Imaginary Enemy (3 page)

Copycat

W
hen I was eight, we went to Texas to visit the ancient Aunt Jane my parents were so fond of—the one whose mundane name was tattooed on my birth certificate. She was awful. She had orange hair piled on top of her head, bright pink toenails, and a silky dress with big magenta flowers all over it. The whole ensemble bottomed out with a pair of neon green flip-flops stippled with teeth marks where her cocker spaniel had attacked them. She smelled like bourbon, her supply of which she and my parents managed to diminish significantly that afternoon. Aunt Jane, Mom, and Dad told stories and laughed a lot, and I was so bored that I actually played with Zander and Carmella. By choice.

Aunt Jane kept calling me her “sweet little namesake” and saying how much I looked like her. That scared me to death. She was one huge wrinkle with bones sticking out and a puff of wild hair on top. If I really looked like her, I was in for one sorry life. When I opened my mouth to protest, Mom gave me the eye and Dad elbowed me in the ribs, so I held back my denials.

When it was time to go, Mom pulled me aside and told me to give Aunt Jane a kiss. “No way,” I snarled.

“Jane.” Mom crossed her arms.

“She’s yucky,” I protested.

“She’s your aunt, and she loves you, and she’s a delightful person. And you, young lady, are already in enough trouble for putting frogs in her toilet. So give her a kiss, now.”

I knew when I was licked. I walked up to Aunt Jane, holding my breath. I stood on tiptoe, steeled myself, and kissed her.

I survived. That’s the only positive thing I can say about that kiss.

On the ride back to the hotel, Dad said, “Now, Janie, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“I’d rather eat dead bats smothered in maggot sauce,” I muttered.

Normally when I said things like that, my parents chuckled and talked about how precocious I was. Not that day. Dad actually pulled the car off the road, killed the engine, turned around, and glared at me. “I’ve had enough of this, Jane. You are not cute or funny.
You
are a brat.”

Zander’s eyes got huge when Dad said that. If I called Zander or Carmella a brat, I got punished. My eyes filled with tears. “I am not a brat, Daddy. Don’t say that,” I protested.

“
You
are a brat,” he replied flatly. Then he turned around, started the car, and merged with the traffic. “And you will be punished for your behavior.”

But I didn’t get punished back at the hotel. I swam in the pool and played in the elevator and jumped on the bed with Zander and Carmella. I thought Dad had forgotten about my punishment.

Wrong. When we got home, I caught it with both barrels. The usual lecture, followed by a mixture of restrictions and chores. Mom’s usual refrain was right on target: life isn’t fair.

Sharp and I were supposed to be doing our homework. Since we were in the same third-grade class, we usually worked together. The problem was this: Sharp always did his assignments, and I’d made a career of boycotting homework, so we spent more time battling than accomplishing anything. “Let’s go swing,” I suggested.

“After we do our spelling words.”

“I hate doing alphabetical order. What’s the point?”

“There isn’t one, but it only takes a minute.”

“You do it and I’ll copy yours.”

“Again?”

I didn’t respond—instead I jumped from the picnic table and ran to the swing set.

“Jane, come back. You have to do this.”

“You’re not the teacher, Sharp.” I was pumping my legs and soaring.

“We only have twenty words.”

“That’s twenty too many for me. Spelling’s boring. There’s a reason computers come with spell-check.”

He ignored me, then threw down his pencil and closed his book. “I’m done.”

“I’ll copy yours.”

“No.”

“Yes.” I jumped from the swing, ran to the table, and reached out to grab Sharp’s work.

He snatched it away. “No. I’m sick of always letting you copy. Do your own.”

“I just won’t do it at all,” I said smugly, tossing my head and returning to the swing set.

Soon after, Sharp went bike riding with Jazz and Zander. I dashed to the picnic table and took his loose-leaf page of neatly alphabetized words. I erased his name, replaced it with mine, and tucked the paper into my folder. Truthfully, I didn’t really care whether or not I turned in the assignment, but I was mad at Sharp for not letting me copy.

The next day at school, I saw Sharp searching through his backpack when Ms. Lassiter called for homework. “Hey, Sharp,” I whispered, and when he looked at me I held up
our
spelling words, all twenty of them carefully alphabetized in a column. Before he had time to respond, I marched up to the front of the room and dropped the paper onto the pile on Ms. Lassiter’s table. On my way back to my seat I walked past Sharp’s desk. “Next time you better let me copy.”

“You’re such a brat,” he snarled, elbowing me.

“Sharp,” Ms. Lassiter said. “Leave Jane alone. Where’s your homework?”

“I can’t find it,” he replied, glaring in my direction.

I’d known from the start that Sharp wouldn’t rat me out. We had our code. The next day, he grudgingly let me copy his homework, but not before splashing root beer all over me.

“Ten minutes till bedtime, kids,” said Mom.

Carmella, Zander, and I were playing slapjack. “I still don’t think it’s fair that I have to go to bed at the same time as Zander and Carmella. He’s only six, and she’s five, and I’m eight,” I protested.

“Write your congressman,” droned Dad. That was his usual response to my complaints. I was probably the first kid in history to know what “Write your congressman” meant before the age of three. Not that I ever actually did it. I was loyal to Bubba, my only pen pal.

Zander slapped a jack of hearts and raked the pile of cards into his hand. “I’m winning,” he bragged.

The back door slammed. Everyone looked up. “Who’s that?” asked my mother as my father rose and rushed toward the kitchen. The rest of us cautiously followed him, honing our radar, curious and frightened as to who had entered our home.

“Luke,” said my father, and even in that one word I could hear relief.

We crowded around Dad and stared at our half brother. His thick dark brown hair was tangled. He looked angry—his eyes flashed and his cheekbones seemed sharper than ever. He said nothing as he slid his backpack from his shoulder. It hit the floor with a thunk.

Dad looked quizzically at Luke. He’d spent the weekend with us and we hadn’t expected him back so soon—it was only Monday, and late for a school night. “What’s going on, son?”

Luke glanced at the rest of us. “I dunno.” His voice trembled ever so slightly.

“I’ll put the kids to bed,” my mother said, ushering us from the room. I heard the scraping of chairs on the kitchen tiles, so I guessed Dad and Luke were sitting at the table.

“Why’s Luke here, Mom?” asked Zander.

“Luke’s welcome anytime,” she answered. “This is his home, too.” Mom’s open-hearted acceptance of Luke seemed artificial at times. I mean, he didn’t
really
live there and she wasn’t
really
his mother. Maybe she was afraid he’d think she was a wicked stepmother like in
Cinderella
and
Snow White,
so she treated him with deference. “Now go brush your teeth. And Zander, use toothpaste this time.”

When Mom was tucking Carmella into bed, I slipped back down the hall to the kitchen. I stood in the doorway and saw Luke sweep the back of his hand over his eyes. Dad was at the counter pouring a glass of juice.

“Jane, you’ve been sent to bed.” I jumped at my mother’s voice behind me, sterner than normal.

“I want to kiss Dad goodnight,” I whined.

“Go to bed
now,
” Mom ordered.

Dad blew me a kiss from across the room. “Go on, Janie. Mind your mother.”

Luke was in eighth grade when he moved in with us. The night he’d interrupted our game of slapjack, he’d gotten in a fight with his stepfather and run away, although I’m not sure if it really qualifies as running away when you leave your mom to go live with your dad.

Things got weird around the house for a few days. Dad was constantly on the phone. I knew he was talking to Luke’s mom because I heard him say “Calm down, Sandy,” and “He’ll be fine, Sandy. He’s thirteen years old,” and stuff like that. Then he and Mom would go into their bedroom and talk in soft voices. Luke wouldn’t speak to anyone—he just sat on the back steps sulking or stargazing or petting Banjo.

Then it became official and Sandy brought Luke’s belongings to our house in cardboard cartons. When Luke saw her car pull into our driveway, he ran out the back door and jumped the fence. He climbed the rope ladder to the tree house nestled in one of the deMichaels’ oaks. Dad helped Sandy unload Luke’s stuff. Then I saw Sandy crying when she and Dad stood in the doorway talking quietly. He put his arm around her and she wept on his shoulder, but it didn’t make me angry, even though my mother was alone in the kitchen cooking dinner.

At first, Luke was like a caged beast, growling and snarling. Mom said it was part of growing up and that he’d been going through a difficult time, but when his wrath was directed at me, my feelings got hurt. He was a hero of mine—the invincible older brother. The smallest sharp word or briefest derisive glance shattered me.

Luke wasn’t always awful. When he caused one of us to cry, he’d apologize and try to make us laugh. Sometimes he brought me stuff…a pack of Starbursts or an arrowhead he found at the clay pits or a Canadian penny. He was good at art, and since he knew I loved magical creatures, he covered sheets of paper with griffins and dragons and wizards.

There was one drawback to Luke’s moving in with us: Mom gave him Carmella’s room, insisting he needed privacy, and moved Carmella in with me, despite my protests. I tried everything—whining, crying, arguing, sulking, and shouting—but to no avail.

“You’re sharing your room with your sister and that’s it,” my mother said, crossing her arms.

“But Mom—”

“We’ll redecorate. How about that?”

“I dunno,” I mumbled. “It’s still not fair.”

“You can choose the paint and new bedspreads.”

That was at least something.

“Purple?” Mom asked. “You mean lavender?”

“No, I mean purple. Like this.” I pointed to the picture in the catalog.

“Purple comforters are fine, but let’s choose something…softer for the walls.”

“You said I could pick, and I pick purple.” Naturally, I got my way. She had promised, after all. The only problem was Carmella’s obsession with Barbie, which meant that the walls on her side of the room were plastered with Barbie posters, an odd contrast to the movie stills of Godzilla eating Tokyo and
Escape of MechaGodzilla
hanging on my side. Nonetheless, the comforters were perfect, with big colorful polka dots scattered on a field of Fanta Grape that matched the walls perfectly. It was totally cool at first, but over time the room came to look and feel like a giant bruise.

Dawn

B
ecause I am her namesake, Aunt Jane periodically sends me gifts. Not typical gifts like clothes, books, jewelry, or toys. Odd things. When I was six she shipped me a hummingbird’s nest—tiny and fragile and carefully woven from grass and dandelion fluff. In its cavity she’d placed two solid blue marbles.

For Columbus Day, she sent me a fleet of little ships made of walnut shells. The sails were rice paper skewered on toothpicks. I must be the only kid to ever get a Columbus Day present.

At a police auction, Aunt Jane outbid everyone on a stack of ancient fingerprint cards and was certain I’d be thrilled to receive them. I thumbtacked the used ones to my bedroom wall and speculated about what ghastly crimes had been committed by the people whose identities were revealed in loops and whorls of black ink. I played detective with the blank ones and fingerprinted Zander, Carmella, Luke, and the deMichael children.

Another time Aunt Jane bought a basket of sewing stuff at a yard sale—ribbons, beads, buttons, and embroidery thread, along with a tomato-shaped pincushion studded with pins and needles. She included a step-by-step guide to embroidery stitches.

A string of origami cranes left over from a No Nukes rally arrived in a cigar box. “I’ll never forget that event,” she told me later. “It was the nineteen eighties and my bridge club decided we needed to be politically active. So we chose a good cause and campaigned our hearts out until Billie Maygarden got arrested. The handcuffs scratched the gold bracelet she’d inherited from her godmother and she refused to participate after that. So as a compromise we agreed to work at the homeless shelter. That’s where Billie met Milton, her fourth husband. Imagine!”

Aunt Jane simply doesn’t believe in trash. “Everything is useful to someone, somewhere,” she wrote on the note accompanying a bear claw dangling from a leather strap. “At the swap meet, I traded a broken toaster for this, and I do believe that the gentleman who ended up with the toaster thought he’d scored a major coup.” I proudly wore the black claw around my neck for months before passing it on to Chord in exchange for a stack of X-Men and Fantastic Four comics. (I later realized he got the better end of that deal.)

A package awaited me when I came home on the last day of school when I was nine. Aunt Jane’s return address sticker was plastered in the top left corner. I tore away the brown paper wrapping. Beneath it was a corrugated cardboard box embellished with paint, rhinestones, and glitter. “What in the world?” I muttered as I opened the box. I dumped its contents on the table. Out tumbled a pile of large plastic dinosaurs and a plain white envelope with

“Sweet Jane” written on the front. (Aunt Jane always called me Sweet Jane because of some Lou Reed song from the nineteen seventies.)

“Way cool,” said Zander, standing beside me. These weren’t regular plastic prehistoric reptiles. They’d been dressed and decorated. Painted and pierced and bejeweled. T. rex sported a black Mohawk, bulky brass zippers, and heavy chains. Stegosaurus was clad in black leather duds with numerous piercings in his armor plates. His claws were painted crimson. Triceratops was tattooed with a skull and crossbones. Silver hoops adorned his faceplates and eyelids. Black and white stripes ringed his thick tail. Chrome hose clamps circled Brontosaurus’s long neck. Large black and red anarchy symbols were painted on his massive torso in what looked like fingernail polish.

“Aunt Jane is so weird,” I said, tearing open the envelope.

Sweet Jane,

Some teenagers were selling these at the craft fair and they were the cutest things I’d ever seen. I immediately thought of you. The kids who made them called them Gothosaurs. Isn’t that clever? I hope you enjoy them.

Love,
Aunt Jane

“I wish she’d send me great stuff like this. Mom and Dad should’ve named me Jane,” said Zander.

I laughed. “Yeah, right. You’re a guy, remember?”

I gathered up my Gothosaurs and arranged them on the shelf above my bed. I had to admit, they were awesome.

Sharp thought it was a great idea. Naturally, because it was
his
idea. And it did seem like a good idea at the time (at least to a pair of nine-year-olds). A magical idea. One that would make this party shine brighter than all others. He swore me to secrecy. As usual, I fell in. If Sharp was Batman, I was Robin. If he was Scooby Doo, I was Shaggy. If he was Tarzan, I was Jane…. Well, I
am
Jane, so that one doesn’t really count. It seemed harmless enough, though, and wouldn’t everyone be charmed and surprised at Peggy’s celebration?

Every year at the summer solstice, Peggy deMichael threw a party. It was a large affair with crowds of people, plenty of food and drinks, beautiful decorations, musical entertainment provided by Elliot and his friends, and games for the children. It was a tradition we all looked forward to.

The entire week before the party was devoted to preparations. The deMichael kids polished furniture and scrubbed bathrooms. They dusted and vacuumed and washed windows. Their kitchen was heaped with ingredients, dirty dishes, and platters of hors d’oeuvres. You didn’t dare enter or you’d risk being conscripted to grate cheese or peel potatoes.

In most households, it’s the Christmas decorations that get broken out once a year. At the deMichaels’, it was the lawn mower. That summer I watched from the shade of the patio as Sharp and Chord took turns forcing the rusted mower through the grass. It whined in mechanical protest as it chewed at the thick lawn, and stalled out every few feet. The first time I heard either of them cuss was during one of their annual yard-grooming adventures. I was shocked at the number of forbidden words they knew.

It was the night before the party. Sharp and I met in the deMichaels’ backyard after dark. He was armed with a large bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid. “Let’s start here,” Sharp suggested in a whisper, and I followed him to the largest of Elliot’s fountains, the one in whose pool floated the pizza-sized water lilies my mother always admired. The edges of the bright green leaves curled toward the sky to keep pond water from pooling in them. Their creamy white and buttery yellow blossoms seemed to glow in the darkness. Sharp stood at the spillway and poured Dawn into the stream of water. Within seconds bubbles began to form. “Perfect,” he whispered. “It’s gonna be fabulous.”

We went to a waterfall made from a series of flat stones forming a ragged tower. They were covered in a carpet of fuzzy green moss. I took the liquid from Sharp and squeezed it onto the highest stone. We smiled as the cascading water bubbled and foamed.

“We still have almost half a bottle,” Sharp said when we’d soaped the last of Elliot’s waterworks. “Might as well finish it off.”

We emptied Dawn into pools and ponds already foamy and white.

“Peggy’s gonna love it,” said Sharp. The deMichael kids all called their parents Mom and Dad when addressing them but Peggy and Elliot when referring to them in conversation. “I can’t wait till tomorrow.”

“Elliot’s raging,” said Luke the following morning when he walked into the kitchen with the newspaper. He grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and polished it on his T-shirt.

Mom looked up from her coffee. “About what?” Elliot, very even-tempered, seldom raged.

“Bubbles.” Luke looked at me as he bit into his apple with a loud crunch.

“How could Elliot be mad about bubbles? Everyone likes bubbles,” said my mother.

Again Luke stared at me. “
Someone
put soap in all of his ponds. There are bubbles everywhere. It’s like a washateria gone insane. Wait till you see the water lilies. They’re wilted and slimy. What a mess.”

I went to the window. Elliot squatted in his backyard, siphoning water from a shallow pond with the garden hose. It shocked me to see the waxy flowers all brown and shriveled, half buried in dirty gray foam. Luke stood beside me. “The mosses’ll die, too, and the grasses in the little pond at the back fence. And all the rest. Elliot said the soap will kill everything.”

“I’m going outside,” I said.

All the deMichael children except Chord were at work around the property. I cautiously approached Sharp, who was filling the wheelbarrow with dead plants. “Does he know who did it?” I whispered.

“Yeah, he knows.”

My stomach lurched. “Who told him? Chord? That rat. Where is he?”

“I don’t know where he is. You know how he does that disappearing act when we have chores to do.” Sharp sighed. “But it wasn’t Chord. I left my shoes on the patio.”

“That’s not evidence.”

“The empty Dawn bottle was with them.”

“Why’d you do a dumb thing like that?”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” he said defensively. He heaped one last armload of dead plant matter into the wheelbarrow. “Besides. I didn’t think
this
would happen. I thought it would be beautiful.”

I followed him across the yard to the compost heap. “My parents are going to barbeque me,” I moaned, imagining how beserk my parents would go when they discovered my role in the destruction of Elliot’s gardens. The lectures and punishments. The restrictions. I hated the idea of summer vacation ending in June. “I’m cooked.”

Sharp dumped the wheelbarrow load and turned to glare at me. “
Your
shoes weren’t there. No one knows about you,” he said.

“Yet.”

“I’m not a snitch. I won’t tell.”

I didn’t believe him in spite of our code. This was big. Too much for one person to bear the responsibility for.

By evening, all the bubbles were gone. The waterworks looked sterile. Their flowers and grasses had been stripped away and thrown on the compost heap. The mosses carpeting the stones had turned a dull muddy color. When I stood near them, the smell of rotting vegetation assaulted me.

The rest of the yard looked festive. Strings of Japanese lanterns were stretched between the trees. Tiny white lights were twined around the trunks and into the fronds of the palms. Mason jars half-filled with sand flickered with tea-light candles on the tables. Wreaths of fern and baby’s breath circled the jars.

I looked around for Sharp, wondering if he was angry with me. Then Chord walked up. “Where’s Sharp?” I asked.

“You won’t be seeing his face for a good long time. Jazz and I are smuggling in bread and water.”

“Is he coming to the party?”

“No way. He’s not allowed to leave his room ’cept to go to the bathroom. And he has to do yard work all summer. Elliot says he needs to learn to appreciate the balance of nature.”

I looked up at the second-story window of what I knew to be the bedroom Sharp shared with Jazz and Chord. Light was spilling through the glass. I wondered what Sharp was doing…. Reading, practicing an instrument, seething?

I glanced across the patio at Elliot and my father, engaged in an intense conversation. Certain that Dad was learning of my part in Elliot’s backyard environmental disaster, I knew I’d soon be in as much trouble as Sharp. I decided to visit the food table and fuel up before I got evicted, or imprisoned, or entombed, or whatever. I took my plate to the farthest corner of the yard, where there was an arbor with two benches and a small pond. The structure was made of gray limbs that were long and straight, with the bark and smaller branches stripped away. Elliot had built it years ago from the remains of a tree that had snapped during a hurricane.

I sat on the bench. The sweetness of the jasmine climbing the arbor mingled with the pleasing aromas wafting from my plate of food. I suddenly wondered if the koi that usually swam in the pond had survived our crime. I began to eat. I wasn’t exactly gluttonous, but maybe filling my stomach would displace the guilt lingering inside me. Was it my fault Sharp had been stupid enough to tattle on himself? I absently tossed a crust of bread into the little pond. Had the soap killed Elliot’s fish? I gazed into the water but saw no movement, only the vaguest reflection of my own face—but it was dark, after all. They
had
to be in there, with their lovely, nearly translucent tails spreading behind them.

The wind chimes hanging from the arbor tinkled and I looked up at the house. Sharp stood in the window, the light behind him illuminating his hair like a halo. A halo? Or was that my guilt again? I popped a shrimp into my mouth but it stuck in my throat. I felt an unreasonable, ridiculous urge to confess—to go to Elliot and beg his forgiveness. I took a sip of punch to wash down the shrimp. Why should I fess up just because Sharp did? Is it my fault he’s so stupid? I asked myself defensively as I bit into a cheese straw. He knew what was at stake. He should have kept his big mouth shut.

Sharp’s silhouette left the window. I saw him cross to the doorway, where the light switch was mounted, and then the room went dark. I imagined him lying on his back staring at the ceiling, furious with me.

Luke, now almost fifteen, sat down on the bench across from me with his long legs sprawled out in front of him. “So, Janie, you’re letting Sharp take the heat all alone?” he asked. Luke and my father were the only two people on the planet who got away with calling me Janie. Sometimes Chord or Zander taunted me with that nickname, but I always made them pay. Zander I’d just beat up, since I was bigger than he was, but Chord I rewarded with a squeeze-and-twist pinch that left an angry purple mark tattooed on his forearm.