“More or less,” I confirmed.
“However,” he continued, “you are also racked with anxiety—”
“And guilt!” I added.
“—anxiety and guilt that we haven’t planned sufficiently lavish festivities for our daughter, and you would like me to leave the comfort of my warm bed, go online, and find out whether Aretha Franklin is available to perform a four-song set for the party.”
“Aretha doesn’t fly,” I reminded him. “I don’t know whether she’d take a train or a bus or what, but make sure to tell her people that we’re willing to pay for transportation.” I rolled away and forced myself to stretch, breathing deeply, legs pointed toward the corners of the bed, arms raised above my head.
Peter propped himself on his elbow and looked down at me fondly. “You’re nuts.”
I sighed. “You’re right. Joy’s probably never even heard of Aretha Franklin. We should get what’s-his-face—you know, the one who looks like Leonardo DiCaprio’s brain-damaged little brother? Dustin Tull? Joy loves him.”
“Cannie,” Peter said patiently. “We are not hiring Dustin Tull to entertain at Joy’s bat mitzvah.”
“Well, we have to do something.” I got out of bed and started pacing.
“How about we just be ourselves?” Peter asked.
I flopped back onto the bed and buried my face in a pillow. “I don’t think that’s good enough.” Then I sat up. “Do you think we should get Prince?”
“Candace,” said Peter, resting his warm hand between my shoulder blades.
“Nah. Not Prince. He’d say two and show up at eight, and he’s got those assless chaps—”
“Cannie,” Peter rumbled. “What is going on?”
I got to my feet and gave him the tip of the iceberg, a little taste of the truth. “I told her that dress wouldn’t work. She needs something with sleeves. She wasn’t very happy.” And the award for understatement of the evening goes to . . .
“So why don’t we let her wear the dress she wants?” said Peter. He blew out the candle. “She could put something on top of it. A shawl or something.”
“A shawl?” I repeated. “Is she ninety? Do we live in Anatefka?”
“You know what I mean.”
“A wrap,” I muttered.
“A wrap,” he said agreeably. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Our daughter looking like a prostitute in shul is not a big deal?”
“She won’t”—he covered his mouth and yawned—“look like a prostitute.”
“Maybe not a prostitute,” I conceded. “Maybe just an escort. You know, where you’d have to pay her extra for the sex stuff.”
“Maybe just a teenager,” Peter said.
I closed my eyes, wincing, knowing that we were getting to the heart of the thing.
“We need to let this be about what she wants, too.”
I nodded. That sounded very fair.
“She’s growing up,” he said.
I shook my head wordlessly. All golden lads and lasses must, like chimney-sweepers, come to dust. It was inevitable, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. Just because he was in such a hurry to push Joy out of the nest and have another baby, and my publisher was dying to have me write another novel, didn’t mean I had to go along with any of it.
“It happens,” he said, and kissed me gently: my cheek, my neck, my forehead. “It’s okay.”
A tear slid out of my eye, rolled down my cheek, and plopped on the pillow. My little girl, I thought, and swiped at my face with my sleeve. My only one.
FOURTEEN
For my birthday every year the past four years, I have celebrated in exactly the same way. The weekend before, my mom and I go to Toppers for manicures and pedicures. On the weekend of my birthday, we go to the Kimmel Center for a musical, and we have tea at the Ritz-Carlton and eat cucumber sandwiches and tiny eclairs. The weekend after my actual birthday, I can invite two friends to sleep over, and my mom will make me anything I want for dinner. My guests have always been Tamsin and Todd, but this year, because Todd became a man and was off-limits, I invited Tamsin and Amber Gross.
Tamsin and I were in the living room the afternoon of the sleepover when the doorbell chimed. “Come on,” I said. I got to my feet.
Tamsin just sat there with her book (Persepolis 2) in her lap and a sullen look on her face. “You go,” she said. I could tell she wasn’t happy about Amber coming over, even though when I’d asked her she’d said it was fine. For the past week, Tamsin and Todd had both been sitting at Amber’s table with me. I’d thought that Tamsin would be thrilled when Audrey and Sasha scooched over to make room for her, but Tamsin just ate her mother’s discarded Zone burritos and read her book and didn’t even try to make conversation—although I suspected that even though she looked like she was reading, she was really listening as hard as she could, in the way she always did. I also suspected she wasn’t very impressed with what she’d heard, but so far, she hadn’t said anything about it to me.
I opened the door, and there was Amber Gross. I still couldn’t quite believe it. It was like the president showing up for dinner and a movie. I hoped that other people in the neighborhood were watching out their windows and seeing this: the most popular girl in the Philadelphia Academy at my door.
“Hi!” She had a pink backpack over one shoulder and yellow elastics on her clear braces. I could have stared at her for hours, taking her in piece by piece, trying to figure out how she got it all so right: how her pants were the perfect length, how she knew to turn the cuffs of her shirt up twice so they didn’t look too sloppy or too neat.
“Hi. C’mon in,” I said, and led her in.
“Wow,” she said, looking impressed as she peeked into my mother’s office. She eyed the stacks of Big Girls Don’t Cry in many languages and lifted the framed picture of my mom and Maxi Ryder, all dressed up on the red carpet, that I’d made sure was prominently displayed. “Wow,” she said again, and I felt myself relax until Amber ran her finger along the stacks of black-and-green StarGirl books that took up two shelves.
“Your mom reads these?”
My heart started pounding. StarGirl was a secret—one of my mother’s many secrets, now that I thought about it—but why was it my job to keep her secrets for her? What had she done for me lately, except tell me no?
“She reads them,” I said. “And she writes them, too.”
Amber’s eyes widened. “For serious?”
“Yep. That’s what she does. But it’s kind of a secret, so—”
Tamsin stuck her head into the office.
“Hi, Tamsin!” Amber said.
“Hi, Amber!” Tamsin said in Amber’s exact same tone of voice. I shot Tamsin a warning look. She ignored me, and I led everyone to the living room, where Frenchelle was on the couch with her head and half her body inserted into the bowl of popcorn.
“So what’s the plan?” Amber asked once I’d shooed the dog back onto the floor and dumped the contaminated popcorn into the trash.
“Um . . .” I’d thought the plan was going to be dinner and going out for ice cream afterward, but maybe that wasn’t exciting enough. “We were just watching TV,” I said. “I can make more popcorn.”
Amber pulled a pink envelope out of her pocket. “Do you guys want to see my bat mitzvah invitations? They just came in this morning.”
We both nodded. Well, I nodded. Tamsin just kind of shrugged. Amber pulled a DVD out of the envelope and slipped it into our player. A minute later, the song “Isn’t She Lovely” filled the living room, and Amber’s face, in black-and-white profile, filled up the screen. “‘Isn’t she lovely,’” Stevie Wonder sang. “‘Isn’t she won-der-ful . . .’”
“Wow,” I breathed.
“Wow,” Tamsin said sarcastically. I glared at her. She shrugged and lifted her book again, but I was sure she was still watching. The TV screen filled with shots of Amber dressed up like different movie stars: in hoopskirts descending a staircase as Vivien Leigh in Gone With t
he Wind, in a little black dress and pearls as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, posed on the bow of a ship (I recognized the ship from our class’s many field trips to the Independence Seaport Museum) as Kate Winslet in Titanic (“Who’s the guy?” I whispered, pointing at the man with his arms around Amber’s waist, and she said it was her stepbrother, and winked, and told me I’d meet him at the bat mitzvah). A deep-voiced announcer who sounded exactly like the guy who did the movie previews said, “On June eighteenth, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, becomes . . . Amberwood.”
“How’d you do that?” Tamsin asked.
“Do what?” asked Amber.
“Get them to change the name of the whole city just for you?”
“Shh,” said Amber, jiggling on the balls of her feet so that her hair bounced along her back. “Here comes the best part.” There was a montage of people in body paint, men and women whirling across a stage, flipping and tumbling and fighting each other with flaming swords. “Cirque du Soleil!” Amber said. “That’s the entertainment!” The invitation ended with a picture of Amber dressed like Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries after she has her makeover, with her parents and, I guess, a little brother standing behind her and smiling. “Please join our princess,” said Amber’s mom. “As we celebrate one of the proudest days of our lives,” said her dad. Then the screen filled with the URL of the website where you could RSVP “to the Queen Mother,” and then big swirly letters in gold spelled out “THE END.”
Amber punched the eject button. “My parents practically ruined the whole thing. They can’t stand being in the same room with each other, so it took them forever to get their lines right, and my stupid brother is such a spaz.”
“It’s totally amazing,” I said. Even Tamsin, behind her book, looked awestruck.
My mom carried a fresh bowl of popcorn into the room and peered at the TV screen. “What are you guys watching?”
“My bat mitzvah invitation,” said Amber. She waved the remote control at the TV set and the whole thing started again.
My mom sat down on the couch to watch. For once in her life, she seemed out of questions. It seemed like words in general had deserted her. “Well,” she said, and “Wow,” and then “That’s very . . .” and “My goodness!” and “Cirque du Soleil!” Once the credits had rolled, she said, “I should make sure nothing’s burning,” and hurried into the kitchen with her checks flushed and her eyes sparkling, like she was trying as hard as she could not to laugh.
I picked up the remote control from where Amber had dropped it on the couch arm. “You’re so lucky,” I told Amber. “There’s no way they’re going to let me have video invitations. Or entertainment.”
“Really? You’re not even having dancers?” She shook her head, her straight hair swishing. “I thought it was, like, in the Torah somewhere that you had to have dancers.”
“I didn’t have dancers,” Tamsin said from behind her book.
“Yes, you did,” I said.
She made a face. “Todd had dancers. I was just along for the ride.”
Amber ignored her. “Maybe if you, like, get really good grades this quarter, your parents will change their mind,” she told me.
“Maybe,” I said, and shrugged. The only way I could get better grades was if I wore my hearing aids all the time, which I didn’t want to do, although if my grades got any worse, my mother would hire the tutor she was already threatening me with, or demand a meeting with all of my teachers, and she would figure out what was going on with my hearing aids, and I’d be grounded for the rest of my life.
Amber adjusted her headband. “No video invites, no theme . . .” I could feel her evaluating me, deciding whether I was cool enough to deal with or whether, in spite of my secondhand connection to Maxi Ryder, I was a hopeless spaz.
“But I’m going to get a really great dress,” I said. “In New York.”
Amber perked up. “Really? Which store?”
“My personal shopper and I did some scouting at Bergdorf’s,” I said casually. “But my mom said I couldn’t keep the dress I liked. Too adult or something.”
“Bummer,” said Amber.
“You’ve got a personal shopper?” Tamsin said.
“Yes,” I said, and gave her a very severe look. “I do.” She shrugged again and went back to her book.
“You’re so lucky,” Amber said. “I have to get everything at the stupid King of Prussia mall.” She gave what was, to her credit, a very theatrical shudder, just as my mom stuck her head into the room again and announced that dinner was served.
That night, just like on every birthday night I can remember, my mom made my favorites: spa-baked chicken and buttery biscuits flecked with black pepper and cheddar cheese, canned peaches that I’d helped her pick the summer before, and creamed spinach dusted with nutmeg. For dessert, there were my favorite chocolate cupcakes with peanut-butter frosting and silver sprinkles, served on the antique cake stand that Aunt Samantha had given my mom and Peter for their wedding. My mom stuck a candle in mine even though I’d begged her not to, but at least she didn’t sing. Amber licked a little frosting off her pink fingernails, took two dainty bites, then set her cupcake aside. I did the same thing. “Aren’t you going to eat that?” Tamsin asked, and when I shook my head, she picked up my cupcake and finished it herself.
After dinner, Amber and Tamsin and I walked to the TLA video store and rented Titanic, which was Amber’s choice, and Ghost World, which was Tamsin’s (“You’ve never seen an R movie?” Amber asked me, with her eyes bugging. “Never ever? God. I got the Wedding Crashers special edition for, like, my tenth birthday”). We went back down South Street with Amber on one side of me, talking about dresses, and Tamsin on the other side, absolutely silent, except every once in a while I’d catch her humming a little bit of “Isn’t She Lovely.” We got lemon water ices at Rita’s and ate them on our way home. Then we changed into sweatpants and T-shirts, and for a while I thought everything was going to be okay. My mom and dad moved around the kitchen quietly, running the dishwasher, making coffee. Amber and Tamsin ignored each other, but with the movies on, it wasn’t even a problem. At eleven o’clock, my mom said lights-out. We went upstairs and brushed our teeth. I stared straight ahead when Tamsin came out of the bathroom in her Lord of the Rings nightshirt. “Nice shirt,” Amber said in the exact same tone she’d told Mr. Shoup “Nice tie.” Amber was dressed in a sleeveless white nightgown with pink lace trim. Tamsin ignored Amber as she took her usual place in her sleeping bag on the floor beside my bed and yanked the zipper up to her chin. Frenchie hopped onto the foot of my bed and curled in a ball.
Amber unrolled her own sleeping bag. “Oh, no,” I said. “You can sleep here.” I pointed to my bed. “You sure?” said Amber. I nodded as Tamsin’s eyes followed me. Amber tucked herself in, and I spread my blanket on the floor on Tamsin’s other side. As soon as I’d turned out the lights, Amber pulled her cell phone out of her backpack and flipped it open, filling the room with a bluish glow. Frenchie lifted her head.
“We should buzz some guys,” Amber said. Her braces caught the light from the telephone as she leaned toward me.
“Um . . .” I tried not to talk to people I didn’t know on the phone. I was never sure whether my voice sounded right. “I don’t know.”
Tamsin picked up her book and rolled onto her side. Amber whispered something I couldn’t hear. I clicked on my bedside lamp so I could see her lips.
“Come on, Joy,” Amber said. “I’ll call Martin. Who do you want to call?”
Duncan Brodkey was right on the tip of my tongue, but what would I say to him? What if he was sleeping? What if I sounded really weird? What if he thought I was a guy or something? I felt myself starting to blush.
“You don’t say anything,” Amber said. “You just hang up.”
“What’s the point of that?” asked Tamsin, turning a page.
“So they know we’re thinking about them,” Amber said with an extremely disgusted look. “See,
if you do a star-sixty-seven, that blocks caller ID, so they can’t tell who’s calling.”
“How do they know who’s thinking about them?” Tamsin asked. “It could be anyone. It could be a wrong number.”
“Don’t you have a book to read?” Amber asked. She rolled her eyes at me. I bit my lip and said nothing. “What a drip,” Amber whispered. I ducked my head, tucking my chin into my chest, and pretended that I hadn’t heard her say that, even though she probably knew I had. Worse, Tamsin heard it, too.
• • •
The next morning I woke up at seven-thirty, got dressed quietly, slipped my hearing aids into place, and shook Amber’s shoulder as gently as I could.
“Huh?” she said without opening her eyes.
“Can I borrow your phone for a minute?”
“Sure,” she said, rolling onto her side.
“Can I call long-distance?”
She yawned. “Unlimited minutes.”
I’d been counting on that. I pulled my copy of Big Girls Don’t Cry out from under my mattress, stuffed it into my backpack, put Frenchie on her leash, and double-checked that Amber’s phone was snug in my pocket. I wasn’t sure whether my mother checked my phone to see who I’d been calling, but I knew she kept track of my minutes and how many texts I sent, and it was important that she not know about this particular call. I left a note—Going to get bagels—on the kitchen counter and slipped out the front door.
The sky was a deep blue, and a sweet-smelling breeze shook the trees, sending showers of blossoms into my hair and onto Frenchie’s back, casting wavering shadows on the sidewalk. I slipped off my jacket and tied it around my waist. “Pretty girl, pretty girl,” chanted the homeless guy from his wheelchair on the corner, and the man behind the counter at the bagel place smiled at me and slipped an extra French-toast bagel into my bag. I tucked the bagels under my arm and walked three blocks south, then sat down on a bench underneath a towering dogwood tree in Mario Lanza Park. Frenchie trotted along the perimeter of the dog run, ignoring the other dogs, sticking her nose haughtily into the air when they tried to sniff her. I pulled Big Girls Don’t Cry out of my purse, opened it to the page where I’d stuck a Post-it, and began to read.
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