El Camino A Casa / Local Girls
By Alice HoffmanRoca Editorial
Copyright © 2005 Alice Hoffman
All right reserved.ISBN: 9788496284289
Chapter One
One thing I've learned is that strange things do happen.They happen all the time. Today, for instance, my bestfriend Jill's cat spoke. We were making brownies in thekitchen when we heard it say, Let me out. Well, we rushedto the back door and did exactly that. We experienced amiracle and now we're looking for more, although Franconia,the town we live in, is not known for such things.Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. Onehouse separates our houses but we act as if it doesn't exist.We met before we were born and we'll probably still knoweach other after we die. At least, that's the way we're planningit.
My mother and I left for Atlantic City so quicklyI didn't have time to call Jill. We told people we were onour way to visit an old aunt, but really our departure hadsomething to do with love, or the lack of it, and the auntdoesn't even exist. I know other people whose motherssuddenly pack up when their fathers drink or scream, butfor us this is more serious. My mother doesn't do thingslike go to Atlantic City. She doesn't order room serviceand cry. She once told me that anyone who gets marriedhad better like herself, because there's nobody else in thisworld that she'll ever really know, not truly.
We stayed in our room in Atlantic City for three days,and didn't go outside once, thanks to room service. We atelike pigs and didn't even bother to brush our teeth untilmy mother's cousin Margot, who got a divorce last summerand changed the color of her hair to give herself anemotional lift, came to get us. She drove to New Jersey inthe Ford Mustang convertible that she refused to let her exhave, since he'd taken her very soul and raked it over redhotcoals.
"Get dressed right now," she told us.
We were wearing our bathrobes and watching an oldcowboy movie, which, for some reason, made my mothercry. Maybe it was all those men on horseback who were sosteadfast and loyal. Their own men had disappointed them,but somehow Margot and my mother both had hope forimprovement. Frankly, I had more faith in the horses.
"I mean now, Frances," Margot said, and because shemeant business, my mother actually dressed and put onsome lipstick and we went to a Chinese restaurant wherethe drinks came with little paper umbrellas, which I keptas a souvenir.
Listen to me, Gretel, Margot told me when we'd goneback to the room to pack and my mother was finally outof earshot. When a marriage breaks up, it's the children who suffer,so baby, hold on tight. That's why Margot was relievedthat she and Tony had never had children, although shebecame teary whenever she saw a baby.
"Margot is my best friend, but she's completely full ofbaloney," my mother whispered as we were throwing oursuitcases into the trunk. "Take it all with a grain of salt.Maybe even a whole shaker."
Say what you want about the Mustang, it may be gorgeous,but it has very little trunk space. I had to sit in theback seat with the hair dryer and the makeup case on mylap all the way to Franconia, but that didn't stop me fromkeeping my fingers crossed and wishing we'd wind upsomeplace other than home.
We're in Florida for one week, the week whenthe turtles die on the beach and there are jellyfish in theocean. As soon as we checked into the hotel, my brother,Jason, who likes to pretend he's not part of our family,went out to study tide pools and no one has seen himsince. My parents are here to try to revitalize their marriage,which seems a pretty impossible feat to all outsideobservers. Gretel honey, don't get high hopes, Margot had alreadywarned me when she took me shopping for abathing suit, a mission which can give anyone with a lessthan perfect body a complete nervous breakdown. Whenit's over, it's over, Margot told me, and I had the distinct feelingthat she was right.
Long before the plane touched down in Miami wecould hear our parents arguing, and at the hotel theylocked themselves in their room. If you ask me, workingso hard at being married can backfire. It certainly is makingmy father nastier than usual. Not that his bad temperaffects me. I keep my own counsel. I go my own way. I orderroom service and eat Linzer tortes and shrimp scampialone in the room I was supposed to be sharing with Jason,not that he was ever planning to show up. Even though Iwas across the hall from my parents, I could still hear themfighting.
I went out to the beach late, later than I'd be allowedto if anyone knew I was alive. That's where I met JonathanRabbit, who is now in love with me. He is known as JackRabbit, which makes me laugh out loud. Doesn't it figurethat the boy who fell for me would be a rodent? He livesin Atlanta and is in the ninth grade, and frankly he's terriblyboring. I let him kiss me once, but believe me, I didnot hear bells. I only heard the jellyfish sloshing around inthe water and the noisy beat of Jack Rabbit's heart.
Florida didn't do anything for my family, butat least it's starting to be spring. Jill and I are keeping oureyes open for miracles. Jack Rabbit calls me constantly andthat is something of a miracle. He writes so often you'dthink his fingers would start to cramp up. I bring his lettersto school, so everyone is well aware that I have a boyfriendin Atlanta. They'll never meet him. They'll never know it'sactually possible for a boy to be so boring you'd agree tokiss him just to get him to shut up. I should get paid to listento him when he calls on the phone. I should get a dollarfifty an hour. Minimum.
Jill told me that when you're really in love, you knowright away. I'm not exactly sure how this happens. Is it likea flash of lightning? Like an angel tapping you on theshoulder? Or is it similar to choosing a puppy? You thinkyou're picking the cutest one, but really you wind up goinghome with the one who keeps insisting on climbinginto your lap. That's how we got our dog, Revolver. Wethought he was so crazy about us, but it turned out thatLabrador retrievers adore everyone. Well, maybe that'swhat love is, a state of mind ready to grace anyone willingto accept it. Anyone who cares.
School's out. Hurray. Life, however, is still so boringthat I'm writing to Jack Rabbit every day. I go to thepool with Jill and take along my notebook and write untilI think I'm going blind, then jump into the deep end. Weare not going on vacation because no one in my house istalking to each other, so going anywhere together is definitelyout. My brother's on the summer science team at thehigh school, so he's never home. My father is on an exercisekick and has joined a gym, so he's never around either.
My mother and Margot and I spend a lot of time goingto movies. It's dark and it's cool and no one knows ifyou're crying, except for the person sitting directly besideyou. Margot buys me anything I want, even Jordan almonds,which are so terrible for your teeth. She's the kindof person who knows about love. She has men calling herin the middle of the night, but they're all no good, or soshe says. Just like Jill, she insists she'll know when shemeets the right man. But unlike Jill, she tells me exactlywhat love's evidence is. I'll just want to kiss him till I die. Tome, this doesn't sound like something to hope for, butpeople seem to hope for it all the same.
Jill is camping with her parents, and has sent mea postcard that it has happened. The miracle we've beensearching for, the great event, the angel's secret. It's love, itreally is. It's the boy in the tent next to hers who she sneaksout to meet after her parents are asleep. I sit on my frontstoop while Jill is away and think things over. I'vesmartened up and am no longer waiting for the mailman.Jack Rabbit isn't writing anymore. He went to camp to bea junior counselor and I guess he broke his arm or fell inlove with somebody new. Doesn't it figure that I wouldmiss his letters like crazy? Sometimes I read the old oneslate at night, and I wonder what was I thinking when I gotthem. How could I have thought he was boring? Well, I'mthe boring one now. When Jill comes back I may have tolie to her. I may tell her Jack Rabbit died in a canoeing accident.My name was the last word he said, or so they tell me.My name brought him comfort with his last dying breath.
Jill and I are not in the same class at school. Wenever are. The administration doesn't want people wholike each other to be together. They think it builds characterwhen they stick people who hate one another in thesame room, day after day, and nobody winds up gettingkilled or maimed. I'm not supposed to know that Jill'smother is seeing a psychiatrist, just as Jill is not supposed toknow my parents are no longer sleeping in the same room.My mother spends her nights on a quilt on my floor, andshe doesn't cry until she thinks I'm asleep.
Recently, Margot and I went out for ice cream. Wehad butterscotch sundaes with vanilla ice cream. Margotasked for my advice. She had spotted my father at an expensiverestaurant, the kind he'd never take us to, withsome woman she'd never seen before and she didn't knowwhether or not to tell my mother. I have never been muchof a tattletale myself, although I understand that there aretimes when the truth serves its purpose. This didn't seemto be one of those times. For all we knew, this womancould be some business associate, although Margot and Iprobably would have both been willing to bet our livesthat she wasn't.
Don't tell. That was the advice I came up with. Mymother was already crying and sleeping on the floor, whatgood would the truth do her now? Margot didn't eat anyof her sundae, and when she offered it to me I realized Iwas sick to my stomach. I think I've pretty much figuredout that in this world, it's better to stick to hot fudge.
On Halloween Jill wore all black and made ears outof felt which she glued to a plastic headband. She was ablack cat. She had a tail that was braided out of three silkscarves. I borrowed thirty silver bangle bracelets from mygrandmother. I was a fortune-teller. We should have suspectedsomething when we saw the moon. It was orangeand so big we couldn't believe it. It was like we could takeone big step, and there we'd be: moon girls who had fallenoff the rim of the world. My brother laughed at us.Weren't we a little too old for trick-or-treating? Well ofcourse we were, but we didn't care. We went up and downthe block, collecting candy; then we walked beyond thehigh school through the field so we could smoke cigarettesbeside the creek. Jill had stolen the cigarettes from hermother's purse, and I had gotten the matches from mygrandmother.
"As long as you're not smoking cigarettes," my grandmotherhad said to me, which pretty much ruined thewhole thing. I couldn't enjoy a single puff. GrandmaFrieda was visiting for the weekend and she had the abilityto put a hex on any form of high jinks. She was sleepingon my floor too, and it was getting pretty crowded there inmy room. I could never find my sneakers. I couldn't findmy underwear. Every night, as I fell asleep, I'd hear bits ofwhispered conversation, and every single one seemed toinclude the word sorrow.
Jill had been practicing and knew how to blow smokerings. She was blowing a misty ring when some guys fromthe high school intent on trouble approached. Jill lookedolder than she was, and even in costume, you could tell shewas beautiful. The high school guys tried to kiss her, andwhen she refused, they grabbed her. The whole thing happenedso fast I just sat there, as though I were the audienceand the whole thing was a play. And then it wasn't. I hitone of the guys, and all of my silver bracelets were soheavy he fell backwards. The shock of me smashing one ofthem gave us time to run. We ran and ran, like we reallycould get to the moon if we had to. We ran until weturned into smoke; we could float across lawns and driftunder windows and doors.
"I can't believe you did that," Jill said when we finallymade it home. She had lost her tail and her ears, but herface was shining. "You hit him."
I felt great for days.
We don't do holidays. We go to my grandmaFrieda's for Passover, but we skip Chanukah, which my fatherinsists is trivial, and Thanksgiving, which he considersa meaningless ritual. We do, however, spend everyChristmas at Margot's house. It's a holiday she feels entitledto celebrate since she was married to Tony Molinaro for allthose years. My father never goes to Margot's, and this yearJason wasn't there either. It was just us, and we decoratedthe tree with all of Tony's mother's beautiful old ornaments.There's an angel that's always been my favorite,fashioned out of silvery glass. When Tony's mother wasalive she assured me it would bring good luck to whoeverhung it on the tree. Tony's mother always preferred Margotto her own son, and when they broke up she took to herbed and was dead by the following spring.
Even after Margot and Tony divorced, Margot alwaysincluded her ex-mother-in-law in the festivities. Tony'smother must have been at least ninety. Her hands shook asshe held out the angel. "Here's the thing about luck," shetold me on her last Christmas. "You don't know if it'sgood or bad until you have some perspective."
This year we made a toast to the old lady and Margotactually cried. Right as we finished the tree, snow startedto fall. We all rushed to the front window to look. It wasthe kind of snow that you hardly ever see, so heavy andbeautiful you fall in love with winter, even though youknow you'll have to shovel in the morning.
Margot had made a turkey with stuffing, a noodlekugel, and a white cake topped with coconut that lookedlike the snow outside. After dinner, she and my mother puton aprons and did the dishes and laughed. I let them listento Elvis's Blue Christmas; I hardly ever saw my mother havinga good time, so how could I complain?
In Jill's family Christmas was a big deal, and I knewwhen I went over to her house in the morning she'd havea dozen great presents to show me and I'd have to try notto be jealous. Jill and I had given each other bottles ofWhite Musk, our favorite scent. I envied Jill just abouteverything, but I didn't feel jealous right then, listening toElvis in Margot's house. Truthfully, there was nowhere elseI'd rather be. Lucky for us, Margot lived right around thecorner from us. Her house was our house, and vice versa,unless my father was at home. Margot and my mother intendedto be neighbors forever; they had dozens of plans,but not all of their plans were working out.
I'd overheard my father talking on the phone. He wasintending to leave as soon as the weather got better. Assoon as he could break the news to us, he'd be gone. Hewas in a holding pattern, that's what he said, but he wasn'tholding on to us, that much was certain. I didn't tell mymother what I'd learned. I didn't tell anyone. I wanted tosee Margot and my mother dance in the kitchen when thedishes were done and drying on the rack. I wanted to seethem throw their aprons on the floor.
That night, when we walked home, my mother puther arm around me and told me to wish on a star. She stillbelieved in things like that. We stood there in the snow,and try as I might, I didn't see a single star. But I lied. I saidthat I did, and I wished anyway. We stood there while mymother tried in vain to see that same star. My fingers werefreezing, so I put my hands in my pockets. The angel wasthere. I knew that if I tried to thank Margot, she'd tell meto cut it out, she'd say it was nothing, but it was definitelysomething to me.
It was late, but we could hear traffic on the SouthernState Parkway, even though it was Christmas, and snowingso hard. You had to wonder who all these people in theircars were leaving behind and who they were drivingtoward, and if they knew that in the distance, the echo oftheir tires on the asphalt sounded like a river, and that tosomeone like me, it could seem like the miracle I'd beenlooking for.
Continues...
Excerpted from El Camino A Casa / Local Girlsby Alice Hoffman Copyright © 2005 by Alice Hoffman. Excerpted by permission.
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