Ivy Secrets (17 page)

“I wouldn’t know. Have you asked her?”

Charlie blinked. “God, Marina, don’t joke about this.”

“I am not joking.”

“Do you think it’s true?”

“Would it make you uncomfortable?”

“God, yes. No. I don’t know.”

Marina swung her legs off the bed. “Well, if she is, she hasn’t tried anything on me. Has she on you?”

Charlie shook her head. “But she doesn’t go out …”

Marina laughed. “So what? You Americans. You are all so nervous. You expect everyone to be … what do you call them—the Brady Bunch?”

“But … but she’s seen me in the shower.”

“So?”

Charlie shivered. “So … I don’t know. It makes me feel … creepy.”

“Is Tess your friend?”

“Yes. Of course. You and Tess—you’re my best friends.”

Marina sat back and folded her arms. “Well, I would not exactly call her my best friend, but I do know one thing. If Tess is your friend, it should not matter whether or not she is a lesbian.”

Just then the outer door closed. Charlie jerked her head toward it. But no one was there.

    The next morning Charlie cleaned up the kitchen after breakfast and decided not to see Vance again. There had to be someone better; someone who wouldn’t make her feel as though she had to live in the Quad to be good enough for him, someone who surely wouldn’t care if she didn’t have an unlimited allowance or a trust fund to sustain her.

And there had to be someone who wasn’t into drugs.

She wiped down the long stainless counter and wondered who that might be, and when on earth she was going to find him. It was easier to think about boys this morning than to think about Tess.

“Phone call for Charlie O’Brien,” a voice boomed from the dining room. She quickly put down the sponge and went to the swinging door. She hoped it wasn’t Vance; she hoped
it wasn’t another guy asking her out. All she wanted to do now was concentrate on studying. She pushed open the door.

“I’m here,” she said.

“Phone call in the living room,” said a girl Charlie recognized as an upperclassman.

Charlie crossed the kitchen and went into the living room. She picked up the receiver, pressing a finger to her other ear to block out the sound of girls racing down the stairs.

It wasn’t Vance or another guy: on the phone was her mother.

“Mom!” Charlie called out. “Why are you calling me on this phone? Why didn’t you call me upstairs?”

“I did. You weren’t there.” Her mother sounded strangely distressed.

Charlie sank onto the crushed velvet sofa beside the phone. “What’s wrong, Mom?”

“Everyone’s fine. No one’s dead,” her mother said quickly.

Charlie smiled, then felt a little guilty that the thought of someone in the family being dead hadn’t crossed her mind. The O’Briens were a hearty lot. It was unfathomable that anything could kill them.

“There is a problem, though, honey,” her mother said, “it’s Dad.”

“Is he sick?”

“No, honey, he’s fine.” The pause seemed to last forever, during which time Charlie imagined her father had run off with the secretary at the mill, or probably worse for her mother, had refused to go to mass that week.

“He’s been laid off,” her mother finally said.

“Oh, Mom,” Charlie said, “how awful.”

“Yes. It is.”

She played with the phone cord, remembering when he had been laid off once before. Charlie was about eight or nine, and the only difference being laid off seemed to have made was that Daddy was home during the day.

“It’s different this time,” her mother said. “This time they’re shutting down the mill.”

Charlie stared at the floor. “Well, he can get a job somewhere else, can’t he?”

“He’s tired. But it seems like all the mills are shutting
down. The ones they’re leaving open are computerizing. And you know how your father feels about computers.”

“He’ll get something, Mom.”

The pause was longer. “He’s tried,” her mother repeated.

An uneasiness crept over Charlie. “When did this happen, Mom?” she asked.

“The week you went back to school.”

“And no one told me?”

“Honey, we didn’t want to worry you. There was nothing you could do …”

“What can I do now?”

“It doesn’t look as though he’ll find work any time soon. I hated to call and tell you, but I didn’t want it to wait until you got home for Thanksgiving.”

“What is it, Mom?”

“We, well, your father and I are afraid you won’t be able to go back to college next semester.”

She stared at the floor again. “What?” she asked weakly.

“Honey, we know how hard you worked to get that scholarship, and you should go to college. We’re so proud that you wanted to. But maybe it would be better if you came home. Maybe you could take a course or two at the university.”

“Why, Mom?” She felt tears well as she spoke. “It doesn’t cost you anything to send me here, and I earned enough for my expenses.”

“Honey, your father would kill me if he knew I told you, but we’ve already missed two payments on the house. We never had enough money left after feeding you kids to have any kind of a savings.”

“I know that, Mom.”

“If you come home, and work at Felicia’s or somewhere, you could still go to school part-time and help … well, help us out. Just for the time being, until he gets a job.”

Charlie couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Your brother Bobby can’t help, of course. He’s barely making ends meet with his wife and the new baby.”

Charlie bristled at the thought of her older brother, at the fact that he “had” to get married and had given up his chance at a college degree.

“Did Danny get laid off, too?”

“Of course. That’s what he gets for wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps.”

The other three kids were younger than Charlie—Maureen, and Sheila, and Sean Patrick, the youngest, who was only eight.

“Maureen is working at the Super Save, but she needs her money for clothes. You remember how hard it was being in high school. And Sheila is baby-sitting …” Her mother’s words trailed off, and she started to cry.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Charlie heard herself saying as she saw her dreams evaporating.

“Honey, you know I’d never ask if it weren’t—”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Charlie lied. “You’re my family. You’re more important than college. Besides, maybe Daddy will have a job soon and it won’t be a problem.”

“Maybe you’re right,” her mother answered, but Charlie heard no conviction in her voice.

“We’ll work it out,” Charlie said. “And if I have to stay home for a semester, maybe it won’t be a problem. Maybe my scholarship will still be here next year. Maybe everything will be fine.” And maybe, Charlie thought as she hung up the phone, maybe everything won’t. Then she had a raging thought at the unfairness of it all: that boys like Vance Howard had sufficient funds to waste on parties and drugs, and that Tess and Marina could spend enough money in one morning to make two mortgage payments on the O’Brien house.

Tess couldn’t believe they thought she was a lesbian. She had tried so hard to change over the summer; she had tried so hard to look like
them.
Still, they thought she was a lesbian. All because boys didn’t call her, because boys didn’t ask her out. She had stayed awake most of the night, wondering. She stared into her mirror now, looking for telltale signs, obsessed with one horrifying thought:
Am I a lesbian?
Maybe it was the kind of thing you didn’t always know about yourself, the kind of thing other people saw first. Like when you left the ladies’ room with no idea that toilet paper was hanging from the back of your skirt for all the world to see. All the world, except for you.

She remembered the time she’d stumbled on the photos of the naked women in the back of Dell’s bookstore. She had been surprised, but she had looked at them. All of them. And she had felt a certain stirring within herself, especially at one picture. The long-haired brunette was tall and had firm, full—well, Tess realized—really beautiful breasts, with large dark nipples that looked as though they’d just been kissed. One hand was discreetly placed between her thighs, and one hand was at her mouth, her fingers barely touching the tip of her extended tongue. Even now, recalling the picture in her mind, Tess felt warmth rise within her.

God, she thought, was she a lesbian?

God, was Dell?

Maybe that’s why Dell likes me
, Tess thought.
Maybe Dell wants to see me naked, with one hand between my thighs, and fingers to my mouth.

She slowly put a hand to her mouth and watched her reflection.
She stuck out her tongue, and licked the tip of her fingers. She tried to decide if she looked sexy. She decided she looked stupid.

She ran her hands across her breasts, down the front of her. Could she be almost twenty years old and not know she was a lesbian? But she was going to marry Peter Hobart, wasn’t she? And she wanted to, really wanted to. Why would she want to get married if she was a lesbian?

She put her hands to her head and touched her hair, her shorter hair, her just-curled hair. Maybe that was why she really hated her new look, the new Tess. Maybe she hated curling her hair and wearing makeup because she wanted, at heart, to be a boy. Maybe she wanted to want women.

Tears came to her eyes. She tried to picture Charlie naked. She tried to picture Marina. She’d seen them unclothed in the shower; why hadn’t she paid attention? Maybe she didn’t want them as her friends. Maybe she really wanted to kiss their mouths, touch their breasts.

She thought about Peter again. His tall, athletic body. The muscles of his arms that had poked from the sleeves of his T-shirt when Tess saw him ride his horse on his mother’s estate in New York. It had been over a year since she’d seen Peter. He was back in college, no doubt, yet he hadn’t called. Maybe there was only one way she would get to see him. Maybe there was only one way that Tess could prove to herself that she was not a lesbian.

She turned from the mirror and went to the other side of her bed. Then she dialed information and asked for directory assistance for Amherst.

    She walked into the Lord Jeffrey Inn on rubber legs. Peter had offered to pick her up, but Tess decided it would be easier for her to take a cab; she didn’t want to have to answer any questions or feel a hundred pair of eyes at her back.

She passed by the long mahogany desk and went toward the dining room, hoping that Peter had already arrived. She caught her reflection in the long french doors—the short, black knit dress looked—well, sexy, she supposed. She didn’t think that the girl in the glass looked like a lesbian.

“May I help you?” asked the young maître d’.

Tess smiled and tried to forget that she’d rather be back
at Morris House, clad in her chenille bathrobe. She tried to remember that this was the night that would lead to the day her mother had planned for so long.

“I’m meeting Peter Hobart,” she said, afraid to look past the man into the dining room.

“Tess!” came a voice from inside the room. “Over here!”

Both Tess and the maître d’ looked across the room. Peter was standing, waving. His dark hair was longer than Tess remembered, and his glasses were different. They made him look older. He looked very Ivy League in corduroy pants and a tennis sweater, and was much more underdressed than Tess. She raised her chin and tried not to show any embarrassment.

The maître d’ escorted her to the square cherry table in front of the fireplace.

Peter leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Gosh, it’s great to see you,” he said. “I’d forgotten you were going to Smith.”

Her weight sunk into the Windsor chair, and her heart along with it.
He forgot I was going to Smith.
Which probably meant he hadn’t thought about her at all in the year and a half since she last saw him.

“You look … different,” he said.

“Different?” Tess managed to ask.

“Well, yes. Different. Older. Actually, you look great.”

She hung on to his words, words of encouragement. Then she smiled. She didn’t know if she should tell him that he, too, looked great. She pictured him in a white tux, standing beside her at the altar. She pictured her mother smiling, and it felt good. Tess took a breath, then exhaled. If she were a lesbian, surely it would not feel that good.

“Would you like some wine?” Peter asked as he reached for a bottle in a wine cooler beside him.

“That would be nice,” she said. While he filled her glass, Tess looked down at the red leather menu on her plate. She realized the maître d’ had vanished.

She shifted on the uncomfortable chair and caught the edge of the white linen tablecloth with her hand, nearly pulling it off the table. She cleared her throat.

“How are your parents?” he asked politely as he replaced the bottle in its stand.

“Fine,” Tess answered. “And your mother?”

Peter laughed shortly. “You know Mother,” he said. “She never changes.”

Tess nodded and placed her burgundy napkin in her lap—her black knit, overdressed lap. “You probably wonder why I’m so dressed up,” she said.