by Sloane Tanen
I pulled out the magazine and the Skittles I’d hidden in the pantry and waited for the sound of his car. If my mother had any idea that both my allowance and my salary from the library went to buying candy and tabloids, she’d seriously kill me. The fact was, my love of candy was trumped only by my passion for gossip mags. Nobody knew. Not even Jordan. I mean, she knew I read them on occasion, like everyone else, but she didn’t know that I read all of them, every week, and that I knew on which days of the week each one was delivered to the grocery store. I could have happily done nothing but read tabloids all day. And if I didn’t have money to buy them, I’d log on to PerezHilton, TMZ, or the NeverBeenScooped site.
When I was finished with the mags, I’d roll them up and stuff them in the bottom of the trash outside so nobody would find them. I was addicted and ashamed. I hated all those celebrities, and yet I envied how special they got to be. It wasn’t fair. I mean, nobody cared that I let Andy Blank touch my boob last Saturday, so why did I care if Miley Cyrus got drunk at the CMAs or if Zac Efron wore eyeliner? But I did care. A lot. Maybe I secretly wanted to be famous because I felt underappreciated at home. Maybe I suffered from low self-esteem. I could have psychoanalyzed it to death, but what was the point? All I knew was that my fascination with all of it was disgusting and topped the list of the many things I truly loathed about myself. It just didn’t go with the package I was trying to present to the world. It wasn’t easy reconciling my innate sense of superiority with my inexplicable crush on Ryan Seacrest.
The cover of Star was a beaming Heidi Montag with what looked like another botched boob job. “Yes, I had plastic surgery again!” the headline read. I felt a quiver of excitement. And to think it was readers just like me who made this bimbox famous. Shameful. I was studying Heidi’s askew nipples when I heard my mom’s voice.
“When is your father supposed to be here?” she asked, coming into the kitchen in a ghastly long sack dress I’d never seen before. She also had on purple eye shadow that was obviously meant to complement the dress but merely screamed, rather than whispered, “I was born at Woodstock.” I cringed but didn’t say anything. I prayed my dad would be late so he could be spared this week’s episode of What Not to Wear. And to think she was giving me tips on how to present myself. Ha.
“Seven,” I said, sliding the magazine under my trig book as I typed a message to Jordan. I knew she’d already be in the limo, but I figured she could read it later.
J:
Lord, you should see what my mom’s got on. I mean, wouldn’t you think my dad leaving her for a 26-year-old pastry chef would have inspired her to abandon the prairie skirts and clogs to the decade from which they were born? Talk about a beauty rut. My God. And how about a little Botox, lady? Pamela Anderson and Madonna are working mothers, and you don’t see them running around looking like background singers from A Mighty Wind.
I hit send.
“I honestly don’t know how you maintain your GPA,” my mother nagged. “You’re always on that phone. It’s not healthy. What about human contact? Who are you writing to all the time? What is there to say?” This nagging was a monologue I heard about three hundred times a day. I was just relieved she hadn’t seen the magazine. Texting is an affliction of my entire generation, so whatever. “Mother, the point is I do maintain my GPA, so don’t worry about it. Just go. Have fun.”
J:
When is my mother going to LEAVE??? She’s so obviously stalling. Next she’ll ask me if I have a boyfriend or if I’m doing drugs. Isn’t it obvious that I’ll never have a boyfriend? And wouldn’t I be in a good mood at least some of the time if I were doing drugs?
“Are you going with someone, honey?”
“No.” Ugh. I hated the expression “going with.” I mean, going where, you know?
“Are you smoking marijuana?” she asked with a contrived tilt of her head. I couldn’t help but wonder if that worked on her patients. “I thought I smelled marijuana the other day in the pantry.”
“Jesus, Mother! No.”
“All right, Ms. Sunshine, I’m off then,” she sighed, grabbing her keys.
“Buh-bye,” I waved her off, thrilled at the uncharacteristic haste of her exit. But, of course, that was foolish of me. She turned around and looked at the red Skittles bag.
“Why are you eating candy before dinner? You really shouldn’t eat that processed crap. You are what you eat.” She had a point—looking as she did like a bowl of lentil soup.
“OK, I’m processed crap,” I said, popping a handful in my mouth.
“Don’t be fresh, Francesca. Those are fattening and have zero nutritional value.”
“You think I’m fat?” I suddenly felt like the girl from Hairspray.
“No, you’re beautiful. But you have to watch out for junk food. Why can’t you eat more like your sister?”
“Oh my God, you think I’m fat!” I yelled.
I had put on a little weight, but I was hoping nobody had noticed. Leave it to my mother, the therapist, to find the open wound and squeeze some lemon juice on it.
“I’m not getting into this with you right now,” my mother said, closing the door on the only conversation I was interested in having with her.
“Fine.” I was pissed. I thought about throwing up the Skittles, but it was too gross. I couldn’t do bulimia. Anorexia maybe. I’d waste away to seventy-eight pounds and would have to be taken away. Then she’d really feel guilty about what she “did” to me. Unfortunately, I’d never really been the eating disorder type. I’d have to find another way to exact my revenge. In the meantime, I decided to wait until my mom left and then throw the half-eaten bag in the trash and pour Windex in it to avoid temptation. Jesus. Maybe I was the eating disorder type.
“OK,” she said, “I’m off. Call me if there are any problems.” She hesitated a moment, obviously wondering what else she could bug me about before she left. “Did you finish studying for your history final?” she asked, hand on the doorknob.
“It was last Tuesday, Mom. Just go already!”
She looked guilty. Like she should have known and was losing track of everything and everybody.
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask about it,” she said. “How was it?”
I realized this was a golden opportunity to ask for twenty dollars, but I really just wanted her to leave.
“Easy,” I said. It always was.
She smiled and moved in as if to give me a kiss before heading out the door. I flinched.
Just then, the kitchen door opened. Great. I hadn’t heard the car in time.
“Hiya,” my dad waved, poking his head through the door and smiling sheepishly. His posture was stooped and guilty.
“You don’t knock?” my mom hissed. “You don’t live here anymore, Jon.” Lucky him.
My dad shifted. “Sorry.” He said this with as much conviction as a two-year-old being forced to apologize for dumping sand on another kid’s head in the playground.
“Let’s go.” I popped out of the chair and headed toward the door.
“Let’s,” my father smiled gratefully.
“How’s the frosting maker?” my mother asked casually. This was easily her most cringe-worthy moment since their separation. So it was going to be that kind of a night.
“Chandra’s fine, Melissa. And she’s not a frosting maker, she’s a pastry chef…and she has a name.”
“Right. Chandra the pastry chef. I keep forgetting that that’s a real job,” my mother snorted, “or a real name.” My dad ignored her and turned back to the door. Did she not get how transparent her sarcasm was? I mean, did she honestly think being such a witch was going to make him reconsider his decision to leave in the first place? I felt sorry for my dad.
“Jon, we need to talk about Emily getting a credit card before she leaves for college.” I could almost taste her panic that he was getting away.
“Fine, we’ll talk about it next week,” he answered, motioning for me to go, go, go. I glanced at my mom and noticed t
hat her face was suddenly all puffy and red, and I could see beads of sweat forming around her temples. God, please don’t start crying, I thought. Her desperation was tragic. I mean, the dress, the eye shadow, even the haircut. Did she really think the combined effect was going to wow him into thinking he’d made a big mistake leaving her brand of babe behind? As if. My father just looked like he wanted to get out of the room.
“It’s always next week with you, Jon.”
“All right, Melissa,” he mumbled, rubbing his forehead. “I want to take Francesca to dinner now. I will call you Monday, and we can talk about everything you’re angry about then. You’re not the only one having a hard time, though I know how much it completes you to see the world that way.”
“Oh,” my mother laughed shrilly, “are you having a hard time, Jon? What part, exactly, has been hard on you, Jon? Is it hard to align your chakra with Chandra, or is it hard to live with the guilt of abandoning your family? What’s the hardest part, Jon?”
I expected my father to fly into a rage, but all he said was, “Melissa, you don’t know the first thing about Chandra’s chakra.”
Chandra’s chakra? Did my dad actually say that out loud? I let out a weird peal of laughter from somewhere in the back of my throat. They both looked at me, and I slapped my hand over my mouth and shut my eyes. The last thing I wanted to do was upset my dad.
“What are you laughing at?” my mother shouted, her rage filling the room. Her face was the color of my hair.
I looked at them both staring at me with concern, and I started laughing even harder. And I couldn’t stop.
“You think this is funny, Francesca?” she yelled. My head was now buried in my lap as I convulsed in a squatting position on the floor. Yes, Ma’am. I thought it was really funny.
“What’s the matter with her?” my dad asked.
“It’s just a nervous reaction,” my mother said. “Your leaving has been particularly hard on her,” she added, and then asked me to wait outside by the car so she could speak to my father alone. My dad rolled his eyes. I was still laughing but couldn’t help thinking that her using me to get alone time with my dad was disgustingly sad and transparent.
From Hero to Zero
It was so nice to have that hour alone with my dad at the restaurant. We drank ginger ale and ate French fries with mayonnaise. For the first time in months, I realized how sad I was that the only person in the house who ever understood me wasn’t there anymore. I missed him. The worst part was that I couldn’t really blame him for leaving. I do love my mom, but she’s a nag, and her anxiety levels about everything from mortgage rates to mosquito-transmitted West Nile virus are beyond exhausting. I could only imagine what she was doing to her patients. Maybe my dad found her neuroses charming the first twenty years they were married, but the novelty had clearly worn off.
Since he’d gone, my mother and Emily spent a lot of time man-bashing my dad. Mom was really working the dutiful, abandoned wife routine, and it was totally bogus. If one thing was clear to me, it was that my mother and Emily had driven my dad away. For this I would never forgive them. It seemed like they were always mad at him for one thing or another, and when they weren’t disappointed in him, they were ignoring him. I mean, could you blame the guy for wanting out?
The fact that my dad actually had the balls to leave was the shock of my mother’s life. And now that he had a new girlfriend, she was in a panic that maybe he was the best thing she’d ever had and she’d blown it. And she was probably right. If only she were a little less narcissistic, a little less globally neurotic, a little more of a caretaker. And while I wasn’t naïve enough to think he and my mother would be getting back together, that night, at least, it felt like our relationship was going to be OK despite their problems. Over the last few weeks, he’d been so removed I wasn’t sure what was happening. I was scared he was leaving all of us, and I wanted him to know that I was on his side. I wanted him to know that we were the same. I didn’t want to be associated with my mother, or Princess Emily, for that matter.
“I fixed the garage door this afternoon,” I said, trying to engage him in an area of common interest. Ever since I could remember, I’d been following my dad around the house, watching him change light bulbs, fix the sprinklers, paint the house, and cook dinners.
“Yeah?” he lit up. “What was wrong with it, broken roller?”
“The power wasn’t on,” I laughed. He laughed, too, and pounded my hand on the table affectionately.
“I miss you, Bam,” he said, eyes filling up with water. “I miss my brown-eyed deer.”
“Me too.” I didn’t say anything else for fear my voice would crack. He hadn’t called me Bambi in a long time.
“Have you been cooking, or are you all living on Lean Cuisine now?” he asked, trying to change the subject.
“A little of both. If I don’t have time to go to the market and make something, we order in. You know how it is.”
“It’s a lot of responsibility for you, Fran. I’m sorry. Why don’t you stop by the restaurant on your way home from school, and I’ll ask Ramon to have something prepared that you can take home?”
“Like she’d ever go for that. Anyway, it’s fine. Once Emily goes to school, it will just be Mom and me, and it’ll be more manageable. Right now, what I need is a break from both of them.”
“I can’t say I don’t understand,” he laughed guiltily.
I was about to ask him the big question I’d been ruminating over since he left. I wanted to move in with him for a while. Maybe just for the summer. I was on the verge of asking him when he ruined everything…forever.
“Franny,” he said, leaning across the table and putting both hands over mine. I looked at the mingling of our freckles and, for once, didn’t hate my hands.
“Yeah, Dad?” I said, imitating his serious face and smiling.
“I need to tell you something, and I need you to be OK with it. I haven’t told Emily or your mother yet.” He was looking at me like I was an adult, and it was making me uncomfortable. I stopped smiling.
“OK,” I said, instinctively pulling my hands away and putting them in my lap. He stared down at the back of his empty palms and told me that dumb, new-age Chandra was pregnant. Then he told me that they were going to get married as soon as my mother agreed to a divorce.
All I remember after that is my dad trying to catch my arm as I ran out of the restaurant. I left my backpack on the seat. I could hear him calling my name as I ran down the highway as fast as I could. My legs were spinning so fast I felt like I was on a bike. In retrospect, I can only imagine what a sight I must have been to the cars blasting past me in a blur. When I finally stopped, I was three miles out of town, in front of the only place I knew was safe: Jordan’s house.
***
“What can I get you to eat?” Jordan’s mother asked, sitting on the edge of Jordan’s bed the next morning. Her hair was tied back in a tight knot, and she was wearing a gorgeous blue sari. I think everyone over the age of forty should wear saris. They’re the perfect combination of good style and maximum coverage. What more could you want at that age?
Mrs. Singh is a stay-at-home mom expelled from the 1950s. She cooks breakfast, lunch, and dinner for her family every night of the week. She doesn’t drive, and the house is so clean you could brush your teeth with the toilet water. My mom could learn a lot from Mrs. Singh.
“Nothing, thanks.” I looked at the clock and noticed that it was 8:45 in the morning. “Oh my God, I’m late,” I cried, jumping out of bed in a panic. Jordan’s mother reminded me it was Sunday. Jordan was at SAT prep until 3:00. That she actually went to SAT prep the morning after the senior prom was so Jordan. I was sorry she was gone but glad it was Sunday. I sunk back into her crisp, white sheets and began to reconstruct the last fifteen hours of my life.
“Don’t worry, Francesca,” she said soothingly. “I called your mother last night, and she knows you’re here.”
“I wasn’t worried,” I m
umbled. And it was true. I couldn’t have cared less what my mother thought about anything at that moment. She was responsible for driving my dad to Chandra. And then I thought of my father with a new baby. If he could forget us all so quickly and just start a new family, maybe he wasn’t who I thought he was at all. At that moment, I really detested both of my parents. I felt like puking.
“Your father was very concerned. He went back to your house after you left the restaurant. He was waiting there when I called to tell your mother you were here.”
“My mom must have loved that.”
Mrs. Singh didn’t say anything.
“Did he tell her?” I asked.
“Tell her what?”
“That he’s having a new baby?”
“I don’t know, Francesca. I think so, perhaps.” Her unlined face got a little pinched between her brows. “Your mother’s going to pick you up after work.” My mother saw patients on weekends too.
“Like I care.”
“This must also be hard on your mother,” Mrs. Singh said, searching my face for traces of empathy. I made sure she found none. She stood up and grinned. “OK, Francesca, I have a splendid idea. Why don’t you relax while I make you a grilled cheese with tomato, basil, and honey. I saw it on Oprah. Gayle gave it five stars. Sounds good, no?”
“It sounds weird,” I said, smiling. I was kind of hungry, and everything Mrs. Singh made was good.
She laughed and got up, and I started to wonder what I was going to do in Jordan’s house all day without my backpack or cell. Then she handed me a stapled brown bag that she said Jordan left for me. After she left, I opened the bag and saw it was the week in tabloids plus a Seventeen and a Vogue. And a pack of apple Jolly Ranchers. You had to love that girl. Of course, I’d already read all the magazines, except the Seventeen, so I started to peel through it with the sort of enthusiasm I generally reserved for People. Seventeen was definitely not my thing, but it was a hundred times better than nothing.
