Among them, I thought. That really did make us sound as if we had come from another planet.
She started to go through some of my earrings and necklaces.
“Daddy didn’t want me wearing any jewelry with this dress,” I said.
“When did he tell you that?”
“When I put it on for dinner. He thought it would take away from my natural beauty.”
“That was then. This is for now. There’s understated and overstated. Daddy doesn’t keep up with the youth scene out there. That’s why he needs us. This would be all right,” she said, plucking a pair of teardrop diamond earrings out of my jewelry box, “and this matching necklace. You need some color, some glitter,” she added, before I could voice any protest.
“But Daddy knows style,” I blurted, still not taking the jewelry from her.
“Is Daddy taking you out for this field trip, or am I? Well? Make up your mind. He put me in charge of this for a reason. He has faith in me. I think I know what I’m doing. I don’t fail out there, do I? Well?”
I took the jewelry from her, but I couldn’t help feeling I was disobeying Daddy. Even something as small as this seemed like a great defiance, a possibility of disappointing him. But then I thought that if Ava wasn’t afraid of getting him angry, I shouldn’t be so timid about it. I couldn’t imagine her taking any such risk.
“Okay, finish up,” she told me, and went to do her own makeup and get dressed.
When she was finished and came for me, we stood before my full-length mirror and looked at ourselves standing together. She was wearing a light pink silky one-piece dress that was tapered at her waist and a little shorter-hemmed than my dress. Her collar didn’t go as low as mine, but she had put on one of her uplift bras. She looked as if she could fall out of her dress at any time.
We had different looks entirely. Ava, despite what she had wanted me to wear, was not wearing any jewelry. Her hair was straight, down around her shoulders. I thought I looked like a young lady dressed for a formal dance, and she looked as if she worked in a strip club.
“You’re not even wearing earrings,” I said.
“Don’t worry about what I’m wearing and not wearing,” she said. “I know what I’m doing, what has to be done tonight. Let’s go.”
I followed her out. I half expected to see Mrs. Fennel standing at the door waiting to inspect us, inspect me, but she was nowhere in sight. Daddy had left earlier in the day to meet some business associate and wasn’t home yet. I was happy about that. No matter what Ava had said, I still felt he would be disappointed in my appearance. Marla heard us, however, and came hurrying out of the den, where she was watching television.
“Oh, you both look so beautiful,” she said, dripping with envy.
“Relax. As Daddy told you, your day will come, Marla,” Ava said. “Don’t be in such a rush to grow up. It’s not all fun and games. There’s more responsibility.”
Marla grimaced and then muttered to me, “I don’t care what she says. You’re lucky, Lorelei.”
She retreated with her shoulders sagging, her head lowered.
“She’s lonely,” I said. “I usually spend this time with her.”
“You want to stay home?” Ava snapped. “Go ahead. Sit with your little sister, and watch some cartoon.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to stay home, Ava. I just felt sorry for her. Didn’t you ever feel sorry for me? Even a little?”
“No,” she said. She held her gaze on me a moment, as if she were searching for some sign, some proof, that I was indeed too different.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s go. She’ll be all right. You’re right.”
She opened the door, and we went out. I looked back once, but Marla was probably already curled in close to a fetal position on the sofa. I was confident that, like my situation when I was her age, one or more of her classmates had invited her to go somewhere to do something, whether it was to a movie or just to hang out at someone’s house, and she had had to say no. You could refuse these invitations just so many times before they stopped coming altogether. It didn’t much matter how you refused them, either. Your excuses could sound quite plausible, but the result was always the same. You weren’t going to be there. You weren’t going to embrace someone’s attempt at a closer friendship.
I used to think, I know we’re different, but can’t we just pretend we’re not once in a while? Can’t I do the things other girls my age do? Finally, one day when I was about Marla’s age, I asked Mrs. Fennel just that, and she said, “No,” but with such an accompanying angry, biting look that I dared not even think it again.
Ava said we didn’t need school friends. We had each other, and we had Daddy.
It was true that Daddy did his best to occupy us. He took us to shows and on trips and even permitted us to attend his parties sometimes. If he ever invited a woman to dinner, we were all there at the table as well. Whoever she was, she was always impressed with our manners and our polite and informed conversation. More than one of his dates said something like, “You’re raising them by yourself better than most couples raise their own children.”
“You simply nurture what’s already in them,” Daddy would tell them. “You give it room to grow, to breathe. You have patience. It’s like this wonderful wine,” he would say, looking at the decanted wine. “If you don’t rush it, it will be smooth, the flavors full.”
Of course, I didn’t realize it when I was very young, but now I knew that whenever he spoke to one of his women like that, in his silky soft voice, she was practically having an orgasm. I remember looking around the table and seeing the sly, almost smirking smile on Brianna’s face. She would look down the whole time Daddy spoke. Ava was mesmerized and was just as curious as I was about the women Daddy had brought to our table and later would bring to his bedroom. We could see his power unfold right before our eyes, and that made us idolize him even more.