Diva (3 page)

"Would you stop making it about you? It's not always about you!

"I'm your mother. I'm practically the only parent you have, and I—"

Her voice fades to static because that's when I figure it out. I got in. If it was a rejection, she wouldn't be mad. She'd be all sweetie and honey, comforting poor Caitlin who'd failed. Again. Don't worry,

sugarplum, Mommy's here to pick up the pieces of your broken heart, as the old song goes. But if she's

mad, it could only mean…

I grab the letter. I'm giggling and crying, and I grab the letter from her and run until I get to the bedroom. I slam the door and lock it.

Dear Caitlin: We are pleased…

The letters swim before me, and I read it over and over again, memorizing it:

Dearcaitlinwearepleasedtoinviteyoutobepartofiheclassof
… and I'm jumping up and down, screaming

and smiling so hard I feel like my face might explode out of my throat. Mom's pounding on the door, and

I'm dancing and screaming, "I got in!" at the same time she's screaming, "You're not going!"

Opera_Grrrl's Online Journal

Subject: Miami HS of the Arts Letter

Date: April 11

Time: 9:37 p.m

Listening to: Mad Scene from
Lucia di Lammermoor
(which mom hates b/c it's too screechy)

Feeling: Crazed

Weight: 115 lbs. this morning

Guess what came 2day?

The good news: got in.

The bad news: can't go.

I stop typing and eat three gummy bears—green, yellow, and red. My jeans feel tighter when I do this,

though gummies only have nine calories each (times three). The thing about losing a lot of weight is that it

feels temporary, like you're just a
thin
fatgirl, and one good Big Mac will send you exploding from your jeans again. I weighed a hundred and five when I left camp last year. Since then I've gained and lost the

same fifteen pounds a dozen times. Right now, I weigh one-fifteen, which is what the weight charts say

you're supposed to weigh at five-three. The guy who made the weight chart (and I'm sure it was a guy)

didn't go to my school, though. At my school, the most you can weigh is one-ten, even if you're five-foot-

nine.

I toss the rest of the bag into the wastebasket, stare at the computer screen, and listen to the opera on CD.

This is the part where the soprano just went completely nuts and stabbed a guy. She's covered in blood,

singing like crazy in her nightgown in front of a crowd of people… all because her family wouldn't let her

do what she wanted to do

I can
sooooo
relate.

I wake to the sound of screaming.

"Lance! Are you aware of the date?"

My mother. I check the clock on the night table. Seven thirty.

"It's April twelfth. Twelve! That's eleven days late for this month, and we still don't have March!"

Ah. Daddy-kins is late on the child support. Again
.

"If I don't get that check, I'll have to buy her clothes at Wal-Mart! Do you care?"

I really don't think my dad cares where she buys my clothes. I think about the gummies in the garbage.

You
try and feed and clothe a sixteen-year-old on what you give me! The least you could do is not insult us by being late on top of everything.
Really
late."

I take the bag from the garbage, then go to the bathroom, and shake the bears into the toilet. They scream

as they whirl down the drain. I read once that Lindsay Lohan, the actress, dumps her Diet Coke onto her

plate when she's through eating so she won't be tempted to graze, which is why you can see every bone in

her neck like it's on display. I need to do that. Closer to the bedroom, Mom's voice is louder.

"No, I don't use the money for myself. We had an agreement, Lance! Lance! Don't you dare hold the phone

away from your ear!"

I'm about to turn the stereo louder, the better to avoid Mom's Vengeance Aria, when I hear the finale.

"You think you could do better, raising her?" She laughs. "I'd like to see that!"

Opera_Grrrl's Online Journal

Subject: In Their Gummy Graves

Date: April 12

Time: 8:00 a.m.

Feeling: Determined

Miami HS of the Arts Possibilities

Work on Mom

Forge Mom's signature on registration paperwork

Stay at Key Biscayne High, be a cheer-girl & get stalked by ex

Try to live with Dad???

I hit the backspace button and erase the last one.

The first thing I remember my father doing was leaving. That was he second thing too, and the third, and

the tenth. My father was always leaving for something—business trips, double-secret golf weekends.

Then one day when I was five, he got tired of coming home for fresh Jockey shorts and he left for good.

The day he left, in a scene reminiscent of
The Parent Trap
but without the British accents, my parents

divided up the important stuff: Mom got me. Dad got the Porsche. I can still see myself wearing my

favorite
Sleeping Beauty
dress (I loved Aurora because she looked just like Mom). We came home from

preschool, and Dad was loading his suitcase into the trunk of the aforementioned Porsche. I asked if he

was going on a trip. He looked at Mom.

She shrugged, like, "You tell her," and he said no, he was leaving for good.

Great word choice: For good. He didn't say what I now know are the usual meaningless things about how

we'd still be a family, that it wasn't my fault. He said he was leaving for good. I had no idea what "for

good" meant, except it didn't sound any good to me. I started crying. He yelled at Mom that she brought me home on purpose to make it hard for him and that this was the kind of crap she always did. Finally, he

pried my fat fingers from his pants leg and drove away.

Mom held me, to keep me from being crushed by the Porsche, then said, "We should have dinner at

Mickey D's. A shake always helps."

"No!" I didn't want a shake. I wanted everything to go back to the screwed-up way it was. Finally, I

agreed to go. I got a shake. A Shamrock, because it was March. Large. Since then mint ice cream has

always made me sick. It's one thing I can't eat. But if I had to guess, I'd guess that's also the day I started eating when I felt bad.

Some people fantasize about their dads coming back, or about going to live with them. Not me! I see Dad

twice a year, at Thanksgiving
or
Christmas (not both, even though he only lives twenty minutes away), and again on Easter. For a long time, I associated Dad with the smell of sweet potatoes. Mom drives me to his

place, which he shares with his lovely wife, Macy, and their charming daughters, Thing One and Thing

Two. I get there an hour before dinner and leave an hour after. I always get presents, even on

Thanksgiving, since Macy wraps my Christmas gifts early. Last Easter, the bunny brought me a Movado

watch, all stuffed inside a pink plastic egg. I spent the next week trying to figure out how to convert it to

cash. The stupid thing would've paid for an opera subscription or a lifetime supply of sheet music. But the

jeweler would only give merchandise credit.

So I don't kid myself about Dad. Even if Mom hasn't exactly been supportive—even if she's sort of a

witch—she is, as she constantly reminds me, my only parent. I know that. That's why it's unfair of me to

think about asking Dad to move in with him, just for a few months, until Mom realizes that Miami High

School or the Arts is a good idea.

It's also completely stupid, because I know he'd never take me.

All weekend, the letter sits on my bed. I pick it up every few hours, just to look at it, like I used to do with the ring Nick gave me, before I gave it back.

I avoid Mom. I stay in my room, watch television, and eat there too. She thinks she won our argument, but

I'm not giving in that quickly. And I listen to music,
loud
music, opera music I know she hates, like the Queen of the Night's Vengeance Aria, which has four high Fs in about two minutes. I listen to that over

and over. But Mom's working most of the weekend, so she's out. It's no fun not speaking to someone if

they don't even know you're not speaking to them.

But Sunday morning, we collide in the kitchen.

My mother sells real estate, or she tries to. She also sells Emma Leigh cosmetics—that company that

awards its top sellers a purple Mustang convertible. Mom got one of those a few years ago—the high

point of her existence (we had a party with purple streamers and purple foods, even the meat). Mom didn't

work right after Dad left. She just sat in this house, doing her nails, waiting for Dad's monthly alimony

checks. Then I guess Dad wised up, so she had to get a job. Or rather, she got her real estate license
and

started selling Emma Leigh. She's out of the house a lot now, which is great, but she must not sell much,

considering she's still completely on the dole from Dad. Once, years ago, I opened one of his monthly

checks, and I almost fell over at the amount. Dad might as well be one of those guys in Utah with two

wives.

Anyway, the kitchen. Today's Sunday. Mom has open houses most Sundays, so after I hear the garage door

go down, I head for the kitchen, planning to sit there for the approximately nineteen seconds it takes to

consume my lunchbox-sized, fat-, sugar-, and taste-free key lime yogurt (90 calories). I open the fridge.

When I close it, she's there.

"Oh!" I say, forgetting I'm not speaking to her. "Thought you left."

She's carrying a pink plastic lawn flamingo she named Harold and dresses in little costumes: a ghost on

Halloween, a leprechaun on St. Patrick's Day, which is how it's dressed right now. "I went to change

Harold into his Easter bonnet. Want to help?"

For this chore, she has on a blue crop top that manages to show off both her boobs and her (pierced) belly

button, denim butt shorts, and cherry red platforms. Mom is thirty-seven, but she looks twenty-five and

dresses like thirteen. She tried to get me to call her Val in public, so people wouldn't know she was my

mother. But I said that would just be too alternative universe.

"No, that's okay."

"You always used to help me with Harold."

Yeah, I thought it was cute when I was, like, seven
. I remember I'm not speaking to her and turn and head for the table, so she'll remember too.

But she puts Harold down and follows me. I sit, and she's behind me, touching my hair, acting like Friday

never happened. "Time for a little trim!"

"I got my hair cut last month." Then I add, "The day before auditions." You know, just to remind her.

She ignores that, running her hands through my hair. I know her nails are blue without even looking.

Sheesh—why'd I have to look?

"I know," she says, "but how about something different this time. Like layers."

Something different
being secret code for,
I really hate the way it looks now
.

When Mom and I can't talk about anything else, we talk about beauty products. Beauty products mean

something to Mom. She thinks if I'd just take her advice on beauty and fashion, my life would be better. I

used to think so too, but now I think it would be better if she left me alone.

"I don't want layers," I say. "You talked me into layers once, and they made me look like a marigold."

"
Long
layers. And we can go together and get our nails done. It'll be fun."

Fun
for her because whenever we go out together, all the salespeople and hairdressers crowd around,

talking about how we look like sisters. "No, thanks."

Mom was a great beauty in college. She was homecoming princess her freshman year, and rode down the

street on a float, waving. I'm sure Mom would have come back the next year and been queen.

But by the next year, she'd managed to hook Dad, and she dropped out of college, anyway, so she never

made it to queen.

When I was a homecoming princess last year at school, she said, "Maybe you'll be queen next year," even though the best you can be is a princess, unless you're a senior. She couldn't just be happy about that.

"I like my hair the way it is now," I say.

"Sometimes a person needs a change."

"I know. That's why I want to go to Miami High School of the Arts."

"Caitlin, that school is in a bad neighborhood in downtown Miami."

Translation: She's afraid there'll be black kids there.

"
I'm trying to protect you. I wouldn't feel right sending a sixteen-year-old there."

Translation: It will inconvenience her
.

The other kids are sixteen too. Some are fifteen."

I wait for her to say I'm a
young
sixteen, which translates to,
If I'm pretending to be twenty-five, you
can't possibly be sixteen
. Wait for it.

"Yes, but you're a
young
sixteen, Caitlin. You've been sheltered and haven't always had the best

judgment."

"Sheltered?" But I know the translation for that too.

"You're going to throw Nick in my face forever, aren't you?" I say.

"I'm not throwing anything in your face. I haven't said anything about that… boy for months. But I do wish we could talk about it. You're always so secretive. I didn't even know you were dating someone else."

"Who said I am?"

"Shelley Silverberg said she saw you in a car with some boy in a football jersey."

Why do grownups always call guys "boys
?"

"It wasn't Nick. God, why do you always have to assume—?"

"Because we don't talk. That's why I thought it would be fun to spend a day together, catch up on things. I don't know anything about your life, Caitlin."