“I swear to God,” I said, “I’m going to break out in hives.”
Even though I’d reclaimed my right to be awesomely spectacular and beyond extraordinary in all I wore, when it came to what I was going to wear for the Day of Dread and Pancakes, I didn’t have a clue. It was Ann who, after inspecting every item in my closet, decided on my authentic Peter Max early seventies dress — balloon sleeves, a wide skirt, with a pattern of pink and turquoise and coral swirls, like the surface of the ocean during sunset. She also insisted that I top the whole outfit off with her grandmother’s awesomely cool turquoise Lucite choker.
“I can’t take your grandmother’s necklace!” I said.
“Yes, you can. You have to. First, because it pulls the whole look together. And also, it would be like: I’ve got style by the mile and you best not mess with me, because I got Ann in my corner.”
“Yeah, really,” I said. “You could take her down with one punch.”
“My first blog entry? You know, the one I told you I’m going to write? It’s going to be about you,” she said, waving her arms around so her bangles chimed.
“Right,” I said, knowing full well that the chances of Ann actually writing her so-called blog were minimal. The girl hated to write and procrastinated like crazy every time she had to write a paper, calling me and whining and begging me to help her find the right words, which was pretty funny, given how much she liked to talk.
Stroking my Peter Max dress like it was a puppy, she said: “I’m going to call my first entry: ‘Maxing Out.’ Get it?”
“Great.”
“It’ll be all about your Peter Max groove.”
“Sure it will.”
Like I said, Ann was great — but it had taken me a while to invite her over to Homely Acres. I’d been right about that, too. Because not five minutes earlier, when I’d introduced her to my mother, Mom had actually come right out and said: “I’m so glad that Justine is finally making friends.”
“You don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard,” Ann was now saying. “But you don’t want to look like you’re competing with her, either. But mainly, you just want to be as you as possible. Comprende?”
I comprended, all right. But just because I had my outfit figured out didn’t mean that I wasn’t still seriously and absolutely freaked out by the outrageously world-class stupid thing my mother did.
Every other kid in school seemed to know about it, too. Even the loud-mouthed jerk in English who’d made remarks about my paper dress seemed to know. Ben. That was his name. He was so skinny that he looked like a cartoon. “I hear you’re having a big breakfast with the In Crowd next week,” is how he put it, and when I asked him what he was talking about, he just grinned this huge, stupid grin and said: “I have my sources.” Meantime, Becka no longer so much as glanced my way.
“Obviously, the girl has issues,” Ann said.
Issues or not, she freaked me out. Freaked. Me. Out. And I’m not all that easily intimidated. Even Weird John, who was getting increasingly more useless, spending most of his time in class drawing things in his notebook that he wouldn’t let me see, didn’t get to me. Even when he purposefully exploded something in a test tube, or sat on my lap, or called me “Mizz Frizz,” or took out his own eyeliner and insisted on doing my eyes.
But with Becka, I was a quivering worm. So when Mom got me up on Sunday morning with a cheery “Wake up, sleepyhead!” it was all I could do not to heave. The best I could do was believe in my outfit — that rock concert of colors that hugged my not-very-small waist in such a way that it looked like I had one, with platform shoes, and Ann’s grandmother’s choker, because as it turned out, she was right. As I clasped the necklace around my neck, I felt a kind of reassurance, a promise that, no matter what might come, Ann and I would be able to laugh about it afterward.
“I’m telling you, Mom,” I said as we drove to the place where we were meeting them for breakfast because even though we lived across the street from each other there was no way we were going to drive in the same car because, duh, Becka considered me to be lower than pond scum and never in a million years would have agreed to be trapped in the same vehicle as me, “this is not going to be fun.”
“Just cool it, would you? How do you know if you never try? Meryl told me that Becka wanted to go.”
“Right.”
It was one of those places with on-purpose-beat-up heavy wooden tables, where they put the entire menu on a blackboard. Becka and her mother, along with Huge Smile All-Varsity Girl — the same one who’d given me the evil eye in the bathroom on the first day of school and who sat, with her big-athlete-on-campus lab partner, in the front row in chemistry class — and her mother, were also there. As was Becka’s sidekick, Fabulous-in-Lingerie Girl. Becka was looking her usual amazing, with skinny jeans and low-heeled black leather boots, a plain white blouse topped by what looked to be a real Chanel jacket, and that astonishingly beautiful Hermès scarf, swirls of pink and gray and green, that she’d been wearing the first time I met her. She didn’t even look up. Not even when all three mothers started making noises about “letting the girls sit together,” and promptly rearranged themselves so they were at the far end and the four of us “teens” were at the wedged-in end of the table. I ended up sitting directly across from Becka and Becka’s sidekick, and next to Huge Smile All-Varsity Girl, who was wearing the kind of perfect blue jeans that pretty, popular girls from coast to coast wear, with an oversized sweater. Her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail. Her skin was as smooth as soap. I held my breath, waiting for the extreme awfulness.
But, amazingly — as in, flip me out with a feather — Big White Smile Girl immediately said: “Wow! I love your dress! Where did you get it?”
“Do you mean it?” I stammered.
“It’s, like — fabulous. Really.”
“Yeah,” Sidekick added. She looked great, too, in a silky top that showed off her collarbones, and jeans, she looked like she could have been in a perfume ad. “It looks awesome on you. It sets off your hair.”
I blushed, thinking about how my head probably looked like an exploded red dandelion.
“No, really. I love your style. Where do you buy your clothes?”
So I ended up telling her — telling them — about how, when I lived in San Francisco, I started getting into shopping at secondhand stores, and Big White Smile said that she wished she could pull off the look but was too big to wear anything but fairly straight-up American sportswear with a preppy accent, and I said that I’d kill to be tall and pretty like she was, and she said: “Yeah, but have you taken a look at my huge butt?”
“You?” I said. “A huge butt? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“If only. Don’t you remember? We met, like, on the first day of school. In the bathroom, actually.” She was blushing a little. “You were, like —”
“I know,” I said, fingering Ann’s grandmother’s Lucite choker for extra protection. “My paper dress. I was trying to clean it.”
“Yeah. I loved that dress, too. It was awesome! But — I don’t know. It sounds stupid. But I could tell that you thought I had a huge butt. I mean, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t like you said anything.”
“But I thought that you thought I looked like a freak of death.”
“No way!”
Which was when Becka, at last, spoke. “Polly’s always thought she was too big,” she said. “When the truth, and everyone knows, is that she’s strong. Which is why she’s such a great athlete. Right, Pol?”
We both just looked at her. Arching her neck, Becka was like a swan among ducks.
Polly said, “That’s what my mother says. But I don’t know. I hate it!”
From the mom end of the table, Polly’s mother leaned in and said: “Tell her, girls. Because you know what? This child of mine is so self-conscious that she won’t even wear the white jeans she got for her birthday.”
“What?” Sidekick said. “But you’d look awesome
in white jeans.”
“You totally would,” Becka said.
“That’s such a pretty scarf!” Polly then said, turning to Becka, and I could tell she was doing her best to be nice and to try to get the conversation going at something like a normal speed and temperature. Again I ran my hand around Ann’s turquoise Lucite beads, feeling their smoothness, like a reassurance that there was hope. “You always have the best stuff.”
“I got it last summer,” Becka said after a while, “in Paris. A friend gave it to me.” She fingered her scarf. Then, turning to me, she said: “But what I’d like to know? What I’d like to know is: What’s with your beads? Going for the dog-collar look? As in: bark, bark?”
“They’re my friend’s,” I said stupidly. “She lent them to me. I love them.” By now the whole table had gone silent.
“I was only joking,” Becka said. “Joking? Like I didn’t mean anything by it? Like ha ha? Lighten up.”
No one, including my bigmouthed mom, knew what to say. So we all just sat there in silence for an eternity or two until finally the waiter came to take our orders. Finally the conversation limped back, and my mother, using her fakest happy voice, said: “You know what’s so great about getting you girls together? All four of you are so into clothes. You have so much in common.”
“Mom,” I said, “that doesn’t mean anything except that we’re in high school.”
“Really,” Becka agreed, while next to me, I noticed Polly blushing, and instantly felt bad because it was obvious that I’d hurt her feelings.
When the food came, I could barely touch it, and even though Polly kept trying to get the conversation back on track, with Sidekick Girl attempting to help her, by the time I got back to my Puke-Pink Palace, I was too angry — at my mother, at myself, at Becka, at everyone — to do anything other than fume. Even my reflection in the mirror was fuming. Finally, I went online to check my email and Facebook. Eliza was like: “SO?????!!!!!” I had about a hundred messages from Ann. There were a few other random emails, too. There were also two messages from Dad, I didn’t even know where he was — San Francisco? (He still had some business there.) Detroit? Baltimore? In the first subject box, it said, “Hi, Pooky,” and went on to read, “Miss you. How’s school? How’s Mommy? Love you. Dad.” In the second subject box, it said: “For my sweetest.” That was funny, because Dad never called me “sweetest.” The message read: “Darling Sweetest — just to let you know that my last meeting will wrap up around eleven this morning, meaning that I should be able to catch an early afternoon plane to JFK and be in the city for dinner. Make a reservation? Billy.” Billy? — that was a good one. He hated being called “Bill,” let alone “Billy.” Mom, as well as everyone else we knew, called him “William.” I read the email about a dozen times before I understood that he’d sent it to the wrong email address — that it was meant for someone else. I could barely move, but just sat there, in front of my lit-up computer screen, staring at the message until there was a knock at the door and Mom popped her head in. “Actually,” she said, a little half smile on her face, “I thought that Becka was really quite nice.”
In early October, a miracle happened. And when I say it was a miracle, I’m not exaggerating. Aunt Libby called and said: “How would you like to come to Paris with me over Christmas?”
“No way,” I said.
“Yes way. It’ll be my birthday present to you. Aren’t you going to be sixteen soon? That’s a big year.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“Do you know how lonely it is to be single in Paris over the holidays? But it’s the best time for me to go, when things are quiet in New York. So what do you say? Want to join me?”
Talk about a no-brainer. Unfortunately, Meryl didn’t see it that way. Hunched over her computer, she glanced up for about two seconds, shook her head, and said: “Look, honey, can we discuss this later? I’ve got a deadline.”
“You always have a deadline.”
“It’s for my next book,” she said. “It’s important.”
“This is important to me!”
“I need to discuss this with your father.”
“What do you mean, discuss?”
“Discuss the issues.”
“Issues? What issues? I’d be going with Aunt Libby!”
Instead of answering me, though, she returned to her computer and was so engrossed in whatever she was working on that she didn’t so much as glance up when I said: “I hope your computer explodes.”
It killed me, having to wait for Daddo to come home from work so I could tell him. So I didn’t. Instead, I called his office and when his receptionist answered I told her that I had to talk to him right away. A minute later, he was on the phone, saying, “What’s up, my sweet girl? Is everything okay?”
Of course I told him, right away, that things were fine at home and that there was nothing to worry about. Then I told him about Aunt Libby’s offer and Meryl’s twisted response, and he sighed and said: “Okay, honey. I understand. Let me deal with this one, okay?”
I knew something was up when, that night, Meryl came into my room with two glasses of cherry soda and sat on the end of my bed. But seriously? The cherry soda routine was getting old. As if she was going to coax me into telling her the truth, which was that I was in love. Because I knew exactly what she’d say: Oh, I remember my first crush, too! But my feelings for Arnaud were more than a crush, more than a schoolgirl’s passing whim. As the weeks had dragged by, I’d come to understand that I couldn’t be apart from him without something inside me dying.
“Honey?” Meryl said. “It’s been a while since we really talked.”
For a second, all I wanted to do was crawl into her lap and just spill everything, but as she handed me the cherry soda, I came to my senses. “Anything going on that I need to know about? I just hate to see you looking so sad.”
“But I am sad, Meryl,” I started to say. “I feel so — so bored. At school, everything is drama, drama, drama all the time, and I’m just not like that.”
“High school can be tough all right,” she said. “Which is why your dad and I agreed that you can go to Paris.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes, but with conditions.”
It was an old trick of hers — she’d take me to the movies only if I gave Lucy a bath, or she’d let me have a sleepover at Robin’s only if I folded the laundry. I wondered if she had any clue that I was no longer in elementary school.
“What kind of conditions?”
“I want you to do something for me.”
“Great. Blackmail. What is it this time?”
“I want you to come out to brunch.”
“Meaning?”
“You need to open yourself up to new friendships. I mean it, darling. I know how hard it is, being your age, wanting things, feeling all that inchoate yearning for something better, something more exciting than going to classes and doing homework.” I wanted to barf. Finally she spat it out. “We’re going to have brunch with Polly and her mother.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And Robin . . . You sure you don’t want some soda?”
“No.”
“And someone else, too.”
“Let me guess: You’ve invited Ann Marcus, with whom, let me remind you, I haven’t been friends since first grade.”
“Not Ann. Justine. Justine and her mother. I invited them both and they’re coming.”
Perfect. Just perfect.
“The girl is a freak. There’s just something about her, Meryl, the way she looks at me with her little doggie eyes, like she wants to bite me with her little doggie teeth.”
“That’s what I mean when I say that I’m worried about you. Your attitude isn’t helping you. I’ve met Justine, and frankly, I like her. She’s funny. She’s smart. I happen to think she’s cute. And Judy is a doll. . . .”
“Judy?”
“Judy Gandler — Justine’s mother. She’s terrific. Really. And she’s concerned, t
oo, only, of course, about Justine. She says that Justine’s plain old lonely. That she doesn’t really hang out with anyone at all.”
“Her problem, Meryl. Not mine. And of course she’s lonely: She’s a freak! No one wants to be friends with her, not just me. Why are you shoving her onto me like this? I can’t stand the girl.”
I went anyway. I mean, what was my choice? Plus, at least Polly and Robin were going to be there, because even though Polly and I hadn’t been friends since middle school, she was cool, and Robin had been my best friend since forever. But the brunch was so horrible, with both Polly and Robin ganging up on me all because I made, okay, I admit it, this really stupid joke about Um’s necklace, which was supposed to be funny but just came out weird. Plus, could I help it if the girl reminded me of a cocker spaniel? Just because I said her choker necklace was like a dog’s collar, everyone acted like I’d called the girl an ugly loser from the bowels of hellacious hell. As I sat at that table, I felt more alone than ever.
Even Robin didn’t get me anymore. The next day, as we were walking home from school together, I said: “I can’t believe Meryl rigged up that stupid brunch in the first place. I mean, is she kidding me? Thank God you and Polly were there, is all I can say. But can you believe what that girl Um was wearing? What a weirdo. You’re so much nicer than I am, though, telling her how great she looked and all when you didn’t mean it. I’m just bad at those kinds of white lies.”
But Robin was like: “But I did like her outfit. I thought she looked really cute.” As for me, I’d worn my favorite Free People skinny-cut jeans, which I’d tucked into my favorite pair of boots — so called “riding boots” even though they weren’t for riding — made of black leather, which I’d bought at Macy’s of all places, and also, of course, my Hermès scarf, plus this sweet little knockoff Chanel-style jacket, and no one had made any kind of big deal over my fashion choices. That wasn’t even the point, though, because I really didn’t care. Now it was cold and misty with rain, and over my jeans and sweater I wore the raincoat that I’d forgotten to bring to Paris. And I know: A raincoat is only a raincoat, right? Wrong. Because this raincoat, my Donna Karan, was a fashion statement in and of itself, long and elegant and tailored, made of black cotton sateen, with a pleated back gathered together with a bow, square shoulders, and a tapered waist. Thank God I had it, too, because it was another horrible, cold, damp day. “Plus,” Robin said, “I like that she tries different things.”
Tales From My Closet Page 8
