Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare)(9)

“It is exceedingly attractive,” Pyotr said.

“Thanks,” Kate said. “Well, this is where I turn off. Do you realize the lab’s back that way?”

“Oh! Is back that way!” Pyotr said. He didn’t seem too perturbed about it. “Okay, Kate! See you soon! Was nice having a talk.”

Kate had already started down her own street, and she raised an arm without looking back.

—

She had barely stepped into the house when she heard a distinct male voice. “Bunny,” she called in her sternest tone.

“In here!” Bunny sang out.

Kate tossed her jacket onto the hall bench and went into the living room. Bunny was sitting on the couch, all frothy golden curls and oh-so-innocent face and off-the-shoulder blouse far too lightweight for the season; and the Mintz boy from next door was sitting next to her.

This was a new development. Edward Mintz was several years older than Bunny, an unhealthy-looking young man with patchy beige chin whiskers that reminded Kate of lichen. He had graduated from high school two Junes ago but failed to leave for college; his mother claimed he had “that Japanese disease.” “What disease is that?” Kate had asked, and Mrs. Mintz said, “The one where young people shut themselves in their bedrooms and refuse to go on with their lives.” Except that Edward seemed bound not to his bedroom but to the glassed-in porch that faced the Battistas’ dining-room window, where day in and day out he could be seen sitting on a chaise longue hugging his knees and smoking suspiciously tiny cigarettes.

Well, all right: no danger of romance, at least. (Bunny’s weakness was football types.) Still, a rule was a rule, so Kate said, “Bunny, you know you’re not supposed to entertain when you’re on your own.”

“Entertain!” Bunny cried, making her eyes very round and bewildered. She held up a spiral notebook that lay open on her lap. “I’m having my Spanish lesson!”

“You are?”

“I asked Papa, remember? Se?ora McGillicuddy said I needed a tutor? And I asked Papa and he said fine?”

“Yes, but…” Kate began.

Yes, but he surely hadn’t meant some pothead neighbor boy. Kate didn’t say this, however. (Diplomacy.) Instead, she turned to Edward and asked, “Are you especially fluent in Spanish, Edward?”

“Yes, ma’am, I had five semesters,” he said. She didn’t know whether the “ma’am” was smart-aleck or serious. Either way, it was annoying; she wasn’t that old. He said, “Sometimes, I even think in Spanish.”

This made Bunny give a little giggle. Bunny giggled at everything. “He’s already taught me so much?” she said.

Another irksome habit of hers was turning declara-tive sentences into questions. Kate liked to needle her by pretending she thought they really were questions, so she said, “I wouldn’t know that, would I, because I haven’t been in the house with you.”

Edward said, “What?” and Bunny told him, “Just ignore her?”

“I got an A or A-minus in Spanish every semester,” Edward said, “except for senior year, and that one wasn’t my fault. I was undergoing some stress.”

“Well, still,” Kate said, “Bunny’s not allowed to have male visitors when no one else is home.”

“Oh! This is humiliating!” Bunny cried.

“Tough luck,” Kate told her. “Carry on; I’ll be nearby.” And she walked out.

Behind her, she heard Bunny murmur, “Un bitcho.”

“Una bitch-AH,” Edward corrected her in a didactic tone.

They fell into a little spasm of snickers.

Bunny was not nearly as sweet as other people thought she was.

Kate had never quite understood why Bunny existed, even. Their mother—a frail, muted, pink-and-gold blonde with Bunny’s same asterisk eyes—had spent the first fourteen years of Kate’s life checking in and out of various “rest facilities,” as they were called. Then all at once, Bunny was born. It was hard for Kate to imagine how her parents had considered this to be a good idea. Maybe they hadn’t considered; maybe it had been a case of mindless passion. But that was even harder to imagine. At any rate, the second pregnancy had brought to light some defect in Thea Battista’s heart, or perhaps had caused the defect, and she was dead before Bunny’s first birthday. For Kate, it was hardly a change from the absence she’d known all her life. And Bunny didn’t even remember their mother, although some of Bunny’s gestures were uncannily similar—the demure tuck of her chin, for instance, and her habit of nibbling prettily on the very tip of her index finger. It was almost as if she had been studying their mother from inside the womb. Their aunt Thelma, Thea’s sister, was always saying, “Oh, Bunny, I swear, it makes me cry to see you. If you aren’t the image of your poor mother!”

Kate, on the other hand, was not in the least like their mother. Kate was dark-skinned and big-boned and gawky. She would have looked absurd gnawing on a finger, and nobody had ever called her sweet.

Kate was una bitcha.

—

“Katherine, my dear!”

Kate turned from the stove, startled. Her father stood in the doorway with a shiny smile on his face. “How was your day?” he asked her.

“It was all right.”