Tales From My Closet

by Jennifer Anne Moses

  Why? Because she has this huge crush on this twenty-year-old, and she thinks she’s so mature, and she’s planning on having sex with him in Paris.

  Turning suddenly back in my direction, Meryl directed her gaze at me and said: “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Me? No. No way.”

  “Do you not like boys?”

  “Sure. I guess.”

  “Do you ever feel, I don’t know — like you’re in a hurry to grow up? To look sexy or racy?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay, then. Tell me what you’re wearing.”

  I looked down at myself again. “Jeans. A silk top. A jacket. Boots.”

  “Tell me about them: why you chose them, what they mean to you, whether you feel good in them.”

  This was getting weirder and weirder. “You know what? My mom hates my clothes. Okay? But Libby Fine loves my look. She told me so herself, last summer, when I was interning for her.”

  Sighing deeply, Meryl leaned forward and said: “Okay. Point taken. But in the meantime, honey, will you do me a favor? If Becka’s hanging out with the wrong kind of people, doing things she shouldn’t be doing . . .”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Is she seeing someone?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Grabbing both my hands in hers, Meryl leaned in so close that I could feel her breath. “I know you’re trying to protect her, Robin. But I can read the signs. I’m a trained psychologist — a specialist in adolescent behavior! And if there’s one thing I know about, it’s how teenage girls close ranks in an effort to protect one another. So I understand that you don’t want to betray your friend in any way. Really, darling, I do. But you have to understand. I’m Becka’s mother, and ever since she’s gotten back from Paris, she’s been acting stranger and stranger, more and more depressed and high-strung.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” I said weakly.

  “Is she taking drugs?”

  “Oh God! No! I swear.”

  “Drinking?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Okay, then. Who is he? Is he someone I know?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Is she dating someone she shouldn’t be — a stoner? A grown man? One of her teachers? Because I know the territory here. I know how tempting the bad boys are when you’re your age.”

  She was pleading now. I felt sorry for her, but I was also angry — too angry to feel anything other than a desperate need to leave.

  An endless eternity later, Mom picked me up. It was raining. As she drove, I let my eyes slide out of focus, so the world was streaked with red-and-yellow taillight blurs. “So, was that helpful?” Mom finally said as she pulled her gray Toyota into our driveway.

  “Why don’t you ask Meryl?” I said in the most sarcastic voice I could muster. For some reason, as soon as I said it, I felt even worse, and I continued to feel awful most of the afternoon, too, until finally I went online and, for less than ten dollars, bought myself a cute bright-green clutch studded with pink rhinestones. I knew that if Mom found out about it, she’d get on my case. But, first of all, there was no way she was going to find out about it, because this time I was paying for it with PayPal. And second of all, what was ten bucks?

  I knew something was wrong when, halfway through team practice, Coach Fruit stopped me in mid–flip turn to say: “Your mom needs to talk to you.” I looked up through the steamed half windows: Outside it had begun to snow.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “Here — use my cell phone.” It was Bella, who’d come down from the stands.

  “Do you think just maybe I could have handled this without your help?” I heard Coach saying to her as I dialed home.

  “Poppy died,” Mommy said, picking up on the first ring. “I know. I could have waited until practice was over. But — oh, honey!” She sounded like she’d swallowed a wad of wet tissue.

  “Don’t cry,” I said, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I started crying, too. “I’ll come home right away.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even called you! You stay at practice. I’ll see you afterward.”

  It was so weird, because as I pulled myself out of the pool, instead of being sad about Poppy, all I could think of was that Coach seemed mad at me. Instead of wearing his usual grin, he was scowling, and his neck was taut, as if his jaw hurt him. I tried not to think about it — either about Coach being angry with me or about Poppy. Instead, as I toweled myself off, I burst into tears. Poppy — gone! I just couldn’t believe it. Or rather, I could. He’d been sick for a long time. But never being able to see him again? I couldn’t bear it! I tried to think about swimming instead, but as I walked home, all I could think of was: Who will take care of Poppy now? And then I’d cry even harder, my tears falling on my woolen scarf (a hand-me-down from Becka, when Becka and I used to be friends) and making my cheeks even colder than they already were.

  Mommy met me at the door with a hug. Bending down to put my head on her neck, I could feel her small bones and her heart beating against mine. “I just got off the phone with your father,” she said, wiping her face with one hand and leading me to sit on the sofa with the other “The funeral’s on Friday.”

  “Not until Friday?” I said. “But today’s Monday! What are they going to do, put Poppy in a freezer?”

  “Your father needs time to get here.”

  Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about Poppy at all, but instead, was furious — at my so-called father. “Mommy! Burton lives in L.A. He could be here by tonight if he wanted.”

  “Apparently he has some complications.”

  “I don’t even know why he has to come.”

  She ignored me. “You may have to miss school. Practice, too.”

  “Who cares about stupid practice?” I screamed. But then, with a sudden pang, I remembered how angry Coach Fruit seemed to be. And with State coming up, it was important that I didn’t lose momentum. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was disappoint him.

  Mommy squeezed my hand. “You’re a good girl.”

  “Poor Poppy!” I said, bursting into a fresh gush of tears. Then Mommy started crying, too, and the two of us just sat there, blowing our noses and sobbing until Hank came over and slobbered on us.

  On the day of the funeral, we both dressed in dark colors — Mommy in the same black scoop-neck dress that she wore to her students’ recitals, and me in a dark-blue sweaterdress that she went and bought for me online, insisting that I needed a good winter dress anyway and that she wanted me to look nice when I saw Burton. “But I don’t care about Burton!” I said. “And what about the money?”

  “For the last time, Polly,” Mommy said, “I have enough. I do. And I do care about Burton.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” I said.

  The dress was — how can I put it? A part of me felt like it made me look like a bag of flour squeezed into a dark-blue mitten. But another part of me felt like I’d never looked better than I did in that dress, that it had been made for me and me alone — and that just didn’t seem right, not for Poppy’s funeral, not when I’d never see him again.

  It was depressing, driving through Astoria, where every storefront was decked out for Christmas, with blinking lights and giant blow-up Santa Clauses, but even more depressing was when we got to the funeral home, where Poppy was lying in an open casket at one end of a small room, wearing a scuffed-up gray suit and a pink tie, his face looking like it had been painted with shellac, and his hands folded over his stomach, as if he was taking a nap. I just stared at him, thinking: Where’d he go? And then I began to think that they were going to put him under the ground, where he’d be cold, and shut in, and all alone. . . .

  “Oh, Poppy,” I whispered.

  Just then, there was a hand on my back, and I turned to see a man who said: “Polly! Look how grown-up you are!”

  “Hi?” I said.

  “It’s me. Your dad!”
/>
  “Burton?”

  The last time I’d seen him, he’d had thick hair and a square jaw. But this man was balding, with a patch of scalp at the back of his head, red, puffy skin, with a ring of sparse hair the color of black ink.

  “Hi, Burton,” Mommy said, proffering her cheek to be kissed.

  “Liz,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”

  As if Mommy wouldn’t come. As if it hadn’t been Mommy (with me along) who’d been looking after Poppy ever since Burton had skedaddled off to his fabulous, kid-free life in Los Angeles.

  “You’re not a little girl anymore, are you?” Burton continued, scanning me up and down as if I were something he was thinking about buying. I tugged at the hemline of my sweaterdress, suddenly becoming hyperaware of how it hugged my hips and clung to my thighs.

  “I’m fifteen.”

  He whistled. “I guess you are, at that.” I noticed that, in addition to his weird, pasted-on-looking, ink-black hair, his gums were weirdly red. “Poor old Dad, eh?”

  Which was when I was jolted out of my discomfort with Burton and into remembering why I was there. Poppy, lying in his one suit, which was shiny with age and too big for him, there in that coffin. I wanted to throw my arms around him and cry on his neck, but I knew it wouldn’t help. He’d still be dead.

  “So, Liz,” Burton now said, turning to my mother. “You’re looking well.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Still teaching the piano?”

  “You know I am.”

  He clasped his hands behind his back, rocking on his feet. “So she’s become a serious swimmer?” I could hear him saying to Mommy.

  “You should see her, Burton. She’s a natural.”

  “I can see she’s strong,” he whistled. “Her arms and legs are huge. She must be bigger than most of the boys. And in that dress — like a great blue whale! What are you feeding her, anyway?”

  I felt so stung that I wanted to cry. Instead, I turned to see Mommy’s face turning pink the way it does when she’s about to cry. Then I turned to Burton and said: “Why are you such a jerk?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re probably only here to see if Poppy left you any money!”

  “Polly . . .” He started to explain. “I don’t think you understand. All I meant was that you’ve gotten so tall, so tall and so strong.”

  “Why didn’t you ever come and see Poppy? Your own father! Whatever. Okay. You went ahead and abandoned me and Mommy. But Poppy? He’s been sick for years. What is wrong with you? Are you gay?” I was so worked up I could have continued for an hour, except right then the priest walked in. He was round and pink and wore round, shiny glasses. He blinked, cleared his throat, and said: “Shall we begin?”

  Sitting herself in the front row, near Burton, Mommy gestured to me to sit beside her. But I couldn’t — I just didn’t want to go anywhere near that loser. Instead I sat in back, with Patty and Linda, Poppy’s nice nurses from the old-age home.

  I don’t know why, but as soon as she saw Burton making a beeline for me after the funeral, Mommy pulled me away, saying: “I’m going to get you back home in time for you to make your swimming practice.”

  “You are?”

  “We can just make it,” she said

  I didn’t want to hang around Burton — that was for sure — but I didn’t want to swim, either. I didn’t want to do anything but sleep. I mean, it just felt weird, going to school to swim like it was just an ordinary day, like nothing unusual had happened. And even though Mommy assured me that Poppy would have wanted nothing more than to get me to swim practice, once I hit the pool, I couldn’t catch my rhythm no matter what. I was breathing hard — too hard — and my arms and legs felt rubbery in the water. It got worse and worse. So much worse that Coach pulled me out of the water to tell me to take a hot shower, put my clothes on, and meet him in his office, and boy oh boy, did he sound angry.

  I was pretty sure he was going to lecture me, but instead, when I got to his office, dry and dressed again in my dark-blue dress, all he said was: “You were really off out there.”

  “It was my grandfather’s funeral today,” I said, “and my so-called father was there.”

  “I see,” he said, frowning.

  “You’re angry at me, aren’t you?”

  “Why should I be angry at you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, but that wasn’t true, either. He was angry for all kinds of reasons, mainly to do with how, even after all the work he’d poured into me, I was letting him down. To keep from crying, I dug my fingernails into my hands, afraid to look up.

  “Damn,” he suddenly snapped.

  Sighing loudly, the way Mommy sometimes does when she’s frustrated with one of her students or tired, he suddenly burst out with: “If I seem angry, it’s because I had a fight with Bella.”

  It was one of those awkward moments. I didn’t know what to do, or say, or even whether I had permission to breathe. So I just sat there, staring at my hands until, a few moments later, he said: “Sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  I still didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything. Finally he broke the silence: “So tell me. What’s going on? Why are you so off?”

  “You already know. Poppy died.”

  “And?” His voice was so soft and so kind, I nearly melted.

  “His funeral was awful. Including the priest, there were only nine people there.”

  “Sounds sad.”

  “Plus, my father said that I’m huge!” I suddenly burst out.

  “Huge?”

  “He said I had enormous legs and arms. He said I’m a whale!”

  “In those words, exactly?”

  “Actually, he said I’m a great blue whale.”

  Coach just looked at me.

  “And then I asked him if he’s gay!”

  “Is he?”

  “What do I care?”

  Suddenly I was laughing. I was laughing so hard, I could feel the chair shaking under me. I was laughing so hard that I was crying, laughing and crying as I remembered when Poppy still lived in his own apartment and Mommy and I would go over there for what he called his “famous lamb chops for his lamb chops” and we’d eat dinner in his cramped kitchen, Poppy telling jokes he’d heard on late-night TV. “Whatever,” I finally said, catching my breath enough to get up. Which is when it happened. Coach Fruit reached for me. Pulling me into his chest, he murmured: “You are not a great blue whale.” I knew he meant it as a joke, something to keep the laughter going, but when I felt my chest against his, with only my sweaterdress and his sweatshirt between me and him? I thought I was going to melt right into the gray linoleum floor.

  It was the weirdest thing ever. Because even though I couldn’t stop crying over Poppy, at the same time, my mind was whirling with what had just happened in Coach Fruit’s office. Wouldn’t it be funny, I thought as I walked home, if Mommy and I both got boyfriends at the same time? Except, of course, that Coach Fruit would never be my boyfriend. I mean, the whole idea was ridiculous. But it had been fun to laugh with Coach Fruit about my so-called father, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized how glad I was that I’d confronted Burton: Somebody had to! Coach Fruit had told me it was great that I had, not that that meant anything boyfriendwise. And just because Mommy had gone ahead and had coffee with that weirdo lummox whose kids took lessons from her didn’t mean that she was going to start dating him, either. Especially since all she’d tell me afterward was that he “seemed like a nice man.”

  But when I got home, there he was, sitting on our sofa, looking huge and uncomfortable, like he wasn’t sure that the sofa would hold him. It wasn’t that he was fat or ungainly so much as big all over, with huge feet encased in square black shoes, and long fingers. “Hiya, we met before, on the steps?” he said. “I’m Alfred.” I gave him my standard “see you” wave and started heading to my bedroom, but Alfred (Alfred?) kept talking.

  “My kids are really getting int
o it.”

  “Good.”

  “Piano, that is. Your mom’s a good teacher.”

  “Yup.”

  “Polly, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “We met before. When you were with your mom, coming home.”

  “Yup.”

  “You’re a swimmer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Your mother told me. She’s very proud of you.”

  “She does that.”

  “My kids really, really like her.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Their mother and I are divorced.”

  “Sorry.”

  “They live with me.”

  What did this guy want from me, anyway? A cookie? I honestly didn’t know what to do. I had homework, and even if I didn’t, I made it a habit to never, never ever, get into a lot of chitchat with Mommy’s students’ parents.

  “I like your dress,” the man then said.

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s pretty,” he said. “It looks good on you.”

  “Can I, er, get you a glass of water or something?”

  “No, that’s okay. “

  “Well, then,” I said, “nice meeting you again.”

  “Nice meeting you, too, Polly.”

  From my bedroom, I heard the strains of a very tentative Bach — one of the Anna Magdalena minuets that I used to play when I still played piano. Then silence. Then my mother’s voice. “Oh, Alfred! Did you hear? Aren’t they doing well? Wasn’t that just beautiful?”

  In my mind, I could practically hear Poppy saying: “What kind of name is Alfred?”

  Mama waited almost a week, but when she was ready, boy, did I get a talking-to. “I want to discuss what happened at Thanksgiving,” she said as I reached for the Cheerios and poured myself a bowl. She herself was sitting at the kitchen table as usual, drinking coffee, the New York Times spread in front of her.

  “Can this wait? I have to get to school.”

  “No, it can’t wait.”

  “I’ll be late. I don’t want to get a tardy.”