Estranged Read online

  * * *

  On Saturdays, I’d stay in bed late sleeping lightly, half-awake-daydreaming or worrying or listening to the chords of conversation—arguments, usually—rising from the kitchen.

  I couldn’t be sure if the fighting was the kind to worry about. Sometimes, now that we were older, it was my father and Josh (or Mark, when he was home from college) having an odd kind of loud and argumentative “fun.” Sometimes it was my parents needling each other or kibitzing, as my father called it. But the line between joking around and getting my father angry for real was thin. Even these morning squabbles could easily become something more. I’d stay in my bed as long as I could hold my pee, trying to figure out when it was safe to come out.

  “Do you want to go shopping?” my mother asked me one morning when I eventually came downstairs.

  My mother usually went clothes shopping on the weekends but hadn’t left the house yet. Going along with her was a double-edged sword. If I went, then I’d have to be with her, to suffer through the awkward silences and try and fight off the barrage of supposedly constructive criticism. Jessie, brush your hair. Jessie, is that what you’re wearing? Jessie, why do you have to always look so messy? I tried to ignore her, not to let her judgments and criticisms penetrate me. Brushing my hair, I knew, would make it frizzier. Nothing was wrong with what I was wearing, I told myself. Nothing was wrong with me. It was important to stand up to my mother, but I didn’t know how.

  On the upside, there would be new clothes. Like my mother, I loved clothes and craved the rush of something new. I pored over the Seventeen fashion spreads and studied how my favorite television characters dressed, like Denise Huxtable from The Cosby Show. My mother wanted me to look preppy and classy. I wanted to pull together a quirky vintage style, like Molly Ringwald in a John Hughes movie.

  I opened the door of our yellow fridge. My father’s chocolate Entenmann’s donuts were waiting for me on the middle shelf, as were tubs of Philadelphia cream cheese to go with the bag of bagels we had on the counter. I knew I’d find a box of Cheerios in the pantry, which I could have with milk and a banana, but I’d always pour more milk than necessary, just to be safe, and then, when I was out of Cheerios but still had milk left, I’d pour a second bowl, which left me with too much cereal for the remaining milk. Which meant I’d have to add more milk, and then somehow my virtuous breakfast would end up a three-bowl special. Even breakfast was complicated.

  I had to be careful, because I was thin, or at least on my way to thin, for the first time I could remember. My eighth-grade English teacher asked us to write a letter to our twelfth-grade selves and promised she’d mail the notes to us before our high school graduation. My three wishes to myself: 1) Lose weight; 2) Get the lead in the high school plays; 3) Have a boyfriend. To my mind, numbers two and three depended entirely on number one. And so I decided to take matters into my own hands and set out on a path of self-improvement. Every night before I went to sleep, I devoted myself to reading my new bible, The Sweet Dreams Body Book. In keeping with the author’s plan, I’d been eating sensibly, exercising my heart out, and watching my calories. Instead of unlimited bagels, I allowed myself unlimited baby carrots. My mother bought me an air popper to make fresh popcorn and started keeping more than one kind of fruit in the house. I tried my first green pepper and an unripe, cold supermarket tomato. I ate open-faced sandwiches and baked potatoes without butter and raw broccoli. I sucked on lemons and ice cubes to quiet my always needy appetite. When my motivation wavered, I would lie in bed and visualize myself in a bathing suit. I went for exercise walks, did pliés in the kitchen, and executed Jane Fonda–style leg lifts and sit-ups in front of the television before dinner. I danced in my room and went for jogs. It worked. My jeans were looser each week. When I stretched out in bed and rested my hands on my chest, I could even feel my ribs.

  “Jessie? Do you want to come or don’t you? Make up your mind, because I’m leaving soon. Bloomingdale’s is having a sale,” my mother said, showing me the glossy white postcard announcing the preseason sale for this weekend only. She generally had us hunt for brand-name bargains at discount emporiums. But during a big sale, or when she needed to return something or treat herself, or if we were shopping for a special occasion, she’d take me to Garden City. My mother had a sweep of department store credit cards for Lord & Taylor and Saks and Macy’s filling up the slots in her wallet, but Bloomingdale’s was my favorite. I couldn’t help but say yes. Garden City!

  I went upstairs and got ready to go, brushing my teeth at the sink, putting my head under the faucet to rinse before spitting out my Aquafresh. My mother was usually tired, but she almost always found the energy to take me shopping. That was pretty much the point of having a daughter.

  “Jessie!” my mother called from the kitchen, where I knew she’d be waiting with her arms folded against her chest and her keys in her hand.

  It was hard to fill up the silences of the twenty-minute car ride to Garden City. I wasn’t even sure my mother liked me. I figured she wanted me to be the kind of girl who was asked out on dates and to school dances so we could plan my outfit and then, the next morning, dissect the evening over breakfast. But I’d never held a boy’s hand, or gotten a phone call from one, or been invited to a boy-girl house party.

  I looked out the window and settled into my seat, soothed by the familiar click of my mother’s turn signal. Her biggest concern for me was her biggest concern for herself, too: weight. That was the thing about shopping. The dressing room could be a dangerous place. The usual dressing room question on both of our lips: Does this make me look fat?

  For the longest time my mother had seemed unhappy with my appearance. She worried over my nose, which was sprouting a dangerously not okay bump; my overcrowded teeth and uneven bite, in need of oral surgery and expensive orthodontia; and especially, before my latest diet, over my chubby tummy and inner thighs that rubbed together. In the dressing room, she usually tried her best to be honest but politic: It’s not the most flattering cut. It’s the wrong shape for you. That style can be hard to carry off. It does you no favors. You can do better. I said the same back to her. When something looked good, or good enough, we were relieved. We rejoiced. And we bought. But the subterranean insults masquerading as helpful hints stung. I hoped all that would change now that I was thinner.

  We drove from Rockville Centre through the ragged poverty of the bordering town of Hempstead, passing a stark invisible line between black and white, poor and rich, and crossed into Garden City, where large grand houses sat on swaths of green lawn.

  Turning on the soft-rock station, my mother hummed along to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water.” This was her all-time favorite song. I listened to the lyrics. Who was the bridge? And the friend sailing right behind? Not my brothers and me. My father? How could that be? Or was the bridge God, and was she dreaming for herself something better in the afterlife? When would it be my mother’s time to shine?

  When I was nine, there’d been an HBO broadcast of the reunion concert in Central Park. My mother had let me stay up late to watch. Art Garfunkel was bohemian cool, with his white button-down shirt and rolled-up sleeves worn under a vest and tucked into faded femme jeans. Paul Simon sang next to him in suit trousers and a blazer with a T-shirt, as if he and Art had the one suit between them for the evening. I wanted to be just like them. I wanted to be an artist and sing to the rooftops about cigarettes and cross-country bus trips and love affairs. I tried to imagine my mother and father in college and at a diner or sitting on a twin bed, listening to records together. I tried hard to love them.

  When Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” came on, she abruptly turned the radio off.

  “Why can’t I listen?” I wanted to know.

  “You’re too young for that.”

  After driving past the residential neighborhoods, we came to the department store. We parked in the large lot and made sure our doors were locked and the windows rolled up.

 
Then we entered the hush and hum of the modern and milky-white first floor, past the Shiseido counter, where my mother sometimes treated herself to makeup and moisturizers sold by an older Japanese lady with perfect skin, past the handbags and scarves and hosiery sections and the shoe department. We glided up the escalator to the preteen department.

  We usually didn’t shop here, not for me. Sale or no, Bloomingdale’s was expensive, and by budgetary necessity, my mother preferred bargains. Today, though, we’d splurge.

  I headed straight to the rack of Esprit clothes along a back wall. I was obsessed with their catalogs. Their models were “real” people, creative city types who were styled in carefree, colorful cotton. All of the models, including the children, appeared to live in loft apartments, the kind you got to by freight elevator. The clothes were just vaguely preppy enough for my mother and recognizably artsy enough for me. I piled hanger after hanger over my arm, and my mother did, too, until we couldn’t carry anything more.

  We both took a number, the highest available, and headed into a fitting room. My mother sighed, taking a seat.

  As I undressed, stripping off everything but my saggy underwear and cotton training bra, my mother inspected me with approval. Then I started trying things on.

  I couldn’t believe it. A miracle! The clothes looked good. All of them.

  My mother went wild, relieved to see me pretty, and bought me a lavish capsule wardrobe. She drew the line at the days-of-the-week underwear I pined for that came in a plastic pack. I didn’t care; I was ecstatic. We selected a canary-yellow short-sleeved cotton minidress with a wide belt, a navy sweater I planned to tie around my shoulders, and best of all, a red paisley tunic-length blouse paired with stretchy black stirrup pants that I’d wear along with my black rubber and sparkly rhinestone Madonna bracelets for the variety show at school. The year before, I’d sung “Out Here on My Own,” from Fame. This time I’d be performing “Can’t Fight This Feeling” by REO Speedwagon.

  “Don’t tell your father,” my mother made me swear as the purchases were added up at the register. She tapped her credit card on the counter before handing it over to the salesclerk. We couldn’t risk making him mad. He was just as likely to be happy for me to have the new clothes as angry with my mother for spending all that money, but there was no way to be sure.

  “Receipt in the bag?”

  “I’ll take the receipt with me,” my mother said, stuffing it into the back of her wallet.

  We stopped in for her at the sale in the women’s department. I was used to weekend afternoons watching her scrutinize the racks; she’d expertly move hangers from right to left and pass quick judgments, trying on her selections while I sat on the dressing room bench with her street clothes heaped on my lap. But she didn’t feel like shopping for herself today. Maybe we’d spent enough. Maybe she didn’t want to ruin things by feeling fat.

  Instead, my mother guided me toward the cosmetic department on the main floor.

  “I think you’re old enough to wear makeup.” What? I couldn’t believe it, but there she was, leading me to the Clinique counter.

  “Only blush and lip gloss for now.” She had me sit on the makeup stool and asked for the lightest shade of each. My legs dangled while she taught me how to fake-smile to make the apples of my cheeks pop so I’d know where to leave the faint dash of pink. This was how she mothered me.

  “Just a little,” she said. “You’re thirteen. You want to look natural, not cheap.” I considered what that might mean.

  Afterward, we sat across from one another at a nearby diner and ordered a diet soda and diet platter each. The platters came with ice-cream-shaped scoops of tuna salad and egg salad and cottage cheese. Conversation between us was strained. She talked about overly permissive parents, men who drank too much, Jews with Christmas trees. She handed me nickels and dimes and asked me to go feed the meter. It was cold out, but the sun was bright, and I blocked it with my forearm. I made my way back to the table, and we tried halfheartedly gossiping about my brothers and their friends. When we ran out of things to say, we talked about my new clothes or the things she wanted. Once my parents had the money, she bought herself diamond stud earrings and a Torah scroll pendant that hung on a gold chain, and had her engagement ring reset and arranged on a bed of diamond chips. She bought me clothes and paid for summer camp. My mother believed wholeheartedly in the power of nice things to make us happy.

  * * *

  The summer before ninth grade, though I wasn’t remotely athletic, I signed up for a bike trip with the 92nd Street Y. We’d spend a couple of weeks cycling our way through Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod and Nantucket. I sometimes had to get off and walk my bike, and on most rides I was the last camper to arrive. But I loved racing down hills, working the brakes, and the long flat afternoons when I couldn’t see anyone in front of me or behind me and could feel my calf muscles taking shape. Until one day, when I was waiting at a stoplight outside a supermarket parking lot for the girl following me. A man drove up and honked, rolling down his window. It was hot, bright sun on asphalt. I figured he wanted directions, and I was about to say I wasn’t from around there when I saw something poking out from his short shorts, huge and pink. He had his hand on it. I wanted to throw up. I’d never seen a penis before, and I knew in an instant I’d never forget his no matter how long I tried. The biker behind me rode up, and I shouted, “Come on!” and we went flying.

  * * *

  Late that August, my friend Monica invited me and a couple of other girls up to her parents’ lake house. Unlike the rest of us, Monica was from the rich side of Rockville Centre, but her family was different from most of their neighbors. Her father made good money and would take us out to Benihana and pay with a hundred-dollar bill like it was no big deal, but he wore undershirts by themselves at home on the weekend like my father did, and he had a thicker Brooklyn accent than was usually heard on that side of town. He was Jewish and technically Monica’s stepdad, but he was her “real” father, the one who had adopted and raised her. Monica’s mom was Catholic and Colombian. She was an attentive and warm stay-at-home mom who doted on her husband and daughter and threw Monica a surprise birthday party every year. I hadn’t had a birthday party since I was a little kid, much less any sort of surprise, so this impressed me. When I came over after school or on the weekends, her mom gave me hugs. I loved it at Monica’s.

  Monica had straight black hair, great taste in music, and a closet filled with skillfully folded Benetton sweaters and matching socks. At the lake, Monica knew how to drive their small boat, and her father let us go out on the water without him. It was the first time I’d been on a motorboat since that long-ago family vacation in Maine, and this time we were free and far from my father, and the sun was shining on us and I could have stayed on that lake forever.

  One night an older boy who lived next door gave me a ride on his three-wheeler. On a rainy day I went with Monica and the other girls to see Stand by Me at a mall in Oneonta, and in the parking lot waiting for our ride home, we talked about which of us was most like which character, and how the four of us would stay friends forever.

  We started drinking on our last night. It was my first time. Maybe Monica’s mom gave us the wine coolers, or else we just grabbed them from the fridge or swiped them from the neighbors. With just a four-pack between us, we took gingerly sips and then sugary peachy swigs, and when we lit our first cigarettes, a friend showed me how to inhale and nobody laughed, just like they hadn’t that morning when I couldn’t get up on water skis. I felt grown up, and hopeful for the first time in maybe forever.

  SIX

  “LET ME SEE JESSIE,” Mr. Goodman said as he arranged and rearranged the student actors at the foot of the auditorium stage, forming various potential family configurations, figuring out who fit. This was the final day of callbacks for our high school production of Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon. It was between my best friend, Kathy, and me for the role of Laurie, the youngest daughter. The fall
drama was a big deal. The spring musical had the allure and magic of a live orchestra in the pit, show tunes and choreography, and a large cast and crew. But the drama was for serious actors. Kathy and I were ninth-graders and had gone to tryouts together to face the older, intimidatingly cool theater kids. But now she was my competition. I paced the chorus room with the script in my hand, going over my lines even though I knew them by heart. Kathy told me not to worry, that I would definitely be the one to get it, but I wasn’t so sure.

  Stanley Goodman, the school drama teacher and director of the school play, motioned for me to walk all the way downstage. I stood in front of the others with my hands clasped in front of me and tried to look the part of a fatherless Depression-era Brooklyn girl. Jason, who was also in ninth grade and had starred in my soap opera parody, was there beside me, up for the lead role of Jerome. I stared out into the sea of seats. Mr. Goodman—or Stan, as we called him when he wasn’t around—was older, in his forties, but crush-worthy, just like I’d heard, with worn Levi’s and heavy eyelids that made me think of the phrase bedroom eyes, which I must have read in a book. He’d gone to theater school at New York University and lived in the city with his wife and their young daughter. My mother didn’t trust him, even though he’d been teaching at South Side for almost twenty years. She’d heard that he smoked marijuana and lived in the Village, and she thought he was too close to his students. My hair was cut in a bob. Kathy’s was long. I wondered which he’d prefer.

  I prayed that I would get the part. That it would be me, not Kathy. I told myself she didn’t care like I did, that she wasn’t as into drama, although she had played a dancing Indian and Wendy’s daughter Jane in Peter Pan in seventh grade and had gotten to fly, and I had only been a lost boy named Nibs. Plus, Kathy took jazz and tap. I couldn’t move as well, but I could sing—not that the role called for either. We were both good students. I wasn’t sure what would make the difference, what the deciding factor might be in whether or not my life would change.