Blue Moon by Luanne Rice

show, then. A roundtable discussion group with a pitcher of martinis in the middle and us discussing teenage sex.”
    “Pertinent issues,” Bonnie said.
    “No, I mean our
own
teenage sex,” Cass said.
    “Like how we lost our virginity …”
    “And how often,” Cass said.
    “I thought you hated martinis,” Nora said.
    “I do. Give me a Diet Coke. Never mind, Bon—I’ll get it myself.”
    “This is a subject I can’t relate to,” Nora said. “I was a twenty-four-year-old virgin.”
    “Well, Mom and Dad were so strict with you,” Bonnie said. “They lightened up with me, and they gave up on Cass.”
    “I wouldn’t be a teenager again for anything,” Nora said. She sipped the wine Bonnie had set in front of her. “So polite, such a good girl.”
    “At least we haven’t turned Belinda and Emma into good girls,” Cass said. “They’re great girls.”
    “I know,” Bonnie said. “Mom and Dad were so high on good manners, I was afraid to say no. I thought it was impolite.”
    Nora sipped her wine, blushing, as if Bonnie had hit a nerve. Bonnie wondered when had been the last time Nora had said no to any man. She needed a real man who would love her right, not another local playboy.
    “I never wanted to say no,” Cass said.
    “Well, you were always with Billy,” Nora said.
    “True,” she said, nodding. She seemed about to say more, but upstairs something thumped and Josie screamed. Cass flew out the door. Bonnie and Nora stared at each other. They heard Cass taking the stairs two at a time.
    “They shut me owwwwww!”
howled Josie, her words mushing together in that pitiful, familiar way.
    “Then we’ll knock on the door and ask them why,” came Cass’s voice, loud and calm.
    Josie screamed louder.
    “That poor little thing,” Nora said.
    Bonnie said nothing. Her view of the situation was unpopular. She thought the family blamed all of Josie’s difficulties on her handicap, when at least half of them could be chalked up to the simple fact that she was a four-year-old. Josie had begun to catch on, too. She knew exactly how to get her mother’s attention.
    “It must be so frustrating for her, not hearing right. Imagine what will happen when she gets to school. The other kids will be brutal.”
    Bonnie shook her head. “Don’t fall into that trap. Do you think that”—she pointed upstairs—“is only about deafness?”
    Nora shrugged. “Doesn’t Cass like us to say ‘hearing-impaired’? Or whatever. I just know she hates ‘deaf.’”
    “Belinda and Emma are thirteen. Remember being their age? Would you have wanted Cass around then? They’re not being meanto Josie because of her hearing problem. She’s too little to play with them.”
    “That’s not what I meant, exactly. I understand the girls’ kicking Josie out. But just listen to her.”
    Josie was screaming louder; it sounded as if she were kicking her heels on the bare wood floor. As Josie’s volume increased, so did Cass’s. But the steadiness of her voice did not change.
    “I don’t know how Cass does it,” Nora said. “I’d go insane.”
    “I know,” Bonnie said. The longer the racket continued, the less certain she felt of her theory. Those shrieks weren’t coming from a manipulative toddler.
    “It’s awful,” Nora said.
    “I wish we could do something to help.”
    “What can we do?”
    “Nothing at all. I just wish we could.” She wondered how Cass kept herself from shaking Josie to make her stop. She remembered taking the Block Island ferry, one time when Emma was about Josie’s age. Standing at the rail, waving to a fishing boat, Emma had accidentally dropped her favorite doll overboard. Out of control with crying, she couldn’t be consoled, and after fifteen solid minutes of trying to calm her down, Bonnie remembered feeling an overwhelming impulse to slap her.
    “This reminds me of hearing Mother and Daddy fight,” Nora said.
    “Mom and Dad fought?” Bonnie asked, searching her memory.