But the scales weren't the worst. Saturday mornings were the worst.
The Misses Amity and Theodora Blaine supported themselves by teaching piano and giving deportment lessons. Every Saturday morning at eleven o'clock, the daughters of Clearbrook's best families dressed in their Sunday frocks and donned white gloves to knock politely on the Misses Blaines' front door.
Wearing a suit and tie, Mitchell stood miserably in the hallway next to his aunts and watched the girls enter. One by one they dropped a small curtsy and said, "How do you do, Miss Blaine, Miss Blaine, Mitchell. Thank you so much for inviting me."
He was required to bend neatly from the waist in front of girls like fat little Cissy Potts, who sat behind him in his sixth-grade class and wiped her boogers on the back of his seat. He had to say things like, "How delightful to see you again, Miss Potts."
And then he had to take her hand.
The girls settled in the living room, where they were instructed in such skills as the proper method of performing an introduction, accepting an invitation to dance, and pouring tea. He was their guinea pig.
"Thank you, Miss Baker, I'd love a cup of tea," he said.
Snotty little Penelope Baker would pass him his cup of watered-down tea and stick her tongue out at him when the aunts weren't looking.
The girls hated the Misses Blaines' deportment class, and they hated him in turn,
He spent his Saturday mornings gracefully balancing thin china saucers on his knee and taking himself to faraway places where no females were allowed. Places where a man could spit in the dirt, scratch himself, and own a dog. While he took Mary Jane Simmons's hand and led her to the center of the living room rug for a dance, he dreamed of feeling his legs fly out from under him and his hip hitting hard against the dirt as he slid into home plate. He dreamed of going up for a slam dunk and hanging off the hoop. He dreamed of hunting rifles, fishing rods, soft flannel shirts, and blue jeans. But the aunts' duckings and warnings and sighings held him in gentle, unbreakable bondage.
Only in the classroom was it possible to let himself go, and no matter how much the other boys taunted him, he refused to rein in his quick mind. He answered questions in class, did extra-credit projects, and got the best marks in sixth grade.
Teacher's pet. Teacher's pet. Diaper Boy is teacher's pet.
When he was fourteen, his voice dropped and his muscles thickened. Almost overnight, he shot up until he towered over his aunts' small, birdlike bodies. His wheezing disappeared, but they continued to pet him. They made him wear a white shirt and tie for his first day of high school. Freshman year brought academic brilliance and gut-wrenching, aching loneliness.
The summer before his sophomore year, he was walking home from helping his aunts teach Vacation Bible School when a moving van and a paneled station wagon pulled up to the white clapboard house next to his own. The doors of the station wagon opened, and a man and a woman got out. Then a pair of long, suntanned legs emerged, followed by frayed denim cutoffs. He held his breath and watched as a beautiful girl close to his own age appeared before him. Her hair was arranged in a sprayed blond bubble kept neatly back from her face with a madras headband. She had a pert nose and soft mouth. A man's blue work shirt clung to a pair of high pointy breasts.
She turned to study the neighborhood and her eyes fell on him. He waited for the condescending sneer, the look of superiority, and could barely believe it when she gave him a shy smile. He walked closer, wishing the bible and curriculum book he was holding at his side would become invisible.
"Hi," she said.
"How do you do?" he replied, and immediately cursed himself for not being more casual. But he didn't know how to be easy like the other guys.
She looked down at the sidewalk. He spotted a little speck of dandelion fluff caught in the top of her blond bubble, and had to fight back a nearly irresistible urge to brush it away. As she continued to stare at the sidewalk, he realized that she was shy, and he felt a great surge of protectiveness toward her.
"I'm Mitchell Blaine," he said, using the skills that had become second nature to him after nearly a decade of deportment classes. "I live next door. Welcome to the neighborhood."
She looked back up at him. Only a dab of soft pink lipstick remained at the bow of her upper lip. She had eaten the rest away. "Mitch?" she inquired.
No one had ever called him Mitch except the parents he barely remembered. He was Mitchell. Mitchell-Mitchell-Diaper Boy.
"Yes," he said. "My name is Mitch."
"I'm Candy Fuller."
They stood on the front sidewalk and talked awkwardly. Candy and her family were from Chillicothe, and she would be a sophomore at Clearbrook High that September, part of the class of '64, just like he was. Candy had been a junior varsity cheerleader at her old school, and she wanted to cheer for Clearbrook this year. When they finally parted, Mitch felt as if his life had begun all over again.
For the rest of that summer they met every evening after dinner on the old metal bench beneath his aunts' grape arbor. Candy had to wash the dishes before she could come outside, and she always smelled like Joy detergent. They sat on the bench with the flat dark grape leaves curling about their heads and they talked.
Candy spoke of the friends she had left behind in Chillicothe and her worries that she might not be able to make the varsity cheerleading squad at Clearbrook High. Mitch talked about how he'd like to have his own car and whether or not he would be able to get a scholarship to college. He kept the darker bitterness of his life hidden away, out of fear that her affection for him would turn to disgust.
The adoration in Candy Fuller's deep blue eyes grew stronger every evening. Her reaction left Mitch breathless. No girl had ever looked at him that way. His stomach cramped as he remembered that Candy was from Chilli-cothe. She didn't know about the sissy boy, the diaper baby who wasn't allowed to play sports. All she saw when she gazed at him was a tall, lean fifteen-year-old, with sandy hair, light blue eyes, and a broad, handsome face.
They lived in splendid isolation through those dog days of summer, drenched in the scent of grapes and Joy and the infinite, unspoken promise of young love. The night before school started, they were quieter than normal, each sensing the changes that the next day would bring. Candy scratched a thin white line in the suntan on the top of her thigh.
"I don't hate moving here anymore, Mitch. This month, it's been special. Meeting you. But I'm scared about tomorrow. I'll bet all the girls at school are crazy about you."
He shrugged, trying to act cool, although his heart was thumping so hard it was painful.
She studied the toe of her once-white sneaker and her voice began to quiver. "I'm afraid you won't still like me after school starts."
He couldn't believe it. This soft, pretty, bubble-haired cheerleader with her sweet mouth and pointy breasts was afraid that she would lose him. The stirring of emotions that gripped his chest was the sweetest pain he had ever experienced. "I'll still like you tomorrow," he murmured. "I'll always like you."
She tilted her face up to him, and he realized that she wanted him to kiss her. Closing his eyes, he leaned forward and touched that sweet Candy-scented mouth with his own. Although dark, sexual thoughts of her had tormented him for weeks, the kiss was pure. It was a gesture of adoration, a symbol of promise, a farewell to summer.
"Will you walk me to school tomorrow?" she asked when they finally drew apart. Her eyes were large and beseeching, as if she still wasn't certain that he cared for her.
"Of course," he replied. He would have walked with her to the moon.
And then they kissed again. This time it was different. Their mouths met hungrily. Their young bodies joined with a raw, untried passion. He felt the thrusts of her young breasts against his chest and the small bumps of her spine beneath his fingertips. Dark longings raced through his body and heated his blood. A man's need surged through him, its urgency blocking out everything but the feel of Candy's body pressed next to his.