Cannie Shapiro 02 Certain Girls (12 page)

"That's right," I assured her. Nifkin came clicking into the room and settled himself in Joy's suitcase, rooting around until he'd made a nest on top of her shorts and shirts.

Joy sat up in bed and looked at me. "Who is my daddy?"

"Um..." I leaned against the doorjamb. I'd known this question would be coming, but I'd thought I'd have more time to figure out my answer. "Yes. Well. About that..."

"Pe-tah." She nodded, looking satisfied.

My breath caught in my throat. It had been a year since that August night in the car, the night when he'd told me he wouldn't keep waiting. I'd thought of him every day and every night, but I wasn't sure Joy even remembered Peter. "You see, honey, the thing of it is--"

She waved one fist at me--Joy-speak for
Quiet, you, I'm thinking!
--and stared at me with her lips pursed. "Granny Annie is your mommy," she said.

Okay. Terra firma again. "That's right."

"Who is your daddy?"

My hand closed convulsively on the light switch, and the room was plunged into darkness except for Cinderella in her ballgown, dancing just above Joy's pillow, head lifted, as ever, in expectation of the prince's kiss. "I..." I took a slow breath and swallowed. "Well, his name is Larry."

"Arry," Joy repeated sleepily. I leaned against the wall. If I wasn't ready for questions about her father, I was doubly unprepared for questions about mine. My father had left when I was a teenager, married a much younger woman, and had two kids. I hadn't seen or heard from him since our single encounter in Los Angeles, when I'd shown up at his office pregnant, wearing a gold wedding ring I'd bought for myself, hoping for something I couldn't name--that, at twenty-eight, single and knocked up, I could be his little girl, his princess; that he would think me beautiful.

It hadn't happened. He'd turned away, his expression somewhere between disinterested and disgusted, and I'd remembered with a pain that felt like a cramp, like something tearing inside of me, a bit of graffiti I'd seen once in the ladies' room at the Vince Lombardi Service Area on the New Jersey Turnpike, written in tiny black letters on the scarred green metal door:
I never knew my father / it doesn't really matter / that's all there is to that.

That's all there is to that,
I'd thought. I'd walked out of his office, and I hadn't seen him since. I hadn't planned on Joy even noticing that she was down a grandpa for years. I'd thought I would have time to prepare: read the right books, figure out the right thing to say.

I stood there in the darkness, looking down at her, wondering whether she'd think that people--no, not people, parents--could just drop out of your life like loose teeth. Peter had. Bruce had. My father had. She'd probably think that everyone could or would. Maybe she'd think that someday I would leave, too.

There was only one telephone in the rented beach house, an old rotary model made of black plastic on the kitchen counter right beside the sink. Peter answered on the first ring, as if he'd been walking around the way I had, with his phone stuck in his pocket, or as if he'd been sitting beside it, waiting. Not that I believed he'd been waiting. He'd probably met someone already. She was probably right there beside him on the bed, and if she knew about me at all, she was probably thinking I was the biggest idiot who'd ever lived. She was probably right.

"Peter? It's Cannie. I wrote a book," I blurted.

His voice was neutral. "Oh."

"It...if you'd read it, it explains..." I slumped into the chair in front of the telephone, thinking how ridiculous I must sound. "About Bruce and my father and what happened to me. About why I can't be a good wife." I gulped. "Peter, I'm sorry. I am." Tears were running down my face, and words were spilling out of my mouth. "Joy misses you. Tonight she said that you're her father, and I think..." I gulped again and wiped my eyes. "I wish...I mean, she's had enough people leave, and I thought maybe if you would read the book...I could give you a copy. It's not coming out until next spring, and they changed the title, but I could print it out and give it to you..."

His tone was fractionally warmer, the bedside-manner voice he'd used with me when I was at my lowest, the voice you'd use to tell a patient that yes, her condition was terminal and you'd try to keep her comfortable. So maybe he was alone. Or maybe it was just that his new girlfriend had gone to the bathroom to slip out of her lace merry widow and into her leopard-print thong. "Where are you?" he asked.

"New Jersey. I took Joy on vacation. I'm sorry to bother you. I'll be okay. I should have..." I made myself stop talking. "Well, anyhow. I'm sorry I bothered you."

Now he sounded amused. "Where in New Jersey?"

"Avalon. The beach. I got some money for my advance, and I thought we should go to the beach. Get some sun. Walk on the sand. Joy's therapist said it's good for her to walk on the sand."

"What's the address?"

My heart rose, and I bit down hard, not letting myself hope. "Hang on." I told him where I was, and we said goodbye. Then I climbed up to the widow's walk off the master bedroom, with the door open, listening to the hushing sound of the waves rolling onto the shore, laughter from the bar down the block, and the voices of people playing cards on the porch of the house next to mine. I let the summertime smells swirl around me, salt water and the smoke from somebody's charcoal grill, until headlights washed over the walls and Peter walked unerringly up the stairs and out to the deck and took me in his arms.

Later, on a mattress that sagged in the middle, in a room where the walls were glazed with moonlight, it occurred to me that writing my book had been something like an exorcism. I'd written it all down, every angry, hateful, vengeful thought, every sorrow and insecurity, my bad romances, my messed-up family and lousy self-esteem. I'd embroidered the truth with the gaudy gold thread of sex, and a lot of it, letting my heroine work out her anger in a variety of far-fetched and acrobatic encounters, giving her everything I'd ever wanted, and now I was free--or as free as I could ever be. I nestled against Peter's chest, imagining that the bed was a boat and the two of us were adrift on a gentle sea, floating far, far away from my unhappy history, everything and everyone who had ever caused me pain.

His hand was in my hair, and my cheek was warm against his chest. "I'll marry you," I said. "If you still want me."

He chuckled. "Isn't that obvious?"

I twined my legs between his. "The only thing is, no big party. I don't want a spectacle."

"No spectacle," he repeated.

I kissed him sleepily. "Also, I really don't want a wedding dress. They're a huge waste of money. I mean, two thousand dollars on something I'll wear only once!"

"No dress," Peter agreed.

"Joy should be the flower girl." I closed my eyes, picturing it. "Can Nifkin be the ring bearer?"

"Whatever you want." I could feel his lips curve into a smile against my cheek. "No party. No dress. Taint carrying rings. Excellent."

"Don't call him Taint."

"Means the same thing as Nifkin," he said, yawning.

True enough. "Oh, and I can't have my picture in the paper."

Peter sighed. "Do I want to ask why not?"

I shook my head. I'd used that scene in the book, a page right out of my own life. Once, my father had found me at the dining room table, poring over the wedding listings, studying the pictures. He'd squinted at the page, checking out the brides like he'd never seen one before. Maybe he hadn't: "Fish wrap" was one of his kinder terms for our local paper. He stuck to the
Times.
"Why so interested?" he'd asked. I'd told him about the Bow-Wow Bride contest. "Can you believe it?" I'd asked, my voice rising indignantly. "Can you believe people would be so mean?"

He'd glared at me. His face was flushed, and there'd been a tumbler of Scotch in his hands. "Do you worry about the bride?" he'd asked. He spoke slowly, and the words were a little blurred around the edges, but I could still understand each one. "Or are you really worried about yourself?"

"Larry," my mother had said from the sink, where she was washing the dinner dishes. Her voice rose, wavery and weak, above the sound of the running water. "Larry, please."

In bed with Peter, I took a deep breath, pushing away the memory. "It's a long story," I said. "You can read it"--I yawned and snuggled against him, warm and sated and content--"in my book." Eventually, he did. Him and everyone else. The consequences had been, in my biased opinion, close to disastrous. And here was my publisher, wanting me to wade back into the fray and do it again.

"Cannie?"

I saw the tips of Larissa's glossy navy patent-leather shoes peeking underneath the bathroom stall.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Fine," I said.

The shoes didn't move. "I'm sorry," said Larissa. "I should have seen that coming, but when I called Patsy to ask what lunch was about, she said she wanted to surprise you."

"Well, I'm surprised," I said lightly, getting to my feet. "The thing is, I'm really happy doing what I'm doing now. I like Lyla Dare. I like having a pen name. I'm happy."

"But you'll think about it?" Larissa's voice was high and hopeful. I opened the stall door and walked to the sink.

"Sure." I knew the word was a lie as soon as it was out of my mouth, but it was a harmless one, I figured. I'd tell Larissa what she wanted to hear; she'd tell Patsy what she wanted to hear; and I'd go back to Philadelphia, plan my daughter's bat mitzvah, knit another sweater, and screen my calls until the whole thing had blown over.

Larissa beamed at me. "Do you mean it? I can't even tell you how thrilled they'd be. If you've got a new idea--if you could write me up an outline, or maybe even just a paragraph..."

For an instant my reluctance gave way to amazement. "You could sell a paragraph?"

"From you? I could sell a sentence. I could sell a burp."

I dried my hands with my mouth closed tight. No way was I giving her anything to go on.

"Come on," she said. She linked her arm through mine and uttered a sentence I seriously doubted had ever been said out loud in this particular ladies' room: "Let's send back our salads and order dessert."

"T
he most important rule of fashion," Aunt Elle instructed as she led me through the doors of Bergdorf Goodman, "is 'Know yourself.'"

"Know yourself," I repeated. I felt as if I should be taking notes.

"Are you pear-shaped? An hourglass? Are you short-waisted? Do you have broad shoulders? Good legs? Narrow feet? You have to embrace the thing that makes you you, and make the most of it."

"I...uh..." I honestly wasn't sure I had a thing that made me me, other than my absolute embarrassment about my mom and the truth of my birth. "I like my hair," I finally said, even though that was true only after I'd spent over an hour on it. Aunt Elle nodded. She had a sparkling sarong--pink silk with silver thread--wrapped around the hips of her jeans, and silver ballet flats and a skinny black top with a plunging neckline. Her hair was tucked underneath a gray tweed cap that she'd decorated with six rhinestone pins of various sizes. She tinkled and jingled with every step, and I felt plain as a pigeon walking next to her in my khakis and the sneakers that my mother had forced me to wear. ("You're going to be on your feet all day, Joy; you will thank me for this later.")

"Before you buy even a pair of panties, you need to know what you're working with," Elle said. She hopped off the escalator and put her hands on my shoulders, holding me in place. I tugged my hair over my hearing aids, sucked in my stomach, and straightened my shoulders, frozen in place as crowds of well-dressed women walked past us. Elle touched my head briefly, ran her hand down my hair, walked around me in a circle, then smiled, satisfied, and led me onto the next escalator.

"I'd say you're a four or a six. Good proportions.
Great
complexion. I'm thinking pink," she said. "Not yellow. Definitely not red or blue. A little pair of sandals, an updo..." She reached forward, gathering my hair into a twist. "I saw this beaded Proenza Schouler? Killer. Just killer."

"Um...the thing is..." I wasn't sure where to start, but I was positive that "beaded Proenza Schouler" was incompatible with "Don't spend over three hundred dollars," which was the last thing my mother had said to me after she'd given me her credit card at the train station. It had been preceded by "Don't talk to strangers" and "Don't lose that credit card" and "Did you remember to bring the snack I packed?" at which point I'd been forced to remind her that I was going shopping, not to Amsterdam. A shadow had crossed her face when I'd said "Amsterdam," but she'd just kissed me and wished me good luck. "You know I have a budget, right?"

"I did hear that rumor," Aunt Elle said. "How much are we supposed to be spending?"

"Three hundred dollars?" I said. Aunt Elle's expression was so shocked I might as well have slapped her. "For two dresses?" I said even more quietly.

Aunt Elle shook her head, looking disgusted. "And where," she asked, "are we supposed to procure a gown for a hundred and fifty dollars? H&M?"

I bit my lip. My shirt was from H&M.

"Hold my hands," Aunt Elle said as we got off the escalator. She stretched her arms out to me.
Aunt Elle's new-age nonsense,
my mom sometimes said about her sister, but I let her press her palms against mine. "Close your eyes." I did. "See the dress." I tried, but all I saw was darkness. "See the dress," Aunt Elle chanted. "Be the dress." I concentrated hard, and this time I did see a beautiful dress with a tight satin bodice and a flowing tulle skirt. Unfortunately, the girl in the dress wasn't me, it was Amber Gross. Still, I guessed it was a start.

Aunt Elle exhaled slowly and loudly, let go of my hands, and whipped her silver cell phone out of her beaded leather purse, punching what I guessed was my mom's number. "Cannie? Yes. Yes, she's here. Everything's fine." She paused, head cocked. "No, we have not found the dress yet. It's been half an hour! Are you insane?" She rolled her eyes and mouthed the word "crazy." I smiled at her. "We need to talk budget," Elle said. "Yes. Yes, she told me--but Cannie, really. Three hundred dollars?" She paused. "Okay, but do you know what gowns cost?"

Another pause.

"Yes, I said gown. She needs a gown." A short pause. Elle grabbed my elbow and tugged me after her, onto the floor, where the names of designers, written in silver, wrapped around the walls.
Narciso Rodriguez,
I read.
Zac Posen. Armani. Valentino. Marchesa.
I mouthed the words, almost tasting them. "Candelabra, I do not have the time to explain the difference between a dress and a gown to you at this moment," Aunt Elle said as she pulled a one-shouldered white dress off a rack, held it against me, then shook her head and rehung it. "Just trust me. There is one. And three hundred bucks might get you a decent dress somewhere in Philadelphia, but it will not even begin to pay for a gown, which is what the occasion of your only child's bat mitzvah requires." She pulled a pale gold dress with a short, poufy skirt off a rack, held it against herself, smiled, then shook her head sharply, as if to remind herself of our mission. When the phone slipped away from her ear, I could hear my mother's voice, a thin, indignant squawk.

Elle grinned and pulled another dress off another rack. This one was shimmering lavender satin with a pleated, ruched top. I'd seen the actress Taryn Tupping in something exactly like it--maybe even this exact dress--in one of Aunt Elle's magazines. My heartbeat quickened. Taryn Tupping's exact dress! But Aunt Elle shook her head.
Not your color,
she mouthed.

"What?" she said incredulously into the telephone. "No. No. A thousand times no. I am not buying your exquisite daughter, quote-unquote, something with a long skirt and maybe ruffles. God, what is the matter with you? How did you turn out this way?" She pressed the phone to her ear, but I could still hear more squawking. "Listen," she said at last. She waved at a saleslady, who hurried over to help us. "Just because you don't spend money on your clothes doesn't mean that Joy shouldn't. In fact, just because you don't spend money on your clothes means that Joy can afford something really nice." I shyly ran my finger over the bodice of one of the dresses. It was made of bands of green satin, pale as new shoots of grass. I lifted the price tag, then dropped it fast, then picked it up again, thinking that I must have counted in an extra zero. When it was clear that I hadn't, I sidled past the saleswoman, who was practically standing at attention beside Aunt Elle, toward the rack topped with a discreet sign reading
SALE.

Elle was listening to my mother, her brow furrowed under the twinkling brim of her cap. When she spoke again, her voice was icy. "Bad values?" she said. I froze, holding my breath. "Because I care about clothing? Because I think Joy should look beautiful on her big day?"

She winked at me again, and I felt myself relax even before she gave me a thumbs-up. "Right. Right. No, no, I hear you. I got it. I'll do my best. I'll let her know. Right. 'Kay. What?" She put the phone against her shoulder. "Your mother wants to know if you used the bathroom."

I rolled my eyes. Aunt Elle rolled hers.

"I'm sure she can take care of herself. Yes. Uh-huh. Call you later. Bye." She flipped her phone shut and put it back in her purse, looking satisfied. "I got her up to five hundred," she said.

I gasped. "Aunt Elle, you're amazing!"

"True," she agreed. "But you've got to pay a hundred dollars of it."

"That's okay," I said. "I'll do errands or babysitting or something. My friend Tamsin babysits, and she gets fifteen dollars an hour."

"Fifteen dollars?" Elle shook her head and plucked a dark blue dress off the rack. "Jeez. I was lucky if I got three. Then again, I wasn't what you'd call attentive. Hey, get away from there!" She grabbed my arm and pulled me past the marked-down dresses with her eyes on the floor. I grinned. I'd forgotten that Aunt Elle believed in the Law of Affinity, which meant that if you wanted nice things, you had to be around them as much as possible. Aunt Elle not only wouldn't buy clothes on sale, she wouldn't even touch them.

"We should probably go to Macy's." She said the word like it tasted bad. "I think I remember where it is. They'll have cute knock-offs, and maybe..."

I was following her as she jangled her way through the racks when I saw it: pink, sparkling, beads flashing, thin straps draped over a padded silk hanger. "Aunt Elle."

"What?" she asked. I pointed wordlessly at the dress. "Ooh." She lifted the gown off the rack and shook it gently, making the beads shimmer and the skirt sway. "Nice."

I found my voice. "That's it. That's the dress I want."

She held the dress at arm's length, moving it this way and that. Watching the palettes catch the light, hearing beads on the hem click against each other, I could imagine myself dancing in the dress; could see myself gliding across the floor; could even picture Duncan Brodkey looking at me, his lips pursed in a soundless whistle. Elle's forehead furrowed when she lifted the price tag.

"Bad?" I gasped.

"Well, let's not be hasty. We'll try it on." She tapped one pink-painted nail against her teeth. "I think I've got a gift certificate we can use. And maybe..." She slung the dress over her forearm, and I practically skipped after her toward the dressing room.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Ask away, honeybee," said Aunt Elle. She shook salt onto the puddle of ketchup she'd squirted on her plate, dipped one french fry, and nibbled it daintily. We were in the Brooklyn Diner, in a booth next to the rotating cheesecake display, Aunt Elle on one side of the table, me on the other with my new pink dress beside me. We'd split the price between my mother's credit card, Aunt Elle's debit card, and her gift certificate, and even then we'd gone way over budget, and I didn't have a dress to wear to Amber's bat mitzvah, if she really was going to invite me, but I didn't care. When I'd slid the pink dress over my head and Aunt Elle had pulled up the zipper, I'd never felt so pretty in my life.
You look hot,
I could imagine someone whispering, and the voice had sounded like Duncan Brodkey's, and he'd been saying those words not to Amber but to me.

"I..." I pulled the lettuce off my turkey burger, then the round pickle slices. "So I guess Bruce wasn't around much when I was little."

Aunt Elle smirked. "Doing a little fact-checking after the fact?"

I took a bite of my burger. "How long was he in Amsterdam?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. You were so little...and by the time you were three or so, he started coming around again." She lifted her fork and speared a lettuce leaf. "Your mother was probably trying to protect you."

"By not telling me that my biological father didn't even meet me until I was three?"

Aunt Elle looked worried, maybe because she was afraid that my mother would be angry at her for spilling the beans. "Well, is it really such a big deal? Can you remember anything from when you were one or two? I mean, you were probably just stuck in a playpen."

I was momentarily confused. "What's a playpen?"

She scowled. "A little baby cage. That's what your grandmother kept us in."

Never mind that for now,
I thought. "It is a big deal. It's important. I mean, hello, it's my father!"

"I had a father," Aunt Elle said. "It wasn't such a walk in the park."

"What do you mean?" I knew the basics of my mother's family's story: that her father had left when she'd been a teenager, and married someone much younger and had kids with her, and that my mom and her brother and sister didn't see him anymore.

Elle pressed her lips together and put her fork down. "Just not nice," she said. "He was not a very nice guy."

"What do you mean, not nice? Did he hit you guys?" The father in
Big Girls Don't Cry
hadn't hit his kids; he'd thrown things at them: books, bottles, cordless telephones. "Allie" had a dent in her forehead from the father chucking an ice skate at her when she was nine.

Elle sprinkled more salt into her ketchup. "He never hit us." She was quiet so long that I thought she wasn't going to say anything, and then I'd have to start again with the computer or maybe Grandma Ann, when she said, "He called me names."

"What names?"

Her face was flushed, and her hair, when she raked her hand through it, stood up from her head, making her look disturbingly like my mother. "Dummy. Stupid. Idiot. Moron. You get the idea."

"Wow." I didn't know what to say to that.

"And then he was just..." She snapped her hands in the air and exhaled furiously. "Gone. Vanished. Into thin air. He missed Josh's high school graduation. He missed my college graduation."

"You graduated from college?" This was news to me.

"Well, maybe I would have if he'd paid my tuition!" Her voice rose. The two white-haired ladies sharing a slice of cheesecake stared. Aunt Elle smacked the bottom of the ketchup bottle so viciously I was surprised I didn't end up splattered with the stuff. "Anyhow," she said, putting the bottle back down, "you've got a mother and a father and, um, Bruce. You've got a bunch of people who love you. You're practically self-actualized! At your age!"

While Aunt Elle chattered about self-actualization and some seminar she'd recently attended, I let my mind wander. Fact: She and my mom had had a bad father--except he hadn't been bad in exactly the way the father in the book was. I'd already found out the truth of my mother and Bruce. I could find out the truth of this, too. I could continue to play detective, the detective of my life and my whole family's life, reading the books and the articles, interviewing the witnesses, separating what had really happened from what had been invented, finding out all the stuff that nobody ever wanted to tell me. Maybe the truth was something different from what my mother had written, different from what she'd told me. Maybe the way she behaved was the truth, and what she'd written was the lie, and she really had wanted me, and I hadn't ruined her life.