Inside, Mrs. McCall helped me lace my skates.
“All right, Peter,” she said at last. “You’re as ready as you’ll ever be.” She stood up and gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Good luck,” she said.
Jack skated to the railing in front of us, all power, skill, muscles, chin, and teeth. “Hey, good morning, Mrs. McCall,” he said. He gave an odd emphasis to the words Mrs. McCall, and he smiled broadly and winked at her.
I told myself to do what Porky had told me, to imagine myself doing what it was I wanted to do. I stood at the railing, closed my eyes, and summoned all the strength of imagination that I could muster, and in a single brilliant instant I was able to imagine everything that was going to happen.
I would say, “Well, here I go!” and I would push myself onto the floor and be startled by the sensation of having lost all control over my feet. My right foot would insist on rolling farther and farther forward while my left rolled slowly backward. I would flail my arms as falling people do, as if imitating the herky-jerky rotation of the wings of an ornithopter. And I would, of course, fall. I would land on my right buttock, hard, my eyes locked on Veronica, and I’d watch her expression shift from surprise to concern to hilarity to embarrassment and back to hilarity. I would scramble to my knees and look over at Mrs. McCall, who would be trying awfully hard not to laugh, and at Jack, who would be roaring, so forgetting himself in his exuberant amusement that he had flung his arm around Mrs. McCall and was kneading her shoulder through the soft angora sweater. I would struggle to my feet and try to make myself move in Veronica’s direction. Try as I might, I would not be able to make myself move on a course that would get me to her side. Weak with laughter, she would finally come to me, put her hand on my waist, and try to show me how to change direction. The smallest movement would upset my balance, and at any moment, even when standing still, I would be on the verge of falling down. I would clutch at her, to keep from falling, and fall anyway, often taking her down with me. I would discover in the tumbles a surprising pleasure, and I would discover in the laughter an analgesic for the embarrassment of not being able to skate, for not being graceful and confident, for being, in that puzzling way, so very much younger than Veronica. I would begin to play for the laughs, and Veronica and I would wind up having a wonderful time. She would begin to anticipate my falls, and she would prove to be so at ease on skates that she could even play the clown. She could fake losing her balance herself, go through a wild parody of my attempts to recover my balance, recover hers at the last instant, make it look as if both of us had recovered, then give me a little nudge and send me sprawling. Jack and Mrs. McCall would be beside themselves with laughter, flinging their arms around each other in uncontrollable glee when Veronica resorted to simply holding me up and guiding me around the rink as if I were stuffed. When Veronica and I finally made our way back across the rink to where they were seated, they would stand and applaud us, Veronica would stop and deliver a graceful swanlike curtsy, and I would bend at the waist and fall in a heap.
“Bravo!” Jack would shout, when I had a grip on the railing again at last.
“Oh, Peter, you were so funny!” Mrs. McCall would say, gasping for breath, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I haven’t laughed so much in I don’t know how long.”
“You were hilarious, kid,” Jack would say. He’d pat me on the shoulder and add, “You’re really a good sport.”
Veronica would put her arm through mine and snuggle up beside me, and when I looked at her I would know that she was pleased with me, that she liked being with me, and that it would be quite possible for Veronica and me to be great friends once she’d transferred her lusts to Stretch.
“Here I go!” I announced through clenched teeth. I pushed myself out onto the floor. Porky White turned out to be right; everything happened just as I had imagined it would.
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🎧 177: Inside, Mrs. McCall . . .