Free City of Boys by Beth Nugent

the living room, where my father is already watching the doubleheader between Cincinnati and Chicago.
    I am in the bathroom taking inventory. Cheekbones: flat; chin: receding; hair: thin; breasts: the same; appearance: problematic.
    I have borrowed a few of Francine’s cosmetics, and they are spread out on the sink in front of me when she comes in without knocking, wearing a fluffy pink robe. She looks at the makeup on the sink and I begin to offer some explanation, but she moves past me and turns on the water in the bathtub. From the pocket of her robe she takes a little bottle, which she opens and smells; then she pours some of the liquid under the running water. Bright bubbles burst up immediately in the tub, and she smiles as she turns to me. —Bath oil, she says. —It makes your skin silky and smooth to the touch.
    Who is going to touch you, Francine? I think. She lowers herself into the tub and sighs.
    Who? I think, and then I say it: —Who?
    —What? she says. She lifts a palmful of bubbles to her face and blows them into the air. —I’ve got a date tonight, she says.
    I am mystified. How could she have a date? There are no boys. I look casually into the mirror.
    —Oh? I say. —Who with?
    —A boy, she says. —A boy I met at the carnival last night. Last night, I think, and run over the evening in my mind. She must have met the boy when my uncle and I were onthe Ferris wheel, or when my uncle was throwing rubber balls at the clown, or when my uncle was buying me candy. —Where are you going? I ask.
    —We’re meeting at the carnival, she says, waving her hand over the tops of the hills of bubbles that surround her breasts. I imagine them high up over the lights of the mall parking lot, swaying in the Ferris wheel’s artificial ecstasy, an enormous pink fluff of cotton candy in Francine’s arms, the boy’s hand under her sweater, holding the soft candy of her breast.
    We all stand around the front door as Uncle Woody prepares to drive Francine to the carnival. My aunt reaches out with a Kleenex to blot away a little smear of lipstick from Francine’s chin.
    —Don’t you want to go, too, Susie? my uncle asks. —You don’t want to stay in all night with us old folks.
    —I don’t feel well, I tell him. —I’ll just read.
    —If you want, he says, —we can go to a movie. Just you and me. Like a regular date. I’ll buy you popcorn and we can sit in the back row and watch the smoochers.
    —Woody, my aunt says, —Francine’s going to be late.
    Francine turns at the door and tosses me a smile. —I’ll see if he has any friends, she says.
    Aunt Louise watches them walk out to the car and my father goes back to the living room. I realize that my mother has not been standing with us; she is in the basement, perhaps, or on the patio. When the car pulls out, Aunt Louise turns happily to me.
    —Francine is very popular, she says. —Wherever she goes, she seems to make new friends.
    I nod, and try to think of something to say, but she turns her head sharply at the suck of the freezer door opening, and heads off toward the sound of an ice tray cracking.
    * * *
    My father stands by the television, tapping absently against the screen. He is torn: either he can watch the game between L.A. and Cincinnati or he can watch the game between Cleveland and Detroit. He looks out the window at the final stretch of evening sun over the grape arbor and wipes his fingers delicately against the front of his shirt, then selects a few candy corns from the bowl on top of the television, put there by my uncle to lure me to the flickering screen while he waits alertly in the shadows. My father finally chooses his game and sits unhappily to watch it, thinking only of the game he is missing, though before long he will be asleep.
    Traveling through the house and into my bedroom, the baseball announcer’s voice is reassuring: summer, father, home, it says, and its insistent rise and fall blends with the murmur of the locusts. My