Emma Cline - The Girls

She let out a breath. “And?” She was smiling a little. An untroubled smile.

I was confused: she must know what I meant. “That’s all,” I said.

My mother looked at the wall. “That dessert was the one thing,” she said. “Next time I would do macaroons instead, coconut macaroons. Those mandarins were too hard to eat.”

I was silent, shock making me wary. I slipped off my shoes and put them under my bed, side by side. I murmured good night, tilted my head to receive her kiss.

“You want me to turn off the light?” my mother asked, pausing in the doorway.

I shook my head. She shut the door gently. How conscientious she was, turning the handle so it clicked shut. I stared at my red feet, marked by the outline of my shoes. Thought about how strangled and strange they looked, all out of proportion, and who would ever love someone whose feet could look like this?

—

My mother spoke of the men she dated, after my father, with the desperate optimism of the born-again. And I saw the devout labor it took: she did exercises on a bath towel in the living room, her leotard striped with sweat. Licked her palm and sniffed to test her own breath. She went out with men whose necks raised boils where they cut themselves shaving, men who fumbled for the check but looked grateful when my mother removed her Air Travel Card. She found men like this and seemed happy about it.

I’d imagine Peter, during our dinners with these men. Asleep with Pamela in a basement apartment in an unfamiliar Oregon town. Jealousy mingled strangely with a protectiveness for the two of them, for the child growing inside Pamela. There were only so many girls, I understood, that could be marked for love. Like that girl Suzanne, who commanded that response just by existing.

—

The man my mother liked best was a gold miner. Or that’s how Frank introduced himself, laughing, a scud of spit in the corner of his mouth.

“Pleased to meet you, darlin’,” he said the first night, his big arm reining me toward him in a clumsy hug. My mother was giddy and a little drunk, as if life were a world where nuggets of gold were hidden in streambeds or clustered at cliff bases, picked off as easily as peaches.

I had heard my mother tell Sal that Frank was still married but wouldn’t be for long. I didn’t know if that was true. Frank didn’t seem the type to leave his family. He wore a shirt with creamy buttons, peonies embroidered in raised red thread on the shoulders. My mother was acting nervous, touching her hair, slipping her fingernail between her front teeth. She looked from me to Frank. “Evie’s a very smart girl,” she said. She was talking too loud. Still, it was nice to hear her say it. “She’ll really blossom at Catalina.” This was the boarding school I’d attend, though September seemed years away.

“Big brains,” Frank boomed. “Can’t go wrong there, can you?”

I didn’t know if he was joking or not, and my mother didn’t seem to know either.

We ate a casserole in silence in the dining room, and I picked out the blats of tofu and built a pile on my plate. I watched my mother decide not to say anything.

Frank was good-looking, even if his shirt was strange, too fussy and feminine, and he made my mother laugh. He was not as handsome as my father, but still. She kept reaching out to touch his arm with her fingertips.

“Fourteen years old, huh?” Frank said. “Bet you have a ton of boyfriends.”

Adults always teased me about having boyfriends, but there was an age where it was no longer a joke, the idea that boys might actually want you.

“Oh, heaps,” I said, and my mother perked to attention, hearing the coldness in my voice. Frank didn’t seem to notice, smiling widely at my mother, patting her hand. She was smiling, too, in a masklike way, her eyes bouncing from me to him across the table.

Frank had gold mines in Mexico. “No regulations down there,” he said. “Cheap labor. It’s pretty much a sure thing.”

“How much gold have you found?” I asked. “So far, I mean.”

“Well, once all the equipment is in place, I’ll be finding a ton.” He drank from a wineglass, his fingers leaving ghosts of grease. My mother went soft, in his glance; her shoulders relaxing, her lips parting. She was young looking that night. I had a queer twinge of motherly feeling for her, and the discomfort of it made me wince.

“Maybe I’ll take you down there,” Frank said. “Both of you. Little trip to Mexico. Flowers in your hair.” He burped under his breath, swallowing it, and my mother blushed, wine moving in her glass.

My mother liked this man. Did her stupid exercises so she would look beautiful to him without any clothes on. She was groomed and oiled, her face eager for love. It was a painful thought, my mother needing anything, and I looked over at her, wanting to smile, to show her how we were fine, the two of us. But she wasn’t watching me. She was alert to Frank instead, waiting to receive whatever he wanted to give her. I balled my hands tight under the table.

“What about your wife?” I asked.

“Evie,” my mother hissed.

“That’s all right,” Frank said, holding up his hands. “That’s a fair question.” He rubbed his eyes hard, then put down his fork. “It’s complicated stuff.”

“It’s not that complicated,” I said.

“You’re a rude girl,” my mother said. Frank put his hand on her shoulder, but she’d already stood up to clear the plates, a grim busyness fixed on her face, and Frank handed over his plate with a concerned smile. Wiping his dry hands on his jeans. I didn’t look at her or him. I was picking at the skin around my fingernail, tugging until there was a satisfying tear.

When my mother left the room, Frank cleared his throat.

“You shouldn’t make your mom so mad,” he said. “She’s a nice lady.”

“None of your business.” My cuticle was bleeding a little: I pressed to feel the sting.

“Hey,” he said, his voice easy, like he was trying to be my friend. “I get it. You wanna be out of the house. Tired of living with ol’ mom, huh?”

“Pathetic,” I mouthed.

He didn’t understand what I had said, only that I hadn’t responded how he wanted. “Biting your nails is an ugly habit,” he said hotly. “An ugly, dirty habit for dirty people. Are you an ugly person?”

My mother reappeared in the doorway. I was sure she had overheard, and now she knew that Frank wasn’t a nice man. She would be disappointed, but I resolved to be kinder, to help more around the house.

But my mother just wrinkled her face. “What’s happening?”

“I was just telling Evie she shouldn’t bite her nails.”

“I tell her that, too,” my mother said. Her voice rattled, her lips twitching. “She could get sick, ingesting germs.”

I cycled through the possibilities. My mother was simply stalling. She was taking a moment to figure out how best to drive Frank from our lives, to tell him I was no one else’s business. But when she sat down and allowed Frank to rub her arm, even leaning toward him, I understood how it would go.

When Frank went to the bathroom, I figured there would be some kind of an apology from her.

“That shirt is too tight,” she whispered harshly. “It’s inappropriate, at your age.”

I opened my mouth to speak.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said. “You better believe we’ll talk.” When she heard Frank’s footsteps returning, she gave me one last look, then rose to meet him. They left me alone at the table. The overhead light on my arms and hands was severe and unlovely.

They went on the porch to sit, my mother keeping her cigarette butts in a mermaid tin. From my bedroom I heard their staggered talk late into the night, my mother’s laugh, simple and thoughtless. The smoke from their cigarettes drifting through the screen. The night boiled inside me. My mother thought life was as easy as picking gold from the ground, as if things could be that way for her. There was no Connie to temper my upset, just the suffocating constancy of my own self, that numb and desperate company.