What I Saw and How I Lied

by Judy Blundell

  What

  I Saw

  and How

  I Lied

  by

  Judy Blundell

  SCHOLASTIC PRESS / NEW YORK

  AN IMPRINT OF SCHOLASTIC INC.

  This book is dedicated to

  Betsy, Julie, and Katherine,

  tall in their saddles

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  The match snapped, then sizzled, and I woke up fast. I heard my mother inhale as she took a long 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 surfcasting 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.

  Chapter 2

  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.”

  Chapter 3

  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.

  Of course, Margie had done a best friend’s duty. She’d staked out my territory. Loyalty counted the most in my neighborhood. I should have felt lucky to have a best friend who would fight for me.

  The door opened behind me, and Mom sat down on the stoop, her skirt billowing and then drifting down to her ankles. Unlike other moms, she wore her good clothes all the time and didn’t care if she got them dirty.

  My mother was beautiful. I always said that first, because it was the first thing everybody noticed.

  I took after my father.

  You couldn’t stop looking at her. She was a knockout. The way she held a cigarette, the way she danced in the kitchen, the way she could make supper with a cocktail glass in one hand—that was movie star glamour. You could almost forget she was just a housewife from Queens.

  “In the dumps?” she asked me.

  “I want to wear lipstick,” I said.

  She took a cigarette pack out of her apron pocket, then her gold lighter. She tapped out the cigarette, then placed it between her lips and lit it. She took a fleck of tobacco off her bottom lip. She was wearing Revlon’s Fatal Apple lipstick—the most tempting color since Eve winked at Adam.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up, baby,” she said, blowing a plume of smoke out toward Mrs. Carmody, who was sweeping her porch and pretending not to spy in windows as the lights came on. “It’s not all polka dots and moonbeams, you know.”

  “It’s got to be better than this,” I said.

  “You think so?”

  A breeze ruffled her blond hair. She stared out into the air and flicked an ash off her cigarette.

  I leaned backward over the glider and looked at her upside down. Her face seemed to assemble into something foreign. Her blue eyes looked like triangles, and I could see straight up her nostrils. It was strange how a face was just eyes, nose, and a mouth. It was how they were arranged that counted. I was cheered to discover a position in which my mother was not quite so lovely.

  Even though I didn’t say a word, she knew. “You’re too young for boys, anyway,” she said.

  “You got married when you were seventeen,” I pointed out.

  “Good Lord, Evie, you don’t want to take after me. Anyway, I was a mature seventeen.”

  No kidding. I have one photograph of her and my father. She looked hubba-hubba even then, in a flowered dress, clutching the arm of my father, who was leaning back on his heels, like he wanted to fall backward into another life. Six months later, he did. He brought her a cup of coffee in bed, said he was going to California, and walked out. She was seventeen and already pregnant with me.

  Now she looked at her watch, the one Joe had surprised her with for their anniversary last year, the one he’d bought in a fancy jewelry store on Fifth Avenue. (“You’re crazy,” she’d said. “We can’t afford this.” “Let me worry about it,” he’d replied. “And I’m not worried.”)

  “Your father is late,” she announced. “Agai
n. Be prepared for a roast like a rock. I can’t wait to hear what Grandma Glad says.”

  My grandmother’s name was Gladys, but Joe wanted us to call her Grandma Glad. Maybe it fit a vision of what he wanted her to be, the opposite of what she really was. She knew how to spread misery around.

  Mom took a puff of her cigarette. “Maybe she’ll break another tooth.”

  The living room window was open. “I’m not deaf yet!” Grandma Glad yelled.

  Mom raised her eyebrows at me, and I had to slap a hand over my mouth to put the plug in my laughter.

  So that’s how we were: a mother and a daughter sitting on a porch, laughing as the tree shadows stretched toward the porch and lights came on in the houses. Sounds cozy. But it was just like buzz bombs—the V-2 rockets the Germans launched at London near the end of the war. You couldn’t hear them, not even a whistle. Until your house blew up.

  Chapter 4

  After they got married and Joe knew he was going overseas, he insisted we move in with his mother. Suddenly we had a house with a porch and a yard. Grandma Glad made us pay rent, but it was her house, after all. It must have been hard to give up two good bedrooms for the duration. But I’m guessing it was harder to say no to Joe because he was a soldier. We all felt like we had to make sacrifices on the home front. It made us—the women—feel braver, and better, if we were suffering, too, somehow. Even if it was only arguing in the kitchen.

  Mom got a better job at Lord and Taylor while I was in school. She was the best saleswoman in the tie department, her manager said. She came home at 5:45 on the dot. Grandma Glad had figured out how long it took to walk from the store to the subway, and how long it would take to wait, and how long the ride was, and how long the walk was from the subway to home. If Mom was late, she wanted to hear why.

  You could say that Grandma Glad raised me from age nine to thirteen, but usually I spent whole afternoons at the Crottys’. Mostly I remember Gladys plopped in the gold armchair, listening to Amanda of Honeymoon Hill on the radio and watching the clock like a factory foreman ready to dock Mom’s pay. I knew she considered minding me as her patriotic duty, right up there with hoeing our Victory Garden. Tomatoes and her son’s stepdaughter—we both broke her back.