Certain Girls

by Jennifer Weiner

  I set a stack of folded underwear and shirts on the bed and opened her closet to hang up her jeans, and there it was. Pink. Spaghettistrapped. Sparkly. Except the dress was gone. The week before, Elle had picked it up and brought it back to New York.

  I stared for a minute, trying to make sense of what I was seeing—how the dress, like the cat of the old children’s song, had come back. When I lifted the hanger off the metal bar, I realized that this was actually a different dress, not from Bergdorf’s but from Macy’s, an almost identical version in pink with silver sequins.

  It took me about thirty seconds to figure out what had happened, another ten to find the telephone. Bruce Guberman didn’t answer his office line or his cell phone. Emily answered at his home.

  “It’s Candace Shapiro. Is Bruce there?”

  “What is this regarding?” asked Emily.

  Oh, the night your husband and I had sex on the basement stairs while his parents put Passover dinner on the table was right on the tip of my tongue. You know, the good times! I managed to restrain myself, managed, even, to cut short the memory of how, for years after, the taste of charoset made me horny. “Joy,” I said. “It’s about Joy.”

  Another minute passed, and then Bruce was on the line. “Cannie,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  Bruce Guberman and I had loved each other once. Then we’d done our best to destroy each other: him with his magazine article, me with my book, hurling words as if they were arrows with deadly poison at their tips. What we had now was the thin crust of good manners laid over the bittersweet mess of our history . . . and Joy. We had Joy.

  “Sorry to disturb you at home,” I said formally. “But we need to talk about this dress you bought Joy.”

  “I didn’t buy Joy a dress.” He sounded confused. Then again, Bruce frequently sounded confused.

  “At Macy’s? Last Sunday? There’s a dress in her closet with a price tag on it. You took her to the mall. She had to have bought it there. And Bruce, this dress is completely inappropriate.”

  “I don’t know anything about a dress. Joy went shopping when I took the boys to the movies—”

  “You left her alone?” I asked sharply.

  Bruce sighed. “For ninety minutes in a shopping mall. We were right across the street, and she had a cell phone with a GPS locator.”

  Never mind that for now, I told myself. “She must have bought the dress while you were at the movies.”

  “Does she have a credit card?”

  I forced myself to breathe. “No, Bruce, my thirteen-year-old daughter does not have a credit card.” You stupid pothead, I thought . . . except I guess I said it instead of thinking it, because Bruce replied in a very dignified voice, “I haven’t smoked pot in more than ten years.”

  “Wow. Congratulations.” Not that I believed him. If Bruce had truly given up weed, the entire East Coast’s black-market economy would have collapsed. Dealers would have been wandering the streets, rending their garments and weeping. “But that doesn’t explain how Joy got the dress. If I didn’t pay for it, and you didn’t pay for it . . .”

  “You think she stole it?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. No. There was no way. I looked at the dress, and my heart unclenched. “There’s a receipt in the bag. She used a MasterCard. You definitely didn’t give her a credit card?”

  “I gave her five bucks so she could get a pretzel and take Max on the train. I . . .” He paused. “Hang on a minute.”

  He set the telephone down. I sank onto my bed with my eyes closed. A minute later, Bruce was back on the line, and his voice was grave. “I think she might have taken one of my cards.”

  “No way,” I said reflexively. “Joy wouldn’t . . .” I swallowed hard.

  “My MasterCard is missing from my wallet.”

  “And you’re just noticing now?” Idiot, I groaned in my head. “Why don’t you call the company to see if there’ve been any recent charges? If there were—if that’s what happened—I’ll speak to her. See if I can figure out what’s going on.”

  “Okay.” Bruce paused. I sat there, burning with fear and with shame. How had my beautiful, solemn, good-hearted little girl turned into a thief?

  Bruce cleared his throat. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you, but Joy may have overheard something at Tyler’s bar mitzvah.”

  “Overheard . . . at . . . Wait, she wasn’t at Tyler’s bar mitzvah!”

  Bruce sighed. “We weren’t expecting to see her there, and Emily didn’t react very well. We were having a discussion at the party—”

  I spoke slowly and clearly, so that there was no chance that he could miss a word or mistake my meaning. “Joy wasn’t at Tyler’s bar mitzvah!”

  “She was,” Bruce said. Now he was the one to sound bewildered. “I thought you dropped her off.”

  “She told me she didn’t want to go.” My hands were gripping her sheets so hard that I could feel my fingernails through the fabric. Joy, I thought. Oh, Joy.

  “Huh,” said Bruce. “Maybe she took the train. Or got a ride with someone. Or—”

  “I’ll call you later,” I said, and hung up the phone and sat there, stunned and sick and not very surprised when Bruce called me back to say that, yes, there was one new charge on his card, from Macy’s. “Hey,” he said, not unkindly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” I croaked, and told him I’d find his card and call him back.

  • • •

  They say that nothing is more delicious than food cooked with love. My beef stew that night would have proved them wrong. I got out my cutting board and my heaviest cleaver and decimated an onion, three carrots, three potatoes, and an entire can of plum tomatoes. I rocked the blade of my knife over garlic cloves until they were pulverized to a paste. I wrenched the lid off a frozen container of beef stock that I’d yanked out of my freezer, jerked the cork out of a bottle of wine, hacked the beef into oozing red ribbons. I browned the vegetables, deglazed the pan, dredged the meat in flour, and adjusted the seasonings, flinging brown sugar, bay leaves, molasses, and more garlic into the pot. Then I slammed on the lid and sat at the table, fuming, trying to figure out how and when my daughter had turned into a stranger. Joy stealing credit cards! Joy on the train! By herself! Without anyone knowing where she was! Anyone could have talked to her, I thought. Anything could have happened.

  At two-forty-five I got behind the wheel. Driving up Lombard Street while the wind whipped against the windows, I rehearsed arguments in my head—only where would I start? With the dress? With the train trip? With her lying to me about not wanting to attend Tyler’s bar mitzvah?

  I sneezed twice, wiped my eyes, and pulled up to the curb, searching for Joy’s face among the crowd of kids clustered around the gates. I raised my hand and waved at Tamsin, who gave me a brief wave back, then tucked her chin into her chest and marched past me. No Joy. Strange. Usually, wherever there was Tamsin, there was Joy. I got out of the car and scanned the play yard. There was a group of big boys squabbling over a basketball, a row of girls in gigantic pink and purple backpacks so heavy they looked as if they would tip their owners over, and there was my daughter, huddling in the school doorway as if trying to keep warm, with her sweater pulled tight around her.

  “Joy!” I yelled. She turned around and smiled, the sunny, open little-girl smile that I hadn’t seen in months, and she beckoned to me, just the way she had when was three and my sister had bought her a DVD of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. “Come with me! And you’ll see!” Joy would say in her husky rasp. “See the world of pure imagination!”

  “Hi, Mom! Guess what? I got an e-mail from your father!”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” I said before her words had a chance to register. My father? Surely I’d misheard her. Maybe she’d meant Bruce.

  “Later?” Joy repeated incredulously. “Mom, this is, like, a huge big deal! He’s your father!”

  “We have other things to discuss,” I snapped.

  Jo
y recoiled. “He says he wants to see me,” she said softly.

  The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. “Why, does he need money?” I asked.

  Her eyes got huge, and her mouth fell open. I rubbed my temples, wishing I could take it back. I changed the subject instead. “Did you take Bruce’s credit card?”

  Joy lifted her chin and said nothing. I climbed behind the wheel, and she got into her seat.

  “Did you go to Tyler’s bar mitzvah?” I asked.

  She turned toward the window without answering.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why lie to me? Why keep it a secret? If you wanted to go, that would have been fine!”

  She didn’t answer. I stared at her profile: honey-colored hair, cheeks rosy from the wind, Bruce’s straight, narrow nose, and Bruce’s rounded chin, only smaller and finer. A grown-up, I thought, and on the heels of that thought came another one: A stranger.

  “You stole Bruce’s credit card,” I said, a judge reciting the charges, “and you bought the exact same dress you got with Elle.”

  “It’s not exactly the same,” she muttered.

  “Close enough for government work.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  I blew out an exasperated breath. “You lied to me,” I said. “You’ve been sneaking around. You’ve been stealing. You went out of the state without telling me or your father where you were going.”

  “You lied, too,” Joy said so softly I almost didn’t hear her.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You told me my grandfather had never even seen me. You said he never tried to meet me.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out two sheets of paper. The first was indeed an e-mail from Lawrence Shapiro at the Beverly Hills Surgical Centre. I scanned it fast: Sadly, your mother and I have been estranged for years due, I believe, to my ex-wife’s attempts to poison my children’s minds against me . . .

  I threw the paper down in disgust. “Oh, please.” I shook my head. “Joy, he’s lying. Grandma Ann didn’t have to try to poison us against him. We didn’t need poisoning. All we had to do was see what he did to us! He abandoned us, he never wanted anything to do with us, he wouldn’t pay for our educations . . .”

  Her voice was small but implacable. “You told me he never tried to see me, but he did.”

  My stomach clenched, and I thought for a minute I’d be sick. I chose my words carefully, as if picking my way across a swollen river, looking for the stones that would support me. “Joy, what is going on with you? Why the sudden interest in my father?”

  My daughter extracted another piece of paper from her backpack. I knew what was coming even before I saw it: a ten-year-old snapshot from that long-ago bookstore in Los Angeles, a picture of Joy tucked into my father’s arms.

  “He says he came to a reading and took that picture,” Joy said.

  “He did.” My mouth was so dry it was as if it had been stuffed with straw. “That’s true. He showed up at one of my readings, and he . . .” I forced myself to breathe again. “Look. I can see that you’d like a grandfather in your life, and I’m sorry to disappoint you, but other than that reading, the only time he ever got in touch after you were born was to ask for money.”

  “You said,” Joy repeated, “that he’d never tried to see me. But he did. So you lied.”

  I swallowed hard, feeling even more dizzy and sick. Had she somehow decided that a reunion with my father was the key to her happiness? My father, who’d never cared about her, never asked about her, had been interested in me only for my money? A man who’d never called, never sent her a birthday card, never asked for a picture, an update, anything at all? “I . . . I only . . .” I shook my head and reached for Joy’s hands, which she had folded primly in her lap. I should have told her the truth, I realized, even if it hurt her. I should have told her that he was no good. “Joy. Talk to me. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s—”

  She cut me off. “You lied,” she repeated calmly.

  “Joy . . .” The word wrenched itself out of me.

  “Stop saying that!” she cried.

  “Stop saying what?”

  “My name! My stupid name! Joy,” she spat. “Like I made you so happy. Like you even wanted me in the first place.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” My voice sounded high and frightened. “Where did you ever get that idea?” I knew the answer. She’d gotten the idea from my book, of course, my angry book, the one that was never meant for my daughter’s eyes, the version of the story she was never meant to believe. “Of course I wanted you! You do make me happy!” I reached for her shoulder. She flinched and wriggled away. “Honey, I’m sorry if I—that I—that I lied to you. But the thing about my father—”

  “‘He’s not a very nice guy,’” she recited.

  “I know him better than you do. I know what he is. I’m your mother. I just want to keep you safe.” My voice was shaking. “That’s all I ever wanted. Just to keep you safe.” I gulped. “Is this about something you read?” I gulped again. “My book? Because you should know, Joy—”

  “Take me home,” said my daughter. And that was all she said until we pulled into the garage, at which point she marched past me, up to her bedroom, and closed the door. I heard the lock click into place, and I stood there wringing my hands, wanting to knock, to call her name again, to say something, even though I wasn’t sure what I would say that would do either of us any good. “Listen,” I said at last, addressing the blank surface of the door. “If you want to meet him—your grandfather—then I’ll try to find him. If it’s important to you, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  I thought that I heard the word “liar” drift out from under the door, but as long as I waited, as hard as I knocked, Joy wouldn’t open the door or say another word.

  PART THREE

  Certain Girls

  TWENTY-SIX

  I ignored my mother until she gave up and clomped back down the stairs. I turned off the lights and lay on my bed with my pillow pressed against my ears, trying to ignore what was outside my door: my mother, my father, the telephone ringing, more knocking. Then silence.

  Some time later, there was another knock at the door. “Go away,” I yelled, not very nicely.

  “Joy?” The sweet, calm voice didn’t belong to my mother or my father. It was Grandma Ann. I’d forgotten that she was coming over for dinner. “Can I come in?” she called, loudly enough so that there was no chance of me pretending not to hear.

  I rolled out of bed, flicked on the light, unlocked the door, and stood there, glaring at my grandmother, who stared placidly back at me.

  “Oh, honey,” she said, and reached out to hug me. I jerked away and stalked back to my bed, brushing angrily at my eyes. Grandma Ann sat down at the foot of the bed. I breathed in her smell, a little like sugar cookies, a hint of Bengay. “You heard from your grand-father,” she said.

  “Mom lied to me,” I croaked. Grandma Ann merely nodded. “About everything,” I continued. “My father . . . her father . . . everything’s a lie.”

  My grandmother sighed and tucked her legs up until she was sitting Indian-style. “Parents make mistakes,” she said. “I did, and your mother did, and you will, too. But I can promise you that everything your mother did was with your best interests at heart.”

  My best interests, I thought. As if my mom had any idea what those were. As far as I could tell, she’d done everything for her own interests, to make herself look better: the good mother, the pillar of the community, not a slut who’d written a scandalous, embarrassing book, a stupid slut who’d gotten pregnant by accident and never even wanted a baby.

  “Your mom didn’t have it easy,” Grandma Ann said. “After Bruce left, it wasn’t easy for her. And as far as her father goes, I think she was just trying to keep you away from someone she felt wasn’t the kind of person you’d want in your life.”

  “Why does she get to be the one to decide who I want in my life? I’m thirte
en years old, I’m going to be bat mitzvahed, it’s not her choice—”

  “Joy, she did the best she could.”

  “Well, she did a sucky job!” I shouted, loud enough so that my mother could hear me. My face was hot, and my head felt like it was going to burst. “She made my father take off for years. I’ve got a grandfather who doesn’t know me, even though he wanted to.”

  “I don’t fault your mother for that,” said Grandma Ann a little coolly. Her voice surprised me. I’d expected her to fall to pieces when she saw that I was crying, to do whatever she could to comfort me. It didn’t look as if that would happen. “Your grandfather broke her heart.”

  I wiped my face. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” she said, “that she was his favorite, from the time she was a little girl until she was maybe twelve or so.”

  I sat up, blinking. Parents weren’t supposed to have favorites, and if they did, they definitely weren’t supposed to talk about it.

  “So what happened?”

  “He loved her because she was smart and sharp, but then, I think, when he saw her struggling with the same things he’d struggled with—”

  “Like what?”

  The bed shifted as my grandmother rearranged herself, tugging at the cuffs of her loose-legged cotton pants. I could tell from her face that she was thinking hard about what to say and how she’d say it. “Her looks,” she said. “Fitting in. Making friends. None of that came as easily to her as schoolwork did, and I think . . .” She paused and recrossed her legs. “I think that it brought back lots of memories for him. Not good ones.”