decided to push it around to spell out the name of some imaginary future husband.
“Maybe you’re not going to get married,” Debbie finally said. Maggie lifted her hands and then asked what the future would bring for her parents. “Dumb question,” said Debbie, wrinkling her nose and pulling her hands away. “Who cares about the future of parents?”
“I care about the future of your parents. I like your parents,” Maggie said.
“I like my parents okay,” said Debbie, “but, it’s like, they’re all taken care of. They know what their future is, who they’re married to, how many kids they’re going to have, what they wore to the prom. They’re sort of finished.”
“Something could happen.”
“Like what?” said Debbie, and she sounded so doubtful that Maggie could not bring herself to say, What if they start to hate each other? What if one of them starts to love someone else? What if they never talked to each other, or to you? Debbie’s life seemed so simple to Maggie; how could she tell her friend that she and her mother didn’t even belong to the same family?
They were silent for a minute, the sounds of distant television sets carrying to them faintly through the development, and then Debbie said, “Want to go to Bridget’s tomorrow? She’s got a Princess phone.” Bridget Hearn was fourteen and lived next door to the Malones. She had taken Debbie up in a desultory fashion in the first weeks of summer vacation, because her own best friend was at the shore until Labor Day, and because she wanted a chance to go through Helen’s drawers.
“No.”
“She called Richard the other day and asked if he had Prince Albert in a can.”
Maggie groaned. “You have to call a store to do that joke.”
“But wait, wait, guess what he said? She goes ‘Excuse me, but do you have Prince Albert in a can?’ And Richard says, ‘No, I already let him out.’” He said the perfect thing without even knowing she was going to call.”
“She’s stupid,” said Maggie. “She only cares about boys and clothes. And Helen.”
“Her parents go out a lot,” Debbie said. “She had Richard and Bruce over one night until midnight. She went down the basement with Richard for an hour and Bruce had to sit upstairs and watch television alone.”
“And?”
“And how do I know? She didn’t tell me.” In the silence, they could hear someone laughing nearby. Finally Debbie said, “She said Richard tried to French-kiss with her.”
“And?” said Maggie.
“She said she didn’t let him.”
“What a lie,” said Maggie, whose parents had told her she couldn’t hang around with Bridget Hearn after seeing her one day at Mass with a Band-Aid incompletely covering a hickey on her neck. Maggie thought of Monica again. “Do you think Helen has done it?” she asked.
“God, Mag, are you crazy? She’s not married.”
“So. People who aren’t married must do it sometimes.”
“Yeah, and wind up like that girl two years ago, what was her name? Who had to go to a home and then her parents moved away? Forget it.”
“Maybe doing it is better than we think it is. Our parents do it.”
“Because they have to.”
“Maybe they want to,” Maggie said.
“You’re nuts,” Debbie said, flicking off the flashlight. Maggie put her hands back on the Ouija. “Let’s ask if I’m really moving,” she said.
“Doesn’t your grandfather say that you’re moving?” Debbie picked idly at a scab on her knee.
“He bought us a house but my mother says we’re not going to move into it. My father says no, too. Anyway, my grandfather’s sick now.”
“Sick or not, if your grandfather bought you a house, then you’re moving,” Debbie said.
Maggie wondered why everyone else in the world suddenly seemed so sure of themselves, and only she felt that every answer was the wrong answer, every situation a strange one. That morning, remembering the scene at the hospital the night before, she had thought about going to see her grandfather Mazza at the cemetery. But she thought of her set of tools, her square of fabric, and they seemed to belong to someone she had once been friendly with but who had since moved away, or gone to another school. This morning she had even felt out of place on the familiar streets of Kenwood. The air had been filled with the buzz of bulldozers, and the familiar curb where she and Debbie had written their initials in wet cement when they were nine had been crushed to pebbles by the wheels of the dump