Page 17 - WTP Vol. VIII#2

and Sleeping Beauty too.
“Science does so much good,” she said hotly, defend- ing what she thought. “It’s how we’re going to save people—make the world better than it’s ever been.”
Anya was furious at her, at all of them. In passionate, indignant tears, she pushed away the chair she’d been perched on and ran out of the room. And Sa- mantha the cat, unhappy at the sudden upset, put out her claws and scratched Jodi’s thigh severely as she jumped down from her lap.
To make things worse, Luisa Frey came in from the kitchen just then, where she’d been conjuring aromas of braised lamb and cinnamon and ginger—calling Jodi to the phone.
“It’s your mother, wanting you.”
Jodi made a face as she took the receiver, and another as she listened to the fretful voice.
“I want you home now, right this minute. You know we’re going to the Deans’ tonight, to watch the moon walk. And I’ll have supper ready soon.”
“Can’t I stay here for dinner? Mrs. Frey asked me.”
“No, absolutely not. I’ve made meatloaf. You’ve surely overstayed your welcome already—you should apologize to Mrs. Frey, and come on home.”
And then, as if to serve her right for having been at odds with her best friend, and mad at Quinn for hav- ing Bruce over and being horrid and ignoring her, her punishment was swift, dire, and irrevocable.
“By the way, Jodi,” Luisa Frey started gently, hesitant- ly. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. You know we’ll miss you terribly . . .”
Her blood ran cold, with all the possibilities. And yet she hadn’t figured out the worst.
“I’ve been offered a consulting job at the fledgling Insti- tute for Astronomy in Honolulu,” Aaron Frey finished for his wife. “They lured me with all kinds of money
I couldn’t refuse, besides the chance to live in a great house on Diamond Head—with shoji doors! But they will want me almost right away. Before school starts.”
“You know we never stay in one place long,” Olivia added bitterly, reading Jodi’s face, not ready either to be parted from her friends at school, the senior year she’d so been looking forward to—an internship at Sunstone Press, the lead in Pygmalion. “Except for
Quinn and me, we’ve all been born in different places. Anya in Bali, Bo in Santa Monica, my mother in the Pyrenees . . .”
“And me in lowly Missoula, Montana,” Aaron Frey again concluded.
“It’s what we do,” Olivia finished, coldly. “We go away.” ~
Her family didn’t have a television, only eight or nine volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia and lots of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, as well as records of old musicals (Carousel, Oklahoma, The Music Man), so Jodi and her parents went across the street to watch the moon walk with neighbors, the Deans. They all
sat in a row in front of the TV set, on a davenport and two matching side chairs. The little Dean girls sat like three nestling dolls in neatly descending order on the hardwood floor, whether riveted by what was going on there on the screen, or only taught to be polite. Jodi felt like some alien creature among them, in a Simon and Garfunkel t-shirt, a hand-me-down from Quinn, and the raggedy denim cutoffs she liked best, the fabric soft as baby powder as she smoothed it, hands too tense
to keep still. Her thigh had been scratched nastily by Samantha the cat when she’d taken off hell-for-leather from Jodi’s lap when Anya knocked over the chair, and her eyes were ugly and puffy from crying—but she couldn’t care less if anyone noticed. Her misery was out there for the world to see.
Rachel Dean brought out a half a dozen little china plates, and served them each a piece of moist white cake with coconut frosting. Jodi figured it would taste like sawdust—her fare from here on out, like those women ascetics in the desert Olivia had been telling Luisa about after reading something in National Geo- graphic. But it surprised her, soothing and achingly like childhood, birthdays, days when there’d been happiness and hope. When everything was still ahead for her, and anything was possible.
She remembered after the Franco Zeffirelli film, Quinn’s standing behind her later that afternoon in the dim knot-holed tack room with sun splashes, thrillingly close, and murmuring into her ear Romeo’s line, “my mind misgives some consequence yet hang- ing in the stars.”
Jodi’s mother interrupted her reverie, saying
“Do get the recipe, Jodi, so you can learn to bake the
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