The Worst Years of Your Life (17 page)

Actually, the power had gone out in the whole neighborhood. If there'd been a sound or a pulse in the light, I hadn't noticed it, and when I asked the Bitch why she'd pointed at the chandelier, she said, “Because I knew something was going to happen.” Oh my God, was I a bored little girl. Did I ever want to hitch my star to someone who knew something was going to happen.

So I overlooked her flaws, her erratic behavior, her insistence I smoke Kools and endure the strains of gangsta rappers calling me a bee-atch because at least around her, things were interesting. I tried to make light of her attitude, figuring it would pass, but I wasn't sacrificing anything of myself, understand? I mean, I wanted that Brandy sheet music. I didn't care that I couldn't play the piano or any other musical instrument. That wasn't the point. I wanted “Brokenhearted” because it had this great picture of Brandy, a beautiful girl, on the cover and I thought it was cool. Me,
I
thought it was cool. Well, the Bitch was just not having any of this. For one thing, Brandy's black, which apparently is her territory and she's the big fucking expert. For another thing, she says Brandy is “an ugly little crossover wimp” and not a real homegirl and I'm an asshole if I like her. I mean, so what? So, I like Brandy. So shoot me. So pitch a fit, which she did, peeling out in her 450SL and leaving me in the parking lot of a C-mall. So slice my face with a fucking razor blade.

Which she did the next time I saw her and I haven't seen her since, except for that one time at her shrink's office. This was after my mother had gotten all high and mighty because I'd only scored 590 on the quantitative part of the SAT, since math was right after lunch and frequently, I attended stoned. Of course, Judi couldn't give a shit if I did math or not; she hires an accountant to balance her checkbook, but since my youthful beauty was trampled she'd reasoned that I should fall back on my next best asset—the mind. Oh those smart girls! Do men ever love those clever girls! She said it over and over, with a fake, bright smile, when she thought I wasn't paying close attention.

I wasn't half as worried about my sullied good looks as she was. Doctor Wohl said we could smooth out the lumps with dermabrasion, plus he wasn't entirely wrong about the rakish charm. I'd begun wearing black Anna Sui numbers and hanging out at The Coffee Plantation in Biltmore Fashion Square, where the neo-beatnik kids considered me sort of a god. I rarely spoke and they were under the impression I had a boyfriend in France. I'd also realized the scar sort of went with the curves of my face, it cupped my cheekbone—I mean, if you're going to have a major facial scar, this was the one to have. One girl with piercings all over her nose came up to me and asked where I had it done.

It wasn't like I looked normal, but I was learning to adjust. I was feeling okay about myself—I rented
The Big Heat,
where the heroine gets coffee flung in her face, and I was beginning to feel like being maimed was kind of romantic. I mean, I got noticed, and I looked just fine from the right side. Still, Judi was putting all bets on the intellect and had dragged Arthur into her camp. Together they forced me to take a Princeton Review class to get my test scores up. I hated it all except vocabulary:
Perfidy:
betrayal, the deliberate breaking of trust.
Refractory:
resisting treatment, unmanageable. My verbal was 780. 780—that's almost perfect! I couldn't believe they were making me. It had been years since they'd forced me to do anything. It was cutting into my spare time, and it wasn't only me who suffered: I knew the neo-beatniks would be lost without their tragic center. Finally I went on strike and refused to eat in the dining room. I just took a plate, retired to my room, locked the door, and put on my headphones. A couple days of this, I thought, and they'll go into serious parenting withdrawal.

The second day Mom caved and weaseled her way in. She said I could quit the class if I'd do something for her. She said she'd talked to the Bitch's mother, and she'd said her therapist had recommended I go to one of the Bitch's sessions. She “wasn't happy,” Judi said; she was “having trouble adjusting.” This was like one of those moments when my mother gets all doe-eyed and yearns to save the environment, but a second later, it's
snap!
time for a manicure. But she was dead serious, and I knew this was my chance to get out of that fucking class. Even so, I wouldn't have done it. I wasn't scared of anything then except the Bitch. I thought I saw her a million times, in the mall or the cineplex; I saw her big, smiling head gliding through the crowd, and then a swish of silver. At the last minute it was never her—the big head always morphed into some alternate head—but whether I created it or not, I felt like I was being stalked. Then I had these dreams where the Bitch and I were just hanging out, dancing to Chaka Khan, just hanging out like before when everything was normal—and those really gave me the creeps. I did not want to see her. No Bitch for me.

But then I changed my mind. Young and foolish I am. Also, I loved the idea of going to see the Bitch's shrink. I pictured a distinguished man with gray at his temples gasping at the sight of my scar when I walked in the room. Then, he would look at me with infinite compassion. I would take a seat on the leather lounger. My outfit is DKNY. My shoes are Kenneth Cole. The Bitch would be sitting in a straight-backed chair, her hair in cornrows. The Doctor would shake his head reproachfully.

“I never dreamed the wound was so dramatic,” he says.

The Bitch would blush. I notice her body racked by waves of contrition. In her arms is an album by Brandy. A CD would be more practical but I like the way an album fills up her arms.

“This is for you,” she'd say. “I've learned that it's okay for us to like different things. I celebrate your appreciation of Brandy.”

I thank her. The Doctor looks on approvingly. I can tell by his glance that he thinks I'm a brave and noble girl. A few minutes later I leave. The Bitch is weeping softly. I feel a light, crisp sense of forgiveness. The Doctor has offered me free therapy, if I should ever want to share my burdens.

Well I'm here to tell you, buddy, it wasn't like that at all. First, there's no lounger, and the doctor is a streaked blond chick about my mother's age. I arrive late and she shows me to the office where the Bitch is already sitting on a swivel chair. She barely looks up when I enter the room. My dress is DKNY. The Bitch is dressed like white trash in jeans and a T-shirt of normal proportions. She looks like hell. I mean,
I
look better than she does. I was always prettier than she was but she used to seem intriguing. Before, if she was in a room, you felt her presence immediately. The girl knew how to occupy space. Something came out of her—a lot of pesky teen rage but at times, something nicer. She had that glow, at least to me; she had a sense of excitement and wonder. But in the office she seems dulled, and the truth is, right away I feel sorry for the Bitch.

The Shrink looks like she came straight out of a Smith alumnae magazine—Ann Taylor suit, minimal makeup, low-heeled leather shoes. The picture of emotional efficiency. Her office, too, is a symphony in earth tones. She checks me and the Bitch out, then says something like, “Katie's been grappling with the conflict that occurred between the two of you, and now she needs to know how you feel about it.”

She does not blink twice at my scar. She does not look at me with infinite compassion. I realize whose turf I'm on. She's an employee, and the Bitch's father writes the paychecks.

“I feel okay,” I say. I keep trying not to look at the Bitch, but she's unavoidable. After hallucinating her face a million times, it's unnerving how unfamiliar she seems. She's gained weight, but it seems like she's not really there. There's something inert and lumpen about her. No rage, no nail charms. Nothing extreme. She's just examining her shoes—for God's sake—clogs.

“Just okay? Because Katie and I have been discussing the impact of the cutting, and for her it's really been quite profound.”

The Bitch does not say anything. The Bitch is not looking at me. The Bitch is sitting with her head down and her mouth closed like the first day she came to school with braces. Then I realize something. “She's not even looking at it,” I say. “She won't even check out the scar!”

I look at the Shrink like she's some kind of referee. She, apparently, is having none of that, and sits quite calmly glancing at the Bitch and me as though we were a light piece of entertainment intended to gaily pass the time. This goes on for a while. The Bitch looks at her clogs and a brown spot on the carpet. I look at the Bitch for as long as I can, then start reading the spines of the Shrink's books.
Personality Disorders
—ha, that should come in handy. I can hear the Bitch breathing, which is odd, because in all the years we hung out together I never noticed her breathing. It's like she's alive in some weird, biological way—the way those pithed frogs were alive in science class. Alive but damaged.

Finally, the Bitch clears her throat. She raises her head until her eyes hit the scar. She starts to wince, then freezes. I can tell she's trying to control her expression, but all the color drains out of her face in a smooth, descending line, like she's been pumped full of pink fluid and someone has pulled the plug.

That was when I knew for sure that I looked like shit, absolutely and for certain. I'd been fooling myself, believing I looked dashing and rascally, but in the shock on my best friend's face I saw the truth. I was ruined.

The Bitch started to cry. I started to cry. The Shrink tried to glance calmly at us as if we were a light piece of entertainment but you could sense the strain. I pulled a Kool out of my bag and lit it. The Shrink finally cracked and shot me a dirty look but I was beyond caring. I realized, after all I'd been through, that I still smoked Kools, just like the Bitch always had, like she'd encouraged me to, and the thought of that made me cry even harder. Something switched then and I wasn't crying about my face anymore. I was crying because the Bitch was the Bitch, and the friend I'd had since I was a kid, the friend who knew for certain something was going to happen to us, something magical and vivid, was lost forever. She was lost to us both. The wonder had been extinguished.

Eventually I got ahold of myself and squashed the Kool out in a piece of damp Kleenex. The Bitch had slumped over in her swivel chair and I didn't even want to look at her. My thoughts: fuck, shit, etc. It was weird. I began to feel practically like she was my friend again, us having had a simultaneous cry. I did not want that. I wanted her to stay the Bitch.

“Oh God,” she says, unprompted by the Shrink.

I notice her braces are off. She's not looking at me. It's too much for her.

“Fuck,” she says, to a spot on the carpet, “I'm really sorry.”

Okay: I'm a girl who's going to Smith College. I'm going to Smith and then I'm going to law school to become a criminal lawyer who champions the rights of the victimized and oppressed. I'm going to have two cars, a Volvo for transportation and a Jag for thrills. I'll cut a feline figure in my Agnès B. clothes and I'll have a drawerful of jewels. Maybe I'll even get married to some average-looking dork, but I will never be pretty and I will never be loved by the handsome men who roam this earth. My dear mother told me long ago that youth and beauty will get you everything. Well, mine's fucked up and now I'll never have Everything. No magic, no wonder, no fairy tales.

My plan was to walk out of there with a light, crisp sense of forgiveness, but help me. I sat in a sea of beige and looked at the Bitch in her clogs, fat, miserable, and afraid, and I knew: if I really forgave her, something vast and infinite would open up inside me, some place wide and blue, and I couldn't enter such a place. It would be like some kind of health spa—where you go in naked, without any things. God, would I ever be lost in a place like that.

So I said, Oh Katie, that's okay, babe! No problema! I forgive you! with a hint of fake innocence in my voice—a little dose of manufactured niceness. She turned white again and the Shrink started urging me to get in touch with my feelings but you know, I had my finger right on them.

Later, when I got home, I went into the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror for a while. It was the same mirror Katie and I used to stare at in the pitch black while chanting “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary” over and over until we hallucinated the beheaded head of Mary Queen of Scots emerging in reflection, dripping like a porterhouse steak. She fought her way up from the land of the dead to punish us for tempting the dark with the sight of her terrible wound. Mary with her disgusting necklace of blood—she was a perfidious one! I didn't look anything like her. In fact, I had a certain glow about me. I was so radiant I looked almost pretty. From the right side, I actually was pretty.

I
WAS AT THE
P
LATTSBURGH
D
ANCE
S
TUDIO FOR LIKE THIRTY
seconds before I realized it was a rip-off. I even went back outside like I'd dropped a mitten or something, but my mother was already gone. I could see her taillights two stoplights down. She was the only Isuzu in a pack of pickups with gun racks.

The facilities were terrible. It was in a warehouse. The wooden floor ran out at one point and whoever was on that side was supposed to dance on cement. I was like, No thank you, and wherever they wanted to arrange me, I made sure I ended up back on the good side.

The teacher was clearly unqualified. It was supposed to be a musical theater course, six weeks, and it turned out she hadn't been in anything. “She probably just owns the records,” Crystal whispered while we stood there freezing. There was no heat. Ms. Adams—she stressed the “Ms.”—gave us her Opening Day speech. It had to do with getting to Broadway one step at a time. I was embarrassed for her. When she finished, she looked disappointed that we didn't all cheer and carry her around the room on our shoulders. We just stood there warming our hands in our armpits.

She asked if there were questions. “Do we have any
heat
?” I asked, and Crystal gave me an elbow and I gave her one back. She loved it.

At the back of the room a
Threepenny Opera
poster was taped to a sawhorse. Pathetic.

“Is that a
Cats
sweatshirt?” I asked Ms. Adams. The way she said it was, you could see she didn't get it.

“You're terrible,” Crystal said.

Crystal was the reason I stayed at all. Nobody asked, but I told my mother that night that it was horrible, and told her why. She said what she always said—Well, Give It a Little Time. I didn't argue. Not because I thought it would get better, but because of Crystal, and because what else did I have to do? Sit around staring at my brother?

Crystal was so poor. I knew most of the kids would be pretty low class, but it was either this or voice lessons and I really wanted to do this. Crystal was poor like in the movies. She carried her stuff in a plastic bag. She brought a little Tupperware thing of Coke instead of buying them from the machine. She was clueless about her hair; she had it up with a butterfly clip, like Pebbles. She wore blue eye shadow. And she was pretty anyway. She had a good smile and a mouth like Courtney Love's.

She
walked
to the school, every day. We met twice a week, after regular school: Mondays and Fridays. It was like a mile and a half. Her parents had one car and her dad needed it. She had two pairs of socks total, one gray ragg, one pair of guy's sweat socks with the stripes across the top. Her coat she got from a place called the Women's Exchange. Her older brother was retarded.

“So's mine,” I told her.

He isn't but he might as well be.

She said her father worked in an office. I didn't say anything.

That Friday we were helping each other stretch and she said, “So are you a little rich or way rich?” I told her my family wasn't exactly going bankrupt. It was a good way to put it. I told her what my dad did. I told her where we lived.

“Good for you,” she said, like she meant it.

I told her I was going to keep ragging on her socks until she got new ones.

“Oh,
that's
funny,” she said, meaning that they were ragg socks.

But that next Monday she had different ones, and we didn't say anything about it. When we were getting ready to go I told her I was going to help her.

“Oh, yeah?” she said, yawning. She yawned so wide her eyes teared up. “How?”

I told her I'd been thinking about it all Sunday night.

“That's really great,” she said. You could see she thought I was going to give her a Mounds bar or something.

I told her that since I was a foot taller I had a lot of clothes I'd outgrown or I wasn't using. Nothing was totally cheesy or worn out. Like this forest-green top I completely loved but wouldn't fit me anymore. Or this wool skirt that was Catholic school-looking but okay.

“Please,” she said, and we rolled our eyes and laughed.

There was more stuff, too. I named other things and even threw in some things I did want. I always do stuff like that and afterwards regret it.

We were standing around the lobby of the building. It was cold from everyone coming and going, but at least it was out of the wind. I was wearing a man's wool overcoat I really loved and a fur-lined winter cap my mom called smart, but so what? When you got through all of that it was still just me.

We were just standing around waiting, looking at different things.

“Listen,” she said. “Doesn't your mother want you to hang on to your stuff, or give it to a relative?”

“My mother doesn't care,” I said. That wasn't really true. But I figured that later, when Crystal found out, she'd be even more grateful.

I didn't bring her anything on Friday, though. I had the stuff ready and I just left it in my room. While my mom drove me there, I thought, Why couldn't you just
bring
it?

“You are so stupid,” I thought. I realized I'd said it out loud.

My mother turned to me. “What?” she said.

I was embarrassed. I was sitting there turning colors, probably.

“Why are you stupid?” she said.

“How do you know I wasn't talking about you?” I said.

She smiled. “The way you said it,” she said.

I had no answer for that.

“Why are you stupid?” she asked again.

“Why do you think?” I finally said.

“Don't snap at me,” she said. “All right? I don't need it.”

When we got there I got out of the car and slammed the door. I saw her face when she drove off and I thought this was what always happened; I made everyone feel bad for no reason.

Crystal was waiting for me on the good end of the dance floor. She'd saved a space by spreading her stuff out. I was still mad. She saw how I looked, so she was all ears with Ms. Adams. She didn't say anything and neither did I.

We ended early because Ms. Adams had a dentist's appointment. She told us about the periodontal work she needed to have done like we wanted to hear. Then she left. I felt like I'd just gotten there. Everyone else called their rides. My mother, of course, was still out. She hadn't even gotten home yet. I left a message on the machine. My brother was probably right there and didn't bother to pick up.

Crystal said she'd wait with me. Which was nice of her, though all she had to look forward to was a walk home anyway. I told her we'd give her a ride when my mom came.

We talked about how much we hated the class. The ad said we would do Sondheim and stuff. So far we'd been working through the chorus of “Some Enchanted Evening.” According to Ms. Bad Gums, that was so we could get to know our voices.

“I already know my voice,” Crystal always said, like she didn't want to know it any better.

She shared some Hershey's Kisses, which looked pretty old. The foil was faded. She told me she liked my Danskin. I told her she had great calves. She said she worked out every night, watching TV. The conversation kind of hung there.

“Have you thought about doing something with your hair?” I asked.

“Have you thought about doing something with your mouth?” she said back, meaning I was a wiseass, which was what my mother and brother always said. “You bitch,” I said, and she said, “It takes one to know one,” which was true.

She showed me how to look back behind the vending machines where the money rolled and people couldn't get to it. We found fifty cents and got a Reese's. I had money but I hung on to it.

When my mother finally drove up it was totally dark. Two of the big lights were out in front of the building. She beeped the horn and we ran from the lobby to the car.

“Where were you?” I said, and she gave me one of her I'm-not-going-to-dignify-that-with-a-response looks.

“Who's this?” she said.

“Crystal,” I said.

“
Crys
tal?” my mother said. She let it go at that.

“Can you take me to my dad's office instead?” Crystal asked.

“Sure,” I said.

She gave my mother directions. She made zero small talk. I couldn't see her face.

We dropped her off. The office was a factory that made brake linings. I waved through the window. My mother pulled back into traffic.

“It's not such a horrible name,” I said. I was sulking.

“It's a pretty horrible name,” my mother said. “But it's only a name.”

The next day I got the pile of clothes back together. It ended up filling a lawn bag. My mom came upstairs and asked what I was doing.

I told her. She sat on the bed. She watched for a little while. She said things like, “You want to get rid of
that
?”

“Is your friend going to take this the right way?” she said. “Did you tell her you were going to do this?”

I told her yes. She smiled. This was another one of her daughter's stupid ideas.

“Well, don't go crazy,” she finally said. She got up and went downstairs.

Immediately my brother wandered into my room. I'm supposed to have privacy but it's like a train station.

“Get out of here,” I said. “I don't go in your room.”

“What do you want from me?” he said. “Go in my room.”

I didn't let him see what was in the bag.

He had my stuffed Snoopy from when I was little by the ears and he was pounding its forehead on the headboard. “Whaddaya doing?” he said. “Giving your clothes to the less fortunate?”

“None of your business,” I said. Then I said, “Like you'd ever do anything for anybody.”

“Why don't you do a telethon?” he said.

I got a book off my shelf and read until he left.

I complained about him to my mother and she reminded me he was going through a tough time. He had seven things he went out for his first year in high school and didn't get into any.

On Monday I told Crystal about him. I said, “Maybe we're both losers,” meaning him and me.

“I doubt it,” she said.

I'd left the bags of clothes home again. “I was going to bring the clothes this time,” I finally said when we were getting ready to go.

“I should give
you
something,” Crystal said.

“Oh, you don't have to do that,” I said. What was she going to give me? Something she whittled?

She asked if I wanted to stay over Friday night.

“Sure,” I said.

“Give me your number,” she said, and I gave her a number.

I have like three friends, and they never call. They had to be practically dragged to my birthday party.

It was okay with my mother. “I am going to have a drink,” she said, when I asked her what she thought. I told her it was Crystal, the girl she met. “I assumed,” she said.

Later we ran it by my father, up in his study. Somebody on his team had totally screwed up a deposition, so he had to make another whole trip to someplace like Iowa. He asked who Crystal was. He said it was fine with him. “Spending the night with the poor,” he said, and he gave me a hug.

“Very nice,” my mother said to herself as we came back downstairs.

That Friday I loaded the lawn bag into the trunk. My mother would pick us up after the lessons and take us to Crystal's, and then pick me up Saturday afternoon after some errands.

Crystal was nervous in class. She was fidgety afterwards, waiting for my mother. I was flattered.

My mother was right on time, which I told Crystal wouldn't happen in a million years. “How are you, Mrs. Gerwig?” she said when she got in the car.

“I'm fine, Crystal,” my mom said. “How about you?”

Crystal said she was fine, too.

“It's nice of your parents to invite Lynn over,” my mother told her once we pulled onto the highway.

“I so love the twilight this time of year, don't you?” Crystal said back. I almost lost it.

We got off at the Riverside exit. I didn't know anyone lived down there, poor or not. All you could see from the highway was oil tanks.

Crystal gave directions while my mom turtled along like the whole thing was a trap. I kept hoping the houses wouldn't get any worse.

“Mom, the gas pedal. On the right,” I said.

My mother just drove.

We were all quiet.

“Right here,” Crystal said.