Misty (5 page)

“Paradox?” Star offered.

“Yes, paradox. Thanks. Anyway, what I mean is Mommy didn't mind my mimicking her, experimenting with makeup and trying to get my hair exactly as she wore hers. She took it as a compliment. I tried to walk like her, eat like her, talk like her because I thought that was what made my father fall in love with her and I wanted my father to always love me,” I said.

“I asked my mother why I don't have a bigger bosom, and she told me I was fine because I was perky. Perky and cute, that's me. I feel like I'm twelve,” I said.

When I glanced at Cathy, she looked guilty and actually folded her arms over her own large breasts. Like she could ever hide them, I thought. I sighed and went on.

Suddenly Cathy took such a deep breath, we all paused to look at her. Her eyes were directed to the ceiling and she had her hands pressed against her bosom like someone who was reciting a prayer. I looked at Star who shrugged. Doctor Marlowe sipped some lemonade and waited. I hated her patience, her damn tolerance and understanding. Where were her bruises hidden, her pain and disappointments? I felt like turning my rage on her. She saw the angry look in my eyes.

“Let's take a bathroom break,” she said.

“I don't have to go,” I said. I wanted to keep talking. I knew she was handling me. If there was one thing I hated more than anything, it was being handled.

“Well, I've got to go,” Jade said and sauntered out as if she was a runway model.

Star looked over at me, then stood up.

Cathy's eyes narrowed before she looked down again.

And I sat back against the cushions of the couch and wondered what it was about this little group that made me able to share the deepest secrets of my put-away heart with them.

W
hen Jade returned, she plucked a cookie from the tray and sat. Then she thought for a moment, leaned over and took the plate to offer one to Cathy, who gazed at them as if they were forbidden fruit.

“It's only a cookie,” Jade said. “Don't consider it a life threatening decision.”

Cathy gingerly took one off the plate and brought it to her mouth slowly, barely opening her lips.

“Girl, it's not poison,” Star said sharply and took a bite from the cookie in her hand as if to prove it.

I looked at Doctor Marlowe and saw something in her eyes that told me she was very interested in how we behaved toward each other. For her, this was as much an experiment, perhaps, as it was for us.

She turned back to me and nodded. I looked out the
window and made them all wait. After all, they had interrupted me, hadn't they?

“I know my father wanted more children. That was actually the first big fight I can remember,” I began, still gazing out the window. Slowly, I turned back to them.

“This was before my mother started to have her problems with sex, I guess. My father didn't know my mother was on birth control pills. All the time she was pretending to be trying to get pregnant. One night he found them and went into a rage, but not right away. He didn't come charging down the stairs screaming or anything.

“My mother and I were downstairs watching television. She liked to do her toenails while she watched one of her nighttime shows and I was mimicking her as usual, doing my toenails, too.

“Suddenly, Daddy appeared in the doorway. He had taken off his tie, and his shirt was unbuttoned. His hair looked like he had been running his fingers through it all day.

“He stood there staring in at us quietly for a few moments. Mommy looked up at him and then continued working on her nails.

“ ‘Guess what I just found, Gloria,' Daddy said sweetly, so sweetly I thought it was something they had both been looking for a long time.

“Without looking at him, Mommy said, ‘What?'

“ ‘I was looking for that designer belt I had bought you last year because I remembered you wanted the same one in a different color, so I opened the bottom
drawer in your armoire to look at it and check the name on the belt and lo and behold. . . ‘ he said still quite calmly.

“ ‘What is it, Jeffery?' she asked impatiently, raising her eyes reluctantly.

“He opened his hand and revealed the box of birth control pills. There were a number missing. I didn't really know what it was. I still thought it was something they had been searching for, maybe some important medicine.

“She stared for a few moments in silence.

“ ‘You had no right to go searching through my things, Jeffery.'

“ ‘So you're going to turn this around? Make
me
the bad guy?' He waited for a moment. Despite my age, I sensed that the silences between them were like those just before big explosions. I remember holding my breath and my little heart pounding as if there was a woodpecker in there trying to get out.

“ ‘What about your lie?' he continued shaking his head. ‘Not deceiving me? Not pretending you were really as interested in having another baby as I was and making me feel bad that you weren't getting pregnant, so bad that I actually went to have my sperm count checked? That's not the big bad thing here? Birth control pills! You've been secretly taking birth control pills all this time?'

“ ‘Don't get so dramatic about this, she said nonchalantly, but I could hear the tiny cracking in her voice, a note of fear.

“He nodded, looked like he was going to turn and walk away, and then spun around and heaved the small pink box of birth control pills across the living room so hard that it smashed against the numbered print my mother had bought at a gallery on Rodeo Drive just a week ago and shattered the glass. The pills went flying all over.

“ ‘You idiot!' my mother cried.

“I was practically under the sofa.

“ ‘How could you lie to me about this? How could you do this?' Daddy cried.

“Mommy just went back to her toenails while he fumed in the doorway, his face so red, I thought the blood might shoot up and out of the top of his head.

“ ‘I didn't want to disappoint you,' she finally said.

“ ‘What?'

“ ‘I didn't want to tell you that I wouldn't have another child. I knew how much you wanted one, so I just kept them out of sight,' she offered.

“ ‘I don't understand,' he muttered.

“She looked up again.

“ ‘Look at me, Jeffery.'

“ ‘I am looking at you,' he said.

“ ‘No, take a good look, Jeffery. I used to be a size two and no matter what I do, I can't get back because my hips will be forever too big and no matter how hard I try, diet, exercise, personal trainers, whatever, it doesn't help. If having one baby does this to my figure, what will two do?'

“ ‘Your figure? Your figure! That's what you're worried about?' he cried.

“ ‘Oh, don't try to fool me, Jeffery. Men,' she declared, ‘make their wives ugly and fat and then go looking elsewhere. Just like every other husband, you'll go looking at other women,' she said. ‘If I don't stay beautiful,' she added practically under her breath.

“I remember I was shocked to overhear her say that having me ruined her figure. Daddy walked off. She finished doing her nails, picked up her copy of
Vogue
and walked out mumbling about how unappreciated she was.

“After she left the room, I remember I found one of those pills and thought if she could change things, go back in time, and use one of those little pills to keep me from growing in her stomach, she would. Even then, that young, I understood that. I took the pill and crushed it under my foot.

“What I didn't understand was that was the beginning of the end way back then.”

I sat back and thought for a moment. No one spoke. Doctor Marlowe sipped some of her lemonade and waited.

Gazing at the floor, I went on talking like someone in a hypnotic state. I could hear myself, but I sounded as if I was talking through a radio.

“It's like you're living in this magical world inside a big balloon and slowly the air is leaking out. As time passes, the walls and the ceiling begin to close in on you. It gets stifling and all you want to do is break out.”

I gazed at the others. They all looked lost in their own
thoughts, each of them really looking sad, but not for me, as much as for themselves, I thought.

Doctor Marlowe looked pleased, very pleased about how everyone was. It was as if I had proven she was a good therapist or something. Great, maybe I'll get a certificate of achievement at the end of the session, I thought.

I took another deep breath. Why did I feel like I was lowering my head under water each time I spoke?

“When I was almost fourteen, it really began. My father's trips began to take longer and longer. I seemed to notice and care more than my mother did. He missed my birthday. He called from New York, but not until very late in the day. He asked me how I liked my present, but I sensed that he didn't know what it was, what my mother had bought.

“ ‘Was it something you were wishing for?' he wanted to know.

“The only thing I was wishing for was for them to love me and go back to loving each other, but I said yes and he was relieved.”

I gazed at the others again. My eyes had a film of tears over them.

“We make everything so much easier for them when we tell them what they want to hear,” I said, “but that doesn't stop it. It doesn't stop the static. Suddenly, there were more and more arguments. It was like some kind of disease infecting everything. Daddy never openly complained about the bills before. Now, he would toss them on the dinner table and question Mommy like some prosecutor, demanding to know why she needed
this or that and always asking, when was it going to end?

“ ‘It's never going to end, Jeffery. It's called living,' she told him and that would set him off ranting about other husbands and wives, mostly about how other wives were more economical and efficient.

“They both seemed to look for reasons to complain. It was as if. . . a pair of magnifying glasses was suddenly put in front of their faces and they saw the little mistakes and blemishes in each other. One of Daddy's favorite topics was Mommy's salon bills. She also has a masseuse twice a week, facial treatments every weekend and, of course, the personal trainer. I didn't understand the comments he muttered under his breath, but he would say things like, ‘Why are you making yourself so beautiful for me? It's just a waste.'

“She would cry and they would stop arguing for a while, Daddy looking like he felt just as terrible.

“I knew they weren't fighting because Daddy was making less money. Shirley Kagan told me that was why her parents eventually got a divorce, but Daddy bought a new car that year, an expensive one, a Mercedes, and he bought an expensive new big screen television set. More and more it seemed to me they were looking for the arguments, lifting stones to see what they could find that was wrong about each other.

“They even fought over food. Daddy complained about the choice of breakfast cereals. He hadn't cared much before. He only had juice, toast and coffee anyway, but there he was rifling through the food cup
boards criticizing what Mommy had bought at the supermarket.

“Sometimes, they made me into a referee. They would both turn to me and ask my opinion. I felt like I was being held over a raging fire and if I gave the wrong answer, one or the other would cut the string and I'd fall into his or her rage.

“My mother started to say things like ‘Your father's a narrow-minded fool.'

“Daddy would say, ‘I only hope you don't become like your mother.'

“I started doing badly in school. Often, in the middle of one of their arguments, they would both spin on me and complain about my work, my clothes, my friends. I think it made them both feel better to have me available. It was like I was a test target or something. On more than one occasion, I told them I hated them both and ran upstairs, hysterical, tears streaming off my face.

“Then one would blame the other for failing me and that became a whole new round of battling.

“The gray had come seeping into our house. I hated coming home and hated to go down to dinner when Daddy was there. I could feel the lightning in the house, that damn static, crackling all around me.

“What I really remember is how quiet it suddenly became. I didn't hear music or even the television going. We had become a family of zombies, shadows of ourselves, gliding along the walls, avoiding each other.

“When Daddy came home, Mommy wouldn't even
greet him. He would say something like ‘Hello to you too, Gloria, and she would mutter something under her breath.

“And then finally one day, on a weekend, Mommy and Daddy called me into the den and asked me to sit on the sofa. Mommy was seated in the cushioned, red leather chair and Daddy stood by the window. I remember every detail of that day. It had rained in the morning and the sun began to appear between thick, dirty looking clouds, puffs that looked bruised and stained. The whole world seemed to have turned angry. I had a little stomach ache, some cramps that told me my period was getting ready to make its usual spectacular entrance. Lately, they had become more severe and less regular. The school nurse told me it might be due to stress. I think she was fishing for good gossip.