Girlhearts

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “Patty, do you know that this is the first time I’ve lived in a house with stairs? And two bathrooms? And a room just for eating and another just for TV?”

  “Well, what can I say?” Patty fell back on her own bed. “I’m glad for you.”

  I knew what I’d done. My throat tightened. Why couldn’t I make anyone happy anymore? I sat up, folding my arms around my knees. “I’ve been living with your family almost three weeks now. It’ll be three weeks on Sunday.”

  “I’m glad you came to us,” Patty said after a moment.

  “Your stepfather isn’t glad.”

  “Oh, him. Kevin’s a jerk. You know that. A total hard case.”

  “He’s a lawyer; he’s educated. You have to respect that.”

  It was something Mom would have said. I was being a parrot. Maybe I did respect his education, but I didn’t like him any more than Patty did.

  “Every time you go for a walk,” she said, “he’s waiting to cross-examine you when you come back. Where were you? What did you do? Who did you see? What does he think you’re doing, robbing houses? How educated is that?”

  “Actually, your mom’s not too happy about my being here, either,” I said. “She asked me how long I planned to stay.”

  “Sarabeth, she didn’t!” Patty turned on the light on the night table.

  I blinked and covered my eyes. “Yeah, she did. So … it seems like I should think about going.”

  “When did she say that to you?”

  “Tonight.”

  Patty threw aside her blanket. “Why did she say that? Oh, I know why! It’s Kevin. He’s got such an influence on her. She’ll do anything he says. Ever since she married him, she thinks she’s Juliet and he’s Romeo. She’s flipped completely! He’s made her bizarre and selfish.”

  “I told her I’d be leaving pretty soon. I always knew it was temporary, Patty. I told your mom that, I told her I was only wanting to give Cynthia and Billy a break from me.”

  “You’re not going back there.” She was out of bed now and pacing. “I won’t allow it. It’s perfect your being here; it’s perfect for both of us. You get a home, and I get to think about someone besides Kevin. And it’s working; it’s working for both of us. You know what they say. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

  I smoothed the blanket over my knees. Patty was wrong. It wasn’t working and it wasn’t going to work. Her stepfather was too opposed to me. I thought she was right about one thing, though. From what I’d seen, her mom followed anything he said.

  “I can’t believe my mother said for you to go.”

  “She didn’t really put it that way, Patty.”

  “But that’s what she meant. I wish she was even half as nice, half as sweet as your mother was to me.”

  “Sweet? Mom? She’d laugh her head off if she heard that. She’d tell you she didn’t have a sweet bone in her body.”

  “Sarabeth, come on! Your mother was great.” Patty sat down at the foot of my bed. “Look how she let me live with you last year when I needed someplace.”

  “Well, that was different. Your uncle was abusing you! You had to go someplace.”

  “You and your mom didn’t live in exactly a palace of space. She didn’t have to take me in. She was good. She was always so okay about my being there. I think she even liked it.”

  “Yeah, she did. She liked it for me. She liked my having company. You’re right,” I said, my face falling onto my knees. “She was good.”

  And that last night came back to me again so vividly. Mom in her red dress, the two of us running through the rain, hand in hand. She’d been laughing, and I kept telling her to be quiet, and neither of us knew that with each moment that passed, she was already dying, her heart starting to fail her, her body getting ready to separate her from her life, from me.

  “Sarabeth?” Patty put her hand on my head. “What are you thinking about now?”

  “I’m fine,” I said automatically, and I burst into tears. I cried as I hadn’t cried in weeks, in months. I couldn’t stop crying.

  “Sarabeth,” Patty said. “Oh, Sarabeth. I know, I know … Poor thing. Poor baby.” She stroked my head.

  I pushed her hand away. “Stop pitying me.”

  “I don’t pity you, Sarabeth. I don’t! You say that all the time. ‘Don’t pity me.’ It’s not pity! Can’t you tell the difference? It’s sympathy. I understand. We all do. The worst has happened to you, but, Sarabeth, when is it going to end? You can’t be depressed forever.”

  I straightened up. Mom would have been proud of my posture. “Sympathy or pity, it’s the same,” I said. “Awful. And I’m not depressed, Patty.”

  She shrugged. “If you say so.” She went to the bureau and took a cigarette and a pack of matches from her purse.

  “You shouldn’t smoke,” I said, still sitting rigidly upright. “It makes me furious when I see you smoking.”

  “Kevin smokes, and he’s got my mother smoking, so why not me?” The cigarette was between her lips. She kept trying to light the match. She finally got it going, and smoke traveled up around her face. She narrowed her eyes; they were shaped like tiny blue diamonds.

  “Smoke is going to make your skin wrinkled. You have beautiful skin,” I said. “It’s perfect now. Smoke will ruin it.”

  “So, maybe by the time I’m forty, I’ll get wrinkles. I’ll be dead by then anyway.”

  “Now you sound depressed,” I said.

  But maybe she was right. Mom hadn’t smoked, never drank more than a single beer at a time. She was a little goofy sometimes, but she worked hard, she was honest, and what did it all mean? She died anyway, not even thirty years old. She never made it to forty, not anywhere near.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  When I moved back in again with Cynthia and Billy, I found that they had rearranged things. For instance, the little bureau was filled with Darren’s stuff now, and Cynthia had cleared out a kitchen cupboard for me to use. “You actually have more room this way,” she said. She had given me two shelves below the counter. “And it’s neater, isn’t it?” She was right. Before, even with the bureau, most of my stuff had been stowed in plastic garbage bags, and every morning, getting dressed, I had found myself thinking how ticked off Mom would be to see me becoming the undisputed queen of wrinkles.

  The main thing that was different now, though, was that I didn’t have a “room” anymore. Cynthia and Billy had moved the couch out into the room and turned it to face the TV. “Maybe we’ll switch back to the way you had it, after a while,” Cynthia said. “Let’s see how this works out for now.”

  In the weeks I’d been away, Billy had gotten used to having the couch available whenever he wanted it. “But it’s still your place,” he said to me. “You’re the one who sleeps here, so you have priority.” I saw Cynthia nod approvingly. “You just give me the signal, whenever you’re ready to go to sleep or whatever, and I’ll clear out.”

  Cynthia must have talked to him about how to act with me. He was nice, almost the way he used to be back in the days when they had lived near Mom and me. The first day I was back in the apartment, he seemed sort of glad to see me. He gave me a hug and made a joke about pancakes.

  I wanted things to work out. I think we all did. But something had changed. We were wary around one another, sometimes too polite, sometimes too tense. I think we were all afraid of another blowup.

  “I talked to your social worker this morning,” Cynthia said one afternoon when I got home from school.

  I unloaded my books onto the couch and went into the kitchen. Cynthia was mixing a salad in the same big yellow bowl in which Billy had mixed pancake batter. “What did he want?” I asked.

  “He said—what is his name anyway? Is it Tavero?”

  “Travisino.”

  “Oh, right, that’s it, Travisino. I don’t know why I can’t remember that name. Anyway, he said you’d missed the last two appointments. Is that so?”

  “If he says it, it must be.”

  �
�If he says it—what do you say?”

  I took a piece of onion and chewed it. “Okay. Sure.”

  “‘Okay. Sure’? What does that mean, Sarabeth?”

  “Whatever, Cynthia. I’m just being agreeable.”

  “Sarabeth.” She looked at me mournfully. “What’s the matter with you? You don’t seem like the same girl anymore.”

  I wanted to laugh. The same girl? The same as what? The same as I’d been when I lived with Mom? The same idiot who believed, because her mother had told her, that life was like a river and you just had to learn to swim and stay afloat? The same fool who thought everything could be fixed, every problem solved, every stumbling block overcome with a little grit and persistence?

  “You’ve changed, Sarabeth. You’re not the person you used to be. Jane would cry to see you,” Cynthia said, and she sounded really sad. “She would, she’d cry.”

  “Sorry,” I said stupidly. It was all I could say. I went into the other room and put on my jacket again. “I’m going for a walk.”

  “Supper’s almost ready.”

  “I’m not hungry.” I went out. I walked. I cried. I talked to myself. And it helped a little, but that night, like so many nights now, I didn’t sleep well. Partly, it was because I was remembering what Cynthia had said, that Mom would cry to see me. Yes, I knew how sorry and disappointed she would be in me. I sent her a thought, a message: I wish I could do better. I’ll try.

  But there was another reason I didn’t sleep well. It had been this way ever since I’d moved in again. Billy mostly wasn’t here weeknights, so I had the couch to myself. Not a “room” anymore, but that shouldn’t have made a difference. Shouldn’t have, but did. No matter how often I told myself a bed was a bed was a bed, I couldn’t get used to sleeping in the middle of the room. It seemed public, exposed, unprotected, like sleeping in the middle of a sidewalk or under bright lights in a bus station.

  So many nights, I just huddled and slept for a few hours, then woke, then drifted into fitful sleep again. And somehow, sleeping so poorly, I missed Tobias terribly, missed his weight on my belly, his eyes opening in sync with mine. I was sure that if he were here with me, I wouldn’t feel so exposed or so cold all the time. Cold, even though the weather had turned so much warmer.

  TWENTY-NINE

  James and I had agreed to wait for each other outside the triplex in the mall. He was there first. The long, skinny guy wearing a dark jacket, preppy khaki pants, a scarf around his neck, and a squashed little hat on his head.

  “Your hat is stupid,” I said. That was my greeting, not even hello. I didn’t have manners anymore. Without Mom around, maybe I’d never do anything right again. “Sorry,” I added.

  James gave me a mocking look from his height. “Jealous? It’s called a porkpie. It was my grandpa’s. He was a musician; he played guitar at clubs. He always wore this hat; it was his signature.”

  “Cool,” I said. That sounded better, more like a normal girl having a normal time with a normal boy.

  Although James insisted that neither of us really fit the definition of “normal.”

  We bought tickets and went up about six flights of stairs to the theater. There was still half an hour before the movie came on, so we lounged in the hall and ate Gummi Bears and talked. We had decided that other people could “go together,” but we would do things our own way. We would continue to be friends. Yet, sometimes, we danced around the theme of romance, telling each other stories about the people who had ensnared, enslaved, captured, and broken our hearts when we were younger.

  Now he was telling me about LaShandra, who he loved when he was eleven years old. “She was a dancer, a year older than me. I thought about her all the time—night, morning, all the time. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I do. I know about obsessing on a person.”

  “Got it,” he said, snapping his fingers. I’d told him about my crush last year on a boy named Mark, and how it had led me to name a pillow after Mark, to kiss the pillow passionately, and then to lie to my friends that Mark had kissed me. James liked that story so much, he had made me repeat it to him.

  “But I’m jealous of LaShandra,” I said. “Great name, talented, plus a year older than you, instead of a year younger.”

  “Don’t forget, she was beautiful, too,” he said.

  “Was?” I asked, a little desperately.

  “Is,” he said. “I see her around now and then.”

  Did he know he was causing me heartache? But it was my fault. Friends weren’t supposed to be jealous. Friends weren’t supposed to flirt, and that’s what I’d been doing.

  We found seats in back of the theater. When the movie came on, I tried to stay focused, to follow the story. It was about four men who’d been friends until they stole a ton of money and got suspicious of one another. There was a lot of shouting and shooting and cars bursting into flames.

  I was in a movie with James, a normal girl, doing a normal thing.

  Afterward, in the food court downstairs, we got sodas and pizza and found a table. We talked about the movie and agreed it was 40 percent noise, 40 percent special effects, and 20 percent story. “Not quite enough for me,” James said.

  “Me, either.” Even if I hadn’t agreed with him, which I did, I would have agreed with him. At that moment, if he’d said fried octopus was the greatest food in the world, I would have agreed. His leg was against mine under the table. He had long legs—they had to go somewhere, but still, it was nice … so nice.

  Later, we walked around outside the mall, and I started talking about Mom again. I got started, and I couldn’t stop. Then I was sorry for James, sorry that he was with me. Dull white girl who rambled on about her mother. “Apologies for being so dull,” I said.

  “Oh, you are dull, very dull. That’s why I’m hanging with you.” He tugged my hair, and I liked that as much as his leg against mine. Then he did the best thing. He put his grandpa’s porkpie hat on my head and let me wear it for a long time.

  “I don’t have anything from my grandfathers,” I said. “Not from either one of them. I hardly even know their first names.”

  “Some kind of sorry people,” James said.

  “Very sorry people, and it’s very okay with me that I don’t know them. I don’t care if I ever do.”

  “That’s a sorry thing to say,” he reproached me. “And I don’t believe you. You care.”

  “No.” I looked up at him. “No, I don’t, James.”

  “Yes. Yes, you do, Sarabeth.” He pushed the hat down over my eyes. Then we got into it, like two little kids. “No, I don’t.”… “Yes, you do.”… “No, I don’t.” Back and forth like that, each of us stubborn, refusing to quit.

  “You’re wrong, James!”

  “I’m right, Sarabeth!”

  He grabbed my hand and stopped me in the middle of the street. “I’m looking at you. You can’t see yourself, but if you could—if you saw your face when you talk about these folks, you’d know you’re not happy about them. And I’ll tell you something else—if they’re so stupid, you don’t have to be the same way. You should go and meet them. Don’t wait on them. Do it yourself.”

  “Never,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t take away his hand, which was wrapped around mine, and which I was pretending I didn’t notice. “I’ll never do it.”

  “They’re your family,” he said. We kept walking, and he was still holding my hand. “You can’t ignore your family forever.”

  “I can’t? After how they treated my mom, I don’t even call them family.”

  “They’re probably good people, even if they did do some bad stuff,” he argued.

  “Hello? I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe what they did wasn’t that bad, either, just—”

  “Just what?” I said, withdrawing my hand.

  “Misguided. That’s what my mother calls it when people make mistakes. Misguided. Missile gone wrong. And she says you have to allow for that and give everyone the chance to get into a
right path again.”

  “Oh, James!”

  Now I didn’t want to look at him or talk to him, or even be next to him. I wanted to get away from this awful conversation, this, yes, misguided attempt to make me think well of people who had treated my mother like dirt. I walked faster. I wanted to run. But he stayed with me—of course, his long legs! I couldn’t outwalk him, and he kept up the “misguided” talk, reminding me of the saying, That was then; this is now.

  “Yes, this is now. And now, especially now, I don’t care if they were misguided, mistaken, or miss anything. They don’t miss me, James! They didn’t care about me or my mom. They never did, and they never will. And here’s something else, James. Chew on this! Why would they even want to see me? I was the cause of all the trouble between them and my parents.”

  “What if I told you that knowing them could change your life?”

  “I’d tell you that, smart and brilliant and clever as you are, you still don’t know what you’re talking about. And I wouldn’t believe you anyway, so let’s just drop the subject.”

  We became peaceful again, but I resolved never to talk about Mom and her family and Hinchville again to anyone. I hoped never to even hear that name, Hinchville, again.

  THIRTY

  “You’re really thinking of going to Hinchville?” Grant said, and they all looked at me, waiting for my answer.

  How had this happened? After my passionate vow to ban the topic of Mom and Hinchville, I’d kept my promise three entire days. And now, sitting at our table in the cafeteria, I’d not only spilled the whole conversation I’d had with James but I’d heard myself blurting out that maybe I would go to Hinchville and check out those people.

  “Are you serious, Sarabeth?” Asa asked.

  “No. Forget I said that. It was just a stupid thought.”

  “My advice is, keep it that way, as a thought, stupid or otherwise.” Grant set her sandwich down and wiped her mouth carefully. “Why dig up the past?”