Big Mouth Ugly Girl

by Joyce Carol Oates

  This was so unfair. He’d asked me my opinion, he must’ve known what I might say.

  (Or, maybe: I’d been thinking Matt would naturally agree with me. He was disgusted, too, with the lawsuit—wasn’t he?)

  Ugly Girl was nudging in here. Ugly Girl liked a good fight she was morally certain she should win.

  “Matt, you’d asked me weeks ago what I thought about the lawsuit. You said please to tell you the truth! Don’t think I haven’t been feeling bad about it, too. I can see what it’s doing to you, and that’s why—”

  “You don’t know what it’s doing to me, Ursula. And you don’t know what it’s doing to my parents.”

  This was shocking, it was so unfair. It was inaccurate, too: In his e-mails and on the phone and in conversations Matt had told me how the lawsuit was “tearing me up”—“making people hate me all the more”—“driving my dad and mom totally crazy.” When Matt said these things, I listened sympathetically because I didn’t judge him, but I’d always had my own thoughts about the lawsuit. I’d only just kept quiet about them.

  Maybe I should’ve kept quiet now. But Ugly Girl was feeling betrayed, tricked.

  “The lawsuit just seems wrong to me. It just seems—well, like making things worse. It’s nothing I would want to do, maybe that’s all I’m saying. Matt? See? I’m a hothead too. But then I figure, these things backfire.”

  Matt shrugged. I couldn’t believe this: He was furious with me for telling the truth. And he’d asked me to tell him this truth!

  I said, “People get the wrong idea, a lawsuit like this is being done for just—well, money. And so much money.”

  Now Matt did turn to me, and I saw that his eyes were brimming with tears, and his mouth was trembling.

  I couldn’t believe the shocking thing Matt said to me, in a voice bitter and heavy with sarcasm—“My dad isn’t rich like yours, Ursula. Maybe the Donaghys need money.”

  And he practically trotted up the trail, like he couldn’t bear to be anywhere close to me. I considered turning around and going back down, waiting for him at the car, better yet getting a ride back to Rocky River somehow else, leaving him, but there was Pumpkin panting and looking clearly unhappy, aware of tension between Matt and me, so Pumpkin and I kept a slower pace, behind Matt, and I wondered if Matt was crying, if a boy could cry, out of hurt but also out of anger, the way girls do, though not Ugly Girl. I wiped at my eyes, annoyed that they were wet, it must’ve been caused by the March wind off the river for Ugly Girl doesn’t cry.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  NO E-MAILS AWAITING ME IN THE MORNING, posted by Your friend Matt during the night. No telephone calls. If Mom was listening, she must’ve been pleased. At school we sat at the same table for lunch, the misfits’ table, talking and even laughing (pretty convincingly, I thought) with the others. It was like a really painful game in which, though you’re losing, you have to keep playing your best because people are watching and expect a certain standard of performance from you.

  I didn’t cry. I would not cry.

  I would not give in, either.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  MATT WASN’T GOING TO GIVE IN.

  Feeling like a time bomb. A secret bomb, and nobody knows when it will explode because the clock’s hands have been broken off. Tick-tick-ticking inside. But you wouldn’t want to hold it against your ear, to hear that ticking.

  He’d lost her now. Ursula. Matt’s only friend.

  Still, he would not give in.

  He missed her. He missed their e-mail correspondence. Now he had no one. He missed calling her at midnight as he’d been doing, their digital watches so synchronized that Ursula lifted the receiver of her phone in the first nanosecond of the first ring.

  “Hi! It’s me.”

  “Hi.”

  They’d only been friends for a few weeks, but.

  They’d never held hands or kissed or . . . but.

  At school Matt wanted to shield his eyes from her. She was so tall, walked with such pride. He saw her blue eyes glance upon him with contempt. She was a person of integrity, he was a coward.

  She had no right to criticize his parents! People get the wrong idea, a lawsuit like this is being done for just money.

  He hated her.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “MATT, WHERE ARE YOU? IT’S TIME.”

  It was Matt’s mother calling him. Trying to make her voice bright, bubbly, “optimistic.”

  They were going to see Dr. Harpie. The “renowned” Dr. Harpie, whose office was at Park Avenue and 72nd Street, Manhattan. In Dr. Harpie’s best-selling Adolescents at Risk: Your Child and Depression it was stated: “Young depressives often take their cues from elder family depressants,” so it was important to shield an impressionable young person from adult depression, anxiety, and above all, “suicidal attitudes.”

  Matt’s mother hadn’t liked the happy face he’d drawn in Dr. Harpie’s book. “Is this your idea of a joke, Matt?” she’d asked him with a hurt smile. “If so, it isn’t funny. Under the circumstances.”

  An apology was expected. Matt laughed instead.

  * * *

  “Pumpkin. You can’t come with us, you’re too normal. No ‘suicidal attitudes.’”

  Before leaving, Matt checked his computer. No mail.

  It was humiliating. Matt’s mother insisted upon driving him into the city. “You don’t trust me to go alone, right?” Matt asked, and his mom said quickly, “Of course I trust you, Matt. But I’m expected to speak with Dr. Harpie too.”

  But you don’t know me. Not the first thing.

  No one except Ursula Riggs knew. That day in the preserve, by Rocky River Creek.

  Matt had agreed to see Dr. Harpie only because both his parents had put pressure on him. They claimed to be “very concerned” about him, and probably this was so, yet at the same time Matt guessed that seeing a psychiatrist was part of their legal strategy. Mr. Leacock had advised them. In the Donaghys’ lawsuit it would be impressive that Matthew had suffered such psychological distress that he was seeing a psychiatrist. A renowned specialist in troubled adolescents who has agreed to speak to the court.

  Matt was sullen and uncommunicative—“uncommunicative” was a term frequently used in Dr. Harpie’s book—on the drive into the city. He’d wanted to drive, of course, but his mom insisted she would drive, she “didn’t trust” his mood. Matt said sarcastically, “Meaning what, Mom? You think I might drive us into the Hudson River? Matricide-suicide?” Matt’s mother winced. She’d applied crimson lipstick to her mouth, but the skin around her mouth was white. “Jokes like that are not funny, Matt. You know better.”

  Sure I do. I know a lot better. But Big Mouth doesn’t give a damn.

  When they entered Dr. Harpie’s office, Matt suddenly balked and refused to stay. He told his astonished mother that he was leaving—“I’m out of here, Mom. This isn’t for me.” Matt’s mother seized his wrist with surprisingly strong fingers. “Matt, you are not leaving. You are not walking out of here, you have an appointment.”

  “It’s your appointment, Mom. You see him.”

  Matt took a deep breath. He had to say this, no matter how angry his father would be. “Dad, I’m sorry. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want you to sue.”

  Matt’s father stared at him. “Certainly we’re going to sue, Matt. It’s too late to change your mind. You’ve been slandered—libeled. We have been. It’s pointless even to discuss this.”

  “But we need to discuss it, Dad. Please.”

  “Matt, the lawsuit is under way. Motions have been filed. A court date has been named: April twenty-seventh. That’s coming up soon. Leacock doesn’t come cheaply, you know.” Matt’s father laughed, but it was a grim laugh.

  “I can’t go through with it. Giving more testimony, answering more questions . . . I want to forget it.”

  “Forget it? Never. We aren’t going to forget it.”

  “People are saying . . . the lawsuit only makes things worse. Some of them have th
e wrong idea we’re doing it for just—money.”

  “So, what’s wrong with money?” Matt’s father laughed again, and his laughter turned into coughing. His face, which had once been a handsome, fair-skinned face, with wide-set gray-green eyes like Matt’s, was now florid and slack. Mr. Donaghy had been away for several days and appeared not to have shaved for part of that time. Matt no longer knew if his father had an actual job or was already in a “transitional” state, and he couldn’t ask his mother, who refused to answer such questions. Alex had asked Matt the other evening, “Does Dad have a job now? Where does he go?” Matt felt sorry for his kid brother, who was beginning to share some of the anxieties of the household. “Leacock expects us to win in court. Any reasonably intelligent judge, hearing how the school district treated you, will find for us. Or the district may offer us a generous settlement. Either way we’ll be publicly vindicated.”

  “Dad, people around here are all hating us. At school—”

  “Ignore them. They’re your enemies. We’ll transfer you to a first-rate private school, starting next fall.”

  Matt knew that his parents were discussing a boarding school in Massachusetts. An expensive school especially geared for very bright adolescents with “problems of social adjustment.”

  Matt’s father continued, in a rapid, vehement voice, “Look what those people tried to do to you, Matt. Mr. Parrish—who should have protected you—handed you over to the police like a common criminal. The detectives were pressing you to confess. They wanted you to name coconspirators. You said so yourself. What if you’d broken down, given in? It was like a witch hunt. Without a shred of evidence, only the false, lying testimony of right-wing religious fanatics with a history of causing trouble in this community, they’ve destroyed our reputation.” Matt’s father paused, breathing quickly. “And we want our revenge.”

  Matt said, miserably, “But Dad, I don’t want revenge. I just want . . .”

  What? Things to be the way they’d been, before the arrest?

  But Matt wouldn’t have gotten to know Ursula Riggs in that case. He’d still have his old hypocrite friends.

  Matt’s father began to shout at him. “It doesn’t matter what you want, Matt. We’re in this too far to back out. My name is at stake—my integrity. Just remember, you got us into this—with your idiotic, childish sense of humor.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  UGLY GIRL, NO TEARS. AND NO LOOKING BACK.

  Never, never give in.

  Mom looked at me in this searching, almost-sympathetic way. Wanting to ask, maybe, why I wasn’t any longer talking and laughing on the phone later than she approved of, and why I was so quiet, a big horsy sullen girl with a pouty lower lip who’d been, until just recently, in a Good Mood.

  Wanting to ask what had happened between me and Matt Donaghy.

  “Ursula? There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  “Absolutely not, Mom. What about you?”

  I was getting mean again, the way I’d been before getting to know Matt, and before quitting the team. Scoring a point, scoring a wisecrack, scoring a blow like an elbow in the rib, an accidentally-on-purpose foul.

  Except with Lisa. I guess I loved Lisa. I’d overhear her talking with her ballet-class friends, these sweet little girls with such slender sparrow bodies, chests still flat, feet half the size of Ugly Girl’s. I’d want to hug Lisa and protect her. Not just from the dancing lessons and recitals and so much pressure on a girl so young, but from something else, headed for her, that I couldn’t name.

  She won’t be protected like Ugly Girl.

  But I was thinking, maybe I’d been wrong to speak to Matt as I had? Criticizing his parents. Sure, you can criticize your own parents, but you don’t want anyone else to criticize them.

  Three days had passed since our hike in Croton Park. When we’d driven back to Rocky River scarcely saying a word. He doesn’t like me. Well, I hate him! When Matt let me out, I hugged Pumpkin in a fierce, hard embrace. “Good-bye, Pum’kin! Be good.” Like it really was good-bye, I’d never see her again.

  Three days. I wasn’t eating much, I guess. I could tell I’d lost weight—my clothes were loose.

  So I logged onto my e-mail (where there was a message, but from Bonnie, and it wasn’t important) and typed this out, for Matt.

  Tues 3/20/01 11:43 PM

  20 mars

  dear matt—

  i’m sorry. i miss you.

  u r

  This pathetic little message required ten minutes to compose; then instead of clicking SEND I lost my nerve and clicked DELETE.

  Easier that way.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “URSULA, WHAT’S THAT? ‘TREASURE HUNT’?”

  Was it a joke? A trick? My hand turned the stiff piece of paper, which had been stuck into the crack of my locker door at school. Eveann and I stared at it, mystified. It was about the size of a dollar bill, black construction paper with sparkling gold lettering:

  TREASURE HUNT COUPON. FOR U R ONLY.

  Go to Library.

  Turn left.

  Below farthest-left window,

  2nd shelf.

  At Rocky River High there was an atmosphere of tension. It had to do with the Donaghys’ lawsuit, and people taking sides, and Matt continuing to attend classes, stubborn, and seemingly indifferent to hostility, but it also had to do with an interview Reverend Brewer had given in a local paper, charging Rocky River school authorities with hiring “morally unfit teachers” (Brewer didn’t name any names, but it was obvious he was referring to Mr. Steiner) and “coddling teenaged terrorists” (still campaigning against Matt). It was a long, rambling interview, allegedly about the injustice of Reverend Brewer being sued, and having to start a legal defense fund among his congregation and in the community, since the Rocky River School District was declining to pay his legal expenses. And his daughters Muriel and Miriam, who’d only “done their duty as Christian U.S. citizens,” were subject to sarcasm and hostility from classmates and teachers both, and in danger of not graduating with their class.

  You could try to ignore Reverend Brewer, but there he was: in your face.

  Brewer had the moon face of his twin daughters, but he was tough-looking as a Marine sergeant, with creased skin, a few strands of wirelike hair on his head, and an angry squint like somebody staring into the sun. He’d moved to Westchester County twenty-two years ago, he said, to establish the Apostles of Jesus in a mission “in the very heart of the Antichrist,” out of private funds.

  Antichrist? Did that mean Jews? Or—anybody Reverend Brewer took a dislike to?

  So, finding this “coupon” in my locker, I halfway thought it might have something to do with Brewer. Muriel and Miriam avoided me, as I avoided them, but playing weird tricks was exactly the kind of thing they might do.

  Still, I was too curious about the “treasure hunt coupon” not to follow instructions. I went to the library; turned left; back below the farthest-left window there were bookshelves for oversized books, atlases of the world, and slipped in among them was a book in a wrapper lettered in the same sparkly gold.

  IF U ARE UR THIS IS FOR U

  I laughed. This was like a kids’ game!

  I pulled off the wrapping paper, and the book was Great Twentieth Century Drawings. It was a book I’d been browsing in when Matt and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art one Sunday afternoon and spent time in the bookstore.

  Tears stung my eyes. Matt had bought this for me!

  Inside the front cover was his note:

  I grabbed the book and ran from the library, and located Matt (whose schedule I’d memorized) just headed downstairs for history class. I was so excited, I grabbed his arm, and his hand closed over mine. “Oh Matt—thanks!” We were sort of stumbling on the stairs, bumping into people. I was almost crying, or maybe was crying, and Matt was just grinning at me. “I hope you like it, Ursula.” I said thanks again, and Matt was holding my hand in his like he didn’t want to let it go, and people were annoyed
because we were blocking the traffic flow on the stairs, but some of them were looking amused, like they knew all about us, and this just confirmed their suspicions. I felt my face burn, so exposed. I laughed, and backed away. “See you after school, Matt?”

  Matt called after me, “I’ll be there.”

  We went to the Gypsy Horse Café. And afterward, for two hours we just walked.

  Matt told me about quarreling with his father, how he hated the lawsuit himself, he’d always hated it, and he was contemplating just refusing to cooperate any longer with their lawyer, and refusing to testify in court on April 27—“And maybe that will end it.”

  I said, “You’d still have to live with your father, Matt. It might not be so easy.”

  We got to talking about our fathers. I found myself telling him how I’d overheard Dad talking about my size, how I’d been hurt. “Because he was right. Dad always is right.”

  But Matt was shaking his head. He didn’t agree.

  “You’re beautiful, Ursula. Not like other girls but—in your own way. Special.”

  I was blushing, with a fierce painful heat.

  Beautiful? Ugly Girl?

  “Don’t make a face, Ursula. I’m serious.”

  “I’m not making a face, this is my face.”

  I laughed, but Matt didn’t join me. He knew what I was doing, making nervous fun of myself. But he wouldn’t join in.

  “Around school, the way you carry yourself, you look like—well, some Olympic athlete. You have a terrific smile, and a sense of humor almost as weird as mine.” Matt was talking slowly, almost stumblingly, with an uncertain smile, not knowing what he was saying. My heart was beating so quickly, I could scarcely breathe. “People are afraid of you because you can be sarcastic, but they respect you, for sure.” Matt touched my shoulder, and my hair, the first time he’d ever touched me like that, and a sensation of warmth spread through me, but I was afraid, and in danger of bursting into high-pitched giggles, and stepped away. I can pretend that didn’t happen. Maybe it was an accident?