True To Form (18 page)

In my pocket is a letter from Cherylanne. I told her about what happened with Cynthia, and, judging from the thickness of the envelope, she has a lot of advice to give me. Now that I am alone and sure that no one can interrupt me, I will read it.

Dear Katie,

Well, it is the job of a friend to a friend to speak the truth and so I am going to tell you yes, you are right you have screwed up royally. You have to follow certain rules when you are talking about somebody, and the most important of course is MAKE SURE THE PERSON IS NOT THERE. Or you will have to bear the consequences. Which now you know all about.

One thing I want to tell you is not to feel bad that you felt the urge to gossip because it is a basic need like cereal. It is not nice, but we all like to do it. Except saints, who nobody can stand to be around. It will not do any good for me to tell you the obvious such as you never should have invited Cynthia to a party with girls like that, to speak frankly but I hope it doesn't hurt your feelings, you would not have been invited either except that you got in their school and probably they have to have welcome parties which their moms make them do. I have heard about that. Not to hurt your feelings. But anyway, once she was invited probably you should have explained some things not to do, and for sure you should never have talked so loud behind a closed door when it was every possibility someone could listen, especially the disaster person, Cynthia herself. But again, there is no sense in going on about the past is the past.

So now what you have to do in my opinion is a very hard thing, which is you have to do nothing. That is so you can wait for the balm of time to do its magic, time really does heal all wounds. Most of them. So, just do other things and do NOT call her again as her mother might answer for one thing and there is nothing she would like better than to make you feel bad because you made her daughter feel bad. This is how mothers are, which I know a lot more about now that the hormones of motherhood are racing through me like Andy Granatelli. I have feelings like I never had before and it is all on account of the baby
growing inside. I don't even care how Darren has become somewhat cold, at least he is going to do right by me. After a while, he will get used to being married and my goal besides having a healthy baby is to make sure Darren ends up having a spring in his step as he comes up the walk to our home. And I
will
do that, you know how when I get determined, I can do anything.

But we are talking about you, right. So Katie you must trust that if you had a good friendship the rags of it will come together and mend into a new garment. It will not be exactly like before of course, because you have done a hateful thing. Which sort of you couldn't help it, it was the intense peer pressure of adolescence (remember how I used to tell you about that?). You could try praying, although so far that has not always worked out for me, but many others swear by it.

I wish we weren't so far apart now and I could invite you over to have a glass of limeade at the kitchen table and we could talk both at the same time instead of I write a letter, you write a letter, and then about a thousand years go by and then we write again. But even if that is so, just know that I am here in my heart for you because we used to be good friends and that always stays and that is what you will come to see about Cynthia, she will come around like an old cat.

I guess that's it for now, and to summarize, just remember: do nothing for now. Just wait.

Bubba is in heaven because he was in the newspaper for football and now he is even worse to live with. It is only the paper they give away at the supermarket, but Bubba's fat face was right on page one and now he sits around on the front porch like he is waiting for Hollywood to drive by and say at last we've found our leading man forever. He did try to do one nice thing, believe it or not. He came in my room the other night when I was a little bit crying which is not unusual for someone in my position. And he sat on my bed with his stupid football in his lap and he said, “I'll bet
your baby turns out to be good looking because look at us. And it could have my genes for sports talent, too. Probably it will if it's a boy.” I said thanks Bubba, and he said you're welcome and then he stood around for a while like an elephant in a china shop and then he made some grunt and said, “See you,” and left. I'm telling you I had to smile after he closed the door so soft and caretaking.

My parents are fine, and if my mother could advise you about your problem I know just what she would say, don't you? “Well, sweetheart, there's no point in crying over spilt milk, you might as well get right back up on the horse that bit you.” Followed up by a kiss and a hug. And then of course she would feed you which we hate to admit it but it almost always does feel good to eat something someone has fixed for us when we are hurting. (P.S. My mother has given me her chili recipe which as you know was always
TOP SECRET.
Because I am going to be married and I'll need it. Believe it or not, one of the secret ingredients is orange juice!!!!)

I have a little pot belly now which as you know I would never ever have had otherwise. It is offset by how my hair and nails are growing. And I probably glow, although it is a bit hard for me to see it, even though Lord knows I have tried in every kind of light. But others have said it's so. Soon all I will wear is maternity clothes, which believe me, they are not the height of fashion.

Well, I guess this letter is long enough! I will try to write again soon, but the best intentions are of mice and men, as you know. Here comes some love to you, Katie, and a comforting and resounding pat on the back. Close your eyes and you can feel it.

Your friend forever,

Cherylanne

(and her baby girl Sandra or Annette or Scarlet and if it's a boy?????? as there are no good boy names, including Darren)

I fold the letter up, put it back in my pocket. Cherylanne and I are a lot alike right now. We have both blundered into a place where we'd rather not be, and now we have to make the best of it. I lie down on the warm dirt, which smells so calm, and look up into the sky. It seems like people are all the time making themselves themselves, but they don't really know it. You can only have true vision when you look behind. A person can slide so fast into being something they never really intended. I wonder if you can truly resurrect your own self.

In an hour or so, my father will be home for dinner, and I am going to talk to him about how I don't want to go to the Bartlett School after all. I will keep Cherylanne's letter in my pocket to help me when I say it. The thing about people like Cherylanne is, you can't be so fast about what to think of them. It's like the way you find beautiful crystals inside some plain gray rocks—who would have known they were there? Cherylanne says a lot of strange things, and her style is not exactly Shakespeare, but this is the first time I have felt soothed inside since I did what I did. And it is Cherylanne who did that. I also feel some hope about the future. Which will not include the Bartlett girls, I hope.

This morning, Leigh called to see if her poem about her and her boyfriend was ready, and I said not yet. Then there was a moment of cool silence, as though I had offended her. I suppose she thought I should be honored to write about her and Barrett, but I don't even know him. And even if I did, I don't want to write about what someone else tells me to write about.

When I start a poem, the center of me lifts up—I feel myself floating before I start to put the words down. Sometimes they are good words and sometimes they're not, but always the lift comes to take me to the place that is not really a place, yet feels realer than this ground I lie on. But when someone tells me what to write a poem about, I'm not lifted at all, I'm weighed
down. It's as though something comes down over me, cutting off my view, taking up my breathing space. I can't do it. And I don't want to do it. And I
won't
do it for Leigh; this is what comes to me now. I won't do it because I don't have to do it. In the dirt, I use a stick to write
no
. Then I stand up and start back home.

G
UESS WHO CALLED?”
Ginger says, when I walk in the door.

“Cynthia?” I ask quickly, and Ginger gets a soft look and says, “No. Not yet.” I told Ginger about what happened, although I must admit I made myself look better than I actually was. I said that Leigh was talking about Cynthia and that I didn't defend her, and that's all. This was a lie of omission, of course, which, according to Father Compton, is just as bad as other lies, but I just couldn't tell the whole truth right then. Later I will. It will have to be at the right time.

But now Ginger says, “It was Mrs. Randolph. She'll be leaving tomorrow afternoon, and she said she would love to see you before she goes.”

“Oh,” I say. “Okay.” Mrs. Randolph wants to see the me from before. But I am different now, I am someone who did a bad thing, and who now wants to refuse the gift that her husband gave me. I won't tell her I don't want to go to the Bartlett School anymore. But I wonder if it will leak out my eyes. I wonder if I'll end up telling her and then she'll feel so disappointed in me too.

“I can run you over to the nursing home tomorrow morning,” Ginger says. “But it will have to be before ten.”

“Okay,” I say. “That's fine.”

Now I hear the car door slam, and here comes my father up the steps. I swallow hard, and go to wash my hands before I take my place at the table. Sometimes I wish people didn't have to wash so much. Sometimes when you've been outside and gotten dirt on your hands, it just feels so friendly and connected.

M
ACARONI AND CHEESE IS WHAT
Ginger has made, with little baby peas to go along with it, which is the perfect choice. Fruit salad with whipped cream for dessert, and the only thing wrong is that she uses oranges in it, the cheater fruit. My father is sitting in his army uniform with the neck of the shirt open, and you can see his T-shirt which is so white it's almost blue. He is not saying anything, which is normal. Ginger is making a little comment here and there, also normal. She says things in a low and musical voice that always reminds me of the sound birds make when they're settling down for the night.

Well, here goes.

“Dad?”

He looks at me.

“I was thinking about the Bartlett School.”

Nothing.

“I was thinking I might not go.”

He smiles and nods his head in a knowing way. “Oh, you'll go, all right.” He looks at Ginger, who smiles back at him,
Yes indeed.
They think I'm just nervous.

“But the thing is, I might not
want
to go.”

His blue eyes on me. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I've decided something. I've decided my regular school will be all right. It will be fine. I want to go to my regular
school, it's really pretty much the same as the Bartlett School.”

“Your regular school is nothing like the Bartlett School. You are very lucky to have gotten a scholarship, and you'll go there.”

His voice has risen and everything else has gotten so still. This is the part where I am supposed to put my head down.
Okay. Sorry.

But I don't. I put down my fork and look right at him. “Dad. I have changed my mind. I have come to know some of the girls and I don't think I'd fit in. I don't think I'd be happy there.”

“Well, I'll tell you what. You can be
happy
when you come home.”

“Honey?” Ginger says. “What happened? Why in the world would you want to turn down an opportunity like this?”

“I just don't like the kids. I don't think I—”

“You're going,” my father says. “End of discussion. Pass me the bread, Ginger.”

I wonder how it feels to say this, to have that kind of power. I wonder, Does it feel like a thrill, do your insides swell up proud like a peacock on full display? I wonder when it started, my father being mean. When did he go from being a kid himself to saying
Do it! Now!
with veins of his neck standing out.

Sometimes I try to remember things my mother told me about the awful way he was raised. But why does he have to keep on going. Why would you take something bad out of your mouth and then hand it to another, saying, Here. Eat this.

I look at Ginger,
Help
me, but she says nothing. She agrees with him. She doesn't know what's happened, that I am not by any means a member of the Bartlett School Girls' Club, and I never will be. I am in the club with Cynthia, only now she won't be with me in anything, not anymore. What do I have left, I wonder.

I sit and stare at my father, but he won't look at me. I don't know what to say to make him hear. I see the muscles in his jaws moving as he chews. He takes a long drink of water.
Dinner,
that's what's in his head. That person inside me who rose up so confident
when I was out in the field this afternoon is not inside me anymore. Nothing is inside me anymore. Wind could rush through.

I look at the kitchen clock and wish it moved in years instead of hours. Because I'm going to California to live near my sister, Diane, as soon as I'm done with high school. You think everything can change, but the truth is that some things never can. Living with him is like living in a box. Ginger can hang curtains and put some pictures on the wall, but it is always a box. You can't move far. You can only rise up when you're able and move out altogether.

“Finish your dinner,” he tells me, and I pick up my fork, swallow around the lump.

I won't write him, either. I won't call.
Huh
, he will say, sitting out on the back steps at night, his cigarette held low between his knees. He will run a hand over the top of his crew cut, stare at the clothesline pole standing simple under the stars, and he will say it again:
Huh
. Ginger, sitting beside him, will say nothing, but he will hear exactly what she is thinking. That he will hear.