You, Maybe (10 page)

Twenty-one

“DO YOU BELIEVE
in
beschert
?” I asked my mother, as I was climbing onto the table and lying down.

“Never heard of it,” Mom said. “Hold still for Bitsy.”

“I believe in beeswax,” Bitsy said. “Wow, have you ever had these eyebrows done before?”

“No,” I said, closing my eyes. “Does it hurt?”

“It hurts to be beautiful,” Mom told me.

Bitsy rubbed some warm, sticky wax over my right eyelid.
Not so bad
, I thought. It’s kind of nice, actually. Maybe I am just tougher than most women, and don’t make a big deal out of nothing.

Then she ripped it off.

I screamed. I said a bad word or three. Dozen. When I calmed down enough to do anything other than feel the pain of having my eyelid practically torn from my head, I noticed that my mother was laughing.

Not just laughing—she was cracking up. Poor Bitsy had backed into a corner, terrified, but my mother was sitting on a folding chair, practically gasping for breath, doubled over with laughter. How sick is that?

I watched her, amazed. No wonder I’m so screwed up: My own mother finds my pain hilarious. I truly have never seen her laugh so hard.

When she was able to lift her head and wipe the tears from her eyes, I said, “I’m happy I finally got a smile from you, Mom. If I had only known, I would’ve broken my arm when I was younger. That would’ve been a riot, huh?”

“What are you talking about?” Serious, suddenly. Ah, I was embarrassing her publicly again.

I shrugged. “I’m outta here.” I jumped down from the table.

“You can’t go, Josie,” Mom protested, and actually stood up to block the door. “Show her the mirror, Bitsy.”

“You’re insatiable, Mom,” I protested. “Is my pain really that funny?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Josie,” Mom said. She grabbed the mirror from Bitsy. “Don’t be so operatic! I was laughing at your vocabulary, not your
pain
. Look.”

I looked in the mirror. She was right, I couldn’t go. One of my eyebrows was curved like a movie star’s, though red underneath. The other looked like a huge fuzzy caterpillar taking a nap on my face. I flopped back onto the table.

As Bitsy tore the wax off my left eyelid, I came up with another choice few words. Mom held up the mirror again. “Better, right?”

I shrugged, but yes, I looked better. I followed Mom out into the main room of the salon and into a small closetlike room, where Mom handed me a smock. “Put this on so your new sweater won’t get wet while you’re getting shampooed,” she instructed.

“Is that really a verb?” I asked. “Shampooed?”

She rolled her eyes and shoved me toward the sinks.
I never should’ve agreed to this whole thing
, I thought, on my ways. Forget agreed—I had asked her to take me. You would’ve thought I’d given her a new cashmere sweater, from her reaction. She even almost forgave me for the one I’d ruined, after I asked to have my hair cut by an actual professional. How was I supposed to know that cashmere can’t be put in the washing machine? Anyway, she was happy, and took the afternoon off work to bring me.

I sat down in the chair and was pushed back into a weird and uncomfortable position with my neck bent back over the cold lip of the sink, but as soon as the warm water hit me and Bitsy’s hands began massaging my scalp, I felt myself relax. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander.

Carson. I couldn’t close my eyes without thinking of Carson, his gorgeous face, his red, perfectly formed lips, his strong, slow hands. He’d been driving me home every day, lately (no more driving lessons); when we got to my house, we’d head straight up to my room to fool around. We were going farther than I’ve ever gone before, but that’s okay, I told myself—he’s my boyfriend, I love him, and he’s a senior. I can’t expect an eighteen-year-old boy to be happy just kissing with a little groping every day. When I told him I was a virgin at Frankie’s on Saturday night, he said he knew, but he didn’t say if he was or wasn’t. Probably not. Probably he and Emelina . . . but I didn’t want to think about that.

He wasn’t pressuring me to do anything. Definitely not. Even if he was sometimes abrupt in how he talked to me, he was always gentle and slow physically. He was full of compliments on how I looked, and if he got annoyed when I talked too much, well, who could blame him? I do talk too much. I was trying to shut up more. I wrote
SU
(for Shut Up) on my palm with a Sharpie, to remind myself. Anyway, things were going well. Really well.

Except with my friends. Zandra and Tru had a “talk” with me on Sunday. They are “concerned” that I am “losing” myself. I assured them that I knew exactly where I was. They didn’t look convinced. Maybe we’re just growing apart. Maybe they’re right that I haven’t been such a great friend lately but I have other stuff going on right now and I wish they could just be happy for me. Michael meanwhile has been completely avoiding me. I put some of my stuff in Carson’s locker so I wouldn’t have to face Michael so much at my own. Carson walked me from class to class with his arm around me; those moments made the whole day worthwhile. I craved them, did anything I could think of to get back in there, under that wing.

He is such an amazing combination of strength and vulnerability, my boyfriend. Maybe we’re alike in that way. Maybe I had to test him, with all my teasing, and now it’s his turn, sometimes. I have to show him I can take it, I can take his sarcasm and his moods. I’m strong. I’ve always been a strong person. I can take it.

And it’s not like he’s even so tough on me, really, at all. I’m just new at this, I think, and so I’m sometimes paranoid. When he sees me down the hall and his whole face lights up, I feel so good, I feel—what? Complete. Like there’s nothing else I have to accomplish. I look back on all those days I spent arguing philosophy and dissing the high school experience with my friends, and I’m embarrassed about how immature I seem to myself, and how insecure. I had to put on this whole intense façade to prove I wasn’t lonely—and now? Now I’m not lonely. Now I am Carson’s girlfriend. People smile at me, and guess what? I smile back. Because life is good and I am where I belong, in the thick of it.

And then we go to my house and he smiles at me, touches my face, tells me I’m beautiful. And for those few minutes, I dare to believe it’s true.

Sitting in front of another mirror in the haircutting chair, I listened to my mother’s voice as she gave Bitsy instructions. Bitsy and my mother picked up pieces of my hair and looked, chatting, evaluating, not noticing particularly that there was a person under the hair situation.

“Can I go away this weekend?” I blurted out. There. Finally.

“Away?” Mom asked. “No. Where?”

“I don’t know, the mountains. To a friend’s grandparents’ house.”

“Which friend?”

Pieces of my hair were falling on the floor as Bitsy snipped her scissors briskly.

“Emelina.”

“Never heard of her,” Mom said. “With Zandra and Tru?”

“Zandra and Tru aren’t friends with her.”

“But you are?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“How about Michael?”

“No,” I said.

“But boys are going?”

“Yes.” I turned my head. Bitsy
tsk
ed at me so I turned back to the mirror.

“Carson Gold?”

“Yes. Why are you quizzing me? I am not a baby anymore, Mom!”

“You weren’t a baby when you were a baby,” she said. “What’s going on with you and him?”

“He’s my boyfriend,” I said. “Shocked?”

“No, actually.”

“Forget it,” I said.
I know you are shocked, deny it or not, because he’s gorgeous, and a senior, and going to Harvard, and drives a white sports car. And you think I’m a loser. Admit it or don’t, Mom. I know what you think.

“I had a feeling,” Mom said, smiling a little.

“We’re in love,” I yelled. Everything in the salon stopped for a second. Clearly I had an audience. “I’m in love.”

“Congratulations,” Bitsy said.

“Thank you,” I answered. “My mother thinks he’s too good for me.”

“Is he?” Bitsy asked.

“Why would you say that?” my mother demanded—not denying that’s what she thought—just asking why I would call her on it. Very tricky, Mom.

“He probably is,” I told Bitsy. “That’s why you have to make me as pretty as possible, to compensate. Right, Mom?”

“He wants to take you away for the weekend?” Bitsy asked.

“Yes,” I said. “No. A bunch of people are going, it’s not like that. It will be like ten of us, plus this girl’s grandparents. But I’m probably the only one whose mother is making a big deal of it.”

“Are you making a big deal of it?” Bitsy asked Mom.

“I don’t need to,” Mom said, throwing up her hands. “Josie’s doing it for me. I didn’t say a word.”

“No way you’ll let me go,” I said. “I can’t believe it. I shouldn’t even have asked you. I should just run away.”

“Don’t cry,” Bitsy said. “You eyes will swell and right after the waxing, that’s bad.”

“Do you want to go?” Mom asked me, irrelevantly.

“Why would I ask you, if I didn’t want to go?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Mom said.

“Okay,” said Bitsy. She put down her scissors and her comb, and picked up a blow-dryer. “Put your head between your knees, like you’re trying not to throw up,” she said.

“Good idea,” I said. For a minute I just let the sound of the blow-dryer drown out all my thoughts. When I was allowed to flip back up, my hair was off my face and Bitsy was pulling it hard with the brush, to dry and style me. I felt like Fluffy and Sarge must feel, which made me think again of Michael. It had been a week and a half, the longest I’ve gone without talking to him since I lost my baby teeth.

“You’re thinking of letting her go?” I heard Bitsy ask my mother.

I couldn’t hear what my mother answered. She met my eyes in the reflection and said something else I didn’t hear. And then I noticed myself in there, in the reflection, beside my mother. I looked different. My hair was smooth and shiny, falling soft around my face, the ends just skimming my shoulders. It looked like a vaguely pretty girl but nobody I specifically recognized. I watched some expressions pass over the face of the girl in the mirror, and when we smiled at each other, Bitsy shut off the blow-dryer. “You like it, huh?”

She tucked the side hair behind my ear. My mother stepped closer, then grabbed my empty earlobe, pinched it and yanked. “Your earring! Oh, no! My grandmother’s diamond earring. It must have fallen out!”

The whole salon erupted into furious activity, everybody checking my one remaining earring, searching the sink, the garbage, the mess of hair in the dustpan. It all happened too quickly for me to stop them, and then it was too late to correct the misperception. By the time we left, the owner of the salon was so relieved to get rid of us, he refused to let Mom pay for my day of beauty at all, and promised to call her immediately if the earring turned up. Mom and I walked glumly to her car.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Was the back on properly? You have to take care of valuable things, Josie. You always . . .” She shook her head. I didn’t defend myself because the truth was way worse than what she was mad about.

She backed out and as we waited our turn to pull out of the shopping center’s parking lot, she asked, “So you and that gorgeous boy are in love, huh?”

“What’s so bad about that?”

“Nothing. It’s wonderful,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So why do you seem so unhappy?”

I looked out my side window. She drove for a while, without talking for once.

“Your hair looks good,” she said.

“
Beschert
,” I said. “It means meant for each other. Do you think you and Daddy were meant for each other?”

She bounced her glossy lips against each other. “Meant for each other?”

“You don’t seem it,” I said. “I mean, you’re all about how you look, he’s a schlump; all he thinks about is feet, and all you wear is stilettos. . . . How come he doesn’t bug
you
about your shoes?”

“Relationships are work,” she said. “And they all have their miseries.”

“Miseries?”

“Mysteries,” Mom said. “I said mysteries.”

“You said miseries.”

“Josie! Why are you always looking for a fight?”

“I’m a pacifist!”

“So you say.”

“Fine, forget it. Can I go this weekend or not?”

“Daddy and I will discuss it.”

“Daddy will agree with whatever you say. He’ll say, ‘As long as she wears the orthotic shoes for her falling arches I don’t care where she goes.’”

Mom laughed.

“Is that a yes?”

“I guess so,” Mom said.

I looked at her, as she drove. Yes? “Really?” As easy as that?

She smiled. “I trust you.”

“I’m supposed to do a party that weekend but I can cancel it, no problem.”

“If you’re willing to cancel a party for it,” she said quietly, “it must be really important to you.”

“It is,” I answered. “Thank you.”

Her pocketbook started to ring. “My phone. Quick. Josie! Get that for me. Come on, why are you always so slow?”

I found her phone in her bag and handed it to her. She flipped it open and started talking a mile a minute. Work. “No,” she was saying. “Absolutely not. Well, tell him the sketches have to be in by Thursday or the . . . what? That’s ridiculous, I don’t care if the flooding is up to his armpits, I still need . . .”

“Mom!”

She was swerving a little, yelling into the phone, and almost sideswiped a car passing on our left.

“Ack! Don’t yell, Josephine, you almost made me get in an acci . . . what? No, my daughter. I had to take her to a, a, a doctor’s appointment. No. Fine, I’ll be at a computer in twenty minutes, email me what you’ve got.” She hung up and tossed the phone in my lap.

“It’s dangerous to talk on the cell phone when you drive,” I told her.

“You sound like your father. Listen, that reminds me . . .”

“Don’t say I have to wear the orthotics.”

“No, don’t. They’re hideous. Wear stilettos; that’s what they all love. Even your father.”

“What?!”

“Nothing.” She blushed a little. Weird. “No, I mean the lie I just told about the doctor’s appointment. What about birth control?”