My Mother Was Never A Kid (Victoria Martin Trilogy) Page 4

  Three

  I have two things to say about the party in Philadelphia (I’m on the train home now). One, it started badly. Two, it got worse. In fact the whole weekend bombed out for me, including Liz. I’m not in her house ten minutes when she breaks the news that she’s not going to wear pants to the party after all. Instead she’s going to wear this gorgeous silk dress. That’s bad enough but I really start having a nervous breakdown when she tells me that all the other girls are wearing dresses too. Naturally I don’t have one with me. And then she swears that she told me on the phone last week that it was dresses, but that’s totally untrue because that’s something a person doesn’t forget. Maybe a school assignment could slip your mind but not what everybody’s wearing to practically the most important party all term.

  It wouldn’t be so tragic if I could borrow something from Liz, but she’s almost three inches taller than me so there I am, stuck wearing my sailor pants and feeling like a real jerk. Wait, it gets worse. Here it is Saturday night and I just looked in the mirror for a last-minute check. I know for sure my skin was super-perfect an hour ago, but now there is the biggest, grossest, most horrendous pimple in the history of the world growing smack in the middle of my chin. Great! Now I’m really going to wow that David. The only five-foot-four-inch pimple dressed in pants and all his.

  It turned out that I didn’t have to worry about David after all. That’s right. He never showed up for the party. No phone call or anything. Just another one in my long line of admirers. I really knock ’em out.

  The party was a real nightmare for me anyway. I spent the whole evening sitting on the back porch talking to Annie Gordon, the fat girl from next door who Liz has to invite to all her parties. But that’s not even the worst.

  Two of the boys who think they’re really hotshots lit up a joint right behind us on the porch and start puffing away like mad. Then Liz comes out and she gets right into the action. It hits me that she’s being kind of silly, I mean doing it practically right under her parents’ noses, but I figure she knows what she’s doing, so I keep quiet. Then she sees Annie and me and whispers, “Move closer and I’ll give you a drag.”

  Annie’s jaw falls a mile. She leaps up and takes off, clopping down the steps so fast she misses practically half of them. Actually it’s a hysterical sight except instead of cracking up I probably should have followed her. But you know me, I have to be Miss Cool, so instead I just slide over and join the group. Fatal mistake.

  I probably sound like I’m uptight about grass but I’m absolutely not. It’s no big deal anymore. I mean, I hardly know anyone, except maybe Annie Gordon, who hasn’t tried dope at least once. First time I smoked it was at this big fountain in Central Park where a whole load of kids hang out. They do it right out in the open. Anyway, I took a couple of puffs and it was okay, not outrageous like some kids say, but good enough. Still I don’t think it’s worth taking a big risk for, like at Liz’s party, smoking on the back porch while her parents are right inside the house. I’m up to my eyeballs in trouble already, so when Liz hands me the joint I tell her, “No, thanks, I’ll pass this time.”

  You should have seen the way those weirdos look at me. Like I’m some kind of freak or something. Then the really gross one sitting next to me pipes up with, “Another Annie Gordon.” And they all laugh their heads off.

  It’s really hard not to let creeps like that get to you. I try—for almost ten seconds. Then I can’t stand it anymore so I reach out, grab the stupid joint, take a giant drag, and let the smoke out right in Big Mouth’s face.

  “Perfect …,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says, real pleased.

  “… for my nine-year-old sister.” I zing it to him. “What nursery school did you get this banana peel at?” And before he can stop stuttering I launch into two and a half minutes on the advantages of Acapulco Gold over Panama Red (or is it Acapulco Red and Panama Gold?). Somewhere in the middle of my brilliant dissertation three things happen: Liz reaches out for the joint, I start to hand it to her, and dear Aunt Hilda comes out of the house. I’m not saying I’m wonderful or anything, but even though I have just enough time to drop the butt into Liz’s hungry little fingers, I keep the joint myself. I figure, how can I stick her with it right in front of her own mother?

  Aunt Hilda is pretty easygoing most of the time, but when she sees me holding that tiny wrinkled-up joint she knows right away what it is and lets out this little shriek and that’s it. End of party. End of weekend. End of me. She starts sweeping everybody out of the house, and Liz goes right up the spout, crying and bawling and arguing with Aunt Hilda, but it does no good. The party’s over.

  Of course there’s absolutely no way to convince her that it wasn’t all my fault when she sees me sitting there with the joint in my hand, so I don’t even try. Anyway, it’s just like I said about how a hundred people can be doing something wrong and I’m the one who gets caught.

  This time my aunt is angry at Liz too. But get this, only because she was “careless enough to allow Victoria to bring pot to the party.”

  It really makes me mad that Liz didn’t even take part of the blame. Worse. She was actually teed off at me for getting caught. All she wanted to know was how come I didn’t shove it in my pocket or step on it or eat it or something. Can you catch your breath?

  Then my Aunt Hilda says that it would be better if I went home because she couldn’t let a thing as serious as “smoking a pot” (that’s what she actually said. Good thing the guys weren’t smoking two pots or she’d have called the police) go by without teaching Liz a very serious lesson. So to punish Liz, she sends me home. Neat logic, huh? And of course she has to call my mother Sunday morning and tell her the whole story. Right during breakfast. They talk for about a minute, then Aunt Hilda calls me to the phone. “I think your mother wants to say a few words to you.”

  “Mom?” I ask, hoping for a dead connection.

  No luck.

  “This is the last straw…. I’ve absolutely had it with you…. This time you’ve gone too far….”

  “But it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t bring the dope.”

  “I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

  “I only took one drag. I didn’t start it.”

  “Of course not, you never do!”

  “But I’m not lying. I swear.”

  “I’m not going to argue over the phone. We’ll discuss it when you come home.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  “I said we’ll discuss it when you come home. There’s a nine forty-five. I want you to be on it.”

  “Damn.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “I said, I said nothing.”

  “Put Aunt Hilda back on.”

  Now my mother goes through a whole long thing with my aunt and my aunt keeps shaking her head with a “tsk tsk tsk” and looking at me. You know how you always read about somebody’s stomach sinking? Well, that’s mine now. I know I’ll never be able to talk my parents out of sending me away to that gross boarding school now. I’m horrendously depressed at the thought of having to spend the next four years in P.S. Prison or whatever they call that disgusting place. Home may not be the greatest place in the world but it has to be better than reform school.

  And all that garbage they’re going to give me about how it’s for my own benefit is just so much baloney. All they want to do is get rid of me and I know it. Do you know how it feels when your own mother and father don’t want you? It’s the worst thing in the world, that’s what.

  Rather than stand here and cry I start to get busy putting the dishes in the dishwasher.

  “That’s okay, Victoria, just leave them,” says my aunt, putting down the phone. “You’d better get packed if you’re going to make the nine forty-five. I’ll get my car keys and be ready in five minutes.”

  I go upstairs and throw my things in the suitcase and I’m back down in less than two minutes.
My marvelous, adorable cousin doesn’t say a word. She just keeps eating her waffle. Boy, was I wrong about her.

  The train was in the station when we got there so we really had to make a run for it. When it was time for good-byes my aunt kissed my cheek but I didn’t kiss back. I was really mad at her. By the time I got to my seat, we were moving. I flopped down without even looking out the window and here I am. Miserable. What a mess. I don’t think I’ll ever visit them again.

  “I promise you, young lady, nothing’s that bad.” I look up and see that it’s the conductor leaning over me. He happens to be wrong. It’s very bad, but he’s sort of an old man with a nice pink face so I give him a smile while I reach into my jeans for the ticket.

  “That’s better, Smiley,” he says, bending his whole face up into a big crinkly grin. We’re practically nose to nose and it’s so silly that I smile for real.

  As long as I’ve got the smile handy, I turn it toward the old lady sitting next to me, and she likes it so much she offers to change seats with me and let me sit near the window. I love window seats. I must have had a million arguments with my sister over who gets the window seat. It’s the difference between a boring hour and a half and a fascinating experience staring out of the window and getting lost in somebody else’s world. I really need to get lost somewhere today.

  “Is this your first trip to New York, dear?” the old lady wants to know. I tell her I live in New York and about my cousin in Philly. Then she says that the first time she made this trip was just before her daughter was born. I really don’t feel like talking so I don’t listen too closely. I hope she’ll get the idea. I would love to say, “Please leave me alone,” or just not answer, but I’d never have the nerve so I just keep shaking my head and pretend to be interested.

  “Joseph, that’s my husband, was truly upset with me but I said to him, Tm the one who’s having the baby and I simply couldn’t be comfortable unless I used Dr. Tuller in New York.’ After all, Ethel and I, that’s my twin sister, had always used Dr. Tuller and I wasn’t about to change now, what with a first baby and all. It took some fancy convincing but I finally said to him, ‘When you have a baby you can use any Philadelphia doctor you want.’”

  This seems to strike her as positively hysterical. She’s too much. I start to laugh too, but not at her doctor story. I’ve got this wild picture in my head of another little old lady, the spitting image of this one. I wonder if they still dress alike. That would really be weird. Two twin old ladies with the same kerchief, lipstick and pointy patent-leather shoes all in shocking crimson. I’d love to ask her but she’d probably think I was being fresh. I am.

  Luckily she gives up on me and goes back to her book. That gives me about ninety undisturbed minutes to sit here and work myself up into a panic about what my parents are going to do when I get home. Too bad worrying isn’t a subject at school, I’d get straight As. I’m the best around. If I cut myself, I’m sure I’m going to get tetanus. If my parents argue, I worry they’re going to get a divorce, and if they get sick, I’m sure they’re going to die. I worry about being adopted (I’m not), failing tests, getting spots, robbers when I’m alone in the house, and spiders all the time, even when everybody’s home.

  No matter what the worry, it always feels the same. It’s like somebody opened a trapdoor in my stomach and let in a whoosh of icy wind that practically takes my breath away. And if that’s not bad enough, there’s a little metal ball that just sits way down in the pit of my stomach. It never moves, but it weighs a ton. As soon as I start to think about my mother’s face when she meets me at the station I get all those old symptoms. I really dread that look of anger and disappointment.

  My mother always says I look for trouble, but I really don’t. Just the opposite. In fact trouble with anyone, particularly my mother, makes me miserable. I don’t remember having problems with her when I was little. In fact everything was just great then. I think it began to change when I got to be about twelve. We just never seemed to agree on anything after that. We even had an argument on my birthday last year. I don’t remember, but it was probably something she wouldn’t let me do. I know I’ve said I hate my mother, but I really don’t. It’s just that she seems a million miles away from me.

  My elbows are probably filthy from leaning on the windowsill and my forehead’s going to have a big black smudge from pressing against the pane, but that’s my favorite position for train travel. I can just sit like that for hours watching the scenery shoot by. Seems like the whole trip to New York is nothing but miles and miles of split-level houses. Still, I’m not bored. I have a special thing that I do. I pick a house and concentrate on one tiny thing about it. Maybe the way a branch brushes against a window or some missing bricks on the side of the steps, something private that only the people who live in the house would know about. It’s like sneaking into their lives for a minute without their knowing it. It tickles me to think that I’m the only person in the whole world looking at the broken window shade on the house that just whizzed by. Then I always think, maybe it doesn’t really exist—not just the window shade, the house and all of it. Maybe I made it all up. I remember one time my parents were having a discussion with some of their friends about different philosophical explanations of life and someone described Aristotle’s, and it was just like that. I loved it. He said that you were the only real thing that existed in the world and everything else was a creation of your imagination, and if you weren’t there, the world was empty.

  Like now, all those houses, the people on the train, even the train itself is right out of my mind. I made them all up, including Aristotle and his ideas, and of course, if that’s the case, I’m the only one alive and I get to live forever. Cool, huh? It could be possible, except the way I am with science I don’t think I could really invent something as complicated as, say, electricity. On the other hand I certainly could come up with a simple thing like a plug, which is all I ever get to see anyway. No wonder electricity is so mysterious—there’s nothing on the other side of the wall. Just like a movie set, it’s only what’s in front of me that’s real. Of course the whole theory collapses when it comes to my mother. With any kind of person to choose from, why in the world would I stick myself with her? Another thought: if I know my mother, most likely she’s real and I’m just a figment of her imagination. Obviously Aristotle was off his nut and there really is something behind the plug on the wall, and with my luck I’m going to have to explain it all on some science test one day.

  Suddenly I close my eyes, overcome by a terrible dread. I’m on a train heading home, where I’ll never be able to explain away the dope business, and where they’re bound to kick me out of school. As sure as I’m sitting here, my folks will send me off to that disgusting boarding school. I don’t want to go home. I can’t go home. I squeeze my eyes tight and try to will the train to stop. Come on, Aristotle or somebody. Help me. Where are all those great big mysterious forces floating free out there in the galaxies somewhere? How do you get the train to stop? How do you get time to stop? If I could only stop time I’d be safe. Or better, make it go back a little so I’d have a chance to avoid the stupid things that got me in all this bad trouble in the first place. No cigarette up in the balcony. No party in Philadelphia! I’d even be nice to Nina.

  Go back, train. Go back, time. Come on, give me a hand. I listen to the rattle of the train as it speeds through the countryside and I feel it’s trying to help me. Clickety-clack, back and back. Clickety-clack, back and back and back and back. I lean forward to look out of the window and see if maybe the crazy train isn’t in fact going backward, and just as I do the train makes one of those wild sways as it’s rounding a turn and my head whacks into the windowpane. It’s a good hard bang because there’s an instant roar of thunder inside my skull and what feels like a bolt of lightning shooting down the back of my neck and into my spine. Pain. And in the next breath, gone. I’m okay, just a little shaky. Boy, you’d think they’d be more careful on those sharp turns. E
ven the train lights went out. And we must have hit the tunnel into Penn Station because it’s black outside, too.

  Four

  Now the lights in the train flash back on and I look around the car and everything looks calm. I guess I was the only one that got bumped. It must have been the way I was leaning on my elbows.

  Wow! I didn’t think ninety minutes could zoom by so quickly. It’s only about five minutes from when you go under the tunnel until you get into Penn Station. The idea of going home to face all the trouble I’m in really makes me feel sick. Ugh. I dread it.

  I excuse myself to the young woman sitting next to me and squeeze by her so I can reach for my suitcase over the seat. I’m especially careful because she’s very pregnant. Funny, I never noticed when the old lady, the one with the twin sister, left and this young woman got on. I guess I was too busy with Aristotle. Even though I push as far as I can toward the seat in front when I inch past her, I manage to catch her toes under my wooden clogs. She jumps and lets out a loud “Ouch!”

  “I’m really sorry,” I say, but I have to look away because I’m in danger of cracking up at the sight of her struggling to reach her foot past that gigantic stomach. When she finally succeeds, she takes off the shiniest red pointy shoes you’ve ever seen, and rubs her toes. Her shoes look like something right out of The Wizard of Oz, but funny thing is, I could swear the old lady was wearing the same kind. They certainly look like old lady’s shoes, even the wild color. Actually the pregnant lady’s taste is just about as awful as the old lady’s with her matching scarf and crazy shoes and, oh my God, crimson lipstick. Bad taste must be catching.

  Everyone is moving around, getting their luggage, and making last-minute adjustments. The train slows down to a crawl as we enter the station.

  I get a flash thought: Maybe I’ll hide and stay on the train until we hit the freight yards and then I’ll hook up with some hoboes and never go home. There’s one small problem. I’m terrified of railroad tracks. It takes me forever to get up the courage to cross them. One of my big nightmares is that I won’t know which is the third rail. I know some trains don’t even use them, but I can never remember which ones. Science is just not my field, and neither, for that matter, are messy old hoboes.