Sister Golden Hair: A Novel (28 page)

My life was now divided into two categories: time away from Sheila, which had that odd combination of dullness and anxiety, and time with her. Together we had our routine: Cheez Whiz, Tab,
General Hospital
. Laura was sleeping with an old guy who had seduced her only to get back at her mother. Sheila wouldn’t let me talk during the show, only when the commercials came on. The thing about Laura was that even when she was sleeping with older guys she still looked, with her big wet eyes and golden hair, as innocent as a baby. Nothing she did ever stuck to her, or diminished her. She never seemed to learn anything from her mistakes either, but this was a small price to pay for going through the world doing whatever you wanted.

After
General Hospital
, we did the problems in our math workbook, and then answered the lame questions at the back of the chapter in our history textbook. They seemed designed for people with brain damage. The history class was taught by Coach Carter; all he did in class was tell us to read our textbooks, while he sat at his desk looking at pictures in
Sports Illustrated
. The brazenness of his lack of interest appealed to me. And I loved how he threw a Nerf football, which he kept in his bottom desk drawer, at the boy in the back who always fell asleep.

Only once did I make the mistake of mentioning Sheila’s father. I asked where he worked. I could tell
by the way her eyes blanked that I’d made a huge mistake. The way the words came out made it sound as if I suspected he was a prostitute and, to be honest, I had speculated, in the privacy of my bedroom, that he
might
be a male prostitute. I thought of him in his sad little apartment with a collection of sex toys, painting his toenails while he wore girls’ underwear. I waited for her to say something mean about my own pathetic family, but she just sat perfectly still, as if I had not said anything, before walking into the kitchen to get us another can of Tab.

After our homework we went into her mother’s room and Sheila read from either
Sybil
or
Fear of Flying
. Sybil had twenty-three personalities. Two were boys and one was a prostitute. Sheila read how Sybil’s evil mother shit in the neighbor’s yard and then hung Sibyl upside down from the kitchen ceiling. In
Fear of Flying
, Sheila always read the part about sex being like Velveeta cheese. I was fascinated with Velveeta, how if you melted a slice on top of an English muffin pizza, it melted more like plastic than cheese. I often found myself thinking of the odd texture during my last class. Now I had to wonder if all this time I had been actually thinking about sex. When we got to the part that said
His penis . . . is the tall red smokestack of an ocean liner
, we’d laugh so hard Tab came out of our noses. But it was the part about the
zipless fuck
, which Sheila always read last, that really appealed to me. Instead of worrying about the mechanics, the
male part going into the female, you could just lie like two people in footie pajamas, next to each other on a couch.

After
Fear of Flying
we practiced our Bunny moves. We approached the table, pivoted carefully, and “tailed.” We practiced asking customers for their keys and then responded when they showed them,
Thank you, Mr. Pochucknick
. We did the Bunny dip: while serving drinks, instead of bending over the table, exposing our breasts, we placed our right foot behind us and swayed our backs to set down the flamingo with the orange slice wrapped around a cherry and stuck with a tiny red plastic sword. We also practiced the Bunny stance, backs arched, hips tucked. We did this only if key members were watching. We practiced “perching” on the back of a chair or sofa, tipping our heads and giving the Number One Key Holders sly smiles.

At exactly 6:15 every weeknight, Sheila’s mom came home from her job at the makeup counter at Leggett’s. She was violently cheerful, asking me, as she moved around the kitchen, if I had a boyfriend or if I was going to the spring formal. She asked where my dad preached and she didn’t approve when I said he’d given up church. She wore several shades of eye shadow that blended into one another like the tiered colors on a bird’s wing, and her eyebrows were drawn in with black pencil. Walt
called at exactly seven, just as she was setting the plates down for dinner. Walt, she’d told me, was from an old Virginia family. His great-grandfather had been lieutenant governor and, while it was true his main income came from lot rentals at several trailer parks, when his father finally died, he would be a zillionaire. I’d watched him get out of his Volvo in a rumpled seersucker suit, his face long and red and his nose looking like it was constructed entirely out of raspberries. Mostly she just listened, her ear pressed into the receiver, but occasionally she said
Oh stop that
or
You’re so bad.
I thought this was odd as Sheila told me her mom had met Walt at First Baptist. If he didn’t call, Sheila’s mom fretted, saying he was probably chatting up his secretary, who was clearly after him. While she ate she looked through magazines, compiling lists of hors d’oeuvres to make for Walt’s surprise birthday party.

On Saturday my mom dropped me off at the mall. Sheila had ridden in early with her mom, as she did every Saturday. She hung around the makeup counter while her mom loaded the cash register and set out the makeup. I had assumed we’d meet in the French Quarter, but unlike me, Sheila preferred the Orange Julius on the ground floor.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said, throwing myself into the orange plastic seat.

“It’s OK,” she said.

When things got quiet, Sheila stared like babies do at a point just over my head. Her silence was the opposite of my dad’s. With him, you felt the strong current of his interest and that that interest was not focused on you. But Sheila’s silence was empty, like a dog’s or a cat’s.

The Orange Julius mixer whirred. The boy behind the counter told the girl he was waiting on that he’d signed up to join the Marines. The orange wall behind Sheila’s head vibrated. I watched people coming into the dark mall from a rectangle of pure light.

“What’s up with the party planning?” I asked.

“My mom is obsessed,” she said. “Last night she made three kinds of mushroom caps.”

Besides being a key-carrying member of the Playboy Club and a trailer-park mogul, Walt was also a Redskins fanatic. His car was covered with bumper stickers and he and his friends from church sometimes caravanned it up to Washington for games. If he stayed home, he took Sheila’s mom to the Fiji Island to watch the game on the TV that hung over the bar. Afterward they went to his place. I imagined Frank Sinatra playing on the stereo, Walt sitting in a satin smoking jacket, like Hugh Hefner, eating stuffed mushroom caps off a silver plate.

I wasn’t sure what girls did at the mall. My only experience had been with Jill and I knew there was no way Sheila would want to smoke bean pods in the French Quarter bathroom. Sheila just sat there, more
like a cow than a dog. Her inertness was horrible and fascinating. I had hoped we’d move from Chess King to Spencer’s Gifts, trying on tops, buying flip-flops or rhinestone studs set into plastic. Mostly I had hoped that kids from school, who also roamed the mall on Saturdays, would see us together. This was the one public place where people could see us together because at school Sheila didn’t speak to me. That hardly mattered, though; my worship of her was too fierce to be called love. It hardly mattered if she never spoke to me at all, as long as I could bind myself to her by a secret vow. I followed her down the hallway at a distance. When she hung around the audiovisual room talking to Mr. Ramin, I waited outside, pretending to search for something in my backpack. Mr. Ramin sat surrounded by overhead projectors and filmstrip canisters, with his feet up on his desk. He wore Earth shoes, a Western shirt with silver snaps, and bell-bottoms with rust-colored stitching on the pockets. Sheila did the Bunny perch on the side of his desk and listened to him talk about his band, Earth Tone, and how they were about to get a record deal.

Time inside Tanglewood was like time in Narnia: it stretched out like Silly Putty and had no relation to time outside. After we browsed the crocheted penis-warmers and the candy underpants and each bought Playboy Bunny shot glasses at Spencer’s Gifts, we sat on the fountain’s edge and watched the lid of a plastic cup stuck in the bubbling water. I had the feeling
Sheila was waiting for someone. Maybe Mr. Ramin had said he would be shopping for drumsticks at the mall music store. Maybe they’d agreed to meet and I was the cover. I’d stand in front of the bathroom while they had sex inside.

When I asked if she was waiting for anyone, she acted the same way she did when I mentioned her father—completely blank as if I hadn’t said anything. Senior citizens sat around us waiting for the A&W to open so they could get their lunches for $1.99. A group of boys walked by us; one pushed another toward us while the rest laughed. It was funny that I was ugly and Sheila angelic.

Finally, Sheila pointed, and I saw the woman she’d been waiting for. When I tried to ask her if she was Walt’s ex-wife or some teacher who had tortured her in elementary school, she put her finger to her lips and grasped my hand, and we followed the woman. The lady’s hair was clearly synthetic, her ankles thick, and her stride a bit too wide. Even though the woman was middle-aged she seemed much younger, a girl even younger than myself, trying to figure out how to apply makeup and walk like a lady.

She rode the escalator up to the French Quarter and we followed her through the darkened halls, past the wishing well and the thatched-roof shops. She stopped in front of the bridal shop and gazed at the rhinestone tiara and lace veils. The woman moved through the French Quarter and back down the
escalator. When she was nearly at the mall’s front door, she looked over her shoulder and I saw up close her heavy foundation makeup and her large, angular nose. Fear flashed over her features as she realized we were following her, and she ran through the doors into the bright parking-lot light.

“Who was that?” I asked.

Sheila didn’t answer, though I could tell by her flushed face how upset she was. She walked out of the entrance of J. C. Penney where my dad had said he’d pick us up.

When we got back to Bent Tree we went right up to Sheila’s room where she paced the floor, saying it was gross and creepy to dress up like a girl if you were really a man. She put Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” on her record player. A weird expression came over her face.

“Make the sex sounds,” she commanded.

I laughed.

“I don’t want to.”

“Do it now or I’ll tell everyone how after gym class you smell like vegetable soup.”

I weighed my options. On the one hand if I didn’t make the sex sounds Sheila would betray me by telling everyone I smelled, but if I did it, she might betray me worse by telling everyone I’d made the sex sounds. I closed my eyes and let the sex sounds come from deep in my belly. I panted and made the vowels last a long, long time.