After the divorce, my father moved to Portland, where he got an adjunct position at a community college. My mother got work as a receptionist in a dentist’s office, and between her salary, and my father’s meager child support checks, we made ends meet. The constant refrain of our two-women house was that my mother’s life was ruined, but that mine could be better. And by better, my mother meant more money.
In high school I was pretty average, but I did turn myself into a world-class shoplifter. Most of my thefts occurred outside of Orono, in either Bangor or Portland during one of my visits to my father. I mostly stole from department stores, the places that employed store detectives who prowled around trying to look like customers. Those detectives were trained to look for shoplifters by observing their body language, looking for someone who was acting nervous or suspiciously. I was never caught because I never acted like a thief. I perfected the casual nonchalance of a girl with her parent’s credit card doing a little aimless shopping. I brought a big purse with me wherever I went, and I looked for small expensive items. Scarves. Perfume. I became very skilled.
The only time I was spotted stealing was by a classmate at the pharmacy in Orono. I rarely shoplifted there—it was too close to home, and a store that I went to a lot. I was a junior in high school then. I purchased several items from one of the hawk-eyed old lady cashiers, but walked out with three packs of replacement razors for my Gillette Venus in my purse.
After exiting through the automatic doors I heard a guy’s voice say, “I think you forgot to pay for something.”
I turned. It was a kid I knew from school. James something. I didn’t realize he worked at the pharmacy. “Excuse me?” I said, trying to sound like I had more important things to do than talk to a drugstore employee.
“In your purse. I saw you put the razors in there.”
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, making my face look shocked. “I totally forgot about those.” I began to step toward the store. “I’ll just—”
The boy laughed, and grabbed my arm and steered me away across the sweltering parking lot. It was August, that annual two-week period when northern Maine turns hot and muggy and mosquito-infested. The asphalt had softened and filled the air with the smell of hot tar. “I’m not busting you,” he said. “I just saw you. I don’t give a fuck if you steal. I do it all the time.”
“Oh.” I laughed. “I know you, don’t I?”
We introduced ourselves. His name was James Audet, and he was a junior as well, although he’d started at Orono High halfway through the previous year. He was handsome, with light blue eyes, high cheekbones, and thick blond hair. He was also short, and tightly muscled to make up for it, which caused him to walk like a gymnast, bouncing on the tips of his feet. I was a bit of a loner in high school, biding my time until college, and determined to make sure my grades were good enough to secure financial aid somewhere out of state. James and I became fast friends. He confessed to me that he believed the only thing that mattered in life was money, and that he planned on making a lot of it.
“Then marry a rich woman,” I said. We were at the Friendly’s two towns over where we liked to hang out.
“I’m too short. Rich women want tall husbands.”
“Is that true?”
“Proven fact. You, however, could definitely marry a rich man. Look at those tits.”
“Ugh. I look like a freak.”
“Trust me. You’re the slightly awkward girl in high school who comes back for the reunion and looks like a model. I’ve seen it a hundred times.”
“Seen it where?”
“Movies, of course.”
After graduation we both got jobs in what passed for a downtown in Orono, James at a pizza place, and me at that same pharmacy I used to sometimes steal from. I had gotten into Mather, a private college in Connecticut. It was a school that primarily catered to rich kids from New York and Boston, but I’d graduated third in my class, and my parents’ financial situation ensured that more than half of my tuition would be paid for with aid. James was going to the University of Maine, where his father coached the wrestling team. We were both virgins, and by July of that summer, decided to have sex with each other so that we wouldn’t enter college with no experience. We did it in the back of James’s Caprice Classic. Afterward, he asked me how it felt. “Incestuous,” I said, and we both laughed so hard that James fell off the backseat and bruised his hip. We kept at it, though, telling ourselves that we’d seen every good movie that was out that summer, and the hookups passed the time. On our last night together before my father was going to pick me up and drive me to Connecticut, James said, “It was nice knowing you.”
“Um, we’ll see each other at Thanksgiving.”
“No, I know. I just assume you’ll have some rich boyfriend by then and won’t even talk to me.”
“I’ll talk to you,” I said.