“You snitched to Mom? You weren’t even living at home anymore.”
“I felt she should know. It was Dad’s! And it was expensive!” Debbie inched forward as the Audi opposite her did the very same thing.
“I can’t believe you snitched to Mom. They grounded me for a month for that.”
“Get over it. This was fifteen years ago. You put Mom and Dad through their paces, believe me.”
“Do you always have to be such a goddamn sanctimonious saint?”
“Rikki! Stop harassing me!” Debbie accelerated, turning toward the stone gates of West Meadow Knolls. Brakes squealed. A horn barked shrilly.
Erica jerked her head around. The Audi’s grille hovered directly out the rear passenger side window, inches away from Sophia’s car seat.
“Debbie!” Erica screamed.
“God, Rikki, you totally distracted me!” Debbie slammed on the brakes. The Audi driver gave them the finger. Erica looked back at Sophia, her sleeping breathing unaltered, her pulse beating regularly under her thin new skin.
A chilled sensation rose up in Erica—an icy draft from a rip in the earth.
“What was that all about?” she squealed. “You almost killed us.”
“Let’s just forget about it, okay?” There was a finality to Debbie’s tone, a warning to go no further. Erica steadied herself by turning to look at the bland face of the Bergmans’ high ranch. Steve Bergman, accompanied by his Jamaican nanny, pedaled down the sidewalk on his tricycle.
Debbie pushed up her sleeve to check the time on her watch, and another bruise revealed itself, deep purple and unmistakable. “I have to stop at the high school first,” she said. “I’m late.”
They arrived at the school. Jared stood glumly at the end of the parking lot.
“You can have my seat,” Erica said, opening the front door.
“I can drive you and the baby home,” Debbie said. “I still have time.”
“No, thanks,” Erica said. “I could use the walk.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
One wedding, one fiftieth birthday party, and two bar mitzvahs were taking place simultaneously in the catering hall, but there was no mistaking Lauren’s party. That would be the room illuminated with blue lightbulbs, framed by banners announcing, “Under the Sea.” Erica and Ethan stopped at a large table with a model of a harbor, constructed from paperboard and tongue depressors. Ethan plucked a sailboat with their name on it from the Styrofoam sea. Table six.
“Are we sitting with Ron and Debbie?” Erica asked.
“How would I know?” Ethan asked. “Should I care?” Ron and Debbie’s sailboat still sat untouched in the harbor. They were sitting elsewhere, at table seven, which was just as well. Debbie had called Erica Wednesday evening, informing her that she’d had second thoughts on the way home from Jared’s gastroenterologist appointment and exchanged the dolphin pendant for a jade bracelet. Debbie, the queen of returns. Erica did not have the time to return things. Once she bought something, she owned it. Nor, precisely because of Debbie’s insulting manner of asking, had she found the time to call Jared to chat and relate. He’d most likely classify her as a clueless adult and not give her the time of day anyway. Though, now that she thought about it, maybe she should do so of her own volition, not as a favor to Debbie. Perhaps it was just a function of exhaustion, or medication, but by the time they’d finished talking that afternoon he got out of the hospital, it seemed liked Jared had actually opened up a bit.
The room filled up. Scaly turquoise helium balloons with silvery eyes floated by. The DJ started playing outdated disco hits and handing out shark-head masks; all three boys ran off to dance. Dave Luskin, Dylan’s orthodontist, snagged Ethan for investment advice, leaving Erica alone in her red spaghetti-strap dress. She’d bought it herself, at a new boutique across from aerobics. If she needed to wear a size 12, it wasn’t going to be another dress selected by her mother. She gulped down two glasses of mediocre chardonnay, then grabbed a third and meandered through an obstacle course of conversations. Her mother commented on the scarlet hue of her dress, although, thankfully, not the skintight fit. Sherry Luskin requested the name of her kitchen contractor. Some woman she recognized from aerobics inquired after Dylan’s summer camp plans.
The DJ transitioned into a Cars song—at least he acknowledged the advent of the ’80s—and Erica watched the crowd of kids jumping up and down in their shark masks, waving fins above their heads. She felt disconcertingly light, as if she could float up and join the helium fish. She let the murmurs of the crowd flow through her like the ancient Hebrew prayers did at services and searched for safe anchor. She considered sitting down at table six, but no one was sitting at any of the tables yet, save some ancient relatives and her uncle Barry, who suffered from a rare muscle-wasting disease. She pressed herself against the wall, underneath a blowup of Lauren vacationing in Bonaire, sporting scuba gear. So she was right; Lauren did dive after all.
Looking toward her escape hatch, a swinging door at the end of the long blue hall, she watched Debbie, Ron, and Jared enter. Jared was wearing a clearly homemade pair of pants, black in the front, white in the back, held together by safety pins, topped by a sloppy black T-shirt. He’d spiked his green hair around the crown of his head. Ron was wearing a blue-gray polyester suit. Sinuous in his diamond twill, he reminded Erica of a rattlesnake. He stalked along the edges of the room, heading directly for the bar. Both he and Jared looked sullen as hell.
Debbie, on the other hand, shimmered like one of the decorative fish. Curvy and resplendent in a clingy full-length silver garment, topped off by long silver gloves, she dove into the crowd as if off a high board. She swam straight for Erica, grabbed her by the arm, slipped a shark mask over her head, and dragged her to the dance platform. “Let’s let bygones be bygones, Rikki. Let’s dance! Let’s have some fun!”
“You look pretty,” Erica said. Through the stiff plastic eyes of her mask, she watched Jared stride back out the swinging doors, out of sight.
“I bought a new dress.” Debbie giggled, gyrating with abandon. “Isn’t this cool?” she squealed, shaking her hips. “Isn’t this fabulous?” She was a good dancer, smoother and more rhythmic than Erica, who nodded in agreement and flung herself about. Someone shoved glow sticks in their hands. The group formed a conga line. Debbie swayed along, her arms on Erica’s shoulders.
“I’ve decided to have some fun in my life,” Debbie announced. “I mean, why not?”
“Why not?” Erica agreed, trying to lose herself in the moment, all silvery and blue and laughing and empty. The last time she’d seen Debbie this manic was shortly after her ectopic pregnancy when Jared, two years old, developed a nasty cold that turned into pneumonia. He ended up in the North Shore ICU. Mom and Dad were attending a wedding in Chicago, Ron was out of town at some music industry conference, and Erica was a week away from leaving for Boston University. “He’s on a breathing tube, Rikki,” Debbie told Erica when she called from the hospital, in a high-pitched airy voice. “His lungs are full of water.” And then in a higher pitched voice: “They don’t know if he’s going to live.” When Erica talked her way into the ICU, she found Debbie grinning, which struck her as odd. She’d paced around their little cubicle, circling Jared’s crib, babbling about anything and everything. How she’d wanted to go to beauty school ever since she put French braids in her Tressy doll; how she wanted to open her own salon someday; how Ron beat up that kid on his basketball team, breaking his collarbone (by mistake, of course); how she wore a thong bathing suit on their honeymoon in Barbados.
Antibiotics and luck worked magic. Jared came off the respirator, and Ron rushed back from his conference. Jared returned home with asthma meds and a special humidifier. Erica left for college, and by the time she returned for Thanksgiving, Debbie was back to her zipped-up, holier-than-thou self.
“Let’s get something to eat,” Debbie said. “I’ve
decided to eat whatever I want at parties like this. You only live once, right?”
The appetizer stations resembled a mall food court: a pasta bar, a cold seafood bar, burgers and fries, Italian antipasto, a lineup of uniformed waiters serving Chinese food out of warming trays. Erica removed her shark mask. Underneath, her skin was sweaty and her lipstick smeared. By the Italian station, Jesse and Jake slurped pasta under the solicitous arms of two thirteen-year-old girls. Nearby, Ethan peeled the skin off a giant prawn while presumably giving Erica’s uncle Nathan an update on the stock market. Back on the dance floor, Dylan sank to the ground and twirled around on his butt.
Debbie plowed into her orange beef while they were still in line for the seafood. Erica piled her plate with boiled shrimp, balancing her empty wine glass on the edge of her plate.
“Let’s get a cocktail,” Debbie suggested. Sipping Cosmopolitans, they passed Uncle Barry, who was sitting alone with his cane, picking at ravioli with a toothpick. Debbie leaned close to Erica. “I feel so bad for Uncle Barry,” she whispered. “Did you know that on top of everything his wife left him? For another woman! Can you believe that? She’s a lesbian!”
Ron stood by the burger station, engaged in a back-slapping exchange with Dave Luskin. As she passed him, he slapped her on the back as well, spilling her drink into her shrimp. “Whoa, baby!” he said. “That’s quite the dress!”
“Oh, get lost,” Erica muttered.
“Leave Ron alone,” Debbie said nervously, steering her away until they were out of sight, on the other side of the dance platform. “We had a fight,” Debbie whispered. “Ron’s real mad about Jared’s outfit,” she whispered. “And that awful hair! Ron wasn’t going to let him out of the house looking like that, but we can’t leave him alone these days.” Debbie lowered her voice even further, so low that Erica could barely make out her words over the disco music. “So I pleaded with Ron to please let us go, even with Jared dressed like that. I told him I absolutely needed this party for my mental and physical health.”
“Well, I’m glad you came,” Erica said. “Where is Jared anyway?” she asked, scanning the room for green spikes.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Debbie said, breaking into an odd little leap. Her heels skidded against the floor. “And I don’t care! Don’t you get sick of men, sometimes? Maybe Barry’s wife had the right idea. Don’t you wish we could get away for a week or so? Just us girls. Go to a spa or something. Something wild!”
“I guess so,” Erica said without conviction. Debbie’s hot dry palm rubbed against Erica’s; her diamond band dug into Erica’s finger. A bell clanged, calling them to dinner. The lights darkened. Lauren’s baby picture flashed on a giant movie screen, and Caesar salads appeared in front of Erica and Ethan. Table six proved to be a cousin’s table: first, second, and third cousins from Westchester and Jersey. A fishbowl sat in the middle of the table, with a single hardy goldfish swimming round and round. Erica downed her glass of cheap sweet champagne and started in on Ethan’s.
“So, I’ve figured out this program,” Ethan was saying to her cousin Mike from South Orange, “similar to the programs that I’ve developed to predict movements in the bond market that predicts standing in the NBA for the upcoming year. I tested it this past winter, and it proved 95 percent accurate.”
Mike’s wife (Kerri? Gerri?) turned to Erica, smiling brightly. She was approximately Erica’s age. Erica remembered their mutual mothers forcing them to go together to USY dances in high school. Kerri/Gerri had been voluptuous and vivacious then, dancing with stringy bespectacled boys whose garlic breath made Erica want to gag. But marriage and childbearing had transformed her into a stout, short-waisted woman, middle-aged before her time, with a heavy bosom hanging close to her waist. She was wearing a purple suit of an unnatural-looking matte material and a white blouse with an oversize bow.
Erica’s nipples tingled, leaking milk onto the silk of her red dress. She missed the pull of Sophia’s urgent little O of a mouth closing down upon her, the damp pressure of her small body against her chest.
“You’ve got spots on your dress, Erica,” Kerri/Gerri said.
“Milk,” Erica dabbed ineffectively at the two dark circles.
“Oh, dear,” said Kerri/Gerri. “What did you order for your main course?”
“The salmon, I think. It’s lower calorie.”
“You know, you should always order the prime rib at affairs,” Kerri/Gerri said. “Never the chicken—it’s inevitably rubbery. And absolutely not the fish. The salmon could be crawling with salmonella!” She tugged her white bow for emphasis.
On the movie screen, Lauren’s thirteen-year-old life flashed before Erica’s eyes: Halloween costumes, birthday parties, swim meets, Caribbean vacations. Across the way, at table seven, a screech of metal chair against the linoleum announced Jared’s return from wherever he had been. He forked large bites of salad into his mouth.
The video entertainment ended, the salad plates were cleared, and the lights came back on, far too glittery and bright. The airy, dizzy, almost nauseous sensation Erica had felt before returned, intensified. Ethan was still chatting with Mike about stocks and basketball while tearing pieces off his roll and spreading them with butter. Kerri/Gerri, having exhausted her line of conversation with Erica, was chatting with her second cousin Pamela about the cost of orthodontia. Dylan, Jesse, and Jake were bending themselves under a limbo rod on the dance floor. At table seven, Ron appeared to be telling a story from his endless cache of jokes. He cackled, waving his long arms toward the goldfish bowl. Debbie reapplied her lipstick. Ron cackled again, this time pointing at Jared, who slid his chair back and once again walked out the swinging doors.
“I’m going to the women’s room,” Erica announced to no one in particular.
She followed Jared’s retreating green spikes around a corner and then down a flight of steps into the basement. Right past an open utility closet jammed with mops and green buckets, he pushed open a door labeled “Men’s Lounge.”
Erica followed. The door clanged shut, and Jared looked up in surprise. The room stank of Lysol but still looked dingy, with trough-like urinals and a roll of toilet paper snaking out the stall door. Jared sat on a torn vinyl couch tamping dope into a pipe.
“What are you doing here?” Erica asked.
“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?” Jared said. “This is the men’s room.”
“Your mother wanted me to talk to you.”
Jared chuckled grimly. “That sounds like a thrill and a half.” He lit the pipe.
“Can I have some?” Erica asked.
He looked at her, incredulous. “But what about the baby?”
“She’s home with a sitter,” Erica said, as if that answered the question. She held out her hand.
He handed her the pipe. A silly flood of excitement rustled through her body, like she was fourteen years old again, sitting on the mossy stones of Mackay Estates in the gathering fall darkness with her friend Allison and her cute big brother home from college. She hesitated for a second, afraid she would do something embarrassing like she’d done back then: cough her lungs out. It had been a long time. But no, the smoke in her throat felt good. Grounding.
“So, what’s going on?” she asked.
Jared handed her the pipe again. “You know Mom. She’s convinced herself I’m sick. She hauls me to one doctor after another. As well as the psycho doctor at the family clinic. And the drug and alcohol counselor at school.”
Erica took another drag on the pipe. She felt steadier than in high school or college, as if her neuronal pathways had cleared up along with her skin. “Do you actually get stomachaches?” she asked.
“Not really,” Jared said. “And this is rich. We’re starting family therapy next week, on Fridays. You should have seen Dad when Mom informed him about the family therapy. He exploded! He never had any of that touchy-feely stuff when h
e was growing up. When Grandpa Joey spoke, it was the law. Blah, blah, blah.”
They kept passing the pipe back and forth. She felt exposed, sitting there in a public restroom for the opposite sex, using illegal substances on a grungy couch. Jared’s voice seemed to be coming from far away.
“Did you know my Dad’s jokes always have a priest, a minister, and a rabbi in them?” he said. “Or else an Italian, an Irishman, and a Scotsman? And Mom laughs every time, even when she’s gotta know they’re not funny.”
“What was the joke he was telling just before you walked out?”
Jared looked down at his pants, running his hands along the line of safety pins. “He called these things diaper pins.” The mucoid-colored tiles lining the bathroom walls shimmered to the distant thrum of the disco beat. “I’ve never seen a diaper pin,” said Jared. “Have you?”
“I used them on my Tinkly Winkly doll,” said Erica.
“What’d you say? Your Tinkly Winkly doll?”
“I got her for my seventh birthday,” Erica said. “I was jealous of your Mom’s Tressy doll, so Grandma and Grandpa gave me Tinkly Winkly. She peed out of a little hole. I changed her diaper a hundred times a day. Practice for my current life.”
“Tressy! Tinkly Winkly!” Jared clutched his belly and bent over, laughing hysterically. He proffered Erica the pipe again.
She reached for it but could not assess its location in space. She shook her head no, inhaling deeply of the overheated, pseudo-antiseptic air instead, aware of its slow drift down her bronchi and into her lungs. “I’d better get back,” she said.
Jared regarded her with his luminous, thick-lashed eyes. She grasped one of the green spikes fringing his head and wiggled it. It felt like a papier-mâché horn.
“How do you get the spikes to stay this way?” she asked.
“Elmer’s glue,” said Jared.
Wrong Highway Page 7