WHEN CYNTHIA’S MOTHER drops me off at home, she tries once more to get me to change my mind. “How about if you and Cynthia are coleaders?” she asks, and I say, “Thank you, but it’s just not for me. And I’m going to be pretty busy—this new school gave me a lot of reading to do before classes start.” Then, before she can say anything else, I open the door and say, “Good luck, though—it seems like you’re off to a great start!”
“Katie?”
I turn around. Slowly.
“Don’t forget this. Just in case you change your mind.” It’s the uniform she’s handing me, all my things neatly folded in a paper bag.
“Oh,” I say. “Well, to be honest—”
“Just take it,” she says. “All right? I’d like you to have it.”
“Okay,” I say, and slam the car door. Not as hard as I’d like to.
She toots the horn as she backs out of the driveway, waves and smiles. I wave back with face A and when I turn around I have on face B.
When I come in the door, I see Ginger sitting at the kitchen table.
“That was awful,” I say.
“Was it?”
She says a normal answer, but it is not a normal tone of voice. “Ginger?” I say, and she says, “Why don’t you have a seat here, Katie? Your father will be down in a minute. There’s something we need to tell you.”
I sit down, my mouth dry. The first thing I think is, Mrs. O’Connell called to complain about the way I behaved last night. Then I think, one of the dogs got hit by a car. But no, I can see that they’re both out in the backyard. Then I think, Diane.
“What happened?” I say.
“Your dad will be right here. We’d like to tell you together.”
“But is it about my sister?”
She shakes her head no, gets up to put her cup in the sink. My father comes into the kitchen, sits at the table, and Ginger stands behind him. Then my father clears his throat and says, “Katie, Mr. Randolph died last night.”
I swallow. “Mrs. Randolph, you mean.”
“No. It was Mr. Randolph.”
I sit still for a long moment. “How do you know?”
“Mrs. Randolph called us. He had a heart attack—went out to get the paper, and didn’t come back in. She called the police, and . . . She’s in a nursing home. I guess they’re going to find her a place near her niece in South Carolina.”
“Oh,” I say. Inside, some wave of sadness rises up, tall as a wall.
“She said she’d like you to come and see her before she moves,” Ginger says. “Would you like to go today? Your father and I will take you.”
“Yes. I just . . . I need some time to get ready.” I go into my room and close the door and see Mr. Randolph in all his different ways: carefully chopping vegetables, washing his wife’s back, listening to me talk like I was saying the most interesting things in the world. Who would have thought that he would die first. It never occurred to me. I sit on the bed and think how life is never safe and they should tell you that right off the bat. Things happen out of order and just plain wrong, and there is not one thing you can do about it. The message of every morning is: ???????????
I put my face into my hands and rock back and forth. No tears. I hope there is a heaven, and I hope Mr. Randolph meets my mother. I hope she invites him into her heavenly living room and together they keep their eyes on all of us down here.
I CAN TELL MY FATHER disapproves of the house where he drops Cynthia and me off for the party with the Bartlett girls. He says nothing, but his face is hard and bitter. Ginger is quiet too, but it is not anger; it is awe. I feel nervous in the knees to get out of the car, and I don’t have much to say myself. The only one who’s talking is Cynthia, and she hasn’t shut up since we arrived in this neighborhood. “Look at the size of these houses!” she said, and she lives in a pretty big house herself, especially compared to mine. “This is the land of millionaires!”
One of the places we passed had lions at the end of the driveway, and it made me wonder: What goes through the head of someone who decides to put them there? “I want a thousand rosebushes, a big brass knocker at the door, and oh yes, a couple of lions at the end of the driveway.” “Lions, sir?” “Yes, that’s right, lions.” “Okay, sir.”
“Call us when you’re ready to come home,” my father says, and I nod.
“This is going to be fun,” Cynthia says, opening the car door, and I want to tell her to just be quiet, it is not a party for her. Ever since her mother dropped her off at my house tonight, I have been irritated with her. First, she wore something I don’t think is right: a dress. I think a skirt and blouse would have been better; a dress seems babyish. Especially with ruffles. And she is so excited, she’s talking way louder than usual. Even Ginger noticed this, I saw her smiling to my dad about it on the way over. And now she is rushing out of the car like she knows everyone there, and I want to just take my time, to think about what I’m going to say after I ring the doorbell. But too late, Cynthia rings the doorbell before me, and now the door is opening. There is a tall, blond woman standing there smiling, and behind her is an entryway as big as a gymnasium. She is wearing black pants and a white blouse and gold hoop earrings. “The guest of honor!” she says, stepping aside. I turn around to wave to my father and Ginger, but all I can see is headlights, then the slow backing away of the car, like an animal when it rushes up to something and then changes its mind.
“Welcome, Katie,” the woman says warmly, to Cynthia. And Cynthia starts laughing, which is so rude. Then, instead of pointing to me and saying, “That’s Katie,” she says, “I’m Cynthia O’Connell.”
“Glad to meet you, Cynthia,” the woman says. “I’m Kay Grasser, Leigh’s mother.” She doesn’t look like a real mother. She is the Donna Reed type of mother, with no gravy stains on the apron. “How nice of you to come along.”
Well, I guess I’ll just go sit on the curb and wait for Cynthia to come out from the party. Make some grass harps and wave at the cars that go by. This edgy meanness is growing and growing inside me; I don’t know what to do to stop it.
But then Mrs. Grasser turns to me and says, “And you must be Katie.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come in,” she says, “Everyone is here; they’re all downstairs.” She leads us down a long hall to a door that goes into the basement. This is not a basement like we have, with the washer and dryer and old wooden table to fold clothes on, with storage boxes lined up along the walls and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling that you turn on by pulling a string, with a smell of bleach mixed with damp earth. No. This doesn’t look like a basement at all. For one thing, there is wood on the walls. For another, there is a bar. A real bar, with a mirror and tall stools and a million glasses lined up on shelves. I see a girl standing behind the bar, pouring a Coke into a glass for another girl sitting on one of the stools. On a low coffee table there are two pizzas, but no one has eaten any yet. In the corner there are three more girls, standing around the stereo, looking through a stack of albums. They are all wearing skirts and blouses, so I was right. One girl has on a sweater like the one I want—black, with ribbing. And she gets to wear it even though school hasn’t started. Another is wearing a wraparound skirt, something I also want but doubt that I’ll get. This is something I cannot get Ginger to understand, that you cannot go to Wards to get fashionable clothes, that regular loafers are not Weejuns.
“Leigh?” Mrs. Grasser says, “Here are Katie and her friend, Cynthia.”
“Hi, Katie!” Leigh says, looking at Cynthia.
Again! “I’m Katie,” I say, and go over and hold out my hand. Leigh hesitates just the slightest bit, and I realize I’ve made a mistake offering to shake hands. But she’s being nice about it. She shakes my hand and then goes so far as to shake Cynthia’s too. Cynthia starts giggling, and I want to say, Don’t! but instead I just stare straight ahead to show that I am my own separate self. Leigh says, “We’re really glad you’re coming to Bartlett. Let me introdu
ce you to the other girls.”
Everyone comes over to make a perfumey circle around me, and I can’t believe it. Pretty girls in nice clothes who know how to do things are smiling at me and saying how much I’ll like their school. One, Caitlin, has suspiciously streaky blond hair and I remember what Cherylanne said about dyed hair. But she is being so nice, everyone is. I am in the basement of such a fancy house at a party given in honor of me. And this is all because of Mr. Randolph, who has died before I could tell him anything about it.
I think of how Mrs. Randolph looked in the nursing home, bewildered and sad, how mostly she just patted my arm and thanked me and said how much her husband liked me. How he was wonderful to the end, wasn’t he? And then she just looked out the window for a time before she turned back to me. Her eyes had lost the light they usually had; they were a flat and vacant blue. I said I would come and see her one more time before she left—her niece will be there to drive her to South Carolina on Wednesday. “I’ll look forward to that, Katie,” she said, and then it seemed like all she wanted to do was rest. I left her lying in the hospital bed, holding her purse on her lap like it was Mr. Randolph’s hand.
So there she is at the end of her life which is closing down, and here I am at the beginning of mine, which is opening up. Cynthia asks if I want to go and get some pizza, and I tell her no, but go ahead, like it is my house, like everything here is mine. It kind of feels that way. It feels like some part of me that was curled down and waiting in the dark has risen, and now stands stretching and strong in the sunshine. I knew it.
ONCE I SAW THE DOGS get into a tug-of-war over a dishcloth that had fallen off the clothesline. They stood facing each other, their paws firmly planted, growling and giving a shake every so often, each unwilling to let go. This is how it feels inside me now. I am lying in bed wide awake, so thrilled to know that I will be part of the group I just met, but there is another feeling in me as well, and that is shame. Each feeling wants to win.
About halfway through the party, Leigh called me into the little bathroom in the basement. She said it was so I could try on some of her lip gloss that I had admired, but that wasn’t it. What she wanted was to talk about Cynthia. She closed the door, sat on the closed seat of the toilet, and said, “This Cynthia. Is she a good friend of yours?”
I knew why she was asking. Cynthia was acting like an idiot. She was just too excited, talking loud, laughing like a braying donkey, telling jokes that were not funny, even a really stupid riddle, once: “Why did Tigger look in the toilet? He was trying to find Pooh.” I thought about answering Leigh by saying I knew Cynthia was weird, but also she was pretty nice, you could tell her anything, part of her problem was she had to live with a crazy mother, things like that. But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was, “Not really. She’s just someone I go to school with. I kind of had to bring her.”
Leigh nodded, like she was an old, wise person. And then she said, “Well, good. Because we’re all going shopping tomorrow, and I wanted to invite you, but not if . . . ”
“Oh, no,” I said, quickly. “She doesn’t have to come.” And then, to prove how much I understood that Cynthia was not part of us, I told Leigh about the Girl Scout thing.
“Are you kidding?” Leigh kept saying, louder and louder, and I kept saying, No! Leigh was listening so carefully to me, as though we were sudden best friends, and I had this feeling of joy like I just got rescued. I remembered a time in school last year when I saw two very popular girls go into a bathroom stall together. They were giggling and talking low so no one could hear. I looked at their shoes, at their purses on the floor. I went into the stall next to them and sat on the toilet with my hands on my lap, trying to hear. But it wouldn’t matter if I did, I still would never have anything to do with girls like that. Now, suddenly, I was in one of those crowds. I wanted to keep going, I wanted Leigh to be more and more interested in me, and so I tried to make the story of Cynthia better and better. I told about how the first time I went to her house, she showed me how she could fart from her vagina. That was a good one; Leigh’s mouth opened wide, and then she took my arm and squeezed it tight, and began laughing and gasping, her eyes wide. I felt a delicious power, like how you feel when you’re holding the platter up high and everyone is clamoring around you. I laughed too, when I told the story, remembering Cynthia lying on the floor with her legs in the air and that triumphant look on her face; but also I laughed because it felt so good to know I had finally arrived at a place where I had been longing to be. I thought I could say to Leigh, “Can I borrow your bracelet?” and she would say, “Of course!” and unclasp it, and when I put it on, the metal would still be warm from her skin. I saw that I would have some golden protection that comes from being in a circle of girls like this; the things that used to hurt me wouldn’t anymore. I was all of a sudden a Bartlett girl.
When we came out of the bathroom, there was a terrible shock. Because standing there was Cynthia, her face so still and straight. At first I tried to act like nothing happened, but it didn’t work—she had heard everything. She looked at me and she didn’t say anything, but in her eyes were a million things coming out in a sorrowful beam directed straight at me. I felt a blush start to creep up my neck.
“Cynthia!” Leigh said. “Are you having a good time?”
“I want to go home.”
Leigh looked at me quickly, a little smile on her face.
“Cynthia,” I said, but she ignored me, just asked Leigh, “Can I please use a phone?”
“Sure,” Leigh said, shrugging. “Come on upstairs with me.”
Cynthia followed her up the basement steps, her back straight, her purse tucked under her arm. I knew everything that was in that purse. I’d written notes to Cynthia in school that she kept in the zippered compartment in the middle. I’d opened her makeup case many times to use her comb or mirror, and I’d helped her pick out the wallet she carried, a blue plastic one with a picture of Troy Donahue she’d cut out of a movie magazine and put in the first picture holder. I’d taken money she’d offered me from that wallet when I didn’t have enough.
I knew where Cynthia would put her purse when she got home, and I knew what her room would look like after she went to bed, how she’d have the little night light on because she was afraid of the dark. I felt a giant fist begin to squeeze my stomach, a sense of profound regret that made me want to do something to erase all that had happened.
But I did not call Cynthia’s name, or follow her up the stairs, or even pay attention to what my insides were trying to tell me. Instead, I turned back to that circle of girls gathered now around the pizza, each bright and brilliant as a gemstone to me, each as desirable. I took in a breath, put a smile on my face, and went over to stand among them.
Now I turn onto my side and finger the charms on the bracelet that Leigh really did lend me. At the time, the bracelet seemed so much, a trophy. Now it is just a bracelet with charms that dig into my skin, hurting me, and I take it off and put it by the side of the bed.
In one night, a new life has started. I feel bad about Cynthia, but I would feel bad even if she hadn’t caught me talking about her. I guess it always hurts to move away from something, even if it’s not another city you’re going to, but another way of being.
THE NEXT MORNING I AM in the middle of a dream when I hear Ginger’s voice calling me, telling me there’s a phone call for me. I am instantly awake, excited, remembering last night and thinking—hoping—it’s Leigh. But then I realize it’s probably only Cynthia, healed from last night’s humiliation, calling to ask what are we going to do today. And I’ll have to tell her nothing. I’ll be as gentle as I can.
But it is not Cynthia, it is Mr. Wexler, asking if I can baby-sit tonight. I am so surprised to hear from him—I’d thought we were all done. But Mrs. Wexler has come back, they are going out for a night on the town, and I will earn a lot of money because they will be out really late. There are a million questions I want to ask him: Is she sorry? Are you h
appy? What did the kids say? Where was she? But of course I don’t ask those questions, I act like nothing at all is unusual, and I agree to be there at seven o’clock. I am actually looking forward to seeing the boys. Well, Henry, anyway.
I go out into the kitchen and smell Ginger’s French toast. There is a stack of it, already done, sitting on my favorite blue plate on the kitchen counter. She makes it for special occasions. I guess she’s happy about my new friends—she got excited last night when she and my father came to pick me up and I told them I had been invited to go shopping with Leigh and some of the other girls. She looked at my father like, Isn’t she something? but my father didn’t do anything back. When I’d told him Cynthia had gone home early, he’d said, “Is that right,” and then he hadn’t talked anymore.
I look at the clock; thirteen after eleven. I believe this is the latest I’ve ever slept, and a sure sign that I really am a teenager now; they always sleep late. I sit at the table with my breakfast and try to remember every nice thing that was said to me at the party last night. It’s no use, though, because Ginger is vacuuming my bedroom, and that vacuum is so loud it seems like it sucks all your thoughts up with the dirt. The vacuum cuts out suddenly, and I hear a little cry from Ginger. Then it is quiet.
I get up and run to my room, wishing my father were home, thinking Ginger must have hurt herself. But it isn’t that. Instead, Ginger is sitting on the floor, the vacuum turned on its side, and she is looking up into it. She sees me and says, “Katie, did you have something on the floor by your bed?”
I start to say no, but then I remember. I feel as though the French toast I just ate has turned into bricks.
I sit on the floor beside Ginger. “It was a bracelet. I put it there last night.”
Ginger looks at me, and I know what she’s thinking. Well, you can say good-bye to that.
“It belongs to the girl that had the party,” I say, “the one I’m going shopping with today. Leigh.” It is so strange to me how in the middle of an emergency, out pops a kind of brag. This is how it looks in my brain: