The Bay at Midnight

yard. And of course there weren’t so many boats.”

“Gosh.” I turned to look at the water again, imagining it lapping at our sandy backyard. I wished it was still like that.

“The tubes are a little soft,” Isabel said.

We had four of the giant black inner tubes in the garage. Ethan and I used to float on them in the dock, our arms and legs dangling over the sides. This year, though, I hadn’t even bothered with the tubes. It was no fun playing in the dock alone. My loneliness was mounting, day by day. I made up stories about the rooster man, but I had no friends to scare with those spooky tales. I didn’t dare tell them to Lucy and make her more paranoid than she already was.

“Why don’t you and Julie take the tubes to the gas station and fill them up?” Mom said, stubbing out her cigarette in the big clamshell ashtray on the table. “By the time you get back, the current should be perfect for our adventure.”

After we helped clean up from breakfast, Isabel and I went out to the garage, gathered up the four fat tubes and loaded them in the car. Isabel turned the key in the ignition, then adjusted the dial on the radio until she found “Johnny Angel,” and we both sang along with it. I liked having that bond with my sister. I watched her bare arms turn the steering wheel as we backed out of the driveway. Her skin was smooth and dark, and my arms seemed pale and flabby by comparison. Isabel thought her tan was mediocre that summer because she had to work three days a week at Abramowitz’s Department Store in town and couldn’t lie out on the beach every day. She was stealing from the store; I was sure of it. She would come home with new clothes once or twice a week.Yesterday, she’d brought home two new bras, and when she was out with Mitzi and Pam, I tried one of them on, stuffing the pointy cups with toilet paper to see how I would look with real breasts, only to discover that I looked kind of ridiculous. I also tried to practice using one of her tampons so I’d be ready the next time I got my “friend.” The tampon in its cardboard tube was huge and had been impossible to get it in. It was like trying to push a Magic Marker against a brick wall. I felt scared, wondering if there was something wrong with me and I would never be able to go all the way with my husband or have babies.

“I’ve got dibs on the biggest one,” Isabel said, referring to the inner tubes.

“I don’t care,” I said. I knew the one she meant. It was fatter and wider and supported you so well it made you feel like you were floating on a cloud. But I wasn’t going to fight her for it.

As we turned onto Rue Mirador, Isabel pulled a pack of Marlboros from the pocketbook on her lap, shook one partway out of the package and wrapped her lips around it to pull it the rest of the way out. She pushed the cigarette lighter into the dashboard, waiting for it to heat up.

I was stunned. “Did Mom give you permission to smoke?” I asked.

“She smokes herself, so what can she say?” Isabel asked. She held the pack toward me. “Want one?”

I hesitated, then took one of the cigarettes, digging it out of the pack with my fingers in a graceless manner. I put it to my lips.

“I’m not going to light it, though,” I said.

“Then why did you take it?” She laughed, pulling the lighter from the dashboard. She held it to her cigarette, inhaling as the tip turned a bright orange.

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said, but I did know. I just wanted to be with her. To share something with her. To be like her.

“I get the porch bed tonight,” she announced.

“I know,” I said. She and I had been taking turns sleeping on the porch when the weather was good. I still had to stuff my bedspread beneath my covers to placate Lucy. I’m sure she knew what I was doing, but it seemed to give her some comfort nevertheless. As long as I did that and left the light on, she was doing better upstairs alone at night.

“What are you burying in the yard?” Isabel asked, turning the car onto Bridge Avenue.

“What do you mean?” I asked, all innocence.

“I saw you bury something by the corner of the house. What was it?”

Darn. If I didn’t tell her the truth, she would probably dig in the sand by the corner of the house to satisfy her curiosity and discover my clue box anyway.

“It’s my Nancy Drew box,” I said.

“Huh?” She gave me that “what are you talking about” look as she blew smoke from her nostrils. She reminded me of a dragon.

“When I find something that might turn out to be a clue in a mystery, I put it in a box Grandpop buried there for me.”

“A clue in a mystery? What mystery?”

“Well, I don’t know yet,” I explained. “Sometimes you can find things and later on, when a mystery happens, you realize the thing you found might be a clue that would help the police solve it.”

Isabel laughed. “You’re a moron, you know that? You mean you just throw any old thing you find in there, waiting for some deep, dark mystery to occur?”

“Not any old thing,” I said, insulted. I thought of the Ping-Pong ball I’d found in the canal. Maybe I was being indiscriminate, but good clues were hard to find. I did not want her to shoot holes in my theory. Deep down, I knew the wished-for mystery would never happen, but I was having fun pretending it might. Grandpop had understood that.

“You act like such a twelve-year-old, you know it?” Isabel’s voice was tinged with disgust.

“That happens to be my age,” I said, folding my arms across my chest, managing to bend the unlit cigarette in the process. What did she want from me? “When you were twelve you probably did things like that, too,” I said, but I didn’t really think she had. Isabel had always been the sophisticated older sister. I could never catch up to her. I would probably still be reading Nancy Drew and making up wolves-are-loose-in-our-neighborhood stories when I turned seventeen.