Girls in Pants

by Ann Brashares

  Christina held the baby to her breast, and Tibby knew it was done. Christina’s little world remained at two, but the second one wasn’t Tibby anymore. That was as it should be, sad and happy at once.

  Slowly Tibby unfolded her limbs and climbed off the bed. She wanted to leave quietly, to let Christina have her unadulterated joy.

  But before she did, she planted a kiss on Christina’s head. “You kicked ass,” she whispered. It wasn’t quite the wording of a Hallmark card, but it did express her true feelings.

  Near the door, she bumped into Lauren, bustling about. Lauren paused. “Tibby, you have an unorthodox coaching style, but it is very effective. Would you be available for future labors?” Lauren was half laughing, but Tibby could see she’d been crying too. She was wiped out.

  “No way.” Tibby stopped. She needed to know something. It felt important, like her future suddenly hung on the answer. “Hey, Lauren?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t you get used to this? I mean, haven’t you done it hundreds of times?”

  Lauren pushed her hair behind her ears. Her purple liner was smudged. Her face was shiny with sweat. “Yes.” She looked at her hands. “But no. It’s a miracle. It’s different every single time.”

  To love another person is to see the face of God.

  —Victor Hugo

  The three of them, Carmen, David, and Win, crashed into labor and delivery with such speed and force you would have thought they were each having a baby of their own.

  Tibby’s was the first familiar face they saw. She was wearing hospital scrubs with a lot of scary-looking stains, standing in the hall with a bewildered expression. As soon as she saw Carmen she burst into tears. “You have a baby!” she screamed.

  “We do?”

  “Oh, my God.”

  David was darting around, trying to find Christina.

  “Over here!” Tibby grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him into a room.

  It was a hospital room and, of course, it featured a bed. The bed featured a flushed woman in a pale pink gown, and she in turn featured a tiny, blanket-wadded bundle topped by a knit hat the size of a tennis sock.

  Carmen was surrounded by shouts and yells and exclamations of surprise and joy, so many and so voluble that she couldn’t tell which one came from whom—not even if it came from her own throat. She let David beat her to the bed, but she was a fast second. With expansive arms she pressed herself on her mother and this baby and even David. Christina was laughing and sobbing, and Carmen felt her own breaths coming out in those same general types of contortions.

  “We have a baby!” David pulled away a few inches to try to get a grasp on the situation. “Right?”

  Christina was the madonna now, calm and wise. She laughed at his tortured face. “Yes, this one is ours.”

  Tears were coursing down David’s face. He needed to make sure of Christina before he grappled with the idea of this baby of his. “Christina, I am so sorry—I don’t know how—”

  Christina pressed her hand to his face. “Don’t say anything else about that. I had Tibby. We have a beautiful, healthy baby.” She looked at Carmen. “You too, nena. Right now I have everything on the earth that I want.”

  With trepidation Carmen and David both peered at the tiny thing.

  “Do you want to know what it is?” Christina asked.

  Carmen was so overwhelmed, she’d forgotten about that whole issue. That had mattered to her once, hadn’t it?

  “It’s a boy,” Christina said joyfully.

  “Oh!” Carmen let out another scream, but she thoughtfully directed it away from her mother’s ear. “We have a boy!”

  David cried some more.

  Carmen looked over her shoulder at the door of the room. She wanted to share this deep pleasure with Tibby and Win, but both of them had gone.

  Carmen realized she needed to find them. She also needed to give her mother and David and their baby a moment together.

  She backed up a little, seeing the three of them framed in a triangle. Her mother’s face radiated such relief and joy that Carmen felt her own face pressing itself into that same shape, without even thinking. Her connection was so overpowering, she felt like her mother’s face was her own, her mother’s heart was beating with hers, her feelings were the same.

  And she remembered the thing about being able to feel someone else’s joy and knowing that you loved them.

  Good and Great Carmen,

  This is a day for miracles. Put on the Pants, and take one for your very own.

  All my love,

  Tibby

  When Carmen found the Traveling Pants neatly folded with the note right outside the door to her mother’s hospital room, she raced into the bathroom and pulled them on.

  Then she took the elevator up to geriatrics. Win stood by the vending machines. He was searching his pockets for change. It so happened that neither of them had eaten anything but Corn Nuts in many hours.

  Her impulse was to hug him, and she didn’t give herself the time to chicken out. She just threw her arms around him. “Thank you so much, Win!” she exclaimed with a full throat. “Thank you for everything.”

  “I’m sorry we didn’t get to her in time,” Win said into her hair. His arms had made their way around her, too.

  “I think it’s okay. I think everything is okay now.”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean to disappear before. I just didn’t want to get in the way of your family and everything,” he explained.

  “I know, but I needed to see you.” She pulled away a little, to give him some room.

  He didn’t seem to want to take it. He put his face back into her hair, pressing his cheek against her ear. “I need to see you, too,” he murmured.

  He held her closer. She let her body relax into his, feeling his breathing. She felt his backbone under her palms. Her heart was beating only a few inches from his.

  “I need to say something to you,” she said over his shoulder.

  He lifted his head. He let her back up from him a little. He had a look on his face that said it was girding for disappointment.

  “There’s this thing I’ve been worrying about, and I have to set it straight.”

  His look of apprehension grew.

  She breathed out. “I think you might think I’m a good person, and I wanted to let you know that I’m not. I am mean and selfish most of the time.”

  He tipped his head, confused.

  “You are too good for me,” she explained.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “No, seriously, Win. You are a good person, and I’m only pretending to be one. I’ve given you this false impression that I’m selfless and kind. And I’m not.”

  Win raised his eyebrows. “God, that’s a relief. You may think I’m good, but I was starting to feel pretty intimidated.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I got eight fifty an hour to babysit Valia.” She figured she might as well go for full disclosure.

  “Man, you deserved a hundred.”

  She laughed. “Funny thing was, I ended up really caring about her. That part was free,” she added.

  He studied her for a long moment, a quizzical look in his eyes, before he opened his mouth. “I used to be fat.”

  Carmen felt her eyebrows floating upward. “Excuse me?”

  “I used to be fat.” Win shrugged. “I was the fat kid. Since we’re uncovering our inner selves, I might as well throw that in.”

  She couldn’t help glancing over his body in case there was a hundred pounds she had forgotten to notice. There wasn’t.

  “The summer I was thirteen my parents sent me to fat camp. The next summer I grew six inches and got serious about swimming. But still, a fat kid lives inside me.”

  Carmen tried to fit this piece into the puzzle of Win. It did fit, in a funny way.

  He cleared his throat. “So as I see it, I’m the pretender. You’re too good for me.”

  “T
hat’s impossible,” she said.

  He moved closer again. He looked in her eyes for a long time. Then he tugged, most intimately, on a belt loop of the Pants. “If you’re too good for me and I’m too good for you, what does that mean?”

  “We’re just right?”

  He smiled. “Can I?” He wanted to put his arms around her again.

  “Please.”

  In front of the candy machine, under the glare of fluorescent hallway lights, surrounded by the smell of old people, he put his lips on hers. He kissed her soft and slow at first, and then deeper.

  He buried his head in her neck. He pushed her hair aside and kissed her there. She let out a small sigh.

  “I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” he murmured into her ear.

  “Mmmm,” she said. She found his lips again with hers. With abandon, she kissed him. Perhaps for the first time ever, she kissed without a single thought about how it was or what it was or what it meant. She kissed from the inside.

  An old lady wheeled out of her room and caught them in the act. “Can you two lovebirds take that somewhere else?” she clucked.

  Carmen and Win both started laughing, running for the elevators. They held hands as they descended and as they strode through the lobby.

  Carmen walked, and squeezed his hand, and suddenly she had the strangest impression that Good Carmen walked before her, a few feet in front of her, like a ghost, a glistening spirit.

  This was a day for miracles. Carmen overtook that spirit. She walked right into Good Carmen and absorbed her into her soul. Let her fight it out with Bad Carmen if she needed to.

  And, thus, the hospital doors opened and Whole Carmen emerged, newly born, into the world.

  My shoe is off My foot is cold I have a bird I like to hold.

  —Dr. Seuss

  Tibby wasn’t done leaping yet.

  Dazed in the fading light, she stumbled down Connecticut Avenue. Cars rushed by; people went around. Tibby felt like she’d been sucked into a wormhole of heightened experience and then spat back out into the regular world. The world was regular, but she wasn’t regular anymore.

  The wormhole happened to be pretty messy. Back at the hospital she’d washed her hands and face and shed her stained gown. She’d taken off the Pants and made away with just the pair of scrub pants on her legs. She hoped she wouldn’t get arrested for it. Still, she felt sticky. She didn’t want to think about that too much.

  She needed to find Brian. She didn’t want to get comfortable with the ground yet.

  She knew he’d be at home. At her home. She pointed herself in the right direction.

  A block from her house she saw him walking toward her. She didn’t question that. It was one of those days.

  They didn’t run into each other’s arms or anything. He walked toward her and when he reached her, she turned 180 degrees so they were walking in the same direction. They walked like that for a while. She reached for his hand. He held on.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. He didn’t ask what it was. He was willing to go along.

  They walked blocks and blocks and then up a long hill up to Rockwood pool. Then they step-jumped over moving water. And then ascended that long staircase. By the time they got to the fence, it was dark. And they were good and high. A high place was what you needed for a leap.

  “Here’s where it’s good to climb up.” She pointed to the break in the barbed wire.

  Brian seemed to think that made sense. She led the way; he followed. For such a chicken she really was a pretty good climber. She jumped the last five or so feet to get herself in the right spirit. He appeared gracefully by her side.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  “I think so,” he said faithfully, even though he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  She began unbuttoning her shirt and his eyes widened slightly. She cast it off. She was wearing a pretty bra. That was nice. She saw her skin glowing in the warm evening air. She pulled off the aqua green scrubs. This was new. She slipped them off and folded them carefully. Her underpants were pink and not embarrassing.

  Brian’s eyes glanced off her and then back on. They were careful, surprised, hopeful. And longing. There was that, too. He was looking for permission to let his eyes stay on her. And with her eyes, she gave it.

  “Now you,” she said.

  He took off his own shirt and jeans in a matter of seconds. He left them in a pile. His skin glowed just as brightly above and below the boxers that she herself had picked out for him, three pairs for nine dollars at Old Navy. She hadn’t realized she’d be seeing them again in this context. She drew in a sharp little breath. She had pictured him in her mind many times before. This was better.

  She held his hand again. They let their eyes run over each other unchecked. What was there to hide anymore? She didn’t want to hide anything.

  She led him to the edge. She picked the deep end on purpose.

  They stood side by side, their toes curled over the edge. She looked at him, right in his eyes and he looked in hers. This was going to be fun.

  One. Two. Three.

  And so they jumped together.

  Bridget’s body felt better. Dramatically ill, dramatically better, that was her all over.

  Learning about the birth of Carmen’s baby brother gave her great joy. The news came like a dash of cold, fresh water on her soul. She spent almost a week’s pay sending flowers and balloons to Christina.

  But, still, her heart hurt. She wanted to see Eric. She needed to see him. She craved his presence. But he was gone. Saturday he disappeared without a trace.

  He wasn’t in his cabin. He wasn’t in the dining hall for three meals in a row. Finally she sucked it up and went to Joe. “I seem to have lost my partner,” she said, trying to sound casual.

  “You like him now, do you?” Joe said smugly.

  She felt like smacking him. “Do you know where he went?” She couldn’t bring herself to say Eric’s name.

  “No idea,” said Joe.

  She tapped her bare foot against the floor planks of the main office. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “He better be back by Monday,” he said. “We’ve got a tournament starting.”

  She hated Joe at this moment, San José Earthquakes or no. He was a guy who rode his own agenda hard, and he didn’t care about yours. “Did he say anything to you?”

  “He said he had to take off for a couple days. That was it.”

  Bridget stalked away angrily. She practically screamed when a chunk of the pine floor dug itself deep into her big toe. Why didn’t she wear goddamn shoes? What was the matter with her?

  Where had Eric gone? Why? Did he need to get away from her? What had happened between them?

  That evening she tried running, but she felt weak. She couldn’t eat. She called Lena, Carmen, and Tibby on the common phone in the staff lounge and left messages for all of them. That made her feel panicky. Why couldn’t she find them? She felt terribly alone.

  She thought to call Greta, but she didn’t know how to get her feelings up and over the transom. How could she explain? Eric wasn’t her boyfriend. He wasn’t her anything. Why did she feel like she needed him so desperately?

  She sat on the dock at the lake and watched the clouds thicken. She wished it would rain hard and long and clear everything away. Rain never came when you asked for it.

  She couldn’t sit. She paced. She kicked a soccer ball around an empty field. The lightning in the distance wasn’t the real thing. It was empty, dissipated and fake: heat lightning. It brought no rain.

  As much as she prided herself on making this summer with Eric different from the one before, it was beginning to seem eerily similar.

  Like before, she was laid open by a glimpse of intimacy, and when she tried to find it again, there was no one and nothing there. Eric offered, whether he meant to or not, some giant idea of love. But she only grasped it long enough to know her poverty. He pushe
d her to destroy herself. He made her want and then gave her no satisfaction.

  Why did he do this to her? Why did she let him? How could she give herself away like this, even after she’d already learned such a bitter lesson?

  She wished he hadn’t found her in that feverish, vulnerable state. She wished he hadn’t worried over her and taken care of her and held her all night. Having it was ecstasy, but its sudden, inexplicable loss was too painful to bear. She’d rather go through her life doubting such a thing was possible than knowing it was real and she couldn’t have it.

  What a pitiful waste she was. She was willing to give away, to throw away, the very best she had. For what? It was one thing to sacrifice yourself for a great cause. It was another to destroy yourself for a person who didn’t even want you. It was an act of self-immolation, a sacrifice nobody wanted, that did nobody any good. What could be more tragic than that?

  She thought she was independent and strong, but she got one small taste of love and she was hungrier than anyone. She was ravenous.

  All the drawings had been difficult, but Lena saved the hardest for last.

  She’d procrastinated. She’d gotten a manicure and pedicure with Effie. She’d spent mornings shopping and cooking for Carmen’s household, wanting to help out with the new baby. She and Carmen had spent happy evenings together on the floor talking about drawing and Win and the beach, simply watching the baby breathe.

  But now the time had come. Her portfolio had to be postmarked by the following day; she couldn’t put it off any longer. When the house was quiet and the light was good, she pulled on the Traveling Pants and sat herself in front of the mirror in her bedroom, and got to work.

  It was one thing looking at other people’s troubles. It was another looking at your own. If feelings and expectations made it difficult to see a loved one’s face, how blind were you to your own face?