“What about you?”
“I was at work…at the bowling alley on East Grand. We didn’t hear anything but we felt it. I thought it was an earthquake.”
“We don’t have earthquakes in New Jersey, do we?” Right away she regretted asking such a stupid question.
He shrugged. “There’s a first for everything.”
There’s a first for everything, she repeated silently, and he was a first for her.
When they got to her house he asked if her number was listed.
“Yes. N. Ammerman. That’s my mother. Or I can give it to you now.”
“I don’t have a pen.”
“I do.” She dug a leaky pen out of her bag and handed it to him. He stuck the top in his mouth, holding it between his teeth, the way he had with the cigarette. As she recited her number he wrote it down on his arm, just above his wrist. Miri had never seen anyone do that, would never have thought of doing it herself.
He kissed her goodnight, touching her face. “Miri Ammerman,” he whispered.
For the first time her name sounded musical. It sounded like a love song. What did it mean that he said her name that way? What did it mean that he touched her face? Did it mean he was in love with her the way she was with him?
Mason
Phil was the one who told him if he wanted to see her again to go to the dance at the Jewish Y, that she’d probably be there. It didn’t cost anything to get in, he said. And you didn’t have to be Jewish. Nobody asked. Nobody cared. He said he and Steve wouldn’t be there. They’d been invited to a party given by Phil’s cousin Kathy Stein, in Perth Amboy. Kathy was a freshman at Syracuse, and aside from the two of them, everyone at the party would be older, would already be at college. It wasn’t necessary for Phil to make excuses about why Mason wasn’t invited. But Phil was a decent guy.
There was a holiday dance at the YMCA that night, too, and Mason planned on going until Phil told him about the girl from the Osners’ party. Miri. That was her name. And as long as Steve wouldn’t be there to get all hot under the collar about him dancing with his sister’s friend, why not go?
At the YMCA he’d have known all the girls, most of them, anyway. And they’d know him, dance with him, laugh with him, but none of them would feel the way Miri had in his arms. He couldn’t explain it. He half hoped she wouldn’t be there tonight. Because he sensed he was just looking for trouble. She was young. He had to be careful. Above the neck only. And only if she wanted him to kiss her. Only then.
And there she was, in that red dress, and her mother’s shoes making her three inches taller, and when it came to kissing, it turned out she was more than willing.
Miri
Mason wasn’t a secret love for long. During the ten days of vacation, she saw him whenever he wasn’t working. She was allowed to stay out until 10 p.m. as long as Rusty knew exactly where she was—a get-together at Robo’s house or Eleanor’s, or at the movies with Suzanne and Natalie and the other kids. Miri had to introduce him to Rusty—that was the deal—then to Uncle Henry and finally, to Irene, who’d had a conniption fit when she first heard his name, but not, thank goodness, in front of him.
“For god’s sake,” Rusty said to Irene later. “She’s not getting married. She’s in ninth grade.”
“Be careful,” Irene warned Miri. “All boys want the same thing.”
So do girls, Miri thought. But she was never going to make the mistake her mother did. She wouldn’t go all the way until she was twenty-three or married, whichever came first. And they’d use protection. A funny little rubber circle called a diaphragm that you somehow had to shove up there, like Corinne used—Natalie had shown it to her in its circular container. “I’m not sure how well it works,” Natalie said, “because I think Fern was a mistake. Or maybe my mother got it after Fern was born.”
Last year Robo had snitched one of her father’s rubbers from under his shirts in his dresser drawer. They’d stretched it over a cucumber. “Do they get that big?” Suzanne asked. “Because if they do, I’m never doing it.”
“Maybe we should have used a carrot,” Robo said, and they all laughed.
Now Irene told her, “Be a good girl. Promise me you’ll be a good girl.”
“I am a good girl,” Miri said. “So stop worrying.”
Rusty didn’t say anything.
Mason
If he wanted to see her he had to meet her mother. And not just her mother but her uncle, maybe to prove there was a man around the house, and her grandmother, who looked like she’d swallowed a lemon when Miri introduced him and she’d heard his name. “McKittrick?” she’d said, like she’d never heard it before.