Testimony from Your Perfect Girl Read online

  “Great,” Jay says, his hands on his hips, head pecking. “The kitchen, wow. Nice.”

  “You should have seen it before,” Nicole says. “It looked like . . . the rest of the house.”

  Jay and I assess the rest of the house. It’s very dark—dark walls, an itchy-looking couch, and like, no space, no amenities. Jay eyes me, urging me to say something. I look around, trying my best.

  “Cool stools,” I say, and we all look at the bar stools, which aren’t that cool at all.

  “It’s been so long since we’ve seen you guys,” Nicole says, something catching in her voice.

  We’re all so nervous it’s unbearable. I feel like doing a jig just to get it all out. Let’s jig! I want to yell.

  “Super long,” Jay says.

  “How are your parents?” she asks, then shakes her head. “Stupid question.”

  Skip looks down with a furrowed brow as if he’s figuring out a problem. He takes in a sip of air. “You guys must be going through a lot.”

  “We’re fine,” Jay says.

  “We’re fantastic,” I say, and Nicole cringes and looks to her husband, for guidance it seems.

  “Well, we’re here for you,” he says. “Whatever you need.”

  Nicole claps her hands together. “Let’s bring your things to your rooms, then get the rest of your stuff.”

  This order brings relief to all of us.

  Nicole leads us to our bedrooms, and I’m hit by a wave of homesickness, a longing for my parents I haven’t had since my first year of summer camp six years ago, when I was ten. My mom had given me Atkins bars to keep me fit for ice-skating, but our counselor threw them out and told me, “Camp is your chance to change your destiny.”

  Since I’m supposed to be hiding, maybe it’s time to change my destiny again, though I’m not sure what that would mean or what I’d be giving up.

  We walk down a short hallway with wood walls that have lots of framed pictures. Not like our pictures with identical frames, but a patchwork of colorful photos. All hang a bit crookedly. I look, not wanting to really look, not wanting to see myself and Jay on the wall, or maybe not wanting to see our absence. I’d be embarrassed that Nicole would be embarrassed if I noticed either scenario. I’m always embarrassed for other people’s embarrassment. It’s embarrassing.

  Nicole sees me lost in the wall, and she straightens one of the frames, then opens a bedroom door.

  “This can be yours,” Nicole says to Jay.

  I take a quick glance into the room—it’s bleak and small. I mean, it’s fine. I’ve been in rooms like these, in houses like these. When I was younger, I had friends whose parents worked for Coors. It’s funny because their homes were smaller, but they had tons more toys. My mom never let us have plastic toys that “marred” her landscape.

  “Awesome,” Jay says, and walks in.

  Nicole walks a few steps to the next room, which is just as minimalistic. “And this one yours,” she says. “Or whatever. You can switch.”

  I walk into mine. Then I walk right back out to fully compare.

  His is smaller, I think. The bed has a purple comforter and lots of purposeless pillows that don’t match one another. There’s a sad, bulky TV that looks like it’s from the ’90s and a window that looks out to a brown backyard, telephone poles, and another identical house. God, I miss our house.

  “Great,” my brother says, and pushes on the bed like a mattress salesman. Nicole looks around as if it’s the first time she’s been in here.

  “I know you’re probably used to better things,” she says.

  “Not at all,” he says, and I roll my eyes. She sees this, and I smile to cover it up.

  “Sorry,” I automatically say.

  “No, it’s okay,” Nicole says. “I said it, and you . . . followed through.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she says.

  I walk to the other room, and though it’s a tad larger than Jay’s, it’s pretty sad. It’s clearly a kind of storage closet. There’s an old TV, shelves of knickknacks, vases, movies on tape: Out of Africa and Pretty Woman, which I saw once on VH1. Loved it.

  Skip walks in delicately as if he doesn’t want to catch something.

  “This okay?” he says.

  I look down. “Yeah.” It’s much harder to be rude to him. His eyes always have that half-full look.

  “There’s a lot of stuff in here,” he says. “Hey, Nicole?” he calls to the other room. “Maybe we could clear some of the stuff off the shelves?”

  The shelves line an entire wall. They’re filled with books and jewelry boxes and clay bowls that look like Mother’s Day gifts.

  “It’s okay,” I say, wanting to seem like I’m a girl who can camp and skip showers. “I’ll manage.” I think of the frontierswoman Calamity Jane, how she endured and conquered. Though she did have bad skin, a life of drudgery, and she drank like a salmon going upriver.

  Nicole comes in and again looks around like it’s her first time in here since they moved in.

  “Sorry,” she says. “This all happened so quickly.” She walks toward the shelves. “Take down whatever. Just be careful—” She looks at Skip. “Or don’t,” she says. “Throw it out the window.” She laughs a little, then sighs, I think as a way to pass the time. I smile politely and start to take things out of my suitcase to show my gameness. Unfortunately, one of my cowboy hats—the felt Billy Jack—is on top, slightly crushed. The Towns eye one another when I place it on the bed.

  “Nice,” Skip says, touching the beaded band.

  “I collect them,” I say.

  “Wow,” she says. “Cowboy hats?”

  “From different Westerns. This one—” I pick it up, flip it onto my head. “Tom Laughlin’s from Billy Jack. Not the actual one, but . . .”

  They’re both looking at me like I’m not quite real. Like they think I’ve been replaced by a different girl. I don’t tell them Poz and Mira, our live-in help, gave me my first hat, that the most memorable parts of my childhood were watching Westerns with them, something we still do. I wonder how much Poz and Mira know. They always go to Arizona in December to visit their sons. They must have been warned that things might be different when they return.

  “I know we’re only here for a week or so,” I say. “But I like having them around.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Skip says. “Like a lovie.”

  “I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it,” Nicole says. “Anyway. I have pie.”

  I don’t stop unpacking, not knowing how to respond. She has her hands on her hips and looks like I should be writing something down.

  “I have pie!” she says again toward the hallway, louder so Jay can hear. She shrugs, then walks toward the door. “When you guys get settled, come out. We’ll have dinner and some pie?”

  “Okay! Thanks,” I hear Jay say. I hear him exclaim!! How I despise exclamation-pointed words.

  I dig back into my suitcase to hide my eyes, and when they leave, I put on my steel-gray Virgil Earp with the turndown brim. There’s a mirror over the desk. I look at myself, channeling the outlaw Josey Wales.

  “Get ready, little lady. Hell is coming to breakfast.”

  * * *

  • • •

  When I’ve done all I want to do in my new room, I look out into the hall, then run over to Jay’s. His door is partially closed. I kick it open a little. He’s lying on the bed and talking on his phone. I walk around his new digs. The vinyl blinds are open. In the neighbor’s yard a wolflike dog is moving a tin bowl around with his nose. Maybe it’s not a wolflike dog. Maybe it’s a wolf.

  I stand in front of his bed and do this thing that I like to do—sort of like a trust fall, but you fall forward with your arms by your side, then once you hit the mattress you swoop your legs up so you l
ook like a banana. Jay smiles at me while he talks to whomever. This move has cracked him up since we were little. I bounce on the bed and look at a globe on the desk, wondering what other sixteen-year-olds are doing right now. Sleeping, eating, kissing, driving. I’m most envious of the ones who are doing something super mundane and having a blast.

  Who’s having the most fun? Who’s having the least? Someone could be getting killed. This thought makes me feel so small. I always think about that after I hear about a plane crash. Everyone just down here at their office or at school or Snapchatting in the car. Meanwhile people are up in the sky, praying for their lives, screaming, weeping, too much in the moment of terror to even think of envying us. It’s goddamn horrible.

  “It is,” Jay says on the phone. “Yup. Miss you. I’m about to eat some pie. No! Like pie pie, silly. Cherry or pumpkin. I know. It all sounds sexual . . . Ha! Or pudding. Rhubarb.”

  Gross. I stand and go back to my den of sorrows to wait for him there. I’m met with a musty scent, a muggy weather. I walk to the shelf and check out the trinkets. A plush yellow duck, little bowls, and notecards, ceramics and vases, like the adult equivalent of shit you get in goodie bags. I swipe things to the side, spilling a few objects, then begin to put my hats up. I wonder what Sammy is doing now. Eating yogurt? Pulling himself to standing? Then I remember that he’s probably asleep, the happiest baby in the world.

  “Nice room,” Jay says.

  “The drawers are full of sweaters. It’s like a refugee camp.”

  He puts his hands on his hips and nods. “Yeah, I’m sure this is really similar to a refugee camp. Jesus, you’re seriously so spoiled.”

  He walks over to my bed, the heaps of clothes still on top.

  “Like you’re not?” I ask. I know I’m spoiled. It’s not that I think it’s so bad. It’s that it’s not home. I’m mad at our parents.

  “You brought your own comforter.” He pinches it between his fingers.

  “Of course I did.”

  “I mean, who brings their own linens and shit when they visit someone?” He looks out my window, and I wonder if he’s thinking about our old view, the lovely aspens slicing up the light.

  “Mom told me to. She said I’d definitely prefer my own.”

  We look at each other, realizing this is kind of lame of her, and yet he eyes my pillows from home, maybe wishing he’d thought of doing the same. He looks around. “New digs. An adventure, right?” He’s trying his best to be positive, but I catch a look of total disappointment. He’s always had the attitude that there’s no use complaining about something you can’t fix. I’ve always had the attitude to complain as much as possible and try to get others to do so with you because it’s more fun that way.

  “What are you going to do?” I whisper.

  He knows what I’m talking about. He looks toward the door, then shrugs.

  “Should we go out there?” he whispers back.

  “I guess so,” I say.

  “He has beer shrimp!” he whispers. “And she has pie!”

  “Beer shrimp and pie!” I loud-whisper back.

  * * *

  • • •

  The shrimp was so good. And the pie is, too. We sit at the dining room table. Dancing with the Stars is on the television behind us, but I can’t tell who the stars are.

  “So, Annie,” Skip says, “you like cowboys and such?”

  “What?” I say, my mouth full of chocolate.

  “Cowboys,” he says, his chin tilted up to keep the food in.

  “I like Westerns,” I say. “And fashion. I don’t, like, play cowboys or, like, hang out with ranchers. Poz and Mira—they help out around the house—they got me into the films, and . . . I don’t know. Some people collect baseball cards, I collect hats. Not too deep. We don’t need to analyze it.”

  “I think Uncle Skip here is trying to make conversation,” Jay says, and I wipe some cream off my nose with my middle finger.

  “Yeah, I like cowboys and such,” I say.

  Skip laughs, which throws me off a bit. Perhaps he gets my humor and lack thereof.

  “Annie’s not quite socialized,” Jay says, and winks at me.

  Seriously, though. Some kids skateboard; some kids watch Westerns. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just what I took on, like an accessory. Like skating, but something unique I chose for myself. I like the wildness of Westerns, the lawlessness, which ends up revealing the goodness in people, the strength. I like the view back into beginnings.

  “Your mom says you do well in school, though?” Nicole says.

  Though, as in at least I have that.

  “And skating, of course,” she adds.

  I grip my spoon like it’s a Ping-Pong paddle. Skip and Jay are chewing and waiting for me to respond. Why is everyone focused on me? It’s like I just got out of rehab or something.

  “Yes,” I say, in a totally socialized way. “Of course.”

  “But that ship has sailed,” Jay says. “Her coach gave up on her.”

  “Motherfucker,” I say.

  “Wow!” Nicole says.

  “I told you!” Jay says. “She’s not quite mature yet. Still teething. Don’t be fooled by her posh exterior.”

  Skip clears his throat. I cut my crust, annoyed I’m always candid with my brother—I belly flop on his bed, I tell him about feeling rejected by Coach—and he uses it against me.

  “I was getting tired of it anyway.” This is only partially true. I was tired of it in the way I’ve always been tired of it. Because it was exhausting. Because it was my life. But I wasn’t prepared for my coach to say he needed to focus on the girls who were headed to Sun Valley for the summer competition, something I had thought I’d be doing myself. I told my mom I could just continue with someone else. I didn’t need the best. I didn’t need to be trained to be the best anymore. I could just skate. For fun.

  “You don’t just skate for fun,” my mom said, then held up her hand, her sign for I can’t deal with you right now.

  Sixteen years old and fired from a sport, and yet I wonder if she took it harder. It was her sport, really. What she did when she was younger. Every sport I wanted to try when I was younger—soccer, volleyball, snowboarding—immediately shut down. Fierce athleticism is acceptable only in sequins and short skirts.

  I think about the way I’ve been judged since I was a child. Were they looking at my Biellmann spin or my Vera Wang skating dress or, perhaps, my glorious crotch shot to the tune of Beyoncé’s “Halo”? Yes, you can see my halo. I shake myself out of this horrid memory, which makes me smell the ice, feel the sensation of being locked in a freezer.

  I notice everyone looking at me, so I dig into the pie with gusto. Dessert is something I’d typically go easy on, but hey, I’m fired. I’m free. I’m devastated, though it wasn’t until I stopped skating that I realized it’s the identity I miss, not so much the act of it.

  “So, Jay,” Skip says, “your dad tells me you’re a big snowboarder. So is Nicole.”

  “Is that right?” Jay asks with a winning smile. He is really bringing out the violence in me.

  “I’m okay,” Nicole says. “Everyone’s okay.”

  “She’s good in powder and trees,” Skip says. “That’s a sign of being truly good.”

  “It’s true,” Jay says.

  “What Skip means is that I can keep up with him,” she says. “That makes me awesome. That I can keep up with an average male.”

  I smile a bit but try to hide it, letting my laugh escape through my nostrils. I’m charged by her negativity, and it occurs to me that Nicole’s social skills might be right on par with mine. Maybe that’s why my mom is always saying her sister needs to do better with her life. I imagine Nicole trying to talk to my mom’s friends, how they’d widen their eyes and make excuses to refill their Chardonnays. Maybe she’s not the worst.
/>   “Annie, do you ride?” Skip asks. “Or ski? Maybe we all should go—”

  “I can,” I say. “But I don’t.”

  The truth is I love to ride. I go with Jay a lot, put my headphones on and charge all day, run after run. My mom doesn’t know—thinks it’s not a girl sport, and she didn’t want me to get hurt for skating, but I would sneak off, put on my baggy black snow pants—the opposite of my leotard and tights.

  “She’s really good,” Jay says, and I give him a shy look.

  Firewood crackles and snaps, and I glance at the alluring flames. We have one of those fireplaces that work at the touch of a button, but I’ve always wanted one like this to be in solidarity with our ancestors. Though they’d probably want the electric one. Nostalgia can be stupid, I guess.

  “I like your fireplace,” I say. “Cozy.”

  They look at me like I’m a gorilla who did something humanlike.

  “Maybe you guys can help me chop wood one day,” Skip says.

  Jay and I both let out a staccato snort-laugh. There are certain words you just can’t say around us, “wood” being one of them. Skip and Nicole look puzzled.

  “So, I guess your parents want you to be Towns,” Skip says, looking shy and a little pleased. “I mean, I don’t think it’s really going to come up or anything.” He looks over at Nicole and seems a little sad. “Just if anyone asks—”

  “You don’t come from me,” she says, still looking at Skip.

  “From your side of the family,” he says to her.

  “Ridiculous,” she mumbles.

  “Well?” he says. “They just want you to have a clean slate while you’re here, I guess. Get away from your last name. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s a great last name, and you should be proud.” He notices we’re all staring at him, amused. “Anyway. It’s so you can enjoy your vacation. Without judgment.”

  “Yes, your mom is very concerned about judgment.”

  “Hon, there’s also the Desjarlais and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says.