Read Online The Longings of Wayward Girls by Karen Brown - Free Book Online Page A

continue their play, and sadie is as sorry and disgruntled as they are that they cannot. she remembers the worlds she used to create, the sadness she felt on sunday evenings when she knew they would have to be abandoned. Her mother, too, hated sundays, telling sadie how as a child she dreaded the impending return to school, the ferry to staten Island, the skies dark overhead. still, when sadie complained about going to school her mother refused to listen.
    “you come home every afternoon,” she said, her eyes wide, as if she were revisiting the lurching ferry, the closedin smells of the dormitory. “you don’t sleep in a room with twenty girls, and nuns patrolling the hallways, listening for any little noise.”
    sadie ushers Max and sylvia through the morning preparations with singing and happy bantering: Guess what I’m putting in your lunch today? A brownie! who knows what day it is? It’s Daddy’s birthday! she writes little notes with colored markers and drops them in their lunch boxes. she loads them into the car. she puts in a tape of songs Max likes, ones that sylvia sings along to, changing the names to their own the way sadie did when sylvia was small. There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Sylvia, dear Sylvia, there’s a hole in the bucket, dear Sylvia, a hole. she comes to the stop sign and ray is there, parked on the side by the woods, near the rotting cedar posts of the barbed wire fence. With what shall I mend it, dear Max, dear Max, with what shall I mend it, dear Max, with what? The children sing; the taped music is tinny and ridiculous. sadie realizes that even as an adult ray still makes her feel like a child.
    when she returns he is still there. she drives to her house, parks her car in the garage, and then walks back down the street. The lawns are muddy, the grass yellow and flattened. soon the men will be out with their fertilizer spreaders, their pruners and mowers. she raps on ray’s window and he rolls it down and smiles at her. His eyes are green, the color of the truck. she feels a warmth rush down the length of her body, a weakness in her legs. “Get in,” he says. Her skin feels hot. she gets into the truck and smells the dirt ground into the floor mats, a powdery whiff of old hair pomade. They have never been this close before, and she feels his proximity, a flash of gooseflesh on her arms and legs, senses the tension in his hand, which plays absently with the gearshift. He glances over at her and then away, fiddles with the knob on the radio. His silence is a pent-up one—she imagines he is holding his breath, waiting for something from her. she slides along the seat, leans against him, and takes his face in her hands. His cheeks are rough, unshaven. His eyes close, and she kisses him, listens to his groans of pleasure, her own sighs filling the cab, the seats making everything impossibly awkward. when ray puts the truck in gear, his face flushed, she pulls away and opens the truck door.
    “what are you doing?” he says.
“I’m getting out,” she tells him. she slips out of the truck, into the spongy grass by the woods. she smells the damp, the snow melting. Her mouth feels bruised.
“so what was this? Just some necking ? Are we in junior high?”
sadie laughs at that. “necking! yes, that’s what it was.”
she wants to start at the beginning, to have what she never had from him. she wants kissing, and fondling, and the feeling of venturing into a forbidden place. she shuts the truck door and walks up the road in the direction of her house. behind her she hears his truck pull away, and she feels elation and regret. she folds the laundry, empties the dishwasher, peers out her front window, waiting. It is nearly spring. The snow clings to the grass beneath the hedges. The sky fills with loose clouds. It is Craig’s birthday, and she bakes a cake. Preoccupied, she lets the layers overcook in the oven, but she hides them beneath the chocolate frosting and decides no one will be