by Jean Stone
“All of whom,” Kris commented, “I’ve yet to meet.”
“It’s because they’re stupid. All they do is ride bikes and punch each other.”
Maddie laughed. “Okay, so we know what Kris wants. What about you, Betty Ann? What’s your important wish for when you’ll be a teenager?”
Lowering her head, Betty Ann shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll wish for a boyfriend, too. As long as he doesn’t ride a bike.”
Abigail folded the paper, dropped it into the bottle, and wondered why Betty Ann was wasting a perfectly good wish on something she obviously didn’t want.
1962
“She’s late,” Abigail said, peering out through the lace draperies, looking for Kris. “Maybe we should eat the cake without her.”
“I can’t believe she’s riding in a car with a boy,” Betty Ann said.
“Jack’s not just a boy,” Maddie replied. “He’s her boyfriend. Remember when you wanted one?”
Betty Ann blinked but did not answer.
• • •
She liked the way Jack was rubbing her breast, liked the way her nipple got stiff and the way she felt warm and wet between her legs, just like when she put her pillow there and moved back and forth against it. Kris wondered how it would feel if his fingers slid beneath her panties—if it would feel as good when he rubbed her down there, as good as it felt when she did it to herself.
She knew she was going to be late to the party, but it didn’t matter. They were fourteen now, and it seemed sort of dumb that they kept doing this little-girl stuff anyway. Maybe she should have suggested that they forget it this year, but then, Maddie’s father had died last month and Kris didn’t have the heart to say she wouldn’t be part of their birthday celebration, even though it was apparent that Betty Ann’s long-ago idea of making birthday wishes, and sealing them in a bottle so they would come true, had certainly not worked. Not for Maddie, anyway.
Jack ran his tongue around the outside of her ear. Kris felt herself getting warmer, wetter. Then he took her hand and pulled it to his lap. The hard bulge beneath his jeans told Kris that this was what it was all about; maybe Maddie’s wish had not come true, but hers was, here and now.
Besides, there was no way she was going to leave before she saw a penis. A live, in-the-flesh penis—erect, as the magazines she’d read had called it.
When he unzipped his zipper, Kris thought she would die from impatience. And suddenly it was there. Big and shiny and wet. She reached out and touched the pink tip. Lightly at first.
Jack moaned.
“Make me come, baby,” he groaned. “Put your hand around it and make me come.”
She caught her breath, then wrapped her fingers around the shaft. They did not meet on the other side.
“Move your hand, baby,” Jack cried. “Move it up and down.”
Slowly she began to rock his penis in her hand. With each stroke, the tingling built between her own legs. With each stroke, she squeezed more tightly. Quickly he reached down and thrust his hand between her legs, rubbing furiously at her crotch. Then he worked his fingers underneath her panties and plunged one inside her. It hurt. She jerked. He moaned again. Something sticky dribbled down her wrist.
“Oh, baby,” Jack whispered. “Oh, baby.”
She rested her head against the back of the seat, listened to the rapid thumping of her heart, and wondered why she had waited until fourteen to do this—and when she could do it again.
Racing up the driveway, past the fountain, straight up to Abigail’s front door, Kris wasn’t even out of breath when she rang the doorbell. And she knew there was a wide smile on her face.
“You’re too late,” Maddie announced, sweeping open the door. “We ate all the cake.”
“Bullshit,” Kris said, using one of the favorite words the girls had adopted somewhere along the time they all had begun the once-a-month bleed between their legs. “And you’ll thank me for being late. I’ve reached a milestone better than being fourteen.” She breezed past Maddie into the huge foyer and headed for the library, where she couldn’t wait to tell her story. Behind her, Maddie’s feet softly padded.
Quickly Kris scanned the library. Abigail and Betty Ann were on the floor, rolling their hair in large pink rollers. “Everyone, stop what you’re doing,” Kris demanded. “We have important stuff to talk about.”
“You’re late,” Abigail answered. “We ate all the cake.”
“Who cares.” She dropped to the floor in a crossed-legged position and tucked her thick black hair behind her ears. “I did it,” she announced.
“Did what?” Betty Ann asked.
Maddie clutched at her stomach and slumped beside Kris.
“You’re crazy,” Abigail said as she calmly twirled another roller around her blonde hair. “And I don’t believe you for a minute.”
“Well” Kris said, “I didn’t exactly do it. I came close, though.”
“Close doesn’t count,” Abigail said, averting her gaze.
“Excuse me, but it does count.”
“Counts for what?” Betty Ann asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Sexual intercourse,” Maddie said. “Kris had sexual intercourse with Jack.”
Betty Ann’s hand flew to her mouth, stifling a barely audible gasp. “OhMyGod. How could you?”
Kris shook her head. “I didn’t go all the way. But I held it in my hand. And I jerked him off. He came all over my hand.” She held up her hand.
The room grew silent. Suddenly Betty Ann sprang up from the floor, knocking over the pile of rollers. “I have to pee,” she announced, and raced from the room.
“God,” Maddie said, “I’ve never even seen a penis.”
“I have,” Abigail commented as she rose and placed her hands on her hips. “I walked in one day when Grandfather was changing. I thought it looked rather disgusting.”
Just then Abigail’s grandfather appeared in the doorway, Betty Ann by his side. “What’s going on?” he asked. “It seems you’ve scared this poor girl to death and she wants to be taken back to school.”
Kris looked at the man—tall, snow-white hair, with the same green eyes as Abigail. Her gaze dropped to his fly and she wondered why on earth Abigail would think his penis—any penis—was disgusting.
Abigail walked over to Betty Ann and put her arm around her. “It’s all a joke, Grandfather. Kris told us a joke and Betty Ann didn’t like it. Come on, Betty Ann, we haven’t made our birthday wishes.”
Tears coursed down Betty Ann’s rosy cheeks. “I … I forgot I have homework …”
“Kris will help you with it tomorrow,” Abigail said. “Once she’s stopped being so silly.”
Kris caught a look from Abigail that told her to knock it off, that Grandfather would be angry and they’d all have to go home. “I’m sorry, Betty Ann,” she said. “It was only a joke.” But inside she smiled, looked down at her hand, and knew she had learned the secret to feeling really good.
She picked up a pen and began to write: “By the time I am fifteen … I will not be a virgin.”
The next morning, after the others had left, Abigail unsealed the milk bottle and unfolded the slip of paper containing Kris’s wish. She stared at the words and wondered if Kris really meant it. Then she wondered how she could find a boyfriend fast, and do it before Kris had a chance to.
1964
The first time she did it was over the summer. He was a stable hand at Windsor-on-Hudson, and all things considered it should have been romantic: the beautiful heiress and the poor but handsome servant, like in the stories in those true confession magazines on the rack in the back of the five-and-dime. Despite the adventure, she hadn’t really wanted to go through with it, but September was coming and Kris would return to Arbor Brook and Abigail wanted to be able to tell her she’d done it.
The first time, it hurt. Her hair got messed up, her white shorts got dirty, and it hurt. But a couple of weeks later she let him do it again to see if it woul
d be better, It didn’t hurt as much as before, which was about all she could say. That and the fact she was glad she’d insisted he wear one of those Trojan things from the package she’d stolen from Grandfather’s drawer, an apparent leftover from a dozen or more years ago when her grandmother passed away. Surely he no longer needed them.
Anyway, the act itself had seemed a lot of mess and bother. But she had done it, and now she could tell Kris. She wondered if Kris had gone all the way too, and if she had been as disappointed.
Sometimes it was hard to be with them. Things were happening so fast that Maddie felt she was being left behind. Abigail and Kris both had boyfriends; Betty Ann still talked about wanting one, but so far she hadn’t found one—she said she was waiting to find the perfect boy who would make a perfect husband and father to the five perfect children she intended to have. Everyone but Maddie seemed to know what she wanted.
The night of their sixteenth birthday celebration, Maddie stood before the mirror in her bedroom and wondered what it would feel like to be beautiful, to have been blessed with a body that had all the indentations where they belonged, to have the blonde hair of Abigail or the exotic looks of Kris or even the freckled cheeks of Betty Ann.
Instead, Maddie was simply Maddie. Lumpy, bumpy Maddie who had not one definable, uniquely “Maddie” feature, had not felt her rib cage since she was about six, and had no idea why her hair had to be so thick and flat and straight. On top of it all, tonight she had cramps. Her ankles were swollen over the edges of her penny loafers, and her stomach looked like she was pregnant. As if any boy would ever come that close to Maddie to make that a possibility.
“You’re a beast,” she said into the mirror. “It’s a wonder they even want you for their friend.”
From outside came the sound of Abigail’s grandfather’s limousine crunching up the gravel drive toward Maddie’s house.
“Time to pretend you fit in,” she said to no one, because no one was at home. Her mother had gone out to play canasta, and it was just the two of them now, just the two of them since Daddy had died.
The horn honked. Maddie sighed and turned from her room. On the way downstairs she juggled her camera, trying to stuff it into her purse. Then she brushed the liquor cabinet. It rattled. She stopped. Hey, she thought, we’re sixteen now. Maybe it was time to grow up. Maybe then she’d feel as if she belonged.
Quickly she reached inside the cabinet and pulled out two bottles of wine. She tucked them under her black wool cape as the limo honked again.
They read last year’s wishes, laughed, then ate birthday day cake. Then, despite the rain on the chilled September night, they retreated to the stables, where they sat in solemn celebration sharing the wine. Kris had brought cigarettes that she and Abigail shared; Betty Ann tried one too, coughed, tried it again, then coughed some more. She put out the smoke and swallowed her cough with a big gulp of wine.
“Let’s go to West Point and look for boys,” Kris said, grabbing the bottle from Betty Ann before she could drink the whole thing.
“Good idea,” Abigail answered. “There’s only one problem. None of us can drive. And nobody has a car.”
“That’s two problems,” Maddie replied, taking another swig from bottle-number-two and enjoying the warm feeling that spread all the way down to her toes.
“I know how to drive,” Kris said. “I just can’t get my license until next month.”
“If you drive without a license you’ll get arrested,” Betty Ann said with a hiccup.
“Only if I get caught.”
“That’s not funny. Two of my brothers got arrested.”
“For driving without a license?”
Betty Ann nodded. “They took my father’s car. They went through a stop sign and got arrested.”
“Then it was their own fault,” Kris snickered. “I’m glad I’ve never met them if they’re stupid enough to go through a stop sign.”
Betty Ann stared at the pack of Winstons that lay open on the floor. “Yeah,” she said, “they’re stupid all right. Not like you.” She pulled out another cigarette and lit it with the same quick stroke of a match as Kris had done.
“If you’re going to light that, you’d better smoke it,” Kris said.
“No problem.” Betty Ann blew out a small white cloud. “I had something stuck in my throat before, that’s all.”
Maddie wished Betty Ann would stop trying to do everything Kris did. As much as Maddie wanted to fit in, she hoped she’d never be so dumb. She wondered if Betty Ann took after her brothers. “Come on, you guys,” Maddie urged. “Let’s write down our wishes. This year we can put them in a wine bottle!”
“I brought paper,” Abigail replied, producing a small notebook, tearing off sheets, and passing them around. “And Betty Ann, nothing impossible this year.”
Last year, Betty Ann’s wish was to be as tall as Kris, which was absurd because she was nearly a foot shorter and almost six months younger and would never catch up if they lived to be a hundred and a hundred and a half.
“By the time I am seventeen,” Kris said, writing her wish with a flourish, “I hope we will be grown up enough to stop writing down these ridiculous wishes.”
“Kris!” Betty Ann shrieked. “It’s our tradition!”
“Yeah, well, I want to start a new tradition. I want to go to West Point and look for boys.”
Maddie didn’t know what happened next, because her head was too fuzzy from too much wine. She only knew that a few minutes later they dropped their wishes into the bottle, and all piled into Abigail’s grandfather’s Rolls Royce, which Kris steered straight ahead toward West Point, the place to look for boys.
“I wish we could find a boy for each of us,” Kris said, one hand holding the steering wheel and the other waving the empty wine bottle that now held all their birthday wishes.
“I thought you already had a boyfriend,” Maddie said from the back seat. She was trying not to notice that despite the smile pasted on Betty Ann’s face the girl sat stiffly beside her with terror-filled eyes staring out the window, as though she expected red and blue flashing lights to swoop down on them at any moment.
“Hey, I love Bloomingdale’s,” Kris replied, “but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to shop anywhere else.”
Maddie shrugged, Abigail laughed, and Betty Ann kept her gaze fixed on the yellow and orange leaves that floated to the pavement on sheets of pounding rain.
Kris set down the bottle. “How the hell do you turn the wipers up?” she asked Abigail.
“How should I know? I ride in the backseat.”
“Ah, yes,” Kris replied. “The princess. Give me a cigarette, princess.”
The two in the front seat lit cigarettes while the car continued its steep climb along the winding road.
Maddie pulled herself up behind Kris and looked over her shoulder. “Try that knob on the left,” she suggested. “For the windshield wipers.”
“Wait a minute,” Kris said. “I can’t watch this damn dark road and look at the dashboard, too.” She gripped the steering wheel with both hands. The cigarette dangled from her lips.
Maddie slouched back in the seat. Her head was beginning to ache.
They rounded another curve. The rain pelted harder.
Kris wiped the inside of the windshield with her arm. “I can’t see a fucking thing.”
“Maybe you should put out your cigarette,” Betty Ann said. But Abigail and Kris both ignored her.
The windows fogged up again. Abigail leaned forward. “You need to put on the defrost.”
Kris shot her a look that said How the hell am I supposed to know where that is? just as the wheels skidded beneath them. “Shit,” Kris cried. “Wet leaves.” She struggled to steer away from the guard rail, away from the side of the road that was black as the night.
Maddie clutched the seat.
Betty Ann rolled down her window and started to cry.
“Turn the fucking wheel!” Abigail screamed.
Kris tried. It was too late. The car veered off the road, smacked the guard rail, and spun around in a circle. Maddie was flung against the seat, just as she heard the sound of Abigail’s head cracking the windshield and saw Betty Ann’s tiny body propel through the open window and lurch into the rainy night.
September 1997
“I read her wish,” Abigail said quietly now, taking another sip of Dom Pérignon and keeping her eyes steady on the lace tablecloth.
Maddie was silent. She would have bet they all had just been thinking the same thing, reliving the same nightmare in which they’d all played a part.
“Those goddamn birthday wishes,” Kris said with a sarcasm Maddie was certain the woman did not feel. Kris may be caustic, but she was not cold. Not like Abigail.
Abigail tipped back her head. “ ‘By the time I am seventeen,’ Betty Ann wrote, ‘I will make sure that we are friends forever.’ ”
A tear found its way down Maddie’s cheek.
“Why did she have to die?” Kris asked. “Of all of us, why was she the one to fucking die?”
“She died because I stole the keys to Grandfather’s car,” Abigail said in a voice so quiet, so filled with remorse, that Maddie could hardly believe it was coming from her. “She died because we were stupid teenagers.”
“No,” Kris said slowly. “She died because I was driving.”
“You’re both wrong,” Maddie added. “She died because I brought the wine. If I hadn’t brought the wine, we never would have …” Her words trailed off. The table grew silent once again.
“Would you ladies like anything else?” a voice beside them asked. “We’re getting ready to close.”
Abigail shook her head. “Just our check, please.”
Maddie glanced at her watch. Three o’clock. La Chambre, of course, was only open for lunch, for any lady of the city—for any lady who had not been killed at the age of sixteen in a senseless accident because of her three best friends.
“Next year we’ll be fifty,” Abigail said. “Let’s make it count for something. Let’s make our lives finally become what we’ve always wanted.”