Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York by Gail Parent

Author:Gail Parent [PARENT, GAIL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC048000, FIC046000, FIC016000, FIC044000
ISBN: 9781468302042
Publisher: ABRAMS, Inc. (Ignition)
Published: 2012-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

The Wedding (Not Mine)

WE DID GO BACK to Fire Island the following summer … and the following summer. Then we were the ones who were saying, “The island was much more fun last year.” We didn’t go back for a fourth year. We had graduated. Fire Island was for kids … “Did you notice that the crowd on the island is getting younger and younger every year?” … “The place is full of high school kids. … And it’s so noisy there.” … “Who wants strange people in your house night and day?” … “And it has gotten so dirty.” … We were aging. We went the way of other New Yorkers of our age and background. We went to East Hampton.

The Hamptons—a little more expensive, a little older crowd. You needed a car, or there was no way to get around. Linda went out and found a great house and put together an interesting group. I just went. Spent every weekend in East Hampton for the entire summer and didn’t put on a bathing suit once. People were now wearing bikinis. Little teeny, tiny bikinis dotting the beaches.

It was a nice, relaxing summer, a few brunches and a few dinners. Norman came out a couple of times and looked ridiculous in the jeans I bought him so that he would look like everyone else. (He would never look like everyone else. He had no desire to grow long sideburns or a mustache or anything.) I found out after the summer was over that the people in our very house were having group sex. That was no fair, kids. I chipped in, too.

On Fire Island there are no phones, which is a blessing when you have a mother like mine.

“No phones? Sheila, darling, what happens, God forbid, I have to get in touch with you?” She said that at least once a week.

There are phones in the Hamptons, which relieved my mother tremendously. This way, she could call me on weekends to remind me that I was single. I made her swear to God that she wouldn’t call me unless it was an emergency.

“Suppose I have to tell you we won’t be home all day.”

“Mother, that is not an emergency.”

“Suppose I don’t feel well.”

“That is not an emergency.”

“What is an emergency with you?”

“Death. That is an emergency.”

One Sunday night, just as I was taking my famous quiche out of the oven, she called.

“Sheila, dear?”

“Yes, Mom?” (I was really upset. I had said, “death.”)

“I have some news.” (The way she said it, I thought there had been a mass murder on the block and she was the prime suspect.)

“Yeah?”

“Your sister is engaged. She’s getting married next October.”

Worse. It was worse than mass murder. How can she get married before I do? How could Luci Baines do it to Lynda Bird? I won’t go. I’ll hide. I’ll go to California and hide, and no one will know where to find me. I don’t wish her well. I hope something terrible happens and she can’t get married.

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