Local Girls (7 page)

“What can I do?” Sam said, always the same sad song. “Gretel's been incorrigible from day one.”

“Listen, mister, you can do plenty. Offer to send her on a trip. Buy her a new wardrobe. Invite her to your house for dinner.”

After she slammed down the phone, Frances felt elated. She didn't think about her ex once that night; she didn't shed a tear. Frankly, it pleased her that she had sounded so much like Frieda all the while she'd been shouting at that self-centered loser. Naturally, of all Frances's suggestions, Sam chose the dinner invitation. What did it cost him? Two extra steaks thrown on the broiler? Another head of lettuce added to the salad? On the designated evening, Jason drove Frances's car, a rusty Ford with the rear end smashed in. As they neared the North Shore, the houses seemed bigger with every block. They kept the windows rolled down; all the same they couldn't seem to get enough air.

“We'll eat and we'll split,” Jason said. “In and out.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gretel said. Now she knew what people meant when they said they were in the grip of depression. She was in the grip, all right, and it was holding her tight. “Whatever.”

“A total of forty-five minutes.” Every time he spoke, the skin beneath Jason's left eye twitched. It was subtle, but if you looked closely you could see his discomfort, clear as day. “Fifty minutes tops. We're polite, we let the old man drop some cash on us, and we're gone.”

They left their mother's car parked beneath a white birch tree, and walked across the lawn. It was November, that quiet, gray time of the year when you feel like holding someone's hand. Gretel had her own hands clasped together, like a corpse. Jason kept his hands in his pockets. The house really was huge, and maybe that was why it took so long for anyone to come to the front door.

“Fuck it, it's freezing out here,” Jason said.

“Ashes to ashes,” Gretel said.

“Will you cut it out?” Jason put his hand on the door-bell and left it there. “Everybody dies, Gret. Fact of life.”

“Is that supposed to cheer me up?” Gretel asked. “Because somehow it just doesn't.”

It was Thea who answered the door. She always seemed vaguely distraught to come face-to-face with Gretel and Jason, as if their very existence made the world a shakier place.

“Right on time,” Thea said.

Actually, they were twenty minutes late, but who was counting? So what if the steaks were a little dry and the salad wilted? Gretel and Jason followed their father's new wife through the front hall, toward the dining room. There were good carpets on every floor and the furniture was highly polished.

“She's getting fat,” Gretel whispered to her brother when they stopped beside the closet to take off their coats. “Look at her.”

Jason glanced over his shoulder, then shrugged. “She seems the same to me.”

Females over the age of nineteen never really entered his field of vision, but when their father came to join them in the dining room, even Jason noticed that he'd gained weight. Maybe his new bulk was what made Sam too uncomfortable to hug his children or welcome them to his house, or maybe it was just his true nature to merely nod coldly, suggesting they all sit down to dinner.

“What a tubster,” Jason whispered to Gretel. “So much for the fitness king.”

These days, Gretel wasn't eating much; she was too depressed for the comfort of food. She refused the steak—but when she took a bite of baked potato she was truly surprised. “There's tons of butter on this,” she declared.

Thea laughed. “Completely wrong. Potatoes have a natural sweetness, if you cook them right. I don't even add margarine.”

Gretel couldn't help but smile. No wonder they were getting fat. She took a forkful of green beans and chewed carefully. Drenched in butter.

“I think I'll get myself a glass of water,” Gretel said, excusing herself from the table in spite of the desperate look Jason gave her. He'd just have to rise to the wretched task of chatting up Thea and their father alone. Gretel knew it was all Jason could do to complete a whole sentence in their father's presence, and she pitied him, but frankly, she had better things to do. She went directly to the kitchen, where a row of arched windows overlooked the wide lawn and the tiered herb garden. Gretel peeked into the refrigerator and found nothing particularly suspicious—diet soda, turkey roll, vegetables, fruit. A fat-free cheesecake sat on the counter, still in its box, and beside the cake was a pitcher which held a sauce of sugar-free cherries. And yet, when Gretel opened the oven there was the unmistakably rich odor of butter. She dragged her finger in a puddle collecting on the oven door; when she touched it to her tongue, she knew she was right. Definitely butter.

Somebody was sabotaging the food, turning the lowcal into megacal. Gretel started to have a tingling sensation in her shoulders and arms. It was the sort of feeling you have when you believe something, yet know you can't possibly be right. She thought she saw her grandmother in the pantry. Truly, she did. If it hadn't been such a ridiculous notion, Gretel would have sworn that her grandmother was rearranging the cans and jars right then. Everything Thea had set into alphabetical order was being reorganized into food groups: The pickled items were together. The legumes were relegated to a separate section. The soups all stood in a row, from tomato to salt-free chicken-noodle.

Gretel squinted, but the image was hazy no matter how she tried to focus. Still, wasn't that her grandmother's good black dress? Weren't those the gold earrings Frieda had gotten on sale at Fortunoff?

“Grandma?” Gretel said.

Even if she could have responded, the image that appeared to be Gretel's grandmother was too busy to speak. She was unscrewing the tops of jars where Thea kept her granola, her popcorn, her caramel-flavored rice cakes. To each she added a stick of butter. Frieda's supply of butter seemed endless; all she had to do was reach into her pocket and out came stick after stick.

Gretel had never felt prouder of her grandmother. She smiled broadly, and although it seemed impossible, her grandmother smiled right back. Of course, this was difficult to gauge for certain as the image had now left the pantry and was headed for the counter where the cheesecake was waiting. When the image passed by, Gretel smelled something that reminded her of a rainy day. It was a scent so piercing and sweet it might have been an embrace. If her grandmother chose to add hot pepper flakes to the cherry sauce, well then, who was Gretel to argue? She was merely respecting the wishes of the dead when she walked back to the table, and she stopped only once, to whisper in her brother's ear.

“Take my advice,” she suggested. “Skip dessert.”

Fate

On ours street everything turned green in its own time, first the poplars and the lilacs, then the tender shoots of the iris my mother planted beside the patio the year before, when she thought she was dying. We had made a deal with the higher powers that if she lived to see the iris in the spring, she'd go on living, she'd be free and clear, and we were hopeful since spring was already here. But you can't make deals for everything; sooner or later you have to pay, and that was what seemed to be happening to my best friend Jill.

In Franconia, there wasn't a female between the ages of twelve and eighteen who wouldn't have been willing to change places with Jill for an hour or a day. We were all jealous of her, and for good reason. She had long blond hair and a sugar-sweet voice that made the boys crazy; she could eat five cupcakes without gaining an ounce. People were drawn to her, but they resented her too. They thought she had been granted more than her rightful share. Because Jill was my best friend, I spent a lot of time defending her. There were many who wanted to believe she was only beautiful on the outside, and that inside she was horrible and withered. They wanted to hear that in her heart of hearts she was as mean as a snake, she was a competitive bitch, a nightmare, a diva. But in fact, Jill was much too kind and generous. Whatever she had was yours, no questions asked. She cried at the drop of a hat, and embraced you just as quickly. She'd do almost anything if she saw a tear in your eye, and if you pleaded for mercy you'd win her over instantly, which was what had happened with Eddie LoPacca.

Jill didn't dare tell me she was pregnant until early spring; she was so thin I never would have guessed anything was amiss, except that she seemed teary, which she chalked up to allergies, or maybe a cold—her excuses varied each day. But one afternoon, when we were over at her house, the truth was revealed after we'd gone into the kitchen for a snack. It was a perfect kitchen; Jill's mother was so fanatical about cleaning we could practically eat off the floor. I coveted that kitchen so badly I could feel my skin turning green whenever I walked into the room. The spices were set out in alphabetical order. I could see my own reflection in the sink. I wanted to live there even more than I wanted to look like Jill.

I couldn't think of my own kitchen without shivering. All hell had broken loose there, and it showed. After my father left, and my mother was diagnosed with cancer, our cousin Margot had suggested that she and my mother go into business together. They now had a catering company, although neither was much of a cook. They did bar mitzvahs and engagement parties, and there were weekends when hundreds of Swedish meatballs simmered on our stove. Cleaning up after themselves was a low priority for Margot and my mother. They had both recovered from cancer scares, failed marriages, and lost hope; in their opinion, dirt could wait. They took the money they earned from catering and bought high-heeled shoes and went to the Poconos on holiday weekends looking for husbands. They didn't care how thick the grime was on our stove.
You'll
see, they vowed,
someday you won't care either,
but that day had not yet arrived.

Delighted to be in Jill's perfect kitchen, I went to the snack drawer, where her mom always had brownies and cookies. It was pure chance that I happened to look up to see Jill standing in front of the open refrigerator. They must have had liver the night before at supper, because that was what she was reaching for. I felt a chill on the back of my legs. Jill usually wept to think of lambs and calves led to slaughter. She had to close her eyes whenever I ordered a hamburger, rare.

“You're eating that?” I asked.

“This?” Jill looked at the liver as though she'd been hypnotized and was just now surfacing to consciousness. She'd already taken a bite though, and was forced to chew and then swallow.

“Are you all right?”

“I guess I felt faint,” Jill admitted. “I thought it would help to have some protein.” She sat down at the table and I brought her a knife and fork. She ate the liver and tears rolled down her face. Slaughtered calves no longer mattered to her. That's when I knew.

“No,” I said. “Tell me you're not.”

“I am.” Jill nodded her beautiful head and kept on crying.

This was bad news indeed. Her boyfriend, Eddie LoPacca, was the boy that everyone wanted, but not for keeps. He Was gorgeous and stupid, and for two years straight I'd written all his term papers, so I certainly knew the state of his mind. Blank as the pages in his notebook. Even my brother, Jason—who was actively screwing up his own life with Eddie's sister, Terry, as his constant companion—would come home from the LoPaccas' house shaking his head.

“That Eddie,” he'd say. “No one's yet informed him that the earth is round. He thinks Abraham Lincoln is a brand of toothpaste. If you watch him closely you can actually see steam coming out of his ears when he tries to concentrate.”

We had some good laughs at Eddie's expense, but when I really thought it over, I always felt sobered by the hand of fate. My brother was the one who was supposed to be such a genius, but he and Eddie were now both employed in the same deli department, so who was the real idiot? Fate could twist you around and around, if you weren't careful. Just when you thought you knew where you were headed, you'd wind up in the opposite direction or flattened against a wall.

All the same, Jill was my best friend and I wanted to help. At that point I still believed that I knew as much as most people, and more than many. That afternoon, I went home and called my cousin Margot out to the patio, where we could speak privately. She and my mother had been experimenting with napoleons and éclairs and there was bitter-sweet chocolate streaked along Margot's arms. They had a wedding on Sunday that was driving them crazy.

“I told your mother we shouldn't do weddings.” Margot was supposed to have stopped smoking, but occasionally she had a Salem, during times of stress. She was having one now. “A bar mitzvah, a party, they're something else completely. At weddings people are so on edge. They can see their lives passing before their eyes. They're shutting the gate, they're locking it twice, and they turn all their anxiety into complaining about the catering. ‘You call this coffee? You call this cake?' That's what we'll be hearing. Believe me.”

My mother was busy rolling out dough, so Margot let me take a puff of her Salem. I thought about the way my father had dragged out leaving us. For two years my parents fought day and night, like pit bulls trapped in an L-shaped living room, but Margot's husband had vacated in a totally different style. He took off in the middle of the night; he didn't even bother to pack a suitcase, he just got into their Ford Mustang and headed south. Margot eventually got the Mustang back, but ever since her marriage had broken up, her mouth had a funny look to it, as though someone had grabbed her by the lips and yanked, hard.

When I asked her what she would do if she wanted to get rid of a baby, Margot's mouth looked even more pinched than usual. She pointed her Salem at me. “You?”