The Baby Blue Rip-Off

12

I was thirteen when I fell for Debbie Lee. It happened at a sock hop after school in the gym at the junior high. In certain obscure areas in Iowa hinterlands, this bizarre ritual is still practiced.

Debbie was just an inch short of five feet tall and looked like something her parents might’ve won at a high-class carnival: heart-shaped face, enormous blue eyes, appropriate Kewpie lips, cap of curly blonde hair, the living doll cliche come to life.

Also, she was cuddly looking, just a trifle plump (baby fat), and she wore pink a lot. Especially fuzzy pink sweaters. And even at thirteen she could fill a sweater out, one of maybe ten girls in the whole seventh grade who could. I think that was what was so appealing about her, really; not only did she look like the sort of picture-book princess a thirteen-year-old boy could worship with knightlike purity and devotion, but she was also the stuff wet dreams are made of, the possessor of a body designed to further madden an already puberty-deranged adolescent.

I expressed my love for Debbie, at that first junior high sock hop, by asking her for each slow dance; she accepted every time, and we would dance to the strains of “Wonderland by Night” or “Blue on Blue” (the only two slow tunes in the record collection of the acned fat kid who emceed every hop). It was heaven! Here I was, holding Debbie Lee in my arms (sort of-you could’ve driven a truck between us, actually)-though I wouldn’t dream of hanging onto her like the “steadies” in the eighth grade who, rumor had it, “made out” frequently…. Well, I would dream of it, but I wouldn’t dare try it. We didn’t say a word to each other-“yes,” “no,” and “thanks” all being communicated by nods of the head-but nevertheless, true love it was, and I had optimistic enough an outlook to hope Debbie shared my feelings.

This, of course, is where the go-between comes in. Every junior high love story has a go-between. Our go-between, Debbie’s and mine, was a girl named Darla whose complexion looked like the surface of the moon. Her hair was a ghastly reddish fright wig, her nose a beak, her eyes beady, her teeth buck. She was not attractive.

Which is what being a go-between is all about. The go-between is a girl who can’t get a boy to save her life, so she becomes the best friend of an attractive girl and serves a function somewhere between agent and pimp, getting far more than her ten percent of the boy’s attention. In fact, the boy will spend much more time talking to the go-between than to his actual girl friend. At least that’s the way it was back in those days before the first shot of the sexual revolution had been fired. In my case, I went steady and broke up with Debbie Lee three times before ever saying a word to her.

It went this way: I would tell the go-between, Darla, how I felt about Debbie. Debbie would tell go-between Darla how she, Debbie, felt about me. And go-between Darla would tell both of us whatever the hell she felt like telling us.

And so, after an evening of slow dancing together at the YWCA, Debbie would give me a sorrowful look and would return my silver friendship ring. Immediately I would rush to Darla to find out why. Darla would explain that I had insulted Debbie, somehow or other. I would plead my case to Darla, who would resolutely promise to do her best for me with Debbie.

The go-between’s prestige depends on getting the best boy possible for her client, and therefore a schmuck like me didn’t stand much of a chance with a cute girl like Debbie and a shrewd go-between like Darla. Soon I was seeing Debbie’s round blue eyes staring woefully at me from across the gym floor while some older guy (an eighth-grader) would approach her and ask for a slow dance, and the vampire Darla would be sitting smugly in the corner, a smile of vicarious pleasure on her homely face.

Fortunately, Darla moved away that next summer, and in the eighth grade I made a comeback with Debbie, who was working freelance now. We even spoke occasionally.

And then disaster: Debbie became part of a crowd of “popular” girls who served as go-betweens for each other. A closed shop. This fleet of go-betweens was even more depressing than Darla, as they had boyfriends of their own and were in the go-between business for the sheer, sadistic hell of it. Talking to six of them during one day about the current state of Debbie Lee was like getting six different and equally upsetting opinions from doctors examining something malignant. By the time I was in the ninth grade, I had gone steady and broken up with Debbie Lee no less than sixteen times, investing in three rings (two wore out-swear to God) and having very little direct communication… though we had taken to talking to each other on the phone every once in a while, usually in the presence of some go-between who was staying the night with Debbie and was constantly on the extension phone, giggling in.

Most frustrating of all was the fact that I had never kissed Debbie, in sixteen rounds of going steady. We’d never lasted long enough at one crack to get that far. And, since boys in the ninth grade are incredibly horny, something had to give.

What gave was that I took up with Debbie’s best friend, a lass named Maureen who had a 38-24-36 figure (at fourteen!) and an IQ considerably smaller. Maureen put out (which means she let me kiss her and give her a moderate grope now and then) and, being Debbie’s best friend, Maureen naturally told Debbie all.

I began getting irate phone calls from Debbie, wanting to know why I had never tried any of this kissing and groping stuff with her. Hadn’t she, Debbie, been attractive enough to stimulate such activities on my part? I assured her I would be glad to do those things with her, but I was going with Maureen right now; I stood firm, because true love with Debbie was one thing, but groping 38-24-36 (at fourteen!) was something else again.

Gradually Debbie began to drop further hints that she was interested in me again. She broke up with her current boyfriend: a sophomore in high school, no less, with a car of his own. She accompanied Maureen and me to dances and movies, her blue eyes on me all the time, full of sorrow and longing. In a darkened movie theater, Debbie would grasp my hand; in the gym at the ninth-grade party, she’d ask me on a ladies’ choice and would snuggle close till we were cheek to cheek, among other things. I took the hints and broke up with the luscious Maureen, who promptly took up with Debbie’s sophomore. Free again, I made my intentions known to Debbie.

Who wanted nothing whatever to do with me now.

Of course.

Until a year later, in high school, when I had a car of my own. That got her interested again, and I asked her out on a date: homecoming. I offered her my class ring at the dance after the game, she accepted, and it looked like tonight would be the night-I’d kiss Debbie Lee at last!

And then on our way out of the dance, as I waited outside the restrooms while Debbie powdered her nose or something, a short, tough, red-headed upperclassman cornered me. He was, as fate’s sick sense of humor would have it, a distant cousin of Darla, the go-between who moved away.

He said, “Pat Nelson’s back in town.” He had perfected a way of talking without moving his lips.

“Really?” I said. Politely.

“You know who Pat Nelson is, don’t you?”

I knew who Pat Nelson was. Pat Nelson was a hood (pronounced like “who” with a “d” on the end), and I wanted nothing to do with him or his friends. Pat Nelson had been caught stealing sports equipment from the locker room at the junior high several years before, and had recently stolen a television set from a church. He’d been spending most of his time lately at Eldora, a reformatory for “wayward youths.” Pat Nelson was pretty damn wayward, if you asked me.

“I know Pat,” I said. “Pat’s a good guy.”

“That’s right,” the upperclassman said defensively. “Pat’s a hell of a good guy, and don’t forget it. And don’t forget something else…. He don’t like it when guys go messing with his girl.”

“I don’t blame him,” I said. “I wouldn’t want anybody messing with my girl.”

“Don’t be cute. Me and some other friends of Pat’s seen you with her tonight.”

Panic.

“Oh?” I said.

He prodded me with a finger attached to a short, beefy arm; his gray tee-shirt had full moons of sweat under both. “Stay away from his girl, if you know what’s good for you.”

What a corny line! I couldn’t believe this guy! I would’ve laughed in his face if I hadn’t been scared shitless.

“Pat’s got a knife,” he said.

“Good… good for Pat.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“I thought you maybe said something.”

“No. What’s Pat doing home? I thought he was at Eldora.”

“He’s got good conduct leave.”

“Oh.”

“And he’s back in town to stick his knife in anybody who messes with his girl.”

“Who,” I asked, knowing, “is Pat Nelson’s girl?”

“Be reasonable, Mal,” Debbie said later as I dropped her off at her folks’. “Pat’s a nice boy, misunderstood. I felt sorry for him, so I wrote him a few letters, that’s all.”

I didn’t see Debbie anymore after that. I loved her, but her sympathy for underdogs had gotten out of hand. I decided not to go out with girls who wrote to guys at Eldora who came home on good conduct leave with knives.

She went steady with Pat Nelson all through high school. She used to be in classes with me sometimes; she’d give me meaningful looks with those big baby blues, and I’d hurt inside from wanting to return them. Once I did, and a friend of Pat Nelson’s (he was big on go-betweens himself) told me to stay the hell away from his woman. (Somewhere between sophomore and junior year in high school, the ownership term for females shifted from “girl” to “woman.”) I left Debbie alone after that, because I had a feeling Pat and Pat’s go-between had gotten the information that I had exchanged meaningful looks with Debbie from Debbie herself. I began, as I got older, to consider Debbie a troublemaker, and spent the rest of my high school days in the company of girls who were easier to get a kiss out of, and whose previous beaux were nonviolent sorts, who carried nary a pocketknife.

But I never loved any of them like I loved Debbie. You never do, you know. You never love again as you do at thirteen, with so super-charged a combination of idealized adoration and puberty-stirred lust. Once your face clears up, the complexion of love changes too.

I should’ve kept that in mind when Debbie Nelson nee Lee called me up and wanted to come over.

13

I gargled. Used some sweet-smelling concoction that was designed more to perfume bad breath than to cure sore throats or kill germs. But that was okay; perfumed breath was what I was after. Scent of peppermints and posies beats out that of belched beer any old day.

I grinned at myself in the bathroom mirror. Frowned. My teeth couldn’t be that yellow. I brushed my teeth several times, grinned again: no improvement.

I sniffed under my arms. Bad news! I whipped off the frayed, cut-off sweatshirt I was wearing, stuffed it in the clothes hamper, climbed out of my rib brace and abandoned it as if faith-healed, soaped my underarms, and sprayed them with Right Guard. I walked to the bedroom to look for a shirt that might be a shade more suave than the frayed relic I’d been wearing. Unfortunately, owning no suave shirts whatever, all I managed to come up with was a bland cream short-sleeve number, but it had a collar and was pressed, so that was something. I got into it and looked at myself in the full-length mirror behind the bedroom door. I didn’t look like Ronald Colman, but then, who does anymore?

I tidied the trailer. Got all the beer cans picked up and thrown away. It occurred to me that I’d had a hell of a lot of beer this afternoon, and that maybe that accounted for my light-headedness.

But in reality, I knew my feeling light-headed didn’t have a damn thing to do with beer. It had to do with Debbie Lee coming over. The light-headedness had started then: when Debbie Lee (I mean Nelson) called up and said she was coming over.

I finished tidying the trailer, emptied ashtrays, vacuumed the front room carpet, straightened the books in my brick-and-board bookcase. Then I sat down on the couch. My living quarters and myself were all slicked up. Like a first date. My heart was pounding, adrenalin surging, and I felt like a damn fool.

Which I was.

Worse, I knew it. It’s one thing to be a damn fool and unaware, and quite another to be a damn fool, know it, and go idiotically along being one. For instance, I knew this house-cleaning and instant revamping of me and my life-style was a silly, half-assed thing to do. As if I still carried the torch for Debbie after all these years! Even if I did still care about her in some cobwebbed corner of my mind, I cared about a person who didn’t exist anymore, right? Yet here I was, sprucing myself up like I expected her to be just the same, a cute little blonde, with big blue eyes, in a fuzzy pink sweater. Hell! She was a housewife, with a kid eleven years old! She wasn’t the thirteen-year-old storybook princess. She was a housewife and a mother, and thirty just like I was.

The doorbell.

I answered it, prepared for the shock of what a decade or so might’ve done to Debbie Lee.

Standing there, in the doorway, was a cute little blonde, with big blue eyes, in a fuzzy pink sweater.

“Debbie,” I said.

“Mal,” she said.

Violins played in my mind; surf crashed against mental beaches.

“Come in,” I said.

“Thank you, Mal,” she said. She came in.

I offered her a spot on the couch and she took it, crossing her short but shapely legs. She was the same. Or seemed to be at first glance anyway. Admittedly, the lighting in my trailer isn’t much better than your average bar and may have put her into a sort of soft focus. Yet there she was: just as cute. She’d never grown any taller, of course; still just under five-foot. She wasn’t dainty, though, but full-bodied and slightly layered with, well, I guess you couldn’t rightly call it “baby fat” anymore. But if ever the phrase “pleasantly plump” was appropriate, it was now.

“You’ve changed, Mal,” she said. “You look different.”

“Longer hair,” I said. “A little heavier.”

“It looks good on you,” she said. “Both the hair and the weight. You were skinny before.”

“I’m also older, Debbie.”

She smiled. A tiny smile. “Everybody is.”

Then I noticed it; she’d frozen herself in time. She’d purposely stayed the same. People do that sometimes, you know, especially in small towns like Port City-they think of their youth (their junior high and high school days) as the best time of their lives, and they stay the same, or try to. They don’t vary their fashions as much as the rest of us; Debbie still wore fuzzy pink sweaters, and her pink cotton skirt was a short shift that was decidedly out of style. And they don’t change the way they wear their hair; Debbie still had the cute skullcap of blonde curls. She had never been much for makeup, having rosy cheeks and deep pink lips anyway, thanks to God or somebody being in a good mood when she was assembled. Overall, she had been much more successful in holding onto her youthful identity than most people who try. You should see the women with beehive hairdos running around the streets of Port City in pedal pushers like it was still 1960. None of them have heard of the B-52s, either.

“Listen,” I said, feeling awkward, “can I get you a beer?”

“I don’t want to be any bother.”

“Bother? Hey, I’m glad to have you. I, uh, always wanted to look you up, but….”

“Yes. I know what you mean, Mal.”

This was ridiculous! Here we were, talking in veiled, elliptical language, exchanging meaningful glances, as if we had shared some deep relationship. As if the last time we’d been together was at Casablanca, and not high school homecoming.

“Can I get you that beer, then?”

“Please.”

I got two Pabsts from the icebox, gave her one, and joined her on the couch.

“You said it was important, Debbie, on the phone. You said you had to see me. You seem pretty calm now.”

She smiled again. That tiny smile was the only one she had, but it was a dandy. “Maybe I’m being silly. When I called you, I was upset, but… I’ve had time to think, driving over here, and now I wonder if I should’ve come.”

“What’s bothering you?”

“It’s my husband… Pat.” She looked down at the beer in her hands. Her hands were small-very small-and white, and in the dim trailer lighting they looked like something carved in marble by a first-rate sculptor.

“What about your husband?”

“Maybe you didn’t know that Pat and I… well… we’re separated. Have been for several months now.”

“No, I didn’t know that.” In spite of myself, I felt fireworks going off in my inner recesses somewhere. Celebration was in order.

“Pat has a drinking problem, of sorts.”

“He’s an alcoholic, you mean?”

“No. Not as I understand the word anyway. He isn’t somebody who drinks all the time, gets up in the morning and reaches for a bottle. Not that at all. He’ll go out maybe twice a week. Rarely more. Five days a week he won’t touch a drop, not even a beer like we’re having.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“He… when he does drink, he gets mean. He drinks himself silly and comes home and…” She looked down again, for just a moment. She looked up, and her eyes were bluer than anything I’d ever seen. The best-looking sky on the clearest sunny day came in second to those eyes. “Mal, I know we… haven’t seen each other, haven’t talked in years… but I feel like you’re someone I can trust, someone I can come to for help. I don’t have many places to turn for help, you know. With Dad gone….” She got a little choked up and stopped talking for a moment. I got up and brought her a Kleenex and she dabbed her eyes.

Her father had died several years ago. He was a fine old guy, but both he and Debbie’s mother were on in years when Debbie came along. Debbie had been a change-of-life baby, as a matter of fact, and her parents had been more like grandparents than parents to her. Her dad had died at sixty-eight and her mother, who was still living, must’ve been in her mid-sixties or older. Debbie had a brother, but he was much older than she was and had moved away years before.

“Go on,” I said. “Finish about Pat.”

“Well, I’ve… said it all, really. He just comes home drunk and gets mean. He’s never hurt Cindy-that’s our daughter-but he doesn’t have much hesitation about… about beating on me.”

And she started to cry.

More Kleenex.

My stomach was fluttering. Debbie had never been the emotional type when I’d dated her. I’d gotten to think of her as rather cold-hearted and manipulative, toward the end of our going-steady era, and seeing her break down, like a real human being, was disturbing.

“And that’s why you came here?” I said after a while. “You wanted to talk to somebody about Pat, and this problem of his?”

“No,” she said, stiffening her upper lip, taking a few final dabs with the latest Kleenex. She sipped her beer, smiled, and said, “No, that’s why we separated. And divorce is only a few tiny steps away. I can see no hope for reconciliation, especially now…. I wanted to try, for Cindy’s sake, but….”

“What do you mean, ‘especially now’?”

“That’s why I’m here, Mal. I got a phone call from Pat. Just before I called you. He was drunk… roaring. He said he was going to beat the hell out of me. And you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. He had some crazy story about you trying to frame him for that murder. The one mentioned on the radio this morning-the old woman?”

The evening paper wasn’t out yet, so she (and the rest of the town) wouldn’t know the details as yet.

I nodded.

“You did find the old woman, didn’t you? I heard that much on the radio. You did find the body and contact the police?”

“Well, it was the sheriff’s department I contacted, but yeah, I did all that.”

“Pat says you told… I thought he said police, but maybe he just said ‘cops,’ which could just as easy be the sheriff’s people, right?”

“Right.”

“Anyway, Pat says you told the cops or whoever that you saw his car there. He says you’re trying to get this murder pinned on him. He thinks….” She smiled again, but at the same time her eyes teared up. “… he thinks you and I are seeing each other, having an affair, and have cooked up this scheme to get at him.”

“Oh Christ!”

“It sounds crazy, I know. I can’t believe Pat will still believe that when he’s sober, but right now I don’t think being reasonable is high on his list.”

“No, I don’t suppose so. And he says he’s going to beat hell out of both of us?”

She nodded.

“Maybe we should call the police,” I suggested.

“No!” she said. “I couldn’t stand the embarrassment. He is… Cindy’s father, after all.”

“Okay. I can understand your point of view. But where do we go from here?”

“Is it true? Did you report his car as being at the old woman’s place?”

“It’s true,” I said. “And it was there. But Pat is clear; he reported the car stolen, prior to the murder. So I don’t see where he’s in much danger of getting framed.”

“He said something about that, too. Mumbled something about maybe you did that; maybe you stole his car to get him involved; maybe you killed that old woman hoping to pin it on him. Ridiculous, I know, but tell that to a man crazy-drunk.”

Not so ridiculous. I was everybody’s favorite suspect. Except Brennan’s, oddly enough.

“What do you want me to do, Debbie? Do you want to stay here for a while?”

“No. I don’t want to alarm Cindy-she’s with Mother now. Pat’s never bothered Cindy, or Mother, so I think the two of them’ll be all right.” She shivered.

“Where are you living?”

“We have an apartment downtown. Could you… would you stay with us tonight? I can tell Cindy you’re a friend of the family or an uncle or something.”

This was the dream of a lifetime, but I had hoped to start poking into things tonight, contacting a few people who I thought could help me uncover some things regarding Mrs. Jonsen’s murder. But maybe this was worth the time at that. Maybe Pat Nelson was involved in the murder and was being either cute or stupid.

“Okay,” I said. “Be glad to.”

She leaned over, touched a hand to my face. “Mal.”

“Yeah?”

“Can I do something I wanted to do for a long time?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“Good,” she said, and smiled her tiny smile.

And kissed me.