“I was. I was jealous. And selfish and small.”
Big tears were suddenly shivering in Carmen’s eyes. They warped the face of poor Rogette, discarded on the floor. Carmen was bad at loving. She loved too hard.
“I didn’t want her to be happy without me.” Carmen’s voice came out wobbly.
Making very little noise, Paul appeared beside her, sitting next to her on the desk. “She would never be happy without you.”
Carmen had meant to say that she didn’t want her mom to be happy without Carmen getting to be happy too. But as Paul’s words bumped around in her brain, she wondered if maybe he’d understood something she hadn’t.
Had she been jealous of her mother? Or had she been jealous of David?
Paul linked his arm with hers. Carmen cried. It wasn’t much, maybe, but it felt like everything.
Kostos did come for her, but not when she expected. Lena wished for and wanted him through breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but he didn’t come until she was already in bed. She heard the acorn against her window.
Her heart rising up nearly out of her chest, she went to the window and saw him there. She waved and rushed down the stairs and out the back door as fast as she could. She practically threw herself at him. He pretended to fall backward. He staggered a few giant steps and pulled her down with him.
“Shhhh,” he told her as she was laughing.
They found the most private place they could find in her yard. It was at the side of the house under the thick-leaved magnolia tree. If her parents found out, not even the dazzling Kostos could save her.
She was in her nightgown. He was more properly dressed.
“I’ve dreamed about you all day,” she told him.
“I’ve dreamed about you for a year,” he told her.
They started out slow, kissing. That was all they needed for a long, long time, until she put her hands inside his shirt. He let her explore his chest and his arms and his back, but at last he pulled away. “I have to go,” he said miserably.
“Why?”
He kissed her. “Because I’m a gentleman. I can’t trust myself to be one too much longer.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to trust yourself,” she said boldly, letting her hormones do the talking.
“Oh, Lena.” He sounded as though he were partly underwater. He wasn’t looking at her as though he wanted to go anywhere.
He kissed her more and then broke away. “There are a few things I want to do with you very badly.”
She nodded.
“You haven’t done . . . these things before, have you?” he asked.
She shook her head. Suddenly she was worried he thought she was inept.
“All the more reason,” he said. “We have to be slow. Make it count.”
She was touched by his honor. She knew he was right. “I want to do those things too. Sometime.”
He held her and squeezed her so hard she had to stifle a shout. “We have time. We’ll do all of those things millions of times, and I will be the happiest person in the world.”
They kissed and kissed more until finally she had to let him go. She wanted to gobble up her whole future in this one night.
“I have to leave tomorrow morning,” he told her.
Her eyes instantly filled with tears.
“I’ll come back, though. Don’t worry. How could I stay away? I’ll come back next weekend. Would that be all right?”
“I don’t know if I can wait,” she said, her throat aching.
He smiled and held her for one last minute. “Any place at any time. If you are thinking of me, you can be sure that I am thinking of you.”
Billy practically accosted Bridget on her way to the hardware store, where she was going to buy parts to fix Greta’s refrigerator door. She was now paying her seventy-five dollars a week to Greta and was busy vanquishing every disobedient thing on the property—the weeds in the lawn, the wobbly coffee table, the peeling paint at the back of the house. Bridget was in her running clothes, her hair was stuffed into a scarf, and her mood was giddy because she’d been thinking about Lena.
“You didn’t come to practice on Thursday,” he said.
Bridget just stared at him. “And?”
“Usually you come.”
“I do have one or two other things to think about,” she said.
Billy looked offended. “Like what?”
She prepared to look offended right back, but then he laughed. His laugh was just as choky and full as it had been when he was seven. She loved the sound of it. She laughed too.
“Hey, can I buy you a milk shake or something?” he asked her.
He wasn’t flirting, but he was genuinely friendly. “Okay.”
They crossed the street and sat down at an outside table in the shade. He ordered a mint-chip shake and she got a lemonade.
“You know what?”
“What?” she asked.
“You look familiar.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Where are you from?”
“Washington, D.C.,” she answered.
“Why’d you come all the way down here?”
“I used to come here when I was a little kid,” she explained, wanting him to ask more.
But he didn’t ask more. He didn’t even listen to the last part of what she said, because at that moment, two girls stopped by on their way down the sidewalk. One was a busty brunette and the other a small blonde wearing very small, very low pants. Bridget recognized the girls from the soccer field. They smiled and flirted with Billy while Bridget retied her shoes.
“Sorry about that,” Billy said when they were gone. “I had a crush on that girl for a year.”
Bridget felt sad. She remembered when she herself had been the girl boys had crushes on, not the one they talked to about them. “Which one?” she asked.
“Lisa, the blonde,” he said. “I’m a sucker for blondes,” he added.
Instinctively she touched her skunky hair packed in its bandana. The drinks came.
“So how do you know so much about soccer?” he asked.
“I used to play,” she said. She held the straw between her teeth.
“Were you any good?” he asked.
“I was all right,” she said around the straw.
He nodded. “You’ll be at the game Saturday, right?”
She shrugged, just to punish him.
“You gotta be there!” He looked worried. “The whole team will freak if you’re not there!”
She smiled, enjoying herself. He didn’t have a crush on her, but this wasn’t so bad. “Oh, all right.”
“Krista’s taking her mom to brunch at Roxie’s,” Carmen explained to her mother over toaster waffles. Both Al and Lydia had arrived the evening before to make peace with Krista and take her home.
Christina smiled. It was a ghost of a smile, really, but downright mirthful compared to her expression of the last few weeks. Roxie’s, notable for its clientele of drag queens, stood at the edge of Adams Morgan. Krista had heard about it from Tibby with wide, fascinated eyes. Carmen was actually pretty pleased with her protégée. Krista was going down, but not without a fight.
“Al too?”
“No, it’s a mother-daughter day. Krista’s going home with them tomorrow.”
Her mother nodded thoughtfully. “I like Krista.”
“She’s sweet. She’s all right.” Carmen tore off half a waffle and stuffed it in her mouth. “Are you coming tonight?” she asked after she’d chewed and swallowed.
Her mother’s face settled back into its look of distant forbearance. “I guess I am.”
As every couple had an identity in marriage, they also had one in divorce. Carmen’s parents practiced “amicable divorce.” This meant that when Al and Lydia arranged to have dinner at a restaurant with Carmen, Al was bound to invite Christina to come along to meet his newer-model wife, and Christina was bound to accept.
“You okay about meeting Lydia?”
Christin
a considered this, sucking on her empty fork. “Yes.”
“Yes?” Her mother was stoic. Her mother was brave. Carmen was maybe adopted.
Christina looked like she was about to say more, but she stopped herself. “Yes.”
These weeks, they stayed on the surface together. Carmen wanted a million things from her mother, but she was afraid to press. She deserved nothing.
She had certainly eaten and slept, although she couldn’t remember exactly what or when.
Tibby had lost track of time and space and even going to the bathroom. There was a lot of video to go through, especially after she had called Mrs. Graffman and asked for a few tapes from their collection. She needed to be absolutely scrupulous about saving all her original material, and every stage of her edit took deep concentration.
In the course of her work, she’d discovered pretty quickly that the stuff she’d shot for her actual documentary last summer was worthless. The beautiful things were hanging around the edges. They were the outtakes and the overhangs—Bailey setting up shots or breaking them down, Bailey’s careful tinkering with the boom.
Tibby also loved the parts when Bailey’s eye was behind the camera. Bailey had a remarkably patient style. Unlike Tibby, she wasn’t in a hurry to muscle everything into the shape of a story. She didn’t goad her subjects into saying what she wanted them to say.
The one part that Tibby had purposely filmed that was any good was her interview with Bailey. Bailey sat in the chair by the window, as luminous as an angel, the Traveling Pants bagging at her feet. There was even a shot of lumpy, sleeping Mimi in the mix. Tibby was mesmerized by Bailey’s brave, straight-on face, her peeking-out soul, no matter how many times she watched.
Today she was working on the soundtrack. It was easy, really, because she was just going to play Beethoven straight through. But as she listened, the music wasn’t having exactly the effect she wanted.
She put her head back. She was dizzy. She’d been up for a lot of hours. The end-of-summer festival was less than four days away.
The quality she loved about the music involved Brian whistling to it. Somehow, in her sleep-deprived mania, this struck her as art. It wasn’t Kafka and explosions at Pizza Hut. It was the rise and fall of Brian’s whistle.
It had been a summer of awkward meals. Carmen sat between Lydia and Krista. Christina sat between Al and Paul.
Carmen so dreaded the long, miserable silences they were sure to endure, she’d actually prepared a few topics for discussion:
Summer movies
Sequels-a good idea or inherently problematic?
Popcorn-what exactly is that buttery mess? (Make room for Christina to cite stunning calorie facts.)
Sunscreen (Throw a bone to the mothers.)
SPF-what’s it all really mean?
Worst sunburn ever? (Appear to leave up for grabs. Let Al win with oft-told story of sailing in the Bahamas.)
Ozone. (Allow all to be in agreement over liking it. Not liking holes in it.)
Air travel-has it gotten worse? (Allow adults to go on and on as needed.)
(If situation grows desperate.) Israel/Palestine.
But strangely, the paper stayed in her pocket. She listened quietly as the conversation made its own brave start: Lydia described Roxie’s and surprised Carmen by being able to laugh about it. Lydia laughing made Christina laugh too. It was a small and rosy miracle.
Then Krista told about getting lost for three hours and twenty-two minutes on the D.C. subway. That immediately launched Al into a long, educational summary of the various colors and lines and junctions of the Washington, D.C., mass transit system. He even whipped out his map for illustration.
Then somehow or other, that led to the story of how Al and Christina got lost the night they brought brand-new baby Carmen home from the hospital. Carmen knew the story well, and she usually hated hearing it because the punch lines were always Carmen crying or Carmen spitting up. But tonight she listened raptly as her parents traded back and forth narrating the different parts of the story, being funny and amicable. Lydia laughed and winced appreciatively. Al held Lydia’s hand on top of the table, to let her know it was okay, he loved her better now.
Al ordered the wine in a funny Italian accent. Krista fiddled with her beads and whispered something nice to her mother. Lydia insisted Christina try a bite of her “divine” corn-and-lobster salad.
Carmen felt flushed and warm with pleasure as she looked around at the animated faces. This was her family, weird as it was. She’d gone from a dysfunctional three to a completely haywire six.
Paul looked at her. It’s all good, he seemed to say.
She smiled. And the real bonanza was, she’d gotten Paul in the deal. Paul, who was the kindest, most patient person she knew.
She thought back to last summer, the day she’d met Lydia and Krista and Paul for the first time. She’d been furious at her father. She’d thought it was an ending, but it had turned out to be a beginning.
She looked at her mother, bearing up gracefully. Al and Lydia were a couple; Christina was alone. Christina always bore up gracefully. As a single mother with a full-time job. As a person with a broken heart.
Her mother deserved a beginning too.
At 9:15 the phone rang, and Lena pounced on it. The phone was her worst enemy and her best friend, but she never knew which until she answered it.
“Hello?” she said, barely disguising her eagerness.
“Hi.”
It was her best friend.
“Kostos.” How she loved his name. She loved just saying it. “Where are you?”
“At the subway station.”
Her stomach commenced the spin cycle. She forced herself to pause, slow it down. “In . . . which . . . city?”
“In your city.”
“No.” Please, please. “Really?” Her voice sounded squeaky.
“Yes. Can you come and get me?”
“Yes. Yes. Right away. Just let me, um . . . lie to my parents.”
He laughed. “Wisconsin Avenue side.”
“Bye.”
It was almost too good that she still had the Traveling Pants. She pulled them on and lied hastily to her mother about going for ice cream with Carmen. She flew out the door and into her car, blessing her parents for letting her use it whenever she liked.
He was there waiting for her, a silhouette standing solidly on both feet. He wasn’t a dream or a hoax. She buzzed down the passenger-side window so he could see that it was her. He was hardly in the car when he kissed her big and full on her mouth and cradled the back of her head in his hands. “I couldn’t stay away,” he told her breathlessly. “I took the train right after work.”
He kissed her more and some more until finally she remembered she was at the wheel of a car on a major thoroughfare. She looked up, delirious, trying to bring the streaming streetlights into focus. “Where should we go?”
His face was vivid, locked onto hers. He didn’t care.
“Do you think we should do something besides kiss?” she asked. “I mean, should we keep some semblance of a date? Are you hungry or anything?” Her body was most eager for the making out.
He laughed. “I am hungry. I do want to take you out. But, no, I don’t really want to do anything where I can’t touch you for more than a few minutes.”
Love inspired her. “I think I have an idea.”
She drove to the A&P. She supervised the buying of raw cookie dough and a quart of cold two-percent milk from the refrigerated aisle, a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts with pink icing from the cereal aisle. They found a lot of ways to touch each other—his hands on her waist, her hip pressed to the side of his, his lips, briefly, on her neck—even there under the squinting grocery store lights.
She tried to drive as carefully as possible, speeding along the forests of Rock Creek Parkway, even though he kissed her elbow and touched her hair. She drove along the Potomac River, and the glowing marble faces of the monuments rose up around them like an anc
ient city. The road was nearly empty but for them. The glittering water and the pale arched bridges were so beautiful they were struck silent.
For once it was a simple matter to park. They carried their bounty in a brown paper bag to the wide white stone steps and gazed up reverently at Mr. Lincoln, floodlit and enthroned in his marble temple.
“This is the most beautiful time to see the monuments, but nobody ever comes,” Lena explained, gesturing at the emptiness around them.
Some people might have thought that the solemn gaze of a great president might cool a person’s passion, but Lena disagreed. They ate and they kissed, deeper and more involved each time. She pinched off pieces of cookie dough and he gazed at her in her green tank top. He considered her shoulders, her neck, her mouth as though in a rapture. Her beauty through his eyes made her take a kind of pleasure in it she’d never felt before.
Was she making him as happy as he was making her? Was that even possible? But then again, could she feel this good, this close, if he weren’t feeling at least some of it too?
It seemed a fitting transition to go from the Great Emancipator to the very stars themselves, but you couldn’t see them when you were too near the lights. So they wandered off the landscaped paths to a dark, private clearing, where they lay on their backs, overlapping one ankle each. It was exceedingly thoughtful of the rest of the world to leave them completely alone.
The warm air was sweet tonight. The thick summer leaves were sweet. Tonight, even the garbage overflowing the rim of the can was sweet.
Some nights the stars winked and teased coldly from a great distance. Other nights they seemed to smolder and urge one on in a personal way. Tonight was the second kind of night. Lena felt grateful that it was summer, and that when they were together they had no ceiling pressing these feelings down.
First just their ankles touched. Then forearms and hands. Then, boldly, Lena found herself, her whole body on top of his, curving into all his parts and places. “Is this too fast?” she asked him.
“No.” He said it forcefully, as though afraid she might stop. “No and yes. Too fast and too slow.” His chest moved as he laughed. “But please don’t stop.”
The Second Summer of the Sisterhood Page 18