by Paula Garner
“You Ironmen.” Meg smiled, shaking her head. She was in a good mood.
I wiped up the egg with paper towels and tried again. When I had three eggs in the bowl, Meg told me to whisk in the Parmesan cheese.
I squinted at her. “Did you ever read Tom Sawyer?”
“No, why?” Her poor nose was peeling from her sunburn, illuminated by the lightbulb in the stove hood.
I started mixing the cheese with the eggs. “He’s supposed to whitewash a fence, but he hoodwinks the other kids in the neighborhood into doing the work. You’d make him proud.”
“You could grind in some pepper now.”
“See?”
She laughed.
“I mean, come on,” I said, picking up the pepper mill. “You’re standing there in front of the stove, just looking pretty, and I’m doing all the heavy lifting.”
“Oh, boo-hoo. Cue the violins.”
“How much pepper?”
“Tons.”
When she finally said I could stop grinding pepper, I stood behind her, watching over her shoulder as she dropped spaghetti into a boiling pot of water. She wore a red-and-white polka-dot shirt and jean shorts, and she looked unreasonably cute. Also, I could smell her hair.
“Where’d you learn how to make this?” I asked.
“Jeff’s grandmother. She’s from Italy.”
Why’d I have to open my mouth? I just killed my own buzz.
“She’s an incredible cook.” Meg set the stove timer to nine minutes. “Jeff’s got it made. All the women in his family are great cooks.”
The idea of Meg immersed in his world gave me an ache.
But minutes later, when we stirred the creamy, cheesy egg and the crispy bacon into the steamy pasta — and threw in handfuls of extra cheese — I was distracted from my misery.
“This is unreal,” I told her, twirling up a giant forkful. “This might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“I know, right?” She kept grating more cheese into her bowl until I finally had to laugh.
“How ’bout some pasta with your cheese?” I asked.
She stuck her tongue out at me.
We ate it all — every delicious bite. Then Meg set the pot between us and we fished out the last strands of spaghetti with our fingers. When there was nothing left to pillage, we cleaned up.
“Otis? It’s kind of scary,” she said, running hot water into the pot, “how much you can eat.”
“Ha! From the girl who eats like it’s her last day on Earth.”
She smiled. “Touché.”
I was never so happy washing dishes in my life.
When we finished, we went downstairs to watch TV. I sat close to her on the couch, deciding to pretend Jeff didn’t exist.
“Feels like old times,” Meg said. “Doesn’t it?”
“Well, not exactly,” I hazarded, flipping channels with the remote, settling on an old black-and-white Katharine Hepburn movie. She gave me a quizzical look.
“I mean,” I said, “if it were old times, there’d probably be some hanky-panky going on.”
She chortled. “Oh, Otis. You’re so funny!”
I wasn’t really going for funny. I was trying to rekindle a fucking flame.
“Who says hanky-panky? You’re like an old geezer trapped in the body of a Greek god.”
My head spun; she had insulted me and flattered me in the same breath. “What, you don’t remember all the . . . ?” I raised my eyebrows suggestively.
The smile fell off her face in an instant. She looked away. “I remember everything,” she said softly. “The magnolia. Michigan. Of course I remember.”
“I don’t know what you remember,” I said, suddenly feeling an edge. Because after all that kissing, all that in-love-ness that we were awash in, she disappeared and never looked back. Why?
Some angry energy was blooming inside of me; was I really going to ruin the best, most promising evening I’d had in years?
“So how is it with Jeff?” I heard myself ask.
Yes. Yes, I was.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Is he a good kisser?”
I was such an asshole. And an idiot: Why did I ask questions that I didn’t even want to hear the answers to?
“It’s different, I guess.” She gazed at the floor. “Jeff kisses . . . like a man on a mission. You . . .” She glanced at me for an instant before looking away. “You kissed me like you thought I might break.”
My face flushed with heat. Great. So I had no clue how to kiss. So be it. Fuck it all anyway. Fuck Michigan. Fuck my hopes. Fuck me.
I picked up the remote and turned up the volume.
“Wait,” she said, taking the remote and muting it. “Don’t take that wrong — please.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, staring at the silent screen.
“I wasn’t dissing him,” she said. “Really, I wasn’t.”
I blinked. Dissing him?
“I’m sure things are never, you know, like the first time.”
Just as I was beginning to process this unbelievably amazing revelation, my phone dinged. I picked it up to silence it, but the displayed message stopped me short. “Oh, shit.”
“What? What is it?”
“Shit.” I stood up. “It’s Dara.”
“Of course,” she mumbled.
“I have to go.” I headed for the stairs. “There’s been an accident.”
I pedaled through the dark, ping-ponging between fear and anger. Damn Dara for pulling me away from Meg at such a crucial moment! But what if Dara was seriously hurt? What was I going to find when I got there? Her texts were hard to decipher. If she’d totaled her car and hit her head on the windshield, she could be dead by the time I got there. Or maybe she was just being dramatic and her texts were garbled because she was tipsy. God — I was finally getting somewhere with Meg. Fuck.
My mind twisted and leaped as I rode toward the forest preserve, cars whipping past me in the night. Stopping for red lights seemed to take an eternity. Maybe I should have called Shafer or Abby or someone else who could drive — and help me with whatever I was in for — but I didn’t even know where Dara was or if I was overreacting. When I finally reached the start of the forest preserve, I called her, trying to find her. Between her confusion and her slurred speech, she wasn’t much help. The only thing she was clear on was “don’t call nine-one-one.”
But finally, I found her car, or what remained of it, where Forestway Drive winds around the lagoons.
The front of the Corolla was crumpled into an enormous weeping willow — the hood was lifted and bent, and the driver’s-side windshield had a bloated spiderweb pattern embedded in it. No seat belt, probably, the dumbass. How many times could this girl cheat death?
I found her huddled under a nearby tree, dressed in a white tank and shorts. Her face was covered in blood, her hair caked with it.
I jumped off my bike and ran over to her. “Dara!” I grasped one of her shoulders and shook her a little, my heart pounding. “We need an ambulance.”
“No. No police.”
“We have to. All we have is my bike. Your car is totaled. Jesus, Dara — you could have been killed!”
“You know what I never told you?” Her head listed to the side. “There were signs posted that day.”
I knelt down next to her. “Where? What are you talking about?”
She touched her hand to her head and looked at the blood. “In Hawaii. They posted warnings. That sharks had been sighted.”
“You knew there were sharks that day?”
She nodded.
“Why did you do it?” I asked, picking up her hand, which was wet. Now I had blood on my hands. “What are you saying?”
She waved her hand limply. “I thought it would be fine. I always did stupid shit. Climbing water towers, stealing, messing with fireworks . . . Nothing ever happened to me. I thought, you know, they just cover their asses and post signs and whatever.” She s
tared at nothing. “Sometimes I still can’t believe it happened. In my dreams, I still have two arms. That’s mostly why I drink. The more I drink, the less I dream.”
Jesus. It wasn’t just the phantom limb pains. It wasn’t just the loss of an arm. Waking up every day and rediscovering that your arm was gone — having to face that over and over and over again? The thought made me weak. I had my own version of that waking-up-and-remembering, and it was unspeakably terrible.
She leaned her head back against the tree. “S’another way I ruined his life. He was my swim coach, you know. Before . . .” She gestured with her stump.
Her dad. Yes. I did know that, although I’d forgotten.
She closed her eyes and her head lolled again. “Now I swim like a fucking freak.”
There was nothing I could say to that. And I was still reeling to think she had done so many other reckless things. Climbing water towers? Fireworks? Jesus. Did she have a death wish?
“And now his freak of a daughter is a . . .” She hung her head.
“A what?”
“Nothing,” she whispered. “Just a fuck-up.” She leaned her head back, her eyes closing.
Choosing her probable wrath over her possible death, I got up and called 911. I paced while I talked, checking on Dara to make sure she was still breathing. When I hung up, I sat next to her and talked to her about anything I could think of, trying to keep her with me.
Through the tangle of trees over our heads, a jillion stars sparkled against the black sky. I had never felt more alone.
It’s funny how even the most un-religious person will turn to prayer when the chips are down. As Dara bled onto my shirt, I pleaded with the Great Whomever to let her be okay. I felt guilty because I had wished her away countless times, but not like this! I never wanted anything bad to happen to her. It hit me hard, how fucked up she really was, and what a shitty friend I’d been. I mean, who did she have, except for me? And what was I doing? Ignoring her. Thinking of myself and wishing she’d leave me alone. It occurred to me that, before Dara, I’d only ever really loved two people, not counting my parents, and I’d lost both of them. Dara was the third person I’d ever loved, as complicated and messy and unpleasant as it often was. I couldn’t lose her, too.
The cracked windshield of Dara’s beloved Corolla gleamed in the moonlight like the facets of a diamond, a galaxy of its own. And of all things, that’s what finally triggered the overflow of the well inside of me — which is pretty fucking nuts, if you think about it. My brother was dead, things with Meg were fucked, Dara was bleeding away on me. But somehow, it was looking at her crumpled-up car that broke me. She had loved that car more than just about anything. I’d been riding around in it since the summer after eighth grade. I couldn’t imagine her not hauling me around in it. I couldn’t imagine her without it. Whatever happened now, nothing would ever be the same. A chapter of my life had just ended, and I had no idea what the next one would hold.
When the twinkling of stars gave way to the flashing of lights and the panicky sound of sirens filled the still night air, I stood up, propping Dara straighter against the tree. I was scared shitless and thinking I should have called my parents.
Two cops questioned me, one about a foot taller than the other and probably twenty years younger. I answered as best I could while the EMTs moved Dara to a board and put some plastic contraption around her neck.
“Had she been drinking, do you know?” It was the younger of the two cops, Officer Garrett.
I really, really didn’t want her to get busted and lose her license, but I was a terrible liar. “She’s on all these medications. For phantom limb pains.”
He nodded knowingly, his mouth twisting into a grimace. “Fucking prescription medications. The wife had knee surgery and the doctors doped her up so bad that she had a car accident, too.”
He bought it. Maybe there was a God.
He took a good look at me and asked why she’d called me, a kid on a bike, for help.
“I’m kind of her best friend.” I stuck my trembling hands in my pockets. I was shaking — shaking like beef, Meg would have said — either from being cold or scared or both.
Officer Garrett put an arm around my shoulder and said some comforting things, I don’t remember what. He took information from me while Dara was loaded into the ambulance.
“Her dad’s out of town,” I said. “I don’t know his cell phone number.”
“What about the mother?”
“Dead.”
“Brothers? Sisters?”
I shook my head.
He whistled through his teeth. “So you’re basically the closest thing to family we have, eh?”
Just when I thought I couldn’t feel any guiltier. “I guess so.”
“All right. Come on — I’ll take you to the hospital. You have parents to call?”
“Yes, sir.”
I called my dad, knowing how my mom would freak, and then texted Meg an update from the cruiser. It was hard not to feel like a criminal in the backseat of a police car — the last place I ever thought I’d be. It felt sort of like being put in a cage.
My parents met me at the ER. Officer Garrett introduced himself and then made himself scarce, probably because my mother looked like a cannon about to blow.
“Oh my God! Is that blood?”
I looked down at my shirt. I looked like an ax murderer.
My dad gaped at me. “Why the hell didn’t you call us, Otis?” He didn’t exactly sound mad — more baffled and disappointed.
“I didn’t know how bad it was,” I said as they sat down. “I didn’t want to wreck your night without even knowing what the situation was.”
A fluorescent light over my head flickered. I shifted in my seat. When I’d arrived with Officer Garrett, a guy was vomiting on the floor of the waiting area, and even though it had been mopped up, I could still smell it. My stomach churned.
My dad got up and went to the water dispenser, where he drank a cup of water and then refilled it and brought it to my mom, who sat on my other side.
She held it, not drinking. And then she hissed, “You could have been in that car. I knew she wasn’t a safe driver!”
She sounded livid, but her eyes welled with tears. I wished I could escape — fly, apparate, vaporize, anything. I’d rather be anywhere than near my mom when she was upset.
“But I wasn’t,” I whisper, leaning in.
She shook her head and blinked, and both eyes spilled over at the same time. “You don’t understand anything.”
I did understand, even if she didn’t know it. I was her only remaining child. I got it.
She dug in her purse for tissues. “How is she?” She sat with her legs crossed, her black high heel wagging back and forth at a frenetic pace. They must have been at a nice restaurant when I interrupted, because her shoes were generally of the comfort-is-the-only-concern variety.
“I don’t know,” I said.
I took out my phone and texted Meg again to give her an update. She responded, Okay, hope she’s all right. Who knows what she was really thinking.
After a while a doctor came out and told us that they’d be observing Dara throughout the night.
“Can I see her?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” he said, tapping a file folder against his hand. “She’s not going to wake up tonight anyway.”
“Did anyone reach her dad?” I asked. “His number must be in her cell phone.”
“He’s flying in.”
Oh boy. I was afraid of how angry he might be at Dara. Once when I was in eighth grade, he came to a swim meet and yelled at Dara in Russian after her two hundred free relay. I don’t know what he was saying, but he was mad. People stared. What kind of asshole yells at an amputee for not swimming right? She didn’t cry, although I almost did. That was the last time I ever saw him at a meet.
The drive home was quiet except for once or twice when my mom exploded about how I was never to get into a car with Dara again, and why
couldn’t I stay away from girls who were so troubled? Girls, plural. A statement about Meg, too? I didn’t pursue it.
Later that night Mom tapped on my door, then pushed it open. She held a glass with about an inch of something amber in it. My dad had probably poured her a medicinal Scotch.
“Can we not?” I asked, anticipating another tirade about Dara. I stood up from my desk. “Can’t it just wait until tomorrow?”
“It’s about Michigan.”
I crossed my arms. “Let me guess. Meg’s not coming.”
“No, she’s coming.”
Relief. But why did my mom’s expression still telegraph doom?
She slowly walked over and sat on my bed, holding the glass in both hands. Definitely Scotch. It smelled like peat smoke and Band-Aid adhesive. “Not just Meg, though.”
“Yeah, her dad — I know, you told me.”
“Not just Jay.”
“Karen’s coming?” I could see why my mom was so upset.
But my mom shook her head.
“Well, who, then?”
She took a sip of the Scotch and grimaced, staring at the floor. “Apparently Meg’s boyfriend will be joining us.”
THE NEXT MORNING I SAT IN THE WAITING area in the hospital and played games on my phone, trying to distract myself. When I wasn’t worrying about Dara, I couldn’t stop fuming about Football Guy. Hadn’t he ruined enough things for me? Now he was going to ruin my vacation, too — and my chance to get close to Meg again? The thought of actually having to live with this guy, to see them together, to be the third wheel while they had a romantic reunion . . . It made me sick just thinking about it.
Apparently it was a birthday gift from Meg’s mom, sending Jeff to visit. My mom had apologized, saying she couldn’t exactly tell Jay and Meg that he wasn’t welcome at the Michigan house, when they knew full well that there was plenty of room.
“Why the hell not?” I had kicked my garbage can hard, flipping it over and sending crumpled-up paper and granola bar wrappers tumbling. “It’s our vacation. They have no right bringing him.”
“If it’s any consolation, Jay felt bad about it.”