LITMIR.BIZ

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I felt happy, two months of freedom stretching out in front of me. Lucy didn’t feel that freedom, though; she felt fear.

      “You’ll go up to bed with me at night, won’t you, Julie?” she asked as she dried the silverware. I always had to go to bed at the same time she did, some compromise hour between the two of our bedtimes, so that she wouldn’t have to be in the attic alone.

      I looked at my mother. “I want to stay up later this summer, Mom,” I pleaded. “I’m twelve now.”

      “You’ll go at the same time Lucy does,” my mother said, but she drew me aside and whispered in my ear. “Go up when she does and wait until she falls asleep,” she said. “Then you can come downstairs again.”

      “Lucy needs to grow up,” Isabel said as she dried a plate. “She’s never going to get over her fears if you keep coddling her.”

      “What would be more helpful than your criticism,” our mother said, “is for you to offer to go up with Lucy sometimes so Julie doesn’t always need to be the one to do it.”

      “Be happy to,” Isabel said. “I’ll tell her ghost stories.”

      Mom was sponging off the counter, but stopped to look at Isabel. “When did you get so mean?” she asked, and turned away. I saw the look of remorse on Isabel’s face before she covered it with a smirk. My sister was not as hard as she pretended to be.

      I was coming to realize that Isabel was very beautiful—and that she knew it. She could get her way with just about anyone, especially our father, using a pout of her lips or the sheen of tears in her eyes. Her dark eyes were amazing, the lashes so long and lush they looked as though they must be false. She complained about her hair all the time. It was too wavy. Too thick. Too dark. But her complaints were empty; she knew her hair was the envy of every other girl in her high-school class. She had large breasts and a tiny waist. Boys stared at her when we’d walk down the street and girls were cautious around her, afraid that their boyfriends might compare them to Isabel and decide they could do better. There was no use denying that she’d gotten the looks in the family. Lucy and I had dark hair, as well, but I had to set mine on rollers to make it wavy, and Mom had given Lucy’s short hair a perm that made her look like a poodle.

      The kitchen had grown very quiet. I poured the remaining tomato sauce into a Tupperware container and burped the lid, which made Lucy giggle.

      Isabel lifted the colander from the dish drainer and began to dry it. “Ned asked me to a party tonight,” she said. “I can go, can’t I?”

      My mother continued cleaning the countertop with the sponge. “Not tonight,” she said. “You need to unpack and—”

      “I’ve already unpacked and I helped Julie and Lucy unpack, too,” Izzy said. “And the beds are made upstairs and I swept the floor up there and cleaned the toilet and sink and everything.”

      I honestly wasn’t sure if all she was saying was true or not. I knew I had unpacked my things quite capably on my own, but I said nothing.

      “And we’re practically done in here, aren’t we?” Isabel asked.

      “Yes, we are.” My mother turned on the faucet to rinse the sponge. “But I don’t want you gone our first night here.”

      Isabel smacked her dish towel down on the counter. “That makes absolutely no sense,” she said.

      My mother looked up from the sink, wringing the sponge between her hands. “I said no,” she said.

      Isabel rolled her eyes and picked up the towel again. I could hear the aggravation in her breathing as she dried one of the saucepans. She didn’t say another word, and neither did my mother. There was tension in the room, and I grew quiet myself. I didn’t know the appropriate rules of behavior when the ice suddenly grew that thin.

      Later, my mother and I were cleaning the deep drawers beneath the kitchen cabinets. Lucy stood nearby, brushing ancient crumbs from the old toaster. She’d refused to help us with the drawers because we had found mouse droppings in one of them and a spider in another. Daddy came into the room and poured himself a glass of ginger ale from the bottle in the refrigerator. He was wearing his summer uniform: baggy shorts that showed off his pale, scarred legs and one of his short-sleeved plaid shirts.

      “Charles.” My mother looked up from the task. “Would you find Isabel and ask her to sweep and organize the hall closet, please?”

      “She’s gone out,”he said. He’d taken the ice tray from the freezer and although the ice had barely had time to form yet, he cracked the tray open and dropped a couple of delicate cubes into his glass.

      My mother straightened up. “Gone where?” she said.

      “To a party with Ned Chapman.”

      My mother put her hands on her hips. “I told her she couldn’t go,” she said.

      My father looked surprised, his eyes, the same light brown as his hair, wide-open. “She didn’t tell me she asked you,” he said.

      I watched a blotch of red form on my mother’s throat. “I’m going to ground her for the rest of the week,” she said.

      “That’s a little harsh, Maria, don’t you think?”my father asked, swirling the ice and liquid around in his glass. “It’s her first night down the shore and she’s known Ned all her life. His father may be one of the biggest fools on earth, but you can’t hold that against Ned. I don’t see the harm in her going to a party with him.”

      “Yes, she’s known him all her life, but she’s seventeen this summer,” she said, as if that explained everything. “And it’s her first night here. I think she should have stayed in. Help clean up a little. Get acclimated.”

      Daddy laughed. “Acclimated?” he asked. I was not sure what the word meant, and I realized I had left my dictionary in Westfield. I didn’t like to hear my parents argue, and I buried my head deeper in the drawer I was cleaning, brushing mouse droppings into a dustpan with a small broom. I glanced at Lucy, who looked as uncomfortable as I felt. She was concentrating hard on every crevice of the old toaster.

      Daddy put his arm around my mother and kissed her cheek. “We raised her right,” he said. “She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

      My mother looked wounded. “How can you say that when she just lied to you about—”

      “She didn’t lie to me,” Daddy said, letting go of her and heading for the door to the hallway. “She omitted a small fact.”

      “She has you wrapped around her little finger,” my mother said. “She’ll be fine,” Daddy said. He walked out of the room, turning in the direction of the front door. I knew he was working in the garage with Grandpop this evening, organizing the fishing gear and slapping a fresh coat of blue paint on the Adirondack chairs.

      My mother returned to her cleaning with a vengeance, and I could see the tight line of her lips. I knew my sister lied often to our parents. When we would go to confession on Saturday evenings, I was always amazed at how short her sessions in the confessional were. I knew she couldn’t possibly be owning up to every lie she’d told. I learned from watching her. Instead of enumerating everything I did wrong, I now gave the priest the abbreviated version. “I lied five times,” I’d say. I refused to count “pretending” as “lying.” If I counted pretending, I would be in the confessional all night. “I disobeyed my mother once,” I’d continue, “and I was mean to my little sister twice.” It was a relief to do it that way, instead of spilling all the details of my sins, and the priest didn’t seem to care.

      I put my arm around my mother’s waist, feeling very adult. “She’ll be okay, Mom,” I said.

      My mother didn’t respond. Her eyes were glassy, as though she might cry, and I felt confused by her tears. I thought she needed to be alone, so I said I would sweep the hall closet myself, and I took Lucy’s hand and dragged her out of the kitchen with me.

      At

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