What She Saw...

by Lucinda Rosenfeld

  Moreover, as the Whitehead kids began to follow the lead of the so-called Riverskank, Phoebe found herself ostracized by her oldest friends, with her no-show at the Tom Petty concert at the Brendan Byrne Arena marking the beginning of her fall from social grace. Why didn’t she attend? 1) She had no particular affection for Tom Petty, never mind the Heartbreakers; 2) She’d just as soon have been home rewallpapering her dollhouse; 3) She imagined herself getting lost in a crowd of jostling teens only to wind up keeping disappeared Mafioso Jimmy Hoffa company in one of the Meadowlands’ infamous egg-carton and Dorito-bag alps; 4) She couldn’t imagine Roberta and Leonard ever allowing her to attend a rock concert. But she could have asked. She didn’t bother. That must have been obvious to her friends. Not a week later, at the Whitehead High Talent Show, while a heavyset girl named Naomi sang “The Body Electric,” Brenda Cuddihy, her lashes caked with electric-blue mascara, made it all too clear that she was embarrassed to be seen sitting next to Phoebe on the bleachers. She placed her matching blue ski parka between them. When Phoebe tried to move it aside, Brenda instructed her to “keep your dirty paws off.”

  Shortly thereafter, Phoebe was voted “Weirdest Dresser in the Eighth Grade” for purposes of the Middle School yearbook—was made to pose in a Miss America–style sash reading “Weirdest Dresser in the Eighth Grade, Phoebe Fine,” so the yearbook photographer could immortalize the insult, and all, presumably, because she’d once donned an embroidered smock top Leonard had brought her back from Guatemala City, site of the Trenton Philharmonic’s Christmas ’83 tour. Here she’d thought its decorative needlework would call attention away from the lack of development underneath. Instead, her classmates taunted her with cries of “peasant” and “hippie.” Her only comfort was the thought that it could have been worse; she could have been the new girl, Veronica Dunleavy, who eventually gave up protesting and starting answering to the competing nicknames “V.D.” and “Dog.”

  Even worse, she could have been Dolores Rodriguez, a certain oversized Riverskank who favored a certain brand of scoop-neck black leotard top that made it all too easy for Patrick McPatrick, Jr., to reach down her back and unhook her bra, time after time. Dolores’s protests were loud and impassioned. Once she even slapped her assailant across the face. But it was pretty clear she liked the attention. It was the opinion of her classmates that she liked the attention a little too much. They called her a slut and a whore. They made her cry on the bus back to Riverbank. Not long afterward, she surprised them all by overdosing on her mother’s sleeping pills a week after her mother went after her father with a carving knife implicated in the sudden death of a certain rooster living in their backyard—or so it was said.

  It was also said that Dolores Rodriguez had had her stomach pumped—Phoebe imagined an oil-rig-sized contraption siphoning the liquid content of Dolores’s stomach into an Alaska-bound pipeline—while Dolores’s mother had been sent to a loony bin. Needless to say, Dolores’s suicide attempt was an exciting thing to contemplate. Far more exciting, for example, than the anorexia nervosa that landed little Deirdre Sherman in the hospital attached to an I.V. dripping pink gunk into her arm while she slept. And upon her return to Whitehead Middle, Dolores was greeted with newfound respect. People started saving seats for her on the bus and in the cafeteria. Patrick McPatrick stopped reaching down her back—and started reaching down Phoebe’s with a fistful of yellow snow on her way out of school “as punishment,” he was kind enough to explain, “for being so friggin’ frigid.”

  THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY, in preparation for the first day back to school since Aimee Aaron’s Sweet Sixteen, Phoebe tried on seven different outfits:

  beige Et Vous khakis with narrowed ankles (hand-me-downs from Phoebe’s second cousin, Sasha), paired with a white-and-purple-striped cotton Gap sweater, purchased at the downscale Bergen Mall and accursed with a not terribly noticeable torn thread on the back shoulder;

  olive-green Liz Claiborne corduroy jeans with narrowed ankles (hand-me-downs from Lenore Greenbaum, the borderline anorexic wife of Travis Greenbaum, principal oboist for the New York Philharmonic), and a long-sleeved black ballerina-neck T-shirt of Emily’s;

  khakis (see above) and a pale pink Ralph Lauren polo shirt with a mysterious bleach stain beneath the left armhole, courtesy of Suburban Sophisticates;

  button-fly Guess jeans (Phoebe’s prize possession) bleached and bejeweled with hand-sewn calico knee patches, plus Roberta’s Indian cotton blouse with the drawstring collar, a relic of the 1970s;

  Guess jeans (see above) and a white Hanes T-shirt (men’s size extra-large) with Leonard’s forest green Shetland sweater tied around the shoulders;

  light-blue long-underwear bottoms of unknown provenance (i.e., found in the attic, at the bottom of a cardboard box filled with ceramic spoons, lace handkerchiefs, and early recordings of Schubert lieder), with one of Leonard’s white concert shirts hanging out on top;

  floor-length raspberry-hued cotton-flannel Putamayostyle drop-waist jumper hand-sewn by Leonard’s essentially deaf mother, Phoebe’s Grandma Edith.

  In the end Phoebe chose the drop-waist jumper, reasoning that Jason Barry Gold had probably been attracted to her for the very reason that she wasn’t immediately and overtly attractive. Which is to say that her beauty was subtle if it was anything. Maybe it was nothing. But she wasn’t ugly— she knew that much. She may have had chubby cheeks, rabbit teeth, a flat chest, and eyes more gray than blue. But she had long legs, a clear complexion, and a bump-free nose. And her shoulder-length hair could have been worse. While a bit on the stringy side, it was still shiny and a nice shade of light brown.

  Oh, but who was she kidding? So often when Phoebe looked in the mirror she didn’t even know who she was looking at. That’s how ugly she was—ugly by virtue of the fact that she was unmemorable, a slab of alabaster awaiting a sculptor who never arrived, a “nothing burger” if there ever was one. Take her nose: it just kind of ended. Just as her forehead just kind of began— kind of like the weeks in a year and the years in a life. It was the same with her waist and her hips, and her neck and her shoulders. There was nothing definitive about her. She was just this blob of human flesh—just this girl running laps behind the gym until she thought her legs would snap, her heart explode.

  Of course, as it happened, despite her better efforts, Phoebe didn’t see Jason once the whole schoolday—not in the halls, the cafeteria, the gym, or the library. But after school, while she traded topspin lobs with a stub-nosed string bean from Elizabeth Academy who muttered “bitch” under her breath every time they changed sides, she caught sight of him leaned up against the fence. She couldn’t believe he’d remembered the Counties! Or maybe he’d merely stumbled upon them on his way to lacrosse practice. He was dressed to play, complete with helmet, shoulder guards, and gloves. Either way, it was his show of support that inspired her to take the offensive in what had so far been a lackluster match, with she and Stub Nose tied at 4 all and each of them holding serve.

  At the very next lob that came her way, Phoebe pounced, driving the ball hard and fast down the line. Stub Nose must not have been expecting it. In her zeal to get her racquet on the ball, she tripped over her own feet and fell onto her ass, while her return (if you could call it that) sailed sideways into Court 2, where Pringle Prep’s second doubles team was busy double-faulting an entire game. It was an unpleasant confluence of events for Elizabeth Academy’s second seed. And still, by screaming “FUCK ME!” at the top of her lungs, it wasn’t entirely clear whom she intended to address.

  Jason Barry Gold took the exhortation personally. “I’d rather not,” he informed Phoebe’s opponent, who returned the favor with her middle finger. But the provocation rolled right off him. “Beautiful shot,” he said, turning his attention back to Phoebe, who shot him her best smile and offered up a simple “Thanks,” further infuriating Stub Nose, who thundered, “I WANT THAT DICKWEED OUT OF HERE NOW,” her oversized Prince racquet pointed at the fence like a sawed-off shot
gun.

  But “that dickweed” was already gone—though not in spirit. Her heart full with the memory of Jason’s endorsement, Phoebe took the first set 6–4, then the second set 6–love, thereby advancing to the quarterfinals in what was widely regarded as a major upset for Pringle Prep. After the match her teammates crowded ’round to offer their congratulations. Even Bradley Clay, varsity tennis’s notoriously withholding coach, had these laudatory words to offer: “Way to hustle, Phoebe.” Moreover, so elated was she by the events of the afternoon that she barely registered the sight of Jennifer Weinfelt holding court in the girls’ locker room at six o’clock. She was wiggling out of her field-hockey polo and adjusting the straps of her 32D purple mesh bra. And she smiled when she saw Phoebe, but it wasn’t a friendly smile—more like a snicker smile.

  “So what’s up with you and Jason?” she said, raising one arched eyebrow—just like Rachel had. (They were all the same; they were all suspicious.)

  “What do you mean?” said Phoebe, playing dumb.

  “Slow-dancing at Aimee Aaron’s . . .”

  “We’re just friends.”

  “Oh.” Jennifer lifted her flaky chin. “Right.”

  A CROSS-EYED BRUNHILDE with a killer drop shot from Watchung Day School subsequently eliminated Phoebe in the semifinals. Understandably, then, her mood was less than jubilant when, that same evening, Roberta called upstairs, “Phone for you, cupcake!”

  “What?” Phoebe called back. It was hard to hear over Beethoven’s Ninth.

  “Telephone,” she trilled. “It’s a boy.”

  A boy? Phoebe ran into Leonard and Roberta’s bedroom, grabbed the receiver, and pressed it against her stomach before she even said hello. Then she called downstairs to them—to her incredibly embarrassing parents who refused to listen to Barbra Streisand like everyone else’s parents: “I’ve got it—can you hang up?”

  She thought they had. But when she said, “Hello?” it sounded like the inside of an orchestra pit. (She could just barely make out a human voice on the other end of the phone.) “Sorry,” she told whoever it was. “Can you hold on a second?” Then she tried again. “MOM, DAD, PLEASE! COULD YOU HANG UP THE PHONE?”

  “We did, sweetheart!”

  Phoebe took a deep breath and tried yet again. “Hello?”

  “I feel like I’m on the tarmac at La Guardia,” said Jason Barry Gold the Frequent Flyer.

  Phoebe’s stomach fell out of her body even before he’d finished his sentence. She couldn’t imagine ever forgiving her parents for bringing her into this world. She couldn’t imagine how Jason had gotten her number, either. Surely there were other Fines listed in the phone book. He would have had to have known she lived in Whitehead. But how would he have known such a thing? “Jason!” She giggled to mask her shame. “I’m really sorry—my parents play their music kind of loud.”

  “Tell me about it.” He laughed caustically. “So what’s up, babe?”

  Phoebe Fine a babe? “Oh, nothing,” she said. “I’m just doing my math homework.”

  “You got Petite?”

  “Yeah, I got Petite. Not that he’s aware of that fact. He calls me by my sister’s name every other day.”

  “Who’s your sister again?”

  Someone who didn’t remember Emily? Phoebe couldn’t believe it. Her sister had founded the school’s nuclear disarmament club. Her sister was a card-carrying member of Amnesty International. Her sister read Noam Chomsky for fun. Her sister was the rare individual whose beauty and brains and apparent disregard for the social hierarchy of Pringle Prep had rendered her an object of fascination to the cool boy population even while she’d been essentially shunned by the popular girls. By comparison, Phoebe seemed to fascinate no one—with the possible exception of Jason Barry Gold. Though for reasons that weren’t entirely clear. “Her name is Emily,” she told him. “She’s a sophomore at Yale.”

  But Jason wasn’t interested. “Yeah, Petite’s going senile,” he agreed.

  “Maybe he’s got Alzheimer’s,” Phoebe added.

  “So listen, babe, what do you say the two of us check out a movie on Friday night?”

  A movie? With Jason Barry Gold? This Friday? Phoebe remembered suddenly that she’d made plans with Rachel to see Youngblood that night. She would have to change Rachel to Saturday. And for that, she would surely pay the price of Rachel’s wrath. Oh, but it was worth it! “What time?” she asked.

  “I’ll pick you up at eight,” he said. “Where do you live, again?”

  “In Whitehead. Just follow Beachmont all the way down the hill and keep going for about two miles. It’s on the corner of Beachmont and Douglass. It’s a purple house with white shutters. You can just honk and I’ll come out.” She didn’t want Jason Barry Gold coming inside. She didn’t want him to see the clutter and the anachronism. She didn’t want him to meet her parents.

  She couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing.

  THAT SAID, LEONARD and Roberta Fine were hardly the weirdest Whitehead had to offer. Yes, Roberta knitted her own sweater vests, forgot to cut the sales tags off her shirts, and managed to get food in her hair every time she ate. And sure, Leonard was wearing two different-color socks—one green and one black—the day he came to play the oboe for Phoebe’s tenth-grade class. Compared with their neighbors, however, Phoebe’s parents might as well have been a TV sitcom couple from the 1950s.

  An avid numismatist with an Adam’s apple the size of a plum, the former Swiss ambassador to Togo lived in a split-level across the street. His next-door neighbor to the left was a World War II spy turned cookbook writer whose youngest child died in a freak accident involving a desk lamp. And who could forget the Kaminskys, a husband-and-wife magician team who mostly performed at local bar mitzvahs? Once upon a time Stan and Barbara Kaminsky had been a brand name on Broadway. The real tragedy, however, was their dreadlocked daughter, who lived at home and—despite her pear-shaped body and relatively flat chest—commuted to work at Peep World on Forty-second Street, where she danced without her shirt and (some said) pants.

  Then there was Bill Cornish, the painfully shy arcade game addict who lived farther down the block with his senile grandma with the red shawl. There were rumors that Mrs. Cornish was hoarding her husband’s pickled corpse in the two-car garage. She wasn’t the only old lady on the block getting a bad rap. It was said of Miss Clapp, who’d lived alone in a rickety blue house on the corner since before anyone could remember, that she was actually a witch. The evidence? She dressed primarily in black. Her cat was blind. She rarely came outside during the day. And when she did, she walked with a thick wooden cane that bore a vague resemblance to the stick portion of a broom.

  As for the guy who built the place to the Fines’ right—a near-windowless concrete affair hidden behind a hedgerow of tall pines—it was common knowledge on the block that he’d helped build the atom bomb. Though a resident of New Jersey, he’d somehow gained access to the Manhattan Project. But that was before Phoebe’s time. As she grew up, about six different families would move in and out of that gloomy bomb shelter of a manse. Phoebe’s least favorite were the Glicks, a retired couple whose Rottweiler, Anselm, always made a beeline for her crotch.

  And still, from Phoebe’s perspective, the Glicks were an ever more welcome sight than the Bertmullers, a motherless family of three who lived two doors down. Mr. Bertmuller was a Jungian psychoanalyst. It was never clear what had happened to his “female archetype.” It was hard to believe that the Bertmuller boys would ever be anyone’s types. The older son, George, was a badly shaven, white-painter-pants-wearing perpetual-graduate-student type rumored to be studying mushrooms at Columbia, while his roly-poly younger brother, Gary, was perhaps best known for skinning squirrels and hanging the hides to dry on nails he hammered into prominent trees in the purlieu. The Bertmullers also found room in their house for a constantly rotating assemblage of Japanese exchange students, as well as two black Labs (Evil and Knievel) and three boa constrictors to whom Emi
ly had the job of feeding mice one year while the gang pitched tents in Yosemite. On the day of Emily’s African dance recital in Teaneck, Phoebe kindly offered to fill in. That was the one and only time she saw the inside of the Bertmullers’ ranch home. Once was enough. There were wooden masks hanging from dark red walls. There were hand-woven Peruvian throw rugs draped over mustard leather couches with metal arms.

  There were several piles of fossilized dog shit collecting dust on the living room carpet.

  RACHEL DIDN’T BELIEVE her at first—or maybe she didn’t want to believe her. It went against her entire philosophy of life that a guy like Jason Barry Gold would want to have anything to do with Phoebe Fine. “Right,” she said. “You and Jason Barry Gold.”

  But Phoebe told her, “I’m not kidding. He called me last night. I don’t even know how he got my number.”

  “Maybe you gave it to him?”

  “I swear I didn’t!”

  “So Jason Barry Gold called you last night.” Rachel said it over and over again until even she began to believe it. “And the two of you are going to the movies on Friday night. Which is why you want to go see Youngblood with me on Saturday night instead.”