CHF
Car Forestal made art out of what was on her plate.
"It isn't fattening," her mother said, but Car said the sauce was tasteless, and she pooled it in potatoes, which she never ate. "You know I don't."
Mrs. Forestal said she didn't know why she bothered with a cook, and Car said she didn't know why either. Mrs. Forestal said she tried to please, and Car said don't. Mrs. Forestal asked Car was she this way in school, and Car said which way? Mrs. Forestal said don't bother, and Car said she wouldn't. Nothing she did was right, Mrs. Forestal said, and Car said no, nothing she, Car, did was right.
"I can't talk to you."
"I can't talk to you either."
"Every night this."
"I can't please you, Mother. Nothing pleases you."
"That's not true."
"You're always on my case."
"I am not."
"Listen to yourself sometime; you are."
"Don't be smart, Carlotta."
"I'm not being."
"You're excused, then."
"But I'm not finished."
"You are. You're only playing with your food."
"Okay, if you want me out…"
"Don't run off to your father's."
"I'm not."
"I know you."
"No, you don't."
"I'm warning you."
"Yeah, what are you going to do?"
"Don't leave this house… Carlotta."
"I'm going out for a walk. Can I go out for a walk, Mother? My best friend is very sick, okay? I need to be by myself for a while, okay? I need to get out of this place."
Siddons
Dembroski, checking off attendance in senior-class meeting, was calling out, "Decrow? Has anyone seen Alex Decrow?"
"After ninth grade no one ever makes perfect attendance," Kitty Johnson said to Car. "What happens to us all in tenth grade?"
In tenth grade Mrs. Dell was killed in an accident, not so uncommon in the city: An out-of-control car drives onto a sidewalk. In Mrs. Dell's case, a taxi driver had a stroke and drove onto the sidewalk, injuring three and killing one, Grace Dell. The news flared in the papers, a photograph, and then hissed out.
Grace Dell, Dies at 44; October 4,1994. All those fours: four-four, four, four; four fours. "I bought into numerology for a while," Car said, then felt quick Quirk at the back of her neck wetly shushing: shush.
"I hope you know you're sitting at the Fat Table," Elizabeth F. said.
Greta Varislyvski seemed not to care or hear or even really see them but pulled her long self along the lunch bench until she was seated across from the two Elizabeths, Elizabeth F. and Elizabeth G.
Greta Varislyvski dully repeated, "Fat Table," as if she were answering the roll. Here was space to sit, and she had taken it. She was hungry. "I like to eat, too," she said. "All these girls counting calories. I'm not one of those."
The two Elizabeths were delighted then and told Greta she was welcome at the Fat Table anytime. The soy-cream sandwiches were under discussion. The Elizabeths knew that the soy-cream sandwiches they served in the cafeteria were disgusting, but they liked them, anyway. Elizabeth F. liked strawberry and Elizabeth G., raspberry cheesecake. Elizabeth G. insisted raspberry cheesecake was better. "It is, it is, it is," she said, and knocked against the other Elizabeth.
Greta Varislyvski made a face that might have been a laugh.
"Please," Elizabeth F. said, "don't yuck-yuck my yum-yum."
Suki an d Alex
"Please," Suki said, "I'm eating."
"I'm glad you are. I don't know what this is."
"A Caesar salad?"
"Really?" and she held up a square piece of iceberg. "What's the good of being rich, if I'm going to end up eating at Two Guys! Suki, I will pay whatever it costs never to eat at Two Guys again."
"Wow."
"Look," Alex said, "I don't want to be with the hoi polloi — that's the name of it, isn't it?" She said, "I know I am just a terrible snob, but honestly, Suki, why are we saving money? What's the point?"
"Something else is the matter, and I know what it is."
"Don't talk about him."
"I'm bored," Suki said. "Maybe after our salads, we should get our feet hennaed."
Siddons
The senior-class Halloween morning meeting was notable for the number of girls who came dressed as skinny icons: Car Forestal came as Audrey Hepburn, and Alex Decrow swagged around in short shorts as Dr. Holly Goodhead, with a fake knife and a conch. Suki, aka Twiggy, did up her enormous eyes and batted them at Dr. Meltzer, saying, "Can you guess who I am?"
"Death?" he tried.
Marlene Kovack was unusually ironic and came as Carrie in a blood-splattered prom queen's dress. Ufia, the black princess, wore a fruit headpiece and carried maracas but was obliged to explain herself as Carmen Miranda. "Doesn't anyone watch Turner Classics?" Edie Cohen and Kitty Johnson came as a couple, Raggedy Ann and Andy, and Sarah Saperstein and Ny Song, another senior couple, came as a Big Mac and french fries.
"Really sexy," Alex said to Ny.
The boom-box girls were singing along with Sheryl Crow, "If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad…"
Francesca Fratini was a "fun food" and came as a banana, and there were the usual number of witches, a policewoman with a riding crop, and a criminal in ball and chains, but the parade fell apart when a yodeling Heidi in a dirndl skated into the fun foods and knocked Fratini down. Lisa Van de Ven in a nurse's outfit with breasts as big as hams and padded hips came to the rescue, and Dr. D, in devil's horns and carrying a pitchfork, stood up to say, "Dismissed. To hell with you all!"
Fa La Lah
CHF
Car had tried to write it as a story, but it always came out an essay, a pushy essay full of complaint. "My father was using me to get his boyfriends" missed the real complications of Paris last spring. Walking arm in arm with her father through the lobby of Georges V had been fun. Was she mistress or daughter? He was purring corrections: "poissons de…not poisons de" and she was saying, "I am taking AP French, Dad. I ought to know."
Her father's frown was little; his skin was taut and cared for. "Oh, my daddy is a handsome man!" Fragrant and languorous, a man interested in pleasure, delights of all kinds. Museums and jazz. She could write this out, but it lacked what she saw when he walked away from her; she wasn't sure she could put it in words. She knew where he was in the dark recesses of a glassy bar, but she could not see his face. He came back eventually. On his own — he didn't need her — Car's father always fished up a beauty, a man, a man and a woman, a man and a woman and another man. He knew them from somewhere; he met them at the bar. Her father brought them all to the table, but Car was the one who entertained them, or so it seemed to her, answering questions about Siddons, talking Virgil and Sally Mann, Auden and Philip Larkin. Until it was late, midnight, a bit later, then her father took her back to the hotel and saw her to bed before he returned to the party.
Once at a café in an always dank, poor part of town, a yellow light over a table, a damp floor, once here, rushed to for shelter from the rain, breathless, cold, her father touched her. Her father was plucking her wet shirt away from her breasts. "Dad," she said. "Do you mind?" She was no mistress then; then she was his daughter.
"I'm sixteen," Car said to Madame de Ratignole at a cocktail party in honor of a well-known art critic. Car didn't know the art critic's name; she was in AP French lit. They were reading Le Père Goriot.