As Seen on TV

by Sarah Mlynowski

Okay, so I’m no poet, but they laugh anyway. I have them in the palm of my hand.

  “What was your worst life experience?” Howard asks and then sighs. “Your mom dying?”

  No, slimeball, it was when My So-Called Life got canceled.

  “Of course,” I say, and drop my voice a few notches for effect. “I was young, only six. I didn’t understand what was going on.”

  My audience leans closer.

  “Can you tell us about it?” Tania asks.

  I don’t even need leg warmers to pull this off. “My mother spent so much time at the hospital that my grandparents had to come stay with us. My parents were already divorced at this point.”

  Tania puts her hand to her lips. It’s all about the Double D.

  “My sister and I used to crawl under the covers with my mom at the hospital, and we’d tickle her back. She loved having her back tickled. We used to spell out words and see if she could guess them.”

  “Was it cancer?” Stan asks, clenching his coffee mug in his hand, but not taking a drink.

  I nod. “Ovarian.”

  “My wife’s girlfriend had that,” Howard says, and shakes his head. “It was terribly sad.”

  “Did you know she was going to die?” Tania asks.

  At first I think that Tania is addressing Howard, but then I remember that I’m the one being interviewed. I’m the one whose life is being laid out like a documentary. Opening up to strangers like this is a bit weird. It’s like kissing someone you just met.

  “No,” I say slowly. “My father took me house shopping and kept asking me if I liked this, if I liked that, for my new room. I told him I already had a room at my mother’s house, so why do I need another one?”

  Tania’s sob sounds like an elongated hiccup.

  I’m a hit, all right. Lose my virginity or lose my mother—it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s all the same to them. They don’t want me, they want a soap opera star. Fine. I can do sob story.

  “My mom’s condition was worsening,” I continue. “And my father decided it wasn’t appropriate for my sister and me to watch her die. So in June he shipped us off to the sleep-away camp in the Adirondacks he’d gone to as a kid, Camp Abina. I was six. The youngest kid in the Junior section, the youngest kid in the whole camp. I got a ton of attention, and I was asked to be the newcomball team’s mascot.”

  Tania and Stan look perplexed, and in less than two seconds I come to my second grand realization: only Jewish girls at North American summer camps play newcomball.

  “Newcomball is like volleyball, except you catch the ball and then throw it over the net. Anyway, the fourteen-and-over team, The Abina Bears, asked me to be their mascot when they played against Camp Walden. Obviously I was the envy of all the other Junior girls. The girls on the team had made me a little bear costume with furry ears and a tail. All I had to do was a little dance whenever the team scored a point.”

  Their eyes are glossing over, I’m losing them, I can’t lose them. Time for the kill. “The morning of the game—I hadn’t slept the entire night, I was so excited—the camp owner came over to our bunk’s table in the dining hall and whispered something to my counselor and then she asked me if I could come outside. My sister was waiting for me on the balcony. She told me that my mom was really sick and that she wanted to say goodbye. And that our father was coming to get us. We went back to our cabins to pack up some of our stuff. Dana was crying and then I started crying, a little bit because Dana was crying—I hate when she cries—but mostly because I’d been waiting for the big game, the day when I got to be the star, and who would wear my costume?”

  Suddenly I can’t stop myself. I want to tell them everything. These people care. These people love me and I love them.

  “My father drove into camp, right up to our bunks in a rental truck. This was vaguely exciting since only the head staff was allowed cars in camp, and all the kids ran to their porches to see what was going on. We drove to the airport in complete silence and then the three of us flew home, and when the stewardess asked my dad if he wanted pretzels or raisin cookies, tears started streaming down his cheeks and he tried to cover them because he didn’t want us to see. We got to the hospital and my mom’s parents and her older brother were all there. She looked horrifically frightening, white and bloated. We held her hands and then she said goodbye. My dad took us out of the room and then she died. My sister and I sat shiva. That’s Jewish mourning. You have to sit on these horribly uncomfortable chairs for a week. We sat at my father’s new house. Over the summer all my things had been moved into my new room, at my father’s new house. After the seven days were up, my father decided to send my sister and I back to camp. My sister didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to do anything but lie facedown on her relocated bed. My father put me in charge of convincing her that I needed her to come with me.

  “Everyone was really nice to us when we went back. I had a few sleeping problems. In the middle of the night, I would put my sneakers back on and sneak across the baseball field to Dana’s cabin and climb up to her top bunk, into her sleeping bag. At first my counselor told me I wasn’t allowed, but I kept doing it, anyway. Then she told me she didn’t want me wandering across the camp at night by myself, so she promised that every night, if I wasn’t asleep by the time she got back to the cabin—counselors’ curfew was at one-thirty—she would walk me over. Every night I was still awake. She would walk me over, and even if my sister was already asleep, I would climb into bed beside her.”

  I stopped talking. How’s that for soul?

  No one moves. Tania’s cheeks are stained with tears.

  Now can I have a glass of water?

  7

  Friends

  Thirty minutes later I walk out of the room in a mild state of euphoria.

  I think I’m a natural.

  “How’d it go?” Carrie says, jumping off the couch.

  “I’ll tell you about it outside.” She deserves to be kept waiting as punishment for not telling me about my competition.

  When we reach the concrete stairs outside the TRS building, I decide to put her out of her misery. “It went great,” I say, and do the little hooray jump I usually reserve for when I’m alone. The hooray jump is not as easy to do in stilettos. “I think they liked me.”

  Carrie does a jump, too. “They did? I knew they would. What did they ask? What did you say? Tell me everything.”

  “Can we get something to eat? I’m starving.” Stardom has made me hungry.

  We go to Salad Time, a restaurant down the street. We’re the only ones in line. It’s too early for the lunch crowd.

  “I want to hear every detail,” Carrie says. “Romaine lettuce, Asian chicken, mandarin oranges, a few Chinese noodles, carrots and a dash of low-fat sesame dressing, please.”

  “That sounds good,” I say to the woman in the hairnet across the counter. “But I’ll have a Caesar salad instead.” She mixes the ingredients in a metal bowl and switches the concoction into a plastic container. “They asked me a million questions. Worst experience. Best experience. How old I was when I lost my virginity.”

  Carrie opens the refrigerator and takes out a purple Vitamin water. Those drinks are everywhere in this city. I wish I had come up with the idea. “How old did you tell them?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “You were seventeen when you lost your virginity?”

  “No, I was eighteen. But I lost it to my best guy friend on prom night so I had to come up with something a little less clichéd.” The woman across the counter hands me my salad. I take a Coke from the fridge and we carry our trays to the cash register.

  “I was fifteen,” Carrie says, pulling out her wallet. “Both,” she tells the cashier.

  “You don’t have to pay for mine,” I say. “What? Fifteen? That’s young. Thank you.”

  Salad Time’s round, barlike tables are mostly empty. We pick one by the window and put down our trays. “Not that young,” she says.

  I take the top of
f my salad and dig my fork in. “You don’t even have pubic hair at fifteen.”

  “I had everything at fifteen.”

  Yum. I love Caesar salads. “I remember. Every day you’d ask us to tie up the strings to your porn-star bikini tops.”

  “Great role model, huh? You should have seen what I was doing after daylight. Or who I was doing.”

  “Did you lose your virginity at camp?” I lost a sweatshirt and a couple pairs of socks there, but that’s it.

  “On the beach in the sailboat shack.”

  “But that place had nails sprinkled all over the floor. You could have picked up tetanus.”

  “I could have picked up gonorrhea. Not an experience I want to relive.”

  I don’t want to know from my dad’s girlfriend and gonorrhea, but I can’t help myself, and I ask, “Who was it?”

  She smirks. “You don’t remember the story?”

  “No, should I?”

  “There was a whole scene about it in Staff Laugh.”

  Every summer two male counselors wrote Staff Laugh, a play that makes fun of and often makes cry as many counselors as possible. Usually the female counselors. The oldest campers in camp perform it for the entire staff. “I don’t remember,” I say.

  “It was Mark Ryman. We were in the sailboat shack and he asked me to masturbate for him. And then we had sex. And then he told the whole camp.”

  Mark Ryman was three years older than Carrie. He would have been eighteen. I had just been thinking about him recently. Why was I thinking of him? Oh, yeah. “Howard reminds me of him.”

  Carrie spears a slice of mandarin with her fork, lifts it and then puts it back down. “I was in love with him. Thought he was so hot. That gorgeous, thick hair and that yummy body. You really don’t remember the play? They had one of the fourteen-year-old girls play me. She stuffed her bikini top with melons, and randomly appeared on the stage with her hands down her pants pretending to masturbate.”

  If that had been me, I would have anchored a brick to my leg and jumped in the lake. “But you were only a CIT at fifteen. I thought CITs weren’t allowed to be made fun of in Staff Laugh.”

  “A special exception for me, I suppose.” Carrie shrugs, brushing off the memory. “So now we wait. With our fingers crossed.”

  “But that’s it? One interview?”

  “Not everyone only had one interview. The other three girls filled out a written application, sent in a demo tape, had two interviews and a thorough character evaluation,” she says.

  “Thorough enough that they missed at least one penchant for shoplifting.” I take another bite of my salad and then put the lid back on. I’ll save the rest for dinner. Steve will probably eat at the restaurant, and I’m too tired to even think of joining him there.

  “I hope you get this. Did I tell you Howard hired me as a consultant for the show? He wants me to help the girls find the right look and hang around at the tapings, making sure everything runs smoothly. Won’t your father be thrilled that we’ll be able to get to know each other all over again?”

  Thrilled. Especially once he’s over you and on to the next girl. I nod and try to change the subject. “I wonder what happened to Mark Ryman.”

  “He got married. Lives in Connecticut. Cheats on his wife.”

  “Men don’t change.”

  “Sometimes they do.” Carrie stands up and puts on a pair of Jackie O sunglasses. “He went bald and gained a hundred pounds.”

  When I get home I have to go to the bathroom. Badly. And I mean number two. As I unlock the door I’m praying Steve is still sleeping.

  Nope. He’s picking up a long-sleeved shirt from the floor. He pulls it over his head. “So how’d it go?”

  Why can’t he hang up his shirt? You take it off, you hang it up. You finish the tissue box, you throw it in the garbage. Why not take the next logical step?

  “Good, I think. Who knows?”

  He kisses me on the cheek. “I’m sure you were outstanding.”

  I shrug. I might have been. It’s not hard to tell people what they want to hear. Instead of saying this out loud, I take off my pants and set them on a hanger.

  “What do you want to do today?” he asks.

  I want him to go back to sleep so I can use the bathroom. I know it sounds stupid, but what if he can hear? What if I make noise? Won’t listening impair his sexy image of me? The bathroom door is really thin. I normally hold it when I’m at his place and wait for him to go to work. I know it’s weird and that eventually I’ll be able to go to the bathroom when he’s in the apartment. But I can’t yet. I just can’t. I can hold it.

  “What time do you have to go to work?” I ask.

  “Not till six. What time is it now?”

  Not till six?

  Steve doesn’t wear a watch. He claims not to like watches. Can you have negative feelings toward something that tells the time?

  “My watch says two,” I say.

  “I know, let’s go to Roller Dee’s. They have bowling and minigolf and laser tag. It’s awesome.”

  I’m a little too tired for that. “But it’s so nice out. We shouldn’t waste the day.”

  “Let’s go to Central Park. We’ll throw a Frisbee.”

  There’s no way they have decent public bathrooms in Central Park. “We don’t have a Frisbee.”

  “No? We’ll stop at Toys ‘R’ Us.”

  Steve reminds me of a windup toy that shoots across the table until it dies or falls off the edge.

  I smile, trying to create that I’m-the-perfect-girlfriend-who’s-up-for-anything glow.

  I have a plan.

  When we’re in the lobby I say, “You know what, Steve? I heard it might rain. I’m going to run up and get the umbrella. You wait here.”

  He peers outside.

  I jump into the elevator and hit Close Doors before he can comment that the sky is bright blue.

  Ten minutes later, I return to the lobby. “Sorry,” I say. “Couldn’t find it.”

  After the afternoon of Frisbee, Steven walks me through the park, showing me his favorite places. We stop at The Great Lawn, the Angel of the Waters Fountain at Bethesda Terrace and Bow Bridge. Bow Bridge is a stunning cast-iron bridge spanning sixty feet across a serene lake. Green, red and orange trees frame the lake and look like they’ve been finger-painted. Office buildings tower in the distance, and I’m reminded of the feeling of being at peace in a canoe in the middle of the Camp Abina’s lake, the sun warming my face. I wrap my arm through Steve’s and say, “I think this is the most beautiful spot I’ve ever been.”

  Steve suggests I spend the evening with him at his restaurant, and gets so excited by this idea that I can’t say no. “What else are you going to do?” he asks.

  “Sleep?” I’m tired. Frisbee is hard work. “Okay, okay.”

  “You always want to sleep.”

  It’s true. “Maybe I’m sick.” I’ve been thinking there might be something wrong with me. Some disease that attacks your immune system, sucking energy. Mono, maybe? Cancer? HIV? Wouldn’t that be my luck. I get a part on a TV show and then can’t take it because I have to be admitted to the hospital. My health insurance lasts another three months, and right now I can’t afford a new policy. If I got a disease now, no one would ever insure me and then I would never be cured and I’d die broke and alone.

  I don’t share my thoughts with Steve as I don’t want him to realize how crazy I am.

  Except for the help, the restaurant is still empty when we get there. We sit on the cushioned stools by the bar and open a bottle of overly sweet Manashevitz wine.

  I’m reintroduced to Jerry, the assistant manager, then the cooks and the waitresses as they begin to trickle in. Thank God for his incredible staff, especially Martin. If it wasn’t for them, Steve would never have been able to take off time to visit me in Florida.

  It’s been a while since I’ve spent an evening here.

  The restaurant is small, with only fifteen tables and a bar next to the
kitchen. Eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs of Italian synagogues line the wall. Behind each picture is a light, and the effect makes the photographs look golden, almost holy.

  I should just work here. It would be so easy.

  And then I’ll never bother finding my own job, my own life, will I?

  I decide to play hostess instead of offering to work as one. I watch Steve move and schmooze and take control around the restaurant. He’s amazing here, everyone loves him, everyone wants to talk to him as he walks by. He shakes hands, waves, smiles and makes this place run. And he’s all mine. He introduces me to all the regulars.

  “We’ve heard so much about you!” Mr. Weinberg announces, patting me on the head. “What a face! Such a shayna punim. We’ve been friends with Joy and Abe forever, and they absolutely love you, honey, love you.”

  They do? Good to know. Joy and Abe are Steve’s parents.

  “So when are you two going to have some news?” Mrs. Weinberg asks, wagging her eyebrows.

  Maybe I should tell them that I’m pregnant. “Guess what, Mr. and Mrs. Weinberg? We’re having a baby!” What would they do? Would Mrs. Weinberg have a heart attack? Instead I play dumb. “What type of news?” I ask.

  “Sunny is moving to New York this week,” Steve says.

  “Really,” Mrs. Weinberg says. “Where are you going to live?”

  “With—” Right. Not with Steve. Oops. Almost blew that one. Good thing Party Girls isn’t a sitcom. I’d never be able to remember my lines. “I found someone nice in the Village who was looking for a roommate.”

  “Jewish?”

  I consider answering Palestinian, to see what she’ll do. “Jewish.”

  “How wonderful. Tell me, have you found work here yet?”

  “Not yet.” I’m not sure what Steve’s plan is regarding the show. His parents probably wouldn’t approve of their potential future daughter-in-law parading around the city, drunk and slutty. “Still looking,” I add.

  “Talk to the kids. They all have terrific jobs,” Mrs. Weinberg says. “They’ll be here soon.”

  I nod, but have no idea what she’s talking about. Kids? What kids have jobs? What kids are coming here? And why would these kids want to talk to me about my job?