The Bitch Posse (35 page)

She’s so fucking evil. A fucking child-molesting psychopath. God should just take her sorry ass.
Kill me now, God! Come get me!

Eyes burning, she picks up the phone and checks for messages. Four.

The first is from North Bay Nannies. All their nannies are European educated and bonded. They can have someone over starting on Tuesday, but they ask for a finder’s fee up front of ten thousand dollars. Nannies are paid five hundred dollars a week.

Rennie bursts out laughing. “Fuck that shit,” she says aloud and glances at Caleb, who’s barreling cars into the wall. Fortunately the little
echo didn’t hear her this time. She erases the message and hopes the next one is from the other nanny place. But it’s Kelly, explaining that she and Dad are in the Virgin Islands (oh, nice!) and will be back in a week. In the meantime they’re glad to send some money for a sitter (wonder who’ll sign that ten thousand-dollar check?) and try to find Mallory with the contact information she left.

The third call is a familiar voice she can almost place but can’t. Amy Dionne? She doesn’t know an Amy Dionne. The voice corrects herself. “Amy Linnet.”

Rennie almost drops the Guinness and listens to Amy tell her that she got in a car crash on Highway 80, that she’s in the hospital in Oakland, that Rennie crossed her mind and she just felt she should call, would she mind coming for a visit?

Rennie’s head swims as she presses Save.
Speak, memory
. . . .

She needs those girls now, maybe more than she knows. Where did they go? If she could just go back in time, back to that moment in the circle when they swore their solemn oath.

as long as the stars are fixed in the heavens
and the fish sparkle in the sea.

Oh, God
. . . A sob rips through her and her heart splits in half all over again and she throws her face in her hands so Caleb won’t see, and tears flood out like waves, all over her fingers. She can’t see Amy. She can’t take it. She just can’t.

She takes a deep breath, dries her tears, and listens to the final message, from Lisa, her agent. “Wren, I’m so sorry. I just can’t get through these rewrites. It’s too heavy, there’s no love story. I can’t imagine who the audience would be.” She sighs. “Let me know when you make it through another project, okay? Try some chick lit, I can sell that. And I want to be the first to see whatever you come up with. But I don’t see that this back-and-forth on something we both know is
just not working is doing either of us any good.” She hangs up without saying good-bye.

Rennie feels like crying, like hitting the wall, like breaking something, hurting herself, hurting someone else. She runs her fingers over the Guinness glass. It’d be so easy to throw it to the floor, slide her fingers over the shards, splinter one under her skin. . . . Phone Puck back, beg him to come over with plenty of coke, put Caleb to bed early and . . .

Something hits her foot.

She looks down. It’s a little purple car.

Caleb laughs. “It’s a zoom zoom go car.”

A zoom zoom go car. Someone’s telling her something.

Face things.

Face things.

Face things.

She throws the rest of the groceries into the fridge without even taking them out of the white plastic bags. “Back in the car seat, Caleb. We’re going for a drive.”

Caleb clutches the pink teddy bear he bought in the gift shop, and Rennie puts on a cheerful voice as she walks into the room. “Hey, Amy!”

She looks like she’s been in a fight. She looks awful, really; bruises molt over her face, a five-inch cut skates across her upper lip, she’s in traction, and her left arm is bandaged. But when Rennie looks at her closely, she’s still the same old Amy; there are a few wrinkles near her eyes (Rennie’s got them too), and she’s put on five or ten pounds (so has Rennie), but she’s still adorable. Her freckles are a little lighter, but her hair’s that same washy blond, cut in a shag. “Rennie,” she whispers, “good to see you.”

How do I look to her? Are my nostrils red? Can she tell I’ve been in a coke haze for the last few days?

Is it really Amy? My Amy?

“Who’s the little guy, yours? What a sweetie!”

Rennie laughs. “Mallory’s. Remember Mallory?”

“She was just about his age when I saw her last.”

“Well, she’s all grown up and irresponsible. Long story.”

They chat like that for a while. But it’s odd, the years have put distance between them; it’s not quite comfortable, talking to her. Frustration aches inside Rennie; why can’t they just pick up where they left off? Go out and raise some hell?

That’s so stupid. We’ve both changed so much.

But all of a sudden Amy spills out some major stuff, just like that. The reason she got in the crash. All her drinking. And her marriage ending. Rennie’s shocked to learn that Amy’s lost a child, doesn’t quite know what to say, how to feel.

She bites her lip. “I’m so sorry, Aim,” and the comfortable old name slips out. “I just wish I . . . Listen, if you must know, I’m not the nicest person in the world myself. I’ve been fucking myself over, as one of my students would say, since that night, you know, the night.” She pours out her own story—Puck, Paul, her cocaine binge, the endless sex, God, it’s good to talk. “I just don’t know where I am anymore.”

“Neither do I.”

They study each other for a minute.
What’s going on in those angel blue eyes?
“Does Scotty know?” asks Rennie. “I mean, the whole thing?” Even as she’s saying it, she’s pushing it down,
bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch,
hating herself, wanting it all to go away. A delicious image of her and Puck in bed for endless hours presses into her brain, and she closes her eyes for a moment, swallows the pretty picture whole, yum. Maybe she’ll call him when she gets home . . .

Amy shakes her head. “No one knows. Just you and Cherry. I haven’t heard from her since, well, you know. I always thought it was better that way, always thought we shouldn’t see each other again.
Maybe calling you was a mistake but . . . ” She shrugs. “I don’t know, at least you understand.”

It gets Rennie thinking, maybe it’s better to spill things out, instead of pretending you’re someone you’re not. But then Caleb tugs her arm and says, “I don’t wanna . . . ”

“Don’t want to what?”

He points at the bear, then at Amy.

Rennie still doesn’t get it.

Amy laughs. “Fie changed his mind about giving me the bear. That’s okay, sweetie. You don’t have to. It’s yours.”

Caleb holds the bear close, wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “I’m tired,” he announces, and of course he is, it’s almost nine o’clock. Rennie leans over, hugs Amy, and says, “Call anytime.”

“I might.”

Rennie’s eyes catch Amy’s, and just like that the Amy of 1988 appears in front of her again, the girl almost a woman, her best friend, forever. Rennie smiles, and a smile creeps across Amy’s face too.
Hello, friend.
Unspoken between them is the Bitch Posse oath, the words that will always bind them:
As long as the stars are fixed in the heavens and the fish sparkle in the sea.

Sure, it’s over, Rennie knows that. Amy’ll never call. Probably. But that’s okay. They’ll always have their Posse, and their memories, and that’s enough. “If you see Scotty again, if he comes here . . . ”

Amy’s eyes well up with tears. “He’ll come. It’s over with us, but he’ll come see me.”

“Just tell him the truth.”
Don’t pretend you’re someone you’re not. You’re no angel, my sweet Amy, but you’re no devil either.

That thought feels like it’s about to spin out into another one, but Rennie’s in a hurry and the whole visit’s been so intense, she’s got to go.

They hug quickly, and Amy whispers, “Bye, Rennie,” brushing her hand over her collarbone.

I love you, Amy,
she can’t bring herself to say aloud. Amy’s thinking it too, maybe, but the words don’t need to strike the air to be real. “Bye, Aim,” she says instead and watches her best friend’s fingers slip between the locket and the cross she never thought she’d see Amy wearing.

The trip over the Richmond Bridge is speedy, dark, clear, like driving through a tunnel into the light.

When she pulls into her driveway, Caleb’s asleep in his car seat. She turns off the engine, carries him inside to the bedroom, and rests him in the middle of the bed so he won’t fall out. “I’ll take care of you, sweet pea,” she murmurs, and it’s the best feeling in the world to know she means it. His little chest rises and falls. As she strokes his pale curls for a moment, he rolls away from her, and she whispers a little nursery rhyme from Christina Rossetti.

Angels at the foot,
And angels at the head,
And like a curly little lamb,
My pretty babe in bed.

It brings to her an inhale of Mom, back when she did stuff like read nursery rhymes, back before she took off for Texas and drifted out of Rennie’s life. She rests her palm on his back, his breath nudging her hand as he sleeps. For a moment she feels so sweet, so great, maybe Caleb should stay here, even after Kelly and Dad get back. . . .

Crazy.

She lands a kiss in his curls, and warmth spreads through her heart, melting whatever’s been frozen around it all this time.

Or not so crazy at all.

She returns to the living room, and the horrible feelings clot back up in her, the hating, the self-loathing, all her trouble, Paul, Bay, the goddamn book and Lisa’s fucking message.

“Chick lit,” she says aloud. “I don’t even know what it fucking is.” She lands a punch on the edge of the sofa, the part where the skeleton meets the fabric, and it hurts like hell, leaves a bruise. Good.

Something in her wants to blot away, push away, fuck away the pain, the roots Amy’s dug up by her very presence in Rennie’s life. She pulls the Guinness out of the fridge and throws some whiskey into the glass along with it. Then she dials Puck’s number by heart, yes yes yes yes, he’ll come over with his cocaine and his hot young body and they’ll fuck on the sofa, push Amy’s face out of her life. She’ll change her number so Amy can never call her again, and her breath catches in her throat as she waits for Puck to answer, the phone humming in her ear.

It flashes in Rennie’s head, the painful cold clear memory of that night, one piece, unshattered, whole, perfect in its intensity, gorgeous in its passion, and the ending, the swallow of guilt in her, the constant pushing it down, fighting it back, fucking it away. Her thought from the hospital echoes in her mind:
Don’t pretend you’re someone you’re not.

Her fingers tremble as she curls the phone cord.

Sexy, dripping, crushed blackberries ooze through the receiver. “Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Wren. . . . ” But before she can say any more, that thought that she had in the hospital finally finishes itself up.
Fucking isn’t love, and it’s a pretty shitty replacement for facing yourself.

Without explaining anything, she clicks down the phone. She tucks her laptop under her arm, walks to her room, and slides into bed next to Caleb. His little face is bathed in moonlight as he sleeps, he looks as if he might be out of a dream.

She loves him like she hasn’t loved anyone in years.

Screw chick lit.

She opens her laptop, starts a blank file, and stares and stares and stares.

Caleb rolls over and sighs like the most beautiful symphony Rennie’s ever heard.

She closes her eyes, and in a second she’s back in Cherry’s room, the girls in a circle.
We, the Bitch Posse girls, do solemnly swear to be undyingly faithful to each other, and to put no friends or lovers before one another, as long as the stars are fixed in the heavens and the fish sparkle in the sea.

I love you, Amy.

I love you, Cherry.

The girls press their wounds together. Three into one.

Tears are loosened behind her eyes. She might just have a heart after all.

I’m not evil. God doesn’t hate me.

She’s not ready to write anything, not now. But that’s okay. She will, someday.

She closes up her file and switches off the laptop.

The phone rings.

It’s him, that hot sexy powerful famous writer from Palo Alto. That really famous and important novelist who posed half-naked in
The New Yorker
last winter. That stupid pathetic little snail of a person she’s been fucking in order to run away from something she should never have tried to escape at all.

Rennie listens to the phone ring a couple more times, then unplugs it.

She doesn’t need anyone else to make her real. She knew it when she was in the Bitch Posse, but the years made her forget. No matter. The next thing she writes will be something real, something that means something.
Something Real
by Wren Taylor. Wren. Not a bad little name, that.

The poor wren, the most diminutive of birds, will fight, her young ones in her nest, against the owl.

Wren. Small and plain, but she sure can sing.

“My name is Wren,” she says aloud. “Wren Grace Taylor.”

She tangles her fingers in Caleb’s hair and switches off the light. Two ghosts of girls crawl into bed next to her, cross their arms over her back. She sobs into her pillow for a while, but it’s the good kind of crying, and it doesn’t take her long to fall asleep.