I remembered eating it for breakfast before school, while watching General Hospital after school, and more often than I should have, taking a bowl up with me at bedtime, which was gross because I always forgot to bring it down for a few days, and since I didn’t drink the milk after eating the cereal (that always seemed a weird practice to me, drinking crumb-filled milk), it tended to become a nasty science experiment. “Anyway, I was wondering about tonight—”
The phone rang and she pushed the faucet control down with her forearm. “Hold on, I’m expecting a call from Mr. Henckle.”
That was a blast from the past. Mr. Henckle was her sewing machine repair guy. She went to the family room to answer it, wiping her hands on her apron along the way.
“And I’m still wondering…” I said to myself, then listened as her voice went from the cheerful singsongy greeting to a sudden tense undertone.
“Yes,” I heard her say. “Yes, I understand. It’s fine. I’ll be right there.”
Every muscle in my body tightened. Over the years I had gotten enough bad news on the phone to hate the sound of it ringing, even though over the years the sound of a telephone ringing had gone from the actual banging bell sound of the phones in my childhood home to strains of Beethoven or Jack Johnson or whatever the holder wanted to tell the world about their psychology every time someone rang them.
She came back in, looking a little rattled.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, setting my spoon down. Three magically delicious marshmallows floated off it into the milk.
“It’s your father.”
I almost threw up right then and there. Seriously, my throat went tight suddenly, and I felt whatever I couldn’t recall putting into my stomach threatening to come up. Was it time? Had it happened again? Had my coming back made it happen sooner than it was supposed to? Tears sprang to my eyes and burned like acid.
“Is he okay?” Stupid question. She hadn’t come in looking like that to report that he’d had a nice lunch. Just one dirty martini, nothing to worry about. “What happened?” I said, almost expecting to hear that he’d had a cerebral hemorrhage while he was out somewhere, and no one had been there, so we’d never know if he could have been saved.
I knew that wasn’t how it happened, but still I could picture it in horrible graphic color.
No one was there.
He died alone.
No one should die alone.
But that didn’t have anything to do with today. His death came to him at home, like a ghost in the night, and took him without warning, without accusation or the chance for penance.
My fists were clenched, my nails digging into the soft flesh of my palm. “What happened?” I asked, harder and more urgently than the situation called for. I didn’t need to make things worse by freaking out before she said anything. “What happened?” I asked again, trying to make my voice gentler.
Mom drew in a breath. “He was in a car accident.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The words car accident had long since stopped meaning fender bender to me. No one talked about little bumps, so I was instantly on alert, bracing myself for the worst news. Which was ironic, since I’d already gotten the worst news about my father and processed it and grieved, yet here I was again, about to relive it all, one way or another.
“It was on the American Legion Bridge,” my mother said, sounding more hassled than upset. How was that possible? He could have died! “Someone cut him off and he overcompensated. He said the Chevy is totaled.”
He said. So he was okay, he was the one who called. This wasn’t a case of his number being up around now, one way or another. No wonder she was so calm. I took a deep breath and let it out in a long, shaking stream. “Wait, so he was in an accident but he’s okay.”
“He’s not going to die or anything, but he said his arm got hit pretty hard.” She was hurrying about, collecting her purse, her keys. She stopped in front of the hall mirror to check her reflection, a reflex, I’m sure, as she did it literally every time she went out the door. “I have to get there.”
This was coming back to me. The car accident on the bridge. So minor in retrospect that it hadn’t really registered in my memory. He’d had a dislocated shoulder and had wrenched his back, but when it first happened his shoulder had hurt so badly that he hadn’t even realized about his back, which slowed his recovery.
It was New Me who panicked every time there was an unexpected phone call or any sort of bad news. It took years to build up that kind of paranoia. How interesting that this, which must have been a really scary moment for me at the time, had been whitewashed away as soon as I knew he was fine.
“He’s at Sibley Hospital?” I asked. God, I could smell the antiseptic hospital scent just saying it.
She stopped. “How did you know?”
“I—” This was definitely not the time to add confusion. “It makes sense; it’s closest to that spot. Do you want me to go with you?” Instead of keeping whatever plans I had with Brendan? Good lord, he was going to be here any minute. Where were we supposed to be going?
“No, no, I’ll go,” Mom said, and I recognized her lifelong trait of wanting to be the heroine, the Florence Nightingale who swooped in and saved everyone. Alone. Sharing credit was not her style. “It’s not that bad, for heaven’s sake; he called me himself. He’s just not careful enough, your father. He’s never careful enough.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth, then added, “You go have fun with Brendan and his folks.”
Brendan and I were going someplace with his parents? Another event that hadn’t ultimately registered in my memory. I guess I could take that to mean there was no trauma and thus nothing to worry about. That’s who I am now: a person who assesses risk and worry 100 percent of the time. “O … kay. Call me if you need anything, though.”
“Right, I’ll just call you at the restaurant and have them page you,” she said with a laugh.
I automatically gave an exasperated sigh. Page me. Please. Like that had ever worked efficiently. “I meant call my cell phone.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “We’re not having that argument right now. You absolutely do not need a car phone. Who do you think you are, Donald Trump?”
“God, no.”
She opened the screen door. It creaked in a way I’d never before realized was distinct. “Have a fun graduation dinner.” She took a step out, then stopped and turned back to add, “Aloha!”
Aloha?
Oh, yes! Yes, yes, yes, we were going to a graduation dinner at the Kona Kai Restaurant in Bethesda, which closed not too long afterward and never reopened. In fact, there is a huge dearth of Polynesian restaurants in this world, as far as I’m concerned. Given the number of tiki decorations at Party City, and the sheer volume of tarantula nightmares people still experience from the tiki episode of The Brady Bunch, I’m absolutely amazed no one has picked up the Trader Vic’s idea and run with it. I’d invest in that, for sure.
But I remembered tonight now. Not well, but I remembered the creamy piña coladas (virgin, alas), and the guy who came over and pulled a slab of dough into hundreds of noodles before our eyes. I also remembered, of course, the pu pu platter, which was both delicious and embarrassingly named. And bananas fried in butter and rum and served with vanilla ice cream.
I did not want to miss this revisit to the Kona Kai.
But I had to offer. “You sure you don’t want me to go with you, Mom?”
She looked back at me with a frown, and she was right: this wasn’t like eighteen-year-old me. I seldom offered to go out of my way more than once, and certainly not in an easily heard tone. “Well, now that you mention it…” She must have seen the panic in my eyes, because she genuinely laughed. “I’m kidding, let me go get Dad and bring him back. You can come in and do your duty later, catering to him hand and foot, as I’m sure I’ll have to.”
“Will do!”
“Have fun, sweetie.” She went out to her Oldsmobile Cutlass and I watched h
er get in, close the door, put on the seat belt, adjust the mirrors, and basically do everything you had to do for a driver’s test but never again. Mom was so safety-conscious that she did every check, every single time. She was still like that.
Dad was not so vigilant about anything like that, which was probably how he’d managed to sideswipe someone while trying to switch the radio to The Chris Core Show when he was driving on the Beltway.
I went to the door and watched her taillights fade down the road, then took a moment to absorb the change of scenery. It was one thing to return to your childhood school and note how small the bathroom stalls are, or how big the trees have gotten in the decades since you left, but quite another to “return” to how things were, from a place of more maturity.
The Japanese cherry trees that lined the street, many of which had since died and been replaced by a heartier variety, were all intact, and at the end of their bloom. The shutters on the house across the street were powder-blue, almost the color of the sky on an especially fine day. New neighbors had come in almost twenty years ago and changed the blue to black, which still looked cute against the white brick house, but there had always been something so cheerful about the blue.
I was about to turn and go back inside, hoping to find some of the old junk food favorites I’d long since stopped indulging in, when, from the other end of the street, Brendan’s car caught my eye. The old red Dodge was as familiar as a person to me, and I caught my breath, instantly and fully recalling the scent of it and the feel of the leather (or vinyl?) seats. Whatever they were, they were sticky and hot in the summer and I could remember the smell of them when we’d sit in the backseat and make out. Good lord, I was going to be able to ride in that car again!
I watched him pull up and park in the same spot he always parked in, joggling in and out to straighten the car.
It’s funny how sharp old memories are. I think it’s because the things that happened to us, and that we saw and felt and heard, when we had the freedom and inexperience of youth, were much bigger in the basket of our experience than later things that had to be squeezed in among job interviews, apartment applications, meaningless boyfriends, and dull, unmemorable holidays.
I can’t remember my twenty-seventh Christmas at all, but I sure remember my tenth Christmas, when I’d learned, a week before, that there was no Santa Claus, so the entire day was one of denial and angst for me, as I wanted to keep believing. I could probably recall every detail, from waking up in the morning to going to sleep at night, yet I couldn’t recall the same number of details from ten subsequent Christmases together.
And so Brendan parking his car was like that tenth Christmas in a sense. Something I’d thought of many times since our breakup and since making other choices in my life: how often, on a summer day, my mind had returned to this very ordinary scene in my past because the comparatively few days in which this had happened amounted, in my mind, to an entire history.
He put the car in park and got out, the tremendous bang of the old car door heralding his arrival as it always had. Good old American car. My dad loved that and commented on it every time he saw Brendan. He started to walk up the yard and I stood transfixed, watching him like I was watching a movie I couldn’t rewind. I already wanted to rewind it, to see the step up the curb again, to see the cursory glance at his wristwatch again, but this was live.
He got to the front stoop and only then noticed me standing on the other side of the screen door watching him.
“I’m being creepy,” I said, reading the surprised expression on his face. “I know. I just saw you coming and…” I shrugged. “Watched you walk up.”
He gave that quick smile of his and raked his hand across his dark brown hair. “I’ve watched you sleep before,” he said. Oh, that voice. If not for this, would I have ever heard that voice again? “When you’ve fallen asleep in my car on the way home.”
I laughed. “Creeper.” At this point in history, we’d never had sex together, so that was the closest he’d gotten: making out with me in the car until I sank into an easy, relaxed sleep. Boy, those days were long over; I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in years.
Probably not since those days.
He smiled, then moved in and kissed me on the mouth. The smell of Ivory soap drifted around me, and I leaned in to him instinctively. Habit? After all these years? I don’t know, but rather than feeling improper, like I guess it should have, it just felt good. I didn’t want to stop.
And however old I was, he was already eighteen, so there was no compelling reason to stop myself, as far as any technical “ickiness” yardstick went.
It was so nice. My body came alive in his embrace. Nerves danced wherever he touched my skin, and I felt warm all over. There’s no beating chemistry. As an adult, I’d dated men who “made sense” on paper. Jeffrey made sense on paper, and obviously that hadn’t gone all that well, just like it hadn’t with those before him. It had been ages since I’d been with someone just because he was physically irresistible.
Brendan was irresistible.
It made me wonder if it was really all that bad to base a relationship on sexual chemistry. I knew one couple, friends of my parents who had famously gotten divorced twice and gotten remarried each time. They were still married today. If that was chemistry, the “working” seemed to be overriding the “not working,” though I can’t say those divorces are all that appealing.
Still, kissing Brendan, feeling those soft lips against mine, feeling his tongue and that taste that was so uniquely him and pleasant and right, made my heart race and every part of my body heat up as if touched by fire. I felt tingly in a way I hadn’t felt in as long as I could remember.
Had Brendan actually been the last guy to make me feel this way?
Was that possible?
“Come in,” I said, taking his warm hand in mine and pulling him all the way into the house. I closed the door.
“Where is everyone?” he asked. That had to be the number one question of hormonal teenagers.
I slid the chain lock into place. “My dad had an accident.” I saw his face grow alarmed, and amended, “A fender bender. He’s fine, but the car is smashed, so my mom went to get him. Come upstairs with me.” I tugged on his hand to pull him toward the stairway.
“My parents are waiting for us,” he said, holding back. “If we start something, we’re not going to want to stop.”
For one hugely disappointing minute, I thought he was going to wimp out, tell me he couldn’t have what I was about to uncharacteristically offer, because his mom and dad were tapping their toes and looking at the clock. Instead he said, “Let me call them.” Then he disappeared into the living room and I heard him dialing the landline. Seven digits, not ten. That might be one of the hardest things to get used to here. The mark of simplicity represented by not having to dial an area code.
I waited impatiently, feeling a lot like a person in a plaster cast waiting for a stick to reach in and scratch with, but he was back quickly, leading the way up to my room. “I just bought us forty-five minutes,” he said. “How long till your parents come home?”
“Longer than that.” I had no fear. As I recalled, it had been a very long night, as the cop who was taking the report was a rookie who didn’t understand English very well and he kept making everyone repeat their stories till he got it all down, rather than letting someone who understood the language take it down. My father had complained about that for ages afterward. We had better things to do than sit in a waiting room repeating the story louder and louder. Hell, he could have looked at the cars and seen exactly what happened!
We got into my room and closed the door. Both of us reached over to lock it at the same time, then laughed and kissed each other. It was tender at first, tentative, like Brendan had always been, but things heated up quickly. They always had, but this time I was on fire, kissing him hungrily, as if my survival somehow depended on it.
“Happy birthday,” he said to me between kisse
s.
“Thank you.” Eighteen. Yup, I lost my virginity a couple of months later.
Now I was about to lose it again. No sense in waiting this time.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Not many people could say that and mean it. That they were about to lose their virginity for the first time again.
Again.
But I was.
“Happy my birthday to you too,” I said to Brendan, and reached for the buckle of his jeans. It was cool to the touch, and I fumbled with it for a moment, trying to remember how it opened.
He shifted his weight, making my access easier, and I pulled the belt off and dropped it to the floor. Then I went for the button.
He exhaled harshly and reached his hands inside my shorts, sliding easily along my abdomen and down between my legs. It had been a long time since my stomach was that flat. When he reached the spot he sought, he sucked his breath in sharply.
“You are so hot,” he breathed.
The words lit me on fire. “So are you.”
I ground gently against him. It wasn’t a move I’d ever used on him before, and when his finger slid easily into me, he responded with enthusiasm. “What has gotten into you?”
“I’m about to turn eighteen!”
“Who knew that was all it took?” He laughed, but he did not stop working his fingers.
“I certainly never dreamed it,” I said, sliding his jeans down over his hips, then kneeling before him and taking him into my mouth.
He moaned and I looked up at him, using that Jenna Jameson eye contact trick everyone talked about (decades after this) but which I’d always felt self-conscious using. But it drove men insane. That’s why everyone talked about it, because it was the trick we’d all learned later (much later), to giving the perfect blow job.
Funny thing was, I was surprised to find he was already as hard as a rock before I even did anything. This was another thing that didn’t happen anymore. Grown men had more control or less sensation, I wasn’t sure which, but it took more time to get a grown man excited. This was a very heady compliment.
If I Could Turn Back Time Page 6