So homeroom is about location, location, location. Those fifteen minutes a day put me in the proximity of some of the most influential girls in school, and eventually, one or two of them decide to talk to me. Which is how Mara “Call Me, Okay?” Moline ends up answering my query about cheerleading by tryouts.
Of course, I balk.
“COME ON!! JUST DO IT!!” she cheers in her perpetually urgent way. “I’LL TEACH YOU EVERYTHING!!”
I hem and haw for a moment, fearful of actually letting it be known that I would even consider being a cheerleader. What if I fail? Then people would know I wanted to be a cheerleader but got rejected. That would be a fate more like social quadriplegia—where you get hit by a car but don’t die. Besides, wasn’t cheerleading for girls from nice families, with brothers who played football in the fall and hockey in the winter? I don’t have a brother. I don’t have a family! All I have is a mom, whom I don’t call Mom, because she isn’t really my mom, nor do I want her to be.
Not exactly cheerleader material. Especially in this place.
But cheerleading does have two things to recommend it: First, it is considered a sport, so the uniforms are provided by the school, free of charge. And I don’t have money. But even more alluring is the bigger, more tantalizing carrot that cheerleading dangles. It could do for me what I don’t have the power to do for myself, and that is make me normal. Or at least normal-like.
So the next day when Mara urges me again to try out for cheerleading, I see that she’s really just thinking she wants to do for me what Alicia did for Brittany.
And I’m going to let her.
ALL WE DO ON THAT (SECOND) first date is walk Paul’s dog around the block. That’s it. The conversation is casual, as if the whole relationship is already in the bag so there’s no need to spend a lot of time on courting rituals. (Maybe he got the arm chill, too? I’ll have to ask him sometime, when we’re eighty.) We’ve just skipped all that.
We talk about his trips to Vancouver and Buenos Aires to shoot commercials. We talk about the music I’ve been recording. We talk about dog poop.
He’s not seductive, and I’m not anxious, and we are just being.
It’s done already.
When we return to the loft, I lounge on the sofa and the setting sun streams in the window. I watch as the sky behind the Deloitte and Touche towers sinks from dusky mauve into midnight blue, like slipping deeper and deeper into a state of hypnosis, until the stars are out. It’s a magical hour.
“So how did I end up here?” I ask. This is as close as I’m going to come to making Paul answer for what happened 5.5 weeks ago. It’s one of those deals where possession is nine-tenths of the law. I’m here, and that’s truer than anything else.
Paul tells me how he had a moment of clarity in Argentina. “I’m thirty-nine,” he says. “I’m tired of going from job to job, woman to woman. I’m ready to settle down.” He says he’s made a decision to change his life. “I want a girlfriend. A partner. And when I thought about who I had dated that would be right for that”—he slows down now, like he’s deciding whether or not to say exactly what he’s thinking—“I thought about you.”
Then he just comes right out and says it. “I want you to be my girlfriend.”
Inside my chest, birds are singing, and fish are jumping, and all the animals in the forest are running around like they did in Bambi when the prince was born. This is a truly wonderful day.
Paul has a plan and he lays it out. “I want to commit, and you’ll have to commit, too,” he says. “We’ll only date each other.” I have no problem with that; in fact, it’s pretty much my (second) first-date dream come true. “My hope is that we’ll build a relationship and a life, and it will include your son, and my son, even though he lives in another state.”
I’m good with that. So good with it, I hardly know what to say. Then I remember he once dated me for three days and just disappeared on me. Who’s to say he’s not going to do it again? I put it to him straight. “How do I know you’re not going to just change your mind like you did before?”
He looks at me. This is a moment of truth. I’m scrutinizing his face, because whatever he says is going to be important, and I don’t want to deceive myself into anything.
“You can trust me, Tracy,” he says in that authoritative clipped way he has. “I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I know what I want.”
“How do I know that?” I counter.
“Because I wouldn’t have called you back.”
And I don’t say anything because that is exactly the right answer. If he didn’t want me, want this, want us, he would have left well enough alone.
My fears laid to rest, the relationship is begun. All I have to do now is let it be there.
So, I do.
We make out for a little while and there’s a different feeling between us. A little less heat—from, say, a blowtorch to an electrical fire—but a lot more warmth. Then it’s time to leave. I have things to do, and besides, the deal is done. I can come back and get the keys tomorrow.
We kiss in the elevator all the way down the four floors to the lobby. It’s a symbolic kiss—like getting married, or getting engaged—a promise of everything that’s going to come from this day forward.
I get in my car and pinch myself.
As I drive back home, I consider how my life is going to change now that I’ve chosen a guy like Paul. A man, really. Until now, I’ve had a penchant for boy-men, and even though Paul has a boyish quality, there’s no doubt that he is fully grown.
To start with, he thinks big. There’s the movie project he’s developing, with tens of thousands of dollars of his own money, because he believes, no, assumes it will succeed. It’s about when, not if. By contrast, I’m accustomed to predicting failure, or at least limiting my expectations, as a way of buffering disappointment. And up till now, I’ve attracted men who did the same.
But Paul seems to think anything—actually everything—is possible.
Maybe because he went to Harvard, which, I’ll admit, does impress me. (Just like it’s supposed to.) He didn’t even bring it up until our third or fourth conversation, and then he said it so casually—“Oh, I’m a Harvard Man”—like he was mocking it, but really he was invoking the power that the Ivy League holds, especially for those of us whose dads are in federal prison. This is America, and it’s still a patriarchy where the man in your life—first your dad, and then very likely your husband—determines which spot on the Monopoly board you call home. With Paul I’m going to move from St. Charles Place to Pennsylvania Avenue, and I won’t lie, I’ve always liked bright green.
For years I’ve lived solely on my TV news income, with no child support. (My child’s dad is the farthest thing from a deadbeat, but because we have roughly the same earning power—and equal custody—we each simply maintain our own household.) I pull two or three shifts a week in what is essentially a news factory, turning real-life murders, fires, and water-skiing squirrels into thirty-second news sausages stuffed with mostly useless information.
Writing TV news is great—as far as shift work goes. The people are smart and nice, and the pay is good. It’s also very flexible—if I suddenly get an urge to go to Paris, I can.
Not that I will. Because working three days a week in TV news doesn’t offer the kind of money that would allow me to take vacations, buy a house, have regular spa days, or indulge myself in a thing (or two) from Prada—like many of my well-married (or well-divorced) peers. They are the grown-up versions of the girls with the Tretorns and the alligator shirts. And in many ways, I am still the girl who is with them but not of them.
But here is Paul, with the big paintings on the walls, and the high-thread-count sheets, and the $23 entrées. With the amazing apartment, the supersize sexuality, the long, thin fingers, the well-developed intellect, the serious talent, and the silly voices. With the eccentric spirit, the endearing smile, and the affectionate nature. With the love of politics, movies, conversation,
art, and design. With the four-poster bed.
And he wants to give all that to me.
And I’m going to let him.
Eight
I Love You, Even If You Already Have a Girlfriend
I NEVER EVEN THINK ABOUT my dad anymore. I haven’t been to see him in a year, and to be honest, I don’t miss him. It’s not that he’s dead, it’s that I’ve buried him alive. Six feet under my fifteen-year-old “real” life, in which I am now a Wilson high school cheerleader. Yay!
The only time he really comes to mind is when I’m lying to my friends on the squad about him. It’s not that I lie exactly—I’m very factual—I just omit the part about the prison.
What does your dad do?
He works in a barbershop. (At Sandstone federal prison.)
Where does your dad live?
He used to live in Indiana, but now he lives up north. (At Sandstone federal prison.)
Do you ever see your dad?
Not very often. He left when I was three. (To go to prison.)
Is your dad black?
Yeah. (In prison.)
Until about seventh or eighth grade, I was totally (compulsively?) open about my dad being in prison. It never quite occurred to me that anyone should think less of me because of him. Crime was his thing, not mine. But somewhere in there I must have picked up a facial microexpression or two that told me pubescent girls weren’t terribly Christlike in their ability to accept the sick, lame, tired, and/or incarcerated. Which must be when I decided it was better just to hide that shit.
I follow the same policy with Yvonne. I tell as much of the truth as I think people can handle, carefully framing it in terms they can understand. That means rather than going into a lot of detail about just how, exactly, she ended up as my mother, I simply say she’s my stepmom, who adopted me. I leave out any references to birth mothers, foster care, Lutheran ministers, or other colorful details that only beg more questions than I am willing to answer.
Having this kind of secret naturally makes me feel separate from the other kids. It’s a tough choice: feel separate due to the stigma of having a parent in prison, or feel separate because there’s a huge part of me that no one knows about—even my closest friends at school. It’s kind of a no-brainer. This is high school; conform or die.
All I can say is thank god for Betsy and Dianne.
Somehow, Betsy and I have maintained BFF status, even through my moves. She still lives one door down from my old house, she still bites her nails, and she still has long, straight hair parted down the middle. She is a bulwark of stability in my peripatetic life.
Across the street and a few houses down from her lives Dianne, our third best friend. Dianne showed up in sixth grade, after returning from California, where her professor dad moved the family for a two-year sabbatical. Though all of us go to different schools (and have separate, other BFFs at those schools), the best-friend relationship the three of us have is—certainly for me, maybe for them as well—the most important one. Not least because I practically live with them, at least on the weekends.
It’s a little like having a house in the Hamptons. I usually show up on Fridays after school and live with Betsy one night and Dianne the next. And, just like having a house in the Hamptons, it’s the only time all week I really relax.
When I live at Betsy’s and Dianne’s, I get to be a normal kid: eat dinner at a table, be told to pipe down, and carry the groceries (eight bags!) in from the car. There are rules, and I like that. Not just for the kids; the adults have rules, too, which I also like, because it makes their behavior predictable. I know what makes Betsy’s mother cross (munching cereal in the TV room and getting it all over the floor right after she vacuums); I know Betsy’s dad will have a high-ball around five P.M., before the bridge club arrives; I know Dianne’s mother will cook something weird for dinner, like curry, and I know her dad will be hunkered down in his home office, grading papers all weekend.
Betsy and Dianne (and their parents, and their brothers and sisters) know everything about me. They know I have an unstable mom who can’t seem to keep the same job or the same address. They know I have a repeat offender for a dad. And they let me hang around anyway.
If I ever win an Oscar, I am totally going to thank them.
Both Betsy and Dianne also have older brothers—two for Betsy and one for Dianne—between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. They’re unaware of it, but these three boys are as close as I ever get to “men.” In my “real” life, I only know girls: There’s Yvonne and me, in a household where there’s no dad, so the toilet seat is never up. There’s Yvonne’s mom, her mom’s sister, and Yvonne’s three sisters, who between them had five girls. The only guys at our family gatherings are Yvonne’s sisters’ husbands, and what can you say about them, except that they’re outnumbered? Then there’s me: a girly girl who likes fashion magazines and nail polish, gymnastics and ice skating, and talking. A lot of talking.
Boys are to me what fur is to violins—which is to say, completely unrelated.
I come into contact with some boys at school, but I don’t know them on a personal level—like, none of them has ever said to me anything along the lines of “Hang on, I have to go to the bathroom,” or “Man, my balls itch today,” or “I can’t believe the Vikings sucked so bad last night.” They’re mostly these strange unknowable creatures who can’t see me unless they are making me the butt of a joke, like a couple of weeks ago when two of the hockey players threw me into Minnehaha Creek at a keg party.
So, these Betsy-and-Dianne-brother-people are it as far as understanding, researching, and/or relating to males. Which might explain why my skills are so lacking in this area.
On Sundays, one of Betsy’s brothers, usually Randy, drives me back to wherever I am currently living, while Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” or Gary Wright’s “Dream Weaver” plays on the radio. I’m always a little sad when Randy is driving me home, because it means I’m going back to the madness. Who doesn’t wish they could live in the Hamptons all the time?
Even though Randy is a lot older—he must be, what, seventeen?—I relate to him. He is kind of like me: loud, boisterous, seriously energetic, maybe a little ADD. And his hair is kind of curly. I feel a little less crazy to know that even people who go to Catholic school and live in two-story houses with center-hall plans sometimes turn out like me. I mean, maybe not as bad as me, but still.
I’m pretty sure Randy relates to me, too, because sometimes he actually talks to me about stuff on the ride home. Stuff like my life and the wacky people in it. Stuff most people are afraid to ask me about.
“How’s your dad?” Randy doesn’t wait for an answer before firing off a follow-up. “You still see him?”
“Sometimes.”
“He’s still in prison?”
“Yeah.”
“Man…” Randy trails off. You kind of get that he’s considering what it would be like to be in prison, or what it would be like if your dad was in prison, and you can tell that he’s not feeling pity, he’s feeling a mixture of That would be a wild adventure and That would totally suck.
I like the way Randy asks me questions—curious, not sympathetic. He’s amused and maybe a teensy bit fascinated by my interesting story, and it makes him treat me if not exactly like an equal, at least like someone who might be an equal someday. That’s more than I can say for most boys I know.
Dianne’s older brother Tommy, sixteen, is a different story. He seems to regard all three of us—Betsy, Dianne, and me—like David Letterman regards some of his guests. He thinks we’re silly, when he bothers to think of us at all.
Mostly he hangs out upstairs in his attic bedroom, which is just like Greg Brady’s, except less groovy. When he does interact with us, it’s something like this:
“How many times are you gonna play that stupid song?”
Tommy is shouting at us down two flights of stairs because we have the song “The Groove Line” by Heatwave on repeat. We’re playin
g Choreography, a game where we make up dance moves to a song until we can’t stand to listen to it anymore. Unfortunately for him, Tommy gets sick of the song way before we do.
“Shut up!” Dianne shouts back good-naturedly. Dianne is always good-natured. She’s got a Sandra Bullock–like quality: she’s strong, funny, and pretty all at the same time. Guys love her. Years later, when I have her senior picture hanging on the corkboard in my very first college dorm room, guys will, almost to a man, ask in hushed awe, “Who’s that?” That’s Dianne, the girl who’s showing the rest of us how easy life is when you just allow it to be.
Tommy appears on the staircase to watch us go through our paces. You would think we were in a Bob Fosse show. “What are you guys doing?”
“We’re dancing. Don’t bug us,” Dianne says. She knows how to handle boys in general and Tommy in particular. Of the three of us, Dianne is the one who will have the first period, get the first real kiss, and birth the first baby. (I, however, will walk down the first aisle. On a boat. But I digress.)
Dianne pushes the button on the cassette player, and we take it from the top of the chorus. Again. The singer’s raging falsetto squeezes through the tiny speakers.
I’m busting my little moves, feeling pretty good, when Tommy, who’s still watching, says a word I’ve never heard before.
“Are you guys gonna do this act at the homecoming talent show? Because Tracy can be the Token.”
All three of us look up at him. We don’t know what he’s talking about.
“The what?”
“The Token. You know.” He says it like we’re terribly uninformed. “The Token?”
“Tommy,” Dianne says, rolling her eyes, “leave us alone.” She knows that whatever he means, it can’t be good.
“No, I want to know,” I say, grinning. I have a tendency to smile when I know I’m being made fun of. Intuitively, I already know what Tommy is talking about. There’s an invisible energy that happens when race comes up. An energy that by kindergarten, I knew well.
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