Smoking at the Mayo Excerpt

            The cutest, smartest boy in Rochester Junior High School in 1942 was Sandy Keith; and the ugliest, dumbest pet in town was my dog, Connie. She was a wire-haired terrier with huge ears that stood straight up, and a long tail she dragged behind her as if she understood she wasn’t as cute as the other girls. Connie almost ruined my life the day Sandy took me to a movie.

            My father knew Sandy ’s father at the Mayo Clinic. He referred to him as the distinguished Dr. Keith up on “Pill Hill.” Dad was a doctor on staff at the clinic too, but since he was only a medical editor, who didn’t earn a big salary, we lived at the bottom of the hill.

            I don’t know who was more thrilled when Sandy called, my mother or me. When she heard me say, “Oh, hi…go to a movie with you...?” she scurried over and said, “Diane, who is it?” I put my hand over the phone and whispered, “Sandy Keith.” Mother looked like a cat about to pounce as she purred, “Yes, you say yes.”

            I said to Sandy , “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. When did you want to go? Tomorrow at two-o’clock. Okay, I’ll be ready.”

            Sandy rode his bike down to my house. It was a bright red Schwinn with one of those squeeze-bulb horns and a head lamp you could turn on and off with a switch. He squeezed the horn twice to announce he was there, turned the light on and off to show me how swell it worked, and parked the bike against the side of the house. After we admired the bike, we started to walk the eight blocks downtown to the Chateau Theater. At the corner of the fourth block I glanced back and saw Connie slinking along behind us, her ears sticking straight up and her tail drooping. I said, “Oh no, look at that.”

            “What’s the matter?”

            “My darned dog is following us.”

            “Well, tell her to go home.”

            “I can’t. She’s too dumb to go by herself.”

            “How can you take her home? You don’t have a leash.”

            “I have to carry her.”

            “Okay,” Sandy said, as he sat down on the curb and cupped his chin in his hands. “I’ll wait here.” I picked up Connie like a fat, sleepy baby, and lugged her home.

            My mother cried, “My God, what happened?”

            “The dumb dog followed us.”

            “No! Where’s Sandy ?”

            “He’s waiting for me.”

            “That’s terrible!”

            My father, who was listening to a baseball game on the Philco, put his cigar down with his right hand that shook ever since he was in the First World War, and said, “What’s terrible?”

            My mother’s eyes looked like giant blue jawbreakers. “Diane was on her first date, going to a movie with Dr. Keith’s son. Connie followed them, so she had to bring her home.”

            “Connie had to bring Diane home? That dog’s smarter than I thought she was. Diane’s too young to date. Dr. Keith’s boy is too young, too. Is he waiting outside for you? Bring him in.”

            “No, he’s sitting on a curb down on First Avenue .” My dad looked pretty shocked and wiped a shaky hand across his mustache.

            Mother started wringing her beautifully manicured hands and said, “Oh, Doc, why don’t you drive her down? I hate to keep the boy waiting.”

            “Now, Mildred, by the time I found the car keys and opened the garage door and got the car out of the alley, she’d be there. Now, Pets (I hated that name he called me sometimes, as if I was just a little girl), you just run along and go to your movie and you come right home afterwards. Here’s a quarter in case you have to pay for your ticket. And I don’t want to hear about any more dates until you’re older.”

            “Okay, I have to hurry, or we’ll miss the start of the movie. Thanks for the quarter, Dad.”

            I ran all four blocks. What if Sandy went to the show without me? I began to sweat and took a whiff of my right armpit and then my left. They were bad. I smelled like Connie. I figured I'd better not get too close to Sandy —assuming he was still there.

            He was there all right, sitting on his curb chewing on a Tootsie Roll. “Hi,” he said as he jumped up and shoved the candy towards my face. “Want a bite?”

            “No, thanks.” When I saw Tootsie Roll goop under his nose, I decided he wouldn’t notice I smelled funny, so I said, “We better hurry if we want to get there on time.” I didn’t need my quarter, because when we got to the window Sandy paid for my ticket. He bought a big bag of popcorn, too, some of which he shared with me.

            If I’d been with one of my girlfriends, I would have cried at the end of the movie when Humphrey Bogart said to Ingrid Bergman about leaving her husband, “If you do, you’ll regret it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.” For the rest of my life I would be in love with Humphrey Bogart and dream that I looked like Ingrid Bergman, so someone as handsome as Paul Henreid would ask me to marry him.

            Sandy kind of looked like Paul Henreid, but he darned near destroyed my illusions on the way home when he said, “I thought the movie was dumb, and I sure wouldn’t want to live in Casablanca .”

            I never had another date with him, but sometimes we sat next to each other at parties in Phil Bach’s basement, where we drank Cokes and played records on the Victrola. People said Phil was descended from the great composers, and I guess that’s why he had to practice piano all the time. If he’d been a good boy all week, his mom would let him have kids over on Saturday night. One night he taught us how to play wink-um. It was a pretty wild game for eighth-graders. It’s like musical chairs, only if you get caught you get kissed. Sandy managed to give me a kiss on the cheek. I could hardly feel it, and I remember thinking, Gee, is this what sex is? It’s not very exciting.