“Well, you know, she likes the practice,” I lie. But I’m positive Mrs. Thompson knows just from looking at me that I’ve agreed to the makeover because I’m planning to have sex with my boyfriend. And it’s for sure that Gwen didn’t tell her. On the other hand, it’s obvious where Gwen gets her highly tuned radar.
“Are you still seeing that boy who went to high school with you girls?” asks Mrs. Thompson. “I think his name was Craig Larkin, wasn’t it?”
As if she’s ever forgotten a name, car model, or license plate. “No, we’re just friends. We both thought it’d be best to concentrate on our schoolwork for the first year of college.”
She smiles as if I get credit for saying the correct thing but also as if she doesn’t believe a word of it.
“Mom!” Gwen hollers from upstairs. “I heard the doorbell ring. Stop giving Hallie the third degree. Just ask if you can read her diary.”
“I do not read your diary!” shouts back Mrs. Thompson.
Once I’m safely upstairs I ask Gwen, “Does she really read your diary?”
“Yeah, but it’s a fake. I write stuff about what movie stars I have a crush on and log in good test scores. The real diary is hidden inside Grandma’s old hatbox down in the basement.”
Forget fashion, Gwen and her mom should open a mother-daughter detective agency. “It sounds like Bernard’s bookkeeping system for his antiques shop,” I say.
Gwen’s room is a jumble of patterns, sketches, bolts of fabric, and half-finished outfits. There are three full-sized mannequins in various states of undress, and brightly colored silk scarves dangle from lamps, bedposts, and off the edges of mirrors like flags on a windless day. Gwen instructs me to go and wash my hair in her flowery-smelling bathroom, handing me a gallon jug of conditioner to rub into it that’s actually for horses! Following that I’m supposed to run a comb through and let it sit for ten minutes before rinsing. “I’d better not wake up craving hay and oats tomorrow morning,” I tease her.
By the time I’m finished with all that nonsense, she’s cleared off a chair in the front of her 1,000-watt Hollywood-style vanity mirror. And Jane has arrived in her usual uniform of shorts, the polychromatic jersey of some Ecuadorian soccer team, and a Cleveland Indians baseball cap. She sprawls on top of Gwen’s bed, and just barely misses redesigning her sweat socks with a pair of pinking shears tucked into the folds of the comforter. Glancing at Gwen’s sketches of a fall clothing collection, which are taped above the headboard, Jane is her usual snide self when it comes to fashion. “I don’t know how a person could even bend over wearing any of that stuff.”
“They’re clothes for going to work, silly,” says Gwen. “Not playing sports.”
“Then remind me not to get a job where I have to prance around in panty hose, over-the-calf boots, and a hat that doesn’t have a visor,” says Jane.
“Get the glue stick,” I chime in. “I’m ready to apply that.”
Gwen looks at us both as if it’s difficult to comprehend how her two best friends from kindergarten turned out to be such total fashion failures.
I congratulate Jane on being accepted to Bucknell and she says, “Tell me it’s true that they don’t take attendance in college.”
“One professor did in a freshman writing seminar. The rest didn’t, but in design and computer classes they move through stuff so fast that if you miss just a few sessions you’re sort of screwed,” I explain. “Why? Is Just Call Me Dick the Attendance Nazi making your life miserable?”
“Let’s just say that life was a lot easier when you kept him busy twenty-four/seven,” replies Jane, who is in the habit of skipping first period on a game day in order to enjoy a big breakfast at the diner with some of her teammates.
“It’s Doctor Dick now,” chimes in Gwen. “How about showing a little respect.”
“You’re kidding!” I roll my eyes up so hard that my head follows them in a single whiplash motion. “He got a Ph.D. in attendance?”
As I’m imagining graduate courses on how to create the perfect seating chart and a thesis about advanced alphabetizing, Jane picks at the little tufts on Gwen’s chenille comforter and says, “I guess Gwen told you about my parents.”
There’s no point in trying to pretend that Gwen didn’t because we both know she can’t keep a secret unless it means not telling grown-ups. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” I say. “What happened?”
Meantime, Gwen has drawn a pattern for new and improved eyebrows over my old ones and starts plucking as I wince and occasionally yell out like I’m at a revival meeting.
“I don’t know.” Jane sighs and in a voice tinged with sadness continues, “All they’ll say is that ‘it’s mutual.’ My father can hardly bring himself to speak to any of us and my mother goes around crying all the time. They used to be so in love. Where did the love go?”
“To become the title of a Top 40 ballad.” I attempt to cheer Jane up. Only she looks as if she’s going to cry.
Gwen deftly changes the subject. “Speaking of breakups, Hallie, what happened with Bernard and Gil? My mom says that Gil is living in Cleveland!” At least Gwen comes by her tracking skills honestly. It’s apparently in her DNA.
“I’m not sure, exactly,” I admit. “Although it would seem that Gil wants to date women. And I can tell you that it definitely isn’t mutual. Bernard still really loves him.”
“How can you still love someone after they tell you they don’t love you anymore?” asks Jane, still preoccupied with finding the secret hiding place of love after it’s been given a pink slip.
“I have no idea,” I say. “That’s graduate-level romance you’re talking about. I’m only a freshman. You’d have to ask Olivia.”
“Why would she know?” Gwen likes to be aware of any competitors on the information-gathering front, especially when it pertains to matchmaking.
“Olivia’s a poet,” I say. “She also writes pornography, because it pays a lot more than poems and she likes to have her own income.”
“So call and ask her,” says Gwen, always eager for dating tips. She tosses me her phone.
I dial the number for the Stockton house. “Hi, Olivia, I’m at Gwen’s.”
Olivia immediately wants to know if anything is wrong. She can do that—suddenly fall victim to a latent maternal gene. I tell her that everything is okay. “We—I mean my friends and I—we’re just wondering, uh, how people fall out of love.”
“Put her on speakerphone,” says Gwen, and points toward the red button on the base of the phone.
“Wait, is it okay if I put you on speakerphone,” I ask. She doesn’t mind and so I do.
Then we can all hear Olivia’s light, airy voice coming out of the phone on the dresser like an electronic oracle. “Falling out of love, you say?”
“We’re wondering how couples that love each other suddenly stop, or at least one person does,” I more or less repeat the question.
“Hmmm.” She takes a moment to collect her thoughts. I doubt she was expecting to be ambushed right before bed by a bunch of teenagers doing their hair and searching for the meaning of life. “I’d say that people expect the passion of love to fulfill every need, whereas nature only intended that it should meet one of many demands.”
“Oh,” I say. “So it’s a good idea to have some other stuff in common.”
“I would say so,” she heartily concurs.
We all three nod in silent agreement, not unlike the day Gwen’s older sister told us where babies come from.
“Anyone have anything else?” I ask before signing off.
Jane moves up to the phone. “Why do people waste so much time on love in the first place if it just ends up making everyone miserable?”
“Good one,” Gwen cheers Jane on, as if it’s a game show.
“I’m afraid that human relationships are the tragic necessity of life, and yet they can never be entirely satisfactory because at the end of the day we’re still just individuals,” comes the voice. “Don’t ever c
ount on someone else for all your happiness, dear, whether it be a parent, friend, lover, or child.”
“Deep,” muses Jane.
“I’m going to put that in my diary,” proclaims Gwen. “We should light some incense.”
“I told you she’d know,” I boast a bit. “Thanks, Olivia.”
“Drive home safely,” she says.
After we hang up the phone Jane says, “I know what we should have asked.”
“What?” demands Gwen. “How to catch and keep the man of your dreams?” Gwen is always cutting those kinds of stories out of Cosmo.
“No, whether to spit or to swallow,” says Jane, and then laughs dementedly.
“Swallowing is disgusting!” Gwen is adamant. “You can get a disease. And why bother when you can just fake it?”
“Because the testosterone might make me a better athlete.”
“Where did you hear that?” I ask. “It’s not the same as taking steroids. But we can look it up on the Internet if you want.”
“Hold still so I don’t poke your eye out,” warns Gwen as she finishes my brows.
“And what about you?” Jane asks me.
“I gag. It isn’t pretty.” The fact that I’m not destined to be a great lover is quickly becoming obvious. Not only do I lack the patience and tolerance for the pain that beauty requires, but when I’m not chickening out on going all the way with my date, I’m choking to death.
Gwen starts combing through my wet hair, but at least with the conditioner there isn’t the usual thicket of tangles.
“Next topic,” I announce. “What is the story with my sister Louise’s friends?”
“Oh,” intones Gwen in a way that usually precedes unpleasant news. “That’s a bad group. They’re a lot worse than the burnouts in our class. For one thing, they all have cars. Eddie, the guy with the bronze Camaro, has a real mustache, and looks as if he’s about nineteen. I don’t know if he was officially held back or just doesn’t go often enough to realize when a new school year starts.”
“Your sister’s definitely not part of the cheerleading mainstream,” says Jane, who’s knowledgeable about what goes on in the athletics wing of the building. “Most rah-rahs keep up their grades and plan on going to college. I mean, they can definitely be silly about guys and wear too much makeup, and I can’t for the life of me understand why you’d spend your time cheering for a team as opposed to playing on one, but you know, overall they’re okay. Only this year there are about four who are outliers, sort of rogue cheerleaders.”
“Rogue cheerleaders?” I ask. “Sounds like the title of an educational after-school special, or better yet, a horror film—they make a pyramid at halftime and then release poisonous gas from their pompoms.”
“For the most part the cheerleaders stick together—sitting in the same section of the cafeteria, pilgrimages to the mall on weekends,” explains Jane. “You know, so they can get discounts on bras that make your breasts look perky.” She grabs her boobs and pushes them together and upward to demonstrate. “Sorry Hallie, but I think the squad would be happy to get rid of those four girls, including Louise. In off hours they hang with the rats. And one of them has a brother who’s in a fraternity at the U of Akron and they seem to have gotten involved with that crowd.”
“Drugs?” I ask.
“Who knows.” Jane shrugs her shoulders and picks up a well-thumbed copy of Vogue off Gwen’s dresser.
“Come on, you can tell me,” I say.
“Honest, I don’t know. The Palmer women must just have some sort of mutinous streak.”
Gwen switches on her industrial-strength blow-dryer and we can’t talk above the high-powered shriek. After she finishes the hair and forces me at tweezer point to put on mascara, even I have to admit the change in my appearance is of epic proportions.
“I wish you’d bring Ray to the graduation party I’m having here on Saturday,” Gwen urges me.
“Yeah,” Jane says sarcastically. “I’m sure Hallie would much rather be playing volleyball and drinking grape Hi-C in your barn than getting it on with some hot college guy.”
However, come Saturday, drinking Hi-C and playing volleyball is exactly what I end up doing.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I’M SITTING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE REVIEWING MY FINANCIAL quagmire the next morning when the phone rings. Assuming it’s Ray calling to firm up our plans for tonight, I pounce on the receiver.
“Hey, Hallie.” Ray has the best phone voice, deep and soft, like running water.
“Hi back,” I say. “So, what time are you coming?”
“My dad needs an extra on the golf course early Saturday morning to complete some big deal, so I’m afraid I can’t make it,” he says matter-of-factly. “And then I leave for New York.”
“Oh.” Apparently when your dad is paying for your brand-new car, college tuition, vacations in Acapulco, and summer at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, it’s kind of hard to blow him off.
“But you should come to Manhattan the first chance you get,” he adds.
“Sure, Ray.” I don’t bother to mention that not everyone’s parents give their kid a credit card and a travel allowance. And he doesn’t exactly invite me in a way that indicates we’re still a couple, either. I’d say it’s safe to assume you’re single when conversations end with “See you around, then,” as opposed to “I love you” or “I miss you.”
I’m devastated. But in a weird way I’m also relieved. When Bernard enters the kitchen I’m still standing next to the phone looking slightly deranged from this sudden simultaneous blast of yin and yang.
“As I live and breathe—conditioned and styled hair, designer eyebrows, and smooth, radiant skin! Let me guess, you’ve been placed in the Federal Witness Protection Program and altering your appearance was part of a court order,” guesses the man with a headwaiter’s eye for detail.
“Gwen needed a guinea pig,” I lie slightly.
“And it’s the night of your big date, if I recall correctly—what a marvelous coincidence!” crows Bernard.
“Ray’s not coming,” I say, and nod toward the phone.
“Oh, sorry about that.” Bernard gives me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
“Bernard, how do you tell when a guy is lying about why he breaks a date with you?” It wouldn’t be the first time Ray has changed our plans at the last minute, presumably to accept a better offer.
“Simple,” replies Bernard. “You follow him around and find out, bringing along a pair of those night-vision goggles and some snacks. I’ve always liked chicken potpie for a stakeout. It’s hearty yet easily transportable and stays warm for hours. But a shish kebab can work nicely if you don’t mind eating it at room temperature.”
“I’m not going to trail Ray all over Cleveland!” I say.
“Then when life gives you the lemons, take a lesbian to lunch,” says a cheerful Bernard.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“I’m not sure, but I adore the alliteration.” He places several bags of groceries on the counter. “What about that nice boy from the pool hall you told me about? The one who writes short stories noir and counts using his fingers?”
“He never called,” I say.
“So, we’ll call him!”
“I thought you wanted me to get back together with Craig.”
“I can’t get ahold of him,” says Bernard.
“Me neither,” I say. “Hey, wait a minute! What are you doing trying to get in touch with Craig?”
“I merely want to ask him a question relating to horticulture, Miss Nosy Parker.”
I’m the nosy one? Yeah, that’ll be the day. Olivia is always saying that Bernard’s autobiography should be called Too Nosy to Die. And I don’t entirely trust him on the “horticulture question,” either. It’s certainly possible, but I think it’s more likely that Bernard did talk to Craig, and found out that he’s seeing someone else.
Bernard hands me the phone and begins singing,
“What good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play. Life is a Cabaret, old chum, come to the Cabaret!”
“It looks too desperate. I mean, he’s the one who asked if he could call me,” I say. “And the number one rule in poker is never to chase the pot.”
“Poker shmoker!” declares Bernard. “This is where my extensive knowledge of the theatrical arts comes into play. Now dial up this wagering parlor and trust Auntie Bernard to take care of the rest.”
Why not? Nothing I do seems to be working out these days. I call Cappy’s betting hotline at the back of Bob’s place and when I hear Auggie’s voice on the other end I quickly hand the phone over to Bernard.
“Hello,” Bernard says into the receiver. “Yes, this is Bernard Stockton and I’d like to place a thirty-dollar wager on an athletic competition.” After a pause he says, “An account? Well, I’m sure Hallie does and so I’ll put her on the line.”
I back away and wave my arms at him.
Bernard shoves the phone into my ear.
“Hey, Auggie, it’s me, Hallie Palmer.”
Auggie sounds thrilled to hear from me and I have to wonder if maybe he did attempt to phone but in his excitement got confused by all the numbers. A few of them were awfully high—the nines, for instance.
“I was just about to call and see if you wanted to go out tonight!” he says. “Isn’t this incredible karma?”
I cover the mouthpiece and whisper to Bernard, “He was just going to call me.”
“Tonight is fine,” I reply to Auggie. “What did you have in mind?” I figure it’s the usual teenage date—miniature golf or a movie. The league bowlers basically take over the lanes on the weekends.
“There’s a poetry slam at a café over in Timpany,” he says. “I went once before and it’s lots of fun.”
I agree to go and am about to hang up when he asks what Bernard wants to bet on. Whoops, I’d forgotten about that.
Turning back to Bernard, I ask, “What did you want to bet on?”
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