Squashed (6 page)

Richard touched my braid, unsure. “Are you going to look like this from now on?” he asked sadly.

“Not every day, no.”

“Good,” he said.

I retreated to the bathroom for another braiding. I was wearing a T-shirt with a corn stalk that said MAIZE on the front. Wes’s girlfriend was safe in Gaithersville, and Grace was finally going to introduce us. I was ready.

I had read up on growing corn—not in Max’s presence, certainly, but off-hours. Corn was a noble vegetable—strange how I’d never seen that before. What was more beautiful than a golden field of corn against a summer sunset? A gargantuan pumpkin from my patch covered with first-place victory ribbons and basking in applause and adulation was the only thing I could think of. Without corn, where would America be? Think of all those hogs dying in their slop without a corn husk to munch on. Think of sitting down to a big plate of barbecue with nothing but lima beans on the side for roughage. It made you thankful there were men like Wes who cared about their country. Corn farmers were solid people. Pure, honest, American.

“Like baseball,” Richard said, bouncing his ball off a passing barn roof and catching it, running. “You like him, don’t you?”

“Who?” I said, horrified my secret was out.

“Oh, come on, Ellie!”

I told Richard I didn’t want to talk about it, and he said fine, neither did he. As a partial baseball star, he’d been invited to Grace’s party even though he was a lowly sophomore and not worthy of the honor. Richard was going in formal attire, which meant without his ball and glove. Dad, unfortunately, was driving us. And Dad had this thing about being on time.

“Promptness or lack of it is the first definition of a person,” he announced throughout my childhood. “Lateness is sloppy, Ellie. Often seen in persons with low self-esteem.”

Or persons with two feet of hair to braid. It had taken one hour and fifty-five minutes today because I was nervous, but I finally got the braid to look like the one in the picture. Dad marched in to tell me what time it was and that we were going to be late.

“The thing is, Dad,” I said, deciding not to get ruffled no matter what, “it’s best to get to these things a little late. Let the party get started, you know. Make a big entrance.”

He backed off and I was thankful we were only driving Richard who handled Dad by talking baseball. He was back again and looked at me strangely. “You look very pretty tonight,” Dad murmured. “Very much like your mother.”

That really knocked me out and I wasn’t sure what to say except thank you. His eyes got fuzzy and he went outside to start the car. I went into my room, opened my top bureau drawer, and took out the picture of my mother and father on their honeymoon, arm in arm, walking down the beach.

I studied my mother’s face but couldn’t find the resemblance. She was small and delicate, with laughter
flowing out of her. Dad’s face was filled with love, much different than now. I think Dad got as close to his roots as he ever would when he married Mother.

I wondered how things would have turned out if she hadn’t died. She probably would have helped me with my braid. She used to braid my hair. On Sundays she’d tie my braids with lacy bows that matched my church dresses. I remembered how gentle she was and funny and how well she played the guitar, which everyone told her but she never believed. I remembered how Dad always wanted her to open her own florist shop and get lots of clients. But Mother would just laugh and then do something crazy like shove a bunch of snapdragons down his shirt, and that would be the end of that.

She was good for my father because she softened him. Her name was Claire, but Dad called her “Clairie,” a big deal for Dad, who called Pete Ninsenzo, the garbageman, “Mr. Ninsenzo.” I could have talked to her about Wes and she would have listened.

And I know she would have understood about Max. She would have been crazy about him for sure. Mother grew roses—damasks, climbers, and brilliant yellow briers—they filled the yard, the smell of them sweetening every room of the house. People who grow roses understand deep things, Nana said, because they know about touching greatness.

Dad was honking in the driveway, so I put the picture back in the drawer underneath my good underwear. I was wearing my standby black pants but suddenly felt lucky. I sucked in my stomach, tried on the khaki slacks, and froze at the sight. They fit! Snug, yes, not perfect, but I could still breathe, sort of. And like Richard said, if you wait for perfect you’ll never make the play.

I tossed my head to watch Mother’s earrings dance and headed for the stairs, taking them easy to not create tension in the seams. I swept past Max who would have made a perfect carriage, and into Dad’s waiting Toyota.

“We’re late,” Dad announced, pulling away. Some coachman.

“To the palace,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Let’s get Richard,” I tried again.

R
ichard was developing
his left-hand swing on the front lawn. Richard, a right-hander, figured a switch-hitter was worth a few hundred thousand more in salary with the Chicago Cubs, so he taped his right arm to his side last February to strengthen his grip. This drove his mother crazy because in addition to having a one-armed son, she had a house full of broken dishes that Richard dropped when it was his turn to dry. She hung a sign in the kitchen that read: IF YOU BREAK IT, YOU BOUGHT IT. Richard lost most of his allowance that month to breakage fees, but felt that commercial endorsements would more than make up for it when he hit the pros.

Being Richard, he didn’t say anything about how great I looked. He and Dad talked about the influence of the Japanese on baseball and the universe. I was squeezed in the backseat, thin and stunning, my feet straddling a pile of Dad’s best-selling success tapes:
You and You Alone.
I could see my perfect makeup job
in Dad’s rearview mirror. I tightened my lips to make my cheekbones show.

Dad, who normally didn’t put the top up on his convertible until the first snow every year, stopped the car, snapped up the roof, and said, “Your mother never liked convertibles.” I sat real quiet, like you do in the presence of something delicate. We drove in silence to Grace’s.

Dad pulled up the driveway of the McKennas’ three-story peach frame house. It had white shutters and gingerbread trim, like a doll cottage come to life. The lawn was freshly mowed, the walk lined with potted yellow mums. The bushes twinkled with Christmas lights in the middle of September.

“Have fun, you two,” Dad boomed, patting my hand.

Richard swaggered down the walk, knowing he was going to be accepted because he was a recognized athlete. I followed behind slowly, not wanting to test the strength of my seams. The night was dry and warm—perfect pumpkin conditions.

“What’s that stuff on your face?” Richard asked.

I was horrified and said, “Makeup,” like it was no big deal.

“What’re those clumpy things on your eyes?” he continued.

“I think,” I snapped, “they’re called
eyelashes.
”

I could hear the party sounds from inside as Richard and I stood by the door. Perhaps a kind family would adopt me so I could have another cousin. Richard said maybe I needed to wash my face to get the gunk off and that I should have done that before we left, all of which made me feel like an ugly troll. We rang the bell, which didn’t ding, dong, or buzz. It tinkled. “Just like
laughing fairies,” Mrs. McKenna always said. The fairies’ laughter didn’t carry too well, so Richard crashed the door knocker until Mrs. McKenna appeared, plump and happy in her frilliest apron. She said we certainly did look nice, and were we ready for a good time? Richard said he guessed he was as I lunged past her for the bathroom to check for clumping. The door was locked. I waited in the shadows.

Grace’s party got Mrs. McKenna rolling for the Rock River Pumpkin Weigh-In and Harvest Fair and its pressures. No one is sure how she became its reigning secretary until death, and no one was going to ask her because Mrs. McKenna
was
the festival. The last day of the fair, when the sixty-cent taffy apples were going for a quarter and Marion Avenue was getting back to normal after the four-day extravaganza, Mrs. McKenna made phone calls to newspapers that hadn’t sent a reporter to cover her festival. She told them what a time they had missed and that they should be ashamed of themselves.

She remembered every grower for two hundred miles and every prize pumpkin that had ever slid onto the giant scale her father donated to the festival in 1953. Adelaide McKenna was a big woman of big gestures, and she walked the grounds like a queen touring her kingdom, kissing babies, tasting pies, and patting pumpkins. She did this pretty much at Grace’s party, too.

Nana said Mrs. McKenna was a great community servant, but for my money no woman is truly great if her house has only one bathroom. The door finally opened and out scurried Justin Julee, the smallest boy in school, who had to sit on the Greater Des Moines white
and
yellow pages just to pass driver’s ed.

I slipped inside and checked the damage. Richard was right: My eyes were clumpy. I tried peeling the mascara off, but the lashes stuck together, a look Wes wouldn’t go for. I washed the remainder of a once-perfect makeup job off my face and considered spending the evening in the linen closet. But growing giant pumpkins had prepared me for life’s bad weather: When it hit, you fought back, that’s all.

I heard a knock on the door and Sharrell Upton’s twinkling voice. “I just hate to be a pain, but I’m gonna have to get in there
soon
!”

Sharrell was the cheerleading cocaptain of the Rock River Belles and a Sweet Corn Coquette contestant. We weren’t close. I opened the door to her
look
, which said she had to go bad. I lingered at the door making small talk, so she’d have to hold it longer. Sharrell had Bambi eyes with long, curly lashes that didn’t clump, and a small waist that she always put one hand on for emphasis. Since I couldn’t be the prettiest girl at the party I could at least make it uncomfortable for the one who was.

Sharrell was about to lose it and flung herself toward the toilet. I crept toward the living room, positioning myself behind Mrs. McKenna’s plastic palm, which I had never seen any use for until now. I felt common and ugly. A fungus in a land of flowers.

Richard would never hide behind a fake tree. He was in the thick of it, talking to two soccer players about how Iowa needed a professional baseball team. The soccer players could clearly care less, but Richard’s feeling was if people didn’t like baseball, tough. The boys were looking at the pretty girls, who were pretending not to notice. Sharrell entered like no big deal that everyone was watching her. Just once I would like to
walk into a room and have people notice. Was that too much to ask, God? I threw my braid over my left shoulder and tossed Mother’s earrings for effect. Mrs. McKenna’s clammy hand was on my shoulder, jingling with gold bracelets.

“Ellie dear, why don’t you have something to eat?”

“I’m sort of on a diet.”

“Nonsense,” she said, and dragged me to a table of food that bulged with empty calories. I chucked my diet, cut a giant wedge of butter pecan cake, and dug in. Grace ran up to me and pointed to Wes, who was dressed in jeans and a work shirt and leaning against the fireplace, talking to a group of kids in fancier clothes. Seeing him put a knot in my stomach. Was I ready for
the
introduction?

“No,” I told her, scarfing down cake and holding in my stomach (not easy, trust me). “I’m not.”

Grace pulled me to the fireplace, yanked Wes’s elbow, and announced to him and the world: “This is Ellie. You know. The one with the pumpkin.”

This was not the quiet introduction Grace had promised. Wes and I looked at each other uncomfortably as the others smirked. I had never thought of myself as the One with the Pumpkin. I had other qualities I felt Grace could have brought out. The One with the Gift for Growing, the One with the Pretty Good Skin, the One with a Deep Love and Respect for Nature. I checked my upper lip for frosting. Wes smiled at me. I had never seen him close up before. He was not handsome really, but had very nice gray eyes. He grinned wider and said he’d heard about Max.

“He’s big,” I said.

“Yeah. I heard.”

This was my usual brilliant beginning when I
talked to a boy. I can never think of anything interesting to say, so I keep going, hoping he won’t notice.

“He’s about four hundred pounds by now so, you know, he could really be something, maybe, or it could all go away. You know.”

“How could it all go away?” he asked.

I didn’t know why I said that. Sometimes I was afraid I’d wake up and Max would be gone. “Gypsies,” I offered. “Nuclear war.” Wes laughed, not out of politeness. I laughed back.

“Do you think they’ll drop the bomb on Des Moines?” he joked. He was leaning against the fireplace, looking directly at me. He was cute close up.

I laughed some more and was feeling pretty good even though my face was bare. I made Mother’s earrings tinkle as I talked and could feel my eyes sparkle. I put my hand on my waist for emphasis, not because Sharrell did it but because it was the right thing to do. We talked about corn, how Texas A&M had developed a sweet onion with a taste nobody could believe, and some things that didn’t matter. I went numb. Wes’s eyes crackled and didn’t miss a thing. He told me how his aunt had grown a 481-pound squash, the biggest one he’d ever met personally.

“It took my father and three other men to lift it onto the truck,” he remembered. “They wrapped it in blankets, and my aunt rode all the way to the fair in the back with it because she said if it broke, she’d die. Won first prize.”

“I’m hoping to enter,” I said, humbly.

“Enter? Just enter? What about
winning
?”

Well, of course I wanted to win. You don’t go entering contests you don’t hope to win. “Cyril Pool’s got one bigger than mine already,” I said, “and he’s been at this
much longer than me and…” I stopped because I hated it when I put myself down around people I wanted to like me. I wanted to tell him how important Max was to me. How I’d covered him in the storm all night and given him the best months of my life, and how I had, as Nana said, a grower’s soul.