Roxy’s Story (21 page)

“Is that how she put it?” I shrugged. “I would have thought she would simply say I
was promiscuous or undisciplined.”

“She saw something good in you, or you wouldn’t be here, I’m sure.”

“When did she tell you I was promiscuous?”

“When she was trying to talk me out of hanging out with you. She said you weren’t
the sort of girl I would find interesting or admire because you weren’t a good student
and had nothing to be proud of. She said she had a lot of work to do with you, on
you.”

“She’s not wrong. I haven’t done much in my life except mess up.”

“I know, but that’s exactly why I want to be your friend and want you to be mine.
I’ve never been down the block, much less around it. I want to hear all about it.
You must promise never to be ashamed of anything you’ve done, especially so ashamed
that you wouldn’t ever tell me. People aren’t always what they seem to be, anyway.
If you give them half a chance, you’ll see first impressions are more the result of
prejudice or false information. You’ve got a lot to share, especially with someone
like me who sees the world through the rose-colored glasses my grandmother had fitted
on my face. I have to know about these things, or I’ll be a little girl when I’m thirty.
So you see, you’ll be tutoring and helping me as much as I will be helping you.”

“Oh, boy,” I said, sitting on my bed.

“What?”

“You’re a lot smarter than everyone, including your grandmother, thinks you are.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t just volunteer to help me with all that,” I said, nodding at the material
Professor Marx had given me. “You want a little quid pro quo.”

I lay back on my bed.
I’m in trouble,
I thought. Mrs. Brittany wanted me to have a G relationship with her granddaughter,
PG at most, and she was looking for at least an R.

“No, I want more,” she said.

“What more?” I asked, sitting up quickly.

“I want to be you, get into your mind, your memories, so well that I feel . . .”

“Feel what?”

“That I’ve been around the block,” she said.

“I thought you might have picked up that it’s nothing I’m proud of, Sheena.”

“It brought you here, didn’t it? You want to be here, don’t you?”

I stared at her a moment. This could work in reverse, too. If she drew honest answers
from me, she could feed them to her grandmother. For a fleeting few seconds, I wondered
if that was really Mrs. Brittany’s reason for permitting Sheena to be friends with
me. Could Sheena be her grandmother’s little spy, making periodic reports about candidates?
Maybe without her even realizing how she was being used? On the other hand, according
to Randy, Brittany girls weren’t permitted to get to know Sheena. Should I have believed
him? I couldn’t help feeling as if everything I did and anyone I spoke to on this
estate was in one way or another not to be trusted.

“I think so,” I said, trying to sound as neutral as I could. Again, I wondered how
much she actually knew about her grandmother’s business. “It’s too early to tell.
I’ve not exactly benefited a hundred percent from the decisions I’ve made for myself,
Sheena.”

She nodded, but I didn’t think she was listening to me.

“I always wonder if my grandmother would have wanted me to work for her, too. I mean,
if I didn’t have this,” she said, indicating her prosthetic leg. “What do you think?
Would it be that much of a hindrance? If I wasn’t my grandmother’s granddaughter,
would I have been discovered like you? You said I was pretty. Unless you felt like
you had to say it to please my grandmother.”

“Well, you know now that I’m a good liar, Sheena, so I don’t know how to convince
you that I’m telling you the truth.”

“Maybe . . . maybe we can double-date or something. Does my grandmother permit that
while one of her girls is in training?”

Anyone could see she was fishing to find out more about her grandmother’s girls, I
thought. Because I never worried too much about what I said, I found this to be quite
a challenge.

“I can only talk about myself, Sheena, and I can assure you, your grandmother wouldn’t
want me going on any dates while I was here.” I thought a moment. She had to know
most of it. “You know who Mr. Bob is, I imagine.”

“He works for my grandmother, but I don’t know what he does, exactly,” she said. “I’ve
met him only a few times, and when I’m around, they talk about everything but what
he does, I think. What does he do, exactly?”

Here I go, putting my foot into it.
If I didn’t tell her things, she might get depressed and cry to her grandmother,
and Mrs. Brittany would be angry, not only at me but at herself for permitting this
to start. She wouldn’t have had to if I hadn’t been so damn nosy and gone out there
to meet her. If I told her something Mrs. Brittany didn’t want her to know, she’d
also be angry, maybe even more so. Was this some sort of test, too? A challenge?

I saw the look of hope in Sheena’s face, hope that she would finally have a girlfriend,
someone who wasn’t afraid to tell her intimate things and hear intimate things. Maybe
I was flattering myself too much, but I suddenly saw myself as the sister she never
had. I wasn’t going to hurt her any more than she had been in her life. If Mrs. Brittany
couldn’t see that, then good riddance to her and this whole idea.

“Mr. Bob is the one who brought me to your grandmother. He’s a kind of agent, like
an actors’ agent who discovers new talent.”

“How did he discover you?”

Now we were really getting to the nitty-gritty, I thought.

“A short while ago, my father threw me out of our house, and Mr. Bob found me when
I was about to give up on myself.”

“Really? Your father threw you out?” she asked, now looking shocked. Maybe this would
end the attempt at any friendship. Maybe this was for the best. I’d tell her everything,
and that would drive her away. “I can’t imagine a father throwing out his own daughter.”

“Yes. I was thrown out. I’ve been in trouble all the time. He simply gave up trying
to change me, and he was worried about my influencing my younger sister.”

“Oh. How old is she?”

“She’s about nine years younger.”

“Did you, I mean, do you have a good relationship with her, anyway?”

“We hardly know each other,” I said.

She looked more shocked. “Why?”

“Our age difference, for one reason, and for another, my father has done his best
to scare her away from me. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I’ve
gone somewhere with her without either my mother or my father tagging along. The last
thing I did that you might call sisterly was give her a charm bracelet that had been
given to me.”

“What about your mother? Is your mother still alive?”

“She’s still alive, but she . . . she’s given up on me, too. I told you I was no angel.
I’ve been in one pot of hot water after another. I guess I exhausted them, and they’re
terrified I’ll spoil my sister. She’s perfect in their eyes, whereas I’m all that’s
bad.”

She thought a moment and then surprised me with
a smile. “Well, I’ve never been in trouble. I can’t wait to hear what you did to cause
your own parents to think you were all bad.”

“I don’t know if I should get into all that with you, Sheena.”

“I do. You should. I won’t go blabbering to my grandmother, if that’s what you’re
afraid of,” she said, “or anyone else. You can trust me with any secret you have.
I want to trust you, too.”

“I’m not talking about just being a bad student, breaking school rules, or staying
out too late and going places my parents forbade me to go to, Sheena.”

“Good. There’s nothing extraordinary about that. All that sounds like simple immaturity
or being spoiled. Boring stuff,” she sang.

Was there anything I could say that would keep her from wanting to befriend me?

More important, perhaps, did I want to do that?

“I want to hear about your love life.”

“I haven’t had a love life, except with myself,” I said.

She laughed. “Okay, your sex life, then. As I told you, I’ve read about anything and
everything you’ve done, probably. I just want to hear about it from someone who’s
actually done it. Maybe what I’ve read isn’t so accurate. Maybe it’s too made up or
too . . . hopeful. All right?”

“Okay. We’ll see,” I said.

“Yes, we will, but I’m not being fair.” She turned back to the books and papers. “It’s
getting late, and
I haven’t give you any pointers yet. I’m sure you’re tired. C’mon,” she urged. “Let’s
go over some of this.” She laughed as she opened the fat art textbook. “I’m sure it
will help you fall asleep.”

She was right. After nearly an hour, my eyes began to close, and we decided it was
enough, but she did home in on the information I would need to impress Professor Marx
the next day. Before she left, she told me she was going to ask her grandmother if
I could have dinner with her and spend time with her in her suite studying afterward.

“She has to agree to give you a day off, doesn’t she?”

“I don’t think she believes in the concept.”

“Oh, she does. I’ll work on her.”

“Don’t work on her too hard, or she’ll just ship me off,” I warned.

“I know how to handle my grandmother,” she whispered at the door. “I got her to let
you see me, didn’t I? Don’t worry about it. I have all kinds of things I want to show
you, including some clothes I want you to try on. We’re almost the same size in everything,
I bet. Okay?”

I saw the desperation in her face. On this great estate with almost anything anyone
could want at her beck and call, Sheena was hungering for the simplest thing of all,
some real companionship.

Maybe I was, too.

Maybe escaping loneliness was the reason we did everything we did in this life.

Maybe my father was lonelier than I had ever imagined. Maybe my mother was, too.

Now Emmie would be.

And despite what my father hoped for now, no one would be happier because of what
had happened.

“Okay,” I said.

Sheena leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. “Sweet dreams,” she said.

I don’t know why, but as she walked away, limping, I felt like bursting into tears.

Only I didn’t know if I would be crying for her or for myself.

I closed all the books and crawled into bed.

In the morning, the phone woke me just as Mrs. Pratt had promised. I felt like throwing
it against the wall, but I sat up quickly, lifted the receiver, and put it back as
she had instructed. Groaning and moaning from the charley horses Lance had predicted
with such glee, I got myself into a hot shower and then shifted to icy-cold water
to wake up every cell in my body.

This time, when I arrived at the breakfast nook, there was no one there. Randy informed
me that Portia had already left.

“She had to fly to Los Angeles,” he revealed, and then pretended to zip up his lips.

I ate my healthy breakfast and then reluctantly rose and went to the gym.

“Stretching,” Lance called the moment I entered. “You know the routine.”

Yes, I knew it.

They’ll kill me before I have a chance to be approved for anything,
I thought, but the workout
wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Lance did know what he was doing, just how much to push
me and when to give me rest. We returned to the pool afterward, and according to him,
I swam better. I didn’t get a massage this time but was told to go to the library
to see Professor Brenner, the man who was going to work on my elocution.

Unlike Professor Marx, he was jovial from the start and seemed genuinely amused at
the way I pronounced some of my words. He wore a western-style tie and jacket, jeans,
and boots and had a well-trimmed rust-red mustache. I didn’t think he was more than
fifty years old and wondered why he was a retired professor.

He pounced on my slurring of consonants and what he called my lazy tongue.

“You’ve got that New York thing, saying ‘mounain’ instead of ‘mountain,’ ” he said.
“Also, just like most people your age today, Roxy, you speak too fast. Do you know
what a caesural pause is?”

I remembered Mr. Wheeler talking about it and said, “Sort of a pregnant pause?”

Professor Brenner laughed. “Exactly. You capture your listener’s attention with it
and elevate the importance of what you’re saying next. Think about that, and it will
help you slow down. You’ll sound more . . .”

“Educated?”

“Yes, but I was thinking more mature,” he said.

He gave me lessons to practice with a recorder, and then I went on to lunch with Nigel
Whitehouse. Later
that afternoon, I impressed Professor Marx with what I had mastered, thanks to Sheena.
By the end of the afternoon, I felt more confident. Mrs. Pratt informed me that I
was to have a private dinner with Mrs. Brittany. Again, clothes were brought in for
me.

“It’s all right for you to spend an hour or so with Mrs. Brittany’s granddaughter,”
she added. I could see in her face and hear in her voice that she wasn’t happy about
it. She told me exactly where to go in the east wing of the mansion.

I set out as soon as she left and followed the corridor past the stairway. There was
something about this wing of the mansion that seemed more homey. The colors were far
more subtle, the paintings smaller, with depictions of rural scenes, lakes, and beautiful
valleys. There was one portrait of significant size. It was of a handsome man in what
looked like garb worn by royalty, with epaulets on his shoulders and some medals under
his breast pocket. He wore three jeweled rings and was captured with a soft smile.
Has to be Mrs. Brittany’s husband,
I thought, and turned the corner to knock on the first door on my right.

Sheena opened it instantly.

“Oh, it’s you. I was hoping it was you. Guess what? My grandmother said I could go
horseback riding with you tomorrow when you take your first lesson. Come in. Come
in,” she said, stepping back.