lamp instead.” She noticed Maggie standing there. “You’re back early,” she said. “Miss Debbie is upstairs. Ask her if she’s flying to Paris this afternoon.”
“Helen’s moving out,” Debbie said, as soon as Maggie opened the door to her bedroom.
While she was at the beach Maggie had missed the two most exciting days in the history of the Malone household. On Monday afternoon, on their way home from the Kenwoodie Club, a striped towel draped around her long neck, Helen had informed Mrs. Malone that she had gotten an apartment of her own. Mrs. Malone had never been considered a stupid woman, but it took her a full five minutes to puzzle out what Helen meant.
It turned out that when Helen had taken a special English literature enrichment course at Fordham that spring, she had met a student who had rented an apartment in Manhattan, near Columbia University. The girl had offered Helen one of the bedrooms in return for half the rent. Helen had cleaned out her savings account and packed her clothes before anyone knew what was happening; her closet was empty except for her Sacred Heart uniform and the long dotted-swiss dress she had worn three weeks before for her graduation. She had given Aggie her jewelry box, and Debbie her dictionary.
“I asked for the bikini but she just laughed,” Debbie said.
Mrs. Malone had been wild. For two days, she had slammed around the kitchen late into the night, cleaning the refrigerator, her flip-flops slapping the linoleum as though she was spanking it. Even now Maggie could hear intermittent ranting from downstairs, part of a monologue about how people didn’t know when they had it good, how they always wanted what they didn’t have, how they would have to learn the hard way. Mr. Malone had found the decision complicated by the fact that the other girl was the daughter of a judge with whom he had long wanted to be on speaking terms. The two men had met at the apartment, turned on the faucets to check the water pressure, talked sternly to the superintendent, and agreed that they would put up with this nonsense until the girls’ money ran out, which was expected to happen just in time for the Christmas holidays.
“She’s coming,” Debbie said suddenly, in the middle of describing all this to Maggie, and they heard the sound of footsteps walking down the hall from Helen’s room. The two girls followed her soundlessly, watching her back as she trotted downstairs. Mrs. Malone stood in the hallway next to the suitcases, her hands on her hips.
“Did you take my blue blouse?” she asked.
Maggie stood at the top of the stairs and heard Helen laugh, and behind Helen, through the open door, Maggie could see sunlight. At the curb was a car as blue as the sky. Helen put her arms around her mother’s shoulders. She towered over Mrs. Malone.
“Your blue blouse is safe upstairs. I will be safe at 113th Street and Broadway. I will come home soon. I will call every day.”
“I don’t want to talk to you every day.”
Helen laughed again. “I know,” she said, “but I’ll do it anyway.” She looked up to the head of the stairs, and her face glowed pink, as though she’d been running.
“You’re back early,” she said to Maggie. “What happened—did Monica drown?”
“No such luck,” said Maggie.
“Come see me,” Helen said, and Maggie wondered if she meant it. “I’ll teach you two how to smoke cigarettes.” Mrs. Malone hit Helen on the shoulder and then she started to laugh herself. Maggie could see tears in the eyes of both mother and daughter.
“Oh, you,” Mrs. Malone said.
The car at the curb beeped its horn twice, and Helen picked up the suitcases. “Debbie, could you get the box?” she called, and Debbie sailed downstairs, away from Maggie, into the midst of it all. As Helen started to walk out, Mrs. Malone turned and went into the kitchen, her head down. Debbie was already out the door.
Helen turned in the doorway, the sun lighting her black hair. “I left you something in my top drawer,” she said to Maggie, and then she was gone.
Maggie ran back upstairs to the bedroom at the end of the hall. On the blackboard Helen had written À BIENTÔT, which Maggie knew was French for something. The single bed had been stripped down to its naked mattress, and the top of the bureau, which had always been a welter of bracelets and postcards and ribbons,