Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - Dyan Sheldon [6]
Sidartha, if you haven’t guessed, is our absolute favourite band. I’d been lobbying my mother for months to let me see them the next time they played in the City, but not with a lot of success. My mother said she’d see – which meant I was in with a chance if I handled her right – but Ella wouldn’t even ask her parents because it would upset them and make them worry about her. Mr and Mrs Gerard are actively terrified of young men with black leather and tattoos. They tolerate her love of Sidartha, but warily. You can tell that they see it as the thin end of the wedge; you know, one day Sidartha, the next day hard drugs and all-night parties. My plan was to work on Karen Kapok first, and then worry about how I was going to get Ella to come with me. I believe in dealing with one problem at a time.
“Why doesn’t your mother like me?” I asked Ella as we settled on her floor. (Beds, apparently, are for sleeping, not sitting – Mrs Gerard has a thing about bedspreads as well as insects.)
Ella has a way of just staring at you as though she hasn’t heard the question. It means that she’s thinking of something diplomatic to say.
“My mother likes you,” she mumbled after several seconds. “She thinks you’re very – interesting.”
But I wasn’t going to let Ella slide out of this so easily. I’m like a finely tuned instrument when it comes to reading between the lines – as a great actor should be. I’d heard the pause between “very” and “interesting”. Besides, honesty is important in real friendships.
“And I think Hitler was interesting,” I retorted. “But that doesn’t mean I like him.”
Ella laughed. Sometimes I worry that she may grow up to have a laugh like her mother’s.
“Stop exaggerating, will you? My mother doesn’t think you’re anything like Hitler.”
“But she doesn’t like me,” I persisted. I gave Ella a deep, searching look. The kind of look Hamlet was always giving his mother. “I can tell.”
Ella made a face. “She likes you fine.” Ella made another face. “She just thinks you’re a little … well … you know … strange…”
I didn’t want to hurt Ella’s feelings – after all, she is related to them – so I didn’t say that I, personally, think both Mrs and Mr Gerard are strange. They’re so perfect they might be aliens masquerading in human form.
“And she worries that I don’t see as much of my old friends – you know, since you and I started hanging out.”
Ella’s “old friends”, such as they’d been, were Carla Santini. Carla and Ella – and all Carla’s crowd – live in Woodford. Woodford is a “private community” – it says so outside the electric security gate. Woodford has mega-expensive houses, rolling lawns, shady streets, and its own leisure centre. I’d never even heard of a “private community” before I moved to Deadwood. A “private community” means you aren’t supposed to go there unless you live there, are visiting someone by invitation, or are delivering something to someone who does live there, and that there’s a guard at the gate to make sure that all riff-raff is kept beyond the fortress walls. According to Ella, she and Carla were pretty close in elementary and middle school – when they took dance and music lessons together and went to each other’s parties – but that all changed when they hit high school. It was then that Carla began to blossom and Ella didn’t. Carla more or less dumped the quiet and slightly dull Ella and started gathering a more glamorous retinue around her. They were still friendly, of course, as girls whose parents play bridge and tennis and golf together would be, but they weren’t exactly twin souls. How could they be? Carla doesn’t have a soul.
“Pardon me, Ms Gerard,” I said, in a fruity English accent, “but I thought you said that you hardly ever saw Carla. I thought you said that you’d drifted apart.”
Ella shrugged. “Yeah, we have. But my mother doesn’t know that.”
I pursed my lips. “What you’re really saying,” I said, “is that your mother doesn’t like me because I’m not like Carla Santini.”
Most of the mothers in Deadwood – and all of the mothers