| still at home volume 4 part 2 - 1961 august | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
Aug 1 [staying with Grandma and Grandpa Epp on Stuart Rd in Yarrow] Cher journál; Now I know I'm a fledgling flown. You should have seen me sailing down Wellington Avenue [Chilliwack], purse in hand, $82.50 in purse. The chin was up, the blouse was shirtwaist and chic, the nylons were fashionably dark, the smile was remote, the girl was pretty, the hairdo mobile, the swing of the shoulders jaunty, the shoes - oh, the shoes! - white and pointed, prettily trimmed, and - the sweetest, shiniest, stacked 1 1/2" heels on them!! My first heels today, and my first bank account and tomorrow, my first job. I'll never be able to creep completely back into the little home nest. I've gone too far now. I bought some lovely, expensive things. From outside in: a beautiful piece of luggage in a gorgeous blue with jet age contours and a delicate pale blue interior, steel locks, light blue handles. Only $34.12 with tax. It'll be delivered tomorrow.
The shopping spree lasted from 8:00 am to 5 pm and cont'rary to all expectations I wasn't all fagged when I got home. I roved the streets first and there were two things I didn't like about my reflection; my shoes (horrible floppy black things) and my skirt. (horrible bulgy black thing.) I'd found all the places I wanted to go to before the stores opened so I went to a drugstore and looked at magazines for a while. I asked the perky clerk about nail polish, didn't like what she had, walked out again. The streets were empty and clean with people polishing windows and sweeping sidewalks. 2 old couples stopped to ask the way to the Peakes. Later when I was coming out they were going in and I said, "You found it, eh?" and they smiled back. "We found it!" I like the morning smell of a city, and all the rest of the times of a city but that's not relevant to now. So I looked the city over, and then the stores opened. I found my shoes in Eatons. There was a charming young blond man for shoe-clerk. He looked the situation over matter-of-factly. I said I'd be back. I went upstairs and thumbed through the bathing suits. They were a mess. I looked over the girdles and took three into the fitting room. The saleslady was a drip. I've decided not to like the people who stick in their wooly heads and say "How are you coming along, dearie?" as tho' I was pregnant or something. - Think I should go. My job's waiting! 8 p.m. My feet hurt and I was desperately, dismally sick all over York Farms this morning but I'm a working gal and I made over seven beautiful dollars today. The people at York are sweet: the lady who said "You're looking a bit green in the face. Aren't you feeling well?" The man in the green sweater who said "Don't bother with that. It's too heavy," in a way that almost seemed to have a carressing little "honey chile" in it. The kids who were laughing and yet sympathetic. The forelady with her mobile red mouth and her sensuous figure (the way she puts one hand on her plump hip), her motherly pats, and her kind little "You're doing all right." The Yvette Mimeaux girl who was so friendly and the bushy haired girl who'd gone to Regina Bible School. Edna, who brought me water and apricots and told me ways to have less effort. The greyhaired woman who said "Whatever happened to your leg? When you were two? My little girl had it when she was three. She's seventeen now." The people who smiled. The apricots were a nightmare, yellow globs on a stationary sheet while the block I was standing on swam past and my face turned all hot and cold by turns. I lost my breakfast. I didn't eat any dinner but sat in a green-faced lump under the stairs in the coolest place I could find. I had to keep thinking of the money I was making to keep from quitting. The boss lady turned my tin upside down, looked through the contents and shouted at me, "Too soft, too small, too green, too far out in the cutting, and - " she stopped, aghast, "a stem left in! Positively no stems!" she screamed. The tins clattered on. When I really began to get green the lady down the aisle patted her stomach questioningly. I nodded. She slid from her stool and came over. "If you feel as though you're going to be sick," she said, "go on upstairs and get relief." I stayed on the belt doggedly. Then hastily I dragged out my kleenex and coughed up into it. I looked through a doorway and furtively dropped the kleenex under the stairs. Next time it happened I sprinted for the stairs. I didn't quite make it. But the "signs of my passing" on the stairs were soon taken care of by feet going upstairs. We worked from 9:30 to noon, had a ten minute break, worked until 2:30, had half an hour off for dinner, worked until 5, had another break, worked till 7, quit. A 9-hour day. At noon I found my corner and hoped to be sent somewhere else. The forelady patted my shoulder and said she'd send me to a better place. I hoped desperately that it wouldn't have a belt. It did, but I wasn't on it. I had to stack boxes of tins for a girl who dumped them onto a belt which took them to the other belts, beans in this case. It reminded me of helping Daddy with sacking. You have to rush feverishly to have them there in time but it is, at least, not like floating past glooby apricots. The afternoon was better. I was only sick once and after that felt quite good. Still, 7 o'clock was lovely. On the way home I still wasn't de-perked enough to pass Lottie Goertz without meeting her. And when Frank and George came in the evening, I was still alive enough to give him a rousing account of my woes. For a first job, this is a unique one. For a first day, this was a quirk of fate! August 3 Went to Cultus Lake with Ruby and Lottie Goertz and Walter. Slid down the slide into 18' of water. August 4 Got promoted to dumping tins too. August 6 Working 8 hours - $10.20. August 7 Got moved from cans to boxes to beans to peas to beans to cans. Aug 11, 6 a.m.? Dear-but-so-neglected-due-to-lack-of-time-journal, He has been eavesdropping on my dreams. After he took me home on Sunday night, I had a mad dream about him. He was walking me to the truck. I was just clambering in. His voice suddenly became agonized and broke when he said, "Oh, Ellie, why do you have to walk that way?" My stunned face collapsed, and I burst into hysterical tears. He found his way to me and held me, and them we were whirled into a wild frantic kiss that was a reassurance and a consolation. Meanwhile he was dreaming too. The first part was unimportant; I can't even remember what it was. "I won't tell you the rest," he said. My folding chair gave a leap and nearly folded as I moved closer, widened my eyes, and demanded to be told. "I guess I could tell you," he said. "I kissed you." "Hey, you've been eavesdropping in my dreams!" I accused. "You know, they say you dream what you suppress," he hinted. He has been suppressing the kissing urge. I have too. On Sunday night I looked up at his mouth and thought of how nice it would be. But when he moved into the hovering position and I thought he would, I didn't let him. We had a narrow escape last night, and have had a few. We were cheek-to-cheek and then he moved down, and I moved down, and my lips brushed his as they went past. It was a kiss, but still not the kiss. As he held me lingeringly before he said goodbye to me (we were beside the tall, lean cedar that grows beside the red steps, and it was dark and beautiful. Our shadows were swaying and melty, and he wouldn't let me go so they looked like a two-headed monster) he said, "I'll kiss you yet before you go home." "That's what you think." "I will." "Immediately before, or as soon as possible?" "Um immediately before, I think." "How about not at all?" He looked meditatingly at the sky. I had to laugh at his expression. "Maybe you're right. It does make it more special. And you're special. You're very special." He underlined with a squeeze. "So you aren't going to?" He looked back up at the sky. After a long time he said, "It's a deal." "You're a nice guy," I muttered into his cheek. "On one condition" - he amended. "You're going to have to help me." "Haven't I been?" "Yes, but you'll have to keep on. I'm only human." "How did you do it?" he burst out just before he left, "getting me to make a promise like that." He laughed. "Wait'll I tell Judy about this!" he said. We had an argument about whether he's going to go out with other girls. "I mean it. I want you to," I said. He demurred. He said he didn't want to. I said, "Just think how awful I'll feel if I know you're wrecking your social life because of me." "How much social life do you think this boy wants?" "Oh, about twice a week." "Twice a week with you." "Let's just leave it at twice a week." We argued it back and forth, in an almost tender way, me accusing him (tenderly?) of being silly; it's so unnecessary! This went on for a long time while we held hands over the checker board. Then I thought we'd dropped it. But suddenly, while he had his arms around me, he said, "Do you think I can hold you like this and then take somebody else out?" So what can you say. I think I'm afraid. Frank loves me too much. He loves me so violently and compulsively that I am afraid this won't be only a summer romance. I'm afraid he'll want to marry me someday, and I don't want to marry him. I love him. He's a wonderful guy. But this is young, this is an outgrowth of youth and summer. It would never last a lifetime. I want to be with people and motion and culture. I don't understand his feeling for the earth. I won't marry a farmer. It would make me old and tired and meek like Mom. Perhaps not, though, because I have more liquid steel in my blood than she ever had. Still, I'm afraid that a time will come when I'll have to choose between hurting him (and oh, I don't want to hurt him!) and messing up my beautiful future. If he loves me too much, if he believes in me too blindly, he'll be more than hurt if I dropped him, and I'd have to, sooner or later. He'd lose faith in people, he'd be bitter. I don't ever want to be responsible for doing that to a man. I have to be careful now. Maybe this isn't anything, really, to be worried about. Maybe he just loves hard and then forgets quickly. But I don't think so. I don't know what I can do. I came out and stood in the doorway while he came toward me. It was a dramatic entrance, at least. I felt like an actress making a dramatic entrance, because I know I looked vivid. I was wearing an electric blue sweater, knit and curvy over my new bra, and under it, an electric pinky-peach tight skirt. I posed on the warm red steps with my hands on the door posts. He walked up with his hands behind his back. When he was on the step below me, he put out his hand and showed me - a flower, pink and ruffly on a waxy dark green stem. "It's a silly gesture, but ..." he said. I could have hugged him. I did, later, but that's another story. "I want you to wear it," he said. So I did. I pinned it on lovingly and stuck my chin into it often. It was the first flower I've ever gotten from a boy. "You must have had a premonition of what I was going to wear. These colors just couldn't go together better." And they couldn't have - a mauvy delicate pink and the bright blue. It made me glow. When I left him, I had half-convinced him to write me a letter when he got home. "Can I say anything I want to? Everything I feel?" "Anything. And nothing you say will be held against you." Perhaps he will - oo, what a letter that should be! I hope he does write it. I think he will. We played checkers for a while, but never did finish the game. We started to hold hands above the board and then, well, the chair with the board on it was moved out, and then my chair was moved forward and his was, and he found even this too distant so he moved over beside me, and then I sat half-facing him, so he was still foiled. I don't understand him, partly because he's male and I'm not, but also because he's an adult and I'm only half-way there. But he's driven by the peculiar things that drive men. Still, understood or not, he's the wonderfullest thing and I like him. Once, while he was being amorous and I was being "coy" I suddenly sat back and looked at the little porch window behind us. "You know, I've been nervous about that window behind us," I said, "but I just noticed something - it's only a porch window and there is a tree in front of the door." And I did a most amazing thing. I leaned forward and gave him a hug. "If I were you I'd be very shocked. That was very unbashful and unladylike." "You'd be more shocked if I let myself go - the things I'd do." That sounded interesting. I wanted him to go on but he wouldn't. When the last radio program had ended, he knew this was time for aloha. I started walking toward the door. He reached up and pulled me back toward him. I could see the shadow tossed onto the wall by a street lamp. It was a boy and a girl being romantic. A chugging sound. "Listen to the frogs," I said. He laughed. "You have quite an imagination - that's an electric motor." "No, listen to it - it's ... It is an electric motor." But even without the frogs it was nice. A thin darkness, cool air, a beautiful blue sweater with a crushed pink flower pinned to it, freshness and youngness and a sort of love. That was when I convinced him about the kissing part. I almost think he was a little disgruntled, but he understood, which, for a boy, is marvelous. But that was the evening he and I played checkers. And then there was Sunday. Judy and he came to get me from work. They waited in the living room while I changed, and I choked a chortle while I listened to Grandma's voice going on and on about the "Kinder." (This breathless listening to a family history paid off tho' - she told me later that she thought Judy and Frank were very "gescheit.") Then I made another entrance in my new heels and some petticoats. And then we drove to Mission, stopping at Abbotsford at the Dairy Queen for a big chocolate-dipped soft ice cream. The Mission trip was in honour of my half-birthday. While we were there we had a Chinese dinner - sweet and sour, fried onions, and fried rice au something or a la something. I discovered that having Judy along is great fun - she's a person, a womanly and intelligent and intriguing person. They were talking about a painting called "The Man with the Hoe." "It's a picture of a man all bent over, leaning on his hoe," Frank explained. "That isn't my idea of a man with a hoe," he went on. "He should be standing very straight and holding his hoe high." "But your idea of farming is different than theirs was, Frank," Judy put in. "Your idea is conquest but theirs was subjection." Judy is wistful about love - she's looking for it, and she asks me, indirectly, if it is what she thinks it would be. She thinks of her brother as having this certain "it" that she wants. She knows him better than I do; I wonder ... When we drove home there was a gorgeous view of the river at the bridge; a wash of deep silvery mauve over the smudgy hills and the gold-dusted sky reflected on the ice-like surface of the river (little rough choppy places among the polished patches) and held up against it in a deep solid black silhoette, four old wharf poles. The scene made me think of Reiner because it was a picture he could have taken, and I thought of him tenderly for a few days - also, I was reminded of Doug because Frank unexpectedly hauled out a package of Dentyne and offered me a stick. There was an album cover we stopped to look at twice in one of the shop windows. It was an Oriental looking girl done beautifully in oils with a certain eye-catching verve to the artistry. "She looks sensual," Judy said. "That's a word a boy isn't even allowed to use," Frank put in. "Even that hand, all alone, would be sensual," she continued. "And the whole effect is much more sensuous than this other one - in spite of the nightgown and the rose." Then we went home and he almost kissed me but I was slippery. And we drove home. Comfortably and serenely romantic. That was it. I never did finish about my shopping trip: I got the shoes and the girdle eventually. I had to get money first, so I cashed my 56.30 cheque at the B of C, and then walked across the street to the Royal Bank of Canada. "Could I have some information please?" I asked the "nice man." So I asked, did they transfer accounts? With no charge? Assured that they did, I announced that I'd like to open one and was handed to the solicitous care of a tall blond young man with adolescent acne who got out my bank book, gave me a chequebook, a number, and got me to sign a few blanks. Now I have a little blue book in a plastic case that has me down for a twenty dollar account. And after I'd gotten my bathing suit I went upstairs, a long steep flight of stairs, to the Employment Office. A man told me to sit down and wait. I read an article in the Ladies Home Journal about a teenage girl whose boyfriend wanted her to "play house" with him, and then sat in a chair beside a desk, was given a card, a number, and asked questions by a very clean, courteous, kindly man who said, "I noticed you limp. Do you realize that you'll be standing 9 hours at York Farms?" I reassured him that I did, and could. We filled out a form together. He stopped at one of the blanks "Describe any disabilities ... what shall I do with that?" he said. "Oh, I don't think of it as a disability," I said. He laughed. "You have me there," he said, and we went on to the next blank. I went to the library after dinner, dug around art books, read snatches of a torchered book called "I Shall Not Serve" by a young French girl who committed suicide, and thought about an article I'd read in a dingy café where I had a Coke for dinner. It was called "Anyone can neck, but there are dangers you should know about," and was wedged between the lurid sob stories in a True Love magazine, of all places. It went through the usual "soiled goods" story and bothered me a bit. I even made a few resolves. That evening when Frank came we sat primly in the living room and I wouldn't even hold hands with him. "She's icy tonight," he said. "She has to be, and besides, she's been reading pep talks. You know what I mean." "Sure. And what kind of good book did you find 'em in?" "Didn't find 'em in a good book. Found 'em in a magazine." "I know." He was quiet for a while and then came up with a rebuttle. "But we haven't done anything. We haven't even parked." "True," I said. And from that moment felt quite philosophical about it. I'm glad we're being sort of long-distance. It adds a kind of value. Especially the kissing-and-parking ban. It's healthy and it's money in the bank. We can always withdraw it, and it's there tantalizing us, but it's like Christmas presents - you could open them before Christmas, but it's nice to just think about it. (And perhaps it woudn't be so nice anyway? Perhaps nicer. But I've only been kissed the right way once, and then, ironically, by a boy who was just a few days' flash - maybe that's the secret. I've found a dismaying tendency to become bored as soon as a guy likes me too much, or rather, enough. Paul was elusive and mysterious, and I went for him blindly, compulsively. We'll see, I suppose, what can happen after this. Perhaps there will be a boy again who is what Paul is.) I remember how Frank talked while we were tentatively reaching toward each other; he seemed to be telling me that there was a strange feeling in his heart for me but that it was only a temporary tickle, and that he wasn't going to fall in love - but he has, and he isn't going to say more than auf wiedersehen when I go home. August 11 Got temporarily laid off at 3 o'clock and don't mind a bit. Wrote lots of journal and went to Yarrow on the bike and shall have a lovely day tomorrow. Aug 12 pm I got Frank's letter today and met a boy who reminded me so much of Paul that I was attracted to him as much as I was repelled by his friend. Walter is short and lean and his eyes were like Paul's; he talked intelligently, as Paul did; he was wearing jeans and thongs [flip-flops] and an open blue nylon shirt. His grinny gap-toothed, alley-minded friend was "Smiley" John Peters, graduate of nearly all the pens and institutions of Western Canada and not much more than seventeen years old. They stopped me while I was going past them from reading my letter in the park. "Hi!" said Smiley. "Come here a minute." "What for?" "Just because. I wanna talk to you." So I wheeled in. They were people and I like people and I'd like to know people and I have to know this kind of people too, even tho' Smiley was about the lowest "kind of life." (Quote Bev Morelli: "George is about the lowest form'a life but as far as I was concerned he was always sorta' special.") I failed tho'. I was actually cruel to him and I didn't learn anything about him, and about myself I learned that I am egotistical and blind and selfish. I was so wrapped up in my own phariseeical thou-shalt-touch-nothing-unclean goodness that I didn't see another human's need for help and reassurance. This is the way it was with the Indian George. My heart is not an educated one, it is a bumpkin and a clod and I don't want it always to be that way. I want to remember and be sensitive. I never want to repeat the things I said this afternoon. "You don't like me, do you?" he said when I left. "Not particularly," I said, and I'm so ashamed of myself. I wish I could meet him again and apologize. I want to remember this for the rest of my life. It was a dead failure and it hurt him and I mustn't ever repeat it. August 13, Sunday p.m. I told Frank about the feeling I have about the Smiley episode. He was silent, and I talked on "... hardly anyone has ever been nice to him and then I was nasty. When I got home I thought about it for a while and then I was so ashamed of myself I could have cried. I still am." He changed the subject. He told me about a muskrat he'd seen running over the road, and how he'd swerved to avoid it; then he mentioned a man who deliberately ran down animals on the road. "It was like what I did. It was both brutal." I told him. I looked away and bit my lip. He tightened his arm and pulled me down, tenderly, to his shoulder. "You can sit up if you want to," he said. "I don't," I said in a small voice against his white shirt. "I shouldn't pull you around that way." There was a strange feeling on the way home. First Frank was glum, and then I caught it from him and it was twice as bad for me. We talked about sad and deep things, and behind it there was always a breathless and overpowering tenderness. I looked up from his shoulder and thought, "Oh Frank, I love you, I love you; even tho' it's only for now, I do love you." There was an undercurrent of insecurity too. I was unsure of what he was thinking and I was unhappy because he was. George was singing an off-key version of "The big iron on his hip" and "The Tennessee stud" and "Sugartime." Sometimes I sang with him. I didn't look at Frank because when I did, he either looked straight ahead or else turned slowly to look back with no smile on his mouth and a sort of blankness, a sad blankness, in his eyes. I watched him in the mirror. He drove grimly, or maybe he only looked grim because of the set of his mouth, and after he noticed that I wasn't looking at him anymore, he began to glance at me questioningly from the corners of his eyes. I ignored him petulantly, talked to George or not at all. So George and I were singing "The Tennessee stud was long and lean, the color of the sun, and his eyes were green" both off in a different way, and then that lapsed until we began "Sugartime" quite rousingly, and then that died out and we drove the rest of the way to George's place almost in silence. We let him off, and then drove very slowly between the trees down his lane. I looked away from Frank toward the trees. The truck stopped. Both arms went around me. "Why so look-away?" he asked. "I don't know." "Did you have a good time?" "Yes. I had a very good time." He squeezed for a moment, and then drove on. It was the first time we've ever "parked," and this was not yet quite parking. We took our usual winding route home. When we began to roll down a long hill, we could see the lights of the valley through a layer of mist that was almost like the film on cooking milk. "It looks almost as though we are going down into something entirely strange," I said. "Maybe we are," said Frank. Perhaps he's right. Love is an entirely strange thing. Strange, too, is my new emotional and mental preoccupation by this strange man. Strange, but yet not strange, that I should fall in love, now, in my sixteenth summer, with a boy who is more man than boy and who is so remote from most contemporary ideas (and so near to me because of it). Strange that I should finally, while I am still seeing him often and without the stimulus of "einsamkeit," say to myself, "I love him". I told him about my loneliness complex and the crying jags and he thought it was interesting. He held me, still while driving, but not very fast, about twenty m.p.h. some places and then he wanted to know about the other reasons for thinking I have "leanings toward acute emotionalism," so I told him, except for one reason - the way I feel about him. When we were going down Stuart Rd, I was glad to see him going past our turn-in and so we had to turn around, go back to Yarrow, turn around so as to be coming from the right direction, drive back down Stuart, over the creek, and then I told him exactly where I lived. "I know where it is," he said. "I knew last time too." The dear nitwit. (Grandma thinks he needs a haircut!) so we stopped in front of the house, I got out at his side, he put his arms around me and sque-e-e-e-ezed. I like the way he does that. Nothing half-hearted about it. So I squeezed back sadly. "Ellie " he whispered urgently. I thought he was going to say I love you but he said, after a pause, "It'll be better in the morning. It always is." And then after another pause he said, "I think I'm a lucky guy." I smiled (secretly and demurely) somewhere behind his chin-bone. "I'm a lucky girl," I said. And then he walked me to the door and stood looking at me through the screen door until I went into the kitchen. Oh yes - one thing I forgot. When we were driving toward George's place, Frank was humming something under the racket George and I were making. "What are you singing?" I asked. it was the first thing I'd said to him for a long time.
He began it and I finished. He is sweet. He was concerned. He was wondering what he'd done. Then, when we came out of the driveway, he said "Aren't you going to say anything?" I didn't, but I enjoyed being a spoiled pouting child for a while. I've begun at the end - the whole day was wonderful and not all as morose as the last part. Frank came to church in Yarrow. I was hoping he'd wear his best suit but he didn't. I didn't see him there, but he was coming to dinner so I wasn't worried. I was dolled up - uh-huh! My heels, my bronze nylons, my short peach colored skirt with its tailored look, my slenderizing green shirtwaist with its chain necklace, and under - the girdle, the bra and an ol' slip. I checked and rechecked the contours in the living room mirror. I had my hair half-decent because they're extremely dirty and they always "drape" better when they're dirty. Lipstick light, eye stuff fresh, nose-unshined. The truck drove up onto the yard. I took my time getting to the door. He backed out, thinking nobody was home yet. I opened the door and laughed at him while he drove back up to the door. He came in, sat at one end of the table facing Grandpa, didn't talk much, except for a bit of happy gab in the living room before dinner, laughed when a potato, pushed by Fate, fell into my plate, looked over my Medieval History book (which is is being written on) while I dried dishes, took off his tie and jacket and was quite "gemütlich." He told me about Judy's employers, who, after Frank had been there to see if Judy was home, had told her about "this terribly handsome guy who was here to see you; his name was Frank. Is he your boyfriend?" My first reaction was, what handsome guy. But he is, sometimes. I can't make up my mind as to whether he is good looking or not. In spite of it I'm crazy about him. Having him there seemed quite natural and nice. I felt so feminine while doing dishes because of the heels and because his eyes kept strayng from the Medieval History to me. Then we left, after reassuring G'ma about how gescheit he drives, and got George from the dinner table he was sharing with a mob of small brothers and sisters and cousins. We went the Deas Tunnel route. Twice George reminded us when Frank was one-hand driving and a policeman was nearby. We got into Van. We spotted a curb to lean against while George tried to find the Capilano Stadium. "You find it somewhere, George," said FD. "Meanwhile, Ellie, we're parking." So he gave me a bear-hug there in broad daylight and I - gasp - enjoyed it. Oh - why Capilano Stadium? "Have you ever seen a big-league baseball game?" he asked me. "No - are we going to one?" I asked delightedly. "We are," he said, and when we finally found Capilano, on 33rd and Main, I think, we did. I touched up in the Ladies Room first tho' and when I came out Frank gave it an approving once over and said, "A new paint job." Quite neat. (While talking about nudists being arrested, I said "If they want to go around showing people their appendix scars, that's their business," and he thought that was "ver-y neat.") We sat in the bleachers among stamping small boys and thirteen-year-old girls parading their new-found chest expansions for the benefit of thirteen-year boys who couldn't care less. The Mounties were playing Salt Lake City and won by about 10-2. Number 1 for the Mounties was an incredibly graceful negro who played 3rd base and I admired him profusely while watching him in Frank's field glasses. We used those for other things too - George found some lovers on the opposite hillside and watched them. Altho I couldn't see a girl, they say there was one. And then there was a girl a few sections away, whose back was bare for a ways before the blouse began. George looked her over in the glasses. His commments were - see for yourself - "that backbone sticks out about an inch There's some kind of elastic in her shorts, er panties. Quite stiff too ... Her sister's wearing the same kind " I looked. "Hey, do you want to see too?" I asked Frank. He didn't, and was just a little embarrassed. The game went on. Balls landed in the bleachers and small boys scrambled for them, we consumed ice cream bars and 7-up and popcorn, we commented and watched but the game didn't have as much appeal, altho' more skill than, our high school teams (even tho' the diamond was manicured and raked and spotless.) J-d's argued vulgarly behind us, everyone sang "Take me out to the ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch, (I enjoyed it) and I sat happily between George and Frank. (Who, shockingly enough, held hands with me and even gave me a hug once, right there!!!) Three boys, homely too, but dressed to look a million dollars, came up and sat right behind us. (My influence, I know for a fact) Pigskin shoes! They probably came in a convertible, and what they were doing in the 90¢ bleachers I don't know. But they left soon. And then there were the 4 fresh little boys in front of us. I don't know what they said, but Frank and George both jumped on them (not literally!) and threatened to throw them over the fence. ("They were only about 150 pounds, and the fence can't be more than 15 feet high ..." quote Frank) The boys were properly awed and I was very amused. I suppose that probably lessened the effect but who wouldn't laugh?! Men are such a cocky lot. When it was all over we walked out, down the ramps, and I was very aware of the clicking of heels and the feeling of "class" coming from the right clothes. There were two wheelchairs at the door and I felt almost envious of them while bragging to Frank about my old times and good times. I had my blue sweater and slung it over my knees while driving. Frank got a laugh out of it. "Are you cold?" he said first. "Uh-uh. I'm just covering my knees." "Hey, smart girl. Then you don't have to tug every two minutes." "... And if you don't tug, you're an unverschamedes madchen." We understood even that in a mutual lightbulb popping way. Everything. It's wonderful. Tomorrow, another installment. Hey, I get a letter from him on Wednesday! Isn't it silly? But isn't it fun! Then we went to Playland, which was closed, but George found an open Tramp joint so they, the two of them, worked out for fifteen minutes. Both took off their shirts, the better to show their tans and for more freedom. Also their shoes. (George put his money into his.) I strolled around and took two pictures, one of George all up in the air and one of Frank taking a dive into the canvas. There was another boy, bespecticaled and gabby, who talked to me while I obviously preferred George and Frank. I felt quite - good - to be in a hobble skirt and heels. Even picking my way through loose gravel in that new way is special to me. George was lithe and impish on the tramp, and could turn lovely flips. Frank tried to but never managed to land on his feet even tho' he tried hard. Once he collapsed so I played Florence Nightingale and kneeled on the edge to fan him with my sweater. He pulled me onto the thing so there I was, heeled and tottering, but he took care of me. He always does - I've noticed something. When he talks to me, Frank is always more gentle - he seems to think of me as something delicate that he is holding in his cupped hands, tenderly. I've discovered a deep capacity for tenderness in him. I told him that G'ma thinks he is quiet and earnest, laughingly. But he was perfectly sober when he said, "Maybe I am." Maybe he is. I remember times when he has been apart and silent, and he is never giddy, not even frivolous. That is one thing I miss in him, but his adulthood is one of his attractions, so ... When we went back to the truck George was dripping. Water was dribbling from his young stubble-less chin, and his face was as wet as though he had doused it. I admired the lines of his bare, glistening neck and his long back. His hair was wet and wisping. Then we went to Chinatown. The streets were full of old Chinese men, walking, leaning, sitting on the museum steps. There were crowds of people on Pender St. After parking, we found a restaurant called the - I forget what. Somekind of Tea Gardens with genuine squeaky music, red gold-embossed menus, a beaming prop., and chairs instead of benches. We had chicken fried rice, mushroom chop suey and somekind of Chou Mein with tea. I was teazing George about "Chicken Foo Young," a sort of egg mixture which G claims is meaty. I renamed it, aptly, "Chicken, Too Young." George, being more adventurous, asked for chopsticks, so we ate the entire meal with them - Frank spilled least, George chickened out first, and I spilled most but held on to the last grains of rice. "Another" wizened old China-boy across from us ate plain white rice with gusto and the round heap in his bowl diminished to a few grains quite rapidly. Frank shoved a borrowed dime into the juke box slot and pressed the button beside "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." Soon there was a thrumming sound of music, and then the unexpected burst of a voice singing "Apple-Green." He was puzzled, but I told him quite happily that it was a favorite song of mine. He tried again. "Apple-Green" again. I was talking to George, and then I noticed that Frank was remote from us, listening to th song. I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered if he know intuitively that this is partly my song now.
The voice had an intensity, a clear emotion, in it and it is perhaps that, as much as the words, which makes it my song. (Even tho' I'm not Seventeen, but will be.) George's long legs reached all the way across to my side, and still further under my chair. He's a romping, grinning, stretched out, oversize version of a small boy, but still not without the mysterious "it" called sex appeal. Touching him is not without awareness. When looking at the map together our shoulders and hands touched, and there was that lack of unawareness. But he is a child - carefree and naïve, even. When we left, we walked on back to our truck. At the Marco Polo two stripling boys in black and white were waiting to touch off a long string of firecrackers. George perked up his ears and demanded to wait and watch. So we, all three, leaned against a lamp pole and waited. I was in the middle. I could see my reflection on the glass doors beyond the sign saying "Private Party." Dark hair swinging loosely onto my shoulders, the blouse looking neat, My body narrowing to the belt at my waistline and then curving out under the pastel skirt, the dark legs, one tucked up, and the wonderful white shoes. The big white purse. I looked - chic, I think. Almost Seventeen magazine. We stepped back when they lit the crackers. Frank held my hand - in case I was frightened. There was a sputtering, then mixed with stacatto barks, then a roar like a battle movie's filmtrack as the street corner was filled with flying fire and curious people. There was a pyramid of flames. In the middle of the pandemoneum and excitement I felt Frank's arm around my shoulder giving me a squeeze. I know because of that, that even his twenty-one year old staidness was vanquished by small-boy fireworks excitement. On the way home we stopped at a fruitstand to buy some grapes. We all went in, looking and gabbing and laughing. George furtively peeled off the end of a red banana to show me they were the same as yellow bananas inside. We got a bag full of purple grapes, and in the truck admired the way they hang in bunches. Frank was driving, so I picked out the lovely big ones and held them in my hand for him. I thought he'd chide but he didn't. I wondered if he was remembering the one time I was angry with him - when he didn't let me help fill his carrier even with a handfull of puny berries. (When I accused him of being selfish and he was properly repentant) On the phone a few days ago, in reference to what I said last Thursday about him taking oodles of other girls out as long as he liked me better, he asked me if I'd like him best. I hemmed and hawed and said that you just don't make promises like that, but semi-blurted, at the end, that I like him best now. "Good," he said, and his voice softened, "because I like you best." August 14 I picked beans for the delightful family of Hungarians across the road and amazingly made 223 pounds. Aug 16 That will be nice to remember approximately two weeks, maybe less, from today, when I will go back to Alberta and all of this will be over and I won't see him anymore. It will never be the same. I got a letter from him today and it put me into a very gloomy mood Or maybe I am just in the doldums because it is raining and I haven't had much sleep and I'm not feeling well. His letter was so impersonal, as if it could have been written to a male friend, one who was a little dense. I answered it soberly, folded the letters away and will go to bed @ 8 o'clock today. This desperation, this necessity of him, is again what has happened before. My loving him has left the what-will-be-will-be and entered the vital. I don't want to be always on edge. Then the need to tell your love overpowers your discretion, and then he backs off and you hide it all in your miserable heart until he swings toward you again. Why should it always be like this, so much more bitter than sweet in the bittersweet? I must go back to the joyous type of love because this is corroding. One more thought - really, it would be smartest to say "finis" to it all when I go home because that would end the suspense, and then there would never be a painful dragging end. The pain would be sharp and final. But I could not do it. I don't have the determination it would take, or the courage. But I shall ask him about it. August 15 After about two hours and 72 pounds of beans in the morning York Farms called and I had to be in by twelve so I brashly asked the neighour to take me. August 16 I went with Corny Regeir to work and then only worked 'til 3 so had time to mull over letters from home. August 21 The peaches started today and I ate about 7 - they are huge and juicy. Was so rushed on the can line because I worked alone all day and panted and prespired. August 21 Last night he said "If somebody gave you a friendship ring, what would you do with it - hang it up in your room, wear it on a chain, put it away " "It would depend on who." "Would it?" "Um-Hmm. Who'd give me a friendship ring?" "Him." "Him. Him? Whom?" "The guy from Aldergrove You're free not to answer that question." "Which question?" "About what you'd do with it." "Oh. In the first place I wouldn't take it." There was silence. I wondered if it had been a slap. He didn't ask why so I told him "... because, for one thing, it would send my mother into a fit. For another thing, it's too tangible. For another thing, it hurts too much when you have to give it back." "That was answered very well," he said. I wondered again. "Do you mind?" I asked. "No." He's the most understanding man I know. One thing he didn't understand, though, was my suggestion that we try the electric-fence (imaginary) between-us idea and just talk, about him mostly because I want to know what he is and who he really is. "Give me one good reason why you would want to know me better." "I can't give reasons. It isn't reasonable. Just, when I like someone I get a craving to know what makes him tick." He didn't answer a word but pulled me over and squeezed. We stood on the red steps, our shoulders brushing the cedar, and said goodbye. He held me gently after the first. I knew he would say something then. I knew he would say what he always says. He said, in a terse but wobbly whisper, "Ellie." And then he said, "I hope we always remember each other." I was touched. I thought, "we will, we will." and it is true. I couldn't forget Frank because he is so big in my life now that even after years I'll be able to look back and see things about him above the horizon of my remembering. While we were driving he mentioned the letter he'd sent; the letter that said "he wants to tell you that he cares for you very much, more, perhaps, than he wants to admit." "After I mailed it I wished I could snatch it back out of the mails." "Why?" "It's unusual to say more in a letter than you would verbally." "I always do." "But it violated a standard I'd set up." A long pause. I felt queer - something was tense and my mind kept saying "it's so painful, so painful," when I leaned back casually, looked at the ceiling, stretched my hands up to touch it, and said "Are you going to ask me to forget it? because you didn't mean it anyway?" "No, Ellie. I meant it," and then there was the compulsive moving together, and the reassurance that is so sweet after pain. There is, after all, more sweetness than bitterness in the bitter-sweet of a young kind of love. This young kind is the best kind. It is only for a while and yet it has a temporary permanence. - you know what I mean. It is free from the pressure of adult love. Immediately, in an adult love, there is the thought, "we must be married. When? Soon." And in young love there's no disturbing thought like that one. Frank and I do love in an almost adult way and if I were older it would be "adult love" and there would be the pressure. Yet, I am sixteen and there is no question of marriage, and so we can love in an adult way without adult pressures. We can say, "I hope we always remember each other," and we can remember. I can't realize how wonderful this is. I can't appreciate it enough. Soon I will be back in Alberta and there will be an almost overwhelming loneliness again. I will lie awake and feel my body tauten as I think of him and hear my heart say bewilderedly, and then urgently, "Where are you? Where are you?" But there will never be an answer, and he will not hear me. I won't be able to talk to him, or to listen, or to laugh with him, or hold his hand because that will be Summer and it will be Winter then. I don't know what I'll ever do. I'll feel as though there had been a death. I didn't feel this way when I thought of saying goodbye to Reiner - perhaps he did. But I didn't, and now I shall learn about how it feels. Do you suppose I'll disgrace myself by crying when I'm on the way home with Siemenses? I might quietly cry into the car interior Or will I cry when I say goodbye to him? I feel a desperation rising everytime I think of it. Even if he says "see you" and he may, I will know that it is not really "see you," but actually "goodbye." For a while, a few weeks ago, I could have gone home philosophically saying, "Thanks for the memories," but now it will be a jagged cutting edge. I'll be fine after a while but the first few days, maybe weeks, will be bad. I'm so close to him, there are rootlets joining us and pulling them up will take a yank. I wonder how he'll feel. I'll see him Wednesday. I want to just be close, as close as I can for as long as I can, because soon Frank, Frank. August 22 At the ball game at Sharon High after work I met Janet who came over to yak for a while - she is such a small person. Had a horrible day on the peach line. Aug 24th Last night we sat outside again. I wore his lovely warm big jacket and sat with my elbows on my knees and my chin on my hands while we talked insignificantly and I, at least, felt warm and happy because he was near. When he said good night he held me close, and - it was funny. He just suddenly, while I was breathing into his shoulder, turned my face and said, "Ellie, what's the matter?" He looked over my face and then swept me up again. His fingers moved up under my hair and cupped over my ears, "Oh Ellie," he said urgently, "I love you," "so much," his voice added. When we stood on the red steps again, the rustling of his jacket as his arms brushed my shoulders was almost loud. I was afraid Grandma's and Grandpa's straining ears would pick it up. "Cheer up," he said. "Who's going to cheer me up when I go home?" "Who'm I going to have to cheer up?" But really, who is going to cheer me up those first days? There won't be anyone. I won't be able to see his face just a little above mine looking so serious and his eyes so earnest. And when I think, "Frank, Frank," there can be no answering beep on the shortwave. We haven't been communicating so much lately. Rather, the communication has changed. Where we used to transmit ideas we now communicate feeling. I miss the ideas tho', and would like to get it back because so soon ... Lottie Goertz phoned me last night and we eagerly talked subjects (school) and drama - Shakespeare's plays. It was communication, and it was almost exciting. After a long time a man's heavy voice broke in [party line]. "This is long enough. Isn't it?" "Ye-e-s," I said docilely, and soon we hung up. But it was fun. I want her to come over one of these days and gab for a long time. August 25 Went to Goertzes after Lottie was here for a gab and she played me some Bach, Chopin, Debussey, Beethoven, and it was like heaven. Then she walked me home in the moonlight. Letter from Mom. [August 28] Monday a.m. It was Sunday yesterday. He got me after work. I showed him the cannery. In the cooker section I flirted with leggy Lothar while he talked to somebody he knew. I hoped he'd notice. We sat in the truck for three minutes to decide where we wanted to go after. Grandma came to the door in her long narrow Sunday dress and asked if we'd decided to live there so we came in. He chatted with Grandma in the living room while I changed and then came into the kitchen to keep me company while I ate my salty fried eggs and some mousse. "Wanna read some medieval history?" I asked, and got the text book "The middle ages" into which I tucked the letter I'd written him. He looked a bit nonplussed when I handed him the thing, but found the note soon. I like to watch his face when he reads them. Usually there is a half smile on it, and it grows broader. When I was finished we left and promised to be back before ten. We didn't know where we were going. He took the road to Chilliwack. I moved over halfway there and sat near him (because I am going home so soon). We just drove around while it got darker and the pink in the sky faded behind the mountains. We drove past the hospital. I could see big squares of light and in some of them people moving, and I was so homesick. I would have wanted to go in and walk around but Frank never does the wild impractical things I suggest. "A mistake," he said, "taking this street." But he drove past it again on the way back. I leaned away from him, looking. I felt far from him. He felt it and tried to pull me back. "Hey!" he said, and I felt his hands on my shoulders. I think both his hands, altho' he was driving. He pulled hard but I held back, tearing away. He covered my eyes with his hand but I tugged it away and sat looking over my shoulder at it through the truck's "behind" window with my back to Frank. When we were quite far from it I turned my face to his shoulder and he was comforting for a while. Then I sat up and was normal and happy again. He drove into a café parking lot, a crowded tiny place. There was a red neon shining through the windshield, a sturdy-lettered "CAFE" sign winking on and off. The red light splashed over us while we thought of the time when I will have to go home. We talked and felt and loved tersely. "One summer two people met," Frank said. "So?" "They lived a long ways apart." "So?" "That part of the story is easy to tell. There will probably be a sad ending." "A sad ending is more artistic, Frank." "Is it?" "Sure it is. I'm going to write lots of stories with sad endings There's one brewing in my mind right now." "Tell me about it." "You're in it. Disguised, of course. And I think there should be a strawberry patch in it too. It's an unusual setting." "It is, isn't it?" He chuckled. His voice became tender. "I'm so lucky I met you." "Wasn't it funny that Grandpa happened to send me to your patch." "I should thank him. He'd love that wouldn't he!" "You know, I had a funny feeling about you right from the beginning, before you'd said two words to me." "'Funny feeling' is vague." "More definitely 'an awareness.'" We went into the café and sat on two stools near the juke box. There were tins of fruit and dog food and cases of pop on the wall in front of us. I caught our reflection on the mirror on one side of us. I looked pink-cheeked and a bit disheveled. Frank was dark and earnest. I was wearing the blue sweater over the blue print dress, over the petticoats, over the nylons - and my white heels of course. The television set in the next room. I could hear the voices of Jay North and his mother in "Lassie" and could nearly see the blue glow from the screen in my mind. He put a quarter in the juke box and punched numbers. A man sang excitedly, persuasively, "Love hurts!" "He's right, you know. There is a certain amount of pain involved," Frank said. So he has felt it too. On my request he played "Green fields" by the Brothers Four. It was a soft introduction, and then the voices beginning, "Once there were green fields, kissed by the sun ..." I could nearly see the long grass waving. "Gone are the green fields, parched by the sun ..." they crooned on. "Irrigation." Frank's matter-of-fact farming fact in this tender mood of sighing song was startling. He couldn't understand why I laughed. "Oh I know he's talking about his heart, but he should'a irrigated anyway," Frank said as the song continued, "Gone with the cold winds, That swept into my heart," "Where are the lovers who used to stroll, through green fields ..." I thought of us again, of how soon our green fields would be gone and of how soon there will be that vacuum in my heart again, a parchedness and barrenness. "Gone with the summer " is what our song would say, "the lovers, who left their dreams behind ..." I thought of us again. we've never had any dreams because always from the first day, we have known and felt that this was an interlude, not a prelude, and that dreams would be foolish. And we are too afraid of being fools. So we didn't dream. [Everly Brothers 1960 Love hurts, in A Date With Everly Brothers - Warner Brothers
But there was a dreaminess in what we have now - in our present. There isn't any future to dream about, but our dreams, I suppose, are the lovely things we hold in our cupped hands now, the "things" we possess at the moment (and for only a moment). We know, and the reality of what we know makes our fingers clutch at what we have and at each other, that what is inevitable will happen. "When they're separated by time and distance," Frank said, looking straight ahead through the windshield, "people grow apart. Even if they don't want to." August 29 Went to the Municipal dump after work to scrounge around for some jam-jars, which I found and rattled home on the bike with. Aug 31 Last night after we saw "The Green Helmet," we sat in the truck for a while in the rain, and it was so warm, so utterly contented and so blissful. The rain splattered on the roof. Frank had the window open and the fresh smell floated in through it. He leaned back against the door, looked up into the dark and rain outside. His neck and his young hard jaw were outlined in silhoette against the drizzling soft dark outside. I was near and cuddled and so warm, so happy. It was a high spot. I said, once, on the way home, "On Sunday you can say, 'It's been nice to know you,' and all that. Politely of course." "No. I'll say it is nice to know you." "Was nice." "Is that a request?" "Is what?" "Was nice." "No, Frank." August 31 A chaotic day - canning peaches into jam - letters from Jan and Frank - tearful realization of how the G'ps are waiting for me to go home.
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