Tom shakes his head and whispers, “They’re disgusting.”
“I know.”
“We aren’t that bad, are we?”
“Worse!” Shawn yells. He jabs his finger at us like some sort of conservative news channel host making a point about the wasting away of American morals. “You are worse.”
This is a total lie.
“I’m going to go wash up,” I say and scoot out of the booth.
There’s a one-person line outside the bathroom at Pat’s and it’s Anna in front of me. She’s got her Palm Pilot thing out like the old-style techno geek she is, figuring out her busy schedule I guess. I tap her on the shoulder. It’s wet from the rain. She turns around. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Someone is taking forever in there.” She bites the end of her stylus and says in a perfectly normal, unwhispering voice, “I heard you and Em are going to Wal-Mart tomorrow to buy some condoms.”
My mouth drops open. “Em told you that?”
She nods. Someone flushes behind the door.
I cannot believe Emily, the girl who can’t even buy tampons by herself, has announced this to Anna. This is totally out of character for her.
Anna checks something off on her Palm. “Can I come?”
“To buy condoms?”
“Well,” she shrugs. “I need tampons and Emily says it’s really fun. That you pretend to be a secret agent person on a recon mission.”
“Oh God.” I bring my hands up to cover my face. “My life is so embarrassing.”
“It’s cute!” She taps my shoulder with her stylus. “Don’t worry. You’ll get to use them soon.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Yeah. Both your faces are all longing like Princess Lea and Han Solo in the original Star Wars trilogy. Or Strider and Arwen in LOTR.”
I shake my head. “What?”
“You need to see more movies,” Anna laughs. She shows me her LOTR shirt and points to Viggo, the guy who must play Strider. “The want. You guys have the look of want.”
“The look of want,” I mutter.
“It’s too bad it’s going to totally suck the first time.”
“What?”
“You know, the first time you do it. Boys are all awkward. Especially guys under thirty, not like you should do it with someone that old, because that would be gross and possibly criminal.”
“Where do you get this?”
“Have you or have you not read John Green?”
I shake my head.
“Looking for Alaska?”
I still have no clue.
“With the whole blow-job scene?” she’s shrieking. She stylus-points at me. “Do not tell me you have never read the blow-job scene.”
A woman with cropped unbending hair opens the door, awkward, bewildered. Her eyes adjust to the darker light.
“Sorry,” she mumbles and skitters away.
I don’t recognize her. I whirl on Anna and whisper, “You just said that out loud.”
Anna swallows a half-laugh and gives me a little wave, closes the door, gone.
When it’s my turn, I study my face in the mirror. I don’t see it. I don’t see the look of want. But I know it’s there and once we’re sitting down at the movies, staring at the cartoon about a rat who wants to be a chef, just Tom’s leg bumping into my leg makes me shiver.
A rat on the screen cooks something gourmet. Shawn laughs, leans forward clutching his stomach. Tom leans back, too, chuckling like some old grandpa, but his hand lands on my knee. His thumb moves up and down and electric stuff moves with it. His thumb nail is ragged. My whole body goes wiggly and aching and it’s too much to handle.
The rat on the screen smiles.
I grab Tom’s thumb, just circle my fingers around it and breathe in.
People laugh.
After the movies, Shawn and Em leave together. I try not to wonder if they’re going to have “awkward teenage sex.”
Tom brings me home. Almost the whole way I babble about how I wish I didn’t dislike Bob, how I’m worried that makes me a bigot somehow and it’s true, but it’s also because I can’t stand to think of Tom’s thumb on my knee and how it makes me feel and how I want to have awkward teenage sex, and why was it so unawkward with Dylan, which makes me blab on about Bob again.
When we park Tom just says, “Belle, if you loved all gay people just because they were gay that would be just as bad.”
He gets out of the truck and takes my hand to walk me to the door, but I pull on him and bring him around to the back of the house.
“Where we going, Commie?” he asks.
I hold my finger to my lips. “Shhh … and don’t call me Commie. I am not a communist. I am just in Amnesty and Students for Social Justice and you are so ruining the mood. Okay? ”
Silence.
We walk around the house to the backyard. I bring him to where there’s a big oak tree. Its trunk bark is gnarled with age and wisdom, covered with cracks that separate the bark, lichen clinging to it for life and support. I place his hands against the trunk. He lifts up an eyebrow. The moonlight casts shadows against the lines of his face. I don’t think he could be any more handsome. I don’t want him to not love me.
He turns and leans his back against the tree. I press myself against him. With my eyes closed, there seems to be no distance between us. The world sways beneath my feet. The spring night air lifts my hair gently, rustles through the leaves. Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me. My eyes open. Tom’s face leans down.
I press my hand against his cheek.
“Please,” I say, but I don’t know what I’m asking for.
His arms enclose around me. Every molecule of my body yearns for this, for him. He’s so warm. He moves a little against me.
“Commie,” he says.
He whispers it like a moan. “Commie.”
We somehow end up on the ground. The roots of the tree bump beneath my back.
He kisses my cheeks, the top of my head, softly, lightly. “You have to stop beating yourself up so much.”
“I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
I prop myself up onto my elbow. “You didn’t always use duct tape.”
“Where did that come from?”
“I don’t know,” I say, running a finger along the top of his shoulder. He shivers in a good way. “I was just thinking that you’ve changed since middle school.”
“People change, Belle.”
“Then how do we know who they are? How do we love them if they’re always changing?”
He pulls in a breath through his nose and slowly lets it out. “We don’t know. We just love them … the parts we know.”
“But it’s not real then?”
“You don’t think you can know the essence of someone without knowing all their details?”
I snort. “Essence of someone?”
“Shut up.”
“I want to know why you like duct tape,” I say and he flops onto his back. I snuggle into his shoulder and breathe in. There’s a faint grass smell and soap. He smells so Tomish. I love that smell.
“Why I like duct tape?”
“Yeah.”
“Should I make a Belle list?”
I nod, my head rubbing up and down against the soft cotton of his shirt. “Yep. Good idea. It helps me process, you know.”
“I know.” He sighs and thinks for a minute. “The Reasons Why Tom Tanner Likes Duct Tape.”
“One,” I say.
“One. It’s sticky and you can make stuff out of it.”
“Fine.”
“Two. It’s hard to rip. Only manly men can rip off duct tape repeatedly.”
“So macho,” I whisper
and try to tickle him. He grabs my fingers in his hand, brings them to his mouth and kisses them.
“It let me have the best Halloween costume ever.”
“Duct Tape Man?”
“Yep.”
“That was the best Halloween costume ever?”
“Yes,” he laughs. He kisses my ring finger. “Four. It holds things together.”
“Do you want things to hold together?”
He is silent. His hand isn’t as tight around my fingers.
“Tom?” I whisper ask. “Are you afraid of things falling apart?”
“Everybody is.”
“I never imagine you afraid.”
“Don’t tell Shawn.” He laughs and his voice quiets into the night. “Guys get scared all the time.”
“I won’t.” A twig snaps in the woods. Muffin trots out of the woods, snuggles into our sides. “What are you afraid of?”
“That I won’t be good enough?”
“For what?”
“For you.”
He’s afraid of awkward? Love is bigger than awkward.
“That’s stupid.” I prop myself up to kiss him again. He pulls me on top of him. We rock back and forth, rushing towards each other and then he pushes me away, pulling his lips from mine.
“What?” I’m shocked and angry and empty, really empty feeling.
“Not now, Belle,” he says, sitting up. His face is empty, blank. “Not like this.”
He’s already standing up, and he reaches down to help me to my feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
Shocked, my lips bruised and aching like my heart, I say the only thing I can think of. “Okay.”
If I were Mimi he wouldn’t have stopped. If I were Mimi I wouldn’t have said, “Okay.” Because it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay.
Saturday
I wake up with the knowledge that I am going to have to go buy condoms at Wal-Mart. This is not a good thing, but it is a good thing, and there’s something funny about it too. A condom shopping spree. I stretch out full on my bed, point my toes, move my arms above my head. Muffin senses that I am alive and well and have survived the night in my lonely bed, so she greets me with a cat butt in the face.
The kitty litter smell so early in the morning is not the greatest thing.
I groan and roll over.
The kitty litter smell follows me.
So I heave the blankets off and will my aching body into a sitting position, drop my bare feet onto the cold floor. My flowers are in a vase on the bookcase, blooming and making everything smell good. The little duct tape guitar Tom made me right after Dylan came out waits nearby. I grab my real guitar from her resting place beside the wall.
“Good morning, Gabriel,” I mutter. Shafts of morning sun slide through the window and bounce against Gabriel’s shiny blueness. My tired fingers move across her strings, finding the proper positions and then I begin to play. It’s a song of longing, a longing that might soon be over. It has no words.
My mom comes and stands at my door. She’s already dressed and spiffy-looking. She dresses up even on Saturdays if she’s going out and about. She’s always wearing skirts that flow around her ankles for her public persona. Of course, at home she schlumps around in slippers. Muffin flops off the bed and twines herself around my mother’s legs, popping her head against the red cotton fabric of her skirt.
“Silly cat,” my mom says, and bends so that she can scratch Muffin’s ears. “Nice song. What do you call it?”
“Buying condoms,” I say.
She straightens up, smiling. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Very funny.”
“Really.”
She lifts her eyebrows. “Mm-hmm. I made you some Postum and some toast.”
I strum a final chord and shift off the bed, resting Gabriel against the wall. Then I stretch.
“I see your belly,” my mom says, smiling. She puts her fingers out to tickle me. “I see a cute Bellie belly.”
“Don’t you dare tickle me,” I back up, hands out to ward her off. “Don’t you dare.”
She dares.
Some people’s mothers are nice and normal. Mine is not. End of story.
Okay, it’s not really the end of story. My mom is a great coper. For years she worked at a dental supply company coping with boredom. This year she got a new job as the human resource director at the hospital. She copes with nurses and doctors having affairs, MRI techs looking at porn on their computer and a million other things. At home, she copes with being a single mom who has a daughter who has a seizure if she drinks coffee or eats anything with the chemical aspartame in it. She does it all alone.
She also messes up song lyrics on purpose, but I’m the only one who knows that it’s on purpose. Like even the Happy Birthday song. She’ll sing, “Happy torque day, Big Blue.”
I think she’s just trying to mix people up a little bit.
She’s okay, really, for a mom, except for the whole tickling thing.
And the fact that sometimes when I tell her the truth, like about the condom song, she just doesn’t seem to hear. Or that I can’t tell her some truths, like the seizure thing, because it would make her not sing at all.
Em picks me up first because I am friend number one. Plus, I live closer.
Em sighs as we head to Anna’s. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Funny. Do you want to know what I’m thinking?”
“Sure.”
“You aren’t going to like it.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because you need to hear it.”
“Okay … What?”
“You don’t love Tom enough.”
“What?”
“You don’t love him enough. You hold back. You don’t let yourself go because you’re scared of him loving you. And Tom’s a smart boy. He senses it.”
“That’s crap.”
“You do? You love him the way you loved Dylan?”
“That’s different, Miss Psychotherapist.”
“That’s right.”
“Dylan was gay.”
“That’s not why it’s different.”
“Okay. Why is it different? Tell me, Oh Wise One.”
“Don’t get snarky.”
“Snarky? What kind of word is that? I am not snarky. My mom went on a date last night with a man who collects horror movies and you’re grilling me about whether I love my perfect boyfriend who does like duct tape way too much … but … whatever … and now you’re calling me snarky. What’s with you?”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“Well don’t.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
We both start laughing because even when we try to fight it comes out stupid, like a bad play script, or a really sucky horror movie, like we’re just saying the lines because we’re supposed to, not because they mean anything. But Em ruins it because she keeps talking.
“I just think you’re afraid to love him because of what happened with Dylan. You’re afraid to need him because he might let you down.”
I tie the laces of my Snoopy shoes. The canvas started pulling away from the soles awhile ago, so Tom duct taped them for me. He is sweet like that. I do not answer Em.
“It’s not easy to open up and trust someone when the last time you did it, it turned out that they were pretending. You’re afraid to love Tom because you’re afraid he might not be who you think he is. But he is, Belle. He really is and he loves you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“He does. Shawn told me.”
I pull the laces tight. I try not to look too excited but I fail miserably, obviously, because Em is laughing. I say, “He did?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he actually use the word ‘love’?” I put my other shoe on the dash and work on lacing it. This one doesn’t have duct tape on it so I don’t like it as much. I hold my breath waiting for her answer.
“Yep.”
“Wow. And you’re sure he wasn’t saying it about Shawn. He was saying it about me?”
“Tom’s not gay, Belle.”
“I know.”
We’re silent, then I say, “How’d you get so smart?”
That’s a line my mom always pulls on me. Em answers the way I always do with a corny high-society Manhattan accent crossed with a Russian heiress. “Talk shows and years and years of therapy dahling, years and years of therapy, talk shows and tequila.”
The thing is that love … love is what is still there after everything, that big, overwhelming love, that’s like the glare of snow on a sunny day, when you’re riding through that snow and all you see is whiteness, blinding you, obliterating everything, and you still go through it, go into that blinding glare, even though you can’t see, even though you don’t know where your feet will end up or if you’ll fall off the road and into a river or run into a mountain. You still just go.
Love does that to you.
It obliterates you.
I know that. I know. I know. And I know that’s how it will be with Tom. I know that too. And I know what it’s like when love ends up being a lie, an uncertainty.
Em watches me sink into thought and says, finally, “Thank God we’re picking up Anna, because you are no fun today.”
“Thanks.”
She smiles, shuts off the car and we wait for Anna in the driveway. “No problem.”
After a minute, Anna pops in the car.
Em’s mouth drops open. “Your hair.”
Anna smiles and buckles herself into the backseat. “You likey like it?”
“It’s green,” Em stutters, still staring.
“A beautiful shade of green,” I say. “Like Kermit the Frog or the Geico lizard thing on the commercials.”
“That’s exactly what it’s supposed to be!” Anna pulls her black T-shirt away from her chest all proud. “Read it.”
“I heart Miss Piggy,” Em reads. “So … you’re Kermit?”
“Well, I’m not an amphibian.” Anna lets her T-shirt settle back to her chest. Miss Piggy’s face smiles out from a star. “Obviously.”