Laura Lippman: Every Secret Thing

They were barefoot when they were sent home, their dripping feet leaving prints that evaporated almost instantly, as if they had never been there at all. Had it been possible to retrace their literal steps, as so many would try to do in the days that followed, the trail would have led from the wading pool area, where the party tables had been staked out with aqua Mylar balloons, past the snack bar, up the stairs, and to the edge of the parking lot. And each print would have been smaller than the last-losing first the toes, then the narrow connector along the arch, the heels, and finally the baby-fat balls of their feet-until there was nothing left.

At the curb, they sat to put on their shoes-sneakers for Ronnie, brand-new jellies for Alice, who used whatever money came her way to stay current with the fifth-grade fashion trends at St. William of York. Jellies were the thing to have that summer, on July 17, seven years ago.

The parking lot’s macadam shone black, reminding Alice of a bubbling, boiling sea in a fairy tale, of a landscape that could vaporize upon touch.

“It’s like the desert in Oz,” she said, thinking of the hand-me-down books rescued from her mother’s childhood.

“There’s no desert in Oz,” Ronnie said.

“Yes, there is, later, in the other books, there’s this desert that burns you up-”

“It’s not a book,” Ronnie said. “It’s a movie.”

Alice decided not to contradict her, although Ronnie usually ceded to Alice when it came to matters of books and facts and school. These were the things that Alice thought of as knowledge, a word that she saw in blazing blue letters, for it had stared at her all year from the bulletin board in their fifth-grade classroom. “A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increases strength.” The A papers of the week were posted beneath that proverb, and Alice had grieved, privately, any week she failed to make the board. Ronnie, who never made it, always said she didn’t care.

But Ronnie was in one of her dark moods today, long past the point where anyone could tell her anything.

“I should call your mothers,” Maddy’s mom had fretted, even as she banished them from the party, from the pool. “You shouldn’t cross Edmondson Avenue alone.”

“I’m allowed,” Ronnie said. “I have an aunt on Stamford, I go to her house when my parents are working. She’s this side of Edmondson.”

Then, with a defiant look around at the other girls, their faces still stricken and shocked, Ronnie added: “My aunt has Doublestuf Oreos and Rice Krispie treats and all the cable channels, and I can watch anything I want, even if it’s higher than PG- 13.”

Ronnie did have an aunt somewhere nearby, Alice knew, although Stamford didn’t sound right. Neither did the Oreos and Rice Krispies-there was never anything that good to eat in the Fuller house. There was all the soda you could drink, because Mr. Fuller drove a truck for Coca-Cola. And Ronnie was telling the truth about what she watched. The Fullers didn’t seem to care what Ronnie saw. Or did, or said. The only thing that seemed to bother Mr. Fuller was the noise from the television, because the only thing he ever said to Ronnie and her three older brothers was Turn it down, turn it down . Or, for good measure: Turn it down, for Christ’s sake . Just last week, on a rainy afternoon, Ronnie had been watching one of those movies in which teenagers kept getting killed in ever more interesting ways, their screams echoing forever. Alice had buried her head beneath the sofa cushions, indifferent to the stale smells, the crumbs and litter pressing into her cheek. For once, she was almost glad when Mr. Fuller came through the door at the end of his shift. “Jesus, Ronnie,” he had said on a grunt. “Turn it down. I swear there’s just no living with you.”

“You’re blocking the set, Dad” was Ronnie’s only reply. But she must have found the remote, for the screams faded away a few seconds later, and Alice popped her head out again.

Maddy’s mother didn’t believe the story about Ronnie’s aunt. Alice could see the skepticism in her parted lips, painted a glossy pink, and in her squinty, tired eyes. Maddy’s mother seemed torn between wanting to challenge Ronnie’s lie, and wanting to get away from Ronnie-away from them, although Alice had done nothing, nothing at all, except get a ride to the party from Ronnie’s brother.

Maddy’s mother licked her lips once, twice, removing some of the pink and most of the gloss, and finally said: “Very well.” Later she told everyone Ronnie had lied to her, that she never would have let two little girls leave if she had known they were going to be unsupervised, if she had known they were going to cross Edmondson Avenue alone. That was the worst thing anyone in Southwest Baltimore could imagine at 2 P.M., on July 17, seven years ago-crossing Edmondson Avenue alone.

The hill to Edmondson was long and gradual. Alice did not know if there were really ten hills in this neighborhood called Ten Hills, but there were enough slopes to punish short legs. The two girls did not have cover-ups, so they knotted their towels high on their bodies, at the spot where breasts were supposed to hold them. But they had no breasts, only puffy bumps, which they had started keeping in bras just this year. So the towels kept slipping to the ground, tangling at their ankles. Ronnie’s was a plain, no-longer-white bath towel, and she cursed it every time it fell until finally, after tripping over it for the fourth time, she slung it around her neck, not caring if people saw her body. Alice could never walk down the street like that, and she wore a one-piece. Ronnie had a red-and-white bikini, yet she was so thin that the skimpy bottoms seemed to bag on her. The only curve on Ronnie’s body was her stomach, which bowed out slightly. “Like a Biafran baby,” Alice ’s mother, Helen, had said. “Oops-I’m dating myself.” Alice had no idea what she was talking about, whether it was good or bad, or even how someone went about dating herself. She just knew that her mother never said Alice looked like a Biafran baby.

Alice ’s navy one-piece had a cutout of a daisy on her belly. Ronnie told her this was queer, and had said this every time she saw Alice in the suit this summer, which was exactly three times-a day-trip to Sandy Point, another poolside birthday party, and today. “Who wants to see a brown daisy on your fat white belly?” she had said when Alice ’s mom dropped her this morning at the Fullers’ house before going to work.

“Vintage,” Alice ’s mother had said. “It’s vintage.”

Ronnie didn’t know what that meant, so she had to shut up. Ronnie liked Alice ’s mother and tried to be at her best when she was around. Alice didn’t know what vintage meant, either, but she knew it was good. Her mother had a whole vocabulary of good words that Alice didn’t quite understand. Vintage. Classic. Retro. New-Vo. When all else failed, when Alice was balking at wearing something because the other girls might tease her, Helen Manning would meet her eyes in the mirror and say: “Well, I think it’s exquisite.” This was the word that ended everything, her mom’s way of saying, in her gentle way, Not-Another-Word, I’m-at-the-End-of-My-Patience. Exquisite. The one time Alice had tried to use it, Ronnie had said: “Who wants zits?”