Emily and Nora learned to laugh together so that it sounded like they were hee-hawing. When they didn’t go to camp together, they went to the beach with Nora’s mother. Emily’s mother said she didn’t like the beach. It turned out she was afraid of the ocean. At eight Nora was skinny and awkward; Emily was round and blond, becoming beautiful through no effort of her own. It was a difference between them and Emily ignored it. Nora maintained an unwitting power over Emily, who had many fears.
One of Emily’s fears was the forest. It fronted her house and was behind Nora’s house, a kind of nobody’s land that belonged to the kids. It became the jungle, the bicycle path that dared her to go through it, the hunting ground. Later it was cleared so that a dull family could build a house and live in it. Emily even suffered the indignity of baby-sitting for them. Emily, Nora, and Nora’s brothers used the forest as a location for their first 8mm film, which employed as its main actors a cocker spaniel belonging to a neighbor and themselves appearing and disappearing mysteriously in front of the camera. The camera caught one of Nora’s and Emily’s fights. Years later Emily couldn’t remember what the fight was about, but was surprised to see herself fighting back.
Nora’s brother, Paul, who was the middle child and also a student of Hilda’s, wanted to see their vaginas. So did his friend, who seemed like an old man to Emily. The boys showed the girls their penises. The girls were dressed up, Paul being the producer of the event, and Emily felt it wasn’t fair, the boys looking the same while the girls had fabrics thrown over them and lipstick put on their already red lips. Then they opened their legs and the boys looked in. No one had ever looked in Emily before; it made her feel strange. She wondered whether there was something more peculiar about Paul’s looking at his sister’s vagina, but she didn’t know. The fact that it was and had to remain a secret disturbed her more than opening her legs to them. The event disappeared into her memory the way they all appeared and disappeared in the movie.
Hilda preferred Emily to Nora, who rarely practiced and came late to lessons. But Paul was her favorite because he was noticeably tortured. At the age of fourteen he couldn’t throw a ball, moved slowly, and was far from lanky. Paul’s father had, over the years, taken this son to the ballpark, thrown a few balls to him, and realized it was hopeless, like a dog that can’t be trained. This hopelessness communicated itself to Paul, who was a mensch and adored by Hilda. She’d exclaim to Emily, “I adore Paul.” Emily watched their relationship and was jealous of its intimacy. She was sure they talked on the piano bench about subjects she couldn’t broach with the piano teacher.
When Nora’s nose developed an adult bump, accentuating her small eyes, she was at last truly homely. She didn’t seem to care and Emily and she didn’t discuss looks. The two girls read lots of books and wrote the best compositions in class. Nora’s were better than Emily up until the eighth grade, or so Emily thought. They were as close as two girls could be.
Emily was positive, by now, that Hilda talked to Paul about love and sex. She was sure that Hilda revealed herself to Paul in a way she never had with Emily. Then suddenly, Paul and Hilda weren’t close anymore. Something had happened and Emily didn’t know what. Paul still took his lessons, like medicine, but there was no more conspiring. Emily figured that one of them must have said or discovered something really bad about the other, the way her mother must’ve about Nora’s mother. Something awful happens and people stop liking each other. Emily worried that Nora would turn from her for no reason, or for reasons she couldn’t fathom and no one talked about. Her mother said, “There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Nora and Emily read as much as they could because they wanted to be writers when they grew up. Girls with promise, their teachers said. Nora read adventure stories and books about early American patriots like Nathan Hale. Emily took out every biography of a woman that she could find in the school library. There weren’t that many and the women were all of a kind, good women who had served well. Emily liked Abigail Adams best because she was something of a troublemaker. Like Nora’s mother who had gone back to college to become a lawyer. Emily spent a lot of time in Nora’s house, sometimes eating her breakfast there before school. She told her mother there were better cereals at Nora’s. Nora rarely finished what was on her plate or in her bowl and her mother would say, “That’s why your blouses fall out of your skirts.” Hilda didn’t approve of the way Nora came to her lessons — she was sloppy — but Nora didn’t care what Hilda thought. She was obstinate in a sullen way and quit her lessons when Hilda became too demanding.
Emily wondered what Nora’s mother thought of her; Nora didn’t like her mother or Emily’s mother. They were in the eighth grade now, and in separate classes for the first time. They still took the same yellow school bus driven by fat Freddie, who always waited for Nora, who was habitually late. Nora and Emily vowed that being in different classes wouldn’t change anything.
Hilda chose Emily to accompany her at the annual piano recital. She had to learn “I Could Have Danced All Night.” Emily knew she was supposed to feel honored at having been chosen but she felt embarrassed. She hated the song and having to appear in public. Hilda tried to reassure her, but Emily was miserable. She didn’t appreciate Hilda as much as she once had, especially since Nora had quit. She had been taking her lessons seriously for five years. One Tuesday she announced to Hilda, in the angular and uncompromising way that youthful decisions are both made and delivered, that she wanted to stop. Emily made some excuses about being a freshman and having homework and both knew she was lying. Hilda argued with restraint but didn’t wring her hands. There’s not much a piano teacher can do. After the last lesson her partner picked her up, as she always did, in the old Dodge, and off they went out of Emily’s young life. It didn’t occur to Emily that she might not see Hilda again.
Nora’s brothers were both away at college and Nora was glad. Her new high school friends had less money than her family, but they dressed tough and smoked grass and danced better than anyone she knew. Emily and she still talked on the phone but they didn’t see each other as much. Nora fell in love with a black guy called Eddie who was strong and handsome and older, and who didn’t seem to notice that she wasn’t beautiful. She wore her skirts shorter than the other fourteen-year-old white girls and walked as if she were dancing. When Nora phoned Emily to tell her of her love for Eddie, black and from the wrong part of town, Emily was surprised that Nora had to tell her, shocked that she didn’t know it before the way she knew everything about Nora. Nora was a part of her life, like an arm or a leg. Maybe they weren’t best friends anymore. Emily feared for Nora’s life in high school, where even walking through the halls to the next class caused Emily humiliation. One time she asked an older boy if he had the time and he said if you’ve got the place. But she admired Nora’s visible passion.
When Nora broke up with Eddie he broke into her house, the house he had never been allowed to visit. Nora called Emily and told her, saying now her parents knew everything. They sent her to another psychiatrist. Emily had heard about approved psychiatrists who told parents everything, the way one had done to her friend Beth. Beth had been made love to by a boy who called her Baby and wrote her letters from military academy. Then the letters stopped. Beth gained and lost weight, started sleeping with many boys, and covered her round and pink baby face with rouge and makeup. Beth’s shrink told her parents that she wasn’t a virgin and they watched her like hawks. Emily thought that Beth would never recover and it was a caution to her. She read about love and listened — Emily was a good listener — and gave her friends advice that she gleaned from books and a cautious spirit.