Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (7 page)

YOU CAN CHOOSE YOUR ENEMIES, BUT NOT YOUR RELATIVES

What with starting to learn the new script and being distracted because Ella and I were deep in Siberia, I hadn’t yet addressed the problem of convincing my mother to let me go to New York to see Sidartha. I was so cheered by my victory in the skirmish with Carla that afternoon, however, that I decided to launch my campaign that very night.

I know my mother; she can be handled, but it usually takes some time and I couldn’t afford to blow it because I’d waited too long to start on her. Now it was even more important that Ella and I get to the concert than it would have been normally; this had grown beyond a personal desire and become a righteous cause. I couldn’t let Carla humiliate and ridicule us; I had to go to that party and laugh in her face. I owed it to the rest of the school.

It may seem naïve, but I didn’t really think that persuading my mother was going to be this incredibly ginormous problem. After all, she’d already more or less said maybe. Well, what she’d actually said was, “I’ll think about it.” But I am destined to be a great actor. What’s another thing that separates a great actor from an average one? The ability to
convince
. Convince the audience that you’re an old woman when you’re only in your twenties. Convince them that you’re a murderer when you’re really mild as a newborn lamb. Convince them that you’re a saint when you’re really Carla Santini.

I took the job of convincing my mother to let me go to the concert as a professional challenge. I was confident that once Karen Kapok had given her permission, the Gerards, with their new, guilty understanding of all she’d suffered, would let Ella go, too.

“Is there something wrong with the spaghetti?” asked my mother.

She’d finally noticed. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been sitting there for at least fifteen minutes, languidly pushing my food around my plate and (as usual) no one had paid me the tiniest bit of attention. The twins (also as usual) had been talking non-stop since we sat down, and whenever they paused for air or to stuff something in their mouths my mother took up the slack, yapping on about earth-shattering things like the phone bill and the noise in the car, totally ignoring my pale, sad, silent visage on the other side of the table.

I gave my mother a wan smile.

“No,” I said softly. “No, there’s nothing wrong with the spaghetti.” I gave her another wan smile. “I guess I’m just not very hungry.” I pushed my plate away. “I guess I’m just in too much pain.”

“Cramps?” asked my mother.

It seemed to me that I was always gaping at my mother in horror lately.

“Mommmm…” I moaned. Ella’s mother would never discuss cramps at the table in front of everybody, even though the only people usually at the Gerard’s dinner table are she and Ella. Ella learned about sex and stuff like that from a book her parents gave her. It was made up of questions and answers, so she didn’t have to talk about it with her mother at all.

“I’m in pain, too,” said Pam. She opened her mouth as wide as she could and shoved her face in mine. “See?” she demanded. “My tooth’s coming out.”

All I could see was half-chewed spaghetti. It was enough to make you gag.

My mother didn’t notice that one of her children was making a revolting spectacle of herself any more than she’d noticed my haunted air.

She reached for the salad. “Well?” she persisted. “There’s paracetamol in the bathroom if you need it.”

“It’s not that kind of pain,” I said flatly.

“What kind of pain is it?” asked Paula.

I smiled at her kindly. Even though Pam and Paula are identical twins, Paula sometimes shows signs of being an intelligent life form.

“I think you’re too little to understand,” I gently explained. “It’s a pain of the heart.”

Paula sucked a strand of spaghetti into her mouth. “You mean like indigestion?” And at other times, the closest Paula gets to an intelligent life form is sitting next to me.

“No,” I said. “Not like indigestion. Like having your heart ripped from your body and thrown on to a pile of rusting tin cans. Like having a red-hot corkscrew twisted into your soul. Like having everything you ever loved or dreamed of rolled over by tanks driven by soldiers who are laughing and singing songs.”

Paula looked at my mother. “What’s she talking about?”

My mother shrugged. “You’ve got me.” She helped herself to garlic bread.

“Maybe it’s a bad-hair day,” suggested Pam.

The twins thought this was incredibly funny. Half-chewed spaghetti and bread flew across the table.

“Girls,” said my mother, but she was looking at me. “What happened?” she asked. “Are you having some trouble at school?”

“School?” I covered my heart with my hands as though I were trying to keep it from being ripped from my body yet again. “How can you talk about something as trivial as school at a time like this?” Hot, bitter tears sprang to my eyes. “Can’t you see that my whole world has been pitched into darkness? Can’t you see that I’ve lost any reason to live?”

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” asked my mother.

“That’s what I mean about this family,” I wailed. “Something like this can occur, and you don’t even know about it.”

“Well, maybe if you told us,” said Paula.

I pushed back my chair. “Do you all live in a cave or something?” I shrieked. “Am I being raised by wolves? Doesn’t anybody but me keep any contact with the outside world?” I got to my feet. “Sidartha has broken up,” I sobbed. “They’re having one last concert at Madison Square Garden, and then they are no more!” I raised my eyes to the heavens and opened my arms. “Good night, sweet princes, may choirs of rock angels sing you to your sleep…!”

Pam slurped at a forkful of food.

My mother looked at me.

“Let me make a wild guess,” she said. “You want to go to the concert.”

Hope dried the tears that blurred my eyes.

“Yes,” I snuffled. “If I could see them play live, at least I’d have that memory to carry me through the long, empty years that lie ahead of me like a road in Kansas.”

“You mean go with your dad?” asked my mother.

Good God! I’d forgotten about him. There was no way I could involve my father in this outing.

For one thing, Ella thought he was dead; for another, he was the last person we needed with us when we crashed the party.

“Dad?” I moaned with the suffering of the misunderstood. “I can’t go to a Sidartha concert with my father. I’d die of shame.”

“Well, you’re not going to Madison Square Garden by yourself, and that’s final,” my mother informed me. “You can watch the show on MTV.”

But I wasn’t defeated – not yet.

“How can you treat me like this?” I cried. “I’m your flesh and blood, your first born. You used to lean over my crib in the middle of the night to make sure I was still breathing.”

“Exactly,” said my mother. “I’m concerned for your welfare. You can’t go.”

I tried to make a deal. “I’ll baby-sit whenever you want for the next six months,” I promised. “Free. Just let me go to the concert.
Please…
”

But would Karen Kapok relent? Do bears drive Volvos?

“Get off your knees, Mary,” said my mother. “You can’t go into the city at night by yourself and that’s the end of it. The answer is no.”

It was worse than mere mortal insensitivity. It was inhuman stubbornness.

What could one broken-hearted teenager do in the face of such parental pig-headedness? Sulking wouldn’t work. I once stayed in my room for a whole week (except for meals, baths, going to school, and hanging out with Ella) and she didn’t even notice. The silent treatment wouldn’t work either. I used the silent treatment when I used the week-long sulk. All that happened was that every so often my mother would look up from whatever she was doing and comment on how nice and quiet it was for a change.

“Please,” I begged. “If you don’t let me go, I’ll die. I swear I will. I’ll just wither away and die.”

“Well, if you ask me, that’s better than being shot at close range by some psycho in Manhattan,” said my mother.

My chair toppled over as, devastated, I fled from the room.

“If Mary dies, can we have the porch as a playroom?” asked Pam.

“Can you believe it?!” I complained to Ella the next day as we walked to homeroom. “I live in a house without pity, in a cheap temple to the meaningless frivolity of contemporary life.” I flapped my arms so my cape moved like wings. “She wouldn’t even listen to me, Ella. She wouldn’t even stop for one tiny little nanosecond and consider
me
. My feelings. My needs. My fragile hopes and dreams. Me! Her oldest child, the child of the only man she ever really loved.”

Ella gave me a darting glance. “That means you asked your mother about the concert and she said no, doesn’t it?”

There was something about her tone that I didn’t like. A smugness. If Ella hadn’t been raised to be so polite and pleasant all the time, she would have stuck out her tongue and said, “Nahnahnah, I told you so!”

“Well at least I asked,” I snapped. “At least I made the attempt, instead of just throwing up my hands in defeat.” I raised my chin to the winter sun. “At least I do battle, Ella.”

“I asked,” said Ella quietly. “I asked them days ago.”

I came to an abrupt halt and stared at her as though I’d never seen her before. It may not sound like a big deal to anyone with parents less dedicated to perfection than Ella’s, but this kind of behaviour is unheard of in the Gerard household. Not only do the Gerards never argue, never shout, and never behave like their brains are asleep, they achieve this amazing state of perfection by avoiding even the most everyday confrontations. It’s kind of an unwritten rule that Ella never says or does anything to upset her parents. She does whatever they want automatically, and – consciously or subconsciously – doesn’t do things they wouldn’t want.

“Really?” I couldn’t have hidden my surprise if I’d wanted to. The more I knew Ella, the more I realized there was more to know. “You actually asked Marilyn and Jim if you could go into New York, the evil heart of the universe, and see Sidartha? You admitted that there are things that you’d rather do than watch videos and go to the mall?” Watching videos and shopping – two things that drive Karen Kapok wild if done to excess – are considered appropriate teenage pursuits by the Gerards.

Ella nodded. “Uh-huh. Well, I asked my mother.” She kind of shrugged with her mouth. “I never manage to stay up late enough to see my father most of the time.”

“And what did she say?”

Ella made a face. “She said no.”

I sighed and started walking again. “That, of course, was to be expected,” I said. “But I really thought my mother would come round. After all, I can understand your mother worrying about you. You’ve never even been on a subway. But me?! I know my way around the City like a rat. My mother knows she has nothing to worry about.”

“What does it matter?” asked Ella. “We can’t go and that’s the end of it.”

But I am not a “Que será, será” kind of person.

“No, it isn’t,” I informed her. “It’s just the beginning.”

THE THAW

It wasn’t as if Carla Santini exactly surrendered and signed the peace treaty after I confronted her in that first rehearsal. She pretended I was human when Mrs Baggoli was around and ignored me as much as she could whenever Mrs Baggoli was out of the room. But she had other ways of getting revenge.

Mrs Baggoli clapped her hands together. “Let’s have some quiet in here!” she shouted. “Higgins, Doolittle, Mrs Pearce, Eliza… Let’s try it one more time.” She pointed at me. “Start with ‘Don’t I look dumb?’”

I nodded. I raised my head. “Don’t I look dumb?”

“Dumb?” asked Professor Higgins.

“Mrs Baggoli,” said Carla Santini. “I’m sorry to interrupt again, but do you really think
dumb
’s the right word?”

Mrs Baggoli doesn’t tolerate rudeness or dissension among her cast, so no one groaned out loud the way they would have normally; but we all shot desperate looks at one another. It wasn’t so much that Carla interrupted
us
; it was more like we interrupted
her
.

Mrs Baggoli sighed. She knew that she couldn’t yell at Carla because Carla wasn’t really doing anything wrong. She wasn’t goofing off, or snickering in the background, or anything like that. She was just trying to make sure that everything – and everyone – was as good as it could be. I know this, because it was something Carla said at every rehearsal, at least once, usually when Mrs Baggoli’s awesome patience was about to snap in two.

“Carla,” said Mrs Baggoli very slowly and distinctly, “we all appreciate your sense of perfection about this production, but it really would be helpful if we could get through at least one whole scene this afternoon.”

She could have added, “For a change”, but she didn’t.

Carla wrung her manicured hands. “Oh, I know, I know,” she said, her voice tormented and deeply apologetic. How could anyone be mad at her when she was suffering so nobly for all our sakes? “I know I’m being a nuisance, but this is so important to me—”

Mrs Baggoli put up one hand. “Please,” she pleaded, “it’s important to all of us. Maybe you could just save all your questions till we’re through.”

Carla nodded. “Of course,” she said. “Of course you’re right. I’ll wait until we’re through.”

“Right.” Mrs Baggoli took a deep breath. “Once more, Eliza.”

If we’d been making a film instead of rehearsing a play, at that point someone would have jumped in front of us with a clapboard and screamed, “
Pygmalion
. Act Two, take sixteen.”

We started yet again. This time we got as far as Eliza telling Higgins that her father only came to get some money to get drunk with when Carla’s calfskin shoulder bag crashed to the floor.

Everyone looked at Carla.

“I’m so sorry…” crooned Carla as she picked up her bag from the floor. “I was looking for a pen and paper so I could write down my questions.”

“I have an idea,” said Mrs Baggoli. “Why don’t we run through the beginning of Act Three instead?”

Mrs Baggoli might be a little naïve and too patient for her own good, and she had no idea what was really going on, but she wasn’t a fool. Act Three featured Mrs Higgins. By now all of us knew that the only way you could get Carla to shut up when I was on stage and she wasn’t, was to change the scene.

You could hear a sigh that was half relief and half frustration ripple through the auditorium.

“Jesus, we’re going to have to start rehearsing our scenes in secret,” Professor Higgins muttered as Carla got out of her seat.

Colonel Pickering snorted.

Personally, I wouldn’t have minded rehearsing every scene in secret, especially the ones where Carla and I appeared together. When we were on together, she did everything in her power to throw me off or steal my scene. She’d change lines, she’d forget to cue me, she’d stand in such a way that the only thing anyone in the audience could see was the top of my head.

Both Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering smiled as though their dearest wish had just come true when Carla pranced on to the stage. Nobody said anything to Carla’s face that wasn’t a compliment. Not and lived to tell the tale.

It’s true that – except for Carla, who addressed me stiffly, as if I was sitting on her coat or something – everyone in the cast was friendly towards me from then on, but outside rehearsals the Big Freeze continued for weeks. Only in maths, where Sam Creek made a point of talking to me at great length about the intricacies of the internal combustion engine, was there any kind of real warmth.

Ella and I were getting oddly used to the Big Freeze, to tell you the truth. In fact, Ella said that she almost enjoyed it because it took all the stress and strain out of having to be interested and friendly to people you felt neither interested in nor particularly friendly towards. Since I have never felt the same obligation as Ella to be nice to absolutely everybody, I didn’t feel the same relief, but I actually didn’t mind it either.

And then, as suddenly as the explosion of a terrorist bomb, things changed.

We were walking to our first class, and Tina Cherry smiled at us as she passed with a pack of her lesser friends. Because Tina smiled, the rest of them smiled, too.

Again, this doesn’t sound like a big deal. So some girl you’ve seen practically every school day for the last year smiles at you, so what? So something had happened, that’s so what. Tina did what Carla Santini did, or what Carla Santini told her to do. If Tina was smiling, something was up.

“I wonder what brought that on,” I mused, glancing over my shoulder to make sure that Tina wasn’t sneaking up behind us, brandishing a knife. I’d read my Shakespeare. I knew all about the daggers in men’s smiles.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” said Ella.

We turned the corner and walked into Marcia Conroy and her boyfriend of the week. Carla Santini and her friends go through guys the way someone with a bad cold goes through tissues. What gets me is that even though everybody knows this, there’s always another guy right behind the last one, waiting to be picked up and dumped in almost one swift movement.

“Lola,” purred Marcia. “Ella.” She stretched her mouth in a mirthless kind of way.

We strode past her without a glance.

“Something’s definitely up,” said Ella. “I just wish we knew what.”

“I’m sure we’ll find out soon,” I assured her. “Carla, like God, may work in mysterious ways, but she doesn’t have God’s patience.”

An observation that turned out to be prophetic.

Carla decided to sit near us at lunch.

“I’ve been looking all over for you two,” she boomed, catching the attention of anyone who could hear. She dumped her stuff on the table behind us.

Ella froze in mid-bite, gazing at Carla over her forkful of pasta salad. Everyone else was gazing at Carla, too, but with curiosity, not horror.

I looked up. “Haven’t you heard?” I asked sweetly. “You’re not supposed to talk to us.”

You have to hand it to Carla, she has grace under fire.

“Oh, that…” She waved her nails in the air. “I really don’t know what that was all about.”

The Big Freeze was over; Carla was speaking to us again. We were about to be engulfed in an avalanche.

Carla threw herself into the chair next to mine and started rummaging in her bag. “I knew you’d want to see this,” she gushed.

The only thing Carla Santini could show me that I would want to see is a picture of the house she’s moving to in China.

“Really?”

Carla ignored the boredom in my voice.

“Look what came in the mail for me this morning,” she ordered with girlish excitement. “They’ve just been printed. They won’t even be going on sale for at least another week.”

She was holding two rectangles of black cardboard. SIDARTHA –
THE FAREWELL CONCERT
– PRESS was written across them in silver. She raised the tickets in the air for a few seconds so the rest of the cafeteria could admire them, too.

“And that’s not all!” Carla’s voice was loud enough to deafen anyone within a mile radius. “Look what else I got.”

She held out a third rectangle of black cardboard. This one said SIDARTHA’S LAST BASH and, under it in smaller print, the place and time and the information that it would admit two.

There was a chorus of “Wow”s around us. A couple of people crowded closer for a better view.

“God, you’re lucky,” said one of the onlookers, a girl whom, normally, Carla would never have noticed. “Imagine going to a party like that.”

Carla smiled on the girl, the queen among the peasants.

“Oh, but I’m not the only one,” cooed Carla. “Lola has an invitation, too.” I flinched as she put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t you, Lola?”

I didn’t answer. I was still staring at her invitation, imprinting the address on my brain before she put it away.

Carla made a few loud gestures of shock and outrage. “Don’t tell me you haven’t gotten yours yet,” she cried. “Stu told my father that they’d all gone out.”

I didn’t believe this for one fraction of a nanosecond. Like Stu Wolff had dropped everything else in his life to make sure Mr Santini knew how the plans for the party were going. Yeah, right…

“I didn’t say I didn’t get my invitation.” I gave Carla a tolerant and amused smile. “As a matter of fact, mine came yesterday.”

“Well show it to us,” said Carla. Her eyes flitted over our audience. “I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d like to see it.”

I laughed as though she’d suggested that I wear my diamonds to school. “I’m not bringing it
here
.”

Carla’s smile locked on me like a car clamp. “Oh, come on, Lola,” she coaxed. “Why don’t you just admit that you don’t have one and get it over with? It’ll save you a lot of humiliation later on.”

I counter-clamped. “I’m sure there’ll be lots of photographers at the party,” I said. “Maybe we can have our picture taken together.”

“It’s a deal,” said Carla. She turned to face Ella for the first time. “You know,” she went on, gently waving the invitation in the air over our table, “this
does
admit two, El. If you really want to go you could always come with me.”

Behind me, Alma gasped in surprise. She was obviously under the impression that she was going with Carla. But she didn’t so much as bleat in protest – she never dares to open her mouth unless it’s to agree.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” said Ella loyally. “I’m sure I’ll see you there.”