“Fonzie?” Faye asked.
“That Conor guy,” Maeve said. “After Claire and I picked up Molly. He made a crack, some ‘little pixie doll thing’ and then Claire asked who he was, and he was all gross, like, ‘Who’s your friend?’ What a creep. I mean, who wears a leather jacket in weather like this?” Maeve bit her lip. “I may have mouthed off a little.”
Faye’s heart sunk with worry. Every encounter felt likely to provoke him. “Oh, no. Maeve. What did you say?”
Maeve shrugged. “I just said, ‘Mind your own business, Fonzie.’ That’s all.”
Molly scooted closer and tapped Maeve’s thigh. “And then we ran, didn’t we?”
“Yeah,” Maeve said. “Then we ran. But don’t worry, Mom. I had Molly’s hand the whole time. I didn’t let him touch her.”
“I should hope not!” The thought sent a shiver up her spine. And Maeve, with her navel showing again below the tied-up ends of her blouse. She really had no idea what men like Conor O’Kane might read into her choices. “I wish you’d listen to me and cover up more.”
Maeve rolled her eyes. “It’s fashion, Mom. All the girls do it. Besides, he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Claire. Everyone looks at Claire.”
“Boy’s a lost soul at best. Bad penny at worst,” Thomas added, his head shaking.
“Hope he stops turning up,” William said, adjusting his aluminum chair. “I told him to get on with his own life and leave us out of it. AndI, for one, would like to get on with this day. Can we agree? No more talk of him?”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Faye said.
Someone tapped the mic at the bandstand, and the topic was dropped. The grass thrummed from the bare feet of scampering children, leaves quaked with their laughter. Pop music filled the park. Relieved, Faye stretched out on the blanket, leaned back on her elbows, crossed her bare legs at her ankles. She let her head drop so the sun could blaze her neck and chest, closed her eyes, and played out the remainder of the day. Later, Maeve would take Molly to the midway for rides and games. There would be more food—corn dogs and lobster rolls, caramel corn and candied apples—until bellies ached. Finally, her whole family would reconvene on the blanket to watch what would seem like two hundred years’ worth of fireworks explode overhead. The girls would shriek with delight. Faye—while trying to keep old wounds from aching—would welcome William’s embrace and his gentle ribbing over her delicate nature, knowing they would return to a home still standing, their girls safe and sound under a solid roof with only stars overhead. America the Beautiful indeed.
Chapter Twelve
1979
Molly sat on the end of Maeve’s bed, knees drawn up but splayed, painting her toenails a gaudy purple while Maeve, her back against the headboard, thumbed through theTiger Beatshe’d bought that afternoon. She’d thought about shoving the magazine down the front of her jeans, but shoplifting was pointless without anyone to see you get away with it. It had been funny and conspiratorial to steal with friends, to run to the park afterward and lay out the loot on a picnic table, the risk worth the reward of pulling off a petty heist. But her old friends were gone. And she didn’t have new ones who she could hang out with in the same way. She missed basketball. She missed Claire. She’d bought the nail polish but told Molly she’d swiped it.Talk about pathetic! Lying about stealing to impress your little sister.She watched Molly slop polish all over her cuticles, pursed her lips, and closed the magazine. “You’d better not get that on my bedspread, or Mom will kill me. Or you.”
“I’m trying to be careful. It’s hard. Toes are so far away from hands.”
Maeve rolled her eyes. She knew Molly was fishing for attention. “Give me that.” Molly handed the bottle and brush over with a satisfied grin.
Maeve didn’t want to admit how much she needed Molly’s company. Here she was, seventeen years old, and her best friend was a third grader who didn’t know the first thing about boys or basketball or rumor mills or periods or bras or how snaky and fickle girls can be. She didn’t know what it felt like to be an outsider, how saying or doing one stupid thing could change everything. But, then again, it wasn’t just one thing that got Maeve into this situation.
“Don’t tell Mom and Dad, okay?” Maeve said, Molly’s big toe pinched between her fingers. “I’m going to a party tonight. In the woods.”
Molly bent forward, blew on the nail. “A birthday party?”
“No, not a birthday party. More like a party to blow off steam,” Maeve said.
Molly scrunched up her face. “Huh?”
“Remember that boy Oskar I was telling you about? The exchange student?”
“The German boy. With the tongue. I remember.”
Maeve had had a nonspeaking townsperson role in the spring play, and at the cast party after the final curtain, the bottle pointed at her when Oskar spun it. He’d lurched across the circle, and suddenly his tongue was down her throat.
“Yeah, so he and a bunch of other kids are going to a party. He asked if I wanted to go, too, so I said yes.” Maeve put the cap back on the nail polish and used the magazine to fan Molly’s nails.
Molly flexed her foot to admire her purple toes. “Are you going to kiss him again?”
Maeve did not want to kiss this Oskar again. But she had to admit, there was some satisfaction in it. It had all started freshman year. If only her parents had let her switch from Spanish class to German with Claire and Robin, she wouldn’t be in this situation. But no. They’d been firm to the point of ridiculous. Her dad had raised his voice—something he never did—shouting at Maeve that he would not have German spoken in his house, and that was that.And her mother had almost burst into tears! Then Claire and Robin grew closer, and Maeve was the third wheel. To make matters worse, Robin decided to go out for basketball, and before Maeve knew it, Robin and Claire were both starters, and Maeve was a reliable benchwarmer. No, she didn’t want to kiss Oskar. But she did want to shut up that stupid, pimply dullard Kim who peeked over Maeve’s shoulder in class one day and saw Maeve had doodled Claire’s name in bubble letters. It wasn’t framed in a heart or anything. It was nothing. A thing between friends. But loud enough to make sure someone else would hear, Kim said, “Oooh! Maeve has a crush on Claire!” And somehow, somehow, it had stuck. No matter what Maeve did or said, no matter how hard she tried to prove otherwise, she knew that people still snickered about her, and she’d let it get under her skin and it had made her act weird around Claire, which made Claire act weird around her. Then, beginning of junior year, Maeve and Claire were assigned to the same homeroom, and some random boy said, “Look, Claire. There’s your girlfriend!” Claire told the kid to go fuck himself, which made Maeve’s heart leap until Claire turned to Robin, made a gagging motion, and said, “Gross,” which pulverized Maeve’s hopeful heart. Weeks later, at tryouts, the varsity roster was filled until Maeve was the only junior left standing. “Looks like one more year of JV for you,” the coach said. In front of everyone—Claire, Robin, her teammates, even the hotshot new girl from Canada, Wendy Walker—Maeve told the coach he could stick JV and had walked out of the gymnasium, away from basketball and the only friends she had. If it hadn’t been for the theater kids, she wouldn’t have any social life at all. And the German boy was a theater kid. Did she want to kiss Oskar? No, she absolutely did not. But she would. To get back at her parents. To prove something to Claire. To clear her name. Sure, she’d kiss him again.
Maeve smacked Molly’s foot playfully. “Wouldn’t you like to know ...” she said. “Now get out of here. I have to change and comeup with a story for Mom and Dad. And Pix, seriously, you have to promise. You can’t tell.”
“I know!” Molly said. She crossed her heart with anX, locked her lips with an imaginary key, then snatched the nail polish off Maeve’s side table.
