“Bad how?” I say.
“Yes, please dish,” Gemma says.
“In about every way that sex can be bad. It was as though I were a machine that he had no idea how to operate. He tried to go down on me . . .”
“Wait, tried?” I ask.
“He was down there but there was this tongue darting and . . . oh, I can’t, it was too awful. I wanted to pull him back up and interrogate him: like, whoever told you to do that to a vagina, they must be stopped.”
“What did you do?” Gemma asks.
“I pulled him up and kept going.”
“And??”
“Jackrabbit hammering for about three minutes and then it was over. The worst part is, we have the room for an hour, and at that point we’re like ten minutes in.”
“Was he mortified?” Gemma asks.
“No!” Cali says, slamming her hand on the armrest of the chaise. “He didn’t even have the sense to be embarrassed. He just dozed off.”
“What did you do?!” I ask.
“I’m alone in the tackiest hotel room in the universe, with my failed little Don Juan taking a nap. I raided the minibar obviously. Then he wakes up and wants to go again. At this point, I’ve downed two minibottles of tequila so I figure why not, everyone deserves a second chance.”
“And?”
“I’ve now revised that maxim to: Bad sex once, shame on you. Bad sex twice, shame on me.”
“Oh, Cali, I’m so sorry,” I say.
“Poor love! That is the worst,” Gemma says.
She rolls her eyes and shrugs. “I mean, it’s fine. No lasting harm done, I suppose, but there’s just something so”—she wrinkles her nose—“soul-sucking about bad sex. I remember my brothers used to make this joke when they were teenagers that sex was like pizza, still pretty good even when it’s terrible. I disagree. Sex is like . . . I don’t know, a soufflé, if you botch it, it’s just a big mess!”
“Have you made a soufflé before?” Gemma asks, seeming distracted and impressed by this detail.
“No, what do I look like, a midcentury housewife? But you know what I mean, it’s like why bother if it’s bad? You just think: Why am I even here? Meanwhile, he’s completely unaware that he was terrible. It’s just ignorant to be with a woman and not be able to read any of the signs that she’s not enjoying herself, you know?”
We both nod.
“I guess he needs a good teacher?” Gemma says.
“Yeah, well, it’s not going to be me.”
“I think every man needs that first girlfriend to learn with. Someone who they actually have a bond with who can communicate with them and be honest with them.” I’m thinking of Luke now, irritatingly. Even though he’d been with other girls, we were different, he told me—with me it was all new again. “Not that that should be your job, obviously.”
“Yeah. To tell you the truth,” Cali says, “he was only the third person I’ve ever been with. Is that dismal or what?”
Quite the opposite. I was struck with envy, because at one point I’d been able to count my lovers on one hand as well. After my breakup, my breakdown, I decided I might as well give casual sex a try. I wasn’t some girly girl, I wasn’t going to get all emotional about some guy I didn’t know. Wasn’t this just another use for the body? But whatever I was looking for, it wasn’t to be found in sex with strangers. For one thing, I was always wasted. I would find myself floating in and out of my body while it was happening, alternately grasping at transcendence that was nowhere within reach and trying to escape from the too-closeness of the stranger inside of me.
“Wow! I feel like a proper harlot now,” Gemma says. “But you’re right that every man needs a great teacher. Good thing Edward and I had each other.”
My jaw drops. “I thought things weren’t romantic with you two!”
Gemma waves it off. “Oh they’re not, this was twenty years ago! At any rate, Cali, if you’ve only been with three people, Buenos Aires is the perfect place to expand your horizons.”
“Maybe I’ll just stick to dancing. It’s like you get all the good parts of sex without the disappointment, without the inevitable letdown, the shame spiral, whatever.”
“Oh, honey. Let’s not give up on the whole enterprise, shall we?”
I consider this. Do I not owe it to myself to explore beyond Luke? To have some sort of awakening? I need someone real—someone who moves me a little—to put between me and Luke. After all, he had lovers before me and—I realize with stomach-dropping dread—has almost certainly had lovers since. That’s what I came here to do, isn’t it? To disappear. To forget.
Penny Is Getting Married!
THE WEEKEND Penny and Captain Stewart Granger got married at the historic downtown Roosevelt Inn in Coeur d’Alene is my last truly good memory of her.
To the surprise of no one, Penny had a big wedding. She invited all of her high school friends and all of her coworkers from the clinic, as well as just about everyone else she’d ever known. Penny had been the kind of little girl who dreamed of her wedding day, who dressed up as a bride for Halloween when she was eight and when she was ten, who married off her Barbie dolls at every opportunity. She wanted the big dress, the bridesmaids, the tiered cakes, the whole shebang. My parents, having seen worse than I had, were happy to indulge her: as though the maelstrom of taffeta and buttercream could wash away all of the darkness that preceded it.
She was getting married in August, so fortunately I was able to come see her more frequently leading up to the wedding. Other than a handful of training camps, summers for me meant rehabbing whatever was injured, time in the gym, and cross-training on my mountain bike. I came up one weekend to go with Penny and my mother to Marcella’s bridal boutique in Spokane to look for a dress. My mother and I sat on plush white couches, drinking glasses of champagne while the attendant wrestled Penny into the complicated gowns.
The first dress Penny came out in was a strapless ballroom gown with a voluminous tulle skirt. The dress engulfed her petite, busty frame, but Penny was beaming.
“Well?” she asked us.
“Oh . . . well, do you like it?” my mom said diplomatically.
“I feel like a princess,” Penny said, gazing at herself in the three-way mirror. “Katie, what do you think?”
“You kind of look like a cupcake.”
Her face fell.
“I mean you look like a beautiful cupcake. But, Penny, it’s a lot.”
“You just don’t want to have a dress that wears you,” my mom added.
Penny huffed. “Sorry we can’t all be six feet tall.”
I knew I wasn’t the best pick for something like wedding dress shopping, but Emily hadn’t been able to make it. I was also the maid of honor. I’d always expected it to be Emily, but something had shifted between them. Penny didn’t talk about her as much as she once had, and when I’d called Emily to see if she could come today, she’d made excuses and hurried off the phone. I’d asked Penny if something had happened, but she said of course not, they were both just busier now and didn’t see each other as much since they weren’t roommates anymore.
I wouldn’t find out until years later what my parents already knew: during the final year they’d lived together, before she moved in with Jon, Penny had been taking Emily’s half of the rent and then, for whatever reason, not using it to pay their rent. It wasn’t until they received an eviction notice that it came to a head, and then Penny denied everything. The girls had such a history that they remained friends after, but they were never the same.
“Well, this is only the first dress,” the attendant said now, saving the day. “Let’s keep moving! It always takes a little while to find the right silhouette.”
Penny gave her a brave smile and nodded. I feared this would be added to Penny’s list of ways in which I’d let her down; she’d always had a knack for keeping score. As she headed back to the dressing room, I looked at my mom helplessly and she smiled. “It’s fine,” she whispered, “there a
re better dresses for her. She just had to get the Cinderella one out of her system.”
There was no talking her out of a ball gown, but we found her one with a straighter skirt that nipped in at her natural waist and flattered her figure. Seeing her in the dress, my mom and I both choked up. My sister, getting married. It was a new beginning.
Because Penny never spoke about the pregnancy, it was easy enough to pretend the whole incident had never happened. It was a strange paradox with my sister: she could hold a grudge like crazy, but her own mistakes seemed to evaporate from her mind almost immediately.
Luke came with me to the wedding and seemed a bit agitated. Normally, he was super relaxed in the summertime, and he was flying high after his back-to-back gold medal and world championship wins; I couldn’t imagine what his deal was. The morning before the rehearsal dinner, we splurged on pancakes at Benny’s, a diner we’d both loved as kids, and I brought it up.
“Hey,” I asked him. “What’s going on with you, you’re acting strange.”
“No I’m not,” he said defensively, plunging his fork into a many layered bite of pancakes and downing it.
I cocked my eyebrow at him, and he relented.
“I dunno . . . weddings are weird.”
“They’re weird?”
He looked like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. We’d been together for years by then, and on the rare occasions when Luke decided he needed to discuss how he felt about something, he squirmed like a convict with a bad rash. The first few times, I was sure he was breaking up with me; now I knew better. Our mutual successes—though mine were a bit more modest—had brought us closer.
“Spit it out, Luke.”
He scratched the back of his head. “Blair was asking me when I thought we might get married.”
Now it was my turn to squirm. “Blair asked you what? Why would he ask you that?”
“He just said, you know, we’ve been together a long time. You probably like, wanted me to put a ring on it at some point, you know?”
“Blair said that?”
“Those weren’t his exact words. But girls get weird at weddings, so. . .”
“Oh yeah?” I smiled now. “Girls get weird?”
“You know what I mean!” He laughed. “I don’t want you to think . . . I mean someday obviously but . . .”
“Oh god, please stop,” I said. “I mean, yes, someday. But I want a matching gold medal before we start talking about matching gold bands, okay?”
A wide smile took over his face. “This is why I love you, Bomber. Well, one of many reasons.”
Luke wasn’t great about expressing himself, but I thought I understood. It was why I loved him too. His focus sharpened mine. We were skiing’s golden couple. Glory before anything else.
“What the hell, Blair?” I said, thinking out loud.
“It’s fine, he’s just being protective. He doesn’t want me wasting your time. Which, I’m not. Katie, you know that, right?” He turned momentarily serious again.
“Luke, of course I know that. Do you think I’m wasting yours?” Marriage was something I couldn’t wrap my head around yet at twenty-four. I wanted to make my own life mean something before joining it with someone else’s in such an official way.
Now, he laughed, and, at last, the tension dispersed. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
The night before Penny’s wedding is one I’ll remember forever. I try to hold on to it because in some ways, it was my last glimpse of Penny as she was, the Penny I remember from my childhood.
We were all staying at the Roosevelt for three nights during the wedding festivities. After the rehearsal dinner, five of us—Penny, Stewart, Emily, Luke, and me—went to the hotel bar to have another drink that turned into several. We laughed as Penny and Emily begged the piano player to play “Sweet Caroline” and “Tiny Dancer” and we all sang along off-key. Stewart was the most cheerful I’d ever seen him, the top buttons of his shirt undone. He and Luke—both guy’s guys—got along well. Stewart’s upbringing had been a bit hardscrabble, and this, I’d learned upon meeting his very sweet family, was the reason for his drive and discipline. His family was proud of him and they adored Penny, the smart, pretty girl from the nice, middle-class family. I got the sense they were a little overwhelmed by the wedding, even though it wasn’t especially lavish.
That night, Stewart stayed in another room—holding to tradition—and Emily and I stayed over in the bridal suite with Penny, poring over the old photo albums that Emily had brought along with her. Emily and I had never spoken about the pregnancy after our one strange conversation, but no one wanted to think of that now. That night, it felt like we’d gone back to a time before Penny lied about strange things or pilfered rent checks. We were girls again.
The next day my father would walk Penny down the aisle with tears in his eyes, a cousin’s toddler would make everyone laugh when she hammed it up as the flower girl, the nurses from Penny’s office would get roaring drunk and tackle one another to catch the bouquet, and Penny and Stewart would dance their first dance to Billie Holiday’s “I’m Yours”—which had been my grandparents’ song—making everyone cry. The next day, as we watched her, it was impossible to believe that everything was not going to get better from here. Seeing her get married, it was as though my parents and I let out a collective sigh of relief, a breath we’d been holding for years. This wedding would fix things.
But the night before belonged to Penny and Emily and me—the three sisters. Whatever came next, that night was real. I hold on to it because, in some sense, I would never see my sister again.
Liz Finds a Wonder Drug
“OKAY,” HE says as the long melancholic tango comes to an end. “That’s probably enough for tonight.” It’s only now that I realize that the hour slated for my lesson with Gianluca has long since passed. Ordinarily, he plays a bit of a song and then stops the music to break down what we’ve just done, go over additional technicalities, and such. But tonight, at some point, he’d just let the music play and we kept dancing. I feel drugged from dancing with him, high off the elemental relief I get from it.
There was a feeling I lived for during races, a brief few moments when my mind and body felt perfectly fused, when my body was working as hard as it possibly could and my mind was fully engaged—taking in the terrain, calculating where I needed to be on the next turn, preparing for the jump I knew was coming at the end of the course. There was no space for anything other than the moment I was in. I never expected to find that feeling again, and, impossibly, I’ve found an echo of it here. When G steps away from me for a moment, I feel the jarring sense of leaving it.
“Okay,” I say. I feel the effects of the dance leeching from my veins too quickly. G smiles at me and turns back toward the office. For a moment, I stand there, uncertain about what I’m meant to do now. Everyone else has long since left; our lesson started late to begin with, at nine o’clock. Because G is working these lessons into an already full schedule, we squeeze them in when we can, as frequently as we can—I’d be here every day if I could, running through my savings like a junkie. I like the idea that he is making room for me, though for all I know, he needs the cash. How much does Edward put in to keep this place afloat? What does their mysterious bargain entail?
“Come on,” he says without turning around. My feet take me along like we’re still dancing and I’m simply following. Tango, it seems, is a wonder drug: a way of being close to someone without the messiness of sex or love, a potent but temporary hit of both. A place you can go with a stranger but leave unscathed by shame and heartache.
I’ve never seen the back office before and I don’t think students are normally allowed in. It’s shabby and cozy with an exciting air of secrecy. There are scraps of costumes and extra pairs of worn practice shoes piled in the corner, a box of the T-shirts the team wears. G sits on the carpet with his back resting against a large, overstuffed, ramshackle sofa. There’s a bottle of whiskey and tw
o glasses beside him. I gingerly sit down next to him, slipping my heels off of my pleasantly aching feet. He pours me a glass without asking.
We’ve just spent over an hour with our cheeks pressed up against one another’s, but that was with the veil of the dance shrouding us. Sitting here with him now feels nearly postcoital, a fog of intimacy hanging over us still. Sometimes after Luke and I had sex, he would lie there on his back and, without warning, all of his fears would come tumbling out in a steady stream: he’d be a failure, he’d let everyone down, underneath everything, he was a fraud who’d convinced everyone he was a champion, and that sooner or later the truth would come out. These confessions were notable in their rarity; on the slope and in the start house and at the foot of the hill and the bar and the gym and on television, Luke was cocksure and brash. He was always the only thing that stood between him and being the best: he’d never quite shaken off the rebellious streak he’d developed after his parents’ divorce. I remembered Blair and me physically dragging him from bars in Park City when he started looking for someone to fight. But once I’d seen the soft underside of his arrogant veneer, I knew it was there all the time. Fragments would suddenly reveal themselves to me, even in a roomful of people. I knew too that I was the only one who could see it. I could never only be his friend after that.
I sip the whiskey. G stares down into his glass.
“You were good tonight,” he says quietly, turning toward me with a hint of a smile. “You’ve had a breakthrough.”
I try not to let how thrilled I am show. “It felt different tonight.”
“Tell me,” G says, letting his head fall back. His eyelids always look a little heavy, like he’s being lulled by some music only he can hear.
“It’s hard to put into words.”
“Try,” he says, “for me.” He puts his hand on my bare knee.
“Well . . .” What can I say that won’t make me sound like I’m in love with him? Because, though I know I’m not, I feel elements of it when we’re dancing: the closeness, the opening, the freedom of it, without all of the doubt and comedown. “At first, I was thinking about the steps, but then I wasn’t, it just . . . we were moving together and it felt, not like we were one body exactly, but like we were in this perfect tandem. It felt freeing, it took me out of my head, like suddenly I had no past and no future. Just here and now with you and the music connecting us at a thousand tiny points.”
We Came Here to Forget Page 17