Amandine

by Adele Griffin

  Mom set dinner for four in the dining room. Silverware and linen napkins and bread rolls for everyone, takeout for us, and quail and creamed spinach for my parents. Amandine even dressed for it by donning a short black jacket, the kind that bullfighters wear. Plus more lipstick and dark rings of eyeliner that made her face look hungry.

  I tried on some of her lipstick, pressing it deep into my lips, tasting its wax.

  “You’re not ready for that color,” she said, laughing when she saw. “You should stick to pink. How do I look?” She sucked in her cheeks and arched her neck.

  “Fine, I guess. Who cares?”

  She laughed again and brushed past me, heading down the stairs.

  I followed. I was nervous of my freshly leaked lie. I chewed my tongue and hoped nobody would ask the wrong questions, and I silently practiced my defensive answers, if it came to that.

  “I brought Carmen,” Amandine announced to my parents as soon as we sat down. “With Teresa Berganza, on DVD. Shall I put it on? Do you have a DVD player? Do you even like opera?” The last question was a bit wistful.

  “Why, yes, that would be just … perfect, Amandine.” My mother looked surprised, then pleased. “It’s in the living room, dear. In that silver-and-wood-paneled cabinet. You’ll have to raise the volume so that we can hear it in here.”

  Amandine nodded. As her jacket fell open, I saw that she had brought the discs down with her, slipped into an inside pocket. I also saw that at some point she had changed from her black blouse to a sexy, plunge-necked black leotard. Although there was nothing much to see, the leotard humiliated me as much as if I were wearing it, instead.

  She skipped out of the room, and I glanced at my parents to see if they were shocked, exasperated, anything, but they were speaking quietly to each other.

  “Carmen,” Mom mused to Dad. “I’ve always preferred it to Romeo and Juliet.”

  “I haven’t heard it in ages.”

  “Oh, let’s light the candles!” Amandine exclaimed when she returned.

  Dad jumped out of his seat for his Brookstone electric lighter kept in the sideboard drawer. Then he dimmed the lights and lit both candelabras.

  “Ah, that’s wonderful! I forget what candlelight does to a room.” Mom clasped her hands together and held them under her chin.

  It did look pretty. The icy March twilight outside; the warm, golden firelight inside; and all of us gathered together while Carmen washed in at a soothing distance. A family, Amandine had said. And it made me sort of angry, though I couldn’t have said exactly why.

  “This is the first time I ever ate in here,” I blurted.

  “Stands to reason. We’ve been here less than a month,” said Dad. “And Miss Amandine is our first special occasion.” He smirked across the table at Amandine, giving her his lawless Operator’s smirk. As if he were teasing her and complimenting her at the same time.

  “Who, little old me?” she asked, pointing a finger at herself.

  I wished she would stop with all that. The way she talked to my dad was worse than the way she talked to my mom. Fussy and chirpy was one thing, but flirty was another. She should know better than to talk to other people’s dads this way. It was alarming.

  My parents were unalarmed. They drank up Amandine as if she were an entertainment or an amusement, like the special red wine they treated themselves to in the summer. Even when, at one point, Amandine put down her fork and began to sing along with the opera—which made me shiver slightly, it was too weird—they did not react except to smile and listen, their heads tilted like birds.

  I could almost hear Dad say “Young and refreshing! Just bold enough!”

  After dinner, we parted—Amandine and I to the living room to watch movies, and my parents to clean up the kitchen.

  Later, while I was fixing a tray of fruit and cookies in the pantry, Mom caught me around my shoulders and drew me into a clumsy hug. “Such fun!” she whispered in my ear. “She’s a water sprite, your little friend.”

  “Kind of unpredictable,” I said. Though I didn’t quite know if I was referring to Amandine or my mother’s reaction to her.

  We both slept in my bed, on opposite sides. I wasn’t used to sharing my bed, it made me nervous, and when my toe accidentally touched Amandine’s leg, she judo-kicked me.

  “Sorry,” I said, although it was all her fault.

  “Good night,” she answered stiffly. I supposed she didn’t want to share the bed any more than I did. I wished she had brought a sleeping bag. A sleeping bag was kind of the rule of a sleepover, and I didn’t get how Amandine could have forgotten this.

  “Your parents wouldn’t like it if I broke in and slept in your brother’s room, huh?” she hissed after a few more shifting, twisting minutes.

  I felt my heart stumble. “They would kill me,” I answered. “I’m not kidding.”

  “There’s no pictures of him anywhere. Are they mad at him?”

  “Oh, yes!” I answered. “They’re so mad. Because. Because he wanted to marry this girl, and they didn’t like her, so he’s not talking to them. Ethan’s really good-looking and tons of girls are in love with him, so my parents have these really high standards. You don’t see it, but they can be very strict if they want.”

  “They love him the most,” she whispered. “That’s why they’re mad.”

  “I don’t know about that.” And for a moment, I felt a throb of pity for myself, and more than a little jealousy of this wonderful, made-up brother of mine.

  I woke up several times that night, and each time I sensed that Amandine was awake, too. It made my dreams skittish, and I was conscious all night that the bottoms of my feet were dry and scratchy. At one point toward morning, I was sure Amandine had slipped out of the bed and was no longer in my room, but by then I was too tired to care.

  I woke late, and my opened eyes felt bruised. From downstairs, I heard Amandine’s voice. I smelled coffee and pancakes. Nobody had bothered to call me. When I sat up, I saw the bath towel and pools of discarded clothes on the floor. I saw, too, that the books on my shelf, as well as my painted cigar box of treasures, my bronze horseshoe bookends, and my chorus line of old Beanie Babies were askew, as if everything had been taken out, examined, and hastily replaced.

  I leaped out of bed to check on everything, to make sure all of my treasures were there. My fingers counting, reassuring me that nothing was gone.

  Nothing was gone. But still! How sneaky! What was she looking to steal? My heart pounded so loud that I thought I could feel its reverberation in the floorboards.

  Furious, knotting my robe, I stormed down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  “Honeydew!” said Dad. He and Mom and Amandine were ringed around their empty plates on the breakfast table. My parents’ faces were alive with pleasure.

  “Honeydew!” Amandine grinned. Her wire-rimmed glasses were perched on the edge of her nose, giving her a smart, thoughtful appearance. I felt sleepy and childish in contrast.

  “Amandine was just telling us that she was in the City last month, to see that revival of Watch on the Rhine,” said Mom. “It’s a play.” She turned to Amandine and spoke confidentially. “Poor Delia doesn’t have good parents who have been as conscientious about her cultural awareness.”

  And Dad laughed in a sporty, ho-ho way that I had never heard before.

  I moved to the overhead cabinet for a plate.

  “Delia, I thought you might like some fruit and yogurt,” said Mom. “It’s already prepared, in a glass dish in the fridge.”

  I veered away from the cabinet as gracefully as I could, opened the refrigerator, and took my breakfast to my place.

  “As I was saying,” Dad continued, “back when we lived in the City, Eva and I used to go to the Sunday matinee special. You could get a fixed-price lunch at that restaurant, what was it called … the trattoria on Thirty-eighth with the free homemade grappa, lord help me, what was the name of that place, Eva?”

  “La Bugga? No, that’s not
… La Trugga?” Mom rippled her fingers over her forehead as she tried to remember.

  “La Gubbria?” suggested Amandine.

  “La Gubbria!” Mom and Dad exclaimed together, then burst out laughing.

  Watching the three of them, I felt all mixed-up and confused. It was as if a bubble had sealed them off from me. Now I was the guest, the outsider, and Amandine was the daughter. A strange gypsy daughter who looked more mature than usual, dressed as she was in a Hanes V-neck, jeans, and clogs, and I wondered why that costume had won out over the other choices.

  It was starting to upset me, all of it. That Amandine had snooped in my room, that she was allowed to eat pancakes, that she knew the name of the stupid restaurant with the free grappa. I ate my yogurt and fruit in silence, and stayed quiet as I helped with the cleanup, waiting for my parents to head out to the garden before I confronted her. She was pirouetting around the floor, glasses in hand and a dishrag on her head.

  “My mantilla,” she said.

  “Amandine, did you go through the stuff on my bookshelf?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Because that’s personal, okay? If you went through it, I’ll … I’ll never speak to you again.”

  She stopped, looking stricken even as she continued to hold her ballet pose. “God, I’m sorry, Delia. Maybe that was bad of me, but you don’t have to be horrible. All I did was look at your Horse Club books. Oh, and then I took out your dad’s yearbook. It was right there, and I wanted to see for myself. How you said how he used to be real handsome. By the way, could I borrow The Noplace Pony?”

  “What else did you do? Did you take anything?”

  “Nothing.” She held up her hands, palms flat.

  “Promise.”

  “Promise! Double-cross my heart. I’m sorry.”

  But I had a feeling that neither the promise nor the apology meant much to her.

  “Watch me do ballet?” she asked. “I’m playing Coppelia. Do you recognize it?”

  She began to hop and spring around. I watched. She was a trained dancer—that was no lie—so her spins and leaps were strong and precise. She twirled out to the living room and turned the music up so loud that eventually my parents drifted in.

  “Live from Blaine Center,” Dad joked.

  “Shhh.” Mom put a hand on his arm. She watched, riveted. The skinny daughter she wished she had. The daughter who “got everything.”

  With an audience, Amandine went faster, performed better. I sensed my parents’ enchantment, and I longed for secret abilities of my own, to be something better than what they could see. The tiny ballerina inside my own dull self danced along with Amandine, shadowing every pretty step. Well, at least I had brought her to them. At least I had done something they appreciated.

  At the end, she pliéd low, bowing as we applauded. I made my clapping slow, so that it sounded rude. But I’d had enough.

  “When are your parents coming to get you?” I asked. “It’s almost noon.”

  “Mom’s not there. My dad called earlier, while you were sleeping, he’s going to be late.” Amandine bit her lip. “But I just realized, I have my doctor’s appointment in town. Physical therapy, for my shinsplints. I forgot to tell him.”

  “Call home now and tell him,” I said.

  “He’s in his studio. He won’t hear the phone.”

  “I could give you a lift to town,” offered Dad. “I was going to the hardware store. It’s not really on the way, but if you want—”

  “Great!”

  He looked surprised, but smoothed over it quickly. “You want to come along, Delia? I won’t be at the store for more than a few minutes.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’ve got homework.” An ironclad excuse.

  “Eva?”

  “If I go, then I can’t finish putting the fish fertilizer on the topsoil. I want to get the smell over and done with.”

  Dad nodded, but now he looked put out. Maybe the idea of enduring half an hour of Amandine and her constant showing off was giving him second thoughts. Bad luck. She was his problem now.

  “Funny how what goes around comes around,” said Mom, sliding up next to me at the door frame as I watched them leave, Amandine dragging her bag because Dad forgot to take it from her. “I used to wear clogs and jeans back when I was in grad school. I haven’t seen a pair of clogs like that in almost twenty years. Our Amandine has a unique style.”

  “Just because she’s wearing it doesn’t mean it’s any kind of style,” I bit back. My words sounded small, but I didn’t want her to be our Amandine. She could come for a visit, but any ownership of her seemed suffocating. Even the clogs seemed sneaky, as if she was trying to show how much she belonged to us.

  When she didn’t. She didn’t.

  Monday morning, Samantha Blitz was getting off the bus just as I was getting out of Mrs. Gogglio’s car. I had my chance and I leaped for it. My hand groped in my book bag for the bandanna.

  “Samantha!” I called, running up to her and thrusting it into her hands. “Here! I found this last week. It was hanging over the shower rod in the girls’ locker room. I know you have a game today and—”

  “Oh my gosh! Delia, awesome!” She snatched it from my fingers and shook it out, flipped it over. “I figured it was just, you know, totally gone! You’re the best!”

  When a practically perfect girl like Samantha Blitz says you’re the best, it really feels as if, for a moment, you are.

  “I meant to give it back Friday, but you had soccer and I had spring fitness and we were in the gym and you were all outside so I put it in my book bag, and then some other stuff was going on for the weekend and I totally forgot! I’m so stupid!”

  I was talking too much, too fast. Then I saw the low red car, the one that dropped off Amandine, turn into the parking lot. I stalled an extra moment, looking at Samantha. Hoping. Samantha just smiled.

  “Okay,” she said. “Thanks, again.”

  “Okay. I better go,” I said.

  Later, when Samantha and her boyfriend, Marcus Zeller, passed me in the hall, she waved. A ripple and drop of the free hand that wasn’t hooked around Marcus’s belt loop. But it wrenched me. Samantha seemed so normal, like a bar of soap, after I’d spent a week soaked in oil. My oil was Amandine, and even when I was not with her, the marked territory of our friendship clung to me.

  Now I knew Samantha Blitz was out of my reach. The bandanna had been my last lucky chance, and I hadn’t figured out how to make it work.

  Sitting with Amandine at lunch, I tried not to let my eyes stray to Samantha and her rowdy, happy table as I half listened to Amandine relate her plan to cut class. An afternoon assembly had been scheduled for freshmen and sophomores, some slide show from some teacher who went someplace and took some pictures there. It sounded boring, but I’d never been a class-cutter.

  “Oh, come on.” Amandine’s gray eyes were contemptuous. “There’s too many of us for Mrs. Nyeung and Ms. Hunnington to keep it all together. That’s why they yell so much, ’cause they’re going nuts. Look, you get in the end of the line, and when it turns the corner to go down to the theater, cut into the bathroom. Not the girls’ but the teachers’ one. I’ll meet you there.”

  “What if a teacher comes in?”

  “Then she’ll send us back to the theater, or blue-slip us for Saturday study hall.” She crossed her arms. “But the probability is almost zero, Delia. Don’t disappoint me.”

  I tried to imagine getting a Saturday study hall. My parents would be furious. But Amandine seemed so sure that she made me feel a little daring. And if Amandine didn’t attend the assembly, then who would I sit with in the theater? Samantha Blitz? That would be pushing my luck. No, I’d end up sitting alone near the teachers or, worse, in a spare seat in front of a row of jock guys—an hour’s worth of chair kicks and spitballs aimed into my hair.

  I cut. Keeping to the end of the line, then swaying, wobbling until I veered out of it completely. Anxiety put a rosy glow in
my face that must have made me look guilty from miles away as I scurried into the teachers’ bathroom.

  Amandine was hiding in a stall. She sprang out and slapped me a high five. We waited, breath held, until the din of the passing line faded. Then we made a break for it, Amandine ahead and I following sweatily behind. Down two flights on the fire escape stairs and into the soundproof sub-terrain of the music department.

  She led me into a little room that was a storage space for the harp and the electric standup organ. A long row of greasy polyester blue choir outfits, separated by plastic dry cleaner’s bags, hung from a wall-to-wall clothes rod. Other than that, the room was empty.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked.

  “Shhh!” She pinched my arm. I heard voices slowly approaching. The door was louvered, slicing up my view of what lay behind it.

  “That’s Mr. Serra out there,” I yipped. Mr. Serra was the school principal.

  “Oh, who cares?” Amandine shrugged, but we waited until the voices had passed. Then she said, “Let’s do a skit.”

  “A what?”

  “A skit. You pretend you’re that maintenance guy who mows the grass, and I’ll be me, and you ask me out on a date but I have a big black poppy seed stuck in my teeth and I don’t know it, so you have to try to tell me!”

  “That’s weird,” I said.

  “No, it’s acting,” she answered. “It’s for fun. I used to be in plays all the time. From, like, age three to age eleven I was always in a play at the Circle Theater, back when we lived in Brooklyn.” She began to tick them off with her fingers. “Inherit the Wind, Really Rosie, The Children’s Hour, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Tons more. Come on, Delia. Do it with me.”

  “I don’t know how to be a guy.”

  “Then I’ll be him.” She spun away into the corner of the room, her back to me. “I’m getting into character,” she said over her shoulder. When she faced me again, she had her shoulders flexed and her face mirrored the casually alert expression of the man who for the past week had been taking care of the school grounds. He was older, but handsome in a sunburned, burnt-out way.