the subject of how and where to watch the upcoming solar phenomenon (to Jessie these meetings had seemed like ordinary run-of-the-mill summer cocktail parties), and had even given themselves a name-The Dark Score Sun Worshippers. The Sun Worshippers had rented one of the school district's mini-buses for the occasion and were planning to voyage to the top of New Hampshire's tallest mountain equipped with box lunches, Polaroid sunglasses, specially constructed reflector-boxes, specially filtered cameras... and champagne, of course. Lots and lots of champagne. To Jessie's mother and older sister, all this had seemed to be the very definition of frothy, sophisticated fun. To Jessie it had seemed the essence of all that was boring... and that was before you added Pooh-Pooh Breath into the equation.
She had gone out on the deck after supper on the evening of the 19th, ostensibly to read twenty or thirty pages of Mr C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet before the sun went down. Her actual purpose was a good deal less intellectual: she wanted to listen as her father made his-their-pitch, and to silently root him on. She and Maddy had been aware for years that the combination living roorn/dining room of the summer house had peculiar acoustical qualities, probably caused by its high, steeply angled ceiling; Jessie had an idea that even Will knew about the way sound carried from in there to out here on the deck. Only their parents seemed unaware that the room might as well have been bugged, and that most of the important decisions they had made in that room as they sipped after-dinner cognac or cups of coffee were known (to their daughters, at least) long before the marching orders were handed down from staff headquarters.
Jessie noticed she was holding the Lewis novel upside down and made haste to rectify that situation before Maddy happened by and gave her a big, silent horselaugh. She felt a little guilty about what she was doing-it was a lot closer to eavesdropping than to rooting, when you got right down to it-but not quite guilty enough to stop. And in fact she considered herself still to be on the right side of a thin moral line. After all, it wasn't as if she were hiding in the closet, or anything; she was sitting right out here in full view, bathed in the bright light of the westering sun. She was sitting out here with her book, and wondering if there were ever eclipses on Mars, and if there were Martians up there to watch them if there were. If her parents thought no one could hear what they were saying just because they were sitting at the table in there, was that her fault? Was she supposed to go in and tell them?
"I don't theenk so, my deah," Jessie whispered in her snottiest Elizabeth Taylor Cat on a Hot Tin Roof voice, and then cupped her hands over a big, goofy grin. And she guessed she was also safe from her big sister's interference, at least for the time being; she could hear Maddy and Will below her in the rumpus room, squabbling good-naturedly over a game of Cootie or Parcheesi or something like that.
I really don't think it would hurt her to stay here with me tomorrow,do you? her father was asking in his most winning, good-humored voice.
No, of course not, Jessie's mother replied, but it wouldn't exactlykill her to go someplace with the rest of us this summer, either. She'sturned into a complete Daddy's girl,
She went down to the puppet show in Bethel with you and Will lastweek. In fact, didn't you tell me that she stayed with Will-even boughthim an ice cream out of her own allowance-while you went into thatauction barn?
That was no sacrifice for our Jessie, Sally replied. She sounded almost grim.
What do you mean?
I mean she went to the puppet show because she wanted to, and she tookcare of Will because she wanted to. Grimness had given way to a more familiar tone: exasperation. How can you understand what I mean? that tone asked. How can you possibly, when you're a man?
This was a tone Jessie had heard more and more frequently in her mother's voice these last few years. She knew that was partly because she herself heard more and saw more as she grew up, but she was pretty sure it was also because her mother used that tone more frequently than she once had. Jessie couldn't understand why her