Mary Jane by Jessica Blau (debian ebook reader TXT) 📗

quickly. “We were practicing for church.”

“Are you—” Beanie started.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Jimmy said.

Sheba started the car. “So nice to meet you!” she called. Then she hit the gas and pulled away from the curb, running throughthe stop sign. Jimmy stuck his hand out the window, his first two fingers open in a V. “Peace!” he yelled out.

There was silence in the car for about five seconds and then we all burst out laughing. I laughed so hard that tears streameddown my face. Sheba screamed and hooted with laughter and Jimmy was actually wiping tears away from his eyes.

“Beanie? Her name was Mrs. Beanie?!” He laughed some more.

“Beanie Jones,” I said. “Her first name is Beanie.”

“Jesus, who names a daughter Beanie?” Sheba asked, and I wondered, Who names a daughter Sheba?

We were on my block now. “Up there,” I said. “The one with black shutters and window boxes.”

Sheba stopped the car one house before mine, at the Rileys’. This seemed safe, as my mother, like Beanie, would walk out tosee what was up if she noticed a car parked in front. The Rileys were at their place on the Chesapeake Bay most of the summer,so they wouldn’t be coming out to check on us.

“Dang, Mary Jane. That’s a damn pretty house.” Jimmy craned his neck and leaned his head out the window.

“It’s like a storybook,” Sheba said.

“So you’re a rich girl, huh?”

I’d never thought of whether we were rich or not. Everyone I knew had more or less the same, though I was certainly aware of the less fortunate. But rich? Rich seemed like people who wore long sequined gowns, smoked cigarettes from alabaster holders, and rode in limousines driven by a man in a flat, black cap. I assumed Sheba and Jimmy were rich. Weren’t all movie stars and rock stars rich?

“I dunno. My dad’s a lawyer. We don’t go on fancy vacations. I’ve never been to Hawaii.”

“Are you working for the Cones for fun or for the money?” Sheba asked.

“Well, it is super fun. But I agreed to do it at first because my best friends went to sleepaway camp and I didn’t want togo to camp and I didn’t want to stay home all day and help my mother. And I don’t love hanging out at the club.”

“Why didn’t you want to go to camp?” Jimmy asked. “I would have loved to have gone to sleepaway camp.”

“I went one summer and it wasn’t fun. There were so many people and it never got quiet and you could barely read. The onlypart I liked was when we sat around the campfire and sang.”

“Sweet Mary Jane,” Sheba said.

“Why didn’t you go to camp?” I asked Jimmy.

“We were dirt-poor. Poorer than poor.” Jimmy shook his head and smiled. “I’d never even met anyone who went to sleepaway camp.I spent my summers riding an inner tube down a rain gully—not even a goddammned river but the fucking culvert that ran throughtown. After a heavy rain, the water was black and there was trash bobbing it in like ice cubes in a glass of Coke. But itwas fun as hell. Stole cigarettes from our parents. Rode that inner tube. Tried to find girls who’d let us touch their boobs.The usual.”

My sex addict brain repeated the words touch their boobs three times, rapidly.

“I couldn’t go to camp, because I was famous,” Sheba said. “But I might have loved it too.”

“Why didn’t you want to hang around and help your mother?” Jimmy asked.

“Um, well.” I shrugged. I’d never said anything bad about my mother.

“I don’t suppose your mom smokes pot,” Jimmy said.

“My family is very patriotic,” I said, as if that would preclude pot-smoking. “We love our president.”

Jimmy and Sheba both looked at me with gentle smiles on their faces.

“We’ll talk you out of that soon enough.” Sheba leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Good night, doll.”

“Good night.” I had lifted my hand to feel the heat in the place where she’d kissed me when Jimmy leaned over and kissed myother cheek.

“Good night, sweet Mary Jane,” he said.

“G’night.” I barely had the breath to say it.

I stepped out of the car, pushed the door shut, and then walked toward my house. Sheba and Jimmy both watched out the frontwindow. I turned, waved, walked. Turned, waved, and then, finally, entered the house.

My mother was exactly where I had expected her to be. “Did Dr. Cone drive you home? I didn’t hear a car.”

Just then the station wagon cruised by our front window. It was impossible to see Sheba’s and Jimmy’s faces in the dark. “That’shim,” I said.

“How was the meatloaf?”

“I think it was perfect.”

My mother laid her needlepoint on her lap and looked at me, smiling. “That makes me very happy.”

“Maybe I’ll just use our menu for their dinners this month?” My mother worked so hard on planning our family dinners, I thought it would please her that more than just our small family would enjoy them.

“Excellent idea. Do you think she has any dietary needs? With her illness?”

“Um . . I don’t know,” I said.

“I have a feeling it’s cancer. Especially because no one knows—I tried to pull it out of a few women at the club today. Peopleare very secretive about cancer. No one wants their neighbors to know about the hardships in their home.”

“Oh. Okay.” I wondered how many hardships were going on in the houses around me—hardships I’d never before imagined.

“Did they pray before dinner?”

“Yes,” I lied. The third lie. I would start losing count if there were too many more.

“In Hebrew?”

“No. In English.”

“Hmm.” My mother nodded once, decisively. “Well, good for them.”

6

Beanie Jones was standing on the front porch holding an angel food cake on a glass platter. She hadn’t knocked. Izzy and Ihad opened the door for our daily walk to Eddie’s market and there she was, a too-big smile smeared across her face like acartoon drawing.

“Hey, Beanie!” Izzy said.

“Hello!” Beanie said.

“Hey.” I blushed. “I’m sorry about the other night. I’m sorry