Birthday Girls (9 page)

The idea of eating dormitory food served on stainless steel trays repulsed Abigail. But a party was something else, something that Kris might like, too. “Let’s have a party at my house instead,” she said. “Just the four of us.”

“And we’ll celebrate together!” Betty Ann exclaimed. “All our birthdays at the same time.”

“I can bring my records,” Maddie said, stepping forward, two distinct golf ball shapes defining the front of her jumper. Abigail wondered if Maddie had formed them with socks. “I have Buddy Holly and Elvis.”

“So do I,” Abigail said, “and I have a new hi-fi.”

Maddie said nothing.

“A birthday party,” Kris commented. “Great. I’ll be sure to wear this dress.”

• • •

The party
had been a success.

At first Maddie was embarrassed that she’d worn her new Mousketeer T-shirt, the one with the box-lettered black stencil of her name across the front and the official Mickey Mouse Club emblem in red and black on the back.

“Maybe we should call you Annette,” Kris said, referring to the lines of Maddie’s bra that showed through the thin cotton. But Betty Ann said Kris was jealous because she’d be wearing an undershirt for the rest of her life, and then Abigail laughed and said she was surprised that Betty Ann knew what bras were at all, seeing as how she was younger and had five brothers and all.

They soon learned that Betty Ann knew about much more than that: her mother had given her a book called
Now You Are Ten
, and it told what was going to happen to them—all of them—that they would start bleeding from between their legs.

Abigail said, “Impossible.”

Maddie hadn’t heard anything like that either but was simply glad that the conversation had moved from her chest.

“She’s right,” Kris announced. “It’s called your period and it comes every month.”

Abigail looked skeptical and suggested it was time to eat.

After chicken and potato salad and chips that they ate off gold-rimmed china with a fancy crest on the bottom, the woman named Louisa presented them with their cake. Maddie thought it was the perfect time to use her new camera, the kind with a timer. Everyone groaned except Betty Ann.

“I love pictures,” she cried with that pixie-like grin that few people—even Abigail—could say no to.

“Okay, let’s stand behind the cake,” Abigail ordered. “we should line up like Rockettes.”

Maddie winced. She did not want to pretend to be a Rockette. Everyone knew she was too short. And too fat. But her friends fell into position, one knee raised, hands on hips, flat chests out.

Maddie looked through the lens. “It looks boring,” she said. “Let’s make it more fun.”

Without speaking, Kris smiled. Then she leaned over, scooped two pink-frosting roses from the edge of the cake, and pushed them into Abigail’s face.

The hostess screamed.

“Perfect!” Maddie shouted, set the timer, and raced around to be in the shot.

Click.

While the housekeeper muttered and cleaned up the mess, Betty Ann made her pronouncement about birthday wishes.

“Please, please,
please
,” she begged the others. “Please let’s write down our birthday wishes and seal them in a bottle.”

And because Betty Ann was Betty Ann and no one could say no to her, they wrote down their wishes and put them in an old milk bottle Louisa brought from the pantry.

“Be careful what you wish for,” the woman warned. “It might come true.”

The girls all giggled, and Maddie wrote down her wish, deciding that she liked her new friends after all.

“By the time I’m eleven,” Maddie carefully wrote, “I hope I have filled an album with pictures of me and my friends.” Then she erased the last four words and wrote “my friends and me,” just in case her college-English-professor father ever read her secret birthday wish.

• • •

1960

By the time
they were twelve, it had become a tradition.

“This is the most important year
ever
,” Betty Ann said as they clustered on the floor of Abigail’s bedroom, the milk bottle by their side, the slips of paper ready to accept their birthday wishes.

“Why?” Kris asked.

“Because next year we’ll be teenagers, and we’ll get to do whatever we want!”

Abigail stopped herself from commenting that technically Betty Ann would not be a teenager for a year and a
half
. And that with her tiny size, she’d probably still pass for eight, ten at the most.

“Can we have boyfriends?” Kris asked.

“Well …” Betty Ann said quietly, “Sure. I suppose. But I was thinking more that we can wear nylons and lipstick.” Thirteen, after all, was the magical year at Arbor Brook when young girls were expected to be transformed into young ladies.

“Grandfather lets me wear lipstick already,” Abigail said. Poising her pen with the shocking pink ink over her slip of paper, she added, “I’m going to wish that Grandfather will take me to Venice. I want to see the gondolas.” So far, she’d not accompanied Grandfather on any of his business trips. She hoped that would change, now that she’d be thirteen, almost an adult.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to know each other’s wishes until next year. Until we see if they came true,” Maddie said.

“Let’s make this year an exception,” Abigail said. “Because we’ll be teenagers.”

Kris chewed the tip of her pencil. “And no ranking on each other if we think our wishes are stupid?”

“No ranking,” Abigail agreed.

Maddie nodded. “Okay. So I’m going to wish that my father gets well.”

The room grew silent. They all knew Maddie’s father had that dreaded disease … the one that began with a “c” … the one no one talked about. Maddie looked away. “What are you going to wish for, Kris?”

Her black eyes sparkled. “A boyfriend. Definitely a boyfriend.”

“Oh, no,” Betty Ann whined.

“What’s wrong with that? It’s time I had one.”

Betty Ann frowned. “You wouldn’t be in such a hurry to have a boyfriend if you had five brothers.”

“All of whom,” Kris commented, “I’ve yet to meet.”

“It’s because they’re stupid. All they do is ride bikes and punch each other.”

Maddie laughed. “Okay, so we know what Kris wants. What about you, Betty Ann? What’s your important wish for when you’ll be a teenager?”

Lowering her head, Betty Ann shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll wish for a boyfriend, too. As long as he doesn’t ride a bike.”

Abigail folded the paper, dropped it into the bottle, and wondered why Betty Ann was wasting a perfectly good wish on something she obviously didn’t want.

1962

“She’s
late,” Abigail said, peering out through the lace draperies, looking for Kris. “Maybe we should eat the cake without her.”

“I can’t believe she’s riding in a car with a boy,” Betty Ann said.

“Jack’s not just a boy,” Maddie replied. “He’s her boyfriend. Remember when you wanted one?”

Betty Ann blinked but did not answer.

• • •

She liked
the way Jack was rubbing her breast, liked the way her nipple got stiff and the way she felt warm and wet between her legs, just like when she put her pillow there and moved back and forth against it. Kris wondered how it would feel if his fingers slid beneath her panties—if it would feel as good when he rubbed her down
there
, as good as it felt when she did it to herself.

She knew she was going to be late to the party, but it didn’t matter. They were fourteen now, and it seemed sort of dumb that they kept doing this little-girl stuff anyway. Maybe she should have suggested that they forget it this year, but then, Maddie’s father had died last month and Kris didn’t have the heart to say she wouldn’t be part of their birthday celebration, even though it was apparent that Betty Ann’s long-ago idea of making birthday wishes, and sealing them in a bottle so they would come true, had certainly not worked. Not for Maddie, anyway.

Jack ran his tongue around the outside of her ear. Kris felt herself getting warmer, wetter. Then he took her hand and pulled it to his lap. The hard bulge beneath his jeans told Kris that this was what it was all about; maybe Maddie’s wish had not come true, but hers was, here and now.

Besides, there was no way she was going to leave before she saw a penis. A live, in-the-flesh penis—
erect
, as the magazines she’d read had called it.

When he unzipped his zipper, Kris thought she would die from impatience. And suddenly it was there. Big and shiny and wet. She reached out and touched the pink tip. Lightly at first.

Jack moaned.

“Make me come, baby,” he groaned. “Put your hand around it and make me come.”

She caught her breath, then wrapped her fingers around the shaft. They did not meet on the other side.

“Move your hand, baby,” Jack cried. “Move it up and down.”

Slowly she began to rock his penis in her hand. With each stroke, the tingling built between her own legs. With each stroke, she squeezed more tightly. Quickly he reached down and thrust his hand between her legs, rubbing furiously at her crotch. Then he worked his fingers underneath her panties and plunged one inside her. It hurt. She jerked. He moaned again. Something sticky dribbled down her wrist.

“Oh, baby,” Jack whispered. “Oh, baby.”

She rested her head against the back of the seat, listened to the rapid thumping of her heart, and wondered why she had waited until fourteen to do this—and when she could do it again.

Racing
up the driveway, past the fountain, straight up to Abigail’s front door, Kris wasn’t even out of breath when she rang the doorbell. And she knew there was a wide smile on her face.

“You’re too late,” Maddie announced, sweeping open the door. “We ate all the cake.”

“Bullshit,” Kris said, using one of the favorite words the girls had adopted somewhere along the time they all had begun the once-a-month bleed between their legs. “And you’ll thank me for being late. I’ve reached a milestone better than being fourteen.” She breezed past Maddie into the huge foyer and headed for the library, where she couldn’t wait to tell her story. Behind her, Maddie’s feet softly padded.

Quickly Kris scanned the library. Abigail and Betty Ann were on the floor, rolling their hair in large pink rollers. “Everyone, stop what you’re doing,” Kris demanded. “We have important stuff to talk about.”

“You’re late,” Abigail answered. “We ate all the cake.”

“Who cares.” She dropped to the floor in a crossed-legged position and tucked her thick black hair behind her ears. “I did it,” she announced.

“Did what?” Betty Ann asked.

Maddie clutched at her stomach and slumped beside Kris.

“You’re crazy,” Abigail said as she calmly twirled another roller around her blonde hair. “And I don’t believe you for a minute.”

“Well” Kris said, “I didn’t exactly
do
it. I came close, though.”

“Close doesn’t count,” Abigail said, averting her gaze.

“Excuse me, but it does count.”

“Counts for what?” Betty Ann asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Sexual intercourse,” Maddie said. “Kris had sexual intercourse with Jack.”

Betty Ann’s hand flew to her mouth, stifling a barely audible gasp. “OhMyGod. How could you?”

Kris shook her head. “I didn’t go all the way. But I held it in my hand. And I jerked him off. He came all over my hand.” She held up her hand.

The room grew silent. Suddenly Betty Ann sprang up from the floor, knocking over the pile of rollers. “I have to pee,” she announced, and raced from the room.

“God,” Maddie said, “I’ve never even
seen
a penis.”

“I have,” Abigail commented as she rose and placed her hands on her hips. “I walked in one day when Grandfather was changing. I thought it looked rather disgusting.”

Just then Abigail’s grandfather appeared in the doorway, Betty Ann by his side. “What’s going on?” he asked. “It seems you’ve scared this poor girl to death and she wants to be taken back to school.”

Kris looked at the man—tall, snow-white hair, with the same green eyes as Abigail. Her gaze dropped to his fly
and she wondered why on earth Abigail would think his penis—any penis—was disgusting.

Abigail walked over to Betty Ann and put her arm around her. “It’s all a joke, Grandfather. Kris told us a joke and Betty Ann didn’t like it. Come on, Betty Ann, we haven’t made our birthday wishes.”

Tears coursed down Betty Ann’s rosy cheeks. “I … I forgot I have homework …”

“Kris will help you with it tomorrow,” Abigail said. “Once she’s stopped being so silly.”

Kris caught a look from Abigail that told her to knock it off, that Grandfather would be angry and they’d all have to go home. “I’m sorry, Betty Ann,” she said. “It was only a joke.” But inside she smiled, looked down at her hand, and knew she had learned the secret to feeling really good.

She picked up a pen and began to write: “By the time I am fifteen … I will not be a virgin.”

The next
morning, after the others had left, Abigail unsealed the milk bottle and unfolded the slip of paper containing Kris’s wish. She stared at the words and wondered if Kris really meant it. Then she wondered how she could find a boyfriend fast, and do it before Kris had a chance to.

1964

The first
time she did it was over the summer. He was a stable hand at Windsor-on-Hudson, and all things considered it should have been romantic: the beautiful heiress and the poor but handsome servant, like in the stories in those true confession magazines on the rack in the back of the five-and-dime. Despite the adventure, she hadn’t really
wanted to go through with it, but September was coming and Kris would return to Arbor Brook and Abigail wanted to be able to tell her she’d done it.

The first time, it hurt. Her hair got messed up, her white shorts got dirty, and it hurt. But a couple of weeks later she let him do it again to see if it would be better, It didn’t hurt as much as before, which was about all she could say. That and the fact she was glad she’d insisted he wear one of those Trojan things from the package she’d stolen from Grandfather’s drawer, an apparent leftover from a dozen or more years ago when her grandmother passed away. Surely he no longer needed them.