The next Friday at Mr. Kofeldt’s ballroom dancing class, the young man I had met the previous week—whom I shall call Gerhart, for that was not his name—headed straight for me. After the obligatory “May I have this dance?” he clutched me with an arm that felt like iron as he maneuvered me, grimly and silently, through Mr. Kofeldt’s steps. Escaping to another partner, no matter how short, was welcome.
When the class was over, Gerhart offered to take Mother and me home again. Mother accepted graciously.
On the way home, Gerhart asked if he could come over Saturday evening to practice dancing. We confessed we did not have a radio, or even a phonograph. For a moment I was terrified that Mother might offer to play the piano for us. However, Gerhart said he had a radio he could bring. I do not recall which of us, Mother or I, accepted.
The next morning, Mother insisted I had to offer Gerhart something to eat after we practiced dancing. She sent me to the store for a can of chocolate cookies, half a pint of whipping cream, and some maraschino cherries. I whipped the cream, flavored it with vanilla (thank goodness!), spread it on the cookies, stacked them so the cream would soften them, and topped each stack with a cherry.
That evening, Gerhart arrived with his portable radio. The rug was rolled back, my father disappeared into the breakfast nook, and Gerhart led me woodenly through the waltz square and its variations. Mother wandered in and out, playing the part of chaperone and extracting bits of information from him.
Gerhart was twenty-one. He had come from California, where he had completed two years of college. He had a secure civil service job working irregular shifts in a laboratory at exactly the same salary my father earned. Chemistry and physics, two subjects I intended to avoid, were his favorite studies. He lived in a room in a private home, where the daughter of the family had suggested he go to Kofeldt’s to learn to dance, and ate his meals in restaurants. Mother overlooked, and I was too naive to recognize, the fact that we had nothing in common.
Mother, feeling I was safe with Gerhart, announced she was going to bed, leaving me to serve a stack of soggy cookies and a cup of hot chocolate waiting in a pan on the stove.
When Gerhart and I sat down at the breakfast nook table, my stomach tightened into a fist. I could think of nothing to say; I could not eat a bite. Because I couldn’t eat, he wouldn’t. I struggled to think of words to share; Gerhart offered no help. Instead, he laughed at me, which hurt my feelings. Finally, to my relief, he said he guessed he’d better go, and departed, lugging his radio off to his Model A while I returned the soggy cookies to the cooler and, disheartened by the whole experience, went to bed.
Mother, ignoring the touch of cruelty in Gerhart’s behavior, found the whole incident hilarious and laughed about it over the telephone with her friends.
I was less amused, but I did brag to Claudine and Lorraine—an older boy, a car, a radio, a good job. They thought I was lucky. Neither of them had ever had a date.
After that, Gerhart pounced each Friday evening at dancing class, brought his radio to our house so we could practice, and finally left it there so we could practice more often. He took me to movies and for a hamburger afterward—a luxury for me, even though I was so nervous I could only nibble at the hamburger.
I continued to go out with Gerhart every weekend and relaxed enough to eat a hamburger. Mother protested. “You are seeing too much of Gerhart. You should go out with other boys.”
“What other boys?” I asked. “Nobody else asks me.” Somehow I did not care, not because Gerhart meant so much to me, but because I felt I wasn’t ready for boys.
“Well, they should,” said Mother. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you.” She went on to tell me how popular she had been at my age, as if my lack of popularity were a reflection on her.
I did not refuse Gerhart’s invitations. Movies and evenings away from the tensions of home were too tempting. After about three months, Gerhart kissed me at a stoplight.
Being kissed by Gerhart was disappointing. I had expected a kiss to feel more like the time in Yamhill when I stuck my finger in the electric socket, only nice. Still, being kissed was a novelty. I went along with Gerhart’s occasional kisses, hoping they would get better. I persuaded myself I was having a good time. Didn’t Mother tell her friends what fun I was having? Didn’t movies, and stories in The Ladies’ Home Journal, say girls met boys, kissed, and were happy? Of course I was happy, I insisted to myself, but I did wish Gerhart would not poke fun at activities I enjoyed. He thought English boring, my interest in the literary club silly.
Gerhart also disliked Oregon. He ridiculed the custom of farm housewives drying their washing on porches. I was familiar with old farmhouses without basements, where the porch was the only place to dry clothes in rainy weather. I told him about a time in Yamhill when, waiting days for sun, Mother did a huge washing on the back porch in the electric Maytag washing machine with a wooden tub, her only laborsaving device. She heated water on the kitchen stove and carried it outside, a bucket at a time. When she finished, she hung sheets, towels, and work clothes in the sun on lines in the barnyard. After the last clothespin was in place, the lines broke, and her morning’s work fell to the mud. Gerhart thought the story funny. I remembered Mother’s tears of despair.
Gerhart also laughed at Oregonians’ custom of ordering slab wood by the cord and having it Stacked on the strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk. A truck with a gasoline saw cut the wood into furnace lengths, which the man of the house, or boys eager to earn a little money, stacked in the basement beside the coal. Californians could heat their houses with gas, but no one I knew had a gas furnace in Portland. I deeply resented Gerhart’s lack of compassion for a life I understood.
Summer came. Mother surprised me by buying me white shoes. I had expected to wear brown oxfords in summer. “White shoes look nice with light dresses,” she said, and I agreed.
Claudine went out to Puddin’, and Gerhart came to our house whenever work permitted. We passed the time playing two-handed bridge, but he sulked when he lost. I began to let him win to avoid unpleasantness.
Once, when one of us was shuffling cards, Mother asked, “Gerhart, what does your father do?”
Gerhart’s face turned hard. He looked straight ahead and said, “He was a house painter who committed suicide.”
Mother and I were shocked and sorry. Later she said, “Well, that explains a lot about him.” The matter was never mentioned again.
Sometimes Gerhart took me swimming in one of the nearby lakes or rivers. If I returned home with the least touch of sunburn, Mother greeted me angrily with, “You have ruined your complexion.” I began to dread coming home from these outings.
One evening, when Mother and I were washing and wiping the supper dishes, she said, “You know, you are the type that will fade quickly.”
What on earth did she mean? This was not a remark of a woman who loved a daughter who had barely begun to bloom. I was too hurt to answer, but after mulling over the remark for several days, I said, “Mother, I don’t think it was very nice of you to tell me I would fade quickly. Why did you say a thing like that?”
Mother shrugged. “Well, I said it, didn’t I?”
“Well, you shouldn’t have!” I snapped.
Mother did not tolerate contradiction. “You should show more respect for your parents,” she informed me.
I answered, “Gerhart says one of the reasons he likes me is I am nice to my parents. He says I am not like some girls.”
Mother looked surprised and for once had nothing more to say. I was still puzzled and hurt and have often wondered why, when she was so anxious to protect her own youthful appearance, she would direct such a remark to me. Perhaps she envied me my youth. I do not know.
I began to see Gerhart more and more as a way of getting away from Mother. On warm summer evenings we drove to the airport on Swan Island in the Willamette River, which Charles Lindbergh had inspected and pronounced a poor location for an airport. It was a popular spot for waiting to see the ten o’clock mail plane arrive from California. We searched the stars for its lights and, when we found them, followed their descent to the runway and watched the small brave plane that had flown all the way from California taxi to the little terminal. Then Gerhart drove me home.
One day, Mother said, smiling, “You know, Daddy doesn’t like Gerhart. I think he’s jealous.” That my father should be jealous of Gerhart seemed so ridiculous I paid no attention. Mother must be imagining things. However, when Dad bought a radio of our own so Gerhart could take his away, I wondered if he hoped Gerhart would have one less excuse for spending so much time at our house. Perhaps Dad wanted more privacy, I thought.
One day, Gerhart suggested a picnic at the beach. Mother agreed I could go, provided she went along as a chaperone.
“What for?” I asked impatiently. “We don’t need to be chaperoned.” Hand-holding, a few kisses, mild embraces—that was as far as I ever intended to go. That was the way it was in the movies, and I had no knowledge of what might come later.
Mother ignored me. She set about making a huge bowl of potato salad and suit box full of sandwiches. “People get hungry at the beach,” she said.
We set off for a day, with Mother and myself beside Gerhart, and in the rumble seat a wind-tousled, sunburned couple, friends of Gerhart. We often took his friends on outings; my friends were never included.
When Gerhart parked his car among the salal bushes and we carried blankets and the picnic lunch down to the sand and were racing around on the beach, Mother called me back and gave me the only advice or information on sex she ever gave me. “Never play leapfrog with boys,” she said. “They might look up.”