The Ocean House. Mary-Beth Hughes

maybe even an eighth grader—pressed against her. His arms stretched high, fingers splayed on the wood. Paige’s head stuck out just beneath his armpit. He angled his big body like a plank into Paige. Don’t, she said, without a laugh now.

      One big boy said, He’s only playing. But Paige said, I can feel his thing!

      Courtney kept walking to her sister. She didn’t speed up and she didn’t slow down. She closed her coat carefully as if the motion might break something. When she was near enough to be heard, she said, Hey?

      They all looked at her at once.

      Are you all right? she said directly to her sister. Courtney made her eyes simple. Pretending she was just a wispy leaf, maybe orange colored, that had landed on Paige, nothing to be scared of.

      The boys looked at Courtney. There were more than she’d thought; some had cigarettes burning.

      Are you okay? Courtney tried again.

      No one answered her. And when Paige looked at her, her eyes went blank, as if she were a door Courtney couldn’t go through today.

      Courtney didn’t want to say her sister’s name, in case the boys didn’t know it, so they wouldn’t be able to find her later or the house on Honeysuckle Lane. Should I wait? she said to Paige.

      Nope, said a boy with black hair and pink cheeks. Everything’s fine. We’re playing a game.

      Paige, under the boy’s armpit, looked so small. At least her coat was buttoned. Go home, Courtney. It’s a game, she said, but Paige sounded like the doll talking when the string was pulled: Go home.

      Courtney turned around and started walking, feeling the way she had earlier today when everyone looked at her as they left the classroom. Sister Joseph had succeeded in marking her as repulsive as her own wart. And now the big boys could see this about Courtney, too. It was as clear to them as Sister Joseph’s protuberance. Ruth’s word, giving the big lump with gray hair sprouting out like a spare eyebrow some dignity. Courtney was a protuberance. The boys liked her sister and wanted nothing to do with Courtney.

      But then maybe Paige was only faking. She was often a liar now. They both were. Courtney spun back whether they wanted her to or not, but they’d taken their game elsewhere. Quiet as snakes, they’d already vanished from the orchard.

      When Courtney got home, Ruth was serving sweet pickled onions on pumpernickel toast rounds in the den for four o’clock cocktails. She waved Courtney upstairs, sighing: Homework, please.

      Don’t you care where precious Paige is? whispered Courtney.

      But Ruth was repeating her sigh, more amplified now for her friends. Upstairs in the room she shared with Paige, the lavender flounce on Courtney’s twin canopy bed looked stupid. She ripped the ruffles off hoping to get rid of it once and for all. But she left the top of Paige’s bed intact so she could make her own decision.

      In the ocean house their mother had been against ruffles. Forced down your throats your entire lives, why start now. They were dressed like little English girls in gray and navy blue, good linens, good wools. They wore their hair in single braids, tied beginning and end with white cotton ribbon. Mrs. Hoving did the brushing and the braiding and the baths with the transparent brown soap.

      Mrs. Hoving vanished when they moved to Honeysuckle Lane. They asked their father where she’d gone. And Ruth answered quickly: To Newark, to her family. Lots of trouble there and she’s the only one with any sense.

      Would Mrs. Hoving be coming back when the trouble was over?

      Now why would she, asked Ruth. And the girls looked to their father for confirmation, but he was busy watching out the window, guarding the flat lawn.

      After the day in the orchard with the boys at the old outhouse, Paige told Courtney she wasn’t allowed there anymore. The boys have made it out-of-bounds.

      For both of us?

      No, Paige said. Just for you. And just in the afternoon. The morning it’s still fine to cut through.

      Which meant Courtney now had to take the long route home all the way down Oakes Road to the far end of Honeysuckle Lane. She was the only one walking this way. But soon Andrew Kennedy cycled slowly around her, an eighth grader with big flat hands and coat hanger shoulders, stiff and pointing. A shorter, thinner older brother’s school blazer riding up to reveal the pale skin above his flannel trousers. This bike’s only four years old, he explained. It’s still perfect. As if Courtney wanted to know. He tipped sideways to tighten the loops around her, stinking the air with pockets of his breath and sweat. He made her dizzy, just to look at him. You don’t frighten me, she said. They were out in the wide open and any neighbor or even Ruth might drive by in an instant. But every day now included a blister of time with Andrew Kennedy and his chipped green three speed.

      What does he want? asked Paige, from the top of her pristine bed. She always made it up carefully and slipped into the sheets and blankets at the last minute just to sleep.

      He must be lonely, said Courtney, though it had never occurred to her before. Those boys still in the orchard?

      Not really, said Paige. Then she was pulling back the bedspread as if it stank of something and inserting her skinny legs one at a time into Ruth’s stiff bleached sheets.

      Courtney was the oldest in the fifth grade at Star of the Sea. She’d been left back the year they moved to Honeysuckle Lane. Now Paige in fourth had almost caught up to her. Courtney had started out smart but now she was in the bottom percentile.

      She’s not much of a trier, Ruth explained to their father. Ruth had done her best. But given the steep task and the short time allotted, there was talk of cutting losses. Sometimes the older takes the brunt, she said. We have to face facts.

      And Courtney, folded into her hiding spot between the back of the tweed sofa and the heating vent, assumed she’d be sent away like Mrs. Hoving, so the more promising Paige could be given more of what Ruth had to offer.

      Paige is a sweet thing, so helpful. But it was the dead of winter, their father pointed out, as if that were relevant. As if when the snow lifted, Courtney might bloom again. This point was met with silence.

      When the spring finally came, the orchard filled in with blossoms and then the buds of tiny apples-to-be. The fruit already at Mr. Kemp’s farm stand was imported. Ruth shopped there and one evening told their father that Mr. Kemp had made a pass at her, had tried to rub his nasty fingers where they don’t belong.

      The girls didn’t believe it.

      Handed me my bag of cherries and nearly twisted a you know what off me. Their father laughed, and Ruth laughed, too.

      Oh, such a rookie, he said.

      At afternoon cocktails, Ruth often related the woes of her new life. The girls were stubborn, selfish, contrary, though never rude. I’ll give their mother that much, she’d say. She taught them manners. Too much, if you ask me.

      Never rude? Of course not! Their mother was born in England, her own mother, Bess, gone early in the war. Her father earlier still.

      Sometimes Ruth pumped them for information so urgently the girls wondered if their father ever told her anything at all.

      They do the snaky dance and that’s it, said Paige. Courtney caught their father in the kitchen rubbing his front against Ruth’s bottom. When Courtney arrived with dessert plates he wheeled back and pretended a golf swing. He doesn’t even play golf, said Courtney later to Paige.

      One thing Ruth really wanted to know was who found their mother first. She didn’t lead up to it, just asked outright. So? Ruth pressed. The girls looked astonished. Or at least that’s how Ruth described them to the afternoon ladies. Mouths hanging open, eyes like marbles, she said. She had her work cut out for her with those two, all right.

      Sometimes a shock like that does brain damage, she said.

      The women agreed, but also said they liked her new egg salad. Catsup, Ruth confided. It’s