“You spy on your mother? You search out her little secret hiding places?”
“I decided to move some things around without going to the trouble of rearranging the furniture,” Shelley said. “To see how it would feel, you know? You were visiting in Chicago and I had some time on my hands.”
“I wasn’t ‘visiting’ in Chicago, Mother.”
“Of course you were. You were visiting your uncle Al Harry. You were visiting your cousins.”
“He’s not my real uncle. Don’t you think I don’t know he’s not my real uncle?”
“No,” I said, “Al Harry’s not your real uncle, and you weren’t ‘visiting’ in Chicago. You were on the lam because of all the trouble you caused.”
“And you and my mother don’t sleep together anymore.”
“I already explained that,” Shelley said. “I already told you what that was all about. There’s a saying: ‘A place for everything and everything in its place.’ I was a little bored. The sheets with the sheets, the tablecloths with the tablecloths. My jewelry case in the bureau drawer under my sweaters.”
“Oh, yeah? Then why’d you put it all back?”
“It was too hard to find things. I couldn’t remember where anything was.”
“Oh, sure, oh, right,” Connie said, crossing her arms and glaring at her mother. “If you couldn’t remember where anything was, then how’d you know where to find the things you forgot so you could put them back where they belonged?” she demanded triumphantly.
“Aha,” Shelley shot back, trumping her triumph, “but I didn’t! You found the brushes, you found the comb! You found my jewelry and lucky lion!”
“What is this? What’s going on? What’s this about?” I asked, sliding into my rabbi mode. “What’s all this fireworks between my two best girls?”
“Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, young lady,” Shelley said, “you must never, but never, go to bed angry. Your father and I never go to bed angry.”
“Mother, that’s gross.”
“Because we’re no different,” Shelley told her suddenly, ardently. “Connie, dear, you have to understand this. We’re no different. We’re not. You aren’t different. I’m not. What, just because we live in a funny little town? What’s that? It’s nothing. Or any of the rest of it either. All that peer baloney you think you missed out on. It isn’t anything, Connie sweetheart. Really. I promise you. It’s nothing at all, Connie dear.”
I looked at my serious, even solemn, wife, in her rabbi mode once more. I’ll be, I thought. I’ll be damned, but you never know where your succor is coming from next. I’ll be, but my redeemer liveth. I thought we were all about to embrace each other.
“If he was my real uncle, or Diane and Beverly were my real cousins, I could never look them in the face again, especially Diane,” Connie said softly, suddenly, her point dipped in a sort of quiet, come-hither hostility.
“What’s this, a new riddle?”
“I’d be too ashamed,” she said.
“Connie?” I said.
“You don’t do that to real cousins.”
“You don’t do what to real cousins?”
“Who’ve taken you in. Who trust you.”
“This isn’t some new St. Myra Weiss thing we haven’t heard about yet, is it, Connie? Something like Gold Cards or individual retirement accounts and living wills of their very own for teenagers? It’s about Keoghs for kids, isn’t it, Connie?”
“No wonder she always goes to the papers first,” my wife said. “You pick on her.”
“Another county heard from.”
“You don’t? You don’t pick on her? You’re not sarcastic? You don’t poke fun?”
“He seduced me.”
“I’m out of line?” I said, wailing my woe, to Connie, to Shelley, to the room, to all the living and dead in Lud. “I guess maybe I’m out of line I turn a phrase on a kid she tries to tear up her daddy’s career, who has a problem with the neighborhood she runs to the press with handouts and bulletins, who practically cleaned me out with my own wife.” I turned to my daughter. “Guess what? Guess what?” I demanded. “I sold Klein’s and Charney’s dirt for them. I gave up my nights and weekends and flogged cemetery real estate to the trade and came home to an empty bed. What do you mean he seduced you? Who seduced you?”
“I couldn’t help it,” she said. “He swept me off my feet. He turned my head.”
“Who swept you off your feet? Who turned your head? What are we talking about here?”
“All he does is just stand next to me and I hear music playing.”
“Music,” put in Shelley, my wife the entertainer.
“Marvin made me feel like a woman for the first time in my life.”
“What Marvin? Who Marvin?”
“Marvin. Diane’s boyfriend from Hebrew school. The one with the crush on me they told me about at the slumber party. He taught me how to play miniature golf. He wined me and dined me.”
“He’s twelve years old!”
“He’s tall for his age.”
“I’m going to kill her,” I said.
“You’re upsetting your father,” Shelley said.
“I’m going to kill her.”
“Jerry, calm down. We’ll gather our thoughts, we’ll find out exactly what happened. Connie,” Shelley said carefully, “Connie, dear, when you say he ‘seduced’ you, just what is it you mean exactly, sweetheart?”
“I surrendered my cherry to him.”
“Your cherry, your cherry?!”
“He promised to write!”
“That’s why you did it, so you’d get mail?”
“No,” Connie said, “of course not.”
“Of course not,” Shelley agreed. “Let her explain.”
“Explain what? What’s there to explain?” I yelled.
“Oh, you think it’s so easy for two people who want to get it on, one of whom doesn’t even live in Chicago but is only staying at her uncle’s place (who isn’t her real uncle anyway) until some stuff blows over in New Jersey, and the other of them not only has no car but isn’t old enough to drive one yet even if he did, or even old enough to have a learner’s permit so he might at least have access to one so long as there’s a licensed driver or even just a person old enough to have her learner’s permit beside him in the death seat when the cop stops him. Or if they had the car. Even if they had the car, where could they go to be alone? To her cousins’? Even if one of them was off practicing swimming at the East Bank Club in the Olympic-size pool, what about the other one? What about Diane, whose boyfriend he actually was supposed to be? Even if neither one of them was at home? You think that’s so easy? How would you handle that one?
“I’m sorry, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world to be young and in love and from out of town and not have access either to a car or an apartment.
“Oh,” she said, “it’s all right, I guess, during the courtship phase, when you’re at the movies, say, and he’s sitting there, holding the tub of buttered popcorn between your Cousin Diane on the one side and you on the other and you reach into the box and accidentally brush his hand. Or you don’t, you put your palm out and he places the popcorn into it piece by piece. Or when you’re both guests at the East Bank Club and you’re both in your bathing suits side by side at one end of the pool holding the stopwatch between you and timing laps and flip turns for your cousin Beverly.