some minutes, until she patted him lightly on the arm. ‘I gotta go,’ she whispered.
‘Oh, Tully,’ he said. Gently, she pushed him off her, and when he moved back to his own seat, she adjusted her skirts and brushed her hair. Robin buttoned his pants. ‘So you gotta go. You don’t want anything else? Anything else for yourself?’
Tully was amused. How to tell him that in the last ten minutes she got everything for herself she possibly could get from him, and anything else was out of his league, out of his Corvette, and in any case, completely unnecessary.
‘Robin, I’m so fine,’ she told him. ‘But I really gotta go.’
‘Can I still see you tomorrow?’ Robin said, touching her cheek.
Tully smiled. This one was a real gentleman. Some of them were. ‘Sure, great. Come,’ she said, kissing him quickly, and then was out, up the path, up the porch steps, and inside.
September 1978
Sunday morning, Jennifer sat by the phone and waited for Jack to call her. Last night he said he would call her, but here it was, noon already. Jennifer didn’t even go to St Mark’s for the ten o’clock Mass, waiting for him to call.
The last guests had left by about midnight, and Jennifer spent until two in the morning compulsively cleaning her room before she lay down in her bed. How did he get home? Jen had thought. He left around eleven, mumbling something about getting a ride. But he lived nearby, so he might have just stumbled home.
Jennifer slept poorly, waking up at five-thirty in the morning to sneak into the garage. Then she started cleaning up the house, and at six-thirty her mom and dad got up and helped her. Jennifer went back to her room, vacuumed, dusted, polished, shined. Then she came down to breakfast.
Sunday breakfasts! How she loved the mozzarella and onion omelettes her mom made; the whole family, all three of them, did. But this morning, Jennifer looked down into her omelette and thought about his breath, his breath on her shoulders, on her hair, his breath as he leaned over and laughed in her ear while she felt his sweat-soaked blond hair brush against her face.
‘Jenny, did you have a good time?’ Tony Mandolini asked her.
‘Great,’ she said into her food.
‘Did anyone get drunk or embarrass themselves?’
And they danced, oh, they danced together to ‘Wild Wild Horses.’
‘Only Mom,’ replied Jennifer, trying to be jovial, ‘but everyone knew she can’t handle her liquor, so they were real sympathetic.’
‘Jennifer!’ Lynn slapped her daughter’s arm.
Jennifer smiled. ‘No, everything was great, Dad, thanks.’
‘Hey, your mom did most of the work. Thank her.’ Tony reached over and patted Lynn’s thigh.
Tony and Lynn glanced at each other, and then Lynn said, ‘We have another surprise for you, Jenny,’ handing Jennifer a little wrapped box with a white bow.
Jennifer stopped eating, put down her milk, wiped her mouth, looked at her mom and dad, and picked up the little gift. She knew what it was. So when she ripped the wrapping paper, opened the box, and took out a pair of keys, Jennifer summoned all her powers to open her eyes wide and to put on a big surprised smile on her face.
‘Dad! Mom! What’s this? You know, I already have a pair of keys.’
Tony and Lynn were grinning. ‘Yes, darling, it’s what you always wanted,’ Lynn said.
It’s what you always wanted rang in Jennifer’s ears as they went outside and her father opened the garage door and showed her a huge white bow, this time wrapped around a brand-new baby-blue Camaro.
To match my eyes, thought Jennifer wearily.
‘To match your eyes,’ said Tony as his daughter stood and stared. She then effused sufficiently. Hugged and kissed them both. But did not take the car for a ride just then and spent the rest of the morning in her bedroom, sitting on her bed in utter silence, not moving at all.
‘I told you they were gonna get me a car,’ Jennifer said when Julie called at nine-thirty.
Julie squealed. ‘A car! A beautiful car! Your car! You can take us all everywhere in your car!’
‘Hmm. What are you so happy about? You didn’t get a car.’
‘I should’ve been so lucky,’ Julie answered.
‘Well, maybe if your mom and dad didn’t have twenty kids, you might’ve,’ commented Jennifer.
‘Five,’ said Julie. ‘But why were you so sure it was going to be a car?’
Because it’s what I always wanted, Jennifer thought, and wearily said so.
‘Going to St Mark’s, Jen? My grandmother wants me to take communion today.’
‘Not today, Jule, okay? I really gotta help clean up.’
They talked about Tully a little and hung up; afterwards Jennifer sat back down on the bed with hands folded on her lap and waited – until Robin called.
‘Jennifer, I want to take Tully out,’ said Robin.
Jennifer sighed. The only phone calls she had received were from Julie and now from Robin to ask permission to see Tully.
‘Go right ahead,’ said Jennifer. ‘By all means.’
Robin was pacing around his bedroom. He could tell Jennifer was not listening to him, and hated finding himself in a ridiculous position of having to confer with a seventeen – no, eighteen-year-old. But he remembered Tully’s face and sweet lips as she kissed him. He would have been delighted with her lips alone. The rest of their encounter confounded him. Robin felt vaguely that unwittingly and unknowingly, he was being sucked into some bottomless mire. That last night’s encounter with Tully felt like he had been had. With no choice in the matter. Simply sucked in, and had. Tully seemed like a mosquito in the summer that sucked just enough blood to feed itself but not to kill him, and when the mosquito was swollen and bloated with the little it took, it buzzed off, to digest Robin’s blood and then feed off some other poor slob. Still, Robin felt persisting for Tully was the right thing to do. It felt like the right thing to do.
‘Jen, can you help me out a little, please?’
‘What can I do for you, Robin?’
‘I want to take her out.’
There was a short pause.
‘What would you like me to say?’ said Jennifer.
What’s
