Tales From My Closet (25 page)

“Even though I still loved him, when he got sick, I just had to ask him to leave. What choice did I have?” She looked away. “I just didn’t want him anywhere near you.”

“And just like that, he left? He didn’t even put up a struggle?”

“It was me, honey, not him. But you have to understand. I couldn’t take care of a baby and look after a sick man — not when that man was HIV positive, and was still using, and God knows what he might bring home next.”

“But he didn’t want to?”

“To what?”

“Leave?”

Mommy hung her head. “He was so ashamed. Of his habit. He went through all his savings, and then all of mine. He had to sell his piano — a beautiful grand piano, not a baby grand like mine. His own father didn’t know how sick he was. He never told him.”

“I feel kind of nauseous.”

“I’m sure you do,” she said.

“I’m going to be sick.”

“But you aren’t sick, honey. You’re the least sick person I’ve ever known.”

“I’m sick in my head. I’m sick in my chest.”

“You may feel that way now, but that’s because you have a heart that feels. You’re healthy and smart and kind and good, not to mention a terrific athlete and the prettiest girl I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

I threw up anyway. I never wanted to talk to my mother again. I didn’t care that my father was dying. But I wore his jacket to school anyway. It was the least I could do. I wore it with my white jeans, and a white turtleneck sweater, and my Ugg knockoffs, and, for the first time ever, I didn’t care what other people thought about me. I liked my look just fine.

T
he weirdest part
of that whole long winter?
Fashion High
was a hit. A huge hit — even more successful than my fantasies for it had been. And after the news filtered through that Becka was going to be all right, even Mama could see that what we’d done hadn’t been all that bad.

She grounded me anyway. For a month. She also made me promise to apologize to Martha, which grossed me out,
and
write a letter to Becka: a real letter, on paper, and not an email. “But what can I say to her?” I said. “The girl probably hates my guts anyway. What can I say that will make a difference?”

“How about ‘I’m sorry’?”

So I sat down and wrote it. And wrote it. And wrote it again. Finally, on maybe the tenth time, I got it to where I didn’t think it was dog poop. This is what I wrote:

I still felt like one of yesterday’s Tater Tots, though. A Tater Tot with a mean streak so mean that it goes viral on the local teenage blogosphere, and a fabulous wardrobe that’s nonetheless coated with cooties. Which brings me to the question: What does a stale, nasty Tater Tot wear to school? Stale, nasty clothes, of course: in my case, jeans and sweaters and turtlenecks from freshman year. Ann the Astonishing had disappeared, replaced by a walking, miserable Tater Tot, and no one cared, except, of course, Justine, who was on my case about it, except that, ever since the blog bomb incident and our fight, even she didn’t
really
care — or at least not enough to actually be friends again.

It may as well have been the beginning of the year again, with me in my bland clothes, hanging out with the Latins, and going through the motions of going to class and doing my homework and pretending that everything was just hunky-dory, when it wasn’t. It wasn’t AT ALL. As for Justine, she was mainly hanging around with Polly and Robin, and when I did see her, which wasn’t all that often, we were like:
Hi. Hi. What happened to your fashion? I dunno. Well, see ya. Well, see ya. . . .
and that was all.

I was so depressed that I, me, Ann Eleanor Marcus, barely even talked until about a month later, when I was rumbling around my locker looking for my biology textbook. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Becka. She looked miserable, like she’d lost not only weight, but her personality, too. She’d never acknowledged my letter to her, but since it hadn’t been returned to me, I assumed she’d gotten it.

“Hi?” I said.

“I didn’t hate the blog.”

“You didn’t?”

“I thought your drawings were really good.”

I didn’t know what to say. She looked so angry.

“But then you went and . . .”

“I know,” she said. “My accident.”

“Right.”

“For your information, it wasn’t a suicide attempt, like everyone is saying.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. I was just so — angry. I wasn’t even thinking. It just kind of happened.”

I was afraid to say it, but I said it anyway: “Because?”

“It’s complicated,” she said, “but it wasn’t because of the blog.”

“It wasn’t because of the blog?” I had to say it out loud, just to make sure that I’d heard her right.

“Like I said,” she said. “It was just a stupid blog. What do I care?”

I didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted, so instead, and for all the rest of the day, I was vaguely weirded out. When I found Justine to tell her what had happened, Justine told me that Becka had told her something similar, with that same flat intonation and nonexpression on her face. Polly, who was also there, just shrugged and said: “How do you like my varsity jacket?”

“I like it,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “You should blog about me. You can call it ‘V is for Very Awesome.’”

“Ha ha. Funny. Not,” Justine said.

“But I mean it!”

As it turned out, she
did
mean it. And she wasn’t the only one. Even though she’d been in our first post, Robin had liked it, too. I know because she’d told Polly, and Polly had told me, and I told Justine, and the next thing I know, Justine and I were hanging out again. It was weird, though, hanging out with her like nothing had ever happened, when we both knew that things had changed. Big-time. And that my stupid blog was the cause of at least some of it.

Then one day, out of the blue, Robin herself sat herself down with us at the Latin Girls table, saying: “Do you have any clue how much I love clothes?”

“And?”

“No, really,” she said. “I’m not just talking about your blog, either, which, by the way, everyone and their dogs know you did.”

“I know,” I said.

“We know,” Justine said.

“Yeah, well, that’s not all — you guys know my twin brother, Ben?”

Of course I knew Ben — everyone did. He was actually a pretty nice kid, but he had one of the biggest mouths in all of Western High, plus he was a supergeek, skinny and tall and smart, the kind who understands what black holes are and reads the
Wall Street Journal
. He hung around with Weird John. But Justine was like: “Ben’s your brother?”

“My
twin
brother.”

“OMG,” she said. “That kid . . .”

“Tell me about it,” Robin said. “I have to live with him. And you know that email that was going around about Becka? ‘Teenage Tears and Fears’? The one that was like an article by her mother?”

The whole table nodded. Anything related to Becka was still considered to be good gossip.

“My brother sent it. He and my cousin, John, together. As a
joke
. He thought it was so funny.”

“But it was stupid,” I said.

“And mean,” Polly said.

“I didn’t see it,” Justine said. “What article? What are you talking about?”

“My brother sent out a group email that was like a parody or something — something he wrote as a joke, but he said it was from the Daughter Doctor, which is what Becka’s mother calls herself, and when I found out, which wasn’t actually all that hard, I was so mad I wanted to kill him.”

“How’d you find out?”

“John confessed. After Becka hurt herself. He thought you were going to go to jail, or something crazy like that, I don’t know. He helped write it because he was so in love with you.”

“I’m going to puke blood,” Justine said.

“Seriously?” she continued. “And Ben thinks he’s so smart, like he knows everything about everything. But he’s not. And one thing he definitely doesn’t know about is clothes. Which is where your blog comes in.”

Justine and I just looked at each other.

“I want to write it with you,” she said.

“You want to work with — us?” Justine gasped.

“Why not? When it comes to dressing it, you two are the best.” Then, turning her attention to me, she said: “Except, I mean . . . I mean . . . Can I ask you a question?”

“I guess.”

“What happened to you?”

“Huh?”

“Your fab fifties look. I mean, not that you don’t look cute now, but it’s just that I loved that look you started getting into, and now . . .” She let her sentence trail off.

“I know,” I admitted. “Blandorama, right?”

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“I’ve been telling her,” Justine said.

“I know it’s not my business, okay? But if I had clothes like yours — and your cute little figure to pull it off — I’d never wear anything but those old styles. God! I’m so jealous.”

“You’re jealous — of
me
?”

“God, yes,” she said. “First of all, I don’t know if you noticed, but my own wardrobe . . . How can I say this? I kind of feel homeless.”

“You mean the PJ look?”

“It’s awful, right?”

“Actually,” I said. “I liked it.”

“Really?” she said, turning slightly pink around the edges. Today she was wearing a more standard look: cords and a sweater, with clogs. “You didn’t think I looked — just — totally stupid?”

“What can I say?”

“It’s just — that I love clothes. I know they’re just clothes. But I love them. I just do.”

Right then, I knew what I had to do — what we all had to do. “Okay,” I said. “You’re hired.”

“But we don’t have a blog!” Justine said. “Remember how we’re not allowed to do the blog anymore and will be put in prison for the rest of our lives if we do it again? Unless you want me to be grounded forever.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way!” I said, and suddenly, I realized that I meant it.

The first thing I did when I got home was throw open my closet. Then I reorganized all my clothes — putting my Mama Lees in front, my weekend clothes in back, and my last year’s bland, blah basics in a giant black plastic Lawn & Leaf bag for Goodwill. As for the red dress with the white flowers — I put it over to the side. After all, it was still too cold to wear it. I figured that I wouldn’t even think about that dress again until it was warm again — and then, somehow, I’d figure it out. Afterward, I felt so good that I strode into the kitchen, where Mama was sorting the day’s mail, and said: “What is the big deal about my wanting to be an artist?”

“Not now, Ann,” Mama said.

“And about Mama Lee’s clothes, which, by the way, fit me perfectly. I mean, so what if you wore the red dress in that painting? What does that have to do with me?”

Finally, and for the first time ever, my big mouth achieved something. Mama looked up and, squinting a little, said: “Who told you about that painting?”

“Er? Martha?”

“I should never have told that girl! Oh! What on earth is wrong with me?”

“But, Mama! So what? I mean, you were only a teenager yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I didn’t?” she said. “How about I humiliated my mother — and my father, too? How about I nearly threw my entire future away? How about I acted like a fool?”

“But, Mama!” I was nearly shouting now. “So what? That was — that was a million years ago.”

“I never wanted you to find out,” Mama said. “Oh! I’m still just so ashamed of myself.”

“But, Mama!”

“I wanted you — you and your sister — to be proud of me.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Proud of her? I’d never really thought about it before, that she wanted us to be proud of her. I’d always thought it was the other way around, that I wanted her to be proud of me — but that she never would be, not with me being so like me, and so not like Martha.

“And not only that,” I blurted out. “But you have to know something else.”

“Oh, no.”

But I was off and running, Ann the blabber-puss, back in business: “Because, and I hope you know it, and Daddy, too, but I’m never going to go to Princeton.”

“I wouldn’t put yourself down like that.”

“It’s not a put-down, Mama. It’s reality. I’m just not that into it — school, I mean.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Even if you don’t like being a student, you have no choice. Going to school is your job, and Daddy and I expect you to do your best.”

I couldn’t believe it. After all that blowup and upset and blogging and mess, and she still didn’t get it? Feeling like I’d been stabbed, I let out a long groan.

“What?” Mama said. “Is there something you’re not telling me . . . again?”

“OMG! Mama! I really, really, really want to make sure that you know that even if I study twenty-four hours a day, there’s no way I’m going to get into Princeton.”