‘So you moved here in the winter, right?’ I asked her. ‘After your parents…you know?’
Her eyes flashed. ‘You have a problem with that?’
‘I was just asking.’
‘I heard stuff about you, too.’ Her face was pinched. ‘Your mom left you guys. Probably because your dad’s a basket case, huh? Apparently he has this big reputation here of being, like, mentally unstable, even when he was younger.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said quickly.
‘How do you know?’ She put her feet up on the porch’s railing. ‘That’s pretty despicable. A woman leaving her husband. Her children.’ She said it like she was sitting behind the bench on The People’s Court. ‘Did she leave because your Dad’s nuts?’
‘No!’ I cried.
‘Do you think she was having an affair?’
‘No!’
She smiled. ‘Everyone knows that people only leave marriages when they’ve found something better.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘So you’re not angry? She left you before Christmas! Did you even get any presents?’
I shrugged and looked away.
Samantha took drag after drag, her flip-flop hanging off her toe. ‘I tried to have sex with that Philip kid from down the street, but he didn’t want to. He’s not going to have sex with you. His whole family wears special religious underwear.’
‘I don’t even know him,’ I protested. ‘And I don’t want to have sex with anyone.’
She barked a laugh. ‘Sure you don’t. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.’
7
‘Here you go.’ Stella shuffled into the sitting room with a coffee mug. ‘Some nice hot chocolate.’
‘It’s ninety degrees out,’ I answered.
‘Oh, now. It’s good for you. I made it with whole milk. You need to gain some weight.’
My father and Petey had just left to see my grandmother’s body. Stella decided to stay home with Steven and me, and no one fought her on it. Everyone, I’d noticed, was being extra-nice to Stella. Perhaps it was because she’d discovered my grandmother was dead when she came into her room to rustle her out of bed for breakfast.
Upstairs, Steven made the floor thump with what sounded like jumping jacks. Earlier, he’d gone running, crunching down the gravel road and disappearing onto the highway. To my knowledge, this was the first time he’d ever run in his life. I pictured him out there, gasping, cars narrowly passing him at sixty miles an hour. I saw him in camouflage, running an obstacle course, out of breath while the other recruits easily scaled a twenty-foot wall.
‘So.’ Stella sat down across from me. ‘Tell me about yourself, Summer.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’ I looked down at my hot chocolate. It was the kind with mini-marshmallows, which I hated.
‘Sure there is! I bet you’ve got tons of things to tell me about you.’
Her glasses were on crookedly, which made her look a little drunk.
‘I’m pretty boring,’ I answered.
‘That’s too bad.’ Stella pulled a pack of cigarettes from her front pocket and lit one. She took a drag and eyed me. ‘Do you want a little?’
I shifted my gaze in the other direction. ‘It’s all right.’
‘Come on. It’ll relax you.’
I lowered one eyebrow. ‘There are all sorts of health warnings on the box.’
‘These? Nah.’
I took the cigarette from Stella to avoid an argument. She looked overjoyed. As I put it to my lips, I glanced at the stairs, both in hope and fear that Steven would come down and see. ‘Thanks,’ I said, handing it back to Stella.
‘You want your own?’
I shook my head no. We sat in silence for a few moments, Stella smoking. A car horn sounded. Stella cleared her throat. ‘Nice day,’ she remarked, even though we were sitting indoors, couldn’t see out the heavily curtained windows, and even though I was pretty sure it was still overcast out. ‘Hope we get a day like this for the funeral. And I hope people bring over a lot of hot dishes.’ She leaned back. ‘Minnie Elkerson makes the best pierogis. And Marcy makes a good ham. And Liza makes cabbage rolls. You ever had a cabbage roll?’
‘Nope.’
‘What? No. Never?’
‘No. They sound disgusting.’
She exhaled. ‘Ruth used to make terrible cabbage rolls. She was Suzy Homemaker, but her cabbage rolls smelled like shit.’ She leaned back into the cushions. ‘At least this holiday, I can make my own cabbage rolls.’
‘Well, that’s good.’ It sounded as if Stella really hated her sister. She hadn’t said one nice thing about Ruth since we had arrived.
Stella looked at me. ‘And you’ll come for Christmas this year, won’t you?’
‘Sure,’ I said, but I didn’t mean it. Upstairs, Steven made an unusually loud clunk. There wasn’t anything wrong with exercising, nor was there anything wrong with wanting to enlist in the Marines…at least, I didn’t think so. But this had come on so fast, and Steven seemed so possessed. That was what made it so scary.
‘You got a best friend?’ Stella asked.
I thought of Claire. ‘Not exactly.’