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shin-high grass to the sidewalk and across the street to the Parkers’ tidy plot.
    When Mrs. Parker opened the door, she could have been Elizabeth Taylor. Her hair was jet black, even darker than Betsy’s, and she was wearing a slinky sort of dress, looking more like she was at a cocktail party than simply puttering around that giant house. My ears were hot.
    “I live across the street,” I said, gesturing vaguely behind me.
    Mrs. Parker looked at me, her eyes the stunned eyes of a doe.
    “Do you have some sugar?” I asked, relieved to have remembered my excuse.
    She smiled then. “Sure, honey. How much do you need?”
    I had no idea how much sugar one might need if one truly needed sugar. I was also suddenly aware that I had no way of getting the sugar home. “This much?” I suggested, making a bowl with my hands, seemingly solving both the quantity and container problem.
    “About a cup? Sure thing, come on in.”
    The inside of Betsy Parker’s house was as tidy as the outside. Fresh flowers stood erect in thin glass vases, catching light from any number of the windows. The floors were completely covered in carpeting. I’d never seen, or felt, anything like it before.
    I followed her down a long hallway to the kitchen, where she motioned for me to sit at the clean white dinette set. Mrs. Parker opened up a tin marked “Sugar” in fancy red script and pulled out a scoop. She poured the sugar into a teacup and handed it to me.
    “Here you go, exactly one level cup. What’s your momma making?”
    I hoped my ears weren’t as red as they felt.
    “Doughnuts,” I answered, saying the first sweet thing that popped into my head.
    Mrs. Parker’s forehead wrinkled a little, and I was pretty certain I’d been figured out. “Can you be a sweetheart and get the recipe from her? You can bring it over when you return the teacup.” Mrs. Parker smiled. “I can’t find a decent doughnut recipe anywhere.”
    I nodded, and was backing down the hall, balancing the teacup by its delicate handle when I remembered why I had really come.
    “Oh,” I said. “Is Betsy home?”
    “Sure, honey. She’s in her room. Would you like me to go get her?”
    I thought about it for a minute, even pictured Betsy Parker in her room, maybe lying on her stomach on her bed, thumbing through a magazine, but the idea of actually talking to her suddenly seemed ludicrous.
    “Nah,” I said. “Just tell her I stopped by.”
    Mrs. Parker raised one perfect black eyebrow and then winked at me. “Sure thing, sugar.”
    The next time I went back, I pretended my mother was making beef stew. I pulled a dusty cookbook down off the highest shelf in our kitchen and scanned the list of ingredients. Bouillon… I couldn’t pronounce it. An onion . My mother didn’t even hear me go.
    This time, Betsy answered the door, breathing hard as if she’d been running.
    “Hi,” I said, my heart thumping in my chest so hard I was fairly certain you could see it pounding through my shirt.
    She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into the house. “Follow me,” she said, leading me down the long hallway to the kitchen and then out the back door. Her hand was soft. She had a Band-aid on her thumb. Outside, she took off across the shady backyard, climbing nimbly up a giant maple. Once perched in the crook of two large branches, she whispered, “Come up.”
    Though the maple was unfamiliar, I’d climbed my share of trees and quickly ascended up into the tree’s depths. To my dismay, Betsy seemed unimpressed by my tree-climbing skills; she was fixated on something in the distance.
    The Parkers lived next door to Mr. Lowe, a widower with throat cancer and a reputation for losing his temper in public. He’d been seen screaming at waitresses and gas station attendants and store clerks all over town. Some people said the terrible sounds that came out of his throat were punishment for his temper. He’d even yelled at me once when I lost my baseball in his hedges.