“Forget the Slip ’N Slide. I’ll take you and Ella to Adventureland tomorrow. All day if you want.”
“Please let go of me,” Shelly said.
So Rhea did. She walked into the hall and called up the stairs. “FJ! Ella! Dinner’s ready!”
FJ came down first. He’d be starting at Hofstra University as a freshman in the fall. He was lean and muscular and so quiet that the family often forgot he was present. He’d been a submarine man all summer, surfacing at the house in the early hours, sleeping until noon. He was popular in school. Every night was another graduation party. But he managed to keep up his preseason lacrosse practice, so she figured: Why cramp his style?
Outside, the Rat Pack still skidded across the yellow plastic Slip ’N Slide. Everybody was eating ice pops, laughing hard, covered in tarry muck. It did look fun, she admitted. Rhea drew the curtains, so her own kids wouldn’t feel excluded.
Nine-year-old Ella came down last. Like Rhea, she had hazel eyes, close-together features, and a habit of frowning when surprised or happy. “Sorry. I was reading!” Ella said. “Nicholas and Smike just ran away and I had to know what happens to Fanny. She’s my favorite.”
“Brilliant!” Rhea pronounced. “Harvard. I’m sure of it.”
“I read that book,” Shelly said. “Smike is an outcast. O-U-T-C-A-S-T. It’s very sad. What did he have, Mom? Cerebral palsy?”
“Don’t spoil it for your sister,” Rhea answered. “And don’t phony. You Netflixed the miniseries. The day you read a chapter book to the end is the day I have a stroke.”
“Shelly watches Buffy. It’s all she does is watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on her screen in bed at night,” Ella volunteered as she scooped half the stewed beef from the tureen. “She loves Angel the vampire like he’s Dave Harrison and she makes me play Dawn and it’s so lame!”
Shelly looked down at her plate. “I do not love Dave Harrison, and I did read Nicholas Nickleby.”
If the family heard Shelly, none responded. The sounds were forks and spoons, rattling plates, water glasses lifted and replaced. Pretty soon, dinner was done. Rhea drained another glass of wine, her second, which was her limit on weekdays. FJ got up without asking. He seemed preoccupied by something. Probably a girlfriend. He was always having high drama with some girlfriend.
“Magic words,” Rhea said.
“Can I go?”
“You may be excused.”
“Can I go, too?” Ella asked.
Rhea nodded. “PJs, brushed teeth, and two more chapters.”
“I’ll do a book report. You’ll love it so much! Because I’m a genius!” Ella cried, all enthusiastic sincerity, then bounced toward the stairs.
Last, it was just Shelly and Rhea. Rhea eyed her empty glass. With the heat this high, even the central air-conditioning couldn’t combat it, and she’d lost her appetite. She poured just a little more, letting the sweetness sizzle on her tongue, then fade as a means of making it last. Shelly watched. Noticed, in ways the others never did.
“Mom?”
“Yup?”
“I’m out. Of tampons.”
“There’s nothing in Gretchen’s old room?”
Shelly tugged on her loose navy blue skirt, which Rhea could now see was damp in the crotch. It was on the fabric of the chair she’d been sitting on, too. Red against tan. “It happened just now. I just realized. I’m sorry,” she said.
Rhea sighed. Who doesn’t know when they have their period? Things like this only happened to Shelly, which was why she feared the child would have a nervous breakdown, a kind of psychological aneurysm, before adolescence finished with her.
Tears rolled down Shelly’s cheeks to the bib of her blue shirt. Her shame was in extreme excess, and this worried Rhea, too. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Calm down. Take a shower while I clean up. I’ll brush your hair first, then I’ll be ready to drive to the store. Does that work for you?”
Shelly clutched her mother’s wrist. “Do you think we could take a break? For tonight? And not brush my hair?”
“You know what happens when we do that. Boomerang. It’s ten times worse tomorrow. Just put in lots of conditioner. I’ll make it as painless as I can.”
After Shelly left, Rhea cleaned the kitchen and turned the laundry. She could still see Maple Street out there. Imaginary conversations played. These were directed at the dumb neighbors, who were going to give their kids cancer, and at pregnant Gertie, who’d proven to be the worst kind of friend. And then at Fritz. And then at every rando in fragile Shelly’s future, who might one day threaten her or make her feel bad, and then at her jealous accuser, who’d ruined her career, and finally, back at Gertie. Her face made expressions as if inhabited by ghosts.