The Bitch Posse (30 page)

She walks up to the house, brushes a cobweb away from the door frame, and turns the knob. Locked. Shifting Caleb to her hip, she knocks on the door. “Mallory? Max?”

No answer.

She leans over to the window and peers inside. Nothing, it’s dark. Where did they go? Ran an errand? Went for coffee and let Caleb stay in the yard? “This is beyond irresponsible, Mallory,” she says aloud.

Caleb sticks his dirty thumb in his mouth. “Malla-wee.”

Swearing, she digs through her purse for her keys and unlocks the door. She turns on the lights and drops Caleb to the floor. In a moment a puddle pools over the hardwood, and Rennie registers for the first time that his diaper’s soaked. “Shit!” She tosses her cotton throw blanket onto the puddle.

“Shit!” Caleb laughs.

“Listen, Caleb. Did Mommy leave a diaper bag?”

“Mommy leaved.” Chunks of mud pepper his nose. After she takes care of the diaper, she’ll give him a bath.

“I know Mommy left. Did she leave some diapers?” She tugs at Caleb’s. “These?”

Caleb tears open the tape, and the soaked diaper falls to the floor. A
moth buzzes by him and lands somewhere Rennie’ll never find, and he shrugs off his T-shirt. “Caleb nudie!” He struts around, waving his penis like Rennie’s supposed to be really impressed.

Great, great. Boys must have this fixation from birth. Rennie scoops him up, tosses the wet diaper in the trash, and draws some bathwater.

The bath is complicated by the fact that Rennie has no boats and no duckie, plus her shampoo is the eye-stinging kind. She’s never bathed a baby before and, absurdly, wants to get him clean without touching him. But there’s no way around that, and she finishes, a little embarrassed. She wraps Caleb in a warm dry towel. Mallory and Max should be here any minute.

What about the diapers? Could just let him run around without one for a while. She remembers the puddle in the living room. No, not such a great idea. She pulls a hand towel out of the closet and wraps it around him—hmm, maybe with some safety pins . . .

It falls to the floor in disgrace.

Mallory, where the hell are you?

“Diapies out dare.” He points.

“In the yard? Where we were?”

Caleb nods. “Outtide, Ann Wennie.”

And that’s who she is now, with Caleb, Ann Wennie. She sucks in a breath; that’s so much better than Wren Taylor, failed writer, Rennie Taylor, teacher-whore.

Ann Wennie.

It’s perfect.

She buries her face in his clean hair. God, they’re cute when they’re little. It’s when the hormones hit that they’re trouble. She’s in love in a way she’s never been since the Bitch Posse broke up, in love with this little cherub who calls her Ann Wennie. If only she could be Ann Wennie forever.

Someone loves her, anyway.

They head out to the garden together, Caleb still “nudie.” There’s no way Rennie’s putting on that T-shirt again, it’s filthy. The diaper bag sits on the bench, where she should have seen it before. Maybe there’re extra clothes in the bag too; if not, well, it’s pretty warm out, she’ll just let him run around in his diaper until Mallory gets back.

She sits down to open the bag and finds a fresh diaper and a red T-shirt, which she slips onto Caleb. She’s pretty sure she got the diaper on the right way, but if not she’ll find out soon. Caleb walks toward the flower bed. “Look, don’t touch, sweetie, okay?”

She zips up the diaper bag and a note slips out of the pocket.
What . . . ?

As she unfolds it, something hits her.

There was no luggage in the living room.

She reads the note, but she doesn’t have to, she knows what it says.

Dear Rennie,

I’m so sony to do this to you but there’s no other way. We have to go down to Bogota, and it’s no place for kids, not where we’re going anyway. I’ll be back for him. I don’t know when, but I really will try to make it sooner rather than later. Here’s some money for diapers and babysitting and stuff. Call Dad and my mom if you need something.

Mal

Inside the note is a small stack of fifty-dollar bills.

The world slams into Rennie and explodes, and she tucks her knees to her chest.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit, I can’t deal with this. I have to be at school tomorrow. Oh shit, Mallory, what the fuck are you thinking?
She balls up her fists and presses them to her closed eyes, but she won’t scream and scare Caleb. When she opens her eyes, he’s picked the tops off three of Beverly’s tulips that are just closing for the evening.

“Come on, Caleb. Let’s go back inside.” She leads him into the living room.

Toys. Why the fuck doesn’t she have any toys? “Sorry, I . . . ” But it doesn’t matter because Caleb’s mesmerized by the cardboard box her curriculum materials came in, that and today’s paper, so she sets him up with that stuff and shifts to the kitchen to make some calls.

Her father and Kelly aren’t answering the phone, but she leaves a long, detailed, pissed-off message and very calmly requests that Kelly fly out here right away to help her deal with Caleb and figure out who’s going to take care of him, since God knows when Mallory’s coming back, if ever. As she hangs up she realizes she’d better call in for her messages, and also, she needs to call for a sub for tomorrow. Finding a sub at the last minute for a Monday’s a bitch, plus Tarn’s principal, Joseph Stalin (it’s really Joe Stoland, but it’s her private joke), will think she’s just extending her weekend because she’s been known to do that from time to time.

She phones the sub line and explains that family stuff has come up, no she doesn’t have a lesson plan, but the movie of
The Crucible
is in her closet, and no, they haven’t finished the play yet, but oh well. She thumbs through the yellow pages and leaves messages at Simply Au Pair and North Bay Nannies, not like she has money to pay any of these people. (That little stack of fifties? Good one, Mai, ha ha.) But someone needs to fill the gaps so she can make it back to school, hopefully by Wednesday.

All of a sudden Rennie’s feeling very dizzy, and she realizes she hasn’t eaten anything all day. When she was doing line after line of coke, she wasn’t thinking at all about eating; she probably hasn’t had any food for two days, maybe more. Caleb must be hungry too.

She opens the fridge. Not very promising—a jar of cocktail onions, a squeeze bottle of mustard, some skim milk, take-out Chinese from a week ago that she immediately throws into the garbage along with the onions, which she has no idea why she has since she hates them. Left over from a party maybe. Does Caleb need baby food? No, no, he’s two, he must eat regular food. Doesn’t he?

God, she knows nothing about babies. She needs a tutor or something.

She needs to go out anyway, stop at Safeway, buy diapers and kid-type food and maybe even run to Mervyn’s or somewhere cheap for some clothes since Mallory’s left just the one outfit.

She walks back into the living room.

“Caleb? Do you like burritos?” Caleb abandons his forty million shreds of now-ruined newspaper and squeals with delight. “Breetos!”

Great. Okay. My evening’s cut out for me.
Time to worry later about Puck, her book, Paul and whether he’s told anyone what happened in the classroom. Her heart closes up just thinking of all the crap she’s got to deal with. It’ll be blissfully normal and respectable to walk into Joe’s Taco Lounge and order a kiddie meal. Hell, she might just order one for herself.

She runs a hand through her hair
(God, I must look like utter hell)
and grabs her purse. “Let’s go, sweetie.”

The phone rings. Rennie hardly wants to answer it, but thinking it might be Kelly or one of the nanny services, she picks it up. “Hello?”

“Wren?” His voice is dark, sexy, a blackberry dripping juices. “It’s Puck. I can’t stand being without you. Come back, come back, come back.”

Her heart thuds to her stomach. If he only knew how much she wants to. It’s not just the sex, not just the cocaine, it’s more the danger, the allure of being so close to the edge. “Oh . . . ” is all she breathes out, like the sounds she makes when he touches her.

May 1988
Holland, Illinois

It’s so good to have the girls back at my place, and we have it all to ourselves. Marian’s off somewhere doing some shit that I’ve made myself stop caring about, because all my caring’s not going to change her, so fuck that shit. One nice thing coke’s done for her is made her careless about hiding and keeping track of her pot, so it’s been very easy for all three of us to help ourselves. Oh, and I finally did tell the girls about Marian’s little hobby. Why work so hard to hide something when we’re all of us so fucked up and really I’m the only liar in the bunch? And it’s funny, telling them helped me let go of a little of the shame. Of course, I told it like it was a joke and like I don’t care—that’s the only way to tell it.

Rennie’s a wreck. Watching L’Affaire Rob Schafer’s been painful enough, but now that it’s slammed into the wall I knew it’d hit sooner or later, she’s an emotional disaster. It doesn’t take a genius to figure
out she’s been slicing her arm, that’s why she’s wearing a sloppy White Sox sweatshirt (and again, that is
so
not Rennie) on an eighty-degree day. Every time you say something to her she answers really quickly and then goes all silent and brooding and staring at the wall, like she’s doing now, over there on the edge of my bed, turned away from me and Amy.

“We should go after his fucking credential,” Amy says.

Rennie just shrugs and kicks the wall. Fuck. Nothing’s ever going to make her better.

Bastard. How dare he?

Amy’s on the right track, but her idea is seriously stupid. “Fuck that, Aim. You really think Coldwell and the shitheads who booted Rennie out of the honor society are gonna help us?” Even if we went to a school run by rational people, it’d take a million years to push something through the asshole fucked system that tried to break up the Bitch Posse.

“So it’s a dumb idea. Forget it then.”

“No, but you’re right. Fie needs to pay.” What he needs is a good scare. This calls for some careful planning. “I’ll come up with something better.” I always do.

Rennie leans into my arms. “Can we just drop the fucking subject?” Her voice is shot through with tears, and
shit, Rennie, I’m sorry.
But she wraps her fingers around my forearms and I know she forgives me and I don’t have to say a word.

Amy scoots over to the stereo and puts on that Sisters of Mercy song I can’t bear to hear. Well, of course, it’s goth music, we’re supposed to be depressed when we listen. But that’s not the reason. No, by some unbearable coincidence the song is called “Marian.”

It’s very hard to figure out the lyrics to this one because Andrew Eldritch’s voice is so low. But Amy’s done me a real favor, listened to it tons of times and written everything down, except the chorus in German of course, that’s beyond her. “Listen, Cherry.” And she
chants on and on with Andrew about the ship of fools and drowning and graves. Great, oh so happy. “Isn’t that hilarious, there’s this song about your mom?”

“Hilarious” is not the word that comes to mind. I tap my cigarette ash and take another puff, trying not to listen.

Amy keeps singing about fatal waves and death and my mother until I’m about to implode. Finally the words blessedly drift into German and she stops.

I reach over and snap on the fast-forward. “Let’s skip it.” I pop out the tape. “Better yet, let’s put on something else.” What will make me not think of Sam, Rob Schafer, Dr. Linnet, Coldwell and his cronies, the whole stupid fucking world, everyone we hate? I put in the Violent Femmes and listen for a while and smoke. Then my favorite song, “Kiss Off,” comes on, and I crank the volume.

Anger surges through the room, and it feels good, empowering. Amy straightens up and says, “Know what? That bruise is so light, I bet it’ll be almost gone by tomorrow morning. No one at school will even know.” She runs a finger over the cut on my nose. “This too, it looks good.”

As she touches the marks Sam’s made on my body, I feel that yawn of pain again. It’s not so much that he hurt me, it’s the sting of betrayal from someone I trusted, someone I let my guard down with, someone I thought mattered, and I shared
everything
with him. The first time I dropped acid was with him, I told him the story of Marian, my hopes for the future, my jealousy (that’s what it is, I admit it) of my friends, who despite their problems really do have their shit together. Rennie’s going to fucking Stanford, Amy to Michigan, they have a future. What do I have but an associate’s degree and a waitress job to look forward to?

Amy’s fingers float over my face, and the memory of her kiss presses into my mind. It’s not the first time a woman’s kissed me. One of Marian’s friends who doesn’t come around anymore (I guess now
that she’s shooting up she’s disgusted even her fellow cokeheads) and I used to make out—oh, no big deal, just smooching, just for fun, when Marian was in the other room. But that was more my do-whatever-the-hell-I-want-to-because-Cherry-Winters-tries-everything phase.

No way was it anything close to what I felt with Amy.