DEANIE, CLARA, AND THEIR father were having supper in Howard Johnson’s. Clara had ordered fried scallops, and her father was saying, “You ought to wait till we get to the island to order seafood.”

“She likes tacky seafood,” Deanie said as she politely cut her steak into small pieces.

“I do not.”

“You do too. All you like is the fried batter. You don’t even care what’s inside.”

“I do too!”

Deanie turned in her chair. “Anyway, you know what I heard, Dad? I heard you don’t get real scallops anymore. It’s too hard to catch real scallops, so you know what they do? They catch stingrays and cut out little round pieces with a cookie cutter. Marcia’s father read that in a magazine.”

“These are scallops,” Clara said. “I can tell.”

“Maybe,” Deanie said, spearing a piece of steak with her fork. “Maybe not.”

Clara stared down at her plate with sudden distaste. It was a known fact that she was bothered by food rumors. She had not bought a hamburger since the earthworm scare. She had stopped drinking bottled drinks the day a woman in Georgia found a mouse in one. She wouldn’t eat hot dogs for fear of choking on rat hairs.

Suddenly it occurred to her that Deanie had probably tricked her into ordering the scallops in order to ruin her supper. She had really wanted a steak. It was Deanie who had said, “Oh, look, that woman’s having scallops. They look delish. That’s what I’m having.”

Then, after Clara had ordered scallops too, Deanie had said, “Oh, I believe I’d rather have steak.”

Clara looked up and caught her sister with a faint smile on her face. She strained to think of something that would ruin Deanie’s supper.

Her eyes narrowed. She could cough on Deanie’s steak if she could get close enough or, better still, sneeze on it, or at least knock her tea over. Her hand was sliding snakelike across the tablecloth toward Deanie’s glass when her father spoke.

“Oh, by the way, girls,” he said. His voice was casual, no hint of trouble. “Did I mention that a friend of mine, Delores Jones, and her son, John D, will be sharing the beach house with us?”

Clara watched Deanie’s expression go from smirk to shock in two seconds.

“What did you say?” Deanie’s eyes blinked rapidly. This was a habit. She blinked every time she didn’t understand something. Her teachers were always sending notes home suggesting she have her eyes checked.

“A friend of mine and her son will be sharing the house. I’m sure you’ve heard me mention Delores Jones. She and I have been seeing a lot of each other and, well, she and John D will be sharing the house.”

Deanie put her fork and knife down beside her plate. She folded her napkin. It was as if she were trying to reverse the meal, to turn back the clock.

“Why are we sharing our house?” she asked, blinking three times.

Her father ran his hands through his hair. He was like a lot of radio announcers in that his looks did not match his deep voice. People who heard him announce the games were surprised to find he was tall and thin and didn’t have much hair.

“Well,” he said, “Delores had a vacation and was planning a trip to the beach, and we were planning a trip to the beach, and it just seemed sensible to share expenses. The house has four bedrooms—it’s ridiculous to have them empty.”

Deanie said, “Is it?” Her voice had the sharp click of a key in a lock.

“And you’ll like Delores. She’s very good company, very bright, very funny. She writes a kind of Dear Abby column for the Chicago paper. It’s going into syndication soon.”

“Dear Delores,” Deanie said in a flat voice.

“Exactly!” Her father looked pleased. He began to cut his steak with renewed enjoyment.

“Does Mom know?” Deanie asked.

“What?”

“Does Mom know that this woman and her son are going along on our vacation?”

He looked thoughtful. “I don’t know whether I mentioned it to her or not. It all came up kind of suddenly.”

“I see.”

Clara had been watching Deanie, enjoying her distress. Then, suddenly, the realization hit. A strange woman and her son were going to be sharing their vacation, their beach house, their father.

Her expression changed. Her lips tightened. Her cheeks puffed with distress—“frog cheeks,” her mom called them.

“Clara, don’t blow up like a frog every time something goes wrong,” her mother would say.

“I don’t.”

“Well, you probably don’t realize it—we all have little habits and mannerisms that we aren’t aware of, little things—oh, what I would call animal behavior.”

Now for the first time Clara was aware of her puffed cheeks. She drew in a breath, looked down.

Abruptly she pushed her plate away. “These scallops do taste funny,” she said. “I don’t think they are real.”

The scallops rolled around her plate. She looked at the quivering scallops as disappointed as a woman discovering fake pearls.

“I told you so,” Deanie said. There was no pleasure in her voice at all.

The two girls looked at each other. Their eyes, the soft brown eyes of their mother, shifted to look at their father. He was signaling the waiter for another glass of wine.

Deanie pushed her plate away too. “This doesn’t taste like real steak either,” she said. This time when she blinked her eyes it was to hold back her tears.