Jeannie
1963
Every year, after Kip had blown the flames from his cake, their mom told the story of how he’d nearly killed her.
“Nurse said she’d never seen so much bleeding, and for such a scrap of a boy,” she said, tipping back an old-fashioned.
“Mom,” said Kip, spraying dark crumbs; they scuttered over the tablecloth.
“Mom,” said Jeannie.
Their mom licked her lips and fingered the maraschino cherry from her glass. “Your daddy said he could hear the screaming all the way out in the parking lot.”
“Nearly turned my wagon around and went straight home.”
“They fogged me with all those medications, but the nurse said I was clear-mouthed as a preacher, said I called out to the Lord to take me.”
“The Lord didn’t want her,” their dad said, smiling. Each time their mom told the story it got bloodier, and their dad would rock on his Weejuns and push her words away with a smile, before winding it up with a joke. Then their mom, muss-haired and glitter-eyed, would squeeze the nape of Kip’s neck and fall into the easy chair. Their dad would set an Edith Piaf record on the turntable and a song would play that would make their mom cry.
“There’s the Texan coming out,” their dad said. “All that humidity growing up, and now she’s all heat and water.”
Their mom was raised in the Texas Panhandle, on a smallholding with a pick-your-own pecan orchard and six beehives. As a girl, she cracked nuts for three cents a pound until her nails bled; and she’d had nothing to do with pecans since, not even on Thanksgiving. Their dad came from Eureka, California, where the weather was clean and cool, and his mother grew citrus trees in the garden.
“You grow up with lemons, you end up sour,” said their mom.
“Lemonade from lemons,” said Jeannie.
“That’s my girl,” said their dad.
* * *
HER MOM HAD always been superstitious about Kip’s birthday. So when Jeannie was called into Mrs. Harris’s office that November afternoon to take her dad’s telephone call, it felt like a prank. It was dark out; typing drill was nearly through. Jeannie stood at the ink-spoiled desk, looking out at the rain, the receiver tacky on her cheek.
“Jeannie, you got to come home.” Her dad’s voice was swollen and strange.
“What’s the matter, Daddy?” A fly landed on the orange on Mrs. Harris’s desk and picked at the rind.
“Uncle Paulie’s on his way to get you.”
Jeannie hadn’t seen Uncle Paulie since her dad kicked him out of their house for fooling around with his ceremonial sword.
“What’s going on?” Jeannie heard the warm sound of men talking. “Who are you with?”
“I can’t get into it, honey. Just come home.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Please, Jeannie. I’ll explain.” Her dad’s voice rose.
“We’re not done with our typing exercises,” said Jeannie. Her face grew hot. “I’m not coming till you tell me what’s going on.”
She watched the fly climb over the curve of the orange and wondered if they’d been disconnected.
“There’s been an accident.”
Jeannie’s heart flickered. “Is Kip all right?”
A blow of breath down the line. The fly twitched.
“He’s all right, Jeannie.”
Something in his emphasis made Jeannie wince.
“It’s your mother.”
“What happened?” Jeannie’s hands were wet.
“The cops are here.”
Jeannie swallowed. “Is Mom all right?”
“They said—”
Jeannie heard the stickiness of her dad’s mouth. “Daddy?”
“She was in an accident, and Mom—your mother…”
Jeannie’s breath stopped rough and solid in her throat. The receiver slipped against her cheek and she said something, but it lost its shape in her mouth.
“Uncle Paulie will be outside. Come now, honey.” Her dad’s voice caught, and the dial tone pushed into her ear. The news disappeared down the telephone line, back through the cables and into the earth. Outside on Dolores, two women with shiny-wet overcoats ran arm in arm under the rain, their dark lips stretched in laughter. If she stayed right where she was, if she didn’t move a fiber, the news might not come back for her; it might sink between the rocks that moved beneath the city, back into the slime below.
“Operator. May I help you?” The voice was far-off, from Oregon or the 1940s.
Jeannie opened her eyes and set down the receiver. She sat in Mrs. Harris’s chair and caught her head in her hands. The thing that had been climbing up from her stomach since she’d been pulled from class (perhaps it had always been there) broke free from her lips in a wheeze of noise and spit. The fly lifted away.
* * *
UNCLE PAULIE STOOD on the sidewalk, his face white as milk.
“Sweetheart,” he said, and collected her in his arms.
Jeannie pressed her head against him, his smell of dirt and soap. She couldn’t blink to cut the tears from her eyes. Her chest ached.
Uncle Paulie let go. “Here,” he said, opening the door of his car. He drove and they stared at the rain bleeding on the windshield, listening to the rub of the wipers. He kept his right hand clamped on her knee. They were passing Sunset before Jeannie could ask—
“What happened?”
He turned his head to look at her; his face was striped with shadows.
“You got to talk to your father, Jeannie,” he said.
* * *
AT HOME, JEANNIE found Kip and her dad staring at Temple Houston on the television, drinking root beer. It could have been any Thursday; she half expected her mom to be in the kitchen, fixing cheese biscuits. Then Kip turned to look at her, and his expression reminded her of when he was four and he lost his toy jeep at the beach.
“What happened?” she said.
Her dad stood to switch off the television. Kip watched the empty screen, his hands moving in his lap like birds.
“Honey,” said her dad, taking her in his arms and squeezing her too tight. Jeannie felt the spaces between his ribs as he breathed large. She struggled free, knocking him in the chest with her elbow.
“Tell me what the hell happened.”
Kip’s shoulders jumped.
“I’ll go,” murmured Uncle Paulie. He clicked the door behind him.
Her dad sat back in his chair and rubbed his cheeks. His eyes were small and red. “She wouldn’t have felt anything, honey,” he said. Kip got up, left the room, and slapped his bedroom door shut.
* * *
HER MOM HAD TAKEN Kip to Sears Fine Food for his annual birthday treat. Kip was fourteen now, a baby man, hair burrowing out of his smooth cheeks and pimples budding on his chin. He wasn’t a kid anymore, he’d told Jeannie that morning when she’d caught him slipping a cigarette from their dad’s overcoat. Even so, Kip had allowed his mother to scoop him up from school and take him into the city. It had been a tradition since he’d turned eight: every year, Kip would order the stack of eighteen pancakes with syrup, whipped butter, and links; and every year, he would eat and talk and jiggle until his legs stilled, his jaw stopped, and a thin sheen of perspiration formed across his face. “The kid was sweating sugar!” her mom would say when they returned home, and her dad would swipe Kip’s legs with his Chronicle.
It had rained all day. The two Cadillacs sat outside the restaurant, creamy pink like strawberry malts, blowing hot air and music onto the line of waiting diners. Jeannie decided that must have been it—the Cadillacs must have hidden the approach of the cable car, muffled its thunder. She imagined her mom stepping out, her eyes digging in her purse for a Tums, her white heel jamming in the track. Or perhaps something had drawn her gaze the other way—perhaps she was distracted by the tramp outside the Sir Francis Drake, who wore dirt for gloves and cursed at pretty women, or by a toddler screaming after a lost balloon. But Jeannie didn’t know exactly how it happened. Kip was full of tales, but this one he wouldn’t tell.
* * *
THE DAY AFTER the accident, things started to accumulate in the house: roses stuck into baby’s breath; a jellied meatloaf; cigarette smoke; and the liquory hit of Aunt Ruth’s perfume. Jeannie’s dad stood at the telephone, murmuring and smoking; Kip had the television dialed loud. Jeannie sat in the backyard alone, the wind pinching her skin.
“Come on, now, honey, get inside,” called Aunt Ruth, standing at the back door, her ankles sliding over her laced shoes like dough. “That cold’ll burn you up.”
“I’m all right.”
“Mrs. Luciano brought some nice fat meatballs. You want me to warm them for you?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You got to eat, Jeannie. You’re thin as a whip already.”
Jeannie was slim, but like Jimmy Collins once told her, she had plenty of squeeze on her. “I’ll stay here,” she said.
“I better come to you, then.” Aunt Ruth levered herself through the back door and pulled up a deck chair. The fabric gulped under her. “Here,” she said, “take one of these.” She shuffled two Luckies from her pack, cradled them at her mouth, and handed one over.
They sucked on the cigarettes in silence, Aunt Ruth’s eyes trained on the side of Jeannie’s face. The older woman was shaking out another smoke when Kip came to the door, his face ripped of color.
“You got to see this.”
Inside, Jeannie’s dad stood close to the TV set, his cigarette burning down to a wand of ash. Walter Cronkite was on the screen, looking toward a voice off-camera.
“Well, that’s a repeat of something that you heard reported to you directly a moment ago from KRLD television in Dallas—”
“What is this?” asked Jeannie. Her dad raised his hand; the ash broke to the floor.
“The rumor that has reached them at the hotel, that the president is dead—”
“Shit,” said Kip. Her dad whistled.
“Totally unconfirmed, apparently, as yet. However, let’s go back to KRLD in Dallas.” Cronkite blinked twice, bent his head, and slid his black frames over his face.
“Sweet Jesus to hell.” Aunt Ruth crossed herself.
“No one’s going to give a shit about Mom anymore,” said Kip.
“Shut up, Kip,” said Jeannie.
* * *
KIP WAS RIGHT. The president’s killing punched the breath out of Forty-sixth Avenue. Drapes were drawn and housewives sobbed as they swept their front yards.
“Never seen a thing like it, not even with old King Franklin,” said Aunt Ruth.
“They’re all acting like his dying belongs to them,” said Kip.
“It does belong to them,” said Jeannie.
“Doesn’t belong to nobody.”
The flowers and dinners stopped as fast as they had started. Her dad had trouble organizing the funeral—Shirley’s Flowers and The Sunset Florist closed out of respect for the president. Over the coming days, as Jeannie watched the wet, blotched film roll over the television screen, it was like her own news was broadcasting on CBS: the cops hanging around; the unfolding burial arrangements; the girl and boy gazing at the casket. Even years later, the sight of that newsreel made Jeannie feel she was watching her loss exploded onto a network screen; and it bothered her that other eyes were gobbling it up.
* * *
HER MOM’S FUNERAL went fast-slow, the smell of shoe polish and carnations and cologne. All the while it felt like they were rehearsing a show, until the small casket sailed down the aisle.
“A real dainty lady.”
“And always so well put together.”
“How’s Frank doing?”
“That man’s seen such a lot of death.”
“Death and taxes, you don’t get used to them—”
The funeral director, Mr. O’Sullivan, had recommended a closed casket—“Let’s remember her for the lively woman she was.” When it was her turn to pay her respects, Jeannie knelt and pressed the casket with her palms, like a prisoner feeling for a loved one through the wire mesh of his cell. There she was, right there; Jeannie imagined climbing in next to her, like she used to scrabble into her parents’ bed after a bad dream. A grip on her shoulder: her dad, telling her to stand.
The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing.
* * *
AT THE WAKE, old women pressed her with dry hands and slicked her with kisses.
“You’re the woman of the house now,” said Mrs. Davis, nipping mouthfuls of sherry, her eyes scurrying around the room.
“How’s your little brother doing, honey?” Mrs. Fleish adjusted the bulge of her breasts beneath her woolen dress.
“He’s doing all right,” said Jeannie. Kip had been locking himself in his bedroom for hours at a time, silent save for the odd bounce of noise—the throw of a Wiffle ball, a gasp, the cork of a Daisy gun.
“As well as can be expected,” said Mrs. Davis, holding up her glass for a passing Uncle Paulie to fill. “You’ve got to take care of those men of yours.”
They watched Jeannie’s dad moving around the room, never saying more than a word or two to any guest, clearing mess as soon as it was made. His cheeks were shaved raw and his suit pants bagged at his waist. He looked like a stranger: a lost, unlucky cousin of the soft-bellied father of her childhood. Jeannie slipped away from the women and pushed through the room to find Kip. Her dad’s friends from the Corps stood outside drinking bourbon, making jokes. They seemed far away, like people standing inside a television screen. In the kitchen, Aunt Ruth was buttering bread, pausing to lick her cracked fingers.
“Where’s Kip?” asked Jeannie.
“I don’t know, honey. Here.” She handed Jeannie an overstuffed garbage bag. “Help me out, will you?”
Jeannie was hauling the bag out front when she saw Kip sitting against the trash can, flipping the pages of a Spider-Man comic. His khakis were smeared with dirt and his face looked sore.
“What are you doing?” said Jeannie.
“I had to get out.”
“Scoot,” said Jeannie. Kip hauled himself out the way, flinching at the reek of spoiled food.
“Everybody’s so fucking excited in there,” he said.
Jeannie thought of all those wine-blushed faces, the old bodies shedding heat and noise, Uncle Paulie pressing through the party with his bottles of liquor.
“Assholes,” said Kip.
“I got stuck with Mrs. Davis,” said Jeannie, wiping her hands together.
“Mom hated her.”
“She did?” Her mom and Kip always knew each other’s secrets. Kip’s bike was lying on their mom’s sage plant; he went to grab it. “Kip,” said Jeannie. “You got to help me out in there.”
“Can’t do it.” He swung himself onto the saddle and raced away, standing on the pedals to glide down the street, through the stop sign, toward the ocean.
* * *
IT WAS TEN o’clock before the last guests left. Jeannie found Kip asleep in his bedroom, fully clothed, his bedspread kicked to the floor. Her dad tidied, stepping and bending like Kip’s old windup robot. Uncle Paulie picked over the sweaty hors d’oeuvres; Aunt Ruth rubbed her corns. Jeannie sat in her loose black dress, feeling the spell beginning to break.
* * *
LIFE CAME KNOCKING. Her dad returned to work at Muni, where they moved him from the planning desk and onto clerical duties for a little while; Kip returned to school. Every morning, as soon as they’d left the house, Jeannie would stop getting dressed and go to her mom’s room, unfolding scarves and sweaters to release the last drifts of her mom’s scent, the smell that held warmth and memory and was always nearly vanishing. She brushed her mom’s face powder onto her wrist, pressing the dusty smell to her nose, and reread the last dog-eared page of the novel her mom had left on the nightstand. Those bright, blustery days of winter, the house was alive with her mom’s ghosts; they would catch Jeannie like spiders’ webs as she walked the rooms. But the smell faded from her mom’s clothes, and the chicken potpie her mom had left in the refrigerator was thrown out, and one day, after Uncle Paulie had driven her dad home late—the slam of the front door, shouts, the sound of glass breaking—Aunt Ruth came to pack up her mom’s possessions.
“Your father can’t be looking at your mother’s things everywhere he turns,” she insisted, ignoring Jeannie’s protests; and Jeannie felt a balloon swell inside her. She waited until her aunt was outside fussing at the trunk of Uncle Paulie’s car, then grabbed the nearest carton—marked Nightstand—and shoved it into Kip’s room. When her aunt had left, Jeannie slipped into Kip’s room and opened the carton, digging through the haul—the tissue-pocketed housecoat, the hairbrush spindled with hair, the coral vanity case—before carrying it to her bedroom and pushing it inside her closet.
* * *
CHRISTMAS CAME AND went—maple ham and long silences at Aunt Ruth and Uncle Paulie’s place—and a new year. Jeannie cut class at secretarial school until, come February, Mrs. Harris suggested she take a break from the program. She quit volunteering at St. Mary’s, and lived out the rest of the winter perching at the soda fountain with Nancy, or lying for long dull hours on the living room floor, browsing through her mom’s back issues of McCall’s. She spent her days waiting: waiting for the hands on the clock to move and for her dad and Kip to come home, when they would heat three dinners and watch TV until The Tonight Show started and their dad switched off the set.
“Your father doesn’t mind you lazing around all day long?” asked Nancy one day on Ocean Beach. It was Washington’s Birthday, and sunny out; mothers had come to run their children on the beach. Nancy knelt behind Jeannie, tying a scarf around her head.
“Hasn’t said a lot about it,” said Jeannie, pushing her bare feet into the sand.
Nancy touched the top of Jeannie’s head. Head up. “My daddy would kick me out if I wasted my days that way,” she said.
“Your mom would beat him to it.”
Nancy made the noise of a smile. “There.” She patted Jeannie’s shoulders.
Jeannie turned; Nancy’s face glared in the sun, like a coin catching the light. Jeannie shuffled to sit next to her.
“What were you going to tell me?” she asked.
“I don’t know if I should,” said Nancy, unpicking a carton of her mother’s Newports and pulling out a cigarette.
Jeannie nudged her friend. “Tell me.”
Nancy placed the cigarette between her lips, lit it with her father’s Zippo, and slid her brown legs to her chest. She blew smoke. “He told me not to.” She squinted at the sailboats swinging on the ocean and took another pull.
“Who?” said Jeannie. “Tommy?”
Nancy leaned in to whisper, the wind flicking her hair into Jeannie’s face. “Mickey Riley,” she said, her breath warm on Jeannie’s ear.
“Mickey Riley?” Mickey had graduated high school as their homecoming king and was now working as a meat wrapper off Twentieth Avenue. He was also married, having knocked up the homecoming queen, Sandra Simmons, (so the rumor went) on prom night.
“Hush,” said Nancy, checking for listeners. Just a heavy-diapered toddler, squashing sand into a tin can.
“What happened?” said Jeannie.
“We did it.” Nancy smiled, her canine teeth showing over her bottom lip.
“What? When?”
“Last night. Over there, by the rocks.”
When Kip was six, he was climbing those rocks when he slipped and fell into the water and—had it not been for a nearby man plunging in to help him—was almost swept away. When they got home and told their mom, she slapped Jeannie so hard her cheek was still red the next morning.
“I got sand everywhere,” said Nancy, voice rising. The toddler’s mother gave Nancy a sharp look. “All the way up—”
“Keep it down,” hissed Jeannie. “Jesus, Nancy.”
“You’re such a prude.” Nancy smiled.
“You weren’t afraid somebody would see you?”
“I think we might have shocked a couple of seals.” Nancy laughed and buried her cigarette butt in the sand.
Jeannie shook her head. “You got to be careful you don’t get in trouble.”
“I’ll be fine.” Nancy caught her pale hair in the crook of her arm and swept it behind her shoulders. “You got to watch you don’t miss out on trouble altogether.”
* * *
THEY STAYED ON the beach all afternoon, until the sunset dragged the warmth from the sand and it was cold and dark under their feet. At home, the sound of men filled the living room; it was her dad’s turn to host his Corps friends for poker night. Jeannie felt their presence like static, all noise and heat and roughness, stuffing the house, pushing itself into every space; and the absence of her mom ambushed her with such violence, her breath caught. She stopped in the hallway, waiting until her breath eased. The sound of yelling and whistling boiled over from the living room—an unexpected hand revealed, a foolish bet placed. Jeannie pushed her hair from her face and stepped into the kitchen. Her dad was scrubbing the countertop, muscles taut like rubber in his thin brown arms; and something in the smallness of his labor, in the brightness of the room and the smell of Ajax, returned the house to itself, and her mom’s shadow folded itself away in the corner of the room.
“Daddy, it’s clean,” said Jeannie. “Go be with your friends.”
Her dad grabbed a tuft of steel wool and worked it over an imperceptible stain. “What did you do today?” he asked. Bernie Garubbo walked in, his belly pressing against his shirt, his eyes scanning the kitchen for snacks.
“I went to the beach with Nancy.”
“Who’s Nancy?” said Bernie, shaking a pack of peanuts into a bowl.
“A girlfriend,” said Jeannie.
“You spend too much time with that girl,” said her dad.
“That’s what she said too.”
Her dad straightened to look at her. “What about Mrs. Harris? Want me to give her a call?”
Bernie leaned against the counter, cracking nuts with his fingers. Jeannie wished him away.
“She won’t have me, Daddy. She didn’t mean for me to come back.”
“So, someplace else.”
“I don’t know if I want to be a secretary anymore.”
Her dad and Bernie swapped a look.
“You got to do something,” said her dad. “All this lying around’ll make you soft.”
“I got Aunt Ruth fretting I’m too skinny and you saying I’m getting heavy.” Her dad didn’t smile.
“Your father’s right, Jeannie.” Bernie splashed shells onto the floor.
“Jesus, Bernie, we’re not in a goddamn bar,” said her dad, scooping up the mess with his hands.
“You’re a nineteen-year-old woman,” Bernie continued, spitting nut fragments. “You got better things to do than jaw with your girlfriends all day long.”
“It’s not like that—”
“I talked to your father.” Bernie brushed his hands together. “There’s a spot for you at my place.”
Jeannie slid a pleading look to her dad; he frowned down at his dish towel.
Kip slunk in. “Jeannie’s going to flip burgers?”
“A waitress job,” said Bernie.
“Thanks, Mr. Garubbo, but I’ll pass.”
“Not so fast,” said her dad, opening a Pabst and handing it to Bernie. “You got another way to pay rent around here?”
“Kip doesn’t pay rent.”
“Kip isn’t grown,” said Bernie. He sucked greedily on his beer.
Kip made a face; Jeannie glared back.
“It’s a nice gig, Jeannie.” Bernie wiped his lips on his knuckles. “A buck and a half an hour; you keep the tips.”
“Honestly, Mr. Garubbo—”
“It’s no problem. Come tomorrow at eleven. I’ll show you the ropes.” Jeannie’s dad nodded; Kip grinned.
“Jackson, your hand isn’t going to play itself!” came a yell.
“Let’s go.” Bernie put his hand on her dad’s shoulder and steered him back to the game.
“Sucker,” said Kip.
“What the hell am I supposed to do?”
Kip cracked a shell and caught a peanut in his mouth. His eyes shone. “You’re going to boot camp, sis. Bernie’s gonna bust your ass.”
“Screw you,” said Jeannie. She went to her bedroom and shut the door.
* * *
BERNIE’S HAMBURGERS WAS a dive with oily windows and sticky leather booths. But the hamburgers were generous and the French fries had just the right salt and bite, and in any case, it was the only place to eat within a block of UCSF. Everybody who came in seemed to be waiting: for a relative to get better, or worse; for a shift to start; for the next procedure. One thing they didn’t want was to hang around for their food.
“The patient ones are in the hospital,” joked Anita, Bernie’s longest-serving—and favorite—waitress. She was forty going on twenty-five, with a spare inch of makeup and, as Bernie put it, two spare handfuls of patootie. Jeannie wondered if she’d heard about the accident, because from her first shift Anita had maneuvered Jeannie around the diner with the quiet care of a school crossing guard. The rest of them, for the most part, ignored her: Esteban and Gaël, the chefs, who talked only to each other, in Spanish; Patty and Linda, who saved their smiles for the doctors; and Bernie himself, whose attention was rare but unwelcome. The work was enough to trick her out of her grief, sometimes for hours at a time. At the end of each shift, Jeannie returned home with tender feet, stinking of fried meat. “Hey, Jean-Burger!” Kip would call, and Jeannie would give him the finger before collapsing into bed, too stuffed with the smell of food to think of eating.
Whole months worked themselves away that way. Jeannie found the rhythm of her labor and rolled through the days. As summer came and gave way to fall, the temperature outside rose, making the windows sweat and leaving moisture on her upper lip. Every night she counted her dollar bills and tucked them inside her mom’s vanity case, which she kept hidden beneath her bed. At the end of each month she pushed twenty-five bucks under her dad’s bedroom door for rent, and the next day she found the bills returned in a neat pile on her dresser. When Linda quit to marry her high school sweetheart and move to South San Francisco (she never did hook a doctor, sniped Anita), Jeannie picked up the extra shifts. Now that Nancy was spending all her spare time with Mickey, there wasn’t much else to do. Fall deepened to winter. Jeannie got to feeling like there was never a time when she wasn’t pacing over the days, sliding plates on and off tables before sliding into bed. She could go long spells without thinking about her mom’s death, but three, maybe four times a day it would skewer her like a knife. It was like riding the Limbo at Playland—long stretches of dark riding, and then, when you least expected it, a horror lunging from the shadows.
* * *
ON HALLOWEEN, NANCY came over, her plaid skirt rolled high, her hair ratted into a lump on the top of her head.
“It’s me,” she said in a flat voice as she pushed into the house. Her eyes were thickly and unevenly lined. Kip was at the kitchen table studying a Sgt. Fury comic; he started out of his chair.
“Kip, honey, how are you doing?” Nancy folded Kip against her chest. He angled himself away, snatched up his comic, and left the room.
“What’s he in now, seventh grade?”
“Ninth.”
“Cute little guy!”
Jeannie heard Kip’s door click shut. “You okay?”
“You got anything to drink?”
“I think we have seltzer.”
“I mean something to drink.”
Her dad was out bowling. Jeannie hesitated, then pulled a bottle of Old Crow from the cabinet.
Nancy’s nose wrinkled. “Your mom didn’t keep any vodka?” Something catty touched Nancy’s face, then vanished; Jeannie saw an apologetic heat spread at the root of her friend’s neck, and decided to ignore it. She cleared her throat.
“This is it,” she said. “Take it or leave it.”
Nancy shrugged and sat at the table.
Jeannie took two coffee cups from the kitchen closet and poured. “Something happened at Bernie’s today,” she said. Jeannie turned and saw Nancy picking up a letter addressed to Jeannie’s dad; Nancy let it go and it drifted to the floor. Her face was pale and spiteful. “What’s the matter?” asked Jeannie, sliding over a cup holding an inch of bourbon. Nancy looked at her head-on for the first time since she’d arrived; she had a tightness about her eyes, as though she’d been crying.
“I’m late.”
It took a moment for Jeannie to understand what Nancy was talking about. “How late?”
“A week.” Nancy took a gulp from her cup and gave Jeannie a strange smirk.
“A week’s not so long,” said Jeannie.
Nancy sent her a dead look. “I’m never late.”
It was true: Nancy prided herself on being regular.
“You were careful?”
“Mickey doesn’t like to be careful.”
You’d think Mickey would have learned. “You been to the doctor?”
Nancy shook her head.
“Does Mickey know?”
“Of course not.”
“Shit, Nancy.”
Nancy scratched at the table with a pink frosted nail. The sound of the Beach Boys bled through Kip’s door.
“What are you going to do?” asked Jeannie.
“I’m not going to end up like that stupid bitch, that’s for sure.” Jeannie thought of Sandy Riley, with her thin face and her furious baby. It would be worse for Nancy—not even Mr. Cooper could shotgun an already hitched guy to the church.
Nancy must have seen something in Jeannie’s face, because all of a sudden she looked scared. “I don’t have a choice,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
Nancy stood and went to the cabinet. She tipped three glugs of bourbon into her cup.
“CeeCee’s cousin knows somebody who can take care of it,” she said. Jeannie heard the shade of challenge in Nancy’s voice.
“You told CeeCee?” Jeannie checked herself. Nancy sat, her face smoothed with something like satisfaction.
“She knows about stuff like this,” said Nancy. CeeCee Adams had lived in a Manhattan skyscraper until she was eleven, and she still acted like she’d learned everything about the world staring down at the dirty streets and the little yellow cabs.
“She wants you to think she knows,” said Jeannie, a rash prickling her chest.
“Don’t be jealous,” said Nancy, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.
Jeannie adjusted her voice. “I’m not jealous,” she said. “But you can’t just go get rid—”
“You’re getting religious on me? The Virgin fucking Jeannie?”
The rash had crawled up Jeannie’s neck and over her face. “You could get hurt.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”
“Come on, Nancy.”
“You know what Mickey and his friends called you in high school? Icebox. Because you’re so damn frigid.” Nancy was standing, hard-voiced, with that odd smile still touching her mouth. Suddenly she looked how she might look in ten years, like the former pageant girls in the grocery store whose beauty didn’t last—plump faces that dragged to fat and cute-nipped features that sharpened with age. You’ll be just like them, Jeannie thought; and the cruelty of the thought had a kind of power, stopping her tears.
“Maybe it’s okay. Maybe you’re not gone,” she offered.
“Maybe you’re fucking clueless,” said Nancy.
The scratch of a key at the front door. Jeannie and Nancy downed their bourbon, Nancy gagging on the last swallow.
“Hello, girls,” said Jeannie’s dad, setting down his bowling bag and removing his shoes. His shirt collar was loose, and the skin around his neck looked plucked and raw, like a turkey’s.
“Mr. Jackson,” said Nancy, coughing to recover herself. “I was just going.”
“Don’t leave on my account.”
“My mother’s expecting me.” Nancy brushed out her skirt and nodded. “Goodnight, Mr. Jackson.”
“Goodnight, Nancy.” Jeannie’s dad turned on the kitchen faucet and squeezed Lux into the sink.
“Nice girl,” he said when Nancy had closed the door behind her.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, JEANNIE couldn’t sleep; she kept replaying Nancy’s words—jealous, frigid, clueless—and letting them hurt her all over again. She sat up in bed, looking out the window at the browned-out front yard, headlights blaring over her every few minutes, then every hour. A scratch against the wall behind her head—Kip was awake too. The sound of the back door sliding open. A long sag of time, the chink of glass bottles on the doorstep; then, nothing.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY, Jeannie was hiding behind the counter at the diner, sweeping up broken glass. Bernie had reamed her out in front of everybody after she fumbled a tray and sent a half-dozen new water tumblers crashing to the floor.
“Guess who showed up!” Anita’s face appeared, pressed powder breaking into excited cracks across her forehead.
Jeannie gazed up at her. “Who?” She wondered if it was Nancy, who never stayed mad for long.
“The doctor who’s always making eyes at you—the one with the specs and those red cheeks.”
Jeannie sat back on her heels and pushed her wrists to her eyes.
“Honey!” Anita threw her a paper napkin. “You’ll spoil your face.”
“Table Five,” barked Bernie.
“You go, honey.”
“I’ve got to finish up—”
“Here.” Anita rounded the counter and took the dustpan and broom. “He’s yours.”
He was bowed over a newspaper, his glasses pushed into his hair. He was becoming a regular. The previous day, he’d been in with a couple of bigmouthed doctor friends, and she’d felt their amused eyes on her from across the diner, heard their loud-voiced banter, caught his look of hope and horror as she approached to take their order. Jeannie wanted to creep back under the counter; but Anita popped up and mouthed, Go.
Jeannie’s approach jerked him from the Chronicle; his knuckles caught the saltshaker and spilled a mouthful of salt onto the table.
“What can I get you?”
He swept the crystals with his palm; they scuttled across the newsprint.
“Sorry.” He set his glasses on his nose. “I was in here yesterday.” A bashful smile. “I’m here a lot.” He half stood and nodded his head. “I’m Billy.”
“Hello, Billy.”
A pause; he lowered himself to his seat. His eyes darted to the button fastened at her chest. “You’re Jeannie,” he said. His cheeks purpled.
“What can I get you, Billy?” Jeannie felt Anita’s eyes on her neck.
“Sorry about my friends yesterday. They were pretty loud.”
“It’s always loud here.”
“I’d like to take you on a date.” Billy clamped his jaw shut and blinked in surprise, like a fish had just leaped out of his mouth.
“Oh. Well—”
“A New Kind of Love is showing at the drive-in by the Cow Palace. Have you seen it?”
“I haven’t.” Jeannie remembered the billboard. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward locked in a romantic somersault, Woodward’s frothy green dress spilling to reveal a bite of petticoat.
“Tomorrow night?”
A date. About time, Nancy would say. And with a doctor. Billy’s face was working in a twitch; his own nervousness eased Jeannie’s shyness. “Sure,” she said, in a steady voice.
Billy nodded and beamed. He gathered up his newspaper and grabbed his coat from the seat.
“You’re not eating?” asked Jeannie.
“Jeez—” Billy pulled back his sleeve to look at his wrist. “I can’t. I’ve got to run.” He wasn’t wearing a watch.
He left the diner, and Jeannie watched him jog across the street, then run back and push his head through the door.
“Pick you up?” he asked.
“Here,” replied Jeannie. “Shift finishes at six.”
“Well, there you go,” said Anita, sidling up to give Jeannie a pinch on the hip. “Who said breaking glass was unlucky?”
* * *
BILLY PICKED HER up in what Kip would have called a clunker.
“You live in the city?” he asked, thumping the stick shift with the heel of his hand. “Darn thing.”
“The Sunset,” said Jeannie, her body stiff against the leather seat. “What about you?”
“Born and raised in the city. On Spruce.”
“It’s fancy up there.”
Billy shrugged. “I live near the hospital now, up from Parnassus.”
“You a doctor?”
He looked at her and winked. “Almost.”
They listened to the gripe of the engine.
“Sounds fatal,” said Billy, and Jeannie laughed, and her shoulders loosened.
* * *
AS THE CAR squashed over the gravel, Billy seemed embarrassed to discover it was buck night.
“I didn’t know,” he apologized, handing over the dollar bill. “I’m not being cheap, I swear.”
“You’re nuts,” said Jeannie, and gave him a smile.
He smiled briefly back. “Now, where shall we go?” he said, and, seeing a spot, drove all the way to the front of the pit.
I guess I’m safe, then, thought Jeannie.
As the movie started, Billy pushed out his knee so it touched hers, and she didn’t move away. But after a few minutes, her leg cramped, and as she shook it out, Billy shifted in his seat and pivoted away from her. When Paul Newman called Samantha “a semi-virgin at the ripe old age of twenty-five,” Jeannie felt exposed, like someone had thrown a hot white spotlight on her. It didn’t look like she was going to get laid any time soon.
* * *
AFTER THE MOVIE, they shared a malt at the soda fountain on Geneva.
“Thanks for taking me,” said Jeannie.
“You liked the movie?” asked Billy.
Jeannie considered the question. “It was a little lame,” she said.
“I thought it was fun.”
They lapsed into silence. Jeannie stirred her malt; she wondered what Nancy would say next. “He only fell in love with her when he thought she was a hooker,” she said.
Billy swallowed. Jeannie felt a crackle of power.
“He’s cute, though. Paul Newman.” Jeannie watched Billy; he leaned in on his straw, a blush rising at his jaw. Maybe men weren’t all that complicated after all. “What about Joanne Woodward?” she asked.
Billy scratched his head, his face crinkling. “I’m more of an Elizabeth Taylor kind of a guy.”
“She’s beautiful.” He preferred brunettes. Jeannie dared herself to hold eye contact; two beats, and he looked away, jerking his head to give a shy smile to the pretty waitress who wiped the counter in front of him.
“So.” He drummed his fingers on the countertop. Jeannie feared she’d been too obvious; embarrassment scuttled over her skin. “Tomorrow,” he said.
“Tomorrow?”
“You voting?”
“Oh.” Jeannie shook her head. “No. I can’t.”
“You’re not twenty-one?” He leaned close, as though examining her for a time stamp.
“Still a baby,” she said, sensing his eyes on her as she lowered her lashes and pulled a sip of malt.
“Well,” he said, swiveling on his stool. “It’s been keeping me busy. Been to so many fund-raisers I’d be happy never to see a stuffed egg or pickled shrimp again.” He let the remark rest like he’d made it a half-dozen times before; Jeannie guessed it went down well with the kind of ladies he mixed with.
“You’re interested in politics?” asked Jeannie.
“My mother,” he said, pouring a slurry of chocolate into his glass and taking a gulp. A slop of malt washed onto his top lip. “Had me campaigning every spare minute. Had to tell her I was working tonight, otherwise she’d have me walking the streets with a clipboard.”
“My father says he’s got it sewn up,” offered Jeannie, eyeing the mess on Billy’s mouth.
Billy laughed. “You’re talking about LBJ. No, we’re gunning for Goldwater—In Your Heart You Know He’s Right!” He placed his hand over his chest and grinned.
Jeannie didn’t have much more to offer on the subject; she searched for something to say. “My father says never trust an Army man.”
“And your mother? She a Democrat too?”
“From Texas,” said Jeannie. She nearly added was, but the word stuck.
Billy clicked his tongue. “So that’s a yes.” He turned to her with a pink, open face; his eyes shone. “My mother would disapprove of you,” he said. Jeannie shifted on her stool, feeling the awkwardness of her hips and legs. Billy pushed his hand into his pocket and threw down a fistful of coins. A Goldwater in ’64 button scurried over the counter.
“Here,” he said. He plucked up the button and fastened it to her sweater. His fingers trembled. Jeannie turned her head to stop herself breathing on him. “There’s still time to change your father’s mind,” he said. He sat back to look at her, nodding in satisfaction.
Jeannie thumbed the edge of the button. “What about your mother’s mind?” she ventured.
Billy was looking at the headline of a newspaper that somebody had left folded on the stool beside him. VIET CONG ATTACK SAIGON AIRPORT. “My mother never changes her mind.” He picked up the paper and stuck it under his arm. “Come on.” He pulled a thick, final smile, the kind her dad did when he wanted to go to bed. “I’ll drive you home.”
At her front door, Billy rattled the keys in his pocket and cleared his throat. He leaned in; she rocked back on her heels, then held herself still. And he kissed her, a wet mash of tongue and teeth, spit and chocolate.
* * *
THE NEXT AFTERNOON Nancy called by, her lilac skirt bouncing under her raincoat, a paper bag squashed in her hand. Jeannie noted the easy look on her friend’s face and felt relieved.
“It came,” said Nancy, bending her knees in a small skip for joy.
“It did?” said Jeannie, a smile spreading over her face.
“That was so scary,” said Nancy. Jeannie beckoned her friend inside. “I was ready to throw myself under a streetcar.” Jeannie felt a sharp sting, like she’d been touched by the edge of a whip. “Because you know that if my mother had found out, she’d have pushed me in front of one.” She stopped and took Jeannie by the wrists. “Oh, Lord, I’m so sorry, Jeannie.”
“It’s all right,” said Jeannie. “I’m glad you’re okay.” She slipped her hands into Nancy’s and squeezed.
Nancy pulled Jeannie to her bedroom. “It came this morning and it ruined my best capri pants, but honest to God, I’ve never been happier to see Rosie Red.” Nancy smiled at her own junior high turn of phrase, sat at the mirror, and shook a can of Aqua Net from the paper bag. “You’re not ready?” she asked, flicking her eyes over Jeannie through the mirror. (A week ago, Mrs. Cooper had asked them to chaperone at the middle school sock hop; Jeannie had assumed, after her fight with Nancy, that she was no longer needed.)
Jeannie opened her dresser to find her gold pullover.
“You okay?” asked Nancy, bringing a comb down on a white-blond ribbon of hair.
“I went on a date,” blurted Jeannie.
Nancy’s comb stopped, her eyebrows drawn high. “With who?”
“Someone from Bernie’s.”
“Gaël?” Nancy shredded the hair to a tangle, then picked another strand. “I told you he was hot for you.”
Jeannie smiled and pushed her feet into her saddle shoes. “A customer.”
Nancy put down the comb and scooted around to face her. “Is he older?”
Jeannie nodded. “A doctor.” She threw the word like a pebble into a still pond, and watched the ripple.
“A real doctor?” Nancy leaned forward, as if to hear better. “Is he cute?”
Jeannie thought of Billy’s flat nose, his thick-knit eyebrows, the hairline creeping from his forehead. “He looks a little like Paul Newman.”
“Tell me everything. What happened? Where did you go?” The tips of Nancy’s ears were growing pink.
“He kissed me,” said Jeannie.
* * *
THEY CLICKED DOWN Noriega, the sunset tearing bloody strips out of the sky, the wind whipping dust from an empty lot. Nancy slid her arm around Jeannie’s waist; she smelled of soap and lemons.
“You’re so lucky dating a doctor,” she said. “Mickey just got fired for stealing a ham.”
“It was just one date.” Out across the highway, the ocean waited; it had been waiting and sighing that way since Jeannie was a child.
“He got a friend for me?”
“I’ll ask,” said Jeannie, snugging her own arm around Nancy’s middle and feeling a flush of contentment. They held each other tight as the wind charged them, slapping their raincoats against their legs and lifting their hair.
In the morning, her dad told her that President Johnson had taken the election. “This country still has some goddamn sense, thank God.” Jeannie dressed carefully for her shift and wondered if Billy would stop by.
* * *
“IT’S NOT GOING to pop itself,” said Nancy, untangling Christmas lights from a dusty carton Jeannie had found under her parents’ bed.
“What are you talking about?” asked Jeannie, crawling back under the bed for the other carton.
“Your cherry.”
“Jesus, Nancy.” Jeannie wriggled her head from under the bed. “Keep it down!” Kip and her dad were in the living room, putting up a Douglas fir. They’d picked it up by the roadside on Sloat; it had cost three whole dollars.
“You’re twenty years old,” said Nancy, blowing on the lights and bouncing dust bunnies into the air. “You’re going to close up.”
“You’re full of it,” said Jeannie, lifting the lid of the carton and unwrapping a Shiny-Brite from its wax paper.
“I’m serious. It happened to my aunt Sylvia.”
“You’re kidding,” said Jeannie as she unpacked another ornament. “Your aunt Sylvia never had a loolie.”
Nancy laughed. “You’re going to do it with him, right?”
Jeannie and Billy had been dating for six weeks. They had been to the movies, the creamery, the bowling alley, and the railcar diner on Pine. Always just the two of them; she had never met his doctor friends again, or even seen where he lived. Whenever he drove her home, he stopped by the beach and sat for a while—maybe being a gentleman, maybe finding his pluck—before leaning to kiss her, his fingers testing a button on her blouse, his hand sidling up her thigh. She let him hold her breast through her bra, keeping his hand in place with her own; once or twice he sneaked his fingers underneath the fabric and rolled her nipple like it was a bean. That week, after watching a Sophia Loren movie, he didn’t wait to kiss her; he slid his hand up her skirt, thumbed aside her panties, and pushed his finger inside her. She could feel her warmth against his cold hand, his knuckles pressing at her. The whole thing felt separate from her, like she was observing a scientific experiment. He took her hand and urged it against the hardness in his pants; Jeannie wasn’t sure what to do, so she let her hand rest there for a while, before pulling away and smiling. She never should have told Nancy.
“First time you do it, it’ll hurt,” said Nancy. “Get him to spit on his fingers first.” She took a sip from her bottle of Dr Pepper. “The main thing is, he’s got to pull out. You don’t want to get knocked up.”
“I don’t know, Nancy,” she said.
“He’s going to want to do it, Jeannie,” said Nancy. She threw the bottle at the wastepaper basket; it missed and rolled across the carpet, dribbling soda. “If there’s one thing I know about guys—put out or get out.”
* * *
JEANNIE TOOK A long bath before Billy picked her up that night. She washed her body using her treasured sliver of Yardley and dabbed her mom’s Unforgettable on the backs of her knees and wrists. She rolled and set her hair the way her mom had shown her, and painted her face. By the time she’d brushed out her curls and applied Nancy’s peach lipstick, it was seven o’clock. She walked into the kitchen to collect her purse; and Kip, who was setting the table for dinner, looked at her like he was watching a ghost.
“Where are you going?” he asked. Anxiety and need mixed in his face; it was the look he used to get when he was little and their mom left them with the babysitter, and it made Jeannie want to run.
“Meeting a girlfriend,” said Jeannie.
“Liar.”
* * *
THEY DROVE TO Winterland, where they scratched over the ice, hand in sweaty hand, and sipped scalding cocoa from tall glasses. On the way home, Billy pulled off Lincoln and parked by the wasteland. Jeannie saw the old windmill, its vanes stuck still among the scrubgrass. When she was twelve, she saw a story in her dad’s newspaper about a pair of lovers who parked out here to be alone. A man smashed their window and dragged the girl from the car and into the park, where he stripped, beat, and raped her; he hacked all of the girl’s hair off. Jeannie felt a quick stride of fear climb her body. Billy sat in his seat, a dull light edging off his spectacles. Outside, it was pitch-dark, the only noise the sigh of the ocean. Then fingers tapping on the window. Jeannie’s throat tightened.
It was only rain, the kind that scuttled over everything and stopped as suddenly as it started. Billy turned on the radio, and “She Loves You” played out happily; he turned to her, and Jeannie could see from the movement of his face that he was smiling. She unbuckled herself and climbed into the backseat. Come on, she said. A beat, and Billy clambered back, his neck stooped, his body crouched. He pulled her pedal pushers and panties down over her white thighs; undid his zipper, fumbled, and pushed himself inside her. Jeannie held still. Nancy was right—it didn’t take a minute—all of a sudden, Billy stopped as if someone had put a gun to his head, then shivered once, twice, and sighed. Then he put a blurry kiss on her mouth and they hurried home, Jeannie facing out the window, her thighs growing damp. At home, she wrapped herself in her mom’s housecoat and lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling until the seagulls started yelling and sleep came.
* * *
A NEW YEAR arrived, and Jeannie realized she was in trouble. She waited for her period with a superstitious vigilance, and when it didn’t come, she realized she’d known it wouldn’t, maybe even that night in the car. The first thing Billy did was tell his mother, Dorothy, and by March, Jeannie was on the steps of St. Dominic’s wearing an ivory taffeta empire-waist gown with off-the-shoulder cap sleeves that Aunt Ruth had sewn from a dollar pattern. The dress was stiff and shone metallic in the sunlight, and Dorothy’s expression—as if the dress itself had said something unforgivable to her—could, as Aunt Ruth put it, have “outstunk a skunk.”
It was cold that day, but Jeannie felt her own heat, felt sweat crawling between her skin and her dress, a smell like lunch meat rising from her armpits. There was something furtive in the quietness and brevity of the service; Jeannie had the strange sensation that they were conducting the whole affair behind her mom’s back and that at any moment, her mom might sweep into the church wearing her wide-brimmed hat and ruched dress gloves and order the priest to start over. Jeannie’s dad and Kip wore the suits they’d worn at the funeral over a year back—her dad’s too large, Kip’s too small, like a double act who’d switched clothes—and afterward, at the luncheon in the mansion on Spruce, Kip wouldn’t leave her side, to the point where Billy’s uncle Jesse joked that he couldn’t figure out which one—Kip or Billy—was the groom. Nancy had run up her own short, flare-skirted dress in candy pink, and she drew eyes like bugs to a lantern.
“That little girl’s going to get herself into a mess,” said Aunt Ruth, watching Nancy take a walk in the garden with Billy’s boss.
“Messes have their perks,” said Uncle Paulie, flicking a wink at Jeannie as he threw back the last of his champagne.
Jeannie played her part—as best she could—and waited. If she could get through the day and into their new place down on Noe, she might feel safe again.
* * *
THE HOUSE ON Noe was a Victorian the color of egg yolk, with steps running up to a door set with stained glass. They had the rooms on the first floor; the upstairs rooms were kept by two quiet older men—brothers, Jeannie assumed. Billy’s father, Dr. Richard Harper—a large man whose taut belly and sprouting ear hair gave him the appearance of being overstuffed—handed them the keys shortly after their engagement: “All lovebirds need a nest,” he said, taking the couple in his arms and letting his fingers wander over Jeannie’s ass. Where the Sunset was caught in the whip of a westerly wind, Noe Valley was still and noiseless: standing on Twenty-fourth gave the sensation of standing inside one of her mom’s snowglobes. Except that no one was shaking this particular globe: Jeannie was surprised each morning to find sunshine waiting quietly at the windows.
“I didn’t know there was sun in the summertime till I was old enough to drive out of the Sunset,” said Uncle Paulie as he stood at the bay window, rubbing his back.
“You could live a whole life here,” said Aunt Ruth, taking in all the corners of the room, as though she were picturing all the babies and heartaches and sicknesses that would breathe their hours there. “That’s it—you’re going to die here,” agreed Nancy when she visited a week after the wedding, trailing her fingers over the furniture like a customer who, in the end, wasn’t minded to buy.
“Can I feel it?” she asked, pushing her palms against Jeannie’s belly, her eyes saucering like a little girl’s, and Jeannie loosened herself from her friend’s hands and asked about Mickey and Sandy and the tramp at the soda fountain who still refused to serve Nancy because of some scandal way back in high school.
“It’s all the same,” said Nancy, clicking her heel against her ankle. There’s no place like home. She paused, then sighed. “I got to go,” she said, and Jeannie watched through the window as Nancy walked down the hill, her shadow stretching along the sidewalk.
* * *
THOSE MONTHS BILLY worked days and nights at SF General, and Jeannie got fat with her baby, accepting visits from her next-door neighbor Cynthia, who had an overbite, an explosive toddler, and nine yards of advice. Every couple of days Jeannie would get on the streetcar and ride it all the way to the Sunset, where the wind blew and life happened, and after a soda with Nancy or Kip she’d ride home, fold herself in her mom’s old quilt at the bay window, and wait.
Copyright © 2016 by Hannah Kohler
