City of Boys by Beth Nugent

gently. Although there is never any real dancing to speak of, occasionally, as the party wears on, one or two couples will lean close together and move around in little circles in the corners, while their husbands and wives watch from the couch, making loud, bitter comments as my father freshens their drinks. These are usually among the last guests to leave. My mother passes Annie’s parents and smiles graciously down at them. —It’s so nice to have you here, she says to them. —I hope you’re having a good time.
    Annie’s mother opens her mouth to answer, but my motherhas turned away before she’s gotten a word out. She turns to her husband, but he has filled his fist with peanuts, which he pops into his mouth one by one. She takes a sip of her drink and watches my mother talk to a man in a black suit. He takes her hand and his thumb catches on her ring.
    —It’s very nice to have you in town, he says, and my mother smiles and begins to look away, but he keeps hold of her hand.
    —Really, he says. —I mean it.
    This gets her attention and she slowly turns her head and looks directly at him. My father is in the kitchen making drinks, and when I go in to watch him, he smiles happily at me.
    —Isn’t this great? he says. —Aren’t these people great?
    He brings the bottle he is pouring from to his lips and closes his eyes as he drinks. He winks at me when he puts the bottle down, then leaves with a tray full of fresh drinks.
    —Sally, my mother says when I walk by her. She takes my shoulder and turns me to face the man in the black suit. —This is Mr. Wheeler.
    I hold a plate of crackers out to him and he smiles nervously at me.
    —Well, he says. —You fit right in, don’t you?
    My mother smiles proudly. —When Sally was little, she says, —she loved our parties. She used to kiss all the guests good night.
    Mr. Wheeler nods politely, but it is true: I remember shuffling from one guest to the next like a little pet, the brush of their cheeks across my lips, the smell of smoke and perfume, and the warm scent of bourbon on their breath.
    My mother looks down at me with the fondness of a stranger, running her hand over my hair. —She couldn’t go to sleep without kissing them all, she says.
    —Like mother like daughter, says someone behind us, and my mother’s face freezes for a moment; then she turns her smile in the direction of the voice.
    My father laughs loudly at whatever jokes he overhears as he moves efficiently in and out of the kitchen, and the party glitters around me like a light I can’t quite catch as it passes on the edge of my vision. My friends who are not my friends are all together at someone’s house, making popcorn and watching movies on television. Later, perhaps, they will gather their courage and wander in a small crowd to the pizza shop where the other children all meet. The bravest among them will insist on going, and the others will follow reluctantly; perhaps, on the way there, they will be attracted by an ice-cream store, or a movie, and stop, relieved to find this distraction; or perhaps they will go and sit in a corner booth, glancing around over their pizza, wondering what is happening. And across the street, Annie sits in a little circle of darkness in front of the television, listening to the hum of Tommy’s nerves as he turns the pages of his comic books. When the phone rings, my mother turns from her conversation with Mr. Wheeler and my father looks up from his tray of drinks. I answer it for them.
    —Oh, Annie says, —I was just wondering if you changed your mind.
    She waits. —You know. About coming over.
    Her voice is high and strained.
    —I can’t, I say. —I have to help.
    —Oh, she says, but she does not hang up. I think I can hear, from the basement below her, the mean laughter of boys as they watch television.
    When I hang up and my mother asks me who it was, I say it was no one.
    Before I am grown, I will live in a dozen more houses, and attend a dozen