The St. Ambrose School for Girls(2)
“Look at this building. Just look at it.”
My mother slams the driver’s side door to add an exclamation point, and the sound of the hollow bang brings us attention from the other girls who are unpacking from their parents’ cars. As my mother smiles in the direction of a Volvo station wagon and then a Mercedes sedan, there’s expectation and relish in her still-attractive features, like she’s prepared to be invited to dine with the Izod-wearing fathers and the Talbots-clad mothers. What she fails to notice, and maybe this is a blessing, is that their perusal of us is of short and disinterested duration, a cursory assessment of my black Goth-ness and my mother’s synthetic-fiber, fake von Furstenberg dress. They don’t even bother to reject us. We’re not significant enough for that. We’re something they look through, ghosts of the lower middle class.
“Go introduce yourself to the girls.”
When I don’t respond, my mother glares over at me, and then refocuses on the Mercedes as if she’s trying out the logistics of dragging me to it.
She’s going to need a fireman’s hold.
“We have to unpack the car,” I say.
The Mercury’s trunk has two suitcases in it. One a battered black, the other a winsome blue that has inexplicably fared better with age—black seems like it would be stronger, more durable. I take them out one by one. As I straighten, I see around the corner of the dorm. There is a plumbing truck parked in the back. Albrecht & Sons. It is white with blue lettering, the telephone number starting with an area code I am not familiar with.
“You really need to introduce yourself,” my mother says.
“Why do the plumbers need to meet me?”
“What the heck are you talking about?”
She exhales over her shoulder, flicks the butt onto the lawn, and lights another cigarette. She smokes when she’s frustrated with me, but she also smokes for a lot of other reasons.
I look over to the Mercedes that has commanded her attention. The car has a rich, creamy yellow body, and its hubcaps are painted to match the sunny shade. The fact that, at this moment, there isn’t a fellow student of my own age to introduce myself to anywhere near it is irrelevant. My mother wants to go over and make acquaintances between adults, and as she stares at the mother and father, she gleams like lamé. In her mind, she’s no doubt advancing way past dinner in the small town we went through about two miles down the road. She’s spending a late-season week at their summer house. Then they’re all skiing together wherever people like that ski together in Colorado during Christmas break. Finally, three years from now, she sees them all sitting together at graduation, sharing in-jokes and reminiscing with a tear about how fast the young ones have grown up, and how lucky they are to have found each other.
Lifelong friends in a blink, the assumptions and the fantasy as real to her as my own assessment that the last thing those two wealthy people want is for a pair of scrubs like us to do anything other than wash that pretty, buttercup-colored sedan of theirs.
“You’re being ridiculous,” she announces. “We’re going over there.”
My mother links her lower arm through mine, and I think of the old-fashioned Wizard of Oz movie, Dorothy lined up with her friends, skipping down the yellow brick road. It’s an apt image on one level, at least. We’re going to my mother’s version of the wizard, and out of the two of us, I’m the only one who cares what’s behind the curtain. My mother is not just content to be on the surface; staying superficial is necessary for her survival.
The parents of the Mercedes—and, presumably, a student who’s also in this dorm—look at us a second time as we approach. I’m embarrassed by everything about my mother: the dress, the lipstick stain on her cigarette, her peroxide yellow hair, this Hail Mary “introduction” that has taken us over a boundary line that to me is as obvious as a border wall. I’m also ashamed of my cheap black clothes, even though they are a persistent expression of my inner self, a signal to the world that I am different and apart from the crowd. Armor.
The good news about looking like a freak is no one tries to talk to you.
“Isn’t this a marvelous campus!” my mother says. “I’m Theresa—Tera Taylor. This is Sarah Taylor. She goes by Sally. How do you do.”
Ah. She’s switched into Rich Person Dialect. I’ve heard her do this before. She picked it up while watching Robin Leach.
And so much for my going as Bo here.
The father’s eyes go to the V in the top of my mother’s dress. Then he looks at her mouth. My mother recognizes this perusal and shifts her body so that one hip moves out of place, the inquiry on his part answered with an affirmative on hers. Meanwhile, the wife notices no part of this currency exchange between her husband and what could arguably be called a tart. The other mother’s eyes land on me, and the pity in them makes me look at the pavement.
I don’t want any part of this. But this whole thing, from the clandestine application and shocking admission to the excited way my mother talked all summer long about my coming “to St. Ambrose” to this “introduction,” is the same rabbit hole for Tera Taylor, a glossy magazine she is creating for herself. The defect in her reasoning, which is a blindness similar to the other mother failing to see her husband’s flirtation, is that no one else is going to buy this bullshit. I’m no more a St. Ambrose girl than Tera Taylor could be.