Bittersweet Dreams Read online

  “What stuff?”

  “Just stuff,” she said, and sat at her desk. “Thanks for helping me, Mayfair. My friends think you do my homework all the time, especially when I get a high grade. That’s why I try not to ask you too much.”

  “Forget your friends. If you don’t understand something, you ask me. They’re just jealous.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  I hesitated a moment as she worked on the remainder of the math problems.

  “Right?” she asked, showing me her answers.

  “That’s it. Look, Allison, I want you to tell me what else Mr. Taylor says to you, especially over the next few days, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “I’d just like that. I help you with your homework, don’t I? You can do that for me, can’t you?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  I started out again.

  “Mayfair?”

  “What?”

  “You’re not really like they’re saying you are, right?”

  Look how easily someone’s reputation can be ruined, I thought. Often, just being accused of something made you guilty. Most people weren’t going to be bothered with proof. Here was my stepsister, who had lived with me for years, already thinking it was possible.

  “I already told you no, but stop looking so worried. Even if I were, it’s not anyone else’s business, and people who are like that are still good people.”

  I thought of something that I knew would bug her.

  “Why? Are you feeling that way about yourself?”

  “No!” She grimaced and shook her head vehemently.

  I laughed. “See how easy it is to make you sound guilty? Don’t grow up with your mother’s middle-class prejudices,” I said. “If you can help it, that is.”

  She just stared at me. I knew I was taking her too high too quickly.

  But as the poet Robert Browning wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

  Arrogant of me, but I thought that if Allison hung around me, enough might rub off to make her at least a decent student, if not a decent person. Julie was worried that I might be a bad influence on her. I’ll be an influence on her, all right. I’ll get her eyes open wide enough to see what a hypocrite her mother is.

  But I wasn’t thinking about Julie now. I was thinking about Alan Taylor. Did he single out Allison because of me? Was he paying too much attention to her? At her age, she was far more vulnerable than I was, and today, I thought, I was most vulnerable.

  I ran a bath and soaked in it, not because I felt unclean or spoiled after having been with Alan but because it relaxed me and let me think. What bothered me the most was the idea that I had allowed myself to be a victim today in so many ways. It began in Dr. Richards’s office and ended in Alan Taylor’s bed. I wanted to blame my troubles in school on those bitchy girls and Julie, but did I let it happen? Could I have been shrewder and more intelligent about how I had handled it all?

  Did I throw myself at Alan Taylor willingly, or did I fall into a trap, all the while thinking I knew what I was doing? I’m smarter than he is. I’m old enough to understand and handle myself, I had told myself.

  Was I suffering from what the Greeks called hubris, excessive pride, the fault that would bring tragedy to the arrogant? Had my super intelligence turned me into too much of a snob, a smuggie? Did I deserve what was happening to me after all?

  One of my grade-school teachers, Mrs. Schumer, once voiced something to my parents that I thought she regretted immediately afterward. They were talking about my superior intellect, the wonders I had performed in second grade, and Mrs. Schumer said, “I wonder if it’s a curse or a blessing.” She looked at my parents’ faces. This was something they had heard before from Fish Face, and they didn’t like it then.

  Mrs. Schumer quickly added, “Of course it’s a blessing. Look at what she will be able to do. Why, I imagine someday, I’ll be reading about her accomplishments.”

  She spoke as quickly as she could to override her previous utterance, but I saw it was too late. It had already taken root in my parents’ minds and would flower into more and more doubt as time went by.

  It had taken root in me, too. It grew like a wild vine, reaching deeper and wider inside me.

  As I lay there in my bathtub filled with soothing bubbles and bath oil, these thoughts, these memories, streamed behind my closed eyelids.

  And minutes later, when I opened my eyes and looked at myself in the mirror, I saw that I had been crying. Not realizing that I had been until I looked at myself was more frightening than anything.

  It was truly as if there were someone else in me, a second Mayfair, who was always trying to emerge, to pop out of me and cry, “I’m the real Mayfair Cummings, not you. I want to be normal. I want to have fun, do stupid things, eat the wrong things, make happy mistakes, laugh at dumb jokes, wear silly clothes, flirt with vapid boys, cheer my lungs out at football games, eat popcorn and watch a goofy Simple Simon raunchy movie, and neck and pet in dark corners at house parties where we all drink too much or smoke pot or take other stuff and feel like rotten apples in the morning but laugh about it on telephone calls that go on and on until our parents scream at us to get off and do something worthwhile like clean our rooms and pick up all the clothes scattered everywhere.

  I’m the real Mayfair Cummings, not you. I’m putting you back in the box and stamping it “No longer at this address.”

  I put my hands over my ears as if I really did hear my second self, and then I took some deep breaths, got out of the tub, and got ready for bed.

  There was a knock at my door.

  “Not another problem, Allison,” I called.

  The door opened. It was my father.

  “Oh.”

  “Hey, May,” he said when he entered. He hadn’t called me that for a long, long time. I couldn’t recall when he had first started, but it was his most affectionate greeting. “Hey, May.” Sometimes he would just say it, smile, and go on to do whatever he had to do, but it always made me feel good. Once he composed a little rhyme that he would often sing for me.

  Hey, May, what do you say?

  Hope you had a very good day.

  If not, someone’s going to pay.

  It made me smile and made my mother laugh. Now it seemed so long ago; it felt more like something I had watched on television or read in a book. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, a little fantasy.

  I pulled myself up on my pillow and watched him come to my bed and sit at the foot of it, just the way he used to before he married Julie.

  “Sorry about what you went through today. I intend to give that Dr. Richards a piece of my mind tomorrow.”

  “Don’t bother. It won’t help. They’re all probably right. I’m better off away from those girls.”

  “I would have been there, but there was a major screw-up at the firm, and . . .”

  “Don’t knock yourself out about it, Daddy. It’s over. I didn’t expect that Julie would stand up for me, and she lived up to my expectations, that’s all.”

  He nodded. “She thought she was doing the right thing.”

  “Believe what you need to believe,” I said.

  “I know it’s not easy for you, hasn’t been, but . . .”

  “Let’s just go to sleep, Daddy.”

  I lowered myself again. He got up and fixed my blanket. I kept my eyes closed and then felt him kiss me on the forehead. He brushed my hair. For a moment, I was afraid he might notice the change in me, sense that I had been with someone, but that was probably the furthest thing from his mind.

  “Good night, May,” he said. He turned off my lamp.

  “ ’Night,” I said.

  I heard him leave and close the door softly. For a while, I just lay there in the dark. I was worried that I wouldn’t fall asleep, that I would stay up all night thinking about this roller-coaster day, but when I finally did close my eyes, it was as if I had fallen into a coma. I didn’t dream; I did
n’t remember getting into bed. The light of morning surprised me the way a spotlight might catch a burglar stalking a target. It took me a few moments to realize that it was another day and I would face even more challenges, more than I, with my super intelligence, could ever imagine.

  My father was quieter than usual in the morning. He always had things to say to Allison. Sometimes I thought he was sweeter to her than he was to me, but I excused that by thinking she was so much younger and more insecure. I couldn’t remember being as insecure as she was, and I supposed my father never thought I needed as much reinforcement, but that didn’t stop me from feeling sibling rivalry. In short, I was jealous, something I never imagined I would be.

  “I’m sorry about all this happening to you, Mayfair,” he said when we’d arrived at the school. “Let’s just let things calm down for a while and then talk about it some more, okay? The three of us can have a family meeting.”

  “I don’t need things to calm down to talk about them, Daddy. But I know you do,” I said. “Or should I say, Julie does, which has become the same thing, unfortunately.”

  He didn’t like that, and he didn’t answer. I closed the car door and followed Allison into the school. Probably the thing I was most curious about this morning was the way Alan Taylor would look at me and what he might say. Like all homeroom teachers, he was at his doorway. Dr. Richards wanted his teachers always keeping an eye on the students as they passed through the hallways, especially in the morning. That’s what Alan meant when he told me that being observant was in the job description.

  He saw me coming toward him, but he didn’t smile, nor did he acknowledge me in any particular way. Instead, he started to talk to a seventh-grader and turned his back on me. It gave me the strangest feeling. I wasn’t angry as much as I was confused. It was almost as if I had dreamed everything that had happened between us.

  Two periods later, I had another opportunity to walk past his classroom, and once again, he was in the doorway. This time, he looked at me, but it was as though he had never spoken to me and didn’t know anything about me. It was the look someone would give a total stranger, an empty glance, his eyes shifting quickly toward someone he did know, and then a smile and chatter.

  Perhaps he thought it was too dangerous for us to be seen talking to each other now, I thought. That had to be it. Why else would he ignore me today? Maybe, just maybe, someone had seen us together, and he was trying to show Dr. Richards that there was nothing to it.

  The school day was passing quickly. I was bored and distracted in every class, and during math, I read nearly all of Crime and Punishment. I wasn’t a speed-reader like those people trained in the Evelyn Wood methods. There was a trade-off between speed and comprehension. Long ago, during some educational psychological testing, it was determined that I had another gift associated with my super intelligence. It was the ability to gulp thousands of words and process them instantly. It was not uncommon for me at age five to read a book a day and understand each and every word, and those were books read by adults.

  When the bell rang at the end of the period that I knew was the one right before Alan Taylor’s free period, I strolled down to his room to see if he would beckon for me to come in. He was just leaving when I approached. He turned and saw me. I anticipated at least a smile this time. There was no one else in the hallway, but he turned again instead and hurried off toward the faculty room. I almost called to him but choked back his name and watched him disappear around the corner.

  What could possibly be the reason for his ignoring me completely?

  I debated remaining after school so I could confront him, but I didn’t. Perhaps it was better that he find a way to contact me safely, I thought, and went out to get into Julie’s car with Allison. I sat in the rear, where I normally sat, and, as usual, didn’t offer a word of conversation. Julie looked more nervous than usual.

  The day had turned quite overcast. A storm was blowing in from the north, and that meant rain was very possible, and the temperatures were dropping. The weather fit my mood now. I almost welcomed it.

  “You were pretty hard on your father yesterday,” Julie finally said, after we had been riding for a while.

  I didn’t respond, but Julie was one of those people who always had to have the last word.

  “I know you’re a very intelligent person, Mayfair, yes, probably a genius, but you really need to work on your people skills.”

  “And what are people skills, pray tell?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “You probably don’t know this,” she said, “but I took a course in people skills.”

  “No, I didn’t know there was such a course. Where was it given? The mall, Saks, Nordstrom? How many times did you have to take it to pass?”

  “You’re not funny, Mayfair. I happen to get along very well with most people, no matter what position they’re in or how important they are. And you want to know why?”

  “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me, no matter what, so why?”

  “Because I show people that I care about what they say and who they are. I keep an open mind. No matter what you accomplish in your life and what honors you receive, you’re still going to have to communicate with others.”

  “I’m impressed, Julie. That’s two out of three.”

  “Two out of three what?”

  “Complete sentences. The first was an adverbial clause, what we call a sentence fragment. Allison knows what I mean,” I said. “I’ve helped her with her grammar homework.”

  Allison looked at me, frightened that I was somehow turning her into an ally against her mother.

  “Okay, be like that. I tried. You never gave me a chance to be a friend to you, a mother. I am your father’s wife, and that’s a fact that can’t be denied. I love that man. I’m warning you. I won’t sit back and let you hurt him.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. It was a weak thing to say, but there was no doubt in my mind that she had greater influence over my father now than I did, maybe than I ever had. I hated the fact that he was a man and, like most, was vulnerable to a good-looking woman. He needed that, maybe as much as he needed me, if he did need me.

  My eyes stung with tears that I wouldn’t release. Now that I thought more about it, I hated the idea that in my father’s eyes, Julie would care for him, protect him, more than I did or perhaps more than I could.

  “And despite any of this, all that’s going on in this house,” she continued, almost under her breath, “Allison is going to grow up normal, because she will permit me to be her mother, to be her friend and give her the benefit of my experience. She’s going to have friends and go on dates and go to parties and go to college.”

  “And get married, live in a house with a white picket fence, and have other little Allisons,” I said.

  “Exactly.” She nodded at me in the rearview mirror. “Exactly. And as much ridicule as you toss over it, normal relationships give you the best chance at being happy.”

  “Like your first one?”

  “You’re just trying to hurt someone else because you feel hurt,” she said.

  I turned away, folding my arms and leaning against the window. Sometimes Julie’s arrows hit their targets. That one did.

  The rain began to fall. The monotonous sound of the wipers began.

  Allison turned around to look at me, then quickly turned back so her mother wouldn’t think she felt sorry for me in any way.

  Right now, I didn’t need her to do that anyway. I didn’t need anyone to do it.

  I was feeling sorry enough for myself.

  12

  When my phone rang that night, I thought there was a real possibility that it was Alan Taylor. I had given him my private phone number because I had hoped he would be calling me to arrange our next rendezvous. I had explained that he could risk a phone call because I had my privacy at home. When we had walked on the beach, I had talked about my life after my mother had died and especially after my father had remarried. By the
time the evening was over, Alan certainly knew what I thought of Julie and how disappointed I had been in my father for marrying her and catering to her so much. During our dinner, I had described how little I had to do with her and even with my father at this point. I’d made it sound as if I lived in my own cave in our house.

  Maybe he was calling to explain his behavior toward me in school, I thought. I was ready to accept any excuse and believe any reason he had, as long as it wouldn’t prevent us from seeing each other again. Our lovemaking had been the centerpiece of my daydreaming.

  I practically tore the receiver off the cradle, but as soon as I heard the voice of the caller, my heart felt like it had dropped into a sinkhole. It wasn’t Alan. It was Joy, my new best friend whether I liked it or not. I had followed through on one promise to her. I had gotten her a good deal of information about anorexia, its symptoms, causes, and treatment. There was even a list of possible therapists in the area. I had put stars next to the names of the ones I thought might be most helpful. She had promised she would give it all to her mother, and I gave her my private phone number in case she or her mother had to ask me a question about any of it. Now I regretted it.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “I saw you today, Joy. You know how I am. I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not, Mayfair,” she said with uncharacteristic authority. “Is something else bothering you?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  She was quiet.

  “Were you watching me again, following me all day?”

  I wondered if she had seen how many times I deliberately passed Alan Taylor’s classroom and how I looked toward him, anticipating some personal recognition. If she had seen my face, she might have noticed my disappointment. Was she smart enough to suspect anything?

  “I just want to be able to do something for you,” she said. “You’re trying to do something for me. My mother was impressed with the information you gave me. We had a talk. She admitted other people have said something to her about me. I will be seeing someone, one of the names you put a star next to.”