I touch Gabriel’s neck with one of those hardened fingertips, but I can’t pick her up. I can’t play her.
I turn off my bedroom lamp. Through the window, past the mostly leafless trees and a good mile away on flat land, cars move on the Bayside Road. Their headlights make little lights, like tiny stars. I probably know everyone in those cars and they probably know me. It’s probably Dr. Mahoney going in to Maine Coast Memorial Hospital to deliver a baby. It’s probably Cindy Cote, Mimi Cote’s mother, going in to work her shift at Denny’s, our town’s only restaurant that serves after 8:30. She works there and at the Riverside on Sundays.
And all those people know me too. That’s Little Belle Philbrick, they’ll say, whose dad died in the first Gulf War when she was a baby. She dates that cute Dylan boy. What a good couple they are. They’ll get married after college. You just can tell.
In my town, everyone repeats your past and predicts your future every single time they see you, even though the people they tell it to already know. I wonder what they’ll say about me now, what they’ll say about Dylan.
I turn away from my window and tiptoe through the house without flicking on any lights. It doesn’t take much to lose my way, even though I’ve lived here all my life. Everything is different in the dark. I bump into the coffee table. My shin bruises. My hip launches into the corner of the kitchen counter. The pain is sweet, like water after a long bike ride uphill.
Night sounds skim against me. My mother’s snore-breaths bound down the hall. Cars on faraway roads rev their engines. Mice rustle in the walls. Cats’ paws pad along crackling leaves.
I lean against the counter.
“I’m lonely,” I say to the sounds, the house, to nothing.
In the dark, dark kitchen my body slumps onto the counter, leaning, but my soul, it floats up by the ceiling, watching it all, wondering about this lonely girl with her feet planted on the wood floor, this girl who is me.
My mother snores in her bedroom. The clock tells me it’s too late to call.
In the morning, after the gloom of a typical overcast day wakes up my mom, I leave the kitchen, where I’ve moved from the floor to the top of the counter.
“Good morning, sweetie. You’re up early,” she says in her sleep-heavy voice. She makes her way to the coffeemaker, eyes barely open and not really registering anything. She is not a morning person.
“Yep,” I say.
I go in my room, ignore Gabriel, and turn on the stereo. It’s Barbra Streisand, this super-crooner lady that Dylan loves. She’s got this CD of show tunes that came out way back in the 1980s some time. Dylan and I sing to it together. He’s a great singer, with one of those musical-classical choir voices. He’s an all-state, all–New England baritone. I’m an alto and I’m more folk. When I sing you expect to hear a guitar with me.
But I don’t turn on my music. I turn on his. This is ironic, of course, because he’s just dumped me, and here I am in my room listening to his music. I can’t help it. I turn it up louder and remember.
Sometimes Dylan would sing to me. Sometimes he would sing even if I didn’t ask him to, like when I was nervous or we thought I might have a seizure. I’d rest my head on his stomach and his breathing would change, it would become deeper and longer. The breaths flowed out music words that would soar around the room or outside and then flit gracefully into my ears. Even when he sang in chorus, I could always pick out his voice. It was the voice that cascaded into my head, down through my throat, and settled into the depths of me.
I put up the volume real loud because my mom’s gone out to the grocery store.
Barbra’s got this voice that goes loud and soft and spirals all over the place. I pluck up Muffin, scratch her kitty head, and stare out the window while Barbra sings.
Muffin puts her paw on the cold pane of glass. I close my eyes and hear Dylan’s voice mixing with Barbra’s.
We’d always come to my house after school and sing this with my stereo. We’d belt out old show tunes, the stuff Dylan really liked. We’d get overdramatic and laugh so hard we couldn’t sing anymore. We’d flop on my bed and start kissing. That was our routine.
Dylan can sing everything—folk songs, opera, show tunes, rock. Although, he’s not too good at rock. No offense to him. It’s too brash for our music breathing. It’s not Dylan.
Although, how can I know that? How can I know who he is anymore? And if I don’t know who he is, how can I know who anyone is?
I open my mouth and try to sing but just a gulp comes out, like I’m gasping for air. Muffin puts her paw on my face, I breathe her in . . . cat fur, and outside smells like the forest. She purrs.
“Muffin,” I whisper to her but I’m not sure if my voice makes it into the outside air or can be heard over Barbra. I close my eyes and lean my forehead against the window, remembering things that are not healthy to be remembering when it turns out that your boyfriend is gay. I do it anyways.
One time after Dylan and I sang this song, we made love and then took a bath. We folded our bodies into the tub and put in raspberry bubble stuff. We laughed and laughed and made bubble beards and bubble boobs and bubble hair and then the bubbles started popping. They just weren’t there anymore and the water left the world of hot and journeyed into the world of lukewarm and Dylan kissed me a long, long kiss. Then we just sat there facing each other and everything in the whole bathroom seemed to glow—the tissue box that my mother made with plastic rectangles and yarn, the peach-colored towels, the photo of a southern plantation above the toilet. But mostly it was Dylan. Dylan glowed.
We looked at each other and then this weird, good beam of golden light came out of my eyes and drifted toward Dylan. And at the same time this good, weird beam of golden light shifted out of Dylan’s eyes and touched my beam of light. They just stayed there, mingling for a minute. They just stayed there and with them came peace and comfort and all those Hallmarky cheese ball things.
In the water, we sat. In the water, we were silent. In the water, we waited and waited until it was cold. Then we pulled ourselves up and out. The only noise was the water dripping off our bodies and rejoining the water in the tub. Dylan gave me his hand and we toweled each other off with good rubs.
“I love you, you know,” Dylan said, pulling on his jeans. He had to tug them up, because I hadn’t dried off his thighs well enough.
“Good,” I laughed, reaching around my back to snap my bra. My shoulders stretched. I was still thinking about the light thing, and whether it was just some freak weird hallucination/illusion, or whether it was real. I didn’t want to mention it though, because what if he didn’t see it? I needed it to be real.
Dylan turned me so my back was against him. His body felt warm. “I’ll do that for you.”
His fingers snapped my bra closed. He kissed my neck. I shivered. He gently pulled out my ponytail holder and said, “You love me too, right?”
“Yeah.” I raked my fingers through my wet hair and turned around to face him.
He tilted his head like a dog does when it’s trying to figure something out. “How much do you love me?”
“With all my soul,” I said. I believe it too. I believe that’s how I love Dylan, even though it’s corny. And I believe that afternoon, in my bathtub, we saw our souls. It was the only time in my life anything remotely magical happened. And I was going to keep believing it. No matter what.
How can you not believe you’re meant to be with a guy when that happens? How does anything make sense anymore, when that happens and then he turns out to like boys?
“He is not!”
“I swear it,” I say. I would hold up my hand and do the Boy Scout honor pledge but I am too sad, too tired.
Emily, my best friend that isn’t Dylan, has lost the ability to close her mouth. It hangs there and hangs there. Finally, I reach over and gently shut it for her. Sh
e blushes, flops onto my bed, and covers her face with her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just . . .”
“Unbelievable,” I say. “Bizarre? Horrifying? Ridiculous? Ludicrous? Humiliating?”
“Yeah,” she says and moves her hands away from her face. “Yeah. But, you know, it kind of makes sense.”
Anger wells up inside of me. I push it down to my piggy toes. It does not stay there. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, he does sing show tunes, and he dresses really nicely.”
“All men who sing and dress well are not gay!” I yell at her. “That is a stereotype.”
She sits back up. “I know. I know. Oh, you poor baby.”
She scooches next to me and hugs me sideways.
“I thought he loved me,” I sniffle.
She nods.
“I can’t believe he doesn’t love me.”
“He still loves you, honey, just not that way,” she says and gives me a little squeeze.
I groan. “Yeah, right.”
She thinks for a second and says, “Who’s going to help him with his economics homework?”
I shrug.
“And who’s going to help him study for English?” she asks.
“I don’t know! Maybe me. Maybe we’ll still be friends.”
We sit there for awhile and then I say, “It must be awful hard for him.”
“What?”
“Being gay.”
Emily nods. My cat, Muffin, jumps on the bed and rubs her head against our backs. Emily picks her up and kisses her nose. “Oh, who’s the pretty kitty. Yes. You are. Yes, you are.” She settles Muffin in her lap. “At least he doesn’t have some weird cat fetish or something.”
“True,” I say. “But what if he gets a boyfriend? What if he starts dating someone and then everyone realizes that my quote-unquote One True Love likes boys?”
“That would suck,” Emily says. “Definitely. But this is Eastbrook, everyone’s going to figure it out eventually.”
She picks up Muffin and kisses her kitty belly. Muffin puts her paws on the top of Em’s hair but doesn’t scratch it. Em moves the cat away and says, “Eddie Caron will be happy.”
“Oh, great. My life’s goal is to make Eddie Caron happy,” I say.
Em shrugs. “It’ll make Tom Tanner happy.”
“Give me a break. Tom is a shallow, shallow boy who went out with Mimi Cote and obviously is not my type. He calls me Commie.”
“He’s liked you forever,” she says, settling Muffin back on her lap. “Remember in fourth grade when he gave you that I LOVE YOU ring for Valentine’s Day and how jealous Dylan got?”
“That was fourth grade. I’m not really looking for another boyfriend right now.” I flop down on the bed, squeeze my eyes tight so I don’t cry.
My mother’s voice careens down from the living room. Now that she’s done with the groceries, she’s dusting and singing, which would be embarrassing if it was anyone other than Em here. Em is used to my mother. She’s even used to the way my mom sings the wrong lyrics to songs all the time.
“Live like Yoda’s crying,” my mom sing-yells.
Em starts laughing. “Oh my God, is she screwing up the words to ‘Live Like You Were Dying’?”
“Yep,” I say.
“That’s so funny,” Em snorts. “Does she really think those are the words?”
“She’s always stunned when I tell her she’s singing things wrong,” I say and fortunately for all of us my mom turns on the vacuum and we can’t hear her singing anymore. I try to relax onto my bed. “I feel selfish for thinking about myself. I should be worrying about him, you know, all he has to deal with.”
“No way. That’s his job. You worry about you. That’s okay. As long as you only do it for a week.”
Muffin pounces on my stomach and knocks the air out of me. “A week?”
“Yeah, any longer and you become annoying, self-obsessed, like a Mallory.”
A Mallory is a girl who only thinks about, talks about, knows about herself and how herself reacts/responds/is involved with boys, makeup, clothes, parents, herself.
“I will never be a Mallory!” I yell and sit up straight again, holding Muffin against my belly so she won’t run off. She squirms.
“That’s right. You are a good Maine girl who gets on with her life,” Emily says, raising her hand and putting her fingers in the form of the Boy Scout pledge. “Swear it with me. On my honor, I swear, under God, blah, blah, blah to never be a Mallory.”
I raise my hand. I swear. I raise Muffin’s paw, make her swear too. Emily grimaces, checks her nails, shakes her head, and says, “You’re losing it. That poor cat.”
She grabs Muffin, who climbs onto her shoulder and settles there. They both seem to purr. She pulls out her digital camera and snaps a picture of me, even though my nose is red from crying and my hair is a mess. She’s always taking pictures ever since her dad died. She’s afraid of losing people, afraid she’ll forget things about them, if she doesn’t snap what they look like happy, sad, angry, bloated from eating too many buffalo wings. She says she can’t remember how her dad looked except for how he looked smiling. So, I let her take her pictures and think of how brave she is, how brave I should be.
“A week?” I ask Emily.
She nods, checks out the photo but doesn’t show me. She snaps another one of my lonely Gabriel guitar, leaning against the wall. Em throws her sexy brown supermodel hair behind her cat-free shoulder. “A week.”
After Em leaves, I yell to my mom that I’m going out on my bike.
She looks up from her computer. She’s paying bills and her hair’s flopped out of her weekend ponytail, looking all scraggly in her face. “It’s cold out.”
“Yeah.”
She has worry stuck behind her eyes the way she always does when I go out alone, but she’s a good mom, she knows that I hardly have seizures, that they don’t run my life and she wants me to have a life. “You have your cell phone?”
“Yep.”
I kiss her on the top of her head and she wraps her arms around my trunk. “You bundle up, okay?”
I pull away. “I promise.”
She smiles and something shifts behind her eyes. It turns out it’s a memory. “Do you remember when you were little and you and Mimi Cote rode bikes all the way out to the Washington Junction Road and you both got flats and that guy, Pete, from R.F. Jordan picked you up and put your bikes in the back of the dump truck?”
I clench my teeth. I hate thinking about Mimi Cote. We used to be good friends when we were little and then kind of friends in middle school, but then she went out with Tom Tanner and everything changed. “Yeah.”
“You ever talk to Mimi?” my mom asks, but she’s already turning back to her computer screen filled with check numbers and deposit statements.
I don’t even think she hears me when I say, “No.”
I take my bike out and ride until my mind is like the blueberry barrens—this nothing field full of rocks, scrappy bushes, and dried-out fruit. Old footprints in the sand. Abandoned blue jay feathers. A worker’s gray t-shirt soaked with sweat.
I know that beyond the barrens is a world of forest with sloping trees, limbs reaching toward the sky, birds flittering from nest to home, to nest. I know that beyond the barrens is a world with nice subdivision houses full of wagging-tail dogs and happy kids, comfy beds, family photos on walls featuring smiles and laughs and hugs, magical stories of love and hope, and refrigerators full of chocolate milk and good leftovers waiting to be rewarmed.
I know, I know that it is all out there, beyond the barrens, beyond my mind and when I ride my bike up and down the Maine hills and around the potholes, over the frost heaves, all I can do is think about wanting, wanting,
wanting.
Each want puffs out with my cold breath, making a cloud in the frigid air. Each want stomps itself into my heart as I pedal harder and faster.
I want a life that I can trust. I want a life where there are four stable walls and the people I love are who I expect them to be. Is that too much to ask? I want no one to know about Dylan and me. I want it not to be true.
Before Emily or Dylan could drive, we all used to walk home from school to Dylan’s house, because he lived the closest, only a mile or so away. Dylan would laugh at Emily and how girlie she could be sometimes, quoting from Cosmopolitan or Vogue. We would all crash in Dylan’s kitchen and scarf up all the food in the house, usually bagels. We always ate bagels and tea.
Dylan always made my tea perfect, the way I can never make it. It would come out tasting like apples and cinnamon, not too strong, not too wussy weak like I make it. He’d put the perfect amount of honey in it, stirring the spoon around and around in the mug, without ever clanging the edges. Now, there’s no one to make me tea anymore.
Now, he’ll be making some handsome boy tea, and they’ll kiss each other the way we used to kiss each other, soft and then hard, aching and then fulfilled.
My heart throbs and my feet stop pedaling, because my lips will no longer be the kissed lips. My feet stop pedaling because really where do I have to go? I am in the middle of a road that winds through a blueberry barren.
I was wrong. It is my heart that is the barren, not my head. My head is a river rushing, rushing, rushing and not knowing where it’s going. My head is a river rushing, rushing, rushing and looking for the home, looking for the ocean.
There is nothing to do except go home and hide in my room, stare at Gabriel the guitar leaning against the wall, try not to think about music, try not to think about him.