I Am the Wallpaper (5 page)

“Here? But I’m not …” And he blushed, which made me
very
happy.

Since I’d already gone this far, I figured I might as well keep going. “It’s a slow song. You don’t really need to know how to dance when it’s a slow song. I’ll show you.” Trying my best to act casual, I put my arms around his shoulders. Amazingly, he didn’t stop me. In fact, he put
his hands uncertainly around me and rested them against my back.

“That’s good,” I said, my heart beating through my chest. “Now sway.”

We started rocking back and forth. His rhythm was good, but his movements were a little stiff. He looked as unsure as I felt.

“You’re doing great,” I said, still trying to seem like this was normal for me. “But you have to relax. We’re just moving with the music. That’s all there is to it.”

A moment later he seemed to get it. His body, loosened up a little now, felt warm, and his blue, blue eyes gazed down into mine. It was nice. I’d danced with boys at school dances, but this felt entirely different, and much more exciting. I felt like we were under some magical spell. After a while, I even found the courage to rest my head on his chest.

But then he said, “Floey, is this really a good idea? You’re only thirteen and I’m fift—”

“Shhhh.” I cut him off. A part of me—the new, crazy, unrealistic part I’d never known was there before—didn’t want to break the spell. So he was a couple of years older—what did that matter? We were moving back and forth, back and forth. This was very nice. The music, Calvin’s arms around me and the champagne making me feel just … perfect. But I guess the champagne must have affected my judgment even more than I’d realized, because that’s when I suddenly got the wildest idea of all.

I decided I was going to kiss him.

Sure, there was still that faint, cautious voice that said this was crazy, but as soon as that idea entered my head, I shoved it right back out again. I knew that if I thought about it too much I’d never kiss him, so I’d better do it right away. I leaned forward to bring my lips closer to his.

But then another unexpected thing happened.

We both screamed.

He’d lost his balance and so had I. Somehow, I must have pushed him backward and knocked him into the coffee table. The next thing I knew we were on our sides, our bodies tangled together, half on the table, half on the sofa. His arm was trapped under my shoulder and mine was pinned under him.

“Oh my God,” I said. “I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”

He nodded but didn’t say anything. He was staring at my face.

That’s when I realized that my hand was pressed firmly into his butt.

Suddenly the fuzzy glow from the champagne was gone. I was mortified. I tried to untangle myself, but he was heavy.

And then I heard Lillian’s voice.

“Floey? What are you
doing
?”

Calvin and I both spun our heads to face the door. Lillian stood there, her veil hanging lopsided from her head, and pop-eyed behind her were Rebecca Greenblatt and Aunt Sarah. Everyone stared.

“Now
there’s
a picture for the wedding album,” Lillian said.

I yanked my hand away and pulled myself off him. I
couldn’t bear to imagine what everybody was thinking as Calvin and I stood up and straightened ourselves out.

“This isn’t what it looks like …,” I tried to explain, but I could see they weren’t buying it. In waves, the happiness from just a few moments ago died away, and all of a sudden I wanted to barf.

Rebecca laughed.

Lillian shook her head slowly. “You better hope Wen never finds out about this, Floey. Ma either.”

Head down, Calvin quickly stepped past me and pushed through Lillian, Rebecca and Aunt Sarah, leaving me alone with them. I wondered how much more it would take for me to just shrivel up and disappear.

Rebecca laughed so hard she had to hold on to the doorframe.

I lowered my face, covered my eyes with my hand and pressed past them toward the bathroom, where I hoped to stay until the end of this God-awful day. No matter what I did for the rest of my life, I knew I’d never be able to get past the shame I felt at this moment.

When I finally reached the door, it was locked, so I ran to my bedroom. My cousins were gone; the room was empty. I slammed the door. Finally alone, I leaned against the door, closed my eyes and decided to stay in my room until the last guest left.

In the big room, the dancing continued.

Soon, though, I heard those awful kids pounding back down the hallway, laughing and playing. They knocked on the door.

“Open up!” one of them shouted.

“Go away!”

They pushed against the door, so I pushed back. But there were too many of them. As hard as I pushed, I couldn’t stop them from moving the door just enough to let one of the little girls through.

“What’s the matter with you?” she said. “You can’t take a whole room!”

“This is my room, so get out.” I kept my back against the door.

The little girl shook her head. “Your mother said that today this is
our
room.” She grabbed my arm and tried to pull me away. The other children shouted and kicked the door. The music and laughter from the living room were louder now.

“Let them in, room hog!” the little girl screamed. She kicked me in the shin. I grabbed my leg, and the other children finally tumbled in and the room filled up with little kids again.

“Get her out!” the girl shouted, and soon all the children were chanting it over and over, grabbing my arms and pulling me out of the room. “Get her out! Get her out!” It was like a nightmare. The children opened the door to the back steps, just outside my room. I kicked and shouted, but I couldn’t stop them.

“Get her out! Get her out!”

They forced me outside. Then the door slammed in my face.

The small wooden shelter over the top step wasn’t
enough to protect me from the wind and the rain. I tried the handle but the children had locked it. “Open up!” I pounded on the door. Through the window I saw them laughing at me. My cousin Richard yanked down the shade.

Suddenly all I could see was gray.

It only took a few more seconds for my dress and hair to get soaked through. I stared at the shade until water dribbled from my bangs and down my face. I closed my eyes. Was there any point in going back inside?

The rain slapped against the roof. My dress was already cold and heavy.

Life is suffering, Zen you die
.

I now believe that there are some moments so life-changing that your mind remembers them with almost superhuman clarity, as if everything is running in slow motion. For me, this was one of those Pivotal Life Moments. I was tired of being taken advantage of. I was sick of being unnoticed, unimportant, powerless and invisible. I could almost see myself, standing in front of the door, drenched and dripping. It was like I was my future self watching my present-day self from the outside, listening to her think.

It was really Zen.

All at once I understood that this moment could only be bearable if I made it the beginning of a new era in my life. If I went back inside, things would have to change. I felt my future self watching me, waiting for my next decision.

I needed to consider my next move carefully, so I stood in the rain for a while.

Eventually, I turned around and slowly and deliberately slogged down the back steps and around the side of the house. As my bubblegum pink shoes squelched through the mud, I made my decision.

This is what I wrote in my diary that night:

I trudged up the long brick stairway to the front door and grasped the handle. The music was still loud enough that I could feel the vibrations through the metal. I took one extra moment to gather my courage, but then I opened the door and stepped inside.

A whole room full of family and strangers turned to look at the crazy wet girl dripping in the doorway. Even the music paused between songs, almost as though it knew I’d come in. For a few seconds, the party screeched to a halt as
everybody noticed me, my sopping wet dress, my shoes covered in mud, my hair flat against my head. They didn’t know it, but my future self, a bold, remarkable new Floey, had arrived.

Nothing would ever be the same again.

I didn’t see Calvin again that evening. He left and never came back. This is what I wrote in my diary the next morning:

But first I had a few little obstacles to take care of.

Since Aunt Sarah’s support group for divorced mothers had signed up for a three-week Alaskan adventure—supposedly to learn something about themselves—we had to transform our house so we could take her kids. Ma said it’d be good for me to get to know my cousins better. “It’ll be fun,” she said, “like being at summer camp.”

Ha.

The summer-camp preparations began with my dear mother making me wash the windows, vacuum up the ferret hair and scrub the toilet. Craziest of all, she was going to force me to clean my cousins’ bedrooms (meaning my room and the TV room)
every day
! I understood making me take care of my own stuff, but why should I have to clean up after them, too? I could point out the obvious unfairness of this until my tongue wore out, but it wouldn’t make any difference. Richard and Tish were going to be our guests, Ma said. If this was a summer camp, I was the camp cleaning lady.

There is no justice.

When we were done cleaning, I had to think of a way out of going with Ma to pick up Aunt Sarah and my cousins at their hotel, shuttling them up to Logan Airport in time for Aunt Sarah’s flight and then ferrying the kids back here to start their three-week stay with us. Fortunately, the New Floey Packer was a take-charge kind of girl. Unlike the Old Floey, she wasn’t going to let life just happen around her.

“Can’t,” I told Ma. “I’m having cramps. Very bad cramps.” This was a trick of Lillian’s. Tried and true.

A couple of minutes later Ma produced two ibuprofen pills and a glass of water and set them next to my bed. “I called Gary,” she said. “He’ll drive into Boston with me.”

“He will? That’s almost three hours round-trip. He agreed to that pretty quick.”

She shrugged and gave me an innocent smile.

Gary sure was trying hard. You had to feel sorry for him. My mother hadn’t dated anybody since my dad died. She’d told Lillian and me that she probably never would, and that even if she did it would only be after we both grew up and moved away. Poor Gary.

Anyway, as soon as the door closed, I went to the computer in the little office off the kitchen. The minute I sat down, Frank Sinatra stopped running around in neurotic circles and flung himself into my lap. He was a ferret with social issues but good taste.

Since it was summer, there was no point in looking up the English department at Moses Brown. Instead, I searched for poetry readings. I typed
open-mike poetry
and got 150,000 hits. Even when I refined my search to
Rhode Island open-mike poetry
, there were still too many to be useful.

So after a few futile minutes I gave up and typed
Zen
.

There was another long list of Web sites. I clicked on one of them at random. At the top of the screen was the title
Zen Thought of the Day
. Today’s thought was:
What is the sound of one hand clapping?

There was no answer, just the question. I stared at it for a few seconds. I had no idea what it was supposed to mean.

Below the thought of the day was a poem:

Five seven five. Haiku.

Did Calvin write haiku? Probably. That inspired me to make up two of my own:

Would the future Floey Packer be a famous poet? I pictured myself spending hours alone in beautiful fields thinking deep, inspired thoughts. Then, concentrating again on the computer, I clicked on a few other links at random and printed out the pages so I could bring them to my room and read them. But as soon as I sat on my bed the doorbell rang.