My Perfect Life

by Dyan Sheldon

  Instead of using his ancient Karmann Ghia, which was something of a local legend and easily spotted a mile away, Sam borrowed Mr Colombo’s van from his dad’s garage, where it was in for a service (presumably without asking either Mr Colombo or Mr Creek first). The van was most of Sam’s disguise – the rest was to wear a jacket borrowed from Lola’s mother (had she but known) and a knitted hat to hide his hair. The van was white with the legend Colombo’s Fine Meats on the sides in blue and a painting of a smiling pig underneath it. Sam figured that the driver’s seat of a butcher’s van was the last place anyone would expect to find a fanatical vegan.

  Sam said that although following Carla was a lot less interesting that watching an engine leak, it couldn’t have been easier. With no trouble at all, he got several photographs of Carla shopping; several more of her walking down the street, talking on her cell phone; and one of Carla talking on her cell phone while she watched the attendant at the gas station fill her tank.

  We needed only one more photograph to complete our set: Carla Santini putting on her make-up.

  “I don’t understand why you can’t do this,” I complained as Lola and I left Sam to plaster the first of the new posters all over campus on Wednesday morning. Going along with Lola’s crazy ideas was one thing; actually carrying one out on my own was something else. Something nerve-wracking and unpleasant. “You’re much better at this kind of thing than I am.”

  Lola swung her book bag over her shoulder with a sigh. “How many times do I have to tell you? Carla expects me to be active and combatant, but she doesn’t expect that of you. Even if she sees you lurking in the girls’ toilets she isn’t going to get suspicious.”

  “She will if she sees me hanging over the door trying to take her picture.”

  “Well, don’t let her see you,” said Lola. “Be clever. Be subtle. Be spontaneous.”

  I’m not any of those things. I’m smart enough at schoolwork, but that’s not the same as being clever like James Bond. I’m quiet and passive, but that’s not the same as subtle either – it’s sort of the same as not being there at all. And you can totally forget spontaneous. My mother is a woman who worries about everything from crumbs to a nuclear holocaust; caution is in my blood.

  Lola flapped her shawl, and clanked her bracelets, and steamed on towards the west wing. “Of course you are.” She looked over at me, trotting beside her in my lemon A-line. “Anyone with such a fixation on pastels has got to have hidden depths of subtlety.”

  The entrance to the west wing loomed. Every morning, as soon as she parks the BMW, Carla goes to the girls’ toilets in the west wing to touch up her make-up and fix her hair. It’s a Dellwood High tradition.

  “Shhh!” Lola held up one hand in warning and gently opened the west wing door with the other. “Let me check that the coast is clear.”

  If you asked me, the coast could only have been clearer if we were in Alaska. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. The only person on campus besides Sam and us was the janitor.

  Lola poked her head through the doorway. She looked left. She looked right. Then she reached back and pulled me after her.

  When we got to the girls’ toilets, she did the same thing. Door open, head in, look left, look right, yank Ella in against her will.

  “Take the end cubicle,” ordered Lola. “That way she won’t see you in the mirror.”

  I took the end cubicle.

  “You’ll have to stand on the bowl,” instructed Lola. “So your feet don’t show.”

  I used some toilet paper to lift the seat and stood on the bowl while Lola taped a sign to the door that said OUT OF ORDER. Talk about Watergate. All I could think about was the fact that if my mother were to see me she’d drop dead on the spot.

  Lola stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Perfect.” She looked at me. “You’ve got the camera ready?”

  I nodded. Sam’s Pentax was in my pocket. Sam set the aperture opening using the light in one of the boys’ toilets as a guide so I wouldn’t need a flash.

  “And you know what to do?”

  “I guess so.” I eyed the door with a certain amount of misgiving.

  “It’s easy,” said Lola. “You brace one leg in the corner, you hang on to the coat hook with your free hand, and you just pop up and take the picture. Got it?”

  I nodded.

  She took my book bag and slung it over her shoulder. “That’s it, then. I’ll see you in homeroom. Don’t forget to lock the door.”

  I’d forget my own name sooner.

  It felt as if I were in that cubicle for days before anyone came into the toilets. They were long, unpleasant days. There was nothing to do but listen to the leaky tap on one of the sinks and – once my feet had gone numb – try not to fall off the bowl. And worry. There was plenty to worry about. I’m not my mother’s daughter for nothing.

  What if…? What if…? What if…?

  Lola, of course, is never ever bothered by the what-if question. It never occurs to her that something could go wrong with her plans – which is pretty amazing in itself, since something almost always does go wrong with them. But as I crouched on the ceramic rim, the camera in my hand and a cramp beginning in my leg, What if…? What if…? What if…? marched through my mind like an invading army.

  What if I dropped the camera? What if I did fall off the bowl? What if someone told the janitor about the broken toilet and she came to fix it? What if I coughed just as I was about to press the button? What if my mother found out?

  But what worried me most was Carla. The sense of empowerment I’d felt when I hung the phone up on her had faded by then. I was back to being normal Ella Gerard, the one who didn’t like to make any waves or rock any boats. I knew that taking a picture of Carla putting on lipstick wasn’t exactly a major invasion of privacy or anything like that. (There couldn’t be many people in Dellwood who had never seen Carla Santini putting her face in place – in the carpark, on the train, in the supermarket, on the beach, even that time we visited her grandmother in hospital.) But I knew that Carla would act like it was the biggest invasion of privacy since the white man arrived in the Americas, and the simple truth is that I didn’t like people being mad at me – even people I don’t like. Carla being mad at me wouldn’t depress me the way my parents being mad at me did, but it would make me feel guilty. I was really good at guilt.

  What if…? What if…? What if…?

  I was just asking myself the question: What if there’s a fire and the whole school’s been evacuated except me? when the door to the toilets finally opened and a group of girls burst in, all of them talking at once. I didn’t recognize their voices.

  And then, a few minutes later, the door opened again.

  This time I had no trouble recognizing the voices. Or voice. I could tell that at least three more people had come in, but only one was talking.

  “I don’t believe it!” The room rippled with rage. Carla Santini was mad. “I don’t effing believe it.” I could practically hear her curls shaking, and see the way her lower lip trembles when she’s ready to roll a few heads. “Of all the nerve! Of all the gall! If they think they can treat me like this, they better think again.”

  Sam had obviously put the new posters up all right.

  “I just can’t believe it!” Carla continued to fume. “I really can’t believe it. They’re persecuting me, that’s what they’re doing. They’re like stalkers. It’s some kind of sick and twisted vendetta.” I could be mistaken of course, but it sounded like her make-up bag hit the sink at a rate of knots. “It’s jealousy, that’s what it is. Pure, chew-at-your-entrails jealousy.”

  I checked that the camera was cocked and made a silent prayer. Please let this work… My hands were shaking. It didn’t seem possible that no one else could hear the racket my heart was making. All I could think of was how bad I was going to feel if Carla caught me.

  Alma Vitters finally managed to squeeze a few words in. “We should talk to Dr Alsop,” she said indignantly. “This
kind of thing has to be against the rules. I mean, we do live in a democracy after all.”

  “They can’t get away with this,” agreed Tina Cherry. “They have to be made to pay.”

  Marcia Conroy said, “If Dr Alsop wasn’t such a pushover they’d be thrown out of the election for a stunt like this.”

  “I mean, just what are they trying to insinuate?” shrieked Carla. “That all I care about is shopping? Like none of them ever shop, right? Like the Pope doesn’t shop. And what’s wrong with shopping anyway? How can you have a strong economy and a successful nation if people don’t shop? If you ask me, shopping is a symptom of a truly democratic system. Nobody goes shopping in Cuba, do they? And why not? Because there isn’t anything to shop for!”

  All the while this acute political analysis was going on I was trying to get myself in a position where I could rise just enough above the door and go “snap” the way Lola had instructed. Only it wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

  When my mother took yoga classes she could balance her whole weight on her hands for minutes at a time, but I was having a lot of trouble balancing my weight on my feet. Of course, my mother hadn’t been balancing on the rim of a toilet bowl with a camera. I grabbed for the coat hook, and that’s when things totally stopped going according to plan. The coat hook moved. I banged into the door.

  One of the advantages of Carla Santini is that when she’s going full tilt in the centre of the stage the marines could be landing in the wings and no one would notice. No one heard me hit the door.

  “I know whose idea this was,” Carla was saying. “It was Lola’s.”

  I’ve always thought Lola was a pretty name, but on Carla’s lips it sounded like something that didn’t have legs and oozed slime.

  “Sam Creek’s a Neanderthal. God knows he could never think of anything like this,” continued Carla.

  A voice that didn’t belong to either Alma, Tina, or Marcia, said, “I don’t think Sam’s a Neanderthal. I think he’s kind of cute.”

  There were a couple of sympathetic giggles, but not from Carla. Carla had dealt with Sam and dismissed him; she had already moved on.

  “And as for Ella! Ella practically has to ask permission to breathe. There’s no way she could engineer something like this.”

  I’d been breathing all right without permission up until then, but I nearly stopped completely when I heard my name.

  “And Lola has her wrapped around her little finger,” chipped in Alma.

  “Like a puppet on a string,” seconded Tina.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than that,” said Carla. She said it as if she knew something; something interesting.

  I’d gone back to squatting on the rim, my mission forgotten, but I sat up a little taller at that. I didn’t want to miss Carla’s next sentence.

  I wasn’t the only one who was curious.

  “What do you mean?” asked Tina, Marcia and Alma.

  Carla hesitated. “Well… I’m not saying I know anything for sure … It’s just – you know…”

  When Carla Santini says she doesn’t know anything for sure it means that she doesn’t know anything at all.

  “Oh, come on,” begged Tina, Alma and Marcia, as though Carla ever kept a secret from them.

  “Well… I have heard some suspicions…” Carla paused again, possibly to put on her mascara; possibly to check her supply of venom. “I mean, they do spend an awful lot of time together, don’t they? They don’t really have any other friends… And neither of them has ever had a boyfriend…”

  I gasped out loud. As far as innuendo went, it seemed to me that Lola came a pretty poor second to Carla Santini. No one heard me gasp, though; there were quite a few gasps out by the sinks.

  The girl who didn’t think Sam was a Neanderthal butted in again. “I thought Lola was going out with Sam,” she said. “They spend a lot of time together, too. And I’ve seen the way he looks at her.”

  Carla laughed. “Maybe that’s what Lola wants everyone to think. Maybe he’s just a beard.”

  “Beard?” said someone else. “Sam doesn’t have a beard.”

  Carla was amused. “Oh, no, I mean a beard. You know, like a disguise.”

  “You know… You may have something…” It was Marcia. “I mean, to never have a date … and…”

  One of the other girls laughed, too, but her laugh was nervous. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? You think Lola and Ella—”

  I sat there like a cube of ice. What was my mother going to say when this rumour reached her ears? Because it would. Someone would tell her mother; and her mother would tell someone else’s mother; and someone else’s mother would tell my mother. My parents are liberal, but only to a very limited degree.

  “It all makes sense, doesn’t it?” said Alma. “I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sam Creek was that way, too. He’s never dated anyone either.”

  “That’s because he never speaks to anyone,” said the girl who thought Sam was cute.

  “That’s my point exactly,” said Carla. “He’s a social deviant.”

  “What’s a social deviant?” asked the girl.

  It wasn’t Carla who answered. It was someone who hadn’t spoken before.

  “A social deviant is someone who doesn’t obey the laws of Carla Santini, that’s what a social deviant is,” said Lola Cep.

  I was so surprised that I forgot about my mother and Carla being mad at me – all that stuff – and stood up with a lot more sureness now that I was motivated by curiosity and not paralyzed by terror.

  Lola was leaning nonchalantly against the door (just out of camera range), and Carla was in the centre of the group at the sink. Carla had a lipstick raised in her hand but her lips were clamped shut.

  “And as for suspicious liaisons…” Lola must have been listening for quite a while. “If there’s anyone who’s a couple around here, it isn’t me and Ella. I mean, think about it, Carla. You with your stunningly empirical mind can surely see the logic in this. Not only are you and Alma thicker than coagulated blood, but neither of you ever date the same person more than twice.” She laughed girlishly in a perfect imitation of Carla Santini at her most charming. “I mean, what do you think Freud would say about that? Talk about beards! You two could be the Smith Brothers.”

  There was a spray of giggles, though none of them from Carla or her friends.

  “Oh, how droll…” cooed Carla, and she turned back to the mirror to finish her make-up.

  It was the perfect moment. Smooth and graceful as a trained killer, I rose over the door and pressed the button.

  I couldn’t believe I’d done it! I wanted to whoop with joy. I’d done it and no one had noticed a thing. I crouched back down to wait for everyone to leave. I wanted to hug myself, but I was afraid I’d fall off the toilet. So I gave the camera a kiss.

  Which was when I realized I’d left the lens cap on.

  “Let’s look on the bright side,” Lola said later. “At least you didn’t fall down the bowl.”

  More gauntlets

  The call from Dr Alsop came right at the start of English. I’d never been called to the Principal’s office before, and I didn’t want to go. Lola, of course, wanted to go, but Mrs Baggoli wouldn’t let her.

  “I was told to send Ella, not Ella and Lola,” said Mrs Baggoli. She gave Lola a half-smile. “And, unlike some of us, I usually try to do as I’m told.”

  “It’s no big deal,” whispered Lola. “It’ll be about the posters. You’ll be fine.”

  I must have looked like Oedipus when he realized he’d made a major marital mistake because Mrs Baggoli gave me a whole smile. “I think it has something to do with the election,” she reassured me.

  Everybody watched me gather my stuff together and leave the room.

  I knew I wasn’t really in trouble, but I felt like I was. Sam was waiting for me by the main desk. He was smiling. Sam has spent more time in Dr Alsop’s office than anyone except Dr Alsop, so this was nothing new
for him.

  “Cheer up,” Sam teased. “They’re not going to hang you.”

  What an optimist.

  “Sam! Ella!” Dr Alsop got to his feet as Ms Littlemoon opened the door. “Come on in.” He gestured to the two empty chairs facing his desk. “Take a seat. Take a seat.”

  There were six visitor’s chairs in Dr Alsop’s office. Four of them were already occupied by Carla Santini, Alma Vitters, Morty Slinger and Farley Brewbaker. Mercifully, Carla had left the balloons outside.

  “I’m sorry to have to take you out of class,” Dr Alsop apologized, “but Carla and Alma have a complaint about how the election’s being run, and I thought that all the candidates should hear it, too.”

  Sam and I sat down. I perched uncomfortably on the edge of my chair with my hands on my lap. Sam stretched his legs out and dropped his books on the floor with a thud.

  Morty and Farley gave us a can-you-believe-this look, but Carla and Alma ignored us and kept their eyes firmly fixed on Dr Alsop. Carla wasn’t going to let Dr Alsop know how angry she was; she was playing the innocent victim for all she was worth – which is quite a lot. Alma had her vague, suits-all-occasions smile on her face, but Carla’s expression was earnest and concerned. I didn’t know if it was true of politicians, but with Carla this was a sign that she was about to start throwing the cow manure around.

  Dr Alsop plopped back in his chair and folded his hands on his desk. “Carla…” He gave her a fatherly smile. “If you’d like to tell us what’s bothering you?”

  It took her a few seconds to get going. She sighed. She shrugged. She twisted a strand of hair around one finger. She crossed her legs. She looked at Dr Alsop, and then at Alma, and then to heaven (or at least to the ceiling). She said, “Um…” and “Well…” and sighed some more.

  “Christ,” whispered Sam. “It’s like warming up an old car in winter.”

  Dr Alsop has been a teacher for decades. He could see the anguish in Carla’s face. He knew this was an awkward situation for her; and a difficult one.