Part 9 (1/2)
I was only too happy to share. ”My mom died, so, yeah, I just moved in. Downstairs. I guess I'm right downstairs.” I started to smile, decided that was too much, so I turned back to the game. Katherine was in the thick of it, waving a spotted pony in my face. ”No, no, go away!” she yelled.
”I'm gonna get her,” I announced, picking up the unicorn and pretending to eat it. She started laughing, completely beside herself with glee.
”Yeah, but you're not like staying there,” Jennifer informed me. ”Like I heard they were kicking you out.”
”Who told you that?” I asked.
”Everybody.” She shrugged.
”Everybody who?” I pressed.
”Just people.” I knew I'd get nothing more out of her until she felt like talking.
”We'll see, I guess.” I shrugged. ”Do you want to see it?”
”See it?” she asked, not quite getting me. ”You mean the apartment?”
”Yeah, you want to come down and see it?”
Such a stroke of blind good luck had never occurred to her. But she was far too well versed in the etiquette of cool to acknowledge any excitement. ”Are you allowed to let people in?” she asked, choosing to completely dismiss my invitation rather than express any interest in it.
”I have the key,” I pointed out. ”My stuff is there. They haven't kicked me out yet.”
”But isn't it just like this place?” She suddenly and cleverly decided to feign indifference, pretending to be bored with the possibility of seeing the mystery apartment downstairs. ”It's the same layout and everything-it's the same apartment, right?”
”Are you kidding? Your place is totally normal, you should come see my place, it's pretty weird. Like they were selling off all the furniture, so there's nothing in there but light fixtures and moss and some clocks and those crazy mirrors from like the nineteenth century? All sorts of cracked stuff.”
”Moss?” said Jennifer, disbelieving this. ”I mean, like, are you kidding? What is it, like mold?”
”No, it's really moss, the guy who has the greenhouse up on the roof needed a place to put his moss.”
”You know that guy?”
”Len? Yeah, he was a friend of my mom's; he's great. Have you ever seen his greenhouse?”
”No,” she said, an edge of sullen jealousy creeping into her tone.
”It's amazing. If you want, I'll take you up there.” I knew this all sounded so unbelievable that she was tempted to believe it. ”Anyway, you have to at least come by and see the moss, he's got twenty different kinds in my kitchen. One of the kitchens.”
”You have two kitchens? 'Cause we only have one.”
”Yeah, it's different down there. The layout is completely different. Like this room, the one we're in right now? It's not there.”
”Well, where is it?”
”I don't know, maybe it's part of the Westmoreland apartment. Do you know her, Delia Westmoreland?”
”Do you know her?”
”Not really.”
”She wants that apartment, she's been trying to buy it for like fifteen years,” Jennifer stated. ”She's going to try and get you kicked out. She's h.e.l.l on wheels.”
When Jennifer wasn't pretending to be bored with the universe, she had a curious beam going, like there was a spectacularly intelligent person in there who was perfectly capable of utterly devious behavior.
”I'm not going anywhere,” I announced, feeling far less sure of this than I sounded. ”You want to come down?”
”I'm not allowed.”
”Come on, it's only one floor,” I persisted. The idea of having an idle teenager to show off my cool apartment to was suddenly very enticing.
”Seriously, I'm not allowed,” she said. And the devious person went away again.
Jennifer was telling the truth. When Mrs. White showed up two minutes later, she shooed Jennifer back to her room and described the facts of life as they were lived in 9A.
”Their father is very strict,” Mrs. White explained, as she politely ushered me back through the many hallways to the front of the apartment. Their place was easier to navigate than mine, but it was a bit of a maze nonetheless. ”Raising six girls in Manhattan, you can imagine how that would be necessary. The things that go on in the private schools, you don't want to know about.”
”Drugs, boys, b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs?” I asked, kind of all concerned and quiet. She shot me a look, none too pleased with my slightly too careless display of insider information.
”Of course, you would know about this,” she observed, smiling a little too tightly.
”Oh, I just know what I've read, it's all over the Web,” I countered fast. ”Isn't it? I went to Catholic school in Jersey. All girls, only nuns. We didn't even have priests. Well, and thank G.o.d for that! I mean, what the priests turned out to be up to, a kid would be safer in prison.”
”You went to Catholic school?” This seemed of some interest to her, so I was glad I had made it up.
”Saint Ignatius, over in Jersey City. They finally closed it a couple years ago, which is too bad, I got a great education there.” To my own ear I sounded like a pretty desperate liar, but she was dealing with a writhing baby and wasn't paying full attention. ”Your girls are in Catholic school, right?”
”Saint Peter in Chains, up on Ninety-eighth,” she said.
”Saint Peter in Chains!” I smiled, like I knew it well. ”I love their uniforms, they look so cute.”
”Well, it certainly makes life simpler. With six girls you can imagine what kind of chaos we would have to deal with in the clothes department if we didn't have the uniforms,” she agreed. ”And my husband wants them to learn a broader system of values.”
Eyeing Mrs. White's gorgeous pink outfit, I felt a sincere moment of sympathy for those teenage girls learning a broader system of values. I mean, their mother was running all over New York City in designer suits, and they had to throw on the same ugly pleated skirts every morning before heading uptown to hang out with a bunch of nuns. It seemed like a pretty nasty fate, especially considering that they lived in Manhattan, where I would have thought that n.o.body, and I mean n.o.body, went to Catholic school to learn values.
”Well, I know I loved my uniform, maybe not every day of high school, but afterward, definitely,” I said. ”I come from a family of girls too. Not as many, there were only three of us, but obviously we were in something of the same boat in terms of the clothes, I mean. My mother was always up to her eyeb.a.l.l.s in laundry.” I was definitely starting to sound like a suck-up. Mrs. White, mother of teenage girls, recognized the sound, and her already chilly att.i.tude became logarithmically less friendly.
”Thank you for coming,” she said, opening the front door. Behind her I could see Katherine watching from the hallway. Off in the distance teenage voices were suddenly raised in heat-Jennifer and Louise sniping over shoes or hair clips or who was hogging the phone-and then a third voice chimed in, topping them both. I thought for a second about the two girls whose names I didn't know yet and hadn't even laid eyes on. Mrs. White turned for a second, impatient.
”Girls, no yelling! Gail! Louise! NO YELLING IN THE HOUSE!” she yelled. And then she looked back at me, clearly waiting for me to just go.
”I have two sisters,” I repeated.
”Yes. So you said.”
”I'm the youngest. We didn't live in a very big house, so we were really on top of each other all the time. And we would argue about everything. Sometimes I think of the stupid things we argued about and wonder how my mother didn't go stark raving mad just listening to us. Did you ever meet my mother? She lived downstairs. She died just a week and a half ago. It feels like a long time already, but it was just a week and a half. I mean, it was a shock to everybody, we had no idea she was even, well, I guess that's how heart attacks work, n.o.body sees them coming. And maybe it was good for her, to go that way, just fast like that. If you're going to die, that would be the way, right? I just worry. I'm staying down there and I'm seeing all her stuff, and I'm telling you, she-did you know Bill? Because we didn't-anyway, I just hadn't seen her in such a long time. I think maybe she was lonely. It's nice to meet you. It's nice to meet your girls. I'm happy to be here.”