To Die For by Joyce Maynard

going out of style. I mean, we were going strictly first class.
    Our last night in Orlando, Larry buys Suzanne these two stuffed dogs, and they’re hugging each other. Like one is him, and the other one’s her. Then we go see the fireworks over at Epcot Center, and Larry and Suzanne are making out pretty good while these fireworks are exploding all over the place. I guess you’d have to say the whole thing was about as romantic as it gets. Must of been, because after, when the four of us were heading back out on the monorail, Larry holds up Suzanne’s hand, and she’s got this big diamond on her finger. “What do you think of this?” he says. The whole thing makes me a little tense, you might say, on account of Jeannie’s right there, and I know she’s thinking, OK, where’s my ring?
    But we took their picture, the two of them, with the stuffed dogs. I’ve still got the picture, if you want to see it. That’s more the way I remember Larry, before he got all serious and cut his hair. Grinning like he always was back in those days.
    But the thing that got me—well now, of course, looking back, it seems more important than it did at the time—was the way she only held his hand while Jeannie was taking the picture. The minute the flash went off, she let go.

JOE MARETTO
    I DON’T GET IT. I keep trying to figure out what went wrong. Because at every step along the way, things just looked so good. And now this.
    Angela and I went steady right through high school. I never looked at another girl. That’s God’s truth. She was all I wanted.
    I wasn’t looking to set the world on fire. She didn’t need to find herself or any of that. What we wanted was to take over my uncle’s lunch counter, get a nice home, have healthy kids, raise them right. Someday sit in the den and watch our grandchildren open their Christmas presents, knowing we’d done a good job. Does that sound like too much to ask?
    We did it by the book. No fooling around before we were married. First two years we were married, we lived with her folks, so we could save up for the down payment. We moved into this house the day Kennedy was shot. Our daughter Janice came along nine months later to the day. And Larry two years after that. So we had our boy and our girl. Angela stayed home with the kids, like mothers did in those days, and I worked like a dog at the restaurant. Nights, weekends, I didn’t complain. I had two healthy kids and a lovely wife. They were worth it.
    Angela was just great with those kids, you ask anyone. Home-cooked meals every night, you could eat off the floor. Janice wanted skating lessons, Angela drove her an hour each way to the rink. Same thing with Larry’s Little League games, and then those drums. By this time the restaurant was doing real good, we got our liquor license, put in the bar. Running a restaurant in this part of town, big Italian clientele, I’m not saying we didn’t have one or two fellows among our customers that may have been on the wrong side of the law on occasion, but we kept our noses clean. We always ran an honest, family-type establishment. A lot of the time I’d be working, but Angie never missed one of the kids’ events at school. And always had the right thing to say if Janice didn’t get invited to a dance or maybe Larry struck out or fumbled a ball in the field. Larry may not have been a natural athlete, but you never saw a bigger heart in a player, or a kid that tried harder.
    I’m not pretending the teenage years were a picnic. Janice had her skating to keep her out of trouble, but Larry was always such a friendly guy, always going someplace, he had some friends that maybe wouldn’t have been Angela’s and my choice. Long hair, guitars, drums, the whole bit. Larry’s only problem was, he trusted everybody else to be as decent as he was. But I trusted him too. I knew he had his head screwed on right, and sooner or later he’d buckle down and get on with his life. Which he did.
    Angela