Cherries In The Snow (26 page)

My mother doesn't like Grrrl cosmetics, preferring old-movie
Max Factor theatrical makeup, thick pancake to cover her freckles. She never even lets me see them: it's like being naked to her. I think of her sometimes as a little girl in the Swedish countryside, swimming in the sun, drying out on the jetty, freckles popping up one after the other as she wiggled her toes in circles. When did she realize she didn't like them? When do any of us realize we hate that one thing about our appearance, and why that one thing? Why the freckles? Why the straight or curly hair? Why the bump on the nose, the width of the shoulders?

As Montana fixes her pigtails in the bathroom mirror, Marley kisses me in the kitchen. I peer over his shoulder on Montana watch, as her catching us at it in even the mildest form guarantees a bad night. He runs his tongue across my teeth, but they are too sensitive from the bleach and I yelp. We both jump back, two cats with arched backs, wanting to be petted and left alone at the same time. Over the course of the last few months I noticed that we had been our best selves in that kitchen. We'd had our best sex there, our best conversations, our most useful arguments. Feelings in proximity to the fridge get frozen, crystallized. I never thought we would have our first bad kiss there.

Montana comes out of the bathroom, pigtails as high as a rent hike. I have laid out on the kitchen table a bag of sample products not available until the spring.

‘I got you these.'

She sniffs. ‘I don't like makeup.'

‘You don't? You liked it last time we played together.'

She tightens a ribbon. ‘I was just trying to be kind.'

The misjudged kiss on my mind, I decide to ignore the comment, try as best as I can to make things work tonight.

‘Well, Montana, you've done such a great job with your hair. Would you possibly do mine for me?'

She can't help but brighten. ‘Okay!' she yelps, and runs back to the bathroom for a bag of bobby pins.

‘Come on, though,' says Marley, ‘the reservation is for seven.'

‘Okay, okay' she says, and proceeds to put my hair up in scores of messy clips. I know she means to sabotage, or maybe it's just that her fingers are too little, but it is an absolute wreck. And it looks kind of hot.

‘Thank you, Montana. I love it!'

‘Wow!' says Marley. ‘So do I!'

This disgruntles her no end and that is just the start. She is wearing a little red dress and carrying a matching velvet handbag. Sitting to her right in the taxi, I ask, ‘What's in your handbag?'

She snatches it away from me and spends dinner jealously guarding it, as though I was attempting to copy her math homework. As soon as we are led to our seats, she lays her head on the table.

‘Hello?' coos Marley, patting her hair, but she shakes him off.

‘I am dead,' she hisses.

‘What did you die of?' I ask. Expensive French cuisine? She doesn't answer.

Marley touches my foot under the table, but I kick it away a little harder than I mean to. She is made out of him – he must have a remote control. Why can't he guide her, battery-powered, to better behavior? I know it isn't his fault. But I put aside my knowledge to sulk with her, my archnemesis and my compadre. Marley is the only grown-up at the table, trying valiantly to hold it together, saying ‘Yum, yum' as he eats his steak and French fries, like a nervous party guest.

He looks so handsome. And so tired. Tired of us. We are both losing him a little tonight. Bags under his eyes, pale
skin. Even his fingernails look tired, curled up and taking naps at the tips of his fingers, pulling French-fry fat around them like a duvet.

I am facing the painstakingly aged Balthazar mirror, flecked at its edges with fake rust stains. In its expensive artifice it somehow makes all who gaze into it look naturally thrown together. My cheeks look healthy, not be-blushed, my lashes generous not mascaraed, my lips wine-stained from sips taken between elegant discourse on the history of art. This mirror I face goes against every tenet of the Grrrl cosmetics ethos. Holly and Ivy insist that if you are going to fake the funk you should flaunt it, big spidery eye makeup, no all-American-girl look for them. They want the Grrrl buyer to be the chick whose outlandish liquid liner causes cheerleaders to throw spit balls at her in the locker room and the math professor to have troubled dreams. ‘Liquid liner melting down her face as she unzips his tweed pants and rides him like a little bitch.' That was Holly's advertising pitch for the fall line.

‘That sucks,' I hissed in the marketing meeting, ‘you're too fierce a dyke to celebrate the sexual fantasies of middle-aged men. It's like when the pre-out-of-the-closet George Michael kept recording songs like ‘I Want Your Sex' and other come-ons that made no grammatical sense.'

We settled on ‘I fake it so real I am beyond fake,' which Ivy thought of and which touched me so deeply that I actually woke in the middle of the night crying about it.

I keep looking at myself in the mirror, trying on natural expressions to go with my natural look. So Marley has one child with her head on the table and another pulling faces.

‘Sadie, what the hell are you—'

‘Laurence Olivier looked at himself in the mirror for two hours every single day.'

‘You choose names for makeup and you're the premier theater actor of your generation?'

‘No, but … I might be and just not know it yet.'

‘When are you planning on knowing it?'

‘Soon.' Under my breath I add, ‘Fuckhead.'

I pull out my compact mirror and slide it down my body like a lecher. The crop top was a mistake. I look like a Britney Spears fan who has never actually seen her idol live and thus is basing her emulation on a doll version of the singer. Montana looks like a Victorian doll come to life to terrorize the Britney doll, flinging its sparkles in her face, battling on the top shelf above the sleeping Marley, who unaware of the tumult around him, is fast, fast asleep in the spinning poltergeist room.

‘Do you have to keep looking at your reflection?' he asks. ‘Would you like all the knives and spoons so you can also check yourself out in them?'

I want to snap the compact shut like a Castanet, but I can't. I am trapped in mirror world. It feels like the dreams you wake from urging yourself to breathe. Speak speak speak. Anything.

‘You know my absolute favorite dessert in the world, Montana?'

She raises her head wearily. ‘Buttmonkey pie?'

‘No.'

Her blue eyes blaze. ‘Poo-poo diarrhea vomit puke?'

‘Montana!' Marley snaps.

‘No,' I say, ‘not poo-poo diarrhea vomit puke. Although that's an excellent name for our new eye shadow, so thanks for that.'

I watch my lips move in the aged mirror. ‘Profiteroles.' I point to them on the menu, like she is retarded as well as rude.

‘Those are Montana's favorite too. She's allowed them very occasionally as a special treat.'

‘They absolutely are not my favorite.' She sits bolt upright,
affronted, as though he has misrepresented her views on abortion.

‘Yes, they are. Remember the last time we came here and you said that it was your favorite dessert in the whole world and you could eat it forever and ever.' He watches her intently. ‘Let's get two orders, baby girl.'

‘I don't want anything.'

‘You sure?' he asks softly.

She grabs the volume from his control. ‘YES!'

She folds her arms and goes back to the dead-kid position, yogic in her anger. The waiter comes by, French and pleased about it. World's stupidest idea: opening a Disneyland in Paris. I've traveled around the world and I'll tell you this: the French – not so big on kids. As a child in Morocco, I was tipped upside down endlessly. In Italy, my chubby cheeks were grabbed on the hour. Running through the gates to hug Mickey at Paris Disneyland, I was greeted by a Mickey who was smoking a fag, saying,
‘Non, non, finit!'

‘I'd like two orders of profiteroles, please,' Marley tells the waiter.

‘Dad!' howls Montana.

‘Just in case,' he says.

In case of fire? In case of meltdown? It's true, I try when possible to eat dessert before the main course just in case there's a fire and I have to run out without pudding. I was born a few weeks early and at first Mum ignored her labor pains, convinced I was too much Christmas cake. Maybe that's why I'm addicted to sugar.

The ice cream pastry arrives and Montana watches me eat. It is taking me everything I can not to rub her little face in the chocolate syrup. I plow through my portion, licking the plate clean with the same studied vim and vigor I once used to give blow jobs.

‘That's rude,' she spits, and I wonder if she has heard my secret memory.

‘You should know,' I answer.

Marley looks like he wants to be eaten by French waiters and left for dead.

‘Coffee, anyone?' I ask with the forced brightness genetic to the British middle class.

‘Mmmplrdl,' she answers, talking into her elbow.

‘I can't hear you.'

‘Children don't drink coffee.'

‘I did.' My mum also gave me Valium to get to sleep when I'd wake her with terrors late at night.

‘Ugh! Coffee? Repuggo!'

‘Really?' Repuggo sounds like an antidepressant my mother used to be on around the time she'd hand out Valium.

‘Even the smell of coffee makes me puke.'

‘Even the smell? Wow.'

I think of the Steve Martin movie
Dead Man Don't Wear Plaid
and added:

‘Dead children can't puke.'

Merrily, I start to eat the profiteroles from the other plate. A thought crosses her mind. I see it happen. As I lift the spoon to my mouth she whispers, ‘Careful, Sadie. There might be spiders in it.'

‘What?' asks Marley, who has been sitting there barely drawing breath.

‘Sadie's afraid of spiders. When she left Topanga Canyon, me and Mommy laughed at her.'

‘Mommy and I,' I correct her.

‘That's enough!' says Marley. ‘Get up!'

‘Whyyyy? I hate you!'

‘So hate me!'

‘I hate her!'

‘But I'm not hateful,' I object.

‘You're stupid!' she screams at me. ‘You stink!'

‘Of what?' I ask, unable to mask my curiosity. Everyone has a distinct smell, but none of us can ever smell our own.

‘Of bitchy!'

I start taking out my hair clips and lay them on the table one by one.

‘Don't take those out. Don't you dare take those out!' She focuses on me like a bloodhound. ‘I put those in there. I worked hard on those.'

She starts to cry hot angry tears. With the removal of the clips, I have somehow removed the need to care.

‘Is there anything that doesn't make you cry, Montana?'

‘You can talk, spider bitch!'

‘What's that about?' Marley asks.

‘Sadie's afraid of spiders,' she bawls, shoulders heaving, ‘I told you.'

‘No, what is that behavior about? Sadie is my special friend.'

‘And you schtup her.' That is a Jolene word if ever I heard one.

He nods his head. ‘And that too.'

And, I want to add, but I don't, it was
good
!

‘You are causing me to see a red mist!' she shrieks.

All of a sudden Marley puts down his credit card, pushes back his chair, and says, ‘I can't take this.' Now he shouts it and everyone at the tables next to us and even those across the room turn around to stare. ‘I CANNOT TAKE THIS!'

‘No, Papa!' she wails. ‘Don't leave!'

‘I am going to take a piss.'

‘You said piss!' she says, recovering from her weeping as the possibility of cash for her swear box presents itself.

‘You said spider bitch and buttmonkey pie and poo-poo
diarrhea …' He struggles to remember, so I help him by adding, ‘Vomit puke.'

Montana laughs nervously.

‘And you are going to sort it out,' he says. ‘You are going to stop being mean to me. You are making Daddy cry. Both of you.'

‘She started it!' I point at her because who else had started it?

‘You are twenty-four years old!'

‘That's nothing! I'm a kid.'

‘That's
everything
, Sadie! Grow up!'

He walks off and I start to cry and cry. I lay my head on the table in the dead-kid pose. Soon enough I feel a little hand on my back as I gasp for air, making a scene I hadn't planned on. Most of my scenes are planned.

‘Don't cry, Sadie. Please don't cry. My daddy loves you' – and this she adds in a whisper so soft it sounds like a butterfly burp – ‘and I don't hate you.'

We look at each other, maybe we look better through the blur of tears. Her sharp edges seem to be gone; her blond a little faded. I can look at her without feeling blinded. Or blindsided. She is just a kid. And right now she looks tiny. I shrug on my coat. She sits there dejected, but I tap her lightly and help her into hers, buttoning up the velvet to her neck until it can go no further. Then I take her by the hand and lead her to the banquettes between the two main doors where cool air blows on us and we can hear each other speak.

‘What else don't you like? I know about the subway.'

She wipes the last of her tears away. ‘Group singing. I don't like people singing happy birthday, just one at a time.'

‘I don't like the flames on birthday cakes. Or clowns.'

‘Me either.'

‘I thought there'd be a fire and the clown's nose would catch fire.'

She laughs.

Encouraged, I add, ‘Uncles.'

‘Uncles?'

‘They're all creepy. Tourists stopping to talk in the street taking up the whole sidewalk. I'm scared I'm going to kill them. I wouldn't go to their country and talk on the sidewalk.'

‘Chewing gum. I know you're not supposed to swallow it so I don't, but then I get scared it's somehow going to jump down my throat anyway. I don't really like it. Laura—'