Liberty Street (20 page)

Before she drives home, she stops at the post office to pick up the mail. There's a large white envelope addressed to her, Frances Moon, and when she opens it she finds a letter, which is her acceptance letter to the college of arts and science at the university her mother had wanted to tour the day they were robbed. At first she can't figure it out—
how did this happen
?—
and then she realizes that her mother must have filled out an application without her after she'd become the dark-horse A student. She drives home recklessly, furious, and storms into the house waving the envelope.

“I'm relieved,” her mother says, reading the letter. “I was worried we'd be too late. I sent in the application after the deadline had passed.” Then she says, “This is the only way you'll find a good job, Frances. Girls without an education work in restaurants and walk around with gravy spills on their aprons, hoping for a ten-cent tip. That's just the way it is, and that is not what you want. Tell me now if I've got that wrong. I'm putting my foot down. I will not allow you to live here next year and sit on your backside doing nothing. I don't care what you choose to study, but university it is.”

“No,” Frances says. “I'm not going.”

“I won't accept no for an answer. I want you to take this letter and think. I want you to stop being selfish, and I want you to grow up and act like a girl who is on the verge of becoming a woman. You're not a child anymore, or so you keep telling me.”

Then her mother goes outside and leaves her alone in the kitchen with the envelope.

Frances reads the letter once more. She empties the envelope's contents on the table and looks through a brochure that tells her what to expect as a first-year student. It contains photos of smiling young men and women carrying books and looking as though they're in an advertisement selling success and happiness. She rips up the letter and leaves the torn pieces next to the brochure on the table. Then she goes to her room and cries for an hour. Eventually, she falls asleep, and when she wakes up she can smell chicken frying. She
expects to find her mother livid with anger, and she makes up her mind that she won't fight but will simply refuse to talk about it. But nothing more is said about the letter, which her mother had no doubt found in pieces on the table. Not a word is spoken about anything, not even Joe Fletcher, as Frances and her parents sit down to chicken and mashed potatoes. They eat in silence until Frances's father wipes his plate with a slice of bread and says, “Well, I can't stand another minute of this,” and he leaves the kitchen and goes back outside. Alice clears off the table and puts the dirty dishes in the sink, and Frances gets up to wash them. Her mother dries.

The silence is terrible, even to Frances, but the conversation about her education appears to be over.

I
N
S
EPTEMBER
, F
RANCES
turns eighteen without much fanfare. A cake, yes, along with eighteen candles and a set of pens in a leather box, clearly purchased some time ago and intended for the academic life that has now started without her presence. She says thank you, although what she'd really wanted was a special celebration with a boyfriend, with Joe Fletcher.

On Friday, Frances drives to town in her mother's car to return library books, or at least that's her excuse, and she walks up Main Street and past the dealership in hopes of seeing Joe, but instead she runs into Daphne Rose, who acts as though they're old school pals.

“Did you hear that Myrna had her baby?” Daphne asks. “A boy. She was in labour for
two whole days
, and they had to use forceps to pull the baby out. My God, can you imagine? I would die. Anyway, she's calling the baby Morgan after . . . oh, I can't remember. And did you know that she and Buddy
broke up? They aren't getting married, but Myrna is keeping the baby anyway. Not like the other one.” A commiserative look comes over Daphne's face and she says, “After all they've been through, they end up splitsville. She'll need her friends, don't you think? We should go and see her. Do you want to?”

Why? Why in the world is Daphne even talking to her, let alone suggesting they go together to see Myrna Samples? But Frances is caught off guard, and even though she wants nothing to do with Daphne, she hears herself saying, “Sure. Okay.”

“You look way different since you started wearing makeup,” Daphne says. “Anyway, I have to run. I'll phone you.”

Frances stares after her and wonders what that was all about. She doesn't expect Daphne to call her. She hopes she doesn't.

She and her mother are making supper later—Frances is peeling potatoes and Alice is browning pork chops on the stove—when Alice asks, “What is it that you like about that man?”

Here it comes again, Frances thinks. He's too old for you.

“Joe, you mean?” she says. “His name is Joe.”

“All right, then,” her mother says. “Joe. What is it that you like about Joe?”

It's the first time her mother has asked a serious question about him. Maybe, Frances thinks, she is genuinely interested in the answer.

She says, “We like the same things, movies. I like the fact that he's not a stupid teenager. And he doesn't know me from school, which counts for a lot. And I don't really care about our ages, so don't start on that.”

“Please don't let this go too far,” Alice says. “He'll have . . . expectations. Surely you know that.”

Frances sighs and digs at a potato eye. Her mother is very fussy about the eyes. She wants no black spots on her boiled potatoes. “Do you mean sex, Mother?” she asks. “Is that what you're talking about? You should just say it.”

“A man that age is not going to go out with a girl for long before he . . . well, you know what I mean. Young people were meant to go out with other young people. I'm warning you, Frances. This will not go well if you continue to see that man. Do you want to end up like Myrna Samples? Two pregnancies. Honestly.”

“Joe. His name is Joe, and I have no intention of ending up like Myrna Samples. How stupid do you think I am? And by the way, Myrna had her baby, and she and Buddy broke up and she's keeping the baby anyway. That's what comes of a girl dating someone her own age. Now Myrna is saddled with a baby. Anyway, quit talking as though Joe Fletcher wants to marry me.” She whips at a potato with her peeler and takes a slice of skin off her knuckle. “Damn it. See what you made me do?” She grabs a Kleenex and wraps it around her knuckle.

“A man wanting to marry you is not my biggest fear,” Alice says. “Quite the opposite.”

“That's it,” Frances says, throwing her potato peeler into the sink. “Peel your own damned potatoes.”

“My potatoes, are they?” her mother says. “I suppose you aren't planning to eat them.”

Frances is about to say something else, but then she sees that her mother has that look on her face again—the one that says Frances is her greatest sorrow in life—and Frances can't stand it, can't stand to be in the same room as that look, and she leaves, goes to her bedroom and wonders again what
happened to the mother of her childhood, the one who would put on her sunglasses and head for the lake on a hot day,
we two girls.
This mother is whiny and dismal, and there's no pleasure to be had in fighting with her, none at all.

She resolves not to take the bait next time it's offered.

A
FEW WEEKS
after Frances's eighteenth birthday, Joe picks her up and they go to a special double feature, two Clint Eastwood movies, one of them with a little too much suspense. As they're walking out of the theatre, she instinctively tucks her hand into his arm (
Clint Eastwood's arm
), and then, when she realizes what she's done, she pulls it away, embarrassed. But Joe picks it up and tucks it back in, and they leave the theatre like that, with plenty of eyes watching them. Let them gawk, Frances thinks, pleased with this new step, the idea of herself on Joe's arm. Well, not just an idea. She really is
on his arm
!

When Joe drops her off, after midnight, her parents have gone to bed, but when she gets inside she can see the light under their bedroom door. Through the closed door she says, “Joe Fletcher isn't as bad as you think. If you have to know, he hasn't even tried to kiss me.”

There's no answer, but the light flicks off.

The next day, Daphne phones to ask if she still wants to visit Myrna, and Frances hears herself saying yes even though she knows that she should be coming up with an excuse, knows that an overture of friendship from Daphne Rose is not to be trusted. Daphne says she'll meet her in town in front of the school and they can walk over to Myrna's house together. Frances doesn't even know where Myrna lives.

Frances gets there first, and when Daphne arrives, she
says they should buy the baby a present, so they go to the drugstore—the only store open on a Sunday—and pick out a package that contains a flannelette receiving blanket, a sleeper, and a little cap that looks too small to fit anything but a doll. They buy some wrapping paper and a card and some tape, and sit on a bench on the sidewalk and wrap the gift and sign the card.

“What should we say?” Daphne asks. “How about ‘All the best for the future, from your friends Daphne and Frances'?”

Phoney as baloney, Frances thinks, but she says, “Sure, why not.”

When they get to Myrna's house, it turns out Daphne hadn't told her they were coming. Myrna's mother answers the door and Daphne says, “Hi, Mrs. Samples. We're friends of Myrna's.” Mrs. Samples looks as though she might be about to send them away. Frances wants to ditch Daphne and run, but then Mrs. Samples says, “I'm glad you've come, girls. She's feeling a little blue. The baby blues, I think.” No mention of Buddy and how the blues might be because of him, and how Myrna's been left with a baby and no husband.

Myrna is lying on the couch in the living room, wearing a pink terry-cloth bathrobe and looking as though she's been in a war. She looks shocked to see Frances—actually glances away before staring at her again to double-check—and she barely acknowledges Daphne. Frances thinks she's maybe made her biggest mistake ever by coming. Maybe Myrna and Daphne aren't even friends. She remembers the catfight at school. Then Myrna sits up on the couch and apologizes for the way she looks, and Daphne hands her the baby gift. Myrna opens it and looks at it and puts it on the couch beside her without saying anything, not even a thank-you.
Mrs. Samples brings in three glasses of Coke on a tray and sets the tray down next to a box of tissues on the coffee table. When she sees the gift, she holds it up and says, “Oh, isn't that cute? Adorable.” Then she leaves again, saying, “I'll just let you girls talk.” Frances hears a baby cry from another room, and she notices that Myrna doesn't turn her head toward the sound, ignores it, and Mrs. Samples calls, “Don't worry, Myrna . . . I'll get him,” and then the baby is quiet. There's no mention of Mrs. Samples showing the baby to Daphne and Frances.

Frances doesn't know what to do or say, so she picks up a Coke from the tray and takes a sip. Daphne does the same. Myrna's goes untouched. Then Daphne turns to Frances and says, “So, Frances, tell us all about Joe Fletcher.”

Frances almost chokes on her drink. Now she knows what this is all about.

She sets the Coke down on the table. How could she not have seen that coming?

“There's not much to tell,” she says. “You've seen us at the Roxy.”

“Oh, I bet there's more to it than the Roxy.”

“No,” Frances says. “That's it.”

She knows she should leave, just get up and go, but she takes too long deciding and Daphne says, “Are you on the pill? You'd better be because, you know . . . or maybe you don't know. You were never that swift when it came to boys, were you? Maybe Myrna and I should fill you in, so you know what happens when you let a boy . . . well, not a boy exactly. I guess we're talking about Joe Fletcher. Tell us, Frances, what's it like to have an old man's hands under your sweater?”

As Daphne says all this, she keeps looking at Myrna,
inviting her to join in, expecting praise for bringing her a gift—not the baby gift but a better one, the opportunity to be a high school girl again, to have some fun with Frances Moon.

“You know,” says Frances, standing up from her chair, mad only at herself for not seeing what Daphne was up to, “I've got some really pressing things to do this afternoon. Like wash my hair. Watch paint dry. Things like that. And high school's over, Daphne. Grow the hell up. Congratulations on the baby, Myrna. Thank your mother for the drink.”

Then Myrna says, in a tired way, as though she too has had enough, “Daphne, you are such a mean fucking bitch. Get out of my house. And don't look so shocked. What did you think? That we're in a girl gang, you and me? Get out. This second, or I'll rip every hair out of your head.” Then she picks up her glass from the table and throws her Coke all over Daphne.

Daphne jumps up, saying, “What the hell? You slutty whore!” and it's one of the most satisfying things Frances has ever seen: Daphne standing there sputtering, with Coke dripping from her bangs. For a minute it looks as though she might lunge across the table at Myrna and there'll be a repeat of the schoolyard brawl that got them both suspended, but then Mrs. Samples comes into the room to see what's going on. Daphne pushes past Myrna's mother and heads for the door, shouting that she's going to get Myrna for that, she'll be sorry, she'd better watch her back.

“We'll see, you psycho bitch,” Myrna shouts after her.

Both Frances and Myrna's mother stand speechless until Mrs. Samples finally says, “I've never liked that girl.”

“Well, join the club,” Myrna says. “Why'd you let her in?”

“I thought you needed the company.”