fancy grown-up bathing suits in the bottom of her underwear drawer and goes out at night to talk to boys in those damn houses you’re building.”
“She does?”
“They all do.”
“Ask her if she knows who’s setting these fires. They burned down an entire garage last night. If there’d been a breeze, it would have taken half a block with it.”
Connie sighed. “My God, what a summer. Will we live through it? I feel like all hell started to break loose as soon as you showed up.”
“Hey,” Joey said, “don’t blame me.”
“I don’t blame anyone for anything. People just believe what they want. That if you’re a kid, you’ll stay that way forever. That if you look like a Shirley Temple doll, you’re a good girl. You live in a big house, everything’s fine.” Connie shrugged. “You know who my husband’s family thought I was going to be like? Doris Delgaudio.”
Connie and Joey both began to laugh. Doris Delgaudio had lived down the block from the Martinellis. She had worn red lipstick as thick as her ankles, crystal costume jewelry, and Capri pants. When she walked, her bottom swayed from one side of the sidewalk to the other, and she made a noise like Oriental wind chimes from the sound of all the crystal knocking together.
“I swear,” Connie said, gasping for air, “the Scanlans were all waiting for me to fill the house with crushed velvet and red curtains, waiting to see if I’d stamp grapes with my bare feet in the backyard. I think what bothers them as much as anything else is that I didn’t turn out to be what they expected. Their son married a guinea, she ought to at least act like a guinea. I think it drives them crazy, that I’m not one thing or another.”
“Yeah, you are,” Joey said, “you’re terrific.”
For just a moment, before it happened, Connie could see what was coming, but in the same way she was always convinced people who were hit by a bus froze in the middle of the street, she found herself incapable of doing anything about it. She saw his face move, then his arm and his shoulder, and then he had his arm around her and he was kissing her. Her mouth opened in amazement and she could feel his teeth.
It was the oddest feeling, being kissed by someone who wasn’t Tommy. She kissed him back, and her body warmed and she shifted a little in her seat so she was turned toward him. She put her hand on the back of his neck and felt the short hairs, and try as she might, all she could think, while pleasure welled within her, was: This is different from Tommy. And this. And this. He put one hand on her bare knee and she felt a throb inside her groin, and then in her stomach.
“Oh, my God,” he groaned, “you are so beautiful.”
She imagined this was what she had read about in Reader’s Digest, an out-of-body experience. She felt that she was looking at herself from somewhere near the inside light of the car, and thinking: Why, it’s true. I look wonderful, all white whites and black blacks. Joey ran his thumb over one of her nipples, and the her that was still inside her body felt her joints grow warm. She whimpered softly. She had forgotten all about the baby in the back seat. When he put his hand between her legs she started to slide down, her shoulders jammed between the steering wheel and the seat, and the woman watching it all, the other woman she was, thought to herself, “This is exactly the spot I was in when I got pregnant the first time.” She did not know whether it was the power of that suggestion, or the prone position, or the hormones that-flooded her body as her excitement rose, but she suddenly realized she was going to be sick.
She opened the door of the car with one hand over her head and lurched out somehow onto the grass. She gagged a little, and the ground beneath her felt liquid.
When she got back into the car she left her door open because of the sharp vinegar scent of her mouth. Joey was sitting with his head in his hands, and she felt so sorry for what had happened that she started to reach out to stroke his hair and then stopped in midair. She wondered what would have happened if her stomach had not betrayed—or