Ten Girls to Watch (14 page)

Back in my own building, I flipped the switch for the dusty light fixture above the mailboxes. One bulb came on, and the other popped, the sound of a snapping filament. I climbed the four flights in dingy half light. Inside my apartment, things usually felt cheerier—I’d done my best to artfully arrange my secondhand Ikea and cardboard furniture and had framed a half dozen pages from a Matisse calendar and taped up a few big Rothko posters—but tonight, instead of noticing all those bright pops of color, I noticed the greige walls behind them. The walls and Sylvia’s shot glass collection, which took up a full two shelves of our bookcase. I counted five from Cancún. Had she been there five times or just done a lot of shots on one visit? (Somehow, I suspected the latter.) I popped some popcorn for dinner and then ate it in bed while watching
Big
on my laptop. I hoped it would put me to sleep. It didn’t.

In fact, sleeplessness was nothing new. I’d had nights of insomnia here and there through all of college, mostly when Robert and I were on the outs. But since graduation, it felt like a nightly plague. Even nights when my brain would go quiet, when I wasn’t thinking about jobs, or applications, or money, or Robert, or my parents, or disappointment, or the future—even nights when I felt peaceful—my body didn’t shut down properly. I spent hours in the dark holding very still, trying to trick myself into unconsciousness. I’d tried drinking, but I was too poor for that and it didn’t work well anyway. I’d tried Tylenol PM and Benadryl and melatonin. I felt groggy and made from sludge the next day, but I still used them plenty of nights anyway. The few times I’d mentioned the sleep thing to, say, Robert or to my sister, they’d said Ambien. But it hadn’t felt bad enough or regular enough to talk to a doctor about it in college. And now that I didn’t have health insurance or unspoken-for funds, prescription drugs weren’t that easy to come by.

Eventually, sometime after three in the morning, I fell asleep. But then I woke up again Saturday morning, much earlier than I would have hoped, at the first hint of sun through my windows. Despite the fried fatigue, I lifted my laptop from its storage spot right beneath my bed, where I wouldn’t step on it in the night, and prepared for what I’d been procrastinating—Kelly Burns duty.

One quick Gmail check and I’d get on with the lawn business. Or at least that’s what I thought until I saw the subject line “The One Invites You . . .”

I checked the clock to make sure it wasn’t indecently early. It was, but I dialed Robert anyway. I guess I could have called some other friend, but I hadn’t exactly been telling everyone I’d signed up (or passively “been signed up”) for TheOne, and this was his doing, after all. Somehow, the arrival of this e-mail felt urgent enough to override the “Do Not Call” advisories my brain had been issuing for weeks now re: Robert.

It rang and rang and then, just when I was expecting voice mail, a surprise: Lily answered.

“Good morning, Dawn,” she said with a sort of wry seduction in her voice, a fancy-meeting-you-here drawl. Not confrontational. Flirtatious, if anything. The voice you use on a friend.

“Lily,” I replied, more woodenly.

“What has you up so early on a Saturday morning?” she asked.

“I’m so sorry to call so early,” I said, though her tone hadn’t been rebuking.

“No, no. Don’t worry at all.” A dog barked on her side of the phone, followed by some shouting. “We’re in the park. Robert would have answered, but he’s deeply engrossed in a Frisbee game right now. He signed up for an Ultimate Frisbee league, which sounds like it would be all chill and full of Frisbee types, but it’s not. It’s psycho.”

I couldn’t help but follow her bantering lead. “So it’s psycho, like people getting up at six a.m. to play frisbee, or psycho like people taking dives into the grass and body checking each other?”

“Unfortunately, both. I don’t know how I let him talk me into coming to watch. I’m sitting on some bleachers, trying to read the paper, but I either look like a soccer mom or a perv leering from the stands.”

We both laughed, like friends.

“But I thought Robert believed sports were for people who couldn’t win in the real world and needed an outlet for aggression,” I said. Robert and I had, on numerous occasions, bonded over our shared antipathy for contact sports. After a full three years of braces in high school, I refused to risk my teeth. He refused to risk his dignity.

“Yes, that sounds exactly like something he’d say.” Lily laughed. And rather than feeling unsettled by this exchange about Robert, somehow upset that Lily knew him enough to say anything about him at all, I felt comradely. I felt validated.
Yes, that was something he would say. Yes, wasn’t it funny.

“So what has you up so early?” Lily asked.

I felt sheepish saying it, but there was, in fact, a clear reason I had called. “I just got an e-mail from TheOne,” I admitted.

“I love it!” she said with the exact same delight she’d exhibited at dinner when the subject of my TheOne enrollment had come up. “So what does it say?”

“Oh, well, it’s just one of their party invitations.”

“Read it! Read it!”

I balked, embarrassed. I didn’t want to read it.

“Come on,” she said, filling the silence.

I could have continued resisting, but instead I let myself be sucked in by her charm.

“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “Dear Dawn, Please join us tonight for a get-together with a great group of people we think you’ll really like. 8 o’clock. 4 Leonard Street, Apartment 18A.”

“Wait, it’s in an apartment?”

“Yeah, their parties are all in apartments. I skimmed an article on it. It’s something about cost and exclusivity and this theory that it makes people more comfortable and blah-blah-blah.”

“Do you know what you’re wearing?” Lily asked, not letting me finish reading the e-mail.

“I don’t think I’m going to go,” I said, the repartee slipping from my voice. I didn’t say it the way people say no when they want to be talked into something, the false bashfulness, the yearning for entreaty. I said it for real. I didn’t want to go.

“Do I need to call Robert over here to give you a talking-to? Of course you’re going.”

Suddenly, her tone felt too familiar, too smothering. It had been there all along, this overfamiliarity, like an odor, and it was finally too strong for me not to pull away sputtering.

“No, I don’t need to talk to Robert. I think I should let you get back to your game,” I said.

I didn’t care whether it would be awkward later. I was tired. I’d go so far as to say exhausted. I felt like I was going to cry. I just wanted to get off the phone. I didn’t want to be one more of Lily’s cheerful order-takers.

“Wait, Dawn,” she said, “Robert’s yelling something.”

I could tell from the rustling that she’d lowered the phone. Then I heard Robert at a distance. “This is ridiculous,” he grumbled loudly.

I should have hung up. But I also felt the curiosity and slyness that accompanies clandestine intrusiveness. How was this going to go? So yes, I wanted to hear, but I still felt the need to back away. The phone next to my ear felt like too much, like I was a heavy breather. I put the phone on the bed and hit speaker.

“What’s the problem?” Lily said to him, her voice muffled and scratchy.

“I don’t need cardio enough to put up with this,” Robert answered, even more distantly.

“Really, you dragged me out of bed for this and now you’re quitting!” She said it sharply, like she was truly furious. And then she continued, “Oh, you’re outrageous. What, four, maybe five body checks and one bleeding knee and you’re quitting? I’m in the middle of reading a great article on eyeliner!”

Robert, his tone not yet shifted, huffily said something about the stupidity of his teammates, something with the word “meathead.”

“You’re going to have to take me to some pretty great brunch to make up for this,” Lily replied with faux hauteur.

“We’re going,” he said, but now with the same put-on anger. As if he, like Lily, were only playing at being upset.

I finally hit the end button and sat staring at the silent phone.

She handled him in an easy, second-nature way I couldn’t imagine. Like it was fun. Had I been at the park, I would have undoubtedly tried to placate him, to talk through his feelings, encouraged him to get back out there, or encouraged him to quit if he felt like it, either way. But it would have been a touchy-feely mess. And he would have fumed and gotten worked up and snapped at me and we would have been stormy all day, Robert walking around feeling bad about being a jerk, me walking around feeling wounded. With Lily, neither of them felt anything bad. I could just see their brunch. They’d keep grousing until the mimosas arrived, and then they’d forget they were worked up about anything except fondness for each other. Robert had solved all his problems by finding the right person.

And I, the wrong person, was left with all of mine.

I reread the e-mail from TheOne. “A great group of people we think you’ll really like.” Why did that sentence turn my stomach? Was it the automated message masquerading as a personal communication? Or was it just the slashing truth that I was alone, not just on a break from Robert, but really really alone. And like TheOne was going to work anyway. Why not just skip the rocky ride of love and rejection by staying right here in my bedroom?

As you might imagine, this line of thinking really killed my shoulder-to-the-wheel Kelly Burns spirit, and I slipped into a morass of aimless Saturday morning puttering. I should have been writing. Not Kelly Burns writing. Dawn West writing. Real writing. That’s what I needed. To work on a story. Something that mattered to me. That’s what would turn everything around. But I puttered, called my sister, puttered, called my mom, cleaned my bathroom, puttered, and hated myself every second of it. Not too long after I hung up on Lily, Robert texted: “Heard you’re going to TheOne party tonight. Go get em.” I didn’t respond.

That night, instead of doing what I should have done after my failed day—locking myself in my bedroom and writing till I fell asleep—I put on a dress and took the subway to Tribeca. I felt miserable and frenetic. So why did I go? I guess because part of me really wanted to meet someone. I tried to tamp down that part. As if hope were the most humiliating thing imaginable. In fact, I was pretty sure it was.

Nothing is as bad as wanting and not having, whether it’s love, money, fame, status, or work. Needing, wanting—they’re universally despisable traits. They’re for villains and weaklings and victims and pests and gold diggers. There’s nothing more reviled than a woman who displays her naked want by throwing herself at men. And if you’re poor, the only way to get applause is to proudly make do or quietly and sternly build yourself up, never letting on that you’re desperate. Hope, want, need—you have to disguise them at all costs.

So I pretended I was going to the party to prove a point, so I could say “See, I tried everything, and it didn’t work, you stupid, foolish romantics who believe love always works out.” But in fact, I was going because I wanted them to be right. I wanted someone to fall in love with me. I wanted to fall in love back. Maybe I was like Robert—I just needed to find the right person to transform me.

Before I left home, I took five minutes and logged on to Lawn Talk. BlackthumbMary in Lincoln, Nebraska, had written in with a plea. Her kids were tearing up her lawn. She needed suggestions for grass that could handle four boys and their football league. “Perennial ryegrass,” I told her. “It’s what they use at Wimbledon—tough as nails. They can trample all over it, and it won’t show a thing.” And with that, I closed my computer and headed out for the evening, ready to be Dawn West, perennial ryegrass.

Jane Smith,

Baylor University, 1959

_________

THE COLOR QUEEN

Jane pairs classic grace and beauty with youthful curiosity and unexpectedly bold wit. An only child, she grew up on a rabbit farm and fought timidity through acting and speech. Even appeared on local television. These days, always turns down roles in tragedies and snaps up leads in comedies, especially musicals: a special flair for Gilbert and Sullivan. An English major, adores Chaucer. Her fashion credo? “Never wear black.” In full color, she maintains a crisp, sophisticated look with simple sheaths and elegant “no frills” jewelry. Prefers earrings and bracelets to necklaces. The result—every bit as vivacious and pulled together as Jane herself.

Chapter
Six

T
he doorman checked my name off his list and sent me up. I inspected myself in the elevator mirror. I’d suited up in a mod navy blue dress I’d lucked into back in the day at a “clothes by the pound” secondhand store near campus. It was demure on top, but short enough to be slightly racy on the bottom. And I’d really gone for it with the mascara. There was a time when I’d figured I had brown eyelashes, so I should use brown mascara. No more! Black black black, with plenty of eyelash curler action to give them an extra boost (thanks to my mom, I had both a pocket and regular-size Mary Kay eyelash curler). Plus, I’d done some blow dryer and curling-iron action on my wavy red hair, and it cascaded past my shoulders and down my back in a way that seemed distinctly sexy. I felt a bloom of confidence—I looked good. Just before the elevator doors opened, I winked cartoonishly at my reflection, then I sauntered down the hallway of the eighteenth floor.