Stiltsville: A Novel (16 page)

He nodded.

“Take off your shirt,” I said.

He thought I was getting frisky, but I’d spotted yellow on the fabric under the arm, and I was pretty strict on this issue, even when times were lean. I threw the shirt across the room, into a rusty metal trash can with the motel’s logo printed on the side. Dennis shrugged, and all at once I saw where Margo had gotten the gesture. I felt a surge of fondness for this ability to discriminate between battles, large versus small. Then, because hotels and motels—anonymous, ghost-ridden, seedy—have always inspired me, we got frisky.

I
n the fourth grade, Margo had worn a pair of purple denim jeans that I loved. Like me, she was mostly legs, and her stomach puffed charmingly over her waistband. I might have admitted to Margo that I loved those purple jeans—I certainly never concealed my opinion of her more questionable preferences—but I never did. To me, those jeans represented the perfect balance of tomboy and girly girl. If the jeans had been black, it would have been another story.

The Saturday before sixth grade started, Margo and I had brunch with Marse—she had just broken up with a professional golfer whom Dennis and I had liked a lot, and who had given Margo a set of clubs and several lessons—and afterward, Margo and I went shopping for school clothes. I’d started work at the bank that week, and on Friday had received a check for the sum total of my earnings, which I planned to spend entirely on Margo’s wardrobe. The purple jeans, I discovered that morning when she put them on, were fading through the knees, and soon would be too short at the ankles and too tight through the hips. I planned to find the perfect replacement. I believed new clothes put a spring in the step. Never, though, had the stakes been so high. For years, Margo had watched the big kids with longing and trepidation, and she was about to be catapulted into their world as if holding on to the end of a long, bendy pole. For sixth grade, Margo would need jeans in every color. She would need heart-shaped jewelry and brightly colored Duotangs and teen idol book covers. She would need armor.

“Do you know what the sixth-graders are wearing?” I asked Margo on the way to the mall.

“Sure,” she said. I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t, so I summoned from memory what I knew of middle school fashion. I’d parked in front of Sunset School every weekday afternoon for five years, waiting for Margo to emerge with Carla at her side, two droplets in a maelstrom. I’d studied the older kids as closely as the younger ones: many of the girls kissed each other’s cheeks in greeting and valediction. They had good posture. They did not carry lunch boxes; instead, they slung backpacks over one shoulder, and each girl’s backpack was a different color, as if they’d all drawn straws. The girls spent a lot of time sneaking glances at the boys, who slouched with their hands in their pockets and their legs apart, and whose clothes were too big and didn’t match.

Margo led the way through the mall. We wound up in the juniors section of the department store, among clusters of paisley and polka-dot blouses, neon leggings, and plaid blouses and matching skirts. Margo took several pairs of pants, two skirts, and half a dozen blouses into the dressing room, and I sat on a stool in the corner as she pulled each item on and off. I returned the items to their hangers, checking the prices, alternately relieved and disappointed. In an hour, she’d chosen two pairs of jeans, one pair of black pants, and five blouses—
shirts
, she said—that looked more or less the same to me. I told her to choose three of the five, and she did. Before she put her old clothes on again, I said, “What will it be for the big day?”

I held the new clothes in my arms. She picked through them, then matched the black pants to a pink cotton blouse with red stripes. She stepped into the pants and buttoned them, then pulled on the blouse. Price tags dangled at her waist and upper arm. She stared into the mirror for a long time, and I kept my mouth shut. She would’ve gone through all her school years with the same kids, I thought, and now she’ll go through the rest with an entirely different batch. Fourth grade had been a good year, a happy year. She’d learned that Mars has two moons, and that soap can be made from lard, and that Mount Kilimanjaro was formed by a volcano.

She pulled her hair from her face—we were waiting until just before school started to get it cut—and touched her earlobes. I knew what was coming. “Mom,” she said.

I stood behind her. “Will you be the only one without them pierced?” I said, thinking: would it help?

“Not the only one,” she said.

Dennis had always said we didn’t have to worry about Margo becoming an actress—her expression always gave her away. In the dressing room, her face showed that she was highly alert, like an animal sensing a predator. She wasn’t fearful, exactly—she was anxious, as if she knew in her bones that anything could happen. “I have one condition,” I said.

She started hopping in place.

“You’re not going to like it,” I said. She stopped hopping. “New bras,” I said. “Plus a fitting.”

She considered her options, then reached for her old clothes. “Let’s go.”

As we wound through the store toward the lingerie department, I spotted a pair of jeans made of bright red velveteen. At most, she’d be able to wear them four or five weeks during the winter—but they were adorable. “What about these?” I said.

She eyed the pants and made me move out of the way. “Cool,” she said, touching them, and moments later in the dressing room, admiring her long legs and little tummy in the mirror, I was unable to keep from admitting that I loved them, too.

For the bra fitting, a diminutive older woman prodded Margo onto a platform in front of a triptych of mirrors. To Margo, she said, “Arms up, dear,” and Margo raised her arms while the rest of her body folded in. The woman looped a measuring tape around her torso and muttered a number. When she took the tape away, Margo tugged on her shirt and headed for the exit. If she’d been thirteen, she might have been glad to learn that she’d grown an inch in the rib cage, thereby earning the right to leave training bras behind forever.

“My turn,” I said, stepping onto the platform. I tried to sound lighthearted. For someone my age being fitted was like stepping onto a scale after years: who knows what might have transpired? Margo sighed and clutched a shopping bag to her chest. The woman unwound her measuring tape. “I thought I was a thirty-four C,” I said, “but it couldn’t hurt to make sure.”

When I saw myself reflected in the mirrors, my first thought was that I did not look half bad. I’d lost weight over the past three or four years. It was only about ten pounds, but maybe the fashion of the times flattered me, and maybe height was in style, because my self-esteem was up. That was how I thought of it, how I think of it still: a wave I ride until it abates. I can divvy my life into phases with regard to how I felt about my looks at the time: good years, bad years, so-so years; years of no makeup, years of no jewelry, years of some of each. In good years, I looked at myself in the mirror more often and criticized my body parts—flabby upper arms, too-wide hips—because in those times, the problem areas seemed discrete and fixable, as if all I needed was a few lunges or a few laps in the pool.

But—and here is where I pat my parenting on the back—appearance was not a fourth family member in my house, didn’t pull up a chair and sit with us at mealtimes, peering at our plates. In this, I followed Dennis’s lead: more handsome every year, ten pounds up or down depending on nothing more than whether the Dolphins had made it to the play-offs or how many times he had gone for a run. When he wasn’t working, Dennis wore baggy blue jeans and deck shoes with no laces. He used his fingers for a comb, and when he saw himself in a mirror, he smiled. “Hey, man,” he’d say to his reflection when he passed the full-length mirror that hung at the end of the hallway off our bedroom. “What’s happening, dude?”

I’d hoped Margo might watch my fitting as I’d watched hers, making some meaningful connection between bra fittings and womanhood. Instead, she wandered into a corner of the room and stood in front of another mirror. She brought her hand to the top of her head and started patting, then brought the other hand to her stomach and started to rub in circles. Patting and rubbing, patting and rubbing. Inevitably, the motions became confused, and by the time my new bra size was announced—thirty-six B, to my surprise—she’d grown frustrated and turned away.

It hadn’t occurred to me to confer with Dennis before negotiating with Margo on the matter of her ears. After the piercing was all done, I dabbed away the droplets of blood from the tiny gold studs she’d chosen, and thought she looked rather cute. At dinner that night, Dennis leaned over his meat loaf to push her hair from her face. “What the hell?” he said to me. “Did you know about this?”

“I forgot to tell you,” I said. He’d spent the day at the marina and come home late, and we’d scheduled an after-dinner modeling session so Margo could show off her new outfits.

“It’s OK, Dad,” said Margo.

“I don’t agree,” he said.

“I’m in sixth grade now,” she said.

I flinched. Dennis went back to eating, but it was clear that he was upset. Margo and I talked awkwardly about her soccer coach, who’d complimented her speed on the field and moved her from fullback to halfback, and about what she could do to welcome Carla home from Massachusetts, where her family had spent the summer. We decided to make a card and leave it in the mailbox for Carla to find when she arrived home. When I went to clear the plates, Dennis left the table without helping. The front door opened and closed. I pushed a glass of milk toward Margo and sent her to watch television in our room, and the phone rang.

It was Bette. “What’s in that yam dish?” she said when I answered. “Rum?”

“Bourbon,” I said.

“Can I make it with rum?”

“I suppose.”

“You sound tired.”

“Not really,” I said, but then I found myself rubbing my eyes, as Margo had done when she was a little girl. I told Bette about our afternoon at the mall, the bra fitting and the ear piercing. “Dennis is brooding,” I said.

“You worry too much,” she said.

An hour later I circled our block, looking for Dennis. When I got back to the house, he was sitting on the front steps holding a can of beer. He must have rooted behind stacks of yogurts and sodas and vegetables to find the beer in the refrigerator; I hadn’t even known we had any. Our stocks were thinning with each week that Dennis was unemployed. I seized over every purchase, every small distinction in price.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He didn’t say anything.

“Please don’t get gloomy,” I said. “We’re depending on you.”

“I could’ve used a little warning.”

“I was ambushed,” I said.

“Self-mutilation, rite of passage. Shit.”

“Oh, honey,” I said. “I just want her to be happy.”

He took several long draws from his beer and set it down with an empty clang. “It’s not looking good out there, Frances,” he said. “I feel like a slob.”

It was mid-August. Dennis had been out of work for eight months. He’d been on five interviews: two with the University of Miami, two with consulting firms, and one with the parks department. He’d sent out many, many résumés. Friends and colleagues called regularly with news of an opening at this or that law firm, but Dennis always declined. Lately, though, it had sounded as if the possibility of returning to law was back on the table. I wasn’t sure which I feared more: Dennis not finding a job as our funds dribbled to nothing, or Dennis taking a job he wouldn’t like. “You’re not a slob,” I said.

“I feel useless.”

“You’re definitely not useless.”

“I feel—”

“This is the hard part, Dennis. We knew this was going to be hard.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “I don’t mind it so much.” This was true. I’d carved out a little place for myself at the bank, and had been promoted from teller to loan processor, for a higher hourly wage. The people were friendly and the work was easy. I’d always planned to go back to work someday, and now I had done it. “It’s going to be fine,” I said. But reassurance was rarely my responsibility, and it sounded forced. I tried again: “It’s going to be
fine
.” If he couldn’t believe it, I wasn’t sure I could.

“I was thinking something.”

“What?”

“Used to be,” he said, “she had twelve years of school, total, before we sent her off.”

I inhaled sharply. How could I not have considered this? We’d robbed ourselves of an entire year of Margo. “I’ve been thinking maybe fifth grade was the best year that never happened.”

“Right,” he said. From inside I heard Margo calling for me.

“Come see what she got,” I said to Dennis.

“I saw plenty,” he said, but he rose anyway, and stretched up on the balls of his feet, pointing his long arms toward the sky, and when he came down again he put one arm around me, and we went inside. The next week, I drove Margo to the front entrance of Sunset School, where Carla was waiting for her. They stood on the sidewalk, admiring each other’s outfits—Margo had worn the red velveteen pants, despite the muggy weather—and then Carla walked in one direction, and Margo walked in the other.

D
ennis and I were late for parent-teacher night because Marse and Margo and I had spent the afternoon on Marse’s boat and lost track of time. Dennis and I snapped at each other in the car, and I was flustered upon arriving at the school gates, where a student handed us name tags and a schedule. According to the schedule, our evening would follow the design of our daughter’s day: ten minutes in each of her classes. I studied the schedule as we walked toward her homeroom, then looked across the courtyard at the elementary school building. There, our other selves headed to the fifth-grade classroom, where we would have drunk coffee from Styrofoam cups and chatted with parents whose faces were familiar but whose names we’d forgotten. The fifth-grade teacher would have taken me by the elbow and told me that Margo was doing marvelously, that she had many dear friends, and that her scores were top-notch. We would have popped our heads into the fourth-grade classroom and waved hello to Mr. Oxley. Margo might have felt the same nostalgia. In the month since school had started she’d been spending a lot of time on her schoolwork and in the backyard on a blanket with sunscreen and a book. From what I gathered, she had not made new friends.