I open it to a page with a small poem, entitled, ‘RIP New Self.’ This is definitely a sign.
‘Read it to me!’ Mary says as she sees my eyes bulge open and drop like waves, and so I begin:
‘RIP New Self
‘I made my way to the man who bought
My old self from me.
He had it, my fermented self, pickled in a glass jar,
Behind him, labeled: YOUR OLD SELF.
‘He said if I didn’t have a receipt, I couldn’t get it back.
I said I’d give him my new self in exchange, but he said, No.
Old selves to this salesman seemed to carry some weight.
Why? I asked.
Because it’s got all the soul, he told me.
I went to leave but then he stopped me and said
I could get store credit, if I wanted, for someone else’s self but not for my own.
‘But I gave up my old self so long ago, I’ve lost the receipt, surely.
He shrugged and so I faked to look for it in my bag,
Jingling the keys in my pocket, stalling.
Then another girl came in and in that moment of her asking
The shopkeeper, my self-keeper, a question, I jumped over the counter.
He looked at me, startled, so instinctually, I punched him in the face
And grabbed the glass jar with my old self in it, cradling it.
I started to run, leaving only the particles of dust I kicked up behind me.
And I ran really fast.’
Mary’s mouth is open, she’s looking at me like I just told her Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
‘What do you think?’ I ask.
‘I love it!’
‘Good,’ I say. ‘Me too.’
I take it with me and wait in line to check it out. I wonder if I’ve lost my old self already. If all this misguided, seemingly hopeless quest for love has unfairly warped the person I was. A girl without hope is not the girl I was. I look down at Mary and see her little sparkling eyes look back at me, knowingly, and it makes me so sad I have an overwhelming desire to make s’mores and drink Brandy Alexanders. I want to cry in the aisle as I wait to check out the book but that would be crazy. Crying is for sheep, I tell myself.
Just as we pass through the exit I hear Hans calling after me, ‘Hey!’
When I turn around he’s slightly shifty and out of breath, which concerns me because we’re only a foot from the exit. He didn’t have to run far.
‘Sorry, I’m a bit nervous,’ he says.
I feel hot again.
‘Haha,’ I say. ‘Don’t be silly. We’re all nervous!’ Once I say it, I wish I never did. It doesn’t even make sense.
‘I wanted to give you my cell,’ he says, holding out a torn piece of paper with his cell scribbled on it. ‘If you want to get a coffee sometime, give me a call.’
I must look really shocked because his face searches mine for a response but I’m expressionless. I can’t remember the last time I was asked out. Then I remember that I’ve never been asked out. I look around me, checking over my right shoulder, then my left. Peering up at the security cameras.
‘Am I on Candid Camera?’ I say. ‘Am I being punk’d?’
Mary kicks my ankle, and starts shaking her head, No.
Hans is smiling, hopeful, thank God.
‘Oh,’ I say, finally. ‘I’d love to!’ I pause. Waiting. Wondering if I’ve said enough before I add, ‘You mean, like, for a date?’
‘I guess so, yeah.’
Mary’s smile is so wide it looks like it’s going to rip her face open. Mine is mixed, unbelieving that this is really happening.
‘Yay!’ Mary creaks. ‘A date!!!’
‘Talk to you soon, then,’ he says. ‘Are you free tomorrow night?’
‘Yeah, okay,’ I say. ‘Saturday night! It’s a date!’
When he walks back into the library, I turn to Mary and she’s as happy as I am. We cover our mouths with intoxicating excitement. It feels like I’m hovering. Maybe that’s why my mom always looks like she’s an inch from the floor. At last, my future is looking as bright as I’d always imagined it would be. On our walk back to the car, I panic, reciting the words he uttered and entertain the thought that maybe I just made them up. Then doubt and skepticism creep in; I wonder why he’d be free on Saturday night (overlooking, of course, the fact that I was, too). I worry with each step I take towards the car if I’ll be interesting enough on our date, if I’ll have enough to say. And then, as if she knew what I was thinking, Mary comes out with, ‘You’re going to have so much fun!’
As we pull into our driveway – an adventure in itself quite nerve-wracking as we have too small a space to park two cars as well as it being on a hill, doubling its precariousness – I see Milk coming out of his house. ‘Hey!’ I scream, trying to get his attention as I frantically roll down the window. ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’
He looks over and smiles. ‘I hear you,’ he says as he walks over. ‘I’m coming.’ I try to get out too fast and forget to unfasten my seatbelt so it whips me back a few times. I finally unbuckle it and struggle out through a tight space, mindful not to bang the side of my door on our mailbox. All of a sudden I’m dancing and head banging and screaming, ‘Wahoo!!! I got asked out on a date! I got asked out on a real, real, real date! I didn’t even have to make him ask me or do anything too tricky to make him feel he had to! He just did it! On his own accord! Isn’t that exciting?’
‘So who’s this lucky guy?’ he asks. His smile is returning in slow measure. He drops his head to the left while keeping his eyes on me.
‘This amazing guy who works at the library. He’s smart, charming, handsome, handsome, handsome! I think he could be the one. Like, the one, the one.’
‘See?’ he says, looking down, kicking the pebbles in the concrete around. ‘I’ve always told you you’d be fine.’
Mary starts yelling from inside the back seat.
‘You forgot me!’ she says. ‘You always forget me!’
‘That’s not true,’ I say defensively, unbuckling her. ‘Absolutely not true.’
She rolls her eyes in habit and runs over to Milk, who embraces her as if he’s shielding her from harm. She spears my heart with devil eyes but then smiles to relieve me. I see an extra car parked on the street outside our house. It’s a pale blue Honda Civic, and I know what it means: Delina and Julia are over visiting Mom.
‘When is this big date?’ he asks.
‘Tomorrow night!’
‘Can Milk look after me while you go on your date?’ Mary asks.
‘I think your mom will want to,’ I say. ‘She never gets to see you.’
‘Please?’ Mary begs Milk, clinging on to his leg. ‘We can dress up as fairies!’
‘I can’t, Mary,’ he says. ‘I’ve got plans.’
‘With who?’ I question.
‘I’m going to see The Pixies with this girl.’
‘Is she pretty?’ Mary asks.
‘Yeah, she is.’
All of a sudden, I’m feeling very jealous but I don’t know why. I mean, it’s Milk for Christ’s sake.
‘Oh, cool,’ I lie.
‘Mary, come on. Let’s go in.’ I give Milk a hug goodbye and I release before he does because I hate to be the one who’s let go of first; I’m changing. His sweater is so soft I lift my hand up to rub his sleeve but then realize it’s weird, this rubbing, so I stop.
‘Bye, Milk!’ Mary yells even though he’s right in front of her.
When we approach the front door, I can hear the pop of a champagne bottle. Party time. I love when Delina and Julia come over. The lights are on downstairs and Frank Sinatra is playing, which means my mom is in a great mood. This day keeps getting better.
‘I hear the footsteps of a darling!’ Delina yells as she throws her head out of the kitchen doorway.
‘What a beautiful child you are,’ she says. ‘And you know what they say?’ She looks me up and down and pats my ass. ‘A girl can
never be too rich or too thin.’
‘Amen!’ Julia and my mom yell out from the kitchen.
‘Aren’t you hot?’ Mary asks Delina because she’s in a coat despite this LA weather.
‘I’m always hot, darling! But I’m fat right now so can’t bear to take off this jacket.’
‘Oh,’ Mary says.
‘I have the absolute best news to tell you!’ I scream, colorful by osmosis.
‘Well stop being such a pussy tease, darling, and tell us!’ Delina says.
My mother is making a roast with a cigarette hanging from her lips. ‘It’s like Shabbat without the headache,’ she says. Even when her hair is messy, there’s something mysterious about her. She’s like a dark-haired Brigitte Bardot, chopping potatoes with a knife that looks too big for her.
‘I have been asked out on a date,’ I say.
‘A real one!’ Mary highlights.
‘Mamacita’s gonna get some dick!’ Julia says, clapping her hands together. She’s got lipstick on her teeth but I don’t want to make her feel self-conscious by telling her.
‘Positively delicious!’ Delina adds.
I want my mom to ask me about him. I want her to put the knife down and ask me about this date, but she doesn’t.
‘His name is Hans Tuckerman,’ I tell them, and then it turns into what it always does when you come home to spill yourself over a new potential love: you google him, find everything you can, and ask them all what they think. Julia has a habit of taking the image on the phone and putting it up next to you, so she can imagine what it’s going to be like when you’re together.
‘There’s a vibe, you know, between faces,’ she says. ‘You have to look like you could go together and you know,’ she stops to wave her hand between the picture and me, squinting her eyes as if to laser her focus, ‘this is cute. I really think this could be something.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ I say. ‘It was just so serendipitous, our meeting today. Had I not gone looking for smart guys at the library, I never would have met him. It’s a sign.’
Mary scrunches the space between her nose and forehead. ‘That doesn’t sound like a sign to me.’ I hold my finger up to her and purse my lips, implying to zip it quick, to which she responds by sticking out her tongue.
‘Mom?’ I ask. ‘Did you hear any of that?’
‘Yeah,’ she says distractedly. ‘He seems great, just play it cool. Don’t fuck it up!’
The problem is that I don’t know anyone who plays it cool. My mother does when she’s in her Dorothy Parker mode, despite my knowing that she secretly wants to be eaten alive by romance, and then fails miserably when she slips back into her neurosis. I guess Julia and Delina play it cool, but then again, they don’t date anyone.
‘Darling!’ Delina says, pawing at the air to keep my attention. ‘This new date sounds fabulous and I have a good feeling about it, but you know—’ she stops to look at Julia ‘—we want to know why you’ve never dated Milk? He’s really quite a catch, don’t you think?’
‘They had a bit of an incident a while ago,’ my mother interrupts.
‘It was just something that was embarrassing that happened and it made it pretty clear we wouldn’t be able to be together. Case closed,’ I say before anyone else has a chance to chime in.
‘All right, then! I just had to ask. Anyway, there’s a book,’ Delina says, ‘called The Rules, and it says, in a nutcase – I know, I know, it’s “in a nutshell” but isn’t nutcase so much better? – that you can’t let the first date last more than five hours, that you have to end the date first, and that you are never, ever, ever allowed to call a man first. Oh, and be busy. Always be busy.’
‘Busy I agree with!’ my mother shouts between puffs as she stirs and prongs juicy chicken. When she opens the oven to test if it’s done cooking, the gust of heat fogs up her glasses. Each time, she’s exasperated by it, as if she didn’t anticipate it despite it happening every time. She huffs, temporarily blind, wipes her lenses with her T-shirt – flashing those around her – all the while never letting anything drop except for the ash from her cigarette. She’s the perfect woman.
‘But Delina,’ I argue. ‘You know how I hate rules.’ I start dragging my heels along the floor and pout my lower lip in emphasis and throw my body to the wall in a dramatic display of emotion: think drag-queen impression of a diva. I’m clawing the wall now and freeze mid-climb. I’m frozen but turn my head out just enough to see if anyone notices but no one does, so I drop it.
‘And look where not following the rules has gotten you!’ Julia and Delina say smugly, almost in unison.
‘But what about you both?’ I counter, testy. ‘You live life the way you feel you want to live it. It’s definitely not by the rules.’
‘The rules of dating are the same for everyone. You have to know them to break them,’ Julia says. ‘You have to understand why they work so you can also understand when they don’t. It’s the same for a modern artist. It’s not all just splish splash, you know. They’re trained painters, can paint the shit out a realistic portrait, but only go off the edge because they know where the lines are supposed to be. Do you get me?’
I nod because what else can I do?
‘Just don’t be too available,’ my mother pipes in, ironically. ‘Men get turned off when you’re too available.’ To this Mary gasps, amused, with a ‘get a load of this’ gesture.
‘You know,’ I start, unable to let it go. ‘All this advice is so confusing! I just want it to work out . . .’
‘Men can sense desperation,’ Delina interjects, sniffing the air. ‘Don’t act like you want it too much.’
‘Are you both dating now?’ I ask Delina and Julia. ‘It’s been a while since . . .’
‘Honey, I don’t need a man to keep myself open,’ Julia says. ‘I’m still in the “care” stage since my operation.’
‘What does that mean?’ Mary says.
Julia looks to us adults as if to exclude Mary, talking in whisper but still loud enough for her to hear. ‘Three times a day, I use my vibrator, just to keep the hole open.’
‘Oh yes,’ Delina chips in. ‘I had to do that for three years.’
‘You masturbated every day for three years?’ I ask, realizing I’m doing it way less than other women. I can’t tell if that makes me feel better or worse. ‘Or else what would happen?’
‘We’d close up, darling!’ Delina says as Julia laughs, as if it’s an inside joke, literally.
‘What will close up?’ Mary asks.
‘Don’t worry, mamacita. You will understand one day,’ Julia says. A nod emanates from my mother in the corner as she cools and tastes a hot potato. ‘You just have to do whatever you need to in order to keep yourself open.’
And that’s when it hits me: we’re just trying to keep ourselves open. We’re trying to survive, to keep our faith in the idea that everything works out the way it’s supposed to despite the mountain of setbacks and disappointments we face.
When we sit down to eat, we do an obscure version of a prayer. Delina, Julia and my mother link hands and Mary and I follow. Delina leads.
‘Thank you, Mother Nature, for this glorious food. This pesky roast and sumptuous feast to fill our bellies as well as our hearts. Salute!’
‘Salute!’ we all say in unison.
‘So tell us a little more about this Romeo,’ Julia inquires with beady eyes, smiling devilishly.
‘He’s a Leo,’ I say first, because I’m in front of two astrologers and I know it will tell them ninety-nine per cent of what they need to know. Given I’m a Sagittarian, he’s a good match for me. Our love is pretty much written in the stars. Well, Aries are the best fit for me, but beggars can’t be choosers. I’m naturally this capricious. As expected, they ohh and they ahh until my mother says that my dad was a Leo.
They’re liking the sound of this guy, I can tell by the way they chew their food and look at each other in between gulps. I tell them about the swagger in his walk, the way
his shirt was halfway out of his pants, his unruly hair. Oh, and that moment when he asked me out, how he literally ran after me just like they do in the movies! And how he had little beads of sweat around his temples, which was an obvious sign that he liked me and was nervous.
Delina, at one point – while my mother is giving Mary an angel halo made out of her napkin and Julia paints lipstick on her – leans over to me and says, ‘Just keep telling yourself that whatever you need to know will be revealed to you when you need to know it. Just show up on your date with that pretty smiley face of yours. The rest isn’t up to you.’
‘Thanks, Delina,’ I say. ‘You always know what to say.’ I stop, meddle absentmindedly with my plate of food, bringing green beans and peas to the left and the meat separated to the right. Compartmentalizing. ‘I just want it to make sense, all this blind chasing. I’m sick of being crazy.’
‘Why be sane?’ she whispers. ‘It’s a mad, mad world.’
*
When I wake up on Saturday morning, I have the world’s largest pimple on my chin. It’s not just a normal, coverable, concealable pimple. It’s the kind that could be given its own name. In fact, when Brenda eventually sees it, she names it Alice. Alice, my almost twin. Alice, the biggest pimple in the world on the day of my big date. Alice, the cunt.
I’m in the bathroom for probably an hour examining it.
‘Don’t touch it!’ my mother says as she walks by. ‘You’ll make it worse.’ When she comes over to take a look, she bursts out laughing.
‘Hey!’ I pout. ‘Oh God, now you’re making me feel worse. This is just terrible.’ I cup my head in my hands and fake cry, but each time I look back in the mirror, my eyes are dry. Not even a tear to reflect this aching, breaking heart!
‘Oh stop being so dramatic,’ my mother says. ‘It’s just the biggest blemish I’ve ever seen!’ She slaps her thigh mid laugh this time, really getting a kick out of the misery I’ve settled into on this dreary Californian morning. All day I pace. I touch every strand of carpet and every pane of wood throughout the house, hoping that by the end of it, by the time I get back to my room and my mirror, it will have only been just a horrible nightmare. I pray to all sorts of gods in the hopes that one will have pity on my unfortunate situation, but alas, no gods do. It’s just this fucking pimple and me.
The Optimist Page 23