Dear Diary,
I’m sure someone (maybe Van?) told me Anna Karenina was a love story. To which I say: thanks A LOT. If that’s what passes for romance, I’ll happily stay single forever. I’d describe it as a train wreck but that would be a really bad pun.
Talk about a relationship that was doomed from the outset. As anyone with half a brain would have known. Poor Anna may be nice, but she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. And don’t even get me started on Vronsky.
M.P.M.
“Excuse me?”
The Contessa waved the other girl to silence, her eyes never leaving my face. “Do you know him—Alex?”
Summoning my courage, I took a step closer. “Kind of. I know of him.”
“Alex Ritter.” Madam CEO repeated. She looked me up and down, face taut with suspicion. “Who are you anyway?”
“Mary Porter-Malcolm.” Whenever possible I gave my whole name, because Mary by itself was sorely lacking in gravitas. “But that’s not important right now.” I turned to the Beauty. “Alex Ritter may seem charming, but he’s dangerous.”
“Oh,” the Beauty breathed. “One of those.”
Madam’s frown deepened. “One of what?”
“Like a gentleman strangler,” the Beauty replied. “Handsome but deadly.”
That wasn’t quite what I’d been trying to convey. Clearly it was time for the gloves to come off. “I’m sorry to say that he’s a Vronsky.”
The Crimson Contessa gasped, fingers flying to her mouth in a flurry of jade green polish.
Madam looked from her friend to me. “A what now?”
“Not what,” I corrected. “Who.” From their silence, I gathered they were having difficulty digesting the news.
“Maybe you should sit down,” suggested the Contessa.
Feeling only slightly more out of place than I had behind the counter, I pulled out a chair.
“I’m Arden,” the Crimson Contessa informed me. “And that’s Terry.” She pointed to the Beauty.
“Teresa Larios,” the dark-haired girl supplied, pronouncing it Te-RAY-sa rather than Te-REE-sa and rolling the r in both names. Teresa, I silently repeated. That was much more fitting. She needed a name that danced on the tongue, like Beatrice or Titania. I spared a moment to wish Mary had a longer, more mellifluous form.
“Lydia.” Madam CEO extended an arm. Her small hand squeezed mine like a vise, but that wasn’t the part that surprised me.
“Your name is Lydia?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why? Did you hear something about me too?”
“No, you just don’t seem like a Lydia.”
“Meaning what?”
Flighty. Gauche. Prone to ill-advised elopements. Something told me this wasn’t the right time to bring up Pride and Prejudice. “You were asking about Alex Ritter.”
Lydia adjusted her headband, making it clear she was only accepting the diversion because it suited her purpose. “We’re listening.”
I took a deep breath. “A guy like that is completely wrapped up in his own drama, all the Sturm und Drang, ‘have mercy, my heart is bleeding.’ He never stops to consider the other person’s needs. If you ask me, it’s the pining he cares about, not the pine-ee.”
The pause that followed this speech gave me plenty of time to reconsider my word choices, not least because I’d made it sound like he had a thing for conifers.
“And in English this time?” said Lydia.
“Getting involved with a Vronsky is a recipe for disaster,” I replied, cutting to the chase. “You’re setting yourself up for misery.”
“What’s the deal with the train?” Arden asked in a hushed voice.
“You know—like Anna K.”
They looked at me blankly.
“How she abandons her family to carry on a torrid affair with him, and they have a baby, but slowly the weight of society’s disapproval chips away at her sanity until one day she’s at the train station and that’s it.” I walked my fingers to the edge of the table before plunging them over the side.
Lydia held up a hand. “Are you saying his baby mama offed herself?”
I endeavored to conceal my surprise. How could they forget that part of the story? It was one of the most famous endings in literature. “Yes.”
Arden shook her head. “I can’t believe I never heard about this.”
“Maybe your school read War and Peace instead?” I suggested, trying to make her feel better.
“Instead of what?” Lydia asked.
“Anna Karenina.” I paused to look around the table. “The Tolstoy novel. With the famous hay-mowing scene?”
Lydia squinted her eyes into slits. “What does that have to do with Alex Ritter?”
“Or hay,” Terry put in. “Does someone get mangled by one of those big machines with the spinning blades?”
“Ah, no. The mowing part is more about ‘isn’t it great to live in the country and commune with nature.’ No one dies.” I turned to Lydia. “As for Alex, what I mean is that Vronsky is the archetype. Alex is a modern version of the same kind of bad behavior.”
“Except one of them is made up,” Lydia countered.
Arden put a hand on the other girl’s arm. “That’s not what she’s saying, Lyds. The point is we don’t want Terry to end up brokenhearted at the train station.”
“We don’t have a train station. She’d have to go Greyhound.”
“You know what I mean.” Arden smiled encouragingly at me. “Tell her, Mary.”
“It’s about certain universal truths of human nature. You can’t trust a person who never gives a second thought to the consequences of his actions because no one’s ever going to blame him for anything.”
Lydia pushed her empty glass to one side. “Based on what evidence?”
“She’s going to be a judge,” Arden told me, holding her hand in front of her mouth as if it were a soundproof barrier. “Not the cheesy TV kind.”
I thought of the scene I’d witnessed at lunch, Alex giving that come-hither look to all and sundry. Flirting for tater tots, or his own twisted amusement, while the wreckage of my friendship with Anjuli smoldered in the background. He was what he’d always been, a destructive force wrapped in a deceptively appealing package.
“Here’s the thing about Alex Ritter,” I began.
“The one in real life?” Lydia cut in.
“Yes. Two years ago—”
“When he was a sophomore,” Arden supplied.
I nodded, accepting her math, though he’d seemed much older to me at the time. “It was during rehearsals for Antony and Cleopatra. The play,” I added, to forestall the possibility of further confusion.
“He was Antony?” Arden guessed.
“He would have been, but everyone was worried he’d upstage Cleopatra in the looks department, so they made him the understudy. Unfortunately, that left a lot of free time for him to hang around backstage.”
“Uh-oh.” Ice cubes rattled as Arden swirled the dregs of her drink.
Lydia gave her a look. “Like you know where this is going.”
“Hush.” Arden put a finger to her lips. “Go ahead, Mary.”
“First the stage manager and the girl playing Octavia got into a huge screaming match. The next day it was the attendants, Charmian and Iras. Every time he talked to someone, they came away thinking Alex was in love with them. It was madness. Even the Clown got involved, despite the fact that she had a very serious boyfriend. Who happened to be running lights for the show.” I raised my eyebrows, letting them imagine the fallout from that little wrinkle.
“Wow.” Arden rested her chin in her hand. “What else, Mary? I can tell there’s more.”
She was right, but part of the story involved me being foolish and ignorant, which was not the image I wanted to present. Even the fact that I remembered the whole thing so clearly was probably a sign I needed to get out more, and yet the mental snapshot stubbornly refused to fade.
Let me guess, you’re Juliet. That had been his opening line.
Most afternoons that fall had seen me hanging around the theater, fetching and carrying for my sisters. It was inevitable our paths should cross; what I didn’t expect was for him to engage me in conversation.
Naturally I lit up like a candle. It was the first time a boy had paid attention to me in that playful, noticing way. He thought I was not only an actress but Juliet? The thrill dimmed slightly when it occurred to me why he might have singled me out. It wouldn’t be the first time an actor had attempted to improve his casting by currying favor with the twins—or a member of their immediate family.
“I’m afraid you’re not the right kind of Romeo,” I gently informed him. It was no secret the next Baardvaark production was going to be Romeo and Juliet. Fewer people were privy to the fact that it was slated to have an all-female cast.
He pressed both hands to his chest, mock groaning. “Stabbed in the heart.”
“Actually, Juliet’s the one who stabs herself. Romeo takes the poison.” I mimed drinking from a vial.
It was only after I’d been called away on an errand that I realized he’d meant something else. By then it was too late to explain that a) I hadn’t meant he was the wrong kind of Romeo for me personally and b) I was a glorified stagehand, not the leading lady. And while the twins sometimes solicited my opinion on casting decisions, I would never throw my weight behind someone just because he’d tried to butter me up.
The next time I saw him, he was bantering with my sister Addie. I passed within five feet of them and he looked right through me, without so much as a flicker of recognition. Like maybe I’d imagined our whole interaction, or else he chatted up so many girls it was impossible to keep track of them all. The whole thing was so mortifying I’d never spoken of it to another soul—until now.
But how to convey all of that in a few nonembarrassing words?
He’s the kind of guy who has the effrontery to act like he’s going to sit with you when all he really wants is to steal one of your chairs.
He’s the kind of guy who flirts for personal gain then drops you like a rock.
He’s the kind of guy so indiscriminate in his attentions he’ll trade one sister for another in the blink of an eye.
“He hit on my sister,” I said in a rush. “I think maybe he thought she was my other sister. The one who directs.”
Arden made a tsking noise with her tongue. “That’s just rude.”
“Why would he think your sister was your other sister?” Lydia asked.
“Face blindness?” Terry suggested.
I shook my head. “They’re twins.”
“Aha,” Lydia said. “Then it doesn’t mean he’s for sure a player.”
I made a vague noise in the back of my throat, privately resolving to ask my brother Jasper about the precise connotations of the term, since he was the most au courant member of the family when it came to slang. Although fairly certain I got the gist, I’d been wrong about such things before. (In my defense, “twerking” did sound like a rude gesture involving teeth.)
“Wait a sec.” Arden studied me intently. “You’re talking about the twins who put on the plays?”
I nodded.
“They were in my brother Morrison’s year! He had a huge crush on one of them, Allie or something—”
“Addie.”
“Yes!” She slapped the table with her palm. “I used to hear about them all the time. Super smart and artsy, which is completely Morrison’s jam. Apparently one of them came to school in thigh-high boots—”
“Part of a costume,” I said quickly. “For Baardvaark. That’s the name of their troupe. All Shakespeare, all the time.”
“Isn’t this great?” Arden squeezed Terry’s wrist. “You’re getting so much background info. She just transferred from Sacred Heart, so I’m helping her get up to speed.” The last part was clearly for my benefit. “It’s hard when you don’t know many people.”
I tried to smile as though I had a vague and largely theoretical understanding of such a predicament, but the result must have looked more like a grimace.
“Freshman year is awesome,” Arden assured me. “Totally low-stakes. I miss those days. It’s not like tenth grade, when everyone expects you to have it all figured out. Seriously, can we talk about the SAT after I get my license? One thing at a time, people.”
“I’m actually a sophomore.”
“Hey!” Arden shoved me in the shoulder. “Us too. How come I haven’t seen you before? Did you just move here?”
She seemed so intrigued I was loath to disappoint her. “I’ve lived in Millville all my life. I just haven’t gone to public school until this year.”
“Homeschooled?” asked Lydia.
“No. Though my school was in a house—on campus.” My head tipped in the direction of the college. “It was run by a bunch of grad students from the School of Education. Sort of an experimental research program, until they shut it down.”
This description seemed to give them pause.
“Not because there was anything weird going on,” I said quickly. “It was mostly unstructured time and talking about your feelings.”
“Sounds very evolved,” Arden said.
I shook my head. “Our feelings about whatever pedagogical method they were using that week. But on the plus side, we got to do a lot of independent study. Reading and such.”
“So that’s how you know so much,” Arden mused.
“Mostly about nineteenth-century novels. That was my area of concentration.”
“Yeah, but there’s so much wisdom in books.” Arden tapped her forehead. “And you have it all up there, ready and waiting. Super useful.”
“Oh boy,” Lydia sighed. “Here we go.”
“What?” Arden was the picture of wounded innocence.
“You sure you want to jump on this bandwagon? I’m still traumatized from when you made me KonMari my underwear.”
“I’m just saying it’s interesting, is all.”
Interesting. I savored the word.
“Did any of your friends come over from your old school?” Terry asked.
I hesitated. “No. I—there’s no one.” When I looked up, expecting to see derision on their faces, Arden’s eyes had a sheen of wetness.
“That is so sad. You went through your whole first day alone?” She pressed her hand to mine. “I would have died. You are so brave, Mary.”
Whatever response I might have made was interrupted by the buzzing sound emerging from Lydia’s bag. “My mom’s running late,” she reported, glancing at her phone. “I have to walk Muffin.”
“I’ll tell Morrison we’re ready for a ride.” Picking up her own phone, Arden tapped out a message. “One more week and he’ll be back in his dorm. It’s going to be so nice when a bag of tortilla chips lasts more than ten minutes at our house.” She looked up from the screen. “What’s your number, Mary?”
“I . . . don’t have a phone.” My parents weren’t technophobes, exactly, but they had informed us in no uncertain terms that they couldn’t afford data plans for a family of seven. That wasn’t the sort of information I felt like volunteering.
“Thanks for the advice,” Terry said with a shy smile.
Lydia jerked her chin at me. “Yeah. Allegedly, and all that, but you made some good points.”
The bell over the door jangled as a red-faced Marco staggered inside, a tower of books balanced between his arms.
“I made it,” he panted, stashing the reading material behind the counter. He straightened slowly. “Whoa. Customers.” He looked questioningly at me. “Friends of yours?”
I hesitated. Saying no would sound like I was repudiating them, while claiming them as friends would be presumptuous—however much my heart swelled at the thought.
“Yep,” Arden answered for me, with another of her easy smiles. “Coming, Mary?”