frighten her; she wanted to close her eyes to make it last. She did, and thought: Who’s there? Who’s there? But when she opened her eyes she found no one; even the bird was gone.
The second time she was at a friend’s birthday party; Mary was nine, or ten. Hats, balloons, games that seemed childish but were still fun: The girl whose party it was, Simone, had invited no boys, or else they simply had not come. It was February, a Saturday afternoon in Minnesota, and the house, a rambler in the same subdivision where Mary lived, was a modest variation of her own. The party was held in the basement, a low-ceilinged room with brown paneling and shag carpet the color of moss. Mary’s mother kept a bag of presents in the coat closet for birthday parties, and Mary had selected Spirograph, which now embarrassed her: all the other presents were better, more grown-up. Bonnie Bell Lip Smacker, a bottle of Love’s Baby Soft, a poster of David Cassidy, a neon-purple Hula Hoop—the last a child’s toy but also something older girls did, girls who had hips and waists and could keep the thing spinning for hours. What could she have been thinking with the Spirograph? Still Simone had thanked her, pausing dutifully to open the package and insert the pen into the gears, drawing a single fleur-de-lis before putting it to the side. Spirograph, Simone said, smiling. Cool. I haven’t used this for years.
They sang “Happy Birthday” and ate the pink-frosted cake, and when Simone’s mother had left them in the basement, one of the girls, Simone’s older cousin Rose, showed them how to practice kissing with a pillow. They taped the poster of David Cassidy on the wall, and took turns kissing this as well, tilting their faces as they knew they were supposed to; you had to be careful, Rose instructed, not to go straight in, or you would bump noses. When this was done Rose took one of the empty pop-bottles and placed it, on its side, on the coffee table. The girls all sat around the table while Rose explained the rules and gave the bottle a lazy spin.
Mary watched as the bottle turned on the wood—it seemed to go around forever—and then it came to rest, pointing at Mary like a finger. All the girls laughed, though Mary knew this wasn’t personal: they were simply relieved that the bottle had pointed at someone else.
Mary curled her hair behind her ears. “Sure,” she heard herself say, “I’ll kiss you.”
“Remember what I said about the noses,” Rose warned.
It happened so quickly it was nothing. Mary had never been kissed on the lips before—her parents did not do this—and she leaned across the table, letting her eyes fall closed and trying to think of David Cassidy, and kissed Rose. So this is kissing, she thought. A pause fell over the room—Mary felt this silence, as she was also aware of the taste of pink cake-frosting and watermelon Lip Smackers—and when their faces parted Mary realized that with this kiss the game had ended. The bottle was a dare, meant to be accepted only once; because Mary had done this, the others were absolved.
“When you kiss a boy,” Rose said confidently, “you’ll want to use your tongue.”
Mary said nothing; this did not seem true. Use it how? Around them the girls laughed again; they had no idea either.
“You’ll see,” Rose said.
It was later, on the car ride home, that she felt it. Darkness was falling; the snow, in great piles beside the roadway and the houses, had turned a pale and lifeless gray. At her waist Mary was holding the small party favor that each of the girls had gotten, a jewelry-making kit wrapped in cellophane, and her father was smoking, tapping the ashes from his cigarette through a slender crack in his window. How was the party? he wanted to know. Did she have fun with her friends? What was that there, honey, that little thing on her lap? Was it a prize that she had won? The moment was common, and yet everything about it had begun to feel strange to Mary. More than strange: The smell of her father’s cigarette and the close heat of the car, the slipperiness of cold vinyl beneath her jeans, the remembered taste of Rose’s kiss—all of it was both less than real and somehow more, as if she were dissolving into sensation itself, like a lozenge on the