“Don’t go far,” Mom says. “Stay on our street.” Easy enough.
The dogs and I make it up to the room, where Laney is propped like a life-size rag doll on the futon, her eyes closed. Nina hovers over her with a washcloth. Maryann sits on the floor, staring at Laney. Southpaw hops over to Maryann, who cringes. Carver’s in the bathroom with the door open, wetting another cloth in the sink. The dogs sniff each corner and settle on the floor with Kirby for some affection.
“How is she?” I ask Nina.
“Ugh,” says Laney.
Nina shrugs. “That just about sums it up.”
Carver gives Nina a fresh washcloth. Laney curls her body into a tight ball. “I want to go home.”
“Nope,” says Carver, “got to sober up first.”
“Turn on the disco ball, will ya?” Nina asks. “That, by the way”—Nina points to the disco ball—“was my idea, remember?” The first time Nina saw this room, she did utter “disco ball.”
Carver turns off the main light, flicks on the blue spotlight, and gets the ball spinning. Snowy specks splatter the ceiling in a circular pattern. Laney looks up, her head circling while tracking the disco ball. “I’m gonna be sick.” Carver swoops her up in his arms while Nina and I run ahead to the bathroom.
Laney kneels in front of the toilet. “Get out, Carver,” she says. He shuts the door behind him, leaving Nina and me with Laney.
Nina rubs Laney’s back. “Let it come out.” With a loud squawk, Laney heaves into the toilet. “Good,” says Nina, like a true coach. I grab another washcloth from under the sink, wet it, and hand it to Nina. Laney takes it and wipes her mouth.
“I have to take the dogs back in the house,” I say, aware that my time is limited. “I’ll come back when it’s safe.”
“Hey, grab some crackers, will you?” asks Nina. “She’ll need something in her stomach.” Laney hovers over the toilet again, her body writhing as she throws up.
A video of someone puking curds of cheese into a white porcelain toilet might be the ultimate antidrug campaign.
I herd the dogs back into the house. The credits of the Julia Child show flip on the screen while Mom and Grandma get up from their places on the couch. “I’m going to bed,” says Mom.
“Me too.” Grandma shuffles over to me, holds my head in her hands, and kisses me on the cheek. “Pumpkin cake is in the kitchen. Tomorrow I make something with potatoes!”
I settle myself on the couch and grab the remote. “I’m gonna watch some TV.”
“Night.” Mom leans over and kisses the top of my head. I watch the beginning monologue of an old Saturday Night Live rerun, waiting a solid eight minutes before snatching some crackers from the kitchen. I also steal a few bites of Grandma’s moist cake before sneaking outside with the dogs.
“They’re still in there,” says Carver when he opens the door for me. The disco ball keeps on spinning.
“She sounds like a wounded bear,” Kirby adds. Maryann still sits on the floor. Her head wearily dangles atop her neck as she fights sleep.
I tap on the bathroom door. “Nina?” The door opens and Nina looks pale. Laney is crouched, her head resting between her arms, which are propped on the rim of the toilet. The smell emanating from the bathroom is sour.
“I need a little break,” says Nina. “Think I’m gonna toss some cookies myself.”
I hand Nina the package of crackers. “I’ll stay with her.”
“Laney,” says Nina, “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Natalie’s here.”
“ Uh-huh,” Laney manages to moan.
It seems awkward to rub Laney’s back like Nina did, so I just stand behind her. She lets out a long whine, lifts herself, and throws up again. Long threads of spit sway from her lips. She reaches over to flush, but the handle comes loose.
“I’ll get it.” Stretching over Laney, I lift the lid of the toilet tank and set it on the sink. A yank of the chain and the toilet flushes. But there, among the mechanics of toilet fixture and rising water, is a plastic Ziploc bag duct-taped to the inside of the tank. It’s filled with what look like grass clippings. At this point, I know better.
This can belong only to Carver. I rip the bag from its place, give it a quick drying-off with a hand towel, and shove it into my jeans’ pocket. Laney is slumped down on the floor, unable to see me.
I replace the lid and twist the handle of the flusher back into its place, securing it tightly. I flush again, and the tornado of water in the toilet funnels down, getting slurped into the hole.
Laney makes her way out of the bathroom and collapses onto the futon. Seeing me in the open doorway of the bathroom, Pip and Otto shuffle to attention.
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” plays softly on the turntable, and everything in the room except for the orbiting droplets of light from the disco ball comes to a photographic standstill. Maryann is in a childlike trance. Nina feeds crackers to Laney as if she’s offering Communion. Kirby hides behind the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. And Carver sits near the door leading outside, petting Southpaw. All 110 pounds of her sprawls across his lap.
I am no Lucy in the sky with diamonds. There are no marmalade skies or marshmallow pies, only a disco ball and saltines. Carver looks up at me. I am holding his secret in my pocket, asking him with my plain, nonkaleidoscopic brown eyes to bare himself, show me who he is so that I can trust him.
The song ends, and as if he himself is here to offer a segue, Paul McCartney starts singing “Getting Better,” the next track on the record.
“I want my bed,” Laney says, snapping the room back to reality.
Carver lifts the heavy weight of Southpaw off his lap. She does a one-pawed downward dog stretch and walks over to Pip and Otto. “I think it’s okay now,” Carver says. He says to Laney, “I’ll walk you and Maryann over to your house.”
“Nina, I’ll walk you home,” says Kirby. Nina and Kirby get to stay out until eleven-thirty. “I don’t want to miss my ten o’clock Twilight Zone rerun. Not that this zone of ours hasn’t been interesting.”
“I’d better go in.” I motion the dogs over to me.
“Bye, Nattie,” Nina says. Kirby gives me a stiff wave, like he’s saluting me.
“I’ll walk you out,” says Carver. We stand on the landing outside the door. The dogs are eager to walk down the steps and into the house.
“See you tomorrow?” he says.
“Yeah.” He leans in for a kiss. I turn my head and give him my cheek.
“Are you mad about this?” he asks. “It would have been wrong to leave her alone.” Thank you, Mr. Nightingale.
“Of course,” I say. “I’m just beat.”
“Good night, then.”
“Night.” I can feel him watching me as I head down the stairs.
Back in the house, I turn off the TV and go up to my room. Mom’s light is on, her door cracked. I shut my bedroom door behind me, pry the clear bag out of my pocket, and sit on my bed, crunching the bag between my hands.
It’s two a.m. I’m still awake. The little bag of horror is hidden inside the cavity of Fu-Fu. Right now, attempts to sleep are futile. I keep hearing Julia Child and that thing about flipping with the courage of your convictions.
Just when I think Carver’s this great guy, some zinger comes flying into the picture, making me question whether he is who I think he is. Does he deal? Did he brave the airport with the pot in his luggage? And if he did, how did he get past the drug-sniffing German shepherds? Will my dogs smell the bag and lead Mom up here in a drug bust?
I’m dizzy from the constant whirl of questions.
This is what I know: Carver makes me feel different than anyone else I’ve ever been around has.
I wedge my arm under Fu-Fu’s scratchy underside and grab the baggy. Not bothering to strap on a bra or change out of my tank top and pajama bottoms, I leave the dogs in their lump on my bed and tiptoe in the darkness down the stairs, out of the house, and back to Carver’s room.
&
nbsp; The lights are out; he’s sleeping.
I look up to see the white saucer of the moon. Suddenly, I’m scared. Am I jumping at this too fast, like the Russians did when they sent Laika, part Siberian husky, to orbit earth in the 1950s? They had it all planned, how they’d rocket the dog into space, but there was no plan for getting her back to earth.
What is my plan here? What will I do once I hand over this little bag? Stomp out of the room? Cry? Tap dance?
Laika died of fright after the rocket launched her into space. I’m scared, too, but putting it into perspective, I’m not scared enough to die of fear.
Conviction!
I tap gently on the door until I’m forced to knock more loudly. Carver opens the door in sweatpants and bare chest. The wedge of light from the moon illuminates his tight belly and muscles. There is no marijuana leaf tattooed across his chest (thank goodness). He looks warm and wrinkled from sleep. Conviction, Natalie, not muscle, I think.
“Hey,” he says, scratching his head; his hair is confused in different directions.
I walk into the dark room, plastic bag in hand. Carver shuts the door and sits on the edge of the futon, on top of a ruffled comforter. I stand in front of him and toss him the baggy.
He catches it. “Whoa,” he says groggily. “How did you get this?”
“Why were you hiding it?”
“But, wait.” He shakes his head. “Why did you take it?”
“If it’s not important to you, why do you care?”
Our questions chase each other around the room until we are tired. Carver buries his head in his hands. “Laney gave it to me. I haven’t even touched it yet.”
“Yet?” I ask.
“Yeah, yet.” He rubs his eyes. “I was planning on having a little here and there. It’s summer. I graduated. I just wanted to kick back.”
Of course I understand this part of it, because I, too, often have visions of taking a vacation from myself.
The blue part of my hair dangles in my eye. I wrap it behind my ear. “I don’t think it’s the pot that bothers me. But it’s deceptive, you know? You roll into town under the banner of Boy Wonder and then here you are hiding pot in the toilet.” I keep going, because I am not scared anymore. “And the other night, when we were in the car, you told me you didn’t have any more because you didn’t want to disappoint me. Did you mean that?”
“I haven’t done it since.” He reaches his hands out to me. I take a step back. “I like you, Natalie. It’s not that important to me. It looks like a bigger deal than it actually is.”
“I’m trying to figure you out. You say it’s not important and then you have like a year’s supply of it hidden in the toilet.”
He stands up with the bag in one hand and motions me to follow him with his other hand. “Come here.”
He walks me toward the bathroom. I’ve spent more time in this bathroom than I’d prefer tonight. He lifts the toilet seat and dumps the contents of the baggy without spilling on the rim of the bowl. With a flush, the water swirls with what looks like oregano and disappears. “See, I don’t need it.”
“I wasn’t asking you to do that,” I say. “I just want to be able to trust that you’re who I think you are, that’s all.”
Taking my hand in his, he leads me to the futon, where we face each other. “This is who I am.” He rests his hands on my waist, his body slopes toward mine, warmth collects between us, and we kiss, folding onto the comfortable cushion of the futon mattress.
Our bodies shift so that we are side by side, our heads sharing the pillow. Carver holds me, his mouth still connected to mine; our tongues touch in soft, spiraling rhythm. Time turns into a series of movements.
Carver’s mouth leaves mine, but his lips don’t leave my skin. They trace my cheek and travel down toward the nape of my neck. My fingertips explore his shoulder blades and slide down the smooth skin that travels the measure of his back. Carver’s hands reciprocate. One tousles my hair; the other reaches cautiously under my shirt. It caresses the span of my stomach and veers to the side, up toward my rib cage, creating a pulse inside me that is moving more than blood.
His hand crawls farther up and up, and right before he gets to where I think he’s going, I place my hand on his. Our hands tighten together. We kiss like this until his hand descends the slope of my torso to my hips, where his arms encircle me.
I’ve never been in anyone’s arms this long. Long enough to fall asleep.
Dogs, like rebel children, need defined boundaries.
—Michael Kaplan, The Manifesto of Dog
A series of knocks on the door, quick and hard, then slow and pounding, wakes me. My eyes open. Darkness has been replaced by light. I’m still in Carver’s bed. With Carver!
I look at his wristwatch: 6:30. Thursday morning.
It could have been a nice moment, waking up together. Maybe we’d kiss each other, though I’d be sure to hold back my morning breath.
But the knocking is beyond disruptive. And worse, I know who is behind the door. Carver places his hand on my arm. “We didn’t do anything wrong,” he says, eyes shut. His body turns away as if he is going back to sleep.
I sit up. “I’m in your bed.” Fully clothed, my shirt hiked up only a bit, but still.
He sits up now, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The knocking becomes desperate.
I should hide in the closet right now, cash in my remaining lies, and scuffle out when Mom leaves. But I get up to answer the door, because I don’t know the secret passageway out of that kind of lie.
I open the door and face her. Mom stands in her gray sweats. Her hands are in fists and bolted to her hips. Her frizzy hair makes her look like a madwoman who is clearly ready to eat her young. “What. Are. You. Doing. Up. Here?” She can barely breathe.
“I fell asleep, Mom. We were talking, and I fell asleep.”
“No,” she says irately. “Last I saw, you were on the couch, watching television, and then I assumed that you went to sleep. In your room. In your bed.”
Carver comes up behind me, wearing sweatpants but no shirt. The bare-chested look worked well last night but seems a bit sketchy now with Mom at the door. “Sorry, Elizabeth, but it’s true. We just fell asleep.”
Mom cranes her neck past me, toward Carver. “No, Carver. I trusted you. Both of you.”
“I left something here and came back to get it,” I explain.
“Don’t lie to me!” Her nostrils are flaring. “Let’s go.” She pinches the back of my neck and practically forces me down the staircase.
A second after we go inside the house, Mom whips me around to face her and points a stiff finger in my face. “Even though you may feel that sixteen is old enough to make your own decisions, you need to know that you are my daughter, living in my home, where there are boundaries. Boundaries that you have violated, young lady.” Mom shakes her hands in rage.
“Nothing happened! It’s not like we had sex.”
“You, Natalie, were in a boy’s bed—”
“Yes, but—”
“But what? When Faith and I agreed that Carver could come and stay here, I didn’t think that I’d have to worry about the two of you. Especially you.”
“If that’s true, then why did you come up to the room in the first place? Why did you give me the ‘boundaries’ speeches?”
“You were up there, Natalie. You’re proving my point. I can’t trust you.” What have I been the last sixteen years if not honest? I understand that I lie, but my lies are weak, tweaks and twists of truth so that Mom won’t have to worry about me. And this is what I get in return.
I push back. “Then why would you allow a guy my age, a good-looking one, to come and live with us? It’s a no-brainer, Mom.”
“Don’t use that tone with me, Natalie.” She turns away from me. “Go up to your room, because I can’t look at you right now.”
Mom put the dogs outside, so I have no allies, but there is the smell of cinnamon drifting in from the kitchen, a sign that
Grandma is there. I want to bury myself in the coffee cake she’s probably pulling out of the oven right now. Instead, I follow Mom’s instructions and walk up the stairway, holding on to the railing for support.
Mom has the nerve to make me feel shameful about this. And shame is the worst. She could slap me across the face, and it wouldn’t hurt as bad as this feeling of shame.
I enter my room and dive onto my bed, stubbing my toe on Fu-Fu once again. My pillow takes a punch, and I plunge my face into it, giving it a scream. I pound my fists on the mattress.
Sooner than I can string my thoughts together, Mom bursts into my room. She begins to pace back and forth in the tiny space between my nightstand and my closet—three steps forward, turn, three steps back. “You are not ready for this,” she says.
At this point I’m sitting straight up on my bed with my pillow balled in my lap. “Ready for what, Mom? I told you, I didn’t have sex with him.”
Three steps forward, turn, three steps back. “Maybe not, but it’s all part of a chain of events. They all lead to something, to expectations. You can’t be dense about this.” Mom stops midstep, looks out my window at the room above the garage, then shoots her eyes back at me. “You are wrong if you think I’m going to stand here and allow you to ruin your life by going too far with this boy!”
“Don’t you trust me?” I ask.
She walks toward me. “No!” There it is, the golden goose egg of truth tottering between us. “I was once your age. Emotions rule over logic.”
I lean up into her face. “Nothing happened, Mom. Don’t you think I know about consequence? Haven’t you crammed these little talks into my head long enough for me to know that?” Tears start to spill. I shrink back and hover over my pillow, shaking my head. I hate that I cry when I’m angry. “You don’t give me any credit.”
She ignores me and keeps going with her own distorted view of this. “You have violated my trust.” She steps closer to me. I look up at her; the fire in her eyes is close enough to burn mine. “That, Natalie, is the bottom line.”
We are locked on each other right now, our heads squared on the same plane. I tilt my head, wipe the tears from my eyes with my wrists, and try to shift the imbalance of the situation. “Is this about Dad cheating on you? Is that why you can’t trust me?”
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