Authors: Elizabeth Berg
Still, I did well enough in school, earning mostly Bs and the occasional A. This was largely because I did homework with an intense kind of concentration that I did not display inside the walls of Foster Elementary. I liked doing homework because Sharla liked doing it—we would lie on our beds after school with books and papers scattered all around us. I would watch the precise way Sharla turned the pages of her textbook, and I would imitate her, down to turning exactly when she did. You licked your finger delicately before turning a page, then lifted it from the bottom right-hand corner. It was important to turn the page slowly and then smooth the center of the book with the flat of your hand. I read my pages so that I would have something to do until it was time to turn them again. Sharla read much more slowly than I; therefore I often read a page twice, or even three
times. She never noticed my turning pages exactly when she did; I thought this was a very pleasant miracle.
My mother, who was not daydreaming like I was, licked an envelope, stamped it, and put it on the bottom of her little pile. Then she capped her pen and pushed her chair back from the table.
“Are you done already?” I asked.
“We’ve been here for over forty minutes.”
“Who’d you write to?” Sharla asked. My mother corresponded with a number of relatives as well as friends she’d had since high school. It was always interesting to hear her talk about what she’d written; often, of course, her news featured us.
“Oh, Sandy Wertheimer,” she said. “And Mom and Dad, of course. I told them about your recitals coming up. And the forts you’ve been building—my goodness, they’re wonderful. Did either of you mention them?”
“Who else?” I asked.
“Pardon?”
“Who else did you write to? You have three envelopes.”
She pulled her pile toward her, smiled. “Such a busybody. Who are
you
writing to?”
I sighed. “Grandma and Grandpa. They’re the only ones I ever write to. There
isn’t
anybody else to write to.”
“Well, finish up,” she said. “Then I’ll walk these to the corner and mail them.” This was something my mother had started doing recently. She used to clothespin letters outside for our mailman to take the next day, but lately she’d started going to the mailbox, three blocks away, at night. My father had initially offered to go with her, but she refused, saying she liked the “thinking time.” “What
do you think about?” he’d asked, and she’d said, “Oh, this and that; you know.”
“Recipes, I’ll bet,” my father had said the first night she went out without him. He was standing at the window with his hands in his pockets, watching her walk away.
“What about recipes?” I’d asked. Sharla and I were right beside him. “Nothing,” he’d said. “I was just … nothing.”
My mother stood. “I’m going to go get my sweater. I’ll be down in a little while to get your letters.”
The promise of imminent release spurred me into action. I quickly wrote a paragraph about the last four dinners I could remember, describing in some detail the delicate suspension of fruit cocktail in the cherry Jell-O that had served as a salad last night. I liked Jasmine’s idea of a salad much better: one afternoon I’d found her sitting down to a Caesar salad for lunch. I’d never heard of that, and I told her so.
“Really?” she’d said. And then she’d shown me how she had rubbed the cut edge of a clove of garlic over the inside of the big wooden bowl that was on her table. She described for me all the ingredients that went into the dressing as though she were reciting a love poem to someone in the dark. She picked up a large narrow leaf of lettuce, pale green, which she ate with her fingers; then she sucked them off. She shared the salad with me, encouraged me to eat it the same way. I did, though it embarrassed me. But it was delicious, the residue of that dressing licked from my own salty flesh.
My mother came back to the table, sat down to wait. I ended my letter with a wish that my grandparents would
come and visit for a long time—mainly so that then I would not have to write to them. I licked the envelope, stamped it, and handed it to my mother. I could hardly wait to live in my own house, where I would never write one letter to anyone, ever.
“Sharla?” my mother said. “Are you finished?”
Sharla folded her letter—two pages, front and back!— put it in an envelope, and handed it to my mother. I hated the teacher’s-pet look on her face, I hated it when she got this way. She folded her hands and rested them on top of the table. Below it, I assumed her feet were lined up exactly even with each other.
“What did you write about?” I asked. Four pages!
“What I want for Christmas.”
“It’s August!”
“So?”
“Isn’t that cheating?” I asked my mother.
“It’s fine.” She smiled at Sharla. “I assume, however, that you talked about other things, as well. Such as Grandma and Grandpa, I assume you asked about
them.
”
Sharla nodded gravely.
My mother nodded, too. Then, “I’ll be right back,” she said.
“You cheated,” I told Sharla, as soon as I heard the door close behind my mother.
“I did not.”
“Huh. Anybody can write about what they want for
Christmas.
”
“You’re just mad because you didn’t think of it.”
This was true. Therefore I changed the subject. “Who else did Mom write to?” It had occurred to me that the
letter she would not show me had something to do with my birthday. It wasn’t far away, and I was beginning to think everything that happened, more or less, had something to do with it. I had yet to make a formal list of things that I wanted, but my mother might be sending away for some wonderful surprise. Last time she had done that, I’d gotten a monogrammed towel set, which I loved so much I wouldn’t use it.
“She wrote to Jasmine,” Sharla said, and yawned, stretching her arms up high over her head. “I saw when she addressed the envelope.”
“Why? She lives next
door!
”
Sharla shrugged. “She’s not here now. Maybe Mom had something to tell her.”
“She’ll be
back
in a couple days!”
“I know.” She stood. “I’m going to make a cake for Dad. Want to help?”
I stood, too, pushed my chair in. “Yeah. For Mom and Dad, you mean.”
“No. Just for Dad.”
I stopped, stared at her. “Why not Mom, too?”
“Do you want to help or not?”
“Yeah. Dibs on the frosting part.”
“Half. You can frost the bottom half.”
“Can I break the egg?” I asked, when we were in the kitchen.
Sharla opened the refrigerator, handed me an egg. We worked in silence. I wanted to ask Sharla something, but I didn’t know what. When our mother came back, she asked what we were doing, and Sharla told her. “Ah,” she said. “How nice! It’s for … nothing, then?”
“It’s because he’s Dad,” Sharla said—coldly, I thought.
My mother stood still for a moment, smiling. Then, “Well,” she said, “that’s very nice of you.”
She went into the living room, and I heard her and my father talking under the blare of the television. The words got louder, then stopped abruptly; then I heard the faint click of my mother’s knitting needles. It came to me to put pop beads on my birthday list; I really wanted some of those. It was a relief, thinking of something so easy.
I awakened several mornings later to the sound of Jasmine’s and my mother’s voices coming from the kitchen, then noticed a third voice as well—a boy’s. I thought it must be someone asking about mowing the lawn, or selling some utterly unwantable thing for the Boy Scouts, but the conversation was going on too long for that. I turned to ask Sharla if she knew who was downstairs, but found her bed empty. Then I heard the toilet flush, and she came back to bed, yawned. “What?” she said.
“Who’s down there?”
She shrugged.
“Did you hear a boy’s voice?”
“Well,
yeah
, they’re
talking
loud enough! I wanted to sleep some more, too. I was up really late last night.”
“No, you weren’t.” We had gone to bed at the boring hour of ten o’clock.
“Yes I was! I got up after you were already asleep. I was reading.”
I checked her face; she was telling the truth. “Reading what?”
She pulled a book from under her covers. It was
Beautiful Joe
, a book about a dog that Uncle Roy had brought
with him last Thanksgiving, and which neither Sharla nor I had ever really looked at. Now, since Sharla was interested, so was I.
“Is it good?” I asked.
She nodded. “I cried.”
“You did?”
She nodded again.
“Can I read it when you’re done?”
“I am done.”
I held out my hand.
She pulled the book to her chest. “I might want to read it again.”
“Well, just let me read it first.”
“No, I might want to read it again right
away.
”
I knew what I needed to do: feign disinterest. But I could not. “Just give it to me first. I read way faster than you. I’ll give it back in a day or two.”
“No.”
“Then I’m just taking it.” I got up, started toward her bed.
“MOOOOMMMMM!” Sharla yelled.
I sat back down, slack-jawed. We had company!
I heard the creak of the stairs; and then my mother, wearing a new red print housedress and her favorite yellow apron, came into our room. She said nothing. She didn’t need to. The expression on her face talked. She was wearing makeup, a rarity at this time of day; I saw the faint traces of rouge on her cheeks, and her lashes were longer, as they were when she used her mascara. That mascara came in a small, red lacquered box. There was a rectangular cake of mascara and a cunning little brush you used to apply it. I couldn’t imagine why my
mother didn’t use it constantly. When I was old enough to use makeup, I intended to sleep in it.
My mother put her hands on her hips. “Well?”
“She started it,” I said.
“We have a guest,” my mother answered. Her voice sounded different to me. Happier, I realized; that was the difference. Sharla and I were fighting, but she was still happy.
“Who’s here?” I asked.
“It’s Jasmine’s nephew, a very nice boy named Wayne.”
Wayne! I had never met a boy named
Wayne!
The name seemed exotic to me, and slightly disgusting. Sissified. I liked plain names for boys: Bill. Tom. Pete. Whenever Sharla and I staged scenes featuring a male character, we used names like that. Wayne and I would not be able to be friends.
“I want you two to get dressed,” my mother said. “Then come down and say hello. I’ll get breakfast started.”
One thing I hated about company was the way your routine always had to get altered—I liked change only when I initiated it. I didn’t like getting dressed to eat breakfast; it made the food taste different. I liked not even washing my face or brushing my teeth first, if the truth be told. I liked to be as close to the sleep state as possible, then let the colors and smells and sights of breakfast foods be my wake-up, rather than the rude splash of water. I did this on school days, too—came down and ate breakfast first, then got dressed. Sharla was the opposite: when she came to the table on school mornings, she was ready to go, down to her hair ribbon
being perfectly tied and her well-organized book bag lying at her feet like an obedient dog. She might eat breakfast without getting dressed in the summer, but only after she had washed her face, brushed her teeth, and combed her hair.
“How can you drink
orange
juice when you just brushed your
teeth?
” I would often ask her, as though perhaps at some point my question would initiate change in her. “How can you be such a slob?” she would answer, hoping no doubt that her response might elicit the same in me. Neither of us changed, of course; and when we were at the breakfast table together, we sat eyeing each other with mutual disgust and superiority.
My mother started to leave, then turned back. “I’ll expect you downstairs in ten minutes.”
“Bathroom first,” Sharla said. I dressed while she was in there; then, when it was my turn, I went to wash resentfully. When I dried my face off, I noticed a piece of sleep clinging stubbornly to the corner of my right eye. I left it there, then brushed my teeth without toothpaste. So there. I sighed, sat for a moment on the closed lid of the toilet. It was only morning, and I was already in a bad mood.
When we came into the kitchen, I saw a tall boy standing at the kitchen window, his back to us. “Well.
Here
are my girls,” my mother said. The boy turned around and I saw that he was the person in the picture Jasmine kept in her dresser drawer. I put my hand to my eye quickly, removed the sleep.
My mother made her introductions. Wayne Meyers was his whole name. I said, “Hi,” waved loosely, and looked away. Sharla moved to sit in the chair closest to
him. “How long are you here for?” she asked, in a tone of voice that I did not recognize. She was smiling prettily.
“Two weeks.” He smiled back at her. I put him at about fourteen, but he spoke with the ease of an adult.
“Well, come and sit
down
, Ginny,” Jasmine said, laughing, indicating the seat beside her. I sat, then stared at my knees. Wayne was an extremely handsome boy; he had no business at my breakfast table. I had no idea what to do next. I felt as though something had hold of my shoulders and was pushing down. Something else worked at my center, pulling at my insides like taffy.
“Jasmine and I are going into town for a while,” my mother said. “We were hoping you could show Wayne around the neighborhood a bit.”
I looked up. “Well.… There’s not much to show.” For the first time, I hated where I lived.
“We could walk to the record store,” Sharla said brightly.
“We could go out into the woods,” I said.
There was a moment of weighted silence, and then Wayne said, “Why don’t we do both?”
I saw my mother and Jasmine smile at each other. “Ready for some scrambled eggs?” my mother asked.
“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m not hungry.” This was a lie, but I knew girls were supposed to have tiny appetites. Tiny appetites, small waists, friendly personalities, and no BO. Sharla said she wanted a lot to eat, however. She said she was starving. I looked out of the corner of my eye at Wayne. He was not shocked, or disgusted, or disappointed. He was sitting down, reaching for a piece of the toast that was already on the table.