Olivia (Logan 5)

"You know she needs it more than ever, Daddy. It was your good idea. Don't let her pull the wool over your eyes. She'll be more than a handful for all of us if she has nothing whatsoever to do with her time," I reminded him. He pressed his lips together and held tight, but Belinda didn't give up.

"Who goes to school in the summer? Only people who have failed classes. I didn't fail any classes," she wailed, choosing to make our dinner hour as unpleasant as she could every night until she got her way.

"It won't be like going to school, Belinda," Mother told her. "It's a special school with beautiful grounds and dormitories, isn't it, Olivia?"

"Yes," I said, "with the finest facilities and some of the best teachers."

"It's still a school. I still have to be in stuffy classrooms while the sun is out and my friends are sailing and having fun back here, don't I?" Belinda moaned. She pouted, refused to eat, stomped about the house, sulked and made everyone else miserable as her day of departure closed in on her.

All during the week before she left, Belinda insisted on having her boyfriends and girlfriends come to the house and bid her good-bye as though she were off to war and they all might not see her ever again. Every time someone left, she was in tears.

"No one will write me or call. They all say they will, but they won't. They'll forget me quickly," she complained through her sobs.

"If that happens, that will show you they weren't very good friends anyway," I told her.

"That's right: Mother echoed.

"Oh . . . poop!" she cried, her face red with frustration, and ran up to her room.

Actually, I enjoyed her last minute antics, enjoyed her stream of complaints, her sobbing and sulking

. From my expression, she saw she could find no sympathy in me, and no matter what she said to Mother, no matter what disaster she predicted, Mother found a silver lining.

"You'll meet new people, make new friends, see interesting new things, learn so much. What an opportunity for you, Belinda, dear. I wish I was young and going off to finishing school, too."

"And I wish I was old and past all this," she fired back with the tears flying off her cheeks.

That made me laugh: Belinda wishing herself old. "You don't know what being old is," I told her. "As soon as you see the first wrinkle on your face, you'll threaten to commit suicide."

"I will not. You're being dreadful to me, Olivia. You'll miss me when I'm gone," she threatened, which only made me laugh harder and make her sulk more.

Finally, the day of her departure arrived. She did little to make herself ready. Carmelita had to pack everything with Mother's supervision. She wouldn't even pack her own toiletries. We were all supposed to go up with her in the limousine, but I managed to get out of the trip. Daddy was disappointed. No one could handle Belinda in our family as well as I could; however, I was determined not to sit in a car for hours and hear her whine about how cruel we were all being to her.

She put on an award performance when Daddy told her to come out and get in the car. She stood on the walkway and looked back at me, her eyes filled with tears.

"Good-bye, Olivia," she said with her hands clutched at her heart. "Good-bye house. Good-bye good times and childhood and being young and having fun. They're turning me over to ogres and teachers with whips in their eyes who will make me feel like some sort of mistake. I'll have no one to go to for help either when I'm tired or lonely." She paused and looked at me. "Stop smiling, Olivia. You know I'm not exaggerating. You were there. You know what it's like."

"Belinda, you will stop being spoiled, if that's what you mean, and for once, you might have to consider someone else's feelings before you consider your own," I said.

"You're just being mean as can be. I hate you," she spit at me and turned to the car, but before she got in, she looked back at me. "Please call me, Olivia. Call me tonight. Please," she pleaded.

"I'll call you," I promised. "Now stop being a spoiled brat and make things easier for everyone," I ordered.

She sucked in her sobs, took one deep breath like someone going under water, and got into the car. I had to smile. Maybe I would miss her, I thought, but I hoped she would change a little, grow up just a little, and do just what I said: make life easier for us all.

A deceptive period of calm did follow Belinda's departure. Daddy and I were busy with his companies. Belinda called and cried over the telephone for a few days and then gave up. It looked like we might have an uneventful summer after all.

Now that Belinda was safely and securely filed away like some embarrassing set of documents, Daddy turned more of his attention to me, and, without my realizing it, arranged for me to have a date with Clayton Keiser, the son of our accountant. There was nothing subtle about it. On the way home from our offices one day, Daddy told me the Keisers were coming to our home for dinner on Friday.

I had met Clayton before, of course. He was five years older than I, and he, too, worked for his father now that he had graduated college. I had never given him more than a passing glance, and, during the whole time I knew him and his family, I had spoken little more than a dozen words with him.

Clayton's father Harrison Keiser looked like he had been discovered by a casting director to play the role of an accountant. He was a slim, beady-eyed man obsessed with details, no matter how small or insignificant they might be to other people. His son Clayton was practically a clone. They both had small, round faces, large dull brown eyes and thin noses with the tiniest nostrils. Clayton also inherited his father's pasty complexion and soft, very feminine lips. The one gift from his mother's side was his auburn hair, rich and thick, which he kept cut close to his head, almost in military style.

I was too many classes behind him to remember him in school, but I knew he was unathletic, the quintessential bookworm with his thick glasses and meek manner. Although he was an excellent student, he wasn't class valedictorian because the school policy averaged in physical education grades. Daddy told me there was a big argument about it at the time, but the policy wasn't changed to suit Clayton. I thought teachers and administrators simply didn't want him to be the valedictorian and represent the best of the school in front of all those parents and guests.

Clayton wasn't more than two or three inches taller than I. He was still a very slim, almost fragilelooking man, quiet, but with a scrutinizing look that made me feel he was assessing my assets and liabilities on some net worth document entitled "Olivia Gordon."

I was oblivious at first to what Daddy and Harrison Keiser had plotted and didn't notice how much of the conversation at dinner that night centered around both Clayton and myself until Daddy finally said, "Maybe Clayton should ask Olivia to the opening of that new show at the Sea and Shore Art Gallery. I think they share an interest in art."