The Usual Rules

by Joyce Maynard

  People. I want to remind you. We encourage you to decorate your books in a creative manner. But I don’t want to see any crude or inappropriate language or imagery on your schoolbooks, and I’m sure I don’t need to specify further just what that sort of thing entails.

  Wendy looked out the window again. The picture came to her of her little brother in his blue sleeper suit and golden cape, snuggled against her that morning, smelling slightly of pee. She thought about Josh, handing her the brown paper bag with her lunch as she headed out the door. Sade, whispering into her ears through the headphones on her Walkman, “Take me to the belly of darkness.”

  Call your mom at work, Josh said. You know she hates it when she doesn’t get to say good-bye. She thought of Louie, bending his whole head over her plate after she was finished with her French toast and lapping up the last of the syrup. If her mother was at the table, she might have told him no, but Josh laughed. Are you a boy or a dog? he asked.

  A dog, said Louie. A karate dog.

  Last Thursday, she got a letter from her real father. Why don’t you come see me? he wrote. You wouldn’t believe my crop of oranges, and the almonds are going to be great this year, too.

  Isn’t that typical? her mother said. She was talking to Josh, but Wendy heard. All summer he kept putting off the visit, she said, and now that she’s going back to school, he tells her to come see him.

  She thought about the cabin in California in the picture he’d sent her with the letter, with the cactuses around it and morning glory vines climbing the fence. If she lived in California, she’d eat nothing but oranges off his tree and throw sticks for his dog, and she’d get skinny as Christina Aguilera.

  Where did you get your tan? Robbie Gershen would ask her when she got back. Oh, surfing, she’d say. My dad taught me. He lives in California. He’s an artist.

  She tried to picture her father, but the picture was hazy. It was so long since she’d seen him. We’re due for some major father-daughter hangout time. What do you say? he wrote. I’ll send you a ticket as soon as you let me know the date.

  Even Wendy knew there was no way she could miss two weeks at the start of school, but she asked anyway. When her mother said no, Wendy said she never let her do anything.

  You just want me to hate my dad as much as you, she said. You probably hate me, too, because I remind you of him.

  Josh took her by the shoulders then—not angry, but firm—with those bass player hands of his gripping her so tight it just missed being painful.

  Listen, he said after her mother had walked out of the room. You know that isn’t true. Your mom just loves you so much she doesn’t want to see you hurt.

  Sometimes I wish she’d just drop dead, Wendy told him.

  Mrs. Volt was passing out more forms. The revised school dress code, with a parents’ advisory concerning midriff tops and guidelines for skirt lengths. At the desk next to hers, a boy named Sean was tattooing his arm with the name of some girl named Cindi. He had made very small cuts in his forearm with a razor blade, in the shape of the letters, and now he was filling them in with ink. Wendy wondered what it would feel like to be Cindi, to have a boy love you so much that he would make cuts in his wrist for you. Josh would probably do something like that for her mother, come to think of it. If she wanted him to. As it was, he just left her Post-it notes all over the place.

  She could hear the sound of lockers slamming in the hall. The audiovisual cart wheeled past, and from the cafeteria came the smell of chili cooking. Outside the window, a squirrel ran across an electric line. She could make out the words of the Madonna song that was everywhere at the moment, on someone’s car radio. The floor trembled very slightly, the way it always did when the L train went by.

  Later, Wendy would think back on that morning, trying to remember every single thing. She would remember the smell of the butter in the pan and the sound of Josh singing along with Madonna, the gold of the sun hitting the roof of the church across the street from their apartment, the woman who had gotten on at her bus stop, talking about some congressman who had an affair. Having to try her locker combination three times before she got the lock to open. The band director calling out to her, I’m betting you’re the one clarinet player who practiced over the summer, which she had.

  She would list all the things she would do—cut off her hair, cut off her arm, both legs, gain fifty pounds, two hundred, never have a boyfriend, never have anybody fall in love with her for her whole life, stand naked in front of her whole gym class—if she could just return to how it was before.

  Pause, Louie liked to say when he got up from the couch to go to the bathroom or get a cookie and he didn’t want you to do anything until he returned. Rewind, he said when he came running back in the room and it looked as if things had been going on without him. Sometimes they’d be watching a video, but he also said it if someone was reading to him, or if they were playing Go Fish or checkers. He thought you could freeze time in real life, same as on a video.

  If rewind wasn’t possible, then pause. Freeze forever at this moment and never go on to the next, and it would still be a million times better than what happened when she did.

  Later, she would consider what she was doing at the exact second it happened. Walking up to the pencil sharpener in front of the room and wondering, as she sharpened her pencil, if anyone was thinking she looked fat. Doodling on the back of her notebook, a Japanese animation-style picture of a girl in an orange jumpsuit with a punk hairdo and a boom box—a picture she would never finish. Opening her binder partway, enough to look again at the picture her father had sent her of the cabin with the cactus. The morning glory vines and the funky green truck and her dad holding the puppy against his chest.

  I guess they’re still getting the kinks out of our bell system, because it definitely should have rung by now, Mrs. Volt said to them. If it doesn’t ring in another minute or two, I’ll just send you along to your first-period class.

  Then came the voice of the principal on the loudspeaker.

  Everyone remain calm, please. We’re still trying to get the details. There’s been an accident.

  Two

  After her father left and they moved to their new apartment, Wendy’s mother said she’d have to find a real job. She closed the Pocahontas Dancing School and sold her mirrors and let Wendy keep all the leftover costumes for dressups. She bought a suit and navy blue high heels and cut her hair short, and put Wendy in day care.

  Wendy could dimly remember those days: the newspaper spread out on the table every night and her mother, with a Hi-Liter pen, marking the prospects worth checking out.

  What are those? Wendy had asked the first time she saw her mother dressed up for an interview.

  They’re called panty hose, her mother said. They’re what people with regular jobs wear.

  Nights back then, they made soup and snuggled up together under the blue afghan and watched reruns of I Love Lucy on Nickelodeon. They had popcorn for dinner a lot.

  I don’t know how you live with yourself, Garrett. I don’t expect anything for myself, but you’ve got a daughter here, and if something doesn’t change soon, she’s going to have cardboard boxes for shoes, she heard her mother say on the phone one time. It was late and Wendy was supposed to be asleep, but she lay in the dark, wondering how you keep cardboard boxes on your feet. This was just around the time she was learning to jump rope. She wondered how a person could jump rope with cardboard boxes on.

  One day when her mother came to pick Wendy up at day care, she had a bunch of flowers in her grocery bag and she looked happy again.

  I got a job, she said. I’m an executive secretary in a giant skyscraper in the city. At the time, Wendy had no idea what an executive secretary was except that it must be good. Later, she learned a few more things about executive secretaries. They worked very hard. They had to buy many pairs of panty hose, and at night when they came home, they didn’t feel like making paper dolls or crocheting funny hats or dancing to the Gu
ys and Dolls CD. They put their feet up and poured a glass of wine.

  For a while she asked when her father was coming home, but then she stopped. The picture that used to be on top of her mother’s special treasure case in the living room had disappeared—the one with her mother in the long fairy dress, and flowers in her hair. Can we call him? Wendy asked.

  I don’t know where he is anymore, her mother said. His phone got dis-connected.

  Weekends were best because she didn’t go to day care. If it was rainy or there was snow sometimes, they’d get under the covers and read all morning. They cut out a picture of Princess Diana from People magazine and used a Glue-Stick to attach it to a piece of cardboard from a cereal box, and dreamed up outfits for her that they colored and cut out. Prince Charles didn’t deserve her anyway. She was better off without him. They watched old movies while her mother crocheted and went skating at Playland and rode the subway to the city and looked at toys at F. A. O. Schwarz.

  The way the game worked, they each got to pick out their favorite Madame Alexander doll that they’d buy if they were rich. Wendy didn’t need her mother to tell her they weren’t really going to buy anything at that store. Sometimes Wendy would study the faces of the rich girls at F. A. O. Schwarz, who actually got to take the dolls home.

  Do you notice how they hardly ever look particularly happy, even after they get their doll? her mother said. She had a saying: Treats make trouble. It was amazing how often that applied.

  It’s more special if you have one doll that you think about a long time before you get her, her mother said. You might wait a whole year, but when you finally brought the box home, you would love her more than you would if you were the kind of person who got a new doll every week.

  It’s like how I feel about you, her mother told her. You’re my one special daughter, who I wanted for a long time.

  So if I got a sister sometime, I wouldn’t be so special anymore?

  You’d still be just as special, her mother said. If I had ten kids, you’d always be the first baby I ever had. Plus, we’re the hotbox girls. Nobody else but us knows the dance. She was talking about the times when they put on their Guys and Dolls sound track, Friday nights when it was just the two of them, and they did a special number they’d made up to “Take Back Your Mink.” Wendy wasn’t a good dancer like her mother. Young as she was, she could tell. But she loved their dancing nights.

  Anyway, I doubt I’ll have any more kids, she said, and she put her head in Wendy’s lap. When Wendy asked why, she said it didn’t seem like it was in the cards.

  Her mother went on dates now and then. Once with a man from work named Tom. At first she didn’t introduce him to Wendy, because she said she wanted to check him out first. She met him at the restaurant, instead of having him come to their house, and when he brought her back, Wendy was in bed. So the only one who got to see him was the baby-sitter.

  Finally, her mother let her meet Tom. He was tall like her dad, but he didn’t have a ponytail, and some of his hair wasn’t even there anymore. Wendy couldn’t imagine him making artworks or swing dancing. He wore a suit, which Wendy figured was the way the men dressed who you met when you were an executive secretary. When he came over the first time he asked Wendy what grade she was in and if she liked school. The answer was preschool and day care and yes.

  For a while after that, Tom used to come over every Friday. Then he started being there on Saturday mornings.

  The first Saturday it happened, Wendy went into her mother’s room as usual, with the stack of books, and she almost dumped them on his head because she wasn’t expecting to see him there. Her mother whispered that Tom had a sleepover, so they should read in the living room instead. When he got up, he had on the pants of the same suit that he’d been wearing when he showed up the night before, and the same shirt, but no shoes. His face was scratchy-looking, and when he came into the living room, her mother set their book down, even though they were in the middle. He also smoked in the house.

  Sometime that fall, her mother and Tom went on a trip to Bermuda and Wendy stayed at her mother’s friend Kate’s house, but when her mother came back, she said she wouldn’t be going on trips like that anymore. He wasn’t really divorced, she said.

  I don’t believe men, she told Wendy.

  What don’t you believe? Wendy asked her.

  Anything.

  I think the best thing is if I just forget about falling in love, her mother told her. All I really need is you anyway. But sometimes at night in her room, when Kate was over, or when her mother was talking on the phone, Wendy would hear her saying different things. I feel like I’m dying on the vine, she said one time. My problem is that I keep believing the words to songs.

  Which songs? Wendy wanted to know. Why was that a problem? What vine was her mother on? But it was the dying part that worried Wendy the most. What if her mother died on the vine? What would happen to her then?

  She only saw her father once in all that time. He showed up one Saturday afternoon in early winter. They had just moved all the furniture to the end of the living room, the way they did sometimes when they made up their dances, and they had on Wendy’s new favorite CD, the sound track to West Side Story. They were at the part where Anita was singing about how great it was in America when they heard the knock, and because the door wasn’t locked, he had opened it just as they had their scarves out and they were twirling. Wendy was wearing her nightgown and her mother had on her peasant dress from a show she’d been in when she was young. They had put on lipstick.

  You’re just as beautiful as ever, Janet, he said. He still had his ponytail and he was wearing a long black coat, with a scarf around his neck, and holding a backpack, which he set on the floor.

  For a second when he said that, Wendy thought maybe her mother would jump into his arms and her father might start singing “Tonight” and the three of them would live happily ever after, Wendy and her two original parents. Not dead like Tony and Maria. But that much in love.

  You should have called first, Garrett, her mother said. The minute Wendy heard her tone of voice, she knew there would be no more dancing. The next thing her mother did was turn off the music.

  I just got in from Maine at five this morning, he said.

  There were other days, her mother said. I’m glad Wendy gets to see you anyway.

  I wanted to see you, too, Janet, he said.

  Here I am.

  More than see, he said. Be with.

  This isn’t the place to talk about that, her mother said. You might want to focus a little attention on your daughter, though.

  Look how big you are, he said to Wendy then. You used to be so little.

  A year and a half is a long time for a child, her mother said. A long time for anyone.

  Can we sit down? her father said. We could go out for Chinese food. A friend of mine is having a party later.

  You’ve got to be kidding, her mother said. No, come to think of it, of course you’re not. You haven’t seen our daughter in a year and a half and you want to go out and see friends. Wendy wondered if this was the voice she used when she was being an executive secretary.

  I was thinking it could take the pressure off a little, that’s all, he said. I thought you might like me to take you out on the town. But I’m happy just to hang out here and talk.

  We don’t have anything to talk about, she said. The time for that has passed.

  I was thinking, up in Maine, of all the great camping trips we used to take, he said. Remember that waterfall in Vermont?

  At some point, a person has to grow up, she told him.

  He looked at her, like he really wanted to know the answer to his question. Why?

  You cut your hair, he said to her mother.

  Some of us had to get a job, she said.

  I was missing you, he said. I was actually thinking there might be some hope for us.

  He sounded so sad, Wendy wanted to comfort him, but she knew her mother wouldn’t like th
at. She could see the characters in Parent Trap rewinding to the beginning of the movie, where they hated each other, though in this case it seemed like it was only her mother who hated her father, not the other way around, and Wendy didn’t understand how her mother could be so mean all of a sudden to someone who kept trying to be nice.

  Here, he said. I brought you something. He reached into his pack and took out a fish wrapped in many layers of plastic. I got this in Sebago Lake, he said.

  Her mother told Wendy to go to her room and change. Put on your jeans and a warm sweater, she said. You and your father can go out together in a minute.

  Put on your fanciest dress, he called out to her, louder than he needed to. Your dad’s taking you out on the town.

  He took her into Manhattan on the subway. They went to a restaurant in Chinatown, where there were lots of people smoking. They had dim sum. A couple of his friends were there, and they asked her what grade she was in and if she liked school. Preschool. Yes.

  After, they walked up Fifth Avenue all the way to F. A. O. Schwarz. When they got to the front entrance, he explained to her how his mother used to take him here when he was her age, and that it was the best toy store in the world. He pointed out the clock with the face on it, with the song that kept playing over and over, and the giant Steiff animals that people like Mick Jagger bought for their kids. He said that as if she would know who it was. She didn’t, though later, when she learned the name, she could remember him saying that. They have the most beautiful dolls in the world here, he told her as they rode the escalator up to the second floor. She didn’t let on that she knew.

  She thought he was just going to play the same game with her, where you pick out the one you’d get if you were rich. But he told her she could have one for real. Any doll in the case, he said. You name it.