The Appetites of Girls (10 page)

There were even more guests than I had imagined. How was it possible my parents knew so many people? And they seemed to know one another, too, weaving from living room to library to terrace to greet one another, the men clapping shoulders, the women kissing cheeks. There were even a few children, some close to my age. I recognized two boys from Christopher’s school and a girl who had been in my art class years before. One girl wore a dress similar to mine in pastel yellow. Her arms, her waist, her hips were as slender as flower stems. She was nibbling a tiny cookie, running a finger around her mouth every so often to check for crumbs. Father was at the far end of the living room, only the back of him visible in his navy jacket. Christopher was beside him, one fist thrust into his pants pocket as Father’s was. Father patted the elbow of the man on his right, and Christopher offered his hand, too, for an introduction. The room seemed a blur of sequined blouses and shimmering skirts, jeweled wrists and drink glasses, so it was hard to focus, hard to concentrate on any one person in the crowd.

Eventually I spotted Mother among a circle of women, a champagne flute in her right hand, a small plate in her left. Even from a distance, I could see her cheeks glowed pink. The red hem of her gown fluttered above her feet as she laughed with the women around her. Then she turned and began searching the room. I followed her gaze as it swept over each band of guests, each face. And it was not impatience or irritation I saw in her eyes but concentration. Or was it concern? Oh! I would permit her to find me where I stood.
No
. No, I would rush to her! But then I saw her eyes fix on Father instead. He was stepping over to Mrs. Mitchell, whose hair was loose for a change and whose black gown had a long
slit along her right leg. So it was
he
Mother had been checking for, and she did not look away until one of the caterers moved to the center of the room with a tray of stuffed pastries. Then Mother seemed suddenly to remember something, and setting her dish on the coffee table, began to thread through the guests. Smiling, the burgundy of her lipstick glittering against her teeth, she waved to the caterer, and he followed her through the crowd, balancing his silver moon of a tray high in the air.

When they returned to the group of women, the caterer, with a bow of his chin, gently lowered the tray. Fingers reached for napkins and pastries. Mother handed an hors d’oeuvre to a woman in a sheer sleeveless blouse—the mother of the girl in yellow, I decided, since the girl seemed always to be standing behind her, blotting her lips carefully, taking cautious sips from a clear plastic glass. Then Mother leaned toward the girl, speaking something near her. When the girl nodded, Mother motioned to the caterer and gracefully lifted a pastry from his tray, then placed it into the girl’s open palm. They stood so close their blond heads nearly touched. The girl’s hair brushed Mother’s shoulder as she smiled with tiny, closed lips, her narrow nose twitching slightly. Instead of chewing the pastry in one gulp, she took miniature bites at its edges, licking it now and then to prevent the filling from dripping. I watched her until every bit of the pastry had disappeared.

In the hall, the marble table was still piled with appetizers. I crammed my napkin with as many fritters and cheese squares and crackers as it would hold. Then I climbed the stairs with clattering footsteps, not caring who heard me.

Seated cross-legged on the handwoven Indian carpet Mother had recently purchased for my room, I devoured one hors d’oeuvre after another. Within minutes, a dusting of crumbs littered the new rug, but I made no attempt to brush them away, only gobbled bite after bite until the first heave of nausea hit. Then, when the last morsel had been swallowed, I threw myself onto my bed unwashed, having tossed my dress to the floor, letting it lie in a crumpled puddle.

In the first days of September, before my ninth-grade year and Christopher’s fifth, the streets of New York flooded again with zigzagging cars and jostling pedestrians as they did at the close of every summer. We, too, had just returned from two months away at the house we rented in Montauk for every July and August.

“It’s invigorating, isn’t it?” Mother said one glaringly blue morning as we stood on the terrace watching the bustling people below. “The city rushing with life—surging once more with energy.” She sipped from the polka-dotted mug of coffee in her moisturized hand and tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. She’d lightened it a shade, I thought, more streaks of yellow.

“You must be excited for the first year of high school.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess it won’t be much different from last year.”

I squinted through the trees of Central Park to see if I could make out the flat gray oval of the reservoir.

“If you want to invite any friends to the recital tomorrow night, you are welcome to. Everyone must be back from vacation by now.”

I shrugged again. I had only two girlfriends, really—Sharon Frasier and Emily McKenzie. Sharon was expected home for dinner every night, and I was temporarily avoiding Emily—she’d responded to none of the letters I had mailed her at summer camp. “I’d rather not.” Besides, I couldn’t imagine any reason they would want to sit in our living room for two solid hours of harp music, even if the harpist
was
“heaven inspired,” as Mother had exclaimed after seeing her perform the previous spring.

“Are you sure? Larissa Balliet is so gifted. I bet your friends would enjoy her. I think it’ll be fun!” Mother leaned her hip against the terrace rail. The breeze lifted the hair from her neck. Then, glancing at her watch, she said, “I suppose I should make a few phone calls. Breakfast is
on the table. Just don’t touch any of the wrapped appetizers in the refrigerator, love. They are to be saved for tomorrow evening.”

The afternoon before the recital, white-painted rental chairs with gold cushions arrived and were arranged in rows facing the living room fireplace. Mother adjusted their fabric ties and placed the programs she’d had printed on each seat. She set bowls of pink rosebuds on the two living room coffee tables and a vase of white tulips and lilies and peonies in the foyer.

“The house looks nice,” I said. It had suddenly occurred to me that possibly the Dempseys had been invited, and if so, might bring their son Jamie. “The East Coast Hottie,” Sharon and Emily called him because Emily had kissed him once at a wedding reception in Amagansett and told us his lips made her feel she would slide to the ground and melt into a puddle. Behind her back, Sharon and I agreed she was exaggerating, but this did not stop me from thinking of Jamie Dempsey when I watched movie love scenes, or imagining what it might be like to kiss him in the pouring rain.

“Are the Dempseys coming?” I asked Mother as nonchalantly as I could. “Or the Hanovers?” I added, just so that she would not grow suspicious.

“Dempseys—no. Hanovers—yes.”

“Oh,” I said, as though the answer made no difference to me, and stood watching Mother for a minute. Her flowers really did look beautiful, her arrangements always prettier than those from the florist. And I considered telling her so.

“Is there something else you need, Fran? I’ve a
million
things left to do,” Mother sighed.

“Not a thing.” And I would not say a word about her flowers.

It had been hours since lunch. From the fridge door, I poured myself a glass of Pepsi. On the refrigerator shelves were rows of finished hors d’oeuvres in protective plastic. One metal tray held puffed orange wafers that looked to be made with cheddar, the appetizers I had been forbidden to eat. But who would miss one from the corner? I took a gulp of soda then fished a single wafer from under the cling wrap. It had a spicy flavor
that I liked, and I snatched another. Then a third. A fourth, and then one more, until a gaping hole formed in the center of the tray, too large to hide.

Several minutes before her guests were expected, Mother rapped on my bedroom door. “There’s something I’d like to discuss with you later this evening, Francesca.” She spoke quickly, breathlessly. Through the closed door I could smell the sugary, petal scent of her perfume.

“What is it?” But she was already gone. I could hear her heels thumping on the carpet. So she would wait until after the recital for her reprimand. Perhaps she thought the delay would give me time to regret my actions.

After the final chord from Larissa Balliet’s harp, after the last guest had left, I sat in bed waiting, my bed lamp switched on, my copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
propped open on the blankets I had pulled to my chest. I had finished the first two chapters and begun the third. Down the hall I could hear water running in my parents’ bathroom, the murmur of their voices, the clicking on and off of lights, and footsteps fading down the corridor. Then . . . nothing. Quiet. Only the faint rhythm of car tires whistling on the avenue below. During the hubbub of the recital, had my misdeeds been forgotten? Ha! I folded down the corner of my page to mark my place and set the book on my night table, then switched off my bedside lamp. Ha! Ha! But I turned in my tangled blanket for what seemed like hours before finally dropping off to sleep.

•   •   •

E
very morning Mother directed Carmen, our housekeeper, to set a blue lacquered plate of croissants or brioche rolls on the breakfast-room table. This was more civilized than the bowls of cereal Christopher and I used to gulp down at breakfast, I heard her tell Carmen. After sipping her coffee and extinguishing her cigarette, Mother sometimes picked at a pastry, but always, I slathered my rolls or croissants with
strawberry jam, finishing them entirely, then washed them down with a glass of orange juice. But by early fall, I noticed I felt unsatisfied even before I’d walked the nine blocks to school. So I began to visit the cafeteria before my first class for a cream cheese bagel and a carton of fruit punch.

In the afternoons, by the time I returned home, another wave of ravenous hunger overtook me. While Mother was busy upstairs with her late-day regimen of toning exercises, I combed the cabinets and refrigerator. From leftovers, I created elaborate snacks—cold slices of quiche, steamed dumplings, pecan cookies—eating these with my right hand, my left holding open whichever volume I was currently reading of the solve-your-own mystery series I’d discovered at the local bookstore.

I had always been plumpish around the midsection, but after some time, I could not deny a growing change in my body. I studied the swelling in the full-length mirror on my bathroom door as I undressed each morning and night. But it was not really a worrisome gain. Just a slight lumpiness at the tops of my thighs, a minor spreading above my hips. This was part of maturing, anyway, according to Mrs. Donald, the health teacher at my all-girls school, who brought charts and diagrams with embarrassingly accurate renditions of female forms into our classroom to indicate how our figures would thicken and curve. She, herself, had mentioned, during her talk on menstruation (which had made us all roll our eyes at our neighbors and fidget in our desk chairs), the increased appetite we might experience. Besides, I had noticed proudly, along with the expanding of my legs and middle, two small mounds were taking shape, conspicuous enough that Mother had returned with three lacy training bras from the misses department.

One morning after gym class, Sharon recited the regulations of a new diet, her latest among a slew of weight-loss experiments from teen magazines. Though, as far as I knew, she was as fickle with these as she was with her exercise routines—running, jump-roping in place, a toning video with Jane Fonda.

“This one’s all-citrus,” she said, wiping perspiration beads from her brow with the sleeve of her gray sweatshirt. “Maybe we could do it together.” She twisted to inspect her backside, which had been disproportionately large for her body since third grade, making a firm balloon in her gym shorts, in the tunics we had worn in lower school, and now in our navy skirts. “Talk about irony,” I’d said to her once, watching her fuss with the pleats of her uniform. “They give us these to make us identical, but the same outfit on forty-four girls only exaggerates our differences! Ha!” But Sharon had only given a final tug to her waistband, and, looking insulted, accused me of being disagreeable. Now she opened her locker and studied the poster she’d taped inside of Farrah Fawcett in a red swimsuit, breasts thrust forward, winged hair tossed back—this the image of womanly perfection personified, Kenneth, her older brother, had told her—the photo serving as a constant reminder, she’d once explained, of her ultimate, ultimate goal.

“How can you keep that poster?” I asked her for the hundredth time. “It’s for hormonal teenage boys! And about your citrus plan—I am
not
interested in fad diets.”

Sharon shrugged her shoulders. “It works,” she said. “I saw a program about it on TV.” She seemed to be examining my middle as I shimmied out of my sweatpants and into my school skirt. To my annoyance, I had to inhale deeply before the buttons would fasten.

“Grapefruits are a diuretic,” she informed me as we carried our books to math class. “You can lose ten pounds in a week!”