Testimony from Your Perfect Girl Read online

  “Oh,” he says, standing. “Okay.”

  I rise to tiptoe, hold the back of his neck, and bring him toward me. I kiss him, not really sure what I’m saying by it. It’s not a tender kiss. It’s more of a statement: I deserve to kiss you. Because I want to and because I know you do, too.

  29

  When I get back to the living room, they’re all basically in their same places, with empty and half-empty plates on the coffee table. I’m glad Nicole didn’t bother with setting the table. I go to the kitchen, take a bite out of the veggies in the pan, and add salt.

  “It would have been nice for you to join us,” my mother says.

  “I want to finish at Evergreen,” I say, my hands flat on the counter. “Not just the year, either. I want to graduate from my school.”

  Skip clears his throat, then begins to collect everyone’s dishes.

  “You can’t,” my mom says. “We can’t afford it.” She seems confused by her own words—totally perplexed. “And we won’t have a home.”

  “We can afford it,” Nicole says. “We have savings. And we have a home.”

  My mom looks like she’s been slapped. She makes a sound that is part laugh, part cough. “You can afford it?” she asks.

  Nicole doesn’t look as sure. “We’ve been planning on having kids these past ten years and haven’t, so . . . you could say my infertility has saved us money. Plus, we don’t have many expenses.”

  My plan doesn’t seem as strong now that, once again, I’d have to take from others. I go back to private school at someone else’s expense. “I could keep working and help out,” I say. “I could pay you back.”

  Nicole rolls her eyes, but I wonder if she can truly afford two years.

  “It’s not like we’re livin’ large,” she says, gesturing to the house. “We actually do quite well and we save our money.”

  My mom looks away, her jaw flexing.

  “You don’t know what it will be like,” my dad says.

  “I want to know,” I say, and Jay looks at me with what seems like respect.

  “Annie, this isn’t up for discussion,” my mom says.

  Nicole looks furious, even though she’s lightly bouncing Sammy, making him smile and squeal.

  “Here,” my mom says. “I’ll take him. And please stay out of this. These are family matters.”

  “Family matters?” Nicole says. “If I recall, we are family, remember? If she wants to stay and face things, let her stay. We love having them here. Both of them.”

  “They’ve been great,” Skip says. He puts the dishes into the sudsy water. “I’d miss them if they were gone.” He tags on a quick laugh, but it’s so fake. Fake in that he was aiming for lightness, but his voice had a timbre of sadness.

  “Well, thank you for having them,” my mom says. “Things can go back to normal now. Here, I should feed my son.” She stands up and walks toward Nicole.

  Nicole’s still bouncing Sammy on her leg, but she’s focused on some distant thought. “Look,” she says. “We’re sorry this is happening, but let’s take a deep breath and be logical. Annie can stay and at least finish her year. It’s worked out, hasn’t it?” She looks back at me in the kitchen.

  “Yes,” I say, and even though our town may not want my parents, it might want me. “It’s been great.”

  I immediately look at my mom, her jaw still tight like a spring. If my parents and I were the same age, would we be friends? Would Jay and Dad hang out? Would I be friends with my mom? I know the answer, and it makes me sad.

  “Absolutely not,” my mom says. “They will both stay with me. And I’m sure they don’t want to be separated.”

  Jay and I make eye contact. He’s not going to actually agree, but as always I can read his face. The maggot would miss me.

  “We’re going to be separated anyway,” he says. “I’m pretty much done with Evergreen, but Annie isn’t. There’s still a lot to look forward to there. Plus, it would be good to be free of my immense shadow.”

  “You mean ego,” I say. “Your immense ego.”

  My mom eyes Nicole. “Could you not bounce him so roughly? Here, I’ll—”

  “I want to stay,” I say. “I’m not better off with you. I’ve changed. I’ve grown up.” I immediately feel a bit stupid for saying this, and yet it’s the easiest way to say what I feel, and I guess I like when people can speak simply.

  My dad is hearing me, I can tell. I can see him considering it, allowing his mind to listen. It’s a look he’s given my brother so many times.

  “I have a job,” I say while looking at him. “I have new friends. I have a boyfriend. I want to stay. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  My mom shoots a look at Nicole, as if these horrible things—friendship, love, responsibility, confidence—are all her fault.

  “Staying is not an option,” my mom says.

  “Yes, it is an option.” Nicole glances at Skip for solidarity. “We can take care of her.”

  “I’m the person who will decide this,” my mom says. “And please, I’ll take Samuel now. He wants me.”

  He doesn’t want her. He’s having the time of his life.

  “God, Mom,” I say. “Just let her hold him. She’s not going to steal him. Or me or Jay. We know you’re the real-deal mom. If both of you just stopped lying for once, everything would be okay.” I couldn’t help myself.

  My mom glares at Nicole, stands up, and takes her baby. “How could you?” she says with icy calm.

  “How could she what?” Jay asks.

  Everyone is silent. I can hear the fire pop like a gunshot. Jay eyes my mom warily, then me, and I have to look down. It’s not like I revealed anything—my mom just latched on to it—the secret, the guilt.

  “It’s okay, Ellen,” Nicole says. She widens her eyes and uses her hands as if to push down the tension, smooth it out.

  “He needs to be fed,” my mom says. “That’s all. And I need to pump for the sitter tonight.”

  “We need to meet with the attorneys,” my dad says, maybe so we don’t think they’re going out for fun after sweeping through this place.

  My mom goes toward the hallway with Sammy and her bag. You’d think, since we’re family, she’d be able to feed him here.

  “Your mom needs you,” my dad says to me. “And she thinks it’s best for you to be with her and get a new start.”

  “I don’t want a new start,” I say. I don’t want a new last name. I have nothing to hide. Then I say it out loud. “I have nothing to hide.”

  My dad looks down, either so sorry or so ashamed.

  “I’m staying,” I say. “I have a life, I have friends in this town. I have someone I really care about. I’m not worried about how people treat me at school. I don’t have real friends there, anyway. But I’m going to.”

  He clenches his jaw. I see him then as the businessman he once was, the man he could still be, appraising the value and logic of something, the gain, the risk.

  “Let me go back to school and face it.”

  “And you’d be okay commuting?” he asks. “You’re happy here?”

  “Yes,” I say, practically stuttering. I realize that, yes, simply “happy” is what I am, something I’ve never really been before. I feel fully in my body, if that makes any sense. I feel like I can make my own choices and that I have this custom family I’ve designed to fit me, and no other version exists. I feel like I’m home.

  My dad leans back and looks up at the ceiling.

  “Well?” I say.

  “I’ve heard what you have to say,” he says, and I know it’s best to leave it right here. For now.

  My mom comes back out, and I can tell she’s been crying. If only she’d just say she’s wrecked and devastated.

  “Jacob, we need to go,” she says, her face hard, emotions all ironed out. She walks ou
t the door.

  Skip and Nicole wait outside with my mom, letting my dad say good-bye to us on his own.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice shaking.

  Jay and I exchange nervous looks, having never seen our dad defeated. It makes me feel so unsafe, like I’m bobbing in the middle of a dark sea.

  I try to calculate him. Is he 90 percent good and 10 percent bad? Or is there more to it—25 percent greed, 45 percent nurturing father, 5 percent dork funny, 11 percent whiskey, cigars, ice cubes, and boy toys? Make that 25 percent. I just can’t do this kind of math.

  “I’m sorry,” he says again.

  “What do you want from us?” Jay asks, and my dad seems confused by the question.

  “Just be my son,” he says, looking at Jay as if this is so obvious. He looks at me. “Just be my daughter. I need you both. I’m grateful—” He utters a sob that triggers my own tears. “I’d be so grateful for you to still love me. That’s all.”

  His words wallop me in the gut, the head, and the heart. I’ve never seen him like this before. I’ve never seen him need anything.

  Jay and I look at one another, tearful with fear and maybe relief to be asked for something so clear: help.

  Still, neither of us answers, and I know he doesn’t expect us to.

  My dad hugs Jay before he has time to think about it. Then he hugs me. “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.”

  I’m not sure what he’s talking about. Life in general, or my fate specifically. I see my mom outside, and for a moment, I wonder if he has asked the same of her, if he’s asked for her to love him, and if so, what was her answer?

  30

  I eat the dinner they all had without me: a meat loaf made with walnuts, oatmeal, V-8 and Worcestershire, and, well, meat. I sit with Jay on the couch that faces the street and watch Skip-Nic talk to our parents outside.

  We drink Bud Light, because why the hell not?

  “If you asked to stay, Mom would have said yes,” I say. “You always get everything.”

  “Yes, I get everything,” he says. “Things are really swell.”

  “I mean that Mom trusts you more.”

  “I’m a guy,” he says.

  “I know. It sucks.”

  “Look.” Jay points his fork to the window. “Nicole’s in smack-down mode. Look at her go.”

  Nicole is gesturing with her arms and my mom is talking back, but not as her calm self. She’s actually getting riled up by whatever Nicole’s saying. They’re sisters, after all.

  “Maybe she’s working it out,” I say. “Nicole is convincing.”

  “But it’s not up to her,” Jay says, and takes a drink. “She’s not our mother.”

  I look over at him, carefully so he doesn’t notice. She is your mother. She may be my mother too.

  “You look like her, though,” I say. “Nicole.”

  Jay watches her yelling, and he touches his nose.

  Why can’t it be out there in the open? Why can’t my mom trust us enough to know who she is? She’s our mom and always will be. “Jay?” I say.

  “Look, they’re leaving.” He takes a bite from my plate.

  We watch our parents get in the car. My dad looks back at us, and I press my hand to the glass, getting a premonition of our lives to come, something defiantly, solidly between us, clear and strong. I can see the top of Sammy’s head, his little blue beanie. The black Mercedes doesn’t fit on this street of trucks and vans. Our parents begin to drive off. Skip nods at them, his hands in his pockets, then he puts his arm around Nicole.

  Jay knocks on the living room window and waves. “Good-bye.”

  We watch them go, and I want to sob.

  “What were you going to ask me?” he asks.

  My plate is balanced on my thighs. “Nothing,” I say. “I forgot.”

  When we were kids, we could never sit next each other without kicking or hitting or annoying each other somehow. We’d always have to be separated. And look at us now, our hands to ourselves.

  Nicole and Skip walk toward the house, and we continue to watch them through the glass like they’re characters in a movie. They open the door and walk into the room. Nicole seems to deflate when she sees our beers.

  “Drinking, boys, what else can you do at your aunt and uncle’s? Would you like some crack? Or shall we visit a whorehouse? You have fully proved your mother’s point.”

  She storms off to the bedroom. We hear the door slam.

  “Ignore her,” Skip says.

  “We know,” Jay says.

  Skip walks up to us, taking both of our beers.

  “What did my mom say?” I scoot to the edge of the couch. “Did my dad say anything?”

  “He did.” Skip takes a sip of a beer. “But . . . no change.”

  “This makes no sense!” I say. “You have to help me.”

  “Are you sure you’d even want to stay?” Skip asks. “They’re your family.”

  “So are you.”

  “We’re extended, we’re—”

  “No you aren’t,” I say, my voice strong, even though it quivers.

  “Annie,” he says with a look of disappointment.

  “You know this is wrong,” I say. “You know it.”

  Skip blows out his breath. “Your dad is going to talk things over with your mom, okay, but I can’t help.”

  I glare at him.

  “Hey,” he says, “I’m sorry, but it’s not my decision. If I’m ever a parent, no one will override me, and I’ll be the one to see things through.”

  I get up, put my plate in the sink, then go to my room, but after sitting on my bed and fuming, I leave my room, taking my blanket with me. I knock on Nicole’s door, then let myself in. She’s in bed, watching TV. She pats the comforter, and I get in beside her.

  31

  I think back to the last time we packed—Sadie lounging on Jay’s bed, Jay’s ease with our bizarre move, my annoyance with the inconvenience of it all. I feel like I have a different life and, most definitely, a different brother. What’s stranger than this, though, is that I don’t prefer the original one. It’s not that I like what has happened, but knowing what I know now makes it impossible to want things as they once were.

  Jay comes to my doorway. “So weird I don’t have to go to school.”

  “Lucky,” I say, but don’t really feel that way, and I can tell that he doesn’t feel it either. We are miles away from lucky. “So weird that I do. At some random school. I’ll almost stand out more.” I’ve given up on trying to convince anyone to let me stay here, part of me almost relieved. I get to look brave without having to go through with it.

  Skip appears next to Jay. “Um, Annie?” he says.

  “Yeah?” I unfold a skirt I can’t imagine wearing, toss it in the Goodwill pile.

  “You don’t need to pack,” Skip says. “You can stay.”

  I drop the shirt I’m folding. I asked, I received. And now I’m flooded with fear, regret, and, and . . . I don’t know! A wallop of electricity. Have I asked for the right thing? Is this the right choice? Jay and I exchange looks, and he gives me a congratulatory grin that has a tinge of jealousy or sadness or both.

  “You talked to them?” I ask Skip.

  “Your mom called,” he says. “If you want to finish school at Evergreen, you can. If you don’t mind the commute, then . . . yeah. You can stay.”

  My eyes tear up, though I don’t know the source. I just feel unbearably happy and sad. Sappy. Had.

  “Thank you!” I say. “I swear I’ll contribute. I’ll help out. I can work on weekends.”

  He makes a gesture as if he’s swatting a fly.

  “I better finish up,” Jay says, and Skip gives me a slight smile before leaving. They both seem to know I need a moment to absorb this, and I suppose Jay needs to absorb it too. I immed
iately lie on my back and stare at the ceiling. Just a few weeks ago, I looked around this room with such contempt, and now it’s like a haven.

  * * *

  • • •

  Jay closes his suitcase, then hauls it off his bed. “I’ll take this one out. Here, grab this one.”

  I take the handle of the smaller suitcase, and we roll out to the hall. Jay stops in front of the picture of Nicole holding him as a baby.

  “I’ve never noticed this one before,” he says.

  “Really? Jesus, you’re as observant as a bag of oats.”

  Nicole comes out of her room and sees what we’re looking at. In the picture she looks so happy and at ease, laughing at the camera, baby Jay in profile staring up at her.

  “You were so cute,” she says, and tentatively puts her arm around his shoulder.

  “I really was,” he says.

  She tries to hide her joy and focuses on the picture. “My boy,” she sighs.

  I look back and forth from them together on the wall to them standing in the hall, and in my mind I take a picture.

  “You’re a wonderful nephew,” she says. “I’d say amazing, but I hate that word.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Nicole,” he says.

  He walks down the hall, and she stays where she is, looking at the picture. I take his place next to her. She ruffles my hair. “My girl,” she says.

  Like that, she claims both of us.

  * * *

  • • •

  There’s more energy in the house as the day goes on. Rickie has come over to help out, music is playing, and there’s a kind of joy in the air. You don’t realize how much you like something or someone until you’re going to leave, and the sadness and gratefulness combine into a strange elixir. I can’t quite get my head around Jay and me being separated.

  Nicole is all business with her checklist, serious and quick. It’s happening so fast. Everyone is moving as if careening down this river, and I feel like I’ve been swept up and can’t put my feet down, can’t find a branch to hold on to. Rickie will help me drive—the new plan is to take Jay to Denver, then keep his car for myself, which is—sorry, Nicole—amazing.