“I forgot, Mother,” I said.
“Fifty thousand dollars,” she said, tapping her foot after each word for emphasis. To me she looked like she was keeping beat to music. “If we add that to all the money he’s spent on psychotherapy, tutors, fixing the things you’ve broken, paying off people who have lodged complaints against you, and everything else I can’t think of, he’s spent as much as some third world countries spend over a year!”
“Maybe he should ask the UN for help, then,” I said.
“Get up,” she snapped. “You’ve embarrassed me again and again. Don’t you have any concern for this family and its reputation? Oh, what have I done to deserve this?” she asked the ceiling.
“Forgot your birth control pills sixteen years ago?” I offered.
She turned a shade darker than blood red and looked out toward Mrs. Miller’s desk. In front of other people, my mother was always stylish, elegant, and able to manage her rage. She rarely, if ever, had a strand of hair out of place, and when I was little, I used to believe that creases were terrified of forming in her clothing. She would have them ironed to oblivion.
“I suppose this is really all my fault,” she said, not really sounding like she was taking the blame, “for having you so late in life.”
I did actually agree with that diagnosis. My parents made me on a hot summer night after they had both had too much to drink. My father let that little detail out once when they were arguing over something stupid like how much of his money my mother spent on fresh flowers, especially in the winter. I happened to overhear it.
“Maybe I was just dying to be born, and there was nothing you could do about it,” I offered dryly.
She pulled herself up, primping like a proud peacock. Then, as cool as a brain surgeon, she stepped out of the little comfort room and spoke to Mrs. Miller.
“Do you think she is in any sort of condition for a meeting with the principal?” she asked, hoping to hear no, of course.
Mrs. Miller rose and came to the room.
She grabbed my shoulders and turned me to her as I stood, and then she shook her head.
“What gets into you kids these days?” she asked.
“Aliens?” I responded. “Through our belly buttons, I think,” I added.
Mrs. Miller nearly smiled.
“She’s fine, Mrs. Sommers. She’ll probably have a good headache all day. Give her some Advil at home.”
“I think it would be better if she suffered all day and appreciated the damage she is doing to herself,” my sweet, loving mother replied.
Mrs. Miller looked like she agreed.
“Come along, Teal,” Mother said, and I started out.
“Your books,” Mrs. Miller reminded me. “Mrs. Tagler brought them in after you arrived.”
“Oh. Sorry,” I said. I really meant sorry she had brought them in, but Mrs. Miller smiled and handed them to me.
I continued after Mother, who tapped the corridor floor tiles with the sharp heels of her shoes like some drum roll as she reluctantly led me back to the principal’s office to be executed in red ink. I remained a good yard or so behind her, imagining an invisible rope tied to my neck, which was used to tug me through life itself.
“How is she doing?” Mrs. Tagler asked my mother when we entered.
“Rather badly, I would say, wouldn’t you?” Mother replied, her lips slicing a thin red line in her face. I always thought that for an expert on cosmetics, Mother wore her lipstick too thick.
Mrs. Tagler rose without speaking and went into the principal’s office. Mother turned to me, shaking her head.
“I was on my way to have lunch with Carson,” she said. My brother, who was nearly fifteen years older than me, was already running the business affairs division of my father’s real estate development company. He had his own townhouse and was practically engaged to the daughter of a wealthy banker.
Carson was everything they would want me to be, I thought. He is Mr. Briefcase, a suit and a tie with a perfectly designed manikin within, Mr. Perfect who uses a Waterpik after every meal. I called him my father’s second shadow, especially when it came to business.
Our father specialized in malls and entertainment centers, and it had made him—us—very wealthy, millionaires a few times over. At the end of the fiscal year, Carson liked to break it down to how many dollars were made per minute. I suppose in my case it was how many dollars were wasted every minute.
We lived in a full-blown estate house with nearly twelve acres, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and a clay tennis court, which only Carson used occasionally. The property was walled in and gated.
“I’m sorry I spoiled your day,” I told my mother.
When Mr. Croft asked for examples of understatement once, I raised my hand and said, “My mother favors my brother over me.”
Worships
would have been more like it.
“My day?” She laughed. “It’s more than one day you’ve spoiled, Teal,” she added.
I looked up at her sharply and felt tears trying to introduce themselves to my eyes. Only my own ever-present boil of rage kept that from happening.
The principal’s door opened before I could say anything, and we were ushered in. Mr. Bloomberg did not get up when we entered, and I could see that bothered my mother. He was trying to make a point, however. The point was, this was definitely
not
a social occasion.
“Please have a seat,” he said, nodding at the chairs Mrs. Tagler must have just placed directly in front of his marble-topped, immaculate-looking desk. Everything was so neatly organized, I felt like wiping my hands through the piles of papers and files before sitting and knocking them all about. Of course, I didn’t.
“I am sure you realize, Mrs. Sommers, that this is Teal’s fourth appearance before me generated by her misbehavior in three months.”
“Yes, of course. I’m very, very upset about it, Mr. Bloomberg.”
“We pride ourselves on how well run our classrooms are and how professional our staff is. To waste all that over this sort of thing is more than just a breach of our school rules; it’s a veritable sin.”
“Oh, I agree,” Mother said. He could have said, “Let’s hang her at dawn,” and she would have nodded. As long as it didn’t conflict with her hair appointment, of course.
“Alcoholic beverages, drugs of any kind, weapons of any sort, all those are grounds for expulsion after only one incident, Mrs. Sommers, much less three or four. I have,” he continued, reaching for a document on his desk, “asked Mrs. Tagler to retrieve your contract with us. Both you and Teal signed the document when she entered the school, you will recall. I have underlined the stipulation that if and when Teal should be asked to leave the school as a result of repeated misbehavior, you forfeit your tuition.”
He handed it to Mother, who pretended to read it with interest and then handed it back to him, nodding.
He then sighed deeply and looked at me.
“Is there any possibility you will change your behavior, Teal?” he asked.
Mother turned and glared through me.
I shrugged. He knitted his thick, dark brows together and leaned forward.
“That’s not quite the response I was looking for,” he said.
My mouth felt so dry. That was all I could think about, and I was on the verge of asking for a drink of water. He turned to Mother.
“If she is sent to this office again for any reason, no matter how small the violation, we will have to ask her to leave the school. For now, she is suspended for three days. I hope you and your husband will impress upon her how serious this has become, Mrs. Sommers. We’re not a public school. We don’t have the time or the inclination to reform disrespectful young people. Anyone who attends this school should know the value of the education he or she will receive.”
I wanted to put my fingers in my ears, but I didn’t dare. Most of the time, actually, I wanted to put my fingers in my ears. I guess drinking booze was just another way to do it, especially at this school for penguins and canaries, I thought.
“I understand,” Mother said. She glared at me. “We’ll have a good talk.”
He nodded, firming his lips and looking at me skeptically. Our eyes met, and he knew the clock was ticking on my expulsion. He could also see how little importance I was placing on it.
“Very well,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a tone that clearly indicated the meeting had ended.
Mother rose, and I followed her out. Mrs. Tagler looked up at us as we passed through the outer office. She and my mother exchanged looks of sympathy as if I was more like a disease than a child.
“Your father is going to go ballistic over this, Teal,” she said as we left the building and headed toward Mother’s big Mercedes.
I knew what was coming. Mother had a set lecture. I really believed she had written it all down and memorized it. It always began with how much my father had done for me. The lecture started as soon as we were in the car and she was driving out of the school parking lot. She should have recorded it and put it on a CD she could just play, I thought.
“Look at what you have, Teal. A beautiful home. Your own suite, your own telephone and a computer, clothes that rival any princess’s wardrobe, clothes you don’t wear, I might add. Any toy you wanted as you grew up, you got. You have servants waiting on you, a car and driver to take you wherever you want to go, and if you behaved, you would have your own car. Why, why are you like this? What do you want?” she asked, a little more hysteria in her voice than usual.
I looked out the window.
What did I want?
Should I tell her? Could I ever tell her? How do you tell your own mother that what you want the most is simply to be loved?
At wasn’t a surprise to me that I often imagined myself locked in some echo chamber. My big house was filled with words that bounced around me, repetitions of threats, lectures, and ever-changing rules. In other homes, I suspected the walls lovingly absorbed the words spoken between mothers and daughters, fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters, but not in mine. The warmth in our home came from central heating, not from smiles and kisses, hugs and loving caresses.
A few years ago, I sat and thumbed through the pile of family albums we had in the den. I was more fascinated with my brother when he was younger and his relationship to my mother and father than I was with anyone else. One of my therapists once accused me of being a little paranoid about it. He was referring to the way I described my mother smiling at Carson or holding Carson’s hand, or the way my father held him when he was a little boy, and the way they held me or looked at me when I was his age.
First, there were three times more pictures of Carson than there were of me. Mother’s explanation for that was my father became more successful during my early years and was far busier than he had been when Carson was growing up. Therefore, there wasn’t as much time to recreate. As he became more important in the business world, they moved up the social ladder, and Mother had the added burden of presenting him and herself to the substantial world, as she liked to call it. She became a social bird who primped her feathers and held court at dinners and balls, making sure her face was pasted on the society pages and in the slick community magazines. If I even approached what some might consider a complaint about how little we did together, I was told the sacrifices were all very important and good for the family, which of course included me, so I shouldn’t feel I was neglected.
I had three nannies in my first ten years, two of whom, according to my father, demanded battle fatigue insurance. I suppose the worst thing I did before I was nine was knock over the perfumed candle in Mother’s bedroom after she and my father had left for a dinner with the mayor. It was my misfortune or my intention, depending on who tells the story, that the candle remained burning. Its tiny flame managed to lick the sheer nightgown my mother had on a hanger by her closet door. That triggered a bigger fire, which spread into the walk-in closet.
We had a sprinkler system in the house. Naturally, we would, Daddy being a developer and up on everything that was possible and necessary. The flames set off the sprinkler, which then soaked Mother’s wardrobe, ruining, she claimed, one hundred fifty thousand dollars’ worth of clothing. My father actually fired the nanny I had at the time. I knew that if he could have, he would have fired me.
“You’re finished here as my daughter,” he would have said. “Get out. Go to some orphanage!”
I actually dreamed such a scene and woke up crying. Carson, who was twenty-five at the time and still living at home, was the only one to come to my bedroom to see what was going on. I told him I had a nightmare.
“My advice to you,” he said, “is to stuff it back into the pillow. That’s what Mother used to tell me to do when I had a bad dream, and it works.”
It was something she had told him when he was only four or five, I was sure; but at least she had come to his room when he had cried. My tears made her nervous because she was older and more apt to get nervous, and making her nervous was forbidden because “nervousness leads to wrinkled brows and palpitating hearts.”
“I didn’t mean to start the fire,” I said. Vaguely, I wondered if I did. It was during the period I was seeing a therapist and was told that sometimes we don’t realize ourselves what we secretly want to do. Now I know he meant subconsciously, but I was too young to understand that, so he called it my secret self. He had me so convinced I had a secret self that I often paused quickly in front of a mirror to see if another me would be visible, perhaps caught unaware.
My brother Carson grunted after I protested my innocence. He has my mother’s nose and mouth, my mother’s eyes, but my father’s bulky upper body and my father’s dark brown hair. From the rear, especially from a distance or when there isn’t much light, it’s hard to distinguish who it is, Daddy or Carson.
“You know what Daddy says about apologies,” he reminded me. “They are always too little too late and might as well not be uttered. Usually they serve only to remind the injured party he or she has been injured.”