Luke: coffee, paint, and sage.
The girls: fruit-scented erasers, crayons, and hand sanitizer.
Sometimes I’d stand at the kitchen window, take forever to do the dishes, watch the homeschooled brown boys swimming next door. They were halfway through high school, as slim-jim and long-legged as colts. Sometimes I’d take forever to water the Kool-Aid-colored geraniums and lantana. Watch the woman across the street come out at the same time every morning in her visor and flowery garden gloves, her collared shirt and pale candy-heart-pink pleated shorts.
I wandered in the dry heat, went shopping. Bought a hat.
“It’s good for the sun,” the man at the store told me. I had lived long enough and been married long enough to know men were always telling women what they already knew. I nodded kindly and wouldn’t let him give me a bag. I put the hat on before I left—the brim so wide it made me feel like a mushroom.
I stopped for allergy medicine. Beer and a pair of new sunglasses too. I tore the tag off and put them on, pointed to the blackheart lenses.
“They’re good for the sun,” I said to the cashier without smiling. That’s what I always did when I was annoyed, passed it off to someone else. Like, tag you’re it. Gave it away like it was the Cheese Touch.
I chased the antihistamine down my throat with a smooth river of so-light-it-was-basically-nonalcoholic beer I’d poured into an empty coffee cup. I sat in carpool and waited for my babies to come out of the school gym, to fill the back of the car with their secret language and giggle-bubbles.
* * *
Over oatmeal dinner, I told Luke I wanted to have another baby.
“If it’s a boy let’s name him Gunnar. Or Shotgun. Make this whole desert cowgirl thing a reality.” I blew off my finger guns and laughed, looked across the table at our twin second-graders named after twinkling jewels.
“I’m already jealous of the new baby,” one of them said.
“I’ll hate him,” the other one said.
“Don’t say that,” Luke and I said at the same time.
“Jinx!” the girls squealed.
We drove out in sunset-glory, got Jinx Coke Slushies for dessert.
I sat on the edge of our bed wearing nothing but a pair of lust-red suede wedges and my new hat. The air filter, a peaceful plastic monster in the corner, humming and humming. I was reading one of Luke’s nature books, underlining the words I liked with a hideous yellow pen. Surreptitious. Canary. Chamomile. I meant it as an act of aggression. Rebellion. Claiming my territory, pissing on a bush. Luke never wrote in his books. I whispered the words to myself. Surreptitious. Canary. Chamomile. I loved how they made me feel…my tongue and lips and teeth, quietly tip-tapping.
“Hey, Brooke,” he said. He rarely said my name. Hearing it bloomed my heart, creeped fresh yellow-green ivy up and around the bone cage protecting it.
“Hey, Luke,” I said as he closed the door. I’d already checked on our sleeping girls to make sure they were still breathing.
“Do you want to stay out here or go back home?” he said. Was he sad? I didn’t want him to be. Selfishly, I wanted to see him smile. Wanted to light the firecracker-swish of his happy face. The sex was always better when we were both in a good mood. I wanted to do this right. I wanted my Arizona Baby—to have him cowboy-swagger right out of me with a tiny gun on his hip. I was ovulating. Maybe that was why I was feeling so dizzy and lonesome.
“I’m naked and you’re asking questions.” I pouted.
“I’m sorry. I’m worried about you,” he said. Cloying. I told him to stop. Told him he was giving me a headache. I shut him up by writing surreptitious, canary, chamomile in his mouth with my tongue. He pushed me back and I spread across the bed slowly. Like a flag unfurling on the Fourth of July. Like every damned army in the world was watching, standing to salute.
Winona Forever
Limerence. As if someone had smeared my life lens with dewy Vaseline, I got this dreamy, floating feeling around Crystal. I loved that her name was Crystal. Like, her mom thought the word crystal was pretty so she named her that. Crystal’s sister was Amber. Of course her sister was Amber. Was. Because Amber’s boyfriend got drunk one night two years ago and drove his car into the river with Amber in it. No one knew exactly what happened, but everyone knew two eighteen-year-olds shouldn’t die. That kind of thing never made sense anywhere, to anyone. Crystal wore a necklace with Amber’s picture in it and sometimes when it was late and we were in bed together talking and making lists with the TV on, I would touch Crystal’s neck and open the locket and look at Amber staring back at me with glossy lips and those same Winona Ryder–brown deer eyes Crystal had. And we’d cry and cut ourselves together sometimes. Go to her bathroom window and open it, hang our heads out far enough so we could share a cigarette.
I was obsessed with Winona Ryder and got my hair cut the way she had it in Reality Bites. It’d come out the year before and Crystal and I had been to see it three times already at the cheap theatre. My mom had taken us to see Mermaids in the theatre when it first came out. Amber went with us too and when we were walking out, my mom had told the three of us we reminded her of Winona and we told her she reminded us of Cher, because she did. I didn’t have any siblings and Crystal and Amber were the closest things I had to sisters. When Crystal and her family lost Amber, I didn’t feel outside of them like it was something I couldn’t understand because I wasn’t blood-related to them. Crystal and I had been friends since kindergarten, I’d known them both almost my entire life. It was like I lost my sister too. Crystal and I both got obsessed with Winona Ryder because seeing her onscreen made us feel like we’d been hanging out with Amber again.
Lucas, Beetlejuice, Heathers, Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael, Edward Scissorhands, Little Women. I especially loved Heathers because my name was Heather. And sometimes when I was in front of the mirror, Crystal would point to me and my reflection and go, look, Heathers! It was a dumb joke we loved. Sometimes everything about my life felt like a dumb joke to love. Amber’s death drew us closer to one another, and we were already close. But now, we never even spent a weekend apart. We watched the Winona movies in Crystal’s room with the door closed because it bothered Crystal’s mom the way we watched them over and over again. Crystal’s mom thought Winona looked like Amber too, but it wasn’t comforting for her like it was for us. Crystal had a big bedroom with her own bathroom and a TV and a VCR and a stereo. We could do whatever we wanted in there, like it was our own apartment. At my place, we could watch the Winona movies in the living room because my parents didn’t mind. And my dad’s best friend worked at the video store, so he would hook us up and give my dad sweet deals when we bought the VHS tapes. I had them on a shelf in my bedroom because they were as precious to me as my books. Crystal and I shared the collection, but the movies stayed at my house. We had a pact that we’d never watch the Winona movies alone, only together. And even if one of her movies happened to be playing on TV, if Crystal wasn’t with me, I’d close my eyes and change the channel or leave the room completely.
Crystal and I would write WINONA FOREVER on our arms sometimes. Sometimes on our feet if it was warm enough to wear sandals. The boys we liked asked us what it meant, but we wouldn’t tell them. WINONA FOREVER was ours and ours only. We liked boys and we liked each other too. Crystal and I kissed when we slept in the same bed. We kissed until we couldn’t kiss anymore, but that was all we did. Kissed. We kissed and kissed until our sticky-lipgloss mouths tasted exactly the same. Like cherries or strawberries or pink or grape or blueberry or lemon or Dr Pepper and then we rolled over on fire. Burning and burning before we fell asleep. We didn’t tell the boys about this either. Not even when they were being pervs and wanted to get off on asking us if we ever made out. We were coy when we said no, stop it, no.
We started kissing after Amber died. It was summer and Amber and her boyfriend had been out celebrating her boyfriend’s birthday. It was summer when Amber and her boyfriend went missing for two whole days u
ntil the cops found the car in the river. It was summer when Crystal’s family had to bury Amber. It was summer when Crystal and I went and bought all the yellow roses we could find at the grocery store and put them on Amber’s grave because yellow roses were Amber’s favorite. And we each kept a yellow rose for ourselves and came back to Crystal’s room and watched Mermaids because Crystal said she wanted to watch something cozy so I went home and got my tape and brought it back. A lot of Crystal’s family was still over at her house, in the kitchen, eating and cooking. Her dad was out on the front porch, drunk with his brothers. Her mom was in the kitchen smoking and crying with Crystal’s grandmother. Crystal and I went to her room and closed the door and turned the movie on. I put my head on her shoulder and I’d already cried so much I didn’t think I could cry anymore, but I sobbed. Again. And Crystal was playing with my hair. I got up and went to the bathroom, blew my nose, washed my face. My eyes were all black and streaked from my makeup afterward. Crystal had taken off her black velvet dress and I took mine off too. We were in tank tops and panties and when the movie was over we got in bed. We could hear her family in the rest of the house, on the front porch, in the backyard. Everyone was being quiet, but the house was somehow loud because it was full and alive, something Amber wasn’t anymore.
Crystal looked at me and put her hand on the side of my face and it was both of us. Both of us leaned forward and kissed and kept kissing. My stomach, our tongues—pink cotton candy, swirling. We touched feet in her cool sheets and I don’t know how long we kissed with the windows open. When we were finished, we cried some more before Crystal got out of bed and went into the kitchen to steal a cigarette from her mom’s pack. Her mom had drank a lot and took some pills and passed out on the couch in her black dress; her dad was out there staring at the TV. Crystal’s uncle was at the sink, sniffing and quietly doing dishes with the wet spoons clinking and catching the zappy kitchen light.
I had a headache from everything, but I smoked with Crystal anyway. She peed in front of me, put the seat down and sat there with her knees under her chin. I let my cigarette hand hang out the window whenever I was holding it. Crystal pulled a half-empty bottle of peach schnapps from underneath the sink. We’d absconded with it that morning from Crystal’s parents’ liquor cabinet. We’d learned the word absconded in English class. It was extra credit on the vocab quiz. Cherry schnapps was my favorite, but I liked the peach too. Crystal’s favorite was peach. I thought it was important for her to have her favorite that sad night. And I wanted to be there for her, for whatever she needed or wanted. After we finished our cigarette, we went to Amber’s abandoned bedroom, touched her stuff, hugged her stuffed animals and cried some more. We didn’t sleep much that night and when we ended up in Crystal’s room again she and I kissed some more, and I was genuinely surprised when the sun rose, like the night should’ve been extra-long since everyone was so devastated. The gravity of Amber’s death was weighing us down, so why not the sun too? Crystal and I cut ourselves together in the morning. Same spot on our upper thighs, stinging and bleeding; we put on fresh Little Mermaid Band-Aids and watched Mermaids, finishing off the bottle of schnapps in her room and getting drunk pretty fast because we hadn’t eaten. And when we puked, we barely had anything to puke up. We both took showers, washing our hair with the same Herbal Essences shampoo every girl at our school used that fluffed up against the boy-smells of gym, weed, and matte Drakkar Noir.
“My breath smells like a funeral,” Crystal said. “Winona Ryder looks so much like Amber,” she said again before she fell asleep in full afternoon sun. I brushed my teeth twice before I went home.
* * *
I was jealous of the boy Crystal liked, but that wasn’t fair because I liked a boy too. Crystal liked Jamie and I liked Tristan. Jamie and Tristan were best friends. They lived in the same neighborhood, so we’d drive past their houses sometimes to see if they were home, to see what they were doing. Crystal’s mom hadn’t let Crystal get her license even though it’d been two years since Amber died. She didn’t like her riding in the car with me that much either, so we didn’t let her know how much we drove around. My parents had gotten me a little white hatchback I loved and Crystal and I called it the white rabbit after one of our favorite songs. I kept our flower crowns hanging around the rearview mirror and we’d put them on whenever we drove past Jamie and Tristan’s houses. We thought it was good luck, that it would help us be able to see them, that they’d be out in their yards. Sometimes it worked. We went to school with Jamie and Tristan, but we got a special thrill when we saw them outside school. Once, we had our flower crowns on and Jamie and Tristan were out in Tristan’s driveway skateboarding and listening to Nirvana. The whole thing was so nineties, so grunge. Jamie even had a flannel shirt tied around his waist.
“Hey,” Jamie said, walking over to the white rabbit. He stuck his head in a little and was so close to Crystal I thought she was going to die. Her shorts were really short and we weren’t cutting ourselves anymore, so there were no Band-Aids, just a couple pale, smooth scars. I looked down at her pretty legs, her purple-glittery toenails and flip-flop feet on the floor of my car.
“What are y’all doing tonight?” I leaned over and asked.
Tristan came over to my side so I turned to him. My car was sitting right behind the driveway, out of the road. I turned the engine off.
“Skateboarding,” Tristan said.
“What are y’all doing?” I heard Jamie ask Crystal, but I didn’t turn around. I was looking at Tristan and his big brown eyes and my sadness flipped on because I thought about Winona’s Bambi eyes and Amber’s Bambi eyes. Tristan asked me if I wanted to smoke with him, so I got out and leaned on the hood of my car while he lit my cigarette.
“My parents are in Florida,” Tristan told me. “And I like this,” he said, touching my flower crown. Would the good luck be doubled or go away completely now that Tristan had touched it? Only time would tell.
“Thank you,” I said.
Crystal and Jamie were talking to one another quietly, almost like they were already dating. I could tell Jamie liked her by how he looked at her. I saw him reach out to touch her necklace and Crystal let him. She didn’t even flinch and my jealousy ratcheted up, but dropped down low after I pulled my car up Tristan’s driveway and we went inside and Tristan kissed me for the first time up against the wall in his kitchen with Crystal and Jamie sitting right there in the living room.
“You’re cool with this? Because I like you. I like you a lot,” Tristan said with his hand pressed on the wall next to me. The ice-maker in his humming refrigerator rattled. I would’ve had sex with Tristan. I wanted to. But I hadn’t had sex with anyone and I was waiting. For something. But I decided in the kitchen that I would lose it to Tristan whenever I was tired of waiting.
“I like you a lot, too,” I said to him before he kissed me again. Was Crystal jealous of Tristan kissing me? When we went back to the living room, Crystal and Jamie were making out on the couch and neither of them even noticed us, so we went to Tristan’s room and closed the door.
That quick, I decided I was tired of waiting and I wanted to lose my virginity with Crystal in the same house, so we could talk about it later. I hoped maybe she was in the living room losing hers to Jamie. In Mermaids, Christina Ricci almost drowns while Winona Ryder is losing her virginity up in the bell tower, so before Tristan and I did it, I went to the door and opened it and peeked out at Crystal and Jamie. They were under a blanket and I could see Jamie’s ass moving up and down. Underneath him, Crystal had her head thrown back, her hair hanging down the side of the couch like a waterfall, her eyes closed. Jamie looked right at me and the look on his face was placid. Another extra credit word from our vocab quiz. Jamie looked at me and looked at me, then closed his eyes tight, let his head hang down, and kept moving under the blanket.
Tristan and I moved under his blanket too. Watching Crystal and Jamie made me so horny I felt like I’d pass out. Tristan had been looking for condoms
in his dresser while I was watching them, so I didn’t even know if he knew what I’d been doing. I liked Jamie looking at me when he was with Crystal like that, because it made me feel close to Crystal. And even when Tristan was inside me with the condom on I was thinking about how later Crystal and I would go back to her house or my house and watch a Winona movie and kiss when we got in bed. I loved being with Tristan. He was sweet and gentle and kept asking me if I was okay and I was. I was more than okay. The night was perfect and the cigarette I’d share with Crystal later would be perfect and seeing Winona’s brown eyes on the TV would be so comforting to both of us. We’d talk about the boys, cry about Amber, watch Winona and write WINONA FOREVER on our arms and kiss some more. We’d be cranky with lust and twinkle like sometimes-sad, crooked little lights.
Girlheart Cake with
Glitter Frosting
POSSIBLE INGREDIENTS: Too much black eyeliner. Roses. Champagne from a can, champagne in a bottle. “Music to Watch Boys To” by Lana Del Rey. Pink, lavender cigarettes. Flower water, flower crowns. “Formation” by Beyoncé. Glossy lips, glossy eyelids. “Fetish (feat. Gucci Mane)” by Selena Gomez. Red lipstick. Lipgloss in your pocket, lipgloss in your purse, old lipgloss lost and found under the couch. Lipgloss that smells like birthday cake, lipgloss that smells like blueberry, lipgloss that smells like mango. Your natural hair. Lorde humming at the beginning of “Yellow Flicker Beat.” Fairs and beers. Los Angeles, Nashville, Kentucky. Malibu! Miranda Lambert and a lighter. “Milk” by Kings of Leon. Expensive skincare routines. The Virgin Suicides. “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House. Green-green summer grass and ice-blue pool water. Lindsay Weir dancing in her bedroom to “Box of Rain.” Sunflower sunshine, golden. “Thirteen” by Big Star. Rihanna as fairy godmother. Zazie Beetz. Harry Styles in a wallpapery, wildly patterned suit. Chipped polish and a mood ring. Beach breath, sunscreen. Taking your bra off, finally. And bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. Dresses and leggings and cowboy boots. “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” by Sophie B. Hawkins. Vanilla. Cherry. Every Fiona Apple. Lens flares. Kissing your black- (or brown- or red- or blond- or no-) haired husband or boyfriend while he’s sleeping, kissing your black- (or brown- or red- or blond- or no-) haired husband or boyfriend when he’s awake. Pink quartz, amethyst, carnelian, aquamarine, red jasper, plum jasper, citrine, amber, padparadscha sapphire, etc. “The Summer I Was Sixteen” by Geraldine Connolly. “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. “Killer Queen” by Queen. Feather earrings and hoop earrings and groupies. And Taylor Swift. Father John Misty and Father John Misty’s hands in the smoke and lights. Jeff Buckley. Clementine and honey. Patsy Cline. Cool, green iridescent lake water, beer can bonfires. “Spice Night” by Catherine Bowman. Sparklers, twinkle lights, pale sugar. Glitter, glitter. Jefferson Airplane. Ring Pops and Blow Pops and eyeshadow names. Looping cursive, folded paper. En Vogue and Tori Amos. Heart. Baseball, A League of Their Own. Denise Huxtable. Angela Chase. Felicity. Keri Russell. Dorothy Dandridge, Eartha Kitt, Barbra Streisand, Audrey Hepburn. Cher. Marilyn Monroe movies. Swish-swishy prom dresses, heels in hand. Lemonade. Lemonade. Buzzing neon. Confused hearts, blooming hearts, broken hearts, full hearts. Ale-8-One and church camp, crosses. Peach pop, root beer floats, Popsicles. Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson. Mary Shelley. Judy Blume. “Work It” by Missy Elliott. “Bossy” by Kelis. Shaving legs in kitchen sinks. Secrets, spilled like wine. Pretty in Pink. Accidental girlfriends. Stealing Beauty and A Bigger Splash and Call Me by Your Name—every summer obsession movie—panting, drinking, licking, blazing. Oprah Winfrey. Hayley Williams + Paramore. Serena Williams. Roxane Gay. Sylvia Plath. Jenny Lewis. “Does He Love You?” by Rilo Kiley. The Supremes, The Ronettes. “Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals. Bubbly pineapple water, tank tops, Juicy Fruit. Tegan and Sara. Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin. Ella Fitzgerald dancing in a black dress next to Frank Sinatra. Judy Garland singing “a big fat rose” to Gene Kelly. Etta James singing “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World”; Etta James singing anything. The Thomas Crown Affair’s chess scene kisses, Steve McQueen spanking Ann-Margret in The Cincinnati Kid. Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Villanelle’s pink Molly Goddard dress in Killing Eve. Sandra Oh. Natalie Wood. Elizabeth Taylor, Maggie the Cat. Joshua Tree. Antonia Thomas. Sissy Spacek. Sissy Spacek’s wardrobe in Badlands. Rookie magazine. Zendaya. Bonnie Raitt. Stevie Nicks. Indigo Girls. Linda Ronstadt singing “You’re No Good.” Aretha Franklin singing “Respect.” Carly Simon singing “You’re So Vain.” Tammy Wynette singing “Stand by Your Man.” Loretta Lynn singing “Fist City.” Margo Price. Princess Diana and Jackie O. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Eve and a pomegranate. Mary, mother of Jesus. Mary Magdalene. Bathsheba. Deborah. Esther. Queen Vashti. Dirty Dancing. “Love Is Strange” by Mickey & Sylvia. Sylvia Robinson. Chaka Khan. “This Tornado Loves You” by Neko Case. Coconuts, strawberry shampoo. Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. Lace. Velvet. Mesh. Tulle. Your bedroom—a candy-colored, starry-ceiling sanctuary. “Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty and “American Girl” by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. “American Girls” by Counting Crows. “Around the Way Girl” by LL Cool J. Your natural blush, Lolita. Orange Crush. “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways. Flirting and bar lights. And everysingle heart-dark or heart-light muddy tomboy and frilly girly-girl and bad girl and good girl (and walking the edges, nowhere and everywhere in between), living or can-never-really-die dead.
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