I found a few other things, junk like a half-used pot of cherry lip gloss, a couple of dusty hair bands. On the shelf, there were my old Judy Blumes and then my V. C. Andrews books hidden behind them. I figured I’d just leave all that stuff behind.
The one thing I had to take was Junior Mint, my old stuffed polar bear, the one Conrad had won me that time at the boardwalk a million years ago. I couldn’t just let Junior Mint get thrown out like he was junk. He’d been special to me once upon a time.
I stayed upstairs for a while, just looking at my old stuff. I found one other thing worth keeping. A toy telescope. I remember the day my father bought it for me. It had been in one of the little antique stores along the boardwalk, and it was expensive but he said I should have it. There was a time when I was obsessed with stars and comets and constellations, and he thought I might grow up to be an astronomer. It turned out to be a phase, but it was fun while it lasted. I liked the way my father looked at me then, like I had taken after him, my father’s daughter.
He still looked at me that way sometimes—when I asked for Tabasco sauce at restaurants, when I turned the radio station to NPR without him having to ask. Tabasco sauce I liked, but NPR not as much. I did it because I knew it made him proud.
I was glad he was my dad and not Mr. Fisher. He never would have yelled or cussed at me, or gotten mad about spilled Kool-Aid. He wasn’t that kind of man. I’d never appreciated enough just what kind of man he was.
Chapter twenty-eight
My father rarely came to the summer house, for a weekend in August maybe, but that was pretty much it. It never occurred to me to wonder why. There was this one weekend he and Mr. Fisher came up at the same time. As if they had so much in common, as if they were friends or something. They couldn’t be more different. Mr. Fisher liked to talk, talk, talk, and my dad only spoke if he had something to say. Mr. Fisher was always watching SportsCenter, while my dad rarely watched TV at all—and definitely not sports.
The parents were going to a fancy restaurant in Dyerstown. A band played there on Saturday nights and they had a little dance floor. It was strange to think of my parents dancing. I’d never seen them dance before, but I was sure Susannah and Mr. Fisher danced all the time. I’d seen them once, in the living room. I remembered how Conrad had blushed and turned away.
I was lying on my stomach, on Susannah’s bed, watching my mother and her get ready in the master bathroom.
Susannah had convinced my mother to wear a dress of hers; it was red and it had a deep V-neck. “What do you think, Beck?” my mother asked uncertainly. I could tell she felt funny about it. She usually wore pants.
“I think you look amazing. I think you should keep it. Red is so you, Laure.” Susannah was curling her lashes and opening her eyes wide in the mirror.
When they left, I would practice using the eyelash curler. My mother didn’t have one. I knew the contents of her makeup bag, one of those plastic green Clinique gift-with-purchase bags. It had a Burt’s Bees chapstick and an espresso eyeliner, a pink and green tube of Maybelline mascara, and a bottle of tinted sunscreen. Boring.
Susannah’s makeup case, though, was a treasure trove. It was a navy snakeskin case with a heavy gold clasp and her initials were engraved on it. Inside she had little eye pots and palettes and sable brushes and perfume samples. She never threw away anything. I liked to sort through it and organize everything in neat rows, according to color. Sometimes she gave me a lipstick or a sample eyeshadow, nothing too dark.
“Belly, you want me to do your eyes?” Susannah asked me.
I sat up. “Yeah!”
“Beck, please don’t give her hooker eyes again,” my mother said, running a comb through her wet hair.
Susannah made a face. “It’s called a smoky eye, Laure.”
“Yeah, Mom, it’s a smoky eye,” I piped up.
Susannah crooked her finger at me. “C’mere, Belly.”
I scampered into the bathroom and propped myself up on the counter. I loved to sit on that counter with my legs dangling, listening in on everything like one of the girls.
She dipped a little brush into a pot of black eyeliner. “Close your eyes,” she said.
I obeyed, and Susannah dragged the brush along my lash line, expertly blending and smudging with the ball of her thumb. Then she swept shadow across my eyelids and I wriggled in my seat excitedly. I loved it when Susannah made me up; I couldn’t wait for the moment of unveiling.
“Are you and Mr. Fisher gonna dance tonight?” I asked.
Susannah laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Mom, will you and Dad?”
My mother laughed too. “I don’t know. Probably not. Your father doesn’t like to dance.”
“Dad’s boring,” I said, trying to twist around and get a peek at my new look. Gently, Susannah put her hands on my shoulders and sat me straight.
“He’s not boring,” my mother said. “He just has different interests. You like it when he teaches you the constellations, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“And he’s very patient, and he always listens to your stories,” my mother reminded me.
“True. But what does that have to do with being boring?”
“Not much, I suppose. But it has to do with being a good father, which I think he is.”
“He definitely is,” Susannah agreed, and she and my mother exchanged a look over my head. “Take a look at yourself.”
I swiveled around and looked in the mirror. My eyes were very smoky and gray and mysterious. I felt like I should be the one going out dancing.
“See, she doesn’t look like a hooker,” Susannah said triumphantly.
“She looks like she has a black eye,” my mother said.
“No, I don’t. I look mysterious. I look like a countess.” I hopped off the bathroom counter. “Thanks, Susannah.”
“Anytime, sugar.”
We air-kissed like two ladies who lunch. Then she took me by the hand and walked me over to her bureau. She handed me her jewelry box and said, “Belly, you have the best taste. Will you help me pick out some jewelry to wear tonight?”
I sat on her bed with the wooden box and sifted through it carefully. I found what I was looking for—her dangly opal earrings with the matching opal ring. “Wear these,” I said, holding the jewelry out to her in the palm of my hand.
Susannah obeyed, and as she fastened the earrings, my mother said, “I don’t know if that really goes.”