by Dyan Sheldon
“You don’t understand,” I said – sadly, as a person used to being misunderstood would. “It was a new town, a new school…”
“I understand,” said Stu. “I think.”
I immediately felt less defensive. I believed him. If anyone could understand, I was pretty sure he, a true artist and kindred spirit, could.
“It wasn’t intentional,” I told Stu. “It just came out like that and then I couldn’t change it.” I smiled dauntedly. “I mean, if I’d been thinking more clearly I’d have had him move to Tibet or something.”
“Tibet’s good,” said Stu. “It’s mystic and nobody’s going to go look for him there.”
Ella, however, is more attached to a narrow, pedestrian concept of truth.
“So were they really married?” asked Ella. “Or did you make that up, too?”
“Of course I didn’t make that up. They really loved – love each other.” This, too, was true. My parents are largely incompatible, but they’re really good friends. “He just didn’t die in a road accident, that’s all.” I gave Ella an accusatory look. “I don’t lie about fundamentals,” I explained, not hiding my hurt. “Only minor details.”
But Ella was stuck in the minor details.
“What about Elk?” she persisted. “Where’s he?”
I kept my eyes on Stu. “California.”
Ella shook her head. “This is incredible,” she said. “I feel like I’m in a movie or something.” She smiled bitter sweetly. “The Life and Times of Lola Cep.”
“You know,” said Stu, who was much less self-obsessed when relatively sober than when relatively not, “I really would like to know what’s going on.”
Nor was he the only one. Even as I was sitting there with both Ella and Stu staring at me expectantly, the main door opened and a large mixed-breed dog walked in, followed by a thin, fair man in faded jeans and a black leather jacket, his hair close-cropped and a diamond stud in one ear. The man looked around uneasily.
“You think that’s Marsh Foreman?” whispered Ella.
The man’s eyes fell on Ella, Stu and me.
“Mary!” cried my father. “What the hell’s going on?”
As the rain continued to fall on the dark, heartless streets, we gathered around Officer Lentigo’s cluttered desk and I told our tale. Succinctly, but with passion and raw honesty. I told how desperate Ella and I had been to see Sidartha’s last concert but our parents, insensitive to the intensity of our needs and feelings, refused to let us go. How we tried so hard but couldn’t get tickets. How we decided to crash the party rather than have our dreams forever denied. How everything had gone so incredibly wrong, as though the Fates themselves were pulling the strings. How we’d seen Stu storm out of the Soho loft and followed him to make sure he didn’t come to any harm. It was a slightly edited version. I didn’t mention Carla Santini and I didn’t mention telling Ella that my father had been dead for sixteen years – I didn’t want to complicate it too much.
I’d been right to resurrect my father, rather than wake up my mother. My mother would have interrupted my story every sentence or two to ask annoying questions – like, how did you know about the party? or, where did you get that dress? – but my father only interrupted once to say, “But I said I’d take you to the concert,” and was satisfied with my explanation of our desperate desire to get to the party without an escort. He could understand, he’d been young once, too.
My father kept shaking his head while I talked, but Officers Lentigo and Grimkin and Stu Wolff, riveted by my story, were motionless and staring.
“I know I should be furious,” said my father when we were through. He sighed, looking at me with a mixture of paternal love and paternal frustration. “But I’m not up to fury right now. I’m just thankful nothing worse happened.”
Officers Lentigo and Grimkin were stern but not unkind. They agreed we were lucky they’d become interested in us before someone less savoury did.
Stu said, “Well, now that that’s settled, does anyone want to go to a party with me?”
My mother would have said, “No.” She has a very rigid sense of justice.
My father looked at me and Ella. “Oh, what the hell,” said my father. “Is it OK if we bring the dog?”
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
“All right,” said Ella softly as we drove to Stu’s loft in my father’s car, “I’m prepared to forgive you.”
How generous, I thought. She hadn’t ruined Eliza’s ball gown. She didn’t have to face Mrs Baggoli. She didn’t have to face Karen Kapok. She didn’t even have to face Marilyn and Jim – there’d been no one at home when Officer Lentigo called and the answer machine hadn’t been on. She didn’t really have anything to forgive me for. I didn’t say anything, though. So far, things were working out better than even I could have hoped. I didn’t want to rock the boat.
Ella’s face was stern in the shimmering shadows. “But you have to promise you’ll never lie to me again,” said Ella. “You know what my mother always says: ‘You can trust a thief, but never a liar’.”
Personally, that seemed a bit hard to me. I mean, sure I’d elaborated on dull reality a little, but I never lied about anything important. I would never let Ella down. I would never betray her. I would never say I was her friend and then steal her boyfriend, the way some people would.
“I promise,” I said solemnly. “I’ll never lie again – not even about things that aren’t important. I’ve learned the error of my ways.”
“Thank God for that,” said Ella, but I made out more than relief in her expression. She was as happy as I was. We’d done it! We were going to arrive at the Sidartha party with Stu Wolff. Carla Santini was going to have a herd of cows!
In the front seat, Stu and my father were talking about my father’s picture books. Stu had recognized my father’s name. His niece was a big fan of my father’s rabbits.
I leaned back against the hairs that cover the back seat of my father’s car, and smiled. “Can you wait to see Carla’s face when we walk in?” I asked softly. “Or what?”
Ella grinned back. “No I can’t. If I wasn’t so wet and hungry and half crippled I wouldn’t believe it was going to happen.” She winked. “All’s well that ends well…” she said.
You wouldn’t have been able to tell it was the middle of the night from the scene in Stu’s duplex-loft. The party was in full swing. Even though he had enough room to house a jumbo jet, the place was packed.
Ella and I hung back in the doorway for a few seconds, our eyes trying to take it all in.
“Look over there!” Ella kept saying as she spotted another celebrity. “Look over there! Look over there!”
“Come on,” said Stu. “I’ll lend you guys something dry and have those dresses cleaned and at your dad’s by tomorrow afternoon.”
I pinched Ella hard. “Stu Wolff’s clothes!” I hissed. “We’re going to be wearing Stu Wolff’s clothes!”
“I’ll be over there,” said my father, pointing to the main bar. “I think I’d like a drink.”
As we followed Stu up a spiral staircase to his bedroom, my eyes scanned the crowd of famous faces for the infamous one of Carla Santini.
“I don’t see her,” I whispered to Ella. “Do you?”
Ella shook her head.
Stu left us with two very worn Sidartha T-shirts and two pairs of tracksuit bottoms, and went off to find my father. “Imagine meeting Calum Cep,” he said. “I can’t believe my luck!”
“He can’t believe his luck?” I softly shrieked when the door shut behind him. I buried my face in the T-shirt that had so often stunk from Stu Wolff’s sweat. “I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“Not yet,” said Ella. “Not till Carla Santini sees us.”
We descended the spiral staircase slowly, pausing every rung or two to survey the revellers in their designer clothes and glinting jewellery, our heads held high. What did we care that we looked freshly drowned and ready for a jog? We didn�
��t. We were the privileged ones. We were the ones who had brought Stu back. We were the ones tripping over his pants.
We were on the last few steps when we spotted Carla. She and Alma were demurely following Mr and Mrs Santini as they cut a path to the door through the throng.
“Carla!” I cried. “We’ve been looking for you.”
I saw her glance over. She didn’t turn her head or scream or anything, but she did glance over. Alma glanced over, too.
And then they disappeared behind a waiter with a tray full of food.
“Did you see her face?” Ella was as delighted as I was. “I’m glad I don’t have to ride home with her – she’s going to be in a really bad mood.”
I laughed out loud. “All’s well that ends well,” I said.
We all had a great time at the party, even Negus. Several people with small children recognized Negus as Buster, the hero of My Dog, Buster and Buster Runs Away, and they made a big fuss over him and stuffed him with canapés. My father and Stu discovered that they were both into climbing and talked till four in the morning about rock faces and ropes. In fact, my father enjoyed himself so much that by the time we got up on Sunday he’d more or less forgotten why we’d gone to the party in the first place. After he called my mother again, he took Ella and me to lunch, and after our dresses came back from Stu’s cleaners (good as new), he drove us home.
My mother, however, had not been at the party, and had not had a good time. My mother said that if I ever pulled a stunt like that again, she’d have me lobotomized. She’d do it herself.
“Do you have any idea how worried I was when your father called?” she screamed. “Do you have any idea what could have happened to you, traipsing around Manhattan in the middle of the night? How could you lie to me like that?”
“I was desperate,” I sobbed. “You didn’t understand how important it was to me.”
“And you don’t seem to understand how important keeping you alive is to me,” said my mother.
My punishment was six months’ hard labour, with no chance of parole.
“I don’t care what plans you’ve already made,” raged my mother. “If I need you to baby-sit, that’s what you do. Six months,” she repeated. “You’ll be free for your birthday.” She gave me a motherly smile. “Make sure you live to enjoy it.”
I promised I would. I could afford to be contrite – and generous – I was getting off lightly, and I knew it. My mother knew nothing about the dress, which I’d smuggled into the house in my bag, and that meant that Mrs Baggoli wasn’t going to know about it, either. There was no way she’d be able to tell by looking at it now that it had spent Saturday in New York. I didn’t get off as lightly as Ella, though. Her parents were out when she got home, and the only thing they asked about Saturday was “Have a nice time at Lola’s?” My mother agreed not to tell the Gerards what had happened.
“There’s no point upsetting them now,” said my mother. “Besides, I know Ella had nothing to do with this. She just let herself be persuaded by you. I don’t think that deserves the wrath of the Gerards.” It was the first time I realized that Karen Kapok probably liked Ella’s parents a lot less than they liked her.
Once my mother had calmed down, I spent the rest of Sunday in a state of euphoria. I couldn’t join in the family conversation. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t even face my homework. I just lay on my bed, listening to Sidartha on my stereo and planning my entrance at school the following morning. I wanted every detail straight in my head, so I could stand back and enjoy my total triumph.
SNATCHING DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY
Sam Creek arrived in his Karmann Ghia to collect me and the dress on Monday morning.
“So?” said Sam as I squashed myself into the front seat. “How’d it go? Did you manage to get in?”
“You won’t believe what happened!” I said, too excited to pretend to be cool. “You just won’t believe it!”
I told him what happened.
“And you should have seen my dad,” I concluded. “Lots of Stu’s friends knew his books. It was really weird.”
Sam took his hands from the wheel for a second. “Hallelujah!” he shouted. “This is the day I’ve been waiting for since kindergarten, when Carla Santini used to talk me out of my dessert every lunch. I cannot wait to see her face.”
He didn’t have long to wait.
Ella was waiting for us in the courtyard, right outside the student lounge. In my old school, the teachers were lucky to have a faculty room, but in Deadwood even the kids have their own room. The student lounge has three walls of glass, a bunch of chairs and low tables, and a drinks machine. Ella jerked her head behind her as we approached.
“Carla’s already started boring everybody to death with every microscopic detail of the concert and the party,” said Ella. She looked a lot different than she had just two days before. Partly this was because she had her hair down, but it was more than that. She looked brighter, happier, sort of more vivid.
Sam and I looked through the wall of windows. Carla Santini was holding court from the centre chair, flanked by Alma, Tina and Marcia, and surrounded by a gaggle of BTWs. She must have known Ella was waiting for me, because she turned to face me and smiled.
“Uh-oh,” said Sam. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What?” asked Ella, her back to Carla.
“She smiled,” said Sam.
“Are you sure?” asked Ella.
The way they were carrying on, you’d think they were two Red Guards talking about Stalin. He scratched his ear this morning… Well, someone’s off to the firing squad…
“She’s bluffing,” I said airily. “She doesn’t want everyone to know she spent yesterday crying her eyes out.” I grabbed both of them by the arm and steered them towards the entrance of the lounge. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s watch Carla Santini eat humble pie.”
Everyone turned around as Ella, Sam and I stepped into the lounge.
“Well, if it isn’t the Great Pretender!” called Carla.
“Kill her now,” muttered Sam.
The smile that had been on Carla’s face since she saw us grew like a cancer. “Come to hear what the Sidartha party was like?” she crowed.
As if she’d said something hysterically funny, the rest of them laughed.
“Why would we want to hear what you have to say?” I asked sweetly. “Ella and I were there, remember?”
This, apparently, was even funnier than what Carla had said.
Alma started shrieking hysterically. “Oh, my God!” Tears of laughter watering her mascara, she turned to Carla. “Did you hear that? She said they were there!”
Marcia gave me a pitying look. “You know, lying’s not going to help you,” she said as though she wanted to be helpful. “Everybody already knows that you didn’t go.” She shook her head, baffled, as many of us are, by human behaviour. “How could you think you’d get away with it?” she wondered aloud. “Nobody who isn’t an idiot believed you in the first place.”
“That’s right!” chimed in Tina. “I mean, you? The only way you’d get into a party like that is if you were one of the waitresses.”
I stood there, taking their abuse, staring at Carla in shocked disbelief. She had no intention of eating humble pie; it wasn’t on the Santini menu. She was going to lie through her teeth, and make it her word against mine.
“Don’t you pretend you didn’t see me!” I was calm, but strong. I stood up straight. “I know you did.” I sent a sneer in Tina’s direction. “And don’t you tell me the only way I’d get into a party like that is as a waitress. It just so happens that Ella and I got in with Stu Wolff. After we practically saved his life.”
Carla gestured to the photographs spread out on the table in front of her. “There’s the proof,” she purred. In case I was too thick to get what she meant she explained. “Those are my pictures from the concert and the party. Lola isn’t in one of them. But Stu is.” Her smile was Antarctica with lipstick. �
�Now how could you have been saving his life, Lola, when he never left the party all night?” She made a helpless gesture to her audience. “Why isn’t Lola in any of the pictures?” Her expression became sweetly sly. “It’s not like she’s camera shy, is it?”
Another round of laughter greeted this insightful witticism.
“Bride at the wedding … corpse at the funeral…” muttered Alma.
I wanted to turn the tables on her. I wanted to say that she had taken a photo, but she was pretending that she hadn’t. Only Ella was there. I’d promised her I wouldn’t lie any more, and I definitely wasn’t going to when she could hear me.
“You’re not going to get away with this,” I said instead. “Ella and I were at that party. My dad and Stu are even going climbing together – sometime.” When Stu got back from finding himself in India.
That, unfortunately, was the wrong thing to say.
Carla went off like a siren. “Your dad? But you don’t have a dad, Lola. Ella’s mother told my mother that your father died before you were born.” She turned her lethal smile on Ella. “Isn’t that true?” she asked.
It was obvious that our adventure really had changed Ella. She recovered more quickly from this sudden attack than I did.
“If you say so, it must be true,” said Ella sarcastically but without strictly lying. “All I know is that Lola’s father is very much alive and living on the Lower East Side.”
The homeroom bell sounded.
Carla smiled. “Of course he is. He and Stu Wolff are probably climbing up some mountain in Manhattan even as we speak.” She gave Ella another killer dose of smile. “Didn’t I say you should come with me?”
Monday went downhill from there.
History, Spanish and science weren’t total hell because, though everyone darted knowing glances at me and Ella, and muttered amongst themselves, Carla wasn’t in those classes with us, egging everyone else on. But in maths, Ms Pollard sent Sam to the principal for threatening to deck Morgan Liepe because he called Ella and me liars. And in English, where we had a supply teacher because Mrs Baggoli was taking one of her classes on a field trip and we were supposed to be writing an in-class essay, Carla passed her photographs around so everyone could see the first-hand proof that Ella and I hadn’t been at the party. Hearing the hissed wisecracks and sniggers, the supply teacher periodically raised her head from the book she was reading, but as soon as she went back to it, the wisecracks and sniggers would start again.
