Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

The time at the beach had gone quickly, but at the same time, it felt expansive. It was as if a whole season had zoomed by rather than a week. At home in my own bed, I missed everyone at the Cone house. With my mother, at breakfast, I felt like an imposter. Even my clothes were false, as I’d left the wardrobe Sheba had bought me at the Cones’ house, and promptly changed into a new outfit each morning right after I arrived. My mother, who had known everything about me since birth—what I ate, when I slept, who my friends were, what music I listened to, and what books I read—suddenly had a stranger at her table. But I was the only one who was aware of the change. I was now someone who had gone to family group therapy for sex addiction and knew the words to both the A and B sides of every Running Water album. Like Sheba in her wigs—I couldn’t wait to get to the Cones so I could rip off the false self and just be me. Barefoot. Singing. Cooking dinner. Wearing a bikini. Playing with Izzy’s hair.

Dr. and Mrs. Cone acted as if that night at the beach had never happened, but I noticed an effort in their relationship that hadn’t previously existed. They almost never touched each other, and when one spoke, the other shut up entirely as if to be careful not to interrupt or correct.

Three weeks after we’d returned from the beach, Mrs. Cone left the house in the afternoon for a hair appointment. Izzy and I were in the TV room, folding clothes. Laundry was one of Izzy’s favorite activities: every stage of it, from sorting to putting it away.

Sheba came in eating a Popsicle.

“We’re going to iron.” Izzy pointed to the growing pile of wrinkled clothes. I’d already set up a footstool by the ironing board and was waiting for the iron to heat up. When Izzy ironed, I stood right behind her, ready to grab the iron if she dropped it, left it too long in one spot, or knocked it off the board.

“Can you believe I’ve never ironed?” Sheba said.

“Really?”

“We had this Mexican woman who lived with us when I was a kid. She ironed everything. Even jeans and underwear.”

“What about in college? Or now?”

“In college I dropped off my clothes at the cleaners every week and they were returned to me ironed and folded. And then after college I hired a cleaning lady who does all the laundry. Toni. She’s in the New York apartment now.”

“Mary Jane can teach you to iron,” Izzy said. “She’s good at teaching.”

“Okay. I’ll try it.”

“But you can’t have your Popsicle when you iron.” Izzy and I had had a struggle over a dripping red Popsicle in her mouth the last time we’d ironed.

“Bossy!” Sheba smiled at Izzy and continued to suck her Popsicle.

“I’ll finish it.” Izzy went to Sheba and took the Popsicle from her. Sheba got up and stood at the ironing board.

I laid a white button-down open and facedown on the board. “The key is to not linger. You just push firmly and slide it along the fabric.”

“One mustn’t linger!” Sheba winked at me. She pushed the iron a few times. I watched. Izzy got closer and looked up. The Popsicle dripped down her chin. “Now what?”

“Then you do the sleeves.” I readjusted the shirt so there was a single sleeve on the board.

“Firmly. And no lingering!” Sheba raised her voice to sound more like me. She slid the iron around the sleeve, then on the cuff. “Okay. I’m bored.”

“Already?”

“Yup. Let’s go record shopping.” Sheba put the iron on the shirt facedown. I righted it quickly before the shirt burned.

“I wanna go record shopping!” Izzy jumped up and down, waving the Popsicle.

“I don’t even know where the record store is.” There were no record stores in Roland Park, and none on the regular routes I went with my mother: to the Elkridge Club, Roland Park Country School, Huxler’s for clothes.

“Richard will know. I’ll find the keys.” Sheba sauntered out.

“Can I get a record too?” Izzy asked.

“Yes. I’ll buy you one.” I quickly finished ironing the shirt.

“You will? You have money?”

“Yeah. I’ve been saving all the money your parents pay me. But I’ll use some of it to buy you a record.”

Izzy ran to my legs and hugged me. I rubbed her head. Then I unplugged the iron and neatly folded the shirt.

Jimmy wanted to go too. He didn’t wear a wig and neither did Sheba. They both put on sunglasses. Jimmy was wearing a tank top and a Johns Hopkins baseball cap that must have been Dr. Cone’s. Sheba tied a color-block scarf around her head. It covered her forehead and draped down the back of her hair like two red and orange tails.

Dr. Cone walked us out to the station wagon. Sheba got in the driver’s seat, and Izzy and I got in the back. Sheba rolled down the window and Dr. Cone leaned on the window frame with his hairy forearms. “You remember how to get there?” he asked.

Sheba said, “Left on Cold Spring, right on Charles, stay on Charles awhile, left on North Ave.”

“That’s right. Cold Spring, Charles, North Ave. You can’t get lost.”

“Mary Jane is going to buy me a record!” Izzy said.

“She is?” Dr. Cone looked up from Sheba’s window, then came around to Izzy’s. He reached in and tousled her hair, then pulled out a folded bill and tried to hand it over to me. I waved him away. “What kind of record?” He tried once more to hand me the money. I shook my head, smiling. Dr. Cone shrugged and stuck the bill back in his pocket.

“I dunno. Mary Jane, what kind of record?”

“What about a Broadway soundtrack?”

“MARY JANE’S BUYING ME A BROADWAY SIDETRACK!!” Izzy leaned out the window. I grabbed her waist so she wouldn’t fall out. Dr. Cone kissed her and then backed away as Sheba pulled the car from the curb.

“You have fun at the record store!” Dr. Cone laughed at his daughter, who seemed perilously close to dropping onto the pavement.

“Bye!” Sheba yelled.

“GOODBYE!” Izzy yelled, and I tugged her back in before we were moving too fast. Once she was settled into her seat, Izzy started singing a Running Water song. Sheba jumped in on the melody and I sang harmony. Jimmy made instrument noises with his mouth that sounded pretty cool. He could actually make the sound of a trumpet. And for a guitar he sort of said the word twang, but in a way that sounded close to a guitar.

The farther we got from Roland Park, the fewer trees I saw. By the time Sheba parked the car near the record store, there were no trees, just pavement, street, sidewalk, stores, and cars. Though I’d lived in Baltimore my whole life, I’d never been on North Avenue. The first thing I noticed was that there were very few station wagons around. Most cars here looked either shinier and fancier—many were the color of jewels—or beat-up and barely drivable. Everyone on the sidewalk was Black and I imagined how uncomfortable my mother would be here. Jimmy, Sheba, and Izzy didn’t seem to notice that we were the only white people around.

We walked into the warehouse-size record store and Jimmy took a deep breath. “Fuck yeah,” he said.

I examined the store. Signs hung from strings above sections, naming the genre: Jazz, Funk, Rock, Soul/R&B, Classical, Folk, Blues, etc. Along the walls were listening stations that looked sort of like phone booths, but instead of a phone, each booth held a record player and headphones. The people who worked at the store all wore bright yellow-and-green-striped shirts, making them hard to miss.

“Why didn’t we come here on day one?” Sheba asked.

Izzy tugged my hand. “Where do we find the Broadway sidetrack records?”

“Over there.” I pointed to a sign that said Soundtracks.

A salesperson approached us. He was as skinny as a piece of licorice and had an Afro pick stuck in his hair. I thought it was a clever place to carry the comb, as the comb was too big for his pockets.

“How can I help you folks?” The guy smiled and jerked his head as if he were following a tennis game: Izzy, Sheba, me, Jimmy. “No way, man. No way. Jimmy and Sheba?” His smile grew.

“Yeah, man.” Jimmy pulled off the baseball cap, ran his fingers through his hair, and replaced the cap. “I need something new. Some jams that will inspire me, you know. I need a launching pad for my own shit.”

“NO WAY!” The guy looked behind him, as if to see if anyone else was seeing this. “Jimmy! I love Running Water! I know every Running Water song by heart!”

“We do too,” Izzy said.

“NO WAY! No way, man! I love both you guys! My whole family watched your show, Sheba. For years! YEARS!”

“Ah, you’re so kind.” Sheba smiled and I could see her sucking in this adoration like gold dust. She was glowing from it.

“My mother is going to DIE! This is UNREAL!”

“These are our nieces.” Sheba held her hand out toward Izzy and me. She flipped her sunglasses so they were propped on her head over the scarf.

The guy glanced at us, smiled, then turned back to Jimmy and Sheba. “Okay, okay, okay, so let me help you. Jimmy wants something inspiring. What do you want, Sheba?”

“I just want something fun,” Sheba said.

“I want Broadway sidetracks!” Izzy said.

“We got show tunes.” He laughed, smiling at Izzy. “We got everything, man. I’m gonna set y’all up. Wait here.” He held his hands up like stop signs. “Don’t move, okay? Like, not one step. Stay right here.”

“We’ll be right here, doll,” Sheba said.

The guy returned just a few seconds later, a small mob following behind him. The mob was made up of a bunch of guys and one girl. The girl was wearing a patchwork leather cap that I could imagine Sheba wearing on television.

“Holy moly, holy moly, I don’t believe this!” the biggest guy said. He stuck out his giant hand and shook Jimmy’s hand, then Sheba’s, then mine, and then Izzy’s.

“We’re record shopping,” Izzy said, and the man laughed.

“Look at her hair! Look at that cute hair!” the girl said, about Izzy. She was tall and had a face that was a perfect circle.

“Mary Jane is going to buy me show tunes!” Izzy said, and the big man laughed again, and then bent down and picked up Izzy. He looked even bigger with Izzy in front of him, like a giant holding a Munchkin.

The rest of the crowd leaned forward and shook all our hands, and then customers started noticing Jimmy and Sheba. Immediately three of the guys who worked there created a barricade, like bodyguards.

“Let them shop!” one guy said. “Give them some space!”

“Y’all want a sno-cone?” the girl asked. “My cousin’s got a sno-cone stand at the end of the block. I can get you some sno-cones.”

“I’m fine, just happy to be here,” Jimmy said quietly. I could see that he liked the people who were helping us, but didn’t like being fussed over. Sheba, on the other hand, lingered with each person who shook her hand. She asked them questions: What’s your name? Did you grow up in Baltimore? Each person she talked to looked changed, like they’d been anointed, charged with some kind of power that passed from Sheba to them.

When we moved, we moved as a single mass. The big guy, whose name was Gabriel, was the leader. The bodyguard guys kept everyone who wasn’t part of our group back a couple of feet as the knot of us shuffled across the store.

We started in the Rock section.

“My niece needs her world expanded a little,” Sheba said about me to Gabriel, who was still holding Izzy.

“She’s got a hell of a voice.” Jimmy nodded toward me. “You’re gonna hear her on a record soon.”

“One of yours?” Gabriel asked.

“Oh yeah. Definitely.” Jimmy winked at me and I didn’t know if that meant he was kidding or serious. I couldn’t let myself think about it. I was afraid of ending up wildly disappointed.

Jimmy, Sheba, and Gabriel picked out records for me and handed them to a guy named Little Hank. I soon figured out he was Little Hank because another guy helping us was Medium Hank. I didn’t ask where Big Hank was; maybe it was his day off?

Little Hank sidled up to me and shuffled through what they’d picked out. “You’re gonna love this one.” I looked at the record he held on top of the pile. On the front was a woman with bluish hair, surrounded by a long accordian.

“Is Little Feat the band or is Dixie Chicken the band?”

Little Hank laughed so hard, he bent over. “No, man, Little Feat’s the band.” He shuffled to the next one. There was a photo of a grown man in a very small black bathing suit walking on the beach.

“Boz Scaggs Slow Dancer. Is that the band name or the album name?”

“No wonder they’re buying you music! No niece of Jimmy and Sheba should be so uninformed. Slow Dancer is the name of the album. Boz Scaggs is that guy’s name.” Little Hank flicked his finger on the bathing suit in the picture.

“A guy named Boz? Is that his real name?”

“Heck, I don’t know.” Little Hank kept shuffling through the records. He pulled out Steely Dan, who I’d heard of, and Rod Stewart, who I’d also heard of. I’d never heard of Dr. John, but the title of the album, Cut Me While I’m Hot, made me want to listen.

In the Folk section, Jimmy picked out John Prine and Gram Parsons. I’d heard of them both because Sheba and Mrs. Cone had discussed them one night. Jimmy handed Little Hank a Joni Mitchell album.

“Hell yeah, Jimmy!” Little Hank said. Then he leaned into me and almost whispered, “She’s soulful. I didn’t know who she was until I started working here, but Gabriel, man, he turns me on to every kind of music.”

I wanted to be Little Hank so I could hear every kind of music. Then I realized I already was a version of Little Hank, as he was now handing me—well, not every kind—many kinds of music. As much as I liked wandering the record store, I was ready to flee it so we could get home and start listening.

Little Hank and I rushed to catch up to the group. They had moved on to Soul/R&B. The bodyguards backed people away so we could slide into the inner circle.

“He’s getting Black music,” Little Hank said to me as Jimmy and Gabriel discussed different albums. “That’s what real musicians listen to.”

Gabriel handed Little Hank a stack of albums and Little Hank shuffled through them so I could see all of the choices.

“I’ve heard of Earth, Wind & Fire,” I said. “I think. Maybe not. Is there another band with a similar name?”

Little Hank thought I was hilarious. He laughed, shook his head, and showed me the rest of the albums: Al Green, Parliament, the Meters, the Isley Brothers, Sly and the Family Stone, Labelle, and Stevie Wonder.

“This guy is blind.” Little Hank nodded toward Stevie Wonder, on top of the pile. “And he plays piano. He’s cool. Everyone likes him.”

I’d heard of Stevie Wonder but hadn’t known he was blind. Maybe my mother would like him, since she believed that God had given blind and deaf people extra goodness since He took away one of their senses. A blind man attended our church and Mom always made sure he was seated near the front pew, close to our family, where she could help him in and out.

Sheba handed Little Hank two more records. “These are for me, but you’re going to love them, Mary Jane. Let’s sing along to these tonight.”

“Oh, you gonna be singing loud!” Little Hank said. We looked at the albums; the first was Shirley Brown, Woman to Woman. I liked the colors of the album, pink and brown, and I liked the photo, too, because it just showed her: upside down and right side up. Facing herself. Unlike most of the other albums with women on the front, she wasn’t posed in a sexy way. That made me curious about her. Next I looked at Millie Jackson, Caught Up. The cover showed a man and two women caught in a spiderweb. The back showed just the woman—Millie Jackson, I assumed—talking on the phone with a spiderweb framing her hair. She looked sort of sad in the photo, like she was getting her heart broken over the phone. There was another Millie Jackson album too. This one was called Still Caught Up. In the photo she was wearing a big hat and her lips were parted like she was about to kiss someone. It was definitely sexy and I wondered if Jimmy and Sheba knew her and if Jimmy, in their open marriage, was allowed to have sex with her.

“My turn!” Izzy shouted, and Gabriel moved her up to his shoulders. She was riding so high, I worried she’d knock her head on one of the signs hanging from the ceiling.

The crowd gathered in the Soundtracks section. Gabriel smiled down at me. “So what are we looking for?”

“Uh . . .” Would this knowledgeable crowd think I was stupid for liking show tunes? “Just something for Izzy to sing in the tub. You know.” I was afraid to say what I was thinking, which was Guys and Dolls. What if, in spite of my great love for Guys and Dolls, it was actually the dumbest soundtrack ever made?

“Something for the tub, huh?” Gabriel pulled alternately on Izzy’s ankles and she laughed.

“We could try Guys and Dolls?”I said it as if it had just occurred to me.

“I love Guys and Dolls!” Gabriel said, and I exhaled, relieved. Gabriel pulled the record from a bin and handed it to Little Hank. “What about Hair? Wanna try that one too?”

“Hair?” I didn’t know it. We hadn’t gotten it in the Show Tunes of the Month Club.

“Oh hell yeah,” Jimmy said. “It’s got naked people running all over the park.”

“I want Hair!” Izzy yelled.

“Is that the name of the song?” I asked Little Hank. “‘Naked People Running All Over the Park’?”

Little Hank almost fell to the ground laughing. Gabriel added Hair to the pile Little Hank was carrying, and we all worked our way to the checkout counter.

Gabriel slipped Izzy off his shoulders and onto his hip as if he’d been carrying her since birth. “You folks mind if we take a photo or two? For posterity. Never has anyone as famous as Jimmy and Sheba set foot in this store.”

“Sure.” Jimmy nodded, but his face didn’t look happy.

“And we gotta get a photo of Mary Jane before she becomes too famous to speak to us.”

“Oh, I would always speak to you,” I said, and everyone laughed.

Gabriel took Izzy with him and returned just a second later with a giant camera that had a large rectangular flash attachment. He handed the camera to one of the bodyguards and gave him a quick lesson on how to focus the camera.

Gabriel stood in the middle and hoisted Izzy back up to his shoulders. He let go of Izzy’s ankles and put one arm around Jimmy and the other around Sheba. Izzy looked perfectly balanced, her tiny fists knotted in Gabriel’s hair. Jimmy pulled me in close against his side, as if to protect himself from the crowd. The rest of the people who had been in our group gathered around on either side, and the bodyguard with the camera snapped off three pictures. Then he stepped in closer, maybe making it so it was only Jimmy, Sheba, and Gabriel, and snapped off another couple shots.

“One more, just to make sure we got a good one,” Gabriel said. “And step back so you can see Izzy on my shoulders and the sign above the register.”

I turned around and looked up to see what he was talking about. Above the register hung a huge sign that read, “Night Train Music: The Greatest Record Store in America.”

The flash exploded when my face was turned away.

“I’m ready to go,” Jimmy whispered in my ear, and the flash exploded two more times.

Little Hank rang up the records while Jimmy and Sheba talked to the employees who’d been shopping with us. I pulled out the ten-dollar bill I’d been carrying in my pocket and handed it to Little Hank.

“Jimmy gave me a credit card,” Little Hank said, waving the bill away without pausing on the register. His long fingers moved so fast on the keys that they sounded musical.

I leaned into Jimmy and handed him the bill. He bent his head down toward me, glancing at the bill. I could see in his eyes that he wanted to leave so badly, he would bust out of his own skin and abandon his body in the store if he could.

“What’s this?” Jimmy whispered.

“I’m paying for Izzy’s records. They’re a gift from me.”

“Okay.” Jimmy looked up, with his eyes only, as a woman, a customer, wedged her way into the circle to talk to him. She was in a jumpsuit that was unzipped almost to her waist, revealing breasts that were smashed together like two loaves of bread on her chest. The woman immediately started talking in a run-on sentence, as if she wanted to say everything she could before someone moved her away from Jimmy.

“My babysitter brought Running Water records to our house ’cause we didn’t have any, see, and she’s a heroin addict now too, just like you, see, and I still listen to Running Water. . . .”

“Uh-huh.” Jimmy nodded. His eyes seemed unfocused and fogged over. He reached his arm toward me and I felt a small tug in my back shorts pocket. Jimmy had slipped the bill in there.

One of the bodyguard guys escorted the woman away from Jimmy and then moved other employees aside so Jimmy could sign the receipt. Izzy and I carried the two bags of records as the employee mob walked the four of us out of the store and to the car, the crowd of fans and shoppers trailing behind.

Gabriel laughed when Sheba put the key into the passenger-side door. “You gotta be kidding me, man. Jimmy and Sheba drive a station wagon!”

“Well, we got the kids.” Jimmy nodded at me and Izzy and then got in the car and didn’t roll down the window. Izzy and I got in too. Izzy rolled down the window and leaned half her body out, watching everyone give Sheba hugs or kisses goodbye.

When Sheba finally got in the car and closed the door, Jimmy said, “Let’s roll, baby, roll, roll, roll.”

Sheba pulled the car out slowly. The crowd walked behind us, their hands on the back window and hood. It took a long, slow time to get out into the street and finally pull away.

Once we could no longer see Night Train Records behind us, Sheba slapped the steering wheel with her hand. “That place was fabulous. I mean, there was nothing missing there. Nothing they didn’t have. And Gabriel knew everything about anyone who’s ever made a record. He knew everything about music.”

“Yeah, it was cool.” Jimmy rolled down his window and took a deep breath. “If we go back, I’m calling Gabriel ahead of time and we’re going in after hours.”

“Will he do that?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” Sheba said. “Jimmy and I usually only shop in closed stores.”

“I don’t think we need more.” Izzy slid the records out of one bag and spread them across our two laps. She picked up Hair and stared at the cover, at the man with a neon-red-and-yellow Afro that radiated like a burning sun. The green lettering above his head repeated the word hair hairhairhair hair—upside down and right side up and sideways. I imagined people singing that word in ten-part harmony. My head felt a little dizzy and full of static, in the happiest way.

Mrs. Cone seemed hurt that we had gone to the record store without her. For the rest of the afternoon, she acted like she was a stranger in the house. As Sheba, Izzy, and I played the new records on the turntable in the dining room, Mrs. Cone sat on a chair at the table, a glass of wine in her hand. She rarely sang along and didn’t seem to be enjoying herself.

I was worried about Mrs. Cone, but mostly I was excited to hear the new records. There were so many that we started off by playing only one song from most albums, and two from some. Sheba picked the songs. I thought each one was the best song I’d ever heard, until she played the next one and then I’d think that was the best song I’d ever heard. Izzy requested that we replay “Family Affair” by Sly and the Family Stone three times because she loved singing it and holding hands with me and Sheba. “We have to sing it because we’re family,” she explained. Once we finished trying all the albums, we went back to Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Sheba wanted to practice the harmonies in “A Case of You,” and she wanted me to memorize it so we could sing it together tonight.

I had the melody memorized after only hearing it once. The words took me a little longer, and I couldn’t figure out what they meant. Once I had them down, Izzy and I went off to the kitchen to make baked mac and cheese.

We were stirring the cheese sauce and singing Joni Mitchell when Izzy asked all the questions I’d had about the song.

“What is a case of you?”

“I’ve been wondering that too.”

“How do you drink someone?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s about love? About drinking up love?”

“How do you drink up love?”

“Hold the noodle pan still.” I poured the cheese sauce over the noodles while Izzy held the pan on either side. She didn’t really need to do that, the pan wasn’t about to move, but I liked to make her feel like she was involved in every step.

“Could you drink a case of me?”

“Yes! I love you so much, I could drink a case of you.” I handed Izzy the bowl of bread crumb mix we had prepared earlier. She sprinkled it over the mac and cheese slowly, as if the pacing were important. When the pan was covered, she dumped the remainder in the middle so there was a small hill of crumbs. I smoothed the hill out with my hand. Then Izzy put her hand over what I had smoothed and smoothed it again. My mother didn’t believe in touching the food you were preparing—all contact was made through a third party: knife, fork, spatula, spoon. Even when making a pie crust, my mother pressed it into the pan using two shallow spoons. But since I’d been cooking with Izzy, I’d found that to put your hands in the food, to touch, move, tear, bend, and sprinkle ingredients straight from your fingers, gave you a better sense of what you were doing, and made the doing more effective. It might have been my imagination, but I thought the food I prepared tasted better when my hands had been in it. My fingers knew things a spoon or spatula couldn’t.

After dinner, Jimmy got out his guitar while Izzy and I served vanilla ice cream on Nilla Wafers with three marascino cherries on top. He was picking through different tunes when Dr. Cone said, “I know that one.”

“Sing it, Richard!” Sheba said. Dr. Cone rarely sang with us. He usually patted his thighs or bongoed the table and nodded with the beat.

“No, I mean I can play it on the guitar.”

Jimmy smiled and shook his head. “Doc. Come on. We’ve been here all summer and you’re just now breaking the news that you play the guitar?”

Dr. Cone smiled. “I was in a band when Bonnie and I met.”

“No way!” Sheba laughed.

“I played the guitar. And did some backup singing.”

“But you barely sing now!” Sheba seemed doubtful that Dr. Cone could ever have been in a band. It hadn’t seemed odd when Mrs. Cone told me, but as I looked at Dr. Cone now, hunched over his empty ice cream bowl, I understood why Sheba was laughing.

Mrs. Cone pushed away her ice cream, as if she were done. “I play the flute.”

“Get the guitar, Richard!” Sheba took another bite of her ice cream and Mrs. Cone pulled her bowl back and took another bite too.

“And, Bonnie, get the flute.” Jimmy kept plucking.

Dr. Cone looked at Mrs. Cone and they smiled at each other for the first time I’d seen since we’d returned from the beach. He got up from the table and returned shortly with a guitar and a small white case, which he handed to Mrs. Cone. I’d never seen the guitar in the house, which meant it had to have been in Dr. and Mrs. Cone’s bedroom closet. That was the only space in the house I had never entered.

“Wait!” Izzy ran out of the room and returned with a tambourine. She placed it on my lap.

“No, you play this. You’re good at tambourine.”

I watched Mrs. Cone assemble her flute. She finally looked relaxed and even a bit happy. Dr. Cone tried to tune his guitar, and then Jimmy put his own guitar down, walked around the table, and took Dr. Cone’s guitar from him. In about a minute he had it tuned.

“Okay. Here we go. ‘Stairway to Heaven.’”Dr. Cone started plucking on the guitar, his head bent, eyes honed in on his fingers. Jimmy was plucking the same tune, but looking at Dr. Cone. Each time Dr. Cone messed up, Jimmy said the chord, and then Dr. Cone jumped back in. Mrs. Cone picked up her flute and played along. I was surprised by how smooth and pure it sounded. Izzy picked up the tambourine, slapped it once against her thigh, and then looked up at me.

“I don’t like this song. It sounds scary.”

“Okay. Let’s clear the table.”

“I think this song is calling the witch.”

“Hmm, I don’t think so. Witches don’t like music. Not even scary music.”

I stood and started picking up dishes. Sheba had laid a rolling paper on the dining room table and was filling it with marijuana, half singing “Stairway to Heaven.” Izzy and I put all the dishes in the kitchen and then returned to the dining room to say good night to everyone. Dr. and Mrs. Cone were so into playing their music, they could barely look up to kiss Izzy. Sheba was rolling a second joint. The first one was between Jimmy’s lips.

“Can we sing songs from Hair?”Izzy asked as we walked upstairs.

“Yes. Do you remember them?”

“Yes.” Izzy started softly singing: “Wearing smells from Labradors . . . patching my future on films in space . . . I believe that God believes in clothes that spin, that spin. . . .” The words were wrong, but I let her go. When she got to the Let the sun shine part, I sang along with her.

We sang all through the bath, the wrong words mostly, and then we got into bed. I fell asleep in the middle of reading a Richard Scarry book. When I woke up, Izzy was snuggled against me, her face smashed into my shoulder, sound asleep. I slipped out of bed and silently changed into the shorts and top my mother had bought me at the start of summer.

Sheba drove me home alone while Jimmy continued to play music with Dr. and Mrs. Cone. When we passed Beanie Jones’s house, Sheba lifted her middle finger, as she had every night since we’d returned from the beach.

After we’d pulled up in front of the Riley house next door, Sheba leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “See you in the morning, doll.”

I wanted to say I love you, but instead I said, “I’ll make you birds in a nest for breakfast.”

“Beautiful,” Sheba said. “I’ve been dying for birds in a nest.”

I got out of the car and waved as she drove away.