Although I hide it
my love shows in my face
So plainly that he asks me,
are you thinking of something?

--Taira No Kanemori





C H A P T E R

F O U R




WHEN SHE SAYS, “OH I think Ian should ask?” even though Ian is taken aback, he waits for the rationale behind Tina’s suggestion to show itself.
“Well,” Tina says, wiping her hands off and balling up the napkin she tosses back onto her tray. “You’re Lebanese. Stearne is Lebanese. It could be like... You know,” Tina looked from Madeleine to Vaughan, “A brotha helping another brotha out.”
“Oh, my God,” Madeleine murmured.
Ian cocked his head.
“He’s white, and I’m white,” Ian said. “I don’t think white people believe in helping brothas out.”
“Well they should,” said Tina. “We should. Besides, you’re not exactly white, you know. Lebanese people are... Arabs.”
“Lebanese people are Lebanese,” Ian said, breaking off a piece of a cookie. Roy took the rest. “And only my dad is Lebanese. And I think he’s only half Lebanese which is why if you ever showed up at our house and said we weren’t white, I think he’d flip.”
“We’re not white either,” Mackenzie announced.
“Oh, God, here we go again,” Vaughan shook his head.
“Don’t ‘Oh, God’ me.”
“Mackenzie Allyn Foster, there is no one whiter than you.”
“I’m an Indian. We’re Indians. And proud.”
Ian stared blankly at the blond haired, blue eyed boy. He looked back to Vaughan who said, “I don’t want to touch it.”
“Check the registry at the Tsalagi,” Mackenzie said.
“The who?” said Roy.
“The Tsalagi--,” Tina filled him in. “The bar, you know. It’s supposed to be like a club for all the Cherokee families in town.”
“That’s right,” Mackenzie went on, “And all the Indian families in the area are on the registry--including the Fosters. Technically we’re Cherokee Indians.”
“But what are you all really?” Ian said.
He was shocked to suddenly see the fiercest look in Mackenzie’s eyes.
“We’re really Cherokee.”




WHITE PEOPLE ARE FUCKED UP.
That’s all I can say. The first thing that fucks them up is this whole business of being white in the first place. I don’t think I even know what it is anymore. Like take Rodder for instance. The day he came to the door of our house, Daddy had a fit. I kept saying Rodder wasn’t white, he was a Mexican. Daddy didn’t believe me. It takes a long time for me to realize that they have white Mexicans. And hell they have Black Hispanics. So really, it’s not white people I guess. It’s color in general that’s fucked up. Everybody’s sitting next to a color, claiming this, claiming that.
Take this town for instance. It’s a bunch of people in this town but first we’ve got a lot of Levantines--some are Arabs, but most are Lebanese. The Lebanese get upset when you call them Arabs, and I think part of this is just that old hatred of looking white but not BEING white. But then the other part is that they are SYRIANS and will tell you loudly that a SYRIAN is not an ARAB. I’ve heard Egyptians say the same thing about themselves. So you’ve got people like the Stearnes and the Canes and they look pretty white. You might think they’re Italians or something, and then you realize: no, they’re Lebanese. They don’t even have those Lebanese names anymore.
Now the second big group of white people in town are the Indians. Or the Cherokee. All my life, growing up with Tina I’ve known how they had their own country and their own capital city and language. They came from Georgia. We’re connected to them because they also had slaves. I didn’t know they had mixed blood so much that many of them were already white, but they still counted themselves as Indians. The long and short of it with our folks is that when they got sent away to Oklahoma, one brief stop on the Trail of Tears was in Chattanooga. It was here that a few souls realized that they didn’t want to travel on to Oklahoma--one: because it as too far, and two: just out of spite. I think they had an idea that they could pass for white and make a happy compromise out of being Indian and being white people. It wasn’t such a bad idea Tina told me. She said that once upon a time Irish people and Polish people and Italians weren’t counted as white people. The Cherokee families that broke off and headed north were more white than those people. If white meant Anglo-Saxon. And it did. For that matter the slaves were more white.
The slaves.
That’s where we come in.
It was pretty much the idea of a slave to head north. Here the Cherokee would lose their slaves. It wasn’t legal. But here they could start over again with people who--for the most part were related to them. And like many a down and out person, the Cherokee weren’t adverse to getting as much help as possible. It’s easier to get help from free people than servants. And when they had reached Ohio--this is where we come in--Louis Foster--who was a brother to one of Colonel Foster’s great-grand-somethings wrote down to New Orleans and New York and Pennsylvania for some free Black people to join in the effort. The other Fosters and Mc.Kennas also wrote to Indians who had whitened up a little. All in all the town was going to be quite an experiment.
The Lebanese wouldn’t come for a while. They’d come after the Scots-Irish and before the Poles. But at this time Black people and kinda-sorta Indians were flocking in. And then up from New Orleans came the first Catholics, all Black, all burning finger nails and casting spells. Later on the first white Catholics--priests and nuns-- came. They all settled across the river in Canaan, and here in Jamnia they settled on Le Rue de Croix Fraus. But no one could pronounce it, so in the end they just called it Crawford Street. Any other place except New Orleans these niggahs would have been considered much too strange to talk to, but in this town everyone was coming up strange and so they seemed to blend in.
Somewhere out of all that blending came the Fitzgeralds.


“Ms. Foster,” Stearne pronounced in his usual sharp voice accompanied by the mocking eyebrow.
Tina had been walking toward the glass doors of the smoking porch.
“I hate to interrupt you in the midst of skipping--”
“I wasn’t skipping, Stearne.”
“Well, I guess it is sort of early in the year to run out of absences.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“I thought you’d just like to know that I’ll be putting up the cast list at the end of sixth period.”
“Oh,” Tina tried to manufacture non-chalance.
Stearne went on. “You seem awfully casual. I mean for someone so interested in finding out who got what part that she wanted to make a Lebanese connection--”
“How did you--?”
Stearne put a finger to his lips.
“I have my ways, Ms. Foster.”
“I’m gonna kill Cane.”
“If you think you’re able.” When Tina looked at him, the little man explained.
“That was a joke, Ms. Foster. You know... Cain and Abel.”
` “I get it, now,” Tina said, instantly upset that for the second time in a short conversation she’d been brought up... short.
“By the way,” Stearne said as Tina was turning around to leave, “I’m actually only a quarter Lebanese.”
Out on the porch, Luke handed her a Lucky Strike without even looking at her.
“Unfiltered.”
“I figured you’d need it,” Luke said, grinning up at her from where he sat on the stoop. “Stearne and all.”
“He’s something else,” Tina agreed, taking out her own lighter. “Goddamn, what’s in this?” she demanded, almost coughing.
“It’s what’s not in it--,” Luke said. “The filter.”
They sat smoking for awhile, waiting for the fifth period bell to ring. Derrick Todd drove back into the parking lot in his mother’s Lexus, He swung out with Lindsay on his shoulder. They attempted to come up the steps without speaking.
“Hello to you, too,” Tina said to her sister.
“Oh,” Lindsay looked surprised. She was a purer, slightly thinner version of Ashley. In her jeans and white blouse, with her blue-jeaned and blond football playing boyfriend, she looked nothing her Tina. “I didn’t notice you.”
“I guess,” Tina said, taking a drag from her cigarette. “Hey, Derrick,” she said.
“Hey,” he was a junior. His hands were jammed in his pockets as he smiled nervously, curly hair combed back and gelled on both sides.
Tina smiled back slowly. “I guess Lindsay’s what the good guys on the team end up with. Right, Sis?”
Lindsay looked irritated.
“Right, Martina.” she hoisted her school bag over her shoulder, “ Tina, the bells about to ring,. I’ve got class--”
“I know you think you do,” Tina commented. Luke barked out a laugh. Derrick just gave a more desperate grin. Lindsay did not understand the insult.
“I’ll see you at home,” Lindsay was gone.
“My sister,” Tina shook her head and laughed. “What a bitch.”
“You must be such an embarrassment to your family.” Luke inhaled the last of his cigarette, crushed the stub out under his work boot, and placed a callused hand in his brown hair. “What does your Dad do when he sees you out here smoking?”
“What most Fosters at Jamnia High School do,” Tina said. “Pretend we’re not related.”

Ian, Vaughan, and Mackenzie stopped talking when Lindsay arrived at Mackenzie’s locker. Vaughan did not want to stop talking, but had not choice. The last time he had acknowledged Lindsay was in that fatal sixth grade year when he was not in homeroom with Mackenzie (twins were never put in the same homeroom at Our Lady of Jamnia). He’d stood up to make a speech during English in which he had announced that Lindsay was a stuck up bitch. He’d paid for this in many demerits, but it had been worth it.
“I just wanted to say that you’d better start thinking about where we’re going on our band trip.”
Mackenzie nodded, but Vaughan said, “You came for this?”
Lindsay debated pretending to be surprised at seeing Vaughan, but explained, “Mr. Stearne told me that Mackenzie and a few others hadn’t given any input about the hotel we’re supposed to stay at, and he asked me to tell him.” She seemed relieved when she could take her eyes off of Vaughan, and looked back at her twin. “So I’ve told you. Can I tell you something else?” she said.
“Yeah,” Mackenzie shut his locker and bent down rolling the combination home. Ian watched the fair hair fall into Mackenzie’s eyes.
“In private.”
Mackenzie looked from one friend to the other. Vaughan shrugged. Ian nodded.
“They’re talking about me,” Lindsay said as she drew her brother away.
“And maybe they should,” Mackenzie ventured. “If you’re gonna be that way. Now what is it, Lind?’
“I was just going to say that that’s Ian Cane.”
“I know who that is.”
“And he’s a loser. He does drugs and all that stuff.”
“Look, Lindsay--”
“Wait. Just let me finish. I’m trying to say don’t end up hanging around him, being like him. Like his type.”
“His type?”
Lindsay ignored her brother’s tone. “You’ll end up like Tina, hanging out with the Luke Madeary and smoking on the porch, and being... an outcast.”
“Goodbye, Lindsay,” he said, feeling suddenly very upset with his sister.
“I’m serious, Mackenzie.”
“I know. “ Mackenzie shook his head to clear it. He wasn’t like Tina or Vaughan. He wished he was. He felt bad for not liking people. He couldn’t be cool about not liking his twin.
“I gotta go,” he said.
“What did she say?” Vaughan didn’t even wait until Lindsay was out of earshot.
“Something stupid,” Mackenzie said.
Vaughan murmured. “Well, why break tradition?”
“I wish you wouldn’t ,Vaughan,” Mackenzie said.
“It’s not like you like her,” Vaughan went on. “And I wish you wouldn’t feel bad for not liking someone who’s.... un-likable.”
Ian looked between the two old friends, his two new friends.
“Is she really that bad?” he demanded.
Mackenzie didn’t answer. Vaughan nodded solemnly.
“We still on for this weekend?” Ian said.
Mackenzie’s mood brightened considerably, and he said, “Yeah!”
“Great.”
“Roy can come along too,” Mackenzie added.
“I think he’d like that,” Ian told them. “He hasn’t made any real friends yet. We’ll take my car.”
“Well, you won’t take ours,” Vaughan said, making a stomping motion and turning an invisible wheel.

“Ashley, could I talk to you for a moment?”
Ashley Foster took a deep breath, and looked up at Mr. Rafferty. The way this semester was going, she’d felt that there would have to be a “Can I talk to you?” moment any day now.
“It’s about my grades, I know,” she said, slinging her bag from over her shoulder, and walking toward Mr. Rafferty’s desk. “Sir, I promise things will improve... When’s the next test?”
“Next Wednesday,” Mick said sadly. Ashley felt a little guilty for the sadness in his voice.
“Sir, that is just when things will improve. I promise.”
“Why is that, Ashley?”
She could tell by his tone he didn’t believe her. In that second she felt lost. It was a feeling that only lasted a second, though, and a voice in her head told her that Tina would never feel intimidated by Mr. Rafferty’s unbelief.
“Because,” she said, “tomorrow is the last game of the season. I’ll be through with cheerleading, and there’s no dance team until January. Basketball season... They don’t really need us. I will have all my time to study.”
Mick cocked his head, and looked like he was studying her. This upset Ashley, and she thought how he wasn’t the first teacher, the first grown man who had looked at her that way and whom she had brought to his knees.
“Well, I’ll be glad to help you anyway I can, Ashley,” Mick told her. “Don’t hesitate to come by.”

“AND NOW THE MOMENT OF truth where we see if I’m the lead or not!” Tina announced, hooking one arm through Rodder’s, and another through Madeleine’s.
“How do you know Madeleine didn’t get it?” Rodder leaned over and asked her.
“Rod, Rod,” Tina shook her head. “You don’t understand your lady as much as you should. This isn’t a musical. And if it’s not a musical--”
“I don’t try out.”
“You do have a beautiful voice, Maddy.”
“I know,” she told Rod.
As they approached the wall where the cast list was, they waited for a throng of the excited and disappointed to move away, and then Tina stepped forward. Her finger hit the bottom of the list and she moved right up it until she saw her name.
“You’re not even gonna hoot or holler,” Madeleine said.
Tina smiled in satisfaction.
“Not yet, maybe after I listen to Mom and Dad lay into me for violating my restriction. When I’m in my room. Alone, and punished. Then I’ll hoot and howl.”
“Or when you tell your boyfriend?” Rod suggested.
Tina smiled at the tall young man and patted him on his cheek.
“Rod, Rod,” she said for the second time. “You’re in the dark about everything.”
“Well, then what is Luke?”
“Luke is my friend,” Tina said.
“Who you like to make out with on occasion?” Madeleine raised an eyebrow.
“It’s an evolving relationship,” Tina declared loftily.



Mackenzie, reclined on Vaughan’s bed, put down the book and said, “I wish I was normal.”
Vaughan, sitting in his window seat, sketching the mustard yellow leaves of the tree limb blowing before his window said, “I wish I could help you.”
“I mean: then I’d be outside playing football or something.”
“With your normal friends?” Vaughan gave Mackenzie a slightly amused look.
Mackenzie sat up.
“Alright, then. I take back what I said. It’s an honor to be abnormal with you. I just...” he handed over the book.
Vaughan opened it and squinted at the print. He began reading where Mackenzie had bookmarked a page.
“For a subject like gays in the church you’d think it’d read a little racier. What’s he talking about?”
Mackenzie snatched the book back.
“I don’t know. All he seems to be saying is that everything in Church Law about how evil being gay is doesn’t really come from the Bible. It comes from gay bashing bishops and cardinals picking out what they like from the Bible, and then telling you what they believe.”
“It figures,” Vaughan shrugged and went back to sketching.
“Whaddo you mean it figures?” Mackenzie mimicked his friend’s carelessness. “And he also implies that the church is homosexual anyway.”
Vaughan stopped sketching.
“Where?”
Mckenzie climbed back onto the bed and began flipping back and forth through the book.
“I can’t wait till you learn to underline,” Vaughan commented.
“I think it makes books look ugly.”
Vaughan only shrugged, and waited for his friend to find the spot.
“Here,” Mackenzie pushed the book toward Vaughan. “Read this.”
Vaughan read, murmuring. He handed it back.
“ ‘An all male priesthood,’ in dresses--I added that part-- ‘sacrificing male flesh to a naked man on a cross,’,” Vaughan nodded. “He’s got a point.”
“Vaughan!”
“I don’t get you,” Vaughan said. “You’re the one who’s gay. You should be delighted that someone’s telling it like it is. Like you haven’t always suspected....” Then to clarify, Vaughan added, “that the Church isn’t always on the up and up.”
Mackenzie was curious and said, “Well, whaddo you think?”
“About?”
Mackenzie ducked his head, put the book down, and said, “We’re Catholic.”
“This is true.”
“I mean. You believe in God. And Jesus and all, right?”
“It depends on the all I suppose,” Vaughan said.
“Well you were the one that was always talking about the Bible in religion class.”
“But you were the altar boy.”
“That’s because I love the Church. I... I like being Catholic. I’d get upset when the other guys at school wouldn’t take it seriously. And then when I knew that I was different... That I was looking at guys, I wouldn’t tell anyone -- not even you -- because I’d been told it was wrong. It was against God.”
“Like jacking off?”
Mackenzie looked at Vaughan, but in the end ignored this and went on.
“But, regardless if it was against God or not... There it was. And I told you, and now I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.”
Now Vaughan looked confused.
“What?” said Mackenzie.
Vaughan pushed himself off of the window seat, put away his notepad and sat beside his friend.
“I just assumed that now that you were out and all, you’d have a nice gay wedding in San Francisco one day and we’d all go to the “Y” or... whatever gay people do.”
Mackenzie looked at him blankly.
“I’ve been trying to decide what this gay person,” he thumped his hand on his chest, “is supposed to do. How I’m supposed to keep my faith and be what I know I am. And I can’t pretend that I don’t know anymore.”
While Vaughan looked at Mackenzie, waiting for an explanation, his friend reached into his book bag and pulled out the huge, ugly beige volume of The Catechism of the Catholic Church and flipped open to read it.
“Listen to this: Homosexuality....” Mackenzie murmured over a few words, his tongue sticking out between his lips until he said, “Here: Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.... These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition. Homosexual persons are called to chastity.”
Mackenzie finished reading. Vaughan looked at his friend with a raised eyebrow.
“So what are you supposed to do, be a priest or a monk?” Vaughan said.
“Well, that’s chastity.”
“Or be by yourself for the rest of your life? You can either be lonely, or you can pretend you’re celibate? Those are the options?” Vaughan looked indescribably pissed off, as if he were the gay one. “What about people who really do want to be alone? People who really are celibate? And what’s this whole business about the Lord’s Cross?” Vaughan was getting increasingly agitated, “Who the hell is the Pope-- or anyone else to tell you what your cross is?”
“Vaughan, you don’t have to get so--”
“Yes I do! This is bullshit!” He stood up. “That’s like the Pope going out and telling my great- great- grandparents slavery is their cross and they shouldn’t be able to read.” his hand made an angry gesture over the beige book, as if sweeping it’s existence away. “This doesn’t even deserve to be looked at seriously.”
There was a knock at the door, and then Cedric peeked his head in.
“I heard yelling. Is there a fight?”
“It’s between Vaughan and the Vatican,” Mackenzie said.
Cedric looked at his son.
“The Vatican is bullshit!” Vaughan said.
“Sooner or later,” Cedric told him, “most good Catholics come to that conclusion.”

“Man, what’s Vaughan bitchin’ about in the background?” Ian demanded. He had called the Fitzgeralds, and already talked to the irate activist who had handed the phone to Mackenzie, now straddling a ladder back chair in the kitchen.
“He’s having an attack of Catholic liberalism, ranting and raving at the Vatican.”
“See what I was talking about?” Ian said. “That’s so cool. You ever hear of the Sandinista Nuns?”
“What?”
“These crazy bitches from Nicaragua. They were with the communists, and they were activists and everything. Got killed, of course. No one here seemed to care. You guys are always up to something under the Pope’s nose.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Mackenzie said, non-commitally.
Ian assumed that for some reason Mackenzie didn’t like being up to things under the Pope’s nose, and switched the subject. “I forgot where the band competition is.”
“I think it’s in Chicago.”
“Isn’t that where it was last year?”
“No,” Mackenzie said. “Last year we were in Detroit.”
“That’s right,” Mackenzie said, “How could I forget? It sucked so bad.”
“What did you do then? I don’t remember you being there.”
“I was off in a corner somewhere getting high, probably,” Ian confessed candidly. “I plan to actually be a little sober his year.”
“You better be,” Mackenzie threatened. “I’ll clobber you if you leave me sober by myself.”
Ian was about to suggest that Mackenzie get fucked up with him, but instantly saw this as a distinct impossibility.
“Who did you room with?” Mackenzie asked him.
“Fat Ass Donovan.”
“Does he have a real name?” Mackenzie wondered.
“I think it might be Franklin,” Ian replied in his usual, raspy, laid back voice. “But it’s always been Fat Ass to me.”
“Yeah. I was with Phil Dugan and Marty Washburn. My sister was dating one of them last year.”
“I think maybe that’s why I didn’t talk to you last year,” Ian said.
“Huh?”
“I don’t know,” Ian told him. “I just thought you’d be like her... You being Lindsay’s twin and everything.”
“She can be difficult,” Mackenzie allowed.
Ian heard Vaughan on the other end of the phone say, “She can be a Grade A-bitch!”

“Lindsay!” Despite the cold, Tina made it a point to call out brightly, and roll down the window when their two cars met at the stop light on 36th Street.
Lindsay was in the passenger seat of Derrick’s car, which was thumping out loud Papa Roach, and Tina was driving Luke in her LTD so the two sisters were side by side in the night.
“Hi, Tina,” said her sister, drearily.
“Hi, Tina!” Derrick shouted Then to be nice, he waved at Luke, who stunned him by waving back. He looked much to cool to wave.
“I hear you got the lead roll,” Derrick shouted over Lindsay. “Congrats!”
“Thanks, Derrick,” Tina tried not to choke with laughter over hearing the phrase ‘ ‘Congrats’.
Luke murmured something, and gave it to Tina.
“Derrick, Luke says you’re cool. Have this.”
She reached out of the window, Derrick reached across Lindsay, and took it.
The light changed, and Tina gunned the car, turning up the music, and suddenly turning right onto Market, disappearing into the night while Sheryl Crow lamented.

You don’t know what it’s like
to be the bad man
to be the sad man
behind blue eyes!

Derrick drove straight, grinning at what he was holding.
“Oh, my God!” Lindsay cried. “It’s a joint.”
“Your sister’s sooooo cool!”
“She’s a reprobate,” Lindsay said. “And Luke’s a criminal. I should tell Mom and Dad.”
Derrick ignored Lindsay.
“Wanna smoke it?”
“No!” Lindsay said, thinking that it probably came form her aunt, anyway. She hated her family. So she took it out on Derrick. She smacked him in the back of his head as they came to another stop light.
“Ow,” he said.
“No,” Lindsay repeated.
Derrick drove on. Willow Parkway was becoming nothing but trees. They wouldn’t hit city again until about Lake Street. About a block before Lake Street he decided to play the guilt cards.
“Lindsay, I know we can’t have sex,” he began.
“That’s out of the question.”
“That’s what I just said.” Derrick was a little frustrated. “But would you go down on me?”
The look on Lindsay’s face said that she wouldn’t. Derrick thought that out of all the Foster sisters, this was the one he’d ended up with.
He hadn’t expected it anyway. It was just like bidding too low at an auction to get the price you wanted. He’d settle for fooling around, but he went the next step. He was poker faced when he said, “Can I have a handjob? I won’t tell anyone you did it.”
Because Lindsay didn’t immediately look at him he knew this stood a chance. She was taking out her guilt cards too, and seeing if she owed him this.
“It’s the last game of the season,” he added to shift the balance his way. When he thought of how many people on the team were getting sympathy fucked as he drove his girlfriend around this godforsaken town, it made Derrick a little bitter.

In his last jabs, Bone was deep in her. That was the best, when his large body tensed, when her buttocks were cupped by his paws, when her hands were clutching the spread of his own backside and Bone, in all of his largeness was rendered still, his face set in a rictus by orgasm. It made keeping quiet bearable while the too cold shower water soaked her.
Bone was breathing deep like a furnace, his large hands were giving way. Ashley was sore. Bone moved her under the shower. She understood that she was supposed to wash the semen away. He didn’t say anything. If anyone had seen them in the second story bathroom of the Mc.Arthur house it would have looked like he was taking her from behind, but he was too tired for that, his head was on her shoulder.
That annoyed Ashley too. If they were in love that sort of affection would have been bearable. But Bone was just the big bear who fucked her.
“Rafferty says I’m flunking his class,” Ashley said, as the water soaked her, as she reached for the towel hanging over the shower curtain rung, and stepped out. She began drying herself.
“Rafferty’s got a little dick,” Bone said. As if this were somehow relevant.
“How do you know?” Ashley didn’t even bother to look at bone. She just kept drying her hair.
“His type do.”
Ashley began drying the rest of her body. She smiled and shook her head.
“Un unh,” she said. “I bet he’s big. I bet he’s hung like a bull.”
“Shut up,” Bone shut off the shower water. His skin was red. He was dripping. He looked like an irritated child.
“I bet it’s big as fuck,” Ashley said. “I bet it’s bigger than yours.”
Bone didn’t say anything.” Ashley watched him because she liked watching him. She liked his surliness. She liked watching his big old body plod across the bathroom floor.
“Whaddo you think your sister’s like in bed?” Bone said. As he said it, Ashley just caught a glimpse of his cock before the towel went over it.
“It took you awhile to think of that one, didn’t it? It wasn’t even a good one. I’d have to ask you which sister. Then I’d have to tell you it didn’t matter cause neither one of them’s doing anything.”
“Not Lindsay. She’s a prude. But Tina.”
“She’s a bitch. She’ll die a virgin.”
“She’s probably taking it up the ass from Luke Madeary right now.”
“I bet he’ll take it up the ass from her before that happens,” Ashley said. “And all this talking about taking it up the ass is something you can definitely drop because this shit is an exit only,” she said displaying a behind that was round and porcelain smooth.
“All I said--”
“I know the things you say, and the things you want and you can keep on wanting,” Ashley said. “I gotta go. You’re not the only one who has to be at the game tomorrow.”
“I bet you’d give it up the butt to Rodder.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ashley said, slipping into her panties and then looking for her bra. “Rodder’s not here.”


IAN SLIPPED ON HIS LEATHER JACKET.
“You wanna run over to Kirk Berghen’s with me?” he asked his cousin. “Then I’ll drop you off before I go home.”
“I guess,” Roy said, sliding off the sofa. “Are you going to buy more weed?”
“His shit is the cheapest and the best in town. Come on.”
“Look at that sky,” Ian pointed up to the black heaven as he opened the door for his cousin and then rounded the car, and slipped inside. “And the weather’s great... For this time of year. It’ll be winter before long.”
Roy was quieter than usual as Ian threaded his way from the northeast to the southwest of Jamnia. He thought that he’d have to talk to Roy a little later. But he didn’t want to push his cousin.
They came through the alley to the two story garage behind the white house on Windham Street. Lights were on and Ian could smell frank and unashamed marijuana smoke Over the laughter The Grateful Dead were demanding

Oh, Oh, and I want to know-ow
how does that song go!

When Ian came through the back door Kirk, hair in his face, and black beard around his jaw, noticed his guest and shook Ian by the shoulders. “Come on in. Who’s this?”
“My cousin,”
“Welcome, Cousin!” Kirk stuck out a hand, He looked fierce and handsome, though a little shaggy. He brought them further into the garage where people in ripped jeans, and corduroys, paisley shirts, white men and women with dreadlocks were sitting on sofas, drinking beer, and passing joints.
“Roy! Ian!” Tina leapt up from a beanbag where she’d been sitting between Luke and her Aunt Ally -- a woman who obviously did not mind being in a group of people twenty years younger than she.
Roy waved nervously. Ian was surprised, then said, “I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised.”
“I’m usually never here,” Tina said, but I’m with Luke -- ,” she jerked a thumb toward the brown haired boy, talking to Alice now.
Kirk came toward them with a sausage in a bun. He bit into it and kept talking, “Grab yourself some food. He pointed to the table in the middle of the garage. “But I can’t tell the difference between the spicy sausages and the regular. Cause there all burnt,” Kirk smiled cheezily. Then he said, “Oh --,” and Kirk dumped a bag of weed into Ian’s hands.
“How much -- ?”
“It’s free!” Kirk announced. “Tonight. It’s a party night, and everything, you know. And my cousin’s here,” he wrapped an arm about Tina. She gave him a dubious look. “I’m feelin’ Christian.”
Ian thanked Kirk, and motioned for Roy to follow him toward the table, “What’s wrong, you wanna go home?” Ian asked. “We can’t go right now. I just got a free bag of marijuana. But I promise. In a few minutes we can get away from these folks.”
Ian made quick work of the sausage, and split his beer with Tina who said, “It’s almost time for us to turn in too.”
“What?” said Luke.
“Me, at least,” Tina said.
Getting into the car, Ian said, “Now tell me what’s up, Roy. You’re my cousin. You know what that means?”
Roy turned, and gave his older cousin a blank stare.
“It means that up until this time, caring about you has been the thing that’s kept me from being a selfish asshole. Alright? So you have to tell me what’s wrong with you tonight.”
“I...” Roy started. Then he blurted out, “It’s tomorrow and tonight!”
“Whaddo you mean? We’re going out. You’re gonna have fun, not be stuck in the house all day.”
“You’re going out,” Roy said. “And I’m tagging along.”
Ian looked as if he’d been betrayed. Then he felt as if he’d been betraying Roy.
“It’s just that...” Roy was trying to explain this. “I like everyone. I like all of your friends. But. I want friends of my own.”
Ian sighed and sat back blowing his cheeks. He did not speak immediately, because he did not know what to say.
At last he spoke, slowly. “How about if you borrow mine for awhile? Could you live with that? I mean, friends have to come from somewhere.”
Too quickly by Ian’s judgment, Roy grinned back and said, “Yeah, I guess. Let’s go home.”
As he turned the key in the ignition, Ian was not sure who was comforting whom.

AILEEN WAS SITTING UP AT her little desk off of the kitchen when she heard the back door jingle open, and Ashley come in.
“Where have you been?” she started, motioning at her daughter with two envelopes of unpaid bills. Then she sighed, and shook her head so that strands of hair escaped the bun she’d tied behind her head. “Nevermind. I don’t even want to know. Have you seen your sister?”
“Tina?”
“Either one of them, actually.”
Ashley took the news that Lindsay was hanging out on the town with a note of surprise.
“No, Mama.”
“Well... Go to bed,” Aileen said at last, at a loss for anything else of import to say. If Lindsay and Ashley, the two daughters who actually did have to be someplace tomorrow could hang out till all hours of night with their many boyfriends, then why couldn’t Tina, the only one who showed signs of having a brain.
Aileen heard Ashley’s steps stop, and then reverse on the stairwell above her head.
“Mama, I just thought...”
Aileen turned around, pushing the difficult hair out of her face as she pushed the glasses up her nose.
“Um hum?” Aileen waited.
“Tina’s probably with Luke.”
“With who?”
“Her man.”
Really?” Aileen said. “Thank you, Ashley. Go to bed, Ashley.”
Aileen’s eyes were red with exhaustion. She lit a cigarette, smoked it, and wondered how much of a private life did her oldest daughter have. She was crushing out her cigarette, a little hypnotized by the spirals the smoke made as it crawled up over the lampshade, when she heard the heavy plodding of Kevin’s feet coming down the back stair, and then he had materialized, his brown hair sticking up, his face looking rumpled, and a little bit like Popeye the sailor man’s -- this was not enticing her to come to bed anytime sooner. He stood, stretching, his fist curled behind his back the way he’d done since they were teenagers, rising on the balls of his spread apart feet.
“You comin’ to bed, Aily?”
“I would have been to bed if you bothered to look over some of these bills, first, Kevin,” she told him.
He gave her a sour look, and folded his arms over his chest. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew he was still attractive. His chest was broad, his arms were strong. She knew she was attractive too. Her hair didn’t have to be greasy. She didn’t have to look like a movie librarian with the glasses on chains. Tomorrow, at the game, she wouldn’t.
“Come on upstairs, Aily.” She was even more sure of her beauty now, because when Kevin used that voice it meant that there was only one thing he wanted to come upstairs for.
Aileen rose in her old worn out satin nightie. She untied her hair, and Kevin sloppily brushed it down with his hand. She flicked off the light. The little converted pantry room behind the kitchen was swallowed in darkness. They went up the stairs, Kevin’s arm around his wife’s waist. He swatted her on the ass, and she yelped and laughed.
“Kevin! Stop! Stop! I’m serious. I’ll hurt you!”
Walking up the stairs was a slow process. She did it with her arm around a man who’s arm was around her waist, her head resting on his chest. Kevin kissed her on the top of her head. They didn’t make love enough. They were both too tired and quite frankly too damned cranky. So when he wanted her, she was determined to want him. Aileen resented Ashley because she was sure this Luke boy had been brought up just so she could bring him up to Kevin right now and sour her husband’s mood. Not only would Tina be in trouble, but intimacy would then be all but completely impossible tonight. So she filed Luke away in her brain for another day, knowing he would be as much of a mood killer as announcing before she went into the bathroom for a brief second to slip into something more comfortable, that what she was really doing was taking an emergency piss and popping birth control.

MADELEINE DECIDED NOT TO DRIVE. To drive was to alert the neighborhood, especially her father, to the knowledge -- as the car roared to life -- that she was traveling. And the car would probably be missing the next morning, which would tell her father that it had not been here all night.
So she climbed out of her window and down the trellis, the only way her father had never been able to catch her escaping, and went through the high over growth of the side yard to the garage and into the musty smelling place which was filled with summer heat in late autumn, and mildew scented cold in summer. Madeleine she pulled out her bike, which she scarcely used anymore. Before having a driver’s license this bicycle had been the freedom to go wherever she wanted. Now she realized that she had never gone far. Jamnia was the extent of her imagination, and she thought she had a better than average imagination! No wonder no one here ever went anywhere.
Madeleine’s path was not down Michael Street. It described a loose circle around the set back cul de sac areas of split levels behind the school, and close to the Lake. She cut up Fairlane Drive, well out of the range of the high school, or her own house before she was anywhere close to traveling toward her intended destination. Several blocks east of her house, she crossed Michael. It was almost empty at this time of night. She rode through the quiet tree lined streets of Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Streets. Some houses were bricks and colonials, some long blocks of small shoeboxes with one large picture window, a few boasted two stories, garages, antique antennas.
Main Street was still fairly busy at this time of night. Some bars were still open. The Walgreens was open down the block. Two blocks down to her left, Madeleine could see the shadow of Our Lady of Jamnia. There were some kids out, probably from the college, looking for a good time. She crossed Main, and it was all quiet again. She made a right turn into small hosues set back in trees, where she could hear crickets. Over some hill a motorcycle was revving up. A train was sighing as it crossed the trestle a block or so away.
Madeleine parked her bike in the bushes before a little house at an angle. White, two storied, with a little porch, and blue shutters blue trim. Her heart felt light tonight.
When she passed through the gate and the overhang of tree limbs, Madeleine Fitzgerald saw Rodder Gonzales was sitting on his porch, sipping a beer. He toasted her with it, smiled, and then raised a finger and went inside the darkened house. He came back with one for her.
“I thought you’d never come,” he said.
“I told you I would.”
With the edge of his tee shirt, Rodder unscrewed the cap and handed the beer to Madeleine. It was good and fizzy going down her throat. She decided not to smoke. He had always hated that.
“And the parents away for the weekend of the last game,” Madeleine commented.
“What can I say?” Rodder said. “I’m hurt.”
He didn’t seem terribly hurt.
“Don’t worry, Madeleine’ll make it all feel better. Just let her know where it hurts.”
“I will, don’t worry.”
“I’m not sure if you’re concerned about my welfare, Maddy,” Rodder said in a hurt voice. “I think you just want to take advantage of me.” He kissed her. “What’s a boy to do? I bet when you heard my parents wouldn’t be home to protect me...”
Since they’d first met, Rodder had always turned her on by feigning innocence in the middle of passion. Over six feet, lean, and very handsome with shocking sky grey eyes and a mind sharp as a whip, Roderigo Gonzales, when they were alone would channel a a naive boy, helpless and stupid, wondering what was about to happen to him. When he murmured, “What’s a boy to do?” in that same heated tone she imagined a serial rapist would use to say, “I’m about to fuck you.” it made her panties flood.
She was on his lap, tied up in his arms, they were making out, really making out, lips on throats, mouth to mouth, kissing eyes and noses, caressing arms, squeezing thighs, tasting flesh. She looked around a second. There had been no traffic or anything.
“You can’t see anything from here,” Madeleine marveled. Undistracted, Rodder kept kissing her.
“I couldn’t see this porch until I’d come past the gate,” she said.
“I know,” Rodder murmured, not caring as he set himself on his back, under the porch swing. Madeleine was on top of him. He guided her hands to the belt of his shorts.
“We can’t -- ” she gasped.
He pulled her face down and kissed her. His grey eyes were full on her.
“Yes we can,” he insisted, and began working with her jeans.
“Oh, my God, Rod,” she murmured. She felt the melting. She was going wet and wide in that secret place. Before Rod there had been no one. After him there had never been this melting, the aching inside her, the feel that his hands on her skin, working off her clothes, were actually melting into her skin. There was that old familiar ache in her.
They undressed each other on the porch. Sex with other people was not sex like this. They didn’t even undress all the way. So much of the lovemaking would occur in the touching and the tasting of the body once this was done.
Madeleine got on her back so they lay facing each other, and then he moved over her. panting and eager. She pulled down Rodder’s shorts, and his white briefs. She watched him growing. His cock was a black, thick shadow in the night darkness. She only saw it a little as she guided him in. He gasped a little at making his entry. Rodder took Madeleine’s hands gently, and guided them under his tee shirt. Together they lay like that, making no loud sounds, no sudden moves, clinging and rolling in and out, trying to fuse their bodies together until slowly Rodder began to develop a rhythm, and sing a little to his rhythm and Madeleine began to caress his back, broad and damp with perspiration, wet and narrow at the small. She began to caress his ass, round and covered in smooth hairs, his beautiful thighs, this beautiful body she opening too, felt like she was giving birth to.
Before Rodder began to speed up and make her cry out, before those last moments when the loving became fucking, before it became coming she wondered what had happened to break this unity?

“He’s not white if that’s what bothers you,” Madeleine had told her father.
Cedric just sat on the couch and looked up at his daughter after her first date with Rodder.
“His name is Roderigo Luis Gonzales.”
“Okay,” Cedric said.
“And if he was white... What’s the difference?”
Fourteen years as a single father had taught Cedric a variety of silences from which to choose. He picked one now.
“Well, I like him,” Madeleine said.
“That’s good,” Cedric had told his daughter.
“He’s really smart,” Madeleine added, heading up the stairs. “Gonna be a marine biologist.”
“That’s great.”
“You didn’t even give him a chance,” she stopped at the top of the stair.
“Madeleine, I didn’t give him anything. I didn’t even get to see the man. He came and left.”
“Well, I want him over for dinner.”
“Alright,” Cedric flipped the magazine. “I’ll cook my famous biscuit pot pie.”
“Oh, Daddy, please! No more biscuit dinners!”
“It’s the only thing I know how to make?” Cedric said. “And they’re all purpose, damnit! Biscuit pot pie, biscuit croissants, biscuit bisque and biscuit elephant ears. A whole meal in a fucking can. Cost about sixty-five cents plus condiments.”

But the truth was that Cedric’s first look at Rodder had been a shock, and he had to take it on faith that he wasn’t white -- a thing he didn’t completely believe. Cedric knew they had white Mexicans, and wasn’t even sure if Gonzales was a Mexican name or not. The afternoon when Cedric had opened the door for the boy, he’d first been shocked by how tall Rodder was, then by how intimidated this tall young man was of him merely being Madeleine’s father. The last thing that had occurred to Cedric, even as he was inviting the boy in, and assessing the damage repair quotient of the house was that the boy was not Black. And then came the odd and almost treacherous revelation that this did not really matter to him. He thought how surely it should. He ought to be getting worked up. At best, as an artists, he ought to be pretending not to care. Pretending not to care that your daughter dated a white guy or that your friend was gay -- this was called tolerance. Actually not giving a damn, this was lax morality. Wasn’t it?
I should care, Cedric looked back at Rod, sitting on the couch with the serious semi-constipated look that many white boys worked hard to cultivate. He was very tall in blue jeans and wearing a starter jacket. He was attractive enough though he squinted, which made Cedrid think he wore contacts, and Rodder didn’t really have a haircut. His brown hair had just been buzzed low all around his head. It looked right on him. He looked nice for Madeleine.
He’ll probably take her virginity, Cedric assessed.
There is no controlling your children. It’s a lie that you don’t know what your children do or what they will do. If your eyes are open, if you’re real enough very little will surprise you. You will grit your teeth, and get ready for the fall.
He’ll be a nice guy for it to happen with, I suppose.
Rodder rose up, and was first to offer his very large hand -- God the boy was huge -- to Cedric.
“Good evening, Mr. Fitzgerald. Is it alright if we’re back by 8:30?”
The boy raised an eyebrow. Out of the corner of his eye Cedric could see Madeleine looking disappointed. The boy was respectful, but he was also currying favor. This was some elaborate game that even Madeleine didn’t know was being played. Cedric, himself, hadn’t known it until the moment Rodder offered the ridiculously early time of 8:30.
“Yeah, that’ll be fine.” Best not to look to concerned. Yes, yes. Watch out for this one.
“He’s Mexican Daddy,” Madeleine had thrown in.
Cedric gave his daughter a look like, “Yeah, sure he is.”


Really, what Cedric concerned himself about was knowing well the guy he knew would sleep with his daughter. Two years later he knew it had happened, and then that it ceased to be happening, and he knew what all the foolishness of this summer had been about. He didn’t claim to know when it had happened, but he knew it had happened. Actually he prepared for this by believing his daughter was no longer a virgin after her first date with Rodder. She’d been to Catholic school. Cedric had baldly told her all about sex. Ida and the O’Muil sisters had done their bit and the Fosters had their own poor example of what raging hormones could do. You could only teach so much. Even at her confirmation, as the relatives from Crawford Street had loaded Madeleine down with money and rosaries and Bibles and dresses, Cedric had stood back and looked at his two children, one who wouldn’t be confirmed for years to come. This docile, pretty daughter would be the one who never set foot in church unless she had to. It would be Vaughan, stuffing a Cheetoh up his cousin Treshon’s nose at this very moment, who would say his rosary every night. Cedric just knew it.

Actually, if Cedric thought about it, he did know when Madeleine was no longer a virgin. It wasn’t anything that Madeleine did either. Rod actually was a good person. Cedric appreciated that he helped out in the kitchen when he came, and took an actual interest in his career. More than these, he liked Rodder’s bald admittance: “I know nothing about playwriting or poetry. But they interests me.”
One day Rod showed up smelling like aftershave, wearing a white turtleneck instead of the usual Starter jacket. Cedric had checked for an earring, and thanked God at not finding one. Madeleine was still upstairs getting dressed. Rod slipped on his glasses, an unconscious sign of his earnestness. They sat down and talked though Cedric could not longer remember what they had talked about.
Madeleine had shouted down from the bathroom: “I’m almost ready!”
Rodder turned to him and said seriously, “Cedric, you know that I really love Madeleine.”
Rodder’s grey eyes had been uncompromising, and that’s when Cedric realized that up until then, even with Kevin and Aileen, he had never believed in teenage love. Marilyn had come along late, the children later. Suddenly Cedric knew that Rod was serious, and he knew in that brief moment that Rod was having sex with Madeleine. He had already told himself it didn’t matter, but suddenly he wanted to cry. He turned off the valve, and turning his head away from the boy nodded and said, “I know you do.”
After they left, Cedric had paced the house playing with his fingers, and then playing the piano. Vaughan came down to ask what was wrong. Cedric did not answer. He couldn’t tell Vaughan the truth, and Vaughan had never been a child to be lied to.
Rodder knew that the one statement had told Cedric too much. He knew that Cedric knew and stood wary of the house for a while. Even when he had finally come back as a regular, he knew that Cedric knew. Cedric’s demeanor was different. The older man coping with some knowledge he didn’t know how to handle.
Rod wondered how Madeleine never guessed or how, if she had guessed, she thought her father didn’t care?

Rod, himself, had a hard time being with Madeleine after the night he told without telling, because he thought about Mr. Fitzgerald’s face. Cedric was so good at his poker face and yet this once it had given away and the message was not, “I’m glad you love my daughter,” but, “You ARE sleeping with my daughter.” And there was the note of, “And I know there’s nothing I can do about it.”
So being with Madeleine attacked the things he had come to like about a man who was good for advice and council, and who had done a good job with being a widow and raising two kids, a better job than his absentee parents had done with just him. Rod had liked the fact that Cedric wasn’t like his parents who talked about Church Law and Catholic school and the Pope and how morals were going to hell in a handbasket. Cedric never brought any of that up. There were some discreet crucifixes in the house. The little man’s hands were always making their way about the circuit of a rosary. Or Father Hanley would come by, and they would talk about Mass from earlier that morning, so Rodder knew that Cedric would hardly be happy about knowing he was sleeping with Madeleine.
And then Rodder was attracted to the power of the man, the idea that Cedric Fitzgerald could do whatever he wanted even though he chose to do nothing most of the time, and the idea that he was powerless to stop someone from desecrating his daughter, even when that someone was Rod, bothered Rod.
He wished he could say more, but saying more would only ruin more. He wished he could say that he did love her, that it wouldn’t have happened without love, that it wasn’t even intended. They’d driven out of town, to the barn that rose over the lake. But this was just to make out, just to make out and have a nice drive. And then... well maybe they had meant it to happen. It was hard to say. They had gone out into the field, like in a movie or a novel. It wasn’t in a park or in the back seat. Her hair had smelled so nice, and been thick and black whipping against his face. They’d sat in the field a distance from his car, hidden from sight by the grasses. They lay on their backs looking at the stars.
They kissed slowly, then more intensely. At the usual point where the fooling around ended, he had asked without asking, and she had consented. He always liked to think how it had happened under the stars. They had undressed and been completely naked without a sound anywhere near them. He had been slow, wanting her to feel as good as possible as he came in for the first time. He remembered growing inside of her, and then the slow movement. Don’t move to fast, don’t think it’s all about you. Listen to her, ask her what she wants, comfort her over and over again, lean over and kiss her. Love her.





It wasn’t like the novels, but then it wasn’t like the bad experiences that happen so often. There was no weeping when it was over. They just held each other tight and didn’t say anything.
Like tonight in his house.
Tonight in his bed.

v i

When Luke Madeary came to consciousness, he was grubby, and fully dressed, his mouth tasting of stale beer, his head throbbing. He was violently startled to find himself in bed with Kirk Berghen and his girlfriend, Money. Both were naked and looked as if they’d passed out in the midst of coitus, her legs impossible high about Kirk’s waist, Kirk Berghen’s mouth still wide open.
Luke stumbled out of the room and into the yard, wondering what had happened to Tina or to the night. Out here the air was fresh, the grasses yellow green. But it was all too sharp. The day was not particularly bright. But it was still too bright. Luke stood still. The world spun a little under his feet. He didn’t know where he was.
“You looking for Martina?”
He looked up to see a bronze haired woman. She wore glasses, and had a serious face, but a kind one.
He nodded.
“This is my house,” she said by way of introduction.
This was Kirk’s aunt. Kirk was Tina’s cousin. This was Tina’s grandmother.
“She’s upstairs in her mom’s old room,” Ida said. “Come on in.”
Luke followed. He managed to say “Thank you.”
“No one else is up yet,” Ida said. “It’s early still.”
The kitchen was filled with sunlight, Ida knew instinctively to shut the blinds for Luke. He loved the sound of the black coffee splashing into a cup, loved to smell the rich, slightly burning aroma. In the distance the morning train blew its whistle as it crossed the tracks near his home.
“Eat this.” Ida put down a day old danish down with the coffee, the creamer and sugar.
Luke fumbled with the sugar and creamer to make a good cup off coffee. This and one bite of danish had him a little more alert.
“Are you and Tina seeing each other?” Ida said baldly.
“I don’t know, Ma’am” Luke pushed his hair out of his face.
“That’s shame. You’re a good enough looking young man,” Ida said. “If I were forty years younger... But....” she shrugged.
“You’re still good looking,” Luke told her valiantly.
“I know,” Ida said with a smile. “But I’m old. Or getting there. My point, however, is -- if you are serious with Tina I think you’d better know it will either be her or the drugs. She won’t share you with Mary Jane.”
Luke looked at Ida.
She took out a cigarette and waved it like a wand.
“It’s just something to think about,” Ida said.

WHEN MARTINA FOSTER STEPPED ACROSS the threshold that morning, she could tell something had happened. She smelled fresh coffee in the kitchen, and her father was humming and smiling, and he kissed her on the head on his way out to the high school. Aileen was singing along with the radio. Tina noted that her mother had actually pulled a brush through her hair before nine in the morning on a Saturday, and she looked like she really was only thirty-four.
“Good morning, Martina,” Aileen said brightly.
Tina eyed her mother suspiciously, and moved to the plastic Bundt cake pan from the where she cut herself a piece of week old strawberry pound cake.
“Morning, Mother. I trust that you had a good evening.”
Aileen, smiling, eyes down on the batter she was stirring said, her voice barely above the radio, “Oh, yes.”
Tina poured a cup of black coffee, broke off some of the light cake, and dunked it quickly.
“I hope you and Dad didn’t wake up the whole house.”
“Tina,” Aileen said, coloring. But Tina noticed her mother was still smiling.
“Grandma says hi,” Tina said, by way of offering an explanation as to where she’d been last night.
Aileen smiled and nodded, singing absently,

“And did you ever wonder why?
Did it ever make you cryyy?
Cause you’re my favorite mistake.”

Suddenly Lindsay bounced down the stairs, looking like the oldest instead of the youngest woman in the room.
“It’s you!” she said, pointing a finger at Tina.
Tina looked behind herself for someone else, and then said, “I sure in the hell hope it is.”
“I want to talk to you.” Lindsay stuck out her finger.
Tina tried not to laugh.
“Please! When you do that, dressed in your band uniform, it reminds me of Uncle Sam.”
“I’m serious!” Lindsay cried.
“Lind,” Aileen frowned for the first time this morning, “what’s the fuss?”
“I need to talk to her,” Lindsay pointed at Tina. “Woman to... woman.”
Tina raised an eyebrow, and took a swig from her coffee.
“Alright, Sis. But make this quick.” She wiped her fingers off on her old trousers, and went to the living room with Lindsay.
“I want you to stay away from Derrick,” Lindsay hissed.
“What?” Tina wanted to laugh.
“I’m serious!”
Then Tina did laugh, because it was hard to take a majorette seriously.
“The way you only say one word to him and he’s just -- ‘Hi Tina.’ ‘Howya doin’, Tina!’ Tina this, Tina that. Tina! Tina! Tina! Well you stay away from him. Martina!”
“Fine.”
“I’m ser--”
“I know, you’re serious. And you’re seriously mental. No one wants Derrick Todd but you. For God’s sake, he has two first names.”
“Don’t make fun of him.”
“Fun. Fun. Fun.” Tina said just to be a bitch.
“And don’t be like Ashley, and try to steal him just to steal him.”
Tina’s head snapped to the side. Lindsay knew she’d gone too far.
“But Ashley would do something like that,” Lindsay said, defensively.
“Well then maybe you’d better stop wasting my time and go talk to Ashley. Or talk to Derrick if you think he’ll leave you.”
“He won’t leave me,” Lindsay insisted, throwing her hands on the wide hips of her trousers. “He can’t. I’m good to him. My God, I do things for him?” she hissed.
“Do things for him?” Tina raised an eyebrow. “Oh my God! Do you blow him?”
Tina was already whispering but Lindsay shushed her and said, “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, you give him handjobs,” Tina went on.
“This conversation is at an end,” Lindsay said, growing imperious.
“Well, shit,” Tina muttered. “If I’d known it would be that easy to shut you up...” And then she got up, and turned around, returning to the kitchen.
Aileen, who was in the middle of a soulful reinterpretation, of “Say a Little Prayer For You,” stopped washing out the Tupperware bowls, and suddenly turned around to ask Tina, “So, who is the Luke?”
Tina sighed, took out her cigarettes, and said, “Firstly, I hate having sisters....”

After the half time show, Tina, Madeleine and Claudia came to sit down in the small section around the band area. The day was cool enough for them all to be in jackets, a few in gloves, but winter had not set in earnest. Last year at this time, they’d been on the football field, bundled under scarves and looking like nuts. George Stearne took enough time out from the direction of the band to say, “Ms. Foster, I certainly hope you’re studying for your part.”
“I’m studying right now,” she thumped her head. “Semper Fi, Stearne!”
Stearne smirked and said, “Does it ever occur to you to call me Mr. Stearne.”
“When I call you Stearne it’s like an adjective. Not a proper noun,” Tina explained. “Calling you Mr. Stearne would be like you calling me Miss Bitch.”
“Oh, my God,” Claudia said, as Madeleine caught her breath, and gagged on the Coke she’d been drinking.
Stearne only grinned from a corner of his mouth, and stroked his goatee.
“That is one way to think of it, Ms. Foster. Carry on,” he said, and left.
“Carry on,” Madeleine imitated in a British accent.
“Leave him alone,” Tina said, turning red.
“Tina’s got a cruuush,” Claudia said.
“So does Stearne,” Madeleine noted.
“He does not.”
“He left his lonely post as bandmaster to come and tease you,” Madeleine noted.
“He’s old,” Tina said.
“I think we’ve had this discussion before,” Madeleine said.
The game had not started, and Derrick Todd, who had been leaning over the band rail talking to Lindsay, kissed her, and then called out, “Hey Tina!” and waved at her.
For just a brief second, Tina saw the flash of anger in her little sister’s eyes, then she said, “I’m sorry Derrick, I’m forbidden to talk to you.”
Lindsay, too far away to get up and punch her sister, only scowled more as Derrick looked more confused, and then grinned and ran back to the field.
As the band started back up, Claudia said, “Now he is white, but have you noticed how with that sunblocker under his eyes and in a football uniform...”
“Even Derrick Todd looks buff,” Tina supplied. “Yeah. I noticed that. For the first time I was a little turned on.”
They heard Madeleine yelp and put her hand to her mouth as Rodder came running into sight.
“Doesn’t he look good?” Madeleine said.
“Um hum,” Tina said, non-commitally, never able to tell one football player from the other when he was wearing a helmet.

When the band had finished, and they were all standing around with their instruments looking scattered (-though no real band dork would ever let his instrument actually be scattered) Lindsay found her brother and Ian Cane talking.
“Have you seen Tina?” Lindsay demanded.
“There are so many other things on my mind,” Mackenzie replied, startled to realize he sounded like a bitch.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“That’s exactly how you can take it,” Where was it coming from? This bitch voice? Is it part of the new GAY Mackenzie?
Lindsay humphed and stomped off, trumpet in hand.
“She’s pissed cause she thinks Tina’s trying to steal Derrick Todd,” Mackenzie told Ian who started to chuckle.
“Well that’s a shame,” Shawn Norman said from behind them. “Cause someone needs to tell girlfriend that if she’s trying to compete, band uniforms just don’t flatter the figure.”
In the distance, Mackenzie and Ian could see Lindsay shouting and stomping her foot, and Tina between Madeleine and Claudia, smoking and looking amused.
“I’m starved at hell,” Ian said. “As soon as we put out instruments away we should go.”
“Should we pick up Roy first?” Mackenzie said. “Then we can just swing back here and get Vaughan. He said he’d be dressed by one... Which means two.”
Ian nodded.
“Cool.”