Free Rowing in Eden by Elizabeth Evans Page A

the party below, and Franny’s room went dark. Outside her windows, however, the ragged bits of sky not blotted out by the oaks still held their starchy blue, and in the bower of the bunk bed, she tucked her knees up to her chin, and felt pleasantly small, albeit in a theatrical sort of way. She thought of A Child’s Garden of Verses’ “Bed in Summer”—
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  In winter I get up at night
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  And dress by yellow candle-light.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  In summer, quite the other way,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  I have to go to bed by day.
    â€”and how the summer light filtering into her room was very much like that in the book’s illustration, magical stuff that revealed the checked counterpane on the boy’s bed, and the bird that sang on a branch outside—
    But, again, the light in the hall went on, and now Martie came down the hall, then turned into her bedroom.
    Was she crying?
    Oh, Franny did not want to go to Martie. Did not want to leave her cozy bower. Did not want to breathe in Martie’s failure or despair or whatever it was—that exhausted air, that old-balloon air. Twice, Franny’s feet drew back from the wooden floor before she made herself move into the hall, and even when she reached the small alcove that led into the bedroom proper, she hesitated before saying, “Martie?”
    In front of her dresser mirror—a thing half-obscured by its wreath of souvenir tickets, matchbooks, faded corsages—Martie beat at her long red hair, which crackled and ripped beneath the brush. She looked curvy and grownup in her ivory shell and matching shorts, in lipstick and eyeliner and all, but her tears spilled over her full lips in precisely the same way that they had when she was a flat-chested schoolgirl in a merciless Dutch-boy haircut and hornrimmed glasses.
    â€œHey, Martie.” Franny put an arm around Martie, patted her on the back. “What’s the matter, honey?”
    â€œOh, nothing! Except, just as Mom and Dad came in from taking a walk, your charming, teetotaling sister made a point of telling me I was acting drunk!”
    Franny looked away, fixing her gaze on a chain of green gum wrappers—Doublemint—that Martie had made in the days when the gum-chewing ROTC member was her boyfriend.
    â€œWell, that’s great, Franny.” Martie stepped away from the girl and resumed her hair brushing. “So I take it you think I act drunk, too? I love it! Everybody always takes Roz’s side.”
    â€œThat’s not true.”
    â€œIt is!”
    â€œNo!” Tears started to Franny’s own eyes now. “This year, at a game, a boy called you a whore, and I slapped his face.”
    Martie set down the hairbrush. “A whore?” She took a seat on the edge of her bed. “Who was it?”
    â€œWell, just some little jerk obviously.” Sniffling, Franny sat down beside Martie on the bed. The combined weight of the pair on the old mattress made them tip, one into the other, and they exchanged teary half-smiles before straightening.
    â€œI only told you to show I stand up for you,” Franny said.
    Martie patted Franny on the knee. “Well, thanks, Fran. I appreciate that.” She stood and scowled at herself in the mirror. “And I am not drunk,” she said before leaving the room.
    Franny fished around inside the purse Martie had left on the bed. A cigarette smoked in the bathroom—that sounded like something to do. But Franny found no cigarettes. Just a comb. A package of tissues. A lipstick called Mighty Like a Rose. She wound up the lipstick—a clear, bright pink—then wound it down again.
    The weekend before, after the Sunday brunch and numerous Bloody Marys, Al Castor—weaving a little, holding his hands over his