Populazzi (21 page)

"You took my journals?"

"I don't see that I had a choice," Karl said. "I have a stranger in my house. That's a dangerous situation for me. The only way I can protect myself is to find out everything about her that I can."

"
Dangerous?
Karl, you've known me since I was four."

Karl shook his head sadly, but his voice remained impassive. "The girl I knew—the girl I was willing to take on as my daughter—would never betray me the way you did. I've been breaking my back to try to get you into Northwestern. You think your teachers will recommend you now?"

"The way I dress shouldn't matter to them," I said.

"But it does. You think they'll want you on a college campus looking like that?"

We were having the wrong conversation. I wasn't a real emo girl. I would never dress like this at college. But no explanation I could offer would make things any better.

"Maybe," I said. "Colleges love diversity."

"Do they love drug addicts, Cara?" Karl asked. "Do they love alcoholics? Do they love teen pregnancies?"

What?

"Karl, that's not what I—"

"How do I know? I don't know who you are anymore. I don't know what you're doing. I don't know what you've
done.
How long have you been sneaking around behind our backs, Cara? What else have you been lying about?"

"Nothing! I'm sorry—I made a terrible mistake. I shouldn't have lied to you, and I shouldn't have gone behind your backs. But I swear, I'm not leading some secret double life. I'm the same person I always was."

"I don't believe you," Karl said. "But if—if—you're going to continue to live under my roof, here's what you will do: you will go to school, you will come home, you will do your homework. You will
not
have a credit card, a car, a phone, a television, a computer, or any life whatsoever outside of school. When you
are
in my house, I don't want to see you except for meals. You are to remain in your room and out of my sight."

I couldn't believe this was happening. Had Karl really said "
if
" I continue to live under his roof? Had I really messed things up
that
badly?

"For how long?" I asked.

"Lucky for me, you'll be out of the house in a year and a half, right? Now please go up to your room.
After
you give me your cell phone."

My insides felt shredded, but Karl looked just fine. He almost seemed happy. A smug smile played on his face. I stared at him, then handed over my cell phone and went up to my room.

My doorless, journal-less, computer-less, TV-less room. I wanted to change out of my emo-garb, but oh yeah: no clothes. Every drawer and my closet had been emptied.

What could I do? I lay back on my bed and listened to Mom and Karl scream at each other downstairs. Or to be more accurate, I listened to Mom scream, plead, and cry while Karl gave her the same disinterested attitude he had given me. At one point he even turned on the TV.

They both seemed to agree that I was horrible. It was the degree of horribleness and the extent of the consequences that had them banging heads. Mom thought stripping away every bit of choice in my life was a touch extreme. Karl thought it was the only sensible way to deal with a stranger in the house. Mom thought the demotion from "daughter" to "stranger" was also a touch extreme. Karl said if "Harriet" didn't like it, then she and "her daughter" could go live in someone else's house and leave him alone.

It went on for a really long time. At a certain point I crawled under the comforter, pulled it over my head so their voices were muffled, and cried myself to sleep.

I woke up at two. Mom was sitting on the bed next to me, rubbing my arm. Her face was puffy from crying, but she laughed when I sat up to look at her.

"You really need to wash your face. Go take a shower. We'll talk afterward."

I felt even fuzzier and drunker than when I'd had the beer with Nate, but I managed to get up and stagger into the hall. On the way, I noticed my computer was back on my desk, all my clothes were stacked on my dressers, and my door—while not reattached—was now leaning in the hallway next to the jamb. I cast my eyes under my bed and saw with relief that my giant plastic bin of journals was back in place. At least at first glance, they looked beautifully untouched.

I winced against the light in the bathroom as I peeked at my face. No wonder Mom had laughed: I looked like a badly beaten mime.

I took a long hot shower, then pulled on my favorite furry white robe that seemed to have magically reappeared on its usual hook. Mom wasn't in my room anymore, but I smelled something in the kitchen, so I padded down to find two spots set at the table: one with hot tea and one with warm milk and cinnamon, my favorite childhood drink when I couldn't sleep. I sat and sipped it gratefully.

"You missed dinner," Mom said. "Can I make you some eggs?"

I nodded, and a few minutes later Mom and I both had big plates of scrambled eggs. It was time to talk.

"He really doesn't want to see me anymore?" I asked, looking down at my eggs.

Mom sighed. "Karl..." she began, then thought about it another moment and frowned. "I want you to know that I'm not giving you a pass for what you did. Especially lying to my face. That hurts me a lot, and I'm going to have a very hard time getting over it and trusting you again."

I knew that, and it killed me. I wanted to tell her how awful I felt, that I'd do anything to turn back time and make it all go away, but it was hard enough just meeting her eyes.

Mom's face softened, and she sipped her tea. "Karl, though ... you know how he gets. He doesn't react well when he feels unappreciated."

"Unappreciated?" I asked.

"Karl does a lot for you," Mom said. "For both of us. And you repaid him by lying. You had a whole life we didn't know about: different clothes, different makeup, maybe different friends, maybe dangerous friends—"

"It's not like that. I swear, it's not as if I was skipping school and running around Philly flashing gang signs."

"That may be, but when you lie to us, we don't know. And it makes Karl wonder if everything else he knows about you is a lie and you're just showing him what he wants to see so you can get what you want out of him. It's not a good feeling, Cara."

I had a headache. My brain must have been swelling, because I couldn't hold my head upright. I rested it on my hands. "Okay ... so what can I do to make it better?"

"Karl needs time. You really hurt him. I haven't seen him this upset since..."

She didn't say it, and she didn't have to. I knew exactly when he'd been this upset. I was maybe eight years old and I'd been invited to Dad's for Christmas. Mom, Dad, and I are Jewish, but the Bar Wench is Christian, and they do up the holiday big-time. The house was practically ablaze with lights and decorations, including a giant singing and dancing Frosty the Snowman on the lawn. Inside, things were even crazier, but the centerpiece was a thick, full Christmas tree, nearly twenty feet tall.

I'm no fan of the Bar Wench, but she really did try to make me a part of the celebration. Even though I showed up on Christmas Eve, she had saved a whole swath of bare tree for me to decorate, and there was a stocking stitched with my name hanging from the mantelpiece. Since I clearly didn't believe in Santa Claus, she let me stay up after her boys had gone to bed and help her "prove" Santa existed. She and I shared his milk and cookies, we wrapped and put out the gifts from him, and she let me help her press rubber boots into the fireplace ashes: Santa's footprints.

In the morning, Santa had left gifts under the tree for me, too. And my stocking was as full as the boys'. All my presents that year were perfect. Dad and the Bar Wench—and Santa—had given me everything I wanted, including the gift I'd been
dying
for: a super-plussed-out Spin Art kit. The whole trip was magical. It was the only time I ever felt like I was actually a part of my dad's new family.

When I got back to Mom and Karl's on the twenty-sixth, I couldn't stop talking about the amazing visit, all the fun I had with Dad's really-cool-once-you-got-to-know-them family, and of course my incredible new Spin Art kit.

The more I raved, the quieter and angrier Karl got. He didn't want to hear it, and he did
not
want me to open the Spin Art kit. He said it was too messy. It had to go back to the store. I threw a fit; he screamed at me to stop or else; I screamed back, coming up with what I thought was a very clever line: He wasn't just a stepfather, he was a step
down
father.

He responded by opening the Spin Art kit and smashing it to pieces in front of me, then gathering up all the gifts I'd gotten from Dad, the Bar Wench, and Santa that year and throwing them in the trash. When he was done, he kicked a hole in the hall closet door. It's still there.

That was the last time he'd disowned me. He eventually got over it, but it seriously took a year before things were normal again.

My headache was getting worse.

Mom put a comforting hand on my arm. "If you really want to make it better," she said, "prove that he's wrong. Be the best daughter you can possibly be. Lie low and don't force yourself on him; he's angry. But when you do see him, be nice. Ask him about his day. See if he needs anything. Let him know how much you love him. He might not respond right away, but he'll come around. He always does, right?"

"Yeah ... he does."

Mom nodded, then took a sip of her tea. When she finished, she sighed and studied my face.

"What?" I asked.

"I still don't understand, Cara ... why did you do it? Did you get in with a bad crowd? Were you trying to express something you felt you couldn't talk about? Were you..." She looked achingly concerned as she turned my hands palm-up and carefully scanned my wrists.

"Mom, no. I wasn't cutting. At all. I'm fine. I'm happy. I'm not in with any kind of bad crowd. It's so much littler and stupider than any of that."

"Then, what?" I could see she really wanted to understand, to break through and talk about my inner turmoil, whatever it might be.

"It was for a guy," I said. "He only likes girls with that look. That's all. I promise."

"What kind of a boy only likes girls who dress up in costume every day?"

"It's not a costume to the people who are into it. And the guy ... he's a friend of Archer's. That's how I know him."

I knew this would give Mom pause. She loved Archer; could any friend of his really be that bad?

She shook her head. "I'm surprised. But you should know any boy who's worthwhile will like you for
you.
Not the way you dress."

"I do know, Mom. I told you, it was stupid."

"And if he does only like you for your clothes, he's going to be sorely disappointed. I didn't put everything back in your room. Some things we're giving to Goodwill."

I had an image of a large group of homeless people clad in fuchsia zebra-striped leggings and chain-embossed tees and laughed out loud.

"I'm absolutely fine with that," I said. "I'd already planned to break up with the guy tomorrow."

"Good, I'm glad," Mom said with a smile—then a moment later she burst into tears.

The whole time Mom and I were talking, I'd assumed Karl was asleep in his room. He wasn't. After he'd fought with Mom, he was so disgusted that he stormed out of the house, promising her that since she was choosing me over him, the next time she heard from him would be through a lawyer.

Mom was devastated. She loved Karl. And if he divorced her, that was it. At forty, she was sure she was past anyone falling for her. Then there was the house: without Karl's income, we couldn't afford it. We'd have to get an apartment somewhere, Mom would have to go back to work...

"I'm so sorry," she sobbed. "I don't mean to put all this on you. You're my little girl, and I know you didn't realize you'd be doing this to us."

I couldn't speak, but I couldn't close my mouth. My mom, my world, my life was falling to pieces in front of me.
Because
of me.

Then Karl came home. True to his word, he didn't acknowledge my existence, no matter how charmingly I smiled and apologized. He did talk to Mom. He'd gone down the shore to think, and in the middle of the most unbelievable shoe he'd ever played, he'd had an epiphany. Having given birth to me, Mom couldn't help her irrational devotion. It was like a handicap, and you can't hold a handicap against someone. He had therefore decided to remain married to her but with the caveat that my care now fell to her alone. He was washing his hands of me.

Mom said she understood. Then she asked what had made the shoe so unbelievable, and within minutes they were chatting happily and practically skipping upstairs to count his winnings.

I was still at the kitchen table. No one had bothered to say good night.

I managed to clean my plate, get it in the dishwasher, and get all the way to bed before the tears started again, but once they did, I couldn't stop them. I sobbed—breathlessly wrenching convulsions from deep inside my body that Mom and Karl must have heard, but no one came to see if I was okay.

At some point I fell asleep.

A few hours later, for the first time since before Christmas break, I went to school looking almost like myself. "Almost" not just because my hair was still straight, but because my features looked more foreign to me now than they ever did with layers and layers of dark makeup. Hours of crying had left my whole face flat and immobile, like it had been infused with Botox. My skin was puffy and even too blotchy for concealer, not that I had any in my now sorely limited makeup kit. And while my eyes were usually my best feature, today they were barely visible pinpricks, wrung free of all moisture and life.

I was also exhausted.

"I feel like I ran a marathon on my face," I told Claudia as I drove to school. Mom had returned my phone as I left, "for emergencies," but any rational human being could see the current state of my life was itself an emergency. At least I wouldn't be on the phone for long. My face had so little elasticity that it hurt to enunciate.