An American Love Story (14 page)

Nina had her large collection of stuffed animals: bears and rabbits, dogs and cats. She chose nine of the most intelligent-looking ones and made them into a Supreme Court. They sat in a row on the top of her bookcase and she conducted her mock trials. Whose fault is this? Is my mother to blame because she’s so different, or is my father to blame because he doesn’t care about us? Am
I
to blame? Have I done something wrong, or is it just that I’m a kid and he doesn’t like kids? I’m much more grown up than other girls my age—my teacher said I was “unusually mature”—but obviously that’s not good enough. I’m still a child. Why would he be interested in me?

But the fathers of my friends (most of them, anyway) love their daughters. Those fathers come to school events with the mothers, even when they’re divorced. My father never came to anything for me.

She sent cards and letters and drawings to her father. She did the same for her mother so she wouldn’t feel left out. Her mother was too sensitive and too possessive, and scared her a little. Her father scared her too, because there seemed no way she could please him or win him. It had occurred to her finally that she would have to find herself, and be perfect, in order to survive, for surely she would have to exist alone. Of course she could confide none of this to her mother, who was already so unhappy. The animal judges had come down with their verdict: Guilty, and the punishment was isolation. Nina accepted it, but she walked
around in a haze of perpetual anxiety and low-grade depression because of what she now knew was her fate.

Sometimes she had nightmares that made her wake up with tears pouring down her cheeks. Her mother often asked her to sleep in her bed, to snuggle and be cozy together. And once, Nina had. On that night she saw her mother as a terrifying creature she had never seen before. It was the drugs. Laura had fallen asleep with her eyes partly open; little white slits showing and no pupil, as if her eyeballs were turned up under the lids, and she slept as if she were drugged or dead. But she was not dead; she was snoring. This strange unseemly sound came from between her delicate lips, a gurgle and moan, but no matter how Nina prodded her she did not wake up. This stranger looked like her mother, but she was not. Asleep, she looked even thinner than she did when she was awake and moving like a whirlwind. Her cheeks were sunken, the bones on the sides of her forehead stood out, and her nose was too big. This stranger would never save her child. This dead woman could not even save herself.

Afterward, Nina would never sleep with her mother again. She slept with her animals. Her father teased her that she was going to take them to college. Nina thought she probably would.

She and her mother and Aunt Tanya and Uncle Edward had been to Paris together, and it had been fun. At night in the hotel room she shared with Boo, Nina wrote long letters to her father, as if they were school papers, telling him everything she had learned. “We went to the Musée du Jeu de Paume, and there was a Degas sculpture there of a ballerina, with a tutu on it made of material. I was surprised that the material had lasted so long, because it was such an old sculpture. The statue reminded me of mother when she was young and was a famous dancer, although of course I wasn’t around because I wasn’t born yet.” She had wanted to add: “Were you two happy before I was born?” but she didn’t. You could never ask either of your parents a thing like that.

Nina was doing well in ballet class, and her teacher said she had great promise. Laura was thrilled. “It’s in the genes,” she would exclaim happily. “Look, you have my turnout!” A ballerina
like her, Nina thought; I’d rather die. I want to work in an office. I want to read.

But of course, being the child she was, while hating and fearing the talent she thought would trap her in a reenactment of her mother’s unhappy life, Nina couldn’t help but try to be as good at ballet as she could. She had to be perfect, even when she wanted nothing so much as to fail.

They were doing an abridged version of Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at school, and because Nina was so graceful and elfin she had been chosen to play Puck. The other girls were pleasant to her, except for the ones who were so jealous they couldn’t contain themselves, but she had never had any really close friends. Everyone had a best friend, to confide in and giggle with, but she didn’t. She studied too hard, her marks were too good, she was too exact and seemingly poised. The other girls admired her, but they didn’t invite her to their homes on weekend afternoons. Although this hurt, Nina felt it was best, because she was ashamed to invite them to her home where they could see how peculiar her mother was. Laura was delighted that Nina had such an important part in the school play. She honestly felt that Nina had a normal, average academic life—the kind she had missed as a child—and she had never breathed the dreaded word Rudofsky. It was good to be a star in the sweet little world of private school. After all, Puck was not the Firebird. As for Nina, she felt like an automaton on a treadmill.

There was a playhouse in the schoolyard. It was painted white and had red shutters. It had originally been built to hold gym equipment, but the students loved it and used it for fantasies. They also occasionally used it as if it were itself a piece of gym equipment, and because it was as high as a garage it had become off-limits for climbing. Nina found herself looking at it often lately. Her fantasies about it were of a different nature.

The day before the school play she climbed on top of the playhouse roof. Looking down she thought how easy it would be to jump off that roof and break her ankle, or even her leg; then she would never again be material for a prima ballerina. She felt her stomach turn over; she was afraid of heights and didn’t want to
die. What if she miscalculated and fell on her head? But no, she would sail off quite simply in a classic leap, when no one was looking, and they would think she had accidentally fallen, while she would land exactly as she wanted to. It would be agonizing. Her eyes filled with tears. One of the girls had broken an arm once and had screamed and sobbed. It would hurt, but not forever. The doctor would come with pills, perhaps the kind Laura had, and the pain would go away. There was something for every pain.

As she stood there, afraid but determined, someone saw her. “Hey!” Then a chorus: “Hey! Come down!”

And one voice, a voice Nina would never forget, from a fat girl who had always hated her and who would never be anything but ugly and resentful: “Jump!”

Then Nina saw the teacher, running toward her. There was only a moment left, and she performed the best acting job of her life. She pretended to slip, to try to right herself, to lose her balance, and then, arms flailing to make her look clumsy and terrified, Nina performed her perfect leap.

Pain shot up her leg like a silver scimitar. She was lying on the ground in the middle of a circle of faces, and then she looked down and saw the blood, and a piece of white bone that she knew was hers, sticking out of the side of her shin, and she fainted.

The surgeon put a little metal pin in her leg, and promised she would walk without any trace of a limp. There would be a small crescent-shaped scar, but Clay told her that if it didn’t go away by itself she could have plastic surgery. Of course he didn’t see the X rays or the cast because he wasn’t there. He was in California, and there were important meetings, and after all, it was over, so what could he do?

Any hope she might have had of becoming a ballerina was gone. Her mother didn’t mind at all; she kept saying how glad she was that it hadn’t been worse. Uncle Edward drew colored pictures on her cast. Aunt Tanya did healing with laying on of hands. She said she saw a golden light coming from her fingers to Nina’s injury, but Nina didn’t see it. The doctor, however, said the break was healing nicely, which he attributed to Nina’s youth and good health and which Tanya attributed to her help.

The play was delayed because no one else had been trained to be Nina’s understudy. When they finally put it on she was maneuvering very well in her walking cast. Enough time had elapsed so that if anyone had noticed what she said after she hit the ground, before she passed out from the shock, they either hadn’t heard or had forgotten. Laura never mentioned it. Nina certainly never mentioned it. But she remembered, and was ashamed. Ashamed because it would have hurt Laura, and because of her own weakness, and ashamed because her desperate involuntary cry had received no magical response at all.

What Nina had cried out had been, “Daddy!”

9

1969—SEATTLE

T
he mirror, which up to now had been Bambi’s enemy, was beginning to be—amazingly—her friend. She saw the changes come gradually, as her mother had promised, and it was a kind of miracle. She had always thought of herself as looking hopelessly uninteresting, just this side of ugly. Now she saw a smooth and clearing skin, big brown eyes that looked twice as big with eyeliner and mascara, an interesting curve to her cheeks. Her hair was long and walnut colored, and after years of being lank and greasy even though she washed it faithfully every day, it had become healthy and shiny. Having tried ironing it, frizzing it, setting and teasing it, in the passing fashions of the time, now in her never-ending quest to be special she had decided to wear it pulled straight back in one thick braid. She didn’t want to be a boring little copycat, she wanted to be Bambi. Her new body amazed her; she was a woman. She was sixteen, no longer a geek, but a cute girl to be reckoned with. She wondered if anyone else would notice.

The other astonishing development was what had happened to Simon. That delicate vulnerable neck which had embarrassed and confusingly moved her when they were children had been transformed into one that was thick and muscled. Without doing anything, because he hated sports, he had developed impressive shoulders and hard slender legs. He had also grown; the former class shrimp was five feet ten. He wore his hair long like all the boys did, and it covered his large pointy ears so he no longer looked like Dumbo about to take off. He was as cute as she was, maybe even more so. She hoped he wouldn’t find out. She didn’t want him looking at any other girls: he was hers.

When she looked at him now, at his grown-up contours, she felt sexual stirrings. His lips were plump and sensual, both firm and soft. She kept wondering what it would be like to kiss him, and touched her mouth, wondering what it would feel like to him. They had been friends for all of their lives. He had always worshiped her, aided her, encouraged her, and she had depended on him. But that had been from necessity, because no one else liked either of them. Their defense had been that they were better than other people, but now, attractive enough to dive right into the mainstream, Bambi wondered what would happen to their relationship. She knew only one thing: she wanted to keep him; he had to fall in love with her. She didn’t want a boyfriend from out there in the unfriendly world, she wanted Simon. She had fallen in love with him, and the thought of losing him to some pushy bitch made her feel scared and alone.

Her parents were insisting on giving her a Sweet Sixteen party. It would be at the house, with nonalcoholic punch and her cousin Al to act as deejay. Bambi was terrified. No one would come because nobody liked her, and if they did show up they would laugh because it was stupid kid stuff. She wanted something sophisticated: wine in the backyard, Thunderbird or Ripple would do; an acid psychedelic rock light show like they had at the Eagles Ballroom, where neither she nor Simon were allowed to go. She wanted a white lace minidress, not that childish little thing her mother had insisted on picking out that made her look like nun school.

She told Simon her fears about this dreaded event. “If nobody comes we’ll have a good party all by ourselves,” he said staunchly. “We’ll pretend we’re millionaires. But don’t worry; people will come. They’ll go to anything that’s free.”

“I hate them all,” Bambi said. She had invited their whole class, even people she had never spoken to.

“I bought a white suit for your party,” Simon said. “I’ve been saving my allowance and my Christmas and birthday money.”

“A white suit!” She couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.

“I want to look like Elvis Presley.”

“You didn’t get it with
sequins
?”

“Very funny. Where’s your money?”

“What money?” Bambi said.

“
Your
allowance and Christmas and birthday funds. You didn’t spend them all on makeup.”

“I have a savings account,” Bambi said.

“It’s your money,” Simon said. “You could buy the white lace minidress you want, and then we’d both be in white and we’d dance together and we’d look great. We’ll really be special.”

I love him so much, Bambi thought. “I don’t know if the bank will let me take the money out,” she said. “I may be too young.”

“You put it in yourself,” Simon said. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes …”

“And you have the bankbook?”

“Well, sure. My parents want me to learn responsibility.”

“We’ll go to the bank tomorrow,” Simon said.

Bambi thought of how red her father’s face got when he was angry. “But they’ll have a fit.”

“The first step to being an adult is dealing with differences of opinion with older people,” Simon said calmly. “Starting with parents. This party should be a night you remember fondly for a very long time. There will be other Christmases and birthdays and other money. You can tell them that.”

She smiled, finally feeling secure and free. “I want to go with you when you have your haircut,” she said. “To be sure they don’t take off too much.”

“Okay.”

He has to love me back, she thought. We’re just like a married couple. Except, of course, for the sex …

“Why are you blushing?” Simon asked.

“I’m
not
,” Bambi said, and kicked him and ran away. Of course he followed her. They raced around her house, expertly dodging furniture and breakable knicknacks. “Don’t kick me!” she screamed. “You’re too strong! Don’t!”