Tales From My Closet (12 page)

“Isn’t she just a picture?” Mama Lee said, beaming.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Mama Lee!”

Finally she looked over at me and, seeing my dress, smiled a smile so big I felt like I could curl up in it and never come out. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” she said, “I brought you something. It’s over there in that bag in the corner. See?” Glancing through the little crowd of relatives who’d gathered in the foyer, I saw a Macy’s shopping bag next to the coat closet. “What is it?” I asked. But just then Mama came out of the kitchen, still wearing her apron, and telling everyone else to go to the dining room and find a seat, pulled me away, saying, “I’m having a little last-minute crisis and really need your help in the kitchen.” It wasn’t really a crisis, of course: It was some burned mashed potatoes. But it gave Mama time to scold me about my dress, telling me that Thanksgiving was no time look like I was playing dress-up. I loved my dress, though: I thought it was beautiful and elegant and mysterious. “But, Mama!” I began to protest, but she just hushed me and directed me to start ladling out the soup. By the time I’d finished helping Mama, there was only one place left at the table, between my eight-year-old cousin Scooter and a friend of my father’s who was going through a divorce and didn’t have anywhere else to go for Thanksgiving. Across from me were Mama’s aunt Ruth, my cousin Ashley, and Dad’s divorced friend’s friend who was visiting him from, like, Poland or somewhere. Mama Lee and RG were sitting side by side at the far other end of the table.

“What a wonderful feast!” Dad’s divorced friend said.

“Do you have a Wii?” Scooter said.

“No.”

“We do. Ha ha! Get it?”

“How old are you, now, honey?” my mother’s aunt asked, and when I told her that I was fifteen, she said: “You are? You look like you couldn’t be a day over twelve.”

“Well, I am,” I said. “Fifteen.”

“Well, shucks,” she said. Then, turning to Ashley, who was wearing a white sweaterdress that made her look practically grown-up, she said: “And you! How many boyfriends do you have?”

“None,” Ashley said, blushing.

“I can’t believe that! Oh! They must all be chasing you! I feel sorry for them, I really do.”

On the other end of the table, I heard RG saying that Princeton sends a greater percentage of its students to graduate school than any other college in the country. “I guess it’s never too early to start thinking about your future,” Daddy said. Scooter started kicking the table leg, my great-aunt told me that when she was my age she enjoyed nothing better than going ice-skating on the pond they had out back out where they all live, in central Jersey somewhere, and I, not knowing what else to say, said: “That’s nice, I guess.”

Then the conversation lulled and, in the ensuing silence, Dad’s friend turned to me and said: “What about you, Ann? Do you want to go to Princeton, too?”

“As if,” RG said.

“Actually,” Daddy said, “Ann’s still a little young to be thinking of it. She’s a sophomore. Next year is the year it all starts up again.”

“What kinds of things are you interested in, Ann?” Daddy’s friend persisted. He wasn’t that old but he was practically bald. His face and head were a pale pinkish red, and I could tell he was trying hard to be nice to me.

“Actually, I like fashion.”

“Ann joined Debate Team this year,” Mama cut in from her end of the table. “Her father and I are looking forward to her first debate. That is, if she ever gets around and telling us when it is!”

“Are you kidding?” RG interjected. “It’s late November — almost time for Regionals.”

“You never said anything about that, Ann,” Mama said. Everyone was looking at me.

“Just because I don’t like to brag!”

“But, honey . . .”

“What’s Debate Team?” my great-aunt said. “You mean when you argue about current events? I think we used to call that the Public Speaking Club.”

My stomach was beginning to churn, and even though it wasn’t, my bladder suddenly felt like it was so full it would burst. “Just because I don’t tell you about every little thing I do, just because I don’t tell the world about all my brilliant accomplishments all the time,” I said. “I mean, can we just drop it?”

“I think that’s a very good idea,” Daddy said. Everyone was looking at me as if I’d just announced I was pregnant with triplets. Even Mama Lee. And I just sat there, like a frozen lump of crud wrapped in the most beautiful dress in the world. I felt so bad that it wasn’t until nearly two days later that I remembered about Mama Lee’s present. It was still waiting for me, in the corner by the coat closet: a Macy’s bag filled with old
Vogue
magazines.

M
y mother
did not take kindly to my new raincoat, even though, as I explained to her about a thousand times, Becka had insisted that if she didn’t give it to me, she’d give it to the Red Cross.

“It’s just not right,” she said. “Such an expensive coat. Are you sure you’re telling me the truth?”

I hadn’t even wanted the coat. Or rather, though I loved the coat, I didn’t want to take it the way Becka was giving it to me — thrusting it at me as if it smelled like a dead animal. I made her promise to take it back the minute she changed her mind. But my mother didn’t want to hear any of that. Instead, she wanted to talk about my going into therapy.

“Therapy?” I said. “Are you kidding? But nothing’s wrong with me.”

“Except that you have a shopping addiction.”

“You’ve flipped, Mom. Just because I ran up those charges on your credit card last summer doesn’t mean I have an
addiction
. First of all, it was a mistake. What’s more, I paid you back every penny!”

I had, too. Every time I’d made money babysitting, I’d turned it over to Mom. It had wiped me out, but it was worth it to get her off my back.

“I don’t think so,” Mom said.

“What are you talking about?”

When my mother is angry at me, she doesn’t yell. Instead, she speaks very slowly, her voice pitched low. She was talking that way now, enunciating every word as if it were made of ice.

“I want to show you something.”

“What?” It was all I could do to keep my knees from trembling. We were in her third-floor office, with the wind pushing gusts of rain onto the roof and down the gutters.

“Come see,” she said, gesturing with a tilt of her head to her computer. She made a few keystrokes and scrolled down. “You paid over two hundred dollars to a store called Here. On — let’s see — August second.”

I was confused. Because, yes, I had spent a lot of money on those fantastic boots, but it was
my
money, coming out of
my
bank account.
Three months ago.

“You want to explain this to me?”

My mouth hung open, like I was at the dentist’s. “I don’t understand,” I finally said.

“Well, I do,” Mom said. “You tried to pay for something you bought with your debit card. But you didn’t have enough money in your account to cover it. So I got stuck with the bill.”

“What?”

“Because you’re a minor, our accounts are connected.”

“But, Mom!” I said.

“You have a problem. A spending problem. This is the second time you’ve gone into debt to me over expensive clothes that you’ve bought that you don’t need. Honey, you really do need to see someone, to nip this problem in the bud.”

“Nothing’s wrong with me!”

“Except that you can’t control your buying habits.”

“You want to send me to a
shrink
?”

“What do you suggest?”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “You know who goes to shrinks? Weirdo kids who are flunking out. Or girls who
cut themselves
. Juvenile deliquents with anger management issues. Or Ben.
He’s
the one who needs therapy, not me. He jumps on my back at school and thinks it’s hilarious.” He did, too. I wanted to kill him. “You can’t do this to me, Mom! I get good grades. I babysit every other second. I’m
normal
!”

Without even blinking, she turned to look at me. It was the kind of expression your teacher makes right before she gives you a detention. She wore an off-white, slightly stained cable-knit sweater, and her red lipstick was the consistency of rubber. Had she
ever
been young?

“One way or another,” Mom said, “you now owe me — let’s see.” She stopped to make a couple of calculations. “Two hundred and eighty-three dollars and twenty-one cents.”

“But the boots weren’t even that expensive. . . .”

“But you also spent money at, let’s see — Starbucks. A place called Nails of Utopia. And . . . the Regal Bagel.”

“But I paid you down to the penny. All that babysitting I did, Mom. Those brats nearly killed me. I work twice as hard as Ben, but you don’t get on him about the stupid stuff he does. I just don’t understand what you want from me!”

Raising her eyebrows, like I was the dumbest dum-dum in the world, she said: “First of all, this isn’t about Ben.”

“He jumps out of the janitor’s closet at school and freaks people out!”

“And as for you, you have a choice. Go and talk to someone about it, or I’m going to close down your checking account completely, and you can live on your allowance money. I’ll give you a couple of days to think it over.”

“Mom!” I whimpered. But she’d already turned her attention back to whatever it was she was doing on her computer.

“I’m going to run away to Mexico,” I told Becka the next day in school, only Becka, as usual, wasn’t listening.

She was too busy staring at Justine and Ann, who were sitting with a bunch of other girls a few tables over. “Would you take a look at Um and Ann. The two of them, I mean — they look like extras from some ancient TV show.”

“Didn’t you and Ann used to be friends?”

“Yeah, when I was five.”

“I think they look good,” I said, glancing over at them. What I was sure of was that they were cracking each other up, like Becka and I used to do, and as I watched them, I felt a mixture of longing and envy floating up my throat.

“You would think that,” Becka said. “Given how, er, original your own style choices have become.”

I was wearing a pair of Ben’s flannel PJ bottoms tucked into my purple boots and cinched with a wide belt, with a tight-fitting black sweater. Because what was my choice? The truth was, ever since my internship, I’d started seriously lusting after what I can only call, gag me with a spoon, the Emma Bitch look: classy and classic of the kind it takes money to buy. Meantime, as usual, Becka looked unbelievably incredibly ridiculously fantastic, her killer jeans tucked into the most gorgeous pair of low-heeled black leather boots, which I coveted and would have given my right arm to own — not that Becka would have ever thought that way, given that her parents bought her everything she wanted. Those boots! That gorgeous Donna Karan — a real one, too! The trip to Paris! The cashmere sweaters!

“What’s your problem?” I finally sputtered.

“
My
problem?
You’re
the one who needs to see a shrink.”

I was so angry that I felt like hitting her, and opened my mouth to say something when Ben, with his impeccable timing, came over with our totally weird cousin, John — when I say he’s weird I mean he’s so weird that kids at school had started calling him Weird John — who, for some reason, Ben didn’t mind, and a couple of his geeky, nerdy, gawky friends (hard to believe he had them, but he did) and said: “Just the girls we were looking for.”

“We’re doing a survey,” John said, blinking his mascara-coated eyelashes. “For the newspaper.”

“Yes?” Becka said regally.

“And we wanted to ask you,” he continued, but Ben took it over again and said: “About clothing. As both of you are known for your high fashion, we wanted to know whether it is true that there’s a high correlation between shopping activity and neurosis.”

“I’m going to frigging kill you, Ben,” I said as the whole bunch of them, howling with laughter, turned and walked out of the cafeteria.

Two days later, Mom came into my room while I was doing my homework, sat on the side of my bed, and said: “I know you don’t want to see a therapist. So I’m going to make it easy for you. Go and talk to Meryl.”

I just looked at her — at this stranger who had once been my mother. She was wearing, get this, pink corduroys and a brown pullover sweater. There were faint traces of lipstick in the tiny lines at the corners of her mouth. Her hair looked like it had been frosted with fireplace ash. She and Dad had just had another fight, this time because Mom had thrown out all the liquor in the house. They’d yelled so loudly that I thought the house would fall down, until finally Dad had left.

“Great! So just head off to a bar, why don’t you?” Mom had screamed as he got into the car.

“And what if I do?” he screamed back. “Are you going to ground me?”

Now she said: “I really don’t think you get how serious this is. Which is why I already called her. And Meryl — you’ve known her forever, honey. She’d be a great person to talk to.”

“Becka’s mom? And you’ve already talked to her? Mom, this is my business, and you’re blabbing it to the world? Have you
lost your freaking mind
?”

“Don’t speak to me like that,” she said. “It’s either that or you go to someone else. I already have the names of several good therapists.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Listen: You can either talk to Meryl, whom you’ve known your whole life and is like another mother to you, or I’ll make an appointment with someone else. Your choice.”

“And what if I refuse, which I do?”

“I already told you. Your cash card goes in the garbage disposal.”

“I swear to God!” I said.

“And you’ll be working for me on weekends, too. There are a lot of things I could use some help with around here.”

I
had
known Meryl practically my whole life. When I fell off the toolshed in Becka’s backyard, landing on the rosebushes, it was Meryl who’d carried me into her house and wiped me down with a cold washcloth. When I had this huge crush on this boy named Sam Smith in sixth grade, and he was mean to me, it was Meryl who’d made me laugh about it. She’d even helped smooth things over with my mom so I could work at Libby Fine. But she had a way of looking at me, with her eyes just resting on me, like she could read all my thoughts, that always made me feel slightly weirded out. Becka called it her therapist look.

She had on her therapist look the afternoon Mom dropped me off at her downtown office. Opening the door, she said: “I just want you to know, Robin, that I don’t consider your being here an appointment. But I did agree with your mom that perhaps there’s something in your thinking that’s tripping you up, and that maybe I could help you get to the bottom of it.”

Nothing like knowing that my mother is telling Becka’s mother every last thing about me to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

“All I did,” I said, settling myself down on one of the two ultramodern chairs she had, “was spend too much money on some boots. It was a mistake. I know it wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own. I mean, I know I love clothes. But I already told Mom that I’d pay her back.”

“Okay,” she said, settling herself onto the other chair. “Let’s talk about that, shall we?”

“I already told you. It was a mistake.”

“You just said you love clothes,” she said.

I shrugged. Like she didn’t already know that.

“So tell me about what you’re wearing now.”

I was wearing an ivory-colored silk pajama top with big white buttons over my favorite jeans, with the eggplant-colored boots that had gotten me into so much trouble, and my usual array of necklaces.