Silver Girl

by Leslie Pietrzyk

  Tommy sat with Sydney at a table up front, his chair tilted back on two legs, balancing, as he smoked a cigar. She whisked a hand through any smoke that drifted too close, and she didn’t smile unless she was talking to a boy. If she got stuck having to deal with someone’s date, she basically stared straight ahead, boredom shadowing her face.

  When I got back to the dorm at three A.M. I tapped on Jess’s door, and when she cracked it open, I told her that I saw the man she was going to marry, and she laughed and called me totally drunk, which I was, on Black Russians, which I’d never had before, which I wouldn’t drink ever again because I was up all night puking.

  I never told Jess the man she was supposed to marry was Tommy, even after they got together, and I never admitted I remembered him from that stupid dance or why I did. But there was a moment when Tommy was walking along the perimeter of the dance floor, a drink in each hand, and I was standing alone while Pugsley was “going wee-wee”—his excuse to escape and snort coke with his buddies in the “little boys’ room.” As Tommy passed, without skipping a step, he thrust one of his drinks into my hand, saying, “You need this more than I do,” and kept going, but then turned, walking a few steps backward, calling, “You’re too cute to give up on men because of one asshole,” meaning Pugsley. Meaning, I guess, that he had noticed me. I hoped he might say more, but he was already back at his table with Sydney.

  Chivas and soda, which I later found out was his drink because his father drank it. I still order Chivas thanks to Tommy’s dad, a man I’ve never met and never will. Chivas isn’t the cheap stuff, especially not back then.

  He noticed me, but to feel sorry for me. So Jess could have him. Anyway, I didn’t want to get married and she did, and she was someone who needed to get what she wanted and I wasn’t. Find someone, she had told me, so I did.

  After I left Sydney Moore puking in the Baxter Center bathroom, I wanted to be somewhere specific, and the most specific place I could think of was class. So I got to Harris Hall, smiled through the professor’s sneer—“Lovely you decided to join us”—willing my face not to redden, and slunk into my usual chair around the seminar table, ready to soak up gallons of her wisdom about Henry James. The midway break came ten minutes later, and I was lined up at the drinking fountain when it snapped together that Jess could be at the apartment, changing the locks on me. I bolted back for my coat and book bag, then ran out of Harris, dodging through the herd race-walking up Sheridan, running for several blocks until I was too exhausted and had to slow. I didn’t really believe this was possible, that Jess truly would lock me out, and yet, actually, I did. It was confusing to be in my mind, all stirred up and jostled. Nothing made sense, except the comfort of simply following the path I traveled every day, that straight shot up Sheridan, left on Noyes, five blocks to the el tracks, and then diagonal through the park to our back door. I suppose there was weather, cars, bicycles, autumn leaves and birds, the rattling el, but I didn’t think to notice any of that.

  The lock in the back usually stuck anyway, so I swooped to the front door, scanning for clues: the same locksmith van that had sealed up Jess’s bedroom after Penny moved in. My clothes heaped on the front porch or spilling from the garbage cans that the upstairs neighbors had hauled out. Her car. But there was no evidence, not in view anyway, which didn’t mean evidence didn’t exist. For example, no one parked in the back spaces on garbage day because the guys were careless about heaving the lids around.

  My key slid in, the lock sighing a soft click, and the door opened. Not that I relaxed any. My heart thudded harder in my ears.

  I walked in, half breathless, immediately smelling Jess’s Lauren perfume, which I inhaled in quick, deep gulps, until I practically felt calm, or calm enough to get to the next room, where I dropped my coat and crap on the ugly couch.

  Jess was sitting at the table, sliding a glass of Tab around in the slickness of its water ring. I felt kind of frozen where I was, watching her through the cutout to the dining area. She wore a high, loose white turtleneck—the collar crawling so far up her neck it looked like she didn’t have one—printed with an oversized grid of thin black lines, like a blowup of graph paper—three boxes across, three down. An orderly grid of nine. Her sleeves were pushed up to her elbows, and I noticed the heat was cranked hotter than usual. On her wrist, her watch with the pink leather band, loose and dangling the way she liked, so the watch face could twirl to the inside of her arm. Without looking at me she said, “How was class?”

  It seemed like an invitation, or half of one anyway, so I edged closer, into the archway that led into the dining area, where I stood, framed and centered I imagined, and I rested one hand up against the wall. She was wearing high-waisted white wool pants, “winter white,” she called them, her favorite color she told me a long time ago, and I had nodded, not knowing what made a white “winter,” but accepting that apparently something very specific did. A skinny black belt with a spiky silver clasp on the side looped three or four times around her waist. The look, which felt chosen for this moment, could be on a magazine cover.

  I knew she didn’t care about my class, but we had to start somewhere.

  “Good,” I said. “Good enough, anyway.” It was a safe, dull question, like one she would ask her parents, where no one listens to the answer because they just want words rolling around. Her parents always took forever to address even the most boring question, so I added, “Her voice is like a drill through cement. And on and on she goes. Just like the Victorians, I guess. Trollope wrote like fifty books.”

  I wanted to feel normal. But I couldn’t chatter forever.

  In the silence that followed, I realized that the pattern was that I waited for her to talk and then I answered back, that we talked about what she wanted to talk about. Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe it just seemed that way. But I had been alone so much lately that I was pretty sure I was right. That she talked first, and then I talked. It was unclear who picked that pattern, or if it was that our patterns fit from the beginning.

  So I launched into a story I thought was funny about this professor, something she had said last week, and I was doing a pretty drop-dead imitation of her voice, but abruptly Jess lifted one hand, like a cop, like stop. The gesture prickled my skin, and I shut up mid-word. I had been about to slide into the chair across from her, but I stayed standing. I looked at my hand on the wall. My knuckles were ugly.

  She said, “Penny told me something.”

  My heart banged back up into my ears. I stiffened, all inside and along my body. I couldn’t stop that hammering heartbeat, but I could stop listening to it. I willed myself to not hear it. I didn’t hear it. I studied my knuckles, which seemed even uglier than I thought. Too big, too lumpy, even for knuckles. “Knuckles” was an ugly word. My knees and elbows were also quite ugly, very bony, as my mother liked to inform me. This moment wasn’t a surprise—what Jess said wasn’t a surprise—but it felt like one now that I was pulled into it.

  “How is Penny?” I asked, trying to be all casual, like saying, What’s for dinner?

  She abruptly tilted the glass of Tab, 90 degrees, 180. Brown liquid pooled and spread, waterfalling onto the chair, to the floor, ice cubes skittering along the tabletop. She set down the empty glass, quietly but definitively.

  Now I couldn’t sit down; the chair was drenched in Tab. The paper towels, if any were left, were in the kitchen, beyond where she sat. A can of Tab cost fifty cents in the library vending machine. I couldn’t help knowing that. I would always know those things, also that I would never purposely spill Tab while wearing “winter white” and probably not even drink Tab while wearing “winter white” because I would worry about stains and dry cleaning bills.

  “She saw you kiss Tommy.”

  I said, “Penny’s a liar.”

  She said, “Penny’s my sister,” with the same casualness I had tried for, but pulling it off completely.

  There was a mean pause, and I sort of caught my breath. It was the kind of
silence where you couldn’t breathe, where you instantly felt smothered or something. So I said, “She has your ring. She stole it.”

  “I know,” Jess said. “She confessed.”

  I could not react. I could not react.

  “Not her fault she lost it. You know how she is.” Jess was pensive for a moment, nibbling a fingernail. My focus stayed steady, not reacting, until Jess said, “With Tommy. She saw you.”

  That thick silence again. Feeling it made me so angry. I swallowed.

  Finally: “Once,” I said. “Because he was mad at you. And anyway, he kissed me.”

  Her face scrunched, confused and startled, like maybe she hadn’t actually entirely believed her sister. Like she had wanted to believe me, but now I wouldn’t let her.

  I smiled. It felt like an odd, inappropriate smile, the kind you regret later or right away. She glared at my smile, and it seemed like I really should stop smiling. She was so serious. This was so real. I shouldn’t smile my way through something this real. I don’t know why I smiled in the first place.

  She said, “I hope he was worth it.”

  I said, “He isn’t.”

  She said, “I know he isn’t. I know that. He’s a shit-turd. He’s an absolute shit-turd.”

  “I guess I thought...”

  After a moment, she asked in a sharp voice, “You thought what?”

  “That you’re too good for him,” I said, too fast.

  “Oh, ha,” she said, eyes rolling. “But you weren’t. How sweet of you. How fucking sweet. Thanks.”

  In the movies, these kinds of conversations took forever. There were a lot of dramatic pauses, lots of waiting. I could stand here for hours, I thought, and we would get through, and it would end like in the movies with a hug and things the same. My palm against the wall felt sweaty. Slippery. If I pushed too hard, there was sort of a suction cup sensation keeping my hand stuck. It was like a game to guess what Jess would say next. If it were a game, I would get a very good score, because she shook her head and said:

  “I really loved you, you know. I thought I found the one person in the world who understood me.”

  I said, “I do understand you,” because I totally did and because now Jess was crying, which cued me to start up my own crying, my tears keeping hers company, my agony matching hers, equal melodrama. Tears stained our faces; her mascara streaked down black. Probably mine, too, since we wore the same brand now. She didn’t like waterproof. It was too stiff, she said. Sister, I thought, not wanting to, that word.

  “I trusted you,” Jess said. “You know all my secrets.”

  I said, “You know mine.”

  It seemed smart, ping-ponging right back to her, but she slapped her hands on the wet table, flinging droplets everywhere, and declared, very dramatically, “I don’t even know who you are anymore.” She slumped forward onto the table, letting her head drop onto her folded arms, her hair draping over and into the puddle of Tab, and as she cried, I watched her shoulders shake and quiver. Her shoulder blades were shaped like shark fins. I couldn’t cry if she wasn’t watching me. She spoke now in a muffled wail: “I don’t even fucking know who you are or if I ever even knew.” I understood I was supposed to feel bad and I was supposed to apologize. I watched her cry, but it was hard. She was right. She didn’t know my secrets and certainly wouldn’t want to.

  “I’m sorry?” It came out a question, not a statement.

  “You’re not the person I knew,” she sobbed. “Making me laugh, and taking care of me, and agreeing my parents are crazy, and keeping me sane. You know, just being my one true always-forever friend.”

  I should have apologized again for real, as sincerely as I possibly could, and fixed it between us. It was still fixable. But the person she was crying over didn’t exist. I wasn’t the girl Jess was brokenhearted about, not me with my ugly knuckles and scuffy thrift store boots, not me who secretly trailed Sydney Moore for forty-five minutes, then left her all alone, puking in a public restroom, abandoned.

  I said, “Jess, really, I’m so sorry. About all of it. Letting Penny stay here and eating your groceries and everything with Tommy.”

  She sat up, the tips of her hair damp with Tab. “What’s ‘everything’?” she asked. Her eyes were so bright. I didn’t like looking at them, but I kept my gaze steady.

  “Nothing you don’t know about,” I said.

  “That he kissed you,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Once?”

  I nodded.

  “Is that all?” Her voice was oddly kind.

  I nodded.

  “Because you could tell me,” she said.

  “Nothing more to tell,” I said.

  “Because I really want to know the truth,” she said.

  “That is the truth,” I said.

  “I need to hear you tell me the actual, real, honest-to-god truth for once,” she said. “You owe me that. Don’t you think?”

  The ice cubes looked smaller already. I was surprised there was ice. I couldn’t remember filling the trays. What did I owe her?

  “The truth is,” I said, “that he was mad at you and he kissed me that one time. And you weren’t even technically still together when he did. That’s the truth, and either you can believe me or not.”

  The phone rang, but neither of us moved to answer. It rang four, five, six times, seven, eight. I knew she was counting, too. After ten, it stopped. “Probably no one,” I said.

  She said, “It wasn’t just Penny. I talked to him, you know. He told me everything.”

  I felt sorry for her, with her smeary mascara and cheeks splotched pink, and this silly tough talk, like she was some kind of private eye looking to bully out a confession. I couldn’t imagine that conversation, not at all: Jess firing out questions or listening to him say “blow job,” or him describing the library bathroom. I couldn’t imagine Tommy admitting anything, him being more honest than me. I had to pee, I realized, desperate for that relief. I shifted my weight. Why stand here, I wondered, stuck in this dumb conversation, as forgettable as any sunny day, when the life waiting ahead was so far beyond worrying about a melodramatic rich girl in her pretentious white pants? As years passed, how many times would I think their names? “Cast a cold Eye,” Yeats said, the writer said. These things would simply slide away, forgotten, Jess and Tommy and what I had done, all of right now, even the Tylenol killer, who would be nabbed by the cops and prosecuted and either clutter up a prison cell or sizzle in an electric chair. He would explain how he did it and why, and the reasons would be evil, but there would be reasons we could know and hold on to until we forgot them. All was nothing in the end.

  “Come on,” I said. “Stop it. It’s fine. Everything is...” That damn word. Fine.

  She said, “I know you’ll feel better if you just tell the truth. If you confess. Like Penny. She told me everything, and now...” She held up both hands, fingers crossed. “She’s the sister I always wanted.” She knew, she knew, knew, knew, knew how to say that. Like a knife.

  “Jess,” I said. “Come on. Please stop.”

  She didn’t: “Look at you, with that ratty hair and sweat pouring out and nothing in the fridge and the hem dropping out of your jeans. Rings around your eyes like a raccoon, your hand all jittery. Literally, I’ve never seen you such a mess. Are you sleeping at all?”

  “Stop it,” I repeated, very in control, totally in control, the control of control.

  “And yeah, who are you, anyway, always wearing my clothes, kissing my boyfriend, eating my food, trying to steal my sister?” she said. “Do you even have a mind of your own?” She calmly enunciated each syllable, like explaining to a foreigner. “You’re half a person, just totally copying me. All surface and nothing underneath.”

  The gut punch of that. The goddamn gut punch. But I would take it to the end, I would take it and take it and take it. Finally I spoke, coolly, all inquiring-minds-want-to-know: “What does that mean, nothing underneath?” The question ached like to
o much sugar.

  She looked disappointed, as if I had latched on to the wrong thing. “Come on,” she said. “I swear whatever the truth is, it’s fine. I just have to know. I can handle it. Be honest. Just be honest. I can take it.”

  And here I laughed, which I shouldn’t have, so much worse than smiling, to laugh when someone melodramatically swears they can take the truth, that they want to know, that you owe them the truth. Because fuck the fucking truth. What truth did I have underneath that Jess would want to hear? That my father—? That my uncle—?

  Never.

  Her complaining that she didn’t know me was my ultimate victory, my intention. I didn’t want her to know me. My only safe bet the whole rest of my life was never revealing the damaged, horrible person I was, the terribleness I was capable of. That truth? That’s what she wanted, all that? Fine, give it to her. Give it to her, give it to her, I would give it to her. She would see, she would see and she would hate me, and what a relief that would be. What a relief.

  I said, “You’re right. I gave him blow jobs in the library whenever he wanted. He wanted a lot.”

  Jess howled and called me names. I stood there and let her. Those names were nothing new. I’d heard them all before. They were the names I called myself.