Читать книгу Fake it so Real - Susan Sanford Blades - Страница 8

Sally called the day Madame Robertson gave a slide show on the Impressionists in French class. At Monet’s Water Lilies, Sally raised her hand.

Weren’t we supposed to have a quiz on imparfait today?

Alisha Fletcher coned her hands against her lips and chanted, Saaaaaa-llyyyyyy.

Then Trevor Blackburn sang, Sally Sally bo-bally she likes to keep the tally.

Trevor Blackburn was on the cusp of popularity. He wore mismatched socks and his forehead was dusted with just enough acne to make him approachable. He treated me like a kid sister, which meant he either wanted to kiss me or copy my homework. It was crucial I laugh at all his jokes in order to push him toward the former. But when I laughed, everyone laughed and I kicked it up a notch so it would seem perfectly acceptable to toss my head back and brush my hair across his fingertips on the desk behind mine. Sally looked as though she’d witnessed Madame Robertson pick All-Bran out of her teeth. An Oh, the humanity! sort of look.

When I answered the phone, without even saying hello back, Sally said, Why did you laugh at me?

Why did you bring up the quiz?

I studied all night.

So? Nobody else did.

I didn’t think of that.

It was selfish, is all.

I didn’t see what the Impressionists had to do with French class.

They were French.

They weren’t verbs.

You don’t interrupt a slide show. So not cool.

Are we still friends, Meg?

Why wouldn’t we be?

You never talk to me at school.

You’re always playing with soccer balls at lunch.

I guess. Alisha Fletcher must be nice.

She’s fun.

Sally paused long enough for me to wonder if she was crying or choking or distracted by Wheel of Fortune.

You want to sleep over Saturday?

’Course, Sally. Yeah. Sure.

I hung up the phone to find Mom at the kitchen table, sucking peanut butter on Wonder Bread from her molars.

Was that Sally?

Uh-huh. I’m sleeping over at her place Saturday.

Good.

I was twelve years old, the age at which Mom needed only to say one word to enrage me. By good, she meant as long as I slept on an air mattress in Sally’s bedroom I would remain in the safe, unalterable past. To Mom, Sally meant sweatpants and dolls and lemonade stands. If I hung out with my new friends from middle school I might wear eyeliner and ultra-low-rise jeans and go to night dances in the gymnasium. I might become popular like my sister Sara. Popular girls got into trouble. They skipped class and dated boys and had sex and abortions. They talked back to Mom and stopped getting the groceries for her. And when they did get the groceries they spent the milk money on Rolling Stone and the Hamburger Helper money on blue hair dye. When it was time to take Mom to her bank appointment, they said, I’m watching Buffy. Popular girls stared at the TV screen and said, Meg can take you to your appointment. Meg does nothing but play dolls. Let Meg take you for a change. And while Mom groped at the doorknob and said, Meg’s never done it, Meg doesn’t know what to say to the bus driver, Meg’s not old enough for this, popular girls stood up as though they were going to relent or hug her, but they grabbed her by the shoulders and said, I. Can’t. Hear. My. Show.

Mom licked peanut butter from her fingertips. You two used to be inseparable, she said.

I guess.

Used to dance to the Spice Girls in your underwear on the balcony, remember?

Yup.

Guess you won’t be doing that on Saturday.

Mom stared at her fingertips, pressed them into one another and apart as though nostalgic for the peanut butter that once united them. Nothing was ever so good for Mom as the moment before. She was a constant reminder of the passage of time. Sally and I had grown up, we were different. Life would never again be as simple as it was when we hollered “Wannabe” in our panties to passersby. Those passersby had become real people who saw, judged and possibly praised what I did. My inventory of acceptable actions was diminishing. I would not have another moment of unselfconscious fun. This information should have been percolated to me through people I could later discount: Sex Ed. teachers, team captains, boys on skateboards.

That Saturday, Sally stood in the threshold of her home, a vulgar relapse into childhood. Spice Girls T-shirt worn in earnest, not irony, blonde hair as straight and untouched as when she was six. She hugged me and I smelled her skin, sweet and warm like jam on toast. A chunk of my mascara smudged onto her cheek and she wiped it with her fingertip.

You do have fuller lashes, she mumbled.

It’s cry-proof too.

Handy.

Sally’s house was a relic from our shared childhood. Same spill-resistant, vacuum-tracked carpet. Same wall of gold-marbled mirrors in the living room. Same momish mom. Same jar of cookies. Real, melt-in-your-mouth homemade cookies.

You girls want a snack?

Sally’s mom leaned out of the kitchen, all ten fingertips wedged into her jeans pockets. She tried to push them in farther, but gave up when she hit the soft wall of flesh I’d once heard Sara refer to as a gunt. There were no visible bones on Sally’s mom, the way a mom should be. She was the cushion between us and the awful world I knew I would eventually become, but in a grotesque alternate universe in which I was old and undesirable. Sally told her mom we weren’t hungry, but I would’ve killed for one of her cookies. Sally grabbed for my hand and led me down the hall to her room.

What should we do? Sally said.

Alisha Fletcher never asked what we should do. She said we’re going to the mall. We’re trying on jewellery at Claire’s. We’re slipping earrings into your backpack and leaving the store. We’re acting cool or we’ll get caught.

Dunno, I said.

I wanted to dissect Trevor Blackburn. How he used the perfect amount of hair gel, like Ricky Martin. How he was so cool he made braces cool. How he had touched me on the shoulder in French class to ask for a pencil. I knew he had pencils of his own. Trevor Blackburn was nothing but prepared. But if Sally and I had ever discussed boys, it was to whine about their tendencies toward hair-pulling and potty talk. I didn’t know whether Sally’s opinion had changed and I was too afraid to ask. I wanted to emerge from the purgatory between childhood and adolescence headfirst, and it seemed one false move with Sally would hurl me, breech, into my future.

How about Barbies? I suggested.

Sally seemed relieved. She led me downstairs to the playroom—which she still labelled, shamelessly, The Playroom—and set up one of our usual scenarios. Barbie and her friends were at school. Sally pulled out some of her brother’s G.I. Joes.

Schools have boys, right, Sally said.

Unfortunately.

Maybe there’s a school dance.

And they have to go with a boy.

Skipper’s gonna freak, Sally squealed.

Sally was pretty tame with Skipper. She put Skipper’s hands on G.I. Joe’s shoulders while they danced to her Destiny’s Child CD. My Barbie shoved her plastic digits down her partner’s pants. I peeked through my frizz of brown curls for Sally’s reaction. She was oblivious, her eyes trained on the miniature couple under her control, her head tilted and lips parted to sing along to a love song she didn’t understand.

Wanna do something else? Sally said. She laid her dolls on the carpet and rose to her hands and knees, squishing the plastic couple beneath her palms. Perhaps we were there for the same reasons. An homage to a history we were too afraid, too naïve, to let go of.

Sally crawled across the room and opened a baby-blue trunk. We used to call it the Tickle Trunk in the days when Mr. Dressup held heroic status. When the ability to make anything out of construction paper and to maintain an even temper for half an hour were all it took to turn our cranks. Sally pulled out handfuls of silver platform shoes and floral-printed string bikinis.

Your mom used to fit these?

Yeah, before she was a mom.

Sally criss-crossed her arms and pulled her T-shirt over her head. She leaned, topless, over the web of spandex before her and scooped out a faded brown bikini top. It had firm cups and looked like a giant moth dancing from Sally’s finger. I tried not to look at Sally’s chest. It had mutated since we’d last seen each other naked. It protruded from her ribs, swayed, lifted and landed when she moved. It had bra-filling potential. She tied the bikini strings behind her neck and shoulder blades and tucked a fist into each cup.

Look, I’m my mom, she said.

You already have boobs, I said.

So do you, a bit.

Judging from my mom, this is as big as they’ll get.

Judging from my mom, I’ll be a whole lot bigger. Everywhere.

I dipped an arm into the trunk and rifled through the musty disco-dance party. I pulled out a mint-green nightie fashioned from layers of netting and held together by sequined shoulder straps. A marshmallow of a dress, something a faerie vixen would wear, Tinkerbell or Courtney Love, like on that poster in Sara’s room with her scabby knocked knees, raccoon eyes and swollen bottom lip.

I think my mom wore that on her honeymoon, Sally said.

It’s pretty hot.

I put it on over my head and squatted to shimmy off my shorts and T-shirt under a cloak of tulle. Perhaps I was embarrassed that the only change I had undergone since we last saw each other naked was mental. I wished Sally’s chest was like mine—a couple of mosquito bites on a ladder of ribs. But Sally’s chest was unavoidable.

I threw a hot-pink tube top at Sally and told her to wear it as a skirt. You’ll look so Posh Spice, I said.

The top hit Sally’s face and fell to the floor. She lifted a hand slowly to her nose then sunk, straight-legged, to pull the top up along her floppy calves, then thighs, which she lifted and dropped in tandem. She looked like a mermaid.

Okay. I’m Courtney and you’re my neighbour, Madison. Madison’s this boring mom and Courtney is this divorcee who wants to get it on with Brad, the mailman.

Get it on?

Like, go on a date.

What do they get on?

It. You know: it. I lounged on the couch, Manet’s Olympia with legs crossed at the calves. Madison, be a dear and fetch me a vodka screwdriver?

Is that a sour candy?

Never mind. Here comes Brad. Isn’t he a dreamboat?

Oh, Courtney! If my husband could hear us talk.

That bore? You should have an affair with Brad. But not until I’m done with him.

I would never. I love my husband.

Sally, you’re killing the game.

Sorry. I don’t know what you want me to say.

Say what you want.

Truth was, I didn’t want Sally to say what she wanted, or what I wanted. I wanted her to show me what I wanted.

Maybe we should go to the 7-Eleven and get soft serve.

Like this?

Yeah, it’ll be fun.

Sally looked down at her bikini top, sagging under her collarbones. The miniskirt swaddled her hips below her arched back and tummy.

I can kind of see your underwear, she said.

I tugged at the bottom of my nightie. It’s Little Miss underwear, I said. Little Miss Naughty. It’s funny.

I picked up two pairs of sequined, five-inch platform shoes and tossed one to Sally. We headed outside, a wobbly parade. An old lady with a wiener dog tsk-tsked at us and I knew this meant we were teenagers. If we were girls she would’ve cocked her head and told us how darling we were.

Behind the counter of the 7-Eleven, two boys gazed at skater mags and slurped bright-orange Big Gulps. My stomach dropped. They went to Vic High. My sister’s friend’s brother played soccer with them. They were popular. They looked up at us and snickered and I steered Sally to the soft-serve machine.

Courtney dear, I hope this won’t ruin our figures, Sally said, far too loudly.

I glanced over at the boys to see if they heard, but at the same time moved my hand so the ice cream flowed onto my forearms. Sally burst out laughing and swatted me with napkins.

Hey, c’mere, one of the boys said. He held up a wad of paper towel.

I walked over and stretched my arms out to him.

You girls playing dress-up or what? The boy knelt to my level and scrubbed at my arm in a circular motion as though buffing a windshield.

I didn’t answer. A boy was touching my arms. This was nothing like a blotting from Mom’s spit-moistened tissues.

Your name’s Courtney?

I nodded.

I’m Mark.

I smiled.

Do you talk?

I nodded.

Mark had greasy blond hair tucked behind his ears and wore a faded Green Day T-shirt and jeans baggy enough to display a good four inches of boxer above the waist.

When Mark had wiped the ice cream from my forearms, he rose from his squat then paused distinctively. I looked down and saw that, in my hunched position, my chest was completely uncovered by my nightie’s neckline. His eyes were on my nipples. My prepubescent, chocolate-chip nipples.

When his eyes moved away, I tried to meet them so I could raise my eyebrows and pout like Courtney Love but he didn’t look me in the eye.

He smacked my shoulder and said, Nice panties.

When we left the store, Sally crossed her arms as best she could with an ice cream cone in one hand and said, Meg, he was looking at your chest.

I know.

Looking.

So?

Don’t you feel used?

There’s nothing to see.

What I couldn’t say to Sally was that I felt noticed. I felt real. I also felt used, but the other two feelings trumped that one. We walked home in silence, our mouths immersed in ice cream. Sally probably wasn’t imagining if this was what it was like to kiss a boy. She probably wasn’t wondering if this was what a penis felt like against her tongue, only colder. If boys hadn’t invaded my mind, I would’ve thought about how the flavour vanilla had strayed so far from the bean itself that anything with sugar and no other flavouring was called “vanilla.” Or maybe I would’ve calculated in my head how long ice cream would take to melt in various temperatures and on various surfaces. Sun-soaked pavement in June versus the middle of the desert in December versus on a train heading north at sixty kilometres per hour about to collide with a camel.

Sally crunched on her cone and said, What are you thinking about?

Algebra.

Your bra?

What? No.

You don’t wear one?

My sister gave me her old one. I kinda hate it.

My mom says I need one for sports.

I have like no boobs.

The guy at 7-Eleven didn’t think so.

Saaa-lly.

We giggled. I nudged Sally and a gooey chunk of my ice cream blobbed onto her calf. She toppled over her platform heel and onto someone’s yard.

We wiped her calf in the grass and I said, Maybe we should go back and get Mark to lick it off for you.

I felt high like I did with Alisha Fletcher. Someone who depleted the oxygen to my brain.

I would never let that perv touch me, Sally said.

She didn’t say it out of jealousy. Jealousy was coveted. This was naïveté engendered from a mother who darns socks and picks you up from the mall when you miss the bus and attends your dance recitals. Sally’s mom would hold her hand through puberty, answer questions, share embarrassing first-date stories, show her how to operate a razor and a tampon. The times I had plucked up the courage to ask Mom a question about what actually happens when you have sex or what does it mean when a boy messes up your hair in a rough way and then says, You look pretty like that, she would flop her head back, exhale through an open mouth, and say, Meg, I’m not the one to ask. Alisha Fletcher’s mom worked night shifts and gave her cold pizza and Coke in her lunch. With Alisha, I could hold my peanut butter and jam on stale Wonder Bread sandwiches and my trail of unsigned permission forms and report cards as a point of pride. Popular girls had to be motherless.

My sister showed up at Sally’s door after breakfast the next morning. She wore tight black jeans and an old seventies ringer tee that said Wolftrap Lives. Mom called these her street-person clothes but I only wished I had the flippancy to dress like her.

Let’s go, Meggers.

I can walk home on my own.

Mom was all freaking out. She wanted me to come get you.

Sally’s mom walked into the entryway, wooden spoon in hand, and asked Sara if she wanted any eggs.

No thanks, Mrs. G.

You sure? It’s no trouble at all, sweetie.

Sally’s mom smiled, plump and rosy cheeked, and for the first time I felt anger rather than envy. It seemed she wanted to rub in the fact that our mom didn’t cook eggs, or anything that didn’t reside, dehydrated, in a box.

Nnnnnoooo thanks, Mrs. G. My sister leaned back with her foot up against the door jamb.

I shimmied my feet into my shoes and smacked Sally’s shoulder the way Mark had smacked mine. Thanks, Sally. I’ll see ya.

Yeah, she said. See you around.

I didn’t want See you around. I wanted When can I see you again? Attempted hellos met with ambivalent pass-bys. Longing looks in French class. Contrived reasons to talk to me: a maxi-pad to borrow, homework comparisons, a note-passing middleman.

I gave her my most aloof, For sure, and left before she could respond.

On our way home from Sally’s, my sister walked a consistent metre in front of me, no matter how I hurried to catch up.

Hey, Sara, I yelled.

What?

Is Mom—did she have a party last night?

She’s fine, Meg. She was pissing me off with her questions, is all.

Sure?

Yeah. Don’t worry, kid. Sara put her arm on my shoulder for almost two seconds, but then pretended to brush dirt off my T-shirt.

I like your shirt. What does Wolftrap mean?

It’s just bullshit, Meg. It could say anything.

Can I borrow it?

You can rip it off my dead body.

Hey, Sara?

Yeah?

What does it mean when a boy looks at you?

Looks at you?

Or anyone. Like, down your shirt.

Sara laughed and spun to face me. Meg, you little slut.

She held her hand up like a stop sign in front of me and I thought she was going to hit me. I flinched and drew my hands to shelter my face. Sara waited for my hand to meet hers. Her mouth was open, lips curved, her eyes warm. The face she wore for birds who’d flown into our balcony window or for any mention of our absent father. The face she wore for the flawed and the reckless. The unacceptable.