The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [102]
It is in that room that Linda reads Keats and Wordsworth, studies advanced algebra, memorizes French verbs, lists the causes of the Great Depression, and, on the sly, looks at Eileen’s high school yearbook in which there is a picture of a boy who was a junior the year before: “Thomas Janes, Nantasket 2, 3; Varsity Hockey 2, 3; Varsity Tennis 2, 3.”
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On Saturday afternoon, Linda walks to Confession. She wears a navy blue skirt and a red sweater, a peacoat and a mantilla on her head. She tells the priest that she has had impure thoughts. She never mentions the aunt’s boyfriend.
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That night Linda announces that she is going to visit a new friend she has made at school (a lie she will have to confess the following Saturday). There is a bit of a flurry amongst the cousins, because Linda has not been told any of the rules and doesn’t have a curfew as they do. Though no one ever follows it anyway. She leaves the house in the same blue skirt and red sweater and peacoat she wore to Confession. She has on as well a silk head scarf that Patty has lent her because the wind from the water is blowing the flags straight out.
Linda walks down the hill, passing other apartment houses like her own with asbestos shingles and tiers of balconies with charcoal grills and bicycles on them. She walks along the boulevard and crosses Nantasket Avenue. She keeps her hands in her pockets and wishes it were cold enough to wear gloves. At night, Patty rubs Oil of Olay into all the cracks and creases.
The lights of the amusement park are dazzling. Tens of thousands of bulbs illuminate the park by the beach on this last weekend of the season. Nearly all of the lights are moving — on the Giant Coaster, on the Ferris Wheel, on the Carousel, on the Caterpillar, on the Lindy Loop and on the Flying Scooters. The entrance is surprisingly ugly, though: only a chain-link fence and a sign. Flags whip at the tops of tall poles, and Linda’s scarf snaps at the back of her neck. She pays for her ticket and steps inside.
She knows that Michael would have taken her to the park if she had asked. He, of all of the cousins, even Patty, who has been nothing but sisterly, seems the most distraught by what has happened to Linda and is, consequently, the most eager to please. To make Linda feel welcome, he has given her his John Lennon poster, his denim pillow, and his royal-blue Schwinn. In the mornings, he always asks her if she has a ride to school. Perhaps it is too soon to tell, but Tommy and Erin do not seem as generous, possibly having inherited their mother’s temperament or simply resenting another mouth to feed.
Jack, the youngest, is smitten with his new cousin. Anyone who is willing to pay attention to a four-year-old in that family of seven children is, in his opinion, a goddess.
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Linda plays Shooting Waters, Hoopla, and Ball Toss and buys penuche at the candy concession at the arcade. When she has finished the fudge, she walks directly to the Giant Coaster and stands in a short line with people who have their collars up. She has never been on a roller coaster before, but logic tells her she will probably survive the experience.
The sense of terror on the steep incline is deeply thrilling. She knows the drop is coming, and there is nothing she can do about it.
She rides the Giant Coaster seven times, using the money she has saved at the home for wayward girls (thirty-five cents an hour for ironing; twenty-five an hour for delivering). The ride lasts only a minute, but she thinks the Giant Coaster has probably provided her with the best seven minutes of her life.
While she is on the Ferris Wheel, from which she can see Boston, the wind blows the cars sideways, and people scream. In fact, people are squealing and screaming all through the park. Which is, after all, she thinks, the point.
To one side of the park is a pier of thick planking that runs out over