Back in the stacks, Agnes (unfortunately nicknamed "Baggy Aggie" by her exasperating older brother) concentrated on translating her "honors" French high school homework.
Dr. Bunker, the school librarian, stopped by for the third time that afternoon to ask, "How's it going, Baggy?" She purposefully kept her pen on the lined notebook paper as if to say, I am immersed in Camus's existentialism and cannot be interrupted. But she managed a quick, polite-toned "Fine thanks" as required by parental law when dealing with adults. Trés bien merci.
At least Dr. Bunker didn't have his camera dangling by a loose leather strap across his scrawny chest. He'd startled her with it many times on school premises, usually when she was wearing one of her plaid miniskirts. A month ago, on a rainy, bad hair day in 1967, Dr. Bunker had ambushed her as she walked down an aisle in the library. Her head reeled back when the flash went off. He said, "That will be a great candid shot! I can't wait to process it in my dark room and show it to you" and then went merrily off to his library duties, while Baggy regrouped and caught her breath.
When she saw the final picture, the expression he'd caught was one of raised, annoyed eyebrows, a twitch in her lips as if she were about to yell, "Hey!" and an unflattering chin angle. The photo also provided stark evidence that Baggy's use of Sun-In bleach to lighten the hair around her face wasn't successful. The photo captured what her bathroom mirror had not and more tragically proved that yet again, her mother was right about something when she announced it looked awful. Her actual word was "trashy." Even Baggy knew she couldn't pull off trashy.
She took French because her mother once taught it, along with Latin, which Baggy also studied since her mother thought it was helpful in life to understand the origins of words. Baggy already knew a lot of Latin from Sunday Mass. Studying a romance language and a dead language made perfect sense since Baggy spent a lot of time pondering both topics (death and romance). Baggy found the library, sans Bunker, calming, and felt the same way in Latin class. She wondered if the other Latin students were just aspiring lawyers or if they, too, felt cocooned for forty-five blessed minutes in the classic world of the language, rather than in riotous sixties drama.
Despite Baggy's focus on her homework, Dr. Bunker continued to stand in her cubicle, smiling in his hyper-bearded-balding, wolf-like teeth way. He clasped his bony hands and said, "I have an idea." Which he did regularly and usually involved a proposal for some elaborate setting for a private photo session. "I'm sorry, I'm busy" was Baggy's constant reply. And truthfully, she was. Her mother kept her hopping with volunteering and piano lessons, while Baggy on her own had signed up for Madrigals and the Yearbook staff.
Baggy really didn't have a spare minute until Sundays, her favorite day. She never booked anything social. She liked her friends, but sometimes they felt like another assignment, especially the needy ones who had to itemize every interaction with boys, teachers, and parents. A person, Baggy thought, needed to seal herself away once in a while to focus or to just relax and stop smiling. She'd lock herself in her bedroom after church to luxuriate in finally being alone—with her records, books, and a bulletin board covered with thumbtacked photos of Marvin Gaye, shaggy-haired British pop stars, and Harve Presnell, to whom she'd formed a puzzling attachment.
After Baggy turned down Dr. Bunker's new photo request, he pleasantly departed. Baggy figured he'd find somebody else to pose for him.
As she packed up her books and homework for the long walk home, she considered:
--- Dr. Bunker had a type, and Baggy met it: tall, studious, leggy freshman or sophomore girls with long brown Cher hair parted in the middle. Hair that regularly, to her father's dismay, clogged up the bathtub drain.
--- Dr. Bunker never bothered the blondes or the buxom. Or Lucy Lasser, who bucked the hair trend and wore bouncy, short curls she was tired of ironing.
--- The Bunker Girls weren't the girls who craved attention and had to be the center of things. They were popular but not, God forbid, cheerleaders, a gig that struck Baggy as both exhausting and humiliating. When will I be cheered, she often pondered.
--- The Bunker Girls weren't extroverts, tramps, druggies, or wild offspring of some television news anchor. They dated boys who were sweet and awkward, or pushy and determined. The worst were too aggressive, one having recently pushed Baggy into a kitchen pantry and shoved her against a wall. She blamed herself for the pantry incident. As a joke she'd worn a silly, untrue button that said, "I can't dance. But I can sure intermission." She should have known better.
--- It was the not majorly screwed-up, careful girls Dr. Bunker asked to pose for him. Did tall girls somehow come across to Dr. Bunker as older than they really were? Did this grown man see the Bunker Girls as something they weren't, at least not yet? Were they all the same to him, a blister pack of girls ready to be yanked out of their cubicles?
--- Baggy chuckled at the notion of the Bunker Girls forming their own club. Maybe they could get an actual school budget. Dr. Bunker could take their group photo for the Activity section of the yearbook, just as he did for all the school-sponsored activities. There they'd be, the Bunker Girls, smiling next to the photos of students in the Archery, Fencing, and Rifle clubs.
Near the library's exit door, Linnell, who was a year younger than Baggy, approached her. She didn't really know Linnell all that well. Just that some called her Linney and she had a brother named Percival, a name that struck Baggy as a tough one to carry.
"Can I ask you something?" Linnell said. "Does Dr. Bunker bother you? I noticed he hangs around your desk a lot."
"Well, you know, he's a little…"
"Crazy? Annoying?" Linnell said loudly. "He's always asking me to pose for photos."
Baggy stopped strolling and faced her. "Me too." Baggy studied Linnell. She definitely fit the Bunker Girl criteria. And she was adept at eyeliner.
"Let's face it, that's just creepy," Linnell said.
"Does it really bother you?"
"Yes. I'm trying to get work done, and he keeps interrupting."
As she pushed open the heavy exit door, Baggy said, "Maybe we can fix this. My dad always says, ‘For every problem, there's a solution.' He's an engineer."
"I like that!" Linnell chuckled. "I wish it were true. See you tomorrow."
Once on her tree-lined street, Baggy waved at Claire, the deep-voiced daughter of their next-door neighbors. Claire was a senior and a hearty archer. She impressed Baggy with her disciplined practice and form: rain or shine she'd set up the colorfully ringed target in the garage and stand at the entrance of her long driveway, almost out into the street, and shoot thrumming arrows over and over again, splat into the bull's-eye. She was training for the Olympics. Could a person really dream so big?
Claire's parents were "European," according to Baggy's mother. They often came over for cocktails on the porch to discuss the contrast between US and European politics. Claire's short, fleshy father usually stood during these sessions, his hands in his pant pockets, in a manner Baggy associated with shy men. Were they fumbling for change, soothed by the feel of the coins or perhaps the jangling sound when they clanked against one another?
Inside, Baggy found her brother sulking and hogging both the sofa in the den and a bag of Cheetos. His lips were orange. If Baggy had consumed a puff near dinnertime, she would have received a lecture from Maman on not spoiling her appetite before one of the seven weekly, rotated meals her mother had worked hard to prepare (e.g., tuna noodle casserole made with potato chips instead of noodles, or a dish with onion soup mix and a can of cranberry sauce her mother called "piquant" chicken and the rest of the family referred to as "crazy" chicken—Bon Appetit!) and the eternal warnings about Baggy watching her weight. Even though Baggy was lanky and thinnish, her mother constantly fretted she, too, had the blow-up family genes that struck at "the change" of life. Since Baggy was fifteen, she didn't understand the worry. Je ne comprends pas.
Baggy considered asking her strong, imposing brother if he'd put the fear of God in Dr. Bunker so he'd leave her and Linnell and all the Bunker Girls alone. It was probably too much to ask; her brother was struggling at school and worried about being drafted. So, she left him alone. Percival didn't seem like an option either. Besides, they didn't need a savior; they needed a solution.
Should she discuss Dr. Bunker with her parents? Did she really have anything to tell them?
Telling would require disrupting their highly regimented evenings: the heralded arrival of Papa from the train station, the family watching from a window as he intentionally amused them by walking his monster-like Frankenstein steps from the street curb to their front door, his right arm straight out in front of him holding the house key; his cheery "I'm home" greeting before his methodical disposal of his pocket's contents—subway tokens, half sticks of Wrigley chewing gum in a pale green wrapper, cuff links, watch, and family signet ring. Sometimes he'd change into what he referred to as his T.H.E. Cat turtleneck sweater, named for a cat burglar on a TV show.
Then began his ritualistic preparation of the parents' first of the evening's gin martinis, to be savored alone as a couple in the high-ceilinged living room, he on the couch, she in the high-backed golden chair. An invisible but understood chain prevented Baggy and her brother from entering the room or interrupting this sacred time.
Baggy's parents would sip their martinis, smoke their cigarettes (Lark for him, Chesterfield for her) and discuss his day, her day, and any issues requiring attention, including those of their not particularly impressive children. The son didn't apply himself despite his gifts, and the daughter over applied herself to her studies, her social life, her extracurriculars, all of which they found amusing since their only expectation was that she marry well, breed, and provide them with lovable grandchildren they could spoil. Baggy did not see that happening. She knew she didn't have the sangfroid required to endure the belittling scrutiny of family life.
Her mother had law enforcement relatives. If Baggy mentioned Dr. Bunker, her mother might overreact and have him arrested. Or she might find it encouraging someone, even a librarian, wanted to take Baggy's picture. Maman could go either way. Her verdicts were often puzzling.
One afternoon Baggy got home from school and found her mother ironing in the den. The TV was on, which was unusual, and showing an old black-and-white movie on WPIX. "It's got Katharine Hepburn in it. Watch some with me, hon." Hepburn was held in high esteem by both parents, though it occurred to Baggy the actress had not followed the "breed" philosophy.
When Baggy mentioned she was surprised to find Jimmy Stewart so appealing (she'd only seen him in old man roles, usually Westerns) and that he had a certain je ne sais quoi, so you could see why Hepburn's character was torn between him and Cary Grant, her mother had turned off the steam iron, stepped around the fold-up board, and said in her "now listen to me closely" voice (which resembled Hepburn's speech pattern), "If you have the choice between a Jimmy Stewart or a Cary Grant, please promise me you'll choose Cary." It seemed a profound moment, that she was conveying a new and baffling secret of life, another philosophy Baggy needed to learn.
Baggy's dad did funny imitations of Cary Grant's gliding walk. Was this to please his wife? And did Baggy's mother have a Jimmy Stewart in her past? It was just too much to think about.
Baggy decided against talking with her parents about the Bunker situation.
Up in her bedroom, she was relieved to see the area rug (where that morning she'd accidentally spilled a glob of Noxzema lotion she'd been lathering all over her face while trying not to gag from its fumes) looked restored. She was clumsy but clever at cleaning up her mistakes. Savoir faire! She'd dashed to the fortunately unoccupied kitchen, yanked the pancake flipper spatula out of the organized kitchen drawer, grabbed a sponge and a handful of paper towels, and managed to repair the rug damage pretty well. Whether her mother's hawk eyes would notice the faint stain and deem it the end of the civilized world was an open question.
Baggy lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling for a moment's contemplation before cracking open her textbooks.
Maybe it was hard for Dr. Bunker. He wasn't handsome and had a job where he had to deal with snooty, spoiled, suburban teenagers like her. All day. Maybe he was just a lonely nuisance.
Was it flattering to have the attention of an adult male, even if it was just Dr. Bunker? He praised the Bunker Girls for their alleged beauty, but was that a threat, a taunt, a test?
Yes, he was weird, Baggy admitted. But would it have killed her to stand pleasantly in front of the library window that peeked out over the foreign-car-jammed student parking lot? To simply laugh as he snapped his camera at her hunched shoulders ensconced in her favorite royal-blue ribbed turtleneck sweater with the tiny light brown buttons on a strap near the cuffs?
No, it would not. Other students had been all around the library, packed into cubicles; nothing bad would have happened.
Maybe Dr. Bunker knew they all needed cheering up. There was a war on. They were just teenagers after all, bouncing from one misery to the next or filled with confusion or joy at the newness of everything else.
The next day, she found Linnell in the hall outside the library.
"What if," Baggy whispered, "the two of us propose to Dr. Bunker a one-time-only photo session with both of us, you and me, outdoors on the high school lawn, in the afternoon, near the library window, so no hanky-panky."
Linnell looked worried.
"We could stress the one-time-only, all of our conditions having to be met, and specifically that he can't tell us what to wear. And then he'd never be able to take our picture or ask us about posing again," Baggy said.
"Hmm. Let me think about it. Do you really think it could work?"
"I don't know," Baggy admitted. "We're dealing with an adult. I just don't understand them."
Linnell laughed. "I hear you!"
Dr. Bunker bought it.
He didn't have to ask them to wear skirts. Slacks weren't proper attire for girls, and they had no choice.
On the appointed day, Baggy wore yet another turtleneck with knee-length, rust-colored wool culottes that looked like a skirt. She was overdressed for the sunny spring weather and sweating through her Iced Blue Secret deodorized armpits. Linnell wore a short-sleeved striped shirt and a miniskirt, a wardrobe choice Baggy worried about on Linnell's behalf.
They were out on the front lawn facing Post Road. The traffic was reassuring, even though a carefully trimmed hedge at the curb would probably prevent drivers from witnessing any unsavory behavior by Dr. Bunker.
"Okay, girls. Let's see," Dr. Bunker said. He was pacing the grassy knoll he wanted them to perch on, camera hanging around his neck. They stood while he pondered his artistic vision. Why get grass stains until they knew for sure where they should sit and how to arrange themselves on the lawn?
Finally, he had them sit on the ground facing each other, their legs aligned, four in a row, two in each direction, like a stash of pale, crowded construction tubes. Baggy was grateful for the sturdiness of her culottes against the ground. Linnell bent her legs slightly so there was some cool air between her and the grass. Baggy thought that was a good idea and did the same.
Dr. Bunker was circling them from above, issuing commands (look here, over your shoulder, place your hand on the ground, elbow there, hold your book, look in the distance, don't smile, act natural, that's it!).
His voice got louder with each command and more excited, with a creepy zest.
When it was over, he looked happy and tired. "Well, ladies," he beamed, "that's it."
For a minute it looked like Dr. Bunker might hug them.
Baggy and Linnell stood up and wiped the earth off their skirts and hands, straightening their clothes and picking up their books.
In unison, they loudly said, "Okay. Bye," and quickly walked away.
He hadn't touched them, not once.
Would it really stop? Baggy wondered as she walked home, still wiping the lawn off her culottes.
Eventually Dr. Bunker gave them each a copy of the photo. A photo of themselves they could keep for a lifetime, en plein air, when they were young, surrounded by textbooks on a sunny, suburban day, the sound of cars whizzing by on Post Road and Dr. Bunker's nonstop directions, their untouched legs jutting out of the spring grass like gutters.
For a few weeks, Baggy's copy of the photo leaned on the fireplace mantel in the living room next to a folding brass frame that held formal, professional pictures of her dead grandparents. On one side, her teenage grandmother sat in a chair, her head slightly tilted, one white-gloved hand firmly grasping the end of the chair's arm, the other in her lap. Her gaze was clear, perhaps resigned, under a stupendous, wide black hat soaring way beyond her head. Secured to the hat was an even wider white feather plume. The plume seemed energetically alive, fluffily moving across the black hat. In the center of the headgear was a jeweled contraption trying to capture and contain that plume and prevent it from spilling all over Baggy's grandmother.
Held in the other side of the frame was the youthful face of her broad-shouldered intended, with his sweet, probing eyes, anticipatory close-mouthed smile, and the big ears he'd patiently and repeatedly wiggle to entertain his future grandchildren. "I'm wise beyond my ears," he'd say.
Dr. Bunker kept his word. He stopped asking Linnell and Baggy to pose for him.
Baggy never saw Linnell again in the library. After a while, Baggy stopped going too. Her house had gotten quiet, and she could study there in peace.
Her brother didn't get drafted, buckled down at school, got into college on a sports scholarship, and moved out of the house.
Her mother got active in civic activities that kept her busy. She began to ease up on Baggy once in a while, even defending Baggy's right to attend rock concerts her husband thought too wild for his daughter. "Come on, honey, let her have some fun. She'll hate you forever if you make her miss that show."
Her dad continued his routines: his turtlenecks, evening TV (Dean Martin, Mannix), goofy walks, weekend golf with his wife, and polite but firm grilling of any boy who came to the front stoop to pick Baggy up for a date.
When Baggy had the house to herself, she was free to blare The Doors or Aretha from her dad's wall-hugging living room stereo system. Sometimes she moved the coffee table to dance more freely to the music. One time a young boy, younger than Baggy, rapped on the window while she was dancing and then ran off, scaring her and ending her musical escape. She'd found a note stuck under the rubbery mat by the front door. Written in red ink and capital letters on construction paper (how young was this kid, Baggy wondered, if he was still using construction paper?), it appeared to be a sappy note of love. She had no idea who he was.
She turned off the stereo and closed its creaky wooden lid. She replaced the table in the exact crushed-down spots of the rug where they were before and slowly headed up the stairs to do her endless homework. She stepped briefly into her brother's unoccupied room. It was tidy and no longer, as her mother would say, "smelled like boys."
Baggy sealed herself in her room behind closed doors, despite the empty house. She ruminated about what was going to happen to all of them when they no longer lodged en famille. She had a few more years until she, too, moved out.
Would her dad keep up the Frankenstein walk even when no one was watching? Would her mother take over the world? Would her brother be all right? And where would Baggy end up? She had a swirl of questions. About everything.
She supposed everyone, including Dr. Bunker, was always changing, on a new, surprising journey every single day.
It was exciting but sometimes exhausting to keep up.
C'est la vie.
She thought about the line the Hepburn character said in that movie: the time to make your mind up about people is never.
Baggy decided, for the moment, to agree.
Title image "Shudderbug" Copyright © The Summerset Review 2023.
