Happy Endings Are All Alike. Sandra Scoppettone

      

      Happy Endings

      Are All Alike

      

      Copyright © 1978 by Sandra Scoppettone.

      All rights reserved.

      Reissue Edition

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher.

      Please direct inquiries to:

      Lizzie Skurnick Books

      an imprint of Ig Publishing

      392 Clinton Avenue #1S

      Brooklyn, NY 11238

       www.igpub.com

      ISBN: 978-1-939601-11-7 (ebook)

       For my editor, Liz Gordon,

       who helped to make many dreams come true

      Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

1

      Even though Jaret Tyler had no guilt or shame about her love affair with Peggy Danziger she knew there were plenty of people in this world who would put it down. Especially in a small town like Gardener’s Point, a hundred miles from New York City. She and Peggy didn’t go around wearing banners, but there were some people who knew.

      Like Jaret’s mother, Kay. Of course, Kay was an unusual woman, particularly for Gardener’s Point. But even though Jaret and Kay were open and honest with each other, Jaret wasn’t sure she would have told her about Peggy if Kay hadn’t found out for herself. Sometimes Jaret still remembered that day and the first wave of shock when, over breakfast, Kay said:

      “So, would Cree Cree like more bacon?”

      Oh, wow! Obviously, Kay knew. What would happen now? Whatever it was, Jaret decided before saying anything, she was not going to give up Peggy . . . ever.

      “What do you mean?” she asked, stalling.

      “I mean,” Kay said, lighting her fifth cigarette of the morning, “I know.”

      “Know?”

      “Oh, Jaret, please.”

      Jaret waved the smoke away and tried swallowing her homemade granola, which felt like shotgun pellets in her mouth.

      “Sorry,” Kay said, making a fan with her napkin.

      “I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much.”

      “Don’t try and change the subject. I know about Cree Cree and Char.”

      “Char,” she said automatically, pronouncing the ch as in charge.

      “All right. Char. Honestly, Jaret, couldn’t you do any better?”

      Jaret wanted to die from embarrassment. They had gotten the names from a dumb movie called Home in Indiana made in the forties. They had watched it on a rainy Saturday afternoon and rolled on the floor laughing over it. This really insipid actress named Jeanne Crain was Char and somebody else named June Haver was Cree Cree and an awful goony boy named Lon McCallister was Sparky. The whole thing had just broken them up and from then on they’d started calling each other those names. Jaret was Cree Cree and Peggy was Char. And Jaret knew she would never have told her mother about their private names for each other even if she’d chosen to tell her about their love affair. Some things you just didn’t tell anyone. The only way her mother could have known about the nicknames was to have read Peggy’s love letters; love letters Jaret kept hidden in the back of her sock drawer.

      “You creep,” she said, “you read them.”

      “I was wondering when you’d realize that.” Kay ran a hand through her black curly hair, something she always did when she was nervous. “What can I say, kid? I’m guilty. I didn’t mean to . . . Well, I did mean to once I saw them. There’s no point in pretending they jumped into my hands and etched their words on my eyeballs by themselves, is there?”

      “No, there isn’t.”

      “No, I didn’t think so. But I wasn’t snooping—honest, Jare.”

      “You just wanted a pair of my socks to wear on your ears, right?”

      “You’re not going to believe this,” Kay said, stubbing out her cigarette.

      “Try me.”

      “I was looking for my Q-tips.”

      “You know what, Mom? You’re right—I don’t believe you.”

      “It’s true . . . really.”

      Jaret stared at her, waiting to see if her mouth twitched to the right. If it did, she was lying. Foolproof evidence. Jaret counted to ten and Kay’s full mouth stayed quiet. Innocent.

      “Okay, I believe you. But what made you look in my sock drawer for the Q-tips?”

      “I looked everywhere . . . I thought I’d go mad.” She poured a cup of coffee, offered another one to Jaret, who refused. “I finally found them. In the medicine cabinet,” she said sheepishly.

      “Oh, Mom.”

      “It is definitely a conspiracy. The inanimate objects in the world are trying to take over. They do it all the time. You know that.”

      Jaret nodded. She’d heard this tirade before. It was one of Kay’s favorite theories.

      “You put a pencil down, turn around for a second, look back and it’s gone. Gone! You spend five, ten minutes looking where you put it, turn around again, look back and there it is! It’s their plot to drive humans crazy.”

      “Mom,