I examined the onions like a gemologist studying an uncut stone. Only the best onions dropped into my plastic bag. I noticed a man emerge from the stockroom with a cart that he pushed toward the corn display. The man looked familiar, though I could not place him. Initially, I assumed I had seen him around Cambridge Hills while growing up. The man’s identity danced out of memory range teasing and annoying me. I placed the sack of onions in the cart and decided we needed a few ears of corn as an accompaniment. As I approached the man and his face came into focus, a sickening excitement caused my heart to freeze then suddenly start beating again with disturbing intensity.
“Hello?” I ventured reading the fellow’s nametag. “Mr. Millbank,” I began with a teasing grin.
He looked at me first with confusion. “Kate?” A smile broke on his face threatening to split it horizontally. Then he hugged me as though we had been the best of friends.
I would not have been surprised if Howard did not remember me at all. We met at the beginning of our ninth grade school year. He sat behind me in French class and pulled my hair and poked me in the back relentlessly. Every time I swung around to tell him to stop, he became more handsome. His big blue eyes sparkled with boyish mischief as he tilted his head forcing his long blonde bangs back to their feathered position. This pubescent flirting lasted about a week before Howard transferred to a Spanish class that one of his well-informed friends claimed was easier. That incident constituted my personal high school involvement with Howard Millbank.
Within a couple of months, my father denied my request for roller skating lessons. After that devastating incident, I became a rebellious teen dyeing my hair black, wearing make up that gave me a deathly pallor and dressing in bizarre clothes. I spent my time with Zoë and students in the foreign language club. While I dated boys in high school, none of them diminished the crush I developed on Howard Millbank during that first week of French class. My friends reserved this type of obsession for musicians and movie stars, taping magazine photos inside their lockers and doodling their names on notebooks surrounded by fat stylized hearts. Zoë graduated from junior high school with Howard and provided me with several pictures from the yearbook and school newspaper. I kept these in a drawer in my bedroom and looked at them often.
Howard took his place in the high school popularity circle as he experienced increasing success as an athlete. A champion swimmer, he won numerous local and state titles. His attractive face and toned body made him a celebrity with the girls. After displaying his initial interest by pulling my hair, Howard made no further advances toward me in high school. One of the most sought-after personalities on campus, he probably did not have time for foreign language nerds. Of course, my transition to an adolescent weirdo could have deterred him as well. Too shy to approach Howard, I admired him from afar and daydreamed about dating and eventually marrying him. While most young girls fantasize about marrying a handsome man they either know personally or idolize in the media, graduating from high school a year early freed me from my fixation on this boy. I entered a new environment where I met approachable people and developed genuine relationships.
When Howard graduated a year later, he selected from several university athletic scholarships and left the Cambridge Hills area. I never expected to see him again, unless I attended a reunion of my freshman class. When I saw him arranging ears of corn in the grocery store, my heart leaped with emotions long forgotten in the awkwardness of adolescence.
How the mighty have fallen! I thought with a combination of horror and glee.
If Howard had not invited me to dinner, I would have asked him for a date if only to find out why one of the most promising young swimmers in Northern California wound up stocking produce.
My father had tucked a yellowed newspaper clipping about the new ice arena under the telephone in my bedroom. I eventually told my father than I had taken up skating as a hobby and form of exercise, but never discussed the subject with my mother. Although my father was the one who disallowed roller skating lessons years ago while I was a high school freshman, I had renewed a healthy trusting relationship with him. However, I did not describe how I deeply loved to skate or what it continued to represent in my life.
For a brief moment, I considered foregoing a trip to the rink near downtown Sacramento to construct a little black dress to wear that night for my date with Howard. However, recent experience with Neil taught me not to make sacrifices too readily. I planned to check out this relatively new rink and decided to be true to my own interests. Howard would have to be impressed with me in jeans and a blouse.
Built in a converted warehouse, the rink was not regulation sized; although it seemed to be used for hockey. The ice was certainly hard enough. Since I had trouble finding the place, I arrived after the start of the session and people had already taken to the ice. I sat down on the bleachers and laced my boots while observing the other skaters. This was my first exposure to truly competent adult figure skaters. My eyes followed a woman in her mid-thirties dancing across the ice with the grace of a professional performer.
Her legs stretched into a glorious spread eagle curving around the back of the rink as her arms arched and flowed first in the direction of movement then overhead. She stepped out of the glide directly into a layback. It was not the best layback and may not have been any better than mine. But the layback was really the only advanced move I knew. The woman jumped up into an axel extinguishing my brief layback gloat. I had never seen an adult execute an axel before, though I had witnessed many painful failures. Although I hoped to land one someday, the possibility seemed more like a fantasy than a realistic goal. The woman’s axel lifted into the air, turned around a well-defined axis then landed cleanly about three feet from the point of take-off. Because of the dignity and style with which she performed the jump, it appeared superior to many of the axels I had seen eager little children complete at the Arctic Circle and in Martinsville.
I stepped onto the ice aware that I was not the best adult skater in the arena. Another man flew passed me landing a double jump. Stroking around the rink, my blades skidded on the hard ice indicating the need for a fresh sharpening to cut this unyielding surface. Still a relative newcomer to the world of figure skating; I did not know anyone who skated as a child, left the sport, then returned as an adult. Vijay was the best adult skater I knew, and his brand of raw talent was rare. In all likelihood, these impressive adult skaters learned their craft as children. Humbled and unfamiliar with the ice, my usually well-centered spins traveled leaving corkscrew patterns in the middle of the rink. I tried to ignore the other skaters and block the feelings of envy out of my mind to concentrate on spinning. Finally, I centered a decent warm-up L-spin and moved on to laybacks.
The layback happened naturally and rotated with surprising ease over the hard ice. A strange ceiling spun above me and I reached up toward it generating more speed. As the spin fulfilled its potential, my arms opened while I straightened my back and jabbed my free foot into the ice ending in a fast backward inside pivot.
“Nice layback!” called the man who could do doubles.
Slightly disoriented, my eyes found his smiling face looking over his shoulder as he set up another jump. “Thanks,” I returned, exonerated from a skating inferiority complex.
Bolstered by the compliment, I worked fiercely on spins completing some of my best sit spins and camels. While I could barely jump, my spins challenged these accomplished adults. I wished I could do a back camel, making me a more versatile skater by allowing combinations. I did a few waltz jumps and salchows but these did not make me feel confident or proud. My skill with forward spins mismatched my limited jumping ability. Although I aspired to doing an axel, even the simplest jump made me uncomfortable, and I resisted devoting significant effort to their improvement. I could only afford infrequent lessons with Willa, and the majority of that time was invested in spinning and coordination exercises. Years of bad technique learned through independent garage roller skating could not be easily erased. Incorrect technique led to falls, which solidified my feelings of fear and anxiety whenever I approached a waltz jump.
I ended the session with a scratch spin that approached blur speed. Unlacing our skates, I spoke with a few of the adult skaters who commented on the quality of my spins. I returned the compliment focusing on their distinguished jumps. Enthralled by skating, I almost forgot about my dream date scheduled for that evening.
I saw Howard at a school dance once. A teenage disco king; he wore polyester bell-bottom slacks, a shiny knit shirt that snagged in a strong wind, and a gaudy gold neck chain. The gentleman who rang our doorbell resembled that boy only in his pleasing facial expression. Accompanying me down the walkway to his car, I observed Howard walking with a slight limp, something I did not notice in the supermarket. Assuming he experienced a minor injury, I dismissed it and sat comfortably in his car. During the ride to the restaurant, I summarized my life since high school focusing on positive experiences and even bragging a bit about my academic achievements. I did not mention anything unpleasant or outline my romantic history. A typical reunion, I wanted to impress my old acquaintance rather than disclose personal and professional misfortunes. Satisfied by a commendable skating performance earlier in the day, I added self-congratulatory comments about ice skating. Since we were not good friends as teenagers, Howard knew nothing of my previous interest and disappointments in the sport.
I smiled warmly across the table at Howard, still slightly amazed that I was out for the evening with my childhood heartthrob, a feeling other women might experience on a date with Davy Jones or Shawn Cassidy. “So, what have you been doing since high school?” I asked diverting attention from my own life story.
Howard provided a similarly up-beat description of his college years and swimming career, stopping short of his present situation at the grocery store. I continued to smile, nodding politely as he spoke. We talked like strangers afraid to be honest but wanting to make the best possible impression.
“Whatever happened to Heather?” I asked with a jovial reminiscing grin that belied the actual feelings the memory evoked. Howard and Heather; the alliteration still sickened me even ten years after leaving high school. I had been fiercely jealous of Howard’s old girlfriend.
The young man laughed as his eyes drifted far away glancing back into his adolescence. “There’s a name I haven’t heard for a while.” Howard went on to explain that she met a medical student early in her college career and married him before graduating, dumping Mr. Millbank without emotion or regret. Obviously this hurt Howard at the time but he added amicably, “She has two children now. I’m happy for her.”
A woman my age with two children. I knew such things happened, but it was far beyond the realm of possibility for me. My endeavors to locate a suitable marriage partner all ended in various degrees of disaster.
I was surprised when Howard walked me to the door of my father’s house and asked me to join him for a music festival that weekend in Old Town Sacramento. I hoped we might see each other again, if only to learn more about Howard’s mysterious life after high school. After agreeing to go out with him again, he left me at the door without kissing me good night. Howard became a goal, taking on some of the obsessive character of my teenage crush. I wanted to know how he landed in a produce department, and I desired a summer romance with him before returning to the drudgery of my work at Carolina Tech.
One of the first things I did shortly after returning to California was to cook my father’s favorite dish, homemade onion rings. I have prepared these, perfecting the recipe, since high school. They are superior to any I have tasted in a restaurant. Unfortunately, most restaurants buy bags of frozen breaded onions and simply drop them into hot, bubbling grease. My father anticipated this treat and mentioned it on the way home from the airport. He had already set up a card table on the deck and spread newspapers over it that were held in place with rocks he kept by the screen door specifically for this purpose. Dissatisfied with the supply of sweet onions in the pantry and lacking a couple of critical ingredients, I drove to the local supermarket.
Ordinarily, a rigorous skating session leaves me contentedly tired. However, I returned to the house invigorated and excited about a date I should have had ten years earlier. The novelty of a romantic fantasy coming true was a delightful experience, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, savoring every moment of getting dressed for the evening. My father did not remember Howard because they had never met and I rarely mentioned him to my parents, but he respected my privacy by not coming to the door when the young man arrived.
Chapter 35 posted 7/18/01
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