Haunting Happiness

Suzanne drifted through the door of Jinks’ Skating Rink and was enveloped in memories so intense she had to pause and wait for the waves of emotions to recede a bit.

Being in this place, once the center of her teen universe, often filled her with unspeakable sadness, yet she remained a participant in this journey of the mind. Knowing nothing could return her

to those carefree days of her youth did not keep her away from the repository housing her happiest memories and the moment that haunted her still. Leaving it, and the memories it held, was

unthinkable.

Nostalgia compelled her forward.  The odor of popcorn from the concession stand mixed with dozens of perfumes worn by the girls waiting to present their tickets and enter. Further along, new

odors dominated the senses. Grime from hundreds of feet passing over infrequently washed flooring mixed with axel grease and boot leather and foot sweat wafting upward from the line of skates behind the counter where Tommy, the big man with the easy smile took tickets and handed out rentals.  

The regulars brought their own skates in colorful cases secured with metal snaps.  Newbies headed for the benches; the regulars for the locker room to change out of their street shoes.  In their

space, the girls teased their hair, added more gloss to glistening lips and popped gum into their mouths. The odors of hairspray and mint chewing gum dominated the area around the mirrors where the teens checked their make-up and adjusted headbands. Suzanne suspected the boys room smelled of cigarette smoke and after-shave with an undercurrent of the leather from the jackets every regular wore, winter and summer because leather jackets made boys feel like men.

Suzanne moved toward the girl’s bathroom and placed a hand on the door but did not go inside. Nothing in there held her interest now.   

She looked over at the concession counter where other kids

stood, tapping change on the glass countertop, waiting to order cups of flat soda and sticky packets of red licorice. The stand didn’t interest her.

She moved toward the main room and gazed at the smooth wood of the floor and the chipped paint of the metal railings where new or inexperienced skaters clung in desperate, often futile, attempts to remain upright on their skates. 

Balancing on eight wheels, gliding with grace over a variety of surfaces required practiced dedication, dues were paid with skinned knees and bruised bottoms.  

Only the best skaters were allowed into the inner circle of regulars. Membership in that circle meant the world to Suzanne. The girls in the restroom loaned their combs and told her when there was a hole in the back of her fishnet stockings. The boys, in their leather jackets and peg legged jeans, took her hand and pulled her onto the floor for a couple’s skate or trio.  She was in on their jokes. The regulars called her by name, acknowledged her existence, made her feel alive.

Suzanne slid into a bench and ran a hand over the varnished surface imagining the hundreds of bottoms that had polished those boards.  She heard the echo of young voices, ringing with laughter and whispering secrets sure to be spilled before the listener made a full circuit of the rink’s floor. She heard boys talking tough about things they only claimed to have done, and girls whispering prayers to the gods of love that the cute boy in the blue shirt would notice them.

She thought of the big board mounted over Tommy’s counter; heard Tommy picking out familiar tunes on a xylophone with a rubber mallet, and remembered how every eye in the place turned

toward that board to see whether All Skate or Trio, or Couple Only was next on the agenda. Then, like lemmings, the skaters left the floor and prepared to reverse direction, or link up with a twosome,

or pair up and skate onto the floor where the lights were dimmed, and boys could steel kisses if they were quick about it. 

She liked the simplicity of it all; liked the way she could count on everyone obeying the rules because anyone foolish enough to disobey the board would be intercepted by Jinks and escorted from

the floor. Some offenders found themselves in time out; others, on occasion, were shown the door and added to the expelled list.

Outside of Jinks’ Skating Rink, in her everyday life, Suzanne’s world was unstructured and the behavior of the adults unpredictable. So, she entered the rink four or five times a week and immersed in blessed routine, found happiness.

She flirted with boys in leather jackets who filched cologne and cigarettes from their fathers and counted herself lucky to have found a group of strangers she could call friends; no one from

her neighborhood, or school, no one who knew about the chaotic, violent, unpredictable world she inhabited outside of the rink.

Suzanne stood and moved out onto the floor. That, after all, was what she had come down for. No point in putting off, any longer, this reckoning with her past.

She moved forward, thinking about Terry Wilson, who enjoyed the highest position in the upper echelon of the inner circle.  Even now she could not say what attracted the girls to Terry.  He was

shorter than most of the boys in the group and skinny, with no sign of developing the musculature his pals began to exhibit. His completion was sallow, and his features unremarkable. He wasn’t the smartest, funniest, or nicest in the group but every girl who wanted to be part of the “in” crowd dated him, and every girl who dated him found herself dumped when a fresh girl caught his eye.

    When Suzanne’s turn came, lives changed forever.

Tommy had just signaled a switch from All Skate to Couples Only. The lights on the floor were dimmed and the first strains of Love Potion blasted out from the speakers mounted overhead.

She was wearing her blue denim mini skirt and her new red sweater. The sweater hugged her in a way that made her feel glamorous, and had a neckline that plunged low enough to add a bit of sass to the glam.

Terry grabbed her hand and pulled her out on the rink. She was so stunned to find herself gliding along, out there, with his arm wrapped around her waist, she hadn’t noticed the desolate

expression on Patsy Pilch’s face or the girls crowded around Patsy consoling her, until Potion was more than half over. By then there was nothing she, or anyone, could do.  Patsy was out, Suzanne was

in…simple as that.  Patsy would spend the next few weeks staring slack jawed and red eyed as Terry staked his claim and Suzanne took her turn as his girl, but Patsy would survive.

Suzanne didn’t like Terry in the way so many of the other girls seemed to. His breath stank and his relationship with soap was sketchy. But, dating him was part of the game the girls in her circle played and, more than anything, she wanted to belong.  At first, she enjoyed, the way the other girls looked at her and whispered behind their hands when Terry skated up behind her, draped his arms over her shoulders and nuzzled her neck.   She saw envy in their eyes when Terry took her case, after a skating session, and carried it to the counter and handed it to Tommy saying, “Hold this for my girl, will ya’ Tom.”   And Tommy would wink and grin and whisk Suzanne’s case off the counter and place it on the shelf beside Terry’s.  

She wouldn’t have asked for the privilege of storing her case at the rink, or thought of displaying any of a dozen rule breaking behaviors only the most favored dared to engage in.  But Terry was rink royalty and, by extension, so was she.  

She tried not to let the pleasures of her new position go to her head, she expected her ride to last a month, maybe two, and then Terry would move on as he always did.    But she was a sixteen-

year-old girl, riding high on her fifteen minutes of fame, and she was going to get hers while the getting was good.

To her surprise, Terry did not move on. Instead he offered her the ultimate prize a girl could have hoped for, he slipped his class ring onto her finger and told her they were steadies.

Suzanne tried to be happy about the unexpected turn, but the allure of her position was wearing thin.   Still, she curled her hand into a fist around Terry Wilson’s ring and nodded her head

dumbly, as she was expected to do and wondered how she would manage to avoid awkward introductions and humiliating interrogations while maintaining a relationship with the most desirable boy in her group. 

She learned to ignore the odors of perspiration and unwashed hair, and smiled when he bent to plant garlic scented kisses on lips freshly dressed in cherry lip balm. She tolerated his moodiness and

fended off the occasional question about home and family life, saying her parents strictly forbade her dating and warning that there would be trouble if they knew he was more than a friend from the rink.

They dated for six full months before the cracks in Terry’s skating rink persona began to show.  By then, the other girls abandoned any hope of being next in line to step up to the throne, and the boys stopped signaling their willingness to step in and fill the void once Terry dumped her.  

The first time Terry shoved her, she pretended the push had been accidental. He was so attentive and solicitous, rushing to help her up saying, “Oh, man, Suz, are you okay? Oh, you scraped

your knee when you fell.”  And, when he told her she “fell” she agreed with his revision of the truth because it was just easier than facing angry recriminations from him.

A week after that, he reached over the seat of his car, during an argument over an order of French fries, and pinched her, hard.  The bruise was ugly and difficult to explain and that time there was no agreeing with an alternate version of reality. He fixed her with an ugly glare, as she sat sobbing in the front seat of his car and told her to “Zip it.” before tossing the bag of fries out the car window and ordering her to get out and walk home. Which she did.

After that, the abuse became more regular, the punishments more severe, and the triggers for his behavior more difficult to predict and avoid. 

Suzanne gently massaged the wrist of her left hand as she drifted back in time, to that day when she knew she and Terry were through and that the break-up would change her life forever. What she did not know, could not know, was how life altering the change would be. 

Until that afternoon, episodes of abuse occurred in private and never within sight of Jinks' Skating Rink.  The building was her safety zone, the one place where she felt at peace.

She was looking forward to the afternoon’s skating session. Patsy Pilch was dating Robbie Abbot. Robbie was new to the group, and Patsy was happier than Suzanne had ever seen her. It was Patsy’s birthday, and word was that Robbie was planning to surprise Patsy with a bakery cake, and a bouquet of balloons.    The whole gang planned to celebrate, so Suzanne expected Terry to be on his best

behavior, but when they pulled into the lot and Terry saw Robbie pulling the massive bunch of balloons from his car, a look came over Terry’s features that sent Suzanne into high alert. 

She looked over at Robbie, who was oblivious to Terry’s scrutiny and was turning her attention back to Terry when his fist slammed into her cheek.

Before she could do more than cry out in pain and surprise, he grabbed her wrist and squeezed it hard. He leaned close, the leather of his jacket creaking, the smell of his hair oil making her stomach churn.

“You ever look at another boy that way again and I’ll mess you up, bad. You understand me?”

He released her wrist with a disdainful shove.

She nodded, afraid to speak.

“Fix your face and look happy. We’ve got a party to go to.”

Terry reached across her and opened the glovebox, and she shrank back, staring straight ahead though the car’s windshield, waiting for him to finish so she could reach for her purse and do as she was told. 

She felt her cheek swelling and knew it would bruise. She was learning to lie, fluently, about her growing collection of bumps and bruises, and planned to blame this one on her clumsiness; say she whacked her face on the car door when she bent to get her purse.   The girls would give her sympathetic looks and gather paper towels from the wall dispenser and hand them to her, dripping with cold water. She would smile her gratitude and press the cool paper to her aching face. Then she would repair her make-up, lace up her skates, smile, and join the party.

But, when they walked in the door, Jinks looked and her and then at Terry in that searching way adults do when they know a kid has done wrong, but don’t have the proof, yet, to call them on it. And,

something in that look gave her unexpected courage. 

Terry felt the change.  He felt her hand loosen in his, felt his control of her slipping. His fingers encircled her aching wrist and gave her a warning squeeze. 

But the decision was made, she wasn’t turning back.

She waited until after Patsy had her birthday surprise and the afternoon session was nearly at end. Couples Only was lit on the big board for the final time that afternoon. 

Terry took her hand and they glided onto the floor together. He smiled at her, as if nothing was wrong, and she was grateful for the dim lighting that hid her own expression. He didn’t try to kiss

her, as they rounded the back of the rink and headed back to the straight away. She didn’t know what she would have done if he had. She only knew that she was never going to allow Terry Wilson the privilege of kissing her again. 

They were on the straightaway, nearing the front of the rink. She planned to say her piece and head straight for girl’s locker room,   She dropped Terry’s hand and stopped moving.  She stood still as stone right there on the floor, not because she had fallen, but because Terry Wilson had fallen from grace and she was preparing to tell him to go to Hell.

Terry skated forward another three strokes before his brain signaled his solo status. When he turned back, legs wide, toes turned inward, there was no mistaking his outrage.

“We’re finished,” Suzanne said.

She felt the angry glares from the other couples, forced to maneuver around the unexpected obstacle created by a pair of bodies no longer in motion, but she made no move to apologize or explain. 

“What?” Terry hissed.

“Don't make this ugly,” Suzanne said. 

Terry rolled forward, the toes of his skates slamming into hers, but she stood firm.

“We’re finished,” she said, her words drown out by the ding, ding, dong of Tommy’s xylophone as the big board changed from Couples Only to Clear the Floor and the house lights blazed to life.

    Terry shook his head slowly.

     Suzanne repeated, calmly, “We’re finished.”

Terry’s back was to the front of the rink; he did not see the growing number of onlookers gathering to witness the tableau. She had the gang’s full attention and saw that they understood she

was dumping the great Terry Wilson.

The gang saw Terry reach into the inside pocket of his jacket with one hand and reach for Suzanne with the other.  But, no one could have guessed what he was reaching for, and it was far too late for Suzanne to react when she realized she was in grave danger, even there, within her safety zone.

Her friends saw Suzanne’s eyes widen, but they did not see Terry raise the blade, or use it, until there was no chance of stopping him.

Suzanne gazed down at the spot, on the floor, where she lay until Terry Wilson was tackled and disarmed by Jinks Wilcox, until the building was cleared of screaming children and cursing adults, until the police took charge, and her body was carried away in the Coroner’s van.

   She thought of how sweet it would have been to have laced on her old skates and circled the rink just one more time before the wrecking ball arrived to demolish the building where her spirit was

torn from her by a jealous boy incapable of giving or receiving love. But no such thing was possible. Dead was dead.

  Suzanne glided from the floor and sat on the bench where she would wait for the building’s end. She wondered what would become of her when she would no longer had a physical place to

haunt.  She supposed she would see soon enough.

She closed her eyes and remembered the scents of her youth: popcorn and axel grease and leather boots of the skates.

She did not regret, for an instant, the years spent haunting that once happy place.