Goldengrove Read Free

wriggling out of the moss. Margaret was always the first to hear thunder, or a mouse in the wall, or some amazing Billie Holiday phrase I’d never noticed even though she’d played me “God Bless the Child” a thousand times before.
    “ Is your figure less than Greek? ” Margaret sailed the line over the lake, and I tried not to think about how our mother had mocked it.
    Margaret and Aaron were in love. I was their alibi. Margaret would tell my parents she was taking me to the movies, and I’d go to the theater, and she and Aaron would pick me up when the film was over.
    On the way home I’d tell Margaret about the film, in case Mom or Dad asked. But they never did. They always said lying was worse than whatever the lie was about. I already knew that even if they were right, you couldn’t live in a family without a lie or two as a cushion between you and the people you loved. If you were lucky, you might not need a big lie, maybe not even one as large as Margaret smoking and having sex with her boyfriend.
    The first time Margaret and Aaron went out, Aaron came in to meet us. Mom and Dad intercepted him at the door, a body block they intended to seem welcoming and friendly. He shook hands, starting with Mom, who winced. An electrical current arced between Aaron and my father, sparking with more information than either wanted the other to have. By the time Aaron got to me, his palm was so wet that I had to stop myself from wiping mine on my jeans.
    The next morning, Dad said, “There’s something squirrelly about the guy. As if he had a secret acorn stash, and the thing he really gets off on is not telling the other squirrels where he’s got it hidden.”
    Margaret said, “You say that about every guy I go out with. Every guy I bring home, it’s like Romeo and Juliet .” In fact she’d only dated one guy, junior year, and it hadn’t lasted. A senior with a bolt through his ear who made everyone call him Turbo. “Maybe you think that any guy who would want to hang out with me must have something wrong with him.”
    “Quite the opposite,” said Dad.
    Mom said, “I know what your father means. The kid’s too good-looking. Little Adonis carries himself like a vessel of some precious oil he’ll drip on you if you’re lucky.”
    Margaret said, “How strange that someone who married Dad should hate someone for being handsome.”
    “We don’t hate him,” said Mom. “ Hate is a little extreme, dear.”
    “That’s enough,” our father said. “The kid’s got a screw loose, is all.”
    It embarrassed us when our dad used lame, old-fashioned phrases like that. Something’s not somebody’s cup of tea. That’s how the cookie crumbles.
    “What screw loose?” Margaret asked.
    Dad said, “I don’t know, sweetheart. The one that holds it all together.”
    “ Is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart? ”
    Margaret’s voice rose and lingered lightly on “smart.” She made it sound like fun, like flirtation, not like a list of qualities some guy is telling his girlfriend she lacks.
    Mom and Dad told Margaret she couldn’t smoke, but not that she couldn’t see Aaron. They always said it was a mistake to forbid kids to do something, unless you wanted to make it their heart’s desire. They often talked as if all four of us were involved in some group child-raising project, as if treating us like semi-adults would make us do what they wanted. But they gave Margaret such a hard time about Aaron—Little Adonis this, screw loose that—that it was easier to pretend that Margaret and I were going to the movies.
    Besides, Margaret liked conspiracies, codes, secret signals, her version of the tactics with which the brave Resistance couriers outfoxed the Nazis in her beloved French World War II films. We had a system worked out: Margaret and I would drive most of the way to town in Mom’s car and meet Aaron at a designated spot. We’d park Mom’s car behind a barn and get into