Smart Women (31 page)

Even if Margo and Andrew did get married there was no guarantee that they would stay married. Look at that fight they’d had on the night of Early Sumner’s dinner party. They had come home around one a.m., shouting. Mainly it had been Margo doing the shouting. Andrew had just kept repeating, “You’ve got it all wrong. She was just being friendly.”

“Friendly!” Margo had yelled, slamming their bedroom door so that their voices were muffled. “She had her hand on your thigh. You call that friendly?”

“What was I supposed to do?” Andrew asked.

“You could have removed her hand. You could have walked away from her. For Christ’s sake, Andrew, you’re a grown man. You know the difference between friendly and flirtatious.”

“I’m here with you, aren’t I?” Andrew said. “Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“No . . . being here isn’t enough. I need to be able to trust you.”

“I didn’t fuck her. I didn’t even want to.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about needing to trust you not to hurt me. I’m talking about needing to be able to depend on you emotionally.”

So, something had happened at the party, Michelle had thought. Somebody, probably Early Sumner, had put the make on Andrew, and Andrew had responded, leaving Margo feeling hurt and betrayed, not to mention jealous.

Early Sumner was old, more than fifty, but she had an interesting face. It looked carved. She was very thin and always wore black leather pants, big shirts, and amber beads, each one the size of a golf ball. She gave a lot of money to the library and the museums. Once a month she would drop by school to see who might be free to do some odd job around her house. She paid five dollars an hour. She never chose any of the girls though.

Whatever had happened Margo had been steaming. Michelle kept listening even though she was frightened.

“Men, you’re all the same,” Margo was shouting. “You’re all babies with big egos. You’re all such pushovers.”

“And you’re all so goddamned insecure.”

“Who’s insecure?”

“What do you want from me?” he asked. “Don’t you know what I’ve been going through? Don’t you know what a hard time this is?”

“It’s a hard time for me too,” Margo said. “Taking on the responsibility of another child and all the family problems that come with it. Not a day goes by without a phone call about either B.B.’s mother or B.B. herself. Jesus, Andrew, I’m so sick of Goldy and her stroke and B.B. and her breakdown I feel like I’m going to have one or the other myself. I’ve been afraid to tell you how tense I am because I know you are too. But here I am trying to help Sara feel at home and trying to think of your needs and her needs and my children’s needs and my work, and my own needs have gone right down the drain . . . and yes, I’m feeling a little resentful because I needed a night out so badly and this is what I get from you!”

Michelle felt a lump rise in her throat, a lump as big as one of Early Sumner’s amber beads. She wanted to run down the hall, to fling open their bedroom door, and shake them by the shoulders, yelling,
Stop this stupid fighting. Stop it right now, before you ruin everything!

She realized then, for the first time, that she did not want Margo and Andrew to split up. She liked them together. She liked having Andrew in the house, in spite of Sara. It made her feel good. It made her feel as if she were part of a family.

“Come on, Margo . . . come on . . . I’m sorry,” Andrew said, softly now, so that Michelle could barely hear him. “I just wanted to have a good time, that’s all.”

“I wanted to have a good time too,” Margo said, crying, “but you acted as if I wasn’t even there. I felt invisible . . .”

Michelle understood what Margo meant. Sometimes she felt invisible herself. And she would have to pinch herself to make sure she still existed.

A
FEW DAYS LATER,
when Sara and Michelle were the only ones at home, Sara knocked on Michelle’s bedroom door.

“Yeah?” Michelle called. She was still reading
The Bell Jar.

“It’s me, Sara.”

“Come in . . .”

“Hi,” Sara said, standing in the doorway.

“Hi.”

“Could I, uh, borrow one of your, uh, Tampax?”

“Yeah, sure. They’re in the bottom cupboard in my bathroom,” Michelle said, without thinking. She was at this really interesting part of the book, where Esther was just getting out of the hospital. But then it suddenly dawned on her that this was Sara’s first period, so she looked up and said, “First time, huh?”

Sara turned red and nodded.

“You need some help?”

Sara shrugged.

“You know how to use Tampax?”

“Jennifer showed me once.”

“Well, go try and if you can’t get it up call me, okay?”

“Okay.”

Sara was locked in the bathroom for twenty minutes. Finally, Michelle knocked on the bathroom door. “You okay?”

“I think I got it up, but I’m not sure. It feels like it’s going to fall out.”

“Try again, with another one. Put some Vaseline on the tip before you shove it up.”

“Where’s the Vaseline?”

“In the bottom . . . where the Tampax is . . .”

“Okay, I see it.”

“You want me to come in and help you?”

“That’s okay. I’ll try it again.”

Sara came out ten minutes later. “I think it’s up there this time.”

“You shouldn’t feel anything. It should be comfortable.”

“It’s pretty comfortable,” Sara said. And then she smiled shyly.

Oh, she was so pathetic, Michelle thought. So young and so pathetic. “The first time I got it,” Michelle told her, “I was almost fourteen and I was at this sleepover with six other girls and I didn’t want to tell any of them it was my first time so I just kept shoving Kleenex in my pants until I got home and then I told my mother and she was so excited she cried and that night we went out to dinner to celebrate.”

Michelle saw the hurt come into Sara’s eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad about your mother.”

“That’s okay.”

“Well, if you need any more help just ask me.”

“Thanks.”

Michelle went up to the kitchen then and baked a chocolate cake. When the icing cooled she wrote
Congratulations, Sara
across the top.

36

S
ARA STILL HAD NOT HEARD
from her mother, but she had talked to Dr. Arnold, her mother’s doctor. Sara had been scared that once she heard Dr. Arnold’s voice she wouldn’t be able to think of a thing to say. So she had rehearsed her first question over and over in her mind. And then, when Dr. Arnold came on the line, Sara had said it. “Exactly when will my mother be better?”

“That’s hard to say,” Dr. Arnold answered, as if Sara’s question was just ordinary. “She’s improving, but very slowly.”

“Should I keep on writing to her?” Sara asked.

“Yes,” Dr. Arnold said. “Your letters mean a lot to her.”

“Then how come she doesn’t write to me . . . or call?”

“She’s not ready to communicate, Sara.”

“What does she do all day?”

“Well, she’s begun to go out for walks and that’s a very good sign.”

“What else?”

“She watches TV.”

“Mom
never
watches TV. She says it ruins your mind.”

“She’s watching now.”

“Which shows?”

“Whatever’s on in the lounge.”

“Like
Happy Days
and
M*A*S*H
?”

“Sure.”

“Does she laugh?”

“No,” Dr. Arnold said, “she doesn’t laugh.”

“Will you tell her that I’m coming to see her as soon as school’s over, unless she’s better before then?”

“I’ll tell her. And when you come down I’ll introduce you to my daughter, Mimi. She’s your age.”

Sara did not tell Dr. Arnold that she didn’t want to meet Mimi. Mimi would feel sorry for Sara, knowing that her mother had had a mental breakdown.
Mental breakdown.
That was such a weird expression. Sara imagined all these little pieces inside her mother’s brain coming apart and spinning around. They would have to be put back together, like a puzzle, before her mother would be well again.

Sara thought it was good that her mother’s doctor was a woman. Her mother was always saying,
Never hire a man if you can find a woman who can do the same job. Women are so much more dependable, Sara. Women take their responsibilities seriously.

Sara found out about her own responsibilities the night they came home from the movies to find that Lucy had raided the pantry. She had dragged at least a dozen boxes of food into the dining room, hiding them under the table. She had chewed up parts of each box so that cookies, crackers, cereal, and spaghetti lay all over the floor. “Looks like Lucy had a great time tonight,” Stuart said, and he and Michelle laughed.

Sara laughed with them until Margo looked at her as if she was as guilty as Lucy.

“Clean it up, Sara,” Daddy said.

“But . . .” Sara began.

“No buts,” Daddy said. “Lucy is your dog. You’re responsible.”

And so Sara cleaned up the mess by herself.

If they were a real family, like the Brady Bunch, Sara thought, everyone would have helped her. But they were just people who happened to live in the same house. They had responsibilities, but no feelings.

Sara was learning more about them every day. She understood that Margo was responsible for Stuart and Michelle, that she was responsible for Lucy, and that Daddy was responsible for her. Which got Sara to thinking that if anything happened to her father she would be all alone. Margo wouldn’t want her. Margo had only taken her in and painted her room purple to please Daddy. But Margo didn’t really care about her. Sara had suspected as much, but she was still disappointed to find out it was true. She heard it from Margo herself on the night that Margo and her father had had their big fight.

Jennifer had slept over and they’d gone to bed right after
Saturday Night Live.
Sara was just about asleep when she heard a door slam. At first she wasn’t sure what was happening. Then she heard Margo’s voice, followed by her father’s. They were shouting at each other. Sara lay very still, pretending to be asleep. She hoped that Jennifer was already asleep and would not wake up, would not hear Margo and her father arguing. There was a lot of talk about loyalty and betrayal before Sara heard her own name.

“Sara!” Daddy said. “What has this got to do with her?”

“Having another child in the house means added responsibilities,” Margo said. “I can’t pretend that she isn’t here just because she’s yours.”

“I can pack my bags and leave,” Daddy shouted. “If that’s what you want, just say so. If it’s too much for you having Sara here . . .”

“Don’t yell at me,” Margo said. “I need to be able to be honest with you. If I can’t be honest about the way I feel . . . if I can’t discuss it . . .”

“Do you want me to go?” Daddy asked.

“Do you want to go?” Margo said.

“Sometimes,” Daddy said. “Sometimes I want to get the hell out of here and just sail off to Bali.”

How could he? Sara thought. How could he want to sail away without her? Unless he meant that he wanted to sail away
with
her. Yes, maybe that was it. Oh, that would be nice. Just the two of them, sailing off to Bali, wherever that was. She wouldn’t have to go to school or anything. And she wouldn’t have to share him with Margo either.

“Sometimes I wish you would just sail away,” Margo said, “. . . sail right out of my life the way you sailed into it.”

Sara could tell that Margo was crying.

“But then I think of life without you,” Margo continued, “and I know that isn’t what I really want.”

“What do you want?” Daddy asked. “What the fuck do you want?”

“I want the closeness back.”

Sara felt a sharp pain in her stomach. She drew her knees up to her chest.

“Sara . . .” Jennifer whispered, “are you awake?”

Sara did not answer.

Jennifer yawned noisily and rolled over in her sleeping bag.

Soon the house was quiet again and when Sara heard the familiar sounds of Margo and her father making love she covered her ears with her hands.

Ever since that night Margo and her father were lovey-dovey again. He called her Margarita, like the drink. Sara hated it when they kissed in front of her. And one time she had caught her father sliding his hand down the front of Margo’s shirt. But even that wasn’t as disgusting as the Polaroid pictures. Sara had found them in the middle drawer of Margo’s bathroom cabinet, tucked away beneath the plastic tray that held Margo’s cosmetics. Sara had been trying out Margo’s lipsticks and eyeliners when she’d noticed the envelope. She’d lifted it out, turned it over, opened it, and had pulled out five Polaroid pictures, all of them of Margo wearing some dumb-looking black underwear and showing off her tits.

The pictures had made Sara feel weak and dizzy and she’d sat down on the edge of the tub with her head between her knees to keep from passing out. After a few minutes the dizzy spell passed and Sara had carried the pictures to her room. She’d hidden them in her bottom drawer, under her scrapbook. If Stuart or Michelle gave her any trouble she would show them what kind of mother they had.