“I bet my uncle killed a shitload of ’em when he was in ’Nam,” Buddy boasted. He kicked the curb with the toe of his sneaker. “And now they’re in our own backyard. My mom said a whole boatful of them came over and are staying up the road with some nuns.”
In the sunlight, Clayton’s eyes looked eerily transparent, as if the blue color had been drained liked pool water, leaving them nearly white. Buddy looked up at him in quiet awe. Everything about him appeared dangerous and cool: the dungarees that hung below his hips, the white T-shirt with the small tear at the hem, and the Puma sneakers. Even his Texas accent made him sound tough. As B?o pedaled faster away from them, Buddy hung on to his friend’s every word.
CHAPTER 61
ON THE KITCHEN TABLE OF THEGOLDENS’HOUSE, A SINGLEsheet of yellow paper announced the annual fundraising dance at the high school.
Katie lifted the paper and smiled. Last year, she’d gone on her mother’s insistence and found herself standing alone awkwardly with her friend Millie, who was nice enough but wasn’t much of a spark plug of fun. But just yesterday, Linda Atkinson, the most popular girl in her grade—who she’d managed to become friendly with at the beach club due to their overlapping lifeguard shifts—asked her if she was planning to go.
“I’m not sure,” Katie answered, trying to sound cool. “Last year, it was a bit of a drag.”
Linda rolled her eyes and blew a small pink bubble with her chewing gum, before snapping it back like a salamander catching a fly. “I know, right? But my mom’s making me go and help her sell cupcakes as part of my punishment for coming back late from my curfew last week.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” Linda glanced at her wrist. “We have to be back on our shift in ten minutes. But think about coming, we could sell the cupcakes together then maybe go out for ice cream or whatever afterward.” She stood up and stretched her long tan arms above her head and adjusted her blond ponytail. “Please try to come, Katie. It’d be so much better if I had a friend there.”
Friend.Just the sound of being called Linda’s friend was thrilling to her. She took the yellow paper and tacked it to the family’s bulletinboard before writing the wordDanceon the wall calendar just as Grace came into the kitchen.
“What’s that, honey?”
Katie swung around and smiled at her mother. “The PTA dance. Linda Atkinson asked if I wanted to sell cupcakes with her there. Her mother’s baking them for the fundraiser.”
“Shelby Atkinson’s daughter? I didn’t know you’ve become friendly with her.” Grace was honestly a bit surprised, considering the girl had always rebuffed Kate’s birthday invitations back when they were in elementary school. And Grace recalled how once Linda said no, an avalanche of other girls suddenly responded saying they couldn’t attend either.
“Well, since we started lifeguarding, we’ve become friends,” Katie said.
“Oh, that’s a new development.…” Grace responded, trying to contain her suspicions. She had an old-world sensibility bred into her which made her believe Linda’s true nature had showed at a young age.
“It’s just she wasn’t that kind to you when you were back in—”
“Mom!” Katie cut her mother off. “That was ages ago, and why can’t you just be happy she asked me to go with her?”
Grace’s head ached. No one had told her parenting a teenager could be this relentless. She bit her tongue, trying to stop herself from saying things that she knew would only spiral into another fight with her eldest daughter. Didn’t Katie understand she only wanted what was best for her? That she didn’t want her to have her feelings hurt. She could almost anticipate the scene at the dance with Linda asking Katie to hang out with her until someone better and more socially advantageous came along.
What was it about American motherhood that seemed so paradoxically different from her own experience of being a daughter back home in Ireland? She would never have dared to speak back to hermother, even though there were times—many times—she had wanted to say something about a particular unfairness or frustration but held her tongue out of respect. Her childhood was filled with swallowed words and buried emotion. But here in America, children filled the air with their every thought and feeling. The space between her and Katie often felt so thick, she could barely breathe.
But before she could explain herself to her daughter, Katie had stormed out of the kitchen. Grace heard her daughter’s feet stomping loudly on the stairwell as she headed toward her room. The door slammed and Grace looked at the clock. It wasn’t even 10:00 a.m. yet, but she already felt weary.
As much as she longed for the laziness of summer break, she now craved school starting and the structure it brought with it.
Minutes later, when Molly stumbled into the kitchen in her pajamas, her face still drowsy with sleep, Grace tried to think of something that would make both of them happy.
“How about we go down to the drugstore for some new notebooks and pencils for school?” she suggested while pouring milk into a bowl of cornflakes.
“I need a new backpack too.”
“Well, we can take a drive down to the Foxton Mall for that, and maybe some new shoes too …”
Molly perked up. “No saddle shoes this year, Mom, okay? I want penny loafers.”
These were requests that were easy to fulfill. Grace stood in the kitchen and poured herself a mug of coffee, while upstairs she could still hear Katie’s angry footsteps and the slamming of her bedroom drawers.
Bellegrove High School, with its brick facade and flat roof, was a testament to 1960s functional architecture. Gone were the neoclassical pillars that flanked many of the neighboring towns’ schools that werebuilt in the 1930s or ’40s. Through the heavy doors, past the rows of metal lockers, and down the long corridor was the school gymnasium, where the PTA dance would be held. Even after the long summer break, the scent of school lunches and teammate perspiration still clung to walls. Katie sprayed a little perfume on her wrist, hoping to fill her nostrils with something more delicate than the scent of hamburger and gym socks, before she headed out to the dance.
Grace had volunteered to help with decorations earlier that afternoon and had come home happy to report that the gym had been transformed into a Hawaiian oasis, replete with huge paper flowers made of colorful streamers and fake tiki torches that someone had made from old wrapping paper tubing.
Katie was just relieved her mother’s volunteer work had ended earlier that afternoon. There was nothing she wanted less than having her mother hover around her while she and Linda sold the cupcakes.
