Paul

“You don't know how lucky you are,” Mom told me as we were getting off the bus at our home stop. “Just keep coloring within the lines.”

I was eleven.

We had been shopping downtown at the Bon Marche, a department Store in Seattle . She didn't fully comprehend my situation I thought. I was living like the rest of my friends. No more, no less. I was a good girl. I colored within the lines, but I colored it my color. I didn't try to discuss it. Besides, that was before I was whammed with the Wow.

Wow!

We met in the fall of the eighth grade. The halls were empty except for the two of us. We were walking in opposite directions. The bright gray of the Seattle day shone through the windows. He was blond, with blue eyes that danced. I felt something amazingly new; I could barely catch my breath. Instead, I clutched my Crayola pack. I was glad that Mom gave me her silver-plated necklace and bracelet to wear that day. Her jewelry let me rise above my usual gawky eighth-grader-with-glasses persona.

Paul whistled!

That whistle marked a new era. It started with butterflies in my stomach. I colored them with rainbow colors. A pink deer nuzzled my heart. Orange-and-magenta striped tigers awakened my thighs and pelvis. A green horse stampeded my backside. Lavender and silver swans swam elegant in my arms and neck. I was on top of Mt. Rainier . I felt dizzy. I felt like a new Marian had been born. I had a secret inside of me! Outside was another story.

As soon as class was over, I would rush to a mirror, desperate to touch up in case, heaven forbid, Paul should catch me unawares. My friends were already in the bathroom applying coats of bright pink lipstick and of course styling their hair. One girl I knew suffocated because she used too much Spray Net. So much for extra hold! Once I was deemed presentable, and every strand of my light brown hair was in place, I could put my white-framed glasses into my white box purse – both of which matched my white suede shoes. I made my way, nearsightedly, down the hall. All I wanted was a glimpse of him. I could recognize Paul amidst the blur. He never failed to wear his jeans lower than anybody else.

We passed one another in hallways. We winked and whistled. We slow danced at school dances. Oh life could be a dream sweetheart.

Paul was the only person I had met who didn't have a Dad. Just like my Dad, he was raised by his Grandmother and mother. One day, after school, while his mother was at work, he called me.

He asked me if I would suck it or lick it or eat it.

“Eat what?” I asked.

Paul's words were hot: red and orange and fuchsia. However they were just that: colors. But Mom thought otherwise. She had been listening on our basement phone. She was all shook up! She looked kind of sick when she came up the stairs and confronted me. She said she and Dad had been married for years and never talked like that. I felt real bad. I told Paul. He never talked to me in hot colors again.

Still, Mom invited him to stay for dinner with us one Sunday. The meal was fancier and had more dishes than the regular weekday ones. We were sitting in the dining room as we did when company comes. Mom had set the lace tablecloth and the good silver. The platters of steaming vegetable were passed. Paul smiled and took a teeny tiny dollop of mashed potatoes and oodles of gravy. His front chipped tooth gleamed as he passed the platter. My Dad saw it and stiffened; Mom got tense. I felt a lonesomeness come over me, a deep shade of gray.

And then, some time later, I was sitting in Spanish class when a policeman came to the door. Our teacher called out the names of five boys. I knew in that moment that my life would never be the same.

Paul was sent to military school in West Virginia . He was the leader of a group of boys that were stealing hubcaps from parked cars and a car or two. I was, of course, forbidden to see him. But I was able to get hold of his number in West Virginia . When he came to the phone from the baseball field I couldn't say anything. He said, “I know. I feel the same way.” It was the most intimate conversation we ever had.

When Paul came back home to Seattle for the summer, he got a job at the Bon Marche. One day, I got dressed up in the pink dress my Mom had made for me. The neck and dropped waist were trimmed with a band of white lace and sparkly rhinestones. I wore Mom's sparkly earring to match along with my pink heels. When I showed up at the store, I found Paul pushing a big cart near the back elevators. I couldn't think of anything to say. I smiled and tried at act nonchalant as if the back elevators were the usual passage. I had that dizzy feeling all over again.

When I got back home, Mom told me that I looked like a Christmas tree. I pretended not to be bothered.

Ninth grade came and went. Paul was still in military school. The stuck-in-the-headlights pink deer in my chest grew antlers and was poking at my heart. I decided on translucent. I stopped eating. Sometimes I'd only have an apple a day. After losing all that weight, you could see the boney bones all over my body. I tried taking more dancing lessons. It helped.

Paul went his way and I went mine.

In the spring of 1971, when I was thirty years old, I opened in Harvey on Broadway. I played the role of Myrtle Mae Simmons, a gawky young woman with glasses. The actress, Helen Hayes was my mother, Jimmy Stewart my uncle, and Harvey played himself; the invisible rabbit. On opening night I was on Mt. Rainier again, though this time the butterflies in my stomach flew in airplanes. The animals were giving me a hard time, but I found a way to stash them in the overhead compartments (feeding them did the trick). The audience was a cloud of red, white, and blue floating around the sharp, bright stage lights. It was like a dream.

The American one.