Dyan Sheldon - Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

I was still aware that Sidartha existed, but I have to admit that it wasn’t about the greatest band in the history of the world that I was thinking as I rode along. I was thinking about Karen Kapok, my mother.

I couldn’t get over the fact that of all the things the Gerards could have held against me – my clothes, my hair, my earrings and nose ring, and my attempts to turn Ella into a vegetarian, to name but a few – they’d chosen Karen Kapok! Ms Normal. It just shows you how ironic the world really is, doesn’t it?

But that, of course, was about to change. I was pretty sure that by the time I got home Mrs Gerard would already have heard all about my mother’s tragic marital history. That meant Mr Gerard would know by the end of his dinner – assuming, that was, he made it home for dinner for once. And that meant that by the time the Gerards settled down to watch TV together, their opinion of my mother would have radically altered.

I watched the sliver of moon as I turned up Maple Drive. It hung over the trees like a broken halo.

It was important to me that the Gerards liked me. I wanted them to encourage Ella to see me, not discourage her. Besides, if they didn’t like me, I’d never be able to convince them to let Ella go to a Sidartha concert.

I was whistling as I pulled into our driveway.

Because it was my turn to cook that night (my mother considers herself a potter, not the family chef), I didn’t get a chance to phone Ella before supper.

After supper I locked myself in the bathroom for an hour or so to rehearse my lines for the auditions the next day. This year Mrs Baggoli had chosen Pygmalion for the school’s annual production. I knew I was a shoe-in for Eliza – my cockney accent’s a lot better than Audrey Hepburn’s in My Fair Lady – but I wanted my reading to be perfect. The only competition I had for the lead was, naturally, Carla Santini, if only because no one else would even think of challenging her for a role she wanted. They might try out, but they’d make sure they weren’t too good. Carla Santini had starred in everything since she was in kindergarten and it was tacitly understood that she always got the lead and that everyone else got whatever they got. I’d been too late to try out for the play the year before, but this year I was ready for her. I felt I owed it to all the other mere mortals at Dellwood not to let Carla star this year. Just for a change.

It was almost ten by the time I finally got around to calling Ella. Her father had given her twenty-five bucks for getting a distinction in her history test, and her mother, who’d just started a new cooking course, had made her own ravioli for supper (Ella’s father is always giving her money for doing things my mother takes for granted, and Ella’s mother is always taking a course in something), but otherwise it was a quiet night.

“I hope you don’t mind,” said Ella after she’d stopped enthusing about the home-made ravioli, “but I told my folks about your mom.”

I pretended to mind – just a little.

“Well…” I said. “I wouldn’t want it to get back to my mother that I’d been talking about the tragedies in her life. She’s a very private person, you know.”

“My parents won’t tell anyone,” Ella quickly assured me. “They’re not gossips.”

This is probably true of Mr Gerard, who doesn’t have any time to gossip since he’s always working, but it isn’t true of Mrs Gerard. The women of Woodford are a communication system unto themselves. They might not know much about existential theatre or post-modern literature, but they know everything that goes on in Dellwood, no matter where it goes on. Gossip is what they do when they’re playing golf and shopping and sitting in the sauna together.

“Oh, I know they’re not,” I said equally quickly. “It’s just that it’s very personal stuff…”

“My parents were really moved by your mother’s story,” said Ella. “It made them think.”

I smiled at the telephone. “No one’s suffering is ever in vain,” I softly intoned.

After I hung up, I took a shower, touched up the purple nail polish I was wearing that week to match the lining of my cape, and went to my bedroom to get away from the grunting and shouting of the other members of my family while they played Monopoly in the living room.

When I look back on myself that day, going about my life as if I didn’t have a care in the world, it almost makes me weep. How innocent I was! How naïve! The poet was right: ignorance is truly bliss. There I was, laughing, talking, working, making spaghetti, eating, going over my script, doing my nails and cleaning my teeth, totally oblivious to the fact that a catastrophe of cosmic proportions was hurtling towards me.

It took me a while to get settled. That’s because my bedroom isn’t really a bedroom, it’s really a sun porch. At least it was until we moved in. My mother, trying to stop the twins from acting so much like twins, decided that each of them should have her own room. So I got the sun porch. (Ordinariness isn’t the only thing I have to fight against in my house; gross injustice is another.) Anyway, there isn’t any heat in my room, so I had to close all the curtains, plug in the minute and ancient electric heater, and find the chenille bathrobe I got at the Salvation Army so I wouldn’t freeze to death. Then I had to go back to the kitchen because I’d run out of candles. Then I had to get my diary out of its secret hiding place where I keep it to safeguard it against the prying eyes of my mother’s other children. My father, who is a worrier by nature, is convinced that I’m going to torch the house some day by burning candles, but I prefer candlelight to electric. It’s so much more atmospheric. Especially when I’m telling the events of the day to my diary. No matter how busy I am, or how exhausted from the slings and arrows of the last twenty-four hours, I write in my diary every single night. My life is extraordinary; I don’t want to forget any more of it than I can help.

By the time I was finally in bed with the radio on, my candles lighted, my diary on my lap, and my pen with the lilac ink in my hand, it was nearly ten forty-five. I started the entry for March 5th. I had a lot to tell, as always.

I’d had another fight with my mother about my hair at breakfast. My mother thinks that the only suitable hair colours are brown, black, blonde and auburn. She was refusing to let me dye mine blue. She never got over me cutting off all my hair in my Joan of Arc phase and she still hadn’t really come round to the ring in my nose, so she was being especially stubborn this time.

But there were up things, too. My new cape had attracted its share of admiring looks, and Mrs Baggoli herself had wished me good luck for the auditions the next day. I innocently took these events as good signs.

I’d only gotten as far as everything that had happened in maths, my last class of the morning, when the world came to its sudden and horrible end. It wasn’t water, and it wasn’t ice, and it wasn’t even fire. It wasn’t even a neutron bomb. It was an announcement.

Wait’ll I tell you what happened in the cafeteria today, I was writing.

And then the song that was playing ended, and George Blue, my most favourite DJ in the whole universe, began talking again. I started to listen when I heard the name Sidartha. I almost wish I hadn’t; that the moment had passed right by and left me ignorant but happy for a little longer. I sat there, rigid with horror, the pen dangling from my hand like a withered flower on a severed stalk. I glanced at myself in the mirror next to my bed. If I had to describe the look on my face I would say it was the expression of a young woman who has lost every reason for living.