American Woman by Susan Choi Page B

the bluebirds. Oh, did you want to look at this, Iris? What do you say, Dolly? Should we let her look?”
    Once Jenny has the envelope in hand she tries standing up. “Excuse me,” she begins.
    â€œOh, no.” Mrs. Fowler pushes her, gently and firmly, back into her chair. “Miss Dolly and I have been climbing up the walls with curiosity, haven’t we, Dolly? You’re so mysterious, Iris. Won’t you just tell us a thing or two? Where in the world did you meet this young man? You never seem to have pals or go out or do anything except shop for paint. Tell us . Dolly, make her tell us.”
    â€œPlease recall our agreement,” Dolly says instead, in her bland, unoiled voice. “Regarding room and board.”
    Jenny nods. “Of course,” she says.
    Mrs. Fowler blinks at Dolly. “What agreement?”
    â€œRegarding room and board,” Dolly says.
    â€œNo male visitors,” says Jenny. “This man wasn’t visiting—I don’t know him. He must have made a mistake—”
    â€œOh, Miss Dolly. That’s so unromantic and unrealistic. This is 1974 . The girls are going to do whatever they want no matter how you try to stop them. I know that with my girls, I’d much rather have the boyfriends coming by the house than taking them out God knows where. Just the other day Maureen—”
    â€œEven if he was a boyfriend, which he wasn’t,” Jenny says, “because I don’t even know him, I would never have him visit—”
    â€œPlease correct me if I am somebody’s parent,” Dolly says. “So far as I know I am nobody’s parent. Whenever I have taken a boarder at Wildmoor I have forbidden lady visitors if the boarder was a male, and male visitors if the boarder was a lady, and it hasn’t been because I’m somebody’s parent. It’s because it’s my house!”
    â€œOf course it is,” says Mrs. Fowler.
    â€œNo matter how many folks come tramping in and out at three dollars a pop. It’s my house.”
    â€œAnd thank goodness for that!” Mrs. Fowler exclaims. “When I see some of these lovely old homes come separated from their owners it just breaks my heart. Like at the old Bellingham place? When the last Bellingham finally gave up and sold it to the state for the back taxes? They turned it into a park, and they didn’t even give it a budget for oversight or preservation or anything, just stuck an ‘Open, dawn to dusk’ sign at the gate and a line of Porta Potties on the drive. You go over there now and there are all these people who haven’t got anywhere better to go barbecuing hot dogs on the lawn. Remember that mosaic of lovely little colored tiles in the bottom of the fountain? Somebody’s pried those up, every single one of them. It doesn’t even matter because the fountain is practically a public swimming pool. It just breaks my heart.”
    Miss Dolly lets this discourse dribble off into silence. “All I’m saying,” she concludes at last, “is it’s my house.”
    After a time Mrs. Fowler says, brightly, “More tea?”
    â€œI’ll take a splash,” Dolly says. “Iris, I need to hear how things are coming for the Fourth.”
    â€œGood,” she says cautiously.
    â€œHave you got my ball?” By this is meant the yellow croquet ball. The yellow croquet ball supernaturally vanished last summer, at Dolly’s yearly Independence Day picnic. Even the determined bushwhacking of dozens of guests at the time, and the denuding of the ground through the subsequent winter, have failed to produce the lost ball. It has been one of Jenny’s most urgent tasks to locate someone who will sell her a yellow ball pro rata, as Dolly is reluctant to buy a new set—this was the errand that had taken her down to Poughkeepsie this morning, returning from which she had found Frazer waiting for her—but so