My mother pulls up a few minutes later. Betsi is sitting in the front seat, and Peter is in the back. I forgot he gets picked up first now.
“How’d it go? How’d it go?” Betsi asks, practically bouncing out of her seat as I open the back door.
“Okay,” I say. She continues staring at me, waiting for more of an answer. “My math teacher seems like a jerk.”
“Who do you have?” she asks.
“Underwood.”
“Oh God, is he still there? He must be a hundred years old!” She laughs.
“Barry had him too,” I say.
“Did you see him today?” Mom asks.
“Yeah, in the morning.”
“Oh yeah?” Betsi says, still turned around in her seat. “What’d he have to say?”
“Not much. He asked about you. I told him about the interview—” I realize what she’s been waiting for. “Oh my God, what happened?”
I can see Mom smiling as Betsi begins to relate the details. “I don’t know for sure yet, but they said they’d call. I think they liked me. It’s a really nice dealership, and I’d have my own little area and desk. There’s a mall nearby where I can go on my lunch breaks, and of course once I save up, I’d get a great deal on a car.”
“Betsi, don’t get too ahead of yourself,” Mom says, turning onto our street.
“I know, I know. But I have areally good feeling about this.” Betsi finally faces front in her seat, singing quietly to herself until we pull into the driveway, and it’s not even an Elvis song on the radio.
As soon as we walk inside, the phone rings, and Betsi squeals, but Mom says, “Let me get it, let me get it. You don’t want to seem too desperate.” She picks up the receiver and says “Hello” and “Yes, I’ll get her,” then passes the phone to Betsi.
Betsi plays the game-show host. “This is Betsi Dunn. Yes. I see. Thank youso much for calling.” When she hangs up, we’re all holding our breath, even Peter, who hasn’t said a word since I got into the car. Betsi smiles and says, “They want me to start Monday.”
We’re all jumping up and down as if we’ve won the lottery. Mom says we can order Giacomo’s to celebrate, a treat we never get unless it’s a birthday or sleepover, but she adds, “This is a special circumstance.”
The phone rings again, and this time Betsi answers it first. She rounds the corner with the phone, her voice lowered, the white spiral cord stretching as she moves farther away from us. Mom pulls out the menu for Giacomo’s from the junk drawer and hands it to me for review. The plan is to call Dad at work with the order so he can pick it up on the way home. Betsi comes back into the kitchen a few minutes later and places the phone in the cradle. “I have to go,” she says, her voice calmer and more subdued.
“What do you mean? We’re just about to order,” Mom says.
“I…I have a meeting. Save some for me?” she asks, and Mom nods. Betsi grabs her purse and keys from the kitchen table, waving as she heads out the door.
“She has a work meeting already?” I ask, clutching the menu in my hands.
Mom shakes her head. “No. She’s meeting…I think she probably had to go meet some friends from her clinic.”
“Why?” I ask, trying to force my mother to stop dancing around with her delicate words.
“Did you pick out what you want?” Mom says, ignoring me and turning to load the dishwasher. “Hurry up. I need to catch your father before he leaves.”
Later, we feast on a Veggie Delight, Chicago-style, with bread sticks and salad and even cups of Italian ice for dessert. After I finish my math homework, Mom says we can watch television. We sit in the family room, Mom and Dad on the couch, Peter and me sprawled on the floor. At 10:00P.M. , Mom goes into the kitchen and opens the oven, where she’s kept the pizza warm since dinner. She pulls out foil, wraps the leftover slices, and places them in the refrigerator.
“Should we leave the door unlocked?” Mom asks Dad from the kitchen.
“No,” he says, folding the evening paper in half. “She has a key.” He turns off the television and says to Peter and me, “Time for bed.”
I wake up to voices outside my door, and then the ceiling light switches on abruptly and Dad is shaking my shoulders, saying, “Come with me.” I try to grab my shoes, but he says, “There’s no time,” and picks me up so my feet don’t touch the ground, which he hasn’t done since I was very young.
The hallway smells like smoke, not like Betsi’s cigarettes but like campfire, like burnt toast. My eyes itch and I can’t see anything. Dad takes the stairs in what seems like one leap and then we are outside in the night air, Dad still holding on to me, Mom holding on to Peter, Betsi holding on to herself, the sound of sirens approaching in the distance.
The Parkcrest Motel is only fifteen minutes away, off of I-696. The room has two queen beds and a rollaway. Dad refused to pay for two separate rooms, so he and Mom will share one bed, Betsi and I the other, and Peter will sleep on the rollaway. He’s already brushed his teeth, set his glasses carefully next to the lamp on the nearest table, and tucked himself underneath the white sheets and spongy mustard-colored blanket. There’s no comforter on the rollaway, and I ask Peter if he wants ours, but he doesn’t answer, his eyelids tight as if he’s already asleep. Maybe he is.
A card folded into a triangle on top of the TV declaresFREE HBO , but Mom shakes her head and mumbles, “Not now,” when I reach for the remote that’s Velcroed to the top. After that, no one talks. We each take a turn in the brightly lit bathroom, with the toilet seat sanitized, the roll of paper folded into a triangle at the end like a bandana, and rough white towels stacked overhead on a silver rack. I count only four but decide to wait until morning to point this out to Mom. She’s already called the message center at both my school and Peter’s, explaining a “slight family emergency” that will keep us out until noon or so.
Betsi uses the bathroom last. The rest of us just washed our faces and brushed our teeth, but she turns on the tub, the water harsh and forceful. When I don’t hear the stopper pulled, I think she must be sitting on the edge and rinsing the dirt off her feet. Mom and Dad get into their bed before Betsi finishes. I wait in mine, concentrating on the digital alarm clock. This one has red numbers instead of green, like the one I have at home, and just like last night, I watch the time turn from 1:26 to 1:34. At 1:44, Betsi finally emerges. She smells like bar soap when she slides under the covers next to me, and I don’t know whether I should say anything or pretend I am asleep like everyone else. We’re both lying on our backs, faces toward the ceiling. I can hear her sniffing just slightly, so I reach toward her and find her hands clasped on top of her belly. When I take one of hers to hold with my own, it’s shaking. I tighten my grip and she squeezes back. The room is silent except for her muffled cry and the whir of the radiator that sits underneath the window by the door. I keep holding Betsi’s hand, which is delicate but warm, and soon I can’t tell the difference between hers and my own. My eyes are closed, and it feels like I am falling into my pillow when I hear Betsi whisper, “Presley?”
I turn toward her, catching part of her face in the sliver of moonlight coming in through a crack in the heavy paisley drapes. Her pupils are large and wet, like shiny beetles. “Presley,” she whispers again. “Have you ever looked back on something and thought if you could just hit rewind or call a do-over, you could make things right?” I watch the water in her eyes run over, gently falling toward her mouth. “I feel like that every day of my life.”
“But it was an accident. You didn’t mean for it to happen.” I wonder if my parents are still awake.
“I think I might destroy everything I touch,” she says, biting on her lower lip.
I pause, then squeeze our clasped hands underneath the blankets and say, “Not everything.”
She nods, and we fall asleep like this, facing each other and holding the proof between us for now.
Chapter3
Happy Birthday to Me
The Sunday beforemy fourte
enth birthday, Mom and Betsi are outside preparing the garden for the fall. Actually, it’s Mom doing most of the gardening while Betsi leans on a shovel nearby. Every once in a while, Betsi moves around the piles of dirt in front of her, reshaping them into one large mound, then into three separate smaller hills, and then into a flat pancake. But it’s not really changing anything, like when I push my vegetables around on my dinner plate. No matter how many times I arrange them, they’re still there, waiting to be dealt with. I’m supposed to be outside helping too, but Mom decided my math homework was more important. It’s spread out on the kitchen table next to my calculator and textbook. But algebra can wait. I perch on the kitchen counter near the sink, peeking through the yellow curtains into the backyard.
September isn’t even over, but autumn has crept in quickly and kissed the trees, the leaves stained with gold and rust. Some years we don’t switch the sheets from cotton to flannel until Halloween or later; this year the weather is predicted to turn cold early. Mom kneels on a foam cushion in front of her garden, which holds the remnants of snap peas and baby tomatoes and a patch of mint. Her hands are covered in gardening gloves to protect her from sticks and thorns.
Their conversation floats in through the window, cranked open for the crisp fall air. “I can tell he wants me to go,” I hear Betsi say, resting the shovel against the wheelbarrow, tired of pretending. The “he” is Dad, who left twenty minutes ago for the hardware store to get one more can of Oyster Shell #4143. After the new carpet that went in last week and the final coat of paint, all of the damage to the den will have been repaired. Betsi moved into my room after the fire, though I never see her. I just hear her, either leaving early in the morning for work or coming in late at night after one of her meetings. Sometimes when she gets back, it’s so late that it’s almost time for me to get up for school, but more often than not, she’s also crying—small, brief whimpers—and that’s when I lie as still as possible. I offered to let Betsi sleep in my bed with me but she set up an air mattress on the floor and told me this was all just temporary. It’s been a little over two weeks, and as far as I’m concerned, she can stay in my room forever. Just this morning I found her at the kitchen table, her head in one hand, the other clutching a fat red marker and circling apartment ads, the ink so thick it’s bled through the other side.
“He wants me to go, doesn’t he?” Betsi repeats.
Mom pauses, and I can see the silhouette of her sigh in the cold air. “No, he doesn’t.”
Betsi pulls a cigarette and lighter from the pocket of her puffy baby-blue vest. I don’t see the look Mom gives her, but I hear Betsi say, “What? I’m not anywhere near the house.”
Mom goes back to her business in the garden bed. “Betsi. You can’t possibly afford anything on your own yet. Just give it some time, save some money from your job. We can look after the holidays.”
Sometimes when I hear Mom talking to Betsi, it sounds more like mother to daughter than sibling to sibling, but I’ve seen photos of them together when they’ve seemed more sisterly. My favorite is from a neighborhood Christmas party when my mother was just out of high school. Betsi must have been my age, and she has shiny red tinsel wrapped around her neck like a boa. Both of them have strips of frosty white eye shadow swept across their lids. They are in party dresses, laughing, my mother toasting the room with her champagne glass. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her drink champagne or even wine, but I like looking at proof that she used to celebrate. A few nights ago, I showed Betsi the photo again, and she had the same reaction she always does—“That’s the night your mother met your father”—despite the fact that he’s not even in the picture.
“No one wants you to leave,” Mom says. Betsi snorts. “It was an accident,” Mom reminds her. It’s been said so many times, over the phone, to my friends at school, to the neighbors we bump into at the grocery store, it’s as if the words have lost meaning or become a foreign language. They’re a secret code, a gathering blur of meaningless letters we continue to say over and over again because they’re what we need to believe.
“Well, it doesn’t feel like an accident. He’s acting like I killed someone,” Betsi says, carefully ashing her cigarette into the swirl of coffee turned cold in the bottom of her mug.
“Betsi, don’t be so melodramatic,” Mom says, checking her watch, but I think she knows Betsi’s right, in a way. Dad hasn’t actually spoken to Betsi since that night.
I duck down beneath the curtain to avoid being spotted. Mom’s already set out the ingredients for tonight’s dinner—a can of stewed tomatoes, garlic powder, bread crumbs, a package of ground beef defrosting on a plate. Her meat loaf takes over an hour to prepare and cook, but the house fills with a smell that is rich and spicy. It’s almost better than the actual meal. It’s a smell that makes me forget anything is wrong until I get to the table and the plates of food are passed around wordlessly.
“Maybe I should go stay at Barry and Tim’s,” Betsi says, leaning against the garage, her cheeks flushed, fingers clutching the last puffs of her cigarette.
Mom stops pulling the weeds into the neat cluster next to her. “That’s not necessary. But you’d better put out that cigarette before he gets home.” Betsi drops the butt into the mug, while Mom stays perfectly balanced on her knees and continues to remove what doesn’t belong, salvaging what she can before the air shifts without warning one night soon and ruins everything.
On Friday, the day of my sleepover, Betsi and I make plans to pick up the last item for the party—my birthday cake. I feel too old to be calling it a sleepover, so I’ve been telling people, “I’ve got some people coming over,” like Betsi says when she’s going to meet friends from her group. I remind Chris Carroll of this as we stand in line during basketball drills in gym class, thinking this bit of information might intrigue him enough to ask more details. Instead he just leans down and tightens his laces. “For my birthday,” I add.
“Hannah coming?” he asks, standing back up. I nod and get a final statement of “Sounds cool” before Mr. Lyndon blows his whistle, which means it’s Chris’s turn for a layup. I also invited Jill and Karen, whom I’ve known since fourth grade. This is the group I eat my lunch with, though I like Hannah the best, probably because I’ve known her longest. Jill is a pro at any sport and doesn’t care if she trips, sweats, or falls. She likes to tell us the jokes she hears from the kids she babysits: “Why did the tissue dance? Because it had a little boogie in it!” And she never seems to get upset about anything—boys, grades, her parents, none of it. She just shrugs and recycles another G-rated joke. Karen, on the other hand, has faked illness to get out of gym more than anyone I know. She always seems bored and spends a lot of time talking about what she’d rather be doing, like visiting her aunt in New York City. But she’s fiercely loyal, and the boys shake around her, with her cabaret legs and slinky eyes, so she’s a powerful addition to the group.
Betsi has negotiated a half-day with her dealership, claiming she has a doctor’s appointment. I wait for her at the side stoop by the senior parking lot, my school bag at my feet and my English assignment on my lap—The Great Gatsby. I am working my way through another one of Jay Gatsby’s legendary parties when I hear the doors open behind me and a flurry of strong denim-covered legs file by. One pair stops, and I look up to see Barry. “Hey. You need a ride?”
“Hey. Uh. No. Betsi is coming to get me,” I stammer, trying to hide the book so it doesn’t look like I’m doing homework.
“Really?” Barry asks, almost like he thinks I’m lying. “Isn’t she working?”
“She took a half-day,” I explain. Like Barry, most of his friends are wearing Cavalier varsity jackets because there’s a game tomorrow afternoon. Jack doesn’t wear school colors, let alone a varsity jacket—he doesn’t play football—but he’s the only one who lingers while Barry’s teammates scatter to their cars.
Jack asks me, “What are you reading?” The book is slipped between my knees but not hidden enough.
<
br /> “The Great Gatsby. For English.”
Jack laughs. “Wow, look at that, Barry. Your cousin’s doing homework—on a Friday. Maybe you should try to be more like her.” Barry always gets A’s and B’s, and I’m certain schoolbooks and assignments are the last thing he worries about on Friday afternoons.
He punches Jack in the arm but keeps talking to me. “What are you and Betsi going to do?”
“Pick up my birthday cake. My friends are coming over in a few hours,” I say, tucking the book back into my bag.
“That’s right. It’s your birthday this weekend.”
“Wait—girls are coming over?” Jack says. I don’t think he can stand it unless everyone is paying attention to him in every situation. “Sounds like a sleepover to me!” He claps his hands together, like he just got a brilliant idea, and whistles.
“I don’t believe you’re invited,” Barry tells him. “When’s the family party again?” he asks me.
“Sunday. It’s at your house, remember?” I say, trying to ignore Jack, who is staring at me.
“Right,” Barry says, and then, “Well, okay, I guess I’ll see you Sunday. Is Betsi coming soon?”
“I guess,” I say, and just then she pulls up in her Jeep, the radio blasting an Elvis song.We’re caught in a trap…I can’t walk out…Because I love you too much, baby. She waves to us, and I turn around in time to see Barry give her the “call me” signal. I wonder if they are planning a surprise for me.
“Come on, Moran. We gonna leave sometime this year?” Jack says, less sarcastic and more like he’s actually getting irritated.
“Yeah, yeah, settle down,” Barry tells him, pushing Jack toward his truck. “Happy birthday,” he adds before he walks away.
I grab my bag and run toward Betsi’s Jeep. We have only a couple of hours left to pick up the cake and decorate the basement before the girls come over. Betsi volunteered to act as the official chaperone, and earlier this week we went to Kmart to buy decorations. Everything was mostly for fall or Halloween, but we found some with a tropical motif left over from the summer and on sale. Betsi decided we should keep with the theme and order Hawaiian pizza with pineapple and Canadian bacon and make a punch with Sprite and orange juice. We even found miniature grass skirts for the plastic tumblers. A Hawaiian cake sounded gross, so Mom special-ordered a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting and macadamia nuts. It’s a rectangular cake, one layer, with a girl in a yellow-and-green-frosted hula skirt on the front and “Happy Birthday Presley” scrawled across the top in bright pink. Peter is spending tonight at Grandma Biddie’s just to give us extra privacy. Everything is in place for the perfect party.
The Girl I Wanted to Be: A Novel Page 4
