What I Saw and How I Lied

The match snapped, then sizzled, and I woke up fast. I heard my mother pull on a cigarette. Her lips stuck on the filter, so I knew she was still wearing lipstick. She'd been up all night.

She lay on the bed next to me. I felt her fingers on my hair and I kept sleep-breathing. I risked a look under my eyelashes.

She was in her pink nightgown, ankles crossed, head flung back against the pillows. Arm in the air, elbow bent, cigarette glowing in her fingers. Tanned legs glistening in the darkness. Blond hair tumbling past her shoulders.

I breathed in smoke and My Sin perfume. It was her smell. It filled the air.

I didn't move, but I could tell she knew I was awake. I kept on pretending to be asleep. She pretended not to know.

I breathed in and out, perfume and smoke, perfume and smoke, and we lay like that for a long time, until I heard the seagulls crying, sadder than a funeral, and I knew it was almost morning.

We never went to the hotel dining room now. They knew who we were; they'd seen our pictures in the paper. We knew they'd be saying,
Look at them eating toast — how can they be so heartless?

I rode a bike down to the beach instead. In the basket I had a bottle of cream soda and two Baby Ruths. Breakfast.

The sky was full of stacked gray clouds and the air tasted like a nickel. The sun hadn't had time to bake the wetness from the sand. I had the place to myself. Me and the fishermen. Peter and I had watched them surf-casting together. One day, one of them had brought him home.

When Alice fell down the rabbit hole, she fell slow. She had time to notice things on her way down —
Oh, there's a teacup! There's a table!
So things seemed almost normal to her while she was falling. Then she bumped down and rolled into Wonderland, and all hell broke loose.

I'd noticed things on the way down, too. I'd seen it all — the way he took off his hat, the way he lit her cigarette, the way she walked away, her scarf trailing in her hand. Flower petals and a pineapple vase.

Now I had to look at it again. This time without me in it, wanting things to go my way.

So I've got to start from the very beginning. The day before we left for Florida. Just an ordinary day.

That afternoon, my best friend Margie Crotty and I stopped at the candy store for chocolate cigarettes to practice smoking. Cigarettes were rationed during the war, like everything else, but now there were stacks of packs, Lucky Strikes and Old Golds and Camels. And Chesterfields, so smooth they soothed your throat. That was what the advertisements said.

Margie and I believed in magazines and movies more than church. We knew that if we practiced hard enough, one day we'd smoke a real cigarette with Revlon
matching lips and fingertips
while Frank Sinatra sang "All or Nothing at All" right at us.

It was 1947, and the war was over. Now there was music on every radio, and everybody wanted a new car. Nobody had a new car during the war — they weren't making them — and nobody took pictures, because there wasn't any film. One thing about a war? You never have new.

But now our fathers and brothers and cousins were home, and our Victory Gardens had been turned back into lawns, because now we could buy not only what we needed but what we wanted, vegetables and coffee and creamy butter. Cameras and cars, and brand-new washing machines, even. Appliances were the reason my stepfather was getting rich.

We were lucky enough to live in Queens, where you could put a nickel in a turnstile and ride the subway to Manhattan, the place where everybody in the world wanted to be. They left the lights burning in the skyscrapers all night long, because now they could.

Summer was ending, and we were just starting to imagine a chill in the air. School would start any minute — next week, in fact. Margie and I were spinning out summer as long as we could.

Margie held her candy cigarette high in the air, even though ladies don't smoke on the street. We couldn't imagine being wicked enough to smoke on the street, but it was something to shoot for, something that smacked of high heels and saying "damn" if you broke a nail. In the meantime, we were careful not to step on the cracks in the sidewalk. Step on a crack, break your mother's back. We'd been saying it since we were nine years old, and it was just like Holy Communion. We believed in it absolutely, no matter how screwball it sounded.

"So much more fun to do this when it's fall," Margie said. "When it's hot, it just melts."

"It's even better when it gets really cold, because we can blow out real smoke," I said.

"I'm going to start smoking when I'm sixteen," Margie announced. "I don't care what my father says."

"And wear lipstick," I added, even though I knew my mother's "no lipstick until you're eighteen" rule was as unbreakable as "no roller skates in the house."

We both pretended to take deep drags, like Joan Crawford in
Mildred Pierce.

"Why is a bad guy called a heel?" I asked.

"Is that a riddle?"

"No, it's a question."

Margie regarded the end of her candy cigarette. She tapped it lightly, as if to dislodge the ash. "Because he's the lowest of the low?"

"Then why isn't he called a sole?"

"You're asking the wrong question, Evie."

Well, wasn't that so Margie. She always had to tell you what you
should
be doing or what you
should
have said.

"What's the right question, Margie?"

"Why do girls always fall for heels?" She giggled a little too loudly, and I knew it was because we were passing Jimmy Huggett's house. Jimmy was Margie's idea of a heel, because he had black hair as thick as motor oil and he called out "hey hey" to girls as they walked by. Margie always walked slower in front of the Huggett front gate.

I knew I was just being sour-grapey. Even if I wanted Jimmy to notice me, he'd rather catch a line drive right in the eye. Margie, however, had "developed" over the summer. "Talk to me when she's twenty — she's going to be fat," Mom said, but for now, Margie was fifteen with curves, and I wanted them. I was dying to wear the full-skirted dresses Margie did, with a thick wide belt, but Mom said I had to wait until I could fill out a sweater.

We were passing the church now, so we hid the cigarettes in our skirts, even though they were candy, just in case Father Owen came out. In my neighborhood, everybody knew you, and if they didn't know you, they knew your mother or your priest.

Margie crossed herself as we passed the statue of Mary, but I got distracted. Up ahead was my crush, Jeff McCafferty. Walking with Ruthie Kalman.

Ruthie could fill out a sweater.

"Margie," I said. "Look."

She grabbed my hand and squeezed it, and suddenly I was sorry I'd pointed them out.

"Oh, nausea! Maybe they just bumped into each other, and they're going the same way," Margie whispered, even though they were half a block away. I smelled chocolate and satisfaction on her breath. Now she could console me. I'd been noticing lately that Margie had grown a sense of authority along with her breasts. Who knows, maybe her mother had laid out womanly wisdom on her bed along with her new brassiere. Mrs. Crotty had six kids. She ran a snappy household. Systems for everything.

Ruthie Kalman had thick dark brown hair and dark eyes with eyelashes so long it was like they were glued on. She lived in an apartment, not a house, which made her exotic.

I had seen them talking before. Suddenly I realized how
often
I'd seen them talking.

"Jeepers, Evie, you shouldn't worry," Margie said. "After all, a McCafferty won't date a Kalman. She's Jewish." She whispered this last word, as if the statue of Mary would blow a raspberry if she heard it.

I knew Margie was right. That's the way our neighborhood worked. But Ruthie was so pretty that anything could happen. I knew from just looking at him that Jeff was in love with her. I could tell by the back of his head, which I knew like clockwork. I'd stared at it all through geometry last year. If I could tell when he suddenly understood the isosceles triangle, I could get this.

It was almost worse that he couldn't have her. It was all Romeo and Juliet and balconies. Ruthie had European cousins who disappeared into camps during the war. She was so lucky — tragedy
and
curly hair.

"C'mon," Margie said, and she began to walk faster. I followed, because when somebody expects you to follow them, you have to go ahead and do it.

We were just behind Jeff and Ruthie, close enough that I could see the fraying on the collar of her white shirt, which she tried to cover with a polka-dotted scarf. Ruthie was always well pressed. She had the cleanest fingernails I'd ever seen, even after a whole day of school. I felt better seeing that flaw.

"Je-eff..." Margie sang out his name like a tune.

Jeff half-turned but didn't stop walking. "Hey, Margie. Hey, Evie."

"Aren't you supposed to be at the altar boy meeting? I just saw Father Owen going into the church."

Jeff stopped. "Aw, get out. There's no altar boy meeting."

"Wanna bet? Frank was just going." Frank was Margie's older brother. We'd just seen him taking off to play baseball. I looked at Margie. Why was she telling such a whopper?

"Sorry, Ruthie," Margie said. "I guess your people don't know about altar boys."

Jeff looked down the block to the Virgin Mary, whose hands were outstretched, palms out, as if to say
What gives?

Ruthie slipped her books out from underneath Jeff's arm.

"You'd better go, Jeff," she said. She didn't look at him. She looked at us.

He had a chance to say no. But he mumbled "See you" to all of us and headed back toward the church.

Ruthie turned and began to walk.

"Do you believe the nerve?" Margie whispered to me. "Did you see the way she looked at us? I'll show her."

"Let's just go home."

"Come on, Sister Mary Evelyn," Margie said. She called me that when she thought I was being a goody-goody.

Margie speeded up until she was right behind Ruthie. She stepped on the back of her loafer and gave her a flat tire, flattening the back of the worn leather so that Ruthie's foot came out of the shoe.

"Sorry!" Margie chirped out the word like she was in glee club, smug because she had the solo. Fat chance. I

had a much better voice than she did. So did Ruthie. She stood next to me in glee club because we were both tall.

Ruthie reached back to
fix
her shoe but couldn't do it without stopping. She hopped for a few steps, trying to hook her fingers behind the heel. Then she gave up and walked on the back of her shoe. Her gait had a hitch to it now, but she only went faster, scuffing one foot along the pavement to keep her shoe on.

Margie tried to speed up to follow her, but I yanked on her shirt. Ruthie lurched along, faster and faster. She turned the corner and disappeared.

"We sure showed her," Margie said.

"Yeah," I said. "I guess we did."

When I got home, I slumped down on the glider on the porch, hoping my stepfather, Joe, would be there. I wanted someone to tell me I was beautiful, even if he was lying. I wanted to forget that picture of Ruthie walking away, dragging her foot along so she wouldn't lose her shoe.