Mr. Rembrandt was in to her, as it turned out, and she was directed up a spiral staircase to his spacious office. That manic salesman, Dave, who’d signed Linda up for Shapely Lady, had delivered his pitch in a cluttered cubicle about the size of an airplane lavatory. She remembered how fast he’d talked as he explained the savings on a two- or three-year membership, and that he began to write up the contract before she’d agreed to anything.
Now, Linda thought, she was the salesperson, and she was going to have to sell herself quickly to this dapper, pin-striped executive, who was already glancing at his watch. The language of praise in the stained and frayed letter of recommendation from Simonetti of the Newark Fred Astaire’s suddenly seemed cheap and insufficient, too much and too little at once. She opened and closed her purse a couple of times without withdrawing the letter. It might be better to just talk about her work experience, stressing her natural abilities and her willingness to learn.
But Mr. Rembrandt appeared more interested in extolling the virtues of the Beverly Body than in hearing about any of Linda’s. What she had to understand, he said, was the exclusivity of the club. “We only accept women for membership who are recommended by current members,” he said, “and then only after a careful screening process. We cater to the epitome of Beverly Hills society here, to some of the biggest names, people who are used to the best of everything. So you can imagine that they, and we, do not tolerate inferiority of any sort.”
Linda, who had suffered from a sense of her own inferiority most of her life, had to remind herself that she knew how to dance and how to teach dancing, that they were the only two things she was genuinely good at. As if to prove that unspoken claim, and as if they had a life of their own, her feet tapped out a silent little tattoo on the black carpeting beneath them. “Oh, yes,” she responded automatically to whatever Mr. Rembrandt was saying. “I understand. Of course.” Robin, she was sure, would have been disgusted by her bootlicking, and would have told Rembrandt promptly and precisely where he could stick his lousy job. But in her outrage she probably would have forgotten the essential thing, that Linda desperately needed work. Besides, if she got this job, she would be doing what she loved to do best. But why hadn’t Nathan warned her that the place was this … this grand, and intimidating? And where was he, anyway? He knew that she was coming here today—he had called her a couple of days ago to find out—and she’d expected him to show up and offer some last-minute coaching and encouragement.
Linda changed into her leotard and tights, and went to one of the exercise rooms to be auditioned. Two stone-faced staffers, clones of the receptionists, awaited her there, but Nathan was still nowhere in sight. As she did her warm-up stretches, her anxiety increased. Every time she encountered her own image in the mirrored walls, she glanced uneasily away, as if she kept running into someone she had hoped not to see. But as soon as her tape of the orchestrated highlights of West Side Story began playing, the music poured through her body like a lubricant, loosening all her joints and soothing the nervous muscle of her heart. She was as ready as she would ever be. For the past few days, ever since Nathan had driven her back to Culver City to pick up her car, she’d been putting together and practicing dance routines that would be easy and fun to follow, and would constitute a thorough workout. She knew the basics of aerobic and body-toning exercise, and she had added the joy of free movement to them. On Sunday, Nathan had given her some advice for the audition. “What they look for most is pep and drive, you know, like a cheerleader or a drill sergeant. You can’t slow down for a second, and you’ve got to really scream out those commands. I swear, those women are all into domination.” He offered to come over later that evening, or any evening before her interview, if she wanted to try something out on him. But she was afraid that Robin might get the wrong idea, or that Nathan himself might.
When the tape ended, she was flushed and sweaty and very hoarse. The two staffers, who had been busily taking notes during her performance, like judges at the Olympics, merely told her to shower and change, and that Mr. Rembrandt would be speaking to her shortly. She rushed to get ready not quite drying her hair, and stuffing her hopelessly tangled panty hose into her purse, and then he kept her waiting for at least twenty minutes. But when she was finally readmitted to his office, she was given the job, which had decent hours and fairly decent pay. She might have to work one or two evenings a week, but Robin would be able to babysit then. For the morning and afternoon sessions, Linda was going to have to find a day-care center for Phoebe. It was awful to think of leaving her with strangers when she was still so little, and it would be one more expense to juggle, but she had no other choice. Linda was in the parking lot, mulling all of this over and reclaiming the Mustang, when Nathan came running out of the back of the building, calling her name.
“Hi, I didn’t think you were here,” she said. “But guess what? I got the job! I start Monday!”
“Hey,” he said, “congratulations! I told you you could do it. I knew you’d knock ’em dead.”
His confidence in her was flattering and flustering at the same time. “Where were you before?” she asked, mostly to change the subject. “Did you have a class?”
“No, today’s my day off. I came in just to see you. But I didn’t want to make you nervous before the audition, I didn’t want to jinx you.”
“I can’t get over this place,” she said, looking back toward the club, and away from his penetrating gaze.
“Yeah,” he said, and he whistled a few bars of the Star Trek theme.
“I had the same thought!” Linda exclaimed.
“But instead of being lost in space,” Nathan said, “we’re stranded on the Planet of the Rich and Famous.” As Linda opened the door of the Mustang, he put his hand over hers and said, “Do you want to go somewhere for a cup of coffee?”
Linda didn’t answer right away. The sensation of Nathan’s hand pinning hers to the car door was pleasantly disturbing. It was only a lower-voltage version of the kiss on her hand the week before, to which, she had since decided, she’d overreacted, probably because of all the stress that day. But what was her excuse now? Oh, no, she told herself, not again, not yet. She needed Nathan’s friendship, was truly grateful for it, but she was afraid of becoming romantically involved with him. It was much too soon after Manny and she didn’t feel very lucky in the love department. There wasn’t enough time for even a harmless cup of coffee today, anyway. The interview and audition had taken longer than she had expected, and she still had to pick the baby up at Vicki’s, and then go get Robin, too, at her friends’ house. Linda remembered her mother saying that too many good excuses usually add up to one bad one, so she only said, “That sounds lovely, Nathan, but I really have to be going.”
“It’s all right, querida,” he said, releasing her hand, along with the rest of her. “We’ll be seeing each other. There’s no rush. How about tomorrow?”
This was Robin’s first visit to Lucy and Carmel’s house, a small yellow bungalow on a street of similar bungalows in Echo Park. They’d all gone there together straight from school, and now they were lying around the girls’ bedroom, listening to the latest U2 tape and trying to talk. But Lucy and Carmel’s kid brother, Garvey, a punky little ten-year-old, kept hanging around and interrupting them, and staring at Robin as if she were some kind of freak.
“Yo!” he’d cried as soon as she walked through the front door. “It’s Snow White!”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, swatting at him and missing, “and you’re one of the dwarfs.”
Now he stood in the doorway of the bedroom, gazing at Robin again, and said, “Uh-oh, we haunted, gotta call Ghostbusters!”
“What’s your problem?” Carmel asked him, and Lucy said, “Get out of here, fool, before I call somebody.”
“Who axed you?” he demanded.
“Nobody axed me,” Lucy said. “If somebody axed me, I’d be bleeding all over the place, wouldn’t I?” Before he could answer, she slammed the door and push
ed a chest of drawers against it, in case he tried to open it again. “Just ignore him,” she told Robin. “He thinks he’s cool.”
“He’s pathetic,” Carmel said, with a sigh.
“You are so lucky not to have a brother, Robin,” Lucy said. “And by the time your baby sister’s old enough to dis you, you’ll probably be married.”
“Or dead,” Carmel added cheerfully.
“I’m never getting married,” Robin said.
“Oh, yeah, what if Bono asked you?” Lucy asked.
“Sure, like he’s coming over right this second to start begging me.”
“Too bad you’re not home,” Carmel said.
“He wouldn’t have to beg me,” Lucy said.
Lucy was fourteen and a half, the same age and in the same grade as Robin. Their last names, near the tail end of the alphabet, had gotten them into the same homeroom, too. Carmel was a year younger and a grade behind them. When Robin first arrived at Northside High School, she felt like a complete outsider. She hadn’t had any really close friends back in Newark, but there were always a few kids she hung out with. She didn’t know anybody here, and they all seemed to be best buddies since birth. There was so much shrieking and hugging that first day of school you’d think they’d been separated for about a century instead of just a few weeks. Robin had hoped to get lost in the crowd, to sort of blend in and become invisible, but everything about her was conspicuously different and wrong, from her deadly pallor and East Coast inflection to her sexual retardation. People were just starting to pair off in her crowd back home when her father died and she began her long, torturous journey with Linda. She had never had a boyfriend and probably never would; it was like losing your place in a moving line and not being able to cut back in. And now, at Northside, she felt as if she’d landed in some foreign country without a passport, and without knowing the language. In social studies, a couple of smartasses made fun of the flat, nasal way she spoke—“Noo Joisey,” they mimicked, cracking themselves up—so she just stopped speaking, for the most part, after that.
All of her old personal problems were nothing compared to the assorted daily torments of high school: the nasty kids, the indifferent or demanding teachers, the cavernous building echoing all day long with voices, whistles, and bells. And later, when she got home, Linda would usually be waiting for her with cupcakes and milk and all those dumb questions. How was school today, honey? Do you have much homework? Did you make any friends yet? Why don’t you join some nice after-school clubs? God.
Robin skipped out as often as she could without getting suspended; she didn’t need to have Linda bugging her about that, too. Sometimes she would just stay home if Linda wasn’t there, or she’d hitch a ride to the mall or to one of the video arcades. She had to keep a sharp eye out for attendance officers, who, she’d heard, prowled those places disguised as normal people. Luckily, she was never caught. She was caught shoplifting once, though, at a sneaker store in the mall. The guy took her name, but he let her go with just a warning. Big deal, she’d only copped a pair of glow-in-the-dark shoelaces. She never lifted anything that great or that she actually wanted or needed: the shoelaces, a crappy plastic key ring and a lipstick from the five-and-dime, a black lace bra from The Broadway. The bra wasn’t even her size.
Then, one Monday in December, she went to school, and a girl in her homeroom accused her of stealing a ballpoint pen. It was a total lie; Robin had actually borrowed the red-and-silver pen she was doodling with from Linda’s purse that morning, when she couldn’t find her own Bic. “Just bug off, okay?” Robin told the girl. “It’s my pen.”
But the girl said, right in Robin s face, “Bullshit! It’s mine, and you’d better hand it over.”
The homeroom teacher was out in the hall, trying to round up some kids still goofing off near the lockers. In the classroom, other kids were starting to gather around Robin and the girl, hoping to see a good fight, when Lucy Thompson, who had glanced at Robin from time to time on other days but had never spoken to her, intervened. “Chill, girl,” she said to Robin’s accuser. “It’s her pen. She’s been using it all term.” Robin was so surprised by this unsolicited and enterprising lie in her defense that she didn’t say anything, but she really looked at Lucy for the first time. She saw a tall, skinny light-brown girl with elaborately plaited hair and huge, innocent eyes. Robin was reminded of the illustration of Queen Esther in that book of children’s Bible stories she used to have. Who wouldn’t believe her? Robin was almost persuaded herself.
“Oh, right,” the girl said to Lucy. “Like you really know.” But you could see that her heart wasn’t in it anymore. And then a boy who usually waited to see which way arguments were going before joining the winning side said, “Yeah, I’ve seen her using it, too, every day.” Immediately, other voices chimed in, agreeing with him, and as easily as that, Robin’s social exile was over.
After school that afternoon, while they were waiting to board their respective buses, Lucy introduced Robin to Carmel, who bore as strong a resemblance to her older sister as Phoebe did to Robin. “Want to come over sometime?” Lucy called to Robin as she was getting on her bus. And Robin shrugged, and said, “Maybe. I’ll see,” without betraying at all how stupidly happy she felt.
She made them come to her place first, though, as a kind of test, and also just to get it over with. Linda was still pregnant then, as big as a barn, and she went totally bananas when Robin walked in with Lucy and Carmel. Like Robin had never had a friend in her life before. She didn’t stop yakking and falling all over herself until Robin hauled the Thompson sisters into the bathroom with her and locked the door. There the three of them shared a joint Robin had bought from a guy on the football field that morning, and tried out some of Linda’s makeup and perfume.
Lucy invited her home again, but first Robin got the flu and then Lucy did. And after the baby was born and Manny died, Robin didn’t feel like doing much of anything, except play with the baby and mope around. Lucy and Carmel kept asking her when she was going to come to their house, but Robin managed to sidestep the issue by inventing alibis or by making dates she didn’t keep. One day, Lucy confronted her at the lockers and said, “If you don’t want to be friends, Robin, why don’t you just say so.”
“It’s not that,” Robin mumbled.
“Did your mother tell you not see me anymore?” Lucy asked.
Robin snorted. “Are you kidding? She likes you more than she likes me. And she’s not my mother, anyway, she’s my stepmother.”
“So then is it because Carmel didn’t inhale?” Lucy asked.
“What?” Robin said. “Look, forget it. I’ll come to your house, okay? When do you want me to come?”
And now here she was, walking down the hallway from Lucy and Carmel’s bedroom to the kitchen, to look for something to eat. A bent-over old lady was standing there, stirring something at the stove. The sisters took turns kissing her. “Hello, Ga,” Lucy said. “We thought maybe you were sleeping.”
“Dead folks couldn’t sleep with that racket,” the old lady said, squinting at Robin.
“Ga, this is my friend Robin from school,” Lucy said. “Robin, this is my grandmother, Mrs. Pickett.”
“Will you look at that hair,” Mrs. Pickett said.
“I’m going to braid her later, Ga,” Carmel said.
This was the first Robin had heard of it, but the idea instantly appealed to her. She loved when someone fooled with her hair, combed it or touched it; it made her feel like lying down at their feet and going right to sleep. And Lucy’s intricate network of braids and beads—Carmel’s handiwork—was really beautiful. In fact, Robin had tried to do something like that to her own hair just the other night, but she’d only made five or six fat, lopsided braids, which kept unraveling as she worked, before her arms grew weary and she gave up.
She followed the girls back to their bedroom, where Carmel kept her word and arranged Robin’s hair in about a hundred tightly woven, precisely aligned braids. Each
one glistened with the gel Carmel applied, and was neatly tied off with a tiny blue rubber band. Her hands moved like a magician’s, but the whole process still took almost three hours. When she was finished, Robin’s scalp tingled violently from the pull and scratch of the comb; in the dresser mirror she saw that it was as pink as a baby pig’s. She stared at herself for a long time, trying to decide how she looked without her usual camouflage of hair. Sort of naked, she thought, like bald Phoebe right after she was born, although Lucy assured her that she was the image of Bo Derek in 10. You didn’t have to take the braids out for months, she said, patting her own head; you just shampooed it the way it was.
Garvey was lurking in the hallway, and he started laughing the minute Robin emerged, pointing helplessly at her and doing a crazy little stomping dance. The girls pushed past him and went back to the kitchen, where Mrs. Pickett’s only comment about Robin’s hair was “Lord!” Soon Mr. and Mrs. Thompson came in together from work. There were more introductions, more talk, laughter. The clatter of dishes and pots. Then a tall, very dark woman in an apron walked into the kitchen from somewhere. She might have stepped out of a cupboard or come right through the wall. Without saying a word to anyone, she took a bowl out of the refrigerator and began beating whatever was in it with a fork. Did she live here, too? Nobody said. In a few minutes, Garvey reappeared, looking meek and small in front of his parents. The house was pretty small, too. Lucy had once said there were only two bedrooms; where did everybody sleep? The kitchen was so crowded and busy with cooking and cross-conversation it made Robin’s head spin. She remembered having to share a room with Linda at all the motels they’d stayed in across the country, some of them so teeny you could always feel the other person’s breath on your skin. She didn’t know how Lucy and Carmel could stand all this closeness and commotion. To make matters worse, Garvey started laughing about her hair again, and although his father shook him a little to make him stop, Robin saw that Mr. Thompson’s eyes were watering, too, and that he was hiding his own laughter by coughing repeatedly and beating himself on the chest. By the time Linda came to pick her up, she was looking forward to going home, to the relative peace and privacy of their apartment.
Tunnel of Love Page 8