He put his hand to his chin. “No,” he said after a moment. “I don’t mind.”
She looked around the room. There was a drawing board in one corner, a bureau, a chair with some clothes draped over it and one thing that surprised her, a full-length oval mirror in a wooden frame. What now? she thought. Was that all? Was that it? Did she have to leave?
But then Scott said, “Do you play checkers?”
“Checkers?”
“Don’t you like them?” He sounded disappointed. The nap had made him feel better, he said, put him in exactly the right mood for a good game of checkers.
“I usually play chess with Tobi.” She got the board and checkers from the closet. Scott patted the side of his bed and after just a tiny moment she sat down. “You want red or black?”
“Red,” he said. “I always play red.”
After a few moves she could tell that, even sick, he was a lot more serious and a whole lot better at checkers than she was. He studied the board, frowning, tapping his lips. Was that where Liz had picked up that habit? Karen made her moves fast and without a lot of thought. It was like playing chess with Tobi. After the first few moves, she knew he was going to wipe her out.
“Not a bad game,” he said, after he’d finished her off. He had crowned every one of his kings and taken almost all of hers.
“It was a terrible game. Don’t laugh.” She knocked the pieces onto the floor. “I’m a sore loser.”
He started coughing, his face got red, and he leaned back against the pillow. “In high school we had a checkers club. Not a chess club. That was for the brains. I was our star checkers player.”
“A fine time to tell me.”
“You’re impressed? I never once, not in my entire checkers career, impressed a girl with that news.” He reached for a cigarette from the pack on the bedside table.
“You shouldn’t,” she said, and held out her hand for one for herself.
“You’re right. Neither should you.”
“If you don’t smoke, I won’t.”
“I’m not going to inhale,” he said.
“Okay, I won’t either.” She stuck the cigarette between her lips.
“What are you going to do when you graduate high school?” he asked.
“I’m not totally sure yet. I have a lot of different ideas.”
“That’s good. I didn’t know for quite a while what I was going to do. I didn’t know all the way through college. Then it came to me—I’ve been wasting my time! All I want to do is build.… So, that’s what I’m doing.” He sat up, raising his knees. His hair was damp, curling down onto his forehead and over his ears. “What kinds of things are you interested in? What do you think about?”
“A lot of things.” She looked down at the blanket, smiling a little.
“You think about the world situation?”
“Sure, don’t you? Doesn’t everybody?”
“Well, what do you think?”
“Bad. Very bad.”
“How about the economy?”
“Gives me a headache.”
“My feeling exactly. How about boys?”
“Hmmm … not like girls.”
“Remarkable. Tell me, Karen, are kids still getting together in the same old way?”
She waved the cigarette as if to say, if he was talking about sex, nothing had changed.
“Ahh, so.”
“Human nature,” she said.
“You get sex ed. in school these days, don’t you?”
“Not really. Family Life. I had to care for a goldfish for a week.” She explained about Gladys Goldfish and Eggbert.
“I missed out on all that fun.” Then he started talking about how kids really learn about sex. “I suppose you learn the most from your parents. And after that, you learn from your friends and on the street. It’s not so bad.”
“Maybe,” she said. “And sometimes it’s awful.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was just thinking … after I started kindergarten, one of the big boys pushed me down in the playground, fell right down on top of me.”
“He fell down?”
“No, he threw himself down on me, wouldn’t let me get up.”
She stopped, remembering how the boy had said, I fick fick fick you! Even though she’d never heard the real word, she still knew what it meant. In some way she knew and she was terrified.
“Baby rape,” Scott said. “What did you do?”
She shrugged. The conversation was making her uncomfortable now. “I yelled and scared him off.”
“Good for you.” He lay back against the pillow and a moment later, he’d dropped off to sleep again.
Karen tiptoed out of the room. In the kitchen, she ate an apple and some cheese. Harold and Alfred were whining and pawing at the door. Let us in, Karen, pul-eeeeze!
“Okay, you guys, but you gotta be quiet.” They tumbled in, grinning. She filled their water bowls. They sounded like Niagara Falls when they drank. “Shhh! Scott’s sleeping.”
When she went back into the bedroom, Scott was still asleep, lying on his side, one hand under his chin. She sat down in the chair across from the bed. The other night she and Tobi had watched a movie about a teenage girl in love with an older man. The girl, who was seventeen and incredibly sexy (Tobi disgustedly said that in real life the actress was thirty-one), went all out to make the older man see that he should let go and fall in love with her, too. Actually, secretly, he already was crazy about her, but he didn’t want to admit it because he thought the difference in their ages was too great.
The girl, though, thought love was the most important thing. She didn’t care about anything else! She wanted him and did just about anything she could think of to influence him, including stripping off her clothes on the beach when he was watching. He had a wife, which was the bad news, but the good news for the girl was that she didn’t have to think about his wife because (luckily—or anyway, conveniently) she was someplace else, far away.
That definitely helped. Liz, for instance, was right here. What if her flu took a turn for the worse, her temperature shot up, and before they had a chance to even call the ambulance, she went into a coma? DOA. First the shocking phone call from the emergency room doctor. Ms. Freed? I want you to break this news gently to your mother. I have bad, very bad news.… Then the funeral, all of them weeping. Poor Scott! He’d be inconsolable. Karen would be the only one who could make the tiniest dent in his misery.
On the other hand, it would be better all around if Liz didn’t die. She didn’t want Liz dead. Just away. Far away. Very far away, and not coming back. For instance, if Liz were in California … but that wouldn’t work. Liz didn’t like California. Last year she’d gone out there with a girl friend for a couple weeks and come back saying she wouldn’t care if the San Andreas fault opened up wide enough to swallow the whole goofy state.
Maybe she’d like to go to Africa on a safari. No, that would only be for a month at most, and then she’d be home again. Karen pondered. Since Liz didn’t like the Sunshine State, maybe she’d flip for snowy Alaska. She could live in a cabin and write poems about cold and frost and polar bears. She’d be away, but happy, while Scott would be here and lonely.
Karen got up quietly so as not to wake him and looked at herself for a while in the mirror. The dogs came in. “Shhh!” Harold lay down on the floor with his chin on his paws. Alfred took over the chair, turning around and around like a cat until he got comfortable. “Thanks a lot, Alfie,” Karen whispered. “Where am I supposed to sit?”
Alfred looked at her out of one eye. Suit yourself, Karen, sit on the bed, just don’t bother me, puleeeze.
She sat down carefully on the bed. The room was quiet, just the sounds of the dogs snuffling in their sleep. Everyone was sleeping but her. She yawned and leaned back, breathing quietly. Scott had turned to lie on his other side. He faced her, the blankets pulled up around his ear, his mouth slightly open. She slid down a little, then a little more,
until she was lying flat on the bed next to him.
When she woke up, Scott was looking at her, his eyes sleepy. “Hu-lo,” he said.
“Hu-lo.” The smell of his skin came to her: fresh wood and cigarettes and cough drops. Their faces were close. She didn’t know if she could bear it, if she was going to live or die. Scott touched her chin with one finger, his face came closer still, and he kissed her.
Then suddenly the dogs were on the bed, Harold and Alfred, both of them leaping on Scott and Karen, licking their faces, grinning and happy. You’re kissing? We want to kiss, too. Scott sat up, his hair mussed. He didn’t look at Karen. He grabbed Alfred by the ears. “These mutts!” he said. And Karen slid off the bed, stooping to pick up the checkers.
Twenty-four
Karen’s grandmother came over on Sunday, after calling up to make sure no one was still sick. “No, we’re all recovered,” Karen’s mother said on the phone. “Liz’ll come for you, Mother Freed.”
“Want to come with me?” Liz said to Karen, picking up the car keys.
Overnight, the weather had turned summer hot. The inside of the car was like a furnace. “Ugggh, sticky seats.” Karen rolled down her window.
“I hate it when spring gets gobbled up this way,” Liz said. “But I’m not complaining,” she added hastily. “I’m just glad not to be sick.”
Grandma was waiting in the lobby of her building. She walked leisurely toward them, her face shadowed under a large straw hat with a pink band.
“Hello, Grandma,” Karen said, getting out of the front seat and into the backseat.
Her grandmother put out her cheek for Liz’s kiss.
“I said, hello, Grandma,” Karen repeated louder.
“I’m not deaf, Karen. Try to remember.”
“Sorry.”
“I have excellent hearing, dear.”
Karen slumped lower in the seat and closed her eyes. When life was unbearable, go somewhere else. Go to Scott’s house. He had kissed her. First he had looked at her. Hel-lo. And then he had kissed her.
Liz, I’ve something to talk about to you. Scott and I don’t want to hurt you, it’s just that we feel we have to be honest with you.…
Liz, this isn’t easy to say, but you must have noticed something is wrong. We can’t go on deceiving you. We? Who’s we? Oh, I know in your heart of hearts you know already. Scott and I.…
The night before, when Scott had called, Karen answered the phone. “Hi, Karen,” he’d said, “is Lizzie bird there?”
“Hold on.” Hi, Karen? Was that all he had to say to her?
And what was this Lizzie bird stuff? When had he started that kind of cutesy talk? Liz detested being called Lizzie. But maybe there was a method to his cuteness. Make Liz crazy by calling her names she hated. Lizzie bird, Lizzie lizard, bizzy Lizzie. Lizzie, Laaazy, louzy blouzy frowzy Lizzy. She’d throw his engaged to be engaged ring in his face. We’re through. No, I won’t change my mind. Get out! Good-bye!
Then he and Karen would hop in his truck, the dogs would ride in back, and all four of them would drive off together. They’d probably keep going until they got to California, where they’d eat oranges off the trees and swim in the ocean. Happy together forever.
“I suppose exams are coming, Karen? … Karen?”
She sat up. “Oh. Not yet, Grandma, not till the end of June. Six more weeks.”
“Are you prepared?”
“I hope so.”
Her grandmother looked over her shoulder. “Don’t hope for things, Karen. Make them happen. Just do it.”
At home on the patio, her grandmother sat upright on a deck chair, fanning herself with a Japanese fan. “It’s terribly hot.” Karen brought her lemonade, ice water, a peeled cold peach. “Is that what you call peeling, dear? I can’t eat that skin, it’s indigestible.” She peeled the peach again with the fruit knife, then bit into it. Her teeth were white and strong. “I’ve never lost a single tooth.”
Karen’s mother came out on the patio. “Mother Freed, are you comfortable?”
“Terribly hot. A bit cooler here than my apartment.…”
“Yes … unseasonable. Would you like a part of the Sunday paper?”
Karen lay in the grass. Their voices came to her distantly, a soothing hum. How odd to be old like Grandma, to be half old like her mother. Sometimes she felt sick with being young, it hurt so much, but she didn’t want ever to be so old that she talked about nothing but weather and the skin on peaches.
Later, it began raining. Her parents went to a concert. Tobi had been out all day. Liz was getting ready to go out with Scott. Karen went upstairs, dragged the phone into her room, turned on the radio, and called Marisa. “Hi, I’m depressed.”
“I am, too. You go first.”
“No, you.”
“Are you sure, Karen? I can wait—”
“No, I can, too.”
“I’m fighting with my parents. I want to take a job this summer. You’re right, I don’t know anything about work—”
“You still remember that! I shouldn’t have said it.”
“No, I’m glad you did. Now here’s the problem. If I work, it upsets my parents’ summer plans. They want to travel. If I get a job, they think they have to stay home. I told them I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“It’s not easy getting a job.”
“Davey says maybe he can help me.”
“Good.” Karen kicked her legs in time to the music. Hardly a twinge now when she heard Davey’s name.
“Your turn,” Marisa said.
“Oh, it’s just everything. My grandmother was over today. They’re all out now, except Liz, and she’s going out, too.”
“With that cute guy in the red truck?”
“Right. Scott.”
Did Marisa pick up on something in her voice, in the way she’d hesitated over his name? “Karen, you still haven’t told me who the new love of your life is.”
“I know.” Karen lay on her back, pedaling her legs in the air, and thought about telling Marisa. It would be good and bad. Good, because it would be a relief to tell someone what had happened. Bad, because then the memory of what had happened wouldn’t be just hers.
“What does his name begin with?”
“Can’t you guessss?” she said, deliberately drawing out the s sound. If Marisa guessed, she wouldn’t deny it.
“Oh, give me a little hint, Karen.”
Karen pedaled harder. And a one! and a two! and a one! and a two! and a three! … Good for the thigh muscles. “No, no. If I tell you anything, you’ll guess.” She hissed out the word.
Guess, Marisa, guess. No, never mind, I’ll tell you. It’s Scott. He kissed me.
“You should tell me. I’m your best friend.”
I was in his apartment. On his bed.
“So you’re not going to tell?”
“Oh, I might … one of these days.”
Downstairs, the doorbell chimed.
“Karen, get it, please,” Liz yelled.
“Have to go, Marisa, see you in school.”
The doorbell chimed again. It was undoubtedly Scott. She didn’t want to see him. Well, yes, she did, but not this way, not coming for Liz. Let Liz answer the door herself. She turned up her radio from loud to deafening.
“Karen,” Liz screamed.
Her legs flopped to the floor. She lay there another moment. What was it her grandmother had said? Something about making things happen. The kiss—had she made that happen? Or had he? Or had it just happened? She went into the hall. Lightning flashed green through the little window.
“Karen!” Liz banged open the bathroom door. She had on a white summer dress, the blue sash dangling. She was barefooted, brushing her hair. “Oh, there you are. You are going. Okay.”
Karen’s hand drifted over the banister. Why should she open the door if Scott was here to see Liz? What was she, Norman the doorman?
Make things happen. Grandma, that’s like telling a Martian to make a
chocolate cake. Just do it. How? What’s the secret?
The doorbell chimed a third time. Liz rushed past her, shoeless. Her freckles stood out like stars all over her face. “You’re sleepwalking tonight. Scott’ll drown out there.”
Karen sat down on the stairs.
“Hi, love,” Liz said, below her, “come on in.”
“Mmm, you look sweet.” Scott, in the hall. Kiss kiss, like birds pecking. His dark, curly hair was damp. He had shaved off his sick beard. There was a bit of tissue stuck to his skin and he wore a gold necklace.
“I’ll be a moment more,” Liz said. She went up the stairs, past Karen, down the hall.
Karen sat still, looking down at Scott. He hadn’t noticed her.
He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, stuck one in his mouth, then put it back into the pack. Did he remember that Karen had taken the cigarette from his mouth, put it into her mouth? He had said, You’ll get my germs, sweetie. She had said, I’m not afraid.
No, that wasn’t the way it happened. She had just made that up. What if she had made up everything? What if nothing had happened, none of it? Not her visit. Not being on the bed with him. Not the kiss.
He looked up and saw her. He walked to the stairs. One foot on the bottom step, hands in his pockets. “Hi. How are you?”
“Fine.” As you can see. Why do you ask? Is something wrong with your eyes?
“Well, I’m all recovered.”
“Uh-huh.” Thrilled to hear it.
“Harold and Alfred say hello.”
“Yeah?” Bla bla bla.
“Quiet tonight, aren’t you?”
“Uh-huh.” I hate you, Scott.
“Cat got your tongue?”
She thought about sticking out her tongue. How childish!
“So! How are you?”
The same way I was the last time you asked me.
“Liz and I are going to a movie.”
“She told me.” She was almost nauseous with anger. What a stupid conversation.
Liz came running down the stairs. “Here I am. We’re taking my car, aren’t we?” She got her car keys from the basket, pulled on a light jacket. Scott opened the door.
“See you later, Karen.” The door slammed.
She sat there for a long time, biting her fists.
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