Girls in Trouble: A Novel

by Caroline Leavitt

  “Scott!” She rested her head against the receiver. “I have to go somewhere first.”

  “First? What are you talking about? What’s more important than this? Go where?”

  He was silent the whole time she was telling him, things so stunning even she couldn’t believe them. Even when she started to cry, when she was telling him about what Danny had said to her, he didn’t speak. And when she was finished, she grew afraid.

  “You went to find this old boyfriend?” he said, stung. “Is this something I’m going to go through again?”

  “It’s nothing like that. I told you I was just riding around.” She heard him breathing. “Scott? What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. I—Sara, I thought you were over this. What does it mean?”

  “It means I have a daughter. It means I have the right to see her.”

  “You’re going to just spring yourself on her? After all these years? Surely, you must know that would be disaster. Sara, you studied psychology—”

  “And I gave it up!” Sara said. “Because it doesn’t always help. It doesn’t always make things better.”

  “Sara—”

  “I know, I know everything you’re going to say. But I’m not a psychologist now. I’m a mother. And she’s my daughter.”

  “I don’t understand.” She heard his breath through the wires. “Why do you even have to go down there? Why can’t you take it slow? Write her first. Or call.”

  “I can’t risk taking it slow. I don’t know if her parents want me knowing her—if they’d disappear again—”

  “Well, there you have it,” Scott said, “you shouldn’t do this, then, it’ll be a mess.” And he suddenly sounded so relieved that she felt something tighten inside of her.

  “I have to see her.” Sara hesitated. “Come with me, Scott.”

  “Sara, I don’t know this girl and neither do you! She has parents, Sara, she has her own life and you’re going to disrupt it. What do you think is going to happen?”

  “I can have a relationship. Maybe I can move down there and be nearer to her.”

  Scott was quiet for a moment. “I don’t want to move there. My work is here.”

  “Well, maybe she can come here—who knows what can be arranged? I just want her to be a part of my life. I just want to see her.”

  “What about my life?” he said. “What about our life together?”

  “This is our life together”

  “No, it’s your life. Your decision.” His voice was so far away, floating from her. “If you have a relationship with this girl, then don’t I have to have a relationship with her, too? What if I’m not ready for that? What if I just want it to be me and you?”

  “She’s my daughter!” Sara stared at the phone. She thought of the place they were planning to get together, big and sunny, filled with light, and then she thought of her daughter, a girl who had been frozen in time for years and years.

  “We’re either a couple or we’re not,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means don’t go,” he said.

  “I have to.”

  “Sara,” Scott said, and his voice was suddenly so sad that it worried her. “This is too much for me. You call me, Sara, when you’ve figured out what you need to do.”

  She put both hands around the receiver. Was this a mistake? Was this just dreaming, Sean Young aching over her worn photographs of a mother who never existed? “Scott,” she said, and then the silence grew and they both hung up the phone.

  The house ticked and settled, and then she got up, and her whole body felt so heavy, as if she had thickened in the space of the conversation. She would finish packing, and by the time her parents came home, she would be gone. No one could tell her she wasn’t doing the right thing. She would miss Scott, but by the next morning, she would be in Florida and she would see her daughter.

  chapter

  twelve

  Anne stood outside the high school, waiting anxiously for Flor and June, clutching her journal to her chest. They used to all walk home together, the three of them giggling and carrying on, gossiping about school and clothes and the boys they secretly yearned over. The Triple Threat, they called themselves. Lately, though, they were more like the Double Trouble, and she was the odd girl out. Though she had casual friends at school, Jasmine in her algebra class whom she sometimes ate lunch with, Ryan in history who regaled her with tales of the computer game he was developing that he hoped would make him rich, when she walked home most days, she walked alone.

  She rubbed at her bare arms, wishing she had worn more than a T-shirt, that her legs were in jeans rather than bared under a short plaid skirt, but changing this morning would have involved going back into the house, having Eva trail after her and ask her questions.

  She spotted Flor, languidly climbing down the stairs, walking as if she were Miss America, nodding her head at the other kids who were staring yearningly up at her. What would it be like, Anne wondered, to feel that way about yourself? To be that lucky? Flor’s eyes roamed the crowd and then met Anne’s, and instantly Anne perked up. “Flor!” she called, waving, and Flor hesitated, looked around some more, and then ambled over.

  “Want to go to the park?” Anne asked. “Or want to come to my house? Hang out?”

  Flor considered. “What’s June doing?”

  “She went home during history. Period cramps.”

  “That rat! She doesn’t have her period! We’re on the same schedule. She should have told me! I would have skipped out, too.”

  “She skipped?” Anne said. June had been doubled over at her desk, had winced when anyone even looked at her. And more importantly, June hadn’t let Anne in on the ploy.

  “That June is really something,” Flor said admiringly.

  “So, do you want to hang out?”

  Flor studied Anne, considering. She tapped one finger on Anne’s journal. “You are so queer,” she said. “It’s bad enough we have to write for school. I can’t believe you actually like to do this and you bring it to school, yet. Me, the only stories I need to make up are the ones for my parents.”

  “I didn’t say we had to write together,” Anne said.

  “Maybe I’ll go home and clean my room,” Flor said.

  They started to walk home, and even though Anne was matching her strides to Flor, she couldn’t help feeling that she was tagging along, that somehow they weren’t walking together. She looked at Flor who was slightly smiling, and then she cleared her throat. “What’re you thinking about?” Anne asked, and Flor started. “Oh, nothing,” she said.

  Despair washed over Anne. She tried to think of something interesting to say, something that might draw Flor into a conversation or at least an animated response. “I heard they might have a dance at school—” she said.

  “I know. I’ve already been invited. Bob Ross. I rate a cuter boy than he is, though.”

  Anne glanced down at her feet. Red cowboy boots. She had bought them with Flor and June last year, but now they were scuffed and a little uncomfortable. “We should go shoe-shopping one day,” she said as they rounded the corner toward Flor’s block.

  “Sure,” Flor said, waving her hand. She pointed to Anne’s shoes. “You still have those boots we all bought?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “God no.” Flor shook her head. “But they’re okay for you,” she said magnanimously.

  They turned down another street, Flor’s block. “See you,” Flor said.

  Stung, Anne slowly walked home. She took the long way, circling past the town, along the stretches of beach and boardwalk. Her pace lengthened and she began to relax. Road rapture. She felt like she could walk for years without stopping.

  She cut down Forest Street and then headed toward Bank Avenue.

  She missed Flor. She missed June. It was like that movie about the pod people. Something had taken her friends over, changed them without her even noticing it, and worse, it hadn’t changed her
. Flor and June were going out with senior boys, who trailed after them in school, confused and bothered, and if those boys happened to see Anne, their eyes skimmed right over her like she was the fat on top of some soup. The only time the other girls called Anne was to brag about this boy liking them or that one asking them out, or when they needed an alibi to cover their tracks. They had a new patina about them, a shimmer like a force field. Anne couldn’t get close. June kept love notes in her bra to take out and swoon over. “You are so beautiful you make my eyes hurt,” one note said. Flor had a whole brown paper bag of fortunes from this boy Richard who sat behind her in math class and was in love with her. “You will fall in love forever with a boy named Richard.” “You will ask Richard out for a date on Saturday.” “You will wear Richard’s ring.” And she had seen one note nudged to the bottom of the bag: “You will kiss Richard’s balls.”

  The only notes Anne had were notes her mother left her. “I’m happy you’re my daughter. I’m so proud of you.” She found them tucked in her junk drawer under her bangle bracelets, sometimes at the bottom of a shoe, and once in a bag lunch she had made for herself. She loved the notes, but she never mentioned them to her mother, because the one time she had, her mother got this bright, expectant look on her face and said, “And?” as if Anne were supposed to respond in a certain way. So rather than risk getting it wrong and disappointing her, Anne had just shrugged, which had ended up hurting her mother anyway.

  Anne rounded the corner to her block. Here, nothing ever seemed to change. She could count on Mrs. Morton hanging up her wash on the clothesline even though everyone in their right mind had a dryer. She could count on Mr. Thrommer sitting on the front porch reading the newspaper. Anne knew she herself didn’t change either and everything she did to rectify that mistake backfired.

  Because she looked tragically young, she spent mornings in the girls’ room vying for a position at the mirror, carefully applying mascara and blush and lip gloss, the same way everyone else did, but on her, the mascara freckled under her eyes. Her lipstick faded back into her skin. Sixteen and she looked twelve. A junior and she could pass for eighth grade. June, watching, had laughed. “You look like a kid wearing her mother’s makeup,” she said, and put the blush on Anne herself. “That’s better,” June said. But later, in history class, Mr. Reynolds had asked Anne with great concern if she needed to go home. “Your cheeks are so flushed,” he said, “do you have a fever?”

  “Fever! She’s on fire!” said Sal Nelson, who sat behind her. He tugged Anne’s short carroty ringlets and then made a sizzling sound. The other kids cracked up, and while Anne slunk lower in her seat, Sal was spurred on. “What did you do, put your hand in an electric socket and it went right to your head?” he said, laughing.

  Anne concentrated, willing herself to be invisible, gripping one hand in the other so she wouldn’t reach up and try to smooth her hair down flat, which would only call more attention to it. Her hair! God, her hair! She had always hated her hair. She had ironed it, and straightened it, had once poured a solution of Jell-O and water through it and worn a nylon stocking on her head, but her hair always sprang back curlier than ever. “There must be a way to tame it,” her mother kept saying, showing Anne photos in magazines, buying her clips, but Eva always threw her hands up when the clips sprang free, when the curls that had been jelled down grew rampant again, as though Anne’s hair and Anne had both disappointed her. Anne kept her hair just to her chin, and every time she went to have it cut, she was in misery because she saw the perplexed look on the faces of the cutters, the way they didn’t know what to do with such a wild mop, either. “Short. Very short,” they suggested, and the one time she had agreed, she had ended up looking like a pinhead.

  Anne tugged at a curl, trying to will it to straighten. Eva was blessed with a sheet of shiny blond. Complete strangers were always stopping to compliment it, like it was the eighth wonder of the world. The pictures she had seen of her father when he was young showed he had glossy black waves. She cursed her genes, cursed whatever ancestor’s recessive code had given her her pale skin that wouldn’t turn gold in the sun the way her friends’ skin did. Cursed the way any attempt she made to look older—makeup, clothing, even the way she walked—ended up making her look younger instead.

  “Who do I look like?” she had asked her mother.

  “You look like me. I’ve told you that. You look like Dad.”

  Anne had studied Eva. “You always say that, but how is that true? I don’t have your coloring or Dad’s. I don’t have your eyes. I don’t think I’m anything like you.”

  “Your great-aunt Ada had red hair,” Eva had told her.

  “She did? Do you have a picture?”

  “Not in color. And listen, I don’t look anything like my parents, either.”

  She looked up, shoulders hunched, in time to see Eva, blond hair flashing, getting ready to go someplace in the car, and Eva looked at Anne, delighted. “I was just saying to myself, who’s that pretty girl coming toward me?”

  “Mom.” No one ever called Anne pretty and a mother saying it didn’t count. The boys at school ignored her, the other girls never thought to consider her competition. “You have no style,” June had told her critically. “You so don’t know how to dress that even my help wouldn’t help you.” Even Eva fussed with Anne about combing her hair or putting on a nicer shirt. But right now, her mother was so happy to see her that Anne couldn’t help but feel cheered.

  “Are your friends coming over today?” Eva said. “I miss those girls.”

  “Not today.” Anne wished her mother would stop asking. What was she supposed to tell her? My friends don’t like me anymore? My friends outgrew me? The only friends I have are the casual ones at school?

  “I was just going shopping. Going to treat myself to something. Come with me.”

  Anne hesitated.

  “Come on,” Eva urged. “We’ll go to Saks and spend some money.”

  Saks was cool and quiet. Eva couldn’t stop talking about her class today, how she had had the children draw portraits of themselves as if they were animals. “You’d be surprised how many kids were dinosaurs!” Eva said. “One girl was this tiny little insect—a cockroach of all things!—and I felt so bad until she explained to me that she was more powerful than anyone because everyone knew cockroaches could survive a nuclear blast!

  Anne picked up a soft blue suede glove and held it against her cheek.

  “Let’s go upstairs and look at the dresses,” Eva said.

  They took their time going to the elevator, stopping at every counter. Eva plucked up glittering earrings and held them against her lobes. Anne tried on a few felt fedoras that sat on top of her curls rather than on her head and she finally gave up. They were passing the maze of makeup counters, the perfume sprayers, when a saleswoman in a burgundy lab coat beckoned them over. She was tall and angular and as pale as a sheet of paper. “I have just the thing for you,” she said in a bright voice to Eva. “Be the first to try our brand-new line and get some wonderful free samples.”

  “Free samples!” Eva winked at Anne. Anne used to love when Eva brought home tiny pots of sample face cream, the golden tubes of lip gloss. “Doll makeup,” they used to call it, and when Anne had put it on, George had called her Dollface.

  They both approached the counter. Eva plucked up some moisturizer and then the saleswoman peered at her. “It’s past time for you to start using our latest line,” she said.

  “What line?” Eva tapped some sample moisturizer on her wrist and sniffed at it. “Mmm, smell this,” she said to Anne.

  The woman pointed to a display case of bottles, all the same burgundy as her lab coat. Matura, they all said, in tiny gold script. The woman held up a small tube. “You won’t believe the difference one little tube can make. I swear by this cream. This is true anti-aging technology for the menopausal woman.” She leaned forward so Eva could see her perfect skin, and then, with great sympathy, she held up a mirror, positioning
it so Eva could see herself. “See those lines by your eyes? Those crinkles on your neck won’t go away by themselves.” She took the moisturizer from Eva’s hand. “This is for younger skin.”

  Anne saw her mother visibly flinch. She looked up at Eva as if she were noticing her for the first time. Her mother’s hair was beautiful, long and silky and buttery yellow, but in this odd, bluish light, her mother’s skin looked like crepe paper. The lines around her mouth and eyes suddenly seemed dug deeply in. Startled, Anne drew back. Mom’s in her fifties, she thought. By the time I graduate college she’ll be sixty. Sixty! How could her mother be sixty so soon? It struck her like a slap.

  “Anne! Hi!”

  Anne turned. Doreen, the girl who Anne sometimes had lunch with, smiled at Anne and started walking toward her. Anne smiled back. It felt funny to see Doreen outside of school, here in Saks. “Who’s that?” Eva asked with interest.

  “Doreen,” Anne said shyly. “My friend from school.”

  “Your friend!” Eva said approvingly, and her approval made Anne brighten, too.

  “My good friend,” Anne lied.

  Beside Doreen was a slender woman with shining blond hair cropped at an angle, the same heart-shaped face as Doreen. “My mom,” Doreen said. Peering at the cosmetics, she snickered. “Matura!” she said, delighted.

  “You must be Anne’s grandmother,” said Doreen’s mother, turning to Eva.

  “Actually, I’m her mother,” Eva said quickly, and Doreen’s mother looked appalled. Doreen squinted at Anne as if there were now something wrong with her.

  “Oh, of course,” Doreen’s mother said quickly, but Anne could see how flustered she looked. “We’re just shopping for things for our vacation,” she said. “We’re going to the Rockies. Do you hike?”

  “Oh God, no,” Eva said. “It’s all I can do to get up in the morning!” She laughed and Anne felt her stomach plummet. Couldn’t her mother see no one else was laughing?