My First Love and Other Disasters

by Francine Pascal

  Three

  Friday night I work on my parents some more about the mother’s helper job on Fire Island this summer. I’d be working for Cynthia Landry, this woman who lives in our building. I’ve been sitting for her kids for almost three years now. Last year she got a divorce. It was really horrendous. David and DeeDee—those are the kids—they were very upset. It’s not like you could tell by just looking at them, but it seemed that they were always crying about something. Both of them. They would just burst into tears for nothing. All you had to say was, “David, it’s too late to watch TV,” or just disagree with him about any little thing, and boom, he would start bawling. It was truly horrific since neither of them are babies. David’s almost eight now and DeeDee is five. It could really upset you, except I knew that it was a reaction to what was happening so I tried to be extra nice. I felt bad for them.

  Divorce is such a scary thing. I don’t know how you feel, but anytime my parents have an argument I practically hold my breath. I guess divorce is the worst thing next to something horrible happening, like one of them dying. (I’m very superstitious. I have to knock wood when I even think something awful like that.) Just the thought of my father moving away and my mother not loving him, maybe even hating him, makes my stomach sink.

  Cynthia hates Jed—that’s her ex-husband. He moved to California and he hardly sees the kids anymore. When they broke up, people were saying he was playing around with Cynthia’s best friend, Amy. I don’t know all the juice. All I know is that Amy didn’t leave her husband to run off with Jed, but Charlie the doorman (he knows everything) says Cynthia doesn’t talk to Amy anymore, and he says they were practically like sisters. Like Steffi and me, I guess.

  It’s a funny thing, but I used to think they had a fabulous marriage and I used to baby-sit a lot for them, so I knew what they were like together. It really looked fantastic, I mean they hardly ever argued, and mostly they helped each other and did things together even, like cooking. He liked to mess around in the kitchen and make bread and things like that. I don’t know. I even used to hope that my husband (if I ever get married, which I’ll probably do when I’m about twenty-seven or so, but I want a career and I want to live with a few people first so I can make the right choice) would be a lot like Jed.

  Ugh! He turned out to be such a creep. I don’t blame Cynthia for hating him. But that’s what makes me so nervous. Not that my parents fight a lot, because they don’t. But neither did Cynthia and Jed, and look what happened to them. You can’t ever tell what’s really going on with your parents. One day they could just come in and announce that it’s over, for some dumb reason, like they’re incompatible or unfulfilled, and that’s that. I mean, there’s nothing in the world you can do about it. It’s not like a Disney movie where the kids come up with some outrageous plan and then in the end they get the parents back together again. Baloney. It never happens.

  Like with Steffi’s parents. Everything was great, and then they got a divorce and it looked like there wasn’t even a reason. Steffi said there absolutely wasn’t anyone else involved, and she and her brother did all sorts of things to try to get them back together, but it didn’t make any difference. They had made up their minds. Kids never really have anything to say about family things like that. Whatever your parents decide, no matter how gross or how much it hurts you, forget it, they get to make the decision and that’s that. I don’t think it’s fair at all. But a lot that counts! I mean what a kid thinks.

  Anyway, David and DeeDee seem to be pretty okay now. I guess they’ll get it together, but still I feel bad for them. I would just love to be their mother’s helper for the summer, and I know Cynthia really wants me to be. I get the shivers just thinking about how sensational it would be living on Fire Island this summer. Not only would I be near Jim, but I’d be practically living on my own. Sure I’d have to take care of the kids, but I don’t mind that, and then on my time off I’d be on my own—me and Jim. Oh, I don’t think I ever wanted anything so much in all my life!

  I have to make my parents understand how much it means to me. My mother is still saying, “We’ll see,” about the job, but I have to get a definite answer one way or the other soon because if I don’t Cynthia is going to get someone else. It just so happens that Steffi’s mother said she could go, so if I can’t I guess then maybe Cynthia would ask Steffi. I would hate that. I know that’s sour grapes and Steffi is really my best friend, but between you and me, I would hate Steffi if she took the job, which of course she would because, after all, why shouldn’t she? Naturally I would tell her that I didn’t mind, and then she would probably say, “Are you sure?” and I would say, “Absolutely,” but I would absolutely hate her and my parents and Nina, too, because she’d probably think it was hysterical that Steffi was getting my job.

  No matter how much I want it to be the best, I guess this summer could just possibly be the worst summer of my entire life, which is a pretty awful gift for somebody’s fifteenth birthday.

  Did I forget to mention that? I turn fifteen on Sunday, and that’s when I make my major, final, desperate, dying-gasp plea for the Fire Island job—at my birthday dinner.

  Four

  I have nothing to wear.

  “I have nothing to wear!” I have to scream because I am buried four feet into the bottom of my closet hunting for some scrap of something to wear out tonight for the big dinner with my parents and the gnome, who unfortunately insisted on coming along even though she hates Italian food, especially since I believe I may have mentioned to her sometime or another that it all has squid and octopus in it—alive! She still practically gags at the thought of Italian food, but no, she wouldn’t stay home tonight. She knows this is when I plan to talk to my parents about the summer and she wants to make as much trouble as she can. This is going to be a tough fight, all uphill, and I have to look just right, kind of sweet/cute but also old/sophisticated, and I can’t find the right dress to wear. It’s got to be a good dress, but not my best in case I have to throw myself dramatically out of my chair and pound the dirty floor in a tantrum.

  Amazing, I just found a great skirt I haven’t seen since I accused my sister Nina of borrowing it and lending it to one of her friends who I was certain had lost it. So, big deal, she didn’t. She does enough other awful things, so she could have done this too. Actually if my closet were neater, it would have been hanging up, and then she’d have seen it and certainly would have borrowed it and lent it to her friend, and they’re so jerky they absolutely would have lost it so you see I wasn’t wrong in accusing her.

  “Victoria, come on, move it! The reservation’s for seven thirty.”

  My mother is standing in the doorway. I can hear her but I can’t see through all this junk.

  I push through all kinds of hanging things, past clumps of dusty shoes, and shopping bags stuffed with scraps of suede from when I was going to make a patchwork skirt, and wool from my crocheting projects, and old letters from summer camp. I’m a saver, sort of. Now I’m peeking through at my mother, who is getting more aggravated than she sounded.

  “I have nothing to wear” That wasn’t my mother.

  “Put on your navy blue dress.”

  “Gross.”

  “Or the beige pants. I haven’t seen you wear those in ages.”

  “They’re in the laundry.”

  “Since January?”

  “Well, they’re at the bottom.”

  “Ugh.” That wasn’t me either.

  “No jeans, please. This is a good restaurant.” And with that irrelevant information, she leaves the room.

  Now I want you to know that I’m not just being difficult. I actually have nothing to wear. Sure there’s a lot of bulk in my closet but it’s all horrendous. Like for example, the navy dress. I can’t imagine why I was so crazy to buy it, it’s positively disgusting and I look like a giant baby doll in it. My knit skirt hangs down half a mile longer in the back than in the front, and my red dressy sweater itches. Most of my clothes are just
nowhere, full of lumps and bumps in all the wrong places, and I’m really in the mood to make a big thing about my wardrobe with my mother, but the plain fact is I can’t risk angering her tonight of all nights. She absolutely has to let me go to Fire Island. Period.

  I kind of have it worked out in my mind how to do it. We’re going to this terrific little restaurant in the Village called Trattoria da Alfredo. The food is out of sight, but the best part about it is that it’s very small and sort of quiet. A perfect place to put the squeeze on somebody. I know just how it’s going to happen. I start asking them about the mother’s helper job, and they’re not hot for the idea but I keep at it, and then my father says to lower our voices and we start to whisper louder, and then people start to turn around. You know how adults get very patient with kids when other people are listening? I mean, they just can’t say, “I said no, and I don’t want to hear anymore,” like they do at home. They have to pretend to listen and consider it and then give a reasonable answer. I really have them with their backs to the wall, I hope. I’m preparing for an all-out blitz tonight, the kind that takes everyone’s appetite away (except, of course, Nina, who could eat through an earthquake).

  Five

  It happens exactly like I said only a little different. First thing my father says is “No, and I don’t want to hear about it anymore.”

  Of course this is a very bad start, but I push on. I give them the business about how I’m fifteen and they still treat me like a baby. That’s an old argument so they know how to answer that easily. Even I know how to answer that. All you say is, “When you can’t take no for an answer, that’s acting like a baby so we treat you like one.”

  Then I give them the business about how every other girl in the entire high school is going to be a mother’s helper this summer and before they can say anything I rattle off six names ending with Laura Wolfe, the only one I absolutely know is going to.

  Up to now the toad has been gorging on fettucine. Now suddenly she zeroes in to destroy my life. “Uh-uh,” says Nina, “Laura Wolfe is going on a camping trip with her parents.”

  “She is not, smarty, she’s going to be a mother’s helper for the Kramers out in East Hampton, so there.” I could kill her, I swear it.

  “Uh-uh.” She shakes her dumb head, and the strings of the fettucine hanging out of her mouth swing back and forth.

  “She is so!”

  “Nope.”

  “Is so, creep!”

  “Mom!”

  “Jerk.”

  “That’s enough!” hisses my father. “I don’t care what Laura Wolfe or anyone else is doing with her summer.”

  “But she is, Daddy,” I insist. “I know because she said . . .”

  “Well, she isn’t anymore because her sister, Linda, is in my class, and she said . . .”

  “Did you hear your father?” Now my mother’s in it. And suddenly the couples at the next table are all dying to hear about Laura Wolfe. “And, Nina, for God’s sake, swallow that food. How many times do I have to tell you not to eat spaghetti with half of it hanging down to your chin!”

  “I can’t help it,” she whines, “it just slips out.”

  “Roll it on the spoon the way I showed you,” my father tells her.

  “I did.”

  “If you did it properly it wouldn’t fall out of your mouth like that. Do it like this.” And my mother starts rolling up a spoonful of spaghetti on her spoon and then pops it into her mouth perfectly. “You see? It’s simple. Now let me see you do it.”

  “I don’t have a spoon,” says Nina.

  “Why are you telling me you rolled it when you don’t even have a spoon?”

  “I did but it dropped.”

  Naturally everybody at the surrounding three tables starts hunting for Nina’s spoon.

  “Ask the waiter for another one,” my mother says, embarrassed and completely out of patience.

  “I know Laura Wolfe is definitely going.” I have to get them back on the track.

  “Laura who?” my father says, as if he never heard the name before.

  “The girl who’s going to be a mother’s helper.”

  “Uh-uh,” says my gross sister, and she’s got a new batch of spaghetti dropping out of her mouth.

  “Shut up!” I tell her.

  “How many times do I have to tell you not to say shut up to your sister!” my mother snaps.

  “Then make her mind her own business,” I say.

  “Why do we always have to have these arguments over dinner?” my mother says. “I look forward to a pleasant meal with my family and this is what it turns into.”

  “Girls,” says my father, “enough, you’re ruining your mother’s dinner. I don’t want to hear anything more about Laura Wolfe or what she’s doing for the summer. Do you understand?”

  “And you,” he says to Nina. “Don’t order spaghetti anymore if you don’t know how to eat it.”

  “But I don’t like anything else.”

  “Then stay home,” I tell her.

  “Mind your own business, Victoria, I’m talking to Nina,” my father says.

  “She’s always minding my business, and besides just because of her I didn’t even get to ask a very important question. It’s not fair!”

  “Okay, Nina, be quiet,” my father says. “Now what’s your question, Victoria?”

  “Can I?”

  “Can you what?” He turns to my mother in exasperation. “Can she what?”

  “Can she be a mother’s helper,” my mother says.

  “Well, I don’t know.” Good sign that my father didn’t say absolutely no. “Maybe she’s a little young. Maybe next year. What do you think, Felicia?”

  Lovely. He’s sticking with it. Now she can’t say, “Your father doesn’t want you to,” or something like that. It’s very bad when you get in the middle of one of those things and then each one keeps blaming the other and you never get the right answer.

  “I don’t know, Phil, you may be right.”

  She throws it right back to him.

  “If that’s what you think, dear.”

  He grabs it and shoots it back to her. I’ve got to get it away or they’ll just keep passing it back and forth forever.

  “Liz started when she was fifteen,” I volunteer. Liz is my cousin from Philadelphia, and she really did start last year.

  “That’s true,” says my father, like it’s maybe not such a bad idea to do, especially since his favorite sister, Liz’s mother, let her do it. “It worked out okay, didn’t it?”

  “I think so,” says my mother.

  “It was perfect,” I pipe up. “Liz said she really learned a whole lot that summer.” You bet she did. But I’m not crazy enough to say what she learned.

  “Except, now that I think about it,” my mother says, “there was some problem about the people leaving her alone for a weekend. I think they went away or something like that. I know Dinah”—my aunt—“was very upset about that. Fifteen-year-old girls shouldn’t be left alone with small children overnight.”

  I swear to them that Cynthia Landry—wonderful, mature, responsible Cynthia—would never go anywhere and leave me alone with the kids overnight. I tell them how she really needs me because now that she’s working she has to have someone with the kids.

  “Will she be going into an office every day?” my mother wants to know.

  I tell her no, mostly she works from home. But she’ll probably be going in to the city maybe about three times a week. And then I make a big thing about how Cynthia and the kids really want me, especially because I’ve been baby-sitting for them for almost three years and the kids are crazy about me. I can see that they’re considering the matter seriously and that it’s looking good. Even Nina is minding her own business. Maybe she ate some octopus. I keep my fingers crossed.

  They kick it around awhile, and then they ask me a million questions. Practically Cynthia’s whole family history and where on Fire Island and what kind of a house and on and on, an
d then right in the middle of dessert they decide. Of course they want to talk to Cynthia and drive out and see the house and all that, but so far the answer is yes.

  I practically die, I’m so excited. I jump up and hug and kiss both of them. Now the other people and even the waiters are all smiling. Everyone wanted me to go. I almost expect applause, they’re all so pleased.

  “But . . .”

  I knew it! The big “but.” Probably my mother will have to come along too, or maybe Nina, or maybe they’ll hire a mother’s helper for me or something grotesque like that, I just know it.

  “But,” says my mother, “we must be absolutely certain that Mrs. Landry knows that we don’t want you to be left alone overnight with the children.”

  “That’s very important, Victoria,” my father says. “Mrs. Landry must understand our feelings on that. It’s far too big a responsibility for a young girl to have.”

  “I’ll tell her you said so,” I say.

  “We’ll bring it up when we have our talk with her,” my father says.

  “Please, Daddy, let me tell her.”

  “I think it’s better if we do it ourselves.”

  “Please, I want to try to handle everything myself. I want her to see that you think I’m responsible enough to make my own arrangements. Then she’ll feel better about trusting me.”

  “That’s a good point, honey.” Sometimes my dad’s absolutely perfect. “She’s right, Felicia,” he tells my mom. “Let her make her own arrangements. She knows what has to be done.”

  This was even better than I expected, and I grin like a fool—right at Nina.

  Actually talking to Cynthia myself may be a little tricky, because, you know, I don’t want to sound like I’m telling her what to do. I can’t say to her, “Hey, you can’t stay out overnight,” like I’m her mother or something. Still, I don’t really think she would do it, so it probably won’t even come up. If it does—well, I’ll just have to figure a way to handle it when it happens. Anyway, it’s nothing to worry about now. The main thing is that I’m going. I can’t believe it. I’m really going to be on Fire Island with Jim for an entire summer. Wow! Fifteen is going to be a great year!