by Kim Green
I snap open my cell and ring Sue. I get Sarafina. “What are you doing up?”
“Mom and Arlo said I could watch C-SPAN.” She giggles. City kids are so precocious.
“Is your mom there?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you get her?” I press out a little more pee, anxious to hide the sound of the call.
“Quel? Hey,” Sue says.
“I am about to have an affair with Ross Trimble,” I hiss, feeling nauseated.
“Where are you?”
“The toilet.”
“Whose toilet?” Sue says it very slowly, as if to a non-pottytrained three-year-old.
“Ross’s.”
She ruminates on this. “Do you have a condom? He’s pretty old. He might not, you know, be up on that sort of thing.”
“Sue, for God’s sake, help me out here.”
“What am I supposed to do, hold your hand?”
“No, you’re supposed to talk me out of it.”
“Okay, don’t do it.”
“I think it’s a test,” I say. “What if he fires Phil?”
“I don’t think that’ll happen. I think if you reject him, he’ll have his driver take you home instead of driving you himself. He’ll be very gracious about it and act completely normal to you in the future, so you’ll always wonder if you imagined it. If you do sleep with him, he’ll probably want to continue it for a while, unless you start acting clingy or something, or fall in love, or gain weight. Then he’ll tell you how great it’s been, how important you are to him, and how he has to end it because he loves his wife.”
Sue is so smart about these things, it scares me.
“I see,” I say evenly.
I hang up and creep back to the living room. Ross hands me a drink. His beige eyes gleam with what I think must be ardor, WASP-style. He is very slim. I might crush him to death in the impending tussle. I will have to kick off my heels before he tries to kiss me, or he might hit my chin.
Just as I’m about to begin (discreetly) removing my (illchosen) thong from the depths of my rear end, the door opens to the sound of a woman’s laughter.
Tate Trimble prances in, her stretchy butt-cupping deep blue gown an exact replica—I kid you not!—of Hilary Swank’s 2004 Oscars ensemble. In spite of the fact that none of the woman’s fleshly parts dares jiggle, I can tell she does not have on undergarments of any kind underneath the dress. What she does have on is Connor Welch—am I psychic or what?—who is draped around the woman like a big furry blond coat.
“Hiya, Ross.” Connor regains his Silicon Valley executive aplomb, which is somehow enhanced by the dorky frat-boy greeting.
“Hi, hon.” Tate Trimble kisses her husband on the cheek. There is lipstick, red and smeared, staining her cheek, which nobody acknowledges.
Ross turns back to the bar. “Would you like a drink? Raquel and I were just having one.”
This is getting too weird for the likes of straitlaced old me.
“I’m going to catch a cab,” I hear myself say, and as per usual, nobody stops me.
“You’re such a bitch!” Taylor screams at me.
The windows to the front yard are open. The Bonafacios, observant Catholics, operate, as far as I can tell, a curse-free home. Maybe they will move, find some neighbors who don’t drop F-bombs on them and will remember to water their hydrangeas.
I am too stunned to reply. Four months ago, this response would not have shocked me. Today, in the general sea of deference and adulation in which I swim, it is an unexpected, even horrible, oddity. A mutation, if you will.
A comment sparks in my memory: a woman at the hospital with the unlikely designation of “patient navigator.” She’d seen Dr. Ruiz-Milligan’s pamphlets in my hands—“The Case Against Underwire”; “Fighting Chemo Brain, One To-Do List at a Time”; “Knit for the Cause!”—and cornered me outside the elevator. When I told her how stellar my family’s BC performance had been thus far, she laughed sharply.
“Just wait till you’re done with chemo. Everybody starts out taking you to appointments, taking you shopping for bras and wigs, holding your hand. You’ve got casseroles coming out of your ears, right? Uh-huh. Then they start thinking, When’s she going to get over it? Couldn’t we have just one day without this thing hanging over us? Why does she always have to talk about it? ” The woman handed me yet another pamphlet: “30 Ways to Cope When Your Friends Disappear,” or something like that. I smiled sickly—and convincingly—and ran for the exit.
Still.
Taylor has broken the rules, forgotten how sick I am, how I cling to life like a poisoned frog gasping on a lily pad. I have done too good a job at making things seem normal, it seems. My daughter is about to see how not normal things really are.
“You’re grounded.” I’m pleased with my tone, which falls somewhere between Nanny 911 and godfather consigliere. Discipline is normally not my strong suit. Now that I am sick, my dicta have so much more heft.
“I’m not grounded. You don’t ground us!” Taylor shrieks.
“You’re grounded,” I say again, this time with index finger extended.
“Bullshit.”
“Stop cursing!”
“Fuck you.” Her voice is low, menacing. Uncertainty approaching fear gels in my gut. Is my daughter’s hostility a symptom of her newfound love for the wretched Biter or— bear with the psycho-mumbo-jumbo, here—is she afraid I’m going to die, so she’s trying to alienate me to minimize the incipient sense of loss?
“Tay,” I say, trying futilely to grasp my daughter’s hand and make amends. “I know you didn’t mean that, but it would be nice to hear you say it.”
Her eyes—so clear, so greeny-gold—which I used to regard as innocent but now resemble Zsa Zsa’s hard-earned emeralds, brim with tears. “You don’t understand anything. Biter’s right, you just want me to be a loser.”
“Explain it to me.” I ignore the Biter remark, certain that the next time I see the stringy criminal, I’ll strangle him dead with his iPod cord. Right now I’m going to take the high road. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in these situations? Listen? And take the high road? After the Valium kicks in, of course.
“As if.” Taylor is sullen.
“Well, unless you can convince me why it makes sense for you to spend the night away with a boy we have met exactly once and who didn’t even find time in his busy schedule to have dinner with us, you’re not going.”
“I’m going over to Grandma’s. You’re crazy!”
My long-legged daughter zigzags toward the door, coltish and wild as an unbroken filly. In a heartbreaking act of self-control, she restrains herself from stealing my car keys and stalks off down the street, presumably to see her best friend, Lindsay. Lindsay, an overripe sixteen, recently got her driver’s license and can transport my wronged daughter to a sympathy outpost in the manner to which she is accustomed.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter, that this is one mistake among thousands of moments I got right, but the rationalization doesn’t make me feel any better. At this precise second in time, I am conscious of nothing more than the desire to make my daughter—beloved, cherished, precious girl—like me again. I know you’re not supposed to think about that. You’re supposed to focus on things like inherent self-esteem and ego boundaries and setting limits, all the fizzy catchphrases the parenting books throw around so blithely, but in the end, don’t we all just want the little shits to love us?
I stagger to the sink and pour a glass of water. It is milky-looking (number 384 on my list of domestic insults). I choke it down anyway. Hypercritical. Is that what I am? The one thing I have tried not to be with my children. The thing that leaves the sourest taste from my own childhood. Also: mistrustful. Another bad one. When they were little, before the grim specter of sex with bad people bared its reaper smirk, trust was easy to forecast. Our relationship, I’d think—oh, so naively—will be based on trust. I’ll trust them to make the right decisions and to come to me when the
y need guidance.
Because they know I’ll never judge them. I won’t need to.
Because they will make the right . . .
Yeah, right.
I sag into a kitchen chair. A thought curdles: I have become my mother.
A vision. Of Laurie and me arguing with Ma. The memory is old—so old it has the stale, musty air of a story discovered in an unpopular waiting-room magazine, a tale that is as likely to have sprouted from somebody else’s life as your own.
Set the scene: I know it is not yet 1980, because the kitchen is still the buttery avocado Ma layered on in the sixties, a merciless shade that renders all but the peachiest complexions sallow and makes everything but hard-boiled eggs inedible. Through the window, I can see Dad working in the yard, fumbling with the lawn mower, which is the old-fashioned kind that relies on lots of coddling and an unruly pull cord. That year, while the rest of America watches the Iran hostage crisis with bated breath, Dad obsesses over loose rocks, finally wresting lawn-mowing duties away from me and Laurie after he is forced to replace the mower blade a third time in as many months.
Laurie is sitting at the table. Having avoided the trendy pitfalls to which teenage girls routinely fall prey, her hair hangs long and thick and golden down her back, aided only by a squirt of Sun-In she consistently denies using. (Later that summer, I find the bottle in the trash, stuffed inside a Tampax box, and am fleetingly content, a feeling so rare in those days that I am briefly tempted to renounce my great passion for the nihilistic poetry of the Sex Pistols and take up something less atonal.)
My sister is one of those rare teenagers who manage to walk the swaying tightrope between peer popularity and parental obeisance without regret, error, or misgiving. Smart, active, and prettier than the Bionic Woman—indeed, two years later, as a senior, she is voted Most Likely to Be Cast Opposite Lee Majors in a Hit TV Show— Laurie has no need to strain at the leash our parents place on her. Hers, unlike mine, is kept fairly loose and never yanked; it is merely there for show. Why would Lauren Jessica Schultz, cheerleader, National Honor Society member, varsity track star, girlfriend of brown-haired Andy Gibb look-alike Greg Meyers, want to do anything untoward? Anything that would damage her perfect record, which seems to be leading directly toward a coveted spot at a prestigious— and, ideally, fun—university?
“This . . . what is this?” Ma is so upset she can barely speak. She is gripping a medicinal-looking white box. Reared in the pill-popping seventies and intimately familiar with the popular girls’ preferred methods of weight management, I immediately absorb the graphic design and call it—correctly—as the diet drug Dexatrim.
Laurie tilts her head to the side and watches Ma carefully. I have seen my little sister use this look before, like the time Christie Mueller asked if Laurie thought giving a guy a blow job counted as sex. I am pretty sure the wide eyes and swish of judgment-obscuring hair are Laurie’s idea of diplomacy. I lean against the door frame, conscious of the fact that I am witnessing something both provocative and deviant.
“It looks like cold medicine or something,” Laurie says.
“It’s a dangerous diet drug, is what it is,” Ma says with enough menace to send me backward a step into the shadows.
Laurie says nothing. Her ability to maintain composure in the face of Ma’s wrath is nothing short of legendary, a talking point among our shared friends since elementary school.
“I found it in your underwear drawer when I was putting your laundry away.” Ma grips the back of a chair with her other hand. Dad, blissfully unaware of his younger daughter’s impending demotion from princess status, kicks the mower and yells, causing the blue jays at the bird feeder to flee.
“Lauren, tell me you aren’t taking this stuff,” Ma says. At that moment, drawn by the nauseated disappointment in Ma’s voice, I move into the kitchen and meet Laurie’s eyes. I know I should feel vindicated, but strangely, I am only sorry for Laurie, the way you’d feel if you were forced to watch a beautiful yet damaged historical landmark come under the wrecking ball.
Laurie’s gaze follows mine as I stand in the doorway, the afternoon sun highlighting the thick, hated filaments of espresso hair on my forearms. I am afraid to shave them for fear the hair will redouble its efforts to take over my body. More sophisticated hair-removal methods are beyond me.
Before I can stop myself, I open my mouth. “It’s mine,” I say.
Even as I hear myself enter the fray so foolishly, I understand exactly what I am doing: tendering a test. I am waiting for Ma’s dubious reaction, the flash of admiring anger when she realizes that I, Misunderstood and Underestimated Daughter, have fearlessly leaped to my sister’s defense. How many other times has Laurie the Angel lied and failed her while I plodded on, bearing the Schultz mantle of decency alone?
“Well, that makes sense, I suppose,” Ma says.
Ma’s perfidy is so horrible, so crushing, that I forget to breathe. When I summon the strength to inhale again, I emit a hiccupy sob not unlike the wet gasps of a stabbing victim. The look of irritation, anger, relief— yes, that’s what it is—on Ma’s face sends me into a spiral of despair. I want to disintegrate . . . or explode. Yes, that’s better. Something messy, something that will ensure they keep finding things—pieces—to remember me by, later on, when they’re sweeping under the fridge or flipping pancakes for Sunday brunch.
Laurie goes to the fridge and removes a can of Mountain Dew, which she cracks open before settling in to watch the show unfold. I can tell she is sympathetic. Maybe even a bit sad on my behalf. At no time do I expect Laurie to correct the misapprehension I have created. She may be to blame for spawning the situation, but I walked into it full tilt, upped the ante. The laws of both sisterhood and teen diplomacy are clear on this point: What’s done is done.
Dad slides the glass door aside noisily. “Goddamn lawn mower needs a new blade.”
“Rachel has been taking diet pills to lose weight,” Ma tells him before he can even open his can of Miller Lite.
Dad looks up at me, surprised that even I, in my chunky misery, would stoop to such stupidity. If the Schultz girls have been taught anything, it’s that there’s no easy way to earn a buck/get into college/drop ten pounds; life is tough, and you have to be tougher. Looking into Dad’s melancholy deep blue eyes—they mirror my own, with the same pale blue ring at the center— I feel a spark of gladness: Dad, at least, is on my side.
His large bony hand falls on my shoulder. “Oh, honey,” he says.
Then Dad picks up the Dexatrim box and slides out the sheet inside. Most of the pills have been used, the empty pods torn apart like spent butterfly cocoons.
“Oh, honey,” he says again.
Did he know? I think now, sliding the spoon into the jar of unprocessed peanut butter, which somebody— what’s new—thoughtlessly placed back in the cabinet instead of the fridge, causing the oil and peanut sludge to separate. Did Dad suspect?
I pour off the oil, spoon some, and stick it in my mouth, enjoying the sweet-savory thickness of it. Dad and I relished our peanut-butter habit together, sprinkling mouthfuls of the stuff with M&M’s or cookie crumbs or cupcake toppings while Ma wrinkled her nose in disgust.
However much I want to trust Taylor, I know I cannot give away the key to my daughter’s chastity—not to wet-haired Biter or Prince William or anyone. The possibility that Taylor has already—or will shortly—deliver her body to some callow, rutting boy in a motel room or friend’s poolside cabana in thus a manner does not bear rumination. As it is, I have little experience in such matters as young love, my own teen years having been characterized by a virginity so intractable I finally had to offer myself to an indifferent Ecuadorian bellhop on a family vacation. That Taylor will undoubtedly despise me in the short term for refusing to conspire in her ruination is, I tell myself, inconsequential, a twig crunching underfoot in the forest of life’s obstacles. Yet—and this may be the most persuasive evidence of my devastating lack of parental qualification—the knowl
edge that I cannot impart my greater wisdom to my daughter in a way that causes her to collapse into my arms in grateful tears, well, it rankles. The trust and validation I’d longed for from my own parents, the knowledge that they both knew and liked the real me, never really came. Maybe I expected too much. Maybe, like Dexatrim, trusting your kid to make the right decision has been taken off the market for being dangerous to your health.
CHAPTER 13
A Great Success
“You look too healthy,” Sue says.
We are tucked into her gleaming kitchen, our hands shiny with olive oil and free-range chicken broth. Rows of dainty canapés and mysterious tartlets and small towers of succulent heirloom tomatoes and French cheeses and button mushrooms and prosciutto-wrapped melon balls blanket the countertops. Sue has been baking and chopping and sautéing for hours, in preparation for tonight’s opening at Saskia’s gallery. My opening. Without Sue, not only would we be tempting our guests with a hubcap-size wheel of Bulgarian Brie, I’d be a cowering wreck of nerves, paranoia, and bad juju.
“Well, what am I supposed to do, eat somebody’s dirty Kleenex?” I say.
“You could drink cod-liver oil or something.”
“How about arsenic? I mean just a little bit. Not enough to kill me.”
“Food poisoning is always hell on the complexion,” Sue muses, glancing at the bowl of sun-dried tomato aioli as if to determine its maximum shelf life.
At some unidentified point, Sue became fully complicit in the farce that has become my life, a condition I have delayed pondering until some unspecified and distant point in time.
In my experience, these sorts of matters don’t disappear; they come back at the worst possible moment to haunt and compromise your friendships, your life. I will pay for luring Sue Banicek to the dark side, I know. It’s just a question of when. And how.