Laura Lippman - Hardly Knew Her

But he didn’t leave the house right away. He never did, not on the glum Saturdays that followed his bad nights, the ones that came and went without doughnuts. He went down to the breakfast table and wolfed down a plate of fried eggs. Sofia followed him down to the table, staring at him silently, but he refused to meet her gaze. Her mother might intervene if she told her, but Sofia didn’t feel that she had earned anyone’s help. She had sat by while the candlesticks left, turned her back when Brad cried over his bicycle. She was on her own.

Her father took a long nap on the sofa, opening his eyes from time to time to comment on whatever television program was drifting by. “Super Bowl’s going to be a snorer this year.” “Wrestling’s fixed, everyone knows that.” It was going on three by the time he left the house and Sofia followed behind, shadowing him in the alleys that ran parallel to Brighton Avenue. She thought she might show up at the last minute, shaming her father, then remembered that hadn’t worked with Shemp. Instead, she crouched behind a row of yew bushes at the end of the property that bordered the vacant lot. She had retrieved many a mis-thrown football from these bushes, so she knew how thick and full they were. She also knew that the red berries were poison, a piece of vital information that had been passed from child to child as long as anyone in the neighborhood could remember. Don’t eat them little red berries. They look like cherries, but one bite will kill you. When she was little, when she was still okay with being Fee, she had gathered berries from the bushes and used them in her Hi Ho! Cherry-O game at home. For some reason it had been far more satisfying, watching these real-if-inedible berries tumble out of the little plastic bucket. She was always careful to make sure that Brad didn’t put any in his mouth, schooling him as she had been schooled.

A man was waiting for her father behind Gordon’s place. He held himself as if he thought he was good looking, and maybe he was. He wore a leather jacket with the collar turned up and didn’t seem to notice that the day was too cold for such a light jacket. When he opened the velvet box, he nodded and pocketed it with a shrug. But he clearly didn’t appreciate the thing of beauty before him and that bothered Sofia more than anything. At least Shemp had gone to a man who thought he was a good dog deserving of a good home. This man wasn’t worthy of her necklace.

She watched him get into a red car, a Corvette that Joe and the other boys had commented on enviously whenever it appeared in Gordon’s parking lot. He wasn’t an every-weeker, not like her dad, but he came around quite a bit. Now that she was paying attention, it seemed to her that she had seen the car all over the neighborhood-up and down Brighton Avenue, outside the snowball stand in spring and summer, in the parking lot over to Costas Inn, at the swim club. He came around a lot. Maybe Joe knew his name, or his people.

Three months later. The clocks had been turned forward and the days were milder. There was another dance at school and Sofia was going this time. Things had changed. She had changed.

“Why isn’t Joe picking you up?” her mother asked.

“We’re meeting there,” Sofia said. “He’s not a boyfriend-boyfriend.”

“I thought he was. You’ve been going to the movies together on weekends, almost every Saturday since St. Patrick’s Day.”

“Just matinees. Things are different now. We’re just friends. This isn’t a date. But he’ll walk me home, so you don’t have to worry. Okay?”

“What time does the dance end?”

“Eleven.”

“And you’ll come straight home.” A command, not a question.

“Sure.”

Sofia shouldn’t have agreed so readily; it made her mother suspicious. She studied her daughter’s face, trying to figure out the exact nature of the lie. Reluctantly, she let Sofia go, yanking her dress down in the back as if she could extend the cloth. Sofia had grown some since her birthday and the pink dress was a little short, but short was the fashion of the day, as were the platform shoes she clattered along in. She had practiced in them off and on for two weeks, and they still felt like those Dutch shoes, big as boats around her skinny ankles, Olive Oyl sandals. Thank God they had ankle straps or she would have fallen out of them in less than a block.

Two blocks down, where she should have crossed the boulevard to go up to the school, she turned right instead, heading for the tavern. She didn’t go in, of course, but waited by the back door, which was just a back door on Saturday nights, nothing more. Within five minutes, a red Corvette pulled into the parking lot.

“Hey,” said the man in the driver’s seat, a man she now knew as Brian. He wore his leather jacket with the collar turned up, although the night was a little warm for it.

“Hey,” she said, getting into the car and pulling her dress so it didn’t bunch up around her.

“Never seen you in a skirt before, Gino.” That was his joke, calling her “Gino” after Gino Marchetti.

“And I’ve never seen you in anything but that leather jacket.”

“Well, technically, this is our first date. There’s a lot we don’t know about each other, isn’t there?”

Sofia smiled in what she hoped was a mysterious and alluring way.

“Maybe we should get to know each other better. What do you think?”

She nodded.

“My place okay?”

She nodded again. It had taken her three months to get to this point-three months of careful conversation in Gordon’s parking lot, which began when she threw the ball at the red Corvette, presumably in a fit of celebration upon scoring a touchdown. Brian, who had just pulled up, got out and started screaming, but he settled down fast when Sofia apologized, prettily and tearfully. Plus, she hadn’t damaged the car, not a bit. After that afternoon, he would stand in the lot for a few minutes, watching them play. Watching her play, she was sure of it. He brought sodas for everyone. He asked if they wanted to go for ice cream. He took them, one at a time, on rides around the block. Sofia always went last. The rides were short, no more than five minutes, but a lot can happen in five minutes. He told her that he managed a Merry-Go-Round clothing store, offered to get her a discount. She told him she was bored with school and thinking about dropping out. He said he had been married for a while, but he was single now. “I’m single, too,” Sofia said, and he laughed as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

“Maybe we should go out sometimes, us both being single and all,” he said. That had been yesterday.

The date made, it was understood that he would not come to her house, shake hands with her father, and make small talk with her mother while Sofia turned a round brush in her hair, trying to feather her bangs. Other things were understood, too. That it would not be a movie date or a restaurant date. Sofia knew what she was signing up for. Her only concern was that he might want to drive someplace, stay in the Corvette, when she wanted to see where he lived.

So she said as much, when he asked what she wanted to do. “Why don’t we just go to your place?”

His eyebrows shot up. “Why not?” He passed her a brown bag that he had held between his legs as he drove and she took a careful sip. It wasn’t her first drink, but she recognized that this was something sweet, liquor overlaid with a peppermint flavor, a girly drink for someone assumed to be inexperienced. Thoughtful of him.

Brian lived out Essex way, in some new apartments advertising move-in specials and a swimming pool. She hoped it wouldn’t take too long because she had only so much time, but she was surprised at just how fast it happened. One minute they were kissing, and it wasn’t too bad. She almost liked it. Then all of a sudden he was hovering above her, asking if she was fixed up, a question she didn’t understand right away. When she did, she shook her head, and he said, “Shit,” but pulled a rubber over himself, rammed into her and yelled at her to come, as if he were a coach or a gym teacher, exhorting her to do something difficult but not impossible.