The Kids Are All Right

by Diana Welch

  By February 23, I was down to three hundred bucks. That afternoon, I went to Notre Dame. For the first time ever, I wished I believed in God. I wanted to pray for a job, for heat, for a winning lottery ticket. For someone to save me. Instead, I lit one candle for Mom and one for Dad, knelt down before the burning flames, and thought: “Dear Mom and Dad, help! I don’t want to go back to Bedford with my tail between my legs. No, I will not go back to Bedford. Period.”

  That night, I dreamt that Dad was still alive. He was driving the Mercedes-Benz, and I was sitting behind him, asking where he’d been all those years. Instead of answering, he looked at me through the rearview mirror and smiled wide. I asked again, and he let out a boisterous laugh. And then I woke up.

  It was yet another gray cold day. I went to Sacré-Coeur and lit more candles. That night, I dreamt about Dad again. This time, I burst into tears in my dream. I was hugging him and kept saying, “Where have you been?” He just laughed and laughed.

  I woke the next morning in Kathy’s freezing room feeling worse than the day before. I had heard that families posted notices for au pairs at the American church, so I went there and wrote every name and number down. On March 4, I finally got a job taking care of a one-year-old girl called Emma. I had to sleep in her room—the family’s apartment was small—but I didn’t care. I had a warm bed and my own bathroom, with hot water. I was thrilled.

  Kathy and I celebrated that night at a café on the Champs-Élysées. We were drinking champagne when a middle-aged man with slicked-back hair asked if we would join him and his friends. “Non, merci,” I said, rolling my eyes at Kathy. This was a common occurrence. Men in Paris could be a nuisance. They hissed at you in the streets and aggressively flirted in cafés, and more than once, I had been touched in the subway, and not by accident. It infuriated me.

  Things were not so great with my employers, either. The dad was in Alcoholics Anonymous and taking a pill that made him have an allergic reaction to alcohol. I learned this when he arrived at the apartment at noon one weekday swollen and splotchy red, gasping for air. This happened several times over the next few weeks. Plus, he and his wife expected me to babysit twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for a measly two hundred francs. One Friday night, they said they’d be home by eleven, so I made plans to meet Kathy at a club at midnight. When they did not show up by two in the morning, I went to bed writing my resignation speech in my head. The next morning, they were still gone. The mom called later that day to say they decided to go to Biarritz for the weekend.

  So on Monday morning, I quit. I couldn’t take it anymore. It was April 4. Since I had nowhere to go, I told Emma’s mom that I would work until she found my replacement. I figured that would give me enough time to find something else. But when her husband heard the news, he was furious and said he wanted me gone before he got home from work. In a panic, I called the closest youth hostel to reserve a bed. Then I called Amanda.

  AMANDA

  THAT WAS THE most terrifying phone call, ever. Liz was freaking out. That drunk bastard refused to pay her the money he owed her and kicked her out of his house, with nowhere to go! And when she told me that she kept getting harassed by seedy men, I was a wreck. My worst fear was Liz getting sold into sexual slavery somewhere. So I told her to call Janie Rayne and get her ass to London, ASAP. I wanted her somewhere safe.

  Around that time, Abbie, the woman I had mucked stalls for in high school, got in touch with me again. She was moving to Charlottesville, Virginia, and asked me to drive one of her cars down there for her. She also offered to sell me her old Saab, cheap. I had sold the Karmann Ghia and, since the Mercedes was on its last legs, I decided to buy the Saab.

  Charlottesville was beautiful. It reminded me of Bedford with its wide-open fields. It was horse country. During that short visit, Abbie asked me to come work on her new farm. I thought it sounded like a good idea. Since Liz was in Europe and Dan was in boarding school, there wasn’t anything keeping me in Manhattan anymore.

  Back in New York, I spent hours wandering the city, imagining the life I really wanted, which was basically a place where we could all be together again. I wanted to bring back the feeling we’d had when we were little. I wanted there to be a place where everyone knew they could go, so Dan wouldn’t be left stranded again, Liz wouldn’t have to choose between being alone and vulnerable or dealing with Montgomery’s bullshit. I wanted to get my life together, so that my house could be a place where Nancy might let Diana come, too. Eventually.

  DIANA

  A LITTLE MORE than two years after I moved in, the Chamberlains’ house was invaded by a steady stream of men who knocked down walls to expose the entire eastern side of the house. They added on my new bedroom and a bathroom for William and me to share. They completely transformed the kitchen, swapping out the dark red tile for a gleaming, peachy pink. They scratched the wet black paint on the new library’s walls with a comb, exposing the bright red paint beneath in a repeating shell pattern. Faux finish, my new mom called it.

  My new room was in the same wing with the rest of the family, right next to William’s bedroom and down the hall from Margaret’s. It was all so permanent, so disappointing, with its peach carpet and white wicker furniture. The bedspreads were purple with big peach butterflies. They matched the headboards rising over the two twin beds in padded arcs.

  Above the kitchen with the maid, I could pretend I was a mistreated heroine who would be saved any day by someone who truly loved me, like Sara in A Little Princess. It was my favorite book, a tale of a once-rich orphan who bore the humiliation and torture of living in the attic of her fancy school until her father, thought to be dead, came back from overseas to collect her. I read it over and over again, looking for clues as to how a dead father might come alive.

  In my new room, I spent a lot of time hiding in my closet, where I tried to contact Mom by Ouija board. Sitting in the dark, with the little plastic triangle hovering beneath my fingers, I concentrated on opening myself up to ghosts. Mom always believed in them, and believed that I could channel spirits if I worked at it. It seemed only natural that she’d be there, on the other side, waiting for me. I thought maybe she could keep on being Mom, even though she was dead. Once, the board did spell out M-O-M, though I’m not positive I didn’t do it on purpose. I kept a picture of her hidden in there, too, behind my shoes.

  One afternoon, my new mom spotted it as she pawed through my closet, organizing. “I thought you didn’t like that picture,” she said. I had told her that I didn’t like it in a cowardly moment, hoping to please her, to make her think that I didn’t miss Mom, that I was happy where I was, that she, this new lady, was all I needed. I had thought maybe if I acted more grateful we could get along better.

  “You can put it up, you know,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. But seeing Mom’s picture outside of the surreal darkness of the closet sent me into a state of confusion. Here I’d be calling another lady “mom,” while my real mom smiled at me, testing my loyalties. I liked to keep it put away, so that I would only look at it in the dark of my closet, with no interruptions.

  Things were changing all around me. I was going to go to a new school next fall, the same one my new siblings went to. Rippowam Cisqua wasn’t new, not really. I had gone there when I was little, before West Patent, before Dad died. When I went to go visit Rippowam Cisqua with my new mom, it was as if I was loosened in time.

  Mrs. Handlen, my junior pre-kindergarten teacher, stopped me in the hallway. “Look at you,” she said, her body bent down so that her old, familiar face was level with mine. “Why, I remember you when you were four years old. Your daddy would pick you up every Friday to take you on a lunch date to Friendly’s. Do you remember that?” She smiled. “I’ll always remember you and your little white cowboy boots. Do you remember those?” I didn’t and told her so. I couldn’t remember anything anymore. My gloves were attached to the elastic wristband of my puffy blue coat by little metal teeth, because otherwise I
’d forget them, too.

  “Oh, your dad bought them for you on a trip to Dallas,” Mrs. Handlen continued, straightening to her full height. “You were so proud of them. You were the cutest little girl I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot.” She laughed warmly. “You’d always hide your eyeglasses in your pocket and say that you’d lost them.” She winked at me and smiled at Mrs. Chamberlain, who quickly smiled a smile that looked fake. Mrs. Handlen walked off, and we continued down the hallway and saw Waldo Jones, the headmistress. I remembered her because she looked exactly like the man on the Quaker Oats box.

  “Well, hello there,” she said, her voice kind. “We’re so glad that you’ve come back for a visit, Diana.” I felt shy and stuck my chin into my coat so that my smile was covered up to the nose by my zipped blue collar. She led us to a hallway lined with hooks for coats and backpacks, where my new mom left me. The girl named Kate waiting to show me around for the day was familiar to me, too; we had been in Mrs. Handlen’s class together. She led me to her fourth grade homeroom. There, I sat, quietly looking at the blackboard, mystified. I had no idea what was going on even though I had already completed fourth grade. After class, I said so, and the teacher looked baffled. She took me to a third-grade classroom, where the chalk marks on the blackboard looked familiar. I was moving backwards at a pace quicker than I could comprehend.

  Then, between classes, I passed a teacher with a bowl cut and a strong nose. She put her hands on my shoulders. “Diana Welch!” she said, smiling. “We know people in common!”

  “Yeah?” I said, smiling, thinking she had another story about Dad or me when I was little.

  “My daughter is dating Brad Hayes!” she said, triumphantly. The look on my face must have given away my confusion. “Brad Hayes?” she said, lightly. “Ring a bell?” I shook my head, and her smiling face changed. “Your brother lived with him,” she said, her eyes searching my face for something I just didn’t have to give her. I had never heard the name Brad Hayes before in my life.

  LIZ

  I ARRIVED IN London to an empty house. Janie and Robbie were in New York for Easter and asked if I would walk their two dogs and feed Damian’s rabbits, which they kept in a hutch in the back garden, while they were gone.

  Vera, the Italian housekeeper, let me in. Janie had filled the refrigerator with food and left a note that said, “Make yourself at home! And call Amanda, immediately.” I knew Amanda would be at Karen’s for Easter, so I called there first and got to speak to Dan for the first time since Christmas. He sounded great, as did Amanda and Karen. No one had seen or spoken to Diana. I decided to call the Chamberlains. She was my sister, after all, no matter what Nancy said. Ted answered the phone and sounded pleasantly surprised to hear my voice. Nancy got on next and peppered me with kind questions about my travels. Then I spoke to Diana, who sounded as enthusiastic and goofy as ever.

  “Have you been getting my letters?” I asked. The phone went silent.

  “I didn’t know you sent me any,” she said, quietly.

  Then Nancy’s voice was back on the line. “We have to run off to Easter mass!” she said, still chipper. “Keep us posted on your travels!” And with that, she hung up.

  DAN

  THAT SUMMER, I got in trouble for running up Karen’s phone bill. I called some 900 numbers, and Karen said I ran up almost a thousand dollars in charges. I can’t imagine that was true. I remember doing it only, like, five times, ten times tops, and most calls didn’t last that long, if you know what I mean. But Karen made such a big deal out of it, she told everybody, even Liz and Amanda. It was uncomfortable, to say the least.

  It wasn’t like I was having an easy time finding a girlfriend—I went to an all-boys school, and New York City is a really lonely place. There are millions of people around you, but you can’t walk up to just anyone and say, “Hey, can I be your friend?” So I got in trouble for making some phone calls. Big deal! Meanwhile, that same summer I also tried heroin and smoked crack.

  I was spending a lot of time with Clarke, this druggie friend from Trinity Pawling. One weekend, he bought us a ton of coke and suggested that we go get prostitutes. He was paying, so I was like, Fuck it. Why not? That night, we met Wendy, a beautiful black girl who gave me a blow job on Ninety-third and West End Avenue, in a stairwell underneath an entrance to some apartment building. Her hair was a glistening Jheri curl, and I remember really wanting to put my hand on her hair, but every time I tried to touch her, she’d swat my hand away.

  When we were through, Clarke and I still had tons of coke left, so we went back to Karen’s and did more lines. It was, like, four in the morning, but we were so wired Clarke said we should both go get another blow job. Karen was away that weekend, so we decided to bring this well-weathered lady back to the apartment. She was a lot older than us, not beautiful like Wendy, but she was really nice. I was so wasted I couldn’t get an erection; I couldn’t even get the condom on. But, like I said, the lady was really nice.

  DIANA

  THAT SUMMER WAS my first at Camp Wyonegonic, an all-girls camp tucked in the shadow of Pleasant Mountain, near Bridgeport, Maine. There were soft, pine-needled paths and small wooden cabins where generations of girls had written their names on the walls. My new mom and I searched through these cabins until we found her name marked in bubble letters inside a door. Her mom went there, too, but we couldn’t find her name etched anywhere in wood. The search was fun, like a treasure hunt. My new mom said Margaret would go here, too, eventually, and William would go to the brother camp Winona across Moose Pond. It felt good to be included in the family ritual, and even better to be the first.

  In my cabin, my counselor, a wiry, athletic girl in her late twenties, smiled and told me I was the first girl there so I got first dibs on a bed. The beds were all the same, squeaky and covered in scratchy forest-green wool blankets, Wyonegonic’s signature color. I dragged my black trunk over to a bed in the corner and changed into one of the uniforms that had been mailed to me a couple weeks before, an assortment of green and white shorts, shirts, and sweats. Then my counselor gave us a tour of the camp, past the bathrooms, called Greenies, and the Wiggie, a bigger cabin decorated with oars that was for junior-intermediate campers, and finally Cobb Lodge, the dining hall where we younger kids got to mingle with the teenagers who made up senior camp.

  Then, out by the horses and cars, my new mom gave me a hug and got into her new Isuzu Trooper. Back at the cabin, I met my cabin mates. Hannah was skinny and tan with frosted hair. She tacked a picture of her bedroom in California on the rough wooden wall next to her bed. It was huge, with a recessed sitting room and fluffy white carpets that matched her fluffy white dog. Fay was blond and genteel and had an adult-sounding Texan drawl. There were other girls, identical blond twins named Honey and Allison, and a girl named Veronica who wore her hair in beads and braids. She peed in her bed a lot, and I would help her pull the thin striped mattress out behind the cabin where no one could see it drying.

  I flourished at camp. I felt powerful, unchecked. I developed friendships with the counselors-in-training, girls close to Amanda’s and Liz’s age who smuggled me illicit stuff like candy and told me stories about their racy exploits with the male CITs from Camp Winona. I learned how to sail and how to properly right a tipped canoe. I got pretty good at tennis and won an award in archery. I learned camp songs that we sang every day at lunch, and every night I fell asleep to the sound of taps on the trumpet. When it rained, we all played jacks in the Wiggie, where we’d also perform the songs we made up on our overnight canoe trips down the Saco River. My name is still up there in the Wiggie today, painted on a plaque that hangs on the wall, because as captain of the Wampanoags, I led our team to victory against the Penobscots in the summer camp equivalent of Field Day.

  When summer ended, I was chosen by the counselors to be one of the Candle Girls, which was a special honor. The last night of camp, I lined up with other Candle Girls out on the docks as the black waters of Moose Pond lapped at the f
loating wood beneath our feet. We all lit our candles and sang, as everybody sniffled and sobbed in the quiet dark.

  The next morning, my new mom was waiting in the same spot where I had last seen her, seven weeks ago. After we said our hellos, she said to me, “You didn’t miss us much, did you?” She smiled her frowning smile as she lifted up one end of my trunk by its handle.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She raised her eyebrow and said, “Not one letter?” I realized that no, I had not missed her. I hadn’t missed her looking at me like I was an idiot. I hadn’t missed second-guessing myself. I hadn’t missed getting put in my place. I hadn’t missed William or Margaret, nor had I missed my new dad. I hadn’t even missed Liz or Amanda or Dan. At camp, for the first time in too long a while, I had been myself. I had been happy.

  LIZ

  WHEN I RETURNED to Bedford that August to pack my things for Georgetown, I called the Chamberlains to see Diana before I left. The housekeeper said she was away at camp. That’s good, I thought. I didn’t ask where. Then Dan and Amanda and I went back up to Maine for a long weekend. Uncle Russ rented a log cabin for us on Moose Pond and we spent three days catching up. None of us knew it then, but that summer Diana was right across the pond, which was really a giant lake. As she sailed with her friends, we all went canoeing, and as she went to bed listening to taps on the trumpet, we heard more stories about Dad