Bittersweet Dreams (9 page)

That was the way I was.

I analyzed everything I did or started to do and determined how much time and energy I should spend on it.

Like this makeup thing.

It was easier to wash off the three nails I had painted, give my hair four or five quick brushes so it wouldn't fall over my eyes, and then get back to my calculus.

“You're being ungrateful to my mother,” Allison said. The word
ungrateful
was in practically every other sentence her mother tossed in my direction.

“Do you know the meaning of gratitude, or are you just parroting your mother?”

“Don't call me a parrot!” she screamed, and walked out when I began to laugh.

However, there was no question that Julie saw all that as another example of my deliberate failure rather than appreciating what she was trying to do for me. She complained to my father at dinner.

“After all,” she said, “I'm making the best effort I can, Roger. I offer to take her to get new clothes, new shoes, anything, but she shows no interest. She has to meet me at least halfway.”

He nodded and told me I should be more appreciative. He tried to sound stern, but I knew he hadn't reprimanded me enough to please her. She sulked her way to bedtime.

I suppose what I eventually did to Allison and her English teacher, Mr. Taylor, in a way pleased her, despite how she reacted. It finally turned my father against me and justified her constant complaining about me.

Right now, it was the only reason for any regret, the only reason for my telling my father I was sorry.

But let me explain how I happened now to be in my father's car, with my bags in the trunk and my stepmother, at the prospect of getting me out of the house and out of her hair, practically panting like a dog about to be untied and let free to run.

I have this tendency to compare Julie to animals often. I remember thinking she must have charged like an elephant in heat at my bedroom door one Sunday afternoon a few months ago. First, I heard her footsteps pounding on the hallway floor. Most of the time, she wore sharp-heeled shoes that clicked over the Spanish tiles, but this particular day, they sounded more like the rat-a-tat of a machine gun. She was moving that quickly and determinedly. Then I heard the rattling of the doorknob, and when I didn't respond instantly, I actually saw the hinges strain. Adrenaline must have been pouring out of her ears.

I had looked up reluctantly from
The History of Western Civilization
to pay attention
.
I was nearly finished with the book and hated the interruption, especially if it was Julie doing the interrupting. Most of the time, it was about something so minor or insignificant that I could barely listen.

“Why is this door locked?” she screamed. I envisioned her putting her lips to the hinges to be sure her voice carried through. “Mayfair! I know you hear me. Don't pretend you're asleep!” She slapped the door with the palm of her hand so hard I was sure it turned bloodred.

“Coming!” I shouted back, but I took my time. I took so long, in fact, that she rattled the handle again, this time so hard I thought surely she would break it, which only made me take longer. I stood there and let her shout my name one more time and slap the door again before I unlocked it.

When I opened it, she was standing there breathing hard, her shoulders rising and falling with every deep, quick breath, her face looking like she had been in direct sunlight too long. She was so upset she'd permitted strands of her dark brown pampered hair to pop up like broken guitar strings and her mascara to run. Her lips trembled as the rage washed over her face in small tremors. I was waiting for her to explode and shatter herself all over the walls and the floor.

In her hands was a book I had lent to Allison. She opened it and held it up with two hands in front of herself like a shield so that the cover was facing me.

“What's wrong, Julie?” I asked in a calm, almost sweet-sounding voice.

“What's wrong? What's wrong? How dare you give this book to Allison!”

“I didn't give it to her. I lent it to her.”

“You know what I mean. Why would you give her this book?”

“She's more than thirteen years old now, Julie. Four girls in her class are pregnant. They all probably have mothers like you, terrified to mention S-E-X. You should be thanking me. That happens to be a well-written book on the subject by a renowned expert in the field, presented in a clear, simple manner so someone her age can understand it all easily.”

“Thanking you?” She swallowed hard. “Thanking you? A clear, simple manner? You call this simple?”

She turned the book around, flipped some pages, and held up a drawing of a naked man and a naked woman in the missionary position. She turned it back to herself and read, “ ‘The missionary position is a male-superior sex position in which the woman lies on her back and—”

“I know what it is, Julie. The problem is that Allison doesn't, or she didn't. I hope she got through most of it before you confiscated it, which I think was a mistake.”

“Of course I confiscated it. I'm her mother!”

“I know you're her mother, but what world do you live in? Do you think Allison hasn't watched soft porn with her friends, French-kissed at parties, had a boy's hand in her blouse and in her pants?”

She recoiled and then shot back like a rattlesnake. “That's absolutely disgusting. Of course she hasn't. I'd know if anything of that sort happened.”

“How would you know?” I asked. “You treat her like she's never menstruated.”

She opened and closed her mouth without making a sound.

“If you're not going to permit her to read it, may I have my book back, please? I'm doing some research on the fruit fly and want to make some comparisons.” I wasn't, but I thought that was a funny thing to say.

She didn't. She thrust the book at me. “You can be sure that your father is going to hear about this,” she said.

“Hear about it? Sex? I think he knows about it.”

“You know exactly what I mean. Don't be . . . be . . .”

“
Facetious
? I think that's the word you're searching for,” I said. “It means joking inappropriately, perhaps to satirize or show contempt.”

She did what she usually did when she couldn't get the best of me. She nodded repeatedly and looked like one of those toy dogs people placed in the rear windows of their cars. I felt like reaching out and putting my hand under her chin to stop her before her head rolled off.

“I don't understand you,” I said in an even calmer voice. “Didn't you want to know these things when you were your daughter's age? Aren't you happy that there are better ways to learn this stuff than listening to misinformation other girls spout in bathrooms or sneaking terrible sex books into your room and reading them under the covers?”

“Allison is . . . is . . .”

“What? She's probably masturbated. Are you saying she is a virgin? Are you absolutely sure? And what if she loses her virginity inappropriately? Wouldn't that upset you more? When you calm down and think about it later, you will definitely thank me,” I said with that stone-cold confidence that assured most people that I was right.

Her eyes looked like two balls lit up in a slot machine. I felt like reaching out for an invisible lever on the side of her head and pulling it down. If I got two bloodred pupils, her mouth would open and spill out silver dollars. She opened and closed that mouth, and then she spun on her heels and walked away with her back hoisted like a flag on her iron-pole spine. I envisioned smoke streaming out of her ears.

I closed my door quietly and returned to my book. Usually, I could turn Julie on and off like a light switch, but for some reason, this latest confrontation between us annoyed me more than usual. I had trouble shutting it out of my mind, and it wasn't because I felt any sense of guilt about it or was worried about how my father would react.

My stepsister, Allison, was, in my view, very immature for a girl her age living in California in the twenty-first century. I really did believe I was doing her a favor. It was one of those rare times when I did something in this house without the initial purpose of annoying Julie.

Like most mothers, Julie wasn't even measuring her daughter in terms of herself at this age, recalling the questions and concerns she'd had. Worse, it was as if these mothers believed nothing had changed since they were teenagers. Information for those who sought it was accessible much more quickly and easily. They either were ignorant of or ignored what their daughters could learn on the internet, what sorts of materials they passed around and discussed, and what their personal experiences with boys already were. Had she even ever heard of friends with benefits? Didn't she know the birth rate among teenagers? Didn't she go to the movies or know about sexually explicit films deliberately targeting girls her daughter's age? I could rattle off statistics that would make her head spin. I could have wiped the floor with her if she hadn't run away.

Although I tried, I was unable to shut it out of my mind. Maybe it was because I wasn't happy about my own romantic life, which was a zero. Even though I was good at pretending that it didn't bother me, acting convincingly as if I wasn't interested, it did bother me. It bothered me a lot, and I was very interested. If my mother were alive, I'd have someone to talk to about it. I certainly couldn't talk to Julie or my father, and at this time, I hadn't connected with Joy and still had no girlfriend with whom I could spend hours on the phone, not that Joy was ever a great source of comfort or information for me. I didn't even have anyone to email frequently. There was just no one yet whom I trusted enough to reveal anything more than the weather report.

I couldn't remember when I was last invited to a party or when other girls in my class asked me to do something with them. It was probably a few years, and back then, I was only invited because of my father and his business relationship with the parents of the girl. When I arrived, I could see that no one cared to talk to me. The parents of the girl whose house it was most likely pushed her to be civil to me, and she was barely that. It wasn't difficult for me to see the lack of sincerity.

The girls who finally did talk to me did so on their own initiative, speaking to me as if they were with some foreigner who had just barely learned English. The questions they asked gradually got more and more annoying as their confidence grew. I'm sure they saw how uncomfortable I was getting. Perhaps I wasn't so hard to beat after all. Maybe if they were good enough, they could bring me to tears or send me running from the room. Then they could gather in a clump and giggle as they congratulated one another.

“How come you don't ever have a party at your house or hang with anyone at the mall?”

“Don't you think any of the boys are good-looking at our school?”

“Are you afraid of boys? Is that what happens when a girl is so smart?”

“Who do you dream of being with, at least? What actor?”

“What sorts of fantasies does someone like you have?”

They fired the questions at me so quickly I couldn't answer one. Finally, they stopped and waited.

“There are some good-looking boys at our school,” I said. “But when they open their mouths to speak, their faces fall off for me.”

“Huh? Fall off? How can someone's face fall off?” Willa Marley asked me. I remembered her question because I could see that she wasn't quite sure whether I was speaking literally or figuratively. Perhaps I did know something about some sort of disease that caused a person's face to fall off.

“It just slides off his skull,” I said casually. “Like hot melting butter sliding off a pan.”

“Ugh.”

“That's not true. That never happens. You're just afraid of boys, aren't you?” Victoria Walters asked. I remember how small her eyes were, beady, how they seemed to retract while her nose grew pointier, and how her mouth twisted, with her lips becoming pale.

“I'm certainly not afraid of boys. Why should I be? Do you think they have some magical powers they hold over us? I'm not afraid of sex, certainly. It's not a disease, and it doesn't require a great deal of intelligence to perform it.”

“Perform it?” Victoria said, and laughed with the others as her chorus. “Do you do it on a stage?”

“You're defining
perform
too narrowly.”

“Huh? Just answer the question.”

“Yes, I'm just as interested in boys and sex as any of you are. I'm just not as obvious about it. I don't walk around with my tongue hanging out like some of you.”

“Maybe you should,” Victoria flung back at me. “Maybe then you'd attract someone.”

They all laughed and shook their heads but still peeled away like frightened birds. I watched them go off into corners to tell the boys about me and laugh. I told myself it didn't bother me. After all, I had gotten the best of them, hadn't I? Who cared what they thought?