Use Me Page 4

  NOVICE BITCH

  “Want a treat?” my mother asks, but before I can even open my mouth, Sunny slips a hot-dog-shaped dog yummie between her teeth, bends down, and scoops Waffles up off the kitchen floor. Waffles obediently bites down on the tiny weenie and for a second, nose to nose, they kiss.

  “Well, that is completely revolting,” I say.

  My mother raises an eyebrow, and I wait for her to share some inane dog factoid with me, like how a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s, but she doesn’t, instead she sighs. Sunny is the wounded mother persecuted by a selfish ungrateful daughter. Mildred Pierce of Park Avenue.

  “Dogs are easy. They listen, Mary Beth. They respond to kindness,” my mother says, stroking Waffles as she peruses the day’s schedule for the Westminster Dog Show. My mother is such a drama queen.

  “Poor Sunny,” I say. “How do you ever stand it?”

  She won’t even look at me. She absolutely detests it when I call her by her first name, but I cannot help it, sometimes it just slips out.

  Waffles is a King Charles spaniel, the dog most favored by the royal family of Spain and immortalized in the court paintings of Goya. They were lap dogs, canine napkins for their owners to wipe their greasy hands on during banquets. I think this is why my mother bought him, even though he is not a show dog. Sunny still has delusions of grandeur, of the old days when she had a buzzer under the dining-room table that she would push with her foot when she wanted the cook to serve the next course, the old days when my father would instruct the pilot to land the company plane so my mother could pee on terra firma. Now, at forty-eight, my mother is a divorcée in a dim little two-bedroom apartment at Eighty-first and Park that the two of us have shared for the last four years. Sunny is one of those blazered geeks you see trotting poodles in formation, bribing them with liver snaps to stand still on a table while some stranger gropes their withers. She would never have done this if my father hadn’t left her for a twenty-five-year-old, forcing her to find something to do in order to make a living. She should thank him; after all, she is always saying, “Dog training is the first thing I’ve ever done for myself, and it’s the first thing I’ve ever been really really good at it.” I am supposed to disagree with her, say she is a great mother. Ha.

  Today Mom is showing Mr. Jeffrey, one of her prize dogs. This pug could make her.

  “Puppy Class, Novice Bitch, Best of Breed…” my mother mutters to herself as she takes down her favorite cereal bowl. I like to say novice bitch. It’s like a bitch in training.

  On this big day Mom’s preparing her breakfast of champions—she weighs what looks like a cup of gravel on her trusty diet scale, pours some blue milk over it, then digs in, her chewing sounding like a wood chipper.

  When she finishes she puts her bowl on the floor, where Waffles hoovers up the last bit of milk.

  “Did you eat anything, Mary Beth?” she asks, peering over her reading glasses so she can actually see me. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Are you getting taller, or is that hemline inching up?” She frowns, and two wrinkles in her forehead cross like swords on a family crest. “I’d like to hear what the sisters have to say about that.” Sacred Virgin Academy is supposed to be the strictest of the socially elite Catholic girls’ schools in the city, a place where girls from good families can go to have the inner wayward slut disciplined out. I’ve been going there since I was three. My parents weren’t taking any chances. On the way home from school we roll up the waists of our blue skirts to make them minis, stuff our ties in our bags, ditch the ugly navy blazers, push down our socks, undo an extra button on our white blouses to show off cleavage and, in my case, a little gold crucifix with a ruby in the center, caught between my tits. Could you die?

  “I ate already.”

  “What did you eat?” she asks suspiciously.

  “I had a donut and milk.” I just love watching my mother’s face scrunch up in disgust.

  As usual, I absolutely could not sleep. I lay in bed fiddling with my crucifix—my father gave it to me for my confirmation—but I just could not lie still, so I got up. Anyway, it was already six, a slit of yellow light catching fire at the bottom of my shade. Sometimes I like to get up really early and just throw a coat over my pajamas, then stroll up Lexington Avenue. It is completely deserted and eerie like a movie set, not a soul around except for recovering alcoholics riding their bikes to AA meetings and doormen hosing off the sidewalks. It is like I own the entire world. At the Korean market I bought a chocolate donut, a carton of Quik, and a pack of Marlboro Lights. I really was not hungry, the cigarette was okay, but that’s about all. And of course, about twenty minutes later when I was in the shower I threw it all up. As I was kneeling there trying to push my vomit down the drain, I almost started to cry, which I absolutely never do. I can go months and months without crying. But getting sick like that, it bugged me for some reason. It never had before.

  Two years ago, when I was fourteen my mother taught me how to throw up. She’d come home from a New York Kennel Club meeting and found me sprawled and groaning on the family-room floor, skirt unbuttoned, legs akimbo, wallowing in a sea of shiny cellophane Little Debbie Snack Cake wrappers. The way Sunny reacted, you’d have thought she’d found me doped up and naked with a Puerto Rican boy.

  After nearly making me beg her to make it better, she dragged me to my feet and pushed me into the bathroom. I felt as full as the ticks I used to pull off of Waffles in the country, ticks big and fat as blueberries that I would explode with matches like little blood bombs. I had this marvelous vision of my mother holding my chin as she fed me spoonfuls of sweet pink Pepto-Bismol, then tucking me into her big bed with a glass of ginger ale.

  In the bathroom she cranked the sink taps on full blast, little droplets of water spraying out of the bowl, hanging in the air like a fine misting rain.

  “Here,” she said, getting down on her knees beside the sink, kneeling in front of the toilet the way we kneeled together at Mass.

  “Come on,” she said gently, and pulled me down beside her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  I nodded. This was far too weird. I stared at my mother’s hand grasping the toilet seat; I couldn’t even imagine her touching a toilet. I could see the tiniest little nicks on her knuckles.

  “Now, you want that garbage gone, don’t you? Because that’s what it is right now, just garbage,” she said, her voice suddenly hard and purposeful.

  I nodded again.

  “Gone forever from your body. You want to feel light and clean, don’t you?” she said as though she wasn’t just teaching me to puke but also offering to wash away my sins.

  “Of course you do.” She pushed my hair back behind my ears, and into the back of my blouse, split ends tickling my spine. “For safety’s sake,” she said.

  “Just these two fingers,” she directed, holding up her first and middle fingers pressed together. “That’s good.”

  So I opened my mouth, leaned over the toilet, and stuck my fingers in my mouth. I felt that little pendulum of pink flesh in the back of my throat brush the back of my hand. I gagged, of course, but nothing happened. I was failing her. Hail Mary, I prayed.

  “Here, let me help you,” she said, and took my hand and guided it into my mouth, my teeth scraping the top of my hand. She didn’t even seem to see me; she was biting her lip, deep in concentration, as she pushed my hand further and further until both of my fingers were well down my throat, the tips of my fingers touching my windpipe. She held my hand there, even as I started to gag, my stomach leaping like a trampoline, tears bouncing into my eyes. She let go just in time and everything came up—bright yellow Fritos, my garish hot lunch of sloppy joe and fries, chocolate milk, and the barely digested Little Debbies, the cream still visible. My back arched like a cat as I heaved again, this time just at the smell of it.

  “Don’t worry, it gets easier,” my mother said, then stood up and straightened her skirt. “You did very well, dear. I’m prou
d of you.” She bent down and patted my head, then turned the tap down to a trickle. I laid my head on the toilet seat and listened to the water run. I watched my mother walk away, her greyhound legs moving with purpose, high heels clicking on the tile floor. I studied her tight calves, the muscles massed in a ball, permanently shortened by a life in high heels, so that now it hurt her to walk in flats.

  That was the closest we have ever been. That was our big connection. She wanted to help me, and I think I loved her then. I think purging is the only thing Sunny has taught me other than how to respond to a formal party invitation and when and where you can wear white shoes. It is so annoying, but almost every time I make myself throw up, I think of her—if just for a split second. Sometimes I think, See, take that, I am not fat, and I am not a child. I can take care of myself. Sometimes I think, I don’t want to be you. I want to be just the opposite of you.

  This morning when I threw up in the shower I did not think of her, I thought of Dr. Andrews. I had a three o’clock appointment. What was I going to wear?

  “You’re in bed,” Sunny says, stating the obvious.

  “I’m sick,” I say, and curl up like a shrimp.

  “It’s that donut,” she says. “Good Lord, Mary Beth, do you have any idea how many calories are in a chocolate donut? Do you? They are the atom bomb of the food world,” she says, her eyes flitting around the room like a weapons inspector searching for warheads: an arsenal of candy corn, an underwear drawer mined with Tastycakes.

  “I don’t know about that,” I say, rolling onto my back so I can see her upside down, “but in yesterday’s Post it reported that a recent study found the aroma of donuts to be the single most arousing scent to men.”

  “Oh, that’s nice, Mary Beth, that’s a very nice way to talk to your mother.”

  “Mmmm. Dunkin’ Munchkins.”

  “Fine. I don’t want to hear you complain about not having a boyfriend.” If only she knew. I would bet money that I have slept with more guys than my mother ever did.

  “I cannot get over you, Sunny. Here I am near death’s door and you are on me about my weight,” I say. “I have been vomiting for days. Days.”

  “I’m just trying to help you,” she replies, then pulls out her compact and vigorously powders her nose. “Beauty is power, dear. You better learn it now.” She crayons on a bit of shell-pink lipstick, a shade she’s been wearing since her debutante days.

  “I know, Mother,” I say, trying to sound forlorn, like she is always right and I am always wrong. I do not want to fight anymore today. I just want her to leave. I struggle to sit up and hunch my shoulders so I look completely pathetic.

  “Do you need me to write you a note?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “Fine,” she says as she puts on her blazer and straightens her lapels. She runs her hands quickly up the length of each leg, checking her stockings for ladders.

  “If you need me you know where I’ll be,” she says, and gives me a little half hug. Mother-daughter photo op.

  “Oh, I love my sweet baby,” she coos, ambushing Waffles as he licks his groin in my bedroom doorway. She cradles him in her arms and kisses him on the belly. She shuts my door, and then a second later opens it. “Dear, do you think you will be able to use those tickets for the dog show?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, annoyed. I am sick after all.

  “You know, it would be nice if you took the smallest interest in what I do,” she says.

  I say nothing. What can I say?

  “Well,” she sighs, “that’s the best ticket in town today, and believe me, some people would give their eyeteeth to be there. It’s a big day. Mr. Jeffrey…Best of Breed…” she says as though this will entice me.

  I shrug.

  “If his owner calls, could you please tell her I’m already at the Garden, and tell her to keep the dirty laundry off the floor. I tell you, if that dog eats one more sock, saints protect us,” she says, crossing herself and closing the door behind her with a ladylike slam.

  I flip on the TV and have a smoke. Then I go into the kitchen and open the fridge. There’s a wallet-sized studio portrait of Mr. Jeffrey on the door. A pug in profile in front of a blue satin curtain. It looks like a school photo. All he needs is a bow tie. What a runt. I think about taking a little nip of my mother’s frozen Stoli, but I don’t. My stomach hurts, but it is a good hurt; the insistent hunger pangs remind me that I have control. In one way, I am pure. Still, my heart is absolutely pounding, like a ball-peen hammer on steel.

  I pinch a Valium from Sunny’s medicine cabinet and think about calling Phillip, but he’s at work. Yesterday morning I’d stopped by his apartment at seven. As I was tiptoeing out of the apartment, my mother called sleepily from her bedroom, “Grab a banana.”

  I had to crack up.

  At first he was mad that I’d just stopped by, as he always was, but once he had me tied up to his Ikea bed frame, in my school uniform, white cotton panties at my ankles, he was happy. Afterward, after he’d modestly stepped back into the boxers he’d left like a pair of fireman’s boots by the bed, after he’d showered and I’d wiped myself with his lame bondage gear—four Brooks Brothers silk neckties—I sat him down and told him I was pregnant, and he was mad again. He started to completely freak out. “You’re seventeen—for Christ’s sake!” he said, as though I had to be reminded. Tears came into his eyes. He said, “I hate this. I really really hate this.”

  “Me too. I’ve never been in this situation before, I’m lost. I don’t know what to do!” I wonder if, like my father’s, the tips of my ears turn red when I lie.

  Phillip did know what to do. He figured it all out like the businessman he was—he was so good at figuring out profits and risks. I would get an abortion. There was no other choice.

  Of course, just being a kid I don’t have that kind of cash, even if my dad is rich. Phillip was good about that; there’d be no going dutch, no way. We walked together to the cash machine, but not holding hands. It was so odd to be on the street with him in the daylight, him all grown-up in his Wall Street costume—a dark gray Brooks Brothers suit and black tasseled loafers—and me in my hideous blue uniform. As we walked I started lagging behind him. I wanted him to slow down and walk with me, talk to me, but he was cruising. At one point, I let him cross the street without me, the traffic rushing through the space between us. I stood there with a girl in a uniform similar to mine, but she was maybe eleven. She had chubby thighs and her hair was brushed back into a low sophisticated ponytail and fastened with a tortoiseshell clip, the way I bet her mother wore her own hair. She was holding hands with her father and he was tugging on her ponytail and she was laughing like it was the funniest damn thing in the world. I don’t remember if my father ever walked me to school. I just don’t remember. When the light changed, the two of them literally hopped off the curb and, arm in arm, crossed the street. I thought, That girl has never even given a guy a blow job. She’s never had a guy feel her up and tell her, “You are so beautiful.”

  Across the street, Phillip was glaring at me. Hands on his hips, he barked, “Come on, step it up,” just like my father.

  At the ATM he inserted his card, then paused for a moment, turning his shoulder to shelter the screen like some kid who thinks you want to cheat off him. God, he had some nerve.

  “I’ve got to make sure I’ve got enough,” he said in a low voice. “Shit,” he said. “It’s got to be money market.”

  He sighed, dug into his briefcase, and pulled out a slim black checkbook. Then, right there in the street, he wrote me a check. I held out my Algebra II book and he used it for a desk. His handwriting was shakier than a boy’s; he needed a Valium.

  “Get a good doctor, a reputable man. Do you know what I mean, Mary Beth?”

  I nodded, I knew what he meant—someone discreet. I didn’t tell him I’d already made an appointment last week.

  “This should cover it, don’t you think?” he asked me, and I saw there a glimmer of who we u
sed to be. Me sitting in his lap at Dorian’s, the bar where we met. The romantic dinners in expensive restaurants smaller than my living room, the clubbing and staying up until morning doing coke and smoking pot and talking about his dull Ohio childhood. The pressure of his body on top of mine. The time a homeless guy selling roses and giant stuffed chickens out of a shopping cart told him, “That’s one beautiful girl, you best hold on to her,” and Phillip laughed and said, “Don’t I know it, brother.”

  It was understood that the money was to cover “the procedure,” a cab, some flowers for me, maybe a box of chocolates, some bubble bath. He kissed me quickly on the lips, then pulled me to his chest.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said into my part, holding me tight against his body, like he wanted to hide me inside of him. It felt good to be touched, to be held in place so tightly. Here I was. Then he pulled away and took my chin in one hand. “Take care of yourself,” he said, starting to cry again, and that was that.

  Well, I was taking care of myself. I was a girl with a check for $2,000. As I caught the bus to school, I wondered how much money a thirty-three-year-old stockbroker made. What would he have had to shell out if he’d wanted to make me an honest woman? Wasn’t two months’ salary the rule of thumb for what a man was supposed to blow on a girl’s engagement ring?

  I’d been gypped.

  The doorbell rings. I peek through the fish-eye and see Marco, our doorman, standing in the hall, grinning at me. “Your mother tells me you’re sick,” he says when I open the door. Marco is nicer to me than any other adult. I think it’s because he and his wife can’t have kids.

  “Here, I thought this might make you feel better. You got a postcard from your father.” He holds it up between his fingers like a magician pulling the lucky card you picked out of the pack.

  “Oh really,” I say, trying to sound bored, then I snap the card out of his fingers and close the door fast.