Charmed Thirds (15 page)

Trying to make him more a part of me than I am myself.

December 15th

Dear Hope,

I’m on the bus home for winter break. Consider this letter a Christmas miracle. I apologize for being so distant last semester. You’ve heard my excuses before and I don’t know what else I can say, except maybe this:

Flash back ten years to Christmas 1993, and my first TV appearance in the Pineville Elementary School winter concert. This was during my short-lived career as a clarinet player, and I actually had a solo in the
Beauty and the Beast
part of the Disney medley. The show was only broadcast on the local cable station, but my family captured this legendary moment on video. It wasn’t my performance that was so noteworthy—oh no!—but the appearance of my very first pimple. Not a bashful blemish, the scarlet starlet on my chin had so much personality that it practically upstaged me. My family dubbed our act “Notso & Friend,” my solo made into a duet.

Throughout adolescence, other humiliations followed, including The First Day of School Furuncle, The Maid-of-Honor Nodule, and The Senior Portrait Pustule. My dermatologist prescribed an array of antibiotics and topical treatments, including a sulfur-based ointment that smelled like rotten eggs and gave my skin an Oompa Loompa hue. As each one failed to work, I learned to adapt to my acne. Like you’d mix paints on a palette, I taught myself to combine half a dozen shades of foundation to achieve the perfect camouflaging color. But no matter how much makeup I used or how often I reapplied it, my zits would inevitably shine through, being the attention-starved abscesses that they were (and still are).

And finally, after nearly a decade, I was prescribed Accutane.

On the back of each Accutane pill compartment there’s a tiny drawing of a woman who appears to be at least eighteen months pregnant. A red
JUST
SAY
NO diagonal slashes her distended belly. When I punch through the perforations to get to the pills, the little oval pictures come off in my hand. The pregnant-lady petals always end up on the carpet, often surrounding my bed. An offering to the goddess of Anti-Fertility. As if such measures were necessary. It’s Dr. Rosen’s duty to ask whether I’m using birth control, and I assume asking me about my sex life must be the highlight of a day primarily occupied by lancing boils. I disappoint him every month: “My method is abstinence.” The next time I see him, I hope to give him a thrill. “CONDOMS! I
USE
CONDOMS!”

The red
JUST
SAY
NO warning is what I thought about when I sat in a stall three months ago, searching for any sign of my period on the toilet paper. It soothed me as I stood barefoot on the cold, damp bathroom tiles on a late September morning, waiting for the white stick to give me a sign: plus or minus. Positive or negative. Yes or no. I braced myself on the sink, forehead pressed to the mirror, my breath fogging up my frightened reflection. I told myself, “I have to get rid of it. I have no choice.” But I knew that even if I wasn’t on Accutane and the baby was twenty-digits perfect, I would’ve come to the same reluctant conclusion.

When I finally got my period, inexplicably twenty-seven days late, I had already ignored as many messages from Marcus. This wasn’t something I wanted to talk about over the phone or e-mail. I was tired of telling him everything in absentia.

You, too. Which is why you’re getting this letter now. And for that, and all of my other unspoken secrets, I’m sorry. So, so, so sorry.

Repentantly yours,
 J.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Date: December 11th, 2003

Subject: Poetry Spam #32

coastal quarantine 
 inoculate, isolate 
 secret soul disease

—Original Message— 
 From: Pinky Webguy [mailto:[email protected]]
 Sent: December 10th, 2003
 To: [email protected]
 Subject: chevrolet quarantine marjoram fuzzy sprocket pocono

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the seventeenth

Ah, there’s no place like home for the hellidays . . .

“
MERRY
CHRISTMAS!!!” might seem like an improvement over my mother’s usual first-glance, still-on-the-doorstep greetings (usually a recrimination or an accusation about my appearance). But in truth, her seasonal cheer was an affront to my humbuggy sensibilities. As was the house in general, which smelled like pine needles and cinnamon sticks and was all aglow in the tasteful, unblinking little white lights my mother favors. Surround-sound carolers contributed to the merriment. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-blah-blah-blah
-bleech.

Mom grabbed me by the arm. “Let me show you your present!”

I was surprised that she hadn’t commented on my wardrobe (third-day-in-a-row jeans, ratty black thermal), epidermal land mines (mostly clear), or hair (finally! finally! finally! long enough to twist into a sloppy topknot). I interpreted her haste as a sincere desire to spread joy to the world, one malcontent at a time. She guided me down the hall and then stood for a moment outside my room, blocking me from entering. And then, with a dramatic sweep of her arm, she opened the door.

“Ta da!”

Ta da! My room was gone! Gone! My mosaic from Hope, my snapshots of Marcus, my movie posters, my books, my CDs, my everything . . . GONE!

“Mom! What the hell happened to my room?!”

I guess it could have been worse. It
could
have looked like the results of one of those not-even-third-rate
Trading Spaces
rip-offs, with, like, seaweed stapled to the walls. It was all very tasteful. Very . . . beige. Natural wicker furniture, a polished wood floor covered with a sand-colored sisal rug, photographs of beach scenes on the creamy walls. It could be a hotel room, a room for anyone.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said, pulling me inside. “It looks so much more spacious and sunny without all your stuff strewn about.”

“My
stuff! Where is all my stuff!”

“Why are you upset? You were always complaining about how babyish your room was. You even tried to paint over the wallpaper, remember? I thought I’d surprise you with a makeover!”

She was showing a little too much enthusiasm. I tapped my sneaker in defiance.

“Don’t get all huffy with me, Jessie,” she said, sounding a bit huffy herself. “I redid Bethany’s room, too.”

“Now I’m really confused,” I said.

Then my mom went on to explain that she needed to redo our rooms as practice for what she hopes will be her new career as a professional stager.

“A what?”

My mother brightened. “A stager is real estate professional slash design specialist who sees the hidden potential in spaces and makes superficial yet strategic cosmetic enhancements to let the true personality of a property shine.”

“And people
pay
you for this?” I asked skeptically.

“Yes!” She was very proud of herself.

“Why would anyone put more money into a house they want to sell?”

“This is not designing for living, it’s designing
for leaving.”
My mother draped her arm around me apologetically, feeling sorry for this daughter of hers who was
so
in the dark about
the
most obvious truths. “My work creates a faster sale and more money for the seller. Sometimes it’s simply a rearrangement of furniture and a removal of clutter. But some rooms are in such disarray that they require a total overhaul.”

“Like mine,” I said dryly.

“Yes!” She was too excited to notice that I was insulted. “I’ve reinvented it as a guest room, inspired by the casual elegance of a Caribbean resort. But for your sister’s room, I wanted to try my hand at something entirely different . . .”

She crossed in front of me to open the door, leaving me in a fog of perfume. Nothing could have prepared me for what was inside: a burst of blue. Baby blue, to be specific.

She had reimagined Bethany’s room as a baby boy’s room.

My mother started talking very, very fast, her excitement now bordering on mania. And psychosis. “It was my intention to do a baby girl’s room, which would be practical because of Marin, but then when I was shopping for bumper sets I saw this adorable one with the blue choo-choos and I thought, This is how I want to transform this room! So I just went with it.”

I looked around the room, at the Dr. Seuss books on the blue shelves next to the teddy bear sitting in the blue rocking chair across from the blue diaper stacker on the blue changing table under the blue choo-choo mobile . . . and I couldn’t help but wonder how much this fake nursery looked like the real nursery in which the older brother I never met was discovered blue in his crib . . .

I thought maybe this was a cry for help. That by doing something so drastic, so over the top, she was begging for a long overdue discussion of that which is never discussed.

“And Marin can still sleep here,” my mom breezily continued, unaware of my discomfort. “She’s surrounded by a pink and sparkly feminine aesthetic at home, so I don’t think that sleeping in a blue room a few times a month will—how should I put this?—make her more masculine, now, do you?”

This was the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen. And there was only one way to escape.

“Mooooom! WHERE! IS! MY! STUFF!”

“Jessica Lynn Darling, don’t get so testy,” Mom said testily.

It worked.

“First of all, anything in this room was left behind when you went to school. If these things were so important to your well-being, why didn’t you take them with you?”

I was so freaked out that I wasn’t even thinking in English anymore. I was thinking in some made-up language spoken by asylum inmates (which will come in handy when I have my mom committed). I couldn’t form a single word, let alone a sentence that could express how supremely horrified I was. My mother misinterpreted my silence.

“See?” my mother said, fluffing her bangs in the choo-choo mirror. “You know I’m right.”

“Just tell me where my stuff is,” I said, when the powers of speech had returned.

“Stored in the basement,” she replied. “In a properly labeled container.”

I went into the cellar and found the large bin she was referring to:
JESSIE’S
JUNK
.

And so, for the next few hours, I sat on the floor of the dim, dank basement, sorting through my junk. The mosaic picture of me and Hope brought a drizzle of tears to my eyes. The ME,
YES
, ME T-shirt that Marcus gave me to wear for my graduation speech created a steady rainfall. But the “Fall” poem, proof of how far we’ve come, all the way to being “
naked / without shame / in Paradise . . .
” Well, this brought on a torrential thunderstorm of tears. I might still be drowning downstairs if my dad hadn’t come to get me with his corny Christmas cheer.

“Ho ho ho, Notso!”

I wish I could get high on frankincense or buzzed on myrrh, just to get me through these next few days until Marcus comes home. His last poetry spam told me what I’d suspected all along: He knew a heavy workload wasn’t to blame for my lack of communication last semester. It was something else, something big I was too afraid to tell him, something he knew existed simply because he knows me so well. Something I will tell him when I see him. I swear.

the twenty-fourth

I wasn’t the only one anxiously awaiting Marcus’s arrival at my parents’ house.

“MMMMMMMMMMAHCUSSSSSSSSSS!” shouted Marin as she careened into my knees.

“She associates you with Marcus,” Bethany explained, setting out a tray of Papa D’s Holidaze Donuts, which, to my knowledge, were the same as their regular variety, only coated in red, white, and green sprinkles. “Where is he, by the way?”

“On his way. He’ll be here very soon.” I stroked Marin’s curls to console her. Her fair hair is the same color mine was before it darkened with age and temperament to its current bitter chocolate hue. Sometimes this gives me hope: The Blond Bond is broken! On more jaded days it makes me grieve for her future, which will be more dun than sun.

“YAY! YAY! YAY!” Marin whooped as she bounded toward the Christmas tree.

“She’s more excited about Marcus than Santa Claus,” I observed.

“So how are things between you two?” Bethany asked.

“Well, you know, this is Santa’s really busy time of year . . .”

“I meant Marcus,” she said, clarifying the obvious. “You haven’t talked about him in ages.”

I wanted to point out how she’d scarcely mentioned her husband in the past six months and she was
married
to him. But bringing him up would have created a Christmas crisis. G-Money believes no American of any color, class, or body mass index should ever be deprived of the opportunity to go into a diabetic coma. So if a Jew gets a craving for a king-sized cone of eggnog custard with a side order of Holidaze donuts at 2 A.M. on Christmas morning,
someone
has to keep the Shoppe open to serve him, and that person is G-Money. I’m sure if you asked him—not that I have—G-Money would tell you that he’s doing it all for his wife and child. But haven’t those priorities gotten a bit out of whack when loyalty to the brand seems to come before everything else,
including
your wife and child?

“You’re not having problems, are you?” my mother asked, pinching stray sprinkles off the poinsettia print tablecloth.

Now that Marcus has been endorsed by Bethany, my mother is less hostile about our relationship. This proves the indestructibility of their Blond Bond.

“No,” I said. “It was a tough semester, that’s all.”

“How tough could it have been?” my dad asked, the bells on his corny Santa hat jangling. “You got four As and a B-plus.”