Girlfriend Material

by Melissa Kantor

  “Bummer,” I said.

  He smiled at my mellow response. “You are cool,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said. Cool. Awesome. If those weren’t Lady Brett Ashley adjectives, I didn’t know what were. “Now, what’s the good news?”

  He reached across the table and took my hand. “The good news,” he said, “is that we’re less than a hundred yards from the best ice cream on God’s green earth, and I’m about to buy you a cone.”

  I leaned toward him. “That is good news,” I said.

  And, like I’d known he would, he met me halfway with a kiss.

  The ice cream was pretty amazing, but it wasn’t as amazing as the used bookstore, where we ended the afternoon. There must have been ten thousand books piled everywhere, the system of organization vague enough that Adam assured me I shouldn’t even try to find something specific. “Just let yourself get lost,” he said, which is exactly what I did. I was sitting on a pile of books, reading a novel about a crazy apartment building in San Francisco where all of the people know each other and the landlady is more or less the tenants’ mom, when Adam tapped me on the shoulder. He was holding a book in his hand, but I couldn’t read the title.

  “I’m just going to pay for this,” he said. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  “Sure,” I said, starting to stand up.

  “Take your time,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be on the porch.”

  Even though he’d said he didn’t mind, I felt weird sitting and reading while Adam waited for me, so I just finished the page I was on and decided I’d buy the book, which cost only a dollar. As I was walking up to the cash register, I passed a slightly shabby paperback copy of The Wizard of Oz. Without letting myself stop and think about it, I took it off the shelf. Then I paid for both and went outside. Adam looked up at the tinkling bell of the screen door.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” I said. I held the book out for him. “I figured since you didn’t know her last name, maybe you’d never read the book.”

  “Oh, this is great,” he said, taking it from me. “I’ve seen the movie, but you’re right, I never read it.” He was smiling, and I could tell he really was glad about my getting him the book. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  Then he reached into the paper bag he’d had on his lap and pulled out an equally tattered paperback. “This is for you. You said you like The Sun Also Rises. This is supposed to be Hemingway’s nonfiction account of the time he spent in Paris.”

  The book was called A Moveable Feast, and the cover had a line drawing of a window looking out over the Parisian skyline. “Oh, wow,” I said. “Thank you so much. I’ve never even heard of this book.”

  “Kind of like the rainbows,” he said.

  I hit him in the head with my gift. “Watch yourself, Carpenter,” I said. “I like you and all, but really.”

  “So,” he said, raising one eyebrow at me, “you like me, do you?”

  For a second everything got really still. “Maybe I do,” I said.

  “Hunh,” he said. “Well, maybe I like you too.” We stood there looking at each other, letting what we’d said sink in a little. Then he took my hand and we walked down the street and headed to the car.

  “THE GUYS BAILED,” said Jenna around a mouthful of toast. “But we don’t care.” She gestured to the plate of toast in front of her. “Have one.”

  It was a little before nine on Saturday, and I’d come up to the main house to find Jenna and Sarah eating breakfast on the deck. In the kitchen my mom and Tina and Henry and Jamie were talking about what they kept referring to as “the political scene” in New York. I could understand Tina and Henry and Jamie caring about it, since it had become extremely clear to me that New Yorkers never tired of talking, thinking, or hearing about New York, but my mom’s interest in the subject escaped me. Usually all my mom wanted to talk about was whether or not it was time to redecorate the downstairs bathroom.

  “Yeah,” said Sarah. “The siren song of male bonding was just too powerful to resist, so Adam and Lawrence left on their fishing trip this morning.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I know? Then they’d want to know how I knew, and I’d have to say, Well, Adam and I are kind of … what? Kind of going out? Could you be kind of going out, or was going out something you were or you weren’t? And no one had said anything about going out. It wasn’t like Adam had said, Will you go out with me? But did people even say that anymore? Was that an anachronism along the lines of going to the soda shop for a pop and having a boy carry your books home from school and getting pinned?

  But you know if you’re going out with someone. Like, Laura was clearly going out with Brad. As far as I knew, she still had his sweatshirt. I, on the other hand, had felt obligated to return Adam’s sweater yesterday. Question: Were he my boyfriend, would I have kept the sweater?

  “Would you?”

  I realized that Jenna and Sarah were both looking at me and that there had been silence for a second or two. Since they weren’t mind readers, they must have asked about something other than Adam’s sweater.

  “Sorry,” I said. “What?”

  “Would you describe yourself as someone who gets seasick?” asked Jenna.

  “Not that I know of,” I said. Though, considering I’d never actually been on the sea, I probably didn’t not get seasick so much as I’d never had the opportunity to get seasick.

  “Oh, you’re lucky. I get soo sick. It’s the worst.”

  “But you’re the one who wanted to go on the whale watch,” I pointed out.

  Jenna wrinkled her nose. “I know,” she said. “But I’m planning on being a marine biologist, so I’ve got to get used to it.”

  I had to put Adam out of my mind or I was going to drive myself insane. He liked me. He’d said he liked me. And then when we’d kissed good-bye, he’d given me a really tight squeeze and said, I’ll be fishing with Lawrence, but I’ll be thinking about you.

  If that wasn’t practically as good as asking someone out, I didn’t know what was. It was time to focus on something else.

  “I don’t know anything about marine biology,” I said. I took a piece of toast from the pile and sliced a piece of cheddar cheese to put on it.

  “Oh, you will,” said Sarah, spreading cream cheese on her own piece of toast. “When you’re on the water with Jenna, you learn a lot about marine biology.”

  I was glad to see that even with Jenna in the car, Sarah blasted music—apparently it wasn’t simply her desire to avoid conversation with me that had her playing her favorite artists at top volume. We didn’t talk much on the way to Provincetown, but at one point, when we’d been driving for about fifteen minutes, Sarah reached over and lowered the volume.

  “You know, if you say the word humpback enough, it doesn’t even sound dirty,” she said. “Try it.”

  “Humpback,” said Jenna, and she immediately cracked up.

  “Humpback,” I said. It was impossible to say the word without laughing.

  Sarah was smiling. “Hmm,” she said, reaching for the volume knob again. “Guess I was wrong.”

  The Queequeg was a much smaller boat than I’d anticipated—I’d been picturing something along the lines of a Princess Cruises ship, a kind of floating condominium that couldn’t possibly capsize no matter how enormous the sea life it encountered might prove to be. The tickets were way more expensive than I’d been anticipating, too. Between whales and lobsters, I’d run through Mr. Davis’s money and started digging into my own.

  Jenna brought us upstairs to the open-air deck even though she said we wouldn’t be seeing any whales for a while. As we pulled away from the dock, I could see why she’d wanted to stay outside—it was an incredible feeling, the spray on my face, the slight bump bump bump as the boat skimmed over the water on its way out to sea. I felt a tingle of anxiety in the pit of my stomach even though I didn’t think I was especially nervous about seeing whales or
even about the boat tipping over. Still, with the speed and the air and the sunlight on the water, it felt like something exciting or unexpected or even dangerous was about to happen.

  When the coastline was nothing but a dark smudge in the distance, I turned to Jenna. “It’s like a movie,” I said. “Or a music video.” We were flying along now, and leaning against the rail with the wind blowing my hair and the sun in my face, I felt very glamorous.

  “You look like Jackie O,” said Jenna.

  “Totally,” said Sarah.

  For no reason I felt like laughing. Between my day with Adam and feeling like Sarah and Jenna were really my friends … It was all so amazing I didn’t even care if we saw any whales.

  “If you’ll look over to the port, or left, side of the boat,” said a voice over the loudspeaker, “you’ll see—”

  “Look!” yelled Jenna, pointing out toward the horizon. “Whales!”

  I followed her finger. Maybe two hundred yards away was a group of what I guess were whales. One was much larger than the others, which were small enough that they looked like nothing more than small lumps.

  I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. They were just … bumps in the ocean. People around us Oohed and Aahed as they directed their cameras toward the sight, but I couldn’t see what was so special. I didn’t want to be a bad sport, though, so I opened my eyes wide, hoping I looked like someone who was amazed by what she was seeing.

  As we watched, the largest bump disappeared and immediately pushed high up out of the water. I gasped as water sprayed off its gigantic body; it seemed to hover in the air for an impossibly long time before it dipped below the water, its tail still waving against the horizon.

  “Oh my God,” I said, barely aware of having said it. I wasn’t faking my look of amazement anymore.

  Jenna was standing next to me, and she bumped my shoulder with hers. “I know,” she said quietly. “Isn’t it incredible?”

  I’d honestly never seen anything like it in my life. No sooner did the whale disappear than it shot up again. I caught my breath.

  “Wow,” whispered Sarah. “I don’t believe in, you know, God or anything, but still.”

  “Totally,” I said, knowing exactly what she meant. It’s how I feel sometimes when I’m up in the mountains and it’s really quiet and the light is falling in a certain way on the peaks across the canyon from you, and you feel—I don’t even know what the right word is—whole, maybe. Like everything makes sense somehow.

  After its third leap, the big whale headed away from us, and the little whales followed. I was afraid the boat would go after them—the thought of chasing and possibly scaring such amazing animals was awful—but we just continued in the same direction we’d been going. Sarah turned around and leaned her back against the railing. “Okay,” she said, “that was amazing.”

  “I know,” said Jenna. “Each time I see it, I can’t believe it.”

  Standing there with the two of them, the memory of the whales still alive on the back of my retinas, I felt happier than I could ever remember feeling. It was like my whole life had been leading up to that moment of the whale bursting out of the sea, drops of water shimmering off as it leaped to the sun. It made me want to be a great writer, to find the language to capture and communicate the feeling of perfect calm I was experiencing.

  “Remember last summer when we came with Biff and Molly, and Molly puked the whole time and missed the whales?” said Sarah.

  “Oh God,” said Jenna. “I forgot about that. But I thought she ended up getting to see a whale at the end.”

  Sarah shook her head. “That was another trip. When she took the Dramamine.”

  “Poor Molly,” said Jenna.

  “Who’s Molly?” I asked. I wondered if she was someone else they went to school with who summered up here. Maybe she’d become one of my new friends too.

  “Adam’s girlfriend,” Sarah explained.

  Still under the spell of the whales, I wasn’t quite following the conversation with my whole brain. “Adam who?” I said.

  “Adam Carpenter,” said Jenna. Then she punched me lightly on the arm. “Adam Adam. Our Adam.”

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly interested. I still didn’t know anything about Adam’s dating history—here was clearly my chance to find out. “Adam went out with a girl named Molly?”

  I swear, I hadn’t meant my use of the past tense as a challenge, just a statement of fact. Adam used to go out with a girl named Molly. Now he was on a fishing trip thinking about me.

  “Not went,” corrected Jenna. “Goes. She spends the summer in New Hampshire with her family, but I think she’s probably coming up in August like usual.” She looked at Sarah to confirm.

  “Far as I know,” said Sarah.

  It was like they were speaking a million miles away. I could barely hear them.

  “Are you okay?” said Jenna. “Are you feeling sick?”

  My knees were soft, and I wondered how much longer they would be able to support my weight. Adam had a girlfriend? A girlfriend? “I’m fine,” I lied.

  “That’s what Molly said,” said Sarah, slipping her hand under my elbow. “Then she went down below and we never saw her again.”

  “Let’s get you to a seat,” said Jenna, taking my other arm.

  The three of us slowly made our way downstairs to a seat.

  “I’ll get you a ginger ale,” said Jenna. “You look pretty green.”

  As she walked away, Sarah said, “You’ll feel better as soon as we get on land.”

  “Sure,” I said, wishing the thing that was making me sick were as temporary as our whale watch. “Sure.”

  There were no more whale sightings for the rest of the trip, so it didn’t matter that Jenna and Sarah and I stayed below deck. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the back of a bench, half hoping and half fearing I’d hear more about Molly.

  They didn’t mention her again, though. Not then, and not on the ride home. I know because even though I pretended to be asleep, I was listening the whole time.

  IT RAINED NONSTOP for the next two days. I hoped wherever Adam and Lawrence were that it was raining there too, that their tent and their sleeping bags were soaked, that their boat had capsized. I hoped Adam got trench foot or whatever it is you get from wearing wet socks and shoes for too long.

  I hoped he got gangrene.

  I threw out A Moveable Feast. At dinner with her parents and my mom and Jamie the day after our whale watch, Sarah invited me to a movie with her and Jenna, but I was so afraid that if I went they would mention Molly (Isn’t she doing a modeling shoot at the end of the summer? Remember when she got that award for being the smartest, funniest person in the junior class? I can’t recall—was it freshman or sophomore year that they were voted couple most likely to live happily ever?) that I said I was still feeling sick from the boat trip.

  It wasn’t a lie either. I felt like such an idiot. I ran our time together over and over in my head until it felt as grainy as an old family movie. Why had I kissed him that night at the beach? Had he even wanted to kiss me back or had he just wanted to be polite? But if he’d just wanted to be polite, what about our day in Provincetown? What about I like you too?

  He certainly hadn’t acted like someone who was just being polite. I remembered his hands on my face in the car that night. I can’t stop kissing you.

  Why not, Adam? Because as long as your tongue’s in someone’s mouth, you can’t talk about your girlfriend?

  By Tuesday morning I was in the worst mood I’d been in for as long as I could remember. I knew Adam and Lawrence were coming back today or tomorrow, and just the idea of seeing Adam made my stomach knot up. What was I supposed to do when we all met up at Larkspur or The Clam Shack: feign interest in his fishing trip? Suddenly the fact that he hadn’t told Lawrence he was with me in Provincetown made perfect sense. Of course he’d wanted to keep it secret—I was like his mistress or something.

  I tried to think about
how Lady Brett Ashley would have handled things if she’d found herself in my situation, but it was impossible. Lady Brett is never the other woman, she’s always the woman. I mean, I’m not holding her up as some kind of moral compass, what with her having a lot of affairs and cheating on her fiancé all the time and everything. But the point is, she was never a victim.

  How I’d managed to go from jaunty, potential girlfriend to victimized piece on the side, I’ll never know. But here I was.

  As if to mock my sour mood, the sun was shining brightly. When I went outside to go for a run, in the hope that endorphins pumping through my system might make me not feel like killing myself, my mom was sitting on the deck with her cell phone on her lap. I wondered if she was waiting for my dad to call, and for the first time since she’d dragged me across the country, I actually felt a little bit sorry for her. I mean, okay, it was annoying that she was so desperate for her husband’s attention she’d go to these absurd lengths to get it, but wasn’t it kind of lame that my dad wouldn’t just give her the attention she wanted without her begging for it? Would it have killed my dad to, like, take his wife out for dinner once in a while or tell her she looked beautiful or just buy her a dozen roses if that’s what she wanted? I mean, yes, it’s dumb to want a watch or a pair of diamond earrings or a compliment about the sofa’s new slipcovers as desperately as my mom appeared to want these things, but she did want these things and he had married her.

  How did you end up as a forty-five-year-old woman sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring like you were still in high school? “Hi, honey,” said my mom, turning around at the sound of the door sliding open.

  “How’d you sleep?”

  “Okay,” I said. I gestured at the phone. “Are you waiting for Dad to call?”

  “No, Jamie, actually,” she said. “He went to town to buy fish for dinner tonight, and he’s going to call and tell me what’s available.”

  How creepy was it that my mom was waiting for a guy other than her husband to call? Was anyone faithful anymore?