by David Amsden
“Oh thank you,” I said, taking the glass.
“Welcome,” her mother said. “Warmest now?”
“It’s warmer,” Claudia said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Getting there. Pretty warmest. Thank you.”
Now came this awkward moment that happened every time I came over here, had been happening during the almost whole year I’d been with Claudia. Her mother sits down with us on the couch, and then no one knows what to say. We just sit there, the three of us, sort of half smiling in silence, furiously sipping or eating whatever beverage or snack is present. The couch cushions really were stiff—you suddenly felt that now. And for some reason these moments always tended to occur just as I was getting an erection, so I’d be in that annoying state where you try not to think about it, you know, so it will go away, but then, because you’re trying so hard not to think about it, all that happens is it just keeps getting more ridiculous. So there we are, sitting there, waiting for her mother to get up, smile, tell us she’ll be in the kitchen, right around the corner, working on the dinner, if we need anything, anything at all.
“It’s just cooking dinner,” Claudia was saying. “God mom! Not working on the dinner.”
Her mother said something in Spanish, then left the room.
“Could you taste the chocolate?” I now asked. Finally, I’d kissed the girl.
“No,” she said. “I’ve been drinking it too.”
“I thought you’d taste like Bubble Yum.”
“I ran out,” she said.
Before Claudia, my experience with kissing wasn’t so impressive. That’s because it was confined only to those long, glorious make-out sessions with my bathroom mirror. Our first kiss happened during a game of truth or dare, where three orange Tic Tacs traveled from my mouth to hers. These were the anxious, mechanical, pistonlike kisses of kids. But they’d gotten much better, like more liquid, over the past year. And now my braces were off, so we didn’t have to worry about the taste of blood getting in the way anymore.
“Can you feel how warm it is?” Claudia was now asking, sort of whispering, her mouth right up to mine. “Because of the hot chocolate?”
“It feels cool,” I said. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Just wait,” she said.
“We’ll say we’re gonna go sledding.”
“We don’t have any sleds.”
“Who doesn’t have any sleds?” I asked.
“Us,” she said.
“Then we’ll say we’re gonna make a snowman.”
“Aren’t we too old for that?” Claudia asked.
We called it the rug, this place we went in the woods behind her house. It was called the rug because after the first few times we went there, I brought this old blanket I had lying around. Brown, nappy as hell, the thing looked like a depressed shag carpet. Not that I’m complaining: it was a lot better for fooling around on than the bare ground, which left us picking small rocks out of our skin, itching from never-cut blades of grass.
We started going back here over the summer, in the afternoons, pawing at each other until one of us had to get home for dinner. We kept the rug in one of those bags used for men’s suits. You know, the long plastic kind they give you at fancy stores like Macy’s. That way it wouldn’t get all screwed up in the rain.
And right now, our feet all crunching in the snow as we walked to the rug, the snow had eased up and I swear it wasn’t even cold out anymore. Like all of a sudden. I can’t explain it—sometimes my senses just flip on and off, get kind of frantic and go haywire, like they can only deal with so much at once. And right now that meant only Claudia.
It was just very quiet. That’s all I’m saying. You could even hear the few flakes falling down on themselves. No sun, no shadows. And feel that: Claudia’s breath turning to mist, the wind picking it up, breaking it against my face. You can smell her Chapstick, cherry flavored. It’s practically still happening, all of it, happening right this second, if you think about it the right way—
Every house in this neighborhood was white, one-story, all made of aluminum, only two models total. Call it a boring place, but I always liked that kind of order, found it sort of tranquil. There were no cars out, hadn’t been for a while, so everything was covered evenly in the snow, the houses practically blending right into the earth. Our footprints were the only things messing this up.
It was a snow day, school canceled for the third day in a row. What I’m saying is that maybe if it were a normal day, if it hadn’t been freezing, if it hadn’t been an entire three days since we’d last seen each other—well, I bet we would have made it to the rug, as was planned, a ten-minute walk down the path to that little weedy alcove where we kept it.
But that’s not what happened.
We were stopped now. Look at us, we’re right there: deep enough into the woods where it no longer feels like someone’s neglected backyard, where you no longer see houses squeezing through the slits in the trees. I turn to Claudia like—
“So?”
“Are you cold?” Claudia asks.
“No, are you?”
“Not really.”
“Yeah, me neither.” I guess I’d already forgotten that I’d just said this. “Do you want to…I don’t know…make a snowman?”
“You have a snowflake on your nose,” Claudia’s now saying—
It’s the same furious, charged, methodical kissing already mentioned, but with an added utilitarian element: it’s keeping us warm right now. The harder we kiss, the warmer we get, the heat in our mouths seeping all up through our faces, shattering into our heads, spiking down all through our bodies. My hands go up the back of Claudia’s jacket, up under her shirt, the strap of her bra running up under my fingernails. Her back’s so smooth, kind of sliding under my hands as she shivers, her vertebrae biting down on itself, spastic because of my cold palms. But she doesn’t seem too concerned, and a second later…my hands aren’t even cold anymore. I take Claudia’s hands now, because you had to do a lot of coaxing with Claudia, and I put them up the back of my jacket. It’s really crazy. Her hands had been on my cheeks, so they’re not cold at all. They almost burn even.
I begin unzipping the outer layer now, that Pirates Starter jacket I was telling you about.
“What are you doing exactly?” Claudia asks.
I don’t say anything, a smart enough move, as Claudia’s now the one unzipping that gay Columbia parka, now the windbreaker. So you should have seen us. God, it really was tremendous. Just look: we’re kneeling now on this sloppy pile of winter coats, both of us in only jeans and sweatshirts, kissing all maniacal.
“God, I’m not cold at all,” I now say.
“I know,” she says. “Me neither.”
“Like I’m even warm,” I say.
My hands up the front of her shirt now, they go up over her pretty-much-nonexistent breasts, just flip her bra up because I could never figure out that damn clasp. I like them. They’re manageable. They were the only breasts I’d ever touched, but already I knew I was the type of man who for whatever reasons is scared of breasts. I just never get what the point of touching them is. I don’t know. I think it’s that they’re just too motherly or something.
So I quickly unzip the front of my pants now, pull them down a bit, encourage the movement of her hand toward the opening of my plaid boxers. Yeah, and now I’m working the button-fly of her jeans. Since she’s kneeling, the denim is especially tight around her hips. You know, like each button’s a chore.
“Oh my God,” I’m now saying. “Do you even know how warm you are?”
I always liked looking down at my hand, it’s movement, at my fingers, how they went away up inside of her. Claudia wasn’t so into me looking, said it was too embarrassing. So I’d have to be careful about when I did it. Tact was a must. I’d kiss her neck and take these stealth glances downward. Or sort of make her kiss my neck and do the same thing. But right now she was j
ust kissing my neck on her own, really kissing hard, really into it.
So I decided to look down, at where my hand was. And at first I didn’t want to say anything, because Claudia was so crazed and I wasn’t really that bothered. But as I kept looking, watching what was happening, I found myself saying—
“Blood.”
“What?” Claudia asked, sort of dizzylike, absentminded, still all up in my neck.
“Blood,” I said again. “Blood.”
She pulled away, looked down.
“Oh my God,” she said.
“There’s blood, I know.”
“I’m bleeding.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah yeah yeah.”
“You’re bleeding,” I said. “Are you fine?”
We’re both looking down now, at my hand, kind of suspended between us. It was sort of amazing. It was almost entirely covered in blood, very thick and dark and gleaming, thickest around my first two fingers, then sort of streaking down toward my wrist. I mean, there had been that time at the movies, when we went to see Reality Bites, that stupid movie about rich kids just out of college trying to fake like they’re poor, and in the back corner Claudia was telling me no, that I had to stop, that she was on her period. I said I don’t care, like come on, please, wondering was it really that bad, and she went out to the bathroom, threw away her maxi pad, and came back and said okay. If you really want to, it’s okay now.
But then there was hardly any at all, just these thin pink-yellow streaks over the tips of my fingers. I didn’t really know what to do right now. What’s strange is, I wasn’t really scared, or all that worried, or any less attracted to her. I was just starting to feel the cold again. I was remembering that we were in the middle of the woods, in the snow, sort of half clothed on a pile of jackets. I started feeling funny about the fact that I had this unstoppable erection jetting out from my boxers.
Then Claudia was talking, saying—
“Oh God it’s getting on the jacket.”
“Oh that’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. It’s the inside, the lining. And it’s not even my jacket anyway.”
But I still moved my hand over to the side, wiping it on the snow. It was kind of pretty. We both looked, this solid red against solid white. The snow was absorbing it, spreading it out thin, going from red to pink.
“What are you doing?” Claudia now asked.
I was moving my hand back to her underwear, which, by the way, turned out to be pale blue and not white, and which were all twisted up and bunched right now. There was some hair coming out at the sides.
“I don’t know.” I said. “It’s okay. Is it okay?”
I slip my hand up under the lining now, just rest it there for a moment. It’s so warm you don’t even know. I kiss her. At first she doesn’t kiss me back, but then she does, kisses me real hard and I straighten my fingers and all of me gets warm, warm, really so warm—
Then she bites down on my bottom lip, hard, and then Claudia pulled away.
“What?” I said.
“The snow,” she said. “I can feel it. You know, down there.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no. It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t know. I kinda like it, if you don’t mind.”
“No,” I said. “Not at all.”
I pull my hand away and wipe it in the snow again, in a different place. We watch it dilute again. Then I move back and we’re kissing again, hard, just like before. I can feel the snow melting. I start kissing her neck, so I can look down. You can see it on my wrist now, just look: the blood, all mixed up with small pieces of shiny ice. It’s getting all over the jacket too, on the bright yellow nylon lining. I don’t care at all.
I don’t care about anything.
Then she pulls away once more, looks right into me. Right there she looked so honest.
“I think I know what it is,” she says. “What just happened. What’s happening.”
“Is it okay?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Claudia says. “It is. It’s fine.”
TWO
A few weeks before that day with Claudia, the one I just told you about, me and Mom were eating dinner at Boston Market, that fast food place that I swear is designed for divorced people and their kids—you know, so they can order an eighth of a turkey and string beans and pretend they still have a huge family or something. Me and Mom weren’t like this, though. We just loved the butternut squash.
But it was funny that we were eating here right now, I have to say, because I’d just got back from Maine, had gone up with Dad for Thanksgiving, and couldn’t shut up about the time I had up there. And now here we were, eating a meal like this. You know, fake Thanksgiving.
“I could never get over how huge his family is,” Mom was saying to me.
“I know what you mean,” I said.
I wish you could have been up in Maine for one of these Thanksgivings. Since Dad’s one of ten kids, and the only one who didn’t at least try to have ten of his own, they were really something. All these aunts, uncles, third cousins thrice removed. I was always amazed at how many people there were with the same blood as me who I didn’t really know. What was even more amazing is that I just loved them anyway.
“You know who’s really great?” I was saying to Mom now.
“Who’s that?”
“T.J.,” I said. “I spent most of my time hanging out with him.”
“You guys are around the same age, right?”
“Not really,” I said. “He’s twenty-three.”
“Jesus…,” Mom said. She hadn’t seen any of Dad’s family in almost ten years, since the divorce obviously, so it made sense that she’d be a little out of it when it came to everyone’s age and life story. “I can’t believe he’s twenty-three. I remember when T.J. was younger than you.”
T.J. was the oldest of all the cousins, and there was just something glamorous about him. With his almost-black brown eyes, the long lashes, and his black hair and tan skin, he was certainly the best looking person in the family, man or woman. He looked very clean, a lot like the guys you see blown up poster-size in cheap barber shops trying to fake like they’re glitzy, places like the Hair Cuttery. And T.J. dressed different from everyone else, real stylish. I admired this. He was living down in Florida, in Fort Myers, waiting tables at the Ritz Carlton. I know this may not sound fancy to you, but in that family it meant he’d got out and hit the big time. I was bussing tables and cleaning the grease trough at this chili restaurant down the street, Hard Times Cafe, so I thought I’d be able to talk the talk, relate to his life. But then T.J.’s telling me about all the celebrities he got to serve. People I’d never heard of, like John Ritter. Still, I was impressed as hell. What I liked about it was how adult his life was. I think when you get a father like mine you’re especially interested in real adults, you sort of search them out. It’s like a hobby. Thing was, talking to T.J., even though he was so grown-up and all, was still pretty much like talking with someone my own age.
“So does he like it in Florida?” Mom was now asking.
“I guess,” I said.
“I really can’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t get over how old everyone is.”
“You know what’s weird?” I now said. I’d been thinking about this for a few minutes, ever since we started talking about Dad’s family. “I always forget that you actually know these people too,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Mom said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I know you went up there a lot, like when you and Dad were married, but—”
“We went up with you too,” Mom said.
“I know,” I said, “but it’s not like I can remember that.”
“Not at all?” Mom asked. She almost sounded upset by this. “Seriously?”
“Nope,” I said. I wasn’t going to lie to her. Mom’s the one person I’d never lie to. “Nothing.”
Mom had this odd look
running all over her face right now. I’d seen this before. It was the same look she’d get when we talked about Opa, my grandfather, the one who died about ten minutes before Mom and Dad split up, in 1987. She’d go on and on about Opa and I’d just sit there, then say Mom, I don’t remember any of that, I only remember him in the hospital. It always blew her away that there were these things between us, different spaces in our lives that were filled with the same material, filled with people like Opa and Dad. You know, things that affected both of us, but just in completely opposite ways.
Later on, when I’d be a little older, and Mom would get this look—a sort of depressed but resilient look—I’d just think wow, this lady has been through it. I’d think about my friends’ mothers, how they always seemed ready to break apart, dissolve completely, and I’d wonder how does mine do it? She’d impress me, and in time I learned to say something to her, give her props for being such a cool lady. But when I was thirteen I didn’t really get any of that. Truth is, back then, whenever she got this look I just got uncomfortable, annoyed even.
So I went back to the subject at hand—
“Yeah…,” I said. “T.J. is pretty cool. He really is.”
I was hoping this would maybe bring us back to a kind of normal conversation. But then, I swear out of nowhere, Mom’s asking—
“Why don’t we go up?”
“What’s that?”
“To Maine,” she said. “Why don’t we go up, for Christmas?”
I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do with this.
“Um…,” I said. Then I didn’t say anything for a second. I just ate my squash. “Um…sure,” I said. “I mean, I guess so.”
“Just the two of us,” Mom was saying. “Your father’s staying down here at Ray’s for the holidays, so it won’t be a problem.”
I was getting more into the idea now, I admit. I mean, if you had seen Mom right there, how excited she looked, you would have been into it too, even if it was pretty bizarre.