Spectacle (A Young Adult Novel) (25 page)

“Hey, Bean. I mean, Emily. I just wanted to say Merry Christmas. I, uh, I can’t believe … um, scratch that. I hope you’re having a good day, that’s all. I’m skiing with my folks. So, you know, Merry Christmas.”

She sucked in her cheeks and frantically jiggled one knee over the worn plaid chair in Bisbee, Arizona.
Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.

After a few minutes, she inhaled and dialed Melissa’s cell.

Melissa picked up on the second ring.

“I’m here,” Emily said quietly.

“Where’s here? The airport? Your hostel? Your mother’s?”

“Yeah, Marilyn’s.”

“Wow,” Melissa said. “Wow. So, is it okay?”

“Mostly, I guess.” Emily couldn’t admit, right then, that traveling to see a woman who’d already proven to be an apathetic, selfish, old burr oak was not the most logical or rewarding thing to do on Christmas Eve.

“Mostly,” Melissa echoed.

“Well, I mean, things never turn out how you fantasize they will.” Emily picked at a loose piece of rubber on her sneaker. “How’s dad taking it?”

“Oh, not well. Didn’t you get his messages?”

“I haven’t listened to them.”

“We knew how he’d react, right? So, he’s living up to our expectations. He’ll get over it.”

“Melissa?” Emily said. “Thank you. I mean, like, thank you so much for going to bat for me and helping me do this. However things go with Marilyn, I needed to come here and you knew that, and I couldn’t have done it without you.” She stopped before her voice caught. Her emotions were all over the place.

“I know, honey. I know.”

Emily wondered if she loved Melissa. She thought she might. She knew she could. Melissa, young, pretty Melissa, had chosen to parent her and Kristen. And, yeah, maybe they were fulfilling some mommy fantasy for Melissa, but who cared? It was working.

“Thank you,” Emily said again.

“Okay, you need to stop thanking me now or I’m going to bawl.”

“Me too.” Emily laughed and wiped at a hot tear that had spilled down her cheek.

“So, are you staying there?”

“Just for dinner. Duck. I’m sleeping at the hostel. They’re being polite, letting me eat with them. But they don’t want me here.”

“They don’t know you well enough then. They’ll learn how delightful you are.”

“Oh, stop. All right, I guess I should go. Merry merry,” Emily said. “Tell Dad and Kristen that, too.”

“I will. Call me tonight from the hostel, okay? Or better yet, call your dad’s cell. I think it’ll help.”

Ugh. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to her seething father. But she knew Melissa was right. “I guess,” she said.

“Seriously, Em. Promise you’ll call your dad tonight. He needs to hear from you. It’ll make it easier on all of us.”

“All right. I promise.”

“Good. Thank you.”

And they signed off.

Emily texted Thomas then.
@ Marilyn’s. Den of hostility
.

Thomas texted back right away.
Sorry darlin. Hugs. Xoxo.

Emily was tense, wound up more tightly than a rubber band ball.

To blow off steam, she quietly pulled her camera out of her backpack, dialed down the aperture to let in more light, and began to snap photos of the living room.

She squatted in front of a window and took a photo of the cactus on the sill. She shot the Christmas palm and the dog bed with a chewed up plastic toy next to it. Emily could totally imagine the photos in sepia, forming a sort of bleak collage of her trip to Bisbee.

From the kitchen wafted the smells of meat and spices. Emily’s stomach growled, yet she didn’t want to eat the food there. McDonald’s would be preferable to feeling indebted.

When they sat down to dinner, she closed her eyes and held her hands in her lap while Winslow said a prayer. They had poured her, she noticed, a glass of red wine. She didn’t really like wine, but she took a courteous sip.

“Just a little ’02 Cab Franc,” Winslow explained.

The rich wine that Winslow described as “oaky” coursed down her throat, warming her stomach and making her face flush. It was good. Delicious, in fact. She took another sip.

“There’s a big difference between this and the swill you kids probably guzzle,” he said.

“Oh, well, I don’t normally drink wine. Or drink much at all. But this is really great.”

Marilyn ate silently, her eyes cast down on her meal. Could she be remembering Christmases past? Christmases with Emily and Kristen?

The dog paced around and around them.

Emily ate, trying to ignore her mother’s iciness. (She still couldn’t get used to the fact that the woman who’d given birth to her was just across the table.)

She finished her glass of wine and Winslow refilled it. Twice. By the end of dinner, Emily was seriously buzzed.

Marilyn had asked her exactly two questions during the meal. 1. Did she enjoy school? And 2. What was her favorite subject? Inquiries adults made to be polite, when they had no interest in knowing the real You.

Emily had answered accordingly. 1. It was okay. And 2. English.

The conversation was horribly stilted. Worse, even, than Emily could have imagined.

After a dessert of pumpkin tart, Emily rubbed her uncomfortably full stomach, deciding she’d wait a little while before calling her dad. She knew she was too tipsy right then to contact him. He’d pick up on it and that would set him off like a firecracker.

Winslow guided Marilyn and Emily to the living room where he brought out a bottle of Port and proceeded to fill miniature glasses with the liquid that looked as thick and dark as blood.

When Emily first tasted it, she coughed. It was sickeningly sweet. But Winslow closed his eyes appreciatively while Marilyn sipped and stared into space. The jazzy Christmas music still played.

“So, do you remember spending any holidays with us?” Emily asked, emboldened by the wine and port.

Marilyn looked stricken. She glanced at Winslow, who was serenely sipping. Then, in almost a whisper, she hissed, “Of course I do.”

“But you never miss them? Miss us?”

“I told you,” Marilyn said. “I wasn’t cut out to be a mother.”

“Too bad you didn’t figure that out before becoming one, huh? You could’ve saved us all a lot of grief.”

Marilyn’s mouth opened as if she were about to speak, then closed. Her lips thinned and she gazed into the lit tree.

“Let’s try to get along, ladies,” Winslow intercepted. Extravagantly, he added, “It’s Christmas!”

Fury sizzled across Emily’s skin like a sunburn, but she bit her lips hard to keep from saying another mean thing.

64. Giving It Up

“
I
T’LL FEEL GOOD
,” Jamie said. “I promise.”

The back of the truck was cold, the mattress so thin Trix could feel frigid metal when she shifted her weight. A car rumbled by.

“Duh,” Trix said. He’d been peeling her shirt up toward her shoulders when she uncharacteristically stopped him. “Of course it’ll feel good. That’s what you all say.”

“Because it’s true.” His voice was flinty, almost angry.

“Can’t we just lie here and talk?” She sounded simpering and this disgusted her. Still, to just connect with him, with someone, verbally was what she wanted right then.

“Just snuggle?” he scoffed.

“Yeah, kinda. It’s Christmas,” she said. And she realized, as it came out of her mouth, that she really did care about it, that she missed her pancake dinners and movies with her mom.

Jamie began kissing her again, more insistently this time. He rose up slightly so he arched over her, his hands pinning her wrists to the mattress.

Trix felt herself stirring, her body responding to his. She could do this. It would be nice to lose herself for a while.

In her head, a voice spoke. The voice was a prism: part Emily, part her guidance counselor, part her dad, and part Trix herself:
Don’t give in. It’s not what you want. Not really.

How do you know?

Because you’ll never love yourself until you stop giving it up to any boy who wants your body.

Shut up.

Please?

Shut up.

Jamie pressed his pelvis into hers and started grinding.

Wanting her body wasn’t the same as wanting her, she knew that. So why did she pretend it was?

“Take off your jeans,” Jamie murmured.

65. Not The Mother She Would Have Chosen

E
MILY COULD’VE KEPT
it together if Winslow hadn’t said, “You should be nice to your mother. She gave birth to you, after all. She gave you life.”

Emily started to cry. Why had she thought a surprise visit to Marilyn would be a good idea? She’d rather have kept the fantasy that her mother was a shiny fashion model retired to the south of France or even a strung out drug addict in the city.

Tears coursing down her cheeks, Emily looked at Marilyn, really looked at her frizzy, long hair, gaunt face, the silver and turquoise earrings, the lack of concern in her eyes. She knew her visit had been a mistake. Or, if you took it another way, a wake-up call. Maybe that was good?

She stood, swaying, and said, “I’ll just get my bag and go. I’ll leave you alone. Thank you for dinner. Thank you for … my life. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

Neither Winslow nor Marilyn protested. They watched her over their glasses of port, the stupid, jazzy Christmas music still playing.

“Shall we call you a cab?” Winslow asked.

“I can walk,” Emily grabbed her backpack and camera bag, fumbled with the doorknob, and burst out of the little, stucco house.

She couldn’t help herself as she wobbled away—she looked back. She looked back hoping for a glimpse of her mother in the window, her hand to the glass, her eyes full. But all she saw was the palm plant dotted with white lights.

The night was cool and very dark. She wished she’d thought to pack a flashlight. Luckily, she had a decent sense of direction and, even drunkish, thought she could find her way to the hostel.

66. Escape

“C
’MON,”
J
AMIE PRODDED
, his fingers working Trix’s jeans button.

Then, without thinking, without a single conscious thought directing her, Trix slapped his hand away.

She sat and tugged down the hem of her shirt. She crawled toward the closed tailgate and started banging at it.

“Hey! What the hell?”

“Let me out!”

“What? Why? Jesus!”

She kicked until the door of the cap popped open. She climbed over the cold metal tailgate and started to run.

“Seriously?” he bellowed. “Dicktease!”

She didn’t care what he said. She didn’t care. She ran on her high-heeled boots through the mist, the sailboats still sloshing and clanking. She had no idea how she’d get to her mom’s or her dad’s or wherever she was supposed to call home.

The wind felt good on her face. Her breath was hot and cold in her lungs. She wanted to laugh and suddenly she did, huge peals ripping through her. Her exhalations and low cackling filled the night.

She’d done it. She’d gotten away without giving in. And, though she didn’t know how she’d get back to her dad’s duplex other than on her own two feet, she felt free. Different from the pseudofreedom she’d claimed earlier. Free like she could make her own decisions about her body for once, like she wasn’t shackled to her slutty identity.

Trix knew what it felt like now to turn a boy down. She’d do it again. And again after that until she found someone smart and kind who cared about her as much as she cared about him.

That night she walked three-and-a-half miles in her high heels and slept at her dad’s with just David the cat for company. In the morning, Christmas morning, she made herself a pot of coffee from good beans she’d been saving and scrambled two eggs. She didn’t have any presents to open and, though that was admittedly a little painful, she felt better than she had in a long time. She tried to consider her new freedom a gift in itself. Waking that day and feeling not exactly pure, but clean and hopeful, was a great thing.

She sat down with her sketchbook and, while David twirled around her legs at the rickety table, which was really a card table with an old sheet tossed over it, drew an angular model wearing a short shirt and long, flowy jacket with bell sleeves. Working her way down to a pair of stacked heel boots, she realized the apartment was dead quiet and got up to turn on the radio.

Jingle Bells
quavered through the speakers. Trix went to change the station, then thought,
Oh, why not?
She could handle a few Christmas carols.

As she turned to go back to the table, she saw something tucked against the second-hand entertainment center that hadn’t been there before. It was a white plastic bag taped closed. On top sat a crushed blue bow.

She went over to it, looking for clues as to what was inside. Finally, she just decided to open it.

Trix peeled the bag away and gasped.

It was a sewing machine. Not the used model she’d had her eye on, but one that looked brand new with 60 stitch functions and three different presser feet. She scrabbled at the box, yanking it open, removing the protective Styrofoam and gazing at the gleaming plastic machine.

Just then, her crappy cell phone rang.

She didn’t recognize the number, but answered anyway. The first thing she heard was the rush of traffic. Or a river.

“Merry Christmas, babe!” her dad said.

“Hey, Dad, you too.” Trix could hear the smile in her voice. “Where are you?”

“At a pay phone in Colville. What about you?”

“At home.” And she realized that, even though she had no bedroom of her own at her dad’s duplex, this was her home for now, at least until she graduated. “So, I just found a bag with a sewing machine inside.”

Her dad laughed, a hearty chuckle she didn’t hear from him often. “That’s why I’m calling. I didn’t have time to write out a gift tag or what have you.”