Disclaimer: All characters and environments belong to Michael MacLennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Shaw Media/Global TV.
Betty McRae met her boyfriend Pete at church, the way all nice teenage couples are supposed to. Well. That's not exactly how it happened, but that's the story that got spread around, and Betty wasn't about to contradict it.
Truth was, Betty met Pete after service. She had to get out of there. She was desperate for a smoke and wary that Mom might frog-march her over to her cousins Mavis and Nora, whose behaviour she would love Betty to copy. That was an even worse prospect than usual, because her cousins were talking with Shirley Rose, whose dad owns Rose and Sons General Store in town. Next to Shirley, Betty feels like a squat little mannish dwarf all caked with dirt, stuffed into a yellow Sunday dress. The thought of having to contend with her cousins and a tall proud elegant lily of a girl at the same time (Betty does not have any patience for pretty girls, no sir) was more than Betty could bear.
Betty slipped out through a side door, into the drizzling rain, turning out her purse with shaking hands. To Betty's dismay, she found she'd forgotten her matches. She cursed and kicked a stone, and didn't care one whit about messing up her church shoes. It was then that Pete Flaherty stepped out from under a dripping tree and offered to light her cigarette.
They got talking, as they sheltered from the rain. "I don't see you in church much," he said. "How come you're here today?"
"It's my Aunt Joan's fault we're here. Whenever my mom and Aunt Joan meet up, I know we'll have to suffer through church the next Sunday."
"You don't like it?"
"My brother Bill reckons it's a waste of time. In the time that most people go to church, we've done about a thousand things." She took a drag on her cigarette and glowered in the direction of the church. "I'd rather be up to my knees in cow shit than here right now."
"I'm not a believer either, but my stepdad makes me come along. You get a whipping if you try to get out of it." He flushed. "I mean, I could definitely take him in a fight, but I don't, for my mom's sake."
"Your stepdad sounds like a real prize," she said. "Wait 'til your eighteenth birthday, and then lay him out."
"I'd have to get the drop on him. He's a big guy."
"Well, I reckon you could. You look fast."
Pete perked up like she'd just told him he was wonderful, or something. "We were in school together, weren't we? 'Cept you were a bit younger. I remember now, you'd always turn up in dresses, but you'd scrabble in the dirt with the boys. You looked real funny, sitting on the girls' side of the room, them all neat and clean, and you all grubby."
"I don't get on so great with girls," Betty said. "I never have. And well, now I just don't have any time for them."
"What do you have time for, then?"
"Don't know." Betty shrugged. "Not girlfriends, that's for damn sure."
"Have you got yourself a guy, Betty?" Pete asked.
She snorted and shook her head. "I'm only fourteen."
"Fourteen's old enough."
"Well, nobody ever asked me before." It sounded better than saying she hoped they never would. She dropped her cigarette and ground it into the damp grass. "Thanks for the light."
"Maybe I'll come and call for you," he said.
"Maybe," she replied. She assumed it was one of those lies boys told girls to keep them on their toes, but later that afternoon, Pete called round and asked Betty's dad if he could take her out.
Monday night, after they had both finished work, they went to the movies. They held hands after the lights went down. His hand was bigger than hers, and his palm was damp. Betty's was bone dry. His lips were slick with popcorn grease when he gave Betty her first kiss. She felt kind of nervous when it happened the first time, because she didn't know if you were allowed to breathe when you kissed. Once she remembered she could easily breathe through her nose, she didn't feel nervous. She didn't feel much of anything at all.
As the week wore on, Pete gave Betty her first four kisses. It would've been a lot more than that, only Betty kept ducking or pretending to sneeze. She was weirdly … cold, about kissing Pete. She's never thought of herself as a cold person. She's tough, certainly, all McRaes are, but she's never had such cold thoughts as she has this past week.
"He's got nice eyes," she said to Mavis and Nora, when they asked Betty about Pete. It seemed like a safe bet. All girls think their boyfriends have nice eyes, even if they don't. Anyway, nice eyes don't matter so much, when a person is decent. Pete is decent. He doesn't buy her useless stuff like chocolate bon-bons or flowers; he buys her stuff she'll actually use, like cigarettes or chewing gum. In fact, he pays every time they go out, and doesn't expect more than a kiss for his trouble. He lets Betty talk, and most boys don't like having a girlfriend who talks too much. She supposes if she has to have a guy, Pete is far from the worst she could do.
It's such a shame. He'd make a good pal, if only he didn't keep trying to kiss her all the time. It never feels right when he kisses her. Last night, it went more wrong than she ever could have imagined. Betty is never getting out of bed again.
Betty's mother doesn't seem to have realised Betty's new resolution, because she yanks back the makeshift curtain that gives Betty's corner of the room a semblance of privacy. "Betty, it's nearly eight! You're going to be late for work."
Betty doesn't say anything. She tries to pretend she's still asleep. She knows it won't work. She's been an early riser all her life, Mom isn't about to be fooled.
Mom makes an impatient noise. "It's not me who's gonna catch it if you're late." A moment goes by before she pulls the covers off Betty. "Up, now!"
"I don't wanna," says Betty, sounding about two years old.
If there's one thing Mom hates more than laziness, it's petulance. "What's the matter with you?"
"It doesn't matter. It's nothing," Betty mumbles.
"Well, if it's nothing, you can bloody well get out of bed. I didn't raise you to laze about all day." Mom spies Betty's good blue dress crumpled on the floor beside the bed. "And I certainly didn't raise you to leave your clothes lying around like a boy. Do you think you're a boy, is that it?"
Betty bristles. She climbs out of bed and starts thumping about the room, finding her work clothes. "I am not a boy. I've got myself a fella, haven't I? So nobody can say that about me any more." Betty means to shout it angrily, to get Mom yelling at her so she can feel slighted and indignant, not frightened and lonesome. Her voice cracks audibly midsentence, and she's crying before she's finished speaking.
Her mom looks at her in astonishment. Her only daughter is not one for tears, never has been. Mom comes over and takes Betty's work clothes out of her hands. "Now, what in heaven's name is the matter with you, miss?"
"You don't even care," Betty says childishly, wrapping her arms around herself. "You think the boys are so great, and you never even notice me."
"Funny, they tend to say the same thing about you." Betty's mom smirks exactly the same way she does, but it's rare for them to be laughing at the same things, nowadays.
"I do all the girl chores and the boys' chores when they've got things to do, when they're out on dates, and nobody even cares! Nobody does my chores before I have to go out on a date. I work all day, and then I have to go out and it's-" She halts abruptly. "It's unfair."
Mom gives her a long look. "Did you and Pete have a fight?"
"No," says Betty, and then, "Yes."
Mom sits down on the bed, motioning for Betty to join her. "What about?"
"Our date didn't go so good last night," says Betty stiffly.
Mom's brows knit together. "You've only been courting for a week. You can't be quarrelling already."
"Well, we are, so that shows how much you know."
Mom fixes her with that you're-not-too-big-for-a-licking-young-lady stare that used to make Betty quake in her boots. Still makes her quake, a bit, even though she's grown up now and has all sorts of scary adult problems.
Betty doesn't quite know how to apologise, so by way of an explanation, she says, "I feel rotten."
Mom's face relaxes and Betty thinks meanly that she must be just thrilled, that she and her odd little girl are finally talking about boys. "A problem shared is a problem halved."
"There's not really any nice way to say it," Betty says, stalling for time.
"Well, I can't make you talk," Mom says, in the voice that means she most certainly will make Betty talk, if Betty doesn't get to the point in the next five seconds.
Betty takes a deep breath. "When we went out last night … he tried to force me. He tried to … but I didn't want to." She thinks she's probably making it sound worse than it really was, but right now, she would do anything to get out of this situation, anything to stop feeling so bloody confused.
(Maybe the reason she feels so mixed-up inside is that really, she's not confused at all. That is so much worse…)
After the movies last night, Pete and Betty went and sat out in a field, under the stars. Betty tried hard to exclaim about how romantic it was, and not whine about being eaten alive by bugs. Pete took out a hip flask and said they should have themselves a little party. Betty thought maybe she might feel more cheerful if she were drunk, so she agreed.
He drank a lot more than her. He got all worked up, talking about Betty's hair, and her figure, how pretty he thought she was. She shouldn't have let him keep going. But she just kept sitting there, letting him talk, and little by little she started to smile. She wasn't thinking about Pete. She was thinking about how good it would feel to have these kinds of compliments coming from someone else.
Suddenly, he was kissing her, and it was more insistent than before. She supposes other girls would call it passionate. He wasn't holding her down, or anything, they were sitting up and he was holding her gently, so why did it feel like being forced? She was kissing a boy under the stars, for Christ's sakes, all girls dream about stuff like that, so why did she keep thinking resentful, uncharitable thoughts? It's like having my face put through a cheese grater, she thought, hating him, even though Pete understood about things like not liking church or not getting on with your folks. She gritted her teeth against his kisses and thought, Just get through it, just get through it… Then she started getting scared all over again, because Betty's not a fool, she knows that's not what girls think when they're kissing their beaus.
She tried to make her head swim more than it already was. She tried to think about something good. Betty thought a little too hard. She said a name against Pete's lips. It wasn't his name.
In the room she shares with her brothers, in the light of morning, Betty doesn't look at her mother. "I told him I wasn't that kind of girl. Girls have to keep themselves nice, after all. I didn't want to get saddled with a bad reputation, and embarrass the family…" All these ideas, the ideas of her parents' generation, of a time when there was no such thing as petting parties or unchaperoned dates … they all sound so phony, coming out of Betty's mouth. What's worse, her voice keeps going up at the end of each statement, making it sound like she's asking her mom a whole bunch of questions.
For a minute or so, Mom doesn't say anything. Betty's eyes begin to well up again. She's seen right through me, she thinks miserably. Or else Pete couldn't keep his trap shut, and it's gotten around the whole town… She's panicking, wondering where on earth she'll go if her folks don't want her any more, when Mom speaks. "Perhaps I was too keen for you to be around boys. It's just that you've always been such a tomboy, and it made me happy to see you growing up and acting a little more ladylike."
"I know, Mom."
"Still, I'm proud that my girl has such a good head on her shoulders. I'm glad you didn't get carried away."
Quickly, Betty says, "I don't wanna go out with Pete any more, Mom."
"You won't have to." Mom puts her arm around Betty. "I'll get one of your big brothers to tell him."
"At last, they'll be good for something. Smart of you to have the three of them before you had me," Betty jokes shakily.
"Well, your common sense didn't come out of thin air, you know." Mom gives her a kiss on the head. Nobody ever kisses me, Betty thinks, completely disregarding the week she spent necking with Pete, the hour she spent thrashing around in a field with him, last night. "Now, up you get, and get dressed for work."
"Yes, Mom," says Betty, getting to her feet, and gathering up her work clothes. "Mom?" she asks tentatively.
"Yes?"
"You know I wish I could be like Nora and Mavis, don't you?"
Mom actually sighs out loud from what can only be relief. She nods like she's thinking, Yes, of course you want to be like Nora and Mavis, and you will, I just have to figure out how…
"It's just that sometimes, I worry I never will be." The next words out of Betty's mouth – What'll happen if I never am? - die on her lips. She can't say them aloud. She could never say them aloud.
Mom clucks her tongue. "You're a late bloomer, that's all. And let me tell you something, I'd much rather have a daughter who's a little young for her age than one who runs around getting up to God knows what with boys. Your turn will come. We just have to be patient with you, that's all."
Betty always makes such a point of being grown up. She's not in school any more, not a little girl. She'd go into fits of embarrassment if her mom started talking about her being a late bloomer around anyone else, and yet … oh, God, she wants to be one, so much. Betty has to believe she's going to grow out of this. "Yes, Mom," she says, again, clinging to her mother's words like a rock in a stormy sea.
Before she leaves for work, Betty makes sure to wash her face with soap. Betty's lucky, she takes her mom's side of the family. She doesn't get many pimples. Still, she scrubs vigorously over her face, over her lips, as though it can wash away Pete's kisses. As though it can wash away the name she let slip out, the name that's been racketing around in her brain for over a year. "Shirley," is what she said, when Pete was kissing her. He didn't look angry, just bewildered, and he shouted for her to come back when she got up and ran away. He's not going to tell anybody. Even so, Betty knows that she is in a whole world of trouble.