Marianne

by Elizabeth Hammer

  Patrick fake coughed.

  “No!” shouted Marianne. “That sounded bad. Not like that.”

  He laughed. “You’re so easy to tease. I love it.”

  Marianne started rinsing the tub with the shower extension. “At least one of us does,” she said, annoyed.

  “I miss you,” he said.

  She stopped working and stood up straight. “Yeah.” Marianne bit her lip. “Me, too.”

  “Can I call you when I get home? If it’s not too late?”

  She shook her head at his stupid question. “Call me anyway.”

  “I will,” he said. “Okay, I gotta go finish up with some things. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Okie-day.”

  “Dude, seriously Marianne,” said Patrick, almost angry. “Stop it with the Jar Jar Binks stuff. I hear that imbecile’s voice in my head all day long now.”

  “All right,” she laughed. “My give up. No more Jar Jar.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Meesa tinkin yousa gettin back ta workin now.”

  “You are the worst.”

  “Bye!”

  “Bye.”

  Marianne flipped her phone closed and stuck it in her back pocket. She was seriously in love with that man. She started dating him on a Sunday, kissed him on Monday, fell in love with him over the phone by Friday, and was ready to propose to him by today, Wednesday. Eleven days. Was that okay?

  Probably not.

  It was kind of pathetic, actually. Marianne went to the kitchen and started filling the sink with water. She hadn’t planned on doing the kitchen today, but Patrick wouldn’t be home for another eight hours. If she went home, she’d spend the entire time fussing over how she looked, and he’d come home to Paris Hilton.

  Marianne washed the dishes, organized the refrigerator, and mopped the floor. She was still on her hands and knees on the tacky linoleum, when her phone rang again.

  “Hi,” said Sally. “Do you want to go to Disneyland right now?”

  “Hi. No.” Marianne was too happy today for that depressing place.

  “Yes, you do,” said Sally firmly.

  “No, I don’t. Patrick is—”

  “Yes, you do!” cried Sally. She was suddenly weeping into the phone.

  Marianne sat down on the floor, getting her pants wet. “What’s wrong?”

  Unintelligible gibberish. Sobbing. The word boyfriend. More gibberish. The word man-whore.

  “Got it,” said Marianne. “I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

  More weeping.

  Marianne just hung up and ran for her purse.

  Sally stuck her head out of her upstairs bedroom window and squealed like a little girl when she saw Marianne walking up the driveway. Marianne crossed the lawn and stood under the window. She gave Sally a sympathetic, pouty look and spread her arms out.

  Sally bent her pretty face down toward Marianne and smiled as if her prince had come to rescue her from her locked tower. She leaned her elbow on the sill and rested her cheek on her hand. “‘Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Wherefore hast thou left me now many a day and night? Many a weary night and day ‘tis since thou art fled away.’”

  “Right...” Marianne scratched behind her ear. “So, what’s the plan?” She wasn’t trying to be mean, but geez.

  Sally pulled down a piece of her ratted orange hair and twirled it around her finger. “I have no plans. I have no ambitions...”

  Marianne exhaled. So this was how tonight was going to go. She squinted up at Sally in sudden inspiration. “Well, do you have makeup?”

  Sally brightened up immediately. “Ooh! Yeah!”

  Marianne nodded and ran into the house. She met Sally on the landing of the second floor. “I think we’re going to need it all. Everything you’ve got.”

  She followed Sally into the bedroom. Her room was typically teenage. Hanging on the walls were rock band posters, Christmas lights, and dried prom corsages. The bedposts and chairs had been annexed as more closet space and peeking out from under the bed were a pair of old school roller skates and a few of her little brother’s toy trucks.

  Sally pointed at the far corner of the room where the makeup was and flopped backward onto her bed. The vanity area was just an empty corner of the room. All her makeup and hair products were organized into bins on the floor, and there was a square mirror mounted on the wall about eighteen inches up. Marianne knelt down and started dumping out eyeliners and pulling off caps to check the colors. “You do your makeup on the floor?”

  “You wanna buy me a vanity?” said Sally, leaning back and looking at the ceiling.

  “Of course. The question is... Do I have the money to buy you a vanity?”

  “Vanity, vanity! All is vanity!” shouted Sally. She untied the strings on her black skirt and yanked it off. She tossed it toward Marianne. “Put that away for me, dollface.”

  Marianne smiled and obeyed. She didn’t like undressing in front of other girls, but she thought it was fun when they did. It made her feel like a valid teenage girl. She’d seen movies about slumber parties—girls were supposed to hang around together in their underwear, right? Marianne turned toward her. “So, I guess you want a full makeover? And am I crazy, or do you have teddy bears on your pink underwear?”

  “I do, indeed,” said Sally. “And you haven’t even seen the back, yet.” She rolled over onto her stomach and wagged the huge teddy bear face on her tush.

  Marianne went over to the bed and knelt down by Sally. “Are you okay?”

  “No,” said Sally, brightly.

  “Victor’s a man-whore?” asked Marianne. As if she didn’t know that already. Sally’s boyfriend Victor was an accomplished jackass. Always had been.

  Sally smiled and raised her eyebrows. “He is, indeed.” Her demeanor was a little disturbing. Besides the cheeriness, her eyes were too wide, and she wasn’t focusing just right.

  Marianne hoped that it was just stress. Other than cigarettes, Sally didn’t use any kind of drugs... but you never know. Marianne was still going to watch for signs that Sally had taken something. “I’ll let you make me over as Gothy as you want tonight,” said Marianne. She’d offered it at the same time as she’d thought it. Compassion run wild.

  Sally laughed once. “Sounds good. Do you want to do me normal?”

  That was even crazier than wanting to go Goth herself. She frowned. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

  Sally noticed her frown. “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just...” Marianne looked at her hard. “Are you having some sort of breakdown?”

  “I think that’s a given, Marianne!” she sighed. “But, for me it’s understandable. You’re the one we should be wondering about. What’s going on with you? Since when are you cool with looking undead?”

  “Since—”

  “Oh, and undead is your term, not mine,” said Sally, interrupting her.

  “Since I heard that you got your heart broken…” said Marianne. She said the words carefully and non-emotionally so she wouldn’t offend Sally by bringing up the subject. “I’ll make a fool of myself for you if it makes you forget for a while.”

  “Lies,” said Sally.

  Marianne just stared at her. What was that supposed to mean? Did Sally really think that Marianne was incapable of being nice? Rude. Now Marianne would be really nice tonight just to get at her. Marianne stood up and went back over to the makeup. “Get your pink butt over here. Let’s do this thing.”

  Sally stuck her legs straight up toward the ceiling and then swung them down and lurched off the bed. She sat down cross-legged by Marianne and started brushing out her snarly hair. Marianne popped open the bottle of makeup remover and put some on a little cotton pad. She started gently removing all the makeup from Sally’s face. “Do you want to tell me about it?” asked Marianne. “Did Victor confess?”

  “Changing the subject, are we?” said Sally with her eyes closed.

  “Should I take that as a no, then?” Marian
ne tried very hard to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “You don’t want to tell me about it?”

  Sally tilted her face up so Marianne could wipe under her chin. “I said nothing of the sort. I just noticed that you dodged my question.”

  “What question was that?”

  Sally didn’t respond, just opened her eyes, and raised her eyebrows at Marianne in annoyance.

  “What?” said Marianne. “I’m not being cagey. I just don’t know what you’re asking.”

  She shrugged. “I’m asking about your true motives. I don’t know, I guess I’m just as bad as the tabloid publishers. I want to know all the details of this crazy love affair you’re living.”

  Marianne shifted to lean on her other leg. “I have a boyfriend. I’d hardly call it a love affair. I mean, I like him and everything—”

  “You don’t love him?”

  “No.” Lies, lies, lies. But really, what could she say? That she’d found a new reason to breathe in and out? That she’d found an additional thing to worship? It was true, but she couldn’t say it without sounding sappy or pagan.

  “You seem like you love him.” Sally had to pause to cough when the alcohol from the pad hit her nose. “And that’s not a bad thing. Honestly, it makes me want to kiss him.”

  Oh, neat. What a neat, neat image. Marianne would keep that one around, pull it out whenever she needed to kick her insecurities up a notch. If she ever felt a bit too comfortable, she’d just imagine Patrick lifting Sally up in his arms and holding her like there was no one else in the world he wanted to be with more than her. She’d imagine Patrick kissing Sally with all the sweetness and intensity he had. Beautiful Sally cradled in beautiful Patrick’s lap. Those were the kind of thoughts that made Marianne wish that she’d develop cancer, or get shot during a bank robbery. Then Patrick would have to visit her in the hospital and feel so sorry for her that he would feel too guilty to leave her. Marianne got her thoughts under control and tried to answer Sally, though she couldn’t quite remember her exact question. “I hardly know him. I just met him a few weeks ago.”

  “So?”

  “So?”

  “So, you don’t know him well enough to marry him or anything,” said Sally. “But that doesn’t mean that you can’t love him. It’s okay to love someone right away.”

  “Yeah right!” Marianne shook up the bottle of foundation. “That would be totally creepy.”

  “No, it would be totally natural. I’m in love all the time; there’s nothing wrong with that.”

  Marianne put some foundation on a little wedge sponge and started to put it on Sally’s face. “Well, I guess I’m just not like you.”

  “You are so deluded. You think we’re different, but we’re not. You’re in love with Patrick. I can see it in the way you act, in the way you’ve been talking about him all week. You’re just too scared to admit it.”

  Yup. Marianne didn’t say anything.

  “Am I wrong? You love him on the inside, right?”

  “Close your eyes,” said Marianne. She put the foundation over Sally’s eyelids and then started with the brown eyeliner. “I don’t know. How do you know if you love somebody or not?”

  “Well,” said Sally with her eyes closed. “You get this nauseated look on your face when your friend says she wants to kiss him.”

  Marianne laughed, and Sally opened her eyes long enough to wink at her. Marianne dug her brush into the eye shadow and tapped the excess off on the side. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Marianne. “Even if I thought I loved him, it wouldn’t matter at this point in our relationship.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

  “How is that stupid? What? Do you want me to go tell him?”

  “No. We all know you’d need a brain transplant before you’d ever tell a boy you loved him.”

  “Exactly,” said Marianne.

  “But if you admitted it to yourself, then you could start acting like it. That’s better than saying it, anyhow.”

  “Yeah, well. I don’t need any help in that department. I already stare at him with goo-goo eyes and carry my cell phone around with me everywhere. I even put it on the sink when I take a shower.”

  “You idiot,” said Sally. “That’s not what I’m talking about at all. I mean that you’ll start being more open, being more you.”

  Marianne put blush on Sally’s cheeks. “Hmm. I guess I’m not in love after all. There is no way that’s going to happen.”

  Sally pulled back to stare at Marianne with her mouth open. “You are one selfish witch.”

  “I know!” Marianne nodded. “That’s part of what I’m trying to hide from him. Aren’t you listening?”

  “You know,” Sally smiled sideways, “you’re not as jacked up as you think you are, Marianne.”

  “Ha! That’s just proof of what a brilliant liar I am.” She shook her head and handed Sally the eyelash curler.

  Sally leaned over to the mirror and did all the mascara stuff herself. “You love the man, and you hide your true self from him. Don’t you see a problem with that?”

  “Not if I want him to love me back.” Ew. Too much honesty. Marianne wished she could take that comment back. She crawled over to the radio and hit play on Sally’s CD.

  “He can’t love you if he doesn’t really know you,” said Sally. “It’ll be fake.”

  Marianne crawled back to Sally. “Fake is better than nothing,” she mumbled toward the carpet.

  Sally slammed the mascara tube back into Marianne’s hand. “I think we’d better stop talking about this before I punch you in the eye.”

  Marianne smiled and shrugged. That was the best plan she’d ever heard. She finished putting on Sally’s lipstick and then flat ironed her hair into a little orange bob. Very cute. She rummaged through the closet for an outfit. Sally had tons of stuff, so it wasn’t hard to put something together. She picked out a pair of tight, dark jeans and a black camisole. She wrapped a thin ivory scarf around Sally’s neck and made her put on little black slippers. Unfortunately for Marianne’s self-confidence, Sally didn’t end up looking normal at all. She looked like she belonged on a magazine cover. “All done,” said Marianne, smiling. “You look so hot.”

  Sally spun around in front of the mirror that hung on the inside of the closet. “Thanks, babe. I feel all fresh. A new creature—for one night, anyway.”

  Marianne sat down on the bed to enjoy watching Sally’s good mood. “I wonder what everyone will say when we get there.”

  Sally turned around in a flash. “Oh, honey. No one will be looking at me.” She pointed firmly at the makeup nook. “Your turn.”

  “Fricker,” said Marianne under her breath. But she realized as she walked toward the gallows that she was actually a little excited. She’d always wanted to try out this look for herself but never had enough courage. Since Sally was forcing her to do it, she felt less nervous. If she looked like a dope, it would be Sally’s fault, not hers. There was no risk of feeling presumptuous this way; she had no choice.

  Sally worked on her hair first. She attached a few thin white hairpieces onto her head and pinned up all of Marianne’s long hair in elaborate loops. She left her bangs down and cut a few more layers to hang down around her face. Sally even added a few turquoise feathers.

  “I’m looking like a peacock,” said Marianne. “You know that right?”

  “That’s the idea, dollface.” Sally grabbed Marianne by the chin and turned her away from the mirror. She found a new sponge and put too-pale foundation all over Marianne’s face. “It’s all about theatricality.”

  “I thought Goth was all about truth.”

  “This is truth,” said Sally, coming at Marianne with the black eyeliner. “You are a glorious, dark princess, and that’s exactly what you’ll look like when I’m through with you.”

  “I can’t believe I’m going to go anywhere like this.” Marianne tried to hold perfectly still so she wouldn’t mess up Sally’s work. “See how nic
e I can be?”

  Sally tapped her on the chin. “Okay, you can open your eyes, now. And yes, you’re very nice.” She sighed heavily. “I guess it’s my turn to start talking now, huh?”

  “Only if you want,” said Marianne softly.

  “I do, it’s just...” Sally paused and blinked a few times. Then she smiled an angry smile. “It’s just that you’re kind of the last person I want to talk to about it.”

  Marianne’s breathing stopped automatically, and she didn’t speak. Sally had never seemed bitter at her before.

  Sally looked down at her hands and then back up at Marianne. She looked defeated now instead of angry. “I mean... it’s just not fair.” Her voice broke on the last word, and she coughed a little. “I always try so hard, you know? And I get crap back. You give crap, and nobody cares. Everyone loves you.”

  Huh? Sally was way crazier than Marianne ever knew. But Sally was right about always getting crap back from everyone. She was the nicest girl in the world, but her parents treated her like crap. Her boyfriend treated her like crap. Even half of her friends treated her like crap. Why the hell did that happen? Marianne had so many things to respond with, that she couldn’t decide where to start. Sally started back up before she could pick one.

  “I still love you, though,” said Sally, smiling. She lifted the eyeliner to Marianne’s face again and started drawing a spider web design to the side of her left eye. “So anyway... I went over to Victor’s house after school to see if he wanted to go to the beach clean-up with me this weekend. His cell phone was off.” Sally paused to grab the purple lipstick and directed Marianne about how to hold her lips. “I saw him making out with some chick in his car.”

  That was so much worse than a confession! No remorse at all. Marianne was so angry that she wanted to stab a pen into her leg just to release some of it. She let Sally finish with her lips, and then said, “What the hell? Are all Goth guys evil cheaters?”

  “I believe you’re thinking of men in general,” said Sally, very composed.

  How could she look so calm? She should have been yelling and asking Marianne to help write nasty notes to him.

  Sally looked at Marianne like she’d forgotten something. “Excepting Patrick, of course. He wouldn’t do that to you.”