The Girls (17 page)

The record glinted dully in the dark room, but even its pretty Egyptian gleam failed to stir me—it was just an artifact of that strange house, nothing so valuable. Already the weight was making my arms tired.

The clatter on the porch startled me, followed by the sound of my mother's dissolving laughter, Frank's heavy steps. I was in the living room, stretched out in my grandfather's chair and reading one of my mother's
McCall's.
Its pictures of genitally slick hams, wreathed with pineapple. Lauren Hutton lounging on a rocky cliff in her Bali brassieres. My mother and Frank were loud, coming into the living room, but stopped talking when they caught sight of me. Frank in his cowboy boots, my mother swallowing whatever she'd been saying.

“Sweetheart.” Her eyes were filmy, her body swaying just enough so I knew she was drunk and trying to hide it, though her pink neck—exposed in a chiffon shirt—would have given it away.

“Hi,” I said.

“Whatcha doing home, sweetheart?” My mother came over to wrap her arms around me, and I let her, despite the metallic smell of alcohol on her, the wilt of her perfume. “Is Connie sick?”

“Nah.” I shrugged. Turning back to my magazine. The next page: a girl in a butter-yellow tunic, kneeling on a white box. An advertisement for Moon Drops.

“You're usually in and out so quick,” she said.

“I just felt like being home,” I said. “Isn't it my house, too?”

My mother smiled, smoothing my hair. “Such a pretty girl, aren't you? Of course it's your house. Isn't she a pretty girl?” she said, turning to Frank. “Such a pretty girl,” she repeated to no one.

Frank smiled back but seemed restless. I hated that unwilling knowledge, how I'd started to notice each tiny shift of power and control, the feints and jabs. Why couldn't relationships be reciprocal, both people steadily accruing interest at the same rate? I snapped the magazine shut.

“Good night,” I said. I didn't want to imagine what would happen later, Frank's hands in the chiffon. My mother aware enough to turn out the lights, eager for the forgiving dark.

These were the fantasies I goaded: that by leaving the ranch for a while, I could provoke Suzanne's sudden appearance, her demand that I return to her. The loneliness I could gorge myself on, like the saltines I ate by the sleeve, relishing the cut of sodium in my mouth. When I watched
Bewitched,
I had new irritation for Samantha. Her priggish nose, how she made a fool of her husband. The desperation of his doltish love turning him into the punch line. I paused one night to study the studio photo of my grandmother that hung in the hall, her shellacked cap of curls. She was pretty, awash in health. Only her eyes were sleepy, as if just woken from flowery dreams. The realization was bracing—we looked nothing alike.

I smoked a little bit of grass out the window, then fingered myself to tiredness, reading a comic book or a magazine, it didn't matter which. It was just the form of bodies, my brain let loose on them. I could look at an advertisement for a Dodge Charger, a smiling girl in a snow-white cowboy hat, and furiously project her into obscene positions. Her face slack and swollen, sucking and licking, her chin wet with saliva. I was supposed to understand the night with Mitch, be easy with things, but I had only my stiff and formal anger. That stupid gold record. I tried hard to mash up new meaning, like I'd missed some important sign, a weighted look Suzanne had given me behind Mitch's back. His goatish face, dripping sweat onto me so I had to turn my head.

The next morning I'd been pleased to find the kitchen empty, my mother taking a shower. I tipped sugar in my coffee, then settled at the table with a sleeve of saltines. I liked to crumble a saltine in my mouth, then flood the starchy mess with coffee. I was so absorbed in this ritual that Frank's sudden presence startled me. He scraped out the other chair, hitching it close as he sat down. I saw him take in the debris of saltines, inciting my vague shame. I was about to slither away, but he spoke before I could.

“Big plans for today?” he asked me.

Trying to pal around. I twisted the sleeve of crackers closed and wiped my hands of crumbs, suddenly fastidious. “Dunno,” I said.

How quickly the veneer of patience drained away. “You just going to mope around the house?” he asked.

I shrugged; that's exactly what I'd do.

A muscle in his cheek jumped. “At least go outside,” he said. “You stay in that room like you're locked in there.”

Frank wasn't wearing his boots, just his blaring white socks. I swallowed a helpless snort; it was ridiculous to see a grown man's socked feet. He noticed my mouth twitch and got flustered.

“Everything's funny to you, huh?” he said. “Doing whatever you want. You think your mom doesn't notice what's going on?”

I stiffened but didn't look up. There were so many things he could be talking about: the ranch, what I'd done with Russell. Mitch. The ways I thought about Suzanne.

“She got real confused the other day,” Frank went on. “She's missing some money. Gone right from her purse.”

I knew my cheeks had flushed, but I stayed quiet. Narrowing my eyes at the table.

“Give her a break,” Frank said. “Hm? She's a nice lady.”

“I'm not stealing.” My voice was high and false.

“Borrowing, let's say. I'm not gonna tell. I get it. But you should stop. She loves you a lot, you know?”

No more noise from the shower, which meant my mother would appear soon. I tried to gauge whether Frank really wouldn't say anything—he was trying to be nice, I understood, not getting me in trouble. But I didn't want to be grateful. Imagine him trying to be fatherly with me.

“The town party is still happening,” Frank said. “Today and tomorrow, too. Maybe you could go on down there, have some fun. I'm sure that would make your mother happy. You staying busy.”

When my mother entered, toweling the ends of her hair, I immediately brightened, arranging my face like I was listening to Frank.

“Don't you think so, Jeanie?” Frank said, gazing at my mother.

“Think what?” she said.

“Shouldn't Evie go check out that carnival?” Frank said. “That centennial thing? Keep busy?”

My mother took up this pet notion like it was a flash of brilliance. “I don't know if it's the centennial, exactly—” she said.

“Well, town party,” Frank broke in, “centennial, whatever it is.”

“But it's a good idea,” she said. “You'll have a great time.”

I could feel Frank watching me.

“Yeah,” I said, “sure.”

“Nice to see you two having a good talk,” my mother added shyly.

I made a face, collecting my mug and crackers, but my mother didn't notice: she had already bent to kiss Frank. Her robe falling open so I saw a triangle of shadowy, sun-spotted chest and had to look away.

The town was celebrating 110 years, after all, not 100, the awkward number setting the tone for the meager affair. To even call it a carnival seemed overly generous, though most of the town was there. There had been a box social in the park and a play about the town's founding in the high school amphitheater, the student council members sweating in theater department costumes. They'd closed the road to street traffic, so I found myself in a bobbing press of people, pushing and grabbing at the promise of leisure and fun. Husbands whose faces were tight with aggrieved duty, flanked by kids and wives who needed stuffed animals. Who needed pale, sour lemonade and hot dogs and grilled corn. All the proof of a good time. The river was already clotted with litter, the slow drift of popcorn bags and beer cans and paper fans.

My mother had been impressed by Frank's miraculous ability to get me to leave the house. Just as Frank wanted her to be. So she could imagine the neat way he'd slot into a father shape. I was having exactly as much fun as I'd expected to have. I ate a snow cone, the paper cup weakening until the syrup leaked out over my hands. I threw the rest away, but my hands scudded with the residue, even after I wiped them on my shorts.

I moved among the crowd, in and out of shade. I saw kids I knew, but they were the background fill from school, no one I had ever spent concentrated time with. Still, I incanted their first and last names helplessly in my head. Norm Morovich. Jim Schumacher. Farm kids, mostly, whose boots smelled of rot. Their soft-spoken answers in class, speaking only when specifically called upon, the humble ring of dirt I saw in the upturned cowboy hats on their desks. They were polite and virtuous, the trace of milk cows and clover fields and little sisters on them. Nothing at all like the ranch population, who would pity boys who still respected their father's authority or wiped their boots before entering their mother's kitchen. I wondered what Suzanne was doing—swimming in the creek, maybe, or lying around with Donna or Helen or maybe even Mitch, a thought that made me bite my lip, working a ruff of dry skin with my teeth.

I'd have to stay at the carnival only a little while longer and then I could go back home, Frank and my mother satisfied with my healthy dose of sociable activity. I tried to make my way toward the park, but it was packed—the parade had started, the pickup beds heavy with crepe-paper models of town hall. Bank employees and girls in Indian costumes waving from floats, the noise of the marching band violent and oppressive. I weaved out of the crowd, scuttling along the periphery. Sticking to the quieter side streets. The sound of the marching band grew louder, the parade winding down East Washington. The laughter I heard, pointed and performative, cut through my focus: I knew, before I looked up, that it was aimed at me.

It was Connie, Connie and May, a netted bag stretching from Connie's wrist. I could make out a can of orange soda and other groceries straining inside, the line of a swimsuit under Connie's shirt. Encoded within was their whole simple day—the boredom of the heat, the orange soda going flat. The bathing suits drying on the porch.

My first feeling was relief, like the familiarity of turning into my own driveway. Then came an uneasiness, the clicking together of the facts. Connie was mad at me. We were not friends anymore. I watched Connie move past her initial surprise. May's bloodhound eyes squinted, eager for drama. Her braces thickening her mouth. Connie and May exchanged a few whispered words, then Connie edged forward.

“Hey,” she said cautiously. “What's going on?”

I had expected anger, derision, but Connie was acting normal, even a little glad to see me. We hadn't spoken in almost a month. I looked at May's face for a clue, but it was insistently blank.

“Nothing much,” I said. I should have been fortified by the last few weeks, the existence of the ranch lessening the stakes of our familiar dramas, and yet how quickly the old loyalties return, the pack animal push. I wanted them to like me.

“Us either,” Connie said.

My sudden gratitude for Frank—it was good that I had come, good to be around people like Connie who were not complicated or confusing like Suzanne, but just a friend, someone I'd known beyond daily changes. How she and I had watched television until we got blinky headaches and popped pimples on each other's backs in the harsh light of the bathroom.

“Lame, huh?” I said, gesturing in the direction of the parade. “A hundred and ten years.”

“There's a bunch of freaky people around.” May sniffed, and I wondered if she was somehow implicating me. “By the river. They stunk.”

“Yeah,” Connie said, kinder. “The play was really stupid, too. Susan Thayer's dress was pretty much see-through. Everyone saw her underwear.”

They shot each other a look. I was jealous of their shared memory, how they must have sat together in the audience, bored and restless in the sun.

“We might go swimming,” Connie said. This statement seemed vaguely hilarious to both of them, and I joined in, tentative. Like I understood the joke.

“Um.” Connie seemed to silently confirm something with May. “Do you want to come with us?”

I should have known that it wouldn't end well. That it was happening too easily, that my defection wouldn't be tolerated. “To swim?”

May stepped up, nodding. “Yeah, at the Meadow Club. My mom can drive us. You wanna come?”

The thought that I might go with them was such a ludicrous anachronism, as if an alternate universe were unfolding where Connie and I were still friends and May Lopes was inviting us to the Meadow Club to swim. You could get milkshakes there and grilled cheese sandwiches with lacy frills of burnt cheese. Simple tastes, food for children, everything paid for by signing your parent's name. I allowed myself to feel flattered, remembering an easy familiarity with Connie. Her house so known to me that I didn't even think about where each bowl went in the cabinet, each plastic cup, their rims eaten by the dishwasher. How nice that seemed, how uncomplicated, the cogent march of our friendship.

That was the moment May stepped toward me, pitching the can of orange soda forward: the soda inside hit my face at an angle, so it didn't douse me so much as dribble. Oh, I thought, my stomach dropping. Oh, of course. The parking lot tilted. The soda was tepid and I could smell the chemicals, the unsavory drip on the asphalt. May dropped the mostly empty can. It rolled a ways and then stopped. Her face was as shiny as a quarter, and she looked spooked by her own audacity. Connie was more uncertain, her face a flickering bulb, coming to full-watt attention when May rattled her bag like a warning bell.

The liquid had barely grazed me. It could have been worse, a real soaking instead of this meager attempt, but somehow I longed for the soaking. I wanted the event to be as big and ruthless as the way my humiliation felt.

“Have a fun summer,” May trilled, linking arms with Connie.

And then they were walking away, their bags jostling and their sandals loud on the sidewalk. Connie turned to glance back at me, but I saw May tug her, hard. The bleed of surf music carried across the road from an open car window—I thought I saw Peter's friend Henry at the wheel, but maybe that was my imagination. Projecting a larger net of conspiracy onto my childish humiliation, as if that were an improvement.