Portia walked out with me. “I’ll be going early in the morning,” she said. “You did well, much better than I did at my first dinner here. I wouldn’t worry too much about the looks Mrs. Brittany can give you from time to time. She’s foremost a good businesswoman. If she thinks you’ll earn money, she’ll overlook a lot more than she claims she would, but don’t test her too much just yet. You’ve got to, as they say, make your bones first.”
“Thanks for the advice. Will I ever see you again?”
“Maybe,” she said, smiling. “Good luck.”
She gave me a hug and hurried off to join the others.
I went up the stairs, wondering how I would read or learn anything after that dinner. All I wanted to do was crawl into that marvelous bed and soak myself in a good sleep, but when I opened the door, I was startled to find Sheena sitting in her robe at my vanity table, perusing the books and papers Randy had put there for me.
“Oh, hi,” she said. “I’ve got this figured out for you. I’ve gone through it and underlined what’s important and what’s not.”
I just continued to stand there in the doorway.
“Come in, silly. It is your suite,” she said.
“Sorry, you just surprised me. I thought you had said, ‘See you tomorrow.’ ”
“Good. I love surprises. When they are good surprises, I mean.”
“You’re a good surprise,” I said quickly.
She smiled. “Why don’t you get into your pajamas or whatever and get comfortable?” she suggested. “It’s a pretty dress, but you look like you were in a spotlight or something and can’t wait to relax.”
I laughed. “That’s exactly the way I would put it, a spotlight.” I unzipped the dress, took out a pair of pajamas, and headed into the bathroom to wash off the makeup. She came in with me.
“My grandmother wouldn’t want you to tell me about your dinner, but you can if you want. I won’t tell her you told. I never had anyone I could share any secrets with, and I’ve never had a friend over, have you?”
I looked up at her. Here I was almost finished with my first day, and I was placed once more in what Mama would call a delicate situation. Sheena wanted me to hold her in my confidence. She wanted a friend, probably desperately, but if I was revealing and she slipped up and mentioned something I had told her, I’d surely get my walking papers. Nevertheless, I could see the need, almost the pleading, in her eyes. Because I was the youngest girl to be brought to the Brittany mansion for training, I would probably be most likely to befriend her.
“Actually, no,” I said, which obviously surprised her.
Ironically, even though I wasn’t put in the same situation by something as devastating as bone cancer, I had been and still was almost as much of a loner. The difference was that I never felt as much of a great need to have a close friend as she did. Maybe I simply didn’t want to trust anyone or believe in anyone. The girls I witnessed struggling to be liked or to have a close friend most often than not looked pathetic to me. Usually, I would tell one of them that she looked ridiculous and sounded pitiful and wretched. I drove them to tears. Maybe I was cruel; maybe it was wrong to expect any of them to be as strong as I was when it came to rejecting any groveling. The girls who wanted to talk to me usually did so to get something from me. More than half of the girls in my class were simply afraid of me.
But if there was any honesty in me, I would have to admit that there was a part of me that wanted to be liked, wanted to be like Sheena, and wanted to have the need for a close companion, someone to share secrets with and explore what this whole journey into womanhood meant. Looking at her standing in my bathroom doorway, waiting for some sign, some indication that I was ready and willing to be her friend, did get to me. Yes, I was hard, and my recent disgusting life in the bowels of the city had hardened me even more, but the softness and innocence in Sheena’s eyes brought me memories of Emmie and my mother whenever we could be . . . just friends.
“The food was fantastic.”
“Oh, was it?”
“I’ve got to tell you,” I said. “Your grandmother has a magnificent chef.”
“Yes. I know,” she said, welcoming my excitement.
I described the menu. She looked as if she was hanging on every word. I wondered if she knew Decker Farmingham, but I thought I shouldn’t mention his name.
“Was everyone stuffy? So many of my grandmother’s friends can be stuffy.”
“A little,” I said. “But I unstuffed them.”
She laughed. “I wish I could have seen that.”
“I had to be the wine taster,” I said.
She came farther in.
“Wine taster? You mean you had to drink it first and decide if it was good or not?”
“Exactly.”
“How did you know what to do, what to say? Did you learn all that today?”
“No, I knew all that. My mother taught me a lot about wine. She’s French, a Parisian,” I said.
“French? Have you been to Paris? I was there with my grandmother, but she assigned a special guide to take me around while she did business. I liked what I saw, but I hated all the boring things he told me. We went to great restaurants, but I didn’t go up the Eiffel Tower or go on the big Ferris wheel. Did you?”
“Actually, no,” I said. “I was too young at the time to appreciate most of it. Someday I’ll go back.”
“I wish I could go with someone like you and not a professional guide.”
“Maybe someday.”
“You really think so?”
“Who knows? Two days ago, I could never even imagine I’d be here in this beautiful place talking to you, right?”
“Right.” She thought a moment and then lost her smile as if it literally evaporated. “I’d be terrible to travel with. I’d slow anyone down, and I’d be gawking at everyone and everything, and everyone would gawk at me. And there is so much I don’t know about . . . the real world,” she said. “You’d hate it.”
“I would not, and you will learn everything you have to learn about the real world, as you call it.”
She shrugged. “Once, when I described all the things I wanted to do, my grandmother said, ‘Just be grateful for tomorrow, Sheena.’ That was right after I was very sick, but I never forgot it. I hate being grateful for tomorrow. Only very old people are grateful for tomorrow, right?”
“No. We should all be grateful for tomorrow,” I told her, “sick or not.”
She smiled again. “I drink some wine, whatever my grandmother says I should, but honestly, I don’t know the difference between one or the other.”
“No one has ever offered to teach you?”
She shook her head.
“Perhaps one day, I’ll be able to show you what I know. If I ever get real time off, maybe we can have our own special lunch or dinner.”
“Would you?” she said, her face bursting into a smile that reminded me of Emmie’s smile when she opened her birthday presents. “That would be wonderful. I always feel so silly when the waiter asks me what wine I would like. Grandmother orders quickly for me, of course, but someday, I might go to a restaurant without her.”
“You never have?”
“No. There’s never been anyone else for me to go with. I certainly wouldn’t go with Mrs. Pratt. She makes me nervous. Does she make you nervous?”
“I suspect she made her own mother nervous the day she was born,” I said, and Sheena laughed.
I worked on my face.
“Did you always know how to make up your face?” she asked.
“Not like this. But I’m learning.”
“I really like what was done to your hair. I wish mine was done the same way.”
“Doesn’t your grandmother permit the beautician to do your hair, too?”
She shook her head.
How could that possibly be a no-no? Sheena lived here, but somehow Mrs. Brittany kept her sheltered from what was really happening. It made me wonder how much her granddaughter did know about the
escort business.
“I mean, she’ll take me someplace to have it cut and styled when she thinks it needs to be.”
“Not when you think it needs to be?”
“Oh, my grandmother knows so much more than I do about all that. She’s a very sophisticated, worldly woman. She knows princes, queens, kings, and senators.”
I nodded and rose to slip out of my bra and panties and put on my pajamas.
“You’re beautiful,” she said.
“Thank you, but you have nothing to complain about,” I replied, and immediately felt like an idiot. “I mean, you’re very pretty, too, Sheena.”
She smiled. “I know,” she said. “I just don’t know why I was given a pretty face. It seems to me it was a great waste.” She retreated into the bedroom.
Maybe, I thought, I was getting in too deeply, and not only would I drown, but I would also hasten her drowning, and there was no question how Mrs. Brittany would feel about that.
Actually, it was hard, if not impossible, for me to imagine myself being helpful to anyone these days, especially someone as innocent and vulnerable as Sheena.
But maybe, just maybe, if I helped someone else, I would help myself.
The thought sounded too much like something Mr. Wheeler might tell me.
Suddenly, however, that didn’t devalue it the way it might have only days ago.
Perhaps I could change.
10
“You shouldn’t think like that, Sheena. The beauty in your face is not a waste,” I said when I walked into the bedroom. She was sitting at my vanity table again, looking at the books and pamphlets.
She looked up at herself in the mirror.
“I can’t help it, Roxy,” she said. “I know I have an attractive face, but it’s almost as if a terrible joke has been pulled on me, don’t you think?”
She turned to me before I could answer.
“Everywhere my grandmother takes me, people tell me I’m beautiful. Most of the time, I think it’s because they feel sorry for me and want to make me feel better or because they respect my grandmother or want something from her.” She pulled up her robe to show me more of her prosthetic leg.
“I bet most of those people never noticed your leg.”
She smiled and shook her head at me as if I were the naive one and not her. “I used to dream of that and pretend it, too. Even if I wear jeans, they still can see my false ankle, and even if they couldn’t, they still see me limping or walking with the cane. Roxy, I’ve stopped pretending or dreaming. Grandmother tells me she is working on getting me a far better . . . what should I call it . . . device? One that resembles a real human leg and feels like real skin and muscle so that people will actually wonder if it is or isn’t. But I won’t ever wonder, will I?”
“Anyone who judges you on only one part of you isn’t worth your attention, anyway. They have to be willing to know all of you.”
“And how will that happen? Do you know I’ve never even danced with a boy? Sometimes, when I’m alone, I dance, but I feel foolish, even though no one can see me. I’ve never gone on a date just to have a hamburger or pizza or something. Actually, I’ve never even held hands with a boy.
“Oh, I know all about what it’s supposed to be like,” she continued. “I’ve read so many romance novels it would make your head spin. I have even read all the scientific information about sex. I probably know as much as any doctor or therapist, but I don’t really know what a kiss is like, I mean a real kiss on the lips.” She paused and then smiled. “How many times have you seen Gone with the Wind?”
“Only once, I think. Why?”
“Rhett tells Scarlett she should be kissed, and often. I love that scene. I pretend I’m Scarlett O’Hara. I’ve pretended to be lots of characters in romantic movies. Half my youth has been spent talking to myself and embracing imaginary characters. When no one is around, of course, but at least I get kissed on the lips in my imagination.”
“Well, I’ve kissed a few dozen lips recently, and I can tell you, all but one time, I’d rather I had kissed a duck.”
She laughed.
“I’m serious,” I said. “Most boys don’t even know how to kiss. They do it to get something over with so they can get to groping you and slipping their hands under your clothes, panting like some wildcat. I once broke a boy’s pinkie because he put it where he shouldn’t.”
“You didn’t!”
“That was quite a mess. My father ended up paying the doctor’s bill. I tried to explain, but he believed the boy, who said I encouraged him. Well, maybe I did a little,” I admitted.
She laughed again. “That’s what I like about you. I saw it right away.”
“What?”
“You’ll tell me the truth . . . about everything, no matter what.”
“No, no. I’m not your best authority when it comes to the truth. I majored in lying, in school and at home. I might even be in that Believe It or Not! book by now for telling the most lies for someone my age.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling like a little girl who expected she would get her Christmas presents no matter what, “but I’m sure all that lying was to protect yourself. You don’t have to lie to protect me, so you won’t. As Grandmother told me, you’ve been around the block.”
“Is that how she put it?” I shrugged. “I would have thought she would simply say I was promiscuous or undisciplined.”
“She saw something good in you, or you wouldn’t be here, I’m sure.”
“When did she tell you I was promiscuous?”
“When she was trying to talk me out of hanging out with you. She said you weren’t the sort of girl I would find interesting or admire because you weren’t a good student and had nothing to be proud of. She said she had a lot of work to do with you, on you.”
“She’s not wrong. I haven’t done much in my life except mess up.”
“I know, but that’s exactly why I want to be your friend and want you to be mine. I’ve never been down the block, much less around it. I want to hear all about it. You must promise never to be ashamed of anything you’ve done, especially so ashamed that you wouldn’t ever tell me. People aren’t always what they seem to be, anyway. If you give them half a chance, you’ll see first impressions are more the result of prejudice or false information. You’ve got a lot to share, especially with someone like me who sees the world through the rose-colored glasses my grandmother had fitted on my face. I have to know about these things, or I’ll be a little girl when I’m thirty. So you see, you’ll be tutoring and helping me as much as I will be helping you.”
“Oh, boy,” I said, sitting on my bed.
“What?”
“You’re a lot smarter than everyone, including your grandmother, thinks you are.”
“Why?”
“You didn’t just volunteer to help me with all that,” I said, nodding at the material Professor Marx had given me. “You want a little quid pro quo.”
I lay back on my bed. I’m in trouble, I thought. Mrs. Brittany wanted me to have a G relationship with her granddaughter, PG at most, and she was looking for at least an R.
“No, I want more,” she said.
“What more?” I asked, sitting up quickly.
“I want to be you, get into your mind, your memories, so well that I feel . . .”
“Feel what?”
“That I’ve been around the block,” she said.
“I thought you might have picked up that it’s nothing I’m proud of, Sheena.”
“It brought you here, didn’t it? You want to be here, don’t you?”
I stared at her a moment. This could work in reverse, too. If she drew honest answers from me, she could feed them to her grandmother. For a fleeting few seconds, I wondered if that was really Mrs. Brittany’s reason for permitting Sheena to be friends with me. Could Sheena be her grandmother’s little spy, making periodic reports about candidates? Maybe without her even realizing how she was being used? On the other hand, according to Randy,
Brittany girls weren’t permitted to get to know Sheena. Should I have believed him? I couldn’t help feeling as if everything I did and anyone I spoke to on this estate was in one way or another not to be trusted.
“I think so,” I said, trying to sound as neutral as I could. Again, I wondered how much she actually knew about her grandmother’s business. “It’s too early to tell. I’ve not exactly benefited a hundred percent from the decisions I’ve made for myself, Sheena.”
She nodded, but I didn’t think she was listening to me.
“I always wonder if my grandmother would have wanted me to work for her, too. I mean, if I didn’t have this,” she said, indicating her prosthetic leg. “What do you think? Would it be that much of a hindrance? If I wasn’t my grandmother’s granddaughter, would I have been discovered like you? You said I was pretty. Unless you felt like you had to say it to please my grandmother.”
“Well, you know now that I’m a good liar, Sheena, so I don’t know how to convince you that I’m telling you the truth.”
“Maybe . . . maybe we can double-date or something. Does my grandmother permit that while one of her girls is in training?”
Anyone could see she was fishing to find out more about her grandmother’s girls, I thought. Because I never worried too much about what I said, I found this to be quite a challenge.
“I can only talk about myself, Sheena, and I can assure you, your grandmother wouldn’t want me going on any dates while I was here.” I thought a moment. She had to know most of it. “You know who Mr. Bob is, I imagine.”
“He works for my grandmother, but I don’t know what he does, exactly,” she said. “I’ve met him only a few times, and when I’m around, they talk about everything but what he does, I think. What does he do, exactly?”
Here I go, putting my foot into it. If I didn’t tell her things, she might get depressed and cry to her grandmother, and Mrs. Brittany would be angry, not only at me but at herself for permitting this to start. She wouldn’t have had to if I hadn’t been so damn nosy and gone out there to meet her. If I told her something Mrs. Brittany didn’t want her to know, she’d also be angry, maybe even more so. Was this some sort of test, too? A challenge?