“It’s not as though all your close friends were going, and if Andrea doesn’t go, she’s going to feel left out.”
“Which confuses me,” I say quietly, “as this is an educational field trip for nine-year-olds.”
Sensing she’s stepped into something foul, Taylor backpedals with a faint laugh. “You know what I mean.”
I say nothing.
“It’s just that we’ve all been doing this together for years,” Taylor adds. “And it’s become something of a tradition, as well as a chance to help the school.”
“So that’s why everyone chaperones field trips? To be with their close friends?” I now laugh a little. “Funny, I thought everyone rushed to chaperone field trips to become the teacher’s best friend.”
Taylor’s not laughing anymore. There’s definitely tension here, and I’m glad. I’m so ready to take off the gloves and get down to business. Taylor and her daughter are selfish, shallow, and insensitive, and they represent everything I detest about my gender.
Social climbers, opportunists, and power hungry, they have a double agenda: They intimidate and manipulate others to further their own cause as well as maintain control.
You see, they’re not just bitchy, they’re bullies. They use language and social intelligence as a form of indirect aggression. Instead of weapons, they use words. Barbed remarks. A sharp tongue.
And until this very moment, I don’t think I fully understood what I was dealing with. Taylor isn’t merely a pretty petty annoyance, she’s a danger, because she’s teaching her daughters to perpetuate unkindness toward others. She’s teaching her daughters to become hurtful women.
But Taylor doesn’t know what I’m thinking, and she presses on in the same sickly-sweet tone of voice. “Seeing as you have only one child, you can’t know how difficult it is for those of us with three kids, but we don’t have your flexibility. We’d love your flexibility—”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have had more kids.”
Taylor laughs, but it’s not a light tinkle. She’s beginning to sound brittle. “That’s funny!”
I will smack her. I will knock her down. I will ride my motorcycle all over her and leave skid marks from here to kingdom come . . . Okay, I won’t, but the thought is so highly satisfying that I calm down.
“Taylor, I have to go, and I’m sorry for Andrea, but I promised Eva I’d chaperone this trip and I’m going.” As gently as I can, I hang up the phone.
It takes me another hour to realize why I’m so angry.
I’m not on the A team. I’m not even on the B team. I’m on the Team That Doesn’t Matter.
I wake up with a raging headache the next morning, pound a huge glass of water and two Advil before going to check on Eva.
Eva’s up, curled on the couch with a blanket over her lap. She’s holding her book How to Be the Most Popular Girl in Your School, but not reading or writing. Instead, she’s just lying there with the book clutched against her chest.
It still blows me away that she actually takes notes from that book.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, approaching her to put my hand on her forehead.
“So-so,” she answers wanly.
So-so is right. She doesn’t look good at all. “Have you had anything to eat or drink?”
She pales, shakes her head.
“Still queasy?” I ask.
She nods.
“But you do need to get some liquids into you.” I head for the kitchen, where I make some very watery grape Kool-Aid. “Drink this in tiny sips, see if you can keep it down.”
Eva clings to the plastic cup along with the book but doesn’t try to drink. I head back to the kitchen, where I make coffee, hoping it’ll help my headache.
As I grind the coffee, I glance at her on the couch, see the book under her arm, and wonder how to broach the subject of what she’s been reading. I’ve never had a hard time discussing anything with her before, but suddenly we’re on such opposite sides of the fence. I never wanted to be popular. She wants to be the queen bee. How can I help her on this one?
As I empty the ground beans into the coffee filter, I think about the different ways I could bring up the subject. Maybe I should tell her that I know Allie gave the book to her and ask her if she likes it.
Maybe I’ll just ask her which chapter she’s reading and if the notes help her remember the main points.
Coffee brewing, I wander back into the living room and curl up in a chair facing the couch. “Is that a good book?” I ask casually.
Eva nods, deep purple crescents beneath her eyes. “Yeah.”
“Is that the same book you’ve been reading for a while?”
She nods again.
“It’s the one teaching you things?”
She closes her eyes. “I don’t feel good, Mom.”
“Maybe you should just sleep more,” I say, feeling guilty for even trying to have this discussion when she feels so bad.
“Okay,” she whispers, eyes still closed, thick black lashes fanning her cheeks.
After her breathing slows and grows deeper, I return to the kitchen for my coffee. Filling my mug, I flash back to a time before I was officially a teenager, a time when anything remotely grown-up sounded wonderful and desirable and the discovery of Seventeen magazine’s Guide for Young Ladies at a neighborhood garage sale seemed to be the most exciting find ever.
I bought the book for twenty-five cents when I was just a little older than Eva is now. The book was at least twenty years old, and for months I pored over it in secret, committing to mem
ory necessary facts and tidbits like how to sleep in rollers to give your hair the proper bounce, why proper hygiene is important, how to sit properly, hold a teacup, file your nails.
I can still see the tips written in big swirly cursive script and illustrated with sketches of a delicate red-haired beauty putting on her gloves or checking to make sure her purse matched her shoes.
I would never have admitted it at twelve, but a big part of me wanted to be like that illustration—lithe, pretty, elegant, so very proper. I wanted to astonish people with my perfect rightness, my delicious sense of etiquette. I wanted to be Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady after the whole Pygmalion project.
But every time I looked in the mirror, I saw a skinny, big-eyed, big-lipped, fourteen-year-old misfit. A misfit who was teased by the popular girls at school.
We get through the day without Eva getting sick again, and later when she goes to bed for the night, she’s managed to get a little soup down. I tumble into bed soon after, as everything hurts.
Even though the night’s cool I’m hot, too hot, and with the window open wide I lie on top of my covers, watching shadows creep across my ceiling as the moon shifts in the sky. The moon outside is big, bold, one of those huge harvest moons that cast long fingers of light and illuminate the night.
I don’t feel well. I’m hot and ache in funny places, with pain in my shoulders, elbows, and other joints.
I’m not coming down sick, I tell myself. I’m not getting Eva’s flu. I’m still just upset about last night’s call from Taylor.
Maybe it’s because I put my all into the presentation yesterday yet felt criticized when I had to rescue my daughter.
Maybe it’s because sometimes your best just doesn’t seem good enough.