Tales From My Closet (19 page)

It felt like a million years until my next event, but it was really no more than forty minutes until the one hundred meter, my strongest event, was called. This one called for a fast start, an all-out approach, and a strategy that called for slow breathing and constant, all-you’ve-got strokes. I’d actually done it once in under a minute, and I was hoping to do even better this time. The announcer announced the next event. I stretched, adjusted my goggles, and climbed onto the block. There was maybe ten seconds left until the last event was over and it would be our turn to start, when I glanced up into the stands again, thinking I’d wave to Mommy. But I couldn’t even find Mommy, let alone wave to her. Instead, my eyes stopped to rest on this gorgeous blond woman wearing a white sweater over white jeans:

Bella.

“Swimmers get ready.”

I crouched into racing position.

“Get ready, get set!”

She was blowing a kiss at Coach Fruit.

And the horn blasted, launching me up and over the block, until, boom, I hit the water. But instead of it opening up for me, like a Polly-shaped pocket, it slapped me at the top of my head, angry and hard. Already I was behind — I could sense the bubbles left behind by the girls in the lanes on either side of me — and as I struggled to catch up, to find my rhythm, to be the champion that Coach Fruit thought I was, I felt a sharp pain, like a knife sinking into my calf, and barely got to the far end of the pool before I had to stop in utter agony. “Oh my God, oh my God!” I said over and over again as I hauled myself, limping, out of the pool. I tried not to cry — not in front of all those people — but I did anyway. Thank God I was already soaked, or Coach Fruit — or worse, Mommy — would have noticed.

One of the refs told me to sit down, and as I sat, he worked my calf, massaging the cramp away. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “It happens to the best of them.” But all I could think of was how disappointed Coach would be in me — and how I’d not only gone and ruined my own chances of getting any kind of college scholarship money, but sunk the team’s standing as well.

The last thing I wanted was to look up to see Coach Fruit coming over — but of course he did. As Justine would say: He was my coach, and that was his job. “The same thing has happened to me,” he said, giving me a reassuring pat on the back. “It’s all right, Polly. Really. I promise. It is.”

But it wasn’t all right at all. I was a fifteen-year-old kid who could swim, with a skinny mother who barely made enough money to pay the rent and a creepy father who could never love either one of us, and worst of all, I’d never see my Poppy again. In a few days it would be Christmas, and once again, Mommy will have scraped up every penny to buy me something nice. Even after I got up to walk back to the rest of the team, and everyone started clapping, I couldn’t bear to look up into the stands.

O
n Christmas Eve
, my parents had a fight over whether to make stuffing with or without roasted chestnuts. Dad wanted them because that’s how his mother had made Christmas stuffing, and Mom said: “Guess what? I’m Jewish. You make the stuffing.” To which he said: “You know I have a thousand exams to grade. Can’t you do it this year?”

“
This
year? I do it
every
year.”

“I help.”

“No, you
say
you help, but you don’t. You show up in time to make the salad dressing.”

“For God’s sake. What do you want with me? I have a job, you know.”

There was a pause. Then: “Have you started drinking
already
? You just don’t care about your family at all, do you?”

“Keep your voice down. The children . . .”

“As if they don’t know! As if they don’t already know that you prefer Scotch to them.”

“Give me a break. I’m doing the best I can.”

“Some best.”

Christmas sucked. Ben came down with the flu and went around the house coughing and hacking up green gunk. Becka, my former best friend, flat-out refused to pay for the damage she’d done to Daphne’s pink dress. The dry cleaner told me that he’d never be able to get the stain out completely. Mom and Dad gave me a pair of cheap-looking light-brown leather boots that I instantly hated. And I was terrified of what Daphne would say to me when I told her about the ruined dress.

A few days later, I found out.

“I’m sorry,” Daphne said, her lashes heavy with mascara. “But don’t look so downcast, hon. You just have to buy it back from me, and with your discount” — she bent over a calculator, and started adding up and subtracting figures — “you still come out ahead.” Then she reached into her cash drawer and handed me some twenties and a five. It just covered the amount I owed Mom, plus enough to buy me a new bottle of nail polish or a double latte.

“That’s all?” I said.

“Like I said, I’m sorry, hon. But I was clear with you about it. Otherwise, whenever I lent a dress out, I’d run the risk of a girl running off with it.”

“But I didn’t run off with it,” I said. “I’d never —”

“I know you wouldn’t, but no matter what, it’s not the end of the world.”

It was no use to explaining what had happened. She wouldn’t care. And why would she? I was just some kid who helped out during the holiday rush.

Trying to hide my disappointment, I shrugged. “Okay. Thanks.”

Just then my cell phone rang: Becka. What did she want? “Excuse me,” I said as Daphne returned to her work.

“Oh my God,” she said. “My mother is going around talking about me!”

“And?” I said impatiently.

“I don’t know what to do! I’m going to kill her! Or myself! I mean it, Robin.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, just get over here. Please! If you were really my friend, you’d get over here right now!”

“But I’m at Daphne’s Designer. I had to buy back that dress you ruined,” I tried to explain.

“Listen, Robin. I know I screwed up, okay? And I feel bad about it. But what do you want me to do? I already said I’m sorry!”

“You did?”

“That’s so like you, isn’t it? Everything that happens is my fault.”

“But it
is
your fault, Becka. And you never admitted it.”

“You know what? If that’s how you feel? Forget about everything. Forget we were ever friends! You can hang out with Um and all her freak friends for all I care!”

“Not everyone’s parents give them everything they want! I worked hard for that money!” But Becka has already hung up.

“Hon?” Daphne said as I put my cell phone back in my purse. “You okay?”

“Okay?” I said. “Okay. No, I’m not okay! I’m extremely not okay.” And there was something so sympathetic, so open and straightforward and plain old bullshit-free about the way that Daphne was looking at me that the whole story poured out — about how I got my summer internship only because Becka had interceded for me, how much I loved clothes, my parents’ constant fighting, and finally, how Becka had gone and spilled wine on Daphne’s pink cashmere dress.

“That
is
a whole lot of drama, ain’t it?” Daphne said when I was done.

“I guess.”

“And you say you want to go into fashion?”

“It’s kind of a dream of mine,” I said. “Too bad both my parents think I’m such a loser.”

“My daughter’s into fashion, too,” she said. “I guess that’s not such a surprise, though.”

“I guess not.”

“But, hon, I’ve got to ask you: If you’re so into fashion, and I don’t doubt you are, why are you going around wearing pajamas?”

I looked down at myself. I was wearing the same heavy knit bell-bottom pajama pants I’d worn for my interview, a long-sleeved T-shirt topped with a puffer vest, and a woolen scarf that I’d gotten for Christmas.

“It’s not that you don’t look cute,” Daphne said. “You could wear a sack and still look cute. But I still have to wonder why a girl with your pizzazz is wearing PJs. When you first came in here to ask for a job, my first thought was: Where are this girl’s parents?”

“
What?
”

“Don’t be like that, sweetie. I understand. I mean, when I was your age, I was into all kinds of out-there fashion — hippie platform shoes, peasant blouses, you name it. But not once did I wear a nightie anywhere except to bed.”

I was on the verge of tears. But how could I explain it to Daphne — or to anyone — that in some sense, I
didn’t
have parents. Or at least not the kind I’d once had, the kind who bothered to make sure that I was tucked into bed at night, and had been read a story, and had warm clothes to wear in winter.

“Tell you what, though,” Daphne said. “At least you’ve got yourself one classy dress. Maybe you can have it dyed black, and then, when you have an occasion, you’ll knock ’em dead.”

It was a nice idea: me, in elegant suits or simple, shirtwaist dresses, in ankle pants with excellent high heels or out-there bubble dresses with lace and silk. But it was only an idea. On my budget, I could barely get dressed at all. My one comfort was that at least I’d made enough to pay Mom back.

As I turned to go, Ben texted me, saying:

I was going to text him right back, but right then my eyes fell on a new shipment of boots that Daphne hadn’t completely unpacked yet. And I saw them: the boots of my dreams, the exact same ones Becka had. “Would I be able to get discount on these?” I asked Daphne. To which she said: “I don’t see why not.” When I walked out of Daphne’s, I had seventeen dollars left, and the most beautiful boots in the world.

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I couldn’t wait to get home so I could log on and see the blog that Ben was all worked up about.
If
I could sneak past Mom and Dad and run upstairs to my room before anyone noticed that I was carrying a shopping bag.

For once, I was in luck. Mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway, which probably meant that she already returning unwanted presents. Inside, Dad was slumped over, asleep in his favorite chair in front of the fireplace. Ben was in the TV room, watching a football game.

But as I tiptoed past Dad, Ben started hollering and cursing and screaming, “Off-limits, morons!” And Dad woke up.

“What do you have there?” he said, indicating the shopping bag I was carrying.

“Nothing,” I said. “I went to Daphne’s to pick up my paycheck. And she gave me some . . .” I had to think fast. “Some fruit!”

“Did she?” Dad said from deep down in his throat, like there was a snake coiled in there that made it hard to get the words out.

“Apples!” I said as I headed past him toward the foot of the stairs.

“Apples, huh?” Now he was standing up, and his words were slurred. Meantime, from the next room, Ben was screaming: “No! No! Say it ain’t so, Joe! You guys are killing me! KILLING ME!”

“I like apples,” he said, more clearly this time. “I’d like to eat an apple just about now.” He was giving me this look that just about paralyzed me, but right when I thought I’d be busted, he slumped into his chair again, and said: “Where’s your mother?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know where your mother is?”

“PLEASE DEAR GOD DON’T LET THIS BE HAPPENING. RUN, YOU IDIOT, RUN!”

“Sorry!”

“That’s what I say, too,” he said. “
Sorry.
But does that change anything?”

“Sorry, Dad, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s what your mother says,” he said, slurring his words again. “That she doesn’t understand what I’m talking about. Even though I’m a professor of law. Hundreds of students understand what I say, write down what I say, and in fact hang on my every word, but she can’t understand me.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

“So let me ask you this,” he said. “Do you, my only daughter, understand me? Do you? Do you?”

“I guess?”

“Just answer the question! If I’d talked to my dad the way you talk to me, he would have shut me up but good.”

“But I didn’t say anything!”

“You’re being fresh!”

“What’s your problem?”

Suddenly I realized that I’d heard those words before. Coming from my own mouth. But this time, Ben was too slow to come in and rescue me. This time, my twin brother burst into the living room a few seconds
after
Dad had hauled off and hit me, sending me and my beautiful, expensive black leather boots sprawling.