What We Keep

  “It’s your birthday.”

  “Then I won’t have any dinner when you eat yours.”

  “You’ll have some rice and beans.”

  “Okay. And I want caramel frosting on my cake. Caramel.”

  “I know. And a white cake, in the shape of a star. And pink candles.”

  Well, I had to be sure. She’d been so dreamy lately. I thought maybe she’d better start getting more sleep.

  She poked at the chicken, then took off her apron. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?” Sharla asked.

  “Just to borrow something from Jasmine.” She turned down the flame under the chicken, covered it. “This should be fine, but keep an eye on it.”

  We watched from the window as she knocked on Jasmine’s door, then entered without waiting for Jasmine to open it. “They’re best friends now,” Sharla said, sighing.

  “I know.”

  “I wish I had a best friend like her.”

  “Me, too.” I thought of Wayne; maybe I had found a friend like her. Only more.

  Sharla turned to me, spoke in a low voice. “Jasmine gave me a gold bracelet, don’t tell Mom.”

  “She did?”

  Sharla nodded. “It has a diamond on it.”

  “Huh. I doubt it.”

  “It does. It’s real, too, she told me.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “After we go to bed.”

  “Well … okay.” I was worried. I had something to do after we went to bed: get married. I’d make sure Sharla showed me the bracelet right after we turned in; then she’d be asleep by midnight.

  After about ten minutes, my mother returned from Jasmine’s empty-handed. “What did you get?” I asked.

  “Pardon?” She lifted the lid on the chicken, covered it again.

  “What did you get? From Jasmine. You said you were going to borrow something.”

  She stared at me blankly. Then she said, “Before a birthday, some things are secret.”

  “All we talk about is her birthday,” Sharla said. “Everybody has a birthday.”

  “Shut up,” I said quietly.

  “What did you say?” my mother asked.

  “She said, ‘Shut up,’” Sharla answered.

  “I have told you I do not want to hear that kind of talk in this house.”

  I shrugged.

  “Apologize to your sister, Ginny.”

  “Sorry,” I said. And, actually, I was. I felt bad for Sharla. She didn’t have a boyfriend and her birthday wasn’t until December.

  “Jasmine asked if you girls wanted to go to the movie with her and Wayne tonight.”

  “I do,” I said quickly.

  “What a shock,” Sharla said. And then, “I’ll go, too. If you don’t mind.” She smiled at me then, a small, sad smile, and I knew she was giving him to me completely.

  “Yes, of course I want you to come,” I told her. I sat back in my chair, pleased with myself.

  “Want to make me a French twist before we go?” Sharla asked.

  “Okay.” I would be so gentle.

  “Should we do our nails after that?”

  “Sure!”

  “Use that red if you want to,” my mother called after us as we headed up the stairs. “It’s in the medicine chest.”

  This stopped both Sharla and me in our tracks. Not long ago, we had brought home a bright red polish from Woolworth’s. “Well. It’s very pretty, but I don’t think quite yet,” my mother had said, and she had taken the polish away to “save” for us. (She was also “saving” a strapless bra a friend of Sharla’s had given her, as well as a paperback book called Real Treasure, which I’d brought home from the drugstore. The cover featured a bare-chested pirate standing next to a busty woman in lovely distress.)

  “When can we have red?” I’d asked.

  “When you are eighteen,” she’d answered, her standard response.

  Suddenly, things were different.

  Sharla and I moved quickly up the stairs, before she changed her mind.

  The flight attendant asks if I would like something to drink. Sure, about six more scotches. Instead, I ask for coffee, then stare out the window as I drink it. Far below me, I can see some birds flying in a raggedy formation. One of them looks different from the others, though from this distance I can’t really tell for sure.

  I used to fantasize that I’d be outside some day and see our parakeet, Lucky, flying illegally in some V-shaped squadron. I figured I’d hold up my finger, call his name, and he’d joyfully alight. Then I’d bring him home and give him a fancy bird treat.

  It was soon after I’d met Wayne that Lucky had escaped. My mother had brought the cage into the backyard—to clean it, she said—and somehow he got out. We’d had the bird for five years, and we felt terrible, Sharla and I, and even Wayne—he’d helped us look for Lucky for hours. My mother said she felt bad, too, but I remember thinking there was something false in her saying so. At the time, I thought it was just that she didn’t really care about pets. Now, sitting here and looking out the window into this vast sky, I realize something. She must have let him go. It would have fit, for her to have done something like that about that time. Of course she let him go.

  As it happened, Jasmine did not go to the movie with us. Just before our turn at the ticket window, she said suddenly, “You know what? I think I’ll just drop you guys off. You don’t need me.”

  “Don’t you want to see this?” I asked. It was Ben Hur. I couldn’t imagine her walking away from this movie, just like that. Charlton Heston was in it!

  “I’ll see it some other time,” she said. “Maybe your mother and I will go.”

  “She goes to the movies with my father,” Sharla said, and my indignant heart leaped up in confirmation. They probably would have come tonight, in fact, if my father hadn’t been working; they loved the movies.

  “Well, maybe the three of us will go tomorrow night,” Jasmine said. I supposed this was possible. My father seemed to genuinely like Jasmine. Only last week, he had spent an hour at her place fixing a drip in her kitchen sink; she had rewarded him with a new toolbox—both clasps were broken on his old one. And occasionally after dinner the three of them would sit in lawn chairs out in our yard and drink coffee together, swatting at the mosquitoes.

  Jasmine bought our tickets, handed us each one. I hoped that the numbers on my stub would add up to twenty-one, which meant I could kiss my boyfriend. Or eighteen, which gave you the right to a hug. Under the right circumstances, a hug would surely lead to a kiss. I had gotten twenty-one twice before; the tickets were taped uselessly into my scrapbook. Now I added my numbers while we waited in line for popcorn. I had twenty. That meant somebody else had something. I looked to see if Sharla was adding her numbers up. No. Not Wayne, either.

  “Want to go to the bathroom?” I asked Sharla.

  “No.”

  “Sure?”

  She looked at me. “No!”

  “Okay,” I said, and stood immobile beside her.

  “Go,” she said. “We’ll wait.”

  I looked over at Wayne, who was busy buying popcorn. “I just wanted to ask you something,” I told Sharla quietly.

  “Oh! Okay.” She tapped Wayne on the shoulder, told him, “We’re just going to the powder room.” And then, pointing to her mouth, “Lipstick.”

  I admired Sharla’s quick thinking. It wouldn’t do for him to imagine us excusing ourselves for any other reason. Comfortable as I felt with him, there were limits.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and get seats?” I asked, as he came away from the counter. He’d gotten the large-size popcorn, a red-and-white-striped bucket approximately the size of the pail my mother used to scrub floors. I inhaled the yellow smell of butter and salt, content. We would bump knuckles.

  “Where do you like to sit?” he asked.

  I had no idea. No one had ever asked me.

  “Middle section, middle of the row,” Sharla said. “Not behind a
bighead or a hat.” Apparently she did think about it. And it came to me that that was why I didn’t; I had always just played the role of the subordinate: the older sister decided, the younger one complied. Usually, with gratitude.

  In the bathroom, Sharla pulled me into the corner by the paper-towel dispenser. “Did you get the curse?” she asked, her face close to mine.

  I shook my head.

  She pulled away, disappointed. “Well, what, then? Hurry up, the cartoon is going to start.”

  “What are the numbers on your ticket?” I asked.

  “Oh.” She checked her stub, then looked up at me, smiling. “Want to trade?”

  “Is it twenty-one?” I asked, my breath coming out through a suddenly narrower passage.

  “Bingo.”

  I took her stub, gave her mine.

  “But are you sure?” she said. “Are you ready?”

  I nodded, and we started walking. Then I stopped, took her arm. “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

  She shook her head.

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “I’ve hugged,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind; come on, I’ll bet it’s already started.”

  “Who?”

  She sighed. “Steve Golinsky, okay? At Jane O’Connell’s birthday party last month, spin the bottle, but I wouldn’t kiss.”

  Steve Golinsky! I tried to think of something remarkable about him. Nothing came to me. He was a quiet boy, average-looking. A member of the chess club, brown tie shoes. But still, Steve Golinsky! my mind insisted, fueled by the image of a kiss.

  “Why wouldn’t you kiss?” I asked, a little worried.

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t. I didn’t want to, that’s all.”

  I bit my lip, nodded. Steve Golinsky. I understood Sharla not wanting to do anything with him. But Wayne! “Well, I think I’ll do it,” I said. “I will. I’m going to do it.”

  “I know.” She shrugged, brushed a piece of hair back from my eyes. “You look pretty.”

  We walked out together toward the darkened theater, resolute as soldiers, both of us. This is the beginning, I was thinking. Right here. Of a lot.

  We walked home, as we’d assured Jasmine we could. From the sidewalk outside our house, we saw my mother and her in the living room, seated on the sofa. My father’s car was still gone; he was working very late.

  When we opened the door, my mother jumped up. “You’re back!” She walked quickly toward us, smoothing her skirt with the flat of her hands.

  Sharla rolled her eyes at me.

  “Yeah, we’re back,” I said.

  “Would you like a snack?”

  I looked at Wayne. I thought I knew exactly what he was thinking: why wasn’t she asleep? When would she be?

  “We had a lot of popcorn,” Wayne said. “But thanks.” I loved his boy blue jeans. I loved his white shirt and his brown belt, the way he got tiny crinkles around his eyes when he smiled, the way, when he looked down, his lashes made shadows on his cheeks.

  Jasmine stood, stretched. “I guess I’ll go on home to bed.”

  “It is late,” I said.

  Oh, and his teeth were white and straight, his hands warm—I’d held one the entire length of the movie. He had a smell that might have been cologne, but was not, I was sure; it was just him, just an invisible part of him that I wished would be made tangible and pocket-sized, so that I could have it and carry it with me everywhere. I’d walked close beside him all the way home; listened to his smooth, low voice tell jokes, ask questions of Sharla and me, share stories about his life back home. He was the pitcher on his high school baseball team; he’d won a blue ribbon at the county art show for a charcoal drawing he’d done of a shoe.

  “A shoe!” Sharla had said, incredulous. “You won a prize from drawing a shoe?” But I was not surprised. All you had to do was really look at a shoe to see how much was there: the valleys in the creases of the leather, the graceful lines of the hanging laces, the implied history of the absent wearer.

  My mother stood smiling, her hands clasped tightly together. I noticed dark circles under her eyes, and I checked her face for anything else, but there was nothing. She was not ill. She did not even appear to be tired, really.

  Jasmine rose, put on her shoes, which I saw now had been left in a corner of the room. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Marion,” she said. “We’ll plan the menu.” She smiled at me as she walked past. I noticed the faint aroma of a new perfume.

  Wayne waved at us, followed her out. “I’ll see you later,” his back told me. I’d shown him my ticket on the way home. He hadn’t understood what the numbers meant at first; they didn’t do that in Mobile. But he knew now.

  “What menu is Jasmine talking about?” I asked my mother. I had to get my mind off Wayne for a minute, or I’d faint.

  “Oh, for my Tupperware party,” she said. “It’s that time of year.”

  “What night will it be?” I liked Tupperware parties. My mother made fancy snacks we never got otherwise: cucumber sandwiches. Asparagus rolled in wafer-thin slices of ham. Small flowered dishes full of fat cashews.

  “August seventeenth,” she said, and began straightening the pillows on the sofa.

  “That’s your birthday!” Sharla said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, don’t you want … I don’t know, it’s your birthday!” Sharla was clearly frustrated by my mother’s lack of attention to herself; I appreciated it, since it kept my birthday as the important one.

  “I know that, Sharla. I’m aware of when my birthday is.”

  “Well, aren’t you and Dad going out for dinner or something?”

  “I don’t know. The day before, I suppose we could. Or the day after, what difference does it make, really?”

  Sharla and I stood still, stared at her. “We’ll go,” she said, laughing. “Just not on the day itself. It doesn’t matter.”

  Does so was at the back of my throat. Stuck there.

  “I’m going to bed. Did you girls lock the door behind you?”

  We hadn’t. We didn’t do that. Our father did that every night; then his large frame filled our doorway as he checked on us. Often, I’d been awake to see him. He kept one hand in his pants pocket, and he leaned against the doorjamb, just watching. I could hear him breathe, sometimes. And sometimes I could hear him sigh. I always wanted to talk to him then, to offer him some sort of reassurance that he seemed to need, but I didn’t want to get in trouble for being awake. I missed him now, as though he’d been away for a very long time.

  Then, as if in answer to a silent request, I saw headlights sweep across the ceiling, heard a car door slam. “Dad’s home!” I said.

  “Is he?” My mother was halfway up the stairs. She did not start back down.

  I looked at Sharla, then at the empty staircase, then at my father coming through the front door. He looked tired: his tie was off, his rumpled shirt open a few buttons. But he looked good. He did, he looked good. “Mom just went up,” I said. “Just now.”

  He glanced toward the stairs. “Okay,” he said. And then, “What are you two doing up so late?”

  “We saw a movie,” Sharla said. “Ben Hur.”

  “Ah. Yes, I want to see that one, too.” He put his briefcase in the closet, arched his back, rubbed a shoulder.

  “Are you tired?” I asked.

  “Me? No. No, I’m fine.”

  He said that when he was sick, too. He would be in his plaid robe, face flushed with fever, flat on his back, and that is exactly what he would say.

  I felt in my pocket for my ticket stub, forced a yawn. “I’m going upstairs,” I said. My father crossed over to me, kissed the top of my head. “Sleep well.”

  Not hardly. I had so much to do it felt like an alarm clock had just gone off. I went into the bathroom. I wanted to comb my hair and put some Vaseline on my lips. It could look like lipstick, if you did it right.

  When I came into our bedroom, I found Sharla sitting on my bed, holdin
g a black box in her hand.

  “Is that it?” I asked. “The bracelet?”

  “Shhhh!” She nodded.

  “Well, let me see.”

  She opened the box, lifted up a round gold bracelet, slipped it on. It was a bangle type, thin.

  “I don’t see any diamond,” I said.

  “It’s here.” She pointed to a place on the bracelet. I came closer, looked. It was there all right, a small stone.

  “How do you know it’s real?” I asked. “It looks just like a rhinestone.”

  Sharla looked at me, disgusted.

  “It does!”

  “Would Jasmine have a rhinestone bracelet?”

  “She might.”

  Sharla sighed, took the bracelet off, put it back in the box. “I knew it.”

  “What?”

  “I knew you would just be jealous.”

  “I’m not jealous.” In fact I wasn’t, but only because of Wayne.

  Sharla sat, head bowed over her ruined prize.

  “Could I try it on?” I asked.

  Her spirits seemed to lift. She opened the box, held the bracelet out toward me. I slid it onto my wrist. It did have a certain something. I raised my arm, moved my wrist back and forth. The diamond flashed, fractured its light into small rainbows. “Fancy,” I said. “Wow.” I handed it back. Sharla returned it to its box, but kept the lid open, continued to look at the bracelet.

  “Why don’t you wear it?” I asked.

  “I can’t. If Mom and Dad see it, they’ll make me give it back.”

  “What will you do with it, then?”

  “Put it in the closet. When I get my own apartment, I’ll wear it.”

  “That’s so long to wait,” I said. “Why don’t you wear it just when you sleep?”

  She thought about it, then put the bracelet on, smiled. “It feels good, huh?”

  She nodded, went over to her own bed, crawled in and turned away from me. “Night,” she said, yawning.

  I went to the window, looked out into the backyard to see if Wayne was there yet. He was. He sat still as a statue right in the middle of the yard, cross-legged, waiting. I was grateful my parents’ windows faced the street. I put a nightgown over my clothes, got into bed, turned off our bedside lamp, listened for the sound of my parents talking. When they stopped, I’d wait a good fifteen minutes, then sneak out. I turned my head toward their room, held still, heard nothing.