I'll Love You When You're More Like Me (12 page)

I picked up the envelope with my name on it, in Harriet's handwriting. Harriet made circles over her o's with little faces inside them.

“Love leaves me weak, I cannot speak,” said A.E. “Emily Dickinson wrote that. And if my words do leak, from pent-up heart, I start, I sneak, to say your name.”

“Take mother a light bulb for the lectern, will you?” I said. “Please?”

“What do you think of that poem?”

“It's fine,” I said, ripping open the envelope.

“Do you really like it?”

“I said it's fine.”

“Well Emily Dickinson didn't write it,” A.E. said. “Your very own sister wrote it.”

“
Dear Wally
,” Harriet's letter began. “
When I offered to loan you a hundred dollars ($100) toward the ring, you said nothing.
”

“If you say Emily Dickinson wrote it, or Sylvia Plath wrote it, or Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote it,” A.E. said,
“everyone swoons over it. If you say you wrote it, you get screwed.”

I said, “You better take the hand vacuum and touch up around Miss Wheatley. Visiting hours start in fifteen minutes.”

“This is a business like any other business,” A.E. imitated my mother's voice. Then she fell to the floor spread-eagled with her eyes staring straight ahead and her mouth hanging open.

Gorilla jumped down from the kitchen stool she was perched on, walked over A.E.'s stomach, strolled down the ramp and headed back toward the Slumber Rooms.

“Oh no you don't!” A.E. was on her feet, scrambling after her.

. . . You may think a ring old-fashioned but as the ads say a diamond is forever and why should I promise my self to you for nothing? My father has an old saying that goes “What we obtain too easily we esteem too lightly,” so think that one over, Wally. Another thing is the way you treated me when we got to Dunn's Saturday night, as though the special one was the great afternoon actress and not yours truly. I would also be curious to know what you were doing walking on the beach with her much later, which you needn't bother denying since Myra Tuttle saw you there with her own eyes. Oh sure Charlie was there too for your front! Sometimes I think you are really lower than a worm
.

I couldn't read beyond the word “worm.” Every time I saw the word “worm” I remembered all the times I'd answered
the phone and heard some kid singing, “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, they crawl up and down your dirty snout.” Then laughter and a click.

Whenever A.E. got jokers like that on the telephone, she always sang back, “We'll be seeing you, before you know it!”

“Ann Elizabeth,” my mother would tell her, “if that happens again, simply say, ‘You are an ill person and you should see a doctor.' ”

One night A.E. told one of the jokers, “You are an ill person and you should see a doctor.” We were all sitting around the dining-room table while A.E. took the call, and my mother had this pleased expression on her face, because A.E. for once, seemed to be carrying out my mother's instructions. Then A.E. said, “And after you die from your illness, we'll be seeing you!”

When I got to Current Events that afternoon, Martha was chewing out the lending-library man because all the novels he'd supplies were years old.

“I'm a laughingstock,” Martha told him. “Who's going to pay fifteen cents a day to take out old books like
Jaws
and
Once Is Not Enough
?”

“Monty told me to concentrate on nonfiction,” said the man.

“Monty's an ass!” Martha shouted. “Are you the last one in Suffolk County to find out Monty's an ass?” Then she began to cry and the lending-library man put his arm around her and said the humidity was getting to everyone, they should go somewhere for a cool drink.

“You'll mind the store, won't you, kid?” he asked me.

Martha said, “There's just one shirt order, Wally.
It's pinned on the bulletin board next to a message from Charlie Gilhooley.”

Martha got her bag from behind the counter and they started out the door. “I'm only doing this work because I was laid off from my regular job,” the lending-library man was saying. “What I am is a lathe operator down near Commack.”

I unpinned the shirt order and the message from Charlie. Someone named Sussman wanted a shirt with “Wink if you want a sex change” printed on it. Charlie's message was
Please buy me an inexpensive backgammon game and show up at my house around four. S. is coming.

12. Sabra St. Amour

Saturday night when I got back from my walk on the beach, Mama's bedroom door was closed. Lamont was washing brandy snifters in the kitchen. He had a dish towel stuck in the V of his baby blue cashmere sweater to protect it, and another one stuck in his belt to protect the front of his white linen trousers.

“Did you have a good time?” he said, as I walked in carrying my shoes. He smiled over his shoulder at me as though nothing had happened.

“We had a dynamite time, Lamont, particularly when we came back here about an hour ago.”

“Don't give your mother a bad time about that, Sabra,” he said. “We both had too much to drink.”

“Don't tell me how to handle Mama,” I said. I lit the first cigarette I'd had since I met Wally. “Why are you hanging around here?”

“I didn't know I needed a reservation at The Seaville Inn. They're full.”

“I bet you didn't know you needed a reservation,” I said.

“You've got to accept the fact your mother's an attractive woman,” he said. “She was intended to be something more in life than your personal slave.”

“Was she intended to be your personal bankroll?” I
said. “You're saving yourself forty-five dollars a night staying here, and I bet Mama bought all the drinks at The Surf Club.”

“It's none of your business who bought the drinks,” he said. “Nobody has to answer to you, Sabra.”

“You're never going to get near a storyline of mine,” I said. “I'll never say a word you write!” I was actually hissing through my teeth at him.

Then I went into the bathroom and got sick.

When I came out, the door to the guest room was shut and Mama's door was open. She was standing there in her bright orange robe with the white boa fringe, holding her head with one hand, blinking at me. “Are you all right, honey?”

“Go to bed, Mama,” I said. “I'll be fine.”

I felt a little punch of disappointment when she did. It was the first time I'd ever been ill that Mama hadn't tucked me in.

Sunday mornings Mama never made an appearance until after Dr. Robert Schuller's sermon on television. He was this little blue-eyed, bespectacled man who preached positive thinking while the cameras swept around the church showing thoughtful faces, flower arrangements, then trees outside, fountains and people sitting in parked cars listening to him. A lot of the times I'd crawl in bed with Mama and watch, too. Mama and I did a lot of things like that together. Sometimes we'd fix a huge bowl of buttered popcorn and watch Lawrence Welk in bed, or we'd find an old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical extravaganza and make a fried chicken/potato salad picnic to eat on the floor in front of the set while we watched.

Lamont drove into Seaville to avoid another confrontation with me, to get The
New York Times
and have breakfast. I made Mama her hangover cure: skimmed milk with a tablespoon of brewer's yeast and a tablespoon of wheat germ, whipped up in the blender. Then I took it in to her. I figured she'd have the guilts pretty badly and I didn't want her to. All I wanted her to do was tell me Lamont was going, for good.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked her.

“Are you?”

“I didn't think you'd remember that I was sick last night,” I said.

“Oh I remember,” Mama said. “I remember last night very well.”

“I took some Maalox and it helped,” I said.

“I'm glad something did,” she said. “Maggie, I'm sorry if you were embarrassed in front of your new friends, but that's life.”

“I thought it was gross and juvenile,” I said. “I think they did, too.”

“Well juveniles don't have a corner on gross and juvenile behavior,” said Mama. “You kids think we're supposed to pack it all away the day you're old enough to answer back.”

“I can see getting smashed,” I said. “I wouldn't mind if he was someone your own age.”

“I wouldn't mind that, either,” said Mama. “Open the windows wider, please, Maggie. I could use some fresh air.”

I went across and pulled the drapes and fixed the windows. Then I went back and sat on the edge of Mama's bed. “Mama,” I said, “what if I decide not to go along with this
new storyline of Fedora's?”

Mama's expression didn't even change. “What if you do? The last thing I want to talk about right now is storylines.”

“You may not ever have to again,” I threatened, “if I quit for good.”

“That's right,” Mama said.

“Do you really hear me?” I insisted. “I'm talking about giving up my career for good.
For good
. I want to go to college.” That last sentence was a surprise even to me.

“I hear you,” Mama said. “Turn on channel 9.
Hour of Power
is coming on.”

That afternoon I stayed in my room while Lamont read Mama's tarot cards out on the deck. I could hear Lamont forecasting a possible trip and a meeting with a dark stranger, and Mama squealing and exclaiming, while I turned the pages of a book I wasn't even reading. I was still in my room when they went swimming, and later when Mama came in and asked me if I wanted to go out to dinner with them.

“I'm having spasms,” I lied. “How could I eat?”

“Rest and take your Librax,” Mama said. “We won't be late.”

Monday morning early, I took off in the Mercedes without leaving any note. I drove to Hampton, bought a copy of
Daytime TV
and had breakfast in a luncheonette there.

There was a feature article in the magazine called “Sabra and I Have to Wait.” It was supposed to be an interview with Peter Tripp, the daytime actor I'd gone to the awards banquet with almost a year ago and never
seen since. Peter played a preacher's son who was always in trouble, on
Turning Point.
He was fifteen and when he wasn't in front of a camera he took out his contact lenses and wore thick Coke-bottle-bottom glasses, scratched his eczema, and played some game of his own invention called “Where Is?” (Where Is Fels Planetarium?. . . Wrong! It's in Philadelphia! Where is Nakhon Si Thamarat? . . . Wrong! It's in Thailand!)

There was a picture of me out in front of the studio, and a picture of Peter, with his lenses in and his Airedale on a leash, and a quote which was supposed to be Peter's, in a banner over the two pictures. “We knew what was happening to us and why it couldn't be!”

The writer of the article probably never even met Peter. He probably wrote the story from notes he'd taken down during a telephone conversation with
Turning Point's
publicity person.

The article was about our magic attraction to each other and how we had to fight against it because of our careers. Peter was supposed to have promised his dead twin brother he'd be a star by the time he was twenty-one, because that had been his brother's ambition. “
Sabra,
” the article continued, “
would never do anything to upset the dream, for in real life Sabra is a deeply sensitive girl who wants to grow professionally as much as she wants Peter to realize his ambition. But there are long nights, too many of them, when their hearts ache for each other.
”

It was a bad, dated picture of me, taken way back when the Wedge was in style (my hair hasn't been that short in years), and I made a mental note to find out if
Hometown's
publicity department was still sending out photos like that,
or if it had come from an old file of the magazine's.

After I finished breakfast, some vacationers on the main street spotted me, and I signed a few autographs.

Then I shopped and kept calling Charlie's until he came home.

That afternoon on
Hometown
, Storybook Sabra had a scene with her shrink as the tune-in-tomorrow tease at the end of the show. Charlie and Wally and I watched it in Charlie's living room, while Charlie and I played backgammon.

Storybook Sabra had been trying to fit in to a normal life at Clear City High School, after her mother's indictment for murder. She was telling her shrink about her experience with a sorority that had been rushing her.

Sabra:
I didn't make Tri Ep.

Dr. Day:
Do you blame your mother?

Sabra:
Not really. I knew they wouldn't pledge me, even if Mom wasn't up on a murder rap. I'm not like them.

Dr. Day:
Is that the only reason you think they don't you?

Sabra:
Isn't that always the only reason people don't want you? It's why they don't love you, too. All the cliques in the world from sororities to churches to kaffeeklatches to your own relatives are saying just one thing: I'll love you when you're more like me.