The Rise and Fall of a 10th Grade Social Climber

by Lauren Mechling

  “Or any other city!” Ivy cheered.

  As they high-fived one another, I tried to assume an expression of deep regret, which was easy because it was exactly what I was feeling. I had already made plans with Sam Geckman, friend of my youth, who was long-lost and potentially lame. Given that he might be Baldwin’s number-one social outcast, I wasn’t going to bring his name up in front of these urban goddesses.

  “I, ah . . . I can’t,” I said. “I just flew in yesterday, and I promised my dad I’d come home straight from school so that we can start setting up my new room. He’s not used to being a bachelor, and the apartment’s a total wreck.”

  My disappointment was real, and I wished I’d never made that stupid appointment. I’d told Sam I’d meet him at his “spot”—a Yemenite café on Atlantic Avenue. If only I’d put him off a day or two. But then again, when I’d answered that letter, I had no idea that the first day of school would be so . . . Was easy the word I was searching for?

  The girls exchanged understanding nods, and Amanda proposed that we sit together at lunch that Monday instead. “I promise,” I said, and as I rushed off I hoped they wouldn’t notice that the Manhattan-bound subway was in the opposite direction. Of course I could always claim that I was lost, and I would have been if I hadn’t studied the online street map of Brooklyn Heights so obsessively over the last few weeks.

  As I turned onto Atlantic Avenue, I checked over both shoulders as if I were in a spy movie. Why had I lied just now? I couldn’t figure it out.

  Once I located the Yemenite café he had described in such detail in his last letter, I trudged up the stairs to the entrance and ducked inside. I immediately spotted Sam at a table near the back—his red hair really stood out in that setting. He was sipping from a tall glass and reading the newspaper. I wove through a tangle of men who were all drinking espressos while standing up. It was only after I pulled out a chair and sat down that I noticed Sam’s paper was in Arabic.

  “Can you pass me the sports section?” I greeted him.

  Sam hadn’t changed much since the fourth grade—strange that I hadn’t seen him in the U-Croft that morning, but perhaps Baldwin’s ambient lighting was to blame. Sam had the same carroty hair and freckles, the same gentle green eyes and lopsided smile as in the fourth grade. The only difference was that Sam had gotten very tall over the last few years, but without having gained an ounce. His new physique was a stretched-out version of the one I remembered.

  He was assessing me with a funny, startled expression. Was it the waifish hairdo that caught him off-guard, or the effect of my push-up bra beneath my plain white shirt?

  “Remember me?” I began when Sam didn’t. “My name is Mimi. We used to be best friends. We made ice cream floats together and sometimes even pooped in front of each other.” I concluded with the Everything’s Cool smile that I’d copied from teenage popstar interviews. I wasn’t expecting everything to feel as awkward as everything was feeling. A full five minutes must’ve passed before Sam pushed out his chair and stood up to hug me.

  “Good old Mimi. Whenever I read your letters, I picture you from the end-of-the-year play in fourth grade. When you played—”

  “The pig in Charlotte’s Web?”

  “Exactly! My mom took so many pictures, they still pop up sometimes. You in that snout. An outstanding look. Hate to break it to you, but among the Geckman family you’re still known as Miss Piglet.”

  Relaxing a little, I asked Sam about the school meeting—he had been hiding behind the upright piano and was apparently the only member of the entire tenth-grade class not to have logged my late entrance. “I was in the way back,” he said. “I was on the lookout for you, but I couldn’t see beyond the Afro Scott Rosenfeld sprouted over the summer.”

  Sam explained that Scott Rosenfeld was a Jewish computer science whiz who decided to become a rap DJ this past summer. I laughed and described Ariel’s boyfriend, Vanny, who had no computer skills worth mentioning. Sam then told me that Zora Blanchard used to be so chubby that everybody called her “Custard.” Suddenly, before I’d even seen a menu, a waiter appeared and placed a cold drink in front of me.

  “But I didn’t order anything,” I protested.

  “That’s the charm of this place. Try it.”

  I took a small sip: cold and sour. “Interesting?” I tried.

  “It’s an Arabic iced tea. I’m obsessed with them,” Sam said.

  As I continued to sample my beverage, my former best friend’s expression changed. Knitting his brow, he leaned across the small table to look me straight in the eye. “So, Mimi, tell me. What’s up?”

  “Nothing much,” I said. “Just being the new girl on the block.”

  “You know what I mean. What’s going on with your parents?”

  I sighed, semi-exasperated. I didn’t resent Sam for asking, but I just wasn’t in the mood. What are you supposed to say when your mother leaves your father for a roly-poly physicist named Maurice? How do you make small talk out of your father quitting his prestigious job as senior photography professor at Rice University and hightailing it to New York to resume his postponed dream of becoming the most important art photographer of his generation? And oh, what about Maurice’s plump, hairball-gathering offspring, Myrtle, and Ariel’s contradictory obsessions with the Vanilla Gorilla and Kappa Kappa Gamma? Did I leave out the number of Audrey Hepburn movies I noticed stacked on Dad’s TV, or his cheerful admission that he lived on pizza and burrito delivery services?

  “Nothing’s going on. Except they split up. Not the biggest deal—happens to the best of families.”

  Sam wasn’t going to let me off at that. “Mimi,” he insisted, “of course it’s a big deal. But you don’t have to talk about it if you’re feeling uncomfortable.”

  He said the phrase “feeling uncomfortable” very comfortably, as if he said it a lot. I wasn’t used to guys my age talking like this—it was so my mom. Could he be seeing a therapist? Rachel had told me that every respectable New Yorker saw one at least three times a week.

  “Oh, well, whatever,” he said. “Finish up. I’ll take you on a tour of Brooklyn Heights, which, despite its yuppie aura, isn’t entirely charmless. Although there are no even half-decent record stores. Do you like electronica?”

  “Electronica”? In some of his more recent letters, Sam had mentioned musical groups I’d never heard of, but that kind of thing always reminded me of Ariel, so I had naturally tuned them out.

  “Well, er, it’s not exactly my cup of tea.”

  “No big whoop. Ready?” Sam stood up and motioned for me to follow. “In forty-five minutes, I can show you everything you’ll need to know to survive at Baldwin,” he said.

  We paid, left the Yemenite café, and started walking up Clinton Street, back in the direction of school. “The hot spots where the Baldwin kids do their drinking, smoking, and gossiping—I’ll even throw in a private residential stoop with maximum squatting potential if you want.”

  “And what about frozen yogurt stores?” I asked. “I hear that’s big in Brooklyn.”

  Sam gave me a strange look. “Frozen yogurt? Is that a new kind of designer drug?”

  “Er, never mind. You know, as part of my tour, I think I’m going to have you teach me how to read Arabic.” I gestured at his indecipherable newspaper with my chin.

  “Sure thing,” Sam said as we brushed past a group of kids walking the opposite direction. When one of them murmured “Whassup?” at him, Sam nodded back in a pretty cool I-couldn’t-give-a-damn way. “I’ll teach you Arabic once I get around to learning myself.”

  He gave my shoulder a half-punch and for the first time I recognized my old Sam. Our letter writing had become a duty, and I’d forgotten how close we used to be. I was glad to have him around again. Fingers crossed that Amanda and her gorgeous flaxen-haired entourage would approve.

  Pad Thai, Interrupted

  AFTER LETTING MYSELF INTO THE FRONT door of our brownstone, I flipped through the mail basket that
we shared with the Judys. I shuffled through a few bills for my dad and a thick packet for Judy #2 from some organization called “The Friedman Institute for Filmic Insight Without Borders” but found nothing with my name on it. I was disappointed because at the sushi restaurant Rachel had sworn on her virginity that she’d already mailed me a juicy letter. Then again, that was only three nights ago, so it couldn’t possibly have arrived yet. Only three nights? I shook my head. I had trouble believing that only three nights ago I was in Houston eating cucumber rolls and chugging hot sake with Rachel.

  Two nights, 1,500 miles, a mega-haircut, and a few ounces of Arabic iced tea, and I had aged a lifetime.

  I walked into the apartment, which was quiet and deserted. “Hello?” I called out. Getting no response, I went downstairs and stood outside my father’s brand-new darkroom. The Do Not Enter sign was up, so I shouted “Dad?” and knocked on the door. “Dad, I’m home!”

  “So am I,” an unfamiliar voice floated out. “I’ll be out in a sec, just gotta put these things on the drying rack. OK?”

  “Uh, OK,” I answered, slightly mystified. I had no idea who this person was or what he was talking about, but no matter. Coming home to find a complete stranger locked inside my father’s darkroom wasn’t the weirdest thing that had ever happened to me, not by a long shot.

  I went back upstairs to raid the kitchen. I was always starving after school. But then I opened my father’s fridge and—ugh—changed my mind. His leftovers would inspire even gluttonous Maurice to go on a diet. You could build a bridge across the East River with all the white cardboard takeout cartons that my dad had crammed in there. There was also a container full of eggs that had expired in August, a can of beer, a jar of discolored pickles, a Tupperware tub full of black-and-white 200-speed film, and some half-and-half that reeked like Maurice after a jog. Holding my breath, I got onto my knees and poked my head inside, an act that I can attribute only to my “self-punishing tendencies” that my brilliant mom had been pointing out since the breakup.

  The state of the inside of the fridge was very unlike him. For one thing, in addition to being OCD tidy, my dad was a total health nut. He was an antioxidant addict who did gross stuff like slice fresh ginger into his oatmeal and grill all-birdseed hamburgers. The array of week-old processed food splayed out before me made no sense. Maybe he was trying to make up for all his organic food-eating, Vitamin B complex-downing, wheat germ juice-swilling days? No wonder he’d looked so unsvelte at the airport on Wednesday. I took a bite of a spinach burrito that tasted like body odor, and proceeded to keep searching for something edible.

  As I was attempting to dewedge a moldy container of Pad Thai from the bottom rack, the voice I’d heard downstairs made me jump. “You must be the famous Mimi—sorry, didn’t mean to scare you!”

  Hovering above me was an adorable guy with perfect teeth and rosy cheeks. He was wearing Lennon glasses, a tight-fitting T-shirt, and what appeared to be a lot of styling product. He was about twenty-three or twenty-four, slightly older than the nerdy students my mother persuaded to mow our lawn in exchange for free therapy, but with much, much better pectorals.

  “Uh, h-hey,” I stuttered, gripping the refrigerator handle like the rail of a building I was about to fall off. “Hi. I . . . live here? At least, I . . . Who are you?”

  “Oh, do you really not know?” he raised an eyebrow and decided this news delighted him. “That’s so Roger! I’m Quinn, your father’s new darkroom assistant. I was the suck-up kid in his color photography class at the New School this summer. Now I pretty much live here.”

  This total Adonis pretty much lived in Dad’s apartment? Make that my apartment? I beamed gratitude in Dad’s direction, wherever that happened to be.

  “Oh, hey. Good to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand. He had the same vinegary darkroom smell as my father. It was comforting. “Dm, is my dad around?”

  With glittering blue eyes, Quinn was ogling me so intensely that I wondered if I had a huge piece of spinach stuck to my front teeth. I was not the type of girl to admire men’s bodies—that was more Rachel’s specialty—but this Quinn looked like he had just stepped out of a male fragrance ad.

  “Oh, you know Roger,” he was saying in a low, gravelly voice. “He’s been procrastinating in the darkroom all day, then about an hour ago remembered that you’d moved in, so he ran out the door shouting gibberish about sepia-toned reprints and other great domestic necessities.”

  As if cued, my father barreled through the door right then, huge shopping bags strung on both arms. “Honey, hello,” he said, dropping several bags when he saw me. His face broke out in a huge smile, just like at the airport yesterday. It was nice, having that effect on someone. “I see you’ve met Quinn. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t here when you got back—I guess I completely lost track of time! But you’ll be delighted with what I’ve gotten you today. I might have gone a little overboard, but this place had absolutely everything! Here, here, have a look,” he was rattling on a mile a minute as he overturned several bags onto the grimy kitchen floor. My father—usually so mellow (or, according to my mom, “unmotivated”)—was acting off-the-charts hyper just then.

  Quinn caressed a beige sequined tank top on top of the pile. “Hey. What’s that?” I suspected he was more interested in the kind of woman who might wear that tank top than the tank top itself, but it was nice of him to pretend. “It’s killer.”

  “Yeah, cool?” I echoed, liking Quinn for being so nice about my father’s off-the-wall vintage clothing obsession. Unfortunately, the rat-eaten garment itself made me shudder. Some times I felt unworthy, being the only fifteen-year-old in America whose dad digs secondhand boutiques more than she does. He’s always foraging for old cameras, but he never leaves without sifting through the clothes: the prototype of the modern metrosexual, I guess. He appreciates women’s clothing the way some men appreciate beautiful perfume or jewelry. When I was little, I used to accompany my parents to Macy’s, where Dad would pick out a handful of designer dresses and make Mom try them all on—never to buy them, just to imagine how she’d look in them. It was too bad that she preferred to dress like an overcommitted career woman, drowning in earth tones and never without a pair of sensible pumps—that is, when she wasn’t walking around the house in sweatpants and XXL T-shirts.

  Today, with no more Mom to inspire him, Dad seemed to have taken to shopping for me.

  “You have quite the father,” Quinn told me. “He’s the only man I’ve ever met who knows every thrift shop and chic oyster bar in New York.”

  “I’m a man of varied interests,” Dad admitted. “Williamsburg is unrecognizable these days, Quinn—I was expecting all factories and Hasids, but was I ever wrong! It was packed with kids your age and incredible boutiques. They had to pry me out of the last one. I was going nuts over an entire section devoted to old Leicas.”

  The photographers cracked up in unison. It seemed as if they’d both inhaled too much fixer solution.

  While still speed-talking about the crate of kaleidoscope scarves he’d unearthed, my dad tossed a red-fringed denim miniskirt at me. “Your bags haven’t shown up yet, hon, so I thought, to avoid patronizing another sweatshop, we could spice up your style a bit! And I even found shoes to match—you’re still a ten and a half, right?”

  Hoping Quinn hadn’t heard how obscenely big my feet were, I nodded.

  “Consider this your early birthday present!” With a flourish, my father reached into a ratty polka-dotted hatbox. “How’s that for making the transition from the Wild West to the West Village?”

  Emitting a shriek that the Judys upstairs might confuse with one of their interviews with Eastern European political prisoners, Quinn lunged for the pair of knee-high burgundy leather cowboy boots that my father held before me. “Whoa. These are seriously cool.”

  I didn’t want to hurt my dad’s feelings, but I almost threw up when he sprang his next surprise on me: a chartreuse velvet hat with a veil and a hummingbird stapled
on top. According to my dad, women’s clothing must resemble either a geometry problem or a prewar musical costume. Unfortunately, there was no way I could walk into Baldwin wearing the next dress that Dad pulled out, which seemed to be some sort of hybrid of a tunic and a coffee filter.

  Remembering that little horse embroidered into Amanda’s shirt, I said very hesitantly, “Do you think maybe tomorrow we could also go to, um, Ralph Lauren? For the, um, essentials?”

  “Ralph Lauren?” my dad repeated with a blank look, as if I’d suggested selling my ovaries to science. Before I could explain my reluctance to show up at Baldwin as some gawky, adolescent version of Ginger Rogers, the phone rang. I raced to pick it up and yelped, “Hello?” before the second ring.

  “Mimi!” my mother bellowed. “Thank God it’s only you! Damn, I’ve missed you!”

  “Oh, hey, Mom,” I said in a flat voice. After our chaotic summer, it hadn’t occurred to me to miss her yet. If ever. “How’s it going?” The cordless was sticky with ketchup.

  “Oh, you know, same old, same old. Ariel’s still driving me up the wall, begging for a new set of linens for school—can you believe that? That girl has some nerve. New sheets for college—chambray sheets? When we have closets full of perfectly good ones right here.” She gave a little huff of disapproval before going on: “Now, I’m just calling to check in, see how your reading program’s going—if you don’t start the semester on track, you know, you’ll never catch up. If you need any book suggestions, I just read a really wonderful survey about the history of sugar, and I could send it up north if you’re interested . . .”

  Amazing. She didn’t even bother to ask how my brand new upside-down life was treating me. She was too obsessed with her so-called reading program. My mother had allowed me to enroll at Baldwin, where there were no grades, only if I promised to read two books on my own every week. Of course she didn’t ask any more sensitive questions. How was your first day of school? Did the kids play nicely? Did you miss your mommy? That was out of her range. No, she just wanted to bitch about bed linens and harass me about extracurricular enrichment. At times, I found my heart going out to her, almost sympathizing with her late-onset life overhaul. The impulse to start over was one I perfectly understood. But then, whenever I was about to forgive her, reality always reared its head. Like now, for instance, when she said: “And that reminds me of another thing we haven’t discussed: curfew. Now, Mimi, you know . . .”