complain about, so she shuts off the light and lets him sleep.
Ryan’s dragged the old Ping-Pong table up from the basement to the deck. He’s gathering a group around him to pick teams, and drafts Prima onto Matt’s the moment he sees her. Th is is the woman Prima Buckley has become: a forty-five-year-old housewife and mother of four, varsity shopper and JV gardener, playing beer pong with a bunch of teenagers. She does it for Matt and Zach, of course, not to get drunk. She doesn’t drink much anymore. She’ll have a strawberry daiquiri once in a while at the shore, but she hasn’t had more than two beers in a row since college. Even so, she’s glad Tom’s upstairs and her parents are out of sight.
“You’ve got such a nice house, Mrs. Buckley,” says the girl on the opposite team, a skinny flat-chested thing in painted-on jeans and a fuzzy pink tank top. Her squeaky voice, and her arm rubbing along Zach’s, staking a claim, disrupt Prima’s concentration.
“ Th ank you,” Prima says. She holds the Ping-Pong ball between her thumb and index finger, aiming for the cup at the other end of the table. She prefers the bounce method rather than the direct-in-cup strategy. Everyone is watching. Th e handsome young men in their dark jeans and Eagles jerseys. Th e glossy lips of the girls. Matt. If the ball in Prima’s hand goes in, mother and son will win.
“How many square feet is this place?” the girl asks.
“Dude, she’s trying to throw,” Zach says.
Prima releases. Th e ball bounces once, then plops into the cup. She pumps both fists, her bracelets jangling, and Matt gives her a high five. Everyone claps.
“She’s a ringer!” says the guy on the other team.
“ Th at’s it for me,” she says. “Quit while I’m ahead.”
“No way!” Matt says. “We’re defending champs. You gotta keep playing till somebody beats us, or you lose your honor. Th at’s how it works.”
Prima glances at the girl. She’s holding Zach’s hand now. “You’re really good, Mrs. Buckley,” she says. “Seriously. You really never played this before? It’s, like, all they do at U of D.”
Turns out it’s just beginner’s luck, though, because the next round Prima can’t get the ball anywhere near the cup. Matt’s expertise carries them; the other team can barely stand up straight, so they win again, but in the meantime the rules make her drink many, many cups of beer. She keeps one eye on the living room and kitchen through the sliding doors. She has no idea what’s become of her parents but suspects they’re in the garage inspecting Tom’s new tractor. She checks the upstairs windows for spies. “All righty, then!” she calls out. “Next victims!”
Zach and the girl step up.
Her name, it turns out, is Allison. Allison Grey. She’s a senior at Padua, the sister high school to Salesianum, where Zach used to go and where Patrick goes now. What would the nuns at Padua think of Allison, Prima wonders, a good Catholic with glitter on her cheeks, smoke breath, and a Coors Light in her hand? She’s pretty enough for Zach—he likes blonds, all his girlfriends have been blonds—but she thought he was going steady with a girl in his biology class at Penn, or at least that he was done with high school girls altogether. Th eir teams take turns at the Ping-Pong table, and in between, Allison keeps grilling Prima about the house like she’s a real estate agent. Does she have a decorator? Who picked the border on the wallpaper in the study? Prima wonders how grand a tour Allison Grey got, and when. All the back-and-forth with her makes Prima dizzy. Her yammering voice and sparkly face are like an overloud commercial for zit cream.
“I just love the lowboy in the hallway. Is it Ethan Allen? My mom and I saw one just like it in the showroom last week. Th at’s what we do, me and my mom, go to sample houses and furniture stores and antique fairs.” She says this as she flicks the ball effortlessly into
David VanDyke, Drew VanDyke