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“Belly, you want me to do your eyes?” Susa
I sat up. “Yeah!”
“Beck, please don’t give her hooker eyes again,” my mother said, ru
Susa
“Yeah, Mom, it’s a smoky eye,” I piped up.
Susa
I scampered into the bathroom and propped myself up on the counter. I loved to sit on that counter with my legs dangling, listening in on everything like one of the girls.
She dipped a little brush into a pot of black eyeliner. “Close your eyes,” she said.
I obeyed, and Susa
“Are you and Mr. Fisher go
Susa
“Mom, will you and Dad?”
My mother laughed too. “I don’t know. Probably not. Your father doesn’t like to dance.”
“Dad’s boring,” I said, trying to twist around and get a peek at my new look. Gently, Susa
“He’s not boring,” my mother said. “He just has different interests. You like it when he teaches you the constellations, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“And he’s very patient, and he always listens to your stories,” my mother reminded me.
“True. But what does that have to do with being boring?”
“Not much, I suppose. But it has to do with being a good father, which I think he is.”
“He definitely is,” Susa
I swiveled around and looked in the mirror. My eyes were very smoky and gray and mysterious. I felt like I should be the one going out dancing.
“See, she doesn’t look like a hooker,” Susa
“She looks like she has a black eye,” my mother said.
“No, I don’t. I look mysterious. I look like a countess.” I hopped off the bathroom counter. “Thanks, Susa
“Anytime, sugar.”
We air-kissed like two ladies who lunch. Then she took me by the hand and walked me over to her bureau. She handed me her jewelry box and said, “Belly, you have the best taste. Will you help me pick out some jewelry to wear tonight?”
I sat on her bed with the wooden box and sifted through it carefully. I found what I was looking for—her dangly opal earrings with the matching opal ring. “Wear these,” I said, holding the jewelry out to her in the palm of my hand.
Susa
In retrospect, I don’t think it really did go. But I loved that opal jewelry so much. I admired it more than anything. So I said, “Mom, what do you know about style?”
Right away, I worried she’d be mad, but it had slipped out, and it was true after all. My mother knew about as much about jewelry as she did about makeup.
But Susa
“Go downstairs and tell the men we’ll be ready to go in five, Countess,” my mother ordered.
I jumped out of bed and curtsied dramatically. “Yes, Mum.”
They both laughed. My mother said, “Go, you little imp.”
I ran downstairs. When I was a kid, anytime I had to go anywhere, I ran. “They’re almost ready,” I yelled.
Mr. Fisher was showing my dad his new fishing rod. My dad looked relieved to see me, and he said, “Belly, what have they done to you?”
“Susa
My dad beckoned me closer, regarding me with serious eyes. “I’m not sure. You look very mature.”
“I do?”
“Yes, very, very mature.”
I tried to hide my delight as I made a place for myself in the crook of my dad’s arm, my head right by his side. For me, there was no better compliment than being called mature.
They all left a little while later, the dads in pressed khakis and button-down shirts and the moms in their summer dresses. Mr. Fisher and my dad didn’t look so different when they dressed up like that. My dad hugged me good-bye and said that if I was still awake when they got back, we’d sit on the deck awhile and look for shooting stars. My mother said they’d probably be back too late, but my dad winked at me.
On the way out, he whispered something to my mother that made her cover her mouth and laugh a low, throaty kind of laugh. I wonder what he said.
It was one of the last times I remember them being happy. I really wish I had enjoyed it more.
My parents had always been stable, as boring as two parents could be. They never fought. Taylor’s parents fought all the time. I’d be over for a sleepover, and Mr. Jewel would come home late and her mom would be really pissy, stomping around in her slippers and banging pots. We’d be at the di
When her parents got divorced, I asked Taylor if, in some little way, she was relieved. She said no. She said that even though they had fought all the time, at least they had still been a family. “Your parents never even fought,” she said, and I could hear the disdain in her voice.
I knew what she meant. I wondered about it too. How could two people who had once been passionately in love not even fight? Didn’t they care enough to fight it out, to fight not just with each other, but also for their marriage? Were they ever really in love? Did my mother ever feel about my dad the way I felt about Conrad—alive, crazy, drunk with tenderness? Those were the questions that haunted me.
I didn’t want to make the same mistakes my parents made. I didn’t want my love to fade away one day like an old scar. I wanted it to burn forever.
chapter twenty-nine
When I finally went back downstairs, it was dark out and Jeremiah was back. He and Conrad were sitting on the couch, watching TV like the fight had never happened. I guessed it was that way with boys. Whenever Taylor and I fought, we were mad for at least a week and there was a power struggle over who got custody of which friends. “Whose side are you on?” we’d demand of Katie or Marcy. We’d say mean things that you can’t take back and then we’d cry and make up. Somehow I doubted Conrad and Jeremiah had been crying and making up while I’d been upstairs.
I wondered if I was forgiven too, for keeping a secret from Jeremiah, for not taking a side—his side. Because it was true, we’d come here together as partners, a team, and when he’d needed me, I’d let him down. I lingered there by the stairs for a second, unsure of whether or not to go over, and then Jeremiah looked up at me and I knew I was. Forgiven, that is. He smiled, a real smile, and a real Jeremiah smile was the kind that could melt ice cream. I smiled back, grateful as anything.
“I was just about to come get you,” he said. “We’re having a party.”
There was a pizza box on the coffee table. “A pizza party?” I asked.
Susa
“I ran into some people in town. They’re go