Tales From My Closet (26 page)

“Nobody said anything about your having to go to Princeton.”

“Or . . .” I had to think a minute, because it wasn’t like I had all the colleges lined up in my head in order of their prestige. “Or the University of the Midwest!” I finally burst out with.

“There is no University of the Midwest.”

“Or even, like — I don’t know. Mama, what I really want to do? I want to be an artist. I want to go to art school.”

“You’re too young to decide where you want to go to college. And you’re certainly too young to decide to give up on a well-rounded liberal arts education.”

“You’re not listening to me. What’s so awful about my wanting to be an artist? Just because that man — whoever he was — was a painter . . .” and I would have continued except that Mama shot me one of her “enough is enough” looks. Then, instead of answering me, she said: “Honey, you have some talent. I can see that. I’m not blind. But art school? That’s the kind of dream that can only let you down.”

“But why, Mama?” I was nearly crying by then. “What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that you’re still too young to understand that most dreams are just that — dreams. Life is a compromise, honey. It is for me, it is for your father, and one day, as you’ll see, it will be for you, too.”

“Why? Why does it have to be like that?”

Which is when Mama put her face in her hands and remained that way for a while. Finally, she looked up and spoke. “I don’t want your spirit crushed, like mine was.”

It took me a little while, but finally I understood.

“Told you,” Mama Lee said that weekend, when I took Justine with me to help her do her spring cleaning. Mainly that meant climbing up on her kitchen cabinets and dusting the parts she could no longer reach. That, plus raking up the last of last year’s leaves. Mama Lee was a stickler about that kind of thing: Everything had to be perfectly neat. “Your mother loves you no matter what. And she believes in you, too. But I guess you just had to go learn it for yourself.”

“But she’s still kind of weird about my wearing your clothes.”

“That’s something the two of you will just have to work out, I guess.”

“But why, Mama Lee? Why is she still so — so totally freaked out when I wear something that has some pizzazz?”

“Sounds to me like she already told you. “

“What did she tell me?”

“Your mother just wants to keep you a little girl a might bit longer,” Mama Lee finally said, “you being the youngest and all. And how much you look like she did when she was your age. And also, I don’t think she ever quite forgave me for allowing her to spend so much time with that man — and he was a friend of mine, too! I had no idea that something had started up between them. Oh! I was just stupid, letting her spend so much time with him. What was I thinking?”

“But,” I said, “it wasn’t your fault!”

“And you,” Mama Lee said, ignoring me completely while she turned her gaze on Justine. “I understand that you had a hand in this whole blog business, too.”

“Yeah, but it was Ann who dragged me into it.”

“Well, it could have been really good,” Mama Lee said. “Next time, you girls just have to be sure that you go about it the right way: with kindness. Because I haven’t met a teenage girl yet who doesn’t like a little attention — just so long as it’s the right kind.”

“Told you,” I told Justine.

Justine had never met Mama Lee before, and from the moment we’d walked in, I could tell she was kind of in awe of her — of how beautiful she still was, and how fashionable, in one of her lightweight pantsuits, of gray linen, with a scarf knotted jauntily around her neck. I’d never seen her haul her butt so readily before, either, letting Mama Lee order her around like she was a soldier in a private army of two.

“Do you really think so, ma’am?” she said.

I’d never, not once, heard Justine call anyone “ma’am,” and nearly busted a gut laughing.

“I do indeed,” Mama Lee said. “You’ve got a way with words. And your friend here has a way with a pencil. You make a great team. The way I see it, God wouldn’t have put you two girls together just so you could mess up.”

Justine’s eyes were like two rocks underwater, swimming black in their pupils.

O
n the night
that it happened — that terrible night when Dad slugged me — Ben sprang out of the TV room and, brandishing the remote controls like guns, stood between me and Dad until Dad left. We both heard the sound of his car backing out of the driveway, and from there, racing down the hill.

“I’m taking you to the emergency room,” Ben said as he lowered himself to the floor and drew me onto his lap.

“I don’t need the emergency room!” I wailed.

“I’m going to call the cops.”

“No!” I wailed even harder.

And we sat there, hugging each other, and rocking back and forth in each other’s arms until Ben finally got up to get me some ice. Then Ben reached for the phone to call Mom, but Mom was already at the door, letting herself in. And when I say she freaked out, I mean it. But at least I didn’t need to go to the emergency room, or even to the doctor. Dad had hit me pretty hard, but nothing was broken. At least, not physically. It was just my entire life that was broken. So broken that, in bits and pieces, as Mom applied more ice and then Neosporin to my face, I spilled the entire story — including pretty much everything, even how Becka had gotten drunk and ruined my work dress — and when I was done, Mom didn’t say anything at all. Instead, she pulled me to her so tightly that I could hear her heartbeat and the sound of her blood moving through her veins and smell her smell of soap and fatigue and old red lipstick.

That was the night all three of us moved into our cousin’s house. It was Mom’s decision: She insisted that our safety came first, and even though I didn’t think that Dad would do it again, and Ben said that he’d sleep on the floor next to my bed, Mom just kept saying: “Better safe than sorry.” Which is how I ended up at my cousin Weird John’s house, watching TV in the basement, with Polly and Justine. That was the night when I got to know Justine a little, the night when I realized that I didn’t need Becka’s approval anymore, that I could be friends with whomever I wanted to be friends with.

A couple of days later, Dad moved out of the house, and Mom and Ben and I moved back in. I didn’t want to, though, and ended up staying over at Polly’s for a couple of days. It was weird, but even with Dad gone, Mom was still there, and I just didn’t want to deal with her. At all! I came home anyway. Ben told me I had to. He said that Mom felt so guilty her hair had turned gray. For the first time in his life, though, he wasn’t exaggerating. When I finally came home, Mom’s stubborn black hair was the color of tin.

The first thing she said to me was: “Let’s go shopping.”

“Very funny, Mom.”

“Really,” she said. “Want to?”

“Do you mean it?” I finally said.

“And maybe we can get something for me, too?”

I couldn’t help it: It just jumped out of my mouth: “How about a trip to the hair salon?”

“Do I look that bad?”

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“We’ll do both, then.”

So we did.

In March, Daphne called me to say that she needed someone to help out on Saturdays, as the girl who had been helping her just quit. This time, Mom didn’t quibble, but instead said that she was proud of me. Even though I still wore an occasional semi-showing under-cami, or tight woolen leggings, I’d mainly upped my look to something I thought of as affordable-funky-classy, a redo of preppy, wherein I combined basic button-down shirts with, say, a wide belt and slim-cropped bright-pink pants, or a cord mini with my black boots and an oversized pullover sweater. (My mother had upped her look, too, and was actually wearing jeans that fit, sweaters that weren’t covered with small granules of ancient pills, and dresses that didn’t go down to her ankles.)

A week later, I was back at work, this time with a name tag and two more amazing dresses, which Daphne said were mine to keep for as long as I stayed. “But the minute you quit on me,” she said, “these two babies come back to me. Understood?”

I understood, all right, and I also understood that I wasn’t ever going to let Becka see me in my work dresses — a beautiful light-blue Kate Spade and a Theory printed charmeuse. These were the clothes, I thought, of my future, of the day when, instead of just being a salesgirl in a local dress shop, I’d inhabit an office in New York where, every day, I’d dress in beautiful silk or woolen clothes, in lace-trimmed shifts and colorblock dresses, in multistriped scoop necks with elegant black heels, and designer wool crepe.

But as it turned out, I didn’t really have to worry about keeping the dresses in good shape. Now that it wasn’t the preholiday rush, the job was pretty low-key, so low-key that at times there were no customers in the store at all. That’s when, bit by bit, Daphne told me about herself, and she was amazing. Her husband had been killed in a car accident when their only daughter had been two, and Daphne had had to move home to live with her parents until she could work again. That’s when she started in retail and eventually bought what became Daphne’s Designer Digs. She was sending her daughter to college in the city. “And let me tell you,” she said, marking down prices or taking inventory, “it costs me a pretty bundle, too. And it doesn’t help that the girl has such uptown tastes.”

She sighed. “She’s my daughter, and I love her more than I can say. I just wish I saw her more. But she’s growing up, and has her own life, in the city. She’s my gem. Worth every late night doing inventory or pulling my hair out over taxes.”

I just stared as Daphne’s eyes grew wet.

“What? You don’t believe me?”

Finally I found my voice. “Of course I believe you.”

“I’m going to have you over for dinner sometime,” she continued. “I want you two girls to meet. What do you say?”

But for some reason, I was too choked up to say much of anything, and turned away. “What is it, hon?” Daphne said. “Things still tough at home?”

I’d told Daphne pretty much everything, including the fact that my father had hit me and that Mom had kicked him out of the house and he was living in a sublet in the city.

“It’s just weird, is all,” I finally said.

“Because I’m your boss?”

“No, that isn’t it.”

“Or if you just don’t like me . . .”

“But I totally like you!” I blurted out. “I like you. . . .” And again my voice trailed off, and then I was throwing myself into her arms. “I like you so, so much!”

“Then what is it, hon?”

But I couldn’t tell her. Because how do you tell someone that you kind of wished that she, and not your mother, was your mother? Finally she patted me and said, “Good, then! I just know that you and Emma Beth will hit it off!”

I don’t know why I simply didn’t tell her the truth then and there — that the internship I’d told her about had been at Libby Fine, where Emma Beth and I hadn’t exactly been best friends. Instead, I swallowed my pride and called the one person I could think of who I thought might be able to help me: That’s right, Becka. Things had slowly gotten better between us, or at least at school they had. One of the girls — it could have been any of them — had told her that Dad had hit me, and as soon as she’d found out, she’d come running up to me at school saying how bad she’d felt about not knowing. Now she said: “You just need to out-fabulous her.”

“Like that worked out so great last time.”

“But you’re you, Robin. You can out-fabulous anyone.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

There was a pause. “I know!” she said. “You can wear one of my Libbys.”

“Meaning?”

“Aunt Libby gave me some of her new line.”

I had to ask: “Do they have poodles on them?”

“Poodles? Very funny. But you should come and see. There’s something in particular that I think would look awesome on you.”

I hadn’t been to Becka’s since the night she’d spilled red wine on me — oh, and once afterward, when I’d brought her some flowers after she came home from the hospital. So I thought it would be weird being there again, that there’d be so much left unsaid that it would be like a giant invisible ice cube sitting between us. Instead, when she opened the door, the first thing she said was: “I’ve missed you.”

“You have?” I said after a little while.

“I really have!” she said. “And, Robin?”

“What?”

“I’m, like — I’m, like, so lonely!”

What do you expect after you’ve been such a bitch?
I thought. Then I stood there, feeling as awkward as a freshman in a class full of seniors, and tongue-tied, like I’d never met her before, let alone been friends with her most of my life. It got worse when she looked at me like she could read my mind. So I was super-relieved when she lunged toward me and, giving me a hug, said: “I miss everyone!”

“You do?”

“I even miss Um!” she said, and in the first time for over a year, I saw her laugh. She laughed so hard she turned purple and had to bend over to stop from coughing. She laughed so hard that I couldn’t help but laugh with her, hiccupping and drooling as I went into hysterics. Finally, when we’d both calmed down, she gestured toward the stairs, saying: “Shop my closet.”

Daphne lived on the third floor of a redbrick building a few blocks from her shop, in an apartment filled with brightly colored Oriental rugs, slightly beat-up furniture, and silk pillows in lollipop colors.

“No way” was the first thing Emma Beth said when she saw me. It didn’t surprise me that she looked amazing in tight black pants and a cropped black-and-white houndstooth jacket, with black ballerina flats.

“Way,” I said, wearing my new Libby outfit, which was, and you’re not even going to believe it, an off-white clinging blouse with a pair of gray silk pajama pants. Except that unlike my own pajama pants, Libby’s looked like something you’re supposed to wear to a party or a ball, and had a protective, well-made weight to them.

“This can’t be happening.”

“I work for your mom,” I said, my voice shaking a little. “At the store.”

“What’s going on here?” Daphne said.

“Did you know about this, Mother?” Emma Beth said.

“I’m confused,” Daphne said.

“How long have you worked for her?”

“Not long. I don’t know. A month or so.”