Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You

by Joyce Carol Oates

  If you looked closer, you could see that Veronica was expertly and heavily made up. Her face had none of the delicate bone structure of Tink’s face, but you could see an uncanny resemblance around the eyes and the bridge of the nose; otherwise, Veronica’s face was fleshy, as if there were no bones beneath. We guessed she’d had “work” on her face—injections, or implants—for her cheeks were full and the skin around her mouth just slightly puffy; her face was amazingly unlined for a woman of her age, which we knew to be over forty.

  Veronica’s eyes were a dull mud-green, not vivid and striking like Tink’s, but glamorously made up with eye shadow and eyeliner. And she wore gold lamé capri pants and a taupe jersey top that showed the impress of her large breasts, and shoes with clattery heels. All this for a weekday evening at home with no guests more important than her daughter’s high school classmates.

  Her perfume wafted to us and enveloped us like a mildly toxic cloud.

  Quickly Veronica’s eyes darted about us, from face to face: Did she know us? (She should have known Merissa Carmichael, at least, and maybe Hannah Heller, but she didn’t seem to recognize them.) Should we introduce ourselves? Tink had turned sulky and silent and wasn’t at all helpful, sprawled on the floor beside the sofa.

  “Trina? Where are the rest of your guests?” Veronica smiled uncertainly.

  “These are them, Moms.”

  “But—I thought you were inviting all your new friends from school.” Veronica looked perplexed, disappointed. You could see that life with her adolescent daughter was fraught with surprises difficult to interpret. “All your friends from Quaker Heights Day School.” Veronica enunciated the formal name of our school as if eager to demonstrate that she knew it.

  “I said I was inviting the people I like.”

  “No boys?”

  “You didn’t want boys, did you?”

  “Well—I’d thought . . .”

  “If there are boys, there is sex. You don’t want ‘sex’—so why d’you want ‘boys’? Make sense, Moms.”

  Tink spoke so impatiently to her mother, we were embarrassed.

  Veronica was smiling, or trying to smile. Her hair had been bleached a striking platinum blond, like Merissa’s, but it was as synthetic-looking as a mannequin’s hair. Her fleshy lips were outlined in deep purple.

  “It’s just that I’d thought—somehow—you are sixteen years old, after all, aren’t you?—and you’ve mentioned boys, I think. . . .”

  “A party with boys would be Friday or Saturday night, not Wednesday. Or maybe you don’t know which day of the week this is, since you aren’t working right now.”

  Tink was behaving so rudely, we exchanged glances with one another. Not one of us would have spoken like this to our mothers in the presence of guests; yet Veronica only winced, and smiled in a way to suggest that this was a strategy of hers—smile, smile. For after all, Veronica Traumer was a quasi-public figure, accustomed to TV lights and interviews. Accustomed to performance.

  We saw that she was holding a glass of wine in her fingers, which were glittering with rings. And her fingernails were long and oval and brightly polished.

  Since Tink made no move to introduce us, we introduced ourselves to Veronica Traumer: “Chloe”—“Shelby”—“Merissa”—“Nadia”—“Martine”—“Hannah”—“Anita.”

  We could see that Veronica’s gaze moved lightly from each of us to the next and that, though listening, she wasn’t going to remember a single name.

  In an almost flirtatious voice she said, “How Trina merits such nice girlfriends, I can’t imagine. You all look absolutely—nice—and beautiful—and well-mannered. Trina must be much nicer to you than she is to her mother.”

  “Moms, that is so maudlin! Please.”

  Veronica was sipping wine. She regarded us with a sly smile. “She’s the prissy one, you know. She doesn’t approve of her mother’s lifestyle.” Veronica laughed, a surprisingly high-pitched, girlish giggle.

  It was time for Valeria to serve dinner. Hesitantly the Latina housekeeper was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looking to Veronica, who seemed oblivious of her. Tink was also oblivious of Valeria.

  Merissa said, “Excuse me, Tink, but—maybe—Valeria would like to serve dinner? We can help her.”

  Yet Tink didn’t seem to hear. And Veronica didn’t seem to hear.

  Though daughter and mother were purposely not looking at each other, it was awkwardly clear that they were intensely aware of each other. As Veronica sipped from her wineglass, she stroked her bare, softly fleshy forearm in a way that must have infuriated Tink, who squirmed, trying not to look up at her mother but failing, at last.

  “Big Moms has a very banal lifestyle,” Tink said, “which she wants to think is chic.”

  She tried to speak lightly, like a brash young child in a TV sitcom, but her green eyes flashed with hurt.

  Veronica laughed. At first it seemed that Tink’s joke wasn’t an insult to her, but then, with no warning, she lunged toward Tink as Tink sprawled on the floor, and slapped her.

  We could not believe it: Veronica slapped Tink’s face, so hard that Veronica’s numerous bracelets rattled and chimed.

  “You vicious little bitch! Why do I put up with you? If you want to die, why don’t you? No one will miss you! No wonder your father has vanished from the face of the earth.”

  In her clattering heels, Veronica stalked out of the room. It was a TV moment—wasn’t it? We wanted to think that it wasn’t exactly real, though Tink’s cheek was flaming from the slap and she’d recoiled like a wounded little creature, hiding her face and drawing her knees up to her chest.

  Then Tink laughed, and the painful moment was past.

  “Big Moms is melodramatic. She never learned nuance.”

  13.

  TINK SAYS GOOD-BYE

  HEY GUYS, GUESS I WON’T BE SEEING YOU FOR A WHILE.

  LOVE YOU GUYS BUT FEELING KINDA BURNT OUT. NBD.

  TINK

  14.

  OBITUARY:

  KATRINA OLIVIA TRAUMER

  Katrina Olivia Traumer, 17, a resident of Quaker Heights, died in her family home at 88 Blue Spruce Way in the early hours of June 11, 2011.

  Ms. Traumer, a junior at Quaker Heights Day School, transferred from the Brearley School in Manhattan in the fall of 2010. She had had an early success as an actress, and from the age of six to the age of eleven she’d played the child Penelope in the popular TV series Gramercy Park, in which her mother, Veronica Traumer, also appeared in a leading role. Ms. Traumer’s TV credits also include episodes of Medium, Two and a Half Men, Masterpiece Theatre, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

  According to the county medical examiner, the cause of death has not yet been determined.

  Ms. Traumer is survived by her mother and her grandparents, Margaret and Reardon Traumer of New Britain, Connecticut.

  In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Humane Society of the United States.

  QUAKER HEIGHTS JOURNAL,

  June 14, 2011

  We were crushed. We were devastated. Tink’s obituary was so ordinary.

  These words, written by someone who’d never known Tink, had nothing to do with the girl we’d known.

  And the photograph that ran with the obituary hardly resembled the quirky, beautiful Tink we knew!

  We cried together. We hugged one another, and we cried.

  We were sick with grief. And we were angry.

  Why? Why did you do it, Tink?

  She’d sent us each a final text message. That was all.

  Classes had ended for the year. Exams had ended. Class Day was past, and graduation was scheduled for the following Monday.

  Tink had skipped Class Day, but we hadn’t guessed that that meant much—she hated speeches and “formalities” in the school auditorium, where “the air was like ether,” she said. Though she’d known that she was probably going to be named as one of the Outstanding Artists of the year, for her Night Sky exhibit, still
Tink had snubbed the ceremony, and when her name was called by Headmaster Nichols from the stage, there was an embarrassing silence until Merissa Carmichael rose from her seat and said apologetically, “Tink isn’t feeling well and couldn’t come to school today. May I accept for her?”

  Merissa had carried the crystal plaque with KATRINA TRAUMER engraved on it home with her, thinking to give it to Tink the next time she saw her.

  But she never saw Tink again.

  There was no funeral, only a private ceremony to which no one we knew was invited. We didn’t even know where Tink was buried—or if she was buried.

  For all we knew, Veronica had had her cremated.

  We wanted to have a memorial service for Tink, but Veronica Traumer never answered our calls or letters. The house at 88 Blue Spruce Way looked vacant, with no vehicle in the driveway. We went—daringly—to ring the doorbell, but no one answered. We wished we’d known Valeria’s last name; we might have contacted her.

  We had a Memory Wall for Tink online. Here we posted photos of Tink and photos by Tink. We posted poems by Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost. Though we knew that Tink would give us hell, we posted photographs of her as little Penelope on Gramercy Park, since this had been a part of our friend’s life, a life that had intersected with the public for five years, long ago in Tink’s life but not so long ago in history.

  “There is something more to why Tink did what she did. Something more that hasn’t been told.”

  We thought this might be so, but we had no proof. We wanted to believe that there was more to Tink’s d***h than we knew, and that there was more to Tink’s life than we’d known.

  Whatever we do for Tink, on our Memory Wall, never seems like enough.

  But then, Tink hasn’t actually vanished. She is gone and yet—

  It’s like striking a match and the flame goes out and still you smell the hot, acrid powder smell and you know there’s a fire somewhere even if you can’t see it.

  III

  THE SLUT

  1.

  “GO FOR IT!”

  Oh God. Now he will know.

  Now, no turning back.

  She backed away. Staggered away.

  She was terrified—thrilled—excited.

  For now he would know that she loved him. He would know, and he would understand, and he would—maybe—call her, and want to see her.

  No turning back.

  She wondered what Tink would think about what she’d done. For Tink had often nudged Nadia in the ribs—“Go for it, girl!”

  And soft-eyed Nadia would say, “Go for—what?”

  “What there is to be gone for.”

  That was Tink. She’d tell you to do what you wanted to do—the hell with the consequences.

  2.

  THE BIRTHDAY GIFT

  He was opening the present. Unwrapping it, and lifting it from the bubble wrap, carefully . . .

  Why, Nadia! This is—so beautiful. . . .

  Nadia, I can’t accept this. . . .

  Nadia, I—want you to know—you are so beautiful, so—special—to me. . . .

  Then Mr. Kessler would grip Nadia’s head in his hands—his fingers spread in her hair—he would kiss her forehead, gently—her nose—her silly snub nose—her lips . . .

  Love you, Nadia! My beautiful girl . . .

  “I l-love you too, Mr. Kessler.”

  Or should she say, softly, “I have always loved you, Mr. Kessler—since I first saw you. . . .”?

  It wasn’t clear to Nadia where she and Mr. Kessler were. In his car, maybe.

  Yes, that was likely. Mr. Kessler was giving her a ride—(home? In this bad weather? This was plausible)—and the mood between them was tender, suspenseful.

  Nadia had seen Adrian Kessler driving a Subaru station wagon with colorful bumper stickers: GO GREEN! (front) and I BRAKE FOR BUTTERFLIES (rear). It was not so unlikely that he might give her a ride home in this vehicle.

  And if so, it was not unlikely that they might stop—park—somewhere. For Mr. Kessler would want to speak seriously with Nadia, after their conversation in his office the other day, and what had passed between them; and, once Nadia had given him the present, he would know her feelings for him, which were very intense, and very deep.

  Except: Nadia wasn’t sure that she wanted Mr. Kessler to know who’d given him the present. Just yet.

  Yet he was smiling at her, and for the first time really looking at Nadia Stillinger. Not as a female student, but as an individual—a young woman.

  As gently he closed his fingers in her hair, leaned in to her—closer . . .

  Nadia swallowed hard. Her eyelids fluttered. She felt her heart kick like a frightened bird inside her rib cage.

  There came a whistle: “Hey—Nad-ja.”

  Nadia turned, in dread. Seeing that it was—oh God: friends of Colin Brunner.

  Football teammates of Colin’s. Those loud, mean boys with jeering faces like hawks’ beaks—one of them was Rick: what was his name, Rick Metz?

  Nadia felt sick. The terrible thing was, Nadia knew him from a party the previous weekend.

  It was too late to turn away. To pretend she hadn’t heard.

  Yet clumsily Nadia turned away. Her face was pounding with blood; she was sure she must be flushing beet red.

  “Nad-ja? Want a ride?”

  The boys laughed. Sniggered. There’d been sessions at Quaker Heights Day School since last fall focusing on harassment, cyberbullying, how you should report such incidents to the headmaster immediately, but few girls would want to do so—If you tattle, that will make things worse for you—so Nadia would try to ignore them, Nadia wished she could stick her fingers in her ears like a small child and ignore them, and now she was walking away from them—trying to walk calmly, her head held up, without haste, without betraying the anxiety she felt—but one of the boys crowded her from behind, pushed against her, giggling: “Hey, babe. Watch it.” Another boy jostled him; like ridiculous small children they were hooting with laughter, wrestling one another, nudging Nadia off the walk and into a mound of gritty snow that looked as if dogs had urinated into it.

  “L-leave me alone. . . .”

  Noisy and laughing, the boys strode on. It wasn’t clear if they’d even heard Nadia’s pleading voice.

  Why had they had to bump against her? Why push her? That was pure meanness.

  And they would report back to Colin, for sure.

  And on their Facebook pages, for sure.

  (Nadia didn’t know, because she had not looked.)

  (Nadia had heard—something . . . Nasty-cruel, mean and vicious, what they’d posted about NADIA STILLINGER, but the fact was, she had not looked.)

  “Bastards! I hate you.”

  Or, no: “Pricks! I hate you.”

  Prick was a better word. Tink had said guys think with their pricks.

  Cocks, dicks.

  These were all good words that Tink had used.

  If you remember that a guy thinks with his prick, essentially you can be protected from him. But if you forget . . .

  Nadia had made a mistake, she had forgotten. Or—somehow—after unwisely drinking beer with Colin—(and maybe Colin had put a pill in Nadia’s glass when she wasn’t looking)—Nadia had just stopped being aware of what Tink would have called her well-being.

  It was so unfair! It had turned out wrong, and yet—it might have turned out differently.

  Just now, when Rick Metz and his friends had jeered at her and pushed her off the path—they might have just smiled at her, and said, Hi, Nadia! as they’d say to another girl. They might have treated her politely, or at any rate not meanly. It was just unfair.

  Because of Colin, and the mistake Nadia guessed she’d made—(she couldn’t remember clearly, and no one was going to tell her)—first in Colin’s car and then in his basement, it would never be made right. The guys would not even look at her without seeing Nad-ja! Nad-ja! She was wearing a new quilted dark-rose jacket from the Gap with a f
leecy hood—if the guys had gotten a clear look at her, a fair look, they would have been impressed.

  For Nadia Stillinger was pretty—really, quite pretty. Not beautiful, for her face was too full, and the expression on her face too yearning, but she was pretty; it wasn’t an exaggeration, as people said, that she had beautiful dark-brown eyes. . . . And she certainly wasn’t skinny or anorexic.

  But the guys hadn’t really looked at her. Colin hadn’t really looked at her. That was the mistake.

  She couldn’t tell her girlfriends—Merissa, Hannah, Anita, Martine would be merciless with her. Chloe might be sympathetic—Chloe wasn’t quick to judge. But Tink!

  The good thing was, when the boys had hassled Nadia, she hadn’t dropped Mr. Kessler’s gift on the wet pavement out back behind school. In a nightmare scene out of middle school, they might have started kicking it like a soccer ball.

  Not that it was breakable—it wasn’t.

  Wrapped in bubble wrap and hidden in a large, shiny-gilt tote bag from Neiman Marcus, embossed with the initials AJS—Nadia’s stepmother’s initials. And this tote bag was inside a large grocery bag with paper handles.

  Nadia had borrowed her stepmother’s glamorous bag for the occasion, reasoning that the gift for Mr. Kessler was so special, she could hardly bring it in a shopping bag to leave for him, nor did she want to jam it into her own ordinary tote bag, let alone into her backpack—where it wouldn’t have fit anyway.

  Reasoning too that Mr. Kessler would give the bag back to her and she could return it to her stepmother’s closet before its absence was detected.

  Then again, Amelie had so many nice things, leather handbags from Prada and Louis Vuitton, bags made of brocade with tortoiseshell handles imported from Morocco, it wasn’t likely she’d miss the gilt bag immediately.

  “Nadia! Hi! What are you doing here?”

  Merissa! Nadia wasn’t happy to see a friend just now.

  Merissa was smiling at Nadia—but strangely, Nadia thought.