Our Girls

Abstract

Our Girls Alice McDermott (bio) Our girls are fair and witty. They take their vocabulary words seriously and say inexorable and obdurate in ordinary conversation. They sing—belted show tunes, bebop, Christmas songs, of late, or simply the nasal imitation of some popular hit that nevertheless strikes us (their mothers) as lovely, promising. You're as good as, we tell them. You're better than. As good as and better than we tell our girls, who play piano or field hockey, who sketch portraits and design clothes and speak French, who smile endlessly at the poor souls in the old folks home or the soup kitchen or the after school program for damaged kids. Our girls shop. They see every movie. They have boyfriends, and boys who are friends. They have lovely hair and straightened teeth and contact lenses, not glasses—except at night, at home, when their own languor and the soft pajama bottoms that drape their thin hips make glasses seem a sophisticated and lovely choice. They are sophisticated and lovely, our girls. Brilliant, we tell them. Talented, we tell them. And they are miserable, miserable, miserable. "How's Ellie?" Charlotte asks the girl's mother. Ellie of the pale skin and freckles and sturdy legs. Honor student, track star Ellie, namesake of the Eleanor, Queen of Aquitaine (adorable as a child to tell you the history of her patroness), dark hair with a royal wave to it and a sweet shy grin. "Off to college by now, I suppose." "Eleanor's doing better," comes the reply. "She should finish high school, finally, in the spring." After the depression and the addiction, Ellie's mother explains, and the truancy, and the flight to her father's apartment in another [End Page 363] city and now, finally, Zoloft and a small expensive high school where there are no more than seven in each class and talk therapy is on the curriculum. The two women share, sadly, their mutual surprise, both women recollecting what a fine student Eleanor had been, how smart and sure of herself, in sixth grade, in eighth grade. What happens to our girls, they wonder? What happened? Which well could be asked, Charlotte tells Ellie's mother (by way of commiserating) of pretty little Lizzie Nash, who was only a few years behind Eleanor in grammar school. "Do you remember Lizzie?" Face like an angel, blonde hair down her back. Sent to the best prep school where she flourished academically but took to pulling out her hair, not in single strands but in clumps. At first just in the back, underneath (Charlotte shows Eleanor's mother the back of her hairline, as Lizzie Nash's mother had shown Charlotte in the supermarket a week ago), but then at her temples and behind her ears until, finally, there were bare patches all over her head. Her parents thought it was some strange disease, something like whatever it was that other Princess, the one in Monaco, had suffered. But, no, they discovered, she was doing it herself. Which was a relief, in some ways, Lizzie's mother had said in the produce aisle, leaning on her cart. In some ways, it was even worse. A more specific disease, Lizzie Nash's mother had said, would have meant a more specific cure. "It's life," Eleanor's mother says now. "The stress. It hits the smart girls even harder." They are in the shopping mall, two weeks before Christmas. It's mid-morning and the place is filled with women. There are caravans of handsome young mothers pushing elaborate strollers that are loaded down like Hannibal's pachyderms with juice boxes and water bottles, diapers and baby wipes, Cheerios in zip lock bags. There are the mothers of school-aged children walking singly, determinedly, in the clothes they will wear to the gym, shopping bags slapping their [End Page 364] thighs. There are older mothers, like Charlotte, who have time to chat when they meet friends, who have mostly simple items on the lists in their hands, gloves or a scarf, a gift certificate or two, something for an elderly neighbor, something else for her own teenage daughter whose...