(That goddamned dazzling smile—WHERE IS IT?)
It was a fact: There were secrets in Veronica Traumer’s life—and in her daughter’s life as well. Rumors of “health issues”—physical? mental?—of which Veronica spoke mysteriously and with an air of stoic melancholy.
Yet the child had a “career”—a high-paying career, in fact.
Though not always able to work, for mysterious reasons.
(Was she away somewhere? Was she living with the estranged/unidentified father? )
(No one knew. No one dared ask Veronica.)
(Though to the child she would speak bitterly. You! I think you came between us. Not your fault—you didn’t ask to be born—your so-called father is not the marrying kind, and he is not the daddy kind, and as for child support—the bastard is definitely NOT THAT KIND.)
“Trina? Trina!”
The doorknob was frantically rattling. Big Moms’s perfume penetrated the locked door. I wanted to shout at her, Go away! Go away! You weren’t supposed to come home until tomorrow.
But I was too weak. And instead lay very still in the lukewarm bathwater as it stained red.
The bathroom door was never unlocked. The door was removed from its hinges—“unhinged”—by Mr. Leo and one of his young assistants. Big Moms was screaming—unless it was a siren screaming. Someone covered me—my skinny, sickly-pale naked body—as I was lifted onto a stretcher and borne away. And now there was a siren—I was inside the siren. Like a wild, high laughter it was, but I don’t think that the sound was me. I was fourteen then. I didn’t think that I would ever be older, but I am older now, and I promise I will not make that mistake again.
10.
SECRET
It wasn’t like Tink had not warned us.
It wasn’t like Tink had not prepared us.
We’d known that something was wrong—those last several months of her life, when she seemed always to be missing school, or hadn’t much time for her friends, or was “away” somewhere mysterious.
“She’s seeing a shrink in Manhattan.”
“She’s auditioning for a new TV series in L.A.”
“She’s visiting with her father—somewhere.”
(No one knew the smallest particle of any fact about Tink’s father—it was the one subject you would never, ever bring up with Tink. So this was pure conjecture.)
It seemed too ordinary to suggest that if Tink stayed out of school as others did, it was for the same reason—she was sick with a bad cold, or flu.
Or she hadn’t finished a paper, or hadn’t studied enough for an exam. Or, just maybe, she was feeling rebellious, or depressed—“Some days are just not school days,” as Tink said.
After Tink d**d, it would be revealed that she’d missed sixteen school days out of approximately seventy in the 2010–2011 school term. The Quaker Heights Day School would release to the press only the fact—(assuming it was a fact)—that Katrina Traumer’s absences had all been explained and had been considered legitimate.
When Tink missed school, she didn’t return our text messages except to say
TINK IS AWAY & TINK WILL RETURN. LOVE YOU.
Mr. Trocchi said mysteriously, as if he had some special connection with Tink or maybe with her glamorous actress-mother, “Tink Traumer is no ordinary student, you know. Her destiny is elsewhere.”
“Movies? Hollywood?”
“A play in New York?”
“A new TV series?”
(Though we knew that Tink had “retired” from acting, she’d told us and told us, yet somehow we wanted to believe that our friend might change her mind.)
(Though we want our friends to be just like us, and to not be superior to us, we take pride in having “famous” friends—we even like them a little better if they are “famous,” and yet our friends.)
In an undertone, so Mr. Trocchi wouldn’t hear, Anita Chang said severely, “Tink Traumer is suicidal. Her destiny might be nowhere.”
We hated Anita for saying such a thing. We did not—we DID NOT—want to believe that Tink, who was our friend, was suicidal.
11.
“SURPRISE, TINK!”
We’d planned a surprise party for Tink.
Is this a good idea?—we weren’t absolutely certain.
Tink had spoken admiringly of “wild, crazy surprise” parties on the “set”—(meaning the TV set, we gathered)—and not all of these were birthday parties. Could just be a party-party, to surprise somebody you liked who was maybe feeling a little blue.
We always did something for our birthdays, but we’d never yet had any party for Tink, who was new in our lives but who had come to feel like our oldest friend.
The pretense was: Chloe’s mother was going to be away, and so Chloe had asked Tink to spend the night with her; the rest of us would be waiting when Tink came in, and we’d surprise her.
We’d made funny cards. Tink had referred to non-birthday cards so we made them.
Chloe’s mom was divorced; Chloe had no sisters or brothers. So her mother was often involved in her life, and in the case of the surprise party for Tink, Chloe’s mother helped plan every step of it and insisted upon preparing most of the food, though we came over to help. (Tink’s favorite foods—vegetarian lasagna; ginger carrots and nutmeg spinach; arugula salad tossed with Italian dressing, raisins, and sunflower seeds.) Mrs. Zimmer even baked a cake—devil’s food with egg-white frosting spelling out HAPPY NON-BIRTHDAY TINK!
And then, Tink didn’t come.
She must have guessed that something was planned that revolved around her, and it wasn’t going to be just a night with Chloe but with others. So, she didn’t come.
We should have known. Tink hated fuss.
Chloe was upset. Mrs. Zimmer was hurt.
Chloe texted Tink and called her—no answer.
“She must have overheard us. Must have guessed something. Maybe she was afraid we were going to play old TV videos of her show. She’s weird.”
“Oh no, it’s our fault. With Tink, you can’t presume.”
Nadia said, “I feel so bad. I feel like this was my idea.”
Merissa said, “I think it was my idea. I feel terrible.”
Hannah said, “Do you think she’s angry at us? Some people just don’t like surprise parties.”
Martine said, “Tink wants to be the one in charge of surprises. Tink doesn’t want to be surprised.”
We gave up texting and calling Tink and decided to have dinner ourselves and to enjoy Tink’s non-birthday party without her. Chloe’s mother drifted away upstairs with the excuse of a migraine.
Chloe said, “This was all my idea. I can’t imagine why I thought it would be a good one.”
Merissa said, “The fact is—Tink warned us.”
“Warned us how?”
“She’s always said, ‘I’d like to be your friend—but only if you promise never, ever to count on me.’”
Merissa was right. We just hadn’t wanted to remember.
Then, as we were preparing to leave for our homes, at about nine p.m., Chloe’s cell phone rang: It was Tink.
“Hey, guys—it’s me. Bet you had a great time without me.”
“But how did you know?” Chloe was baffled.
“It’s a ‘surprise’ party, right? Don’t ask me how I knew.”
“Did someone tell you?”
“No! But I could guess, around you guys. I knew something was up and I figured . . .”
Chloe held the phone up for us to hear. We were all talking and laughing at once.
Tink said she was sorry she hadn’t been able to come. She’d wanted to, she said. But she hadn’t been able to.
We told her it was okay. We understood.
We passed the little phone around. We talked to Tink, and laughed with her, and Tink sounded like her usual self, that low, scratchy, funny voice, and something edgy and sad beneath.
“You could still come over,” Chloe said hopefully. “It isn’t so late. We have lots of cake. My
mother made the most delicious devil’s food cake. . . .”
“Oh God. Your mother . . .”
“Mom really wanted to, Tink. She had a great time. She loves to cook, and the dinner turned out really well—vegetarian lasagna. We can save some for you, in fact. Mom was hoping—”
At the other end, Tink began to cry.
“Tell your mother I’m sorry. I’m really s-sorry. I never even thought about your m-mother! It’s just that I couldn’t come. I wanted to, but I—I couldn’t come. I love you guys, but—”
We listened in shocked silence. Tink appeared to be laughing, but it was obvious that she was still crying, too.
Tink asked if she could speak to Chloe’s mother, and Chloe said sure, she’d take the phone upstairs to her mom; and when Chloe went upstairs we looked at one another, and we’d stopped laughing. And Hannah said, “I wish there was something we could do to make Tink like herself better.”
This was a surprising remark. But we knew Hannah was right. We tried to think. What could we do? What could girlfriends do?
“Just be really nice to Tink. If she lets us down, if she’s weird sometimes—just ignore it, and love her. Just love her.”
12.
THE CURSE
Senior year means doing everything for the final time.
Except Tink’s final year with us was our junior year. When no one was prepared for an ending.
We would wonder—did Tink know? When did Tink know?
Later it would seem to us that she’d been saying good-bye almost since we’d known her. Out of nowhere she’d come into our lives and, just as mysteriously, now she was leaving.
Our art instructor at school mounted an exhibit of Tink’s Night Sky photographs in the school gallery, which was up for the month of March; our local Quaker Heights newspaper published a full-page feature on Tink’s work, which included a terse interview with the young student artist.
Interviewer: What are you trying to say in these photographs?
Katrina Traumer: I’m not trying to say anything. Photographs don’t say.
Interviewer: Let me rephrase my question, then. The “Night Sky” sequence seems to suggest that human beings are related somehow to the constellations—to the universe—maybe to God?—but are unaware of that fact. Is this a fair interpretation?
K.T.: A photograph is like a poem—there should be different interpretations.
Interviewer: What is your greatest hope as a photographer?
K.T.: To take some good pictures.
Interviewer: What is your great challenge as a photographer?
K.T.: To take some good pictures.
Interviewer: Do you intend to continue studying photography after graduation?
K.T.: After graduation? That’s too far away to plan.
Interviewer: You’d had a quite successful career as a child actor on the TV series Gramercy Park. Do you ever anticipate returning to acting?
K.T.: No.
Interviewer: What was it like to have a career at a time in life when most children are just—children?
K.T.: I thought this interview was about my photographs.
Interviewer: Yes, of course. But our readers would also be interested in your experiences as Penelope in Gramercy Park.
K.T.: But I’m not. I haven’t been interested in Penelope since I was nine years old.
(The interview might have been longer, but the newspaper feature ended abruptly at this point.)
It must have been a sign we hadn’t known how to interpret: In April of that year, Tink cut off most of her hair!
Tink’s ripply, frizzy, burnt-red hair, which was snarled at the nape of her neck and wasn’t always what you’d call super clean—suddenly, one day, was gone.
“Oh, Tink! My God! What have you done?”
We’d been invited to Tink’s house. An invitation to Tink’s house was rare.
(Tink came to our houses often. She’d come to study with us, and stay for dinner—though we’d have to coax her, and our mothers would have to coax her, before she gave in. For often it seemed that Tink’s mother was “away,” and maybe there was just a housekeeper at Tink’s house, or maybe there was no one at all. Tink would not have told us.)
We all came together in Merissa’s mom’s station wagon to the house at 88 Blue Spruce Way, in which Tink and Veronica Traumer had lived for less than two years. It was a sprawling, showy, “custom-designed contemporary” on a hilly lot above an artificial lake bordered by blue spruce trees as if in a scenic calendar in which no one actually lived.
At the house, Tink opened the door for us. Instead of her signature black leggings, she was wearing jeans and a red GUERRILLA GIRL T-shirt. She was barefoot, and most of her hair was gone.
“Hey, guys! Love ya.” Tink had to laugh at the looks on our faces.
We were stunned, staring at Tink’s head, which looked so small, and vulnerable, like a small child’s head.
Tink had not only cut off her hair with scissors—“without exactly looking to see what I was doing,” as Tink explained—but when her mother saw the disaster, she’d taken Tink to a hairstylist in Quaker Heights to “minimize” the damage.
You could say that Tink’s hair was both a disaster and, in a weird-punk way, chic. It was shaved at the nape of her neck, a half-inch long except at the crown of her head, where it was an inch long, and fuller. Our girlfriend looked like a punk rocker or maybe a street urchin in a comic strip—hair sticking up in short tufts.
We hugged Tink. We tried to laugh with her. We didn’t want to accuse her but—what a surprise this was! It felt like some sort of rebuke.
“Come in! Quick! Big Moms will be downstairs soon enough, and all over my ‘girlfriends.’”
Tink led us inside her house. The large white-walled rooms were sparsely furnished, and the tall windows had no curtains or blinds; on the floors were scatter rugs, each colorful, beautiful, probably very expensive, but inadequate to fill the large floor space. After nearly two years, it seemed that Veronica Traumer hadn’t quite moved into her new house.
Why had Tink cut her hair, and why without warning?
“Maybe I had brain surgery over the weekend. Or ECT.”
“ECT—what’s that?”
“Electroconvulsive therapy. Electric shock.”
We laughed because Tink laughed, but we didn’t know what to think. The loose-fitting T-shirt disguised Tink’s thinness, but you could see her bony hips and pelvis in the tight-fitting jeans, and she appeared to be shivering—in fact, the house was overheated.
“ECT has a bad rep, but it actually works. Shocks you out of your narcissistic stupor. Sure, your IQ drops an octave, but—what the hell. You become tractable and, like, lovable.”
Seeing how perplexed we were, and the horrified look on Nadia’s face, Tink said airily, “No. I just got sick of my old hair, and cut it off. Who else is gonna do it, if not me? Also to piss off Big Moms, she’s got this obsession with being feminine.” Tink laughed. “Femininity is a weapon, Big Moms says. You bet, it can be lethal in the right hands.”
Tink brought us into the kitchen to get Cokes and smoothies from a large Sub-Zero refrigerator. A dark-skinned woman, whom Tink introduced as Valeria, was preparing dinner—the spicy smells were overwhelming.
Tink had invited us each singly—confidentially. Don’t tell anyone else, please, this is a small private party at my house for just special people.
We’d conferred with one another, of course. It wasn’t difficult to determine whom Tink had probably invited.
“See, Big Moms is taking us on a trip next week. We’re flying to ‘L.A.,’ as it’s called. And I wanted to make just the perfect impression—just as feminine as possible.”
We were in an adjacent family room with a large fireplace, a fifty-inch flat-screen TV, floor-to-ceiling plate-glass sliding doors. Even this room, which was more comfortable than the rest of the rooms we’d seen, with Mexican tiles on the floor, bright-colored sofas and chairs and pillows, look
ed as impersonal as a designer room; you could see that Tink had no favorite place to sit, but wandered around as you would in a hotel lobby, before dropping onto the floor beside a sofa.
Valeria came into the room to bring us appetizers. She laughed when Tink said she was the best cook ever and Big Moms was conspiring to kidnap her, to take her with them.
“Are you really going away, Tink? Where?”
“No. I mean—yes. Maybe.”
Tink laughed. She was sprawled on the floor with her thin legs outspread. Her bare feet were like an urchin’s. Without her frizzy burnt-red hair to hide behind, Tink looked awkward and exposed. Her face was pale; even her freckles appeared to have faded.
“I mean—there’s a preliminary trip. And depending on the outcome of this preliminary trip, there may be a permanent trip—a ‘removal.’ Depends.”
“But—when would this be? We have, like, six weeks before school ends. . . .”
“Who knows? I’m not in charge.”
We wondered if Veronica Traumer was moving to Los Angeles to make a film. Or work in TV on the West Coast. Gramercy Park had finally ceased its long run after a dozen years, and its cast, which had grown older with the seasons, would all be looking for new work.
Tink was a tease: No matter what she told us, seemed to confide in us, if we asked her a direct question she’d deflect it with a joke, or make a sarcastic reply.
We were reminded of Mr. Trocchi’s remark. Tink is no ordinary student. Her destiny is elsewhere.
How badly we wanted to believe this.
At last, after about a half hour, as Valeria was about to serve dinner—(we were all going to help her bring dishes to the table)—Tink’s mother came downstairs, hurrying to meet us.
“Ohhh—girls! How lovely.”
We had glimpsed Tink’s mother before, and we’d seen photos of the actress Veronica Traumer online, but we’d never seen the woman close up until now.
She was so—bosomy. And her face seemed large, like a moon. And her skin seemed to give off a light, as if an actual spotlight shone on her.
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