How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (42 page)

“I'm sorry, but, man, those are so . . .”

“Edward, make him stop.”

“. . . beautiful.”

Flecks of red dart across Paula's white-white skin.

“I mean it,” Doug says. “You look like a woman in a painting or somethin'.”

Paula runs her tiny fingers through her hair in the manner of Sophia Loren. “All right,” she says, “let's get on with it.”

She lies down on the floor next to Dagmar and I grab a chair to stand on so I can get the right angle for the pictures. Doug's right: Paula's breasts are magnificent. Her nipples are spread dark and large across the snowy landscape of her bosom, so pale you can see blue veins beneath the surface, like water trapped under ice. If these pictures weren't meant to be incriminating, they'd be considered quite artistic.

“This feels strange,” Paula says, snuggling next to Dagmar.

“You'll get used to it,” Kelly says and we all laugh. The atmosphere feels more relaxed now, as if taking blackmail photos were a party game. Natie joins the land of the living again.

“Make sure you don't get her face in the picture,” he says.

“Got it,” I say, clicking away. “Okay, Paula, just rest there a minute. Doug, it's your turn.”

“Sure,” he says, sounding as if he couldn't wait to be asked. As he starts to undress, Ziba and Kelly launch into the stripper theme and Doug responds by doing some Revolting Renée dance moves, the sight of which is rather unsettling when you consider he's dressed as a priest. He finishes by whipping off his boxers and revealing his best feature.

Now it's Paula's turn to stare.

I know I don't stand a chance with Doug, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying seeing him naked. “If you could just get on the other side of Dagmar,” I say, “that'd be great. Paula, if you could . . . Paula? Paula?”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” she says. “Did you say something?”

“If you could just move in closer again, thanks.” I look through the lens. Doug's starting to get hard.

“Doug, I'm losing you,” I say. “You're moving out of camera range.”

“Sorry, man, I can't help it.”

The guys at Toto Photo are going to love these.

“Okay, just scooch down a little closer toward Paula. Got it. One more. Perfect. All right, everyone relax. Paula, you're done. Thank you.”

I'm tempted to say, “Don't call us, we'll call you,” but there's such a thing as being too jocular.

Now it's my turn. “Natie, are you ready?”

“For what?” he says.

“To take these last pictures.”

“Sure, sure,” he says, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

I hand him the camera and begin to strip.
“Vámonos, Jesús,”
Doug says, much more alluringly than I can stand.

Natie tells Doug to kneel behind Dagmar's head and for me to kneel in front of her, straddling her thighs. “Now lean in,” he says, so it looks like you're screwing her.” I lean in, trying not to graze her bush so I don't have to be in therapy the rest of my life. I look down at Dagmar's sleeping face and imagine her waking up at this very second and screaming bloody murder so I tilt my head up instead, only to be confronted with Doug's enormous member bobbing in front of my face.

“Arch your back just a little bit more,” Natie says.

“Enough already, Scavullo,” I say. “Take the fucking picture.”

“I'm only trying to . . .”

He's interrupted by the sound of the doorbell ringing. Four nuns and two naked men freeze.

“What do we do?” Paula whispers.

“Nobody move,” I hiss. “Maybe they'll go away.”

“Who is it?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

The doorbell rings again.

I motion to Natie, who's dived behind the couch, to peek out the window and see who it is. He's about halfway up when there's a loud knock at the door, which makes him flinch so badly he knocks over a table lamp.

From outside a woman's voice says, “Hello? Is anybody there?” The door handle clicks.

If there's a God in Heaven, please let that door be locked. I'll go to church, I'll tithe, I'll never do anything bad ever again.

The door creaks open.

Where the fuck are my pants? I drop and roll onto the floor, grabbing my clothes and scrambling naked after a group of frantic nuns when I hear the woman's voice call out, “Edward, are you here?”

I stop. I know that voice. I know it as well as I know my own. And just as I reach up to cover myself, I turn around and see the body attached to that voice glide around the corner into the room, a tanned, ethereal vision in a gauze dress.

“Mom?” I say.

M
y mother's being very Auntie Mame
about the whole thing as we crowd into a booth at the Cramptown Diner, very I've-seen-it-all and you-can't-shock-me. As a result, everyone falls all over themselves trying to outdo each other with tales of our misadventures and misdeeds. No matter how unseemly or outright illegal the details are, Barbara reacts like the whole thing is just some big adolescent lark.

“Your mom is so cool,” Doug whispers to me.

Everyone always says that.

Barbara is so cool, which is to say she is not like other mothers. Other mothers don't follow their yogis to India, or do past-life regressions at Stonehenge, or go to Baja a month at a time for silent retreats. (“Why can't she stay in New Jersey and be silent?” Al asked.) Other mothers don't walk on hot coals or read tarot cards or communicate with guides from the spirit world.

Other mothers stay home.

She's gotten thinner, traipsing all over South America. Her skin is tan and weathered, and when she relaxes her face you can see the places where the sun hasn't gotten into the wrinkles. Her graying hair has grown long, and she gathers it in a single braid down her back.

She is not wearing a bra.

“My
goddess,
Edward,” she says, waving a turquoise-covered hand, “I go away for, what, four or five months and look at the trouble you've gotten yourself into.”

“Eleven months,” I say, pushing french fries around my plate. “This time you've been gone for eleven months.”

“Time is an illusion,” she says, addressing everyone at the table like this is a lesson worth learning. “I discovered that when I climbed Machu Picchu with Shirley.”

Paula's Disney eyes go wide. “You climbed Machu Picchu with Shirley MacLaine?”

Barbara pats Paula's little hand. “Well, not at the same time, dear, but her presence was so strong that she acted as my guide. We're very connected, Shirley and I. Edward, dear, are you going to eat those fries?”

I shake my head “no.”

Barbara scoops them onto her plate. “If you kids could see the kind of poverty I've witnessed, you wouldn't leave food on your plates. Ketchup, please, dear.”

I grab the ketchup and plunk it down so hard the silverware jumps. Everyone looks startled, including the people in the next booth. “Would you like to talk about why you're so angry?” Barbara says in a low voice.

“I'm not angry,” I say, taking a rather aggressive sip of my 7Up.

She sighs. “I thought we were beyond this,” she says, “that you understood why I couldn't stay here.”

I close my eyes in hopes it will make her stop. She always does this, gets all intense and personal in a public place. It's weird.

She continues. “Did you know that in some African tribes the boys are
forced
to leave their mothers when they reach puberty?”

I open my eyes so I can roll them at her. “Yeah, and some tribes wear that Ubangi lip thing. What's your point?” I glance around at my friends, searching for some encouragement. Everyone stares at their plates like there's something terribly fascinating there.

“Don't be smart,” Barbara snaps. “I'm still your mother.”

I feel my cheeks get hot, like she's just threatened to pull down my pants and spank me right here in front of everybody.

Barbara adopts a professorial tone, which frankly is annoying. “Other cultures understand that boys can't learn to be men until they're separated from their mothers,” she says. She turns to the rest of the table. “I did my part. It's not my fault Al wasn't up to the task.”

Those plates just get more and more interesting.

She sighs. “I find this anger very strange, Edward. You weren't angry like this the last time I saw you.”

“That's because the last time you saw me was before my whole life went to shit, that's why.”

“Then why didn't you get in touch with me?”

I bang my hand on the table in frustration. “How?” I shout. “You're never in one place long enough to have a fucking address!” My face grows hot all over and my eyes fill with tears. A few wiseguys and the women who love them turn and stare. Let 'em.

Barbara smiles like I'm being a silly child. “I meant on a psychic level,” she says.

Oh, yeah, why didn't I think of that?

“You're enough of an intuitive not to have to rely on something as mundane as the postal system.”

There's no talking to this woman.

“Come here,” she says, opening her arms. She wraps her shawl around my shoulders and brushes the hair out of my face. Her fingers are rough and dry to the touch. “You just need a little mommy-ing, don't you?” She says it like it's something I should be ashamed of, like there's something wrong with me for not being as mature and evolved as pubescent boys in Africa. Well, I don't care. I'll take whatever mommy-ing I can get, even if it means I look ridiculous in public. I lean my head on her shoulder and breathe in the scent of Noxzema, a familiar Barbara smell since childhood. Tears roll down my cheeks and my nose begins to run, but I don't care. I'm just happy to snuggle.

Barbara closes her eyes and places a hand on my head, smiling that strange, beatific smile that's the hallmark of New Age mystics, born-again Christians, and the completely insane. “It's time for a vision quest,” she says in that profound way that assumes I know what the hell she's talking about.

Actually, it's time for the check, which gets dumped in front of her rather unceremoniously by a gum-chewing waitress with no eyebrows. Barbara opens her purse.

“Oh, dear,” she says. “Edward, do you have any cash? All I have here is Peruvian nuevo sols.”

I pull out my wallet and laugh. I can't help myself.

She smiles at me. “What's so funny?”

“Vision quest, huh?”

“Yes,” she says in a manner both definitive and defensive. “I think you'd greatly benefit from the Indian sweat lodges.”

I hand Natie the check to figure out how much everyone owes. “Well, it's good to know I'll have something to do instead of college.”

Barbara looks confused. “What are you talking about? Why aren't you going to college?”

My friends and I give each other shifty-eyed sideways glances, the Internationally Recognized Signal for “If this woman can communicate with spirits how come she can't communicate with us?”

“Haven't you been listening to anything we've been saying?” I ask.

“Not really,” she says, digging into her fries. “Your energies are so scattered it's hard for me to keep balanced.”

“Well, listen carefully,” I say, wiggling my fingers like I'm interpreting for the deaf. “Al . . . refuses . . . to . . . pay.”

She looks at me like I've just slapped her in the face. “What are you talking about? That's ridiculous.”

“He won't pay for me to go to acting school.”

“He can't do that.”

“Well, he has.”

“No,” she says, “I mean, he
can't.
It's in violation of the divorce agreement.”

Suddenly it feels like I'm looking at her through the wrong end of a telescope. Everything around me disappears—the clanging dishes, the little jukebox playing Sinatra in our booth, my friends—and all I can see and hear is my mother.

“What did you say?”

“Your father is in violation of the divorce agreement. It says very clearly: ‘Albert Zanni agrees to provide for the children's education, both undergraduate and graduate, at the college of their choice.' I insisted on it.”