Cotton Candy and Cornflower Eyes

Cotton Candy and Cornflower Eyes

July 7, 2022

I saw her — Jenny Marie Hodge — and sparks crackled between us. You might think I’m peddling some tired cliché, but I swear on my mother’s best pecan pie: there were real sparks, flitting around like bumblebees to the hive. It was the Fourth of July, 1982, Howling Gulch’s grand old Independence Day bash, and the whole sky was burning with firecrackers and honest-to-God fireworks.

Forty years on, I can still feel the flush of that night climbing up my neck, scrawny as it was; it still warms me even on the most frigid Nebraska night, and I’ve seen it cold enough to freeze your pee midstream. What I most remember about Jenny is her endless blond hair and blue-beyond-belief eyes, two of many things that made her shimmer.

This girl, a schoolmate I barely knew (except in my head, where I knew, or thought I knew, everything about her) was pure-T class. She shimmered with life -- a magnet for fun and friends and meaningful conversations on dark nights. I dreamed up scenarios where we'd bare our souls -- and maybe other things, too -- in the most sacred moment we’d ever have. On that cotton-candied, sticky Fourth of July, her body pulsated with liveliness, making everyone else recede into the black.

In that instant, I wanted her to be my life. More than anything. I stepped toward her, hoping I could make her feel my longing. Make her see how her perfect life and my less-perfect life could create something that would lift us both into the clouds, as nimble as two birds soaring, soaring -- well, I don’t really know where we would be going. I’m not a writer or some creative type. I just prayed we wouldn’t crash into the sun.

And then she saw me. I half expected her to turn away with a slight downturn of those perfect lips, if she had any reaction to me at all. Most folks kinda looked through me like I wasn’t there. In their eyes, I was a spindly, unformed boy with a doughy face that made me look even younger than I was -- fourteen, going on eleven. It was like God got me out of the people-making oven about a half hour too early and never came back to me.

But, merciful Heavens, she didn’t run the other way. In fact, she stepped toward me, seemingly in slow motion, like the moment just before a car crash when you go on flapping your wings toward whatever comes next -- heaven or hell.

And she looked at me, her eyes locked onto mine, before mine fell, looking for some nickel that had fallen out of my pocket earlier.

“Hey, uh --,” Jenny said, her voice the best poetry and music I’d ever heard, kind of like if REO Speedwagon and Billy Joel had a baby. “I know I’ve seen you at school, but I don’t even know your name.”

I searched every nook and cranny of what passed for a brain, but I had no idea why she’d want to know. My name? Me? I didn’t know exactly what she was getting at, but her large blue eyes, the prettiest cornflower blue I’d ever seen, made me ready to take the first step.

“My name’s Thomas Gilmore, Jenny.” Did I imagine that her eyes opened a bit wider (if that were possible)? Did she really think I didn’t know her name?

She smiled, obviously taking delight at the uneasiness her beauty and her complete aura stirred up in me. She was the single most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. Gently curving rivers and quiet country roads had nothing on her. Jenny was my own personal sun, and I bathed in her glow. Usually, my worship of her was from afar, but now she was just two feet away from me, and we were actually talking. Can you believe it?

“Well, Thomas Gilmore. It sure is nice to meet you. I’ve seen you around town and always meant to speak and just didn’t for some fool reason or other.”

We looked at each other, love shining in our eyes.

Well, okay. Truth be told, she looked at me like a normal human being would look at someone they’d just been properly introduced to; I gawked at her like some poor lovestruck puppy. My awkwardness wrapped around us like barbed wire, ratcheting up until we could barely speak -- not even sure she’d want to after this performance from yours truly, Mr. Smooth.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jesse Wade, a smirk across his face like plastic wrap bulging over Mom’s overflowing bowl of potato salad on Memorial Day. Before graduating Jesse had glided the halls of Howling Gulch High -- letterman jacket always on, girls swooning like he was a prince or the third-best dancer on American Bandstand. I wanted to be with her, but I wanted to be him.

“Hey, c’mon, Jenny. Who ya talking to there?” The makings of the lightest cloud flickered across his face and hers. He was ill with her and me, I guess. He just didn’t want to show it, cool as he was. Of course, I offered no competition when it came to Jesse. I was just a blip on the radar. Small, bug-like.

“Let’s go ride the Whirl-About. C’mon everybody’s going.” He noticed me, his supplicant. “Who are you? I think I saw you around somewhere, ain’t I?”

I drew up, summoning all the breath inside me just to speak.

“I’m a sophomore. I see you in the halls sometimes. Just walking.” Gliding so cool.

He was full-on smirking now. Bastard.

“Well, hey. It’s nice to meet you, really. But we gotta go. Our friends are waiting for us,” Jesse said.

He might as well have had a pin right there, he let the air out of me so easily.

“You wanna go with us, Thomas?” she said.

Jesse threw me a stony glare. I knew what that meant.

“Nah. Thanks, but I’m supposed to be looking after my little sister.” An absolute lie. I don’t even have a sister, little or not, her being stillborn and dying in Mama’s womb ten years ago. Her name would have been Millicent, one of the last remaining remnants of my grandmother. If Millicent were around, would she look up to me -- or look at me, shamefaced, like those who really know me?

“Okay … if you’re sure.” Jenny said, her face darkening for a moment. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She glanced at me in a way I’d never seen before. It wasn’t love, certainly. But it was something, something unknowable. A plea?

“You, too, Jenny.” Her name tumbled off my tongue with the grace of a lean, supple gymnast about to not stick the landing. “You, too, Jesse.”

“Yeah, kid, sure.” His face didn’t register that he even saw me standing right in front of him. He was already on to the herky-jerky thrills of the surely-by-now rickety Whirl-About and sitting close to Jenny, not room for a penny to fit between them, his muscle-y arm flung about her like she was his and his alone.

My face burned with -- envy, shame, or maybe some nameless thing no one’s even thought of yet.

“Well, come on, now. Everybody’s waiting.” He said it a little pushy, a little insistently. Like she was at his beck and call.

“God, Jesse. Okay! I’m coming. You think that stupid ride’ll be destroyed in the next thirty seconds. Jesus! Let me frickin’ breathe. Okay?”

Well, her outburst seemed to do old Jesse in. I’m sure he wasn’t used to being talked to that way. Especially by her, they’d been arm-in-arm since the beginning of junior year, him carrying her around like a beautiful, high-end ragdoll, delicate and for him to arrange however he’d like. The two of them probably knew earthy delights that we sophomores couldn’t even wrap our heads around. Those secrets beckoned to us, and, at the same time, sent us scurrying back to our mama’s skirt tails.

“Well,” Jesse sputtered out. “Just come whenever. Or not. No biggie.”

“Okay. I’ll catch up.”

“Yeah.” And whirled around, steam pouring out of his ears -- metaphorically speaking, of course.

Tears, threatening to glaze her lucid blue eyes, seemed to catch at the edges. It was then I could see just a glimmer of how much we had in common. People got to us both, all gibes -- real or imagined, but mostly real.

Or was I dreaming?

“Sorry about that,” she said.

“No, that’s fine. No problem.”

I didn’t really know what to say, so we just kind of looked at each other. Me -- thinking about a life with her, wherever she would let me in -- if she’d let me in. Her eyes, her body language said to me that maybe she wouldn’t mind me in whatever capacity -- maybe not all I’d hoped for, but some at least. I’d take what I could get and feel like the boy who’d just won first prize. At least I could fill the role of the perpetually pining confidant, circling her, gauging her every want and need, blocking out those who dared to make her fret with worry -- like Jesse.

“So, you wanna walk with me for a little bit,” she said. “I know your sister’s here, but we’ll stay close. I promise.”

Did she even understand what she was asking? My heart scurried off into a thousand fleeting pitter-patters in response.

“Yeah, I’ll go with you.” My heart had settled down to where it could just be heard above the firecrackers whizzing heedlessly above our heads.

“Okay, good. Make my so-called boyfriend wait a bit. It won’t kill him, although sometimes … .” Her voice drifted before creeping back in.

“You must think I’m awful, talking about Jesse that way.”

“No, not at all.” Hmmm … . Cracks in the foundation?

“It’s just that everybody expects us to say our vows right after high school and live happily ever after. Well, Thomas, in my experience, nothing ain’t ever that easy. I tell him that we need to go off and do our own thing, see if being together still suits us.” A sadness, barely noticeable but there anyway, settled over her -- and me.

She glanced at me, almost as if she was surprised at herself for saying so much.

“All he says is, it will. It will. Like he knows everything. All he knows is his idea of me -- his own perfect little concept. I want to be able to screw up without sending him tumbling into a black hole.” She looked at me, the hint of a smile pulling at her lips. “I may look like one, but I’m no mannequin. In two years, he hasn’t grasped it. I doubt he ever will.”

“I know.” How I know, how I know, how I want to know.

She looked at me kind of sharply, like she and I knew something, but it wasn’t polite to talk about it just yet.

“Uh, I mean you’re not a mannequin. The ones I see downtown when I go shopping with my mama look too waxy for you.” It’s true, even the ones that look like they're from Paris with their pouty mouths don’t capture your essence, Sweetness. … So glad she can’t hear these ramblings. She’d run to Jesse fearing I was a madman, praying for rescue, and he’d probably just kick my butt, anyway.

“Been studying those mannequins, eh?”

This was the moment I’d been waiting for. The time when embarrassment, shame, and just the sense of being a damn kid came washing over me.

“Just kidding, Thomas. Thomas or Tom or Tommy? What do they call you? You seem like a ‘Tom’ to me. Grown up and all.”

Oh, my dear Lord! Grown up? Me? You shouldn’t have. And then ….

“Well, my mama calls me ‘Thomas’, so I guess it just stuck.” I winced inside with a shudder that almost made the walls of my soul fall down around me. Crap. My mama. Like a two year old still suckling at her teat.

“Well, can I call you Tom?”

“Yeah. Sure.” You bet, babe. If I could wink at myself, I certainly would.

“Come on, Tom. Let’s see if that Thunder Twister spins your guts around like everybody says it does.” She smiled, lovely and shining. “I think we can handle it, don't you? Let’s go!” Her enthusiasm was infectious, and I was catching it, too.

“I’m hungry first, though. Are you?” she said. Hungry, a funny word with many, many different contexts.

“Yeah,” I said, using the context I knew she meant, though my mind went to places it shouldn’t. Oh, God! What if I pitch a tent in front of God and everybody? Especially her! … Go down! Go down! Or else, I’ll think of the rampaging polar bears ripping those fish into a bloody mess again. And you know I will! … Ah, there we are. You finally learned how to cooperate, you raging beast!

With disaster averted, we walked around some, Jenny and I side by side like it was the most natural thing in the whole world -- her with her feet kicked up high and proud, me scuffling along like cinder blocks were bolted to my legs. It made me feel like the transports the stormtroopers used in The Empire Strikes Back that Dad and I saw at the old World Theater in Kearney.

I couldn’t think of much to say, and she didn’t really say much either. She just kind of shuffled along like she was there beside me but thinking of things miles away. I remembered the time my dad, a quiet man, said that when a boy and a girl are meant for each other, more things are said in silence than in talk. He told me that they could be together and look at each other with moony, sideways glances, and not worry about filling all that empty space in between with pure prattle.

We finally got to where we wanted to go and ordered two footlong corn dogs and two RC Colas. I took out a crumpled five-dollar bill -- lawn-mowing money -- and handed it to the pimple-scarred teenager in charge of rounding up our order.

“You didn’t have to do that, Tom,” she said.

“I know, but I wanted to,” I said. Oh, how I wanted to continue: It was only five dollars, dearest. What is that in the face of our unstoppable love? Forget about Jesse! Did he buy you a corn dog and an RC? Didn’t think so.

She smiled at me, a touch of bashfulness showing in it, through her overwhelming glow. Her smile put me even more in her thrall. That smile felt like it had a piece of me -- wanting to be nice to people, wanting to look for the good in everything. Oh God, please answer my solemn prayer. I want her, I need her in my life tonight. Jenny could keep me from feeling alone (like I do all the time, Lord), and I can help her know that she is the most important person in the world to me -- better than any old Husker, Royal, or Chief.

She wanted to say something else to me. I could feel it. I could see the words rising in her. But they seemed to be caught at the top of her throat for a moment, but then the words started.

“Tom, you don’t have to … you don’t have to be with anybody you don’t want to.” She dabbed at the corners of those cornflower eyes. “You decide that, not your Mom, not even your friends. Just … just remember that, okay?”

Just then, Jesse, moving through the crowd, looking for his woman.

“Hey, Jenny! Come on, let’s ride. Kevin’s throwing a party -- folks outta town. Let’s go!” He grinned his shark-tooth smile, eyes focusing on me. And with a wink, “Sorry, kid. Gotta go.”

Damn, if that didn’t tear me a new one right there. His woman. What gave him the right? She’s not mine, but why did she have to be his? What made guys like him always win?

She found her smile again, tossed her hair back, and could not meet my eye.

" 'Bye, Tom. I’ll see you around, kid.”

“Yeah,” I said, my sorrow elevated by the constant thrum of cicadas and katydids mourning in the distance. I looked up, the burgeoning clouds swallowing the moon until only a frail sliver remained to light my way. I hung my head and trudged home.

*****

Forty years later, I still think of Jenny often. I ponder what she was trying to tell me with such urgency that sticky July night. Whatever it was, I didn’t listen. Hey, ask my ex-wives, all two of them.

On reflection, maybe I have learned something, after all. I've been seeing Rhonda Bishop for about three years. Our fractured hearts couldn’t take any more bruising, so we’re just letting this one ride -- see if it works for us before we jump in with both feet. Dad, dear old Dad … he always said you make a decision, you carry it with you. And you alone.

Maybe I’ve learned something after all. Now, on to Rhonda’s and another night of dreaming, planning, and looking at the stars we’ll gaze at the rest of our lives. One day I’ll tell her about Jenny and the night a shy, loon-faced boy thought, if just for a moment, he could touch the stars.