by Mimi Strong
She held her hand up in the stop position emphatically. “Nu-uh. This was beyond awkward. This was invent-a-new-word-that-conveys-abject-horror.”
“And you and Richard broke up because of that?”
“Not over that, but the thing that happened next.” She twisted her lips to the side and looked coy.
“Tell me this instant before I beat it out of you.”
“The next day, I made a little joke about it. A teensy little joke to ease the tension, you know? We were out on the boat, because he insisted on going fishing, even though it's the most boring thing on earth. Anyway, we had live worms, and he had the worm in his hand and he was leaned forward, trying to put the wriggling thing on a hook.”
“Oh god.”
“And I said, 'For the last time, Richard, stop masturbating where you're going to get caught.' He looked up at me, his eyes all astonished, and I said, 'Oh, that's a worm you've got. Never mind.'”
I convulsed with laughter, resting my cheek on the cool table while slapping it with my hand.
Steph mused, “Strangely enough, Richard did not find that amusing.”
As I was trying not to pee myself while laughing, someone came up to the table and asked if I was okay. I wiped the spit off my mouth and sat up, staring straight into the eyes of our waiter. He had gorgeous eyes, green like emeralds. He had short, black hair, and … why had I not noticed how hunky our waiter was?
“I'm okay,” I said to the cute waiter.
“Those guys left,” he said. “They were hoping you'd go over to their table.”
“But we haven't finished the drinks,” Steph said. “How does it work? I don't understand the buying drinks thing at all. Does it buy five minutes or something? Oh, ew. I don't like this at all.” She pushed the drink away.
The waiter said, “Personally, I don't like the send-drinks-over approach.”
I said to him, “That's because it puts you in the middle. Like some sort of drink pimp.”
He chuckled.
I said, “How about you? Do the drunk ladies who enjoy the fantastic margaritas here try to pinch your butt?”
He took two steps back, pretending to be afraid.
“Come back, we don't bite,” Steph said.
“But we may need a walk home,” I said. “What time are you off?”
He gave us a smile that made the whole restaurant seem brighter. “I've been off for twenty minutes.”
Steph said, “We just live a few blocks away. North of here. Perhaps you want to walk with us, if you're headed that way?”
He looked at her, then me, then her, then me again. “Give me five minutes to cash out,” he said, and he walked away. Steph and I both leaned over to check out his butt.
“We should kiss him,” Steph said.
“What do you mean, 'we'?”
“Just kissing. Nothing gross. Like when we were in high school. Remember we'd drink at parties and make out with boys.”
“I feel like I should be the responsible one here and say no, but I don't want to say no.”
“We'll go to your place,” Steph said. “And we'll say we're sisters.”
I shook my head. “I don't like lying. If he assumes we're sisters, that's fine. But don't say we are.”
The waiter's name was Caleb, and he told us his mother was Korean and his father was of Scottish descent. He had looked white in the restaurant, because his skin was quite light, but once we were outside, under just the streetlights, he did look more Asian. He was also terribly cute.
He held out his elbows for us, and Steph and I took a spot on either side of him.
“You're quite the ladies' man, Caleb,” I said, giggling.
“Wanna hear something funny?”
In unison, Steph and I said, “Yes!”
We were walking along the sidewalk past darkened store windows, and some people were around, going to the theater and nearby restaurants, but nobody gave the three of us a second look.
Caleb said, “When I was a little boy, one of my uncles used to tease me about being a Lady Killer. It would always make me cry, because I didn't know what the term meant, and I took it literally.”
“Aw,” Steph said. “That makes me want to hug you.”
He laughed nervously.
“Children do not get stuff,” I said. “Like sarcasm, for example. Sarcasm is wasted on toddlers.”
The other two laughed.
The traffic light was changing, so the three of us rushed across the street, still with arms linked tightly. As I caught our reflection in a store window, I thought: Half a man is better than no man!
We passed by a place with televisions playing in the window, and I said, “Do you know there's a correlation between young kids with speech problems and households where the television is constantly blaring, even during meals?”
Caleb said, “How does that work? Wouldn't the kids learn better with more examples of people speaking?”
“I'm not sure,” I said. “But I think the issue is nobody is actually hearing the kid talk. The parents aren't hearing the words that aren't right and giving the small corrections that matter.”
“The Corrections,” Caleb mused. “I read that book.”
“Me too!” Steph squealed, and then the two of them proceeded to talk about the author, Jonathan Franzen, the whole way back to my place. I liked his books, but didn't relate to the family dysfunction. I'd never read or watched anything that mirrored the same flavor of dysfunction I'd grown up with.
I unlatched my arm from Caleb's to open the front door of my building, and didn't put it back. He and Steph didn't seem to notice.
We got upstairs to my loft, and Caleb gushed about how amazing my place was. He ran up the spiral stairs to my sleeping loft and called down to us, “This place needs a firehall pole!”
Steph said to me, “You should get right on that. It could double as a stripper pole.”
I walked over to the kitchen, which was directly underneath the sleeping loft, and waved Steph over to talk with me in semi-private.
She whispered, “He's so adorable. Please, Mom, can we keep him? I'll look after him, I swear.”
Caleb kept talking about the view, admiring the cityscape that was visible from the upper part of the loft.
Also whispering, I said to Steph, “Dude, those drinks are gone. Metabolized. I'm totally sober and there's no way I can pull off a three-way makeout with that guy.”
The main reason, though, and what I didn't want to say, was that Steph and Caleb seemed to have all the chemistry, and I didn't like being the third wheel.
She looked at me through squinted eyes. “Are you sure this isn't about something else? Like you'd be cheating on your kissing client, Devin.”
“No,” I said, my tone distinctly guilty.
She rummaged through my fridge and pulled out a skinny bottle of rosé wine, unopened. “Hello, pink party wine,” she said.
I yanked open the drawer and handed her the corkscrew.
She laughed and twisted off the cap. “Twist-off. Classy.”
“That's my mother for ya.”
Steph called up to Caleb, “How big a glass of pink party wine do you want?”
He came down the spiral staircase, his feet noisy on the metal treads. “Just a small glass. My cheeks get all flushed.”
Steph brought him his glass of rosé and stared at him with adulation. “I wanna see your cheeks get flushed.”
His eyebrows went up, and he glanced guiltily over at me. “Thank you so much for inviting me over, Heather.”
“Feather,” I said.
He nodded. “Heather, and Stephanie.”
I shrugged. “Close enough.”
We finished the wine. We also danced in the middle of the living room to music played just loud enough to be enjoyable but not loud enough to upset my neighbors. I'd lived in the place for a year, and I was still meaning to have a housewarming party and invite some of the neighbors over, but it hadn't happened yet.
Aft
er the wine and the dancing, we were out of booze, but I had root beer and ice cream, so we made root beer floats.
The three of us sat on my sofa with Caleb in the middle.
I was not thinking at all about kissing Caleb. I was simply enjoying his company and letting my hair down. Caleb was taking some investment and securities classes, studying to be a financial consultant. The stocks and bonds weren't that relatable to me (like how walking around on Mars wouldn't be relatable to me), but I gave him a few tips about building up a client base and networking.
We were still working on our root beer floats when Steph said, in a tone that indicated a serious topic change, “Caleb, have you ever been afraid of kissing someone?”
“Of course. If you're not afraid of kissing someone, they're not worth kissing.”
My jaw literally dropped open. “That's such a great line.” I tapped my head and repeated it to myself in my mind. If you're not afraid of kissing someone, they're not worth kissing.
Steph said, “Are you good at kissing?”
“I used to be terrible. Because I would let my lips get all soft and not do anything, but then I started looking closely at people in movies, and I think I improved.” He looked down at his root beer float. “Of course, I am a little rusty now.”
Steph said, “You should kiss both of us. For practice.”
He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no, either. I hadn't noticed if his cheeks had reddened before, but they were certainly flushed now.
I said, “You don't have to. Steph's being silly. We used to kiss boys at parties in high school, and I think she's trying to recapture that feeling.”
“Yes,” he said, and he turned to face me first. “Sure, let's kiss.”
“Careful,” I said. “The last guy I kissed was so horrified, he ran away screaming.”
“Now I'm really curious,” he said.
Steph jumped up and ran around turning off the lights. Now my loft was dark, lit only by the streetlamps outside.
Caleb reached up and stroked my cheek. He seemed relaxed and comfortable. I leaned in toward him, and he kissed me. I kissed him back, and he didn't pull away. His lips were firm, and when I parted my lips, he gave me a little tongue, still sweet from the root beer. His hand moved from his lap, over to my leg, where it sat on my thigh, heavy and warm.
The kissing was nice, but my mind wandered. I thought about what my other client, Justine, had said about kissing a girl, and how her lips had felt soft, like uncooked bread dough. I thought about kissing Devin, and my heart began to race. I imagined it was him I had my lips on, and I mashed my lips into Caleb's.
He pulled away, saying, “Wow.”
I stared into Caleb's emerald-green eyes. Cute as he was, he wasn't Devin. Not even close.
Steph licked her lips. “My turn,” she said.
Caleb turned to Steph and did the same thing to her, stroking her cheek first.
“I feel nervous,” he said to her.
“Me too,” she said.
“Good.” He leaned in for the kiss. His hand didn't stop at her knee, though. His hand reached up around her waist and behind her shoulder, pulling her into him on the couch.
From where I sat, I could actually hear them kissing, hear the lip-smacking sounds. A moment later, they had their hands in each other's hair and were having a full-on makeout session.
Yep. So that was that.
Careful not to disturb them, I got up, gathered the root beer cups and the glasses from the wine, and brought them all quietly to the kitchen.
Caleb and Steph kept kissing, unaware of anyone else. Good for them, I thought. I also had some other dark thoughts, but I tried to squelch them by repeating to myself that Steph hadn't kissed anyone since her bad breakup, and that this was a good thing, and I was happy for her. I had wanted some attention, but I didn't want Caleb.
The question remained, though. Why not me?
I had nowhere to go in the open-plan loft. If I went upstairs to the sleeping loft, that would simply afford me a bird's-eye view of the couple, and though I enjoy tasteful photos of couples embracing (don't we all), my best friend going to second base was not something I wanted to see. I glanced over and saw Caleb was indeed going for it, his hands up inside Steph's shirt. She threw her head back, eyes closed, a woman in ecstasy.
The root beer floated roiled and boiled in my stomach.
And so, I retreated to the other room—the only other room—the bathroom. I put the bath mat on top of the toilet lid to make it more comfortable and sat down to catch up on some of my magazine reading.
At one point, I started to worry Caleb and Steph might be porking each other on my sofa, getting nasty stains on my nicest piece of furniture, but I reminded myself that Steph wasn't that kind of girl. And I would know, because for many years, I had actually been that kind of girl.
I cleaned out my toothbrush cup and started drinking water to stave off the hangover. I leafed through my magazines and read the articles I'd skipped over before—articles that would only be interesting if you were stuck in a bathroom with nothing else but your dark thoughts about how you were unworthy of love and every guy could see that at a glance.
On Saturday, I went to my mother's place to help her paint her kitchen. Since I'd moved out on my own, she'd lived in a townhouse not far from the little house I grew up in. A month before, the upstairs neighbors at the townhouse had done some unauthorized repair work and nicked a sprinkler line, flooding a bunch of units. Mom got money from the insurance to fix things up, but decided to keep the money instead of doing the repairs, which was not atypical for her.
Growing up, I'd been shooed away from the nicer running shoes come back-to-school time, being told that the cheap pairs, at the store where people helped themselves and threw everything everywhere, were good enough for us Hilborns.
I'm sure you can imagine that, when I showed up at school wearing less-than-current clothing, the mean kids took pleasure in warping my last name into Hillbilly. Before that fateful day a boy named Odin called me Fartbag Hillbilly, I'd loved my last name, thinking it was classy, like Hilton. Unfortunately, Hillbilly was the better of the mean names. (Yes, a few clever gents actually called me Fartbag Stillborn, but at least the teachers put a stop to that, finding it too cruel, even for kids.)
I never told my mother about the bad names, because she hadn't been that sympathetic to my social problems when I was growing up. She'd typically shrug and say, “Whattaya want me to do about it?”
When asked that question as a ten-year-old, I had no answer. Now, I realize I hadn't been asking her to do anything but listen, but she's always been one of those problem-solving people, who sees no point in discussion of things that won't change.
I arrived at the townhouse in my painting clothes, with a scarf tied over my hair.
“Cute,” she said as she let me in. “I suppose you'll want to take photos of yourself for your blog or whatever?”
“Mom, I'm not doing that anymore.”
“Good,” she said. “It was a waste of your talents.”
I clenched my fist. Why did her compliments feel like backhanded insults?
She showed me the damage that had been done by the water.
The counter top was warped, but it was hardly noticeable. The up-side to the disaster was it destroyed the tomato-dotted wallpaper in the room. The pattern had always looked, to me, like a blood-splattered crime scene, but she didn't see it. “They're happy tomatoes,” she'd always say.
It took us an hour to pull off the wallpaper. Next, we washed the de-papered walls with TSP and started priming them in preparation for a neutral beige paint.
“I'm thinking about going back to school,” I said.
She grimaced the way someone would at a bug flying into their drink. “Why would you do that? Rack up all those student loans?”
“I'd like to take more classes on psychology. Maybe become a counselor. They do a lot of the same things I do now, only they probably know what they're doi
ng.”
“You're in over your head, are you?” She refilled the paint tray with more tinted primer that looked like melted ice cream. “I don't know how you do it. Listen to people's problems when they don't have the sense to help themselves.”
Her words made my insides twist up in a way that only my mother could inspire. I clenched my teeth together to stop from responding, to avoid her trap. This was her method—she'd poke and poke until she found a soft spot, then I'd be on the defensive, defending myself verbally. Eventually, I'd get angry and have enough and say something that hit one of her tender areas, then she'd get a case of Why Is My Daughter So Ungrateful?
She continued, “You must enjoy the drama.”
Nope, not gonna bite.
She painted the wall with the roller for a moment, then stopped to admire her work.
Brightly, she said, “I wish I'd painted this wall ages ago!” She put more tinted primer on the roller. “That old tomato wallpaper had a funny look. Like an inkblot test or spattered blood or something.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said.
“If you'd wanted to study psychology, you shouldn't have dropped out of college,” she said. “What makes you think it would be different if you went back?”
“I'm older now.” I clamped my mouth shut again. I'd only said three words. If I kept it brief, she'd have less luck twisting my words.
“That you are,” she mused.
I moved the ladder over so I could continue with the edging work along the ceiling.
She didn't know why I'd dropped out of college, yet she hadn't exactly pressed me to tell her.
I could tell her now. The words were like dead birds in my mouth. I'd imagined telling her, imagined it a thousand times, and her stony face.
We should be sitting, I thought. I shouldn't be on a ladder when I tell her.
“I had a Miscarriage,” I said, the aluminum ladder creaking under the weight of the truth spilling out. “That was why I dropped out.”
Her roller slowed and then stopped.
I kept looking up, not making eye contact.
She said, “At Christmas?”
“Yes. I didn't have Mono. I went into the hospital to have a D and C, because it wouldn't stop bleeding.”