Dyan Sheldon - Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

Mrs Gerard, however, had stopped laughing.

“Are you serious?” she asked. “Your mother really doesn’t approve of microwaves?” You’d think I’d said she didn’t approve of breathing.

I decided not to get into this discussion. If Ella’s mother pressed me on what things my mother did and did not approve of, we could be there till the morning.

“She has very strong opinions,” I said, vaguely. I took another bite. “It’s because she’s Polish.”

There’s no food allowed in the Gerard bedrooms because of Mrs Gerard’s terror of attracting insects, so after we had eaten Ella and I went to her room to listen to the new Sidartha CD again. We knew most of the songs by heart even though we’d only had it two days. Ella likes Sidartha’s first album better, but I think this one is more profound and emotionally powerful. Their other albums make me think, but this one really engulfs my soul. When Stu Wolff (the band’s creative heart) sings, There’s something in me that always wants more … more moons and stars and music in the wind… it’s as though he’s talking just to me.

Sidartha, if you haven’t guessed, is our absolute favourite band. I’d been lobbying my mother for months to let me see them the next time they played in the City, but not with a lot of success. My mother said she’d see – which meant I was in with a chance if I handled her right – but Ella wouldn’t even ask her parents because it would upset them and make them worry about her. Mr and Mrs Gerard are actively terrified of young men with black leather and tattoos. They tolerate her love of Sidartha, but warily. You can tell that they see it as the thin end of the wedge; you know, one day Sidartha, the next day hard drugs and all-night parties. My plan was to work on Karen Kapok first, and then worry about how I was going to get Ella to come with me. I believe in dealing with one problem at a time.

“Why doesn’t your mother like me?” I asked Ella as we settled on her floor. (Beds, apparently, are for sleeping, not sitting – Mrs Gerard has a thing about bedspreads as well as insects.)

Ella has a way of just staring at you as though she hasn’t heard the question. It means that she’s thinking of something diplomatic to say.

“My mother likes you,” she mumbled after several seconds. “She thinks you’re very – interesting.”

But I wasn’t going to let Ella slide out of this so easily. I’m like a finely tuned instrument when it comes to reading between the lines – as a great actor should be. I’d heard the pause between “very” and “interesting”. Besides, honesty is important in real friendships.

“And I think Hitler was interesting,” I retorted. “But that doesn’t mean I like him.”

Ella laughed. Sometimes I worry that she may grow up to have a laugh like her mother’s.

“Stop exaggerating, will you? My mother doesn’t think you’re anything like Hitler.”

“But she doesn’t like me,” I persisted. I gave Ella a deep, searching look. The kind of look Hamlet was always giving his mother. “I can tell.”

Ella made a face. “She likes you fine.” Ella made another face. “She just thinks you’re a little … well … you know … strange…”

I didn’t want to hurt Ella’s feelings – after all, she is related to them – so I didn’t say that I, personally, think both Mrs and Mr Gerard are strange. They’re so perfect they might be aliens masquerading in human form.

“And she worries that I don’t see as much of my old friends – you know, since you and I started hanging out.”

Ella’s “old friends”, such as they’d been, were Carla Santini. Carla and Ella – and all Carla’s crowd – live in Woodford. Woodford is a “private community” – it says so outside the electric security gate. Woodford has mega-expensive houses, rolling lawns, shady streets, and its own leisure centre. I’d never even heard of a “private community” before I moved to Deadwood. A “private community” means you aren’t supposed to go there unless you live there, are visiting someone by invitation, or are delivering something to someone who does live there, and that there’s a guard at the gate to make sure that all riff-raff is kept beyond the fortress walls. According to Ella, she and Carla were pretty close in elementary and middle school – when they took dance and music lessons together and went to each other’s parties – but that all changed when they hit high school. It was then that Carla began to blossom and Ella didn’t. Carla more or less dumped the quiet and slightly dull Ella and started gathering a more glamorous retinue around her. They were still friendly, of course, as girls whose parents play bridge and tennis and golf together would be, but they weren’t exactly twin souls. How could they be? Carla doesn’t have a soul.

“Pardon me, Ms Gerard,” I said, in a fruity English accent, “but I thought you said that you hardly ever saw Carla. I thought you said that you’d drifted apart.”

Ella shrugged. “Yeah, we have. But my mother doesn’t know that.”

I pursed my lips. “What you’re really saying,” I said, “is that your mother doesn’t like me because I’m not like Carla Santini.”

Most of the mothers in Deadwood – and all of the mothers in the private community of Woodford – want their daughters to be like Carla Santini; most of the teachers wish all their students could be like Carla Santini; most of the girls in school wish they could be Carla Santini, even the girls she treats the worst; and as for the boys – except for Sam Creek, who seems totally impervious to the Santini charms – any one of them would sell his soul for the chance of getting his tongue into Carla Santini’s mouth.

Ella rolled her eyes. “Oh, please… Will you stop with the Carla Santini obsession for a few minutes?” She pursed her lips, looking at me as though she were wondering how honest she could really risk being. “The thing is…” she went on, slowly and carefully choosing her words.

“The thing is that I’m not your mother’s idea of a suitable companion for you.” Mrs Gerard wants Ella to hang out with other well-off, middle-class kids who will all go to the same good colleges and eventually have the same narcotic if perfect lives as their parents. She doesn’t want her only offspring running around with someone who has the soul and passion of a gipsy and lives in an old house without a microwave.

“Actually,” said Ella, her eyes on the thick white carpet, “it’s more your mother than you that my mother doesn’t think is suitable.”

I gazed at her incredulously.

“My mother ?” Thinking my mother isn’t suitable is like thinking Santa Claus is a highwayman. My mother is eminently suitable – in an ordinary way. “Not suitable for what?”

Ella squirmed uncomfortably. “It’s not big things…” she mumbled, still studying the two-inch pile. “I mean, remember when they met at Parents’ Night?”

I nodded my head very slowly. My mother hadn’t really said anything about it, just that she’d met the Gerards.

“Yeah…”

Ella squirmed some more. “Well, apparently your mother was wearing filthy old overalls and she had chopsticks in her hair.”

“My mother often has chopsticks in her hair,” I answered a little shortly. Because she can never find a hair clip. “And if she was in her work clothes it was because she didn’t have time to change.”

“You don’t have to get defensive with me,” said Ella. “I’m just telling you what my mother said.”

“But it’s ridiculous. What difference does it make what she had in her hair?”

“ I know it doesn’t matter,” said Ella. “But my parents pay attention to stuff like that. They’re old-fashioned.”