I drilled a hole through the wall to the outside with my smallest bit, pushed the bureau back into place, and tried the lamp. It worked fine. I packed up and left the house, being careful to lock the door behind me. Then I drove back to Jodie.
Sadie called and asked me if I would like to come over and have some supper. Just coldcuts, she said, but there was poundcake for dessert, if I cared for some. I went over. The dessert was as wonderful as ever, but things weren’t the same. Because she was right. There was a broom in the bed. Like the jimla Rosette had seen in the back of my car, it was invisible… but it was there. Invisible or not, it cast a shadow.
Sometimes a man and a woman reach a crossroads and linger there, reluctant to take either way, knowing the wrong choice will mean the end… and knowing there’s so much worth saving. That’s the way it was with Sadie and me during that unrelenting gray winter of 1962. We still went out to dinner once or twice a week, and we still went to the Candlewood Bungalows on the occasional Saturday night. Sadie enjoyed sex, and that was one of the things that kept us together.
On three occasions we shapped hops together. Donald Bellingham was always the DJ, and sooner or later we’d be asked to reprise our first Lindy Hop. The kids always clapped and whistled when we did. Not out of politeness, either. They were authentically wowed, and some of them started to learn the moves themselves.
Were we pleased? Sure, because imitation really is the most sincere form of flattery. But we were never as good as that first time, never so intuitively smooth. Sadie’s grace wavered. Once she missed her grip on a flyaway and would have gone sprawling if there hadn’t been a couple of husky football players with quick reflexes standing nearby. She laughed it off, but I could see the embarrassment on her face. And the reproach. As if it had been my fault. Which in a way, it was.
There was bound to be a blow-up. It would have come sooner than it did, if not for the
Ellen Dockerty came to me in February and asked me two things: first, would I please reconsider and sign a contract for the ’62–’63 school year, and second, would I please direct the junior-senior play again, since last year’s had been such a smash hit. I refused both requests, not without a tug of pain.
“If it’s your book, you’d have all summer to work on it,” she coaxed.
“It wouldn’t be long enough,” I said, although at that point I didn’t give Shit One about
“Sadie Dunhill says she doesn’t believe you care a fig for that novel.”
It was an insight she hadn’t shared with me. It shook me, but I tried not to show it. “El, Sadie doesn’t know everything.”
“The play, then. At least do the play. As long as it doesn’t involve nudity, I’ll back anything you choose. Given the current composition of the schoolboard, and the fact that I myself only have a two-year contract as principal, that’s a mighty big promise. You can dedicate it to Vince Knowles, if you like.”
“Vince has already had a football season dedicated to his memory, Ellie. I think that’s enough.”
She went away, beaten.
The second request came from Mike Coslaw, who would be graduating in June and told me he intended to declare a theater major at college. “But I’d really like to do one more play here. With you, Mr. Amberson. Because you showed me the way.”
Unlike Ellie Dockerty, he accepted the excuse about my bogus novel without question, which made me feel bad. Terrible, really. For a man who didn’t like to lie — who had seen his marriage collapse because of all the ones he’d heard from his I-can-stop-whenever-I-want wife — I was certainly telling a passel of them, as we said in my Jodie days.
I walked Mike out to the student parking lot where his prize possession was parked (an old Buick sedan with fenderskirts), and asked him how his arm felt now that the cast was off. He said it was fine, and he was sure he’d be set for football practice this coming summer. “Although,” he said, “if I got cut, it wouldn’t break my heart. Then maybe I could do some community theater as well as school stuff. I want to learn everything — set design, lighting, even costumes.” He laughed. “People’ll start callin me queer.”
“Concentrate on football, making grades, and not getting too homesick the first semester,” I said. “Please. Don’t screw around.”
He did a zombie Frankenstein voice. “Yes… master…”
“How’s Bobbi Jill?”
“Better,” he said. “There she is.”
Bobbi Jill was waiting by Mike’s Buick. She waved at him, then saw me and immediately turned away, as if interested in the empty football field and the rangeland beyond. It was a gesture everyone in school had gotten used to. The scar from the accident had healed to a fat red string. She tried to cover it with cosmetics, which only made it more noticeable.
