The Blood Lie. Shirley Reva Vernick

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СКАЧАТЬ Crammed with penny suckers, licorice whips, saltwater taffy and all sorts of chocolates, the tiny store was a magnet for children. The girls pressed their noses against the window until it fogged up.

      Jack stepped next door to the barbershop, where Walter Robinson displayed photos of the high school sports teams. Not that Jack was in any of the pictures—he wasn’t, even though he’d been on the baseball team for two years now. He missed the photo shoots because they were taken at games. Games were played on Saturdays, and Mrs. Pool wouldn’t hear of sports on the Sabbath (working on Shabbos was bad enough, she said, but at least that was out of necessity). Coach Romeo grumbled about it but let Jack work out with the team five afternoons a week—“because you can bat, dammit, and my outfield needs the practice”—even though he missed every game. He couldn’t tell whether his teammates admired him or resented him.

      Actually, he found out last spring how at least one of the guys felt about him. The team was in the common shower after practice when Moose Doyle called out in his larger-than-life voice, “Hey, Pool, were you born that way, or were you in a freak accident?” He wasn’t pointing at Jack’s crotch, but he might as well have been. Jack was the only circumcised boy on the team. Maybe he was the only circumcised boy Moose had ever seen.

      Some of the other boys snickered. Some of them laughed out loud. Only when George Lingstrom told Moose to shut up did they all stop making noise. But they didn’t stop staring. From that day on, Jack showered at home.

      “C’mon,” Jack said to the girls. “Let’s keep moving.”

      They passed the apothecary, the jeweler’s, J.J. Newbury’s, the A&P and finally Pool’s Dry Goods. “Can we go in, please, pretty please?” asked Martha. “I want to see Pa.”

      “He’s busy,” Jack said. “Let’s cross the street instead.”

      He took the girls’ hands and walked them across the road until they were standing in front of Gus’ Sit Down Diner. The Sit Down was a shiny linoleum-and-Formica place that became the center of the universe early every morning and again at lunchtime. Sarah Gelman worked there part-time. Maybe she’s the one I should be pinning white roses on, he thought. Sarah was likable and nice-looking, and, of course, she was Jewish, a fact that placed her within reach. But who was he fooling? Sarah wasn’t Emaline and never could be.

      “Who’s that?” asked Daisy, pointing to a man emptying rubbish into a can in the diner parking lot.

      “That’s the owner,” Jack said. “Gus.” A squat, nearly bald man, Gus Poulos was chewing a cigar and trickling ashes every time he moved. “I eat supper here sometimes when I’m working late, and he brings me my food.”

      “His head’s shiny,” Daisy said, and Martha giggled. “Is he nice?”

      “He’s okay, I guess,” Jack said. “He knows Mama goes to the Sunflower Café instead of to his place. And that’s because the Sunflower makes pies and doughnuts for us—without lard. Gus would never do that. But he hates losing the business.”

      The noon bells from the Sacred Heart Church began to ring. “Okay. Time to get you home, Daisy.”

      “Aw,” Martha pouted.

      “C’mon,” Jack said. “I’ve got to get back to the store soon, anyway.”

      As they headed back across Main Street and rounded the corner of Maple, it dawned on Jack that Emaline might be home when he dropped off Daisy. He couldn’t face her—not right now. He knew jealousy was written all over his face, and he didn’t want her to see it. So he dropped Daisy off at the foot of her driveway. He watched her until she disappeared inside, then challenged Martha to a race back home.

      Emaline and Lydie cut through Paradise Woods on their way home. The dirt path was covered with end-of-year pine needles, and the leaves on the trees were already tinged yellow and red, but it felt more like summer than autumn. The woods ran on for miles, dense with scaly-trunked trees, spiky evergreens, jagged vines, and prickly shrubs, but if you stuck to the paths, there were some handy shortcuts, especially on a bright day like today.

      “George Lingstrom sure thinks you’re the bee’s knees,” Lydie said as they passed the boulder they called the Sausage Stone.

      “Really?”

      “Anyone can see he’s goofy over you. And what about you, Em?”

      “What about me?”

      Lydie pushed her glasses up her nose and looped her arm through her cousin’s. “Do you fancy him back?”

      “Well…”

      “Well what? The fall festival dance is coming up, isn’t it, and I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts he’s going to ask you. You’ll say yes, won’t you?”

      “I suppose I will…I mean, yes. Probably. Yes, I’d love to go to the dance. With George. If he asks.” It wasn’t like Jack was going to ask her, after all. It wasn’t like Jack could ask her.

      “He’ll ask.”

      “Hmm?”

      “I said, he’ll ask you.”

      “You know, his father’s a drunk—at least, that’s what Ma says, ever since he lost his job at the aluminum works. Cussing and hollering all day, and I hear—”

      “But you’re not going to the dance with the old man, are you?”

      “Yeah…hey, do you have any ciggies on you?”

      “Almost a full pack,” Lydie said, stopping to spit out her gum. She pulled the box out of her coat pocket and lit one, handed it to Emaline, then lit another one for herself. “Let’s duck behind that tree.” She led Emaline to the same fat oak where Jack had held her hand.

      “Mmm, that’s good,” Emaline said, taking a puff.

      “Mother says they turn your teeth brown and your fingers yellow.” Then she laughed. “She’s such a worrywart.”

      Emaline leaned her head against the tree, exhaling a slow plume of smoke. “They remind me of Daddy, how he smelled like tobacco—tobacco and shaving cream. He smoked every night after supper and whenever we went driving. I wonder if he and your daddy were smoking when the accident happened. I wonder if the last thing they did in this life was take a puff of their Lucky Strikes.”

      “Couldn’t say,” Lydie said without much interest.

      “You don’t talk about him—about your daddy—much,” Emaline said. “I probably talk about mine too much. Everything, everyone reminds me of him. Ma especially. She reminds me of him every time I see that look in her eye, that awful, sorrowful look. I don’t know how you did it, you and your ma—you pulled yourselves together lickety-split.”

      Lydie let her ashes fall to the ground. “Maybe that’s because—this is probably a terrible thing to say—but I don’t really miss Father. I don’t think Mother does, either. Oh, don’t look so shocked. You know how he could be—his spells, as Mother called them. We never knew who was coming to dinner at night: the gloomy father, the mean and angry one, or the СКАЧАТЬ