Love Always Read Free Page B

California girl long before her mother took her there. Her bedtime lullaby, suitably enough, was harmonized by the Beach Boys, who also played at her kindergarten graduation. She tap danced on the
Tonight
show, sharing the limelight with Charles Bronson and a macaw. The first time Nicole visitedher grandmother in Philadelphia, Grammy could not believe that the child had never learned a prayer. Instead of rattling off “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” when she was put to bed, Nicole waited patiently to be questioned. At night her mother always asked, “How do you feel about everything?” When Grammy took Nicole to see a Shirley Temple movie, Nicole’s whispered comment was, “What’s wrong with that girl?”
    Lucy had not seen much of Nicole the last few years, so this phone call came as a surprise, but if she needed anything besides Jane’s request to persuade her, she had only to remember that Nicole was her only niece: beautiful, intelligent, talented, and famous—the gleam of her deceased daddy’s eye that now gleamed in Hollywood. She was also a fourteen-year-old girl who was difficult. But really—how could anyone know how much of Nicole’s difficult behavior was the result of fame and how much was just a given with any girl that age? It was perfectly possible, Lucy thought, that like a rabbit drawn into danger by the beam of a headlight, Nicole had been lured away from the relative normalcy of places like Vermont and stunned by exploding flashbulbs. Looking at stars—real stars in the sky—might be just what Nicole needed. As Lucy and Jane discussed Nicole’s visit, tiny birds began swooping through the air. Vermont really was paradise in a way—Les had been right about that. It was more beautiful than any invented backdrop, a sky against which Lassie could be painted, noble and romantic, with wind-fluffed fur. White pansies blew like handkerchiefs held in the air. An image came to Lucy’s mind of ladies waving goodbye to soldiers as the train pulled out. Just as quickly, she thought that this scene had already passed into myth; handkerchiefs were an anachronism, and the next war would blow the Earth away. Nobody was going anywhere by train. The inevitability she felt about this made her sad. Of course she wanted to spend time with her niece.
    By the time she and Jane hung up, Lucy felt energized. As she waited for Hildon, she picked up her clipboard, uncapped the fountain pen, and invented the week’s column.
    Dear Cindi Coeur,
    My brother and I are in big trouble and we don’t know what to do. Our parents have grounded us because the cops found us acting suspiciously in a garage that’s under a restaurant complex where our parents often eat. What we were doing was playing “Deep Throat,” but neither of us thought we could tell anybody. The cops questioned us, and we said we were playing hide-and-seek. See, my brother stands behind a pillar, and I go around the garage until he makes a noise or I catch on where he is, and then I go over with a real serious look on my face and he whispers something to me. Then he closes his eyes and I go off and do the same thing. When we get bored, we make strange telephone calls from the pay phone in the garage, but nobody knows about that. My brother is sick of being grounded and thinks that we should just confess, but I think we should wait it out, or maybe there is another way. Do you have any advice?
    Tina the Throat
    Dear Tina,
    Often I receive letters and worry that, in reading between the lines, I am understanding more than the people realize they are revealing. I would be avoiding the real issue if I did not tell you that Freud would be even more interested in the game you and your brother play than either the cops or your parents. You did not choose to play “Deep Throat” as opposed to Monopoly without a reason, and the reason is that it is a game highly charged with sexual undertones. I am not entirely sure that even the original players, Woodward and