A Summer to Die Read Free Page A

didn't remember it, but Mom did; she laughed, and said, "Molly, that was a
beautiful
dress. Those butterflies were hand-embroidered! It's going into a special place on the quilt!"
    Dad hadn't heard a word, but he'd been sitting there with a half-smile on his face. All of a sudden he said, "Lydia, I really have a grip on Coleridge!" and he jumped up from his chair, leaving half a piece of apple pie, and went back to the study, taking the stairs two at a time. We could hear the typewriter start up again.
    Mom looked after him with that special fond look she gives to things that are slightly foolish and very lovable. She smiles, and her eyes look as if they can see back into her memory, into all the things that have gone into making a person what they are. With Dad, I think she looks back to when she knew him as a student, when he must have been serious and forgetful and very kind, the way he still is, but young, which he isn't anymore. With me, I know her memories go back to all sorts of frustrations and confusions, because I was never an "easy" child; 1 remember that I questioned and argued and raged. But her look, for me, is still that same caring look that goes beyond all that. As for Molly? I've seen her look at Molly that way, too, and it's a more complicated thing; I think when Mom looks at Molly, her memories go back farther, to her own self as a girl, because they are so alike, and it must be a puzzling thing to see yourself growing up again. It must be like looking through the wrong end of a telescope—seeing yourself young, far away, on your own; the distance is too great for the watcher, really, to do anything more than watch, and remember, and smile.

    Molly has a boyfriend. Boys have
always
liked Molly. When she was little, boys in the neighborhood used to come to repair her bike; they loaned her their skate keys, brought her home when she 18
skinned her knees and waited, anxious, while she got a Band-Aid; they shared their trick-or-treat candy with Molly at Halloween. When I was down to the dregs in my paper bag, two weeks later, down to eating the wrinkled apples in the bottom, Molly always had Mounds bars left, gifts from the boys on the block.

    How could boys
not
like a girl who looks the way she does? I've gotten used to Molly's looks because I've lived with her for thirteen years. But every now and then I glance at her and see her as if she were a stranger. One night recently she was sitting in front of the fire doing her homework, and I looked over because I wanted to ask her a question about negative numbers. The light from the fire was on her face, all gold, and her blond hair was falling down across her forehead and in waves around her cheeks and onto her shoulders. For a second she looked just like a picture on a Christmas card we had gotten from friends in Boston; it was almost eerie. I held my breath when I looked at her for that moment, because she looked so beautiful. Then she saw me watching her, and stuck her tongue out, so that she was just Molly again, and familiar.
    Boys, I think, probably see that part of her all the time, the beautiful part. And now suddenly this one boy, Tierney McGoldrick, who plays on the basketball team and is also president of the junior class, is
hanging around her every minute in school. They're always together, and he lets her wear his school jacket with a big MV for Macwahoc Valley on the back. Of course, because we live out here in the middle of the woods, so far from everything, they can't actually date. Tierney's not old enough to drive, even if he wanted to drive all the way from where he lives; half the distance is a dirt road that's usually covered with snow. But he calls her up every single night. Molly takes the phone into the pantry, so that the long cord is stretched all across the kitchen, and my mother and I have to step over it while we're putting the dinner dishes away. Mom thinks it's quite funny. But then Mom has curly hair too, and was probably