by Vendela Vida
“Don’t fall over,” he says.
“I’ll try not to,” I say.
He reaches into the inside pocket of his suit once again and takes out the flask. Except that now I see it’s not the silver flask I was envisioning. It’s plastic. “Is that a shampoo bottle?” I ask. “The kind you get for traveling?”
He shrugs and pours some of the golden liquid into my red cup. I take a sip, and suddenly, now that I know the flask isn’t what I thought it was, that it’s sold at the drugstore next to the miniature deodorants, my drink tastes soapy.
Axel pours himself the rest. The shampoo bottle is empty, and he screws on the plastic top and returns it to his suit pocket.
“What’d you think?” I say, looking out at where the view of the bridge would ordinarily be on a clear night.
“Of what?”
“The talk on the stairs.”
“Oh,” he says, as though that was a side note to the occasion of the party. “It was a lot more official than I thought it would be.”
He shifts to his other foot. “What’d you think?” he asks, slurring.
I want to say that I think it was ridiculous, that Maria Fabiola is lying, that I think all of this is a scam, a big story to get attention and that she was really in a shed behind a ballet studio. But I look at Axel, who hiccups, and I know I can’t tell him any of this. For a brief moment I wish he were Keith. Keith would understand. Keith would be in agreement with me and, I’m pretty sure, wouldn’t share my suspicion with anyone else.
The wind blows, and I hold on to my hat. I smell his cologne and the warmth that is in my throat and in my stomach now is on my skin. I inhale deeply. We’re back in the cocoon together.
“Do you want some more?” he asks. I nod because I want whatever he is offering. I want him close, especially now that we’re outside and the Polo scent is diffused and, I imagine, surrounding me. I hope my dress will smell like Polo tonight, tomorrow, the coming week. I want to share the scent with Ewa. I imagine holding the dress up to her nose so she can inhale, and then waiting for her verdict, which I know will be appreciative. Ewa, I decide, is the best thing that’s happened to me in months. Until now. Until Axel, who is leaning in toward me, his lips coming for mine. Something happens when he kisses me though—I think my lip is bleeding, or maybe it’s his, but something tastes like batteries. And then my brain registers what his mouth is doing—it’s transferring the alcohol from his mouth into mine. I swallow it and step back and he smiles at me, and I force myself to smile back at him when the truth is that I feel disappointed. I wanted a real kiss, not the drink he’s forcing from his mouth into mine.
I lean back into him and push my lips against his. I want the connection again, I want the cocoon. He places both hands on my breasts and squeezes. Then he looks down at his hands, squeezing, and smiles at his hands as though he’s proud of what he’s doing.
“Touch me,” he says. I touch the back of his neck, even though I know that’s not what he means. “Touch me down there,” he says.
I put my hand on the bulge beneath his pants zipper. I look out onto Marina Boulevard to make sure no one can see us. They can’t. The street is startlingly empty. A lone dog walker, a group of French-speaking tourists drinking beer out of bottles. Merde, one says.
Axel places his palm over the back of my hand and guides it up and down—not in the direction I would have moved it; I would have gone left to right. I want his hands back on my breasts. I don’t know how we suddenly got to me standing with my hands on his crotch on a balcony at a party. It’s like we’ve forwarded a VHS tape to the middle of the movie after only watching the opening credits.
But this is the position we’re in—his hand on my hand on his crotch when the balcony door opens. I hear the swell of laughter coming from inside, along with festive music. It’s Arabella. She steps up and out onto the small balcony. Axel and I promptly release ourselves from each other.
“Love at first sight,” she says.
“Good evening, ma’am,” Axel says, and I’m impressed how quickly he knows to do this, to revert to normal party talk.
She studies him. “What a handsome boy,” she says with the authority of a queen about to knight someone. Her bolero jacket is back on, her wand and triangle out of sight.
Then she turns her gaze toward me. Reflexively, I smile, as though a photo is being taken, as though a compliment is about to be bestowed upon me.
“Aren’t you cold?” she says, studying my bare arms, the scoop of my dress’s neckline.
“No, I’m very warm blooded,” I tell her.
“Well, I can certainly see that!” she says.
Axel convulses, suppressing a laugh.
“I came outside to let you know that dessert will be served in the next ten minutes.”
She steps back down into the living room, closing the balcony door behind her.
“That was hilarious,” Axel says.
“Maybe for you.”
“I think she’s just upset because she wants me and Maria Fabiola to date. Tonight was a setup I think.”
What? I want to ask. But I don’t want this moment, like everything else, to be about her. I want to rewind, to back up. Suddenly, his hand dives down and I think he’s falling. His fingers reach under the hem of my dress and snake up my thigh.
“Oh,” I say. And then I say nothing. The breeze on my legs is damp, and between my legs I feel a rush of moisture and heat. Axel’s hand is moving toward that wet heat. His cologne is closer to me now, which is all I care about. Except that the concoction is making me ill. The strength of the cologne and the alcohol and the revelation that he’s being matched up with Maria Fabiola are whisked in my stomach. His finger is inside me and then maybe two fingers are inside me.
“Wow,” he says. “You really like this.”
I don’t know how to respond because I don’t really like this. He pulls his hand out and even in the late-dusk light I can see that his fingers are stained with . . .
“Blood!” he says. “Jesus Christ. You’re bleeding.”
We both stare at his fingers and for a moment I think he’s done that to me, he’s made me bleed.
“Wait, you’re not . . . are you getting your period?” he says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe.” Maybe this is why I’m sick to my stomach.
“Maybe? Why didn’t you tell me? What am I going to do with this?”
I stare at his hand. “Here,” I say, and lift up my hem and turn the inside of the dress toward him. “You can wipe it here.”
He does.
“You’re gross,” he says.
“Your grandfather would be so disappointed in you!” I yell.
“My grandfather?”
“I know your grandfather is Raoul Wallenberg!”
“Who? What the . . . ?” he says. “You are batshit nuts.”
Then he turns and steps back into the living room.
I decide to wait fifteen seconds to follow him so it’s not as obvious that we were outside together. My stomach feels like a cardboard box being taped up too tight. When I finally step back into the living room, I hear Maria Fabiola’s favorite song, “We Are the Champions,” being played too loudly. Tiramisu has been served. Maria Fabiola’s nowhere in sight. The bathroom is locked, so I stand outside it. I remove the bowler hat from my head and hold it in front of the skirt of my black and white polka-dot dress as casually as I can. Just in case anything has leaked through and I’m showing. When the bathroom opens up I clean myself off with wads of toilet paper that I dispose of in the toilet, where the tissues bloom in size. The water turns pink and I flush. I rummage under the sink for pads before I remember that Arabella has no daughters.
At 9:20 I go outside to wait for Ewa and her friend. As I’m standing there waiting I realize I’ve forgotten my hat inside the house, possibly in the bathroom, but I can’t go back. When Monica and Ewa pull up they don’t stop and park, they just pause. I’m so grateful to see them that I
jump into the back seat and Monica starts driving. “How was the party?” Ewa says.
I start to answer her—I’ve already planned to lie—but a force greater than words twists inside of me and I vomit all over the back seat of the Jaguar.
21
When we get back to the house, Ewa sits me down at the kitchen table and makes me tea and toast.
“It’s decaffeinated,” she tells me, as though this is something that I would be concerned with at the moment. My only goal is keeping the toast down.
My parents are out at their auction and won’t be home for an hour. An enormous blessing. I have no idea how they’ll react to me getting wasted at the party for Maria Fabiola.
My heart is rattling against my ribs, my ribs are rattling against my heart.
“How do you feel?” Ewa asks.
“Betrayed.”
“By who?” she says.
“Whom,” I say.
“Who?”
“I feel betrayed by my femininity.”
“I wish I had something wise to say right now,” she says, and looks at me with mercy and pity. I can tell she thinks she’s seeing herself as a young woman. I let her stare. Her eyes scan my hair, where a strand of vomit hangs like tinsel.
“The best advice I can give you is to take a shower, shampoo well, and go to bed,” she says. “I have extra pads in the cabinet behind the mirror if you need them.”
In the bathroom, I see someone who looks like me but is paler and bloated. In the bathtub’s soap dish I spot Ewa’s razor that she uses to shave her legs, and probably her armpits. I’ve never shaved any part of myself. There are three mirrors—a triptych—that cover the medicine cabinet. If I arrange them a certain way—with the mirrors on the left and right facing inward, they produce a thousand reflections. I pick up the razor and stand on top of the toilet, so I can see the multiple me’s.
My pubic hair is darker than my hair. It’s curly and, I decide, unruly. I take the razor and push as hard as I can and swipe it left and right over the small mound of my pubis.
Then I start screaming. The blade is filled with hair and there’s more blood. First the blood emerges in tiny, multiple drops, then gushes. And the burning sensation is unbearable. I leap down from the toilet seat, jabbing my toe against the sharp edge of the bathroom scale. I run to the shower. The water pressure helps. A pool of pink circles my feet and I step off the drain. I press a washcloth against my pubis—pressure is the only thing that helps.
It’s suddenly clear to me that I wasn’t supposed to push the razor so hard against my tender skin. It also occurs to me that I was supposed to use soap and water, that that’s why razors are often seen on the soap dishes of bathtubs.
I start sobbing in the shower. I cry and cry until the water turns cold. Then I cry because I’m freezing.
Outside the bathroom door, I hear Ewa screaming. “If you don’t unlock this door in one minute, I’m knocking it down.”
I turn off the water and crawl to the door and let her in.
“I’m sorry but I think I destroyed your razor,” I say.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING the sharp pain wakes me. I feel like I’m on fire. I sit up. I have a headache, but the pain coming from between my legs is so intense that it makes my headache seem minor.
Ewa has left aspirin outside the door to my room. I swallow two without water and the chalkiness of the pills makes me gag.
When I make it downstairs I find my father lying flat on the dining room table. He’s covered with a white sheet like he’d dead, but I know he’s alive because Ewa is humming while giving him a massage. The protective padding is on the table, which is a good thing, because we never use this table for casual dinners. But apparently we use them for massages.
“I was just telling your father that maybe you should walk on his back,” Ewa says to me. “I’m too heavy, but you would be the right weight.”
“Okay,” I say. I know I’m going to have to be agreeable, to make amends to everyone in the house.
The front doorbell rings. Maybe it’s another Swedish au pair on the run, I think. I open the door and Maria Fabiola is standing before me. She looks so much smaller than she did last night, so much more my size now that we’re on the same level and she’s wearing jeans instead of a dress. But her fury is huge. Her fury is a force I can feel before she opens her mouth.
“That was my party and you ruined it,” she says. She puts her bag down on the brick entranceway so I can tell she plans to stay.
I step outside and close the door behind me. I don’t want my dad and Ewa hearing this.
“I don’t know how I ruined it,” I say. I don’t remember throwing up until I got into the Jaguar, but I don’t volunteer this information.
“Seriously? All anyone can talk about is how you got blood all over Axel. He’s told everyone.”
“Why would you even want to be set up with someone like him?” I ask.
She screams a scream of frustration instead of answering. Even her hair, which has lost its hair-sprayed hold, is extending out from her head like exclamation points.
“I don’t know how you managed to make last night about you, but you did,” she says.
“All I did was get my period.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“You know what’s disgusting?”
She stares at me. I don’t know what I’m going to say is disgusting so I drag out the moment while I plot my response.
“The story you told,” I say. “You really think anyone’s going to believe that kidnapping story?”
“Excuse me?” she says.
“Have you taped your ABC interview yet?”
“They’ve done B-roll,” she says.
I nod as though I know what that is.
“That means they’ve filmed me walking on the beach with my family. I think it turned out really well.”
“You could get in a lot of trouble for lying to the news,” I say. I don’t know if this is true, but it sounds true. “The story you told last night has a very familiar ring to it, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?” she says, and I can tell she’s frightened.
“Kidnapped? Robert Louis Stevenson.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh my god,” I say, as it dawns on me. “Last time I was in Mr. London’s office there was a book missing. It was Kidnapped, wasn’t it? You took it.”
“What are you talking about?” she says in a quiet voice.
“The book. You got the idea from a book.”
“I don’t even read books,” she says. “Maybe the kidnappers do, but I haven’t exactly been able to read recently since I was busy being kidnapped!”
“Well, I’m just saying that before you go on ABC and give them your exclusive, you might want to revise your story a little bit.”
“I’m leaving,” she says. “But I brought you something you forgot last night.” She reaches into the bag and takes out my bowler hat. She throws it on the ground between us. Then she proceeds to jump up and down on it like it’s a fire she’s trying to stomp out. “There,” she says. She turns and walks down the stairs. I pick up the hat and try to restore its shape, but it’s destroyed. I carry the hat inside like it’s a once beloved animal that I’m going to need to bury.
22
On Sunday morning my dad comes into my room and asks if I want to go to church. I pull the covers over my head.
When my parents return home, I learn that my mom talked with Julia’s mom, Kate, in the church courtyard. A plan has been hatched for me to go to Julia’s house this afternoon to make Valentine’s Day cards.
“It will be just like how it used to be,” my mom says. “You girls used to always make cards together.”
I tell her we haven’t made valentines since we were little.
“Well, Kate misses you,” my mom says.
“Well, Julia hates me.”
My mom wants to contradict this. She opens and closes
her mouth. After a few seconds she says, “Anyway, it’s all been arranged.”
My mom makes a cheesecake and pours red cherries from a can on top, spreading them with a wooden spatula. Shortly before 3, she walks with me to Julia’s house, carrying the cheesecake, which has been Saran-wrapped. She’s taped down the edges of the wrap with the rough surgical tape she brings home from the hospital.
Kate opens the door wide, an exaggerated gesture to show how welcome we are.
“Your new house is beautiful,” my mom says before she even looks around.
“Thank you,” Kate says. She seems genuinely grateful for the compliment. She’s still wearing her church clothes, which resemble her shiny ice-skating outfits except that the top is less sparkly and the skirt is slightly longer.
“I brought you a cheesecake,” my mom says and offers the cake to Kate.
“Thank you so much, Greta. You know how much I love your desserts. What was that thing you made for the bake sale last year?”
“Broom cookies,” my mom says proudly.
“Exactly,” Kate says. “Do you actually place them on a broomstick to get them to look like that?”
“Yes,” my mom says. “But don’t worry—it’s a clean one!”
They both laugh fake laughs.
Julia is not within sight, and we all stand in the entranceway, waiting for her without saying we’re waiting for her. Sitting by the door are three boxes with “Hitachi” and “Toshiba” and “Sanyo” printed on the side.
“New TV?” my mom asks.
“It’s a long story,” Kate says, and sighs dramatically. I can tell she wants to share this long story, but my mom doesn’t prompt her. “Anyway, the short version is they’re for sale. Do you know anyone who wants to buy a TV, a Betamax, or a karaoke machine?”
“Maybe,” my mom says. She seems genuinely interested. “How much are you selling the Betamax for?”
“Um, I’ll have to get back to you about that,” Kate says.
