If I could tell Sandra everything—what I’d done with Susan—maybe she would say I wasn’t bad, that what I’d done was okay. She had sex. She didn’t apologize for it. But she looked so pale that it seemed like one wrong word could send her over the edge.
If Johnny Moon were here, maybe he would comfort me. From what I read, there was no indication that he was Catholic, or an emotional basket case.
I sat down next to the couch and put my hand on Sandra’s arm. Then I lifted the napkin off her face. Her eyes were swollen. The skin underneath was thin-looking, like tissue paper.
“Susan’s dad?” I asked.
“Richard,” she said, correcting me, “and he’s never coming back.” I saw that her eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot. She’d been crying, and Sandra didn’t cry.
“I know,” I said.
“He was the only one who . . .” She started to say something, but then stopped herself. “Shit,” she said instead.
“Wait,” I said, taking my hand back. “Were you guys, like, doing it?”
Sandra took a deep breath and rubbed her temples.
“Oh my God,” I said. “You were.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “I thought he was my one true love.”
Those words sounded ridiculous coming out of Sandra’s mouth.
“So it wasn’t Mrs. Greenberg?” I said.
Sandra snorted.
“I can’t believe I said that,” she said. “My one true love.”
What Sandra revealed didn’t surprise me. Mrs. Greenberg wasn’t hot like Sandra. Still, I felt bad for her. She looked terrible. Was this how Corvis saw me?
“Brad dumped me,” I said, changing the subject, maybe trying to relate, “but at least I have Stephanie Tanner. I’ve managed to keep her alive for eight years.”
“Oh, honey,” said Sandra, “Stephanie Tanner has died at least six times.”
“Sandra!” I shoved her leg. “What?”
“I replaced her when you were at school.”
“Did you just keep flushing her?”
Sandra wiped the hair out of her eyes, tucked it behind her ear.
“Actually, no,” she said. “There’s a Stephanie Tanner graveyard in the back, under the maple.”
“Sandra,” I said. “I can’t believe you.”
“Well.”
I pictured her burying all the Stephanies, kneeling over the earth. She was being a mom, at least a kind of mom, whether or not she wanted to admit it.
I reached over and turned the tape player off.
“Susan’s dad was an asshole,” I said. “He hit her.”
She touched my head, curled her manicured fingernails in my hair. Because she never touched me, I felt myself melting a little.
“He was an asshole,” she said, “but he was gentle underneath.”
The brown bucket was empty, which was proof that Sandra was all right. She may have thought she wouldn’t be able to handle the vodka, but she could.
“Sandra, I need to tell you something,” I said. She had secrets too. Maybe she would listen to mine.
“Oh, Taylor,” she said, massaging her temples. “What?”
I sat up straighter, looking her in the eye.
“I’m a lesbian,” I said. “You were right.”
It seemed best to do it this way—to tell her during a weak moment, so that she didn’t have the energy to scream at me, or to cry.
She tilted her head, squinting at me.
“I thought so,” she said absently. “You didn’t react to Brad at all. The way he looked at you—you barely noticed.”
“So you’re not mad?”
As I said this, I realized that part of me had hoped she would be mad. It was so difficult to get a reaction out of Sandra.
“Just keep it to yourself,” she said quickly.
I didn’t say anything. I wanted her to banish me. I wanted her to slap me. I wanted her to call me a liar, to kick me out onto the street. Anything. Anything was better than nothing.
“I need to rest now,” Sandra said, dismissing me.
I watched her back as she went upstairs, gripping the railing, white-knuckled.
I crawled onto the couch, into the space she left behind, the cushion still warm from her body heat.
The Haircut
I don’t know. I guess I realized that I had never been to Provincetown before, and even though it was farther than Boston, it wasn’t actually that far. The people there, maybe they could help me. I’d heard that people went there to be gay.
So, instead of going to school on Thursday, I just started driving. It only took three hours. I drove all the way down Cape Cod. Then the land thins off and becomes dunes on either side, and I thought I was lost. Even though there’s only one way to go, I thought there couldn’t possibly be a whole town there, but all of a sudden there was.
Susan came back to school, and she wouldn’t even look at me. I tried to sit with her at lunch, and she got up and left. I sat there by myself for maybe two or three minutes, but then Heather sat with me. Then PJ. Then Scottie.
“We’re wicked sorry we said that in the bathroom,” PJ said, speaking for Heather too. “You know,” PJ continued. “PMS.”
Heather didn’t apologize.
“Susan’s acting weird,” Heather said. We all watched Brad sit with her at another table, put his hand on her shoulder. “I know her dad just died, but still. She’s sitting with Brad.”
“So?” I looked at whatever disgusting casserole was on my tray. I thought of Susan’s refrigerator, full of untouched casseroles just like this.
“So, you and Brad just broke up,” said Heather. “She doesn’t just get, like, a free pass to be a backstabbing slut.”
Heather switched alliances quickly, and it was hard to predict which way she would go in a given situation, but today I realized she usually stuck close to me, even when she tried to hurt me. It occurred to me that PJ was the one who started the conversation in the bathroom.
“Yeah, she kind of does,” I said. “She liked him before I did, after all.”
I looked over at Susan again, sitting across the cafeteria with Brad. I panicked, for a moment, at the thought of her telling him everything. I remembered what happened to Corvis when we told everyone about her.