After I'm Gone (14 page)
M
ichelle was aware of the impression she made as she walked out to the pool in high-heeled sandals and a pink bikini. She strolled the full length slowly, toward the deep end where the adults—her mother, Bert, Lorraine—were seated. She then had to go back and procure one of the chaises at the other end. Again, she made a show of it, letting the wheels clatter, refusing the help of the all-but-panting teenage boys who offered to do it for her. How could her mother possibly think that Michelle—eighteen, a high school graduate—should attend a party of
sixteen-year-olds
. It had been bad enough, having Sydney’s company pushed on her all these years, but to attend a Sweet Sixteen on the first beautiful Saturday in June—torture. Especially when her boyfriend had wanted to take her to Philadelphia for dinner, to Le Bec Fin. But her mother couldn’t possibly know that, right? She didn’t even know about the boyfriend.
Michelle had come up with such a good plan to get away, too. She told her mother that she was going to Philadelphia for the day to visit an art museum with a girl she had met on the College Park visit, a girl who might be her roommate if she proved, on this outing, as collegial as she seemed. This should have been a no-brainer for Bambi—art, a girl, Michelle trying to be sensible and optimistic about the whole College Park thing, which had been a bitter pill to swallow. Not because she was a brainiac like Rachel, or a grind like Linda, but because she had wanted to go someplace
fun
. ASU, Tulane, University of Miami. Only she hadn’t got into any of them. Bambi said Maryland was a bargain and if Michelle wanted to go out of state, she should have put more effort into high school, as Linda and Rachel had.
“You might also want to consider if the number of tanning days belongs on a list of things you need in a college,” she had added.
Tanning days. Michelle flipped on her stomach, reached behind her and unsnapped her halter top, then slid the top beneath her and onto the table where her Diet Coke was sweating. Her mother and the Gelmans were enjoying Bellinis, although the kids—the kids!—had been promised sips of champagne when the cake came out. Michelle’s own sisters—well, Linda at least—had been able to drink at eighteen, but the law had changed. Just another entry on Michelle’s List of Everything Unfair.
But now that her top was off, no one would dare approach her. It actually hurt a little, pressing her bare breasts into the Japanese-inspired lounge chair—Lorraine always had the most beautiful things, but she didn’t always have the most comfortable things—and it would probably leave marks, but who cared? She wasn’t going to see her boyfriend tonight. Her perfect plan had been torpedoed by Bambi, who had blandly told Michelle that she wouldn’t cover the cost of the train ticket because Michelle was overdrawn on her allowance by six weeks. And Michelle couldn’t have the car because Bambi needed it to go to this party, which Michelle was going to attend, too.
“If it kills you,” Bambi had added.
“It just might.”
Michelle glanced over her shoulder at the kids in the pool. A few years ago, she might have amused herself by making all the boys focus on her, but it was too easy, not enough of a challenge. The Philadelphia man, as she thought of him, was another story. The Philadelphia Story. That’s the kind of joke that Rachel would have made, if Michelle had confided in her, but she wasn’t like everyone else, telling Rachel her secrets. The Philadelphia Story was twenty-four, in his second year at Wharton, and Michelle was cock-teasing him within an inch of his life. She loved that men tried to use that term as an insult. She was proud of her technique, as formal and balletic as a matador’s. So far, she had slept with him only literally, stripping down to a T-shirt and her underwear, then ordering him out of the bed when she awoke in the middle of the night to find him trying to undress her.
Her mother had thought Michelle was on a school trip to New York City that time. There
was
a Park trip to New York in May. Bambi had given Michelle the money to attend and she had signed up, then gone sorrowfully to the head of school seventy-two hours before departure and explained that there were the “usual issues” at home and she needed a full refund. The head had counted the money out of petty cash and asked Michelle how her senior project was coming along. (Park students did not attend classes in their final semester, but worked on projects that they presented at year’s end.) “As well as can be expected,” she said, using her brave voice, the voice of The Girl Who Had Seen Too Much, the girl who had been asked to be an adult before her time. The Philadelphia Story, whom she had met in a bar Preakness weekend, was waiting for her outside the school
.
He drove her straight to a beautiful inn on the Eastern Shore, one that had been in some movie a few years back, and she had tortured him all weekend. She was a virgin, she told him. True. She wasn’t ready yet. Also true, although Michelle’s not-readiness had nothing to do with fear. Oh, she helped him out, she wasn’t heartless. Well, maybe a little heartless, when she crawled into that beautiful bed with him in her panties and T-shirt and told him he could take care of himself while he watched her touch herself. “But use a towel,” she added.
They had hit Saks in D.C. before he took her back home. She then hid her purchases at her friend Devorah’s, who briefed her on the New York trip so Michelle could provide Bambi with plausible details. The only possible pitfall was that someone would mention to Bambi what a shame it was that Michelle had been forced to cancel, but Michelle was pretty sure that the head would remind everyone to be sensitive about the Poor Brewers. Everyone was so goddamn careful around Michelle. People at school, her mother, her sisters. Just because she used it to her advantage didn’t mean it didn’t bother her.
Jesus, this chaise was like some kinky bondage chair. She couldn’t find a comfortable position on it and she sure as shit couldn’t flip over. Lorraine might not know what it was like to try and lie facedown when one had breasts, but Sydney certainly did. Lorraine probably didn’t spend much time by the pool, being the kind of woman who never tanned. A shame. The pool was gorgeous. Michelle loved everything about the Gelmans’ house, couldn’t understand her mother’s private disdain for it. When she was younger, she had assumed her mother was pretending to dislike it because she was embarrassed by their own house, but, no, Bambi really seemed to think their old wreck of a place was preferable to this shiny house where everything was so very up to the minute. If this was tacky, then Michelle could only hope to live in such tackiness.
She felt a shadow fall across her back, assumed it was a cloud passing over the sun. When the shadow didn’t move, she said: “I’m fine, I don’t need anything.”
“You need,” a man’s voice growled, “to put your top on.”
Oh, Bert, sent to do Mother’s dirty work. Again.
“You have your top off,” she said. Bert was very proud of his physique, and Michelle had to admit it was quite good. Slender yet muscled, the right amount of hair. And, like her, he tanned beautifully, quite the opposite of Lorraine with her big hats and moles everywhere.
“You’re embarrassing your mother.”
And upstaging your daughter,
she thought. Michelle actually liked Sydney, who was extremely good-natured about being the overweight redhead in a family of dark-haired, good-looking people. Her twin brothers, Adam and Alec, born less than two years after Sydney was adopted, had the kind of eyes and lips that people said were wasted on boys. They were certainly wasted on those two. Nasty jocks, very competitive. They would have been asked to leave Park School if Lorraine wasn’t such a big deal there.
“Okay, I’ll just sit up and put my top on,” she bluffed.
“You will cover yourself with a towel and go into the house to make sure you’re decent.”
She started to argue, but something in Bert’s tone would not be denied. She did as instructed, thinking about the alternate reality of Philadelphia, the place she should be right now. They might have gone to an art museum for real. Then Le Bec Fin—not that Michelle could eat that much and still wear bikinis, but she liked the idea of expensive restaurants and wine and champagne. She still wasn’t ready to have sex with him, though. She might never be. She wanted to be in love the first time and she hadn’t been, not even close. She barely
liked
most of the boys and men she knew. She assumed the Philadelphia Story would get mad with her eventually, really mad. That was part of the thrill, testing how far she could push men. No, she did
not
want to be raped, and she felt she had excellent instincts for picking men who would not go that far. Look at Philadelphia Story, making his stealth move in the middle of the night, then skulking off to sleep in a chair when she called him out. No, she was very clear that she wasn’t caught up in some moral dilemma, as Rachel would probably have it, in which she wanted a man to take her virginity because she was too guilt-ridden to give it away freely.
It was just so
exciting,
knowing that she had something men wanted, that anyone wanted. Not only did her boyfriends not take advantage of her, they allowed her to boss them around, demand favors. She supposed she would still be able to do that after she lost her virginity, but she wasn’t in a rush to find out. Her mother, as far as Michelle knew, hadn’t had sex for fifteen years and men were crazy for her. Look at Bert, doing whatever she wanted, without Bambi even having to ask. Yet her sisters had fallen crazy in love and where had that gotten them? Linda was always yelling at Henry, and Marc had divorced Rachel before their second anniversary, leaving her without a penny. Rachel had signed a postnup, the sap. You’d never catch Michelle making that kind of mistake.
Michelle had first discovered her power while working with her Hebrew tutor, a young man who had bought her clothes. Shoplifted them, actually, although she didn’t know that at the time. She could imagine Rachel saying, “Do the math, stupe. He was helping you with Hebrew for ten bucks an hour. Do you think he could afford those things he gave you?” But it never occurred to Michelle to worry about how he afforded the items until he was arrested, a month after her bat mitzvah. He was picked up at the Woodies in Columbia with a pair of Guess jeans. Michelle’s first thought was:
Wait—he steals for other girls, too?
She had assumed she was special and was irritated to learn that he had made similar arrangements with other female students.
He had been a little pervy. It was funny, how the ones who touched you the least were often pervier than the ones who really did stuff. But weak, so weak. Once, when he tried to get her to model one of the outfits, she had looked at him and said: “It’s not really my style. But thank you.” Bambi had been out of the house that day. Who wouldn’t trust her twelve-year-old daughter with her Hebrew tutor? He had tried to kiss her once, only once. Michelle had drawn a hand across her mouth and said: “No, thank you.” The next week, he brought her three dresses, better ones.
Towel wrapped to ensure modesty, she walked back the length of the pool, still aware of the boys’ glances. She did not use the bathroom in the cabana/changing room at poolside, nor did she use the powder room off the kitchen. Michelle, who knew the Gelmans’ home as well as her own, climbed the stairs to the master bedroom, where the enormous en suite marble bath had lighted mirrors, heated towel racks, a bidet, even a heated floor, not that it was turned on in June.
The bathroom opened into a dressing room the size of Michelle’s oh-so-stingy bedroom. Even as Linda and Rachel decamped, Bambi would not allow Michelle to move into their rooms. Michelle suspected this was because she would then want to redecorate, make the new room hers. Why shouldn’t she? Her room was childish. Sophisticated for a thirteen-year-old—she had been allowed to use her bat mitzvah money to redo it. But now the color palette, peach and pale green, bored her. So fussy, so Laura Ashley, which it happened to be.
Her top back on, she sat on the long, upholstered stool in the center of Lorraine’s closet and considered its perfection. The problem, as Michelle saw it, was that money came too late. You had to be old, in your forties, before you had the money to have the best clothes, furnishings, jewels. Even if Lorraine had been as beautiful as Bambi, these things would still be wasted on her. Michelle wished she had known her mother in her twenties, when the money flowed and no expense was spared. The photos of this time, in black and white, looked fake to her, props from a film. And by the time Michelle was born in 1973, the clothing was horribly tacky. Thank God Bambi had made them dress like the preppies they weren’t.
She barely remembered her father and worried sometimes that the memories she did have weren’t even hers, just stories planted by her mother and sisters. But there was a smell, a couple of them. Cigar stores, anything leathery. And a certain aftershave that she sometimes picked up in department stores. No one could have made her remember smells that weren’t hers to remember.
If her father had served his sentence, he would be free by now. Would it really have been that hard? She once overheard Linda telling Rachel that he might have been out in ten years, according to Henry. Ten years. He would be here and this would be their house and she would be allowed to borrow her mother’s clothes and jewels. Because, yes, Bambi was the same size as Michelle. When Michelle was younger, the boys who came to the house had gotten crushes on her.
Maybe that was part of the reason that Michelle now preferred men, men she never allowed to come to her house.
But even if her father had returned, would they have been rich again? Michelle could never work out that part of the fantasy, and Michelle was very pragmatic about her fantasies. What would he do? Could he earn as much in a legal enterprise as he had in his old business? These were not questions she could put to Bambi, or even her sisters. So much of what she knew about her father had been learned from eavesdropping. Michelle was less resentful than the others thought about being cut off from the family’s days of ease and money. But she hated not being privy to the secrets that her sisters shared. The stories about the mistress. Did they really think that Michelle, incurious as she was at thirteen, hadn’t seen the article in the
Star
when Julie Saxony disappeared almost ten years to the day after her father did? It had been only a matter of time before someone at school had told her that everyone believed that her father had finally sent for Julie Saxony—and all the money he had put away, money that was supposed to go to Bambi.