Kylie, who’s wearing cutoffs and an old Knicks T-shirt, obediently follows Gillian into the ladies’ room, although she hasn’t the faintest idea of what’s about to transpire. She’s wearing the bracelet Gillian gave her, as well as the locket her mother saved for for so long; she has a weird sensation in her legs. She wishes she had time to run around the block once or twice; maybe then she wouldn’t feel as if she were about to burn up or shatter.
Gillian turns on the light and locks the door and reaches under the sink for a paper bag. “The secret ingredients,” she tells Kylie, as she takes out a pair of scissors, a bottle of shampoo, and a package of bleach. “What do you say?” she asks when Kylie comes to stand beside her. “Want to find out how beautiful you really are?”
Kylie knows her mother will kill her. She’ll ground her for the rest of her life and take away her privileges—no movies on weekends, no radio, no TV. Worse, her mom will get that awful look of disappointment on her face—See what has happened, that’s what her expression will say. After I’ve worked so hard to support you and Antonia and bring you up right.
“Sure,” Kylie says, easily, as if her heart weren’t going a hundred miles an hour. “Let’s do it,” she tells her aunt, as if her whole life weren’t about to completely flip-flop.
It takes a long time to do almost anything worthwhile to someone’s hair, even longer for a change as radical as this, and so Sally and Antonia and Gideon Barnes wait for nearly an hour in a booth at Del Vecchio’s, drinking diet Cokes and fuming.
“I missed soccer practice for this,” Gideon says mournfully.
“Oh, who cares,” Antonia says.
Antonia has been working at the ice cream parlor all day and she has a pain in her right shoulder from all the scooping she’s done. She doesn’t even feel like herself this evening, although she has no idea of who else she might be. She hasn’t been asked out on a date for weeks. All of a sudden the boys who were so crazy for her seem to be interested either in younger girls—who may not be as pretty as Antonia but who can be impressed by the slightest thing, a stupid award from the computer club or a trophy from the swim team, and go all googly-eyed if a boy pays them the teeniest little compliment—or in an older woman, like her aunt Gillian, who’s had so many more sexual experiences than a girl Antonia’s age that a high school boy could get hard just by trying to guess what she could teach him in bed.
This summer has not been working out as Antonia hoped. She can already tell that tonight is another totally lost cause. Her mother hurried her so they could be on time for this dinner, and Antonia was in such a rush that she grabbed her clothes from her dresser drawer without looking. And now, what she thought was a black T-shirt has turned out to be a horrible olive-green thing she ordinarily wouldn’t be caught dead in. Usually the waiters here wink at Antonia and bring her extra baskets of rolls and garlic bread. This evening not one of them has even noticed she’s alive, except for a creepy busboy who asked if she wanted a ginger ale or a Coke.
“This is so typical of Aunt Gillian,” she tells her mother when they’ve been waiting for what seems like an eternity. “It’s so inconsiderate.”
Sally, who is not completely sure that Gillian wouldn’t encourage Kylie to hop a freight train or hitchhike to Virginia Beach for no particular reason other than a good time, has been drinking wine, something she rarely does.
“Well, to hell with them both,” she says now.
“Mother!” Antonia says, shocked.
“Let’s order,” Sally suggests to Gideon. “Let’s get two pepperoni pizzas.”
“You don’t eat meat,” Antonia reminds her.
“Then I’ll have another glass of Chianti,” Sally says. “And some stuffed mushrooms. Maybe some pasta.”
Antonia turns to signal the waiter but immediately turns back. Her cheeks are flushed and she’s broken into a sweat. Her biology teacher, Mr. Frye, is at one of the small tables in the back, having a beer and discussing the virtues of eggplant rollatini with the waiter. Antonia is crazy about Mr. Frye. He is so brilliant that Antonia considered flunking Biology I just so she could take it again, until she found out he’d be teaching Biology II in the fall. It doesn’t matter that he’s way too old for her; he’s so incredibly handsome that if all the guys in the senior class were rolled up together and tied with a big bow they still wouldn’t come close. Mr. Frye goes running every day at dusk and always circles the reservoir on the far side of the high school three times. Antonia tries to make certain to be there just as the sun is going down, but he never seems to notice her. He never even waves.
Naturally she has to meet up with him on the one evening when she hasn’t bothered with makeup and is wearing this horrible olive-green thing, which, she now realizes, doesn’t belong to her. She’s ludicrous. Even that stupid Gideon Barnes is staring at her shirt.
“What are you staring at?” Antonia asks so savagely that Gideon pulls his head back, as if he expected to be smacked. “What is your problem?” she cries when Gideon continues to stare. God, she can’t stand him. He looks like a pigeon when he blinks, and he often makes a weird sound in his throat, as though he’s about to spit.
“I think that’s my shirt,” Gideon says apologetically, and in fact, it is. He got it on a trip to St. Croix last Christmas, and left it at the Owens house last week, which is how it got thrown in with the wash. Antonia would be completely and utterly mortified to know that I’M A VIRGIN is printed across her back in black letters.
Sally calls for a waiter and orders two pizzas—plain, no pepperoni—three orders of stuffed mushrooms, an order of crostini, some garlic bread, and two insalatas.
“Great,” Gideon says, since he’s starving as usual. “By the way,” he tells Antonia, “you don’t have to give me the shirt back until tomorrow.”
“Gee, thanks.” Antonia can’t take much more of this. “Like I wanted it in the first place.”
She dares to look over her shoulder. Mr. Frye is watching the ceiling fan as though it were the most fascinating thing on earth. Antonia assumes this has to do with some sort of scientific study of speed or light, but in fact it’s directly related to the experiences of Ben Frye’s youth, when he went out to San Francisco to visit a friend and stayed for nearly ten years, during which time he worked for a rather well-known maker of LSD. Such was his introduction to science. It is also the reason why there are times when he has to slow the world down. That’s when he stops and stares, at things like ceiling fans and raindrops on window glass. That’s when he wonders what on earth he’s been doing with his life.
Now, as he watches the fan spin around, he is thinking about the woman he saw earlier that day, in Sally Owens’s backyard. He backed off, the way he always does, but it won’t happen a second time. If he ever sees her again he’s going to go right up to her and ask her to marry him, that’s what he’ll do. He’s sick of letting fate roll right past him. For years, he’s been a lot like this restaurant fan, spinning around and getting noplace. What, when it comes right down to it, is the difference between him and a mayfly, which lives a whole damned adult existence in twenty-four hours? The way Ben sees it, he’s just about passing by hour nineteen right now, given the statistics for a man’s longevity. If five more hours is what he’s got left, he might as well live, he might as well say to hell with it and, for once, just go out and do as he pleases.
Ben Frye is considering all this, as well as deciding whether or not to order a cappuccino, since it will mean he’ll be up half the night, when Gillian walks through the door. She’s wearing Antonia’s best white shirt and a pair of old blue jeans and she has the most beautiful smile on her face. Her smile could knock a dove right out of a tree. It could turn a grown man’s head so completely he might spill his beer and never even notice that a pool was spreading across the tablecloth and onto the floor.
“Get ready,” Gillian says, as she approaches the booth where three very unhappy customers with low blood sugar and no patience left whatsoever are waiting
.
“We’ve been ready for forty-five minutes,” Sally tells her sister. “If you have got an excuse, it better be a good one.”
“Don’t you see?” Gillian says.
“We see you don’t think of anyone but yourself,” Antonia says.
“Oh, really?” Gillian, says. “Well, you sure would know about such things. You would know better than anyone.”
“Holy shit,” Gideon Barnes says.
At this moment he has forgotten his empty, growling stomach. He no longer cares that his legs are cramping from being squooshed into this booth for so long. Someone who looks a lot like Kylie is walking toward them, only this person is a knockout. This person has short blond hair and is thin, not in the way that storks are but in the style of women who can make you fall in love with them even when you’ve known them for what seems like forever though you aren’t much more than a kid yourself.
“Holy fucking shit,” Gideon says as this person gets closer. It is indeed Kylie. It must be, because when she grins Gideon can see the tooth she chipped last summer when she dove for the ball during soccer practice.
As soon as she notices the way they’re all staring at her, open-mouthed, like goldfish whose bowl she’s just been dropped into, Kylie feels something tingly which resembles embarrassment, or perhaps it’s regret. She slides into the booth next to Gideon.
“I’m famished,” she says. “Are we having pizza?”
Antonia has to take a drink of water, and still she feels as though she might faint. Something horrible has happened. Something has changed so intensely that the world doesn’t even seem to be spinning on the same axis anymore. Antonia can feel herself fade in the yellow lighting of Del Vecchio’s; she is already becoming Kylie Owens’s sister, the one with the too-red hair who works down at the ice cream parlor and has fallen arches and a bad shoulder that prevents her from playing tennis or pulling her own weight.
“Well, isn’t anybody going to say anything?” Gillian asks. “Isn’t anyone going to say, ‘Kylie! You look incredible! You’re gorgeous! Happy birthday’?”
“How could you do this?” Sally stands up to face her sister. She may have been drinking Chianti for nearly an hour, but she’s sober now. “Did you ever think of asking my permission? Did you ever think she might be too young to start dyeing her hair and wearing makeup and doing whatever the hell else will lead her on the same dreadful path you’ve been on your whole life? Did you ever think that I don’t want her to be like you, and if you had any brains you wouldn’t want that for her either, especially considering what you just went through, and you know exactly what I mean.” By now Sally is hysterical, and she’s not about to keep her voice down. “How could you?” she asks. “How dare you!” she cries.
“Don’t get so upset.” This is definitely not the reaction Gillian expected. Applause, maybe. A pat on the back. But not this sort of indictment. “We can put a brown tint over it, if it’s such a big deal.”
“It is a big deal.” Sally is having trouble breathing. She looks at the girl in the booth who is Kylie, or who used to be Kylie, and feels that she’s been hooked through her heart. She breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth, just as they taught her in Lamaze class so long ago. “Robbing someone of her youth and innocence, I’d call that major. I’d say it’s a big deal.”
“Mother,” Antonia pleads.
Antonia has never experienced humiliation quite like this before. Mr. Frye is watching them as though their family is putting on a play. And he’s not the only one. There’s probably not another conversation going on in the entire restaurant. The better to hear the Owenses. The better to watch the sideshow.
“Can we just eat?” Antonia begs.
The waiter has brought over their order, which he tentatively places on the table. Kylie is doing her best to ignore the adults. She imagined her mother would be mad, but this reaction is in a whole other dimension.
“Aren’t you starving?” she whispers to Gideon. Kylie expects Gideon to be the one sane person at the table, but as soon as she sees the expression on his face, she knows it’s not food he’s thinking of. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks.
“It’s you,” he says, and it sounds like an accusation. “You’re all different.”
“I am not,” Kylie says. “It’s just my hair.”
“No,” Gideon says. The shock is wearing off, and he feels that a theft has been committed. Where is his teammate and friend? “You’re just not the same. How could you be so stupid?”
“Go to hell,” Kylie says, hurt beyond belief.
“Fine,” Gideon shoots back. “Do you mind letting me out so I can get there?”
Kylie moves so Gideon can slide out of the booth. “You are an idiot,” she tells him as he leaves, and she sounds so cool she amazes herself. Even Antonia is looking at her with something resembling respect.
“Is that how you treat your best friend?” Sally asks Kylie. “Do you see what you’ve done?” she says to Gillian.
“He is an idiot,” Gillian says. “Who leaves a party before it’s even happened?”
“It has happened,” Sally says. “Don’t you see? It’s over.” She searches through her purse for her wallet, then throws some cash on the table to pay for the uneaten food. Kylie has already grabbed a piece of pizza, which she quickly drops when she sees how grim her mother looks. “Let’s go,” Sally tells her girls.
It takes Ben Frye this long to realize that he has another chance. Sally and her girls have gotten up and Gillian is alone at the table. Ben walks over casually, just like a man whose blood hasn’t heated up to a dangerous degree.
“Hey, Sally,” he says. “How are you doing?”
Ben is one of the few teachers who treat Sally like an equal, even though she’s only a secretary. Not everyone is so kind—Paula Goodings, the math teacher, orders Sally about, convinced she is some drone behind the desk, available to do errands for anyone who wanders by. Ben and Sally have known each other for years and considered dating when Ben first was hired at the high school, before deciding what they both really could use was a friend. Since then, they have often had lunch together and are allies at school meetings; they like to go out and drink beer and gossip about the faculty and the staff.
“I’m doing really poorly,” Sally tells him now before she notices that he’s moved on without waiting for an answer. “Since you’re asking,” she adds.
“Hi,” Antonia says to Ben Frye as he walks past her. Brilliant, but it’s the best she can do at the moment.
Ben smiles at her blankly, but he keeps right on going, until he’s at the table where Gillian is staring at the uneaten food.
“Is there something wrong with your order?” Ben asks her. “Is there anything I can do?”
Gillian looks up at him. There are tears falling from her clear gray eyes. Ben takes a step toward her. He is so gone, he couldn’t come back if he wanted to.
“There’s nothing wrong,” Sally assures him as she collects her girls and begins to troop toward the door.
If Sally’s heart weren’t so closed up at the moment, she’d feel sorry for Ben. She’d pity him. Ben has already sat down across from Gillian. He’s taken the matches out of her hand—which has that damn tremor again—and is lighting her cigarette. As Sally leads her girls out of the restaurant, she believes she hears him say, “Please don’t cry,” to her sister. She may even hear him say, “Marry me. We can do it tonight.” Or maybe she’s just imagining that’s what he’s said, since she knows that’s where he’s headed. Every man who’s ever looked at Gillian the way Ben is looking right now has made a proposal of one sort or another.
Well, the way Sally sees it, Ben Frye is a grown man, he can take care of himself, or, at the very least, he can try. Her girls are another matter entirely. Sally’s not about to let Gillian arrive out of nowhere, with three divorces and a dead body in her recent history, to start playing around with her daughters’ welfare. Girls like Kylie and Antonia are just to
o vulnerable; they get broken in two by cruel words alone, they’re easily made to believe they’re not good enough. Just seeing the back of Kylie’s neck as they walk through the parking lot makes Sally want to weep. But she doesn’t. And, what’s more, she won’t.
“My hair’s not that bad,” Kylie says once they’re in the Honda. “I don’t see what’s so horrible about what we did.” She’s sitting alone in the backseat and she feels so weird. There’s no space for her legs at all, and in order to fit she has to fold herself up. She almost feels as if she could leap out of the car and walk away. She could start a new life and never look back again.
“Maybe if you think about it, you will,” Sally tells her. “You have more sense than your aunt, so you have a better chance of understanding your mistake. Think it over.”
That’s what Kylie does, and what it all adds up to is spite. Nobody wants her to be happy, except for Gillian. Nobody gives a damn.
They drive home in silence, but after they’ve pulled into the driveway and are walking toward the front door, Antonia can no longer hold her tongue. “You look so tacky,” she whispers to Kylie. “And you know what the worst part is?” She draws this out, as though she were about to utter a curse. “You look like her.”
Kylie’s eyes sting, but she’s not afraid to talk back to her sister. Why should she be? Antonia looks oddly pale tonight, and her hair has turned dry, a bundle of blood-colored straw caught up in barrettes. She’s not so pretty. She’s not as superior as she’s always pretended.
“Well, good,” Kylie says. Her voice is honey, so easy and sweet. “If I’m like Aunt Gillian I’m glad.”
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