by Multiple
“No.” I balled up my fists. “I hate soccer. You know I hate soccer. You wouldn’t have to yell at me about my weight if I liked soccer. I do not want do anything with Todd McIntire.”
Gasps! The ladies froze, eyes as big as satellites, all fake laughter and scandalized grins. Caroline did not help when she snorted behind her hand when trying not to laugh.
“Avery.” My mother kept her cool and smoothed my hair out of my face with controlled, practiced gentleness. “Don’t be so histrionic. Tell them what you told me. About how you want to learn to play soccer. Tell them,” she warned, “about how much you like little Todd McIntire.”
I understood that violently gentle touch against the side of my head. A polite warning.
“No.” I continued because once I’d started defying Genevieve, there was no stopping me now. “You’re wrong. Just, stand there and be wrong for once! Caroline likes soccer. I like books. Caroline plays sports.”
My insistence was met with my mother’s laughter. Tears filled my eyes.
“Avery, darling…”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I announced, then turned and fled.
I hadn’t gotten very far before my mother caught me. She spun me around so hard I thought she’d yank my arm out of its socket. But instead of violence, she fussed with making sure my necklace was centered.
“Darling,” she warned. “I don’t know what’s come over you. You’ll tell them what they want to hear Avery. That’s how this works. You’ll make your father look good.”
“But…”
“Is everything alright?” My father appeared then, separated from his followers just to find me. I loved my father. I thought he ruled the world, back then. He put a large hand on my shoulder and searched my tears for the truth. “I saw Avery run away and…did something happen sweetheart?”
“She’s fine,” my mother answered. “Just too many sugary foods, I think. Someone’s spent too much time at the buffet.” She laughed, my father smiled thinly. “She’s fine Hamilton.”
“Dad, I don’t want to play soccer. I don’t like soccer. Tell her I’m not Caroline!”
“Sweetheart, you’re so smart. Smarter than I ever was at your age. But sometimes we have to do things we don’t really like to make others happy. And if it makes your mother happy that you play soccer, is it really such a bad thing?” The way my father tilted his head and put his arm around me made me think maybe I was being ridiculous.
“You want me to be a robot?” I demanded through my tears. “You want me to lie?”
He shook her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. I just want you to be like everyone else.”
Which meant I was all wrong. Every inch of me. Not just the baby fat but the books too, and the awkward smile and the fact I didn’t play sports. It was a shocking realization, discovering your favorite person in the world thought you were made wrong.
“But…”
“Avery, my God, please stop. Hamilton, I’ll take it from here.” My mother swept my father’s arm off me and ushered him back to his adoring fans. She returned, all her emotions tucked back inside. “No more. You insulted Mrs. McIntire and embarrassed me and your sister. You’ll come back with me and apologize. And I won’t hear another word that isn’t I’m sorry.”
I let her take me back to those women. My sister had the good sense to look worried.
“I’m sorry,” I told them sincerely. “I love soccer. I didn’t mean to be contrary. Please forgive me.”
And then I herky-jerked my arms and torso like an automaton. Beeping. Buzzing. Booping. I spun like the Tin Man on Wizard of Oz and let my head fall at an awkward slant.
“Jesus H,” Mrs. McIntire blurted out.
“My goodness, is she having a fit?”
“What a precocious child!”
“They get so bored so easily these days, don’t they just?”
Don’t they just?
“What,” my mother said through her smile, “is that supposed to be, Avery?”
I swiveled my right arm to let it dangle as if broken and pushed my glasses up my nose with my left. “My parents raised very good robot daughters, Mrs. McIntire. I would really love to spend time with your son.” Eee-ooo, eee-ooo, I beeped.
My sister’s mouth slowly formed a very silent Oh.
“Your father,” my mother promised, “will know about this.”
And later, when we finally got home, my father took his belt to me.
It was the first and last time he’d ever done anything so barbaric, this man of letters and persuasion, but that was more effective I guess. Before that night, I’d done what I was told and my father loved me most. We weren’t sons, but we were almost as good as. That night I’d let all the colors in the world fill my mouth and transmogrify me into a wicked little girl. And because of that my father stopped speaking to me.
Afterwards, after I stopped crying into my sister’s trembling arms, she and I folded our hearts into little boxes heaped with tissue paper and locked them away in a closet. We had no more use for them, being robots girls and all.
One
I wanted sugar.
“Dean asked me about children last night.” Caroline folded her napkin into her lap and stared straight across the table at Genevieve.
Our mother gasped happily. “Why that’s wonderful news! I’ve always said you’d make beautiful children, Caroline.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, mother. I didn’t say we were getting pregnant. I said he asked me about it. Do you know why he’s suddenly interested in my getting pregnant? Apparently you told him lots of women in my office were having babies and it wasn’t affecting their career at all. Now he thinks I’ve been lying to him.”
I lifted my thoughts out of my sugar trance to look at my sister who rarely got the brunt of our mother’s interference anymore. Caroline, mostly, did everything right. She was primed to be partner at her law firm and attorney general someday. Her only failing, according to my mother, was the lack of babies.
“Don’t blame this on me. When we went to lunch that day, I saw a girl in your office who was at least seven months pregnant.”
“She is our receptionist whose job is not in jeopardy if she takes maternity leave. If I took maternity leave, the partners would forget my name. Who has time to be pregnant?” Caroline sighed. “Maybe I could just hire a surrogate.”
My mother made a rude noise behind her coffee cup. “Caroline,” she said. “There’s only one thing people want less than a pregnant attorney general, and that’s one who can’t be bothered to do it herself.”
They kept arguing. I turned my attention back to the sugar dilemma.
The little swan shaped bowl sat midway between my mother and I, untouched since we’d arrived at the café. When the waitress set it down alongside a cup of cream, Genevieve had tried to politely send it back, but the girl hadn’t understood and left the indelicate bowl between us like a bad omen. If I reached for the comically tiny sugar spoon, my mother would tsk and say, “Avery, you don’t want sugar. You never take sugar.”
Then she’d whisper, “Calories,” in a scandalized tone that would suggest I was attempting to add a spoonful of cancer to my coffee instead.
Because in eleven years, the baby fat she promised would eventually disappear never did. My mother and sister were steel cut-out copies of each other – blonde coifed bobs and small chests.
This was my mother’s great shame – I came out faulty and blob shaped. Thick arms, thick chest, thick waist. A lot of excess robot build wasted on an imperfect model. Eleven years since the Starlight Ball and she still felt compelled to remind me, but gently, that I needed to work harder to blend in. It was difficult for her to have a faulty model for a daughter.
Mom said, Don’t you think so, Avery? and my robot head bobbed and said, Yes I think so.
Isn’t the view lovely?
Yes, the view is lovely.
Don’t you think you’ve had enough to eat?
Yes, I th
ink I’ve had enough to eat.
Because what would Michael think if you got any bigger?
I don’t want to lose Michael.
“Does Dean want children?” I asked.
“Oh of course he does.” Caroline threw her hands up and slumped down. “But he doesn’t have to worry about explosive acne and weird flatulence.”
“I never had flatulence,” my mother said, aghast.
“I know, you had magical pregnancies. The rest of us mortals have to worry about morning sickness during cross examination.”
I’d believe Genevieve hadn’t experienced flatulence in 50 years. I’d believe Genevieve had her clothes made by cartoon birds. She was, after all, the nicest model of suburban robot. The kind who did everything right the first time.
Sugar or no sugar, then?
If I didn’t take the sugar, I’d never be able to choke down the Sumatra she’d ordered for us. The dark roast smelled burnt and bitter and kind of mean, like it hated us as much as I hated it.
If I were home, I’d take it with three sugars and enough cream to turn it the color of raw almonds.
Under the table, while my mother and sister argued about Genevieve sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, I texted, Sugar or no sugar?
“What are you and Michael doing this weekend?” Genevieve asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“He’s in New York until Tuesday.” I didn’t look up, too eager for a response. It was lunch time on a Friday so it was unlikely he was busy. He hated Friday meetings and loved long Friday lunches.
“Why don’t you come stay in the guest house this weekend? We could do brunch on Sunday.”
“Can’t,” I said into the table top. “I work all weekend.”
“It’s a bookstore, Avery. Certainly they can manage without you for a few days. Certainly you’re not so irreplaceable that they just shut down without you.”
I bristled but didn’t look up. Caroline had earned the right of power in our messed up family and so could speak her mind. I had to acquiesce or have a very good reason not to. I was twenty-three years old going on thirteen.
Caroline huffed. “Leave her alone. Normal people can’t just not go to work when they feel like it because their moms say so.”
Sugar, he replied. Mountains of it.
I smiled.
“Book clerk isn’t a job. It’s a hobby to kill time until Michael proposes to her. Then she can come volunteer with me.”
“Mom, God, let it go.” Caroline dug into her purse for a cigarette, which she didn’t have since she’d decided to quit, and instead shoved a piece of sugar free gum into her mouth.
Yes, sir.
I reached for the sugar bowl and shoveled three spoonfuls right into my coffee cup, not even bothering to meet my mother’s stare.
“Michael and I haven’t even talked about marriage yet. Let’s not jump ahead of ourselves.”
Not to mention the idea of marrying him gave me anxiety attacks. My parents loved him and he loved my parents and the beginning I’d thought he was a wonderful catch, especially for someone who looked like me. He was nice, came from a good family, loved academia and old detective movies.
But I’d discovered quickly that it was like dating my father. Instead of going to dinners as the doting daughter, I went to dinners as the prospective fiancé. A new, complicated hell full of grown up frumpy silk dresses and wine I wasn’t allowed to shotgun just to get through the night. He didn’t get sarcasm, my main weapon, and he didn’t like fiction.
Was it delicious? he asked.
“Oh sweetheart, it’s inevitable.” My mother scooped the sugar bowl across the table between her and Caroline and out of my reach. “You know he came to see your father twice last week. You know what that means.”
I blinked. Took off my glasses. Cleaned them with a napkin.
“I’m sure I don’t know what that means,” I answered. It was easier playing stupid.
Genevieve and Caroline winked at each other.
“Speaking of, I ran in to Michael’s mother this weekend at the club. She says Michael’s worried about your neighborhood. She said he told her about the vandalism to his car last weekend. Michael said…”
“His car wasn’t vandalized,” I interrupted. “Someone set off his car alarm in the middle of the night by making out against it after last call.”
“Did Michael pee himself?” Caroline grinned. “I bet he’s never made out in public in his life. I bet his idea of porn is a copy of Forbes. No offense Avie. You two are as vanilla as they come. It’s sort of perfect.”
I smiled a little but inside my stomach soured. Vanilla. All I wanted to be was a really good strawberry.
“Caroline,” Genevieve tsked. “Don’t be vulgar.”
Exactly how I like it, I teased. Dark. Then sweet.
He certainly wasn’t vanilla. And with him, neither was I.
“He almost peed,” I said into my lap. “He’s only ever seen that much action on Animal Planet.”
Mmm. My very good girl.
My spine tingled, straight down my body to my toes.
“Avery are you texting? At the table? Were you raised in a barn?” I jumped and found my mother staring wide-eyed at me. I quickly turned off my phone and gave her my full attention.
“It was a very nice barn,” I said innocently.
Caroline snickered. My mother looked at me like I was trying my damnedest to grown horns and a tail. “What in the world has gotten into you today? You’re acting very strange.”
“Sorry. Too much coffee.”
“And sugar,” she added.
“You’re right. Sorry about that.”
She loved when I apologized to her. Satisfied, she pressed on. “Now Michael said your lease was up in two months.”
I sighed.
“Now just hear me out. Two months then you and Michael could have the guest house while he finishes law school. You’d save a lot of money and you wouldn’t need to work at your little bookstore anymore.”
After college (liberal arts, respectable but nothing fancy), my one and only subversion was my apartment located in the artsy-boozy side of South River. My mother had been scandalized, believed I was a mugging waiting to happen. Michael refused to stay the night unless I drove him because he was convinced the hoodlums stalking the streets would make off with his car while he slept. He hated that neon bar lights shone in through my bedroom window or that homeless people sometimes hung out on my stoop.
I loved it though. The potential muggings and middle of the street make-outs were the only excitement in my pencil skirt life.
As if he could hear my thoughts, my phone buzzed against my thigh.
Well, I thought, not the only thing.
I had one exciting secret that put the rest to shame. One my mother would spell d-i-s-o-w-n if she ever found out. My father…
Well who knew for sure. He spent time with Caroline when he wanted to talk law review and he only talked to me on holidays in monosyllabic responses. He’s so busy, my mother always explained, but the truth was simpler. He’d wanted sons, got daughters, and they weren’t as impressive as he knew sons would have been. A boy could have been Governor or Senator Alston. Daughters weren’t made for power and besides, only Caroline had any ambition. I was the daughter who embarrassed him by being weird and alien. I missed him sometimes.
All I wanted out of life was a hard bound Austen or Atwood and a nice shady park on a lazy afternoon. To my father, I might as well be skateboarding in empty parking lots and having sex for money. It was the same level of shame.
My phone buzzed again, demanding my attention. I tapped the back of the case and counted to ten so I wouldn’t seem too eager to please him.
Jane, he texted, you went quiet. Did you get caught with your hand in the sugar bowl? Have you been locked in a tower somewhere? Should I come rescue you?
After I hadn’t respond, he added, If you don’t tell me you’re safe and sound, I will scour the city in search o
f a girl with auburn hair and freckles and glasses and beautiful thighs. It will require me to look at a lot of naked thighs and as difficult as that would be, I’d be willing to sacrifice myself at the altar of naked, freckled thighs for you.
I smiled and shook my head. He didn’t know my name, let alone where I lived, and yet this perfect stranger who was no stranger at all talked about rescuing me like he meant it. If I still had my heart, it would have fluttered.
I guess that makes me Cinderella, I answered.
I looked up at my mother who was in the middle of a good lecture on my sister’s behalf. Something about being too young to be called grandma, but wouldn’t little ones look nice on the Alston Christmas card?
Actually, I typed. Cinderella makes a lot of sense.
Two
I work in a bookstore. I spend my days answering people’s questions and getting books down from high shelves. I’m smart and quiet and I do my own taxes. I’d really like to spend my weekends tied up.
It started with a personal ad in the Midtown Edge, South River’s edgy magazine on culture and entertainment. Its personals section was my favorite, full of longing and wanting and honest arousal. I read them like I read historical romances, looking for glimpses into the wanton, wild, colorful world of lovers who liked to play outside of missionary.
All of the things I longed for and would never have.
Once I’d asked Michael, in the heat of what he called passion, to pull my hair. He’d frozen above me, hovering mid-thrust, and said, “I’d never disrespect you like that.”
It had broken my heart a little. Suddenly I thought of every time my mother and sister asked about a potential engagement and I imagined fifty years’ worth of missionary in-and-out and gentle moans that sounded suspiciously like yawning.
And all I wanted him to do was pull my hair. Even though we had plenty of evidence to the contrary, I was his virginal girlfriend who could be paraded in front of his father’s business buddies and everyone would know how virtuous I was. It was like, if I gave him a blowjob he’d never be able to look his lawyer friends in the eye and introduce me to their wives.