Lookaway, Lookaway (5 page)

Her future
Σ
KN sisters were doing elaborate unvoiced screaming:
Get off the phone!!

“Oh goodbye,” she said, flustered, clicking the red button and hanging up on her mother for the first time in her life.

Brittanie and Taylorr were an immediate chorus: YOU NEVER call anyone on coke! God, she called her mother! Both girls were soon in hysterical laughter. Brittanie had to lower herself to the ground she was laughing so hard—her mom! Jerilyn called her mom! It would go down in legend: the girl who did her first line and immediately called her mother to fight! Soon Jerilyn was hysterically laughing too. Oh it felt good to laugh; it was like laughter took over every cell and flowed through her. And her mother would, of course, come around and help her achieve this dream. Already, in the few afternoons with these wonderful, fabulous girls, she had known the most joyful moments of her young life!

*   *   *

Jerilyn had heard that at most every other house, once you were on track toward being a new member (no one says “pledge” anymore), you were as good as in, barring catastrophe. But not Sigma Kappa Nu. Commonly, a few fell by the wayside. Already, in this year’s group of thirty-six girls, a girl named Katrina had been caught out lying about her background, fabulating membership in Raleigh’s Carolina Country Club. Like that couldn’t be checked easily.

And then there was Cathyanne. She saw it with her own eyes. Cathyanne, who was sweet as can be, first had announced that she didn’t judge about the drugs but they weren’t for her. Strike one. Then at the Big Little Dinner (where Big sisters sat with new Little sisters), Cathyanne ate two desserts. Cathyanne wasn’t fat but she was buxom and she’d worn this sleeveless top and had, okay, some flesh on the upper arms but she was shapely and fun and good-natured, and after Cathyanne left for the backyard with some of the sisters, Jerilyn saw Brittanie turn to some other girls and put a finger to her lips and blow out her cheeks, and then do the thumbs-down sign! She was too fat … or maybe was likely to be fat down the road. This was the sorority, after all, that got scornful national attention back in the early 1990s for making pledges stand on stools in the front yard, dressed in skimpy underwear, and marking them up with black Magic Markers, circling the “problem areas” during pledge period, prescribing weight loss or liposuction. Dear Cathyanne—she was so sweet!

And so here, right in the middle of pledge period, Jerilyn’s sister Annie was in town to visit her. And Annie, gargantuan Annie, almost 250 pounds and heading toward 300! She had said she’d never seen the inside of a sorority house before—maybe she’d have to have a “look-see.” Jerilyn had to stop this in its tracks! THAT’S your sister? Does your family all get fat? And then Brittanie would put her finger to her lips and do the blown-out-cheek thing and they’d all shake their heads and blackball Jerilyn when the time came …

Maybe she and her sister could go somewhere completely unfashionable and uncool where no
Σ
KN had ever set foot: the Sunshine Café (where old ladies and ancient townies went for lunch). As Jerilyn strolled down Franklin Street, shopping bags clutched to her side, purchases from her new credit card with a way-too-small limit, she was overcome with shame and repented of her disloyalty. For much of her life, she had craved Annie’s attention and approval; their twelve-year age difference had only recently not seemed so unbridgeable. She brightened when she saw her older sister lodged in the backmost table; with a wave she sidled her way past the other Sunshine habitués, lifting her shopping boxes high.

“So Jerry, this is your favorite place?” They were not a kissy-huggy family.

“Haven’t been in Chapel Hill long enough to know where my favorite is yet! I picked based on geography.” Jerilyn could see that Annie, who could barely hear above the din sitting two feet from her, found this venue annoying. Jerilyn scooted her chair so she could see the door in the event any Sigma Kappa Nus ventured into the Sunshine by accident.

“What’s good here?” Annie flipped the menu over for the desserts.

“Oh I’ve eaten.”

Annie glanced over the top of the menu. “It’s eleven twenty-five. Nobody’s eaten yet.”

Jerilyn patted one of her department store bags. “Trying to fit into a little number here for the parties. Cross your fingers.”

“A sorority, huh? Can’t say I’m pulling for you there.”

“I know you’re not pro-Greek, believe me. I promise not to go on and on about it.” Jerilyn knew the price of the lunch would include at least one rant about fraternity-sorority racism, classism, the underlying social inadequacy apparent in people who needed ready-made sisters culled from a bunch of money-worshipping strangers, et cetera. But Annie held off. She ordered a tuna melt and fries, and could they bring a little cup of mayonnaise with the fries, please?

Jerilyn asked, “How’s Chuck?”

Annie was blank for a moment. “Great. Hurricanes are good for business. Nature keeps knocking the houses down and Chuck keeps rebuilding. God-awful eyesores, too, up and down the Outer Banks.”

Jerilyn knew it was tricky asking after her husband, although she wasn’t quite sure why. Annie never wore a wedding ring. Annie retained her last name, Annie Johnston, even though “Annie Arbuthnot” would have been way cool. Annie never volunteered anything about Chuck. Maybe they had a very open, wide-open kind of marriage, or … well, Jerilyn had lots of theories, including that the marriage was Annie’s third mistake in a row and divorce was imminent. Over the last few years Annie would descend upon Charlotte for family occasions without Chuck, making excuses for his not being there, always trapped by some construction project down on the coast.

And then a silence. The tuna melt arrived and Annie devoured it all with amazing speed. Jerilyn stole a fry. What to say next? Truth be told, there wasn’t much of a real sisterly track record here. Jerilyn reflected that this was, after all, a first undiluted meeting for the two sisters, Annie and Jerilyn Johnston, no filtering parents, no accompanying brothers.

“How’s your end of the business?” Jerilyn asked.

“Boom times. Commissions galore but the real money will be when I buy some of these undervalued homes and fix them up. I’ll be a landlord capitalist businesswoman—some adjectives you never thought you’d hear in front of my name.”

Silence again. She and Annie would never be friends had they not been in the same family. Jerilyn was clothes and hair and girlie stuff, she was pop radio and watching the tween shows on the Disney Channel even though she had long aged out of the target audience, she loved fashion mags and the Harry Potter books were about the only novels she had ever finished, she had few political ideas whatsoever, while Annie … well, Jerilyn couldn’t begin to imagine what Annie listened to on her iPod (lots of foreign women singers, howling in African or Slavic languages) or if she even watched any TV; there were all manner of save-the-earth blogs that Annie was always linking her by e-mail. Annie was in perpetual war with Mom and Dad, while Jerilyn, until recently, had done her best to obey and please, usually with tangible rewards. And men. There was the real Grand Canyon. By the age of thirty, Annie had been married and annulled, married and divorced, and now was married again to laconic macho-man Chuck Arbuthnot, who seemed the mismatch of the century. Jerilyn had limited experience in any sexual direction, not counting some pants-off touching and experimenting with Skip Baylor at his family’s Lake Norman house last summer.

“You know,” Jerilyn began, brightening. “You ought to let me take you shopping sometime.”

“Jeri, there’s not one thing in the overpriced boutiques you patronize that would fit around my arm.”

“Well now, if you’re going to take people into luxury homes all afternoon with your real estate license you can’t look like…”

Annie smiled, patting her belly, her sweatshirt and stretch jeans. “This is my casual wear. I fix up for clients.”

“Yeah, but I mean dressed to the nines, dressed to impress.”

“My God, Mom did a great job on you.”

“No, c’mon, you know you have to have some sharp business suits and things that feel loose and good on you. Expensive things to prove to your clients you’ve gotten rich off your brilliant ability to place people in homes. And admit it, you don’t have a lick of taste where clothes are concerned, and I do.” It was the most courageous assertion she’d ever made to Annie.

Annie squinted at her suspiciously, before the smile returned. “Hm. In the interest of financial success and independence, I’ll take a rain check on … that Armageddon. Me in a clothing store.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

“Clothes sure look good on you,” Annie said, eyeing Jerilyn sip her ice water with a lemon wedge. “You’re a cheap date, sis. Promise me you’re not going to be bulimic like every sorority bimbo in town.”

“I would never—”

“Oh yes you would, don’t bullshit your big sister. Let’s face it. The Johnston women come in two varieties. Matronly: me and Aunt Dillie and Grandma. Thin and stately: you and Mom. I believe you’re not sticking your finger down your throat only because I’ve never seen you or Mom give the least thought to what you ate. In fact, I can barely remember ever seeing Mom eat. She stirs stuff around on the plate and lets the waiter take it away. She’s an alien life-form with no normal human desires.”

What would Annie do without Mom to rail against, Jerilyn thought. “Speaking of Mom.”

“Yes?”

“So far there’s been no thaw about her helping me pay for the sorority dues. I hate that she pretends we’re poor.”

Annie met her gaze quite seriously. “You may not have gotten the memo, but as a family we really are flat broke.” Annie cocked her head, giving this small rebellion the benefit of her lifetime of military wisdom. “I’d try to work around her and go to Dad. He might sell off a Civil War pistol or something. Then, failing that, hit up Uncle Gaston.”

“To be honest, I’m scared of him.”

“Tell him there’ll be lots of drinking and partying and Mom doesn’t approve. He’ll probably send up a Brink’s truck right away.”

Jerilyn watched Annie brace herself on the table and push up from the chair. Once on her feet, Annie was active and so dynamic that her weight didn’t register, but in the transitions, getting up from the table, compacting herself into the car, Jerilyn often found some distant object to focus upon. What a success this lunch had been, after all! They had actually started something here, something to build upon. Jerilyn gathered up her shopping bags and felt like she might float back to McIver Hall … when at the front, just where Annie was heading to pay the bill, was that … were they … My God, three green T-shirts blazoned with
Σ
KN? How could … oh yes, they do no-fat yogurt smoothies to go, very dietetic. She should have seen that coming!

“I’ve got to use the restroom!” she blurted and set her shopping bags back down on the table. She hid in the bathroom stall for another ten minutes until, surely, that smoothie had been made and purchased and the Sigma Kappa Nu girls were all out window-shopping on Franklin. She sat there long enough that she heard the women’s room door open and close several times, once with Annie leaning in: “Jeri, are you all right in there?”

“I’m fine, really!”

“You’re not abusing laxatives, are you?”

“Annie, ssssh! I’m fine. Time of the month.”

Annie pleaded that she had to get going back to the coast, but she’d paid the bill and she promised to come again, real soon. She brought Jerilyn’s shopping bags and set them inside the door of the ladies’ room. And Jerilyn felt terrible about the expedient goodbye, but Annie being gone was a relief and if the Sunshine Café was full of Sigma Kappa Nus, it didn’t matter now.

*   *   *

Justin drove his Lexus convertible back to Durham and pretty-pleased his mom into lending him her Suburban van for one night. Then he swung by Zeta Pi to pick up Skip and Joey D for the mission to Raleigh, twenty miles away by interstate.

“Shouldn’t we put down newspapers or something?” Skip asked.

Justin, amazingly, hadn’t considered this pitfall when borrowing his mom’s prize possession. “Oh yeah, we need like a tarp, in the event she shits all over the place.”

Joey D overruled them all: “Home Depot’s closed. My cousin, the poor bastard, is waiting for us. If there’s a mess we’ll clean it the-fuck up.”

Justin knew that meant that he alone would clean it up.

“Why is he a poor bastard?” Skip followed.

Joey D checked his watch, and sank back exhausted into his seat. “Because he goes to NC State, that’s why. NC State is thirty thousand farmhands who wanted to attain the … the heights of Chapel Hill but had to settle for Cow College U instead. I can already smell the stink. You can major in Manure Science at State, you know.”

Skip yawned. “I have a hot cousin in the Design School at State.”

Joey D: “Poor her, having nothing but Dungeons and Dragons losers to date! When she brings back someone named Rajeev or Abdul for Christmas dinner, remember I told you so.”

Justin sometimes secretly wished he had gone to NC State or Appalachian State. “Joey, Zeta Pi has a chapter at State—”

“They don’t do Greek at State! They don’t understand what the Greek lifestyle is all about—they’re too busy losing at all the major sports and shoveling manure from one half of the campus to the other. Da only party is a Tar Heel party, or maybe you should transfer down to Zeta ‘Cow Pi’ and play Tony Hawk 3 with Rajeev and Abdul every Saturday night, while the hottest got-it-goin’-on, sorostitute shawtys in the South work my joystick in the BJ Room! Do you think there’s a Blow Job Room anywhere on State? Hell no, ’cause no one’s ever had a blow job or sex of ANY KIND at State. Oh I dunno, maybe some cow or pig starts nuzzling another animal’s crotch—but that’s as close as it fuckin’ gets!”

Silence for a minute before the contrarian Skip offered, “The pot is better at State, and cheaper. All those horticulture students. Hydroponic stuff, grown in the dorms.”

*   *   *

Tonight Sigma Kappa Nu was visiting those hellcat Zippermen, the Zeta Pis. Yes, it was Hell Week over there and the pledges would be enduring some unspeakable stunt. Jerilyn heard that last year at Zeta Pi, the boys had to parade naked through the party in something called “the Elephant Walk.” One guy reached between the legs of the guy in front and grabbed his penis, and with the other hand put a finger up his behind. Then they had to walk in a chain like that around the outside of the house, through all the rooms—with all the sisters providing shrieking commentary and trashtalk—and then up the stairs. If anyone lost their grip, the whole group had to start over! That was their grand finale of Hell Week. Jerilyn hoped they wouldn’t do anything like that; she would be embarrassed for them. She tried to imagine Skip Baylor, her slightly stiff prom date, doing that and she couldn’t … yet he pledged last year, so he must have.