COUSIN EZRA GOES TO school at N.Y.U. in the city and he comes to our house at least once a week for supper. Ezra is studying to be a psychologist. His father, our Uncle Eddie, had hoped Ezra would follow in his footsteps and become a dentist. But Ezra says that the human mind is a thousand times more interesting than teeth. I have to agree with that.
Karen and Mother and I are his guinea pigs. He gives us tests to find out our intelligence quotients, our personality disorders, and our aptitudes and interests. Once, when Karen and I asked him how we did on one of those tests, Ezra shrugged and said numbers weren’t important, that there was no winning score.
But when my friends and I took a teen-magazine test called “Are You His Dream Girl?” numbers were important. A score of 15 to 20 points meant you were Miss Personality, a score of 10 to 14 points and you were Pretty Pleasin’, but with anything below that you were A Wallflower. I was hoping I’d come out as Miss Personality, even if it didn’t seem likely, but I only had eleven points and ended up as Pretty Pleasin’. Afterward, I realized I could have cheated a little to get a higher score. After all, I wasn’t really sure I wouldn’t be a good sport if my Dream Man broke an important date with me to drive his mother to the airport. I didn’t even know any boys who were old enough to drive.
On Monday nights Mother makes spaghetti and meatballs, which is everyone’s favorite, and Ezra says he follows the good smells all the way from N.Y.U. to our door. One Monday the doorbell rang at six o’clock. I knew it was Ezra—he’s always on time—but I had to open the peephole anyway to make sure. “Who goes there?” I asked. “Friend or foe?”
Ezra pressed one of his eyes against his side of the peephole. “Eet is only I, your old friend Cyclops.”
“Only eye,” I said, opening the door. “That’s a good one.”
“My wit never fails,” Ezra said. “Either you have it or you don’t.” Ezra is six and a half feet tall and has red hair. Sometimes I think he and Mother both make a lot of jokes because they’re afraid people will take them seriously. I guess some of that psychology stuff is rubbing off on me.
Right after dinner he asked for volunteers for some “simple but pleasant tests.” I told him I couldn’t be a guinea pig that night because my best friend, Maya, was coming up from the third floor to study for a French test with me. He still had Karen and Mother, though, who sat at the kitchen table with paper and pencils in front of them.
Ezra took out his stopwatch. “I’m going to show you some simple designs,” he said. “I would like you to draw the same designs on your paper. I will tell you when to begin. Ready?”
His voice was funny, all stiff like a robot’s or one of those voices in an automatic elevator that says, ‘Welcome to Macy’s. Please face the door.’ I hoped he wouldn’t sound like that when he really became a psychologist.
Maya arrived then. She waved to everyone as we tiptoed past the kitchen, on our way to the bedroom to study. But before we could begin we had to talk. Maya is my closest friend and we tell each other things we wouldn’t tell anyone else in the world. I always told her about Daddy and Shelley and how it felt when I went to their apartment; and she would tell me about her parents and how they treated her like a baby and tried to smother her with attention because of what happened to her sister. Sometimes I was completely on her side, especially when her parents called up every two minutes to find out if she’d left the apartment yet, and when her father waited in the hall for her outside their door. After all, Maya is almost fourteen years old! But when I saw her parents in their apartment with baby pictures of Maya’s sister on every table, and how sad they both seemed, I started to feel sorry for them. Yet it’s not as if Debby is dead or anything like that. It’s just that she was a “fast girl” and “had to get married.” She lives in a crummy neighborhood. She and her husband, Howie, didn’t even finish high school and now they have two babies. Their place always smells like pee and sour milk.
Sometimes when Mrs. Goldstein catches me alone, she tries to tell me about it. “That girl had the world at her feet,” she says. “That girl could have had her pick. Did you ever hear her play the piano? Did you ever see the poems she wrote?” She never waits for an answer because she’s really talking to herself.
The Goldsteins were always very strict with Maya. They made her wear terribly babyish clothes and they wouldn’t let her get her hair cut in the latest style or use any makeup. “If I talk to a boy,” Maya said, “my father thinks we’re going to take out a marriage license, or worse.”
I nodded. I knew what she meant. The funny thing is, boys never talk to us much. We’re not popular, like some of the girls we know, or the way Debby used to be when she was in junior high school.
“If a boy calls me up to find out the Social Studies assignment, my father stays in the room listening.”
“Maybe he thinks you’re talking in code.”
“Yeah, the Articles of Confederation is the code for ‘Meet me in the park after dark, honey.’ ”
“And the Congress of Vienna stands for ‘I can’t live without you, baby.’ ”
“Oh yeah.” Maya lay down on the bed laughing and hugging one of my stuffed animals against her chest.
“Hey,” I said. “We’d better do the French or Gruber will kill us tomorrow.” Not that I really wanted to study. I just felt we were doing the same thing my mother and Ezra always did, making fun of the things we really cared about.
“Okay,” Maya said in her serious voice. She sat up cross-legged on the bed, with the French book open on her lap. “Bonjour, Madame Bonnard,” she said. “Comment allez-vous ce matin?”
“Très bien, merci, Madame Bruin,” I answered. “Et vous?” I caught myself sneaking a fast look in the very edge of the mirror. I still looked the same Plain Jane. Ghastly. Ugh. I wouldn’t look in another mirror until I was about thirty-five and it didn’t matter any more.
Maya was shouting. “Et votre mère? Hey, kiddo, how is votre mère?”
“What? Oh, she’s fine, thanks. I mean bien.”
“Yes, well, voulez-vous couchez avec Marc Singer?”
“That’s not in the book,” I said, throwing my autograph hound across the room.
Maya leaned back against the pillows with her eyes shut. “Amour,” she crooned to the animals. “Toujours amour!”
Amour, I thought sadly. Love. Because of that Daddy wasn’t home with us, where he belonged.