The Princesses of Iowa

  Everyone knows you’re not supposed to drink and drive. I mean, obviously. They start telling you that in fourth grade and you nod along, wide-eyed, because you can’t imagine ever being stupid and awful enough to drink at all, much less drink and drive. You make posters about how dumb it is, drinking and driving, and they hang them in the elementary school hallway. You tell your parents to stop smoking and accuse them of being alcoholics if they have a glass of wine with dinner more than once a month, and in health class you take tests on drugs, where every single drug is listed with a bunch of outdated slang and possible side effects, which all include death. Tobacco (butts, heaters, cancer sticks): lung cancer, emphysema, DEATH. Alcohol (booze, hooch, sauce): impaired judgment, loss of consciousness, DEATH. Marijuana (ace, grass, hay): disorientation, paranoia, DEATH. Heroin (boy, horse, smack): euphoria, convulsions, coma, DEATH.

  For the next few years, you basically assume that you’ll drop dead the second you’re even in the same room as someone drinking a beer, and you solemnly swear that you’ll never be that stupid. But then in eighth grade you’re hanging out at the park shelter, waiting for something interesting to happen, and your best friend pulls out a cigarette she’s stolen from her mother and dares you to smoke it, and you do because the cute boy from your math class is there watching, and you feel brave and strange and grown up, even though you’re half convinced that you’ll be addicted within seconds of your first puff. If not dead. But nothing happens, except that the boy’s eyes widen slightly and your best friend looks at you with new interest, like you have all kinds of potential she never saw in you.

  And then maybe you have another cigarette at a party later that spring, standing out beyond the lights of the back porch, talking to a different cute boy, and he offers you a sip of his beer, and you don’t die, you just giggle a lot. And you start to suspect that all the stuff they told you in fourth grade was a little exaggerated — not that you’d ever do heroin, but maybe shrooms or something — because you probably wouldn’t die. Your teacher made you believe there would be trench-coated junkies hanging around the school yard, but then she always used articles with drugs, like “the marijuana,” and belted her polyester pants just under her ribcage, so in retrospect she maybe wasn’t the best source of information about illegal drugs.

  But obviously you shouldn’t drink and drive. They start telling you again in high school, making you watch videos in driver’s ed where a kid piles fifteen of his best friends into a big yellow van and then drinks half a PBR and drives off a cliff, killing everyone but himself, and then lives with that guilt for the rest of his awful life. They tell you that you shouldn’t give in to peer pressure, and they make you role-play ways to say no when someone hands you a joint. You can throw your hands up and say, “No, thanks, I’m cool.” You can pass it to the next person in the circle without saying anything. Or you can make some snotty remark that only works on sitcoms, like “I get high on life.”

  What they don’t tell you is that sometimes you might not care about the side effects, that they might not be such a bad trade-off if it means you get to get the hell out of your own head for a little while and let go of the breath you’re always holding, the tiny bit of pudge on your belly you’re forever sucking in, if for one stupid night you can stop worrying about what people think about you and stop watching every word you say. And maybe that night, as you’re holding an ugly plastic cup and listening to everyone have the exact same conversations as last weekend and you’re inside your head thinking all the same thoughts, and sometimes you kind of hate your friends, sometimes you really kind of hate yourself, and maybe you wouldn’t mind getting hurt or going into a coma or something. Something.

  And what they don’t tell you in fourth grade is that if everyone’s drunk and the least drunk person offers to drive, it will make a kind of crazy sense, and everyone might even congratulate themselves on how responsible they are to make the car owner sit in back and not drive her own car. They don’t tell you that the whole impaired judgment thing means that you’ll make decisions you’d never make sober and you’ll think they’re good ones, or maybe you’ll know they’re bad, but you won’t even care anymore, because it was such a stupid night and you just want to get home. Because maybe your best friend was making a total slut of herself with a college guy and then disappeared for an hour, leaving you to make small talk with her brother and drink the rum and Cokes he keeps handing you until you can hardly see straight and you can’t stop thinking about what a stupid whore your best friend is, and what if you’re actually no different because you’re the one who agreed to go to a college party even though your boyfriend had to go to a funeral in Kansas this weekend and what if he comes back on Monday and hears rumors about what happened at the party even though nothing did, it was a total bust, you sat there and talked to your best friend’s brother while everyone else paired off in dark corners and you sat on the couch getting drunker and drunker and listening to him talk about some Boy Scout trip he went on in ninth grade, no kidding, he will not shut up about hiking in Philpot or something, like anyone seriously cares, and about how he found God or something, though actually when you think about it, it’s kind of sexy to hear a guy talk about God, and the way he’s describing the desert sky at night is amazing, seriously, just beautiful, and you really don’t mean to kiss him but it just sort of happens.

  And then suddenly she’s standing over you with this look of horror, gleeful triumphant horror, and she’s your best friend but what if she calls your boyfriend to tell him what she just saw, even though it was seriously nothing, it’s not like it meant anything, but she saw it and you can see it in her eyes, she’s going to tell him, because she’s always had a crush on him, even though she denies it, and then you’re running through the house to find your other best friend because you are not going to stay in that house a minute longer, and when you finally find her, your other friend, she’s half dressed and barely conscious and you grab her purse and keys and shirt and drag it all out of the frat house with your other best friend, the bitch, at your shoulder, saying, “What about Jake? How could you do that to him?” and obviously you shouldn’t drive, of course you shouldn’t, you’re all drunk, but you don’t even care anymore, you just want to get home, and if you all die in a horrible fiery crash then fine, great, because you cannot let her tell your boyfriend about what did not just happen, and it’s all so fucking pathetic and tedious and awful.

  They don’t talk about that part in fourth grade.

  But maybe they should.

  I didn’t want to go to Paris. Not that I had a choice or anything, but if someone had bothered to ask me how I wanted to spend the summer before my senior year, I would have voted to take all my closest friends to an amazing beach house in California or Florida or something and spend the summer lying out and having fun. Realistically, though — because while my family is comfortable, we’re definitely not beach house comfortable — I would have opted just to stay with my best friends in Willow Grove. Lacey, Nikki, and I would spend our days in the good chairs at the pool (now that we were seniors, we could claim the best spots) and nights hanging out together with our group of friends. And on the weekends, when he was free from his internship at his father’s law office, Jake and I would go anywhere we could be alone, whether that meant hanging out in his basement or on the golf course behind his house or even just driving around the dark country roads. Because even though Iowa isn’t the most exciting place in the world, I would rather be with my friends at home than be all alone in stupid Paris, where I’d been treated like slave labor and everything smelled bad.

  Seeing as how I wasn’t given a choice, though, I have to admit there was a tiny part of me that had hoped Paris would work
its magic on me, and I’d come home at the end of the summer all Sabrina-ed up, transformed from prom queen runner-up to elegant, worldly Audrey Hepburn–esque homecoming queen. Not that I was mad at Lacey for winning prom queen last spring — we were best friends, so her winning was almost as good as me winning. I just figured that it was my turn to be in the spotlight, and if Paris could help, then at least I could get one good thing out of my summer.

  But even though the only fashion choices I had made involved choosing new clothes for the baby after she’d pooped through her diaper, up to that last morning in Paris, I kept a small shred of hope that the city would transfer some of its elegance and allure to me.

  Ten minutes into my triumphant return to Iowa, that plan did not seem to be working.

  Instead of sweeping across the jet bridge into the airport as I’d imagined — fresh, cool, newly adult — I hobbled behind an old man who had smashed my toes with his cane. The flight from Paris to Chicago had been bad enough — I’d been pinned between the window and an enormously fat man, my shoulder pressed against the plastic airplane wall in an effort to make myself as small and contained as possible to avoid any further contact with the masses of flesh hanging over our shared armrest. Our plane circled Chicago for almost an hour, sweeping out over Lake Michigan and back, due to traffic on the tarmac or who knows what, but by the time we finally landed, I had to sprint across the airport in four-inch heels, push my way through customs, jump on a stupid train thing to get from the international terminal to the whole other side of the airport, and then run all the way to the end of the concourse. I arrived sweaty, panting, and bruised from where my bag kept hitting me as I ran, only to be seated directly in front of a screaming baby whose every breath gave me PTSD flashbacks to the summer, with Mrs. Easton crying and Mr. Easton yelling and the baby screaming its red little face off. Getting stomped on by Gramps was a fantastic finale to the whole hideous thing.

  When I finally limped past security, looking less like Sabrina and more like an escapee from the asylum, I was almost happy to see my mother. At least she couldn’t dump me on the spot, as I was sure Jake would do if he saw me in this state. My mother stood at a slight angle, the Leaning Tower of Jacque, with one tanned arm perched on her hip and one hanging down casually at her side, holding a trendy bag. She wore Jackie O sunglasses (“My namesake!” she always said), and her hair was swept up in a neat summer do. She looked less like a mom and more like a cool older sister.

  “Hey,” I said, reaching her. “Where’s Lacey and Nikki? Where’s Jake?”

  “What happened to you?” She held me at an arm’s length. “Did you have to ride in the baggage hold?”

  I sighed. “There were fat people and screaming babies and running . . . I’m just tired.”

  “Oh, honey,” my mother said. “It’s always a good idea to stop in the restroom to freshen up before you leave the terminal.”

  “I know.” I did know. I’d been flying with my mother for seventeen years, and each flight required a stop to freshen up. I should have gone directly from my flight to a sink and mirror, but after traveling for eighteen-plus hours, I was so tired that my fatigue seemed to take on physical properties of its own, like it could stand beside me and pull at my hair and clothes.

  She glanced around. “This airport is so small, you never know who might see you. You can’t take any chances right now. Not after —”

  “Mom,” I said. “I know.”

  My mother wrapped her arms around me loosely, raising her voice almost imperceptibly. “I’m so happy you’re home! I missed you! My little girl is all grown up!”

  “Okay,” I said. “Seriously, though, where is everybody?”

  “I thought we could spend some time together, just the two of us,” she said. “Plus, the Austins’ barbeque is tonight. I’m sure they’re helping with it.”

  Helping? My friends? I loved them, but I wouldn’t exactly call them helpful. Well, Nikki maybe, even Jake, but if Lacey was doing anything but lying out I would eat my boarding pass.

  My mother pulled away and started walking toward the baggage claim. “Let’s get your luggage and then go get some lunch. I’m just dying to hear all about Paris.”

  I stopped. “What?” She didn’t notice, and I had to kind of shuffle-jog to catch up with her. “You’re dying to hear about Paris?”

  The people from my flight had positioned themselves around the baggage carousel. Baby McScreamy was peacefully snoozing in a hippie sling across its mother’s chest. The old man who’d crushed my toes was sitting in a wheelchair at the U-turn. Probably looking for someone else to maim.

  “Of course, honey!” My mother planted herself strategically behind a giant linebacker-type guy. “The lights, the museums, the food! The men!” She winked at me, then checked her skinny gold watch. “I hope this doesn’t take too long.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Lights? Food? I spent the whole time babysitting.”

  “Paris is so romantic,” my mother said, and the linebacker turned to give her a smile.

  “Romantic?” My mind played a slide show of my summer in Paris: Nights lying as still as possible on a tiny twin bed, waiting for the ancient fan’s breeze to sweep across my face. Borrowing the baby’s diaper cream to treat my own heat rash. The time the Eastons left for the opera together and came home separately, an hour apart, both so drunk they were practically crawling, and so hungover the next morning that I had to take the baby on my day off. The man in Aix-en-Provence who had lifted his little daughter over a street planter so she could pee, and how she smiled hazily at passersby as it trickled down between her legs. The time Mrs. Easton threw a piece of expensive china at her husband’s head and it flew straight out the window, only to hit a pigeon on the next rooftop and knock it flat dead. “Are you joking?”

  “What girl wouldn’t kill to be an au pair for the summer?” The linebacker turned around again, and my mother asked him, “Am I right?”

  “Sure.” He looked her up and down and turned to me. “Listen to your sister.”

  My mother giggled. “Sister! This is my daughter.”

  “No way,” he said. “You can’t be a day over twenty-five.”

  “Oh, you!” my mother said, and turned to me. “Every girl dreams of spending the summer in Paris. Being an au pair will look so great on your college applications, all that responsibility and international experience!”

  “Mother. I was not an au pair! For one thing, au pairs get paid. I was not paid.” The baggage carousel grumbled to life, and the first bag tumbled down the ramp.

  “They fed you. And housed you! In Paris!”

  “What’s your bag look like?” the linebacker asked.

  “In exchange for slave labor,” I said. “It was in their best interest to keep me alive so I could continue to do everything for them.”

  The linebacker said, “This one’s mine,” and scooped up one of those gigantic hockey bags, slinging it across his shoulders.

  My mother rolled her eyes at me, and winked at the linebacker. “Teenagers.”

  “For another thing,” I said, “au pairs are supposed to have days off. Like, regularly! Every time I tried to take a day off, Mrs. Easton would cry and beg me to take the baby ‘just this one time.’”

  “Oh, there’s your bag!” My mother pointed, and the linebacker grabbed it and swung it off the carousel in one clean motion.

  “Where are you parked?” he asked my mother. “I could carry this out for you.”

  She put up a token fight but quickly demurred when he insisted. “And they say chivalry is dead!”

  He followed her out of the terminal, trotting like a puppy. I thought about calling Lacey or Nikki to pick me up and hiding in a bathroom until they came and rescued me. But my cell phone was still at home in Willow Grove, probably still resting in the top drawer of my mother’s dresser, where she put everything she took away from us, and I was so tired I just wanted to go home, crawl into my bed, and sleep until everyt
hing melted away and I could wake up brand-new at the beginning of my senior year and shake the whole summer off like a long bad dream.

  So I followed her, as I’d done my entire life. Nothing, really, had changed.

  My mother talked the whole way home. I tuned in and out, hearing snippets of gossip and updates about her job and something about someone’s cat, but mostly I was looking out the window, trying to see every single leaf on every single tree before we passed it. Paris had been beautiful at times, like one night when I’d managed to slip away from the stuffy apartment and walk through the streets alone and ended up on this stone bridge and everything was quiet and I could see the Eiffel Tower lit up in the distance. But I’d missed Iowa, more than I’d even realized: green as far as you can see, the horizon stretching all the way to the sky without a single building interrupting it.

  “And I thought we could do our annual shopping trip to Chicago this weekend, even though I’m sure you picked up tons of great clothes in Paris, because I want to take you over to campus and show you the sorority house and maybe see if we can introduce you to some nice girls who might have some insights about the application process. . . .”

  We drove across the bridge just outside of town, broad concrete rather than narrow stone, but the river beneath us was wide and clean and sparkling in the August sun. After the bridge it was just another two miles into Willow Grove, first the chain stores on the outskirts and then the cute little shops around the central park downtown.

  “. . . started thinking about what you’re going to wear on the first day of school? Because you really need to make a strong impression after what happened last spring. But, of course, if you remind everyone you spent the summer in Paris, that should help people forget —”

  “We have a stoplight now?” I asked.

  My mother glanced up at the red light over the intersection, seeming surprised. “Yes, I suppose they did just install that in June. I’m so used to it already!”