by Beth Miller
Two girls dancing. Sheets flapping on a line. One girl jumps right over the sheet, and when she lands, she is a boy. He says, ‘A June baby, how lucky, lucky, lucky.’
I wake with the word ‘lucky’ ringing in my ears. These repetitive sheet dreams are at least useful in reminding me to change the beds. I go upstairs and rummage in the linen cupboard. When I take the bedding into my room I notice a shoebox of papers I brought back from my old room at Mama’s house. I empty it onto the bed and pick up Miffy’s recent note, which is on the top. ‘I’ll be in touch soon. Love—’ and the little drawing. It makes me smile. I put it aside to keep, and look through an old autograph book from school in Edgware. The silver cover is cracked and the pages are yellow, but my friends’ writing is still legible. I remember taking that book in on my last day. It wasn’t at the end of term, of course, but near the start: a Thursday in September. We’d just started a project on the Tudors. I’d been enjoying that, drawing the costumes the Tudor ladies wore. At my new school in Norfolk, they’d already done the Tudors, so that’s a gap in my education thanks to Mama and Michael’s desperation for a shag.
My friends couldn’t believe I was really leaving. Claire cried, promised to visit. In my autograph book she wrote, ‘If all the boys lived under the sea, what a good swimmer Laura would be.’ But it was Fiona who kept in touch the longest: we wrote to each other till we went to university. I can’t remember where she went. Durham or Liverpool or somewhere. A good one, anyway. Wonder what she’s doing now. Her page says: ‘2 sweet + 2 bee = 4 gotten’.
Then I come to Danny’s Valentine’s card with the elephants on. I open it and the piece of paper falls out. I take a long breath before I unfold it. Torn from an exercise book, and the writing scrawled in pencil, it’s faded but it doesn’t matter because I remember what it says. Word for word:
‘Dear Laura. This is to say goodbye. I thought you loved me but it was just pretend. I will never forgive you. D.’
After all these years it still has the power to shock. When I read it as a child, it pierced my heart. I thought it unbelievably cruel. I couldn’t understand what he meant or why he felt compelled to write it. Now, of course, I can see the sorrow in it.
I take it downstairs and set a match to it. When it’s in flames, I drop it in the sink.
Miffy
1979
Perfect Teeth
When Laura came round after school today, I told her about Jay, that new boy at shul. She helped me go through my clothes, looking for something nice to wear next time I saw him, and said she’d turn up one of my skirts to make a mini.
She sat at my mirror, twisting her silky black hair into a French pleat, and putting on red lipstick. She said, ‘If I was blonde, would I look like Agnetha?’
‘Oh, no, you’d be much prettier.’ Her reflection grinned across at me.
I said, ‘If I was blonde, I’d look like Marilyn Monroe.’
‘Umm … yes … darlink. Not quite ze spitting image …’
‘Because she had very straight white teeth, and so have I.’ I giggled.
She laughed. ‘Phew, thought you were being a bit deluded there.’ She blotted her lipstick, and we checked the outline of her mouth on the tissue – perfect. Then she examined my teeth and said, ‘They are really straight. Anyway, guess what?’
I guessed loads of things, but they were all wrong. After I begged her to tell me, she said, ‘My mum’s going to start playing the organ at your shul.’
‘But she’s not Jewish.’
‘So?’ Laura opened her eyes wide to put on mascara. ‘She only has to learn some tunes. Anyway, she said we might convert.’
Garibaldis
Breakthrough with my batmitzvah study! As usual, Max was sitting too close while I was chanting my portion, saying, ‘Pliss try and put a leetle beet of feeling into eet.’ He still has his Polish accent even though he’s lived here since 1937 or something.
Suddenly, for the first time, I could see the point of what I was saying. The Hebrew made sense, the actual meaning of the words, and I realised what the rhythm should be. It was like poetry, and I knew exactly how to do it.
‘That’s eet! That’s eet!’ Max cried, and in the excitement he clutched my knee, and just then Mum came in with the tea tray and he was caught red-handed. He yanked his hand off my leg as though it were on fire. Mum stood there holding the tray and said calmly, ‘Mr Kaplinsky, we have spoken about this matter before. Please do not touch my daughter. Now, here’s your tea, and there’s a choice of bourbons or garibaldis.’
The Belt-Skirt
Dad was working late, and Danners was at Towse’s (lucky thing). Mum wanted to go out with her friend Bernice. I told her I was nearly thirteen and would be fine on my own, but she wasn’t listening. She phoned loads of people but no one was free. Finally she said, ‘I suppose Olivia is always offering.’ She stood looking at the phone for a while, till I thought she’d changed her mind. Then she slowly dialled, pausing between each number. I could tell from the conversation that Mrs Morente had said yes. Mum hung up, and stared at me so strangely that I checked my face in the mirror, but it looked no worse than usual.
Mrs Morente brought Laura with her, so that worked out well. Laura had my skirt, which she’d shortened. I nearly died. It was more of a belt than a skirt. Mum will never let me wear it. I was convinced people would be able to see my knickers, but Laura said they’d have to be looking.
Half an hour after Mum went out, Dad came back. I leaned over the banister so he couldn’t see my skirt and said, ‘I thought you were working late.’
‘Yes, wasn’t I lucky, Andy didn’t need us after all.’ He went into the kitchen and I heard him say, ‘Fancy seeing you here, Olivia.’ Then the door shut.
Back in my room, Laura was looking through my clothes. She held up my old red T-shirt that was too small and said, ‘You need a tight top like this to go with the skirt. You’ve got great boobs, you should show them off more.’
I always thought they were too big. I used to get teased about them. At primary school I was the first in the class to wear a bra. I started being ill on Thursdays because we had Music and Movement, and wearing a leotard was so embarrassing.
‘Jay won’t be able to resist,’ Laura said. ‘You won’t wear your hat, will you?’
‘Which hat?’
‘That stupid one you wear to school; the green thing with the earflaps? It makes you look about five.’
I liked that hat. Auntie Leila gave it to me. It was warm and soft and made me think of her. I wanted to cry to think that everyone was laughing about it. To change the subject I said, ‘I got Mum to buy some proper Cokes. Let’s go downstairs.’
‘No.’ Laura put her hand on the door. ‘I think we should try out your make-up for Friday. Jay will propose on the spot, you’ll look so nice.’
After she’d done my make-up, she wrote down my married name in all its different ways. Mrs Jay Jacobs. Mrs Melissa Jacobs. Lissa Jacobs. Miffy Jacobs.
Ultra Brite
A truly great day: Max never showed up, and I smoked my first cigarette!
We waited for Max for half an hour, and finally Mum rang his house. She spoke to his wife (amazing that Max is married; it proves that there really is someone for everyone in this crazy world), who told her Max had been rushed to hospital. She said he would be out of action for several weeks. Yes! Thank you, God! As if this wasn’t enough, Mum said, ‘Maybe this is a blessing in disguise after that funny business, not that I’d wish ill health on Max. I’ll see if the Rabbi can take over your teaching.’
I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I gave Mum a big hug.
‘You’re very fond of the Rabbi, aren’t you, Melissa?’
‘Not specially.’
‘No, you’ve got good taste; he seems a very nice young man.’ She sighed.
Young? He’s twenty-two if he’s a day.
At Laura’s house later, Laura made me close my eyes, and when I opened them she was holding a pack
et of three cigarettes! Anthony East left them last time he was at her house. We sat on the windowsill and Laura put a cigarette in her mouth. She gave me a box of matches, but my hand shook and it took several goes to light one.
‘You scared, Miffy-sister?’
‘My hands always shake, actually.’
Finally, I got the thing lit, and Laura took a deep puff. She held the smoke in her mouth for a moment, then blew it in a long stream out of the window. She looked really cool. Then she handed the cigarette to me and I took a puff, expecting to cough, but it was easy. When I whooshed the smoke out, Laura said, ‘Hey, you look good!’ She moved her dressing-table mirror so I could see myself from all angles, and I did look brilliant smoking. When we’d finished, we sprayed Charlie perfume round the room, and went to the bathroom to brush our teeth. Laura lent me her toothbrush. She uses a toothpaste called Ultra Brite which made my mouth taste funny.
I was sure Dad and Mrs Morente would smell the smoke when we went downstairs, but they didn’t say anything. Dad offered to come over the next day and help Laura with her revision for chemistry and physics, as they were topics he did at polytechnic. I wanted to help too, but Dad said I would distract Laura from her work. Which is a shame, because now I don’t know when I am going to get my next cigarette.
In Suspenders
I left it till the last possible minute to come downstairs. I thought I’d got away with it, because Mum was arguing with Dad and barely noticed me. Then Danners said loudly, ‘I can see your bum.’
My coat was quite short so it looked like I wasn’t wearing anything underneath. I gave Danners a filthy look, but the damage was done.
‘Melissa,’ Mum said. ‘What. Exactly. Are. You. Wearing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s what it looks like.’ She sent Dad and Danners out to the car, then said, ‘Show me.’
I opened my coat like the flasher that hangs round the school field. Mum went mad. ‘What the hell happened to that skirt? We’re going to a place of worship, not a brothel!’
She gave me thirty seconds to change. Nothing was clean or ironed except my foul Helene’s Paris Fashion blouse and skirt, and I started crying while I was pulling it on, great gasps of sobs that hurt my tummy.
No one said a word on the way to shul. We were late, Mrs Morente already playing the organ as we crept in at the back. As the music stopped and Rabbi Aron stepped up to the pulpit, I saw Laura. Sitting next to Jay.
Laura ran up to me at the end of the service. ‘Where were you? My first time at shul and I didn’t know anyone.’ I started to blub and she grabbed my hand and said, ‘Where are the loos in this place?’ Once we were squashed in a cubicle, I sobbed my heart out. Laura was lovely and hugged me and gave me tissues. Dad was waiting for us but everyone else had gone. Mrs Morente had taken Mum and Danners home. Laura whispered that she wanted to tell me a secret, and she got me to ask Dad if we could stop off at her house. I hoped she didn’t want to tell me that Jay had asked her out.
Mrs Morente was just back, and she offered Dad coffee. Laura and I raced upstairs. ‘You mustn’t tell. Cross your heart and hope to die?’
‘Promise! You know I won’t. Hurry up, Laura-sister! I’m in suspenders.’
She looked very serious. ‘Danny wants to sleep with me. What shall I do?’
‘Oh, my God!’ Laura had never asked my opinion before. ‘You’d have to go on the Pill.’
‘No way! I’m a Catholic.’
‘How will you stop getting preggers, then?’
‘You suck a Polo mint while you’re doing it.’
‘Why do you even like Danners? I mean, his feet are so smelly.’
‘I’ve fancied him for ages. But he was a bit slow. Thought it would encourage him if I danced with Towse at the disco. Treat ’em mean; keep ’em keen.’
‘So anyway,’ I asked, ‘what did you think of Jay?’
‘Oh, he was all right. I go for the older man myself. He’s got quite bad spots, too, hasn’t he?’
I asked what she was going to do about Danners, and she said she would ‘sleep on it’. This set us off into giggles.
Back home, Mum had forgiven me over the belt-skirt. She made me hot chocolate and we cuddled on the sofa. It was really nice.
Laura
14 MARCH 2003
‘A pretty big house,’ Miffy had said. A mistress of understatement. Remember the stately home in Brideshead Revisited? That’s the kind of scale we’re looking at here. It’s a great white wedding cake of a place, with an absurd number of rooms. I get lost every time I leave the kitchen. One time, trying to find the bathroom, I ended up in a completely new wing. You’d expect Amy, the owner, to be a posh wanker, but she’s actually all right: friendly and down-to-earth. She works as a children’s psychiatric nurse, which is how Miffy knows her. Weird kind of job for someone who’s got a mansion in Sussex. It’s her parents’ house really, inherited off rich relatives. Another world.
The party’s tomorrow but loads of people are here already. Amy’s got friends staying; there are Cline kids everywhere; someone else has got three children under five. Or is it five under three? Can’t sodding tell.
Miffy’s making a huge cooked lunch for everyone in the enormous kitchen. She’s standing at the eight-ring cooker frying onions, looking half her age in a strappy vest and denim skirt. She clearly loves the chaos, the noise, the kids running round. Evie, playing Rummy at the long oak table with some of the Cline kids, loves it too. She’s smiled more since we arrived than in the last three months.
I sit with my feet up on a chair. My ankles are puffy and I don’t feel great, don’t feel like talking, but it doesn’t matter because everyone else is talking their fucking heads off. Creating more than her share of the noise is my best mate Heifer, labelling bags of food for the freezer and gabbing loudly to one of her cousins. They’re wearing matching LBTs – Little Black Tents. They must be boiling. Whenever Heifer catches my eye she sends me a sympathetic glance. She can’t get over the fact that Huw has ‘let me’ drive all this way without him, in my condition.
‘I go where I want, when I want,’ I tell her, but she clucks her tongue, starts riffing about the raw deal women get in modern marriages, how the little wife ends up soldiering on by herself. I love that she can stand there on her stately tree-trunk legs and say stuff like this.
And here, making my heart skip, is her lovely husband, who soldiers on her behalf. Danny comes in from the garden with an armful of wood, flushed from exertion, so sexy as he chucks the logs into the basket and brushes his hands down his trousers. I must be off-the-clock horny, because even the cream-coloured cuple on his head looks alluring.
When Evie and I arrived this morning, both knackered after our stupidly long drive through the night, the size of the house was surreal enough. But to make things even weirder, Danny bounded out to meet us, came right up close and whispered, ‘So glad you could make it.’ Ooh, hello. I get a lurch in my groin just from thinking about it. Being so near him is freaking me out. I feel weird and super-sensitive, as if I’m missing a layer of skin. I feel I could come just from him touching my hand.
Miffy passes plates round, then sits next to me. ‘It’s so stuffy in here with that Aga thing,’ she says, pushing her hair off her face. ‘Thinking now that a hot meal was a daft idea. Are you okay?’
I haven’t told her about my bleeding episode earlier this week. I don’t want her to tell me I shouldn’t have come.
‘I’m fine, just tired. It’s good to get away. And Evie’s having the time of her life.’ We both turn to look at her, laughing at something one of the Cline boys has said.
‘I don’t feel any older than her right now,’ Miffy says. ‘I feel like when we were kids and dying of excitement about a party.’ She sits back in her chair, her food untouched, and hugs her smooth brown knees. I avert my eyes from my own podgy knees, blotchy-white as semolina, and contemplate her glowing face. Surely only a man could make her look like this?
&nbs
p; ‘Anyone in particular you’re looking forward to seeing?’
Her lashes sweep down over her reddening cheeks. She can’t help smiling as she says, ‘Oh, no, not really.’
She’s still a rotten liar, I see.
Most of the younger kids have given up on lunch and are running round the table. The adults are drinking and chatting. No one can hear us. On a whim I decide to tell Miffy about Huw and the woman in the pub. She’s lovely, says straight away how awful, how sorry she is. ‘What was she like? I hope she had the decency to be ugly.’
This is something I’d forgotten about Miffy: she could always make me laugh. ‘Alas, no,’ I reply, feeling better already. ‘Blonde and big boobs.’
‘Like Norah Ephron says, “Your basic nightmare.” So what’s he had to say about it, then?’
‘I haven’t talked to him yet.’
She raises an eyebrow and lights a cigarette, takes a deep long drag. Across the table, Amy shakes her head, but she is smiling. ‘Amy’s being lenient as it’s my party,’ Miffy says, then sings, ‘It’s my party and I’ll smoke if I want to, smoke if I want to …’
I ask what she’s going to wear, and offer to help her get ready.
‘You always used to love doing that.’ She grins. ‘Last time you styled me, you put me in a tiny miniskirt that barely covered my bum.’
‘Did I?’ I can’t remember.
Danny laughs. I turn round, but he’s not looking our way. He’s dealing amiably, not just with a baby on his lap, but also with two toddlers trying to scramble into his arms, and an older child standing behind, curling her arms round his neck. Look at all the fucking kids crawling over him, and Huw’s been making a fuss about two!