My parents, my younger sister and I sit at the table in our yellow kitchen in Westfield. In my mother's mind yellow is the color you paint a kitchen. Yellow is the color of the chintz you buy to make the curtains. Yellow is the color of the chair cushions, the plastic table cloth. My mother has recently rearranged the kitchen furniture. My father, who sits at the head of the table, is now directly under a shelf. We have just finished dinner and are having dessert. I am seventeen and everything my parents do annoys me. Right now they annoy me with the sounds they make drinking coffee. My mother gulps. My father slurps. Slurp, gulp, slurp. My father lectures me about boyfriends. Why can't I go out with a nice Catholic boy? A nice Catholic Italian boy? Why can't I go out during the daytime with a nice Catholic Italian boy? Why always at night with these Protestant boys? Am I looking for trouble? What's wrong with a nice Catholic boy? A nice Italian boy? My father looks at me, his eyes big and wide, his black eyebrows raised, his forehead raked with lines arching up beyond the point where he once had hair. He makes me sick. The sight of him. The sounds of him. “From now on, no more dates at night. Tell your boyfriends to take you to the matinee.” I pick up a chocolate cookie from the plate in front of me – Happy Family Assortment is the brand my mother buys for us. "If the last boy on earth was Italian, I’d never go out with him!" I yell as I throw the cookie at my father, hitting his forehead. He scrapes back his chair and stands up in one quick, angry motion. I hear the bang of his head against the shelf as he rises and I spring from my chair – I’m in big trouble now. I push past my sister, circle around my mother, bolt through the kitchen doorway into the living room and round the corner to the stairs. If I can scramble up the stairs to my room before my raging father catches me, I might be able to hold the door shut against him. But before I reach the stairs, he grabs my shoulder, spins me around and hurls me against the wall. "What did you say to me? You think you can talk to me that way?" Does he expect an answer? I’ve sunk down the wall. I am curled on the floor. My arms protect my head, my body is bent forward, my knees cover my breasts. He socks my arms, kicks my thighs, pounds my head with his clenched fists. Red faced raging bull. Nostrils flared. Chest heaving. Eyes wide and bulging. "Stop it, Anthony. You'll kill her!" My mother claws pitifully at my father. He's wild. Out of control. Mr. Moderation has gone bananas. Now my crazy mother is the rational one. "Stop it, Anthony! The neighbors will hear you! Mr. Porst will call the police! Stop it!" I'm down on the floor, struggling to protect my face and my breasts. My arms, my legs, the back of my head take the beating. I want to hit back but he scares me. His strength overwhelms me. I break down and cry. The brazen rebel has been reduced to tears. The loudmouth is scrunched into a frightened ball, a fetus, an infant crying on the floor. The pace of the punches slows. My father stands over me, panting. He punches again. One last punch, one last kick. My mother takes his arm and tries to lead him away. He shrugs her off, walks away alone. Before I stumble up the stairs, I see my sister standing next to my mother. She has a smirk on her face. I know that self-satisfied smirk. She enjoyed the beating. I hate her, too. I hate my father and I hate my sister. I swear to myself, if he comes after me again I'll go straight out the front door and away from here forever.
Lee
“He must be adopted” was my mother’s theory since he had that Anglo-Saxon last name and lived in a big white Protestant house on the north side of the Jersey Central railroad tracks that ran a straight line through the middle of Westfield. He was dark. So dark my mother was sure he must be Hispanic – Puerto Rican like her, maybe. Not that being Puerto Rican was a good thing in my mother’s eyes. Even though she was born in Puerto Rico, she was quick to add that her forefathers had come from Spain. Leland Charles Beck. He was named after his father. When I first met him at a party in Bev Jones’s basement, he had just returned to the States from living in England. He was wearing one of those team jackets, not silky but woolen, navy blue with BARLOW, the name of the prep school he’d attended, stitched in white felt letters on the back. His father was an engineer. Most of the fathers in Westfield were engineers. Lee’s mother was a musician, an accomplished pianist, as they say to distinguish someone like her from someone like me who could bang out a couple of tunes – a sonata here, an etude there. Lee was thin and serious with tousled hair. Curly hair. His curls looked as if someone with long painted nails had run her fingers through them. They had a free, wild look, those curls. And a sensuous mouth. Maybe that’s what made him such a good kisser – those soft, cushiony lips. When you pressed against them, they had just the right give and just the right resistance – not too firm, not too flaccid. The give of his lips was like that one in a million pillow you’re tempted to take with you when you go on vacation. Lee was a great kisser.
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