Face Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan

outside Detroit, we’ve learned, but her mother’s memories have remained.
    Myra Matzenbrenner slides pink napkins toward Franklin and me and sets down our coffees. Continuing her nonstop newsreel of Swampscott High history, she pulls up a white rattan stool and sits down to join us at the kitchen counter. Her living room is set with three card tables, each topped with a poof of carnations, a dish of chocolate-covered almonds, a stack of notepads and tiny pencils. It’s bridge club day at the Matzenbrenners’, but Myra has agreed to talk before the “gals” arrive.
    “And I don’t mind telling you.” She rips open two pink packages of sweetener and pours them into her coffee, stirring carefully. “My Linda Sue was not happy when Dorie and that CC were crowned prom king and queen. My Linda Sue had practiced wearing a tiara, you know? Had her hair done just right, so the queen’s crown wouldn’t slip.” She taps her spoon against the rim of her glass, puts it on a napkin. “That CC, though, he was a slick one. Charmed the pants off everyone—teachers, Principal Webb, coaches. He was used to getting anything he wanted. He wanted to be quarterback, he got it. He wanted the lead in the school play— Romeo and Juliet —and he got it. And when he wanted Dorie, he got her, too. She was the cutest little thing, I’ve got to admit. What we always called a good girl. Never smoked, never drank. And her poor mother, of course.”
    She looks between us, confirming. “Well, I can tell you this. Dorinda was pretty enough, smart enough, but she’d never have been prom queen without CC. That’s what I say.” She makes a tsking noise. “It would have been Linda Sue.”
    “You said ‘her poor mother,’” I begin.
    “So why’d she marry—” Franklin says at the same time.
    Both our half questions hang in the air. Myra Matzenbrenner absently pats her pepper-and-salt curls, finding the fuchsia-framed glasses on the top of her head. She pulls them off with a look of surprise, as if she’d been looking for them and had forgotten where she put them. Flapping the glasses closed, she points them at Franklin, then me.
    “Well, it’s the same answer,” she says. “When Dorie’s father died, that left Colleen on her own with Dorie. They didn’t have much.”
    Colleen. I make a mental note. I’ve left my reporter’s notebook in my bag, keeping it casual. I’m hoping whatever I don’t remember, Franklin will. But my increasingly unreliable short-term memory (did I pick up the dry cleaning?) is still pretty solid when it comes to research and reporting.
    “Colleen worked at Bay State Insurance. It’s still there on King Street? And Ray Sweeney, of course, ran the place. Took over from his father.” Myra narrows her eyes disapprovingly. “Ray was a piece of work. Piece of work. All bluster and no brains. Just waiting to take over from his dad. Sniffed around Dorie when her mother brought her to the office.”
    She stops, then frowns. “Dorie must have been fifteen when he started paying attention to her. Fifteen. Ray was what, twenty-five? You catch my drift? But he had money, no doubt about that. The Sweeneys had money.” She points to me with one pink acrylic fingernail, making sure I understand. “Money.”
    “So Dorie’s mother—how do I put this—arranged? Pushed? Convinced? Allowed her daughter to marry Ray Sweeney?” I ask.
    “Whatever word you choose,” she replies. “The prom. Then graduation. And before you could say, ‘oh promise me,’ Dorie was Mrs. Ray Sweeney. And before you could say ‘Uncle Sam wants you,’ CC had signed up for the Navy.”
    I glance at Franklin, remembering his words in the Red Rock. I like the boyfriend. Maybe Franklin had something. Or maybe Colleen Sweeney, in a fit of remorse over pushing her daughter into marrying a sleazy local pol, had bashed her predatory son-in-law with an iron and pushed him down the stairs. I like it.
    And for a moment, I almost believe it.