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

it looked like wet paint. I thought about the day Jimmy, Izzy, and I had drunkmilk straight from the carton.

When I returned the milk to the refrigerator, my mother was standing by the stove staring at me. I could see that her bottomlip was quivering.

“Mom,” I said, and now my lip was quivering.

“I just don’t understand why you lied to us.” A tear ran down my mother’s face. My stomach lurched. My body stilled. I wasn’tsure what to do.

“Um . . .” My chest rose and fell as I tried to breathe. “I really wanted to work with the Cones. I loved the job and I knew you wouldn’t let me if—”

“Exactly, Mary Jane. You knew you shouldn’t be in a house like that.”

“No, Mom. I knew you wouldn’t approve of it. But you were wrong. They’re wonderful people. It was the best summer of my life.”

My mother stared at me and I stared back. We both were breathing hard, as if our lungs were twinned bellows. I had never beforetold her she was wrong about anything. And until this summer, I had never thought she was wrong about anything.

“Go tell your father lunch is ready.” My mother wiped the tear away and re-formed her face into a placid downturn. She satat the table and I went to fetch my dad.

14

My home jail sentence was to continue, but with fewer restrictions, until school started. I could now leave the house withmy mother, though I still couldn’t see the Kellogg twins, who had returned from camp. I was surprised by how little I wasupset about not seeing them. I didn’t feel lonely; I was busy in my head—thinking, remembering, daydreaming. Working out whoI had become after spending so much time with Sheba, Jimmy, and the Cones. I figured I’d find my way back to the twins soonenough.

My mother and I did all the usual things: shopping at Eddie’s, having lunch and tea at the Elkridge Club, preparing meals,working in the garden, and going to church on Sunday. After our conversation in the kitchen, my mother no longer seemed angry.She filled the air between us with directions, commentary, and general chatter about the house, the garden, the meals, theneighborhood, and the neighbors.

It wasn’t until the final two days of August, which I knew were Jimmy and Sheba’s last, that I considered sneaking down to the Cones’ only so I could say goodbye. I was grieving the fact that this wonderful summer was behind me, would never happen again, and the only souvenirs I had were the thoughts in my head. The clothes and records Jimmy and Sheba had bought me, along wth the Polaroid I’d kept, were still at the Cone house. By now they were likely buried under other clothes, records, dishes, dishrags, shoes, boxes, and junk mail.

Over those two days, I was desperate for an accidental meeting with someone from the Cone house. I scanned the aisles at Eddie’s,looked out over the pews at church, and kept my eyes on the sidewalks as we cruised down the roads of Roland Park. My motherhadn’t driven past the Cone house since the failed kidnapping. She took parallel streets instead.

When it was time for back-to-school shopping, I knew there was no hope of getting a goodbye moment with Jimmy and Sheba. Izzyseemed just as out of reach, as I assumed Mrs. Cone either didn’t do back-to-school shopping or did it beyond the bounds ofthe northern Baltimore corridor that roped in my family. Still, I searched the shops as we entered, even our traditional finalstop, Van Dyke & Bacon, where my school shoes had been purchased each year since kindergarten. My mother was convinced thatbecause I wore flip-flops, which had no restraint and exposed my feet to direct doses of vitamin D, my feet expanded a bitevery day in the summer. She liked to wait until this sunshine-growth period was mostly over before we purchased my regulationschool shoes (black-and-white saddle shoes or brown oxfords with only three grommets on each side).

At Van Dyke & Bacon there were only shoes, salesmen, and mothers and kids similar to my mother and me. I flopped down onto the red leather bench seat with a weighted sadness over the fact that my summer was now absolutely, and entirely, over.

My mother grabbed a salesman and brought him to me. He wore a green apron and had a mustache that made him look like a walrus.In his hand was the flat silver foot measure.

“Right foot,” he said, laying the measure on the floor before me.

I kicked off my flip-flop and stood on the cold metal runway. The salesman outlined my foot with the sliding fins. “Uh-huh,”he said. I stepped off and he flipped the plank around and waited for my left foot. “Uh-huh,” he said again as he measured.

“She’s grown this summer,” my mother said. “Did you see how her toes hung off the edge of the flip-flop?”

“I didn’t notice.” He patted the red leather bench seat. “Sit.”

I sat down and he slipped a small nylon sock on each of my feet. His hands were almost as cool as the measuring plank.

“It’s the sun,” Mom said. “She started out with her toes way back there.” She picked up a flip-flop and put her finger inthe spot where she imagined my toes had been at the beginning of summer. I couldn’t remember if she was right.

“Uh-huh.” The salesman wasn’t interested. “Roland Park Country School, right?” he asked me.

“Yes,” my mother said, and he walked away. Each private school had their own shoe requirements. As far as I’d seen, Van Dyke & Bacon was the only shoe store in town. Though I wondered if, like Night Train Records, there were amazing, hip, fun shoe stores in Baltimore that my mother would never enter.

“Let’s get you new church shoes too,” my mother said. “You could wear them to the homecoming dance as well.”

“Um, can we get those later?” I asked. My trips to Van Dyke & Bacon in