Free What She Saw... by Lucinda Rosenfeld Page B

She couldn’t imagine ever forgiving her parents for bringing her into this world. She couldn’t imagine how Jason had gotten her number, either. Surely there were other Fines listed in the phone book. He would have had to have known she lived in Whitehead. But how would he have known such a thing? “Jason!” She giggled to mask her shame. “I’m really sorry—my parents play their music kind of loud.”
    â€œTell me about it.” He laughed caustically. “So what’s up, babe?”
    Phoebe Fine a babe? “Oh, nothing,” she said. “I’m just doing my math homework.”
    â€œYou got Petite?”
    â€œYeah, I got Petite. Not that he’s aware of that fact. He calls me by my sister’s name every other day.”
    â€œWho’s your sister again?”
    Someone who didn’t remember Emily? Phoebe couldn’t believe it. Her sister had founded the school’s nuclear disarmament club. Her sister was a card-carrying member of Amnesty International. Her sister read Noam Chomsky for fun. Her sister was the rare individual whose beauty and brains and apparent disregard for the social hierarchy of Pringle Prep had rendered her an object of fascination to the cool boy population even while she’d been essentially shunned by the popular girls. By comparison, Phoebe seemed to fascinate no one—with the possible exception of Jason Barry Gold. Though for reasons that weren’t entirely clear. “Her name is Emily,” she told him. “She’s a sophomore at Yale.”
    But Jason wasn’t interested. “Yeah, Petite’s going senile,” he agreed.
    â€œMaybe he’s got Alzheimer’s,” Phoebe added.
    â€œSo listen, babe, what do you say the two of us check out a movie on Friday night?”
    A movie? With Jason Barry Gold? This Friday? Phoebe remembered suddenly that she’d made plans with Rachel to see
Youngblood
that night. She would have to change Rachel to Saturday. And for that, she would surely pay the price of Rachel’s wrath. Oh, but it was worth it! “What time?” she asked.
    â€œI’ll pick you up at eight,” he said. “Where do you live, again?”
    â€œIn Whitehead. Just follow Beachmont all the way down the hill and keep going for about two miles. It’s on the corner of Beachmont and Douglass. It’s a purple house with white shutters. You can just honk and I’ll come out.” She didn’t want Jason Barry Gold coming inside. She didn’t want him to see the clutter and the anachronism. She didn’t want him to meet her parents.
    She couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing.
    THAT SAID, LEONARD and Roberta Fine were hardly the weirdest Whitehead had to offer. Yes, Roberta knitted her own sweater vests, forgot to cut the sales tags off her shirts, and managed to get food in her hair every time she ate. And sure, Leonard was wearing two different-color socks—one green and one black—the day he came to play the oboe for Phoebe’s tenth-grade class. Compared with their neighbors, however, Phoebe’s parents might as well have been a TV sitcom couple from the 1950s.
    An avid numismatist with an Adam’s apple the size of a plum, the former Swiss ambassador to Togo lived in a split-level across the street. His next-door neighbor to the left was a World War II spy turned cookbook writer whose youngest child died in a freak accident involving a desk lamp. And who could forget the Kaminskys, a husband-and-wife magician team who mostly performed at local bar mitzvahs? Once upon a time Stan and Barbara Kaminsky had been a brand name on Broadway. The real tragedy, however, was their dreadlocked daughter, who lived at home and—despite her pear-shaped body and relatively flat chest—commuted to work at Peep World on Forty-second Street, where she danced without her shirt and (some said) pants.
    Then there was Bill Cornish,