Playing with the Grown-ups Page 8

  Her mother painted a mural in the temple. Kitty worked in the kitchen, making vats of fragrant chai tea, and tiny little coconut sweets.

  Everyone seemed to know her mother and love her.

  'Lakshmi!' they said. 'These are your kids? How beautiful they are. What grace for them to come to the Guru so young. It's the best gift you could give them.'

  'I know,' her mother said, smiling. 'If only we had all been so lucky.'

  'Before we had the Guru we had drugs, we had sex, we had negative patterns of behaviour; then we found God, and now we are free.'

  'What does that mean?' Kitty said to her mother, her ears pricking up at the sex bit.

  'It means that the Guru freed us from human bondage.'

  'What do you mean us? Did you take drugs like them?'

  'No. I was lost, though, and kept trying to find myself through other people. Now I know who I am. Gosh, you look so pretty in a sari.'

  There were so many rituals to remember. It was disrespectful to let her feet point at Swami-ji, whether she was in his presence or bowing to a photograph of him. She had to curl them beneath her, or tuck them to the side. In the temple, she had to bow to the statue of the god in the middle of the room, then walk clockwise three times, bow again, touch her head to the silver feet of the god, put money in his box, then touch her hand to her head, then her heart.

  Women sat on the left, men to the right. Sometimes in the meditation room people made funny animal noises in the dark, screeching like monkeys, or bellowing low like cattle. You weren't meant to laugh, her mother said, because it was recognised as a manifestation of being connected to the divine. Kitty thought it was spooky and embarrassing. She didn't like to be in the pitch black with a crowd of people sounding like they were auditioning for The Jungle Book. When one started, three followed, calling each other in strangeanimal voices. Her mother told her in a whisper that she thought they were showing off.

  The thing she loved best was Satsang with Swami-ji, which happened at six every day before supper. You went and did your bowing which was called 'Pranarn'. And then you took your seat and he gave a talk, which was always funny and wise without being tedious. After the talk the lights were dimmed, and the sitar called, the people answering in unison, chanting, calling on the gods, asking for their divine protection and benevolence. Then they had to meditate.

  Kitty watched Swami-ji secretly during the meditation, while the eyes of the others were shut. He sat straight, cross-legged in his throne, his back perfectly erect, and light emanated out of him in waves, so that she could almost see it floating through the air like little darts.

  She also watched Ram, who worked in the kitchen alongside her, who was fifteen and from New Canaan, Connecticut. He smelled like patchouli oil and had beads in his curly chin-length hair. He wore Birkenstock sandals, which Kitty found upsetting, because staring at his naked feet felt obscene to her. She concentrated on his face, which was strong and handsome, and imagined their wedding, in the temple, officiated over by Swami-ji, as Brahmins threw rice, stained yellow with turmeric, over her and Ram.

  She tried not to think of being sexy with him, because she didn't think it was appropriate in the company of an enlightened being. So instead Kitty imagined riding through the streets of Jaipur on an elephant, chastely kissing him on the lips. In her fantasy he wore boots like a maharaja, and a turban with cabochon rubies dancing around it.

  Whenever Ram tried to talk to her in the kitchen, she was mute and turned an unbecoming shade of purple. She wore her hair down, and managed to hide behind a curtain of it, until Ghoti, the kitchen manager, told her it was unsanitary and she had to tie it back. Ram had lived in the ashram since he was three, and he could meditate for seven hours without stopping.

  Back in New York, Nora surveyed her bindi with distaste.

  'I hope,' she said, as she quickly removed Sam and Violet for their bath, 'that you're not going to school like that. People will think you're very strange. Touched maybe.'

  She now had something else in common with her mother, but Kitty wanted to surrender to it fully. She would be a monk when she grew up, and walk with Swami-ji under the banyan trees in India, speaking of God in a secret language no one else would understand.

  Chapter Four

  There was one day before school began. Kitty sat on the edge of her mother's bed; she was sleeping.

  'Mummy,' Kitty whispered.

  Marina liked to be woken gently and slowly. She stayed up late painting and singing. Kitty had been carried off to sleep by Bessie Smith and the clink of the Martini glass.

  'Mummy, I need clothes for school. I don't really have any clothes except your old ones. I need jeans and things.'

  'Christ, of course you do. You don't have a uniform.' Marina opened one eye. 'Could you please, please, please make me a sugary milky coffee the way I like it?'

  Kitty marvelled at how her mother could look so lovely and unsquashed after sleep. She knew she looked like a spectre of her mother, whose bones were etched in fine; hers were yet to be formed, like a half-finished drawing.

  'Can we go and play Spy Games?' Sam asked as Kitty carried the coffee upstairs.

  'What's Spy Games?' Their games were still new to her.

  'It's when we go around the streets pretending to be spies and Mum is the head spy. We bring our walkie-talkies.'

  Kitty supposed her mother could be a spy, but a winsome French one, who wore Armani raincoats and suede Maud Frizon pumps.

  'OK, but I need clothes for school, so can we do it on the way?'

  'Right, I'll get Violet. It's a school-clothes cover mission.'

  Her mother hid behind a corner.

  'The subject has been spotted at twelve, carrying a large bag of M&Ms. How should we proceed, agent V?'

  Violet radioed back from two feet away.

  'Subject is carrying gold. Stop him with caution.'

  Her mother sidled up to Sam.

  'Excuse me, sir,' she said. 'I think you must come with me. You have what we need.'

  'You must be mistaken, madam.' Sam made an innocent face. 'I am on my way to meet my wife for a coffee.'

  'I know your game,' her mother said. 'I know you're single and work for no one but yourself.'

  'No,' said Sam. 'Here's my wife right now.'

  Kitty swept down upon him and kissed him on the eyebrow.

  'Yuck,' he said. 'Hello, wife.'

  At this moment an elderly man in mismatching shoes came running towards her mother with his arms outstretched. He looked like a crow, with straggling fabric flying around him like moth-eaten wings.

  'Mummy!' Kitty said. 'Be careful. There's a mad person.'

  'Hey, baby!' the mad man called to her mother. 'Hey, my favourite pretty lady! You got some sugar for me?'

  But her mother didn't run away. She opened her arms and kissed him on his leathery cheek.

  'Hello, Norm,' she said. 'How's the mansion rebuilding going?'

  'Norm lived in a mansion but George Bush blew it up with a Scud missile and he's raising funds for a new one. Until it's built he lives in a box,' Sam said in a stage-whisper to Kitty.

  'Five bucks, lady. Five bucks will pay for my satin sheets. The satin sheets that bastard Bush set on fire!'

  'Five bucks?' her mother said. 'Norm, we should go shopping together, you clearly know where to find a bargain. Here, take fifty, and you can buy ten pairs.'

  Norm jumped in the air, his arms punching up.

  'Yes!' he said. 'That's right! We'll show Bush . . . Your man a lucky son of a bitch, I tell you.'

  'Don't have a man,' her mother said, touching his cheek fondly, leading her children down the street like a gaggle of goslings.

  On her first day of school Kitty dressed for battle. She wore blue mascara and ripped jeans and a crocheted and complicated sexy top.

  'You can't wear that,' her mother and Nora sang in unison at breakfast.

  'I can, I must, I'm trying to be sexy.'

  'Clearly you're sexy,'
said her mother. Kitty felt a thrill at this. 'But you don't need to advertise it.'

  Kitty gave them a weary smile.

  'I'll be fine,' she said.

  She was. She was fine. She was no longer bespectacled, with her chest jutting out in an empire-line uniform. She was slinky and five foot eight and to her astonishment everyone wanted to be friends with her.

  At lunchtime Kitty saw her: her best friend to be. She was sitting at a table of girls from Kitty's class, but she didn't belong with them, in the gym cum cafeteria that smelled of boys and macaroni. She looked like a patrician Debbie Harry, the way she shimmered, heart-shaped and spotless, her long legs folded beneath her. She wore a cream cashmere sweater and a short kilt. She was reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Kitty knew her mother would have called the girl a preppy; she thought Sylvia Plath was pretentious.

  The other girls fired questions at Kitty about England and her parents.

  'They're divorced,' she said. 'He lives in London with my stepmother. I don't get on with her, so I don't see him that much now.'

  'What does your mom do?' asked an eager little brunette called Natalie. She reminded Kitty of a fox terrier.

  'She paints,' Kitty said.

  'Oh . . .' The girl seemed confused. 'That's nice.'

  The Debbie Harry lookalike looked up finally.

  'That's really cool,' she said. 'I'm Charlotte.'

  Boys. Everywhere boys, laughing and looking her up and down, their jeans hanging below their boxer shorts, their smiles sly and foxy.

  Charlotte sat on the steps looking bored, a swarm of eighth-grade boys buzzing around her. She read her book, swatting them away with it.

  'All right there, English,' one of them said. His English accent was Dick Van Dyke. Kitty turned red. His name was Noah; she'd seen him at lunch throwing bagel chips at a fat girl.

  Charlotte smirked.

  'Kitty, I waited for you.'

  'Thanks.' Kitty ran her hand through her hair and smiled at Charlotte.

  'Where do you live?'

  '78th and Park Avenue.'

  'I'm on 75th. We can walk.'

  Charlotte liked Adamski and Beats International. She didn't like schoolboys. She was an only child and her parents were 'narcissists'. Her mother was an actress. She was famous. Her father wrote 'self-involved plays'. The narcissists went to the country every weekend and she stayed in the city on her own if she wanted. She had shaved her legs since she was ten. Kitty did not want Charlotte to see her bedroom. She thought she might think it childish.

  'You can come over on Saturday. If you want?' Kitty said. She could make her room appealing.

  'Cool.'

  Charlotte turned down 75th Street and blew her a kiss.

  ' "This is jam hot. This is jam hot," ' Kitty sang as she walked through the front door. 'Mum?' she called.

  'Is that my angel? I'm baking,' said her mother from the kitchen.

  Her mother baked when she was happy. Kitty jumped up the stairs.

  'Hi, lovely. How was school?'

  The kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. Violet and Sam stood on tall chairs helping her mother at the pink marble counter.

  'It was great.' Kitty dipped into the bowl and licked her fingers, then remembered that icing was fattening.

  'I'm thrilled. Why was it great?'

  'It just was. Everyone was really nice and what I wore was OK and French is really easy. They're masses behind me.'

  'Do you have a best friend?' asked Violet, chocolate ringed round her raspberry mouth.

  'I think so. She's called Charlotte.'

  'I have a best friend. She's called Summer. But I have to pretend I don't like her because she's a girl,' Sam confided.

  'Mum has a date, Kitty,' Violet said. 'With a very young boy named George.'

  'Young being the operative word,' her mother said dryly. 'He's twenty-two.'

  'Bloody hell! That's only nine years older than me!'

  'Will you help me decide what to wear?'

  This was their favourite pastime, one that had begun when she was little. Kitty loved her mother's wardrobe. At Hay she used to climb in amidst fur coats and taffeta dresses that slid against her with a sigh of history. She sat with a torch, reading for hours. The cupboards contained the essence of her mother. Overalls, paint-smattered, and T-shirts thin and soft with years of wear and washing. Dresses that swore fun and seduction, heels worn down with dancing and late nights in the rain.

  They surveyed her mother's wares like hawk-eyed cloth buyers, dismissing scraps of silk, a heel too high, a sweater too mumsy.

  'The rose,' Kitty declared finally. The rose was her mother's standard date dress. It had a heady history of success.

  'Aren't we a bit bored of it?' Marina asked fretfully.

  'No, it's good. Honestly,' Kitty said.

  She watched her mother's party ritual, the long bath with orange-blossom oil (a witch had told her it made men crazy), body cream swept on surely, the make-up applied with the fine strokes of a painter. She looked like a pert-lipped Matisse woman but thinner. Kitty told her this and Marina crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. She wasn't wearing any knickers.

  The doorbell rang.

  'Darling, give him a drink and tell him I'm on the phone to my gallery in England.'

  'It's midnight in England,' Kitty said.

  'Oh, my gallery here then. Please, and try to keep Violet out of the sitting room. She gets a little over frankwith new people.'

  Kitty answered the door.

  'Hi,' she sing-songed. 'I'm Kitty. How do you do. Mummy's on the phone to her gallery in New York but do you want a drink . . .' She looked at him. He was unbelievably handsome. She fancied her mother's date.

  'You look just like your mother,' he said. 'I'm George and I would love a Martini. Do you know how to make it or shall I help you?'

  'I know how,' she said faintly.

  'Good girl.'

  They sat in the sitting room with the huge bay windows.

  It was still light. She wished she had put on her dot of Chanel No. 5.

  'Kitty, you make a mean Martini. Have you started school yet?'

  'No, I'm at university.' It fell from her mouth.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  'Seventh grade. I started today,' she said, blushing.

  'Seventh grade, that's cool. How is it?'

  'I liked it. The lessons weren't difficult, but that could have been because it was the first day. It's odd having boys, I'm not used to that.'

  'Somewhat different from boarding school, I'd imagine?' he said, and his tone was sweet.

  'Oh yes,' she said fervently.

  They talked about books. His favourite was Catch 22. She told him about Sense and Sensibilip, which he'd never read. He laughed quite a lot at the things she said, as though they delighted him, and she didn't mind, because he was not patronising or humoring her, she knew. She felt like they were on a date, that she was amusing him with her witty little stories. When she laughed, she touched Mr Fitzgerald's necklace at her throat as she had seen her mother do when she liked a man.

  The reverie was broken when Marina burst in, vital and awash with colour, trailing orange blossom behind her.

  George swallowed.

  'God you're beautiful,' he said.

  'Thank you,' she said smartly. 'I'm sorry I kept you waiting.'

  'Kitty's been amusing me.'

  'Yes, she's jolly good company, my big girl.'

  Oh go away, Kitty thought.

  'Do you want a drink, Mummy?' she said.

  'No darling. I think we'll go now.'

  George stood up. Kitty felt that he was being disloyal. He followed her mother out of the room like a hungry puppy.

  On the stairs Violet greeted them, cherubic in her nightie. After a careful kiss goodnight, she bellowed down the stairs, 'Mum, Mum, why aren't you wearing any knickers?'

  Through the sitting-room window Kitty watched them walk hand in hand down 78th Street. He leaned into her mo
ther and whispered something and Kitty saw her laugh her low laugh. It was adult and secret and it gave her a pang of loneliness. She wanted to be a part of their Indian summer night, not just there for the dress rehearsal. She felt like an understudy. She wanted her own secrets.

  She lay on the sofa with Violet and Sam and they watched May Poppins.

  'I'm glad Mary Poppins isn't our nanny,' Violet said.

  'Why? If she was, we could fly, and our room would tidy itself. It would be awesome!'

  'No, Sam. If Mary Poppins was our nanny she'd think Mum was naughty, and she'd fly up the chimney and go away. I'd rather have Nora any day. I bet Mary Poppins made nasty rice pudding without the jam.'

  'Mum isn't naughty, Violet,' Kitty said.

  'Just a little bit.' Violet yawned. 'Knickerless girls shouldn't climb trees.'

  Elsie and Ingrid were coming to stay. Her mother sent a limo to pick them up from JFK, while Precious made the guest rooms perfect. They'd ordered little bouquets of freesias from the florist, and the beds were piled high with linen sheets that had been ironed with rosewater.

  'Why can't my room be like that?' Kitty said. 'I'm jealous.'

  'Because you live here,' her mother said. 'You're not a guest; I want you to stop this woebegone nonsense.'

  'Fine,' Kitty said.

  'Oh my God, Marina, you are living in LUXURY,' Ingrid gasped as she was led through the door by the chauffeur, who carried her duffel bag like it was a Vuitton trunk.

  'LUXURY,' Elsie echoed.

  'I've sold a few paintings. Do you like it?' Her mother asked, beaming shyly.

  'We want to move in! Holy fuck! Look at you, Kitty, you're so tall and skinny and sexy! I can't believe it! I have to have a nap, it's all too much.'

  Kitty helped Elsie unpack. Her milk hair was cut short, like Jean Seberg's, and she looked elfin in black tights and a black jumper, her blue eyes ringed with smoky grey.

  'Can you make my eyes look like that?' Kitty asked her.

  'Yes, of course, oh, we've missed you so much . . . do you have a boyfriend?'

  'No. But I could very soon. This boy in the eighth grade -that means form - he really likes me. His name is Noah. He plays the guitar and has a band called the Dirty Things. He told my friend Charlotte he fancies me. Did you like Paris?'