What She Saw...

by Lucinda Rosenfeld

  Even so, you’d think he could have said good-bye.

  But he didn’t; he didn’t even say where he was going. He disappeared without a trace. Just like the Lenni Lenape. None of the kids in school knew why. And Mrs. K. wasn’t talking. She crossed “Mancuso, Roger” off the class list without comment. She never uttered his name again. It was as if he never existed. Or maybe Phoebe was the one who never existed. In the end, it seemed, she was just “some girl” Stinky once knew, didn’t anymore.

  She was a lot more than that to Roberta and Leonard.

  In her double stops they heard traces of Paganini. In her slow movements they found reason to recall Milstein. They said she was a natural. They said she had the makings of a soloist. It didn’t matter that her talent was questionable. Or that she planned to become a newscaster or a chemist. It was enough that she trekked over to Mildred Street every Wednesday at four for her private lesson with Mrs. Bernstein, developed indestructible calluses on four of the five fingertips of her left hand, suffered the embarrassment of having the semipermanent abrasion under her chin mistaken for a hickey. It was enough that she pretended to like their music. That’s how easy it was maintaining the affection of her parents—a whole lot easier than it was maintaining the affection of boys like Stinky Mancuso, boys who didn’t seem to care if you pretended to like the Stones or not, boys who asked questions to which they didn’t apparently want the answers.

  Boys who were kissing you one minute and were gone the next.

  SHE CAME ACROSS the obituary a few weeks later. She was sliding rubber bands over rolled-up copies of the Whitehead Ledger—she’d taken on a paper route to supplement her skimpy allowance—when one rolled open. It was the last name that caught her eye. “Eugenia Mancuso Dead at 74,” read the headline. “Beloved Mother and Grandmother Active in Community Affairs. . . . Her only son, Vincent, and daughter-in-law, Mary, died in an automobile accident in 1976. . . . Survived by a nephew, Boz Mancuso, of New Rochelle, N.Y., and a grand-son, Roger Mancuso, formerly of Whitehead, now also of New Rochelle. . . .”

  That was the last Phoebe heard of Stinky, though not the last she thought of him or of the stink bomb for which he was named. For in that terrible smell, she somehow perceived that the antiseptic odors of suburbia—of newly cut grass and lemon-fresh furniture polish and brand-new basketballs—were not the only odors there were, that there were other smells she might one day sniff, some that merely stunk, but others that spoke of a larger drama than the one being played out in the not-quite-hallowed halls of Whitehead Middle.

  Besides, school had been a lot more fun when Stinky was there. After he left town, the weekdays dragged on like classical-music concerts. The intermissions were never long enough.

  2. Günter Hopstock

  OR “The East German Pen Pal”

  BAD LIEBENWERDA 28.2.81

  Dear Phoebe Fine,

  I am pleased to meet you. I come from the GDR. My name is Günter Hopstock. I am 13 years old. I was born on the 22.05.67. I learn in the 8 class. I have brother and a sister. My brother is 14 years old, and my sister is 12 years old. My mother is 36 years old. She is a teacher. My father is 37 years old. He is an engineer. Do you speak German? From 4.7.1981 to 31.8.1981 we have school holidays (finish school). What’s your age? When were you born? We built a new house with many rooms. We have: 3 nursery, 1 bedroom for my parents, and 2 sitting rooms (1 with new furniture and 1 with old furniture). We also have a swimming pool that is 5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide. I have a rock collection. I would like to be a geologist. Please write back.

  Sincerely,

  Günter Hopstock

  WHITEHEAD, NEW JERSEY, MARCH 30, 1983

  Dear Günter Hopstock,

  You wrote me a pen pal letter two years ago. Sorry it took me so long to write back. I was really busy. You know—friends, school, tennis, shopping, skinning squirrels, taking apart and putting back together computers, that kind of thing. Do you still have a swimming pool that is 5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide? Also, do you wear Speedos or trunks? I have a mother and a father, too. I can’t remember how old they are, but there’s a good chance they’re older than I am. (I’m 12 now.) I have a sister, too. She’s 15 and really conceited. You must be around 15 now yourself. Please send a picture so I can tell if you’re cute. I already have a huge crush on Matt Dillon, C. Thomas Howell, and our Russian piano tuner with the crooked teeth, Igor.

  Last summer I was in Switzerland, fairly near Germany. It was really nice there—if you like cheese. I hate cheese. I only like sweet foods. My favorite foods are sugar, corn syrup, and dextrose. What kind of music do you like? I like Flock of Seagulls and Schubert, especially his unfinished symphony. I have a rock collection, too. Maybe someday we can compare mica. I also have a stamp collection. Your country has such beautiful stamps! My favorite stamps are from Nazi-occupied Estonia. I also really like the John and Jackie series from Sierra Leone. Have you heard of Valley Girls in Germany? I’m like, “totally” one “for sure.” By the way, I don’t speak a word of German so nanananananananananana.

  Are you a good student? I get straight A’s. My school is really easy. Last year, they started letting in kids from a town nearby that doesn’t have its own junior high. They’re very “low class” (my mother’s favorite word) and obnoxious. All they do is sit around and smoke, and if you turn your homework in on time they call you a “dexter.” So next year I’m going to private school with a bunch of snobs. I guess you don’t have snobs in the GDR because it’s Communist. Speaking of which, are you a Communist? I’m not very political, but I think Ronald Reagan is a dope and should go back to acting in chimp movies. My parents voted for Jimmy Carter. I would have too because I don’t have any of my own opinions.

  Do you have any suicidal classmates? I do. Also, have you seen E.T.? I’ve seen it twice, but I hated it. I saw it because it was the cool thing to do. You know, peer pressure. When I’m bored, I think about dying. I think the worst way to die would be in a plane crash, followed by drowning, gunshot, knife wound, avalanche, strangulation, fire, car crash, riptide, Chinese water torture, and getting run over by a bus. Do you have London broil in the GDR? You’re lucky if you don’t. Also, do your parents save twisty-ties? My parents have a whole drawer full of them. When I grow up, I would like to be an astronaut, a clown, or a tortured artist. By the way, my favorite song is “Every Sperm Is Sacred” by the Monty Python gang.

  Well, I’m off to a wild party now. So I guess I’ll sign off, you hunk. What base have you gone to? I’m in between second and third (don’t ask me how).

  Write back soon.

  Love always and forever,

  Phoebe Fine

  P.S. Do you ever just ask yourself “why”?

  3. Jason Barry Gold

  OR “The Varsity Lacrosse Stud”

  RATHER THAN GET naked in full view of Jennifer Weinfelt, who liked to prance about the girls’ locker room in her 32D purple mesh bra making nasty comments about other girls’ flat chests and fat asses, Phoebe and her current best friend, Rachel Plotz, changed into their party dresses in the handicapped bathroom over by the nurse’s office. Then they piled into Rachel’s stepmother’s champagne-colored Mercedes coupe, with Rachel in the driver’s seat and Cat Stevens on the stereo singing “Wild World.” And wasn’t that the case? “I, like, cannot believe we’re going to Aimee Aaron’s Sweet Sixteen,” said Rachel on the ride over.

  “Well, it’s not like we’re not friends with her,” said Phoebe.

  But she knew Rachel was right. Despite the lengths they’d gone to to befriend the most popular girl in school—bleaching all ten pairs of her Guess jeans was just the beginning of it—it had still come as something of a shock to find invitations to the big event (forty-fives of the Kool and the Gang single “Celebration” with the labels rewritten to commemorate the particular celebratory moment of Aimee’s sixteenth) waiting for them on their respective beds.

  They arrived at Parthenon West at ten past eight.

&
nbsp; Floodlights cast a rubicund shadow across the parking lot, with its glistening array of new-model Audis and Jaguars. With the help of a valet parker dressed up as a birthday candle, it soon included Rachel’s stepmother’s Mercedes. By then, Phoebe and Rachel had disappeared through a red-roofed portico supported by two oversized Corinthian columns and into a cavernous ballroom where two rows of crescent-shaped booths upholstered in pink-and-gold vinyl flanked a black marble dance floor, and several hundred Mylar balloons inscribed with the birthday girl’s name nearly obscured a neo-rococo ceiling.

  A buffet dinner consisting of chicken Florentine and rigatoni with sun-dried tomatoes had been laid out in silver-plated chafing dishes over Sterno candles on a silver-spangled cloth. Hired help included a fortune-teller, a mime, a pastel artist, and a guy dressed up as a funky chicken. Phoebe and Rachel had to wait their turn to congratulate Aimee Aaron, dressed impeccably in a black velvet off-the-shoulder cocktail dress and matching black velvet beret cocked coyly on her long, brown hair. “You look so beautiful,” they said, air-kissing their host hello.

  “Thank you, and thanks so much for coming!” Aimee smiled fraudulently before she turned away to real-kiss her real friend Stephanie Cohen.

  At which point Phoebe and Rachel found an out-of-the-way table in close proximity to the ladies’ room—Rachel was experiencing heavy flow—and sat down.

  Across the dance floor, a collection of more and less embarrassing relatives, some in floral mumus, others in sleek white pants suits cinched at the waist with stretchy gold belts, chattered among themselves. Three tables away, Aimee—surrounded by twenty-five of her adoring best friends—seemed equally oblivious to Phoebe’s and Rachel’s presence. “Well, this is fun,” snipped Rachel an hour into their unspeakable disappointment.

  “Well, don’t get mad at me about it,” Phoebe snapped back.

  But she knew it was too late. She knew Rachel already was.

  The feeling was mutual.

  Each other’s only close friend, Phoebe and Rachel had long resented the isolation the other one represented, even while possessiveness prevented them from branching out. That said, both girls had somehow envisioned that Aimee Aaron’s Sweet Sixteen would transport them to another level of social acceptance. Only here they were as alone as they’d ever been, with no evident recourse to integration. (It wasn’t as if they could just go sit down at Aimee’s table.)

  And then, suddenly, they weren’t alone at all. To their immediate left, albeit with his back to them, sat the captain of the varsity lacrosse team; the on-again, off-again boyfriend of Aimee Aaron; the driver of a navy-blue BMW convertible whose vanity license plates bore the three initials of his tri-part name. He didn’t seem to notice that there were other people sitting at the booth. He proceeded to untie one suede buck, remove it from his sock foot, and shake it violently over the floor, whereupon a microscopic piece of gravel went skipping beneath an adjacent table.

  “Usually, when a gentleman sits down at a table with ladies, he says, ‘Hello ladies,’ ” began Rachel in a bitchy voice.

  Phoebe wished she hadn’t. She hated scenes. And she didn’t see how antagonizing the most popular guy in the twelfth grade—she and Rachel had just begun eleventh—stood to enhance either one of their social lives.

  But to her shock and bewilderment, Jason Barry Gold turned around and smiled convivially, like a feudal lord bestowing the privilege of his company on his serfs. “Well, hello, ladies,” he said. “And how are we tonight?”

  Rachel didn’t answer.

  Phoebe mumbled, “Fine,” her excitement matching her suspicion as he slid himself into the booth next to her.

  Though they’d been in mock trial together the previous year, Jason Barry Gold had never spoken to her directly.

  Now he wanted to know, “What are you girls hiding in the corner for?”

  Then he let loose a loud burp.

  Rachel rolled her eyes.

  Phoebe muttered, “Gross.”

  “Come on, it’s biology,” said Jason, reaching a long arm around Phoebe’s black lace shift, a vintage purchase from a recent weekend excursion to Eighth Street in Greenwich Village with Emily. “People burp.”

  Phoebe thought she’d die. What would Aimee Aaron think? And what were Jason’s intentions? And was she about to become the butt of some obscene joke that would be retold in a loud whisper during Monday-morning assembly, eliciting throaty guffaws from the whole lacrosse team? For Phoebe, adolescence had produced such a paucity of male admirers that she had trouble imagining the attention she did occasionally receive was motivated by anything short of sadism.

  And yet, despite her better judgment, she found herself electrified by Jason’s proximity, and fluttering her lashes accordingly. She thought of Stinky. She had always been attracted to men who showed no shame when it came to bodily functions. Maybe because they deflated the shame she felt about her own bodily functions. She found menstruation unseemly. She failed to see the point of pubic hair.

  “People control themselves, too,” she said, attempting wit in the face of her fear.

  “Yeah, well, in my personal opinion, control is overrated,” replied Jason, his free hand gripping the frosted exterior of her non-alcoholic strawberry daiquiri. “Don’tcha think?”

  As he lifted the glass to his lips, Phoebe shot Rachel a look intended to communicate her deep distrust of their surprise visitor. She knew Rachel would never let her forget it if she thought that Phoebe thought she had even the slightest chance with Jason Barry Gold. (She could already hear Rachel teasing her: “Things going well with Jason?”)

  But Rachel wasn’t interested. She gazed blankly at the dance floor, her eyes as glassy and depthless as two little skating rinks. Then she stood up and announced, “I have to use the rest room.”

  “Hope you get some rest,” said Jason.

  “Duh,” said Rachel, frothing at the mouth.

  “I’ll watch your bag if you want.” Phoebe tried to protect her best friend from hurt, even while her best friend seized upon the smallest opportunity to uncover Phoebe as an unmitigated dork. That was the arrangement. That was the injustice of it.

  She was taking her bag with her.

  Together, Jason and Phoebe watched Rachel Plotz waddle away, her jaw clenched defensively, her fringe purse jitterbugging against her polka-dotted peplum. Then they were alone. Then Phoebe turned to face him, thinking she’d never really looked at him before—or, at least, not at this close range. And what she saw had the simultaneous effect of inspiring awe and making him that much realer. His layered hair was styled backward into a point. His nose was long and broad and not un-handsome. His olive complexion helped create the illusion of a more chiseled face than he actually had. He was wearing a white oxford shirt and pleated beige trousers that tapered to the ankle.

  That Phoebe was willing to overlook the whitehead that decorated his left cheek was just another testament to his social clout.

  “So what do you think of the party?” she asked him.

  “I’ve been to better,” he answered with a yawn. “So how’s the tennis team?”

  That he knew she was on the tennis team! Phoebe readjusted her neck and shoulders beneath Jason’s dead weight and told him, “It’s okay, but I really only like playing with my father.”

  She couldn’t believe she’d said that. No sooner had the sentence exited her mouth than she was contemplating suicide, hating herself for not thinking before she spoke.

  “I’m sure you do,” smiled Jason, his eyebrows leaping like pogo sticks.

  “You know what I mean,” squeaked Phoebe.

  But it was too late for explanations. Jason shook free his arm and rose to his feet. “Tennis,” he said then. “A fine game, if I do say so myself.”

  Using a plastic spoon, he gave his best imitation of a topspin forehand.

  “You should come see us play on Monday after school,” suggested Phoebe, knowing full well he never would. “It’s the first round of the Counties,
and they’re at Pringle this year.”

  “Very cool,” said Jason, finishing off her juice concoction like a stiff shot of whiskey.

  “Hey, that was my drink!” she protested.

  “I’ll get you another one,” he promised.

  But she had her doubts. His attention seemed suddenly caught up by another scenario being played out several tables away. What it was she couldn’t say for sure, but it seemed to consume him. “Listen,” he said, laying a careless hand on her bare shoulder. “I’m gonna go check on the guys. I’ll catch you later.”

  “Later,” she said.

  But it wasn’t the guys he apparently felt compelled to check on. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Phoebe watched Jason Barry Gold glide over to the birthday girl, take her in his arms, and dance a few steps with her, his lips barely moving inside her diamond-studded ear. What was he saying? Were they on again or off again? And who was Phoebe Fine to think it had any bearing on her pathetic life?

  SHE SPENT MOST Friday nights at the Paramus tenplex watching John Hughes movies with Rachel. Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club: she’d seen them all twice, three times. Thursday nights were a different matter. She spent those rehearsing Brahms’s Second Symphony with the All-County Youth Orchestra in the basement of an Episcopalian church in Mahwah. Years later, she grew attached to that very symphony— would lie awake with all the lights off, swooning to its overwrought themes. At the time, however, its raw emotion struck her as pompous. Nor did it seem to bear even the slightest relation to any of the pressing issues in her life—namely, not being embarrassing, getting decent scores on the S.A.T.s, losing her virginity in a timely fashion, and getting her revenge on Jennifer Weinfelt. That said, Brahms was the least of her complaints with the ACYO.