Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - Dyan Sheldon [30]
“You mean go with your dad?” asked my mother.
Good God! I’d forgotten about him. There was no way I could involve my father in this outing.
For one thing, Ella thought he was dead; for another, he was the last person we needed with us when we crashed the party.
“Dad?” I moaned with the suffering of the misunderstood. “I can’t go to a Sidartha concert with my father. I’d die of shame.”
“Well, you’re not going to Madison Square Garden by yourself, and that’s final,” my mother informed me. “You can watch the show on MTV.”
But I wasn’t defeated – not yet.
“How can you treat me like this?” I cried. “I’m your flesh and blood, your first born. You used to lean over my crib in the middle of the night to make sure I was still breathing.”
“Exactly,” said my mother. “I’m concerned for your welfare. You can’t go.”
I tried to make a deal. “I’ll baby-sit whenever you want for the next six months,” I promised. “Free. Just let me go to the concert. Please…”
But would Karen Kapok relent? Do bears drive Volvos?
“Get off your knees, Mary,” said my mother. “You can’t go into the city at night by yourself and that’s the end of it. The answer is no.”
It was worse than mere mortal insensitivity. It was inhuman stubbornness.
What could one broken-hearted teenager do in the face of such parental pig-headedness? Sulking wouldn’t work. I once stayed in my room for a whole week (except for meals, baths, going to school, and hanging out with Ella) and she didn’t even notice. The silent treatment wouldn’t work either. I used the silent treatment when I used the week-long sulk. All that happened was that every so often my mother would look up from whatever she was doing and comment on how nice and quiet it was for a change.
“Please,” I begged. “If you don’t let me go, I’ll die. I swear I will. I’ll just wither away and die.”
“Well, if you ask me, that’s better than being shot at close range by some psycho in Manhattan,” said my mother.
My chair toppled over as, devastated, I fled from the room.
“If Mary dies, can we have the porch as a playroom?” asked Pam.
“Can you believe it?!” I complained to Ella the next day as we walked to homeroom. “I live in a house without pity, in a cheap temple to the meaningless frivolity of contemporary life.” I flapped my arms so my cape moved like wings. “She wouldn’t even listen to me, Ella. She wouldn’t even stop for one tiny little nanosecond and consider me. My feelings. My needs. My fragile hopes and dreams. Me! Her oldest child, the child of the only man she ever really loved.”
Ella gave me a darting glance. “That means you asked your mother about the concert and she said no, doesn’t it?”
There was something about her tone that I didn’t like. A smugness. If Ella hadn’t been raised to be so polite and pleasant all the time, she would have stuck out her tongue and said, “Nahnahnah, I told you so!”
“Well at least I asked,” I snapped. “At least I made the attempt, instead of just throwing up my hands in defeat.” I raised my chin to the winter sun. “At least I do battle, Ella.”
“I asked,” said Ella quietly. “I asked them days ago.”
I came to an abrupt halt and stared at her as though I’d never seen her before. It may not sound like a big deal to anyone with parents less dedicated to perfection than Ella’s, but this kind of behaviour is unheard of in the Gerard household. Not only do the Gerards never argue, never shout, and never behave like their brains are asleep, they achieve this amazing state of perfection by avoiding even the most everyday confrontations. It’s kind of an unwritten rule that Ella never says or does anything to upset her parents. She does whatever they want automatically, and – consciously or subconsciously – doesn’t do things they wouldn’t want.
“Really?” I couldn’t have hidden my surprise if I’d wanted to. The more I knew Ella, the more I realized there was more to know. “You actually asked Marilyn and Jim if you could go into New York, the evil heart of the universe, and see Sidartha? You admitted that there are things that you’d rather do than watch videos and go to the