An Italian Wife (28 page)

Penelope shrugged. “I guess,” she said.

Her mother kissed her on the cheek, her breath all coconutty and sour gin. “All right then,” she said. “Cheeri-o until morning.”

Penelope slipped away from the hug her mother was drunkenly trying to execute. “Cheeri-o!” she muttered heading up the hill toward Figg. “Ta-ta and all that bloody rubbish!”

JULIE WAS STANDING
in the hallway outside the common room when Penelope walked in. Last year, Julie had been Ms. Matthews; this year she said to call her Julie. She taught English and coached the debate team, a dismal group that always came in last place. But Penelope liked the way Julie wore her hair cut short and shirts she embroidered herself, and an old pair of jeans with a red felt heart sewn on the butt.

“You okay?” Julie asked, frowning. Her hair was rust-colored, and so were her eyebrows and her freckles, which made her look a bit disconcerting.

“You know.” Penelope shrugged. “Mothers.”

And LSD trips, she added to herself. And flying out windows. And death. She forced a grin but it came out more like a grimace.

“Ah!” Julie said. She cocked her head toward the door to her suite. “Want to sit and talk a bit?”

Relieved, Penelope nodded and followed her inside. The red heart on the back of her jeans seemed to smile at her. Penelope loved Julie's suite, even though she wasn't one of the girls who visited here often. Last year, Pamela Grundy had practically lived in here. This year, August Frank could almost always be found here. There were rumors about them, Pamela and now August, that they were lesbians. And so was Julie. But Penelope thought it was dumb to think every woman with short hair was a dyke.

The suite was small, just two rooms. The bedroom lay behind a closed door; the sitting room and kitchen were separated by a counter with two stools at it. According to August, Julie had salvaged those stools from an old diner in Worcester. The seats were aqua vinyl. And Julie's plates and bowls were all pink and orange and baby-blue, also rescued from somewhere. That's what she does, August said. She rescues things. August never went down to the river, giving more evidence to her rumored lesbianism.

“So,” Julie said, “mothers.”

She took out two metal cups, one green and one gold, opened a jug of red wine, and poured some in each glass. “Don't tell,” Julie said, winking. “At Rosemary we relied on our house mother to buy all of our alcohol.”

Penelope pretended not to be surprised. The wine tasted like grape juice.

“Of course,” Julie said, “we liked vodka and orange juice. What is that called? A screwdriver, I think? We carried it around and no one knew the difference.” She smiled to herself.

“My mother's on a quest,” Penelope said. “She wants to find her real mother. Like, what's a
real
mother anyway? She was adopted,” she added.

“So was I,” Julie said. “But I don't want to meet the woman who gave me away. I mean, honestly. Fuck her. Right?”

Penelope sipped her wine. It was like Julie wanted to shock her. Suddenly, Penelope wanted to be in her own room listening to her new Cat Stevens album. But Julie was pouring them each more wine.

“Tell me,” Julie said, “what do you girls do down at the river?”

When Penelope choked on the wine, Julie laughed. “Don't worry. I won't tell. Is it drinking?”

Penelope shook her head. She loved that song, “Wild World,” and she wanted to play it over and over until it became part of her. That's what she did when she liked a song.

“Pot, then?” Julie asked.

“I . . . I don't know,” Penelope said, and Julie laughed again.

“I never liked it myself, but hey,” Julie said. “And I suppose Maxwell boys are there too.”

The album was called
Tea for the Tillerman
. Penelope wondered what a tillerman was. Julie probably knew. Julie had been the one to tell her who Penelope was in Greek mythology, a woman who waited for, like, twenty years for a man to return for her. She just sat there knitting or something. Leave it to her mother to give her such a stupid name.

“Just be careful,” Julie was saying.

Penelope stood up, lightheaded from the two glasses of wine.

“Don't want anyone coming down to tell me they're preggers,” Julie said.

Deborah's face came to Penelope's mind. At the tea, she had looked over at Penelope solemnly and ran her finger across her throat. Preggers.

“Well,” Penelope said, “thanks for the talk and stuff.”

Julie touched her arm so lightly it felt like a feather had landed there. “Do you like the boys?” she asked. “Do you like kissing them?”

Her fingers stayed there, hardly touching. Penelope thought of butterflies, light things. “I guess so,” she said.

“At Rosemary we kissed each other,” Julie said. “To practice, you know. We didn't mean anything by it. We weren't dykes or anything. No, it was more like the Native Americans. When a boy came of age, his mother taught him what to do. How to please a woman.”

“Really?” Penelope said. She felt confused, and a little drunk. Julie's fingertips seemed suddenly burning hot.

Penelope was tall, one of the tallest girls at St. Lucy's. And Julie was small.
A slip of a thing
, Penelope's mother had said when she'd met her last fall. Julie stood now on tiptoe, and tilted her face upward, like a girl waiting to be kissed. Without hesitating—and that was what confused Penelope even more later—Penelope leaned down and kissed her, full on the mouth. She had never been anywhere so soft. She thought she might crawl into those lips forever. Use similes! She told herself. Like clouds. Like marshmallows. She heard herself gasp a little, at the softness. She couldn't stop pressing her lips against Julie's. All those Maxwell boys with their rough faces, their chapped lips, their boy tastes. Julie tasted like grapes. Like cotton candy. Now their lips parted and their tongues were touching, Julie's soft like . . . like what? Penelope couldn't think. She felt herself getting wet down there where Maxwell boys jammed their fingers in.

Then like an interrupted dream, Julie pulled away. “Remember that,” she said, her mouth wet with their spit, “when you're kissing that Maxwell boy tonight. See?”

Penelope nodded stupidly and stumbled out of Julie's suite. Some girls were sitting cross-legged in the common room and looked at her all funny.

“Did you hear?” one of them said. “Deborah Woodson slit her wrists. They've taken her to the hospital.”

“What?” Penelope said. She thought of Deborah dragging her finger across her throat.

“Don't worry,” that little tight-ass Yvonne Mack said. “She did it in the library. Not in your room.”

Just then Julie's door flew open. She had on the faded corduroy jacket she always wore, and a panicked look. Penelope ran to her. Julie grabbed her by the wrist, dragging her along.

THE GIRLS STIL
L
RAN
down the hill to meet the boys, even with Deborah in the ER and then up in the psych ward. They went down there and got stoned and took off their panties and let the boys finger them. They opened their mouths and the boys stuck their dicks in, pushing against their teeth, yanking on their hair. Don't swallow! That was one of the rules. But Penelope always did. She'd read somewhere, maybe in
Cosmopolitan
magazine, that semen was a good source of protein. But that wasn't why she did it. She did it because she earned it. All that work, her jaw sore for hours afterward. It didn't taste bad either. Like saltwater. Like asparagus. Like the smell in chemistry lab.

But tonight, after Penelope and Julie got back to St. Lucy's from the hospital, the calls made to Deborah's parents to come first thing in the morning, Deborah locked up in the psych ward, Julie unlocked the door to Figg and said, “Boy, do I need a drink. You?”

And Penelope, knowing where all the girls were, knowing she would have to face her room alone, and see all of Deborah's stuff there like nothing had happened, said yes.

“I just have to check something,” she told Julie. “I'll be back in a flash.” She had never said
I'll be back in a flash
before, and it sounded stupid.

Penelope went into her room and without turning on the overhead light because she did not want to see Deborah's jean jacket tossed casually on the bed, or her Simon and Garfunkel album covers or anything Deborah, she retrieved the end of the joint and smoked it, every bit.

“I'm high as a kite,” she said out loud to the room. She was thinking and speaking in clichés. This had to stop.

Julie had left her door ajar and Penelope hesitated before pushing it open. The apartment looked different. An Indian blanket thrown over the lamp made the light diffused and tinted red. Julie was standing in the dark, drinking from a water glass full of wine.

“I didn't think you were coming back,” she said.

Penelope shrugged. “My room is kind of creepy.”

Julie walked over to her and stroked her hair. “You poor baby,” she said softly.

Penelope stood still, stiff.

“I don't need to practice kissing, you know,” she said. “I kiss boys all the time.”

“Do you fuck them?” Julie asked, her voice so soft that Penelope wasn't sure she was hearing right.

“Sure,” she said. She was perfectly high, the way she liked most, when her body felt like it was being lifted up even though she wasn't moving at all. A light breeze moved through her hair, tickled her neck, touched her collarbone. Penelope closed her eyes and enjoyed it.

“You went and got high, didn't you?” Julie said. “I can smell pot in your hair.”

That's when Penelope realized that it wasn't a breeze; Julie was touching her with her fingertips. Goosebumps rose on her arms as Julie's fingers moved, light, light, to her shirt, right at her nipples.

“Do you like having sex with those Maxwell Academy boys?” Julie asked.

“I do,” Penelope said. This wasn't a lie, though technically what they did was not sex. There was a rumor that Amy Brear let boys put it in her butt because that way she was still a virgin. Penelope considered asking Julie about this technicality, but her brain was too fuzzy. All of her energy and power seemed to be in her nipples. Amazing. Amazing that so much could be centered in such a small part of her body. She remembered when she broke her baby toe, back in junior high, how she couldn't believe how much a tiny thing like that could hurt. For days, all she could think about was that toe, as if all of her blood and nerves were in that one place.

“Your toe?” Julie asked.

Penelope laughed. Had she said it out loud?

“I broke it,” Penelope said, trying to stop laughing. “And all I could feel was my toe.”

“That's why I hate pot,” Julie said. “It makes you stupid.”

Julie pressed the glass of wine, now half-empty, to Penelope's lips. “Have some,” she said. And when Penelope gulped some wine, Julie whispered, “Good girl. Good girl. Does anyone ever call you Penny? Hmmm?”

Penelope wanted to explain that she hated that name, that her mother called her that. The one time she could remember seeing her father, he'd called her Penny.

“I want to call you Penny,” Julie was saying. “Penny. Penny. My Penny.”

Penelope's head was spinning ever so slightly. She liked having the spins, liked lying on her back and watching the lights and walls and faces spin past her.

“Not here,” Julie said, laughing softly.

She was tugging Penelope to her feet when she had not even realized she'd lain down. Walking into the bedroom, Penelope bumped into the walls. Like a pinball machine, she thought, which made her laugh again. Hard.

“Use similes,” she said.

“Okay,” Julie said, nodding her pretty head. She had curly hair, like Slinkys. Penelope reached up and touched it, and told her that.

“Your hair is like Slinkys,” she said.

When Julie pulled off Penelope's shirt, her small breasts pointing into the air because no one wore bras anymore, Penelope said, “I like boys, you know.”

“Absolutely,” Julie said. “There are no lesbians on this bed.”

“None,” Penelope said, yanking her jeans off, and her little yellow panties, too.

Julie's tongue began to trace the same path her fingernails had. Hair, neck, collarbone, nipples. She hummed “Penny Lane.”

“Because,” Penelope said, “I don't know how they do it, you know?” It was something the girls discussed. How did lesbians even have sex? There were theories, but none of them made any real sense.

“I don't know,” Julie murmured, Penelope's left nipple in her mouth. “The only thing I know is that whatever one woman does to another, the other woman has to reciprocate.”

“Uh-huh,” Penelope said, not understanding. All she could really concentrate on was the electric buzz that seemed to emanate from her nipples to down there. She wished she could explain it to Julie, but her words were so blurry.

She watched Julie's Slinky hair bounce as her tongue moved down Penelope's ribs, and belly button, and then down there.

“Whoa,” Penelope said, or thought she said. Her thoughts were getting even more jumbled. No boy had done this, and why not? she wondered, because surely this was the thing she'd been waiting for, maybe her whole life, this tongue making light circles, around and around, until Penelope's back was arched and she was pulling on those Slinkys and she was making noises like she was an animal.

“What?” she said when her body stopped shaking. “What?”

“I don't know,” Julie was saying into her mouth, kissing Penelope with her mouth tasting of . . . tasting of Penelope. “Maybe they do that?”

Penelope couldn't make sense of what she meant. Until Julie said, “My turn, Penny Lane.”

“PREGNANT?” PENELOPE'S MOTH
ER
SAID.
They were driving down Route 95, heading south toward Rhode Island.