Certain Girls Page 12

  Twelve years ago, I’d written Big Girls in my spare bedroom, banging out five hundred pages in six months of white-hot fury. The manuscript was a sprawling, profane picaresque about a fat, funny, furious girl, the father who’d abandoned her, the boyfriend who’d broken her heart, and the girl’s fitful journey toward love and happiness, with many (entirely fictional) stops in many (equally fictional) boys’ beds along the way. In a fit of literary pretension, I called the book Nought. Would I be open to a title change? Larissa had asked. I’d told her I would be open to a sex change if she thought she could sell the book and give me enough of a cushion to pay for health insurance and maybe put a down payment on a condo.

  Three weeks later the book was revised, cut down from its original 500 pages to a much more manageable 370, and renamed Big Girls Don’t Cry. A week after that, Larissa sold the book to Valor for an amount of money that alternately thrilled or terrified me, depending on my mood.

  The first thing I did as soon as the check for the first chunk of the advance cleared was to make a down payment on a row house around the corner from my apartment, a redbrick building with four good-size bedrooms spread over the top two floors. The house had a postage-stamp garden in the backyard, with southern and eastern exposures, and a weeping cherry tree standing shoulder-high in one corner, along with wooden half-barrels where I could grow herbs and tomatoes. After I’d moved Nifkin and Joy and all of my earthly possessions into our new digs, I rented a house by the beach in Avalon for two weeks.

  I drove Joy to the shore on a Friday afternoon in August. I’d treated us to fried clams and crabcakes for dinner, and made it to the rented house as the sun set. I gave Joy a bath in the deep claw-footed tub, tucked her in to the bedroom next to mine, and plugged her Cinderella night-light into the wall. “Knuffle Bunny,” she demanded. I read her the story of how Trixie’s daddy loses her favorite toy at the Laundromat, until Joy yawned and popped her thumb into her mouth.

  “Love you, boots,” I said, cracking open her bedroom window. The house still smelled faintly musty, but mostly of the salty breeze. I could hear the waves from every room.

  “You’re my mommy,” Joy said sleepily. Bundled under the covers, she still looked tiny, baby-size, even though she was two. She’ll grow out of it, her pediatrician assured me, explaining that she was just the right size for her gestational age. Eventually, she’ll catch up to the rest of the kids. You’ll look at her, and you won’t even see a difference. Except I knew I’d always see.

  “That’s right,” I assured her. Nifkin came clicking into the room and settled himself in Joy’s suitcase, rooting around until he’d made a nest on top of her shorts and shirts.

  Joy sat up in bed and looked at me. “Who is my daddy?”

  “Um . . .” I leaned against the doorjamb. I’d known this question would be coming, but I’d thought I’d have more time to figure out my answer. “Yes. Well. About that . . .”

  “Pe-tah.” She nodded, looking satisfied.

  My breath caught in my throat. It had been a year since that August night in the car, the night when he’d told me he wouldn’t keep waiting. I’d thought of him every day and every night, but I wasn’t sure Joy even remembered Peter. “You see, honey, the thing of it is—”

  She waved one fist at me—Joy-speak for Quiet, you, I’m thinking!—and stared at me with her lips pursed. “Granny Annie is your mommy,” she said.

  Okay. Terra firma again. “That’s right.”

  “Who is your daddy?”

  My hand closed convulsively on the light switch, and the room was plunged into darkness except for Cinderella in her ballgown, dancing just above Joy’s pillow, head lifted, as ever, in expectation of the prince’s kiss. “I . . .” I took a slow breath and swallowed. “Well, his name is Larry.”

  “Arry,” Joy repeated sleepily. I leaned against the wall. If I wasn’t ready for questions about her father, I was doubly unprepared for questions about mine. My father had left when I was a teenager, married a much younger woman, and had two kids. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since our single encounter in Los Angeles, when I’d shown up at his office pregnant, wearing a gold wedding ring I’d bought for myself, hoping for something I couldn’t name—that, at twenty-eight, single and knocked up, I could be his little girl, his princess; that he would think me beautiful.

  It hadn’t happened. He’d turned away, his expression somewhere between disinterested and disgusted, and I’d remembered with a pain that felt like a cramp, like something tearing inside of me, a bit of graffiti I’d seen once in the ladies’ room at the Vince Lombardi Service Area on the New Jersey Turnpike, written in tiny black letters on the scarred green metal door: I never knew my father / it doesn’t really matter / that’s all there is to that.

  That’s all there is to that, I’d thought. I’d walked out of his office, and I hadn’t seen him since. I hadn’t planned on Joy even noticing that she was down a grandpa for years. I’d thought I would have time to prepare: read the right books, figure out the right thing to say.

  I stood there in the darkness, looking down at her, wondering whether she’d think that people—no, not people, parents—could just drop out of your life like loose teeth. Peter had. Bruce had. My father had. She’d probably think that everyone could or would. Maybe she’d think that someday I would leave, too.

  There was only one telephone in the rented beach house, an old rotary model made of black plastic on the kitchen counter right beside the sink. Peter answered on the first ring, as if he’d been walking around the way I had, with his phone stuck in his pocket, or as if he’d been sitting beside it, waiting. Not that I believed he’d been waiting. He’d probably met someone already. She was probably right there beside him on the bed, and if she knew about me at all, she was probably thinking I was the biggest idiot who’d ever lived. She was probably right.

  “Peter? It’s Cannie. I wrote a book,” I blurted.

  His voice was neutral. “Oh.”

  “It . . . if you’d read it, it explains . . .” I slumped into the chair in front of the telephone, thinking how ridiculous I must sound. “About Bruce and my father and what happened to me. About why I can’t be a good wife.” I gulped. “Peter, I’m sorry. I am.” Tears were running down my face, and words were spilling out of my mouth. “Joy misses you. Tonight she said that you’re her father, and I think . . .” I gulped again and wiped my eyes. “I wish . . . I mean, she’s had enough people leave, and I thought maybe if you would read the book . . . I could give you a copy. It’s not coming out until next spring, and they changed the title, but I could print it out and give it to you . . .”

  His tone was fractionally warmer, the bedside-manner voice he’d used with me when I was at my lowest, the voice you’d use to tell a patient that yes, her condition was terminal and you’d try to keep her comfortable. So maybe he was alone. Or maybe it was just that his new girlfriend had gone to the bathroom to slip out of her lace merry widow and into her leopard-print thong. “Where are you?” he asked.

  “New Jersey. I took Joy on vacation. I’m sorry to bother you. I’ll be okay. I should have . . .” I made myself stop talking. “Well, anyhow. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  Now he sounded amused. “Where in New Jersey?”

  “Avalon. The beach. I got some money for my advance, and I thought we should go to the beach. Get some sun. Walk on the sand. Joy’s therapist said it’s good for her to walk on the sand.”

  “What’s the address?”

  My heart rose, and I bit down hard, not letting myself hope. “Hang on.” I told him where I was, and we said goodbye. Then I climbed up to the widow’s walk off the master bedroom, with the door open, listening to the hushing sound of the waves rolling onto the shore, laughter from the bar down the block, and the voices of people playing cards on the porch of the house next to mine. I let the summertime smells swirl around me, salt water and the smoke from somebody’s charcoal grill, until headlights washed over the walls and Peter walked un
erringly up the stairs and out to the deck and took me in his arms.

  Later, on a mattress that sagged in the middle, in a room where the walls were glazed with moonlight, it occurred to me that writing my book had been something like an exorcism. I’d written it all down, every angry, hateful, vengeful thought, every sorrow and insecurity, my bad romances, my messed-up family and lousy self-esteem. I’d embroidered the truth with the gaudy gold thread of sex, and a lot of it, letting my heroine work out her anger in a variety of far-fetched and acrobatic encounters, giving her everything I’d ever wanted, and now I was free—or as free as I could ever be. I nestled against Peter’s chest, imagining that the bed was a boat and the two of us were adrift on a gentle sea, floating far, far away from my unhappy history, everything and everyone who had ever caused me pain.

  His hand was in my hair, and my cheek was warm against his chest. “I’ll marry you,” I said. “If you still want me.”

  He chuckled. “Isn’t that obvious?”

  I twined my legs between his. “The only thing is, no big party. I don’t want a spectacle.”

  “No spectacle,” he repeated.

  I kissed him sleepily. “Also, I really don’t want a wedding dress. They’re a huge waste of money. I mean, two thousand dollars on something I’ll wear only once!”

  “No dress,” Peter agreed.

  “Joy should be the flower girl.” I closed my eyes, picturing it. “Can Nifkin be the ring bearer?”

  “Whatever you want.” I could feel his lips curve into a smile against my cheek. “No party. No dress. Taint carrying rings. Excellent.”

  “Don’t call him Taint.”

  “Means the same thing as Nifkin,” he said, yawning.

  True enough. “Oh, and I can’t have my picture in the paper.”

  Peter sighed. “Do I want to ask why not?”

  I shook my head. I’d used that scene in the book, a page right out of my own life. Once, my father had found me at the dining room table, poring over the wedding listings, studying the pictures. He’d squinted at the page, checking out the brides like he’d never seen one before. Maybe he hadn’t: “Fish wrap” was one of his kinder terms for our local paper. He stuck to the Times. “Why so interested?” he’d asked. I’d told him about the Bow-Wow Bride contest. “Can you believe it?” I’d asked, my voice rising indignantly. “Can you believe people would be so mean?”

  He’d glared at me. His face was flushed, and there’d been a tumbler of Scotch in his hands. “Do you worry about the bride?” he’d asked. He spoke slowly, and the words were a little blurred around the edges, but I could still understand each one. “Or are you really worried about yourself?”

  “Larry,” my mother had said from the sink, where she was washing the dinner dishes. Her voice rose, wavery and weak, above the sound of the running water. “Larry, please.”

  In bed with Peter, I took a deep breath, pushing away the memory. “It’s a long story,” I said. “You can read it”—I yawned and snuggled against him, warm and sated and content—“in my book.” Eventually, he did. Him and everyone else. The consequences had been, in my biased opinion, close to disastrous. And here was my publisher, wanting me to wade back into the fray and do it again.

  “Cannie?”

  I saw the tips of Larissa’s glossy navy patent-leather shoes peeking underneath the bathroom stall.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I said.

  The shoes didn’t move. “I’m sorry,” said Larissa. “I should have seen that coming, but when I called Patsy to ask what lunch was about, she said she wanted to surprise you.”

  “Well, I’m surprised,” I said lightly, getting to my feet. “The thing is, I’m really happy doing what I’m doing now. I like Lyla Dare. I like having a pen name. I’m happy.”

  “But you’ll think about it?” Larissa’s voice was high and hopeful. I opened the stall door and walked to the sink.

  “Sure.” I knew the word was a lie as soon as it was out of my mouth, but it was a harmless one, I figured. I’d tell Larissa what she wanted to hear; she’d tell Patsy what she wanted to hear; and I’d go back to Philadelphia, plan my daughter’s bat mitzvah, knit another sweater, and screen my calls until the whole thing had blown over.

  Larissa beamed at me. “Do you mean it? I can’t even tell you how thrilled they’d be. If you’ve got a new idea—if you could write me up an outline, or maybe even just a paragraph . . .”

  For an instant my reluctance gave way to amazement. “You could sell a paragraph?”

  “From you? I could sell a sentence. I could sell a burp.”

  I dried my hands with my mouth closed tight. No way was I giving her anything to go on.

  “Come on,” she said. She linked her arm through mine and uttered a sentence I seriously doubted had ever been said out loud in this particular ladies’ room: “Let’s send back our salads and order dessert.”

  TWELVE

  “The most important rule of fashion,” Aunt Elle instructed as she led me through the doors of Bergdorf Goodman, “is ‘Know yourself.’”

  “Know yourself,” I repeated. I felt as if I should be taking notes.

  “Are you pear-shaped? An hourglass? Are you short-waisted? Do you have broad shoulders? Good legs? Narrow feet? You have to embrace the thing that makes you you, and make the most of it.”

  “I . . . uh . . .” I honestly wasn’t sure I had a thing that made me me, other than my absolute embarrassment about my mom and the truth of my birth. “I like my hair,” I finally said, even though that was true only after I’d spent over an hour on it. Aunt Elle nodded. She had a sparkling sarong—pink silk with silver thread—wrapped around the hips of her jeans, and silver ballet flats and a skinny black top with a plunging neckline. Her hair was tucked underneath a gray tweed cap that she’d decorated with six rhinestone pins of various sizes. She tinkled and jingled with every step, and I felt plain as a pigeon walking next to her in my khakis and the sneakers that my mother had forced me to wear. (“You’re going to be on your feet all day, Joy; you will thank me for this later.”)

  “Before you buy even a pair of panties, you need to know what you’re working with,” Elle said. She hopped off the escalator and put her hands on my shoulders, holding me in place. I tugged my hair over my hearing aids, sucked in my stomach, and straightened my shoulders, frozen in place as crowds of well-dressed women walked past us. Elle touched my head briefly, ran her hand down my hair, walked around me in a circle, then smiled, satisfied, and led me onto the next escalator.

  “I’d say you’re a four or a six. Good proportions. Great complexion. I’m thinking pink,” she said. “Not yellow. Definitely not red or blue. A little pair of sandals, an updo . . .” She reached forward, gathering my hair into a twist. “I saw this beaded Proenza Schouler? Killer. Just killer.”

  “Um . . . the thing is . . .” I wasn’t sure where to start, but I was positive that “beaded Proenza Schouler” was incompatible with “Don’t spend over three hundred dollars,” which was the last thing my mother had said to me after she’d given me her credit card at the train station. It had been preceded by “Don’t talk to strangers” and “Don’t lose that credit card” and “Did you remember to bring the snack I packed?” at which point I’d been forced to remind her that I was going shopping, not to Amsterdam. A shadow had crossed her face when I’d said “Amsterdam,” but she’d just kissed me and wished me good luck. “You know I have a budget, right?”

  “I did hear that rumor,” Aunt Elle said. “How much are we supposed to be spending?”

  “Three hundred dollars?” I said. Aunt Elle’s expression was so shocked I might as well have slapped her. “For two dresses?” I said even more quietly.

  Aunt Elle shook her head, looking disgusted. “And where,” she asked, “are we supposed to procure a gown for a hundred and fifty dollars? H&M?”

  I bit my lip. My shirt was from H&M.

  “Hold my hands,” Aunt Elle sai
d as we got off the escalator. She stretched her arms out to me. Aunt Elle’s new-age nonsense, my mom sometimes said about her sister, but I let her press her palms against mine. “Close your eyes.” I did. “See the dress.” I tried, but all I saw was darkness. “See the dress,” Aunt Elle chanted. “Be the dress.” I concentrated hard, and this time I did see a beautiful dress with a tight satin bodice and a flowing tulle skirt. Unfortunately, the girl in the dress wasn’t me, it was Amber Gross. Still, I guessed it was a start.

  Aunt Elle exhaled slowly and loudly, let go of my hands, and whipped her silver cell phone out of her beaded leather purse, punching what I guessed was my mom’s number. “Cannie? Yes. Yes, she’s here. Everything’s fine.” She paused, head cocked. “No, we have not found the dress yet. It’s been half an hour! Are you insane?” She rolled her eyes and mouthed the word “crazy.” I smiled at her. “We need to talk budget,” Elle said. “Yes. Yes, she told me—but Cannie, really. Three hundred dollars?” She paused. “Okay, but do you know what gowns cost?”

  Another pause.

  “Yes, I said gown. She needs a gown.” A short pause. Elle grabbed my elbow and tugged me after her, onto the floor, where the names of designers, written in silver, wrapped around the walls. Narciso Rodriguez, I read. Zac Posen. Armani. Valentino. Marchesa. I mouthed the words, almost tasting them. “Candelabra, I do not have the time to explain the difference between a dress and a gown to you at this moment,” Aunt Elle said as she pulled a one-shouldered white dress off a rack, held it against me, then shook her head and rehung it. “Just trust me. There is one. And three hundred bucks might get you a decent dress somewhere in Philadelphia, but it will not even begin to pay for a gown, which is what the occasion of your only child’s bat mitzvah requires.” She pulled a pale gold dress with a short, poufy skirt off a rack, held it against herself, smiled, then shook her head sharply, as if to remind herself of our mission. When the phone slipped away from her ear, I could hear my mother’s voice, a thin, indignant squawk.