Real Live Boyfriends

actually. I’m registered for school there.”

“Now I shower almost every day,” said my mother. “But it’s really not necessary. In Europe it’s totally normal to bathe only once a week.”

“Don’t bathe once a week, Mom,” I said.

“Why shouldn’t I?” she said. “I wouldn’t smell. We just worry about smelling, but really we don’t smell.”

“What about the smelly people?” I said. “There are definitely people who are smelly.”

“You might get a rash,” said Meghan. “Like a sweat rash.”

“No, I won’t,” said Mom, taking a sip of tea. “I think it’ll be very good for my skin, actually. I have a few dry patches that I’m sure are from overbathing.”

“Please, don’t let your new thing be refusing to bathe,” I said. “Any new thing but that.”

“What do you mean my ‘new thing’?” my mother snapped.

I knew I was starting an argument.

I knew I was, and I knew I shouldn’t.

But I was so shattered about Noel not coming, all the badness had to come out one way or another.

“You know. First it was juice fasting, then craniosacral therapy, then Rolfing, then the macrobiotic diet, then raw food. And now that you’re eating smoked duck, you’ll obviously need some new thing to fill the void left when you abandon the raw food way of life.”

“Ruby!” My mother straightened up in anger just as Meghan kicked me under the table.

But I kept talking. “So I’m just asking you not to take up no bathing as your thing. I think that’s reasonable. It’s not a pathway to health and it’s not chic and European and it’s not anything except gross. You can put lotion on your dry patches and pick a different new thing, no loss.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this to me.”

“Why not? Dad and I have suffered enough through all your fads. I don’t think we should have to live with someone who doesn’t bathe.”

“You!” My mother stood up so quickly her chair fell over and hit the floor with a bang. She shoved her pointer finger in my face and leaned down so her angry mouth was in front of my eyes. “You are a disrespectful, unsympathetic, shallow brat who has no idea what it’s like to be searching for something. Searching for some kind of truth, some kind of path to be on in this life. All you care about is whether you get dessert and whether you can borrow the car and whether some boy is going to call you.”

“I want truth,” I said, because her words stung. “I want a path. I just don’t want to talk to you about them.”

“What? Why not?”

“You’re a crap listener.”

“I am a wonderful listener! Ask anyone. Ask Dad. Ask Juana.”

“You’re not!” I cried. “You’re such a bad listener you have to pay Doctor Z to listen to me instead. How many parents have to do that?”

Meghan kicked me under the table again, hard this time.

“I am working extra hours copyediting to pay for that doctor,” said my mother. “Do not give me attitude about that.” She picked up a piece of tea-smoked duck with her fingers and shoved it into her mouth, talking while she chewed. “And do not give me attitude about my choices, either. I want to eat smoked duck now? I eat smoked duck. It is not any of your business to be commenting or criticizing what I choose to eat or how I choose to live.”

“I live with you!” I cried. “I have eaten raw food for breakfast and dinner every day for months and months. How am I not going to react to that?”

“You’re supposed to show respect for what I’m doing,” Mom said.

At this juncture in a classic Ruby/Elaine argument, Dad would typically be intervening and saying that yes, it was healthy for us to be sharing our deep feelings, but he thought that maybe we could benefit from some mediation and could he just hear each person’s point of view voiced calmly? Only he didn’t.

“You don’t mean respect,” I told her. “You mean you want me to be quiet and let you boss me around the way you boss Dad.”

“I do not boss your father,” said my mother, teeth gritted.

“I’m allowed to say if I want dessert! I can to ask to borrow the car! That’s just basic conversation when you live with someone.”

“Take it back!”

“What?”

“About your father. Take it back.”

“Take it back? We’re not in fourth grade here.”

“Take it back, Ruby. I do not boss him.”

“I’m not taking anything back,” I said.

I knew I was being mean.