What She Never Reveals

Long Island, 1974

Think of a day so hot that your T-shirt sticks to your back like paste, a scorcher they say on the morning TV broadcasts. The air is shimmering with humidity, still and heavy, ripe with the sour smell of cabbages that Owen Kepler grows in his farm across the blacktop road.

The pungent cabbage odor drifts across the street, into the screened and open windows of the small ranch home that Terry Dougherty shares with her parents. On the front steps, she finds the tomatoes that Kepler has left for them as usual. Terry treads lightly as she brings them to her father James, who has just turned on the air conditioning, sweat running down his face.

Long Island was once primarily farmland, but by the 1950s the acreage of family farms had vastly decreased, replaced by tracts of suburban homes. In 1974, Terry’s suburban neighborhood surrounds part of the Kepler farm. The homes are all look-a-like two-bedroom ranch houses, built simply and affordably to appeal to GIs and their families after World War II. Once their Queens neighborhood began to integrate in the late 1950s, Terry’s parents moved into this house, a good deal smaller than the one they left behind.

Today Terry is slumped on the couch avidly reading the cover story in Life about John Lennon. “You will ruin your eyes that way,” Terry’s mother Lily says, speaking through her teeth with forced restraint, and switches the light on. Terry glowers and returns to the pages of Life.

Inside the kitchen, Lily reaches for cans of Coke in the fridge, makes up a big pitcher of iced tea, the rolling ice cubes in the tea making chipping noises. She smiles wide as she carries the drinks on a tray outside to the picnic table.

Terry follows her mother, almost reluctantly.

She slides into the inground swimming pool that takes up most of the Dougherty yard. Jessica and Diane are already there, tossing a volleyball to each other. They slap the volleyball back and forth, pretending not to notice Jess’s current crush, Sean Bradley, sauntering into the yard. He and his best friend Ryan dive smoothly into the pool and emerge to splash each other and then the girls. They shriek with laughter.

“Hey, Terry,” Ryan says as he moves toward her. “What’s new with you?” His voice is friendly, and he peers at her face, while the two other girls watch, curious. Terry isn’t sure what to say, and her right foot scrapes the concrete floor of the pool restlessly. Her chest tightens and her limbs tingle. “I’m great,” she finally says and twists her fingers together underneath the water. “Race you to the end of the pool.”

The two teens plunge ahead in the blue water, move their tanned bodies in the crawl. Terry is at home in the swimming pool. It's the one place she feels confident. Her training on the swim team comes in handy. Her hand touches the concrete at the edge of the pool. She has beaten Ryan, just barely, and stands up in the water with a smile.

He grimaces, pounds the water, and it splashes over Terry. She blinks to keep the tears in, and turns her back on the other kids.

“Ryan. you’re a jerk,” Sean calls out. He laughs and the others join in, while Terry boosts herself up out of the pool, and stretches out on a plastic chaise lounge.

“Sunscreen,” Lily calls out.

Terry sighs, moves alongside her mother on the picnic bench underneath the big patio umbrella. She smears Coppertone onto her arms, legs, neck, and above the scoop top of her one-piece, hands the bottle to Lily. Her mother smooths the sun lotion gently onto Terry’s back.

Diane is watching the mother-daughter tableau with a barely concealed smirk. In the pool, Diane’s curly red hair splays across her neck as she leans toward Jess, whispering and giggling. Terry has heard Diane’s jokes before—her imitations of Lily’s wispy voice and small rigid frame held tight like stretched wire. Terry wrenches away from her mother’s touch, embarrassed.

As evening nears, Lily clears away the family’s early dinner. The dusk has brought cooler temperatures, but Terry’s father hasn’t shut down the air conditioning yet.

James takes out a six-pack from the fridge and begins to drink. “A sip,” he offers Terry, and she savors the cool bitter beer on her lips.

Lily stands by the sink, watching, her arms crossed.

“That’s enough,” she says.

Terry looks from Lily to James and then back at her mother again, her forehead creased. James shrugs and pulls the tab on another beer can. Terry slides off her chair, retreats to her bedroom. From the small white bookcase there, she pulls out a copy of Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist but doesn’t read it, just listens.

Her parents argue about James’ drinking, their words punctuated by the occasional hiss of one, then two cans opening. Lily mentions the upcoming vacation they have yet to plan, the week at a Jersey shore cabin. The place they go to every year, where James can swap stories with other Manhattan cops.

“We can’t afford it,” Lily says, her voice thin but stubborn.

James bellows: “Bullshit. There is more than enough. You know nothing!”

Lily’s voice is louder now, and James’ footsteps thud, and Terry can picture him right up close to her mother, furious. He slaps Lily once, then again, the sounds sharp and sudden. Terry hears her mother stumble, but she doesn’t fall.

James moves through the house as he shuts off the air conditioning, opens several windows. The back door slams. Terry runs to her parents’ room, where Lily is sitting on the side of the bed, crying silently, her face marred with red splotches. Terry knows the marks will fade, nothing too bad tonight, no bruises, or broken bones. She clasps her mother’s hand.

“I’ll rest. We’ll talk tomorrow,” Lily murmurs. Terry nods and turns off the light.

She opens the back screen door and takes a deep breath of the cool evening air, sees the fireflies flitting around the porch light. Her father sits forward on the picnic bench in the yard, gazing into the pool. He drains a beer can.

“Daddy?”

He crumples the beer can in his hand and throws the tin down so it lands with a clink on top of the others. James holds up another Schlitz can.

Terry’s forehead is sweating despite the night breeze. “Not tonight.”

She heads almost blindly toward her bedroom, where the walls are bright orange, painted by her father a year ago. Terry closes her eyes and picks up the phone to call her best friend from Trinity High, Michele Chen. Three years ago, her father urged her to enroll in the private Catholic school, a half hour drive from their home. Michele is a member of the Math club and with Terry, will compete with Matt and Antonio in a statewide tournament next month.

Before Michele arrives, Terry opens the front door to gaze at the farm across the street. She knows Jess and Diane are already sitting in the lean-to they constructed from discarded wood in the undeveloped part of the farm, marked by dusty trails and swaths of long weeds. If she were there tonight, she would sit slightly behind them as they chatted, and all three would pass a joint. She would quietly take the joint, her back against the rough wood, her mood, dark. The acrid smoke would fill her mouth, and she would know the two girls have forgotten her, although she is sitting in their midst.

When Michele pulls up in her parents’ Corolla, Terry runs out across the lawn. Michele tries to park, is too far from the curb and backs up with a lurch.

Terry plops down onto the front seat next to Michele and starts laughing.

“Shut up,” Michele says, her cheeks flushed.

“Let’s go already,” Terry says.

Michele moves the gear shift, and together they drive slowly toward the Chen house in the next town.

Once inside, they head for Michele’s room and the math quiz books she keeps there. Her older sister is home from state college and tonight has a date with a guy Michele calls “hunky.” Michele would like to attend the senior prom this coming year, hopefully with Antonio, who is cute for a skinny guy and has a starring role in the school play.

“Who do you like this year?” Michele asks. Terry reflects on the boys in her school. “Maybe Tom Puglisi,” she says. He is tall and lanky with wispy brown hair, and intense blue eyes that follow her when she walks down the hallway at school. He is nice enough, quiet, and works in the 7-11 after school. When she stops to talk after his shift, he is usually sitting with his friends on the hillside behind the store, passing around a bottle of rum inside a paper bag, trying to be cool, but she doubts they ever finish the bottle.

She hopes he asks her to the senior prom, although she has a crush on Jimmy Dunne, who is funny and sits next to her in homeroom, making jokes. But he is unattainable, head over heels in love with an older girl, a physician’s assistant who has already graduated high school.

The two girls scramble down the stairs. Snatches from the TV show MASH leak out from the family room where Michele’s parents are ensconced. Michele and Terry walk by the open family room and see the big popcorn bowl on the coffee table, the hands of Michele’s parents, Lee and Catherine, are entwined, as the reflected images of the TV play across their faces. Lee leans over and whispers something to Catherine, and Terry steps back, as if she has witnessed an exchange that is too intimate.

Michele leads Terry into the kitchen, and they pull out two of the six cushioned gray chairs. Michele grins as they spread out their math books on the linoleum table.

“Let’s make this a contest,” Terry says.

Michele pushes up her big wire-rimmed glasses, and they glint against her dark pixie haircut. “You’re on,” she says.

The two girls bend their heads down as they whiz through Math tests, competing to see who can finish first.

Terry loves mathematics. The numbers are clean and clear. Their logic has a certain beauty. Terry thinks that logic can take you anywhere, away from a house filled with secrets and farm tomatoes on the front porch.