“I know.” A wash of sickly cold horror trickles through me, and I stare at the yellowed glow-in-the-dark stars on the sloping ceiling in Coco’s room. They lost their glow long ago.… Oh, God, I can’t be fired. I can’t be fired after one week. “I’m so sorry, Benny.” Silence. “Did you … tell my, um, father?”
He sighs. “I e-mailed him this morning. I didn’t tell him why.” I don’t say anything, and his voice softens. “Look, Pia, it’s complicated. We made some redundancies a few months ago. So hiring you, as a family friend, really upset a few people, and that photo … my hands are tied. I’m sorry.”
He hangs up.
I can feel Coco and Angie staring at me, but I can’t say anything.
I’ve lost my job. And I’m probably about to get kicked out of my house. After one week in New York.
My phone rings again. It’s my parents. I stare at the phone for a few seconds, knowing what’s on the other end, what’s waiting for me.
I wonder if Coco would mind if I borrowed her puke bucket.
I need to be alone for what’s about to happen, so I walk back out to the stairwell and sit down. I can hear Madeleine playing some angsty music in her room on the floor below, mixed with Julia’s placating tones and Vic’s grumbly ones from down in the front hall.
Then I answer, trying to sound like a good daughter.
“Hi, Daddy!”
“So you’ve lost your job already. What do you have to say for yourself?”
My voice is gone. This happens sometimes. Just when I need it most. In its place, a tiny squeaking sound comes out.
“Speak up!” snaps my father. He has a slightly scary Swiss accent despite twenty years living in the States.
“I’m … sorry. I’ll get another job, I will, and—”
“Pia, we are so disappointed in you!” My mother is lurking on the extension. She has a slight Indian accent that only really comes out when she’s pissed. Like now.
“You wanted the summer with Angie, so we paid for it. You wanted to work, so we got you a job. You said you had the perfect place to live, so we agreed to help pay rent, though God knows Brooklyn certainly wasn’t the perfect place to live last time I was there—”
“You have no work ethic! You are a spoiled party girl! Are you sniffing the drugs again?”
They’ve really honed their double-pronged condemnation-barrage routine over the years.
“Work ethic. Your mother is right. Your total failure to keep a job … well. Let me tell you a story—”
I sink my head to my knees. My parents have the confidence-killing combination of high standards and low expectations.
They also twist everything so it looks terrible. They told me if I got good grades they’d pay for my vacation, and that I’d never find a job on my own, and they offered me an allowance, so of course I said yes! Wouldn’t you?
“… and that is how I met your father and then we got married and had you and then lived— What do you say? Happily ever after…”
Yeah, right. My parents hardly talk to each other. They distract themselves with work (my dad) and socializing (my mother). They met in New York, where they had me, then moved to Singapore, London, Tokyo, Zurich … I went to American International Schools until I was twelve, and then they started sending me to boarding school. Well, boarding schools.
“Life starts with a job, Pia. You think we will always pay for your mistakes, that life is just a party. We know you’ll never have a career, but a job is—”
“A reason to get up in the morning!”
“And the only way to learn the value of money. Do you understand?”
I nod stupidly, staring at the wall next to me, at the ancient-looking rosebud wallpaper. At the bottom the paper has started to peel, curled up like a little pencil shaving. It’s comforting.
“Pia!” my mother is shouting. “Why are you not listening? Do we have to do the Skype again?”
“No, no, I can’t, my Skype is broken,” I say quickly. I can’t handle Skyping with my parents. It’s so damn intense.
“We are stopping your allowance, effective immediately. No rent money, no credit card for emergencies. You’re on your own.”
“What? B-but it might take me a while to get another job!” I stammer in panic.
“Well, the Bank of Mom and Dad is closed unless you come live with us in Zurich and get a job here. That’s the deal.”
“No way!” I know I sound hysterical, but I can’t help it. “My friends are here! My life is here!”
“We want you to be safe,” says my mother, in a slightly gentler tone. Suddenly tears rush to my eyes. “We worry. And it seems like you’re only safe when you’re with us.”
“I am safe.”
“And we want you to be happy,” she adds.
“I am happy!” My voice breaks.
My father interrupts. “This is the deal. We’re vacationing in Palm Beach in exactly two months, via New York. If you’re not in gainful employment by then, we’re taking you back to Zurich with us. That’s the best thing for you.”
The tears escape my eyes. I know I’ve made some mistakes, but God, I’ve tried to make it up to them. I studied hard, I got into a great college.… It’s never good enough.
How is it that no one in the world can make me feel as bad as my parents can?
“Okay, message received,” I say. “I gotta go.”
I hang up and stare at the curled-up rosebud wallpaper for a few more seconds. Then, almost without thinking, I lick my index finger and try to smooth it down, so it lies flat and perfect against the wall. It bounces right back up again.
With one party, I’ve destroyed my life in New York City. Before it even began.
CHAPTER 2
When Julia comes back upstairs moments later, pink with fury, my stomach flips over. I hate fighting. And Jules is really good at it. She should have been a lawyer.
“You destroyed our neighbor’s ceiling,” she snaps. “Destroyed. A piece of plaster fell on his sister’s head this morning. She’s eighty-six-fucking-years old, Pia!”
“Is she okay? Oh, my God, I can’t—”
“She’s fine,” says Julia. “It was only a tiny piece. But Vic is pissed.”
“I’ll pay for it, I promise!” I say. “I have, like, sixteen hundred dollars. He can have all of it.” It’s all I have in the world, and the last of the money from my parents, but I need to convince Julia not to kick me out. “I’m sorry, Julia, I didn’t know it’d get so out of control.”
“What were you thinking?”
“I just … I thought it would be fun, that everyone would have a good time.” I can’t tell her that I was drinking because it was August 26. I never talk about Eddie to anyone. Only Angie knows the story, only Angie saw me that day. “Seriously, Juju, I never meant to hurt anyone … or destroy the old guy’s, I mean Vic’s, ceiling.”
“Vic and Marie have been here forever. Since long before I was born, or my mom,” says Julia. “They’re like family, okay?”
Suddenly, I understand. Her mom grew up here, and she died of breast cancer about eight years ago. Her dad has cocooned himself in silent grief ever since, and then her Aunt Jo passed away, so I guess Vic and Marie—and Rookhaven—are sort of a last link to her mom. No wonder she feels so protective.
“I’ll fix the floor damage,” I say, reaching out for Julia’s hand. She doesn’t resist, which I take as a good sign. “And I’ll get them flowers to say sorry. Today. And I will not let anything bad happen to this house again. I cross my heart.”
Julia takes a deep breath and leans against the wall, closing her eyes. She looks exhausted, and it’s not just from the party. Her job—trainee in an investment bank—starts at 6:00 A.M. every day, and she doesn’t get home until past 7:00 P.M. every night. It’s step one in her plan to take over the world. She’s so exhausted, she’s actually kind of gray. And she’s not even hungover.
“I had fun last night, by the way.”
“What?” I
say.
She opens one eye, a tiny grin on her lips. “It was a great party. I had fun. Right up until Coco started to do a striptease in the kitchen.”
I clap my hand over my mouth. “No way.”
“I carried her up here. Anyway, don’t tell her. She doesn’t remember. I always think it’s better that way.”
“Oh, I know,” I say. “You never flashed an entire bar your Spanx on Spring Weekend.”
“Totally. Goddamnit, I wish I’d been wearing a thong that night.”
We grin at each other for a second, remembering. That’s the Julia I know and love. The girl who works hard and plays hard, too. And the girl who always wants to make everything right. But I can’t tell her what happened with my job and parents just yet. I need to process it (uh, pretend it didn’t happen).
“Hang on a moment.” Julia narrows her eyes at me. “Bed hair. Panda eyes. And stubble rash. Peepee, you got action last night!” she exclaims.
“I did not! And don’t call me Peepee!”
“Have we made up?” coos Angie, peering out from Coco’s room. She wraps her bare leg around the door, lifting one snow boot–clad foot up and down like a meteorology-loving stripper. “Are we all friends again?”
“Those are my boots,” says Julia. “Why are you wearing them?”
“Are you planning on skiing soon? I think not.” Angie sashays past us down the stairs. “It’s August. I’ll return them in pristine condition as soon as the house is clear of party debris, okay, Mommy?”
Julia rolls her eyes and heads downstairs. “Start cleaning.”
Angie flicks the finger at Julia’s retreating back.
“Real mature, Angie.”
“Suck my mature.”
“I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry. Let’s clean.”
Somehow, being hungover and giggling with Angie cheers me up and helps squash my what-the-sweet-hell-am-I-going-to-do-now thoughts. She keeps making little moans of dismay at each new inch of party filth, and pretty soon we’ve both got the giggles.
“When I have my own place, there will be no carpets,” I say. “Carpets are just asking for trouble.”
“Did anyone lose a shoe? And why did we invite someone to our party who wears moccasins?”
“Is this red wine or blood? No. Wait. It’s tomato sauce. Weird.”
“You wanna talk me through the hickey, ladybitch?”
I catch Angie’s eye and bite my index finger sheepishly.
“You had the sex? You little minx…”
“With her brother,” I whisper, pointing at Madeleine’s door. “Bit of an oopsh.”
Oopsh is our word for a drunken mistake.
“Oopsh I kissed the wrong dude, or oopsh I tripped and his dick landed in my mouth?”
I crack up. No one does crass like Angie. She looks like a tiny Christmas angel and acts like a sailor on a Viagra kick. “Or was it more like, oopsh, I’m riding his face and—”
“Too far! That’s too far.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t tell Jules, she’d just have to tell Maddy, and it’d be a whole thing.”
“Absolute-leh, dah-leng,” she says, in her best imitation of her mother’s British accent. “You were totally kamikaze last night.”
“It was August 26. That’s International Pia Goes Kamikaze Day, remember? Crash and burn.”
There’s a pause. “Oh, dude, I’m sorry. I totally forgot. Eddie.”
I can’t bring myself to look at her. Only Angie saw me that day, only Angie knows how bad it was. She always calls me a drama queen, but she knows that misery was real. You don’t fake that kind of breakdown.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.
Angie keeps cleaning. “Fuck him, Pia. Okay? Fuck him! It’s been four years!”
I nod, scrubbing as hard as I can. It has been four years since we broke up. And I really should be over it. Then, thank God, Angie changes the subject.
“So I’m gonna move out to L.A. after the holidays,” she says. “I don’t really belong here in Brooklyn, you know?”
This news just makes me feel even sadder. There’s no point arguing with Angie. She does whatever she wants. Instead I scrub harder and, stair by stair, stain by stain, we make it downstairs. Angie puts on some music, and we clean to the post-party-appropriate strains of the Ramones. I can hear Julia and Coco throwing out empty bottles in the kitchen and, every now and again, shrieking when they find something nasty. Oh please, God, no drugs or used condoms. Just spare me that.
“What time did the party finish?” I ask Angie.
“About five. Lord Hugh and I saw out the last of the party people just as the sun was coming up.”
“He seems … Lordesque.”
“He’s very Lordesque.” She nods. “He also knows his way around a washer-dryer.”
“Did you guys do a”—I pause and grin at her—“full load?”
“Just a half load. Then we rinsed. Very thoroughly. Oh, look. Half a spliff. How nice.”
We make it to the first floor, and help Julia and Coco finish up the kitchen, which primarily involves de-stickying every surface. Nothing does sticky like forty-year-old linoleum.
“That was intense,” says Julia, wiping her forehead with her arm. “The laundry room flooded. That’s what made Vic’s ceiling collapse.”
“I’ll fix it,” I say again.
“Oh, I know you will.”
“I cleaned the bathrooms,” says an icy voice. I look up, and see Madeleine, carrying a mop and bucket. “They were absolutely revolting.”
“Thanks, Moomoo,” says Julia. Madeleine rolls her eyes at Julia’s nickname for her—she professes to hate it—and pushes past us to the sink, giving Julia’s ponytail an affectionate tug. She’s so nice underneath that cold-and-controlled exterior, just not to me, not anymore.
Okay, the Madeleine story, in brief: we were friends once. Really good friends. In fact, she and Julia and I were pretty much inseparable for freshman year. We’re all very different, but somehow we just … clicked, in an opposites-attract kind of way.
Then, suddenly, at the end of freshman year, Madeleine got crazy drunk for the first time ever and, out of nowhere, told me she hated me. I was holding her hair back so she could throw up, and she just said over and over again, “I hate you. I hate you, Pia, I hate you.” Then she passed out. The next day, I tried to talk to her, she shut down, and we’ve been in a cold war ever since. And now her brother is naked in my bed.
Hmm.
Between you and me, I wouldn’t have moved in if I’d known Madeleine was going to be here, too. Jules was probably hoping we’d make up, that the five of us will become best friends and start swapping traveling ya-ya pants, or whatever. I can’t see that happening. Particularly given that Julia’s now busy making her own little cold war with Angie.
An hour later, the whole of Rookhaven is clear of party fallout, not including hangovers.
“Perfect,” says Julia, smiling as she looks around the living room.
“C’mon, Ol’ Rusty hasn’t been perfect since the Eisenhower administration,” says Angie.
“Don’t call this house Ol’ Rusty,” snaps Julia. “If you hate it so much, you can always leave.”
“Who said anything about hating it?” says Angie.
“I like it just how it is,” I say.
“I love it. And I love Brooklyn. I’m a lil’ Brooklynista.” Angie smiles sweetly at us all.
“Can we get some food, please?” I say to distract them from their almost-argument. “I’m starving.”
“I’m making French toast!” That’d be Coco. She’s been trying to force-feed us comfort food since we moved in. “Everyone in the kitchen!”
“I’ll just be a minute,” I say.
Time to deal with you-know-who.
“Hey.” Mike is groggily stretching in my bed. He looks a lot better clean-shaven and in a pressed shirt. “Where’ve you been? You wanna snuggle?”
“All the cool kids are doing it. C’mon…”
I put on my aviators and take a deep breath. “Mike, your sister will kill me if she finds out about last night. Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen, okay?”
“Okay. Fine.” Wow, he’s bratty when things don’t go his way.
“I’m serious. She doesn’t like me as it is.”
“She doesn’t?”
“No…” Suddenly I realize that talking to Mike about his sister being a bitch isn’t the smartest move. “Um, you know. I’m probably misinterpreting it.”
“Maddy’s pretty hard to read,” he says. “She never lets her guard down. Even with me, and I’m family. I think it’s insecurity.”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. I am so sick of people blaming everything on being insecure. It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card, you know?
“Whatever. We’re all in the kitchen. Wait ten minutes and you can leave without being seen.”
“Why don’t I just climb out the window and shimmy down the drainpipe?”
“That would be perfect! Do you think you could?” I say, just to see his reaction. “Kidding. See ya.”
Thank hell that’s over with. I have more important things to worry about. Like being unemployed, broke, and cut off from the so-called Bank of Mom and Dad (pay interest in guilt!) with the threat of being forced to leave New York in exactly eight weeks.
* * *
If a kitchen could be grandmotherly, then this one is. It’s huge, yet also 1960s-sitcom-rerun cozy. The kind of kitchen in which cakes and cookies and pies are always baking, you know? My mother never baked.
As we’re sitting around the kitchen table, listening to Lionel Richie and eating Coco’s amazing French toast with bacon on the side, I finally tell the girls everything. About the Facebook photo, work, and even my parents.
“In a nutshell, I destroyed Rookhaven, and I’m unemployed, unemployable, and broke,” I say, pushing my food around my plate miserably. “I don’t know what to do. Who gets fired after one week? I’m such a fuck-up.… If I don’t get a job, my parents will make me go live with them.”
“You can’t do that!” Somehow, Angie manages to look cool even talking through a mouthful of bacon. “You’d never survive! Your parents can’t make you do anything.”
Brooklyn Girls Page 2
