“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 to see 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 to go 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 only part 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 through town. After a heavy rain, the water was black and there was trash bobbing it in like ice cubes in a glass of Coke. But it was 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 my other 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 front window. 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’s him,” 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. People are 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 I had opened the door for our daily walk to Eddie’s market and there she was, a too-big smile smeared across her face like a cartoon drawing.
“Hey, Beanie!” Izzy said.
“Hello!” Beanie said.
“Hey.” I blushed. “I’m sorry about the other night. I’m sorry we were parked in front of your house.” It was Thursday and I hadn’t seen Beanie since Monday night, when Sheba and Jimmy had driven me home. Driving me home had become a ritual, one that began with Sheba taking off and Jimmy and me jumping into the moving car. We called it “Doing a Starsky and Hutch.” Sheba critiqued our performance each time. Mary Jane, you should have jumped in deeper! What if I had been going faster? You would have ended up under the back wheels! I took Sheba’s critiques seriously, and put real effort into being a better car-jumper.
We took a different street to avoid Beanie Jones. And we only parked in front of houses whose owners I knew were out of town. Jimmy always lit a joint, and then the three of us sang church songs, with Sheba on melody and Jimmy and me harmonizing—him low and me high. Turns out that Sheba and Jimmy had both been in their church choirs, Sheba because she liked it, Jimmy because his grandmother forced him to. (Of his grandmother, Jimmy had said, “She was a warty old hag who loved Marlboros and Old Crow bourbon almost as much as she loved Jesus.”)
“No need to apologize,” Beanie said. And then she lowered her voice to a whisper and said, “But tell me. That was Sheba and Jimmy, wasn’t it?”
Izzy looked up at Beanie with huge, blinking eyes. “NOPE!”
“Uh, it was just some people who looked like them. Old friends of the Cones. They’re gone now.” The words came out so smoothly that I almost wanted to laugh. The more I lied, the easier it was. And instead of feeling guilty about my lies, I was starting to feel guilty that I didn’t feel so guilty.
“Mary Jane.” Izzy tugged my hand. When I looked at her, she quietly said, “Secret.”
Beanie’s eyes ticked like a cat clock, back and forth. “Huh. Amazing resemblance. Why don’t I bring this cake in? Mr. Jones suddenly decided he was watching his ‘girlish figure,’ and I thought, with you here all summer, there were enough people in the house to need an angel food cake.”
“Oh, I’ll put it inside for you.” I took the cake and turned to go. Izzy followed me, and Beanie followed her. There was no one to see; Jimmy and Dr. Cone were in Dr. Cone’s office, and Sheba and Mrs. Cone had gone to the Eastern Shore for the day. They both wore wigs this time, long and blond, like Swedish sisters. Still, I felt a bolt of panic with Beanie in the house.
I put the cake on the kitchen table, then turned to Bean
ie. “Thank you so much.” I wasn’t sure what to do. How to be good, polite, and kind while still getting Beanie out of here?
“Is Bonnie home?”
“No, she’s gone.”
“And my dad’s in his office with a patience,” Izzy offered.
“A patient,” I said. “We’re on our way to Eddie’s.”
“Oh, I can drive you!” Beanie held up her car keys.
“Thank you so much,” I said. “But we need the walk.”
“We sing,” Izzy said. “And we talk about the witch. And we look at things. Sometimes we play with toys that kids leave out front. Oh, and we buy Popsicles.”
“How nice,” Beanie said, making no effort to leave.
“Thank you again for the cake.” My voice sounded airy and strange. I took Izzy’s hand and walked toward the hall, hoping Beanie would follow. Eventually she did.
“Maybe I’ll stop in again later. I’d really like to meet Bonnie,” Beanie said, once we were out the door and on the sidewalk. She took a few steps toward her car, which was white and shiny.
“She’ll be out all day,” I said. “But I’ll tell her you came by.” I smiled real big; my cheeks hurt and my palm started sweating against Izzy’s.
“Bye, Beanie!” Izzy waved with her free hand and tugged me down the sidewalk. My heart was still pounding as Beanie drove by us in the car.
“Let’s cut over,” I said, and we took the parallel street early to avoid Beanie Jones.
“That was scary,” Izzy said.
“Yup. A close call.”
“Can we have that cake for dessert tonight?”
“We sure can. We could add sliced strawberries and whipped cream.”
“Hurrah!” Izzy lifted a tiny fist.
We walked in silence for a minute until we came upon a skateboard sitting alone on a lawn.
“Can I try it?” Izzy asked.
I looked up at the house. No one on the porch. No one in the windows. “Okay, but I have to hold your hands.”
Izzy picked up the skateboard and placed it on the sidewalk. She put one flip-flopped foot on it. I took both of her hands and then she stepped her other foot on. I pushed her up the sidewalk to the edge of the property, then turned around, so she was backward and I was forward, and pushed her the other way.
We went back and forth like this several times, until my body, mind, and heart calmed. Beanie was gone. Everyone was safe. We’d eat the cake after dinner and then I’d return the glass plate on the way home. I’d have to run up to the porch and leave it so Sheba and Jimmy wouldn’t be spotted. But I could do that. And Sheba and Jimmy seemed to like the sneaking around, as if it made their lives in Baltimore just a little more thrilling.
Each time we shopped at Eddie’s, Izzy liked to find the ratio of employees to customers. She missed people, but I didn’t point them out. And she often lost count, so I’d make up a number and give it to her. It was as inexact as pulling random numbers from a sack. The ratio that Izzy liked to talk about the most, however, was that of the witch. With Sheba now on our team, that remained three to one.
That day, we did our usual shopping. Izzy knew what to grab: Screaming Yellow Zonkers, Popsicles, and Slim Jims, which Jimmy and Mrs. Cone were eating with equal fervor, alternating a salty bite of Slim Jim with a sweet bite of something else. Yesterday I had tried it with candy orange wedges. There was something explosively wonderful about tasting salty, grainy meat stuff followed by chewy, gelatinous sugar stuff.
For dinner, I had a list of ingredients copied from one of my mother’s index cards. Tonight was going to be the most complicated meal yet. Chicken breasts roasted in orange sauce. My mother went over it with me in the morning, giving me tips on how to know when the chicken was properly cooked, and how to spoon the sauce over every few minutes to keep the breasts moist. The more she told me, the more nervous I got. Mom must have seen this on my face, because she stopped her instructions and said, “Mary Jane, now is not the time to lose confidence. There is an ill mother in that house and a hardworking doctor who needs to be fed.” She had stared at me until I nodded, and then she gave me even more directions.
“How many breasts do you think Jimmy will eat?” I asked Izzy. We were standing at the butcher counter. The butcher, whose long rectangular head reminded me of a cow’s, waited patiently.
“Seven?” Izzy said.
“You think Jimmy alone would eat seven?”
“Jimmy a football player?” the butcher asked.
“Just a man.”
“Two,” the butcher said. “Prepare two breasts for each man, one for each woman, and maybe a half for half-pint there.” He winked at Izzy.
“Okay, seven breasts.” I figured Izzy and I would split one if the men really did have two each. And I wasn’t sure Sheba really would eat a whole breast anyway. I noticed that she sat down and ate at every meal, just like everyone else, but she left half of everything on her plate. It didn’t matter what it was, or how much she claimed to love it; only half went in her mouth. Usually, when everyone appeared to be finished, Jimmy—though once it was Dr. Cone—would reach over and take her uneaten portion.
Mrs. Cone had noticed how Sheba ate as well. The past couple of dinners, she had tried to leave half of her meal on her plate. But with little success, as just as someone—Dr. Cone, usually—made a play for her food, she would come back to it with a few quick stabs. And last night, when we were clearing the table, I found Mrs. Cone in the kitchen, using her hands to shove down the half piece of lasagna that she had left on her plate. I’d never really thought about food, or how much to eat or not to eat, until these meals with the Cones. In my own house, you ate everything you took. If you weren’t going to eat a whole chicken breast, then you sure as heck didn’t put a whole chicken breast on your plate.
In addition to eating, or trying to eat, like Sheba, Mrs. Cone had been dressing like Sheba too. They were about the same height, but Sheba was more of a curvy line while Mrs. Cone wasn’t a line at all. Her hips jutted out, her breasts jutted out, and lately they all had been jutting with greater enthusiasm as she wore tight pants, jumpsuits, and clingy maxi dresses. They were clothes that demanded you look at her, something that was virtually impossible when Sheba was nearby. Sheba sparkled. My eyes trailed her from room to room, as if she were a rocket sailing across a night sky. Mrs. Cone, in her snazzy outfits, was the contrail from that rocket, her breasts, behind, and flaming red hair streaking by in Sheba’s wake.
Sheba and Mrs. Cone came home a few minutes before the chicken was ready. They both oohed and aahed over the way the house smelled and I could see that this made Izzy proud. I prayed the chicken would taste as good as it smelled.
Sheba helped Izzy set the table while Mrs. Cone stood in the kitchen with me as I finished preparing the rice and the string beans I had steaming on the stovetop. She leaned over to see exactly what I was doing when I spooned sauce over the chicken, and when I sliced off a hunk of butter and melted it into the beans.
“How do you know how to do this?” The long locks of Mrs. Cone’s blond wig fell over her shoulder. She pushed them back with the side of her dangling hand, the same way Sheba pushed her long hair out of her face. It was a gesture I had tried to copy many times when I watched Sheba push her hair away during the opening monologue of her variety show. In person, she didn’t do it as often as I’d seen her do it on the show. I wondered if it was a nervous habit.
“I help my mother with dinner every night.” I wanted to ask how she didn’t know how to do this, but I felt that it might be rude.
“I’ve never cooked,” Mrs. Cone said.
“Your mother didn’t teach you?” I spooned the rice into a serving bowl, then melted a pat of butter on top and garnished it with parsley.
“Oh, she tried, but I just wasn’t interested. I was boy crazy, and I loved rock and roll. There wasn’t time to care about things like cooking.” She laughed. “Nothing’s changed!”
I blushed. It was odd to think of Mr
s. Cone as boy crazy. She was married! “But you ended up with a doctor, not a rock star.”
“Richard was in a band in college—he was at Johns Hopkins and I was at Goucher. When he started medical school, he quit the band and I quit school to marry him.”
“Were you disappointed that he didn’t stay in the band?”
“Not as much as my parents.” Mrs. Cone pulled a string bean from the pan and bit off half.
“They wanted you to marry a rock star?”
“No, but they didn’t want me to marry Richard. Medical school or not.” She shrugged.
“Why not?” I needed to take out the chicken, but this news seemed important and I didn’t want to turn away.
“Because he’s a Jew!” Mrs. Cone laughed.
I tried to laugh with her, but I didn’t understand why that was funny. I busied myself by putting on the oven mitts. Then I opened the oven and took out the chicken. “So you’re not Jewish?”
“No way. We were Presbyterian. I grew up in Oklahoma.”
“Oh. Wow.” Oklahoma seemed exotic. I’d never met anyone from Oklahoma. And what about a Presbyterian marrying a Jewish person? Would my parents think a half-Jewish family was easier to take than a whole Jewish family? Did Mrs. Cone’s parents, like mine, think Jewish people had a different physiognomy? Dr. and Mrs. Cone seemed more like each other than my parents. If I really thought about it, it was my parents who appeared to be different breeds (my mother the talker, the doer; my father the silent newspaper reader). And the Cones seemed happy and in sync. They were different versions of the same model.
“Yup, wow.” Mrs. Cone smiled at me.
“We go to Roland Park Presbyterian. I’m Presbyterian.”
“I know. Sheba told me. She thinks we all should go to your service on Sunday.”
“That would be so fun!” I smiled, but Mrs. Cone just gritted her teeth. Like maybe it would be painful for her to go. “I mean, if you want.”
“I try to avoid church. But if Sheba really wants to go . . . we’ll see.” She shrugged again.
I tried to imagine Sheba and Mrs. Cone in their long blond wigs in my church. It seemed impossible. No one looked like that at Roland Park Presbyterian. I took down the serving platter Izzy and I had washed a few days ago when we cleaned out some kitchen cupboards, and then moved the chicken from the pan to the platter, placing each piece with the bronzed meaty side up. The orange slices were hot, but I could still lift them from the pan with the edges of my fingers so I could arrange them artfully. I thought it looked like something out of Sunset magazine, and Mrs. Cone might have agreed because she stared down at the platter and looked happy again.
Mary Jane Page 9
