5
The Fiskes’ house was enormous, three stories, and old. In the front yard there stood two towering oak trees and a row of rhododendrons in full bloom. We drove up a rock driveway to the back of the house and parked next to a silver Saab in front of a garage, built, judging by the small size, with horse carriages in mind, not wide-bodied cars like my father’s Corolla. The garage was used by Mrs. Fiske for painting miniature portraits of her dogs, Chelsea and Spencer—named before these were common names for children—and her cat, Kit Kit. This artistic hobby Juniper had let slip in the phone conversation with my mother, who’d related it to me as if it was the key to understanding the delicate psyche of Juniper Fiske.
We used the back door and lugged suitcases into the kitchen, a large, high-ceilinged room with oversize skylights that made it greenhouse-stuffy even with the cranked-up air conditioning. Piper Fiske was only a few months younger than I was, but she seemed much older, at least a year or two. She skulked down the servants’ stairs and slouched into the room, holding a copy of Naked Lunch close to her chest. She smiled at me in a practiced way that made me embarrassed about my socks, navy blue cable knit that my mother bought for me in three-packs packaged with sticky labels and little black hangers, as if anyone would ever hang them up. It was too hot for socks, and even I knew that I shouldn’t be wearing cable knit with sneakers. I was also embarrassed by my hair, too neatly clipped back in silver barrettes, my flowered shorts matching my top in a childlike way, obviously bought together as an outfit. Piper had curly brown hair and wore beat-up, untied L.L. Bean moccasins with crushed heels and braided anklets, three or four per ankle. She had braces and faint freckles on a perfect nose.
Juniper was breezy and gaunt, draped in gauzy clothes, and I thought, Oh, so she is an artist, because at fifteen I associated artists with loose-fitting clothes rather than with art. Her hands were white with flour—we’d caught her baking—and she squeezed my mother’s shoulders with her inner forearms, wrists bent, so as not to powder my mother’s pale yellow oxford shirt. My mother and Juniper both gushed the normal pleasantries. The dogs, hunters turned indoor pets, nosed my privates and my mother’s, slobbering on our shorts and bare legs. Juniper swatted their wide rumps, leaving white handprints on them, and offered my mother a stool at the kitchen island while they fawned over each other’s youthful appearances.
Piper snorted and rolled her eyes. We were asked to take the suitcases back up through the narrow servants’ stairway to the guest bedroom, which my mother and I would share. It was immense and pristine with an assortment of variously sized towels on a chrome-metal standing rack. Then Piper led me to her bedroom. There was no mention of her brother, Church.
Her room had none of the frilliness of girlhood, and unlike the rest of the house, it was a mess. The floor was littered with tennis skirts and rackets and sneakers and small piles of paperbacks. Her chest of drawers was covered with perfumes, lip glosses, a lid-flipped box of tampons, and wax and tiny multicolored rubber bands for her braces. I assumed that her mother had insisted on the watercolors of sailboats—originals, no doubt—that hung on the walls. She had a light comforter with preppie blue-and-purple stripes, thrown on an unmade double bed. She watched me as I glanced quickly around her room.
“I don’t believe in exploiting the lower class by making them clean up our crap,” she said, slumping onto the bed and scooping up Kit Kit, who’d been sleeping there.
I’d never thought of Mrs. Shepherd, our maid, as being lower class. She’d always seemed so superior, cleaning the house with her tsk, tsk and solemn head shaking.
“So, are you seeing anybody?” Piper asked, bored by my answer before she got it.
“No,” I said, making my way across the room. “Not at the moment.”
“So, how far have you gone?”
“I don’t know,” I said, standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed. “Far enough.”
In actuality, I hadn’t gone very far. I had the impression that a lot of the boys in my school knew that my father was a gynecologist and that that intimidated them somehow, made me too dangerous to date, like being a cop’s daughter. In reality, there was really nothing dangerous about me. The only effect my father’s profession had on me was that I was very comfortable saying the word vagina, having learned, however, well before this point, that other people were not as comfortable with the clinical term. To answer Piper truthfully, I’d attended a school homecoming dance with Eric Banter, a piggish boy with pimples and a spitting habit, and I’d kissed Jimmy Owens, whom I’d met on one of our family vacations to Lake Winnipesaukee, someone I’d never see again.
At this point, the door creaked open, a heavy paneled door with a metal handle, and Church sauntered into the room. He, too, was slouchy, with rumpled hair and a wide grin.
“I know a girl with a studded tongue,” he said. “They do that, you know.”
I’d never heard of it—it was something that really wouldn’t catch on for years to come. “Why do they do that?” I asked.
Piper rolled her eyes and tossed Kit Kit to the floor, where the cat padded off. “To give better fellatio,” she said.
I looked at her, confused. Church kind of smiled and offered, “She means sucking cock.” I thought at that moment that they were really rich, that only a really rich person would have such a long, flowing word for something like that and be able to say it so breezily. Church’s translation was a little off: “Sucking cock” was really lower class; I was middle class—I would have said “giving head,” not that I went around saying it. In any case, I understood Church’s translation.
“Doesn’t it make it hard to talk?” I asked.
“You can’t talk while giving fellatio,” Piper said.
“No, I mean with a studded tongue. Don’t they”—and I still didn’t know who they were—“talk funny?”
“She . . . kind of . . . lisps,” Church said. “And she’s always fiddling with it—you know, with her tongue. It’s distracting.”
Piper wheeled around, looking at her brother for the first time. “You don’t know anybody with a studded tongue. You read that in one of those sick misogynistic pervie magazines.”
He shrugged and smiled as if to say, So?
“Oh, God,” Piper yelled out, flopping around on her bed.
“And Naked Lunch is a piece of art?” he questioned.
Piper screamed into her pillow, “Fuck you, Church. Fuck you!”
He ignored her. “You want to play badminton? We’ve got a net set up in the backyard.”
“Sure,” I said, and I followed him out of the room.
And so this is how I first came to adore Church Fiske. He was so cocky and relaxed, the opposite of how I felt, that he was exactly what I wanted, what I wanted to be. From this very first time I met him, his life seemed to afford him this confidence, this ability to say whatever he wanted to say. I was envious. And, also, now thinking about it, that might have been the moment I first linked him to my father. Having just misplaced my father, however temporary I thought that might be, I needed to imprint on someone, someone sturdy and confident. Church was a role model, not a fatherly one, but the only male stand-in I had handy. However, if I allow myself to link Church with Bob Jablonski, I have to admit that he’d also be equally, if not more strongly, linked to Anthony Pantuliano, my biological father. Church would become my young romance, and although he’d fall far short of my mother’s mythological lover, once again he was all I had. I wouldn’t be aware of this odd linking, on a conscious level, until college, during my affair with Joey Pedesto, but it might have started that far back, that immediately. In any case, I’d begun to think maybe my mom was right in bringing us here, that it was, in fact, a crash course of sorts—but in what subject, exactly, I still have never quite figured out.
Church, as it turned out, was horrible at badminton. I told him he might play better if he removed his hand from his pocket, but this seemed out of the question and so instead we sat on th
e side of the garage not facing the house. Even though he was a year younger than I was, a fact that at that age was very important, he seemed so much older, so much more worldly, that I forgot he was only fourteen.
After a minute, Church walked to his mother’s Saab and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her glove compartment. He offered me one, but I shook my head. He lit up and sat down next to me.
“So, your parents are divorced,” I said after a few minutes.
“Yeah, my dad lives in Annapolis. That’s in Maryland.”
“My dad kind of split,” I said, acting bent up and hard-luck but not really feeling it.
“And does your mom have a case of nerves? Juniper is wound up tight! She pecks around like a cat in snow. Ever seen a cat in snow? It sucks.” He put his arm around me and took a drag off his cigarette. “They’ve got a pill, though, that can knock them out. My mom will definitely lend some to your mom. It’s good stuff. It’s how I learned to drive the Saab.” He grinned.
“You know how to drive?”
“Well, Juniper can’t drive when she’s gassed. And Piper’s too high strung. She freaks just backing out of the driveway and ends up in between the oak trees. She flattened some bushes last month.” He stubbed out his cigarette with the heel of his L.L. Bean moccasin.
“Oh,” I said.
“Hey, if our moms get looped together, I’ll take you for a ride.” He grinned again, as if the ride meant more than just a ride.
I shrugged and said, “Okay,” and then Church Fiske kissed me full on the mouth and put a hand on my tiny breast. He tasted like the cigarette. He held still just like that, and then after about five seconds, he stopped, as if that was the end of his repertoire.
“Let’s eat,” he said. And we got up and went inside.
At dinner, Church announced that Piper wanted to get her tongue studded.
“Why, dear?” said Juniper, who looked pale and a bit shaky.
“I do not,” Piper whined with exhaustion.
“Oh,” said Juniper. “Okay, then.”
Juniper had prepared dinner herself, which, I took it, was a rare event. Church and Piper seemed suspicious of the food, smelling the vegetables in white sauce and picking at the chicken before putting it in their mouths. My mother mentioned her little Weight Watchers scale, but said she was ready to splurge. We ate informally at a big table in the kitchen. The dogs circled our chairs, looking for scraps and handouts, and the kids kept glancing around as if looking for the regular help, a woman named Dinah. Finally, Piper asked casually where Dinah was.
“Oh, Dinah is wonderful, but I love to cook and sometimes I’ve just got to shoo her away so I can whip something up,” Juniper said in a high voice, her eyebrows hitched and the wrinkled skin between them pink.
She’d made chicken Dijon and, unfortunately, had persisted in making homemade bread—not French bread but a shorter, rounder loaf. It was awkward just the same. When I saw it, I glanced at my mother furtively, and it was obvious she’d seen it, too, and had thought of the erect penis of Anthony Pantuliano. I refused to eat any, but she couldn’t, for reasons of politeness, and it was a terrible sight to watch Juniper slice the bread, to watch my mother butter it with two pats, shyly bend her head and take a measured bite. And then she had to praise Juniper, the bread, the taste, and texture. It was unseemly and awful.
“Piper would like to be a tennis pro,” said Juniper. “She’s quite good.”
“Oh, Mother,” Piper protested. “That was when I was ten years old and an idiot.”
Church said, “Now she’d like to become a lesbian.”
Piper glared at him in such a way that made me believe that Piper had admitted lesbian aspirations.
“If you want to be a lesbian, that’s fine. Just be the best lesbian you can be,” Juniper said with an odd smile and wink.
“I wish I’d thought to become a lesbian,” my mother said, as if it were the fault of a guidance counselor who hadn’t helped her find the proper college major. “It’s such a nice lifestyle.”
“And there’d be no reason for you to stud your tongue,” Church added, and then he reconsidered, thoughtfully, “but, then again, I guess it could still come in handy.”
My mother eyed him with suspicion. Juniper seemed oblivious and quite accustomed to such talk. She said, “Oh, but we didn’t know those opportunities existed back then.”
Piper said, “Oh, please, gag me,” and made a gagging gesture with her finger in her mouth and a coughing sound. Juniper, looking even paler and more frazzled, abruptly pushed her chair away from the table and scampered to a nearby bathroom. Piper and Church went on picking at their food, as if nothing had happened. My mother and I sat in a respectful silence while we listened to Juniper throw up.
That night Juniper took a couple of her little pills and passed out, and my mother drank a bottle of red wine, smoked cigarettes—which I’m sure Juniper wouldn’t have allowed had she been conscious—and listened to records from the Fiske collection, throwbacks to the ’60s, but the tame, stiff-coifed ’60s, nothing revolutionary, no Baez or Dylan. My mother sat on the sofa in the living room and looked through photo albums that Juniper had pulled out for the occasion, while Juniper slept soundly in her bedroom. Despite the fact that both of our mothers got looped, Church didn’t take me out for a joyride in his mother’s Saab. Instead, we hung out in his bedroom. Piper found my interest in Church to be wholly despicable, and she wouldn’t look at or speak to us. I could hear her in the house, though, talking on the phone in her bedroom and blaring the TV in the upstairs study. Church and I played Bob Marley tapes and talked about getting stoned, although I was pretty sure he’d never done it, just as he’d never really met someone with a studded tongue. Unlike me, Church was a natural liar—I would have to work at it—and he was one who didn’t really mind getting caught. When I questioned him on the term roach clip, what one exactly looked like and how it was used (I’d seen them only as hair clips with long feathers worn by high school druggy types in fringed suede lace-up boots and black eyeliner raccooning their eyes), he hemmed and hawed and finally gave that smile and shrug. He seemed to like lying for the sport of it. It was not a way of life, as it had become for my mother, nor was it used for malice. He was a purist in the field of deceit. He simply enjoyed a good lie well told.
His bedroom was more typical for a kid his age than was Piper’s. It was smaller and neater, complete with a Kathy Ireland poster taped to the back of the door. Evidently he didn’t share his sister’s distaste for exploitation. Although we were propped up in his bed, he didn’t kiss me that night. I thought he would, but he never did. I think the fact that I hadn’t fought him earlier that day scared him. I had the feeling he was the type of kid who’d already been slapped by a girl at fourteen, and that maybe I was the first girl who’d ever kissed him back. In any case, I found myself wishing he would kiss me. I loved his slouched cockiness, his messy hair and baggy clothes.
It got late. Eventually, I heard my mother’s feet on the stairs. She called my name in a whisper, “Lissy? Lissy?”
I said, “I gotta go,” expecting Church to at least kiss me then, just a peck or something. But he didn’t. He just flipped up his hand in a little “bye-bye” wave. I slid off his bed and popped out the door.
My mother stood almost on the top step of the stairs, leaning into one stiff arm, which was propped by the rail, her body slouching into the arm like it was a crutch, the only thing holding her up. She said, “C’mere.” She wrapped her arm around me and we staggered to the guest bedroom, where she fell back into the bed, a dead weight.
“I missed everything,” she said. “Listening to Juniper Fiske and which fork to use and the last acceptable day to wear white shoes and the dirty sin of panty lines. I was listening to Pat Boone, for Chrissakes.” She went on for a while about Pat Boone, his perfect hair, glossy teeth. She accused him of putting Vaseline on them before album cover photo shoots. She also seemed to hold Ray Conniff personally responsible
for her missed opportunities, the song “I Love How You Love Me,” in particular. Petula Clark also shouldered some of the blame. She lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling.
She said, “The fifties made promises they couldn’t keep. They dressed me up, Dotty Verbitski, like I wanted to get voted prom queen. They said, C’mon in. There’s no end to the golden life. But they were Indian givers. My mother’s kitchen wasn’t pink. We didn’t drink out of polka-dotted glasses, and there was no Chevy Bel Air in our garage. There was no garage! They said, But you, Dotty, you can have it all. But they took everything back. One massive product recall,” she said, “and I’ve never said this to anyone, Lissy, not anyone: My mother couldn’t love me, and that was what I wanted, the mistake I wanted to unmake.” She turned and hissed in my ear, “They promised. But none of it was true.”
For the first time, I thought of my mother as a girl like me, as still being that girl, only older, that I would age but be the same person that I was right then lying next to my drunk mother. I felt that we were completely alone in the world, cut loose and spiraling farther and farther from what we knew. I laid my head on her chest, something I hadn’t done since I was a little kid, and she stroked my hair. We were quiet for a long time and then I noticed that her breathing had grown suddenly deep. She was asleep. I took off her Keds and then hoisted her legs onto the bed, and she curled into a knot by the foot of the bed. I pulled a T-shirt from my suitcase and slept horizontally up by the pillows. It took me a long time to fall asleep, the day buzzing through my head. But finally I drifted off to the rhythm of her deep breaths, and I dreamed of my mother as a young girl, quite happy, riding the parade-float penis of Anthony Pantuliano like a prom queen. She was throwing Dum-Dum lollipops to the crowd, where my father carried Vivian on his shoulders like she was a little girl. I was desperately picking up lollipops to give them back to my mother, as if she were throwing away something precious.
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