All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leapt like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles. Better to control that spark and pass it carefully from one generation to the next, like an Olympic torch. Or, perhaps, to tend it carefully like an eternal flame: a reminder of light and goodness that would never—could never—set anything ablaze. Carefully controlled. Domesticated. Happy in captivity. The key, she thought, was to avoid conflagration.
This philosophy had carried her through life and, she had always felt, had served her quite well. Of course she’d had to give up a few things here and there. But she had a beautiful house, a steady job, a loving husband, a brood of healthy and happy children; surely that was worth the trade. Rules existed for a reason: if you followed them, you would succeed; if you didn’t, you might burn the world to the ground.
And yet here was Mia, causing poor Linda such trauma, as if she hadn’t been through enough, as if Mia were any kind of example of how to mother. Dragging her fatherless child from place to place, scraping by on menial jobs, justifying it by insisting to herself—by insisting to everyone—she was making Art. Probing other people’s business with her grimy hands. Stirring up trouble. Heedlessly throwing sparks. Mrs. Richardson seethed, and deep inside her, the hot speck of fury that had been carefully banked within her burst into flame. Mia did whatever she wanted, Mrs. Richardson thought, and what would result? Heartbreak for her oldest friend. Chaos for everyone. You can’t just do what you want, she thought. Why should Mia get to, when no one else did?
It was only this loyalty to the McCulloughs, she would tell herself, the desire to see justice for her oldest friend, that led her to step over the line at last: as soon as she could get away, she would take a trip to Pennsylvania and visit Mia’s parents. She would find out, once and for all, who this woman was.
12
Those days, it seemed to Pearl that everything was saturated with sex; everywhere it oozed out, like dirty honey. Even the news was full of it. On The Today Show, a host discussed the rumors about the president and a stained blue dress; even more salacious stories circulated about a cigar and where it might have been placed. Schools across the country dispatched social workers to “help young people cope with what they’re hearing,” but in the hallways of Shaker Heights High School, the mood was hilarity rather than trauma. What’s the difference between Bill Clinton and a screwdriver? A screwdriver turns in screws, and . . . She wondered, sometimes, if the whole country had fallen into a Jerry Springer episode. What do you get when you cross Ted Kaczynski with Monica Lewinsky? A dynamite blowjob!
Between math and biology and English, people traded jokes as gleefully as children with baseball cards, and every day the jokes became more explicit. Did you hear about the Oval Office Cigars? They’re ribbed and lubricated. Or: Monica, whispering to her dry cleaner: Can you get this stain out for me? Dry cleaner: Come again? Monica: No, it’s mustard. Pearl blushed, but pretended she’d heard it before. Everyone seemed so blasé about saying words she’d never even dared to whisper. Everyone, it seemed, was fluent in innuendo. It confirmed what she’d always thought: everyone knew more about sex than it appeared, everyone except her.
It was in this mood that Pearl, in mid-February, found herself walking to the Richardson house alone. Izzy would be at Mia’s, poring over a contact sheet, trimming prints, absorbing Mia’s attention, making space for Pearl to be elsewhere. Moody had failed a pop quiz on Jane Eyre and had stayed after to retake it. Mr. and Mrs. Richardson were at work. And Lexie, of course, was otherwise occupied. When Pearl had passed her at her locker, Lexie had said, “See you later, Brian and I are—hanging out,” and in Pearl’s mind all the nebulous things that were swirling in the air rushed in to fill that pause. She was still thinking about it when she got to the Richardsons’ and found only Trip at home, stretched out across the couch in the sunroom, long and lean, math book spread on the cushion beside him. He had kicked off his tennis shoes but still had on his white tube socks, and she found this oddly endearing.
A month ago, Pearl would have backed out quickly and left him alone, but any other girl, she was sure, would have told Trip to move over, plopped down on the couch beside him. So she stayed, teetering on the edge of a decision. They were alone in the house: anything could happen, she realized, and the thought was intoxicating. “Hey,” she said. Trip looked up and grinned.
“Hey, nerd,” he said. “C’mere, help a guy out.” He sat up and moved over to make room and nudged his notebook toward her. Pearl took it and examined the problem, keenly aware that their knees were touching.
“Okay, this is easy,” she said. “So to find x—” She bent over the notebook, correcting his work, and Trip watched her. She had always struck him as a mousy little thing, cute even, but not a girl he’d thought much about, beyond the baseline of teenage hormones that made anything female worth looking at. But today there was something different about Pearl, something about the way she held herself. Her eyes were quick and bright—had they always been that way? She flicked a lock of hair out of her face and he wondered what it might feel like to touch it, gently, as you might stroke a bird. With three quick strokes she sketched the problem on the page—across, down, and then a sinuous line that made him think suddenly of lips and hips and other curves.
“Do you get it?” Pearl was saying, and Trip found, to his amazement, that he did.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re pretty good at this.”
“I’m good at lots of things,” she said, and then he kissed her.
It was Trip who tipped her backward onto the couch, knocking his book to the floor, who put his hands on, then under, her shirt. But it was Pearl who, some time later, wriggled out from beneath him, took him by the hand, and led him to his room.
In Trip’s half-made bed, in Trip’s room with yesterday’s shirt on the floor, with the lights off and the shade half closed, striping both their bodies with sunlight, she let instinct take over. It was as if, for the first time in her life, her thoughts had turned off and her body was moving on its own. Trip was the hesitant one, fumbling over the clasp of her bra, though surely he’d unhooked many before. She interpreted this—rightly—as a sign that he was nervous, that this moment meant something to him, and found it sweet.
“Tell me when to stop,” he said, and she said, “Don’t.”
The moment, when it came, was a flash of pain, the sudden physicality of both their bodies, of his weight on her, of her knees levered against his hips. It was quick. The pleasure—this time, at least—for her came afterward, when he gave a huge shudder and collapsed against her, his face pressed against her neck. Clinging to her, as if driven by an intense, unshakable need. It thrilled her, the thought of what they’d just done, the effect she could have on him. She kissed him on the side of his ear, and without opening his eyes he gave her a sleepy smile, and she wondered briefly what it might be like to fall asleep beside him, to wake up next to him every morning.