Forks, Knives, and Spoons

  “Yup, I know Dennis. You can do so much better than him, Jenny,” was all Amy could say truthfully, picturing him during March Madness, when he’d sauntered into the Sigma Chi house leading a giggling girl up to his room. He led her not by the hand, not by walking beside her, but with his left hand sunken into the back of her pants and his right hand flinging a thumbs-up to anyone who looked their way. He paraded her past Amy and the group of brothers and girlfriends watching Syracuse play in the Elite Eight on the living room TV.

  “Do you think it’s a little weird that Dennis told me that he knows all about girls’ ‘period underpants’? He told me never to wear my period undies around him.”

  “Yeah, that’s a little strange.”

  “He even keeps trying to show me the ‘right way’ to give a hand job, like I don’t know how to do that. That’s not what bothers me, though.” Jenny glanced around then leaned closer to Amy. “It’s that he told me how he taught other girls how to do it, using his dick, of course, and then he compares me to them.”

  Amy felt the old familiar frustration and sadness creep in as Jenny talked. Amy wanted to shake her and lead her away from Dennis at full speed. Instead, she put a hand on Jenny’s arm and repeated, “You can do so much better than him.”

  “Oh well, no biggie, he’s fun to be with anyway, and he sure is hot to look at.” She shrugged.

  “Where are you heading after graduation?”

  “Back home to California,” Jenny said, bubbling with forced enthusiasm. “I’m going to live with my mom for a little while, waitress and save some money, then I’ll probably try to get into the movies or something.” She flipped her yellow hair over her shoulder as the bubbles fizzled from her voice.

  Amy searched for a silver lining around the cloud she felt. “I bet your mom will be glad to have you home. You should do some painting, too, you’re really good at it.”

  Jenny didn’t ask Amy what her plans were and she made a sharp-angled turn from peppy to serious.

  “You know, I will always remember the time you took me home for Thanksgiving,” Jenny said, her gaze on Amy’s shoes instead of her eyes. “It really meant a lot to me. And your dad . . . well, your dad was the bomb. Tell him I said thank you. You were a good friend to me, Amy.” She took a deliberate breath and raised her eyes to Amy’s face. “You’re really lucky.”

  AMY TOSSED ANOTHER KERNEL of popcorn into her mouth. “Can you believe we’re graduating this weekend?”

  Andrew was studying for his last final exam, and she and Matt were having a movie night at his apartment before she met Andrew back at his place. Matt opened the blue-and-gold Block-buster video case and slid When Harry Met Sally . . . into the VCR. It was three years old, but it was Amy’s favorite movie, edging out Say Anything as her top pick.

  “Do you really think it’s true that men and women can’t just be friends? We’re friends,” Amy said. “Don’t you think Harry is totally wrong?”

  Matt shrugged and didn’t answer. He moved his guitar to the chair and lifted the popcorn from the coffee table. He nestled in next to her and balanced the bowl half on her leg and half on his, the way they always did. Amy kept talking even as she popped more kernels in her mouth.

  “What’s it going to be like being so far apart? And what am I going to do if I need help with my computer stuff at work?”

  “You’ve got your computer word processing down pat now; you’ll kick butt at the Observer, knocking out those top stories, your byline everywhere. Besides, the city’s not that far. I can visit when I’m at my parents’. And there are these things called phones. You can call me with any questions or even just to tell me you miss me.”

  His smile wrapped around her. His once straggly hair was trimmed away from his face and around his ears, clipped for job interviews, and contacts replaced his glasses. Amy saw something new in his familiar brown eyes and in that dimple that she loved: a handsomeness emerged in a way she hadn’t recognized before.

  Amy was moving to New York City after graduation for a reporting job at a five-year-old newspaper, the New York Observer, and Matt was remaining in Syracuse to work for the computer technology department of the Lockheed Corporation while he stayed on at the university to begin a graduate program.

  “And I’ll send you postcards from sunny Syracuse.”

  “Matt,” Amy said softly, “do you think Andrew and I would stay together if he weren’t moving to New York City, too?”

  “You’re the only one who knows the answer to that,” Matt said.

  She sat pensively for a moment.

  “But, I mean, do you think we should stay together? We’ve been going out since freshman year, and what if there’s someone else I should be meeting and I miss him because I’m with Drew?” Amy took a breath and continued, talking to herself more than to Matt. “Of course, I love him, he’s amazing. Sure, sometimes I get upset and feel a little like I have to compete for his attention with all he does and with him always wanting to have friends around, but what couple doesn’t have those kinds of things to deal with? Right? He’s great at school and sports and, well, everything, and he got that great finance job. Bear Stearns is a big deal. He’s not jealous, he’s fun to be with, and everyone loves him. I know we’re meant to be together, forget I’m asking. Never mind.”

  Matt shifted his arms behind his head and leaned back against the couch. Amy noticed his T-shirt rise at his waist, revealing a taut abdomen. Her eyes traveled along the line of hair trailing from his navel to his—she stopped herself and tried to pull her eyes away. She pretended to look into the popcorn bowl but glanced beyond it back to his exposed midriff, hoping he couldn’t see her eyes. Her stomach fluttered, either from the tingle of discovery or the bare wonder of the momentary sensation never before associated with Matt.

  “You have to do what you feel is right, Amy.”

  She lifted her eyes to his.

  “There’s nothing I can say about your relationship with Andrew. I can help you with computers, but you have to figure out your heart on your own.”

  She nodded. “How come you never talk to me about any girls? We talk about everything, except we hardly ever discuss girls you date.”

  Matt shrugged. “I don’t feel like I need to talk about that stuff. Besides—”

  “What do you mean? You can talk to me about anything, even your romantic conquests. Come on.”

  “I do talk to you about everything. Everything else. I’ve got nothing to hide from you, but what would you want to know, anyway? There’s no one serious, there’s not much to say.”

  “Hmm. What’s your type of girl? Who’s the girl you’ve spent the most time with?”

  “You.” He laughed. “My time with you doesn’t leave me much time for other girls.”

  She nudged him, feeling relief jumbled with curiosity. He hit the play button on the remote. As the first old couples started telling their love stories, her worries about Andrew eased and she rested her head comfortably against Matt’s shoulder. She let her eyes sweep to the edge of his shirt. It covered him again. She sighed, threw a handful of popcorn in her mouth, and watched the on-screen tales of love.

  A POUNDING AT THE door woke Amy. She blinked her eyes open just enough to see Matt lift his head and stretch his neck. The knocking returned and the two rubbed their eyes and searched the room, trying to make sense of what was happening.

  “Oh no, Matt! What time is it? We fell asleep.”

  Matt stood and padded to the door as Amy gathered the bowl emptied of popcorn and refilled with two drained Rolling Rock bottles and some Popsicle wrappers. Matt unlocked the door while his fingers brushed his sleep-filled hair. Andrew burst in as the latch released.

  “Hey, Matt, is Amy still here?” His voice was filled with worry.

  Matt began to answer but Andrew stepped past him. He saw Amy moving toward the kitchen and followed her into the outdated linoleum room with its 1970s appliances and avocado-green countertops.

  “Aim, what’s g
oing on?”

  “We must’ve fallen asleep. What time is it?” Amy replied, squinting at the stove for a clock.

  “It’s three thirty in the morning! I got back to the house and you weren’t there,” he accused. “You said you’d be there after your movie.”

  “I’m sorry, I fell asleep during the movie. Come on, let’s go. Did you just get home? You were studying late,” she noted, floundering to connect the dots.

  At the door, she gave Matt a hug, then slid into her flip-flops. From the corner of her eye, blinking through the sleepiness, she thought she saw Andrew bump his shoulder into Matt on his way to her side.

  THE PIERCING SOUND CUT into Amy’s dream, filtering into the images. In her dream, there were Christmas lights everywhere and Andrew’s mouth was open wide as if the buzzing sound was coming from him. The ringing shrieked through her heart and reverberated down her spine, and then she was shaking back and forth.

  “Amy! Amy, get up!” Veronica’s voice wedged in and found her through the slumbering fog.

  Amy startled to attention and robotically reached for the pile of fire-alarm clothes stored beside her bed, a practice that lingered from freshman year. She mindlessly lifted the sweatshirt, forcing her head through the hole as she yanked leggings on under her nightshirt. Her arms, by habit, found their places.

  Their room in the Kappa house was dim, and the red numbers on the clock radio announced 2:28 a.m. The gleam from the streetlights and the campus beyond seeped in around the edges of the curtains. Amy walked toward Veronica’s silhouette and they stumbled out the door into the hallway lights. She squinted against the whiteness and leaned against Veronica, relying on her stability.

  Amy felt as though she could taste the buzzing and touch the light as they herded down the hallway and the three flights of stairs. A cool night breeze crept up to them, even in May there was a chill in Syracuse after sunset. Amy wrapped her arms around herself and pulled her sweatshirt up at her neck without effect. Her ears throbbed in the sleepy outdoor air, and voices drifted away, lost in the expanse of the night.

  “FOUR YEARS AND I’M still waking you up for fire alarms,” Veronica teased Amy as they waited across the Kappa driveway for the fire department.

  All the sisters who lived in-house gathered on the grass and the terraced steps that led down the hill to Comstock Avenue. The alarm rang out through open windows, and as sirens rose in the distance, brothers from Sigma Chi, next door, started trickling onto their front porch. They draped over the railing and threw themselves on the filthy, torn couch, watching their neighbors.

  “Hey! You girls all right?”

  “Wanna wait over here?”

  “What’s with the hair, girls?”

  “Now we’ll see who’s shacking up over there!”

  The friendly taunts punched the night air. Veronica thought back to the parents’ weekends the two houses had hosted together, the semiformals, the casual hangouts, and the bid night parties. She laughed, remembering the late August weeks when they had all arrived back on campus early to prepare for rush, when the girls spent hours in song practice on the front steps of the stately brick house. In the middle of the night last summer, Veronica had woken in a panic; she was hearing rush songs and thought they were missing a rehearsal. She stirred Amy from sleep and roused her from bed, becoming more alert as she hurried to join the singing. It was dark and Amy grumbled, but Veronica insisted they couldn’t miss a rehearsal. Amy was the one who had noticed the time, almost four in morning, and stumbled sleepily toward the sound of the music.

  “Veronica, come here,” she had said, laughing and leaning out their window. “Very funny, guys! You got us! Let’s all go back to sleep now!”

  When Veronica joined her at the window, she saw a bunch of their friends sitting on the roof of Sigma Chi with a boom box, playing back the tape they had recorded of the girls singing.

  Before the fire trucks arrived, Veronica looked between the houses and glanced up to the roof where the guys had perched that night. Movement from the side door of the Kappa house—the door no one ever used—grabbed her attention. In the darkness, she couldn’t tell who it was, but she saw silhouetted heads come together in a whispered word, or in a kiss, and then the body, who was clearly male, slunk away behind Sigma Chi. He scurried out of the shade of the houses and into a patch of lightness. Veronica gasped. Even in the dimness, she was sure it was Andrew. She walked away from the others and toward the house to see which sister uncoiled from the shadows.

  “Stay back, please,” barked a firefighter as she approached. Following his orders, she stopped and pulled her unruly curls away from her face, squinting as Dawn Nichols stepped toward her. The fireman redirected his reproach toward Dawn: “Ladies, off the driveway, onto the grass, please!”

  Veronica stalked over to her and spoke through gritted teeth: “Andrew Gabel? You’re fooling around with Amy’s boyfriend?”

  Dawn’s face registered shame and she stammered, “I didn’t—we didn’t do anything really. We just—we only kissed and hooked up a little. Only a little.” She looked stunned and scared. “Please, don’t tell Amy, she’s always been so great to me. Please.”

  Veronica turned on her heel, giving Dawn her back. She knotted her hair into a twist at the back of her head, thinking, knowing she had to be honest. Amy would be heartbroken. She was completely idealistic when it came to Andrew, totally devoted and unable to use her reporter’s eye on him. She is so stuck on him being her “perfect steak knife,” Veronica thought, too stuck. Thinking through their years together, Veronica couldn’t count the times when Andrew was too preoccupied with other activities and left Amy in second place behind those pursuits, but besides seeing him with Donna after the Pan Am crash, he’d never given any indications of being a cheater. Sure, he always commanded a room and was happiest in social settings surrounded by friends and new people to meet, but as far as Veronica knew, he had been loyal to her best friend. She felt sickened with disappointment.

  Compelled to tell Amy, she went to find her roommate just as the firemen exited their house, announcing, “All clear!”

  Back in their room, Veronica broke the news as gently as she could. Amy sobbed until morning, her eyes puffy and bloodshot, her nose rimmed pink. Veronica sat up with her, feeling Amy’s grief along with a misplaced guilt for having been the one to tell her the news. As the house began to stir, there came a timid knock at their door. Protectively, Veronica left Amy’s side to answer, instead of granting the usual invitation to come in. Dawn stood there, her shoulders hunched, her eyes swollen like Amy’s.

  “Can I talk to her? Please?” she sniffled.

  Veronica planted herself, blocking the doorway.

  “Who’s there?” Amy said in a hushed voice.

  “Her.”

  “It’s okay, V, let her in.”

  Dawn moved slowly, cowering toward Amy’s bed as if trying to not take up too much space in the room. Her voice caught as she spoke. “I’m sorry, Amy. I’m so sorry. I want you to know that nothing really happened. It was just a kiss and a little fooling around, that’s all. Really. And it was all my fault. I’ve always liked him and I saw him out at Faegan’s last night. I was drunk and I know it’s no excuse, but then I walked back here with him. He was looking for you. I pretended to check your room and told him you weren’t home.” Dawn hiccuped and took what seemed to be her first breath since beginning. “I brought him to the back study room. I wasn’t thinking, I just did it, I just kissed him and—well, I’m sorry.”

  Amy was out of tears. She squeezed her scratchy eyes shut, seeing more clearly with Dawn’s confession. Dawn padded out of their room, seeming even smaller than when she had entered.

  The whole time Dawn had talked, Veronica noticed Amy had looked away, toward something on her bookshelf. Veronica followed her gaze to a snapshot of Amy and Andrew smiling cheek to cheek, a dried corsage resting beside the frame.

  “I’m breaking up with him,” Amy resolved, blowing her no
se as punctuation.

  WEARY AND COVERED IN sleeplessness, Amy marched next door to the Sigma Chi house early enough to avoid most of the still-sleeping brothers. She found Andrew just waking up, alone in the single suite reserved for the fraternity president. He greeted her with his wide smile and outstretched arms, then startled when she crossed her arms over her chest, unmoving, and burst into tears anew. She couldn’t hold it in for another moment.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s over. I never thought that you . . .” Her heart and mind flapped like a sail in the wind, and she didn’t know how to pin down her thoughts into words. “You’ve sometimes been distracted or a little far away emotionally, but I never expected—I never thought you could cheat on me.”

  Andrew protested. “Cheat on you? What are you talking about?”

  “You messed around with Dawn. Last night. I know all about it, she told me everything.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. I was there for you, and she just kissed me, that’s all, just a quick kiss, just like you and that guy from spring break freshman year. I forgave you then, you should forgive me now—it’s the same thing.”

  His words stung, but still she pushed back. “You’re holding that over my head? That’s not forgiveness. Is that what this is? Payback for freshman year? We only kissed; we didn’t hook up. That was three years ago and this isn’t the way things are supposed to happen. We’re about to graduate, to move to the same city. I thought you were ‘the one.’ How could you fool around with someone else? We’re breaking up.” Sobbing, Amy turned and left his room.

  Wearing only his boxers, Andrew followed her into the hallway, calling behind her in a muted tone: “Don’t do this. You have to forgive me. Give me another chance, Aim, I’ll show you it was nothing. I’m sorry. Don’t go. Please.”

  The fraternity was rising, and brothers were peering out doors and lining up in the hallways, staring at Andrew, their leader, who was unaccustomed to negative attention, unfamiliar with being rejected. As Amy stood on the landing at the turn of the staircase, she sensed the desperation in him, felt her own embarrassment mix with his. He begged her in a loud whisper. Leaning over the railing of the stairwell half-naked, he pleaded. Amy heard the crack in his voice, felt a squeeze in her heart. She looked away from him. Down the hall, she saw a brother leave the bathroom; she glimpsed the panels of the toilet stalls in the wedge of space before the door fell shut again.