Born Confused (6 page)

But when we got back to our dead end I couldn’t keep it in.

—What is it, bacchoodi? said my father, alarmed, his forefingers gently collecting my tears in their tracks.

—I wanted to give her my shoes, I sobbed.—I should have given her my shoes. Can we go back?

—Who, beta? my mother asked.

—That little girl!

—What little girl? said my father.

—Don’t worry, beta, my mother said.—Her feet aren’t cold. It’s just a statue.

—No, no, there was a little girl. She came out into the yard.

—You must be imagining things, bacchoodi.

My mother felt my head for fever.

—No parents would let their little girl out in the cold like that, she said.—And alone at this hour, too.

So did she live all by herself in the big double-drived house, and bake sheets of gingerbread cookies for breakfast, and talk to animals like an American Pippi Longstocking? The world behind those double doors titillated my imagination with its magical possibilities. Soon after the first Gwyn sighting I met her for real and discovered the truth: Gwyndolyne Baxter Sexton
did
have parents, two for many years that I could remember, years counted in front-yard Nativities. And then suddenly there was no more Jesus, Mary, or holy
crew. And round about the same time there was no more Mr. Sexton. Not that I had ever seen much of him anyways. Just usually Mrs. Sexton splayed out coltish on one of the divans, the television tuned into something with a laugh track, an invisible audience chortling menacingly in the otherwise dark room. Her face was always lit by blue TV screen light, swording so many emotions from the lofty cheekbones and tweezed brows, plucking the skidding stars from the bottle by her side, the fat goblets, the cut glass ashtray glowing with embers like a distant UFO parking lot.

We had to cross this room to get to most anywhere in the house and I always felt terrified in that two-second passage, the pull to something sweet and dark that I worried we would not be able to escape or resist. But we always made it through, and usually ended up out back in the playhouse, in our own wooded universe, making up passwords and stories, imagining movie kisses by rolling our tongues back upon themselves, learning the constellations of each other’s birthmarks and beauty spots. In India, the latter were believed to be protection against the evil eye; Gwyn had one, fierce and solitary, freckling a place that I would stop seeing around the time when boys would begin to.

Then just as suddenly as she’d appeared on the lawn that day, Gwyn disappeared, moved away. And for what felt like an eternity, I was Gwynless, which turned out to be an awful thing to be after spending so many hours in her light. I was a sick weed, growing needlessly and clumsily. And out there on that other coast, she was blossoming like a wild rose. I heard the rumors: She and her dad were off living in L.A. Mrs. Sexton was too unfit to take care of her (that was before she did the rehab thing, though the effects of that were obviously temporary, something I didn’t bother mentioning to my parents). I got Hollywood postcards from Gwyn occasionally, with pictures of Mann’s Chinese Theater and the Walk of Fame
and lots of Marilyn Monroes and too many exclamation points but no return address. Even Mrs. Sexton didn’t seem to know what it was.

—Last I heard they were on Venice Beach, she said, looking right through me the one time I mustered up my nerve to go over and ask. It sounded so exotic. I imagined Gwyn drifting slowly in gondolas (or dancing around, more likely, like in that old Madonna video). I imagined her crossing the Bridge of Sighs with shadowy men who spoke in delicious, disturbing accents.

And then just as abruptly as she’d come and gone, Gwyn reappeared after junior high, back to live with her mother.

I remember seeing her that first day in earth science, the same old Gwyn but her legs had gone all long and she stretched them out from her desk to right under Tony Mahoney’s seat in front of her. She leaned back lazily as if it were Club Med and not room 104 where owlish Mr. Witherspoon worked himself into conniptions over igneous rock and made us believe the collision of the very tectonic plates we were riding upon was imminent.

I can see it well, as if I’d photographed it: She stuck a blow pop in her mouth, crunching immediately through to the gummy center (an old habit). I had a sort of back and side angle view of her. Her hair was more gold than white now, flaxen, and twirled up in about a dozen braids, wound and pinned so the nape of her long neck showed clearly, unadorned. Then she turned towards me—I’d been staring, stunned, wondering whether I’d misjudged the back of the head—and blew a huge grape bubble and popped it. She sucked in the strands (none caught on her gloss), winked at me, and grinned the Gwyn grin.

—Hey, Boopster, she said.—Remember me?

I nearly leapt out of my chair to bear hug her, then remembered: We were in high school now, you weren’t supposed to do that to your girlfriends. So I stayed put.

—Rabbit? I said in my best James Bond.—Veronica Rabbit?

And then she jumped up and wrapped me in her arms, closer than a papoose.

As children, Gwyn and I grew into a friendship made up of silences and secret stares, one that can happen only between two people who don’t fit in—in our case, the rich little girl who lived like an orphan and the brown little girl who existed as if she were still umbilically attached to her parents. But we could look each other in the eye, go porous in our created world, sliding easily from one to the other. Many times I didn’t know where Gwyn left off and I began. But from high school on there were a few differences, of course: Puberty had gone all out in the interim of our friendship and now neither of us fit too well in our seats. My hips had erupted lavalike from the waist and there had been much volcanic activity in my chest as well, which I downplayed with plaid shirts and big sweaters—you know, fat clothes. I had, in other words, been branching out into new areas horizontally while Gwyn had gone vertical. But the two of us still fit. And from that moment, we were inseparable again. We never talked about those years in between, just carried on until they became a mere blip on the radar. Our plates came together and we were on the same planet again; seamless.

But now that Dylan had arrived on the scene, I could feel a tiny crack forming, still invisible, but still spreading along the length of the island that was us. I only hoped Julian could mend it. Or give me something to swim towards should I find myself splintered off in strange waters.

Julian. Frock. I had to get ready.

I could barely move, let alone breathe, by the time I’d squeezed, squinched, and prodded myself into the Style Child ensemble. I must have looked like a preview for yet another
Mission: Impossible
in the process, but fortunately no one was watching but me. I zipped myself up in a coverall coat before stepping out the door: There was no way my parents would buy the movies-with-Gwyn story if they saw this outfit.

My mother stared at me a long moment with a half-quizzical, half-knowing look on her face. Did my own read night-of-debauchery-and-potential-liplocking ahead? Oh, no—it was the coat. It had to be the coat that’d tipped her off.

—What is it? I said nervously.

—It’s just that. I don’t know. You’re wearing a bindi. I’m just a little surprised.

Frock! She was definitely on to me.

—That Gwyn is such a good influence on you, she said. Then she brushed my hair out of my eyes, ruining an hour’s worth of carefully choreographed facial coverage.

—You look just beautiful, she smiled.—You shouldn’t hide your face.

—What’s so great about my face?

—Beta, when you insult yourself you insult me.

She tried to look cross, but only half meant it.

—No, I don’t.

—So—you’re beautiful. Now say it.

—You’re beautiful, I said. She gave me an
and you’re impossible
look, but she was still smiling.

—Oh go on. Have a good time. I love you.

—Love you, too, Ma, I said, air-kissing her to leave my gloss intact.

She kept watching from the screen door as my father and I swapped places and I got in the driver’s seat, her hand frozen in a Queen of England salute, as if I were going far far away, to a place from where no one would ever be able to retrieve me. She’d been doing this since I started high school. And tonight part of me hoped she was right. And I tried to ignore the other part, the part that wanted to run back to her, leap into her open arms and never leave them.

The sweat was spouting down my face the second I got behind the wheel.

—Don’t forget to check all the mirrors, my father said.

Don’t worry. I was checking them. Did I have too much makeup on? Now, in real daylight, I looked far faker than I’d intended. My dad started looking at me funny, too, which only made the base pour down harder.

—What? I said.

—I don’t know, he said.—It’s just, you look so uncomfortable. Why don’t you take off your coat? Why are you even wearing a coat in this heat?

—I’m really cold.

—Look at you, you’re sweating. How can you be cold?

—I just am!

—How?

—It’s a woman thing, I said.

He clammed up, lifting his hands as if to say
sorry I went there.
I used his shyness mercilessly against him.

I was already feeling thoroughly exhausted and he tense and sheepish and we hadn’t even exited the driveway yet.

I turned the key and checked for my blind spot, which I was convinced was a moving thing, tracking me just about everywhere I went from every conceivable angle, and not necessarily limited to the automotive sphere. Then we were off like a turd of hurdles, my spindly heels tripping me off the gas and brakes in turn.

As we curved up the road and out to the main street, I started to look for a sign from the gods that everything was going to be okay. I decided red was good, and was encouraged by several auspicious sightings: a kid’s wagon in a driveway, a brick house, a redskirted woman unloading groceries from her trunk, and scores of American flags star-spangling the rooftops. Hinduism had its advantages; with its many deities there was bound to be one who would be in the office.

By the time I was actually careening down the grim aisle of the dim mall, my feet were throbbing and I was sure I’d sweat an actual hole through my shirt pits. A college boy. What was I going to talk about with a college boy? And in a white vinyl miniskirt, too.

Julian Rothschild was hanging alone by the potted plants, fists in the pockets of his pleather pants and chestnut hair curling rockstar-esque down the nape of his neck. He made being alone look cool.

And when I saw how, well, how
Julian
he looked, even in the
sickly mall light, my stomach did the watusi. Where were Gwyn and Dylan? Now I wished I’d insisted she ride over with me. Julian’s gaze turned towards me, no visible shift on his face. My stomach queased: I was going to have to introduce myself. I felt like a consummate idiot and ducked behind a potted palm.

This was probably not the best move if avoiding attention was the goal.

Julian was looking right at me now, the truth dawning on him.

—That you? he said, tentatively approaching my fronded hideout. He walked like a movie image, a reservoir dog moving speedily in slow motion: swaggering.

—Yes.

—I’m sorry, I just didn’t recognize you. It’s been a while, I guess, since we’ve spoken.

Just short of seventeen years, give or take a few hours, to be precise.

—Where’s Gwyn? I asked, trying to emerge as gracefully as possible from the foliage.

—Dillweed beeped me. They’re running a little late.

Base sludged down my face; I could feel it. I wondered why the sample colors on the drugstore swatches never matched the shade inside when it came to makeup.

—Why?

Julian gave me a duh look.

—Let’s just say they’re getting to know each other better. Anyways, as it turns out, they’re going to meet us straight at Chimi’s to get a guzzle before the movie—so we can try out your new ID, according to Gwyndolyne. We could head on over, if you’re ready.

Chimichanga’s was a Tex-Mex restaurant smack between the Chinese one and a used car dealer’s across the street from the mall. They were particularly famous for a Shoot the Worm drink, and
people went there to get plastered before the movies. Therefore it was always packed at six and eight. And therefore there was also a lot of audience participation at the seven and nine o’clock shows.

The walk to the mall exit, which really wasn’t so far in the normal world, seemed excruciatingly long in the doped-up universe where a girl like me was hanging with a guy like him.

—You look hot, Julian said suddenly.

I was taken aback and hope illogical went off like a flash inside me.

—Well, thanks, I said, smiling goofily.

—No, I mean…

He gestured. I realized he was referring to my arctic number.

—Uh, no, I’m fine.

(Then why are you in a winter coat, stupid?)

—I mean, I’m really cold.

(Now he’ll think I’m hypothermic.)

—I mean I
have
a cold.

(Even worse—now he’ll think I’m contagious!)

—Not a cold but it’s a little chilly, I concluded; blame it on forces beyond my control.

We stepped outside into the 101 degree weather and sweat immediately steeped my face.

—What
ever,
said Julian.

I was burning up. And I had no idea what to talk about all the interminable way through the parking lot and across the street to Chimi’s.

—So, uh, how’s film school?

—You couldn’t
imagine.
To be immersed in your métier 24/7, to be liaisoning with people of nearly equal artistic aptitude—it takes rad to a whole new level.

He pronounced métier and liaisoning and, oddly, aptitude, as if
he were speaking French. I didn’t think he was French though, not even French-Canadian. What the frock was I saying? He was from Jersey.

Inside Chimi’s, it was all nighttime ambiance even though the sun was unbudgeably out outside. And also inside Chimi’s—swigging with Dylan in the overflowing bar area and waving around the beeper that flashed when your seat was ready—I could make out that reverse mirror image of myself. Except instead of all the black parts being white and white being black as usual, today our second skins were the same shade.