Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories (9 page)

“I will wait until I hear from you before making a decision about reporting your daughter’s injuries, Candace. Kimi is certainly adamant that they were ‘accidental’ and we have no proof that they are not. But, you see, if I don’t report ‘suspicious injuries’ to a child, and there are more injuries, that are reported, I will be held to account and I may be charged with dereliction of duty.”

“Well, Dr. Weedle, we wouldn’t want that—would we! ‘Dereliction of duty.’ Absolutely not.”

Candace bares her beautiful teeth in a smile to suggest—to
insist
—that her words are lightly playful merely. But Weedle reacts as if stung:

“Mrs. Waxman, this is not a joke. This is a serious matter. Anything involving the well-being of a vulnerable child is serious. I would think you might be grateful that the staff at Craigmore is alert to a situation like this, rather than reacting defensively.”

“I am grateful—very! The tuition I pay for Kimi’s education here suggests how grateful! But I warn you—and Kimi’s teachers—if you over-react about something harmless—if you call the ‘hotline’ and involve the police—I promise, I will sue you. I will sue you, and the others involved, and the school board. I will not allow my daughter to be humiliated and used as a pawn in some sort of ‘politically correct’ agenda.”

Feeling triumphant at last, Candace is on her feet. Weedle struggles to her feet. With satisfaction Candace sees that Weedle is shorter than Candace, and at least a decade older; Weedle is a homely woman, exuding the sexual allure of one of those inedible root vegetables—turnip, rutabaga.

“Good-bye! Thank you! I know, Dr. Weedle—you mean well. In fact I am impressed, the school staff is so
vigilant.
I will talk with Kimi this afternoon—as soon as she returns from school—and clear all this up. Shall I make an appointment now to see you next week—Monday morning? At this time?”

So brightly and airily Candace speaks, it seems she must be making a gesture of reconciliation. Such abrupt turns of mood are not unusual in Candace but Weedle is slow to absorb the change. Warily she tells Candace that Monday is a school holiday—Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. But Tuesday morning—

Candace laughs almost gaily. Something
so funny
about this.

“ ‘Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday’! Every month there’s a ‘great man’s’ birthday! Sometimes there’s ‘Presidents’ Day’—three for one. And how many ‘great women’ birthdays do we have? Is Eleanor Roosevelt so honored? Emily Dickinson? Amelia Earhart? What about—Circe? Circe is a goddess—that’s big-time. Or was there more than one of her? Is ‘Circe’ the singular—or the plural? Is there a ‘Circ’ and the plural is ‘Cir-say’? Like goose and geese—ox and oxen?”

Weedle stares at Candace with an expression of absolute perplexity.

“All right! Tuesday, then. Same time, same place—I promise, I will be on time.”

Candace thrusts out a glittery-ringed hand to shake Weedle’s pallid hand—one of those warm-friendly-intimidating gestures Candace has perfected, like a sudden parting social kiss to the cheek of someone who has been entranced by her, yet guarded.

Strides out of Weedle’s office. Already she is feeling much, much better.

At the front entrance of Craigmore Academy Middle School Candace has her cigarettes in hand and by the time Candace locates her car, on the far side of a lot she doesn’t remember parking in, she has her cigarette lighted.

I
t’s so: Kimi’s friends are all girls she has known since grade school. A small band of not-pretty/not-popular girls of whom at least two—Kimi and Scotia Perry—are invariably A students.

Friendships of girls unpopular together.
Candace hopes that her daughter’s friends will remain loyal to one another in high school which looms ahead for them next year like an ugly badlands terrain they will have to cross—together, or singly.

Scotia is not Candace’s favorite among Kimi’s friends—there is something subtly derisive about the girl, even as she politely asks Mrs. Waxman how she is, and engages her in actual conversations; Scotia is stocky and compact as a fire hydrant, with a ruddy face, deceptively innocent blue eyes and thick strong ankles and wrists—a girl-golfer!

(Candace has never seen Kimi’s friend play golf but she has been hearing about the golf “prodigy” for years.) Scotia is an all-round athlete who plays girls’ basketball, field hockey and volleyball with equal skill, while poor Kimi takes aerobics for her phys-ed requirement—Kimi shrinks from sports and has difficulty catching balls tossed to her so slowly they seem to float in mid-air. Though not a brilliant student, Scotia so thrives on competition that she maintains an A average in school; she also takes Mandarin Chinese at the local language immersion school and she has been a savior of sorts for Kimi, as for their other friends, helping them with malfunctioning computers.

(Scotia has helped Candace, too!) From a young age Scotia exuded a disconcerting air of mock-maturity: Candace recalls when, after Kimi’s father had moved out of the house in the initial stage of what was to be, from Candace’s perspective, an ordeal like a protracted tooth extraction, both painful and intensely boring, Scotia said with a bright little smile,

“Hope you had the locks changed on the door, Mrs. Waxman! That’s what women do.”

(In fact, Scotia’s parents are not divorced. This droll bit of information must have come to Scotia from other sources.)

Last year, in eighth grade, Kimi’s closest friend seemed to have been a girl named Brook, displaced over the summer by Scotia Perry. Now it’s Scotia who spends time in Kimi’s room as the girls prepare class projects together, or work on homework; watch DVDs, do email, text-messages, Myspace and Facebook; snack on cheese bits, trail mix, Odwalla smoothies which Candace keeps stocked in the refrigerator—
Strawberry Banana, Red Rhapsody, Super Protein, Mango Tango, Blueberry B Monster.
Often Candace is out—with friends—for the evening and returns to discover that Scotia is still on the premises, though the hour is getting late—past 9
P.M
. She can hear, or half-hear, the murmur of their girl-voices, and their peals of sudden girl-laughter; she’s grateful that Kimi has a friend though Scotia Perry seems too mature for Kimi, and too strong-willed; and Scotia’s mother hasn’t made any effort to befriend Candace, which feels like a rebuke.

Once, Candace thought she’d overheard Scotia say to Kimi in a laughing drawling voice—a mock-male voice, was it?—what sounded like
fat cunt—
but Candace hadn’t really heard clearly for Candace
was not eavesdropping
on her daughter and her daughter’s friends. And afterward when Scotia had departed and Kimi came downstairs flush-faced and happy Candace had asked what Scotia had said and Kimi replied, with averted eyes, “Oh, Scotia’s just kidding, teasing—‘fat cow’ she calls me, sometimes—but not, y’know, mean-like. Not mean.”

“ ‘Fat cow.’ That girl who looks like a young female twin of Mike Tyson has the temerity to call my daughter
fat
. Well!”

Candace pretended to be incensed though really she was relieved. Very relieved.
Fat cunt
was so much worse than
fat cow.

Conversely,
fat cow
was so much less disturbing than
fat cunt.

Another time, just the previous week, after Scotia came over to do homework with Kimi, next morning Candace was shocked to discover that, in the refrigerator, not a single smoothie remained of six she’d bought just the day before.

“Kimi! Did you and Scotia drink
six smoothies between you
?”

Kimi’s face tightened. The soft round boneless face in which large brown eyes shimmered with indignation.

“Oh
Mom.
I hate you counting
every little thing.
”

“I’m not counting—I’m recoiling. I mean, it was a visceral reaction—pure shock. I just went shopping yesterday and this morning all the smoothies are gone. No wonder you’re overweight, Kimi. You really don’t need to put on more pounds.”

This was cruel. Unforgiveable.

Kimi made a sound like a small animal being kicked and ran upstairs.

“K
imi? May I come in, please?”

This is a tip-off: something is seriously wrong. For Mom is behaving politely—almost hesitantly. Instead of rapping briskly on the door and opening it before Kimi can reply.

Kimi’s voice lifts faintly—whether inviting Mom in, or asking Mom not to interrupt her right now, she’s working; but the door isn’t locked, and Mom comes in.

“Hiya!”

“Hi.”

Candace’s eyes clutch at the girl—sprawled on her bed with her laptop opened before her, a shimmering screen that, as Candace slowly approaches, vanishes and is replaced with drifting clouds, exquisitely beautiful violet sky. Candace wonders what was just on Kimi’s screen but has decided she will not ask, even playfully. Kimi bristles when Candace is too inquisitive.

Kimi is lying on top of her bed surrounded by the stuffed animals of her childhood: Otto the one-eyed panda, Carrie the fuzzy camel, Molly the big-eyed fawn. Since returning home from school Kimi has changed into looser-fitting clothes—sweatpants, sweatshirt. Her feet are bare and her toes twitching.

Last summer Kimi painted her toenails iridescent green, and still flecks of shiny green remain on her toenails, like signs of leprosy.

On the pink walls of Kimi’s room are silly, lewd rock posters: Lady GaGa, Plastic Kiss, Raven Lunatic.

There is music in Kimi’s room—some sort of chanting, issued out of her laptop. Kimi brings a forefinger to her lips to silence her mom who nonetheless speaks: “Sweetie . . .”

When Kimi, frowning at her music, doesn’t glance up, Candace says she’d been summoned to Kimi’s school that morning—“D’you know Dr. Weedle?—she has some sort of psychological counseling degree.”

Kimi’s surprise seems genuine. Her eyes widen in alarm.

“Dr.
Weedle
? What’s she want with
you
?”

“She said that you were going to speak to me about an issue that came up at your school yesterday. But you didn’t.”

“Mom, I
did.
I mean, I certainly tried.”

“You did? When?”

In a flurried breathless voice that is an echo of Candace’s girl-voice Kimi tries to explain. She’d started to say something to Candace but Candace had been in a hurry and on her way out of the house and now belatedly Candace recalls this exchange but details are lost—crucial words are lost—Kimi had drifted away, and later that evening Candace heard Kimi in her room laughing, on her cell phone with a friend.

Candace has changed from her designer clothes into pencil-leg jeans, a magenta silk blouse, flannel slippers. She sits on the edge of Kimi’s bed with less abandon than usual. Bites her lip ruefully saying, to enlist her daughter’s sympathy, “I’m not good at whatever this is—a TV scene. If I can’t be original, I hate to even try.”

Kimi smiles to signal
yes,
she knows that her mother is a funny woman, and clever, and original; but Kimi is tense, too. For Mom has let herself into Kimi’s room for a purpose.

“Kimi, I have to ask you—is someone hurting you?”

Candace is hoping that this will not turn out to be the horror film in which the perpetrator of evil turns out to be the protagonist—or maybe, on a somewhat loftier plane, this is Sophocles’
Oedipus Rex.

Though knowing—
She has never touched her child in anger still less has she abused her child. Or any other child.

Kimi sits up, indignant. Kimi tugs her sweatshirt down over her fleshy midriff. “ ‘Hurting me’? You mean—making me cry? Making me
feel bad
?”

“Yes. Well—no. I don’t mean ‘hurting’ your feelings—exactly—but ‘hurting’
you.
Physically.”

Kimi squirms and kicks, this is so—ridiculous! Candace sees a paperback book on the bed—Kimi’s English class is reading
To Kill a Mockingbird
and this is consoling, to Candace.

“Mom, for God’s sake! That is so
not cool
.”

“Sweetie, this is serious. You are saying that no one has hurt you? No one at your school? Or—anywhere?”

“No one, Mom. Jeez!”

Yet Kimi’s voice is faltering, just perceptibly. You would have to be Kimi’s mom to hear.

“Will you—let me examine you?”

“Examine me!” Kimi laughs hoarsely, an uncanny imitation of her mother’s braying laugh. “What are you—a doctor? Psychiatrist? Examining me?”

Nonetheless, Candace is resolved. The roaring in her ears is a din of deranged sparrows.

“Will you let me look, Kimi? I promise that—I—I won’t be—won’t over-react. Dr. Weedle said something about a head injury—”

Kimi is scuttling away, crab-fashion, on the bed. Stuffed animals topple onto the floor with looks of mute astonishment.

“You hit your head on a—locker at school, and cut it? Did you go to the school nurse? Did you tell anyone? Did you tell
me
?”

Kimi would swing her hips around to kick at her mother but Mom has captured her, kneeling on the bed. The mattress creaks. Another stuffed animal falls to the floor, and the paperback
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Candace is panting gripping Kimi’s head between her spread fingers—not hard, but hard enough to keep the girl from wresting free—as Kimi hisses, “Mom, you
smell
! Disgusting cigarettes, wine—you
smell
!”—as Candace peers at the girl’s scalp through a scrim of fine feathery pale-brown hair at first seeing nothing, then—“Oh! My God”—Candace sees the dark zipperlike wound, something more than a simple scratch, about four inches long, at the crown of Kimi’s head.

Candace is stunned, staring.

Feebly Kimi protests, like a guilty child.

“I didn’t mention it to you because it’s
just nothing,
Mom! I was stooping to get one of my shoes, in the locker room, after gym, and banged my head on the edge of a locker door—it didn’t even hurt, Mom. It’s
just nothing
.”

“But it must have bled, Kimi—head wounds bleed . . .”