My Perfect Life

by Dyan Sheldon

  “I just thought of something,” I said instead.

  Lola said, “What?”

  I even managed not to smile. “You can’t run.”

  Lola laughed. It was a Meryl Streep laugh, throaty and surprised. “Can’t win? I can’t win?”

  “I didn’t say you can’t win,” I explained, though that was probably true, too. “I said you can’t run.”

  Lola pointed her bike lock in my direction. “What do you mean I can’t run?”

  “I mean you can’t run. Presidential candidates have to have served at least one term as a homeroom representative. It’s a rule.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. It’s in the school constitution.”

  I figured that was the end of it.

  Even Lola couldn’t get around that.

  Lola and I have a

  second conversation

  about the school

  elections

  Carla Santini was the first person to declare her nomination for President of the Student Council. No surprise there.

  And probably the only person who was surprised at how quickly Carla handed in her petition of fifty names supporting her candidacy was Dr Alsop, the principal, who was still in the parking lot when she gave it to him.

  By the time the first bell rang, Carla’s henchmen already had posters up all over the school. The posters featured a large studio photograph of Carla and the slogan:

  SANTINI – YOU KNOW SHE’S THE BEST.

  Although Dr Alsop applauded Carla’s enthusiasm, he made her take them down until the campaign officially began the next Monday.

  Lola and I were sitting on the grass in front of the library, determinedly avoiding any talk of the election by discussing Oedipus Rex while we ate our lunches. We were doing Greek drama in English. Mrs Baggoli, our English teacher, says you can’t appreciate Western literature without an understanding of Greek drama. Lola, naturally, loves Greek drama, especially the tragedies, but I was finding the Greeks a little gloomy and depressing.

  “How can you say that?” wailed Lola, her voice loud and her gestures large and – because of her bracelets – noisy. She was wearing a lot of scarves that day and about six different dangling earrings, which made her look like some kind of ancient priestess – though not particularly Greek. “Can’t you feel their passion? Their thirst for life? Their intimate knowledge of the nature of the universe?”

  There were quite a few people nearby, but nobody even glanced over. They were all pretty used to Lola by then.

  “I don’t see what passion and an intimate knowledge of the universe have to do with it.” I unwrapped my dessert, which looked like it might be solid sugar. My mother was doing an advanced course in Asian cooking. “Poor Oedipus. He never had a chance.”

  “Speaking of losers,” said Lola. “There’s someone else who doesn’t have a chance.”

  Morty Slinger was loping towards us, his nomination petition in his hand. Morty’s glasses are held together with neon-coloured tape, and he always wears a suit that doesn’t fit (not him, at least), yet he has SAT scores that look like the combined national debts of Nicaragua and Brazil. Morty was the only person either brave or foolish enough to run against Carla Santini. It was enough to break your heart.

  Morty loomed over us. It was like being accosted by an accountant. He cleared his throat and shuffled from one foot to the other. “I wondered if you two would sign my nomination petition. I only need forty more names.”

  “Gee,” I said. “Only forty.”

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” said Lola. She gave him a sympathetic smile. “I didn’t realize you had a masochistic streak.”

  “I consider it a defiant gesture.” Morty squatted beside her. “You know, like when you went against Carla for the lead in the school play.”

  “There is a difference, though,” said Lola. “Let’s not forget that I got the lead. Barring divine intervention, you have less chance of winning against the Santini than of becoming a ballerina.”

  But Morty isn’t just a brilliant mathematician and scientist; there’s a touch of the philosopher in him, too.

  “I can but try.” He sighed. “Somebody has to. If no one else volunteers for this suicide mission, she won’t even break a fingernail campaigning. She’ll just walk into the presidency the same way she walks into everything else.”

  Lola took another bite of her apple. “Carla really should be living in South America. She was born to be a military dictator.”

  “She practically is.” Morty shrugged. “I just wish a few people out of our year had ever heard of me. I’m like the invisible Valedictorian.” He glanced at Lola. “Now if it were you – everybody knows you. You’re famous at Dellwood.”

  He meant infamous.

  Lola, however, was already shaking her head. “It can’t be me. I know Ronald Reagan was both an actor and a politician, but he wasn’t really very good at either. I, however, am destined to be a great actress. I can’t waste my talent on the crass and tawdry world of politics.”

  Morty gave her a look. “You mean because of the Sidartha incident? You figure Carla would use it to turn you into victory confetti?”

  Lola laughed. I have to hand it to her: she definitely has promise as a politician as well as an actor.

  “Oh, please… The Sidartha incident, as you call it, just happened to be a major personal triumph for me and Ella.”

  Despite, among other things, being taken into police custody, I thought the Sidartha incident a major personal triumph, too – in a roundabout kind of way.

  “Lying Lola,” murmured Morty.

  But it did have a dimension of public humiliation.

  Lola shook her head and her earrings clattered. “That was nothing but character assassination. It was Carla who was lying, not I. Ella and I went, and saw, and conquered.”

  Morty, however, isn’t top of our year for nothing. He tapped his pen against his petition thoughtfully. “But Carla does have a lot on you, doesn’t she? And what she doesn’t have she could make up.” He smiled warily in Lola’s direction. “I mean, there’s not much people wouldn’t believe about you after that.”

  I wanted him to shut up. If he didn’t stop he was going to end up goading her into action.

  Lola gave him one of her scathing Bette Davis looks. “I’m not afraid of Carla Santini, and everyone knows it.” She said it quite loudly. “And besides, that was eons ago.”

  It was a month or two before.

  The Sidartha incident happened around the time of the school play. Because she was so furious at losing the lead in Pygmalion to Lola, Carla made a big deal about being invited to Sidartha’s farewell concert and the party after it. Sidartha was our favourite band. Not one to ignore an impossible challenge, Lola immediately announced that she and I had been invited, too. Everyone knew Lola was lying. Which was why Carla Santini was able to convince everyone that we hadn’t been at the party, when in fact we were. After the police released us.

  “So why don’t you run, then?” asked Morty. “Forget Reagan. Clint Eastwood never stopped acting even when he was mayor of Carmel County. And he directs.”

  Lola was shaking her head, sadly and with regret. “I can’t,” she repeated. “I’d be torn in two. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’.”

  Morty seemed to have forgotten the crucial rule about homeroom representatives; it made him persistent.

  “I’d’ve thought you of all people would want to see Carla sweat a little.”

  “Carla doesn’t sweat,” I corrected. “She oozes Calvin Klein.”

  Morty laughed.

  Lola said, “Well, of course I do…”

  There was something in her voice that made me look at her. She was gazing somewhere above my head in that way she has, as though she’s watching a movie being shown on the clouds. This is never a good sign. It means that she’s thinking. Which in this case meant that she was about to come up with some outrageous scheme to circu
mvent the school constitution that would almost definitely involve me and play havoc with my stress levels. It was a good time to distract her.

  “So, Morty,” I said loudly and brightly. “Let’s have that petition. I’ll sign.”

  Lola stopped gazing at her private movie screen. She put out her hand to stop him. “Wait.”

  “Wait for what?” asked Morty. “I’ve got a pen right here.”

  Lola looked from him to me. Her eyes were glowing like something that was about to blow up.

  “I just realized that I wasn’t thinking laterally before. I was just thinking psychopathic mudslinging and having no time to reread Lear… But now I am thinking laterally. And I’ve got an idea!” She looked to me for encouragement, and when it didn’t come she went on without it. “You’re right, Morty,” Lola proclaimed, picking up steam and volume at the same time. “Carla can’t be allowed to just swan into the presidency as if it’s her birthright or something.” She waved one of her scarves in the air. “She must be stopped!”

  Someone behind me actually clapped.

  Clapping, however, was not what I felt like doing. I stuffed my uneaten dessert back into my lunch box in what I hoped was a firm and significant manner. Lola is my best friend, but that doesn’t make me blind to her faults. I’d known her long enough for the words “I’ve got an idea” to chill my heart.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to know.”

  Lola looked wounded. “For God’s sake, Ella … you haven’t even heard what it is yet. You can’t say no until you hear what it is.”

  “Yes I can. And anyway, I have a pretty good idea what it is. You’ve found some way around the homeroom rep rule, haven’t you?” Something devious.

  Lola coyly tilted her head. “Well…”

  “You just never know when to stop.” I snapped my lunch box shut, and grabbed the piece of paper from Morty’s hands. “I’m signing Morty’s petition,” I said. “You’re on your own on this one.”

  To my surprise, instead of arguing with me like she usually does, Lola just made a what-can-you-do kind of face, and sighed like a doomed Greek heroine.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll get the fifty signatures I need without your help.”

  “Good,” I said. “You do that. But just remember one thing: there is no way I’m running with you for Vice President. Is that totally and absolutely clear?”

  “Don’t get yourself all stirred up,” answered Lola. “Running for Vice President is the last thing on earth I’d want you to do.”

  How was I supposed to know she was telling the truth for a change?

  My mother and I have

  a conversation about

  the election

  There was a meeting of the school newspaper staff that afternoon.

  Carla Santini had already bought a full-page ad for the next issue.

  “Just so long as Carla understands that the paper is impartial,” said Barry, our editor-in-chief. “We don’t take sides.”

  “What sides?” asked one of the other reporters. “Morty Slinger’s more a shadow than a side.”

  Everybody laughed.

  “We may as well write up the election issue now,” said someone else. “Santini by a Landslide: You Know She’s the Best.”

  “Well, that’s a little defeatist,” I teased.

  “And we’re all a little defeated,” said Barry. “Carla’s got a better war record than the American Army.”

  After the meeting we went for a pizza, so it was late by the time I got home.

  My mother was on the sofa, watching something on TV and drinking a glass of wine. She always had a couple of glasses of wine in the evening, to help her relax. Lola wasn’t the only one who wasn’t quite sure what my mother was relaxing from.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” she called. “Have a good day?”

  I said yes. Even if I’d had the worst day in the history of mankind, I probably wouldn’t have told her. My mother doesn’t handle disappointment well.

  “Anything exciting happen?” she asked.

  “No.” I flopped down in one of the armchairs. “Not really.”

  My mother poured herself another glass. “I hear Carla’s running for School President.” She sounded pleased.

  “Yeah,” I said. “She is.”

  “You know,” said my mother, “I was talking to Mela today…” Mela is Carmela Santini, mother of Carla.

  I didn’t want to get into a Carla Santini conversation with my mother, because a Carla Santini conversation always led to a Lola Cep one. My mother didn’t like Lola. Lola isn’t a character type my mother understands. My mother still had hopes then that I’d go back to hanging out with Carla Santini. Carla Santini she loved.

  I stared hard at the television screen. “Really?”

  I heard her put her glass down on the coffee table.

  “Mela was saying that Carla’s not very happy with Alma as her running mate…”

  “No?”

  I heard her pick her glass up again.

  “As a matter of fact, Mela thinks that Carla would much rather have you run with her.”

  I nearly choked on my tongue. “You what?” I couldn’t stop myself. I turned around. “You can’t be serious.”

  My mother shrugged almost coyly. I wasn’t sure if she was smiling again, or if she just hadn’t stopped.

  “I’m only telling you what Mela said.”

  What you have to understand is that this wasn’t just idle conversation over the coffee cups or the charity lunch. This was Carla Santini getting her mother to get my mother to convince me to run with her. That’s the way our little community of Woodford works. The CIA could have taken lessons from this crew.

  “Well, you can tell Mrs Santini that I’m not interested.”

  “Oh, honey…” My mother rubbed a finger on the stem of her glass. “At least give it a little thought.”

  “I don’t have to. I don’t want to be Vice President.”

  “But you and Carla used to be such good friends. Wouldn’t it be nice to be doing something together again?”

  Not unless I was guaranteed to come out alive.

  “I’m really not interested in politics, Mom. I’m the shy and retiring type, remember?”

  “But that’s why you and Carla would make such a good team,” said my mother. “And think of the victory party you could have if you and Carla won.” Her voice rose with excitement. “We could have it here – it’s been ages since we had a party – and I could do the catering…”

  My mother was always catering for charity dos and her friends’ parties and stuff like that. “Finger foods would be best – but not chips and dips. Chips and dips are sooo passé…”

  “Mom, please … listen to me. I don’t want to run for Vice President. I really really don’t.”

  She looked into her glass. “And what about Lola?”

  “What about her?”

  She looked at me almost slyly. “Isn’t she running? I can’t imagine Lola missing an opportunity for attention like this.”

  I told you she didn’t like Lola.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’m not sure. But I’m not running with her.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  My mother gave me a curious look as she reached for the bottle.

  “Well, I suppose that’s something,” said my mother.

  Even the most

  mundane election

  can hold a surprise

  I didn’t tell Lola about my conversation with my mother. This was partly because I knew it would only wind her up; and partly because Lola spent the next few days being very involved in her new role of political agitator.

  She was always busy. Too busy for lunch. Too busy to walk to class with me. Too busy to leave school when I did. She even cut us down to two phone calls a night, because she was so busy. The phone company must have thought she was ill.

  “I’ve had a lot to do in a very short amount of time,” Lola informed me
on Wednesday. “The petitions have to be in by tomorrow afternoon.”

  I didn’t want to encourage her – encouraging Lola is like encouraging dandelions, she just takes over – but I was pretty curious by then.

  “So how’s it going? No hitches?”

  “Not one.” She tapped the clipboard she now carried everywhere. “I shouldn’t have any trouble meeting the quota.”

  “Really?” I didn’t ask how she’d managed to get around the homeroom rep rule. I wanted to know, but I didn’t want to become an accessory after the fact – the way I had when she “borrowed” Eliza Doolittle’s dress from the drama department. “What about Vice President? Who’s that going to be?”

  In only a few short days Lola had acquired a politician’s smile. Possibly Hillary Clinton’s.

  “Sam.”

  “Sam?” She couldn’t be serious. Sam Creek is not a person you associate with school politics. He’s more a person you associate with revolution. “But he hasn’t even been in school all week.”

  “Because he hurt his foot,” explained Lola, as though Sam would never miss school unless he was practically dead. “Some car spare part rolled over it, or fell on it … something like that. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Sam’s a lot more popular than you’d think for a social deviant. It must be because most of the boys take their cars to him.”

  “Well,” I said. “So everything’s under control.”

  “Absolutely,” said Lola.

  I lowered my voice. “I do wish you luck, you know. It’s not that I don’t think you should be President. It’s just that I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  Lola had been pretty upset when no one would believe that we’d been to the Sidartha party and met the lead singer, Stu Wolff. It was the only time I’d seen her even temporarily defeated.

  “I know that,” said Lola. “Yours is a kind nature. But you don’t have to worry, El. This time it’s Carla Santini who’s going to get hurt.”

  And then she dashed off to get some more signatures before the bell rang.

  Carla Santini and her coven – Alma Vitters, Tina Cherry and Marcia Conroy – were standing outside homeroom on Friday morning, the day the nominations were announced.