like they’ve come straight from the country club,” Mom muttered under her breath. But she smiled broadly; a second later she held out a hand to shake with Stacy’s parents.
“Oh, homemade potato salad, Bill!” Mrs. Lemke exclaimed, taking the dish from Mom, followed by a conspiratorial whisper in Mom’s direction, as if she were revealing a state secret, “It’s his favorite, and I just don’t have time to make it from scratch anymore.”
“Oh, I’m so glad,” Mom said. Without the salad bowl to hold, she clasped her hands in front of her stomach awkwardly.
I set our gift—a soft white cardigan with tiny pearl buttons that Mom had picked out and Emilie had judged “too fussy”—on a card table already heaped with presents, and then stood uncomfortably in the middle of a circle of strangers. Emilie spotted a group of teenagers that included Joanie Lemke and wandered over, perfectly at ease. It wasn’t difficult to spot Heather Lemke; even in a sundress, she was just as fearsome as she was on the playground. She was giving a piggyback ride to a little boy about half her size, who wobbled on her back like an oversize doll. I made my way over to the drink table, where my parents stood uneasily, sipping out of plastic cups. I reached for one of the massive plastic ladles but was redirected by Mrs. Lemke.
“Oh, no, Kirsten. Have some punch from this bowl,” she said and laughed, steering me by the shoulders to a bowl floating with lumps of orange sherbet.
Sipping the too-sweet punch, I joined my parents, who were in the middle of a polite set of introductions.
“John’s a farmer and Alicia works at the hospital in Manitowoc,” Mrs. Lemke announced to the group. “Can you believe that? She’s a lot tougher than me, working around blood and guts all day long.”
Dad and Mom grinned and nodded, looking as out of place as I felt. We had dressed carefully, with Mom ironing out our wrinkles, but in this crowd of linen dresses and polo shirts, we might have been the Beverly Hillbillies. I spotted Johnny and Stacy coming out of the house holding hands and marveled at how comfortable Johnny looked here, as if he belonged.
“And over there, that’s their daughter Emilie, and this is Kirsten.” Mrs. Lemke leaned down to me with a wide pink smile. “And Kirsten will be starting...?”
“Fourth grade,” I said loudly. Mom gave me a little nudge from behind, which I knew meant—Be polite.
Mrs. Lemke wrinkled her pretty face inquisitively, as if there was a joke she didn’t understand.
“She’s just a little small for her age,” Mom said quickly.
I looked around for Stacy and saw her standing with some of the other high school kids. Then Johnny came up behind her and dropped something down the back of her dress, and she screamed, swatting him away. She wriggled an ice cube free and tossed it playfully after him.
“Who wants the grand tour?” Mr. Lemke asked, and Dad and I, not sure what to do, followed him. Mr. Lemke led us into their rambling house, pointing out the upgrades such as the finished basement with a pool table and the master suite addition, which he joked had cost “an arm and two or three legs.” Everything looked bright and new, down to the dozen red pillows on the white living room couch. A white living room couch? Between Mr. Lemke’s white pants and Stacy’s white dress, I was beginning to believe that dirt didn’t exist here.
When we got to Stacy’s room, I lingered behind, giving the open door a slight nudge. Inside, the walls were a pale yellow, and the furniture was white, from her nightstand to her headboard to a double chest of drawers. I pinched myself: I was inside Stacy’s bedroom. There was a massive “Shipbuilders” banner on one wall and a bouquet of red roses on the nightstand, which I guessed were from Johnny. Her room was so white, so clean and sterile, it might have belonged in a hospital. Emilie and I had filled about every inch of our room with our junk—where were Stacy’s bunched-up socks, her bottles of perfume, the paper fans folded from church bulletins?
I peeked into the hallway, but Dad and Mr. Lemke had continued on without me. I stepped farther into the room, cautiously. Stacy slept here, in this very bed, I thought as I ran my finger along her pillow, over her crisp pillowcase. I scanned her bookcase. A King James Bible, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a set of pristine leather-bound classics. Through her filmy white curtain, I could see kids bobbing up and down on the trampoline, their heads coming in and out of view. I sat gently on the edge of her bed, and slid open the top drawer of her nightstand.
I wasn’t looking for anything exactly—just evidence of the girl I knew in this too-perfect room, or maybe evidence of how much she loved Johnny, and me, too. But right on top was a picture of Stacy and someone who wasn’t Johnny. His arm was tight around her shoulders, and she was grinning so widely that I could see her one pointed tooth. Someone had drawn a heart in red marker around their heads—and then, more recently I suspected, the boy’s face had been blacked out with a ballpoint pen. I ran a finger across the snapshot, imagining Stacy wielding the pen, digging the deep hash marks across his face until it was gone, obliterated. She had pressed so hard that she’d almost poked a hole through the back of the picture. He didn’t matter anymore, but Stacy was still there, beaming.
I dropped the picture as if it was on fire and slid the drawer closed, my heart pounding. Standing, I straightened the edge of the bedspread to erase my presence. Maybe Emilie was right—Stacy had loved someone else before, as intensely as she loved Johnny now.
“We spent the most money in the kitchen, of course,” Mr. Lemke was saying when I caught up to them. “You know how these old farmhouses are, with the outdated plumbing and electrical.”
Back outside, Mrs. Lemke removed a store-bought cake from its pink bakery box and poked sixteen candles through its stiff loops of white frosting. We sang a wild rendition of “Happy Birthday,” with Mr. Lemke holding all the notes too long and stretching out his hands dramatically, as if he was performing for the back row of a crowded theater. Mrs. Lemke clapped excitedly when Stacy blew out all the candles in a single shot.
“No candles left? You know what that means, don’t you?” Mr. Lemke bellowed. “No boyfriends!”
Everyone laughed, and Johnny pretended to look offended. Stacy leaned over to give his cheek a loud smack. “One boyfriend,” she clarified. My cheeks burned, thinking of her in the picture with the other boyfriend, scratched out of existence. Mom forced a polite smile and excused herself to the bathroom.
Mrs. Lemke stepped up to cut the cake, and Heather and Joanie came forward to pass out plates and forks to the guests.
I picked at my slice, slipping a red rose of frosting into my mouth and holding it on my tongue until it dissolved. The adults, finding it difficult to balance their drinks and their slices of cake, found their way back to the folding chairs. I sat cross-legged on the grass, my own plate in my lap.
The frosting had melted in my mouth, sickly sweet. I felt a little bit like throwing up, whether from the sun or the sugar, or thinking of Stacy with a boyfriend she had loved as much as Johnny.
One of the ladies, passing by, said under her breath, “They’ve sure got their hands full with that one.” I turned around, trying to pinpoint who she was talking about, but got only a sharp glare of late-afternoon sun.
Suddenly Mom was standing over me, her shadow like a soft blanket. “Did you save any cake for me?”
I held out my plate. “You can have the rest.”
I lost count of how many boxes Stacy opened, carefully working her finger under the wrapping paper and gently separating layers of tissue. Instead I was watching her carefully, looking for any hint that Stacy was somehow less than perfect, not the angel I’d thought. She cooed over each sweater, shirt, skirt, necklace, bracelet and earring, holding it up for our appraisal. When she got to our gift, she said, “Oh, I love it! It’s perfect. Tell the truth—who picked this out? It wasn’t Johnny, was it?” Everyone laughed, Johnny loudest of all. I was irritated with him then; he looked like a buffoon, like just another big, dumb guy. “And now, the best for last,” Mr. Lemke said, setting a huge box in front of