“You’re going to the prom, and you’re doubling with Ernie and his date, young man.”
“Why do you always do this?” I asked.
“What, try to create memories for my son?”
“Fit a square peg in a round hole, Mom.”
“You’re only a square peg if you allow yourself to be treated as one. Now you’re going to the prom, and you’re going with Mickie, or so help me I’ll get out one of my old prom dresses, and you’ll be taking me.”
If there was one thing I had learned about my mother, it was that she did not make idle threats. The image of me walking into a hotel ballroom with my mother was enough to get me out of my seat and moving to the telephone. “Fine,” I said snatching the phone from the cradle.
My mother followed and took the receiver from my hand. “No way, young man. You do not call a young lady on the phone to ask her to the prom. You drive to her house and ask her proper.”
At that moment, I just wanted to get away, so I hurried down the stairs with my mother yelling something about flowers on the kitchen counter, which I ignored. I grabbed the keys off the hook and slammed the front door.
9
Mickie’s mother invited me in with what I thought to be a wry smile, further convincing me this was a conspiracy. A moment later Mickie bounded down the stairs dressed in jeans and a powder-blue UCLA hooded sweatshirt. “Hey, Hill, what’s up?”
Joanna, her younger sister and often her shadow, shuffled down the steps behind her. “Hey, Hill, what’s up?” she mimicked.
My paranoia now led me to suspect from their poorly disguised grins that Mickie and Joanna knew exactly what was up and were also a part of the conspiracy. “You want to go get a yogurt?” I asked. Frozen yogurt was new and all the rage at that moment, and a new shop had just opened on Broadway.
“Are you buying?”
“Are you buying?” Joanna asked.
“Yes, I’m buying.”
“Then I’m eating.”
“Then I’m eating.”
Mickie slipped on sandals and convinced Joanna she could not go with us, as Joanna sometimes did, sitting in the back seat with her head between the two of us like a dog just excited to be out for a ride. We promised to bring her home a yogurt. I stormed out the door and down the front walk ahead of Mickie, not even bothering to open her car door for her. Inside the Falcon she slid across the front seat, closer than normal, which only increased my irritation.
“Everything okay?”
“Fine.”
“Are we grumpy?”
“Just tired.”
At the yogurt store, Mickie waited at one of the tables while I stood in a considerable line, growing more and more irritated by everyone and everything. After twenty minutes, I delivered Mickie a strawberry yogurt.
“Where’s yours?”
“I’m not hungry. Do you want to go to the prom with me or not?”
Mickie spiked the tiny plastic spoon in her yogurt. “Is that the best you can ask me?”
“I assume my mother has already asked you the ‘proper way,’” I said, putting the last two words in quotes.
“As a matter of fact, she didn’t.”
“Come on—like you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t know, and you know what, if I had, I would have told you not to bother and saved you the drive. Jerk.” Mickie stood and left the table, then came back to retrieve her yogurt. “Thanks for the yogurt, asshole,” she said and stormed off again.