“Oh, Chloe, what did you do?”
“I said no, I don’t think so. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.” I gave her an exasperated look. “You know, Val, when your father dies, everything’s so different. I feel so old.” I listened to her, transfixed. “I was always Daddy’s little girl, you know? I mean, Julie was the oldest, but I was his little princess. That’s what he called me. It was so weird, being in that car. I’m not his little girl anymore.” She paused, finishing her wine and placing the glass on the table. “He was always so glad to see me when I came home, even just from your house. Now I can’t stand coming home.”
I held her hand. What can I tell her? I thought. That it scares me to hear her say that, because I know it will happen to me too? That I wish I could help her? How can I help anyone?
“How’s your mother doing?”
“Oh, rotten,” Chloe said with a groan. “It’s terrible to see her, Val. She’s so depressed all the time. I keep her company every night, but there’s nothing to talk about. I can’t tell her things like you can tell your mother.”
“I’m lucky, I guess.”
“You sure are. And what’s my mother got to look forward to? Getting old. She’ll never remarry, and after I leave home she’ll be all alone. She doesn’t even have friends. Not close friends.”
“Why not?” I said, feeling pleasantly woozy.
“I guess because she has such high standards, people disappoint her, and she’s hard to get close to anyway. So she doesn’t make friends. You know, in a crazy way I feel like I should become her companion and live with her after we get out of school.”
I looked at her in horror. “Chloe, you can’t do that!”
“Oh, I know, and I wouldn’t. I’d go crazy. But—do you know what I mean?”
I nodded. Poor Chloe: first she feels responsible for her father, and now she feels responsible for her mother.
“Chloe, you’re too young to worry about stuff like that,” I said.
“Oh?” She glanced up at me and I touched her cheek.
“Chloe, you’re my best friend. My only one. I’d do anything to make you feel better. Anything, just name it. That doesn’t help much, does it?”
“Yes, it does.” She got up rather unsteadily to turn off the TV, laughing at herself. “I think we drank that wine too fast, I feel really drowsy.”
“Me too. In a nice way, though.”
“Mm. Let’s go upstairs, okay? I don’t want to be down here swaying when my mother gets home.”
“Sure. Are we sleeping up there?”
“Yup.”
We climbed the stairs and walked through the bed-room to Chloe’s painting room.
“Your own studio,” I said dreamily.
Chloe laughed. “My mother says it’s a dump,” she said, mimicking her mother’s voice.
“I love dumps.” The room looked the way it always did; easels, oil paints, cartons overflowing with clothing everywhere. Chloe dug up a few pairs of old shorts and tossed them to me.
“Want ’em?”
“Yeah, thanks. Chlo, where’ll you be all summer?”
“Oh, we might go away for a couple of weeks this month, to Connecticut. Then I’ll just be here. Maybe work at my mom’s law firm.”
“Good. I’ll probably be in and out of the city after this stupid job.”
We wandered back into the bedroom.
“You sleep in here,” Chloe said.
“What about you?’’
“I can sleep on the cot in there.”
“But it’s stuffy in there! I’ll sleep in there.” But she wouldn’t let me. We changed into big shirts and I got into bed and so did she. Five minutes later I heard her voice in the dark.
“Val? Are you asleep?”
“Are you crazy?”
“It’s hot in here. Do you mind if I sleep with you?”
“Come on.”
She stepped in like a ghost, her shirttail bobbing, the moonlight giving her an unearthly glow. “Get in!” I said, and she did.
“Thanks a lot. It’s much cooler in here.”
I can’t believe it, I thought. I’m actually insulted because she only came in to be cooler. Didn’t she? Sure she did. She doesn’t think of twisted things like I do! Or are they twisted? I want to tell her, I thought. When it’s dark and she can’t see my face. I lay there working up the courage to do it, and finally said, “Chloe?” but she’d fallen asleep. A little relieved, I looked around at the vague outlines of furniture, feeling comfortably hazy and liquid from the wine. Chloe’s clothing on top of the dresser looked like an elephant looming in the dark, the way it was piled. Maybe I am horrible after all, I thought. Maybe she’d never think of me except as a friend. But then maybe she would. But why hasn’t she said anything? She’d be scared, like I am, probably. But Chloe isn’t scared of things like that; she never listens to what anyone says and she doesn’t care what people think. No, that’s not true; she cares what her mother thinks. Oh, rats. What’s wrong with me?
Suddenly Chloe trembled and began to whimper.
“Chloe, what’s wrong?” I said, propping myself up on my elbow and reaching out to her with my other hand. “Chloe, wake up.”
She slowly turned her head around and blinked. “She was yelling at me and I was yelling back, it was my fault he died—”
I reached for her shoulder impulsively and my hand met her body.
“Shh, Chloe, it’s okay, it’s only a dream,” I whispered. Where am I touching her? I wondered. I shifted my hand, trying to find her head, but it wasn’t there. Then it hit me. I, Valerie Hoffman, am touching her breast. But why hadn’t she moved away or turned around? My heart pounding, I went on, slipping my other arm around her and stroking her back gently, the way Mom used to stroke mine when I cried.
“But it was my fault,” she said, crying softly.
“No, it wasn’t. You weren’t even there. It was just a bad dream. Shh, come on.”
“Oh, Val,” she said, and placed her hand over mine, the one that was on her breast. She held it there for a while, and then I eased it around her back and massaged her, holding her close to me. This isn’t sick at all, I thought, closing my eyes. Everything I’m doing I’m doing because it’s what my instinct says to do. She felt warm and frail beneath her shirt as she huddled closer to me. My entire body felt as though a generator had gone on. Miss Udry’s words came back to me: sexual attraction. Is that what I’m feeling right now—me, normal Valerie—from Riverside Drive? She wants me to do this, I thought. I’m not making it up; it’s happening. But what is it that’s happening? Only that we’re holding each other and it feels good. Is it wrong to feel good about doing this?
Chloe lowered her head and rested it on my breasts. They must make a great pillow, I thought, laughing silently at myself. Maybe they’re not so bad to have after all. My arm was still around her, and I kept it there. She gave me a little sigh and seemed to fall asleep.
Then I heard footsteps. A bolt of fear shot through me: Mrs. Fox must be home. Is she coming up the stairs? I wanted to get up and shut the door, but before I had a chance to move, I saw the top of her head above the banister outside the room. I closed my eyes and froze, waiting.
The footsteps stopped. I lifted my lids just enough to see what was going on. Mrs. Fox was standing at the top of the stairs, peering in at us. I closed my eyes again and held by breath; it was the longest minute of my life. When I heard footsteps again I opened my eyes to look. She was gone.
What did she see? I thought wildly. What did she think? Chloe lay still as a rock and after a while bent her leg up and rested it on mine, moving her head up onto her pillow. I watched her sleeping face, my mind blank with fear; I don’t know when I finally fell asleep.
Dim yellow-gray light pushed its way into my thick sleep. I squinted and opened my eyes with difficulty, as the events of the night slowly surfaced in my mind, waking me with a sickening lurch. Did I dream it? No, not this time. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes a
nd looked at my watch. 6:45. Pretty soon they’ll wake up, I thought; pretty soon we’ll have to have breakfast together. Is Mrs. Fox going to say anything? Should I tell Chloe she saw us? Is Chloe going to pretend last night never happened? How could she, even if she wanted to? But what does it mean? I looked over at her face poking out of the sheets, her hair spread over the pillow. I’m scared, I thought. I feel like I was caught at something terrible. The light coming through the window was cold and unsympathetic.
I crept out of bed and put on my rumpled clothes, which I’d left in a heap on the floor. Fully dressed and holding my shoes, I looked back at Chloe’s sleeping figure once more and then inched my way stealthily down the stairs. I got my bag from the den, opened the back door as quietly as I could, and ran down the gravel driveway and up to the bus stop at the end of the street, shivering in the morning sun.
11
I waited three days for Chloe to call. Every time the phone rang, my heart skipped a beat, but it was never her; whenever I came home from doing an errand or buying things I needed for Easthampton, like Tampax and deodorant and stuff, I asked Mom if anyone had called, but no one had. I started to call her twice, but hung up both times before I got to the last number. I really drove myself crazy trying to figure out why Chloe hadn’t called. Mrs. Fox must have told her she saw; maybe she even forbade Chloe to have anything to do with me, I thought, forgetting that no one could stop Chloe from doing anything if she really wanted to. Otherwise, why wouldn’t she call me? It was either that, or else I was wrong thinking Chloe had wanted me to touch her. Maybe it was just the wine, and when she remembered everything the next day she was disgusted. She’s probably scared of me; maybe she thinks I’m horrible and never even wants to see me again.
So I brooded for three days, knowing that finally something had happened that we couldn’t ignore. When we see each other again, I thought, how can we go on being friends as though nothing had happened? It isn’t something vague we can avoid talking about, the way it was before the other night, I told myself. What will she say? What will I say? Why won’t she call me?
Then, before I could even get up the courage to call Chloe and say good-bye, I was whisked off to the Hamptons.
The job was a disaster from the start. The Baskwells turned out to be the type of rich people that tried to look poor and had scads of friends as sham as they were, and they all went to dumb parties and drank and talked about dumb things and laughed at jokes that weren’t funny and the men made passes at their friends’ wives. I knew that because a few of the parties were at our house, and since it was too noisy to read or think, I listened through the paper-thin walls of my room. You could hear everything perfectly because the walls were made of cheap beaverboard; the outside was plain and gray, like all the other beach houses.
The Baskwells were just renting the place, so I couldn’t blame them for the decor, which consisted of things like a big fake fish hanging over a big fake fireplace in the living room, and furniture sets that looked like they’d been won on a TV game show. I heard them saying it was tacky to some friends of theirs, but I didn’t think much of their style, either. They were the type of people that would poke holes in their jeans. The first three nights I couldn’t take a bath because Mrs. Baskwell, who was tall, flat-chested, frosted blond, and had mean green eyes and high cheekbones, had filled the tub with bleach and blue jeans. I guess it was part of their looking “rugged.” Mr. and Mrs. Baskwell were always talking about being “rugged” and looking “rugged,” only they couldn’t pronounce their r’s, so it was “wugged.” I laughed to myself whenever they said it, thinking what a kick Chloe would get out of it, and then remembered I’d decided not to write to her. I tried writing a few times the first week, but the letters never sounded right. I was afraid of not being able to see her reaction to what I was trying to say, or even worse, of the possibility that she wouldn’t read them. So I tore them up. If I tell her anything, I decided, it has to be in person.
It’s funny, you’d think being in a house in Easthampton right by the beach would be nice, but it was hell. If Mr. and Mrs. Baskwell rubbed me the wrong way, it was nothing compared to their three kids. They drove me bananas. Colin was seven, and the eldest. He was hyperactive, and his hands never stopped flailing and thrashing. If he wasn’t hitting Lilli, who was two, he was punching Stevie, and then he got wild; and if he wasn’t doing that, he was hitting me, screaming and yelling the whole time. I was ready to quit and run out the door at least ten times each day, and ordinarily I’m not a quitter, but I was really miserable and those damn kids threw tantrums like they were going out of style. According to Mrs. Baskwell, however, I was not to reprimand them. I was to be calm and ignore it. She had this nasty way of saying things, like I was some sort of monster for wanting to discipline her kids, so I didn’t argue; I gritted my teeth a lot.
“Mommy, I’m too tired [scream] to brush my teeth—you do it.” Colin shrieked like that every night, and half the time Lilli would wake up and start howling, and when that happened I wanted to kill them both. Stevie was no prize, either; he threw rocks at other people’s cars. Really, that’s what he’d do when we weren’t at the beach, just sit in the driveway throwing rocks at cars. Mrs. Baskwell acted like she’d never heard of discipline; I think she must have read some screwy permissive child-care book. After a week of being there I found out she had an ulcer and took Librium (I checked the cabinet in her bathroom) but I didn’t feel sorry for her.
The second week it rained almost every day; you can imagine what being cooped up in that house was like. It was a nightmare. In between whining, “Whadda we do now,” Colin broke three vases in the living room and Lilli got hold of Mr. Baskwell’s razor and cut her lip. Of course, that was my fault; I was too busy scraping off the Silly Putty Stevie got on the couch to watch her. It was like that for days. My hair frizzed out like blown circuits, I caught a cold, and life was never less appealing.
The first decent afternoon after the rain, Mrs. Baskwell made me take the kids into the ocean, which wasn’t unreasonable except that I was sick, and they deducted $1.50 for a bottle of Dristan from my $45.00 for that week. By then Mrs. Baskwell had railroaded me into “helping out” with the housework, too, which wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal, and “helping out” meant doing everything. I don’t know why I didn’t tell her to go jump in the ocean; that’s what Chloe would do, I thought to myself one morning as I was changing the linen. Chloe would tell her off; she wouldn’t take this crap. Chloe! I sighed, feeling miserable, and finished pulling off Colin’s top-bunk sheets.
* * *
I met Anne on the beach one day. Maryanna Porco, to be exact. She was a mother’s helper, too, and she began visiting me in the evenings. She was kind of boring, Catholic like Chloe was (only I don’t think Chloe believed a word of it), had the worst case of acne I’d ever seen, and she was very nice in a prim sort of way. She was a poor substitute for Chloe, but then anyone was, and I was grateful for her company.
“Colin wets his bed every night!” I told her one evening as we were whispering in my tiny room.
“Oh, boy,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“And he won’t let his parents close their bedroom door at night.”
“Won’t let them?”
“She lets that maniac dictate around here,” I grumbled.
“You mean they sleep with the door open every night because of him?” I nodded. Once at two in the morning after they’d been out I opened my door a crack, listening for sounds coming from their bedroom: I thought maybe I’d hear them doing it, but they must have gone to sleep instead.
“And he sleepwalks, too,” I continued. “He stumbles around and wails for his glasses. It spooks me out. I can’t stand it here.”
“You should quit. I can’t believe they treat you the way they do.”
“Believe it, believe it! I’m telling you, I’m housekeeper, babysitter, everything! Those damn kids wake up at five-thirty and I have to get up, too.”
“When do you get up?”
“Never till nine or nine-thirty. Sometimes Mrs. Farber makes Teddy his breakfast so I can sleep.” This was unbelievable. “Hey, did you do that?” she said, pointing at a watercolor I’d done, which was on top of the dresser.
“Yeah, it’s not very good,” I said. “I have a friend who can paint really well.”
“I think it’s great,” she said, getting up to examine it.
“Do you have a lot of friends?” I said suddenly.
“Well, I have three or four close friends,” Anne said thoughtfully. “We always do things together. Do you?”
“No, just one.”
She looked at me questioningly.
“I guess it depends on what you call a friend. I mean, I have people I talk to, but I only have one friend.” I hope I do, I thought, a lump coming up in my throat.
“Why don’t we go for a walk?” Anne suggested a moment later. It sounded like a good idea, and I went and told the Baskwells we were going out for a while.
I began going for walks on the beach at night after that first time, usually alone. I sat sometimes and listened to the ocean, just listened, and looked at the stars. The sand was cold and clammy at night, but I didn’t mind. I played my recorder sometimes, thinking of Chloe and the bagpipe man, and it sounded strange and magical in the thick, salty night air.
On my second day off, I met Ian in Easthampton. He was even better looking than I remembered him, and had as little to say as he had that day in Central Park, but I was so glad to get away from that house I didn’t care. We went to the A & P and bought salami and rolls and beer, which I hate, and a whole bunch of other stuff, and had a picnic in a cemetery nearby. I had to do a lot of convincing to get him to agree to it; I told him about the time Chloe and I had gone down to Trinity Church, and he said he couldn’t understand why we’d want to sit around in a cemetery in the snow.
We had our picnic under a tree, and afterward he started kissing me. We were at it for a long time, and then he tried getting my pants off. I noticed two people visiting a nearby gravestone who seemed to be looking in our direction, and I pushed him away. I wouldn’t have let him do it anyway; feeling me up was one thing, but I wanted to be in love with someone before I let them do the rest. Maybe that’s old-fashioned, but I couldn’t feel good about it any other way.
Hey, Dollface Page 10
