"Angelfaced With Regrets" (1/3) (Continuation of the Goosebumps series!)
Same rating/disclaimer as before, perhaps moving into the drama catagory.
Description/Spoiller: As the war comes to an end, Laverne tries to deal with her confusion over her new feelings for Lenny, Shirley tries to cope with her the awkwardness between she and Carmine. Will Walter's return change things?
Shirley clutched a throw pillow to her breast, her eyes closed firmly. Humiliation ran hot through her veins.
It was just a question, She groaned to herself, Why didn't you answer him? Just Tell him that everything's fine with Walter..
Because it isn't.
Because The Incident had helped shove her marriage into a danger zone, and she wasn't sure that she wanted to reclaim it.
"What am I going to do if I need to see Carmine again?" She whispered to herself and the darkness of the room. Veeny lay, asleep, across her lap. The fact that he couldn't even look at the little girl she'd had with another man hurt.
Laverne stopped her reverie by bursting through the door, her eyes bugging out and with her arm held out in front of her like it was a prop dummy's.
"Laverne?!" Shirley's instant alarm woke Veeny from her sleep and she slipped off her mother's lap to the couch beside it.
"Gah...G-G..." Laverne could only repeat, her mouth working around a word that refused to exist.
"What happened?!" Shirley began to panic, "Was it a masher?! Did you get mugged?!" Laverne couldn't say a thing; her face was a mask of panic. It revved Shirley's paranoia to a new height. She grabbed her friend by the shoulders and shook her so hard that the "L" detached from her dress. "Tell me what's wrong! Tell me what happened!"
Laverne thrust her forearm underneath Shirley's nose. Her best friend's eye crossed in an effort to understand what Laverne was trying to tell her.
She picked up Laverne's forearm and squinted in the light coming from the hotel's hallway. She laughed in relief and tossed her head.
"Laverne, Laverne, Laverne," She sighed, "Didn't I tell you chocolate makes you break out?"
Laverne shook her head. The bumps had began to recede beneath Shirley's scrutiny.
"Then it's cold outside," Shirley responded. "Did you and Lenny take a cab to..."
At the mention of Lenny's name, the bumps returned.
Shirley's eyes widened, "Am I crazy, or are these goosebumps?"
Laverne shook her head.
"And you got them when I mentioned Lenny?"
She nooded, the shock on her face painfully apparent.
"Veeny, honey, It's time to go to bed," Shirley said, not waiting for her daughter to develop a willingness to move, picking her up. When Shirley returned to the room, Laverne was settled on the couch, a picture of loss and confusion, her hands folded in her lap.
"What's happenin' to me, Shirl?" She blurted out, almost distraught, when Shirley sat down beside her, "I've never felt that way before!"
"Never?" Shirley wondered.
"Never. And with LENNY." She shook her head, "An' he's one of my best friends." She carefully emphasized 'one' as not to offend Shirley by making her friendship with Lenny seem stronger.
"Well, maybe it was the cold. You were just walking together, right?"
"Uhh," Laverne's gaze shot to the ceiling.
"You kissed him again, didn't you?" Shirley wasn't surprised by Laverne's nod, "On the mouth?" Another nod, "You've kissed that boy on the mouth a lot of times for someone who isn't interested in him."
"It's always his idea, Shirl!" She said helplessly.
"Hah! Hah, I say!" Shirley threw her head back in mock-amusement, "The time after that unfortunate date the four of us had, after Squiggy was dumped by Barbra Hummel, you kissed him! And then after he talked to you, when you went to visit your Mom's grave for the first time.."
"So?!" Laverne snapped, "That was a thank-ya kiss! And You kissed Squiggy that other time there!"
Shirley's nose wrinkled up, "Don't make me remember that," She uttered.
"That ain't no different than me kissin' Len." Laverne pointed out smugly. "Better than the vacuum', remember?"
"But you kiss back. You've been leading him on ever since you met."
"We were little kids when we met!"
"And he liked you back then." Shirley said flatly.
Laverne groaned, "And now..Nah, I can't tell you."
"What?! What can't you tell me?!"
"You never tol' me about the album." She noted, "An' I'm not tellin' you this."
"Fine!" Shirley muttered.
The two women sat in silence. Laverne realized that she'd run all the way back to the hotel for a very good reason, and decided to quickly make peace,
"Shirl, I'm sorry. How dya feel?"
"Fine." She knew what Laverne was plumbing for; the reason she'd become upset while talking with Carmine, "He made me feel uncomfortable."
"Len? Len don't make nobody nervous..."
"He makes you nervous!"
"Does not!"
"You're sweating, and he does too. I was talking about Carmine."
"Carmine?" Laverne's brow lowered, "But all he was askin' was if you were happy with Walter..."
Shirley's eyes lit up, but she suppressed her anger,"I am happy with Walter. He just had no right to ask me."
"I don't like this. What happened, Shirl? What'd Carmine do?"
Shirley resisted Laverne's plea for more information. "If you tell me what this thing you don't want to tell me is, I'll tell you why I'm mad at Carmine."
Laverne frowned and glared at Shirley for a moment. But the pressure of the entire situation finally caved in on Laverne and she blurted out, "Lenny made me feel it, Shirl. The It. GOOSEBUMPS!" Her hands moved in circles, unable to express what she really meant.
She expected Shirley to overreact, call her crazy, as she had when Laverne'd lied about accepting Lenny's first marriage proposal. But Shirley just leaned back in her chair and smiled.
"I knew it." She smugly said.
"Waddya mean, you knew it?" Laverne snapped.
"I knew that once I left, you'd start getting closer." Shirley primly informed her. "And after Carmine moved away, there was no one else in the building to talk to."
Laverne wanted to tell her. Wanted to tell Shirley about the letters they'd exchanged while he was in boot camp and basic training and college, which became postcards as their financial situations mutually dimmed. "We're not that close." Laverne insisted, maybe even lied, "I'm still datin'."
"Well, Lenny's classier than your last twenty dates, I'll bet," Shirley opined. "Anyway, he's the best thing you've been associated with since Sonny left for who-knows-where, and Randy..." She slapped her hand over her mouth.
Randy's death was still a tender subject, and Laverne's skin became pasty at the mention of his name.
"I'm sorry." Shirley whispered.
Laverne's gruff exterior took over, saving her from pain, "Since when d'ya think Len and I'd make a good couple?" Laverne asked warily. "And Lenny, classy?!" She snorted.
"Classier. He's a lot better catch than he once was." Shirley's eyes fell to her shoes, "I'm sorry I mentioned...you know..."
"Nah, it's OK," Laverne stiffly said. She stroked the couch's arm. "What am I gonna do, Shirl?"
Shirley wrapped her fingers around Laverne's balled left fist, "Take it a day at a time, Laverne." She was tempted to whisper a few verses of "High Hopes" to her friend, but fears of waking Veenie up stopped her.
At that point she excused herself to bed, and felt her knees go weak with relief when the door shut.
Things had changed so much since Milwaukee. Shirley wasn't entirely sure if it was all for the best.
*****
Weeks melted into months as the war dragged on. Shirley bore the weight of Walter's being gone with what Laverne suspected was almost extreme aplomb.
Laverne spent the entire summer with Shirley in the hotel, torn fully between both coasts, constantly aware that poor, put-upon Edna was in her place, running both Cowboy Bills' AND the Pizza Bowl in her absence; afraid that Shirley didn't really need her there.
Afraid of her feeling for Lenny.
That fall, Shirley was forced to enroll Veeny into a kindergarten. "I have to stay here," She said, "I told Walter that I'd be here when he comes out of the service. And believe me, he is coming out of the service after this!"
Laverne smiled thinly above her paper. Talking about Walter with Shirley over the years made her feel exceedingly ill, "We're gonna need a new appartment, and I'm gettin' a new job," She said.
Shirley shook her head, "I still have plenty of money left from my joint account with Walter."
"I ain't gonna take Walter's charity," Laverne emphatically stated, leaving Shirley no room for argument.
A few days later, the girls moved into a medium-sized loft, with a bedroom for each of them and one for Veeny. The struggle for a job would take Laverne longer. Even after having spent months testing space suits with a famous firm she was repeatedly turned down for work. The job market was toughening; college degrees were becoming a necessity. She finally landed a bar tending job in a working-class bar a stone's throw from the Village.
Shirley remained plunged into her own quagmire. She'd worked her whole life to be the wife of a doctor and a mother. The dream had come true. She was now a proper doctor's wife, but without the husband and home to show for it.
Walter didn't want her to work any more, had yelled at her when she tried to get a job during leaner times. This ingrained, she paid her half of the rent out of his money and threw herself into motherhood and friendship to Laverne.
She strenuously avoided Carmine, which was something that Laverne would learn to do after hanging out post-work one night at his place with his roommate.
Laverne found Carmine's life weirder than the desperate need for meaning Shirley suffered from. His world fairly reeked of Bohemia; the "simplified" excesses and narcissism's of an angry generation coated his tiny apartment.
Laverne loved the cause and issues of the day but hated the drug culture; she was an activist, less a hedonist. And Carmine was flirting with everything the town had to offer. Not to a crazy degree, but it made Laverne uncomfortable.
It gradually became obvious to Laverne that they were both in need, maybe even of one another. But she went through her days saying nothing, afraid of upsetting Shirley's fragile state.
In October, Lenny left Boston. He transferred to a music college in New York and moved into a building across the street from Laverne and Shirley's loft.
He almost instantly became a more regular part of their lives, grounding them in cozy routines of work, school and raising Veeny.
Shirley tried not to rub it in Laverne's face when Laverne's dating life shrank and then altogether disappeared. Laverne lied that she was busy; truthfully, she woke up to the pattern she'd been mired in all her life. Date a handsome (on the surface) and-or exciting man, become titillated by his charms. Give herself wholly over to the relationship with all of her passion.
See, for a moment, beneath his lacquered veneer to the person hidden inside, the jerk, pig, creep, thief or psycho she'd become enmeshed with. Disgusted, she would dump him; in the rare cases where she never saw those things, something would occur to end the relationship and she would wind up alone with Shirley or the boys on a Saturday night. She could count on a hand how many of her relationships had worked out politely.
Lenny, too, slowly stopped dating. Not that he'd had very many serious dates before; college, his budding career, and now almost all of his time with Laverne, Shirley and Veeny.
One night, when Laverne was forced to work to the break of dawn, Lenny came to pick her up. He was driving a car that they had gone in on together, an aging Pontiac that worked well enough to tour the city but appeared clunky enough as to ward off street criminals.
"Hey, Vernie," He smiled when he saw her approach the car.
Lenny was such a welcome sight after hours of drunks that she almost ran to the car. "Len," She said, buckling herself into the front Passenger seat, "Drive."
"Wah?" He asked.
"Couldja just drive?" She asked, "Anywhere, as far as we can go without worryin' Shirl."
"Okay," He said simply, starting the car and pulling through miles of brick buildings. "Do you wanna talk?" He asked.
She nodded, "Just don't call me sweetcheeks... Four guys today called me sweetcheeks. Wanted ta punch 'em."
"OK, SugarNoggin."
"LEN," She admonished, her voice a warning tone. He let loose a loud laugh, the kind she hadn't heard from him since New York, outside of his play with Veeny. He'd made her smile for the first time that day; with that, her admonition vanished into thin air.
"Don't gimmie credit for the SugarNoggin stuff; it was my sister's nickname as a baby."
Laverne wondered if this was a sweet endearment or another facet of Lenny's mother's obvious instability. She smiled at him, "That's nice." She said blandly.
He mentioned that he'd heard from Squiggy recently, and told her how well Squiggy seemed to be handling the army.
"He asked about Rhonda?" Laverne noticed, holding the letter a few inches from her nose in order to read the missive in whatever dim light the sunrise offered her.
"Yeah, it sounds like he missed her," Lenny shrugged, "Love's a many splintered thing, Laverne."
She stopped herself from laughing at his malapropism; it was so true, in the long run.
They spent the entire morning just driving and talking. They were the simplest, easiest moments of both Lenny and Laverne's lives.
At least until they ran out of gas.
***
"Didn't notice?!" Shirley complained, tossing her jacket onto her dresser's malachite-green surface. "You went all the way to Seccaucus and didn't notice when you left New York?"
"And I wouldn't've, if we hadn't've run outta gas." Laverne said.
"You didn't siphon it, did you?" Shirley asked, her curiosity piqued.
"No! We were riding on the tank I put in there this morning, I think," She shrugged, "I don't care. I needed to get away from New York!"
Shirley shuddered sympathetically, "Well, You're lucky that that farmer saw you and let you use his phone to call me."
"He had to've seen us. His prize cow was nuzzlin' our car."
"Nuzzling?" Shirley suppressed a giggle.
"Yeah. That was one lonely cow, Shirl," Laverne shook her head, lying down across the bed, "You're sure you don't need me?"
She shook her head, "Veeny's with Lenny; he said they were goin' to the library. He has to research some sort of paper." Shirley's eyes went distant with thoughtfulness, "Boy, Lenny's become a real student, hasn't he?"
"Yeah," Laverne punched her pillow, nuzzling against it, "Lenny, smartenin' up; next thing you know, Squiggy'll get out of the army and join the priesthood." Laverene laughed; the joke was made mostly for Shirly's benefit.
"He can't, he's Lutheran," Reminded Shirley.
"Convert, Shirl," Laverne said, "He could convert. Like Annie Mulgravy from sixth grade."
"Fanny Annie?!" Shirley gasped, "Fanny Annie Mulgravy converted?!"
"Yup. From bimbohood ta Society Matron." She shook her head, "Society ain't that grand, Shirl."
Shirley's eyes became misty. "No," She said, "I guess not."
"Gemme up at twelve?"
"Alright."
"Night, Shirl. Or mornin'."
Shirley smiled, "Night, Vernie." She shut the bedroom door, leaving her own bed unmade from a night of restless sleep.
Walter Kronkite had hinted last night that the war might be over in Vietnam by the end of that very week...
****
Veenie's eyes glowed like the pearls her Uncle Lenny was squinting down at.
"Nah," He said to himself. The saleslady, being a victim to an inner monologue she couldn't hear, rolled her eyes and replaced the delicate strands back into their case.
The little girl paid little attention to her defacto uncle.
It looks like Mamma's top drawer at home, She thought. Mamma opening it up always meant something exciting was about to happen; like a party or a holiday.
Her momma had a ruby ring, and an emerald one; strands of pearls and a charm necklace. Thinking of this made Veenie sad for her poppa, made her wonder where he was.
Lenny poked her shoulder, "You promise you won't tell your mom where I got the money for this?"
Veenie copied her mother's traditional verse and said, "Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye."
Lenny beamed down at the girl, "And don't tell yer Aunt Laverne nothin' neither."
Veenie couldn't contain her shock when Lenny pulled his wallet out and tried to count out a thick layer of money on the warm glass surface. Her daddy had never taken that much money out of his wallet; Uncle Lenny was richer than her father! Her mind was officially boggled.
"An' don't tell yer mom or Aunt Laverne that this is all I've got from my royalty check...and that I sold my guitar and," He gulped, "Jeffrey for this money."
Veenie pouted, "You sold Jeffery?! I liked him!"
"I liked him too," Lenny sighed, but they were already glowed with a joy the little girl was too young to comprehend, "One day, you'll know. D'ja get what I asked for?"
She nodded, letting him pluck from her hand what had been clutched there the whole way over. The metal was now blood warm.
"Uncle Len?"
"Yeah."
"What's it like to be in love with Aunt Laverne?"
He sighed, "It's like..." He couldn't explain it with words, "I'll tell ya when yer older."
"What?"
"When you've been kissed."
Veenie frowned; kissed?! She wanted to shout that most boys were very icky, and that she'd never be seen touching one ever. If kissing made Uncle Lenny weirder than normal, Veenie decided it was something she should avoid. But the saleslady resurfaced from behind another glass case, calling Uncle Lenny by his last name. The woman's face was lined with tension.
"Mister, Kosnowski, are you ready to make a decision?"
Lenny stood very still for a moment; just as suddenly as he'd stopped moving, he seemed galvanized. With more confidence than he'd ever done anything in his life with, Lenny crossed the floor of Bohem's Jewelry store and laid the largest amount of money that had ever passed through his fingertips in his life onto the counter.
He tried to look suave as he leaned against the counter and said, "I would like to purchase your finest engagement ring,"