The Things You Kiss Goodbye

by Connor, Leslie

She had me weeping. I drew my fingers under my eyes trying to trap tears. “It’s awful,” I said. “So sad.”

  “It was a long time before I stopped crying about it,” Regina said with a tiny shake of her head. “I still think that this thing that was supposed to be so, so bad—my being with Ricky—well, it never felt wrong to me. Never. And I still believe it was my papa’s big mistake.”

  “What about your mother? Did she know and—”

  “Oh, I never told anyone what Papa did to me. He went to his grave without us ever talking about it again.”

  “How?” I asked. “How could you be silent after he beat you?”

  “Times were different. He was my father.” Regina raised her eyebrows and stared off for a second. “He was loving me the best he could. Fathers are complicated,” she said. She took a little breath as if to bring herself around again. “Do you know, I was sixteen before I dated any boy again? With my father’s blessing, of course. I went with half a heart because I still wanted Ricky. But that next boy, I had to knee him in his sausage. He tried to take what I wanted to give to my Ricky.”

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  HarperCollins Publishers

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  Twenty-eight

  REGINA’S STORY STUCK TO ME. IN FACT, IT STITCHED ITSELF to my heart. Tony drove me home in his mother’s car while a steady rain dotted the windshield. On the way I thought about Bampas. For all the ways in which I felt he didn’t believe in me, I had never feared he’d hurt me. Never. I thought about things that were forbidden, and exactly how they became that way. Who put that judgment on them? How often did we as human beings get it wrong the way Regina’s father had? Such a tangle. Not something I could sort out in a minute or a month, I knew that. But I was helpless for the way the thoughts kept rushing at me. When she’d put me out the door at the top of her stairs, Regina Colletti had said, “I don’t tell that story much. If you repeat it to anyone I’ll find a way to feed you cat shit when you aren’t looking.”

  “I believe you,” I’d said. Then I’d taken a chance and I’d hugged her.

  At home before supper, I received my desultory kiss from Bampas—that one he brushed on me almost every evening while on his way to do something else. But then I circled him with my arms and hugged him tighter than I had in months—or years. He noticed this stoppage with a slight double take. He quickly restored order, opening his mail. He asked about the quart container I had set on the kitchen counter.

  “Regina sent me home with some of her pasta fagioli,” I said. The cat shit comment flickered through my mind and I kept an alarmed smile to myself.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Momma piped, poking her head in from the dining room.

  Bampas glanced at Momma and agreed, “Regina is too kind.”

  “She was so low last week and now up cooking,” Momma said. “It’s remarkable. But she puts me to shame. I should be sending meals to her.”

  “She had some of those cheese pastries I made,” I said.

  “Not enough. I will have the restaurant make several dishes. . . .” Bampas said. “Bettina, you have a table to set,” he added, and we fell to our evening routine.

  Throughout dinner, I thought about a particular thing Regina had said—that spending time with Ricky had never felt wrong to her. Cowboy was not my boyfriend, but he was still someone who I would not have been allowed to see had Bampas known. But seeing him never felt wrong to me.

  I went on showing up at Unit 37 as many mornings as I could, always with coffee. I found my way there a couple of lucky afternoons a week, and yes, it always meant lying to someone—usually, the Not-So-Cheerleaders. Cowboy seemed happy to see me every time. We talked about his work and my work and we stayed off the subjects that went prickly on us—like Brady.

  Cowboy taught me how to change a tire. I degreased, I polished chrome, and I treated interiors with conditioner, but only if I felt like it. Often, he needed to be underneath a car, and I’d do homework or fill a few pages of my sketchbook while I savored the oily smell of the shop.

  Unit 37 gave me the same sort of feeling the art room did. Both spaces could be amazingly silent except for the sounds of work getting done, and maybe some music. I never told Cowboy, but sometimes I pretended that being in his shop was my job.

  A few times now, we’d gone off in Cowboy’s truck. We took back streets to escape being seen in the village. We hit the country road that took us to the Dairy Bar for milk shakes. He’d buy or I’d buy. Except for the slight bittersweetness of spending lunch money that Bampas had given me to fatten up a friendship that he would forbid, those were the best afternoons ever.

  One October afternoon I was striding my way toward Unit 37, and I looked up at a yellowish light in the sky. The trees had turned; leaves were falling. It was like somebody had flicked a switch. It wasn’t just the landscape. People’s faces were turning rosy over faded tans. They were wrapped in knits and fleeces. Change of pallet, change of texture.

  I gave the lot a cursory check for Cowboy’s policeman friends. All clear. For the first time, the overhead door was not open. It felt a little different turning the handle on the small swing door; entering this way seemed more deliberate. I stuck myself half inside and called, “Knock-knock!” No answer. I walked in anyway. I almost leapt backward, thinking Cowboy was someone else as he rolled out from under the Chevy; he was wearing a gray zip-front coverall against the chill. As his head emerged, I said, “Oh, good. You’re still you.”

  “Who’d you think I’d be?” he said. He grunted and sat up.

  “It’s just that you didn’t look like you. In the . . . uh . . . romper.” I drew a line up and down in the air to indicate his attire.

  “Beta, if you ever see me wearing a romper, you can kick my ass,” he said. I threw my head back and laughed. He pointed to his clothes and said, “Coverall.” Then he added, “It’s cold. I need an extra layer.”

  “Yeah. Everything’s changing,” I said.

  “Guess so.”

  “If you have time I’ll buy you a shake,” I offered.

  “Too cold for milk shakes.”

  “It’s warmer in the sun,” I said. I might have been pleading. I wanted to go for a ride. I was afraid he’d slide back under the car not to be seen again. I had a whole hour and half before I needed to be back at the front circle of the school for my ride home.

  He got up and rolled up the big door. He stood for a second, looking up to the treetops, the sky. “Hmm. How’s that knee of yours?”

  “I don’t feel it much anymore,” I said. I almost mentioned that things had been better with Brady. I guess I was longing to talk to someone about all of that. But not Cowboy.

  “Yeah? What if we go somewhere different?” Cowboy asked. I nodded. A lot. “You’re like my mother’s Gordon setter,” he said. “Always up for a ride in the truck—”

  “Hey! Don’t get personal!” I said.

  “That’s not personal. That’s specific. My way of saying that I like your enthusiasm,” he said. He peeled out of the coverall and pulled his boots on. He put his long arms into a big flannel jacket and he looked like Cowboy again.

  I was surprised when he took River Road. We drove out past the place my brothers and I had seen him back in September at sunset. A few more miles and he pulled off at the water company property. Cowboy was out of the truck so fast I had to scramble to keep up. “Hope you’re game for a climb,” he said, jabbing a thumb toward the steep, wooded slope. I looked up.

  “Whoa. Sure,” I said. I was never so glad to be wearing long jeans. “Are we . . . uh . . . supposed to hike here? I mean, allowed to?”

  “Yup. It’s a public trail. But I rarely meet anyone. A shame. It’s so nice.”

  He led the way taking quick, broad strides. He caught handholds on tree trunks and rock outcroppings as he went. I followed his moves as much as I could. But my reach was much shorter and it wasn’t the easiest climbing. I’d
lost my dancing lungs. I kept falling behind.

  “Hey, Speedy, are you trying to lose me?” I called.

  He turned around on the next ledge four feet above me and reached down for my hands. We slapped grips together, I planted a toe and he pulled me right up toward his beaming face. I landed, two-footed. He let go of my hands. “Sorry, I’m rushing us. But I know you, and up there,” he pointed, “is a view you’ll want to sit with.”

  I know you. I heard it like an echo. Then I was chasing his plaid back once again.

  Finally, we stopped on a scrubby overlook. Cowboy offered the view to me, with a sweep of his hand. The lemon-colored sky spanned the spaces both above and below us. I had that feeling of breath laughing its way out of me. We were in a place that was neither earth nor sky. “You were right,” I said, steadying my breath. “Worth the race.”

  We looked down on a blaze of orange-and-amber treetops. Mounds of colors grew fuzzy in the distance. Closer to us, the sun came through the blush of leaves and lay bare the branching veins. I raised my hands and framed the sharp points of a maple leaf in my thumb and fingers for a moment. I gave Cowboy a grateful smile.

  He lay back against the hill in a patch of sunlight. He sighed, tossed out a rock that bothered his back, and I listened to it thumping off the steep hillside on its way down to who-knows-where. He put his hands behind his neck. His knees poked up like a pair of matched mountaintops. I watched him: quiet, eyes closed in the sun. It was a rare chance to stare at him—to trace his lines—and I did.

  I was between earth and sky, between two tantalizing views. We’d have to leave soon. I reached out and patted one of Cowboy’s knees. He opened one sleepy eye at me.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “I’m going to take the trail a little higher.”

  “Hmm . . . careful. Leave bread crumbs. . . .” he mumbled, then settled back.

  I stayed low—fingers touching down every so often. I stopped on my way to look across the treetops. Then continued up. I liked rising, rising, rising, while little balls of dry earth slid down the slope behind me.

  Last plateau, I thought. I was out of breath. I wrapped my hand around a small tree trunk, rested my cheek on my knuckles and gazed out. Frost. I’d like to see this whole place covered in crystals. I stayed there, frosting the view in my mind. Oh, for sure, I was spending too long. I took a last look and turned back.

  Going down was tricky. Every few yards I felt myself being shot forward—taking stupid, fast little steps along the steep path. I grabbed at the skinny trees trying to slow myself down and practically jerked my arms out their sockets. Then I launched on my feet again. The jarring made me laugh as it traveled from my boot soles to my jawbone. Down, down . . . I must be getting nearer to—ah—Cowboy.

  He was standing below me. He was smiling, I was smiling and—oh God! Was I just bouncing down this hill in front of him? And was he watching? I pulled one side of my open jacket across my chest. I took another step and suddenly the whole hill beneath my boots was marbles. My head went back. My feet came up.

  I hit the ground. Hard.

  I slid. There was nothing to do—nothing to grab. I hit Cowboy, square in the ankles. He fell smack on top of me. I closed my eyes.

  I heard him say, “Oops . . .”

  Other sounds were coming from me. I was trying to get air back into my lungs. I realized I was clinging to him. I closed my fingers tighter on the cloth of his shirt while I squirmed for that breath that would not come in. Then it did, and the fight for the next one began.

  “Beta . . . you okay?” His lips were near my ear.

  I blinked. Focused on the gray-green eyes that were looking right into mine. I saw how crowded his lashes were, the white-blond tips. And he had freckles. Tiny, tan ones that I had never been close enough to see before. There was a thin, white line of a scar beneath one of his eyebrows.

  He lifted off of me the littlest bit. “It’s only my boot heel against a root keeping us from a six-foot drop,” he said. “So we have to be careful here.”

  “Hu-uh. Really?” The words rode out on my jagged breaths. At least a hundred little rocks dug into my ribs from the back. “S-sorry,” I said.

  “Well, I’m okay.” He let out a gentle laugh, puff of air along my cheek.

  “But I hit you so hard.”

  “And I landed on you—so much,” he said in a commiserative way.

  He was still very much on me. I looked at him again. I uncurled my fingers from his sleeve and put my hand against the side of his face. I felt his beard—rough, but not spiny—on my fingers.

  His eyes closed. He pressed my hand between his chin and shoulder. He huffed a laugh and said, “Beta . . . I’m going to get up now.”

  I didn’t want him to move. But he did, slowly dumping himself to one side. He kept hold of my folded elbow, lest I go sliding again. I badly wanted to spring to my feet—to be perfectly fine, and damn sure of it. But this wasn’t going to go like that. With his help, I sat up. I pulled my boots underneath me one leg at a time. When I was ready, Cowboy pulled me slowly to my feet. We stood close—touching—just a few seconds before we let each other go.

  “You are all right, aren’t you?” he asked. He looked worried.

  “F-fine,” I said. I was pretty sure it was true. I tried to speak smoothly, like a person who could actually breathe. “Got the wind knocked out of me,” I said.

  “At the least!” he said. He wrapped his hand around a skinny tree trunk and rested his chin on his knuckles—just like I had when I’d been up the trail, alone. Was that something universal or just something Cowboy and I both did? No way to know and too strange a question to ask out loud, especially in a silence like this one.

  “Hmm . . .” he said, looking me over. “You look like you went ten rounds with a mean mountain.” He came up close again and began to dust me off. He was gentle, sweeping dirt from my jacket cuffs, flicking little stones from their impressions on the underside of my forearms. He held my braid in his hand and picked little sticks and leaves from it while chills rippled through me. Then I couldn’t stand it.

  “Stop,” I said. I stepped back. “D-don’t.” He kept trying anyway. “It’s too much. . . .” I stepped away from him. I pulled my braid to my front and swiped at it. Then I swatted dirt off my jeans.

  “Too much?”

  “Yes.” I faced him. I felt helplessly honest. “Cowboy . . . I liked holding you. I liked you holding me. I didn’t want to let go—” I stared at him, my eyes pooling.

  He waited, lids down so I couldn’t read his eyes. Then he picked up his chin and said, “We better head back to the truck.” He started off down the trail.

  I followed him, legs wobbling. “Hey. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Nope.”

  “Cowboy . . .”

  He stopped and turned to face me. He took hold of my shoulders. “I hear you,” he said. “But I don’t understand because I don’t want to understand. Do you get that, Bettina?”

  What a punch. He never called me Bettina. I hated the way it came off his lips.

  He stared at me as if he had something more to say. But he took too long. I boxed out of his grip. I hugged my own body—trying to pull together. My ribs felt like a cracking cage around my heart, and my heart felt like an exhausted bird. I sucked it up. I began to march. I went all the way down the slope ahead of Cowboy.

  Alone in the truck, I dialed Bampas. Thank God I hadn’t smashed his precious phone up on that hill. I picked a lie and steeled my voice. “Bampas, I—I’m going to be late coming out to the circle. Sorry.” He launched—started giving me nine kinds of shit through a signal that was full of hiccups. While I listened to that, I thought about how stupid it was that I couldn’t just get out of the truck on River Road a few miles from here and walk the swath to our back door. But that would raise deadly questions. “I’m sorry, Bampas. The paint was slow to dry. . . .”

  I was still connected when Cowboy got into the truck. I swiped the keys out o
f his hand just before he put them in the ignition. I gestured wildly at the phone in my hand and shushed him. When I hung up with Bampas, I turned on Cowboy. “What the hell? Did you want him to hear the engine? Jesus!”

  He said nothing when I got out of his truck at his shop, nothing when I dragged my backpack onto my shoulders. Neither of us said goodbye. I hurried to meet my father. I was late by almost fifteen minutes. While Bampas berated me for making him wait, I thought about Cowboy. I won’t see him anymore, I decided. But of course, it didn’t go like that.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Twenty-nine

  “BETA.”

  Better than Bettina, but boy, what an expressionless greeting. Perhaps I had startled him. I had called out at the door but the music was up louder than usual. He crossed toward me to turn it down. “Are you all right?” Cowboy asked. “I mean from that tumble?”

  “Fine.”

  “Did you tell your parents?”

  “No!” I said. “So don’t worry, nobody will ever know that I know you.” I sounded like a fifth grader, and I regretted it immediately.

  “Come on. You know that isn’t why I asked.” Cowboy shook his head. “But I was thinking . . . maybe you should stop coming around here.” He turned away from me, and I tried to ignore the feeling that he’d just cut my legs out from under me. He made himself busy with something—new brakes for the Chevy, I think. “I’m buried in work. I’ve got calls to make and I’m waiting on parts that are going to have to be modified—”

  “And none of that is new,” I said. “Look, I didn’t mean to mess everything up.”

  “There is no everything,” he insisted. He still wouldn’t look at me.

  “Well, just the same . . .” The heat from the two coffees I held was coming through my thin gloves. I’d waited three long days to come back and, in that time, October had turned even colder. I had followed my breath to the shop. It was warmer inside. The aroma of the coffee was rising. I looked around me. Here were the shiny car parts, the tools along the wall strip, the neatly stacked tires. The cowboy. The shop was my haven. I had to be able to come here. I wondered if I could ignore my way back in—simply not hear what he was telling me.