Bittersweet Dreams (2 page)

She waited for my reaction, but I just continued to stare at her as if she was some sort of curious form of life. It was getting to her, despite her claims of invulnerability.

“You don't intimidate me with that ‘I'm better than you' look. It hasn't happened to you yet, in my opinion, despite what others might think, but someday you'll get your just
desserts
,” she concluded.

I finally had something to say. “From the way you're saying it, I have a feeling that you would spell that expression wrong,” I said.

“What? What on earth are you talking about now? What expression?”

“ ‘Just
desserts
.'
Deserts
in the sense you mean is actually spelled with one
s
, not two. You're using that expression to mean I'll get my proper punishment.”

She continued to glare at me but now with her mouth fallen slightly open, her salmon-pink tongue looking like a dead fish.

I straightened up, and I'm sure it looked to her like I was in front of a classroom, my classroom. I was a good inch and a half taller than she was, a little broader in the shoulders, but with just as small a waist, long legs, and just as ample and firm a bosom. Despite the fact that we had no facial resemblances or similar hair color, I was always afraid that someone who didn't know us might make the wrong assumption that we were actually related.

“
Dessert
with two
s
's is the course in the meal that gets people excited and happy. And getting what you deserve might also mean you're finally receiving the accolades and rewards you've earned. That's certainly nothing to fear. But the expression does come from a playbook called
A Warning for Fair Women
. The exact quote in question is ‘Upon a pillory—that the world may see, a just desert for such impiety.' It's spelled with one
s
, coming from
deserts
in the sense of things deserved. Understand?”

“Understand? That's how you treat what I say even after all you've done? Do you think I'm one of your dumb high-school classmates? Why, you pedantic little bitch,” she said, spitting the words out through clenched teeth. “I bet you think you're so superior to the rest of us because of that computer you have for a brain and those bureaucratic school administrators who fawn over you as if you were the next Albert Einstein or something. They're just as much a cause of all this as you are, by encouraging you to think of yourself as . . . as someone who doesn't need to go to the bathroom or something.”

I didn't change expression, even though I was laughing at her on the inside. My father wasn't home. He had an errand to do before we left, so he didn't hear her say all this, not that I thought he would have done much to reprimand her for saying any of it anyway at this point. I recalled the expression on his face yesterday when he didn't think I saw him looking at me. It was soaked in disappointment. Vividly recalling that look, I thought he might even agree with her now, every nasty and mean word. I imagined him nodding and putting his hand on her shoulder, not mine, to bring her comfort and whisper something to make her feel better and show her how concerned he was for her welfare. “Don't get yourself too upset,” he might tell her. “It doesn't do anyone any good for you to get sick, especially now, in the middle of all this.”

“I don't mean to be condescending,” I said, with just the quiet, matter-of-fact tone that irritated her heart. “You use the expression so often, Julie, that I thought you might want to know about it. I know how important it is for you not to look like a fool in front of your friends. Not that any of your so-called friends would know the difference anyway. If you surround yourself with mediocrity, you become mediocre,” I added. “You probably think you stand out, but believe me, they pull you down, not that you had all that far to fall.”

Her eyes widened, and her face reddened, with cheeks that looked like fully ripe red apples. She balled her fists and readied her vocal cords for screaming. I loved the way I was getting inside her and tying her already twisted little heart into tighter knots. For me, it was sweet revenge, and for the moment, it took my mind off the pool of trouble in which I was swimming, maybe drowning.

“It's not unlike another favorite expression of yours,” I continued. I felt like I was on a roll, like a contestant on
Jeopardy
. “ ‘The icing on the cake.' I notice you're always using it for negative remarks, like ‘His wife's suing him for divorce is the icing on the cake.' It really is used more for positive comments. Think about it. Who doesn't like licking the icing on a cake?”

She continued to glare at me, as if hoping her fiery eyes would make me explode and drop into a pool of dust at her feet. She could do that so easily to her daughter.

“Is that what you do? You analyze all my expressions?” she asked, amazed. “You judge my every word and do a critique behind my back?”

I shrugged and turned away. “Believe me, it's not brain surgery,” I said, hiding my smile.

“What else have you criticized about me? Well? Let me have the whole bag of ugliness you're so capable of filling and flinging in my direction before you leave us. We already know some of the distortions and lies about me that you spread, and don't think I was ever unaware of what you told your father about me. You never understood how important I've become to him and how much we trust each other now. Well? Go on. What else? What other things have you told my daughter? You might as well get it all out before you leave.”

I acted as if I didn't hear her anymore. I knew that was one of the things she hated the most. A woman like Julie couldn't tolerate being made to feel as if nothing she said or did mattered. She couldn't stand being ignored. Her ego would stamp its feet, pull its hair, and scream.

The truth was that most of the time, I didn't really listen to the things she said, even if I gave her the satisfaction of pretending I was listening. I didn't only do it to her. I could shut people out as quickly as I could shut off a light, especially someone like her. I didn't go into a trance. There was no faraway look in my eyes that would reveal that I was gone. It was almost impossible to know when I was listening and when I wasn't. Sometimes I imagined that I had two sets of ears and two brains. You know, like an extra hard drive in the computer that she thought was my brain? My mind had a zoom lens. I could just focus on some interesting thing and cut out the distraction.

But this morning, unfortunately, I did hear her every mean-spirited word. To be truthful, I welcomed her verbal whipping, even though she was certainly no one to accuse anyone else of being mean and selfish and had no right to assume the role of judge and jury. If there ever was someone who should be restrained by being without sin before casting the first stone, it was my father's wife, Julie. It was lucky she didn't have a twin. She would have smothered him or her in her mother's womb just to be sure she would get all of her parents' attention.

But despite what she thought, I wasn't feeling particularly superior this morning. She was at me like this because she knew I was down and incapable of defending myself very much. That was usually when someone like her would pounce. I call them coyote cowards. They're parasites who will only swoop down on the small, wounded, or handicapped. Otherwise, they hover in the shadows, feeding their green faces on envy with hopes for your failures, waiting for you to become crippled and weaker but too frightened to challenge or compete when you weren't.

“I don't know how you will live with yourself,” she continued. “If I were inside you, I'd scratch and kick my way out.”

I turned and glared at her. Despite what she claimed, I knew I could frighten her with a look like the one I had now. I had practiced it in the mirror. It was a look I often employed at school. My eyes were like darts. I had the face of someone capable of sending out curses like emails.

Fear began to overtake her in small ways. She embraced herself quickly, swallowed hard, and took another step back.

“At last, we agree about something,” I said. “If
you
were inside
me
, I'd rip you out. You know, like a bloody cesarean section.” I held up my hands as though they had just been in a mother's womb and were dripping with blood down my arms.

She gasped, turned quickly, and marched out, holding her head high. She was always worried about what she looked like, even when she was alone and wouldn't see anyone else. However, frustrating and defeating her didn't give me as much satisfaction as she thought it had. I had long ago given up on baiting her and making her look foolish in front of my father, hoping it would open his eyes. I certainly had nothing to gain from it today. It was far too late, too late for many things. I was soaked in regrets.

I stood by the window in my bedroom, looked out toward the Pacific Ocean, and thought it should be gray and rainy today, at least. That would fit my mood, everyone's mood. I didn't pay much attention to the weather. Maybe that was because we lived in Southern California and took beautiful days for granted, or maybe it was because I spent most of my time inside, my face in a book or at a computer screen. I wasn't one of those people who stopped to smell the roses. We actually had beds of them out front, along with other flowers. If I stopped, it wouldn't be to enjoy the scent and beauty of anything but instead to examine the flowers, looking for some microscopic genetic change. I couldn't help it. As my teachers were fond of saying, and which was probably true, it was part of my DNA.

Moments after Julie had stopped bitching and left, I heard someone behind me and thought she might have returned to say something else that was even nastier that had crawled into her clogged brain, a brain I imagined infested with little spiders weaving selfish, hateful webs of thought. This time, I would face her down more vehemently, not with calm sarcasm but with what she hated: cold, dirty language. When I spit back at her, she would rush to cover her ears, as if my words would stain her very soul.

However, when I turned, I saw it was my thirteen-year-old stepsister, Allison. That surprised me. I was sure her mother had told her to stay away from me, especially this morning. She probably told her I had done her enough damage, and maybe, like Typhoid Mary, I would contaminate her further. “Stay in your room, and keep the door locked until she's gone,” she surely had said. She was unaware of the short but honest and sweet conversation Allison and I had had the night before. Her mother was on her this morning, however. She wanted nothing to happen to change anything now.

Allison did look very nervous sneaking in here, but, like last night, she looked very sad, too, sad for both of us. She stood there staring at me.

“What is it, Allison? I thought we said our good-byes last night.”

“I know, but I remembered something. My father gave me this pen the last time I saw him,” she said, holding up a silver pen. “He said it was a special pen, one of the ones the astronauts used in space. You could write upside down or sideways with it, everything. I wanted to give it to you to use.” She stepped forward to hand it to me.

“You want to give it to me? Why? Do you think I'll be upside down or sideways?”

“No,” she said, smiling. “It's just a very special pen.”

I looked at it. On the surface, it didn't look like anything terribly unusual, but I did make out the word
NASA
.

“Please take it,” she said, waving it. She looked like she would cry if I didn't.

“Your father gave it to you? Are you sure you want to give it to me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The words you'll write with it will be better than the words I'll write.”

The way she said the obvious truth, with no self-deprecation or self-pity, made me laugh. In some ways, Allison was already head and shoulders above her mother.

I took the pen.

“Okay. Thanks. Who knows, maybe I will hang from my feet in my closet when I do my homework up there. Some people think I'm a vampire.”

She smiled. “No, you're not. No one thinks that. You're too pretty to be a vampire.”

“Pretty?” I glanced at myself in the mirror. I didn't feel especially pretty today. I thought my face was pale, my eyes dull and dim, and my hair unkempt. If anything, I looked more like some homeless girl wondering what in the world had happened that she should find herself so lost and alone.

“That's a nice color on you, too, turquoise. Remember? I made my mother buy me the same blouse, but it didn't look as good on me as it does on you.”

“It will,” I said. “You're going to have a nice figure, Allison.” As hard as it was for me to say it, I added, “As nice as your mother's.” What was true was true. Julie was physically attractive. If only she could be kept under glass like a wax figure, I thought, and not bother or hurt anyone else.

Allison smiled again. “Okay, see you when you come home for the holidays.” She started to turn to leave.

“We don't get holidays,” I said.

“Really?”

“I don't know. Things are very different there. I'll let you know.”

“Will you? Really? I mean, let me know and not my mother first?”

“She'll know, even though the moment I leave, she'll have a moat built.”

“A what?”

“Forget it. Okay. Like I said last night, I'll send you an email or text you.”

“I know you said it, but will you really?”

“You sure you want me to do it, Allison? You know you'll have to keep it secret from you-know-whom.”

“I'm sure. Please, send me emails. My mother doesn't know how to use a computer.”

I stared at her with a hard look. She knew why.

“I'll keep this secret. I swear,” she said in a deep whisper, with her hand over her heart, and then turned and went to the door, checking first to be sure her mother didn't know she had come in to see me. She looked back, smiled, and then hurried away.