They aren’t sisters, really, but they are close enough they might as well be. When they aren’t at one another’s houses, they are on the phone, tying up the main line and ignoring call waiting.
Because they can.
At first, the computer does collect dust. They are more interested in the other gift Gillian receives, a handheld video camera that allows them to film their shenanigans in full over the Christmas holidays. They take it with them when they get trashed on Zima and smoke teeny tiny joints out at Sevier Park. They aim the lens at one another and then zoom in as the victim hides her face in shame.
But then that, too, loses its luster. Eventually, Audrey and Madeline sneak off with it to plan revenge on their asshole parents.
Which gives rise to the summer of the desktop computer.
Slowly, the internet rises up from the lagoon of technological newness, and Gillian and her friends become acquainted with the idea of using something other than a phone to communicate.
“It’s like something out of a spy movie,” Madeline says when she first encounters a chat room. It couldn’t be simpler—scrolling white text on a black background—but to them, it is a marvel. Seeing people from around...wherever they are from engaging in conversation is tantamount to landing on Mars.
The fact that they are the first people from their friend group to explore the dark corners of the World Wide Web contributes to the mystique of it all. They feel privileged—which they are—and this curiosity soon becomes a mainstay of their friendship. It’s like the cyborg sidekick that improves their lives through the wonders of technology.
The reversal from geeky to chic occurs almost overnight. Soon, they reach the point that they’re bored with flirting over chat. It’s always the same cycle: eager boys go from asking about their favorite TV shows to begging for pretend handjobs within the span of a few minutes. Even mention the fact that you’re a girl, and the hounds come a-running.
One night, when they’re scrolling mindlessly through the chat, 90210 reruns on in the background, Madeline pops out of her digital malaise with a start.
“I’ve got an idea,” she says.
The girls all pile in beside her, excitedly waiting on edge for her brilliant plan. Mary Ellen follows suit, though on the inside she is wary.
Madeline St. Clair does not have ideas. She doesn’t just come up with plans. She is a plotter. She thinks about what is going to happen—or, rather, what she is going to make happen—from the moment she wakes up.
So whatever she is about to say, it is not the result of neurons firing randomly inside her head. She uses this pretext because she knows it will be easier for the girls to swallow, if they assume it’s just a wild fancy.
They know, too. It’s not like they’re dumb. They might pretend every once in a while, but they’re not stupid. They are as hip to Madeline’s wiles as Mary Ellen, they just aim to please so as not to upset the apple cart.
You do not want to upset Madeline.
There’s a reason they call her Mads behind her back.
Never to her face. Uh-unh. Never. But they know. It’s an unspoken covenant among them that she is the queen, and they are her loyal subjects. There is a clear hierarchy, and they must play their roles at all times.
Mary Ellen had heard stories of the last girl who had been in her place—Sarah Margaret Clifton—so she knew not to cross Madeline.
Apparently, in ninth grade, Mads had been friends with a girl who went to an elite Catholic school in the area. The two of them had been inseparable, save for the normal school hours. Just peas in a pod and all that. They ran their respective schools like wardens, and in some ways, Madeline had met her match.
But when she found out that Sarah Margaret had rubbed Philip De Santis’s hard-on over his jeans at the movies, she—well, she disappeared.
This part, Gillian and Audrey told her in hushed tones well out of Madeline’s earshot. It wasn’t like Madeline to back down from a fight, especially where her territory was concerned, so they kind of freaked out, thinking maybe she had committed suicide or something over it.
But that’s not Madeline’s style.
Instead, when she finally emerges from the depths of her cavernous room, like a funerary Barbie playset, Madeline is stone-faced and minimally expressive. A princess who has been deposed and vows to regain the throne. It’s a determined look, but there’s an edge to it. Like she’s cried her tears and refuses to admit defeat.
She remains distant and quiet as the other girls trip over one another to prostrate themselves before the altar of her. When Madeline has heard enough, one corner of her mouth turns up, and she puts on a smile that is not quite even a smile.
“I have an idea,” she says, and even though none of them says it, they cannot bear the sound of Madeline’s voice when it reaches this register.
In retrospect, it appears that this plan could have been burbling up near the surface for some time, and Sarah Margaret Clifton just happened to pull the short straw.
Once they were done with her, she spent a month in a psychiatric ward for a suicide attempt brought on by severe post-traumatic stress.
Mary Ellen remembers the sorts of things that got passed around. That she was a slut, that she had slept with the entire starting basketball team. Your standard fare for the high school enemy.
But the worst of them shocked even the most cynical gossipmonger.
It involved a video camera and one of Sarah Margaret’s prized show dogs.
Of course, it was insane—of course—and no one should have believed it—again, it was absolutely bonkers—but it made the rounds, due in no small part to the efforts of Madeline and her underlings.
As with all gossip, it should have died quickly and allowed the poor girl at its center to go about her business.
It didn’t go away.
The rumor persisted into sophomore year. Stretched for months and months and months, tormenting her in part because of its peculiarity but mostly because of the alleged existence of the tape.
At the heart of the rumor was the tape. She had supposedly filmed this inexplicable act of sexual congress, and so—naturally—people attempted to find it. People either claimed to have seen it or claimed to know someone who had seen it. Because of that, the rumor dragged on and on and on, almost to Halloween.
When the cops visited her parents and asked about the video, thinking maybe they were dealing with a case of child pornography, that was the breaking point. Turns out, someone’s mother had contacted the Metro Police, and the resulting fight between her parents ended up causing them to separate for a time. They thought they had failed one another, had somehow failed their marriage vows and had even failed their God.
And then there was poor Sarah Margaret.
The salacious details and white whale of a video drove her to ground, like a plane with one engine down and the other flagging badly. She ended up taking a whole bottle of her mother’s Xanax in a single gulp. Her mom found her frothing at the mouth when she returned from an early dinner with friends and rushed her to the hospital just in time to save her.
She survived, but she was never quite the same after that.
All because of a failed bit of heavy petting in a dark movie theater.
When she begins hanging out with them, Mary Ellen considers the case of Sarah Margaret Clifton a red flag, but for the most part, she ignores it. There is no real evidence they started the rumor, and even if they did, it was the public-at-large who had spread it around, like feces on a bathroom wall.
Besides, Mary Ellen considers herself beyond reproach, in this respect, because she would never betray her friends.
Well, she thinks. Not these new friends, anyway.
And so, on this night, when Madeline smirks and tells them, “This internet thing, it seems like we can have a lot of fun with it,” it’s the first time she feels that strange feeling in her gut, the one that will grow and grow until it feels like it is lodged in the back of her throat.
&
nbsp; When they hear the details, Mary Ellen will remember looking over her shoulder at the bedroom door and wondering just how difficult it would be to get up and walk out.
But she doesn’t, so she will never actually know.
NOW
It’s obvious what I’m getting myself into as soon as I step through the door.
This isn’t a mixer or a reunion; it’s a networking event. Everyone is drinking and laughing, but it is just as evident they are itching to hand out business cards and pitch old acquaintances about their new restaurant, boutique, or real estate deal. People are so enamored with their own elevator pitches, I make it halfway to the bar before someone recognizes me. She turns to gab with her friends, to alert them about the psychopath in their midst. To stare and laugh.
I can’t help but roll my eyes, and for a precious moment, I’m tempted to spin on one heel and dart back outside, but a mere glance of myself in a wall-sized mirror makes me stop. My whole body looks apt to cave in, as if trying to turn itself inside out. I am physically smaller, in this moment, than my normal self.
I clench my teeth.
Somehow, my feet take me further inside.
One drink. I promise myself one drink. Then I will get the fuck out of there.
The bar is cool, at least. A small, renovated factory building that gives Dorsia a legit speakeasy vibe. There’s not even a sign outside, so you have to find it on your own.
Secrets have become a fetish, it appears.
Gillian Meitner doesn’t miss a single thing. She and her Selina Kyle spectacles are busy surveying the room when our eyes meet.
She makes a confident beeline for me. Her bowstring lips are turned up at one corner. It’s the most evident show of emotion she can muster. Laconic doesn’t even begin to describe her.
“Mary Ellen Hanneford?” She lilts my name like it’s a question, but she’s as sure of it as she is that E=MC2 or that the first numbers in Pi are 3.14. Gillian doesn’t do questions. She does answers.
In high school—before everything happened—she spent her spare time on homework or extra credit projects to ensure her role as valedictorian. That the title eventually eluded her is a testament to how fucked up our junior year was. She ended up at a state college well beneath her abilities, but the bitterness doesn’t look like it’s gotten the better of her.
She hugs me. It’s an awkward gesture, clearly not one of her strengths. It feels like a robot trying to figure out human gestures.
But she doesn’t sweat it. She’s already a step ahead.
“You’re in Seattle,” she says, “not Portland. That was my first mistake, wasn’t it?”
Not a question. Not even that conversational. Just a fact she feels needs to be out in the ether. This is her MO, and she hasn’t given that up. She could very well run through a list of my recent accomplishments, and though she doesn’t, I can see her resisting the urge to show off.
“I work in coding,” I say. “You ended up doing something with numbers, didn’t you?”
She’s somewhat shorter than the rest of our crew, but she makes up for it in the looks department. Hair longer than it used to be but flipped out at the edges, sort of like a blonde Liz Lemon with a healthy dose of self-confidence. She’s bespectacled and sharp-featured but also really well put-together. She’s also no longer blonde. Her hair is a deep chestnut, highlighting her eyes.
I can see the vagueness of my answer annoys her. She admires precision, even when she is the subject. She abhors the big picture. Everything, for her, is a moment-by-moment struggle for the truth.
“I’m a certified public accountant,” she says.
It’s hard not to roll my eyes. Classic Gillian. She can’t even shorten it to the initialism everybody knows.
I suddenly want to be very far away. It was a mistake (a) to come here and (b) let myself be seen with one of my former accomplices, so I begin eyeing the exit. I figure if I convince her I need to run to the restroom, I can make it up the stairs and outside before she’s aware of my absence. Then it’s a matter of changing my FaceBook profile before she gets online again.
I’m on the verge of making my excuse known. But then the girl with the golden brain does something unexpected. She sips her drink, leans in, and says, “I fucking hate my job.”
She smiles, her cheeks reddening, and suddenly, the night seems a little more bearable.
“I’ve been to a couple of these mixers, and trust me: everybody hates everybody else,” Gillian says later, once we have plowed through a few drinks. She’s expertly sipping her second or third or fourth Manhattan, while I’ve relegated myself to rosé.
She and I are perched on stools next to high back chairs in the far corner of this industrial speakeasy, and she’s spilling the goods on the girls from our graduating class. Even though she went away for school, Gillian moved back shortly after graduation and is well-read enough on Nashville gossip to make me wonder if she’s a government agent.
“Lora Spielman got pregnant from a one-night stand in Puerto Rico, and her dad disowned her,” she tells me. “He’s running for Senate next year, and he thinks it will hurt his relationship with The Base.”
I don’t remember much about Lora, other than she always looked like she was trying to dislodge a stick from her ass.
“She was always so stuck-up,” I manage, and Gillian nods. She is drunk, and it is that fact I like the most. It slows her brain down, which makes me comfortable, and since Gillian is unloading both barrels on our old classmates, I don’t have to say much.
Thank God.
Talking shit about other people is like chewing glass. Whenever I feel the urge to say something negative about an acquaintance, my mouth cramps up, and it feels like I am going to spit blood. I’ve actually caught myself literally chewing on my tongue to stay quiet, and I think it was spending my senior year in a juvenile facility cured me.
But that was then. This is now. It’s easy to stay quiet when you’re a stranger among strangers, but this is Gillian. She’s one of the girls. She knows me well, and there are...expectations, I suppose, that accompany this kind of discussion.
My stomach tightens up as I wait for it, wait for the moment to arrive. It circles the drain for at least an hour, and then it just happens. By then, I’ve prepared myself.
An uncomfortable silence pops up, and then it lingers there like a third member of our conversation.
Finally, Gillian swirls her drink and asks, “Do you ever talk to any of the girls?”
I shake my head furtively.
I feel like I’m being primed for something.
“I don’t,” I say. “You’re the only one who’s ever even contacted me.”
“So you don’t have any idea how we all turned out,” Gillian says.
Again, a shake of the head.
It’s both true and not true. I’ve not kept up with them in person, but I sure as hell stalked them when I joined Facebook. They friended “me” without much fanfare, and so I’ve managed to stay in the shadows of their lives, silently watching them from a comfortable distance online.
That’s over now, I think.
“That’s fascinating,” she says. “I’ve spent my whole adult life thinking everybody knows too much about everybody else in this town.”
“Long time since DDA,” I reply.
“The DDA d-d-days,” she says, using an old joke of ours, and the laugh she produces is infectious. It almost erases the sadness which has crept into her eyes.
When I was a student at Dallas-Dudley Academy, I was the very picture of an all-girls private school kid. It was a type, and I played the role perfectly, even if I was a complete fraud. I never belonged, not for a moment, but by the time I was “asked” to leave, I had almost convinced everyone I belonged there.
Almost.
After taking a slow drink from my rosé, I ask the obvious question, the one that’s been floating above me like a thought bubble all night. “Where is Madeline? I’d have expected her and Audrey to
be running the show by now.”
The statement is slushy with sarcasm, but Gillian walks right past it. Maybe she knows, somehow, that I am aware of their falling out.
“Madeline said she would be here,” she says, taking a sip from her own drink. “Though she’s not having the best go of it these days.”
“Looks like none of us are,” I say without thinking.
That statement pulls my eyes from Natalie Schaefer, who never quite became the hot shit she always thought she was. Everything she does screams trying too hard. Poor thing. She never quite recovered from the time she went down on Logan Niedermeyer in the locker room after a lacrosse game.
Looking around, it’s a shame we’re all not happier. Most people here, they’re successful. Mostly rich, too. But it’s a sad fucking consolation for happiness.
I think it, but I don’t say it.
That’s the major difference between the old me and the “new, improved” version of myself. When these awful intrusive thoughts occur to me now, I just push them down and pretend they’re not there, like hallucinations in the corner of a room.
But now my mind is working on Madeline St. Clair, and I can’t quite keep silent about her. The decades have brought me much bitterness, and Gillian is precisely the person to
“What could possibly be wrong with Madeline’s life?” I say, feeling a little jolt of venom at the idea that Madeline St. Clair might not be the Queen of Nashville.
Gillian glances around conspicuously, and she mouths the words her marriage to me from across the table. As if people at this event are on the lookout for gossip about Madeline.
I dig through mental photo albums until I pull up an acceptable image of Madeline’s husband, a private wealth analyst named Colton Ambrose. I’m pretty sure he’s a III or a IV, or at the very least a Jr., and I’m suddenly, deliciously happy. I feel the old joy come back, the edge from relishing in other people’s pain.
I catch myself smiling, and Gillian gives me a knee-jerk frown. She still must hold some tenuous allegiance she doesn’t want to jinx.
Suicide Blondes Page 4