Chapter 7: Old Friends and New Faces

“Helen, I cooked dinner,” were Connie’s first words to her mom when Helen got back from work.

“Why, thank you, dear. Let me get out of these shoes and wash up and I’ll be ready to eat. What did you do to your face?”

Helen, unlike the teachers at St. Wigbert’s, didn’t object to makeup, as such. Connie had been afraid that this one wasn’t going to work. “Well, you know, I’m going away to college come September. And I’ll be living a new life, maybe several new lives. I figured to try out some new faces to go with them.”

“It doesn’t work like that, dear. Let’s eat and talk about it.”

Helen explained that a woman started from her own face, which provided certain limits to what she could put on it. “That lipstick is for blondes, dear. Wait until Saturday and we’ll shop together.” Saturday, Connie talked to Helen, she talked to the saleslady, Helen talked to the saleslady.

She ended up with a much narrower assortment than she had bought the first time, but more expensive. “Well, what is the most dramatic makeup I can use without looking grotesque?” she asked when they had returned home. Helen selected it and put it on her. Connie scrubbed her face and did it over with Helen watching and commenting. Then she labeled the materials and cleaned it all off. Sunday, she wore last year’s, much more reserved, face to church.

“Hello, Ted,” she said after the service.

“Connie! You’re back,” he said.

“You know, Connie,” Ted’s mother said, “You’re still welcome to sit with us. You don’t have to sit alone.”

Ted neither echoed that sentiment nor offered her a ride home. Connie concluded that he was probably no longer interested in her; perhaps he was involved with another girl. “When is the youth group meeting?” she asked.

“This Tuesday.”

Monday, Andre stayed home from work to drive her to the driving school. She’d pictured the driving lessons as all occurring behind the wheel. She was shocked at how much classroom time was scheduled. They gave her a copy of The Rules of the Road, and Andre drove her to get her learner’s permit.

“Learning to type and learning to drive,” she said. “I thought I’d have a break from learning.”

He laughed. “Well, these are motor skills. They’ll be closer to your gym classes than to your English classes. And you wanted to learn to drive.”

“Gee, thanks. Gym was the class I hated most.”

“Are you sure you want that much makeup for your driver’s license?”

Here she’d thought he hadn’t noticed. Andre noticed so little. “Well, you suggested I try my wings by going to another section of the country. I figured that I’d present a new face as well, maybe several. This is my driver’s-ed face.”

“Your driver’s license is your identification as well. Every time they card you in a bar. Well, you won’t have to worry about that for two years. Oops again. It’s five years now. Vote at eighteen, drink at twenty-one. You’ll have a new license by then.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. I’m just trying things out. St. Wigbert’s was so restrictive.”

“You’re trying things out a little older than most kids do; you’re going to be a little younger than your classmates. That’s a dangerous combination. You’ll sort of be a college freshman and a high school freshman at the same time. Be a little careful, will you?”

“You don’t want me to live at all.”

“I didn’t say ‘don’t experiment.’ Trying things out is dangerous under the best of conditions, and you don’t have the best of conditions. I’m not enforcing my judgment; I’m asking you to use your own.”

The youth group was something like it had been the year before. A few new faces were there, one of them looked like a senior rather than a freshman; a few of the people she remembered were gone, including Curt. Rachel and, of course, Ted were there. Ted sat with the new girl; in the social time after the meeting, he introduced her to Connie as Jennifer. He told Jennifer that Connie was somebody who’d been in the group the previous summer.

Connie could hardly fault him for not having stayed faithful to her memory, not having been faithful to him the previous summer when he had been around. But the other prospects looked slim. She was pleasant to everybody, though. Who knew what would happen the next month?

Wednesday, she had her first male teacher, and he was a disappointment. Connie was sure she wasn’t a snob like Helen was, nor the entirely different sort of snob Andre was, but she was disappointed. Ray was forty if he was a day, and he was fat with bad teeth.

Sunday, she didn’t feel that sitting with Ted’s family would be proper, since Jennifer was in church with what was probably her parents and two brothers.

As it turned out, she didn’t have to wait the month ‘til the next meeting of the youth group. Ted called her up Thursday evening. “It was good to see you again,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your last letter.”

“No problem. You wrote the first one. It was good to see you, the others, but especially you.”

“I was wondering if you would like to go to another movie.”

“Would Jennifer approve?”

“Jennifer doesn’t have anything to say about it anymore.”

‘Anymore,’ Connie thought. Hmm? “I’d love to go.”

They settled on the next Tuesday.

Friday, after driver’s-ed, she went to the pool. She was late, and many of the kids from the previous summer weren’t there. Bert was, and remembered her. “So fill me in,” Connie said. “Who still comes?” Bert mentioned a few names. “And Kent? Does he ever show up?”

“Kent graduated and got a job.”

Sunday was the Fourth. She didn’t go to church in the morning, but she and Helen went to see a fireworks display that evening.

Tuesday, Ted took her to a movie and then to park. They got in back. He made out with her as if the intervening time had been a week. Caresses through the bra felt better now that the bra was snug. “Do you still have to be home by eleven?” Ted asked when that time was close.

“Probably. I haven’t discussed changing it.”

“Maybe you should. But breaking the curfew isn’t a great lead- in.” He took her home and kissed her briefly outside her door.

Wednesday, she registered for typing class. She’d start class Monday morning. When she got back, she was overheated and bored. Going out in the heat, even to go swimming, didn’t appeal. Her library card had expired, and she knew enough about the hassles of renewing it that she wanted Andre or Helen along when she did that. It was ridiculous to be bored in a house full of books; even if Andre didn’t want her poking through his study, there were shelves in the living room. Encyclopedia Britannica didn’t appeal. There was one shelf half filled with books Andre had written. When was the last time she had read one of his poems? When it had been about her, five years before.

She took down the first five books and lay down on the couch where she was close to the air conditioner. The old man wasn’t half bad, and then she got to one of the erotic poems. This had been on the shelf accessible to her when she was in grade school? Reading about your parents engaged in sex was weird, weirder to see the affection he had felt for Helen. What the hell? She marked that one and went on. She winced when she got to “Next Act.” Andre was not a sentimental poet, but he was such a sentimental parent.

Thursday, Ted phoned to invite her out for the next Tuesday.

Saturday, she took up two questions with Andre. “You know you don’t want me messing around in your study.”

“It’s not that, Princess. It’s just that everything is in an order, and nobody else can see it.” Order? She sure couldn’t see it.

“How about the books on your shelves? I’ll leave a marker when I take one and be careful to put it back just there.”

“Well, I suppose so.”

“And, in addition, could you take me to the library to get my card renewed? They want your signature, or proof that I live here. And I don’t get any utility bills.”

“You don’t? I’d be glad to let you pay them. Okay, Princess. After lunch?”

Sunday, Ted gave her another ride home from church.

That afternoon, she looked through the clothes from St. Wigbert’s. Anything looking worn, she bundled up. The trouble was the things looking new-but-modest. She was sure she didn’t want to look modest next year. One skirt might work for youth group; some of the girls did wear skirts. Actually, all of them might do for typing class, she didn’t know what girls wore there. She needed to decide her face for typing class, too.

Her rising time Monday was a good deal later than it had been at St. Wigbert’s, but she’d had three weeks to get out of the practice of rising early. She felt both sleepy and pressed for time. She rushed the makeup and had to do it over. Luckily, the bus came just as she got to the stop. Even so, she was late to class. The teacher didn’t comment, and other students drifted in after she did.

About three quarters of the class was female. Connie and the teacher wore the only skirts. Connie went to the cafeteria for lunch after class; there was an uncomfortable gap between the typing class and the driver’s ed. She’d have to think how to fill it. She wouldn’t have the need to read schoolbooks; that was for sure. She might ask the teacher about practicing on a classroom typewriter. A man with a tray stopped at her table. “Aren’t you in typing class?”

“Yes. Connie Steffano.”

He put the tray down. “Joe Morgan. I used hunt-and-peck for my themes last year. Never again.”

“My dad warned me about that. I’m starting college in September and want to know how to type by then.”

“‘It’s a wise man who learns from experience, but a wiser man’-- a wiser woman, in this case -- ‘who lets the snake bite the other guy.’” She laughed. It was funny; besides the guy looked decent. Joe dug most of a lunch out of his backpack. His tray held only a soft drink and a slice of pie. They talked until Joe had to leave for class. Nothing important, but a man had talked to her.

She retired to a ladies’ room to remove her typing makeup and apply her driver’s-ed makeup. This switching faces might not be such a smart idea. The trip to the driving lesson took two bus rides, but she was still early. Before catching the bus home, she bought an alarm clock.

Tuesday, she was on time for class. When Joe came in, he took the typewriter next to hers. She had made a conquest, and in a room of mostly women, too. When she looked around after class, she felt less triumphant. The men outnumbered the girls; more than half the women were as old as the teacher. Joe and she ate together in the cafeteria again, Connie bringing her lunch. Somehow, dessert and soft drink at lunch seemed overmuch to her, making her realize that she still had a St. Wigbert’s conscience. In the conversation, Joe mentioned that he worked weekends. “Barman, Friday and Saturday four to two.”