My First Love and Other Disasters (4 page)

I have nothing to wear.

“I have nothing to wear!” I have to scream because I am buried four feet into the bottom of my closet hunting for some scrap of something to wear out tonight for the big dinner with my parents and the gnome, who unfortunately insisted on coming along even though she hates Italian food, especially since I believe I may have mentioned to her sometime or another that it all has squid and octopus in it—alive! She still practically gags at the thought of Italian food, but no, she wouldn't stay home tonight. She knows this is when I plan to talk to my parents about the summer and she wants to make as much trouble as she can. This is going to be a tough fight, all uphill, and I have to look just right, kind
of sweet/cute but also old/sophisticated, and I can't find the right dress to wear. It's got to be a good dress, but not my best in case I have to throw myself dramatically out of my chair and pound the dirty floor in a tantrum.

Amazing, I just found a great skirt I haven't seen since I accused my sister Nina of borrowing it and lending it to one of her friends who I was certain had lost it. So, big deal, she didn't. She does enough other awful things, so she could have done this too. Actually if my closet were neater, it would have been hanging up, and then she'd have seen it and certainly would have borrowed it and lent it to her friend, and they're so jerky they absolutely would have lost it so you see I wasn't wrong in accusing her.

“Victoria, come on, move it! The reservation's for seven thirty.”

My mother is standing in the doorway. I can hear her but I can't see through all this junk.

I push through all kinds of hanging things, past clumps of dusty shoes, and shopping bags stuffed with scraps of suede from when I was going to make a patchwork skirt, and wool from my crocheting projects, and old letters from summer camp. I'm a saver, sort of. Now I'm peeking through at my mother, who is getting more aggravated than she sounded.

“I have nothing to wear” That wasn't my mother.

“Put on your navy blue dress.”

“Gross.”

“Or the beige pants. I haven't seen you wear those in ages.”

“They're in the laundry.”

“Since January?”

“Well, they're at the bottom.”

“Ugh.” That wasn't me either.

“No jeans, please. This is a good restaurant.” And with that irrelevant information, she leaves the room.

Now I want you to know that I'm not just being difficult. I actually have nothing to wear. Sure there's a lot of bulk in my closet but it's all horrendous. Like for example, the navy dress. I can't imagine why I was so crazy to buy it, it's positively disgusting and I look like a giant baby doll in it. My knit skirt hangs down half a mile longer in the back than in the front, and my red dressy sweater itches. Most of my clothes are just nowhere, full of lumps and bumps in all the wrong places, and I'm really in the mood to make a big thing about my wardrobe with my mother, but the plain fact is I can't risk angering her tonight of all nights. She absolutely has to let me go to Fire Island. Period.

I kind of have it worked out in my mind how to do it.
We're going to this terrific little restaurant in the Village called Trattoria da Alfredo. The food is out of sight, but the best part about it is that it's very small and sort of quiet. A perfect place to put the squeeze on somebody. I know just how it's going to happen. I start asking them about the mother's helper job, and they're not hot for the idea but I keep at it, and then my father says to lower our voices and we start to whisper louder, and then people start to turn around. You know how adults get very patient with kids when other people are listening? I mean, they just can't say, “I said no, and I don't want to hear anymore,” like they do at home. They have to pretend to listen and consider it and then give a reasonable answer. I really have them with their backs to the wall, I hope. I'm preparing for an all-out blitz tonight, the kind that takes everyone's appetite away (except, of course, Nina, who could eat through an earthquake).

It happens exactly like I
said only a little different. First thing my father says is “No, and I don't want to hear about it anymore.”

Of course this is a very bad start, but I push on. I give them the business about how I'm fifteen and they still treat me like a baby. That's an old argument so they know how to answer that easily. Even
I
know how to answer that. All you say is, “When you can't take no for an answer, that's acting like a baby so we treat you like one.”

Then I give them the business about how every other girl in the entire high school is going to be a mother's helper this summer and before they can say anything I rattle off six names ending with Laura Wolfe, the only one I absolutely know is going to.

Up to now the toad has been gorging on fettucine. Now suddenly she zeroes in to destroy my life. “Uh-uh,” says Nina, “Laura Wolfe is going on a camping trip with her parents.”

“She is not, smarty, she's going to be a mother's helper for the Kramers out in East Hampton, so there.” I could kill her, I swear it.

“Uh-uh.” She shakes her dumb head, and the strings of the fettucine hanging out of her mouth swing back and forth.

“She is so!”

“Nope.”

“Is so, creep!”

“Mom!”

“Jerk.”

“That's enough!” hisses my father. “I don't care what Laura Wolfe or anyone else is doing with her summer.”

“But she is, Daddy,” I insist. “I know because she said . . .”

“Well, she isn't anymore because her sister, Linda, is in my class, and she said . . .”

“Did you hear your father?” Now my mother's in it. And suddenly the couples at the next table are all dying to hear about Laura Wolfe. “And, Nina, for God's sake, swallow that food. How many times do I have to tell you not to eat spaghetti with half of it hanging down to your chin!”

“I can't help it,” she whines, “it just slips out.”

“Roll it on the spoon the way I showed you,” my father tells her.

“I did.”

“If you did it properly it wouldn't fall out of your mouth like that. Do it like this.” And my mother starts rolling up a spoonful of spaghetti on her spoon and then pops it into her mouth perfectly. “You see? It's simple. Now let me see you do it.”

“I don't have a spoon,” says Nina.

“Why are you telling me you rolled it when you don't even have a spoon?”

“I did but it dropped.”

Naturally everybody at the surrounding three tables starts hunting for Nina's spoon.

“Ask the waiter for another one,” my mother says, embarrassed and completely out of patience.

“I know Laura Wolfe is definitely going.” I have to get them back on the track.

“Laura who?” my father says, as if he never heard the name before.

“The girl who's going to be a mother's helper.”

“Uh-uh,” says my gross sister, and she's got a new batch of spaghetti dropping out of her mouth.

“Shut up!” I tell her.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to say shut up to your sister!” my mother snaps.

“Then make her mind her own business,” I say.

“Why do we always have to have these arguments over dinner?” my mother says. “I look forward to a pleasant meal with my family and this is what it turns into.”

“Girls,” says my father, “enough, you're ruining your mother's dinner. I don't want to hear anything more about Laura Wolfe or what she's doing for the summer. Do you understand?”

“And you,” he says to Nina. “Don't order spaghetti anymore if you don't know how to eat it.”

“But I don't like anything else.”

“Then stay home,” I tell her.

“Mind your own business, Victoria, I'm talking to Nina,” my father says.

“She's always minding my business, and besides just because of her I didn't even get to ask a very important question. It's not fair!”

“Okay, Nina, be quiet,” my father says. “Now what's your question, Victoria?”

“Can I?”

“Can you what?” He turns to my mother in exasperation. “Can she what?”

“Can she be a mother's helper,” my mother says.

“Well, I don't know.” Good sign that my father didn't say absolutely no. “Maybe she's a little young. Maybe next year. What do you think, Felicia?”

Lovely. He's sticking with it. Now she can't say, “Your father doesn't want you to,” or something like that. It's very bad when you get in the middle of one of those things and then each one keeps blaming the other and you never get the right answer.

“I don't know, Phil, you may be right.”

She throws it right back to him.

“If that's what you think, dear.”

He grabs it and shoots it back to her. I've got to get it away or they'll just keep passing it back and forth forever.

“Liz started when she was fifteen,” I volunteer. Liz is my cousin from Philadelphia, and she really did start last year.

“That's true,” says my father, like it's maybe not such a bad idea to do, especially since his favorite sister, Liz's mother, let her do it. “It worked out okay, didn't it?”

“I think so,” says my mother.

“It was perfect,” I pipe up. “Liz said she really learned a whole lot that summer.” You bet she did. But I'm not crazy enough to say
what
she learned.

“Except, now that I think about it,” my mother says, “there was some problem about the people leaving her alone for a weekend. I think they went away or something like that. I know Dinah”—my aunt—“was very upset about that. Fifteen-year-old girls shouldn't be left alone with small children overnight.”

I swear to them that Cynthia Landry—
wonderful, mature, responsible Cynthia—would never go anywhere and leave me alone with the kids overnight. I tell them how she really needs me because now that she's working she has to have someone with the kids.

“Will she be going into an office every day?” my mother wants to know.

I tell her no, mostly she works from home. But she'll probably be going in to the city maybe about three times a week. And then I make a big thing about how Cynthia and the kids really want me, especially because I've been baby-sitting for them for almost three years and the kids are crazy about me. I can see that they're considering the matter seriously and that it's looking good. Even Nina is minding her own business. Maybe she ate some octopus. I keep my fingers crossed.

They kick it around awhile, and then they ask me a million questions. Practically Cynthia's whole family history and where on Fire Island and what kind of a house and on and on, and then right in the middle of dessert they decide. Of course they want to talk to Cynthia and drive out and see the house and all that, but so far the answer is yes.

I practically die, I'm so excited. I jump up and hug and kiss both of them. Now the other people and even the waiters are all smiling. Everyone
wanted me to go. I almost expect applause, they're all so pleased.

“But . . .”

I knew it! The big “but.” Probably my mother will have to come along too, or maybe Nina, or maybe they'll hire a mother's helper for
me
or something grotesque like that, I just know it.

“But,” says my mother, “we must be absolutely certain that Mrs. Landry knows that we don't want you to be left alone overnight with the children.”

“That's very important, Victoria,” my father says. “Mrs. Landry must understand our feelings on that. It's far too big a responsibility for a young girl to have.”

“I'll tell her you said so,” I say.

“We'll bring it up when we have our talk with her,” my father says.

“Please, Daddy, let me tell her.”

“I think it's better if we do it ourselves.”

“Please, I want to try to handle everything myself. I want her to see that you think I'm responsible enough to make my own arrangements. Then she'll feel better about trusting me.”

“That's a good point, honey.” Sometimes my dad's absolutely perfect. “She's right, Felicia,” he tells my mom. “Let her make her own arrangements. She knows what has to be done.”

This was even better than I expected, and I grin like a fool—right at Nina.

Actually talking to Cynthia myself may be a little tricky, because, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm telling her what to do. I can't say to her, “Hey, you can't stay out overnight,” like I'm her mother or something. Still, I don't really think she would do it, so it probably won't even come up. If it does—well, I'll just have to figure a way to handle it when it happens. Anyway, it's nothing to worry about now. The main thing is that I'm going. I can't believe it. I'm really going to be on Fire Island with Jim for an entire summer. Wow! Fifteen is going to be a great year!

My job is supposed to
start on the Friday of the July Fourth weekend, but Cynthia asks me if I'll help them move out on Wednesday. Sure, I tell her, and I can hardly wait to start. I'm supposed to get twenty-five dollars a week and Mondays off. That's probably not a terrific salary but it's great for me. Actually I'd do it for practically nothing just for the chance to be on my own on Fire Island near Jim.

Moving day is really hot, almost ninety-four degrees, and we're all stuffed into this Volkswagen, and there's no air conditioning, and DeeDee's got poison ivy from the trip to the house last weekend, and she keeps crying how it itches, and Cynthia says don't scratch it. She's got some medicine to put on it but DeeDee says it doesn't help. And every time she
scratches it David says, “DeeDee's scratching, Mom,” and Cynthia says, “Don't scratch,” and DeeDee says, “But it itches,” and then ten minutes later they do the whole thing again. It's funny to hear someone else doing the kind of thing Nina and I do. It's not so bad when you're the one doing it, but if you have to just listen, it can drive you up the wall. Then the kids keep asking if we're almost there and can we stop for some kind of Texas hot dog in some special place, and Cynthia says, “We'll see.”