“Do you have to bring that?” Helen Bocelli pleaded with her daughter.
“Yes I do,” Ellie replied, holding the yellow ragged teddy bear under her arm. “It’s my continuity. You may have moved me several times in my life, city-to-city, uncle-to-uncle, dad-to-dad, wherever — but Beastie Bear here, he always comes with me. Taking away my security so early in life could cause irreparable damage. I would have thought that was covered in those parenting magazines you’ve subscribed to over the years.”
“You’re fifteen, Ellie,” Helen sighed, “so I’ll ask you again, nicely. Isn’t it time you let go of that ragged old bear?”
Ellie looked at her mother in mocked horror, her newly applied black lipstick adding forced drama to the dropped-jaw look she was trying hard to pull off. She flicked her long black hair over her shoulder in defiance before assuming a stance of implied superiority.
“Do you have to bring THAT?” she asked her mother, pointing to a van in the driveway. “I mean, I’m glad you’re dumping him, but don’t you think it’s time you let go yourself? By law I think he gets fifty-percent of your communal property, and I’m thinking the stupid van is a good place to start. Put it on his side of the equation.”
Helen studied the white vehicle. It was an eyesore. “I’m just borrowing it, Ellie,” she said. “Our stuff won’t fit in the back of the BMW. I have to get us to your Nan’s somehow.”
“In a van marked ‘TONY’S EXTERMINATING SERVICE’? I’m sure Nan will be impressed. I can hear her neighbors now. ‘Do you have cockroaches, Mrs. LaRose’? No, that’s just my daughter and granddaughter coming to live with me for a while. They like to travel in style.”
Helen sighed.
“Think about this, Mom,” Ellie continued. “Do you actually think it will be easy for me to make friends when my mother makes me show up in a bug-mobile? Like, hello?”
Helen looked for the slightest sign of compassion in her daughter’s make-up blackened eyes. There was none.
“What?” Ellie asked. “Is there something wrong with my thought process or something? I’m a straight-A student, so that would be a bit questionable, but I suppose it could happen.”
Helen admitted to herself that her daughter had a point.
“I know, I know. Just get in the van, Ellie,” she sighed. “I’ll be bringing it back to Tony once we’ve settled in.” She felt a loose strand of hair fall down across her neck. She reached back and placed it back into the bun at the back of her head.
There is nothing worse, Helen thought to herself, than having a fifteen-year-old daughter who is more together than you are.
Helen had agonized about leaving her husband Tony and moving Ellie to a new home for weeks, but Ellie had packed her bags in less than an hour when she had told her the news. In fact, Helen realized, it was almost as if Ellie had been expecting it.
“Don’t your feel just a little bit sad, Ellie?” she asked, throwing the last suitcase into the van.
Ellie could barely contain herself. “He’s a loser, Mom,” she said. “Always was, always will be. I don’t know what you ever saw in him. He’s not good looking, he’s not rich, he’s just ― hairy. But I’ll pretend to be sad if you want me to be.”
Ellie pouted, pulling her black lipsticked bottom lip out as far as she could, just for effect.
Helen thought for a moment before answering her daughter. Tony was ungodly hairy. “What did I see in him? I don’t know. I suppose I was looking for a protector for us. Tony is big and strong. He’s really a nice man, Ellie. You just never gave him a chance.”
“Do you have one of those fun-house mirrors in your bedroom or something? Tony? Big and strong?” Ellie snapped back. “Mom, the man has a complex. He likes to kill things for a living. He keeps referring to himself in the third person as “The Exterminator,” in this weird Schwarzenegger-type voice. That alone should have been your first clue. Is he Austrian? No. Should he really have an accent of any kind? No. He was born here. Has he ever even been to a foreign country? No. He’s a suburban-pest-controller-hit-man-wanna-be and I’m glad we’re leaving.”
“How do you really feel, Ellie?” Helen commented, opening the passenger door angrily. Ellie had pushed her too far. “Get in the van. Enough of the lip for a little while, okay? I want to get to Nan's before it gets too late. And for your information, Tony and I went to an exterminator conference once, in Mexico. So he has been out of the country. For a day or two.”
“There’s really such a thing as an exterminator conference?” Ellie rolled her eyes at her mother. “I stand corrected.”
“Grow up, Ellie,” Helen said, hopping into the driver’s seat and fastening her seatbelt. She started the van up. The muffler made a huge racket.
“So much for sneaking into town,” Ellie said. “I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with making a grand entrance. It’s a good thing I’m flexible. Be proud that you’ve raised a daughter that isn’t frightened by change. I’ll go far in life.”
As Helen put the van into gear, Beastie Bear did a face-plant from his spot on the dashboard.
“It’s probably from the fumes in this van,” Ellie commented. “Can’t you smell it, Mom? It’s disgusting in here. It’s kind of a mix of powdered insecticide, dead bugs, an old gym bag and a hint of pepperoni. There may even be notes of alcohol on the nose, and that’s not good for a scent. Eau-de-knock-off.” She reached down and pulled a beer bottle out from under her seat. “Ah ha! The nose never lies.”
Rolling down the window, Ellie tossed the bottle onto the lawn, much to her mother’s dismay. “We wouldn’t want to be pulled over with it in the car, would we?" Ellie asked with mock innocence. “That muffler is like a magnet for the cops. Come ticket me, I’m noisy. Hmm, maybe I’d better check under your seat too, Mom.”
Helen took a sniff of the air. There was an odd chemical smell in the vehicle, but that was pretty much an occupational hazard. “Okay, you’re right about the van. I’ll get it back here and make the swap for the convertible as soon as I can.” She looked over at Beastie Bear. He looked like he had passed out. “Tell you what, Ellie,” she said, reaching over and propping him back up, “I’ll let you out around the block from Nan’s if you’d like, okay? You don’t have to show up in the van. I’d walk with you, but you know, we’ve got all this baggage we’re carrying. I mean luggage. Wrong choice of noun.”
Ellie laughed. “Thanks Mom, but you’ll need my smart mouth around to protect you when the neighbors see the van. You haven’t stood up to verbal abuse very well lately.”
Right again, Helen thought. There was a time when she could joust with her daughter for hours, quite impressed with the vocabulary of her child. But now Ellie was a teenager and that same vocabulary was thrown at her in a whole new way. And even though her daughter probably needed her more than ever, lately Helen’s own words of wisdom had been coming out all wrong, or worse yet, not at all.
“I could follow you in the Beemer. I know how to drive,” Ellie pleaded hopefully.
“How do you know how to drive?” Helen screeched, without realizing she was doing so. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. No, you can’t drive the coupe. Tony bought it for me, and I will not have you smashing it up. It took a lot of dead cockroaches to pay for that car, I’ll have you know.” She adjusted the rear view mirror. The sun was beginning to set behind them. “Wait, maybe I do want to know. Who taught you to drive? Did Tony teach you how to drive? Because he’s a really bad driver, so don’t listen to him.”
“Tony’s bad at a lot of things, so I don’t ever listen to him. What happened to Dave?” Ellie asked, changing the subject. “I liked Dave.”
“You were five and Dave liked you a little too much. You’re not much of a judge of character.”
“Tony doesn’t like me at all. So much for your own character assessing abilities. I would have thought that would have mattered to you, you know, that your new husband at least be civil to your daughter. What makes you think we need a protector anyway? We were doin
g fine with Bill. Remember Bill? Bill was great. People used to say I looked like him, even though he wasn’t my dad. Why would you leave Bill for Tony?”
“It’s complicated,” Helen answered. As much as she tried to be open with her daughter, there were some things she just couldn’t tell her.
“That’s your answer to everything.”
“Well everything is complicated.”
“Fine,” Ellie sighed, and began to chew her black, polished fingernails. She avoided looking at her mother.
“Are you nervous about something, Ellie?” Helen finally asked. “This nail-biting thing is relatively new for you. There’s some gum in the glove compartment, if you’d prefer to chew on lovely mint flavor rather than old nail varnish.” It seemed like only a few months ago that she had argued with Ellie about cutting the very same fingernails. They had grown so long they were starting to curl downward on their own.
“You’re taking me to live with a woman I hardly know, in a town I’ve never heard of, where I have no friends. What’s there to be nervous about?” Ellie asked sarcastically, reaching for the glove compartment door. She opened and closed it quickly. “Don’t even ask what’s in there,” she said, her eyes opened wide in shock.
“Ah, so underneath that cool Goth exterior you’ve personified for yourself, the old, sweet, apprehensive, Ellie of old still exists,” Helen smiled to herself.
“Something like that. It’s complicated.”
Her daughter was a bright one, Helen knew. Sometimes it made dealing with her all the more difficult. “I know you think I’m the most un-cool mother on the face of the earth...”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Mom. You’re at least the third,” Ellie smirked, the corners of her mouth curling up goofily like some character on MAD TV.
That was it. No more late night television for her, Helen decided. “As I was trying to tell you before you immaturely made that face at me—and I hope it stays that way just to teach you a lesson—I know a little about the Goth look myself, you know. It’s not exactly a new statement you’re making there. It’s been around for generations. It’s a very old European style, dating back centuries. As in, ancient. You don’t want to look ancient, do you?”
“I don’t know about ancient, but nineteen would be good. What are you trying to say, Mom?”
“Ellie, do you think maybe you could take off the Goth make-up before we get to Nan's?”
Ellie looked at her mother as if she had lost her mind. “It’s my style.”
“Look!” Helen said, pointing out the van window. “There’s a Biggie Mart. Maybe we can find you a new style.”
“Mom, we’ve discussed this before. There’s nothing wrong with how I dress. Nothing’s too short, nothing’s hanging out—nothing. If you think about what I could be wearing, I think you’ll find you’ve got it made. I could dress like a slutty, schoolgirl/pop-star and maybe somebody like Dave would come along and…”
“Okay, okay, I get the picture. But Ellie, look at it from my perspective. We’re going to your Nan’s, and today is Halloween. She’s going to think it’s a costume. She’ll say, ‘Ellie, you look so cute!’ But the joke will be on her when she realizes you dress like this all the time. Not just for pagan festivals, but at Christmas, and Mother’s Day, and whatever other three hundred and sixty two days of the year there are.”
“Mom, you’re exaggerating. I take the make-up off at night. So you can take Christmas Eve out of the scenario and revise your count. Which is a little off, I might add, given that there is probably more than one pagan festival a year.”
“That will be a relief to her, I’m sure.”
“I’m her granddaughter. She’ll love me no matter what.”
“You think so, do you? Try calling her ‘Grandma’. She’ll claim you belong to the neighbors.” Helen ran her finger across her throat execution style “Or kill you, so you never utter those words again.”
“She will not.”
“Give it a try, see what happens,” Helen shrugged.
Ellie sadly watched in the side mirror as every familiar landmark became smaller in the distance. She tried to remember what her grandmother was like, but it had been a long time since she had seen her. She remembered liking her, and she remembered that her mother didn’t. Which made her wonder why they were going there in the first place?
“Do you think I’m going to embarrass her or something?” Ellie asked pensively.
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“And parking a van in front of her house, a van that’s side-painted with a dead cockroach lying on its back, won’t? Thanks a lot.”
“So we’re back to the van again. I hate it when you’re right. Look, when we get to Nan's, let’s pretend we like each other, at least tonight. Okay?”
Ellie looked at her mom, bewilderedly. “I do like you mom. Except when you treat me like a child. What did you mean by that anyway? Don’t you like me? You said ‘pretend we’.”
The remark stung Helen. “Nothing. I’m sorry, Ellie. Of course I like you. I love you. This has just been an emotional day for me, that’s all.”
“You can like someone without loving them, and you can love someone without liking them,” Ellie said thoughtfully.
Maybe she was growing up after all, Helen admitted to herself. She reached over and flipped Ellie’s long black hair over her shoulder so she could see her daughter’s face. “I like and love you, Ellie. That’s also possible.”
Helen thought for a moment she saw the slightest beginning of a smile on her daughter’s face. It didn’t last long.
“Then why are we moving to Nan's anyway? To this Troy place? Why don’t we just move around the block or something? That way I can still be friends with Dina and go to the same school. We don’t have to move miles away just because you’ve dumped your latest husband.”
Helen knew the tender mother-daughter moment had passed. “I’m not sure being friends with Dina is such a good thing for you. I think she’s going to get herself pregnant. It will do you good to meet some new friends. Country friends.”
“She already is pregnant.”
Helen sighed. “Okay, see that’s what I mean. This move is going to be so good for us.”
“It’s not contagious or anything, being pregnant.”
“It kind of is, Ellie. Sure, you won’t get it from her, but if it’s going around, it’s going around. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean, because I know you do.”
“Is that what happened to you? Didn’t Nan move you to a small town in time?”
Ellie had wanted to hit a nerve in her mother, and she did. A big one.
“Ellie, you’re driving me crazy. Can we change the subject please?” Helen yelled, her voice hitting decibels her daughter had never heard.
“Then let’s go back to the real subject, which was, before we segued, why are we moving to Nan’s?”
Ellie saw her mother panic and let go of the steering wheel, if only for a moment.
“Mom? Are you okay? I mean, if it’s some deep dark secret you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. I don’t have a huge issue with the unknown. If you need to keep a secret, keep a secret. I know this may come as a big surprise to you but there are some things I don’t tell you. I have some secrets too.”
“Oh God, I don’t know if I even want to begin that conversation,” Helen thought to herself
She knew she had become too upset to drive. Looking out the window towards the right, she saw some fast food outlets coming up, off the highway. “Are you hungry, Ellie?” she asked. Not waiting for Ellie’s answer, she pulled onto the off-ramp.
“Well, I kind of had some pizza at Dina’s earlier,” Ellie began, watching her mother’s erratic behavior. She could see her mother was trembling. “Mom?”
Helen pulled into the nearest drive-through and put the van in park. “I just feel safer at Nan's.”
“Why? Are we in danger or something? You’re acting really weird. Did Tony t
hreaten you? Because if he did, I can take him.”
Helen smiled. If it came right down to it, Ellie probably could take him. “No, Tony didn’t threaten me. Or you.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
Helen hesitated. “Won’t it just be nice to live in a small town? Where everyone knows your name? Where all the neighbors say hello? I want the best for you, Ellie.”
Tears were beginning to well up her in eyes. Not now, she told herself.
“The hookers outside Tony’s office say hello to me all the time.”
Helen rolled her eyes.
“I get my eye-rolling thing from you, you know,” Ellie offered.
Again, Ellie was right. She was right about a lot of things, but still so wrong about others. It was all part of growing up, Helen knew, but Ellie was special. Not special like every mother’s daughter is, but special in a way that only Helen and her own mother could ever possibly attempt to understand. Sooner or later, and lately it was looking like sooner, Helen was going to have to figure out a way to let Ellie understand how special she was without scaring the shit out of her. For that, she needed Helena.
“Look, let’s just give it a chance, okay?” she pleaded. “Your Nan is so excited that we’re coming. I know you don’t know her very well, but people say she’s really nice.”
“People? She’s your mother. Don’t you think she’s nice? Everyone else seems nice to you. You still think Tony is nice, and you’re leaving him.” She paused for a moment. “I’ve heard you tell Tony that Nan is nuts.”
“Did I?” Helen winced. “I was exaggerating. She’s just a little eccentric.”
“So, is she nuts in the way I think you’re nuts sometimes? Just because you’re my Mom?”
“Yes. Exactly like that. She drives me crazy. Even more than I do you.”
“Impossible. Like what? Tell me, what does she do?” Ellie begged.
“Well, for example, I know you hate the way I dress as much as I hate the way you do. I’m much too conservative for your taste. You think I’m stuck in the eighties with big shoulder pads and big hair. I’ll have you know I have let go of the shoulder pads.”
“You still have a lot of hair.”
“Which is why I wear it up or pulled back. Having said all that, the way you dress is too deep, dark and depressing for me. I would rather see you in something a little less funeralesque. But I try to live with it. Your Nan however, well she’s just in a world of her own.”
Ellie was suddenly enthralled. There was something about her grandmother that drove her mother batty. “What about her? Is she muumuu-ville or something?”
“How on earth do you know what a muumuu is? That’s way before your time.”
“I sometimes watch reruns of Three’s Company. They’re those curtain-like dresses that Mrs. Roper wore, right?”
“Yes, but no. Your Nan is definitely not muumuu-ville. You really don’t remember much about her do you?” Helen asked. “She’s more like…”
“Like what?” she asked excitedly.
“Like the slutty schoolgirl/pop star.”
Ellie howled. “I love her already.”
“And that, my darling,” Helen said, reaching across Ellie’s seat to tussle her hair, “is exactly what I am afraid of.”
CHAPTER THREE