Twice Kissed. Lisa Jackson
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into clothes and nail polish and lipstick and listening to music that didn’t appeal to Maggie. She’d taken to smoking cigarettes in her room and blowing the smoke out her window late at night, bleaching streaks into her hair, and sneaking out once in a while, never confiding in Maggie about where she was going or what she was doing or whom she was meeting.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she’d said once when Maggie had caught her slipping through the window. Mary Theresa had been wearing skintight white shorts and a cropped-off yellow top that showed off her flat abdomen. “Just cover for me.”
“And say what?”
“I don’t know. Use your imagination. You’re supposed to be so good at it. All the English teachers say so,” she added with an envious edge to her voice. “As if you’re gonna be a writer or somethin’.”
“Well, I can’t imagine where you’re going or how I’m going to lie to Mom and Dad.”
“You’ll come up with something,” Mary Theresa had replied, clutching her pack of Virginia Slims in one hand while holding on to the sill with her other. She flashed her sister a radiant smile, then slipped into the yard, ducking past the pools of lights from lamps placed strategically between the rosebushes that had been in full, fragrant blossom.
Fortunately, their parents had never noticed Mary Theresa’s absences, and Maggie had never been forced to lie. Well, not yet anyway.
Now as she skimmed through the water and closed her eyes, concentrating on her breathing and the steady rhythm of her strokes, the unrest in the family ate at her, destroying her concentration.
Whenever Mitch’s friends came around, Mary Theresa lit up like a Christmas tree while Maggie felt as if she disappeared into the woodwork. Mary Theresa flirted and giggled, dodging playful pinches, hot-blooded leers, and sensual remarks with an aplomb that left Maggie speechless.
It was bound to happen, she supposed. Who cared anyway?
She sensed rather than saw the edge of the pool, touched it with the tips of her fingers, and tucked quickly into an underwater somersault that propelled her back toward the house where Mary Theresa, disgruntled at the shade cast by the hedge, was shifting in the chaise.
Quickly Maggie swam twenty laps without a break. Her muscles began to ache. One more turn. She saw the edge of the pool near the house and knifed through the water. Stroke, stroke, stroke. Her lungs burned. She stretched and finally her fingers touched cement at the shallow end. She broke surface and gulped in air.
“Done already?” Mary Theresa asked, one eyebrow lifting over the tops of her Ray-Bans. Her body was slick with oil, tanned to a dark tawny shade, her hair piled onto her head.
“For now.” Maggie snagged the white towel she’d dropped at the pool’s lip.
Mary Theresa sighed. “Waste of time,” she muttered under her breath.
Irritated, Maggie patted her face dry, then, spying Mary Theresa basking with conceited calm on the lounge, she reached into the water, and on a whim, flung some cool drips onto Mary’s flat belly.
“Hey!” Mary Theresa shrieked and shot out of the chair. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Nothin’.”
“Nothin’,” Mary Theresa mimed in a high-pitched voice, her face pulled into a nasty pout. “Pulllease, grow up for God’s sake, Maggie. Do you know what an embarrassment you are?”
Unperturbed, Maggie placed her hands on the ledge and hauled her body out of the water in a quick, lithe motion. She didn’t see how she could be that much of an embarrassment because she looked a lot like her sister. Maybe not quite as pretty, but close enough that once in a while people called them the wrong names. Oh, that really burned Mary Theresa’s butt. Maggie loved it. “You’re an idiot, a…a…kid. Why don’t you go and ride your damned horse or something?”
“I will.” It sounded like heaven. Anything to get away from this house and all the ill will that seemed to grow as the summer wore on. When had it started to happen, Maggie wondered, thinking back to when she and Maggie were in junior high and Mitch had just started high school. They’d been happier then. All of them.
Maggie didn’t remember the muffled arguments behind her parents’ bedroom door, or the empty vodka bottles piled high in the trash, or the frigid silence from their mother, an intense, heavy lack of conversation that seemed to radiate from her while quieting everyone else. Bernice Reilly’s deadly silence was able to numb them all. One icy look from her furious eyes was capable of bringing conversation and laughter to a standstill at the dinner table or stopping all communication in the car.
As Mary Theresa brushed the offending water droplets from her body, Maggie eyed the long, rambling house set on the crest of the hill. This place had been her parents’ dream, and recently, she thought, it had turned into a nightmare. Ancient oaks, olives, and eucalyptuses shaded a well-tended yard and the stucco house where they resided. Painted a soft dun color and resplendent with a sweeping red-tile roof and terra-cotta patio that stretched to the pool—their father’s pride and joy—the house seemed cold and empty as a tomb to Maggie, and she longed for their little three-bedroom rambler in the valley.
But with his professional jump to a rival company, Frank Reilly had elevated himself to this house, a new pool and sporty red Mercedes while Bernice had been able to hire Lydia, their Spanish-speaking maid, and for the first time in her life was able to spend hours having manicures, pedicures, and facials between her tennis matches and bridge club.
Maggie wasn’t certain the move had been so good. She missed the neighbors and small yard where she could sneak through the broken fence into Jamie Tortoni’s vegetable garden. They could share secrets while watching Jamie’s father’s goldfish swim lazily in a cement pool he’d designed and built. Whenever Maggie had been fighting with Mary Theresa, she’d been able to count on Jamie as a friend and confidante.
But that was a long time ago. When they’d moved, Mary Theresa and Maggie had gone to a different high school. Maggie and Jamie never saw each other anymore.
In the meantime Mary Theresa had changed. At the old house Maggie and M.T. had shared a room decorated with lavender paint, matching twin beds covered with purple-and-pink patchwork quilts and a gold-shag carpet littered with Barbie dolls, stuffed animals, and clothes that never quite made it to the laundry hamper.
Maggie remembered a time when they were about eleven—God, it seemed like eons ago. Late at night, after everyone else in the house had gone to bed, she and Mary Theresa had huddled together, hidden under the covers of Mary Theresa’s bed with flashlights to read a dog-eared copy of Playboy magazine that Maggie, while searching for Mitch’s stash of licorice whips, had discovered buried under his bed along with his crusty old socks and dirty jockey shorts.
“Yuk. Look at that,” Maggie had said, horrified as she eyed the centerfold where a tanned model with huge boobs and thatch of blond hair at the juncture of her legs was pictured in a sprawled, come-hither position. Long-maned and almond-eyed, the centerfold wore nothing but an endless strand of pearls that, caught between perfect teeth were draped from her wet lips, past her breasts to nestle deep in the misty blond curls at the apex of her thighs and disappear to God only knew where. Maggie didn’t want to consider the possibilities.
“Don’t you think she’s beautiful?” Mary Theresa, awestruck, had asked as Maggie held the flashlight so that its beam shone straight on the pages.
Maggie had shaken her head, unable to tear her gaze away from the woman’s exposed private parts.
But Mary Theresa had rotated the magazine, looking at the model from all viewpoints, pointing out the fact that the naked woman had flawless skin, interesting green eyes, and high, sculpted cheekbones. Maggie only saw her buttocks, boobs with those silver-dollar-sized nipples and…well, all that other stuff that made her blush.
“You know this is art, don’t you?” Mary Theresa had said with all her eleven-year-old wisdom.
“Then