Chapter 13 Goodfellas #3
The older of Kenny Foster’s two younger sisters—she who wore the Debbie Harry sheath to her older brother’s funeral—turned fourteen the August before I left for Smith.
For all the awkwardness and insecurities we associate with tween girls, there will always be those like me who have the intuitive sense that a lot of youth, a little bit of brain, and the right clothes—a short golf skirt, for instance, or a hip-hugging gray dress at your brother’s memorial service—give us a pretty good hand.
It’s not the royal flush that a white boy from a place like Tallmadge is dealt at birth, but it’s also not a couple of deuces.
And Kenny Foster’s sister Olivia would have been one hell of a card player.
She was pretty and smart and emotionally older than most fourteen-year-olds. I learned this about her the hard way.
The last Friday in August, roughly thirteen months after I had killed Olivia Foster’s older brother, four months after an NYU professor had tried ripping my first attempt at fiction into confetti and told me to be a banker, and nine days after I was charged with involuntary manslaughter, I went to the Kmart in Yonkers to buy a trunk so I could pack that weekend for college.
On the way home, when I was driving down the main street in Tallmadge, I decided to treat myself to an ice cream at the closest thing that a suburb like that had to an old-fashioned malt or scoop shop: a tony place with a black-and-white-check tile floor called Mindy’s Mix-Ins that sold handmade chocolate truffles and ice cream made on the premises.
The “mix-ins” were whatever you wanted mixed into the ice cream there on the spot, the employees using a wooden countertop to mash chocolate chips, caramels, or Oreos into vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry ice cream.
(The place is still there, but now they scoop flavors like garden basil and white-chocolate lavender. Not judging or taking sides.)
I had returned from living at my aunt and uncle’s apartment in Manhattan only earlier that month, and since coming home I’d been careful to keep a low profile—especially after hearing the sorts of things that people like Frank Pendleton were saying about me.
This was the first time I had ventured into the village and, I supposed, my last before leaving for Northampton.
I’d peered into the ice-cream shop before exiting my car and hadn’t seen anyone inside.
No sign of Theo Catton’s wife or Kenny Foster’s parents or any of my judgmental peers from high school.
(In hindsight, the way I had cut myself off from everyone except Marie Morris is remarkable.
Once upon a time, I had had the sort of popularity that I understand now was intimidating.) So, I went in, got my ice cream, and was just turning around to leave when there, standing on the sidewalk outside the front door like a pair of goodfellas waiting to whack me, were Olivia Foster and another cute ninth grader named Becca Yount, whom I knew as the oldest of the moppets, the girls who—and it seemed like another life—once followed me around the golf course and came to my little summer camp at the country club.
The two of them were wearing crop tops and cutoffs so high that the bottoms of their pockets fell beneath the frayed denim.
“Hi, Becca,” I said. Then I looked at Kenny’s sister and added carefully, “It’s Olivia, right?”
She nodded. “I saw you going in,” she said, and the tone sounded a little disapproving, as if she’d seen me go into a peep show in Times Square.
(Note to my younger readers: before Times Square was known for family-friendly selfies with Elmo and the heroic pups who comprise the Paw Patrol, it was known for strip shows and glory holes.)
I nodded at my ice-cream cone. “Yeah. Last one before I leave town.” I turned to Becca, recalling the times we’d spent with a sand wedge by the bunker beside the practice putting green, and asked, “Still escaping the sand traps?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t play much this summer. Where are you playing now?” I took this in. Of course, she knew that my family had left the club. But I found it interesting that she presumed I still played.
“I haven’t really been out much, either,” I told her, because that seemed a less toxic response than Well, since I killed the older brother of your friend here, I gave up the game.
“How are you?” Olivia asked me.
“Me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m fine,” I said, nonplussed.
“You were arrested, right?”
“Sort of. Technically, I turned myself in.”
“Did they do all those things you see on TV?”
“I guess. But I was only at the police station for about fifteen minutes. How are you?”
“Okay.”
I wanted to end it there and get away, but I wanted even more to know about her parents. And since here we were stuck awkwardly together on the sidewalk, I asked, “And your mom and dad?”
“Meh. It’s hard. Some days are bad for my mom. My dad doesn’t show it as much. They talked about moving—you know, leaving Tallmadge—but they really like the school, and they know my sister and I like it here.”
This all made sense to me. Olivia and her sister had arrived in the insular world of Tallmadge younger than Kenny and were going to get to spend more time in the school. They had a better chance of fitting in. The fact that Olivia and Becca were pals was a good sign.
But, then, had Kenny not fit in? The two of us hadn’t been close friends, but we’d gotten along well. I liked him. It wasn’t as if he’d been friendless.
“I’m glad you like the place,” I said. I wanted to press for the details on what a bad day was like for Sharon Foster. Were the details too intimate for Olivia to share and for me to know? “Your mom…”
“Some days she sleeps a lot. Some days she gets mad at the lawyers, wanting what she says is justice for her son. For the country club to pay for putting the practice net where they did, or the net people to pay for making a crappy product. She doesn’t understand why this all takes so long.”
“Do you?”
“No. It’s all so obvious. Shitty net in a dumb spot.
” This wasn’t a bad summation, I thought, though it was missing the sorts of nuances that led to legal wrangling and law firm retainers that rivaled tuition at places like Smith and Yale.
And I was both relieved that she had exempted me from the chain of causation and guilt-ridden that I’d been spared.
“Why do you think it’s taking so long?” she pressed.
“I really shouldn’t talk about it,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s cool.”
“Besides, I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer.”
“Can I ask you something else?” she went on.
I nodded. I wasn’t surprised she had questions.
It was clear now that this wasn’t an accident where Olivia and I had just bumped into each other at Mindy’s Mix-Ins, one of us entering as the other was exiting.
Olivia had seen me park and come here to talk.
“Sure,” I said. “Of course. You want to get yourselves an ice cream first?”
“No.”
“Okay. Do you want to walk somewhere? Find some shade?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
And I began to walk us aimlessly toward the main street and the canopies of trees amidst the lawns around the school, the library, the Episcopal Church, and the police station.
It dawned on me: I had now been inside all of them.
“Are you two looking forward to ninth grade?” I asked, and I felt a little like a grown-up at a dinner party who has no idea what to say to the hosts’ kids.
I wanted to recover the ease and familiarity I’d once had with Mira’s Moppets, but that muscle memory had gone weak from disuse.
“I guess,” said Becca.
“Mostly,” Olivia agreed. “But I know the older kids with cars will make fun of my dad’s car. His ‘Ads Are Us’ mobile.”
“They won’t,” I lied. They would. They already did.
“Well, when I’m old enough to get my driver’s license, there’s no way I’m driving it.”
“You can drive my car,” offered Becca.
“You’ll like the high school part of the school,” I said, changing the subject and trying to reassure them. “The lockers are bigger than in the middle school wing.”
“And you have more freedom. That’ll be awesome,” said Becca.