by Tara Conklin
Chapter 4
The year was 1989. The first George Bush was president. The previous month on TV, we’d watched as young men and women with outdated haircuts and funny clothes took sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall. There was a sense of radical change and diminished threats. It was June, a beautiful warm night, and we were eating dinner with the back door open. Light-hungry moths fluttered against the screen. The night air smelled of dew and pavement.
“I don’t want you girls making the same mistakes I did,” Noni was saying. “I loved your father, I did, but you must not rely on a man. You must have your own money. Your own direction in life.”
By now we were accustomed to this line of discussion. We all nodded. We were eating pork chops, steamed broccoli, underdone rice that stuck between our teeth. Tonight Joe had played baseball, and he still wore his uniform, which was dirty across the front from when he slid into home in the seventh inning. A nick of mud marked his chin.
When Noni discussed feminism, Joe remained cautiously curious, wide-eyed, mostly silent. He was afraid to ask the wrong questions, ones that would invite our mother’s disdain, and also he sensed—correctly—that these discussions were not for his benefit. They were intended for us, the girls. Noni believed that the world was harder on women than it was on men, particularly women without men, and you could become one of those in a heartbeat. Noni wanted us to be ready in the ways that she had not. Joe’s passage would be smooth, paved with the wishes of all those who loved and admired him and wanted only to see him succeed.
Renee and I listened avidly to our mother’s lectures, tonight and every night. We nodded and used words like patriarchy and privilege and gender. Shortly after the end of the Pause, Renee had announced that she would become a doctor, and now all her efforts pointed to this goal. AP chemistry, biology, and calculus; her part-time job at the lab in New Haven; her dominance on the Bexley High cross-country team.
Only Caroline, at sixteen, yawned or examined her fingernails or tried, occasionally, to dispute Noni’s lessons.
“But what if we want to be married?” Caroline asked tonight. “What if we want other people?” Caroline’s hair fell long across her back and was streaked a whitish blond from the Sun In she used every morning with the blow dryer. We knew that she was thinking of Nathan Duffy and the Goats, who now called Caroline an honorary Duffy. In the afternoons Nathan would ride his bike slowly past our house and leave on the front steps odd little gifts: one silver stick of dusty Juicy Fruit, a silky brown horse chestnut big as a child’s fist, a lone pink carnation frilly as a tutu.
Noni answered Caroline’s question in the abstract. Even if she knew that the front-door gifts were for Caroline, she believed them irrelevant.
“Fine. Have other people,” Noni said. “But remember that they can be gone—poof! In an instant. Gone. So be prepared.”
This answer did not satisfy Caroline, who shifted and fidgeted on her chair. She blinked rapidly, her entire face reddened. She looked ready to weep.
“Oh, Caroline,” Noni said, and her voice softened. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to scare you, really, I don’t. I just want to prepare you. So you won’t have to suffer. So you’ll have an easier, better time than I did.” She took hold of Caroline’s hand. We had finished eating our pork chops; on each of our plates lay a ragged, moon-shaped bone.
I wanted to believe that Noni’s suffering would not be our own, but her lessons seemed difficult to place within the context of our actual lives. Noni herself had sworn off dating and all men. For her, easier and better meant being alone. We watched The Love Boat every Saturday night with a mixture of delight and unease as the new cadre of attractive passengers flirted and kissed and paired off in the few short days of their tropical cruise. Was this supposed to happen? Caroline seemed to me the purest example of true love: worshipped by Nathan in a factual, fateful way. But even their relationship was dependent on parental whims and the absence of snow, which in the winters made the roof too precarious for Caroline to shimmy across and down to Nathan’s waiting car.
Caroline, still sniffling, turned to Noni. “Can I ask you a question?” she said gently.
“Of course,” Noni answered.
“I was wondering if I could have a slightly later curfew. Just on Saturdays. Or Fridays. One day.” Caroline’s eyes glistened, still wet from her tears. “Please,” she said.
I almost considered Nathan to be one of us, the Skinners. He loved the secret, rushing green of the pond; he knew about the Pause. I’d watched him grow just as I’d watched Joe, with his sudden height and the rough spots of beard that appeared in patches across his cheeks and neck like camouflage. But Noni knew nothing about that. To her, Nathan presented the same risks and liabilities as a stray dog brought home from the park. Would it bite? How long would it stay? She looked at him askance no matter how strenuously he tried to impress her.
“I’m going to study biology,” he had told Noni earlier that year, “be a university professor. I’m particularly interested in amphibians, frogs mostly. They’re disappearing. We need to save the frogs.”
It was the pond that had started this for Nathan. The baritone bullfrogs and the smaller ones, green as a new leaf. The plunk-splash sound as they leaped into the water. The bulging, lidless eyes, jellied, glistening.
But Noni had no use for frogs, or for Nathan. She had imposed a strict 11:00 p.m. curfew on Caroline, Renee, and me, although it was clear that only Caroline truly needed it. I was in sixth grade, twelve years old, and had nowhere to go, nothing outrageous to do. My most scandalous behavior involved sneaking into movies I hadn’t paid for at the cineplex with my friend Violet and eating far too much buttered popcorn.
At night Renee studied organic chemistry and compared medical schools. After one brief romantic fiasco last year involving our high school’s star wrestler, Brett Swenson, Renee now ignored boys altogether. She was too busy, she said, for distractions. She accepted Noni’s curfew with a shrug.
On this spring night, all of us together at the dinner table, Noni tilted her head and narrowed her eyes as she considered Caroline’s request for a later curfew.
“No,” she said. “We’ve been over this, Caroline. You have a curfew for a reason. I want you home.”
“But what about Joe?” Caroline asked.
It was true that Joe glided through the gauntlet of Noni’s discipline unmarked. Noni let him go to parties, date widely, deeply. And—this was the kicker for Caroline—stay out as late as he wanted. By the time Joe reached Bexley High School, he was a six-foot-four center fielder with the reach and charm of Willie Mays, the goofy grin and sleepy eyes of Joe DiMaggio. Girls swooned over him, boys followed him down the hallways and invited him to parties. Teachers indulged him whether they realized it or not. His dimples, the soft swell of his walk, the subtle crack in his voice, the tall golden promise of Joe Skinner. Parents congratulated Noni routinely, because they understood that just to have a son like Joe—simply to be the origin of whatever DNA soup produced a boy like that—was something to celebrate.
Noni said that Joe didn’t need a curfew. He was always up early for baseball practice anyhow. He hated alcohol. Hated the taste, hated the way it made him feel: out of control, bumbling, fuzzy. And think about the public service he performed as the reliable designated driver, the lone sober man among a battalion of high-school drunks. Why would Noni put others at risk just to make a point?
“But Joe is younger than me!” Caroline exclaimed.
Noni sighed. “Listen, if Joe needs one more hour to keep some other kid from driving home drunk and killing himself—Caroline, I’m going to let him do it.”
The rest of us remained silent. This scenario had played out before, always with the same result. Now, predictable as Christmas, Caroline would push away from the table, pound down the hall, and close her door with a wall-shaking slam.
But this time she didn’t.
“You play favorites,” Caroline accused. “You let Joe do whatever
he wants, and you take it out on us.”
I inhaled sharply. Renee was looking down at the table. Joe’s eyes were closed, as though he could remove himself from this fight by refusing to acknowledge its escalation.
“That’s not true,” Noni said.
“Yes it is.” Caroline’s cheeks deepened to red. There was a recklessness in her voice. “And we have to go to every single baseball game. And you don’t care about his grades. And he gets to stay out late, and he’s sleeping with girls. Older girls. Did you know that? Jeanine Bobkin, Christi from Hamden High. That exchange student from Italy. And he’s only fifteen!”
“A lot more can happen to you, Caroline Skinner, when you stay out late.” Noni said this quietly, and it was the softness of her voice that made us all listen harder.
Caroline pushed her chair away from the table and stood up, her eyes blazing. Until this moment I had always seen Caroline as a mild person, someone who squealed rather than yelled, who labored over friendship bracelets pinned to her knee. But here she was, animated by her sense of injustice, training the full force of her fury onto Noni, whom we generally shielded from any conflict or emotional excess. Now, nearly six years after the Pause had ended, such precautions were perhaps unnecessary, but they had become routine.
“I . . . I . . .” Caroline stammered. Her resolve, so firmly stamped on her face, was not finding its way to her mouth. We watched our sister struggle for the right words. “I . . . I . . . I hate you,” Caroline said to Noni, and then she burst into tears and ran to her room.
A dangerous, damaged silence descended. I glanced sideways at Noni, trying to gauge her mood. But Noni merely sipped her wine, chewed her chop. Our mother was opaque to us, a combination of stubborn principles, disciplined instruction, and distance. It was Caroline who wore her heart on her sleeve. Our mother taught us how to protect ourselves from hurt but not how to determine what might be worth the risk.
Joe was the first to speak. He opened his eyes and said, “Should I apologize? This feels like my fault.”
“No, you should not apologize,” Noni replied in her no-nonsense way. “Just give her some time.” She sipped the last of her wine, then brought her plate to the kitchen and followed Caroline to her room. I could hear her knocking on the door and her patient voice. “Caroline, please let me in. Caro?”
Renee began to clear the table. I helped until the plates were stacked in the dishwasher, the wood wiped clean, Renee in her chair, pulling an acid yellow highlighter thick as a cigar across a page of her calculus book. The smell of meat and steam still lingered in the room. The front door was closed now, the house shut up tight, battened against the buggy spring night. Noni had gained entrance to Caroline’s room at last. I heard an occasional muffled sob, a brief angry shout.
Joe had finished his homework on the bus, he claimed, and stood in the hall, ear pressed to phone. I was on my way to the kitchen to find something more to eat. My chronic hunger was a residue from the Pause. It didn’t matter how much I ate during the day; always at night I’d feel an empty rumbling. As I passed Joe in the hall, he held his hand over the mouthpiece. “Battleship?” he asked me.
I heard a flash of feminine mumble, a giggling laugh.
Fragrant, flounce, hair, tease, pretty, smile, wink, sugar, sweet.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
I set up the game there on the floor of the hall, and we played, sitting cross-legged, facing each other. I ate a salami sandwich. Joe drank two glasses of milk and remained on the phone. He gave the conversation only the barest attention. D9. F10. A13. With each coordinate he placed his hand on the mouthpiece.
“You sank my battleship,” he told me.
“Yee-haw!” I whooped loudly.
Joe frowned and told the girl he needed to go. Feminine protest erupted on the other end. I could hear the tone but not the words: pout, cajoling, Joooooe. I widened my eyes and twirled an index finger at my forehead. Cuckoo, I signaled to Joe. You and all these stupid girls. I vowed then never to be like them, frivolous and weak-willed, with their glossy lips and padded bras, speaking for hours to a boy who only pretended to listen.
Joe kept my gaze. “Holly—” he said into the phone, but she kept interrupting him.
“I’m—”
“Listen—”
“Wait—”
And then he simply hung up.
“Your turn,” I said.
As we continued the game, Joe jiggled a knee, tapped an index finger against the floor, squinted and frowned. Back then some part of Joe was always in motion. A leg, a finger, a crack of the neck, a roll of the shoulders. He was still growing, his bones lengthening, skin expanding, his whole person surging forward into a bright unknown. Joe’s vitality seeped out of him, uncontainable. I felt it all the time.
“Fiona,” he said as we were clearing away the pieces of the game. He had won, but barely.
“What?”
“I’m glad you’re my little sister.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like I have a choice,” I replied, but I felt my big, hot heart spreading through my chest like a starfish, like a many-fingered creature that had finally found its treasure. “Noni wouldn’t let you trade me in anyhow.”
“True,” Joe said, and he grinned back at me, a faint milk mustache still clinging to the delicate blond hairs of his upper lip. He looked beautiful and sated and spent.
* * *
And then, in a heartbeat, with a rattle of Caroline’s armful of bracelets, the squeak of Renee’s running shoes, the funny hiccup of Joe’s laugh, my siblings were leaving home.
—cold, lonesome, lone, together, mother, brother, sister, other—
Picture the day: late summer in New England, humid and close, the lawn thick as shag from Noni’s tending. A day when we would have been at the pond. The year was 1992, and eighteen-year-old Joe was piling suitcases and plastic crates, a secondhand microwave, four pillows, three baseball bats, a life-size cardboard cutout of Bill and Ted into Noni’s Volvo station wagon.
“Do you really need the cardboard thing?” Noni asked, squinting into the sun. Dog-day cicadas whined with a high-pitched keen, a cyclical sound so pervasive you didn’t even notice it until it was all you noticed, and then, at that very moment, the sound began to fade.
“Yes,” Joe said solemnly. He was sweaty, wearing blue nylon shorts and a purple-and-green Mavericks tee. “I need them. I’m pretty sure it was on that list they sent. Books, sheets, Bill and Ted . . .”
“Okay, okay,” said Noni. “Bring Bill and Ted. But don’t blame me if your new roommate asks to switch.” She winked at Joe and slid the poster into the back of the car.
All morning Noni had pranced around like a golden retriever. Alden College! Our mother had won the parental college lottery: not Ivy League but close, with a full financial-aid package. Given Joe’s mediocre grades, no one thought he had a shot at a school like Alden, but Coach Marty knew the baseball coach. Alden needed a freshman center fielder, and Joe Skinner was it.
“Joe, don’t take Bill!” I called from my seat on the front lawn. “I love him!” For the first hour of packing, I had helped, sort of, but the tolerable morning temperature had given way so quickly to a sludgy, heavy heat that I’d declared myself overwhelmed and found a place in the shade. “Just cut Ted off,” I called. “Take Ted, but leave Bill.”
My childhood baby fat had not melted away as we all (or at least I) had assumed it would. That summer I was fifteen years old, alarmingly pudgy from puberty and Coke and frosted doughnuts and a general aversion to physical effort. For three long months, I’d moped around the house, reading too much sexed-up Updike and working a stinky, mindless job at a burger place in Bexley that paid me eight dollars an hour to cut tomatoes and onions and lift buns off the grill before they burned. I felt a persistent exhaustion brought on by the act of pushing my body through the days. My knees ached, my back ached, my fingers stank, my friends all annoyed me. I had no desire to grow older; I was already old enough.
/> I had started work on a dandelion chain when Nathan Duffy’s dented old VW pulled up to the house. The passenger door opened with a rattle, and out tumbled Caroline in a short flowery dress, her waist-length dirty-blond hair falling like a cape behind her.
“I’m so glad you guys haven’t left!” Caroline called to Joe. “I thought we’d missed saying good-bye.” She scanned the lawn. “Where’s Renee?”
I pointed: Renee was sitting on the bumper of the rented U-Haul, the U-Haul she’d packed up the night before with everything she’d need for her first year of medical school at Boston University. A fine sheen of sweat covered her tan limbs, legs in micro running shorts. Her arms were crossed against her stomach, her long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail that bobbed slightly as she tapped her foot. Renee, impatience personified.
“We’re still an hour away from leaving,” Renee told Caroline. She checked her watch, then looked pointedly at Joe. “At least.”
Joe grinned back. Look after your brother, Noni had said when it became clear they would both be going to school in Boston. And Renee had answered, Have I ever not?
Nathan ambled around to sit next to me on the grass. “Morning, Fiona,” he said.
“Renee, should we bring the snow boots now or wait till after Thanksgiving break?” Joe called across the lawn.
“Bring them,” Renee answered, examining a cuticle. “It might snow before we get back home.”
Back home. They were leaving, all of them. In one two-week stretch, I was losing Joe to college, Renee to medical school, and Caroline to Lexington, Kentucky. That spring Nathan had graduated early from University of Connecticut and was set to start a biology Ph.D. program. Caroline would transfer schools. Although there was still some question about her credits, there was no question that she was going with Nathan.
Noni and I would remain alone in the gray house.