Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(49)

I have a boyfriend, I say. He’s gonna marry me.

When do you think you’ll get out of here? asks Morgan.

I told you, for college.

This lobby, she says. Where’s your home?



ANOTHER WORD FOR CREEP

Hey neighbor! she writes. I hear you’re from Boca! Me too! Small world, huh?

I’m twenty years old, single with an Adderall addiction, a fashion design student in New York City. It’s seven in the morning, October, and I’m drinking coffee out of a mug when Lennox Price’s name shows up on my screen, in my inbox, calling me Neighbor. I read on.

Well, I recently moved here for a guy but we broke up, and then I met this dope chick named Leah who said she dormed with you or something and I told her where I was from and she was like, another Boca girl! Sweet! You two should be friends! So, what do you think, neighbor? Hang sometime?

I stare at the screen. I light a Camel. I look up recent pictures of Lennox Price. When did she move to New York? She looks the same as she used to on Myspace, though she’s platinum blonde now, with a diamond Monroe piercing to look more like Marilyn. She poses with the boyfriend—a comedian, I recognize him from his late-night specials—the square jaw, a scar across his cheek. The two of them look happy, beautiful, symmetrical in their power. In some photos, Lennox uses a book to cover her face from photographers, but I can tell by her eyebrows that she’s smiling. I call Clarissa, to whom I haven’t spoken in years.

You won’t believe this, I say to her voicemail. Remember Lennox Price?



My mother picks me up from the Fort Lauderdale airport two days before Christmas. I feel more mature in my college clothes, New York clothes, wearing a black turtleneck and emerald, tweed pants.

Aren’t you hot? my mother says. Aren’t you dying?

I’d rather sweat to death than dress like Jimmy Buffett, I say.

How’s my college girl? she says. My Project Runway girl?

Same old, I say. Dog piss freezes up there.

My mother’s spray tan is wet; she looks like she’s been smeared all over with syrup. She and my father, who now split their time between Florida and New York, recently employed a woman named Elna to come over to the house and assemble a pop-up tanning tent in front of the living room TVs. My parents take turns standing in the structure, naked save for goggles, while Elna has them spread their fingers, their toes, spraying their bodies with bronze. The two of them have never been happier.

We drive straight from the airport to Best Buy. We need to pick out some Christmas and Hanukkah gifts, says my mother. Choose some cool electronics—I don’t know electronics—and we’ll hand them out. Doesn’t matter who gets what, just choose some nice shit.

I pick up cameras, iPods, DVD players, USB drives. They clatter in my blue basket. I silently assign who will get what, based on how I currently rank everyone in my family, and who voted for John McCain.

On the way back to the car I say, I think these gifts are good.

Good, says my mother. Good, I thought so. Expensive enough.

Also, I think I’m in love, I say.

David? she says. Still? He’s no good for you, baby. He’s really such a pussy. He’s really a scumbag shit-mouthed mooch of whiney white garbage. And a liar face.

Not David, I say.

Stratton again?

It’s a girl, I say, as my mother pops open the trunk. Girl, the word shapes my mouth in a new way—tongue to teeth. I feel like I’m playing the role of a daughter testing her mother, a daughter grinding her way through a rebellious stage, pushing buttons—Girl—just to see how far it can go. Her name’s Lennox. We’ve been friends since high school. It’s actually very sweet.

My mother pulls the bags from my arms one by one, loads them into the trunk of our car. She lines them up in neat rows. Pats the plastic flat. She smooths her shirt. Takes her sunglasses off to wipe the steam, squints dramatically at the sun, places the glasses back on her face.

What do you want for dinner? she asks. Anything you’ve missed?



It’s true—I’m from Boca! I type back. Parkland, really. I try so hard to forget. How funny that we don’t know each other! I include my phone number. I hit Send before I can change my mind.

Hours later, Lennox responds. How about tomorrow? Natural History Museum? I’ve never been.

Great, I type. There’s a new show at the planetarium. And the whale—the whale is really something.



It’s not that I never thought about it. Girls. Women. It’s that I thought about it too much.



I wait for Lennox in a café near the museum. I run my fingers through my hair to smooth it; I straighten my tie. Lately I’ve been going to an evening writing class in Midtown, where a woman with a shaved head has been instructing us to keep a journal. In the café, I pretend to write in this journal to look busy, scholarly, like I have something important on my mind, but I am only writing Lennox’s name in rows.

I’m so focused on the loop of my L’s that I miss Lennox walking through the door. She just appears, across from me, every detail of her, breathing. She’s twenty minutes late. I’m sorry, she says. Those are the first words she ever says to me. But I think I just saw James Franco outside. He winked!

I laugh, covering my teeth. I say, It’s nice to meet you, and, tell me more about James Franco! because I want to be this friend; I want to be the kind of person who is there for Lennox Price. Her cheeks are a deeper pink in person. Her teeth, sharper. She’s wearing the same leather belt she wore in 2005 in photos from her BFF Kelly’s graduation party. I wonder where Kelly is now.