Strangers wouldn’t be able to tell Pam’s parents loved each other, but she knew they did. At night, she often lay in bed, unable to sleep due to their giggling in the next room. She knew what sex was, and she knew they had it every week because their bed frame knocked hard and fast against the wall. She heard the creak of their bed as they climbed out of it, then a body slamming against something hard. She couldn’t tell if it was her mother’s or father’s, but in this way she supposed their sex life was healthy.
On her fifteenth birthday Pam watched Crossroads. She turned the volume up to drown out the sounds of her parents. She nestled between the pink throw-pillows on her bed with a microwaved bag of popcorn in her lap. She had always loved Britney Spears’s music, but now she saw her acting was incredible, too.
When the movie ended Pam had tears in her eyes. Lucy, Britney’s character, had so many problems, yet she had friends that helped her solve them. The butter from the popcorn felt like Chapstick on Pam’s teeth. Her tongue felt punctured from the salt. She climbed out of bed, leaving popcorn under the covers, and stood before her vanity. She put her thin blonde hair into low pigtails. Her T-shirt bunched up over the band of her sweatpants, her stomach popping out and over the elastic, but she sucked it in, realizing how easily she could make a change to her appearance. She leaned over the vanity, her nose touching the mirror, and studied her face. This is what a man would see when he kissed her: the faint freckles on her nose, the dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, which was strange for someone her age. She put her tongue to the mirror, moving it along the cool glass. She pressed her forehead to the glass and moaned like her mother in the next room.
She sang into her hairbrush next—a song she made up about being fifteen and loving popcorn—but her voice needed work. Scranton didn’t have celebrities even though it was called the Electric City. Having a few might do the place some good.
Two weeks before, in the Steamtown Mall with her mother, they had spotted the Newswatch 16 weatherman buying a soft pretzel at Auntie Anne’s. This weatherman, always making jokes about his wife’s big hair, bringing his bulldog on air to help predict the weather, was so uncool it actually hurt Pam to watch him on TV. But her mother tiptoed toward Auntie Anne’s, looking back at Pam with feverish eyes.
Her mother tapped the weatherman on the shoulder with an acrylic nail. She giggled furiously. She moved her hands around her face, speaking nonsense Pam was happy she couldn’t hear. He listened with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He looked so much cooler when he wasn’t pretending to be someone else.
Her mother had long blonde curls that her lady friends loved to touch when they came over on Sundays to play Bridge. She had green eyes, pouty lips. She dressed like a fifties housewife, though, and none of her Bridge friends told her to step into the 21st century. What was the point of having friends if they wouldn’t tell the truth? It was 2002. Most mothers wore jeans and polos, but she wore checkered or floral dresses that fanned out at the waist. Pam watched her mother delicately bite an acrylic nail in an attempt to be cute. She continued to giggle until she walked away with the weatherman’s autograph on a napkin. She kept her composure while they walked into stores, fingered through clothing they wouldn’t buy, watched for other interesting people, but when they walked out of the mall, her mother raised the napkin above her head and shrieked like a hawk in heat.
Pam considered the possibilities now. There were a few colleges in the city. Her father worked at The University of Scranton. When she became a famous actress, she would visit and sign autographs for her father’s students. She would go to the mall and walk around until someone noticed her. She would draw a much bigger crowd than the weatherman.
She brushed her teeth, took off her clothes, crawled back into bed, feeling like she took up too much space in the world, bloated from popcorn. She rubbed her stomach to relax. The house was quiet now, her parents worn out. There didn’t seem to be many obstacles in her way. She would watch the same movie every night, learn the dialogue and practice the lines. She would continue to suck in her stomach, wear her hair in low pigtails, carry herself with more confidence and poise, like her mother. It was too bad, she thought, that her name was Pam.
****
Her mother always cooked breakfast and made enough food so they could eat the same for dinner. By evening, the waffles tasted soggy, the sausage too salty. But it was fresh in the mornings and every day started the same: They sat at the table, chewing with their mouths closed, no one speaking, the small kitchen TV streaming the local news. The morning after Pam’s birthday was no different. Her mother wore a white dress that looked like it had a hoop around the waist, underneath the fabric. Her father wore a yellow button-up with a coffee stain on the left cuff and awful plaid shoes. All three of them, Pam thought, belonged to a different family, in a different place, and in a different era.
“I want something for my birthday,” Pam said.
“Today is your birthday?” her father said.
Her mother shut her eyes in annoyance. Pam got on with it. “It was yesterday.”
“Then it’s not your birthday. Might have to wait until next year, kiddo.”
“I don’t like my name. I want it changed.”
Her mother coughed, waffle launching out of her mouth. “You’re named after my mother. Pamela Jane Friberg. She was an extraordinary woman. She raised us on her own, worked three jobs so she could feed us. Still managed to get her hair permed and nails done.”
“Maybe that’s it,” her father said. “Call yourself Pamela. Sounds classy.”
“It needs to be sharper. Like Kate or Britney. Maybe Brit for short.”
“Brit?” Her mother looked like she was about to be sick.
Pam nodded. She usually ate a lot at breakfast. She hadn’t touched her waffles, but chewed on strawberries. Her parents didn’t mention this, nor did they ask what brought about her new desire. She knew they never would. She was embarrassed having to carry the conversation from start to finish, but she told herself it was practice. She was acting. Now was the time to transform into someone new, someone braver, no matter how painful.
“I want to be an actress. There aren’t any actresses named Pam. It won’t work.”
“Pamela Anderson,” her father said.
“She’s not an actress,” her mother said. “She’s a floozy.”
“I’m not saying you can’t be an actress,” her father said. “But industries like that are very hard to break into.”
“But I’m good,” Pam said. “If I practice, which I will, I’ll be even better.”
“That’s true. You won’t get anywhere in life without working for it.”
Pam smiled, ignoring her mother who sat beside her, her legs bouncing. Her father licked his teeth. “Just because you work hard doesn’t mean you’ll be rewarded. There’s no way to tell what will happen.”
“What do you mean?” Pam asked.
Her mother pointed her fork at him. “You leave one of your scripts lying around?”
Pam turned to her father. “You want to be an actor, too?”
“He writes movies,” her mother said. “TV shows. Commercials. But even those don’t sell.”
“But you have a job.” Pam was utterly confused, but she liked how her father shared her embarrassment. She could feel it floating back and forth between them at the table.
“I went to film school,” her father said. “That’s what I studied. Nothing to do with how to hold a camera but what happens in a film and the meaning it makes.”
“And now he teaches. Talks about movies all day and gets paid a little for it.”
It didn’t sound as though her mother wanted her words to hurt her father. It seemed she wanted to convince him that his two-story white house on a dead-end street in a small shitty city was decent, as was his small family.
Her father set his hand on top of Pam’s head. He held it there, heat radiating onto her scalp, through her body. He flicked one of her pigtails. “I’m sorry, kiddo.”
She wasn’t sure what he was sorry for. At that moment, he reminded her of her English teacher, Mr. Preston, who dressed in coffee-stained outfits like her father. On the outside Mr. Preston seemed happy, like his life was good enough, but it often seemed he had secret desires only his closest companion knew about. He wore a wedding band, so maybe he had a wife that was like her mother. Someone who stayed home all day but refused to cook more than one meal.
Pam looked to her mother, who poked her waffle. Outside, her father’s Camry started. Her mother’s body transformed into a light, almost weightless body now that he had left the house, and she stuck her finger in her mouth, moving it around, cleaning out the waffle goo stuck under her fake nail. Pam’s mind pulsed with confusion—how were they the same people she heard every night, their wild love-making keeping her awake?
Her mother rested her hands on the table. “Let me tell you something I want you to remember,” she said. “People either have it or they don’t.”
****
In gym class, Pam could tell how embarrassed the fat girls felt in the purple shorts that hugged their crotches and butt-cheeks. Even the skinny girls looked bad in the uniform. She saw things on their boney bodies she wasn’t supposed to see. Pam was neither fat nor skinny. She had a belly, as her mother would probably say about Pam, as she had said about girls in the mall who wore belly-shirts, their stomachs rolling over their waistbands.
Her classmates left the locker room to walk to the track at the back of the building. Pam lingered and stood in front of the full-length mirror. She turned to the side, sucked in her stomach, pulled her shorts over her belly button. She tightened her pigtails. They had to run the mile; the pigtails would flop if she didn’t fix them beforehand. She thought of her mother’s comment at the breakfast table. You had it or you didn’t. Pam smiled at herself in the mirror. These little steps, tightening her pigtails before they loosened, would make her someone who had it.
Four laps equal a mile. She ran without paying attention to everyone zipping past her, Mr. Andrews standing in the middle of the track with a stopwatch, yelling numbers at her after each lap. She daydreamt about her first movie. She thought she would be most excited to sign autographs, but the more she thought about it the more she considered what could happen to her family. They weren’t poor. Their house had two-stories. They owned three TVs, two leather couches. She imagined, though, having a bigger house when she made millions. Modern, with an indoor swimming pool and a refrigerator with a water dispenser. They could hire a cook. Her father could quit teaching, which would mean her parents could have sex all day and carry the energy they saved for their bedroom into the real world, so everyone, including Pam, saw they were normal, happy people.
With two laps left, Pam hummed “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” the ending song in Crossroads. Her classmates slowed as they approached her. She sang the words now, the entire class jogging behind her. She took this as a sign and tipped her head back and belted the song. The kids were ahead of her, so even though they jogged behind her, they finished the mile when they reached Mr. Andrews. He called out each person’s time but no one paid attention to him.
Pam turned, backpedaling, and watched as they collapsed, hands on their knees, releasing a cruel laughter. One kid rolled on the track and kicked his feet in the air. A girl with pigtails like Pam’s knelt beside him and pretended to barf.
Mr. Andrews pointed at Pam. “You’re at twelve minutes! If you’re lucky you’ll make 18!”
****
Pam walked into the cafeteria and the kids at the tables in the back of the room stood and sang “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” which wasn’t even in Crossroads. “Joke’s on you!” she shouted, mortified.
She turned from the lunch line and walked out the double doors. She smacked into Mr. Preston, her English teacher, who had witnessed the cafeteria erupt into song. He held her shoulders. Her entire body trembled, but she liked how his hot hands felt on her. She closed her eyes, thinking of Britney’s first kiss with her lover in Crossroads. When their lips met, a calmness washed over her, a calmness Pam needed now. She imagined Mr. Preston’s hands on her chest, pinching her small nipples. The moans from her mother, the only time she sounded pleased, echoed through her mind. It steadied her rapid heartbeat. She no longer felt like she would combust. She opened her eyes. Mr. Preston’s face looked red, like her father’s when he got riled up about some new commercial. The same red it had been that morning when her mother mentioned his work that never made it to the screen.
“What’s going on in there?”
She looked past him, afraid if she spoke something else would happen. His shoulders rounded forward so he looked almost the same height as Pam. For a moment, her heart ached more for him than it did for herself.
He said, “Take some time, go home for the day. I’ll pretend not to notice in 7th period.”
Their class had finished The Catcher in the Rye, but Pam never read the last two chapters. At least this had worked in her favor.
She wiggled her body and his hands fell to his sides. She walked out of the school, headed for the mall three blocks away.
****
Her mother was at the mall, wandering around in her weird white dress. Pam stood by Auntie Anne’s and watched her in Gertrude Hawks. Her mother picked up a box of Smidgens, flipped it over and pretended to read the ingredients. But Pam saw her head tip up. Her mother studied the man in front of her who wore a black suit. He looked important, too busy to pay attention to someone like Pam or her mother. He fingered through the individually wrapped chocolates. Her mother walked beside him, peering into the same bin. She said something to him but he only glanced at her, then walked across the room. She turned over the candy, still gazing at the man at the opposite side of the store. Her mother looked so wounded Pam almost ran over to console her.
Pam bought a cinnamon and sugar pretzel instead, consuming it in five seconds. She turned and watched her mother again, who stood in the corner of Gertrude Hawks, staring at the man, practically drooling, as he purchased three boxes of Smidgens.
Her mother twirled in her white dress, head to the ground, muttering to herself, perhaps looking for a chocolate she had dropped. Pam no longer felt sorry for her. It was pathetic the way she avoided talking to the man in the fancy outfit, seeing if it led to a better life, leaving Pam and her father, and if it didn’t work out with a new man, finding a time-machine, sailing back to the fifties, to a time and place that suited her better.
Pam felt sick from eating the pretzel so fast. She thought she would do as Mr. Preston suggested— take the rest of the day off, go home. She looked at her mother one last time, who slipped a chocolate into her purse, then scurried out of the store.
****
Pam walked back to school. She wasn’t scared of life. She stood in the doorway of Mr. Preston’s classroom, her heart beating in her throat. She licked her lips, looking at him sitting at his desk, staring out the window while kids hit each other with The Catcher and the Rye paperbacks.
More classmates shoved past her in the doorway. The bell rang. Mr. Preston looked out at the class, his eyes shielded by the same filmy desperation she had seen in her father’s eyes that morning. Then he turned to the doorway and saw her standing there. Pam wasn’t superstitious; she didn’t believe in signs, but he smiled at her, slowly lifting his hand to wave and that told her he needed love and she was the only one to give him it. She walked across the classroom, stood before his desk, set her palms on the fake wood, leaned in, and pressed her lips onto his.
Mr. Preston kept his lips pinched together, impossible for her tongue to break through. One of her classmates gasped. Pam’s arms trembled. She expected the class to erupt in total chaos but it was quiet.
She heard Mr. Preston’s slow breath. She felt it on her nose. She listened, waiting for him to push her away, but she felt his body cave inward and his lips soften. She moaned quietly, but loud enough for him to hear. She could wiggle her tongue through his lips now, enter his mouth, but she stayed still, as did he, and enjoyed the silence she had created.