call us experiment 999 or something.”

He reached over and picked up my bottle of milk and took a drink out of it. I watched him. “Have some pie too,” I told him.

He grinned. “No, thanks, I’m not hungry.”

“Then what the hell are you doing down here anyway?”

“Well, if you really want to know, I came down to see you. Mrs. Scott thinks maybe you’d like to come back upstairs and work with us. She thinks you’re good.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said, standing up. He sat there looking up at me. “You can just run right back upstairs and tell her to get another stoolie. I’m out of business.”

“O.K.!” he said, getting up from the bench. “If that’s what you want, I’ll tell her, but I think you’re maybe making a mistake.”

“I know,” I said, “but don’t give it a thought. I make ’em all the time.”

I walked out of the lunch-room into the yard and then across the street. There were a row of benches there. I sat down and lit a cigarette. It’s kind of on a hill there and you can look out across the river to the Bronx. It was about mid-April and the day was warm and hazyish. I heard the school gong ring announcing the change of classes, and I thought: “The hell with it!” I didn’t feel like maths anyway. I could see some students coming out and others going in. I leaned back against the bench. The cigarette had burned down; I lit another from it and threw the butt away.

A few girls were walking down the path towards me. Janet was with them. I turned my head away, hoping she wouldn’t see me; I hadn’t seen her since that night three weeks ago. But she did. She said something to them and came over to me. The sun was in her hair and she looked very pretty, but I didn’t want to talk to her. I wished she hadn’t seen me.

She came up. “Hello, Frankie.” She smiled. There was something about her smile that got me. It was like she had said: “Don’t be mad at me. If I did something wrong, I didn’t mean to.”

I smiled back. “Hello, Janet.” “Haven’t you got a class?” she asked.

“Yes, but I’m lazy. I guess I got spring fever.” “Oh! It is a nice day, isn’t it?”

“Yeanh.”

“Mind if I sit down?” she asked.

“No. That’s what the benches are here for.”

She sat down on the bench, a little way from me. For a while we didn’t speak; we just looked out over the river. But it was like holding a conversation. I could imagine her asking me why I hadn’t been around to see her and me saying I wanted to, but was too busy and then she would ask if I was going back to help Mrs. Scott because if Marty knew it she would know it working with them and I would say no because I thought Mrs. Scott was a faker and she really didn’t give a damn about us and then she would say that I was wrong and Mrs. Scott was O.K. and I would say it’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it and she would ask me how I was doing in my classes and I would say all right because I had been averaging about eighty and then she would ask me if I was going out for the swimming team again this year and I would say maybe I hadn’t made up my mind yet when I knew that I had made up my mind to go out the coach had asked me and then she would ask me how my aunt and uncle were and I would say they’re all right but my uncle has a cold he’s been trying to shake all winter but the cough seems to hang on and ask her how her parents and grandmother were and she would tell me that they’re O.K. too but her grandmother is getting older and while we were talking I would be thinking of something else how she first kissed me and when she told me she loved me when she was ironing her slip in the kitchen and how the perfume in her hair used to tickle my nose and we would be talking about the kids we knew when we wanted to talk about whether she liked Jerry and I liked her—but we just sat there on the bench looking out across the river to the Bronx.

My second cigarette burned low. I lit another from it and threw the butt over the railing, and we watched it fall over until it was out of sight. At last she spoke.

“You’ve changed, Frankie—changed a lot in the last year.” “We all do,” I said, “We’re not getting younger,”

“That’s not it, Frankie,” she said slowly. “Somehow I’ve got the feeling you’re a person I never knew before, you’re so different. I know we’ve all changed—Jerry and Marty and me—but you’ve seemed to grow cold and hard and selfish. You never were like that before.”

I remembered that was what Ruth had said once. I looked at Janet. “That’s the way I always was,” I said flatly.

We were silent again, and looked out at the river and watched a small boat chugging upstream against the current. I threw my cigarette away. I didn’t light another because my mouth tasted lousy. A light wind had come up behind our backs; I could feel it blowing across my head. I looked at Janet. Her hair was blowing in the wind, forming small curls around her face. I wanted to touch her hair; it always felt so soft and crinkly.

She looked at me. “You look like a small boy just after an undeserved spanking,” she

said, gamely trying to smile. She didn’t quite make it.

I didn’t answer.

“Frankie, why don’t you come to see me any more?” There, she said it. I could never know how much courage it took for her to ask that question.

I didn’t know what to answer. I mumbled something about being busy…. “You were busy before and yet you found the time,” she said.

I said something about her going around with Jerry.

“I only started to go around with Jerry after you started with that other crowd. What did you want me to do—stay home and mope or wait for you to come back?” Her face was white and tense.

“But, Janet,” I said, “we were kids and maybe we didn’t exactly know what we were saying….”

“Maybe you mean you didn’t.” She was crying now. Tears stood in her eyes, sparkling like little diamonds where the sun caught them. “But I did. I thought you loved me.” She covered her face with her hands and leaned forward, weeping soundlessly.

My throat felt funny. I could hardly speak. Nervously I looked around. Thank God there wasn’t anyone near us! “But, Janet——” I said, leaning forward and touching her shoulder. How could I tell her I was sorry I had hurt her, or that I felt like a fool? I thought of Eve, the girl in the senior class I had been running around with the last few weeks, and her wet, hot kisses and the tricks she had of promising with a look of her eye or a movement of her body—of promising a lot and giving just a little —and teasing, always teasing. How could I tell Janet that I loved her freshness, her simple, direct, honest look, the warmth of her eyes? How could I tell her that I wanted her—and something more?

She shook my hand from her shoulder angrily. “Go away!” she cried. “I feel so cheap— I hate you, I hate you!”

She got up and ran towards the school, wiping at her face with a small, ineffectual handkerchief. I started to get up and go after her. Then I remembered we could be seen from the windows of the school. I sat there and watched her run into the school.

I looked out across the river, the day was getting colder. I shivered. The gong rang announcing change of classes. I was almost glad. I got up and went in. I had a Spanish class coming up. On the second floor I saw Janet coming out of the girls’ room. I went over to her. “Janet,” I said.

She turned her face away. ‘Don’t speak to me again—ever.” She spoke in a low, cold tone of voice.

“All right,” I said just as coldly, “if that’s the way you want it.” She walked on down the hall. I watched her turn the corridor.

“Damn!” I said to myself. “Damn school, anyway! It’s kid stuff.” And she turned and walked out of the building.

Chapter Eleven
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T
HE
family was just sitting down for dinner when I came in. The kids were all scrubbed up; Irene was already sitting at the table but Essie was helping her mother at the stove.

“Hi ya, folks!” I said as I came in.

“I was wondering where you were, Frankie,” said my aunt. “Hurry and wash up. We almost started without you.”