The Muffia (20 page)

Chapter 30

“So—” I began, coming into the upstairs hall bathroom as Lila began rinsing the green soapy avocado cleanser from her face. The bathroom, which had been done in shades of orange and peach, was in dire need of redecorating.
What had I been thinking when I chose those colors?
It must have been right before the divorce when I wasn’t really thinking straight. “What’s going on at school?”

We’d had our dinner—frozen Mandarin Orange Chicken from Trader Joe’s—during which time I’d kept the discussion topics to ballet, her recent disappointing “C” in math and what we might do for summer vacation. Of course, I just wanted to come out and ask her how my vibrator got into her bedside table, but I had to wait for the right opportunity.

“What do you mean, what’s going on at school? It’s school, Mom.” She had her long blonde hair tied in a loose knot on top of her head and it wobbled there, threatening to come undone whenever she moved.

“Yes, I know it’s school, but what’s going on with your friends? What’s going on in PE? That kind of thing.”

“Nothing,” she said. “More girls have obvious pubic hair, maybe. Is that what you want to know?”

This wasn’t my idea of easing into it. I handed her a décor-appropriate orange towel and she began drying her face. “Any problems with your teachers? How’s Mr. Rodriguez these days?”

Mr. Rodriguez, Lila’s social studies teacher, had a reputation for belittling everyone in ninth grade for being uninformed about history. It was true they were uninformed, but he was probably overly optimistic thinking he could improve Americans’ awareness of world history by criticizing the country's hormonally challenged teens. The truth was, the average American didn’t care about history.

“He doesn’t bother us anymore. We reported him.”

“Ah.” I
had
encouraged her to be assertive, but I didn’t like the sound of this. “How did you do that?”

“Linda, Savannah, Kim and me—” 

“Linda, Savannah, Kim and
I
—”

While hanging the towel back on the ceramic towel bar, her fourteen-year-old face revealed feelings of boredom, intolerance and disgust, which consisted of rolling her eyes, puffing up her cheeks then dropping her jaw as she let out an unnecessarily dramatic sigh.

“Linda, Savannah, Kim and
I
walked into Principal Jenner’s office and said Mr. Rodriguez was acting inappropriately toward us.”

Now I really didn’t like the sound of this
. “Was that true?” I asked with trepidation.

“Yes. I mean, I guess it’s all in how you define
inappropriate
, right? He has no reason to tell us we’re bad students because we don’t know all the details of whatever war we happen to be talking about. That’s inappropriate.”

“But the word inappropriate suggests something different,” I said. “It’s not a word one uses lightly—especially when you're talking about a male teacher and a group of young female students.”

“I know,” she retorted. “That’s exactly why we used it. Principal Jenner probably wouldn’t have told him to shape up if we said he was being mean because we couldn’t remember which century World War II was in or something, so we did what we had to do to protect ourselves.”

“But he also has a reputation that
he
has to protect. And he has a family. What will his wife think? Lila, you don’t want to be one of those women who makes accusations when they’re not true.”

“Why not?”

This couldn’t be
my
daughter talking.
My
daughter had more integrity.

“Because they’re not true, that’s why,” I stuttered. It was difficult to believe that, despite her youth, Lila couldn’t grasp the seriousness of her offense. “And because . . . because you don’t hurt people like that— especially when it’s a lie. It was the wrong thing to do.”

She shrugged. “But for the right reasons.”

“No, it wasn’t. You
should
know when World War II was.”

“Well, whatever… he’s a lot nicer now—to everyone. So it worked.” She made a move to exit the bathroom, but I blocked the door.

“Ends don’t always justify the means, young lady, and I’m going to call Linda’s mother tomorrow to discuss this.”

“No,” she whined. “Don’t.”

“Don’t you say ‘don’t’ to me. I am the parent here and you are the child.”

Then I lost my patience with her. Maybe I’d lost patience with myself as well. Lila was her own person—I had to remember that— but she was still my daughter and living under my roof, which gave me permission to complain about her bad behavior. It never would have crossed my mind to be so manipulative. I also liked to think none of the women I knew could behave in such a way. That said, I realize there are plenty of women, probably many whom I knew—even women in the Muffia—who would do this kind of thing and worse to get what they wanted. It just wasn’t the kind of behavior I wanted to encourage in my daughter. Well, I’d made my point and I’d continue to work on her, but at that moment, there were other issues I needed to deal with.

“We’ll see. I’m very angry with you right now and I want to sleep on it. But I’m still going to be angry in the morning.”

“I know when World War II was, in case you want to know.”

Then she gave me the kind of smile that told me she was already far more skilled than I’d ever been, or ever
would
be at manipulation. I didn’t have time. I was tired and I wanted to get to the point—why was my vibrator in her drawer? Still, I tried to segue into it.

“Is there a boy you’re interested in?”

She sucked her teeth and sat down on the toilet lid. “No, Mom. Just like there wasn’t a boy I was interested in last week or the week before. What are you fishing for?”

“I’m just curious about whether there’s a boy in your life.”

“No. There’s no boy,” she huffed. “I should never have told you about Amy Villetta giving a blow job to that tenth grader at Claremont. Then you wouldn’t be hounding me like this.”

“I’m not hounding you.” Glimpses of similar conversations I’d had with my own mother came flooding back, though none had been about blow jobs. Neither would I believe Mother ever owned a vibrator. Nor, if she had, that I would have borrowed it.

“Things aren’t like they were when I was fourteen,” I went on, “I realize that. Kids are exposed to more, earlier in their lives, and they grow up a lot faster. That’s really what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Mom, we’ve already talked about this.”

“Listen, you—
I’m your mother
.”

She gave me her best glower. “
Really
?” Sarcasm dripped. No one’s better at it than the teenage girl.

“Yes,
really
. Like it or not,” I went on. “And I’m going to
continue
to talk to you about sex as much as I want to because it’s important and I don’t want you, you know, making a mistake and getting in trouble.”

Again she rolled her blue eyes as she pulled the knot out of her hair, letting it fall over her shoulders. Her freshly washed face glowed with youthful beauty. Any mother would be terrified of such a girl being taken advantage of, though I realize her personality had already shown itself as one not to be toyed with.

I was trying to be cool. Not fourteen cool. I was aiming for around twenty: young enough to be listened to, but old enough to have some authority. As far as she was concerned, at forty-two I was practically dead. I wanted her to trust me and listen, but I had to establish some kind of a parental line at the same time.

“You’re at the age when boys will try to get in your pants—plain and simple. When you get to be my age the situation gets reversed.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind about that. But boys
will
try to get in your pants, if they haven’t already. It’s normal. And with your looks, I’d say you can count on it.”

“I’m not really interested in boys yet, Mom. I’ve told you that. I’m still into sports.”

“OK. Well, let’s just have this little discussion before you need to, then. You must be curious about sex—birds and bees, that kind of thing.” I thought I was doing a pretty good job of keeping up a casual yet upbeat demeanor.

“Can we talk about it tomorrow? I’m kinda tired and I want to go to sleep.” Lila yawned and got to her feet.

Realizing I was still standing in the doorway, I moved aside to allow her to pass then followed her into her bedroom, where I conveniently needed to be for Act II of the sex discussion: The dildo in the drawer scene.

She pulled the covers back and began to climb into her princess bed—painted pastel yellow and white, with the pink duvet decorated with yellow flowers—while I, meanwhile, opened the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out the Rabbit.

“There it is. I’ve been looking for this,” I said, trying to sound surprised, not angry. “What’s this doing in your bedside table?”

Flipping around she saw what was in my hand and the rosy color drained from her face as she gasped.

“Lila? How did this get in here?” I asked again, still maintaining my upbeat, non-accusatory tone.

“I—”

“You . . . what?”

“Remember when Kim came over and spent the night and you went out?”

I did remember. It had been the week before when I’d left them alone while I went out with the scheduling coordinator for a mediation group. “Yes.”

“Well,” she went on, “we were in your room… trying on your shoes and stuff…”

“You’re not supposed to be doing that.”

“I know. Sorry.”

“Why do you say you’re sorry when you’re not at all sorry?” I said, then stopped myself from going further. “Forget it. Go on.”

“OK, so she was sitting on the floor and she saw this box under your bed and she asked me what it was so, I, like, looked under the bed and I didn’t know what it was, so… so then we pulled it out and opened it.”

“And—”

“And then we found that.”

I scanned her face. She
appeared
to be telling the truth. “OK,” I said. “So how did it get into your room? Why didn’t you just leave it in the box?”

“Well, because we knew what it was and we wanted to see how it worked. So we brought it in here and just turned it on and off…you know? Watching it.”

Sounds semi-believable
. 

She had propped herself up on a couple of pillows encased in linens featuring intertwined cats and dogs and wasn’t looking at me. I was sure there was something she was leaving out. “You just turned it on and off.”

“Yeah. And we laughed.”

“You laughed.”

“It was funny.”

I glanced at the purple vibrator with the little rabbit face and little rabbit ears and fake pearls around the middle. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

I sat down on the bed and placed my hand on one of her legs, both of which were tucked under the duvet. “Did you try it?” I asked.

Her face contorted into one of total disgust. “
Ewww,
nooo. . . ,” she squealed.

“It’s OK if you did,” I said calmly. “You’re a little young, but it’s not weird or anything.”

“
Are-you-kidding-me?
That thing is huge! And it’s
gross
. Totally, totally gross. Look at it.
Oh-my-god, oh-my-god.”

Still holding the Rabbit, I tried to assess it with a fourteen-year-old’s eyes. It was odd-looking, particularly for a girl growing up an only child of a single mother who didn’t have many opportunities to see a real penis, but it didn’t look
that
huge. At that point Stipple jumped up onto the bed and licked the Rabbit.

“Stipple, that's nasty,” said Lila, laughing as I shooed the cat away. “No, Mom. I definitely did
not
try it. And neither did Kim. We turned it on and off and watched it wiggle and stuff, but I mean, really? No. That thing is just plain scary-gross. I don’t think I’m ever going to have sex. How can you stick it inside you?”

How was I to give an honest answer to this question? I’m not one to sugar coat the truth for anyone. “Well, honey, it’s like you said in the car the other day—grown-ups have sex. I guess when they don’t have sex, this is sort of a safe substitute.”

“Why do you, like, even want a substitute?” She was staring at me open-mouthed, clearly appalled.

“We don’t need to talk about this anymore,” I said, patting her leg. “I just thought that since it was in your drawer maybe there was something you might want to tell me.”

“Nothing.
Really
, Mom. I’m serious.”

“Because even if there’s nothing you want to tell me right now, there may be something you want to tell me soon and I want you to feel you can talk to me.”

“I know. I do. I’m just sleepy now.”

“You’re just at that age when . . .”

She shook her head vehemently. “There’s nothing to tell. I'm serious. I’ll tell you when there is, Mom. Promise. And I’m sorry I took that thing. I really am. I just forgot to put it back.”