For a moment he blinks at her, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of accurate information she’s just thrown at him. Then he recovers. “Yeah, well . . . good. It’s good you remember. My point is you’re old enough to be thinking about boys and to care about how you look. Like Chloe.” He jerks his chin at me. “She always looks nice. I’ll give her that.”
I stifle a sarcastic retort—?I don’t want to prolong this.
“Chloe’s really pretty,” Ivy says.
“So are you,” says Ron. “But you won’t be if you keep eating junk.”
She considers that, and while she considers it, she absently picks up the Pop-Tart and takes another bite of it.
“Stop eating that!” he says. “You’re not listening to me.”
“I am listening.”
It would be funny if I thought Ivy was deliberately provoking him. But Ivy doesn’t do stuff like that. All she wants is to eat her stupid Pop-Tart in peace.
“What’s going on in here?” It’s Mom, coming up behind Ron. Her hair is styled and she’s wearing makeup—?she’s Ron’s receptionist, and he likes her to look “put together” for the office—?but she changed when she got home and the T-shirt and sweats make her mascaraed eyes and curls look ridiculous. I don’t like when she wears that much makeup, anyway—?it settles into every crease and makes her face look older than it is. Without it, she’s pretty, with big, wistful blue eyes and a small nose and mouth. She and Ivy look a lot alike.
Mom says, “What’s a girl got to do to get a glass of wine around here?”
“I was on my way.” Ron holds up the bottle and glasses. “But the girls and I started talking.”
Her eyes flicker from face to face, gauging the moods of everyone in the room. She says, a little too brightly, “I sound like the worst kind of mother, don’t I? Stop talking to my kids and bring me my wine!” She forces a girly laugh, then gives me a vaguely pleading look. I glance away and notice that Ivy has taken advantage of the distraction to quickly cram the rest of the Pop-Tart into her mouth. You go, Ivy.
“It’s okay,” Ron says to Mom. “I’ve exhausted my parenting skills for the evening anyway. These girls of yours . . .” He leaves it at that and steers her back into the hallway, where she tosses out another giggle-laugh.
She never used to laugh like that. She used to have this rare deep chuckle that often ended in a sigh. Nothing girlish about it at all. But a lot’s changed since she met Ron and even more since the day she told us she was going to marry him, “because you girls need a father.”
I said, “No, we don’t, and even to say that is an insult to lesbian parents everywhere,” which at least got her to stop saying it, but did nothing to prevent her from going ahead and marrying Ron, a guy she had met through some online dating site and whose profile she had first clicked on because a) she thought he was handsome (meh) and b) he said he didn’t have kids of his own and regretted it. (He’d been married once and divorced.)
Mom came back from their first date dazed and ecstatic. Things moved quickly after that. I think Ron must have liked how pliable she was, how willing to follow his lead when it came to exercise and diet—?and raising kids, even though he had no experience in that last area. And Mom definitely liked having someone around to direct her. She’s never liked to be in charge of anything.
The thing about Mom is that she’s the kind of needy that makes people want to do stuff for her, not the kind that repels them. Ron was basically her white knight, charging in to fix her life for her. But I’m not so crazy about being a part of her life that he thinks needs fixing. And I’m even less crazy about watching him pick apart Ivy, who doesn’t have any anger or malice in her and so can’t defend herself against his attacks.
I’m her younger sister, but I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel like I needed to protect and take care of her.
Two
MS. CAMPANELLI TAKES her job very seriously. “I mean, fine,” Sarah said to me at the beginning of the school year. “You like books? You like talking about them? Go ahead and become an English teacher. That’s great. But don’t expect everyone else to get as excited as you about Shakespeare or whatever. Have some perspective. People have lives.”
“She doesn’t,” I said. “I’m assuming. Given the way she dresses.”
But even though I make fun of her, I kind of love Ms. Campanelli and the way every class she teaches veers off into whatever tangent interests us the most. We’ll start off recapping the last few chapters of Wuthering Heights, and then a kid will say he thought the whole book was totally incestuous, and the next thing you know, we’ll be deep into a discussion about whether it’s okay to think your cousin is hot, and how the ancient rulers all married their own sisters, and stuff like that.
During these discussions, Ms. Campanelli (we call her “Camp” when she can’t hear us) gets more and more excited, running her hands through her wildly wavy hair until it stands out like a mane around her head, tugging at her long boho skirt until it’s so twisted that the side pocket is over her crotch, pleading with us to raise our hands and not just shout out. But you can tell she doesn’t really mind—?she’s just happy we’re all into the conversation, and the truth is that most of the time she’s shouting over everyone else just as much as the rest of us. In any other classroom, we’d all be secretly checking our texts under our desks, but we pay attention in English.
Anyway, today it’s all about Romeo and Juliet. The usual complaints are made—?Shakespeare’s boring; he uses way too much imagery; the story’s over the top; half the words are made up, etc., etc.—?and Ms. Campanelli duly notes them and moves on. She asks us to describe Romeo in our own words. “What if he were a student at this school? What group would he be in? Who would he date?”
Sarah raises her hand, and Camp calls on her. “Everyone would want to date him,” she says. “He’s, like, perfect boyfriend material—”