Or, more insidiously, had she just taken the cautious route time and time again? Had she cut off more and more potential branches of life until it had narrowed to just one?
Was Margaret scared of love? Could that be it? Had she left the building just around the time everybody else started hooking up?
Tibby looked at Margaret beseechingly. She wanted to say or do something to make Margaret feel comfortable, but she could not figure out for the life of her what that might be.
“Do you like pasta?” Tibby asked. “I’ve heard it’s pretty good here.”
Margaret looked at her menu as though it were a devilishly tricky test. “I’m not sure,” she said faintly.
“You could just get a salad,” Tibby suggested. “Or if you don’t like this kind of food, I totally understand.”
Margaret nodded. “Maybe a salad…”
Tibby felt a stab of sadness, because she knew Margaret wanted to please her, too. Margaret was desperately uncomfortable, but she didn’t want to let Tibby down.
Who was doing whom the favor in this exercise?
Slowly the hot air of righteousness leaked out of Tibby, and she realized what an idiot she was. She had dragged poor Margaret far out of her comfort zone, congratulating herself on doing Margaret this great charity. But Tibby wasn’t giving solace to a lonely woman; she was basically torturing her. What had she been thinking?
“Maybe I don’t feel like Italian food,” Tibby said brightly, wanting only to offer Margaret some salvation. “Why don’t we walk back by the theater and grab some ice cream and then I’ll walk you to the bus stop?”
Margaret look colossally relieved, and that gave Tibby a small piece of happiness. “Sure thing.”
As they walked, Tibby remembered how her uncle Fred had this line he brought out on the occasion of nearly all family birthdays. Her parents would moan about their children growing older, and he’d say, “Growing up is for crap, but it’s better than the alternative.”
Well, for the first time Tibby realized there was an alternative. It was walking right next to Tibby, licking her orange Creamsicle and breaking Tibby’s heart.
“He caught me again,” Carmen told Lena, sipping her iced cappuccino and enjoying the air conditioning at the Starbucks on Connecticut Avenue.
“What do you mean?” Lena asked. She wasn’t eating her cookie, and Carmen really wanted it.
“Win caught me in another random act of kindness at the hospital.”
Lena laughed. “Busted.”
“I feel like I was shoplifting or something. I didn’t know what to say to explain myself.”
“Did you tell him it was an accident? You didn’t mean it? You’ll never do it again as long as you live, so help you God?”
Carmen laughed too. “Good Carmen strikes again. What are we going to do with that girl?”
“Tie her up in the bathroom.”
“Good idea.”
Lena was squinting at her in thought. “Maybe you actually are Good Carmen. Have you ever thought of that?”
Carmen considered the way she’d knowingly polished off her mother’s last coveted pint of Ben & Jerry’s the night before. “Nah.”
Lena still wasn’t eating her cookie, so Carmen broke off a piece of it and ate it. “So guess who’s sleeping on my couch tomorrow night?” Carmen asked.
“Who?”
“Paul Rodman. He’s driving up from South Carolina and I convinced him to crash here. I haven’t seen him in months.”
Lena shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
“He asked about you.”
Lena nodded timidly.
“He always does. It’s the part of the conversation he actually initiates.”
Lena looked down at her large feet in their large cork-bottomed flip-flops. “How’s his dad?” she asked.
Carmen stopped chewing. She had been corresponding with Paul by e-mail. She got more words out of him that way. “He’s not good. Paul drives hours to see him every week. It’s so sad.”
Lena was nodding as Carmen’s cell phone rang. Carmen scratched around in the bottom reaches of her bag until she found it.
“Hey?”
“Carmen, hi. It’s David.”
“What’s up?” Most of the warmth in her voice evaporated.
“I just wanted to thank you. The way you took care of your mother yesterday. You don’t know how much it meant to her. And to me, too. I wanted to be there so bad myself and I really just can’t tell you how—”
“It’s fine,” Carmen interrupted. “No problem.”
“Really, Carmen. I really—”
“Okay.” She didn’t want him to keep going on about this. “Are you still in St. Louis?”
“No, I’m home,” he said heavily.
Why was she annoyed at him? It wasn’t his fault he worked like a dog. He had a family to provide for now. He took his responsibilities seriously. Blah blah blah.
“So I’ll see you later,” she said.
“Oh, Carmen—one other thing?”
“Yeah?”
“I left my phone recharger in the hotel in St. Louis. Could I borrow yours?” It was well known that they had the exact same cell phone. Sometimes it seemed like the only conversation piece between them. He had the ring that sounded like a polka. He thought it was hugely entertaining.
“Sure. It’s in the outlet by my night table,” she said.
“The hotel said they’d send mine back. I told them I’m going to need it.”
Why were there conversations always so stilted? “Yep. You are,” Carmen said. “Well, bye.”
“Bye.”
She hung up. When she put her phone back in her bag, she realized the recharger was coiled in the bottom of it. Oh. Oops.
Lena was squinting, trying to figure out whom Carmen was talking to. “David?” she finally guessed.
“Yeah.”
“I knew it wasn’t anybody you liked very much.”
“I like him all right,” Carmen said, the slightest petulance creeping into her voice. She sighed. “I should be nicer, shouldn’t I?”
“I’m not answering that.”
Carmen got a mischievous smile on her face. “I know what to do. I’ll invite Win to have dinner with my mom and me and David.” She laughed. “That’ll set him straight.”
Tibby:
Beach equipment & tunes.
No techno crap, as per discussion.
Bee and Me:
Food. A lot. Mostly high-calorie snacks with
extra trans fats. (I think I like those. What
are they, anyway?)
Lena:
Other household goods.
(Kleenex in addition to toilet paper, missy.)
Please make your donations ($60, and I mean cash
money) to the Rehoboth Beach First Annual Precollege
Dream Weekend Fund, aka Carmen’s wallet.
And I mean soon, dang it.
Since Lena had heard about Paul’s being in town overnight, she’d been thinking of him. Finally she got up the nerve to call him at Carmen’s, and she asked him to come over. He wasn’t in her family, obviously, but she felt a pressing urge to draw his picture.
She didn’t want to avoid him anymore.
That afternoon, charcoal in hand, she met him at the door. She hugged him stiffly. She felt her heart jump a little at the way he looked. Older, sadder, even more handsome.
Somewhat mutely, he followed her to the kitchen.
You two are way too much alike, Carmen said about Lena and Paul and their combined inability to carry on a conversation. Carmen had had high hopes for them once.
“Do you want anything to drink?” she asked him.
He looked nervous. “No, thank you.”
She gestured for him to sit down across from her at the kitchen table. She ran a hand through her hair. She’d brushed it for this occasion. “I have kind of a weird favor to ask of you,” she said.
Now he really looked scared. But not unwil
ling. “Okay.”
“Would it be all right if I drew a picture of you? It would take around an hour or an hour and a half. Just a sketch of you from here up.” She indicated at her collarbone, lest he run from her house in panic. “You see, I’m making a portfolio of drawings of people, because I’m trying to win this scholarship to RISD. Otherwise, I can’t go to art school, and I really want to. Do you think that would be okay?” She had never said so much to him all at one time.
He nodded. “I’d like that,” he said.
She had an idea. “Maybe we’ll go outside.”
He followed her out to the backyard. She didn’t picture him on a lounge chair by the pool or anything. She surveyed the possibilities. There was a tree stump in the far corner, by the fence. It had been a giant, beautiful oak that had grown old and gotten a disease, so her parents had had it cut down before it got the chance to fall on their house. It was strong and sturdy, suitable for Paul. She steered him to it, then ran to fetch herself a chair and her drawing board.
“You ready?” she asked.
He sat squarely. The stump was the perfect height for him. Lena’s feet would have been dangling, but his rested solidly on the soil. He put his hands on his knees. This could have looked stiff for another person, but for Paul it looked right. She noticed he wore a large gold class ring on the pinky of his left hand. It was the one thing that didn’t fit.
She backed up a bit. She wanted to draw more of him. “Do you mind if I do a three-quarters?”
“That’s fine,” he said.
She clipped her paper to her board. He watched her carefully. This caused her to clip her knuckle. It hurt, so she sucked on it for a second. She put her hair back in a ponytail. She poised the charcoal over her paper.
“Should I look at you?” he asked.
“Um. Yes,” she said. Paul was always remarkably direct in his gaze, so this felt right for him. On the other hand, she felt the pressure building as their eyes met for long moments. She didn’t feel about Paul the way she did about other people.
The lines of Paul’s face gave the impression of being straight and square. Strong, square jaw; square forehead; squared-off cheekbones. But when she looked harder and longer, she saw many unexpectedly round things. His eyes, for instance. They were large and circular, innocent and almost childlike. But at the outside corners she saw he had faint, fanning creases, proto–laugh lines that she suspected didn’t come from laughing. And at the inside corners, the thin skin where his eyes met his nose was blue and slightly bruised-looking.
His mouth was surprisingly full and curvaceous. It was a lovely mouth. She lost herself in the very tiny up-and-down lines at each corner that separated his lips from his cheeks. You wouldn’t expect such a sensitive mouth on so large and strong a person. She felt a little manic, looking at it boldly and for a long time. And then she felt guilty for taking advantage of this drawing opportunity in such a way.
She drew his shoulders and arms in big, loose gestures. When she got to his hands, she tightened up a little.
Her hand hesitated over the ring. She made herself open her mouth. “Can I ask you about the ring?” she said.
The fingers on his other hand instantly enclosed it. He looked down. It was the first time he’d broken the pose, even minutely, in almost forty minutes. “Sorry,” he said, realizing this.
“That’s okay. Don’t worry,” she said in a rush. She suddenly felt protective of him. “You can take a break. You deserve one.”
“No. That’s okay.” He was looking down now. His neck arched gracefully and sadly. The tilt of his neck spoke so eloquently that her fingers itched to start another drawing.
It was a miracle how when you looked hard enough, when you really sought out information, there was so much to see, even in a person’s tiniest gesture. There was so much feeling, such a dazzling array of things that your words, at least Lena’s words, could never say. There were thousands of images and memories and ideas, if you just let them come. There was the whole history of human experience somewhere contained in each of the bits, the most universal in the most specific, if you could only see it. It was like poetry. Well, she had never really found poetry in poetry, to be truthful. But she imagined this was what poetry might be like for someone who understood it and loved it.
Either it was like poetry or it was like getting really, really stoned.
The ring was off and Paul had it cradled in his palm now. He looked at her again. “This is my father’s. He went to Penn, too, so he wants me to have it.”
Lena stared at him solemnly. She wondered if the swelling compassion she felt for him was finding its way out of her eyes. “He’s sick. Carmen told me.”
Paul nodded.
“I’m so sorry.”
He was still nodding, slowing it down. “It’s rough. You know?”
“I do,” she said with feeling. “I mean, I don’t. I do and I don’t. I don’t exactly, but I feel like I do. My bapi—my grandfather died last summer.” Suddenly she felt a horror at her words. “Not that it’s like that!” she practically shouted. “Not that that is what is going to happen!” Lena really hated herself sometimes.
Paul’s expression was undeservedly kind. It was all sweet forgiveness. And even gratitude to top it off. “I know you do, Lena. I can tell you understand.”
They just stared at each other, but for the first time the silence didn’t feel shamefully insufficient. It felt okay.
“Do you want to take a break?” she asked him again.
“Okay,” he agreed this time.
The stump was big enough for two. She sat next to him cross-legged. She leaned into him a little, and he let her. The sun shone down on them benevolently.
The corners of her drawing, where she left it in the grass, flapped gently in the breeze.
She wanted to finish it, but she didn’t feel rushed. She realized she’d begun the drawing so she could tell Paul she was sorry.
Jiggle it a little it’ll open.
—Pinky and the Brain
via Roger Miller
It was another day in the rut.
Valia had used up most of her energy IMing her friends back home. It was the one time of the day she looked alive. Now they sat in the darkened den, Carmen preparing to wage another war of attrition, with the TV as the prize.
She hadn’t gotten her Ryan Hennessey fix in days. She tried to picture him. For some reason she couldn’t picture him. She stood up. “Valia, we’re festering. We have to get out of here.”
“Ve do?”
“We do. It’s a beautiful day. We need a walk.”
Valia looked sleepy and cranky. “I’m vatching a show. I don’t vant to valk.”
“Please?” Carmen suddenly felt so desperate she didn’t care about their standoff of sullenness. Let Valia win this round. “I’ll do all the work. You just sit in your chair.”
Valia considered. She liked being pled with. She liked her obvious power over Carmen. She shrugged. “It’s too hot.”
“It’s not so hot today. Please?”
Valia wouldn’t give Carmen the satisfaction of saying yes outright, but she looked at her wheelchair with resignation.
Carmen took the opening. Gently she heaved Valia’s skinny body into her wheelchair. “Okay.” Carmen checked for her keys and her money and wheeled Valia right out the door.
The sky was perfectly blue. Though it was August, the swampy deep-summer haze had momentarily lifted. It was so good to be out. Carmen walked aimlessly, letting her mind wander. She tried to look at the world through Valia’s eyes, to imagine how each suburban vista looked through the eyes of an old woman who had spent her life on an Aegean island. Not so good, obviously. But when Carmen looked up and saw the sky, she knew it was the same sky. She wondered if Valia saw this lovely, azure sky and knew it was her same sky.
For some reason, a picture pushed into Carmen’s mind of a restaurant she’d been to with her mom a few times. She didn’t remember the name of it, but she k
new exactly where it was. She pointed them in the direction of it and walked. She felt hungry all of a sudden.
At the restaurant, Carmen was pleased to see they still had tables with large white umbrellas set up outside. Red geraniums flowed from wooden boxes along the whitewashed walls of the little terrace. Carmen had never been to Greece, but she imagined that if you just looked at a small patch of the wall or looked up at the white umbrella against the sky, maybe it would look a little like this.
She set Valia up at a table. There were no other diners.
“Vhy are ve here?” Valia demanded.
“I need a rest and I’m also kind of hungry. Do you mind?”
Valia looked annoyed but martyred. “Does it matter if I mind?”
“I’ll be right back,” Carmen promised.
They didn’t have waiter service at the café tables, so she went to order from the counter inside. It was after lunch and before dinner, so the place was pretty deserted. She felt a bit illicit as she studied the menu. It wasn’t Greek food precisely, but it was Mediterranean. She recognized a lot of the dishes from things she’d had at Lena’s house. She knew the Kaligarises weren’t cooking that stuff at the moment. Lena explained that her dad thought it made Valia homesick. He tried to steer her away from everything that might make her homesick. He didn’t want Valia cooking, even though it was what she had done her whole life.
Carmen ordered stuffed grape leaves and something hot that strongly resembled spanakopita. She ordered an eggplant dish, a Greek salad, a few squares of baklava, and two large lemonades. She paid up and carried it all to the table, setting all the dishes between her and Valia. “I bought us a snack. I hope that’s okay.”
Valia gazed at it all disdainfully.
Carmen put a steaming spinach pastry on a little paper plate and handed it to Valia with a fork. “Here, try some.”
Valia just sat there with it, smelling it, completely still.
Immediately, Carmen regretted her impulse, just as she ended up regretting almost all of her impulses.