The Law of Tall Girls

by Joanne Macgregor

  ~ 34 ~

  Holy hell.

  I stared down at my computer screen, battling to believe what I’d just read.

  It was late Wednesday afternoon, two days before the opening night of Romero and Juliet, and I’d been busy finalizing the theory part of my fashion-school application, hoping to incorporate Chloe’s suggestions and get it finished before I left for the dress rehearsal, when a distracting ping told me I had a new email.

  It was from my father, and pretty much as soon as I began reading, my jaw hit the floor.

  Dear Peyton,

  Exciting news! Lucy and I are going to have a baby! We’ve known for a while, but didn’t want to share until the first trimester was safely under the belt, because we’ve had several disappointments before now.

  They had? First I’d heard of it. I wondered what had gone wrong.

  Pickle (that’s what we call him) —

  Him. Oh jeez, they were having a son. This was going to be super hard for my mother. I checked the To field on the email and saw that it had been sent to me only. Had he sent a separate note to her, or would it be my job to break the happy news?

  — is due in mid-June.

  I’m afraid that a new baby will mean lots of extra expenses, so I won’t be able to continue giving you and your mother financial top-ups. We’re going to have to stick to the financial agreement from now on. I’m sorry, Peyton, I know a bit of what things must be like for you, but I can’t keep bailing your mother out.

  Great. More good news.

  Anyway, we’re so excited and really hope you are, too, and that we can make a plan for you to spend more time with us, so your kid brother really gets to know you.

  I was going to be a sister. I was going to have a baby brother. A rush of images and sensations flashed through me — toes like tiny pink pebbles with impossibly small nails, the gurgling sound of a baby’s laugh, golden-brown eyes like my own — sparking a flood of emotions. Joy, longing, melancholy. Fear.

  What if it happened again?

  I started typing my reply: Damn, Dad, do you really think you should be risking this? Does Lucy know what could happen? Have you thought about what this will do to Mom? And should you be taking on a whole new kid at this stage of your life anyway? You’re 49, not 29. You’ll be close to 70 by the time this kid goes to college — are you up for that? Maybe you should have gone with the standard midlife-crisis Porsche rather than the permanent responsibility of creating a whole new life. Too late, now, I guess.

  No, no, no. Couldn’t say that. I held a finger down on the backspace key until all the doubting, unkind words had been deleted, and started over.

  Dear Dad and Lucy,

  Congratulations!! That’s awesome news! I hope th —

  My screen went black. My desk lamp was out, too. I got up, flicked the main light switch on and off. Nothing. Had my mother been using her toaster again — the ancient one that tripped the lights — or was the whole neighborhood out? I peeped out of the window and saw the neighbors’ windows were shining brightly in the dark of the early winter’s evening. Just us then.

  I sighed. I was on my way to the electric box when a thought struck me. I grabbed my phone and called the utilities company. A bored-sounding operator checked our account and informed me that we had been cut off due to non-payment of our bill.

  “We did send repeated notices and a final warning, hun. I’m sorry. You’ll need to settle the full amount plus the reconnection fee before we can hook you up again. You have yourself some happy holidays now!”

  Yeah, that’s likely. It was the middle of winter, a week to go until Christmas, and we had no electricity. I was so angry, I wanted to kick something. I wanted to kick my mother. I’d reminded her to pay the bill a bunch of times, and she’d promised me she would. Obviously, she’d spent the money on something else. Some irre-freaking-sistible online bargain for more stuff we didn’t need and wouldn’t use.

  I stormed to her bedroom, tripping in the hallway and banging my elbow hard on a bookshelf in my attempt to stop myself from going sprawling. Eyes watering from the pain in my funny bone and from my growing fury, I pushed my mom’s door open without knocking. It banged into some obstruction on the other side and bounced back at me, slamming into the toes of my right foot. Ow! I didn’t know whether to clutch my elbow or my toes.

  “Mom!” I yelled, sticking my head around the door.

  She sat on her bed in the small puddle of light cast by a candle perched on a stack of books on her bedside table. Real safe, Mom. Her face was glistening wet with tears. Clearly, she’d received a babymail from Dad, too.

  “You didn’t pay the power bill.”

  “Did you get Dad’s news?” she asked, her face twisted with pain.

  “They’ve cut off our power because you didn’t pay the bill. Why didn’t you pay it?”

  “They’re having a little boy. I can’t bear it, Peyton. They’re going to have a little baby boy. Why is this happening to me?”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Nobody thinks — nobody cares! — what this will do to me. How will I cope?” She covered her face with her hands and sobbed silently.

  Inside me, fury warred with compassion. And won.

  “I don’t know, Mom. I’m too busy worrying how we’ll cope with no heat and no lights.”

  “My life is so unfair, so hard.”

  “Mom, hey Mom!” I clicked my fingers at her, trying to snap her out of her misery-trance. “The more urgent problem here is that we. Have. No. Power! You have to pay the full bill, plus a reconnection fee. Look at this total!”

  I shoved the impossibly large figure under her nose.

  She shook her head feebly. “I can’t.”

  In other houses, in other families, it was the kids who whined, “I can’t” and the mothers who retorted, “There’s no such word as ‘can’t’.” In this house, my mother said it all the time. She ought to have a T-shirt: I can’t — so don’t bother asking or perhaps: There is too such a word as ‘can’t’ — I should know.

  “Why not?”

  I don’t know why I bothered to ask — I already knew the answer. But perhaps we were both so well-practiced in our little relationship dance that the steps of the recurring arguments just came automatically.

  “I don’t have it.”

  “You mean you spent it.”

  “Perhaps your father …”

  “He can’t give us any more money. He said so in the email to me, so I’m pretty sure he told you, too. No more money means no more spending, Mom. No more!”

  I glared at her, waiting for some kind of response, but she just hugged her knees against her chest and said again, “A baby boy.”

  I swore viciously and retreated to my room, now crying myself. I always leaked when I was angry. I swore again when I saw the time — I was running late for the dress rehearsal. Using my phone and praying my dwindling data and battery life would last, I logged onto the banking site, transferred the bulk of my college savings into the fat coffers of the utility company, and then called them back — being put on hold for even longer this time — to request an urgent reconnection.

  While I was on hold, my phone buzzed three times — Doug and Jay texting to find out where the heck I was.

  Now over half an hour late, I grabbed the bag with my costumes and props, tossed it out of the window, scuttled down the ladder and set off at a sprint. Jay had had a private drama lesson with Ms. Gooding directly before rehearsal, so I’d told him I would catch the bus, but I had missed the last one.

  I’d have to run all the way to school through the freezing darkness, my bruised toes protesting on every other step.

  ~ 35 ~

  “You’re an hour late! Where the hell have you been?” was Doug’s greeting.

  “I was worried. Are you okay?” was Jay’s.

  “Man, your face is red as an angry bird and sweaty as a smackhead in a drug store,” was Zack’s contribution. “Plus, you puffing and panting like a liz
ard on a hot rock. You been up to something naughty?”

  “Poor thing, you look all upset,” said Wren. “Is the pressure of playing the lead getting to you? Do you want me to step in for you? I know all Juliet’s lines and movements. I would hate for you to overextend yourself.”

  “Call my girl an eclipse ‘cos she’s throwing so much shade,” said Zack, winking at Wren.

  “Sorry! I’m sorry,” I gasped. “Family emergency.”

  “Is your mom okay?” Jay asked.

  Define okay.

  “Need to get changed,” I said and limped to the backstage dressing rooms.

  I was back onstage, ready for the start of scene one, less than ten minutes later.

  “Finally,” said Wren.

  I took my place, breathed deeply a few times and tried to get into character, but I was flustered and upset. I felt bad for making the entire cast wait on me, and I was still furious with my mother. My chest burned, my toes hurt, and there was an ache of tears behind my eyes. Who’s feeling sorry for herself now, Peyton?

  The face I turned to Jay in our first Romero-Juliet interaction was not the bright, expectant face of a happy girl laying eyes on the soon-to-be love of her life. My face was pinched tight with emotion, I could feel it. When I spoke my lines, my voice was constricted with anger and frustration, and my movements felt jerky and stiff, rather than fluid and natural.

  Jay tried his best, but he couldn’t carry the scene by himself. My anger turned back on myself. Why couldn’t I just set the personal stuff aside and immerse myself in my character like everyone else did? I was hopeless. I didn’t need to hear the muttered oaths and derisive snorts from the others to know that I was single-handedly ruining the production.

  At the end of Act I, Doug marched up to where Jay and I stood in the wings — Jay murmuring consoling words, and me fighting back tears of humiliation — and yelled at me, “What the hell is the matter with you tonight, Peyton?”

  “I’m sorry. I know my performance is a bit off.”

  “A bit off? It’s effing craptastic!”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I just had a really bad day and I can’t —” That word again.

  “It’s called ‘acting,’ Peyton. It’s called ‘acting’ because you stop being yourself and pretend to be someone else. Just act!” Doug snarled. “Get it together already.”

  I heard muffled laughter coming from the wing beside us. Wren, taking delight in my misery?

  Pushing furious fingers through his already-wild hair, Doug stalked off downstage then spun around. “And, FYI, the stage kisses look ridiculous on the big screens, patently fake. Do real kisses from now on,” he ordered, then marched off.

  I wanted to crawl into a corner and bawl my eyes out. I wanted someone to follow me, hug me, tell me everything would be okay, and take care of me. What I did not want was to kiss Jay — for real — on a stage, in front of an audience, with every minute detail projected onto enormous screens for everyone to scrutinize.

  By the time the scene with the big kiss came, I’d forgotten my lines twice and skipped a chunk of dialogue in the scene with Angela, cutting out five of her precious lines and earning myself a suspicious look. Plus, the straps of my bra top (which I hadn’t yet secured) kept slipping down my arms.

  Worse, about twenty seconds before my scheduled passionate and “real” kiss with Romero, I realized that what with being so upset and distracted, I’d forgotten to brush my teeth before the scene — a habit I’d followed religiously until now. And I’d had an Italian pasta TV dinner for lunch, no doubt loaded with garlic. Could this day get any worse?

  Yes. Oh, yes, indeedy.

  Trying to breathe through my nose and keep my mouth closed until the last second, I placed my palm flat against Jay’s and said my line.

  What I was supposed to say was, “Let our lips do what our hands already are.”

  What actually came out of my semi-closed mouth was, “Let our lips do our hands already.”

  A frown briefly creased Jay’s brows. Was he annoyed? Worried I was ruining the play? Wondering what he’d ever seen in me and thinking how best to let me down gently?

  As though to drain any remaining smidgeon of romance or chemistry, my neck cracked audibly as I tilted my head back to receive Jay’s kiss. He would probably have corpsed with laughter if he wasn’t afraid that would tip Doug over the edge. Scratch that. Maybe Jay didn’t find any of this funny. Like not funny at all. Maybe he was considering asking Doug if Wren could play Juliet after all.

  The kiss was Bad. Bad with a capital B that rhymes with D that stands for dreadful, dire, disastrous.

  I felt myself tensing, and Jay’s murmured “Just relax,” didn’t help.

  I heard whispering and sniggering in the wings, and a loud groan of frustration coming from out front. The tears which had been threatening all afternoon welled and spilled over, and my nose started to run. There was no dizzy excitement in my head this time, no rushing wind. Involuntarily, I pulled back. Jay tightened his grip, and it was only his hold on me that kept me from wrenching myself away and bolting home.

  When the last words had been spoken and that freaking endless sunset had finally faded, there was still no escape. Doug gathered the whole cast and crew together for a colossal shit-fit. He could only thank God that Ms. Gooding hadn’t been here to witness the fiasco, or she’d probably pull the plug on the whole production. The lights were still not focused right, the music was too loud, Angela was too slow in coming in with her lines, and Liz’s footsteps were as loud as a rhinoceros’s. Wren wasn’t audible at the back of the auditorium — didn’t anyone know how to project their voice properly, for God’s sake? Even Jay didn’t escape the wrath of Doug. Where was his violent rage in the scene where he fought and killed Tyrone? And how, in the name of all that was holy, was it possible that Zack still didn’t know his lines?

  But Doug’s worst anger and his harshest criticism was saved for last. For me.

  “And as for you, Peyton, that was pathetic! Underwhelming to the nth degree. You had no life tonight, no emotion, no chemistry with Jay, no passion in your performance at all.”

  Every brutal word hammered me further into my hole of humiliation in the ground.

  “Wooden! You were like a wooden plank.”

  Wren nodded self-righteously at this, a gloating grin on her stupid pixie face.

  “Stiff and expressionless as a broom!” Doug continued.

  “Hey, now,” said Jay in a warning tone. He held up a hand as though to stay the flood of insults, but I said, “It’s okay, he’s right.”

  “Damn straight, I’m right. We haven’t come this far, worked so hard for so long, for you to tank at the last minute. Can you get it together by opening night, or should I swap Wren in right now?”

  Wren perked up at this. Her eyes glittered with excitement. It was enough to put a tiny bit of backbone back into me.

  “Yes, I’ll get it together, okay? I’ll be perfect and passionate, I promise.”

  “You’d better. And you” — Doug turned his glare on Jay — “I don’t know what’s going on here, or what’s wrong with her, but for the love of God, fix it.”

  Then he stalked off backstage, where a loud crash suggested he’d punched or kicked his anger into something breakable.

  Zack gave a low whistle. “Man, Doug shouldn’t bottle up his feelings like that. He should say what he really feels.”

  His comment broke the tension, and everyone burst into subdued laughter. Everyone but me.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” I said to my feet. “I’ll get it together, promise.”

  “Of course you will,” said Jay. “Anyway, a bad dress rehearsal means a great opening. It’ll be alright on the night.”

  I hurried to the girls’ dressing room and hid in the toilet stall until I was certain everyone had left, but when I finally emerged — puffy eyed and drained from a crying jag — Jay was still waiting for me.

  “Listen,” he said, pulling me into his arms
and holding me close, “we all have days like this. It’s not the end of the world.” He kissed the top of my head and then my forehead. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride home. There’s something I want to ask you.”

  I eyed him warily, running through the possibilities in my head.

  Jay said nothing until we were both in his car under a light in the school lot, with the engine running and the heater at full blast, the icy night surrounding us. He made no move to back out of the space. He just ran a hand down over his face, took a deep breath and then turned to face me, more serious than I’d ever known him to be.

  Oh, dear. I braced myself for the worst, but what he said still came as a shock.

  “Peyton, what’s the secret you’re hiding?”

  ~ 36 ~

  I swallowed hard.

  “What’s my secret?” I repeated.

  “Yes, what’s your very worst secret? The one you keep locked up tight in the deepest part of yourself,” Jay said.

  I just stared at him, lips pinched tight together.

  “C’mon, Peyton, everyone has a deep, dark secret. And I know you’re hiding something big from me.”

  “What … What makes you think that?”

  “It’s obvious. You hardly talk about yourself, you’ve never invited me into your house — hell, you won’t even let me see you inside the door. You’re all zipped up and folded in on yourself like you’re determined to stop something slipping out. What is it?”

  I hadn’t fooled him. Not at all. I was an idiot to have thought I could. Here was someone who studied body language and facial expressions, who read what wasn’t said in between the words that were. Of course he’d noticed I was cagey and evasive.

  “What’s the one thing that you wish no one knew, that you’d do anything to keep to yourself? What’s the skeleton in your closet that makes you cringe with shame and embarrassment?” His voice was soft and kind, but his words were terrifying, and his intense gaze probed mine, as though trying to read my secrets in my eyes. “Tell me that now.”