“Were they at the beach with you?”
“Yes.” I looked at my lap.
“Why did you go to the record store with them? Why would they take you to that store?”
“Because it’s the best record store in town.”
My mother snorted. “I highly doubt that.”
“It is. The people in that store know all about every kind of music. The owner loves Guys and Dolls, just like me. And there was a whole wall of classical music and opera.”
“On North Avenue? No, dear. Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying, Mom.” I was almost embarrassed for her. Did she think Black people only listened to the Jackson 5?
My mother sighed. “What are we going to do with you? You lied to me. Every single day when you left this house, you lied to me.”
“I know I lied to you.” It had been hard at first, but then it became so easy I barely noticed it. I felt bad about that—that I had become someone who spit lies so quickly they were more an involuntary reaction than a decision. “But really, my days have been spent taking care of Izzy and making dinner. It’s been mostly what you imagined. The only thing different is that Jimmy and Sheba were in and out of the house.”
“Where did you get the clothes you’re wearing in the picture?”
“Sheba bought them for me at the beach. I left them at the Cones’ house.”
“Dr. and Mrs. Cone don’t mind having a summer nanny dressed like a . . . like a . . . dressed improperly?!”
I remembered Sheba saying that her mother had called her a slut and a whore. In her own way, my mother was saying the same thing. But she was wrong. “The Cones don’t think about things like being dressed improperly. They just want people to be happy. And comfortable.”
My mother shook her head. “You can stay in here all day.” She stood and left my room.
I rolled onto my stomach and cried some more. I tried to imagine my father speaking with Dr. Cone. Combed hair facing unruly hair. A shaved face looking at a goaty-sideburned face. Stern blue eyes on clear brown eyes. Would Jimmy meet my father? Sheba? What about Mrs. Cone? Mrs. Cone’s nipples were always poking out. Did my father notice things like that? And if he did, would I be banned from the Cone house forever?
At noon my mother came in with a ham sandwich and a glass of milk on a tray. She put the tray on the end of the bed and stared at me. I could feel that my eyes were almost swollen shut. My nose was probably red too. “Well, I hope you’re crying with regret.”
I wasn’t. “Did Dad talk to Dr. Cone?”
“Yes. He informed him that you wouldn’t be returning this summer.”
“There are only two weeks left. I can’t go back for two weeks?”
My mother stared at me as if I had transformed from a girl into a goat. “Of course not.”
“But who’s going to take care of Izzy?”
“That’s not your concern, Mary Jane. Do you not understand what happened? You have, unbeknownst to your parents, passed the summer with hippies and a drug addict while dressed like a girl who . . . like a girl who lives in Hampden!” Hampden was where Dr. Cone took us for burgers at Little Tavern. I thought it was probably better not to mention that.
I was allowed to leave my room to help my mother with dinner. We didn’t speak as we prepared a chicken casserole and rice with peas. When my father came to the table, he set the paper beside his plate, looked up, and said, “At least they didn’t put it in the evening paper.”
My mother sighed.
“I’m sorry.” I mumbled. I wasn’t, though.
“Do you know how humiliating this is?” my father asked me. “The entire office, every man I work with, every single one, saw a picture of you dressed like a prostitute, standing with a rock-and-roll heroin addict and Negroes in a record store. Do you understand what that does to our standing in the community?”
I thought about what my father had just said. The Cones seemed unconcerned about things like standing in the community. It was like they were in a different Roland Park, a Roland Park where people weren’t keeping track of each other. Where people were just doing what they wanted, without concern as to how it was seen. Maybe a person’s standing in the community was an illusion. Like the witch in the Cone house. An imagined evil that created unnecessary rules.
When I didn’t respond, my father said, “I asked you a question.”
“I’m sorry,” I said automatically.
My father put his hands in the prayer position. My mother did the same, then I did too. “Dear Lord, forgive my daughter for her sins and help her find her way to purity. God bless our relatives in Idaho, God bless this family, and God bless the president of the United States of America and his wife and family.”