At the party that night, she quickly downed two Seagram’s and 7UPs, after which it was possible to slow down without being noticed. The main effect of the alcohol was to create a powerful but hazy sense of importance; of being on the verge of a great, warm insight. As her buzz began to fade, the sense of importance faded with it, leaving behind a small, cold insight: she was bored. She didn’t care who had a crush on who, what kind of prank was played on Lyons Township before the football game. The world was full of better places.
It’s because of an inheritance I received from Shirley, following her tragic death, that I’m able to consider attending a private college. She herself never attended college, having been a noted actress in her youth and busy with her career, but she loved the higher things in life and knew more about art and theater and music and coteur than many experts anyone I’ve ever known. It was from her that I learned to dream big and really make something of myself. I’m blessed to have an opportunity to educate myself in a way she never could, and learn more about the world. I intend to seize this opportunity fully.
She read what she’d written and wrinkled her nose. There seemed to be no way back to the pure feeling she’d had for Shirley before her mother clouded it with criticisms. Or maybe the morning after being kissed was simply not a good time to experience admiration. Considering her state, she felt good about having written anything at all.
She closed her notebook and went to the kitchen, where Judson was applying colored sugar to a tray of cookies. Through the open basement door came the sound of laundry chores.
“These look great, Jay,” she said.
“I need a better tool. It clumps on the spoon.”
“Which one is your least favorite? I bet I can make it disappear.”
“This one,” he said, pointing.
She ate the cookie and immediately wished she could eat another. “Is there anything special you want for Christmas? Something you haven’t told anyone about?”
“Nobody asks.”
“Perry didn’t ask you?”
Judson hesitated and shook his head.
“I’m asking,” she said.
“Colored pencils,” he said, intent on the cookies. “With interesting colors.”
“Got it. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.”
“If you or any of your I-enforcers are caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”
“I think it’s ‘I.M. force.’ Impossible Mission.”
“I wondered about that.”
“You’re a good kid,” she said, brimming with goodwill.
“Thank you.”
Her mother was trudging up the basement stairs, so she fled to her room again. Seeing her unmade bed, she was drawn to lie down on it, as a way of falling back into the kiss. The day already seemed to have lasted longer than an entire ordinary day, and it had still barely started.
It was generally assumed, and specifically assumed by her father, in his jealousy, that Rick Ambrose was the reason Crossroads had exploded in popularity. According to Clem, though, there were two reasons, and the other one was Tanner Evans. Tanner’s parents belonged to First Reformed, and he’d come up with Clem through Sunday school and gone with Becky’s father on the first spring work camp in Arizona. Tanner was a nice person, from a nice family, but he was also a gifted musician and the coolest guy at New Prospect Township, one of the first to grow his hair long, a bell-bottomed dreamboat. In Clem’s telling, Crossroads had exploded when Tanner invited his music-playing friends, male and female, white and black, to come to Sunday meetings. Crossroads became as much a musical happening as a religious thing, Tanner’s coolness the counterweight to Ambrose’s intensity.
Tanner had postponed college to develop his skills and write songs. He had a regular Friday-night gig in the back room at the Grove, where liquor was served. He and his girlfriend, Laura Dobrinsky, who’d been his female counterpart in Crossroads, played together in a band called the Bleu Notes. Laura was short and somewhat chunky, but she had an impressive head of wavy hair and a face flattered by pink-tinted wireframes, and her voice, when she sang solo, made walls shake and hearts break. She was one of New Prospect’s original hippies, a walking yes to the question Are You Experienced? It was hard to imagine Tanner with anyone else, and so when Becky went to work at the Grove and started running into him, and he asked her how Clem was doing at college, and sent greetings to her parents, she assumed she was only a little sister to whom, being nice, he was being nice.