The Voice of the Night

32

Colin’s first date with Heather was wonderful. Although the horror movie was not as good as he had hoped it would be, the last half hour was very scary; Heather was more frightened than he was, and she leaned toward him, held his hand in the dark, seeking reassurance and security. Colin felt uncharacteristically strong and brave. Sitting in the cool theater, in the velveteen shadows, in the pale, flickering light cast back by the screen, holding his girl’s hand, he thought he knew what heaven must be like.

After the movie, as the sun settled toward the Pacific, Colin walked her home. The air from the ocean was sweet. Overhead, the palms swayed and whispered.

Two blocks from the theater, Heather tripped on a hoved-up piece of the sidewalk. She didn’t fall or even come close to losing her balance, but she said, “Damnit!” She blushed. “I’m so damned clumsy.”

“They shouldn’t let the sidewalk deteriorate like that,” Colin said. “Someone could get hurt.”

“Even if they made it perfectly straight and smooth, I’d probably trip on it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I’m such a klutz.”

“No, you aren‘t,” he said.

“Yes, I am.” They started to walk again, and she said, “I’d give anything to be just half as graceful as my mother.”

“You are graceful.”

“I’m a klutz. You should see my mother. She doesn’t walk-she glides. If you saw her in a long dress, something long enough to cover her feet, you’d think she wasn’t really walking at all. You’d think she was just floating along on a cushion of air.”

For a minute they walked in silence.

Then Heather sighed and said, “I’m a disappointment to her.”.

“Who?”

“My mother.”

“Why?”

“I don’t measure up.”

“Up to what?”

“To her,” Heather said. “Did you know that my mother was Miss California?”

“You mean like in a beauty contest?”

“Yeah. She won. She won a lot of other contests, too.”

“When was this?”

“She was Miss California seventeen years ago, when she was nineteen.”

“Wow!” Colin said. “That’s really something.”

“When I was a little girl, she entered me in a lot of beauty pageants for children.”

“Yeah? What titles did you win?”

“None,” Heather said.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true.”

“What were the judges-blind? Come on, Heather. You must have won something.”

“No, really. I never placed better than second. And I was usually just third.”

“Usually? You mean most of the time you won either second or third place?”

“I placed second four times. I got third place ten times. And five times I didn’t place at all.”

“But that’s fantastic!” Colin said. “You made it to the top three spots in fourteen out of nineteen tries!”

“In a beauty contest,” Heather said, “the only thing that counts is being No. 1, winning the title. In children’s contests, nearly everyone gets to be No. 2 or No. 3 every once in a while.”

“Your mother must have been proud of you,” Colin insisted.

“She always said she was, every time that I came in second or third. But I always got the impression she was really very disappointed. When I hadn’t won a first place by the time I was ten, she stopped entering me in the contests. I guess she figured I was a hopeless case.”

“But you did great!”

“You forget that she was No. 1,” Heather said. “She was Miss California. Not No. 3 or No. 2. No. 1.”

He marveled at this lovely girl who didn’t seem to know how truly lovely she was. Her mouth was sensuous; she thought it was merely too wide. Her teeth were straighter and whiter than most kids’ teeth; she thought they were a bit crooked. Her hair was thick and shiny; she thought it was lank and dull. Graceful as a cat, she called herself a klutz. She was a girl who ought to be brimming with self-assurance; instead, she was plagued by self-doubt. Beneath her sparkling surface she was just as uncertain and worried about life as Colin was; and suddenly he felt very protective toward her.

“If I’d been one of the judges,” he said, “you’d have won all of those contests.”

She blushed again and smiled at him. “You’re sweet.”

A moment later they reached her house and stopped at the end of the front walkway.

“You know what I like about you?” she asked.

“I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to figure out what it could possibly be,” he said.

“Well, for one thing, you don’t talk about the same stuff that all the other boys talk about. They all seem to think that guys aren’t supposed to be interested in anything but football and baseball and cars. All of that stuff bores me. And besides, you don’t just talk-you listen. Almost no one else listens.”

“Well,” he said, “one of the things I like about you is that you don’t care that I’m not much like other boys.”

They stared self-consciously at each other for a moment, and then she said, “Call me tomorrow, okay?”

“I will.”

“You better be getting home. You don’t want to make your mother angry.”

She planted a shy little kiss on the comer of his mouth, turned away, and hurried into the house.

For a few blocks Colin drifted like a sleepwalker, meandering toward home in a pleasant daze. But suddenly he became aware of the darkening sky, the spreading pools of shadow, and the creeping night chill. He was not afraid of violating the curfew, not afraid of his mother. But he was afraid of encountering Roy after dark. He ran the rest of the way home.