The Rise and Fall of a 10th Grade Social Climber

by Lauren Mechling

  I had already tuned her out when, miracle of miracles, the call-waiting beep revived me. “Sorry, Mom, hold on—we have another call.”

  “Call waiting is so rude,” she huffed while I clicked over. My mother was jam-packed with policies about answering machines and microwaves and computers, all of which she considered “symptomatic of the decline of civilization.”

  “Hello?” I said, praying it was Rachel to relieve me. Rachel is known for her amazing timing.

  “Hello, may I please speak to Mimi?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, definitely not to Rachel. “Speaking.”

  “Oh, phew, hey, Mimi! It’s Amanda. You know, from Baldwin? I know you’re probably being driven up the wall with stuff to do, but I was just looking through our new directory, and I realized that we live really close to each other! I’m on Bleecker—how great a coincidence is that?”

  It was great, I agreed, my heart thumping dorkily. “Oh, Amanda, hold on, just one sec—I’m on the other line with my mom in Texas. I’ll be right back.” I clicked back. “I’ve got to get this call, Mom—it’s one of my new Baldwin friends.”

  “New friends already?” She whistled. I could just see her Proud Look, the same one that had lit her face when I got my period for the first time during her psychology department’s open house. Within 2.2 seconds, she had told every single professor there that her little girl had finally become a woman. “Who are these friends?” she demanded, all of a sudden interested in my life. “Spill!”

  I hated when my mot her got chummy, as if I’d magically forget everything that had gone wrong between us. I had no desire to overlook her dumping of my sweet teddy bear of a father for disgusting, doughy Maurice. Our mother-daughter relationship was not A-OK. I mean, it’s not as if I have anything against adultery on principle, but if you’re going to cheat on a guy like dad, you should at least pick a guy whose idea of fun doesn’t involve comparison shopping for herbal lozenges.

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m going to take the call.” And just like that, giving her zero chance to rail on about my manners and my father’s influence, I clicked back to Amanda.

  “Hey there,” I said.

  “Listen, I was just wondering if you wanted to hang out,” she said. “There’s this place I go to on Friday nights, and I thought maybe you’d want to check it out.”

  In Houston the only “places” we ever partied in tended to be people’s living rooms or basements. And to think I’d been in town for only forty-eight hours and I was being invited to a nightclub—beyond incredible. A vision of Amanda and myself, in crisp pleated miniskirts, dancing on the tabletop with celebrities springing into my mind, I accepted—“Wow, great! Really?”—with a tad too much enthusiasm.

  “Oh, fab! And then maybe the rest of the girls could come hang out and we could all give you the rundown of life at Baldwin? That is, if you and your dad don’t already have a million things to do?”

  “No, that’s perfect,” I said, trying to deflate the eagerness in my voice. “Convenient, I mean—my dad just told me that he has plans tonight, so I’m totally free. Just tell me when and where.”

  When and Where

  WHEN AND WHERE TURNED OUT TO BE EIGHT o’clock at the Gray Dog Café, right around the corner. “It’s really cool—you’ll love it,” Amanda swore. “They have the best fat-free muffins.”

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the teeniest bit disappointed by the mention of fat-free muffins. It’s not as if I have a problem with weight-watching blondes—my old high school mass-produced them. For instance, on career day, Tara Meriwether, the single most popular girl at my Houston high school, announced her ambition to open a drugstore that carried fat-free aspirin and fat-free toothpaste. Amanda can eat fat-free everything to her heart’s content—I just hadn’t factored muffins into my night-out equation. It sounded about as sexy as getting together to clip our toenails.

  Getting ready was a serious challenge. I mean, if you know you’re going to the opera, you put on a ball gown. Or if you’re going to the beach, you throw on a bikini and—if you hate your thighs—a sarong. But what are you supposed to wear on a Friday night to eat fat-free muffins, especially when “fat-free muffin” just might be an insider code phrase for a hot new nightclub called La Muffin? I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard, but I also didn’t want to look like I didn’t care. It was a fine line.

  Just that afternoon, watching the gray-haired Judy (that was #1; #2 had a black frizzy mop) tromp onto the street in a pair of banana yellow sweatpants, I swore to devote at least ten minutes to getting dressed every day and another five to hair and lip-gloss. But I had fifteen minutes now and no idea how to fill them.

  None of my new clothes seemed right. I settled on a pair of gray pinstripe pants, belted and safety-pinned to hide their bagginess, and a body-hugging wife-beater tank top—the most normal items in my dad’s vast wardrobe. As I was yanking the pants over my hips, someone rapped on my bedroom door.

  “One sec!” I said, hobbling to zip up my fly. I would die if that Quinn guy walked in searching for a runaway fisheye lens and beheld my purple padded bra instead.

  “I’m not looking,” my dad said as his arm poked through the door with the cordless. “For you. It’s our favorite boy,” he practically shouted.

  My father was so embarrassing.

  “Hello?”

  “Mimi? It’s Sam.”

  “What’s up?” I fished around under the bed for the black ballet flats I’d kicked there the day before.

  “Listen, what are you up to tonight? There’s a party going on. Nona Del Nino’s dad is going out to L.A. and we’re all crashing his pad.”

  I grabbed one of Dad’s shoes. It was a dandyish thing even I could have gone swimming in: a men’s size twelve—too big even for my feet.

  “Word is, Nona’s parents split up this summer and his mother got screwed in the divorce settlement, so she wants as many of us to come over and do as much damage as possible. It should be a totally hot curtain raiser to the school year, and that’s coming from me, not the most enthusiastic of guys. So you’ll come.”

  I crawled around the floor and stuck my whole arm under the bed, only to unearth another pair of gigantic two-toned shoes from who knows when. Finally, I fingered a familiar-feeling shoe, the sneakers I’d worn on the plane. I couldn’t possibly. Where were the flats? I thought of the burgundy boots with a shiver.

  “You there?” Sam said.

  “Yeah,” I grunted. “Sorry. I just discovered my dad’s secret stash of saddle shoes. He is getting so weird with age.”

  “That’s nothing,” he said, laughing. “My dad’s a huge Whitney Houston fan, loud and proud.”

  “Shut the fuck up.” I remembered Mr. Geckman as the kind of guy who ate his Saturday-morning breakfast in a button-down shirt and blazer. I could not imagine him worshiping that past-her-prime chanteuse for the life of me.

  “Dead serious. After getting all her other CDs, he even bought a ten most powerful black women singers compilation to get his hands on an obscure techno remix of ‘How Will I Know.’ He’s in deep.”

  Once again, I couldn’t help thinking about how much life changed in six years. When we lived in New York, Mr. Geckman had been my parents’ most pretentious friend by far. The last time I saw him was a couple of years ago, when he and Sam’s mother had come to Houston for a wedding. The morning after the festivities, he’d forced me to watch, for five straight hours, a videotaped Japanese puppet production of some beyond boring German opera. Some houseguest—Mr. Geckman wouldn’t let me eat lunch until the devil appeared and dragged all thirty-six characters to hell. By the twenty-fifth victim, I was wishing the devil would take me, too.

  “Anyway,” Sam said, “you game?”

  “I would, but I already have plans.”

  “Oh, really?” he said. “So what are you doing?”

  “Yes, really—is that surprising? I told Amanda I’d go out with her, er, to this club.”


  “Oh,” Sam said, chuckling, “The Baldwin squash club’s holding a meeting tonight? Wow, don’t forget your emergency electrolytes. And if you ever get sick of StairMastering, stop by. It’s at Forty-Five Reade Street, in Tribeca. Forty-Five Reade Street. Don’t forget.”

  There was a knock on my door. It was my dad again, gazing moon-faced at my giraffe-like body sprawled across the floor.

  “I already told you, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.”

  “I’ll leave my cell phone on vibrate in case you get lost,” Sam was saying. “Or better—I’ll text you the directions.”

  “Whatever. As if I were allowed to have a cell phone.” I hung up.

  “The boys are chasing you already.” Dad wagged a finger at me. “I knew it wouldn’t take long.”

  I just rolled my eyes. Sometimes it’s better not to get into it.

  The Gray Dog Café was not exactly a breeding ground for the young and restless. It was a teashop filled with sad music and people with long, tired, and, well, gray faces. Dogs with nothing better to do after dark. Most of the customers were quiet, intense couples who looked as if they were on the brink of either falling asleep or jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

  “Mimi!”

  Amanda waved at me from a small round table by the window. She was positioned between two older guys with sideburns, both alone, both with chalk complexions, both angrily scribbling into journals.

  “Do you think we should introduce these guys to each other?” I said. “Maybe they could work on a collaborative notebook. That way there would be less bad art and one more free table.”

  Amanda frowned at me as if I’d asked her to flash her armpit hair. After a pause she took a gingerly sip from a crabgrass-colored teacup.

  “This place is full of very interesting artistic types,” she observed in the tone of my great-aunt describing the crafts fair that comes to her old folks’ home in Sarasota every December, “I think there might be a concert here tonight—they have some really cool new acts here. Very up-to-the-minute stuff!”

  When the waitress came over and took down my order for a Coke and a regular full-fat double-chocolate muffin, Amanda looked shocked. “You should really try the low-fat ones. I swear you can’t tell the difference.”

  “But what if I like the difference?” I asked.

  “Well, they’re also high protein—I’m not sure how, but it’s totally genius. Don’t tell anyone, but sometimes,” Amanda said, lowering her voice, “I eat one and a half.”

  There was no way I could respond to such a shocking confession, so I didn’t even try. The minutes dragged on: The longer Amanda and I sat there, the less we had in common. With her perfect teeth, shiny blonde hair, and swimming-pool eyes, she was definitely pretty, but she still made me uncomfortable. Even more than the top-ten least attractive people in New York City surrounding us. My Baldwin bliss slowly began to dim.

  She wouldn’t stop grilling me about Houston—was I on any teams there? Had I ever sung in a choir? Could you really mountain-bike all year round? Because all my answers inevitably disappointed her, the conversation soon fizzled. Finally, rather than describe my dream wedding dress, I turned the tables. “What did you do this summer?”

  “Same old, same old.” She gave a long sigh. “I stayed out on the Cape with my family—we belong to this great tennis club there . . . And, oh, I also took private voice lessons and learned how to make these really cool lanyard bracelets!” She flung out her skinny bronzed arm to reveal a wristful of creations. “Key chains, too!”

  Then, just when things were getting bad, they got worse. One of the sideburned guys rose and approached the muffin display case, where there was a podium I hadn’t noticed before.

  “Oh, goodie.” Amanda clapped as the man, who was approximately six-foot-seven and weighed eighty-five pounds (sideburns included), tapped on the microphone. His face gleamed with sweat, the café buzzed with irritating feedback, and I pretty much wanted to off myself.

  “Hello, all you Gray Dogs,” he said in a wannabe sultry voice, wiping his forehead with the tip of his polyester shirttail. “Norm the songwriter couldn’t make it here tonight, so I’m going to play a double set. A cappella, if no one objects, he he.”

  I’d never known what a cappella meant, but context clues suggested that it involved playing nursery school rhymes on a recorder while slapping your thigh as though it were a horse’s butt.

  “Isn’t he sooo gifted?” My companion was breathless with admiration.

  Knowing this wasn’t a punch line, I nodded in utter disbelief. Rachel had quite a letter in store for her next week.

  “Waitress,” Amanda chirped between sets, making that little bring-me-the-check-please gesture in the smoke-free air of the Dog. “We’re going to need to split fast,” she said. “I told the girls we’d meet at Courtney’s for our weekly tradition.”

  My eyes lit up. Maybe our coffee shop date was just a warmup, or some sort of test? It was only a quarter to ten, after all, early for real New York partying. Could my roof-raising, table-dancing fantasies still become realities?

  “Every Friday night,” Amanda went on, drawing a red leather wallet from her matching red leather purse, “we eat Twizzlers and drink diet root beer and watch Night News. But hurry, it starts in fifteen minutes!” Shrieking, she jumped from her seat, left a five-dollar bill on the counter, and bounded athletically to the kennel door.

  I nearly choked, staggering after Amanda. Was it possible that the hot blonde girls burned the midnight lamp with cheesy local newscasters? Was this some kind of joke, some reality TV show tryout?

  Amanda and I walked down Carmine Street together, but none of the sights and sounds of Friday night in the Village did much to revive our conversation. As I stealthily tried to steer her toward my doorstep, I felt as if I had just scaled Everest rather than endured open-mike night.

  Though I’d hoped Amanda had forgotten her earlier invitation, as we turned onto Barrow she looked at me expectantly. “You coming with?” she asked.

  “I wish I could,” I said, shaking my head. “But I told my dad I’d be home for Night News. Isn’t that a weird coincidence? It’s our tradition, too.”

  “But I thought your dad was out tonight?”

  “Oh, he is—I mean, was. He’s coming back especially for the news,” I lied, relieved to have reached our brownstone at last. “Well, here I am—thanks so much, Amanda, I had a really great time tonight.” My other hobbies include taxidermy and hog farming.

  “Oh, well.” Amanda sighed, her magazine-perfect features crumpling slightly. “Maybe next week we could all watch it together?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I agreed brightly. “But you know how dads can be sometimes.”

  “Do I ever! My dad and I always go to boat shows out on Long Island, and if I even dreamed of bringing a friend along . . .”

  Safe inside our building, I crouched under the hall table and began counting to five hundred to make sure the coast was clear of Amanda. I don’t know why I do stuff like that—too many World War II spy movies as a kid?—but it’s not a practice I’d recommend. I remained frozen in place for several long minutes, afraid to breathe and paranoid as all hell. I got Gray Dog bored by forty-six. By seventy-two, I was thumbing the September issue of Vegetarian Snacking, which had recently hit the Judys’ mail basket. I forced myself to read an entire article on foolproof pumpkin tofu niblets and even the recipe for the E-Z microwave version before I felt it was safe to open the door and head back out into the night.

  Oscars on Ice

  USING MY MINI-MANHATTAN MAP—a grudging last-minute gift from my mother—I navigated to Seventh Avenue, where I could catch the 1 train downtown. The night air was warm, redolent of fresh-fallen leaves and urine. When Amanda was around, I had been too distracted by her annoyingness to appreciate the stunning weather. I really did love New York. My heart went out to poor Rachel, wading through the Houston smog to mail me a letter about her counselor-in-training
trysts. Life seemed so much bigger all of a sudden.

  At the entrance to the station, I could hear the subway pulling in below me. I raced down the stairs, nearly knocking over a short man selling roasted peanuts. I made it onto the train just as the doors were closing.

  Unfortunately, it was only when I arrived at 45 Reade Street that I realized I had no idea which apartment the party was in, and the buzzer directory resembled a catalog of European painters. A disgruntled resident stepped off the elevator to find me looking clueless in the lobby. “Just follow the noise pollution,” he grumpily advised.

  Now, I’d seen plenty of megarich people’s mansions in my day. The prep school I attended in Houston attracted the offspring of many corrupt businessmen and cowboys who’d stumbled upon oil in their backyard. One kid in my class, Tucker Monton, was the heir to a nationwide chain of discount motels. But I had never in my life visited the home of a real movie star—not even close. Nona’s place proved that there’s a huge difference between an old Texan guy with an oil well and the star of every hit movie made in the 1970s.

  The loft apartment—the penthouse, of course—was jammed with people, so I didn’t have much time to take in the decorating scheme. But what I did see completely blew me away. It made powder rooms of all those Architectural Digest villas my dad used to photograph. It was the size of the first floor of Macy’s and contained almost as much merchandise. There were views of the Manhattan skyline, framed pictures of Nona’s dad’s parties that had attracted just about every celebrity in America, an IMAX-size flat-screen TV, and—weirdest of all—jade Buddhas everywhere, crowning every shelf and counter and crowding the floor. They seemed right out of an art museum, except that someone had outfitted their shiny bald heads with rhinestone tiaras and their fat necks with feather boas.