“Yes, yes, I care. I hate to admit it, but I do.”
He paused, thought, and added, “I have a private detective who works for the company. He mostly checks out financial things so we can be sure we don’t get into business with shady characters, but I imagine he can do more, do something like this. I’ll put him on it and see if he can pick up some details for us, okay?”
What was I going to say? Now that I had pushed him, did I really want to hear the details? Did I want to confirm that my mother had really left us, left me? I’d rather live in foggy hope, I thought.
“But meanwhile, once you tell people Mommy left us for another man, it will get to my classmates’ parents, and the kids will be asking me for details. Some of them thought she was like a movie star.”
“Did they?” He smiled with that look more appropriate for a memory from long ago. “She was beautiful. I imagine she could have been a movie star.”
He thought a moment. And then he had an almost wicked smile.
“You know what I bet your mother would do if the roles were reversed for you? She’d just start to cry, and they would feel terrible asking her anything. Just like a great actress, she’d milk it to death.” He nodded. “That’s what you do. Be your mother at your age. It’s a natural reaction, right?”
I started to shake my head. I didn’t think I could cry at will, not as he was suggesting, and I really didn’t believe my mother would ever do that. She’d rather spit in their faces.
He clapped his hands together as if I had wholeheartedly agreed.
“We’ll get through this together, Scarletta,” he said, and then leaned toward me to add, “Just like you and I always do whenever we’re faced with any difficulty.”
Just like you and I always do? It was as if he was saying my mother was always on the outside. It was an unvoiced alliance between him and me against her. He held his smile, waiting for mine. I flashed it and nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Good.”
I cleaned up after breakfast as I often did, and then, just before Daddy left, I went up to my parents’ room to just look at it, look at the bed, and convince myself once again that my mother was no longer here. Daddy had made his bed, but my mother’s nightgown was hanging over the headboard. She had never left it like that.
“ ’Bye,” I heard Daddy call from below. “Don’t forget to lock up, Scarletta. And don’t forget we’re going to dinner tonight. Get ready as soon as you come home. I know you women. You take a dog’s age to prepare yourselves.”
“Okay!” I shouted back.
Despite what he had told me to do and say when I confronted my classmates, I wondered if I could cut school, maybe even for the rest of the week. Perhaps my mother would be back by then. Would he be called? If the dean’s secretary called here, maybe I could imitate my mother’s voice and say I was upstairs in bed with a fever. Or I could just anticipate it and call in imitating her. Tracey Gold was great at capturing her mother’s voice. She even avoided tests she knew she might fail.
But when it came right down to it, I didn’t have the courage. I finished getting myself ready and walked down to the bus stop. There were a half dozen young kids there and two senior girls, Shelly Myers and Bobbie Lees, neither of whom was a fan of mine. I knew in my heart that they would take joy in learning that my family was shattered. Like so many of the girls, because of how my mother and I dressed and my mother’s admittedly condescending ways, they thought we were snobs.
“You have a few strands of hair out of place,” Shelly said when I approached.
Bobbie laughed.
“You have a few brain cells missing,” I retorted. This morning, I didn’t feel like ignoring anything nasty. I think the look in my eyes frightened her. She huffed and turned away.
They’re cowards, I thought, my mother was right about girls like them. Show them they were getting to you, and they wouldn’t stop. Defy them with so much threat in your eyes that they feared you have no control of yourself, and they’d choose to retreat and ignore you. Ordinarily, it wasn’t in my nature to be like that, but I reached deeper into myself to find a coldhearted, raging beast who had orbs woven with the flames of candles.
I was and would be the stuff of nightmares whenever I had to be.
Rather than look for confrontations, however, I kept my feelings and fears to myself. No one paid any extra or particular attention to me. I was doing well in school until lunchtime in the cafeteria. Daddy had told one of his business associates about my mother who had then told his wife. With Internet speed, it reached Janice Lyn’s mother, who sent a text to Janice to see what additional information she could get from me.
At the time, I was sitting with Jared Peters and Phoebe Goldstein, who were considered the brains of our class. One or the other was destined to be valedictorian. Jared’s mother was an African American, an executive at the water department. His father was an X-ray technician at the hospital. He had a younger sister in the seventh grade.
Phoebe was attractive with her reddish-brown hair and stunning violet eyes. She wasn’t in any sport but already had one of the best figures of any girl in the school. Her mother, who was an attorney, was quite attractive, too. Her father was town manager, not especially good-looking. Any other girl who looked like Phoebe would have wielded her sexual power, which would have resulted in a trail of boys with tongues hanging out, but Phoebe was oblivious to it. Socially, she was a few years behind, perhaps. Some thought she was just too smart for boys in our school and probably had a crush on a college-age boy, maybe a friend of her older brother, who was in medical school.
I liked them both because they seemed aloof from the ordinary silly teenage chatter. They actually enjoyed talking about current events and scientific achievements highlighted in daily headlines. They were better than the evening news. They researched sound bites. Because I listened to what they said, I knew I achieved higher grades, especially in history class.
My mother once warned me about school friends. “The ones you make in high school especially will begin to evaporate the day you leave for college. Years later, you’ll wonder what you ever had in common with them. Keep them at arm’s length. Less disappointment on the horizon,” she said. I thought this was especially true for her. I never heard her mention one friend from high school, and she only occasionally referred to any friends she had made in college.
I didn’t make any special effort to have lots of friends. Probably that was what made some of my classmates think I was a snob. I figured my father was mostly right with his advice about it when he and my mother would discuss my social life, especially when I complained about being left out of a party or a trip other girls had arranged.
“Real friends will just naturally get into your orbit, or you’ll get into theirs. Don’t force it. That’s like watching water boil. If you do, it seems to take longer, even though it really doesn’t. Just let it happen.”
That seemed to be true. One of my “almost friends” was Janice Lyn, who now suddenly made such a beeline for our table that all three of us stopped talking and looked up, half expecting she would crash into it and send everything on it flying. But there was never anything diplomatic or graceful about Janice Lyn anyway. She could bowl over one of the school’s fullbacks on the football team with one of her stupid, thoughtless comments. Right now, it was easy to see she was being propelled by her girlfriends, who had launched her from their table at ours like a gossip missile.
Without any prologue and with the tone of a fait accompli, she asked, “Your mother ran off with a boyfriend?”
The facade I had so successfully maintained until then crumbled and shattered like a mask of ice thrust into a microwave. I couldn’t find my voice.
Although I had confided in neither, both Jared and Phoebe pounced on her.
“Even if that were validated, why bring her so much pain?” Jared asked.
Janice looked stumped by the word validated.
“Your meanness and lack of compassion
are dripping with yellow bile,” Phoebe added. “Go wipe your mouth with rubbing alcohol and see a veterinarian after school.”
“Huh?” Janice said, looking at them. “What the fuck . . .”
I knew I was expected to say something.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Janice,” I said. And then I added a simple, almost childish thing. “Our hearts are broken.” That was close to my father’s advice, even though I couldn’t imagine my mother saying such a thing.
However, Janice did look stunned for a moment and more embarrassed than she had hoped I’d be.
“Well, everyone’s talking about it,” she moaned in self-defense.
“Thanks to people like you,” Phoebe said, “who have nothing better to do with their lives and probably never will.”
“Stuff yourself,” Janice replied, and turned quickly.
Both Jared and Phoebe surprised me by laughing. They had both met my mother a few times. I knew they were impressed with her, and not only with her looks. Jared had called her stately, eloquent. He’d said my father was very lucky.
“Perhaps it’s just a temporary glitch in your family life,” Phoebe offered now. She didn’t hug me, but she touched my hand and smiled warmly, hopefully.
I started to look down, my body trembling.
Jared put his hand over mine, too. “Don’t let an idiot like that get to you,” he said. “She’s not worth a second of your attention, much less an iota of thought.”
“Just tell everyone it’s personal,” Phoebe suggested. She looked at the girls clacking away around Janice. “Not that much is anymore. We all might as well live in glass houses thanks to Facebook and other Internet confession booths.
“I went to the bathroom twice today,” Phoebe joked.
“My father has a pimple on his nose,” Jared added. They both laughed.
I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you guys,” I said.
“Hey. Didn’t you just hear me?” Phoebe replied. “It’s personal.”
I looked across the cafeteria at Janice, who had regained her composure and was now complaining and stoking the fire in the others. She’d have everyone in our class knowing about my mother before the school day ended. Visions of revenge began to stream into my mind. I thought Phoebe could see it in my face.
“Whatever you’re thinking, she’s not worth it, Scarletta,” she said. “Concentrate on helping your father.”
Yes, I thought. She’s right.
I didn’t want to lose him, too.
“Thanks,” I told them.
Neither said, “You’re welcome,” or asked a question to continue the topic. Instead, they began to talk about the subjects for our upcoming term papers. It was as if the real world was merely an inconvenience.
Maybe they were right.
Later, I did far better than I had expected I would at track practice, even though I could feel the curious eyes of my teammates practically glued to my every move. They were probably anticipating my emotional breakdown. I channeled my anger into my physical efforts and ran faster and jumped higher than I had all season. Mrs. Ward, the coach, gave me some terrific compliments. I knew they were born not out of sympathy but out of true appreciation. She was very unforgiving and stingy when it came to praise. A grade of B from her in our health education class was like an A from any other teacher.
Afterward, although I could feel so many eyes on me on the school bus home, I sat stoically and pushed aside all feelings of self-pity. I even smiled to myself, pleased with how I had gotten through the day. It was as if what my mother had done had changed me. Like a snake, I had shed old skin. Perhaps it was weird, but I felt older, wiser, and more equipped to face a world of competition. My mother’s behavior had opened the door to the real world, a world reserved for adults. My childhood faiths were falling like autumn leaves. Everything about my teenage world that had worried me was suddenly silly and meaningless. I had new eyes, new ears. When the bus reached my stop, I rose slowly. I thanked Mr. Tooey, our driver, who looked up, surprised.
And I didn’t leap off the bus the way I often did. I stepped down carefully, slowly, the way my mother would, and then walked with her confidence, not looking behind me or around me to see how anyone was reacting. I felt good not caring. When I reached our walkway, I paused. Water sparkled as it gushed from my mother’s statue of a cherub. Flowers were blooming with their rich reds and yellows. The house grew in stature and looked like a prime candidate for a historical site designation. Yes, very important people really did live here. It was sinful and dangerous to make them the subject of gossip.
This resurgence of confidence gave me the feeling that maybe, just maybe, my mother had returned. I walked to the steps and gingerly, deliberately, went up the short stairway, pausing as usual at the front door to be sure I looked as perfect as I could. My first words would simply be “Hello, Mother.” She’d be shocked, of course, at how undisturbed I’d be about her little fling yet quite proud of how I was carrying myself through the crisis she had created.
Of course, she would take credit. She had made me strong enough to deal with almost any emergency life could toss at me. In fact, this had all been a plan she had concocted and forced my father to participate in as well, just to teach me and make me grow up even faster. “The teenage years are overestimated.”
But the house was deadly quiet when I entered. I stood in the entryway for a few moments, listening hopefully for some sounds of her. The silence was terribly depressing. It fell around me like dark, cold drops of rain. I walked up the stairs slowly, weakening inside. If she was gone, really gone, could I put on my new skin again tomorrow? Had my strength come from foolish hope, which would fade? Or had I really grown years in hours? I didn’t want to think about it. I’d do as much of my homework as I could before Daddy took me to dinner. Keep busy, I told myself. Keep so busy that you don’t think.
I really believed I could do that and get through the rest of the day and even the night. However, when I entered my bedroom, all that hope fizzled and sank to the floor.
There, lying on my bed, was the blue dress my father had bought my mother last year. The matching shoes were at the foot of the bed, too. He must have come home at lunchtime, gone into her closet, and put it here.
I should have thought that all he wanted was to help me look pretty. I should have thought that he imagined I had always wanted to wear this dress, and now that my mother was gone, there was nothing stopping me. I should have thought that all he was trying to do was find a way for us to be happy, even for a little while.
He wanted us to have hope and be strong.
That’s what I should have thought.
But I couldn’t. Something I was yet unable to identify was filling the air with static and pressing into my heart, replacing sadness with cold, sharp fear.
I couldn’t explain it, but I couldn’t make him unhappy, not now.
“Concentrate on helping your father,” Phoebe had advised, and after all, she was brilliant.
As if my father was here, filling my ear with new suggestions, I threw down my schoolbooks and went to take a shower. I would fix my hair, and I would put on makeup.
And I would do it at my mother’s vanity table, using her cosmetics.
Pru
I AWOKE IN my bed, naked, with only the string of pearls around my neck and resting between my breasts. I was lying on my blanket. My nurse’s uniform was on a hanger attached to the top of my bedroom door. It looked washed and pressed. My shoes and socks neatly below it. For a few moments, I was completely confused.
Sitting up slowly, I glanced around my room. I felt like one of those people who have a strange reaction to Ambien. Things had been done in my room that I had no recollection doing. Everything on my small vanity table was organized, the small trash bin beside it that I knew had been nearly filled was completely empty; it even looked washed. There was nothing on the wood floor and area rug, both looking just vacuumed. The door of my closet w
as closed. I usually leave it open, something my mother often chastised me for doing. It added to the sloppiness of my room, for my room was always untidy to her.
I rose slowly, stepped out of the bed, and went to the closet. When I opened it, I saw that all my clothing was better organized and my shoes were much more neatly stacked on the shoe case on the side. My mother would have fainted with shock at such a sight. Usually, this was something she had to do for me, even when I was in high school. I’d come home from school and find my room put back together as it should be.
What was happening? What did happen? I listened for the sound of someone else in my apartment, but I heard nothing except for the ambient noise outside my windows facing Santa Monica Boulevard, car horns, music spilling out of windows and convertibles, and occasional shouts.
I closed the closet door, my heart beating harder as I turned to look at myself in the full-length mirror. I saw no trauma, not even redness anywhere. I looked untouched, as clean as I would coming from a fresh bath. The back of my head did feel a little damp. My mind reeled with the possibilities. Could it be that I had been bathed like a baby? I hurried to the bathroom to see if there was anything that pointed to such a bizarre thing, noting that all the dirty laundry in the hamper was gone.
The bathroom was also very neat, towels folded as well as the washcloths, not something I did so well or at least as well as Chandler. The tub looked clean but not recently used. That gave me relief, but when I turned and looked at the toilet, my heart did feel like it had stopped and started. There, floating in the water, was a used condom. I gasped and clutched myself. I felt no pain, no ache, and of course, I had no memory of being sexually violated. Nevertheless, had I been?
The only way to confirm it was to do a rape-kit exam. I studied myself in the mirror, looking for hair on my body that I knew wasn’t mine. I was spotless, as spotless as I could be if someone had taken a washcloth and a fine-tooth comb to my pubic hair. Without any sperm inside me, I probably wouldn’t have any DNA evidence to collect. And then again, what if I hadn’t actually been violated? That condom floating in the toilet didn’t have to have been used inside me. Still, I didn’t flush the toilet or fish it out. Keep your options open, I told myself. Think, think.
The Silhouette Girl Page 9
