Tales From My Closet Read Online Free PDF Page B

should I say? That I couldn’t wait to go to the shore like we did every year, gee whiz, yippee! Maybe I could get some cotton candy and meet a lifeguard! And we could drink cherry soda until we were sick to our stomachs! Instead, I said:
    “Does Danny have to come, too?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why can’t he stay here with Daddo?”
    “Because he can’t, that’s why. Your father works, for one thing.”
    My father is a neurologist. That’s how he and Meryl met: in med school, before Meryl dropped out and decided to get a degree in clinical psychology instead.
    “You work, too.”
    “I know I work, Becka. But it’s August, and I took the entire month off, like I do every year.”
    “I still don’t understand why the Little Jerk has to come.”
    “Because he does,” she said. “And don’t tell me that your father can watch him, because he can’t. And don’t call him ‘the Little Jerk.’”
    “Danny should be muzzled.”
    She shrugged. “What will it be? Do you want to go to the shore with us, yes or no? Because since you’ve come back from Paris, all you’ve done is mope around, and I, for one, think you could use a little sand and sea.”
    I didn’t mean to be a brat about it, but after Paris, the shore was lame . I mean, I know how lucky I am to have all the nice stuff I (we) have: nice clothes, good schools, the house in West Falls plus the cottage in Atlantic Cove. My parents rented it out for June and July, and we always went in August, with Daddo going back and forth, depending on how much work he had. Even so, the Jersey shore ? I was supposed to be all happy about that?
    “Oh, good!” Meryl said, even though I hadn’t answered. “We’ll have such fun!”
    By which she meant that she’d try to turn me into a ten-year-old all over again so she and I could go looking for pretty seashells together, or collect seaweed and dry it in the sun, or even (her favorite) ride our bikes to the ice-cream store! She just wouldn’t give up. Like, after we got to the shore? No sooner had I put on my bikini, which was the exact same one I’d had last year, than Meryl said: “You’re not wearing that, are you?”
    “It’s a bathing suit. I’m not wearing it to school.”
    “What about your little brother?”
    “What about him?”
    “Don’t you think it’s a little — inappropriate — to wear that when he’s around?”
    “You’re sick in the head, Meryl. He’s my brother .”
    “And I’d really prefer that you don’t call me Meryl.”
    “All right, Mother.”
    She crossed her arms, the way she does when she’s relenting. Then she said: “All the literature points to girls your age not knowing how provocative you can be.”
    “Jesus, Mom!”
    It was worse when my father wasn’t with us, and I missed him. Because at least when he was with us she didn’t tell me what to do and how to act all the time. He was so cute, my daddo was, with thick black hair that he was always batting away, and a slight Spanish accent from having grown up in his mainly Latino neighborhood in Yonkers. I secretly thought that Mom was jealous of him — because he’d finished medical school and was now a doctor, whereas she was just a therapist.
    “Just make sure you wear a cover-up,” she now said.
    When she was gone, I logged on to Facebook and went to Arnaud’s page to look at his photo albums. My favorite was the picture of him wearing “my” raincoat and a floppy hat, and holding a book. There was a picture of the two of us together, too, but it had been taken by one of the merchants at the flea market and was blurred. Another picture was of him skiing. Finally, I went to the beach and let the sun beat down on me. When I emailed him later that day, all I wrote was: “I’m at the sea with my family. Miss you!” (Except, of course in French.)
    And he emailed me back: “ Oui, oui, la belle mer! Beau, la mer magique . . . ”
    I’m not an idiot: I was aware that I was only fifteen and that the idea of my