The Birthday Girl Read online

  Todd huffed by her; her husband always got anxious before every social gathering, and parties at their house brought out the worst. He was snapping at the caterer, growling at the bartenders, yelling at the kids. She should be used to it by now, but mostly it was irritating. Just take a fucking Xanax and relax already. He wasn’t even dressed—he was still wearing a ratty T-shirt and board shorts.

  “Don’t put that there!” he yelled at a hapless waiter who had moved one of the vases from the mantel to make room for a line of shot glasses. “It’ll stain the wood!”

  The waiter startled and almost dropped the vase.

  “Todd!” Ellie said, hands on hips.

  He wheeled toward her, looking positively murderous. “What?”

  “STOP IT!”

  “STOP WHAT?”

  It was her birthday. For one day out of the fucking year, could he not be himself for once? One day. One night. To celebrate herself and her achievements, couldn’t he just let them have a nice party? She promised herself she wouldn’t fall for it, that she would let him rant and rage because when the doorbell rang and the first guest arrived, he always turned into the consummate host, pressing drinks and making small talk and making everyone feel so warm and welcome. He was good at that. But for the hour before the party, he was awful.

  So it always happened that Todd was smooth and smiling when the guests arrived, while Ellie would be the one shaken and brittle because they had just had a screaming fight in front of all the help beforehand.

  Don’t do it, don’t do it, she told herself.

  She did it.

  “FUCKING GET OUT OF THE WAY ALREADY AND LET THESE PEOPLE DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS!” she screamed at him.

  “FUCK YOU! DON’T FUCKING TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK I CAN DO IN MY OWN FUCKING HOUSE!” he screamed back.

  The caterer ignored them; she’d seen it all before.

  Todd stomped away, having dumped all his social anxiety on his wife, who was now, predictably, shaken and brittle and full of rage.

  Why? Why was she even having this party anyway? It wasn’t for fun. It was to show off. To let everyone gawk at the yards of diamonds dripping down her cleavage in her new straight-from-the-runway Delpozo dress and to wear her new Lucite heels from that tranny boutique downtown. Yeah, she still said tranny; she knew you weren’t supposed to say it anymore, which was why she said it. Tranny. You were supposed to say transgender or genderqueer like Sam’s friends, all those beautiful boy-girls and girl-boys. But what else would you call a store that sold seven-inch heels up to size fifteen, a store that was practically exploding with marabou feathers?

  The doorbell rang, and since Ellie was the closest one to it, she opened it, annoyed that someone had arrived early. Didn’t people know it was a faux pas to arrive early to a party? When the invite said six o’clock, it meant please arrive at six thirty. Any earlier was simply irritating and provincial.

  But it wasn’t a guest standing at the doorway, it was Sam.

  Samantha Alyson Stinson. Her stepdaughter.

  “Sam!” she said. “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be home till Thanksgiving! And look at your hair!”

  Sam had cut her hair. It was very, very short, almost like a crew cut. Did this mean she was also going through a gender-fluid phase?

  “I dyed it blond and hated it, so I had to cut it because it was falling out,” said Sam. So no, not a sexual orientation signifier but a hair fail.

  Ellie put her arms around her kid. Sam was her kid as much as Giggy and Otis and Eli. Maybe she even loved Sam more because she didn’t want to love her any less. Didn’t want to be pegged as that stepmom. “You’re too skinny!”

  “Is the party tonight?” Sam asked, scowling at the flurry of activity around the house. “Oh, fuck.”

  “Wait, you didn’t come home for my party? This isn’t a surprise you and Daddy cooked up? And don’t swear; it’s tacky,” she admonished.

  Sam sighed. “No, Ellie, it’s not.”

  Ellie wished Sam would call her Mom, or Mommy, or Mama, like she used to, when she was a kid. But lately, Sam called her by her first name, which was annoying. She supposed it was because technically Sam already had a mom. Montserrat was invited to the party even. It was a magnanimous gesture on Ellie’s part, given all the toxic history between Montserrat and Todd, Montserrat and Ellie, Montserrat and the three of them, Montserrat who had a habit of calling child services on Ellie and Todd, Montserrat who had made Sam believe that Ellie had stolen her father from them, Montserrat who had overdosed twice and, once when Sam was just twelve, locked her out of the house at three in the morning after throwing a water bottle at Sam’s head (ouch), but of course when the police officers came, they’d questioned Todd. Ellie had been in China, at the factory, haggling with her suppliers in the middle of a big meeting when she got a call from her hysterical child saying Montserrat had freaked out and she was alone, on the street, at three A.M., please come get her.

  But of course now Montserrat (stupid name) was Mom, Montserrat was sober, Montserrat was a life coach (of all things!). And Ellie was just Ellie. Not the parent who had flown out that very hour from Shenzhen to deal with the mess. Not Mom. No! Not that. Just Ellie.

  Sam put her dusty bags down on the terrazzo. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why not?”

  Sam raised her eyebrow. She looked like a cute baby lesbian, like Jenny Shimizu, Angelina Jolie’s Japanese model girlfriend before she married and divorced Brad Pitt and became Mother Teresa slash Mia Farrow with all those children. Ellie decided it was kind of a good look on Sam. Asian butch girl. Maybe she would put Sam in the latest Wild & West campaign.

  “Because there’s nothing to say,” said Sam in a belligerent tone.

  Ellie sighed. Todd was supposed to be dealing with Sam, and to be on top of whatever problems she had. Sam’s issues—academic, emotional, and otherwise—were supposed to be more his responsibility than hers, since she was his biological child. At least he was supposed to be on it while Ellie was trying to fix the financial mess they were in. But of course Todd had dropped the ball. Ellie did not have the bandwidth to deal with whatever this was right now. Right now, she was in the middle of selling her company to a wealthy Korean investor (if you can’t beat them, join them, or in her case, sell fifty percent to them) and trying to keep everything afloat and one step ahead of the bill collectors.

  Besides, Sam had never been much trouble. The kid had always been a straight-A-plus nerd. She never had any friends, had withdrawn into herself and her studies as a rebellion against her hard-partying cokehead mom and her negligent dad and her too-busy-at-work stepmom. Ellie had done her best. And she considered Sam a fait accompli.

  Sam was at Stanford! It was something Ellie dropped into every conversation. We can’t make it to dinner because we’re visiting our eldest at Stanford. Stanford homecoming is next week! Stanford housing is so expensive! We can’t decide whether to fly or drive down to Stanford. Stanford, Stanford, Stanford; it was a mantra to keep bad luck, bad fortune, bad things from happening. It was a sign that they’d done well by their kids, that they were the best parents in the world. Stanford! They’d made it all the way to the top! Take that, child services!

  “Did something happen at school?” asked Ellie.

  Sam shrugged and took out her phone, started texting someone.

  Ellie took a deep, calming breath. “Fine. Have it your way. We’ll talk about this later. Get ready for the party. You look like you just got out of a plane.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Against her better judgment, knowing full well the kid was just manipulating her, trying to get on her good side, Ellie felt herself melt at being called Mom again.

  “Okay, go! Hurry! The guests will be here any minute!”

  Sam went, and the doorbell rang again.

  FOUR


  Mall Rats

  October 19

  Twenty-Four Years Ago

  5:30 P.M.

  Since it was Leo’s birthday, they were going to Washington Square, the good mall all the way out in Tigard, not the one just five minutes away. The good mall had the better shops. It was shiny, clean, and had recently been renovated. The mall nearby was old. It had a Sears and a JC Penney, and a Casual Corner, which even her mom found too frumpy. If they were feeling cheesy, they went to Merry-Go-Round, but mostly they ended up at Mervyn’s, which was like Sears but just a tiny bit nicer (no power tools), though nothing like the Nordstrom at the good mall. Mish called it “the Nordstrom’s,” which annoyed Leo because there wasn’t a Mr. Nordstrom or a Nordstrom family who owned it (she didn’t think), plus it sounded so . . . uneducated. The plan was to head to Brass Plum to shop(lift) and then meet the boys at the food court.

  Leo wanted to put the nail polish away in her bureau, so they walked across the alley to her house. Mish waited by the front door. Leo grabbed her backpack and checked her lipstick in the mirror, and as she walked out of the room, she tripped on the loose tile by the doorway, almost falling on her ass.

  “Walk much?” smirked Mish.

  Leo colored. The tile had been broken for months now, and while her mother kept a neat house, she didn’t know anything about maintenance or larger repairs. There were broken blinds in almost all the windows, cracks in the ceiling, and mold in the bathroom. Tidying up wasn’t enough.

  “You guys should really take care of that,” said Mish. “I know some guy who fell and hit his head on the sidewalk and he died.”

  “Yeah, because my dad killed him,” said Leo, who didn’t find it funny.

  “It was an accident!” said Mish, who always found the story fascinating. That someone could die from a punch, from a fall. That was all it took.

  “Shut up,” said Leo, grabbing a key to the house on their way out.

  Neither of them had cars, even though Mish had a driver’s license, so they took the bus. Walking over to the stop, there was a slight mist in the air, and Leo worried her hair would pouf up. It was gray out, but then, it was always gray out. That was the problem with living in the Pacific Northwest; the sky was slate, never blue. It was always about to rain, or had just stopped raining, or raining. Leo was sick of rain.

  It was embarrassing to wait at the curb with all the old people and the poor people and the old and poor people carrying plastic sacks. No one else they knew took the bus. Leo wished Brooks had offered to pick them up, but even Mish didn’t want him to see where they lived. The reality of their circumstances was too far from what he was used to. Leo had been in Brooks’s house a few times, had gawked at the large pantry filled with snacks from Costco and the fact that his family subscribed to all the cable channels. That’s what impressed her the most. The height of wealth was signified by unlimited TV and corn chips more than the formal dining room or the chrome-and-glass tables in the living room, with the weirdly shaped pastel vases that Mish explained were “artistic.”

  When they’d hung out at Brooks’s, Mish had been right at home, pouring orange juice into glasses and acting like a host. Brooks held up the remote and flicked over to MTV. Leo had sat at the edge of the couch, not even daring to lean back. But as the afternoon wore on, and they played a few hands of War, and Mish spilled a whole bowl of popcorn on the rug and Brooks only laughed, Leo had been able to relax a little. She’d told her mom about every detail of the house, about the pretty planters by the window and the fact that they had a room devoted just to watching TV. It was off the kitchen, and when Brooks was little, it had been his playroom. The shelves were still stacked with plastic bins full of Legos.

  If Leo wished for a moment that there was going to be a surprise birthday party for her in that large, comfortable house later that day, she would never admit it to Mish. It was just a fantasy, a sweet daydream. There was no way that would ever happen. Mish would never even dream of asking Brooks. Mish’s own birthday was a few days later, and even then, there were no plans to celebrate at Brooks’s house.

  The bus came, finally, groaning to a stop and making a hissing noise as it crouched down to let the elderly passengers up. Leo and Mish waited their turn, and Leo fished around in her pocket for her quarter. “Transfer, please,” she told the bus driver, who handed her a blue ticket she could use to get back home.

  “We don’t need a transfer. I’m sure we can get a ride later,” said Mish.

  “Really?” asked Leo. “From whom?”

  “Arnold said he’d try to meet up with us later maybe,” said Mish. Arnold was a guy from their neighborhood, something of a big-brother type. He kept an eye out for them, which was sweet, until you remembered he was also basically a dropout and a drug dealer.

  “Um, okay,” said Leo. She took the transfer anyway. You never knew. Arnold could be flaky.

  And Mish tended to overpromise; she couldn’t help it. It was her way, like with the homecoming dance just a few weeks ago. She’d told Leo that she had to come with them, that she and Brooks were all going in a huge group. Leo didn’t even need a date, Mish said; some people were going stag. The point was to just go together and have fun. Leo had never been to homecoming before, neither the game nor the dance after. But Mish had insisted she “come with.” And so Leo made her mom sew her a dress that she could wear. They found a pattern for a tight black sheath. But then the weeks passed and when Leo would ask Mish about specific plans, like where were they all meeting and whom she could ride with, Mish would just wave her away or say, “Um, I dunno, let me find out . . .”

  But she never did. Homecoming week came and went. Maybe Mish forgot about inviting Leo. Or maybe she was too embarrassed to bring her along to one of the rare outings with a larger group of Brooks’s friends. Or maybe she changed her mind and didn’t want Leo there. Leo put the dress away. Maybe she’d wear it some other time. Mish went to homecoming. Leo saw the photos on her desk one afternoon, but she never confronted Mish about it. She didn’t even ask Mish how it went. It was one of those things that was just left unsaid between them. Supposedly, Brooks got crowned homecoming king and Stacey Anders was queen. Stacey was probably the most popular girl in school, pretty, rich, a cheerleader but also a member of Students against Drunk Driving and the debate team, headed for Dartmouth.

  Leo and Mish found seats in the back of the bus, and Leo took the window seat. The mist hugged the tops of the fir trees, and she could see the bay not too far away. Mish put on her headphones and chewed her gum and zoned out. Leo could hear the tinny music from her Walkman. The Cure, it sounded like.

  That was what was nice about having a best friend—they didn’t have to talk to each other all the time. If Mish might be a little smug about her handsome Arlington boyfriend, well, wouldn’t any girl be the same?

  Mish didn’t know what would come next, though. Leo’s mother always told her what was in store for girls like Mish: pregnancy, her own trailer, and another deadbeat boyfriend. Brooks was never going to marry a girl like Mish. She was just his high school hookup, the local tramp he’d talk about in wonder and a little pride to his future wife, some Stacey Anders type, who’d raise their 2.5 children in their perfect home with their perfect life until the cycle repeated itself all over again and his perfect son ended up at Arlington High. Just like Mish would repeat her mother’s cycle. Maybe their kids would even date, ha.

  That’s why Leo wanted out, she didn’t want any part of that, and if she had to do it all on her own, she would. Somehow, she would. She was only sixteen years old, but she already knew her dreams were too big for this stupid little town. She sat in silence and looked out at the view. One day, she would leave this place and never come back. She didn’t aspire just to a better neighborhood. She wanted out of the state even. Out of the West Coast, maybe even out of America.

  “Oh, hey, you’re Leo, right?” Leo looked up to see a gir
l from school standing in front of her. It was Shona Silverstein. Leo was surprised to see her on the bus. “Hey, M,” Shona said to Mish.

  Mish removed her headphones delicately and gave Shona a sweet smile. “Hi, girl, what are you doing on the Green Beast?”

  Shona explained she took the bus when her older brother had to stay late for band. She was awfully friendly to Mish, and Leo got the impression that while the girls knew each other through Brooks, and that Shona was maybe part of that “big group” that had gone to homecoming together, Mish was closer to that group of girls, and particularly Shona, than she had ever let on before. Mish explained what they were doing.

  “Oh, it’s your birthday too? Happy birthday!” said Shona, turning to Leo and clapping her hands as if delighted. Leo wondered why she cared. And what did she mean by “it’s your birthday too”? Who else had a birthday today?

  “We’re going shopping, then meeting the guys,” said Mish.

  Shona raised her eyebrows approvingly. “You guys should come to Stace’s party. I mean, if you have nothing to do later. Not that you don’t, but you know, you should stop by.”

  “Sure, maybe,” Leo said. Why was Shona being so nice? Was it because Mish was part of the group now? In any event, Leo was definitely still a hanger-on, if that.

  Shona got off at her stop, by the entrance to one of those hilly neighborhoods. Several tired-looking women, nannies and housekeepers most likely, got on the bus when she left.

  Before Mish put her headphones back on, Leo elbowed her. “Let’s go to the party.”

  “At Stacey’s? Why?” Mish made a face.

  “Isn’t Brooks friends with all those guys?” said Leo. She was heading dangerously into the unsaid territory between them, but she forged on. “I mean, don’t you hang out with them?”