Bad Marie

by Marcy Dermansky

  Read on

  Five French Films from Which I Have Found Inspiration

  Guillaume Canet’s Tell No One (2006)

  Arnaud Desplechin’s Kings and Queen (2004)

  Benoît Jacquot’s À Tout de Suite (2004)

  Agnès Jaoui’s Look At Me (2004)

  François Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses (1968)

  Five Novels I Have Compulsively Read and Reread

  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night (1934)

  Josephine Humprey’s Rich in Love (1987)

  Mona Simpson’s Anywhere but Here (1992)

  Antonia White’s Beyond the Glass (1954)

  Joy Williams’s Breaking and Entering (1988)

  An Excerpt from Marcy Dermansky’s Debut Novel, Twins

  MARCY DERMANSKY’S DEBUT NOVEL, Twins, was named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and was called a “brainy, emotionally sophisticated bildungsroman-for-two” (New York Times Book Review); a “witty and slyly subversive take on the teenage American dream” (Daily Mail on Sunday); and “compelling, dark, and like a traffic accident that you try to look away from, only to find your gaze returning with odd fascination” (Denver Rocky Mountain News).

  SUE

  I wanted tattoos for our thirteenth birthday. Chloe didn’t. Chloe refused. I told her I did not know what I would do if she kept saying no.

  “Tattoos are dirty,” Chloe said.

  Chloe was four minutes older. She was an eighth of an inch taller. She was smarter. She was prettier. We were identical twins, but Chloe had turned out better. She was the better twin, she had the better name, and I was desperate to hold on to her. Horrifying girls like Lisa Markman were inviting Chloe to their parties and offering her cigarettes and beer and birth control.

  My childhood had passed in a golden bubble of happiness. I adored Chloe and Chloe adored me. We didn’t need our parents; we didn’t need our brother or friends or parties or separate bedrooms. Chloe and Sue. Our hair was blond, our eyes were blue. For twelve perfect years, Chloe and I lived and breathed each other. We took baths in the same bathtub, shared the same rubber bath toys. Now Chloe took constant showers, all by herself.

  We needed tattoos.

  “I won’t,” Chloe said. “You can’t make me. No one in the eighth grade has a tattoo.”

  She was right. No one did. We were from the suburbs. I hated every single person in the eighth grade. They were all morons, out to steal my sister. Chloe was much too good. She was too eager to please.

  I sat on my bed, staring at Chloe, waiting for her to crack. Chloe wanted her own room, but there were no extra rooms in the house. It was a stupid idea. We were meant to share a room. We were identical twins. We had no secrets. Chloe picked up a hairbrush and started brushing her hair. She was obsessed with being clean. Chloe was always taking showers, smoothing her hair, washing her face, washing her hands, looking at herself in the mirror.

  “You want to be like everybody else,” I said. “But they’re all boring.”

  “Who is boring?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Everyone?” Chloe said.

  I reached for her hand. Chloe laid down her hairbrush on the bed and squeezed my fingers.

  “There is no one like us,” I told her.

  “Everyone is boring?” Chloe repeated.

  I picked up Chloe’s brush and threw it against the wall.

  Chloe bit her lip, looking down at her hands.

  “Our tattoos won’t be dirty,” I said.

  I’d explained it to her. I had found someone who didn’t care that we were underage. I had paid in advance. Everything was planned. Our tattoos would be simple. Chloe would get a SUE tattoo. Mine would say CHLOE. If Chloe ever got lost or made friends with someone who was not me or had sex with some strange, awful man, she could never forget who we were. Who we belonged with. It wasn’t enough that we looked the same. Chloe could put a rhinestone barrette in her hair and she became someone else. She would get upset with me when I put a barrette in my hair too.

  Chloe looked at her brush. It had left a dark mark on the pale pink wall.

  “I can’t get a tattoo,” she said.

  “You have to,” I said.

  Chloe shook her head.

  “We could get our ears double-pierced,” she whispered.

  “No,” I said. “Tattoos. It’s all planned. It’s already paid for.”

  Chloe crossed the room, picked up her brush, and started brushing her hair again. She was so beautiful. Wherever we went, people stared at Chloe, they stared at us. I knew that I looked like her. Technically I was beautiful too. But when I wasn’t next to Chloe, I didn’t feel right. I tripped on my shoelaces. My hair tangled easily.

  “Three letters,” I said. “To make sure we are never apart. No matter where we go. You won’t do that for me?”

  “It’s enough to be twins,” Chloe said. “It’s practically tattooed on our faces. We look the same. Why isn’t that enough?”

  We had been having the same conversation for days. Chloe wanted friends, boyfriends. She wanted to blink her eyes and imagine me gone. I sat down on the floor and cried. I cried until my chest hurt and then I coughed. Snot dripped down my face and my head started to ache. Chloe sat down next to me and put her hand on her own head, like it hurt her too. For a while, she did nothing, just watched me cry. I’d blink through my tears, wipe the snot on to my sleeve, and watch her, watching me.

  “Sue,” she said. “Why do you do this?”

  And then Chloe wrapped her arms around me. She rocked me like I was her little baby. I was miserable, but I felt wonderful, rocking. We rocked back and forth. Chloe and I were miserable together. It was the middle of the night. I could hear our older brother, Daniel, in his room down the hall, strumming chords on his guitar.

  “We are underage,” Chloe whispered. She kissed the top of my head. Our age didn’t matter. The appointments were made. The tattoo guy had taken my money and told me how to come in the back door. I had been slipping twenty-dollar bills from my father’s wallet for months.

  One day, Chloe would be glad. One day we would be old, we would be thirty, and Chloe would thank me.

  Chloe’s interest in other girls was temporary. It was adolescence. The tattoos, I knew, would keep us safe.

  “We could get a computer,” Chloe said. “Or leather boots.”

  “No,” I said.

  I stretched across Chloe’s lap and reached over to open her schoolbag. I took out her pencil case and removed a freshly sharpened pencil. Chloe liked her pencils sharp. She loved multiple-choice tests, filling in the small circles with all the right answers.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  I stuck the sharp tip of the pencil into my arm. A bubble of blood spurted from the spot. It was more brown than red. I touched the blood with my finger, smearing it over my skin.

  “Why do you have to be so dramatic?” Chloe said.

  If I was lucky, the lead from the pencil would make it into my bloodstream and I’d die an early death.

  “Stop crying,” Chloe said. “You make my head hurt.”

  I wanted to die. Chloe was the better twin and I was not necessary. She did not need me and soon, any day now, she would pretend she did not know me.

  “You should clean up your arm,” Chloe said. “You’re bleeding.”

  I shook my head. I hoped the lead would spread quickly. I closed my eyes. If I was dead, Chloe would no longer be an identical twin. She could cut the pictures in half, and no one would know I had ever been born.

  She got up. I could hear her walk into the bathroom, hear the water running from the sink. She was washing her face, scrubbing her hands. That’s what Chloe did. But then she came back to the room with tissues, a Band-Aid, antibiotic cream. She wiped the tears from my face. She put the cream on my cut. Chloe was a good nurse, but she wouldn’t become a nurse. She’d be a doctor, a neurosurgeon. I prayed that she would not want to be a lawyer, like our parents. Our parents we
re miserable shits. Our parents were raging bores. They were divorce lawyers.

  “Stop crying,” Chloe said. “Please. Please stop crying.”

  I would not stop crying.

  “Are they safe?” Chloe said. “Tattoos? Are they hygienic?”

  I nodded, still crying. I was winning. I knew I had won. “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

  Chloe bit her lip.

  “Everything is sterilized?” she said. “Clean?”

  “Of course,” I said. “One hundred percent clean.”

  I didn’t know. I had no idea. For all I knew, we would get hepatitis B and die. That would be fine. We would die together.

  “I want mine to be pink,” Chloe said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Pink.”

  I hated the color pink. The walls of our bedroom were pink. Most of Chloe’s clothes were pink. Most of mine were too. I didn’t care. I reached for Chloe’s hand. I squeezed it tight.

  She looked sad. She shook her hand out of my grip, but I couldn’t stop grinning.

  “You are such a drama queen,” Chloe said.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Bad Marie is the second novel I was afraid would not get written. I’m grateful to my agent, Alex Glass, for believing in it and to my editor, Kate Nintzel, for working so hard on it. Thanks to the Writers Room in NYC, the Edward Albee Foundation, Ann and Ira Dermansky, and Lesley and Harvey Weinberg for providing writing spaces at crucial junctures. Also thanks to my now four-year-old niece, Emma Dermansky, for dialogue tips, and to Lauren Cerand for her savvy advice; to Heather Paxson, Melissa Johnson, Joelle Yudin, Sarah Bardin, Jessica Pallington West, and Robbi Pounds for reading Bad Marie in various draft forms; and to Jürgen Fauth for reading every single one.

  About the Author

  MARCY DERMANSKY is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Twins. A film critic for About.com and a MacDowell fellow, she lives in Astoria, New York, with her husband, writer Jürgen Fauth, and their daughter, Nina.

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  ADVANCE PRAISE for Marcy Dermansky and Bad Marie

  “Reading Marcy Dermansky’s Bad Marie is like spending a rainy afternoon in a smaller, older movie theater watching a charming French movie with a woman (or a man) you’ve just met on the street and already like far too much. It’s sinful in all the right ways, delicate, seditious, and deliciously evil.”

  —Frederick Barthelme, author of Waveland

  “By positing a character who’s indulged in all of the deadly sins, Dermansky challenges the reader to finally and forever denounce her character Marie. The fact that this reader can’t is testament to the book’s power and smarts. A naughty pleasure, a philosophical romp, heady hedonism: What could be better?”

  —Antonya Nelson, author of Nothing Right

  “Marcy Dermansky is one of the most demanding novelists of our generation—she leaves her readers little time for friends, food, or sleep. Bad Marie is impossible to turn away from. It is as empathic as it is disturbing, as delicate as it is savage. Sly, honest, and extraordinary, this gem of a book should come with a warning: You’ll have to remind yourself to breathe.”

  —Tish Cohen, author of The Truth About Delilah Blue

  “If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to say just what you think to people who annoy you, to walk away from your life, to enjoy the comfort of strangers, then I suspect you will find Bad Marie irresistible. In swift, vivid prose Marcy Dermansky has created a wonderful portrait of a woman who lives right at the edge of acceptable behavior. I couldn’t wait to see what Marie would do next, and I couldn’t stop myself from cheering her on.”

  —Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street and Eva Moves the Furniture

  “What I don’t know about the inner lives of women could fill a book—but not this book, which has a title character that is bad in all the right ways and all the better for it. Marcy Dermansky’s Bad Marie is all about the tricksy margins of human experience, stolen moments and the people who steal them.”

  —Ben Greenman, author of What He’s Poised to Do and Please Step Back

  “Marcy Dermansky makes it easy to love Marie, a husband-stealing, baby-snatching, underachieving ex-con. The author sends us rocketing along on a brilliant, bumpy ride across the ever-changing landscape formed by the simple loves, the staggering losses and the bad choices that are Marie’s life. Fast-paced and unsentimental, Bad Marie blazes with life.”

  —Barb Johnson, author of More of This World or Maybe Another

  “Bad Marie unfolds in precise, gripping measure. But as the story keeps taking a turn for the worse, ratcheting up the tension, it is buoyed by the lovely relationship at its heart. The unlikely bond between Marie and Caitlin brings our heroine comfort and love in a world determined to deny her both.”

  —Mark Sarvas, author of Harry, Revised

  “Marcy Dermansky’s Bad Marie is so very very bad that I enjoyed every word. A tour de force in mounting suspense as its witless narrator and the baby she’s stolen careen from one all-too-probable disaster to the next. Delicious.”

  —Terese Svoboda, author of Cannibal and Pirate Talk or Mermelade

  “I didn’t want to finish this book any time soon, didn’t want to emerge from its dark and wondrous world. My God, what a writer—absolutely unpredictable, wild with intellect, spilling with charm and sadness and humanity. Marie, the main character here, is literary gold, worthy of Flaubert.”

  —Mary Robison, author of Why Did I Ever

  PRAISE FOR Marcy Dermansky and her previous novel, Twins

  “[Dermansky’s] twins transcend…A brainy, emotionally sophisticated bildungsroman-for-two.”

  —New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice Pick)

  “Dermansky’s first novel embraces and transcends the coming of age genre by overlapping the stories of twin sisters…. Dermansky gives her misfits real dignity and avoids psycho-social clichés…while she neatly captures the girls’ suburban high school world with every telling detail. Sometimes despairing, sometimes blackly humorous, always engrossing and thoroughly original. A wonderful debut.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Fiercely energetic…. Dermansky’s pace is exhilarating, sending both Chloe and Sue, and the reader, rocketing through an adolescence studded with not-unfamiliar dramas…[Sue’s] self-imposed difficulties bruise your heart and make you laugh out loud all at once. Dermansky, who is not a twin, has nevertheless spun a dual spell, capturing the inner world of twins and tapping into our basic human longing to keep those we love most from growing and changing.”

  —New York Newsday

  “Dermansky excels at depicting extreme emotional states and how we rationalize them.”

  —Village Voice

  “[A] witty and slyly subversive take on the teenage American dream.****”

  —Daily Mail on Sunday

  “Compelling, dark, and like a traffic accident that you try to look away from, only to find your gaze returning with odd fascination…. This well-written book gives readers a voyeuristic, insiders’ glimpse into the lives of not only twins, but teenagers…[C]omically and darkly entertaining.”

  —Denver Rocky Mountain News

  “[A] startlingly beautiful love story about two very unlikely identical twins. It’s a joy—no, a thrill—to read…. This is easily the most detailed, disturbing, and lovable oddball romance you’ll ever read. Dermansky is a writer through and through.”

  —Frederick Barthelme, author of Waveland

  “Entertaining…. Balanced by an overarching fable-like quality to this moving and well-written story of two girls learning to accept who they are.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Raw, extraordinary…. A dark, heartbreaking tale about adolescents trying to survive.”


  —Huntsville Times (AL)

  “Marcy Dermansky’s Twins is spectacular, weird, extraordinarily real, and funny in ways they don’t have names for. The perils of contemporary adolescence—from pill-popping to not eating to bad tattoos—are chronicled with an immediacy so intense it’s almost alarming. Dermansky inhabits her characters with a savage, hysterical eloquence. Her novel grabs your heart from the first sentence, and breaks it by the end.”

  —Jerry Stahl, author of I, Fatty

  Also by Marcy Dermansky

  Twins

  Credits

  Cover design by Milan Bozic

  Cover photograph © Mark Douet/Getty Images

  Copyright

  BAD MARIE. Copyright © 2010 by Marcy Dermansky. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.

  EPub Edition © May 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200006-4

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