Paula Bomer - Inside Madeleine

“It’s so good to see you,” he said, reaching his hands out to grab hers. She pulled her hands away and watched her father’s face fall.

“What happened to your hand?”

“Nothing.”

“You look so beautiful, Mary.” He put a hand on her shoulder.

She shrugged him off. “What do you want from me?”

“Want from you?”

“Yeah?”

“I just want to see you, Mary. You’re my daughter. I don’t want anything from you!”

The look on his face! The pain! And it was all because of her. Mary got up and walked to the door.

“Mary? Mary!” He called after her.

That night, Larissa and Mary had a party at their apartment. Larissa bought a half keg and bottles of whiskey and vodka and laid out colorful plastic cups. She called everyone she knew. Mary did nothing, except help her carry stuff up the stairs and then help her arrange things; she pushed the kitchen table against the wall, as Larissa pointed her finger at her, telling her to do it.

“And I’d like you to chip in for the booze.”

“Of course,” said Mary.

Larissa stood there, looking thoughtful, one hand on her now well defined hip. She’d lost so much weight that summer that her once childish pudginess was gone entirely. Her dark hair, once short and framing her face, now hung in thick long curls around her shoulders. Her face had cheekbones that stuck out angularly and her breasts curved low on her chest, like a woman much older than nineteen. She was mesmerizing. Beautiful. Mary stared at her.

Mary set up the keg and pumped and pumped it. She began drinking before people arrived. She kept drinking once they did arrive. In fact, she stayed standing, next to the keg, drinking, until the keg was empty. She served other people, who came and went. The music was loud. The Velvet Underground, Joy Division, David Bowie. It bothered her. Why had she thought this crap more sophisticated than Van Halen? Why had she been so impressed? She longed for her room at home, with its bland furniture and posters of horses. She longed for the quiet of her small town. Stumbling, she went into her back room to lie down. People were sitting on her bed, talking. Other kids sat on the floor, their legs bent up so they could fit in the tiny space. She fell on the bed and passed out.

The next morning, the apartment was a mess. She knew she had to clean it. Larissa would tell her to. She thought if she cleaned up before Larissa woke, that it would make her happy. Her head hurt and her mouth tasted awful. While collecting cups filled with the dregs of beer and cigarette ashes, she felt bile rise in her throat. She went to the bathroom and threw up. When she came out, Larissa was standing there, wearing a dark green nightgown that went down to her ankles.

“Are you okay?” she asked, voice unfriendly.

“I got sick.”

“I can see.”

“I’ve been cleaning up after the party. The smell of stale beer and cigarettes made me ill.”

“I think it was all the beer you drank. You drank half of that keg yourself. Now, can I get in there?”

“Yeah.”

After Mary had finished cleaning the apartment she took a hot shower. She was supposed to work the next day. And it was a group meeting day, too. With a towel wrapped around her, she headed back to her room.

“I need to talk to you,” Larissa said. She was sitting on the purple couch, smoking. The smell of the smoke made Mary’s heart pound.

“Okay.” Mary stood there.

“Go get dressed. Don’t just stand there in your towel.”

Mary headed into her room and shut the door. Larissa found her repulsive. She could tell. Funny how that was, how Larissa’s body excited her, moved her, really. And she had the exact opposite effect on Larissa. She didn’t look at herself as she threw on jeans and a T-shirt.

“That was quick.” Larissa said, and it sounded like an insult. “Listen, you have to move out. Clay is moving in.”

“What?”

“You have two weeks,” she said and blew a perfect smoke ring.

“Where will I go?”

Larissa laughed. “That’s your problem, honey. You know, you never do anything. You’re so … so passive. This will be good for you. Force you to take some responsibility for your life.”

“But the plan was to live here for the next school year—”

“The plan changed.” Larissa interjected. “And you aren’t on the lease, anyway.”

“Why don’t you like me?”

There was a pause, as if Larissa were really thinking about this question. Then she said, “What’s there to like?”

“What did you ever like about me?”

“I don’t know if I ever did.”

“Then you’re just as fucked up as I am.”

“I doubt that,” she said, dryly.

“ You don’t know me ,” Mary said, and her voice was different than she’d ever heard it before. She lifted her bloody knuckles at Larissa. “ You don’t know the half of me .”

She ran out of the apartment, down the rancid smelling stairs, out onto the street.

On Harvard Avenue, the traffic was light. It was two o’clock on a Sunday. She looked wildly back and forth. She saw no one she knew. Somehow, this comforted her. Then she thought, what did she care if she saw someone she knew? What did it matter what anyone thought of her? She turned up Commonwealth Avenue and started walking toward Cleveland Circle, toward Cleveland Circle House. “You shouldn’t have done that, Mareee!” Where would she go now? She kept walking until she came to a bus stop. There, she stopped and sat down. A bus came, and she got on it. It drove up the hill, toward Cleveland Circle. There was the house. She saw the smokers smoking on the porch. She wouldn’t go to work tomorrow. No, she’d never go back there. The bus kept going, and Mary panicked. At the next stop, she got off. She ran to a pay phone.

Her mother answered the phone. “Yes, I’ll accept the charges,” her mother said, her voice familiarly stiff with barely suppressed rage.

“Mom. Is Dad back yet? Is he there? I need him …”

“No. He’s there visiting you . Where are you? Why in God’s name are you calling collect? Mary? Mary! Are you there!?”

Mary hung up. Here was a woman who hated Mary for some power she perceived Mary to have. Just like Larissa hated her for her lack of it.

She’d try calling the hotel. Maybe he hadn’t left yet. He’d forgive her, he loved her. Yes, he did, and that was all that really mattered.

“SEE THIS,” LISE SAID, SHOWING ME A BEAUTIFUL, INTRICATE TATTOO OF AN ASIAN DESIGN ON HER RIGHT FOREARM, JUST BELOW HER WRIST.

“It’s beautiful,” I said without touching it, although I wanted to.

“This is my ‘I’m never going to be a fucking bank teller’ tattoo,” she said, smiling. Her hair had recently been shaved into a military-like flat top and dyed white. Lise was much cooler than me. Her family had tons of money, so why would she ever need to be a bank teller?

I was her doormat friend. This was a good thing for me to be at the time, for various reasons. For one, it was the only way to be her friend at all. I treated her with adoration and she tolerated me and mocked me gently from time to time. As good as my adoration must have felt to her, it also felt good to adore her. It felt like love in my heart, like the unrequited love I once had for my older sister when I was seven and she was twelve. It felt a bit like my love for Ron, my boyfriend at the time, a drummer in a rock band, who wasn’t a very good boyfriend.

Lise lived off of an enormous trust fund and had never held a job in her life. At the time, I was waiting on tables at an Italian restaurant on Newbury Street in Boston. I had come to New York to visit her. We had met years before, in a summer abroad program in Mexico during high school. Now, she lived in a spacious one bedroom apartment on the twenty-first floor of a doorman building on Sixteenth and Third Avenue. The windows held stunning views. I looked out at the fall sun, bright, but holding the chill of the air in it. I wanted to say, what’s wrong with being a bank teller? But I knew the answer. It wasn’t cool. It was being average. It was working for the man . It wasn’t making your art.