"Bedposts" by Carolyn Mansager

Bedposts

BY

Carolyn Mansager

[approx. 2,890 words]

Rip Van Winkle Bowling Lanes on the other side of town from our house, my mom used to win trophies on Friday mornings. I would be downstairs in their playroom, brightly colored cubbies and bubble wrap from deliveries to walk on, “pop, pop, pop!” while mom was upstairs bowling as part of our routine. Mom had a storage closet full of bowling trophies. They had different sizes, shapes, and marble bases. She had gotten her name on the wall with a perfect 300. “Can you teach me?” I’d ask.

“No, because it was "her thing," she said.

A dozen years later, I worked my first job after school in a local grocery store, in the bakery section. Jeff, who lived in and went to the rival high school on the other side of town, also worked there. We never would have met if we hadn't worked in the same place. He was so cute, blond hair, spiky cut, and we both wore gold-rimmed glasses. Jeff was a hard worker and had stepped away from the produce section in order to walk down to Gibson’s Bakery and greet me at work, every shift we worked together. He had a joke, made me laugh, and looked at me in a way that had my stomach do those butterfly flippety-flops.

He confessed to me that the teens in his high school called him "Waldo," like the awkward kid in a commercial. The one that looked a lot like Alfalfa from The Little Rascals, the old show on reruns. I told him, "I don't see it," and he smiled at me with crinkles around his eyes. It was clear that I didn't see the awkward teen. I saw my Jeff, the most beautiful 17-year-old a girl could hope to be kissed by. After he'd kissed me in the dairy case at work, I had said "Yes.”

Jeff's girlfriend now. He'd asked me on our first date. It was to a house party. I had never been to a house party before. I got permission to go. He drove me in his truck to the party. We walked hand-in-hand into the party. He was charming and walked through the house with ease.

A group was watching a new movie in the living room. "Oh, what are you watching?" I asked. One teen in a "Frankie Say Relax" T-shirt shushed me. The guy holding her hand said, "The Breakfast Club." It’s new. They went back to watching it. We found a spot and watched The Breakfast Club. I watched the movie feeling I was the Ally Sheedy Basket Case to his John Bender. He grabbed my hand and I felt the sparks of electricity run up my arm. He leaned in and whispered into my ear, "I'm glad you said yes," and then gave me a smile that I felt there in the dark. It made sense to me at the end of the movie — the moment between the Criminal and the Basket Case. Everyone could see us together, him holding my hand. I was so proud to be with him.

Jeff and I spent six months where we shared secrets. We shared a religious retreat, our first time for a lot of things, and future plans. I sang "You Light Up My Life" to him. I meant it. I believed we would be together forever. I doodled our names inside a heart on my Trapper Keeper. I wore his high school ring on a chain around my neck.

Then, a few months into our relationship, he stood in my parent’s formal dining room. Jeff didn’t meet my eyes and confessed, “I won’t graduate if I don’t pass English. I have to get an A on a short story or its summer school for me. You’re so good at writing, can you write it for me?” he asked.

I bit my lip. My stomach flopped like I’d eaten grease soup. “Well, I don’t know,” I hesitated.

He lifted up my chin, stared into my eyes and said, “Please?”

The queasiness didn’t pass, as I nodded. I didn’t want to do it. I was aware that it was cheating. I was not proud of agreeing. I was in love with Jeff. I thought, “Won’t this help us have a future together faster?” I daydreamed about our life together. I nodded. After Jeff left, I pulled out lined paper and a pencil, and spent the next few nights writing a short story.

Jeff rode his motorbike to my high school, collected the story and wrote it in his own handwriting. He told me, “Good thing you finished it in time for me to copy it. I hope it’s good.” He called me later that night to tell me that he would graduate. He got an A.

“I will never do that again,” I told myself that I would never do that again, but was happy he would be free this summer, not in summer school. Well, except for working, of course.

My classmate and co-worker, Tiny Guillaume, his nickname was "Tiny" to his friends, which was an antiphrasis to his form. He was the popular tight end on the Norwalk High School football team. Tiny a misnomer of a nickname. He was 6'5" tall, on the thin side for football, but every inch of muscle was clear in his uniform and anything else he wore. He worked in the produce section with Jeff between classes and football practice. I was around the football field because I was in marching band and played E-flat alto saxophone. We were all invited to the company picnic one Saturday. I was scheduled to work and Jeff said he wasn't going.

The day of the company picnic, Jeff didn't walk down to the bakery and tell me jokes. He wasn't at work. I didn't know where he was. I figured he would tell me later. I put out the chocolate croissants and spread out the plastic clamshell of in-house bakery goods. I never heard from him that day.

The Monday after the company picnic, Tiny stopped me in the hallway at school, the one that was in front of the orange D House lockers and near the Air Force Junior ROTC classroom. The basement hallway that was dark most of the time except for one high window that worked to let in light. Tiny blurted, "Hey," and I turned to see the gentle giant talking to me.

"Hey," I said back.

"Jeff is cheating on you," he said, just like that.

"No, he isn't," I said, and walked away.

Tiny picked up my 110 lb. frame effortlessly. He set me up on the windowsill in front of the one window in that hallway. There was no way I could get down without his help. "You're gonna listen to me now," he said. "Y'ain't leavin' 'til you hears me." He was serious in a way I had not seen before. "I told you that Jeff is cheating on you. He is, and that's that. I ain't no liar."

I searched his face. He read as focused as on that field he won trophies for our high school.

"I'm sorry, Tiny. I wasn't calling you a liar."

He relaxed, but just a bit. "A’ight," he said, and added, "I was real mad when I saw it. I told him, too. I saw him and that girl at our company picnic. I asked him where you was." He jumped a bit. I don't think he thought I'd say nothing. "He said for me to mind my business. But I ain't no fan of liars. You're my friend, so it's my business, and I told him that."

I nodded from my perch on the windowsill. Tiny put his hand behind his neck, looked about, then up at me. "He and that Pam girl? They wasn't acting like they was just friends. You feel me? And he went and does that with everybody around. I wasn’t having it. You shouldn’t be having it, neither.”

I nodded. I said, "You're a real friend, Tiny. Thanks for telling me. I believe you. Now, can I get down?"

He said, "Sure." Then he lifted me up with the ease he did bags of potatoes at work and set me on the floor. He added, "I'm sure sorry to be the one to tell you. That son of a bitch shoulda done better by you."

I nodded again. Tiny and I shared a brief moment of silence and understanding, deeper friendship. He walked off toward the closest exit to Andrew’s Field, and I assumed to football practice.

I left school right after the bell rang and walked directly to Jeff's house on the other side of town. It was in the section of town my parents didn't want me to go. The lined Victorians along his street had paint chipped off exteriors. The local police cruised past. One car stopped and an officer asked me, "You lost?" I said, "No," and kept walking. He rolled forward a bit and then kept driving. I had to walk through Washington Street and over the bridge to his address. Along, “Restaurant Row,” I passed a group of women in wigs, tight clothes and high heels, who greeted me with, "Hi honey," and a smile. I didn't answer them. I reminded myself I went there to see my boyfriend.

I was armed with what Tiny had told me. From my hairline to my pinkie toes, I wanted his revelation to be untrue. Tiny's words, "I ain't no liar," pushed down my hopes. I was Tiny had walked there with me.

I got to Jeff's house and knocked on the door. Jeff answered it.

"What are you doing here?" he said, his voice cracking higher than normal.

"Can I come in?" I asked. He didn't unblock the entrance, so I pushed past him, into the living room. Pam was sitting with her mouth agape like normal. She was wearing a black and white dress that looked like the television picture wasn't coming in correctly.

"Hi," I said to her.

"Hi," she said back.

"What are you doing at my boyfriend's house?" I asked.

She said, "Your boyfriend's house? You mean my boyfriend's house."

We both looked at Jeff.

"Well?" I asked him.

He shrugged, stuffed his hands in his pockets and said, "Well, one of you got a ride here in my truck and the other one wasn't invited. You figure it out." Pam never shut her gaping maw. I noticed her hair was mussed up, like they'd been making out when I arrived. He also added, "I only opened the door because I thought you were Domino's. I should have checked the peephole first." He laughed like that was funny. It wasn't funny.

I blurted, "Well, I'm not a pizza."

Silence between us for the first time since we met. I added, looking right at Pam as I said it loudly, "And Tiny told me you cheated."

He nodded. No denial. Pam shrugged. I saw the shrug.

"We're over," I said to his carpet. I couldn't look him in the face. I just wish I'd been able to look at him as I stated it. I turned with the tears of realization that I was walking back home without justifying being in that neighborhood with a reason. I started walking back toward the bridge. A car pulled up alongside me. It was Jeff's mom.

"Hi," I said.

"Get in, I'll drive you home." She said it in a way a mom does when she's trying not to sigh. "I was home just a bit ago, when you weren’t there. I heard the whole thing." I nodded. The sting behind my eyes made me grateful for the cardigan-wearing mom being kind. I got into her Audi. I didn't cry. I wanted to. She asked my address and I gave it to her. She drove me home.

In my driveway she said, "Nice house.”

"Thanks. You're welcome, anytime,” I said.

"Thank you," Mrs. MacLee said. She pulled out of the driveway and I was grateful to her. I went inside to cry. The kind of tears that feels confusing, and hot, and real and raw, and full of lessons and wishes and different emotions in the salted water that falls across our faces, when nobody is looking. The breakup tears. And I hated Jeff for making me cry them.

The next Saturday, Jeff’s mom, came through my line at my new job where I was a cashier. “Jeff told me you worked here now. I wanted to invite you to our house for his graduation party. I liked you better," she said, as I rang up her green cardigan sweater at the register.

"I appreciate that," I said. I couldn’t meet her gaze.

Mrs. MacLee said, "I know you wrote that story." She sighed. "If it helps you to know? I appreciate that you helped him graduate. I understand why you did it. You have real writing talent. You deserve credit for your own work. Don’t cheat yourself. She chewed her lip. Then, added, Jeff is grounded, except for his graduation. He wouldn’t be graduating, if it wasn’t for you.”

She was right, I had helped him cheat for our future together. Mrs. MacLee took her shopping bags and turned before she left and repeated, "I’m serious. You are invited to his graduation party. You deserve to be there." I nodded, holding back tears, and rang up the next woman's cardigan. I felt his mom watching me work. I couldn’t do anything but nod and press register keys. I thought about going because of Mrs. MacLee. I also knew the reason he graduated was because I did his homework. I couldn’t go.

The party had happened and the dates passed without me. One summer Friday morning, Jeff came to see Pam at the bowling alley, and had stopped at my lane to see me first. I had braved a wager with him. He stopped to watch me fail. I pushed down the realization that the vapid blonde he dumped me for was somewhere in the Lanes.

I pushed that thought away, instead remembering stomping on bubble wrap here at this bowling alley as a kid, all those years ago. Now it was me on Lane 10 in the same bowling alley. I gripped an 8 lb. bowling ball and stared at the pins. The instrusive thought, “Jeff left me for Pam Chandler . Really? Pam? The cashier at our workplace who couldn't keep her mouth closed at her register and had nothing interesting to say, ever?” I shook that thought out of my head. It wasn't her fault that Jeff had cheated on me. “Focus, Faith,” I said.

I was aware he was standing behind me. The same guy. When he was My Jeff, who had asked me out in the freezing dairy case at work, with the song "Sing, sing a Song" playing overhead. Then we kissed for the first time. That was after he had walked over to where I worked in the bakery with his great smile and made my toes tingle. I shook off those memories and focused on the bet we had made. I knew the odds of picking up the “bedposts,” the slang term for having one pin still in each back corner, wasn't high. I wasn't my mother. I didn't have bowling trophies. I was more likely to slide over the line or drop the ball than pick up that 7-10 split. I knew it. Jeff knew it. Everyone who ever watched me bowl knew it. "Awkward" didn't begin to cover my normal range of movements. They carried over into Lane 10. A few minutes earlier, Jeff had said hello and I opened with a wager, "If I make this 7-10 split, will you leave Pam for me?"

He had smiled and said, "Sure." He got irritated by my hesitation and interrupted my concentration with, "Well? Are you gonna throw it, or not?"

I threw. I hit the outer right pin and it slid over and knocked over the left pin, leaving all the pins down. Bedpost! I did it! I won!

I turned. I saw Jeff with his mouth dropped and eyes wide in satisfying disbelief.

"Are you gonna keep your bet?" I asked.

"No," he said. There was a long pause. He broke it with, "Great shot, though. Wow." And walked off.

As I watched him stride toward the reserved Lane for Pam and his date, while he reneged on our bet because he thought I couldn’t do it, I realized cheaters just cheat. He cheated on me, he cheated on English, he cheated on Pam, he cheated on the bet. He lost a bet and had wagered something he couldn’t pay, but offered me nothing else. He couldn’t be trusted.

Mrs. MacLee had been right and I had also started by cheating myself. No more. That wouldn’t ever happen again.

“What a weasel,” I said to his back as he retreated.

I picked up another bowling ball and put all my focus on Lane 10. All bets were off now. It was just me. I relaxed because I felt that all the new shots were mine.

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