I closed my eyes and tried to think of something clever to say about Oedipus. Nothing came to mind. I checked the window again.

“Stop messing with those blinds,” Nana said. “Can’t you see the dust you’re raising?”

Dust motes caught the light as they billowed over the table. I ran my finger along one of the flat metal blades and then rubbed my fingers together. “How old are these blinds, anyway? Have they ever been dusted?”

My grandmother shook her head in disgust. “When was the last time you did any housework? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, letting me and your mama do it all.”

“I mow the grass.”

“Once a week.”

“All right,” I said. “How often do you clean the house?”

Nana turned to my mother. “You raised a terrible smart-mouth, Barbara.”

“Don’t I know it,” she said. Maurice continued to bark.

“Would you please put the dog out? I can’t concentrate with all that racket.”

“I just let him in. Here, Barbara—Poppy says turn the television down. She can’t concentrate on her school work.”

My mother sighed heavily and lowered the volume. I wished I’d asked Susan for an exact time. She’d just said Saturday evening when I’d talked to her, and at the time, that had seemed good enough. Now, I was anxious to get out of the house. Twice, I caught myself typing Opie instead of Oedipus.

I felt something shove against my legs and looked down to find Maurice trying to squeeze between me and the stack of Reader’s Digest condensed books that propped up the back corner of the table. The Olivetti wobbled precariously, dropping a letter. I advanced the roller and rubbed at it with my typing eraser, scratching a hole in the paper.

“This table has got to go,” I said, wadding up the page in disgust. “It’s only got three legs, and it’s too damn big for this room. It’s not as if the leg Maurice chewed off is going to grow back.”

“That table was expensive,” Nana said, rubbing the mangled arm of the wing chair, which had also been remodeled by Maurice. “I paid three hundred dollars for it.”

“It was expensive in 1972. Now it has three legs.” I closed the book on Oedipus Rex and unplugged the typewriter. “I can’t wait to go to college and get out of this mad house. It’s like living in the Haney Place.”

“The what?”

“The house on Green Acres where Oliver and Lisa live. You can’t plug the microwave in without unplugging the toaster. If you touch the stove hood while touching anything on the stove, you’ll knock yourself into next week.”

“This house wasn’t wired for that microwave. Your grandfather bought it so you could play with it, baking potatoes and blowing up hot dogs.”

“This is the twentieth century. You don’t have to heat the oven for an hour-and-a-half to bake a potato. You ought to try it. No heat, no foil, no mess.”

“Mess,” Nana said. “Talk about mess. You’ll miss us when you’re gone. You won’t have anyone to pick up after you all day long.”

“I don’t know how you’re planning to pay for it,” my mother cut in.

“Pay for what?”

“College. I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Financial aid will pay for it.”

“Will that cover everything?”

“I was planning to get a part-time job, and I’m going to work this summer.”

“As a soda jerk at the flea market, which is only open on Saturday. You need to find a regular job during the week.”

“I will.”

“Have you filled out any applications?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“The record store at North Hills Mall and Taco Bell, okay?”

My mother gave me her watch-that-snotty-voice look. “I guess we’ll have to work something out with the car, or I suppose you could take the bus.”

“I could use Nana’s car.”

Nana shook her head. “Oh, no, you couldn’t. Your driving scares me to death.”

“You wouldn’t be riding with me.”

My mother piped up with mock cheerfulness. “Maybe your dad will give you a new car for graduation. He might win one. Lucky Eddie.”

“Ha-ha.”

Maurice nuzzled my leg. He was a big, black standard poodle. I cut his hair short every six weeks with a pair of electric clippers. Not a poodle cut, just a simple kennel cut. I thought he looked stupid clipped like someone’s hedge, with bald patches here and there and big poufs over his hips and ankles. I kicked off one of my tennis shoes and rubbed his fur with my foot. It felt scratchy against my bare skin. Given my choice of dogs, I would have picked something other than a poodle, something less nervous and over-bred. Maurice was afraid of his own shadow. I stopped rubbing and slipped my shoe back on, prompting him to shove against me with his nose. I reached down and scratched between his ears.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Maurice jumped up, cracking his head on the bottom of the table. I got up to look for his leash, resigning myself to being dragged all over hell’s half-acre. It was then that I saw Susan’s car drive past the dining room window. My heart pounded rapidly against the walls of my chest.

“Where are you going?” my grandmother asked.

“Knock it off,” I said to Maurice, who was hopping up and down by the front door. “I’ll walk you later.” To my grandmother, I added, “I’m going next door. I just saw Susan drive by.”

She said nothing, though the look she gave me was eloquent enough. Susan was to blame for my wanting to go to UNC, and Nana didn’t approve. That look said that it was just a matter of time before I joined the ne’er-do-well hippies of Chapel Hill. I opened the front door.

“I won’t be long.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Just don’t forget about AA. Your grandfather wants us to go with him tonight.”

“He wants an audience,” my mother corrected.

“The meeting’s at seven-thirty. I’ll be back in plenty of time.” I paused to check my hair in the mirror next to the front door. It was still too short. I’d cut it two weeks before with Maurice’s dog clippers, hoping I’d look like Annie Lennox. Instead, I looked like an AWOL marine. I gave it a quick brush now with my fingers, making the hairs stand up like the bristles on a scrub brush.

“We need to leave at seven o’clock,” Nana reminded me, frowning at my hair. “Why don’t you put on a baseball cap and hide that monkey mess on your head?”

“Leave her hair alone,” said my mother. “It’ll grow.”

“Not in time for the meeting.”

My mother snorted with derision. “I don’t know why you think you’ll be going to a meeting. He left three hours ago. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that he’s not coming home tonight.”

My grandmother said nothing. Maurice, seeing that he wasn’t going for a walk, crawled back under the table and gazed at me reproachfully. I turned my back on all of them and slipped out the front door.

Before long, I was spending several afternoons a week at Susan’s house, and a good portion of every weekend. She made friends easily. I was in awe of her. She’d moved two months into her senior year of high school, and it didn’t seem to matter. It was as if everyone had known her for years. I’d met Abby by that time, but we weren’t yet friends. I was still eating lunch in the school cafeteria by myself.

I was devastated when Susan left for college. Her response to my grief was to encourage me to be more outgoing. I’d played sports in Michigan, and Susan pushed me to try out for the junior varsity teams in high school. I made volleyball and basketball, and, my sophomore year, softball.

“Join the French Club, too,” she said. “It’ll look good on your college applications.”

Susan came home for holidays and breaks, and while I looked forward to her visits, I grew less dependent on her as time went by. I developed my own group of friends, Abby, and Kim DiMarco, and a couple of guys who hung around the fringes. Abby’s mother, like mine, was single. She was a widow. The apartment they lived in was less than a mile away from my house. We also shared a coincidental connection in that Pearl Johnson, the woman who took care of Miss Agnes, was Abby’s aunt. Abby and Susan knew and liked one another. She looked forward to Susan being home almost as much as I did. We rode around in Susan’s car, went to the mall or the movies, and ate dinner at the Char-grill Drive-in.

My relationship with Susan gradually changed, and while I wouldn’t have described us as equals—as a college student, she seemed too far above me for that—by the time she was a sophomore and I was a high school senior, I no longer felt like her protégée. Susan was the first person to talk to me about going to college, first guiding and then pushing me through the application process. No one in my family had gone beyond high school, and the assumption had always been that I’d graduate and look for a job. They seemed puzzled when I told them I was applying.

There was a world of difference between the Savas and the

Bartholomews and Koslowskis. The first time I ever ate butter was at Susan’s house. It was spread all over a crusty baguette, and the difference between that sweet, salty flavor and the margarine at my house was a revelation to rival St. Paul’s on the road to Damascus. When I suggested that we start buying butter, too, my mother said that as long as she could get eight sticks of margarine for eightyeight cents, that’s what we’d be eating.

As I rang Susan’s doorbell, I took note of the two new hammered copper planters on the front porch. Dark green leaves were pushing up through the soil, probably tulips. Mike had been to the Netherlands to scout out new varieties. When he came back, he gave my grandmother a small wooden windmill with the word groetjes, greetings, carved on its base.

Susan answered on the third ring, wearing only a red terry cloth bathrobe.

“Groetjes,” I said.

She laughed. “Groetjes yourself. Come on in.”

Susan had fantastic legs, long and tan beneath the knee-length robe. I was looking at them as I followed her inside. Consequently, I tripped over the edge of the doorframe.

“Walk much?”

“You know how I am. I trip on air.”

“It’ll get you every time,” she agreed, reaching out to hug me. “It’s good to see you.”

It had taken me a long time to get used to Susan’s physical expressiveness—she hugged me, she kissed me, she ruffled my hair. With the exception of my grandfather, who was prone to beersoaked displays of affection, my family didn’t hug. I could count the number of times my mother had embraced me on one hand. I was both thrilled and terrified when Susan touched me, uncertain of how to respond.

“I just saw your car go by. Were you driving around in your bathrobe?”

“No,” she laughed. “I came home and stripped first thing. I was just getting ready to take a shower.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I could leave and come back later.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m glad you came.”

She kept her arms wrapped lightly around my waist as she pulled back to look up at me. “I like your haircut,” she said. “It’s kind of edgy. Suits you.”

“You don’t think it’s too short? My ears hang out.”

She shook her head. “No, I think it’s decisive. I didn’t like that long in the back, short in the front cut you got last time. It looked like you couldn’t make up your mind what you wanted. This is good. Where did you get it done?”

“Maurice’s house of beauty.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s in our bathroom. I cut it myself with the dog clippers.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I’ve been clipping Maurice’s hair for years, so I thought, why not? The clippers have these plastic attachments, so you can control just how short you cut it. I used the two-inch attachment. Next time, I’ll use the two-and-a-half.”

“No, don’t. I think two is just fine.” She let go of my waist and reached up to cup my chin. After looking into my eyes for a moment or two, she smiled. “You used to flinch when I did that. Now you stare right back at me.”

I shrugged. “You do this every time I see you, Susan. What do they call it? Operant conditioning.”

She laughed. “You’ve got the weirdest pockets of knowledge.”

“I spend a lot of time at the library.”

She continued to look from my left eye to my right, absently stroking my cheek with her index finger. Though she was two inches shorter than I was, she always managed to make me feel as if she were taller—even when, as now, I had shoes on and she didn’t.

“Look,” she said, “why don’t you wait for me in the bedroom? I’ll take a quick shower, and then you can chat with me while I get dressed.”

“Are you going out?”

“I am, but not for a while yet.”

I followed her through the living room and down the hallway. The Savas’ house seemed empty in comparison to my own. The ceilings were high and white, and the walls were painted a light buff color, emphasizing the sense of open space. Nothing was crowded or close. A fat leather sofa and matching chairs sat in a living room completely free of bric-a-brac. Everything in the house matched. The tables went with the chairs, the lamps went with the tables, and the painting over the sofa picked up the brown of the leather upholstery. The only place in the Savas’ house that could have been described as cluttered was the wall outside Susan’s bedroom, which was filled with photographs. There were some of her parents and grandparents, but most were of Susan, all in matching silver frames. The most recent was her high school senior portrait. She was sitting on a hay bale, smiling against the backdrop of a red barn door. It was the most ridiculous setting imaginable for her.

Susan wasn’t pretty by conventional standards. Her nose was too long and too large for her narrow face, and her mouth was too fulllipped and generous. Nevertheless, she was striking. Her hair was light brown, skillfully highlighted with blonde streaks, and she wore it clipped up over her ears, a riot of curls going in every direction on the top of her head. Her skin was smooth and tan, and long lashes ringed her eyes, which were large and expressive. She looked like an actress in a French movie, one with trains and smoke and people wearing raincoats.

I threw myself down on her bed and read a magazine while she took her shower. As promised, she didn’t take long. She settled herself in front of the dressing table and slipped a red plastic headband over her hair, pulling it back from her face, and I watched as she made up her eyes. The only makeup Susan wore was mascara and a tricky-looking combination of brown eye shadows. When she was done, the makeup seemed to disappear, and her eyes became bluer and more compelling. I found it just as interesting to watch the process in reverse. She looked younger then, more vulnerable, and I wanted to reach out and ruffle her hair or cup her chin like she did mine. I wondered what she’d do if I reversed our roles in that way.

When she looked at me in the mirror and smiled, I felt the familiar fluttering in the pit of my stomach, followed by a rush of fear and discomfort.

“What are you thinking?” Susan asked.

“I don’t know. Nothing. I’m glad you’re back.”

She stood up and slipped off the robe, and I watched her as she shifted hangers back and forth in the closet. When she turned around again, I found myself staring at her breasts, pale pink against the darker skin of her neck and shoulders. “How are things at home?”

“The same as always,” I said, looking down quickly. “We don’t see him much on the weekends anymore, so that’s something.”

“Where does he go?”

“Probably down at the shop, getting drunk.”

“No,” she shook her head. “He’s not drinking there. They’ve cracked down on all that now that Bloom’s sons have taken over. No more hanging around on weekends, using the shop as party central, that sort of thing.”

I looked up again. She’d put her bra on, and although the back was still unhooked, the cups were tucked under her breasts. My breathing had grown shallow, and I tried to distract myself by looking at the poster on her closet door. It was a blow-up of the album cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Stevie Nicks’leg was draped over Mick Fleetwood’s knee, and her arm was extended, waving a length of sheer fabric. He was looking down at her. Two round balls on long strings were attached to his belt and dangling between his legs in a way that was no doubt meant to be suggestive. I just found it puzzling. The contrast between the two of them, Fleetwood, tall and skinny, and Nicks, small and wispy, made it seem strangely sexless. They looked like they were performing a comic dance, something like the Ballet Trockadero.

Susan took the red headband off and began brushing her hair vigorously. “My dad’s thinking about quitting. He has an offer from the BMW and Saab dealership. Maybe he’ll take your grandfather with him. Dad says he’s probably the best mechanic in Raleigh.”

That “probably” rankled, but I ignored it. My grandfather didn’t like to work on foreign cars, and Susan’s father talked a lot about moving over to one of the European dealerships. His customer base was changing. He sold a lot of Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs at Bloom’s, but the people who’d bought American luxury cars in the seventies now wanted imports.

“Hunter will never leave Bloom’s,” I said. “He’s been there since World War II. Besides, he hates working on foreign cars.”

“He might not have a choice,” she said. Susan got up and stood at the edge of the bed with her back to me. “Would you help me fasten this bra?” I reached up carefully and fumbled with the hooks, my fingers brushing against her charged skin.

“There you go,” I said, pulling my hands away quickly. “What do you mean he may not have a choice?”

She shrugged into a black shirt, tucking the tails into her jeans. “I mean that he doesn’t have the same relationship with the sons that he had with their father. My dad has a hard time taking orders from them, and he’s a lot closer to their age than Hunter is. Besides, your grandfather’s got to be getting close to retirement.”

“He’s sixty-three,” I said, “but he’ll never retire. He’ll work till he dies. Or until someone kills him.”

“Who would kill him?”

“My mother. She wants to hit him in the head with a brick.”

“Oh? I thought you said he wasn’t around much.”

“He was home last night.”

“What happened?”