Mommy looked down at her dish of grapefruit slices, hiding her smile.
"I'm not a wisp of a willow," I protested.
After all, I was five feet four and nearly one hundred and fifteen pounds. Mommy told me I had a figure like hers once was, although I didn't need to be told. I saw the pictures of her when she was in acting school in London. In all of the photographs, she looked like someone just caught the moment after a wonderful new experience or sight. Her face glowed. There was no better compliment for me than to be compared to Mommy,
Mrs. Geary always came in the backdoor with her flatteries, especially about my looks and figure.
"Nature plays a trick on young girls." she informed me. "Before you have a woman's mind, you get a woman's body. It's like putting a diamond necklace around the neck of a four-year-old girt She has no idea why everyone, especially grownups, are staring at her and she doesn't know yet how to wear it or carry it."
"Young people are different today," I insisted when she made these speeches at me. "We're far more sophisticated than young people were when you were my age."
"Oh please," she cried, slapping her hand over her forehead. It was her favorite dramatic gesture. I actually heard the sharp crack of her palm on her skin. "More sophisticated? You have more teenage pregnancies, more children in trouble with drugs, more car accidents, more runaways.
"When I was your age, the only pregnant girl in the village was a girl raped by her idiot stepbrother."
"Mommy!" I'd moan in desperation.
"She's only trying to give you good advice, honey," Mommy said, but she gave Mrs. Geary a look that said. "Enough."
"I"ll eat at my party." I promised. "Daddy's having them make all my favorite things."
That was a mistake. I knew it the moment the words slipped past my lips. Daddy had hired caterers even though Mrs. Geary said she would prepare all the food. He insisted it was an unfair burden to place on her, but she countered with a surprising admission that preparing the food for my birthday was a special pleasure for her. In the end she was given the responsibility for the birthday cake.
She grunted at my statement and shook her head. Occasionally. Mrs. Geary would go to a stylist to have her hair cut and shaped, but most of the time, she wore it pinned back in a severe bun. For my party, however, she had surprised us all by having it cut and trimmed in a French style. She had pretty green eyes and a small nose and mouth but a chin that
disappeared too quickly. At five feet seven, she was somewhat portly with heavy arms and a robust bosom. She did have a very soft complexion with not even a sign of an impending wrinkle, something she ascribed to keeping makeup and rough soap off her skin.
"Manufactured food," she muttered with disdain. "It'll have a mass-produced taste."
"Now, Mrs. Geary," Mommy gently chastised. "You know it's not manufactured food."
Mrs. Gear bit down on her lower lip, shook her head and went into the kitchen. Mommy smiled at me and said Mrs. Geary would be fine.
I gobbled down the remainder of my breakfast, too excited to sit a moment longer.
Daddy was outside working with the grounds people to be sure everything was set up the way he wanted it to be. A little more than two dozen of my girlfriends from the Dogwood School for Girls and almost twenty boys from our sister school. Sweet William, would be attending as well as some of my teachers and, of course, my family and Mrs. Geary's Mr, Lynch.
I didn't think of myself as .acing steady with anyone. but I was seeing Chase Taylor more than anyone else. I had gone on dates with him the last four weekends in a row, and it only took two consecutive dates with the same boy for the girls in my school to have someone practically
engaged. I knew almost all my girlfriends envied me. Chase was handsome in a classic way with his perfect nose and sensual lips. He had eyes that could have been the inspiration for the blue sky on a perfect spring day. Daddy approved of him because he was very athletic, six feet two with what Daddy called football shoulders and a
swimmer's waist. The truth was he played halfback on the football team and was the record holder for Sweet William's freestyle stroke. He was even thinking of trying out for the Olympics.
Chase's father. Guy Taylor, was one of the area's most successful attorneys. Their house was almost as big as ours, but their property wasn't as nice. Chase told me that his mother coveted ours.
"She wants whatever someone else has," he remarked with a frankness I hadn't expected. "So my father works harder and harder. He says it takes an ambitious woman to make a man a success. Are you ambitious. Summer?"
"I don't think I'm overly ambitious," I told him. "It's not good to be too ambitious. Mrs. Geary says. 'Men would be angels and angels would be gods.' It's a quote from some playwright."
He laughed.
"How lucky you are to have so wise a maid," he said. I didn't like the way he said maid and told him firmly that Mrs. Geary was more than a servant in our house. My flare of anger didn't frighten him.
He smiled at me and said when I got angry, my eyes were the most exciting jewels he had ever seen. I blushed and he kissed me. I thought. maybe Mrs. Geary was right after all about a young girl burdened with a woman's body. Feelings went off like alarms through my breasts and down into my thighs. We kissed again and again, each kiss longer and longer: when we touched our tongues on our most recent date. I had to scream at myself to stop him from pulling down the zipper on my Capri pants.
"Don't you want to?" he whispered in my ear. We had parked off the road to my house after going to the movies.
"Yes," I said. 'and no."