Imagine Us Happy

by Jennifer Yu

  He pauses. I imagine him adjusting a pair of imaginary glasses on the bridge of his nose. “And it’s really the physical that defines one’s reaction to this piece, don’t you think? Raised goose bumps. Hairs on end. Oh, and gag reflex triggered because of how ridiculous this is and God, I hate modern art. Why did I drag you here?”

  The change in tone is so unexpected—and the look of dismay on Kevin’s face so out of character—that it takes a minute for me to process what he’s said, especially because I’m a few phrases behind to begin with. (Textural interplay? I’m thinking. Why does that sound so sexual?) Then, once my brain catches up, I start laughing. Like, really laughing. Laughing so hard that I can’t remember why I started laughing in the first place, which, of course, only makes me laugh harder. I laugh so hard and for so long that I actually start to tear up, and Kevin looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

  “Stella?” Kevin says. “You okay there?”

  I don’t know why he bothers asking. I’m clearly in no state to respond.

  “All right,” Kevin says. He puts an arm around my shoulders and guides me out of the room, away from the wall-size gray rectangle, and into the hallway. And I guess I can’t blame him. The people around us are starting to look freaked out, and the last thing that I would want to do is interrupt them as they soak in the textural, tactile, synesthetic majesty of the great modernist painting Grey by Richard Munroe.

  23.

  It’s 4:00 p.m. on a Monday afternoon. Kevin and I are in his room—the door wide open, because his mom is working in the basement—sprawled across his bed. The sun is already low in the sky, because it’s November and New England winter is well upon us, and the light slanting in through his window makes his whole room glow reddish-orange. Kevin’s room overlooks one of the main roads in town, and every now and then there’s a burst of street noise that drowns out the music he’s playing from his phone.

  Kevin’s room is sparser than mine—colder, somehow. I’ve got childhood gifts scattered throughout the room and dozens of pictures of Katie and Lin and I pinned up on the walls. Kevin’s walls are light gray and bare except for one poster of a New York City street in black-and-white; there’s a desk pushed into one corner that’s piled high with books but doesn’t have any pictures.

  Kevin, of course, is reading: lying on his stomach at the foot of the bed, neck craned over our next philosophy book. His shirt has ridden up his back ever-so-slightly, leaving a thin sliver of skin exposed between the top of his jeans and the hem of his shirt.

  I’m supposed to be doing the same philosophy reading (by tomorrow, in fact), but I am instead using the time to stare at Kevin, trying to decipher the mess of feelings I experience every time I look at him, the meaning of the knot that seems to have permanently settled in my stomach since the two of us started dating. Sometimes just thinking about the past couple of weeks leaves me flustered and overwhelmed and frustrated with my inability to understand my emotions, at which point I usually detox by scrolling through Facebook on my phone. Fortunately, the antics that Bridgemont students put out there on the internet for everyone to see very rarely elicit complex emotions of any sort.

  The first thing that comes up this time I refresh my news feed is a picture of Katie and Bobby at an ice-skating rink with Victoria Lee and Justin. I vaguely remember Katie texting me about going out with the two of them on Friday—and then never responding.

  But I guess it’s actually not so bad that Kevin and I didn’t go, because the four of them look—well, perfect, in a way that the two of us would probably ruin. Katie is beaming toward the camera and Victoria is midlaugh, with Justin’s right arm slung loosely around her waist. Everyone’s cheeks are slightly red from the cold and the exertion. It would look staged if it weren’t so candid.

  I nudge Kevin in the side with my foot. “Check out this double date we missed,” I say.

  Kevin looks up. Glances at the photograph for two seconds. Then looks back down. “Mmm,” he says.

  “I mean, they all look amazing,” I say. And I’m trying to say that in a totally normal, happy-for-my-hot-best-friend-and-her-friends kind of way. But I’d be lying if I said that there wasn’t a note of jealousy in my voice.

  Kevin doesn’t even look up this time. “Mmm,” he repeats.

  A couple of seconds go by. Then something seems to click in his head.

  “Hold on a sec,” Kevin says. He slides a bookmark into Waiting for Godot, places it on the floor and then slides his body up to mine so that he’s propped up on one elbow next to me.

  “You really shouldn’t worry about things like that,” he says, all quiet concentration and intense eye contact. He puts his arm around my waist, which, of course, sends my pulse skyrocketing.

  “I—I don’t,” I say.

  “You don’t?” Kevin says.

  “I mean—I do,” I say.

  It’s always hard for me to think straight when Kevin is so close.

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “Sometimes I do,” I clarify. “You know, when I’m on Facebook and I see Katie’s pictures and I think, Christ, I could never look like that. Because, I mean, Christ, I could never look like that. But it’s not like it bothers me every second of every day, really, it’s just that—”

  “What I’m trying to say,” Kevin says, cutting me off, “is that I think you’re very beautiful, Stella.”

  His arm around my waist. His body next to mine. And he thinks I’m beautiful.

  Jesus, Stella. Pull it together. Say something.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Kevin lifts his arm and traces his fingers along my jaw, up one cheek. “Do you believe me?” he says quietly.

  And how could I not, when he says it like that?

  “Yes,” I say.

  Kevin looks at me, his blue eyes looking lighter than usual in the golden, predusk light. Silence falls over the room as his phone moves from one track to the next.

  “Okay,” Kevin murmurs. Then—as if this interaction was completely routine, nothing out of the ordinary at all—he sits back up. Grabs his philosophy book from across the bed. And goes back to reading.

  24.

  Later that evening, as Kevin and I are about to leave his house, I meet his mother for the first time. She spots us from the kitchen as we round the corner at the bottom of the stairs and says: “Hey, Kev—come here for a second.”

  Kev? I mouth at him.

  Kevin kicks off the one sneaker that he’s already put on, looks apologetically at me and then leads me into the kitchen.

  Kevin’s mom is tall and willowy, with green eyes and wavy brown hair that is the exact same shade as Kevin’s. Any other resemblance is hard to find. Kevin’s features are all sharp angles—the thin, high bridge of his nose; the curve of his browbone, so prominent that his eyes almost always seem shadowed. His mom’s eyes are round and full of warmth, and when she stands and walks toward me, she moves with the grace of a dancer.

  “It’s so nice to meet you, Stella,” she says, and wraps me in a hug.

  I shoot Kevin a panicked look. He rolls his eyes.

  “It’s nice to meet you, too, Ms. Miller,” I say.

  “Please. It’s Eileen.”

  She pulls back, her hands still on my shoulders, and looks at me. Her eyes move slowly and carefully, and it kind of feels like I’m being studied, committed to memory. Then again, maybe I am. I have just been cooped up for two hours in her son’s bedroom, after all.

  “Okay,” I say. And then I try for, “Hi, Eileen,” but it still feels so strange to call her by her first name that I just end up saying the “Hi” and then trailing off awkwardly.

  “We should go, Mom,” Kevin says. “Stella’s parents are expecting her at home.”

  “Mmm,” his mom says, still looking at me. She floats back to the table and sits down again, crosses her right leg ove
r the other. “You know, Stella, you have the most striking eyes.”

  “Mom,” Kevin groans.

  “Er—that’s—thanks,” I say.

  Kevin’s mom frowns, like that’s the wrong reaction.

  “I mean, they’re just brown,” I say.

  “It’s not so much about the color,” she says. “The shape. The depth. Very expressive. If you’re interested, you should come down to the studio sometime and sit for a portra—”

  “You have to stop doing this to my friends,” Kevin says, sounding exasperated. He takes my hand and pulls me toward the door.

  “Just being friendly,” his mom says.

  “Be a more normal version of friendly,” Kevin says.

  She smiles fondly at him. “Better to be original than to be normal, Kev,” she says. “Like I always say.”

  “I’ll be back in twenty,” Kevin says.

  “Sure,” she says. “I’ll be downstairs when you get back.”

  Kevin mmm-hmms in acknowledgment, and the two of us step outside.

  25.

  “Better to be original than to be normal,” I repeat when we’re halfway down the turnpike.

  I pause, like I’m considering the sentiment carefully.

  “That’s real deep, Kev. I see where you get it.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Kevin says. But he’s laughing.

  26.

  It’s the first time it’s been this bad in a while.

  Over time, I’ve learned that my parents have two types of arguments. The first is your standard squabbling-adults type of thing, in which they argue, sometimes voices get a little raised, my father throws around words like insouciant and pertinacious, my mother throws around words like “Thomas, would you please stop talking like that,” and the two of them spend the rest of the day ignoring each other. These fights are also known as “it’s your fault that Stella isn’t doing x” fights, because ninety percent of them are just my parents blaming each other for whatever Stella-related crisis has come up this week. For example, It’s your fault that Stella is unhappy! Or, It’s your fault that Stella isn’t going to therapy! Or, It’s your fault that Stella won’t stay at the dinner table for longer than ten minutes!

  You get the idea.

  The trouble arises when things get personal. That’s when my dad starts to say things like, “Well, if you did a better job talking to her after school, we’d know why she wasn’t doing her homework,” or when my mom responds with, “Well, if you were home in time for dinner more often, maybe Stella would understand the importance of family time,” and that’s when the first type of fight transforms into the second: the “what the hell is wrong with you?” fight. For example, What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you care about our daughter’s future? Or, What the hell is wrong with you? Does spending time with the two of us mean anything to you at all?

  And that’s how things end up the way they are right now. At two in the morning on a Thursday night. With my parents downstairs shouting at each other about whose fault it is that I’ve been missing my appointments with Karen. As if the subject of the argument isn’t upstairs in her bedroom trying to sleep or anything.

  I wish I could say that stuff like this didn’t affect me anymore. Because that would be nice—it would be nice to be able to follow up everything I just said with, “And I know this because it’s happened countless of times in the past few years, and at this point it doesn’t even faze me.”

  But the truth is, it’s hard not to feel upset about it, even the fifth, fiftieth or five hundredth time around. It’s hard not to feel upset because there’s still a part of me that wants my parents to just work it out and like each other again, as ridiculous as that sounds. And there’s a part of me that believes that this is all my fault. If I had known that Karen was going to call my parents this afternoon and tell them that I’ve been ditching and that it would have triggered this whole disaster, I would have just gone. If I had known that eating dinner in ten minutes was going to escalate into an argument about “family values” and “skewed priorities” and all that, I would have just sucked it up and made small talk with my mom.

  I don’t know what it is that makes me walk across the room, get my cell phone and call Kevin. Part of me is just delirious with exhaustion. I had a big math test yesterday and spent the first three days of the week barely sleeping in an effort to memorize every trigonometric integral known to man. And then there’s another part of me that’s just...desperate. Desperate for this all to stop. Desperate to think about something, anything, other than what’s happening downstairs. Desperate to talk to someone. And then, all of a sudden, desperate to hear Kevin’s voice.

  “Hello?” he says, picking up midway through the fourth ring, right as I’m about to hang up and give up and let him have his sleep. His voice is low, husky. I can hear the yawn at the bottom of his throat.

  “I woke you up,” I say. All of a sudden I feel terrible.

  “I mean, it’s the middle of the night, so yeah, I was asleep. But don’t worry about it. Are you okay?”

  I can hear the sound of Kevin’s blankets rustling as he moves around, probably sitting up in bed to check the time, to drink some water. I can picture him so clearly: switching on the light next to his bed, pulling his covers up around his waist, running a hand through his hair. The expression on his face. The way it would feel to be next to him right now.

  I can imagine it so clearly that it hurts. And then, all of a sudden, I’m crying.

  “Are you okay?” Kevin says. He’s starting to sound seriously concerned, which only makes me cry harder.

  “I feel stupid,” I say. Because I do. This is all so horribly, horribly stupid.

  “Talk to me,” Kevin says. “What’s wrong?”

  “I miss you,” I say. I crawl back into my bed and pull the covers up around me, thinking about how nice it would be if he were here with me, or if I were there with him, instead of all alone listening to my parents scream at each other.

  “Stel...” Kevin says.

  “My parents are fighting,” I say. I try to take deep, calming breaths, the way Karen and I have practiced thousands of times in therapy. But I can’t keep it together long enough to make it through a five-second inhale, so instead I just sound like I’m hyperventilating into a paper bag. “I mean, they fight all the time, but tonight they’re really fighting and, I don’t know, Kevin, I should be used to it, but I’m not, and I should be able to do something about it, but I can’t, and I shouldn’t have woken you up, but I did. And now I just—I just—want—to be—with you.”

  Kevin doesn’t respond for a couple of seconds. This is it, I think. You went and called him in the middle of the night sobbing and now he probably thinks you’re pathetic. Way to go, Stella.

  The thought of that sends me into full breakdown mode, which seems to stir Kevin into action.

  “Do you want me to come over?” he says.

  “Come over?” I say. “Come over and do what, Kevin? Stand outside in the cold waiting for my parents to stop fighting and freeze to death?”

  “I could climb through your window or something,” he says.

  The suggestion is so absurd that I actually stop crying.

  “Climb through my window? Have you gone insane?”

  “I hear they do that in the movies sometimes,” Kevin says drily.

  “Yeah, which, in my opinion, is reason enough to rule it out immediately as a valid course of action.”

  “All right,” Kevin says gently. “Consider it ruled out.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  A few moments of silence. My father is storming around downstairs, and I can’t hear my mom anymore, which means that she’s probably in tears.

  “I’m sorry this is happening,” Kevin finally says. His voice is quiet, almost a whisper. A
nd with the phone pressed up against my ear, with the way every breath he takes comes through the line, he sounds so, so close.

  “Me, too,” I say.

  “And I really wish I could be with you right now, too,” he says.

  I start crying again, and this time, I really have no idea why. I mean, that wasn’t sad, right? I shouldn’t feel sad about that. It was really sweet, actually. And yet here I am. Weeping.

  “I’m—being—pathetic,” I say. “God, you must think—”

  “Stella,” Kevin says. “If someone else called you pathetic, I’d punch them in the face. Well, I wouldn’t punch them in the face, because I can’t throw a punch to save my life, but I’d be pissed. You’re not pathetic, and no one gets to call you pathetic, and you’re no exception. All right?”

  I hear the sound of the garage door opening downstairs, and then my dad’s car starting, which is—well, somewhat shocking, actually. I don’t know if that’s ever happened before. He’s actually going to spend the night somewhere else? I think. Is that how bad tonight’s fight was?

  “You still there?” Kevin asks.

  “I think my dad just left the house,” I say.

  “Fuck,” Kevin says. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not good. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s really, really bad. But I’m just—I’m just so tired. Do I even care? I mean, of course I care. But I just—I just want to sleep.”

  “Let’s go to sleep,” Kevin says. Low, soothing. “But here—I’ll stay on the line with you. Promise I won’t hang up. Okay?”

  Kevin has the kind of voice you can wrap around your body like a blanket, the kind of voice you could make a home out of.

  “Okay,” I say.