Page 30, “The Persuasion”
“Mary Jane, words. Speak.” He swept his hand under his chin, as if he were throwing words at me. “Speak.” He sat back and stared until I spoke. He slid his chair closer.
“Only child, four when my father died. Polio epidemic, died in ninety-six hours and my mother never married again.”
“Never married again? I find it hard to believe that the woman who gave birth to the beautiful wo-man at this table wouldn’t have.”
Maybe that was how he turned the key that day, just that sentence said that way, maybe that was how he got me to tell him things I never said, especially to men, and even more especially to men I didn’t know. But he did. He got me to tell him how thrifty my mother was, how she’d managed my education, how the September after my father died, she’d enrolled me at Little Red Schoolhouse in the Village, how I took the subway by myself from Brooklyn Heights, how I’d stayed through eighth grade.
“Awwww, such a big girl.” He pursed his lips and made a put-put-put sound. I tried not to smile.
I spilled out how we’d always planned for boarding school after Little Red, how I’d applied to a couple of places, and how my mother and I spent a lot of time at the Montague Street Coffee Shop talking about it, and how three days after I interviewed at The Meeting School, they'd offered a scholarship.
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