Meant to be, p.4
Meant to Be, page 4
At first, the attention surprised me. After all, how much could a person change over the course of three months, and why was so much turning on my appearance anyway? It was all further evidence of the “emperor’s new clothes” pack mentality. Someone at the top, likely Wendy, had decided that I had some worth, and everyone else was just following suit, giving me a chance.
But I still had to pass the test, and as I sat down at Wendy’s lunch table, I reminded myself to smile and pretend to be confident. Meanwhile, Wendy and her cohorts pummeled me with questions. It was clearly an audition of sorts, and I could tell by the looks on some of the girls’ faces that they were hoping I’d falter. Kimberly Carrigan, in particular, looked sour, perhaps worried that I might affect her standing as Wendy’s best friend.
“So, Cate, do you like anyone?” Wendy asked at one point, her eyes darting over to the football table, where Bill Adams was sitting.
I shook my head no.
“What about Bill?” she said. “I heard he asked you out.”
“He didn’t ask me out,” I said. “He just invited me to a party.”
Wendy let out a snort of a laugh and said, “Um…that’s called asking you out.”
For a second, I felt dumb. But I spun it to my advantage, playing cool with the most nonchalant shrug I could muster. “Whatever. I said no.”
Several of the girls looked impressed as Wendy continued to grill me. “Why did you say no? ’Cause your dad’s a cop? And you’d get in trouble?”
My stomach dropped at the out-of-the-blue mention of Chip. How did Wendy know he was a cop? I started to tell her that he wasn’t my dad—that he was only my stepdad. But then I flashed back to my English teacher talking pityingly about the kids from “broken homes” in The Outsiders and bit my tongue.
I shook my head, flipping my hair behind my shoulder like the popular girls always did. “Nah. He’s not, like, running around busting parties or anything like that…. He’s a detective…. He works in the city.”
Wendy looked impressed, nodding her approval as she told me that her father worked in the city, too. She then returned to the subject of Bill, asking why I’d said no. “You don’t think he’s cute?”
I hesitated, my mind racing. How could I explain that it really had nothing to do with Bill’s level of cuteness? I just didn’t trust boys. Nothing good ever came from a romantic relationship. I couldn’t really say all of that without sounding weird, so thinking of my Joe poster, I blurted out a whopper of a lie. “I’m kind of seeing someone.”
“Who?” a few girls said in unison, everyone leaning in, eager.
“His name’s Joe.”
“Joe Miller?” Kimberly said, guessing another football player.
“No,” I said, sipping from my carton of chocolate milk with a straw, buying myself some time. “You don’t know him. He doesn’t go to our school.”
“Where does he go?” Wendy asked.
“Um. He goes to school in Manhattan.”
“Oh, wow. What year is he?”
“He’s a senior,” I said.
“How did you meet him?”
“I went to work with my dad one day,” I said. “I mean, he worked while I went shopping with my mom. And we met Joe in the park…randomly. He was walking his dog.”
“Oh, wow. What does he look like?”
“He’s very cute—with wavy brown hair and brown eyes….”
“Is he tall?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “I only date tall guys.”
“That makes sense. Since you’re so tall,” Wendy said. “You could be a model.”
“Thank you,” I said, genuinely taken aback.
Wendy nodded, then said, “Is he romantic?”
“Oh, yeah. He just gave me his shark’s tooth necklace on the beach…in the Hamptons. It was really sweet….” My voice trailed off, as I knew I was going way too far, and suddenly feared that someone would ask why I wasn’t wearing the necklace.
That’s when I shrugged and said, “He’s great, but we actually might break up soon.”
“Is he, like, too nice?” Wendy asked.
The question confounded me—how could someone be too nice?
“No. He’s great,” I said. “But, you know, sometimes boys aren’t worth the trouble.”
* * *
—
From that day on, I was officially popular, scoring invites to the movies and the mall and the skating rink with the rest of the in-crowd. Chip’s instinct was always to say no to anything I wanted. But when it came to my social life, the answer became a surprising yes, so long as it didn’t inconvenience him. He was more than happy to have me out of “his house” and have my mom all to himself; it was clear he was jealous of anyone or anything that took her time away from him, me at the top of that list.
I began spending as much time as I could at Wendy’s house, which was like being at a nice hotel. She had a pool in her backyard, a console television in her family room, and extensive stereo equipment in her bedroom, along with thousands of eight-tracks and cassettes that her father had gotten for free as a lawyer in the music business. She also had a king-size water bed, and her very own bathroom, attached to her bedroom, complete with a Jacuzzi tub. Wendy was spoiled, but I was more envious of her actual parents than of their money. Other than on television, I’d never witnessed such a harmonious marriage. Mr. Fine acted as if Wendy’s mom could do no wrong. He wanted her opinion and cared what she had to say. If anything, Mrs. Fine was the one calling the shots, and it was she, not he, who could be difficult and moody (a trait she passed on to Wendy). I was always nervous when one of them acted bratty, but Mr. Fine never exploded like Chip. In fact, their pouting and complaining only made him bend over backward more.
Meanwhile, I kept Wendy as far away from my house as I could. It wasn’t that she was a snob; she never seemed to look down on me or the other girls in our group with less money and smaller houses. But I desperately didn’t want her to know the truth about Chip. I knew it wasn’t my fault that my mom had married such a monster, and I had a hunch that Wendy would have been really cool and supportive about it. But a greater part of me worried that if she and the other girls found out what was happening at my house, they’d look at me differently. They might even put me in the “white trash” category—a delineation they often used about other stuff that was completely out of a kid’s control. At the very least, I worried that Wendy might change her mind about wanting me as her best friend, and I couldn’t take that chance. Other than Pepper, our friendship was the only thing that made me feel happy.
As an insurance policy against any form of rejection, I did my best to stay aloof. I pretended that nothing bothered me. I also made it a rule not to like boys. That game was way too risky. Along those lines, I gave up my teen bop magazines and took down my Joe Kingsley shrine, replacing it with a collage of artsy photos cut from the pages of Vogue, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar. There was something about those models, with their passive expressions and irreverent glamour, that I found so intriguing. Inspiring, even. I wanted to be like them—how I imagined they were in real life, anyway—and I came to see clothes and makeup as my own sort of armor. I couldn’t change my life in any real way, but with fashion, I could construct a different identity—or at least hide my true one. I obviously couldn’t afford to shop at The Limited and Benetton and my friends’ other mainstays at the mall. Instead, I had to get both creative and resourceful, scouring thrift and consignment shops and stretching my babysitting wages, carefully assembling a wardrobe of secondhand designer goods and various pieces that looked nicer than they were.
It was fun, actually—both the shopping and the styling—and I felt flattered when anyone complimented my outfit or asked if I’d ever thought about being a fashion model. Of course I hadn’t—and knew they were trying to be nice. Either that, or they were just confusing style with beauty. It was still nice to hear, though.
Then, one night at the Fines’, Wendy and I did our hair and makeup and got all dressed up in our most glamorous outfits. We took turns taking photos of each other with her dad’s fancy Nikon. When we got the film developed, I was shocked to discover that the camera seemed to prefer my high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, and fair skin to her golden tan, cutesy smile, and perky ski slope of a nose. Equally surprising, my shots were more interesting. While Wendy stared right into the camera with the most obvious grin, I tried to channel the elusive expressions of my favorite supermodels.
“Wow, Cate! You look amazing,” Wendy said, staring down at the pictures. She seemed as surprised as I was, and maybe a little bit annoyed, too. I’d begun to notice that things went more smoothly when Wendy was on top.
“You look even better,” I said, then made a joke about how big my nose looked in one of the pictures.
“I love your nose,” Wendy said. “It reminds me of Christy Turlington’s.”
“Thanks,” I said, thinking that was pretty high praise.
“But if you don’t like it…you could always get a nose job,” Wendy added. “Did I tell you my dad said I could get a boob job for my eighteenth birthday?”
I shook my head and said no, storing this bit of information away in the “Wendy lives on a different planet” file. Man, she really did.
* * *
—
Later, I showed my photos to my mom, feeling so proud when her face lit up.
“Catherine Cooper! These are gorgeous! We need to get you an agent!”
I laughed.
“I mean it! Or you could enter one of those model search things…. I saw one being advertised at the Cherry Hill Mall.”
Just then, Chip came around the corner with a can of Coors Light and said, “She’s not doing any damn model searches.”
“Why not?” I asked, at my own peril.
“They’re all run by pimps and child molesters,” he said, the authority on everything. “And they’re a scam. We aren’t throwing money down the drain for some pipe dream.”
I exchanged a fleeting glance with my mom, who instantly caved. “You’re right, honey,” she said to Chip.
“Besides,” Chip added, looking at me. “Your nose is too big for you to be a model.”
CHAPTER 5
Joe
A few nights before my eighteenth birthday, and just after Berry and I had returned from Andover for winter break, my mother asked if the three of us could have a chat in the living room. The word chat was usually a signal that I was about to be lectured, but our grades hadn’t yet been announced and I couldn’t think of anything else I’d done wrong.
As Berry and I sat side by side on the sofa and my mother took her usual place in the wingback chair next to the fireplace, I watched her pull a cigarette out of the engraved silver box she kept them in. She held it between her fingers without lighting it, a ritual that was part of her latest attempt to quit.
“So,” my mother began. “Can you believe it? Only one semester until you’re both high-school graduates and off to college.”
I nodded as Berry said something about how the year was flying by.
My mother chatted a bit more about Andover generally, asking if we were still happy with our decision to transfer from our old school in the city. We both said we were, and I resisted the urge to make a joke about all the freedom I had now that I was living away from home.
“And you’re about to turn eighteen,” my mother said, giving me a purposeful look that was a clue about the chat to come.
My turning eighteen had always been a thing for my mother, something she had talked about for years. Obviously, I knew it was a benchmark under the law—that on that day, I would become a person who could vote and fight for my country. But it seemed to hold significance beyond that for her, something she saw as representing my official Kingsley manhood.
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “I sure am.”
She took a deep breath, then said, “Are you excited for your party?”
“Yeah,” I said, then corrected myself before she could. “I mean yes. Very excited. Thank you.”
I still couldn’t quite believe that my mother was throwing a big bash for me, at a trendy downtown nightclub, no less. It wasn’t like her; she was usually very understated about my birthday, perhaps conscious of not wanting to spoil me or create a sense of entitlement beyond that which automatically came with my name. I like to think she succeeded in that aim, but I was also happy she was making an exception this year.
“And how are your friends feeling?” she asked.
The question was vague—how were they feeling about what, exactly? So I played it safe and said, “Great.”
Berry nodded and said, “Everyone is very excited…. It’ll be so nice to get the old gang back together.”
“Yes. It should be wonderful,” my mother said as I caught the two exchanging a loaded look.
“Okay. What’s going on here?” I said, suddenly suspicious that the two were in cahoots—and my mother had waited for Berry to arrive before having this little conversation.
“Nothing is ‘going on,’ Joe,” my mother said. “I just want to talk to you about some things—”
“Like what?”
“Like certain expectations…”
Here we go, I thought, as my mother began droning on about all the adults who would be in attendance, including some notable figures in politics and business, publishing and the law.
I hadn’t given much thought to the guest list beyond the names that Berry and I had come up with a few weeks before, and was a little taken aback by the notion that it wasn’t just a fun party for my friends and family. There was nothing I hated more than making small talk with adults I barely knew and being grilled about my “future plans”—which, at that point, were nonexistent. I was still waiting to hear back from Harvard, a long shot, along with my backups: Brown, Middlebury, and the University of Virginia.
I did my best to hide my annoyance, as I didn’t want to appear ungrateful, and simply said, “Cool. It’ll be a blast, I’m sure.”
“I hope so. I want you to have fun. But please remember that you’re an adult now. And it’s time for you to start thinking about cultivating contacts in the working world.”
“Doesn’t that come after college?” I said with a smile.
“No. It starts now,” she said. “Your eighteenth birthday is a rite of passage. Things will be different now, moving forward. In the past, you’ve been absolved of your mistakes—”
“Mistakes?” I said, grinning. “What mistakes?”
“Um. Jumping the subway turnstile. Cheating on that math test. The fake ID,” Berry said, then mumbled under her breath, “as if that was going to work.”
“Thanks, Ber,” I said, giving her two thumbs up. “Very helpful examples.”
“She’s right,” my mother said. “Foolish behavior is more easily forgiven when you’re a boy. But now the stakes are raised. You’ll be under a microscope like never before. I won’t be able to protect you, and the press will no longer show you any grace.”
“Wait. Is that what they’ve been showing me to date?” I said, laughing. “Hot damn, I’m in trouble.”
Berry elbowed me and said, “Be serious, Joe.”
“Yes, Joseph. Please,” my mother said. “This is important. What you do from here on out could impact the rest of your life. Do you understand that?”
The statement seemed both melodramatic and obvious, but I played along, just wanting the conversation to be over. “Yes,” I said. “I understand.”
“Do you also understand that you’ll be found guilty by association if your friends—or your girlfriend—misbehave?” she asked, shooting Berry another fleeting, but unmistakably conspiratorial look.
I sighed so loudly that it sounded more like a groan. “Ohh. So this is about Nicole,” I said.
“It’s not about any one friend of yours,” my mother said. “Although now that you mention her, I do think it’s best if you have Nicole come to the party separately—”
“Why?” I said, having already planned to pick her up in a taxi. “That seems pretty rude. Haven’t you always taught me to be a gentleman?”
“Normally, yes. It would be rude. But if you arrive with her, the press will know you’re dating…and they’ll start digging into her past.”
“Her past, huh?” I said, folding my arms, then giving Berry an accusatory glance.
My mother pressed her lips together a beat, then said, “Did Nicole shoplift, Joe?”
“Oh, for the love—” I said, throwing up my hands. “It was a stupid dare…years ago. She was only, like, twelve—”
“She was actually fourteen,” Berry said.
“Right,” I said. “A kid.”
“But that’s your mother’s point,” Berry said. “She was a kid—and people still hold it against her. So now…imagine if she was eighteen? She’d be in jail.”
“For a two-dollar pair of earrings? I don’t think so.”
“You’re missing the point,” Berry said.
“Yes, Joseph,” my mother said. “You really are.”
“What’s the point, then?”
“The dress rehearsal is over now. The public eye will be on you as never before. You’re a man—”
“I know,” I said, cutting her off. “A Kingsley man.”
“Yes. A Kingsley man,” my mother said. “And you need to be very careful—and make good decisions. People expect a lot from you…. And remember, Joseph, to whom much is given—”
“Much is expected,” I finished for her. “I got it.”
* * *
—
That Saturday night, my mother, Berry, and I arrived at the club early, pulling up in a black limousine. Through the tinted windows, I could see that the press were already in place, waiting to get their shots of us. I scanned the sidewalk, recognizing some of the usual suspects, including Eduardo, the only one I knew by name. Eduardo invaded my privacy as much as the next guy, but he was so damn funny and friendly that I couldn’t help liking him.
