Tales From My Closet (10 page)

Back at home, Danny was downstairs, banging on his drums, and Meryl was out walking Lucy. I decided to write to Arnaud immediately, to tell him about my upcoming trip to Paris — and also about how I’d changed my mind about how I wanted to be with him. But as soon as I logged on to my email account, I saw it: an email from “[email protected]” — someone I’d never heard of. I was about to delete it when I saw the heading: “An article by Meryl Sanders, PhD, excerpted from
Growing Pains Magazine
.”

I couldn’t stomach it. I closed my laptop down and screamed. I screamed so hard my throat began to hurt. I screamed so hard that Danny stopped playing the drums and came upstairs to see what was wrong.

“Get out of my face, you little brat!” I said, howling, as he stood in the door with his jaw hanging open, clutching his drumsticks as if he planned to beat me with them. “Go on! Scram! And close the door behind you!”

God! I just hated her! All I could think of was running away. But the fact of the matter was that I had nowhere to run to. Aunt Libby would let me stay at her apartment, but given that she and Meryl were best friends, I don’t think she’d let me stay more than one night. Polly was always in the swimming pool — and even if she wasn’t, her apartment was so small that it barely had room for
Polly.
I reached for the phone to call Daddo — but then I remembered that he’d gone to some medical conference somewhere. I called anyway and left a message, but even if Daddo called me back right away, I was still stuck. At home. With
Meryl.
In my mind, I scrolled through everyone I could think of, and in the end, the only person who was even a remote possibility, the only person who might be able to help, was Robin, and we’d just had a fight.

I called her anyway. “What is it?” she said when she heard my voice. “What happened?”

“I can’t even tell you. I hate them!”

“What? Are your parents getting divorced or something?”

“No, my parents aren’t getting a divorce! Why should they get a divorce? It’s me who wants a divorce. From my mother.”

She didn’t say anything. I couldn’t even hear her breathe. “She wrote another article about me,” I finally said.

“I know.”

“What do you mean, you know?”

“Some jerk is sending it all around. I just saw it.”

It was even worse than I thought.

“Why didn’t you say so if you already knew? Why didn’t you call me to see if I was okay?”

“But, Becka . . .”

“You’re supposed to be on my side on this, not sneaking around reading articles about me and then not saying anything.”

I slammed down the phone, locked my door, and threw myself on the bed and cried and cried until at last Meryl came home, knocked on my door, and said: “Whatever it is, I’m here for you.” WAS SHE FRIGGING JOKING?

“You wrote about me again! It was on the Internet!”

“No, I didn’t,” she said.

“Don’t lie! You’re ruining my life! I’m going to kill myself!”

“Don’t joke about things like that, Becka!”

I don’t know why, but the only thing I could think of to do was wrap myself up in Arnaud’s old raincoat. It smelled like him. In some ways, it even
felt
like him. Then I remembered the promise he’d made me make him:
I’ll return it to you someday.

I logged on and wrote him a quick email: “I’m coming to Paris over the winter holidays. I can’t wait to see you! Love, Becka.” Amazingly, he wrote me back immediately:
“Enchanté!”

In the middle of the night, it started to rain again. I could hear the water pounding on the roof. When I woke up, it was still raining, and everything looked smoky and gray. I wrote a second email to Arnaud: “I have something special for you, a surprise. I’ll tell you when I see you.” Then I emailed Robin: “If you want, you can have my Donna Karan.” I meant it, too. It had suddenly gone from being my favorite ever to something that made me sick. I didn’t want to wear anything from Meryl! I didn’t want any of her stupid presents, or false promises, or glasses of cherry soda for as long as I lived!

Then I got dressed, grabbed a bagel, wrapped myself up in Arnaud’s raincoat, and headed out into the drizzle. As the door slammed behind me, I could sense Meryl staring after me.

A
few days after
that awkward, and I mean AWKWARD, brunch, I finally decided to actually wear the white jeans that Mommy had given me for my birthday. Of course, Mommy was thrilled — she’d been bugging me to wear them ever since she’d bought them for me, and I’d been feeling incredibly guilty about
not
wearing them. But I guess between all the girls being so nice to me, and how much stronger I was getting in the swimming pool, I was beginning to feel more confident in general. It was getting chilly, so I wore them with a long-sleeved blue button-down blouse, giving me a superclean and sporty look, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I actually liked what I saw. True, I was slightly worried that once I got to school, the entire student body would stare at my back side. Even so, for the first time ever, I put on red lipstick (I usually wear pink lip gloss or nothing), and when I got to school, the first person I saw was Robin, who came right up to me and said: “Girl, you look hot!” I
felt
like I looked good, too, like even though Mommy and I lived in a small apartment and were constantly struggling with money, we had class. So it didn’t even bother me all that much when I found out that my lab partner had transferred into another chemistry lab, and because of the numbers, Mr. Green put me with Justine and John. Actually, I was happy about being lab partners with Justine, because, just for starters, she was smart. The problem was John. Freshman year he’d sat behind me in English, making nonstop commentary about the size of my shoulders and arms. In middle school he’d given me a chocolate Easter bunny with its paws and ears chewed off. In third grade he chased me around the playground, threatening to pull down my underpants. Even in kindergarten he’d tormented me, mainly by trying to pull the heads off my Barbies. Now he sat hunched over his notebook, scribbling furiously away, completely oblivious to what Mr. Green was saying, and only looking up long enough to say: “Oh, golly, it’s Polly.” Or: “Got a dolly, Polly?” Or my favorite: “You look like a collie, Polly.”

“And ‘john’ is the thing that people go potty in,” Justine countered.

“Put a sock in it, Mizz Frizz,” he said.

But it was as practice was winding down that things really got amazing. Before I even got a chance to take off my cap and goggles, Coach Fruit asked me to stick around for another minute. When all the other kids had gone into the locker room, he told me that he wanted to work privately with me alone every day, after regular practice.

I was so startled I didn’t know what to say other than “What?”

“After practice,” he repeated. “I want to work with you, one-on-one.”

“You want to work with me?” I sounded like a parrot.

“I’m thinking twenty minutes. I want to get you to your edge.”

“My edge?” (Polly want a cracker?)

“So what do you think? Want to give it a try?”

I did, but suddenly, as I stood there dripping wet, the thought of my huge butt made me feel like I’d morphed into an elephant.

“I’ve already told you that you’re talented — that you’ve got what it takes. But now that I’ve seen you in the water day after day, and seen you under pressure, competing in events, how you related to your teammates, well, I feel that I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t try to get you where you should be.”

“I thought I was already there,” I said. “I mean, you really think I can do better?”

I meant it. In only a few weeks with Coach Fruit coaching us, my times had improved by three seconds, four seconds, even, in breaststroke, six seconds, which is, like, almost unheard-of. Not that my
finishing
times were unheard-of. My finishing times were good, but it wasn’t like I was breaking records, or even Western High records. But I was managing to beat my own times a lot, especially in my strongest event, five-hundred-meter freestyle. I loved freestyle. It felt like flying. I’d hit the water and, just like that, I was pure motion, pure movement, like the water was pushing me along.

“You can do even better.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.” Right then, Coach Fruit grinned this grin that was so cute it was like he was some little kid who’d been caught sneaking cookies. It wasn’t just his smile, either.
He
was cute, like, all over, with his Dennis the Menace blond hair and big grin, and did I mention that he had two huge dimples, too? I wondered how old he was. No wonder his girlfriend was always hanging around. I would, too, if I were dating him. Which, of course, I wasn’t and never would, and it was ridiculous even having a thought like that cross my mind. In fact, no sooner had I thought it than Bella herself showed up, her car keys in her hand. “Ready to roll when you are,” she said.

He gave her a “just one second” sign.

“Okay, then,” he said, taking a step toward me. “We have a deal?” He was so close that I could feel his shadow covering me. Was he going to hug me? Push me in the water? The thought even crossed my mind that he was about to
kiss
me. But of course that was stupid, for all kinds of reason, including — especially — that Bella was waiting for him by the door. Instead, he gave me a little punch on my right shoulder, the kind that says: “Way to go.”

I was so happy that I forgot about the kind of stupid, trivial things that usually drive me crazy, such as the fact that ever since Mommy had dragged me to that breakfast, I’d wanted to
say
something to Becka. Such as: What makes you think you’re so great? I forgot that the last time Mommy and I visited Poppy in Queens, he kept calling me “Patty” and dribbled his chicken soup all down his front. I forgot that Burton had, once again, totally ignored my birthday. I forgot that I had a math test that I wasn’t prepared for. I even forgot about my big butt!

“That’s great about the extra coaching,” Mommy said when I got home. “Your coach must really think you’re good.”

“All I know is that I’m so hungry I could eat Hank.”

“Woof,” Hank said.

“You know what?” Mommy said. “I think I’m going to email to your father tonight, to tell him. Don’t you think he’d want to know?”

“Burton?” I said. “Burton doesn’t even know I swim. Why would he care that I was getting extra coaching?”

“I don’t know,” Mommy said. “It’s just that — well, he is your father. I’m sure he’d be pleased for you.”

“I doubt it. He doesn’t even visit Poppy. Why would he care about my swimming?”

She just gave me one of her sad little smiles. But the idea that Mommy thought he might actually give a flying fig about my getting extra coaching made me want to cry.

It’s just that she tried so hard for me. I wished she wouldn’t, but she did. Like that breakfast that she and Becka’s mom cooked up? Poor Justine. I wanted to kill Becka. What was her problem? But afterward, Mommy was like: “I’m so glad we did that! Aren’t you?”

Now she was bustling around the kitchen, telling me that one day I’d be swimming in the Olympics. And the next day, when I got home? On my pillow was a box. Inside it was a silver charm in the shape of a dolphin, dangling on a chain. When I put it on and saw myself in the mirror, the dolphin looked like it was actually swimming. Something about the way the light caught it made it seem like it had a life of its own, swimming in the shallows of my neck. When Mommy saw me she threw her arms around me, saying, “My own little dolphin. The most beautiful creature in the sea.”

Usually, when Mommy surprised me with presents, I felt guilty about them. I loved my new jeans, but I
still
felt guilty about them. I felt a slight twinge of guilt about the dolphin, too, but no sooner had I hit the water after school on Friday then all my guilt disappeared. I’d never felt calmer in the water, more sure of myself, more powerful.

“I like your necklace,” Coach Fruit said as I climbed up out of the pool after practice. I was breathing hard, exhausted and exhilarated and sopping wet.

“My mom gave it to me.”

“A dolphin for a dolphin,” Coach said, giving me one of his adorable grins.

“Looking good!” the beautiful Bella called from the stands. Compared to her, I felt like a giant dripping sponge. I wondered if she knew how perfect her life was. Even so, I’d had such a great day that I felt that somehow I was at a turning point, that my whole life, mine and Mommy’s, was going to get easier. . . .

But when I got home, Mommy told me that Poppy had pneumonia. “He’s pretty sick,” Mommy said. “Patty’s worried about him.” Even though Poppy flirted with all his nurses, Patty was the one who spent the most time with him. She was a large pink woman who always wore a pin that said: and you can call me your majesty.

“How sick?”

“She said we better come visit him soon.”

It’s hard for me to talk about Poppy without crying, because, first of all, he was the closest thing I ever had to a father, and also, because he was
Poppy
, and I loved him. When he’d gotten too sick and old to live by himself anymore, Mommy and I had talked a lot about having him move in with us, but in the end we’d decided that we couldn’t take care of him properly, and even though he could have had my room, he wouldn’t even be able to get up and down the stairs. Then we thought about moving closer to him, to Queens, but that didn’t seem like such a brilliant idea, either. In the end, it was Poppy himself who’d decided to move into the old-age home, which he called “Senility Camp” and where he had a whole group of nurses whom he flirted with nonstop.

“How soon?”

“I think we should go tomorrow,” Mommy said.

We found Poppy was waiting for us with an oxygen mask covering his nose, and watery eyes that looked like melting icebergs. He was skinny and frail, with brown and red bruises on his skinny arms.

“My two favorite girls,” he whispered.

I kissed him on the top of his bald, pink, bony head.

“How are you feeling, Poppy?”

“Lovely. Isn’t it a glorious day for a picnic? What do you say?”

“Poppy, you’re such a flirt,” Mommy said, squeezing his hand.

It made me so sad, seeing him like that. But even with an oxygen mask on and struggling to breathe, Poppy radiated a kind of happy, gentle sweetness. When I was little, and he still lived in the third-floor apartment where Burton had grown up, he’d let me play dress-up with my grandmother’s old things, and would then take me out for an ice-cream cone or a hamburger. And there we’d be, me in my grandmother’s ancient hats and silk nightgowns, sitting across from Poppy, in his bow ties (he always wore bow ties) and blazers.

Then Poppy began to cough, and another of Poppy’s nurses, Linda, came hurrying in to prop him up and adjust his oxygen mask.

We sat there for a little longer with him, until, around lunchtime, Poppy fell asleep. On the way out the door, Mommy made Linda promise that she’d call if Poppy took a turn for the worse.

It scared me, seeing him like that. Not because I thought that Poppy would last forever. Over the past few years he’d gone from sort of okay to really-not-so-okay, so I knew that it was only a matter of time until we got the saddest phone call of them all. It was more that, as we cruised past the rusting hulks of what had once been factories and through poor neighborhoods of old brick houses that looked bowed down by the force of the wind, I realized, as if for the first time, how truly alone Mommy and I were in the world, how little we had, outside of each other (and Hank), and how precarious life itself was. With Poppy gone, we’d be more alone than ever. If it weren’t for my swimming, well, I’m not sure I would have been able to see much of a future for myself — for myself and for Mommy — at all.