by Terri Cheney
Zach and I learned early on that my mother was not to be disturbed, under any condition, during this sacred cleansing ritual. Sneezes were stifled, coughs suppressed, and heaven help me if my asthma kicked up. Thank God we had house guests only once every five years, if that. I can remember only three occasions, in fact, when we actually had someone to dinner.
Odd, that in a house that so rarely had visitors, we had so many matching sets of guest towels. We also had complete sets of linen tablecloths and napkins, and a rosewood box of “good” silver and china, which we ourselves were apparently not good enough to use.
My mother looked around her. My bedroom was a shambles. There were chocolate syrup stains on my sheets, books strewn all about the floor, and dust bunnies in the corners. The rest of the house wasn’t much better. Although she was a stickler for personal hygiene, my mother worked hard at her job, and the housework often suffered as a result. For a moment, I pitied her predicament.
“Can’t you just see her out by the pool?” she asked.
“Look at me,” I said. I was an even bigger mess than the house.
She sighed. “All right, I’ll tell her you’re too sick to get out of bed.”
“That won’t stop her.”
“Then I’ll tell her you’re contagious.”
“Better.”
That didn’t keep Rhonda from calling, of course, but I’d put such a scare into my mother that she made up excuses for me not to come to the phone, even when I hadn’t asked her to. I wallowed in absolute isolation, which was just the way I liked it.
I kept a journal at the time, and the entries got shorter and shorter until they were monosyllabic:
“Same.”
“Same.”
“Same.”
On the twenty-first day (I remember because twenty-one was my lucky number), I woke, at last, to a different sky: dark and brooding, with heavy, gray nimbus clouds threatening rain. Finally, I thought, God gets it. He sees me. I felt the stirrings of change inside me—something was going to be different today. I fell back asleep and didn’t wake until my mother came into my room early that evening. “We’re going to the movies. Are you sure you don’t want to come? It’s a comedy; it would do you good to laugh a little.”
I shook my head, wondering at her impenetrability. Did this look like a face that could laugh? But as I heard the front door close behind them, I started to think. When was the last time I’d even cracked a smile? I was only sixteen years old, and I could barely remember the last time I’d giggled.
It must have been several months back, at a wedding reception for one of my father’s partners. Zach and I had each been allowed a glass of champagne—cheap wedding champagne that went straight to my head. Everything made me laugh after that: the bride’s froufrou dress, the nervous toasts, the way the groom’s mother kept crying even though the ceremony was long over. I went up to her and said, “You don’t approve of this much, do you?” She looked shocked—the groom, standing next to her, even more so.
Remembering he was my father’s partner, I said, “So how long till we make our first million? I’ve got tons of things to buy.” My father overheard this and signaled my mother to pull me away. She took me into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, which only made me giggle all the harder. When I came back out, I danced the cha-cha all by myself, flinging myself around the dance floor and tripping over the bride’s long train, tearing it. My parents decided to call it a night.
I was in no mood for the cha-cha now, but still, a drink might not hurt. My father always seemed to feel better after his nightly scotch: looser, livelier, more talkative. I’d be happy if I just managed to coax a smile out of my pale, pinched lips. So I went to the cabinet where my parents kept the liquor. I’d never really looked inside it before. There were so many bottles—a major waste of money, considering that my father really only drank scotch and my mother just had a glass of wine now and then. It was “company liquor” for the company that never came.
I pulled down a bottle of Kahlúa and took a swig. It was yummy, much better than the acidic, fruity champagne I’d had at the wedding. I smacked my lips and had another swig. It went down even easier than the first one had. The bottle was well over three-quarters full, and I kept on drinking until there was only an inch or so left. That looked suspicious, so I polished off the last inch, then went into the backyard and threw the empty bottle over the fence, which abutted the freeway.
There is something even greater than pleasure, and that is the absence of pain. Midway through the bottle, I realized that my body didn’t hurt anymore. What’s more, I could move. Whatever invisible wall had existed between me and the outside world was gone. I could feel the wind caress my cheek; I could feel my eyelashes flutter. The rain, which had been looming all day, was falling at last in big splashy drops—just a few at first, then more, and more, until my nightgown was soaked through.
I stripped down to my panties and rolled around in the wet, prickly grass. I could feel each blade against my skin. I could count the raindrops as they fell, even though there were hundreds of them coming at me, all at once. I felt dizzy and slightly sick to my stomach, but more powerful than the heavens. I was making it rain, I realized. My wish for change, and mine alone, had brought about this storm.
Over the growling thunder, I heard a sound I hadn’t heard in ages: the Black Beast was roaring with laughter.
Hmm, I thought. Alcohol: very interesting.
I recall little else that happened that night, except that I threw up all over my mother’s beloved begonias and somehow managed to crawl back into bed, naked and shivering. I woke the next morning expecting to feel lousy, but I didn’t. I felt fine—no, better than fine. It was incredible: after so many weeks of not wanting to speak to a soul, I suddenly wanted to talk to the world.
Luckily, it was Saturday, so my friends weren’t at school. I got on the phone and called up everybody, even the girls who’d made junior varsity cheerleader.
“It’s me,” I said. Then a bit impatiently: “Terri. No, I’m much better now, thanks. Just a bad case of asthma. So tell me, where’s the action tonight?” Not “And how have you been?” or “What’s new with you?” Just where were the parties, who was going, and how did I get there.
I ran roughshod over a dozen or so of my friends and collected several invitations. The hottest party sounded like the one at Bob Greene’s house, down on G Street and Benson. His parents were away for the week, and he was a big star on the water polo team. I’d always had a little thing for Bob Greene, ever since my first day at school, when he’d held the gymnasium door open for me. Manners were scarce enough among the boys at Chaffey High. It didn’t take much to impress me.
Tonight, I vowed, I’d make him take notice. I called up Rhonda and told her my scheme.
“But he’s going out with Elisa,” she said. Elisa was a fairly close friend of mine, a fellow member of the Mauna Loas, to whom I’d pledged eternal sorority.
“How long has that been going on?”
“A week or so.”
“Then it’s really not etched in blood, is it?”
“Terri, that’s not very nice.”
“I’m sick and tired of being nice,” I said, an edge creeping into my voice. “Nice hasn’t gotten me very far with boys, now has it?”
Rhonda knew what I meant. Nobody asked me out. I’ve spent years trying to figure out why. On paper, I was popular enough. At the very least, people seemed to like me well enough to elect me to the coveted Student Council year after year. I always had someone to sit with at lunch, someone to walk with to classes, someone to talk with during breaks. At my school, the cool kids lounged on the auditorium steps by the statue of the tiger, the Chaffey High mascot. The unfortunates—the fatties, the nerds, the social misfits—were relegated to the plaza by the bathrooms, where there was little shade and the occasional noxious smell. I always hung out by the tiger.
My mother said the boys were intimidated: by my car,
perhaps, or all the attention and awards I got from the teachers. My father said the boys were just plain stupid. A lot of them did, in fact, look stupid, but I wondered if boys had a built-in radar telling them which girls would be easy to handle and which ones (like me) might be trouble. I never thought to ask my brother’s opinion, because I’d never considered him in the social swim. It was as if we went to separate schools; Zach lived light years away from the tiger.
Deep down, I knew the truth, or rather, the several truths: in a town and a time of life that prized conformity, I was too different from the other girls. I didn’t meet the established standard of beauty: I wasn’t blonde, I didn’t have big breasts or golden, suntanned skin. In fact, I was at my most popular at the very beginning of the school year. Everyone wanted to stand next to me, to compare their summer tans with my paper-white skin.
And although I was a good listener, I didn’t know how to talk to boys. I watched intently while my girlfriends chatted blithely, easily, lightheartedly about what seemed to me the most inane and innocuous of subjects: “Patty told Donna she saw Carrie with Jeff at the mall.” “No! What did Donna say?”
I’d shake my head in wonder. For the most part, these weren’t silly girls. On our own, in the dark, sacred truth of slumber parties, we’d talk about substantial things, things that really mattered: love, life, our future dreams and visions for the world. But as soon as a boy showed up on the horizon, all their substance seeped right out of them, and they turned into froth before my eyes.
I didn’t know how to do froth, although I desperately wanted to. When I was interested in a boy, I wanted to traffic in secrets: What were his deepest hopes and fears? His most cherished desires? It made perfect sense to me—how else was I supposed to touch his soul if he wouldn’t grant me access? But adolescent boys apparently don’t like to be pried open like a can of anchovies. They kept their distance from me, and I spent many a frustrated night longing to be braver and more insubstantial.
I showed up at breakfast that morning with a bright, sunny smile on my face. “Well, look who’s back from the dead,” my father said. Zach looked up suspiciously from his bowl of raisin bran. My mother put her hand on my forehead. “Your eyes look feverish,” she said, “but your skin feels cool enough.”
“It’s amazing,” I said. “I feel completely better.” I didn’t tell them that a bottle of Kahlúa had been the magic cure. “In fact, I feel so good, I’m ready to tackle my homework now.” I took a quick breath, then rushed on. “And there’s a party tonight at Bob Greene’s—”
“Oh no,” my mother said. “If you think you’re going out tonight after missing three weeks of school, you’ve got another think coming.”
“But you don’t understand. Bob Greene’s the most popular boy in school—”
“Never heard of him,” Zach mumbled through his cereal.
“—and he invited me especially, Rhonda said. I’m pretty sure he wants to ask me out.”
My little white lie was a subliminal ploy. I suspected my parents were actually quite worried about my unusual lack of attention from the opposite sex. And sure enough, my father’s eyes flickered over to my mother’s. For a moment, their eyes locked; then she gave a brief, almost imperceptible nod.
“If you can finish half your homework by tonight, we’ll let you go,” my father said. “But only for a couple of hours, and we expect you home by ten.”
I jumped up and kissed him, then for good measure, kissed my mother too. I would’ve kissed Zach, I was so happy, but he scowled and made a cross out of his fingers in the universal “Begone, vampire!” language, so I left him alone.
Surrounded by a pile of encyclopedias, I attacked my homework. I was afraid that after so many weeks of sloth, my brain would be rusty, but it wasn’t. It was as if I had an entirely new set of synapses, refurbished and raring to go. The answers came quite easily to me—almost too easily, in fact. The right words were just dancing in the air above my head, and I simply had to snatch them down and let them flow through my pen. And once they started flowing, I couldn’t stop them; the only problem was writing them down fast enough.
My geography teacher had asked for a couple of paragraphs on the culture of Tasmania. I gave her six pages, single spaced. Miss Miller wanted a book report on Macbeth. Thank God I’d already read that with Professor Tremaine, so it was a breeze. I threw in a totally gratuitous addendum on the possible applicability of Freud’s dream theory to the sleepwalking scene. Even math, which was usually so hard for me, didn’t slow me down. Numbers flashed in front of my eyes like neon signs, shouting “Pick me! Pick me!” and I just had to transcribe them.
I didn’t take a break until nearly seven that evening, and by then I was well over halfway through. My parents were watching TV in the den, so I slipped into the kitchen and took a few quick hits of something called Tia Maria. It didn’t taste as good as the Kahlúa, but it had the same desired effect: within minutes, I felt as far from scholarly and as close to silly as I could possibly get. I felt—dare I say it?—quite insubstantial.
I got dressed in a hurry, taking care to brush my teeth well to hide the smell of the liquor. I popped my head in the den to say good-bye to my parents. “You’re wearing that?” my mother asked, pointing to my skimpy denim miniskirt and slightly-too-tight emerald top, which brought out the green in my hazel eyes. I smiled, knowing that her disapproval must mean I looked a bit sexy. Good. I usually tried to dress nicely for parties, and nicely was obviously getting me nowhere. It was time for a little startle of skin.
Everyone was there: all the junior varsity cheerleaders, of course, and even a smattering of the varsity cheerleaders, which made it the place to be. For a few brief glorious moments, I was the absolute center of attention because nobody had seen me in such a long time. I even saw Bob Greene looking my way, checking me out, and that was all the encouragement I needed. Well, that and a couple of big plastic cups full of beer. Up until then, I’d always avoided drinking at parties, afraid that I would lose control. (The Black Beast was hard enough to handle sober.) Besides, I hated the smell and taste of the warm keg beer that was always served at these large bashes. But now that I knew the Black Beast’s affinity for alcohol, I harbored no more fears. I chugged down another cup, chewed some toothpaste, and marched straight over to Bob.
“I’m Terri,” I said, interrupting his conversation with another girl. I stuck out my hand. “You held the gym door open for me last year.”
He looked a little nonplussed but shook my hand. “Bob Greene,” he said. As if I didn’t know. As if his pellucid blue eyes and tousled blond hair, slightly bleached from all the chlorine in the pool, weren’t pure slumber party fodder.
Over Bob’s shoulder, I saw Elisa look our way and start to head over. There was no time left for subtleties, which was good, because I didn’t feel like I had a subtle bone in my body. I hauled out the big guns.
“Do you want to come see my car?” I asked Bob.
“What have you got?”
“A ’65 ’Vette.”
“Oh, so you’re the one. Is it true you get a parking ticket every day?”
It was true. My father insisted that I park in the teacher’s parking lot because the car would probably be safer there. It meant a ten-dollar ticket every day, but he preferred that to the inevitable dings or worse I would have risked if I’d parked with the other students.
“It’s totally worth it,” I said. “You’ll see.” Elisa was almost at his elbow now. “Come on, it’s parked just up the street.”
Elisa sidled up and put her arm around Bob’s waist. “Terri, it’s so good to see you back. We were all getting so worried.”
“Why, where have you been?” Bob asked.
“Just a slight touch of pneumonia,” I said. Then I looked him square in those beautiful eyes. “But I’m feeling much, much better now. Ready for anything.” I smiled with all the wattage I could muster. He smiled back.
“Elisa, would you mind getting me another bee
r? This one’s warm,” he said.
“They’re all warm,” Elisa said, eyeing me suspiciously.
“There’s some cold Buds in the refrigerator. And while you’re at it, could you make me a sandwich too? Mom left some cold cuts and stuff in the crisper.”
“Are you kidding? The swim team’s been in the kitchen for the last half hour, getting stoned. I’m sure they’ve eaten everything that doesn’t move by now.” Elisa clearly refused to budge, and Bob finally stopped trying to get her to.
“Well, I’m gonna go check out Terri’s car. I’ll just be a couple of minutes.”
“Ooh, I’d love to go for a ride in the ’Vette,” Elisa said.
I admired her stubbornness, but not enough to invite her along. “Sorry, it’s a two-seater,” I said. “But definitely some other time.” I turned my back so as not to see her expression.
The car was actually parked several blocks away, which gave Bob and me a little more time to get to know each other—or rather, gave me more time to talk. I wanted to know everything, all at once: Who were his heroes? Did he believe in life after death? Was it hard to think underwater? I was so excited and nervous, the words just tumbled out of my mouth. I could feel my lips moving way too fast, like I was munching popcorn during a scary movie. It was difficult speaking slowly enough to be understood, and even more difficult waiting for Bob’s replies. But once we got to the ’Vette, it spoke for itself.
Ah, the lovely lines of that car. It looked like it was moving even when it was standing still. Bob gave a long wolf whistle. “Wow!” he said. “It’s gorgeous.”
“It’s fuel-injected,” I said proudly, not quite sure what this meant. “Come on, get in.”
I put the top down, and we sat side by side, just the chrome stick shift between us. I turned on the radio—Art Garfunkel was warbling “Bridge over Troubled Water.” It was a delicious moment: me and Bob and the ’Vette and the stars, with only the man in the moon as our witness.
Bob turned to me. “Is it a standard H-shift?” he asked.