Klepto

by Jenny Pollack

  Our three pictures sat on the chair, slowly revealing who we were, while the lady cop took out some forms and more clipboards and pens. She motioned for us to sit back down on the bench, then handed each of us a pen and a clipboard and made us all sign the form on it. We were agreeing to never again set foot in Bloomingdale’s for the rest of our lives. Oh . . . my . . . God. How would I avoid Blooming-dale’s for the rest of my life? I imagined Christmas morning and Mom has bought me a shirt from Bloomingdale’s and it’s the wrong color and I have to exchange it. How would I finish collecting all the different “Bloomies” undies, with the Os like tennis rackets or hearts or wreaths? What if I ran out of Shiseido Iridescent Baby Pink lipstick—did they even have a Shiseido at Macy’s?

  We sat in this little basement room for maybe fifteen minutes and we had our winter coats on, and I was sweating. We signed the forms and suddenly we were free to go. The walk back up the stairs, through B-WAY and out the revolving doors, was much faster this time.

  Jennifer, Julie, and I could not look one another in the eye. We got outside onto Lexington Avenue and exhaled. It was cold out. The three of us started walking toward the subway, and I stuck my hand in my pockets.

  “You guys,” I said. I pulled out the lavender angora gloves.

  “Oh my God,” Julie said. We all burst out laughing. But it was weird; it was kind of like we were crying-laughing. It felt like what it must feel like to be crazy. Pretty soon it was just laughing-laughing—we were practically doubled over right there on the sidewalk.

  “What an idiot! Do you think she was even a real cop?” Jennifer said.

  “She must have been! I’ve never been so scared in my entire life!” I said, trying to catch my breath. “How did I get away with this?” I waved the gloves in the air.

  “Shhh! Shhhh!” Julie said. “Put them away.” And she looped her arms through mine and Jennifer’s and led us to the Lexington Avenue subway.

  On the train, my head was spinning. Julie and Jennifer seemed fine, but I felt this hollow feeling in my chest. Would we ever stop doing this? What if we never stopped?

  Sunday morning Mom and I were in the kitchen getting breakfast. Ellie was still asleep and Dad was in the shower.

  “Mom, can I ask you a question?” I said out of nowhere. She’d had a few sips of orange juice and was pouring Wheaties into a bowl. I was waiting for my English muffin to finish toasting.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “What if I told you I wanted to go see . . . um . . . like . . . a professional?”

  Then she thought for a second, and I wasn’t sure if it was too early in the morning for her to talk about stuff like this or if she was gonna ask me why or what.

  “What kind of professional?” she said.

  “Um. Like that lady you and Dad go to sometimes at Mt. Sinai. Joyce What’s-her-name?”

  “Joyce Kazlick?”

  “Yeah. Joyce Kazlick. Like her.”

  “You mean, you want to see a therapist?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not really looking at her. My mother was looking at me over her reading glasses, about to open The New York Times.

  “Well, I suppose we could find you someone. Or you could see Joyce. I’ll call Mt. Sinai on Monday, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, and the toaster oven popped open.

  “Okay,” she said, and that was that. She didn’t ask why or pry any further. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, part of me kind of wanted her to, but part of me was glad she didn’t.

  “And Mom?”

  “Mm-hmm?” she said, pouring half-and-half on her cereal.

  “Don’t tell anyone, okay? Don’t tell Ellie.”

  Mom made the motion for zipping her lips. I left the kitchen feeling kind of bummed out, and I didn’t know why.

  14

  Thank God I Was Seeking Professional Help

  I got to Joyce Kazlick’s office at Mt. Sinai early, which was a good thing since I had to pee. The plaque on her door said JOYCE KAZLICK, C.S.W., but I didn’t know what “C.S.W.” meant. I loved the smell of the liquid soap in the bathroom; it reminded me of Dr. Beaumont, my pediatrician, and I always liked him. I thought the smell of the soap and my liking it was a good sign. As I sat there on the tan vinyl waiting chair in Joyce Kazlick’s hallway, I tried to concentrate on reading The Crucible for Dr. Deutsch’s English class, but I kept smelling my hands instead. An older balding black man sat snoozing a few chairs away. He held his cheek in his hand and his elbow kept sliding off the armrest, but he didn’t wake up. Finally, Joyce Kazlick’s door opened.

  “Julie?” she said. I expected her to be young, thin, and stylish with blonde shoulder-length hair. In fact, she was a bit chubby, had short brown hair in, like, a Dorothy Hamill haircut, and she was wearing a royal blue dress with breast pockets and a red plastic belt. I was impressed that she chose such a dress in spite of her round figure. I almost always wore my shirt untucked so that no one could see my stomach.

  “Yes,” I said, and she held open her office door for me. As I walked past her, I got a whiff of her shampoo—a brand called Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific. Another good smell.

  “Have a seat,” she said, and smiled. I sat. “Excuse how small this office is. It’s only temporary.” Her office was tiny. It just about fit a desk and two chairs and a set of bookshelves over the desk.

  “Oh,” I said.

  She sat in a chair and swiveled to reach for a clipboard behind her on her desk. “I just have to ask you a few questions before we get started, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. She asked me my address, my age, my school, how my grades were, a little about Ellie and my friends. Then she told me that everything I talked to her about stayed in this room—it was all one-hundred-percent confidential.

  “So what made you want to come here today?” Joyce asked. She had a kind face.

  “Umm. Wait. Whatever I tell you, you can’t tell my parents, right?” I asked.

  “That’s correct. I can’t tell anyone. Completely confidential.”

  “Okay,” I said, and took a deep breath. “I . . . steal . . . clothes. And stuff.” I looked at her face to see her reaction, but she just sat in her vinyl chair staring back at me like I was supposed to continue. She sat with her hands folded over the clipboard in her lap and her stubby legs crossed.

  “Uh-huh,” she finally said.

  “And I’m afraid . . . I’m thinking . . . I think it’s gotten really out of control.”

  “What do you mean, ‘out of control’?” Joyce said.

  “Well, my best friend, Julie, and me? She’s the one who taught me how? Well, we’ve gotten so good that we could go just about anywhere and get away with it. Well, almost anywhere.” I paused for a second, but Joyce didn’t look like she was going to say anything so I continued.

  “I’ve gotten so much stuff, like hundreds or thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff by now, I’m not sure.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said. I couldn’t believe she didn’t act more surprised. I knew she wasn’t gonna, like, call the police or something, but I didn’t expect her to be so calm.

  “Your best friend’s name is Julie?” she asked, writing in her clipboard.

  “Yeah, I know, two Julies,” I said.

  “Just clarifying.” She inhaled and recrossed her legs. “When you steal clothes, are you always with Julie?” she asked.

  “Most of the time,” I said. “I’ve done it by myself, too. There’s lots of kids in my school who do it.” Joyce let me just sit there for a few seconds. I wondered what she was thinking, just watching me like that.

  “Tell me more about your friend Julie,” Joyce said.

  “Well, she’s totally beautiful. And popular. Most of the boys in our class have a crush on her. But it’s not like she’s stuck-up or anything—I mean, you’d think maybe a girl who was beautiful and popular would be stuck-up or obnoxious or whatever, but she totally isn’t.” Then I thought for a second, and Joyce didn’t say anything. She just looked a
t me.

  “And she has the coolest family,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Joyce asked.

  “Well, her mom? She’s beautiful, too, of course, and doesn’t really act like a mom. I mean, she dresses really cool, like really stylish, and she’s a model and she’s never home so Julie and I get to hang out alone in their huge apartment all the time. It’s the best. And Julie has all these older siblings who she can hang out with like they’re her friends, you know? Like her old sister Mandy? She actually likes her, and they hang out together!”

  “Don’t you like to hang out with your sister?” Joyce said. “Ellie, right?”

  “Yeah, Ellie. No. I mean, no we don’t really hang out. I can’t really talk to her. . . .” My voice cracked when I said that, and I stopped talking so I wouldn’t cry. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to cry,” I said.

  “Why not?” Joyce said. “This is the place to cry. No need to apologize for it.” Joyce looked at me sympathetically. “But I’m afraid our time is up. Do you think you’d like to come back and see me? Does this time work for you?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, see you next Wednesday at four thirty, then,” she said. “Do you want to take some tissues with you?”

  I took a few from the box on her desk and left. I wondered if I was the biggest teenage nutcase she had ever seen.

  By March it was still really cold out, and I was dying for spring. Everyone at school was wearing layers and big bulky sweaters (some stolen) even though the radiators blasted at P.A. so strong you could practically walk around in a tube top.

  Julie and I were talking in the lunchroom, and I said kind of out of nowhere that I was feeling really nervous about all the stuff we were getting lately.

  “What do you mean, nervous?” Julie said.

  “I don’t know,” I said, then I just made myself say what I was scared to say. “I don’t think I can do it anymore.”

  She didn’t say anything; she just looked like she was thinking.

  “I think we’re . . .” I started to say. “We’re . . .”

  “We’re what?” Julie said, not really angry, but weird or something. Like, irritated.

  “I think we’re kleptomaniacs,” I blurted out. Then I paused, and we just looked at each other. “And it really scares me.” I felt like I could cry, but the tears were too far down in the pit of my chest. I just took another bite of my rice and gravy that we got from Cubana and swallowed hard.

  “Are you kidding?” Julie said, smiling. She took a sip of her Tab.

  “No.” I lowered my voice. “I think this is serious. Isn’t kleptomania, like, an addiction? I mean, being a kleptomaniac is a real thing,” I said. Julie leaned in toward me to hear ’cause some kids in the corner were singing “Happy Birthday” to someone at the top of their lungs.

  “We’re not kleptomaniacs,” she said. “Stop saying that. It’s just shoplifting. It’s not an addiction. We can stop anytime we want.”

  “That’s just it, Jule, I don’t feel like I can. I keep telling myself, ‘This time will be the last time,’ and then I do it again.”

  Then she didn’t know what to say. I bet it was ’cause she felt like she couldn’t stop, either. Every day, when I got to school, as soon as I saw Julie in the morning, the first thing I did was check out her clothes from head to toe. I immediately knew what was stolen and what wasn’t. Even her accessories and bag. And before I saw her, I prayed may-be this morning, please God, maybe this morning she’d be wearing bought things instead of stolen things. But she never was. Never. Like today she was wearing Fiorucci jeans that she got, a Canal Jeans top she got, and a stolen jacket from Parachute. Even her earrings I knew she got at Savage. I was also wearing stolen jeans from Sak’s, but at least I had on my favorite sweater that wasn’t stolen—it was my grandfather’s old 1950s green cardigan that zipped up. I loved it.

  I couldn’t even remember the last time Julie was wearing an entire outfit of bought stuff. God, did her mother even notice? She was as oblivious as my mother.

  “Doesn’t your mom wonder about all your new clothes?” I said.

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. But if she does, I’m sure she thinks I buy them with my own money.”

  “I’m scared my mom’s gonna find out,” I said, still speaking softly. “Didn’t Bloomingdale’s bug you out?”

  “Yeah, a little bit. But you can’t let these things get to you,” she said.

  “It was only, like, a few weeks ago,” I said. “I can’t stop thinking about it!”

  “I know,” she said. “You worry too much. Trust me, it’s not that big a deal. Think of all the kids we know who do it. It’s not that serious.”

  Maybe Julie and me (and Jennifer, Daisy, Gordon, and whoever else) should be going to Kleptomaniacs Anonymous meetings, like Mimi went to A.A. Did they even have that? Maybe we’d have to go for the rest of our lives. Well, at least there’d be people there I knew.

  All of sudden Julie acted like this talk was a big joke and she started laughing.

  “Come on, Jule!” she said, grabbing my knee a little. “Don’t look so serious! That Bloomies thing was, like, totally unusual. We’re so good, and we’ve gotten so much great stuff. How could you want to stop now?”

  Because I’m scared, I wanted to say again, but I couldn’t. Like if I said anything more she’d get angry at me or may be even drop me as a friend and then what would I do? I wanted so badly to tell her that every time we went stealing now, I was terrified of getting caught, of my heart racing so fast I’d have a heart attack, of my parents finding out everything.

  The next Wednesday at four thirty I sat down in Joyce Kazlick’s office and felt like I couldn’t stop bouncing my leg. It was my fifth visit and I wasn’t sure if Joyce was helping me, but I liked coming.

  “Are you feeling nervous?” she asked after a few seconds of watching my bouncing leg go. I was getting the sense that she actually cared. I was thinking about Bloom ingdale’s and getting caught and whether they had actually sent something to 115 Central Park West addressed to me—or the fake me. All that was making me jittery, but for some reason I couldn’t make the words come out.

  “What’s up?” Joyce said finally.

  “My mother always says if Julie or whoever jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would I? Like, even though I know a lot of kids who steal, I know that doesn’t make it right or okay, but I just can’t seem to stop doing it and it really scares me. . . .” I said, and looked down at my hands. Suddenly my fingernails were fascinating. I couldn’t seem to look at them and talk at the same time, so I sat quietly for a minute.

  “Does anyone in your family know? Have you told your sister?”

  “Are you kidding? No way would I tell my sister! I can’t really talk to her about anything!” I said, realizing I sounded angry. I was thinking, Didn’t I already tell her that?

  Joyce shifted forward in her seat a little, like now this was getting interesting. “Why not, why can’t you tell your sister?” she asked.

  “’Cause we’re so totally different, she wouldn’t understand.”

  “How are you different?” Joyce said.

  “Well, I don’t know, she’s, like, always in her room. I don’t know what she’s doing, really, but she doesn’t seem to want to do teenage-type stuff, like me and my friends. She doesn’t really ever go to clubs or anything. She’s totally shy. She doesn’t have a lot of friends. I mean, I don’t even know if Ellie’s kissed a boy yet, and she just turned eighteen! She doesn’t tell me anything, either.”

  Joyce waited for me to continue.

  “The truth is, I wish I could talk to her about boys and stuff, but whenever I try, she gets kind of weird. Thank God I have Julie and her older sisters to talk to about that stuff.”

  “How do you think Ellie would respond if you told her about the stealing?”

  “I think she would think I was totally fucked-up and weird,” I said.

  “Do you think she’d tell your mother?” Joyce
asked.

  “Probably,” I said, then thought again. “Well, no, I mean, not if I asked her not to, she wouldn’t, but I can’t imagine ever telling her.”

  “What would you do if you mother found out?”

  I inhaled. “Oh my God, I don’t know. I’d die. She’d probably scream and yell at me like she does at my dad. I’d probably get seriously punished.”

  “How?” Joyce said.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I guess they could take away my allowance. Maybe no sleepovers at Julie’s for months or something like that? But anyway, I don’t think my parents will ever find out. When I told my mom I wanted to see a therapist, she didn’t even ask why or anything. She didn’t seem surprised or curious, or I don’t know. . . .” My voice trailed off.

  “Did you want her to?” Joyce asked.

  “Want her to what?” I said.

  “Ask why, seem interested?”

  I couldn’t really answer her, ’cause I had a lump in my throat and honestly, I didn’t know.

  My next session with Joyce was a few weeks later because Joyce had gone on vacation. I had kind of missed seeing her and for some reason sat down in the chair with a loud thump and immediately started biting a hangnail on my thumb.

  “Hello,” Joyce said, taking me in.

  “Hi,” I said grumpily.

  “How are you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how I felt.

  “You seem angry,” Joyce said.

  I felt my jaw stiffen when she said that, and a little headache started in the middle of my forehead. My face felt frozen in a frown.

  “I don’t know if I’m angry,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  “Did something happen?”