“Fine! Nobody has to tell him.”
Merissa was furious. How badly she wished her mother would leave her room, so that she could click onto Blade Runner. Badly she wanted to send a message to Blade Runner, except she worried—if her father discovered what she was doing—what a nightmare that would be!
He would never love her again, then.
“Anyway, Mom, I didn’t ‘drop out’ of the play. I told you—I don’t respect the Jane Austen world, it’s just silly, and depressing. It isn’t funny—but people laugh. Women with no opportunities in life, no lives, except marrying some stupid man with an ‘income’—meaning interest on some property. Poor people had to work for these ‘property holders,’ which means they were like slaves. They didn’t have any choice but to work for them, like the women didn’t have any choice but to get married. It’s not funny. I didn’t want to be damn old smarty-pants Elizabeth Bennet, whom everybody envies because the richest man proposes to her.”
But was this the entire truth? Merissa had to concede she just wasn’t an actress. She just didn’t care about wearing costumes and makeup and reciting lines on stage, to impress an audience and bask in their applause.
Tink had said, Acting is for people who don’t have actual lives.
If only Mom would leave! Merissa would connect with Blade Runner and the others and—maybe—she would take the razor-sharp paring knife out of the drawer where it was hidden, and contemplate where next she might cut herself.
Blade Runner had made the big step—to Merissa, almost unthinkable. She’d cut her breasts, both breasts. . . .
Maybe that was next: the soft, sensitive skin of Merissa’s breasts.
For now there was punishment needed, for lying about Hannah—Merissa had to be seriously hurt.
But—oh God!—Merissa’s mother sat down.
On the edge of Merissa’s bed. (Uninvited.)
Merissa saw that her mother’s ashy-blond graying hair was matted as if she’d been sleeping, one side of her head against a pillow. Her eyes were both oddly bright and not quite in focus.
Merissa had never seen her mother actually drinking except at mealtimes—but she knew.
Sometimes, entering the kitchen, on her way to purloin a smoothie from the refrigerator, Merissa smelled wine.
Merissa hated weakness! Seeing her mother through her father’s critical eyes.
It was unfortunate, Merissa’s mother hadn’t gone to law school as she’d wanted to. Or graduate school. There were many mothers in Quaker Heights who worked, and who had good jobs: Anita Chang’s mother commuted all the way to Manhattan to work as an investment banker; Chloe Zimmer’s mother was a real-estate agent in Quaker Heights and worked “crazy long” hours, Chloe said, but she had no choice: She was divorced. Hannah’s mother had taught college—community college?—and could work again, maybe, if she had to.
How pained Merissa had been, hearing her mother confide in people, Well, Morgan and I were together for three years before we got married. And then Merissa came along.
There’d been a kind of girlish boastfulness in her tone. “Were together” meant—what? Sleeping together. Living together.
And maybe Merissa’s mother had been pregnant with Merissa before getting married to Merissa’s father—was that the implication?
If so, it was backfiring on Stacy Carmichael now. For maybe Morgan Carmichael wouldn’t have married her, except for the pregnancy.
Disgusting!
In any case, lately Merissa’s mother had stopped any sort of boasting about her marriage.
“Mom, I really have to work. If you were Dad, you could help me with calculus—but you can’t. So—I just can’t talk.”
Merissa’s mother smiled pleadingly. How Merissa hated to see pleading in her mother’s eyes.
“I know, Merissa. I know you have work to do. But I wanted to tell you—assure you—that things are not so terrible right now, with your father, I mean. We were talking this evening after dinner—on the phone. He’s said he is certain that it’s best for both of us to take time for ‘sorting things out’—‘discovering priorities.’ He hasn’t once mentioned divorce. So I think—if we get through the next few weeks . . .”
Merissa’s heart beat painfully. She wanted to believe what her mother was telling her.
“And there isn’t any ‘other woman’—I’m sure of that now. He wants, he says, to live alone for a few months at least—and he has a business trip coming up, to China of all places. He wants to be alone to ‘discover who he is.’ We were married too young, he says—both of us.”
Merissa shifted miserably on her bed. Every little wound in her body stung as if someone had rubbed in salt.
Why was her mother telling her such things? How she wished her mother had more dignity.
And had her father been so young? He’d been thirty-one. And Merissa’s mother had been twenty-five. Hardly young.
“Well. Just thought I’d tell you, Merissa. Do you have any questions?”
Plenty of questions. But you can’t answer them.
“Thanks for telling me, Mom. That’s good news. I mean, that’s cool—about Dad.”
Patiently waiting for her poor, sad mother to sigh, rise to her feet, and leave—ideally, go to bed: darken the house.
Usually, her mother went to bed at about eleven p.m. She might watch TV for a while before falling asleep.
It was only 10:10 p.m. now. Early!
Which meant—plenty of time to contemplate. To anticipate.
“Well, honey—good night.”
Merissa’s mother startled her by leaning over and kissing her on the forehead.
Saying from the doorway, “Any time you want to—talk, I mean. I’m here, Merissa.”
As soon as the door was shut, and Merissa was reasonably sure that her mother was gone for the night, she clicked back on to the internet and Blade Runner, and the astonishing picture of the girl in the black-satin half mask with the scab-and-scar-ridden body reemerged as if it had never been more than an eyeblink away.
15.
“TRY NOT TO CRY”
So maybe. Maybe he won’t. Maybe it’s like Mom says.
Merissa felt so hopeful, she decided not to cut herself that night after all.
Though she’d told a cruel lie about Hannah—or hinted at one.
Though Blade Runner curled in her arms in the night, in Merissa’s sweaty-smelling bed.
Daddy was coming to dinner!
The first time since Daddy had moved out.
Of course: This would be a special dinner.
A special dinner Merissa helped her mother prepare: Daddy’s favorite steak, which was plank steak, rare, with oyster mushrooms, whipped potatoes, glazed ginger carrots.
Merissa had come to hate red meat, especially rare and bloody. Not just that Tink had said how disgusting it was, eating “fellow mammals,” and Mr. Kessler strongly hinted that eating meat was “wasteful of the earth’s resources”—but Merissa had developed an actual, visceral disdain for the chewiness of meat.
Merissa’s mother suggested that she just eat the vegetables. “You know how he feels about vegans and people who go on and on about global warming.”
“Mom, I am not a vegan. I just don’t like red meat.”
“Well, your father does. Men do. Especially rare.”
“And what does it have to do with global warming? Global warming is a scientific fact.”
“Not with the terrible winters we’ve been having here in New Jersey. Don’t get your father started on that subject, please!”
Stacy Carmichael was so excited, you’d have thought this was a first date.
And she was looking less haggard than she’d been looking in weeks: Her skin glowed (with expertly applied makeup), even eyeliner and mascara; the shadowy rings beneath her eyes seemed to have vanished. She wore lipstick. She’d filed and polished her fingernails. She wore a lavender cashmere sweater and black woolen slacks and around her neck a jade medallion Merissa’s fa
ther had brought back from a trip to Japan a few years ago. (Merissa had a similar jade medallion from the same trip: She wondered if she should be wearing it, too. What sort of a distress signal would that be for Daddy to decode?)
Merissa’s father had been vague about when he’d probably arrive—around seven p.m. But it was past seven thirty p.m., and it was past eight p.m., and Daddy had not yet arrived, nor had he called on his cell phone.
Merissa’s mother hovered near both the landline and her own cell phone, awaiting a call.
Merissa, lightly fingering the (secret) panoply of little, healing cuts on her skin, (secret) beneath her clothes, drifted between the kitchen and the dining room, where the table had been set, by Merissa, as if for a special occasion.
And then, at 8:23 p.m., the glaring headlights of his vehicle—a sturdy steel-colored SUV—turned into the drive. Morgan Carmichael bounded into the house—his house—with a quick hug for both Merissa and her mother and an apology: he’d been “stuck in traffic”—some kind of “construction” on the turnpike.
Daddy’s face was ruddy, and his breath held that smell—(Merissa was beginning to discern this smell at a distance of several feet)—that suggested he’d had a drink, or two, en route to his house.
And Daddy, at dinner, seemed not to have much of an appetite. His manner was edgy and alert and distracted: “Hey, sorry, I had a late lunch. Couldn’t avoid it.”
And so Daddy ate just a small portion of the bloody-rare steak.
Merissa thought, Some poor, helpless animal had to die. For what?
The injustice of the world—the stupid injustice of the world!—tugged at her, like Tink tugging at her elbow.
He is one of the cruel persons of the world. Your beloved Dad-dy.
Still, Merissa smiled at her father. There was no point in pretending that she wasn’t happy to see him and that his gaze, however casually, even carelessly, it rested on her, didn’t thrill her in a way no Blade Runner could ever touch.
And there was no point in provoking him, as her mother had wisely said.
Daddy had brought a “special wine” for dinner, which he opened, with some difficulty, cursing as the cork splintered. Both he and Merissa’s mother drank the wine at dinner—all of it.
And then Merissa’s mother sent her to bring another bottle of red wine to the table, and Daddy opened that one also.
Was this a special, festive occasion, Merissa wondered, or were her parents self-medicating?
How superior Merissa felt! She would not ever self-medicate with alcohol or drugs.
Conversation at dinner was awkward. Like three people squeezed into a canoe and each trying to paddle. Mostly you’d be concerned with the canoe not tipping over, without much thought of where exactly you were going, or why.
Merissa’s father brought up the subject—(the happy subject)—of Merissa’s early-admission acceptance at Brown—and asked her who else at her school had gotten into “top Ivy” schools; and Merissa told him, so far as she knew.
“You really got the drop on your classmates, eh? Poor kids will be sweating it out, waiting for acceptances—or rejections.” Morgan Carmichael swallowed a large mouthful of wine, as if the thought gave him pleasure. “Well, we knew—your mother and me—with that résumé of yours, you couldn’t lose.”
Merissa smiled stiffly. Sure I could lose, Daddy. I can lose.
And would you love me—if I did?
Merissa’s father apologized—another time!—for not having taken her skating at the Meadowlands a few weeks ago. “But you’re a little too old to be going out with your daddy, aren’t you? Most girls your age would be, like, mortified to be seen with their dad.”
Trying hard to be funny, using the word like as if in emulation of something Merissa might say. Except of course none of this was anything that Merissa might say.
“Merissa was selected as the lead in the play,” Merissa’s mother said, “which was quite an honor! But she’s had to give it up, she has too much serious schoolwork to do. We’re disappointed—of course. But—”
“Gave it up? Why?”
Daddy squinted at Merissa, holding his wineglass as if about to drink. His plank steak lay in a pool of reddish liquid on his plate, only a few bites eaten.
“I didn’t give it up, I resigned.” Merissa was very tired of explaining her action, which seemed to her now, in retrospect, impulsive and self-defeating—surrendering the coveted role to a girl who envied and disliked her and had been known to say things about her behind Merissa’s back. Yet now, feeling defensive, she said irritably, “And I hate Jane Austen. I’m the only person, ever—the only female, anyway—to disapprove of her.”
Tink would disapprove, Merissa knew.
Oh, how she missed Tink! She could never forgive Tink for k*****g herself.
“You say you resigned? Why?”
“Because, as Mom says, I am too busy with serious things.”
So you’re spared coming to the play. Come on, Dad—this is good news for you.
Merissa’s father went on to ask about her classes at school, particularly her science course—“I haven’t read your essay yet, sweetie, but it’s on my calendar to read soon”—but seemed only half listening as Merissa replied.
(Was Daddy waiting for a call, or a text message? Several times at dinner he checked his shiny smartphone, which he’d had the tact to silence at the dinner table.)
And Merissa’s mother chattered in her bright, nervous, breathy way—no one seemed to be listening to her at all.
Merissa shifted restlessly in her chair. She didn’t know if she felt sorry for her mother, or exasperated with her. Trying too hard. For God’s sake, Mom.
The single time Merissa had met Tink’s (notorious) Big Moms—Veronica Traumer—she’d been surprised that the woman had been so attractive. Beneath the glamorous makeup and chic hairstyle, Ms. Traumer had looked like the kind of woman men would gaze after in the street—yet, according to Tink, Big Moms’s “track record” with men had been “in the low single digits.”
On TV, the several times Merissa had seen Veronica Traumer, she almost hadn’t recognized her: makeup, hair, costuming.
Tink had said, Acting is just a fraction of what you see. The expendable fraction.
Merissa wondered if her father was acting right now—playing the role of the husband, the father who was separated from his family and trying to figure out whether he was going to return or not.
Or when.
Merissa’s father was wearing a white cotton shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled up as if for business. (But the sleeves had small buttons—you could button the rolled-up cuffs!) As soon as he’d removed his overcoat, he’d shrugged off his beautiful cashmere-wool sport coat and tugged off his necktie. His heavy jaws looked as if he hadn’t shaved for a while, and he smelled just slightly—beyond the tart smell of red wine that Merissa had noticed—of something fragrant and flowery, which could not have been shaving lotion.
He is trying to decide between us and her.
But he is here with us now. He loves us!
Merissa, who’d eaten very little of the delicious dinner she’d helped to prepare, asked to be excused from the table. Carrying away plates to scrape unwanted food into the garbage disposal.
The bloody-rare steak, her father had scarcely touched! In the garbage disposal the rejected meat seemed to be twisting, groaning in pain like a live creature.
Still, Merissa was hopeful. She didn’t really—not really—believe that her father would leave her and her mother; she didn’t really believe that there could be . . .
(The very words were so hokey: another woman.)
(Like some made-for-TV movie on the Lifetime channel.)
Merissa lingered in the kitchen. She’d had a sense that her parents wanted to be alone, to talk about urgent, personal matters.
Helping in the kitchen was something easy and familiar, which Merissa had been avoiding lately. She was feeling guilty at not having been so nice
to her mother in recent weeks—she couldn’t comprehend why.
Thinking of the way Anita Chang had looked at her. And Brooke Kramer. And others, at school. Merissa Carmichael is getting to be such a bitch.
She knew they were texting each other this.
But they couldn’t know that she’d been nasty to her own mother. And she couldn’t even remember why.
When she went upstairs tonight, Merissa thought, she’d text her friends Hannah and Chloe, maybe Nadia. . . . She felt a thrill of panic; she’d been mean to the very girls who were her friends.
For maybe now she was bargaining: If her father returned to the family, she would be a good, devoted friend.
Remembering how wistful and depressed Chloe had been in ninth grade, when her father had moved out of their house. At first Chloe had talked about the situation with Merissa and her friends—nervously and compulsively; then she’d stopped talking about it.
Except she’d said to Merissa one day, You think it can’t happen, that it isn’t real. Then . . . it’s like the only thing that is real.
For a while, in ninth grade, Merissa remembered now with self-disgust, she hadn’t really wanted to spend time with Chloe. No one did.
For Chloe was so—needy, sad. Pathetic.
The girls had made plans without Chloe—shopping at the mall, going to movies, sleepovers. This was before Tink Traumer had come into their lives, when they’d seemed so young.
Merissa had been planning a sleepover at her house to which she was inviting seven or eight girls, and she hadn’t intended to invite Chloe Zimmer until her mother had asked her why not, and Merissa had felt so ashamed, she’d decided to invite Chloe—which had turned out to be a very good thing to do.
Chloe adored Merissa, as a consequence. For being just a good friend, at a time when Chloe had needed a friend.
Eventually, Chloe recovered something of her former personality. Her parents had joint custody of Chloe and her younger brother, and shuttling between two households, as Chloe described it, You either sink or swim.
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