Letter to My Daughter: A Novel - By George Bishop Page 0,36

only teenagers dressed up in tuxedos and gowns, their shoes shiny, their hair shiny, a little bit tipsy, celebrating all their good fortune—fortune that came so easily and was so common here as to be all but unnoticed.

Some songs popular that year, in case you’re curious: “American Pie,” “Alone Again, Naturally,” “Lean on Me,” “I Can See Clearly Now,” and “Bang a Gong (Get It On).” We danced the shake, the hitchhike, and the otherwise general kind of flopping around we did in those days, working up a sweat that mingled with the smell of hairspray and deodorant to create a sweet, heady stew of teenage exuberance. Dropping back down in our chairs, we swallowed cups of Coke that had been spiked with rum under the table. When someone brought out a camera for photos, Chip threw his arm around me. A girl at the table remarked on what an attractive couple we made.

“Yeah, too bad she’s already taken,” Chip said.

“What? Who is it?” the girl asked.

“An older man. Major in the army,” Chip said.

“Not a major,” I said.

“I like soldiers,” another girl said.

“They’re gonna get married when he comes home.”

“Chip—” I said.

“Is that true?”

“Little home there in Zachary. Couple of broken cars in the front yard. Kids rolling around in the dirt.”

“Chip—”

“Are we invited to the wedding?”

“No,” Chip said.

“Yes. Of course. Why not?” I said. “You’re all invited. Please come.” Then I added, just to be funny, “Bring your own beer. We’ll decorate the trailer, get some balloons and crepe paper.”

Everyone at the table laughed.

“Zachary. Yuck,” a girl said. “You’ll be barefoot and pregnant before you’re twenty.”

“That’s me. Trailer bride,” I said, sipping my rum and Coke through a straw. “I can hardly wait.”

“How many kids?”

“Two. No, five,” I said.

“Make it seven,” another girl said. “One for each day of the week.”

“You can name them that way,” a boy said. “‘Monday, come over here! Leave Wednesday alone.’”

“We’ll grow snap beans up the side of the trailer,” I said, on a roll now. “I’ll plant petunias in old tractor tires.”

“Laura Loo! Get on here and snap those beans,” Chip said in a funny Cajun voice. “I want my okra. Now!” He hugged my shoulders. “Look, honey, I done shot a coon for the gumbo. Mm-mm good.”

“Gumbo. Yee haw!” a boy cried.

“Save the fur, honey!” I said. “I’ll make pants for little Thursday. He done worn his out rolling in the mud.”

This won me an even bigger laugh. Drunk and inspired, brilliant in our gowns and tuxedos, we went on making fun of poor Cajuns like Tim until the band started playing “Nights in White Satin” and we were obliged to dance.

“Come on, Laura Loo,” said Chip, taking my hand to lead me to the floor. “We gotta go fais do-do.”

• • •

Four o’clock in the morning. See us lounging in a suburban rec room, pale-faced and bleary-eyed in our striped bellbottom pants and denim vests. We’d done the postprom parties, the postprom party breakfasts, and now the girls’ hairdos had all gone flat, and the boys’ faces, slick with sweat and oil, had sprouted tiny whiteheads, budding up overnight like mushrooms after a storm. As Elton John played softly from a cheap stereo in the next room, boys began rummaging for their car keys and rousing their dates from sofas. Someone was busy cleaning up vomit in the bathroom. Someone else’s parents were calling on the phone, wondering where they were. Stumbling across dewy purple lawns, we shouted drunkenly affectionate goodbyes to one another; and even though we knew we’d all be seeing each other at school later that week, there was a rush of sentimentality as we threw our arms around each other and said how this night was the best of them all, we would never forget it, we would be friends forever, friends for life.

I leaned against Chip in the Cadillac Sedan DeVille, my arm hooked into his, as he piloted us slowly through town. The streetlights were still on, casting their watery glow across the flat yards and empty parking lots of Baton Rouge. Tired, happy, I was floating on that dreamy euphoria that comes from just the right blend of sleeplessness, alcohol, caffeine, and youth. You must have tasted it yourself by now, Liz, though you might not recognize it yet as something rare and special, and therefore to be handled with special caution.

At a park overlooking the LSU lake, Chip turned in and stopped the car. We talked a bit, snuggling up against each