“He had yellow fever when he was a kid and he has a weak heart. The doctor said he’s supposed to take it easy, you know, not get excited.”
“So?”
“So my mother was bitching out at him, as usual.”
“About what?” I said, peeling paint from my fingernails.
“Oh, she was just nagging and bitching and complaining. She’s been getting like that a lot lately, and he’s so sweet, he just takes it. He’s always nice to her. I can’t stand it! He deserves better, you know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It just got me really upset, you know? So I started defending him. He told me not to, but I couldn’t help it. So she started bitching at me, telling me I was always on his side, and I was a burden and I never help around the house, which is a lie, and I’d never get any place in life anyway and she was wasting all her money on me and why couldn’t I be more like my sister.”
“Then what?” I said in disbelief.
“Then I had hysterics and I started crying and screaming, ‘You don’t love me, you never loved me.’ I really had a tantrum. They couldn’t believe it.”
“Wow,” I said, at a loss. “But, Chloe, you know that isn’t true.”
“What, that she doesn’t love me? Yeah, I know,” she said uncertainly. “But maybe she’s right, maybe I really am awful. She makes me sound like such a monster I start thinking maybe I’m crazy. Am I that bad?”
“You’re the best!” I said angrily. “Boy, could I tell her off. Is she always like this?”
“Lately she’s been bitchy all the time. But sometimes she’s so nice, you wouldn’t believe it’s the same person. I feel so bad for my father.”
“I know. But, Chloe, he’s a grown man,” I said confidently. “He knows her better than you probably ever will. He can take care of himself. So don’t feel guilty about him.”
“But he can’t! He won’t stand up to her!”
“Well,” I said, thinking, that’s his own affair, but it sounded too cold to say. I wanted to tell her she couldn’t protect people from things. It doesn’t work. So not to be miserable. It’s so horrible when you think your parents are helpless. Instead I said, “I hate it when people throw that money business in your face. People who give you things and then never let you hear the end of it. I mean, if that’s how they’re going to be, who wants it?”
“I know!”
“I can’t believe your mother said that. My parents would never even think it.”
“Val. I’ve got to get off.”
“Okay. Hey, what about next week?”
She giggled weakly. “How’s tomorrow?”
I brightened. “Tomorrow night?”
“Would your mother mind my sleeping over?”
I groaned, “You jerk. She loves you. Besides, you’re my one friend. She’ll think it’s healthy for me.”
“Great. Gotta go. See ya in French.”
“Argh. Chloe! There’s a test tomorrow!”
“I know.”
“Did you study?”
“Are you kidding?” she said.
“Me neither. I don’t care. Well, sleep tight.”
“Okay, dollface.” She called me dollface a lot. Sometimes we called each other kid, but dollface was her favorite. Whenever she said it I had a flashing image of a white china doll with 1940-ish Joan Crawford lips and dark curly synthetic hair. I liked it, and when Chloe said it I usually gave her my favorite woebegone look and said, “Who’d buy me?” It was almost a routine. Chloe always answered with, “You’re not for sale.”
Friday morning we left the house at 8:30 and called in sick from a phone booth. Pleased with ourselves but still apprehensive, we scurried to the subway and took it down to Fourth Street. We were safe. Chloe grabbed my arm every five minutes and said, “This is great!” I think that morning was the first time I realized that I’d never had a physical friend before. My friends and I just didn’t touch each other much, at least not on purpose or with feeling, and I had never really noticed that we didn’t, till I met Chloe. She was always clutching me when she was scared or cold or happy, or if I was, and it was as though a door had been opened. A lot of people are so funny about touching each other; like it’s a threat or something. When Chloe hooked her arm onto mine walking on the street, even I had these pangs of What-will-people-think, but then I’d think, This is New York, I’ll probably never see them again, so who cares? Anyway, besides embarrassing me a little, it made me feel—well, warm, I guess. Like I was going someplace with my friend, and even if we weren’t going anyplace special it was special because we were together. Even going noplace was great with Chloe.
Nothing was open yet and it was pretty cold out. Chloe lent me one of her gloves. We decided we’d buy a magazine and sit in Washington Square Park for a while. We chose Vogue because it made us both miserable to look at it and we couldn’t wait to start examining each and every ad.
“I feel so silly being seen with this,” I grumbled. “People will look and go, ‘Tsk, tsk, poor girl, it’s hopeless.’ ”
Chloe groaned and threw her hands in the air. “You’re hopeless. Ha. What I’d give to look like you.”
“You are off your nut, Chloe Fox. I’ve got big boobs and mashed-potato cheeks. You’d have to be insane to want to look like me.”
“Your boobs are perfect, they’re not big. And you’ve got beautiful skin and beautiful eyes and absolutely no hips and you’re five feet, six inches. You’re gorgeous,” she said.
“Your eyes are nicer than mine and I’d give anything to be flat and so what if I’m five-six?” I countered.
“I’m five-four, that’s so what! And look at my poor tits! They sink in!”
I laughed. “At least you don’t bounce around and jiggle when you run. Mine go flying around like superballs and all the New York bums make nasty cracks.”
“I’ll trade any day,” she said.
“You look taller than five-four.”
“Heels. Always.”
I looked at her shoes. “How can you walk?” She shrugged.
“God, listen to us. Garfield girls, cutting school and buying Vogue like a couple of morons. I can’t stand people who read Vogue,” I said with disgust.
“Me either! Isn’t this great?”
We sat huddled together on a bench and looked at every photograph, sighing over our unfortunate anatomical flaws, and pelting insults at all the plastic phony blonds. I made a mental list of my assets and then, tired of reducing myself to that, turned to Chloe and said, “Well, now, dear, and what’s your value on the common market?” She gave me a sour glance and went back to the magazine.
Greenwich Village wakes up later than other parts of the city. When we couldn’t feel our ears anymore, we began walking. Before we got to the thrift shop on West Broadway she’d told me about, we’d consumed several packages of gum and Chloe had a slice of pizza.
“My day off,” she told me between bites. “I shouldn’t eat this. Bad for my skin.”
I’d never heard of thrift shops till I met Chloe. She taught me the whereabouts and price-haggling of wonderful dark places filled with furs, strange velvet dresses, hats, old jackets, tailcoats, and feather boas. And millions of mismatched pajamas. We walked around all day, going into every pokey shop that caught our eye, finding twisted little streets we never knew existed and eating everything we felt like buying.
Chloe liked things I’d never considered before. She adored old pointy-toed spike-heeled shoes if they had a tacky ribbon or rhinestones adorning them. And those pointy glasses women used to wear. She’d pick up what I thought was an outrageous item and gasp, “Oh, I have to have this.” I usually succeeded in talking her out of it; she told me she’d regret it. She said in a year they’d be the latest chic and I’d regret it, too.
In the afternoon we went to a movie we’d both seen before and then we went over to a thrift shop on MacDougal Street. After looking and digging into piles of clothing for a long time, and talking to the man who
worked there, Chloe finally bought an old dress with a big rose pinned to it. I got a belt and a blue velvet blouse. I think it used to be part of a dress, but somebody cut it and hemmed it. When we left, clutching our big brown bags, it was beginning to get dark.
“Look at this—and it’s only four-thirty!” Chloe exclaimed.
“It’s winter,” I reminded her. “I’m freezing.” She took me by the arm. “I want to call my mother and tell her not to worry, okay? Then we can get some mocha.”
“I don’t know if I’ll have enough money,” she said, digging into her pocket.
“I’ll pay. Hey—those were my pants, weren’t they?”
“Mm-hm.”
“They fit you a lot better.”
“That’s because I have big hips,” she acknowledged mournfully. I called home from a booth, and then we went into a small, dark cafe with tables and chairs that didn’t match. The furniture was Victorian-looking and too large for the place; some of the chairs had red velvet upholstery. There was an espresso machine making comforting noises behind the little counter near the entrance. We got the seats we wanted, by the window.
“I love it here,” Chloe sighed, gazing outside and then back at me.
“Me too.”
“Your mother’s great,” she said out of the blue.
“Yeah, I know. She’s almost too great. I can’t match it,” I told her, feeling I’d said something important that she wouldn’t hear.
“Well, kid, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.” She shrugged. “I wish my mother were more like yours.”
“Yeah, but you’d feel guilty, too. You’re as screwy as I am. Chloe, am I strange?”
“Whaddya mean are you strange?”
“Last Passover I was at my relatives’ house, you know? We all get together for holidays. When we got home, my mother said they all think I’m strange. So I said, ‘They like me, don’t they?’ So she said, ‘Well—they’d do anything for you!’ ” I made a face. “So I said, ‘That’s ’cause I’m your daughter.’ ”
The man came over to take our order. We both ordered mocha—coffee and hot cocoa with whipped cream.
“So anyway, she said, ‘Of course, people love their relatives!’ which is ridiculous, because I hate half of them. Except my mom went through the war, so I guess that changes things. So I said, ‘Well, I don’t. I can’t stand blah blah blah,’ you know. Are you bored?”
“With you?”
“So she said,” I continued, “ ‘They think you’re strange,’ and I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘Well—unconventional. Like Joey Moskowitz came up and kissed me. Did you kiss the Moskowitzes?’ ” I rolled my eyes. “I said, ‘Of course I didn’t. I see them once a year and I don’t even know them and I don’t know if I’d like them if I did! If I went around kissing everyone, what would kissing mean?’ ”
“You’re not strange.”
“Besides which, I don’t have any friends, except for you.”
“Well, neither do I,” said Chloe.
“That doesn’t make me feel any better!” She looked hurt. “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t need them. I just meant I can’t figure out why. If you ever left, forget it.”
“I consider not having friends at Garfield a compliment,” Chloe said pointedly.
“Mm, maybe.”
The mocha came. It looked delicious.
“Val? You know, I saw a shrink for a few months.”
I was dumbstruck. “When?”
“Eighth grade.”
“Why?”
“My mother made me go.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Oh, I was depressed a lot. These people at school told her I wasn’t well adjusted.”
I spooned some whipped cream thoughtfully. “Did it help?”
“No. He was an idiot, anyway. He thought he knew all the answers.”
“Hm. Wow.” This was a new idea to me. I always thought shrinks were supposed to know all the answers.
“Now I know anyone who is well adjusted at that place needs a shrink!” she added.
“I want to go to a shrink too, sometimes, but then I figure I don’t need to. Maybe I just don’t want to find out anything awful.”
“Yeah,” she said, not really listening.
“You know, Ben asked my mother if he could go to one.”
“Ben?” she squealed. “He’s in second grade!”
“Yeah, but a few of his friends go. Can you imagine? But Ben says this one kid who used to be impossible is getting a lot better. Ben wants to be either a shrink or a hockey player.”
Chloe laughed. “Why a shrink?”
“He says he wants to hear all those crazy stories.”
“I like your brother.”
“Everybody likes him,” I said with disdain. “I hate his guts. But I love him. He’s a great kid.” I knew it all fit together somehow. Chloe smiled, so I knew it was all right.
“What’d your mother tell him about seeing a shrink?”
“She told him when he was older and could pay for it and if he still wanted to go, he could, but that she thought he could handle things pretty well right now. It’s bad to ship your kids to a shrink the minute they have a hard time, they’ll wind up basket cases if nobody trusts them to do anything themselves. Don’t ya think?”
“Mmmm.”
I turned and looked out the window. People scuttled by in herds, all hunched over and worried-looking. I sighed, glad that I was inside with Chloe and not in any hurry to leave.
“You know,” I said, “it’s incredible when you think how many people there are in the world. Like sometimes I think how every person is a soap opera, you know?”
“Yeah, and you always think your problems are just the worst, when there are millions of people probably thinking your problems are nothing compared to theirs!”
“I guess you’ve got to think you’re important. Chloe—” I leaned forward. “When I get depressed I pretend someone’s watching me on a hidden TV screen.”
“Yeah? I do that, too, sometimes. I pretend I’m some mythical mysterious girl that everyone wonders about,” she said, grinning darkly.
“Exactly. I guess I just like thinking someone’s watching when I’m all—all alone; it makes being depressed glamorous instead of depressing, you know? And I don’t mean God, who probably isn’t there anyway.” Chloe nodded. Not really believing in God was a recent development, and I hadn’t told anyone how I felt, but then no one ever asked me one way or the other. I guess Mom and Dad just assumed that I knew God was there, but I wasn’t sure anymore. When Grandma was alive and I went to temple with her I did, but figured I was so wicked and so beyond hope and there were so many rules I’d broken, I couldn’t begin to get upset over it. Still, she had made me certain that there was a God; she was history, and tradition, and culture, she cried on the holidays, her very existence was proof that God was there and that being a Jew meant believing this. But after she died, temple was never the same again, and I began to wonder. What kind of a God would sit back and watch something like World War II and not do anything? And if he did watch it happen, why should I spend my time praying? I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about someone I wasn’t sure was there and wasn’t willing to prove it; if God was there, He was just sitting back taking it all in so I never relied on His help in anything. If anything good or bad happens, I thought, people make it happen, not some God. I probably could have psyched myself into believing, but I thought people get lonely or desperate or awful things happen to them so they pray, thinking at least someone has time to listen and someone cares, and I didn’t want to talk myself into being religious. Maybe one day I’ll wake up believing, and that would be nice.
I came out of my daze and poured a packet of sugar into my mouth. “Hey, Chlo? What’s your favorite color?”
“Dark blue. No, aqua. Well, actually, I don’t have a favorite color, except to wear.”
“Me neither. I love colors. I guess gre
en and blue, if I had to pick. What’s your favorite color to wear?”
“Black,” she said without hesitation. I had never really worn black until I met her; she was always wearing black and I loved it, so I had started wearing it, too. Whenever we met each other we looked ready for a funeral. I looked over at her and then down at myself. We were both in black shirts, black sweaters, and black corduroy pants.
“You look like a minister.” I giggled.
She bowed her head and raised it, baring her teeth. “Confess! Confess!”
I gazed at her for a moment, struck by the energetic beauty of her face. Her lips looked as though they had lipstick on them, but they didn’t; her cheeks were flushed, her eyes burned like blue gas jets, and her thick hair seemed to have a life of its own. “I’d like to paint you,” I told her.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“Why?”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, ignoring the question. “Maybe we should get going.”
“Okay.” She collected her cameras and bags and put on her enormous plaid coat while I paid. She must take hours undoing herself at night, I thought. You wouldn’t know it to look at her because all four layers of shirts and sweaters were black, and it was hard to see exactly what she was wearing. She was carrying a big fishing-tackle bag, three cameras, several paper bags and her pockets bulged with rolls of film and Chapstick and keys and Kleenex.
We stepped outside into the darkness. The street was deserted.
“Val, what’d you tell Lewis you had?”
“A virus. That’s what doctors always say when they don’t know what the hell’s wrong with you,” I said, hopping off the curb and back up again. “Nice and vague. What about you?”
“Sore throat,” she said gagging.
“Are we terrible?”
“Nah.” We walked to the park and sat down at the chess tables. A man came out of nowhere and asked us if we’d be interested in some acid. We said no thank you. He tipped his hat.
“Well, at least he was polite. Ben got mugged for a Yo-Yo last year, you know.” Chloe laughed. “It isn’t funny.”
“It just sounded so pathetic,” she apologized.
“You know that other new girl, Corrie Phillips?”
Hey, Dollface Page 3
