Her Mother's Daughter (70 page)

Joy doesn't have a desk, she does her homework at Linda's every afternoon on the floor under a standing lamp with the radio playing. All the girls love the baritones, Dick Haymes and Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby and Joy especially loved Vaughn Monroe. The best singers were all men, it was funny. They said the best cooks were men too, but Joy had never seen a man cook. And all the best athletes were men. Even though Kitty and Linda and Joy played soccer and basketball pretty well, no one ever came to watch them. They didn't really even have a team. But they loved to play it, running, your legs felt so great, then leaping up and tossing the ball, as if your body could fly, it was great….

She wonders if they will have sports at college. Real colleges have sports, but Joy is going to a junior college Hilton Academy in Virginia. Mother speaks of it condescendingly, she says it's just a finishing school but Joy knows Mother is impressed just the same—impressed that she was accepted at all with her grades and because Alice Warren and Eleanor Staples two of the really rich girls in her class were going there too. But Joy feels that if it is really a finishing school, that is okay because she badly needs finishing. She is sure she went up in Mother's estimation, now Mother has to picture her in a fancy school with those rich girls, the idea excites her it frightens her too she would have liked to do something like that when she was young but she probably would have been too scared. Not that Joy isn't.

She tried to speak to Anastasia about it to see if she thought it was the right thing to do but Anastasia is strange these days all she cares about is photographing babies, not even her own babies, them she just drags along wherever she goes. Anastasia acts almost as if she thought that Joy is so stupid it doesn't matter what she does. Maybe Anastasia isn't the right person to talk to even though Joy has always looked up to her. Maybe Anastasia didn't understand. She seems different or maybe she wasn't different maybe Joy just never knew her. She always looks so shabby, her hair long and flying or done in a long braid down her back like a kid you wouldn't think she was a married woman with two children of course she doesn't have any money…but still…Anastasia doesn't seem to care about how she looks or maybe she cares but she won't admit it because she's mad she can't afford clothes and things. That's what Joy thinks.

Joy thinks it is important how a person looks. She always tries to smile when she looks in the mirror. She is smiling now even though she doesn't feel like smiling, not at all, she'd like to cry but she won't. Sometimes—oh it was terrible—she would catch her face in the mirror when she wasn't intending to look when she stood up straight and turned around after making her bed and then a terrible chill would come into her spine. So she'd smile to make it go away. But it would last a few seconds long enough that she was forced to register the new pimple on her chin or a right cheek aflame with them or even if there were no new pimples there were all the other things her yellow skin her full round face her slight sloping shoulders her long neck her broad hips. She hates her body, she hates her face! They all do Kitty and Linda too, she can't understand it Kitty is so pretty and Linda has such a cute body.

But everybody has always said that Joy has a great smile, so she resorts to that, it is the only thing she knows to do. You can hate the way you look and you can try to change it with makeup and stuff but you can't really change it. So you have to make people like you anyway. So you smile. Like now with no makeup on, in the red flannel Dr. Dentons she wears even in June because she is always cold, the smile works, it makes her feel better the brightness of her large blue eyes the broad delighted smile welcomes her in the mirror as if she were a stranger meeting her self….

Kitty is so pretty with her blond hair like a puff of gold around her face sweet delicate little face heart-shaped not big and round like Joy's; and Linda has so much personality always full of energy and she is witty funny she cracks them all up all the time. And Penny is
very
smart Joy wants to introduce her to Anastasia Anastasia would enjoy Penny she'd see how smart she is even though she doesn't do all that well at school but she doesn't care she's beyond that, school and all that because of her mother so sophisticated she's taking Penny to Europe after graduation, three whole months traveling Paris Rome London all those places and Penny has her hair done by her mother's hairdresser and had lessons in putting on makeup Penny's really lovely although she's putting on a bit too much weight that's her mother letting Penny have cocktails with them every night Joy too when she eats there her throat so tense she can barely swallow sitting in the living room with music playing softly on the hi-fi. Penny's mother always wears long gowns grey silk peach silk red brocade and her hair is as blond as Penny's and swept up like a movie star's and Penny's stepfather pouring martinis from a tall glass pitcher so distinguished third husband Penny had seen a lot her father was an alcoholic and then the second husband too and he used to hit her mother too even though he was a big stockbroker.

All the other cheerleaders have something special Amy with her long straight red hair and Joanie with that creamy tan complexion that's because she's Italian and drinks olive oil and Kitty with her blond hair and Linda with her great smile they looked so great standing in front of the crowd yelling “Give me an
S
! Give me an
O
! Yay! Southside!” in their heavy white letter sweaters and short swingy skirts and saddle shoes and thick white socks folded over at the ankle. And Kitty and Linda always say she is the cutest of all of them. But they only say that because they are her friends and they love her. Joy loves them too and she will love them forever.

Joy switches off the wall lamp near the mirror and turns toward the bed. The room is dark now except for the moonlight streaming through the back window the one facing the garden. Anastasia got the bedroom with the window seat but Joy likes hers better because it overlooks the garden. But right now she wishes she had a window seat and could sit by the window and look out at the dark shapes clustered on the pale lawn. Anastasia told her she used to sit on the window seat and smoke at night blowing the smoke out the window so it wouldn't smell up the room and Mother would find out and she'd “moon” she said laughing “dramatizing body juices into the chemistry of tragedy.” Anastasia talked like that. Anastasia was smart.

She thinks she has a cigarette left in her purse. Maybe she will try it: the chemistry of tragedy. What would that be? Whatever it is, it sounds right for her now. She feels around on the chest of drawers for her purse, and riffles through it, finding a wrinkled pack of Luckies. She pulls over to the window the hassock that stands before her little vanity (which with the low wide chest and the bed are all the furniture that will fit in the room) and sits down on it. She doesn't really mind that her room is so small, Linda's room isn't much bigger. But Kitty has a huge room, of course she has to share it with her sister, but it is a room and a half, it has like a little sitting room alcove and they have their own bathroom too. But her favorite is Betty Brower's room her whole house is huge Joy would love to live up there in the expensive area the Canterbury section where the plots are all large and have huge old trees on them where Whit's parents live they have two lots their property fronts on two streets. Betty has two beds in her room so she can have a friend sleep over and a big bureau and a vanity and a desk and a long chair she calls a shez. And in one corner there is a great heap of stuffed animals, some of them huge some little elephants and bears and horses and kitties and bunnies all piled on top of one another.

Joy pushes her face against the screen and breathes in deeply trying to sniff the sweetness of the June night. But all she can smell is the metallic odor of the screen. She lights the cigarette. She coughs lightly. She is not a smoker she only smokes to be like her friends. She realizes there is no ashtray in her room, and flicks the ashes in the palm of her hand the way the boys do. They say it doesn't burn it doesn't but it makes you feel dirty. She doesn't want to be like the boys, she wants to be feminine. She gets up and tosses the ashes into the wastebasket, then wipes her palm along her pajama leg. That's something a boy would do too but she is too lazy to go into the bathroom and wash it. She sits down again and gazes out. She breathes deeply. She waits to feel the chemistry of tragedy.

Anastasia says Mother thinks Joy is pretty and popular and Anastasia is smart and talented. Joy knows this is what Mother thinks. And Anastasia said Mother had made her believe that she was ugly, and Joy that she was stupid. And she said it wasn't true, that Joy was really smart. Anastasia was mad at Mother for making them think that. But Joy feels that Anastasia was mad at Mother for making her feel ugly, but not for making Joy think she was stupid because Anastasia thinks Joy is stupid too. She just had to say that to be polite.

Joy wishes Mother would tell
her
she is pretty. It would make her feel better even if she didn't believe it. It would make her feel…oh…happy. But Mother has never said anything like that to Joy. And Joy can't ask her directly she'd be too embarrassed what would she say, “Mommy, do you think I'm pretty?” Then Mother might say something that would make Joy feel terrible like that time Joy came home from Linda's house when they were in the fifth grade and they had been fooling around with their hair and Linda did Joy's hair in a pompadour just like the big girls' and Joy thought it was beautiful and couldn't help crying out to Mother, “Doesn't my hair look great?” She knew Mother wouldn't let her keep it like that it was too grown up but Mother just looked at it and turned her mouth down a little and said it looked cheap. Or the time she and Anastasia were playing Chinese checkers and she won and she cried out and told Mommy and Daddy, and Daddy said she was making it up, because she could never beat Anastasia. Or the time Mother acted as if Joy was…something awful…because she loved to play with Cetta, and Cetta's nose was always running. Undiscriminating. Yes. Or the time she looked at Joy and shook her head and said in that awful voice, “Always running, always out, you're just like Mrs. Dabrowski!” Joy didn't remember Mrs. Dabrowski but she understood it was not good to be like her.

Still sometimes Joy just drops a remark like “Kitty is so pretty isn't she?” and waits to hear something maybe she might say “Yes but so are you” or something like that. But she never does. But she never yells at Joy for failing a test either the way Kitty's father does he makes Kitty cry. It is so unfair Kitty can't help it that she isn't smart can she? If you try to understand and you pay attention in class as well as you can and do your homework then you can't help it if you don't get good grades can you? Mother never scolds but she never smiles either. Most of the time it feels as if Mother isn't there at all as if the house is empty even though someone cooks dinner and washes and irons the clothes the way all mothers do but the person wasn't real, it didn't talk. Kitty doesn't have a mother and their maid Sarah does all the work but when we go to Kitty's house after school, Sarah sits on her high stool in the kitchen and gives us Cokes and potato chips and talks to us and laughs. But here it feels empty, as though there's no one home Mother is always up in her room making those hats it feels as if there's no air as if no window was ever opened and the smells of all the old dinners are hanging on the wallpaper and the curtains….

But sometimes when Anastasia lived here she would talk to her sometimes. But she never talks to me or Daddy we are the outsiders. And sometimes I try to talk to Daddy but he doesn't talk to me except to scold me for always saying “You know?” after I say something. But I can't help it. Anastasia used to do it too. Because if you talk and talk to a person and they don't answer, they don't even say Yes, or Um-hm, or anything, you just can't help it, you have to get them to say something, so you say “You know?” to get her to say something. You can never be sure Mother is even listening when you talk, sometimes she is looking far away out the window or out at nothing.

But sometimes she's in a good mood. Some nights if Joy isn't baby-sitting Mother says “How about a game of Chinese checkers?” They are good players Daddy won't play with them. They take turns winning the three of them Mother Anastasia and Joy they play with two sets of marbles each and fly across the board so fast that Penny said when she watched them one time that she couldn't follow their jumps. Mother likes to do the crossword puzzle in the Sunday
Times
too and she asked Joy to do it with her the way Anastasia used to but Joy couldn't do it so Mother doesn't ask her anymore. She knows she disappoints Mother and she wishes she didn't but she can't help it. She loves to play gin rummy she's really lucky at it she always wins really fast just a couple of draws and she has gin so now Mother won't play gin unless Joy is sick. She hasn't been sick in a long time, she's healthy now.

But once in a while Mother sits down on the porch and lights a cigarette and asks Joy a question and Joy knows she wants to talk and if Joy isn't going out she pours herself a Coke and sits down across from Mother. Joy knows she wants to hear about her friends and their mothers and fathers and how they live. Mother seemed happy when Joy told her that Linda's house was as small as theirs but she was impressed that Mrs. Hale can support her three daughters all by herself working as a bookkeeper. She acted like she'd like to be Mrs. Hale even though Mrs. Hale is a widow. Joy sometimes wishes Mother was Mrs. Hale too. Mrs. Hale is fun she laughs and jokes with Linda and Mae even though she's much older than Mommy, she has grey hair. Linda's oldest sister Silvia is grown up and married and lives in Ohio.

But Mother especially loves to hear about Penny's family the Swopes although that isn't Penny's real name Mr. Swope adopted Penny and her brother when he married their mother Penny's brother goes to Princeton he's much older he never even looks at Joy or Linda or Kitty when he's there he has his own car a red convertible but he's really stuck-up. Mother loves to hear about Mrs. Swope's clothes and how they have cocktails every night before dinner and how the maid serves the meal and what they had to eat. She loves it when Joy says that their dinners are not as good as Mother's even though they have a maid
and
a cook. And neither are the dinners at the McArdles', Kitty's family, of course Sarah is all they have. Their dinners are all like the Carpenters' Anastasia always makes fun of the Carpenters' Sunday dinners—one thin slice of London broil Joy didn't know what London broil was and a baked potato and one teaspoonful of canned peas and a salad made of lettuce with a peach half and mayonnaise. Anastasia says it's wasp food, Joy doesn't understand what she means, wasps don't eat do they? Joy is always starving when she eats at the McArdles' at home she gets three lamb chops or pork chops one time she had five they were small and big heaps of vegetables and potatoes and no salad but she doesn't really mind because you don't eat dinner out to eat, you do it to be with people you like and besides, she loves canned peaches and canned fruit salad which they have when they don't have peaches. But she tells Mother how awful their dinners are because she knows it makes her happy and she loves to make Mother happy when she can.