Chapter 3: Friendships and Dances
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The ride had been exhilarating. We drove really fast down the winding roads on the other side of the bay. He pointed out his place as we drove past. I couldn't see much, but I got the impression of a barn and a big stone house. When I pointed out that it didn't usually take me this long to get home, he did a half donut in the road. We were across the bridge and at my house in a flash and a spray of gravel.
"Thanks, Mr. Klukov... for everything," I began as he opened my car door.
"Hey, no problem. I enjoyed talking to you. It is so good to hear the sound of a Russian voice. And please... I'm Sasha to my friends."
"No really Mr. uh... Sasha... " I bounced out of the car with my skates. "That was great!" He shrugged. I threw my arms around him in a quick hug and in a burst of sheer gall, I quickly kissed his cheek. Then I grabbed my skates and made for the house before he had a chance to say anything.
I slammed into the house and leaned on the door, breathing heavily, when it was shut behind me. I heard his car rev and then the gravel crunch as he turned around in our lane. I gathered myself, hung up my coat and went into the kitchen. Mama was making breakfast. She was seldom home to make breakfast, what with the second job. She worked too hard. "You're home early!"
"And you're home late. Where have you been?" I should have noticed the iron in her voice, but I was too excited.
"Oh Mama," I gushed, "You'll never guess who drove me home!"
"Alexandre Klukov."
"How did you know?"
"I called the rink when you did not come home and the person next on the ice told me that you had left with him."
"It was awesome, Mama! He has the most amazing 959! I was so gaga over it that he offered to take me for a ride. It was wicked exciting! ... and guess what? I'm going to start back at club practice. Sasha says that he'll give me a lift from school so that I don't have to walk."
"I don't know about this, Elayne."
"But Mama, you've said a million times that you don't like me cutting across the meadows alone to get to and from the rink, and you know how dangerous West Main is to walk. This is the perfect solution and I won't waste 45 minutes of practice time getting to the rink. He'll take me home too so that you don't have to leave work to come to get me and I won't have to wait and I'll have more time for my homework!"
"I don't like it, Elayne. You, alone in a car with this Alexandre Klukov that we barely know."
"He won't bother me. He thinks I'm a little kid."
"You are."
"No I'm not, Mama," I groaned.
"You are a very impressionable young girl and ... "
"Please, Mama!" I whined.
"Well, what's done is done. Go get ready for school and we will see."
I rode with Sasha almost every day after that, except of course when he was away. I always met him up the street from school. I knew there would be a fuss if anyone I knew from school saw me getting into such a sweet car, so I'd walk up a bit and wait. If he didn't show by 2:45, I took the back way across the football field.
The car ride to the skating center was never very long, so often, we didn't talk much. Every once in a while I'd be excited about something which had happened at school and I would blurt it out to him as soon as I got in the car. He was always very polite and listened like he was really interested, which he couldn't possibly be, in the goings on of my little high school. Once in a very great while, he would tell me something about himself or about Russia or about when he had been schooling. The whole month of December, I went on and on about two things: the first senior dance and a possible pairs audition in Chicago in April.
I had never been to the senior winter formal. I was finally a senior and I was dying to go. I had agonized over who to ask for days. I talked incessantly about it to Sasha until I thought that he must be sick of it. I finally worked up my courage to ask the boy I had decided I liked.
When I got into Sasha's Porsche the next day, I was crushed. The boy I had asked not only wouldn't go with me, but one of my girlfriends had heard him ridiculing me to his friends because I couldn't dance. I had never been so humiliated, even at Nationals, even when Steven left for a new partner. At least those humiliations were more private.
By the time I told Sasha the story, I was crying like a baby. He didn't say anything until he had stopped the car in the parking lot of the ice center.
"Are you going to be all right?"
"I guess so... You must thing I'm awfully silly."
"Well, I've never been turned down for a school dance myself. Of course, I've never been to a school dance either. But I can see how it would be traumatic to have someone you like make fun of you to his friends. I don't really understand that, you know. Why he wouldn't take you to the dance? I'd think any American guy would jump at the chance to take you out."
"You do?" I was incredulous.
"I would take you if I could, but I'm sure the school doesn't allow that."
"I don't see any problem... students from other schools are allowed."
"I'm not in school."
"Some girls bring boys who are older."
"Your mama wouldn't like it."
"Sasha, I'm desperate, the dance is on Friday and I don't have anyone to go with. I already have the tickets and if I went stag, I'd be the laughing stock of the school!"
He thought for a moment. "Eh, why not? I'd be happy to take you. If, you can clear it with your mother."
I did an enormous amount of begging to get that clearance. I pleaded and I whined. I reminded her how expensive my dress was and how the tickets would have to go to waste if I didn't have a date. I reminded her that Sasha was only taking me out of kindness as I was a friend in need. I reminded her that there would be chaperones. I reminded her how we would be home early since Sasha had to leave for Europe the next day. I reminded her that I would miss the prom because I would be in Chicago. She gave me permission.
On the day of the winter formal, I didn't meet Sasha for practice. I went straight home from school, blew off my homework and chores and got out my dress. I had to press it very carefully. The dress was pink. It was a designer dress which Mama had picked up at Filene's basement in Boston many years before. I had watched the dress hang in her closet as long as I could remember and dreamed about the day I would wear it.
It wasn't really pink, but instead it was a soft, sophisticated rose. The tag in it said Nicole Miller and it was like nothing I had ever seen. The skirt was full and it fell from a V-waist. It was off the shoulder and cut straight across the neck from shoulder to shoulder and cleft right at the center. There was boning in the neckline which held the arms of the dress out at the shoulder. The hemline was just below the knee and it had a petticoat built in with real horsehair braid sewn in for loft. I had always been thoroughly enchanted with it. It was perfect.
After a long, hot bath, I dried my hair carefully, brushing it until it out long until it shone. I have plain brown hair which is nothing very fashionable but it's long and shiny and thick I usually wear it in a pony tail. I pulled it back from my face and rolled it into a French twist, which I fancied cosmopolitan enough for the lines of my dress. I thoroughly rubbed lotion into my hands, knees and elbows so that they would be soft.
Mama got home from work just as I was starting on my make up. "Don't wear too much," she cautioned, "and don't wear red lipstick." I wiped the red off and put on a shade just darker than the material of my dress. Before I knew it, the door bell was ringing. It was time for Sasha. I slipped into my dress as I heard Mama coming up the stairs.
"Sasha's here," she said.
"I need help zipping this."
Mama got the zipper up in the back. "You have the safety pins in the hem?"
"Yes Mama."
"Well, let's see... that needs to come up there." Mama tugged at the neckline of the dress. She looked over my shoulder into the mirror I was facing. "You look beautiful."
"Thanks Mama."
"Sasha's waiting."
"You go, I'll be down in a few minutes."
Mama left. I tugged the neckline of the dress down and looked at it in the mirror, then I tugged it up and looked again. Finally, I tugged it back down. There! I was on straight. I was nervous, walking into the kitchen. I would have been even more nervous if I had known that Mama was in the living room. Sasha waited for me alone.
"You look like a rose, Yelena."
I blushed.
"A blushing rose, yet," he commented. "Too bad that I brought you an orchid."
"Oh Sasha, it's lovely!" I ignored his compliment. I pinned it on while looking in the kitchen mirror.
"No lovelier or sweeter than you."
"Sasha, don't be silly. You say the sweetest things, but you're too good a friend to mean them." He wasn't saying anything so I went on, "We need to leave soon, the dance committee has hired some sort of instructor. I didn't know until yesterday night, but this is going to be partly a ballroom dance type dance. I hope that you don't mind?"
"That'll be fine," he affirmed, "Shall we go?"
"Bye Mama!" I called as I went out the door. "I'll be in around 10!"
Text Copyright © 1998-2003 Mary E. Tyler
