Smart Women (24 page)

Her mother hadn’t even told her she was going until last Thursday night, while they’d been sitting at the table, finishing their Jell-O. Sara liked to let the Jell-O melt on her tongue. When her mother told her about going to Margo’s overnight she had been so surprised some of it had drooled out of her mouth and had landed on her white sweater. “How come?” Sara had asked. “How come you’re letting me stay there? I thought you said you’d go to court first.” Sara knew she shouldn’t ask her mother questions, that she should just accept it, but she couldn’t help herself.

“If you don’t want to go you don’t have to,” her mother said.

“It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

“The way you keep changing your mind,” Sara said. “I never know what’s going on.”

“Lewis convinced me that since your father didn’t have you for Christmas he should have you one weekend a month.”

“One weekend a month!” Sara said. “That’s nothing.”

“Why aren’t you ever satisfied?” her mother shouted. “Don’t you know what it means to me to let you stay there overnight? Have you any idea? Do you ever think of my feelings . . . because I have feelings too.”

“Yes, Mom. I do try to think of your feelings.”

Her mother stood up and paced the kitchen. Back and forth, back and forth, making a fist with one of her hands and smacking it into the other.

Sara started to feel all tangled up inside. She pushed her dish of Jell-O away and fooled with the crumbs from her Carr’s biscuit.

Her mother whirled around, pointing a finger at her. “Ever since you’ve come back from Florida you’ve been acting like a selfish little bitch. What happened . . . didn’t you have a good time there?”

“It was all right,” Sara said. “I told you when I came back it was all right. There were just other things that I would rather have done over vacation.” Like go to Hawaii, Sara thought. But she didn’t say it.

“Your grandparents would have been very disappointed.”

“All right!” Sara shouted. “So I went, didn’t I? I stayed with them, didn’t I?”

“Go to your room, Sara. And don’t come out until you can control yourself.”

“No! I don’t feel like going to my room.”

“Goddamn it, Sara! Do as I say.”

“You’re the bitch,” Sara muttered, not caring if her mother heard her or not. “Come on, Lucy . . .” she said. Lucy followed her to her room. Sara slammed her bedroom door and flopped on her bed. “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her,” she cried into Lucy’s soft fur.

She knew she shouldn’t argue with her mother. It only made things worse. But sometimes she got so sick of Mom she just felt like letting her have it. Mom was crying and carrying on in the living room, yelling about how she was a good person, how she had always been a good person, had always tried her best, and this is what she got for it. And why had God punished her . . . her of all people . . . why . . . ?

Sara did not want to hear any more so she turned on her clock radio. It was small and white. Her father had given it to her for Christmas. Let her mother act like a nut, she thought. Who cares?

Suddenly Sara heard her mother running down the hall, but before she could figure out what was happening her mother threw open Sara’s bedroom door, grabbed her clock radio, and hurled it across the room.

“Didn’t I tell you to turn it down?” Mom yelled. “What’s the matter with you, Sara . . . are you deaf? I told you at least four times.”

“I didn’t hear you,” Sara said, jumping off her bed.

“Of course you didn’t! How could you possibly hear me with that thing blasting? Blasting and making my head feel as if it’s splitting in two?”

Sara ran across the room and picked up her clock radio. Its case had cracked. “You broke it!” she cried. “You broke my new clock radio. I hate you! You shouldn’t be a mother!”

Her mother turned and left the room and in a minute Sara heard the front door slam, then the car start, and the tires screech. She ran to the living room window in time to see her mother’s car racing down the street.

She felt dizzy then and sat on the piano bench, lowering her head between her legs. That’s what you were supposed to do when you felt dizzy, to keep from fainting. Grandma Broder was always doing it. Her mother shouldn’t be driving, she thought. You weren’t supposed to drive when you were upset. You were much more likely to have an accident.

Sara waited half an hour. She pictured her mother’s car smashing into a tree. Mom’s head would have gone through the windshield of the car and would be covered with blood. Her eyes would be open, staring straight ahead, which meant that she was dead. Sara started to shiver. She went to the phone in the kitchen and dialed Clare’s number, which was posted there for emergencies.

Clare answered.

“Hello . . . this is Sara. My mother’s not home and I wondered if maybe she’s at your house, or else, if you know where she is.”

“I haven’t seen her,” Clare said. “Didn’t she tell you where she was going?”

“No . . . see, we had a little disagreement and then she left and . . .”

“How long has she been gone?” Clare asked.

“About half an hour.”

“Are you all right, Sara? Should I come over?”

“That’s okay,” Sara said. “You don’t have to.”

“I think I will,” Clare said. “I’ll be right there.”

“Well, if you really want to.”

O
N
F
RIDAY AFTERNOON
her father had picked her up after school and brought her over to Margo’s house. Sara had found out from Clare that Mom was meeting Lewis in Colorado Springs for the weekend. So that was why she had decided to let Sara go to stay with her father. Why hadn’t Mom just told her the truth? Sara wondered if Lewis knew about her mother, about how she sometimes acted crazy.

Sara felt funny going to Margo’s house, even though her father lived there now. Stuart and Michelle were out of town for the weekend, at a ski race, and Sara was glad. She knew Michelle didn’t like her, would never like her, and that there was nothing she could do about it. Well, she didn’t like Michelle either, so they were even. She didn’t want to sleep in Michelle’s room, but she had no choice.

Margo said, “This will be your room for the weekend. If you need anything just ask . . . okay?”

Sara would rather have stayed in Stuart’s room. Stuart reminded her of Bobby, of what it might be like if she still had an older brother. She wished she had brought Lucy with her. Lucy would have helped her feel more at home, but Mom had said absolutely not and she’d hired a dog sitter for the weekend.

Michelle’s room was filled with plants and posters. Sara was not allowed to tape posters to her wall. Her mother thought posters were tacky. Michelle’s bed was covered with a brightly striped quilt. Sara lay down on it. The mattress was very hard. She looked up at the ceiling and counted the beams. There were seven of them. After a few minutes she got off the bed and opened her knapsack. There was no point in unpacking since she was just staying two nights, although Margo said she’d emptied a dresser drawer for her. Sara pulled a book out of her knapsack and lay down on the bed again. She tried to read, but she couldn’t concentrate. She put the book down and crossed the room to Michelle’s dresser. She opened one drawer at a time, poking around. Everything in Michelle’s drawers was folded and stacked. Sara was surprised. She’d figured Michelle would be a slob. Only her socks were tossed into one drawer and weren’t in pairs.

Sara found Michelle’s diary under a pile of sweaters. She wanted to read it, but she was too scared. Probably Michelle was the kind who kept strands of hair in her diary so that she’d know if anyone ever tried to open it. Sara could not take that kind of chance. She put it back exactly where she’d found it. Then she tried on a couple of Michelle’s sweaters. There was one she especially liked, a fuzzy blue one with a V neck.

She went through the bathroom cabinet too. You could find out a lot about a person by doing that. She’d done the same thing at her grandparents’ apartments. But they’d had zillions of bottles of pills and Michelle had only one.
Michelle Sampson: one tablet twice a day for stomach cramps.
So, Michelle got stomach cramps too, Sara thought. Now that was interesting. Sara pictured Michelle sitting on the toilet, doubled over, with tears in her eyes from the pain, feeling as if her insides were about to come out.

Sara put the pills back into the cabinet and continued to look around. Michelle used Secret deodorant, washed her hair with Sassoon Salon Formula shampoo, and had a box of Tampax Regular. Sara hadn’t started her period yet, but when she did she was going to use Tampax brand tampons too.

Sara had a weird feeling the whole time she was at Margo’s house. She knew that Margo was trying to be nice, trying to make her feel welcome, but still, there was something about being there that made her uneasy. Maybe it was knowing that her father slept in Margo’s room. In Margo’s bed. Knowing that they did it. That they fucked. She didn’t like to think about them doing that, but sometimes she couldn’t help herself and then she’d get this funny feeling down there, between her legs, like an itch, and she’d have to rub and rub until the itch went away.

On Saturday afternoon she and Daddy took a drive to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Everyone who came to Boulder wanted to see it. It was on Table Mesa and the view was spectacular—that’s how the guidebooks put it. But Sara wasn’t as interested in the view as she was in the deer who browsed beside the road.

On the way back to town Daddy said, “Is everything all right at home, Sara?”

“What do you mean?” Sara asked.

“Are you getting along okay . . . no problems?”

“What kind of problems?” Sara asked.

“I don’t know . . . any kind.”

Sara knew that her father expected an answer. But she could not tell him the truth. She could not tell him about her clock radio, although she wanted to ask him if he thought the store would give her a new one. She could not tell him without going into the details of how and why it had cracked. And so she said, “Everything’s okay.”

“You’re sure?” he asked.

She nodded.

W
HEN SHE GOT HOME ON
S
UNDAY NIGHT
she was glad she hadn’t said anything, because there, on her bedside table, was a brand-new clock radio, exactly the same, but without a cracked case. It was tied up with a red ribbon and there was a note propped in front of it.

Dear Sara,

I’m so sorry I broke your clock radio. You know it’s not like me to lose my temper that way. It’s just that I had a terrible headache. I hope you will forgive me. I love you, always and forever.

Mom

Sara didn’t know what to say. Her mother was standing in the doorway. “Sweetie . . . will you forgive me?”

“Yes,” Sara said. “But I wish you would just talk it out when you feel that way, instead of screaming and running off in the car and scaring me. You were gone for almost two hours.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that sometimes I need to be by myself, to let it all out. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Yes,” Sara said quietly. But she really meant,
No. No, I can’t take any more of this.
She pictured her mother’s cleaver, the one she was never supposed to touch, and the way it could split a chicken breast in half just like that—thwack—with one solid movement. That’s what her parents were doing to her.

28

M
ICHELLE RETURNED HOME
from the first ski race of the season with two blue toes. She had been skiing for years, but she had never raced. Stuart convinced her to go out for the team this year, but she had known from the moment it began to snow that she was going to regret it.

She’d been sitting up front in the school van, a wad of Doublemint in her mouth, praying she would not get carsick. The coach was driving and Michelle was sure that he could not see more than six inches in front of him.

She heard Stuart’s voice from the back of the van. She heard Puffin giggling. The van skidded. If they crashed and Stuart got out before the gas tank exploded, engulfing the rest of them in flames, which one would he try to save, Puffin or her? Probably Puffin. He loved her. He had shouted about his love for her over the holidays. He had shouted it across Freddy and Aliza’s pale gray living room. “Goddamn it, Dad, I love Puffin!” He had shouted it in the midst of a monumental blowup because Freddy would not let Puffin, who was flying to New York, stay at his apartment over New Year’s weekend.

“You’ll have a million more girlfriends before you finally settle down,” Freddy had told Stuart.

“You don’t understand, do you?” Stuart had yelled. “You don’t understand that Puffin and I have a serious relationship and I will not . . . repeat, will not . . . have you acting as if it’s some kind of puppy love.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Stu,” Freddy had said, “but I don’t like it.”

I
F THE COACH DIDN’T SLOW DOWN
none of them were going to have to worry about love, puppy or otherwise. Kristen, the girl squeezed between Michelle and the coach, was dozing and her head wobbled, finally landing on Michelle’s shoulder. Michelle inched away. She wished she were home on her bed, reading a Stephen King novel.