Jumpstart the World (2 page)

“I can use a phone, Mother.”

“Not if you’re hurt or in trouble you can’t. Let me give the nice young man my number.”

I rolled my eyes and waited. I was thinking, If you were really afraid of me getting hurt or in trouble, you’d let me live at home. Like other fifteen-year-olds do.

The minute I opened the carrier, the cat hissed at me. Then he leaped straight up in the air, landed on the hardwood floor, and ran under the bed.

My mother was busy trying to pretend he didn’t exist.

“Now, Donald is taking me to dinner at Café del Arte. But the minute I’m done eating, I’ll be over to help you unpack. I should be back by eleven.”

“I’ll be in bed by eleven.”

“You can stay up just this one night.”

“I have my first day of school in the morning. You know. New school? New year? Kind of a big deal?”

“One night. You’re young. It won’t kill you. When I was your age, I burned the candle at both ends, and I’m still here.”

It takes me a long time, usually, to get mad. I’m not one of those people who flies off the handle easily. I have a pretty long fuse. But I felt myself rise up to something, and I knew it was not about to be contained. Frankly, I suspect it had been a long time coming. A long, painful buildup.

“How many different ways do I have to tell you that I’m not you,” I said, without raising my voice, “before you actually get it?” She stared at me, quite silent. I’m sorry to have to admit that it was gratifying. But I wasn’t done. Not nearly. “I really wish you would stop pretending this is fun. And that we’re doing it together. If you tell me one more time that it’s just like having a wonderful new room, I’m going to scream. A wonderful new room wouldn’t be across town from the other rooms in our apartment—”

She unwisely attempted to interject: “Now, you know how hard I looked for something closer—”

“Just listen,” I said. “For once in your life, just listen.”

That surprised even me. It surprised her even more. It took her a while to close her mouth. But she said nothing.

“This is not fun,” I said. “It sucks. I hate it. If you’re going to do it, fine. Do it. And if you want to pretend it’s a wonderful adventure, I guess there’s not much I can do to stop you. But I won’t pretend with you. I choose not to pretend. Now go have dinner with Donald. I’ll unpack my own things.”

Silence. Not the most fun silence ever. A wounded sort of a silence. Like we were watching some living thing lying on the floor bleeding.

“Someday you’ll understand,” she said. After a truly painful length of time.

“I doubt it.”

“You’ll fall in love someday yourself.”

“Not like that, I won’t.”

Another difficult pause.

“I’m sorry, Elle,” she said.

“Right. Whatever.”

She let herself out. Slammed the door a little harder than necessary.

I looked at the stack of unpacked boxes, sitting like Mt. Elle in my new living room. I slammed into the tower and sent it all tumbling. I heard my new cat skitter, undoubtedly from one hiding place to another. I could hear his claws scrambling over the wood floor. I slapped the coffeemaker Mother had given me and sent it flying onto the kitchen linoleum, where the carafe shattered. I didn’t drink coffee. She drank coffee. If she could see where she left off and I began, she’d know that.

I looked around for something else to break, but everything else was packed. If I wanted to break something else, I’d have to find it first, and that really dampened the mood and the moment.

I sat on the floor for a few minutes with my head in my hands.

Somebody knocked on the door. I pretty much assumed it was my mother, coming back. I think, in a weird way, I wanted it to be. I think I never entirely believed she’d go through with this thing. Part of me kept expecting to suddenly find out it wasn’t going to happen like this for real.

“Who is it?”

“Your neighbor, Frank Killborn. From next door?”

Oh. Right. Munchkin Guy.

I got up and answered the door. I didn’t open it very wide. “Sorry about the noise,” I said.

“It’s not that. Just wanted to be sure you were okay. Sounded like somebody was killing somebody over here.”

“Well, they must have been killing somebody else,” I said. “Because I’m fine.”

“Good,” Frank said. “Now I don’t have to call your mother.”

We both smiled a little. It was awkward. You get to a point where you either have to stop talking or open the door wider.

“I’d ask you in, but I’m not unpacked at all.…”

“No problem. Not trying to intrude. Just—”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black flash. He streaked by me along the floor and out into the hall. I tried to reach down and grab him, but it was too late. “Oh shit. My cat!”

“I’ll get him,” Frank said.

“Don’t. He’ll kill you. He’s not friendly at all.”

We ran down the hall after him. Frank managed to get between the cat and the stairs, which was good because pretty soon after that, the cat ran out of hall. Frank cornered him and closed in.

“He’ll scratch you,” I said.

“I’m a vet tech. I know how to handle a scared cat.”

He reached down and held the cat by the scruff of his neck, gently pinning him to the hall carpet. Then, with his free hand, he scooped up the cat and got him pinned to his side without so much as a fight.

“There’s a trick,” he said. “You hold them like this. Their front legs in your hand like so. Then pin their back legs against your hip with your elbow. That way they can’t scratch with either their front or back claws. And as long as you have the scruff of their neck, they can’t bite.”

“There’s an even better trick,” I said. “Get a friendly cat.”

We brought him back inside and I closed the door, quickly. Closed me and the cat and the neighbor into my apartment.

Then I felt weird because I was in there with this guy I didn’t know. But I never actually thought he’d hurt me or anything. You couldn’t think that with Frank. It just didn’t fit.

He put the cat down. I suppose it goes without saying that the cat immediately ran and hid.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem.”

We just stood there for a minute in that sea of tumbled boxes. I was hoping he’d go home.

I said, “I’m beginning to think I made a mistake, getting that cat. I was trying to piss my mother off. But now she’s gone, and it doesn’t bother her, and I have to live with him. And he’s supposed to be all I have to keep me company in this new place. I’m beginning to wish I’d gotten something more cuddly. You know, a cat I could actually hug. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was stupid.”

Speaking of stupid, what was I telling him all this for? It was so unlike me, to actually talk to somebody like that. And I didn’t even know Frank.

“Maybe this guy’ll come around.”

“Maybe.” Probably right around the time I got used to living alone.

A really awkward moment, and then he said, “Well, okay, then.”

And I said, “Thanks for coming by.”

And he said, “If there’s anything we can do to help you settle in …”

I didn’t know who or what constituted the rest of that “we,” but I wasn’t dying to open up any new subjects. I just wanted to get past this “new neighbor” part of things and be alone again.

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for coming by.”

He let himself out. And then, the minute he did, I didn’t want to be alone anymore. And couldn’t imagine why I’d ever thought I did.

I looked around for my cat. I found him right where I expected to find him—hiding under the bed. It suddenly hit me that I’d better unpack the litter box and litter, preferably right away.

Lots of things were beginning to dawn on me. Like the fact that if I wanted to take a shower, I actually had to find soap and shampoo. And towels and washcloths. And hang the shower curtain. Like the fact that there was zero food in the fridge. Like the fact that I actually
lived
in this strange new place. And that nothing was set up for me the way it had been at home.

It took me almost twenty minutes to find the bag from the pet store, with the cat food and litter box and the bag of kitty litter. Among all those spilled mountains of bags and boxes. I set it up in the corner of the bathroom. Filled it with litter. There was a slotted plastic scoop in the bag. Probably for cleaning out the box.

That’s when it hit me. A whole new level of dawning. There would be no maid to clean out the litter box. Not now, not ever. I was the maid now.

I went back to the bedroom and got down on my hands and knees. Looked in at the cat. I could see his one gold eye glowing in the dark. He hissed at me.

I said, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

And that is how my weird cat got his weird name.

TWO
Isn’t Annie Lennox Straight?

I
woke up weirdly early. That time of day you know in your gut is the middle of the night, but that the clock insists on labeling “morning.” Though it would certainly be fair to qualify it as the wee hours.

I decided to plug in my computer, and at least get it set up. See if I could single-handedly get it to work with the Internet connection I had just inherited.

I found about fifteen pieces of spam mail, and a note from my mother.

The subject line said “Exciting News.”

My heart fell. Don’t ask me why. It’s something about how well I know my mother. When she says a thing like that, she means it’s exciting for
her
. And I’m not going to like it.

I know that sounds like too much to gather from a two-word subject line.

Except I was right.

The e-mail said the following: “Donald’s taking me on a cruise. It was a surprise! Isn’t that just the best? We leave Monday.” My stomach dropped again. Farther this time. The day before my birthday. Donald was whisking her off on a cruise the day before my birthday. “But don’t worry. When I get back, we’ll throw the best party ever. Just slightly belated. After all, what’s in a date? Love, Mother.”

What’s in a date? Oh, I don’t know. Like … a birth?

I felt myself grinding my molars together too hard.

I looked around. It was still dark in my weirdly empty apartment. I could see a little bit of my surroundings by the glow of the streetlight outside. The shadow of the fire-escape railing against the window. Boxes on the bare hardwood floor. There was something spooky about the starkness and the shadows. Something I couldn’t seem to shake.

I felt cheated because I’d already used up my best temper tantrum. All the boxes were spilled across the floor where I couldn’t even smash into them in my rage. Anything I did after that would seem anticlimactic.

I looked under the bed, but no cat. Looked in the closet. Nothing. I walked around the place a little, turning on lights.

I finally found him in the bathroom, huddled in the tub. I couldn’t even see him until I pulled back the shower curtain, which I had gone to great trouble to hang before bed.

When he saw me, he lifted straight up into the air and then scrambled to take off. I could hear the awful noise of his claws on the porcelain. The scene seemed to play out in slow motion, because he couldn’t get any traction. I felt like I was watching a character in a cartoon, that weird exaggeration of a simple motion. It almost made me laugh. But underneath the humor of the situation
was that other side of the thing—the part that wasn’t funny in any way.

When he finally managed to launch out of the tub, he accidentally ran across my foot, drawing blood with a couple of his back claws.

After about ten minutes of looking for Band-Aids in a few miscellaneous boxes, I gave up and wrapped my foot in toilet paper.

I generally try not to waste a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. Some days are harder than others.

Later that morning, when the hours slowly grew less wee, I found an entirely new way to release my anger. And it wasn’t anticlimactic at all. In fact, it was original, creative, and altogether satisfying.

I cut off all my hair.

Mother loved my hair. So of course she would be horrified. Which hardly prevented my decision to do the thing. If anything, it may have been part of the incentive.

Of course, she loved my hair because it was so much like her hair. We’re both natural redheads. Or, at least, we both started out that way. Now she dyes hers red to cover God-only-knows-how-much gray. But, natural or not, we both have lots of red hair, thick and long and a little bit wavy.

I’d run down to the Duane Reade to get Band-Aids, and while I was there I’d made an impulse purchase. I got one of those clippers men use to keep their beards neat. You can set it to different lengths. I set it as long as it goes, so I wouldn’t literally be bald. All that thick red hair dropped onto the bathroom tiles, just like that.

It came out a little bit longer than Frank’s. But it was still short enough to stick up on top.

I liked it. I thought it made me look like a model. It made me look radical and dangerous and a little scary.

I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time. I thought I looked like Annie Lennox, back when she was half of the Eurythmics. Or a young Annie Lennox, anyway. Or maybe like a young Annie Lennox would look without all that makeup.

Looking back, I think if I made a list of all the things I’ve done that were … well, I don’t want to say stupid. I don’t want to be self-abusive here. A list of things that might have warranted rethinking—how does that sound? I think going to my first day of the new school year at a new school with a more or less shaved head, well … that might have found a good home on the aforementioned list.

Don’t get me started on
why
it’s a new school. Let’s just say all disastrous changes track back to The Donald, who found my current high school “pricey” and “coddling.”

But I’ll just get too upset if I talk about it, so that’s another rant for another day.

Anyway, it was probably lousy thinking, but I guess I wasn’t really thinking. I was in more of a feeling mode. And what I was feeling was pissed.

The morning passed for normal. Nobody really seemed to pay attention to my head. Except me. I was weirdly aware of it all morning. Like I could feel people looking at it. But most of the time, they weren’t. I mean, as far as I could see. I was the invisible girl. They weren’t looking at any part of me at all.