The Appetites of Girls (12 page)

I leaned forward, closer, closer, until my forehead met the cool of the window. It was
this
dress I would wear for Michelle’s party. Yes, I had to have it. As the guests arrived, I would descend the staircase, my slippers peeping from beneath the sway of my apricot hem. Head aloft, I would walk as though unaware of the eyes raised to me. And I would not deign to glance in Mother’s direction, at her mouth gaping in shock.

For days I savored this image until I had fixed every detail—the pearl choker I had received as a Christmas present at my neck, my amethyst ring on the middle finger of my right hand. But in these daydreams, my
body was transformed, too—my limbs narrow, my waist, even my face thinned, my cheeks hollowed. I pictured Mother’s eyes, hazy with regret, stricken with guilt for having underestimated me.

As Mother arranged terra-cotta pots of geraniums and jonquils on our terrace one afternoon, I announced there was an apricot dress I wanted to buy for the engagement party.

“Apricot sounds lovely,” she said, tamping down the soil beds with gloved fingers. She handed me a check so I could pick up the gown myself. “I will phone the shop and tell them to expect you. You don’t mind, do you, Fran? I’m just swamped with errands for the party.”

Each morning after brushing my teeth, I checked the waistband of my school skirt. I wondered if I could now more easily slide my fingers between my stomach and the woolen fabric. Using a measuring tape I had discovered in the hall linen closet, I recorded the circumference of my thighs, my hips, my waist, imagining how someday, when the numbers changed, Mother would make surprised apologies.

“Do I look any thinner?” I asked Sharon in the school cafeteria as we trudged with our lunch trays to a corner table.

She frowned, studying me from shoulders to knees, fiddling with the new charm bracelet Robeson, a boy she’d now had five dates with, had bought her as a birthday gift. “I’m not sure. It’s possible. Maybe I need to see from a different angle.”

“Never
mind
!” I should have known better than to ask. Sharon had been annoyingly superior ever since Robeson’s first phone call.

Mother’s check I kept safely folded in my wallet. I was determined to wait until a day or two before the party to purchase the dress; I wanted the smallest possible size.

During the week before the party, Mother bought a carved bronze lion doorstop for the front hall, an enormous cut-crystal bowl for the dining room sideboard, and an intricately patterned gold picture frame to
display a photograph of Michelle and Stanton with their hands entwined. She repeatedly scanned the radio dial for weather reports. Rain or a cold front would mean keeping the doors to the balconies closed and placing coatracks in the vestibule. But Saturday morning was clear and unseasonably warm.

“It’s really a
perfect
day,” Mother said, rushing with several bags to the kitchen. She had just returned from a salon appointment and smelled faintly of mousse, her hair formed in an elaborate knot woven with slender ribbons. A florist was already at work in the foyer, draping garlands of lilies from the banister. Hours before, caterers had marched in with food for the occasion, stacking trays and bowls in the refrigerator and on every available kitchen counter. The servers would arrive later to arrange the buffet tables and hors d’oeuvre platters.

My new gown lay in a protective garment bag across the foot of my bed, the apricot slippers on the floor below it. Though I’d discovered in the fitting room of Grace’s Teen Boutique that I hadn’t reduced a single size (let alone the two I’d hoped for), my disappointment dissipated after modeling the dress before my bedroom mirror. In the glow of my dresser lamp, the material glimmered with opalescent flecks, the beaded straps sparkled on my shoulders. The guests were expected at four, two hours away. But I chose not to wait. I fastened my pearl choker at my neck, scrubbed my face three times, brushed my hair with vigorous strokes until it shone. I dabbed L’Air du Temps perfume behind my ears, uncapping for the first time the sample vial Mother had given me after a shopping excursion. And with makeup I remembered Sharon had left at my house some time ago, I coated my lips with gloss, swept a bit of greenish shadow across my eyelids, until I imagined that even Jamie Dempsey, who was home from boarding school and joining his parents for the occasion, might possibly notice me, until everything was as I had envisioned.

Downstairs there seemed to be a lull in the frenzy of preparations. The kitchen, in fact, had been entirely abandoned, and I entered to survey the display of food. What I found across the counters, in the
cupboards, and on the pantry table far surpassed any presentation I had before seen. There were sculpted salads, carved vegetables, pastries imprinted with curling leaf designs. There were cookies as sheer as parchment paper and glass dishes filled with caviar. Then, on a corner counter in the pantry, I discovered the cake. It seemed almost to have been molded of frosted glass rather than anything edible. It consisted of two circular tiers iced in pale yellow. A necklace of white dots, like gemstones, ringed the base of each tier. But it was the top of the cake that was most stunning—a profusion of pastel sugar flowers, like a bridal bouquet—roses, tulips, lavender forget-me-nots, each with delicate petals and deceivingly real. I was inspecting the cake and a bowl of diamond-shaped chocolates beside it, when I heard Mother’s footsteps. So I straightened, adjusting my shoulder straps, and strolled toward the table of vegetables, conscious of the rustling of my skirt and the tautness of the zipper against my back.

“Oh, Francesca!” Mother said. She was wearing an embroidered silk robe tied tightly at the waist, having not yet changed for the party.

I gave a distracted toss of my hair. It will take her a moment to search for the right words, I thought, and despite my resolve of steadiness, my heart began to pound.

“Franny, you haven’t touched any of the food, have you? The caterers spent hours on all of it, I’m sure.” Then, her hand flying to her chin, she asked, “Did you just hear the doorbell, or was it my imagination?” And without another word, without so much as a second glimpse at me, she padded toward the dining room, her silk robe billowing behind.

So she’d noticed nothing! Really, it was almost funny. Ha! Ha! Ridiculous to have thought she would! One of the straps of my dress slipped from my shoulder, but I did not bother to fix it. For several minutes I paced the kitchen, unable to think of anything to do. A sharp pang of hunger jabbed below my ribs. I’d seen cold cuts for sandwiches in the refrigerator, but I knew these would not satisfy. Neither would the pistachios in glass canisters above the oven. I returned to the pantry. Who
would notice one less chocolate? Or two?—the bowl was enormous. Even if I scooped a handful, no one, not even Mother, would perceive the difference. The chocolates were more bitter than I anticipated. As I let them dissolve in my mouth, I could smell the lemony sweetness of the engagement cake and another scent, as well, something delectably pungent like vanilla—was it the icing or the filling or something emanating from the decorative flowers on top? I leaned over to sniff it, the tip of my nose almost touching the rim. My mouth watered. And suddenly, before I knew it, I had flicked at a bit of frosting with my tongue. Such a delicious mixture of citrus and cream. I inspected the new flaw in the icing—nothing too large, nothing the caterers could not cover. But I was hungrier now and began to study the flowers on the surface. There were so many—if I broke off a single rose, who would be the wiser? I would take a small bud from the edge, but the large one in the center looked more tempting, with full reddish-pink petals.

The flowers flaked off easily, flimsily attached, almost as easily as the top layer of icing peeled away, revealing the moist cake inside. And I gorged myself until the cake was a caved-in yellow shell, until a deep hollow formed in a tureen of pâté, until holes speckled two quiches and the sculpted salads where I had plucked the tidbits I found appealing.

Something dark and sticky had trickled down the front of my dress. When I dabbed at the stain, it began to smear. It was three o’clock. My parents’ guests would be arriving in one hour; the caterers would return any moment. I could hear Mother in the hall giving last-minute directions to the florist: “Could we try raising the wreath on the door one half-inch? Yes, that’s better, I think. Just lovely . . .” In a minute she would retire to her bedroom to change, then descend to the kitchen to oversee the work. It would take only an instant, a gasp from one of the servers, and she would discover the destruction. Ha! If not for the ache of my stomach, I would have laughed aloud. Pulling at the stiff midriff of my gown where it constricted my waist, I climbed the stairs, kicked off my apricot slippers, and waited.

(Setsu’s Story)

•
1974
•

M
y first violin was a sixteenth-size, just the right length for my four-year-old arms. When my mother handed it to me, showing me how to lean my chin into the cupped chinrest and tuck the smooth wooden neck between my parted thumb and forefinger, my father snapped pictures.

“You know, Setsu, your birth parents were both musicians,” my mother said, helping me to curl my fingers onto the thinnest string spanning the fingerboard.

Yes, I nodded silently. Mentions of my Japanese birth parents always made me shy. Perhaps it was the solemn tone in which my mother spoke of them, pausing between her words now and then to pat my shoulder or the back of my hand as if she were expecting some reaction. But what it was I could not quite figure out, and, certain I had not produced the appropriate response, I only bowed my head politely.

My Japanese mother had died the day I was born, in a hospital near
Osaka, my father disappearing soon after. This was all I had been told of my birth parents, all my adoptive parents seemed to know. Only this and the fact that they had been musical—my birth mother, a violinist; my birth father, a cellist. “What a wonderful heritage you have, Setsu,” my mother would sometimes say to me. “
Two
musical parents. A double blessing.” Then she would tell me the story of how she and my father had gone to Japan and chosen me from among all the little boys and girls at the Osaka Blessed Children’s Orphanage.

“When we first spotted you in your crib, you were lying on your back, your thin little arms raised as though bowing a fiddle.” My mother would raise her own arms in imitation. As lovers of music themselves, they had read this as a sign. “And just days after we brought you home, here to Bethesda, Maryland, not long after your third birthday, we noticed each time we played Vivaldi or one of Beethoven’s symphonies on the phonograph, you put your toys aside to listen.”

I would stare down at my hands and my wrists and my elbows, inspecting with some amazement these parts of me that had been responsible for my good fortune.

It was for this reason, I understood, that I was now being given a violin of my own.

“It’s yours to keep,” explained my father. “Don’t be bashful. We want you to have it.” In Japan, after all, many children were given their first instruments as early as three, even two, he said. He invited me to lift the lid of its case, helping me to unbuckle the silver clasps on either side of the black handle. “Do you like it?”

I could only nod, yes, thank you, as I reached inside with a single finger to press the pretty green velvet lining on which the violin rested. I was afraid to touch the instrument itself, so shiny was its polished wood, so perfect the swirl of its scrolled tip. But my mother showed me that it was safe to pick it up as long as I lifted it gently, and that the bow, too, was not difficult to hold and could make such lovely sounds when moved a certain way across the strings.

Every day she taught me something new—down bow and up bow, how to play B, C, or D on the A-string, how to make a note last, how to make it stop short. But she knew only certain things, she said. There was much more that I could learn. So on Saturday mornings she and my father began to drive me to Georgetown to a brick town house with black window boxes on either side of its gray door. This was where Mrs. Dubois lived and where she gave lessons, my parents told me, to many, many boys and girls.

Mrs. Dubois had short curly white hair and wore dresses printed with flowers. At the beginning of each lesson, she offered me chocolate nut candies wrapped in silver paper from a porcelain tray. “You’re such a tiny thing. Here, take a handful. They’ll help to fatten you up,” she would smile. Not wanting to seem rude, I would pick only one and nibble it slowly or place it in my pocket for later.

For many Saturdays, we worked on simple scales and a series of arpeggios. Once I had mastered these, Mrs. Dubois presented me with my own white-and-black-covered music book and began to teach me some of the beautiful melodies inside. “Edelweiss,” a lullaby by Brahms, “May Song,” Bach’s “Minuet in G.” How I loved the soaring high notes of the minuet and the soft, surging notes of the lullaby.

“You can practice these at home, Setsu,” she said. “And soon you will see that the bow will become steadier in your hand, every note sweeter.”

So each evening before supper, while my mother worked in the kitchen and my father flipped through newspapers in the living room armchair, I closed my bedroom door to avoid disturbing them and played the new pieces I had learned. The notes vibrated through my fingers as I held them to the strings, making my hand tingle. Some nights I imagined my whole body humming the melodies, a swaying and swelling in my chest and in my throat that moved out and out along my limbs until I reached the final measures of a piece. The concluding notes that seemed so sad, fading until no music remained. I almost hated to play them and
sometimes drew the bow in slow, slow strokes to make them last. Other times, I rushed through as quickly as my fingers would fly, hoping I had time to start once more at the piece’s happy beginning before dinner.

I visited Mrs. Dubois through the winter and spring, and in the summer, too, when she would laugh and say that even the violins were too hot and wished to stay hidden in the cool of their cases. Her chocolate nut candies oozed through their foil wrappers so that, after I took one, I had to carefully lick the stickiness from each of my fingers. But as soon as Mrs. Dubois opened my music book, propping it on the metal stand beside her piano, and seated herself at the piano bench, winking that we could begin, I forgot all about the perspiration trickling down the back of my neck and the itchy heat of my legs under my cotton jumper.

Sometimes, at the conclusion of a lesson, Mrs. Dubois would usher my parents onto her sunporch, where they would sit on her wide sofa with its lace doily arm covers. From the music room, where I had been given a glass of apple juice and a picture book to browse through, I could see Mrs. Dubois pouring iced tea from a pitcher. Then she and my parents would murmur in hushed tones, and though I could not catch their words, I was quite certain that I was the subject of their discussion. And the thought that such a long conversation could be about me alone made my face flush as I sipped from my juice glass.

On the return trip home from my lesson, I was often lulled to sleep by the steady motion of the car, my father driving with shoulders rounded as he peered over the wheel, never speeding or screeching like many of the cars that passed us. But one afternoon, as I sat in the back, clutching my violin case so that it would not slide from my lap, my head beginning to nod drowsily, my mother turned to face me. Blotches of red shone from the center of her cheeks, making me think of the little crimson tomatoes I had seen her bring home from the grocery store and pop in her mouth like sweets. She brushed at the blond bangs that covered her forehead and reached across the seat to give my hand a pat.

“Setsu! We have some good news!” She smiled at my father, then bit her lower lip, leaving traces of lipstick like filmy pink feathers on her teeth. I began to lift a finger to my own teeth to show her what she’d done, but she seemed not to understand, so I curled my finger under my thumb instead.

“What do you think Mrs. Dubois told us today? Can you guess? She said you have
unmistakable
,
true talent
. Those were her exact words! She believes you are gifted, Setsu. She thinks you may be good enough someday to play with a fine orchestra or perhaps even to become a professional soloist. This is something she suggests to only a few of her students, to only the best!” My mother inhaled quickly, making a tiny squeak. “Aren’t you proud?”

I tucked my chin to my neck in a small nod, unable to speak. The things my mother said seemed too big to hold on to. Never could I remember having seen my parents so excited, and this made my stomach flutter as if I had swallowed a hundred bubbles.

That evening my mother announced that we must have a small celebration. “A special dinner for you, Setsu. What is your very favorite? What would you like to have?”

I glanced around the kitchen at the fruit basket on the counter, the avocados ripening on the windowsill, feeling there must be some particular meal she hoped I would pick.

“Anything you want, dear. Anything at all,” my mother said after a time. She placed an arm around my neck, her touch soft as snow. “What about spaghetti with meatballs? That’s something all children like, isn’t it? Is that your favorite? And I could toast a loaf of garlic bread to go with it.”

“Yes, please. Spaghetti with meatballs,” I nodded, thankful that a solution had been given.

And as we sat at the table, I tried to wind the noodles carefully, carefully onto my fork, afraid that in my new happiness, in my rush of excitement, I would seem ungrateful and gobble my food too quickly.

Over the next few years, I saw Mrs. Dubois not only on Saturdays but once each week after school, as well. She gave me new music books with pieces by Schubert and Mozart and Bach, pieces so beautiful they sometimes made me hold my breath. They were as beautiful as the melodies my parents played on their phonograph, as wonderful as anything I could have imagined. Mrs. Dubois taught me to use vibrato so that my notes would shimmer and sing. She showed me how to slide my hand up the fingerboard toward the bridge for higher and higher pitches. I learned when to use the taut tip of my bow and when the bottom, and the way to pluck the violin’s strings for pizzicato.

At home, when I practiced, my parents now often chose to put aside their reading. “No need to close your door, Setsu,” my father would call from the living room. “We like to listen. And why wouldn’t we, with a budding Isaac Stern under our very own roof!”

So I would rifle through sheets of music searching for the études and sonatas I thought they would most enjoy. Every so often I would hear my mother gasp, “That was lovely, Setsu. Really splendid!” My throat throbbing with pride, I would mark the selection, a reminder to play it for them again. “Setsu’s playing comes from the soul,” I had heard Mrs. Dubois tell my parents. And I felt as if something special had been born inside—not that I had made it happen—the way young ladies in my book of fairy tales had been born with kind hearts and rose-pink cheeks.

•   •   •

T
hen, in the autumn of the year I turned ten, my parents began to have soft conversations that stopped when I entered the living room. If I woke in the dark of night for a glass of water, I could hear rapid whisperings through the crack of their bedroom door. And one afternoon in November, my mother explained that there was something they wished to discuss with
me. She smoothed a wrinkle from her tweed pants, then patted the plush seat cushion of the living room couch, motioning for me to sit down.

“What would you think, Setsu, if we said we wanted to bring home a brother or sister for you? Someone to keep you company. Someone you could play with.”

My father pressed my mother’s hand in his. “A boy or girl from Japan, just like you. Do you want to be a sister, Setsu?”

This news was so unexpected I could only clasp my hands to my chest and nod.

“Would you like that, Setsu?” my father repeated, leaning forward, stretching the buttonholes of his wool cardigan sweater.

“Oh, yes. Yes, thank you,” I managed to murmur, afraid they would take my silence as a sign of displeasure.

I spent the next days trying to imagine the new boy or girl who would soon live in our house. I wondered if he or she would have black hair like mine. Hair as straight as leaves of paper, and dark eyes instead of blue like pale water. In the mornings as I stood before the mirror of my closet door, tucking my blouse into the waist of my skirt, I imagined how the two of us would walk with matching footsteps up the paved path to Chilton Elementary like other pairs of siblings in my school. And how in the afternoons we would wait for our parents side by side on the benches near the school’s entry, where people who passed could look and see that we belonged together.

Then, one week before Christmas, my parents announced they had found a boy they wished to adopt. He was older, twelve years of age, and he was right here in America. His name was Toru, and he, too, was a gifted violinist. Until he was seven he had lived in Japan. “Think how much you will have in common, Setsu! Imagine how much you and your big brother will have to talk about!”

To bring Toru home, my parents would not have to take a long airplane trip as they had done for me; they had only to drive to southern New Jersey, to the home of Toru’s uncle’s closest friend. From my parents’
nighttime discussions and evening telephone calls during the ensuing days and weeks, I gathered tiny bits of information about my new brother, reviewing each item again and again in my mind so that I would not forget it. Five years before, his mother and father had died in a terrible car crash, and he had left Japan to live with his uncle in California. His uncle knew many musicians and had paid for Toru’s violin lessons, overseeing his daily practices. But when Toru was almost eleven, his uncle had been given a new job in Australia, embarking on a life that could not include Toru. And so Toru had been sent to live with his uncle’s friend on the East Coast until he could be properly adopted. In bed at night, before I fell asleep, I thought about all of the places Toru had lived and wondered if his many goodbyes had made him sad. I wondered if he was lonely and if he had ever wished for a sister with whom to spend his time.