DANNY KOPLER sat on the park wall looking very-satisfied with himself. “You girls are in for the most exciting night of your lives,” he announced to Roz and me. “A date to the movies with us boys!”
“Boys? Exactly which boys are you talking about?” I held my breath as I waited for his reply.
His answer was just what I hoped it would be. “Well, to start with, I’m going to take Fran, and Sheldon’s going to take you, Roz. And Linda,”—his brown eyes twinkled as he focused on me—“you’re going to be asked out by Lenny!”
Roz and I looked at each other and were unable to contain our great joy. We began jumping up and down and squealing, “A date! A date! They’re going to take us on a date!”
Not that this was such a big deal for Roz. She had considered herself to be “going” with Sheldon for months now, just as Fran had been “going” with Danny. But going meant being a couple together at parties or group events such as trips to the beach or amusement parks. At age fourteen, none of us girls had had an official date.
Least of all me. I had been without a boyfriend for what seemed like ages—ever since this mad crush I had over gorgeous, blond Louie had crumpled when it became clear he had no interest in me. While my best friends, Roz Buttons and Fran Zaro, had gotten closer to the boys they liked, Sheldon and Danny, I just got lonelier and lonelier.
It was not until this week that things began to turn around for me. Due to some matchmaking by good old Sheldon, Lenny and I came to realize that we had special feelings for each other. Then, two nights ago, Lenny had finally admitted to me that the rumors going around the neighborhood were true. He really did like me.
I had gone home feeling wonderful that night. I, Linda Berman, finally had a boyfriend. Someone I could care about and who could care about me. Someone to hold my hand when we walked, to put his arm around me, to kiss me good night, to be with at parties and dances, to always want to be with me and put me first before everything. At least that’s the way I always thought it should be when you had a boyfriend, and I was determined to make my relationship with Lenny the best of them all.
Well, so far I had been nothing but disappointed. Except for this one brief kiss Lenny had given me when he told me he liked me, I had nothing to indicate he was my boyfriend. When I saw him yesterday, he acted much as he always did around our crowd—joking around, making wiseguy remarks, getting all the kids to laugh at the outrageous things he said and did.
I laughed too, but inside I was hurting. Why wasn’t Lenny coming over to me, putting his arm around me, treating me as if I were someone special? Had he forgotten that wonderful feeling that passed between us the other night, that highly charged energy that connected just right?
Had he forgotten or had he already changed his mind? Our relationship was so new and I was so insecure in it that I didn’t know what to think.
Now Danny’s words set my hopes soaring again. If Lenny was going to ask me to the movies, it must mean he really did like me. This date might be the very thing we needed to get things going between us.
“When are they going to ask us, Danny?” I asked breathlessly as soon as Roz and I managed to stop squealing.
“Who knows? Maybe even now.” Danny smiled as he looked up the block.
I looked where he was looking and felt my heart speed up immediately. For there in the distance, and approaching at a rapid rate, were the unmistakable forms of Sheldon Emory and Lenny Lipoff.
Sheldon was short and handsome. He had thick black hair that hung down into his hazel eyes and a braces-straightened smile that was simply sensational. While I was the one who discovered Sheldon in the first place, things had never developed between us in a romantic sort of way. Sheldon had wound up going with Roz, and he and I had become good friends. This was all for the best since Sheldon had been the one to help me get something going with Lenny.
Lenny was taller than Sheldon, very thin, and more cute than handsome. His big brown eyes and brown hair that curled around an adorable baby face made him look the picture of innocence. But Lenny was far from innocent. He was the neighborhood clown and the neighborhood mischief-maker. If trouble was to be found, the chances were that Lenny’s wise mouth that earned him the nickname “The Lip” was somewhere behind it. Lenny had a scar on his right cheek that he claimed he received in a knife fight. I knew he was kidding about that, but the truth was that Lenny was quite capable of getting someone mad enough to want to stab him.
Lenny had another side to him as well. He could be sweet and sensitive and feeling, with more depth than I had found in any other boy. I don’t know what attracted me to Lenny more, his wild and crazy side or his deep and sensitive one. I only knew there was nothing more important to me now than making sure that Lenny really was my boyfriend.
No sooner did he and Sheldon reach the park wall than Lenny began stirring up some trouble. “What’s the matter, Kopler, isn’t Fran good enough for you anymore? Are you trying to move in on our girls?” he challenged Danny.
“Yeah, Kopler,” echoed Sheldon. “Just remember that Roz belongs to me.” He put his arm around her as he said that, and she leaned up against him happily. They looked great together, Roz’s petite prettiness and long, sand-colored hair and matching eyes contrasting with Sheldon’s dark, rugged good looks.
I felt a pang of jealousy as I watched them. If only Lenny would act that way toward me. But Lenny seemed unaware of my wishes. After a brief, “Hi,” he hoisted himself up on the park wall next to Danny. He stared at the baseball game that was going on in the ballfield on the other side as if it was the most important event of the summer. If Lenny was about to ask me out on a date, you certainly couldn’t tell by his actions.
“Look at that fantastic pitch! Unbelievable! He hit it! It’s going, going, gone! A home run!” Lenny yelled excitedly.
At his words, Sheldon seemed to forget about Roz. He dropped his arm from her shoulder and sprang to the wall to see what was happening with the game. It was as if Roz had lost all importance.
Roz and I looked at each other in frustration. Why did we have to find boys who were such absolute sports freaks that they would rather watch a dumb old neighborhood ball game than pay attention to us?
Danny, who is on the chubby side and doesn’t care much about sports, seemed to understand how we were feeling. He hopped off the wall and put one arm around Roz and the other around me.
“What you girls need is a man that knows how to treat you right,” he said teasingly. “Someone to shower you with the attention you deserve; someone who knows how to ask you to the movies!”
The word movies seemed to do it. Sheldon and Lenny turned from the dumb baseball game to glare at Danny.
“Why don’t you watch your big mouth, Kopler, before you find my fist stuck in it?” Sheldon threatened.
Danny laughed away his threat. “You think you’re so tough, Emory—until it’s time to speak up to a girl. Then, all of a sudden you turn chicken, just like Lipoff!”
Lenny’s eyes flashed angrily at Dan, then looked up the block. A slow, mischievous grin came over his face. “Well, Kopler, it looks as if you’re going to have an opportunity to prove just how great a ladies’ man you really are. Since that seems to be Fran coming down the street, why don’t you go over and ask her out? Show us how it’s done.”
Danny’s arms dropped from our shoulders. His face turned pale, and then it blushed bright red. It was obvious that, for all his big talk, when it came to asking Fran for an official date, Danny was chicken, too.
This disappointed me. Danny, who had lived in my building until his parents had recently moved away to Queens, was like a big brother to me. He was one of these freaky geniuses who taught himself calculus in the sixth grade and was president of the math team in high school. I always thought of him as more mature than the rest of the boys. Danny knew Fran liked him. What could be so difficult about asking her out for a date?
“Come on, Danny, ask her,” I nudged him with my elbow. Something inside of me knew that if Danny blew it now, Sheldon and Lenny would never get up the courage to ask Roz and me. The date to the movies would be over for all of us.
“Fran’s crazy about you, you know she is,” I reminded him. “She’s bound to say yes.”
My words seemed to do it. Danny took a deep breath.’ “Okay, here goes.” He walked over to Fran in that slightly waddling way of his.
Watching Danny, it suddenly hit me how tough it must be to be a boy. It was hard enough for us girls to sit around and wait for the guys we liked to ask us out. It would be really awful for a boy to get up the courage to ask a girl for a date only to have her reject him and say no.
Of course, Danny had nothing to worry about with Fran. She positively lit up when she saw him coming her way. She ran her fingers through her frizzy black hair and immediately took off her thick glasses. Her violet eyes glazed over as she blinked up at him nearsightedly. Fran couldn’t see a thing without her glasses, but she knew she looked a lot prettier that way. “Hi, Danny. What’s up?” she purred in her soft, throaty voice.
Danny must have decided it was best to get right to the point, “What’s up is the movies,” he announced. “We were talking about a date, just for couples, and I’d like you to come with me. That is, if you—if you want to.”
We all waited to hear what Fran would answer.
“Oh, I want to, all right,” she said happily. “The question, however, is whether my parents will let me. It might help if they knew what other couples were going.” She looked to the wall where Roz and I were standing next to Sheldon and Lenny.
Roz and I looked at each other. Then we looked up at Sheldon and Lenny. Now it was their turn to get red-faced and embarrassed. They squirmed and they nudged each other and they joked and they stammered, but they finally got it out. We girls were all officially asked out on a date for Saturday night. We all had the same answer—yes, if our parents would let us. And we all knew, from dealing with our parents, that was a very big if.
* * *
My parents are basically okay. They get along with each other, and have good values and all that. But when it comes to me and boys, they’re as strict, old-fashioned, and hard to deal with as they come.
Roz and Fran’s parents are almost as bad as mine are. Even though we all turned fourteen over the summer, our parents think we’re too young to date boys one on one. They don’t even like it when we have parties or go to the beach with the boys or hang around in groups on the park wall or by the corner ice cream shop we called the candy store. They seemed to have forgotten what it was like to be young.
This summer had so far been the best summer of my life. Washington Heights, the part of New York City where we lived, was a neighborhood of apartment buildings, mostly six stories high. There were parks, stores, schools, and plenty of kids around. In the summer, most of the kids came out to the park to play ball or just hang around under the shade of the trees. It was a wonderful feeling to be part of the crowd.
This was the first summer that my friends and I had really made it. Not only were we a part of the crowd at the park wall, we each had our own special boyfriend. We wanted to be out with our friends every moment we could.
My parents couldn’t understand the importance of it all. They insisted that unless there was a party or special event, I had to have a curfew. It wasn’t even a reasonable curfew. Even if the kids were all standing around the candy store, which was on my corner where my parents could check to see what I was doing by merely looking out the window, I had to be home by nine o’clock. It was awful!
I would have been positively humiliated if it wasn’t for the fact that Fran had a curfew, too, even if it was a half-hour later than mine. And sometimes Roz did, depending on what kind of mood her father was in. He was the strict one in her house.
Later on the night the boys had asked us to the movies, a whole group of kids had gathered around the wall listening to Lenny tell one of his funny stories. We were having such a great time that nine o’clock came before I realized it. Fortunately, Danny, who has to make all these subway connections to get back to Queens, was aware of the time and came to my rescue.
“Hey, Linda. Isn’t it getting close to your bedtime?”
“Bedtime? Huh? What do you mean, Danny?” It took me a while to catch on. Then, with a rush of panic, I grabbed his arm and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to nine.
“Darn it! Now I’ve got to go home without hearing the end of Lenny’s story,” I complained.
“So stay another fifteen minutes,” Lenny urged. “What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that I can’t afford to get my parents mad at me tonight. Not if I want them to let me go to the movies.”
“Oh,” said Lenny. Then his eyes sparkled the way I loved. “Well, since you can’t be here for the end of the story, why don’t we bring the story to you? What do you say we all walk Linda home, guys? I’m starving anyhow. An ice cream sundae with double whipped cream from the candy store might be exactly what I need.”
Everyone was willing to go along with Lenny’s suggestion. So that’s how I wound up walking home that night in the middle of a whole mob of kids. Lenny was walking next to me, finishing his story, and everyone was laughing.
As we walked down my block, I felt a surge of happiness go through me. It was so great to be fourteen and be part of a crowd and have a boyfriend and my first real date to look forward to. I wished the wonderful feeling could go on forever.
It didn’t. In fact, it came to an abrupt halt as we approached my apartment building and I looked up at my third-floor window to see my mother looking out. Apparently, she wasn’t quite as happy about my belonging to a crowd as I was. By the expression on her face, you would think I was doing something awful.
“Linda,” she called. “It’s nine o’clock. Time for you to come up now. Right away!”
I made an attempt to protest. “Aw, Ma, the kids are all going to the candy store for some ice cream. Can’t I stay out with them a little longer? We’ll be right on the corner, so you don’t have to worry.”
“No. I want you upstairs now, and that’s that,” my mother said unreasonably, then turned from the window.
“Come on, Mrs. Berman. Nothing will happen to Linda. We’ll be right where you can see us.” My friends tried to help me out by calling up to her. They didn’t know my parents the way I did. Reason meant nothing once they had made up their minds. Further arguments were only likely to make them angry. And I didn’t need to get them angry when I was about to ask for something important like permission to go on a date. It was better for me to just go upstairs quietly without a fight.
“Thanks, guys, but don’t waste your energy. My mom’s about as flexible as a brick wall,” I told my friends. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you,” everyone called back to me. My eyes sought out Lenny. I was hoping he would walk me upstairs or do something to let me know I was special. But he must have been really hungry because he was already heading to the candy store.
I reminded myself that what really mattered was that he had asked me to the movies. Then I raced up the stairs two at a time to make sure I made it inside before the clock struck nine.
* * *
“Well, I see you somehow managed to get home on time despite your friends.” That was my father’s sarcastic greeting as he looked up from where he sat at the kitchen table reading a book. My mother was in the kitchen, too, so I figured she must have said something to him about my walking home with all the kids and wanting to stay out later.
Dad and I used to be pretty close when I was younger. Because I loved to read as much as he did, he would always take me to the library with him to pick out books. We both loved nature and would often take long walks to Ft. Tryon Park or down by the Hudson River, or across the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey. Dad wasn’t much of a talker, but when he did say something, it was usually worth considering. I knew both Dad and Mom were proud of me because I did well in school and education was the thing that was most important to them. In general, we had a good relationship.
All this started changing when I began to like boys. My parents thought I was too young to have these interests. They were sure liking boys would interfere with my doing well in school. The fact that this hadn’t happened didn’t mean anything to them. They were always making it difficult for me to do things involving boys and making it clear that they disapproved of whatever I did get to do.
It made for a very tense atmosphere in my house. Like now, as I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, trying to decide what would be the best approach to getting them to let me go on this date.
I picked the “group” approach. I figured my parents would like the idea of safety in numbers.
“A group of us were planning to go see this great movie together Saturday night,” I said cautiously. “That is—if it’s okay with you.”
“Group?” My mother looked suspicious right away. “Just who is going to be a part of this group?”
“Why Roz and Fran, my closest friends.” Fortunately, my parents liked Roz and Fran, so I let this sink in first. “And Danny.” My parents loved Danny because he did so well in school. “And Sheldon and Lenny, too.” I glossed over their names as fast as I could.
My parents looked at each other. You could tell they didn’t really want me to go. “Are Roz and Fran’s parents letting them go?” my mother asked doubtfully.
“Sure they will,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “But that’s why it’s so important that you let me go—so we can have a real group, I mean. Roz and Fran are waiting outside for my answer right now. I can tell them it’s all right with you, can’t I?” Pleadingly, I gazed from my mother to my father.
My father looked at my mother and shrugged. “It’s up to you, dear.” Once he said that I knew I had won. My mother wasn’t about to say no if my father hadn’t.
“Well, I guess—if Roz, Fran, and Danny are going to be there,” she began.
I didn’t wait to hear anything else. “Thank you, thank you!” I practically jumped with joy. I raced for my parents’ bedroom where the windows faced the street so I could let my friends know the good news.
Unfortunately, to reach my parents’ room, it was necessary to pass through the living room. And there, supposedly watching TV, but obviously managing to eavesdrop on my conversation with my parents, sat my brothers, with big, stupid grins on their faces.
Ira and Joey were twins, ten years old, and total pains. They liked nothing better than to tease me about boys and make my life miserable.
As soon as they spotted me, they started right in. “So you’re going to the movies with your boyfriend,” said Joey.
“We know what you’ll be doing there,” added Ira.
“Linda and Lenny, hugging and kissing, and all that mushy stuff,” Joey said with a silly giggle.
“I don’t know how she can stand it.” Ira screwed up his face with distaste.
“I don’t know how he can stand it—yuck, yuck!” Joey held his stomach and made a gesture as if he was going to be sick all over the rug.
Normally, this kind of teasing would require a strong response from me. Even now, I was tempted to go over and knock those twin heads together. But I was able to restrain myself. The last thing I wanted to do was to create a reason for my parents to change their minds about my date.
So I settled for making a face that I hoped was as ugly as my brothers’ and for sticking my tongue out at them. Then I ignored those two twin terrors and continued my dash to my parents’ room.
I leaned out the window, and saw my friends were still out there by the corner. “Hey, guys!” I called out to them joyfully. “I can go Saturday! My parents actually said I can go!”
“Great, Linda! That’s wonderful!” Roz and Fran called back. But I hardly saw them. My eyes were fixed on Lenny as he stood there under the streetlight, smiling up at me.
For a moment, the whole rest of the world seemed to fade away. It was just the two of us, gazing at each other. This strange feeling came over me. It was as if I was connected to Lenny, and I knew that no matter what difficulties lay ahead for us to face, we would somehow always be connected the way we were right now.
“Till Saturday night then, Linda,” he said, waving to me and breaking the spell.
I waved back at him and stood by the window watching the kids all head down the block. I couldn’t wait for Saturday, and my first real date with Lenny!