A Different Kind of Forever(93)
And this is the girl who has problems in school, they keep telling me, because she’s not working up to her potential. Any human being who can come up with an idea like that should be working in a brain trust.
“Real clothes, Miranda,” I said in my best I’m-only-saying-this-once-then-I’m-killing-you voice. “Jeans. Or a skirt. Or Dockers. Not jammy pants. Then bring down the ugly outfit so I can take it back to Macy’s for credit. Now.”
Miranda knows when she can push and when she has to back down, so she actually dropped her cereal bowl and spoon into the sink before she flounced out of the kitchen in a subtle display of teen-age compromise. I stirred lots of sugar into my coffee and waited for the second wave.
Daughter the Second and Daughter the Third are only separated by eight minutes, but that counts for a lot when you’re fourteen. Daughter the Second is very sweet. Daughter the Third chews nails for breakfast then spits them out at people all day long. When they were little, they were kept in separate classrooms in school because they were impossible to tell apart. But sometime around the age of ten, distinct personalities began to develop. Now, to the casual observer, they could be two completely separate species.
Lauren, the older and infinitely wiser, combs her shining, soft brown hair into neat little braids or pony tails, applies some mascara and clear lip gloss, then descends into the kitchen smiling, her books in a neat pile by the door, her jeans freshly washed and actually ironed – which, I must admit, bothers me just a little- and her T-shirt always clean. That bothers me a little too, but she actually kisses me on the cheek every morning as part of her morning routine. I tend to overlook a lot of her little foibles.
That particular morning, I could see a happy kitten face beneath her grey hoodie, and her hair was in a long braid. She carefully measured oatmeal and water into a bowl and set it in the microwave, then smiled as she poured her orange juice and said, in her very sweet, little-girl voice, “I put our DNA in Johnson already. Is that okay?”
I smiled. Of course it was okay. For those who need a translation, Johnson is our mini-van. I call it Johnson after the actor, Van Johnson. I am a huge movie fan, and I watched a lot of old movies on television when I was a kid. The DNA she was referring to was the science project she and her sister had been working on for the past six weeks. The science teacher put a number of acceptable projects into a hat, and Lauren and her sister Jessica, who are both very smart in science and are lab partners, pulled out the DNA model as their project. Jessica, with her warped sense of humor and her innate ability to take any mundane activity and turn it into something that will drive everyone crazy, insisted on a very large-scale model. The finished project was over five feet long and about as graceful to maneuver as a herd of water buffalo. So I was driving them both to school that morning.
On cue - that is, late - my youngest, my baby, my last chance of attaining perfection, clumped down the stairs. Jessica can’t help clumping. She really can’t. Her feet are encased in Doc Marten boots that are designed to protect SWAT team members from having their feet shot off by bazookas. But they are black, so they match the rest of her outfit, which is, of course, the important thing. Her pants, cut raggedly below the knee, are black. Her long-sleeved button-down shirt is black. The heavy eyeliner and clumpy mascara is black – are we all getting the picture? And her hair is black, the kind of dead, dull, artificial black that can only be bought. Very cheaply. Speaking of hair, her haircut is very one-of-a-kind, but for anyone who would care to duplicate it, here’s how it’s done.
Bend over, brushing your long, silky, beautiful hair straight down.
Gather all your hair together and fasten with a rubber band, as close to the scalp as possible.
Still bending over, grasp the hank of hair about three inches from the rubber band with one hand, and with the other hand, using very dull scissors, cut as close to the rubber band as possible.
Remove rubber band, stand upright, and shake your head.
Leave all the cut hair on the bathroom floor.
Mix one application of GothGirl Hair Color #666, Your-Mother-Will-Scream Black, in the bathroom sink, making sure to get a few flecks on the walls.
Apply half the bottle to your newly shorn head, leaving the rest to drip over the hair on the floor.
After rinsing, let hair dry without benefit of conditioner, gel, mousse or blow dryer.
Ta-dah! The Jessica!
Jessica growled. She’s not a morning person. She poured herself a cup of coffee, which she drank, of course, black, and started taking apart a bagel with her blackened fingertips, putting very small bits into her mouth a little at a time.