Tamsin, Page 2

  Sally turned and faced me. She drew in her breath to say something, and then she caught it and said something really else, you could tell. She said, “If you change your mind about dinner, we’ll be at the Cuban place on Houston, Casa Pepe. Probably around eight-thirty.”

  “Well, we might float by,” I said. “You never know.” Sally just nodded, and reminded me to lock up, which she always did and I always did, and then she took off. I hung around as long as I could, hoping Mister Cat would show up before I had to catch the bus, but he didn’t. So I finally had to close the window, which I always hated, because then he’d have to be out all day. Mister Cat didn’t mind. Mister Cat’s too cool to mind.

  I wanted to call Norris early, because you have to give him time to get used to new things, like seeing me when it wasn’t his idea. And I wanted to line up dinner, because if there’s one thing my dad can do it’s eat out. So during homeroom break, I ran across the street to a laundromat and got him on their pay phone. He said, “Jennifer, how nice,” in that deep, slow, just-waking-up voice that probably drives women crazy. He is the only person in the world who calls me Jennifer—never once Jenny, even when I wouldn’t answer to Jennifer, not for months. Norris is incredible at getting people to be the way he wants, wearing them down just by being the way he is. It works with everybody except Sally, as far as I know.

  “I was hoping I could come over after school,” I said. I still hate the way I get when I talk to my father. As well as I know him, as much as I keep thinking I’ve changed, and if he called right this minute, while I’m writing, I’d sound like a fan, for God’s sake— even my voice would get sweaty. Norris must have been expecting me, though, because he hardly hesitated at all before he said, “Absolutely. I’ve been wild for you to see the new place. There’s even a guest room for weird daughters, if you know any.”

  “I’ll check around,” I said. “See you about four. Somebody wants the phone, I have to go.” There wasn’t anybody waiting, but I didn’t want Norris to pick up my anxiety vibes. He’s really, really quick about that—he knows when you want something, almost before you know. But I remember I felt hopeful all the same, because of the guest room. Because of him mentioning the guest room.

  At lunch I sat with Jake Walkowitz and Marta, like always, since third grade. You couldn’t miss our table—Jake’s tall and freckled and white as a boiled egg, and unless he’s changed a whole lot in six years he probably still looks like he goes maybe eighty-five pounds. Marta’s tiny, and she’s very dark, and she’s got something genetic with one shoulder, or maybe it’s her back, I never was sure, so she walks just a little lopsided. Then you add in me, looking like a fire hydrant with acne, and you figure out why the three of us always ate lunch together. But we liked each other. Not that it matters much when you’re stuck with each other like that, but we did.

  I don’t make friends easily. I never did, and I don’t now, but it doesn’t matter anywhere near the way it mattered in junior high school. New York City or Dorset, when you’re thirteen, you’re not even yourself, you’re a reflection of your friends, there’s nothing to you but your friends. That’s one of the things most people forget—what it was like being out there every day, thirteen. I guess you have to, the same way women forget how much it hurts to have a baby. I used to swear I’d never forget thirteen, but you do. You have to.

  Anyway, when I told about Sally and Evan, Jake shook his head so his huge mop of curly red hair flew around everywhere. He said, “Oh boy, oh boy, Evan McDork.” I felt a little guilty when he said it, because I knew that far back that Evan wasn’t any kind of a dork, even if he was wrecking my entire life. But that’s what I called him then, so that’s what Jake and Marta called him, too. Jake said, “So your mom’ll be Mrs. McDork, and you’ll have to be Jenny McDork. We won’t even recognize the name when you write to us.”

  “And you’ll have two instant brothers,” Marta put in. “Lucky you.” She and Jake kept looking two tables down, where one of her brothers—I think it was Paco—was glaring at Jake as though he was about to start ripping Marta’s clothes off. Marta’s got four older brothers, and every time you turned your head, in school or anywhere, there’d be some sabertooth Velez keeping a mean eye on her. I don’t know how she stood it. They never used to be like that, not until we started junior high.

  “I’m not changing my name, I’ll tell you that much,” I said. “And I’m not going to England either.” I told them how I was going to see Norris right after school and get him to let me move in with him. Jake sneaked another look at Paco and scooted right away from Marta until he was hanging on to the bench with about half his skinny butt. He asked me, “Suppose it doesn’t work out with your father? I mean, let’s just consider the possibility.”

  “Ward of the court,” Marta said right away. “My cousin Vicky did that. Mother beating on her, her dad was hitting on her, the judge put her in a foster home, and then later she got a place by herself. That’s it, I love it!” Jake was already shaking his head, but Marta slapped her hand on the table and raised her voice, looking over at her brother. “That’s it, Jenny! You get your own place, and I’ll come and live with you, and we don’t tell my damn family where we are.”

  “My mom doesn’t beat on me,” I said. “She wouldn’t know how.” That made me feel funny, I remember, thinking about Sally and how she wouldn’t know how to hit anybody. I said, “Anyway, I mostly don’t mind living with her. I just don’t want to live with her in England, that’s all.”

  Jake said, “You want to avoid stepfathers. Just on principle.” He was on his second then, and his mother was already lining up Number Three. I said, “Count on it.”

  “Ward of the court,” Marta said again. “I’m telling you, Jenny.”

  We bussed our trays, and then we went off to our special place, where they keep the trash cans, because Jake had one small joint, about the size of a bobby pin. Marta got giggly, but it didn’t do much for Jake or me. Jake said it was a question of body mass.

  After lunch, Marta and I had Introduction to Drama together. Jake got off early because he and his parents went to family counseling on Wednesdays. Usually I liked Introduction to Drama, but lately I’d been having a problem with the teacher, Mr. Hammell. Anyway, I thought it was a problem, but I wasn’t sure then, and I guess I’m still not, all these years later. Mr. Hammell had beautiful one-piece walnut hair, and he had sort of ravines in his cheeks, and half the girls at Gaynor were writing stuff they’d like to do to him on the walls of the john. Some of it was funny, and some of it made me feel strange, not knowing which way to look when Marta showed me. But some of it was really funny.

  Anyway, for the last month or so Mr. Hammell had been maybe not exactly coming on to me. Not that I’d have known if he was, because nobody in the world had ever actually come on to me, except Mark Rinzler one time, at a Christmas party. At first it was okay, fun even, and then it just turned gross—no, that’s not the word, it turned stupid and scary, and I made Mark quit, and he never spoke to me again. But Mr. Hammell used to stand right beside me while he was talking, and he’d let his long fingers trail over my desk, and now and then he’d look at me, as though I was the only one in the class who could ever possibly understand what he was saying. Which was not true. And after class, or if we met in the hall, he’d stop me and ask what I thought about Antigone or poor dumb Desdemona, whichever, while I stood there getting redder and redder and sweatier and sweatier. He even gave me his home phone number, in case I ever had any questions about the homework assignment. I didn’t throw it away for a couple of days.

  Meena keeps saying I should have complained about sexual harassment. Only Meena’s pretty, and there’s a lot of stuff pretty people don’t know. Pretty people like Stacy Altieri and Vanessa Whitfield and Morgan Baskin, they’d come drifting up to me at my locker and they’d ask, “So. What’s it like with him?” And they’d look at me, the way people do when they’re waiting for some kind of right answer from you, some kind of pass
word. And all I had to do was say it, the word, and there I’d be, I’d be with them. But I didn’t know any password, I never do. So they’d go on looking at me for a while, and then they’d drift off again, back to their cool boyfriends, back to pretty. And I’m standing there, still pink sweaty me, and I’m going to know what’s sexual harassment and what isn’t? Right, Meena.

  Anyway. We had Introduction to Drama, and it went okay, except for Stacy Altieri and Kevin Bell making their usual dumb jokes about “TB or not TB.” Mr. Hammell stood right by my desk, the same as always, and I could smell his aftershave, like fresh snow, and see that he had a couple of broken black fingernails on one hand, as though he’d caught them in a door or something. Funny to remember that, when I can’t remember my own damn name half the time.

  After class, Mr. Hammell was sort of beckoning to me, trying to catch my eye, but I pretended I didn’t see him and just ducked out of there in time to grab a quick hit with Marta in the girls’ john before I caught the bus to go see Norris. Probably I shouldn’t have done that, because all it did was make me jittery, instead of easy and relaxed, the way I wanted to be. I put my head back and breathed huge deep breaths, in and out, and tried really hard to feel that I already lived at Norris’s apartment and was just going home, like always. It helped a little.

  He’d moved into a new place just last month, way over east, right on the corner of Third Avenue. An old building, but cleaned up, with a new awning and the number written out in letters, and a doorman wearing a uniform like one of Sally’s tenors in an opera. When I told him I was here to see my father, Mr. Norris Groves, he looked at me for the longest time,just knowing I was actually some sort of damp, squirrelly groupie with an autograph book in one coat pocket and a gun in the other. Then he went to the switchboard and I guess he called Norris in the apartment, because I heard him talking, and then he came back looking like he’d swallowed his cab whistle. But he told me which floor Norris lived on, and which way to turn when I got off the elevator. And he watched me all the way to the elevator, in case I stole the skinny little carpet or something. I remember, I thought, Boy, when I come to live here, I’m going to do something evil to you every day. It’ll be my hobby.

  Meena, when you read this, I already told you I’m no good at all at describing where people live, and telling what color the bedroom was painted and how many bathrooms they had, and what they had hanging on the walls. I hated doing it in Creative Writing class, and there is no way I’m about to do it in my own book. So the only thing I’m going to say about Norris’s apartment is that it was old, but sunny old, not smelly old, with a lot of big windows with curly iron grates on the outside. Not much furniture, no paintings or anything, just some framed opera posters and some pictures of Norris with famous people. I think they were famous, anyway. They were all in costume.

  Norris gave me a huge hug when I came in. That’s his specialty, a hug that makes you feel all wrapped up and totally safe—I never knew anybody else who could do it just like that. He held me away from him and looked at me, and grinned, and then he hugged me again and said, “Look what I got!” like a little kid. And he stepped back, and I saw the piano.

  Okay. I may not know anything about decor, but I can’t help knowing about pianos. This one was a baby grand—I didn’t see a manufacturer’s name anywhere. It was a dark red-brown, the color I said most black cats really are, and it looked as though it was full of sunlight, just breathing and rippling with it. I never in my life saw a piano like that one.

  Norris stood beside me, grinning all over himself. He’s not really handsome, not like Mr. Hammell, but he’s bigger, and he’s got thick, curly gray hair and big features that really stand out—nose, chin, eyes, forehead—which is great if you’re going to be onstage in makeup a lot. I don’t look anything like him either. He said, “Go ahead, kick the tires. Take it for a test run.”

  One thing about Sally, she never made me take any kind of piano or voice lessons, even though that’s what she teaches all day. (I can’t sing a note, by the way: Two parents who do it professionally, and it’s all I can manage to stay on pitch. They could probably take the hospital for millions.) But I teach myself stuff sometimes, just for fun, banging it out for myself, stuff like “Mack the Knife” and “Piano Man,” and “When I’m Sixty-four.” I was nervous about playing for Norris, so I made a big thing out of it, sitting down and rubbing my hands and cracking my knuckles, until Norris said, “Enough already, kid, go,” and I finally went into “The Entertainer.”

  I had to stop. I got maybe ten or twelve bars into the piece, and I just had to quit. The sound was so beautiful I was just about to get sick, or have hysterics, or I don’t know, wet myself—something was going to happen, anyway, that’s for sure. Some people get that way when they see flowers or sunsets, or read poems, whatever. I don’t, I never have, but that damn piano. I stopped playing, and I looked up at Norris, and I couldn’t talk. He laid his arm around my shoulders. He said, “Yeah, me, too. I know I don’t deserve it, I’m embarrassed every time I use it just to sing scales, but I keep telling myself it’s a present for what I’m going to do. You have to believe that stuff, Jennifer, in our business.”

  Norris always talks to me as though I were a real musician, the way he is, and the way Sally is. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I really don’t, because it’s not true and he knows it. He wanted me to play some more, but I got up from the piano and went over to him. I said, “Sally’s getting married.”

  “I know,” Norris said. “Nice guy, too, Evan what’s-his-name. You like him all right, don’t you?”

  I shrugged and nodded, that mumbly nod I do. Norris was watching me really closely. “She says you’re a bit antsy about the move to London.”

  Sometimes I really wish I had the kind of parents who got divorced and never ever spoke to each other again to the day they died. “I’m not antsy about it,” I said. “I’m just not going.”

  Norris laughed. “What are you talking about? Babe, listen, you’ll love London. I’m crazy about it, I’d sing there for nothing—hell, I practically do. Jennifer, you will adore England, you’ll have the time of your life. I promise you.” He was holding my shoulders, smiling down at me with those confident eyes that really do flash all the way to the balcony when he’s being Rigoletto or Iago. Show people feel things, like I said—they just can’t help knowing a good scene when they see one. Like Mister Cat, it’s their job.

  If I was ever going to do it, now was it. I took a deep breath, and I said, “I was wondering if I could maybe stay with you.” Norris didn’t drop his teeth, or anything like that. He stroked my hair and looked straight into my eyes, and sort of chanted, “JenniferJenniferJenniferJennifer.” It’s an old joke—he used to tell me that that was my real name, that he only called me Jennifer for short. That was long ago, when I was little, when the name hadn’t yet started to bug me so much.

  “I could take care of things,” I said. “I could do the shopping, the laundry, keep things clean, forward your mail. Water the plants.” I don’t know why I threw that in, because he never has any plants. “You wouldn’t have to pay a housekeeper. Or a secretary.” It doesn’t look right on the page, because it all came out in one frantic whoosh, but that’s about what I said.

  Norris said, “Jennifer. Honey. Come and sit down.” And I knew it was all out the window right there. He pulled me over to the sofa and sat next to me, never taking his eyes from mine. He said, “Honey, it wouldn’t work. We couldn’t do that to Sally—you know she’d be devastated, and so would I, and so would you. Believe me.”

  “I’d get over it,” I said. “So would Sally. New husband, new country, two new kids—she wouldn’t have time to be devastated about anybody. Norris, I could go visit her once in a while, that’d be fine, I’d love it. But I can’t live there, Norris, I just can’t, why can’t I stay with you in the guest room?” I’m writing it all down, just the way it was, as fast as I can, so maybe I won’t be too ashamed. But I might just cut it
out later on.

  Norris ran a hand through his own hair and then squeezed his hands together. He said, “Jennifer, I don’t know how to say this. I’m not in a very good place right now for having anybody living with me. It’s not just you, it’s anybody. I’m coming off a bad relationship—you remember Mandy?—and I guess I need some privacy, time to be by myself, time to think through a lot of stuff—”

  I interrupted him. “I’d be in school most of the time, you wouldn’t even know I was there.” I wasn’t going to beg anymore, I wasn’t going to say another word, but it came out anyway. Norris didn’t hear me. He went right on. “Besides, going to England would be the best thing in the world for you. Trust me on this one, kid. I know how incredibly dumb this sounds, but someday you really will thank me. Really.”

  Well, that was pretty much it, there’s no point in writing anything else about it. Norris said it was my turn to choose a restaurant, so just out of spite I picked a Russian place, way down in the Village and so fancy it looked like a crack house from outside. Before we went, Norris asked me, very shy and sweet, if I’d mind if somebody joined us for dinner, because if I would mind, that’d be fine. Her name was Suzanne, and I think she did something on the public radio. Actually, she was nice. My father’s women mostly are. She paid more attention to me during dinner than she did to Norris, asking all kinds of questions about school and my friends, and what kind of music I liked, and she pretty much listened to the answers. Afterward they took me home in a cab. Both of them got out and hugged me good-bye, and Norris told me he’d give me all kinds of addresses in London, and they both waved back to me as the cab drove away.