Making Pretty (21 page)

Karissa's going for the kill, and it's an awful thing to have to watch.

“I don't trust you,” Arizona says when she's regained the balance she lost from how deep the words cut. She downs the rest of her drink without being instructed to. She slams it on the counter when she's finished. “I don't trust you and I don't like you and you're not going to like how this all goes down.”

“Neither are you, honeybun,” Karissa says. She pours yet another drink. She's drowning in margaritas, and I wonder if she'll even remember all of this tomorrow.

I will. I won't forget.

I spend the rest of the day and that night at Arizona's apartment, but by the following evening Karissa is blowing up my phone with desperate texts, and I can't stop myself from meeting up with her.

She brings an orchid.

“It's special,” she says. “It's sensitive.”

“I'm not sure I have a green thumb,” I say.

“I'll help you with it,” she says. It's a beautiful and weighty peace offering. Janie was the wife with the green thumb, and it's funny to be thinking of her now, but I can't stop the rush of thoughts. I miss her little boys and Saturday mornings we spent at a community garden planting vegetables.

I wonder what she would think of Karissa. What she would think of me now.

I wouldn't mind seeing her. Even after the Tess fiasco. I wouldn't mind her knowing who I am now. Maybe it would complete something—me seeing all the stepmoms.

Karissa orders a martini. A French one.

I don't get a drink.

Dirty Versailles is slow and grimy tonight. It was so fun a few weeks ago, but tonight my bra's too tight and Karissa has that freaking rock on her finger. Someone vacuumed all the fun out.

“I'm over your sister,” Karissa says. “Do we have to keep her?”

“Hey,” I say. It's not exactly a strong response, but it's something. I try again. “You crossed a line. And my sister and I are a team. Okay?”

“I know, I know. She's wonderful. We love her. But aren't you glad you have me and Bernardo? That's how I feel about your dad.”

“I'd like to have everyone,” I say, but it tastes bad. It is Arizona and me against the stepmothers. That's what it is supposed to be.

Although I guess if I'm honest with myself, it never has been. Not since I made an imprint of my sleeping body on Natasha's couch. Not since I hugged her kids and babysat them and pretended to be somewhere else. I've been betraying Arizona all along.

I have absolutely zero idea what I'm doing, and seeing Karissa face-to-face right now feels all wrong. Like I'm not Montana anymore at all. I eye the door. It'd be easy to sneak out and make my way back to Arizona's. Bring her a carton of ice cream or a pizza.

“Another!” Karissa calls to her bartender.

I watch her get drunk, and I sip on a glass of water and then an orange juice to keep things interesting.

“Are you looking for a new agent?” I ask, wanting to talk about things that aren't about Us.

“Soon, soon,” she says. She grins. “I'm going to be the girl they
want me to be.” I think that's what she says, but the words are sloshed and jumbled. Her eyes are unfocused.

“I bet you'll be famous someday,” I say, and this at least I mean. All the things I've started to find wrong with her don't mean she's not crazy talented and impossible to stop watching.

“Maybe I'll be the girl Arizona wants me to be, too,” she says, nonsensically. There is no version of Karissa that Arizona would be okay with. I take the smallest sip of Karissa's French martini, and I'm surprised by this fizz and the sweetness. It's nothing like what she made me and Bernardo that night in the basement. It's better, lovelier, fancier, more compelling. I could get used to it.

“Look,” I say at last, part of me still watching the exit, willing my limbs to take me there. “Maybe you could at least wait? On the wedding? I know we keep saying it and it's a total broken record situation, but it would help so much if you and Dad would slow down and breathe and let us adjust and make sure you actually love each other.”

“Don't pretend you don't understand love,” Karissa says. “I know you do. I've seen it. We're the same. We'd do anything for it.” She reaches out and touches my eyebrow ring. It's still sore, and her finger on it hurts, sends a wave of pain behind my eye.

I miss Bernardo like he's a limb, and I'm also certain that our love is nothing like whatever she and my father have.

I should have gotten drunk.

I also should know better. I should know better, but when Karissa and I leave, I walk us up the path Natasha and I walk with the girls when we're trying to get them to fall asleep in their stroller.

And maybe it's what I wanted or maybe it's the exact last thing I ever hoped would happen, but we run into them. I don't see them until they're close. Natasha's in pajamas and I'm maybe vicariously drunk through Karissa or potentially so mad and confused that I feel drunk.

She sees me, though. And sees Karissa's drunken stumble.

“Montana?” Natasha says.

“Monana!” Victoria calls out. Veronica screeches and reaches for me. I can't breathe. I don't reach back.

“Hi,” I say. Not
Hi, Natasha
. I guess some desperate part of me believes I can get out of this situation unscarred.

“Hi!” Veronica says. She has a tiny vocabulary, but what words she has she loves.

“Hi,” Karissa says. She wipes her mouth with her hand, like a little spit maybe came out on her greeting. “Who are you people?”

Natasha squints. “Who are you?” she says. “Friend of Montana's?” I almost can't believe that Karissa and I still look a little like we belong to each other, like we fit. I feel so far away from that time.

“I'm Karissa!” she says. She trips over her own feet to grab Natasha's hand, and I'm collapsing inside. I am red and wish I'd drunk my weight in vanilla vodka at Dirty Versailles. I grab my phone in my pocket like it's Bernardo's hand and think I can't manage the world without him sometimes. Not when it's like this—tense and ready to fall to pieces.

“So this is Karissa,” Natasha says. I shake my head at her, begging her silently not to tell Karissa who she is. I'm clenching my jaw so hard I can't open it to speak. If I grind my teeth hard enough, maybe I'll
magically leave this place, like Dorothy clicking her heels. I have to believe there's a miraculous escape.

“This is Karissa!” Karissa says. Her drunkenness hits every sense. You can see it, smell it, hear it, touch it. I'm sure my dad will taste it later if he has his mouth near hers.

“Okay, well, good to see you guys!” I say.

“Monana!!!!” Victoria says, loud and insistent and undeniable.

“I'm Natasha,” Natasha says. “I'm sure you've heard of me.”

Karissa is the worst amount of drunk. Too drunk to be presentable, but not drunk enough to miss what's happening. She looks at the girls and at me and back to the girls.

“They know your name,” she says.

“Monana!” Victoria says again.

Karissa looks Natasha over like she has all the time in the world. Like she could take notes on her if she felt like it. Open up a notebook and go for it, right here and now.

“And how's Sean?” Natasha says, not wincing or shying away from Karissa's gaze. If anything, she sticks her chest out more. Even messy and late night and mother-y, she's hot in the Sean Varren wife way.

“Happiest he's ever been,” Drunk Karissa says. Drunk Karissa wants to be strong and powerful and messing with Natasha. Drunk Karissa is shooting eye-daggers my way every few moments, too. Drunk Karissa can't stay steady. She swings like a pendulum, back and forth and all around.

“Montana? I'll see you soon, I hope? The girls would love to
spend another day in the park with you,” Natasha says.

“Montana and I love going to the park!” Karissa says.

I am territory. I am a thing to put flags in. They want to claim me as their own. It's a whole new thing. I am used to being the thing abandoned. A left-behind spare sock or a toy you outgrow but sort of vaguely remember as symbolic of some time in your life. I am Montana who watches Tess move out or Montana who gets one card a year from her mother or Montana whose dad wishes she had a different shape or Montana whose sister has a better time without her.

“One of the last times Montana saw her mother was at the park,” Natasha says, because even if Karissa knows me in the wildest ways, Natasha knows me deepest. She's read the lists, she knows everything that's ever made me happy or grateful or nostalgic. She knows I sat and watched cupcakes float in the fountain and that I'm grateful that I remember the moment so clearly.

I have never seen Natasha petty like this until I realize of course I have. When Natasha was with my father, she'd make sure we knew that she knew him best. “That's not his favorite tie,” she said to me once when I brought him what I thought was his favorite tie—a purple one I'd given him for Christmas. “Your father prefers red.”

It's not like I've forgotten the things I used to hate about Natasha or the way she made me feel when she lived in our apartment and tried to change us. But I let those memories fade a little, and now there's the outline of the person she used to be, and she never did get her implants taken out, and she's grasping onto me and some life we had together, and I guess maybe people change but they also don't.

“Montana and I don't live in the past,” Karissa says. She puts an arm around my shoulder. She smells sweet and alcohol-y. “We have adventures in the here and now.”

I shrink away from her. I don't want to be a thing they both own. I don't even want to be a thing Bernardo owns, a piece of a whole. Even though I miss it so desperately, I'm not even sure I want to be part of a set of sisters, at the end of the day. I want to be whole, all on my own.

Natasha narrows her gaze. She sniffs the air, maybe seeing if I'm drunk too. Sussing out what these adventures might be. She stands in front of the stroller instead of behind it, blocking the girls from Karissa or, maybe, from me.

Another flash of memory: Natasha sniffing at my father's collar, wondering if he'd been with another woman. The kind of sick that made me feel.

“You're a drop in the bucket,” she whispers to Karissa. “Don't you forget it,” she says to me. I am the rope in a game of tug-of-war. They both want me, but neither of them really wants me. They just want to win.

“So were you,” Karissa says.

We're close to home, and Karissa's smoking what I assume must be the world's last cigarette by the way she's hoarding it.

“Hey, me too,” I say, and reach for it.

“I thought you were all good now,” she says. She doesn't give me a drag. She scarfs the rest down, quick, unpleasant inhales and exhales, and pounds it with her heel into the pavement. “What the hell have
you been up to? What was that?”

“You're drunk,” I say. We're a block away from the apartment, and we can't get there soon enough.

“They know you,” Karissa says. “They know you well. You said you hated all your dad's exes. He told me that too. You're not in touch. We're starting fresh. I'm not like any of the rest of them. I mean, I'm not making this crap up. Those are things that came out of your mouth. And out of your dad's mouth. Those are things that were said.”

“I'm allowed,” I say, but my voice is small and meaningless next to her.

“Do you even want me in your family?” Karissa says. It's not safe to answer. I never said I wanted her to be my stepmom. I only ever wanted her to be my friend or my fearless leader, the girl with the cool hair and the cool clothes and the perfectly imperfect smile who I could have adventures with. “You're so fucking greedy. Some of us would settle for one moment with their mother, one instant looking at their sister or father again. And you run around needing more, more, more,
lying
to me. You're a huge LIAR!”

Her arms are making wild swinging gestures, and I dart a little to avoid them.

No one notices.

“I see her sometimes,” I say. I reach out to bring one of Karissa's arms down to her waist, but it's too out of control and I leap back. “And her kids and whatever, it's nothing, it's a thing I do when I need mom stuff. It has literally zero to do with you. Zero.”

“It has everything to do with me! Are you crazy? ARE YOU
CRAZY?” The question should be asked of her, honestly, but I don't say that. A bike delivery dude rushes by us and Karissa yells after him too, angry at the world. “You and your fucking sister! So selfish! So unfair!” The words are fast and furious and so much louder than I've ever heard her, and it's disorienting to be called this many names in such a short period of time. To have a kind of consensus between her and Tess, that Arizona and I are awful.

“Arizona doesn't know,” I mumble. “It's my thing. It's mine.”

Karissa softens a little at that.

“Arizona doesn't know?” she says.

“Please don't tell her.”

“It's between us?” Karissa says. Her face is nearly familiar again, almost becoming a recognizable set of features in an arrangement I have seen before.

I feel used. Like one of the old cashmere coats at the thrift store I went to with Bernardo. Something to be tried on and left behind. Something that's been worn by a million variations of the same type of person, who think it's all sort of a joke.

My mind rushes with metaphors when I'm overwhelmed. And I am so, so overwhelmed.

“Yep,” I say.

Karissa nods and thinks. A little rain starts to fall. Summer-in-the-city rain, which is light and misty and makes my hair feel thick and frizzy on contact. It's getting ugly out here, summer turning the way it always does away from sun and freshness into something fuzzy and uncomfortable and smelling like the big bags of garbage they haven't picked up yet.

“Okay. Well. It's me or her,” Karissa says. I need to know exactly how drunk she is.

“You're leaving my dad if I don't stop seeing Natasha? What does that even mean?” I say.

I try walking up the stoop to our apartment so that at least we can fight under the miniature awning, but Karissa stops me.

“No. We're doing this here,” she says. She takes out a cig and tries lighting it, but either the lighter is running low on fluid or it's too wet to get it going. The thing is probably soggy in her mouth already. “Your dad barely remembers being with her,” Karissa says. “He's shut it all out. It was all a big mistake. You should be moving on too.” It is impossible that Karissa would know more about this than I would, but she's certainly proclaiming to.