“Did you guys know any of this was happening? The cutting-classes thing. I mean before? You never said anything about it before.”
“When she started hanging out with this new girl from downstate I smelled trouble.”
“Who’s the kid?”
“Monica Carter. You don’t know her. She’s freaky looking. Pierced cheek. Pierced eyebrow. I’m pretty sure her tongue’s pierced, too.”
“That’s so gross,” Lynn says. “P.S. Doesn’t it hurt when they eat—doesn’t the food tug at it I mean?”
“Focus.”
“Sorry, sorry,” she says.
“I went to pick up Cam from school the other day and I see her slouching next to this girl who looks like Cammy times a million. She looks like she hasn’t taken a shower ever. Cammy walks to the car like I’ve got all the time in the world and this girl nodded at me and gave me the peace sign when I introduced myself. That’s another thing, Cammy didn’t introduce me. I had to lower the passenger window and say ‘You’re Monica, right? Nice to meet you.’ She smokes. She holds her cigarette like she’s Steve McQueen.”
“Okay, first of all, sixteen-year-olds don’t introduce their parents to their friends,” Lynn says.
“Okay, well, fine,” I say. “The point is, I don’t like this girl. I saw her smoking in front of the 7-Eleven. She goes to the soccer games from time to time and hangs way off behind all the parents, leaning against a tree with her arms crossed like she’s soooo cool. She’s got a brother on one of the teams I guess. Cammy thinks she’s God’s gift. We can’t ask her any questions about Monica without her stomping off saying we’re so judgmental and we don’t like her just because she looks different. She’s got that Goth eye makeup and she wears long black Grim Reaper clothes. And right on cue, Cammy’s wearing the same makeup. I had to switch to paper napkins because black lipstick doesn’t come off in the wash.”
“It’s what they all want us to think. They’re all antiestablishment, antiparent, and Cammy’s wondering why you don’t like it?” Lynn says.
Lynn’s cell phone rings.
“Yeah, well,” she’s saying into her phone. “I’m not picking you up early again. No. Because you’re not sick! Go on back to class.”
“You don’t even say goodbye?” I ask her.
She cocks her head to the side like do you know me at all?
“You’re losing me on this story,” she says. “Where’s the fight with Bob in all this? And by the way, didn’t Cammy get her nose pierced pre-Monica Carter?”
“Nope. Post-Monica. So the fight. It started after they told us about the probation. That was Friday. Then on Saturday Cammy starts in again with us hating Monica because she looks different. She looks different, get it?”
“Am I supposed to know what that means? Hold that thought. If this is Tommy again, I swear to God. Oh. Unless you’re throwing up blood I’m not picking you up early.”
She turns back to me. “He’s got an algebra test last period he didn’t study for so he’s pulling out all the stops. Sorry, keep going. The fight with Bob …”
“Don’t you remember years ago when I found Cammy in the bathroom crying? Remember what she said? She said she wanted to look like the rest of us. She was tired of looking different from us, she said.”
“So you’re mad because.” she says. “I mean, that happened a long time ago, that thing in the bathroom.”
“I’m mad because when Cammy was three and a half Bob decided—without talking to me about it first—he unilaterally decided to tell Cammy she was adopted. He told her she wasn’t our real child, his words. She wasn’t even four years old! And we’d decided we would wait longer, talk to professionals beforehand to find out the best way to do it.”
“Shithead.”
I hate it when Lynn calls Bob that. She does it all the time now. “I hate it when you call him that.”
“You’re the one who fought with him!”
“I know, but he’s my husband and … it just doesn’t feel right.”
“All right, all right, I’ll stop. But why’s it coming up now?”
“It’s coming up now because now’s the time she’s acting out. He messed her up. I’ve been waiting for this to happen. I knew we wouldn’t see it for years and here we go. Right when it matters most. Right when they’re becoming who they’re going to be. He messed her up and I can’t do a thing about it. She won’t listen to me anymore. And I don’t know when that happened either …”
“Oh, stop,” she says. “This kid, this Monica, she looks different, too, so it makes sense Cam would hang out with her. Maybe it’s good they have each other. Oh, honey, don’t cry.”
“I sound like such an old lady saying this, but she’s always been such a good girl,” I say. In the bathroom off the kitchen I pull a tissue out of the Kleenex box but it’s the second or third to last and they all come out at once, something that annoys me every time it happens.
“We’ve been so close,” I say through a nose-blow. “She’s never talked back to me, not once. And now …”
“Now she’s a teenager,” Lynn says. “Welcome to the teen years. It’ll pass. It always does.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Remember when she was ten and she went and got that skin lightener from the drugstore? The kind they make for African-Americans? I found the box in the trash and luckily I stopped her before she used it, but when I asked her why, you know what she said?”
“Huh.”
“She said she hated her skin color. Here she is with the most beautiful light olive skin and she says she wants to be fair-skinned like Jamie and Andrew and me and Bob. Then I’ll look like a real Friedman, she said. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
I fiddle at the wisps of balled-up Kleenex.
“And now she’s swinging the other way,” Lynn says.
“And now she’s swinging the other way,” I say. “Exactly.”
“Is Bob worried, too?”
“No,” I say.
“Shithead.”
The thing is, he’s not a shithead.
Cammy
I couldn’t stop coughing. It was brutal. When Monica took the joint from me I went into seizure coughs. She laughed and then asked if I wanted some water which I did but I couldn’t even nod my head I was coughing so hard.
Monica doesn’t have fun anymore. She says everything’s boring. It is. I know it is. But every time I think of things to do other than hang out in my room she looks at me like I’m a baby. Like when I said let’s go to the mall she says oh, my God you’re serious? I thought you were kidding. The mall’s all pod people with hairbands and purses. I’m embarrassed I asked.
When I say let’s go to the lakefront and sit on the rock wall at Montrose she’s all and what? Skip rocks? So gay.
Then she goes this is a shit-ass city which pisses me off but I don’t tell her that. Who hates Chicago? It’s like the best city in the country.
Anyway today she brought a joint over and said okay let’s go to your little lake. I thought it was a cigarette. Just for a second, but still.
My mom was out with the boys somewhere so we had to walk, which took forever. The wind was coming at us and I looked at Monica and she looked like a Halloween witch. A cool one. With her clothes blowing after her like a black wedding dress with that long train.
We get there. It’s overcast and kind of cool so not many people are out. We’re near the dog beach. When I’m here with the boys we always stand and watch the dogs chasing each other, swimming, fetching. It’s our thing, it’s what we do, the boys and I. Now, with Monica, I pause to watch this little white dog trying to wrestle a huge stick away from a Lab. I think the little one is a Jack Russell. I said wait, look at that. That dog’s crazy. Look at that. Monica says whatever, let’s keep going. I wanted to see if the white dog got the stick after all but she kept going and I had to half jog to catch up. Seeing it through her eyes I realize it’s stupid to stand there like idiots watching other people’s pets play. The
y throw tennis balls way out in the water and those dogs splash in and swim hard. Some of them go pretty far out. Even when it’s cold. I guess I’m too old for that now. I wonder if my real mother ever had a dog. I picture her with an Afghan with that thin body and long hair. If she’d have kept me we might have brushed the dog together. We would’ve named it Heather. I’ve never seen an Afghan in person just in pictures but they’re beautiful. Owners are supposed to match their dogs and I’ve always imagined my mother like an Afghan. The kind of person people make way for when she walks through a crowd.
There’s a long cement pier with a metal antenna at the end of it and even though it’s freezing and windy we walk down to the end of it. On warmer days fishermen plant themselves up and down it. The very tip is hidden by the concrete base of the metal thing so we sit there dangling our legs like it’s a hot day in August.
It takes her a lot of tries to get it lit. It’s that windy. I watch the way she holds it between her thumb and first finger. Like a guy. It’s not like I haven’t seen people smoking pot before but she looks cooler doing it than anyone I’ve seen. I watch her inhale and hold it in. She hands it to me before she lets the smoke out. I hold it in a pinch like she did. For a second I think what if I let it go in the wind. But she’d be pissed and she’s already at the end of her rope with me. I don’t think I’ll do it right. And what if I fall in the water because I’m so stoned.
I blow all the air out of my lungs and inhale but the smoke goes down too fast. I go into a choking cough. She grabs it out of my fingers like it’s a diamond I might drop. The coughing gets worse every time I try to take in air.
“You want water or something?” she says.
But she doesn’t have any with her so I don’t know why she offers.
“You’ve never smoked pot before,” she says.
I manage in between coughs “yeah, I have,” but I can tell she knows I’m lying.
“With who? Your little friend Ricky?” she says. “Dubious.”
She takes another drag and hands it to me. It’s a test. She’s looking out across the lake but I know she’s sizing me up. I wish I could wait a little longer. My throat’s on fire.
This time I don’t suck it so deep. I hold it in.
She goes: “You barely got any that time.”
I don’t think that’s true but I’m aware that I’m just holding it in my mouth long enough to not have to answer her so maybe it’s true.
“This is good shit,” she says. It’s her third drag. The joint’s almost gone, she’s pulling it in so hard.
“Last call.” She hands it to me.
This last drag I do it right. I can feel it. I have to pinch it using the very tips of my fingers because it’s nearly out. Monica takes it back carefully and sucks on whatever’s left then she tosses it in the water. The paper’s so thin it disintegrates within seconds.
“You know who you have to meet?” she says. “You’ve gotta meet this guy Paul.”
We’re still dangling our legs. I’m kicking mine in and out like a kid.
“Who’s Paul?”
“Just this guy. What’re you doing later?”
It’s Saturday and I know I’m grounded but I can crawl out so I tell her nothing and she says to meet her at the 7-Eleven at nine.
When we stand up I almost fall in and she laughs and pulls me close to her. We shimmy close to the antenna base and she goes race you back to the beach.
I run after her. Our clothes are whipping in the wind. She looks back to me and for a second I see what she must’ve been like before all this. Before all the black. Back when she was normal. When she was a kid.
By the time we reach the sand we’re out of breath. I feel light and happy and I laugh and she does too.
She’s not bored. I’m not either.
On the way back to my house I realize I’ve passed the dog beach without looking over at it.
Samantha
“Jamie, go up and get your sister. Oh, shit.” I’m making lunches at the last minute as usual and as usual I make a mess that could have been avoided if I’d made lunches the night before like Kerry Kendricks does. A glop of jam splats onto the floor. “Shit.”
“Double swear!” he says. He checks to see if Andrew’s around so he can rub it in. “That’s fifty cents!”
I’m crouching over the sticky patch of floor I made worse by using a too-wet paper towel that’s only smeared it into a larger sticky patch of floor. “You have exactly two seconds to go get your sister! Wait, throw me the sponge, will you? Good job. Now go.”
“Cammy! Mom says come down!” he hollers from the foot of the stairs.
“Go up and get her!” I holler to him. “She’s going to miss car pool!”
I’ve run out of peanut butter. Great. I don’t hear the thumping of Cammy’s music anymore, but Jamie and Andrew are the only ones to appear.
“What? Where is she? Andrew, grab two juice boxes out from the pantry.”
“But they won’t be cold,” he whines.
“Cammy wouldn’t come out,” Jamie says. He looks like he’s tattling and to Jamie that is a horrifying offense he takes great pains to avoid.
“There’s Mrs. Kempner honking.” I hurry to the front door to wave that they’re on their way. “Cammy! Car pool! Now! Okay, good, coats on, backpacks. Andrew, did you get juice for both of you? Good. Cammy! Boys, go go go. Have a good day at school! Cammy?”
I hold up a finger letting Eileen Kempner know to wait another minute and I nearly trip on my robe rushing up the stairs to bang on Cammy’s door. The music is cranked high again so shouting is futile. Over some emo noise I don’t even understand I can hear Eileen tapping on her horn. On my way downstairs I remind myself to Google emo music. Or I’ll go to iTunes.
Back at the front door I mouth sorry and wave Eileen on.
Cammy’s music is so loud the doorknob vibrates in my hand. Of course it’s locked. No shaking or beating works and my blood is boiling so hot I’m breaking a sweat in my pajamas and robe that’s too heavy and a very ugly flannel but the kids gave it to me for Mother’s Day so I’m doomed to wear it for the rest of my life. I call her cell phone from the phone by my bed and I’m about to hang up because I remember we confiscated it but it’s ringing. It doesn’t go straight to voice mail. Aha. The music is turned down and she answers, not realizing the call’s coming from a few feet away since we’ve blocked our number from caller ID.
“If you don’t get out here right now I swear to God …”
I hear her door open. She’s fixed a look of amused bewilderment on her face, like she has no earthly idea what the fuss is about.
“You realize you missed your ride to school, right?”
She brushes past me and glides down the stairs without a care in the world.
“I’m talking to you!” I’m about to storm after her but I hurry to my closet to throw on sweats and whatever shirt my hand lands on so I can drive her to school. Cammy’s attitude du jour is just the kind of thing that gets under my skin and she knows it.
“Get in the car.” I don’t bother locking the door. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. “Hurry up.
“I’m so sick and tired of your games, Cammy, I swear to God. Oh, hi, Mrs. Ainsley!” I fake a smile and wave through the window to our elderly neighbor walking her dachshund. Back to Cammy. “Give me one good reason I’m driving like a banshee to get you to school when it’s not my day to drive. Huh? Can you speak?”
She shrugs and I fight the urge to screech the car into Park so I can wring her neck. She shrugged. What do I do with that? She’s looking out her window.
“I wish someone would tell me what I’m supposed to do with you. What am I supposed to do with you?”
I shouldn’t have beaten the steering wheel. I shouldn’t have yelled. I shouldn’t have yelled that.
“I hate you,” she says.
She doesn’t spit it in anger. She doesn’t raise her voice even. She says it calmly, like “gee, isn’t it a lovely
day out.” Like it explains everything, which, I guess, it does. I’d been waiting for this cliché moment of teenagedom—you hear about it, read about it, see it in Lifetime movies, you know it’s coming, but nothing prepares you for the punch of it.
“What?” Maybe I didn’t hear it correctly. “What’d you just say?”
“Nothing. Whatever.” She sighs, turns on the radio and goes back to studying the apparently fascinating scenery.
At the stoplight I feel the look of the driver next to me probably wondering what kind of a mother has a freakish Goth daughter. They all judge me. How is it okay for that daughter to be like that—where’s her mother, for God’s sake? That’s what they all think. So I put on my show. I tip my head back and smile as if I’ve just heard a wildly entertaining story. I turn my head to him. I make sure the smile slowly fades so he thinks, Oh, I guess I didn’t realize they’re actually really enjoying one another’s company what a lovely mother and daughter actually they look so close and happy. Yessiree, we’re having a marvelous time in here. We always have a marvelous time together. I smile into his eyes and nod. I know what you’re thinking, buddy. I’m one lucky mom, in the company of her chatty daughter who’s so sweet she just might look over at you and wave. That’s the kind of girl she is. The kind that waves at total strangers just because she’s naturally friendly.
“It’s green. Jesus frigging Christ, the light’s been green for, like, an hour. God.”
Ah, yes, she’s naturally friendly.
The rest of the ride is a vacuum of oxygen and sound. The kind you notice. I exhale when her door slams shut. Back at home I clean up the rest of breakfast, start a dishwasher load and pick up random boy-debris scattered throughout the downstairs before I straggle up to shower and change for a day that already feels half over and it’s not even 9:00 a.m.
A couple of hours later I’m waiting for the cable guy to come. I hate waiting. Hate it. They’ve given me a four-hour window and I should be going through my list of things to do, e-mails to write, calls to return, but I’m staring out the front window instead. I don’t know when I’ve just sat here, staring out the front window like this. Probably before Cammy. Three cars have driven down our street. I recognize none of them. We live on a street you’d have no reason to come down unless you live here or were visiting someone who lives here. It’s not a cut-through. It’s not really on the way to anywhere anyone wants to go. Then again, I’m rarely staring out the window for any length of time. A Roto-Rooter van pulls up in front of the Flanderses’ house. Sally’s showing them in. She’s still in her robe even though it’s eleven in the morning. Soon they’re snaking a hose from the van in through the front door. I wonder if she sits here like this, looking out the window all day. Maybe that’s why she drinks too much.