Klepto

by Jenny Pollack

  But on Wednesday, Josh wasn’t in French. He wasn’t there on Friday, either. Where was he?

  8

  I Absolutely Loved Rhinestones

  The Sunday before Christmas, Mom said from behind the Lord & Taylor catalogue, “I know just the thing for Marty.” Aunt Marty was Mom’s younger sister, and she had “fun jewelry” on her Christmas list. Mom was lounging in bed with the Book Review and various other sections of The New York Times, as she always did on Sunday mornings. This was her Sunday morning routine: get out of bed, wash her face and brush her teeth, eat some Wheaties with half-and-half in the kitchen (she didn’t like milk) and maybe some Branola bread toast, get back in bed, and read the paper.

  Marty and Mom were not particularly close—probably because Mom picked fights with her sometimes—but they talked almost every Sunday morning. I could always tell it was Marty on the phone ’cause Mom said, “Hi ya!” (Which, by the way, were Ellie’s first words: “Hi ya!” So the story goes.)

  “Would you like to come with me to Lord and Taylor, Julie?” Mom said. “There’s a good holiday jewelry sale.”

  I figured, sure, what the hell. I thought for a second about what it would be like to be in a department store with Mom, after all my recent escapades in department stores, but then I put any thought of stealing out of my mind. I wasn’t a complete idiot; I knew I would never do anything stupid with my Mom right there. Maybe I’d actually buy something.

  As soon as we got to Lord & Taylor, we browsed through the “costume jewelry,” as Mom called it, on the first floor. I didn’t see anything too exciting. Mom said to the salesgirl, “Where are these?” and pointed to the ripped-out page from the catalogue. The photo was of some long necklaces that I thought were pretty ugly. What made grown-ups choose the fashions they did? Mom had so much clothing that I hated; I wished she would dress more young and stylish like Mimi. Some of Mom’s clothes seemed so old-ladyish. She had blouses with these wide ribbon-tie things at the neck that made a big loose bow and were made of material that was so itchy I didn’t know how she could stand it.

  “Mom, that shirt is, like, so out of style,” I said one time when she was getting dressed for work.

  “So?” she said, blinking at me. “What do you care? You don’t have to wear it.” She had a point.

  “So, people are gonna think you’re really old-fashioned.”

  “What do I care what people think?” she said, almost laughing, like, what a crazy idea. What other people think.

  “You mean to tell me,” I said, “that you really don’t care what other people think about you?”

  “Nope,” she said, and smiled at me.

  I was thinking about this conversation as Mom took out her coral lipstick and reapplied it, using the mirror on the jewelry counter where the salesgirl had directed us.

  I looked at her reflection in the mirror on the counter. Thank God she had finally updated her hairstyle. For my whole life my mom had worn her hair in this totally embarrassing, sprayed way that was so incredibly 1960s, like a bouffant. Ellie finally got her to cut it and get a perm and look like a normal person who was of this decade.

  Mom was examining the multicolored beaded necklaces on the counter, and my eye was suddenly drawn to some glittering rhinestone bracelets one counter over. I absolutely loved rhinestones. Mandy had a really cool rhinestone bracelet that I was dying for. She wore it when she played gigs with her band, and it totally added to her rock-star look. I always stared at it on her wrist as her hand moved along the strings of her electric guitar and wished I had one. As the lady was taking out necklaces for Mom, I said, “I’ll be over there.”

  “All right,” Mom said, not really looking at me.

  The rhinestone bracelets cost $12.50 and were like those stretchy watch bands. They were so cool, I was practically salivating. I tried one on. Oh man, it looked so good on my wrist. There were a few other customers around the counter, but no salesperson that I could see. Just then, a thin blonde woman popped up out of nowhere and said, “Can I help you?”

  “No thanks, just looking,” I said.

  “All right, let me know if you need anything,” she said kind of distractedly as she went to deal with some customers on the other side. A middle-aged couple looked aggravated, like, excuse us, we were here first. I put back the rhinestone bracelet and tried on another one, a little wider—$15.50. It looked even better than the first one! My hand is made for this bracelet, I thought. I rotated my wrist a few times, watching how it flickered sparkly specks of light.

  “Julie!” my mother called, and I jumped a little, catching my breath. I turned around to look at her at the opposite counter.

  “Come here. Tell me what you think of this,” she said. She was holding up two long strands of turquoise beads and examining them from over her half-moon reading glasses.

  “Just a sec,” I said. Then I looked down at my wrist, and my winter coat had neatly slid right over the bracelet. It was completely hidden. I walked over to Mom’s counter.

  “Um,” I said, touching the necklaces with my other hand—the one with no rhinestones. “I think the one with the smaller beads is more Marty.”

  “Yeah. I agree.” Mom thought for a second, then said to the salesgirl, “Okay, we’ll take one of these, please.”

  “Will this be cash or charge?” the salesgirl said.

  “Charge,” Mom said, taking out her Lord & Taylor card.

  I looked back at the rhinestone counter, and there were new customers standing where I had been, looking through the cases and at the stuff on the counter. This was too perfect for words. No one saw me put that bracelet on my wrist. Very slowly, I scanned the whole floor, kind of acting like I was trying to find someone. Was there anyone who could have seen me? How could I be sure? Did I risk it? I felt the bracelet through my sleeve and found the small paper price tag, which I pulled off and stuck in my pocket. I moved the bracelet up a bit closer toward my elbow, in case my sleeve moved or something.

  “Let’s go upstairs and have lunch,” Mom said. She closed her wallet and took the small shopping bag with Marty’s present inside, and we headed to the up escalators.

  At the Birdcage Restaurant, we ordered BLTs on toast and a Tab with lemon for me and a tomato juice for Mom. Gross, I hated tomato juice. Right away, I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room. Luckily, Mom didn’t say, “Why don’t you take your coat off first?” or something, like I thought she might. Sometimes, the fact that Mom was oblivious was good.

  The sign said LADIES’ LOUNGE, and the room was totally pink—pink sinks, pink tiles, pink soap, pink stalls. Everyone in there seemed over sixty-five. There was a lady with a gray sprayed hairdo and big thick glasses in a pink-and-white maid’s outfit mopping up around the sinks. She handed people a paper towel after they washed their hands. I went into the pink stall at the end of the row, shut the door, and took off the bracelet. I wrapped it in some toilet paper, stuck it inside one of my gloves, and put it in my coat pocket. The weird thing was, I didn’t feel nervous at all. I didn’t know what had come over me; I was usually so nervous until I got out of the store. I just had this totally confident feeling. I flushed the little paper price tag down the toilet.

  On my way out of the ladies’ lounge I noticed a pay phone and immediately called Julie. I mean, I just had to tell her about my bracelet. Maybe she’d have some tips for me or something. We hadn’t really covered Getting Out of a Department Store with Stolen Jewelry and Your Mother. Her phone rang about seven times. No answer. Bummer.

  When I got back to the table, Mom was reading her New Yorker magazine, but she put it away when I sat down.

  “I liked your friend Julie,” she said, which totally bugged me out.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Of course, why wouldn’t I like her?”

  “I don’t know. I just didn’t think that dinner had gone so well.”

  “It was fine. She seems like a lovely girl.” A lovely girl. Why did I hate that? “Lovely
” sounded so, I don’t know, fake or something. The waitress brought our sandwiches just as I was thinking my mom was so stupid. I mean, how could she be so out of it? How could she not know about the fifteen-dollar bracelet stuffed in my glove? Then I got paranoid. Maybe she did know, I thought. Maybe Mom saw me do it and was acting like she didn’t. Maybe she was waiting for the right moment to catch me.

  “What was wrong with the dinner? Didn’t Julie have a nice time?” Mom said.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “But did you have to start a fight with Dad?”

  “I most certainly did not start a fight with Dad,” Mom said, pressing her hand to the center of her chest defensively, like, Who, me? “What makes you think that?”

  “Oh, only that comment about his being cheap or something.”

  “Well, he is,” Mom said, sighing. “I married a man who’s cheap. When you get married one day, Julie, be sure to have your own money. I wouldn’t be able to do half the things I want to if I relied on your father for everything.” I didn’t know what she was talking about. Getting married was, like, an impossible thing to imagine. I was only fourteen!

  “How’s your friend Olivia? Do you still talk to her?” Mom changed the subject. Olivia Howe and I had gone to school together from kindergarten through eighth grade. She was the funniest person I ever met—she made up tons of hilarious songs that I could never get out of my head. When we were, like, ten or something, she got the idea to create a magazine called Galore that we drew with Magic Markers on white paper and stapled together for Ellie, who was the only subscriber. Inside we drew advertisements for fake Bonnie Bell lip gloss flavors like aspirin and brussels sprouts and we laughed about that for hours. But now we were in different high schools. I had a new best friend and Olivia probably did, too.

  “No, I don’t talk to her much,” I said. I took a big bite of my BLT, and caught a falling piece of bacon. “She’s at Dalton now, and it’s just kinda weird with us being at different schools.”

  “Why is it weird?”

  “I don’t know, it just is.”

  “I don’t understand you kids today,” Mom said. “Everything’s so complicated.”

  “You mean it wasn’t complicated when you were a kid?” I asked.

  “Well, I don’t think I had all these stop-start friendships like you and Ellie do—”

  “Ellie!” I said. “You can’t compare my friendships to Ellie’s; she barely has any friends!”

  “Now that’s not true, Julie, you know that’s not true. There’s Katie Rockwood, and who’s that other girl—”

  “Please!” I interrupted. “You know how I know Ellie has no friends? ’Cause all she ever does is hang out alone in her room! I mean, what is she doing in there? She couldn’t be painting all the time. Don’t you think she should be spending time with kids her own age?”

  Then Mom just stared at me blankly for a second. “I don’t know what you’re getting yourself all worked up about,” she said as she took a bite of her sandwich. Then we didn’t say anything for a little bit.

  When the waitress came to take our dirty plates away, Mom said, “Would you like dessert?”

  “Nah,” I said.

  “You sure? Have whatever you want.”

  “No thanks,” I said, sipping from my Tab even though it was empty. I started poking the lemon with my straw and Mom got the picture, ’cause she took out her Lord & Taylor charge card and waved it at the waitress.

  As we went down the escalator to the ground floor, I had my hands in my pockets and felt my bracelet safely tucked away. The walk toward the exit doors on Fifth Avenue seemed so slow, I almost couldn’t bear it, and Mom was not a fast walker. She was still kind of half looking at the jewelry we passed as we headed for the exit. C’mon, Mom, I was willing her, let’s get out of here. Instead I said, “Marty’s really gonna like that present, Mom.” I was trying to be nice since lunch had been tense. Why was I feeling so irritated at Mom for not noticing things? It wasn’t like I wanted to get caught.

  “Yeah, I think so, too,” Mom said. We finally reached the revolving doors, and I waited a second to let Mom go in front of me, but she stopped to pull up the furry-rimmed hood of her down maxi-coat. I knew she was gonna tell me to bundle up so I wrapped my scarf around my neck and zippered up my coat as Mom, looking like a little Eskimo from behind, went through the revolving door. I followed and I was actually not surprised to suddenly be out on the sidewalk, the cold air on my face, my precious bracelet safe in the glove. A tiny part of me wondered if the rhinestone saleslady would come running out. But nothing happened.

  After dinner that night I asked if I could be excused because I just had to call Julie. Thank God it was Ellie’s night to load the dishwasher. I went to my parents’ bedroom to use the phone and closed the door.

  “Julie!” I said, trying to contain my excitement and keep my voice down. “Guess where I went today?”

  “Where?” Julie said, whispering, too.

  “I went to Lord and Taylor with my mom to get my aunt Marty’s Christmas present, and . . . are you ready for this?” I paused for dramatic effect. “Are you sitting down?”

  “Yes! What?”

  “You won’t believe it. . . .”

  “Just tell me already, what?” Julie said.

  “I got. A rhinestone bracelet. With my mom standing one counter away,” I whispered.

  Julie gasped. “Hold on a sec,” she said, “I gotta close my door.” Julie had her own phone in her room. Well, she and Mandy shared a phone number, but it was a different number from Mimi’s. There was a phone in both Julie’s and Mandy’s bedrooms.

  I told Julie the whole story, and she said, “Wow. That’s so cool. We’ll have to go back there together next weekend or something.”

  “Totally,” I said. “It’s kind of a store for old ladies, so there’s, like, no security.”

  “And Christmas season is key. I’m telling you,” Julie said.

  “Totally,” I said.

  “I can’t believe your mom didn’t notice!” Julie said. Then, it was so weird. Just at that moment in our conversation, as if my mother had ESP, she picked up the extension in the kitchen.

  “Julie!” she said in her angry voice. “Please come get the shoes you left lying on the living-room floor and all the other stuff you left on the couch!”

  I heard Julie go “Oop—” and then try not to laugh.

  “Mom! I am on the phone! God!”

  “Well, your father and I are going to watch Masterpiece Theatre, and I don’t want to always have to clean up after you—”

  “All right! Can you wait one damn minute? Can I have a little privacy, for Chrissakes!” Mom didn’t seem to care when Ellie or I cursed. That was one good thing.

  Click went the kitchen phone. She’d hung up. It was official, my mother was nuts. Julie started laughing out loud.

  “Oh my God, that was so embarrassing,” I said. Part of me wanted to laugh, too, but I was so mad. “Do you think she heard us?” I could feel my heart beating and my cheeks were hot.

  “Probably not,” said Julie.

  “Frankly, I don’t give a shit. I just want to strangle her with this phone cord,” I said, winding my hands up in it.

  “Yeah,” Julie said. “Well, don’t let her get you all riled up. That’s what they, like, totally try to do.”

  “You don’t know how lucky you are to have the mother you do,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, she’s a nut-job, too,” Julie said, sounding sympathetic. “Do you want to know what my mother said to me last night?”

  “What?” I said.

  Julie paused for a second. Then she lowered her voice and said, “She asked me if I’d ever had an . . . an orgasm.”

  “What?!” I half-screamed.

  “Shhhh!” Julie said. “Keep it down! You don’t want your mom picking up again, do you?”

  “Sorry,” I said, giggling and holding my mouth. “Why did she ask you that? Just, like, out of nowhere?”


  “Totally. I mean she’s completely crazy. She wanted to know if I knew how to ‘take care of myself.’”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “I had no idea, until my mother explained it. ‘Taking care of yourself’ is, you know, masturbating. Or ‘pleasur ing yourself,’ she said. I mean, ewwww! Then, are you ready for this? She said if I didn’t learn how to ‘take care of myself,’ I could never expect a man to.”

  I gasped. “Oh my God. Julie, you have got to be kidding me!”

  “Nope, I swear. How could I possibly make this up?”

  “So what did you say to her?”

  “I told her to please shut up because she was completely grossing me out. That even if I wanted to talk about that stuff, she was, like, the last person on earth I would talk to about it.”

  “Totally,” I said. “I can’t even imagine my mom saying something like that. She’s too uptight.”

  “Or maybe it’s just ’cause she’s not as crazy as my mom,” Julie said. Then she paused and said, “Nah . . . your mom’s nuts, too!” And we both started cracking up.

  “I know!” I said, laughing and starting to feel better. “So, wait.” I was thinking about the orgasm stuff. “How did she say you’re supposed to learn?”

  “Oh. From this book,” Julie said, sounding annoyed. “When Women Explore.”

  “She gave it to you?”

  “Yes!” Julie said, laughing.

  “Ewwwww!” I said, and then we paused for a second, like, kind of giggling, kind of not knowing what to say. I had this image of Julie under her covers with no underpants on holding When Women Explore and a flashlight.

  “Gross!” she screamed when I told her, and we got totally hysterical. Julie was laughing so hard I knew there were tears streaming down her cheeks. She was a crier-laugher. When we finally started to quiet down, Julie said, “Have you ever had one?”

  “What?” I asked.