Making Pretty (6 page)

When I first met Karissa, she had on a pink camisole, a brown leather vest, and no bra. She did a monologue from the play
No Exit
, and everyone in class watched her with the jaw-open, wet-eyed look of people realizing they aren't good enough.

“Amazing job,” our teacher said. “Now do it again, but remember that your whole life all anyone's wanted from you is sex. And you love it, but you're tired of it too. Right? Don't apologize halfway through. It's not okay, what they've done to you. How they've treated you. And you know that, but you also know it's your only power. You understand what I'm saying, Karissa?”

Karissa teared up. She scratched her thighs with her silver fingernails and looked at the ceiling for too long a moment. Donna didn't like when we tried to escape a difficult part of a scene by sighing or looking away or diffusing it in any way.

“No, no, leap right in! Get in there!” the teacher said.

This time, Karissa got choked up halfway through the monologue.
The class nodded in unison at the perfection. When she got to the last line, she was on her knees. She was crying, but not wiping away the tears. Not choking them back.

No one from the outside was supposed to watch class. It was supposed to be a safe, private space. And I guess it mostly was, but the day that Karissa nailed her monologue, my father was at the door, peering in through the tiny window, watching the way her mascara tears made a spiderweb over her face. On someone else it might have looked messy and ugly, but on Karissa, with her brunette waves and unlined, practically translucent face, it was romantic. The mascara made a paisley pattern, black on white, and she looked masked rather than destroyed.

“Who was that?” Dad said after we walked in silence through Washington Square Park to our favorite place in the village, Caffe Reggio.

“Who?” I said.

“The beautiful one. Without the bra,” Dad said.

Karissa is not the kind of woman my dad usually calls beautiful.

The wife he was just about to divorce, Tess, has D cups and platinum hair and an impossibly flat stomach. My father likes impossibly perfect women. He likes them because he makes them possible.

That's why when he tells me I'm beautiful, it reeks of lies. I know better. I know what he really sees when he looks at me.

“Please do not talk about my classmates' bras,” I said. “Or better yet, please do not say ‘bra' to me. Ever. Please extract the word from your vocabulary.” I dropped my voice on the word
bra
because the
café was cramped and the table of seventy-year-old men playing cards over by the window were all wearing hearing aids, so I was pretty sure they were listening in.

“Well, don't call her your classmate, then,” Dad said. “That makes her sound like a teenager. And that girl is not a teenager.”

“She's, like, a few years older than Arizona.”

“She's hot.”

I sighed, because
hot
should be banned the way the word
bra
is banned, but my dad cannot be stopped, especially when he's all hopped up on a soup-bowl-size cup of cappuccino.

With his third wife, Natasha, he always used to say, “Now that's an ass!” whenever she walked away from him in her tight black jeans. When he was with his second wife, Janie, I would catch them making out, his hand either up her shirt or down her pants. I was, like, eight. I don't remember much about him being with my mother. I was only five when she left us for the West Coast and then India and communism or Buddhism or one of those, but I'm sure he didn't hold back with her either. He gave her liposuction and a new nose, but, as she tells me once a year on my birthday, she regrets both of them and hopes I don't take that route.

The point being, my dad can be exceedingly gross about women.

Even then, at Reggio, he was doodling on one of the postcards on the table. It was a Renoir, I think. A painting I'd seen a million times of a woman in a red hat with a little girl. My father drew lines on the woman's face, places he could fix, if she were his client. He did it absently, not knowing it was happening. The doodles are all over
the house, too—on magazine covers and friends' Christmas cards. He can't leave work, not ever. His mind looks for flaws to fix, always.

“Her name is Karissa,” I said. “She's the best in the class. Do you want to split the prosciutto sandwich?” I held the menu in front of his face so that he would forget everything about Karissa. It did not work. She had green eyes after all. And a dozen silver bracelets on her right hand that clanked against one another if she moved at all, making everyone hyperaware of her movements. She had long eyelashes and red lips and that cool combination of camisole with leather vest that means she's good in bed, I think.

She wasn't perfect. But that's why she was so goddamn beautiful. My dad has never understood that. He sees a field of wildflowers, thinks it's really great, but also thinks pulling out all the weeds and manicuring it into a perfect garden will make it better. Then he's disappointed at the result.

With her freckles and softly frizzing brown hair and crazy outfits, Karissa is totally a field of wildflowers.

“Do you like her?” he said.

“She's talented.” I added more sugar to my latte. After one day in her presence I wanted her to be my friend. Or my new sister. “She smokes.”

“People give up smoking,” Dad said.

And I guess maybe I should have known then what was coming.

Natasha is the wife who taught me about gratitude.

She is the wife I wish was still our mom. More than I wish our actual mom was still our mom, because our actual mom chose to leave us, whereas Natasha chose to make things right with me a year after she left.

She taught me about writing the List of Things to Be Grateful For. She writes ten a day. I try for three.

I work really effing hard to find things to be grateful for on days like today.

For instance, I am grateful for the stoop and the perfect temperature of the evening and the fact that I can pretend planes flying up above are stars in the sky.

Arizona comes home from dinner to find me on the stoop and shoves takeout pasta into my hands like it's a grenade. Orecchiette. Little ears. My favorite, only because of the name.

“I needed you there,” she says. I almost forget about her boobs, her face is that sad.

“You don't get it,” I say. “That's Karissa. That's the girl I've been talking about all spring. That's her. You know how much she matters to me.”

“Not fair,” she says. “I'm supposed to matter to you.” Karissa comes up from behind in her own cab with Dad. I guess they couldn't even all stand to come home together in one car. Dad kisses Karissa on the lips, a smacking sound that will echo in my head forever, and blows by me on his way into the apartment and up to bed.

Karissa lingers a few feet away for a moment, then heads inside, where I can feel her waiting for me and Arizona to finish up so she can come outside and chat too.

“We can't let this happen,” I say.

“Is she, like, unstable?” Arizona says. “She was a little erratic at dinner.”

I almost tell her about Karissa's impressive grief and story-like past. But I keep it for myself. I guess I have a habit of keeping things from Arizona, a reality I don't want to look at too squarely.

“Also, that woman can drink. No wonder you were such a disaster the other night,” Arizona says. “She's staying over. Do you want to stay at my place so you don't have to deal with that?” She almost forgives me already, and that's what I love about my sister. Her anger has a sharp peak and a deep valley. It's enough to make me think I could tell her about Natasha, at last, after all these years, and that she'd forgive me for being close with the one person we're supposed to hate the most. “And I'm sorry, I want to be supportive, but for the love of God, you look like a cartoon character.” She pulls at my hair and raises her
eyebrows. We're sisters again, just like that.

“Pot calling the kettle black,” I say, even though I'm the one still in the doghouse and should definitely shut up.

“They look natural,” Arizona says. “Don't even try to tell me they don't. And it sounds stupid to you, I guess, but he's not totally wrong. I do feel sort of great. And sure. I walk around the Village and feel like . . . a woman. Like, in control. I don't know. Can we shut down this topic? Like, permanently? I want to feel good with what I did.” She looks down at her own cleavage. We both do. “I don't know,” she says. “Anyway. Eat up. I'll hate you less tomorrow.” She digs a plastic fork out of her pocket, because Arizona is nothing if not prepared to take care of me, so I sit on the stoop and dig in. There's nothing quite like eating fancy food on your stoop. It's cheese and oil perfection, so for a glorious moment I'm okay. Cheese can make me forget about anything for the length of time of one bite.

Arizona catches a cab, and the cheese and I watch her go.

Karissa sits down next to me only a minute later. She must have been watching us from the front door's window this whole time. I'm nervous to be near her. We're in some weird space between what we were three days ago and what we are about to become. It feels like wearing jeans that used to fit and still technically button up, but might rip at the seams if you kick your leg in the air.

“You okay?” she says.

“Shit, dude,” I say.

Janie is the wife who taught me swear words, and Tess taught me about family dinners. My real mom taught me that anyone can leave,
even mothers who smell like brownie mix and soap.

Karissa was supposed to be my friend who would teach me about the correct ratio of cigarettes to liquor and maybe making the most out of small boobs and a sizable ass and how to make the city seem new every day.

Instead she's going to be girlfriend number eight hundred fifty-seven, and I'll be learning about betrayal and whether or not I'm good at denial. I'll learn how quickly something can be taken from me, which is a lesson I was already pretty knowledgeable about, to be honest.

“Don't freak out,” Karissa says. I stare at the potted flowers Tess put out here. They're dying, and I want to replace them. I liked the way she put different kinds on every step, like a mini botany lesson on the way into the apartment.

“Not possible.”

It's funny that we're talking in tiny sentences. The situation is enormous, but we are being stingy with actual words.

I relax a little. I can't help it. My orecchiette is perfection in a cardboard box and the moon is bright and strange above the buildings and it's nice to have someone to sit with at the end of the night in the middle of the big city.

“You take after your dad, you know?” Karissa extends the word
dad
so that it's a word with a melody. “Like, the things I like about you are the same things I like about him.”

It takes everything in me to not scream at her, but I can't stop thinking about the fact that she has no family, that they're gone and
she's the brilliant sparkle that's left. It's hard to imagine lashing out at someone like that. I sit on my hands like that will somehow keep my volume and tone in check. Take a deep breath.

“I take after my mom,” I say. There's a series of horns, a domino effect of sound moving down the street. Cacophony. I don't even know that the things I'm saying are true. One phone call a year is not enough to get to know my mother.

“Me too,” Karissa says. “I mean, my mom. I take after her. It's nice, right? Helps? To have something to share with someone who's gone?”

I'm being tug-of-warred between rage and compassion. I can't even form a response.

“What if this was really good for both of us?” she says. “My mom always used to say that the best things come from the most unexpected places.” She takes a piece of pasta right from the box, no fork. And another without asking.

“I feel like Sean Varren is all new to you. But we've been here before. This isn't new for me.” I give her a heavy look. I shift the box of pasta a little so that she'd have to reach across me to get another piece of it. It's mine. I don't want to share.

“But I'm new,” Karissa says.

We listen to someone playing classical music a few floors above us. It's probably my father, who likes to fall asleep listening to the radio. I look at her face to see if she knows that about him.

I hate her and love her.

I want to yell at her about finding her own family, not stealing
mine. That dating my dad is disgusting. That she's a liar and a fake and an awful person who I wish I'd never met. Those things are all swimming inside me.

But mostly I want to tell her that I'm worried about her.

“He's going to hurt you,” I say. “This isn't whatever you think it is. Whatever he's saying it is.” I don't like how it feels, talking about my father like he's the douche football star that I'm worried is cheating on my friend or something. But it's a true thing I can say. And I want to say a true thing out here on the stoop tonight.

“We both deserve something great,” she says, but this isn't something great, so I don't really have a reply. “I think we could all be really happy. Like, together.”

Karissa is not a Sean Varren wife. I don't know how to explain that to her without a comprehensive history of the last ten years of my life, so I don't say anything.

My skin itches. I poke as many tiny pasta ears onto my fork as possible and shove them into my mouth, like that will dull the urge to stand up for myself. Karissa takes something out of her purse. It's a hunk of parmesan cheese wrapped in the restaurant's cloth napkin. She pulls out a silver cheese knife too, and a small plate.

“Cheese,” she says. “We did cheese for dessert.” She puts the napkin on my lap and cuts bites of parmesan for both of us, and it's impossible to hate someone who makes every tiny moment so fucking beautiful.

The cheese is exceptional. Nutty and buttery and the tiniest bit sweet.

Karissa grabs my cheeks, a weird, hard gesture like she might press with too much force and smush my face entirely. Her hands are cool despite the wicked humidity, and I'm always shocked by her ease with intimacy. “Let's be magnificent,” she says. She's grinning and her eyes are wild but warm. If there is a feeling that is smack-dab in the middle of scared and elated, I'm there. “We're still us, okay? We're Montana and Karissa. We eat cheese on stolen plates in the middle of the night on the stoop. We are spectacular.”

She stares at me until I nod.