At this I grin back briefly, wondering what it must be like to have a good-looking boy like Johnny Treadway do something so bold to catch your attention. Of course, if you’re a girl as pretty and stylish as Diane, maybe you’re used to that sort of behavior from boys.
‘Anyway, I gave him the number,’ she says, still smiling at the memory. ‘And you can guess the rest.’
I can, but fortunately for my curious mind, Diane keeps talking, and one chapter leads to the next. Diane sneaking out to meet Johnny. Lying to her parents. Meeting up at Winkler’s with her friends and then pretending to feel sick and head home, only to meet up with Johnny in the shadows of our neighborhood. Heading over to Playland Park and kissing at the top of the Ferris wheel. Venturing out to see construction on the fancy new Domed Stadium being built on the west side. Heading to Galveston for the night, sinking their feet in the cool sand and imagining what lay out beyond the waves.
I realize I’m still as a stone while Diane spins her story, and totally transfixed. It all sounds like something out of a Hollywood picture, and it reminds me of the movie A Summer Place that I saw at Winkler’s when I was a kid. It was a steamy romance about two teenagers named Molly and Johnny who fall in love even though they aren’t supposed to, and they end up sneaking off to get married. Mama and Grandma took Cheryl and me as a treat, and when Grandma made us cover our eyes during all the kissing scenes, Cheryl and I peeked through our fingers, both of us practically holding our breath so we could hear every single whispered promise. Every sad cry of lovers kept apart.
‘It’s like a movie,’ I say.
‘It sure felt like one,’ agrees Diane. ‘Like the biggest romance ever. And I got to star in it. With him.’
Tears keep falling, and she clutches her tissue to her face again. The image of Diane gently shaking me awake that night at Winkler’s, Preston Fowler’s blood fresh on her pink dress, plays in my mind. So does the image of her handing me some of her clothes to change into later on at her aunt’s house.
You can keep these. I’ve got heaps of clothes.
Her cries ring much louder than the record playing. I do all I can think to do, which is to reach out and hug her, letting her weep into my shoulder. I remember the way I held Cheryl the night she told me she was going to have to marry Dennis. Diane’s sobs are like Cheryl’s. Heavy and hard. Devastated.
‘Diane, it’s all right,’ I whisper, rubbing my hand up and down her back, wishing I knew what to say. Imagining what it must feel like to be able to spill out all your emotions, to lay them out in front of another person without knowing how the other person will respond.
Finally, after a few shaky breaths, Diane gets her composure back, and she withdraws a bit.
‘Thanks, Evie,’ she says, squeezing her eyes shut briefly and taking a deep breath. ‘I bet you’re wondering how the hell I ended up at school with Johnny, huh?’
‘I guess I was, yeah,’ I say. ‘And why you acted like you didn’t know each other yesterday.’ Seeing my chance to ask another question that’s been on my mind, I screw up my courage and say, ‘And what about Connie? Does she know?’ Suddenly Connie’s insistence at the park that she just didn’t like Diane, and her cold, careful stares, make more sense.
Diane nods, wordless for a moment, still trying to calm down from her crying jag. ‘I think she does, yes. I mean, I don’t know how much, but I know Johnny told her about me, and he swore her to secrecy. We knew my parents would never understand us being together. My mother and father are all about appearances. They’ve been planning my match since I was in primary school.’
‘Your match?’ I ask, confused.
‘You know, the right sort of boy. The kind of boy whose parents go to the club with my parents and whose father does business with my father and whose mother plays bridge with my mother and …’ She pauses and scowls. ‘It’s all so awful. My parents don’t believe in true love, like what Johnny and I had. They believe in mergers.’
I think about Mama wanting to pair off Cheryl and me with boys who’ll stick around. And I wonder if it’s any different than what Diane is describing.
‘So you had to keep Johnny a secret?’ I say.
Diane nods vigorously. ‘Yes. We would sneak away to be together. Only …’ She pauses, takes a deep breath. ‘Ruler of My Heart’ stops spinning, and Diane doesn’t pick up the needle again. We just sit, huddled in the booth, our whispers and breathing and Diane’s sniffles the only song we have.
‘One Saturday evening a few months after we met, my parents were gone at some charity event and my younger sister, Patty, was at a girlfriend’s house,’ she says. ‘And I had Johnny come over. He’d been over before a few times when I was home alone. He’d … been to my bedroom.’ At this her cheeks blush a deep scarlet, and she glances down at the tissue clutched in her lap. I can’t possibly imagine working up the courage to ask Diane what I really want to know. Me and the girls don’t have the words for such conversations. Not even Connie talks about it all that much, and she can talk pretty dirty when she wants to. But Diane’s burning cheeks answer my buried question, and the idea of being in love and holding a boy like Johnny Treadway behind a shut bedroom door makes my body thrum with a strange, almost delicious sense of possibility.
‘Anyway, that night my parents came home earlier than I’d expected,’ Diane says, not making eye contact. ‘They tossed him out. My father threatened to shoot him, he really did. And then they called me a whore.’
I gasp. Maybe my mother does want to set me up with a boy like Dennis, but not even when Cheryl admitted to Mama through tears in our tiny kitchen that she was in trouble did Mama say anything so cruel.
‘A whore?’ I manage, lowering my voice. For some reason that word sounds dirtier than any of the dirty words Connie says and any of the ones I’ve tried saying before. ‘Really?’
Diane nods, her face threatening to collapse into tears again. ‘They said I was trash to be with such trash. That I wanted to ruin my family’s good name and embarrass them in front of all their important friends. I’m telling you, all they care about is what other people think.’ She twists the tissue, her fingers gripping it hard. Then she rips it in frustration.
‘After Christmas they sent me away.’ She breaks her gaze and stares off, her face falling, something unsettling clearly crossing through her mind.
‘Where?’ I ask, worried that perhaps I’m pestering her for too much information. Then I realize Diane’s face has gone blank all of a sudden. A shiver runs up my spine. Something about her bleak expression is frightening.
She shakes her head. ‘I can’t … I don’t want to talk about it.’ The way she says it is firm, settled.
‘All right, you don’t have to,’ I say, not sure what to do next. I’m dying to hear more of Diane’s story, of course, but it’s also obvious how difficult it is for her to unfold this part of it.
‘I got home in July,’ she says, and I can tell she’s picking her words with caution. ‘But my parents decided I wasn’t done being punished. They told me it would be better if I had a fresh start. If I came to this side of town to live with my aunt Shirley. She’s always been … I guess you would say the family outcast. She’s my father’s half sister, and she’s a mean drunk. She lives on whatever is left of her part of the family trust, and I’d honestly only met her once or twice before I came over to live with her for good. I think she only took me in because my parents give her a little money for it every month.’