Magda was reading the paper under the glow of a single lamp in the living room when John dropped me off just before midnight. He widened his eyes at me, afraid of being in trouble with my family. I gave a shake of my head and kissed his cheek. Magda could never be mad at John Weseloh.
As I came in the front door, Magda gave her newspaper a shake and carefully recreased the pages, even though it would be chicken bedding in the morning.
“It’s late, Elisabeth,” she said, biting the t in my name, the way my father and his Dutch immigrant family did: Eh-leeSS-a-beTT. She used my full name to signal a Matter of Great Importance.
“So sorry, Magda,” I said, my voice dripping with honey.
I turned to run upstairs, but her voice stopped me.
“It’s time you grew up and stopped running around town, even with the Weseloh boy,” she said, her face severe in the yellow circle of light. “You don’t need to give people a reason to talk, or worse, give the Weselohs any reason to worry concerning you and John. You’re going to need him.”
Magda’s hints had gotten less subtle over the years.
When I was thirteen, my breasts had seemed to materialize overnight: unfamiliar, foreign things that belonged on an adult woman, too much for my five-foot-six frame. When a male classmate commented on the “free show” that summer at the beach, another boy shut him up.
“Uh-uh,” I heard as I swam past the aluminum raft that separated the swim lanes from the free-swim area. “That’s Elisabeth Watry-Ridder. I wouldn’t if I were you.”
After the box turtle incident, the boys in town had learned to hold me at a respectful distance, but many had overcorrected and would only mumble polite greetings or avoid me altogether. John was one of the brave ones who would actually talk to me about school or music or books, normal things, ignoring the awe that came with my name. Sometimes I wondered if Mom had dealt with the same things in school. Was Dad the only brave one back then? Was that how they had ended up together?
But the summer I was sixteen, John Weseloh caught my attention. I didn’t know what it was at first, but something finally nudged me toward the quiet, serious boy I had known since kindergarten, making me see him in a new light. Like many things in my life, that nudge turned out to be Magda.
That was the summer Annie went boy crazy, and I followed, mostly out of boredom. In the afternoons when I wasn’t shadowing my grandmother, Annie and I would walk up and down Lake Street, endlessly looping on the same six-block stretch downtown: Lake Street, Rose, Main Street, Hill. We waited for boys to pass by—on their bikes or better yet in borrowed cars—and notice us.
Annie had a different boy every week. I didn’t know where they all came from. We’d be sitting on the curb outside Sharp’s or on a bench at the park, and boys would magically gravitate toward us. They’d lean out of a car and yell, “Hey,” and Annie would smile and toss her head, and they were done for. She’d be with that one for a week, until she inevitably got ahead of herself and asked them to go steady, and they’d stop calling her.
I mostly observed. The friends of the boys Annie liked would say hi to me, then clam up.
Shortly before the summer solstice, Magda noticed.
“Come talk with me,” she said one afternoon as she sat sipping black coffee between clients.
The house was comfortably quiet, one of those blazing-hot summer days when everyone had something to do and was off in their separate corners of the house. Obediently, I sat across from her, ready for one of our chats that I treasured as a child.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time in town with Annie,” Magda said with a subtle raise of an eyebrow. “Any special friends caught your eye, then?”
I shook my head earnestly as Magda scrutinized me. If she was reading me uninvited, she gave no sign. And even then, there wouldn’t have been much to read. The boys were all scared of me, and I didn’t want to deal with that.
“You’re sixteen now. Two years and you’ll be taking your place here, and then you won’t have much time for suitors.”
I smiled at her old-fashioned way but said nothing, waiting. Magda always had a point; better to let her come to it naturally, or I’d be listening to a lecture all afternoon.
“You’ll need a good man by your side then,” she said.
I frowned. A man? I can barely stand any of the boys around here, I thought.
“I suppose,” I said.
Magda smiled over her coffee. “Look at your father. I know you didn’t know your Grandpa Earl, rest in peace, but he was much the same. A good man. A thoughtful man. Someone who understands our values and the value of the work that we do.”
She gave me a knowing look at that. She meant someone who didn’t get in the way.
“I don’t think I know any boys like that. All they think about is cars and sports and boats, and they’re too scared to talk to me anyhow,” I said.
Magda was quiet for a long time, and I thought our chat was over. She looked as if she were distracted by something on the other side of the kitchen. I sighed and was about to find Mary to practice levitating things across our room.
“I’ve heard good things about the youngest Weseloh,” Magda said with a shrug, so quietly I later wondered if she had said it at all.
In the light of the Solstice bonfire that year, I found myself turning over what Magda had said. If she had even said anything. I watched John Weseloh in the crowd. I was surprised when he caught me looking, but I held his gaze and smiled as sweetly as I could manage. That was all the encouragement John needed.
“Sure, Magda, sorry,” I mumbled in the doorway to the living room, one hand on the doorframe to steady myself, although I knew every inch of that house even in the dead of night.
I fought the urge to say, What does it matter? John said he loves me. He’s not going anywhere. Who cares what anyone else thinks? Still, I blushed furiously in the dark foyer, as Magda surely assumed I had gone all the way with John. You don’t even know how good I’ve been. I’m a virgin, Magda. Still your perfect Watry-Ridder girl.
“Mm,” Magda murmured. She hauled herself out of her armchair and extinguished the lamp. “Go to bed, Lisbett,” she said.