Tales From My Closet (3 page)

“Well,” I said, “later.” Because, as I exited the girls’ room and emerged back into the chaos of the hallways, two things were obvious: first, that Toothpaste Smile girl thought I was a freak, and second, that I’d landed in an entirely different fashion universe from the one I’d come from in San Francisco.

One thing I knew for sure was that if even one more kid said something nasty about my dress I’d be in actual danger of actually crying. Already I could feel the hot burn of tears behind my eyeballs, but I pushed them back with this kind of cranial-sucking-in movement I’ve perfected, and went looking for a place I could sit where I wouldn’t be totally alone or, even worse, unwanted and out of place at some table reserved for this or that clique.

For the first time that day, I was in luck. At a table with a total geek (complete with the too-big tortoiseshell glasses and the sticking-up hair); a couple of vaguely bored-looking girls peering suspiciously at the contents of their lunch bags; a chubby, very pale girl talking with her hands; a girl done up in the classic low-key tomboy uniform of jeans and T-shirt with the classic sassy short hair style, whose one sign of fashion flair was the thin gold bangles she wore on her right arm; and another girl in pure pale-blue prep, there was an open spot at the very end, a seat-gap’s length from anyone else. If this wasn’t a nonclaimed table, nothing was.

“Hi,” I said, sitting down and making a little space for myself with my tray, which I hoped would show that I wasn’t trying to elbow in on anyone’s lunch routine.

“You new?” Tomboy Girl asked me.

“Just moved here.”

“Yeah? Where from?” This time she smiled, lips curling up like she was actually interested.

“San Francisco.”

“Must be nice in San Francisco.”

“Yup.”

“I’m Ann,” she said, flashing a grin, which instantly revealed killer cheekbones and dimples. She was built tiny, like a ballerina, and her beautiful skin was the beautiful color of oak. As she reached for her milk, the bangles on her arm made a tinkling sound. I don’t know why, but I liked her at once.

“I’m Justine,” I said, picking up half of my sandwich.

“Justine, you know you can’t eat the food here? Because it’ll, like, it’s so disgusting, it’ll give you cooties — the double cooties.”

“Oops,” I said, stopping myself midbite.

At that, all the girls giggled.

“Go ahead and eat it,” a second girl said. “As usual, Ann’s being a tad dramatic.”

“You sure?”

“I mean,” she said, “it might not be gourmet, but it won’t make you sick.”

“If you say so,” I said.

Then the first girl, Ann, turned toward me and, with the smile still on her face, said: “What’s that dress you’re wearing? Is that some San Francisco style or something?”

“It’s a paper dress,” I said it. “Vintage.”

“In other words, it’s old, right?”

“From about 1968, 1969.”

“Is that, like, a trend out there?” the other girl said.

“It’s more that I’m personally into the Mod look,” I said, actually relaxing into the conversation as the girls beamed what looked like genuine welcome toward me.

But no sooner had I started to explain the difference between “Mod” specifically and “flower power” or “retro” in general, then the first girl, Ann — the one with the beautiful dark skin and ridiculous cheekbones — said: “And if it gets too hot, you can just rip a couple of holes in it and — voilà — instant air-conditioning!” Everyone cracked up.

My face was on fire all over again, so much so that I could feel the heat flaming out of my head and radiating all around my body. Too bad it didn’t just incinerate me. It was all I could do to mumble a “Yeah, right” without choking on my turkey on whole wheat with lettuce and mayo.

I ran back into the bathroom, slammed the stall door closed, and called Eliza, whose phone, of course, wasn’t on. Then I texted her: “New Jersey bites! I feel like I’m wearing a giant upside-down Dixie Cup!” After I pressed the send button I felt a little better, but not enough to stop me from feeling like the world’s biggest idiot — a girl who wasn’t only plump and pink and a misfit, but someone so desperate that she resorted to wearing clown clothes. After all, my own father barely paid attention to me.

Later, when Mom asked me how my first day of school went, I said what I always said: “Fine.” Then I went upstairs, ripped my dress into shreds, and put them in the trash can. But at least I didn’t cry.

I
swear to God
, my mother loves the dog more than she loves me. She calls her “darling” and makes up songs about how beautiful she is. Then, right in front of my face, she’ll say: “And unlike some girls, you don’t whine when I won’t buy you hooker shoes, do you, Lucy?”

“Meryl, I’m almost sixteen. And they’re not hooker shoes.”

“You’re nowhere near sixteen,” my mother says, reaching for her ubiquitous can of Diet Coke. “And they are, too.”

She’s a therapist who sees patients, but mainly, she’s made a career out of writing about me. Have you heard of the Daughter Doctor series by Meryl Sanders, PhD —
Navigating the Normal: Tears and Tantrums during the Teen Years
, or
Mothers and Daughters: The Forever Bond
? That’s right: They’re both hers. And I’m her star witness, her heroine, her guinea pig and protagonist all wrapped up into one. Someone to be dissected and put back together in the pages of her books. “But no one knows it’s you!” she says when I ask her to write about something else. “Not only do I always use my maiden name, but I never use your name at all. Not to mention that the mother-daughter bond is my expertise, and people deserve good, sound advice. Don’t you agree?”

“No.”

“Honey, I
am
you,” she says. “I know you better than you know yourself.”

Except she doesn’t, not anymore. Yeah, maybe when I was little, and I could tell her everything, and she always knew what to say and how to make me feel better. But now? Forget it. It would end up in one of her books. Which is why, just to take the most prominent example, she doesn’t know that while I was in Paris last summer, studying art and French at the University of Paris, I dated a twenty-year-old named Arnaud. When I was with him, it was as if my entire body was made out of magic. Like I glowed, and sparkled, and flew over the heads of ordinary people.

In addition to studying philosophy (and writing his thesis on Jacques Lacan), Arnaud is a poet. He even wrote poems about me. I can’t remember how they all went, but here’s a part I do remember:
Sa peau soyeuse comme la brume soyeuse/Ses yeux comme le ciel et comme le soleil . . .

Which means
: Her silky skin like silky mist/Her eyes like sky and sun . . .

Which sure beats, “My own daughter is a perfect example of a teenager when the unruly passions meet the unruly hormones, and our darling baby girls morph before our eyes into spastic legs, barbed remarks, and budding breasts.” Gee, thanks, Mom. I love to be the butt of everyone’s jokes.

“Ah, New York, city of dreams!” Arnaud said the first time we met, which was when we were standing in line at the ATM just outside my dorm. I was wearing my NYU T-shirt, so I guess he thought I was a student there. “One day I will go to New York,” he said. “Perhaps you can show me around?” I didn’t tell him that I lived in New Jersey with my family and was still in high school, but I figured that it was no big deal — after all, it was just a conversation in an ATM line.

“What are you studying?” he continued in English. “Art? Literature? Dance?”

“Art,” I said, which was at least partially true. I didn’t paint or draw or whatever, but I
was
taking a class on the early modernists, particularly Picasso. I’d already been to the Picasso Museum twice.

“You stay here?” he said, indicating the dorm I lived in with a nod of his head.

“
Malheureusement, oui
,” I said. (Which means: Unfortunately, yes.)

“So much better to have a place of your own,
non
?” he said.

“
C’est bon,
” — it’s okay — I said.

As far as the dorm went, though, I really didn’t have a choice. It was either live in the dorm, which I knew I was going to hate, or not go to Paris at all; that’s how against it Meryl had been. All I can say is thank God for my father, because even though there are days when I don’t get to see him all that much (he’s a doctor and sometimes has to work long hours), he’s always, as in
always
, on my side.

Which is why, in the end, Meryl agreed to let me go to Paris, because Daddo had said that he thought it would be good for me to study abroad, adding that it wouldn’t hurt my college prospects any to improve my French.

So I was all set, and everything was
parfait
(perfect), except for one detail: I’d forgotten to pack my raincoat! I could have strangled myself, too, because not only did it rain ALL the time, but also, my raincoat wasn’t just any old raincoat: It was this totally awesome Donna Karan that I got for my birthday after I’d begged for it for about a thousand years, and where better to wear something that awesome than Paris? As usual, though, if it hadn’t been for Daddo, I never would have gotten it at all, because Meryl had been against it from the beginning. I know because I overheard them talking one night, with him saying, “But she’ll probably wear it for ten years,” and Meryl saying, “Do you have any idea how much you spoil that girl?” Daddo was just the best, though, and in the end, it had been Meryl who’d given it to me, saying that because I was special, she’d wanted to give me something special. Made of elegantly brushed black sateen, it flared out at the waist and had wide black velvet lapels and cuffs. I’d found it online and was instantaneously obsessed. I’d simply never seen a more beautiful piece of clothing. I was so angry at myself for having forgotten to pack it that I even told my roommate about it. Not that she could care. She studied 24/7 and went to bed by ten. She never said so, but I could tell she was jealous of me. Like when I started seeing Arnaud? All she could say was: “Isn’t he kind of old for you?”

I loved Paris, though. I loved the wide boulevards and the old buildings and the way people stayed out late at night, talking and laughing. I loved being able to take the Metro everywhere and shopping at little outdoor stalls. And most of all I loved the sense that I was on my own, free to be myself without Meryl always watching me and breathing down my neck and checking to make sure I wasn’t developing an eating problem or didn’t have social anxiety disorder or ADHD or wasn’t “experimenting” with drugs or all the other things that she loved — just LOVED — to write about.

“Ah, how I would like maybe to live among all the foreign women students!” Arnaud said, grinning a grin so wide that it made his dimples dance. I was like:
No way.
He was the most unbelievably gorgeous guy I’d ever seen! And there was something so charming about him, so — different. Not different as in weird, but different as in
special.

Okay, I’ll admit it: That very first time I met him, I fell madly in love with Arnaud. MADLY! But not in the gross high-school-crush way. Or like I was obsessed with him, sending thought waves toward him in the hopes that he’d hear them and ask me out. (Okay, maybe I was a little obsessed, but at least I didn’t go around blabbing about how cute he was and how I just had to make him notice me.) I was in luck, though: Two days after we first met, there he was again, this time going into a used bookshop across the street from the university library. I waited a minute or two, then headed into the bookstore myself. It was dark and dusty inside, with sagging wood floors and a fan propped in the corner of the ceiling, waving the lit dust motes around. I spotted Arnaud three rows back and slowly made my way toward him — but not before I’d picked up a book on Picasso so he’d think my being there was just a coincidence.

“
Bonjour
,” he said as I rounded the corner. I looked at him like:
I’m sorry, but do I know you?
Then I smiled. “You’re the guy from the ATM line, right?” I said (in French).

“And you’re the girl from NYU,” he said. “Someday, maybe I, too, will go there. To get my doctorate! In philosophy, no? In New York! Paris — she is beautiful, no? But New York is
America
!”

He was just so . . . well, I know it’s a funny word to apply to a guy, but he was
beautiful.
Slim but not skinny, on the tall side, with light-brown curly hair, slightly freckled skin, and eyes the color of green sea glass. Plus, he had
style.
Not like a gay guy or a hipster or a self-styled bohemian, either: Arnaud’s style was very casual, as if he’d picked his clothes up off the floor, not even noticing what they were, but at the same time, completely perfect. His faded jeans were rumpled; the cuffs of his white cotton button-down shirt were slightly frayed, rolled up to just beneath the elbow; and his expressive feet were in brown leather sandals. He carried a beat-up raincoat draped over his left arm, as if it were a cape.

The first time I went out with Arnaud, it started to rain, and there I was, again, kicking myself for having forgotten to bring my raincoat. As we ambled down the rue Danielle Casanova, though, I must have shivered, because the next thing I knew, Arnaud was taking off his own coat and offering it to me. It was only when my left arm and side were inside the raincoat that I realized that he was still in it — that we were sharing the coat, each of us with one sleeve and one front flap. Because I’m so tall, it fit me perfectly. Arnaud noticed it, too, saying: “
Comment bien vous regardez dans mon manteau! Très belle.
” (How well you look in my coat! Very nice.)

Inside, the lining was worn and warm, and it gave off a powdery fragrance, as if it had been absorbing the dusty fragrance of old books for years. It smelled, I realized, like
him.

We laughed all the way to the café, and when we got there, I noticed people looking at us, smiling. It was like all of a sudden I’d become a movie star, an icon: someone who everyone recognized and wanted to know. It was as if I’d been injected with magic juice.

It wasn’t just that Arnaud was cute, either. Lots of guys are cute. But Arnaud had a kind of grace and flourish that was so, so, so, so, so, so different from the stupid, adolescent boys at school and my dreadful, idiotic brat of a brother, who, by the way, thinks he’s a drummer. Meryl and Daddo gave him a set of drums one year for Christmas because, in the words of my mother: “Danny needs a healthy way to get his energy out.”

“Paris is so quiet in the summer,” Arnaud murmured. “Everyone goes away.”

“New York’s like that, too. By August, it’s dead.”

“You need to come back in the fall or winter, when Paris is back to normal. When everyone returns. When there’s life on the streets. In the summer? Nothing but tourists.”

“Like me?” I said.

“No,” he said, with a delicious, mischievous smile on his face. “You, a tourist? Never.”

Before Arnaud, I’d never walked in the rain singing, never had someone recite poetry to me, never been to a Polish movie with,
mais oui
, French subtitles, never gone to a midnight movie, and never . . . well, you know. Not that we went all the way, or even close. But the truth — and I’m kind of embarrassed to admit it — is that I’d never really kissed anyone before. I mean, guys had lunged at me plenty of times, and I’d tried it, but basically they had all grossed me out. With Arnaud, though, it was different. Everything about him, from his handsome chin to the clean way his skin smelled to his shaved cheeks to the laugh lines at the corners of his mouth made me feel comfortable around him,
willing.
Still, I was nervous. I didn’t want Arnaud to know how inexperienced I was. I didn’t want him to know that my dad was the most old-fashioned father in the whole world, who’d grown up in a Costa Rican neighborhood going to church every other second, and that I still, on occasion, sat on his lap. Nor did I want him to know that my mother had made a career out of writing about my “adolescent years.” After all, he thought I was already in college!

He took me to the rue Mouffetard, which has open-air stalls selling old books, sheet music, china, jewelry, everything. He took me to hear a lecture on the late work of Camus. (It was in French, so I didn’t understand most of it.) He took me to his favorite spot on the Seine, where we watched the barges making their slow way. In another flea market — this one in the Marais — we stopped at a stall that sold nothing but the most beautiful silk scarves, but even secondhand, I couldn’t afford to buy one, even though I was dying to and tried on half a dozen of them, just for fun. So you can only imagine how amazing it was when, a few days later, Arnaud gave me most beautiful Hermès scarf I’d ever seen — pale pink, with tiny swirls of delicate grays and greens, wrapped loosely in crumpled brown paper, like he’d stuffed it in his pocket on the way back from the Marais market. As I turned it over in my hands, I noticed that on one end of the scarf was a tiny stain in the shape of a heart, and wondered if he’d seen it as well.

“You must have it,” he said. “
Pour toi, la belle fille
.”