April Love Story Read Online Free Page B

get back from the movies.”
    “No, Marnie. You wouldn’t listen then.”
    Joel was trying to look as if he were a passing traveling salesman. He got up and his whole body took on a leaving-now look.
    “Marnie,” said my mother, “all you do is whip from one thing to another. This is serious and you have to sit still and give it the amount of time it deserves. The Petersons are coming over for dinner to talk about it with us and you are not going anywhere.”
    I felt slapped. Right in front of Joel.
    “Joel, I’m afraid I have some chores for Marnie to get to. Nice to see you.” She literally escorted him to the door. I couldn’t believe it! Not even allowing Joel a moment to say good-bye. She was acting as if Joel were a dust kitten she needed to sweep out.
    “See you, Marnie,” said Joel, and he left quickly, shutting the door behind him.
    “Mother, how could you? You were positively rude. What’s wrong with seeing a movie with Joel? Joel is a super person. He’s very important to me. And just because the Petersons are coming to dinner! Mother, they come all the time.” What would Joel say to the senior girl he’d call next to go to that movie with him? I thought about dating a sophomore girl once, but she had to have her mother’s—no, make that Mommy’s—no, Mummie’s—permission to go anywhere.
    I angrily brushed away tears, swallowing a lump in my throat. How could Mother be so thick? So unsympathetic?
    She didn’t seem to notice my tears or hear my complaints. “Set the table for six, Marnie. Use that beautiful slubbed woven cloth we got from the weaver in Tennessee. And the wooden-handled knives, forks, and spoons.”
    “But—”
    “There isn’t time for arguing, Marnie. Set the table.”
    Maybe because there are just three of us, two grownups and one daughter, we don’t have many arguments. We get along. My mother’s first rule is, If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Every now and then we have a long silence. Mostly we shrug off the hurts and annoyances and go on being pleasant.
    So I didn’t have the background to yell at my mother. I’d never done it before.
    But then, she’d never thrown out my almost boyfriend before, and refused me my first really truly date.
    I would just as soon have smashed the plates as set the table with them. “Mother, what’s so important about this dinner?”
    The Petersons come over a lot. Mr. Peterson and my father work in the same brokerage firm and Mrs. Peterson and my mother are old sorority sisters who like to have coffee in the mornings and talk about setting up a kitchen enterprise, the way energetic superwomen in the magazines do. But nothing ever came of it.
    My mother was a whirlwind in the kitchen, which was very unusual. She likes to cook, and does it slowly and methodically—says it’s a deep pleasure and shouldn’t be rushed. That night she whipped through the preparation of an involved meal in a fraction of her normal speed. And she wouldn’t answer my questions. She wasn’t being obstructive: She just seemed to have her mind on fifty other more important things.
    Nothing has ever been more important to my mother than me. Yet I had the distinct feeling that I was at the bottom of her thoughts, that she’d brushed me out the way she’d removed Joel.
    “Not five plates, Marnie. I said six. Lucas is coming, too.”
    “Lucas! You know I detest Lucas.” It was the ultimate blow! To be forced to exchange an evening with Joel for one with Lucas.
    “I know nothing of the sort. I just know that you and Lucas are involved in this.”
    “Involved in what? Are we all plotting the perfect crime?”
    My mother laughed gaily. She took my face in both hands and kissed the top of my nose with a queer tenderness. “No, baby. The perfect life.”
    Maybe they were arranging a financially intelligent marriage between Lucas and me. One that would produce genetically satisfactory grandchildren for them.
    But I was