didn’t say anything about my hair.”
“Just covering all the bases.”
“Besides, Keith wants to take me, and I’d rather get stuck under the limo and dragged three miles.”
“Keith’s a good guy.”
“Keith’s a great guy. For someone like Kay Schuler.”
“Because . . . ?”
“Because she’d jump at the chance to be his date to the formal and his bride and the mother of his one-point-eight children.”
“One-point-eight?”
“It’s the national average. Read a little, will you?”
“See, here’s the deal. Keith asked you to the formal. Period. I’m pretty sure he didn’t have church bells and national averages in mind.”
“Yeah, but, you know. One thing leads to another and the next thing you know . . .”
“What? You’re happily married and trying to figure out how to fit a standard diaper around your point-eight child?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“Well, pardon my bluntness, but you’re an idiot.”
“Gee, thanks, Trey.”
“Go to the formal, Shell.”
“And then what?”
“And then come home from the formal. What’s got you so spooked?”
I marked a pause and tried to figure out how not to sound juvenile when I answered the question. “I think he likes me,” I said. Yup. Juvenile.
“Tell me where he lives and I’ll go beat him up.”
“It makes things weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Weird none-of-your-business.”
“Shell.”
“I don’t want . . . I don’t want to be liked. There. Happy?”
“Because . . . ?”
“Oh, for pete’s sake, eat a peanut.”
Trey turned to face me. “Because if he starts to like you . . .”
I sighed. “Because if he starts liking me, there’s a good chance he’ll stop—someday. Or realize he never really did. And then he might—you know—be mean to my one-point-eight children.”
“So you’d rather grow old ungracefully in a cat-infested apartment, eating donuts and watching your girdle stretch into oblivion, than maybe—just maybe—be loved by someone who isn’t going to break your heart and destroy your children.”
“Uh, you lost me a little with the girdle part, but yeah, that’s the general gist.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“You’re repeating yourself.”
“Shell . . .”
“Besides, he’s a hunter.”
“So you’re turning down his invitation to the formal because he kills rabbits?”
“No, stupid. Because he hunts on Sundays.”
“Huh?”
“I’m holding out for a guy who goes to church on Sundays, Trey.”
“You’re weird.”
“Yes.”
“Really? About the church thing, I mean.”
I nodded and looked at him with as much sincerity as I could muster. “If ever—and by ever, I mean probably never—but if ever I get relationship-tempted by a guy, I want him to be accountable to the Big Man. I’m just hedging my bets in case, you know, the church bells and national average thing.”
“You want it.”
“I do not.”
“Go to the formal, Shell.”
“Eat another peanut, Trey.”
17
CHAOS HAD OVERTAKEN the auditorium. And not the Steel Magnolias variety of chaos with the wedding and the dog and the squawking Ouiser. This was the Armageddon variation on the theme. All that was missing was a colossal asteroid hurtling toward the earth. What was hurtling, instead, was the school play, and it was aimed right at a three-week deadline that had me losing sleep. Big time.
A wonderful lady by the name of Nancy had signed on to do costumes for us, and I was pretty sure the process was going to put us all over the edge. It wasn’t so much the time it took out of our rehearsals as the sheer impossibility of forcing teenage boys hyped up on adrenaline into too-tight slacks with high waistlines, à la Oxford circa 1953. They whined and haggled and generally gave sweet, patient Nancy a hard time. The girls in the cast, amazingly, just did what they were told and got back to work. My divas were half the trouble of my divos.
Not only did we now have to contend with costuming interfering with our play rehearsals, but the sets committee had installed themselves in the cafeteria space just outside the auditorium as well, like there was no other place in the school for them to paint and drill and quibble about perspective. The downside of our space-sharing was the added noise and distraction. The upside, however, was the fact that my just-friend Scott had become the official carpenter in charge of designing and creating the stage’s centerpiece—an oversize wardrobe whose doors would open as if by magic on a specific cue in the middle of our performance. He’d set up shop in a corner of the cafeteria and, now that our rehearsals were going later, would often come by after his practices to fine-tune the mechanics and enhance the aesthetics of his creation.
I liked knowing he was there. I had to