The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

she said, crying, but that wasn’t what anyone was thereto do, and Lauren had to look away although she couldn’t see her face. The television plopped a big, blue-gray dot over herhead.

“Saves her the embarrassment,” Nana Glenis had said, over for dinner on the opening day of the trial. She kept a corner of her attic devoted to Kennedy memorabilia: clippings, buttons, Life magazines, the negatives of the roll of film she shot the day President Kennedy gave a speech in Niagara Square. She couldname all eleven of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s children in order of age, middle names included. Nana Glenis left before dessert,after Mirela threw a fistful of mashed potatoes at her and poured a cup of water over PJ’s head.

“No, it’s not about embarrassment—it’s more about privacy,” replied Mom, who was upset that the alleged rape had occurredon Good Friday. “For any of them to be out carousing on Good Friday, of all days!”

“Jesus needed a couple of beers up there on that cross,” Dad said. “You gotta beat the heat.”

Paula was sure that the Kennedy nephew did it, and Lauren was, too. It wasn’t a conclusion that Lauren reached after weighingthe evidence—that the sobbing woman who said she was raped had been raped by the man she said raped her seemed a self-evidenttruth, available without benefit of a jury trial or news coverage. Yet there was another, equally self-evident truth in thetrial, which was that the Kennedy nephew knew how to behave correctly, how to control and parcel out his presentation of himself,and his shrieking accuser did not. Carrying on like that. She was messy. She had ginned up this whole mess. She was messedup in the head.

“Making a scene,” Nana Glenis said. “Hasn’t that poor family been through enough?”

There was what happened, and then there was the story of what happened. The story was what was more important, because thestory would keep itself alive in the retelling of it, long after what happened was dead.

 

Mom had been nervous about Thanksgiving, and it’s true that Mirela ripped both legs off the turkey and then locked the turkey and herself in Aunt Marie’s downstairs bathroom. Mom had been nervous about Christmas Day, and it’s true that the youngest cousins were distraught when Mirela tore the wrapping paper off every present under Nana Dee’s tree before anyone else woke up. Now Mom was nervous about Lauren’s birthday, but it was Mom who wanted a big party at their house, not Lauren. Lauren’s birthday fell right after the holidays, when most people felt gorged on parties and presents. But Mom said this birthday was extra important because it was the first one in the immediate family since Mirela came home.

Both sets of grandparents came over, Uncles Brian and Mike and Joe and their wives and all the cousins. The uncles and Granddad,Mom’s dad, sat in the den watching the Bills, who were two games away from making it to the Super Bowl for a second year ina row.

“Norwood’s really been redeeming himself this season, don’t you think, Lauren?” Uncle Mike asked with his crinkly smile. Lauren’sbaby pictures looked like Uncle Mike’s when they were both smiling. Scott Norwood was the kicker who had missed a long, difficult,but not strictly implausible field goal at the end of last year’s Super Bowl, which the Bills then lost by a single point.Lauren didn’t follow sports, but she sensed that one’s attitude toward Norwood could be a litmus test for a person’s entireworldview. A small minority of Bills fans wanted Norwood banished to another team for spite; others had nothing against himpersonally but found it nearly unbearable to see his number on the field, like the other Bills and all their fans were beinghaunted by the ghost of his defeat; still others wrote impossible movie scripts in their head about a Super Bowl sequel onthe order of Rocky II, whereby the Bills not only win the match but by one point, courtesy of a long Norwood kick, one that would avenge the man, the team, the blighted city, and of course, the tragic squandered genius of O.J. in one perfect arcing firework of a field goal. Dad, like most Bills fans, was soft and forgiving toward Norwood in a way that felt out of keeping with his personality generally, calling him “a good guy who had a bad day at work.” Lauren was surprised and moved that Dad could acknowledge an uncomfortable, unfamiliar feeling and put it into words, and it helped her understand why so many of the men in her life spent so much time sitting still watching sports.

The great-aunts came to her birthday party, Eunice and Faye, with their crumpled-paper voices and ashtray kisses. They mixedbig polyester prints with dark brocade scarves, and all their clothes smelled like the Salvation Army, and they wore bulbousbrooches in iridescents and jewel tones, clip-on earrings that rattled and dangled, clacking fake pearls. Sometimes they gavetheir jewelry to Lauren on the spot: a cameo locket with a sapphire-green eye; a yellow-gold signet ring of adjustable size.Lauren wore the baubles to school, feeling like an heiress, until Claire told her, with apologetic discomfort, that her great-aunts’things were cheap. Lauren appreciated knowing this. But how did Claire know? How could she tell? Her mom must have explainedit to her.

Lauren didn’t ask Julie or any of the other senior girls to the party. Paula came, a couple of PJ and Sean’s friends. DanielleSheridan, of all people, owing to a chance encounter between Danielle’s and Lauren’s mothers at Bells market. A buffet spread,a Bells sheet cake from Nana Glenis, and a homemade malted chocolate drip cake from Nana Dee. Balloons that PJ and Sean hadblown up and tied themselves, streamers that Mirela tore down, a construction-paper banner that Mom had cut, mounted, andstrung herself, using supplies from the Jo-Ann fabric store on Transit Road, reading happy fifteenth birthday lauren. Mirela ripped it in half. Mom taped it back together, and Mirela ripped it in half again.

“She’s just so