Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau
1
Mrs. Cone showed me around the house. I wanted to stop at every turn and examine the things that were stacked and heaped in places they didn’t belong: books teetering on a burner on the stove, a coffee cup on a shoebox in the entrance hall, a copper Buddha on the radiator, a pink blow-up pool raft in the center of the living room. I had just turned fourteen, it was 1975, and my ideas about homes, furniture, and cleanliness ran straight into me like an umbilical cord from my mother. As Mrs. Cone used her bare foot （toenails painted a glittering red） to kick aside a stack of sweaters on the steps, I felt a jolt of wonder. Did people really live like this? I suppose I knew that they did somewhere in the world. But I never expected to find a home like this in our neighborhood, Roland Park, which my mother claimed was the finest neighborhood in Baltimore.
On the second floor all but one of the dark wood doors were open. The bottom half of the single closed door was plastered with IMPEACHMENT: Now More Than Ever bumper stickers and a masking-taped poster of Snoopy dancing, nose in the air. Everything was slightly angled, as if placed there by a drunk on his knees.
“This is Izzy’s room.” Mrs. Cone opened the door and I followed her past Snoopy into a space that looked like it had been attacked by a cannon that shot out toys. An Etch A Sketch; Operation game board; Legos; paper doll books; Colorforms box and stickies; Richard Scarry books; and a heap of molded plastic horses: No surface was uncovered. I wondered if Izzy, or her mother, swept an arm across the bed at night, pushing everything to the floor.
“Izzy.” I smiled. Our neighbor, Mrs. Riley, had told me her name was Isabelle. But I liked Izzy better, the way it fizzed on my tongue. I didn’t know anyone named Izzy, or Isabelle. I’d never even met Izzy Cone. But through the recommendation of Mrs. Riley, and after a phone call with Mrs. Cone, I’d been hired as the summer nanny. I had thought the phone call was going to be an interview, but really Mrs. Cone just told me about Izzy. “She doesn’t like to play with kids her own age. I don’t think she’s interested in what other five-year-olds do. Really, she only wants to hang out with me all day,” Mrs. Cone had said. “Which is usually fine, but I’ve got other stuff going on this summer, so . . .” Mrs. Cone had paused then and I’d wondered if I was supposed to tell her that I’d take the job, or was I to wait for her to officially offer it to me?
A five-year-old who only wanted to hang out with her mother was someone I understood. I, too, had been a girl who only wanted to hang out with her mother. I was still happy helping my mother with the chores in the house, sitting beside her and reading, or grocery shopping with her, searching out the best bell peppers or the best cut of meat. When I did have to socialize with kids my age—like at the sleepovers to which every girl in the class had been invited—I felt like I was from another country. How did girls know what to whisper about? Why were they all thinking about the same things? Depending on the year, it could be Barbies, dress-up, boys, hairstyles, lip gloss, or Teen Beat magazine, none of which interested me. I had no real friends until middle school, when the Kellogg twins moved to Baltimore from Albany, New York. They, too, looked like they didn’t know the customs and rituals of girlhood. They, too, were happy to spend an afternoon by the record player listening to the Pippin soundtrack; or playing the piano and singing multilayered baroque songs in melody, harmony, and bass; or watching reruns of The French Chef and then trying out one of the recipes; or even just making a simple dessert featured in Good Housekeeping magazine.
The more Mrs. Cone told me about Izzy on that phone call, the more I wanted to take care of her. All I could think was how much nicer it would be to spend my summer looking after a little girl who had no friends than going to our country club pool and being the girl who had no friends. I barely listened when Mrs. Cone told me how much they’d pay. The money felt like a bonus. Before the call had ended, I’d decided I’d save everything I earned and then buy my own record player at the end of the summer. One I could keep in my room; maybe it would even have separate speakers. If there was enough money left over, I’d buy a radio so I could listen to American Top 40: the songs from the records that my mother would never let me buy.
Downstairs I could hear the front door open and then slam shut. Mrs. Cone froze, listening, her ear tilted toward the doorway. “Richard?” she called out. “Richard! We’re up here!”
My stomach clenched at the idea that Dr. Cone would ask me to call him Richard. Mrs. Cone had told me to call her Bonnie, but I couldn’t. Even in my head I thought of her as Mrs. Cone, though, really, she didn’t look like a Mrs. Anything to me. Mrs. Cone’s hair was long, red, and shiny. She had freckles all over her face and her lips were waxy with bright orange lipstick. Draped over her body was either a long silk blouse or a very short silk dress. The liquid-looking fabric swished against her skin, revealing the outline of her nipples. The only place I’d seen nipples like that was in posters of celebrities, or women in liquor ads. I’d never seen even a hint of my mother’s nipples; the couple of times I’d entered her bedroom when she was in her bra, it was like seeing breasts in beige armor.