I remembered what Flo Foster had said about Billy. That boy has something chasing him. I still didn’t know what she meant. Maybe it was home.
“We’re here now, Kit. Now is what we’ve got. Look” — he grabbed my hand —“I know I have to win you back. I know that night is like… a stain between us. If it scared you, it scared me, too. You have no idea how much. But we can get it all back. I’ll make it happen. I’ll make it all happen again, for the first time. We can start again, can’t we?”
“I don’t know.”
He drew back, puzzled. “Then why did you write to me?”
I stared back at him, realizing that I had no idea what to say. Answers become such complicated things when you have a lie between you and the person you love.
He kissed me gently, and there was the answer we needed. Billy had always had the softest mouth. It had always been able to unfold something closed inside me.
“Remember?” he asked. “I do. I remember every perfect day. How we met. The beach at Narragansett. Just driving around with Jamie. We had it absolutely perfect. Remember?”
I did. I remembered every moment. But what, out of all those memories, should I land on? Lying on the coarse sand, tasting the salt of the ocean on his mouth? Dancing in a white dress on a deck on the beach? Sharing autumn pears while we walked, not paying attention to streets and sidewalks? Because when I thought of that, my heart rose with joy, but at the same time, other pictures came, of a fist smashing into a face on a dark rainy night. Of clothes flying through the air, catching on a breeze, caught on scrub on a two-lane road.
If I could just concentrate on the beginning. If I could just get it clear.
Sixteen
Providence, Rhode Island
September 1949
I’d just started junior year of high school, but I already knew that this year would be the same as the others — a half-distracted glance at my books at night before bed, a stab at homework. If I made myself listen in class, I didn’t have to work much outside of it to pull a C average. Da didn’t talk to us about college; if we managed to graduate from high school, that was achievement enough for him. He didn’t know that Muddie went to Thayer Street on weekends, pretending to be a Pembroke girl. Pembroke was the sister school to Brown, and Muddie wore kilts and cardigans and brushed her hair until it shone, hoping some Brown freshman would ask her what courses she was taking. Then she would spend the afternoon drinking a soda with him and lying. She’d learned the names of professors and courses, and she’d groan about classes and studies until it was time to go down the hill and shop for dinner.
Da also didn’t know that Jamie had quit the basketball team and was staying late in the art room, drawing with Mr. Hulce. He didn’t know that Jamie checked out art books from the library and hid them under his bed.
As for me, I always ducked out of study hall in order to practice my dance routines in the gym. As long as we were safe, looked presentable, and were home by nine, Da left us alone.
For a long time, Da had escaped the Irish curse — the whiskey bottle was only for Saturday nights and guests. But since both Delia and Elena had gone, he’d begun to wander down to Wickenden Street in the evenings for company, and that meant drink. He’d arrive home late and have trouble taking off his shoes. We didn’t know what to do about it, so we didn’t say a word about it, even to each other. He was never mean; he was either sleepy or silly, wrapping my sweater around his head and pretending it was a turban and he was Bing Crosby, or getting sentimental and crying at dinner just from looking around the table. Once I caught him standing in the doorway of Delia’s old room, staring, weaving, and crying.
It was Jamie who had the job of fetching him on the nights he couldn’t stop. Jamie, who slung an arm around him and helped him home, took off his shoes, wiped his face with a cloth, got him strong tea in the morning. One night the phone rang and I heard Jamie speaking softly, and then the