I go to her. “What's wrong? Mom.”
“I stopped and checked my messages on the way,” she says. “Mrs. Shiley died.”
“Oh, God, I'm so sorry,” I say. Mrs. Shiley is one of my mom's patients. She has—or had, I guess—some series of liver and kidney problems I never really got the full story on, but for various reasons she was in the hospital a lot for different surgeries and she had a lot of complications that would mean she had to stick around the hospital for a long time for recovery. Mom just loved her. “What happened?” I say.
“Stevenson was filling in for me on a surgery for her and she died on the table,” I say.
“Shit.”
“Maybe if I'd been there...”
I sit down next to her and wrap my arms around her.
“I thought maybe you and I could just...hide in here from everything tonight,” she says. “We could steal a bottle of wine from the dining room.”
“Ha, yeah?”
“Sure.” She pets my hair. “Sound good?”
I am the worst person in the world for thinking why couldn't she have died yesterday?
Especially since I might have blown off my mom yesterday too. Mara would have killed me if I'd missed rehearsal.
“I can't,” I say. “I'm so sorry, I have this...it's really important and I promised I'd be there.”
“What is, honey?”
“I...” Shit. “I can't tell you.”
“What? Sugar, you can tell me anything.”
“No, I know I can, but this...it's not mine to tell. I'm kind of helping someone with something and I can't...it's a private thing.”
“It's not your sister, is it?”
“No.”
“Sugar...is everything okay?”
“Everything's fine,” I say. “I need you to trust me, okay?”
“Of course, baby.” She hugs me. “I'll always trust you.”
I rest my chin on her shoulder.
“Maybe Bekah will hang out with you,” I say.
“Yeah, maybe.” Mom pats my back. “Sure. That could be nice.”
Chapter 7
Valley Falls is about an hour and a half away by car, and Mara and I don't want to walk to the parking lot together, so she shows up a little before I do, our costumes neatly folded in brown paper bags. Mara's shifting from foot to foot when I walk up. “What's wrong?” I say.
“Nothing, get in the car.”
“Jeez, all right.” We climb in and she starts driving.
“Does your mom suspect anything?” she says.
“No, I got my sister to tell her that I have a horrible headache and if she opens the door to check on me it'll make it so much worse.” This seems less likely to get Mara to yell at me than telling her that my mother knows I'm up to something but trusts me enough not to push.
“Does your sister suspect anything?”
“Well yeah, but she has no idea what.”
“Do you think she'll figure it out?”
“Have you met my sister?”
“From a distance.”
“Well, trust me.”
She glances at me. “What's with you?”
“What?”
“You're staring at me.”
“Uh, what's with you? You're all amped up. Is it Tristan?”
She shakes his head. “He's fine, he's in recovery. Everything went great. Aaaand now I feel like an asshole for being pissed about other stuff when that went so well.”
I poke her in the leg. “So what is it? Is it Roooory.”
She smacks my hand.
“When do I get to meet her, anyway?”
“When do I get to meet your mother?”
“Yeah, 'cause that's the same.” She doesn't say anything. “You really want to meet my mom?” I say.
“Yeah, sure. You talk about her like she's so amazing, so...”
“You can meet my mom. Go up to her and say hi. Ask her if she wants to dance.”
“Does she know how to lead?”
“I mean, probably.”
She laughs.
It's so easy, is the thing. I'm so used to worrying over every word I say, of trying to come off certain ways or not come off certain ways...and with her it's different. I've known from the second I met her that she thinks I'm uncool and that I annoy the shit out of her, and if you'd asked me in advance I would have said that would be the most stressful thing imaginable, but I guess there's just a freedom in that that I'm not used to.
And I am uncool and annoying, honestly. It's not all I am, but it's part of me. So it's real.
But, in reality, it's not as if she's really choosing to hang out even though she knows that about me. She needed to muscle through eleven days so she did. And after this...well, I'm only here for four more days anyway.
Mara leans on her horn and curses at the car in front of us, then she laughs at herself a little and rolls her eyes. She glances sideway at me, smiles.
Ah, fuck me.
“Rory is demanding,” Mara says abruptly.
“Well, she's a starlet, right?”
“She thinks that when she comes I should just drop everything for her because she can't stay long and it took her forever to get here but like...I still have my job whether or not she's here. And I still have, y'know.” She gestures to me. “Extracurriculars.”
“Well, after tonight you'll have more free time.”
“I don't really want more time with her, to be honest,” Mara says. “She's just...I don't know. She's so serious. Not in a relationshippy way, just in an everything way. Nothing's ever just lighthearted.”
“I'm sorry,” I say, “Are you under the impression that you're a lighthearted person?”
She glares at me.
“See, right there!” I say. “Look how you respond to that. How is that lighthearted?”
“Okay, so maybe that's the problem,” she says. “I'm too intense to be with someone intense.”
“Be with sounds really relationshippy.”
She makes a face. “Yeah.” She watches the road. “So what about you, do you have a boyfriend at home?”
“No, I've never really dated. I worked really hard at school and stuff and with swimming and it just...kind of all happened without me.”
“So you're a virgin?”
“Yeah.”
She whistles.
“What!”
“Are you asexual?”
“I don't think so, no.”
“Then aren't you curious?”
“I don't know. I guess. But it's never been like...something that I'm dying for. It's not like, y'know, in the songs you guys dance too where if they don't have sex with someone they'll just die right this second.”
“It's not really like that,” Mara says. “Music just does that because...other music does that. So then it has to.”
“Well, what if that's why people are having sex?” I say. “Because other people are doing it?”
“You sound really asexual right now,” she says. “I know some asexual people. I'm not gonna judge.”
“It's just something that was always going to be there,” I say. “Sex isn't going anywhere. It's not going to run away without me if I prioritize other stuff for a while.”
“What is it exactly that you're prioritizing?”
“I guess...I guess helping people,” I say, and it sounds so stupid and I can't believe I said that and I'm ready for her to laugh at me.
She says, “That's pretty cool.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure, I'm definitely benefitting from it.” She shrugs. “Okay, fine, no sex, but no dating at all? No, y'know, holding hands at the movies with Trevor?”
“Trevor?”
“I don't know, sure.”
“Well he wouldn't be Trevor, first of all. He would be like...Elijah or Jonah or Adam.”
“Or Josh,” she says.
“Theoretically, yeah.”
“So you always just assumed you'd be with a Jewish guy?”
“I don't know, yeah,” I say.
“So are you like really religious?”
“No,” I say. “It's just...I don't know. Tradition. Values.”
She wrinkles her eyebrows at me.
I say, “I'm not saying it's foolproof or something. But when I meet a Jewish guy...it's like I already have a cheatsheet on him. I don't have to go through some of the early, like, mating rituals, because I can assume some stuff about how he was raised and what's important to him.”
“Josh is Jewish and he's an asshole.”
“Yeah, like I said. Not foolproof.” I pause. “But even if he is an asshole, he probably thinks education is important and wants kids.”
“So all Jewish people think those things?”
“No, of course not. Quit being difficult.”
“And those are what's important to you?” she says. “Really? Education and babies? How old are you again?”
“Seventeen.”
“You sound like you're sixty.”
“And you,” I say, “Really need to stop acting like it's attractive to be casually antisemitic, because I'm here to tell you it's really not one of your better qualities.”
“Oh, come on, I'm not antisemitic.”
“Okay,” I say.
“What?”
“I said okay.”
“No, come on, don't do that passive-aggressive thing. Don't get sulky. Would boy-Sugar do that? No, boy-Sugar would yell at me. Get in character, come on.”
I take a deep breath. “I try to point out some positive things that most Jewish people believe, and you point to an example of a Jewish guy who's an asshole. How is that not being antisemitic?”
“He's the one who's the asshole! Maybe he's being antisemitic.”
“That doesn't make any sense.”
“Sure it does!” she says. “He's going against all these positive things about Jews. Therefore. Antisemitic.”
“I didn't say they were about Jews,” I say. “Goddamn, I just...I am not used to having to explain this stuff, okay?”
“Because you're from a bubble.”
“How is that different from you coming here from Queens and oh it's so different here? Why is it that I can't give you shit about coming from your bubble?”
“Because that wasn't our choice,” she says. “We didn't self-segregate. You guys lock yourselves into gated communities and shit.”
“Are you joking?” I say. “Do you not understand where you're working? Do you get the history of this place?” She doesn't say anything. “It's not because we wanted some exclusive club for just us, all right?” I say. “Gentiles wouldn't let us vacation with them, wouldn't let us go to the same resorts, so we had to make our own. And now you've got a good job getting paid by a Jewish guy and you're going to talk shit about them?”
“Can you, at any time, point to a place where I've actually said anything, and you haven't just like...pulled it out of what I actually said?”
“You need to stop acting like I don't know anything about anything,” I say.
“This is a strange conversation to be having right after I was complaining about someone else being too intense,” she says.
“Yeah, well, good thing we're not a couple.”
“Sure we are. Just without any of the good parts.”
“Okay, well I never claimed I wasn't intense, or like I'm here to be some perfect...yin to your yang or whatever.”
“Honey, that was never on the table.”
I sigh.
“I don't know why you haven't had a boyfriend,” she says. “You've got that firecracker thing going on. You've got long hair. What's not to like?”
“I mean, I'm not exactly...” I gesture up and down myself. “Doing this to attract boys. Or if I am it isn't really working.”
“Doing what?”
“Yelling at people in cars, I guess.”
“Guys don't like you?”
“I honestly have no idea,” I say. “I've never paid attention to it.”
“Well you're not...” she says, and then shakes her head head.
I say, “No, what, I'm not what?”
“You're not...eh. I can't explain this to you. You're a baby.”
I lean back and pout some, to prove that I'm not a baby, I guess.
She groans. “You're girl hot, okay? Not boy hot.”
“So what, I look like a girl?”
“No, that's not what I...forget it. You'll learn. Maybe.” She gives me this sideways smile.
We sit in silence for a while until she pulls onto the road Valley Falls is on and I feel this kicking in my stomach (can you get pregnant from sexual tension) and I feel like I might die of how nervous I am. “This is going to be a disaster,” I say. “Everything in my life that's ever led me here was a terrible idea.”
“You're gonna do fine,” she says. “We couldn't have practiced any more.”
“I mean, I could have been practicing for twenty years like you have.”
“Eh. Eighteen. I was a late walker.”
“Do you really think they're going to believe I'm a boy?” I say.
She laughs. “Well, after this conversation I'd believe you have that dominant thing going on.”
“Mm. Yeah.”
“Just channel that.”
“But that's not...” I start, but I don't know how to finish it. That's not me? Of course it is. That's me, and that's the problem, because I'm not a boy? What would that accomplish?
I just need to embrace these sides of myself. Draw them out. Be just the boyish parts of me and nothing else.
I think about Rory, and her cute spiky hair, her piercings. The tabloids always trying to guess her sexual orientation. No one's ever tried to guess mine.
“We're here,” Mara says.
I can't exactly go in with her while I'm dressed like a girl and then suddenly appear onstage as a guy without stirring up some suspicion, so Mara goes in without me to make sure everything's set up correctly and get into her dress and I get changed scrunched down behind her car. Sundress off, suit pants on. White ruffly shirt. Jacket. Tie, just draped around my collar for Mara to fix. I didn't put on makeup today, but I scrub under my eyes with a tissue anyway just in case there's any mascara leftover from dinner last night.
I put my hair up tight on top of my head and slip on the hat. I check myself in the car's side mirror.
I should have done something about my eyebrows. Drawn them in heavier, or something. Are people going to be able to see me closely enough for that to matter? They're going to be down on the floor and I'll be up on the stage.
Nobody is going to believe this. Everyone's going to say, I came here to see a very good and very normal mambo, what is this weird drag show about a girl who can't dance?
I take a deep breath and head into the hotel. There's an old couple ahead of me and I hold the door open for them.
“Thank you, young man,” the old lady says.
“Really?” I say, before I can stop myself from a. answering ridiculously b. answering at all when my boy training did not include a plan for me speaking, so she looks appropriately confused and uncomfortable but who cares? I passed for a couple seconds from six inches away. Stands to reason I can pass for two minutes from twenty feet, right?
I ask a waiter for directions, and whatever gender he thinks I am is less interesting to him than getting me out of his way, so I'll call that a win too. I trace my way down some hallways until I get to the door for backstage. There's someone setting up music in one wing, and I look across the stage to the other wing and Mara's there. She's looking in a mirror, fluffing up her hair and slipping in her earrings. She's wearing this red sequined dress and satin heels. She looks like someone out of an old movie, like she's going to drape herself against a lamp post with a microphone and that hair and sing something low and slow.
I stand there like a statue while she puts on her lipstick. I keep trying to move or to take my eyes off her or to do anything and I'm just...I'm so scared
that if I do something, she'll notice me staring at her, and she'll see me like this and she'll laugh or freak out about how I don't look like a boy and everything will just be over.
She sets the lipstick down and studies herself in the mirror, and I, well, man up and go around backstage to her wing. She turns around when she hears my footsteps and starts to say something, and stops.
I twist my hands.
“Wow,” she breathes eventually.
“Really?”
“I...um, you look amazing. Oh, here.” She shakes herself off a little and comes over to tie my tie. She doesn't do it up like Tristan did, reaching from behind me—she stands in front of me, our toes together, her wrist resting on my chest.
She slides the knot up to my throat. I swallow.
“There,” she whispers.
“I really look okay?”
“Yeah, you...um, hang on, I brought you something.” She takes my wrist and pulls me over to her mirror and takes some makeup out of her bag. She holds up this weird black spongey thing.
“What's that?”
“Hold still,” she says, and she dips it in some brown makeup and stipples it around my jawline and above my lip. “There.”
I look in the mirror. “That looks fake as hell.”
“Yeah, it looks dumb close up, but it really works from a distance.” She licks her finger and dabs at a spot next to my mouth. “Perfect.” She squeezes my wrists. “Are you ready?”
“I feel like I could do anything,” I say before I can stop myself.
The house lights go out. I hear the mumble of the crowd for the first time. Were they always there? Why didn't I notice them before?
They start applauding.
“Come on,” Mara says. “It's time.”
We go out into the dark and get in position at center stage. I'm stationed behind her, ready to do the thing where I run my fingers down her side, if I don't throw up first. I can see little bumps of people sitting at their tables. Mostly old and white, like Sideling, but other than that it's hard to make out anything about them. How well do they know dance? Are they going to notice if I mess up? Do they already know something's wrong by the way I walked or the way I'm standing?
Mara reaches back and wraps her arm around my neck and we wait for the lights and the music. “You can do this,” she whispers.
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