by Dyan Sheldon
Ella gave me a darting glance. “That means you asked your mother about the concert and she said no, doesn’t it?”
There was something about her tone that I didn’t like. A smugness. If Ella hadn’t been raised to be so polite and pleasant all the time, she would have stuck out her tongue and said, “Nahnahnah, I told you so!”
“Well at least I asked,” I snapped. “At least I made the attempt, instead of just throwing up my hands in defeat.” I raised my chin to the winter sun. “At least I do battle, Ella.”
“I asked,” said Ella quietly. “I asked them days ago.”
I came to an abrupt halt and stared at her as though I’d never seen her before. It may not sound like a big deal to anyone with parents less dedicated to perfection than Ella’s, but this kind of behaviour is unheard of in the Gerard household. Not only do the Gerards never argue, never shout, and never behave like their brains are asleep, they achieve this amazing state of perfection by avoiding even the most everyday confrontations. It’s kind of an unwritten rule that Ella never says or does anything to upset her parents. She does whatever they want automatically, and – consciously or subconsciously – doesn’t do things they wouldn’t want.
“Really?” I couldn’t have hidden my surprise if I’d wanted to. The more I knew Ella, the more I realized there was more to know. “You actually asked Marilyn and Jim if you could go into New York, the evil heart of the universe, and see Sidartha? You admitted that there are things that you’d rather do than watch videos and go to the mall?” Watching videos and shopping – two things that drive Karen Kapok wild if done to excess – are considered appropriate teenage pursuits by the Gerards.
Ella nodded. “Uh-huh. Well, I asked my mother.” She kind of shrugged with her mouth. “I never manage to stay up late enough to see my father most of the time.”
“And what did she say?”
Ella made a face. “She said no.”
I sighed and started walking again. “That, of course, was to be expected,” I said. “But I really thought my mother would come round. After all, I can understand your mother worrying about you. You’ve never even been on a subway. But me?! I know my way around the City like a rat. My mother knows she has nothing to worry about.”
“What does it matter?” asked Ella. “We can’t go and that’s the end of it.”
But I am not a “Que será, será” kind of person.
“No, it isn’t,” I informed her. “It’s just the beginning.”
THE THAW
It wasn’t as if Carla Santini exactly surrendered and signed the peace treaty after I confronted her in that first rehearsal. She pretended I was human when Mrs Baggoli was around and ignored me as much as she could whenever Mrs Baggoli was out of the room. But she had other ways of getting revenge.
Mrs Baggoli clapped her hands together. “Let’s have some quiet in here!” she shouted. “Higgins, Doolittle, Mrs Pearce, Eliza… Let’s try it one more time.” She pointed at me. “Start with ‘Don’t I look dumb?’”
I nodded. I raised my head. “Don’t I look dumb?”
“Dumb?” asked Professor Higgins.
“Mrs Baggoli,” said Carla Santini. “I’m sorry to interrupt again, but do you really think dumb’s the right word?”
Mrs Baggoli doesn’t tolerate rudeness or dissension among her cast, so no one groaned out loud the way they would have normally; but we all shot desperate looks at one another. It wasn’t so much that Carla interrupted us; it was more like we interrupted her.
Mrs Baggoli sighed. She knew that she couldn’t yell at Carla because Carla wasn’t really doing anything wrong. She wasn’t goofing off, or snickering in the background, or anything like that. She was just trying to make sure that everything – and everyone – was as good as it could be. I know this, because it was something Carla said at every rehearsal, at least once, usually when Mrs Baggoli’s awesome patience was about to snap in two.
“Carla,” said Mrs Baggoli very slowly and distinctly, “we all appreciate your sense of perfection about this production, but it really would be helpful if we could get through at least one whole scene this afternoon.”
She could have added, “For a change”, but she didn’t.
Carla wrung her manicured hands. “Oh, I know, I know,” she said, her voice tormented and deeply apologetic. How could anyone be mad at her when she was suffering so nobly for all our sakes? “I know I’m being a nuisance, but this is so important to me—”
Mrs Baggoli put up one hand. “Please,” she pleaded, “it’s important to all of us. Maybe you could just save all your questions till we’re through.”
Carla nodded. “Of course,” she said. “Of course you’re right. I’ll wait until we’re through.”
“Right.” Mrs Baggoli took a deep breath. “Once more, Eliza.”
If we’d been making a film instead of rehearsing a play, at that point someone would have jumped in front of us with a clapboard and screamed, “Pygmalion. Act Two, take sixteen.”
We started yet again. This time we got as far as Eliza telling Higgins that her father only came to get some money to get drunk with when Carla’s calfskin shoulder bag crashed to the floor.
Everyone looked at Carla.
“I’m so sorry…” crooned Carla as she picked up her bag from the floor. “I was looking for a pen and paper so I could write down my questions.”
“I have an idea,” said Mrs Baggoli. “Why don’t we run through the beginning of Act Three instead?”
Mrs Baggoli might be a little naïve and too patient for her own good, and she had no idea what was really going on, but she wasn’t a fool. Act Three featured Mrs Higgins. By now all of us knew that the only way you could get Carla to shut up when I was on stage and she wasn’t, was to change the scene.
You could hear a sigh that was half relief and half frustration ripple through the auditorium.
“Jesus, we’re going to have to start rehearsing our scenes in secret,” Professor Higgins muttered as Carla got out of her seat.
Colonel Pickering snorted.
Personally, I wouldn’t have minded rehearsing every scene in secret, especially the ones where Carla and I appeared together. When we were on together, she did everything in her power to throw me off or steal my scene. She’d change lines, she’d forget to cue me, she’d stand in such a way that the only thing anyone in the audience could see was the top of my head.
Both Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering smiled as though their dearest wish had just come true when Carla pranced on to the stage. Nobody said anything to Carla’s face that wasn’t a compliment. Not and lived to tell the tale.
It’s true that – except for Carla, who addressed me stiffly, as if I was sitting on her coat or something – everyone in the cast was friendly towards me from then on, but outside rehearsals the Big Freeze continued for weeks. Only in maths, where Sam Creek made a point of talking to me at great length about the intricacies of the internal combustion engine, was there any kind of real warmth.
Ella and I were getting oddly used to the Big Freeze, to tell you the truth. In fact, Ella said that she almost enjoyed it because it took all the stress and strain out of having to be interested and friendly to people you felt neither interested in nor particularly friendly towards. Since I have never felt the same obligation as Ella to be nice to absolutely everybody, I didn’t feel the same relief, but I actually didn’t mind it either.
And then, as suddenly as the explosion of a terrorist bomb, things changed.
We were walking to our first class, and Tina Cherry smiled at us as she passed with a pack of her lesser friends. Because Tina smiled, the rest of them smiled, too.
Again, this doesn’t sound like a big deal. So some girl you’ve seen practically every school day for the last year smiles at you, so what? So something had happened, that’s so what. Tina did what Carla Santini did, or what Carla Santini told her to do. If Tina was smiling, something was up.
“I wonder what brought
that on,” I mused, glancing over my shoulder to make sure that Tina wasn’t sneaking up behind us, brandishing a knife. I’d read my Shakespeare. I knew all about the daggers in men’s smiles.
“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” said Ella.
We turned the corner and walked into Marcia Conroy and her boyfriend of the week. Carla Santini and her friends go through guys the way someone with a bad cold goes through tissues. What gets me is that even though everybody knows this, there’s always another guy right behind the last one, waiting to be picked up and dumped in almost one swift movement.
“Lola,” purred Marcia. “Ella.” She stretched her mouth in a mirthless kind of way.
We strode past her without a glance.
“Something’s definitely up,” said Ella. “I just wish we knew what.”
“I’m sure we’ll find out soon,” I assured her. “Carla, like God, may work in mysterious ways, but she doesn’t have God’s patience.”
An observation that turned out to be prophetic.
Carla decided to sit near us at lunch.
“I’ve been looking all over for you two,” she boomed, catching the attention of anyone who could hear. She dumped her stuff on the table behind us.
Ella froze in mid-bite, gazing at Carla over her forkful of pasta salad. Everyone else was gazing at Carla, too, but with curiosity, not horror.
I looked up. “Haven’t you heard?” I asked sweetly. “You’re not supposed to talk to us.”
You have to hand it to Carla, she has grace under fire.
“Oh, that…” She waved her nails in the air. “I really don’t know what that was all about.”
The Big Freeze was over; Carla was speaking to us again. We were about to be engulfed in an avalanche.
Carla threw herself into the chair next to mine and started rummaging in her bag. “I knew you’d want to see this,” she gushed.
The only thing Carla Santini could show me that I would want to see is a picture of the house she’s moving to in China.
“Really?”
Carla ignored the boredom in my voice.
“Look what came in the mail for me this morning,” she ordered with girlish excitement. “They’ve just been printed. They won’t even be going on sale for at least another week.”
She was holding two rectangles of black cardboard. SIDARTHA – THE FAREWELL CONCERT – PRESS was written across them in silver. She raised the tickets in the air for a few seconds so the rest of the cafeteria could admire them, too.
“And that’s not all!” Carla’s voice was loud enough to deafen anyone within a mile radius. “Look what else I got.”
She held out a third rectangle of black cardboard. This one said SIDARTHA’S LAST BASH and, under it in smaller print, the place and time and the information that it would admit two.
There was a chorus of “Wow”s around us. A couple of people crowded closer for a better view.
“God, you’re lucky,” said one of the onlookers, a girl whom, normally, Carla would never have noticed. “Imagine going to a party like that.”
Carla smiled on the girl, the queen among the peasants.
“Oh, but I’m not the only one,” cooed Carla. “Lola has an invitation, too.” I flinched as she put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t you, Lola?”
I didn’t answer. I was still staring at her invitation, imprinting the address on my brain before she put it away.
Carla made a few loud gestures of shock and outrage. “Don’t tell me you haven’t gotten yours yet,” she cried. “Stu told my father that they’d all gone out.”
I didn’t believe this for one fraction of a nanosecond. Like Stu Wolff had dropped everything else in his life to make sure Mr Santini knew how the plans for the party were going. Yeah, right…
“I didn’t say I didn’t get my invitation.” I gave Carla a tolerant and amused smile. “As a matter of fact, mine came yesterday.”
“Well show it to us,” said Carla. Her eyes flitted over our audience. “I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d like to see it.”
I laughed as though she’d suggested that I wear my diamonds to school. “I’m not bringing it here.”
Carla’s smile locked on me like a car clamp. “Oh, come on, Lola,” she coaxed. “Why don’t you just admit that you don’t have one and get it over with? It’ll save you a lot of humiliation later on.”
I counter-clamped. “I’m sure there’ll be lots of photographers at the party,” I said. “Maybe we can have our picture taken together.”
“It’s a deal,” said Carla. She turned to face Ella for the first time. “You know,” she went on, gently waving the invitation in the air over our table, “this does admit two, El. If you really want to go you could always come with me.”
Behind me, Alma gasped in surprise. She was obviously under the impression that she was going with Carla. But she didn’t so much as bleat in protest – she never dares to open her mouth unless it’s to agree.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” said Ella loyally. “I’m sure I’ll see you there.”
DESPERATE MEASURES FOR DESPERATE TIMES
“Maybe moving’s not such a bad idea,” said Ella on the phone that afternoon. “I mean, unless Carla suddenly contracts some rare but fatal disease and dies, there really isn’t any other solution.”
My mother was in her studio, working on a rush order, and the twins were over at a friend’s for supper, so for a change I had a little privacy while I conversed.
“Of course there’s another solution,” I said with a certain amount of exasperation.
“Murder’s out of the question,” said Ella primly. “I don’t like blood.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to jail for Carla Santini. All we have to do is what I’ve been saying all along; beat her at her own game.”
Ella’s voice flattened. “You mean go to the party.”
“Well, of course I mean go to the party,” I shrieked. “You seemed to agree with me at lunch.”
“I was acting,” said Ella. “Remember acting?”
“We have to go,” I insisted. “This clinches it.”
“We can’t go,” replied Ella. “You’re just going to have to live with that fact.”
But I didn’t want to live with that fact.
“Don’t you see?” I pleaded. “I can’t let Carla Santini get the better of me, El. Not now. Not when she’s finally on the run.”
“Carla doesn’t run anywhere,” said Ella. “She drives.”
“Ella, be reasonable. If she’s decided to be all nice again it’s because she’s planning to wipe the courtyard with us later. You’re the one who’s always saying how dangerous she is. Well, if she’s that dangerous, we have to stop her.”
“So what are you going to do?” Ella demanded. “You heard Carla, the tickets go on sale next week.”
I stared at the bowl of fruit on the kitchen table, like a pagan priest staring at a steaming heap of sheep intestine, looking for the answer. And it worked. Just as the priest would see the future in the bleeding innards, I saw the future in the dusty apples and bananas. I smiled to myself. Desperate measures for desperate times…
“I’m going to go on a hunger strike.”
“You really are crazy,” said Ella. “You really and truly are.”
“No I’m not. Passive resistance works, El. Look at Gandhi. Look at Martin Luther King.”
“They were both assassinated,” said Ella.
I sighed. Sometimes she can be as stubborn as my mother.
“That was afterwards. After their methods had worked.”
“OK,” said Ella. “What about Bobby Sands?”
I knew this was a trick question, but I said, “Who?” anyway.
“Bobby Sands,” Ella repeated. “He was in prison for IRA activities and he went on a hunger strike against the British Government.”
I took a wild guess. “It didn’t work?”
“Not exactly,” said Ella. “He starved to dea
th.”
Even though she couldn’t see me, I threw up my arms.
“Well that’s not going to happen to me, is it?” I demanded.
“You mean because your mother will put you in hospital and have you force-fed?”
I laughed heartily. “Of course not. Because I’m not going to stop eating. I’m just going to make her think that I have.”
My mother doesn’t alphabetize the canned and packaged foods the way Ella’s mother does, and our refrigerator doesn’t look like a display model when you open it up, with an orderly and attractive assortment of fruits, vegetables and juices inside. Our fridge is filled with spoonfuls of this and dollops of that in bowls my mother couldn’t sell, a few bendable carrots and a couple of bottles of juice with bits of food floating in them because the twins never bother using glasses. But I knew my mother would still know if anything was missing. I blame her occupation. She has an eye for detail.
So the next afternoon after rehearsal, I stopped at the supermarket and filled my book bag with supplies: cheese, apples, crackers, a couple of containers of salads and juices, a jar of pickles and a box of doughnuts. I figured that should get me through supper and breakfast.
I hid everything in different places in my room, just to be on the safe side. In her one-woman war on dirt and disorder, Ella’s mother goes through Ella’s room with the thoroughness of a policeman searching for evidence, but my mother doesn’t mind a little dirt and disorder, especially if it isn’t hers and the door is kept shut. On the other hand, although my father would believe I was doing what I’d said I was doing – fasting – my mother was almost certain to be suspicious. This was partly because she’s been feeding me since I was born and knows how much I like food, and partly because she has a sceptical nature. I think this is because she’s a woman. In my experience, women are a lot less trusting than men.
