Pretend I'm Your Friend Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Half-Title Page

  Also by the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Information

  Dedication

  Hands of God

  Sorry Mrs Robinson

  Pretend I'm Your Friend

  People Say Thank You

  Alice James's Cuban Garlic

  A Line of EL Doctorow

  Wonderful You

  What's Not My Fault

  Marry Me Quickly

  First in Line

  Imogene's Island of Fire

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Book Club Discussion Guide

  PRAISE FOR MB CASCHETTA’S MIRACLE GIRLS

  “Something extraordinary is happening in upstate New York, where 10-year-old Cee-Cee has visions of angels and missing children. But after Cee-Cee performs a miracle, she’s placed under the care of a radical group of nuns. Darkly beautiful, Girls examines how forgiveness and wisdom take hold in the most unexpected places.” —People

  “This debut sparkles; Miracle Girls is that rarest thing: a literary miracle. MB Caschetta will break your heart and mend it all at once.”

  —Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng and Half a Life

  “What MB Caschetta’s novel brilliantly proposes is an underground railroad for girls. It feels like one of those girls grew up and wrote Miracle Girls. I loved reading it and rooting for Cee-Cee as she struggles to survive her own family and her saintly little girl voyage with the aid of intergenerational healing, and the vintage magic of radical nuns and priests from a time when they worked for peace and helped the lost girls of the world find home.” —Eileen Myles, Chelsea Girls

  “It’s not every day the Virgin Mary makes an appearance in a novel. And how fitting that MB Caschetta invites her into a story where a grandmother provides safety and thousands of prayers; where law-breaking nuns save desperate girls; where life hurts and is full of grace; a world where miracles happen. MB doesn’t flinch from writing painful truths nor does she flinch from lifting her characters up and us along with them.”

  —Beverly Donofrio, Riding in Cars with Boys, Looking for Mary, and Astonished

  “A wondrous and exhilarating novel. The Bianco family is unforgettable in all its catastrophic dysfunction but also in the capacity of some of its most broken members to fight their way toward salvation. Miracle Girls is an unflinching, fantastical and unexpectedly healing act of the imagination. You won’t have read anything quite like it, and you’re not likely soon to forget it either.”

  —Paul Russell, Immaculate Blue and The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov

  “Has ten year old Cee-Cee Bianco just worked a miracle? Are her visions divine or or only the half-baked imaginings of a silly girl? Cee-Cee’s mother has abandoned the family; her brother lies in a coma. Alone, she must pick her way through a wasteland of adult foolishness, but the intuitive wisdom that guides her seems an earthly miracle. Caschetta’s vivid, thoughtful novel leaps, skips and soars along the boundary between faith and superstition, turning every expectation on its head.” —Heidi Jon Schmidt, The Harbormaster’s Daughter

  “Miracle Girls is a wondrous book in which gritty reality alternates with ecstatic visions, cruelty is leavened by grace, and the treachery of families and is redeemed by the kindness of strangers. MB Caschetta conjures an era, a place, and her characters unforgettably. An accomplished and exceptional debut novel.”

  —Ralph Sassone, The Intimates

  “A polished debut novel…Caschetta’s first novel is filled with a kind of dark poetry and the menace of ordinary evils.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “One gets the sense Caschetta offers her readers an idealized version of the Catholic Church as a safe-haven for all people, and where strict interpretation of the Bible goes both ways. I’m not sure this utopia is actually attainable, but within the world of Miracle Girls, you can almost believe it.” —LitReactor, BookShots

  “A mesmerizing first novel.” —Huffington Post

  “Compulsively readable first novel…Miracle Girls is an intriguing blend—part exploration of family ties, part exploration of what faith can look like, part radical concept, part history—and Caschetta does a wonderful job of weaving it all together. Her snappy prose, diverse cast of characters, and imaginative plot make Miracle Girls a pleasure to read. —Lambda Literary Review

  “MB Caschetta’s Miracle Girls is a stunning debut novel about an unforgettable dysfunctional family and faith.” —Largehearted Boy

  Pretend

  I’m

  Your

  Friend

  Also by MB Caschetta

  Miracle Girls

  Lucy on the West Coast

  Engine Books

  Indianapolis

  Engine Books

  PO Box 44167

  Indianapolis, IN 46244

  enginebooks.org

  Copyright © 2016 by MB Caschetta

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are

  either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Also available in hardcover and paperback formats from Engine Books.

  ISBN: 978-1-938126-74-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016934979

  For Meryl

  Hands

  of

  God

  Helena Frankel has the squarest teeth A. J. Wojak has ever seen.

  It strikes her as odd to realize this now of all times, well into their third mid-Atlantic hour of flight to a place neither has been before—though, really, neither has been anywhere. Helena is the most beautiful girl in all of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, place of their birth, and exactly nowhere. And yet, in the back of A.J.’s mind, she’s started to realize she’s growing bored in their friendship, antsy. The thought is nearly unthinkable. So A.J. revises: She is growing bored with Helena’s breakup saga, which has been the topic of conversation nonstop since boarding the plane at five this morning.

  Neither here nor there, A.J. thinks wistfully, looking out at clouds.

  Before today, Helena had spoken in absolute terms: “Italy! Finally!”

  She and Helena saved up money for two years, arranged the timing of this trip carefully, sorting out A.J.’s high school vacation and Helena’s holiday work schedule at the factory’s administrative office.

  Maybe the real problem is that A.J. is no longer stoned, which means she is irritated, which means she should suggest a trip to the bathroom, which she will do as soon as she can get a word in edgewise.

  In the meantime, her slow, buzzing mind has lazily landed on the nature of bicuspids. Helena’s are bone white, perfectly rounded for the tearing of flesh, though she is strictly vegetarian, which A.J. admires. Also, due to a slight speech impediment, even the hardest consonants slipping from Helena’s lips are wet and smooth. It’s a pleasant sound, Helena talking, if you can loosen your mind around the tedious content.

  The problem is timing: two days before their departure, Helena discovered her boyfriend, Gordon Johnson, a foreman at the P&G, in bed with someone else.

  “Not just someone,” Helena says, reviewing the facts. “But two someones! I mean, Gordy was in bed with a couple, A.J.—a girl and her husband.”

  Helena clutc
hes the love note she found stuffed in Gordy’s wallet, which almost caused her to cancel first the relationship and then the trip. The only trouble was that a) she is in love with Gordy, and b) Easter is the only week she can take off work without it affecting her paycheck.

  Procter & Gamble is closed Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the following Monday.

  There is a world, A.J. tells herself, a wide, wide world.

  “I mean, a threesome, A.J.!” Helena says. “A married couple with a baby and everything!”

  Helena is wearing jeans that pinch her boyish hips and angle way out at the ankle. There’s a rip in her turtleneck sweater, which is cream-colored and nearly matches her skin. A.J. marvels that Helena’s father let her out of the house that way. When she thinks of her own father—a guy who drives a school bus, who was once unanimously elected to town council, and who makes a mean gin martini—her mind goes blank. Her body produces a numb floating sensation, as if she’s stoned, as if the very thought of his existence wipes hers out entirely.

  A.J.’s father let her travel mostly because of Helena: People can say what they will about the Jews, but Helena Frankel is good people, a darn pretty little thing. It’s true that Helena is Jewish, but no one in Waynesboro treats her like it. Besides, the Frankels have been part of the town since the beginning; they’ve owned the drug store on East Main for as long as anyone can remember.

  Helena grimaces, twisting her lips strangely and wiping away tears. A.J. has to squint to detect in her the senior voted Most Likely to Succeed, Class of ’72.

  Helena lowers her voice. “He’d go there for dinner, and after the kid was in bed, they lit a fire in the fireplace and the three of them had sex—all together at the same time—in the living room. He told me that, A.J.”

  A.J. is impressed with the idea that a regular guy like Gordy Johnson might not be so regular. A.J. can close her eyes and practically see Gordy, his tall angular body, his weird yellow hair, huffing and puffing for the pleasure of some bored faceless housewife and her not-so-bored faceless husband. Accidentally for a minute she imagines Helena there, too, naked on the rug next to Gordy. She opens her eyes and stares at a woman sleeping across the aisle, realizing the picture is wrong. Too many people.

  In her backpack, she has some marijuana, rolled and ready to go, which they will smoke if Helena ever shuts up about Gordy’s perversions.

  “But did Gordy actually have sex with the guy?” A.J. asks. “I mean, together?”

  Helena pulls back a handful of curly red hair and tucks it in her collar. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. The guy’d been in Vietnam, and Gordy felt guilty because he couldn’t go to war on account of all that mental stuff from his past. The war was like a connection Gordy had with this guy. They were both messed up about it—the guy because he went, and Gordy because he couldn’t go.”

  “Oh,” A.J. says.

  It is 1973, she reminds herself, the year of her graduation. In two short months, she’ll be working at the P&G like everyone else, and maybe then she’ll have the story to tell.

  “I’d be messed up too,” A.J. says, “if I had to go to Vietnam.”

  Helena bites down hard on an airline coffee cup. “Stupid fucking war.”

  She would like Helena to name a few names: Gordy Johnson’s faceless couple, to be exact. But she decides not to press, since Helena can be touchy, and they’ve got a solid week ahead of them in Florence, Venice, and Rome. Anyway, it’s easy enough in a small town to find out who someone like Gordy is fucking. To remind herself that everything’s different now that they’ve left Pennsylvania, A.J. occupies her mind with thoughts of ancient ruins, and pungent nightclubs, and not-quite-sanitary youth hostels.

  “Gordon said having that guy’s dick inside him brought him back to life,” Helena whispers.

  A.J. imagines Gordy’s ass in the air, not quite sure whether she’s in favor or against. “Well, free love,” she says, trying to sound poetic.

  “Man, you can say that again.”

  A.J. waves her beaded bag of joints in the air. “Bathroom?”

  Helena nods, getting up slowly and making her way toward the slim area of tiny restrooms at the back of the plane. Knocking her hip into the seats, she disturbs not one but two sleeping women with infants in their arms, who look up, surprised, and clutch their babies tighter. A.J. smiles apologetically as she follows: Helena is merely trying to exact revenge against the half of a couple that’s breaking her heart. At the back of the cabin, Helena nods toward a stewardess in a blue jersey who saunters down the opposite aisle. “Wait till she passes. I’ll leave it unlatched.”

  The stewardess raises an eyebrow at A.J., a thinly-plucked question mark. A.J. waves innocently, ducking inside and locking the door.

  “Coast is clear,” she says.

  In the cramped space above the sink, A.J. produces a joint, lighting it quickly and taking two long, deep drags, which burn her lungs and feel good. She eventually lets the smoke waft out and the sweet tingling sensation wade in. Against her closed eyelids is an imprint of weird Gordy Johnson with his tongue in some man’s mouth.

  Waiting her turn, Helena muses, “When we get to Italy, let’s fuck guys like crazy.”

  A.J. nods, holding out the joint for Helena’s remarkable mouth, which is thin at the corner and wide toward the middle, a spoon. Gracefully, the top pink lip touches and releases the bottom pink lip as Helena leans in for a hit.

  At a hostel next to the Pitti Palace, they drop off their bags and smoke a joint with some Italians. Then Helena grabs A.J.’s hand, and they start off toward the old center. A.J. concentrates on a tourist map of the ancient city. At first sight Florence is disappointing. It is smallish and blunt, yellowy-gold, the color of a stubbed-out cigarette.

  A nicotine stain, A.J. thinks.

  There’s never any way to anticipate the imperfections of a place. Perhaps the future will merely be a series of letdowns, proving the only real location is in the mind. She bites her nails and rustles the map.

  What if it’s me?

  Here she is: girl in a golden city, still seeing the world with Waynesboro eyes. Though how else would A.J. Wojak ever view the world? If not through her own eyes, then whose?

  “Come on,” Helena grabs the map where it folds. “We don’t need this thing.”

  Helena’s breath is a peppermint airplane candy.

  “Give it up.” She laughs, then threads her arm through A.J.’s and pulls her along. “I can’t stand how beautiful this place is!”

  A.J. agrees: Florence is far better than anything they’ve ever seen. Still, the difference between here and there is small and disturbing. What if it’s essentially the same wherever you are? She longs to be lifted up and out of her own tedious mind, her lumpy, too-big body. As Helena weaves them around two old women selling trinkets on a long arching bridge, she considers how small the difference is between being alive and being dead, being herself and not herself.

  Infinitesimal, she wants to say aloud. The thought gives her a chill.

  Helena would tell her not to overthink it. Once Gordy had overthought peas, Helen had told her: For months all he could talk about was their size, their shape, the different colors they came in. When you thought about peas long enough, he’d claimed, you could no longer imagine anything more powerful. The exercise had landed him in the county hospital.

  A.J. makes a mental note: Steer clear of peas.

  “Wow,” Helena giggles, still stoned. “I think I’m going to explode. I mean, look at that, will you?” She points to the first of many Davids they will see during the week.

  A.J. snaps a photo of the statue and begins to relax a little, letting Helena’s enthusiasm carry her forward. Her fingers are laced loosely in Helena’s hands. The cool temperature of her skin is comforting.

  When they arrive at the next place, Helena throws her arms around A.J.’s hips. “I want my life to be like this always,” she says. “You and me and Florence forever.” In Italy it is still
early morning; they have an entire day for sightseeing ahead. They stop and roll a joint, which A.J. lights under the Rape of the Sabine Women.

  Above their heads, somewhere in the heart of the city, a giant bell is ringing.

  The beautiful boy selling his art outside the Uffizi is muscled in a modest way. A.J. has passed by his blanket a dozen times. He hasn’t sold a single drawing all afternoon.

  “You want one?” he finally says.

  Helena has run off with a high school basketball star from the Midwest, someone she found drinking wine on the street, tall and lanky. His name was Roger. He was on a class trip, but said he could steal away if she wanted to see the Duomo.

  A.J. wanders the city alone. It’s early evening. “This one. The heart-shaped pebble.”

  The beautiful boy laughs: “It’s a clove of garlic.”

  “Oh,” A.J. cocks her head. On closer look, he is much older than she is. “How much?”

  His T-shirt ripples. “More than you’ve got.”

  A.J. sniffs the breeze: “You don’t know that.”

  “Maybe,” he smiles. “Where’s your friend? The one with the hair?”

  A.J. likes that he’s noticed them. “She went off with someone she just met.”

  The boy frowns. “You don’t approve of love?”

  “Love?” A.J. is hard-pressed to apply the word to Helena and Roger-from-Cleveland fucking against some ancient crucifix. “More like revenge.”

  The boy carefully wraps his charcoals in a rag. “This is Florence. Magical things happen.”

  A.J. is doubtful.

  He puts his sketches inside a giant envelope, hesitating before he picks up the one she’s chosen. “What’s your name?” he asks.