Dear Diary,
When my parents decided to name all their kids for someone from the life and works of Virginia Woolf, I’m guessing they didn’t expect to have four daughters. Mary is clearly an afterthought—the kind of name you give someone when you’ve already used up the good ones.
Sometimes I worry it marked me for life. Why couldn’t I have been the firstborn, or a twin, or as tough as Cam, or the only boy? A name like Jasper Orlando is wasted on my little brother.
M.P.M.
The windows had been thrown open to admit the purple dusk and chanting cicadas, and also because my parents didn’t believe in air conditioning.
All seven of us were home, filling the long oval table. Mom and Dad sat at either end, with my four siblings arrayed around them: twins Addie and Van, the Shakespeareans, now in their second year at Millville College; athletic Cam, whose hair was the same burnished gold as the twins’ but worn short so it couldn’t be used against her on the field hockey pitch; and my brother Jasper, the baby of the family. The din of so many forks and knives made it easy to retreat into the privacy of my own thoughts, which were currently stuck on the incident at Toil & Trouble.
I was still bemused by my own daring in following Arden and the others to her brother’s car. It was as though she’d said, Lifeboat, Mary? and I’d leaped at the chance, even though I could easily have walked the few blocks home.
Hopefully I’d acquitted myself in a reasonably normal fashion when we parted ways. At the time, I’d been too caught up in seeing my house through their eyes. The peeling paint on the porch, the patchy lawn: they’d seemed so much starker in the harsh light of afternoon. While Arden in particular had exclaimed over the quaintness of the neighborhood’s cobblestone streets and whimsical pastels, I wondered if that was a euphemism for poor.
Not that the disparity of our financial situations really mattered, compared to the gulf in social standing. What had been an epic encounter to me was likely a minor blip to girls like that, who met new people all the time.
Using the edge of my fork, I nudged the chicken and broccoli closer to the mound of brown rice, hoping to imbue the gooey mass with a little flavor. This was a typical late summer meal: a little too good for you, as our parents tried to compensate for all the times during the academic year when they had essays to grade and lectures to prep—the hummus months. I thought I was doing a good job rendering myself invisible without being too conspicuous about it when Jasper suddenly piped up.
“What’s up with you, Mary?” Although he’d spoken through a mouthful of rice, the words seemed to hover in the thick air, drawing everyone’s attention.
“Nothing,” I said stiffly, shoving a bite of chicken into my mouth.
“Nothing as in nothing, or nothing you want to share?”
All at once I was grateful for the stifling temperature, which meant my face was already flushed. Had Jasper heard about the Anjuli incident? I couldn’t think of a way to find out without showing my own hand, and I had no intention of discussing the subject with my family, despite the fleeting satisfaction it would have given me to tell my parents how very wrong they’d been. Piling their pity on top of my humiliation would be too bitter a pill.
“Can you pass the salt, please?” Addie asked our mother, who was seated closest to the shaker.
“Try behind the dresser,” she replied without lifting her head.
“Thanks, Mom,” Jasper said. “Very helpful.”
She gave a vague mm-hmm in answer. Jasper waggled his brows in my direction, an invitation and a dare. I wasn’t feeling especially playful, but pride demanded I make an effort.
“We’re only going to read books by men in English this year.” When there was no reaction, I added, “White men.”
The room fell silent, all of us watching our mother.
“Addie and I are thinking of branching into musicals,” Van announced, picking up the baton. “From the greater Disney canon. Lots of princesses and uncomfortable shoes. Retrograde fantasies about marrying up. Magical domestic objects.”
“Is that so,” Mom murmured, aiming a forkful of broccoli in the general direction of her mouth. A second later, we heard the telltale rustle of a turning page.
Since Van had spoken for both the twins, as was her wont, Cam launched the next volley. “I broke my leg at practice.” She slid a glance at our mother, whose expression remained placid. “The bone is jutting out of my thigh.”
Dad tried to frown at us, though from the way his mouth squeezed in and out like an accordion it seemed he was having trouble mustering the necessary solemnity. He leaned as far sideways as the narrow-backed chair allowed a man of his girth. “What are you reading, dear?”
“Hmm?” Mom blinked at him, lifting the magazine from her lap and flipping it around so the rumpled cover faced us. “The new New Yorker came. I didn’t want to get behind.”
“That’s from 2007,” I pointed out.
Her lips pursed. “Must have been a good one.”
As if we ever got rid of any printed matter. No doubt she’d stumbled across the magazine on her way to dinner, fingers reaching for it without thought, like scratching an itch.
“So Mary, you were telling us about your first day of real high school,” Jasper drawled. My brother was like a dog with a bone when he had an agenda. Since I had no idea why he was pressing this particular issue, aside from an uncanny instinct for human weakness, I settled for giving him an all-purpose scowl.
“Is it the full teen movie experience?” he continued, unmoved. “Football and cheerleaders? Getting pumped for the big dance? People randomly breaking into song?”
“Honestly, Jasper,” our mother chided. “You’re rotting your brain with that tripe.”
“Give me some credit,” he said, waving his fork. Grains of rice scattered, and I mentally double-checked it wasn’t my night to clear the table. “I also play video games.”
“I always thought of high school as more Macbeth,” mused Van, who liked to talk about that part of her life (two whole years ago) as though it were a sepia-toned photo in a dusty album. “Speaking of which, you’re still going to help with auditions next weekend, right, Mare-Bear? Not too busy with your new life?”
“Ha,” I said weakly. “Of course I’ll be there. But . . . what do you mean about high school being like Macbeth?”
“Spineless men, conniving women, political infighting, a creeping sense of dread—all that jazz,” Van replied with an airy flap of the hand.
Addie gave a delicate shudder then cast a worried look my way. “There were a lot of great things about it, too.”
“Millville High is an excellent school,” Dad observed, as though we’d been discussing its academic reputation. I slanted him a doubtful look, which he failed to notice. It would be a long time before I trusted my father’s opinions about high school again.
“And Mary’s so easygoing.” Addie sounded too chipper, overcompensating for her twin’s bluntness. “All that angst will be like water off a duck for you.”
I goggled at her. A swan would have been one thing. And what did that make everyone else? Humans, presumably, enjoying their complicated lives on dry land while I paddled in circles, quacking to myself. Maybe one of them would throw me a few crumbs. With a sinking feeling, I realized I must be the only member of the family who thought of me as a main character in her own story, as opposed to a background figure in the lives of more exciting Porter-Malcolms.
“It comes from being the middle child,” our mother opined, stroking the underside of her chin. “That’s why I wasn’t worried about Mary starting a new school.”
“But I’m not the middle child,” I said when no one else pointed out the fallacy of this argument. “Four is not the middle of five.”
Then again, perhaps tellingly, there wasn’t a name for my place in the pecking order. Penultimate? That was only marginally better than second-to-last.
“It’s a state of mind,” said my father. “You’ve always been even-keeled. Content to go along with the crowd.”
Jasper dabbed a few grains of salt from his plate before licking them off his finger. “She doesn’t seem that chill to me.”
“Of course she is,” Addie protested. Next to our dad, she was the family member most likely to smooth ruffled feathers, whereas Van more closely resembled our acerbic mother, and Cam and Jasper shared a certain unflappable cool. I was . . . not quite in any of those camps.
“Not that you should feel tied down,” Mom said with the too-casual air of someone pretending not to tell you what to do. “People grow and change during adolescence, as they should. To be honest, I’m not sorry you’ve been pushed out of the nest. It was time for a challenge.”
“I thought she should have transferred last year.” Van stifled a yawn. “Broaden her horizons.”
“Mary doesn’t have to do things the same way we did,” Addie countered. “She made her own choice.”
“Or did she?” our mother asked, wagging a finger.
Addie shrugged. “All her friends were staying behind. It’s completely natural for Mary to want to be with them.”
“Sometimes past associations hold us back. Nostalgia can be a trap. Don’t confuse loyalty and sentimentality,” Mom spoke in her most oracular tone, as though dispensing obscure bits of wisdom from a mountaintop grotto, but we all knew she was talking about Anjuli.
I fought the urge to bang my forehead against the table. “That won’t be an issue anymore.”
“Out with the old, in with the new.” Dad raised his glass to me.
The problem was that the old in this equation was me, since I’d been jettisoned like so much trash. My family’s helpful advice only served to remind me of that fact. It was like the time I’d had my wisdom teeth removed. I wanted to pack the wound with gauze and forget it was there, not poke around to find out exactly how much it could hurt.
Jasper cracked his knuckles. “I’m going to go nuclear when I get to Millville High. This year is just a warm-up for the real action.”
Sadly, I suspected he was right. Between the curls and the big dark eyes, he’d always gotten away with murder around people who didn’t know him well enough to be on their guard. Plus, he had a cool name, which probably counted for a lot. No one would spurn Jasper on his first day.
“And we all live in fear of that day,” our mother chided. “Did you find the copy of Death in Venice I left you?”
“The one on my pillow? Yes, yes, I did. Even though I’m just a boy, it turns out I’m not blind and dumb.”
Dad raised both hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Jasper, you know we have faith in your intellectual potential. A number of men have made important contributions in serious fields of study. If you work hard, there’s no reason you can’t keep up with the girls.” Dad pretended not to see our mother’s dubious expression.
Yarb the cat, whose name came from our father’s favorite Gogol novel, yowled from the next room, a long and variegated complaint.
“I’ll let him out.” I jumped up before anyone could revisit the subject of my ex-friend, new school, or social prospects therein.