do with you.”
“Nothing to do with me? You’re my daughter. You’re months—weeks—away from graduation and you disappear. Everything you’ve worked for is in jeopardy and you disappear for days. I’ve asked you over and over and you give me nothing. Do I seem that foolish to you? You’ve never done anything like that. We thought we’d gotten you through these awful high school years unscarred and then . . . this.”
You didn’t get me through these awful high school years, Mary thinks. You made these high school years awful. If you knew how much I hate you, you’d kill yourself.
“It’s over now, Mom. Everything you guys wanted for me will happen. I’ll work it out with Daddy. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I hope so,” Miriam Wells says. “These last few weeks have been the hardest in my life. Do you have any idea what you’ve put us through? Think of your sister.” She begins to tear up.
Mary closes her eyes. This is the part of her mother that drives her crazy: always making things look some way they’re not. You know your father loves you, he just doesn’t know how to show it. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t get so angry. Always worried more about how things look than how they are. In the dark of her room late at night, in her best moments of clarity, Mary watches herself turn into that person.
“You should have heard your dad after the Father/Daughter Prom. He said you were the prettiest girl there. He said you were the one girl who he knew would keep her promise of chastity until marriage, the one girl who would never disappoint her father in any way. All those cute little religious girls with their high necklines and crosses . . . they had nothing on you.”
Mary looks away. Never disappointing your father is NOT who a girl needs to be, you stupid bitch! Half the time he wants me sexy and the other half he wants a goddamn three-year-old! He’s SICK! YOU’RE sick! I’M sick!!! She closes her eyes. She can get through this. There is no reason for her mother to ever know. She has two cell phones now: one to give her dad at the end of the day and one that holds the answers to the mysteries of her recent history. She’s nowhere to be found on the Internet other than her cheerleader blogs and sweet “hi-ya” emails. There HAS to be a way out. Before this year she thought it was college, but it’s going to be more drastic.
“You didn’t break that vow, did you?”
Yes, Mom, I threw my entire self at Paul Baum. I trapped him. He couldn’t get away, and in the end he didn’t want to get away. And he wasn’t even close to being the first. . . .
“Celibacy? No, Mom, I didn’t break that vow.” Her life has become so convoluted that lies roll off her tongue like honey.
“You know there are going to be consequences.”
Her mother’s voice is fading. In fact, her mother’s voice has always been faded. It has no weight. It barely has sound. And Mary can hear hers fading with it.
The following afternoon after school, Paulie digs into his backpack for his laptop and places it gently on the tabletop at The Rocket, hoping for divine inspiration. He’s always done his best thinking in the white noise of a small restaurant or coffee shop and this one has the advantage of feeling like his home away from home. His bedroom is for sleep. His senior thesis is due soon and he has been swimming, working here, and playing rat basketball and screwing up his life instead of getting it written. So far, he has the title—ADOLESCENT DECISION-MAKING—and about fifty opening sentences. His idea when he chose the topic was to focus on information he’d gathered from his psychology class, brain science books, the news, and personal experience. Mr. Logs is his thesis advisor, selected because he’d get “latitude,” but also because he knew Logs would hold his feet to the fire to get a quality product. He wants that: a quality product. There has been a whole lot of high school for which he has little respect. Testing his memory ’til it was sore and bleeding has never held much water for him and the rah-rah of sports and school loyalty hasn’t cranked him up much, though he roots for the school’s teams and wears the colors on occasion. But Logs