Chapter 3 #3
I had to laugh. “That’s almost two years away,” I said. I already understood Leonard would go to college, likely far away, like Dale’s brother. Smart as he was, he was already studying for the SAT. He said he had to do well on it, very well, if he wanted to get into an Ivy.
“I don’t want to keep you from college,” I said. “I don’t want to keep you from anything.”
He smiled. “I know that. And my mom loves you. She thinks you’re great. She doesn’t like to argue with him. But she sticks up for you in little ways.”
That made me feel better, knowing his mother was on my side. It seemed to me that in time, I would win over his father as well. I was sure my own father was still watching the back of my head, but I slipped off my sandal, stretched out my leg, and hooked my foot under Leonard’s knee.
“Entangled,” I said, making my voice deep, and we both laughed.
But I felt the heaviness of sadness to come.
It wasn’t really almost two years until he would go.
It was more like a year and a half. “Well, I’m glad he assumes we’ll still be together,” I said.
I was trying to look on the bright side.
But Leonard looked at me with pity. I sat up straight and wriggled my foot back into my sandal.
“He knows I’m head over heels,” he said.
I checked my watch again. I had forty-five seconds until curfew. It took fifteen to get from the car to the door. I wanted to ask what he wasn’t telling me, but I could see he wished I wouldn’t. I kissed him good night and got out.
—
My stepmother had told me that after she got the bad news about her first husband, she worked in a cafeteria by an artillery factory.
After Janet was born, Mae’s mother looked after Janet at night, and Mae got a job at a bar.
So she’d been around a lot of different kinds of people, and she knew about things I didn’t, things my friends didn’t know either.
For example, the summer after tenth grade, Roberta’s boyfriend started calling her his little herring, like instead of calling her honey or baby, he’d say, “Hello, my little herring,” and we all thought it was sweet but a little strange, as a herring didn’t seem like a particularly nice thing to be called.
Also, if his friends heard, they’d laugh.
When this boy broke things off with Roberta, I mentioned the nickname to Mae.
She rolled her eyes and said he hadn’t been calling her a fish.
He was saying she was like a Herring safe, meaning hard to crack.
Whenever I made this sort of inquiry to Mae, I tried to be careful, specifically regarding who was around to hear.
The year I started seeing Leonard, Janet was only six and Bobby was twelve.
But the concerns of Leonard’s father didn’t strike me as anything crude, and I mentioned them to Mae the following Sunday afternoon as she and I sat on the back steps, watching Janet do cartwheels.
When I used the word entangled, she told Janet she could go inside and get a cookie.
As soon as Janet was out of earshot, Mae waved her smoke away from my face and leaned close.
“He thinks you’ll get pregnant,” she said.
I about fell off the steps. I don’t think I’d ever heard that word spoken aloud. And this was in regard to me.
“I know that type.” She took a drag off her cigarette and slapped at a mosquito.
“The father, I mean. They think every girl is after their wallet.” She shook her head.
“If your daddy knew he insulted you like that, he’d blow his top.
I like Leonard. You know I do. But I hope I never meet that father. ”
I was too embarrassed to speak. I had no intention of getting pregnant, but I wasn’t as virtuous as Mae and my father believed. It seemed Mr. Lifton somehow knew—maybe by just looking at me—that I was no Herring safe, and that it was his son, not me, that kept us on the straight and narrow.
“Thank you for explaining,” I managed.
“Explaining what?” Janet asked. She skipped down the steps, still chewing at least half of a cookie.
Her hair was the exact same shade of red as her mother’s, and she had Mae’s eyes as well.
But her nose was longer and thinner. I imagined it was the nose of her dead father, and whenever I noticed it, I thought of him, and how sad it was that he’d never known his child.
Mae shook her head. “Honey. Swallow your food before you move or say another word.”
Janet did as told, then asked again what we’d been discussing. She hated getting left out.
Mae smashed her cigarette tip against the concrete. “Nora wanted to know how many pecks were in a bushel. Four, in case you were wondering.”
She said this so coolly that Janet almost didn’t think to ask why I’d need to know such a thing. But when she did, she looked at me.
“School,” I tried. “Homework question.”
Janet watched me with narrowed eyes. She put her little hands where she didn’t yet have hips. “Tell me the truth,” she said.
I was still rattled by what Mae had said about Mr. Lifton. And now I felt pathetic for my attempt at a lie. Nothing had changed in that department. I fooled no one, not even a child.