"He called me Ellen."
Elle turned around in a driveway.
"I have homework," she said. "I should get home."
"No problem. Glad I got to see my baby girl."
"Ugh. Don"t call me that."
Her father laughed and ruffled her hair. Maybe she could crash the car in such a way it would only hit his side....
"Sorry, kid. You"re growing up too fast."
"You know I"ll be sixteen in less than three weeks."
"G.o.d, you make me feel old." He exhaled heavily. Her dad wasn"t old at all. Only thirty-five. And he would have looked thirty-five if he didn"t live so hard. He drank too much, did things he shouldn"t, hung out with bad, scary people. But still, he didn"t make her go to church or do her homework, so between him and her mom, she knew which parent she preferred to hang out with.
"I can"t wait to get older. Trust me, I"m counting the minutes until my birthday. Driver"s license, here I come."
Elle grinned at the prospect of finally being able to drive to school, drive to the city, drive anywhere she wanted, especially away from her mom and her house and her life.
"Elle?"
"What?"
"You know I can"t buy you a car, right? And neither can your mom."
Her stomach knotted up.
"Dad, you promised me two years ago-"
"I had a lot more money two years ago than I do now."
"What happened?"
"Life"s expensive. Business isn"t great."
"Business isn"t great," she repeated. "You mean the car-stealing, chop-shop business? Did that get hit by the recession, too?"
"You have a smart mouth," her father said, all affection gone from his voice.
"If you weren"t going to buy me a car, you shouldn"t have promised me one."
"You want to keep this one?"
"You"re the car thief in the family, not me."
"Can you back off me for five f.u.c.king seconds, please?"
Elle pulled over a block from her house, where there would be no chance of her mom seeing her with her father.
She turned off the car and sat in silence.
"Elle ... baby ... I"m sorry. I wish I could buy you anything you wanted, but I can"t right now. I owe some money. I have to pay it back."
"Whatever."
"Don"t be like that. You know I love you, and I"d do anything for you."
"I know," she said, although she wasn"t certain that she did. "I gotta go."
Her father grabbed her forearm, pulled her over and gave her a gruff kiss on the cheek.
"Don"t be mad at your dad. He"s doing the best he can."
"Tell my dad I"m not mad." Her shoulders sagged. Her heart sagged. Her hopes sagged. "I just wish things were different."
"Yeah, well ... you and me both, kid."
She gave him a faint smile and got out of the car.
She shut the door behind her and said under her breath, "Don"t call me kid."
As she walked the final block to her house she choked back tears of disappointment. Two years ago, on her fourteenth birthday, he"d promised her with all his heart and all his soul he would get her a car for her sixteenth birthday. And she"d believed him even though deep down she knew better. He made promises all the time and never kept them. I promise I"ll see you at Christmas. I promise I"ll make the school play. I promise I"ll get a new job so you won"t have to worry about me. Promises made, never kept. One day she"d learn.
Maybe it was her fault. Maybe n.o.body could be trusted to do what they said they"d do. Once in her life she"d love to have someone who gave enough of a s.h.i.t about her to make her a promise and keep it. For once she wanted someone to treat her like she mattered.
Nice pipe dream there. That happening was about as likely as her getting banged by an angel like St. Teresa.
Eleanor unlocked the back door and walked into the kitchen. The car was in the driveway, but where was her mom? Her mom worked the night shift as a motel manager and did bookkeeping part-time for a small construction company. If she wasn"t at work, she was either asleep or at the kitchen table with her ledgers and adding machine. Eleanor made herself dinner-a bowl of cereal-and went into the living room to eat.
She found her mom in her shabby bathrobe curled up on the frayed paisley couch, wiping her eyes.
"What"s wrong?" Elle asked her mother. Her mom swiped at her face with a tissue. "Did Father Greg die?"
"No," her mother said, pushing a hank of black hair over her ear. "But he"s probably not coming back. Not anytime soon."
"I"m sorry," Elle said, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Her mom never let her eat on the furniture, which made no sense. The furniture was old and threadbare and stained. Like a little cereal on the couch was going to make things any worse than they already were. "What"s going to happen?"
"We"re getting a new priest in the meantime," her mother said, entirely without enthusiasm.
"That"s good, right?"
"No, it"s not good."
"Why not?"
"The new priest is ..."
"What?"
"He"s a Jesuit."
"A what?"
"A Jesuit," her mother repeated. "They"re an order of priests. They founded your high school, although I don"t think any Jesuits teach there anymore."
"Are they bad priests?"
"They"re scholars," she said. "Scientists. And very, very liberal."
"That"s a bad thing?"
"Jesuits are ... They can be ... It might be fine. I would have preferred a loving shepherd to a scholar, though."
"Well," Elle said, taking a bite of her cereal, "maybe you"ll get lucky. Maybe this new priest will really love sheep."
Her mother glared at her.
"I know. I know," she said for the second time today. She gathered her food and her books and went to her room. Did no one like having her around?
She finished up her cereal in her room and stared at her pile of homework. But how could she even think about doing homework with so much s.h.i.t going on? Her dad wasn"t getting her a car for her birthday like he promised. Her mom was having a nervous breakdown over the new priest. And she was turning sixteen in a couple of weeks and had no boyfriend, no money, no car forthcoming and no hope that things were going to get better, now or ever. Her stomach felt like someone had punched it. Her head ached and her throat itched. She didn"t know if she wanted to scream or cry or both at the same time.
Instead she walked into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.
She turned on her curling iron and sat on the toilet while waiting for it to heat up.
Five minutes later she stood in front of the counter and rolled her left sleeve up. She picked up the curling iron and took a breath.
Easy. You can do this. She started the countdown.
Three.
Two.
One.
On the one Elle pushed the burning metal barrel against her left wrist. She whimpered as pain scalded her right to her soul. She lifted the curling iron off her arm, then pressed it back down again. After one full second she pulled it off and dropped the curling iron back onto the counter.
She panted through the pain, not fighting it, but accepting it, relishing it, letting it remind her she was alive and could feel everything she wanted to feel. There were boys at school who would have cried like little b.i.t.c.hes if they"d gotten burned like that.
She rolled her sleeve down over the burns and turned off her curling iron. She went back to her room and sat on her bed, her hands still slightly shaking. She opened her math book and got out a pencil.
She felt much better now.
4.
Eleanor SUNDAY MORNING, ELLE DECIDED SHE WOULD NEVER go back to church again. She"d thought about this decision ever since she"d found her mother crying in the living room. All her life, her mother wanted to be a nun. She dreamed of the day she"d take her vows and put on her habit the way other girls dreamed about their wedding days. But at seventeen she"d fallen in love with a handsome charmer named Will and a few months later, she was married and pregnant, and not in that order.
And here her mother was, sixteen years later-divorced, working two jobs and going to church five days a week because it was the only thing that gave any meaning to her life. Well, it didn"t give any meaning to Elle"s life. She doubted G.o.d actually existed. She thought the Catholic Church was stupid to ban birth control and then tell priests they couldn"t get married. Make up your d.a.m.n mind. Either people should be fruitful and multiply or they should be celibate and childless. The church didn"t get to have it both ways. The hypocrisy disgusted her. The Catholic Church was one big business and they all worked for it.
So she was quitting. Now how to tell her mother this?
Elle flinched as he mother banged on her door.
"What?" she yelled as she grabbed a pillow and slammed it down on her face.
"Eleanor Louise Schreiber! Get out of bed this instant."
Here we go. Now or never. She steeled herself and called out with more confidence than she felt ...
"I"m not going."
"What?"
Elle lifted the pillow up.
"I"m not going to Ma.s.s this morning." She enunciated every word. "I"m a Buddhist!"
"Eleanor, get out of bed this instant and get ready for Ma.s.s."
"I"m an atheist. I"ll incinerate the second I walk into church. It"s for everyone"s good I stay away from that place."
Her mother growled under her breath.
"I don"t even know what that is, but I"m not having this argument with you."
"Then don"t. I have civil rights. You can"t force me to go to church against my will."
"As long as you"re underage, and you"re living in my house, I can."
Elle sat up completely and met her mom"s eyes. Enough joking around. She meant it this time.
"Mom," she said, her voice as calm and as reasonable as possible, "I don"t want to play this game anymore."
"Church isn"t a game."
"It isn"t real."
Her mother said nothing at first but she didn"t leave, either. Bad sign. Her mom wasn"t giving up. Her mom was about to bring out the big gun-guilt.