We Only Know So Much (14 page)

thirty

I
t’s been weeks since Priscilla’s heard anything about the reality show. She hasn’t completely given up the delusion that something will happen, in spite of the fucked-up fact that Taylor’s gone back in several times. Until Priscilla gets this text from Taylor:
O. M. F. G. Flying 2 LALA!

Oh, please let this be some weird family vacation, Priscilla thinks (even though Taylor’s family’s idea of vacation is spending a night at the casino boat in the next town over), and not what she knows is true. Priscilla calls her up immediately.

What the fuck are you even talking about, Tay?

Priscilla has to hold the phone away from Taylor’s squeals.
They’re flying me to Hollywood! Hollywood! This is it, P! Fucking Hollywood!

And you’re going?

What? Of course I’m going, what are you talking about?

What are you talking about? Last week you didn’t even care that much.

Well, I care now! I’m going to Hollywood!

I can’t believe you’d do this without me.

What?

If it was the other way around, I wouldn’t go without you.

Oh, that is bull fucking
crap
. Get over yourself.

I wouldn’t.
It is, of course, the biggest bunch of bullshit ever.

You’re out of your freaking bitch mind. Nobody wouldn’t go to Hollywood.

I wouldn’t. Not without my supposedly best friend.

Why are you being like this? You should be happy for me!

You should be sensitive to me.

Oh my god, get a fucking life!

Of course, this is exactly what Priscilla needs to do, but exactly what no one ever does because someone tells them to do it.

Well, I would
—
but somebody fucking stole mine right out from under me.

I didn’t steal anything from you!

You knew how much I wanted this.

Priscilla, you’re being a fucking cunt pill! This isn’t about you!

Well, I feel how I feel. Have a great trip. I hope you get the fucking show and become a superstar of reality TV and have Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise’s fucking stupid foreign babies and live happily the fuck ever after.

Taylor is in the middle of screaming
Tom Cruise doesn’t have foreign babies!
but Priscilla hangs up on
doesn’t
. This actually isn’t even the worst fight they’ve ever had, but it’s for sure the one Priscilla will hold on to the longest.

Priscilla remembers the Great Dollhouse Disaster of 1997, when her mother gave her that godawful cracked vinyl suitcase of a Barbie house and tried to pass it off as the Barbie Mansion she’d asked for, the one that Taylor did get. Priscilla has been wondering, since about the age of six, why her parents so misunderstand her. She always felt she was stating her needs perfectly clearly, and yet time and again they went unmet. How could her mom not see the difference between a Barbie mansion and that creaky plastic thing she’d gotten instead? Jean, of course, so excited to hand down her Barbie house, should have realized the reaction she’d get from Priscilla, should have at least given a thought to giving her daughter both the one she asked for
and
her own old one. Instead, she’d seen this as a chance for them to share something, for her daughter to know who she had been at Priscilla’s age—that she
had
once been Priscilla’s age. So she wrapped it up and gave it to her for Christmas, and Priscilla had not hidden her displeasure.
This is
not
what I wanted
, she’d said, pushing it away without even looking inside. Jean opened the doors and laid the furniture out, hopeful that Priscilla would change her mind.
Look, sweetheart, here is the sofa and chair for the living room, and there’s this neat little chandelier over here, I thought this was the coolest thing when I was your age . . .

That’s not a chandelier, that’s a picture of a chandelier.

Well, honey, you have to use your imagination.

No, I don’t!

Look, sweetie, here’s the bedroom over here, I had so much fun playing with this, here’s the bed . . .

But it’s
orange
.
Priscilla said the word “orange” as though it were the color of poop.
And it looks like a soap dish or something.
She pushed it away.

Here’s the little closet . . .

That’s not a closet! It’s flat!

You have to pretend, honey, it’s pretend.

We can’t lie. It may have seemed pretty radical when Jean was a girl, but this dollhouse was pretty weak. Even the earlier, cardboard model was way cooler than this.

No! I don’t want to pretend! I need the mansion! It has real little hangers. I can’t hang clothes in that.
The clothes hangers were key because the clothes were key. Surely her mom knew how important clothes had already become to young Priscilla. She hadn’t been old enough to consider detailing the finer points of why the mansion was preferable, and was too young to appreciate what her mom had been trying to do. She’d felt like a forgotten old dress in the back of the closet.

Just after this, Priscilla went to Taylor’s house for a playdate—where Taylor proceeded to show off the very same mansion Priscilla had so wanted. Priscilla could hardly hide her jealousy, though she was eager to examine and play with it. It was three stories tall, all pink, and had bathrooms and real furniture and everything. All Priscilla had gotten, besides the
used
house, was a few new outfits for her Barbies. Taylor began to point out each and every feature of the mansion and was showing her the closet when Priscilla couldn’t take it anymore.

Look!
Taylor had already hung up some of her Barbie’s clothes on the tiny hangers, laid a dozen pairs of her little plastic shoes in a row on the floor.

Priscilla ground her teeth, stood up, and pushed over the entire mansion on her way out.

Theodore had seen his granddaughter’s reaction that Christmas Day, and he wasn’t proud of her, but he loved her, and wanted her to be happy. So he built her a dollhouse. Jean was not thrilled about the idea of encouraging her daughter that way, but she knew she’d miscalculated, and Theodore said that grandfathers were allowed, and she knew it would give him pleasure. The house he built was four stories tall, a foot taller than Priscilla herself. It had four bedrooms, two baths, a fireplace, and electricity; at Jean’s suggestion, it even had a closet, with a working door and a real bar across it. He set in parquet floors, made most of the furniture, fixtures, and fittings, built bookshelves and beds, sofas and tables, using wood or things around the house (regular dollhouse furniture was not Barbie-scale), and convinced Jean to sew curtains and linens and even make a real hook rug with a punch needle. It took Theodore three months to build, and it was spectacular. Priscilla’s initial reaction: unusually silent. It was bigger than Taylor’s mansion by a lot, that was a plus, and it had real working lights. But it wasn’t plastic. Dollhouses were supposed to be plastic. The best she could do was say thank you and give her grandfather a limp hug, and he didn’t appear to notice her seemingly underwhelmed posture.

In fact, though, Priscilla had been entirely conflicted by her grandfather’s gift. In her heart, she’d been completely blown away by it; it was like nothing she’d ever seen, all the little details he’d put into it incredible. She wished she could step right into it. The whole thing was way better than Taylor’s mansion. By this time, with thousands of Saturday-morning TV commercials wedged into her little brain, Priscilla had already learned what had value in the world—things you could
buy
—and this wasn’t one of them. Luckily, the envy of her friends would turn things partway around; every time Ashley and Danielle came over they
ooh
ed and
aah
ed, and Taylor was noticeably jealous, though she made a point to say that it wasn’t a
real
Barbie mansion. And it was a point that was duly noted by Priscilla.

ON HER WAY OUT to meet her friends, Priscilla passes her father on the stairs. He says her name, but she doesn’t stop. Why would she. Gol.

Priscilla! Priscilla, Priscilla. Priscilla.

Priscilla spins her head around as though her father has just said “Fuck you! Fuck you, fuck you. Fuck you.”
What?
She pronounces “what” as though it has two syllables, to where the T becomes its own syllable. She doesn’t even want to say “Dad” out loud right now because of the implication—that he is. Her dad.

Hey, do you go online very often? How come you haven’t accepted my friend request?

Priscilla rolls her eyes, as though the question deserves an actual answer. Apparently it does, but if he can’t figure it out on his own she’s not going to be the one to tell him.

Wow, like, really right now? Seriously?

Of course I’m serious.

Okay. Whatever, Dad.
Shit, she said it.
I’m late. ’K, bye!
Priscilla puts an exaggerated uptilt on her “K, bye” here, attempting to leave things on an up note, but never has a “bye” been less sincere.

PRISCILLA, ASHLEY, AND DANIELLE meet at their favorite club; the plan is for them all to get shit-faced. Before long, Priscilla is more than halfway there.

She has no qualms about dissing Taylor behind her back. It’s what she does. Well, it’s what they all do, but P does it the most. By a lot. She leans in to her friends, yells over the booming bass,
I mean, I wouldn’t do that to her if I knew she cared as much as I did.
Ashley and Danielle both say
Totally
, both look into their drinks and sip through their cocktail straws. Priscilla would totally do that to Taylor, and all three of them know it. Four, if you include Taylor. The reality is, each one of them would have gotten on that plane just as fast as Taylor, had the offer come their way instead. It’s just that Priscilla is the only one who perceives it as a slight.
It’s just like her. Like, she didn’t even care. You guys didn’t go. Why did she have to go? Fuck her. Right?
Ashley and Danielle say nothing.
Fuck her.
Priscilla’s pretty drunk by the end of this.
Fuck
comes out
Fup
.

Priscilla’s ex-boyfriend, Kyle (of the fucked-up status update) is there. She’s long over him by now, at least in the sense that she no longer cares about him. The damage from the incident, of course, has far outlasted her feelings for Kyle. He publicly humiliated her
and
broke her trust, and her solution to this problem has been to put guys on an indefinite back burner—and/or, with a few drinks in her, to tease them as she sees fit. Tonight she wants to be noticed, so she’s dancing provocatively on a speaker, although the only reason she’s dancing on the speaker is because there’s no pole, and we have to be thankful there’s no pole, because if there were a pole, Priscilla might be doing more than just dancing.

Priscilla shakes it to “Bootylicious,” mouths a few of the words she knows in Kyle’s direction (
I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly
). Ashley yells up to Priscilla to get her to come down, but she waves her off—she’s in a zone. Kyle goes over to the girls, leans his body in, and says, loud enough so that Priscilla can hear:
Your friend’s a fucking slut
. She closes her eyes, unwilling to let him have the satisfaction of any little response from her, though it does sting for a second. Nothing another swig of her mojito won’t fix. Priscilla’s hardly surprised that Kyle’s being a dick again, and she knows she’s not really a slut, that she’s an adult, and tonight what she wants is attention, someone’s attention. She’s gotten Kyle’s attention, at least, and for the moment that’ll do.

Shut up, Kyle
, Ashley says.
You’re a fucking dick
.

Kyle, also intoxicated, says to Ashley,
What did you say?

Kyle, of course, heard Ashley.
You’re lucky I don’t hit girls
.

Danielle tries to push Kyle away.
Kyle, just leave her alone, get out of here.

Priscilla gives Kyle the finger and incorporates it into her dance.

You’re a fucking slut, slut!

Priscilla smiles, twirls, looks away, looks back at him, tries to make her dance extra-slutty just to egg him on, almost loses her footing as one ankle wobbles, not really so super sexy as she thinks, but she recovers. (In case you were wondering, Priscilla isn’t any kind of slut. As noted, she’s been with exactly two guys, Kyle and another boy she dated her sophomore year for a couple of months. She’ll tell you there’s no one really worth giving it up to in this town, which may or may not be true. For sure the guys she’s met aren’t, but we don’t know that there aren’t one or two nice guys out there that Priscilla might not run into.) For a moment she closes her eyes again, and as she rotates her hips and runs her hands along her own pretty slammin’ body, she forgets about Kyle, the TV show, everything. It’s all about this moment, up on the speaker. It’s a great night.