Doreen (5 page)

But she was going to change that. She was going to be good. To help Doreen, that was the right thing to do. She could even tell her father about it.
I used my gifts to help a sad, lonely girl make a better life, a fresh start. Aren't you proud, Dad? Isn't it just what you would have wanted?

“Mornin', Pops,” she whispered, allowing herself to relax into her natural accent.

“'Nighty-night, Heidi-bear,” she imagined him saying back. She was tired, too tired to think. Her thoughts were getting all jumbled. She stretched out on the sofa and faded off.

As soon as Doreen opened her eyes, she felt possessed by a weird feeling. Probably from spending her first night in a new place, she thought. She lay back on her pillow and replayed the events of the previous evening—how happy she'd felt, reveling in the attentions of Heidi, a girl prettier than even the most popular girls at her old school. But then the memory of the doctored picture brought her right back down to reality and she felt rotten again.

Biz was just trying to be nice, she reminded herself, though she felt a sharp pang at how much Biz needed to change her image in order to make her presentable. Still, Doreen was anxious to look at the picture again. The fantasy of it delighted her. She pulled it from the drawer in her nightstand where she'd placed it the night before. “I'll look one more time,” she said to herself. “And then I will rip it up into a hundred pieces.” She knew better than to waste her time on what could never be. But she would indulge one final glimpse. She turned on the reading lamp beside her bed to get a better look.

The picture looked nothing like she remembered it. She brought it closer to her face. Instead of the beautiful stranger, she saw that the subject of the photograph was the real Doreen, sitting self-consciously in a chair in the woods, in an unflattering dress and too much makeup, her smile strained with effort. Doreen blinked at the image. Had she imagined the pure-skinned angel? Could her eyes be playing some sort of trick on her? She launched herself out of bed and opened the blinds. But the light, now everywhere, only confirmed that the girl in the picture was no ideal of grace and beauty but Doreen as she knew herself to be—utterly, painfully flawed.

Doreen cried out. How could she have mistaken her own pathetic body for the goddess in her imagination? Oh, how she hated her looks, her face, her skin. She stepped in front of the mirror to relish in her own disgust. She looked up at her reflection with a scowl on her face. And the scowl returned to her—on the face of the perfect-looking girl she remembered from the photograph.

What? Doreen couldn't compute what she was seeing. The beautiful mirror-girl had on the purple flannel pajamas Doreen's mother brought back from Nashville that time, the same pajamas Doreen had worn to bed. When Doreen moved her hand, the girl also moved her hand. The surface of the mirror was hard and smooth as any mirror, but her own skin, when she touched it, was soft and creamy. She watched the girl in the mirror touch her own face, her lovely mouth agape, her perfectly arched eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

Slowly, slowly it began to sink in. She'd made a wish, hadn't she? She wished she could be the girl in the picture, the stunner Biz made out of pixels and light. She stood staring at the image of herself in the mirror, afraid to look away and make it all go back to the way it was. She wanted to hold on to that moment, to make it stretch on for the rest of her life. She put her hand against the glass and took it all in.

By nine o'clock in the morning, Heidi had run four miles, showered, exfoliated her skin, and blown out her hair to perfect, glossy straightness. She had also baked a pan full of pot brownies in the small efficiency kitchen of the dorm. The brownies were for Miss Jenkins, the dean's secretary. Heidi wrapped the treats over with cling wrap on a paper plate and tied a pink ribbon around them. She carried the platter across the still-empty quad toward the dean's office in the warmth of the September sun.

Heidi knew from experience that Miss Jenkins could not resist chocolate. She also knew that marijuana loosened her lips—though Miss Jenkins may not have been aware of this latter fact herself. Whenever Heidi wanted to uncover a useful, dirty secret about one of her classmates, she baked a baggie of weed right into her brownies. After she delivered them to Miss Jenkins with some excuse, she had only to sit around and wait for answers.

“Why, Ms. Whelan!” Miss Jenkins exclaimed from behind her cluttered desk on the morning after the arrival of Doreen Gray. “Classes have not even begun and here you are, bearing chocolate. And so early in the morning. You are a terrible influence,” she said with a playful wag of her finger. Her clothes were dreary and shapeless, her glasses unfashionably round and ill-suited for her face, and she wore her light brown hair half up and tied with a scrunchie. But Miss Jenkins's clean complexion and enthusiasm made her seem youthful despite her tacky presentation.

“Good morning, Miss Jenkins. Did you have a good summer? I am sorry for barging in like this. You see, I made these brownies for my roommate, Elizabeth Gibbons-Brown. Do you know her? She asked me to make them to assist in her efforts to woo some science nerd, but apparently his affections turned elsewhere. Poor little Bizzy is so distraught she can't eat a thing, and she says that seeing the brownies is painful to her. I ate as many as I could, but I was hoping that you might take them off our hands. Would you mind, Miss Jenkins? It would be such a favor.” Heidi set the plate down on the secretary's desk, nudging them toward Miss Jenkins's nose.

“I understand that, of course. Boys will have their own whims, won't they? You're a good friend. Please have a seat, Ms. Whelan.” Miss Jenkins gazed at the plate of brownies. “You know, normally I would never indulge in something so rich this early in the day, but I did happen to miss breakfast this morning.” Miss Jenkins raised an eyebrow at Heidi, looking for approval.

“Oh, go on, Miss Jenkins,” Heidi encouraged. “Have one! Have a couple. They're practically muffins anyway. What's the difference? My mother always said, breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper. That's the key to a slim figure.” Of course, it wasn't her own mother she was quoting, it was Biz's. Mumzy had a million pithy little sayings.

“Wise woman,” said Miss Jenkins as she unwrapped the plate and helped herself to the largest brownie. Heidi leaned back and waited for the marijuana to have its effect.

Not surprisingly, Miss Jenkins spilled the whole story. An acrimonious divorce and a power lawyer left Doreen and her mom penniless. In desperation they moved back to the Midwest while Roland settled in with the new, shiny model wife (Heidi remembered her well) and their shiny, new children. Why had it rung so familiar to her? She made slow progress across the quad, her mind replaying the facts. Heidi's parents had never abandoned her. If anything the opposite was true. They loved her, told her so often, awaited calls that never came. But to have to live in the muck of regular life while Roland plucked goodies off platters and made cutting jokes about debutantes, it was so unfair! Doreen should have been taken in by him, given the easy life he enjoyed, but she had to be beaten down, made to feel worthless and ashamed.

And then Doreen's mother had barged in—good for her! At a society event. Heidi had been to one of those, too. In a long, silk chiffon, apple-green dress with a giant floral pattern Roland had borrowed from his sister, Heidi mixed with the wealthy and the renowned. The dress had a halter top and a cinched waist. Heidi couldn't help stealing glances of herself in every mirror she passed, and there were many at the mansion in Bridgehampton where the party was held. Now, even years later, Heidi could still close her eyes and recall the softness of the rich silk when she ran her fingers along the edge of the garment. It was so beautiful, and she'd been beautiful in it, more elegant and alluring than she'd ever looked before. He said the cut showed off her clavicle, a body part she had not previously known to be worthy of showing off, but once she did she could not stop running her fingers along it as she engaged in conversation with the beau monde.

Roland introduced her as his “little protégé.” He said he found her behind a desk at a hotel like a sad, caged bird.

“And weren't you so kind as to hear my song and free me,” said Heidi with a smile, concentrating on the refined accent Roland had taught her. “It was very charitable of you.”

“Charity had nothing to do with it,” said Roland. People laughed. They were charmed. She was witty. She said funny things, cutting things, she thought, what he would say if he were a woman in a gown. She imitated his laugh, his manner of speaking. Everyone sipped champagne and there was crab and lobster and fish. People looked wonderful. She looked wonderful. Her fingers danced along her clavicle.

“You see?” he whispered in her ear. “Do you see how easy it is? Everyone here is half-moron.” His voice in her ear was like a torch she carried. Never in her life had she felt sharper or more powerful.

Later, as Roland drove them back to the hotel in his Porsche (she doubted the law would consider him sober enough to drive, but who was she to question?), he asked her what she thought of everyone. He wanted specifics. With whom did she speak? What did she say? What did they say back to her?

“I guess I always thought that rich and famous people were smarter or more interesting than the people I knew. But they're not—or not necessarily,” she said. They cruised down Highway 27. Outside it was so dark, darker than anything Heidi knew from her city life. She wished the top were down so she could see the stars.

“Aha,” said Roland. “Now you're starting to understand what I've been saying to you. You can have whatever you want, Heidi, I believe that. And it's not because you're beautiful, or not only because of that. There are plenty of beautiful girls, my dear, but none of them have what you have.”

“And what's that?” she asked breathlessly. “What do I have that's so special?”

He adjusted the rearview so he could look at her. Hope filled her heart as she waited for him to assess her offerings—her spirit, her grace, her goodness—what would he choose?

Turning the car onto West Lake Drive, he said, “You have nothing to lose.”

A mother lugging a desk lamp and a bag of golf clubs clipped Heidi on the shoulder, jolting her from her daydream. The quad was now teeming with activity. Expensive cars lined up around the periphery of campus. Parents and siblings unloaded plastic crates and bulletin boards, giant duffel bags filled with tailored clothing in khaki and blue stripes. It was so easy for them! She balled her hand into a tight fist, then let it go. Jealousy, she well knew, would get her nowhere. She was smarter than all of them, better than all of them because she'd made it this far on her own, made a life from nothing.

A boy who loved Heidi carried a fan into Smith Hall. He waved at her and she deigned grant him a tiny smile. He was so happy he crashed into a wall. She walked on.

Roland was wrong. They were the ones with nothing to lose, not her. You couldn't fall from on high when you were inside—not when you could sit on your grand settee and gaze down at the world from the safety of your penthouse. No. The ones on the inside did not risk falling. It was the outsiders, interlopers, window-washers, people like Heidi who had only a toe in the door while the rest flapped in the breeze, ready to be sent spinning back toward earth the second they were discovered. People like Heidi didn't get to take the elevator down, either. They crashed, splattered on Fifth Avenue like meat scraps.

Heidi had everything to lose, and just as he'd had the power to give it, Roland could take it all away, on a whim. No. Doreen was entirely too risky. It was stupid. Heidi needed to stay focused, get into college, Ivy League, the best. Forget about Roland, forget about Doreen and move on. That was all there was to it.

But she was so lonely. No matter how far she'd come, Heidi didn't really belong at Chandler—or in Yonkers. That was Roland Gibbons's legacy in her life. He made her into a person apart. And he'd done it to Doreen, too, hadn't he? If ever a girl belonged nowhere it was that poor, lost soul.

She's like my sister, Heidi thought. We are sisters in his rejection. We will survive him. We will be not alone, but together. Heidi and Doreen. I will make her the way he made me, she thought, but better, because I will not abandon her to fend for herself. I will be there: friend, sister, guide. She felt weightless, filled with purpose. Worthy. Heidi felt sure that if she could make Doreen, she would cleanse herself of Roland forever. She would find the girl's beauty and poise, and the position that Heidi had worked and struggled for would mean so much more because she would have someone to share it with.