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

room. It hit the long junk-coveredtable and then fell silently to the floor. The four of us assembled in front of the coffee table, which was covered with books,magazines, and a package of Fig Newton cookies that looked like it had been ripped open by a wolf. Beside the Fig Newtons,on top of a teetering pile of paperbacks, stood a lumpy papier-mâché lighthouse. It rose about three feet high and curvedto the right.

“That’s beautiful,” I said.

“Is it a lighthouse?” Mrs. Cone leaned to one side to get a better look.

“Yes! On the Chesapeake Bay!” Izzy had been at a sailing-and-craft camp down at the Inner Harbor. Today was her last day.Mrs. Cone had mentioned the camp in our introductory phone call. She described it as “a bunch of bratty private school kidswho think nothing of excluding Izzy from every game.”

“It’s magnificent,” Mrs. Cone finally said. She picked up the lighthouse and went to the fireplace. On the mantel were morebooks, wineglasses, bongos that appeared to be made of ceramic and animal hide, and what I thought was a ukulele but was maybesome other kind of stringed instrument. She set the lighthouse on top of the books.

“Perfect,” Dr. Cone said.

“Sort of looks like a giant dildo.” Mrs. Cone said this quietly, maybe so Izzy couldn’t hear. I had no idea what a dildo was.I glanced at Dr. Cone. He seemed to be holding in a laugh.

“I love it!” Izzy took my hand and pulled me back upstairs. Maybe her instinct was right and I was like a visitor from Siberia.I had never met anyone like Dr. and Mrs. Cone. And I’d never been in a house where every space was crammed with things tolook at or think about (could it be that all messes weren’t evil and didn’t need to be banished with such efficiency?). I’dfelt instantaneous affection for Izzy and was happy that I was to be her nanny. But I was happy for other things too: thatI’d be doing something I’d never done before, that my days would be spent in a world that was so different to me that I couldfeel a sheen of anticipation on my skin. Already, I didn’t want the summer to end.

2

On my first full day at the Cones’, I dressed in my red terry-cloth shorts and the rainbow-striped top I’d picked out as partof my new summer wardrobe. My mother thought the shorts were too short, but we couldn’t find anything longer at Hutzler’sdowntown, at least not in the juniors section. Mom told me to put my dirty-blond hair in a ponytail. “You need to be professional.It’s a doctor’s home,” she said.

I pulled my hair back, put on my flip-flops, and walked through the neighborhood toward the Cones’ house. It was sunny andquiet out. I saw a few men in suits walking to their cars, about to drive to work. I only saw one woman: our new neighbor.My mother and I had driven by as the movers had been unloading the furniture, and my mother slowed the car to catch a glimpseof a chintz sofa being carried off the truck. “A bit too blue,” she had said, once the couch was out of sight.

The new neighbor was in her gardening capris and a checked shirt. In her blond hair was the thin triangle of a blue scarf. She was on her knees, leaning over a hole she’d just dug in the dirt outline of the lawn. Beside her was a wooden crate full of flowers.

She sat up straight and shielded her eyes as I approached. “Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning.” I slowed but didn’t stop, even though I really wanted to. This woman had a face out of a Hitchcock film. Shewas pretty. Clean-looking. Did she have kids? Was she married? Had she grown up in town? Had she attended the all-girls RolandPark Country School, where I was a student?

Before I crossed to the next block, I looked back at the woman. Her rump was in the air, her hands were deep in the dirt,and the scarf on her head flapped like a bird about to take off. She sat up quickly, caught me watching, and waved. I wavedback, embarrassed, and then hurried away.

Mrs. Cone opened the door for me, smiling and holding a cup of coffee. As she closed the door behind us, she splashed coffeeon the floor of the foyer. She was wearing a nightgown that came to her knees and was unbuttoned down the front, revealingjust about everything. I tried not to look.

“They’re in the kitchen—go on in.” She turned and trotted up the stairs, ignoring the spill.

“Mary Jane?!” Izzy shouted. “We’re in the kitchen!”

Dr. Cone shouted, as if Izzy hadn’t, “We’re in the kitchen!”

“IN THE KITCHEN!” Izzy repeated.

“Coming.” I couldn’t bring myself to shout, so I announced myself again after I’d passed out of the living room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen. “I’m here.”

Dr. Cone was wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. Izzy was wearing pink pajama pants and no shirt. Her taut belly sweetlypopped out.

“I’m coloring!” Izzy announced.

“I love coloring.” I scooted in next to her on the blue-cushioned banquette. The window behind the kitchen table looked outinto the backyard and toward the garage. There was a lamp on in the garage; it appeared to be sitting on a surface—a tableor a desk—at the window.

Dr. Cone noticed me looking. He pointed past me and Izzy. “That’s my office.”

“The garage?” I imagined a nurse inside, hospital beds, IV bags full of blood, ambulances pulling into the alleyway.

“Well, it was a garage once. A barn before that.”

“Ours, too.” The neighborhood had been built about eighty years ago by one of the Olmsted brothers who’d designed CentralPark in New York City. It was full of winding roads, already mature trees, and a horse barn behind every house. I loved thatour neighborhood had a connection to New York City. I liked to imagine myself in New York City, walking beside all those toweringbuildings and