by Herta Feely
“Well, I’m calling about yesterday’s incident in Adams Morgan. Are you aware of what happened?”
“I think I know the basics. Emma mentioned it.”
She had? So why hadn’t Phoebe told her? Isabel felt out of breath and unsure what to say next. “I guess I wondered what your thoughts were—”
“I don’t talk about other people’s children; that’s their problem. I have enough problems of my own.”
Her response took Isabel aback. “Of course not, I didn’t intend to talk about anyone’s children but our own. Emma is a friend of Phoebe’s and they were together…I guess I just wondered if you thought they were moving down the wrong path.” Isabel felt awkward, a rarity in her dealings with adults, and wondered about this woman, about her modus operandi. And how unfriendly she was. She couldn’t just come out and say, I hear your daughter was smoking pot, could she? No, she wouldn’t compromise Emma or Phoebe that way.
“I don’t really see that Emma was involved. Was Phoebe?” Lorraine asked.
“Well, they were with Sam when his mother came home and discovered the kids smoking marijuana.” There, she’d said it without accusing anyone specifically.
“Yes, well, I’m sure lots of people do lots of things when you’re not around them that you have no control over. I don’t really see how that affects our daughters.”
This conversation wasn’t going at all the way Isabel had expected. But now that she thought about it, how had she expected it to go? “I guess I’m hoping this wasn’t an indication that the girls were also smoking marijuana.”
Lorraine gave a derisive laugh. “I don’t know whether Emma was or wasn’t, but there’s little I can do about the choices she makes each day after she leaves the house.”
Now Isabel really had no idea what to say or how to proceed, although she wanted to tell her that she thought she was wrong. There are things a parent can do, in fact is obligated to do to keep her child on the right path. “I am pretty certain Phoebe doesn’t smoke or drink – we don’t allow it – but I guess I wanted to hear what you thought. Based on what you’ve said, I assume Emma isn’t grounded or receiving any sort of restrictions?”
“That’s right. She told me she was taking photos of homeless people for some school project; so I don’t really see any reason to ground her.”
Isabel wanted to press her and ask if she thought it was all right for Emma to continue hanging around with these boys, but what was the point. Her overall attitude made it pretty clear what her answer would be, and the whole thing made Isabel more certain of the importance of separating Phoebe from Emma and Jessie. No wonder Emma looked the way she did. It sounded as though she received no oversight. Or limits of any kind.
“Well, thanks for your time, Lorraine. Please feel free to call me anytime.”
“You bet.”
Without a goodbye, the phone clicked in Isabel’s ear. She stood there staring at the receiver for several seconds before hanging up. Wait till she told Ron about this.
Phoebe spent Saturday morning in self-imposed exile in her third floor lair. Without computer or cell phone, she imagined herself isolated and falsely imprisoned, like the Count of Monte Cristo, the character in the novel she was reading for English. For a time, she lay on her bed studying the sloped sky-blue ceiling, crisscrossed with white-painted rafters and clouds. She also toyed with the box cutter she’d retrieved from her dollhouse. Repeatedly, she ran her thumb across the blade, testing its sharp edge, tempted to use it.
Last night, while watching TV with her brother, she’d pictured herself dancing with Noah at their first Upper School social event. Before the fateful climb up the stairs in Sam’s building, he’d invited her to go with him. She’d fairly melted, thrill upon thrill coursing through her. Now there would be no dance because it fell during her four-week punishment, and she’d only see Noah in class, so there’d be no after school jaunts. These thoughts plunged her into despair.
It plagued her too that she couldn’t talk to Jessie, to make sure she wasn’t still mad about Dylan having put his hand on her leg. She’d apologized, because Jessie had noticed, explaining that she hadn’t known what to do, and Emma had made peace between them, but last night she’d only gotten a couple of texts from Jessie, one of them saying she’d told her mom about smoking pot. Which had freaked Phoebe out. Why had she? Was that how word had leaked out? Because as they’d scurried out, Sam had sworn he’d keep his mother from calling the other parents.
She wished she’d told her mother about the dance, but in the stress of it all she’d forgotten. Maybe if she told her mother how sorry she was, she’d relent for that one night, though it was doubtful. She didn’t know which was worse, being grounded and not going to the dance or insisting she not see Jessie or Emma. Her best friends. She recalled how she’d shrieked at her mother earlier and knew that hadn’t helped matters.
Phoebe wasn’t a vengeful child, but sometimes she felt her mother was terribly unfair, and now she wanted to get back at her. One way was to give her the silent treatment. To lock her out of her life. After arriving in her room, Phoebe had propped a chair against the door and couldn’t wait for her mother to check on her and find the door locked. It would send her mother into a panic, jumping to conclusions. But what Phoebe really wanted was to make the ache go away, to have her mother say, “You can go to the dance, honey.”
She examined the sharp edge of the box cutter and once again ran it lightly over her thumb. She hadn’t used it in several months. Throughout the summer, she’d seen Dr. Sharma and had promised she wouldn’t. She liked Dr. Sharma and felt slightly guilty as she pushed up the sleeve of her J. Crew waffle shirt. She moved the blade just above the crook of her arm. She pressed, but stopped short of drawing blood. I shouldn’t, she thought. Then Noah’s image sprang into her mind and tears welled up. Her life sucked.
She held her breath, and pushing a little harder, pulled the blade across an inch of skin near the inside of her elbow. It made a superficial cut. The sensation she was waiting for pulsed through her. One more little cut and then another. Blood popped to the surface. Briefly closing her eyes, twin sensations washed over her – stinging pain mingled with relief.
I’m sorry, Dr. Sharma.
She watched the blood collect, then begin to run down the side of her arm. She allowed one drop to fall onto a white section of her quilt, and watched the stain spread before grabbing a Kleenex and blotting her arm with it. If her mother discovered the blood she’d probably freak out and that gave Phoebe a bit of satisfaction. Of course, she’d deny having cut herself, though it would be easy enough to discover the truth.
Truth, she thought, and lies. It was true, she shouldn’t have lied, but it wasn’t a big lie. It hadn’t hurt anyone. Why didn’t her mother understand?
Sounds wafted into her room from downstairs. The drone of a Saturday morning cartoon, the churn of the washing machine on the floor beneath her, her mother’s voice on the phone, and the random opening and closing of doors. She liked these sounds and for a few minutes she closed her eyes, resting. Daydreaming about Noah. “Oh, Noah,” she said with a sigh.
Then she cast her gaze outside, where tree branches waved in the gusting wind. Two trees’ branches intertwined. That image reminded her of the dance, the dance she wouldn’t be attending, and that thought again reduced her to tears.
A knock on the door and Phoebe stopped her daydreaming. She’d imagined an elaborate scene in which Noah had brought her flowers and was whisking her off to the fall dance.
“Who’s there?” She glanced down at the raw wounds on her arm and lowered her sleeve. A moment of regret – as if her entire childhood had just been lost – passed through her.
“It’s me, Phoebe,” her father said. “Can I talk to you a minute, honey?”
She removed the chair from the door, then opened it and peered out at her father.
“May I come in?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Sure.”
Whe
n he entered, she saw his eyes travel to her dollhouse, to the miniature people strewn on the floor, and she felt a blush rising to her throat, something that rarely happened with her father. She wanted to explain, justify, joke about it. “Mom treats me like a little kid, so what d’you expect?” But of course there was no point, so she sat on her bed cross-legged and waited for her father to speak.
He told her about his meeting with Jessie’s father, explaining that he thought Bill Littleton was a nice man and that both of them believed their daughters hadn’t used the best judgment in the world, but trusted they would do better in the future.
“Thanks, but is that it, Dad?” she said in a weary tone.
“Come on, Feebs, this isn’t the end of the world. Before you know it, things’ll be back on track.” He explained, more or less, what he’d told Bill.
“Dad, Mom grounded me for a month, I’m not supposed to talk to my friends, and she took away my computer and my cell! She might as well just kill me!” She flounced back against her pillow. “I thought she didn’t believe in capital punishment!”
With a smile, he said, “Okay, Miss Drama Queen, a little down time is hardly capital punishment.” He regarded her for a moment. “How about I check with Mom to see if you can have your phone or your computer, and maybe if you talk to her and apologize she’ll let you off on probation after a couple of weeks of good behavior? How about that?”
Phoebe’s mouth turned up into a smile. She felt as if he’d just thrown her a lifeline. She hugged him tightly, and then with amber eyes wide, she said, “You really think she’ll go for it?”
“I do, Princess. But don’t tell her about our little conversation, okay?”
“I won’t. I promise. And I promise to be good.”
“I know you will.”
Then, her gaze shifting to her lap, she said, “Daddy, there’s one more thing.”
“What’s that, honey?”
“This guy, Noah, invited me to a dance. It’s in three weeks. Can I go? Please? I beg you.”
He bit his lip and looked at her expectant face. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I’ll try. And you’ll try too?”
She nodded vigorously.
In the solarium, Ron found Isabel surrounded by documents, working at her computer. Chopin played on the radio. He seated himself on an ottoman a few feet from her. He’d lied to Isabel earlier about his exchange with Bill, but he figured as long as she didn’t talk to Sandy she’d never know. Now he felt more at ease.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking.” He waited for her to set aside her work and look up. Once she lifted her eyes, he continued. “I think it’s not helpful to cut Phoebe off from her friends. She needs them, especially at a time like this.”
“I don’t want her talking to those girls. Not right now. It won’t kill her.” She paused. “Why can’t you agree with me? Just once?”
He ignored her question. “She’ll see them on Monday anyway, or are you planning to home school her?”
“Ha, ha, very funny,” she said, continuing to eye him coolly.
“Look, what I’m trying to say is that we don’t want her to get so stressed out that she—” he hesitated, again drawing her eye to his before adding, “—that she starts cutting herself again, right?”
There was momentary silence, as Isabel’s eyes took on a pained expression. “Oh, God, don’t say that. You don’t think—” the remaining words refused to cross the threshold of her lips.
“If you handle this right, Phoebe will see you as her ally, not her enemy. The last thing you want is for her to feel like a martyr.”
Isabel looked forlorn as she thought about what he said. “We’re hostage to her self-destructive habit. It’s not fair, Ron. It just isn’t. We need to get her away from those kids, don’t you see?”
“By those kids are you including Dylan?” he asked.
She pursed her lips refusing to answer, fully aware that if Amanda invited Phoebe over she would likely let her go, and that indeed this qualified as a contradiction and a double standard. But then Amanda was not Sandy. She thought about telling Ron this, but not after what happened last night. At least not yet. It was Liz and the suggestion of a joint birthday party that suddenly rose to mind. Maybe that was it. The answer to this vexing situation.
She looked at him blankly when he said, “So what do you think? We give her back the phone or her computer?”
“What?”
He repeated his suggestion of returning one or the other to Phoebe in order to avoid further alienating their daughter. To keep her from cutting. But Isabel was already up and halfway through the arched doorway before he could say anything about Noah and the dance.
As she mounted the stairs to Phoebe’s room, she tried to think of what to say. She knocked, but Phoebe didn’t respond. For a moment, terror engulfed her as she imagined her daughter lying in a pool of blood. She almost burst into the room, but knocked louder, this time getting a feeble reply. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, honey. Can I come in? I want to tell you something. It’ll only take a sec’.”
Though Phoebe didn’t invite her in, Isabel turned the knob and slowly opened the door. Peering into the room, she saw Phoebe on her bed staring at the ceiling. She went and sat on the edge of the bed still formulating what to say. “Look, honey, I’ve thought about it some more and I think it’s okay for you to have your phone. Or your computer. You decide.”
“Both,” Phoebe said flatly, continuing to stare up at the scattered, white-painted clouds.
“Both, huh?” Isabel said, trying to figure out how to respond. Her gaze dropped to the quilt as her hand ran absently over the textured fabric. Only inches from her fingers sat a dark reddish spot. She took in a sharp breath. Fresh blood? She stared at Phoebe’s arms, wishing her eyes could pierce the sleeves of her shirt. “Okay, maybe. But you have to talk to me a minute, Phoebe, and then you can have your gadgets. You probably have some homework to do anyway, right?”
“Right.”
This was more painful than she’d anticipated. Maybe she should have said, When you feel you can discuss this with me, let me know and then you can have your stuff back. It was often like that. In hindsight, the words came to her, but in the moment she needed them they simply went missing. She wanted desperately to ask Phoebe about the stain.
“Maybe I should come back in a little while?”
“I thought you wanted to talk,” Phoebe said.
Isabel launched into an explanation about being in a tough situation because of her status at the school. “It means that I have to be a role model, Phoebe, and I imagine you don’t care about that, but people need to know you won’t get special dispensation just because you’re my daughter. Do you see?”
“Not really, since I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It’s guilt by association, Phoebe. People will assume you were smoking even if you weren’t.”
“Yeah, and by punishing me you’re making them think it’s true.”
“You know you have restrictions because you lied.”
“But they don’t know that, and anyway I’m sorry about that, Mom.”
Isabel grew flustered. What Phoebe was saying bore a certain logic. She shifted gears. “Look, sweetie, maybe we can start planning a birthday party. Skyla’s mom came up to me last night and said you two were planning to have one together. Is that right?” Phoebe nodded. Well, at least that had been true.
“So what do you think about that?” Isabel thought she detected a flicker of interest, but all Phoebe said was, “Maybe.”
Isabel began outlining plans for the party until she saw that Phoebe wasn’t listening. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t really care about the birthday party. Anyway, it was all Skyla’s idea, having it at the Club and whatnot.”
She could see there was something else on her daughter’s mind. “What do you care about? What is it?”
“I want to go to the fall dance.” The next thr
ee words brightened Phoebe’s countenance. “Noah asked me.”
“Oh, why didn’t you tell me?” The news took Isabel aback. She could see how much this meant to her daughter, and she couldn’t fail but notice the schoolgirl crush in her eyes. She felt herself caving in, about to tell her daughter she could go, when she remembered words her own father had spoken on more than one occasion. “What’s punishment without pain? No, you wouldn’t learn a thing.” Later, he’d told her that the best lessons are often as painful for the parent as for the child. And that’s what she faced now. She had to be strong. She had to create clear boundaries and consequences. This was no time to waffle.
“I’m sorry, honey, I wish I could say yes, but you got yourself into this mess. You shouldn’t have lied. Now you have to suffer the consequences.”
“But, Mom, I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.” It truly made her ache to see the bitter disappointment in Phoebe’s eyes, but what could she do?
Late afternoon, when Ron entered the kitchen, Isabel was chopping vegetables for the evening meal. Without looking up, she said, “You acted like an ass last night, you know that don’t you?”
Her abrupt pronouncement startled him. “What?”
She continued to focus her attention on the red pepper she was carving into neat thin strips. “Don’t play innocent. You know what I’m talking about.”
“I do?”
“Damn it, Ron,” she said in a plaintive voice, “Sandy Littleton was practically coiled around your neck, and you just sat there grinning like you’d won the fucking lottery.”
Believing the best defense was a good offense, Ron said, “Oh, for God’s sakes, Izzy, what did you want me to do, tell her to back off, my wife’ll get jealous? How can you be upset about her?”
“Her?”
He knew that he didn’t want to get into this discussion with Isabel; such exchanges never went well. Anyway, didn’t Isabel know Sandy wasn’t the kind of woman he’d ever get serious about? If nothing else, how could he ever trust her? But that was the least of it. No, she was little more than late night fantasy material.
