Watch Me Disappear

by Diane Vanaskie Mulligan

  She is teetering down the center aisle between the picnic tables and there is no place for me to hide. I probably should have expected to see her—I knew she was planning to attend—but once I made plans with Missy I dismissed any thought of Maura from my mind. And now here she is, slightly wavering as she walks in my direction. I watch as one of Hunter’s pals motions with his head toward Maura, says something to Hunter, and then laughs. Maura gives them a little wave, stumbling as she does. It takes me that long to realize she must be roaring drunk.

  For a moment I think I am safe. I think that perhaps in her drunken haze she will not recognize me. I am wrong.

  “Lizzie! Is that Lizzie?” she shouts, vaguely pointing in my direction.

  Hunter and his friends turn to see who she’s pointing at. I am frozen on the spot.

  “Little Lizzie two shoes,” Maura slurs, walking up to me. “Too good to come to the concert with Maura, but not too good to come all alone.”

  I guess Maura is not a happy drunk.

  “Lizzie,” she says again, poking my shoulder with a pointy fingernail. “A lot of nerve you’ve got.” She sways and hiccups.

  Maura is attracting attention, and I can feel my face turning red. I cannot think of a single thing to say that will defuse the situation because I cannot imagine what she is thinking or what she might do next.

  “I warned you. Remember?” she says. Then she burps in a most unladylike way, and I can see her face turn green.

  “Maura,” I say, taking a step back.

  “No, you listen to me!” she shouts, her voice shrill. She stumbles toward me and suddenly she is doubled over puking at my feet.

  The sight, the sound, the smell—it’s everything I can do not to puke in response. There is vomit on the tips of my toes and I feel sweat trickling down my back. A lot of people are looking now, and laughing. I want to run away and rub my feet in the wet grass, but I can’t move. I glance up and for a moment make eye contact with Hunter. He isn’t laughing. If anything, the look he gives me says, “Sorry.” I adore him.

  “Lizzie?” a voice says at my ear. It’s Missy. She tugs my elbow. “Come on!”

  I take a step in her direction.

  “Not so fast, girls,” someone says. We both look past Maura to see a police officer behind her.

  “We aren’t with her,” Missy says.

  By this point Maura has stopped puking but has dissolved into a drunken puddle sobbing on the ground next to a pool of vomit.

  “Is that so?”

  None of Maura’s friends have come forward to claim her, although pretty much everyone except the band on stage is now watching the spectacle unfold.

  “She’s my neighbor,” I say softly. This is everything I dread in life: standing in the spotlight, looking like a fool.

  “We didn’t come here together,” Missy adds. “Our friends are over there,” she says pointing.

  “Officer?” a boy’s voice says.

  We all turn to see one of the guys who’d been standing with Hunter. He has the smug look of a kid who is used to charming his way through life.

  “They’re telling the truth,” he says. “She’s not with them, but she’s my friend. I can take her home or call her parents.”

  The police officer looks at me and Missy, then down at Maura, and then the boy. After a moment, he nods. “You girls get out of here,” he says.

  We do not waste a minute.

  The drizzling rain has returned. I drag my bare feet in the grass. My hands are shaking. Wes and his friends follow us from the pavilion. We stand in a misshapen circle in the dark.

  “What the heck was that about?” Missy asks.

  I shake my head. “She’s my neighbor, and she hates me.”

  “No kidding,” Wes says. After a moment he adds, “If it makes you feel any better, most people hate her.”

  “Her? Miss Popularity?” I ask, looking at him.

  He pushes his hair back behind his ears. “Maybe she used to be,” he says, “but she’s been making people’s lives hell since middle school, and even the prettiest girl can’t get away with that forever.”

  That’s news to me. I am pretty sure that beautiful people are generally immune to the rules of polite society that the rest of us must obey. “Yeah, but she doesn’t know that, does she?” I ask.

  “I doubt it,” he says.

  “Uh, Lizzie?” Missy says, touching my elbow. “Is that your dad?” She points toward a man who is indeed my father, standing in the middle of the pavilion.

  “What time is it?”

  “9:20,” one of Wes’s friends chimes in.

  I had lost track of the time. It had been such a gray and gloomy day that it never sunk in how dark it had gotten outside. And I have to admit, before Maura lost her dinner at my feet, I was having fun. I guess the old “time flies” expression contains some truth. As I hurry toward my dad, I hear Missy quickly explaining to Wes and his friends.

  “If it were up to me, I’d let you stay until the end,” my dad says when I reach him. He turns to lead Missy and me to the car where undoubtedly my mother is getting ever more annoyed with me.

  Oddly enough, I don’t feel the usual dread of my mother’s anger. It was sort of a fun night (up until the end), and I guess I am ready to pay the price. Besides, I so seldom give her real cause for anger (sure we snip at each other, but I don’t get into real trouble. Even tonight—9:20—it’s not like I stayed out hours past curfew or anything). Anyway, I know she will save her true temper for when we get home. She won’t get too heated in front of Missy.

  * * *

  Turns out my mother thought her best reproach tonight was the silent treatment. She said nothing to me or Missy in the car, she said nothing after we dropped Missy off, and when we got home, she went straight upstairs without a word to me. My dad and I sat in the living room watching TV until around 10 when he went to bed.

  I finally had my first real high school social experience. I went out with a friend to a large gathering of teenagers where there were few adults. I sat around gossiping with other kids from school. I was actually part of a group, if only for a couple of hours. And—the only part I would have liked to skip—I was the center of attention in a scene of teenaged drunkenness. At least I had not been the one drinking, and I had not gotten into any trouble. But best of all, I have a friend. Missy came to my side when I was on the spot, while Maura’s friends, except that one boy, just stood by and watched.

  As I sit here now, half replaying the evening in my mind, half-watching Tosh.0 (Just imagine if my mother came downstairs right now and learned that on top of everything else, my dad did not enforce “bed time” and I’m watching completely trash on TV!), it occurs to me that although I still cannot get away with using Facebook at home, I can communicate with Missy freely on the phone now, and I can even talk to Wes and his friends without wondering how I will explain meeting them to my parents. I can have an almost normal teenage existence. All I am missing is a cell phone.

  Chapter 5

  This afternoon I was hanging out in the kitchen while Mrs. Morgan and my mom sat in the living room. They weren’t talking to me, but they weren’t talking so softly that I couldn’t hear them either. I wanted to see if Mrs. Morgan would reveal Maura’s bad behavior to my mother. I hadn’t mentioned it. The less I mention the Morgans to my mom the better. She already takes every opportunity she can find to compare Missy to Maura. No need to give her an opening.

  Anyway, as I slowly spread peanut butter on graham crackers, what I heard was not a despairing Mrs. Morgan asking my mother how to make her wayward daughter into a good girl like me. Instead, I heard that one week from Friday they are having Maura’s birthday party at the country club. Apparently Maura not only got through the weekend without punishment, but she is also about to have the birthday party of the century.

  “We started this when she was in middle school,” Mrs. Morgan said, sipping her tea. “Maybe we’ve let things get too elaborate, but it is her eig
hteenth birthday. She wants to have a Roaring Twenties theme, so that’s what we’ll do. Last year it was Gone with the Wind. You should have seen the gowns the girls showed up in!”

  “Wow,” my mother said, but I could hear the judgments she was making in her head about the way parents spoil their kids these days. I don’t know what it is about Mrs. Morgan that has her so enthralled. It’s like she thinks this is her chance to be one of the cool kids.

  “Anyway, there’s a lot of shopping involved,” Mrs. Morgan said. “I think half the reason Maura has kept it up is to have my undivided attention. Since Billy was born, she’s been obsessed with her birthday parties. She decided on this year’s theme about a week after last year’s party.”

  My mother nodded. Then she glanced over at me. I’m sure she was getting suspicious of my lurking in the kitchen.

  “Why don’t you and Lizzie come with us on Sunday? We’re going into Boston to shop for outfits and favors. It’ll be fun.”

  All I could think was that it would not be fun. I hate shopping and Maura hates me. If we go, the day will surely end in disaster.

  Mrs. Morgan turned around on the couch where she was sitting so she could see me in the kitchen. “What do you say, Lizzie? A day of shopping? It’s about time to do some back-to-school shopping anyway.”

  I stood frozen on the spot, butter knife dripping peanut butter in one hand, trying to think of how to respond.

  “Lizzie isn’t much of a shopper,” my mother said. “But it might be fun, huh, Lizzie? Maybe you’d like shopping if you had someone your own age to give fashion advice instead of just your old mom?”

  The cheerful act my mother is always putting on in front of Mrs. Morgan is so frustrating. She and I had barely spoken since the night of the battle of the bands, but with Mrs. Morgan in the room, suddenly we were chums, pals, the perfect mother-daughter duo.

  But as I stood there trying to come up with a reasonable way out of shopping with the Morgans, I had to concede that my mother often tries to lure me into shopping trips, and I almost never give in and go. She wants to be the sort of mom who takes her daughter to the mall and gossips, and I don’t let her. Besides, she and I do not have the same taste. Usually I just let her buy me things and then I convince her nothing fits or I stick the stuff I don’t like in the back of the closet. Lately she’s been more willing to let me order stuff from catalogs. I think she’s just glad I’ve taken an interest.

  “I’m just not sure,” I said.

  “Let me check the calendar with Greg to make sure he won’t miss us,” my mom said.

  On the one hand I was glad she had just rescued me from having to answer. On the other hand, I knew this meant she was going to get her way. Once Mrs. Morgan was gone, she’d tell me in no uncertain terms that we were going and I was going to like it, and that would be that. I put my snack on a plate. I wasn’t even hungry, but I’d made a pretty big project of putting a snack together, so I had to keep up the show. I took it to the den, where I could call Missy in relative privacy.

  * * *

  The second time I heard about Maura’s party was from the birthday girl herself. She wasn’t talking to me, but she was talking so loudly I hardly think she was trying to keep her conversation private. I was out on the deck with the last of my summer reading books when I heard her.

  “Whatever, my mother can’t stand the idea that I might have outgrown theme birthday parties,” she said. “The upside is I’m going to get an amazing dress out of it… Yeah, the challenge is going to be avoiding the adults… Uh-huh, John is bringing it… He says you can’t smell vodka, so that shouldn’t be a problem… If it’s anything like last year, my mom will be so lit up she won’t have a clue what I’m up to... Nope, she doesn’t give a shit… Mr. Recovering Alcoholic? He’s not my father. He knows he can’t control me. Hang on, I got a beep.

  “Hey… No… Yeah, I’m talking to Jess… Do me a favor, don’t tell her about the pre-party stuff, ok?... No, she’s just been driving me nuts lately… Uh-huh… Okay, see you at six.

  “Jess?... I gotta go… Okay, tomorrow.”

  A minute later I heard the slider open and shut and I was left with the quiet of the neighborhood. I wonder whose account of Maura’s elaborate theme birthday parties is true. Mrs. Morgan said Maura insists on keeping up the tradition, and Maura said her mother keeps it up. For some reason, I’m inclined to believe Mrs. Morgan. Enormous parties at which she gets to dress up and be the center of attention sounds to me like Maura’s lifeblood.

  I wonder if Maura knows her mother invited my family to the party. There will be enough people at the gala event that she can ignore me without much effort, so I hope she doesn’t care that my mother will be dragging me along. Really the more pressing question I have is if I can get my invite extended to Missy. It will be easier to go with a friend at my side. I’m hoping that maybe somehow I can snag Missy an invite during our big shopping outing, but it will have to be during a moment alone with Mrs. Morgan. There is no way I can ask Maura for anything.

  My mother, as predicted, insists we go on the shopping trip. Besides the fact that it will “be fun,” she also noted that I have absolutely nothing to wear to a “Roaring Twenties” party. We will have to go shopping, so we might as well go with our neighbors. Missy thinks it’s fantastic that I’ll be spending the day with my arch enemy. She can’t wait to hear all about it. Although Missy and Maura have not officially met, the night in the park was enough to grab Missy’s interest. That and the Facebook group devoted to hating Maura. So it’s settled. I will spend half the day cooped up in the car with someone who hates me and who I’m not too fond of either, and I will spend the rest of the day feigning interest in fashion and being scrutinized by my mother.

  * * *

  When we first get in Mrs. Morgan’s car for our shopping adventure, I can barely hide my shock at Maura’s appearance. While I am used to her skimpy apparel—the sundress she has on is no exception—it is the rest of her that catches me off guard. She looks like she just rolled out of bed, pulled the dress on, and walked out the door without even running a brush through her hair or washing her face. Without makeup, her features look soft, sort of blurred and undefined. Actually, I think that her eyes look bigger without the dark liner she usually wears. Without any makeup, they stand out strikingly. Her hair looks straggly and greasy. I wonder if she was out partying last night. Maybe she hasn’t even changed clothes.

  As soon as we pull out of the driveway, she leans against the door and falls asleep until the stop-start motion of the car at a tollbooth wakes her. The ride is quiet, Mrs. Morgan and my mother chatting, everyone ignoring me. When Maura awakes, the first thing she does is scold her mother for not waking her sooner so she could get ready. Then she begins rummaging through an enormous bohemian-style bag at her feet. In moments, using a small handheld mirror and unshaken by the motion of the car, she manages to put on a complete face of makeup. Out of the corner of my eye I watch as she blends foundation all over her face, pencils in her eyebrows, draws a dramatic line of charcoal around her eyes, sweeps not one but three colors across her eyelids, brushes mascara over her lashes, sucks in her cheeks to find the perfect placement of a rosy blush, and finishes with a swipe of gloss over her lips. I am surprised by just how much makeup she wears. I knew she owned a lot of makeup—I saw it in her room—but I hadn’t guessed (even seeing her without any makeup) that she wears so much at once. She instantly looks older, her face thinner, her cheekbones more pronounced.

  “Ma, do you have any gum?” she asks, when she’s happy with her look. Mrs. Morgan hands her a piece, and once she’s chomping away on that, she digs through her purse some more until she produces a brush, some hair clips, and a gauzy scarf. She moves around in the seat until she can see herself in the rearview mirror and arranges her hair into a messy pile on top of her head. Then she ties the scarf around her head to hide her greasy roots. She looks effortlessly lovely and fresh. I am so jealous I can barely keep myself from sta
ring at her in disgust. My only small measure of comfort comes from the fact that since she woke, she’s ignored me completely.

  I cannot believe the dress Maura buys. It is a shiny silver thing with a deep-v neck that plunges to her belly button and deep-v back that plunges almost to her butt-crack. The material is so slinky you can see the shape of her belly button, and the hem—I assume this is the flapper connection—has several rows of fringe. She also buys strappy silver shoes that buckle at the ankle. She completes the outfit with gloves that come up above her elbows and a jaunty little hat with a white feather protruding from the side. I watch her posing in the dressing room mirror, pretending to bring a cigarette to her lips. Not satisfied with her appearance, she rummages through her purse and finds a tube of red lipstick. She’s right. The look is not complete without it. I have to give it to her—she looks like a 1920s starlet.

  Every now and then I catch a glimpse of my mother’s expression when she thinks no one is looking. I can tell she is appalled—I mean, the dress requires double-stick tape to remain in place. And then there is the expense; you would think she was buying her wedding dress. Meanwhile, every store we go in, I look for some place to sit down and spend much of the day yawning. At some point after lunch, when Maura moves on to back-to-school clothes, Mrs. Morgan realizes that I haven’t tried anything on yet. Maura’s dress bought and bagged, she turns her attention to me.