This was what was happening? They were going to go to some stupid auction and try to distract themselves, when he no doubt wanted to have a drink and Bettina probably wanted to eat an extra-large pizza? They were so old, so worried all the time, though they tried to make it appear they were in control. “I’ll go,” she heard someone say. She was the one who’d said it.
“Good,” Raleigh said. Her aunt said nothing. She picked up the section of newspaper that gave the address of the auction. “We would’ve been able to inspect things for the last half hour, and what have we done but miss our great opportunity?” Bettina said.
Jocelyn and Raleigh, avoiding looking at each other, got their jackets from the coat hooks in the hallway. In Maine, you learned to always carry a jacket, no matter how warm the evening — and shuffled out of the house with Bettina behind them, making sure the door was locked, pulling the handle three times. It was a signature gesture, as Angie would say. One of Angie’s mother’s signature gestures was to put her face in her hands and cry for several seconds, after which she’d stop abruptly, take eye drops out of her pocket, and tilt her head back, flooding her face with liquid. The day before, Angie had also let drop a convincing detail about her make-out moment with T. G. She said one of her earrings had gotten caught in his arm hair, and she’d cried out, and he’d stopped immediately. Oh god. It was all so ordinary. There was no discharge date for T. G. that her uncle knew. She’d asked him that morning. The youngest son, Ted, was bouncing off the walls, and the parents were going to cave and let him be put on meds, they were so stressed out.
“The Queen Anne’s lace is blooming,” Bettina said. She turned to Jocelyn, who sat curled in the backseat with her legs tucked to one side. “They often have a little black insect right in the center,” Bettina said. “Did you know that?”
Did I know I was fucked? Jocelyn wondered, re-forming the question. She lied about having noticed the flowers; she nodded yes, but Bettina rushed on, wanting to overwhelm everyone with how much information she had. She said, “And roses attract Japanese beetles. That’s something everyone knows.”
The sky was starting to darken. What would it be like to have her own car, to already have been through college? What would it be like to live in Seattle, where you could go on hikes and not always be sitting around some living room, being miserable?
Bettina told Raleigh he was about to miss his turn, and he said, “Sorry about that. Right.”
When they got to South Berwick, Bettina showed him the map. He said the auction was right where he thought it was. The road had potholes that made Jocelyn a little sick to her stomach, but she was feeling better, which was good, because it would have been really bad to feel worse. An auction. She wished it was a movie. She was the only person who hadn’t seen the 3-D movie. Or it would be great if she’d been able to go to a play. Imagine seeing real actors, instead of having to sit for hours watching that kid Emmet Thornton, who lisped, playing Puck? That guy who’d OD’d — the actor in New York. It would have been great to see him in something before he died, though he wasn’t cute. He looked like one of those big-headed dolls people put on their dashboards to wobble their heads. He’d been a father. He had kids who lived with the mother.
They passed Dunkin’ Donuts and followed the road to where it turned at the bend. She’d never been to an auction. In spite of what her aunt had said, her purse was in her lap. She heard her unzip it and take out her glasses to look at the map a second time, then put them away.
“Here we go,” Raleigh said, turning onto a lawn where a teenager with a white flag waved him forward. They bounced through deep ruts, Raleigh holding the wheel tightly in both hands. “Ridiculous,” he muttered. “What do we get for our tax dollars?” Another car in front of them bumped into a parking place, and Raleigh turned in beside it. “Close up the hole!” the boy said, pointing his flag at the other car.
“There’s about three inches between us,” Raleigh said, rolling down the window. “If I parked closer, we wouldn’t be able to get out.” He put his window up again. “Idiot,” he said, under his breath. The boy had walked away and was waving his flag at the next car.
“Are we going to get the parlor set for Jocelyn? And keep it as her dowry?” Bettina asked Raleigh, but he was walking too far ahead of her to hear. Jocelyn slapped a mosquito that was either trying to or had succeeded in biting her ear. “Shit!” she said. “Language,” her aunt said. A young man and his blond girlfriend walked through the space between Jocelyn and Bettina, hurrying across the field toward the auction barn. They joined hands once they’d passed by, and the girl flipped her long blond hair over her shoulder. “Alex!” someone shouted. “Hey, Alex, you’ve got to come see our puppies!”
Alex hollered, “Hey — you don’t care that my mom’s moved to London? You think I care about your puppies? I’m one of those puppies now!”
“What?” the girl said. “Where did she go?”
“She rode off on a coach like Cinderella, only it was C & J. Next auction, we can clean out her room and make money! My dad would totally appreciate help in emptying the house!”
Jocelyn killed two more mosquitoes before they got to the barn, and Bettina gripped the thick handle of her big purse. Jocelyn had rummaged in the purse, but only when her aunt told her to; she wasn’t a creep like some kids who were always stealing money. She’d opened it to get Bettina a Kleenex when she was driving, to see if her lipstick was in there, to fish around for quarters for parking. The purse was nothing but a bag of disappointments. It was stupid to carry things like that. Only old people did it. To the side of the building was a concession stand, and Jocelyn thought, meanly, that if Bettina hadn’t made it clear to her that she shouldn’t spend money on things like overpriced Coke, she’d like one. Her mouth felt tingly; if she tried to throw up now, she’d probably be able to. A big man whose leg had been amputated above the knee rolled himself along, a bright yellow fingerless glove on one hand. The American flag dangled from a pole attached to the back. He wore one slip-on shoe and a black sock. You could see his stomach where his shirt was missing buttons. A little girl was tugging her mother’s hand. “Stop it!” her mother said, pulling her along. “You behave.”
“Hear that? That’s the warning women have gotten through the ages, isn’t it?”
Jocelyn didn’t answer. Inside, the space was divided into two sections with a low wood fence blocking off the area where the auction items were on display. You could tell from a distance that nothing was very special. The building smelled of hay and mildew. Metal chairs were set up in rows. Right now, it looked easy to get a seat near the front. A man came in with a cane, and another man tried to strike up a conversation. The first man kept poking the cane tip toward the closed-off area. Finally he walked away and left the other guy talking to himself, cigarette cupped in his hand. The amputee rolled himself in front of all the chairs and put on his brake. A ceiling fan blew the flag, but otherwise little air circulated in the barn. Why couldn’t they be at a movie? A vampire movie? The mother and child she’d seen earlier moved around the fence and looked but didn’t enter, as if standing behind a rope, waiting for a bouncer to wave them in. One night she’d gone with her friend back home, Rachel, to a disco, but they’d never made it in, and finally they’d gone to a diner and split a foot-long hot dog. Rachel had a bottle of scotch in the car, but of course they couldn’t bring that in. Wouldn’t it be great not to be carded and to be able to afford to eat and drink in a restaurant?