A Girl's Life Online (4 page)

On many levels, my family is probably closer to the American reality than my ideal. Our relationships are complicated, and everyone is extremely busy. We are nothing like the people in the Sears portrait.

I am the middle of three sisters. Abby is four years older than me. Carrie is four years younger. Her father is David, my stepfather. Abby and I are both from my mother's first marriage, to a man who left her before I could even crawl.

Because my mother had to work hard to support us, for all of my life we have had various housekeepers and nannies. They did everything for us—cooked, cleaned, and ran all of our errands. But despite all their efforts I always wished I'd had a nanny like the one in the Harriet the Spy books. A nanny who would talk to me. Except for one, they never really seemed to understand me, plus they were always leaving and being replaced, so I never felt attached to or comfortable with them.

In addition to the nannies, we've always had a cleaning lady. My parents don't like cleaning (although they will do it when forced), and I have never been assigned chores because my parents don't believe in them. My mother's philosophy is that kids should be kids when they are kids—they have the rest of their lives to clean house.

When I was thirteen, I was much closer to Abby than I was to Carrie. Abby and I teased each other a lot. I made fun of her hair, which is curly and uncontrollable, like a perm gone bad. She made fun of my chest—which was size A—and, well, Abby was more than fully developed by the time she was fifteen. Abby and I also competed over height, but it didn't matter, because we were both short.

Even though Abby is four years older than me, everyone always thinks that she is younger. She has an innocent face—freckles, curly blonde hair, blue eyes, tiny nose—that makes her look thirteen even though she's now in college. Despite her appearance, she's able to handle herself in most adult situations, and I learn a lot from her. When I was eleven, we were allowed to go into New York City alone to see the musical
Damn Yankees.
Just being with Abby made me feel grown-up.

When we got into the city I was hungry. Abby was probably hungry, too, but we had exactly three dollars between us, so she was not about to buy me food. But I persisted with my complaining, and she eventually relented. We went into Starbucks, bought a small lemon cake, and split it. Afterward I was dying of thirst, but we were out of money. I ended up taking one of their printed advertisements and making a little paper cup so that I could drink the milk that was set out for the coffee. This might sound small, but it was the kind of adventure I had only with Abby. With her, I could be myself and have fun.

Over the years Abby and I have done most of the same things, so it has been easy for my mother and my stepfather to compare us. Of course, we did it ourselves, too. I remember when I received my scores for the Connecticut State Mastery Tests. My mom suggested that I get out Abby's old scores and we laid them both on the table side by side. Mom insisted on comparing both the overall scores and those for the individual sections. She did it out of curiosity, not to pit us against each other, but I still felt bad as I realized I had the lower scores.

Even though Abby and I had fun times together in the past, our relationship has been at its best in the years since she moved out of the house to go to a private school in New Hampshire. With her gone, there was less competing, fighting, and arguing. Unfortunately, there was also less time for us to really talk. I wish Abby and I had had those talks about guys that you see sisters have in movies, but even back then I knew more about dating than Abby. Abby was seventeen and she had never been kissed. It wasn't because she was ugly, but because she was shy and didn't really care about dating. She was a very by-the-book type of girl, and that book would be called
How to Be a Good Girl.

Abby's move to boarding school, which happened when she was fifteen and I was eleven, meant that Carrie and I were the only ones left at home. Suddenly the sense of competition shifted. Now Carrie and I were always comparing ourselves. I may have been the better student—that was clear—but Carrie had begun swimming at meets at a younger age than I had. When it came to swimming, she had the edge, and it bothered me.

My mother kept the score sheets that showed how we had done at each meet. Sometimes, if she really got going at it, she would make spreadsheets of our scores. No one ever came right out and said that Carrie was a better swimmer than me, but you could see it in the numbers.

Swimming was not the only area where the littlest sister had a real advantage. Carrie is the only one of us who is David's biological daughter, and this means she is the only one who lives with both of her real parents. To me it seemed like David favored her. I wasn't just jealous of his attention. It was more the fact that she had her actual father to talk to. To make things worse, like all my friends who had two parents at home, Carrie didn't seem to appreciate what she had.

When we were together, Carrie and I were likely to get into some kind of argument and it often escalated into pushing, shoving, pinching, or slapping. I think my jealousy contributed to our fighting, but it was never the specific cause. Usually it started when she did something that annoyed me—like crossing the invisible boundary in the backseat of the car—or took something of mine. This happened all the time with clothes. We raided each other's closets almost every day, and then argued over who took what and how it was or wasn't returned.

One of these times I came home from school to see her wearing my favorite white sleeveless oxford shirt from The Gap. She had never asked to borrow it and lamely explained that I had taken something from her room and therefore she was entitled to wear my shirt. This was probably true, but I wasn't in the mood to accept it. Arguing became yelling, and finally Carrie pulled out a blue permanent marker and scribbled all over the shirt while she was still wearing it. “You can have it now,” she sneered.

You might wonder where my parents were when this kind of thing occurred. Usually they were out, but even if they were home, they often just told us to work things out ourselves. In this constant war, they would intervene only if things got physical. In the case of the oxford shirt, all my mother said was that she would buy me a new one. It never happened. And Carrie was never punished.

Sometimes I am amazed that Carrie and I are still living and breathing, considering how much we fought when we were younger. Although my grandmother says it is healthy for kids to fight, I think we pushed it to the limit. The funny thing is, our fights were usually about nothing. I guess that is why my parents used to tell me, “You have to choose your battles wisely.”

The most influential person in my life is my mother. Just from the way my mother looks, you can tell she is very proper and demanding. She is tall, about five foot ten, and she is pretty large. She has always fluctuated in weight, but no matter what, I have always thought she was pretty. I guess everyone's mother is pretty in their eyes, but I truly believe my mom is a beautiful person.

My mother liked to talk about being a great pioneer in a male-dominated workforce. She said she helped break the glass ceiling, and I admired her success in the business world. Since she was the primary breadwinner in the family, she controlled the house with an iron hand. It was funny, though—she liked to talk about how much she hated men, but she acted just like them.

Even though my mom could be strict, she was also a mentor and a best friend. I love it when people tell me that I look just like my mother. We do look a lot alike, but I also hope the similarities run a little deeper.

I have always known that my biological father was pretty much an asshole. However, when I was very young—seven or eight—I didn't want to admit this to myself or to my friends. He and my mother met in college, and I like to fantasize that they courted like the couple in
Love Story.

My parents were separated and practically divorced before I was even conceived. It happened one weekend when my father came to visit with my sister and then stayed on for an extended period. My mother claims that she went along with it—planned it even—because she wanted to have another child and didn't believe that she would ever remarry. I wish that I had been conceived out of love.

As far as I can remember, I was actually in my father's presence just once, when I was about five. He had just met a woman he liked at his office, and I believe he was using my sister and me to impress her. He told my mom this woman was a real find because she had had her tubes tied. So, on a Saturday he picked up Abby and me and took us to an amusement park. For some reason he started calling me Kitty. He continued to call me that throughout the afternoon. At the end he bought each of us a stuffed bear. I got a white polar bear. I still have it. I'm not entirely sure why I've held on to it, because I know I felt as if I had spent that entire day with a complete stranger.

My mother married David when I was four. I didn't understand what marriage was then. And when David's parents came up to Abby and me and declared that they were our new grandparents, I told them we already had grandparents and didn't need more.

I have always held a certain image of an ideal father in my head. It's based on what I heard about my friend's fathers. They took their daughters to baseball games, gave them clothes they wouldn't ordinarily get when they went shopping, and served them sugar for breakfast. David didn't do any of this, and whenever I asked him anything the reply was, “Go ask your mother.” After a while I just stopped asking him. Going to David was a waste of time. This is why I have never considered David my father.

The thing that bothers me the most about David is that he likes to analyze my feelings over and over again. He says I am afraid of betrayal, so I never turn to him. I think that is a lot of bull. Why would I be afraid of being betrayed by him? Because my father left me? I was only a baby when my father left, so I have no painful memory of it. And besides, David had a clean slate. He could have defined what a father is for me. Instead he always told me to go to my mother for answers or for help, and she was usually working, so I was left on my own.

By the time I was thirteen I didn't think that I should have to respect all adults. I didn't disrespect them, but I was finding my own answers and a lot of what I was seeing and hearing about the adults around me was very hard to accept. I wanted adults to be perfect. I wanted them to be flawless role models, guides, even protectors. When you realize that most adults aren't perfect at any of these things, you begin to lose your faith.