I nodded, taking a bite of dill pickle. “Yes. People had extra-marital affairs in 1923, just like they do now.”

Susan speared a piece of fried cod on the end of her fork and dipped it in tartar sauce. I’d finished everything but my pickle ten minutes before, but Susan was a more contemplative eater. I was contemplating my parsley when she finally pushed her plate away.

“Let’s walk,” she said. “I’ll show you the sights of Franklin Street.”

The sights were an ice cream parlor, a movie theater, and several shops of one kind or another. I loved it anyway. The trees on the UNC campus were old and mysterious; their roots shoved up huge mounds of dirt and grass. Susan and I found a secluded gnarl on an enormous oak and sat down with our backs against it. The sun had set, but there was still light in the sky. I reached through the evening shadows to take her hand, lacing my fingers with hers.

“My mother is having an affair,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I know the signs. She’s furtive. She calls me up and wants to do mother-daughter things. She wants to drive over and take me out to lunch. She’ll disappear soon. My father will wait forty-eight hours, and then he’ll call the police. They’ll find her and bring her home.”

“I didn’t know . . .”

“I’ve never talked about it,” she said. “Not with anyone; not my mother, not Dad. Just you.”

“I’m sorry.” I put my arm around her and she rested her head on my shoulder.

“My mother has affairs,” she said. “Always with someone awful, some low-life she picked up in a bar. Young, old, it doesn’t matter. She goes off with them, and then my dad brings her back.”

I waited. Whatever I said, I didn’t want to sound shocked. The problem was that I was shocked.

“Why?” I asked at last. “Why does your father bring her back?”

“He loves her,” she said. “He says she’s mentally ill.”

“Your father’s a good man.”

“My father’s a fool. Sometimes, I think he’s the one who’s mentally ill. How long is he going to let her go on wrecking his life? She’s not going to wreck mine,” she said firmly. “I’m done. When she’s clean and sober, I’ll see her, but no more helping my dad pretend like everything is fine and normal when it’s not.”

“My grandfather had an affair once,” I said. “When I was a baby. He left my grandmother and married some woman who was younger than my mother. My mother said having a grandchild made him feel old.”

Susan lifted her head. “Like it was your fault?”

“Not like that. She was just trying to explain.”

“It sounds more like an excuse.”

We sat in silence. Then we went back to her apartment and climbed silently into bed. Sometime in the night, she turned to me, and without a word, she undressed us both. The next morning, the sun rose red in a nest of mare’s tales spun along the horizon of a pale blue sky.

April 30 bore down upon me with a dreadful inevitability. On the 29th, I told my mother and Nana about dinner at the French restaurant in Chapel Hill.

“Instead of the prom,” I explained.

“Are you going to eat snails?” Nana asked.

“Maybe.”

“Your grandfather ate them in France during World War II, didn’t you, Hunter?”

He nodded. “You won’t catch me eating them again. They’d gag a dog off a gut wagon.”

“You’re going to need a dress,” my mother said, frowning.

“What for?”

“Are you planning to wear jeans and a T-shirt to a French restaurant?”

“No, khakis.”

Nana gasped. “You are not wearing pants! Barbara, put that magazine down. We’re taking this child to Belk’s.”

“She’s got the funeral dress,” my mother said.

“That dress is four years old and she is two inches taller. It will not do.”

“I don’t need a dress. No one expects me to wear a dress.”

“Poppy,” my mother explained, “you’ve never been to this kind of restaurant. I know the place you’re talking about. You have to have reservations.”

Half an hour later, I found myself standing in Crabtree Valley Mall, forced once again to choose between the devil and a deep blue dress.

“I’m not wearing that.”

“Then how about this?” Nana held up a floral print dress with capped sleeves.

My mother laughed. “She can’t wear that. That looks like Aunt Lucy’s bedroom curtains.”

“It’ll have to be the blue, then.” Nana sighed. “I’ll loan you my diamond necklace and teardrop earrings, that’ll dress it up. What do you want to do about shoes?”

“I want to outlaw them.”

“Little Miss Smarty had a party, and nobody came but Little Miss Smarty. The shoes are on the first floor, aren’t they, Barbara?”

I ended up in a pair of dark blue pumps with a one-inch heel. I rejected the two-inch heels with the open toes, and Nana rejected the sandals with the ankle straps.

“I don’t know what Belk’s is coming to,” Nana said. “What kind of salesgirl brings out white before Memorial Day? And you in a size ten, you couldn’t wear white if it was the Fourth of July.”

I finished tying my torn and duct-taped tennis shoes. “Do we have time for a visit to the foot binder? I’m sure if I chopped off a few toes I could squeeze into a seven.”

My mother gave me a thorough appraising look. “A visit to the beauty parlor might not be amiss. Let’s see if one of the salons has a walk-in available.”

A girl with two-inch long red fingernails did the best she could with my three-inch long hair, giving me a spiky Sheena Easton kind of look. Nana and my mother loved it, so much so that they bought me a bottle of salon shampoo and a can of mousse. My reward for not killing myself or anyone else was dinner in the Belk’s cafeteria.

“Just this once,” my mother said, “you can break your curfew. Chapel Hill is a long drive, and a good French dinner can take hours to eat. Let yourself in with your key, and we won’t wait up for you.”

“You might not have a choice if Hunter is home.” A new and horrible thought occurred to me. “My god, he might meet Dave at the front door!”

Nana paused with a spoonful of banana pudding halfway to her mouth.

“That’s true,” my mother said thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll put a light under the curtain in the dining room window. If it’s switched on, don’t let Dave walk you to the door. Just say goodnight when he pulls into the driveway.”

My grandmother giggled. “She can’t do that. She has to give him a goodnight kiss.”