It’s weird how such a seemingly simple question leaves me with no easy answers. I nod slowly and recite my number into his waiting ears because it’s easier to give in than fight, and I’m so tired of fighting, of being on guard all the time. But as I watch him branding my digits onto the soft skin of his palm in black ink, I’m anything but sure.
TWENTY-ONE
THE PHONE RINGS as I’m walking into the apartment. I throw my backpack on a chair and search frantically under the bedsheets. As soon as I pick up the receiver, cradling it beneath my chin so I can shrug off my jacket, I know it’s her. I can almost smell the sharp, animal scent of her perfume coming through the phone in waves with her pulse, fast and erratic, can hear the metallic tapping of her nails as she waits for me to speak.
“Hello, Caitlin.”
Her voice is unnaturally cheerful and bright, the way it always is when I haven’t spoken to her in a while. Maybe she heard about my father’s after-school visit. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Either way, I detect a strange manic quality, as if she’s ready to jump out of her skin or burst into tears. This is the flip side of her anger, and it is as wild and unpredictable as the slaps and kicks that bubble up like lava, crisping everything in its path. As I listen to her breathe, there’s a familiar pressure in my chest, the feeling of suffocation, an elephant squashing my lungs. Thoughts race through my brain without stopping, and all at once I’m dizzy, confused. Whenever I hear her voice, I completely lose what’s left of my bearings, my grip on the world. I sit down on the bed and close my eyes, waiting for her to speak, the imprint of the room flashing beneath my eyelids.
“How are you,” she asks in sotto voce, as if she really wants to know. I’m not fooled. The only person my mother cares about is herself. Everyone else is of little consequence.
Before the divorce, when things started to really get bad between my mother and father, between my mother and me, my father made us an appointment with a psychiatrist on Park Avenue, the waiting room filled with ferns and old copies of Better Homes and Gardens, the pages creased by a legion of worried fingers. My father, of course, had to conveniently work late at the office on the nights the sessions were scheduled, which surprised no one. The shrink once told me, after a joint session where my mother stared at the wall for an hour refusing to speak, the anger emanating from her pores like steam, that my mother suffered from a combination of borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. What this boils down to is that although she wears an unassuming, beautiful mask in public, my mother is essentially incapable of seeing other people as anything else but an extension of herself. People are pawns to manipulate, convenient things to use to get what she wants. Nothing more.
I remember my mother’s eyes narrowing as the therapist asked her a question, the doctor’s voice slow and measured as if she were speaking to a child, and my mother’s frozen expression as she walked quickly from the room at the end of the session. Her heels clicked lightly on the wooden floor, and I thought of the scurrying of rats, the clatter of tiny nails scraping against pavement.
“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but your mother has been tremendously devalued by difficult circumstances in her childhood. These issues, as I’m sure you well know, have been undoubtedly exacerbated by the current state of things between her and your father.” All I knew of my mother’s childhood was that she hated her parents, hated Queens, hated being poor. My mother refused to talk about the past in any detail. “What does it matter?” she’d snap, waving her hands in the air as though dismissing the thought from the premises.
The therapist stared right at me, her face blank as an envelope, willing me to speak.
“She is also one of the angriest people I have ever come in contact with,” the shrink said a moment after the door closed, her expression grave behind the glint of her glasses. “She will manipulate anyone to get her way, and she has no empathy for others. Especially you. When manipulation fails, she will use rage and fear. Remember that, Caitlin, every time you speak to her.”
Not that I really needed reminding.
“I’m fine, Mom,” I mumble, finding my voice in the present moment, the past dropping away in a rush. I clear my throat, picking up an album sleeve that’s fallen to the floor and placing it on my bed, Madonna’s navel staring at me from the Like a Prayer LP. The patchouli emanating from the limited-edition cover wafts through the air, reminding me of Sara and safety.
My mother’s voice is silky, practiced, like fingers gently stroking the back of my neck, her words the lashings of a cat’s raspy tongue. I hear words cutting through my thoughts. Words like home and proper and please, but the language is garbled and unfamiliar, the signal unclear. I know better than to mention that, however briefly, I’ve seen my father. What she wants is for me to come home, back to the apartment where my bedroom waits for me like an abandoned child, like clothes that no longer fit, back to the kitchen where she once pushed me against the sharp edges of the wooden cabinets, my forehead splitting open like the overripe skin of a peach. The bathroom where I’d run water in endless rivers to drown out the sound of my tears. Still, her voice pulls at me, encircling me like a web I can’t get out of, her words stuck to my skin, my flesh deadened with the freezing sensation that comes after a bad burn. You’re safe here, I tell myself, repeating the words over and over in my mind. A mantra. A prayer. Safe, safe . . .
I feel as if I’m slipping beneath an avalanche, gravel filling my lungs, her words drowning my ears in poison. Claudius creeping through the foliage, pouring the contents of the vial into the King’s waiting ear as he slumbers dreamless in the garden. I remember sitting on her lap as a toddler, how safe I felt in her arms. How surprised I was when it started, my body thrown against a wall like so much dead weight, my head hitting the plaster as I crumpled to the floor, motionless. And even before my father left, she had stopped being careful, stopped being careful at all where I was concerned, not even bothering to straighten the house before he came home or to make sure I wasn’t still crying but quietly doing my homework, my head bent over open books, the words swimming black and white and meaningless before my eyes.
“No,” I say with effort so great, it makes me instantly exhausted, unable to sit up. Even after six months, I think, even fifty city blocks away, she can reduce me to ashes. Tears squeeze out from the corners of my eyes in spite of the anger boiling just below the surface. “I’m not coming home.”
Her tone escalates, the pitch rising through the phone, creeping toward hysteria. When she starts to scream into my ear, my mind goes utterly blank, and it occurs to me that I can just hang up, severing whatever connection remains between us.
“I have to go now,” I say, my voice wooden.
“Wait, wait,” she says quickly, smoothing down the surface of her anger like the ruffled feathers of a looming black bird, wings outstretched. “Just let me take you for lunch, the way we used to. Don’t you remember our lunches?” she pleads, her voice reedy and thin. “We’d always have such a nice time, wouldn’t we, Cat?”
Yes, I think. Except for the fact that those shopping trips and lunches were designed to accomplish only one thing: to give her the daughter she always wanted. I’d sit across from her in the restaurant at Bergdorf Goodman, nervously palming my spoon, knowing that one wrong word was all it would take, one glance she didn’t quite approve of, and the moment we got into the car there would be a backhand slap across my cheek, my skin erupting in flames, her eyes flashing in the dimness of the limo.
“Tavern on the Green,” I hear through the haze crowding my thoughts, a kind of white noise. “Saturday. Noon.”
Without answering, I hang up the phone and lie down, pulling the covers up to my chest and hugging them to my body until the shaking subsides and I am warm again. I tell myself that I don’t have to go. I begin to shiver violently once again when I picture the hard, dead look in her eyes, the judgment reflected there.
Children should love their mothers, Caitlin.
/> Her seductive purr creeps into my waiting ears, infecting them, drawing me ever closer until I am floating back aimlessly, dangerously into her grasp.
* * * *
I PULL THE COVERS UP to my ears, smiling as my grandmother climbs into bed beside me, her fragile weight barely sinking the coiled springs in the mattress. The room smells of her perfume, Shalimar, and the mothballs she keeps in her closet—even though it’s lined in cedar—to protect rows of sweaters organized by color and weight. Even with my eyes closed, I’d know this room like the back of my hand: the heavy silver brushes and combs on the dresser, the mirror hanging above, its surface wavy with age. There is blue carpet underfoot, and white curtains that shield the long windows from glare. The weekends I spend here are all I know of safety. Here I sleep unafraid of the door creaking open in the dead of night. Here I fear no footsteps across the polished wooden floors, and my own are steady and sure. Here in this place called Queens, I can breathe. My mother hates the outer boroughs and her own mother even more, so on weekends before my grandfather dies suddenly of a pulmonary embolism and my grandmother is transferred to a nursing home, I am often dumped here when my parents are out of town, my father on one of his endless business trips.
She lets out a large sigh, turning over on her side, the sound of her breathing filling the room, the streets quiet, the stillness punctuated only by the sound of a car skidding down the street or the groan of a truck rumbling past. I love you, she whispers just as I began to fall asleep, dropping down into the delicious nothingness, devoid of pain, never sure if I’ve dreamed the words. In the morning, there will be slices of wheat toast cut carefully into triangles, the bread coated with butter so yellow that it will mock the sun. I will sit at the table, the top scratched and nicked from the banging of plates and forks over time, my grandfather’s old silk pajamas pooling at my ankles, hiding the fine bones of my feet and wrists as my grandmother stands at the stove singing to herself under her breath, frying eggs in a cast-iron pan.
My grandmother with her blond hair the color of the yellowed pages of a rare book and her skin like paper will see my bruises, even at nine years old, and flit her eyes away, placing one hand on my wrist and patting me gently, her blue eyes coated with a film that might be cataracts or tears.
TWENTY-TWO
TODAY I SAT WITH JULIAN at lunch. We shared a turkey sandwich and an apple I scored from a bodega, passing the fruit back and forth between us, aware that putting my mouth on something his own lips had touched was the closest we’d come so far to sharing a kiss. I could sense Julian trying hard to keep things light, limiting the conversation to bands, TV shows, the new Lichtenstein show at the Guggenheim, sensing just how fast I’d bolt if he tried to shove his way through the scaffolding I’ve built around my heart. Some moron who just transferred in from a school in Brooklyn attempted to break-dance on the pavement, spinning for a moment on the top of his head before collapsing in a ball, his parachute pants rustling furiously.
Every time Julian’s hand brushed against mine, I shivered somewhere deep inside. The more time I spend with him, the more I want to see him again. But whenever the phone rings, shattering the stillness of my apartment, I freeze in mid-step, unsure of what to do. Instead of picking it up, I watch the receiver with the wariness of a rabid animal until it stops abruptly as the machine picks up. Without knowing whether it was Christoph, Julian, my mother—or someone else entirely—I am paralyzed, my feet stuck to the floor. I guess it comes down to the fact that Julian is the choice I should be making, who I should be with—despite Sara’s warning—and Christoph is who I shouldn’t, but that knowledge doesn’t make deciding any easier. Every choice feels wrong, like having no choice at all.
As I walk quickly through the chilly streets, I’m filled with a sense of dread. The last time I was in Alexa’s apartment was on her tenth birthday. All I remember of the actual event was that the theme was Versailles, and predictably, there were platters of pastel cakes and cookies everywhere, Alexa standing at the front of the room in a white dress, her hair piled atop her head, which looked delicate and breakable even then, the brightly wrapped gifts dwarfing her small body. Alexa Forte lives in the kind of Upper East Side town house that’s furnished like a wing at the Met—Louis-the-whatever chairs and tables everywhere, chandeliers hanging from fourteen-foot ceilings in every room. A fresco of dancing cherubs chasing a flight of doves graces the entry hall, and there are elaborate sconces dripping with crystal on every available wall. Your basic baroque nightmare.
Alexa’s mother answers the door, her face unlined and serene. She’s wearing a green-and-white-patterned wrap dress that reminds me of cool forests, moss creeping over wet stones. The diamonds in her ears sparkle against the blond hair twisted away from her angular face, and I finger the buckles on my leather jacket nervously, feeling like I’ve arrived at a black tie dinner wearing a tracksuit. She smiles, asking about my parents but not really listening to the answer, her eyes glazed over with what may be boredom or Valium as she leads me down a long hallway, knocking briskly at a heavy wooden door before opening it.
Alexa sits on a white platform bed, hot-pink wall-to-wall carpet covering the floor. A stereo system takes up most of one wall, the silver dials glowing red, the new Taylor Dayne single playing softly amid frantic bass beats. Above the bed on the creamy white wall hangs what looks like an actual Warhol painting—four square portraits of Alexa hung in a quartet, her face bleached white, her features outlined in bright color, her eyes haughty and imperious. You like? she seems to be saying. Well, too bad. You’re not getting any.
“Took you long enough,” Alexa says, glaring hard at her mother before she leaves, closing the door without a word. Alexa grabs a can of Diet Pepsi from her bedside table, sucking noisily on a hot-pink straw shot through with silver glitter.
“The train was running slow.”
I throw my bag down on the floor, not sure what to do with myself. Should I sit next to her on the bed? The floor? The uncomfortable pink beanbag in the corner? “Some guy jumped in front of an express and everything was backed up. We sat in the tunnel for, like, twenty minutes.”
School’s been out for hours, but before coming over to Alexa’s place, I needed to regroup, stopping at home to change and eat something before heading back uptown, the train packed with rush hour commuters.
Alexa shudders. “I can’t believe you take that thing every day.”
“I thought you were so tough,” I say, laughing as I walk over to the beanbag, sitting down gingerly, as if it might collapse under my weight.
“Toughness has nothing to do with it,” Alexa snorts, picking up a cordless phone trapped in her sheets and tossing it to the floor. She’s wearing black leggings and a gray sweatshirt artfully ripped at the neck to expose one shoulder, her hair pushed back from her face with a black cloth headband, a pair of huge white slouch socks on her feet. The combination of tight leggings and big socks makes her legs look like toothpicks swathed in spandex. “I now speak from experience, so listen up: the subway is seriously gross.”
I watch as Alexa stands up, stretching her arms over her head, groaning as her back cracks with a sharp snap that reminds me of branches breaking. She comes over and sits on the floor beside me, folding her legs beneath herself, graceful as a dancer.
“So I probably already know the answer to this question, but what really happened with Ethan the other night?” I ask, pulling at the pink fibers of the carpet with one hand. It’s so soft and plush that I imagine sinking into it for days at a time, the fibers rising up and swallowing me whole. Asking about Ethan feels strained, awkward. The only girl I speak to with any kind of regularity is Sara, and I’m not exactly practiced at girly small talk.
A charm bracelet on Alexa’s wrist jangles musically as she reaches up to play with a strand of her hair. Among the dangling charms I catch a glimpse of a martini glass, a small gold spoon and what looks like a credit card.
“Custom-made at Tiffany for my twelfth bi
rthday. My mother said I could have a charm bracelet, but I’m not sure this was what she had in mind.” She looks down at the tinkling charms, moving her hand so that they glint in the light. “But she’d already paid for it, so, whatever.”
“Don’t change the subject,” I say, laughing. “What happened?”
“Maybe I should be asking you the same question.” A smile plays on her lips, one eyebrow raised. My stomach sinks and I exhale for what feels like forever, her words punching the wind out of me. Through my discomfort I can’t help but notice how easily Alexa has evaded my question.
“I told you,” I say, trying to brush it off, “we just went to breakfast.”
“And?” She rolls her eyes, and I notice for the first time that her irises are speckled with flecks of gold, the round orbs like painted Easter eggs.
“And nothing. That was it. Boring but true.”
“But you like him.”
I hesitate, drawing in my breath before answering.
“Like probably isn’t the right word.”
Actually, I’ve never thought about whether or not I like Christoph at all. I’m trying to figure out if that’s a good or bad thing when Alexa interrupts, clearly exasperated.
“Whatever. Define it any way you want. But you’re interested, right?”
“I guess so.” I curl my legs beneath me, shrugging. “Whatever that means. I don’t know.”
God, I sound like a moron. Any minute she’s going to stand up and tell me she’s late for ballet class or something.
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