“You can trust me,” Veronica said. “I wouldn’t dream of telling your father.” That creep, she thought. That bully.
Maddie swung her legs around and leaned forward so Veronica saw the swell of her small breasts. Just a hint of the cleavage that was to come, sure to catch the attention of many men. To make her as bright and visible as the star on a Christmas tree.
“And don’t tell Mom, okay? ’Cause,” she paused. “She still loves him.”
“Who?”
“Dad, silly. She tells him everything.”
Poor girl, Veronica thought. Not a soul to trust, knowing she wanted to be that soul.
“Well … spill the beans!”
“It sounds stupid,” Maddie said. “Like I’m one of those ditzy girls that falls for a boy and walks around like a zombie.”
Veronica nodded. “But…”
“But Brooks…” She paused. “He makes me feel…”
“Yes?” She needed to hear it. To remember what it felt like.
“Important. Beautiful.” Maddie looked away. The girl was ashamed. “I almost told him that I, well, that I loved him, after the first time we’d…”
“Go on. First time you what?”
“Kissed.” She stared at the crumbles of macaroon in her palm. “I shouldn’t be telling you all of this.”
“No!” Veronica surprised herself.
Rosalita called from the kitchen. “Mrs. Pencott, you needing something?”
“No, Rosa, we’re doing wonderfully. Thank you!”
“How did it feel?” Veronica was whispering. As if, she thought, she and Maddie were two schoolgirls.
Another sigh. But this one, Veronica could tell, was full of satisfaction.
“It was like,” Maddie said. “I felt comfortable. Like, for the first time ever.”
“Yes?”
“Like I could say and do anything and not feel worried he’d think I was dumb. Or weird. Or ugly.”
“You are beautiful. Don’t you see that?”
“No,” Maddie said. “I never did. But I think I do now.” She smiled. “I think, maybe, I really do.”
They ended the visit with their little ritual. There was nothing Veronica looked forward to more than she and Maddie sitting together as the sun sank, making a list of their favorite Oprah sayings. Not that this was something she’d have admitted to the old Veronica, the jaded woman before the visit to the oncologist.
Maddie began, reciting in what Veronica guessed the girl considered a grown-up voice, solemn, her chin tilted toward the ceiling, “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.”
Veronica had felt as if she and Bob had ridden that damn bus all year, and the rest of the Grudder men, and their wives too (hadn’t Mary Gernhardt given her a dirty look at the beauty parlor last week?), were sipping Cristal in the limo, whose exhaust was blowing back in her and Bob’s faces. She thought of the night at the top of the Castle’s bell tower. Thank heavens Julius had been there. On their proverbial bus.
“Amen to that!” Veronica said. Oprah was always amen-ing.
June 30, 1992
Dear Diary,
Hi!
It feels silly talking to you like you are a real person but I guess it’s just like Kurt Vonnegut would say, “and so it goes.”
B gave me some Vonnegut novels and they are AMAZING. Like perspective shattering but then reorganizing and it’s like I’m seeing the world (and me in the world) in a whole new way. Sounds kind of cheesy I know. But it’s true. I’m changing.
It was also B’s idea that I start writing to you (in you?). A place where I can stick all the crap I’m always worrying about. The dark slimy stuff (caterpillar poop!) that keeps me so busy being scared (B told me this and he’s super super smart) so it’s like I don’t really have time to live. You know? B keeps a diary too. And though I’d NEVER EVER read it, I really hope my name covers its pages.
So it goes. Today’s worries:
1.??Penny might die
2.??Penny might get so popular she won’t like me anymore
3.??B will stop liking me
4.??Dad will find out about me and B
5.??I’ll get kidnapped and sold into a sex-slave cult like in that video we watched in sex ed
6.??My mom is going to take too many sleeping pills and die in her sleep
7.??Nuclear war
8.??Chemistry next year with psycho grader Mr. Lomansky
9.??Dom will never cheer up and kill himself
10. Dad is having an affair with that skank Rosemary Dutton
11. Something bad (so bad I can’t even imagine it) is going to happen
Well … I guess I feel a little better. Thanks for listening! See you later, alligator.
Love,
Maddie Pencott LaRosa
26.
Leslie
She lost the third baby a few weeks before her twenty-fifth birthday. Number five at thirty-one on the subway returning from the farmers’ market in Union Square. She felt the warm blood leak out of her as she leaned against the subway car pole, hugging a paper sack filled with oxalis seeds. A gift for Jules, who loved the purple shamrock despite its reputation as a weed.
By then, she and Jules had baby number four, alive and well. A miracle baby, or just a stubborn little thing, who knew or cared? The round-cheeked boy had stuck it out through forty weeks, the last six she’d spent flat on her back on bed rest, a fetal monitor strapped to her beautifully swollen belly. The baby’s heartbeat a constant rhythm she heard even in her dreams.
They named the little survivor Brooks after her cousin who’d died flying a Grudder A-6 Intruder over Vietnam.
At least you have your little boy, the hospital nurse said, three years later, over the purr of the vacuum used to suck baby number five from Leslie’s womb. She began to think it cruel—making a life and knowing all along it would perish. Could those itty-bitty beings feel? Suffer?