The Candy House(58)
Back when I was younger Mom would say, “Look, Molly, you have two options: stop caring about Stella or make her come crawling back, and if you pick the latter I will help you.” I didn’t have the strength to walk away from Stella so Mom planned a Kitten Cap Party in fourth grade where she would help every girl make a kitten cap, Mom is a very good sewer and I invited all of the girls who mattered EXCEPT for Stella and of course she found out and started being nice again, but Mom said DO NOT BUDGE until she gives you Tears and Groveling, nothing less, and on the morning of the Kitten Cap Party Stella came with her mom to our house “wanting to talk,” and Mom poured Stella’s Mom a cup of coffee although she has privately called Stella’s Mom a “superficial dunce,” and Stella and I went upstairs to my room and she cried and apologized saying I was her best friend she just liked to hurt me sometimes but that was the last time and PLEASE could she come to my Kitten Cap Party? So I had my Tears and Groveling, and Stella and I came back downstairs holding hands and I said Mom I want to invite Stella, I’ll let her have my kitten cap materials but Mom said, “Actually, I believe we have one extra!”
That’s how it has worked out with crochet squares and another time a treasure hunt but all of that was BEFORE Dad told Mom he wanted a Separation. Brian and I had no idea, it was a school night and we were doing homework but as soon as Dad told Mom about wanting a Separation, Mom went into our Art Supply Cabinet and made a “HOUSE FOR SALE” sign out of pasteboard and black Sharpie and nailed it to a gardening stake and hammered the stake directly into our front lawn in the pitch dark, and when Brian and I heard the racket we came outside and Dad was already out there pleading with Mom, “Noreen, is this really necessary?” and Mom said, “Actions have consequences, Bruce.” That was more than a year ago and I still don’t know what Actions she meant, now Brian and I live with Mom in an Apartment and Hannah stays in Dad’s Apartment when she comes home from College, and when I asked Hannah about Dad’s Actions and their Consequences, she said, “Mom is impossible, Molly, have you never noticed that?”
When I’m done crying I soak cotton balls in Witch Hazel and dab my cheeks with them and brush my hair and eat a Jolly Rancher green apple candy from a glass jar. Then I hear two Ladies come into the Ladies Locker Room so I scamper behind the last row of polished wood lockers to hide and I recognize the voices of Stephanie Salazar who is Chris Salazar’s Mom and Kathy Bingham who is her Doubles Partner. Kathy is one of the prettiest Moms in the Club maybe THE prettiest, and her husband Clay is one of the richest Dads and they have five children including Colin, Chris’s best friend who was recently caught shoplifting tools from Home Depot. I hear Stephanie and Kathy opening their lockers and Kathy obviously thinking the locker room is empty, says: Harriet’s backhand just keeps getting worse. She should give up on the lessons.
Stephanie: Or maybe find another pro. I have my doubts about Henri.
Kathy: Henri is a fucking disaster.
Stephanie: He’s still new. Who knows if they teach tennis differently in France.
Kathy: That little blonde, Marisol, is so pigeon-toed it’s a miracle she doesn’t fall flat on her face.
Stephanie: She got some good shots off you.
Kathy: It was the first time I’d seen her play.
Stephanie: Anyway, we won.
Kathy: I wish we’d won by more.
Stephanie: I’m heading out to the pool.
Kathy: Does it hurt a lot, getting a tattoo?
Stephanie: Are you thinking about it?
Kathy: Sort of.
Stephanie: What would you get?
Kathy: I don’t know, something symbolic. What does yours symbolize?
Stephanie: Well, the image comes from a piece of Minoan pottery that was made on Crete during the Bronze Age. The Minoans had this beautiful way of representing sea life that I fell in love with in my college art history class, and I got the tattoo in my twenties when I first moved to New York, so probably what it symbolized most of all was a big fuck-you to my parents, who hated tattoos and were scandalized.
Long pause.
Kathy: Where did you go to college again?
Stephanie: U. of Illinois Champaign. You?
Kathy: Harvard. It’s kind of amazing we’re friends, isn’t it?
Stephanie: I’d say we’re doubles partners.
Kathy: Nice.
Stephanie: You can take it.
Kathy: You get the chairs, I’ll grab us a couple of iced teas.
They leave the Ladies Locker Room together and I sit there trying to understand what I just heard, whether Stephanie and Kathy are friends or not, and if they were joking or not, or whether that was a fight. Then I realize that while I was eavesdropping on those Tennis Moms I COMPLETELY FORGOT about Stella and Iona and I feel much better now, and since feeling strong is the best way to regain my advantage with Stella who also loves gossip about grown-ups, I rush out of the Ladies Locker Room and gallop over the stretch of grass to the Herb Garden all ready to sing out Hiya Folks! but THE HERB GARDEN IS EMPTY and I feel like a horse’s ass to use a phrase of Dad’s, so I lean down like I just sprinted over to smell the herbs in this Herb Garden which could not be more wrong, I don’t care about plants that is Mom’s domain although her garden now belongs to the Dunns who bought our old house but Mom calls them “Occupiers” and will not walk past it.
A row of Cypress Trees separates the Herb Garden from the Pool Area and I peek between those trees at the line of kids waiting for the High Dive. Even from the back I recognize Chris Salazar from his darker skin, his Dad is Hispanic which is unimportant of course but everyone knows it, Mr. Salazar is a music producer who discovered Dad’s favorite band the Conduits, and he and Stephanie Salazar are divorced. Tatum and Oriole and that group are by the pool but they aren’t my direct friends and I can’t join them without Stella, it would seem weird and they might be nice but they might also freeze me out the way Stella and I might freeze out one of them if she all of a sudden attached herself to us. So now I am alone and adrift having no idea where Stella and Iona have gone, and this gives me a fading feeling I get sometimes when I think Stella has forgotten me for good, like I’m a particle floating invisibly through space and I might float so far away that I stop existing even to myself. How will I get back? I need somewhere to be or someone to be WITH, but Hannah is at UC Berkeley and Brian is playing baseball and Mom used to come to the club Before, but now she says “That place is full of twits” and her Court Stenography classes take up all her time because she needs to start a Career now that she has been Discarded. So I am ALL ALONE and average-looking at best, I am not one of the dewy girls, I have faded blue eyes that hurt in the sun and my hair is thin and curly like a baby’s and I have very thick hair on my legs that is one step away from Tarzan according to Brian, but I do look better when I’m with Stella, that is an objective fact I can see in pictures, you would think I would disappear beside her but it’s the opposite, like some of her magic dust floats onto me and sticks.