Loom: A Novel

4

12 It must be n in et y degr ees in h er e. Mother, no doubt. As if by cranking up the heat she is expelling the cold and something worse besides. I kick away the sheets. Stupidly, I forgot to bum a few extra cigarettes from my aunt before I left her in her room to her daily ritual of Loom gazing. Everyone’s been acting strange—OK, stranger than usual—since my father’s cousin announced her visit. All week my mother’s been in a frenzy of cleaning, and now she’s cross because the cousin’s stuck in New York and we’ll end up having to eat the leg of lamb for lunch; heaven forbid we should indulge unless there’s company, which never happens anyway. I’ve taken off my pajama bottoms and unbuttoned the top and tied it into a knot. I stretch out on the bed and prop myself up on one elbow, à la Elle McPherson who’s staring back at me from her poster on the wall. Hair tossed back, breasts squeezed together to make them seem bigger than they really are. I pucker up and narrow my eyes. Then I remember. I go to the mirror and look at my belly, pressing down, kneading the muscles, feeling for a potential pulse. Kevin wore a condom. I am safe. I will go to Berkeley. I fall down on the bed. It’s too hot and there’s nothing to do. My mother is calling me. “Marie, Marie,” she yells in that voice I hate, half martyr and half mad despot. I get up and put Janis Joplin on, then lock the door and wait. It takes her a while to climb the stairs because of her bad knees, but here she is, as predictable as morning, knocking on my door and ordering me to turn that thing down. I oblige. Once again I have gotten a rise out of her. But it’s not as fun as it used to be. I must be bored. 13 I am bored. Wretchedly, utterly, down to my pinky toes. My best friend Shirley is visiting her father in Florida. Kevin’s in North Carolina spending Christmas with his grandparents. My only family is all under this one roof. You decide what’s wrong with this picture. I make up my mind to call Shirley’s mom, on the unlikely chance that Shirley has decided to leave Florida earlier than planned. I don’t believe this for a minute, but I tiptoe anyway to the hallway and hijack the cordless . In her scratchy voice, Mrs. Dougherty dashes my delicate hopes: Shirley will be back in the middle of January, as originally planned. Despite my disappointment I don’t hang up. I like Shirley’s mom, with her Seventies bouffant hair and her lumpy thighs she’s not shy about showing off in the summer months and sometimes beyond. They’re wiggly and crisscrossed with varicose veins, but she doesn’t care. Veins like rivers snaking down the backs of those thighs you can almost feel throbbing under the skin, but she walks her dog Duncan every day at five o’clock on the dot, yanking that leash with sure authority every time Duncan gets feisty at the sight of a human or fellow canine. She and Shirley’s dad have been divorced since Shirley was a toddler, which is why my dad doesn’t like my best friend. I’m not sure what it is exactly he finds objectionable, the divorce itself or the absence of a lawful male to steer mother and daughter away from needless sin. Little does he know that, of the two of us, it’s his little daughter who’s no longer a virgin. I’ve never seen Mrs. Dougherty with a man. If she has a boyfriend, she keeps him well hidden. I secretly hope she’ll take me into her confidence one day, whisper her scandalous secrets in my ear while we sit on the stoop, throwing a stick to Duncan. But it’s never happened, and I’m left to wonder what she does in her spare time besides not giving a rip what people think. I inquire politely after her health, a question she knows to be the small empty talk it is and ignores. Instead she tells me that she’s considering trading in her Camaro for a motorcycle but is hesitating because of...