Goldengrove Read Free Page A

Aaron’s van, and they’d drop me off at the mildewy-smelling, fake-retro Rialto.
    “ Don’t change a hair for me, not if you care for me .” Our little rowboat caught a current and turned, then stopped turning.
    Sometimes I tried to see Aaron from our parents’ point of view. Squirrelly didn’t seem like the word for a sweet-tempered guy who, like my sister, seemed to throw off a golden light. Screw loose ? Margaret was right. Our parents would have hated any boy she brought home.
    Aaron often had paint on his jeans and his hands, and once, when he showed up with a comet of blue across his forehead, I nearly reached over to wipe it off, but Margaret got there first. Aaron treated me like a person, unlike the boys in my school, to whom I was a window through which they kept looking for a hotter girl with bigger breasts.
    After the movie, Aaron would ask me to imitate the stars. My Julia Roberts, especially, cracked the two of them up. He called me “kid,” which he’d probably got from a film he’d watched with Margaret. They liked the same things—jazz, old movies, art—though I never knew if Aaron had before they’d started going out.
    “ Stay little valentine, stay .”
    Lazily, the boat revolved, until Margaret’s blond hair was back-lit. When I looked into the sun, my sister blazed like a candle. Her eyes were shut tight, and I could tell that her mind was empty except for the music.
    The last wisps of that “ Each day is Valentine’s Day ” hung over the water, like the haze of heat and mosquitoes that would shimmer there when it was really July instead of this fake summer day.
    I said, “Are you seeing Aaron tonight?” I wondered what was playing at the Rialto. Margaret and I listened to Mom practice so long without a mistake that I almost relaxed.
    “I don’t know,” Margaret said. “We had a fight this morning on the phone.”
    “A serious fight? About what?”
    “Nothing. Nothing important. Aaron can be a little nuts.”
    “Nuts meaning . . .”
    “Freaky,” Margaret said. “You’ve got to watch out for him sometimes.”
    “Freaky how? Watch out how?”
    Margaret had something she wanted to say, but she wasn’t going to say it.
    “A screw loose?” I said.
    “Right. A screw loose.” It was a relief to be off the subject of Aaron and onto the subject of Dad.
    “Anyway,” she said, “how serious can it be? Aaron and I are out of here in September. He’ll fall in love with the first girl who takes off her clothes in art class.”
    “Won’t you miss him?” I asked. “I already miss everyone. You, Mom, Dad. Aaron, I guess. And I’m not even gone yet.”
    I said, “Then shut up about it, okay?”
    “I’m sorry. You know I’ll miss you, Nico. You know I’m sad about leaving.”
    I had decided to forget about Margaret leaving and just enjoy the summer. Last summer, I’d been an intern at my old nursery school, and the summer before that, I’d gone to the town’s recreation program and a week of soccer camp. This summer, I planned to read, watch movies, go swimming with Margaret, maybe catch a fish or two that Dad could cook for dinner, and not waste one precious minute before she left me alone with our parents.
    With our eyes closed and the sun on our eyelids, I felt I could ask a question I could hardly let myself think, face to face.
    “Can I ask you something?”
    “Surprise me,” she said.
    “Are you and Aaron having sex?”
    She lit another cigarette. I was sorry I’d asked.
    “I thought I said, ‘Surprise me.’
    ” “Well, are you?”
    Margaret spun a smoky doughnut from between her parted lips. Finally she said, “Yes. But you knew that, Nico.”
    We’d certainly never discussed it. She and Aaron never even held hands when I was around. Sometimes I’d imagine them making out, until I’d begin to feel a strange sensation, like something inside me dissolving from the center out. Was that sex? I didn’t know. I liked it, and I didn’t. I knew it was