Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

On Saturday, I helped my mother in the garden. She talked about the neighbors: who she’d seen, who was away at the Eastern Shore or Rehoboth Beach, and who had played in her tennis foursome. This reporting was interrupted periodically by instructions on how to properly deadhead flowers and pull weeds. I listened to all of it, the stories and the directives, but my mind was on the Cones, Jimmy, and Sheba. I felt like the outline of a fourteen-year-old girl pulling weeds and nodding at her mother.

At four o’clock my mother and I changed into dresses. We were due at the Elkridge Club at four thirty. She was meeting friends on the porch for tea and lemonade before our six o’clock dinner reservation with my dad, who had been at the club all day playing golf.

As we were about to walk out the door, my mother looked me up and down. “Mary Jane, is there something you can do with your hair?”

I pushed my hair behind my ears. “Should I put on a headband?”

“Headband, ponytail, braids. Just don’t walk around as if you’re a child with no mother looking after you.”

I ran upstairs, went into my bathroom, and opened the drawer that held my brush, comb, and hair bands. I put on a blue floral headband that matched my light blue dress, and examined myself in the mirror. With my hair pushed back like that, my forehead looked broader, and my dark eyebrows stood out. Just then, I could see that maybe someone might notice me someday: my smooth skin, my wide mouth, my orangey eyes.

“Mary Jane!” my mother called from downstairs. “Do not dillydally!”

My mother and I were silent in the car on the way to Elkridge. Just as we pulled into the lot, she asked, “Have you figured out which club the Cones belong to?”

“Well, Mrs. Cone isn’t Jewish. And Dr. Cone is Jewish, but he’s really a—” I stopped myself before I said Buddhist. My mother might think a Buddhist was worse than a Jew.

“Really a what?”

“Well, he prays but he doesn’t seem so Jewish. And she’s Presbyterian, like us.”

“How do you like that! I wonder how their families deal with that.”

“I’m not sure. Their parents both live in other towns. No one’s around to help.”

“Maybe they don’t want to because it’s a mixed marriage.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I didn’t want to betray Mrs. Cone’s trust and tell my mother that Mrs. Cone’s parents didn’t talk to her specifically because Dr. Cone was Jewish.

“So what is Izzy? Presbyterian or Jewish?”

“I guess she’s both.”

“Does Mrs. Cone take her to church?”

“Mrs. Cone is sick, remember?” The lies came out so smoothly now, I barely thought about them.

“Before. Did she take her to church before?”

“I don’t know, Mom. Right now no one is going to church.”

“Hmm. You’d think with her sick, now would be the time to go to church.”

“I guess.”

“We’ll pray for her tomorrow.”

Lately all my prayers had been for Jimmy to get better and for me to not be a sex addict. “Okay. That would be nice. I’ll tell her on Monday.”

While my mother and her friends drank iced tea and lemonade on the porch, I stared out at the vast green lawn and watched the men play golf. I’d been coming to the club my entire life and had never seen it the way I did that day. What in the past had seemed normal suddenly felt abnormally hushed, quiet, and contained. It was like we were in a play that went on forever and ever without any dramatic tension. The waiters and waitresses, bartenders and busboys at Elkridge were Black men and women. I’d seen and known many of them since I’d first started walking. But it wasn’t until this day with my mother that I could see myself, my mother, and her friends the way the employees might. What did they think of all these quiet white people? What did they think of the pastel-colored dresses and pants and the hairdos that were frozen in place with Aqua Net and hair bands? What did they think about working in a place that wouldn’t accept them as members?

We’d learned about the civil rights movement in school. It made me feel hopeful, like change was happening all around us. But sitting at Elkridge that day, I felt stuck in a time-warp atrium of segregated politeness.

At dinner that night, my mother told my father about the Cones’ mixed marriage.

“Hm.” My dad sawed off a thumb-size bite of steak. “How can he play golf?”

“How can he play golf?” I repeated. I didn’t understand what golf had to do with it.

“The Jew clubs won’t take him because of his wife. And the normal clubs won’t take him because he’s a Jew.”

When I didn’t answer quickly enough, my mother said, “Your father is speaking to you, Mary Jane.”

“I don’t think Dr. Cone plays golf,” I said. In all my organizing and searching of the Cone house, I’d never seen golf clubs. Even though this was a deflection, it wasn’t a lie.

My dad shrugged. Chewed. Stared down his steak. I forced in another bite of lasagna.

“We’re going to pray for Mrs. Cone on Sunday.” My mother trimmed off a rim of fat from her steak. It looked like a thick white worm.

“Why are all the people who work here Black?” I asked, not looking up from my lasagna.

My mother’s face shot toward me with the speed of a bullet. “What kind of a question is that?”

“Good employees.” My dad put another thumb of steak in his mouth.

“I just mean, well, don’t you think it’s strange that Black people work here but aren’t allowed to join? Why don’t white people work here?”

My mother put down her fork and knife and laid both her palms on the table. “Is this appropriate dinner table talk?”

My dad sawed away at a bloody center bite. “Ted is white.”

“He’s your caddie.”

“Yes, he is.” Dad spoke while chewing.

My mother picked up her fork and knife and went after another worm of fat. “I don’t think this is appropriate dinner table talk.”

“Why don’t you have a caddie who’s Black? Why is the bartender Black but not your caddie?”

My mother put down her fork and knife again. “Mary Jane! What has gotten into you?”

My father stabbed his fork and knife into the meat. He looked directly at me. It was so unusual that I could only look back for a couple of seconds before I turned my head toward my lap. Finally Dad said, “The bartender, Billy, makes the best Manhattan this side of the Mississippi. That’s why he’s the bartender. And Ted is a damn good caddie. If you can find me a Black man who can caddie like Ted, I’ll take him. And if you can find me a white man who can mix a drink like Billy, I’ll take him.” It was the most I’d heard my dad say in a long time, maybe ever. Perhaps it was because we’d never discussed golf or drinks before.

“If Billy wanted to join the club, would you let him?” I looked up from my lap.

“Not up to me.” My father started sawing again. “But the club rules say that no, he can’t join.”

“I don’t approve of this conversation.” My mother had lowered her voice and slitted her eyes. I could tell she was worried someone might overhear us.

“But I will tell you this, Mary Jane”—Dad put another bite in his mouth—“if we had to let another race into the club, I’d rather have a Black than a Jew.”

“Can we please change the topic?” my mother asked.

My father pushed his chair back and sat straighter. “Most Black men know their place. They don’t assume anything. They’re a pleasure to be with. The Jews, now. The Jews think they’re smarter than everyone else. And that makes them unpleasant, untrustworthy, and unreliable.”

I looked back and forth between my mother and father. If you had asked me at the beginning of the summer if I knew my parents well, I would have said yes. But these two people sitting here were utterly foreign to me. In school we’d learned about anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, racism, and the civil rights movement. What we’d never learned was that sometimes ideas of racism and anti-Semitism were sparked to life by the very people you lived with.

“I don’t think it’s right that Black men should have a place to know when they’re around you,” I said. “And Dr. Cone is none of those words you used to describe Jewish people.” My lips quaked. This was the first time I’d ever voiced a disagreement with my father.

Dad turned his head toward me. “You don’t know him, Mary Jane. You work for him.” He went back to his steak.

What my father said about my knowing Dr. Cone stuck in my mind. I did think I knew him. Was I wrong? Was I just an employee to the Cones, and was their affection for me something like my father’s affection for Billy the bartender? Did they only like me when I knew my place?

“Are you done?” my mother asked. She meant was I done talking. And, really, she wasn’t asking.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m done.”

The kids were restless at Sunday school, so my mother started playing “Rise and Shine”on the guitar. I wondered if the Cones would mind if I taught the song to Izzy. Mrs. Cone seemed disapproving of the church and Dr. Cone was a Buddhist Jew. But Izzy would love the rhymes and naming all the animals on Noah’s ark. And Jesus never even got a mention, so maybe they’d think it was okay.

After Sunday school my mother walked home to drop off her guitar and I hurried to choir practice. Mr. Forge, the choir director, rapidly clapped his hands together as I approached. “Hurrah!” he said. “Our greatest voice is here!” He was an enthusiastic man who smiled often and bounced on his toes when he conducted. When I saw Liberace on television, I thought of Mr. Forge. They had a similar exuberance. A like-minded festiveness.

When it was time for the service, I put on my red robe, waited for the other choir members to sit, and then took the empty front-row choir chair beside the pulpit. I watched my mother chat with other mothers as she made her way down the aisle to the second pew from the front. My father slowly stepped behind my mom. His tie knot bulged at his neck.

Usually I listened carefully at church, but that day I drifted in and out. When it was time for the first song, “Dona Nobis Pacem,”Mr. Forge put his pitch pipe to his mouth and played G, the first note. He pointed in order to me, Mrs. Lubowski, and Mrs. Randall. He meant that we three were to sing the opening lines. The song was a canon, a round, and with each additional verse, more voices would be added in until the entire choir was singing.

Mrs. Randall put her hand on her throat and shook her head.She’d been complaining of a cold when we’d first sat down. Mr. Forge nodded at her, and then looked at me and waved his hands upward. I stood, as did Mrs. Lubowski. When directed, I shut my eyes and sang: “Dona nobis pacempacem, dona nobis pa-a-a-a-cem. . . .” I thought of Jimmy as I sang, and the peace he would feel if his addiction faded away, left his body.

Just as the song was picking up, I looked out at the congregation. My father was staring off into space, as usual. My mother was staring up at me, her head tilted, her mouth closed with a thin-lipped smile.

I looked past my parents, down the aisles, and then my heart flipped around and I almost spit out a burst of laughter. Seated in the back row, in matching black pixie-cut wigs, were Sheba and Jimmy. They had huge smiles painted across their faces and were moving their heads to the music. I could see that Sheba was singing along. She looked far more pleased with me than my mother did. And Jimmy looked totally relaxed and joyful. Like this was a space where he didn’t think about doing drugs or breaking dishes or throwing books.

When the song was over, I smiled at them. Sheba lifted her hands and gave me a silent applause. Jimmy lifted one fist and mouthed, Right on!

Sheba and Jimmy snuck out before the service ended. As I walked home with my parents, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way they had looked at me while I sang: as if I mattered, as if I were seen. My father wasn’t talking, as usual, but I didn’t feel the weight of his silence. My mother was talking, as usual, but I could barely hear her palaver.

Mom was making a pork roast for dinner that night. I paid close attention so I could make it for the Cones on Monday. I wondered if they had a meat thermometer; I couldn’t recall seeing one during my many organizing and cleaning sprees.

After I set the table, I stood alone in the dining room and looked at President Ford on the wall. The words sex addict knocked around my head, like my brain wanted to put the worst thing I could think of in front of the face of our president.

“Mary Jane!” my mother called.

I went to the kitchen and put on the yellow quilted oven mitts I’d gotten for Christmas last year. Together, my mother and I placed all the food on the table: pork roast, mashed potatoes, buttered peas and carrots, Bisquick rolls and butter.

My mother sat and put her napkin in her lap. I sat and put my napkin in my lap. We both looked in the direction of the living room, where my father was in his chair, reading the Sunday paper.

“I don’t know why they sing songs from that Jesus Christ Superstar.” My mother was referring to the third song we’d sung, “Hosanna.”She didn’t like Jesus Christ Superstar, though she’d never seen it. I hadn’t seen it either, but we had the record from the Show Tunes of the Month Club. When I played it, I had to turn the volume real low.

“I think if you heard the whole record, you’d like it.”

“Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar. What are people thinking? They don’t show respect for the church.”

I remembered Sheba’s and Jimmy’s faces one night when we sat in the car and sang Godspellsongs. They both knew all the words to every song. Jimmy was so into it, he lifted his foot and stubbed out the joint into the tread of his sandal. And I could tell by the way Sheba shut her eyes at certain lines that she respected the church.

My father entered the room. He folded his newspaper in half, set it on the table beside his plate, and sat. As always, he surveyed the food before putting his hands in the prayer position. My mother and I put our hands in the prayer position too. I shut my eyes.

My father said, “Thank you, Jesus, for this food on our table and for my wonderful wife and obedient child. God bless this family, God bless our relatives in Idaho, God bless President Ford and his family, and God bless the United States of America.”

“And God bless everyone in the Cone household and may all their illnesses be”—I paused as I tried to come up with the best word—“eradicated.”

My father glanced at me for just a second. And then, as if my voice weren’t strong enough to reach God’s ears, he abridged my prayer with, “Health to the Cones. Amen.”

“Amen,” my mother and I both said.

My mother stood and served my father while he removed his tie. “Is someone else in the house sick? I don’t want you going over there if everyone is sick.”

“I just want to make sure we cover everyone under that roof.”

“If you make the pork roast tomorrow, be sure it’s cooked all the way through. Her body likely can’t handle undercooked meat.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll come up and check the roast before you serve it.”

“They have a meat thermometer. She really doesn’t like visitors.”

“Peanut farmer,” my father mumbled to the paper.

“Is she losing her hair?” my mother asked.

“She has been wearing wigs.”

“Are they tasteful?”

“Yes.”

“I would wear a wig that looked just like my hair so that no one would know it was a wig.” My mother’s blond hair was shoulder-length, thick, and stiff. It was like a cap. Or, really, like a wig.

“She’s been wearing a long blond wig mostly.”

My mother shook her head in disapproval.

On Monday I ran to the Cones’, my flip-flops making a slapping sound. When I got to their house, I stood on the porch a minute and caught my breath. I didn’t want anyone to know I’d run all the way; it was embarrassing to think of how badly I wanted to be there.

When I finally opened the front door, I found Izzy and Jimmy sitting at the banquette in the kitchen. Jimmy had a guitar in his hands and was making up a song about Izzy. Izzy was bouncing her head around like she was at a concert.

“Izzy! Izzy!” Jimmy sang. “She makes me dizzyyyyyy with LOVE!”

“MARY JANE!” Izzy jumped off the banquette and climbed up into my arms. “Jimmy’s singing a song about me!”

“I heard.” I kissed Izzy’s curls. Her head smelled loamy and dank. Her last bath must have been Friday, before we went out to dinner.

“Now sing about Mary Jane!” Izzy monkeyed out of my arms and returned to the banquette. I went to the refrigerator and took out the eggs. Jimmy plucked out a tune on his guitar. He was humming.

“Oh!” I turned to Jimmy. “Thank you for coming to church.”

“I hate church.” Jimmy kept plucking. “But Sheba loves it. And I have to admit, it was worth it just to hear you sing. You were motherfuckin’ beautiful, Mary Jane. I could pick out your voice above the others. Totally gorgeous.”

I swallowed hard and blushed, then mumbled a thank-you and turned to the cupboards to busy myself. When I opened the upper cupboards, I found new dishes—white with a painted blue pattern of onions and leaves—and new glasses. The lower cupboards where I had put mixing bowls and roasting pans were still pretty empty, though a set of metal mixing bowls and some metal roasting pans had survived the purge.

Jimmy started singing. “Mary Jane, she ain’t so plain, my dear sweet Mary Jane.”

My heart banged. When I felt steadier, I turned to look at Jimmy. He smiled and did some picking, his fingers moving fast on the strings. Then he continued, “That down-home girl, Mary Jane, makin’ eggs, on her two strong legs.”

“BIRDS IN A NESSSST!” Izzy sang, and I laughed.

“MARY JANE!” Jimmy belted it out like he was singing to a stadium. “She feeeeds us, but she ain’t never, ever, ever, ever, ever tried to bleeeeeeed us.”

I cracked an egg into a metal bowl to start the pancake batter. Izzy clapped her hands and bounced around. She fed Jimmy lines for his song that he enthusiastically sang back to her as if she were Stephen Sondheim.

When Dr. Cone came down, I got up to make him a bird in the nest. “I like the new dishes,” I said.

“Ah. Yes.” Dr. Cone smiled. “Sheba and Bonnie picked them out. Mary Jane, has anyone told you about the beach house?”

“We’re going to the beach for a whole week. That’s seven days!” Izzy shouted.

“Oh yeah?” My body felt like it was an old, deflating party balloon. I had just spent a tortured weekend at home. What would I do for a week without the Cones and Jimmy and Sheba? How could I take seven full days with my mother?

“Yeah, we’re borrowing the Flemings’ house on Indian Dunes in Dewey Beach. It’s a big place, lots of bedrooms and bathrooms. Right on the ocean.”

“That so nice,” I pushed out the words.

“It’s a private stretch of beach too. And, you know, I don’t believe in the privatization of certain areas—everyone should enjoy the sand, the water, the dunes—and it’s better for us as people if we don’t attach to things.” Dr. Cone put down his fork, as if to rest for a minute. “But Jimmy and Sheba do need privacy, so I’ll accept the private beach in honor of them.”

“Jimmy can’t addict on a private beach. Right?” Izzy looked up at her dad.

Dr. Cone smiled at her, then leaned over and kissed her several times on her cheeks and forehead. “Right. And we can meditate there. Take long walks. Really incorporate some mind-and-body unity into the therapy.”

“That sounds perfect.” I blinked back my grief and started another bird in a nest.

As if on cue, Mrs. Cone came into the kitchen, wearing cutoff shorts and a tank top. “Mary Jane! Did you see the new dishes?”

“They’re lovely.” I could barely muster a smile. I put the bird in a nest on a new plate and slid it onto the table for Mrs. Cone, then started another batch.

“Oh, everyone’s favorite! Birds in a nest.” Mrs. Cone sat and started eating.

“Jimmy wrote a song called ‘Mary Jane.’” Izzy climbed over her father’s lap and nestled between her parents. Mrs. Cone kissed her all over her face, just as Dr. Cone had done.

Jimmy was singing softly, strumming out chords, picking out little rifts. Mrs. Cone stopped kissing Izzy and watched him closely. She looked like she wanted to kiss him the way she’d just kissed Izzy.

“Jimmy, do you want another one?” I asked.

“MARY JANE!” Jimmy sang. “’Cause one bird in a nest will never, ever, ever, ever do, Mary Jane makes a second one tooooooo. . . .”

I picked up Jimmy’s plate and refilled it. Sheba came into the kitchen wearing a red terry-cloth romper, white knee socks, and red tennis shoes. In her hair was a thick red elastic hairband. She looked like she’d popped out of a magazine. Or off a record cover. “Mary Jane, how was your weekend?” Without waiting for me to reply, she added, “Did you hear about the beach?”

“Yeah. You all will have so much fun.” I put the last bird in a nest on a plate for Sheba.

“Well, you’ll come, won’t you?” Sheba asked. Everyone looked at me.

“Oh,” I said. My shriveled-up heart started to inflate. “I didn’t know I was invited.”

“Of course you’re invited,” Dr. Cone said. “You’re part of the family now.”

I felt my eyes tear up, and quickly turned to the stove so no one could see. “Oh okay, yes, I’d love to come.” My mother’s face flashed in my mind and I felt slightly ill. Almost dizzy. What if she wouldn’t let me go?

“Mary Jane, I don’t want to go anywhere without you!” Izzy climbed off the banquette and hugged the backs of my legs. Her grip steadied me. My mother vanished from my thoughts.

Later that day, when Izzy and I were home from Eddie’s, I braced myself to call my mother and ask about the beach.

“I’d like to speak with Dr. Cone about this.” My mother’s voice was sharp. I could tell she wanted to say no but couldn’t come up with a logical reason.

“He’s working. Can I pass on a question?”

“I’m concerned about his wife being sick and your having full responsibility for a child near water.”

“We’ve gone to the Roland Park Pool many times.”

“There are lifeguards there.”

“There are lifeguards at beaches, too.”

“Mary Jane. Do not get fresh with me. You are asking to go away for a week with a family your father and I don’t know. I’d like to speak to Dr. Cone to make sure this is a safe and wise decision.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll come up just before dinner.”

I looked around the kitchen. If my mother walked in, she wouldn’t approve of the Cones’ taste—antiques, Buddhas, framed etchings with naked people in them. Also, if she saw Sheba and Jimmy, I’d be imprisoned at home. And of course, Mrs. Cone was supposed to be ill. For just a minute I imagined her meeting my mother at the door, her nipples pushing out through her tank top. “Mrs. Cone doesn’t like visitors.”

“Then call me before dinner tonight and put Dr. Cone on the phone.”

“Okay, I will.”

“And, Mary Jane, if you’re working around the clock like that, you need to be paid more.”

“Okay, I’ll ask if they’re going to pay me more.” I would not.

“Do they have a proper meat thermometer for your pork roast?”

“Yes.” I’d bought one at Eddie’s.

“Are you doing the berries and whipped cream for dessert?”

“Izzy’s never had s’mores, so I bought the ingredients for them.”

“That’s not a proper dessert for adults.”

“I can make the berries and whipped cream, too.”

“What kind of butter do they keep in the house?”

“Land O’Lakes.” This I had also purchased at Eddie’s.

“Salted or unsalted?”

“Salted.”

“Don’t put too much on the peas and corn. Just enough to lightly coat them.”

“Okay.”

There was silence for a moment. I felt something coming across the phone line. Loneliness, maybe. Could it be that my mother missed me?

“I’ll talk to you tonight when you make the call for Dr. Cone.”

“Okay, Mom.” I wanted to say love you, as Izzy and I now said every night when I put her to sleep. But my parents didn’t say those words. Instead I just hung up.

The rest of the afternoon as Izzy and I prepared dinner and folded and ironed two loads of laundry, I worried about my mother’s conversation with Dr. Cone. How could I make sure Mrs. Cone’s make-believe cancer didn’t come up? If I told Dr. Cone about the lie, would he still want me to watch his child and go to the beach with them? Could he abide a liar in his house? If I were a mother, would I let a liar (and maybe a sex addict) take care of my child?

As the roast was cooking, and Izzy and I were setting the table, Dr. Cone and Jimmy entered the house. Jimmy went straight to his guitar in the kitchen. Dr. Cone came into the dining room and said, “Smells wonderful.”

I smiled and my face burned. My heart was beating so hard, I thought I might collapse right there. “Dr. Cone?” I managed.

Dr. Cone squinted at me. “Mary Jane, you okay?”

“May I speak with you privately?”

“Mary Jane, are you okay?” Izzy hugged my legs and looked up at me.

“Yes. I just need to talk to your dad a minute.”

“Izzy, go help Jimmy.”

Izzy squeezed my legs and then ran off to Jimmy. Dr. Cone pulled out a chair and put his arm out, indicating I should sit. I did. He sat next to me. “Just breathe. In and out. Slowly.”

I took an inhale and then exhaled slowly. It did make me feel better. “My mother wants to talk to you before she agrees that I can go to the beach.”

“Okay. That’s okay.”

“But I told her something I shouldn’t have.” I took another deep breath and when I exhaled, I started crying. It surprised me as much as it seemed to surprise Dr. Cone.

Dr. Cone pulled the napkin from the place setting in front of him and handed it to me. “Did you tell her about Jimmy and Sheba?”

I shook my head. “Worse.”

“Worse? It’s okay, Mary Jane. You can tell me.”

“I told her . . .” I startled myself by crying too hard to speak. Harder than I’d ever cried in front of my parents, who didn’t allow crying. I couldn’t help but think how different I was these days. I was growing into someone new, new even to me.

“Breathe in, breathe out.”

I took a breath in. “I told her . . .” My voice hitched and I breathed out, firmly. “I told her Mrs. Cone has cancer.”

“Why?” Dr. Cone tilted his head and looked at me. His brow was furrowed. His bushy eyebrows almost met his sideburns.

“That was the only way she’d let me cook dinner.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“She thinks a mother should always cook dinner. And so the only way to explain why Mrs. Cone wasn’t cooking dinner was to say that she was sick. And I actually never said she had cancer. I just said she was sick. And then my mother thought she had cancer and I never told her she didn’t.” I squeezed my eyes shut hard. When I opened them, Dr. Cone was staring at me.

“So your mother wouldn’t let you stay and prepare dinner unless Bonnie was incapacitated?”

“Yes.”

“So when I talk to her about the week at the beach she might mention Bonnie’s cancer?”

“She probably won’t,” I said. “Because she thinks cancer is very private. But I don’t know. If you said something about Mrs. Cone swimming in the ocean, she might . . .” I swallowed hard and squeezed back tears. “I’m sorry I lied. I bet you didn’t think you had a liar as a summer nanny.”

Dr. Cone laughed. “No, I understand why you lied.” He reached out and rubbed my shoulder. “It’s okay. This isn’t a crime. You were trying to manage two different households with two different value systems. And, yes, it’s not good to lie. But I can see that was the only way you could find to make the situation work. I appreciate it, Mary Jane. I think you can let yourself off the hook here.”

Mrs. Cone and Sheba came into the dining room. They were in the matching black pixie wigs.

“What happened?” Sheba pushed a chair next to me, sat, and then pulled me against her chest. I started crying again.

“Richard, what is it?” Mrs. Cone hovered over us. Dr. Cone stood and then Mrs. Cone took his seat and leaned in close so she, too, was hugging me.

“Richard! Why is she crying?” Sheba said.

“Her mother wouldn’t let her cook dinner for us unless Bonnie was incapacitated. So Mary Jane told her mother that Bonnie has cancer and that’s why she has to stay and make dinner each night.”

“I’m so sorry I lied!” I cried, and Sheba hugged me deeper. Mrs. Cone was at my back, hugging me too. I’d never been so close to two human bodies before, and I was surprised that it didn’t feel closed in and claustrophobic. It felt nice. And warm. And safe.

“Oh, honey! You don’t have to feel bad! I would have had to tell my own mother the same thing,” Mrs. Cone said.

“Mary Jane, no one cares that you lied about that!” Sheba said, and kissed my head the way everyone kissed Izzy.

Mrs. Cone started laughing. “Cancer! Because only something as horrible and deadly as cancer would relieve a woman from the tedium of having to make dinner for her family every night!”

Everyone gathered in the kitchen near the phone as I dialed the number for my house. Sheba put her finger to her lips and made big eyes at everyone after I’d dialed the last number.

My mother answered the phone on the second ring. “Dillard residence.”

“Mom, Dr. Cone can talk to you now.”

“Thank you, Mary Jane. Put him on.” I could see her so clearly. Standing in the kitchen near the beige wall phone. Holding a pen and a pad of paper so she could write down any important details, like the address of the home where we’d be staying.

“Mrs. Dillard, what a pleasure to finally speak to you!” Dr. Cone sounded more formal, more upbeat than he did in the house. Jimmy put an arm around me and pulled me into him. I could feel the fuzz of his chest hairs through his shirt and wondered if that was a sex addict thought or just a thought.

Mrs. Cone picked up Izzy. Izzy put her finger to her lips like Sheba. Sheba smiled and put one arm around Jimmy.

“Mary Jane has been a lifesaver this summer. I don’t know what we would have done without her.” Dr. Cone nodded as my mother spoke on the other end. “I’m not the least bit worried about her ability to mind Izzy at the beach. Also, Izzy loves cooking with her, so a large portion of their afternoon is spent in the kitchen.” Dr. Cone looked over and winked at the group. “Yes. Yes. Of course . . . we’ll be leaving first thing tomorrow morning and we’ll return the following Tuesday morning. I could have her call each evening if you’d like. We’ll pay the phone charges. . . . Yes, yes, I understand. Thank you and please give my regards to Mr. Dillard.”

When Dr. Cone hung up the phone, we all looked at him.

“She asked that I give you a ride to church on Sunday and sends her best wishes to Bonnie.”

“So I can go?”

“Yes, you can go.”

“HURRAH!” Izzy shouted, and everyone cheered and hooted as if something truly spectacular had just gone down.