“Can we sing songs from Hair?” Izzy asked as we walked upstairs.
“Yes. Do you remember them?”
“Yes.” Izzy started softly singing: “Wearing smells from Labradors . . . patching my future on films in space . . . I believe that God believes in clothes that spin, that spin. . . .” The words were wrong, but I let her go. When she got to the Let the sun shine part, I sang along with her.
We sang all through the bath, the wrong words mostly, and then we got into bed. I fell asleep in the middle of reading a Richard Scarry book. When I woke up, Izzy was snuggled against me, her face smashed into my shoulder, sound asleep. I slipped out of bed and silently changed into the shorts and top my mother had bought me at the start of summer.
Sheba drove me home alone while Jimmy continued to play music with Dr. and Mrs. Cone. When we passed Beanie Jones’s house, Sheba lifted her middle finger, as she had every night since we’d returned from the beach.
After we’d pulled up in front of the Riley house next door, Sheba leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “See you in the morning, doll.”
I wanted to say I love you, but instead I said, “I’ll make you birds in a nest for breakfast.”
“Beautiful,” Sheba said. “I’ve been dying for birds in a nest.”
I got out of the car and waved as she drove away.
12
The next morning, when I came downstairs to the kitchen, my mother and father were sitting at the table. Neither was speaking. Neither was moving. The Baltimore Sun was in the center of the table.
“Uh, everything okay?” I was worried someone had died. A grandparent in Idaho, or maybe a member of our church.
“You tell me, Mary Jane.” My father looked at me with hard eyes. He seemed like a stranger, unrecognizable as he glared and made extended eye contact.
“Tell you what?” I sat across from my father. My mother looked toward the newspaper. I followed her eyes, and then, with a sinking feeling, I pulled the paper toward me.
There, on the front page, was a picture of me, Izzy, Jimmy, and Sheba with the staff at Night Train Music: The Greatest Record Store in America. Everyone was smiling except Jimmy, who was leaning into my ear. The headline said Sheba and Jimmy Visit Charm City!
“Well?” my father said.
I looked at the picture again. I was in the terry-cloth shorts Sheba had bought me and a tank top with no bra. I knew Jimmy was whispering to me, but it looked like he was kissing me. The wallpaper tattoo down his arm almost popped off the page in three dimensions. The combination of that tattoo and his mouth against my ear surely multiplied whatever crime my parents were imagining I’d committed.
“Uh,” I said. I couldn’t catch my breath.
“Beanie Jones called me at six a.m. to ask if I’d seen the paper,” my mother said. I couldn’t tell if she was more upset about the photo or about the fact that she’d had to hear about it from Beanie Jones.
“Beanie Jones . . . ,” I began, then stopped. What could I say about Beanie Jones that wouldn’t make this situation worse? If my parents knew Jimmy had been naked with someone while I was babysitting, they’d be even more angry than they were now. Also, I didn’t have the appropriate vocabulary to say to my parents what Beanie Jones and Jimmy had done. I wouldn’t dare say the words sex or intercourse or open marriage. My mother and I didn’t even discuss my periods. （About a year before my first period, a box of sanitary napkins and an elastic sanitary belt appeared under my bathroom sink. After I started using them, the box was replenished each month, as if by magic.）
“EXPLAIN.” My father banged a fist on the table and I jumped. I thought of Izzy Cone. How she’d probably never had even a second in her life when she felt afraid of her parents. Fear, I suddenly realized, was an emotion that ran through my home with the constant, buzzing current of a plugged-in appliance.
I figured I’d start with the medical situation. “So, Dr. Cone is treating Jimmy—”
“Jimmy.” My father snorted. “You’re on a first-name basis with an adult?”
“Beanie Jones told me he’s a heroin addict.” My mother sniffed, then blinked. I’d never seen her cry, and I was worried she would.
“No one is supposed to know they’re in town because of . . . well, because of doctor-patient confidentiality.” I was glad I remembered the exact wording Dr. Cone had used.
“Beanie Jones certainly knew!” my mother said.
“Dr. Cone told me I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.”