Betsi says, “Hey, birthday girl!” and gives me a big hug. Then she says, “I am so excited for your party. It’s going to be great.” She peels out of the parking lot, and I wish there were more people around to see me leaving in Betsi’s open-top Jeep.
We head toward the bakery, and I pull my hair into a ponytail so it won’t whip around from the wind. Betsi’s hair has grown a little bit, and she has two rhinestone bobby pins holding her bangs back over her sunglasses, which are shaped like cat’s eyes. “What was Barry doing?” she asks, turning the radio down and reaching for the cigarette lighter.
“Nothing. Just asking about the family party on Sunday. He didn’t even remember it was at his house!” I tell her, watching her light the cigarette.
Betsi laughs the first drag out. “Figures!”
“He asked me if you were coming too.”
“He did, huh?” she says, taking another drag and a left toward Magdalena’s bakery. “Who was that other guy?”
“His best friend, Jack. He’s annoying.”
“Why? He’s totally cute, and he was way into you.”
“He was not!” I say, truly disgusted by the idea. “What makes you think that? You only saw him for, like, two seconds.”
“Oh, believe me, I can tell,” she says, mysterious and certain.
“Well, I totally hate him. He makes me feel stupid, and besides, he’s a senior.” I flip the radio stations for something current. “I did, however, make sure Chris Carroll knew I was having a party tonight.”
“How can you even stand guys your own age?” she asks, pulling up in front of the bakery. “You’re fourteen now. You need to broaden your horizons! Let me tell you something about love, Presley. There are some guys out there who are the kind of guys you want to spend a lifetime with, and there are others who are just more of a temporary comfort—like mashed potatoes and gravy. There’s nothing wrong with mashed potatoes and gravy. In fact, it’s important, sometimes even better, to go with the mashed potatoes and gravy, just as long as you don’t get caught up in eating them for the rest of your life. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” I have no idea what she means.
“Did you know when I was a Crescent City Cavalier, I made out with the assistant coach for the boys’ hockey team?”
“You did not!” I say.
“Yes, I did.” She turns off the ignition. The sunlight catches the top of her mirrored glasses, bouncing off sideways and diagonal. “Tommy Shorer. He was twenty-two and just out of the state college. I used to go to the games. Everyone thought I was dating one of the defensemen, but really I’d wait for Tommy afterward, and he’d drive me home in his Chevy Nova and we’d turn off by St. Mary’s and make out in the church parking lot. The next fall he moved to Boston to get his MBA, so that was that. But he was beautiful, and he was a man. And he was mashed potatoes and gravy.” Betsi takes off her glasses so I can see her clearly in the light. “Aloha. Now let’s go get that cake.”
The basement is decorated with green and yellow and orange streamers, bright tropical colors to bring festive feelings into the room. Dad’s card table is set up and covered by a paper tablecloth printed with palm trees around the edges. On top sit the pizza boxes, one plain cheese, the other with ham and pineapple, next to bowls of tortilla chips and salsa and candy dishes full of peanut M&M’s, my favorite. The napkins and paper plates match the tablecloth, and we also bought leis in a different color for each girl—pink, yellow, red, and orange. Betsi took some of her scarves and laid them over the lamps, so the light is hazy and warm like it is in dreams or when you first wake up and don’t realize where you are.
Hannah is the first to arrive, with a large box wrapped perfectly in silver paper and an icy-blue bow. She brings it downstairs with her sleeping bag, also silver, the professional kind used for camping expeditions on places like Mount Everest. “My dad’s,” she explains, and I nod but pull one of the extra sheets Mom brought downstairs over my Crayola sleeping bag that I got in sixth grade. Luckily, Jill shows up moments later. Her bag is covered with rainbows and a giant unicorn in the center, and she makes no apologies for it. Her present is still in the Perry’s drugstore sack, the envelope for the card unsealed. Karen shows up last, with a simple navy blue sleeping bag and a small box wrapped in Christmas paper. “It was all we had,” she explains, shrugging and grabbing a handful of M&M’s.
We turn up our favorite station on the radio—I already warned Betsi no Elvis records at this party—and pass around plates of pizza, licking the grease off our fingers as Betsi tells us stories about teachers she had at Cavalier High who are still there. “You guys have heard the rumors about Mrs. Franken and the Spanish teacher, right?”
“No way,” says Jill. “I heard he was gay.”
“Nah, he’s just a little fem,” Betsi assures us. “They are definitely getting it on. My ex–best friend Katie caught them after school one day when she went in for extra credit.” The girls squeal with disgust at the image.
“Why don’t you ever talk about Katie anymore?” I ask. When I was very young, they used to babysit me together. I have faint memories of Katie feeding me cheddar Goldfish crackers while Betsi stretched the kitchen phone as far as it would go to reach the back porch door so she could talk and smoke at the same time.
“Ugh.” Betsi groans. “Don’t remind me. What an evil bitch she turned out to be.”
“What do you mean?” Karen asks.
“Oh, I was going out with this guy. Shit, what was his name? Brett. No, Brad. No, wait—it was Brent. Whatever. Anyway, Brent was always studying, and he never wanted to go out, so I broke up with him. Then, like two weeks later, Katie went on a date with him.”
“But didn’t you break up with him?” I ask.
“Well, technically—but Presley, that’s not the point. There are certain codes of conduct between girlfriends that should be respected. Honestly, being friends with girls is so…draining. Girls are so competitive and backstabbing.” We look around the room at one another and then at Betsi as she pulls pieces of pineapple off her slice of pizza, popping them in her mouth. When she realizes we’re staring at her, she adds, “Oh, well, not you girls—you’re different, I’m sure.”
We’re all too stuffed from pizza to move on to cake. Hannah says, “Why don’t we call Chris Carroll?” in a singsongy voice.
I’m about to protest when Betsi says, “Screw the telephone. You don’t need to call Chris Carroll to find out what he thinks. Your best bet for information is a Ouija board.”
“Those are so fake,” Karen says.
“Not if you use it right,” Betsi says. She stands up and heads toward the toy closet where we keep the board games, Sorry, Trouble, Monopoly. She digs around in the back for a minute and pulls out a box.
“I didn’t even know we had that,” I say.
“It used to be mine. I gave it to your mom a long time ago for you and Peter, but I can see that didn’t happen. The trick is to balance the board on everyone’s knees, not on the floor, so we have to sit real close, cross-legged, like this.” Betsi has turned off all the lights and grabbed Dad’s flashlight from his toolbox in the laundry room. She seems so certain that we follow her instructions without question, creating a pentagon. The letters face Betsi, and she places the pointer on the lower part of the board, what she calls the “neutral position,” and tells each of us to place two fingers on the edge of it. Our hands all look different: Hannah’s nails short and polished pearly pink; Jill’s chewed and frayed and naked; Karen’s manicured but clear; mine with chipped purple polish; and Betsi’s long, red, and sharp, clicking on the plastic pointer.
“Now, we need to contact someone who has passed, who can act as our guide. How about Elvis?” We all groan. For a minute I wonder if maybe we should try to contact Aunt Marie, mostly to ask her if Dad will ever again acknowledge Betsi’s presence. But no one else mentions Aunt Marie, not Betsi, not even Hannah who knew me back then, so I agree to Elvis and scoot in closer.
>
Dad’s flashlight sits upright in the center, glowing and beaming toward the ceiling like a spotlight. Betsi tells us to close our eyes as she says in a low, serious, throaty voice, “Oh, Great Spirit World. We ask for the spirit of Elvis to come forth and guide us in our journey.” Someone giggles—I think it’s Jill, but Betsi shushes her and tries again. “Oh, Great Spirit of Elvis. Are you here to guide us through our journey?” It’s completely silent except for the ticking of the furnace in the laundry room. On my back I think I feel the slightest chill, as if someone left a window open in another room, and then I feel the pointer move. We all open our eyes and see it turned toward the “Yes” printed on the board. No one asks who moved it, afraid to find out that maybe no one did.
Then Betsi says, “Thank you, Great Spirit of Elvis. Tell us…does someone in this room have a secret admirer?” The pointer circles around “Yes” again. I know I’m not moving it—at least I don’t think I am—and everyone else seems fixated on the board. “Will the secret admirer reveal themselves soon?” she says, and the pointer begins to circle again but lingers in the corner. Betsi takes a deep breath and asks, “Great Spirit of Elvis. Can you tell us the name of the secret admirer?”
The pointer sits still for a moment and then begins creeping closer to the individual letters at the top of the board, circling around the beginning of the alphabet. I think it’s about to spell it out for us, but then it slides abruptly back to “No” just as Mom opens the door at the top of the stairs and yells, “What are you guys doing down there?” We all shriek and the board flies up from our legs, the pointer rolling underneath the table.
“We’re just playing a game,” Betsi says, motioning toward us with her finger over her lips.
“Well, finish it up. It’s time for cake.” We scramble to put the board back in the box but have forgotten to pack the pointer when Mom and Dad come downstairs. Everyone begins to sing loud and off-key or in falsetto. Dad is carrying the cake with fourteen candles lit on top, the flames flickering over the hula girl so she looks almost alive. Our faces glow, and I watch Betsi catch Dad’s eye. He continues singing but smiles at her for the first time in weeks. When I close my eyes and blow out the candles, I wish for everything to stay exactly how it is in this moment—no yelling, no whispers behind closed doors at night, no Betsi crying in her sleep, just everyone singing and waiting for their piece of something sweet.
We’re all huddled in our sleeping bags with the lights off, watchingGrease on the VCR for the third time that night. Betsi is in her makeshift sleeping bag of comforters and afghans on the floor next to me at the end of the row of girls. The opened gifts sit near the wall in a pile of paper and tissue—the LeSport-sac purse Hannah brought, a stack of lip glosses and eye shadows from Jill, and a bracelet from Karen with charms of hearts and stars. Betsi’s present will come tomorrow, at the family party.
We’ve all made bets on who will stay up the latest, but everyone is already asleep except for me and Betsi. We sing quietly under our breath, “Summer Nights” and “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee,” but by “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” I feel myself drifting off. I can sense light even behind my closed eyes, and I create my own movie. Chris Carroll knocks lightly on the basement window and brings me a small box with a silver locket on a chain. He presses it into my hand and kisses me softly on the lips, escaping back into the night, the locket warm in my palm like a secret.
I wake up before I find out what’s inside. The TV screen glows bright blue, the VCR clock reads 1:58A.M. , and Betsi is gone. I sit up slightly, listening for sounds from upstairs, but there’s nothing, just the ticking furnace again. I hear a small muffled noise, and then another, and I think it’s Betsi on the phone in the laundry room. I creep toward the door, avoiding the spots in the carpet that have a tendency to creak, and get close enough to hear her say, “I think I’m in love with you.” Then I walk backward, retracing my steps, and slide back beneath the crayons on my covers, wondering who is on the other end of the line before I fall back into sleep.
After a quick breakfast of hot apple cider and cinnamon toast, the girls gather their things, delivering their polite thank-yous to my parents as they leave. I am tasked with basement cleanup duty, and Betsi offers to help. In the daylight, the dust in the basement is more visible, coating the shelves near the TV and the lamp shades. Betsi attacks the rings left behind by our cups on the end tables with a bottle of Windex. I tug at the streamers taped to the corners of the ceiling, and some of them break in half. I crumple what I can in my hands, leaving behind some strands of color until I can get to a higher point.
I finally ask the question that has been running through my mind all morning: “Who were you on the phone with last night?”
Betsi stops humming “You’re the One That I Want” and turns to face me, Windex still in hand. “What are you talking about?” she asks, her voice tight.
“I heard you. On the phone. Late last night?” She tries to keep her expression blank. “Do you have a boyfriend?” I drag out the last word, imitating Hannah’s singsongy voice from last night, and continue with “Betsi’s got a boyfriend, Betsi’s got a boyfriend!”
“Oh, shut it, Pres. What are you, four or fourteen?” She sounds irritated, but just slightly, and she’s also smirking. I take this as a sign that it’s okay to continue my line of questioning.
“I won’t sayanything —I promise.” I tie the garbage bag shut and flop down on the couch, hoping she’ll join me. She does.
“Don’t, because your mother will flip out and start asking questions, and I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. God, I need a cigarette.”
“It sounded like a big deal,” I tell her, grabbing a stale leftover chip from the bowl on the table.
She laughs. “How much did you hear, you little shit?”
“Not that much.” I pass her the bowl. “Enough,” I admit. “What’s he like?”
Betsi stops before taking a bite and thinks about her answer. “When he’s with me, he acts completely different than he does when he’s around everyone else. He’s really sweet and open, and we laugh all the time. He says I make him laugh more than anyone has in years. He tells me I am the only person he doesn’t have to pretend in front of. He says I make him feel alive.”
“Oh.” My mind is blank, my mouth empty of real words. I’ve never heard her talk like this. After a moment, I ask, “Do you love him?” Before I can stop myself, I add, “I heard you say you thought you did.”
She snaps a quick look at me but waves away her initial response with her hand. “I don’t know how I feel. It’s complicated, Presley.”
“How? Is he…mashed potatoes and gravy?”
Betsi is silent. When I look at her, I see her eyes watering, her lower lip quivering slightly. “He’s—”
“How are you girls coming along down there?” Mom yells from the top of the stairs.
“We’re almost finished,” I yell back, shuffling the garbage bag for sound effect.
Betsi stands up quickly. “That’s right, Pres. Just mashed potatoes and gravy. Our secret, okay?” she says, tucking the Windex underneath her arm and grabbing up her damp paper towels from around the room. I nod even though she isn’t looking at me, fixated instead on a cobweb hovering near the last cluster of streamers that need to come down.
My party at Uncle Tim and Barry’s house starts at 4:00 on Sunday, after church services and, more important, after the football game. Dad leaves for Uncle Tim’s at noon to pick up a cake from the grocery store, which will likely be one of the generic ones from the bakery section, round and yellow with chocolate frosting. Maybe Dad will remember to ask them to add my name to the top. Mom says we should also take the leftover corner from my sleepover party cake. I pull the saran-wrapped chunk out of our freezer to defrost, staring at what’s left: a portion of the Hawaiian girl’s raised arm and her face, and the flowers around her neck cut off just above her bikini.
“I’ll stay at Tim’s until you get there,�
�� Dad tells my mother. “No sense in coming back this way.” Uncle Tim and Barry live only five minutes away from us by car, and sometimes we even walk over there if the weather is good enough and we’re not carrying too much. We both know what Dad really wants to do—park himself on the couch with Uncle Tim to watch the Lions play at 1:00.
“They’re brothers,” Mom explains as Dad backs out of the driveway. “That’s what brothers do.”
As expected, when the rest of us get there, we find Dad and Uncle Tim planted in front of the TV with their feet on the coffee table, chips and beef jerky spread out next to a few cans of beer, arguing about who made the better play and why the team was robbed once again. Mom hands me a large tray of her homemade lasagna to take to the kitchen and goes back outside for the rest of the foil-covered items. Betsi carries in a bowl of what she calls her specialty, a salad with Italian dressing and homemade croutons and freshly shredded Parmesan cheese. The rule is, whoever hosts the party doesn’t have to supply the food or cook, just get the place clean and tidy up afterward. I’d rather be in charge of the food, because whenever we host the parties, I’m always the one who gets stuck dusting, loading the dishwasher, and throwing things away.
The Girl I Wanted to Be: A Novel Page 5
