If Only

by Jennifer Gilmore

  I know how that can feel, which is too much, like, overwhelming. Who wants to be a gift? You know what goes into being wrapped up in paper and pretty ribbons? Tall order because we have stuff inside, too, and it’s not all gift-wrapped in fancy paper.

  “They’re in Arizona,” says Jonathan, though no one has asked him. He goes to the fridge and pulls out a jug of OJ. Gets down some glasses. Kneels down and comes up with a big bottle of vodka, starts pouring. “My dad’s got a show at a museum in Phoenix.” Glug glug goes the vodka. “Lots of cactuses and fruit bats, judging from the pics they keep sending me. And ghosts, according to my mother, who says the car goes freezing and the lights go out on the dash in the same spot on some strange stretch of road they have to drive to the museum.”

  “Really?” Avi says.

  “Guess so,” Jonathan says.

  Tina nods.

  “They leave you alone here?” I ask. The amount of preparation it would take for my moms to leave me alone would be an enormous undertaking for us all. But New York–style, I guess.

  “Naah. I’m supposed to be at a friend’s.” Jonathan is handing out drinks. He’s so easy in his skin, like he could be a bartender for real. Or a kid in his parents’ apartment. Both work for me right now.

  “J’s dad’s a painter. Kind of well known,” Tina says. “Andrew Laherty?”

  I stare at her blankly.

  “Well, I mean, like, in the art world. Art-world well known.”

  Art World? Not World world? These people talk like they are in magazines. Music World? Is that a thing? Also I realize then that Tina loves Jonathan. She probably knows everything about him. I wonder about these details now, like, is there a birthmark? A secret letter, like I have? A rock? I’m not sure he notices Tina much, but I remind myself to watch and see.

  Claire sips at her drink now and I watch her watch him, too, just over the lip of her glass. The boy in charge.

  This, I’m seeing, could get ugly.

  Outside I can see a subway go by and it looks pasted against the sky. Also the tops of buildings, strange uneven shapes, fire escapes. It’s totally soulful and beautiful.

  Jonathan shrugs. “I guess,” he says.

  He’s done passing drinks and I set mine down and look at my phone, think about getting back to Gram’s.

  Claire is flashing one of her sideways smiles and I realize we might be in this for a while, so I might as well just relax and let it all go down however it’s going down. Maybe there is destiny in this, too. The original plan got derailed hours ago, so who knows what I’m meant to be doing tonight.

  Patrick takes my hand. He weaves his fingers in mine, squeezes all our fingers. Hi, I think. Hi, Patrick. I look at him. He’s all in, too. Always has been and tonight I like that. Tonight that doesn’t feel like the whole wrapped-up-present thing, which it can feel like, all too much and all about opening me up to see what’s inside, but tonight it just feels nice and strong and important.

  So this is what happens at Jonathan’s:

  Claire starts drinking and so does that Avi and then he calls his friend who I think is his boyfriend and also he calls the Twins who are now the Twins of Ruth for some reason that has to do with custody and their parents recently divorcing and who live in Chelsea and apparently have a Ping-Pong table, as we’d heard, and then Tina looks up from her book and is like, I’m in this, too, and Andre goes home somewhere along the way and then this happens: Claire goes off with Jonathan. I watch her trail after him, as if she is a Squirmel and he has her on a magical Squirmel string. Off, into his room, and sure enough Tina starts drinking straight from the vodka bottle and then, here we go, she’s crying hysterically, like for her whole life, which seems like it’s been okay actually other than being the middle kid and not getting into the private school her sister got into, which I find out when I sit on the couch with her, holding her hand, and then Avi and his friend sit down, too, and we’re all like talking about our most sad and private things to make Tina feel better, like how Avi once held hands with his friend, a boy, in the backseat of his mother’s car when he was eight and she was driving in New Jersey and she turned around and screamed at him that boys don’t marry each other and then they got in a car crash, right there and then, and so, as a result, Avi will always think of love as a car crash, because he loved this boy so much, he tells us, and Tina nods and says, whispering, I will always only love Jonathan and that is also like a car crash even if the blood is on the inside, and then she weeps and weeps and says she could die from this feeling, she knows it, and it’s getting dark out now, the sun is setting wild with clouds and orange and pink and the room is filling up with darkness but no one moves to turn on a light, not yet, and Avi and his friend, who is Benjamin, hold hands and start kissing, and that’s when the Twins of Ruth arrive, they get buzzed in and they are not identical, and they take a look and say, oh shit, this is some ugly going on in here, and then they pour themselves vodka and OJs, too, and they sit down on the rug and say, fill us in, and Patrick does and also nods to the room where Jonathan and Claire are, and then to Tina, and I don’t know what to do because I want Claire to be okay and even though I don’t know her I want Tina to feel better, too.

  Is Claire okay in there? I mean, who is Jonathan, really? I can’t ask Tina, but her love for him gives me hope that he is lovable and good and worthy of my friend’s temporary affection.

  I look around. Well, I know where he lives, there’s that. Also, Claire is a big girl. I remember the first time she kissed Keith Summers in my backyard in seventh grade. That seemed so scandalous at the time, the way she had snuck off with the captain of the soccer team and then came back all smudged up. But why was it a scandal? What was the part that was scandalous I don’t know now. Was it the leaving bit?

  People are talking about food because there have only been french fries since being in the city, so there is talk of pizza and ordering it or going out for it and still there is no light, but Brooklyn is lit up now and the streetlights are coming into the dark room, and also stores across the street, other people’s apartments and I can see a couple fighting right before me, in a building across the street, there are her hands on her hips and she is in her bra and underwear just screaming her head off. Is that love? In another apartment I can make out a woman, alone, rocking a crying baby to sleep.

  It’s like a dollhouse here/there and I look over at Jonathan’s door and it’s still closed and, man, I can see Tina is watching it like her eyes are shooting darts of ancient fire and I can tell she’s all cried out.

  “I’m going home,” Tina says.

  “You got a Lyft or want a car?” Avi asks her, sweetly, and this means a way home, because Tina lives in a different part of Brooklyn and no one seems to drive anywhere or have their parents pick them up or drop them off; it’s like a whole other system here.

  “Lame-o shame-o,” say the Twins of Ruth. “We’re going to Natalie’s.”

  Apparently this is all the way back in Manhattan somewhere, though this doesn’t seem to bother anyone, no one seems to worry about getting anywhere in fact.

  “See ya, J!” they scream at Jonathan’s closed door, and they leave and Tina goes out behind them, silently.

  I creep back to the bedroom door and tap on it and say, “Claire?” Tap tap. “You in there?” Tap. “We have to leave soon.”

  I hear shuffling and then Claire says, “Let’s stay a little longer, kk? All good here.”

  What can I say? And I can’t tell if the kk is real.

  And then Avi and Benjamin are like, “Should we make out here all night or go to a club?”

  They decide on a club but then we all realize that it’s not even 9:00 p.m., so we call for the pizza, bang on the bedroom door now, screw this delicate tap tap, for his address. Jonathan screams it out, muffled—gross—and then we order two pies, one with some form of meat and one with mushrooms, and then we wait and the boys drink more and even Patrick drinks some, too, me too actually, why the hell not?, and
I think how am I going to get Claire out of here.

  That’s when Benjamin screams. Like curdle-the-blood scream.

  “What?” I say, heart pounding. “What!”

  “Mu-sic!” Avi and he say at the exact same time.

  Avi runs over to a phone port he must know about and soon out blasts: You’re just a kid, but you got nowhere to go.

  They go insane dancing. Jumping on the couch.

  There is a rumble in the streets of soul, they scream/sing.

  It’s loud and sort of awful and I just want to leave but what will we do? I am suddenly exhausted. Like paralyzation. I have been moving and moving and not stopping, not even in my mind, and now it’s all, like, grinding to this incredible stop. I feel there is an extreme purposeless to my life now, to this mission I have been on, that brought us here, and it feels like even though it hasn’t even begun, it’s already over.

  I just want to lie down. Alone. So I go to the door leading to the other bedroom and open the door.

  It’s just a bedroom that belongs to someone else’s parents. Big bed, TV, some cool paintings, one with the name Sally painted in red and yellow brushstrokes across the canvas, and more photos, lots of papers stacked around. I flop down on the bed, watch Avi and Benjamin move in the living room. They’re dancing, hard, and I can’t tell if they’re serious or not. Benjamin’s frizzy blond hair bops by, flailing, and then there is Avi, all dark and contained, robotic almost, they’re kind of opposite in that way I think. Are Patrick and I more the same?

  Patrick comes in and stands at the door and, swear to God, just as he does it, someone turns on a light in the living room and he’s silhouetted now, just this shape I want to lie down next to me, make me feel like it will all work out, like I will find her.

  He walks in and closes the door behind him and he sits on the bed next to me the way my mother does when I am sick and she is brushing back my hair out of my face, but then it changes and we are kissing, like in the car that time after the road trip to Ithaca, just kissing like it will save us or kill us and it is really beautiful tonight in this dark.

  For the first time I want everything with Patrick. To be with him completely, on this adventure, and maybe that’s because he’s with me tonight, I’m not with him, like at band practice, and maybe that’s what I came for, to lose my virginity, maybe that’s what Claire is doing next door to me right now, maybe it was this we were coming for and not to see my first mom because, as Jonathan concurs, that is something I cannot unsee. A thing I cannot unknow.

  Maybe the butterfly wings flapping in South America made this happen tonight.

  I am all in now.

  And while losing my virginity cannot be unlost, I suppose, I want Patrick, and for the first time I am absolutely sure of it and I feel him so close to me. He brushes his fingers over my chest and moves back to unhook my bra, as he has countless times. The feeling of the release of the clasp and also that he did it, with one hand, that he knows me and knows how, it just makes me want more and more of him and I reach for him, which I have done, but I don’t usually do it first, and I brush my fingers over his jeans and I unhook his belt and I feel like I know him, too, like I did that to his belt, and I get the button of his cords undone, then his zipper.

  We are kissing, hard, and I touch him. Because it can be my choice. I can have power, too. It feels natural and perfect and like I’m not thinking and then Patrick grabs my wrist, a little suddenly, and sort of harshly, which feels shocking.

  “Stop.” He stops kissing me and brings me to him.

  I push back a bit, teasing I suppose, but also saying, yes, I said yes, I mean yes, did you not get that?, you have wanted this answer since you put that stupid pencil in my hair in English class, but he blocks me again.

  “Ivy.” He moves my hand. “Now’s not the time.”

  I realize he’s serious. “Why?” I say, sort of insulted, rejected, though I know he’s into it, I mean, the bulge, it can’t lie, can it? “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

  “Of course. My God, of course. It’s not the right time. It’s just not. Where are we? What are we doing? I mean, this is just not how I want it to be with you. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, and it feels right to me. That is all. It never has before really. I mean, I wanted to is all.” I try to lessen the rejected-little-girl feeling I’m holding on to by just being honest. It’s hard, though. Hard not to get mean and invulnerable.

  “This needs to be the weekend you find Bridget,” Patrick says.

  He’s done it. He’s said her name. It, like, breaks some spell. It’s all broken now. The sex spell, for sure, but also some other thing I can’t put my finger on.

  I sit up and turn on the bedside light. “Got it,” I say, feeling the mask of me come back. I had liked the way it had dissolved—for a moment I was just me, just my face.

  “Come here,” he says, sitting across from me, cross-legged. He holds me awkwardly, then moves to button his pants and straightens himself up. So I fidget around and try to be cool and elegant as I redo my bra. It doesn’t work at all. Not at all.

  “You know,” I say, “I might not ever feel this way again.”

  He looks at me sideways. “That would suck,” he says.

  “Just letting you know. That could have been your chance.”

  He scrunches his mouth into a sideways smile. “Ivy,” he says.

  I pretend-pout. I don’t like it but I do. I cross my arms.

  “Come here,” Patrick says again. He’s seated against the headboard, fully clothed.

  I climb on top of him and wrap myself around him. Spider hug. “Fine,” I say.

  He brushes my hair back out of my face, exposing it, mask or no mask, I can’t decide. “And it’s our chance, you know that, right?” he says.

  I’m silent.

  “Now, can we just get Princess Claire out of her tower and get back to Gram’s house before we turn into little mini city pumpkins.”

  “You’re mixing up your fairy tales,” I say, climbing off him. Push my hair back over my face, over my eyes.

  This whole thing is a mixed-up fairy tale, I think.

  We stand and I open the door and Ben and Ari have stopped dancing. They have now descended upon the pizzas that must have shown up while we were in here. It’s carnage—tomato sauce all over the white stools and white countertop. Crime scene–style. New York gangsters.

  “Do you need any money?” Patrick asks as we pull off slices of mushroom and shove them into our mouths.

  “Welcome to our country,” Avi says, bowing. “New York pizza. On us.”

  Patrick nods and shoves a piece of mushroom into his mouth.

  It’s delicious. I am ravenous and I devour the piece and pull off another.

  I look at Jonathan’s door. “Any movement?” I ask the boys.

  Benjamin shrugs. Then Avi does the same.

  I put down my pizza and walk over to the door. “Claire?” I say, tapping lightly. “Honey?”

  I hear shuffling and then the door opens. Claire. Fully clothed. Unscathed. Less smudged than when she kissed Keith Summers in the woods in my backyard.

  “So soon?” She looks back at Jonathan who is equally clothed. On the bed there are about thirty black-and-white photos laid out. Several large portfolios are open, and drawings are scattered around the floor. I can see several charcoal drawings of Jonathan on the night table, one seated with his legs crossed, like mine, I can’t help but note, one smoking a cigarette and looking out the window. There is a contour drawing of him standing, his arms outstretched, about to take flight. Just from his outline, he looks like Alex.

  They sort of take my breath away. The pictures and the people. I remember looking at my friend drawing me. I wonder if he feels the same intensity of recognition that I did that day.

  Found.

  “All right, then!” is what I say. Then, “We have to go now,” and we grab our jackets and hug and the boys do that chest-press thing, which annoys me be
cause it’s like more touching than a hug, so why not just hug?, and then I download a Lyft app and then we get one coming and then we are out the door down the stairs out on the street and then we are in someone’s car and we are moving and Claire is saying, what an amazing person he is, he’s so smart, and I loved drawing him, then we are on the Brooklyn Bridge and I am looking out at all the other bridges, the line of them connecting us, these steel promises that we won’t float away, and then we are flying uptown and then we are at Gram’s, finally, pulling up, and Claire grabs my shoulder, whispers in my ear, “I want to be Alex,” she says. “That’s the answer.”

  I look over at my friend. “You are,” I say. “But you’re Claire.” I yank a little at her sleeve to make sure she knows that.

  And then I thank the driver and I don’t know this doorman who opens the door for us but he knows me, and we are in the weirdo, hideous, glamorous dusty old lobby, empty now, still as a funeral parlor, and we are in the elevator and out on the dark, smelly hallway, tonight it’s like Vicks VapoRub and cabbage, and then, here we are, here we are at Gram’s apartment.

  I take a big breath. I ring the bell. It’s 10:55 and we made it and we are chewing our gum and Gram, expecting us because of course the doorman called up, opens the door in her blue silk robe and her pink lipstick and she says, “Oh, darling, look at you, home so soon? Did you just have an awful time? This is New York City! I certainly didn’t expect you back before dawn.”