by Dyan Sheldon
This is my story.
It starts with the end of the world.
THE WORLD ENDS
The world ended on March 5th at exactly 11.13 p.m., give or take a second or two.
It started out as just a regular day. In a play you know something terrible’s about to happen because the weather’s so bad, or you run into a few witches on your way home. But not even the weather was giving any clues that day. It was cold, but bright and sunny, and there wasn’t a witch in sight, unless you count Carla Santini.
I was in a Gone with the Wind kind of mood when I got up that morning, so I wore the black velvet cape I’d just bought in a local charity shop. In the afternoon Ella and I went to her house. We usually go to her house because she’s an only child and, consequently, is allowed to live her life in peace and privacy, unlike some of us who were less fortunate in our choice of parents.
Mr and Mrs Gerard have always been polite and pleasant to me, but I don’t kid myself that that means they like me. They don’t like me. They’re just always polite and pleasant, period. They never yell or are sarcastic, like some people’s parents. They never have bad moods, and they never fight with each other. They’re always giving each other quick cheek smooches and calling each other “darling” and “honey”. They remind me of parents in a cornflakes commercial. You know, perfect and pleasant and reasonable, even when the box is empty.
Ella’s house is always clean and neat, and most of the furniture is covered in plastic. There are never any shoes under the coffee-table or empty cups left by the side of the couch. You never have to wipe off the TV with your sleeve so you can see the picture. Ella’s house is so immaculately frightful that it looks more like a model home than a real house. I’m afraid to touch anything; which is just as well because I can tell from the way Mrs Gerard usually watches me (closely and with a stiff smile) that she’s afraid, too.
That afternoon I caught Mrs Gerard looking at me as she put the snack she’d made us on the table. In my house, though my mother will occasionally stretch to tossing you a bag of potato chips or pretzels, the only way a person usually gets fed is if she feeds herself (and then she usually has to feed everybody else, as well), but not in Ella’s house. Mrs Gerard is a professional mother. She not only does three meals a day, she also does anything in between. That afternoon she made us grilled cheese sandwiches and fries in the microwave. She used two different kinds of cheese and she cut each sandwich in quarters and decorated it with a sprig of parsley.
“Wow,” I said, “this is just like eating in a diner.”
Ella choked back a giggle.
That was when I caught Mrs Gerard looking at me. I’d seen that look before. Kind of awe-struck but worried, as though she’d just realized I was related to Edward Scissorhands and couldn’t touch anything without cutting it into shreds.
When she saw that I was watching her with a contemplative look of my own, Mrs Gerard laughed. Hers is a laugh that makes me nervous. It doesn’t sound happy, like a laugh should; it sounds as though she couldn’t think of anything else to say or do.
“Surely you have grilled cheese sandwiches at home,” said Mrs Gerard. You could hear the rest of her sentence kind of dangling in the air: don’t you?
Mrs Gerard is always curious about what I do “at home”. You’d think she was taking a course in sociology and not advanced cooking.
I nodded. “Oh, sure, only they’re usually burnt because all we have is this sandwich toaster you put on the stove, and we never have parsley with them.” My mother’s idea of a garnish is a napkin.
“No microwave?” Mrs Gerard laughed again. “I thought everyone had a microwave these days.”
As far as I can tell, Mrs Gerard also thinks that everyone has a housekeeper, a gold American Express card, and limitless time to make sure there are no water marks on the glasses.
“We don’t.” I bit into my sandwich. It was delicious. “My mother doesn’t approve of them.”
I hadn’t meant to say that last part, it just kind of came out. Mrs Gerard’s even more curious about my mother than she is about what I do at home. Mrs Gerard can’t get over the fact that Karen Kapok and I have different last names, and she’s never before met a woman who has biceps like Bruce Willis and is always covered in clay.
Mrs Gerard arched one impeccable eyebrow.
“Doesn’t approve of them?” She rattled out a little more nervous laughter. “I’ve never heard of anyone taking a moral stand on an appliance before.”
Mrs Gerard had never before cracked a joke in my presence. Since Mr Gerard works fourteen hours a day and is almost never seen by me, he hadn’t either, but I’d always assumed that Ella’s sense of humour must come from him. This was the first time it seemed like I might be wrong about that. I laughed, too, enthusiastic and encouraging.
Mrs Gerard, however, had stopped laughing.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “Your mother really doesn’t approve of microwaves?” You’d think I’d said she didn’t approve of breathing.
I decided not to get into this discussion. If Ella’s mother pressed me on what things my mother did and did not approve of, we could be there till the morning.
“She has very strong opinions,” I said, vaguely. I took another bite. “It’s because she’s Polish.”
There’s no food allowed in the Gerard bedrooms because of Mrs Gerard’s terror of attracting insects, so after we had eaten Ella and I went to her room to listen to the new Sidartha CD again. We knew most of the songs by heart even though we’d only had it two days. Ella likes Sidartha’s first album better, but I think this one is more profound and emotionally powerful. Their other albums make me think, but this one really engulfs my soul. When Stu Wolff (the band’s creative heart) sings, There’s something in me that always wants more … more moons and stars and music in the wind… it’s as though he’s talking just to me.
Sidartha, if you haven’t guessed, is our absolute favourite band. I’d been lobbying my mother for months to let me see them the next time they played in the City, but not with a lot of success. My mother said she’d see – which meant I was in with a chance if I handled her right – but Ella wouldn’t even ask her parents because it would upset them and make them worry about her. Mr and Mrs Gerard are actively terrified of young men with black leather and tattoos. They tolerate her love of Sidartha, but warily. You can tell that they see it as the thin end of the wedge; you know, one day Sidartha, the next day hard drugs and all-night parties. My plan was to work on Karen Kapok first, and then worry about how I was going to get Ella to come with me. I believe in dealing with one problem at a time.
“Why doesn’t your mother like me?” I asked Ella as we settled on her floor. (Beds, apparently, are for sleeping, not sitting – Mrs Gerard has a thing about bedspreads as well as insects.)
Ella has a way of just staring at you as though she hasn’t heard the question. It means that she’s thinking of something diplomatic to say.
“My mother likes you,” she mumbled after several seconds. “She thinks you’re very – interesting.”
But I wasn’t going to let Ella slide out of this so easily. I’m like a finely tuned instrument when it comes to reading between the lines – as a great actor should be. I’d heard the pause between “very” and “interesting”. Besides, honesty is important in real friendships.
“And I think Hitler was interesting,” I retorted. “But that doesn’t mean I like him.”
Ella laughed. Sometimes I worry that she may grow up to have a laugh like her mother’s.
“Stop exaggerating, will you? My mother doesn’t think you’re anything like Hitler.”
“But she doesn’t like me,” I persisted. I gave Ella a deep, searching look. The kind of look Hamlet was always giving his mother. “I can tell.”
Ella made a face. “She likes you fine.” Ella made another face. “She just thinks you’re a little … well … you know … strange…”
I didn’t want to hurt Ella
’s feelings – after all, she is related to them – so I didn’t say that I, personally, think both Mrs and Mr Gerard are strange. They’re so perfect they might be aliens masquerading in human form.
“And she worries that I don’t see as much of my old friends – you know, since you and I started hanging out.”
Ella’s “old friends”, such as they’d been, were Carla Santini. Carla and Ella – and all Carla’s crowd – live in Woodford. Woodford is a “private community” – it says so outside the electric security gate. Woodford has mega-expensive houses, rolling lawns, shady streets, and its own leisure centre. I’d never even heard of a “private community” before I moved to Deadwood. A “private community” means you aren’t supposed to go there unless you live there, are visiting someone by invitation, or are delivering something to someone who does live there, and that there’s a guard at the gate to make sure that all riff-raff is kept beyond the fortress walls. According to Ella, she and Carla were pretty close in elementary and middle school – when they took dance and music lessons together and went to each other’s parties – but that all changed when they hit high school. It was then that Carla began to blossom and Ella didn’t. Carla more or less dumped the quiet and slightly dull Ella and started gathering a more glamorous retinue around her. They were still friendly, of course, as girls whose parents play bridge and tennis and golf together would be, but they weren’t exactly twin souls. How could they be? Carla doesn’t have a soul.
“Pardon me, Ms Gerard,” I said, in a fruity English accent, “but I thought you said that you hardly ever saw Carla. I thought you said that you’d drifted apart.”
Ella shrugged. “Yeah, we have. But my mother doesn’t know that.”
I pursed my lips. “What you’re really saying,” I said, “is that your mother doesn’t like me because I’m not like Carla Santini.”
Most of the mothers in Deadwood – and all of the mothers in the private community of Woodford – want their daughters to be like Carla Santini; most of the teachers wish all their students could be like Carla Santini; most of the girls in school wish they could be Carla Santini, even the girls she treats the worst; and as for the boys – except for Sam Creek, who seems totally impervious to the Santini charms – any one of them would sell his soul for the chance of getting his tongue into Carla Santini’s mouth.
Ella rolled her eyes. “Oh, please… Will you stop with the Carla Santini obsession for a few minutes?” She pursed her lips, looking at me as though she were wondering how honest she could really risk being. “The thing is…” she went on, slowly and carefully choosing her words.
“The thing is that I’m not your mother’s idea of a suitable companion for you.” Mrs Gerard wants Ella to hang out with other well-off, middle-class kids who will all go to the same good colleges and eventually have the same narcotic if perfect lives as their parents. She doesn’t want her only offspring running around with someone who has the soul and passion of a gipsy and lives in an old house without a microwave.
“Actually,” said Ella, her eyes on the thick white carpet, “it’s more your mother than you that my mother doesn’t think is suitable.”
I gazed at her incredulously.
“My mother?” Thinking my mother isn’t suitable is like thinking Santa Claus is a highwayman. My mother is eminently suitable – in an ordinary way. “Not suitable for what?”
Ella squirmed uncomfortably. “It’s not big things…” she mumbled, still studying the two-inch pile. “I mean, remember when they met at Parents’ Night?”
I nodded my head very slowly. My mother hadn’t really said anything about it, just that she’d met the Gerards.
“Yeah…”
Ella squirmed some more. “Well, apparently your mother was wearing filthy old overalls and she had chopsticks in her hair.”
“My mother often has chopsticks in her hair,” I answered a little shortly. Because she can never find a hair clip. “And if she was in her work clothes it was because she didn’t have time to change.”
“You don’t have to get defensive with me,” said Ella. “I’m just telling you what my mother said.”
“But it’s ridiculous. What difference does it make what she had in her hair?”
“I know it doesn’t matter,” said Ella. “But my parents pay attention to stuff like that. They’re old-fashioned.”
“Old-fashioned? Ella, they’d have to be time travellers from the Victorian era to get upset about a pair of chopsticks.”
Ella stopped studying the carpet and turned her attention to the CD player. “Forget it,” she said. “It isn’t important.”
“What do you mean it isn’t important?” I threw myself in front of her. “This is the woman who gave me life we’re talking about. Whose milk fed my fragile body, whose blood flows through my veins. Of course it’s important. What else does your mother have against Karen?”
Ella smiled wryly. “Well, that’s one thing.”
“What is?”
“That she lets you call her Karen. My mother doesn’t like that. She thinks it’s disrespectful.”
“What else?” I pushed. “There has to be more than that.”
Ella sighed. She was no match for me in this kind of thing, and she knew it.
“Well, if you must know, Lola, neither of my parents is too happy about the fact that your mother has three children and no husband.”
To her credit, Ella was looking pretty embarrassed.
I was simply stupefied. “What?”
Ella shrugged helplessly.
“I do know this is practically the twenty-first century and everything, but my folks really are old-fashioned. At least about stuff like that they are. They think single mothers are a threat to society.”
Well, you can see their point, can’t you? I mean, what hope is there for our culture when a mother lets her sixteen-year-old daughter call her by her first name, wears chopsticks to hold up her hair, and lives without a husband? The barbarians are practically battering down the gates.
I was really interested now. I’d never seen my mother as a social outcast before. It was an idea I could warm to.
“You’ve got to be joking,” I said, even though I knew that she wasn’t. “And anyway, single-motherhood is a transitory state. I mean, Karen used to be a married mother. It could happen again.”
It was Ella’s turn to look shocked.
“Your mother was married?” She couldn’t have sounded more amazed if she’d just learned my mother used to date the President.
“Of course she was,” I reassured her. “Twice.”
“Twice?” Ella frowned. “But I thought you said you were a love child.”
I had said I was a love child. I remembered it clearly – now that Ella had reminded me. The truth, that my father, whom I visit at least twice a month, lives in New York and draws pictures of adorable bears and rabbits for a living, is pretty dull. I thought saying I was a love child made me seem more of a tragic, romantic figure. This happens now and then. When you’re as creative and imaginative as I am, it can be difficult to keep track of your stories one hundred per cent of the time.
“I was a love child,” I said, ad-libbing quickly. “I mean, they were madly in love when my mother got pregnant. They weren’t planning to get married, of course … my father was a loner by nature, but as soon as they found out that I was on the way they drove his motorcycle to Las Vegas.”
“Las Vegas?” Ella had yet to stop frowning. “I thought your mother always lived in New York. Isn’t Las Vegas a little far to go for a wedding?”
You can see why Ella’s in all the advanced classes in school. She has a first-rate analytical mind.
“They wanted to honeymoon in New Mexico,” I went on, beginning to get into my tale. I could actually see my parents, charging down the highway on a vintage Harley, fuelled by love. “New Mexico is a very spiritual place. They wanted to camp in the desert and count the stars.” I could see them doing that, too. Their arms were ar
ound each other, their heads were sticking out of their tiny tent. It was incredibly romantic.
Ella thought so, too.
“Geez…” she sighed. “My parents went on a cruise to Jamaica for their honeymoon. They stayed on the boat the whole time. They were afraid to go into town.”
My voice became heavy and solemn. “Maybe your parents were right to be so cautious,” I said very softly. “New Mexico is where my father met his tragic death.”
“Oh, Lola…!” Ella’s face was the picture of empathetic pain. She has a kind nature, as well as being smart. “I’m so sorry… I had no idea…”
I gulped back a tear that even the long years of being fatherless hadn’t managed to dry up.
“Of course you didn’t.” My voice trembled bravely. “He was killed on his way back from town one afternoon.” Inspiration flowed through me like current through a wire. “He’d slipped away on the Harley to get my mother her favourite flowers.” I stared at the patch of sunlight that illuminated the immaculateness of the carpet. “They found them strewn across the road—” I paused, too choked to continue. But then I forced myself to rally. “They were splattered with blood.”
A genuine tear glistened in the corner of Ella’s eye.
“Your poor mother…” She was practically sobbing. “What a horrible thing for her to go through.”
“I know.” I shook my head several times very slightly, the way people do when they’re remembering something especially painful. “It took her years to get over it. But then she met Elk, the twins’ dad. They got married before she was pregnant. At least she knew a little domestic bliss…”
I could hear Ella swallow. “What happened to him?”
