The First Time

by Joy Fielding

TWENTY-NINE

  Kim was daydreaming again.

  She sat at the back of the classroom, her math text open to the appropriate page, her eyes focused on the pear-shaped teacher in the sloppy brown suit standing in front of the chalkboard, as if she were actually paying attention to what old Mr. Wilkes was saying—something about letting X represent the problem, as if anything could actually be solved by letting one thing pretend to be something else—when in fact her mind was thousands of miles away, across the ocean, in Paris, France, strolling arm in arm with her mother down the famed Champs Elysées.

  Her mother had called last night to find out how Kim was managing at school, with Grandma Viv, with her new puppy, with her therapist.

  Fine, fine, fine, fine, Kim responded to each fresh inquiry. How about you?

  Everything was great, came the enthusiastic response. They’d already seen the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Montmartre, Notre Dame, the Quai d’Orsay. Today they were heading off to the Champs Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe. The weather was wonderful; Jake was wonderful; she was wonderful.

  Except then she’d started coughing and gasping for air, and Jake had to take over, finish the conversation for her. How was she doing? her father asked. How was school? Mattie’s mother? The new puppy? Her sessions with Rosemary Colicos?

  Fine, fine, fine, fine, Kim said. Put Mom back on the line.

  It was hard for her mother to talk for long stretches, her father explained, although generally speaking she was managing very well, he was quick to assure her. They’d call again in a few days. Paris was great, he said. Next year, they’d take her with them.

  Sure thing, Kim thought now, tugging at the tight little bun at the back of her head, loosening several of the bobby pins and feeling them drop from her hair, hearing the soft ping as they bounced off her shoulder and fell to the floor. She reached down to pick them up, eyeing the strange combination of open-toed summer sandals and heavy winter boots that adorned her classmates’ feet. All it took was one nice day, when the sun came out and the temperature rose a few degrees above freezing, and half the student body was already in bare feet and sleeveless T-shirts. Couldn’t wait for summer, Kim thought, straightening up, stabbing at her head with the errant bobby pins. Couldn’t wait for time to bring them one season closer to death.

  “Kim?”

  The sound of her name crashed against her ears, like cymbals colliding. It filled the inside of her brain, echoing and reverberating, bouncing around her skull as if desperately searching for a way out.

  “Sorry?” Kim heard herself ask Mr. Wilkes, who was staring at her as if he’d been expecting a more pertinent response.

  “I believe I asked you a question.”

  “I believe I didn’t hear you,” Kim replied before she had time for a more considered response.

  Displeasure flickered across Mr. Wilkes’s watery green eyes. “And why is that, Kim? Were you not paying attention?”

  “I would think that was fairly obvious, sir,” Kim replied, stunned by her rudeness but enjoying the assorted gasps and giggles of her fellow classmates. It had been the most response she’d drawn from any of them in weeks.

  The bell rang. The twenty-seven somnambulant teenagers slumped in their seats immediately sprung to life, rose up as one, and headed noisily for the door. “Kim?” the teacher asked as Kim was about to leave.

  Kim turned reluctantly back toward Mr. Wilkes.

  “I know about your situation at home,” he began. “Your father informed the school about your mother’s condition,” he continued when she said nothing. “I just wanted you to know that I’m here for you, in case you ever wanted to talk to someone.”

  “I’m fine, sir,” Kim told him, gripping her books tightly to her chest.

  Fine. Fine. Fine. Fine.

  How dare her father call the school? How dare he inform her teachers of her mother’s illness? What right did he have to do something like that? “Can I go now?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  Kim fled down the halls to her locker. What else had her father blabbed to the school about? Jake Hart, the Great Defender, she thought derisively. The Great Blabbermouth was more like it, she decided, fiddling with her combination lock, mixing up the numbers, having to do it again. On the third try the locker opened, and Kim threw her books inside, retrieved her lunchbag, carried it to the cafeteria.

  She found an empty table in the far corner, sat facing the wall, her back to the rest of the student population. She opened her lunchbag, frowning at the peanut butter and jam sandwich her grandmother had made. “I don’t want your mother saying I didn’t feed you,” Grandma Viv explained. “If you’re nothing but skin and bones when they get back from France, whose fault do you think it’ll be?”

  It would serve them right, Kim thought then and now, throwing the sandwich toward the yawning garbage bin in the corner, the sandwich hitting the top of the large container and coming apart, falling to the floor, sticky sides down. “Damn,” Kim said, retrieving the sandwich and tossing the two halves directly into the bin, leaving the remnants of peanut butter and jelly on the linoleum floor. Yes, sir, it would serve her parents right if she were nothing but a bag of bones by the time they returned from their trip to Gay Paree. That would teach them to abandon her. Not that she didn’t understand their desire to get away, but just because she understood it didn’t make it any easier, didn’t make her less alone.

  Kim’s stomach growled, part hunger, part protest. She checked the rest of her lunchbag. A box of 2 percent milk and a Snickers bar. Kim felt her mouth begin to salivate. Immediately she retrieved the chocolate bar from the bag and hurled it toward the garbage bin, watching it score a direct hit, disappear inside. She’d given up chocolate bars. They weren’t good for you. Too much fat. Too much sugar. It was important she watch her diet, exercise some control over the things she put in her mouth. Probably if her mother had been more careful about what she’d eaten, if she’d avoided all those sweet desserts and those ridiculous marsh-mallow strawberries she so loved, she’d be all right now. No, you couldn’t be too careful. So many chemicals, so many additives and dyes in everything we ate. You practically took your life into your hands every time you opened your mouth.

  Even milk, Kim thought, tearing open the wrong corner of the small cardboard box and watching the warm milk bubble up and ooze across her fingers. Who knew what the dairy industry was adding to the milk to disguise the poisons the cows ingested daily. Look at the number of people who were lactose-intolerant these days. There had to be a reason people were becoming more prone to all sorts of dreadful diseases.

  Kim lifted the small container to her lips, smelled the tepid liquid, felt it curdle on the tip of her tongue. Next thing she knew, the milk had joined the rest of her lunch in the garbage bin, and she was on her feet and heading toward the gym. If she wasn’t going to eat, she might as well get an early start on her exercise program.

  She’d started working out regularly after the debacle with Teddy. At first she did only ten minutes a day, a few crunches, a few lunges, some easy stretches, a few laps around the track. But every day a few more exercises got added to the mix, so that now she was exercising almost two hours daily. First came a series of simple stretches, then half an hour of low-impact aerobics, then more stretches, then more aerobics, this time high-impact, for at least thirty minutes, followed by two hundred stomach crunches and one hundred pushups, then more stretches, in addition to running and skipping and jumping and a few more stretches for good luck. Even when she was holding George, her stomach was busy crunching in and out, in and out, because you could never be too fit. You could never be too healthy.

  Kim laced up her running shoes, checked her watch. She had over forty minutes before her next class. Enough time to get a good run in, she decided, beginning her first circle around the gym. In another month she could add swimming to her list. Kim pictured her mother in their backyard pool. Back and forth, back and forth, one hundred lengths, every day fr
om May till mid-October. And what good had it done her? Kim wondered, stopping abruptly. All that chlorine in the water. So hard on your hair. Think what it must do to your insides. And you were bound to swallow some of it. It was unavoidable. Kim resumed her running, deciding swimming might not be such a good idea after all.

  “Hey, Kimbo,” someone shouted. “What’s the hurry?”

  Kim looked toward the wide double door to the gym, saw Caroline Smith flanked by her two clones, Annie Turofsky and Jodi Bates, resplendent in matching red sweaters.

  “Where you going?” Jodi asked.

  “Someone chasing you?” asked Annie.

  Kim tried to ignore them. They’d barely spoken to her in months. They were only interested in her again because she’d been rude to old Mr. Wilkes in class, which meant she was potentially interesting, potentially dangerous. Why should she cater to their cruel whims? Why should she feel obliged to answer them? Except she didn’t feel obliged, she realized, slowing down and jogging toward them. She felt grateful. “What’s up?” she asked, as if the last several months had never happened.

  “What did old man Wilkes say to you after class?” Caroline asked. “We took bets he was going to suspend you.”

  “No such luck.”

  “Who’s the old bag who’s been driving you to school all week?” Annie asked.

  “My grandmother,” Kim answered. “And she’s not an old bag.”

  Caroline shrugged, her two companions immediately following suit. Nothing interesting here, the shrugs said.

  “I’ve been staying at her house while my parents are away in France,” Kim volunteered.

  “Your parents are away?” Caroline asked.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Annie Turofsky said, her high-pitched voice an accusation.

  “When did they leave?” asked Jodi Bates.

  “More important,” Caroline said, “how long will they be gone?”

  “They left last week,” Kim answered, basking in their renewed attention. “They’ll be back Wednesday.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” Caroline was saying. “You’ve been staying at your grandmother’s while that nice big house of yours sits empty?”

  “Seems a shame, doesn’t it?” Kim said.

  “A real waste,” Caroline agreed.

  “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” Jodi Bates asked.

  “That it’s a shame for a nice big house like that to be all by itself for the weekend?” Kim asked in return.

  “Especially when there’s a party looking for a place to happen.”

  “You supply the accommodations,” Caroline offered. “We’ll supply the guests. Everybody’ll bring their own refreshments. How does that sound to you?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “I can get the word out before the next class,” Annie said.

  Kim took a deep breath. What would be the harm? Her grandmother wouldn’t question her going out for a few hours on Saturday night. Her parents were halfway around the world. No way they’d ever find out. She’d be careful. Insist everyone behaved. No drugs. No hard liquor. “No crashers,” she said out loud.

  “No problem,” Jodi said.

  “The A list only,” Caroline concurred.

  “I don’t know.” Kim wavered. “Maybe it isn’t such a good idea.”

  But Annie was already halfway down the hall, shouting to everyone who passed by, “Party at Kim Hart’s house. Tomorrow night. Nine o’clock.”

  Party at Kim’s house, the halls echoed. Tomorrow night. Nine o’clock.

  Party at Kim’s. Party at Kim’s. Party at Kim’s.

  “What do you think are the chances I could persuade our waitress to exchange one of these rolls for another croissant?” Jake was asking, smiling at Mattie as he knocked the rock-hard roll against the side of the small table. They were sitting in the small window-lined, flower-filled breakfast area located behind the elevator shaft at the rear of their hotel. It was nine o’clock in the morning. Outside the rain was coming down with such ferocity, it all but obliterated the by-now-familiar row of small boutiques and cafés.

  It had been raining for at least four hours, Mattie calculated, stifling a yawn. It was raining when she woke up at five o’clock this morning to go to the bathroom, raining as she tried maneuvering her way across the room without waking Jake, who was snoring with such obvious contentment she hadn’t had the heart to wake him, raining even harder when she collapsed onto the toilet seat some five minutes later, now fully awake. The rain pounded against the bathroom window behind her head, as if trying to get inside, as she wrestled with the toilet paper, trying to tear off the necessary strip, to bring it to her body How soon before this most private of functions was no longer within her control, when something as basic as wiping herself would be, quite literally, taken out of her hands? The rain accompanied her back to bed. She crawled in beside her husband, spent the hours until Jake woke up listening to the rain as it slammed angrily against their hotel room window. It was easier not to think when it was raining, Mattie thought, strangely lulled by the storm’s growing fury.

  “You know the laws of the land,” Mattie said now. “One soft croissant, one jaw-breaking roll.” She raised her cup of black coffee to her lips, hoping a jolt of caffeine would provide her with enough energy to kick-start her day. In truth, all she wanted to do was go back upstairs and climb into bed. Hadn’t she promised Jake that she wouldn’t overdo, that she’d tell him when she was tired? A few hours more sleep—that was all she needed. Maybe in a few more hours, the rain would have stopped.

  “I’m really looking forward to this morning,” Jake was saying, a guidebook miraculously appearing in his hands. “Listen to this: ‘More than a mere landmark in the extensive facelift that Paris has undergone in the last twenty years,’ ” he read, “ ‘the high-tech Georges Pompidou Center is a hive of constantly changing cultural activity. Contemporary art, architecture, design, photography, theater, cinema, and dance are all represented, while the lofty structure itself offers exceptional views over central Paris.’ ”

  Mattie’s shoulders slumped in anticipated exhaustion. Art, architecture, design, photography, theater, cinema, dance—the words slapped against her skull with the careless precision of the outside rain on the windows.

  “ ‘Take the transparent escalator tubes for a bird’s-eye view of the piazza below,’ ” Jake continued reading, “ ‘where musicians, street artists, and portraitists ply their trades for the teeming crowds.’ ”

  Escalator tubes, bird’s-eye views, street artists, teeming crowds, Mattie repeated silently, growing dizzier with each fresh image.

  “Since it’s raining,” Jake continued, “we might as well taxi over to the gallery, do the inside first. Maybe by the time we’re finished, the rain will have let up, and we can go outside and have our portrait painted.” He stopped, dark blue eyes widening in alarm. “Mattie, what’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Mattie felt the coffee cup about to slip through her fingers. She tried to hold on to its delicate porcelain handle, but her fingers refused to retain their grip. Mattie pictured the cup sliding through her fingers and crashing to the marble floor, waited helplessly for this image to become reality.

  Suddenly Jake’s hands were on top of hers, catching the cup before it could fall, returning it to its saucer before a drop of the murky brown liquid could stain the thick white tablecloth, his eyes never leaving hers. “You’re pale as a ghost.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. What’s happening, Mattie? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Mattie shook her head stubbornly. “Honestly, Jake, I’m fine. I’m just a little tired,” she conceded reluctantly, realizing it was pointless to protest further.

  “When you say you’re a little tired, it means you’re exhausted,” Jake translated. “The French aren’t the only ones who’ve mastered the art of euphemism.”

  Mattie signaled her surrender with a smile. “I didn’t sleep very w
ell last night. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for me to take the morning off.”

  “Great idea. We’ll go back upstairs, lie down until this rain lets up. I didn’t get a lot of sleep myself.”

  “You slept like a baby.”

  “So, I’ll watch you sleep.”

  Mattie pushed her hands across the table, caressed her husband’s cheek with increasingly useless fingers. How long before she could no longer touch him this way? How long before even the slightest acts of tenderness would be denied her? “I want you to go to the Pompidou Center,” she told him.

  “Not without you,” came the immediate reply.

  “Jake, it’s silly for both of us to miss it.”

  “We’ll go tomorrow.”

  “No. You’ll go this morning,” Mattie insisted. “If it’s any good, we’ll go together next year. With Kim,” she added, recalling his phone conversation with their daughter.

  Jake brought Mattie’s fingers to his mouth, kissed each one in turn. “I think she’d really love it here,” he said.

  “Then you’ll make sure to bring her.” Mattie’s voice was soft, pleading.

  “I’ll make sure to bring her,” Jake agreed, his voice a whisper.

  They sat for several minutes in silence. “You should get going,” Mattie said finally.

  “I’ll take you upstairs first.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Mattie, I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re safely tucked in bed.”

  “I’m not an invalid, Jake,” Mattie snapped, the sudden harshness in her voice surprising both of them. “Please don’t treat me like one,” she said, her voice returning to normal.

  “God, Mattie. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “I know,” she assured him quickly. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I had no right to snap at you like that.”

  “You had every right.”

  “It’s just not a good day, I guess.”

  “What can I do?” he asked helplessly.

  “You can go to the Georges Pompidou Center and have a good time, that’s what you can do.”