Pieces of Hate (11 page)

Lynda, who was seated in her chair watching television, gasped. It was a long deep-throated gasp of genuine amazement. Margaret spun around once in front of her, smiling, and asked, “What do you think?”

“My God, Margaret, if I were a man I’d have a pup tent in my lap right now!”

“You think so? I tried on nearly every dress in the store, but I — ”

“Oh, you made the right choice, trust me. You’re gorgeous! You look like some femme fatale, like . . . like Michael Douglas should be humping you up against a kitchen sink on the big screen.”

“Oh, stop it, for God’s sake! You’re supposed to compliment me, not disgust me!”

“I didn’t mean to. But I meant that you look like you should be on the big screen. I’m not kidding. You’re beautiful.”

Margaret saw the tears glistening on Lynda’s cheeks as she stared up at Margaret with an expression of awe.

“All those years I told you that you were fat . . . and ugly . . . all those years I made you feel so horrible about yourself. Who would’ve thought . . .”

“Oh, come on, Lynda, don’t cry. Please.”

Margaret went to her, leaned down to embrace her, but Lynda put her hands on Margaret’s shoulders and held her back.

“Don’t mess yourself up,” Lynda whispered. “I’m fine. I’m just feeling . . . some much deserved . . . pain and regret. Stand up. Straight. Don’t you dare mess that dress. I’ll kill you if you do.”

Margaret stood up straight, but reached down and placed a hand on her sister’s cheek, smiling.

Lynda said in a breath, “I was never . . . ever . . . as beautiful as you are right now.”

“That’s the highest compliment I could ever receive,” Margaret said. “’Cause you are one hell of a dish.”

“You’re not wearing underwear, are you?”

“What?” Margaret pulled her hand away and blushed. She wasn’t.

Lynda grinned. “You’re not! But that’s good! No lines, nothing, just that wonderfully smooth and curving figure.”

“Well, that’s why I’m not. I tried, but . . . it didn’t look right.”

“Of course it didn’t. And you can get away with it. I’m telling you, Margaret . . . tonight, you are a sex goddess. Tonight, you’re going to get all the lusty attention and adoration that Marilyn Monroe got for years. So sit back and enjoy every second of it, will you? For me? Please?”

Lynda reached out a hand and Margaret took it. Then Margaret reached down for the other hand, so that she was holding both of them.

“If you want me to be a sex goddess,” Margaret said, “I will. I’ll even sign autographs if anyone asks.”

They both laughed.

Lynda stood and they embraced — “Careful, careful,” Lynda said, “we don’t want to muss you.” — for a long moment, Margaret rubbing her hands slowly over Lynda’s back.

“I’ll come back here afterward,” Margaret said when they separated.

“Visiting hours end at eight o’clock,” Lynda said. “If anyone tries to stop you, feel free to beat the living shit out of them.”

“I promise.” Margaret said, laughing . . .

20

The reunion was being held at the Royal House Hotel. It was the closest Harlie could come to posh. That was not to say it was not a very nice place. In fact, it seemed that the hotel was so conscious of being in a small town that it almost went overboard in trying to make up for it.

A uniformed doorman greeted Margaret and held the door open for her, nodding with a smile as she went inside.

In the lobby, to the right of the entrance, a long table had been set up with two nicely-dressed women sitting behind it. Margaret almost walked by it, until she saw the sign identifying it as REGISTRATION. Then she saw the nametag worn by one of the women behind the table.

HI! I’M AMELIA, the tag read. Amelia Turner, formerly half of The Couple at school, the much-lusted after girl who had taken every opportunity to publicly humiliate Margaret with the help of her quarterback boyfriend, Daryl Cotch. She wasn’t immediately recognizable, though. There was more of her than there used to be. She wasn’t fat, but she had thickened to the point of shapelessness. She looked sturdy, hard . . . but like a tree trunk rather than an athlete. Large glasses rested on her nose. She wore a blue paisley outfit and her blond hair was short and wavy above her thick neck.

The woman beside her didn’t look at all familiar and wasn’t wearing a nametag.

Margaret approached the table, smiling.

“I’d like to register for the reunion,” she said.

Amelia looked up at her pleasantly and slid a nametag and felt marker across the table to Margaret. Her eyes became puzzled even before she spoke. “Well, now, you don’t look familiar.”

Still smiling, Margaret simply leaned forward and printed her name slowly and precisely on the tag. As she did that, Amelia slid the open registration book over the table toward her. Margaret peeled the tag from its backing, stood up straight and pressed it gently to the top of her dress, just over her left breast. Without giving Amelia a chance to read the tag, Margaret plucked the pen from her hand, signed her name in the book, leaving the address and phone number spaces blank, then handed the pen back.

Amelia’s eyes squinted a little through her glasses as she leaned forward, reading the nametag as she handed over a program booklet.

“Margaret?” she said. Her eyes quickly looked Margaret over from top to bottom. “Well, now, I can’t say that I remember a Margaret.” She turned the registry around and read the name. Her head snapped up, eyes wide. Her chin dropped as the pen slipped from her fingers and clattered to the table. “Fuller?” she whispered in unconcealed amazement. Then, louder: “Margaret Fuller?”

Margaret smiled again. “See you at the dinner, Amelia,” she said as she turned and walked away.

Behind her, she could hear Amelia talking to the other woman behind the table, her voice starting in a whisper, then rising in a high, befuddled yammer, only to plunge again to a hissing whisper.

Margaret couldn’t have stopped smiling then if she’d wanted to. She felt somehow taller than when she’d first entered the hotel.

She rounded a corner so she’d be out of sight of Amelia, took a seat on a maroon velvet loveseat beside a drinking fountain, put her purse in her lap and began thumbing through the program. The schedule began with cocktails in the King’s Lounge; that had started twenty minutes ago. After that, a “Reacquaintance Party” in something called the Queen’s Parlor — Margaret thought, Sounds like a gay bar in the Old South — where group and individual photos would be taken. Then, dinner and dancing in the Royal Banquet Hall.

The program booklet was scattered with pictures from old yearbooks: people mugging for the camera, couples caught unawares as they kissed behind the cafeteria, a group of boys throwing one of their own into the pool. Each picture had a caption beneath it, a one-liner that was meant to be clever but came off as tepid.

And then she saw one picture that made her smile fade away and made her stomach twist into a knot.

Margaret looked at herself. Her round face and double chin (with a bright, swollen pimple on the top one) filled the upper right corner of one page. Strings of melted cheese dangled from her mouth to the slice of pizza she’d just bitten into. The caption read, “Dieting to fit into that prom dress!”

Sucking both lips between her teeth, Margaret felt her breath coming in short, staccato bursts, and she knew if she didn’t stop that right away, she would hyperventilate. She also felt the back of her throat burn with tears, which she refused to let out because she didn’t want to spoil her makeup.

Her hands began to tremble as they held the booklet, then shake . . . and then they closed into fists, crumpling the program booklet between them until it was wadded into a ball.

A bathroom. She needed to find a bathroom. She’d get hold of herself, then she’d join the festivities.

As she stood, leaving the crumpled booklet on the loveseat behind her, she muttered under her breath, “Show them what a real fucking diet is . . .”

21

By the time Margaret walked into the King’s Lounge, the cocktail party was well under way. The second she passed through the long, dark entryway into the lounge, she saw a crowd of laughing, talking people, none of them identifiable in the dim, smoke-misted light, but most of them wearing the big, obnoxious nametags on their lapels, shoulders and breast pockets.

At the far end of the lounge, in a corner, a jazz quartet played quietly, barely audible above the din of voices.

As her eyes adjusted to the murky light, Margaret began to look at the laughing, talking, drinking faces around her, moving slowly through the lounge. She went to the bar, got a Bloody Mary, then ambled into the crowd, mingling silently, looking, watching, listening to snatches of conversation.

From behind, Margaret heard a guffawing laugh, and someone slammed into her back. Her Bloody Mary slipped from her hand and splattered over the carpet at her feet.

“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry,” a man said.

She turned to him. He carried a drink in his right hand, and he was enormous, tall with big rounded shoulders, with an enormous belly that his ill-fitting dark suit could not conceal. His face was bloated, red and sweaty; puffy, wrinkled bags formed half-moons beneath his eyes and his hair was slicked back, though it was hard to tell if it was slicked with mousse or perspiration.

When they were facing one another, the man’s eyes moved first over her face, then over her body. “Hey, I’m really sorry.” He glanced down at the spilled drink. “I’ll buy you another one, whatta y’say.”

He’d already had plenty, that was clear. In fact, as he grinned at her, he swayed ever so slightly back and forth. She glanced at his nametag.

HI! I’M DARYL C.

Apparently, his bleary eyes had not yet taken a look at her nametag.

Tucking her purse beneath her left arm, Margaret smiled and said, “I’d like that, thank you.”

“Well, c’mon, then, honey,” he said, taking her elbow in his left hand, a bit too firmly, and leading her through the crowd toward the bar.

On the way, she remembered the things he’d said, the things he’d done . . . in hallways . . . on the steps in front of the school . . . in the gym . . . at dances . . . always with Amelia, the two of them, laughing at her, teasing her, humiliating her . . .

But she’s just so gorgeous, Amelia . . . so sexy . . . I can’t keep my eyes off her. She’s incredible!

“What’ll you have, hon?” he asked, setting his drink on the bar and lighting a cigarette.

“Well, that was a Bloody Mary that I dropped back there.”

“Then a Bloody Mary you’ll have.” He pounded a fist on the bar and ordered the drink, then turned back to her. “Hey, are you with the reun — oh, yeah, you gotta nametag. Margaret? Hmph,” he grunted, looking her over with a frown, as if someone had just asked him a riddle, his mouth twisted into a wriggly line. “I can’t say I remember a Margaret. What’s your last name?”

The drink arrived and he paid for it.

Margaret lifted the drink, took a sip and said, “Well, I can’t say I remember a Daryl, really . . . Oh, no, I take that back. There was one Daryl. But he was a real hunk. Muscular and handsome. A quarterback. You’re pretty chubby.”

His eyes widened and he grinned as he spread his arms as if to embrace her. “Hey, that’s me, sweetheart! Daryl Cotch! The one and only!”

She smiled. “Is that right?” she asked, patting his belly with the back of her hand. “What happened, Daryl?”

“Oh, y’know . . . got married, had a few kids. Settlin’ down’ll do that to ya. But, hey . . . I still got what it takes.”

“Is your wife here?”

“Oh, yeah, she’s around here somewhere,” he muttered with a shrug. “But what about you? I don’t remember you, and believe me I’d remember you!”

“Come on, Daryl, how many Margarets did you know in high school?” she asked as hatred burned in her gut. She was afraid it would explode and vomit out of her mouth all over Daryl’s too-tight suit.

He chuckled, sipped his drink and said, “Well, the only Margaret I knew was this real fat girl who looked like — ”

“Margaret Fuller?”

His eyebrows shot up. “Yeah, that’s the one! You remember her? God she was — ” His face froze as he looked at her, as she smiled at him, as her eyes narrowed.

“Can I bum a cigarette, Daryl?” she asked.

“Uh . . . uh . . . yeah, sure.” He fumbled the pack out of his pocket, gave her one and lit it for her. His hand trembled slightly, possibly from drunkenness . . . possibly from recognition. “You wouldn’t be Margaret . . . Fuller . . . would you?”

“Yes, Daryl, I would be. I am. How about that, huh?”

“Well, hey, look . . . I didn’t mean that, what I said, about you bein’ . . . well, you know, back in school, you gotta admit, you were pretty hefty. Weren’t you? I mean . . . remember?”

He looked embarrassed, like a little boy caught in a lie.

Margaret just continued to smile as she smoked her cigarette, not turning away when she blew smoke from her mouth. Mixed in with those swirls of smoke were tendrils of hatred that would have strangled the fat pig if they’d had any substance to them.