Cannie Shapiro 02 Certain Girls

by Jennifer Weiner

  My stomach cramped. Was he saying that I was useless? "Busy!" I finally said. "She's very busy."

  "Oh yeah?" He sounded bored.

  I tried to change the subject. "So...um. I'm almost done with seventh grade. I go to the Philadelphia Academy. Do you know it?"

  He didn't answer. "Wait here," he said. I watched through the window as he walked back to his car, pulled a book out of the trunk, and came back, setting the book on the table. I recognized it instantly: It was a photo album, a sibling of all the ones I'd seen in Grandma Ann's bonus room. "I thought you might like seeing this," he said.

  I watched as he flipped the book open to the first page, which was a picture of a bald baby with its mouth wide open, wrapped in a pink-and-blue blanket.

  "Your mother," he announced. He flipped to the next page, and there was Grandma Ann, her short hair brown instead of silver and her skin unlined, smiling with the bald baby on her shoulder.

  I looked at the baby. "That's Aunt Elle. Aunt Lucy, I think."

  "Nope. Candace." He tapped the photograph with one finger. "See, Ann hadn't gotten fat yet."

  I swallowed hard.

  "Thirty pounds with each kid," he said. "If you can believe it. Probably a good thing your mom stopped with one."

  I said, "Oh," because I could tell that he expected me to say something. My feet tapped against the floor, faster and faster.

  "You've got a genetic tendency to put on weight," he lectured. His bloodshot brown eyes looked me over critically. "You'll have to be careful."

  I wanted to tell him that I was careful. I wanted to tell him that my mother was careful: that everything she served me was organic and all-natural and hormone-free, that I had the healthiest lunches and snacks of any kid I'd ever seen, that I hadn't even tasted soda until I was ten years old. Instead, I wiggled my straw around the whipped cream in my drink, then took a big swallow.

  He shrugged and turned the page. "Your mother," he said again. There she was, in a bathing suit with a frog appliqued on the tummy. Her hair was wet and curly. She'd been running under a sprinkler set up on the lawn. I could see the strands of water at the far end of the photograph. She was grinning, her sturdy round legs planted on the grass, her belly sticking out proudly. "Four years old, but she could already read. I read to her every night. Poetry. Shakespeare. Every night."

  "That's nice," I said quietly, remembering the tape I'd heard. Oh God, I wanted to get out of here so badly. The man who'd made those tapes, who'd sounded so kind, was gone. Coming here had been a huge, huge mistake.

  "I taught her to read," he said, and flipped the page. My mother again, with Aunt Elle, the two of them in snowsuits and ice skates on the bumpy, pockmarked surface of a frozen pond. Underneath the ice, I could glimpse the black water. "Taught her to swim." Flick. Grandma Ann again, heavier and tired-looking, her brown hair threaded with gray, another baby in a blanket in her arms. My grandfather quickly flipped past that shot--Uncle Josh, I guessed. "Taught her everything, when you come right down to it." The pictures passed by in a blur: first days of school, birthday parties, and bar mitzvahs. Flick. High school graduation, my mother in a shiny cap and gown, standing behind a podium, her face set in familiar lines, sullen and shy and ashamed. She looked bigger underneath her black cap and gown.

  I toyed with my straw. My grandfather pushed the book across the table. "Take a look," he said.

  I flipped back to the beginning, then paged through the pictures more slowly, trying to find something that looked familiar, an echo of my own face in these faces. There was Uncle Josh with a buzz cut, holding a fishing pole, and my mother again, stretched out in front of a fireplace, frowning over a book. I shivered, goose-bumpy in the air-conditioning of the coffee shop. There wasn't anything scary about the pictures, except that nobody ever got any older in them. On these pages, under the plastic, the children stayed children. They never grew up.

  About halfway through the book, the pictures gave way to clippings. Some were from what looked like a high school newspaper. One or two were poems. Then the real newspaper articles began. The first batch had my mother's byline. School Board Postpones Budget Hearing, I read. Science Fair Instructs, Delights. New School Lunches Cut the Fat.

  "You see?" he asked. His voice was half kind, half gloating. "I always knew she'd be a writer."

  I flipped slowly through the pages. The stories with my mother's byline ended in 1999. There was a three-year gap, when I was born, in which there was only a handful of columns from Moxie magazine, including one she'd written, called, like Bruce's first column had been, "Loving a Larger Woman." I will whisper in my daughter's ear. Our lives will be extraordinary, I read. My throat felt like it was closing, and my eyes began to burn.

  I turned the page. The next bunch of stories weren't written by my mother anymore; they were about her. PHILADELPHIA AUTHOR LANDS BIG BOOK DEAL, I read. QUEEN OF THE BIG GIRLS: HEFTY GAL CANDACE SHAPIRO PENS TRIUMPHANT TALES FOR HER PLUS-SIZE SISTERS. There were copies of best-seller lists from around the country, cut out and neatly glued to the blank pages. Then came the one with my picture in it from People magazine: me and my mother, jumping on a bed, our feet in the air, hair flying, mouths open, laughing. It was just the picture--the story itself was on the next page--but I remembered what the headline had been, and said it out loud.

  "Happy endings." Oh, Mom, I thought.

  "I ordered it from the magazine," my grandfather said, pulling the cigarettes out of his pocket and thumping them on the table. "They'll send it to you if you pay them. They don't even care who you are."

  He spread his hands on the table. He wore a heavy gold watch on one wrist and a chunky gold ring on his pinky. "She never wrote anything else," he said. "No more books."

  "Maybe she didn't want to," I said. "Maybe she didn't have to."

  "I guess not," he said. His voice sounded loud and angry. "That Philadelphia Academy's a private school?"

  I nodded.

  "Must be nice," he said. "Never believed in that, myself. Public education was good enough for me. Good enough for all of my kids."

  I nodded.

  "I'll bet you take nice vacations," he said.

  "We go to the beach in the summer."

  "I took my kids to the beach. Your mother probably never mentioned that." He tapped the pack of cigarettes on the table.

  I nodded and sneaked a look out the window, making sure Kevin was still there.

  "Nice vacations," he said. "Nice school. Nice life. Well. She never was very generous with family..."

  "She is. She takes care of me." I stuffed my hands in my pockets and lifted my eyes, telling him something that I'd never in a million years tell her. "She's a good mother."

  "That's a surprise. You know, she didn't have the best example." I thought he meant himself, but then he started talking about Grandma Ann. "I should have known what she was when I married her," he said. "Nineteen sixty-eight, though. Who knew what a lesbian was back then? I don't blame myself."

  I swallowed hard. My knees were bouncing up and down; my feet were jittering on the floor. "I should probably get going."

  "I don't blame myself," he repeated. "I've been the victim. The victim of a fraudulent marriage, then an adulterous one. Have you read any Shakespeare?" he demanded. I didn't need my hearing aids to tell that his voice had gotten louder. People were staring at the two of us.

  "A little. We did Romeo and Juliet in--"

  "'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child,'" he quoted. "That's your mother. That's all of them. Thankless."

  "She's not." My tongue felt shriveled; my teeth felt like they'd been coated in sawdust. "She's not," I said again. I remembered the pictures from Grandma Ann's, from when my mother was older, how she'd always looked like she was cringing. I remembered how my mother would take me swimming in the ocean when I was little, staying close to the shore, letting me hold her shoulders as she kicked and paddled, how I'd floated above her back and felt like I was flying. I remembe
red what she'd said to Hope, the baby she'd had but hadn't wanted, on the last page of her book. I will love you forever. I will keep you safe.

  "I made her who she is." My mother's father gave me a sly, smug smile. "Read to her. Taught her to swim. Gave her all of her material. The story she told. And she made a fortune off it, didn't she? Where would she have been without me?"

  "Happy?" The word was out of my mouth before I knew it. His face contorted, and for a minute I thought he was going to do something: yell or pick up his coffee cup and hurl it on the floor, or at my face.

  I got to my feet. "I should go."

  "Why'd you come here?" His voice was cold, mocking. "Did she send you here? Did you come to gloat? Tell her next time she can come and gloat herself. Come see the old man. Get a good look. See if that makes her..." His voice filled with spite. "Happy."

  "I wanted to see you," I said. "That's all." My voice trailed off. "I left an invitation at your house." Then I was moving, and my chair had fallen to the floor, and I snatched my purse and practically ran out the door, through the parking lot, diving into the backseat of Kevin's car, where I sat with my head in my hands, shaking so hard that I could barely pull out the telephone, could barely make my fingers press the button that would connect me to home.

  Kevin acted as if this was all perfectly normal. "Back to the hotel?" he asked as the phone started ringing.

  I nodded. My eyes caught a flash of motion in the rearview mirror as the coffee-shop door swung open. "Hello?" said my mother. "Joy?" The car pulled smoothly out of the lot and into the street, but not before I saw my grandfather step, blinking, into the waning light.

  "Joy?" my mother yelled in my ear. "Where are you?"

  "I'm in California," I said. "I want to come home."

  THIRTY-THREE

  When Joy was four years old, she started having headaches. She'd sit on the sofa with her head in her hands, pale and drawn, and nothing helped--not cool washcloths or Tylenol, not lying down in a dim room, not chamomile tea. "It hurts," she'd cry, tears streaking her cheeks. "It hurts and it will never stop hurting!"

  We made the rounds from the pediatrician to the ophthalmologist to the otolaryngologist, ruling out ear infections and sinus infections and run-of-the-mill migraines. Finally, the neurologist proposed a night in the hospital and a series of tests, including an MRI of Joy's brain. "You think she's got a brain tumor?" I said, keeping my voice light, waiting for the inevitable Of course not, for the doctor to tell me that there were only so many medical problems one little family and one little girl could be expected to endure. Instead, he'd flipped the pages of her chart and told me that actually, his concern was a tumor in the paranasal sinus.

  I stared at him, waiting for the punch line. None came. Two days later, we checked Joy into the hospital. I sat outside the chamber where the MRI was performed and watched Joy's prone, gown-clad body slide into the mouth of the machine. Her tiny, pale feet, with the remnants of red polish on the toenails, were almost more than I could stand, but I made myself lean forward, at the technician's urging, made myself speak into the microphone and say in a voice that did not tremble and did not crack, "Don't be afraid, baby. Mommy's right here."

  "Don't be afraid," I said into my cell phone the next morning, remembering how I'd spent those twenty minutes offering God everything I could think of, up to and including years of my life, if only Joy would be safe and well. A few hours later, we had our diagnosis: stress headaches. She'd grow out of them. She'd be fine. "I'm on my way."

  Joy sighed and said nothing.

  "What were you thinking?" I blurted. I shoved my carry-on into the overhead compartment and buckled myself into my seat.

  A wordless hum filled my ears. "Joy Leah Shapiro Krushelevansky--" I began.

  "I went to see my grandfather," she muttered. "It was a big mistake."

  I felt my breath whoosh out of me even though, at some level, I'd known that was where she'd gone. I'd known as soon as my mother had mentioned it.

  "You were right," she said. "He isn't very nice."

  Oh God. I swallowed hard, with my father's greatest, hardest hits playing on a loop in my head: calling me ugly, calling Elle stupid, telling Josh that he was a mistake. "What did he say to you?"

  "Not much." She gave an unhappy giggle. "Nothing, really. I don't think he wants to come to my bat mitzvah, is all."

  "Oh, honey." I remembered the day she came home from kindergarten, closemouthed and red-eyed, and how I'd finally pried it out of her that one of the other girls (Amber Gross? The name rang a bell) had said that Joy couldn't be her friend because she wore things in her ears. I'd delivered a politically correct speech about tolerance and understanding and how every kid was different, meanwhile entertaining a brief but vivid fantasy of figuring out which girl had hurt my daughter and drop-kicking all thirty-five pounds of her across the Philadelphia Academy's parking lot.

  Joy sniffled. "I'm okay."

  "Just hang on. I'll be there soon," I said.

  Her voice was tiny. "I took your credit card. Your White Card. Am I in trouble?"

  "Oh. Um." It took me a minute to recover myself. "Yes. Yes, you are, Joy, you're in a world of hurt!"

  She giggled, because in a world of hurt was what I said to her, or to Peter, as a joke, something we'd been saying for years. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry about everything. I'm sorry I went to Tyler's bar mitzvah and that I lied to you."

  "It's okay, it's okay," I crooned into the receiver, imagining rocking her when she was a baby, twining her curls around my fingers with her sweet weight in my lap. "It's okay. I'll be there soon. We'll figure it out. We'll be fine."

  THIRTY-FOUR

  "Joy!" I ran down the driveway in front of Maxi's white-shingled beach cottage (she called it a cottage even though it had five bedrooms, two additions, and a cook's kitchen as big as the one at the Ronald McDonald House) as my mother got out of the taxi and let her sweep me into her arms.

  "Don't ever do that again," my mom whispered into my hair. I could tell that she was crying, and for a minute I thought I'd start crying, too.

  "I'm sorry," I said. She ran her hands over my hair, touching my ears lightly, then my cheeks, inspecting me the way she used to when I was little to make sure I wasn't hurt.

  "Are you all right?"

  I nodded, then hung my head.

  "Come on," she said as the taxi turned around in the driveway and pulled back onto Maxi's steep street. She pulled a sheaf of tickets out of her purse. "We'll fly back tomorrow morning." She raised her eyes to Maxi, who was waiting by the white-painted gate, thick with ruby-colored roses, in a polka-dotted sundress and matching wide-brimmed hat. "If that's okay?"

  "Fine," Maxi said, and smiled. "I'm glad for the company."

  My mom turned back to me. "Do you still have that credit card?"

  I pulled it out of my purse and shamefacedly handed it over. "Good," she said, sliding it into her wallet. "I thought that maybe we'd do a little shopping."

  My eyes widened. I'd been expecting any number of things: getting yelled at, getting grounded, having my bat mitzvah party canceled. A shopping trip wasn't one of them.

  My mom smiled at my expression. "You're still in trouble, though. When you get home, you're grounded, and no TV privileges for a month, and you have to give me your cell phone when you're not at school."

  I nodded, probably too eagerly, because her forehead wrinkled. "No allowance, either."

  "Fine." And then, because no one was looking, I reached up and hugged her again.

  Forty-five minutes later, my mom and Maxi and I walked into the Badgley Mischka boutique on Rodeo Drive, a street that I recognized from many viewings of Pretty Woman with my mother. "Thank your father for this," my mother said as a man in a uniform held the door open. "This was his idea, not mine." We stepped onto the thick ivory carpet, into the icy air-conditioned room, where the dresses were displayed like exhibits in a museum, ten of them hung on mannequins. I looked at each dress, gold and cream
and silver and bronze, getting more and more panicky, until my mother tapped my shoulder and I turned around to find a salesgirl smiling at me with the pink-and-silver gown in her arms.

  I followed as she hung the dress in a mirrored cubicle, along with the matching wrap, and a shoe box with a pair of silver sandals. "Thanks," I said. Then I looked at my mom. "Are you sure?"

  "If it's what you want," she said, only a little reluctantly. "I still think it's very adult."

  "I," said Maxi, "think it's lovely."

  "And you're not being rewarded for running away," said my mom as she sat down on a stool in the dressing room opposite mine. "Just so we're clear on that. Your father thinks you should have the kind of dress you want. And on his head be it," she muttered as I shimmied the dress up over my hips, then stepped out of the dressing room with my back to my mom so she could zip me. She rested her hands on my shoulders, and for a moment we stood in front of the mirror: her with her eternal ponytail (neat, at least, today), me with my curls, her in her black shirt and khaki pants, me in that dream of a dress. My mother sighed and wrapped her arms around me. "Is it what you want? Does it make you happy?"

  I nodded. She draped the wrap over my shoulders and turned to the manager, who was waiting behind us with his hands clasped. "We'll take it," she said.

  The next morning, we were on an eight o'clock flight back home. After takeoff, my mom pulled out a book. I lifted the Badgley Mischka dress bag out from under the seat in front of me, where I'd tucked it, then slid it back. We'd reached our cruising altitude of thirty-two thousand feet when my mother stuck her book into the seat-back pocket, turned to me, and said, "I think we should talk."

  "About what?"

  She smiled. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe what made you decide to go to Los Angeles and hunt down your long-lost grandfather?"

  I shrugged. "He was...pretty awful." There weren't words for what he was, I realized. Maybe that was why my mom and Aunt Elle and Grandma Ann all used the same ones. Not a nice guy didn't even begin to cover it. Scary was a better word. Pathetic worked, too. And old. He was an old, mean man with a book full of pictures of kids who'd grown up and didn't know him anymore. "He showed me all of these pictures from when you guys were kids," I said.