JANE GALLAGHER
She was a funny girl, old Jane. I wouldn’t exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though. She was sort of muckle-mouthed. I mean when she was talking and she got excited about smth, her mouth sort of went in about fifty directions, her lips and all. And she never really closed it all the way, her mouth. It was always just a little bit open, especially when she got in her golf stance, or when she was reading a book. She was always reading and she read very good books. She read a lot of poetry and all. She was the only one outside my family, that I ever showed Allie’s baseball mitt to, with all the poems written on it. She’d never met Allie or anything, because that was her first summer in Maine – before that, she went to Cape Cod – but I told her quite a lot about him. She was interested in that kind of stuff.
My mother didn’t like her too much. I mean my mother always thought Jane and her mother were sort of snubbing her or smth when they didn’t say hello. My mother didn’t think Jane was pretty even. I did though. I just like the way she looked.
It was raining like hell and we were out on her porch, all of a sudden this boozehound her mother was married to came out on the porch and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes in the house. He looked like the kind of a guy that wouldn’t talk to you much until he wanted smth off you. Old Jane wouldn’t answer him when he asked her if she knew where there was any cigarettes. She didn’t even look up from the game. Finally the guy went inside the house. When he did, I asked Jane what the hell was going on. She wouldn’t even answer me, then. She made out like she was concentrating on her next move in the game and all. Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped down on the checkerboard. Then she really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over, her whole face except her mouth. She sort of wouldn’t let me get to her mouth.
She was pretty young, but she had this terrific figure.
Most girls if they hold hands with them, they think they have to keep moving their hand all the time, as if they were afraid they’d bore you or smth. Jane was different. We’d get into a goddam movie or smth, and right away we’d start holding hands, and we wouldn’t quit till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a big deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.
One time, in this movie, Jane did smth that just about knocked me out. The newsreel was on or smth, and all of a sudden I felt this hand on the back of my neck, and it was Jane’s. It was a funny thing to do. I mean she was quite young and all, and most girls if you see them putting their hand on the back of smb’s neck, they’re doing it to there husband or their kid – I do it to my kid sister Phoebe once in a while, for instance. But if a girl’s quite young and all and she does it, it’s so pretty it just about kills you.
Old Jane. Every time I got to the part about her out with Stradlater in that damn car, it almost drove me crazy. I knew she wouldn’t let him get to first base with her, but it drove me crazyanyway.