The Things We Do to Our Friends(64)

Then things started to fall apart. Dina and Adrienne weren’t sure about any of it. They weren’t sure if it was a good idea to go through with our plan, and I worried that they weren’t sure about me either.

What you must understand is that, despite how it ended up, it was their issues with foie gras that started it all, not me. That part was all them, and I did it for them and because of them.





53


My family weren’t rich; they had been once, but the memories of when we had money are frustratingly insubstantial. When I try to grasp them, they fade away. Wispy fragments of slight pinks and sunny yellows—the color of a straw hat on holiday or the pressed linen of a restaurant napkin with iron marks when you unfold it. I’m not sure they are true or if they’ve become stuck in my mind from somewhere else.

Clearer is the memory of my mother in a squalid little room with her hand to her forehead. Her complaints were vast, but many of them revolved round her claims of mold, in the air, on the walls, and she had me searching for the shifting substance—the presumed root of her physical maladies—while she rested close by.

The insects buzzing around her, I remember those, and they came closer than you would expect, sat on her for longer, because she lay there so still.

By the time I was sixteen, there was no more seclusion therapy, technically, but when I wasn’t at school it had become normal for me to be locked in my room. I’d become used to it there. Sometimes I hated it and sometimes I craved it. It forced me to practice conversations, and then when I went to speak, my words were forced and unnatural.

Things weren’t working anymore with Dina and Adrienne. One day, outside school, feeling hot and tired, I told a complicated, repetitive story because I craved their attention.

My voice was too loud and the story was too long. The words kept falling on top of each other. My movements were getting bigger, my hand gestures more extreme, as the two of them stood there listening to me. I remember Dina looked to Adrienne, and Adrienne rolled her eyes. A small movement, but I still saw and felt chastised. I wanted to get my point across.

I was so angry that they were laughing at me. I leaned over, physically towering over them, trying to make them stay so I could finish my story. Still, at the same time, there was that thick choking wave of embarrassment.

I wished I could stop speaking; I wished I’d never started it. I could imagine what they were thinking: We thought three would work, but it hasn’t, not really—how do we get rid of her?

My father was picking me up from school that day—a rare occurrence. He arrived in what he called his old banger; it wasn’t as fancy as any of the other parents’ cars. He watched the exchange and beeped the horn—a sign for me to get in. For a minute, I was grateful to him for saving me from the end of my story, and not embarrassed like I’d usually be; I stopped speaking and slid into the backseat.

He stared straight ahead. “Those friends of yours. Be careful,” he said, pulling away. He spoke to me in English, as always.

“Why be careful?” I asked, anxious disdain dripping from the words. I was calmer already, sitting in the car away from them.

“They’re scared of you,” he said, quite simply.

We arrived back at the apartment.

“Your mother has a migraine so it’s best not to bother her,” he said.

My father still lowered his voice like he did when we’d lived in our old house, where we’d led a muted existence, the rooms stuffed to the brim with soft furnishings: thick carpets and heavy curtains. I strained to hear him—I was always asking my father to repeat himself.

I ignored his instruction and went to her room. There she was, laid out on her bed as if she’d melted into the sheets. Blinds shut. Everything was dusty.

I didn’t tell her about the plan. I just told her about how I felt. That my friends didn’t like me anymore, that they glanced at each other when I spoke, thinking I was too much. Leaving me out.

She pulled the towel from her eyes and looked at me.

“That’s a shame,” she said. She placed the towel back.

I expected her to say something more. She didn’t, though. She lay with her palm pressed to her forehead. A low, dull sound came out through her teeth, almost a hiss. I knew that she did this to distract herself from the pain in her head.

“Sit here,” she said, pointing to the chair next to her. We didn’t often sit together in her room, but I obliged and sat down.

“You know, it doesn’t need to be like this,” she said.

I leaned in closer, because this was unusual. My mother didn’t impart knowledge or wisdom to me often. “Tu as tes règles?” she’d asked me, quite matter-of-factly, when I first saw that reddish stain of blood in my knickers, but she didn’t offer any other advice.

I waited for her to continue, and she did, towel on her face so I couldn’t make out her expression.

“You’re far too invested in them,” she said. “You’ll see when you get older. You’ll have friends for different purposes in life. Some friends make you laugh, and then there are friends who help you climb to get to where you want to be, friends from work too. Friends of your husband and friends you play tennis with. So many friends. This attachment to these girls, it won’t always be like this, I promise. It won’t always feel like everything.”