The Girls (5 page)

“I think I saw you the other day,” I said. “By the Hi-Ho?”

She didn't respond, giving me nothing to grab on to.

“You were with some girls?” I said. “And a bus came?”

“Oh,” she said, her face reanimating. “Yeah, that idiot was real mad.” She relaxed into the memory. “I have to keep the other girls in line, you know, or they'd just fall all over themselves. Get us caught.” I was watching Suzanne with an interest that must have been obvious: she let me look at her without any self-consciousness.

“I remembered your hair,” I said.

Suzanne seemed pleased. Touching the ends, absently. “I never cut it.”

I would find out, later, that this was something Russell told them not to do.

Suzanne nestled the toilet paper to her chest, suddenly proud. “You want me to give you some money for this?”

She had no pockets, no purse.

“Nah,” I said. “It's not like it cost me anything.”

“Well, thanks,” she said, with obvious relief. “You live around here?”

“Pretty close,” I said. “With my mom.”

Suzanne nodded. “What street?”

“Morning Star Lane.”

She made a hum of surprise. “Fancy.”

I could see it meant something to her, me living in the nice part of town, but I couldn't imagine what, beyond the vague dislike for the rich that all young people had. Mashing up the wealthy and the media and the government into an indistinct vessel of evil, perpetrators of the grand hoax. I was only just starting to learn how to rig certain information with apology. How to mock myself before other people could.

“What about you?”

She made a fluttery motion with her fingers. “Oh,” she said, “you know. We've got some things going on. But a lot of people in one place”—she held up the bag—“means a lot of asses that need wiping. We're low on money, at this exact moment, but that'll turn, soon, I'm sure.”

We.
The girl was part of a
we,
and I envied her ease, her surety of where she was aimed after the parking lot. Those two other girls I'd seen with her in the park, whoever else she lived with. People who'd notice her absence and exclaim at her return.

“You're quiet,” Suzanne said after a moment.

“Sorry.” I willed myself not to scratch my mosquito bites, though my skin was twisting with itchiness. I reeled for conversation, but all the possibilities that appeared were the things I couldn't say. I should not tell her how often and idly I had thought of her since that day. I should not tell her I had no friends, that I was being shunted to boarding school, that perpetual municipality of unwanted children. That I was not even a blip to Peter.

“It's cool.” She waved her hand. “People are the way they are, you know? I could tell when I saw you,” she continued. “You're a thoughtful person. On your own trip, all caught up in your mind.”

I was not used to this kind of unmediated attention. Especially from a girl. Usually it was only a way of apologizing for being zeroed in on whatever boy was around. I let myself imagine I was a girl people saw as thoughtful. Suzanne shifted: I could tell this was a prelude to departure, but I couldn't think of how to extend our exchange.

“Well,” she said. “That's me over there.” She nodded to a car parked in the shade. It was a Rolls-Royce, shrouded in dirt. When she saw my confusion, she smiled.

“We're borrowing it,” she said. As if that explained everything.

I watched her walk away without trying to stop her. I didn't want to be greedy: I should be happy I had gotten anything at all.

My mother was dating again. First, a man who introduced himself as Vismaya and kept massaging my mother's scalp with his clawed fingers. Who told me that my birthday, on the cusp of Aquarius and Pisces, meant my two phrases were “I believe” and “I know.”

“Which is it?” Vismaya asked me. “Do you believe you know, or do you know you believe?”

Next, a man who flew small silver planes and told me that my nipples were showing through my shirt. He said it plainly, as if this were helpful information. He made pastel portraits of Native Americans and wanted my mother to help open a museum of his work in Arizona. Next, a real estate developer from Tiburon who took us out for Chinese food. He kept encouraging me to meet his daughter. Repeating again and again how sure he was that we'd get along like a house on fire. His daughter was eleven, I came to realize. Connie would have laughed, dissecting the way the man's teeth gummed up with rice, but I hadn't spoken to her since the day at her house.

“I'm fourteen,” I said. The man looked to my mother, who nodded.

“Of course,” he said, a tang of soy sauce on his breath. “I see now you're practically a grown-up.”

“I'm sorry,” my mother mouthed across the table, but when the man turned to feed her a slimy-looking snow pea from his fork, she opened her mouth obediently, like a bird.

The pity I felt for my mother in these situations was new and uncomfortable, but also I sensed that I deserved to carry it around—a grim and private responsibility, like a medical condition.

There had been a cocktail party my parents had thrown, the year before the divorce. It was my father's idea—until he left, my mother wasn't social, and I could sense a deep agitation in her during parties or events, a heave of discomfort she willed into a stiff smile. It had been a party to celebrate the investor my father had found. It was the first time, I think, that he'd gotten money from someone other than my mother, and he got even bigger in the heat of that, drinking before the guests arrived. His hair saturated with the dense fatherly scent of Vitalis, his breath notched with liquor.

My mother had made Chinese ribs with ketchup and they had a glandular sheen, like a lacquer. Olives from a can, buttered nuts. Cheese straws. Some sludgy dessert made from mandarin oranges, a recipe she'd seen in
McCall's.
She asked me before the guests arrived if she looked all right. Smoothing her damask skirt. I remember being taken aback by the question.

“Very nice,” I said, feeling strangely unsettled. I'd been allowed some sherry in a cut pink glass: I liked the rotted pucker and snuck another glass.

The guests were my father's friends, mostly, and I was surprised at the breadth of his other life, a life I saw only from the perimeter. Because here were people who seemed to know him, to hold a vision of him informed by lunches and visits to Golden Gate Fields and discussions of Sandy Koufax. My mother hovered nervously around the buffet: she'd put out chopsticks, but no one was using them, and I could tell this disappointed her. She tried to urge them on a heavyset man and his wife, and they shook their heads, the man making some joke I couldn't hear. I saw something desperate pass over my mother's face. She was drinking, too. It was the kind of party where everyone was drunk early, a communal haze slurring over conversation. Earlier, one of my father's friends had lit a joint, and I saw my mother's expression downshift from disapproval to patient indulgence. Certain lines were getting dim. Wives staring up at the pass of an airplane, arcing toward SFO. Someone dropped a glass in the pool. I saw it drift slowly to the bottom. Maybe it was an ashtray.

I floated around the party, feeling like a much younger child, that desire for invisibility coupled with a wish to participate in an adjacent way. I was happy enough to point out the bathroom when asked, to parcel into a napkin buttered nuts that I ate by the pool, one by one, their salty grit fleecing my fingers. The freedom of being so young that no one expected anything from me.

I hadn't seen Tamar since the day she'd dropped me off after school, and I remember feeling disappointed when she arrived—I'd have to act like a grown-up now that she was there as witness. She had a man with her, slightly older. She introduced him around, kissing someone on the cheek, shaking hands. Everyone seemed to know her. I was jealous of how Tamar's boyfriend rested his hand on her back while she spoke, on the sliver of skin between her skirt and top. I wanted her to see that I was drinking: I made my way to the bar table when she did, pouring myself another glass of sherry.

“I like your outfit,” I said, pushed to speak by the burn in my chest. She had her back to me and didn't hear. I repeated myself and she startled.

“Evie,” she said, pleasantly enough. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” I felt foolish, blunt in my shift dress. Her outfit was bright and new looking, wavy diamonds in violet and green and red.

“Fun party,” she said, her eyes scanning the crowd.

Before I could think of a rejoinder, some crack to show that I knew the tiki torches were stupid, my mother joined us. I quickly put my glass back on the table. Hating the way I felt: all my comfort before Tamar's arrival had transformed into painful awareness of every object in my house, every detail of my parents, as if I were responsible for all of it. I was embarrassed for my mother's full skirt, which seemed outdated next to Tamar's clothes, for the eager way my mother greeted her. Her neck getting blotchy with nerves. I slunk away while they were distracted with their polite chatter.

Queasy and sunbaked with discomfort, I wanted to sit in one place without having to talk to anyone, without having to track Tamar's gaze or see my mother using her chopsticks, announcing gaily that it wasn't so hard, even as a mandarin orange slithered back onto her plate. I wished Connie were there—we were still friends then. My spot by the pool had been occupied by a gossipy scrum of wives: from across the yard, I heard my father's booming laugh, the group surrounding him laughing as well. I pulled my dress down, awkwardly, missing the weight of a glass in my hands. Tamar's boyfriend was standing nearby, eating ribs.

“You're Carl's daughter,” he said, “right?”

I remember thinking it was strange that he and Tamar had floated apart, that he was just standing by himself, powering through his plate. It was strange that he would even want to talk to me. I nodded.

“Nice house,” he said, his mouth full. Lips bright and wet from the ribs. He was handsome, I saw, but there was something cartoonish about him, the upturn of his nose. The extra ruff of skin under his chin. “So much land,” he added.

“It was my grandparents' house.”

His eyes shifted. “I heard about her,” he said. “Your grandmother. I used to watch her when I was little.” I didn't realize how drunk he was until that moment. His tongue lingering in the corner of his mouth. “That episode where she finds the alligator in the fountain. Classic.”

I was used to people speaking of my grandmother fondly. How they liked to perform their admiration, tell me that they'd grown up with her on their television screens, beamed into their living rooms like another, better, family member.

“Makes sense,” the boyfriend said, looking around. “That this was her place. 'Cause your old man couldn't afford it, no way.”

I understood that he was insulting my father.

“It's just strange,” he said, wiping his lips with his hand. “What your mother puts up with.”

My face must have been blank: he waggled his fingers in the direction of Tamar, still at the bar. My father had joined her. My mother was nowhere in sight. Tamar's bracelets were making noise as she waved her glass. She and my father were just talking. Nothing was happening. I didn't get why her boyfriend was smiling so rabidly, waiting for me to say something.

“Your father fucks anything he can,” he said.

“Can I take your plate?” I asked, too stunned to flinch. That was something I'd learned from my mother: revert to politeness. Cut pain with a gesture of civility. Like Jackie Kennedy. It was a virtue to that generation, an ability to divert discomfort, tamp it down with ceremony. But it was out of fashion now, and I saw something like disdain in his eyes when he handed me his plate. Though maybe that is something I imagined.

The party ended after dark. A few of the tiki torches stayed lit, sending their bleary flames streaking into the navy night. The vivid oversize cars lumbering down the driveway, my father calling out goodbyes while my mother stacked napkins and brushed olive pits, washed in other people's saliva, into her open palm. My father restarted the record; I looked out my bedroom window and saw him trying to get my mother to dance. “I'll be looking at the moon,” he sang, the moon's far-off face the focus of so much longing back then.

I knew I should hate my father. But I only felt foolish. Embarrassed—not for him, but for my mother. Smoothing her full skirt, asking me how she looked. The way she sometimes had flecks of food in her teeth and blushed when I told her so. The times she stood at the window when my father was late coming home, trying to decode new meaning out of the empty driveway.

She must know what was going on—she had to have known—but she wanted him anyway. Like Connie, jumping for the beer knowing she would look stupid. Even Tamar's boyfriend, eating with his frantic, bottomless need. Chewing faster than he could swallow. He knew how your hunger could expose you.

The drunk was wearing off. I was sleepy and hollow, cast uncomfortably back to myself. I had scorn for everything: my room with my childhood leftovers, the trim of lace around my desk. The plastic record player with a chunky Bakelite handle, a wet-looking beanbag chair that stuck to the backs of my legs. The party with its eager hors d'oeuvres, the men wearing aloha shirts in a sartorial clamor for festivity. It all seemed to add up to an explanation for why my father would want something else. I imagined Tamar with her throat circled by a ribbon, lying on some carpet in some too-small Palo Alto apartment. My father there—watching her? sitting in a chair? The perverse voltage of Tamar's pink lipstick. I tried to hate her but couldn't. I couldn't even hate my father. The only person left was my mother, who'd let it happen, who'd been as soft and malleable as dough. Handing money over, cooking dinner every night, and no wonder my father had wanted something else—Tamar's outsize opinions, her life like a TV show about summer.

It was a time when I imagined getting married in a simple, wishful way. The time when someone promised to take care of you, promised they would notice if you were sad, or tired, or hated food that tasted like the chill of the refrigerator. Who promised their lives would run parallel to yours. My mother must have known and stayed anyway, and what did that mean about love? It was never going to be safe—all the mournful refrains of songs that despaired
you didn't love me the way I loved you.

The most frightening thing: It was impossible to detect the source, the instant when things changed. The sight of a woman's back in her low dress mingled with the knowledge of the wife in another room.

When the music stopped, I knew my mother would come say good night. It was a moment I'd been dreading—having to notice how her curls had wilted, the haze of lipstick around her mouth. When she knocked, I thought about pretending to be asleep. But my light was on: the door edged open.

She grimaced a little. “You're still all dressed.”

I would've ignored her or made some joke, but I didn't want to cause her any pain. Not then. I sat up.

“That was nice, wasn't it?” she said. She leaned against the door frame. “The ribs came out good, I thought.”

Maybe I genuinely thought my mother would want to know. Or maybe I wanted to be soothed by her, for her to offer a calming adult summary.

I cleared my throat. “Something happened.”

I felt her tense in the doorway.

“Oh?”

Later I cringed, thinking of it. She must have already known what was coming. Must have willed me to be quiet.

“Dad was talking.” I turned back to my shoes, working intently at the buckle. “With Tamar.”

She let out a breath. “And?” She was smiling a little. An untroubled smile.

I was confused: she must know what I meant. “That's all,” I said.

My mother looked at the wall. “That dessert was the one thing,” she said. “Next time I would do macaroons instead, coconut macaroons. Those mandarins were too hard to eat.”

I was silent, shock making me wary. I slipped off my shoes and put them under my bed, side by side. I murmured good night, tilted my head to receive her kiss.

“You want me to turn off the light?” my mother asked, pausing in the doorway.

I shook my head. She shut the door gently. How conscientious she was, turning the handle so it clicked shut. I stared at my red feet, marked by the outline of my shoes. Thought about how strangled and strange they looked, all out of proportion, and who would ever love someone whose feet could look like this?

My mother spoke of the men she dated, after my father, with the desperate optimism of the born-again. And I saw the devout labor it took: she did exercises on a bath towel in the living room, her leotard striped with sweat. Licked her palm and sniffed to test her own breath. She went out with men whose necks raised boils where they cut themselves shaving, men who fumbled for the check but looked grateful when my mother removed her Air Travel Card. She found men like this and seemed happy about it.

I'd imagine Peter, during our dinners with these men. Asleep with Pamela in a basement apartment in an unfamiliar Oregon town. Jealousy mingled strangely with a protectiveness for the two of them, for the child growing inside Pamela. There were only so many girls, I understood, that could be marked for love. Like that girl Suzanne, who commanded that response just by existing.