by Leigh Stein
When Nate got in the car, he wiped his glasses on the hem of his new, dry t-shirt. He smelled the way the hills of Ireland look in soap commercials. It wasn’t raining very hard anymore, but still he insisted on driving me; he said if I tried to walk and it started to pour again he would never forgive himself.
There were leafy branches cluttering the streets and clogging the gutters. The rainwater moved in slow whirlpools, looking for an exit.
There is a picture of you in my sock drawer, I thought. I couldn’t get my brain to think of anything else. I was busy pretending that his Jetta was a Winnebago when Nate said something that I totally missed.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Amy was asleep in the attic,” Nate repeated, “when I went up there.”
“She was asleep?”
“With the door locked. I had to knock for a while before she got up to open it. She likes to sleep when it rains.” I couldn’t tell if he was irritated or amused.
He drove with both hands on the wheel and left the windshield wipers on low to catch the droplets that fell from the trees that we passed. I didn’t know what to say. So, what do you do for fun? Are you a recreational user of prescription pain medication? We drove west on Madison, past the police station, my old high school, the tennis courts, the track, the empty, shady acre beneath a row of pine trees where Summer had taught me how to smoke when I was sixteen, the places I normally passed each day while I walked to Amy’s, listening to my iPod, and fantasizing about what life would be like if I had brain cancer or botulism.
Nate drove the speed limit, or slightly under, and was especially cautious at four-way stop signs. Was he driving so slowly because of the wet streets? Or did he want the ride to last? Was he hoping we’d get in some minor accident, nothing fatal, so we would have a reason to stand together outside in the rain while we waited for the police to arrive, and talk about our dreams?
When trying to decide a course of action, it is usually helpful to ask yourself, What would Anne of Green Gables do?
Something brave and outrageous. Definitely.
Do something sexy.
“A couple days ago I taught May how to jump on one foot,” I said, knowing as soon as I said it that it wasn’t sexy at all, but I couldn’t stop myself. “She can stand on one foot and hula hoop, too. Like a flamingo.”
“Isn’t that something,” he said, but he wasn’t listening. He continued to stare ahead at the road with the paranoid intensity of someone wanted by the law, and it made me remember a movie I had seen about a high school math teacher whose daughter is impaled on the fence outside their house. Unable to cope with her death, he starts to talk to the potted plants in the high school hallways. Did I want Nate for the same reason I had wanted Jack? Because I felt like they were hiding some sad or violent thing and I wanted to be the one to unearth it?
The streetlights were working again. Stopped at the next red light, Nate turned in his seat to look at me.
“What,” I said, but it came out all choked-sounding. I cleared my throat.
“Does Amy show you what she does up there?” he said.
“In the attic, you mean?”
“Her paintings? Anything?”
“No,” I said, slightly startled by my own answer. She didn’t. She never had.
“Just that theater that’s on your wall,” I added, as if that would make a difference.
“She won’t show me either.”
We both let the truth of that settle in. What did Amy do up in the attic? Watch May and me from the window and take naps on a pile of drop cloths?
“Sometimes when she comes downstairs, I see glue on her fingers and her nails are dirty,” I offered. “Maybe she’s building something.”
Nate didn’t say anything. He fiddled with the gear shift, keeping it in neutral. “May likes you a lot,” he said. “When you’re not there she asks when you’ll be back.”
“I like her a lot, too,” I said. The light changed to green, but Nate continued to stare at me.
“Are your eyes hazel or brown?”
“What?”
He leaned in closer. “Brown?”
“Hazel,” I said.
“Hazel.”
His were also hazel, but more flecked with green than mine.
“You can go,” I told him. “The light’s green.”
“I guess they just looked brown in this light.” He shifted into first and we drove the short remaining distance to my house. We passed the high school cross-country team; some boys were shirtless, soaked to the skin. Three years ago I could have found them good-looking, but if I looked now, I would be a pervert. I looked.
“Do me a favor, Esther,” Nate said as we pulled into my driveway. “Next time you’re over, ask Amy to show you what she’s working on.”
“I’ll try,” I said, knowing even then that I wouldn’t.
I unbuckled my seat belt, but I didn’t really want to get out, didn’t really want to go home, would have rather stayed in a place where it was possible something might happen to me, and was glad when Nate asked if he could ask me one more thing.
“Yeah,” I said, “what?”
“Forget it. I can’t.”
“What is it?”
“Can you promise that my question will stay between the two of us?”
“Who would I tell?” I said.
Do you want to die in my arms tonight?
Why, yes, I do, thank you for asking!
“Do you, um, deal pot?” Nate said.
Oh, shit.
“Do I deal pot?”
“Can you sell me some?”
“Are you a cop?”
“Of course I’m not a cop.”
“If you’re not a cop, how do you know I even smoke?”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not a drug dealer.”
“No, I didn’t think you were. I just thought you might. You know.”
“Know what?”
“I feel stupid now,” Nate said. “Forget that I asked. Totally inappropriate.”
He put his hands on the wheel again. Ten and two. I felt embarrassed for him. I knew I was being paranoid, and paranoia isn’t sexy at all, but I’d been so surprised when he’d asked.
“Don’t feel stupid,” I said. “Theoretically, if I did have some, would you have anything to smoke it out of? Theoretically?”
“I guess not.”
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
I ran inside. My mom was at the dining room table, cutting something out of fabric. “I’m making Fourth of July napkins,” she said. “They’re red, white, and blue.”
“I see that,” I said, and went straight to my room. I threw a pipe and the Altoids tin where I kept it into my purse and went back out to the car.
“Where are you going now?” my mom called as I was leaving.
“Be right back,” I said, and locked the front door behind me so I wouldn’t be responsible if a murderer walked in.
“Drive,” I told Nate.
“Where should we go?”
“Go to the back of the middle school. Behind the soccer fields. There’s a parking lot.”
“Okay,” he said. Nate didn’t turn to look at me at the next red light. I felt confused. Instead of thinking about what we were about to do, we were just doing it. If Jack knew what I was doing, he would say that Nate was a pervert, and I was naïve.
Did Jack know the color of my eyes?
“Park under those trees,” I said.
WHAT WILL YOUR LIFE BE LIKE IN TWENTY YEARS? CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE QUIZ AND FIND OUT!
After she leaves the faun’s warm parlor, the Littlest Panda goes back to the lamppost. She doesn’t quite understand how an ordinary lamppost could be a portal to another world, but the faun has confirmed her suspicion that it is, and before she knows it she is once again surrounded by mink furs and Valentino gowns. The interior of the armoire smells like her mother’s perfume, which makes her feel sad, and a little
sorry for being away for so long, for she knows she must have caused her siblings to worry. She was just having such a lovely time.
“Hello?” the panda calls out, as she emerges from the wardrobe. “It’s me, everybody! I’m home!” They’ll be so relieved to see her!
She takes off running down the long hall.
Run, panda, run!
She knows her brothers and sister won’t be mad at her when they hear that they’ve been chosen to be soldiers for Hanukkah!
The little panda finds all three of them in the rec room, playing Guitar Hero. They don’t even look up when she enters the room.
“Guess what!” she says, in the breathless voice of a track and field star.
“What,” her brother says, her brother who was supposed to be looking for her but forgot.
“I know I was gone for a super long time but now I’m back! And guess what?” No one guesses. She goes on: “I met a faun and he smokes a pipe, but it isn’t gross, and anyway, he lives in this land where it’s always winter and I was kind of transported into the land by hiding in that old wardrobe upstairs! Transported? Is that the word—transported? Propelled? I landed near a lamppost and now he needs our help to save Hanukkah from the Evil White Witch! Let’s go! If we don’t help she’ll give him sweets and persecute him!”
They all stare at her. She can’t understand why no one is on their feet, racing her back to the wardrobe.
Then the cuckoo clock strikes noon, and she realizes with a queasy feeling, a feeling like she’s on a boat in choppy waters, that she has only been gone for three minutes.
• • •
“What would you do,” I said, “if after you took me to my house you went back to your own house, put the car in park, opened the car door, and realized your legs were missing? Go.”
“That’s a good one,” Nate said. “I don’t know what I would do.”
“Would you call someone?”
“Would I still be able to drive the car?”
“Yes,” I said. “Wait. No. No, you wouldn’t.”
“Then I’d park in the garage and keep it running until I asphyxiated on carbon monoxide and died.”
I wasn’t too sure how to follow that one—it seemed like something only a very depressed person would say. Nate didn’t look depressed. But apparently neither did I, because I was entrusted with the care of a four-year-old.
“Think about it, though. If you didn’t have any legs you could ride in one of those electric shopping carts at Walmart,” I said, which made Nate laugh in the soft, easy way of someone who isn’t really listening but can still recognize a punch line.
The sun had set and the stars were out, or at least they would have been, if we lived in a place with less light pollution. Nate had the moon roof open and we had reclined our seats so we could look up without actually leaving the car and risk being seen together. The clock on the dash said 9:06. It seemed like every time I thought to check the clock, an entire hour had passed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a crushed apple juice box on the floor behind Nate’s seat, and a cardboard book in the shape of a lamb entitled Fuzzy Wuzzy Little Lamb.
“Give me one,” I said. “A hypothetical.”
“It’s hard to think of them. You’re better at this.”
“Are you still so stoned?”
“Yes,” Nate said. He closed his eyes and put his finger to his lips to indicate that this was a secret. I pretended to lock my own lips and throw away the key, but realized too late that I had no audience. His eyes were still closed.
“I wish we had some cigarettes. Let’s go buy some cigarettes.”
“Why don’t you steal some from Amy?” I said.
At this Nate opened his eyes.
“Amy doesn’t smoke,” he said.
“What?”
“Amy doesn’t smoke, I said.”
I’m going to go outside for a minute.
To s-m-o-k-e.
“You’re right,” I lied. “I don’t know why I said that.” I didn’t want to talk about Amy. If we started to talk about Amy or May, I knew that Nate would realize the time and that he had been gone for too long. At around seven, he had called Amy to tell her he’d be home late.
I’m going to the mall.
To buy shoes, I whispered.
I’m going to the mall to buy shoes! Nate said, and I flinched a little. I need new shoes! He paused. No, I lost my navy ones. I think I left them at Mike’s that day we played tennis. Okay. Love you, too. Bye.
“Cigarettes just sound good for some reason,” Nate said. “Might as well go all out and do everything I’m not supposed to do at the same time.”
“In that case, let’s drive to the 7–11. We can pick up a couple 40s and some teen prostitutes while we’re there,” I said.
“How old are you again?”
If this were a reality dating show, I would have pushed a buzzer and ended the date right then, before we even got to the free drinks and the hot tub. I had just started to relax, but now my paranoid self-consciousness had returned. With Jack it had been: do I look the right way, which underwear had I put on that morning, will I say the right things if he makes me watch him play video games? With Nate it was: how can I be both sarcastic and endearing, does he want me to pretend to be his age or does he want to pretend to be mine, where will we go after this and what will we do there?
“I’m seventeen.”
“Come on,” he said.
“I’ll be twenty-three in six months.”
“So … December.”
“Basically. I mean, technically, January fifth, but that’s like December.”
“You’re twenty-two now, though.”
“Technically,” I said. My mouth was so dry my tongue felt like a cheap washcloth. A washcloth from Walmart. Electric shopping cart. At some point Nate had turned the engine off because we didn’t need the air conditioning anymore, but now I felt claustrophobic. I asked him to turn on the battery so I could roll down my window and stick my arm out. The air was still damp from the storm, but cooler now than in the day, and I saw fireflies flashing Morse code above the nearby soccer fields like heliographs.
“God,” Nate said, “what was I even doing when I was twenty-two,” which was the second thing I did not want to hear.
When I was your age we didn’t have e-mail! We didn’t have global warming! I had to type my college papers on a typewriter and measure the margins with a wooden ruler!
“I went to engineering school before I decided to get a degree in accounting,” Nate said, “and when I was twenty I was living in a dorm suite with two other guys: Craig and Dave. Craig was a pothead and Dave was like an idiot savant, though now he’d probably be considered autistic. Anyway, Dave had a perfect SAT score, had graduated high school when he was sixteen, and could do these insane calculations off the top of his head like Rain Man. And although Dave had the social graces of a, I don’t know, a meth addict at a cotillion? He loved Tetris and when he found out I could play, he challenged me to a nightly Nintendo duel.”
“I didn’t know they had Nintendo in the 1950s,” I said, a little attempt at revenge.
Nate turned his head to look at me. Our arms were next to each other on the console, barely touching. “This was 1990, you Generation Y, Internet culture zombie.” He seemed proud of himself for that one.
“Hey,” I said. “I read books.”
“Teen Vogue is not a book.”
And at that I put both my hands in my lap. I felt confused. I knew he was kidding, we were both kidding, but part of me was like, Does he really think I read Teen Vogue? I mean, he was right, I did read Teen Vogue, but I didn’t want my entire being defined by it. I also read the Tribune every day, and I’d read at least three Ayn Rand books, not to mention the entire Chronicles of Narnia series and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Nate didn’t appear to pick up on my negative body language, and continued with his story.
“Every day after class, I’d smoke with Craig and play Tetris with Da
ve. He liked having someone to play against who could match his level. And that’s how I spent my twentieth year. The end.”
“Right,” I said. “But I’m not twenty.”
I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t say anything else, just waited for the clouds to pass so I could see the moon. Nate is Jack, I realized. Nate is Jack grown up. Jack will grow up to be Nate. When Jack is thirty-eight he will be smoking pot with his daughter’s babysitter in the middle school parking lot.
Apparently, no one ever grew up to be noble and brave and wise. Apparently, this was just a lie perpetuated by children’s book authors. Thanks, Frances Hodgson Burnett! High five, Louisa May Alcott! Now, at twenty-two, I finally knew the truth:
In another twenty years I would still be depressed and apathetic. I would still be waiting for that turning point, the one that comes in books and plays, where the hero has to step up and risk it all. Apparently, in life, there is no such thing. In another twenty years I would just be a heavier, more nearsighted, more clumsy version of the girl I was now, except that I wouldn’t even be allowed to read Teen Vogue, because I would be seen as either mentally ill or as a pedophilic lesbian.
I had been waiting for something monumental to happen to me in my life and now saw that nothing was ever going to happen. This was it.
“Is something wrong?”
“Nopity nope,” I said. There was the moon, finally. It was full and luminous, like a hula hoop covered in silver lamé.
“Esther, what did I say?”
“Nothing.”
“Was it the Tetris part or the pot part?”
“What?” I said.
“That upset you,” he said.
“You didn’t upset me. I just realized something and upset myself.”
“Should I take you home now?”
“Yeah,” I said. “In a minute.”
He started the car, but didn’t adjust his seat from its reclined position.
“Final hypothetical,” I said. “There are no more planes or cars or school buses or anything.”
“I’d plant a garden,” he said without hesitation, and for another minute we didn’t move. We stayed in our seats and stared at the sky, and when he put his hand over mine all was forgiven, it was as if he had just asked a question to which I had said yes.