‘Actually, no,’ said Tully, taking her bag and touching Jennifer’s hand with her fingers. ‘Jule,’ Tully said. ‘I didn’t go to the Junior Prom, but didn’t you tell me that some guy danced a lot with Jennifer? And that Jennifer danced a lot back?’
Julie smiled an unsuppressed smile. ‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘Come to think of it. But I don’t think it was the same guy. I mean, the Junior Prom guy was blond and tall and well built and everything, but he was clean-shaven and wearing a suit.’
‘Oh, of course, we’re being silly, right, Jen?’ said Tully. ‘That was obviously a different guy.’
Jennifer folded her arms. ‘Are you two quite finished?’
Julie and Tully looked at each other. ‘I don’t know,’ said Tully. ‘Are we, Julie?’
Julie laughed. ‘Yup, I guess we are now,’ she said.
‘Good,’ said Jennifer. ‘Because I have nothing to say to either one of you. Get the hell out.’
‘We’re out of here,’ Tully said, pulling Jennifer’s hair.
‘Don’t forget my presents, girls,’ Jennifer said.
When Tully and Julie were at the end of the driveway, Jennifer yelled after them, ‘Oh, by the way, smartasses!’
They turned around.
‘He is number thirty, for your information.’ And slammed the screen door.
2
Outside, on the corner of Wayne Street and Sunset Court, Julie turned to Tully. ‘Why won’t she tell us?’ she asked.
Tully shrugged. ‘I suppose she’s told us as much as she wants us to know. Have you ever spoken to him?’
No, Julie said, and walked the five blocks from 17th to Huntoon in silence. Tully did not go to the Junior Prom last May, Julie thought. Tully had not seen Jennifer unable to look up into the face of a seventeen-year-old boy who had his arm around Jennifer’s back and her hand in his hand. Seeing them together and seeing the look on Jen’s face impressed Julie, but since Jennifer never mentioned the Junior Prom, or the boy, and since Julie did not see him all summer, she forgot to make him a big deal to Tully. Not until Julie saw the same look in Jennifer’s eyes while talking to a boy near her locker did she connect the dots. Then she told Tully. And Tully was a troublemaker. She put the boy in the fan and blew him around Jennifer every chance she got.
‘He can’t be that important,’ said Julie, stopping at the corner of Wayne and 10th. ‘We don’t even know his name.’
Tully punched Julie lightly in the arm. ‘But we will. We will. Tonight.’ As an afterthought, Tully asked, ‘Is Tom coming with you?’
‘But of course,’ said Julie.
‘But of course,’ mimicked Tully. She rolled her eyes and snorted.
Julie leaned close to Tully. The girls were standing in the middle of the road, in the middle of Topeka, in the middle of America, in the middle of an Indian summer. ‘I’ll tell you a little secret, Tull. He doesn’t like you, either.’
‘What’s to like?’ said Tully.
What’s to like? thought Julie as she rushed to get ready. What’s to like? she thought as she walked down the stairs, unhappy as always with her Mexican face and her slightly rounded Mexican body. Tom wasn’t there yet, thank God, to hear her mother ‘Oh, conchita! Why, you so beautiful! What a beautiful dress, turn around, let me look at you, my, aren’t you growing up, your hair looks so lovely, you gonna be such a heartbreaker!’
Tom did hear her mother, though. Angela Martinez continued to gush well after he arrived. ‘Isn’t she beautiful, Tom, isn’t she lovely?’ Julie rolled her eyes, a gesture she borrowed directly from Tully. ‘Mom! Please!’
‘Yeah, she is,’ said Tom. ‘Now, let’s go.’
Angela came over and hugged Julie. ‘All right, Ma, all right,’ said Julie, hugging her back. ‘You’re messing up my hair.’
‘Julie! Julie!’ Vincent, the youngest of her four brothers, came running from the kitchen, his hands full of raw cookie dough, and grabbed her around the thighs. ‘Julie!’ whined three-year-old Vinnie. ‘I want to go with you!’ She screamed, peeling him off her. ‘Ma! Get him off my dress!’
‘Take me with you!’ repeated Vinnie.
Julie looked intently at her mother. Angela turned to her youngest boy. ‘But Vinnie, who’s gonna help Mama make cookies? Or did you eat all the dough already?’
Vinnie was torn, but stomach won over brotherly affection, and he bolted back into the kitchen after kissing Julie’s dress good-bye.
‘Your mother!’ said Tom when they were outside.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Julie nodded. ‘She only likes me ‘cause she’s got no other daughters.’ But though she said that, she felt a little defensive. Yeah, that’s my mother. Everyone should be so lucky to have a mother like mine. She glanced at Tom. He annoyed her sometimes. Oh, well, she thought. Being in the history club together is fun enough.
3
After Tully and Julie left, Jennifer sighed and went upstairs into her parents’ bedroom. Her mother, just out of the shower, was sitting on the bed, one hand on a towel, one on her cigarette.
Jennifer said, ‘Ma, did you know that Marlboro just patented a waterproof cigarette?’
‘Don’t start with me, Jen,’ said Lynn Mandolini.
‘I’m serious. I’ve seen the commercial. “Why not enjoy two pleasures at once? Wash your hair and inhale nicotine at the same time. You’ve always wanted to do it, and now you can. It costs a bit more, but it’s worth it.”’
‘Are you quite done?’ asked Lynn. Jennifer smiled.
No mother and daughter could have looked less alike. It was a running joke in the Mandolini household that Jennifer, Lynn and Tony’s only child, must have been born to a Norwegian family who got tired of all those fjords and came to landlocked Topeka, only to get tired of baby Jennifer. ‘But Mom, Dad,’ Jennifer would say. ‘Didn’t you tell me you found me in a cornfield where the sun made my hair blond?’
Jennifer was a tall, blond, busty girl, who had always battled with weight. At eighteen, she was still winning; just. But she had the kind of body that with time and kids and plenty of good cooking might get heavy around the middle. Big breasts, small behind, thin legs. She was the only one on the cheerleading squad with a chest larger than 34B. Tully was usually merciless when she described the mammary attributes of the rest of the team when compared with Jennifer, and Jennifer all too frequently had to point out that Tully herself fell into the 34B category. ‘Yes, but I don’t go around parading my tits in a low-cut costume while I dance,’ Tully would say. At this, Jennifer would raise her eyebrows,
