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 nine o’clock that evening, I climbed the creaky steps into the attic, Lucy following behind me. I clung to the railing myself. The stairs seemed more wobbly every year and if I’d had a smidgen of fear in my makeup, I probably would have dreaded climbing them, too. In recent years, Lucy and I had slept in the twin beds in the quadrant of the room closest to the stairs. This year, though, I wanted more privacy. I wanted to be able to leave the reading lamp on as long as I liked and to simply daydream in my own little curtained space without Lucy’s incessant chatter. So, earlier in the day, we’d made up our beds in separate corners of the room, while Isabel made the double bed in the far corner behind the chimney for herself. Lucy had seemed fine with the arrangement then, but now that she climbed under her sheet in the hot attic, she was not so pleased.
“Leave the curtain open so I can see you,” she pleaded. She was lying on her side, facing my bed, the white sheet up to her shoulders.
“I’m going to have the light on so I can read,” I said, busying myself fluffing my pillows and turning down the covers. “It’ll keep you awake.” I wanted her to fall asleep quickly so I could go downstairs and play canasta with my mother and grandmother. During the school year, my evenings were filled with homework and television—The Andy Griffith Show or Wagon Train or Ed Sullivan. But in the summer, evenings were the time for card games and jigsaw puzzles.
“Please,” she wailed.
“You’ll be able to see my shadow,” I said, glad that I had made the bed closest to the curtain rather than the one against the wall. “Watch.” I walked over to the small table between the twin beds in my corner and lit the lamp. Then I pulled the curtain closed. It was tight against my bed, and once I’d climbed in, still dressed in my shorts and sleeveless top, I knew how I would look to Lucy. I’d been watching the silhouettes of my sister, my cousins, my aunts and uncles through those curtains for years. “See?” I said. “You can see me perfectly, right?”
“Okay,”
