“You would,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you like that kind of thing. Mixing things up. Right?” It was true, too. Ever since working at Aunt Libby’s last summer, Robin had been into wearing two or three necklaces together, mixing silver with gold, say. Or topping a beat-up jean jacket with a delicate scarf. Today she was wearing brown corduroy shorts over black tights, topped with an off-white scoop-necked long-sleeved winter undershirt with small buttons, her long hair pulled into a long, tight braid, and her feet in dark-purple suede boots. She was so out-there she was about to topple off the cliff, but managed to pull it off anyway. It was hard to believe that she was related to her twin brother, let alone her totally spastic cousin, John. “You look great, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“I have to tell you something else,” I said.
“What?”
“Don’t kill me, okay?”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. It’s what I’m going to do: Aunt Libby’s taking me to Paris with her in December.”
She just stared, her eyes growing the size of quarters. “Oh my God!” she finally said, dancing a little on her toes. “You’re so lucky. Paris! I’d kill to go to Paris with Libby Fine. I’d kill just to have that raincoat.” It was true, too. Ever since I’d first gotten it, Robin had lusted after my Donna Karan.
“She’s taking me for my sixteenth birthday.”
“Oh my God. You’re going to Paris with Libby Fine! You are the luckiest girl ever.”
“It will be amazing,” I agreed. “Especially since . . .”
“Since what?”
Until then, I hadn’t told anyone about Arnaud. Except for the girl I’d roomed with in Paris, who didn’t count, no one knew a thing. I took a deep breath. Then I said: “There’s someone there I want to see.”
“You mean a boy?”
That was so Robin. She still hadn’t gotten over the boy she’d dated two summers ago at sleepaway camp in the Berkshires!
“Arnaud isn’t a boy,” I said. “He’s — he’s a university student. He’s studying philosophy and might go to NYU for grad school.”
“OMG!” Robin said. “How old is he?”
“Twenty.”
“No way,” Robin said, her mouth dropping open. “That’s, like, old.”
“Do you want me to tell you or not?”
“Tell me.”
“But first you have to promise not to tell a soul. I mean it, Robin. Not one word. To anyone. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
So I told her the story. I mean, not every detail, but the gist. Including the part about how badly Arnaud had wanted to go further than I had, how kissing him, as thrilling as it was, had become a kind of tug-of-war between his wandering hands and my buttons. Then I said: “I’m thinking that, this time — well, I think I’m ready to do it, to go all the way.”
“You’re thinking of doing what?”
“Why not? I’m almost sixteen.”
“So?”
“And he loves me.”
“Did he say so?”
“Well,” I fudged, “not exactly. But he’s French. It’s different there. They’re more sophisticated. More . . .” I finally settled on the word. “More subtle. Anyway, it’s not a big deal.”
“But it is a big deal,” Robin said. “It’s a huge deal. He’s old, Robin. A lot older than we are. And he lives in Paris! Have you ever thought that maybe he’d just be using you?”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“He’s in college, Becka. I mean — that’s a lot older than us. And how do you know he doesn’t have a girlfriend — a real girlfriend, I mean, in Paris?”
“But he loves me.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do,” I said.
“Do you have even one single piece of proof?”
Which is when I realized that I did. In fact, I had two: the raincoat and the beautiful, expensive Hermès scarf. “Actually,” I said, “I do. It’s wrapped around my throat.”
“OMG,” Robin said. “And your parents have no clue?”
“What are you? Ten?”
“But, Becka! Are you sure?”
“What makes you such an expert?” I said. “You’ve never even had a boyfriend, you spend all your time babysitting, and —”
“I have had a boyfriend. Andy Clarke!”
“Andy Clarke was in fifth grade.”
“And Louis Miller, from camp.”
“Robin, that was summer camp. You weren’t even in high school. Just think about . . .”
“About what?” She was turning pink, fluttering her eyelashes in this way she does when she’s nervous. I was going to point out that she’d worn pajamas all summer but decided to start again: “Look, Robin. You’re the only one who knows. Only, Robin?”
“What?”
“Seriously. Don’t tell anyone, okay? This is, like — my whole life.”
“Okay,” she promised.
Back at home, Danny was downstairs, banging on his drums, and Meryl was out walking Lucy. I decided to write to Arnaud immediately, to tell him about my upcoming trip to Paris — and also about how I’d changed my mind about how I wanted to be with him. But as soon as I logged on to my email account, I saw it: an email from “[email protected]” — someone I’d never heard of. I was about to delete it when I saw the heading: “An article by Meryl Sanders, PhD, excerpted from Growing Pains Magazine.”
Teenage Tears and Fears
No one ever claimed that the adolescent years were easy — for either the adolescent herself or her mother. But few of us, myself included, are prepared for the mood swings, tantrums, arguments, and downright hostility that can burst into hurricane strength as your little girl bursts into young womanhood. Take my own daughter. She spends her entire life on the phone, blabbing, and when she’s not blabbing, she’s obsessing about clothes. . . .”
I couldn’t stomach it. I closed my laptop down and screamed. I screamed so hard my throat began to hurt. I screamed so hard that Danny stopped playing the drums and came upstairs to see what was wrong.
“Get out of my face, you little brat!” I said, howling, as he stood in the door with his jaw hanging open, clutching his drumsticks as if he planned to beat me with them. “Go on! Scram! And close the door behind you!”
God! I just hated her! All I could think of was running away. But the fact of the matter was that I had nowhere to run to. Aunt Libby would let me stay at her apartment, but given that she and Meryl were best friends, I don’t think she’d let me stay more than one night. Polly was always in the swimming pool — and even if she wasn’t, her apartment was so small that it barely had room for Polly. I reached for the phone to call Daddo — but then I remembered that he’d gone to some medical conference somewhere. I called anyway and left a message, but even if Daddo called me back right away, I was still stuck. At home. With Meryl. In my mind, I scrolled through everyone I could think of, and in the end, the only person who was even a remote possibility, the only person who might be able to help, was Robin, and we’d just had a fight.
I called her anyway. “What is it?” she said when she heard my voice. “What happened?”
“I can’t even tell you. I hate them!”
“What? Are your parents getting divorced or something?”
“No, my parents aren’t getting a divorce! Why should they get a divorce? It’s me who wants a divorce. From my mother.”
She didn’t say anything. I couldn’t even hear her breathe. “She wrote another article about me,” I finally said.
“I know.”
“What do you mean, you know?”
“Some jerk is sending it all around. I just saw it.”
It was even worse than I thought.
“Why didn’t you say so if you already knew? Why didn’t you call me to see if I was okay?”
&nbs
p; “But, Becka . . .”
“You’re supposed to be on my side on this, not sneaking around reading articles about me and then not saying anything.”
I slammed down the phone, locked my door, and threw myself on the bed and cried and cried until at last Meryl came home, knocked on my door, and said: “Whatever it is, I’m here for you.” WAS SHE FRIGGING JOKING?
“You wrote about me again! It was on the Internet!”
“No, I didn’t,” she said.
“Don’t lie! You’re ruining my life! I’m going to kill myself!”
“Don’t joke about things like that, Becka!”
I don’t know why, but the only thing I could think of to do was wrap myself up in Arnaud’s old raincoat. It smelled like him. In some ways, it even felt like him. Then I remembered the promise he’d made me make him: I’ll return it to you someday.
I logged on and wrote him a quick email: “I’m coming to Paris over the winter holidays. I can’t wait to see you! Love, Becka.” Amazingly, he wrote me back immediately: “Enchanté!”
In the middle of the night, it started to rain again. I could hear the water pounding on the roof. When I woke up, it was still raining, and everything looked smoky and gray. I wrote a second email to Arnaud: “I have something special for you, a surprise. I’ll tell you when I see you.” Then I emailed Robin: “If you want, you can have my Donna Karan.” I meant it, too. It had suddenly gone from being my favorite ever to something that made me sick. I didn’t want to wear anything from Meryl! I didn’t want any of her stupid presents, or false promises, or glasses of cherry soda for as long as I lived!
Then I got dressed, grabbed a bagel, wrapped myself up in Arnaud’s raincoat, and headed out into the drizzle. As the door slammed behind me, I could sense Meryl staring after me.
A few days after that awkward, and I mean AWKWARD, brunch, I finally decided to actually wear the white jeans that Mommy had given me for my birthday. Of course, Mommy was thrilled — she’d been bugging me to wear them ever since she’d bought them for me, and I’d been feeling incredibly guilty about not wearing them. But I guess between all the girls being so nice to me, and how much stronger I was getting in the swimming pool, I was beginning to feel more confident in general. It was getting chilly, so I wore them with a long-sleeved blue button-down blouse, giving me a superclean and sporty look, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I actually liked what I saw. True, I was slightly worried that once I got to school, the entire student body would stare at my back side. Even so, for the first time ever, I put on red lipstick (I usually wear pink lip gloss or nothing), and when I got to school, the first person I saw was Robin, who came right up to me and said: “Girl, you look hot!” I felt like I looked good, too, like even though Mommy and I lived in a small apartment and were constantly struggling with money, we had class. So it didn’t even bother me all that much when I found out that my lab partner had transferred into another chemistry lab, and because of the numbers, Mr. Green put me with Justine and John. Actually, I was happy about being lab partners with Justine, because, just for starters, she was smart. The problem was John. Freshman year he’d sat behind me in English, making nonstop commentary about the size of my shoulders and arms. In middle school he’d given me a chocolate Easter bunny with its paws and ears chewed off. In third grade he chased me around the playground, threatening to pull down my underpants. Even in kindergarten he’d tormented me, mainly by trying to pull the heads off my Barbies. Now he sat hunched over his notebook, scribbling furiously away, completely oblivious to what Mr. Green was saying, and only looking up long enough to say: “Oh, golly, it’s Polly.” Or: “Got a dolly, Polly?” Or my favorite: “You look like a collie, Polly.”
“And ‘john’ is the thing that people go potty in,” Justine countered.
“Put a sock in it, Mizz Frizz,” he said.
But it was as practice was winding down that things really got amazing. Before I even got a chance to take off my cap and goggles, Coach Fruit asked me to stick around for another minute. When all the other kids had gone into the locker room, he told me that he wanted to work privately with me alone every day, after regular practice.
I was so startled I didn’t know what to say other than “What?”
“After practice,” he repeated. “I want to work with you, one-on-one.”
“You want to work with me?” I sounded like a parrot.
“I’m thinking twenty minutes. I want to get you to your edge.”
“My edge?” (Polly want a cracker?)
“So what do you think? Want to give it a try?”
I did, but suddenly, as I stood there dripping wet, the thought of my huge butt made me feel like I’d morphed into an elephant.
“I’ve already told you that you’re talented — that you’ve got what it takes. But now that I’ve seen you in the water day after day, and seen you under pressure, competing in events, how you related to your teammates, well, I feel that I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t try to get you where you should be.”
“I thought I was already there,” I said. “I mean, you really think I can do better?”
I meant it. In only a few weeks with Coach Fruit coaching us, my times had improved by three seconds, four seconds, even, in breaststroke, six seconds, which is, like, almost unheard-of. Not that my finishing times were unheard-of. My finishing times were good, but it wasn’t like I was breaking records, or even Western High records. But I was managing to beat my own times a lot, especially in my strongest event, five-hundred-meter freestyle. I loved freestyle. It felt like flying. I’d hit the water and, just like that, I was pure motion, pure movement, like the water was pushing me along.
“You can do even better.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” Right then, Coach Fruit grinned this grin that was so cute it was like he was some little kid who’d been caught sneaking cookies. It wasn’t just his smile, either. He was cute, like, all over, with his Dennis the Menace blond hair and big grin, and did I mention that he had two huge dimples, too? I wondered how old he was. No wonder his girlfriend was always hanging around. I would, too, if I were dating him. Which, of course, I wasn’t and never would, and it was ridiculous even having a thought like that cross my mind. In fact, no sooner had I thought it than Bella herself showed up, her car keys in her hand. “Ready to roll when you are,” she said.
He gave her a “just one second” sign.
“Okay, then,” he said, taking a step toward me. “We have a deal?” He was so close that I could feel his shadow covering me. Was he going to hug me? Push me in the water? The thought even crossed my mind that he was about to kiss me. But of course that was stupid, for all kinds of reason, including — especially — that Bella was waiting for him by the door. Instead, he gave me a little punch on my right shoulder, the kind that says: “Way to go.”
I was so happy that I forgot about the kind of stupid, trivial things that usually drive me crazy, such as the fact that ever since Mommy had dragged me to that breakfast, I’d wanted to say something to Becka. Such as: What makes you think you’re so great? I forgot that the last time Mommy and I visited Poppy in Queens, he kept calling me “Patty” and dribbled his chicken soup all down his front. I forgot that Burton had, once again, totally ignored my birthday. I forgot that I had a math test that I wasn’t prepared for. I even forgot about my big butt!
“That’s great about the extra coaching,” Mommy said when I got home. “Your coach must really think you’re good.”
“All I know is that I’m so hungry I could eat Hank.”
“Woof,” Hank said.
“You know what?” Mommy said. “I think I’m going to email to your father tonight, to tell him. Don’t you think he’d want to know?”
“Burton?” I said. “Burton doesn’t even know I swim. Why would he care that I was getting extra coaching?”
“I don’t know,” Mommy said. “It’s just that — well, he is your father. I’m sure he’d
be pleased for you.”
“I doubt it. He doesn’t even visit Poppy. Why would he care about my swimming?”
She just gave me one of her sad little smiles. But the idea that Mommy thought he might actually give a flying fig about my getting extra coaching made me want to cry.
It’s just that she tried so hard for me. I wished she wouldn’t, but she did. Like that breakfast that she and Becka’s mom cooked up? Poor Justine. I wanted to kill Becka. What was her problem? But afterward, Mommy was like: “I’m so glad we did that! Aren’t you?”
Now she was bustling around the kitchen, telling me that one day I’d be swimming in the Olympics. And the next day, when I got home? On my pillow was a box. Inside it was a silver charm in the shape of a dolphin, dangling on a chain. When I put it on and saw myself in the mirror, the dolphin looked like it was actually swimming. Something about the way the light caught it made it seem like it had a life of its own, swimming in the shallows of my neck. When Mommy saw me she threw her arms around me, saying, “My own little dolphin. The most beautiful creature in the sea.”
Usually, when Mommy surprised me with presents, I felt guilty about them. I loved my new jeans, but I still felt guilty about them. I felt a slight twinge of guilt about the dolphin, too, but no sooner had I hit the water after school on Friday then all my guilt disappeared. I’d never felt calmer in the water, more sure of myself, more powerful.
“I like your necklace,” Coach Fruit said as I climbed up out of the pool after practice. I was breathing hard, exhausted and exhilarated and sopping wet.
“My mom gave it to me.”
Tales From My Closet Page 9