When she was little she clung to me and said, "You're my best friend in the whole wide world." She used to cry when I went away, for a night, for a weekend. "Why can't you take me?" she would ask. And I would explain, "Because this party is for grown-ups. Because this is a business trip. Because you'd be bored." "No I wouldn't, Mommy. I'd never be bored around you."
Such absolute, unconditional love.
Read MoreIt is too eerily familiar. The exasperation in her voice. The long sighs. The shifting attitude.
"Do you think this looks nice?" she asked me this morning.
She was scrutinizing herself in the mirror, inspecting her white stretch pants and her extra, extra large white T-shirt that she'd covered with a complimenting white sweat shirt that came to her waist.
Read MoreYou wonder, sometimes. You walk around the mall and see a lovely young girl with pink cheeks and shiny eyes and a warm, trusting smile holding the hand of a skinny boy who struts a little because you'd strut, too, if someone looked at you the way she looks at him, and you sigh and think, isn't that nice? Isn't love grand?
And then you're waiting in line and there's another girl beside you. Not much older than the first, she is well-dressed, pretty still, but her brow is furrowed and a line, like stitches, divides her forehead. Her mouth droops as though invisible weights tug at the corners, though it is only a child, about 2, who tugs at her sleeve.
Every afternoon she races in from school, raids the refrigerator, then heads for the piano. "So how was your day?" I shout over Jimmy crack corn and I don't care. "Fine," she answers, distracted, immediately lost in the notes of a song she has been drumming on her desk and rehearsing in her head throughout the day. "How'd you do on your vocabulary test?" "We didn't have it. Wanna' hear me play Remington Steele?
Read MoreChange the names and the date; the story is always the same. A boy who is upset is followed to his car by a girl. She tries to calm him down, gets in the front seat and winds up dead. Two teen-agers with fast cars drag to see whose souped-up engine is more powerful and never find out because they die trying. A young, inexperienced driver gets behind the wheel of a car built for speed, takes a corner too fast and…
Read MoreThe Patriot Ledger
Beverly Beckham
1985
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