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“Carrie?” says a male voice.
“George?” I ask in shock. And then I’m disappointed. And angry. Why is George calling now—way past midnight on New Year’s Eve? He must be drunk. “George, this is not the time—”
He cuts me off. “I have someone here who wants to talk to you.”
“Who?”
“Happy New Year,” Dorrit says, giggling into the phone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lockdown at Bralcatraz
All morning I’ve been avoiding the phone.
I know I have to do the right thing. And the sooner you do the right thing, the better. You get it over with, and you don’t have to worry about it anymore. But who does that in real life? Instead, you procrastinate and think about it and put it off and think about it some more until that one little pebble grows into a giant block inside your head. It’s only, I remind myself, a phone call. But I have so many other important things to do first.
Like cleaning out the space above the garage, which is where I am now, wearing a down coat, fuzzy gloves, and a mink stole. The mink belonged to my grandmother, and it’s one of those really creepy ones where the heads and tiny paws of the little minks are attached at each end. I put the two heads together and make them talk to each other.
“Hello.”
“How are you?”
“Not so good. Someone took my tail and back legs.”
“Eh—who needs a tail, anyway?”
I found the old stole when I was digging through a box filled with my grandmother’s things, which, with the exception of the stole, have turned out to be a treasure trove of fantastic old hats with net veils and feathers. I put one of the hats on my head and pull the veil down over my nose. I picture myself walking down Fifth Avenue, stopping in front of Tiffany on my way to lunch at the Plaza.
With the hat still on my head, I push aside a few more boxes. I’m looking for something, but I don’t know what. I’ll know what it is when I find it though.
My nose is assaulted by the sharp musty smell of old paperbacks as I lift open the flaps on a box bearing the fuzzy imprint of Del Monte canned corn. My grandmother always described herself as “a great reader,” and prided herself on reading five books a week, although her choice of reading material consisted largely of romances and Greek mythology. On the summer weekends we’d spend at her cottage by the shore, I’d be right behind her, devouring those romance novels like candy, thinking, I could do this someday. I’d turn the books over and study the photographs of the authors with their teased hairdos, lying on pink chaises or propped up in four-poster beds. Those lady authoresses, I knew, were fantastically rich, and unlike the female characters in their books, made their own money without needing a man to rescue them. The idea of becoming one of these lady writers filled me with a secret excitement that was nearly sexual, but also terrifying: If a woman could take care of herself, would she still need a man? Would she even want one? And if she didn’t want a man, what kind of woman would she be? Would she even be a woman? Because it seemed if you were a woman, the only thing you were really supposed to want was a man.
I guess I was about eight then. Maybe ten. Even twelve. Inhaling the scent of those old paperbacks is like inhaling the little girl of my childhood. I’ve learned one thing since then: No matter what happens, I’ll probably always want a guy.
Is there something pitiful about that?
I close the box and move on to another. And suddenly, I find it: a rectangular white box with yellowed corners, a dry cleaner’s box for men’s shirts. I lift the cover, take out an old composition book, and turn to the first page. The Adventures of Pinky Weatherton is printed in my sloppy young hand.
Good old Pinky! I invented her when I was six. Pinky was a spy with special powers: She could shrink herself down to the size of a thimble, and she could breathe underwater. Pinky always seemed to be getting washed down the drain in the sink, and then she’d swim through the pipes and pop up in someone’s bathtub.
I carefully take out the contents of the box, laying them on the floor. Besides Pinky, there are drawings and homemade cards, diaries with metal locks (I never managed to write more than a few entries in any of them, although I remember chastising myself for my lack of discipline, knowing even then that writers were supposed to keep journals), and at the bottom, my attempts at stories, crudely typed on my mother’s Royale typewriter. It’s like a surprise party, suddenly coming into a room filled with all your friends. But it’s also the sign, I decide, picking up the box and carrying it down the stairs. It’s the sign that I really do have to call George.
“You need to call George” were the first words out of my father’s mouth this morning.
“I will, Dad. Don’t worry about it.” It made me kind of angry. I’d vowed never to talk to George again, not after what he’d said about Sebastian. Even if I did end up at Brown, which was looking more and more likely as I hadn’t managed to come up with a viable alternative, I planned to avoid him. And yet, once again he had managed to insert himself into our lives—my life—and i
t wasn’t right. I didn’t want him there. I knew my feelings were wrong—it wasn’t George’s fault—but I was convinced he was still somehow to blame. If he hadn’t paid so much attention to Dorrit when she was arrested, if he hadn’t been so nice, then Dorrit would have never developed a crush on him. It was only one of those mewling irrational crushes that young teenage girls develop for pretty-boy singers, but why George? He was cute enough, but certainly not pretty. He wasn’t even dangerous.
Maybe it wasn’t danger Dorrit was looking for but stability.
And perhaps there was an element of competition. Dorrit had grown bolder with each infraction, starting with stealing earrings and lip gloss, and moving on to my mother’s bag. Maybe it made sense that George was her final conquest.
Back in the house, my father is in exactly the same position I left him in two hours ago, seated at the little desk where we keep the mail, staring down at a blank piece of paper with a pencil in his hand.
“Did you call George yet?” he asks, looking up.
“I’m going to. Right now.”
