by Diana Welch
I wound up spending a lot of time hanging out at Curtis’s. Once, I stayed there for four days straight. I told his mom that my mom said it was okay, but I never told anyone at home where I was or what I was doing. No one ever asked. The kids who lived near Curtis were a lot like me in that way. I mean, we were way different: Curtis only had two pairs of jeans and five T-shirts, but each one was perfectly folded in his closet, pressed and washed. He took such good care of his things because they were all he had. Meanwhile, I was sleeping in a closet filled with my parents’ fancy, rotting clothes. But we were similar in that our dads were gone and our moms were preoccupied with putting food on the table. In Curtis’s apartment complex, everybody was in the same situation: None of the kids had any money to do anything, so they were trapped. It was this weird kind of freedom. We played Uno and, when that got old, spin the bottle. Kids started having sex there really young because there really wasn’t anything else to do.
One time, I was in Curtis’s bedroom, fooling around with this girl who was ten, two years younger than me. Curtis was right next to us, fooling around with her friend. All of a sudden, the girl pulled my pants down and stuck my penis inside of her. It was really dry and it hurt, but I just sucked up the pain. I guess I lost my virginity that night. I thought that whole situation was ugly. It broke my heart in a different kind of way.
LIZ
I NEVER TOLD anyone about going to third base with Paul, but in my own head I decided to go all the way with him. I had no idea what that meant. The only thing Mom ever told me about sex was that she was twenty-eight and a virgin when she met Dad, and that it was worth waiting for the man you loved. Well, I loved Paul. But lately he had grown a bit distant. When I passed him in the hallway, he flicked his chin up in acknowledgment instead of grabbing my butt or giving me a big bear hug. He never stopped by the cottage again, and I hadn’t been invited back to his parents’ house for another Friday night dinner. I knew he was anxiously waiting to hear from colleges, that he was hoping to get into Duke even though his dad wanted him to go to West Point. But I also wondered if he was aloof because he had grown bored with me. If we had sex, I thought things would go back to the way they were. Giddy and fun.
The only thing I knew about sex was from the hairy sketches of various positions from The Joy of Sex, which I found in Mom and Dad’s closet when I was little, and from watching Caligula with Amanda. But that was so violent and bloody, I had to close my eyes throughout most of it.
None of my friends had ever had sex. I was on my own. So I started plotting the perfect night. I babysat for Daisy and Montgomery Stewart several times a week, often on a Friday or Saturday night. They had two kids: Jonah, who was two, and Addison, a newborn. One weekend, they hired me to take care of their dog when they went away with the boys. I decided it was the perfect opportunity to have sex with Paul.
I invited him over and cooked a nice dinner, which I served on Daisy and Montgomery’s good china in the dining room. I lit candles, played classical music, and even put on a sexy dress that I had bought with my babysitting money. After dinner, I led him upstairs to Daisy and Montgomery’s room.
All I remember about that night was sharp pain, flesh tearing. It was dark; Paul was on top of me. After it was over, we did not lie in bed, bodies entangled like lovers in movies. I lay on my back frozen, stunned. Was that sex?
Paul had to get home. As I got out of bed to get dressed, I noticed a small bloodstain, a deformed butterfly, on the stark white sheets. I quickly covered it, embarrassed. It was proof of my pain; I wanted Paul to think I’d enjoyed it.
I spent three hours washing and bleaching the stains from the sheets and wound up sleeping there alone. After that weekend, Paul stopped calling me. He avoided me in the hallways. Clearly I had done something wrong, but I had no idea what.
It was near the end of school, and I was at a party, sitting on the lawn with a few friends, when I spotted Paul. I jumped up and grabbed the bottle of Dom Perignon I had stolen from the Stewarts to give him as a graduation present. I had to hold myself back from running. He was chatting with Jennifer, the prettier of the twins who were also the smartest senior girls at Fox Lane. I played volleyball with her. She was on the varsity team and always so nice to me. She even helped me with my overhead serve.
But before I emerged from the shadows, I saw Paul steer Jennifer down the driveway. He was whispering something in her ear, and she threw her head back and laughed. Then he put his arm around her and pulled her close, and they disappeared into the darkness.
The stabs I felt that night were in my throat and in my chest. But I did not cry out or bleed from them. I got drunk on Dom Perignon instead, convinced that Paul had lost interest in me because I sucked at sex.
DIANA
I WAS LYING on my back, concentrating on keeping my throat open and my lungs working by imagining a parachute, like the one we played with in gym, filling with air and slowly descending. It usually worked, but this time it wasn’t doing anything. My asthma had gotten worse since moving to the cottage; tonight, the sound of my wheezing woke up Mom.
She drove fast through the night, her hand on my cheek. My breath was a creaking door, opening and closing. At the emergency room, I was given a shot. Mom said I was brave, the bravest little girl she knew, and kissed me where the needle had gone in.
When I awoke late the next morning, Mom was standing in the living room doing the Jane Fonda workout, legs spread in a wide V, her hands at her waist, as Jane instructed her to breathe. “Good morning, my darling,” she said, coming toward me with her arms outstretched. I ran to her, the maroon velour of her tracksuit soft against my cheek. “How are you feeling?” she asked as she crouched down so that her face was level with mine. I nodded sleepily and put my face in her neck, my eyes pressed closed by her skin. “I have a surprise for you,” she sang, twisting my body back and forth at the waist. “Today is a special day!” she said. “One that’s for just you and me!”
She rubbed her nose against mine and told me to get dressed. We were going to spend the whole day together, no school, no work, just the two of us, having fun. For starters, we would have a picnic in Leonard Park, where we could feed the geese. Then we’d go ice-skating in the new indoor rink. She was going to teach me how to do figure eights.
Mom filled our red-and-white-gingham-lined wicker picnic basket with tuna sandwiches, cookies, and fruit, and we were off. As we passed the turnoff to the gray house, I saw Hugh and Laura playing in the pasture. Mom rolled down her window and asked if they’d like a ride to their house, and I slumped in my seat. The Chisolms must have had one of those extra holidays you get in private school.
“Oh, that would be lovely!” they answered cheerily, their noses pink from the crisp spring air. As they clambered into the backseat, shouting “Hullo!” and “Thanks ever so much!” like the kids in Mary Poppins, I started to feel grumpy. The day didn’t seem as special as it had before, when I was the only kid not in school, when Mom and I were the only two people on earth.
As Mom pulled the gearshift down a couple notches and slowly eased the Jeep forward, my only thought was that the Chisolms better not try to weasel in on our holiday. Then suddenly Mom’s head bobbled up and down as the Jeep went over a big bump.
Hugh yelled, “Maahrk!” Mom’s face crumpled. She bit her lip, opened the door, and disappeared beneath the car. She reappeared clutching three-year-old Mark, his big square head bloodied at the scalp. She cradled him in her arms like a baby breast-feeding. His mouth was wide open, screaming, saliva bubbling on his tongue.
“Are your parents home?” Mom yelled over her shoulder, back at the kids, both crying.
“No!” Laura wailed. “Just Nanny!”
“Diana, take off your jacket and give me your shirt,” Mom ordered. I hesitated. I was wearing my Hard Rock Cafe New York T-shirt, a gift from Amanda.
“Di-ana!” Mom yelled sharply.
The tone was unfamiliar. I lifted the shirt over my head. She grabbed it an
d wrapped it around the head of the screaming child. I quickly folded my arms across my chest, embarrassed that Hugh might have seen my naked boobies.
In her arms, Mark soon quieted down, and as we made our way back to the emergency room for the second time in twelve hours, the only sound other than the whir of the engine and the sniffling of the Chisolms was Mom’s gentle shushings.
“It’s okay,” she sang softly as she patted Mark’s hiccupping back with her free hand. The other was busy holding the steering wheel. “It’s okay.” And it was okay, for Mark at least. It turned out that the bottom of the Jeep just grazed his scalp. Mom and I never did get to go on our picnic, though.
AMANDA
THAT SPRING, I did mushrooms for the first time with my friends Anna and Sue. We ate them in the cottage and decided to go check out the new house. It was framed, but there was no Sheetrock or anything. Mom said we’d move in that summer, and I for one could not wait. The new house was huge, palatial compared to the cottage. That night, I showed Anna and Sue where the kitchen was going to be, and the dining area. Mom called the living room “the great room” because it had cathedral ceilings and French doors that opened out onto a deck. And that was just the first floor. I was so excited; we were going to have so much space! As I was leading them to Mom’s bedroom wing, all of a sudden the floor disappeared. I stepped into nothing and then I landed with a thud on my back, still in a walking position. My breath was knocked out of me, and it took me a moment to realize I had fallen through the hole where stairs one day would lead to the basement. I landed on a pile of plastic-covered gravel. I couldn’t breathe, let alone answer my friends, who were wandering around above me, calling my name. I’m just glad they hadn’t poured the concrete yet.
LIZ
WE MOVED INTO the new house that summer, and it made everyone happy. Especially Mom. She was done with her radiation and finally looking ahead. The house represented our future, our family redefined. And even though it was still a work in progress, I loved every corner of it, including the mudroom, which had pegs installed for all our coats and a bench where we could sit to pull off our winter boots.
The kids’ quarters were upstairs. Amanda and I still shared a room, but this one was as long as the whole house was wide, and Dan finally had his own real room. It was adjacent to Diana’s, which Mom had furnished with a new bunk bed even though Diana still slept with her at night. Mom’s bedroom was downstairs. She called it the “master suite.” It had its own foyer, a walk-in closet, and a bathroom with a Jacuzzi and a bidet. Mom had gotten rid of the crushed-blue-velvet headboard and king-size bed she’d shared with Dad in the old house and was using the bed she shared with Diana in the cottage instead. It looked small and sad in this cavernous room, but it was temporary. We’d buy new furniture once she got another job, because money was especially tight since Mom had been written off Loving. She’d only done one commercial, for IBM’s Selectric typewriter. Still, she was going to the Actors Studio every week and trying in earnest to lose weight. She was focused on finding work, not only for herself but for me and Dan and Diana as well.
That summer, Mom shuttled us back and forth from Bedford to the city for auditions, and in between trips, I juggled as many jobs as I could. I worked as a maid for the von Unwerths, a wealthy couple who paid me seven dollars an hour to serve them breakfast and hand-buff their marble bathroom floors. I learned how to iron—Madame von Unwerth liked her bed sheets crisp—and to set a proper table and poach a perfect egg. On the weekends, they paid me extra to serve lunches and dinners, for which I wore my best Laura Ashley dresses. I also continued to babysit for the Stewarts, and I got a new gig babysitting for the Chamberlains, who had two kids. Three-year-old Margaret had so many food allergies that the list of foods she could not eat was longer than the list of foods she could. William, her baby brother, had come home from the hospital that spring. I liked their mom, Nancy, a lot. She loved to shop and would buy me Indian-print shirts at the Banksville open market and stock the fridge with my favorite foods. Ted, her husband, was kind and always grilling me about my musical tastes. For his birthday that summer I gave him two cassettes: Echo and the Bunnymen and Talking Heads, and he always made a point of playing one or the other in his BMW as he drove me home. Like the Stewarts, the Chamberlains asked me to house sit as well, which I did one weekend while they went to Martha’s Vineyard for their summer holiday.
The night before they left, I’d met a cute boy at a keg party who went to John Jay, Fox Lane’s rival. His name was Bobby, and he was muscular with a hawkish nose and floppy hair. I decided that he was the perfect guy for my experiment. Still convinced Paul dumped me because I was bad in bed, I was looking for a guy to have sex with. If I got better, then maybe I could win Paul back. I fantasized about surprising him at West Point that fall and had even planned the outfit: oversized sweater, tight jeans, and my favorite ankle boots. I’d seduce him, we’d have sex, and we’d start going out again. I invited Bobby to the Chamberlains’ the following night.
The family had left hours before he arrived. He was dressed in baggy shorts and a baseball cap and brought a six-pack of beer. We drank it all in the sitting room before we started to kiss.
Bobby had no idea I was using him, but as his kisses got more urgent and aggressive, I started to get nervous. Our teeth crashed and his tongue gagged me. He wasn’t kissing me so much as devouring me, but my determination trumped my fear. I led him through the empty house to the downstairs guest room with its peach sheets and matching wallpaper.
I had sex again that night, and it was even worse than the first time. I lay there like a corpse, worried that if I moved it might hurt even more. When he finally fell on top of me, limp and heavy, I bit my lip to fight back tears. I wanted him off of me and out of the house. He tried to kiss me again, but I said, “I can’t. You have to leave.” I lied and said the Chamberlains were coming home that night. He got dressed and said he’d call, and I hoped he never would. Sex, I decided then and there, sucked.
The next morning I woke up in the Chamberlains’ guest room sore between my legs and around my neck. I saw the marks in the bathroom mirror—dark welts ringed my throat, a splotchy purple noose. I called my friend Rita, easily the coolest girl in my grade. She was outgoing and flirtatious and always had a boyfriend or two. She’d know how to get rid of hickeys. And I needed to get rid of mine fast. It was Saturday morning, and I was supposed to go to the city to meet modeling agents that Tuesday with Mom.
“Try combing them out,” Rita suggested over the phone in a matter-of-fact way. I found a wide-tooth comb in Nancy Chamberlain’s bathroom and followed her instructions, watching myself in the mirror as I scraped the plastic teeth against my throbbing neck. It didn’t work. In fact, it seemed to electrify the pain in the bruises. I called Rita again.
“Try an ice pack,” she said. “I read that cold-water compresses and combing works.”
I asked her if she had ever had a hickey before.
“Are you kidding me?” she said. “My father would kill me.”
Nancy Chamberlain had asked me to weed her garden for extra money, so I spent the entire day pulling crabgrass and dandelions from the beds that surrounded the pool, taking breaks every hour to ice and comb my neck. Miraculously, the hickeys started to fade by nightfall. By Tuesday morning, when Mom picked me up to take me to the city, my neck was back to normal, and I swore I’d never have sex with a stranger again. Or with Paul Martino. Or with anyone else for that matter. Of course I couldn’t tell Mom any of this. She’d never understand. We talked about my modeling future instead.
“It put me through college, Bitsy,” Mom said. I had seen her modeling photos from when she was young, and it was hard to imagine that the coquettish woman in those shots was Mom. Now forty-eight, she was on another diet that summer; her goal was to lose twenty pounds as, she always said glumly, “the camera adds ten.”
I was excited about the money I could make modeling. Dan had already booked two commercials th
at summer and banked close to ten thousand dollars. As we drove toward the city, I thought maybe I would get back into acting. Maybe I’d apply to drama school. Maybe I’d be an actress like Mom after all.
I met agents at Ford and Elite who told Mom I was cute but, at five-foot-seven-and-a-half, not tall enough. My height did not seem to bother the agent at Wilhelmina, who talked about me in the third person to his colleague. They wanted test shots, and Mom brought me back to New York the following week. I sat on a stool as someone curled my hair, another person applied my makeup, and more people talked about me in the third person. Then someone directed a fan at my head, and the photographer told me to smile. I had no idea modeling would be so hard: I didn’t like the bright lights shining in my face, or the people tugging on my clothes or applying more lip-gloss, or the photographer barking at me to “Smile! Not that much! Open your eyes! Raise your chin!”
A week later, we went back to Wilhelmina. “She’s a bit stiff in front of the camera,” one agent said. “And see that tooth? That’s a problem.”
My right incisor did pop out of line, making my smile lopsided. I glowered at Mom—she should have gotten me braces, after all.
“Get that fixed,” the other agent continued. “And have her lose about five pounds, and we’ll do another test shoot.”
Mom was pissed. “That’s just ridiculous!” she said several times as we drove back home toward Bedford. “You’re perfect the way you are!”
“My thighs are kind of fat,” I offered. “Maybe I should start doing Jane Fonda with you.”
