Primitive People by Francine Prose Page B

tricks and comes out at night in the graveyard.”
    Maisie said, “In school they told us that if our generation doesn’t drink or smoke we’ll live to be a hundred and ten.”
    “Good luck,” Rosemary said. “But you’re interrupting. I asked Simone a question.”
    George said, “The science teacher brought a horse’s heart into class and we all held it and passed it around.”
    “How interesting,” pronounced Rosemary. “I didn’t know you had a science teacher. Considering the education budget up here, it’s probably a moonlighting dietitian.”
    “There’s this thing they’ve been saying in school?” George said. “About Bloody Mary? The Queen of England? The one who chopped people’s heads off? They say that if you go into the bathroom and don’t turn on the light and say Bloody Mary fifty-five times, you’ll see her face in the mirror.”
    “That’s absurd!” For some reason Rosemary was yelling. “You kids must like scaring yourselves into a state of abject terror. I guess that’s what Halloween’s about, the grisly pleasure children take in tormenting themselves with everything we try to protect them from all the rest of the year.”
    The next morning Simone heard Rosemary repeat this on the phone to Shelly, though in a calmer tone. She presented it as a theory that had occurred to her the night before, along with her searing vision of buried homegrown American creativity—two bursts of insight for which she could thank her fascinating Halloween at the mall. Then Rosemary said, “Oh really? Where was it? Who was there?”
    Even Shelly must have been moved by the longing in Rosemary’s tone. For the next pause ended with Rosemary saying, “Definitely! We’d love to!”

“S HELLY ADORES YOU,” ROSEMARY said. “She insists you come along.”
    Adores, thought Simone, was a little strong. But it did seem that Rosemary and Shelly wanted Simone around. You couldn’t say they liked her, exactly—whom exactly did they like? Not once had Simone revealed one true fact about her past, and no one ever asked her, not even from politeness or when conversation faltered. In any case, it was extremely rare that Rosemary and Shelly stopped talking; and Simone, like the children, served as the still point they yammered around. Everyone here spoke so freely and confessed so much about their lives, as if they were strangers meeting just this once on a plane or a train. But where was everyone going, and how would they know when they got there?
    Simone sensed that the women valued her presence the way a lawyer might value an item of evidence—a convincing courtroom exhibit in their ongoing case against men. Simone was younger than they were, taller, beautiful, and black. The fact that she wasn’t living happily with a man proved that it wasn’t their fault. It could happen to anyone, it was simply how things were.
    At other times they saw her differently, which let them see themselves differently, too. Then Simone wasn’t a woman without a man but a woman with two men, a husband and a fiancé whom she had left to make a life for herself in Hudson Landing. In this version they were three independent women who had followed their own lights: Shelly had her decorating business, Rosemary her art, Simone her blossoming career as George and Maisie’s caregiver.
    Rosemary’s and Shelly’s need for Simone gave her a certain power that she tried to deserve and maintain by acting confident, even superior, though she felt that she was unluckier in love than Rosemary and Shelly combined. At least Shelly had Kenny, and Rosemary had two children as proof of twice having been found attractive. All Simone had was an illegal marriage certificate, a ninety-minute cab ride with Emile, one small painting, and a stub from a plane ticket Joseph unintentionally bought her.
    Before they left for Shelly’s house, Rosemary smoked a joint. “The difference between a drunk driver and a stoned driver,” she informed Simone,