We Can't Be Friends

by Cyndy Etler

  I want to say, “Don’t leave me alone with him!” But I can’t because she’s got her mad voice on. So I turn my head and finish licking the grease off my fingers.

  She’s three steps away when old-man boyfriend leans into me and says, “I bet you’ve got the tastiest fingers in town!”

  I jam those fingers right under my new Guess jeans, grease and all. I don’t even care. I turn my head even farther away, so hard it hurts, and close my eyes and hold my breath. And I stay there, paralyzed, until my mother gets back from the bathroom.

  “Come on. We’re leaving,” she goes, still mad about my messy little sister. I hang back from them as long as I can, stacking the dishes for the waitress. I have to mentally bulldoze myself into his car for the ride home.

  But anyway, Guess jeans! Grease stripes or not, they’re real Guess, ankle zips and all. Size eight! They were a gift from my mother’s other boyfriend, the Japanese man. He doesn’t say very much, and every time he comes over, he’s wearing a suit and tie. Don’t ask me where my mother finds these guys, but she told this one that I got down to a size eight and that she’s all proud. Then, next time he comes over, he holds out this Macy’s bag. With Guess jeans inside. That boyfriend, I actually hugged by choice.

  I wear my Guess every single day now, along with a man’s button-down from the thrift store. I pretty much have just this one outfit, like a frigging Smurf. But at least that outfit’s cool. I copied it from my sponsor. Yes, really! That lady Suzanne who asked if I needed a sponsor? She’s mine now!

  Mine. Isn’t that a nice word? It makes me feel all cozy, like me and my mine are together in a little box, the kind they put your earrings in if you buy them at the jewelry store. We’re tucked in there together on that square cotton pad, and God or somebody is fitting the box lid back on, so it makes that soft cardboard click as it closes. And everything feels safe, and everything’s okay.

  Having a sponsor is like having a mini, one-person Straight group. As a fellow addict, she totally gets my issues. She gets that everything—home, school, Straight, sobriety—is terrifying, and all that terror makes me want to put something in my mouth. Her job is to make sure my mouth stays empty.

  Even though she’s an alcoholic, I talk to my sponsor about food stuff too. The twelve steps are the twelve steps. They work with every addiction. But I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk to her about the other stuff, like my mother and her boyfriends and the cheerleaders and all. I mean, Suzanne always has on a choice outfit. Her lipstick never wears off. She’s the kind of skinny where she doesn’t have to try. I don’t think she can necessarily relate to my problems, you know? And I need her to keep liking me. So I’m going to keep my life-life hidden from her.

  What I extra won’t talk to her about is Grant, because I can’t even hear what she’d say about him: “You’re not ready for a relationship.” Program people love to use that line, to pretend they’re further ahead than you. It should be on the wall in calligraphy, next to First Things First and Just For Today:

  You’re Not Ready For a Relationship

  I don’t care what they say. I love my program people, but I don’t love them enough to give up the best part of Narnia: Turkish Delight.

  Ever since I first read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, my mouth has had this memory of Turkish Delight. I can see the word spelled out in my head: NOUGAT. I can feel the pillowy rectangles, studded with pistachios, packed like bricks in a waxy paper box. Turkish Delight is better than money or hugs or program people. I’d do anything to get some.

  And…Grant kissed me. And it was Turkish Delight.

  I go to another Club 12 meeting, right? But this time, I’m wearing Guess jeans. So I look pretty good. I walk in and he’s sitting on his same barstool, so I spend the meeting on the counter next to him, with my legs almost touching his shoulders. Halfway through the meeting, he—oh, my God—he starts pulling the zipper on my ankle up and down. Still looking at the speaker but totally touching my leg.

  After the meeting, we lean on my mother’s cop car so long, talking, everyone else takes off. I’m holding his block-of-wood key chain, running my fingers over the letters carved into it. He says they spell out GRANT, but the T and part of the N fell off.

  I’m telling him, “It doesn’t actually say ‘GRANT,’ it says ‘GRAN,’” when he puts his fingers under my chin and tilts my head up. He looks at me—he looks at my chin, my cheeks, my eyes, and he kind of sighs as he leans forward and kisses me. On the lips. His sigh comes out the sides of his mouth, because he doesn’t keep his lips still. He turns his head sideways so our lips make an X, and he makes his mouth bigger and smaller, and then he…he sort of traces my lips with his tongue, which—oh my God—makes me almost fall down to a praying position. And then, while still holding my chin, he pulls his beautiful family-crest face back and looks at my lips. His hand is magically holding up all 120 pounds of me, and he goes, “I’m sorry.”

  My mouth is hanging open with drool all spilling out, so my “What?!” sounds more like my tonsils clicking around in my throat. Which must gross him out, because he lets go of my chin. He leans back on the car and folds his arms across his chest. His ring flashes at me like a stop sign.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” he tells the pavement. “I’m sorry.”

  I’ve tucked the drool back in, so I can speak, sort of. “Wha—you don’t have to—”

  “No, really,” he says, looking back up at me. “I shouldn’t have done that. I have a girlfriend.”

  Where did he have those boxing gloves hidden? He hit me with ’em, right in the face. The exact face he was just gazing at, like it was some rare artifact. I turn away and start batting my eyelashes, as if that’s gonna scare the tears from showing up. But Grant doesn’t even care. I can hear it from his sniff. He’s—he’s crying?

  I whip around to check, and yeah. He’s not, like, bawling, but he’s pulling a hanky—a cloth frigging hanky—out of his corduroys’ pocket, and pinching the bridge of his nose with it. He’s guy crying.

  “Oh my God, Grant! It’s okay!” I say from where I’m suddenly standing, toe-to-toe with him.

  He ducks his face and jams the hanky back in his pocket, because he’s mortified. He’s friggin’ crying, and I’m all in his face. How did I get so stupid? I start to turn away, to give him his privacy, but he grabs me in a hug. And ooohhhhhhh my God.

  Nothing.

  has.

  ever.

  felt.

  this.

  goooood.

  “I’m so sorry,” he mumbles into my hair.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper back, praying he doesn’t feel spittle. I mean, God. He’s a cute sober boy with a gold family ring. So it’s okay. Doesn’t he know this? Anything he does. It’s okay.

  He squeezes me harder. So I say it again. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

  I don’t get any more Turkish Delight before he leaves, but I do get something else unbelievable: a card. A business card.

  “This is where I work,” he says, clicking his little flashlight and shining it down on the card.

  It has a picture of a shelf with some cans, a counter with a cash register, and the words “Sinclair’s Grocery.” Underneath it says, “Grant Lattimore.” Under that there’s a phone number. A phone number!

  I touch my finger to the bumpy, glossy edges of the cash register. The store where he works is so rich, their business cards are 3-D. And he’s inviting me into his world. His perfect-name, perfect-family, perfect-job world.

  When you’re perfect, of course you have a girlfriend. And she’s perfect too. Like, blond braid down a suntanned back, bikini with a sleeveless Izod over it, no makeup except pink Bonnie Bell. Because that’s the kind of girl who gets a Grant. We all know it. And Grant can’t help it. It’s that science-nature law. Darwin.

  In case you haven’t taken bio yet,
here’s Darwin’s law: the best, strongest boy squirrel gets the best, prettiest girl squirrel, and they have the superbest babies, who get the meatiest nuts. And it keeps going that way. Because the best can choose the best, and their offspring are the ones that survive, because they have the best genes. The lame, weak, and ugly squirrels die off eventually because the strong squirrels don’t choose them. Their babies don’t get the strong genes that can beat nature and keep their family line going.

  Same with humans. The best stay with the best, because if you could choose anyone, why would you choose the less best? Grant’s girlfriend probably has lace underwear with her family crest on them. Their kids will have family crest private planes.

  I don’t come from a family like that. At least not now, I don’t. It seems like I started out there, with the big-deal dad and the Smith-graduate mother, but my Darwin ranking got shuffled along the way. Maybe my father wasn’t a strong enough squirrel, which is why he died early. Or maybe my mother looks superior on the outside, but she’s inferior on the inside. Whatever got fucked, I’m nowhere near Grant’s squirrel level now. I’m just lucky he’ll hang out on the low branch with me. But if he’ll feed me Turkish Delight while he’s down here, my low branch will feel as high as frigging heaven.

  14

  MARCH 1989

  TWO YEARS OUT

  My sponsor, Suzanne, is the grownup version of Grant’s girlfriend. I know because I’m at her family’s house. It’s this holy-shit-it’s-actually-warm-out day, so they’ve got the living room glass doors open to the backyard. But they’re not the plain glass doors that slide sideways, like at my house. They’re the kind with the tic-tac-toe pattern in them, the kind that open outward, like at the frigging White House. My sponsor, her mother, and her sister are all in bare feet with white cotton dresses, all light and smooth and tiny. You can tell how everything in their life works: like dolphins cutting arcs through water.

  Suzanne invited me over to work on a “fearless and searching moral inventory.” Um, gag me? She calls a moral inventory the fourth step. I call it an M.I., just like every other Straightling does. That’s one part of Straight I don’t miss: the 486 M.I.s I had to write, one for every day I was in there. And now I have to do a 487th?

  But when you’re me, you don’t turn down an invitation to get the fuck out of the house. Especially when the invitation comes from another program person, who doesn’t think you’re an alien freak from planet recovery. I’ll do the 487th M.I. Whatever it takes.

  But here’s what I don’t get. Jack Pilgrim, who’s as big a freak as I am, is this, like, social success story. Shit, he’s maybe more of a freak than me. Last week, he and his new best friend, this kid Roger who just moved here, came to school in hazmat suits. Swear to God. Face masks, breathing stubs, and florescent biohazard signs on their backs. Did they explain why? No. Is this total freak behavior? Yes. Did everybody love it? Abso-frigging-lutely. So how come my freakiness makes me the school reject?

  Really, though, I hardly go to school anymore. My mother’s so caught up in her love life, she doesn’t even notice if I stay in bed. She only makes me go two or three days a week. It sucks to get math tests back with twenties on them, and Mrs. Skinner is, like, sad at me. But I can’t keep walking past the hallway’s popular zone, where laughy Brent and mean Kathy hang out. I can’t keep getting lasered by their eyes and their words, which I can never quite hear. If I had just one person who got me—even if we didn’t have class together, if we could just sit together at lunch—I could get through the school day. But being the lone ranger inside these boiling, crowded school walls is death. No, it’s worse. It’s being alive for your death.

  And on top of all this, my mother’s in this phase where she’s mad about me taking her car, so I can’t get to the cool meetings. And I’ve been getting sick of Trumbull AA, so I don’t feel like getting rides there from the old AAers. But then Whitney asks if I want to go with her and Jack to their church’s youth group meeting one Sunday night. So I’m like, what the fuck. Okay, if I can get a ride.

  The youth group meeting itself isn’t so bad. We sit in a circle and talk about some Bible verses and how they relate to our lives. In a way, it’s like being in group at Straight, except nobody here is screaming or spitting in anyone’s face or talking about why they hate themselves. And nobody bum-rushes a misbehavior and slams her to the ground, so her skull makes that crack on the tiles. Okay, maybe youth group isn’t that much like Straight group. But we do sing a few songs.

  Maybe I would’ve gone again if I didn’t socially slaughter myself afterward. Jack and Whitney go into the rec hall for the post-group juice and cookies, which of course, I can’t touch. I don’t even want to deal with the whole “no, I’ll stand here by myself with this small cup of water” scene, so I scurry off to my handy-dandy hidey-hole, the girls’ lav. But this lav is in a church, with no teachers around to spy and snitch. So it’s more of a dragon’s lair than a bathroom.

  I push open the door and get punched back by this planet-sized gust of smoke. Thank God it’s just cigarette smoke, but still. If you’re smoking in the girls’ room, you’re breaking the rules, and breaking the rules is the first step toward a slip. I can’t jeopardize my sobriety like that! Except I’ve already opened the door, so I can’t not go in. My face is an ABC After-School Special, all pinched like, Oooh, shit! I know it is, because I’m petrified. This is exactly what Straight warns you about: being in closed spaces with bad influencers.

  You know what’s even scarier than losing my sobriety? Being Loser Etler again. Other kids can somehow not spaz in dangerous peer situations, so I need to not fucking spaz as well. I walk through the smoke blast, and there’s Mary and Donna, sitting on the heater by the window, which is cracked open.

  “Hey, Cyndy!” says Mary, holding her cigarette out all awkward and wrong. “Want a puff?”

  A puff. We are in an ABC After-School Special.

  “Yeah, it’s cool! Come on!” goes Donna, leaning away from the cig like it’s got bad breath.

  “Yeah, no. I just have to…” I say, and slam the handicap stall door shut behind me. They know the rule, right? You don’t talk to the peeing person. You pretend you forgot she’s there.

  They’re stone silent as I unzip my jeans and uncrinkle a paper seat cover. It’s like they forgot I’m here, but they forgot each other is here too. So we’re all listening to my quiet, pushing effort to eke out a pee.

  No dice. The silence is so total, I can hear the paper sizzle-burning down the un-dragged cigarette. I can picture the long, dry tube of ash sagging off its end. Mary doesn’t know to tap it. If she did, I’d have heard the little bap-bap-bap. It’s that silent in here.

  I can’t produce a pee, and that tube of ash—I know it’s there—is killing me. I have a sudden, crushing need to bust out of my stall and snatch the smoke out of Mary’s hand. And tap it. Three times. While staring her in the eye. Like, this is how it’s done. Then I’d either smoke or eat the rest of the cigarette before hauling ass out of that church.

  Instead I creak-roll off some toilet paper, wipe my bone-dry folds, and flush. Finally, there’s some noise in the room.

  When I come out of the stall, the ash is two miles long. Just like I said.

  “You sure you don’t want, Cyndy?” goes Donna.

  I look at the floor, instead of at that ash. The fuck do I explain sobriety, Straight, Inc., and the slippery slope of druggie ties that would yank me back to using? Or how good it would feel to sit on that heater, holding that smoke the right way, instead of standing around dumbfounded, like a fucking weirdo? How do I explain how that cigarette would save me and kill me all at the same time?

  “I—I can’t,” I say instead. “Because of God.”

  And I run out of that bathroom so hard I hit myself in the face with the door. The sharp shock of it keeps me from hearing Mary’s and Donna’s laughter. From knowing they’re gonna t
ell the whole school, “God told Cyndy Etler to stay away from cigarettes.”

  I’ve got to get it through my head: just because someone’s a church person, doesn’t mean they’re a God person. For me, my program is all about my friendship with God. We’re so close, I could tell you what color tie He’s wearing today. And program people talk about their relationship with God too, all the time. So I walk around with this assumption that everybody who wears a cross has the same sort of…I don’t know, God-ness. That they’re truly nice. That they follow the rules. That they try to make other people feel good. So I keep thinking I can be friends with kids who are in church youth group. And I keep finding out that I’m wrong.

  Really, the kids who wear their crosses outside their collars so you notice them are the meanest. They’re the ones who make sure you know when they’re laughing at you. Jack and Whitney are truly nice, and they really don’t drink or do drugs, but all these other youth group kids? All they talk about is partying.

  Like, why did Mary and Donna try so hard to get me to smoke? What are they, on Satan’s payroll? I won’t give in to temptation, though. One cigarette and I’d be right back in my druggie past, because that’s how strong my addiction is. Nothing could make me desperate enough to smoke.

  Except the fact that, outside of that one hellacious youth group meeting, I was at Club 12 like every night before my mom got weird about the car. And Grant never showed. Not once. It’s like he doesn’t want to see me. Which I can’t handle. That could be enough to make me smoke. Maybe I should go to his grocery store and buy a pack of Marlboros.

  Oh my God, see what I’m saying? See how bad I need God in my life? Left to my own devices, I am fucked. So thank God I get to be here at my sponsor’s tidy, delicate, rich-people’s house today, even though I feel like a whale trying to walk on its hind legs. At least here, my whale song is answered by her family’s dolphin song. They’re all in recovery, Suzanne and her sister and her mother. So even though I’m not sleek and smooth and dressed in white, at least I kind of sound like them when we talk about the program. Dolphins and whales, we’re both underwater singers. We understand each other. The youth group kids, though—I have to give up that hope. They can’t be my friends. They don’t speak sober.