Second Helpings Page 7

  “Vassar and Piedmont are already wooing Mary for their honors programs!”

  “Piedmont, Swarthmore, Amherst, and Williams will practically pay our Jessie to attend their honors programs!”

  “Our Mary doesn’t need financial incentives! She can write her own ticket!”

  “Our Jessie already has! She has her pick of the Ivies!”

  The one-upmanship was enough to make “their Jessie” drop out of high school and become a hooker on the Point.

  “It’s been so fun rooming with you!” Call Me Chantalle gushed, handing me a pink piece of stationery with a tea-rose border.

  The sound of her voice came as a surprise to me. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other for weeks, not since she neglected to put a toe shoe on the door and I walked in on her polishing the Grim Reaper’s skin scythe with her tongue.

  I took a closer look at the paper, on which she had written Mary DePasquale in loopy, girlie cursive. What? Didn’t her parents know about Chantalle? Beneath it was a series of numbers, letters, and symbols which surely couldn’t represent what I thought they did.

  “My e-mail and digits, silly! So we can keep in touch.”

  It was obvious that she was putting on a show for both sets of parents. I looked at the two very respectable, very deluded people whose genetics had produced this hobag. I wanted to say something like, Call Me Chantalle, I wouldn’t touch you without a stockpile of antibiotics. But I knew my parents would be horrified by my candor, which, of course, conflicts with Phase 1 of the PDAD plan.

  I waited until I got home to flush her info down the toilet, where it belonged.

  I hadn’t expected to get anything out of SPECIAL. To finally have something to be excited about was beyond my expectations. I now know I will get through my senior year, if only because I’ve finally gotten a glimpse of what awaits me once my diploma is in my hands.

  the fourteenth

  I thought it was bizarre that my parents hadn’t driven up to visit me at SPECIAL, but I didn’t want them there, so I didn’t bring it up. And on the phone, they said nothing but vague, unimportant things about life back in Pineville, so I assumed nothing was going on. I should’ve known better. No, they wanted to wait until I was settled back into the homestead, enjoying a fine breakfast of Cap’n Crunch and coffee, before springing a month’s worth of bad news on me.

  “Your grandmother, Dad’s mother, Gladdie . . .”

  “I know who my grandmother is, Mom.”

  “Well,” she said, clutching her teacup. “She fell down the stairs again while you were at SPECIAL.”

  “Jesus Christ! Is she okay?”

  “Well, she didn’t do any damage to her artificial hips.” Mom paused to sip her chamomile. “However, it seems the fall was caused by . . .”

  “By what?”

  “A little bit of a stroke.”

  “WHAT?! How can you have a ‘little bit’ of a stroke? That’s like saying she caught ‘a touch of the AIDS.’ ”

  “Well, she was in the hospital for only two weeks.”

  “Only two weeks!”

  “The stroke impaired her motor skills. And her memory is gone.”

  “Mom! The woman is ninety years old! She hasn’t been in her right mind in decades.”

  She shushed me. “Don’t say that. It will upset your father.” “Where is she now?”

  “Well, we moved her into an assisted-living facility because she can’t take care of herself anymore.”

  “Assisted-living facility. Is that PC for nursing home?”

  She shushed me again. “Don’t say the N word. It upsets your father.”

  My father. Aha! No wonder he hadn’t grilled me about my workouts. He’s been too distracted by his mother’s little-bit-of-a-stroke.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  “We didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Does Bethany know?”

  My mother paused just long enough before saying yes to let me know that she was full of crap.

  “Liar.”

  Mom frowned. “We don’t want to tell your sister over the phone. And she’s out in California, so she couldn’t do anything to help, anyway. Why worry her? We’re waiting for a more appropriate time.”

  Of course. Denial is how we Darlings deal with everything. Or, rather, don’t deal with anything. Like Matthew. His birthday is two days away. He would’ve been twenty-one. But instead of acknowledging it, and maybe releasing some of the pain she still feels about the crib death of her two-week-old son, my mom will simply and silently pop Valium instead. My dad will ride his bike from Pineville to the moon and back again.

  We never, ever talk about it. Never will, either. It is extremely unhealthy.

  Is this how it’s going to be next year? My parents will save all their bad news for when I come home for breaks from whatever the hell college I’ll be attending since they probably won’t let me attend Columbia even after I get accepted because it is absolutely impossible for me to feign perfection in their presence, as my next comment proves.

  “Would you have told us if she died? Or would you have buried her without us and waited for a more ‘appropriate time’?”

  My mother placed her hands over her eyes for a few seconds, reluctant to even look at me. I wasn’t sure who she was more ashamed of, me for the comment, or herself for the truth in it. I found out soon enough.

  “Jessica Lynn Darling,” she said in her best Because-I’m-Your-Mother-and-I-Say-So tone. “Just for that, I insist you go over there and visit Gladdie today.”

  “Will she even remember it afterward? I mean, will I get credit for going?”

  Another scornful look.

  “What? You said she’d lost her memory! So why bother going if she’s going to forget I was even there as soon as I leave?”

  “Because it will make her happy while you’re there. And it will make your father happy. By the way, try to be a little nicer to him, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, with a heavy, stereotypically adolescent sigh.

  So that’s how I ended up spending my afternoon at Silver Meadows Assisted Living Facility.

  To its credit, the place wasn’t nearly as depressing as I thought it would be. It looked more like a well-appointed hotel than a hospital where the elderly go to die. There were lots of fresh flowers, which thankfully made the joint smell like potpourri, not pee. Bandstand music piped through the speakers. A chanteuse crooned about all the things that she didn’t get a kick out of: champagne, cocaine, a plane. “But I get a kick out of you . . .”

  I had no problem finding Gladdie. She was sitting in an overstuffed chintz chair, holding court in the Silver Lounge, located directly across from the front lobby. She was in the middle of one of her famous stories, surrounded by no fewer than a dozen men and women who all looked as old as she did, but with far less flair. Gladdie was looking as lovely as a nonagenarian stroke victim with two artificial hips could. She was wearing a lavender pantsuit with a matching beret perched atop her salonpoofy white hair. Always color-coordinated, she had her walker done up for the day with ribbons in light and dark shades of purple. She seemed virtually unchanged from my memory. She’d been ancient my whole life.

  “And so I said to the fella, ‘That old gray mare ain’t never been what she used to be!’ ”

  The crowd howled with phlegm-filled, ragged, lung-rattling laughter.

  “Hey, Grandma,” I began cautiously, well aware that I’d have to break in before she launched into her next tale. “It’s me, Jessica.”

  She fixed her eyes on me and there was an instant flash of recognition.

  “Hey, guys and dolls!” she brayed. “It’s J.D.! The one I told you about!”

  Twenty-four quad-focaled, cataracted eyes turned toward me. So Gladdie seemed to know me, but why did she refer to me as J.D.? No one had ever called me that in my life. Even so, I pretended that it was a nickname Gladdie had given me years ago.

  “This one here has to beat ’em off with
a stick, I tell ya!”

  Not true at all, obviously, but it’s in line with Gladdie’s usual delusional view of me.

  “Like grandmother, like granddaughter!” shouted a liver-spotty man in a plaid sport coat.

  The crowd went into more spasms of laughter, but I clearly saw a hint of blush show through Gladdie’s heavy “cheek rouge,” as she calls it.

  Later, when we were alone in her room, Gladdie told me that this twice-widowed charmer is Maurice, but everyone calls him Moe.

  “He has a car!”

  Gladdie’s driver’s license was taken away a few years back when she ran a dozen too many stop signs. I imagine that Moe’s freedom of movement is very appealing to her. I had to laugh, though, because it’s the exact same thing a freshman Hoochie Baby says when she starts getting banged by an upperclassman.

  “Moe’s the pick of the litter,” she confided. “ And the cat’s meow.” She purred for effect.

  They sure know how to have a grand old time at Silver Meadows. I stayed through bingo, Wheelchair-obics, Music and Memories, and afternoon tea and cookies. This assisted-living facility seemed closer to my vision of college than SPECIAL turned out to be. You know, guys and girls hanging out, having fun, hormones flying. Only it’s even better because they don’t have to go to class or study or write papers or anything.

  Jesus Christ. I’d rather be a senior citizen than a senior in high school. A new low.

  the sixteenth

  My mom won’t get out of bed today.

  My dad disappeared at dawn, and won’t pedal into the driveway until after sundown.

  My sister in California will go shoe shopping, blissfully oblivious of the date.

  I will sit and think about how I am a pinprick in the condom. A forgotten Pill. A misplaced diaphragm. An accident. I am the second daughter they weren’t supposed to have after the first son that wasn’t supposed to die. I will contemplate how my very existence relied on his demise.

  I will sit and say it silently, because no one will ever say it out loud:

  Happy birthday, Matthew Michael Darling. Happy birthday to you.

  the twentieth

  I am trying to be nicer to my dad. Trying and failing.

  I actually asked him if he wanted to follow me on his bike while I went on a five-mile run. If only he knew how much of a sacrifice this was for me. Not only have I always hated it when he rides along with me, but the sheer act of running has been pure torture lately.

  Running used to be effortless, even when I hated it. I broke my leg last fall, but now my entire body feels like it needs to be fused back together. I feel like I’ve gained a hundred pounds, even though the scale hasn’t budged. Every breath is labored, as if I’m running in a biohazard suit but the oxygen tank isn’t working. I know I look as terrible as I feel, and I don’t need my dad to point that out.

  “I told you to work out at that artsy-fartsy camp! Now look at you! Do you want to get beat by freshmen again?”

  No, I most certainly do not. Last season’s “comeback” from my injury was a total failure. I’ve tried to let go of that humiliating track season, when I was beat by runners I had practically lapped the year before. I can’t. Still, nothing bothered me more than my inability to come within twenty seconds of my old PRs. The way I see it, if I can’t beat my former self, what’s the point? After being number one, it’s tough to settle for being just one of the pack.

  I want to quit. If that makes me a sore loser, then so be it.

  I’ve never quit anything in my life. Plus, I’m the captain, a senior, and a four-year varsity vet. And captains who are seniors and four-year varsity vets do not quit.

  But I really want to quit.

  In fact, the only real problem I have with the concept of quitting is that no more team means no more running—period. I’d miss those middle-of-the-night solo runs around my neighborhood. They were the only things that soothed my insomnia—well, besides those late-night phone conversations with He Who Shall Remain Nameless. I felt connected to something larger than my own sorry little suburban existence. It was the closest I’ve ever come to having religion. It’s too bad I never felt that sense of peace at practice, or at the meets—even when I won.

  The other drawback to quitting would be my dad’s insistence that I see a surgeon. My mom hates hospitals, which is why she has supported my decision not to go under the knife. Or maybe she sees what my fanatical father can’t. She knows that an orthopedist won’t be able to fix the real source of my pain: my head.

  the twenty-eighth

  Ack. I was malled by the Clueless Two while back-to-school shopping.

  I figured the food court would be the one mall zone where I’d be safe, since the Clueless Two don’t eat. Just my luck that they lined up right in back of me at Cinnabon, where I was buying a Pecanbon and they were buying Diet Cokes. They could’ve bought Diet Cokes at any one of the thirty-eight eating and drinking establishments in the Ocean County Mall, but in a truly sadomasochistic dieting gesture, they chose to buy their Diet Cokes at Cinnabon. But I digress.

  “Omigod!”

  Sara’s voice is unmistakably snotty. (Ha. In more ways than one. Her parents are so moneyed, you’d think they would’ve paid to have her adenoids yanked out of her nose, then had a bit lopped off the bridge in time for her senior portrait. Or at the very least, provide her with a travel pack of tissues before she leaves their seaside estate.)

  “Omigod! Look at me, Jess! I’m skinnier than you are!”

  I wasn’t about to endorse her eating disorder by agreeing, but it was true that Sara had lost quite a bit of chunkage. Even more disturbing than her anorexia was her tanorexia, which had reached savage, Bain de Solunatic levels. Tanning was the closest that Sara came to having a hobby, other than gossiping or surfing pro-ana websites, that is. She started every morning with a half-hour fake bake in the bed her parents bought her before the junior prom. Then (weather permitting), between ten A.M. and four P.M. every day, she would soak up UVs on the beach in her backyard. The result? Even the webbing between her fingers was the color of coffee without cream. Even for someone with her Italian heritage and dark coloring, it was unnatural and alien-like.

  “Do you even recognize me now that I’m quote a perfect size two unquote?”

  Had an Amberzombie salesgirl called Sara “a perfect size two”? Or was Sara acknowledging that she isn’t really a size two, but close enough? Or had Sara’s quote/unquote catchphrase gotten to the point that she was starting to use it inappropriately? You know, like the foreign-restaurant owner who doesn’t know how disconcerting it is for a potential diner to see a sign that reads: TODAY’S SPECIAL: “CHICKEN” CHOW MEIN!!!!

  These are the types of things I think about when Sara talks at me. Her verbosity is such that my brain can take a two-week Club Med vacation right in the middle of the conversation. When my gray matter comes back, it’s all refreshed and relaxed, knowing it hasn’t missed a thing while it was away.

  “Omigod!” shrieked Sara, taking a pink tube top emblazoned with a glittery Playboy bunny out of her shopping bag. “I will look so cute in this!”

  I was not fooled by her buddy-buddy behavior. Sara was simply thrilled to have the opportunity to brag about her diet, how much weight she had lost over the summer, and all the guys she’d hooked up with as a result of her makeover blahdiddyblahblahblah. Sara was very proud of her accomplishment: She had finally mustered enough discipline to become the full-fledged anorexic of her dreams. For years, she had hated herself for not having enough stick-figure stick-to-itiveness. Now she showed off her physique in a backless apron shirt and hoochie shorts that were so tight, I could see ample beavage. Foul.

  “Omigod! I can’t believe you eat that stuff. I’ve lost all taste for junk food.”

  The saliva fizzing in the corners of her mouth said otherwise. I must admit that I took much pleasure in biting into the oozy, caramel-coated, bizillion-calorie Bon. However, I was also afraid that she would grab my hand and
bite off my frosting-sticky fingers.

  Throughout this conversation, Manda acted like she couldn’t have been more bored. She lazily skimmed her new paperback copy of Reviving Ophelia—she must have read the old one down to shreds. She just stood there, popping another piece of Doublemint, or reapplying her lip gloss, or slapping her ever-present pack of Virginia Slims against her palm. (Insert oral fixation jokes here, here, and here.) Her hair—usually dishwater brown and wavy—had been straightened and bleached the color of sweet corn since the last time I saw her. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was an attempt to look more like Bridget. Unlike my beauteous SPECIAL friend, whose visage demanded overblown metaphors (sapphire eyes! rose-petal lips!), Manda’s features were dull and forget-table. She didn’t need a cute face, or the new hair for that matter. Just when I thought she had maxed out on hooter hugeness, it seemed that whatever poundage Sara had lost over the summer had turned up in Manda’s bra.

  “So . . .” Sara said in a pinched tone that tried too hard to sound nice. “What did you do all summer?”

  This was good news. The fact that Sara had deigned to make an inquiry about my life meant that she had zero gossip on me. If she’d had the slightest trace of secondhand info, she wouldn’t have bothered asking at all. I decided to respond with the most snoring of possible answers, one that would end the interrogation right then and there.

  “I spent all summer in a classroom taking a college-level creative writing seminar.”

  Stupefied silence. Mission accomplished.

  “Omigod! Have you heard about the new hottie who’s gonna be in our class?” asked Sara.

  As always, Sara was good for a teensy bit of information, which makes her annoyance factor all the more annoying because you can’t ignore her completely.

  “No. Who is he?”

  Manda shot Sara a quick, disconcerting side-glance.