The Starfish Sisters: A Novel(45)
Love,
Suze
PS We used a condom, but I’m going to ask Beryl to help me get some birth control pills.
Suze
All through the winter and spring, Joel and I learned each other’s bodies. Every second we could, we stole away to touch and kiss and look and try things—everything. It was thrilling and dangerous and fun and we were so much in love we lit the skies. I was incandescent, and Joel walked like he knew his worth.
Most of the time, we were in his bedroom while his mother worked. One late May day was hot and he took off his shirt and I took off mine and we took our time, kissing and touching, and laughing.
I will never know how long Joel’s mother stood there. Probably not long, considering, but we didn’t realize we were being observed until she clapped her hands hard and cried out his name. “Joel Minough, are you out of your mind?”
We broke apart, pulling the covers over us, backing away from her rage. At first that was all I could think of, getting away from her, but then she cried, “Her father will kill you. Not threaten, actually kill you.”
“Mom!” he began. “We’ve been careful, just like—”
“I didn’t mean with the daughter of the craziest man in the entire town.”
“Please don’t tell my dad!” I cried. “Please. I’ll do whatever you want.”
She yanked the sheet, exposing us both, and I clapped my hands over my breasts, pulling my hair around for modesty. “Get up and get dressed now. You”—she pointed her finger—“go home right now.” Her angry gaze turned to Joel. “And you are going to your father’s house the second this semester is done. And if I catch the two of you within a half mile of each other in the meantime, I’ll do the beating myself.”
“Mom!” he protested.
She slammed out of the room, and we stared at each other for a long moment, both of us sensing that everything was lost. I flew to him and kissed him, and he held me hard. “Get dressed.”
So I did. And I walked home with the greatest sense of disaster I’d ever known. Even then I knew something worse was coming.
CURRENT DAY
Chapter Fourteen
Suze
Phoebe brings Jasmine over in the late afternoon on Friday. The weather is surprisingly mild, sunny and not at all windy. “Let’s go have a picnic at the beach,” I suggest.
“Cool.”
We don layers in case a squall moves in, then head the back way through town so we can stop by the little grocery that’s been on Main Street ever since I can remember. We pass the lot where the church once stood. Wild gooseberry and kinnikinnick and wildflowers have covered every inch of the burned shell. The house still stands, abandoned. I wonder why no one has ever bought this lot and built some holiday homes, but I feel the hauntedness.
“This place is creepy,” Jasmine says, taking my hand.
“It is. My dad had a church here,” I say, surprising myself. A knot of unresolved anger twists through my diaphragm. “It burned down.”
“Did he die?”
“No. Nobody died.”
She looks at me for a moment, but honestly there’s not a single thing I can offer a ten-year-old about a monster like my father, who moved away to some other poor town. The less said the better.
“I like that bus,” she says finally.
Across the alley from our old abandoned house is a Victorian in considerably better shape than it was the summer I was fifteen. The clapboard is painted bright white, with trim in several shades of blue and yellow. The porch is hung with a swing, and I remember weaving macramé plant hangers there.
An abandoned bus is still parked on the back of the lot. It’s painted cheerfully, and seems to have been done over into a she-shed sort of thing, with curtains at the windows and a flower garden planted around the door. I offer Jasmine a tidbit of history. “Can you see the murals on that bus?”
She squints. “Kinda. Flowers.”
“Your nana painted them when she was a little older than you are now.” I love that someone has taken the time to refresh them, and it occurs to me that, even then, Phoebe loved painting flowers.
Jasmine is underwhelmed. “Oh.”
The grocery has wooden floors and the kind of food tourists might pick up for a couple of nights in—a little fruit, lots of wine, bread and milk and cereal. “Let’s eat junk food,” I declare.
“Yes!” Jasmine pumps the air. “You should know that Nana doesn’t approve.”
“Oh, we all get to let go of the rules sometimes. She gets that.”
“What’re your favorites?”
We choose thin, salty potato chips and a bag of frosted circus animal cookies, a jar of whole dill pickles, Hershey’s Kisses, big red grapes, cans of root beer, and string cheese, then carry the bag down the path to the beach. A few people are walking at the other end, but here by the Starfish Sisters, we only have to share the space with seagulls and a power walker in red shoes. I spread out a blanket I brought with me, and we use rocks to hold the corners down. It’s so much like the days with Phoebe that I feel some mending going on in my soul.
“Which seagull comes to see you?” Jasmine asks, peeling a stick of string cheese. “Do you think it’s one of those guys?”