JULIE WAS STANDING in the hallway outside the common room when Penelope walked in. Last year, Julie had been Ms. Matthews; this year she said to call her Julie. She taught English and coached the debate team, a dismal group that always came in last place. But Penelope liked the way Julie wore her hair cut short and shirts she embroidered herself, and an old pair of jeans with a red felt heart sewn on the butt.
“You okay?” Julie asked, frowning. Her hair was rust-colored, and so were her eyebrows and her freckles, which made her look a bit disconcerting.
“You know.” Penelope shrugged. “Mothers.”
And LSD trips, she added to herself. And flying out windows. And death. She forced a grin but it came out more like a grimace.
“Ah!” Julie said. She cocked her head toward the door to her suite. “Want to sit and talk a bit?”
Relieved, Penelope nodded and followed her inside. The red heart on the back of her jeans seemed to smile at her. Penelope loved Julie’s suite, even though she wasn’t one of the girls who visited here often. Last year, Pamela Grundy had practically lived in here. This year, August Frank could almost always be found here. There were rumors about them, Pamela and now August, that they were lesbians. And so was Julie. But Penelope thought it was dumb to think every woman with short hair was a dyke.
The suite was small, just two rooms. The bedroom lay behind a closed door; the sitting room and kitchen were separated by a counter with two stools at it. According to August, Julie had salvaged those stools from an old diner in Worcester. The seats were aqua vinyl. And Julie’s plates and bowls were all pink and orange and baby-blue, also rescued from somewhere. That’s what she does, August said. She rescues things. August never went down to the river, giving more evidence to her rumored lesbianism.
“So,” Julie said, “mothers.”
She took out two metal cups, one green and one gold, opened a jug of red wine, and poured some in each glass. “Don’t tell,” Julie said, winking. “At Rosemary we relied on our house mother to buy all of our alcohol.”
Penelope pretended not to be surprised. The wine tasted like grape juice.
“Of course,” Julie said, “we liked vodka and orange juice. What is that called? A screwdriver, I think? We carried it around and no one knew the difference.” She smiled to herself.
“My mother’s on a quest,” Penelope said. “She wants to find her real mother. Like, what’s a real mother anyway? She was adopted,” she added.
“So was I,” Julie said. “But I don’t want to meet the woman who gave me away. I mean, honestly. Fuck her. Right?”
Penelope sipped her wine. It was like Julie wanted to shock her. Suddenly, Penelope wanted to be in her own room listening to her new Cat Stevens album. But Julie was pouring them each more wine.
“Tell me,” Julie said, “what do you girls do down at the river?”
When Penelope choked on the wine, Julie laughed. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell. Is it drinking?”
Penelope shook her head. She loved that song, “Wild World,” and she wanted to play it over and over until it became part of her. That’s what she did when she liked a song.
“Pot, then?” Julie asked.
“I . . . I don’t know,” Penelope said, and Julie laughed again.
“I never liked it myself, but hey,” Julie said. “And I suppose Maxwell boys are there too.”
The album was called Tea for the Tillerman. Penelope wondered what a tillerman was. Julie probably knew. Julie had been the one to tell her who Penelope was in Greek mythology, a woman who waited for, like, twenty years for a man to return for her. She just sat there knitting or something. Leave it to her mother to give her such a stupid name.
“Just be careful,” Julie was saying.
Penelope stood up, lightheaded from the two glasses of wine.
“Don’t want anyone coming down to tell me they’re preggers,” Julie said.
Deborah’s face came to Penelope’s mind. At the tea, she had looked over at Penelope solemnly and ran her finger across her throat. Preggers.
“Well,” Penelope said, “thanks for the talk and stuff.”
Julie touched her arm so lightly it felt like a feather had landed there. “Do you like the boys?” she asked. “Do you like kissing them?”
Her fingers stayed there, hardly touching. Penelope thought of butterflies, light things. “I guess so,” she said.
“At Rosemary we kissed each other,” Julie said. “To practice, you know. We didn’t mean anything by it. We weren’t dykes or anything. No, it was more like the Native Americans. When a boy came of age, his mother taught him what to do. How to please a woman.”