Paint Me a Monster (15 page)

I dislodge the crown from my hair and place it back on the table next to the hand mirror. Can happily ever after happen?

Right from the start, I knew my baby brother and I would be buddies. Everything about him was likable: His chubby cheeks, his curly black hair that formed the letter C on his forehead, his pink gums wet with drool, and his two tiny white teeth. I especially liked his sparkly eyes that reminded me of shiny pennies. I always wanted to take him to preschool for show and tell.

I looked out for Evan. When he fell and skinned his knee, I was the one who held his hand and washed away the blood. “Call me Nurse Rinnie, and then pretend I’m the wind,” I’d say, as I blew away the sting of soap and water.

I taught Evan to climb the maple tree by first holding onto the split branch. “Hold one limb in each hand and walk up the tree until you can grip a higher branch, then pull yourself up. I’ll push from the bottom.”

I taught him to ride his bike with no hands and the value of giving in when I sat on his back and slugged his shoulders.

He taught me to tie the knots he learned in Cub Scouts, to build model planes, and to give in peaceably if I didn’t strike a bargain when he tortured my friends with his stupid ideas.

We entertained each other with knock-knock jokes, pickle-eating contests, playing cards, and squishing gooey red berries on each other. We did homework together, shared a bathroom, and got sick at the same time. We told ghost stories in the dark, wrestled, and played basketball. Then one day, life changed. We used to be such good friends, Evan and me. Will we ever be again?

“Theo’s coming over for lunch, and I told him I’d make it myself.”

“He’s a really good boyfriend to take you up on your offer. What are you making?” I ask Liz. “It’s a good day for something hot like chili.”

“I’m making Theo’s favorite, hotdogs and salad. But I need your help.”

In the eight months Liz and Theo have dated, Liz has never cooked anything for him or anyone else. She’s better at drying dishes. It takes three seconds to figure out what Liz wants: instructions.

“The key is getting the lettuce really clean—no grit. Wash the lettuce with soap and make sure it’s absolutely clean because lettuce spiders bury their eggs in the leaves.”

“How do you know?” Liz asks.

“Verna told me,” I say, crossing my fingers behind my back.

Liz separates the lettuce leaves and searches for spider eggs as if she’s performing an autopsy. She squirts a drop of detergent on each leaf and massages the thin membranes with the tips of her fingers, then rinses the leaves in warm water.

“Gently,” I say. “Be gentle. Now, dry the leaves with a towel. Be sure to get all the wet spots.”

Liz pats and dabs at the slips of green.

“How’s this?” she says, handing me a leaf.

“Still a little wet,” I say handing it back to her.

She dries it a second time.

“One more light mop around the middle,” I say, handing the leaf back to her a third time. Liz presses the lettuce with her towel.

“Good. Now tear the lettuce into a bowl and toss in some raw vegetables. Time for the hot dogs.” I reach under the stove, grab a pot, and fill it with water. “Put the hot dogs in the water and boil them for thirty-six minutes. The important thing is to turn them without stopping, or they will cook too long on one side.”

Liz sets a timer and her attention to the bubbling hot dogs, turning them slowly, evenly, continually. The scent of hot dogs saturates the house. Croquette whines for a taste.

“You’re doing great, even Croquie approves.”

The doorbell rings.

“Keep stirring. I’ll get it.” I sprint to the door.

“Hi, Rin. Smells good . . . like hot dogs,” Theo says, dropping his coat over the banister.

“It is hot dogs. Liz is in the kitchen. She’s been turning them in boiling water for the past thirty-one minutes,” I tell him. Theo crinkles his forehead and knuckles my head.

“Hi Theo. Lunch will be ready in five minutes,” Liz yells.

“I hope she’s making something else,” he says.

“She is,” I reply. “History.”

The station wagon glides over the blacktopped road. The ride is smooth, like the unbroken ice that lines the side of the road.

“There is someone I want you to meet,” my mother says. My daydream of cantering over the treeless hills, breathing in the smells of grass and horses stumbles over her voice, and then comes to a halt. One more year and
I’ll
be behind the driver’s wheel, steering my life.

“What?” I say.

“A friend of mine wants to meet you. I’ve told her all about you.”

“Why can’t you tell me why we’re here? I could be washing my hair for Lesley’s party tonight.”

Should I straighten my hair or let it frizz?
Mom pulls into a driveway and jingles the keys out of the ignition.

“This is it,” she says.

I follow my mother up a slight slope and into the overly bright foyer of a one-story building.

“In here.” Mom gestures, opening the door to a room the size of her walk-in closet. A hook by the door holds keys. One dangles from pink beads that spell out
bathroom
. On the opposite wall is a picture of a lake with a lone person in a canoe. It reminds me of last summer at Camp Katawauk. Three of us stole a canoe and paddled to the far side of the lake to spy on the boys’ camp. That night, we had a dance with their camp. I met a boy named Will, and we wrote letters to each other the rest of the summer.

He was a year older than I was and filled me in on what tenth grade would be like. “It’s kind of the same as ninth grade, just more intense,” he said. “You really have to think ahead to college and apply yourself.” I thought he knew everything.

The place is silent as Mom and I sit on the bench, waiting for her friend. A woman opens the door. She smells sweet, like peach incense.

“Hello, Rose,” she says beckoning Mom to follow her. “You must be Rinnie,” she continued. “I am Dr. Didier.”

“Wait here,” she says pointing to the bench. There is no cushion on the bench, and “here” is uncomfortable.

Finally, the door opens again.

“Come in, Rinnie,” the doctor says softly.

The décor is creamy. Two thick leather chairs, the color of buttermilk, rest next to a small table that looks like a footbridge between weathered rocks. Mom sits in one chair, the doctor in the other. I step past a coffee table covered with magazines to a nubby sofa. The room feels sanitized—in a well-done way. Everything matches—even the maple picture frames above the sofa hold documents the color of wheat. Their black letters jump at me, “ . . . Dr. of Psychiatry . . . ” A psychiatrist!

No one speaks. It is lushly uncomfortable.

Then Dr. Didier says, “Rinnie, I believe in being straight-forward. I hope you can appreciate this.”

“OK,” I say.

“Rinnie, your mother says that you are incorrigible. She says you are, well, out of control. A real problem.”

I tilt my head, ears up, to catch the falling words. All I hear is rappa-rappa-rappa. There’s a machine gun. I’m paralyzed. I clutch my throat. I’m not paralyzed. Rappa-rappa-rappa. It’s my heart! Can they hear it too?

“Rinnie, your mother says you make her life miserable.”

Pause.

“Rinnie?”

“Mom?”

Mom’s face is expressionless. It could be cardboard.

She crosses her legs and plants her purse like a shield. Her blue eyes dart like quicksilver. There’s something spiteful in her silence. Something removed. As if she is a puppeteer, pulling the strings on a marionette.

The strings yank my neck and unlock my voice. I do not recognize the sound. The girl inside my changing body, who believes in fairness, is drowning. Her last words struggle to surface.

I rocket to my feet, while the world turns to a teary blur. “That’s not true! That’s not true! It isn’t true!” This is a trick. Mothers don’t set their children up. Mothers don’t lie, not like this. “Mom?”

The tears run inside me, and I choke. Just tell the truth, Rin, just tell the truth. But if I do, I’ll sound “belligerent.” Who would believe me? The doctor? Mom’s ally?

“It’s a lie! It’s a lie!”

“Your outburst is unwarranted and uncontrolled,” the therapist says. “We’ve seen enough. Leave the room.”

I glance at Mom. “How could you?” I clench my arms and leave my shadow in the line of fire.

On the way out, I hear Mom murmur, “I told you she was a monster.”

The ride home over the black pavement is cold as ice. There is no horse cantering across the hills. I ache. Where is the nice mommy to stroke my head? Where is the nice mommy to sing away my pain and tell stories with happy endings?

There must have been a few times when Mom was proud of me. Was it at the country club when the mommies sat at the edge of the pool talking and laughing? I clung to Mom’s legs, counting her freckles. She liked my watery hugs, and I liked riding her legs as they pushed back and forth through the clear water. Was it when she took Liz and me fancy-clothes shopping at Franchons?

“Ohhh, the fabrics are stunning. The attention to detail is simply incredible. Look at the satin roses on the cuffs of this lace dress,” she’d gush. Liz and I played tea party under the clothes racks while Mom picked out things for us to try on. Mom liked to buy pretty things. Was she happy then?

The good memories with Mom feel warm. I wish I had more.

“Come into my parlor,” said the spider to the fly, “’Tis the prettiest little parlor you ever did spy. . . .”

Sometimes it’s hard to tell who likes Theo more, Mom or Liz. Occasionally, Theo includes Mom in his and Liz’s plans, which makes Mom swoon.

“She’s always hanging around. It’s hard not to invite her,” he says. “Besides, I like her. And she likes that I like her.”

Theo’s right. Mom likes him more than any of our other male friends, and she wants him around, even if it breaks her rule: “No boys upstairs.”

Mom once said, “If bad weather makes it too dangerous to drive home, your dates can spend the night.” So far, my dates have always gone home. Not so for Theo.

Tonight, Mom invites Theo to spend the night. It’s not pouring outside. There’s no blizzard, no tornado warning, the roads aren’t icy. But Theo will spend the night because Mom wants him to. Does Liz want him to stay? Maybe yes, maybe no. In the end, it’s not up to her. I’m some kind of alien here—when I say I won’t vacate my room, I become “the problem.” Mom and Theo are a team. I have to sleep in Liz’s single bed, and she and Theo will sleep in my double bed.

I want to scream, but who’s listening?

I form a circle with my two arms and step inside it. If I can slide my circled fingers to the middle of my thigh on both legs, and keep my fingertips within an inch and a half of one another, I’ll eat real earth food. How much harm can a chocolate kiss be? Better than one that’s unwanted.

I clasp my thumb and my pointer finger around my wrist. There is a window of light between my fingers and my wrist. Wiggle room. I need it when someone gets under my skin. Flesh doesn’t stretch like latex.

Why can’t people sleep with their eyes open?

How does a pebble in your shoe cause so much hurt?

Why doesn’t soap get dirty?

Why does a kid in my class have one green eye and one blue eye?

Why is it “I before E except after C”?

Why are fire engines red?

What is a personality?

Why are some ladybugs black?

Why are some freckles big and others are itty-bitty?

Why does Temple have Sunday school on Saturdays?

Why does everyone think Mr. Bonatura is such a good teacher?

Does Dad miss me?

What does bad look like?

Does Pop Pop know his smell is of rumpled clothes, cleaning supplies, and bourbon?

Does he know he and Humpty-Dumpty have the same shaped body?

What is perfect? Really, what is perfect?

Why can’t Katawauk go on forever?

Could I be a counselor at camp next year?

Dad’s Jaguar rolls into the driveway, and he honks the horn. In a few weeks, I’ll be able to do that with no supervised driver.

“My turn to sit next to Dad,” I say, even though I know it isn’t.

“You sat next to him last Sunday,” Liz says, inching her way in front of me.

“It’s Liz’s turn,” Dad interrupts. “She missed the last two weekends.”

Three stop signs and two red lights later, we make a slow turn into the driveway at his house.

“OK, you guys,” Dad says. “I’ve got some work to do. Alana and Amy have friends over and Jake’s at baseball practice. Allyson made sandwiches for lunch. Help yourselves. We’ll catch up later.”

Alana and I are stepsisters, not buddies. Our friends aren’t the same, and I don’t want to hang out with them. Amy’s four years younger than I am, and we have nothing in common. It’s been this way for nearly three years. I’m only a couple of miles from my house, but I might as well be on another planet.

I try to find something wrong with the comfortable furniture; the mustard-colored carpet, and the artistic way Allyson has arranged the crystal and china trinkets in the living room. I search for bad lighting, cabinets with no snacks, or dirty piles of laundry. There must be something wrong. There must be something wrong because I never feel welcome here.

I am afraid to touch things: the gold and glass bowl on the iron table, the delicate porcelain flowers in the Chinese vase, the silver filigree frames that look ancient. Nothing says we want you here. Photographs of Allyson’s family line the walls. There is only one of Liz, Evan, and me. It’s on Dad’s desk in his office. I need permission here—can we bake brownies? Is it OK to drink the juice? Can I go upstairs to Alana’s and Amy’s rooms? Upstairs belongs to the children that live here.