She was being kind. The Times edited my sports stories so much it was like that line on the TV show Dragnet—“Just the facts.” Still, it felt cool to have a senior girl tell me she liked my stories.
“Maybe I’ll come watch you play softball some time,” I said. “Maybe I could write an article for the Times.” I was hoping to impress her. The Times would never cover girls’ softball.
“That would be great,” she said. “Though I don’t think you’d have much to write about.”
I had never felt comfortable talking to girls, except for Mickie, of course, who was at my house even more than in grammar school. She and my mother continued to spend time together even when I wasn’t home. They would shop together and occasionally go to the movies. Every so often I’d catch them alone at the kitchen table, and Mickie would look like she’d been crying, but when I asked about it, my mother’s response remained consistent. “Girl stuff. It wouldn’t interest you.” Mickie gave me the same mantra.
Talking with Donna was easy. I felt no pressure and no reason to be self-conscious. She was eighteen and a senior, after all; she had no interest in someone barely seventeen years old.
I seemed to have an inordinate number of deliveries that afternoon and didn’t make it back to the store until five minutes before closing. After ringing up the cash purchases, I hurried to the back room to grab my coat. Donna was standing on her toes reaching to hang up her smock. My assessment had been correct. A white knit sweater did nothing to camouflage the size of her breasts. She turned her head, catching me looking.
Trying to cover, I stepped toward her. “You need any help?”
“I’m short but not that short. Thanks. Wow, polite and cute.”
I felt my face flush and turned to grab my jacket from the hook behind the door. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
“Wednesday,” she said. “My parents don’t want me working every day. I have to keep my grades up. I’ve got a full load this semester, and I partied a bit too much last semester.”
“Okay, Wednesday,” I said.
I knew Donna was just being courteous when she called me cute; I was, after all, the boss’s son. Besides, it had sounded like something a big sister would tell her little brother. Still, I found myself thinking of her that night as I studied in my room, and during the next two days.
12
I arrived late to the store Wednesday after a journalism meeting went longer than expected, and I had just enough time to get out a quick hello to Donna as I raced past the front counter and pushed through the swinging door to the elevated pharmacy. My father stood at the counter hunting and pecking at the typewriter with two fingers.
“Sorry I’m late, Dad.”
“School comes first.” He ripped off a label and handed it to his tech.
“I’ll catch up.” I grabbed the dust mop and started down the aisles. Donna remained behind the counter talking with Leo Tomaro. Tomaro had been a football player of some repute at the local high school, but I’d heard he was also dumb as a post. Tomaro liked to come in to the store to talk sports with my dad, and I’d recently heard him say he’d “taken some time off” from college.
Tomaro talked with Donna the entire time it took me to dust mop, and he remained at the counter when I went to empty the garbage beneath the front register.
“Hey, sport,” he said, making me feel like I was ten. “Your dad says you’re a big-time sports reporter now, huh? You know what they say. ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, write about those who can.’” He gave Donna a toothy grin.
“I think the saying is, ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, don’t,’” I said.
“Yeah, whatever.”