Free Wifey by Judy Blume Page A

in November, didn’t he? The same time as JFK?”
    “You know something, you’re right. I never thought about that.”
    “You see, there’s more to it than the sun.”
    “Maybe . . .”
    Lisbeth Moseley, Born Zelda Rabinowitz. Changed her first name on her fifteenth birthday, refusing to speak to anyone who didn’t address her as Lisbeth from that day on. It was she who encouraged Sandy to change the spelling of her name from Sandra to Sondra, not that it mattered. Everyone continued to call her Sandy. Lisbeth. Editor in chief of the Hillside High
News.
Girl Most Likely To . . . with straightened black hair and an inexpensive but successful nose job. The only one of the old crowd to go to Barnard. Lisbeth, who married a goy, when Sandy wasn’t even brave enough to date one. A genuine goy who also happened to be her professor. An elective poetry course for those students exempt from freshman English. Blond and tall and slim, he smoked a pipe and wore tweed jackets with elbows patched in leather. The stereotypical professor. Vincent X. Moseley, from Connecticut. With background. Never mind that he also had a chunky, snub-nosed wife and two little boys in a crowded apartment on West 116th Street.
    He
did it
with Lisbeth anyway.
    “Really, all the way?” Sandy asked.
    “Yes, and it was wonderful . . . wonderful . . . much better than we ever thought when we used to play our silly games.”
    “It didn’t hurt?”
    “No.”
    “Did he use a rubber?”
    “No.”
    “But Lisbeth, suppose you get pregnant?”
    “I’m going to marry him, anyway.”
    “But he’s already married.”
    “She doesn’t understand him. He’s a poet. He’s very sensitive. All she understands are diapers and bottles. He’s asking for a divorce.”
    Their child, Miranda, was two years older than Bucky. Lisbeth’s mother looked after her until Lisbeth got her degree, and then, when she had a job, a job with a real future, as a textbook editor at Harper’s, Miranda went to live with her parents in New York. “She’s brilliant, beautiful, and sophisticated, just as you’d expect,” Lisbeth said, matter-of-factly, to anyone who asked about Miranda.
    They lived in a co-op on Riverside Drive now, and had a cabin off the coast of Maine with no indoor plumbing. Lisbeth had shown pictures of the three of them, frolicking in the outdoor tub, naked.
    Lisbeth, whose mother kept kosher when the rest of the crowd ate bread over Passover, whose mother never tired of singing “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” to her daughter’s embarrassment.
    Lisbeth, Sandy’s best friend. Sandy’s first lover.
    T HEY WERE TWELVE, going on thirteen. It was New Year’s Eve. The bedroom door was closed but not locked. There were no locks on the doors in Sandy’s house. A child might get locked in that way. And God forbid, in case of fire . . .
    Mona and Ivan were in the basement recreation room entertaining their friends. Myra was out on a date. Sandy and Lisbeth were in Sandy’s bed, under the quilt. Sandy was on top, being the boy. She moved around and around, squiggling, rubbing against Lisbeth until she got that good feeling. Then it was Lisbeth’s turn to do the same. Sometimes they played
Rape
and other times it was
Just Plain Love.
They touched each other’s breasts, but never
down there.
    The door opened. It was Mona. “Happy New Year!” she sang, slightly tipsy, a glass of champagne in one hand. “What are you doing in the same bed?”
    “Keeping warm,” Zelda/Lisbeth answered.
    “You’re cold?”
    “Yes,” Sandy said.
    “I’ll turn up the heat, but first, come downstairs and say Happy New Year to our friends.”
    “Do we have to?”
    “Yes, everybody wants to see you.”
    “Like this?”
    “Put on your robes and slippers.”
    Mona didn’t know that under the quilt the girls were naked.
    “We’ll be right down,” Sandy said. “Could you close the door so nobody can see us in our pajamas.”
    “There’s