The St. Ambrose School for Girls(3)
“Greta will be down in a minute, I’m sure,” the mother of the Mercedes is saying. “She was here last year as a freshman so she’s excited to see everyone.”
“Greta and Sarah!” My mother claps and ash falls on the back of her hand. She shakes it off with a grimace she almost hides. “The two of them will be the best of friends. It’s fate.”
“Here is Greta now.”
My eyes swing like the boom of a sailboat, an attempt to come about and salvage this poor tack I’m on. What I see emerging from the darkened interior of the dorm gives me no relief. It is blond. It is tall. It has limbs that would be described as willowy in a supermarket romance novel.
It has the eyes of a predator.
Even, if not especially, as it assumes the facsimile of a pleasant expression.
“Greta’s” smile is shiny and white, a second sun. She has freckles dusting across a nose that is so straight and perfectly proportioned, you might assume she’d had it done—until you look at her father and realize that all that aquiline is the result of breeding, no donkey in this bloodline of thoroughbreds. She also has cheekbones with hollows under them—which makes me decide her baby fat was ordered to vacate the premises years ago—and her clothes are expensive and right out of Seventeen magazine: a boxy turquoise jacket, a coral crop top, a kicky skirt with contrast leggings, ballet flats.
She is a jewel.
“Greta,” her mother says, “this is your new best friend, Sally.”
There is no awkward pause because the girl puts her hand right out. “Welcome to Ambrose.”
My mother golf-claps around her cigarette again, but doesn’t burn herself this time.
I glance at Greta once more in case I was wrong, in case my insecurities have misconstrued what is actually going on. As our eyes meet, she somehow manages to smile wider and narrow her stare at the same time. It’s a cute trick.
If you’re Cujo.
My heart pounds sure as if I am already running in the opposite direction, throwing myself in the trunk of the Mercury, and refusing to come out until I am released from this ruse.
My mother is wrong. Greta and I will never be friends.
And one of us is going to be dead by the end of the semester.
chapter TWO
It is forty-five minutes later. I’m back down by the car, and the Mercury is empty of my things, the laundry basket returned to the front seat without its load of folded sheets and blankets. My mother is embracing me, and I breathe in the familiar scent of cigarette smoke and Primo, the knockoff Giorgio perfume she buys at CVS. She’s leaving not because I have unpacked, but because she is getting no further than the introduction stage with Greta’s parents. They’ve made the disappointing choice to help their daughter settle in across the hall, ignoring the incredible opportunity of forging a relationship with Theresa who goes by Tera.
I know this dose of reality is challenging my mother’s imaginary world so she’s got to go before the spell is broken, Cinderella pulling out of the ball early before she realizes she’s actually at a pool hall. I’m the glass slipper in this analogy, and I’m very certain that my mother’s already anticipating a Parents’ Weekend reunion with her new best friends, my residence at Tellmer the thread that will connect her once again with the objects of her aspiration.
Things are going to work out for her. She just knows this.
She’s getting behind the wheel now. She’s lighting another cigarette. Absently, I note that she has only four left in the pack. She’ll stop for gas and more Virginia Slims at the Sunoco down in the little town, but I have to believe the fumes of her fantasy are what will really carry her back to our meager existence, not whatever unleaded she pumps into the tank of her old car.
My mother looks up at me, and for an instant, the façade breaks and I see what is underneath. She’s worried about me. So am I. But my reality is not one that I can invite her into because this flare-up of motherly concern will not last more than a moment for her. The split in the clouds of her busy internal life is something I cannot trust and not because she’s abusive. She’s far from cruel; she’s just self-absorbed. Accordingly, I’ve learned the hard way that I’m the only savior I’ve got in this world.
“You’re going to be fine,” she says through an exhale of smoke.
She has to believe this because to entertain the opposing option that I will not be fine and leave me here anyway means she’s a negligent mother. Which she’s not. I have been fed, watered, clothed, and housed since the moment of my birth. The damage she does is never intentional, and besides, her desperate, twitchy, clawing need to distinguish herself from her lot in life tortures her much more than it does me.
I’ve always felt sorry for her.
“I’ll call you every Sunday at two p.m.,” she tells me.
“Okay.”
“You have the money I gave you.”
“Yes.”
There’s a long pause, and as things become uncomfortable, her eyes skip out to the lawn. The sight of the grass she is so taken with must calm her because she nods once, the sharp head bob like a gavel coming down on a court case, the verdict in. Then she waves at me with her cigarette and I step back to watch the Mercury pull away. In the wake of her departure, I link my arms around my middle. I blink in the lightning-bright sunshine of fall. I smell clean air.