The Lucky Kind

by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

  “You’re an asshole,” I said.

  “You’re blushing,” he replied.

  Eden’s apartment is one of those where the elevator opens right into the apartment, but not like Stevie’s, where it opens into a foyer where you see all this art with even a Rodin and a Miró that they inherited from his grandparents. The Reisses’ elevator opens right into the living room, and you can see an open kitchen to the right, and the only artwork is huge framed photographs mounted on exposed-brick walls. It’s kind of the cliché of a Tribeca loft, like from a movie about artists living in downtown Manhattan made by people who’ve never been to Manhattan. One of those movies that have scenes where something happens on East 59th Street and then a character has to take a cab to get to Bloomingdale’s, which is on East 59th Street.

  I’ve seen Eden’s mother before, at school functions and things, but she’s always dressed, obviously, when I see her, so I’m a little thrown by the woman walking toward us in flannel pajama pants and T-shirt. I notice that she’s obviously not wearing a bra and her breasts swing with every step, but in a way that is so unattractive that for a second I actually worry about what Eden’s boobs might look like without a bra, and I really hope they don’t swing like that.

  “Nick, right?” she says to me, and I nod, trying not to stare at her chest.

  “How are you, Mrs. Reiss?”

  “Becker, actually. My maiden name.”

  I nod. That happens with my mom all the time. She kept her maiden name, too—Ellerstein—and hates when people assume that her last name is Brandt.

  “I used to use Reiss,” she continues, “but I’ve decided I’m going back to Becker now.”

  I nod again. I don’t actually want to ask why.

  “Okay, Mom,” Eden says, and I’m relieved she’s taking control. “We have that history thing to study for, remember?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Okay,” Eden says, and turns to the right. I begin to follow her when Ms. Becker says, “Staying for dinner, Nick?”

  I look at Eden. I don’t know if I’m invited to stay for dinner. She hadn’t mentioned that.

  “We’ll probably get pizza or something,” Eden says, though I’m not sure if she’s telling her mother that, or me.

  “Because, you know, Nick, I might cook something, so I would just need to know how many people to cook for. Eden’s father never tells us when he’ll be home, and it’s very annoying not to know for whom you are cooking.”

  I look at Eden again. Ms. Becker said “for whom you are cooking” very slowly, with an emphasis on the words “whom” and “are.”

  “You never cook, Mom,” Eden says finally. “If we decide to order something, I’ll let you know, in case you want in on it.”

  Ms. Becker doesn’t say anything. I think she’s pretending not to hear. Eden starts walking again and I follow her into her room and she closes the door firmly behind her. My mother wouldn’t let us do that, and even though I suspect it’s more to do with the fact that Eden’s mom isn’t entirely, well, aware, I mostly just feel lucky that Ms. Becker isn’t the kind of mom who notices when her daughter closes the door to her room with a boy on the other side of it.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Eden says.

  “About what?” I say.

  “Don’t pretend to be clueless,” she says, and she sounds angry at me.

  I nod. I think how I would feel if my mother met one of my friends with her breasts swinging low and complained about my father, intimating that she was thinking of leaving him by changing her name. I don’t think Eden is embarrassed; I think she’s angry.

  I say, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, either,” she says, and sits down on the floor, leaning against her bed. I sit down next to her. I’m not touching her, but being this close to her makes my stomach hurt.

  “Don’t worry,” she says, “you’ll probably be gone before my dad gets home and their bickering begins. He works late. Later and later, actually. I don’t blame him; I’d avoid it, too. I mean, I can’t believe she said that, about changing her name.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, and then, realizing how condescending that sounds, I add, “I mean, I won’t tell anyone about it.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She shrugs. “I mean, anyone can tell by looking at them. They’re not going to last much longer, or if they are, it certainly won’t be any good.”

  “Oh?”

  “You should hear the things she says when he does get home. You wouldn’t know what to make of it. Nothing like that happens at your house.” She says it like she knows it for a fact.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, and I’m surprised at how defensive I sound, like it’s an insult that she thinks that my parents don’t fight.

  “Dude, your parents hold hands on parents’ day.”

  “They do?”

  “Yeah. You never noticed?”

  I shrug.

  “I saw them, sitting in the back of the room. Like this,” she says, and she takes my hand in hers. “Your dad even squeezed her hand,” she says, “like this,” and she squeezes my hand. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but my skin where she is touching me feels so hot that I can’t believe she hasn’t let go, like the way you’d drop a hot plate.

  “I didn’t know,” I say, thinking only of the fact that she may be the only person, other than, say, my parents and my grandparents, whose hand I’ve held. Her skin is so soft it’s almost slippery.

  “I was watching them,” she says, kind of wistfully, leaning her head back against her bed, loosening her grip on my hand, but not letting go.

  I should say something. This is an opportunity. I mean, I’ve been in rooms alone with girls before. I’ve leaned toward them and kissed them, at parties, maybe snuck off to someone else’s bedroom or even their bathroom, tried sticking my hands up a shirt or under a waistband. But being alone with Eden is nothing like that, and it certainly doesn’t feel like a moment to make a move. Our hands are resting in the space between our legs, but loosely, like we’ve been holding each other’s hands for years, like it’s not a big deal. It doesn’t even feel like she was really taking my hand, only that she was trying to show me something. But I should at least say something.

  But she speaks first. “I guess we should study now, huh?” she says, and when she gets on her hands and knees to reach for her backpack, she drops my hand.

  Chips & Salsa

  I stay long enough that we eventually order pizza for dinner. Eden asks her mother if she wants any, and Ms. Becker says no; then when the pizza arrives, she eats more than half the pie, so Eden and I only get a slice and a half each. I leave hungry, just as, it turns out, her father gets home. He steps off the elevator as I’m about to get on it.

  “Hi, Dad,” Eden says. He’s wearing gray pants and a blue shirt; I get the impression his closet is filled with rows of nothing but gray pants and blue shirts. He’s tall, and he doesn’t look so much at Eden or at me as he looks above our heads at the living room behind us. After a second of silence, Eden slides between his body and the wall to catch the elevator before the door can close.

  “See you later, Nick,” Eden says, and I step past her father, and past her, onto the elevator. Eden’s hair looks especially dark as her father walks into the apartment behind us; I’m not sure if he noticed that Eden had a friend over. I hold Eden’s gaze until the elevator door closes.

  When I get home, I head straight for the kitchen. I find a bag of chips and a container of salsa, which I eat standing up, leaning over the kitchen counter.

  “Don’t you at least want to take off your backpack?” my dad says behind me.

  “Jesus, Dad, you’re gonna make a person choke, sneaking up like that.”

  “Sorry,” he says, and he grabs the chips and salsa, carries them out of the kitchen and to the dining room table, and sits down. I slide my backpack off and leave it on the kitchen floor, then I follow him.

  “Where’s Mom?”
/>
  “Walking Pilot.”

  “Oh.”

  We sit there, eating our chips and salsa. It’s a good thing I actually did end up studying a lot at Eden’s house, because I’m not at all interested in studying now.

  “What does Sam Roth’s mother do now?” I say, lifting a chip to my mouth.

  “What?” he says, though he doesn’t sound surprised that I brought it up, doesn’t even stop on his way to dip a chip into the salsa.

  I wait a little before repeating my question, chew some more, and then swallow.

  “Sam Roth’s mom—what does she do?”

  “Her name’s Michelle. She’s a high school principal. The school Sam graduated from, as a matter of fact.”

  I shake my head, reaching for another chip, like this will be a casual question. “No, I mean, his real mother. Your old girlfriend.” I can’t remember her name.

  “Oh. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No. We lost touch after the baby was born. I assume she got married, left town, did what most people did.”

  “She might still be living in Troy?”

  “I doubt it.” I scratch the roof of my mouth, shoving a whole chip in. Ever since we got on this subject, I’ve been eating fast, like I’m starving. A piece of chip gets caught in my throat, with sharp edges, but I don’t cough. If I did, Dad would get up, pat my back, tell me I should be more careful, take my time, and the rhythm of the conversation would be lost.

  “But, like, we could bump into her when we visit Grandma and Grandpa this Christmas.”

  “No. I don’t think so. She left Troy, I’m sure.” Dad seems to have made up his mind to believe it.

  “Doesn’t Sam know where she lives?”

  Dad shakes his head. “How would he?”

  “Well, he called us.”

  “Oh. Sarah”—right, that’s her name—“didn’t put her name on the registry.”

  “The registry,” I repeat, thinking of college registrar offices and presents for cousins’ weddings bought off a registry.

  “There’s a registry,” Dad says. “You can opt in to be found, if someone decides to look for you. But only after the child has turned eighteen.”

  “What made you decide to go onto the registry now?”

  “Now?”

  “Well, he’s only just found us, so what made you decide to opt in now?”

  Dad leans back now, places his hands on his stomach so that I know he’s done eating.

  “Actually, I signed up the very day Sam turned eighteen.”

  “Oh.”

  Dad doesn’t say anything, and I can’t decide which question to ask next. Finally, I say, “Well, why did he wait till now to call us?”

  “He hadn’t gone on the registry until this past summer.”

  “Right, so what made him decide to do it now, this summer?”

  Dad pauses, smiles faintly. “He’s getting married,” he says, more an exhalation than a sentence. I can’t tell, but it almost sounds like he’s pleased, maybe even proud.

  “But Sarah isn’t on the registry.”

  “No.”

  “But he could find her now. I mean, you could tell him her whole name—what’s her last name?”

  Dad looks at me. I think he’s actually considering not telling me this woman’s name, as though I might go looking for her or something. As though he’s forgotten that I certainly have no reason to try to find her.

  “Sarah Booker,” he says finally.

  “Good name.”

  “Yes. A great name.”

  “Like a woman in a novel.”

  “Yeah. A 1920s novel with good honest words and good clear names.”

  “Ernest Hemingway,” I suggest, and Dad nods.

  “So why not tell Sam her name? He could find her now.”

  “He doesn’t want to. He didn’t even want to know her name.”

  “Why?”

  Dad looks away from me now, up at the ceiling, like maybe the answer’s stuck up there somewhere, like he threw it up behind the lights and all he has to do is reach around the bulb to get it down.

  “It’s hard for me to explain to you, Nick.”

  “Why? Seems like the natural next step, after finding you.”

  “That’s just the thing, Nick—he didn’t go out and find me. It’s not as though he had to search for me. Essentially, by signing up on the registry, I gave him my name, I gave him my phone number, and I told him where I live.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, Sarah hasn’t done that.”

  “Right, but now you can just tell him, and he doesn’t need the registry.”

  I get up now, go back into the kitchen and toss the almost empty bag of chips, put the lid back on the salsa, put it in the fridge. Our kitchen is open, like Eden’s, so from here, leaning against the countertop, I am looking straight at Dad sitting at the table. I can watch him talking slowly to me like I’m a little kid who can’t understand anything.

  “He doesn’t need the registry anymore,” I repeat.

  Dad shakes his head. He’s not looking at me.

  “Sam thinks he does. He doesn’t want to go after her like that. Her not registering is basically like her saying she doesn’t want to know him, as far as Sam’s concerned. And he doesn’t want to meet her like that.”

  “Oh,” I say, pushing away from the kitchen counter and standing up straight. “I think I’m going to get ready for bed now.”

  Dad nods, and I grab my backpack from the kitchen floor and walk past the dining room table toward my room without looking at him. I don’t hear the sound of his chair being pushed away from the table, so I guess my dad is just sitting there, brushing chip crumbs from the stubble on his chin, waiting for Mom to come home with Pilot; when they walk this long, it usually means they’ve gone to the bookstore, and she comes home with new novels and magazines. My dad must be sitting there waiting, and thinking about Sarah Booker and Sam Roth.

  I’m thinking of them now, and it’s strange, I suppose, that I can’t help thinking of them collectively even though they’re two people who’ve never met each other, who don’t even know one another’s names. And I guess it’s not really fair now that I know both of their names, when neither of them knows the other’s.

  I reach into my pocket for my cell phone and turn it on. I’d kept it turned off at Eden’s house, ’cause I knew Stevie’d be texting me something ridiculous. Now I can see that Stevie has sent me no fewer than eight text messages. I scroll through them.

  1: Don’t get lost on your way to Tribeca.

  2: Eden Eden bo beden banana fana fo feden me mi mo meden Eden.

  3: I hope you guys are studying at least a little cause dude you do not want a bad grade on this sucker.

  4: Sorry, that last message was insensitive. You get very good grades.

  5: What color is Eden’s bra today?

  6: Matching panties?

  7: Jesus I hate the word panties.

  8: Hope the rest of your night is okay.

  I take a second look at that eighth one—no way did Stevie send something so harmless. It’s from Eden. Shit. I should write back, like right now. She might have sent this the minute I left her apartment, which was well over an hour ago, and now she thinks I’m an asshole not to have written her back, I bet.

  I hit reply.

  Hey—just got your message. My phone was off. Thanks for studying.

  Hopefully we’re ready for the test.

  What am I, writing a novel? I delete everything but “hey.”

  Couldn’t be better than the beginning of my night—

  Delete. That sounds creepy, not flirty.

  Finally, I write:

  Hey—thanks. You too.

  I hit send. I should call Stevie, but I really don’t feel like talking; I don’t want to tell about Eden’s mother’s breasts and the way she introduced herself, or about the way Eden took my hand and have to explain that it wasn’t the right time to make a m
ove. I don’t want to say that I only had a little bit of pizza and that I had to come home and snack, and I definitely do not want to think about, let alone talk about, talking to my dad over chips and salsa.

  So I just text Stevie that I’m crashing, and that he’s a loser, and that I’ll see him tomorrow and I plan to smoke his sorry ass on the quiz.

  It is much, much easier to text Stevie than to text Eden. When I can’t fall asleep, I double-check to make sure that I didn’t accidentally hit reply to the wrong message so that what was meant for Stevie somehow made its way to Eden.

  Smooth

  “So, touched the forbidden fruit yet?”

  “Huh?” I’m leaning against my locker; Stevie’s leaning against the locker to my right. We’re both looking straight ahead.

  “Notice that I said touch, not tasted, buddy.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  “What time’d you get home last night?”

  “I don’t know … around nine.”

  “Dude, you didn’t text me till, like, ten-thirty.”

  “I was talking to my dad.”

  “Oh.” I feel the lockers shifting behind me, and I guess Stevie is twisting to face me, but I don’t turn. “You know, he looked terrible this morning. How’s the market treating him?”

  “Huh?”

  “This morning, when your mom fed me breakfast? Your dad looked like he hadn’t slept in ages.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Everything okay, then?”

  “Yeah. He’s just, you know, got a lot on his mind.”

  “To say nothing of wondering whether his little boy has had any luck with the apple tree.”

  “You know …” A third voice enters the conversation, and the lockers give under some new weight leaning on them. I turn and I’m horrified to see Eden leaning back on the other side of Stevie. How long has she been there—and seriously, how much has she heard?

  “You know, Stevie,” she says, “there’s nothing in the Bible to suggest it was an apple.”