Cannie Shapiro 02 Certain Girls (13 page)

The thought of it made my heart lift. I smiled at Aunt Elle, who smiled back almost gratefully, looking like herself again, all glint and flash and shine. I let my hand drift down to the shiny gray bag beside me and rested my fingers on top of the tissue paper tucked over the dress, as if it could give me strength or good luck.

"No," said my mom. It was four hours later, that night. The three of us had taken the train home, my mother with her novel, Aunt Elle with her cell phone, and me with the bag in my lap, refusing to let my mom take even a peek, making her wait for what Aunt Elle called "the unveiling."

I was standing in her bedroom, in front of her full-length mirror, with the pink dress on and my mother walking in slow circles around me. "I'm sorry, Joy. It's a beautiful, beautiful dress. But it's just not going to work for your bat mitzvah."

"But why not?" I moaned. I'd piled my hair on top of my head and worn the one pair of heels I had, left over from last year's Class Day. The dress fit me perfectly--not too tight on my chest, not too loose on the hips. The skirt brushed softly at the skin just below my knees, and the silver palettes shimmered, making it look as if the dress were actually made of light.

My mom sat down Indian-style on her bed, with her boobs practically resting in her lap. "The synagogue sent guidelines. Nothing strapless or with spaghetti straps."

"But it came with a wrap!" I ran out of the room to get it. When I came back with the silvery fabric flung around my shoulders, Mom was still frowning.

"It's lovely, Joy, it really is, but I think it's just too grown-up for a thirteen-year-old."

Too grown up.
Ha. That was a good one for a woman who'd written about losing her virginity on her parents' pullout couch when she was fifteen--unless that was a lie, too. "But I am growing up. That's the whole point of the bat mitzvah! I'm becoming a woman, and I can't wear a little kid's dress!" I wished Aunt Elle were there to defend me, but she'd vanished almost as soon as we'd gotten home, tossing a wave over her shoulder and telling my parents not to wait up.

"No," said my mom.

I looked at her. She looked back at me, her face tense and unreadable. "What are you so worried about? What do you think's going to happen to me if I wear it? Do you think..." I shut my mouth.
Do you think I'll have sex with some guy on a pullout couch?
I'd been on the verge of asking.
Do you think I'll get pregnant accidentally, like you?

"I'm sorry," she said. "But that dress is not going to work for the kind of day your father and I want you to have."

Which father?
I almost said. But I could tell from her face it wouldn't do me any good. I knew this expression. It was the same one she'd worn when she'd told me that I couldn't go to an R-rated movie, that I couldn't go to a party unless she'd talked to the parents beforehand, that she didn't care how late everyone else stayed up, my bedtime on a school night was ten o'clock.

I pulled off the dress and tossed it onto my mom's bed, where it lay in a pathetic puddle of pink. "Honey, I'm sorry, but..." I didn't say anything.
Hypocrite,
I thought, forming the syllables on my lips and teeth and tongue without any breath behind them as I stomped down the hallway lined with family pictures: me as a baby, me as a toddler, me on my first day of nursery school and kindergarten and seventh grade, past the clock my mother was so proud of and the tables with vases of red and pink roses.
Hy-po-crite.
When she was only a little older than I was, she'd been having sex, actual sex with actual boys, and now she was worried that I was showing my shoulders?

In my bedroom, I yanked on jeans and a sweatshirt and pulled the reply card to Tyler's bar mitzvah out of my underwear drawer. Downstairs, I hooked Frenchie to her leash, walked out into the clear night and down to the mailbox at the end of our street, and I stood there listening until I heard my card land at the bottom.

A
t ten o'clock that night, Peter came home from the game of Quizzo he played once a month with his fellow diet doctors (
Bariatric physicians,
he'd say whenever he heard me call him and his colleagues "diet doctors."
Please!
). He'd barely made it through the door before I grabbed his arm, put my finger to my lips, and dragged him upstairs. We tiptoed past Joy's closed bedroom door, and I flung open the door to our bedroom and pointed dramatically at the silvery pink dress spread out on the bed.

"Do you see this?" I demanded.

He looked at the dress, then at me, then at the dress again. "It's pretty," he finally said. "Is it for you?"

Oh good God. As if I could get the thing over my hips. Over my hip, singular. "It's Badgley Mischka. They don't serve my kind. This," I said dramatically, "is the dress that our daughter wants to wear to her bat mitzvah."

Peter peered at the garment cautiously, as if it might spring up from the duvet cover and strangle him. "It's nice," he said. Then he saw my face. "It's not nice?"

I took a deep yoga breath. "It's all wrong. Completely and totally wrong."

Peter crossed the room, lifted the dress up by its skinny straps, and spread it over the bench at the foot of the bed. Then he lay down with his head on the pillow and one arm folded behind his head. He used the other one to pat the space beside him. Grudgingly, I lay down next to him. Peter nibbled at my earlobe. "You smell nice," he said.

"Stay on topic," I said, shifting so that my head rested on his chest. "We need to discuss this. We need to have a serious...adult...discussion...oh, that tickles!" I started giggling, my breasts quivering against his side, which he didn't seem to mind. "Can I ask you something? Are we doing this all wrong? I mean, I want the day to have meaning--that's the most important thing, that it means something--but maybe we'll look cheap if we just have a DJ. Maybe we should have dancers. Or we could show a movie of Joy's life. Do you think it's too late to get a videographer? And a producer? And buy the rights to some songs?"

"We should stick with the plan," Peter advised, and unfastened all four of my bra's hooks single-handed, a skill he'd perfected over the years that still never failed to impress me. "A disc jockey, a nice lunch, that photo booth for favors. It'll be fine." He curled his fingers under my chin and looked at me. "Now what's really going on?"

I opened my mouth and found that I couldn't tell him. I couldn't say,
Honey, the truth is that our daughter looks like a thirty-year-old in that dress.
I couldn't add that if Joy were a grown-up instead of a girl, the world was going to hurt her, the way it hurt all of us. And I couldn't even whisper the worst part, which was this: If she was a grown-up, then where did that leave me? Sure, I had a career, even if it was a half-assed, mostly hidden one, but my real work for the past ten years had been keeping my daughter safe. Seeing her in that dress was as good as getting a pink slip and a severance check.
Your work here is done,
the dress said.
Too bad, so sad, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
I couldn't tell Peter the specifics of the bargain I'd worked out in my head: Give Joy the kind of party she wanted, the kind that her friends and relatives were having, and gratitude would keep her my little girl for a little bit longer.

I pulled Tyler's bar mitzvah invitation out of the drawer of my bedside table, where I'd stashed it for just such a discussion after rescuing it from the recycling bin. "Take a look."

He picked it up. "Big."

"Big," I repeated. "And this is what she thinks is normal. This is what's normal, in her world. So maybe we..." Peter kissed me. My eyes slipped shut as he eased my shirt and bra over my head. Then my eyes flew open again.

"Centerpieces. We need to rethink the centerpieces."

"Shh," Peter said, and kissed me again, easing me onto my back and pressing the length of his body against mine. "No talking for ten minutes."

"Ten minutes?" The giggles were back. "Are we going to do it twice?"

"Pipe down," he whispered. His mouth was hot against my cheek, then my neck, and I closed my eyes and let my heart, that eternally clenched fist, relax and spread its fingers open to the sky.

It was actually closer to forty minutes by the time either of us was interested in conversation again. I made my case as we lay together in the dark, a down comforter over our bodies, the sound of passing cars outside our window.

"So let me make sure I understand you," Peter said in his driest and most sober tone. He was still naked, the lean planes of his chest illuminated by the candle flickering on the bedside table. Post-sex, I'd scrambled into pajama bottoms and a University of Philadelphia T-shirt. I tucked my head into the warm hollow between his neck and shoulder and braced myself for the recap.

"You think," he began, "that bar mitzvahs like Tyler's are the reason the world hates America in general, and Jews in particular, and that if we throw Joy a hundred-thousand-dollar party with dancers and video invitations and costume changes, it means that the terrorists have won."

"More or less," I confirmed.

"However," he continued, "you are also racked with anxiety--"

"And guilt!" I added.

"--anxiety and guilt that we haven't planned sufficiently lavish festivities for our daughter, and you would like me to leave the comfort of my warm bed, go online, and find out whether Aretha Franklin is available to perform a four-song set for the party."

"Aretha doesn't fly," I reminded him. "I don't know whether she'd take a train or a bus or what, but make sure to tell her people that we're willing to pay for transportation." I rolled away and forced myself to stretch, breathing deeply, legs pointed toward the corners of the bed, arms raised above my head.

Peter propped himself on his elbow and looked down at me fondly. "You're nuts."

I sighed. "You're right. Joy's probably never even heard of Aretha Franklin. We should get what's-his-face--you know, the one who looks like Leonardo DiCaprio's brain-damaged little brother? Dustin Tull? Joy loves him."

"Cannie," Peter said patiently. "We are not hiring Dustin Tull to entertain at Joy's bat mitzvah."

"Well, we have to do something." I got out of bed and started pacing.

"How about we just be ourselves?" Peter asked.

I flopped back onto the bed and buried my face in a pillow. "I don't think that's good enough." Then I sat up. "Do you think we should get Prince?"

"Candace," said Peter, resting his warm hand between my shoulder blades.

"Nah. Not Prince. He'd say two and show up at eight, and he's got those assless chaps--"

"Cannie," Peter rumbled. "What is going on?"

I got to my feet and gave him the tip of the iceberg, a little taste of the truth. "I told her that dress wouldn't work. She needs something with sleeves. She wasn't very happy."
And the award for understatement of the evening goes to...

"So why don't we let her wear the dress she wants?" said Peter. He blew out the candle. "She could put something on top of it. A shawl or something."

"A shawl?" I repeated. "Is she ninety? Do we live in Anatefka?"

"You know what I mean."

"A wrap," I muttered.

"A wrap," he said agreeably. "It's not a big deal."

"Our daughter looking like a prostitute in shul is not a big deal?"

"She won't"--he covered his mouth and yawned--"look like a prostitute."

"Maybe not a prostitute," I conceded. "Maybe just an escort. You know, where you'd have to pay her extra for the sex stuff."

"Maybe just a teenager," Peter said.

I closed my eyes, wincing, knowing that we were getting to the heart of the thing.

"We need to let this be about what she wants, too."

I nodded. That sounded very fair.

"She's growing up," he said.

I shook my head wordlessly.
All golden lads and lasses must, like chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
It was inevitable, but that didn't mean I had to like it. Just because he was in such a hurry to push Joy out of the nest and have another baby, and my publisher was dying to have me write another novel, didn't mean I had to go along with any of it.

"It happens," he said, and kissed me gently: my cheek, my neck, my forehead. "It's okay."

A tear slid out of my eye, rolled down my cheek, and plopped on the pillow.
My little girl,
I thought, and swiped at my face with my sleeve. My only one.

F
or my birthday every year the past four years, I have celebrated in exactly the same way. The weekend before, my mom and I go to Toppers for manicures and pedicures. On the weekend of my birthday, we go to the Kimmel Center for a musical, and we have tea at the Ritz-Carlton and eat cucumber sandwiches and tiny eclairs. The weekend after my actual birthday, I can invite two friends to sleep over, and my mom will make me anything I want for dinner. My guests have always been Tamsin and Todd, but this year, because Todd became a man and was off-limits, I invited Tamsin and Amber Gross.

Tamsin and I were in the living room the afternoon of the sleepover when the doorbell chimed. "Come on," I said. I got to my feet.

Tamsin just sat there with her book (
Persepolis 2
) in her lap and a sullen look on her face. "You go," she said. I could tell she wasn't happy about Amber coming over, even though when I'd asked her she'd said it was fine. For the past week, Tamsin and Todd had both been sitting at Amber's table with me. I'd thought that Tamsin would be thrilled when Audrey and Sasha scooched over to make room for her, but Tamsin just ate her mother's discarded Zone burritos and read her book and didn't even try to make conversation--although I suspected that even though she looked like she was reading, she was really listening as hard as she could, in the way she always did. I also suspected she wasn't very impressed with what she'd heard, but so far, she hadn't said anything about it to me.

I opened the door, and there was Amber Gross. I still couldn't quite believe it. It was like the president showing up for dinner and a movie. I hoped that other people in the neighborhood were watching out their windows and seeing this: the most popular girl in the Philadelphia Academy at my door.

"Hi!" She had a pink backpack over one shoulder and yellow elastics on her clear braces. I could have stared at her for hours, taking her in piece by piece, trying to figure out how she got it all so right: how her pants were the perfect length, how she knew to turn the cuffs of her shirt up twice so they didn't look too sloppy or too neat.

"Hi. C'mon in," I said, and led her in.

"Wow," she said, looking impressed as she peeked into my mother's office. She eyed the stacks of
Big Girls Don't Cry
in many languages and lifted the framed picture of my mom and Maxi Ryder, all dressed up on the red carpet, that I'd made sure was prominently displayed. "Wow," she said again, and I felt myself relax until Amber ran her finger along the stacks of black-and-green StarGirl books that took up two shelves.

"Your mom reads these?"

My heart started pounding. StarGirl was a secret--one of my mother's many secrets, now that I thought about it--but why was it my job to keep her secrets for her? What had she done for me lately, except tell me no?

"She reads them," I said. "And she writes them, too."

Amber's eyes widened. "For serious?"

"Yep. That's what she does. But it's kind of a secret, so--"

Tamsin stuck her head into the office.

"Hi, Tamsin!" Amber said.

"Hi, Amber!" Tamsin said in Amber's exact same tone of voice. I shot Tamsin a warning look. She ignored me, and I led everyone to the living room, where Frenchelle was on the couch with her head and half her body inserted into the bowl of popcorn.

"So what's the plan?" Amber asked once I'd shooed the dog back onto the floor and dumped the contaminated popcorn into the trash.

"Um..." I'd thought the plan was going to be dinner and going out for ice cream afterward, but maybe that wasn't exciting enough. "We were just watching TV," I said. "I can make more popcorn."

Amber pulled a pink envelope out of her pocket. "Do you guys want to see my bat mitzvah invitations? They just came in this morning."

We both nodded. Well, I nodded. Tamsin just kind of shrugged. Amber pulled a DVD out of the envelope and slipped it into our player. A minute later, the song "Isn't She Lovely" filled the living room, and Amber's face, in black-and-white profile, filled up the screen. "'Isn't she lovely,'" Stevie Wonder sang. "'Isn't she won-der-ful...'"

"Wow," I breathed.

"Wow," Tamsin said sarcastically. I glared at her. She shrugged and lifted her book again, but I was sure she was still watching. The TV screen filled with shots of Amber dressed up like different movie stars: in hoopskirts descending a staircase as Vivien Leigh in
Gone With the Wind,
in a little black dress and pearls as Audrey Hepburn in
Breakfast at Tiffany's,
posed on the bow of a ship (I recognized the ship from our class's many field trips to the Independence Seaport Museum) as Kate Winslet in
Titanic
("Who's the guy?" I whispered, pointing at the man with his arms around Amber's waist, and she said it was her stepbrother, and winked, and told me I'd meet him at the bat mitzvah). A deep-voiced announcer who sounded exactly like the guy who did the movie previews said, "On June eighteenth, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, becomes...Amberwood."

"How'd you do that?" Tamsin asked.

"Do what?" asked Amber.

"Get them to change the name of the whole city just for you?"

"Shh," said Amber, jiggling on the balls of her feet so that her hair bounced along her back. "Here comes the best part." There was a montage of people in body paint, men and women whirling across a stage, flipping and tumbling and fighting each other with flaming swords. "Cirque du Soleil!" Amber said. "That's the entertainment!" The invitation ended with a picture of Amber dressed like Anne Hathaway in
The Princess Diaries
after she has her makeover, with her parents and, I guess, a little brother standing behind her and smiling. "Please join our princess," said Amber's mom. "As we celebrate one of the proudest days of our lives," said her dad. Then the screen filled with the URL of the website where you could RSVP "to the Queen Mother," and then big swirly letters in gold spelled out "THE END."

Amber punched the eject button. "My parents practically ruined the whole thing. They can't stand being in the same room with each other, so it took them forever to get their lines right, and my stupid brother is such a spaz."

"It's totally amazing," I said. Even Tamsin, behind her book, looked awestruck.

My mom carried a fresh bowl of popcorn into the room and peered at the TV screen. "What are you guys watching?"

"My bat mitzvah invitation," said Amber. She waved the remote control at the TV set and the whole thing started again.

My mom sat down on the couch to watch. For once in her life, she seemed out of questions. It seemed like words in general had deserted her. "Well," she said, and "Wow," and then "That's very..." and "My goodness!" and "Cirque du Soleil!" Once the credits had rolled, she said, "I should make sure nothing's burning," and hurried into the kitchen with her checks flushed and her eyes sparkling, like she was trying as hard as she could not to laugh.

I picked up the remote control from where Amber had dropped it on the couch arm. "You're so lucky," I told Amber. "There's no way they're going to let me have video invitations. Or entertainment."

"Really? You're not even having dancers?" She shook her head, her straight hair swishing. "I thought it was, like, in the Torah somewhere that you had to have dancers."

"I didn't have dancers," Tamsin said from behind her book.

"Yes, you did," I said.

She made a face. "
Todd
had dancers. I was just along for the ride."

Amber ignored her. "Maybe if you, like, get really good grades this quarter, your parents will change their mind," she told me.

"Maybe," I said, and shrugged. The only way I could get better grades was if I wore my hearing aids all the time, which I didn't want to do, although if my grades got any worse, my mother would hire the tutor she was already threatening me with, or demand a meeting with all of my teachers, and she would figure out what was going on with my hearing aids, and I'd be grounded for the rest of my life.

Amber adjusted her headband. "No video invites, no theme..." I could feel her evaluating me, deciding whether I was cool enough to deal with or whether, in spite of my secondhand connection to Maxi Ryder, I was a hopeless spaz.

"But I'm going to get a really great dress," I said. "In New York."

Amber perked up. "Really? Which store?"

"My personal shopper and I did some scouting at Bergdorf's," I said casually. "But my mom said I couldn't keep the dress I liked. Too adult or something."

"Bummer," said Amber.

"You've got a personal shopper?" Tamsin said.

"Yes," I said, and gave her a very severe look. "I do." She shrugged again and went back to her book.

"You're so lucky," Amber said. "I have to get everything at the stupid King of Prussia mall." She gave what was, to her credit, a very theatrical shudder, just as my mom stuck her head into the room again and announced that dinner was served.

That night, just like on every birthday night I can remember, my mom made my favorites: spa-baked chicken and buttery biscuits flecked with black pepper and cheddar cheese, canned peaches that I'd helped her pick the summer before, and creamed spinach dusted with nutmeg. For dessert, there were my favorite chocolate cupcakes with peanut-butter frosting and silver sprinkles, served on the antique cake stand that Aunt Samantha had given my mom and Peter for their wedding. My mom stuck a candle in mine even though I'd begged her not to, but at least she didn't sing. Amber licked a little frosting off her pink fingernails, took two dainty bites, then set her cupcake aside. I did the same thing. "Aren't you going to eat that?" Tamsin asked, and when I shook my head, she picked up my cupcake and finished it herself.

After dinner, Amber and Tamsin and I walked to the TLA video store and rented
Titanic,
which was Amber's choice, and
Ghost World,
which was Tamsin's ("You've never seen an R movie?" Amber asked me, with her eyes bugging. "Never ever? God. I got the
Wedding Crashers
special edition for, like, my tenth birthday"). We went back down South Street with Amber on one side of me, talking about dresses, and Tamsin on the other side, absolutely silent, except every once in a while I'd catch her humming a little bit of "Isn't She Lovely." We got lemon water ices at Rita's and ate them on our way home. Then we changed into sweatpants and T-shirts, and for a while I thought everything was going to be okay. My mom and dad moved around the kitchen quietly, running the dishwasher, making coffee. Amber and Tamsin ignored each other, but with the movies on, it wasn't even a problem. At eleven o'clock, my mom said lights-out. We went upstairs and brushed our teeth. I stared straight ahead when Tamsin came out of the bathroom in her
Lord of the Rings
night-shirt. "Nice shirt," Amber said in the exact same tone she'd told Mr. Shoup "Nice tie." Amber was dressed in a sleeveless white nightgown with pink lace trim. Tamsin ignored Amber as she took her usual place in her sleeping bag on the floor beside my bed and yanked the zipper up to her chin. Frenchie hopped onto the foot of my bed and curled in a ball.

Amber unrolled her own sleeping bag. "Oh, no," I said. "You can sleep here." I pointed to my bed. "You sure?" said Amber. I nodded as Tamsin's eyes followed me. Amber tucked herself in, and I spread my blanket on the floor on Tamsin's other side. As soon as I'd turned out the lights, Amber pulled her cell phone out of her backpack and flipped it open, filling the room with a bluish glow. Frenchie lifted her head.

"We should buzz some guys," Amber said. Her braces caught the light from the telephone as she leaned toward me.

"Um..." I tried not to talk to people I didn't know on the phone. I was never sure whether my voice sounded right. "I don't know."

Tamsin picked up her book and rolled onto her side. Amber whispered something I couldn't hear. I clicked on my bedside lamp so I could see her lips.

"Come on, Joy," Amber said. "I'll call Martin. Who do you want to call?"

Duncan Brodkey
was right on the tip of my tongue, but what would I say to him? What if he was sleeping? What if I sounded really weird? What if he thought I was a guy or something? I felt myself starting to blush.

"You don't say anything," Amber said. "You just hang up."

"What's the point of that?" asked Tamsin, turning a page.

"So they know we're thinking about them," Amber said with an extremely disgusted look. "See, if you do a star-sixty-seven, that blocks caller ID, so they can't tell who's calling."

"How do they know who's thinking about them?" Tamsin asked. "It could be anyone. It could be a wrong number."

"Don't you have a book to read?" Amber asked. She rolled her eyes at me. I bit my lip and said nothing. "What a drip," Amber whispered. I ducked my head, tucking my chin into my chest, and pretended that I hadn't heard her say that, even though she probably knew I had. Worse, Tamsin heard it, too.

The next morning I woke up at seven-thirty, got dressed quietly, slipped my hearing aids into place, and shook Amber's shoulder as gently as I could.

"Huh?" she said without opening her eyes.

"Can I borrow your phone for a minute?"